A Clean Kill

forty

April hung up with Eloise and went downstairs to the Crime Scene unit. She found Woody talking to Chad, who looked as if he had all the time in -the world. Although she and Igor went way back, Chad and Mark were pretty new to the unit and she'd never worked with them before. Chad Westerman was a skinny guy with a round shaved head and pale blue eyes—a real white ghost. Mark wasn't around. At the task force headquarters in the Seventeenth Precinct there was an electric atmosphere of urgency. Here, it didn't look as if much was happening.

The lab was where the engineers of crime brought the hundreds of tagged items taken from every crime scene to be analyzed. Here was the nuts-and-bolts world of forensic science. The CSU worked with the specialists and were the ones who stayed on task day and night, making models—of rooms, buildings, sometimes whole areas. They prepared the charts, graphs, and computerized reen-actments of homicides, and tested the tools of death for a match. In a multiple-stabbing case like that of Maddy Wilson, they would find or create something that closely resembled human tissue and bone and use a variety of sharp instruments on it to try to find patterns consistent with Maddy's wounds. Ingenuity was the name of the game. The two detectives idly watched her hurry toward them through the maze of desks.

"What's going on?" she asked.

"I filled him in on Perkins," Woody said.

Chad looked pensive. "Maybe this is some kind of mission killer," he said.

That was someone who had a sick purpose for his crimes, who wanted to punish a particular type of person like nurses, prostitutes—or young mothers. Nobody had used the term before, and April swallowed the feeling of panic that had been building in her all morning. Maddy's murder had looked like a single tragic, but isolated, event. Alison's murder was unexpected and raised the serial-killer specter. The FBI would come on the scene and the case would mushroom in the press. But beyond that, the killing itself was a frightening escalation that didn't fit with any serial killer's profile she'd ever seen. At the onset, the need to kill and kill again usually developed over time. The perpetrator had to become confident that he was smarter than everyone else and could get away with murder before he tried attacking again. It was a head game as well as a craving. Usually, this kind of killer would relish a violent act in his fantasies for months, or even years, before striking again. It took a lot of energy to plan and carry out a face-to-face killing.

Even in those violent crimes that occurred in remote places where a killer took advantage of a passerby's vulnerable moment, it was not so easy to design a murder and carry it off. Every step was stressful and required preparation. New York City was a busy place. Even in quiet neighborhoods, people were on the- streets, walking their dogs and going to work, and somebody always knew something. April imagined an arrogant individual walking down the street, getting into those two town houses in the early morning hours, surprising Maddy and Alison, and killing them. That person had been comfortable enough to spend time there afterward, arranging the bodies and washing them up. In Alison's case the killer had touched her clothes, tidied her bedroom and possibly taken her rings. It was ghoulish and upsetting, and had ritual elements about it. Then the killer had walked out of that house—or stayed to "discover" the bodies. He (or she) would know that an army of experts would be in there, searching for traces he'd left behind. Every step had to be intensely stressful.

It was not like shooting a gun from across the street. It would be more like running the Kentucky Derby, performing in the Super Bowl—hot and furious and deeply personal. What kind of person could summon that kind of energy, that kind of killing passion, twice in two days? April shook her head over their list of suspects. The trainer, who milked the victims for cash and knew their habits, hadn't left his apartment since last night when he got home from his police interview. He had to be ruled out for both murders. The disgruntled nannies who had just been fired—each acting alone or in concert with two husbands fed up with trophy wives—seemed unlikely murderers. But a mission killer? She'd been over it and over it, and prayed

that it wasn't someone off the police radar screen, hiding in the shadows, and waiting until tomorrow to kill again.

"I went upstairs. Ducci doesn't have anything. Rick doesn't have anything. What's holding things up?" April didn't have all year.

"We're going good on it. We're still processing." Chad glanced quickly at Woody.

• "When are you getting started? I need a time frame here."

"We are started," he replied coolly. "What do you need?"

"Cooperation. We're looking at the two homicides as connected. There are similarities in the crime scenes. You have to get with Igor."

"No problem."

"How far did you go in the Wilson house?"

"We did the usual."

"What about blood? Did you find any?"

Chad shrugged. "Not much. There were traces in the grout. Marble tiles, you know, are set much closer together than porcelain, but there were traces in the grout in the walls and floor."

"What about the drain?"

"She must have washed her hair in that shower. There was a lot of hair in the drain."

"Blood?"

He nodded. "In the hair."

"Anything else?"

"What are you looking for?"

"I'm not sure. Fibers from the killer's clothes. Hair from the head of the killer, or his body if he was naked in there with her."

"Was she sexually assaulted?" Woody asked.

"Damn." April had forgotten to ask the ME.

"Is that a yes?"

"We don't have a prelim yet," April said. "I don't know."

"So, what's the rush?" Chad scratched the side of his face. He had his own time frame.

April ignored the question. "What about mops, towels, cleaning things?" she asked.

"There was a bucket in the garage. It's filled with cleaning utensils, including a mop that had recently been used."

"Blood?"

"We haven't tested anything yet, but it did have a piece of plastic stuck to it."

April frowned. "What kind of plastic?"

"I'm guessing the kind they use for fold-up travel raincoats, or to cover outdoor furniture. It looks dried out, old. We'll check it out. I'd guess raincoat, though," he added, as if he were a raincoat connoisseur.

"Interesting," April murmured. "What about the knives?"

"We haven't started on that. As I said, we're still processing."

"Okay, thanks. We'll be in touch. Woody, meet me at the car in five minutes."

Deep in thought, April went upstairs to see Duke. He didn't turn around when her heels announced her presence. He was busy with his equipment.

"How are you doing?" she asked.

He pulled away from the hair he was studying and checked his watch for time. "I told you an hour. It hasn't been an hour yet," he complained.

"I can't wait. I have suspects to talk to," she said.

He softened. "Okay, pretty one, anything for you," he said with an indulgent smile.

"Here's what I can tell you now. The hair probably comes from a female. It's been dyed a number of times, probably every month, six weeks. You can see the stripes of color. As you know, hair grows at the rate of about a quarter inch a month and no matter how carefully the roots are done, there's always a color change. Type of hair, coarse, and I'd say it's probably dyed to cover gray. I can't tell you what brand of hair dye was used yet, but I'll work on it. Happily, there's a follicle on this one— enough to do DNA down the road, if you need it. But the provenance on this is not good since you lifted it from the scene." He shook his head.

"I told you CSU had another." April ignored the rebuke and considered the information. If the hair came from a gray-haired female, she had to be over thirty. It might be the cleaning lady or a guest from some time ago. If that was the case, it wouldn't help them.

"Anything else?" he asked.

"Yes, what color is it?"

He took out his color spectrum and showed her. While the single hair in the envelope had appeared to be light, like a blond or strawberry blond, or even ginger, the Duke made the head at unmistakably dark red.

"Are you sure?" she asked, disappointed.

"Yes, I'm sure. Are you okay?"

"Of course. Thanks, you've been a big help," she told him even though she hadn't learned a thing.

"You're welcome, and don't wait so long to come back next time," he said as she left in a hurry.

When April met Woody at the car a few minutes later, she was ready to search his photos for a redheaded woman, but she was not at all hopeful about finding one.