Chapter Twenty-Five #2
“You deal with this, and I’ll deal with that. I’ll get them there, and read for the trek out next week to Scotland.”
That worked for her.
Getting out, she was focused on the cemetery, and wanted to see the grave first. She knew the woman died two years ago, and she wanted to make sure her grave didn’t look newly dug up.
That would tell her everything she needed to know.
Crossing the street, Raphael was on the three of them, as Ivan made a phone call to security at home, and at the Baron’s mansion.
Heading to the old cemetery, she pushed the gate open, and it creaked.
“Well, this place is creepy,” Gene said, his hand on his gun because the hair on the back of his neck was standing up.
Yeah, tell her about it.
She was feeling it too.
As they walked around the not-so-big cemetery, she checked out the tombstones.
Most of them were old, but that’s when she saw the newer one in a back corner. It was near some flowers, and it looked like something that Jeffrey would have for his mother.
“That will be it.”
They headed toward it, and Elizabeth could feel the chill in the air that hadn’t been there before.
Yeah, this was off.
VERY.
OFF.
As they approached, there was the grave with Opal’s name etched into it.
Gene looked closer, and that’s when he saw something that he shouldn’t be seeing.
“Oh, boy.”
That had Ethan’s attention.
“What?” he asked.
Gene pointed.
“Why is there a patch of dirt in the middle of the flowers that looks like it was just disturbed?”
Elizabeth looked closer and she didn’t like the size of it.
“Well, fuck,” she muttered. “He’s been here, and he’s left me something.”
Ethan stopped her from moving closer.
“I don’t like this,” he said.
Well, yeah, her either, but here they were, playing some sick scavenger hunt where they went around finding remnants of this nut’s bullshittery.
“I have to look. He needs me to look so I can see if this is the next clue, or clusterfuck.”
He knew, but he didn’t have to like it.
“Raph, give me your gloves,” she said, knowing he had black leather ones tucked into the back of his cargo pants for ‘work-related’ things.
He gave her his gloves, and they were going to be big, but they would protect her from anything sharp.
Going to her knees, she brushed some of the dirt away. When she did, Elizabeth knew it was a shallow hole. She touched something immediately, and it was…squishy.
“What is it?” Gene asked, beside her.
She wasn’t sure. Moving her fingers around it, she could feel the outline.
That’s when she knew.
“It’s a head,” she said, taking a stab at it.
As Ivan approached, he was appalled.
“What are you doing?” he asked, as she was on her knees, and playing in the dirt.
“He left me something,” she admitted. Pulling it up from the ground, the blood was soaking into the dirt, and this was definitely fresh.
There was no embalming here.
When she brushed it off, she saw who it was.
In her hands, there was the head of Jeffrey Von Gunter, and his eye sockets were frozen open, but missing his baby blues too.
She put it down.
“He is cleaning up,” Ethan warned. “Now, it’s about the loose ends. I’ll bet he knew something, or this person was afraid he could give us a piece of the puzzle before it was time. Anywhere that he’s been, the people left behind are collateral damage to him.”
Great.
“Call for a tech van. Not Chris. We’ll have to get the man transported there. I don’t trust that this is exactly what he’d want me to do. I find a body, and what do I do?”
Gene and Ethan both knew.
“You call out your ME.”
Exactly.
“And I put him in danger. Chris is the weakest link,” she said.
“He’s the one of us who is easily targeted.
No one’s coming at Ethan with an Archangel all over him.
Gene almost always has Demeter up his ass, and I have Ivan.
Right now, we’re running short, and this person will use that.
Chris stays in. Fuck evidence. There won’t be anything on Jeffrey’s head. ”
On that, they agreed.
She placed it down, and stood up. This was the first time in her career she had to walk away from forensics to save time in order to cut this cuckoo off.
“He would have left a message,” Ethan said. “He’s playing a game, so there’s a message somewhere. We have to find it.”
Oh, no doubt.
“Well, then, let’s find it,” she said. “I love a scavenger hunt of crazy.”
They knew where to look.
Heading across the street, they moved toward the house. When they got there, on the front stoop, there were blood droplets leading them to the victim’s body.
Or was that leading away from it?
“Ethan, get a warrant for Opal’s body. I’m willing to bet we have her eyes in that jar.”
He didn’t argue.
“As soon as we clear this scene, I will.”
Pushing the door open, it creaked, and there was a trail of flowers beside the blood drops.
Pansies.
Yeah, he was there.
They could hear talking, but it wasn’t anyone in the room, but the TV.
And they were discussing one thing.
HER.
It was set to a twenty-four hour news show that was talking about her and this case.
Oh, and someone had leaked plenty to the media—to fuck her good.
Gun out, she walked in, making sure they all stayed together. She didn’t trust anything anymore. In the living room, she found the TV on and a recliner in front of it.
In the chair, there was a body.
A dead one.
Jeffrey Von Gunter, her once suspect, was decapitated, and waiting for her.
Moving closer, she saw the note on his lap.
‘I have been waiting a long time to play this game with a worthy adversary. I always knew it would be you. You’ve met your match, Elizabeth. I do love a beautiful woman.
Yours forever, or should I say you’re mine?
The Grave Robber.’
Ethan sighed.
“I hate when I’m right.”
Yeah, not as much as she did.
When her phone rang, it was the tone that belonged to Chris.
She knew what this was going to be about. He got the text asking for a tech, but not for him.
Answering, she stared at him on her screen.
“What happened?” he asked.
He was still in his protective gear, but she could see the morgue bay at the police station behind him.
“We went to talk to Jeffrey Von Gunter, one of my suspects, and the ground’s keeper, and we found his mother’s grave disturbed. His head was buried there, and he’s still warm. I just missed him.”
Chris sighed.
Yeah, there was a lot of that going around, and she knew it. That’s how she felt.
“I can come…”
She stopped that.
“Absolutely not. We’re breaking protocols.”
He lifted a brow.
“Elizabeth, when we go to court…”
She stopped him.
“Christopher, this won’t go to court. He’s playing for keeps.
He’s called me out, and he’s threatened my family,” she said, showing him the note.
“He’s years ahead of me. I’m not talking about a normal killer who maybe has a few weeks or a month on me.
This dude has been killing for years, and he’s incredibly intelligent.
We’re talking smarter than our collective group.
He knows forensics, he knows criminology, and I don’t doubt he knows everything Ethan does.
I need something he doesn’t know. Tell me Chrissy found something. ”
He was worried.
“I haven’t been into the morgue yet. Let me go upstairs, and ask her.”
She waited as he rode up in the morgue elevator from the parking garage.
Callen was with him, and her other husband looked about as worried as she was.
Well, that was good.
They all needed to be freaked out.
Upstairs, Chris accessed the morgue by the cooler door, and sent the lift back down to pick up the next victim. Once inside, he found Chrissy at a computer.
“The boss needs to talk to you,” Chris said, handing her the phone.
She took the phone, and had good news.
“I was just sending an email. You have good timing.”
Yeah, she didn’t, but that was neither here nor there. She hoped Chrissy had something good.
As the techs all rolled bodies in, and evidence was moved around the room behind Chrissy, the woman printed something out and picked it up.
“Tell me what you have.”
Chrissy did.
“I ran the rape kits from years ago, when someone was breaking into bedrooms.”
“And?” she asked.
“We had four cases, and all four matched each other. The same person did it.”
Well, that was going to make this a bigger problem. This person was well-practiced.
“BUT.”
It was that one word that stopped her in her tracks.
“But what?” she asked.
“They don’t match the person committing the crimes today. We don’t have the same person.”
Ethan knew why.
It had been a possibility, but he’d not wanted to bring it up so as not to throw more at his wife until they had proof.
“He had a mentor,” he said. “We might have had a person who was an apprentice to the master. I’m willing to bet, someone was taken under their wing, and they learned. That makes sense. That would explain the sheer volume of victims. The person was not only learning, but practicing.”
Well, that sounded horrible.
“So we’re looking for two people?” she asked, hating that Gene nailed this, and she’d put it off to make sure.
Damn it.
He nodded.
“Well, I can help you out there,” Chrissy said. “That person is also not in the database, but we knew that since they had been cold cases for years.”
Elizabeth waited.
“Chrissy, I need something. This is getting bad.”
She was to the point.
“It’s not only a duo, but it’s a father and son duo. The sperm matched at fifty percent. Whoever is doing this, is picking up where his father left off.”
Chris gasped.
“Oh, no.”
Yeah, she didn’t like that.
“So we have a father teaching his son to kill and to prey on women, and we have a doctor son, who happened to work in the same morgue where he did all the autopsies on the buried victims like Lory Vanbruggen are, tied to the case?”
No one said a word.
At first.
“It makes sense,” Ethan said. “The dead solder was missing a kidney. What if that wasn’t a coincidence but a clue? He was leaving a clue for you.”
Well, shit.
That was bad.