Cold Truth

9

Rick Cisco wasn’t certain what he expected to find when he arrived at the Bowers Inlet Police Department, but it wasn’t the welcome he’d been given. Fresh coffee, fresh Danish, and a warm handshake from Chief Denver had made him feel as if he’d stepped into the Twilight Zone. He wondered if there was something else going on in Bowers Inlet that he hadn’t been told about. Like Pod People taking over the identities of the locals. He couldn’t recall ever having been greeted as graciously by a local agency. Usually his entry into a case came by way of some pushing and shoving and was accompanied by grumbles and dirty looks. No one ever wanted the FBI involved in their cases.

He sat in the chair offered to him by the chief, and waited for the other shoe to drop.

A few minutes later, there was a knock on the door, and he turned to see a tall slender woman with chin-length cinnamon-colored hair and uneasy cops’ eyes. She wore jeans and a white shirt with the sleeves rolled up, and he suspected she might be the other shoe.

Chief Denver made the introductions. “Detective Cassandra Burke, meet Special Agent Eric Cisco. Agent Cisco will be working with you on the recent homicides.”

“Great.” She flashed a smile.

“It’s Rick,” he told her, wondering if the smile was for his benefit or the chief’s. He figured he’d find out soon enough.

“Cass,” she replied, the smile still in place. “Hopefully, two heads will prove to be better than one.”

“Chief Denver was just telling me that you’ve recovered very little evidence.”

She nodded, all business now, the smile history. “This is one wily little bastard. He knows what he’s doing, no question about that. We figure he watches his victims for a few days before he strikes; he always seems to know when his target will be most vulnerable. He seems to be choosing women who have a pattern of being out at night. He knows exactly where they will be, and at what time.”

“He took one woman right out of her own driveway,” Denver interjected. “She did shift work at a fast-food place and apparently was picked up just as she arrived home. A co-worker dropped her off in front of her house, but she never made it inside.”

“You checked out the co-worker?”

“An eighteen-year-old girl who was home within ten minutes of dropping off the victim,” Cass said.

“No one heard anything, saw anything?” Rick asked.

“No one’s come forward if they have,” Cass told him, “and as frightened as everyone is right now, I have to think if anyone had information, we’d know about it.”

Rick turned to the chief. “I’m assuming you have extra men on the street at night.”

“I have all my cars on the street, twenty-four/seven. But I only have so many officers, Agent Cisco,” Denver explained. “We’re all working around the clock on this case, but he just hasn’t given us much to work with.”

“Would you like to go over the files?” Cass asked.

“Yes, thanks. That’s a good place to start.”

“Detective, you’ll show Agent Cisco where he can hang his hat while he’s here?” Chief Denver pushed back his chair and stood.

“Sure.” Cass stood as well. “If we’re done here, we can start right now.”

“Great.” Rick took the hand the chief extended. “Thank you. I don’t always get this pleasant a reception.”

“Women are dying in my town, Agent Cisco. I want it stopped. I’ll take whatever help I can get, wherever I can get it. I want this bastard brought in.”

“I’ll do my best.” Rick nodded and followed Cass from the room.

She led him down the hall and into a small room that was crowded with two old wooden desks, one of which looked naked except for the phone, a yellow legal pad, and a lone pen. She paused next to the other desk, which was piled high with files and papers.

“You’ll need a chair,” she murmured, mostly to herself, then went back out the door.

Moments later she returned, rolling an old leather number on shaky wheels.

“Sorry,” she told him, “but this was all I could find. If it wobbles too much, we can trade. It won’t bother me.”

“This will be fine.” He rolled the chair behind the desk and sat in it.

“Where would you like to start?”

“With the first victim.”

“Fine.” Cass shuffled through several files. “Linda Roman was our first vic. Here are the basics.”

She handed him a copy of the report she herself had filed. He skimmed it quickly.

“Early thirties… married… one child. No known enemies, no one stalking her…” He went on to the second page. “Found near a creek, apparently within hours of having been killed…”

“Here are the photos from the scene.”

Rick laid the report to one side of the desk and picked up the top photo.

“She looks as if she’s been posed,” he noted. “This isn’t a natural position, arms over the head just so. Legs bent at that angle.”

Cass handed him another stack of pictures.

“Victim number two. Lisa Montour.”

He studied it for a moment, then said, “Same age, same hair. Same pose.”

He looked up at her.

“Number three?”

“Toni DeMarco.” She slid one packet of crime-scene photos across the desk, then a second. “And this is Yvonne Hunt, number four.”

“So close they could be superimposed on one another,” he murmured. “He’s reliving something. Re-creating a scene. The women even look alike. Same age, same body type. And all that dark hair. Notice how in each picture the hair is sort of fanned out…”

“We noticed, Agent Cisco.” There was a touch of starch in her voice now, as if offended. He wondered if she’d been waiting to feel offended.

Well, he’d been waiting for that, that little bit of resentment, to come out eventually. He was going to nip it in the bud right now.

“I’m sure you did. And it’s Rick. If we’re going to be working together, let’s keep it casual, okay?”

“Sure,” she said dryly.

“Look, let’s get something straight. I’m not here to take your case away from you, or to try to make you look bad, or to steal your thunder. I was assigned to come up here and lend a hand. And that’s what I intend to do.”

“You don’t consider yourself the lead, now that you’re here? You don’t feel the need to be in charge?”

“No. Until I’m told otherwise, I’m considering us equal in this. Partners. But since you’ve been on this case since day one, I’m ready to follow your lead. Agreed?”

She studied him with brown eyes that were almost too big for her face.

“Agreed. Okay. I’ll take you at your word.” She sat in her chair, a wry smile tugging at one corner of her mouth. “Not that it makes any difference.”

“It makes a difference, Cass. I know that the Bureau has the reputation of sometimes coming in and strong-arming the locals. I don’t work that way. My unit doesn’t work that way. I’ll help as much as I can, I’ll do whatever I can to work with you. We have resources that you don’t have and we will use as many or all of them, whatever we need to get the job done. But I won’t take over your case, and I won’t try to screw you over to take the glory when we get this guy.” Rick sat back and studied her face. “And we will get him, you and I.”

“I hope you’re right.” She returned his stare for a long moment, then said, “Well, now that we’ve gotten all the obligatory territorial bullshit out of the way, let’s get back to work.”

“Getting back to our victims, then. Just give me a minute or two to read through the report from the medical examiner…” He scanned the information.

He turned the pages so quickly, she wondered if he actually read any of it.

“The autopsy reports reveal all the classic signs of asphyxiation. Petechia at the eyes, broken hyoid bone in the throat… and of course the telltale bruising around the neck.” He laid the photos of the four victims side by side across the middle of the desk. “Any other injuries?”

“Lisa Montour had a broken index finger on her right hand. Other than vaginal bruising, signs of the rape, no other injuries.” She rested her elbows on her desk. “And no, no semen, he must have used a condom each time. No bite marks, no saliva, no nothing. We’re trying to see if prints can be lifted off the victims’ skin, but we’re still waiting on that.”

“No other trace?”

“Some fibers on the clothing of each matched, some gray carpet fibers, probably from the trunk of the car he transported them in, but it’s so generic it’s of no help. We know it was from a GMC vehicle that was made between 1998 and 2003, but they haven’t gotten it down any more exactly than that.”

“Your lab person is good?”

“She’s very good. We can meet with her on Monday, if you like.”

“Great.” He glanced at the lab report again. “What’s this trace found in the hair of the first three victims?”

“The threads? We’re not sure. That’s something we’ll ask Tasha about on Monday. She was trying to analyze it, but with the finding of another body, she had to put the fibers aside.”

“I’ll be interested in seeing what it is.” He slipped the files she’d made for him into his briefcase. “I’d like to see the crime scenes if I could. I realize it’s the weekend, if you have plans you can just direct me…”

“No. No plans. I don’t mind. Besides, it’s always good to walk a crime scene after the fact. Sometimes you see things you might have missed the first time around.”

It was almost one in the afternoon when Cass pulled off the side of Bay Lane and parked her car. They’d already walked the marsh where Linda Roman’s body was found, stood in the alley where Lisa Montour had been left, and visited the lonely stretch of beach where Toni DeMarco had been discovered.

“This is where the last victim was found,” she told Rick as she got out of the car. “We’ve already photographed everything, so you don’t have to watch where you walk.”

Rick opened the passenger door and stepped out onto the soft sandy shoulder.

“You probably got some good prints along here, as soft as the sand is,” he commented.

“Not as good as you might think. It’s soft now because it rained yesterday morning and it’s been cloudy ever since. The day we found her, it was hard-packed.”

He followed her along the side of the road.

“This road doesn’t appear to be heavily traveled. Is there more traffic along here during the week?”

“Not really. It leads to the remains of an old lighthouse. Hardly anyone comes this way anymore. You might get some people crabbing off the bulkhead, but not at night. The pier was taken down a few years ago-it was so badly deteriorated, it was an accident waiting to happen. There are no houses down here, it’s too swampy to build on. There’s no nice beach, the water comes right up to the marsh along here. So there’s not much reason to be down here, especially at night.” She stopped and pointed to the ground. “This is where we found her. You saw the photos, you know that she was posed right out in the open.”

Rick stared at the place where Yvonne Hunt’s body had been found.

“It would’ve taken a few minutes to have gotten the pose just so, wouldn’t you think?” he asked. “He must have felt pretty confident that no one would be coming along while he was doing it.”

“You’re thinking that he must be local.”

“Would an outsider know that this is a road to nowhere? Would a stranger to the area risk being seen by taking the time he’d need to lay her out the way he did?”

“I wondered, too. As a matter of fact, I mentioned it to the chief. But before you start thinking that this narrows the field, you should know a couple of things. First of all, during the season, our population increases greatly. Remember that we’re a resort town. We get a lot of renters starting Memorial Day weekend. Renters and summer people who move down in June and stay right on through September. And keep in mind, a lot of folks have rented here for years. Add to all that the fact that there’s a big high school reunion next week, and you have a lot of people who are well acquainted with the traffic patterns.”

“What year reunion is it?” he asked.

“All years. They just built a new high school, and they’re taking down the old one. So we have people coming down from the 1930s classes clear on through to last year’s class.”

“Swell,” he muttered. “Not much chance of narrowing it down, is there?”

“We can maybe eliminate certain years. I mean, I doubt anyone past the age of, say, sixty-five or so would have been strong enough to overcome our last victim. She’d been taking karate lessons for about four months, so she had some basic skills in self-defense. Someone too much older would have had a tough time with her. I’d have expected to see more defensive wounds on her. As you know, there were none.”

“Maybe we should bring in one of our profilers, get a little insight into this guy, get some ideas as to why he’s doing what he’s doing.”

Cass shrugged. “Fine with me.”

“I’ll call and see what we can arrange. Maybe we can get someone here early in the week. Hopefully by then we’ll know what that trace fiber is, the threads that were found in the vics’ hair.”

“You think that might be important to the profiler?”

“I think whatever it is, it’s part of what he needs to do to make this thing work for him.”

“His signature.”

“Yes. I think whatever it is, it has to do with his signature.”

“Did you want to look around a little more?” She gestured vaguely.

“What’s back this way?” Rick tilted his head to the right.

“It’s a bird sanctuary.”

Rick parted the rushes that grew almost to the roadway and walked farther into the marsh. Cass leaned back against the car, waiting for him to return. Two days ago she’d walked the entire length of the fence that enclosed the bird sanctuary. She knew he’d find nothing of interest there.

“Any other way in?” he asked as he walked toward her.

“There’s a dirt road about a half mile up toward the highway. It winds through the marsh, sort of a loop, then out again on the opposite side.”

“What’s the main attraction?”

“In the sanctuary?” She thought it over, then replied, “I guess the blinds are pretty popular during the migration times-we’re just coming to the end of one of those. Heavy bird migrations mid- to late-April through mid-June, then again in the early fall. There’s a big bird count on New Year’s Day every year. And there’s a cabin where you can buy bird books, bird calls, that sort of thing. You can ride through in your car, follow the loop around, or you can stop at the observation posts. There are several of those. Places where you can get out of your car and walk a sort of wooden boardwalk farther into the marsh.”

“Sounds as if you’re well acquainted.”

“My mother was part of the group that petitioned the state to set up the sanctuary. It was her favorite place. She spent a lot of her spare time here, training guides, walking the wetlands to look for injured birds, tracking rare birds and photographing them. She even worked in the gift shop when they got shorthanded, though she much preferred being outside.”

“She sounds like quite the nature girl.”

“Yes, she was.”

“Was?”

“She died when I was six.”

“I’m sorry.”

“So was I. Anything else you want to see?”

Rick looked around, his glance returning to the bird sanctuary.

“I think I’d like to drive that loop on the way back, if you can spare a few more minutes.”

“Sure.”

Cass got into the car and started it up, waiting while Rick fastened his seat belt before making a U-turn in the middle of the road. She drove the half mile, then took a right on the rutted dirt road.

“It would be nice if the county or the state could get around to paving this one of these days,” she said as she stopped in front of the long wooden gate that stretched across the roadway.

“Is it locked?” Rick asked.

“No, I’m sure it’s just closed. Lots of people come out here. You can see by the tire marks there’s been a lot of activity over the past few days since the rain.”

Rick got out of the car and walked to the gate. He lifted it and moved it to one side. Cass pulled the car up and he got back in.

They drove in silence for a few minutes, the road winding slowly, dividing the preserved area in two, the salt flats on one side and the more solid ground of the marsh on the other.

“There’s one of the blinds.” She pointed to a wooden structure that sat surrounded by tall rushes and cattails. “That one looks out over the marsh, so if it’s marsh birds you’re interested in, you might spend some time there.”

She pointed out several more blinds along the way.

“This one was named for my mother,” she told him when she stopped at the top of the loop. “It looks out into the bay. One time during the migrations in the spring-when the birds fly from South America to the Arctic?-she brought me with her to watch the birds gobble up the horseshoe crab eggs on the beach down there. It’s not as dramatic as it is on the Delaware Bay, but it was certainly something to see. At least for a six-year-old. All those birds swooping around, calling and scolding…”

She sat for a silent moment, then drove on, but not before he saw the sign on the side of the road. Dedicated to the memory of Jenny Burke, whose tireless work helped turn a swamp into a sanctuary.

“Seen enough?” she asked.

He nodded. “I think so.”

She accelerated, heading for the exit, then paused to wave on an incoming car, then drove out through the gate.

The driver of the other car slowed to a stop as Cass passed, watching in his rearview mirror from behind dark glasses as she negotiated the bumpy dirt road.

She had no way of knowing he would sit and stare after her until her car had long since disappeared.