“Well, he targeted a woman who had a well-paying job, and who walked alone at night.”
She dropped her bag and went over to my wall. “Anything else?”
I stood next to her. “So far, he murdered her with some sort of metal rod. Jammed it in her lungs and left her to bleed out. More passion than a simple shot to the head. She’s young and attractive, but that might be irrelevant, as he’s not raping her.”
“Maybe he’s gay, and I’m free to roam the city with my head stuck in my notebook,” she muttered, annoyed, but I could tell she was reeling from her phone call. She pinched the bridge of her nose. “Okay, so, remove rape, remove sexual obsessions. Still personal, though, because of the style of the murder. Maybe he didn’t use a gun for fear of being heard?” She moved the map and saw the lines I’d drawn from Jamie’s house to where she was found. “She’s blonde, slim, sexy librarian kind of feel, scrape on the upper thigh, and no shoes. Hmm, do we have any photos of her day leading up her murder?”
“I have Jackson on that now.” I was curious. “Why?”
“Maybe we can see if someone was watching her. The academy where she danced has a huge open window in the front. If she was good, they’d place her in the window. I wonder if they have a camera, then we might be able to see if anyone was watching her.”
I leaned back to grab the folder and flipped through some pages. “Let me see what I can do.”
She started to draw an X on the places around Jamie’s home and dance academy. “Though she’s a dancer and a kickboxing instructor, she also works part-time as receptionist at a car dealership.”
“You read the file?” I was impressed.
“I skimmed it.” She shrugged with her back to me. “Which means she may deal with mostly men. She’s attractive and most likely got her nails, hair, brows, stuff like that done. They would be assets in her working world.” She pointed to her markings. “Chances are she goes to the same salon, and if that’s the case, we could ask for those tapes too. If we can confirm that, maybe we can narrow down their other male clients and see if the killer books the same place.”
Interesting theory.
“Spoken like a true detective.”
“Sadly, it’s not my first time analyzing a crime scene.”
“Yes, Benny mentioned you followed a few cases with G before.”
“Right.” She seemed a million miles away, so I let the topic go. I knew I despised discussing that case too.
We bantered back and forth and even dug up a new possible lead. I understood how her head worked and was shocked to learn she wrote a column in a newspaper and had worked on the Liberty massacre. I wondered how many other times our paths had crossed in the past.
“Why didn’t you become a police officer?”
“I love your world,” she finished off the rest of her coffee, “but it’s not for me to work in.” She scribbled something in her notebook. “I like that I can step away and choose to be somewhere else.”
My phone rang. “Excuse me.” I held the phone to my ear, and once I heard the voice, I slipped into the other room so she didn’t hear my ex rip me a new one over our mortgage.
“I’m going to be late on the payments,” Amelia cried into the phone. “I need another loan.”
“No.” I studied myself in the mirror and hated that I’d let Amelia talk me into buying a house before we got married. Thank God I got out of that hot mess before the I-dos were spoken. Since I chose to leave, I paid out my half of the house and left her a safe place to live. But her shopping habits were out of control, and now she was on her third month of asking me for money.
“Why don’t you just ask him?” I couldn’t even stand to think about him, let alone say his name.
“He doesn’t have it, and you know it. You’d let me lose our house to live in a box under an overpass?”
“It’s not ours, and yeah, that’s exactly what I’m saying.” Stupid nut.
“I miss you.”
“No, you don’t.”
“You have no idea how hard it was living with a man who wouldn’t share one fraction of an emotion with me!”
“Maybe if you tried to understand me, you would see I have plenty of emotion. You didn’t want to put the work in. You wanted me to just sit there and listen to your desperate housewife drama while I tucked away my own problems.”
“So, that’s why you left?” she cried. “Because I wouldn’t listen?”
It was always the same with Amelia. I was the bad guy, and she was the victim.
“No, I left because you chose to give up on us. That’s on you, not me.”
I hung up and made my way back out to my empty living room.
Shit.
I grabbed my keys and raced out the door. I combed the streets, scanned the sidewalk and businesses on the way to the station, but she wasn’t anywhere to be found. My anger grew stronger and stronger as I parked my truck and made my way inside. I nearly ran over Fitz, who was handing out fudge to the front desk clerk.
“Afternoon, Detective!” He tipped his hat.
I waved but rushed up the steps and headed for our floor.
“Sarge,” I burst into his office, “I’m sorry. I got a call, and she slipped right by me.”
“Ha.” Benny came up behind me. “Be thankful she didn’t pull a Taser on you.” He rubbed his shoulder. “She plays dirty.”
“You deserved that.” Sarge snapped a file closed. “Thanks for trying, but she’s not here.”
“What?” My breathing evened out.
“Nope, she’s not here.”
“Oh.”
“She’ll show up when you least expect it,” Benny muttered like he was in a thought of his own.
I pulled out my phone and saw I was flagged to check a possible homicide down by the lake. “Never mind. I have to go.” I started to leave but turned back around. “We good, Sarge?”
“Oh, yeah, I’ll meet you there.”
I rushed back down the stairs and avoided the mop on the floor. Christ, this place was busy today.
My mind raced. If she didn’t go to the station, why did she leave?
I made it to the lake in record time. A few heavy, fat raindrops bounced off my vest as I slipped on a ball hat to help my view of the crime scene.
“Evening, Detective.” The lead officer walked and talked as I scanned the scene. It was crunch mode if this rain was about to come full on. “Body over there, female, name Deana Long, thirty-three years old, MBA major.” I bent down and lifted the black tarp to examine her body. “Same drag marks as the last one, on the upper thigh, no shoes, and a punch straight into the lung through the chest.”
Damn, maybe we really did have a serial killer on our hands.
“She was found inside a dory. A man and his son were out fishing and saw the dory floating by the shore over there.” He pointed a few yards away. “Decided they should go and check it out, and the son called it in while the father towed it to shore.”
“All right.” I stood and squinted, curious to know how far the boat could have traveled. “Let’s get the current and wind speeds for today and last night.”