Copycat (2 page)

Rockford, Illinois
Tuesday, March 7, 2006
8:10 a.m.

T
he shrill scream of the phone awakened Kitt from a deep, pharmaceutically induced sleep. She fumbled for the phone, nearly dropping it twice before she got it to her ear. “H'lo.”

“Kitt. It's Brian. Get your ass up.”

She cracked open her eyes. The sunlight streaming through the blinds stung. She shifted her gaze to the clock, saw the time and dragged herself to a sitting position.

She must have killed the alarm.

She glanced at Joe's side of the bed, wondering why he hadn't awakened her, then caught herself. Even after three years, she expected him to be there.

No husband. No child.

All alone now.

Kitt coughed and sat up, working to shake out the cobwebs. “Calling so early, Lieutenant Spillare? Must be something pretty damn earth-shattering.”

“The bastard's back. Shattering enough?”

She knew instinctively “the bastard” he referred to—the Sleeping Angel Killer. The case she never solved, though her obsession with it nearly destroyed both her life and career.

“How—”

“A dead little girl. I'm at the scene now.”

Her worst nightmare.

After a five-year hiatus, the SAK had killed again.

“Who's working it?”

“Riggio and White.”

“Where?”

He gave a west Rockford address, a blue-collar neighborhood that had seen better days.

“Kitt?”

She was already out of the bed, scrambling for clothes. “Yeah?”

“Tread carefully. Riggio's—”

“A little intense.”

“Territorial.”

“Noted, my friend. And…thanks.”

Tuesday, March 7, 2006
8:25 a.m.

D
etective Mary Catherine Riggio, M.C. to everyone but her mother, turned and nodded to Lieutenant Spillare as he reentered the murder scene. None of their fellow officers who witnessed the exchange would guess that the two of them had a personal history—an ill-conceived affair during the time he had been separated from his wife.

The affair had ended. He had gone back to his wife, and she to her senses. She had been considerably younger, new to the force and starstruck. Brian Spillare, then a decorated detective with the Violent Crimes Bureau, had been larger than life, on his way up the RPD ladder. His on-the-job war stories had affected her like an aphrodisiac. Where most women reacted to “sweet nothings” whispered in their ears, stories about bullets, blood and busting the bad guys revved M.C.'s engine.

No one had ever accused her of being a typical girl.

She had come away from the affair, heart intact and an important lesson learned: playing hide-the-salami with a superior was not the way to be taken seriously. She'd vowed to never put herself in that position again.

M.C. crossed to the lieutenant and was immediately joined by her partner, Detective Tom White. Tom was a thirtysomething African-American, tall and slim with elegant features. He and his wife had just had their third child, and the nights of interrupted sleep showed on his face. All in all, Tom was a damn fine detective and a good man, and though their partnership was new, it was solid. He respected both her skills and instincts without any of that annoying “Me Tarzan, You Jane” crap.

During her year in the Violent Crimes Bureau, M.C. had gone through a number of partners. She was, admittedly, intense and ambitious. She recognized that about herself. She recognized that a little softening around the edges would endear her to her fellow officers, but she just couldn't bring herself to change. If she felt she was right, she fought for it—no matter who thought otherwise. Even a superior, like Brian Spillare.

Warm and fuzzy was for baby ducks and bunnies.

“This looks familiar, doesn't it?” she said.

The lieutenant nodded. “Unfortunately, very familiar.”

Five years ago, a series of three murders had sent the city, a town located ninety miles west of Chicago on the edge of corn country, into a panic. The nature of the crimes and the fact that the victims were all blond-haired, blue-eyed girls, murdered in their own bedrooms while family members slept nearby, had struck the very heart of the community's sense of safety. M.C. had been working patrol at the time; they'd gotten calls for every bump in the night.

Then the killings stopped. And after a time, life had returned to normal.

Now it appeared he might be back.

She narrowed her eyes on Brian. He no longer worked in the Detective Bureau, but had been promoted and was supervisor of the Central Reporting Unit, or CRU for short. The CRU took all calls to the RPD, was responsible for all accident reports and registered all sex offenders.

But she understood his interest in this murder. He had been one of the lead detectives assigned to the original case. The other had been Kitt Lundgren.

M.C. struggled to recall the details of the case, of Detective Lundgren's part in it. Solving the Sleeping Angel murders had been the department's biggest priority; Lundgren's leadership had been the talk of the RPD. The detective had become obsessed with catching the perpetrator. She'd let other cases slide, had defied her supervisor and was rumored to have let the killer slip through her fingers. M.C. recalled stories of bungled crime scenes, alcohol abuse and ultimately, forced leave.

A leave Lundgren had only recently returned from. One that had included a stint in rehab.

M.C. frowned. “Lundgren's a head case.”

“True,” Brian said. “But with what she's been through, she's earned it. Cut her some slack.”

Tom White stepped in. “Pathologist's here.”

The coroner's office employed two full-time forensic pathologists. They went to the scene of every death, made the official pronouncement of death, examined and photographed the body and brought it to the morgue for autopsy.

This one, Frances Roselli, the older of the two, was a small, neat man of Italian descent.

“Frances,” Brian said, crossing to him. “It's been a while.”

“Lieutenant. Not long enough, no offense.”

“None taken. You know Detectives Riggio and White.”

He nodded in their direction. “Detectives. What've we got?”

“Dead child,” M.C. said. “Ten years old. She appears to have been suffocated.”

He looked to Brian, as if for confirmation. “Sounds like the Sleeping Angel Killer's MO.”

“Unfortunately, that's what it looks like.”

The pathologist sighed. “I could have lived the rest of my life without another one of those cases.”

“Tell me about it.” Brian shook his head. “Press is going to be all over us.”

M.C. looked at her partner. “Let's get the door-to-door of the neighborhood started. See if anybody saw or heard anything unusual last night.”

Tom agreed. “I'll get a couple uniforms on it.”

“The house is for sale. I want a list of every Realtor and every prospective buyer who's been through.”

“Looks like it's been freshly painted, as well,” Tom said. “Let's get the names of painters and handymen who've been within a hundred feet of the place.”

M.C. nodded, then turned to the pathologist. “When will you have a report?”

“As early as tonight.”

“Good,” she said. “Expect a call.”

Tuesday, March 7, 2006
8:40 a.m.

K
itt double-parked her Ford Taurus in front of the modest home. To keep the curious away and provide parking for official vehicles, the first officers had cordoned off the street a hundred feet in both directions. She saw the coroner's Suburban, the crime-scene van, a half-dozen patrol units and an equal number of unmarked squad cars.

She swept her gaze over the home—a small blue box, probably not even a thousand square feet of living space. Outsourcing and downsizing had hit Rockford hard. Industries like Rockwell International and U.S. Filter, once major area employers, were gone. Other, smaller outfits continued to limp along, but the forecast looked bleak. Last total she heard, the area had lost thirty thousand manufacturing jobs. A drive through town supported that figure—there was one empty factory after another.

Kitt had lived in Rockford, a meat-and-potatoes kind of community with a large Italian and Swedish population, all of her forty-eight years. In truth, she'd never even toyed with the idea of leaving, even after Sadie died and her marriage ended. Rockford was her home. She liked living here. Folks didn't put on airs, fabulous pizza could be found every second block, and if she craved a bit of glitz and glamour, Chicago was just over an hour away.

Frankly, she rarely craved the glitz and glamour. She was one of those people who found comfort in middleclass familiarity.

She climbed out of her vehicle, and the gray, chilly day enveloped her. She shivered and hunched deeper into her jacket. In northern Illinois, winters were hard, springs slow to come and summers too short. But the falls were glorious. She figured the residents deserved it for sticking out the rest of the year's weather.

She crossed to the crime-scene tape and ducked under it, then headed directly for the first officer. She signed the scene log, ignoring the curious glances of her fellow officers. She didn't blame them for their interest; she had only returned from forced leave eight weeks ago and had been assigned nothing but no-brainer assault-and-battery cases.

Until this morning, uncertain of her own emotional strength, she had been fine with that. Grateful Sal Minelli, the deputy chief of detectives, had allowed her back. She'd melted down on the job, big-time. She'd jeopardized cases, endangered her fellow officers and the department's reputation.

Sal had championed her, as had Brian. She would be forever in their debt. What would she have done otherwise? She was a cop. It was all she had ever been.

No, she thought. Once upon a time, she had been a wife. And a mom.

She shook the thought off. The memories that came with it. The ache.

Kitt stepped into the house. It was warm inside. The child's parents huddled on the couch. Kitt didn't make eye contact. She swept her gaze over the interior. Pin neat, cheap furnishings. Sculptured carpeting that had obviously seen its day; walls painted a handsome sage color.

She followed the sound of voices to the girl's bedroom.
Too many people in this small room. Detective Riggio should be doing a better job controlling traffic.

She wasn't surprised to see Brian, though he was no longer part of the detective unit. As if getting wind of her presence, Mary Catherine Riggio turned and stared at her. In the eighteen months she had been away, a handful of officers had made rank of detective; of them one, Mary Catherine Riggio, had joined the VCB. From what she'd heard, the woman was smart, ambitious and uncompromising. All to a fault.

Kitt met her eyes, nodded slightly in acknowledgment, then continued toward the bed.

One look at the victim told her it was true: he
was
back.

Kitt swallowed hard against the guilt that rushed up, threatening to drown her. Guilt at not having nailed the son of a bitch five years ago, about allowing him to kill again.

She wanted to look away but couldn't. Despair overwhelmed her. Her daughter's image filled her head, memories of her last days.

A cry crept up from the depths of her being. She held it in. Her daughter's death and the Sleeping Angel murders had become weirdly, irrevocably intertwined in her mind.

She knew why. She and her shrink had discussed this one ad nauseam: the first Sleeping Angel murder had occurred as Sadie was slipping away. Her fight to keep her daughter alive had mirrored her fight to stop the SAK, to keep the other girls alive.

God help her, she'd lost both battles.

Kitt suddenly realized that this victim's hands were positioned differently than the others had been. In the original killings, each victim's hands had been folded primly on her chest. This one's were posed strangely, the fingers curled, one seeming to point to her own chest, the other out, as if at another.

It might mean nothing. A variation in the killer's ritual. After all, five years had passed since the last known victim.

She didn't think so. The SAK she had hunted had been precise, his scenes had never varied and he had never left the police anything to work with.

Excited, she turned and called Brian over. Riggio and White came with him.

The other woman didn't give her a chance to speak. “Hello, Detective Lundgren.”

“Detective Riggio.”

“I appreciate you coming out to offer your perspective.”

“Thank you, Detective,” Kitt said, though Mary Catherine Riggio looked anything
but
appreciative. Kitt shifted her attention to her former partner. “The hands are different.”

Brian nodded, expression admiring. “I'd forgotten.” He looked at M.C. “In all the previous murders, the hands were positioned the same way. Folded on the chest, near the heart.”

Roselli looked over his shoulder at them. “Actually, the hands present a very interesting scenario.”

M.C. frowned. “Why?”

“Clearly, the positioning is unnatural. In which case, the killer posed them postmortem.”

“No surprise there. What's so—”

“Interesting? How long he waited to do it after the death.”

“I don't understand,” Kitt said. “He had to act fast, before rigor mortis set in.”

The pathologist shook his head. “Wrong, Detective. He had to wait until
after
rigor mortis set in.”

For several seconds, no one spoke. M.C. broke the silence first. “What kind of window are we talking about?”

“A small one. Depending on temperature, rigor mortis sets in two to six hours after death. Since the furnace is running and the house is relatively warm, my guess is it took three to four hours.”

Kitt couldn't believe what she was hearing. “Are you saying he sat here and
waited
for her to get stiff?”

“That's exactly what I'm saying. And for his patience to pay off, the body had to be discovered before rigor mortis broke at ten to twelve hours after death.”

Brian whistled. He looked at Kitt. “The hand position is extremely important to him.”

“He's making a bold statement. An arrogant one.”

“Most killers get in and out, as quickly as possible.”

“Most
smart
ones,” Kitt corrected. “And the original SAK was damn intelligent.”

“So, what does the positioning mean?”

“Me and you,” White offered.

Kitt nodded. “Us and them. In and out.”

“Or nothing,” M.C. said, sounding irritated.

“Doubtful. Considering the risk he took to pose them.” Brian glanced at Kitt. “Anything else jump out at you as different?”

She shook her head. “Not that I've noticed—yet.” She shifted her gaze to Detective Riggio. “Is anything missing from the scene?”

“Excuse me?”

“The original SAK didn't take a trophy from his victim. Which, of course, doesn't fit the typical profile of a serial killer.”

M.C. and White exchanged glances. “We'll need the girl's parents to carefully inventory her things,” she said.

White nodded and made a note in his spiral.

“You mind if I study the scene a bit more?” In an effort to earn the other woman's good will, Kitt directed the question Riggio's way, though asking Brian would have yielded an easy yes and, as the superior officer of the group, his decision would have been unarguable.

But Detective Riggio was lead on the case and, Kitt could tell, hungry to prove herself. She was one of those “ballbuster” women cops, a type Kitt had seen too often. Police work was still a boys' club—women had to fight to be taken seriously. Until they were, they were relegated to second-class citizens. So, many contorted themselves into humorless hard-asses with a severe case of testosterone envy. In other words, a woman acting like a man. Hell, she'd done a turn as one herself.

She knew better now. She had learned what made a female cop an asset was the very fact she
wasn't
a man. Her instincts, the way she responded and interacted—all were shaped by her gender.

“Go for it,” she said. “Let me know if anything jumps out.”

Nothing did, and forty minutes later, Kitt left the scene. It felt wrong to be leaving without questioning the parents, lining up the neighborhood canvas and other interviews.

Dammit, this should be her case! She'd worked her ass off to solve it five years ago, every nuance of this killer's MO was burned onto her brain.

She'd also blown it. And it had been ugly.

“Lundgren!”

Kitt stopped and turned. Mary Catherine Riggio strode toward her, expression set. “I wanted a word with you before you left.”

No surprise there.
She folded her arms across her chest. “Floor's yours.”

“Look, I know your history. I know how important the SAK case was to you, and how it must feel to be shut out now.”

“Shut out? Is that what I am?”

“Don't play games with me, Lundgren. It's my case, and I'm asking you to put aside your personal feelings and respect that.”

“In other words, butt out.”

“Yes.”

Kitt cocked an eyebrow at the other woman's arrogance. “May I remind you, Detective, I know every detail of the original SAK killings. Should this one prove to be a fourth, that knowledge would be invaluable to you.”

“May I remind you, Detective, that each and every one of those case details are already available to me.”

“But my instincts—”

“Are shot. And you know it.”

Kitt fought the urge to become defensive. Riggio would perceive it as weak emotionalism. “I know this guy,” she said instead. “He's smart. Cautious. He plans his crimes down to the tiniest detail. He prides himself on his intellect, the fact that he keeps emotion out of his crimes.

“He stalks the children, learns their routines. Bedtimes. Location of their bedrooms. Spots the ones who are vulnerable.”

“What makes them vulnerable?”

“Different things. The parents' situations. Socioeconomics.”

“How are you so certain?”

“Because for the past five years, I ate, drank and shit this son of a bitch. Catching him is nearly all I've thought about.”

“Then why haven't you?”

Kitt couldn't answer. The one time she'd gotten close, she had blown it.

Riggio leaned toward her. “Look, Lundgren, I have nothing against you. I've been a cop long enough to know how the job can get to you. How a case can get to you. But that's not my problem. This is my case. Stand back and let me nail this guy.”

“I was so arrogant, once upon a time.”

Riggio turned to go. “Whatever.”

Kitt caught her arm. “Wouldn't working together be a benefit? Wouldn't my experience with the SAK be a benefit? If you spoke to Sal—”

“That's not going to happen. I'm sorry.”

Kitt doubted that. She dropped her hand and stepped back. “You know, Riggio, it's not about you. It's about catching this guy, no matter what it takes.”

The other woman narrowed her eyes. “I'm well aware of what this is about, Detective Lundgren. I suggest you ask yourself if you are.”

“I'll go to the deputy chief myself.”

“Have a ball. We both know what he's going to say.”

Kitt watched the other detective walk away, then climbed into her car. Problem was, she suspected she
did
know what he would say. But that wasn't going to stop her from trying.