“My sources tell me that there’s absolutely no DNA found on that Hill City Jane Doe. They’ve got no way to tell if she’s the victim of the guy who did the girl in the hospital. And top it off, the investigating detective’s an idiot.”
“What’s your plan?”
“Your little agent’s been in contact with the girl in the hospital, and her sketch of the Jane Doe conveniently appeared in every Bay Area paper this morning. So why not set up your agent as the next victim?”
“You think you know enough about their cases to do that?”
Blackwell smiled. “Like I said, it’s a no-brainer.”***
Richard Blackwell watched as Prescott walked off, before heading in the opposite direction. He took out his cell phone, hit the speed dial.
“We’re on,” he said, to the man who answered. “With double the salary.”
“Nice job. You know what to do.”
Perhaps Sydney shouldn’t have finished the remaining two beers in the fridge last night. That thought magnified when, head pounding, she pulled on her gray sweats for her normal morning run. She’d made it as far as the bottom of the stairs, then turned around and went back inside. Running was definitely out. Not that she’d gotten dead drunk, more that she wasn’t used to drinking that much. Instead she spent the time allowing the hot shower to erase some of the night’s stresses. It did little but give her time to think, which, looking back, made the run seem so much easier in comparison, headache and all.
What she couldn’t figure out was how could her father be in some sort of special ops and never mention it? How could her mother never have mentioned it? And what the hell did her father do in the service if his job wasn’t simply to take the damned photos and drawings he’d always said was his responsibility? She thought of Gnoble, his political aspirations, and it occurred to her that if they were doing something glorious, he, of all people, would have announced it to the world. Instead, McKnight committed suicide when he was being investigated for a high-powered political appointment, after mentioning something about her father. Something worth blackmailing for.
By the time she dressed, grabbed the envelope with the photo, then left for work, her mood was downright ugly, and she attributed it directly to stepping outside her routine. She cussed out two drivers who’d gotten in her way, and left the McDonald’s empty-handed when the poor clerk couldn’t figure out how to ring up a sausage sandwich without egg, something Sydney thought was a perfectly reasonable order. Somewhere in the recesses of her mind she realized that her temper was flaring at a pace that had all the earmarks of post-traumatic stress disorder. Probably nothing to do with the drinking or missing her run, and everything to do with revisiting her father’s murder case and the man who had been convicted of killing him. Not that she could forget Scotty’s bombshell and that damned photo McKnight had mailed to her. At least that’s what she told herself, when Lettie informed her that Dixon wanted her in his office for a briefing on the Jane Doe from Hill City.
She shoved the manila envelope in her top drawer, schooled her features, trying to appear calm, not let on that she was having any issues unconnected to the current cases. A moment later, Michael “Doc” Schermer walked in. Tall, slim, with white hair and dark eyes, he’d been given the nickname because he looked more like a doctor than an FBI agent. Rumor had it that he’d originally wanted to be an eye doctor, but somewhere along the way ended up at the FBI. And the Bureau took full advantage of that “look,” using him in any undercover operations that involved the medical field, including the Harrington insurance fraud case that Dixon was so anxious for her to finish.
“Morning, Fitz,” Schermer said, with a polite nod. “Morning, Doc.” She liked him for two reasons. He was nice and he’d never been friends with Scotty. That not only earned him bonus points in her book, it also meant that she could trust him not to feed info back to Scotty-which was a lot more than she could say about Scotty’s old roommate from the academy, Tony Carillo, who walked in a moment later. Carillo was just a few years older than she, late thirties, stood maybe an inch shorter than Schermer’s six-three.
Carillo was not an easy man to ignore, and for more reasons than his warped sense of humor and quick Italian temper. He had dark eyes and olive skin, with a perpetual five o’clock shadow, even at eight in the morning, which always gave her the feeling that he’d just climbed out of bed- leaving a very satisfied woman behind. She wasn’t sure he would’ve been amused at such a thought. Word had it that he’d recently taken up celibacy after discovering his wife was sleeping with another man.
That was not, however, the reason she’d done her best to avoid Carillo ever since she came to San Francisco. It was more to do with the fact she was a by-the-book agent. If Carillo followed any rules, they were of his own making, and sometimes she wondered how it was he and Scotty, polar opposites, ever became friends in the first place.
Carillo and Schermer flanked the doorway to Dixon’s office, and Schermer said, “Heard you think we have a serial killer working the area.”
She handed Dixon her notes on the case. “So it appears.”
“Yeah?” Carillo said, crossing his arms, eyeing her. “How’d you get it, when you weren’t even here the past couple days?”
Dixon replied, “The case isn’t hers. She was on a sketch down in Hill City. Found a Jane Doe with injuries similar to our kidnap victim, Tara Brown. Possible sexual assault, head wound, stab wounds, and a bite mark on her breast, which, I might add, wasn’t noted by the investigator, but was found in the autopsy.”
“They missed it?” Carillo asked. “How the hell do they miss something like that?”
“Could be an oversight,” Sydney replied. “Small department. Possibly the detective wasn’t advised at the autopsy.” Or possibly he was an idiot, but that thought she kept to herself. She briefed Carillo and Schermer on what she’d found. “If there’s nothing else,” she said, after finishing, “I have another case I need to finish up.”
“What?” Carillo said. “You’re not going to try to get assigned?”
“I’ve got cases of my own to work,” she replied.
“Thanks,” Dixon said. She left, glad to be out of Carillo’s company, and she overheard Dixon tell the two, “I agree with Fitzpatrick. Good possibility we’ve got a serial rapistmurderer on our hands. I want the two of you to head down to Hill City, see if they missed anything else of significance.”
She thought about warning Carillo and Schermer about the detective down there. Maybe she would after she got something to eat, then dug up a contact for Houston PD to see if she couldn’t get a copy of that suicide note. She took the elevator to the deli, realized she’d forgotten to get money, and managed to dig up enough change from the bottom of her purse to cover a bag of cookies. Some breakfast. She couldn’t even get the damned bag open. By the time she returned to the office, cookie bag still intact, Carillo and Schermer were back at their desks, talking with a few other guys. They were laughing about something, but shut up the moment they saw her, their expressions suddenly turning far too innocent.
She had bigger things to worry about, like breakfast, and the cop-proof bag it was contained in. The guys mumbled their faux greetings as though nothing were amiss, and their laughter gained momentum after she passed by.
She ignored them, reached her cubicle, gave one last tug on the bag, and cookies went flying, one of them rolling four cubicles down, landing at Schermer’s feet. “Crap!”
A burst of laughter followed, and Sydney could see them over the top of the divider. They were looking right at her, no doubt having seen the cookie debacle. Schermer leaned down, picked up the cookie, and tossed it back at her. Carillo was on the phone, trying to appear serious, and he turned his back on them and her, waving for everyone to be quiet-just as her phone rang.