Unspeakable (3 page)
“Dr. Frank Cisernos,” the white-haired man from the dock said, standing up. “County Medical Examiner.”
Elaina shook his hand and introduced herself. She darted her gaze around to the other faces. The young Latino officer smiled at her, but no one else rose to greet her.
Maynard took one of the two empty chairs and gestured for Elaina to take the other. She deposited her briefcase in it and remained standing, then laced her fingers together in front of her so no one would see that she was trembling.
“So, you’re here to lend us a hand.” Breck leaned forward on his elbows. “Scarborough tells me you’re fresh from the Academy.”
Elaina tried not to wince. “I graduated last fall.” She wondered what else the supervisory special agent had told him. Her boss made no secret of his dislike for her, but he’d finally given her a shot at criminal profiling. Maybe he was coming around.
Or maybe he’d sent her here to fall on her face.
She cleared her throat. “I’m here to provide a criminal profile. Also, I’m authorized to offer FBI assistance with any labs you need.” She glanced at the Texas Ranger—who also probably had the clout to fast-track lab work—and knew her stock was sinking quickly.
“A profile, huh?” Breck leaned back in his chair now. “You’re gonna tell us about our unsub?”
Everyone’s attention settled on Elaina.
“What I have on our subject is preliminary,” she said. “I’ll need to see photos from this morning’s crime scene and I’ll need to observe the autopsy. I understand someone from the state crime lab’s coming down to assist?”
She glanced at Cisernos, who gave a slight nod.
“And do we know the victim’s name?” she asked.
“Nothing confirmed,” Breck said. “But for the past half hour, I’ve had just about every parent whose college kid is down here ringing my phone off the hook. They all heard about the body on the news. Now their daughter’s not answering her cell, and they want to know if it’s her or not.
“So go on ahead.” Breck nodded. “Tell us your profile.”
“You said ‘nothing confirmed,’” Elaina replied, sidestepping the bear trap. “You mean you have a lead?”
“All I’ve got for sure is Caucasian female, long dark hair.” Breck eyed Elaina’s long dark hair as he said this. Then he glanced down at the yellow legal pad on his desk. “She was a mess—we can’t even tell her age. But we took a call this afternoon about an abandoned Audi sedan at a boat slip on the north side of town. Car’s been there two days. It’s registered to Valerie Monroe, twenty-seven-year-old from Houston. There’s a purse inside. Driver’s license, med school ID, health insurance card. She’s a brunette. Car’s been impounded, but we still gotta process everything.”
“And my supervisor told me the victim was found in the marshes this morning by some fishermen.” Elaina looked at the ME. “She was naked and had been eviscerated, apparently, like Gina Calvert back in March?”
“Gina Calvert was found March fifteenth,” Cisernos said. “By my estimation, she’d been there at least two days. This new body looks about three days old to me.”
“And Gina’s body was also discovered in the wildlife park.” Elaina’s confidence returned as she ran through the facts of the case, which she’d committed to memory months ago. “She’d been injected with ketamine
hydrochloride. Her car was found abandoned at a boat slip. Her personal items were left inside.”
Breck folded his arms over his chest. “Okay, sounds like you’ve done your homework, Miss McCord. So tell us about our perp. Who’re we looking for?”
Elaina’s instincts screamed for her to stop. The prudent thing would be to wait until she had all her facts together. But her face felt warm, her armpits felt damp, and the air in the room was thick with skepticism.
She took a deep breath. “I think the offender is a white male, late twenties to mid-thirties. I think he’s bright, but he has an inflated sense of his own intelligence and he’s driven by ego. He’s most likely attractive, possibly charming, and comfortable approaching women with some kind of ploy. His sophisticated MO shows that he’s organized and capable of controlling his impulses. I think he lives on the island, is underemployed, and owns or has easy access to a boat. His hobbies include hunting and fishing. He likes guns. I also think he’s probably got some background in law enforcement.”
She noticed the startled looks but kept going. “No sign of sexual assault, at least nothing overt.”
Breck’s brows arched. “Overt?”
Elaina shifted slightly. “Even without rape, I believe these are sex crimes. The knife work is a form of penetration. And this type of offender sometimes can’t get an erection, so he substitutes something else.”
Breck traded looks with the ranger, and Elaina plunged on so she wouldn’t have to answer any questions yet.
“He kidnaps these women, injects them with a chemical to incapacitate them, takes them to remote locations,
and then makes a deep abdominal incision with a serrated hunting knife. He leaves almost no trace evidence behind, indicating a good deal of knowledge and planning—”
“Now, wait a minute there.” Breck held up his hand. “We only got two victims. You make it sound like we’re dealing with a serial killer.”
“I believe we are.”
“It could be a copycat. Some domestic murder, staged to look like the girl from spring break, just to throw us off.”
Elaina tipped her head to the side. “And how many of those details were released to the media?”
Breck darted an uneasy glance around the room, and she knew she’d made a tactical mistake by challenging him in front of an audience.
But he recovered quickly. “And we don’t know what evidence he might have left in that Audi,” he added. “Could be prints all over.”
“I’m also referring to Gina Calvert’s car. And the abandoned Mustang found at the boat dock following the Mary Beth Cooper murder.”
The room fell silent. Breck’s face was pure astonishment.
“Mary Beth Cooper,” he stated.
She nodded.
“From nine years ago?”
She nodded again.
Breck leaned forward now, scowling. “A guy
confessed
to that crime. He’s sitting in Huntsville.”
Elaina nodded again.
“You mean to tell me you think they got the wrong
guy up there? He was convicted in a court of law. Someone wrote a book about it, for chrissakes.”
“He confessed to a string of murders,” Elaina said. “Investigators have irrefutable DNA evidence he actually committed some of them, too. What I’m saying is, I think we need to look at Mary Beth’s case again. I think it’s related to our unsub.” In fact, Elaina believed there was a good chance Mary Beth Cooper was this perpetrator’s first kill.
“The Cooper girl died of traumatic asphyxia,” Cisernos said.
Elaina’s gaze shifted to the ME.
“Manual strangulation,” he added. “I performed the autopsy myself.”
“And as you mentioned in your report,” she said, “the victim had ketamine in her bloodstream at the time of death. And she’d been stabbed postmortem with a serrated knife.”
The room fell silent again. Elaina searched all the faces for some sign of support. Breck sat with his arms crossed, looking disgusted. Cisernos frowned. The cops in the room looked uncomfortable, with the exception of the young Latino officer, who seemed intrigued. He sat forward on his chair, watching her, as if waiting to hear more.
“Well, now.” Chief Breck stood up and finally offered her his hand. “We’re glad you could make it up here today, Miss McCord. I think we can handle things from here.”
After her stellar performance in front of Breck, Elaina had the urge to go get drunk. She eyed the festive bars
as she drove through town, thinking how nice it would be to pull in and order a double frozen margarita with salt.
Instead, she headed for the bridge. A knot formed in her stomach as she replayed the meeting and forced herself to accept what had happened.
Her first homicide case, her first criminal profile, and she’d totally blown it. No way, no how, would she be invited to observe tomorrow morning’s autopsy. Breck had made that clear enough. If she continued to assist on this case at all, she’d have to do it from Brownsville, using whatever reports she could get her hands on. That was if Scarborough didn’t yank the case away from her and hand it over to a more experienced agent.
Elaina stripped off her jacket at a stoplight. She gazed out the window at the tourists crowding the sidewalks. Women strolled up and down in shorts and bikini tops. Sunburned teenagers with skim boards tucked under their arms trekked home from the beach. A sign up ahead advertised a vacancy at the Sandhill Inn, where Gina Calvert had spent the final days of her short life.
The light changed, and Elaina hung a left onto Causeway Road, which would take her back to the mainland. As she neared the bridge, she glimpsed Laguna Madre glistening in the evening sun. Catamarans and Sunfish dotted the bay, and Elaina watched them wistfully, remembering the last time she’d been aboard a sailboat. It was out on Lake Michigan, half a lifetime ago. The wind had been frigid, but she had spent the afternoon with a smile frozen on her face because her dad had taken the entire day off.
Her cell phone chimed from its berth in the cup holder.
“McCord,” she said.
A brief pause. “Did you get the cigarette butt?”
“Who is this?”
“Bet you’ve got it tagged and bagged by now.” It was a male voice. Low, with a Texas drawl. “I’m right, aren’t I?”
Elaina had a flash of the man leaning against the Coke machine. There had been something familiar about him, something that had been nipping at her subconscious all afternoon.
“Who is this?”
“Troy Stockton. I saw you at the marina, Elaina. Very impressive.”
Troy Stockton. She drew a blank.
“How did you get this number?”
“I’ve got lots of numbers. Hey, you really leaving us already?”
Elaina’s shoulders tensed, and she glanced in the rearview mirror.
“I’m disappointed,” he said. “I wouldn’t have pegged you for a quitter.”
Elaina surveyed the cars behind her: several SUVs, a convertible filled with young women, a delivery truck of some sort. “Listen, why don’t you tell me where you got this number and—”
Click.
Elaina checked the display, but the call was gone. Her incoming-call list read only “Private Caller.” She tossed the phone onto the passenger seat.
Stockton. Troy Stockton. The name rang a bell, but the voice had been totally unfamiliar.
Pop!
The wheel jerked right and the car lunged across two lanes of traffic. Brakes squealed. Horns blared. Elaina wrestled the steering wheel as the car skidded off the road.
Cinco Chavez went looking for Troy at the bayside dump where he spent most of his weekends. As usual, the Dockhouse was packed. Cinco waded through the throng near the bar and spotted Troy in the pool room surrounded by smiling women, empty longnecks, and half-wasted oil riggers who thought they were in for an easy buck.
“Wazzup, T?” Cinco claimed a stool next to a threesome of blondes in low-cut tops.
Troy glanced up from the green felt. “Not much.” He gave the cue ball a smack and pocketed two stripes.
The big guy leaning against the wall looked pissed. Troy chalked his cue and rounded the table to line up another shot.
Cinco sat on the stool and listened to his stomach growl. Breck had called him in early this morning, and he hadn’t had anything besides coffee all day.
“Hey, you eaten yet?” Cinco asked.
Troy didn’t take his eyes off the table. “Nope.” He tapped the cue ball and waited a few beats as the final stripe dropped into a side pocket.
“Let’s go grab some ribs. I’ll tell you about the fed.”
Troy chalked his cue and surveyed the table. “I already talked to Maynard.” He glanced up at his opponent, who was about to lose his roll. “Corner pocket.”
But the guy didn’t have a clue. He stared down at the layout, unable to imagine how Troy was going to pull off a shot like that when the table was littered with solids. He crossed his arms and sent a smug look over Troy’s head to his buddy on the other side of the room.
Troy’s eyes sparked at the challenge. Cinco sat back to watch as his friend zeroed in on the shot with total concentration. The room went still.
The stick kissed the cue ball, and it glided across the felt. It bumped off the wall, slid back across the table between two solids, then magically slowed down just as it neared the eight.
Plunk.
The women let out a collective sigh. The roughneck scowled. Troy didn’t react at all, except to lean his cue against the table and pick up his beer.
“Maynard tell you about the meeting?” Cinco asked.
“More or less.” Troy held out a hand and coolly accepted some twenties. The guys stalked off, bumping into the waitress, who had had finally made it around to pick up empties.
Jamie flashed a smile at Troy. “Get you another beer?”
“Nah, I’m good. Hey, didn’t I see you at the marina earlier?”
Jamie’s smile faded as she filled her tray with empty bottles. “I saw them bring in that girl.” She glanced at Cinco. “I heard she was found on the island, not the mainland. That true?”