Drop Dead Perfect (An Ellen Harper Psycho-Thriller) (10 page)

She wiped at another wave of tears.

Never mind the relentless guilt that would convict her like a prosecuting attorney—and she had no defense. Partners don’t let partners die, ever. He was her responsibility, just like she’d been his. Not exactly a blood oath between cops to protect each other, rather more of a spirit promise, a soul agreement that is something more binding than any agreement. She’d not been there and now he was dead. A homicide victim, no less.

Ellen chewed the inside of her lip as she stood near three black-and-whites and watched the flurry of activity that went hand in hand with fifteen cops, six cruisers, and three forensic vehicles.

Oscar hadn’t just been murdered either but mutilated during or after the act. He’d been shot twice. She knew all that because she’d hauled him out of the vehicle, with Brice’s help, and held him until she heard the ambulance scream around the corner of Lake Shore.

Unable to stop her training from kicking in, amid holding Oscar close and gently rocking with him, she’d noticed that the bullet hole in the side of his head was a smaller caliber, probably some kind of kill shot, meaning he might have still been alive when his killer pulled the trigger that had finished him. She couldn’t be sure until she finished processing the evidence, but it seemed logical to her.

And why the huge, gaping hole in his chest? The perp had dug through Oscar’s flesh, muscle, and bones with something sharp and rough edged, yet left all of his organs, including his heart, as far as she could tell. It had been like the killer had been searching for something. One thing was true; she’d get to the bottom of everything the science could teach her because no one else was heading this case. The lab was her world, and Oscar deserved the best—and she was the best. She didn’t give a shit about protocol or even what Big Harv had to say.

Her frown deepened as the tears dried and her fury came out to play. But for the second time in two days, anger felt different than it had for the last fourteen months. This wasn’t about her asshole husband and what he’d done to her. It was about the killing of a good man and, as always, the question that haunted every cop in the universe at some point: why? What the hell did shooting a forensic tech have to do with
anything
? The freak that had done this had to be out of his mind, stoned, or the worst-case scenario, had a hard-on for the Chicago Police Department or someone on the force.

Wringing her hands, Ellen stifled the desire to scream; instead, she walked over to the closest Chicago
PD cruiser, unable stop the clenching and unclenching of her fists.

How could someone do this to her sweet partner?

Ellen stared at the cruiser door with the department emblem staring back. Suddenly she hated everything to do with that moniker. She pulled back her leg and kicked the door. Then again. And again and again. The dents were piling up and so were the scars on her expensive Burberry boots. But she continued until she felt the grip on her arm and turned, fist raised.

“You’d hit your old man?”

She studied Big Harv, then slowly, in the language that was reserved for daughters and fathers, she nestled into his arms and held tight. No more tears, at least for the moment. No more self-persecution, no more science . . . hell, no more Brice. Just her and her father. He trying to take the pain away and she trying to give it to him. Neither was able to fully accomplish what each set out to do. And that was okay . . . at least they were both trying, which sometimes meant more than getting it done.

She listened to his heart
beat and felt better.

“I’m sorry, Ellie. Oscar was a good man, and those are damn hard to come by these days.”

“I . . . I should have—”

“No. You shouldn’t have. You couldn’t have stopped this,” he said quietly. “How in the hell were you going to do that? It’s fruitless to think that way. I know that as well as anyone. I lost two partners and . . . and your mother.”

Big Harv caught his breath, then continued. “I thought I should have been there to stop what happened to them, and your mother. Partners have each other’s back. But after a few weeks, I realized I couldn’t have been in two places at once. Besides, Ellie, no one cheats destiny. I’d have taken each of their places if for no other reason than to make the pain get the hell away. But in the end, it can’t happen. Sorry, kiddo, it just doesn’t work that way.”

She stayed in his arms, whispering against his warm chest. “I know you’re right, but that’s not helping a lot right now. What do I do?”

“Focus on something else. There’ll be time for dealing with the hurt, and kicking a few more black-and-whites, but meanwhile, find something constructive for your escape.”

He pulled her closer, then held her at arms’ length.

“For me, it was you and this damn job. That’s what I focused on, that was my distraction, and it kept the guys in the white coats away. I’ll be here for you, if that’s what you need. Except I suspect you’ll need more than me.”

Gazing at her father in the dim light of the street lamps, she reached over and gave him a kiss.

“So when did you get so smart?”

“Life’s a great teacher. And I’ve paid for a couple of dented doors myself. Amazing therapy.”

He cocked his leg and kicked the door just below Ellen’s boot marks.

Mission accomplished. Big Harv had gotten her to smile. She didn’t know if she’d ever loved him more than at that moment.

“Thanks.”

“You’re welcome. Now let’s get this show on the road. We’ll get the other CSI teams involved, along with homicide, and get to the bottom of what happened here.”

“Like hell you will. This case—Oscar— is mine. Plain and simple,” she answered, remaining surprisingly calm.

“You can’t do—”

“Don’t give me that protocol crap, Dad. I’m working it with or without your approval. You know I will.”

Big Harv stared at his daughter and sighed. “I need you on the other case. Some sick bastard is killing the women of Chicago, and it has to stop. No dice. You’re working that one.”

“I can work both. I’ve worked as many as three at a time. I can do it. And like I said, I’ll be working Oscar’s murder anyway, in my heart and in my mind.”

Big Harv kicked the car again and paced away from her, steamy breath rolling from his mouth. The early morning temperature in the Windy City had dropped below freezing.

Walking back to her, he moved to within two inches of her face. “Okay. But we do it my way. You report to me every six hours and no bullshit. If one thing happens or turns up that I don’t know about and you do, you’re done. Got it?”

“Yes sir. Not a problem.”

Daughter and father stared at each other, neither blinking. One more look told her that he understood everything she’d felt over the last two hours and that this case, her job, was the stabilizer that would get her through Oscar’s death.

“I love you—and
don’t screw up,” he said. He waved his hand and turned back toward his car.

He’d gotten about ten feet when Brice intercepted him. The two spoke, and based on body language, Ellen could see neither
was happy. Despite her exhaustion, she hurried over just in time to hear Brice speak.

“. . . It’s gone. I don’t know where. Just gone.”

“What’s gone?” asked Ellen.

Brice looked at her, then back to Big Harv. Her father nodded.

The detective rubbed his eyes with his thumb and forefinger, and then looked her square in the face.

“The evidence from the second murder scene, Holly Seabrook’s, is not in the SUV. We’ve searched the complete area and nothing. It’s disappeared.”

CHAPTER-17

The early morning sun sparkled on the relatively calm waters of Lake Michigan like precious jewels. Breathtaking. He’d witnessed this scene a thousand times from this very apartment. Each instance stimulated the identical dichotic reaction: awe and disappointment.

The awe of his appreciation meter went far to the right when he encountered pure beauty. It sparked a fire in him that was hard to explain to the common person. It was like listening to Bach or Tchaikovsky. Every note was simply genius. Every rise and fall in dynamics an intricate story, every rhythmic emphasis a new chapter in mystery and intrigue, opening a world of possibilities.

His reaction was the same when gazing upon a Van Gogh or a Monet. Each stroke of the brush an expression of passion, a fascinating love story in which the artist would surely die without the eternal devotion of the canvas and brush. A beautiful, symbiotic relationship made in
Heaven.

Exquisite
.

The very word caused him to tremble with emotion. His life, growing up on the ugly side of Chicago, had been completely devoid of anything that remotely resembled beauty, physical or otherwise. His mother, a reformed drug addict, who wasn’t really. A supposed father who
m he’d met just twice, killed trying to rob an off-duty police officer in a deserted parking lot. His brother, a mess in so many ways, and demanding his care.

The visions of that apartment of his youth still affected him. It had been a one-bedroom joke with boarded windows
. With walls painted the same worn colors as the brown rats that played on the warped dining table and infested the ragged sofa where he and his brother slept. He closed his eyes. There wasn’t a tattered remnant of beauty or hope in those memories. None.

He had suffered through school
wearing hand-me-downs and felt the mortification only kids in high school can conjure up and inflict. The vicious, biting comments still haunted him, if he allowed it. Never mind the beatings. Daily, he’d contemplated ending it all. But he couldn’t. His younger brother needed him. At least someone did.

Then, during his junior year, came an incident that changed his life forever. The unexpected, but perhaps long overdue, episode brought him from the brink of destruction to the sweet realm of redemption, all in one fell swoop.

Susan Jacobs had been the hottest senior in his shithole school, and she knew it. Along with that unspoken title accompanied some unspoken rights. Among them apparently was acting like a condescending bitch with the sole purpose of embarrassing lesser mortals beyond red, beyond humiliation.

On a late February night, he was leaving wrestling practice—the one thing he was good at. She was leaving cheerleading rehearsal at the same time. As fate would have it, they were unexpected companions at the bus stop a few feet from one another. She glanced at him, then again.

“I know you. We’re in history class together,” she’d said.

He didn’t think he coul
d speak but found the words. “I . . . I . . . yes, Mrs. Carson’s class.”

He remembered the awkwardness of answering her had been borne by a flush of emotion that wanted to remind him to consider his place in the universe. But she’d
talked to him first. So maybe he wasn’t dirt beneath her feet. Maybe he was more than he’d ever thought about himself.

Susan moved closer to him. “You’re in great shape, and you’re not bad-looking. Funny how I hadn’t really noticed that before.”

He stared at her with his mouth half open, unable to answer this time.

She leaned closer. “The th
ing is this. No matter how good-looking you become or what kind of shape that body gets into, and no matter what kind of clothes you wear, you’ll always be one thing.”

By then he could feel the warmth of her breath, smell her scent, and see the curve of her pouted lips. His heart raced, and he wanted to ask her what the one thing was, yet his angst allowed no such action.

“Do you want to know what that is?” Then she spoke his name.

His blood pulsed through his veins a million miles per hour.

“Y-yes,” he whispered.

Reaching up to his face with a gloved hand, she ran a leather finger back and forth across his lips.

“A loser. You’ll always be a loser. You’ll never touch beauty like me in your life because it’s not yours to have. People that come from where you come from will die there. You’ll only be able to fantasize about touching someone like me. We’re so far out of your league—”

Before he could stop himself, he had her throat in his hands, twisting. He felt something give, felt the air escape from her lungs in a slow, deliberate sigh. Her face held an expression of pained disbelief, and then he let her slowly slip to the snow-covered sidewalk. She clutched his coat, then his hand, and then she touched nothing at all. The thought of that look on her face, that disbelief, still gave him a measure of joy.

At first, he was terrified by the fact that he’d killed her, not understanding how it could have happened so quickly, so effortlessly. His mind, his vision, had simply turned to a vivid red, and then she was in his hands.

He sprinted away like Satan himself was chasing him, but after two blocks, he stopped. He felt good. He felt powerful. He’d struck against the darkness that promised to swallow him and spit
it back out, and he felt . . . incredible. There had been beauty in that act, and he embraced it.

The cops came to the school, but he’d not been questioned. The darling of his south-side high school remained an unfortunate statistic. A cold case never solved.