The Watched (CSI Reilly Steel #4) (12 page)

‘Well, actually I’m kind of helping Daniel out with something here,’ she informed him quietly.

‘Helping out with something . . . you mean an investigation?’ She could picture him frowning. ‘I thought you said you needed peace and quiet.’

‘Well yes, that was the idea but . . .’ She went on to give him a quick rundown of recent events, and how she’d offered to help Daniel with the investigation.

‘Sweetie, this is not good. You’re addicted to work, a bit like myself and the bottle, I suppose,’ he added, and she smarted a little at the words. ‘Why spend so much of your time – free or otherwise – caught up in all this tragic business? I would’ve thought this family would have had enough of that by now . . .’

He was right, Reilly admitted. It
was
an addiction of sorts.

But Daniel had asked for her help and she wasn’t going to refuse. Not when there was a sadistic killer out there.

The question was, Reilly wondered, as she said goodbye to her father, how many such killers did she need to chase before it was enough?

CHAPTER 12

It was amazing how much goodwill a couple of bags of donuts and a few hot coffees could buy. Reilly had come up with the idea for her and Daniel to bring breakfast to the CSI team the following morning, and it hadn’t taken much to convince him to go along with it.

He’d
since completed his unofficial ‘official’ profile the night before and emailed a copy to the detectives investigating Holly’s death, but hadn’t yet received a reply.

She knew
he was frustrated, especially when his son was only able (or indeed willing) to fill in very few of the informational gaps.

‘
Thought you guys might not have had time to get breakfast,’ Daniel smiled as Bradley appeared in the corridor outside the lab to take the goodies.

‘
Bless you.’ He grinned as he reached for one of the cups of coffee. ‘We’re going to be pulling sixteen- to eighteen-hour days from now on. Sugar and caffeine are now officially my best friends.’

‘
So, nothing yet?’ Daniel tried to keep the question casual, but the look on Bradley’s face said he wasn’t fooled.

‘
You know I can’t share details of an ongoing investigation, Dr Forrest,’ the investigator said, his voice gentle but firm. ‘On the other hand, if the department decides to bring you in then I’d be only too happy to get your take on what little evidence we have so far.’

Daniel
nodded, his lips pressed tightly together.

Then Bradley smiled at Reilly. ‘Speaking of evidence, h
ow did you figure out that Otto Wright was innocent that time? All the news said was forensics cleared him.’

She
found herself pleasantly surprised by another reference to her previous career, another blast from the past from her San Francisco days, and she wondered if it was another attempt at flirtation on Bradley’s part. If so, she was happy to humor him.

‘
Toxicology revealed that Mrs Wright had been poisoned by a certain brand of insecticide,’ she told him. ‘When the crime scene techs brought in the bottles they’d found in the Wrights’ garage, I noticed that both bottles were still sealed and appeared to have the same amount of liquid inside. Everyone assumed that Wright had just thrown away the bottle he’d used to poison his wife. I took a closer look at the two bottles we had and noticed that the seal in both had a tiny hole, just big enough for a syringe.’

Bradley made a face. ‘Still
don’t understand how that proved his innocence.’

‘Wright had passed out when I showed him the needle I was going to use to draw his blood. He couldn’t even look at a syringe, much less use one,’ Reilly
told him. ‘That meant the killer had to have access to both a syringe and the Wrights’ garage.’

‘His
paramedic nephew,’ Bradley nodded.

‘That one was just luck,’ Reilly admitted. ‘If you want complex forensics, you should’ve been on the case I had in Dublin
my first year there . . .’

Just then, a
twenty-something young man poked his head out of the lab. ‘Bradley? Detective Reed just called, said you weren’t answering your phone. He wants to know when you’re going to get those prints done for the Sheldon case.’

‘
Tell him we’re working on it, Miguel,’ Bradley called back. ‘And that would be why I wasn’t answering my phone,’ he added with no small measure of irritation.

‘The Sheldon case
?’ Daniel repeated, and Reilly’s gaze darted toward Todd, who’d just come up behind his partner. A frustrated shake of his head answered the question. ‘You’re working another case?’ Daniel’s voice had gone dangerously hard and Reilly tensed.

Bradley instantly went on the defensive.
‘We’re working on lots of cases just now, Dr Forrest,’ he continued, his tone once again formal and professional. ‘Thank you again for breakfast.’ With that he retreated inside the lab.

Todd remained in the hallway. ‘
Some hotshot Hollywood screenwriter in town for the Tampa Film Festival hasn’t been seen for two days,’ he informed them quietly. ‘His daughter reported it yesterday and the department’s taking it seriously. There are only so many of us—’

‘
So Holly’s murderer walks free while you waste your time trying to find some coke-head who’s probably sleeping it off somewhere?’

Reilly
put her hand on Daniel’s arm, giving it a gentle squeeze. For a moment, she thought he was going to shake her off. Then the muscles relaxed beneath her fingers and he was in control again.

‘I’m just trying to help.’

‘No, you’re trying to take over.’ Todd’s face was pale, this time with anger, his entire body radiating tension. ‘I think you should go.’

‘Fine,’ Daniel snapped. He thrust a finger in Todd’s direction. ‘But if you fuck this up, you get to be the one to tell Alice Young.’

Afterward, as Daniel and Reilly
walked back to the car, he tried to explain the reasons behind his determination.

‘
For a while after Bruce died, I was worried that Todd was going to be jealous of all of the time I spent with Holly whenever we came down here to the beach house. It never happened. She used to follow him around and he loved it. About a year after it happened, he asked me if I thought I’d ever date Alice. He wanted Holly to be his little sister.’

Reilly
didn’t say anything. She couldn’t. Better than anyone, she understood the need to talk about someone lost in a vicious and cruel manner, but she also knew that there wasn’t really anything she could say. She hadn’t known Holly, had no memories to share. The only thing she could do was listen. The ride back to Clearwater was quiet, punctuated by other snippets of Holly’s life, anecdotes that Daniel needed to share.

Reilly
stared out the window, her mind filled with the images Daniel was drawing. Images of a cute little girl with blond pigtails.

‘
Every year after Bruce died, Holly would give me a card on Father’s Day that said, “To my Number Two Dad”. As the years passed without Alice dating anyone, I became the closest thing Holly had to a father. I was there for volleyball matches and school plays. I taught her to drive, sat next to her mother at graduation.’

As they travelled along Gulf To Bay Boulevard, t
he sun warmed Reilly’s face as it peeked out from behind the clouds and she closed her eyes for a moment. The little girl that appeared in her mind had blond pigtails, but it wasn’t Holly. No, this face was familiar.

Daniel looked across at her. ‘You need to be on this, Reilly.’

‘I wish I could help but—’

‘You heard what Bradley said, this case is only one of many for the department.’ Daniel’s voice took on a pleading note Reilly had never heard before. ‘I know I’ve offered you a job with my firm before, but this isn’t a job offer this time. This is a friend asking for help.’

He put his hand on her arm, his expression grave. ‘You have a knack for reading people as well as their surroundings. Most crime scene investigators don’t have that. You don’t just understand the science, Reilly; you get the whole picture. I need you to help me get the whole picture.’

CHAPTER
13

He was pleased with his next location. He’d checked it out weeks before, confirming that the boarded-up housing estate was virtually abandoned after dark.

It was risky, he knew, doing this outside at night. If he’d just been a mere killer, it would’ve made more sense as the shadows and dark would have hidden the crime.

But he was an artist. He needed people to see his work.

And to do that on film, especially a night scene, he needed good lighting. After all, what would the point be of going to such lengths to create his masterpieces if the lighting was poor? Especially when filming in black-and-white.

Once satisfied that he’d eliminated any interfering shadows, he stepped out of the line of sight and turned on the cameras. Donning his mask, he returned to his car. He’d parked nearby, trusting in the dirt he’d allowed accumulate to obscure the color. He’d also liberally applied dirt to the license plate earlier that evening. Most of the time, he parked far enough away from his locations that no possible witnesses would see it.

Tonight, that hadn’t been an option.

He opened the trunk of the car. Eyes as black as pitch glared up at him.

The young man’s skin was dark brown, his face still holding on to a bit of baby fat that made him look even younger than the twenty years his license claimed. Again, easy pickings, another desperate wannabe hoping to see his name in lights.

Well, that would be a certainty now, though possibly not in the way the kid had anticipated.

Wiry muscles indicated that this one might have put up a fight if he’d tried to use chloroform. Fortunately, he’d found a better way to get what he needed.

He picked up a bottle of water from the truck and spritzed the liquid over the bound and gagged youth, ignoring the young man’s thrashing. He then took his new toy from his jacket.

He may have been overly warm, but it was worth not having scratches from fighting victims. It also allowed him to carry things such as the electric cattle prod he’d found online.

He was unable to contain a gleeful smile as he jabbed the end into his captive, chuckling as the young man’s body twitched and jerked as electricity ran through him.

Then he pocketed the prod and grabbed the young man’s shoulder, dragging his prize from the trunk, and ignoring the sound of pain when the young man’s head hit the ground.

The soon-to-be-famous wannabe could barely walk, stumbling as he was dragged toward the cameras. He shoved the young man to the ground and grabbed the prod.

One more jolt and those black eyes glazed over.

He manipulated the limp body into a kneeling position and bent over his victim. The young man’s eyes were fluttering, but he was still awake enough to do what was needed. Ripping the tape from the young man’s mouth with one hand, he used his other to shove the weakly protesting face toward the curb.

‘Bite it,’ he hissed into the young man’s ear.

It didn’t matter if the cameras picked up his words. He’d learned enough to mask his voice. Only a true sound expert had any hope of matching those two words to his regular voice and he doubted it would ever come to that. He considered it well worth the risk.

The young man had tears rolling down his cheeks as he did as he was told. He rested his teeth gingerly against the concrete. With his hands bound behind his back, he had no way to defend himself and the man watched the realization come over the youthful face.

He recognized the scenario, understood what he was supposed to do. And more to the point, what would happen when he did.

Beautiful. It was time.

He straightened, took a step back and, before the young man could react, lifted one heavy boot and slammed it into the back of his star’s head.

A satisfying crunch. Limbs twitched as the blood pooled.

Another perfect death scene.

It was Saturday evening and Daniel had called Todd to invite him over to the beach house for dinner in the guise of wanting to discuss Holly Young’s memorial service, which Reilly guessed was more of an attempt to try and break bread, and smooth the waters after their bust-up at the station the day before.

When Todd arrived around seven, she could tell that he was trying to remain respectful to his father, but there was an edge to him that made her nervous. She could only imagine how pressurized things must be at the lab.

They dined outside on the deck beneath the lanai, and Reilly and Todd did their best to make small talk over drinks while Daniel finished preparing creole jambalaya in the kitchen.

‘So how long are you in town, Reilly?’ Todd asked, popping the cork on a bottle of Corona. She could hear the tiredness in his voice.

‘I’m not sure, to be honest – as long as your dad will put up with me, I guess.’ She sipped a glass of chilled sauvignon blanc and explained about her enforced leave from the GFU and the reason behind it.