TRACE - CSI Reilly Steel #5 (Forensic novel Police Procedural Series) (7 page)

Chapter 8

‘No offense, Reilly,’ said Lucy, later that evening when they were finished at the lab, ‘but I can’t really see how this is going to be of any use. I wasn’t there when Grace disappeared. I can’t know for sure where it happened.’

‘It doesn’t matter,’ said Reilly. ‘I just want to go over the route she would have taken home. It’s all important, especially if you remember something.’

They drove through the leafy streets, slowly following the route that Grace would have taken the day she went missing. The houses were small and pretty, with gardens out front. A few kids were out playing in the front gardens or cycling around the paths outside their houses. It wasn’t hard to imagine Lucy and her sister living here and being happy, feeling protected. It wasn’t hard to imagine that if you lived here, you might think that nothing could hurt you.

Lucy sighed. She seemed quite reluctant to do this, and while Reilly understood that it brought up painful memories for her, she was the one who had asked her for help. Well, she would get Reilly’s help, but on her terms.

‘OK,’ she said, walking around the neat suburban house estate they’d driven to. ‘This is Grace’s best friend’s house?’

Lucy nodded. ‘Yeah, Georgina Davidson. They were really close.’

‘And did you know Georgina?’

‘I knew her,’ Lucy smiled a little bitterly. ‘But we weren’t friends.’

‘Why not?’

‘She was a nasty sort, really. Whenever she saw me and Grace wasn’t around, she was mean to me. They called themselves “The Two G’s”. It was really stupid.’

‘What kind of stuff were they into? What did they like doing?’

Lucy shrugged. ‘The normal kind of teenage stuff. They listened to music, went down town on Saturday and bought CDs. They liked older boys.’

‘Did Grace ever get into any trouble?’

‘Not really. Before she disappeared she had just started to act out, but it was normal teenage stuff. She would come home late or climb out our window. I had to swear to her not to tell mum and dad. After she left, Dad found out that his gin and vodka bottles had been emptied and filled with water. But all the kids drank down at the park. Not me, though. Can you imagine? I was barely able to walk to the shops on my own after Grace disappeared.’

Reilly could picture it. She felt a fresh stab of pity for Lucy, who would have spent her teenage years being so heavily supervised, hardly able to go out and experiment like everyone else. Reilly knew how difficult it was to be the one who was left behind.

‘But she was good at hiding stuff, you know? Mum and Dad were totally convinced that if she got in trouble, it was someone else’s fault. She was so smart. She would have done something really good with her life, I know it.’

‘Did you ever spend time with Grace outside of the house and away from your parents at this time?’

‘A little bit. We would walk to the shops for ice creams or something and she would tell me about her boyfriend Darren. She was really into him.’

‘Did you meet him?’

‘I saw him once, when I was walking home from hockey. They were standing by the side of the fields, talking. They didn’t see me. After she disappeared I would see him around with this older guy, maybe a brother, but if he knew who I was, he didn’t acknowledge me. Sometimes… sometimes she came home crying,’ said Lucy suddenly.

Reilly didn’t say anything, it seemed like Lucy was almost in a trance, remembering things that she hadn’t thought of in years. ‘She would climb in our window after midnight and she would be crying. Once I asked her what was wrong and she said “Why does he have to say horrible things? Doesn’t he know how much I love him?” But she wouldn’t say anything else. I should have told my mum and dad. If I told them what she was doing, they would have grounded her and she wouldn’t have gone missing.’

Tears began to run down Lucy’s face.

‘It’s not your fault,’ said Reilly. ‘You know that, deep down. Even if your parents had found out, she would have rebelled against them anyway. It’s what teenagers do. None of this was in your control, Lucy.’

She waited in silence until Lucy had stopped crying. They were pulled up outside the Gormans’ old house. The family had moved away soon after Grace’s disappearance. Reilly could see the window that Grace would have climbed through. The oak tree that used to stand next to the window had been cut down, probably to stop someone else’s daughter doing the same thing.

‘I know,’ said Lucy, once her tears had subsided. ‘I know that it’s not my fault. People have been telling me that for years. But I just feel so helpless.’

‘I want to ask you to do something,’ said Reilly. ‘Something that you may not be comfortable with. I’m not even convinced it will give results, but it’s worth a shot. I want you to undergo hypnotherapy, to see if there’s anything that you’ve blanked out. Talking to you now it seems as though you’ve repressed your memories of that time. There might be something else.’

Lucy shook her head. ‘I’ve told you everything I remember. I told the investigators right at the start what I knew. You’ve read the files. No way am I doing that, Reilly. I’m sorry, but it’s just not going to happen.’

Reilly nodded. She wasn’t going to argue with Lucy yet. People were afraid of what their psyche held. She would be afraid. But she had a feeling that Lucy might change her mind. This was more important to her than anything else.

She just needed some time.

The following morning, Reilly went for a run before work. She liked the feeling of being among all the others at the park trying to outrun the mundanity of their lives, trying to outrun the grey Dublin day.

Trying to feel something real before they were plunged into their lives, even if it was just the desperate beating of their heart. She knew she was in her element here. Her body soaked up the impact of her feet on the concrete, turned it into something powerful that she could use for the rest of the day. Her eyes focused on something ahead of her, something invisible and it cleared her mind, mad her feel like she was above everything, able to pick up on the smallest of details. She could smell those around her: clean, sharp sweat, deodorant, the smell of people. Their blood rushing to their skin. It was a good smell, a small of people being human. Not being monsters.

None of this was easy. There was nothing easy about what she for a living did all day long. Her young GFU team might think they knew that now, but it was nothing compared to what you saw once you had been working forensics for years. Sometimes Reilly saw kids like Lucy, Gary and Rory and wanted to tell them to get out of this line of work. Go be a schoolteacher, she wanted to say, or work in a bookshop. Go do something useful that won’t leave you hurt and lonely.

But that wasn’t her place, she knew. They all had their reasons for being there, just like she did. Her job was to make them the best she could, to attempt to guide them through the many obstacles that this job threw in your way.

There would be times when they wanted to give up, when the darkness of the world seemed too much for them. She had been through it, and her mentor, Daniel Forrest had dragged her through. It had all made her stronger. If she was worried about losing her edge, she only had to look back at some of the hellish cases she had endured. She could do it again, she knew.

So the run was a good way to start the day, before it got clouded with the mess that she dealt in. Today was a full day: interviews with Jennifer’s friends and family, and two of the men that she had dated that had come forward.

They just had to find the killer before something else happened. Every morning Reilly woke up knowing it was one day closer to when he would feel brave enough to kill again. They needed to get ahead of him. She ran faster and faster, as though the killer was ahead of her and she was trying to catch him physically.

When she reached the gates of the park she realized that she had almost run herself to exhaustion. She stretched up towards the sky, fighting the impulse to curl into a ball. As she fought to control her breath, she thought once more about the day ahead. They would make progress, today, she told herself.

They just had to.

‘Reilly! You’re here, finally,’ Gary rushed her like an eager puppy as soon as she got in the door.

‘It’s 7:55am, Gary,’ she said. ‘I wouldn’t say I overslept or anything.’

‘I know, I know. It’s just, last night I was thinking about the case and I couldn’t sleep. So I came in at around 5am…I know, I know, it’s crazy,’ he said in response to her stern look. ‘But I was thinking about the bed in our victim’s house. And I’d been going over cold cases for days and finding no similarities. But I just needed to have another look. It was playing on my mind. And Reilly,’ he said, ‘I think I found something.’

Reilly, Chris and Kennedy waited patiently as Gary set up the viewing equipment. Crime scenes had only started being transformed into 3D a few years ago, so there was still something of the magical about it for Reilly and the two cops.

But it was now just the everyday for Gary. He would never know what it was like to spend painstaking hours recreating an older crime scene from photos alone.

Reilly could see that he was excited. She knew how it felt, early on, when you made a connection or discovery. It was a rush, a high. It was easy to believe you were simply solving a riddle sometimes, looking for clues. You had to forget that you were dealing with the minutiae of people’s lives, or you would go mad.

‘OK,’ said Gary. ‘Besides the Armstrong case and the previous one that knocked out Reilly, there have been no other antimine poisonings that we could find. So I started to look at poisonings with other substances, instead. Over the past few years, there has been a significant rise in people being injected with large amounts of heroin; trying to make murder look like a suicide. But I had this perp figured for something a little more sophisticated. Whoever this guy is, he’s not out trawling backstreets to score dope.’

Reilly saw Kennedy surreptitiously slide a snack bar from his pocket. She and Chris exchanged a grin; Kennedy caught it and blushed, then shrugged. His colleagues knew his vices all too well.

‘But there was this one unsolved case that kept coming up when I ran a search for poisoning. A few months ago. A girl, living in a one room bedsit in Rathmines. Aspirations to be an actress, she had a couple of tiny parts in plays. 24 years old, she was found dead one day by her landlord. She worked part time as a waitress in town and she hadn’t shown for a week. But no one worried too much, because waitresses are always slipping the net. So she was in a pretty advanced state of decay. They couldn’t figure out if it was homicide or suicide.’

He brought up two images side by side. The decomposing body of the girl on one side, and the recreation of her flat on the other. Reilly felt a stab of pity. Who would want four people dispassionately analyzing the contents of your life when you were dead? Everything this girl had was in this grimy little room. You could see her dreams in the theatre prints on the walls, her hopes in the obsessive neatness of the room.

‘They eventually landed on murder, because the pills she had taken hadn’t been swallowed whole, but crushed up and added to the food she was eating.’ He paused for a moment to let that fact set it. A third deadly dinner.

‘Added to that, it was clear that someone had been in the room with her. Neighbors had heard talking and laughter but no struggle of any kind. The place was clean. But, if you look here,’ He enlarged the recreation of the girl’s room and zoomed in on the bed. It was rumpled, indented. Someone had been lying there. ‘Same kind of thing as in the Armstrong case. Someone lay down in the bed. Someone that was heavier than the victim.’

The victim herself lay neatly on the couch, as if slumbering.

‘Looks like we’ve got a repeat offender then,’ said Kennedy. ‘If there’s been three, and he’s got away with it, there’s probably more.’

‘And he’ll be looking to try again,’ Chris agreed.

‘We’ll look into the restaurant where she worked,’ said Kennedy, ‘see if we can make a few connections. Seems too good to be true that she worked in the restaurant business.’

‘This place doesn’t exactly match any of those that Jennifer Armstrong went to, though,’ said Reilly. ‘This is basically a burger joint.’

‘That’s why this one is mine,’ said Kennedy triumphantly. ‘The two of you can have your tiny pieces of duck liver or whatever it is. I’m going to eat some real food. And, if there’s information to be had, I’ll come back with it. Let’s see who has the most productive day, eh?’

‘You’re on,’ said Chris. ‘If you make it back to work, that is. You’ll probably give yourself killer indigestion.’

Kennedy laughed. ‘Josie made me a salad for lunch,’ he said. ‘Anything’s better than suffering through that.’

‘We’ll meet you back here at 3pm,’ said Reilly. ‘Compare notes.’

‘Sure,’ said Kennedy. ‘Just let me know if you want me to pick you up a burger. I get the feeling you won’t be quite satisfied.’

Chapter 9

It was a beautiful early summers day for a change, and Reilly and Chris had an outside terrace table at Amuse Bouche, the first restaurant on their list licensed to import and use Joker Fruit aka antimine.

Reilly had changed out of her work clothes into a simple black shift dress and high heeled boots. The whole point of her and Chris visiting was to not look like law enforcement. Kennedy would have stood out like a sore thumb but Chris had scrubbed up too, replacing his usual work uniform of T-shirt and jeans for a light blue tailored shirt and chinos.

‘Nice to see a bit of sunshine for a change.’ said Reilly. ‘I don’t think we’ve had one sunny day since I got back.’

‘You Americans, always complaining about the weather,’ said Chris. He couldn’t help but admire how she looked under the golden sunlight, though, her hair falling in glossy waves, her skin soft and bright. Then he cursed his mind for straying in that direction again. You’re here for work, he reminded himself sternly.

‘What do you think of Gary’s little show this morning?’ he asked, determinedly steering the conversation towards work.

‘It looks promising,’ she said. ‘But it’s flimsy at best. Not admissible of course. We need a real, concrete lead.’

‘At least we’re building a decent psychological profile,’ said Chris. ‘Seems he has control issues. He’s a perfectionist. Cold and calculating. But obviously he’s needy too. Needs the comfort of a woman’s bed, but not sexually. It’s more of a nurturing thing.’

Reilly raised an eyebrow. ‘Maybe you should apply for the new profiler’s job, Chris. You seem pretty clued in on all this psych stuff.’

He winked. ‘Must’ve learnt from the best then. But I do think this kind of thing is important. We’ll cover all avenues of course, but it lets us know that we should concentrate our efforts on more professional, educated possible suspects. This isn’t a case of a jealous lover, or a revenge killing.’

‘You’re right,’ she said, ‘but I still want something hard and cold in my hands. If we’re going to catch this guy, I need to know where he is, not just what makes him tick.’

‘I’m with you there,’ said Chris. ‘And with Kennedy’s hard-line, no nonsense, “let’s get the baddies” attitude, the lot of us make a pretty fearsome trio don’t we?’

‘I’ll toast to that,’ said Reilly. ‘if only we weren’t still on duty. I’ve just seen a white from Napa Valley on the menu that I’d die for. A taste of home.’

‘You know I did my undergrad degree in psychology don’t you?’ said Chris, unexpectedly. ‘I did kind of want to go down that road, what Forrest does. Or did,’ he added, remembering that Reilly’s FBI friend was now retired.

‘Why didn’t you then?’

‘It just seemed too taxing, being in the minds of these guys all day long. Almost being them, trying to understand what motivated them to do such horrible things. I wanted more action, wanted to be the person who put them away.’

‘But you analyze them, anyway,’ she said, understanding. ‘You can’t get away from it. Every case we’re on, you’re following the perp like he’s drawing you a mind map. I get that all too well.’

Chris shrugged. ‘I suppose I managed to avoid it for a few years,’ he said. ‘It was all about cuffing them. But lately I have been thinking about the cases a bit more deeply. I don’t see the value of throwing these guys in jail without knowing why. How are we supposed to stop it happening again?’

‘Sometimes you can’t stop evil,’ said Reilly. ‘It’s that simple.’

‘Do you really believe in evil though?’ he asked. ‘Even after all we’ve seen, evil seems to me a kind of fairy tale construction. People are crazy, mean, motivated by uncontrollable desires. They’re ignorant of their own souls. But I don’t believe in evil.’

‘I do,’ said Reilly. She looked thoughtful. She didn’t often have this conversation with people. ‘Maybe it’s got something to do with my…family. I believe I’ve seen evil.’

‘I’m sorry,’ he said, temporarily forgetting that what they were talking about was deeply personal for her. ‘I didn’t mean to …’

‘No, it’s fine’ she said. ‘I know that my own experience sometimes clouds me, makes me believe that there is no redemption if you like. You know, even my dad has a greater capacity to believe in goodness than I do. He’s always cautioning me: “Try to see the good, honey.”’

‘Good advice.’

‘Hard to follow, though. But I do see some very good things on this menu,’ she said expertly changing the subject.

‘You’re not wrong there. I hope you don’t object if I go for the full three courses? I worked out in anticipation of this,’

She laughed. ‘Me too.’

The restaurant was styled like a cottage: wisteria growing along the trellis on the terrace, the ceilings inside were low and the tableware was delicate and floral. Reilly generally preferred a cleaner more modern look, but this was interesting. Their waitress kept shooting little glances at Chris, but he seemed immersed in the menu and talking to her. It was quite pleasant, she thought. She and Chris never really got to chat like this anymore. They’d done so quite a bit in the early days when they were just starting to work together and get to know each other, but more recently their relationship had cooled a little. She’d surprised herself by how much she’d missed his company while she was in Florida and was happy of the opportunity for a proper catchup now that she was back.

Of course the only reason they were here was because Joker Fruit was used in the food, and when Reilly flipped to the dessert menu, she saw the dish: “
Joker’s revenge: a molten white lava cake with a puree of the most dangerous fruit you’ll ever eat. Only if you dare
.”

There was a note at the bottom of the page explaining that every care had been taken to prepare the food safely, but you still ate it at your own risk. Reilly had already suffered at the hands of a very mild dose of antimine and felt that diners here were really taking their lives into her own hands. She knew it wasn't worth the risk. Nothing tastes quite that good. She smiled as she recalled her earlier statement: “I’d die for a glass of that wine.” Not quite.

‘It’s nice to see you smile,’ said Chris. ‘I get the sense that you’ve been a little low since you got back from the States.’

‘I have, actually’ she admitted, touched that he’d noticed. ‘Just a bit blue and irritable. For some reason I can’t seem to get my groove back. Everything feels a little blurry …like I can’t quite get a handle on things.’

‘You wouldn’t know it to look at you,’ said Chris. ‘You seem as sharp as ever.’

‘Yes, well. I’m confiding in you only,’ she said laughing lightly. ‘I can’t have the rest of the team thinking I’m not on top of my game. Especially not Kennedy.’

‘You don’t always need to be a superwoman, Reilly.’

‘You don’t cut yourself much slack either,’ she replied pointedly.

Their first course arrived just then. Reilly had seared tuna on Israeli couscous with a garlic asparagus puree. Chris had an ostrich burger. ‘You might as well have gone and had one with Kennedy,’ she joked.

The waitress topped up their water glasses and Chris continued their conversation where it had been left off. ‘I don’t need to cut myself any slack,’ he said. ‘My life is pretty simple. I’ve whittled it down to the bare necessities. It’s basically work, exercise, and hanging out with little Rachel.’

‘You really enjoy seeing that little girl don’t you?’

‘I love it,’ said Chris, taking a bite of his slider. ‘She’s one of the things about life that just makes me feel that it can’t be all bad. You’ve met Matt and Emma; they are so happy. It’s hard being a family in this day and age, but they make it work. And Rachel’s a dote. I took her to the beach a little while back and she buried me in sand. It was freezing. I had sand in my ears, not to mention other places, for days.’

Reilly cracked up laughing. It was funny to think of him in such a precarious position. ‘Seems like she’s really got you wrapped around her little finger.’

‘She does.’ He smiled. ‘I’m helpless.’

‘Did you ever…’ Reilly wasn't unsure if she should ask. Too personal? ‘Did you ever wonder about, you know…’

‘Reilly,’ he said. ‘Just ask the question. We’ve known each other a long time now. Yes, I did think about having kids at one point. When I was younger, but of course after Mel. … it just seemed crazy to even think about anything like that anymore, bringing a child into the world. But it’s a good thing for some people. The world needs more parents who love their kids. What about you?’

Reilly was really enjoying herself. The tiny bite of the tuna she had was delicious. She cut off another piece. ‘‘Me? It’s never really been on my agenda. I think it would be great, I mean, like you said I think it’s great when other people do it. But I just don’t know how people like us could do our jobs and have a relationship, never mind a child.’

‘I guess it’s a choice. Maybe you can’t do both.’

‘If it’s a choice, then I choose this,’ she said. ‘I think I make a better CSI than anything else.’

‘Don’t sell yourself short,’ he said. ‘I think you’d be just as good with unwashed hair and vomit stains on your sweatshirt. Sleep deprivation would suit you down to the ground.’

She balled up her napkin and threw it at him. ‘Very funny. I’ve heard fatherhood can be pretty rough too. You wouldn’t have time to work out, and soon you and Kennedy would look like twins.’

‘That should be enough to put anyone off,’ he chuckled. Then more seriously: ‘Ah, I don’t know if I would mind all that much. I’ve lived this way long enough, I sometimes think if everything else was right, I might not mind letting some of the rest slip.’

Reilly nodded. The conversation was becoming intense. She wasn’t used to this kind of openness from Chris. She wasn’t used to being open herself. It made her feel naked, like she was walking on a platform that might give at any moment. She wondered if it was a carry-over from the emotional intimacy with Todd, as well as that overwhelming, all-consuming sex. Unbidden, she felt a stab of desire in her lower stomach as the thought of it flashed into her head. It was strange to be thinking of that now, here with Chris. It made her feel confused. Chris was attractive, anyone could see that. But they were workmates. Simple.

Still, she was glad of the distraction when their mains came.

Chris had ordered steak, which she thought was a bit boring, but she had to admit that it looked good. It was a couple of inches thick, still rare and running blood in the middle. It was garnished by a potato which had been carved into a kind of torpedo shape and fried. Then vegetables and a wedge of blue cheese sat on the side. Simple, but effective.

She had stuck with the seafood theme and ordered the restaurant’s take on an old English classic: fish pie. Hunts of tender white fish and prawns lay under a crust of sweet potato and parmesan. She pierced the top and a creamy white sauce flowed out. She was still starving and began to eat with gusto.

‘You have to try this,’ said Chris. ‘Here.’ He held out his fork to her, a bite sized piece of steak on the end. Reilly was momentarily flustered, unsure whether to take the fork and feed herself, or let Chris place it in her mouth. It all seemed very intimate. She didn’t want to seem like she was making a big fuss, so in the end let him place it in her mouth.

‘It’s fantastic,’ she said. In turn she gave him a bite of her meal. A woman at the table next to them smiled at them indulgently. Did it really matter if people thought they were a couple? She had to get the conversation back to safe territory.

‘So the chef is going to come and talk to us after lunch?’

‘Yes, it’s all arranged. Let’s hope he hasn’t figured out why we’re here. He might have laced the food.’

‘At least then we would have a lead,’ she said.

‘Are we going to have this dessert then?’

‘What? Are you serious?’

‘Of course. It seems a pity to go to all of this trouble and not. It’s what we’re interested in.’

‘Thanks, but I’ve already had my share. Not to mention that I’m almost full enough to burst.’

‘I’ll chance it then,’ said Chris, signaling to the waitress. ‘I want to see what all the fuss is about.’