Chapter 3 #2
Griffin couldn’t hide his excited surprise. “You’re kidding? Please don’t tell me it’s to an unsolved crime with no name attached.”
“No, we actually got lucky for once.” He handed over a printed report.
Sean read from the page over the sheriff’s shoulder. “Stuart Crowell. Twenty-five years old. Petty larceny and burglary. Spent two years in the Virginia State prison system. No parole violations and hasn’t missed a meeting with his probation officer since his release six months ago.”
“Doesn’t exactly sound like a serial killer, does he?” the sheriff asked no one in particular.
“Still need to check him out, though. Unfortunately, his print could have ended up on that penny anywhere.” Sean sighed heavily.
He had a feeling the lead wouldn’t pan out—investigations in extreme crimes like this were never that simple—but they still had to follow up on it.
He looked at Cunningham. “Anything else? Was her clothing found?”
“Nope.”
Matt glanced up from the report. “We didn’t find the other women’s clothes, either.
He’s dumping them somewhere else or keeping them as trophies.
And we haven’t found the kill sites yet.
None of them were killed where they were found.
” Addressing Hank again, he asked, “Did you get a chance to run our vic’s prints? ”
The technician shook his head. “Nothing in AFIS or any other government database. She’s never been fingerprinted for any reason.”
“So she’s still a Jane Doe for now. Shit.”
“We’re still processing trace evidence from the body and the scene, including the fingernail scrapings, but nothing else appears out of the ordinary right now. Except, of course, for the penny and body carving. I’ll call you if we find anything.”
“How long for the DNA from the scrapings?” Griffin asked.
“I sent a sample up to the state lab and asked for it to be a top priority, but it’ll still take weeks.” Cunningham held up his hand at the sheriff’s scowl. “And before you ask, yes, that’s the fastest they can do it.”
Griffin wasn’t happy about that, but he nodded anyway.
“Did you save any samples?” Sean asked.
Cunningham nodded. “Yes, I always hold some back in case the sample is lost.”
“If you send it to the FBI lab, we might be able to get it back faster. I’ll have my SAC call and put a rush on it.”
“That’d be great. I’ll fill out the forms and overnight everything before I leave.”
Sean pulled out one of his business cards and jotted down his cell. “Here’s my number if you need me. What’s the number here? I’ll call you when I have a contact name for you to address the samples to. That way, they don’t get tossed into a long-term waiting bin.
The head tech grabbed a nearby notepad and wrote down the lab's phone number and extension. The two men were about to leave when Sean stopped and asked, “What year was the penny?”
Cunningham’s eyebrows shot up in surprise, then he loudly repeated the question to a young male technician across the room.
“1993,” was the reply. “Same as the other two.”
Matt eyed Sean. “What’re you thinking?”
“I don’t know yet. Were the other two in the same condition?”
“Yes.” It was Cunningham who responded.
Sean let the info spin around his mind a few times. “It’s a little odd they all had the same year and seem pretty clean, despite their age. They’ve been in circulation for what? Well over twenty years? Maybe the year means something to the killer.”
Obviously following the fed’s train of thought, Cunningham nodded in agreement.
“I’ll have my techs run a few tests to see if anything was used to clean them up, but I have a jar of change sitting at home.
There are plenty of older coins that look shiny, while newer ones look old.
Depends on who had their grubby little hands on them. ”
Thanking the head tech, the two men left.
On the way to the parking lot, Griffin called dispatch on his cell phone and told them to have deputies track down Stuart Crowell for questioning.
The dispatcher informed him he had two detectives from the SBI waiting for him at the station.
“Tell them I’ll be there in twenty minutes. By the way, who’d they send?”
The sheriff smiled as he hung up the phone. “Well, it looks like I got lucky.”
“How’s that?” Sean asked.
“Not only do I have Sean Malone, the famous FBI agent, on the case, but I have his brother Brian Malone, one of North Carolina’s finest investigators.”
Sean grinned for the first time all day. “The Malone brothers ride again. Yee-haw!”
After making a quick stop at a deli for a takeout lunch, they headed back to the station, where they entered through a side door with Griffin’s passkey and commandeered a conference room.
The sheriff immediately left the room again, hurried into his office, and then brought back the files from the two previous homicides, as well as the thin file he had started on the current victim.
Within days it would probably be as thick as the others.
Just as they were getting ready to sit at the large table, Brian Malone entered the room along with a man in his early thirties.
Both were dressed in sports coats, ties, and khakis.
Sean’s brother stood six foot three, while the other man was about two inches shorter and a tad broader.
Brian introduced his partner to the sheriff. “Matt Griffin, Rafael Montoya.”
As the sheriff shook his hand, Montoya added, “Call me Rafe.”
“Nice to meet you, Rafe. Feel free to call me Matt.”
Montoya nodded, then turned to Sean as Brian said, “And this guy is the sorriest son of a bitch you’ll ever meet.”
Sean gave his brother a playful but hard punch on his left shoulder. “Yeah, well, I can honestly say you taught me everything I know.” He extended his hand to the other investigator. “Sean Malone.”
Montoya shook the offered hand. “Nice to finally meet you. Brian’s always talking about you, KC, and your uncle.”
“Ha! Proof that he loves me.”
Brian pointed at his brother. “What he didn’t say is that I’m always trashing you.”
He smiled. “That I believe. But ya still love me.” When Brian opened his mouth to argue, Sean quickly held up a hand and stopped him. “Don’t deny it, or you won’t get the sandwiches we brought for you.”
His grin widened when his older brother glared at him quietly. Everyone knew the way to control Brian was with food. The man could eat nonstop, yet was one of the fittest guys in the SBI, thanks to his longtime discipline of running every morning.
The sheriff left the room to attend a brief meeting that was on his schedule as the three other men sat down at the table and spread out their lunches and the files.
Brian began scanning through several reports while he ate.
Sean, on the other hand, preferred to finish eating before reading.
He knew he would lose his appetite if he examined the details of the cases during lunch.
It had taken almost a full hour since the autopsy for his stomach to settle.
They ate in silence for several minutes. When Montoya got up to use the men’s room, Sean eyed his brother. “Did you know Bonnie’s niece is in town?”
Brian didn’t look up from the file but answered absently, “Little Gracie? Dan mentioned she moved here, but I haven’t seen her yet.”
He felt relief at his brother’s nonchalance. Hopefully, Brian wouldn’t be interested in Grace because the more Sean thought about her, the more he wanted to see her again. And soon. “She came over last night for dinner with Bonnie and Dan.”
Brian lifted his gaze from the report. “Yeah? She still gawky looking?”
“Um, not really.” Mentally kicked himself, Sean knew he should have kept his mouth shut.
His reluctance to elaborate didn’t go unnoticed. “What does ‘not really’ mean? Don’t tell me she’s hot.”
Hot didn’t begin to describe Grace—she was downright gorgeous.
Calling her hot was like saying an erupting volcano was a campfire.
Sean shrugged, grabbed one of the files, and pretended to be suddenly engrossed in it.
But Brian wasn’t buying it. “Uncle Dan said she was opening her own PT practice. Maybe I’ll go see her for my back pain. ”
Sean’s head whipped up, and his eyes narrowed at his brother. “What fucking back pain?”
“The pain I just got,” Brian teased, dramatically shrugging his shoulders. “I could go for a good back massage.”
The younger Malone growled to himself. If he could, he would have kicked himself in the ass. Now that Brian knew he had an interest in Grace Whitman, his brother was going to drive him nuts. They’d always had a healthy rivalry when it came to women. “Can we get back to the case, asshole?”
An evil grin spread across Brian’s face as he crumpled up the paper his sandwich had been wrapped in and tossed it like a basketball into the garbage can in the corner of the room. Grabbing his lower back, he moaned loudly. Sean wanted to kill the asshole right then and there.
A half-hour later, the three men were elbow-deep in the case files, each making notes on pads of white, legal-size paper.
They all glanced up when the conference room door opened.
A young, dark-haired deputy, whose name tag read Montgomery, stepped in.
“The sheriff told me to tell you we got a missing person call that sounds like it might be last night’s homicide.
Name’s Daphne Jones. He thought you’d want to check it out since he’s still stuck in the budget meeting.
” He handed Sean a piece of paper. “Larry Cumberland’s at the residence now taking the initial report.
He said her picture matches the description. I’m Ned Montgomery, by the way.”
“Special Agent Sean Malone. This is my brother, Brian, and Rafe Montoya with SBI,” Sean said as he stood and shook the deputy’s proffered hand. “How long has she been missing?”
“Last seen by her roommate on Saturday night. Her friends thought she’d left them at some club. Supposedly no one’s seen her since.”