Drop Dead Perfect (An Ellen Harper Psycho-Thriller) (20 page)

He rubbed his eyes with his thumb and forefinger. There had to be something here, something that they were missing. But what? In the last two hours, they had gone through each warehouse that might contain the type of dust showing up on the report. He didn’t know diddlysquat about bleach residue in latent molecules or how that might work. He used bleach on his whites and his workout socks—that was it. And he hated the smell. It made him sneeze, causing his gag reflex to kick in. He could take decaying bodies or mangled limbs, but bleach was a bitch.

The team of three emerged from the lower stairs of the last building and moved straight to him.

“Sorry, Detective Rogers, we got nothing except two rotting raccoons and a shitload of abandoned plastic bags, but nothing else,” said the sergeant who led this group.

“Nothing?”

“No sir.”

He shook his head and exhaled.

“Okay. Thanks. Good work.”

“Now what?” asked the sergeant, eyeing him curiously, impatient for more details. Brice was all too familiar with that look. He’d used it dozens of times. Chicago cops were a good group. For the most part, they lived by the creed they’d sworn to uphold, but patience wasn’t a virtue that ran rampant among the ranks. They hated busy work; Brice didn’t blame them. And right now, it appeared they had been involved in just that.

Reviewing what they’d done, Brice’s thoughts went to what they may have missed, or maybe misunderstood. Step by step, he went over his conversation with Ellie. Her suspicions, her chart, her directions, her discovery of a similarity after comparing two apparently unrelated crime scenes. He frowned. His teams had done everything right; he was sure of it. The women and men going through these buildings wouldn’t have missed anything important. They were good cops.

Brice reviewed the process again, feeling even more comfortable with how they’d gotten to this point. There simply wasn’t anything in these buildings that danced to the tune they wanted to hear. Had Ellie been wrong? Was the evidence tainted? It certainly wouldn’t be the first time something had gone south with evidence.

He dismissed that. Ellie didn’t make many mistakes. The woman was far too good at what she did. Maybe a tad too intense, but incredibly gifted in her field. She’d never make a mistake like this appeared to be.

And it didn’t end there.
She
didn’t end there.

This complex woman had coaxed a certain appeal from him that he hadn’t experienced in years. She wasn’t just good-looking; she actually made him do double takes because of the way
she looked in blue jeans. And, of course, those haunting eyes. But that wasn’t even half the package. The woman wasn’t frightened to face her demons. It had taken awhile, and a few right hooks, but she’d let it out, unafraid that anyone would see her vulnerability. In his eyes, that made her just about the toughest person he knew. Maybe he could take a few lessons from her, help him escape his own private hell, the one he kept deep inside himself, sterile, far from the prying eyes of others. His fortress of solitude . . . and torture. Maybe Ellen Harper could help him. Maybe.

“Detective? You still here?”

“Yeah, Sarge. Just running things over in my head making sure I got my information right.”

“Do you want us all to stay?”

Good question. Did he? He had a meeting with the task force in less than ninety minutes, and he desperately wanted to tell them that the devil’s lair had been found, that it would be just a matter of time before they had the son of a bitch in custody.

“Let me make one more call before everyone’s dismissed.”

“Yes sir.”

Hitting speed dial on his cell, he waited. Ellie’s answering machine came on, her voice sounding like proverbial music to his ears. It occurred to him as he hung up and dialed again that they would be spending a lot time together, talking about this case, what had happened, the next steps they needed to take—maybe over dinner, he hoped. Finally, after the fourth call, he left her a message.

“Ellie, we’ve struck out here in Bridgeport. Before I let these folks go, call me to make sure I haven’t missed something, okay?”

Holding the phone tightly in his hand, he moved closer to the building, waiting for a return call. He scanned the building as if he had Superman’s x-ray vision, just like he’d done with all the other buildings.

There was nothing out of place. No lights, no fresh paint, no new cement, no new wooden planks, and no tire tracks, other than the ones belonging to the cops. They’d followed strict protocol regarding that. He racked his brain for an oversight but found none. They’d been excessively diligent.

After five minutes, he tried calling Ellie again, getting the same no-answer message. He had no real choice. He stuffed the phone in his pocket and made a concentrated effort to suppress his frustration.

Turning to face the group of cops awaiting his direction, he met their collective gazes.

“Okay. Listen up. Let’s move out. I’ve got to go to a meeting to discuss our next course of action. Thanks for your efforts. At least we know there’s nothing happening here.”

He watched as thirty-nine of Chicago’s finest walked and jogged to their vehicles and drove down the street in the fading sunlight. Brice put his hands on his hips, feeling his helplessness grow. If Big Harv was right, there was another woman, to go along with Joannie Carmen, in the hands of a psycho prick who had already shown what he was capable of.

He’d seen more than he’d wanted in his years, yet nothing reached the level that this case had in creating disconcerting images. Those young women had a right to live their lives fully. He had a responsibility to help them.

“Yeah, hell of a job there,” he said out loud.

He had to push his thoughts in another direction because bringing it home “personal” only made it worse. Staying focused and clear minded. Being a good cop was all he could do.

Striding to his cruiser, he opened the door and was about to get in when he caught movement out of the corner of his eye. A woman clothed only in a bra and lace panties staggered around the corner of the building, ran into the rusted fire hydrant, went down, got up, took three more wobbly steps, and then dropped to her knees.

Moving away from his vehicle, Brice ran toward her, yelling to get her attention. He wasn’t totally sure what was going on, but he thought he knew.

Ten feet away, he recognized Joannie Carmen. She was dirty and bruised, with blood on her face and hands, scarlet smearing her torso, but it was her. It was impossible to squelch the sense of hope that coursed through his body.

As he got closer, however, that hope turned to anguish. She was trying to talk, pointing to her mouth, making only primitive guttural sounds.

His heart sank to his feet as he realized she had no tongue.

CHAPTER-37

For the second time in two minutes, Ellen endured a shot screeching past her head. She felt the impact of the bullet hit Steve’s weapon, his Glock tumbling into the air, doing slow-motion somersaults, then crashing to the marbled floor. At that moment, her taut nerves matched the winding flight of his gun. The bullet had missed her by less than five inches but that did little to keep her heart out of her throat. Twisting behind her, she saw the wisp of smoke rising from Bella’s Smith & Wesson.

“What the hell was that?” Ellen demanded.

“I saved his sorry soul, Gringa, and maybe yours. Good thing I’m a helluva shot, eh? It could have been bad for you if I wasn’t, you know?” answered Sanchez.

A different kind of fury emerged from inside of Ellen as she rose to one knee. This time it wasn’t the overriding, life-stifling type. Just plain, pure, unadulterated anger at someone’s dumb-ass decision. The kind of action that gets people killed.

“I had this under control, you moron. You could have killed one of us.”

Sanchez
’s look went from triumph to total disbelief. Her dark eyes flashed.

“You’re welcome, bitch. I was helping your pompous ass.”

“By putting me in the line of fire? And what if you’d missed and killed him?”

“Yeah, ’cept I didn’t, did I? You know, Harper, you have a warped way of saying thank you. He was going to kill himself, or maybe rethink it and shoot you.”

Sanchez turned and stomped through the door she’d entered.

“Hey. You don’t get off that easily,” yelled Ellen.

She started after her, then Steve moaned again, and she stopped. She’d deal with Bella later. She found a little joy in that thought. Yet there was a line of truth in what Sanchez had said. Ellen hesitated. Even if Ellen’s take wasn’t totally right, she had bigger fish to fry at the moment.

She pointed at one of the techs, told her to call 9-1-1, and moved back to
Steve.

He was slouched over, his legs splayed apart, mumbling. His hand was bleeding in two places, his right thumb split to the “V” in his hand, but it didn’t appear that Sanchez’s bullet had struck him directly. The scar on Steve’s gun said she was right.

His shoulder was a different story. Her shot hit exactly where she’d aimed it and probably shattered his scapula and maybe the humerus too. There was a steady stream of blood flowing from the wound. She’d seen worse, but that didn’t mean he couldn’t bleed out if she didn’t get to work.

Pulling off her lab jacket, she ripped off one sleeve and flopped it over her shoulder, then rolled up the rest of the jacket.

“You’ve got to lie down so we can stop the bleeding, okay?” she said quietly.

He nodded, his eyes riveted on her face. “I thought I wanted to die, but I don’t. I’m so sorry. I’m so sorry. I’m so . . .”

His words faded as he stared at the ceiling, his eyes seeing a world Ellen couldn’t.

Acting quickly, she holstered her Beretta then ripped the sleeve in half. Folding one section into four layers, she pressed it to the wound to stem the bleeding. She raised
Steve’s arm, causing him to yelp. She glanced at his face and saw that his eyes had refocused. A good sign that he wasn’t headed into shock. He’d lost a good measure of blood, but was hanging in there. She worked faster.

Placing the strip of cloth under the joint of his shoulder, she tied it securely over the wound, and she could almost see the blood flow devolve to a trickle.

Leaning back, she wiped the sweat from her brow and released a pent-up breath. Two more techs had arrived, taking up positions to Steve’s left, and the other three who had come from behind her with Sanchez, stood to Steve’s right. The man wouldn’t be able to do any more damage.

“What happened here, Ellen? What was this about?” asked one of the techs. She could hear the confusion in the tech’s voice. Or maybe it was fear.

Ellen began to answer but she wasn’t sure—he’d had a meltdown over something that he’d done . . . only that wasn’t quite right, was it? He’d come down the hall with a purpose. Her mind moved back to the moment she first saw him with the gun. His eyes were clear, his gait sure. His motive not shrouded in the least. Steve was going to kill her and at any cost. Did he know she’d put two and two together or suspect that she had? That had to be it. This wasn’t about some bullshit emotional response to being overlooked for a promotion, or even about an attraction to her, was it? She knew he was hiding something. His body language and her recollection of the events of the last few minutes said so.

Looking up at the tech, she gave her a tight smile.

“What do you say we find that out?”

Leaning over to
Steve, she put her face within inches of his. The scent of aftershave mingled with sweat and blood, and her mind cleared even more. If ever anyone took on the general odor of a man, it was Steve Jansen.

She cocked her head to the left, her mind running a million miles a second. Even in his current state, he was just that—a man, only one. But what had he meant by “all of us”? Is that
what this was about—men?

“Talk to me. What the hell’s going on, here? You say you’re sorry . . . sorry about what? What did you do?” she asked softly.

His gaze searched her face, and she quickly realized that she hadn’t been wrong about one thing. He
did
have feelings for her.

“You still don’t understand, do you, Ellie?” he said.

“Understand what, Steve?”

“How beautiful you are. You let one man, one asshole like Joel Harper, screw up your life, but you shouldn’t have. I tried to tell you in a thousand ways, only you were so focused on escaping the pain, you didn’t hear me. I could have been there for you. I wanted to help.”

It was all she could do to stay focused on what she was trying to do. His words were a form of some brazen dichotomy. She was creeped out by his confession, yet there was a part of her that was almost grateful to be thought of in the way he’d described.

“I’m flattered. Really. Other than the part where you tried to kill me. But we can talk about your feelings for me later . . . and I want to. But I need to know what you’ve done. Does it have to do with this case? With Oscar’s death? What?”

“I understand your need to know, Ellie, really I do. But I’m afraid you’ll have to figure this one out on your own. As far as Oscar goes? I guess he was in the wrong place at the wrong time.”