Deadly Dreams (4 page)

“What linked the first two?”

He shot her a grim smile as he rose. “The first victims were found in remote areas. A combination of gasoline and diesel fuel was used as an accelerant. Both had their hands bound with duct tape but not their feet. They weren’t gagged.” His frown sounded in his voice. “That’s hard for me to figure. It’s easier to control the victims if they’re completely secured. Gagging them would ensure their cries wouldn’t summon help.”

“But neither would be as satisfying.” Her voice was soft, but from the sharpness of his gaze, she knew he’d heard her. “The remote locations give a guarantee of privacy. And even if someone comes . . . by that time it will be much too late to save them.”

“You think he needs that? Their screams? But that still doesn’t explain why he wouldn’t bind their feet.”

“Maybe he needs that, too.” The death dance, she thought sickly, her eyes on the corpse once again. The frenzied movements of panic and agony. She’d felt the watcher’s ecstasy as he surveyed the spectacle. The near-orgasmic exultation from seeing what’d he’d wrought. “It might be part of his signature.”

Something shifted in the detective’s expression, leaving it impassive. “Signature. You’re a profiler, then?”

She rose, scanning the area. “All of Raiker’s investigators are trained in profiling, too.” Memory of the dream skated along the hem of her mind, and she sought to gather it in, to examine the details more closely.

That had been the last thing she’d been thinking of when she’d wakened from it this morning. Although she had art supplies in her bedroom closet, she’d gotten out of the habit of keeping an easel in her room with fresh drawing pencils and paper to sketch the visual elements.

The dreams had been gone for months. She hadn’t missed them.

And although Risa was far from accepting this one as anything more than a subconscious mind bump, it was second nature to try and wring any useful information from it that she could.

If it were the victim’s death alone that had so satisfied the watcher, a gun or knife could have been used with far less effort. Her shoulder throbbed, as if in agreement. No, his pleasure had been linked to the particular type of death he’d arranged. The flames had driven him delirious with delight, and he’d stayed as close to them as he’d dared.

Like there was an affinity there. Not just a murderer, but also one who chose fire deliberately because it satisfied a need inside him.

“It has to be death by fire,” she said finally. “And he needs to watch.” To
experience
it, deriving a sort of vicarious thrill from its kiss of heat on his naked flesh. One of the crime scene investigators was photographing the area. Another was sketching it. Two others appeared to be waiting for direction from McGuire. “What’d the crime scene techs turn up in the other two deaths?”

“No wallets, but IDs were left nearby.” When she turned to him, brows raised, he said, “Yeah, just far enough away to be sure they weren’t destroyed in the flames. Whoever the son of a bitch is, he wants to make it easy on us.”

His jaw was clenched, and Risa suddenly realized there was more going on here than a killer choosing arbitrary targets.

“So you’ve established a pattern in the victimology?”

Nate’s face was a grim mask. “Pretty hard to miss. If this one follows the same pattern, we’ll discover the victim is either currently on the job or he used to be on the force.”

Nate raised his brows at Risa’s shocked silence. “So if you have any ideas, I’m all ears. I figure Wessels is grabbing at any straws he can and that’s why you’re here. I don’t put a whole lot of stock in profilers—”

“I’ve got more experience than—”

“But you used to be a cop,” he went on grimly. “Maybe a more than decent one, if the chief is requesting you. So if your instincts haven’t been destroyed by all this profiling crap, maybe you have something to offer. I don’t mind admitting that so far we’ve got jack shit.”

He seemed to have a knack for igniting her temper and disarming it in the next moment. It’d be difficult to recall the last time she heard a cop confess to a lack of direction in a case. So in the end, she ignored the slam embedded in the invitation. “You do like off-the-cuff assumptions, don’t you?” He’d made a similar demand of the ME, with a discernible lack of result. “Fine. You’re likely looking for a male. They make up eighty percent of arsonists, and those odds jump significantly when you figure in the statistics for serial homicide. Since the victims don’t seem to be chosen at random, the offender may be motivated by revenge.”

Justice had been a long time coming.
The snippet from the dream flashed across her mind. Ignoring it, she continued. “The manner of death will be specific to his signature, rather than his MO. The use of fire means something to him emotionally, something connected to his past experiences.”

He made a dismissive gesture with his hand. “I got most of that from Jett. He also says the vast majority of arson is targeted at property.”

She gave a small smile. “That’s right. You aren’t looking for an arsonist per se, which is lucky because profiling arsonists can be an iffy proposition. I’m willing to bet this guy has a lot of instances of fire setting in his background, however. And if the link between the victims hold, you aren’t necessarily looking for a typical serial offender either.”

He nodded in the direction of the burned corpse. “All appearances to the contrary.”

“If this victim also turns out to be on the force, it’s likely the killer is retaliating for some perceived offense. Maybe the individuals are chosen specifically, or perhaps their selection is merely symbolic. At any rate, you’ll have already started looking for intersections in their case files.”

He slanted a look at her before nodding. “Haven’t found anything that pans out yet. First victim, Roland Parker, was a detective sergeant who retired out of the northeast division last year. Second was Detective Sherman Tull, central division. Parker’s widow wasn’t sure whether he knew the second victim or not. Tull was divorced a decade ago, so we’re still tracking down his ex. Talking to his friends. We do know the two men were never assigned to the same division as detectives or the same district as officers.”

“Maybe a task force they both served on,” she suggested. She hadn’t known any of the other detectives on the task force where she’d met Morales.

He shook his head. “Not that I’ve discovered so far.”

“But they were both detectives, rather than uniforms,” she mused. That in itself was a link. Much more than coincidence, especially if it held true with this latest victim. It suggested the killer knew the men. It would be difficult for the average citizen to make plainclothes detectives as cops.

“Detective.”

They both turned at the CSU tech’s call. “You’re going to want to see this.” They both walked over to where the man squatted, near the thicket of overgrown bushes that separated the clearing from the denser growth of trees a few yards away.

She and McGuire flanked the man as they crouched on either side of him. Based on what Nate had told her about the first two bodies, she’d fully expected to be summoned over to look at a driver’s license.

Instead, the tech was pointing at a police badge lying in the uncut spring grass.

Or—upon closer scrutiny she immediately revised her conclusion—a fake badge. The dull silver plastic sort that was sold in dime stores for kids.

“Looks like the others.”

The tech nodded. “Just let me get some pictures and measurements and I’ll bag it.”

Catching her eye on him, Nate shrugged as they rose. “Besides their IDs, a toy badge like that was the only other thing found at the scene.”

Risa restrained an urge to send a hard elbow jab to his gut. Like every other cop she’d ever known, he’d held something back when he’d filled her in on the case. Probably more than one thing. But it still burned. And reminded her of the petty annoyances she’d avoid if she didn’t return to her job with Raiker Forensics, which had paired her with hard-headed cops that could have been McGuire’s clones.

Resolutely, she pushed aside the stab of desolation at the thought. His reticence shouldn’t bother her. It wasn’t like she was going to work this case with him. She still didn’t understand the impulse that had brought her to the scene, but it had been just that. An impulse. Not a return of her natural instincts for an investigation. Not the insatiable curiosity that had once had her following every lead to its end in search of the smallest shred of truth.

That part of her life was over.

And as soon as McGuire finished here and returned her to her mother’s house, her part in this case would be finished, too. The realization brought a flicker of relief.

“You might want to run a Sam Crowley and have him brought in for questioning.” Surely it was small and petty to feel a thread of satisfaction at his surprised look.

“Why?” But he was pulling a notebook from the pocket of his navy muted-plaid suit jacket and unhooking the pen clipped to it. “Is he someone you ran into on the job? Does he have a history of this sort of thing?”

“No, he’s the man Heather Bixby was coming to meet this morning.”

In the act of writing down the name, his gaze bounced to hers. “She told you that?”

“When I pressed her.” Because they were freezing, she tucked her hands in her coat pockets. She couldn’t resist the opportunity to needle him a bit. “You really thought a woman would fix herself up like that to walk the dog?”

His eyes narrowed. “I said there was something odd about her coming to a place like this when it was still dark.”

“Not that odd, as it turns out.” She hunched her shoulders a bit, wishing she’d taken the time to change her clothes. The thin yoga pants weren’t much of a barrier to the chilly breeze. “I think you’ll discover they had a tryst planned, which I hate to think of occurring in front of the dog, but there you go. Crowley shouldn’t be hard to find. He’s got a sheet.”

McGuire flipped the notebook shut and slipped it back into his pocket. “Let’s hope his record includes assault and playing with matches,” he said, in dark humor. “Make my life a helluva lot easier.”

“I don’t think it’ll be that simple. But he may have seen someone in the vicinity. If this guy is as enthralled with fire as I suspect he is, he’d want to hang around and watch as long as he dared.”

“I’ll have him brought in.”

The ME and her assistants were transferring the remains to a stripped-down gurney. Deliberately, she moved away, leaving the CSU techs and the ME to their jobs. Having delivered the information she’d gotten from Bixby, she was overcome with a desire to be gone. And after today she’d have nothing more to do with this case. Certainly, Raiker wasn’t going to get his way this time round. The man might be some kind of wizard when it came to knowing his people, but he’d miscalculated if he thought throwing her into another case would rid her of misgivings about returning to the work.

It went deeper than that. The hell of it was, Raiker, more than anyone else, should understand.

McGuire had joined the CSU techs and was directing the search. One of the men was rephotographing the area where the body had lain. Risa drifted farther from the activity, into a grid the detective had searched before moving on. Something about the tree drew her. It had figured in the dream last night, although the details were fuzzy. Its two largest branches had grown into an X, and it stood directly to the east of the cement pad. The closest vegetation to the fire, it was still far enough away to have escaped unscathed. She wondered if that were by chance or planning.

Although she hesitated to draw conclusions unsubstantiated by facts, she had a feeling that the offender left very little to chance.

Leaning against the tree’s massive trunk, she stared at the blackened cement pad that had held the human carnage. The vantage point placed her directly beneath the juncture where the tree’s branches bisected, like a sentinel with crossed fingers. A mental snippet from the dream flashed across her mind. Of the way moonlight had paved a watery glow through the fork of those branches . . . a diffused spotlight for the horror being played out in the night shadows.

But the moon hadn’t been out last night, had it? She frowned a bit, trying to recall. When she’d gone to bed after midnight, the sky had been a dark smear that had blocked out both stars and moon. The cloudiness continued today, when sun would have bumped up the temperature a few welcome degrees.

An all too familiar chill trickled down her spine. Spread icy fingers over her skin. Slowly, she tilted her head back to squint upward at that fork in the branches.

“Tillman. Mitchell. Over here.”

Crouched on his haunches, Nate waited for the two techs to amble over to him. He pointed to the rim of white he’d spied peeking between blades of tall grass. “Looks like ID.”