Drop Dead Perfect (An Ellen Harper Psycho-Thriller) (18 page)

“I’m good. I’m so sorry to both of you. I reacted without thinking. I didn’t mean to scream. I was surprised, and this situation is not exactly stress-free,” she said softly.

Kyle moved back behind the chair and put his hands on her shoulders. “We understand. We can clear this up if you’re willing to answer two questions for me, for us, okay?”

“Okay,” she whispered.

“No, Kyle. Let’s talk,” said his brother, taking a step in his direction.

“I’m not going to hurt her, brother, if she’s honest. Trust me, yes?” he soothed, all of the while feeling the excitement rise from deep within as it filtered to his arms, then his hands.

His brother drew the black bag over his face and stood still.

“Joannie, could you see yourself living with my brother the rest of your life? Loving him, taking care of him, having his children?”

He could almost smell the tension building in the musty underworld of the warehouse. The seconds ticked away.

Finally, she raised her head. “I . . . I cannot. I’m sorry,” she said, exhaling.

“I applaud you for your honesty. I have one more question for you.”

He heard the sob as she nodded.

“Who loves you more than my brother, Joannie Carmen?”

CHAPTER-32

“Are you sure about this?”

The voice on the other end sounded tired, almost exhausted, but Brice chalked it up to all of the hours Big Harv had been working. This case was taking a toll and was only two days old.

“I’m trusting Ellie . . . er, FT Harper . . . and her staff’s work. She caught something on the ligature marks of the two victims that might help us end this in a hurry,” he said, using his best professional cadence.

“Then we have to give it a shot. We’ve got to stop this now. Also, Sergeant Foster just sent out an APB on a Rachel Dupree. Her picture and bio should be on your phone, and every other Chicago cop’s phone, shortly. I believe she’s a potential fourth victim. Find those women, Rogers. I don’t give a shit how many people it takes or how many laws you break. Not this time. I’ll also inform the FBI in case they want to send a few units out to help with the search.

“Thank you, Captain. I’ll have twenty teams of three, and we should be able to get through the area in a few hours.”

“That’s not enough, Brice. I’m authorizing twice that many. I want an update every ten minutes. Now stop talking to me and get your ass out there.”

The phone went dead, and Brice stared at it for a moment.

“Yes sir,” he whispered.

Ten minutes later, Brice was in his unmarked Ford, racing south on I-94, followed by three Chicago PD vans filled with cops, guns, and hope. Four others, including two K-9 units, were to meet them near West 32nd Avenue in ten minutes.

He’d been a part of several mass searches and had helped organize a search for a missing four-year-old girl near the Chicago River. She’d wandered off, and they had found her alive—a few bruises, hungry, but no worse for the wear. She’d jumped into his arms and clung to him like Velcro. He’d liked it. Or at least the idea of protecting someone like her. Until then he’d never thought about kids. The whole ticking-clock metaphor was typically used in reference to a woman whose maternal instincts had kicked in. He wasn’t sure if men had such a thing, but that little Velcro moment had made him think about fatherhood in a whole new way. And the reunion of the youngster with her parents had driven the idea home even more.

He shook his head slowly. That one had turned out well. Score one for the good guys. As he barreled off the exit, lights flashing, siren soaring, he wondered if this search-and-rescue would turn out the same feel-good way.

Brice bit the inside of his lip.

He didn’t think so.

CHAPTER-33

“I need you to do something for me.”

Steve Jansen looked up from the large, electronic microscope, glanced at her, then focused on her hand. A look of puzzlement flashed across his face.

“I’d do anything for you—you know that—but it’s not really a good time, Ellie. Can this wait? In another hour, I’ll have this ballistics imprint processed and entered into the database to see if we can get a match on one of the guns that killed Oscar.”

He was almost pleading with her. She understood that look. Some son of a bitch had taken out one of their own and that had to be remedied. The scales had to be balanced.

Without warning, the time that Oscar had taken her for a Tofu burger danced across her mind. Her expression, after the first bite must have shown that she’d toss her cookies before she could take another. His look went from minor disappointment to a full belly laugh. She smiled. People never leave you, even if they do.

Her emotions bum-rushed her heart and tore at her insides—again. Finding Oscar’s killer was top priority, no question, but saving the next potential victim was equally important. She’d sworn to serve the good people of Chicago and that meant, even though it hurt like hell, she had to make the right call, the unselfish call, the one that benefitted the most people at the fastest rate.

How in the name of God do I take the personal out of all of that?

Ellen exhaled, handed the photo to Steve Jansen, and watched him hesitate and then slowly take it from her hand.

“That’s wonderful,
Steve, and important, and I hate to keep you on a yoyo like this, but we’ve found a lead that might go somewhere into the Bridgeport Warehouse District. Brice is taking his people out there as we speak. The problem is that they could be hours, maybe a day searching through the buildings, even if our instincts are right. Meanwhile, I found this image of the possible perp’s fingers on one of the victim’s phones.”

She moved to his side, pointing at a corner of the photo. “See how these ridges flow from one side and seem to come out the other?”

He nodded.

“This looks like an arch pattern, and you know how rare that is. Most people have looping patterns to their fingerprints. Only about five percent have this tented-arch configuration. I want you to clean up the image the best you can and then run it through. Pronto, okay?” It was his turn to exhale. His breath was stale, like his mouth was dry. She knew that one too.

“It’ll take a while for the digital imagery to tear this down and reconstruct it so that it recreates the most logical image and then reproduces it.”

“I know. But you should be able to get it ready in an hour, right?” she smiled.

He smiled back and then sighed. “Once I start the program, I’ll have some time on my hands. Maybe just enough to get this,” he nodded at what he’d been working on, “finished and to the ballistics specialists.”

“Sounds like a plan. Let me know when you get it completed. I’ve got a meeting in less than three hours, and I’d love to say we’ve identified a person of interest. Unless, of course, Detective Rogers and his people have this bastard in custody by then.”

“Yeah, I wish it worked that way. But we’ve been doing this too long to think that’ll happen. These people aren’t caught so easily, are they?”

Ellen sighed. The tone in
Steve’s voice was cynical, but he was right. Still, one could hope.
Should
hope. The science doesn’t lie. They had leads, and there was no substitute for that.

She turned to head out the door to the area where Bella was working with another tech and realized she’d forgotten something.

“Steve . . .”

“Yes. I will see what I can get from an enhanced image of the ring too. That’s probably a total dead end, but I’ll try. You know, Ellie . . .”

He stopped and clutched his own wedding ring, turning it in his long fingers.

“What?”

“If that’s an image of a wedding ring . . .”

She nodded. “Yup.”

“That means the guy’s married, right?”

She looked down at her finger where there was still a faint, white circle where her rings had been. It had taken her three months after the divorce was final to finally take them off forever. The idea that Joel was gone from her life had taken some getting used to. A tinge of the anger she’d wrestled with—and seemed to be putting behind her—reached from within and kissed her ever so gently.

“It could mean that. Or that he still wanted to be, if that makes sense.”

“It does, Ellie. It does.”

Steve turned back to his electronic lair, and she pushed open the heavy glass door, her mind racing.

Was that what they were dealing with? Someone who still wanted to be married, but his wife didn’t? She knew from experience that the mental anguish of being rejected was next to
unbearable and could cause one to do some crazy things. Maybe even push one over the edge. Maybe he was a wacko who just liked wedding rings, but that didn’t seem likely. Rings usually symbolize something to people. She’d never seen someone wear one for the hell of it.

Tossing aside those thoughts, she hurried down the corridor. She wasn’t a detective; she was a woman of science and would wait for that domain to speak to her, like always. But Oscar had been right. Both worlds were important parts of the equation, the instinct as much as the hard data, and if all the pieces fell together, they would form a synergetic relationship to close a case. She hoped that would be sooner
rather than later.

As she reached the end of the hall, she stopped in her tracks. Her mind retraced her conversation with
Steve and his actions. He had been twisting his wedding ring. Not unusual, except the man had been divorced for two years.

Or that he still wanted to be . . .

It all made sense. Steve knew the FT assignments. He was at the first scene. Then the odd subtleness regarding his reaction to her request just now. She wasn’t sure why it all came to together in that split second, but there was no question in her mind that Steve Jansen knew far more about these murders than he was letting on.

Before Ellen could turn back down the hallway, she heard a loud roar and froze as glass shattered two feet above her head.

She hit the floor, and the sound of gunfire exploded through the building twice more.

CHAPTER-34

Kyle watched Damon step forward and then hesitate before stopping completely. His face was as unreadable as it had been since the accident. His every attempt at any kind of expression was simply futile. Nothing worked in and on his scarred face. Muscles and nerves were only wishful phantoms for Damon. No smile had graced his face since he was seven, even if he’d had a reason to smile. But his eyes were alive. It was as if all of Damon’s vanished ability to house facial expression had been transferred to those special blue eyes . . . and no one on the planet knew them better than Kyle. His melancholy, his anxiety, his joy, his fear, his pain, and his anger. And now, the gauge that was his brother’s window to his soul was pissed, yet afraid. Interesting. Could Kyle’s little brother be questioning the actions of his protector, his guardian, his big bro?

He felt his own anger rise at the thought of Damon’s disapproval. The sorry bastard had no right. Kyle had spent countless hours looking out for him, feeding him, holding him when he was afraid. He’d sacrificed part of his life to make sure his brother had someone—and his mother’s constant, guilt-ridden spiel had clinched the deal for both of them.

Never mind the revenge he’d carried out on Damon’s behalf. The mimicries, the looks of disdain and scorn, even fear, from those who laid eyes on his brother’s contorted features. Somehow, it also reflected on Kyle. After all, what kind of warped human being tolerates another man, brother or not, who looks like that? He even heard a young couple say as much. They didn’t get an opportunity to repeat it. How could he let them? The two of them left this world as another unfortunate set of unsolved murders collecting dust in the cold-case files.

After all of that and more, he gets this look, this questioning act of doubt and blatant disrespect? He hadn’t stood for it with others, even his ex, so why would Damon think he’d take it now?

The burn kindled from deep within him, rose ever closer to the surface. Damon needed to learn a lesson. Who could teach it better? No one. Watching Damon with curiosity, Kyle asserted a little more pressure on Joannie’s jaw and felt her neck give ever so slightly.

“I believe Joannie has a question to answer . . . unless, of course, you have something to say,
brother
,” he said. “But it is always polite to allow the fairer sex to speak first. With that in mind, I must insist that you answer my question, Miss Carmen.”

He exerted more pressure, and Joannie yelped in pain, tears beginning to form in eyes that already reflected the unmatched terror of knowing one is going to die. This was too good. He not only got an unexpected reaction from his brother, but the bitch’s enhanced fear was one for the ages. He’d never felt so alive. So in control.

Sliding his hands down her collarbone and then to the top of her breasts, his grin grew wider. Even though Damon remained stoic, Kyle could feel his brother’s emotion resonate through the room.

Leaning to her ear, he whispered. “Joannie? My darling? What say you?”