Authors: Allison Brennan
TWENTY
-
SEVEN
I
T WAS A BEAUTIFUL
S
ATURDAY
afternoon, but Carina and Nick were sitting in the windowless task force room painstakingly reviewing all three autopsy reports for any odd detail or stray piece of evidence that might offer them another direction in which to look.
But there didn’t appear to be anything other than the differences they’d already noted. Until Carina saw something odd in the personal effects record.
“It says that only one earring was found with both Becca and Jodi.”
“Is that unusual?”
“I can see how an earring might fall out, especially with a body that has been manhandled, but
one
earring in
both
victims? Angie had six ear piercings, three on each side, and she still had six posts in her ears when she was found.”
“Maybe the killer kept an earring as a souvenir,” Nick guessed.
“It’s the only thing that makes sense.”
“It’s good news. It connects him with his victims.”
Patrick walked into the room. “What does?” he asked.
“Angie was missing a navel ring. Becca and Jodi were each missing one earring.”
“That’s creepy,” Patrick said.
“You can say that again. So what brings you down here?”
“Good news, bad news,” Patrick said.
“What else is new,” Carina grumbled. “Give me the good news first.”
“I have proof that Scout used a Sand Shack public computer.”
Carina grinned. “Really? When?”
“Several times over the last three months, usually in the late afternoon during the week.”
“Only three months?”
“That’s all MyJournal has archived.”
“But the time frame suggests that he’s a college student,” Nick said. “He comes by in the late afternoon.”
“Nothing he said using the Shack computer system was incriminating. Most of it was viewing MyJournal pages and surfing the Internet. But I have every private message or public post he made through that server on a grid to see if we can find a pattern or anything that identifies him.”
“We need to talk to the employees again,” Carina said. “Someone might recognize a general description. What about the library?”
“I went there, showed the librarian Kyle Burns’s photo like you asked, and she put on thick glasses and was noncommittal. The woman can’t see more than two feet in front of her is my guess.”
Patrick sat down and slid the files across to Carina. “You think it might be the manager?”
“I don’t know. He loosely fits Dillon’s profile. Under thirty, college student, underachiever.”
“How is he an underachiever? He works full-time and goes to school.”
Carina rifled through papers until she pulled Kyle Burns’s transcript. “I had one of the uniforms pull his transcript. He was in and out of college for three years. His grades are good, not great. His advisor put a note in his file that he aspired to do great things with his life, but didn’t have the focus to stick with any one thing. His strength is management because he’s neat, organized, and disciplined.”
Nick nodded. “Our killer is organized, but I wouldn’t call him disciplined.”
“Still, Burns fits. He lives alone in a small duplex near the university. He has the light brown hair the half-blind librarian noticed. He has access to the Shack public computers. I think we need to interview all the employees again while Burns is off-site.”
“He doesn’t work Sundays,” Nick said.
“So we go there and talk to the employees, then track everyone else down at their homes. I have the files here. We were focusing on friends of Angie, so we only talked to the employees who regularly worked the same shifts as Angie. Now we need to dig deeper. We have a connection with the Shack and the killer—assuming Dillon is right and Scout is who we’re looking for. We focus there.”
“One more thing popped,” Patrick said. He put a printout in front of him. “This is a private message to an Elizabeth Rimes that he sent through the MyJournal server using the library Internet connection. He talks about his cat Felix being hit by a car.”
“And he told Becca that someone shot his cat.”
“When we pulled down messages from the Shack from the last three months, and reviewed all public comments posted by Scout that are stored indefinitely, he’s told several female MyJournal members over the last year that his cat had been killed. Died of cancer, hit by a car, drowned by his roommate.”
“For sympathy,” Nick said.
Patrick concurred. “Women are suckers for a good cat sob story.”
“Oh, stop that,” Carina said. “They sympathized because they didn’t think anyone would lie about something like that. It’s the old ‘help me find my lost puppy’ trick that pedophiles use to lure kids away.”
“Now where?” Nick asked. “Do we have an ISP?”
Patrick sighed, sat down. “Not yet. We know that Scout was in both the Shack and the library. We can get a warrant to search a house or business if we can get a name that goes with the profile—Dillon already convinced the DA of his reasoning, and he’s ready to take the stand on it if questioned. But because the MyJournal site is a free Web page, no one has to give truthful information. We have an e-mail address and it goes to a free e-mail account that is open, but it’s been inactive since Scout registered with MyJournal two years ago.”
Carina stood and walked over to the map. Red pins showed where the victims were abducted, blue pins where their bodies were found. “Angie was last seen more than ten miles from where her body was found, but Jodi and Becca’s bodies were found where they were last seen. Why?”
“He’s taunting us?” Patrick suggested. “He doesn’t care that they’re found.”
“Maybe it’s convenience,” Nick said. “Or he has a personal connection to the places.”
“We know he’s been to the Sand Shack, which is less than a mile from where Angie was found.” Carina placed a green pin on the Shack. “And the library.” She put a pin at the library, right next to the blue and red pins where Becca was abducted and found. “Nick, what’s Kyle’s address?”
He read from the report. “45670 Rupert Street.”
She found it on the map, put a yellow pin there. “Burns lives smack dab in the middle.”
“There were no drugs in Angie’s system, which suggests that she trusted whoever kidnapped her. She didn’t make a fuss, she seemed to voluntarily leave her house,” Nick said.
“And Becca he physically subdued. She was petite, much easier to control than Angie,” Carina said. “Do you think we have enough to ask for a warrant?”
“On Burns? Nowhere near enough,” Patrick said.
“But it makes sense, right?” Carina frowned at the map.
“Logically it makes sense, but you’re making a lot of leaps in reasoning and filling in blanks with theories, not evidence. We need something solid to tie Burns to the crimes.”
Carina knew Patrick was right. “I can still get the tail. Watch him until we gather enough evidence. And tomorrow, when he’s home, maybe we can stop by for another talk. See if he lets us come in, take a look around.”
“If he lets you in, you’re good to go. What does Jim have right now?”
“Nothing yet, but he’s working on it,” Carina said.
They sat in silence, reviewing the logs, when Patrick suddenly exclaimed, “I have an idea!”
“Give it to me,” Carina said. “I’ll take anything at this point.”
“What if we set Scout up?”
“How?”
“He has an e-mail alert through the MyJournal system that let’s him know whenever certain Web pages are updated. One page is that Elizabeth Rimes I told you about. We send an e-mail ostensibly from her to Scout with a redirect to my account.”
“For what purpose?”
“To get him into a chat room. To keep him in one place until we can locate him. If he’s logged on as Scout, I can find him within an hour.”
“I like it. I really like it.”
“Thank you, sis. I aim to please.”
“How long to set it up?” Nick asked.
“A couple hours, maybe less. I want to make sure we protect Elizabeth Rimes, alert the Atlanta police to keep an eye on her. We know Scout is in San Diego, but on the off-chance that he slips through.”
“I agree. I don’t want to jeopardize a civilian.”
“And I need to set up the technical end. I’m going to ask Dillon to chat with him online—he’s good at pulling people into conversations and he’ll know what to say.”
“Perfect. Thanks, Patrick.”
“I’m going to get started on it,” Patrick said, standing. “Sorry to leave you with all this paperwork.”
“I live for paperwork,” she said sarcastically.
Carina and Nick ordered dinner in. The task force room looked like a war zone, and they had come to the conclusion that until forensics came up with evidence they could use, or Patrick got a hit on his trap, they had nowhere else to look.
Carina was about to call it quits for the night. It was Saturday and there was little they could do until they had something to work with.
Then Jim Gage rushed into the room. “Good, you’re still here.”
“Like I’m going anywhere in this lifetime,” Carina said. “What is it?”
He waved a paper around. “I got a hit.”
“DNA match?”
“Almost as good. I have a match to a relative.”
“Explain,” Carina said.
“Mitchell Joseph Burns.”
“Burns,” Carina said. “You matched DNA to this Mitchell Burns? Is he a relation to Kyle Burns?”
“I don’t know at this point.” Jim pulled out a chair and sat. “Nearly eight years ago Mitchell Burns raped a woman in West Los Angeles. He used a condom, but either there was a tear in it or he wasn’t careful. Semen was found around the toilet bowl in the woman’s apartment.”
“And it matched Mitchell Burns? Was he already in the system?”
“He’s a repeat offender. Served four years for two counts of forcible rape.”
“Is he still in prison?”
“No, I’m getting to that,” he said impatiently. “He served his time, then a series of rapes popped up in West LA. When the investigators ran the DNA from the vic’s toilet, it hit on Burns. They went to arrest him, but his wife said he walked out one day and never came home.
“Ironically, the same day he raped the West LA woman.”
Jim let that sink in before continuing. “So when I ran the DNA we extracted from Becca—”
“Wait,” Carina said, “I thought you said you didn’t have anything from Becca.”
“I should have told you, but I was swamped running DNA myself. I don’t have to tell you how shorthanded we are right now.”
“I’m sorry, it wasn’t an accusation—”
“No, I should have said something. Anyway, I found a hair with a follicle in one of the layers of plastic wrap. One hair, that’s it. There’s some other trace evidence—wool from a blanket, some cotton fibers—but this was the only DNA evidence. So I ran it against the database and it popped up Mitchell Burns. But there’s something else.”
“What?”
“Another commonality to our current murders.”
“Glue?”
“No, but close. Burns gagged his victims with a black bandanna and tied them to the bedposts with white nylon rope.”
“White rope is common,” Nick said.
“But black bandannas aren’t,” Carina added. “So he broke into their house to rape them?” Carina wasn’t surprised. It was common, but her fear that no one was safe even in their own homes was deep-seated.
“Yes. Ground-level apartments in low-security buildings. He was a repeat offender, and had used the bandannas in his previous crimes as well.”
“Any particular reason?”
“None that was in the file.”
“But you said he’s not in prison.”
“He’s still missing. LAPD watched his house for a while, but he never returned.”
“Maybe he realized he’d made a mistake and ran,” Nick said.
“That was my thought.”
“Eight years is a long time to disappear,” Nick said. “Especially a wanted man and repeat offender.”
Carina wrapped her mind around the information Jim had given her. “So the DNA matched a known rapist who has been missing for eight years?”
“No,” Jim said. “Mitchell Burns didn’t rape our three victims. But a close relative did. A brother, first cousin, uncle, son.”
“Son.”
“He has two. According to the police reports, he had two minor sons at the time of his first arrest twelve years ago, twelve and five.”
“That would make them about twenty-four and seventeen,” Carina said. “Names?”
“They’re not in the record, but get this. Burns’s wife moved to San Diego six years ago.” Jim handed her another sheet of paper.
“Here’s the address of Regina Burns. She lives in University City.” University City was between downtown San Diego and La Jolla to the north.
Carina gathered the information and checked her weapon. “Who wants to take a bet that Kyle Burns is the rapist’s son?”
No one took the bet.
“Do you want backup?” Jim asked Carina.
“We’re just going to talk to Kyle Burns first, then Mitchell Burns’s wife,” Carina said. “If Regina Burns confirms what we think we know, we need to put twenty-four/seven surveillance on Kyle Burns and fight for a warrant.”
“It’s going to be next to impossible to get Kyle Burns in with what we have. No attorney will allow him to submit to a DNA test.”
“Then we’ll have to find other evidence to give us probable cause for an arrest. Then we can get his DNA.”
“Don’t you need a warrant for DNA?” Nick asked.
“In California all you need is probable cause for an arrest. Everyone arrested for a felony in California is subject to DNA testing.”
With a solid lead at last, Carina rushed from the room, and Nick followed.
TWENTY
-
EIGHT
Hi Scout:
I’m so sorry about Felix. How awful! If anything happened to my kitties, I would be so upset.
I’ve been visiting my mother for the last week and haven’t had time to e-mail you. My mom’s been sick and we’ve had a hard time with it. I just hope she gets better. The doctors are afraid the cancer has come back, but I’m praying it’s not that again.
If you want to talk about Felix, go ahead.
By the way, I’m really struggling in one of my classes. You really helped me with my midterms last semester, in calculus, remember? Do you think you have time today to help with another problem? I’ll hang out in the private chat area. I have Room 303 reserved and open on my computer. I’ll be studying here all day, so if you can help just pop in.
Elizabeth.
Dillon composed the e-mail from “Elizabeth Rimes” and sent it off to Scout’s public e-mail account through the MyJournal server.
“Smart kid,” Patrick said.
“Smart enough to not use her real name and to realize Scout was obsessing over her.”
Dillon had spoken to Elizabeth—real name Bethany Eggers—over the phone, and she had told him she’d stopped responding to Scout’s e-mails when she found out he’d lied about his cat dying. She’d found three other messages on the MyJournal board from him talking about “Felix” dying. “It was downright creepy,” she said. “When you’re done with my account, just close it down.”
Because Elizabeth had never responded to the cat message, Dillon composed it in a way to encourage interaction. He had the chat room window open, and Patrick had a mirror of the site on his computer screen.
“Now what?” Dillon asked.
“We wait.”
“How long?”
“As long as it takes.”
Dillon let out a sigh. “I’m a patient man, Patrick, but this tests even my resolve.”
“I’m going to call Carina and tell her we’ve set the trap and to be on alert.”
“Tell her to be careful, too.”
“I always do.”
Carina and Nick arrived at the Sand Shack after the dinner rush. Kyle Burns didn’t look particularly pleased to see them, but he approached and said, “What can I help you with, Detectives?”
“We’d like to talk to you about your father.”
Carina gauged his reaction, surprised at the intense anger that flashed across his face.
“I don’t want to talk about him.” Burns realized he’d spoken too loudly and looked around. Several of the waitstaff looked away. “Let’s go to my office,” he said through clenched teeth.
Carina and Nick followed him back. She assessed the situation. Kyle didn’t appear to be armed, but she wasn’t going to be crammed into that little office of his where he might be able to turn the tables on them.
“Mr. Burns—” Carina began.
“I don’t want to talk about my father,” he said again. “I have nothing to do with him.”
“Well then, maybe you’ll listen. We know that Mitchell Burns was a convicted rapist who disappeared eight years ago while under suspicion for rape. Have you seen or heard from him since?”
“No.”
“What about your mother?”
He gave a half-laugh. “She can have him. She’s no better than he is.”
“Are you saying that your mother may have had contact with her husband?”
Kyle rubbed both hands over his face. “No, he never contacted her.”
“How can you be so sure?”
“She would have told me.”
“You’re close?”
“No, but if she saw Mitch she would have told me.”
“What about your brother?”
“What about him?”
“Do you think he may have had contact with Mitch Burns?”
“No, never.”
“You sound certain.”
“Brandon would have told me.” Kyle shook his head. “Ask him yourself. He’s busing tables right now.”
Carina was surprised. “You didn’t give us any employee records about your brother.”
“He just helps out sometimes after school and on the weekends.” He sighed. “Look, I pay him under the table, okay? Is that a crime?”
“Actually, yes.”
Kyle frowned. “It’s just that—”
Carina put her hand up. “I’m not going to arrest you for IRS problems. But I’d like to talk to your brother. Maybe your father has contacted him.”
“You don’t understand what it was like. I was twelve when he went to jail. I sat in the courtroom during the trial and listened to what he’d done. Listened to my own mother lie for him.” Kyle grimaced. “And then the prosecutor didn’t go after her for perjury because he felt sorry for her. What a joke. She was pathetic. We were all better off without him.”
The amiable man they’d interviewed earlier in the week was gone, replaced by a bitter, angry son.
“But he was released.”
“Four years. Only four years for raping two women. He probably raped more, but they didn’t come forward. Why?” He looked at Carina. “Why don’t they come forward? He would have gotten more time.”
Carina said, “They’re scared. They don’t think the police will believe them. They think it’s their fault. There are lots of reasons.”
Kyle’s face fell. “All stupid reasons.”
“What happened when your father was released?”
“My mother took him back. Can you believe it?”
Carina had seen it many times. Either the women were blind or stupid, scared or complicit. Or all of the above.
“The police said he disappeared. According to the interview with Regina Burns, he left after dinner on April eight, eight years ago, and never returned.”
“That’s true.”
“That was the same night as the last rape.”
“I don’t know if I knew that at the time. When the police came, my mother sent us out of the room. I was eavesdropping but didn’t catch everything. And my mother never said anything when I asked.”
“Your brother was there as well?”
“Yeah. He’s now in high school. Amazing considering he still lives with that woman.”
“That woman?”
“Our mother.”
“Do you own a computer?” Carina asked, changing the subject.
“Yeah, why?”
“Would you object to having someone from the department come down and look at it?”
He tensed. “Why?”
“We believe Angie’s killer frequented her online journal several times before her murder.”
“I didn’t even know she had one . . . wait. You don’t think I—”
Kyle jumped up, irate. “Just because my father was a damn rapist, you think I could have done that?”
“Calm down—”
“I’ve lived with the guilt of what my father did for years! I hated him. I’m glad he’s gone. I hope he’s in Hell where he belongs.”
He stormed out of the kitchen.
“Well, that certainly was interesting,” Carina said.
“Maybe it’s in the blood,” Nick said. “Shall we go talk to Mrs. Regina Burns?”
“Absolutely. She sounds like a real winner. But you know what? I think I’d like to wait until Brandon Burns gets off work, chat him up a bit.”
“He’s seventeen.”
“If he says he doesn’t want to talk, I won’t push it. Maybe we’ll see him later tonight when we talk to his mother. I’d just like to get a read on him before then.”
Nick frowned. “Burns didn’t give us permission to search his computer.”
“I noticed. I’m going to make sure the twenty-four/seven surveillance on Burns has been approved while we wait for Little Brother to leave.”
Brandon Burns walked out of the Sand Shack alone shortly after nine-thirty that night. Carina recalled seeing him the first time she visited the Shack with Will. Brandon was tall and skinny, still growing into his awkward height. He was pleasant-looking, if a bit nondescript, and well-groomed with short brown hair and pressed clothes. Carina and Nick approached and showed their police identification.
“Do you have a couple minutes to talk?” Nick asked.
“Um, sure, I guess. Do you want to go inside?”
Carina didn’t want Kyle to interrupt her conversation with Brandon. “Here’s fine. It won’t take long.”
“Okay.” He looked from Nick to Carina. “You’ve been here a couple times this week.”
Carina nodded. “Yes, we’re talking to everyone who worked with Angie. Did you know her?”
“A little.” Brandon played with the change and keys in his pocket.
“When was the last time you saw her?”
“I don’t know. Last week sometime, I guess. I think we both worked on Wednesday and I worked Friday to set up for dinner, but Kyle doesn’t want me working more than four hours a day.
“That makes sense, since you’re in high school. Don’t want your grades to slip,” Carina said. “Do you like working for your brother?”
He nodded vigorously. “Yeah. He’s really great.”
“Do you know if your father has been in contact with your brother?”
He stared at them wide-eyed. “My dad? Do you know where he is?”
Nick’s heart went out to the kid. His father, a convicted rapist. What must it be like growing up with the weight of that on your young shoulders? He’d just been a little kid when his father was in prison, then nine or ten when he disappeared.
“No, we don’t,” Carina said. “But we’re trying to find him. Has he contacted you at all in the eight years since he disappeared?”
“Me? Why?” A hint of wariness, uncertainty.
“We’d just like to talk to him.”
The kid bit his thumbnail. “I haven’t talked to him since I was nine. He stopped coming home one day. I didn’t want to move here because how could he find us? But my mother said we had to.”
“Do you think your mother has talked to him?”
He shook his head. “No. She’s probably the one who chased him off, always yelling at him. Stupid this, dumbass that, pathetic fool. That’s what she called him and he didn’t like it. She’s the reason he left.”
“What about your brother? Do you think Kyle has kept in contact with him?”
No comment.
“Brandon?”
His face turned red with barely restrained anger.
“Kyle doesn’t like him.”
“Why’s that?”
“I don’t know.”
Whether Brandon really didn’t know about his father’s history, or was lying, Nick couldn’t tell. He did sense that Brandon was embarrassed, which suggested that he might have an idea of what had happened years ago, but maybe his brother or mother had tried to protect him.
Nick spoke up. “Brandon, do you know why your father went to prison?”
He stuck his lip out. “Yes.”
“Was Kyle angry with your father because he was in prison?”
Brandon shook his head. “Kyle was angry all the time when he got out of prison. He didn’t want him to come home.”
Carina handed Brandon her card. “I want you to call me anytime, day or night, if you hear from or see your father.”
“Why?”
“We really can’t say.”
Brandon’s face lit up with hope. “Do you think he’s here? In San Diego?”
“Brandon,” Nick said, “call if you hear from him, okay? Or if he contacts your mother or brother.”
The teen nodded absently, and Nick wondered if he’d even heard what Nick had told him.
They left to track down Regina Burns at her house in University City.
“What do you think?” Carina asked.
“I think he misses his dad and either doesn’t know why he went to prison or doesn’t care.”
“He was just a kid.” Carina frowned. “He’s the same age as Lucy. I can’t imagine what she would have felt if she found out someone she loved had done something like Brandon’s father did.”
“He may be a kid, but . . . ” Nick paused.
“What?”
“Never mind.”
“I want to know what you’re thinking.”
He didn’t know if he could trust his instincts, but the last time he’d had a hunch and didn’t tell anyone, he’d almost been killed.
“Brandon’s reaction was odd.”
“To what?”
“To the idea that his father might be in town.”
Carina pondered that. “If you were a seventeen-year-old kid who hadn’t seen his father in eight years, forgetting that his father is a criminal, wouldn’t you be excited? Hopeful?” She paused. “I regret giving him false hopes, though. If Mitch Burns
is
in town, if he has anything to do with these murders, it means he’ll be going back to prison. But I don’t think he’s around. I’d guess he got himself a false identity and moved out of state.”
“Brandon has probably worked up some fantasies about his father. Made him into a hero, not a villain.”
“You sound just like Dillon, and I think you’re right. Brandon said that his brother was angry when their father was released. Because he thought he should stay in prison?”
“Do you know many kids who have that strong a sense of right and wrong? That they’d
want
their father in prison for rape?”
“Most would probably act like Brandon, put their criminal father up on a pedestal.”
“There may be something else going on here.”
“Like what?”
“We have a similar but not identical MO to Mitch Burns. We have DNA of a male relative of Burns. What if one or both of the brothers are involved?”
“A killing pair?”
“Kyle is a strong-willed, dominant older brother with a hair-trigger temper and huge chip on his shoulder about his father,” Nick said. “Brandon is quieter, reticent, looks up to his brother and worships a nonexistent father. He’d be very susceptible to outside influences.”
“There’s no evidence. I can’t just walk in and take Brandon’s computer without cause. He’s a minor. But maybe his mother will let us have the computer. At least we can rule him out if nothing else.”
It was after ten Saturday night by the time Carina and Nick arrived at Regina Burns’s house in University City, roughly halfway between downtown San Diego and La Jolla.
Mrs. Burns lived in a small, post–World War II cinder-block house in a quiet neighborhood. By the looks of the automobiles and neatly trimmed lawns, most of the houses’ owners were original, and were now well past retirement age. The houses that had changed hands were split between would-be mechanics with multiple cars in various states of assembly in oil-stained driveways, and young families with kids’ toys as lawn art behind chain-link fences.
Carina looked at the DMV report she’d run while driving to the University City home. “Regina Burns has two cars registered in her name, a 1996 Camaro and a 1990 Taurus.”