Steele Resolve (The Detective Jasmine Steele Series Book 1) (8 page)

I try to avoid her eyes simply because I have nothing truthful to say.

“It’s from the shower,” so I lie.

“That line might work with any number of people in this room. It doesn’t work on me and you know it.”

Victor leans forward almost pleading with Hadley to understand what he’s saying.

“I do not embalm people. I do autopsies and declare the cause of death.”

“I know that, but you cut inside us, take out or organs and then sew us back up.”

“Exactly!” Victor leans back victorious.

“Then you liquefy humans.” He smacks his hand against his forehead. At this point I’m not sure if she’s pushing his buttons or being serious.

“You’re ignoring me.” Frankie whispers again trying to hold my attention.

“Frankie, I don’t know what you’re talking about.” I calmly reply obviously ignoring her.

“I’ve got years of experience with those ears. Trust me.” It’s that instance that I feel her hand brushing the hair away from my ear and my eyes dart immediately to hers. It’s a simple gesture, one she’s done millions of times before, but this time I am taken off guard. I only smile at her and concede defeat in my argument. She looks at me as if wanting to say something more meaningful but utters,

“I’ll get you some fresh coffee.” Before I can say anything, she has my mug in hand and walking into the kitchen.

It’s then that I notice the silence in the room. Turning my attention back to the bickering twins, I see them staring at me waiting for me to say something. My ears are on fire and I know I have no control over the room at the moment; I have to calm down quickly by switching attention.

“Victor does not liquefy people, Hadley.” Victor nods in agreement and Hadley plops down in a chair in a huff.

“Although he shouldn’t be eating around those bodies. You never know what kind of diseases bodies carry that could get in your food,” Frankie says calmly as she hands me a fresh cup of coffee.

“See, it’s still nasty that you eat around death,” Hadley throws one final jab at Victor who simply takes it in stride.

“Whatever you say Hadley.”

You can feel the tension and frustration building in the room, it’s like an allergy you can kick or a sneeze you can’t expel.

“So, you all want to help me with this case. Let’s get on with it.”

Dropping myself onto the love seat, I await the peanut gallery’s opinions on this case. Grabbing my fresh cup of liquid courage, I take a sip and let the warmth flow down my throat. With a new sense of vigor I open my eyes and start this inquisition.

“Let me start simply, I’ve got very little.”

“Well, the victims have only given me so much. The cause of death is strangulation in all of them. However, the final victim was a male in transition phase. All of them share similar hair and eye color as well as height.” Victor runs his right hand through his hair. He’s been on this for as many hours as I have, not to mention all the other cases he has on his desk.

“You said the last was a male in transition phase?”

Victor and the rest of us look over at Hadley. She has no concept of liquefaction of human beings but apparently she understands this.

“Yes…” Victor hangs on that last word as if waiting for more from her.

“Did he have plastic surgery yet?” Hadley looks us all over. “If he had reassignment surgery, you might be able to trace the serial numbers on the breast implants.”

I continue to just stare at her along with the rest of the peanuts in the gallery.

“What? I was a dead body on a crime show.”

A resounding sigh erupts from all of us; of course, this would all lead back to some kind of entertainment venture.

“It would have been a possibility, had the surgery been done. We have no evidence that it was and the implants removed, or if it was just hormone based.”

“Okay, but it’s still possible they scheduled the removal part of the surgery. It’s a very specific one that only a few doctors do right? So maybe we can do some kind of search, email the photo around and maybe someone knows who the guy is.” She sits, confident but also nervous. I can tell she’s waiting for my response, her knees bouncing frantically.

“I hate to say it but I never thought of that. Thanks, Hadley.”

“You always told me fresh eyes help old cases. Sometimes the most obvious situations are overlooked,” she smiles, the knee bouncing stopping as she calms down. “What else do you have?”

Opening the file, I grab the crime scene photos and spread them out over the coffee table.

“I’ve got some lovely gruesome photos. As Victor already mentioned, all three victims’ cause of death was strangulation.”

Frankie picks up the first victim’s photo, she stares at it intently as if the mouse in her brain is frantically running on the wheel.

“You know strangulation is a very personal way to kill someone. Were these all by hand or foreign objects?”

“Truthfully, the bruising is awkward. Not something I’ve seen before. Some spots look like fingers, others look like objects.” Victor tosses a photo down on the table, “I wish I could narrow it down, but it’s just annoyingly inconclusive.”

“Does it really matter here though? Killers kill, it’s really simple. Choking, shooting, stabbing, they all have the same premise behind it, to eliminate someone from the world.”

“And that is why you are the detective and I’m the psychologist,” Frankie leans back in full doctor mode, “Shootings can be vague, maybe they depend on distance and the type of weapon used. Personally, I take those cases one on one. Each is very different, but strangling someone takes a personal rage built up over time. You consciously close off the means of life from another human being. You watch as the life drains from the human being. It’s a different mental state altogether.”

“Thank you for the psychology lesson, doctor, but if they were aware of their attacker, why were there no defensive wounds or evidence of it?” I hand Frankie the medical reports. She scans them briefly as Hadley and Victor mumble to one another. “You two want to share,” I throw out weakly.

“Hadley was asking about the bruise pattern. It was slightly cylindrical, but awkward at the bottom. Not enough to be a baseball bat but I surmise it’s something similar.” Frankie tosses the paperwork on the table.

“It was a mistake,” she stands and begins pacing. “The other women were surprised by their attacker from behind, leaving them no time if any to fight back before they lost consciousness. But the last victim, he could respond…”

“Which explains the vicious attacks post mortem, but I’m at a loss at the connection between all the victims.” Victor states as he flips through more photos that Frankie has left behind as she paces back and forth. Victor stops suddenly, three photos sprawled out in from of him. “He stalked them.”

“That is an obvious suggestion, Victor, but the final victim throws that out the window. Anyone who was stalking close enough to get the eye color, would know their genders. Not to mention if you did a search online you could probably come to the same conclusion. It works, but not enough to explain all of it,” I answer sheepishly. I know they’re trying to help but sometimes they need devil’s advocate instead of a bobble head agreement.

Hadley looks worse for wear as the rest of us marinate our thoughts in silence. Her legs begin to bounce again as she plays with her shirt.

“Had, you okay?”

Her head pops up like a deer caught in headlights.

“Yeah, I’m good.”

“So we know he watches them possibly from a distance and attacks them from behind. Gives Frankie more stuff for the killer’s profile, than solid lead for me to investigate.” I write down some notes, “Maybe he had their ID cards, mail, credit cards or emails? Maybe the last victim changed his gender on his paperwork?”

Hadley looks like she’s about to evacuate her stomach all over my floor.

“Hadley, what’s going on? You look sick.” All our attention goes to the actress; Frankie looks her over presumably trying to decipher Hadley’s body language. It’s never easy, Hadley’s a great actress and she really only lets you see what she wants you to see.

“It’s probably nothing.” She looks to be with absolute fear pouring off her in buckets.

“Hey, whatever it is, maybe we can help?”

Hadley stands up and wrings her hands constantly.

“I don’t even know if it’s relevant. It just popped into my head and I don’t know why I didn’t think about it before. Hell, you’re all probably thinking, there goes the dumb actress who’s only good for a sex scene before her death.”

Victor stands up and grabs Hadley’s hands. He tries to calm her down, talking to her in such a low voice I couldn’t hear; it’s sort of working.

Taking a deep breath Hadley stands behind Victor.

“He used his forearm,” Hadley wraps her arm around Victor’s throat and squeezes gently. Victor smirks as he sidesteps before tossing Hadley over his shoulder and onto the floor.

“But just like we thought, a man would defend himself whereas a woman being smaller in stature would be lifted off the ground unable to defend herself. So the bruising on his chest would be consistent with a fist trying to knock the wind out of you. He had to deviate from his normal routine.”

“And by deviating he became angry, and he took it out on the male victim’s body,” Frankie interjects.

“Okay, we have a plausible explanation for everything but…” I let the last word hang in the air as I take a closer look to all of the photos.

“They all look like me,” Hadley throws out to the group as if it was a simple statement.

I look over to Frankie, my eyes pleading for some help.

“Sweetie, just because the killer has a type that happens to look similar to you doesn’t mean anything. We don’t know enough about the case to figure it all out right now, we’re just talking about things.” Frankie stands and takes Hadley’s hands in her own. “Remember I told you the hardest part about helping out here is to make sure you separate yourself from the case. You’re just too attached to everything going on here. If you take a step back, you’ll see there’s nothing to worry about.”

Hadley smiles and lets Frankie’s hands go. She silently walks over to my movie collection and pulls one out. Without hesitating she starts my entertainment center and I see her film Psycho Zombie Ninja pop up from the player. Curiosity getting the better of me I walk into the other room and watch the screen as she skips ahead.

“It’s a love story at heart. The girl rejects this guy who goes to a bar, gets wasted and bit by a zombie bartender. So he becomes part of the undead living among us all the while being trained to be a ninja to fight the war with the living.” She pauses the screen on her face and looks up at me, her eyes wide with this childlike innocence. “He uses a camera to find his perfect victim. Once he does, he uses his ninja skills to go undetected. He gets into position, rushes the victim, lifts them off their feet, and strangles them with his forearm from behind.” She hits play and we all watch as Hadley’s character dies in the film exactly as the others have in real life.

“Hadley, this could mean any number of things.” Frankie tries to diffuse the situation.

“It wouldn’t explain the conversations I had with Mr. Murderer over the phone or the threat to Chase.” I add hoping that this little bit of information would get Hadley to calm down.

Hadley shakes her head at the three of us and marches across the room. She grabs the crime scene photos and throws one in front of us.

“Old warehouse,” she throws another one, “the pier.”

Before she can continue Victor grabs the photos away from her.

“We know where the bodies were dumped. This I-know-more-than-you-do attitude isn’t helping.”

The words around me slow to a crawl as my mind seems to put the pieces together. It’s an odd sensation, when you finally have that light bulb go off in your brain. It’s the synaptic responses, the adrenaline pumping, hairs on the back of your neck perk up to attention while the chill of knowledge rolls goose bumps down your limbs. My mouth moves before I can stop it, “filming locations.” It’s said without emotion but as a matter of fact.

The voices around me stop and I look them all in the eyes. Hadley touches her nose and then points to me, her symbol that I finally understood her comment. Victor and Frankie look at me a bit dumbfounded.

“I had to drive Hadley to all of the film locations, her car broke down. Why the hell didn’t I see this before?”

“How many locations are we talking about here?” Frankie chimes in, her voice drenched with fear.

“A lot,” Hadley simply replies.

I run my hand through my hair, this case is getting to be a bit larger than normal and I am in some serious need of help. I just don’t know who to trust that isn’t already with me.

“Still doesn’t explain the phone calls,” I mumble.

“It might,” Hadley replies.

I lift my head up and stare at her, “How so?”

She nervously chips away at her right thumb nail polish. “Well, in the movie, the killer hunts and murders all these women as if he’s training… to kill the original girl who hurt him. He stalks her, calls her, and watches her all the time…” Hadley takes a deep breath, closes her eyes and focuses on me. “You drove me to all the locations. You are always my bodyguard at horror conventions. Everyone knows you’re one of my best friends. If they’re training to kill… say me, who else would you choose to hurt next?”