TRACE - CSI Reilly Steel #5 (Forensic novel Police Procedural Series) (3 page)

They’d shared a lot in their working relationship so far, including a revelation about Chris’s health that now seemed under control, and she wasn't sure if this had hindered or improved their relationship since the earlier days, when they’d become uncomfortably close during their first ever investigation.

Jennifer Armstrong’s living room sprang to life on the screen before them and Reilly’s thoughts returned to the present. Their murder victim had lived the life of someone rarely at home. There was a small table that doubled as a desk, a cross trainer, a book shelf that held a few ornaments, but no books. It was a room that gave away few clues about Jennifer herself, or the person who killed her. Or the reason why she was killed.

‘Pretty bare,’ said Chris.

‘Reminds me of my own living room,’ Reilly commented truthfully.

They zeroed in on the kitchen. ‘This is where the meal was prepared,’ said Chris. ‘You can still see the dirty chopping board, the pans, the knife…wait a minute,’ He zoomed in on the knife. ‘Taking into what Karen said earlier about the meal, it sounded quite specialist. And that doesn’t look like the kind of knife a woman like this would keep in her kitchen. It’s of very high quality and it doesn’t match anything else.’

‘Maybe she just likes a sharp knife.’

‘No,’ said Chris. ‘She barely has anything else in the kitchen. Why this one expensive utensil?’

‘So, you’re saying we’re likely looking for someone who brings his own tools?’

‘Exactly,’ said Chris, and as they continued to discuss and hypothesize, soon Reilly felt like she’d never been away.

She couldn’t find sleep easily that night though. The events of the day were going around in her head. The detectives would start interviews tomorrow, find out more about this girl. And she would follow up with Gary to see what personal revelations about the victim her team could bring to the table. Despite his boasts, he hadn’t got back to her with any information about Jennifer Armstrong by the end of the day.

Added to that was the newly re-opened Grace Gorman missing person investigation. Reilly knew that Lucy was hopeful she could get things moving on that. But where did you even start to dive back in to a case that’s been dead this long? A piece of jewelry left in a house was a flimsy piece of evidence when taken alone. There was always the chance that the necklace could have lost somewhere else, or been sold and resold a hundred times in the ensuing years since its owner’s disappearance. Of course, there was the fact that it was found in that terrible place. Somewhere where bad things had clearly happened. But so far, the man who had occupied Martin O’Toole, the long-dead pensioner’s house, had been untraceable.

And then there was Lucy’s hope – she really believed that her family might get some closure at last. She wanted that for her parents. But she should know how rare that was, in this line of work. Lucy worked in crime scene investigation — she knew better than most that there was rarely a happy ending. Not after this long.

Reilly had an awful feeling that maybe no one would ever know what had happened to Grace. The answer had to be somewhere, though. It always was. But sometimes that somewhere was a place they could never go, or with witnesses who would never talk.

Disappointment on top of disappointment.

Well, Reilly would do what she could. She would talk to the task force and check out the files and see what if anything she could bring to the new investigation. It was all anyone could do.

And it was the kind of thing she did every single day.

Chapter 3

This wasn’t my first time, of course. The girl with the green eyes, staring at me onscreen like a personal challenge. “Come and get me,” she seemed to say. As if she wanted to see you try just so she can push you back. So that she can list your failings later to her friends: here’s all the reasons I could never love him.

I’ve heard those before, the reasons. Too clingy. Too demanding. “You want too much. It’s like you want to climb inside my mind or something.”

No, it wasn’t the first time. But it was the best yet. The first I’ve felt confident enough to leave for others to find. The others were clumsier. I had to choose those who weren’t so one-minded and cold-hearted. Who might almost be capable of arousing pity, if they weren’t necessary sacrifices.

I don’t like doing things randomly, pointlessly. All has a climax, an ultimate end goal. But it has to be perfect. It has to be exactly the way I planned it.

Reilly went into work the following morning feeling better than she had in days, a banana smoothie in hand. She wore a blue roll neck jersey dress, and had her blonde hair up in a high bun. She had got up early enough to run around the park near her flat before work and was feeling energized for the first time in days since her return. The jet lag seemed to be finally abating.

‘OK…OK,’ called out Gary as she walked into the lab. ‘You hunted me down.’

‘You gave me the impression I wouldn’t have to look for you, actually,’ she replied drily. ‘But what have you got?’

She took a chair by Gary’s workstation and Lucy joined them on the other side.

‘Well, ladies, prepare to have your mind blown,’ said Gary and Lucy rolled her eyes.

Reilly said nothing while the two younger techs bantered. Was it only her that didn’t need to bring a sense of fanfare to her work?

‘OK,’ said Gary finally, ‘here’s what I’ve got. Jennifer Armstrong had pretty good security protection on her laptop, probably because she does PR for some big clients. You wouldn’t believe the kind of stuff I found there. Scandal. But that’s another story. The deal on your victim from her computer is that she works long hours, emails her mother and friends quite a bit, and kept a lot of photos from a past romance. From the looks of things I would say she still holds major torch for this guy and it’s been her one really serious relationship.’

‘Possible perp?’ Lucy ventured.

‘Wait, there’s more,’ he said. ‘Our girl was a regular on dating sites. Loveforever.com, Firestarter, Matchbook – she had accounts with all of them and she wasn’t afraid to use them. Unfortunately it’ll take longer to look in to any private conversations she had with these guys. But I do have a list of matches she’s had.’

‘Wow,’ said Lucy. ‘That’s a lot. I’ve never had that many.’

They both looked at her and she shrugged, blushing. ‘I dabble.’

Reilly thought it if it wasn’t so pitiable it might almost have been funny to watch Gary deflate.

‘Well, you might want to be a little more careful,’ he said. ‘Some of these guys aren’t safe, obviously.’

‘I wouldn’t have one over to my apartment, thank you. Like I don’t already have an overdose of parenting in the work place, I don’t need you adding to it.’

‘Anyway,’ said Reilly. ‘Can we get back to the matter at hand?’

‘Well, that’s almost all for now. Jennifer Armstrong dated frequently. She would email her friends and say: “I have a date tonight," but no details beyond that. So it’s hard to figure out who she might have been seeing the night she was killed. I’m going to try to access her conversations, but those places have major security.’

‘It’s a start at least,’ said Reilly. ‘But I’m not sure how we’re meant to find these guys. “FunnyBunny213”, “Bigboots24”? It’s a bit beyond me.’

‘I’ve got faith, boss,’ said Gary. ‘And I’ve seen Batman and Robin work miracles before,’ he added using his favorite nicknames for Chris and Kennedy. In the meantime, I’ll try to find out more.’ Reilly got up to leave. ‘Oh, one more thing. she liked fancy restaurants. Over the past six months, she’s had reservations at some of the poshest spots in town. I’m talking
Amuse Bouche,
L’Ecrivain, Hammer and Tongs. She didn’t mind dropping the big bucks for some wild boar or whatever.’

Reilly wondered if this meant anything taken with the specialist knife that she and Chris had noted at the crime scene. She asked Lucy to follow her to her office afterwards.

‘About the other case …’ she began hesitantly, when they were alone. They would surely both know she was referring to the Grace situation. ‘Any word from the task force?’

‘Useless.’ Lucy shook her head despondently. ‘They’re at a dead end from what I can tell. As much as I wanted the necklace to break the case wide open, I know myself that there’s a long road ahead.’

‘Well, I wondered about going over old ground again; this time with fresh eyes. You’d be surprised at how people sometimes remember key things years later. Little details that they didn’t think were important at the time.’ Reilly had an inkling of something last night lying awake thinking about it, but she didn't want to reveal the notion to Lucy just yet. It was enough to let her know that she hadn’t forgotten about her.

‘Do you mean re-interview some of the witnesses?’

‘For a start, yes.’

‘I’ve got to warn you, Reilly, Dad might be upset. He won’t like it if old wounds get reopened.’

‘I know,’ she said. But Reilly knew better than anyone that until you knew what happened, those same wounds never got the chance to heal.

That morning Kennedy and Chris went to interview Jennifer Armstrong’s last serious relationship, Cormac Lister.
‘I don’t think he’s our guy,’ said Chris on the way from the station, ‘but he could give us some useful insight. We don’t know anything about this girl so far.’

He watched the inner city scenery go by. Living in a more affluent side of Dublin, you might not even believe this other part existed: the housing estates and apartment blocks where terrible things happened every day. Mostly not the kind of things his unit Serious Crimes was involved in: these were crimes motivated by poverty and desperation, and the perpetrators were easy to find.

What he and Kennedy dealt with often revealed an uglier side of people. The cases they handled were usually people hurting others for no reason at all, or for reasons that were not fathomable to anyone else — often borne of huge egos and delusions of grandeur; people who believed that they had a right to trespass on the lives of others. Many garden variety killers felt remorse, but not these guys. They wanted fame, some of these killers, and the sad thing was they often got it.

The landscape changed into more genteel suburbs now, leafy and pleasant as they approached Southside Dublin suburbia. ‘Here we are,’ said Chris when they pulled up to a very Victorian brick house with planter boxes of chrysanthemums along the window sills.

Reilly had sent over the information from Jennifer’s laptop earlier that morning, and the handsome man that had been most prevalent in her collection of photos ushered them in. The house inside was in the kind of mess that could only be created by children, and Cormac Lister had clearly been trying to clean up before they came in.

‘Sorry about this,’ he said. ‘My wife works. Seems like I haven’t been able to think straight today or get anything done since the news about Jenny.’ He sat down on the couch with a thump. ‘I’m sorry,’ he said, putting his face in his hands. ‘It’s been a huge shock.’

Chris almost shook the guy’s hand and left that moment. He was completely innocent. He had seen a lot of perps act out grief: believable performances, to be sure, but he could spot them now. Lister was genuinely upset.

‘We just need to ask you a few questions,’ Kennedy said, expertly ignoring the guy’s distress.

‘Of course,’ the man said, visibly pulling himself together at Kennedy’s tone. ‘I just need to keep an ear out in case one of the kids wake up.’ He indicated a baby monitor.

Chris knew that in situations dealing with fragile or volatile people he really came into his own. He let people speak in their own time, not getting impatient with them as Kennedy did. ‘You were in a relationship with Jennifer for 4 years, is that correct?’ he began.

‘Almost 5. We broke up 18 months ago.’

Chris looked around at the domestic mess surrounding them and resisted the urge to frown in confusion. How could all this happen in just 18 months? There was a photograph of Lister with a woman and two babies on the mantlepiece.

He caught him looking and explained. ‘I met my wife about a fortnight after I left Jenny. Things moved pretty fast: we wanted the same things. She was pregnant after a couple of months and we had twins. They’re seven months old and she has a three year old from her first marriage. Hence,’ he gestured at the toys and bottles around the sitting room, ‘this mess.’

‘Did you and Ms Armstrong split amicably?’ Kennedy asked.

‘No, not really. She was very upset. She kept up a long campaign of contacting me afterwards, even after the twins were born. I asked her many times to stop, but she wouldn’t listen. The last time I made it very clear that she was frightening my wife and that I would take measures if she didn’t cease.’ His face hardened then, and Chris suddenly wondered if he had been wrong. Lister looked like he had every reason to be angry with Jennifer Armstrong.

‘What kind of measures?’ he asked.

‘Like going to the police. That wouldn’t look right for her, not in her line of work. But she backed off after that. I didn’t hear from her, or anything about her really, until the terrible news yesterday. I had heard she was dating again, and I was happy for her.’

‘Where were you on Friday night?’ asked Kennedy. He obviously thought this was a dead end too but wanted to rule it out. Chris knew his partner had no patience for the intricacies of the case.

Lister shrugged. ‘I was here, cooking dinner for my wife and family. You’re more than welcome to check with her. The truth is, that’s what I can be found doing most nights.’

‘Do you have any reason to believe that someone would want to hurt Jennifer?’ asked Chris. Unlike Kennedy he preferred to use the victim’s first name so as to make the questioning feel more personal and less official. Make it more comfortable and it would be easier for subjects to let their guard down.

‘No. I can’t think why anyone would do this. Jenny was a lovely girl. She was fun, she had lots of friends. She liked to go out a lot, she lived a very busy life. That was the reason we split really. I wanted a quieter kind of life, but Jenny’s career was all-important. She didn’t have room for anything else, barely room for me. Perhaps a disgruntled client…? But, no. I can’t think of anyone who would want to hurt her.’

‘OK,’ said Kennedy. ‘One last thing though, can you confirm if Jennifer had any favorite restaurants, places she liked to go to in particular?’

He smiled. ‘If a restaurant was written up in the
Irish Times,
or of one of her clients recommended it, then Jenny would be there in a heartbeat. She has been to every good restaurant in this city, and she’s had cooking classes with many of the Michelin star chefs. Not that she cooks herself, really. She just loves food.’

Sadly for Jennifer Armstrong Chris thought, as they finished up the interview and said their goodbyes to Cormac Lister, it the very thing that killed her.

‘What was with the restaurant question?’ asked Kennedy when they were back on the road. ‘That came out of left-field.’

‘It makes sense, when you think about it,’ Chris replied. ‘Jennifer was killed because of a gourmet meal. She frequented high class restaurants with different men. We can check their bookings, see if their reservations list features Jennifer or matches any of the guys on her dating sites. It’s a long shot, but at the start of a case like this, everything is, you know that.’

Kennedy sighed. ‘Things were much simpler in my day. When I was courting Josie we just went down to the pub for a pint and a packet of crisps and that was as fancy as things got. Now, everyone’s going out for miniature bits of steak on a bed of baby food. Last night for our anniversary she takes me to this place where the waiter wrestled my coat off me, sat me down and practically wiped my mouth. I said to her: “If this is fine dining, then the whole world has gone to the dogs.’”

‘Looks like it’ll be just me and Reilly checking these places out then,’ Chris joked, not altogether put out by the prospect.

‘You’ll get no complaint from me,’ his partner agreed. ‘Now if your woman had been going to burger places, that would be a different story.’