"Speak No Evil" - читать интересную книгу автора (Brennan Allison)ELEVENCARINA ARRIVED AT THE STATION early Wednesday morning, having barely slept the night before. Every time she dozed off she pictured Angie dead on the beach, wrapped in three garbage bags. The longer this case went unsolved, the edgier she got. Though it had only been forty-eight hours, she kept waiting for something to break. It was the manner of death. Restraining the victim. Gluing on a gag. Raping her. Washing her body, then suffocating her. Definitely weird. And for all the lack of evidence, the ritualistic act, it still seemed sloppy. Did Angie’s killer put her body on the beach for a specific reason? Or out of convenience? Why so public? Because he didn’t fear discovery, or because he was thumbing his nose at the police? Or some bizarre reason only the killer would know? Her few sleeping hours were dominated by disturbing dreams about Angie; in her waking hours she thought about her conversation with Nick Thomas. Would she turn in her own brother? First, she couldn’t imagine any of her four brothers raping and killing a woman. Nick seemed certain Steve Thomas was innocent. Wouldn’t she immediately defend her brothers, Besides, though nearly everything Carina knew about the case pointed to Steve Thomas, Masterson and his disappearing act definitely cast doubt on her initial suspicion that Thomas was guilty. But Thomas had repeatedly lied, not only about what time he went to the Shack, but about how much time he’d spent reading Angie’s not-so-anonymous online journal. The cursory examination from Patrick the day before showed that Thomas had spent forty-one hours on the MyJournal website in the last month, averaging more than an hour a day, but Patrick needed more time to extract exactly what he’d been reading. As he pointed out, a good defense attorney could argue that while the window browser may have been up, there’s no proof Thomas was sitting at the computer. They needed to make a correlation between the time his browser was open to a MyJournal page and any e-mails or interaction between Thomas and other MyJournal members. In addition, Patrick was investigating every individual who commented on Angie’s journal, which amounted to hundreds of online identities to match with real people, determine who was a potential threat, and uncover their physical location. Thomas’s online identity was SThomasSgt, which was his name and rank in the military. But if he had been harassing Angie, he may have used another login, so Patrick had to verify every one. And if Thomas really was innocent, Angie’s killer might be one of the other MyJournal members. Already, Carina was developing a headache. Will came over and rubbed her shoulders. “Not enough coffee or too much?” he asked. “Ugh,” she answered and held out her mug. He grinned and poured her more inky-black coffee from the pot against the wall of the bullpen. “Did Dillon ever call back?” “Yes. Finally. You’d think he was this hotshot or something.” Which he was, and Carina was proud of him. Though he didn’t work directly for the San Diego Police Department, he was often retained on criminal cases to interview suspects in custody and present a psychiatric report to the court. She didn’t always agree with his assessments-the cop in her said killers should go to prison for hard time, not to a padded jail cell in the desert-but Dillon backed up his recommendations with facts and solid analysis. “And?” Will asked. “He’s meeting us for lunch at Bob’s.” Bob’s Burgers was across from the police station and a regular hangout for Homicide. If Carina didn’t get a Bob’s Ultimate Cheeseburger at least once a week, she became irritable. Will insisted the fries there cured any foul mood. “So we have a couple hours. Any word on Masterson?” “Nothing,” she said. “By the way, I did a little research last night on Sheriff Nick Thomas.” She raised an eyebrow. “And?” “Do you remember hearing about the Bozeman Butcher?” “Who hasn’t? The sick bastard was responsible for more than a dozen murders up in Montana.” Her eyes widened. “And Bozeman is in Gallatin County.” She hit her head. “Why didn’t I make the connection last night?” “We were preoccupied. It’s been a couple long days.” “So Nick Thomas was responsible for taking the killer down?” “In part. But what wasn’t widely reported was that Thomas was held captive by the Butcher, and afterward was hospitalized for more than a week.” Carina nodded. “I thought he was walking a little stiffly yesterday when he followed his brother down to the beach.” “If anyone knows about serial killers, it would be Sheriff Thomas. He’d been building the case against the Butcher for years. Maybe we should talk to him and get his perspective, see if he thinks we have a serial killer here.” “You’re right, he has the experience, but he’s the brother of our primary suspect. And besides,” argued Carina, “the definition of a serial killer is three or more like crimes with an established MO and-” Will interrupted. “Don’t tell me you haven’t seen signs in Angie’s murder that point to something more than a crime of passion.” She couldn’t argue with him. She’d been wrestling with it all night. “Point taken. But what if it is Steve Thomas? What if he’s the killer?” “Then having Nick Thomas on our side might help stop another murder.” “Has anything come back from the feds’ database on like crimes?” Will shook his head. “The system is haphazard at best. And I read an article last year that serial killers often change and refine their method of killing. So our killer might have started with a different MO. In another state, maybe he strangled previous victims, or stabbed them-” “Or maybe Angie is the first. Something about her set him off.” “Like her sex diary.” Carina’s phone rang. “Kincaid,” she answered. “It’s Jim. I’ve typed the glue.” “And?” “Commonly used industrial-strength adhesive, available at most major hardware stores.” “Match anything we found at Thomas’s apartment?” “Sorry.” “Thanks.” Will was on the phone when she got off, so Carina cleared paperwork from her desk, her least favorite part of the job, until he hung up. “Patrick has a printout of all of Thomas’s e-mails, Internet travels, and chat room logs for us,” Will told her. “He skimmed them, didn’t find anything big, but they’re worth a closer look. He has to run some computer program,” he waved his hand in the air, “to decipher exactly how many times Thomas went to the site and get an approximate amount of time he spent there. Since we haven’t arrested the guy yet, and Patrick’s preparing for a trial next week, he doesn’t have the time to thoroughly go through the reports, but he thinks by early next week he’ll have answers.” “Such is our lives.” Carina frowned. “Will, why do I feel like this isn’t a priority to the department?” “I don’t understand.” “We have a dead girl. Eighteen years old. We have a suspect. True, only circumstantial evidence, but damn good circumstantial evidence. But Jim has priorities, Patrick has priorities, and this case isn’t it. I don’t like it. It makes me feel like Angie’s death has been relegated to the bottom of the list. That because she was a promiscuous young woman who posed in pornographic positions on her Web page, no one cares what happened to her.” “That’s not true, Carina. You know that.” But she was fired up. “Really? I know what? You heard the guys around the bullpen when they saw her MyJournal page. Reading her descriptions of having sex and masturbating. And the pictures! I have four brothers. I know what guys think about nudie shots. “She’s dead. Just because a woman has sex with a lot of guys doesn’t mean she deserves to be raped and murdered. Suffocated. She was terrified when she died. She was tortured. It’s not fair that no one cares!” Will pushed Carina back down in her chair and leaned over her. “Listen here, Detective Kincaid. Don’t Carina took a deep breath. “I’m sorry. I wasn’t aiming that at you, Will. I guess…I don’t know. I’m just frustrated.” He gave her a curt nod and leaned back against her desk, arms crossed. “We thought we had an easy case, open and shut, and it’s turned out to be anything but.” Carina felt sheepish. Will cared as much about the victims as she did. She had to remember that he was not only her partner but her best friend. “Did Patrick say he had anything from Angie’s computer?” she asked, changing the subject. “Oh, yeah. We have our work cut out for us. A lot of legwork, but maybe we’ll get a break.” Will’s phone rang and he reached across Carina’s desk to answer it. “Will Hooper.” “It’s Patrick. Are you at your computer?” “Two feet away.” “Log on to Angie’s MyJournal page ASAP. Seems Angie’s friends have paid a tribute to their dead friend, and you’re not going to like it. I’m on hold with MyJournal security because Angie’s journal needs to be taken down. Immediately.” He walked down the street, around the corner, and down two blocks to the Quik-Stop. He bought a newspaper, a thirty-two-ounce Coke, and a breakfast burrito, using the store’s microwave to heat it. He sat at a picnic table at the park across the street, eating as he turned to the obituaries. There it was. Angie’s memorial service: He’d learned a lot from his mistakes with Angie. She was the first, and of course it wasn’t perfect. That’s why the end wasn’t satisfying. He’d kept her too long, for one. The excitement of that first night gave way to fear of being caught, an urgency that he couldn’t fulfill. Last year he’d made a mistake, and it had taken him a full year to plan and gather the courage to go through with his idea. He should have killed Randi, but he’d been too nervous to go through with it. Fortunately, he’d scared her into silence, and she’d since moved away. He’d taken Randi to dinner and a movie. She was perfect. Shy, quiet, timid. All he wanted was to fuck her. They’d been dating for several months and it had been time. They’d eaten dinner at a nice restaurant, seen a movie, did all the things they usually did on a date. Then he took her to a wooded park up in the San Diego hills with a distant view of the ocean and kissed her. She let him, her mouth soft and warm, tentative. They’d kissed before, but he wanted more. Needed more. At first she gave him what he sought. Her breasts. Her neck. She let him touch her through her pants, but when he unzipped them she grabbed his wrist. “I’m not ready.” She was out of breath. “We both want this. You know it.” “I thought…but no. I can’t. Just kiss me. I like that.” So he kissed her and heated up. Kissed her and wanted more. He pinned her down in the dirt with his body-he was bigger than she-and she protested again. This time, he didn’t stop. He unzipped her shorts and she began to squirm and cry. “Please, stop! I don’t want to do this.” “I want to.” And shouldn’t that have been enough? She was here, she liked him, she kissed him, and she wouldn’t let him fuck her? There was something very wrong with that, and he wasn’t going to let her get away with it. He held her down, his body rigid, and she screamed. She screamed so loud he thought every person in town could hear. They would come and take him away. It stunned him into stopping. Randi was sobbing and he rolled off her. They were both covered in dirt and leaves. “Don’t tell anyone,” he warned her. “If you tell anyone, I’ll kill you.” “I won’t,” she whispered. “No one.” He took her home in silence. They never spoke about that night, never spoke again for that matter. She transferred to another school two weeks later. After she found her dog dead. Still, he’d been nervous for months. But his fears gradually began to subside. Randi hadn’t told anyone what happened that night. And besides, what But he’d never let another woman scream. What he’d learned from Randi he’d applied to Angie. What he’d learned with Angie, he would apply to the next whore. Jodi. He had lots of planning to do before Angie’s funeral, and he couldn’t afford to miss class today even though listening to a boring lecture was the last thing he wanted to do. But missing class would be a He definitely wouldn’t make any mistakes with Jodi. |
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