Julie Miller – The Marine Next Door (страница 2)
Per the chief’s specific request, she’d notified each of the law enforcement professionals gathered here this morning. Detectives. A police psychologist. Uniformed officers like herself. A representative from the crime lab.
But she believed now. She was here for herself. Here for her ten-year-old son, Travis, and their future. She was in this room because Chief Taylor believed she should be.
Letting those positive thoughts drown out the unsettled worry over the message and flower she’d received, Maggie wiped the perspiration from her palms on the navy twill of her pant leg, steadied her nerves with a quiet breath and opened her laptop. All right, so maybe she was just here as a glorified stenographer to take notes, but her pulse still raced. This was the kind of work she wanted to do. Not just man a desk and be the smiling, efficient, nonthreatening face of KCPD that most citizens saw when they came into the building.
Maggie knew Chief Taylor had a soft spot for her. She’d served in his precinct back when he’d been the newly appointed captain of the first watch. Now he was running the show. She’d lost a little girl, given birth to a son, gotten divorced and worked her butt off to maintain a full-time job to support her child while she’d taken classes to earn the degree her ex had once denied her. The chief understood how badly she wanted that promotion and had no doubt invited her to sit in on this meeting to give her some real experience and a taste of where she wanted her career to go.
She was expecting formal introductions, maybe some kind of pep talk to get them fired up for a particular project. At the very least, she expected Chief Taylor to spell out the new team’s purpose and why the commissioner had charged him with the job of selecting a task force for a special investigation.
She wasn’t expecting the terse greeting from her barrel-chested boss when he reached the head of the table. “He’s back.”
He followed up the cryptic pronouncement by slapping a file folder on top of the table.
Even from the opposite end of the room, she could see the crime scene photos that spilled out. She could make out a woman’s blond hair and a puffy, bruised face. She could see a lot of crimson on those photographs. Blood.
Nick Fensom, the stocky, dark-haired detective sitting closest to Chief Taylor pulled the folder in front of him and opened it. “The Rose Red Rapist?”
“That’s right.”
Maggie’s stomach knotted beneath her thick leather belt and her gaze darted up to the chief’s brown eyes, questioning him. Maybe his invitation to sit in on the meeting hadn’t been an impromptu gesture of kindness after all. She’d once been in photos like that.
But Chief Taylor wasn’t even looking at her. What if she had a unique understanding of that victim’s emotions—shock, betrayal, pain, rage, fear, distrust? That didn’t mean the chief had an ulterior motive for inviting her to the meeting. A decade had passed since that horrific time, and she’d put it behind her to focus on the present and future. She was simply overreacting to a gruesome coincidence. She was a cop. A future detective. A fast typist.
Not a sacrificial lamb lured into the room to be probed and profiled by the others at the table.
Maggie’s nostrils flared as she eased the prickly instinct to defend herself on a deep, quiet breath, and dropped her gaze to the screen in front of her. While that feverish impulse to guard against any sort of attack dissipated through the pores of her freckled skin, she concentrated on typing in the names and initial comments of everyone in the room.
Chief Taylor spelled out the details included in the file. “Same M.O. as that unsolved serial rapist case we worked a few years back. Blitz attack. Threat of a weapon once the victim is conscious. None of the victims have been found at the actual scene where the rape occurred, although how they’re moved from one place to another isn’t always clear. We’ve got nothing but the vaguest of descriptions of our perp. Male. Tall. There’s not even a consensus on his race. He wears gloves and a mask. None of them have seen his face although this most recent victim has some other identifiers that might give us a lead.”
“Other identifiers?” Detective Spencer Montgomery, whose short red hair had occasionally earned a question about whether he and Maggie were siblings—other than her son, Maggie had no relatives in the Kansas City area—sat across from his partner, Nick Fensom. Detective Montgomery adjusted his tie and leaned forward. Glancing around the room, she could see he was the senior detective, and his cool and confident demeanor reflected that status. “Such as?”
“His voice.”
“Voices can be altered,” Montgomery pointed out.
“Smells,” the chief countered. “She thought she detected something chemical.”
“That’s pretty vague.” Detective Montgomery wasn’t easily convinced.
A dark-haired woman, wearing a CSI windbreaker and sipping something from a stainless-steel travel mug, introduced herself as Annie Hermann, the task force’s liaison with the crime lab. “If we can identify the chemical or compound the vic smelled, then that could be a significant clue. It might give us the perp’s profession or a medical condition. Or tell us something about his vehicle.”
Detective Fensom shot CSI Hermann a look across the table and shook his head. “The perp leaves a red rose with each of his vics. It’s probably fertilizer or preservative from the florist’s shop.”
The petite Annie Hermann straightened in her chair. “Then maybe he works with flowers. The back of a florist’s van would be the perfect place to hide a body. The lab is running tests right now to isolate and eliminate any chemicals absorbed by the rose.”
Maggie continued to type. Analyzing a rose? Would an analysis of the tulip she’d just trashed reveal the motive behind the anonymous gift? Not that she had any doubt as to the sender and the seeming innocence of his request.
“It’s a viable clue,” Annie Hermann insisted.
“We’ll see.” Detective Fensom rocked back in his chair, unconvinced.
The CSI poked the tabletop with her finger. “Science gives us facts. It eliminates false leads and solves cases.”
“Not without any context to put those facts in. Cops solve cases. I’ll bet my gut has led to more arrests than your science.”
“Back to your corners, you two.” Chief Taylor silenced the debate. “The perp’s smell isn’t much to go on, but it’s a lead. Hermann, I want you to follow up on it.” He turned to the dark-haired detective. “And, Nick, I want you to use that gut to lead you to anyone on the streets who can tell us about this guy or these abductions. Anything is more than we’ve got right now.”
“Yes, sir, Chief.”
“Yes, sir.”
As the detective and the CSI settled back in their chairs, Maggie typed in the information, ignoring the crawl of memories over her skin beneath her uniform. Smell was indeed a vivid identifier because it left such an impression on the senses. Some of the most indelible memories she had from that hellish weekend her ex had gone off the deep end were of the smells—blood, booze, smoke, sweat—and the flowers he’d given her afterward. And to this day she would not use scented fabric softener or scented detergent in the laundry because of the memories that particular fresh smell evoked.
She nodded in silent approval of the victim’s power of observation. If she could identify her attacker by whatever scent was uniquely his, then the task force had a good shot at nailing him.
Provided they could catch him first.
Detective Fensom grumbled as he gathered up the photos. “What’s with the rose, anyway? It’s as though he thinks that hint of romance makes it an act of passion instead of violence.” He shoved the folder onto the blond woman in an elegant suit sitting beside him.
Dr. Kate Kilpatrick was more interested in skimming through the transcript of the report from the investigators who’d originally handled the case. Although Maggie had received counseling from the police psychologist years earlier, she’d never known Dr. Kilpatrick to work actively on an investigation before. “Maybe it’s a sign of remorse?”
“More like a sick memorial for everything he’s taken from her.” Edison Taylor was the only other uniformed officer at the table. But the patch on the short sleeve encircling his biceps indicated he was a specially trained K-9 cop. “I thought he was off the streets, Uncle Mitch. What’s it been? Eight—”
“Ten years, Pike,” the chief answered, using a nickname that Maggie knew referred to the surname Edison had before he’d been adopted into the Taylor family as a young teen. “Either he went away to prison for some other crime and now he’s back on the streets, or we’ve got us a nasty copycat.”