Vail 01 - The 7th Victim (41 page)
Robby sat beside her. “Looks like you had a visitor.”
Without looking up, she nodded. “He got my profile. All my notes.”
“Who did?”
Vail turned her head slightly, nodded at the wall behind them. Written in lipstick were the words they’d seen so many times before: “It’s in the.”
forty-five
“H
oly shit.”
oly shit.”
Robby couldn’t help himself; the words just tumbled from his lips. “He was here, in your place. He went through your stuff—”
“And saw the profile. He now knows everything we know about him.”
“Holy shit.”
“So you said.”
“I gotta call Bledsoe,” he murmured, then rooted out his cell phone. “We gotta get crime scene here, have them comb through this place.”
“Call Bledsoe, but we can’t have any techies here. I wasn’t supposed to have the file. We’d all be canned faster than the Jolly Green Giant.”
“Just don’t touch anything. Let’s get out of here, wait out front.”
She followed him out of the house, the Glock still in her right hand, dangling at her side. She was off in another dimension, thoughts swimming in her head, gurgling up to the surface before she could push them back down.
Robby pressed END and dropped the phone back in his pocket. “He’s on his way. Should be here in fifteen, he’s at the op center.”
“He’ll make it in ten.” Her voice was flat, her mind numb. She sat down on the cement steps of the porch and cradled her head in her hands. The hard, rough surface of the Glock dug into her face. She didn’t care.
“I can’t believe it. He was in my goddamn house. Why me?”
“That’s the question, Karen. Why you?”
Vail shook her head. “I don’t know.”
Robby started walking away toward his car.
“Where you going?”
“I’ve got a kit in my trunk. We can at least document the scene, dust for prints.”
“Yeah,” she said beneath her breath, “and tighten the nooses around our necks another notch.”
Robby walked in with a medium-size toolbox. He set it on the kitchen table and removed the fingerprinting kit. “It’s been a good three years since I did this.”
“You don’t want to know how many years it’s been for me.”
He removed the two-ounce vial of black dust and handed Vail the stiff brush. “Be careful. These bristles cut the print if you’re not careful.”
“Lovely.” She headed down the hall. “I assume we start with the study because we know for sure he was in there.”
“Makes the most sense. Honestly, I doubt we’ll find anything. Guy’s been real careful up to now. Not one stray print in six crime scenes. No reason to think he’d take his gloves off for this one.”
“Maybe he doesn’t see this as a crime scene. Breaking and entering’s nothing compared to serial murder.”
Robby started at the doorway. He took the brush from Vail, twirled it between his fingers to fluff out the bristles, then dipped the tip into the vial. He deposited the dust around the frame, taking care to brush lightly. “If you’ve got a camera, I’d snap some pictures. Let’s do it right.”
Vail fished out her HP 8-megapixel point-and-shoot from the closet and began documenting the scene. Using the standard protocol for crime scene photography, she shot the study from various angles, including close-ups of the message on the wall and the layout of the papers on the floor.
“Why don’t you take the ninhydrin,” he said. “Start spraying the papers on the floor. We know he went through them. If he wasn’t wearing gloves, the most likely place we’ll find a print is on those papers.”
They worked for the next fifteen minutes when Vail heard a “Hello!” through the screen door. Bledsoe. They walked to the porch and stepped out, each holding their tools of the trade.
“What the hell are you two doing?”
“Checking for prints.”
“This may be news to you, but we’ve got
trained
personnel for shit like that.”
trained
personnel for shit like that.”
“We were trained in evidence collection,” Vail said. “It’s just been a while.”
“Yeah, a long while.” Bledsoe looked around them, through the screen door. “So fill me in.”
Vail pulled off her latex gloves with a snap. “I had the papers spread out across the floor of my study, the ones Robby brought by yesterday. The Dead Eyes file. I went out for dinner and a movie last night and . . . got back this morning, about half an hour ago.”
Bledsoe’s eyebrows lifted and he gave a sideways glance at Robby. Adding it up. Vail was sure he hadn’t known there was something between them. But now he was probably patching it all together in his head. The overnight to Westbury, the rapport they seemed to share.
“So you think Dead Eyes was in your house sometime between last night and this morning?”
“Don’t you?”
“It seems to be the obvious conclusion,” Bledsoe said. “He’s trying to scare you. Trying to get inside your head.”
“Yeah, well, it worked.”
“Okay, I think some conclusions are in order,” Bledsoe continued. “One, the offender knows where you live. Second, he obviously found out your email address. For whatever reason, he feels the need to play head games with you. That’s good. If we can bait him, we can eventually catch him.”
“And it also places Karen at risk. I don’t think there’s anything good in that.”
Bledsoe looked away. “It’s the element we deal with. We’re always at risk.”
“It also tells us that he went to considerable effort to find your home address,” Robby said.
Vail nodded. “You’re adding to the profile.”
“Nothing we don’t already know. His approach indicates planning, which means intelligence. Organization.”
“Do we know what he did while he was here?”
“He rifled through the labs, forensic reports . . . and my profile. He now knows everything we know about him. Ed Kemper all over again.”
“Kemper,” Bledsoe said, snapping his fingers. “Kemper—I’ve heard that name.”
“Serial killer who hung out with cops at their favorite watering hole. He knew all the moves the dicks were making, all the evidence they had, because they would tell him. They never suspected he was the killer.”
They stood there staring at each other. Vail could tell the impact of this was beginning to hit them.
“So it’s possible this guy will alter his MO,” Robby said, “now that he knows our analysis of him—and his crime scenes?”
“Yes. He could alter his MO. But his ritual behavior would remain the same.” Vail shrugged. “Then again, I’ve never seen something like this happen before. And Kemper was before my time.”
Bledsoe asked, “What about getting Del Monaco’s take? He said he’s been in your unit the longest. Maybe he’s had a case where the profile’s been compromised.”
“We can’t ask Del Monaco.” Vail looked down at the cracked cement. “In order to ask him, we’d have to tell him that I had all these documents here. The next question he’d ask is—”
“How you got all this stuff if you’re suspended and off the case,” Bledsoe finished.
Robby held up a hand. “Let’s back up a second. We can’t be sure the offender actually saw the profile. We haven’t inventoried all the papers to see if he’s taken anything.”
Without a word, Vail turned and headed into the study, her compatriots following behind. She pulled on another pair of latex gloves, got down on her hands and knees, and started searching. Since it wasn’t the actual file, but loose papers she had organized into piles, it was more difficult to arrive at an accurate accounting.
“Well?” Bledsoe asked. “Is it here or not?”
Vail kept pushing papers aside, moving to another section of the floor and sifting through other piles. Finally, she sat cross-legged on the floor and slumped back against the futon. “It’s gone, along with the victimology analyses, VICAP forms, and. . . .”
“And what?” Bledsoe asked.
Vail swallowed hard. “The crime scene photos.”
There was silence. Finally, Robby spoke. “Karen, we really need to report this.”
She sat up suddenly. “Are you out of your mind? You’ll destroy two careers, and mine is already on the edge of the cliff.”
Robby sat down on the floor next to her. In a soft voice, he said, “Karen, this is bad. Very bad. It’ll affect this entire investigation.”
“The only one conducting this investigation is the task force,” Bledsoe bellowed. “The three of us here makes half the group. Besides, I run the damn thing and I already know what happened. Tell anyone, Bureau or PD, and it’ll be a lynching. With Thurston’s nose in everything, he’ll suspend me, for Christ’s sake. My guess, Robby, is that you won’t stand a rat’s chance in a pool of cyanide of escaping the purge. And then the whole investigation will hit the brakes. No. I say we keep this little . . . situation between the three of us.”
Vail looked at her ethical colleague, he looked at her, and then they both looked at Bledsoe.
Everyone nodded and the contract was sealed.
forty-six
T
he agreement having been reached, the question begging for an answer was Vail’s connection to the offender. They stood there, hands on hips, the issue riding on the air between them.
he agreement having been reached, the question begging for an answer was Vail’s connection to the offender. They stood there, hands on hips, the issue riding on the air between them.
“Whatever the answer is, I don’t think it’s safe for you to stay here. He knows where you live, where to find you.”
Vail clenched her jaw. “I’m not leaving. I’m not letting him run me out of my house.” She turned and walked away. “I won’t do it.”
Bledsoe shared a look with Robby.
“She can stay at my place,” Robby said. “I’ve got an extra room.”
The corners of Vail’s mouth curled upwards, but she turned slightly so Bledsoe wouldn’t see.
That was funny, Robby.
She knew Bledsoe was too good a cop not to suspect there was something between them.
That was funny, Robby.
She knew Bledsoe was too good a cop not to suspect there was something between them.
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