Blind Rage (4 page)

“When the ME does his deal, that should uncover any illnesses,” said Garcia. “I know our people didn’t mention anything regarding an illness. Maybe the cops heard something. But like you said, she might not have told the other girls.”

“Have the parents been contacted?”

“They’re in Europe. Minneapolis Homicide is trying to track them down.”

Bernadette bent over the tub and brought her face close to that of the dead girl’s. “Maybe she was anorexic or bulimic. That wouldn’t be something she’d share with friends or family.” She peeled down the bottom lip of the open mouth. “Her teeth look funky.”

“From stomach acid?”

Bernadette stood straight. “The other victims, some of them had eating disorders, too.”

“They had a lot of problems, which is why the suicide rulings weren’t hard to swallow,” said Garcia.

“The angry villagers aren’t going to swallow this one,” she said. “They’re going to break out the torches.”

“We’re reviewing the earlier drownings,” Garcia said defensively.

“We’ve got to step it up,” she said. “People are going to freak. They’re going to say we let a maniac run around unchecked.”

“The police are taking action. We’re taking action.”

She walked back and forth along the side of the pink bed. “We’re passing out Prozac and telling people to take the ‘How to Tell You’re Depressed’ quiz.”

“The others could still be suicides.” He nodded toward the tub. “This could be completely unrelated.”

“All the victims have been young college women with problems. All drowned. In every case, there were no witnesses. These can’t be a string of coincidences. If that’s not enough, look at the rate. Since April, it’s been one a month. Clockwork.”

“If we count La Crosse, it’s one a month. If we don’t count La Crosse—”

“We’ve got to count La Crosse.” She leaned against the side of the bed.

“Do you think we’ve gone from the river to a tub?” asked Garcia.

“You know what that tells me? That tells me the killer needs a more intense experience, a more up-close-and-personal drowning. He could crank it up in other ways, too.”

“How?”

“The next killing might not be spaced so far apart.”

Garcia dragged his hand over his face. “What do you want from me?”

“What do
you
want from me?” she asked. “Minneapolis Homicide is all over it. Our Minneapolis office is all over it. Milwaukee sent an asshole and an agent. They’re tripping over each other interviewing roommates.”

“It’s Minneapolis PD’s case, first and foremost. I can’t do shit about that. It doesn’t become yours unless—”

“Unless I prove that we’ve got a serial killer.”

“What do you need to do that?”

She got up from the side of the bed. “The files, going all the way back to the first one.”

“The one in April? That was a suicide for sure.”

“Why?”

“There was a note.”

“I want the note. I want the file. Did notes come with any of the other ‘suicides’?”

Garcia’s brows knitted. “I think the second one…no…they found a scarf she’d dropped on the bridge. No note.”

“That’s right. I remember reading about the scarf. A convenient clue left for the cops. I want that scarf, too.”

“What’re you going to do with that thing? Think you might try using your—”

“I might.”

“Flag me beforehand. I’d like to be there, if that’s okay.”

Garcia was unlike any of her previous supervisors. While the others didn’t want to know exactly what she did or how she did it, Garcia wanted to watch. “I’ll flag you,” she assured him.

He stuck his head into the hallway and turned back to her. “Coast is clear. No one to bug you if you want to try a fast one right here.”

She surveyed the pink room. Since the bed was neatly made—with a pile of pink pillows resting in an artful arrangement against the headboard—Garcia was probably right that Hammond and her visitor hadn’t had sex on the mattress. Nothing to touch there. The woman had probably filled the tub herself. The killer had touched the porcelain at some point during the struggle, but after so many victims, she suspected he was clever enough to wear gloves. “I don’t know, Tony. I hate quickies. Let me wait for the scarf. I’ll bet the murderer left that scarf for the police to find.”

“You really think those river drownings were murders staged to look like suicides?” His eyes traveled to the leg dangling over the side of the tub. “There was no attempt to make this look like a suicide.”

“Could be he figures this is so outside his previous MO, we’d never tie it to the river deaths.” She pointed a finger at Garcia. “Let’s let him think that. Let him think we’ve made no connection between this and the river deaths. He’ll get cocky and make a mistake. Plus it’ll keep a lid on the rioting citizens. Tell the cops and the ME to talk like this thing is an isolated murder.”

“That won’t be hard. The police still don’t buy the idea that the river deaths are anything but suicides.”

“Doesn’t sound like you believe they were murdered either.”

“I’m waiting to see what you come up with.”

“Fair enough.” She started for the door. “Make sure the cops keep us out of it.”

“Again, not hard. They love keeping us out of it.”

“Our public information guy didn’t blab to the media that we’ve got agents in this house?”

Garcia followed her out into the hallway. “We treat reporters like mushrooms. Feed ’em a load of shit and keep ’em in the dark.”

“That’s a line from a cop movie. A police detective says that’s how he treats federal agents.”

“That’s
our
line. They pilfered it from the FBI and turned it against us. Bastards.”

The two agents stepped to one side as a man and a woman from the Hennepin County ME’s office clattered up the stairs and into the hallway with a stretcher carrying an empty body bag. They unfolded the gurney’s legs, and then the woman reached over and unzipped the flat sack, preparing it for an occupant.

“Can we take her?” asked the man.

Garcia thumbed over his shoulder. “Last bedroom.”

“One of your fellas downstairs told me he was going to be there for the autopsy,” the woman said.

“Agent Thorsson?” Garcia asked.

“Yeah. He told me to tell you,” said the woman.

“That’s awfully nice of him to keep me updated,” Garcia said with a tight smile.

“Thorsson,” Bernadette said under her breath.

The two agents fell silent as they watched the grim pair wheel the hardware down the hallway. There were few sights as chillingly final as that of the medical examiner’s gurney on its way to pick up a corpse.

BY THE TIME
Garcia and Bernadette left the house, the sea of blue uniforms had thinned out considerably. The pair stood on the sidewalk in front of the house, taking in the epitaphs on the decorative tombstones. “I like that one,” said Garcia, pointing to
See! I told you I was sick!

Bernadette turned away from the yard and pushed her sunglasses tighter over the bridge of her nose. “I’ll be in the cellar if you need—”

Garcia snagged her elbow. “Cat. Wait a minute.”

She pivoted around to look at him. His face was knotted with worry. She pulled off her shades. “What’s the problem?”

He glanced up and down the sidewalk to make sure they were alone, then said in a lowered voice, “As you were coming up the stairs, I caught the tail end of your conversation with Thorsson.”

“For God’s sake, I was just giving him grief. I’m not going to crack up and—”

Garcia raised his hand. “I know, I know.”

She fingered her sunglasses. “It’s been six months since the shooting, Tony. I’m over it.”

“No one gets over it.”

She squared her shoulders. “I’m handling it, then. Okay? Seriously, why bring it up now? Is it because Thorsson opened his big mouth?”

“Between that mess and this case and your own history—”

“My history?”

“It’s just that—well, you seem so resistant to the possibility that the river deaths are suicides. It’s like you’re taking it personally.”

Her mouth dropped open as she realized why Garcia had been hesitant to bring her into the drownings, and she didn’t know if she should be angry or touched. Torn between the two emotions, she stumbled over a response. “I’m not…It’s not personal.”

“You sure this isn’t dredging up some bad stuff? Want someone to talk to tonight?”

“The only reason I talked to a shrink after the shooting was because you made me,” she said. “The last thing I need is to go back to one of those operators.”

He gently squeezed her shoulder. “I was talking about me, Cat. You want me to come over?”

Before answering, she studied his face. She thought she saw something new there but wasn’t certain. “I’m good, Tony.”

“You sure about that?”

She nodded. “I’m sure.”

“I’ll check in tonight, with an ETA on those files.”

“The scarf, too. Don’t forget the scarf. I’ve got a feeling about it.”

While Bernadette walked back to her car, she replayed the expression she’d seen on Garcia’s face. Was it concern beyond that of a boss for an underling? Her eyes must have been playing tricks on her. She slipped her sunglasses back on her face.

Some days she despised her damn eyes.

With those damn eyes, Bernadette could see things. She could hold something touched by a murderer and watch through the killer’s eyes. Problem was, her talent wasn’t a science. She could be seeing through the murderer’s eyes in real time or be observing something from recent history. An execution could pass before her eyes, or she could be saddled with mundane scenes of everyday life: A pair of hands scrambling eggs for breakfast. An old movie on a nondescript television set. The pages of a paperback book at bedtime.

If she landed in the murderer’s eyes during his dreams, she saw bizarre images that would be no help at all to a case. She’d suffered through the visions of maniacs who were hallucinating because of their drunkenness or drug use or mental illness. Again, no use when it came to solving a crime. She could misinterpret what she saw (not hard to do since her vision was filmy when using her special sight) and lead an investigation in the wrong direction. Send the bureau running after the wrong person. Even in the most ideal settings (she often went to empty churches to help her concentration) she came up with blanks. Conversely, it could come on unexpectedly with a casual brush of her hand. Each time she used the sight, it sapped her of energy. Worst of all, it could put her in the same emotional state as the killer, leaving her furious or frightened or homicidal.

Certainly she’d had successes over the years—otherwise the bureau would have cut her loose a long time ago—but her missteps were what attracted the most attention from the front office. A transfer routinely followed the failures. She’d landed in Minnesota the previous May after getting shuffled around Louisiana, where her coworkers had nicknamed her “Cat” because she had weird eyes like the South’s Catahoula leopard dogs. She had a brown right and a blue left.

Garcia liked calling her Cat, and she didn’t complain. He’d asked for her when none of the other bosses wanted her. She was thrilled to be back in her home state, even though she had no close family left there. The farm had been plowed over by developers. Her parents and only sibling, a twin sister, were dead. So was her husband.

HEADING BACK
downtown, Bernadette steered the Crown Vic onto the interstate. Halfway to St. Paul, the traffic slowed and then stopped. “I hate cars,” she muttered, and tried to see around the minivan parked in front of her.

While waiting for the logjam to break, she struggled to keep her mind off of the skeletons that the drowning case was bringing to the surface. She punched on the radio and turned up the volume on an ancient Rolling Stones tune, hoping to blast away the memories filling her head. The last thing she needed was to relive that sunny September day, three years ago, when Michael hanged himself on the water with his own boat rigging.

Chapter 4