Daddy's Little Killer (6 page)

I picked up the phone and called George
Hardy.  "I'll be in Darkwater Bay around midnight,
George.  I've already made arrangements for my arrival."

"I can send a car out to the airport to pick
you up.  That won't be a problem."

"It's already arranged," I explained my
plans.  "So if you'd like, we can meet first thing Wednesday
morning to discuss the specifics of what you're proposing."

"I can make it happen.  The head of the
governor's special unit will be here too, Helen.  Collangelo
is determined to see this city get cleaned up one way or
another."

I wasn't sure I liked the implication behind
that statement, but considering my recent history, Darkwater Bay
might be the perfect place for me to live. 

My wardrobe was too pastel for my liking, a
situation I planned to remedy as soon as possible.  Instead of
chucking the suit for something more comfortable, I accepted light
pink and called the front desk for a taxi and my luggage. 
With one last wistful glance down the hallway where handsome Todd
would spend Tuesday evening without me, I left Washington D.C.
behind.

Chapter 5

Hertz guaranteed an SUV when I booked the
reservation.  When I landed in Darkwater Bay, they had a Prius
waiting for me.  I stared at the tiny car with dubious
regard.  "Seriously?  I doubt my legs will fit in there,
let alone all of my luggage."  Howard the shuttle driver was
still lugging my suitcases from the van that delivered me to the
car lot.

Rental girl snapped her gum.  "You
alone?"

"How is that relevant?"

"Cuz if there's no passengers, you can put
the extra bags in the back seat of the car.  Two should fit in
the trunk without a problem."

This is the story of how I ended up driving
a battery operated coffin instead of a real vehicle.  I've got
nothing against the green movement.  I'm merely waiting for
the model of vehicle that accommodates anyone taller than five
six.

Howard kindly adjusted the driver's seat as
far back as it would slide before I folded myself into the tiny and
quiet vehicle.  Before I could drive away, an enviable dark
Crown Victoria pulled up to the curb behind me.  "Please let
them be returning a car I would rent," I muttered under my
breath.

No such luck.  Two men in suits stepped
out of the vehicle.  Anxiety sparked between nerve endings in
the center of my chest.  Marcos knew I was here?  David
discovered I left the coast and called agents from the local field
office?

Two men approached my car – one older and
rotund in the middle, one younger with a deep cleft just left of
center chin.  His hair dipped down over the edge of one
eyelid.  He tapped my closed window with a shiny gold
badge.

"Great," I hissed a choice word or two under
my breath and depressed the button to open the window.  Its
motor hummed softly.

"Dr. Eriksson?"

I watched his chest expand and freeze the
moment our eyes met.  Something about the way he looked at me
seemed … off.  He stumbled half a step backward.  Not my
imagination.

I frowned.  "Yes?"

"Detectives Conall and Briscoe, Darkwater
Bay PD, Downey Division.  Commissioner Hardy informed us you'd
be arriving tonight and requested that we escort you to a fresh
crime scene."

I shook my head, more of a rattle
really.  "Detective, I haven't even agreed to consult on cases
for Darkwater Bay yet."

"I understand, Dr. Eriksson, but this case
is …"

The man on the other side of the car,
presumably Briscoe, muttered something to his partner.  I
couldn't make out the words, but the tone was clear as day. 
Serious.

"Fine.  I'll go with you to this crime
scene."

"If you'd like, we can take you, ma'am."

"Eriksson will do," did I really look old
enough to warrant ma'am?  Any woman approaching 40 who tells
you she doesn't mind being called ma'am is either insane or a liar,
possibly both.  Ma'am.  Why not call me grandma while
you're at it?

"I'll follow you in my rental," I
said.  "I'd rather not take a trip into the city only to have
to return for the car after I see your crime scene."

The passenger door popped open and the round
detective grunted.  He wasn't fitting inside a whole lot
better than I was.  "Tony Briscoe, Dr. Eriksson," he
said.  "I'll ride along with you so I can fill you in on the
particulars of the case, what we know, why this thing is such a
goddamned hornet's nest already.  Also, I can help you get
through our ground cover so you don't get turned around on the way
to the scene."

I clicked on the GPS system.  "What's
the address?"

"Forty-two fifty Templeton Lane."

Coordinates entered. 
"Nightingale?"

"That's the one," Briscoe said. 
"Puppy'll be right behind us."  His eyes darted through my
open window in silent command to his partner.  "This is a
mess, Dr. Eriksson.  I won't beat around the bush about it at
all.  We got a dead vic in Central Division's territory, and
everybody from the governor down is afraid it's gonna be the
Bennett case all over again."

"What's the Bennett case?"

"Fifteen years ago, a young teenage girl was
found dismembered in the Elegiac River.  Her name was Brighton
Bennett."

"Dismembered in what way?"

"Head and hands gone.  We never
recovered them."

"We?"

"They technically.  That case belonged
to central too."

"And you're with …"

"Downey Division, ma'am."

"Please don't call me ma'am."  The GPS
offered its first cue at direction when I pulled away from the
curb.  "So why is my welcoming committee from Downey
Division?"

"We were available.  Three of central's
five homicide detectives are holding down the scene until you
arrive."

"What?  Why would they do that?"

"Hardy's orders, Doc."

"Don't call me Doc.  What does this
crime have to do with your old case?  Or are you telling me it
was never closed?"

"It was and it wasn't.  I'll be
blunt.  You're walking into a war zone without any Kevlar, Dr.
Eriksson.  Hardy wants Downey to take the lead on this
investigation.  The boys from central aren't too happy to see
another unit take over their turf."

"That doesn't tell me how this case relates
to the one that was closed but not really."  Briscoe was
remarkably vague for a man who claimed to be blunt.  "Is there
a link between the two?"

"I'll let you make that call.  What I
can tell you is that there's another vic in Nightingale missing her
head and hands."

"Teenager?"

"No ma'am.  She certainly is not."

"Do you know anything about the victim
yet?  I'm not sure you understand how I do what I do,
Detective Briscoe.  Victimology helps me determine the type of
person most likely to have committed a crime.  The more I know
about her, the better the chances are of figuring out why she was
targeted by a perpetrator.  How teenage was this victim from
the old case?"

"Fifteen.  Is that important?"

"It depends.  Was sexual assault part
of the crime?"

"That was never determined.  Her body
was discovered in the water, so there wasn't a whole lot of
evidence left to collect if you know what I mean."

I frowned.  Semen can remain present
inside the vagina for up to five days even if a woman bathes and
showers regularly.  It cannot be ruled out automatically
simply because of hygiene.  "Had she been in this river for a
long time?"

"The medical examiner put the time of death
at 48-72 hours prior to the discovery of her body."

"How long had she been missing before she
was found?" I asked.  The Prius guidance system told me to
turn left.  I signaled and glanced in the rearview
mirror.  Conall's turn signal matched mine.  So far so
good, little Prius.

"Three days."

I snorted softly.  "So the medical
examiner believed she might've been held for up to twenty-four
hours after the abduction, but he didn't bother to check for
evidence of sexual assault?"  Hadn't Hardy said something
about an incompetent ME?  That was why Maya Winslow was out
here.  My thoughts took a left turn with the car, long enough
to wonder if news of Rick's indictment had filtered through the
state coroner's office in Maryland before Maya moved to the left
coast.

"Like I said, she was found in the
water."

"But what about abrasions, tearing, other
evidence of trauma to sexual organs?"

"You'd have to talk to the ME about that,
ma'am … er … Dr. Eriksson."

"Will Dr. Winslow be at this new crime
scene?"

Briscoe's eyes pierced the darkness. 
"You know her?"

"We've met a few times.  Does that
matter?"

"No, I guess she'll be happy to see you join
the team."

"This turf war … "

Briscoe cleared his throat and picked at his
thumbnail.  "It ain't gonna be pretty.  I'd imagine that
Rogers and Daltry are burnin' up the phone lines tryin' to get a
hold of Chief Lowe to have him override Hardy's order to hand this
case off to Downey."

"Wait a minute.  The chief of police is
trying to outrank the commissioner?"

"Chief of detectives," he clarified with a
dark scowl.  "Jerry Lowe is technically over all the
detectives in Darkwater Bay."

"So he's your boss too."

"I answer to Lieutenant Finkelstein."

"And he reports to Lowe?"

"She.  I guess."

"Detective Briscoe, why are you so reluctant
to share your opinions with me?  I thought you planned to be
blunt."

"About the case at hand, yes."

"How was that case closed but not
closed?"  My temples started throbbing from playing twenty
questions with the reluctant detective.  If this was blunt,
evasive was going to be sheer hell.

"The detectives on that case –"

"Out of Central Division?"

"Yeah, back before it had gone to complete
shit.  The detectives on that case had a suspect, gathered
evidence against him and arrested his sorry ass.  Then during
an evidentiary hearing, the judge threw out the bloody clothing
because there was evidence that the blood might've been
planted."

"What evidence?"

"I don't know.  Some chemical or some
such found in the vials used to collect blood evidence."

Ethylene-diamene-tetra-acetic acid, or EDTA,
was a chemical added to laboratory vials to prevent blood from
clotting.  It had been infamously found in another case
wherein acquittal was the end result, in the prosecution of O.J.
Simpson.

"The detectives at central, were they the
kind who would plant evidence to make sure their perp didn't
walk?"  I thought of Danny Datello and Hardy's opinion that
the detectives at central were a little too myopic where he was
concerned.

"Flynn Myre, in my opinion, is too stupid to
plant his ass in a chair, let alone evidence.  Johnny Orion on
the other hand …"

"Dirty cop?"

Briscoe snarled, "He'd no more plant
evidence than he would piss on his mother's grave.  I trained
that young man, and he was a fine detective."

"Was?"

"He left the department."

"Volitionally?"

"I ain't sure that means what I think it
means, but if you're implying that Johnny got fired, he
didn't.  He walked away with his dignity intact."

"It was a simple question, detective. 
I have no opinion of the man either way.  I don't know him, or
you, or anyone out here for that matter."

"Except for Winslow."

Why he could spit out her last name but
continued to ma'am and doctor me to death seemed a bigger mystery
to me at the moment.  Maya was at least five years my
senior.  Maybe blonde wasn't such a good color for me after
all, although Todd seemed to like it well enough.  Maybe
Briscoe was just annoyed that another outsider was being brought
into his territory.

"I had very few brief and professional
encounters with her in the past few years," I struggled to push the
bristling tone back into my brain where it belonged.  If Hardy
wanted me working with these people, it wouldn't do well to
alienate any of them until I had a better lay of the land.  "I
would hardly consider that contact enough to say that we know each
other well or in the context of friendship, Briscoe.  I meant
no disrespect to your friend."

"I shouldn't have barked at you," Briscoe
muttered low.  "It's just that Johnny took the blame for a
whole lot of shit that he didn't do.  Folks at central
practically crucified him in the middle of the street, and to my
way of seeing things, they would've never got close to Masconi
without Johnny's hard work."

"I take it Masconi was the suspect who
walked after the evidence was excluded."

"That's right."

"And where is Mr. Masconi now?"

"Nobody knows.  He left town after his
brush with justice and nobody's seen or heard from him since. 
You ask me, his former employer might've had a thing or two to do
with that."

"And?"

"And what?"

"Who did he work for?"  Precognition
tickled my brain.  This was what George meant.  That rush
to judgment.  Still, if Briscoe's affirmation was on cue, it
was a disturbing link.

"Danny Datello."

Bingo.

"Do we know if this latest victim can be
linked to Mr. Datello?"

Briscoe chuckled.  "Hell, you didn't
have to ask who he was.  That tells me a lot, Dr.
Eriksson.  But to answer your question, I'm not even sure we
know for a fact who the victim is tonight.  On account of the
fact that she ain't got a face left to identify or fingers to
print."

"Good point.  So how bad is this turf
war going to be when you show up with another outsider, former FBI
to boot?"