Killing Fear

by Allison Brennan

  “Tell me straight.”

  Will told him everything they’d learned so far about the time line, admitting to his relationship with Robin and why he believed Glenn told Trinity the truth the other night.

  “But the clincher—if none of that evidence convinces you that we have a problem here—Glenn didn’t kill Anna’s cat. His previous history tells us he would have hurt the animal in order to torment her, but the cat was unharmed.”

  “Maybe he didn’t have time,” Jim said.

  “It’s the only thing that makes sense.”

  “Why would he lie about this?” Hans said.

  “Because he’s a psychopath?” Jim said, running a hand through his hair. “If you believe that, then you also believe that someone planted evidence.”

  Will nodded. “Yes. Someone involved in the investigation had to have not only killed Anna, but framed Glenn.”

  “You can’t be serious, Hooper,” Jim said.

  “I am. I wish we were wrong, but I don’t think we are.”

  “Then who? Who would do this? Why?”

  Jim was asking all the questions Will had been thinking about last night while he lay awake next to Robin. Who? Why?

  “It had to have been a cop—or someone at the crime lab.”

  Jim slowly rose. “What?”

  “Sit down.”

  “No. You’re accusing my crime lab of planting evidence. The next thing is you’ll accuse them of murder!”

  When Will and Hans didn’t say anything, Jim’s jaw dropped. “You think one of my people killed Anna? Because we fucked up the Coleman crime scene and they wanted to get Glenn? That’s pathetic.”

  “Actually,” Hans said, “we think that whoever killed Anna planned to kill Robin, but Anna came home unexpectedly. Either Anna interrupted the intruder, or the intruder was someone she knew and trusted enough to let in. There was no sign of forced entry.”

  “Nor was there in the first three murders,” Jim said.

  Will said, “Wouldn’t Anna have fought Glenn off? Not let him in? There would have been something. But we assumed that he was waiting for her when she got in. That he picked the lock or had a key, possibly stealing it out of one the girls’ purses while they were working.”

  “He could have picked the lock at any time. Those old buildings had crappy locks.”

  “Let’s look at the photos,” Hans said. “Maybe our theory is totally off. Maybe we’re wrong.”

  “You don’t think you are.”

  “We don’t,” Will said. He glanced at Robin as Jim spread the files on the table. Robin was holding it together, her mouth tight and face impassive. It was her large, round eyes that showed how tense she was.

  Under the table, he found her hand and squeezed it.

  Jim spoke as if he were on trial. “You can see from the photographs that each victim was cut dozens of times by a sharp instrument. Analysis determined it was an X-ACTO knife.”

  “Was the weapon ever recovered?” Hans asked.

  “No,” Jim said. “Based on the marks, we determined that the cuts were made with the exact same type of knife—a stainless-steel X-ACTO Number 5 blade. Each incision was made precisely. You can see the initial puncture here”—he pointed to what Will knew was the beginning of the incision—“is deeper than the rest of the incision. He punctured, then sliced. It was confirmed in the autopsy.”

  “I see here that the first three victims were cut in excess of forty times, but the last victim, Anna Clark, was cut only twenty-two times.”

  “But the incisions are the same,” Jim said defensively.

  “It’s a common knife. You identified it immediately, correct?” Hans asked.

  “But the same type of knife was also used to slit the throats of the victims—a double-edged blade, three-and-a-half to four inches long, stainless steel. Very likely a butterfly knife, but I couldn’t testify to that. Two killers with the same two knives?”

  “Hmm.”

  “What? You can’t see it?” Jim grabbed two of the photos. “We know Glenn killed Bethany Coleman, but our evidence was thrown out because of contamination. Look at the incision on her body compared to the incision on Anna Clark’s body. Same length, same type of puncture, same knife.”

  As Jim looked at the photos, he frowned.

  “Do you see what I see?” Hans asked.

  “What do you see, Hans?” Will asked, honestly curious. He believed someone else killed Anna based on the time line. He hadn’t seriously thought that the evidence itself could have proved something different than what was presented at trial.

  “It’s actually a minor point,” Hans admitted. “But the depth of the cuts in Anna’s body are shallower than in the first three victims. There are also hesitation marks on Anna, but not the others. On Bethany there were two hesitation marks—but all the rest were clean. No hesitation on Brandi or Jessica. But the last victim—virtually every incision had a hesitation point.”

  “That doesn’t prove Glenn didn’t kill her.” Robin spoke for the first time.

  Hans’ voice softened as he said, “No, it doesn’t. But I think Jim sees what I see.”

  Will looked at the photos. At first he didn’t notice anything strange at all—only the sick perversion of a psychopath.

  It was Brandi’s crime scene photo that gave him the first glimpse of something.

  “Is that a pattern on her body?” he asked.

  Hans nodded. “I think he left a pattern on each of his victims.”

  Will rotated the picture. He saw it at the same time as Jim said, “T.A.G.”

  “Tag?” Will asked.

  “His initials,” Robin whispered. “T.A.G. He marked the bodies of my friends with his initials.”

  “Robin, if you want to step out, Mario can take you—”

  She shook her head rapidly back and forth, tears glistening in her eyes. “I need to see this.”

  Will grasped Robin’s hand again.

  Jim continued. “There’s a pattern on each of the first three victims, but on the fourth victim it’s completely random.”

  “It would be virtually impossible to notice the pattern,” Hans said, “because each body has a different pattern. Nothing to connect the three, but when you turn the photos…” He took out a felt-tip pen and connected the marks.

  Now Glenn’s initials were obvious. On all the bodies, except Anna Clark.

  “I can’t believe I didn’t see this,” Jim said.

  “It wasn’t clear,” Hans began, but Jim waved his hand.

  “Look at this.” He pointed to a close-up of an incision on Anna’s body.

  The cut had two hesitation marks, one at the beginning and one near the end. “What’s that striation?” Will asked. “It looks like a double flap of skin.”

  “It is,” Jim said. “Whoever made this incision did it once—and hesitated twice here and here—then cut into the flesh again in an attempt to make the mark appear uniform. But the knife pulled off another layer of skin. If the medical examiner had been sharp, he would have seen something was off and further investigated the anomaly, and I think he’d have been able to tell the body had been cut postmortem. But it would be hard to prove in court because these cuts happened shortly after death.”

  No one said anything for a moment. “Why?” Will asked.

  “Whoever killed Anna didn’t want her to suffer,” Hans said quietly. “They killed her right there in the foyer, as soon as she came home. I think the killer surprised Anna, and was also surprised by her. He may not have known he hadn’t killed Robin until after Anna was dead.”

  “But then she didn’t call Will?” Robin said. “That means the killer called Will. Why?”

  The killer—instead of Anna—contacting Will gave him pause. Did he know the killer personally? If they were right about what had happened, it was most likely someone he worked with, someone he socialized with after work, who had killed Anna Clark, then planted evidence to implicate Glenn, showing not only a calm cold-bloodedne
ss but premeditation.

  “I don’t think we have enough information to know why at this point,” Hans said.

  “You’re a profiler,” Will said, feeling the pressure. “Based on this evidence, what type of person killed Anna?”

  “I think we need to approach this differently than a traditional crime scene,” Hans said. “Because evidence was planted at the scene that implicated Theodore Glenn. That means that the killer had access to evidence that only those directly involved in the investigation could access. The killer knew Glenn used an X-ACTO knife—and the exact type of knife. That was never revealed to the press until trial. Anna’s killer knew the type of double-edged knife used to slit the victim’s throats.”

  “And the bleach,” Will said. “We didn’t say a word about the bleach until trial.”

  Jim ran a hand over his head. “There were probably thirtysome people involved in the investigation who knew Glenn’s M.O., not including the D.A.’s office.”

  “But they didn’t know about the patterns,” Will said. “They assumed—as we did—that Glenn was randomly cutting his victims as a method of torture.”

  Jim said, “Because the marks in Anna’s case were made so soon after death, scientifically there isn’t much distinction between the cuts. And it would have been difficult to prove in court if we had reason to suspect another killer.”

  “I agree,” Will said. “Jim, we’re not looking only at the crime lab—”

  “Yes,” Jim said quietly, “you are. And now, so am I. Because your average cop isn’t going to have access to Glenn’s hair samples, nor know how to place them in a hand to make it appear that they were pulled out of the head in a fight.”

  Hans said, “According to the reports, you took a DNA swab when Glenn was first arrested after Brandi Bell was murdered.”

  “Yes,” Jim said. “We had a warrant.”

  “And you searched his house.”

  Will said, “We had a warrant to search the premises for any personal effects of the victims, an X-ACTO knife, blood evidence, among other things. It was extensive and thorough.”

  “It would have been easy to remove hairs from his brush or comb,” Hans said. “Never logged it in.”

  “It couldn’t have been logged,” Jim agreed. “I personally checked all the evidence after Will called me this morning. Nothing is missing.”

  “If someone removed hair from Glenn’s house after the Brandi Bell murder,” Will said, “that means that he planned to kill all along, just waiting for the right time.”

  “We need a list of everyone involved in the execution of the warrant,” Hans said.

  “It’s right here.” Will flipped through the report and pointed to a sheet in his own handwriting. “I logged everyone who came in and out of Glenn’s house.”

  Hans looked at the list. “You’re not here, Jim.”

  “I had another case.”

  “There’re only seven people on this list, plus detectives Hooper and Sturgeon.”

  “What about Frank?” Jim asked. “He was an alcoholic—no offense, Will, but you know it was true. Maybe he was feeling guilty because he fell asleep the night of the Suarez homicide.”

  “Frank didn’t have the wherewithal to pull something like this off,” Will admitted. “And we searched Glenn’s house before Jessica was killed. Something like this requires forethought and precision.”

  “This is an organized killer,” Hans said. “The crime was planned well in advance. The killer was likely waiting in the apartment for Robin to return home after her shift. The killer was surprised by Anna, who wasn’t supposed to be home that night. Sliced her throat, laid her on the floor. Had to act fast. Put the hairs in Anna’s hand, closed it. Cut the body. Half as many times as Glenn. Because the killer knew he hadn’t gone deep enough, recut along the same lines to try to reach the same depth as Glenn. Same type of knife, same length of marks, but a little off. After, he poured bleach over the body to destroy evidence as well as mimic Glenn’s M.O.”

  “And there was no pattern,” Will said. “If the killer surprised Anna, then the killer had to have paged me. Why?”

  “That is the million-dollar question,” Hans said. “And I don’t have a good answer for it, not yet.”

  “Does this mean I had two stalkers?” Robin asked, incredulous. “First Glenn, who seems like he was obsessed with me all along and not just a lunatic? Then someone in the police department?” She rose from the table, shaking her head.

  “Robin,” Hans said, “you were in the public eye.”

  “So it’s my fault…” she began defensively.

  “It’s not your fault.”

  “I should have seen something. Why didn’t I know something weird was going on?”

  “We should have seen something,” Will said. “Don’t blame yourself.”

  “Anna wasn’t supposed to die. I was.” She glanced from one man to another, her eyes resting on Will. She was trying hard to keep up her game face. “I need a minute.” Robin left the room and they heard the bathroom door, the only door in the loft, quietly shut.

  “She’ll be okay,” Will said, though he wished she didn’t have to go through this particular hell.

  “There are four cops and three crime scene technicians on this list who were in Glenn’s house,” Hans said. He read the names.

  Jim shook his head. “I can’t believe—why?”

  “I think this is one of the rare cases of we won’t know why until we have the individual in custody,” Hans said.

  “Joseph Miller is no longer in my department,” Jim said. “He transferred three years ago to Los Angeles.”

  “My office can investigate him,” Hans said. “It will be easier that way, if you agree.”

  Will nodded. “And Officer Janice Bernstein moved up north. San Carlos, I believe. Near San Francisco.”

  “And the other three cops?”

  “Patrick Kincaid—I almost forgot he was a beat cop back then. I was his training officer, before I made detective.” Will smiled wanly. “I’ll personally vouch for Patrick. And it’s not like we’ll be able to question him, he’s in a coma.”

  “Is he related to your partner?”

  “Brother,” Will said.

  “Officers Doug Holmes and Roger Supan—they’re still on the force,” Will said. “Supan may have made detective last year, I don’t remember. Neither are in my precinct.”

  “Stu Hansen and Diana Cresson are both still in the lab,” Jim said.

  “I suggest we move cautiously on this.”

  “There’s no motive,” Jim said.

  “That we know about,” Will clarified.

  TWENTY-SEVEN

  It was nearly eleven thirty when Will and Hans arrived at the police station. He’d already spoken with Trinity twice, and agreed to be “caught” at twelve ten right outside the rear entrance of the police station.

  Will briefed his boss, Chief Causey, then went up to the e-crimes unit while Hans used Will’s desk to call Washington.

  He knocked on the door of Patrick’s old office. Someone else had moved into it. He couldn’t blame the department, but knowing everyone had gone on with their lives and his best friend was still lying in a coma hit Will hard.

  “Come in,” a gruff voice said.

  Will entered. Doug Myers looked haggard sitting at his desk. “You left a message that you had information about the law firm associated with Glenn.”

  Doug handed him a file folder, a big grin crossing his face. “I got nearly everything you needed.”

  “Nearly? What did you find?”

  “The money. Glenn paid nearly three hundred thousand to the North Bay Law Offices for legal defense. But this other corporation you had me track down? San Diego Investment Corp? Glenn’s escrow accounts have transferred nearly five million dollars over the past two years to ten different accounts in and out of America, through SDIC. Corporation within corporation to hide the identity of the individuals involved.”

  “But yo
u have a name?”

  “Alan and Eve Reston.”

  “Eve?” Will asked. “Alan and Eve—Alan is Glenn’s middle name. But why? Who set it up? How deep was Sara Lorenz in with Glenn?”

  “Who?” Doug asked, but didn’t wait for the answer. “So I’m working on blocking the accounts, but I can tell you it’s not going to be easy.”

  “I can get the Feds on it.”

  “Good luck. You can probably lock down the U.S. accounts with a warrant, but some of these countries are going to take weeks or months. Or never. And he could easily move the money before then.

  “I did find one local connection,” Doug added.

  “And?”

  “The corporate filings for SDIC and the law firm are in San Diego. They have a local post office box, same zip code.”

  Too close to be a coincidence.

  “Can I see that?”

  Doug handed him the corporate paperwork. The zip code was indeed a San Diego number, identical for both—the boxes were only a few numbers off. “This is a downtown zip code,” Will said as he wrote down the information and thanked Doug.

  He called Hans on his way out of e-crimes.

  Hans said, “I’ll alert Homeland Security to flag the passports for anyone with the last name of Reston. We can’t assume that they’re using the same names, however.”

  “He could simply drive across the border,” Will said.

  “One problem at a time. Border Patrol is on the lookout. We have a stop on the Arizona/California border in case he plans to leave California, and others at Calexico, Tijuana, and other likely exits.”

  “I don’t have to tell you how screwed we are if he goes to Mexico. It’ll be virtually impossible to get him out, especially if he has money.”

  “I’ve already alerted my legal attaché, but you’re right. If he crosses the border, we may never see him again.”

  “I sense a ‘but.’”

  “I can’t see him leaving without making an attempt to see Robin.”

  “You mean kill her.” Will swallowed heavily. “I won’t give him the chance to get that close.”

  “I think he’s torn—he’s smart, knows we have Robin under lock and key. But he wants to get at her in the worst way. He may be rash, and we’ll have to be expecting it.”