The Rainy Day Killer (12 page)

“Cut him loose,” DiOrio ordered. “A swing and a miss.”

“God damn it,” Karen muttered.

“I know
. We all want this one real bad, but it’s not him.”

“I know it isn’t. But for a short, sweet minute, I thought we’d nailed the fucker.”

At that moment Helen Cassion walked into the room.

“I’ve called the press,” she announced. “They should be here any minute.” She looked at the
one-way glass. “Is that him? Is our statement ready?”

Karen looked at
DiOrio and, despite herself, began to laugh.

19

Friday, May 10: mid-morning

The following Friday morning, six days later, Eleanor Montgomery parked her Chevrolet Suburban in the lot of the Food Basket, a rather expensive grocery store in the Springhill neighborhood where she lived. It was a bright, fresh, sunny morning, and it was her day off.

As she walked through the sliding glass doors, she caught a glimpse of her reflection. She was wearing her Ralph Lauren fringed suede jacket over an indigo-striped t-shirt, faded blue jeans
, and suede oxford wingtip lace-ups. Slung over her shoulder was a leather tote bag that matched the shoes. Her blonde hair was tied in a neat ponytail draped over her shoulder. It was a look that pleased her, all the more so because it was very different than what people saw of her on television. She preferred not to be recognized when off duty.

She grabbed a shopping cart
, removed the tote from her shoulder, and put it in the cart’s fold-out flap. She stayed close to her bag at all times while shopping, not only because it contained her cell phone and wallet but also because she had her off-duty service weapon in it, a Glock Px4 Storm nine millimeter. She began to fill her cart with a selection of greens, bags of baby carrots, fresh cilantro and curly parsley, fresh lemons, a sack of basmati rice, a bag of freshly-made tortilla shells, and a half-dozen bagels.

She was thinking about her boyfriend, Jerry Garrett, as she shopped. A reporter for the Glendale
Mirror
who worked the entertainment beat, he’d just written a blog post covering a recent tattoo arts convention held in Baltimore. Always fascinated by the fringes of modern society, Jerry had done a very good job exploring the culture, and had worked in several intriguing character sketches of the people who inhabited that world. She’d liked the post very much, but he’d come back from the convention with a large tattoo of a spider on his forearm that she didn’t like at all. On top of that, he was pestering her to get a tattoo of her own; something small, he said, where the cameras wouldn’t see it.

It wasn’t going to happen.

She wasn’t the kind of person who was into body art. She preferred to augment her appearance in more conventional ways, with clothing, accessories, makeup, and hair style. She knew they referred to her at work as The Ice Princess, a nickname she’d picked up as a patrol officer in Granger Park for her firm refusal to notice the advances of her male colleagues. While it bothered her to be thought of as aloof and disinterested in others, she preferred it to the alternative. She kept her personal and professional relationships separate. If Jerry had worked the city beat, she probably wouldn’t have agreed to go out with him. As it was, their jobs occupied separate orbits that never intersected, which was just fine with her.

She was in the middle of an aisle when she realized she’d passed the tea without remembering she needed more. She
grabbed her tote bag and walked back to the end of the aisle, where she chose a box of her preferred green tea. She paused, running her eye along the shelf to see if there was anything else she wanted. The store was not very busy for a Friday morning. An old James Taylor song, “Fire and Rain,” played lightly on the store audio system. The lyrics began to track through her head as she slowly returned to her cart.

A man passed by the far end of the aisle. She saw a brief glimpse of a dark windbreaker, jeans,
and a camera with a large lens on a shoulder strap.

Someone moved behind her and passed her in the aisle, jo
stling her: a large-hipped African-American woman in a flower print dress, arms filled with loaves of bread, heading for the check-out.

Montgomery tossed the box of green tea into her cart, put the tote bag back in the fold-out flap, and
continued to shop.

She thought
about Lieutenant Donaghue. Although he was twenty years older, he was still an attractive man. She liked tall men, and she definitely liked men with curly hair. Of course, she preferred men her own age. What she appreciated about Donaghue, though, was his attitude. He kept his eyes where they were supposed to be, he spoke to her with respect and genuine interest in what she had to say, and he had a certain style about him that mixed professionalism and humor in a way she liked. He’d kept her in the loop on the serial killer case, he appreciated her daily reports on the information she was culling from the TIPS line calls, and he used the statements she drafted for him with very few changes.

She
decided she would ask him for a letter of reference when she applied for the upcoming detective competition this summer. Word was, the chief was finally going to do something about the acute shortage of detectives on staff. She was already studying for it.

She was
lost in thought as she reached the check-out and began unloading her cart. Fresh fish, boneless chicken breast, the sack of rice, Tetra boxes of chicken stock, bundles of fresh green lettuce.

She paid for her purchases, piled the bags into her cart, and left the store.

She pushed the cart across the parking lot toward her Suburban, parked down the row on her left. Her eyes were drawn to movement in a parked white van on her right. She saw a man sitting behind the wheel of the van. He was lowering a camera out of sight, onto his lap, and his head was turning away from Montgomery to look straight ahead through the dusty windshield of the van. As she drew even, he flipped down the sun visor, which prevented her from seeing his face. She glanced behind her and ran her eyes in a one hundred and eighty degree arc across what would correspond to the man’s field of vision. She saw nothing whatsoever that would be worth photographing.

She reached her Suburban,
thinking hard. Yes. It was the man she’d seen briefly in the store, passing the end of the aisle with the camera slung over his shoulder. She opened the hatch and began unloading her cart.

An engine chuffed to life behind her.

She began to hurry, lifting several bags at once.

A
Honda rolled behind her, heading for the parking lot exit at the front of the store.

Gears shifted behind her. She looked over
her shoulder and saw the van ease out of its parking space.

The man turned the steering wheel
with his left hand, watching the Honda, ignoring Montgomery. He rubbed the side of his face with his right hand, blocking Montgomery’s view of his features.

She could tell that h
e was white, neither large nor small, and perhaps in his early thirties. His hair was short and dark. His hairline was slightly high and a little rounded, with a part on the left side. Exactly the way it looked in Esther Banks’s composite sketch, which she’d distributed to hundreds of people already.

It was him.
It had to be.

The Rainy Day Killer.

All she could see now was the rear end of the van as it followed the Honda. The license plate was coated with dust, but she was able to decipher the shapes of the numbers and letters. She committed them to memory.

She threw the rest of her groceries into the Suburban, slammed the hatch, and shoved the cart away. It bounced against the bumper of the pickup truck parked next to her and rolled away, down the lot.

“Hey!” yelled a man across the lot who was loading cases of beer into the trunk of his car.

“Sorry!” she called out, hurrying up to the door of the Subu
rban. As she fumbled in her tote bag for her keys, she looked around and saw the van turn right, at the front of the store, still following the Honda out of the parking lot. Her eyesight was good enough to see the man’s face move briefly in her direction, but it was too far away to get a good look at his features.

Keys in hand, she got behind the wheel and gunned the e
ngine to life. She backed out of her space, cutting off another vehicle trying to leave the parking lot. A horn sounded. She spun the wheel, waved apologetically in the rear view mirror, and hit the gas. She whipped around the corner, passed the front of the store in a blur, exited the parking lot and turned right, onto the side street. Ahead of her, at the intersection, the van was making a right-hand turn from a stop sign into the heavy traffic on MacArthur Avenue. She hurried up to the intersection.

She looked
left at a steady, unbroken stream of traffic with no openings. A block away the traffic light was green. She’d have to wait for it to turn red, apparently, before she’d get an opening.

She grabbed her cell phone from her tote bag, plugged it into the hands-free system, and speed-dialed a number.

“Donaghue.”

“Lieutenant, it’s Eleanor Montgomery.”

The light down the street turned red. She eased forward as two cars approached, anticipating the hole in traffic behind them.

“Hi, what can I do for you?”

She turned the wheel and stepped on the accelerator, racing out into traffic. “Lieutenant, I think I’ve got a visual on our suspect in the Olsen case.”

“Are you sure?”

“Pretty sure.” She jammed on the brakes. Traffic was stopped ahead of her, waiting for another red light. The van was second from the right, in the inside lane. “I’ve just left the Food Basket on MacArthur Avenue in Springhill. We’re stopped at a light at the corner of, ah, Wilson Boulevard. It’s a white delivery van, I think a Dodge Grand Caravan, no markings, dirty, three to five years old, Maryland tag eight bravo lima, alpha zero five. We’re heading east on MacArthur. The light just turned green. He’s moving straight ahead.”

“I’m putting you on hold.” The line went quiet as Montgo
mery shifted her foot from the brake to the accelerator and began to move forward to the intersection. The van was out of sight ahead of her. She checked her mirrors and over her shoulder, saw a gap on her left, and moved into it. She floored the gas pedal, trying to make up the distance between her Suburban and the vanished van.

She tensed as Hank’s voice came back over the radio spea
kers. “Eleanor, I’ve called it in. The district is initiating pursuit, so stand down. You should hear the sirens in a moment. Stand down, you’re not authorized to pursue.”

“But he’s right here,” Montgomery said, craning toward the windshield, trying to spot the van. “He’s right ahead of me. I
’ll stay on him until they get here.”

“Do you still have a visual?”

“Not at the moment. The traffic’s heavy and I’m trying to get closer.” She grunted, shifting lanes, accelerating around a delivery truck and shifting back into the left lane. She’d gained three car-lengths. She saw a flash of white as a vehicle changed lanes about six car-lengths ahead of her. “Wait, I think I see him.”

“Eleanor, stand down. Right now.”

A white vehicle turned right, onto Blair Street. She reached the corner, turned, and saw the vehicle moving away from her. It was a white passenger car. It turned into a driveway halfway down the block. She put her foot on the brake, slowed down, pulled over to the curb, and shifted into Park.

Behind her, on MacArthur, she heard a sudden commotion of sirens, a blatting klaxon, and roaring car engines. Red and
blue lights flashed in her rear view mirror.

“I’ve pulled over
,” she said. “I’m on Blair, just off MacArthur. I lost him somewhere back there on MacArthur.”

“Come in
, Eleanor, and we’ll do a debrief. In the commander’s board room.”

Montgomery closed her eyes for a moment, gripping the steering wheel tightly with both hands. Her heart was racing and her breath was short. She opened her mouth and drew in air, held it for a moment, then released it slowly. She closed her mouth and inhaled deeply through her nostrils, held it, released it slowly.

“Eleanor? Are you all right?”

She opened her eyes and looked out the window.

A woman walked past along the sidewalk, holding a little girl by the hand. The little girl stared at Montgomery through the window, mouth open, eyes wide.

“Yes, Lieutenant,” she said. “I’m fine.”

20

Friday, May 10: noon

Commander Ann Martinez got up from her desk and strolled out of her eighth-floor corner office, eating a spoonful of yogurt from the disposable plastic cup in her hand. Her secretary and administrative assistant didn’t bother looking up from their cluttered desks. The secretary was on the telephone with the deputy chief’s secretary, comparing schedules to book a meeting later that afternoon. The administrative assistant was making corrections to correspondence that Martinez would take to the meeting for Barkley’s signature. They didn’t look up, but they were aware of her movement through the outer office and knew where she was going.

She
paused in the corridor. The workstations in this corner of the floor were taken up by civilian administrative staff assigned to Detective Services Bureau, and most of the people had already disappeared for lunch. She liked this time of day because it was a little quieter. There was a lull in the bureaucratic chaos, a pause for breath that gave her a few precious minutes for the police work she still loved. She dabbed her lips with the napkin trapped between her little finger and ring finger and walked into the commander’s board room, where Cassion and Hank waited in uncomfortable silence.

Using her foot to move out the chair at the head of the board room table, Martinez sat down and dipped her spoon into the yogurt, looking at Cassion. “I understand there’s been some progress.”

“That’s correct.” Cassion sat up straighter. “There’s been a sighting of the UNSUB. He was observed earlier this morning at a location in Springhill, and I’ve learned that the vehicle he was driving, a 2011 Dodge Grand Caravan, is a rental vehicle registered to a leasing company located at 879 Cooper Street. I’ve directed a forensics team to that location, with orders to obtain the original rental documents, video surveillance recordings, fingerprints, and any other physical evidence I can get from there. Stainer’s questioning staff as we speak, in case they remember him.”

“Cooper Street,” Martinez said, dropping her napkin on the table. “That’s only
a few blocks from here.”

Cassion hesitated. “I
guess it is.”

Martinez glanced at Hank. “Cheeky bastard.”

Hank said nothing, his expression neutral.

“This
will be the first involvement in the case by the FBI evidence recovery team,” Martinez said.

Cassion look
ed confused.

“You said you directed a forensics team to that location, Ca
ptain,” Martinez prompted.

“Yeah, I called Byrne and ordered him out. Are we supposed to call the FBI, too?”

“Criminalistics will,” Martinez said, “as you should remember. They’ll expect to receive the Bureau’s lab reports within twenty-four hours. I want to know if there are any hitches from Homicide’s perspective.”

Cassion shrugged. “Whatever. Sounds like a pain in the ass to me.”

“Hopefully it’ll prevent a few pains in the ass,” Martinez said. “Continue with your update.”

“The UNSUB was sighted by Patrol Officer Montgomery. She was off duty at the time and unfortunately let him get away.
God knows why she didn’t call nine-one-one instead of Donaghue. I guess it’s his charming smile. I’ve ordered her to sit with a sketch artist to do a composite likeness. We’ll see how it compares to the sketch from the witness last week. Hopefully her memory’s a little better than her understanding of procedure.”

Vertical lines appeared between Martinez’s dark eyebrows. “We don’t use a sketch artist in the GPD,
Helen. She’ll have to sit with a technician trained in the software.”

“That’s what I meant,” Cassion said. “The district’s conduc
ting a sweep for the van, and as soon as it’s located, I’ll personally supervise a tactical intervention on site. I don’t want a repeat of the fiasco at the cannery, which went down before I came on board, or the screw-up downtown last weekend where people reacted without thinking, arresting the wrong guy. We’re finally making some real progress, and I intend to nail this sonofabitch with by-the-book, solid police work this time.”

Martinez thoughtfully ate another spoonful of yogurt, kee
ping her eyes on Cassion. “I signed off on the tactical intervention at the cannery, Helen,” she said finally, “as you’re well aware. We have to act on every possible lead to find where this guy holds his victims, and if we’re wrong nine times in a row I don’t care, as long as we’re right the tenth time. Understand what I’m saying? That’s how investigations proceed, one step at a time, one lead at a time. And as for Mr. Kirk, the district responded to a complaint from a citizen who thought she was in danger. That’s what police officers do, Helen. It’s my understanding Mr. Kirk has no interest in filing a complaint, and even if he did, it wouldn’t amount to anything. I’m not worried about it, so you shouldn’t be.”

“If you say so. I’ve also spoken to ASA DiOrio, and we’ve go
tten a warrant for the video recordings at the grocery store. Horvath’s interviewing staff there now, and we’re hoping to get some live footage of this bastard, since Montgomery reported seeing him inside the store while she was shopping. Personally, I think the lieutenant and his Bureau headshrinker give this guy far too much credit. It was stupid to show himself to a cop like that. I think he wants to be caught, and it’s just a matter of being ready to jump on his next screw-up and nail him.”

“I see.” Martinez glanced at her watch. “I’m not su
re that I share your assessment, though. You’ll send copies of everything we get to Ed Griffin?”

“I hadn’t planned to.”

“It’s important to keep SSA Griffin in the loop. We need his analysis of the offender’s behavior each step of the way.”

Cassion shrugged. “I’ve been in the Bureau, Commander. I’ve seen it from the inside, and this behavioral analysis stuff is just a lot of smoke and mirrors. They’re not real psychologists, you know. They’re just
agents who read about this stuff and make elaborate guesses with all kinds of jargon thrown in for effect. It doesn’t fool me, or a lot of other people I’ve talked to about it.”

“Your opinion’s noted and appreciated. I still want Griffin kept in the loop.” Martinez stood up, scraping the inside of the plastic cup for the last bit of yogurt, then she tossed the cup and plastic spoon into a blue recycling bin against the wall next to the open board room door. “Is there anything else you want to tell me?”

“Not at this time,” Cassion said, getting to her feet.

Martinez watched her
cross her arms, fists clenched into her armpits in a classic defensive posture. She saw the tight lips and the narrowed eyes that flicked to Hank and back to her, and she didn’t need to be telepathic to know what Cassion was thinking. Six days ago, Martinez had chastised her for contacting the media directly when Thomas Kirk was arrested, rather than leaving that to Hank, as per the chief’s explicit wishes. Today she’d screwed up twice in a relatively short meeting, forgetting the FBI was now handling crime scene processing on the case and not knowing that the GPD used software to generate composite sketches rather than a forensic artist. Then she’d butted heads with her on keeping Griffin in the loop and taken a swipe at her for authorizing the tactical intervention at the cannery which, while non-resultant, had been a no-brainer. On a roll, she’d also sniped at Hank while criticizing Montgomery’s failure to call 911 when she first spotted the Rainy Day Killer.

The chip on Cassion’s shoulder was large and obvious, and it had as much to do with her inexperience and lack of attention to detail as it did
with her jealousy that Hank and Martinez worked well together. She was making mistakes, and they were not being swept under the carpet.

Martinez looked at Hank, knowing he’d been
told to keep his mouth shut and let Cassion handle the briefing. He looked back at her, eyes patient. He was honoring her request to work with Cassion. She appreciated it.

“
Keep me informed,” she said, heading out the door.