Critical Instinct

by Crouch, Janie

  Until Brett Wagner walked in her front door earlier today, his large form causing wariness in her, but not fear. And the touch of his hand for the first time making Paige want to step closer rather than immediately rush away. And those soft brown eyes that hadn’t looked at her like she was crazy despite what he had to suspect.

  Maybe Paige was finally starting to move past her attack.

  Now if she could just stop drawing dead women in her sleep.

  She knew the Portland PD was frustrated by her inability to remember anything helpful. She’d seen her attacker’s face, she knew she had. But she couldn’t remember it. She’d worked with a police sketch artist, a therapist, hell, even a hypnotist to try to gather the details out of her mind. But all Paige could remember were the colors that had surrounded the man. Blacks and grays swirling like a steaming vat of evil.

  Paige wrapped her arms around herself as she began to shudder. She could remember the colors surrounding the man to the smallest detail. To this day could paint them if someone asked. But somehow “steaming vat of evil” hadn’t provided sketchable results for law enforcement.

  Not to mention the man had hit her in the face so many times that seeing out of either eye had been nearly impossible.

  Paige pushed that thought from her mind quickly. Nothing good came from dwelling on the physical violence she had endured. She knew that as fact.

  It was probably time to stop thinking about the attack altogether. For good. It was time to let Portland PD off the hook. It had been two years. There was no reason to think they were ever going to find any new leads about her attack.

  Paige wanted her attacker behind bars. Wanted to know there was zero chance she would run into him if she stepped foot out of her house.

  But the man was probably never going to be caught. He probably wasn’t anywhere near this area any longer. Her attack had been an isolated incident.

  Without a description, they’d never catch him.

  Every time the Portland PD had to send a good detective like Brett up to her house to talk to her, there was another case —a more active case that had the possibility of being solved— going ignored.

  Paige would call Melissa MacKinven and tell her not to put any more undue pressure on the department. It was time. Past time.

  And maybe she could talk to Brett Wagner again, but not about anything concerning her case, or weird drawings in her sleep, or violence. They would talk about… whatever normal people talked about.

  It had been so long since she had been on a date she couldn’t even remember what that was any more.

  Plus she wasn’t sure that someone as handsome and confident as QB Wagner would even want to go out with her. He was witty and engaging and brave. Paige, on the other hand, was not.

  Not any of those things.

  She was quiet by nature, introverted. She often was so caught up in painting that she forgot basic things like brushing her hair or eating full meals, for days at a time. She wasn’t witty and fun like her sister Chloe or beautiful and tough like her sister Adrienne.

  Paige was just mousy. In all the literal and figurative senses of the word: plain, afraid, in a constant state of mental scurrying, darting around looking over her shoulder.

  Paige doubted someone like Brett Wagner would be interested in her for very long.

  She rinsed her brushes in the sink in her studio and returned them to their rightful places, examining the canvas she’d just finished. It truly was beautiful —his colors were beautiful— but she wouldn’t think about Brett any longer. She’d just be thankful she had the painting. It would have to be enough.

  Exhaustion pulled at her. Hopefully she’d sleep more tonight than she had last night. And not draw.

  Out of habit Paige checked the locks on the doors, then headed upstairs towards her bedroom. Exhaustion nearly overwhelmed her. She knew she should eat something —the few bites of toast she had with Brett hadn’t provided much nourishment— but couldn’t be bothered. She would get something to eat tomorrow. Sleep was the priority now, especially given how little she had gotten the night before.

  The thought made her pause as she changed into the over-sized shirt she always wore to bed.

  Would she wake up tomorrow having drawn another face? Another unknown woman covered in painful bruises? Or even worse, someone looking back from the canvas with the blank stare of death?

  Paige crawled into bed. Sleep suddenly never seemed further away.

  Chapter Six

  His job was tedious, inconsequential, compared to his principal work. But it allowed him to pay the bills.

  And to pay her.

  Rage rose like a savage black wave at the thought, but he forced it back. There was nothing he could do to her, all the things he desired would lead too quickly back to him. All he could do was save other men from the same fate.

  As he had again a few hours ago. He thought of the woman’s screams, how she’d begged him to stop. But he knew he couldn’t trust her pathetic cries.

  Betray. Abandon. Steal.

  She would never do it to another man. As he’d strangled her with the rope he’d bought weeks ago in a different city far from here, he’d known he was doing some future man a great service. When he’d arranged her dead body on that dingy hotel bed, he’d stared down at her, memorizing that moment. Her dark hair, battered face.

  A mental snapshot.

  He longed to take a real snapshot with his camera, but couldn’t. It was too risky. The photos of his prey while they were alive that he kept would be suspicious enough, if found, but at least partially explainable due to his job.

  A job that allowed him to travel where he needed without anyone’s notice. To select and track his prey where he was sure there would be nothing connecting them. Nothing leading back to him. But otherwise the job was just a means to an end. An annoyance.

  Yet he would gladly continue, despite its tedium, until his pattern was complete.

  * * *

  The following week Brett had finally made some headway in familiarizing himself with the cold cases he’d been dealt, along with making progress in current ones. Captain Ameling still wasn’t a fan but at least he wasn’t actively trying to make Brett’s life a living hell.

  But right now Brett was standing over a dead woman and what Captain Ameling thought of him didn’t matter. Brett and Alex Olivier, a ten-year homicide detective who’d joined just after Brett had left the area, stood in a motel room in a rather quiet, suburban area of Portland. Healy Heights had never been a particularly dangerous area unless something had changed while Brett had been gone.

  “You get a lot of homicides in this section of town?” Brett asked Alex as they began looking around. The scene, which had been called in by the hotel manager after a member of housekeeping found the body, had already been processed by the crime lab techs.

  The techs hadn’t been very hopeful of getting much information based on what they’d found. The scene had been pretty clean; the body had obviously just been dumped here. The killing had taken place somewhere else.

  “No, not at all,” Alex responded as he knelt down next to the woman’s body laid out on the bed. “You might get a couple of B&E’s, maybe some domestic disputes, but that’s about it. People here are not going to like a dead body coming so close to their suburban lifestyles.”

  Brett crouched down next to Alex. The medical examiner would give them an official cause of death, but Brett was willing to go out on a limb and say the woman died from strangulation with the heavy rope still wrapped around her neck. Just as disturbing was the state of her face. Both eyes swollen shut, extensive bruising all over her face.

  It reminded him of what had happened to Paige.

  He shouldn’t be surprised that he was thinking of her again. After all, he hadn’t been able to stop thinking about her all weekend. Or any of the days since.

  He had enough work to do, and Randal and Terri constantly trying to set him up with someone, that Paige shouldn’t be
forefront in his thoughts. But the quiet artist had wedged her way, good and solid, into his head.

  This was a murder case and Paige’s was just assault and battery. Just. What had happened to Paige couldn’t be described as “just” anything, but at least she was still alive, thank God. Unlike the woman here.

  “Beating her that way then strangling her seems a bit over-dramatic, doesn’t it?” Alex stood back up.

  Brett looked down at the woman’s face again. Nose was decidedly broken, maybe her jaw. It really did remind him of Paige’s wounds. “Yeah. Damn brutal, that’s for sure. And the killer had definite anger issues going on. This is up close and personal violence.”

  “We had another case a little similar a few months ago. Still unsolved.”

  “Beating, then strangled?”

  “Beaten, yes. But then stabbed. White female, roughly the same age and description: mid-20s, slender, auburn hair instead of black.”

  That pretty much ruled out the possibility of a serial killer. Serial killers, almost without fail, followed a pattern. Stabbing one victim, then strangling another? Would be very uncommon for one killer.

  “That one was on my payday too, like today,” Alex continued. “I remember because I knew my bank account was full when I went to the bar with the guys that night. Drank a pretty large hole in it. My girlfriend was pissed.”

  “We always get paid on the last day of the month, Alex?” Today was March 31st. Brett hadn’t been in Portland long enough to know the paycheck dates yet.

  “Yep. The fifteenth and the last day of every month. I know for sure because my girlfriend keeps threatening to call Winston’s Bar and have my tab privileges revoked. A few of us are headed there tonight. You interested in coming?”

  “Definitely interested. But not sure about tonight.”

  “You got a wife? Girlfriend? Ah, you’re the famous QB, you probably have both. Bring them along if you like to live dangerously.”

  Brett chuckled. “My mama didn’t raise a fool. And I don’t have a wife, at least not anymore. She didn’t like a cop’s hours.”

  Alex nodded again. Brett didn’t need to say anything more. The life of a cop was hell on marriages. Brett’s wasn’t the first to fall apart because of all the time he’d had to leave his wife alone. The meals and occasions he’d missed. At first Heather had thought his life to be exciting, even with the abrupt departures he’d sometimes needed to make. But after two years she’d grown tired of it. Tired of them.

  Brett hadn’t fought for her. By the time he’d realized how bad things had gotten, it had been too late anyway. Their divorce eighteen months ago had been about as uneventful as their two-year marriage. He’d dated on and off since, but no one had really caught his attention and interest.

  Until he’d met a tiny golden brown-haired beauty last week with haunted blue eyes. Brett wasn’t sure anyone had ever caught his attention like Paige.

  “Girlfriend then? Sounds like Randal’s wife is trying to get you set up.”

  Brett barely held back a grimace. “Yeah, she’s trying to reintroduce me to some of the gals I knew in high school.”

  Alex grinned. “Not interested in strolls down memory lane?”

  Not with the people Terri had in mind.

  Brett and Alex continued examining the room. If the body was anything to go by they weren’t going to find much evidence anywhere else in this standard hotel room. But they would still look.

  “You were with Miami PD before here, right?” Alex asked him as the both looked over the bed for anything that might have been missed by the crime scene technicians.

  “Yeah, nine years. First four as uniformed, last five as detective.”

  “Sounds like you’ve got the experience needed for this job. I know the Captain is giving you a hard time, but he’ll come around.”

  Brett used a pen-sized flashlight to look around the bedspread. “Let’s hope so. The evil-eye every time I come in the precinct is getting a little old.”

  Alex smirked at that. “He’s a good guy. Give him a little time.”

  Brett planned to leave no doubts in Ameling’s mind that Chief Pickett had made the right call in hiring him. “I will.”

  “Offer still stands if you want to grab a beer.”

  “Raincheck. I’m actually going to an art show tonight.”

  Alex laughed. “Wouldn’t have figured you as part of the art crowd. Maybe I should’ve asked if you had a boyfriend. Not that that’s a problem.”

  “Yeah, it’s not my normal thing. But thought I would check it out.”

  The two men finished their search of the room in relative silence. Both hoped the lab technicians would have more to report because they sure as hell didn’t have anything.

  Brett looked over at the dead woman one more time as the medical examiner began to prepare the body to take away. He was struck again at how much the bruises on her reminded him of what Paige looked like after her attack.

  He was still thinking about battered faces later that afternoon back at the Precinct. A beating like that with the dead woman from this morning, the other dead woman Alex had mentioned, and Paige? It was at least worth looking into.

  He grabbed Paige’s file first since it was still on his desk. Looking at her bruised face was more difficult each time. But her face wasn’t what he needed to see. He needed the date of her attack.

  April 30th, two years ago.

  Brett sat back in his chair. Paige made the third woman who’d had her face horribly beaten on the last day of the month. That was a weird coincidence.

  Coincidences did happen in Brett’s line of work. But he had learned over the years to never call something a coincidence until you were sure there were no deliberate links.

  Brett began to look up state-wide crimes against women that happened on the last day of any month going back for the past five years. Anywhere the woman’s face had been battered.

  Within a couple of hours Brett had another dozen electronic files to go through. The first seven didn’t have the same craniofacial trauma he was looking for, but then he found one that did. A murder victim from eighteen months ago. Brutally assaulted before being burned to death. Then he found another woman, also beaten before she was stabbed. A third from only six months ago. Strangled.

  It was getting late now and he knew he should leave it until Monday, especially if he wanted to catch Paige’s art show, but Brett couldn’t force himself to stop. The more he looked into these cases, the more he began to recognize something evil.

  Three women beaten and killed in the last three years in Oregon. Each on the last day of a month. But they’d all been killed in different ways and found in different locations across the state. At first glance there didn’t seem to be anything that tied the women to each other, but Brett would be looking further the first chance he got.

  Brett printed the electronic case files with the pictures and laid them out on his desk, standing so he could see the pictures more clearly. There was definitely a body-type similarity in the other three women and the body he and Alex had been processing earlier. As soon as they found out who she was, Brett would have even more to examine, especially once he knew what she looked like when her face wasn’t covered in bruises.

  “Wagner, what the hell are you doing?”

  Damn it. Captain Ameling, and all his animosity, was not what Brett wanted to deal with right now. The man was obviously on his way out the door — rain jacket in one hand, briefcase in the other.

  “Looking at what I think might be a pattern in some old cases, Captain.”

  “Ones I assigned you?”

  “No, sir. Something else I found.”

  Ah, the evil-eye again. “Case load too small, Wagner? So bored you have to start searching for patterns in cases that have nothing to do with you? Don’t you think one of the other detectives would’ve found it if there was a pattern?”

  Brett shrugged. He didn’t want to get into an argument with his new boss, but Brett was sure h
e was on to something. The older man turned away and Brett thought it was the end of the discussion. But Captain Ameling just put his jacket and briefcase down on another desk and turned back to Brett.

  “Tell me.”

  Brett pointed down at the files. “Four women in the last three years. All with heavy facial trauma before being killed. And all were killed in Oregon on the last day of the month.”

  That got the man’s attention. “Same month?”

  Brett shook his head. “No, different month for each.”

  Captain Ameling bent to look more closely at the files. “Almost all of them were killed in different ways.”

  “Yes, two was strangled, one burned and one stabbed, including the woman we found today whose identity has not been confirmed yet.”

  The Captain cursed under his breath. Brett didn’t blame him, this was like a smorgasbord of murder methods.

  The Captain pointed to one of the files after looking through it. “This burn victim wasn’t even labeled a homicide.”

  “I know. But she had the same battered face and died on the last day of July, so I pulled her.”

  “And what is that file under your arm?”

  “Paige Jeffries. Beaten, but, of course, not killed.”

  Captain Ameling sighed. “Date?”

  “April 30th. Two years ago.”

  “So, five women. Four with maxillofacial trauma, killed on the last day of any given month. Plus one who is still alive.”

  “Yes.”

  “But they were killed in different ways, found in different locations, with varying amounts of time between their deaths. And one of your dead ones was ruled an accident by whoever worked the case before. Not to mention the differences in the victim’s appearances — you’ve got blondes here. Brunettes. Auburn. There’s no reason to think this is the work of one person.”

  It sounded a little far-fetched when Ameling put it like that. But far-fetched didn’t necessarily mean wrong.

  “I know,” Brett responded. Just like he knew the Captain was going to shut him down.