Kismet

Chapter 28 Kobe #2

I wasn’t buying the aura of perfection. “If that’s the case, then why are you dead, Malik?”

Lastly, I performed a standard criminal reference check, and when the results hit the screen, I sat back with a grin, vindicated. “And there it is, you motherfucker.”

What most people didn’t realize was that non-conviction information showed up on background checks unless the person applied for record destruction or had the case sealed.

A law student and son to a well-known lawyer should have known that, but for whatever reason, those details had been overlooked.

Considering the date, it was possible that our system hadn’t caught up, and an application had been made in the past six to eight months that was still being processed.

Bad luck for Dear Dead Malik.

The highly acclaimed Mr. Quinn had been acquitted on charges of sexual assault of a minor one year and three months ago. Fucking acquitted. The minor’s name had been redacted to protect their identity, and it would take a judge’s signature and a prybar to have it revealed. The name didn’t matter.

Sexual assault. Again. Jesse and Malik.

“I’m not wrong, and both you fuckers got away with it once, didn’t you?

Thought you were untouchable.” I glanced again at the photographs I’d shoved aside.

“You know what? I think you assholes got what you deserved, and I won’t lose an ounce of sleep over you.

I hope your killer runs free and finds peace knowing the garbage has finally been taken out. ”

The words flowed from my mouth like water, and I refused to take them back. Glancing around the bullpen, fearing I’d been overheard, I was glad to find it as empty as when I’d shown up earlier.

Sympathetic rage turned my blood hot, but that rage was directed at the four men who had died and not at whoever had killed them.

I knew what I felt was wrong and needed to be contained, but for a moment, I was ten years old again, so horribly neglected and verbally abused by the mother who was supposed to love me, that I’d screamed for help in the only way I knew how.

I acted out. I vandalized. I stole. I fought other kids at school with my fists and words.

As a teen, I drank, smoked, and experimented with drugs, all as a means of escape.

A high school counselor had finally recognized my anguish and sat me down to chat, but when the truth of my situation came pouring out, nothing changed.

Child services investigated and found my living situation to be exemplary and my parents charming. My stepsister told wild tales that contradicted my own and cast my parents in golden rays of sunshine.

In the end, I was deemed a troubled child. A liar. A delinquent. No one saw the truth. No one saw my pain and struggles. The police hounded me. The principal punished me. The counsellor who had gone to all the trouble of sitting me down in the first place turned an uninterested cheek.

Everything got worse.

I sat with my thoughts, unsure how to proceed.

Several times during my career—over the course of my life—I’d been faced with the gray zone that lived between the extremes of right and wrong.

I sought to understand the flip side of the coin because no one had bothered to look beyond the facade I’d shown the world to see the buried truth of my existence.

But murder was far different than a stolen chocolate bar or slashed tires. Murder was an indictable offense.

“But so is rape, and those men were never punished,” I muttered under my breath, grinding my teeth in frustration.

I’d become a police officer to help people like me, those who had been labeled without anyone asking why the behavior happened in the first place.

The issue was, when someone took the law into their own hands, it was up to me to arrest the person.

The why wasn’t supposed to be my problem.

The court evaluated the case and decided on the punishment.

I was not judge or jury. I was a lowly detective sworn to follow the evidence and arrest the person we believed to be responsible.

But rape.

We tried to report them.

We still aren’t safe.

It was our word against theirs.

The law failed too many people. Men like Jesse and Ford and Malik were allowed to walk free with barely a slap on the wrist in most cases. Meanwhile, an entire campus of women feared for their safety.

And no one cared. No one helped.

“Tabarnak.”

I scrubbed a hand over my face and blew out a breath. The room was too hot. My insides jittered with a sickening combination of adrenaline and fury. This wasn’t a guy going twenty over the speed limit and running red lights as he raced to his wife’s hospital bed.

I could have all the silent opinions I wanted, but I wasn’t sure I could sit back and not do my job this time.

Turn a cheek. Bury the truth. Rue would see through me if I didn’t work every angle of this case.

If Golding caught wind that I was hiding evidence or not properly following leads, I would be out the door.

Worse, if it was discovered that I willfully let a killer go, I would be complicit in murder.

Before I got too caught up in the whirlwind of thoughts battering my brain, I snagged the phone and dialed Rue’s number.

She answered on the fifth ring, sounding like she’d been dragged through the dirt ten times over, her voice roughened sandpaper. “Talk. I’m listening.”

“You sound like shit.”

“I feel like shit. What do you have?”

“Malik Quinn. Twenty-three. Law student and one of Jesse’s cohorts. Our unsub is either spiraling, or things didn’t go as planned and they panicked. The scene was a mess. All the order of the first three kills was gone.”

“We said that would happen. His turnaround is too quick. He’s not taking time to cool off and think. He’s losing control.”

“Or trying to accomplish a goal before they chicken out.”

Rue made a noise of consideration.

“Plus, I’m convinced it’s a woman.”

“Oh?” I ignored the gratifying lilt. “Why?”

I told her about the body and everything I’d learned about Malik-the-Law-Student-Quinn and his acquittal.

I told her about the spike that didn’t stick in the penis and the crushed rose.

I told her about the message and the scattered clothing.

Lastly, I told her about the swatch of fabric caught in the zipper, the tangle of dark hair, and my suspicions that it was a lady’s fashion scarf like I’d seen a few people wearing during our interviews.

Rue remained silent for a long time after I finished speaking.

“Well?” I asked.

“You could be right. This has all the markers of a vindication for assault.”

“Rape, Rue. I’d bet my badge it was rape. Gang rape. Be it three of them or four of them, or maybe we have more bodies yet to fall.”

“Rape,” she agreed sullenly.

“The agenda could explain the quick turnaround. They’re afraid. They want it done and over with as fast as possible. Like you said. Before they chicken out. They’re cracking. Making mistakes.”

More silence.

“Rue?”

“They’re taking back control from the people who stole it. They want their life back.” Quieter, Rue added, “It won’t fix them. The damage is done. They can’t go back to before.”

I clenched my fists, repressing my anger. “So, you agree our unsub is a woman? And don’t fucking gloat. I know I said it wasn’t possible, but I can admit when I’m wrong.”

“I think it’s a strong possibility. A personal vendetta, but we can’t dismiss that it could be someone close to the supposed rape victim.”

“What about the hair? The perfume? The pointed messages? They are marking the scene. It’s all so feminine.”

“Long, dark hair, you said?”

“Yeah. I don’t have an exact shade, nor do I know if it was dyed, but it was definitely dark in color. Dominique said the analysis will take a millennium.”

Neither of us spoke, but I sensed Rue, even as sick as she was, putting the pieces together.

“You need to bring Fatemeh in for an interview,” Rue said. “A proper interview. On our turf.”

“Why her? What about the other women on campus? What about Blaze? What about Cheyenne or those other girls? If I’m bringing in Fatemeh, I should technically bring them all in.”

“In that case, what about Neo or Laurent St. Pierre?

“The scarf belongs to a woman.”

“Men don’t wear scarves or have long hair?”

“Not the ones we’ve talked to. Why are you being like this?”

“Are you saying Neo couldn’t be seeking justice for his sister?

Maybe Laurent St. Pierre went after a group of boys who took advantage of his daughter.

One of them ran from the city the second her sister graduated.

Why is that? We could name a dozen names, Kobe.

I agree with you. The chances are higher that we are looking for a woman, but don’t dismiss an entire gender. Start with Fatemeh.”

I bit my tongue and stopped arguing. Rue was right. We could point fingers at a dozen people, considering we were riding on a metric ton of speculation and not a whole lot of evidence.

“Fatemeh’s personality fits,” I conceded, “but I have a hard time believing these men took advantage of her.”

“No, but she was married to a guy who potentially covered for three rapists. You yourself said she was physically capable of subduing a much larger man, and it was also you who said she hated men in general. She has long, dark hair like you described. Start with her.”

“She wears those scarves too,” I mused.

“There you go.”

“How popular are they? The scarves.”

“They were more popular a couple of years ago, but they’re still worn by a lot of women today. Kobe, you have grounds to bring Fatemeh in. Do it. She might lawyer up, but—” Rue made an odd retching noise and added, “I have to go.”

The line went dead, and I cringed.

Fatemeh Kordestani. She checked a lot of boxes, except the important one: I did not think she’d been assaulted by university students half her age. I did, however, believe wholeheartedly that her husband was somehow complicit. Therefore, Rue’s theory was notable.

I considered Cheyenne again, and Blaze, and all the other girls we’d interviewed in the process of working the case. Individually, they didn’t necessarily fit. The crimes were too savage, but as a group…

Except the evidence didn’t support more than one killer. Did it? No. In fact, if we went back to the first crime scene and considered the distinct marks on the ground, it only showed…

I paused and sat upright. “Hang on.”

We found a distinguishable tread at the first crime scene.

Analysis had confirmed it was left behind by our unsub and not a match for Navid’s running shoe.

The struggle had veered off the hard-packed trail onto an untrampled area where we’d lifted the perfect print.

In every subsequent scene, the killer had been more careful, leaving us nothing salvageable.

The partial at LeBreton Flats had yet to be analyzed and could have easily belonged to Malik.

I dug through a folder until I located the images from Navid’s murder.

The CSI team had taken a mold of the print since it had been made in the soft ground beside the trail and not in the snow.

The report claimed it matched a man’s Timberland winter boot in a size ten and a half. I had guessed eleven, so I was close.

A man’s boot.

The Rue inside my head whispered, Women wear men’s boots all the time.

But a ten and a half? That seemed large for a woman.

I used Google to convert to a lady’s size.

“Twelve to twelve and a half.” A second Google search informed me that women with feet that large wasn’t as unusual as it had been a hundred or two hundred years ago.

Also, they would typically be over five-foot eight.

Not conclusive enough to dismiss, my inner Rue said.

I reconsidered Neo and Laurent, as Rue had suggested. She made a solid argument, but I was too hung up on the hair and scarf.

“Fatemeh first.”