Malevolent (Lieutenant Kane series Book 1) (8 page)

He rested against the kitchen island. He shook his head and squinted his eyes in an attempt to clear out the cobwebs. A violent cough from the physical excursion sent blood from his lungs spattering across the granite of the island. He was dizzy, more than likely concussed from the impact. He wiped his mouth and took in deep breaths from his nose—he exhaled. The sound of metal scraping against tile filled his ears. Before he could see where the sound was coming from, he felt an explosion of pain jolt up his leg. He screamed and looked toward his feet.

Diane was lying on the kitchen floor, holding the handle of a knife. The two-inch-wide blade was lodged into his calf. She pulled the blade out, causing him to scream in pain again. She yanked her hand back and went for another stab. He pulled his leg away. The blade missed and stuck into the cabinet door of the island.

He balanced on his injured leg and pulled his right foot up. He stomped her head. It bounced off the tile and back up into the sole of his shoe. He stomped down again and again. Her head became soft. Blood splashed with each blow. She was dead. She lay at his feet. He stomped her again.

“You could have been famous.”

He stumbled out to the garage. Fresh plastic was covering the table and floor. Gone was the blood spatter from Diane’s first operation. He dropped his pants and slid off his bloody shoes. In his blue boxer shorts, he turned his back at the edge of the table and slid himself up onto it. He crossed his injured leg over the other knee to get a better view of the wound. She had plunged the knife into the middle of his calf. With the saline bottle, he flushed away the blood so he could see the extent of the damage. The stab wound was a couple inches across and hung open a quarter inch. His blood flowed from the cut. It needed to be stitched. He took his materials for suturing and a bottle of alcohol from the cart.

His teeth ground together as he splashed alcohol across the wound. He splashed more alcohol across his stitching needle. He looped the thread through the needle and tied it. Though he had drugs to ease the pain, he would take nothing. He wanted to be clear headed. He inserted the curved suture needle into his flesh. His skin bulged and turned white before the tip broke the surface. He pulled the thread through, sank the needle into the other side, and then pulled the thread tight. The stitching went slowly and, for the first few minutes, rivaled the pain from the wound itself. Numbness took over after that. The needle became slick with blood. It wasn’t a professional job, but it worked to close the knife wound and stop the bleeding. He wrapped his leg with a gauze roll. With the major injury addressed, he needed to see how bad the slash across his side was. He unbuttoned his shirt and removed it one arm at a time. Loose skin hung from his sides. Her wild swipe with the blade had caught the top of what used to be his left love handle. Now it was just skin. A small trickle of blood came from the cut. It was four inches long and an eighth of an inch deep, a minor flesh wound. He was lucky. He squinted his eyes hard, splashed alcohol over it, and searched for a gauze pad and tape. Patching the wound was a quick fix. With his knife wounds addressed, he scooted himself down from the table.

In his underwear, he grabbed the roll of painter’s plastic, a scrub brush, and a set of his latex gloves. He limped back inside to the kitchen. A fly buzzed his head. He smashed it with the roll of plastic sheeting. The fly spun on its back on the kitchen floor. He hit it until it stopped moving. The fly lay dead. He tossed the roll of plastic next to its corpse. Another fly buzzed past his ear. He shooed it away.

He moved Diane’s corpse to the master bath and laid her in the garden tub. The strain on his leg from moving her caused bursts of pain with each step. He hobbled back to the kitchen for the scrub brush and latex gloves. From the laundry room, he grabbed a bottle of bleach.

He stripped her naked. The smell of bleach filled the bathroom as he doused her body. The bristles of the scrub brush ripped back and forth across her skin. No evidence would be left behind. While he cleaned under her nails, he noticed a cut on her palm. It was from the knife she’d used to stab him. The cut was minor, but someone from forensics would spot it. He took a knife from the kitchen and made a few cuts across and next to it. The police would dismiss it as a form of torture. Cleaned and dried, he re-dressed her in fresh green lingerie. He wrapped her body in the painter’s plastic from the kitchen.

Using just the power of his right leg for support, he pulled her plastic-wrapped body from the tub. He was weak and injured. It took him five minutes to get her out to the garage. Past his work area, parked next to the taxi, was his Range Rover. The rear quarter panel of the SUV held her body up as he opened the rear gate. He pushed her in and slammed it closed. Pain shot up his leg. He stood still until it subsided. He would dispose of her body overnight.

I had a productive morning. I rolled out of bed early without the snooze button and spent a much-needed hour at the gym. I even had enough time to stop at a local coffee shop on the way to work. In addition to two large cups of coffee, I picked up a bag for the house. I sat down at my desk fifteen minutes early. A message waited on my voicemail from Terry Murphy, in our tech department. They couldn’t get anything off the airport video to identify the taxi.

I put it out of my mind and plugged away at the phones for two hours. I again called every cab company on my list, that served the airport. I hoped the day shifters would remember something the night shifters hadn’t. While I was still waiting to hear back from a couple places, I was starting to think she may have gotten into an unregistered cab.

Then the morning went to hell.

The captain buzzed my desk phone and told me to get to the law offices of Stanley and Wallace. We had a body. It was a female, blond, and dressed in lingerie. Apparently, our guy had struck again. The clock read a few minutes after eleven when Hank and I left.

We drove down West Kennedy. The crime scene was under a ten-minute drive from the station. A couple of turns later, we pulled into the small parking lot for the law office. Set on a corner lot, the place wasn’t much bigger than an average house. The building was a single story, beige with a terracotta roof. White pillars supported the roof overhangs over the doorways. All the windows had arched tops. The landscaping was sparse around the building aside from a row of bushes and a couple palm trees running along the back. I pulled into the first empty parking spot and killed the motor.

Two squad cars, an unmarked cruiser, and an ambulance parked near the side of the building—that was where we headed first. I spotted Detective Jones towering over the other officers and the people they were speaking with. We walked up.

“Jones, what have we got?” I asked.

“Hey, Lieutenant. It looks like we’ve got a case of deja vu. Woman, thirties, blond and wearing green lingerie. It’s the same as the other day.”

“Branded?”

Jones nodded.

“Shit. Has anyone from forensics been here yet?”

“Nah, I’ve only been on the scene for a few minutes. I just happened to be grabbing a quick lunch in the area when the call came in.”

“Where’s the body?” Hank asked.

“This way.” He turned his back and headed for the side of the building. We followed a few feet behind him.

“She’s right back here,” he said.

I caught women’s feet sticking out from the bushes as we rounded the building’s corner.

“The guy that first spotted her is giving a statement to Officer Johnson out front. From what I heard, he said he parked in the last spot there and noticed her as he got out of the car.” Jones pointed to a dark-silver four door.

I stopped and took in the location of the car and building. Unless you were on the complete end, in that specific parking spot, you wouldn’t see the body. I pointed back to the body and resumed walking.

“Continue, Jones.”

“He went to her aid and recognized the woman was deceased. He ran inside and had them call 9-1-1. That’s basically it.”

I nodded. We stood in front of the body. She lay sitting up with her back half into the row of shrubs. Her head rested against her chest, her arms hanging in the branches. She wore green lingerie identical to the woman we had found in the dumpster. She smelled of bleach. Noticeable ligature marks were present around her wrists and ankles. Unlike the last woman we found, this one had been beaten.

I knelt down closer to the body. My stomach turned. Her nose was crushed to one side. She had deep lacerations to both sides of her head.

“Find a purse, phone, anything nearby that could help us ID her?” Hank asked.

Jones shook his head. “I searched around a little but didn’t spot anything. I didn’t want to disturb the scene before forensics came.”

“Good.” I stood up. “Did you talk with anyone from inside yet?”

“I haven’t had a chance, no.”

“Well, let’s go see what we can find out.”

We walked back to the front of the building.

I caught Rick from our forensics department pulling into the parking lot as we opened the front door to go inside. Three men in suits and two women dressed in business attire stood by the front counter staring at us as we walked into the building. The two women had tears in their eyes. The men had looks of worry and grief spread across their faces. Something was off.

“I’m Lieutenant Kane, with the TPD’s homicide division.” I motioned toward my companions. “This is Sergeant Rawlings and Detective Jones. We’ll need to speak to each of you.”

One of the women wiped at her eyes and spoke up. “Is it Diane?”

“Diane?” I asked.

“Diane Robins. She worked here.”

“Ma’am, is there a place we can talk?” I asked.

She nodded and pointed at an office. I looked over at Hank and Jones. It appeared as though we had a possible ID. We separated the group, with Hank taking one of the men for an interview and Jones taking the other woman. I followed the woman I’d spoken with to her office. We sat.

“What is your name, miss?”

“Lisa Cotter.”

I put her in her late forties. She had brown shoulder-length hair. Her red puffy eyes didn’t hide the fact that she was an attractive woman.

“Your position here?”

“Attorney.”

I jotted her name down in my notepad. “What can you tell me about the events that took place this morning?”

She pulled a tissue from a box on her desk and wiped at her nose. She spoke slowly. “One of Mark’s clients came rushing in, yelling to call 9-1-1. He said there was a dead woman on the side of the building. I was standing at the reception desk, letting Wanda know I had someone that would be arriving and to send them back.”

I stopped her. “And who’s Mark and Wanda?”

“Mark Stanley. He’s one of the owners. Wanda is our receptionist. Her last name is Markel. They were both up front when you came in.”

I copied down the names. “Okay, continue.”

She choked at her words as they came out. “I walked out to the side of the building to see what he was talking about. I didn’t believe him.”

“And that’s when you saw the body?”

She began to cry. I gave her a moment to compose herself. “Miss Cotter, did anyone else go outside to look at the body?”

She nodded. “Mark went out after I came back. He came back inside and wouldn’t let anyone else from the office go out there.” She broke into another round of crying. “It was Diane, I know it. It looked just like her.”

“All right, tell me about Diane.”

She used a wadded-up tissue to dab at her eyes. “Diane Robins. She’s an attorney here.”

“And you believe the woman outside is her?”

She nodded. “Diane missed work yesterday. She had clients scheduled all day and never called. She wouldn’t do that.”

I wrote down the woman’s name. “When was the last time you saw Diane?”

“Monday. She went to Atlanta on business. One of her clients got picked up on a drug charge. She was supposed to be back yesterday morning.”

“Did she drive or fly?”

She shook her head. “She wouldn’t drive. Wanda, up front, books all of our flights.”

I made a note to get the itinerary from the receptionist. “What kind of attorney is Diane?”

“Criminal defense.”

The interview lasted another twenty minutes. I got as much information as I could about Diane Robins. She was single, no children, both parents deceased. She had a sister that lived out of state. I made a note to call her. Miss Cotter agreed to identify the body once it was back at the morgue. I walked out of her office to find Hank and Jones. Jones stood at the front counter, talking with the receptionist. Hank stood in the large corner office. I assumed he was speaking with one of the owners. Jones turned from the front counter and walked toward me.

“What did you come up with?” I asked.

“Just spoke with the woman from the front desk, Wanda.” He looked over the notes in his hand. “Wanda Markel. She said a client came rushing in and said there was a dead body outside the building. Guess the woman you spoke with went outside to look—came back in shock. She said it was one of their coworkers. One of the other attorneys then went out to look for himself. Miss Markel made the call to 9-1-1. I got a little information on the coworker, a Diane Robins.”

Detective Jones and I compared notes. We’d gotten the same story from both parties.

Jones continued. “Sergeant Rawlings spoke with one of the attorneys, a James Wallace. Now he’s in with,” he looked at his notes again, “Mark Stanley.”

I nodded. We waited another ten minutes for Hank to conclude his interview with the attorney. I spoke with the receptionist to see if I could get a copy of the woman’s itinerary. She printed me one. I was looking it over when Hank met us in the building’s lobby.

“Guess they all believe the deceased is a coworker—a Diane Robins,” Hank said.

“Same thing we got.”

We went over everything Hank had collected from the two men. Everyone’s chain of events lined up. I let the attorney I’d spoken with know where to go to give a positive identification. We informed the staff that we would be in contact if we needed to follow up. We walked back through the front doors to the parking lot. Two news vans were raising their masts, getting ready to broadcast. The coroner’s van sat at the side of the building. Detective Jones went to speak with the guys from patrol. Hank and I headed toward Rick and Ed, talking at the side of the building.