“Could Dell know where he is?” Eve asked uncertainly and Olivia shook her head.
“He wouldn’t talk. And I don’t want to start out offering him any deals.”
“Let’s talk it with the team,” Noah said. “We’ll get dressed and follow you in.”
Thursday, February 25, 7:30 a.m.
“Hurry,” Liza muttered, rushing down the stairs of her apartment. “Be late, be late.” The words were for her school bus. If she missed the bus, she’d have to walk three miles and miss the test she had first period. She burst out of the apartment building, relieved to see kids at the bus stop at the end of the block.
“What’s your rush?” Liza heard the silky voice a moment before she felt something sharp at her back. “Scream and you die,” a man’s voice promised softly.
She sucked in a breath to scream her lungs out anyway, but his hand covered her mouth, yanking her head backward. He was strong, dragging her into the alley between her building and the next. Fear gave her strength and she flailed, biting his hand. The gun abruptly disappeared from her back, but she was stunned by a blow to the side of her head. Dazed, she tried to fight, until a needle pricked her neck.
Seconds later he had her under his arm, dragging her through the snow. She could see an outline of a dark vehicle ahead. She tried to scream, but she couldn’t move her mouth. Couldn’t move anything. Tom. He wouldn’t know she was gone for hours.
He pushed her eyelids closed and she couldn’t open them. “Your sister is dead,” he whispered in her ear. “And soon you will be, too.” Then she landed hard on the floorboard of his backseat and the car drove away.
Thursday, February 25, 8:00 a.m.
The mood around Abbott’s table was silently grim as the team waited for Abbott to return from his meeting with the commander. Noah had put Eve at his own desk with orders not to move for anyone. Right now she wore the biggest target of them all.
Olivia and Kane were tired after their fruitless hours in Interview with Dell. Micki also looked exhausted, having coordinated multiple crime scenes. Ian had actually fallen asleep sitting up. Four new bodies in the morgue kept the MEs busy through the night.
Carleton’s shoulders sagged, his eyes on Jack’s empty chair. No news was no longer good news.
Abbott returned, and one look at his face said his meeting had not gone well. The commander had a right to be perturbed. Five dead women and they didn’t have shit.
Abbott threw a stack of local newspapers on the table. The headline on every one was Jack’s alleged murder-suicide, but each had an equally damaging variation on the Mirror’s NEW RED DRESS VICTIM FOUND, with the details of Rachel Ward’s death. Below the headline was the smaller “Two Witnesses Slain” and “Cops Have No Leads.”
Ian jerked awake as the papers slid across the table, Micki patting his hand silently.
“Jack is unchanged,” Abbott began tersely, saying nothing about the newspapers. The headlines spoke for themselves. “The doctors aren’t hopeful. His dad’s with him.”
Noah closed his eyes until the fury passed. “Do we know what he took?”
Abbott pursed his lips. “This is delicate. Internal Affairs has the case, but we all know Jack was set up. I’ve been given clearance to give you certain information as it may connect to Dell Farmer, which may connect to Donner…”
“Which may connect to five dead women,” Noah said bitterly. “So IA’s helping us?”
“More like reluctantly cooperating. There was Oxycodone and Valium in Jack’s whiskey bottle. The empty prescription bottles were in Dell’s car.”
“At Rachel’s he swore he’d only had one drink,” Noah said hollowly. “Katie must have been slipping stuff in his booze all along. I blamed him for getting there too late.”
Olivia gave his arm a brief squeeze. “You didn’t know, Noah.”
“Jack was late a lot before Katie came into the picture,” Micki added softly. “It was a perfect storm, I guess.”
Carleton nodded wearily. “Apt description,” he murmured. “Such a waste.”
“Were Dell’s prints in Jack’s house?” Noah asked.
“Yes,” Abbott said. “Dell was there. So far, however, we have not found Dell’s prints in Donner’s house, so it seems their only connection is Dell’s rant last night.”
“What about Donner?” Noah asked. “We get his LUDs yet?”
“Still waiting for them,” Abbott said. “When we’re done here, we’ll go search his office at Marshall, and check his next of kin. I got the warrants signed overnight.”
“We?” Noah asked.
“We,” Abbott confirmed. “Until I get you a new partner, we’re riding together.”
It was going to be a very long day. “Okay.”
“Glad you heartily approve,” Abbott said dryly. “Kane, anything on Jeremy Lyons?”
“Security at Marshall found his car in one of the lots last night,” Kane said. “He hasn’t called home, hasn’t used his credit cards, didn’t pick his kid up from day care.”
“So Lyons is either gone under or dead,” Abbott said. “Putting us no closer to determining who’s doing this. The one bright spot is that the two potential victims Eve identified weren’t contacted and are still safe.”
“He could be done,” Olivia said. “We almost caught him coming from Rachel Ward’s. Maybe that was enough to convince him to stop.”
Carleton looked unconvinced. “I don’t think he’ll stop until you stop him or until he accomplishes whatever it is he’s trying to do.”
“What is he trying to do?” Abbott snapped. “Goddammit.”
Carleton appeared unoffended. “Do that to you. Make you ruffled. Throw you off.”
“Well, he’s doing a damn good job,” Abbott grunted. “But I take your point. Once we find Donner, we’ll start getting some answers.”
“God, I hope it is him,” Noah murmured.
“But you still don’t think it is,” Abbott said, then shrugged. “He framed Axel Girard, Donner could be a setup, too. We need to know what Dell knows and how he knows it.”
“We should be careful with Farmer. His reality isn’t cogent. He ain’t right,” Carleton added dryly when everyone gave him a puzzled look. “We need to consider what he says accordingly.”
“Right now he’s all we have,” Abbott said, “cogent or no. Ian, anything?”
“The Bolyards were shot with the same gun, a nine-mil. Harvey Farmer and Katie Dobbs were killed with a same, but different gun, higher caliber. Katie’s face had lacerations and bruises, probably from a fist.” He hesitated. “Katie had had intercourse an hour before her death. Unlikely that it was consensual.”
Noah gritted his teeth. “Jack did not rape her. Dell did,” he said even as a new wave of nausea rolled through him at the thought of what Dell might have done to Eve.
“I told IA that,” Ian said quietly. “Based on the blood spatter, Katie’s body temp, and the chemical levels in Jack’s blood, he was already unconscious when she was shot. It might have been harder to definitively say that, however, if we hadn’t gotten there when we did. That open window would have muddied things considerably.”
“So,” Abbott said, “we need to at least ask the question. Open windows at Harvey’s house and Jack’s. Any chance Dell could have killed five women?”
Carleton shook his head. “It’s far more likely Dell just picked up this element of the Shadowland killer’s MO. He seems like a quick study, writing news articles that Buckland’s editor accepted as genuine. He’s not a stupid man.”
“Just not cogent in his reality,” Abbott said sarcastically. “Olivia, Katie was his brother’s fiancée, but he used her to hurt Jack. There’s something there. Use it to froth him up. Get him agitated, then get him talking. I want to know what Dell saw last night. Micki, anything from the Bolyard house?”
“No forced entry. So far no forensics. Looks like he caught them by surprise at dinner. The wife was probably shot from the doorway. She fell face-first into her dinner. The husband was collapsed over her, probably protecting her.”