Chapter Twenty
Precinct
Conference room
Six A.M.
Yeah, it had been a slow moving two and a half hours since they left the crime scene. Both men had to divide up and take care of their own part of this case. That was normal, even though they worked together in the same room, not a word was spoken.
Gene had gotten up and grabbed them both coffee, and then, they were right back to work.
They were focused on two things. He was researching the victim, and Ethan was working on what the burn on her tongue represented.
Finally, Ethan glanced up and broke his silence.
“I think I found it.”
That had Gene’s attention.
“What?” he asked, curiously.
His man shared.
“I went biblical,” he admitted. “It was a wild shot, but I searched tongue and liar, and came up with this.”
When he turned his laptop around, Gene rolled closer in his chair.
On the screen, he read what his partner had located.
“It appears to be from Proverbs six, sixteen through nineteen. I’ll paraphrase, but it says, ‘a lying tongue will be punished’. I dug deeper, and back in those times, they’d burn ‘liar’ into someone’s tongue for untruths or blasphemy.”
Gene contemplated it.
“So, the killer has to see this particular victim as someone who lied.”
He nodded.
“So, the first three saw, heard, or spoke of something, and this last one lied?”
Again, Ethan nodded.
“That would be my guess. He’s telling us a story.
There has to be something that connects them.
There has to be one thread that we are missing because when a serial killer is lost in the revenge, they are normally methodical when they are telling the story through their actions.
This one has thought it out and dwelled on it. ”
Gene understood.
Oh, he believed Ethan was onto something. He knew it was only a matter of time before they figured it out.
They could bet on that.
“What did you find out about the victim?” Ethan asked, hoping he had located anything that could help.
He shared.
“She’s dating a man by the name of Scott Nickerson. He’s a cop for the city.”
Ethan lifted a brow.
What?
Another tie to the police?
“I mean, whenever a cop is tied to a case, that makes me twitchy,” Blackhawk admitted. “It also makes me really twitchy because we just locked this down because of the cops and ME working this case.”
Oh, Gene was aware.
The second he found out she was dating a cop, his head went there.
Could he have killed everyone else to cover her death?
They were going to have to figure that out.
“Whoever this person is, they’re intelligent enough to know how to handle forensics, or they’re just damn lucky,” Gene stated. “The bodies were dumped outside, the forensics ruined. This person is leaving us very little. My brain went to cop.”
Ethan’s did too.
“Only, we don’t know how much is being left. We don’t have forensics. If we have zero, then yeah, maybe this is a cop.”
Gene now had a pain in his arm, and his ass over this case.
It.
Sucked.
Ethan continued.
“Now add in a cop…when the media is getting a leak, and that worries me. It worries me about as much as Robert Fergus withholding information about sleeping with Ivey,” he admitted.
Oh, yeah, Gene forgot about him.
“So do we have a suspect list?” he asked.
Ethan slid him a piece of paper, and on it, he’d scribbled it down.
“I didn’t want to use the whiteboard, simply because I don’t know if I trust this place. At first, I was worried about someone leaking, but if we have a cop in the mix…”
Gene knew what he was saying.
So, he checked out the list so that they could both be on the same page.
‘Brett Davies
Robert Fergus
Dave Lizney
Randal Crest
Tristan Hevin
Scott Nickerson’
“I think we should add Scott Nickerson to the list, just because he’s a cop, and this person has been evading us,” Ethan stated. “With what we suspect, and his name popping up…”
Yeah, Gene was good with that.
He took the list and read over the names.
“Break them down for me,” he suggested. “So, I know what you’re thinking.”
So, Ethan did.
“I put Brett Davies on there since he found the body in the park. He also works at the courthouse where the victim worked. You know how he who finds the body could be he who left the body,” he added. “Add in the same workplace, even if it’s not in the same job…”
Gene was aware. The man was a clerk, and the dead woman was a lawyer.
Did their paths cross?
That was hella suspicious.
“You did say that this killer would want to watch us to figure out who he was up against.”
Yeah, he was aware.
“It’s weird to be out in the middle of the night looking for your dog.”
Gene played devil’s Advocate.
“Says a dude who didn’t have a dog growing up. I had a hound when I was a kid. That dog was a pain in my ass. Nothing behind its eyes or in its head, and yet, it got itself into so much shit. He went missing one day and was gone for a week. We looked for him at all hours of the day.”
Ethan was curious.
“Did you find him?”
He laughed.
“Yeah, the dumbass fell into a deep ravine, and couldn’t get out with his stumpy-ass legs. Like I said, nothing behind its eyes. Dumb as a box of rocks, but my best friend growing up.”
Ethan considered it.
“I mean, okay. We have dogs on the reservation, but they run wild. People don’t really ‘own’ them. They might keep them tied up outside to bark and warn them, but that’s it.”
Gene gasped.
“Doggos are for beddos not for chainos.”
Ethan found him amusing.
“Beds, huh? Yeah, I’m not so sure about that,” he stated. “Dog beds, maybe. I can’t picture myself with a dog. They’re a lot of work, and they shed. I have nice shoes. Dogs like to chew on shit, and that would piss me off.”
Gene just laughed.
“Cats shed too.”
He shrugged.
“Cats I get. They are little murderers with devious plans. You can see they are trouble, and they aren’t going to listen no matter what. They kind of remind me of me.”
That was why he was going to get Ethan a pet. It was clear that he needed one.
“What about Robert Fergus?” Gene asked.
Ethan went there.
“He lied about his relationship with Ivey. That immediately puts him on the list. This morning, we’re going to have a talk with him.”
Gene wasn’t shocked.
That was a huge red flag.
“What else?” he asked.
He was to the point.
“I don’t know if Dave Linzy belongs on the list or not. We never spoke to him. I put him on because of that reason. We might want to talk to him today, too. He also connects to Megan, since he went into the pub to buy food. For all we know, he could have been there when Randal took Ivey there.”
Yeah, he had a point.
Oh, and Gene was good with reinterviewing.
He knew Ethan was looking to cover all of their bases and with good reason.
“I put Randal Crest on it because he had a good reason to kill someone, and frame Robert Fergus. He’s educated, he has money, and he has a motive. His woman cheated on him. Yeah, he was convincing, but…”
Gene got it.
That made him hesitate, too.
“But he has no place to do the deed. He couldn’t slip them past the concierge in his building, or the doorman.”
That was the truth.
He pushed on.
“Up next is the gay best friend. I’m not gay, I’m bi, so maybe he is too. What if he had some love for the woman, and then when he couldn’t have her…?”
“He what? Hid it among other deaths?”
He wasn’t sure.
“With DID, I have no clue what can happen until it happens. There have been case studies of people with DID waking up in bed after having sex with people and not recalling it.”
That was a good point.
“And Scott…he’s a cop, and we have leaks. My gut is just screaming to focus in that direction. I don’t know why, but leaving him off the list as Vina’s boyfriend feels wrong.”
Well, they were on the same page, at least.
When his phone rang, Gene looked down.
“It’s the ME. He has to be calling with an update,” he said, hitting the answer button, and putting it on speaker. “Yo, Doc. What do you have?”
The man’s voice came over the phone.
“I did the autopsy on the woman in the park. I won’t have dentals, so I can’t give you positive ID yet, but it was pretty much cut and dry.
She died of blood loss when her heart was punctured.
One shot to the aorta, like I suspected.
She was skinned, and not well. Peeled, I would say.
She was put in really hot water, and that likely was what made her peel a bit better. ”
Gene was aghast.
“Hot water?”
The man on the phone explained.
“It’s like if you wanted to get the skin off a tomato before making sauce. You’d stick it in hot water, and eventually the skin releases. Human skin is pretty much the same. Scoring her would have been better, and thus why she didn’t peel well.”
Well, that was gross.
Gene wouldn’t look at sauce the same way again, and he loved Ethan’s sauce.
“What else?” he asked.
Luis shared.
“There’s no sexual abuse or sign of sex. We did get the DNA back on one of the other victims. She recently had sex.”
That would be Megan.
He thought about Mitch Kline’s gum.
“Ethan dropped off something to run it against. Your techs picked up a napkin with chewed gum in it. It was voluntarily turned in by a sex partner. One of the people we talked to admitted to having sex with her.”
“Oh, well, I’ll see if they started processing it yet. As for the rest, no sexual intercourse recently where semen was left behind.”
Gene also went there.
“We turned in a wastebasket full of used condoms. Can you run them too?”
He could.
“Yep. If they used a condom, I won’t have trace. There won’t be bruising from normal intercourse.”
Both men were aware.
The ME continued.
“There was bruising around wrists and ankles, like I assumed. They were restrained and tried to get away. They fought as hard as they could.”
Well, who wouldn’t?
“Anything on the fingerprints?” Gene asked.
He flipped through papers.
“We cleared one. They started at the first victim, and her house. We have multiple partial prints there from the same source. Along with the one you sent in…they match.”