Strip Search (13 page)

“Yes,” Granger replied, “
he
did.” He was still smirking.

“That’s just…bizarre.”

“Yeah. And stupid. Which makes me think we’ll be able to catch him. Without the help of the vaunted behaviorist.”

I gave him a look.

“Which is just as well,” he continued. “At the rate you’re going, the man will die of old age before you give us a profile.”

I turned my eyes back to the printed page, fighting an aching combination of panic and rage. “He was spotted by a security guard?”

“Right. He worked the parking lot, made sure everyone paid their fees and kept an eye on the cars. Tough old bird, too. He’s pushing seventy and he took a hard blow to the head. But he wasn’t down long. He crawled back to his guardhouse, called an ambulance, then called the police. Gave his statement just as soon as the docs would allow it.”

“Did he get a look at the guy?”

“Only from a distance, before he ducked behind a row of cars. Said he was short, thick, but not overweight. Solid.”

“Strong,” I murmured.

“Yeah. Has dark hair, was wearing blue jeans with a rip in one knee. That was all he got. Well, plus confirming that it was, in fact, a guy,” Granger added, rubbing salt in my gaping wound one more time.

“But why?” I said, changing the subject. “Why dump the body in a parking lot on the northeast side of the city? That must be, what, ten miles from where he left the last one?”

“Twelve.”

“And why do it in the middle of the day, when he was bound to be spotted?”

“Maybe he wants to be caught. Deep down. He did go to the trouble of leaving us a clue, after all. That crazy equation.”

I shook my head. “That was a tease, not a clue. Meant to show how superior he was to us, that we would never be able to catch him. There must be some other explanation.”

“Well, I don’t know what it is. And apparently you don’t, either. But I do know this.” He leaned in close. “If you don’t give us something soon, not even O’Bannon—or his son—will be able to keep you on this case.”

I rose out of my chair. “You stupid, ignorant son of a—”

“I’m your superior officer, Pulaski.”

“I don’t care if you’re Mother-fucking-Teresa.”

“I’ll put you on report,” he said, voice rising.

“You try it,” I said, matching him decibel-for-decibel, “and I’ll put my fist up your—”

“What the hell is going on here?”

It was Chief O’Bannon, standing right behind Granger.

“Do either of you alleged officers understand that this is a police station? We’re supposed to suppress civil disturbances, not create them.”

We both kept our mouths closed.

“My officers should set an example.”

Granger turned to face O’Bannon, stiff as a board. “Sir, I formally request that former Lieutenant Pulaski be removed from the case. Her services are not needed.”

O’Bannon leaned forward against his cane. “Denied.”

“Sir, speaking as head of the homicide department, now that we have an eyewitness report, I believe those funds could be better spent on manpower—”

“Speaking as the chief of police, your request is denied.”

“But—”

“Denied!”

Jeez Louise—he was getting into with it with Granger worse than I had. I decided to try to salvage my rep by playing the peacemaker. “Hey, everybody. Let’s calm down here.”

Granger turned a fiery eye in my direction. “Don’t tell me what to do, Pulaski!”

O’Bannon was on his heels. “Keep your flap shut, Granger!”

“Whoa, whoa,” I said, holding up my hands. “What are we gonna do here? Solve a murder? Or have an Alpha Male Smackdown?”

O’Bannon blew air through his teeth. “Granger,” he said quietly, “I need to speak to Susan. Privately.”

Granger pivoted and walked away with a supremely irritating swagger. Of course, he was aware that by this time, half the office was watching us. He wanted it to appear to the casual observer that, by some contortion of reality, he had come out on top.

O’Bannon put his hands on my desk and leaned forward, obviously trying to calm himself. “Got something for you.”

And what could that be? More bad news, most likely.

He reached under his coat and, to my enormous surprise, pulled out a weapon. The gun and shoulder holster landed on my desk with a thud.

I didn’t know what to say. “Is there…perhaps…a badge coming with this?”

“You’re not being reinstated, Susan.”

“And why not?”

“Because you’re not ready.”

“Sir, I’ve been clean and sober—”

“I know. I can tell. Plus, I get reports from your doctor. But a few months on the wagon doesn’t mean you’re ready for full-time duty. Ready to be someone’s partner. Ready to have someone’s life depend on your performance.”

“Then…” I gestured vaguely toward the gun between us. “…why this?”

“Because it’s damn clear that this killer I’ve asked you to catch is dangerous. I don’t want you hurt.” He picked up his cane and jabbed it down on the linoleum for emphasis. “Don’t make me regret it.”

“I won’t,” I said quietly, but he was already walking away, one careful step at a time, acting as if he was just as strong as ever, as if nothing was wrong or ever had been.

Just like me.

I DON’T KNOW why I didn’t think to call Colin before. Probably because he’d been a college friend of David’s, and all the experts kept telling me I had to put my memories of David behind me, to compartmentalize them, so I could move on. And I tried to do what they said. But this mysterious equation business was so more up his alley than mine. He’d helped me before, on the Edgar case, when I needed a code breaker—until I discovered Darcy, who could decode more in ten minutes than Colin—or to be fair, any normal person—could do in ten years.

Colin is a self-styled cruciverbalist, or to put it in English—he makes puzzles. For a living. That’s his job, if you can imagine. He works out of his home and creates brain teasers for
The New York Times
and
Games
magazine and similar publications favored by people with too many brains and too little to do with them. He wasn’t rich but he made enough to get by and make his house payments and not have to wear a tie and go to an office and, all in all, especially when I observed Granger glaring at me, it seemed like a pretty good gig, even if I do think people who work mind-numbing puzzles for entertainment are all a little whacked in the head.

“Susan!” he said when he opened the door and ushered me in. “Great to hear from you!”

“You too, Colin.” He’d always been the nicest of David’s college buddies. Even if he was a little whacked in the head. “Everything going well?”

“Can’t complain.” I cleared a place on the sofa and sat. The room was a mess and, for that matter, so was Colin. I thought, not for the first time, how badly this man needed a wife. “And you?”

“Fine and dandy.” Except for the perpetually shaking hands, the cold sweat on the brow…“You got a girlfriend yet?”

“No. For some reason, chicks just don’t dig puzzlemasters.” I thought it probably had more to do with the fact that he rarely dressed, groomed, or left his house, but I kept my opinion to myself. “Why don’t you ever send a friend my way?”

“Hey, I offered to set you up with Lisa, my oldest friend in the world.”

“Yeah. And that was tempting. I loved that Porsche she drove.” He sighed. “But I could never get serious with a woman who hasn’t mastered cryptic crosswords.”

What
ever.
“Look, Colin, I’m calling because
I’ve
got a puzzle. In a case.”

“Think I hadn’t figured that out already? Pitch it to me.”

“It’s weird.”

“That’s all right. I can handle anything.”

So I gave him the formula.

“Hold on, Susan. You didn’t tell me this was going to involve math.”

“Is that a problem?”

“I’m a word boy. Left brain. Math freaks are a whole different breed. And this doesn’t look like a real puzzle anyway. How can you possibly solve an equation if you don’t have any of the numbers?”

Which was exactly what Granger’s experts were saying. “I’m sorry. I just hoped you might be able to help.”

“Sorry, I’m not your man.” He paused. “But I know who might be. The distinguished Dr. Goldstein. At UNLV.”

“He some kind of math expert?”

“Susan. Shame on you for your sexist assumptions. It’s a she. And she’s an expert in weird math.”

Which would explain why Colin knows her. “What’s weird math?”

“Oh my God, you have no idea. Mathematicians are so twisted. You wouldn’t believe some of the stuff they get into.”

Like maybe melting people’s faces? “Sounds like someone I should talk to. Do you have her number?”

“Sure. Better yet, I’ll call her. They keep her pretty busy out there and her rep is huge, so she may not take every call she gets. But we were both on the U.S. team in the International Puzzle Olympics two years ago. She’ll talk to me.”

“That would be great, Colin. Ask if she’ll see me as soon as possible. Tell her it’s very important.”

“Will do. And Susan?”

“Yeah?”

“You think if maybe I sent you a cryptic crossword, you could pass it along to Lisa? I know she’s in L.A. now, but—you never know. I mean, that is a really hot car.”

“My pleasure, Colin.”

This hardly solved any of my problems, but it at least gave me hope. If a specialist in arcane mathematics could shed light on these bizarre murders, so be it.

Seconds after I returned to the office, Amelia sidled up to my desk. “Have you seen my report?” she asked.

“On the sneaker? Converse, size seven-and-a-half.”

“No.”

“The forensic report? Sounds like the hair and fiber boys got next to nothing.”

“No. On the impression I made of the grill.” She rolled her eyes in the general direction of Granger’s office. “Figured as much.” She surreptitiously slid a three-page stapled report onto my desk.

“Learn anything?”

“Not much. There were some swirls in the mix—whoever wrote the equation did it with his finger. But grease isn’t a particularly good surface for lifting prints. We’ve tried several procedures on the grill and my cast and the head and the corpse. But all we’ve come up with are a few frustratingly incomplete partials. Not a solid print in the bunch.”

“Any partial enough to work with?”

“We’ve created a composite, based on several of them. It’s speculative. But it’s enough to run through FINDER.” That was the FBI’s automatic fingerprint reader and processor. If the print was in their database or that of several affiliated agencies and nations, they’d be able to provide an ID.

“And?”

“Nothing.”

“So our man has never been printed.”

“I can’t say that with absolutely certainty. We’re working with pretty low grade material here. But I can tell you who you can eliminate.”

“Rage on, girl.”

“The victim. And everyone else who worked at that restaurant or had access to that grill.”

“So the killer left the equation,” I murmured. Just as I thought.

“Looks that way. But I’m a scientist, you know. I don’t make theories. I just report the facts.”

“And look damn good doing it. Thanks, Amelia.”

“Anytime.” She laid her hand on my shoulder. “I mean it. And that goes for everyone else in the basement.” Meaning the forensic department. “We’re all behind you.”

Talk about a sweetie. If she only had some clout around here, my hands might even stop shaking. “Thanks, Amelia. That means a lot.”

But not enough to keep my hands from shaking. Not nearly enough.

I CHECKED WITH GRANGER and confirmed that the coroner’s office was still staying tight-lipped. No leaks. No confirmation that the head and the corpse were a match. Which was pretty damn frustrating, because if I was going to come up with a profile, I really needed to know how many dead people we had on our hands. Granger told me he’d tried to pry something out of Patterson, our chief coroner, but without success. Told me not to waste my time trying.

But I have some resources that were not at his disposal. And the greatest of these is girl power.

I hovered in the corridors of the coroner’s office, trying to make it look as if I were waiting for someone or something, until I was certain she was alone. When she was, I slipped into her office and closed the door behind me.

Jodie Nida, one of the coroner’s techs, was seated behind her desk. She was initially startled when she saw me standing there and checked the window in the door to see if anyone had observed my entrance.

Coast was clear.

“I know we don’t have much time,” I said, leaning over her desk. “So spill.”

She adjusted her cat’s-eye glasses and gave me a wry grin. “I assume you’re talking about the Burger Bliss corpse and Danielle Dunn. And all their pieces.”

“Dead on. Do we have a match?”

“Well, Patterson still wants to run about a day and a half of additional tests but…” She grinned. “It’s a match.”

“You’re sure?”

“Positive.”

“Any info on the weapon used on Danielle Dunn?”

“Again, more tests need to be performed. False positives could be created by—”

“Cut to the chase. What did he use?”

She inhaled deeply. “Well, the slash follows a diagonal arc which, when matched with the head, forms a slight wedge shape. Like a tiny triangle. Also, we found particles of rust on the head.”

“Which means…”

“A wedge-shaped weapon made of iron. I’d bet on an axe. A long-handled axe, something that would give you the power you’d need to chop off a head in one stroke.”

“And you would find such a weapon…?”

“In any hardware store in town. In every other garage in town.”

I nodded. “Appreciate the help. You know, if you’d get a phone, this would be a lot easier.”

She sighed. “Coroner techs don’t get phones. Only Patterson has a phone.” She lowered her voice. “Control freak.”

“My condolences,” I said as I made my way to the door.

“Don’t bother,” Jodie replied, waving a hand in the air. “At least I don’t have to take orders from Granger.”

It was all I could do to keep from laughing as I ducked out of her office and slipped away, sight unseen.