Face of a Killer

15

Sydney repeated the phone conversation as she remembered it. Dixon, Carillo, and Schermer listened, and when Sydney finished, Carillo said, “Well, now we know he’s following his victims in the paper.”

“Okay,” Dixon said. “This case moves up on the priority list.”

Carillo cleared his throat, and Schermer said, “Uh, yeah. One problem. I just got a page that I’m due in court in a half hour.”

Before Sydney could decipher the subtleties of that byplay, Dixon said to her, “You’re going to have to assist Carillo for the day.”

“But the Harrington report-”

“Moves down on the list. You have any other cases that need immediate attention, give them to Schermer here.” He nodded to the stick figure drawing. “Seems to me if he has this much free time, he needs the work. Now see if you and Carillo can’t get along for the short time it takes to get this investigation under way.”

Though Sydney wasn’t happy about being paired with Mr. Pipeline-to-Her-Ex Carillo, in the grand scheme of things, she had much bigger issues, and she returned to her desk, expecting that Carillo might follow, at least to get her notes on the case, go over what she’d found at Hill City and in her interview with Tara Brown. Typical Carillo, he didn’t follow, left her sitting there twiddling her thumbs while God only knew what the hell he was doing.

First thing, she thought as she got up to look for him, was that they needed to set some ground rules, number one being that Scotty needed to be left out of the loop.

Carillo wasn’t at his desk, and after wandering the halls, she found him in a different office on the phone. Judging from the conversation, his wife was on the other end. “No,” he said. “I am not selling the condo. You’re living in a goddamned mansion, with a guy who makes ten times what I make. You think you could see fit to allow me a goddamned place to live?” He listened to whatever it was she had to say, then finished with “Whoever wrote the line ‘for better or worse’ sure as hell never had to live with the worse.” He slammed the phone in the cradle, and seemed to stare at it for several seconds, then looked up, saw Sydney, and in a surprisingly calm voice said, “Give me a minute and I’ll meet you at your desk.”

By the time he arrived, he was all business, and she picked up her case file and handed it to him. “This is everything I have on the Jane Doe.” Then she handed him a manila folder, which he opened. “That’s the suspect sketch from our victim the other night, the woman we think may have been abducted and raped by the same suspect.”

He sat in a chair, dropped the binder on his lap, then opened the folder with the drawing. He took a good look, handed it back to her, then opened the case file. “And you think these two are related because of the bite marks?” he asked. “Because the way I see it, your Jane Doe has way, way more wounds.”

“But when you look closer, there are some similarities besides the bite marks. Body dumped near an isolated area at a park and in water for one.”

“Not a lot to go on.”

“You’re right. Until Dr. Armand compares the bite wounds, and either confirms or denies-”

“Or states it’s inconclusive.”

“Or states it’s inconclusive,” she agreed, “we won’t know. But either way, you have two crimes that are clearly savage and in need of solving. One’s ours, the other Hill City’s. And I can tell you they won’t be pleased by your presence.”

He flipped through the report, perused each page, not commenting. After several minutes of silence, part of which she was sure was meant to let her know that he was the one running the show, he said, without looking up from the reports, “Give me about ten minutes to make another set of copies. I’d like to get down there as soon as possible.” And with that, he stood, took the reports.

“Hey, Carillo.” He stopped, eyed her. “How is it I suddenly got assigned to this?”

“Don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Schermer doesn’t have a subpoena for court, does he?”

“He’s, uh, got some personal business he needs to take care of. Off the radar, if you know what I mean.”

“No, I don’t. Care to explain?”

“Let’s just say I figured you’d be chomping at the bit for a case like this.”

She patted her hand on the stack of manila folders piled atop her desk. “Got enough of my own.”

“A few days ago, you’d have been all over it, wanting to work it.”

“And you’d have been convincing Dixon why you needed Doc Schermer or one of the other guys to work with you, because you don’t like me. What happened?”

“Guess I’m slipping. Meet me at the car in about ten.”

Scotty, she thought. That son of a bitch got Carillo to get her assigned to this damned case to keep her busy and away from McKnight’s suicide. That was the only explanation. Hell with that, she thought, pulling out her directory of FBI office numbers, searching for the Houston, Texas, field office. She punched in the number, identified herself, and asked to speak to Rick Reynolds, the agent Scotty had said he’d contacted about the note.

A long stretch of silence greeted her when she identified herself to Reynolds. Finally he said, “Look, I can’t talk right now. Give me your number. I’ll get back to you in about tentwenty minutes.”

She’d be stuck in the car with Mr. Pipeline himself if she waited that long. “Any way we can make it sooner?”

“Take it or leave it.”

She gave him her cell phone. Ten minutes later, she and Carillo were en route to Hill City.

Carillo hated owing favors. And Scotty’s last-minute request, making sure Fitzpatrick somehow got assigned to this case with no explanation other than “you owe me one” was a prime example of why. Wasn’t that he didn’t like Fitzpatrick, he told himself as he signaled for a lane change on the southbound 101 heading toward Hill City. She was as good an agent as any working in the office at the moment, just not the type he liked to work with. Guys like Schermer, though. Now there was a partner. They knew each other’s ins and outs. And they knew when to look the other way.

Which was something he couldn’t say about Scotty. His obsession with Fitzpatrick was starting to wear thin. The guy really needed to get a life. Or a new girl. None of which explained why Scotty needed her assigned to this case, because God only knew the guy had no trouble picking up the phone to find out what the hell she was working on at any given day and time. Bad enough Carillo had to deal with his own wife and her daily diatribes about alimony, lawyers, and anything else she could torment him with.

They were nearly to the Hill City turnoff when Fitzpatrick’s cell phone rang. She answered with a brisk “Fitzpatrick,” listened for a moment, then, “What do you mean there is no note? I was specifically told one existed, that it was booked into evidence… That’s bullshit, and you know it.” She flipped the phone closed, looked out the side window, her body rigid. “Idiots.”

“Something wrong?”

“I don’t want to talk about it.”

And sure as shit, she didn’t say one word for the rest of the trip. Just the way he liked it. Unfortunately he had to break the silence when they got to Hill City, because one thing he hated was surprises, and he wanted to know what the hell to expect. When she informed him, he figured she was exaggerating a bit by saying Detective Rodale hadn’t made much progress on the case because the victim was a woman, Rodale didn’t like women, and especially didn’t like FBI women. As they walked into the station, what went through his mind was that she was laying it on a little thick.

“Un-fucking-believable,” Carillo said, when they walked out fifteen minutes later, undeveloped photos in hand.

“Didn’t believe me, did you?”

“Someone needs to take that idiot’s big fat rodeo belt buckle and shove it down his throat.”

“You volunteering?”

“Wouldn’t waste my time.” He handed her the film, then unlocked the car. “Two weeks. He’s been sitting on this for two fucking weeks, and never once pulled it out to develop it.”

They got in the car, drove to the downtown area, looking for a one-hour photo developer, and found one on the main strip, El Camino Real.

Back in their vehicle, Fitzpatrick thumbed through the pictures while he drove to the crime scene. The park was a grassy area with a few oak trees and a covered picnic area adjacent to a marsh that gave way to the bay. A steady wind swept off the gray choppy water, bending the reeds in the marsh. Nice place for a summer barbecue beneath the covered picnic area, but in the winter probably unused by any but school kids looking for a quiet place, out of view of the cops, maybe drink a few beers in their cars. Too damned cold, otherwise, with the constant wind.

Of course the cold was to their advantage. It kept the people out, which meant there might be something left at the crime scene. Then again, the rain that came down the other night undoubtedly washed out any tire tracks and other trace evidence that might have remained, assuming the PD didn’t run over everything in their haste to get to the body.

Carillo parked at the far end of the lot, away from where the parking spaces butted up against the picnic area. They’d walk the lot first, a grid pattern, hoping to find something. First, though, they sat in the car, viewing the photos, trying to determine where the body was found-about ten feet into the marsh past where the grass ended. There was a shot taken from the parking lot, showing a female uniform standing out in the reeds, pointing down to the body.

“She’s the officer who found the victim,” Fitzpatrick told him as she handed that photo over. “Said that Detective Rodale wasn’t going for a forensic artist, because the victim was just a hooker. She went around his back to get me to do the drawing.”

He held up the photograph so that he could view it against the backdrop of the bay. “Looks like we need to be about thirty yards past the covered picnic area,” he said, then tucked the photo in his pocket. “Guess we’re going to get muddy.”

“ You’re going to get muddy,” she said, handing him the next photo. “ I brought waders in my gear bag.”

“Good partner would’ve warned me there was mud.”

“Ah, but we’re not partners. You don’t even like me.”

“Got a lot on my mind. Divorce, heavy caseload.” He stared out the window, tried to shrug it off like it was no big deal.

She handed him the next photo, asking, “Why?”

“Why what?”

“Why don’t you like me?”

He was going to kill Scotty for this. “Look, it’s nothing personal. There’s a lot of people in the office I don’t like to work with.”

A few seconds of silence, and he thought, Thank God that’s over. Then, “But specifically why don’t you like to work with me?”

“Jesus, Fitzpatrick. You turning this into one of those Kumbaya things?”

She shoved a photo at him, clearly perturbed. “I just want to know. I’ve been here six months, and no one stands around my desk and jokes.”

He studied her to see if she was really serious. Apparently she was. “Okay, I’ll bite. You’re like the fucking Eagle Scout of FBI agents. Pollyanna with a gun, a rule book, and no sense of humor.”

“I have a sense of humor.”

He noted she didn’t dispute the other two claims, and wondered if maybe he’d been a bit too hard on her, when she seemed to be staring at the next photo a little too long. And just when he was about to apologize, tell her it wasn’t all that bad, she started humming the tune to “Kumbaya, My Lord.” He laughed. “Touche, Pollyanna. E for effort and T for truce?”

She looked over at him, said nothing for a second or two, seemed to consider it, then, “Fine. Truce.”

“Just don’t expect perfection right away.”

“ No worries there,” she said, handing him the last photo, a close-up of the victim lying in the marsh, her filmy pale eyes staring up at nothing. She was wearing a once-white shirt, now stained with blood, mud, and dirt.

They got out, and Carillo popped open the trunk, while Fitzpatrick scraped her hair back into a ponytail, fighting against the salt-tinged wind. They each had a bag of gear in the trunk, and he handed hers out to her.

She put on her waders, then stood there for a moment, looked out over the marsh toward the area where the body had been found. If anything, she seemed preoccupied, more than she should have been, even after their strange talk, and he wondered if that phone call she’d received was part of it. He moved beside her, stared toward the water, heard nothing but the wind drumming in his ears. “Let’s get started,” he said.

They traversed the parking lot, looking for anything that might have been missed, before making a sweep of the grass, seeing several muddy-water-filled scars left in the turf, indistinguishable for any purposes of tire identification. The wet grass quickly soaked through his shoe leather as he walked the distance to the covered picnic area. It was there that he looked over and noticed some muddy tire tracks on the cement, as though a vehicle had pulled up beneath the shelter.

His gaze followed the smeared, now dried mud, wondering if it was from a police vehicle, perhaps a CSI pulling in to get out of the rain, he thought, noticing the tracks went right up to a table.

Fitzpatrick stopped at the edge of the cement, bent down to get a closer look, perhaps to see if there was a distinguishable pattern that could be photographed. He followed the tracks to the table, scarred with graffiti. Something dark appeared to have been spilled across the surface of the table, and had seeped into several deep and seemingly fresh gouges in the wood before it had dried.

His stomach turned as he realized what he was looking at.

“Fitz.”

She looked up from the edge of the cement area. Saw what he saw.

This was where their victim, their Jane Doe, had probably spent her last moment alive.