Drop Dead Perfect (An Ellen Harper Psycho-Thriller) (4 page)

Slamming the phone in its cradle,
Big Harv heard the handset crack and then slowly break in half, dropping to the floor in slow motion. Not that unusual for him. He’d needed so many new phones over the years that they were now taking them out of his pay. He didn’t care, and most of the time, it was worth it. Besides, he had more important things to worry about.
Worry
. Such a simple word, but it made the world go round, didn’t it?

His email alert buzzed, and the screen flashed. The email from Sergeant Foster had made it through at warp speed. Amazing what a little ass chewing can accomplish. Quickly opening the two attachments,
he clicked his mouse and waited for them to print, mumbling to himself as he did. He just couldn’t understand not following instructions and orders. His military background had always served him well; these days it seemed no one paid attention. Back in the day, men and women listened and responded to instructions. There had been severe consequences for keeping one’s head firmly planted in one’s ass and making mistakes. In this day and age, the unions and the shrinks protected everyone who screwed up, with no one really accepting responsibility for anything, blaming the lack of proper upbringing, or stress, or God.

Ellie’s face flashed across his mind, again. She had, at least, never ducked the truth; she met everything head on. It was hard not to feel a wave of pride. After that first few weeks, when it had sunk in that her shithead husband had left her, she’d stepped up, just like her mom, and he had taught her. But she had changed in some not
-so-good ways too, now dealing with a shitty attitude. That made her a load of fun to work with over the last year, but she was working through it. Even though patience wasn’t his best virtue, he exercised it in her case as much as possible. It didn’t hurt that she was also the best forensic tech on the force, maybe on the planet, and that always carried weight. Father or not, he knew he could count on her to get it right. That meant something.

Big Harv shook his head, snatched the reports from the printer, and began to read the details of
the first one filed this morning and then the latest from just two hours ago, before he laid them side by side.

Both missing women were under thirty, attractive, and career professionals with good income. Both were single and apparently not dating. Both had missed dinner appointments with their friends and hadn’t responded to phone calls or visits to their apartments.

He studied the information on Joannie Carmen. It was odd to report someone missing in such a short time frame, but he’d learned over his twenty-eight years that people knew their friends and family better than any police department could. When someone called in a missing-person incident this soon, there was almost always a good reason.

The other woman, Holly Seabrook, had been missing since early last evening. Her car had been left in a downtown parking garage, and the computer system cross
-referenced her missing-person report with the towing records. People just didn’t leave their cars, especially expensive sports cars, in a public parking garage.

“Damn it,” he whispered softly.

His thoughts traveled back some twenty-six years to his first real case as a young detective working on the south side. It felt like eons ago, yet it could have been minutes. That case had never left him, ever.

It had begun as just one young woman who’d been reported missing. The Chicago Police Department had taken its sweet time investigating, even after the twenty-four
-hour “wait” policy had passed, thinking she’d show up eventually like most do. The police had been wrong. She’d been found the next day, strangled and dumped near an abandoned warehouse in Hyde Park. The scene was horrific, especially for a new homicide detective like him.

It took four weeks
—and five more murdered women—before it was finally over. Eventually, the perverted son of a bitch had been killed in a gunfight with two blues, who had pulled him over for a routine traffic stop. The potential seventh victim had been in the trunk. Luckily, her kicking from the inside had alerted the two officers making the stop just as they were returning to their cruiser. They confronted the driver and asked him to open the trunk; he refused and pulled a weapon. A lucky shot between his eyes signaled the end of the killer who had become a source of great fear and, as human nature would sometimes have it, great fascination to his city.

Big Harv rubbed his face with both hands. His life had been forever changed, and it had
required years before the images of those women slowly eased into a corner of his mind that wasn’t ever present, but then again, was that possible?

He was determined to never go through that again, so he did his best to ha
ve his staff view every missing-person report made, hoping to avert a repeat of history. He remembered what the victims, their families, and he had endured. The old saying that “people who do not learn from history were bound to repeat it” resonated with him. He wanted no repeat of this kind of history. The extra work involved in double-checking all missing-person reports had been, on more than one occasion, worth the effort. As he took the cell phone out of his shirt pocket, Big Harv felt his anxiety escalate. Not the type of stress brought to life when he and Ellie were arguing, but the kind that told him that Clara Rice’s killer had only begun.

“Foster, a
fter you double-check the hospitals, psych wards, jails, and arrest logs for these two women, get your ass up here. Bring someone with you who can write and, for God’s sake, who knows how to take orders.”

He hung up and tossed the
cell phone on the desk, praying he was wrong. That he was overreacting. That the fine city of Chicago hadn’t birthed another killer in its long, infamous linage of psychopathic murderers.

Except she had, hadn’t she?

CHAPTER-6

After getting over the shock of seeing Clara Rice posed like a mannequin in a high-priced department store, Ellen began snapping pictures with her Pentax DSLR. There was no one better for this kind of work. Each click of the button helped her to relax and concentrate on her job, which was to find anything she could to get the complete picture of what had happened, not to mention where and how. She’d learned not to jump to conclusions at scenes like this and to let the science and evidence talk, but her experience made it difficult not to picture this as a homicide. A perverted one at that. She shook it off. She didn’t know anything at this point. Maybe Clara had become distraught with life and overdosed in an attempt at suicide. Perhaps she’d even gone so far as to tape the sign on her chest, but what it could mean left Ellen guessing, for now. It wasn’t unusual to see public suicides
. Although, if that were true, Ellen had not been part of a suicide investigation like this one.

Zooming in on every angle, she was careful not to get too close until she and Oscar were ready to collect samples. She took two extra shots of the sign, just to make sure they could ID the print font and even the type of printer, if they needed that angle.

Her phone vibrated, and she pulled it from her pocket. Kate had texted her, reminding her about dinner later. It might be much later, if at all.

Moving the camera to her side, she found Oscar coming back from the far reaches of the crime tape.

“Oscar, are you finished?” she asked. Her work voice always surprised her. She thought she sounded like a robot. She guessed it was better than her knock-you-on-your-ass voice.

“Yep. I took as many shots of the perimeter, including details, as we’ll need. There were several cigarette butts and a few pieces of paper, but on first glance, these may be too old to be pertinent. I’ll start collecting . . .”

His voice trailed off as he looked at Clara. Oscar moved his eyes down to the sign, then quickly to the cops still milling around the perimeter. “I’m glad you’re processing the body on this one,” he said quietly. “She looks like my younger sister.” Oscar sauntered away, evidence bags in hand.

Ellen exhaled. She knew what he meant. As a CSI, you did your best, but sometimes it was hard not to equate a life lived—a feeling, laughing person—with a body whose only purpose now was to reveal evidence. Especially someone like Clara who had her whole life in front of her. Then the next moment, she didn’t.

For the second time in five minutes, Ellen shook off the emotion. This time, she set her mind into full-evidence mode. Reaching into her tech kit, she took out a fresh pair of gloves and tossed the first ones. She wanted to take no chance that something on the camera would taint any collection sample. She even liked the sterile smell.

Pulling several polyethylene bags from her kit, she reached for her magnifying glass and large set of tweezers. Grasping the sign hanging on Clara’s front, she carefully placed it in one of the bags. They’d process it for prints at the lab. For now, she wanted to collect what she could before outside exposure affected what the evidence would say to them.

Slowly, with a concentration that threatened to block out the rest of world, thank God, Ellen Harper began the act of collecting material that would hopefully help to identify what had happened to poor Clara.

As she worked her way from the crown of Clara’s head down to her neck, Ellen stopped,
frowning. There was severe bruising between the C3 and C4 vertebrae. She ran her finger over the area lightly and felt a jagged edge lingering just below the skin’s surface. Drawing back, she bent closer to the jaw area and noticed bruising beneath the makeup. She’d seen this three other times in her career. No question that they were dealing with a homicide now. It would have been impossible for the victim to have broken her own neck like this. That fact probably meant Clara was killed elsewhere because it would have taken time, and her killer would have needed privacy, to prepare the body like this while picking just the right moment to leave her in this position without being observed. No question the scene was staged, but why?

Ellen moved to the body’s right side, shining her pen light into the victim’s wide-open eyes.

Taking out the notebook from her kit, she wrote a couple of lines and put it back into her pocket. As she moved back to the body, the voice behind her caused her to cringe.

“So, Harper, you still think that dress makes me look fat?”

Detective Bella Sanchez’s gravelly voice had the same effect on her as fingernails on a chalkboard, only worse.

Ellen closed her eyes, touched the side of her jaw where Sanchez had hit her, recalling for the thousandth time the exchange of punches. At least Ellen hadn’t been the one landing on her ass.

Sanchez had drawn her away from her thought process, but that wasn’t unusual when the detectives started asking questions about what the techs had found. Except . . . well, she hadn’t punched one of them before. She could go one of two ways here. Round two with Sanchez, which was appealing . . . or keep her job and help find Clara’s murderer.

Turning around, she put on her best smile.

Sanchez was standing next to her partner, Brice Rogers. He was a tall, good-looking detective with large, hazel eyes, who spent a lot of time in the gym. He’d earned a reputation for being a tireless investigator who expected the same effort from the people he worked with. He was also a quiet man who seemed to keep to himself. Almost cold-like. She’d remembered that much from the three or four times they’d worked together. What she didn’t recall, however, was just how handsome he was. For one brief moment, Bella was gone and there was only Brice Rogers.

Had he always looked that good?

Putting her thoughts back in proper perspective didn’t take long; still, she lingered a little longer before moving from his face to his partner’s.

As pleasant as
Brice’s look was, it was Sanchez’s face that caused her to do a double take. The detective was sporting one of the finest shiners Ellen had seen. Even with a full load of makeup. It took all of her strength to not laugh out loud, knowing full well where that choice would lead.

Ellen’s mind came back around to Sanchez’s question.
“Umm, I think I answered that one before, Sanchez,” said Ellen. “What are you doing here? I thought you were assigned to the North Side.”

“Yeah, I guess you did answer that before. And what can I say? My transfer came through, and they partnered me with Superman here,” said Sanchez.

Brice frowned at her. “It’s still Detective Rogers, got it?”

“Yeah, yeah. I’ll try to remember,” said Sanchez, never taking her eyes from Ellen.

“Hello, FT Harper. Good to see they have the Chicago PD’s best forensic tech team on this one,” said Brice.

He stuck out his hand, and she shook it. The man had hands the size of the Sears Tower, and they were warm. She had almost forgotten how much she liked warm hands. She wondered why she hadn’t noticed that about him before, either.

Glancing back at Sanchez, Ellen made a decision. One she wouldn’t have made a few months ago. Maybe that was a good sign, or maybe she was actually paying attention to what her dad had said.

“Listen. I won’t pretend we’re friends or some bullshit like that, but I already don’t like what I see with this case. So we need to work together. You okay with that?” asked Ellen.

Sanchez waited a moment and then nodded slowly. “I am, for now,” she agreed tentatively, her green eyes sparkling. “But watch your sweet ass, Gringa.”