Hush (15 page)

Most of it was filled with yellowed
clippings. There was Abraham Sinclair, looking thirty years younger
and fifty pounds lighter than he did now. His face had been circled
with Magic Marker, his name printed in large capital letters in the
margin. Back then, Sinclair had been a run-of-the-mill detective.
Now he was Superintendent. Head of everything. It made him feel
very clever to know he'd outsmarted the Superintendent of the whole
Chicago Police Department.

"Poor Abraham," he said, staring almost
wistfully at the photo. They shared a lot of history, the two of
them.

There were several pages dedicated to
Abraham. Small cutout articles about his wife and his children. The
kids had been very active in school sports and area theater, so it
had been easy to keep up with them. Much later, after getting out
of the mental institute, he'd followed Abraham's daughter, anxious
for her to get pregnant and have children of her own. But the
daughter had given birth to a girl rather than a boy. It would have
been thrilling to have killed the mother and son. He'd imagined
Abraham showing up at the crime scene to find his dead daughter and
grandson. He'd imagined reading about it in the paper, imagined the
grief on poor Abraham's face.

He'd fantasized about killing the mother and
son for so long that he'd almost killed the mother and daughter out
of sheer disappointment. But the medication he'd been on at the
time had a powerful, mind- controlling quality, and it hadn't
allowed him to act on the impulse. Killing a female infant would
have been murder for the sake of murder. Murder with no purpose. He
was above that. Better than that. Killing Abraham's grandchild
would have put him on the same level as every other murdering idiot
out there, and the last thing he wanted was to be like everybody
else. Anyway, the numbers hadn't been right. Not then. And the
daughter was married. Unfortunately.

The girl—Kiki was her name—had just turned
six and would grow up to be a whore like the rest of them. But she
was almost a niece to him, and he'd sent her a birthday card with
the picture of a puppy on it.

He turned to a fresh page at the back of the
scrapbook. He lifted the clear film, then positioned the photo and
article on the heavy white paper. In the margin, with black
waterproof Magic Marker, he carefully printed the name of the
reporter: ALEX MARTIN. All caps. Then, next to the photo of the
woman, he added a question mark. This was done in pencil, so that
he could later add the name with permanent ink.

On the opposite page, was a photo of
Detective Max Irving along with the copy of an article that had
been in the paper a week ago, taken at the press conference held
after the first new murder.

"Detective Irving has been put in charge of
the case," Sinclair was quoted as saying. "And I have every
confidence he'll find the killer."

There had been no accompanying photo of
Irving. But that had been easily rectified by a visit to the Police
Department's Web site. Irving himself didn't have a page, but basic
information was supplied in the overview.

Every name had a face. Every face had a
name.

Under the photo of Detective Irving was
another one—this of a sweaty, blond-haired young man in a hockey
jersey. Number thirty-two. A good number. A nice, round number that
rolled off his tongue.

ETHAN IRVING.

The boy was a rising star on his high
school's hockey team.

Hockey.

A rough sport. A sport that took an enormous
amount of skill.

The high school where Ethan played was called
Cascade Hills.

Even though he didn't like hockey, didn't
like sports of any kind, he thought he might go watch a game
sometime.

There would be a lot of people there, and he
didn't relish the thought of putting on his social mask to mingle
with the masses. But if Ethan were playing, it would be worth it.
If Detective Irving were watching, it would be interesting.

It would be fun.

From upstairs came the sound of his mother
banging her wooden cane against the floor—her signal for him to get
his ass up there.

His heart hiccupped, then began to thud so
loudly that the sound filled his head. Calm down. It's okay. It's
only the bitch upstairs. Only your mother.

"I'm coming!" he shouted.

Now that she'd broken her leg, she was
bedridden— which meant he had to personally attend to her every
need. Luckily she'd been prescribed heavy-duty painkillers and
sleeping pills, and he'd discovered that if he increased her
dosage, she'd sleep for six or seven hours straight. If only he
could make her sleep forever . . .

Sachi Anderson and her infant son had been
dead two days when the task force convened for the first time.

A room on the second floor of Headquarters
was now home base for everyone involved in the case, and it would
remain home until the killer was caught or spending was cut,
whichever came first.

Grand Central Station, so named by
schoolchildren because it was at the junction of Grand and Central,
replaced the old Shakespeare building that had been so old it was
said to have horse stalls at ground level. The new building had
gone up in the eighties. At that time, standard design and
construction dictated small, high windows made of Plexiglas. If you
were to combine a flat-roofed grade school and a fortress, you'd
come up with Grand Central. It seemed to Ivy that a building
couldn't have been any more nondescript.

Chicago could be a dark place, and even on a
sunny day the two small windows in the task-force room didn't do
much to dispel the gloom. That was taken care of by artificial
fluorescent strip lighting.

A room that had been empty at the beginning
of the day now contained four desks complete with phones, headsets,
and computers. Chicago metro maps hung from the walls. Couches and
chairs had been brought in, along with a small refrigerator and
coffeemaker.

Home away from home.

Ivy looked at the room with a combined
feeling of dread and relief. Dread, because she knew the couches
symbolized a future of sleepless nights and more killings; relief
because the seriousness of these mother- child homicides had been
realized and funds had been allocated—not always an easy thing to
pull together so quickly. She suspected Abraham of doing a lot of
talking and dancing over the last few days.

Members attending the preliminary task-force
meeting began to filter in, their somber faces reflecting the
brutality of the crimes they would be dealing with. Two people, a
man and a woman in business suits, introduced themselves as FBI
agents from the National Center for Analysis of Violent Crime or
NCAVC.

"We'll only be here a couple of days," the
woman, Mary Cantrell, told Ivy, shaking her hand. "Mainly to leave
you with proactive suggestions. You'll be free to use them or
disregard them as you see fit."

The words were spoken in a way that implied
her and her partner's "suggestions" weren't always received with
open arms, or, more important, an open mind.

Accompanying them was a man named David
Scott, who turned out to be one of Chicago's local FBI agents. He
had the weary, rumpled, out-of-shape look of someone who had spent
too many years behind a desk eating unhealthy food and drinking
brackish coffee.

He cast a furtive glance at Special Agent
Anthony Spence, who so far hadn't spoken a word. Spence's demeanor
fit that of the stereotypical FBI agent— those frozen-faced men in
black suits and shades, except that this agent had no glasses and
wore an impeccable gray suit that enhanced the gunmetal of his
bloodshot eyes. It occurred to Ivy that the rigid Spence would make
Irving look like a stand-up comic.

Looking at him, his feeling of inferiority
obvious, Chicago Field Office Agent Scott fiddled with his short,
wide, striped, outdated and wrinkled tie, then dropped it to run
his hand around the waistband of his beige pants, as if to check
and see if everything was in place.

Two police officers joined the growing group,
the smell of fryer grease emanating from a bag balanced on a
cardboard tray. One of the new arrivals was Ronny Ramirez, the
young officer who'd given Ivy a ride back to her apartment the
night of the Anderson murders. The other she recognized as the
female officer who'd been stationed at the door of the apartment
that same night.

The female officer told everybody hello and
pointed to her badge. "Regina Hastings," she said, pulling out a
chair, plopping down, and digging into her breakfast sack.

"I never knew a woman who could put away so
much meat," Ramirez said in what seemed half amazement, half
admiration.

Hastings swiped at her mouth with a big
napkin. "Yeah, and I like my meat cooked and on bread." She took
another bite of her sandwich, big white teeth sinking into the
English muffin, while Ramirez made a choking sound. If his skin
wasn't so dark, everybody would be able to see him blush.

Hastings laughed and opened the plastic lid
of her Styrofoam container. The smell of coffee wafted upward,
galvanizing the group to action as they moved toward the coffee
machine where a full carafe was brewed and ready.

Anthony Spence took his black, with a palmful
of orange-coated tablets.

"Headache?" Ivy asked, beginning to feel the
sympathy she always felt whenever a person took on human
attributes.

"Migraine," came the brusque, reluctant
admission. He tossed back the pills, following with scalding
coffee. Jumping and cussing, he spilled dark liquid on the lapel of
his suit and the floor in front of Ivy.

So much for cool.

"He's not used to stimulants," Mary Cantrell
said dryly, grabbing a napkin from the table and dabbing it at the
stain on his suit. "Depressants are more his thing," she explained,
her gaze catching Ivy's with a you-know-what-I-mean look.

No, Ivy didn't know what she meant. That he
was an alcoholic? He wouldn't be the first FBI agent to succumb to
self-medication. Ivy would guess that almost every person in the
Behavioral Science Unit and NCAVC had had a drinking problem at one
time or another.

Ivy was sensing an undercurrent between the
two agents, a latent hostility or rivalry. These two didn't like
each other. That was the only thing Ivy got.

Why did people have to be so damn . . .
human? Always fighting. Always backbiting. When Jane Goodall first
began her studies of chimpanzees, she thought they were our gentle,
more compassionate brothers and sisters. Then years into her
research, she sorrowfully discovered they were just like us.
Animals plagued by jealousy and hatred. They were gentle, yes.

But they were also capable of horrible
atrocities such as violent acts of murder and cannibalism. They too
were guilty of crimes against their own kind.

Spence dropped a napkin on the floor, pushed
it around with the toe of a black dress shoe until the spilled
coffee was soaked up, then bent and retrieved the soiled napkin
with a wince.

So, he cleaned up after himself.

Five minutes later, Detective Irving made his
appearance, along with Superintendent Sinclair and another man
about Abraham's age whom he introduced as a toxicologist.

It was unusual for the Superintendent to
personally involve himself in an investigation and Abraham
explained that he would only be joining them for the initial
meeting. Some in the room may not have known of his responsibility
for the case when he was a detective, and it was strange to think
that Hastings and Ramirez would have been kids when the Madonna
Murderer had first terrorized Chicago.

The initial meeting didn't include the entire
task force. Once a plan was mapped out, recruits would be brought
in and briefed, those officers consisting of foot cops, beat cops,
rovers, fact checkers, information gatherers— people who would be
neck deep in the tedious business of records, reports, interviews,
and statistics.

Irving passed out folders to everyone
present. Inside were abbreviated versions of the original Madonna
Murders case file, combined with the two new homicides.

"No one else is to see these files," Irving
instructed. "Not your wife, or husband, not any officer outside of
this room."

Introductions were made once more, then
everybody pulled up a chair and got down to business.

"Okay," Irving said, "this is where we are.
No fingerprints found other than those belonging to members of the
family and the victim. No DNA found that belonged to anyone other
than family members or victims. No saliva from the drinking glass
that could be connected to anyone else."

"The bite wound?" Abraham asked.

"Our killer is apparently not a
secretor."

Ivy knew that eighty percent of the
population were secretors—meaning they left DNA in other bodily
fluids. Some criminals would get a drink, leave something on a
glass. Use the toilet, not flush, or it didn't flush completely.
And some—many—bit their victims. There had been a few cases over
the years where bite marks themselves had been as incriminating as
a fingerprint—Ted Bundy, for one. But more often, unless the
perpetrator had some unusual dental work, saliva was the better way
to go.

"What about degraded-DNA tests?" asked Agent
Scott.

"The lab is also running tests on evidence
pulled from the Cold File—evidence collected from the original
Madonna Murder crime scenes," Irving said.

"Testing methods have advanced over the last
sixteen years, and we're hoping to find something we didn't have
the resources to find before. Unfortunately, the DQA1 involves
minute amounts of secretions, and there are very few lab
technicians trained to run these tests. They're backed up and
haven't even started on our samples."