TRACE - CSI Reilly Steel #5 (Forensic novel Police Procedural Series)

by Casey Hill

  ‘They’re the same flowers that have been used to garnish the food,’ said Reilly. ‘My bet is that they’re highly poisonous.’

  ‘Right,’ said Kennedy. ‘Another thing for your guys, then.’

  The others left, and Chris was outside talking to the masseuse who had been the first on the scene.

  Reilly knelt down again to look at the body.

  Naomi Worthington was a beautiful girl. According to her ID, she had just turned thirty, and her pale skin was flawless and her hair was long and lustrous, untouched by dye. She was slim, but not thin. She wore a low cut red dress and a gold chain hung loosely from her neck. Her feet were bare and her toes were painted a bright green. The color reminded Reilly of the shimmering wings of an insect.

  Suddenly she remembered something. The plate, before it had been taken away, had shown the direction of the fork as being away from Naomi. As if someone else had handled it. It would have been incredibly awkward to feed herself from that angle, sitting where she was. She couldn’t be totally sure that her memory was being faithful, but she could check the photos later on if needs be. She was reasonably certain that someone had fed Naomi Worthington her final meal. The thought was a chilling one. To give yourself so trustingly to someone who wanted only to see you dead.

  Chris came into the room and stood behind her.

  ‘Did you get anything out of the masseuse?’ she asked, without getting up.

  ‘He’s traumatized,’ said Chris. ‘He thought she was sleeping. He said he shook her, but he hasn’t moved her from where she is.’

  ‘Did you get a DNA sample for elimination? We need to exclude him from any samples we find here.’

  ‘Of course.’ He shrugged as if to say that her question was needless.

  ‘Could he shed any light on the kind of person she was?’

  ‘Like I said, he was traumatized. He just kept saying that she was “full of life”, the usual. We can interview him later. You’re going at this like a bat out of hell this morning. Slow down, you might miss something.’

  ‘I know,’ she said. ‘I know I am. But we need to get this guy, Chris. Look at him, leaving little trophies around. I don’t care about being careful anymore. I just want to get him.’

  ‘Reilly. Being careful is what we do. You’ve told me a hundred times or more. Now, let’s go over all this again, top to bottom.’

  Chris had calmed her down, slightly, and she was able to spend the next few hours going over the scene, taking more samples, checking for foot and fingerprints.

  ‘I’ve got a couple of clear shoe prints,’ she told him, ‘but no fingerprints. Just a couple of partials from where he touched the grease from the meat and then one of the surfaces. He was gloved up.’

  ‘No hair from the pillows, either.’

  ‘Julius said before he thought he was wearing a head covering of some kind,’ said Reilly. ‘Which makes sense if the guy is a chef. They wear those little caps.’

  ‘True. You’re pretty sure that’s what the guy does?’

  ‘I’m almost positive,’ said Reilly. ‘I think you need to go back to Hammer and Tongs today and check out Nico Peroni. Check his alibi for last night.’

  ‘Let’s get the results from the ME first,’ said Chris. ‘Might give us a bit more to go on.’ He was running a cotton bud over the surface of the bench. ‘I’ve got something interesting here.’

  ‘What is it?’

  ‘Hard to say. A yellow powder.’

  ‘Don’t touch it.’

  He chuckled. ‘Reilly, I’ve been doing this job for almost two decades. What do you think I’m going to do, put it in my mouth or something?’

  ‘Sorry,’ she said. ‘I am on edge today.’

  ‘You want to talk about it?’

  ‘Not now. And I can’t. I just don’t know what I’m going to say to Lucy though.’ She couldn't break Lucy’s confidence by telling him exactly what she’d heard, all he knew last night was how much it had affected her.

  He nodded and looked around, in case they might be overheard. ‘And do you want to talk about…last night?’

  ‘No. I don’t think I can do that right now either. I’m sorry, Chris. Let’s just take each day as it comes.’

  ‘Of course,’ he said, but he couldn’t hide the faint disappointment in his voice.

  ‘I think we’re done here for the moment,’ she said, purposefully ignoring it.

  She had a uniform drop her at home before going the lab, so she could collect herself a little better. Her flat seemed completely alien to her: someone else’s house. The dishes from her dinner with Lucy were still stacked in the sink. They would have to wait until later. Everything would have to wait until later. When had her life become such a mess?

  She showered, washing the last traces of Chris’s woody scent down the drain and put on a sober suit, hoping it would make her feel more in control. She left the house with her hair still slightly damp and the circles round her eyes showing her lack of sleep.

  On the way to work, she thought about what she had found out the night before. It seemed no less shocking in the morning light. It never ceased to sicken her the kind of cruelty that was present in the world, and how much of it was aimed at women. It was enough to make anyone feel completely vulnerable. Sometimes she thought that the whole world hated women and there was nothing that could be done about it. She was the ambulance at the bottom of the cliff. She caught the bad guys, but couldn’t stop them from appearing in the first place. Get one, three more appear. A game of whack-a-mole. She remembered rambling on to Chris about much of this last night and wondered now if he thought she was losing it. Lately, she felt like she was losing it, out of control and she wondered what on earth was going on with her. Clearly events in Florida were having some after-effects on her. Seeing Todd on the railway tracks like that …

  She pushed the thought away.

  Jennifer Armstrong and Naomi Worthington were young, beautiful and successful. The phrase “she had it all” could be applied to them. They knew what they wanted, and it wasn’t to be held down to a life of marriage and children. Maybe Reilly needed to stop focusing on the killer and start focusing more on the similarities between these women. Wouldn’t that be the best way to lure him out? To predict where he would strike next? She needed to take another look at the dating profiles of these women. It was something she hadn’t paid close attention to in the Armstrong case. The lack of similarity to the Cooper girl had confused things. But it was time to go back to basics.

  When she got to the office, Inspector O’Brien was pacing the floor beside her desk. It was a wonder he hadn’t worn right through the carpet.

  ‘We need to talk,’ he said.

  ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘We do.’

  In his office Reilly sat and folded her arms loosely. She watched as the chief put his glasses on, took them off again and fumbled with some papers.

  ‘I suppose you’re going to say: “I told you so.”’

  ‘I don’t think I have to, sir.’

  ‘No, you don’t. I’m sorry I didn’t listen to you. I know that you’re an asset to this team, but you can only be as good as I let you be. And I didn’t.’

  Reilly was so surprised her mouth almost fell open. She had expected a brusque apology at best, but this was high praise indeed, coming from Inspector O’Brien.

  ‘I don’t always agree with your methods,’ he continued, ‘And God knows, you don’t always approve of mine, but I think we respect each other.’

  ‘Of course,’ she said. ‘Of course I respect you.’

  ‘Good,’ he said. ‘This case has just got a whole lot harder. I’ve been talking to the press but they’re not going to hold back. One of the first uniforms on the scene has leaked details to one of the big newspapers. It’ll be everywhere. You know the kind of thing: “Killer chef strikes again”, “Useless gardai pin murders on wrong guy”. That kind of thing. My guess is that, by tonight, the death of Harry McMurty will have been turned into a huge
tragedy that we could have prevented.’

  ‘A media circus, in other words,’ said Reilly. The chief’s least favorite thing.

  ‘That’s right. I need a solid lead, Steel. I need something to give these guys, to reassure the public that we have hope of solving this.’

  ‘Well, I would be further along if you had listened to me in the first place, sir’ said Reilly.

  ‘I thought we just put all that behind us.’

  ‘A woman is dead, sir. I can’t just put that behind me.’

  ‘Yes, and there will be more of them if we don’t get this case solved,’ he shot back. I need a lead Steel.’

  ‘I’ve think we’ve got one,’ said Reilly. ‘But in order to make this work, I need to know that you won’t stand in my way again. I want an absolute guarantee.’

  ‘Fine,’ he snapped. ‘Do what you need and use what you need. Just bring me results.’

  Chapter 27

  ‘OK,’ said Julius, in the GFU debriefing room. ‘Even without the results from the Worthington autopsy, the similarities in these cases are piling up. Allow me to elaborate.’

  ‘Go ahead,’ said Reilly.

  Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Lucy open a packet of biscuits and offer one to Gary. He looked as though she had handed him the moon. She envied them their uncomplicated romance. They might not think it was, but Reilly would give anything for that kind of simplicity. She could see Chris watching her and wondered what he was thinking. Had she disappointed him already? Probably. He couldn’t expect too much from her though. She wasn’t able to just give herself wholly to someone. Last night … now in the cold light of day she was embarrassed. What would have happened if he hadn’t pressed the pause button? What did he think of her, practically throwing herself at him like that? Yes she was upset but they’d been through some upsetting things before and she hadn’t felt the need to crawl all over him. Man, this was a mess…

  ‘So. The DNA found at the Cooper and Armstrong scenes matches the one decent sample we got from the Worthington scene this morning. This guy is good. He barely leaves a trace, but as we all know, a trace is all it takes.’ He helped himself to one of Lucy’s biscuits and continued. ‘The bedcovers had the same kind of disruption Gary pointed out before as well. I haven’t been able to test for the same chemical compound that we found on the Armstrong bed yet, but I’ll let you know as soon as I do.’

  ‘If I may pick up the story from here …’ interjected Gary.

  ‘All yours,’ said Julius.

  ‘There is obviously the link with the manner of death: poisoning in both the Cooper and Armstrong cases, and though we haven’t got the results from the Worthington scene, it looks like that was our third meal of death. Naomi Worthington had no real cooking utensils of her own. Her fridge was full of condiments. Which indicates that our perp brought his own utensils again. He just didn’t leave anything behind this time. Except,’ he said, with a dramatic pause, ‘I surveyed Naomi’s chopping board. It seemed absolutely new, apart from some very recent marks that had been made by a knife moving at speed. With great precision. For your information, I actually tested this myself.’ He brought out two chopping boards, identical to the one Naomi Worthington had owned. ‘I went and bought these this morning, when we got back. You can see on this one, I had Lucy chop an onion. You can see that the marks made are from an inexpert and clumsy hand.’ He glanced up for Lucy’s reaction and was rewarded with an eye roll. ‘The second board I took to the café downstairs. Now, the guy in there is only a sous chef, but you can see that the marks on this board are much closer together, much more precise.’

  He finished and waited for their response.

  ‘Very impressive,’ said Reilly drily.

  ‘You’ve gone above and beyond the call of duty,’ said Chris. ‘So. We’ve got all these similarities. We know beyond a doubt now, that we’re dealing with the same guy. We just have to find him.’

  The meeting ended with Gary promising to work on Naomi’s phone and laptop until “his eyes bled”. Julius would analyze the contents of the meal and the flowers and find out what they were dealing with, and Lucy would continue her work in the lab as well, where her sometimes frenetic energy narrowed in on tiny details.

  Lucy caught up with Reilly when she was back at her desk.

  ‘Did you hear anything useful on the tapes last night?’

  ‘I did,’ said Reilly, cautiously. ‘But I don’t want to go into it just yet. For now, I think you should take a break from hypnotherapy.’

  ‘Did I do something wrong?’ She looked crestfallen.

  ‘No, you’ve done great. It’s just I want to focus on another part of the investigation for now.’

  ‘Ok,’ said Lucy. ‘Keep me posted.’

  Reilly breathed a sigh of relief when she left. She had decided that she wouldn’t tell Lucy what she had found until she had a little more information. It was no use upsetting her for no reason. Ethically, it was probably wrong. Lucy had a right to her own memories. But Reilly didn’t want to rip her life apart until she had to.

  Karen Thompson was very good at remaining detached from the corpse she was working on. She preferred not to think of the person lying in front of her, but rather as a collection of clues, that when put together, would make a puzzle.

  It made her job easier that the bodies put in front of her usually had very little resemblance to the living. They were merely models of the living. Something for her to take apart and put together again.

  The truth was, she was completely obsessed by the body and the way it worked. It was like the sea, sometimes it gave up its secrets, sometimes not. She knew what they said about her. That she dug up corpses in the night, that she carried the stench of death around with her. It was all complete rubbish, of course, but she didn’t dissuade the talk. She rose above it.

  Death was one of the great experiences of a person’s life. It was just as important as one’s birth, and just as random, but all too often it was ignored. Simply a by-line. Karen Thompson believed that people should prepare for their deaths, should embrace them almost. It was all well and noble, but she had never had a knife held to her throat, or a gun pointed at her temple.

  She was no stranger to violence and its consequences, however. Every day, she saw a different method of killing.

  She looked at the corpse in front of her now. Another young, healthy person. There had been a few of those lately. She allowed herself a moment of pure anticipation before she began her autopsy. The incision she made into the body was only the first of many steps.

  She removed the organs, checked them for the tell-tale signs of discoloration. The contents of the stomach must be neatly scooped out and kept for testing. The insides of the body were as neat as a map, but each showed something slightly different. In this one, Karen found something that made her stop. A tiny something. No bigger than a bee. No more than a rumor. A tiny widening, a slight preparation of the body. Goodness, she thought.

  The patient’s liver was discolored and cirrated, a typical sign of poisoning. Her bowels were blocked also. There had been none of the voiding which is common in death. It lead Karen to suspect a particular type of poison.

  She would run the bloods and toxicity tests and then tell the investigators what she had discovered. They would no doubt be impatient.

  Chapter 28

  ‘Atropa Bella Donna,’ she told the collected faces later that afternoon. ‘More commonly known as deadly nightshade. It is quite perfect really, because it is very sweet tasting. Irresistible to young children. All that is needed to kill a grown man is three to five berries and our killer used far more than that. My guess is that they were pureed and used as a marinade for the pork. Very creative.’

  Reilly and Chris exchanged a glance. The doc could be a little gruesome sometimes.

  ‘No need to bloody well compliment his cooking skills,’ said Kennedy.

  ‘You would be far better qualified to comment on his cooking than I, Detective,’ sai
d Karen, tartly. ‘Being as it seems that you have actually sampled it.’

  Kennedy subsided into a grumpy silence and Reilly suppressed a smile. Things were back to normal.

  ‘But that’s not all. He used enough deadly nightshade to kill a horse, but still he garnished the meal with Letticis Moravena, also known as Imp’s delight. These are the flowers that were found at the scene. They are also highly poisonous, but sold in selected florists, because of course it is expected that people won’t eat flowers. There was no need to include them,’ said Karen. ‘My guess is that they were used as a kind of flourish, a taunt even. A calling card.’

  ‘Is that it, then?’ asked Kennedy.

  ‘If you would have some patience,’ said Karen. ‘No, that is not “it”. My estimate is that the time of death was around 9pm last night. From her body weight and the amount of poison used, she would have taken no more than twenty minutes to die. There is one more thing, of interest, though perhaps not relevance. The victim was pregnant at the time of death. No more than three months, but still detectable to me.’

  There was a silence in the room as they all paused to take in this tiny double tragedy.

  Things had taken a decidedly macabre turn.

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