Chapter Ten #5
“I’ve had this for exactly nine hours, eight of them asleep. I come here, and your ME runs, even though talking to him helps us get a feel for the killer. Now, I don’t have anything in this file that he might not have thought to put in here. Like, were they restrained?”
Dannie played it cooler, trying to calm this down.
“Well, they didn’t have skin, so how would he know?” he asked.
Oh, well, they knew.
“Hematomas,” they both said at the same time.
Gene was a bit more specific.
“You know, like bruising. This report is pretty scant with details. It seems like you want us to fail. Like you hate the FBI so much, you and your ME don’t want us to solve it.”
The two cops looked insulted.
Well, turnabout was fair play.
Right?
“That isn’t what we want,” Dannie offered. “Maybe we’re all tired and uptight about this. Maybe we can calm it down and try to start it up again.”
Yeah, only, you didn’t get a second chance to make a first impression on the Feds running this shitshow. When someone showed you who they were, you had to believe them, and they were getting the distinct impression that there was some bullshit going on.
No one agreed to restart, but Ethan was more than happy to get this show on the road.
Without them.
“Thank you for the report. We’re going to start working on this now,” Ethan said, signaling they were done talking. He wasn’t playing games with two detectives.
First, he didn’t have to.
Secondly, he gave the respect he was given, and since they arrived on the scene last night, there had been very little respect and a whole lot of wanting in on this case.
“Seriously?” Leah asked. “Why do I think that ‘we’re’ doesn’t involve us?”
Ethan was to the point.
“We have jurisdiction. The second the bodies turned up on Native land, the chief of police asked the FBI for help. That gives us the lead on this, and we’re going to take it. We called you to see if you had victims. You didn’t call us to see if we could help.”
Oh, Leah didn’t like that at all.
So, she fought him.
“You don’t know they were killed there!” she insisted. “You’re guessing.”
Ethan was aware.
“And unfortunately for you, you don’t know if they weren’t, or if the person behind this is Native. That puts us in the same position, but with who the Chief of Police called. Us. Now, if you’ll excuse us, we’re going to check in with your boss, and move on.”
Both detectives were dumbfounded and stunned that they were being excluded.
Gene wasn’t.
With Ethan, if you played stupid games, you won stupid prizes.
And they’d done that.
He would have done the exact same thing if he was running this. They’d rather be behind the eightball than stuck with sabotaging assholes helping them.
As they walked away, they left the two detectives standing there, mouths hanging open.
And they didn’t give a shit either.
It was work time.
“How bad are the reports?” Gene asked, since he’d not seen the file. He was betting it wasn’t good because Ethan was pissed, and to get him there…you really had to try.
At his question, Ethan laughed.
“Well, we have COD as being they bled out from stab wounds. The first two victims had one to the heart, the third was a pin cushion—if a knife was a pin. She had twenty-seven stab wounds across her body.”
Gene whistled.
“Someone was not happy with her.”
No, they weren’t.
“We have a wide-open range of TOD, and not an iota of forensics to use to help us. He did confirm identities, and we were right on those. They match the missing person reports.”
Well, at least they had that.
“Other than that, Gene, we don’t have a whole hell of a lot. This is going to be old-school, boots-on-the-ground, interviewing to find something that connects them.”
Goodie.
He liked old-school.
Hell!
He was old-school.
“Okay,” Gene said. “Now, tell me what you’re feeling. I know you didn’t share it all with the two cops.”
Well, he nailed that.
Ethan broke down what he could.
“It’s going to be a male, unless we find something else to prove otherwise,” he offered.
He was curious.
“Meaning?”
Ethan told him.
“Someone who knows how to play the forensics game. The bodies were degloved. Maybe that’s to strip off evidence. They were dumped on a reservation to sink into a bog. Putting bodies outside kills trace for us.”
He listened.
“If this is someone familiar with forensics, like a goddamn ME who skips out on talking to us, then my theory goes out the window.”
Gene lifted a brow.
“You think the ME is part of this?”
He shook his head.
“No, that was just me venting and an example of jackassery. I think the ME is a douchebag and does shit work,” he stated. “That’s my opinion on him.”
Gene got it now.
Ethan kept going.
“What I do know is that men collect women. Women do NOT collect men. They will kill them in a rage, or out of betrayal with a knife, but how many female collectors have you encountered in the six years that you’ve worked for the FBI?” he asked.
Gene thought about it.
It didn’t take long.
“None.”
That was his point.
“Exactly. Same here. If this person took them over the span of two days, and then killed them at the same time, he was collecting or setting a scene. He wanted them to be together so they could be afraid. That means there is likely something that connects his collection. We just have to figure out what that is. As for the cops, I just wasn’t telling them that. ”
Gene understood.
“So, we’re running this close to the vest?”
Ethan nodded.
“Agreed?”
Gene didn’t have to agree. This wasn’t his rodeo, and this wasn’t his responsibility.
“You’re the lead investigator on this one. I’m just here to do your paperwork until I get my arm back. I’m your backup as you do this your way. I trust you. You’re more than a competent investigator.”
Ethan was glad he had his back.
People tended to forget before he profiled, or started profiling, he ran cases. He wasn’t as good at it as Gene was, but he could hold his own.
“What’s the plan, Boss?” Gene asked.
Ethan laughed.
“That hurt. I know you like being the boss.”
Oh, he did.
Gene winked at him.
“I like when you tell me I’m the boss, specifically in bed. That’s my happy place,” he said, slapping his partner on the ass when no one was looking.
That sent a flush of heat up Ethan’s body, and his belly curled with lust.
“Oh, and I like calling you that. Daddy, specifically,” he said back, making Gene grin like an idiot.
God.
He loved this man.
Blackhawk forced himself to focus.
“Let’s talk to the homicide captain, and then, I really want to piss them off.”
Gene was confused.
“How do you plan on doing that?”
He smiled ferally.
Oh, he knew the one surefire way to get the local law all stirred up.
It was body-napping time.
“We’re getting the bodies sent to the FBI lab in Salt Lake City, and those half-assed autopsies are going to be redone.
I can’t work with this bullshit in this file.
I need a good autopsy. Oh, and if there are any more deaths, they won’t be touching those bodies.
We’re using our people, and only our people. ”
Oh, Ethan was big mad over the ME skipping out on them.
Yep.
That tactic was most definitely going to bite the locals in the ass.
Big-time.
And Gene was here for it.
* * * Blackhawk & Cantrell * * *
Somewhere
Watching
Waiting
For him, this was anything but done. There were a few more than needed to get justice.
Two to be exact.
By the time he was finished, all five women would understand the pain they’d created, and the destructive power they had wielded.
Now, that power was his, and only his.
He hoped they were seeing the news and watching the reports talking about the three dead women, and they remembered them.
Because he never forgot any of them.
Not.
One.
Single.
Day.
This had been years in the making, and finally, three down, and only two to go. Hopefully, he’d get it finished before the local police figured it out.
The media was saying the FBI was here.
Now, he’d have to be careful of that, but make no mistake, he had nothing to lose. When the last two were dead, he’d be more than happy to die.
Because he had nothing left.
His whole world had been ruined by them.
As far as he was concerned, they were his life’s mission, and he wouldn’t drop the ball.
He couldn’t.
Innocent lives had been ruined.
With his checklist in hand, he studied the next name and planned out his day. Taking her would be tricky, especially now since they found the bodies.
But he was smart.
He was tricky.
He was…angry.
Oh, he might have to wait to get the woman, so that everything was perfect, but he’d get her.
Today, he had things to do and plans to make.
But there was more death coming.
Because justice had to be served.
By.
HIM.