Blown Away (6 page)

“Remember?” Emily persisted.

“Yes,” Branch said.

“We were wrong. I just found three heads in my mail box.” Her voice was steady, thought processes efficient. Which surprised her, because at the moment she was frightened half to death. “Two ducks and a goose. They belong to three decapitated birds I found on the Riverwalk this morning during my run.”

Long pause. “There's something else, isn't there?”

“Yes. Each beak contains one of my police cards. Like Lucy had at the cemetery.”

Longer pause. “You still home?”

“Yes.”

“Stay out by the street. Don't touch anything. I'll be there in six minutes.”

Monday, 1
P.M
.
Sixty-five hours till Emily's birthday

“All this for a bunch of birds?” Emily groaned. Her lawn was as crowded as Easter church with cops, detectives, bomb dogs, CSIs, and firefighters. Even a sawhorse team from Public Works to keep rubbernecks at bay. Yellow tape was everywhere. It was monumentally embarrassing.

“Let's talk,” Branch rumbled from behind.

Emily turned, saw he'd changed. At the cemetery he was detached—fascinated, certainly, but ultimately a bystander, like her. Here, on his home turf, Branch was Alpha Wolf, protecting his pack from marauders. His expression was harder, lips flatter, eyes wide and darting, looking for the scat and broken twigs that signified the presence of the Other. A warmth washed over her. Even though she could take care of herself, she was happy to see the department bare its teeth on her behalf. “Did you find those three…uh, bodies?”

“In the bushes, right where you threw 'em. We need to talk about that.” He answered his ringing cell phone. “Hey, Marty, good timing. I was just gonna call you. What? Geez, he's a tricky scumbag. OK, sure, I'll go first.” He peered into Emily's mailbox as he sketched the crime scene, then listened to Benedetti. “Thanks, amigo. Hang on.” He handed Emily the phone.

“Hello?” she said, feeling her heart speed up.

“You all right?” None of the lighthearted banter from the cemetery.

“Yes,” she said, nodding, happy to hear his voice. “I guess our crimes are related.”

“So it seems. I filled Branch in on what's going on here. He'll give you the details. I just called to…I wanted to make sure you weren't hurt.”

“No, not at all. Thanks, Commander.”

“Sure thing.”

“You need Branch again?”

“No. I'll talk to you both when I have anything else. Make sure he tells you what I said.”

“Got it.” She closed the phone and handed it to Branch, raising an expectant eyebrow.

“Lucy's left-handed,” Branch said.

Emily didn't understand. Then, “Left-handed! The gun was fired from her right side! Which means she couldn't have shot herself!”

Branch nodded. “CSI found steel shavings by the hole in the fence. Lucy's killer cut the links first so he wouldn't hurt his precious self getting the car inside.”

Emily fumed. “He staged that entire scene, didn't he?”

Branch worked his chin side to side. “Yup. Marty's changing the call to murder. Given the connection between our crime scenes, he ordered a fresh evidence team to the cemetery to make sure nothing's overlooked.”

“A leftie,” Emily muttered. “And I swore it was suicide.”

“That's why investigations take so long. Everything's tentative till you prove it. In this case, the ex confirmed Lucy was a southpaw.”

She cocked her head, puzzled. “Out of everything a husband could say about his dead wife, why would he bring up what hand she uses?”

“Marty asked.”

“Why would he?” she pressed. “He seemed so convinced I was right.”

“He was. But Marty subscribes to the old newspaper credo ‘If your mother says she loves you, check it out.' So he did.”

Emily shook her head, dismayed at how she'd misread the evidence. “Then what about the calluses and chipped nails?” she tried, making one final attempt to resuscitate her ego.

“Lucy played lead guitar in a rockabilly band.”

“Let me guess,” Emily said. “Right-handed.”

Branch nodded. “Only thing she did that way. Everything else was leftie.”

She looked at her feet. “Some lousy detective I am,” she said.

“Don't beat yourself up, kiddo. Only TV cops solve crimes in an hour.” A grumpy stare replaced his sympathy. “What you ought to feel shitty about is not telling me about those dead birds,” he said, pointing at her backyard hill. “That crime scene was pristine a few hours ago. Now it's useless. Something ate the goose. The ducks are pecked apart. Blood puddle's halfway to China—”

“I know, I know.” Emily hoisted her arms in surrender. “My first reaction to seeing those lumps was ‘Where's the bad guy? Where's the bad guy?' I pulled my Glock on them like some stupid rookie!”

“You
are
a rookie,” Branch pointed out.

“Thanks for leaving out stupid,” she said, smiling wanly. “Then I saw they were birds, and they were headless, and…I mean, what human would go to all that trouble? I was convinced a coyote killed them.” She looked at the mailbox. “We're dealing with a wacko, aren't we?”

“Certainly. Nobody sane would pull this kind of”—Branch squeezed her arm—“Ah, Bambi, don't let it worry you too much. Wackos always do something stupid, like calling to brag without canceling their caller ID. We'll get this one before he does you any harm.”

“I hope so.”

Branch studied her house. “Nothing's missing? No dust bunnies out of place?”

He'd already asked that twice. “Everything's exactly where it should be,” she reassured him. She'd walked the house with Branch and the first two responding uniforms, Glock welded into her fist, every creak in the floorboards a bomb exploding. Nobody inside. She spotted a fresh swarm of cruisers heading up Jackson and pointed with her head. “Is this really necessary?”

“You've been targeted, Emily. I take that seriously.” Branch answered the cell phone, looked at her when done. “Chief does, too. He wants to see you ASAP.”

“Why?” Emily said, wary.

“He probably wants to make sure you're all right. He'll meet you in roll call.” He grinned at Emily's doubtful expression. “If there's more, you'll find out quick enough. Ken doesn't beat around the bush when something's on his mind.”

“No kidding.”

He winked. “Where's your car?”

“In the VFW lot down the street,” Emily said. “CSI cleared it, so I moved it out of the way. One of the patrol guys is standing guard.”

Branch nodded. “Why don't you head to the station then?”

Emily nodded, gazed at her house, then walked away.

Monday, 3
P.M
.
Sixty-three hours till Emily's birthday

Emily turned the corner to roll call, keeping a firm grip on her emotions for her one-on-one with the chief. She saw Annie Bates in the hallway ahead, arms swinging, toes tapping, burning off anxious energy. “Branch told me what happened,” Annie called, opening her arms when Emily got close. “Thank God you're all right!” They embraced, and then Annie stepped away, looking hard into her friend's eyes. “You
are
all right?”

“Of course,” Emily replied. Then, in a small voice, “No.”

Annie pushed her into an interrogation room. She closed the door, sat Emily in the suspect chair, and squatted next to her. “How bad was it?”

“Horrible,” Emily said, breaking down. “That dead woman had flies all over her. Flies! And those heads in my mailbox were so revolting….” Tears splashed down her face, and Annie hugged her again. “It's OK, sweetie,” she soothed. “Don't worry about it. Even Branch gets scared sometimes, and he's the toughest person I know.”

“I wish I was as tough as him. Or you,” Emily snuffled. The terrors eased, and she disengaged. Annie tousled Emily's hair. “Feel better?”

Emily sniffed, wiped her eyes.

“Good,” Annie said. “So you're not scared anymore, right?”

“Heck, no.”

“Yeah, me neither.”

Emily asked why she was so muddy. “We were crawling through drainpipes,” Annie replied. “Training exercise. We got the alert for your house. Halfway there Branch called us off, so we came here.” She raised an eyebrow. “If you're not up to the chief, I can make excuses—”

“No,” Emily interrupted. “I'm OK. I should get this over with.”

Annie grinned. “So what's keeping you?”

Emily wiped her face with her palms, got to her feet, and opened the door. “By the way,” she heard Annie add, “Your tush is fine today.”

“Excellent,” Emily said, running a hand over her behind. She'd been getting all kinds of unexpected looks there lately and wondered why. She asked Annie yesterday. “Hmm. You buy new underwear?” the sergeant said after checking. “Heavier material than normal?”

“Yes,” Emily said, unsure why that mattered. “My regular ones wear out too fast. Why?”

“These uniform trousers are 100 percent polyester, girl,” Annie said, slapping her own. “Polyester never lies about what's underneath, so the boys can see every stitch and bump in your panty line. Fevers their little imaginations no end.”

“What do I do about it?”

“Floss your butt like the rest of us.”

Emily scowled. “I hate thongs.”

“Who doesn't? But it's that or stares,” Annie said. “The initial looks don't stop, thank God for men and their wonderfully dirty minds. But if they don't see panty lines, their attention turns elsewhere….”

Emily came back to the present, more relaxed. “Thanks,” she tossed back. Annie waved and headed for the locker room.

Soon she was at roll call, peeking through the tall, narrow window in the door.

The rectangular room was spacious and low-ceilinged, with maroon-and-beige floor tile and fluorescent lighting that turned everyone's skin off-color. Its walls were plastered with crime bulletins, duty rosters, vacation schedules, department memoranda, union notices, family photos, newspaper clippings, Dilbert cartoons, and grating “motivational” posters of cartwheeling seagulls (“Soar like a bird!”) and impossibly perfect sunrises (“Make someone's life glow bright!”). The riser in the front held a lectern, desk, and chair for the watch commander, the lieutenant who ran each shift. A side table held a Bunn brewer with several glass pots of cop coffee—scorched, dense, shiveringly acidic. Roll call, where cops and bosses gathered to trade gossip, intelligence, and observations before hitting the streets, was the beating heart of patrol operations.

Emily's smile carbonized.
Let's get it over with.
She took a breath and pushed through the door. “Captain Branch said you wanted to see me, sir,” she announced, reminding herself again to keep her temper in check. “May I ask what it's about?”

“Something for which you're not ready,” Chief of Police Kendall Cross replied as he rose, banging his chair off the wall so hard the whiteboards thundered. “Not remotely.” He limped her way, stopping just outside the personal zone she'd pepper-spray a perp for violating. He put his hands on his hips and glared, brass and leather gleaming, every strand of sun-bleached blond hair in place, lips pressed into unyielding flatness. She smelled his citrus aftershave and felt her anger mount.

“Your badge is smudged with fingerprints, Officer,” he said. “Your holster is an inch out of optimum position, Officer. Your left bootlace is loose, Officer….”

Emily glanced down. It was tied, knotted, and tied again. She was about to correct him, then noticed the bottommost rappelling wasn't taut across the tongue. Loose, even. She glanced back into Cross's hard gray eyes and listened to the rest.

“…and your gun's probably dirty.”

“Wrong, sir,” Emily snapped. “I cleaned it last night.”

“Oh? Let's see.”

Suppressing the urge to fling it, she pulled the Glock, ejected the magazine, and cleared the firing chamber. She watched as he aimed the weapon at the nearest light. “There's crud in this barrel!” he barked, handing it back. She looked herself. Sure there were a few specks of burnt gunpowder, but she
did
blast it thoroughly with Gun Scrubber….

“It's good enough for government work, right?” Cross continued. “Nobody can be expected to clear every flake of dirt? Well, you're incorrect about that. There's nothing wrong with your weapon that five more minutes of work wouldn't fix.” His voice was low, but the tone cut like a whip. “A clean weapon is a malfunction-free weapon. You've been here long enough to know that! I shouldn't have to remind you, especially after this morning. Shape up or ship out!”

Emily felt her temper push deep into the red zone. “Enough already, Ken!” she hissed. “What did I ever do to deserve your hatred—” She cut it off, slapping herself mentally. Challenging the chief—by his first name yet!—could be construed as insubordination, a capital offense in the paramilitary world of policing. Daddy had warned that her big mouth would bite her someday, and he was right. She waited for the nuke to go off.

Instead, his lips twisted into something resembling a smile. “You think I hate you, Officer?”

“Seems that way to me, sir,” Emily replied, focusing on a spot several inches over his broad shoulders. Like Marty, Cross was a weight lifter. She'd seen him in the gym off the locker rooms, punching barbells so huge he needed three spotters to complete his sets. Cross also ran. Long, hard, and every day, pumping through his limp even when he looked beyond exhaustion. That single-mindedness was one of the reasons Cross was so good at his job, she supposed. He juggled cops, citizens, suspects, vendors, politicians, equipment, security, budget, everything, down to how often to wash the cruisers. If that wasn't enough, he personally made sure every rookie officer adjusted as quickly as possible to life in uniform. Not through win-win management techniques—empathy, encouragement, coaching for success—but the old way, nagging, picking, and damning imperfections. Branch respected him immensely, though, which counted for a lot. Other veterans she admired said Cross was a scream when you got enough drinks into him—his Jerry Lewis imitation, one said, would set the most somber Frenchman howling. He probably would be fun to share a beer with sometime after work. If he wasn't such a jerk…

“You're always criticizing me,” Emily continued. “Obsessing over things like my badge is smudged, when there's much bigger fish to fry.”

Cross stepped an inch forward. “You think being involved in a homicide gives you permission to be sloppy, Officer Thompson?”

Emily felt her face burn. “No, not at all. What I do think is that you should lighten up. I'm a good cop, and I bust my butt for this department. Life's too short—”

“That's the point,” Cross interrupted. “Life
is
too short. I'll be damned if you'll shorten it more by sloppiness.” Another inch forward. “A smudged badge isn't just a smudge. It's a symptom. Of inattention to detail. Which will get you killed.” Another inch. “You will not die on my watch, Officer Thompson. Repeat, not. If that means ragging you every single day, forcing you to shape up or ship out, then, by God, I'll nag and you'll listen!”

She'd never heard such emotion from Cross—his lectures were normally delivered in measured tones, Jack-ish in their logical precision. “I'm a good cop, Chief,” she repeated, refusing to yield ground. “Just because you hate me doesn't make me think any less of myself or my abilities.”

“That's the second time you've said that,” Cross said. “I don't hate you. I hate your imperfections because they'll make you as dead as Lucille Crawford.” A curious little cloud passed across his face, and he glanced at her neck. “Did you tape on that key?”

Emily winced. After the Massachusetts trooper's slaying, Cross had urged those with long enough hair to tape a handcuff key to the hollow at the base of the skull. Hidden by hair, it would be another way for an overpowered, handcuffed cop to escape. At the time she'd thought it a good idea, but the urgency faded as time passed. Now, adding even a quarter ounce to The Mule Train was more than her aching back could bear. “Uh, no, sir,” she admitted. “I forgot.”

Cross sighed. “I won't order you to do it, Officer. But it's smart. There's body-colored tape in both locker rooms for just that reason.” He frowned at the clock. “But let's talk about why you're here. I'm transferring you to Branch's command.”

Emily blinked. “You're making me a detective?”

“Temporarily.”

“Why?”

“To catch this serial killer.”

Emily threw up her hands. “Whoa, Chief! It's just kids playing around!”

Cross shook his head. “By themselves the heads in your mailbox could be a prank. But your police card in their beaks? The three carcasses outside your home? Your card in Lucille Crawford's purse? No, officer, this is a statement—‘I'm after
you
, Emily Thompson.'” He let that sink in. “The FBI won't declare a serial until three bodies are found. Human bodies.” Brief grin. “But I'll stake my reputation that this is the opening round of a serial spree. One that will get quite ugly. We need to find this Unsub fast.”

Emily cocked her head at the unfamiliar term.

“FBI term for unidentified subject,” he explained. “Everyone else uses John Doe, but the FBI loves its fedspeak.”

“Why not Jane?” she said, unable to resist jabbing the sexism.

“Statistics show 99 percent of all serial killers are male, Officer.”

“Oh,” she said, chastened. “So how does my becoming a detective help catch this guy?”

“It makes you instantly available to Branch. He can ask questions as they occur, rather than radioing you into the station every time.”

“Ask me what, Chief?” Emily said. “I don't know anything about this wacko!”

His frown reappeared. “Get that word out of your vocabulary. What took place this morning required intelligence and planning. That makes the Unsub a skilled criminal, not a wacko. He may indeed be psychopathic—we won't know till we catch him—but calling him ‘wacko' or ‘loony' only makes you underestimate him. Do that and you're dead.”

Emily shivered. “Got it. What happens now?”

Cross looked at her. “You've got some vacation time coming. I certainly wouldn't object if you wanted to take it. Don't worry. Nobody will think you're chicken.”

Well, I
am
chicken
, she thought. But she needed a brave front. As much for herself as for Cross. “No, sir, I'm staying,” she said. “If this Unsub has targeted me and I disappear, he might take out his frustration on innocent people.”

A faint smile tugged at Cross's mouth. “That's what I thought you'd say. Unfortunately, I agree. Do you want the rest of the day off, start fresh tomorrow?”

“I'd rather work, if that's all right.”

“Go ahead then. Another officer will ride shotgun, and I've already put a car in your driveway. Report to Branch first thing in the morning.” He headed for the desk. “Stop by the locker room first,” he reminded over his shoulder. “Fix those problems I noted.”

She'd forgotten all about the nit-picking that had started this, and annoyance bubbled up faster than she could swallow. “Right away, sir,” she said. “I'll go shine my badge and tighten my shoelaces. I know they're very important in finding serial killers.”

Cross whirled. “You've been a cop less than a year!” he shouted. “You don't know jack about what's important! Assuming you do gets you killed in a heartbeat!” Then he shrugged, thunderstorm passed. “But I can't live your life for you. Just don't get hurt finding out.”

“I can take care of myself, Chief,” Emily said, patting her sidearm.

Cross's smile was without humor. “Yes, Miss Crawford's weapon certainly kept her safe, didn't it? Now get going. Service calls are stacked to kingdom come, thanks to that little incident at your house.”

“Ten-Four, Chief,” Emily said. She walked out of roll call with head held high, then ran for the bathroom with as much dignity as a newly minted detective could muster.