“What did he say?” she asked.
“He said to ‘tell the inspector hello.’”
The words ricocheted inside Jamie’s brain like bullets. Hate and fear braided tightly in her chest.
When Marchek said ‘inspector,’ he meant her.
Chapter 6
It was almost two o’clock in the morning when Jamie arrived at the station. The assistant district attorney, Chip Washington, was seated in an interview room, drinking bottled water. Jamie set her things down, poured a cup of thick, overcooked coffee, and brought it to the table.
Washington was at the station at all hours. He was vying for the district attorney’s position, which meant making face time a priority. His wife was an attorney in a large tax firm and they had no kids, so work had become a lifestyle. Jamie appreciated his work ethic. More than that, she appreciated that he didn’t feel the need to tell everyone how hard he was working.
That trait was rare in people trying to climb up in the ranks.
Normally, Washington was sharply dressed. His wife’s position afforded him a collection of Italian suits and shoes. Tonight, he wore navy sweatpants and a gray Cal Berkeley sweatshirt along with his dress shoes.
“Nice outfit.”
He glanced at his feet. “They were the closest to the door when the phone rang.”
“Any word on what CSU found at Marchek’s?” she asked, afraid of the answer.
“Couldn’t locate any sign of the hood—or whatever he wore over his face. No DNA and no blood.”
“So, nothing.”
“They’re doing a sweep for fibers, but you’ve been in his house,” Washington said.
“He’s clean.”
Washington raised a brow. “He’s obsessive.”
Jamie dropped her head. She’d been so hopeful that he’d slip up, that his eagerness would make him sloppy. “Christ.”
“They did find a single blond hair on a jacket in the closet,” Washington said.
“Emily Osbourne is blond.”
“I sent someone to General Hospital to pick up her sample.” Washington glanced at his watch. “That was an hour ago. They promised to run it ASAP and call me.” He patted his cell phone.
“You want to wait for the call?” Jamie asked.
“Nah. Let’s bring him in.”
“Try to shake something loose?” She hesitated, thinking of the conversation she had with Marchek earlier, of trying to push him for a reaction. “I tried that earlier and it…backfired.” The word felt awkward in her mouth. She had done her job.
Every cop pushed in the interview. That Marchek had gone on to rape Emily Osbourne was not something Jamie could blame on that interview. Though, she wouldn’t be able to let it go until he was behind bars.
Maybe not even then.
“He didn’t have long to clean himself up,” Washington said. “Maybe we can convince him we found something.”
“God, I hope you’re right.” Jamie buzzed the guards to bring Marchek in. The process took him out of jail custody and into hers. It looked good for the record, that they’d treated him respectfully. She made a note about offering him something to drink. That looked good too.
Somehow, though, she always managed to “forget” to actually do it.
Though the interview room was barely large enough to fit a table and four chairs, Marchek would come here. The room they’d used before was bigger, more industrial. This had more of a conference room feel and she hoped a new venue might make Marchek more agreeable. She needed every little edge she could get.
She wanted him to think he was about to leave. The closer to freedom he felt, the more apt she was to get something out of him.
Marchek arrived a few minutes later. He wore jeans and a T-shirt, shoes without socks.
They’d dragged him from home without any notice.
She thanked the officers for bringing him over, and motioned Marchek to a chair.
“Please, Michael.”
She would not let him see her devastation. He could not know how deeply Emily’s rape affected her.
“Don’t call me that,” he said. The words came out a long, low hiss, like a tire losing air.
Marchek preferred people use his surname. Or Mike. Never Michael. In the courtroom at his last trial, he literally flinched at the sound of his full name. The effect was that he appeared twitchy and strange to the jury. A point for the good guys.
She’d never asked why he didn’t want to be called Michael. Something about his early home life, she suspected. Perhaps that was why she always used it. Maybe his mother was tough on him. Maybe his father was tough on him. Early in her career, Jamie had bucked the idea of the stereotypes. Bad home life, early exposure to violence—particularly on the part of the father—rapists were always tagged with the same psychological markers.
Jamie had met rapists who had strong parents with successful marriages and successful careers. She’d met some that were like a list of every stereotype in the book. Truth was, more fit the stereotypes than didn’t.
Over the years, she found herself less interested in how they’d grown up, and more focused on putting them away.
Aside from his first name, the other thing Michael hated was slovenliness. He was careful about his appearance. Curly, dark hair covered him. It spilled out under the cuffs of his jacket and down the backs of his hands. The hair on his head was kept short. A number four cut, if she were guessing.
He was normally cleanly shaven, but now, his jaw was covered in a dark shadow that suggested he could grow a beard in a few days. She wondered if the hair bothered him. He seemed like someone who might shave himself from head to toe to be rid of it.
His eyes were dark. In certain light, she’d seen green in them. But usually, like now, they were flat and brown.
He narrowed them, scanning the room.
He generally wore bleached undershirts and work pants. Right then, his carefully kept appearance was bedraggled. His shirt was dirty and untucked, his pants barely buttoned. He wasn’t happy.
His home was like a technology manufacturing clean room. The floors were hardwood. A small, black tray at the door held his work shoes. In the bottom was a half-inch of liquid bleach, which made the whole place stink. She had wondered how he slept with the smell. Surely, it couldn’t be good for him. But it hadn’t killed him yet. Unfortunately.
Marchek had few material possessions. No books or music, no TV, which seemed odd for a guy who worked in a video store. A small hobby bench sat in the center of the living room. From what she had seen, he built mostly small planes. She’d seen one floater plane too.
In the bedroom closet, his clothes were folded and stacked on two shelves. A half dozen pairs of pants and maybe ten shirts. Three were collared ones with the logo of the video store, Video Mania. They had a stack of their own. The others were white undershirts. Hanes. Medium. Underwear and socks shared a separate shelf. He owned only two coats—one of heavy wool that looked like it had come from an army surplus store and the light brown, denim Carhartt work jacket he wore now. No shorts, no bathing suit, no robe. Not even pajamas. Marchek didn’t seem to believe in surplus.
“This won’t take long,” she told him.
“Then, I leave.”
It wasn’t a question, so she didn’t answer it.
Marchek touched nothing. Instead, he used a foot to kick the chair out, then turned to sit. Held his hands in his lap. He was a neat freak and the tendency not to touch anything could be part of that. But, Jamie also thought he was wary of leaving prints. Criminals tended to create wonderfully elaborate conspiracy theories about how police entrapped them.
“It’s amazing what science has done for forensics,” Chip Washington said. “Tests can show that two pieces of duct tape came from the same plant and how close in time they were manufactured. We can actually prove that two samples came from the same roll even if they’re not successive pieces.”
She watched Marchek. A corner of his mouth turned up. A smi
le. She paused, let the information sink in a bit.
He lifted a hand, focused on his thumb. Ran a finger across it like he was petting a tiny animal.
“You’re in trouble, Michael.”
One cheek bounced in and out like he was chewing on it.
“This will be three strikes. No chance of parole next time,” she warned.
He ran his finger along the thumb more slowly, as though considering an offer. Something about the motion was childlike.
She felt close to something, considered her options.
“It’ll be easier if you cooperate with the investigation,” Washington added.
Marchek glanced at Washington. He turned his gaze to Jamie. “I’ve been reading up on serial rapists.”
Chip Washington raised a brow.
Jamie was silent.
“Since you seem to think I am one, I thought I’d brush up on how they work,” Marchek said. “All sorts of different ones, aren’t there?”
Jamie didn’t respond.
Washington’s phone buzzed on his hip, and he left the room to answer it.
The motion didn’t seem to disturb Marchek. He rubbed his finger more slowly. “I’ve been reading about what they do to their victims. Modus operandi and signatures. Truly, you have an intriguing job, Inspector.” He drew out her title.
She pictured Emily, heard the word “inspector” as Emily would have, lying on the ground, violated, beaten. Jamie’s spine stiffened as she imagined the young woman’s terror. Do not let him get to you. She drew a slow breath through her nose.
“What kinds of things did you read about?” she asked.
Marchek smiled. Not the tight, fake smile, but a real one. Joy. He was genuinely happy.
Something rolled in her stomach.
The smile grew a little. He knew he was getting to her. She kept silent.
“I read about men who bite, and then cut pieces of skin from their victims,” Marchek went on. “And, of course, the ones who take things—mementos.”
“What kind are you?”
Marchek’s smile vanished. His eyes stayed flat. He was playing. “Silly inspector. I’ve already explained I have nothing to do with any of this.”
Washington returned to the room.
“Okay. If you were a rapist, Michael…”
“What type would I be?”
“Right.”
His finger moved more quickly across the knuckle. A smooth, repetitive motion—up, back, up, back. Then it stopped. He rested his hands in his lap. “The difference between your rapists and me is that they consider this an art. You and I, we see it as an atrocity, a crime.” He focused on the far wall. “If I were a rapist, which, of course, I’m not, I’d have to be one of those people who saw it as art.”
“And if you saw it as art?”
“I’m sure I’d sign it,” he said.
Jamie watched his expression, thinking of the painted initials on the underside of the plane in his apartment. His eyes neither widened, nor narrowed; his lips remained passive in a flat line. “You’d sign it? Like one of your little models, Michael?”
His gaze shifted back to her. Nonplussed. Almost bored. “If there’s nothing else we need to discuss, Inspector, I really should be going. I work early tomorrow.”
“I’m going to catch you, Michael.”
“You’re making a mistake,” he whispered. His shoulders shifted up, his spine straightened. He focused on her.
“I don’t make mistakes,” Jamie told him, staring him down.
The air in the room stopped. Somewhere someone shouted, but Marchek didn’t blink, didn’t look away. He leaned forward, hands hovering over the table. Somehow, he managed to hold them there without making contact with the surface.
He stood then, and pushed the chair back with his legs, rising. “I’m leaving now. Unless you can charge me with something.”
Gone was the awkward child.
Jamie rose as well, put her hands in her pockets. Kept her voice calm. “I’m going to let you go today, Michael. But watch these last steps. I’ll be on your every move. And when I catch you again, you’re going to jail for life.”
He stared.
“You know it, don’t you? You’ll rot there.”
He shook his head, like a parent listening to the nonsense of a child. “You should be careful, too, Inspector.” His smile disappeared, but his voice remained even, almost friendly. “Whoever attacked that woman is out there. It’s very dangerous.”
She grinned back. Faking it to show him he wasn’t getting to her. She held the expression taut until tremors rose in her cheeks. “I look forward to seeing you again soon, Michael.”
“Not as much as I do, Inspector. It will be a real pleasure, I’m sure.”
With that, Marchek turned, and walked from the interview room.
Jamie turned to Washington.
He shook his head. “The hair doesn’t match Osbourne.”
The other victims were brunettes. The hair didn’t match the open cases, which meant she had nothing to keep him on. The Crime Scene Unit hadn’t found anything in his place and the blond hair didn’t match.
She sank back into the chair and dropped her head in her hands.
Washington touched her shoulder. “You tried.”
She didn’t answer. She had to do better than try. She put Emily in Marchek’s way. Now, she had to clean up the mess.
“Call if anything comes up,” Washington said. “I’m heading home.”
She nodded to him. When the door clicked shut, she crossed her arms, replaying what Marchek had said. He’d be the kind of rapist who thought of his work as art. So he’d sign her.
If he were a rapist, he’d sign her.
She thought back to the first police officer who had been assaulted. Shawna Delman was the single caretaker for a younger brother. Only two months on the job, she’d been brutally raped.
A month later, she overdosed on heroin.
A signature. The image kept flipping in Jamie’s brain. Michael Marchek. A logo to claim his victims. She sifted through the memories for a signature.
Back at her desk, she lifted the file of pictures and took it back to the interview room. Slowly, she spread them out, studied them one by one.
There, twenty pictures in, she found a photograph of the small, rough cut on Emily’s inner right thigh.
Jamie stared at it, squinting. It was almost like a crude W.
Her heart pounding, Jamie rotated the picture one hundred eighty degrees. She gasped.
If Emily Osbourne looked down at it, the cut was like a child’s M.
“Bastard.”
Chapter 7
Cigarette in hand, Jamie ended the call with her surveillance team and blew the long line of cigarette smoke out the open bedroom window.
Three o’clock in the morning, and she had nothing. Patrol followed Marchek from the station; he’d gone straight home. Officers reported the lights went out thirty minutes later, and nothing since then. There was no sneaking off to some secret hiding place, no sliding into a car registered in someone else’s name so he could ditch his stash of souvenirs from his victims and the supplies he used to rape—duct tape, the hood, and whatever else. His crime kit. Nothing. He’d gone to bed. Of course he had. It was three o’clock in the damn morning. They should all be in bed.
Surveillance had confirmed his presence twice in the last hour through a window.
They had twenty-four-hour surveillance on Marchek. But who knew for how long. It was expensive to watch someone that closely—cost prohibitive for more than a few days. They had to count on Marchek escalating. The failed attack on Jill Muhta had happened yesterday morning, then Osbourne last night. How long would the thrill of raping Osbourne last?
Three weeks between Carla Gianni, the officer in Dolores Park, and Jill Muhta.
Jamie hoped Marchek started to yearn for a new victim in the next week. Or better yet, the next two days.
She pictured his thin frame bent ove
r one of his model airplanes. Saw the same thin, hairy figure lying in bed, surrounded by the smell of bleach, dreaming of his next attack. She shuddered, forced him away.
Without more, there was nothing to go on. It was impossible to link him to the cut on Emily Osbourne’s thigh without more evidence, or a confession. Since she wasn’t getting the latter, she had to focus on the former.
She sighed, staring at the thrashed bedcovers.
A messy bed always reminded her of her ex-husband. Tim never slept straight. Facedown, he wiggled deep into the bed until his feet hung over the end, head buried somewhere in the middle, legs usually sprawled in opposite directions. He slept, well, hard, the way children did. Unlike Jamie, who slept up at the top, on her back, hands to her sides like a soldier at ease. Her head raised on two pillows, she molded the sheet across her legs, smoothed it on either side. Stared at the ceiling for long stretches most nights.
For a lot of police officers how they slept (if they could) was a well-guarded secret. Like the little superstitions of baseball players before a game. The process of getting there was often a ritual, or they went without.
Because sleep was easy for him, Tim hadn’t understood that. He kicked and shifted in the bed, never disrupting his own sleep, only hers.
In the swell of the wrinkled bed sheets, Jamie pictured Natasha and Tim. Curled up under the covers, two sets of feet hanging over the end. Jamie dragged on the cigarette, stared at the empty bed like an enemy.
She dropped the cigarette into a glass of tepid water on the bedside table. The flame snuffed out with a hiss. Beside the glass was a bottle of Febreze room deodorizer, which she waved through the air. The bottle was new. One she’d bought to replace the one she’d killed a few days back. As she sprayed it, she realized that the lavender reminded her both of home and of going in to meet a victim at General Hospital. Was there some significance to the lavender itself, or if her job had so blurred her life that there was no separating them? Home, work, the car, the hospital — all one continuum of victims and rapists.
She left the window open, hoping to dissipate the smell, and padded into the bathroom.
She wanted a drink, but refused to let herself focus on the alcohol. Don’t think, just sleep.
The Rookie Club Thriller series Box Set Page 4
