Chapter 8
Dover stood outside of the police department with her arms crossed. She should be inside working on the latest case instead of waiting for Knox and the brother-in-law he wanted to introduce to her.
She checked the watch on her wrist once again. They had two more minutes, then she was returning inside. She was turning to open the door when a car pulled into a visitor’s parking space.
Knox unfolded from the driver’s side of the car, and another man climbed out of the passenger’s side. “All I’m saying is there’s no reason to honk so much,” Knox complained.
“There is when you drive like an old lady from out of town. Hi,” he said, turning to Dover. “I’m Dex.”
“The FBI guy, right?” she asked.
“That’s right, but I’m here unofficially,” he added, holding his palms out. “Just helping out family.”
“You were at the Washington Bureau, but you’re now in Houston? What happened there?” Knox had given her a confusing introduction to her new family before bed last night. She still didn’t quite have everyone straight.
“Fell in love while busting up a major human trafficking outfit.”
“Gets you every time,” Knox chipped in.
“You’ll be following my brother’s psycho girlfriend to see where she’s going?” She waited for Dex to nod before turning to Knox. “I still don’t like this.”
“I’ll just gather information,” Dex said, cutting Knox off before he could say anything to piss her off. “What you do with it, we’ll leave up to you.” He glared at Knox until he nodded. “Is that good with you?”
She studied him trying to make up her mind. Unlike Knox whose aura shimmered in orange and reds like a fire, Dex was surrounded by a cool blue. There wasn’t any deception in him as far as she could tell. If he screwed her over though, federal agent or not, she’d cut him off at the knees.
“Fox can’t know,” she said.
“I promise no one will know I’m there, and Knox won’t tell him. That will be up to you,” Dex assured her.
“I’m not sure what we’ll do even if we find out she’s screwing around. Fox will never leave Ethan if he can prevent it. The only way Ethan would be safe is in Bailey’s custody, but I don’t see that happening,” she said. “Just don’t fuck this up.”
“Damn, she is related to Tyler,” Dex pointed out. “Is that what binds us, our attraction to hard-headed women?”
“Without a doubt,” Knox agreed. “If they’re not related directly, they’re put directly in our paths.”
“Oh, fuck off,” she responded, turning to return to her desk, but she was laughing as she entered the building.
Her “extended family” was starting to grow on her, and that pissed her off for sure.
Still, if she had to have a bunch of extra siblings thrust on her in her forties, these weren’t so bad.
“Everything okay?” Danny asked when she arrived at her office.
“Yeah, just dealing with family bullshit.”
“The new brother?”
“And a brother-in-law apparently. They’re coming out of the woodwork.”
“It’d freak me out to have all these siblings suddenly appear.”
“That’s the thing that worries me,” she said digging through the box on her desk. “There’s like a big age gap between the youngest two. Does that mean there’s a bunch more out there we don’t know about yet.”
“Could be. Guy wasn’t shooting blanks for sure.”
“No, he wasn’t.” She searched her desk for a moment. “Hey, what do you think about moving this to one of the incident rooms so we can spread out?”
“Good idea. I think I just stumbled across another one out in Cambridge.”
“No shit?”
“Same MO.”
Dover picked up a box from her desk and walked out into the hallway. There had to be at least one free incident room. If this kept going, they would have a task force by the end of the day.
Danny grabbed another box and followed her. They found a room no one was using and moved into it. Turning on the lights, she began building case files on the magnetic whiteboards at the front of the room.
She barely noticed as a fourth case was added to the boards. The more she worked, the more it looked like the cases were similar. She finally stepped back to take a look, and Danny whistled low beside her.
“You need to take this to the boss,” he said.
“I’ll go see if anything new has popped up from our search.
” She took a few more minutes after he left to get her facts straight.
It had to be the same person doing this.
What did they say? Three or more done by the same person was a serial killer.
Though, she knew from her training that wasn’t always the case.
With one last look at the boards, she left the room.
“How’s it going, Leah? Has he got a sec?” Dover asked the captain’s administrative assistant when she reached the office.
“Ask him yourself,” she answered. Leah had the tendency to be snarky which was probably why Dover had always liked her.
“Hey, Cap, can I talk to you?” she asked, sticking her head in the chief’s office. He motioned her into his office without looking up. She waited patiently until he finished what he was doing.
“What can I help you with, Detective?” he asked.
“I think we might have a serial killer, sir.” Damn, that wasn’t how she wanted to start the conversation.
With all the facts swimming through her head, though, that was the first thing that popped out.
He arched an eyebrow at her. “I mean, I think we’ve found a link between our cases and another. Two others actually.”
He sat back in his seat and waved his arm for her to continue.
“All four were successful men. They were all strangled by something like a belt, and the ME found a religious medallion on each one. A St. Matthew, St. Francis, St. Christopher, and St. Bernadette” she continued.
“St. Bernadette? That’s unusual.”
“Yes, sir. They were all left on private school properties arranged on their backs with no clothes or personal effects. Sean, uh, the medical examiner is positive they were killed elsewhere. Danny and I set it up in Evidence-2 if you would like to see what we have.”
The chief stood and followed Dover down the hall to the other end of the offices. There were already several other detectives in the room when they arrived. She let him study the boards for a minute before stepping up to them.
“The first is Ian Moore from Minneapolis here on business. He was found in Cambridge three months ago. This,” she said, pointing to the next picture of a handsome smiling man, “is George Goodwin from Buffalo. Dom is working that case and can speak more on it. This is who we found last week. Trent Alleman who worked at Mass Gen and was found here in Roxbury.”
“We just got confirmation from dentals on the latest victim,” Danny said, handing her a piece of paper.
She wrote Jack Dawson above the photos from the morgue.
She would add a photo of him alive as soon as possible.
It was important to remember that these were men with lives and people who loved them, not just some body on a slab.
“Mr. Dawson was from Hartford. Looks like he was here on business too,” she added.
“He was reported missing by his boss when he didn’t turn up to head to the airport the next day.
He was also found stripped of clothing with a St. Francis’s medal around his neck.
We should know more when the lab gets back to us with their report. ”
She looked over the report for any other details she needed to voice. Finding none, she looked up at the chief waiting to see what he would say.
“It looks like you might be right, Detective. See what else you can find. Touch base with Cambridge. We’ll need a copy of their files,” he said. “You’ll be point on this. Are you good with that, Danny?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Good. Dom, Kyle, shift your load to someone else. I assume you’ll want to be in on this.” He turned once again to face her. “I’ll expect a full report tomorrow morning.” With a nod, he left the room. Those who remained turned their gazes on her awaiting instruction.
“Okay, Dom, do you want to keep working on the Goodwin case. Danny, contact Buffalo and see if they can send someone to interview the boss. I’ll contact Cambridge and have them send over their files.
We might have the detectives on that case brought over for a while.
We’ll meet back at about four. Sound good? ”
She watched as the other detectives got to work. If they could just connect the dots on the cases, maybe it would lead them closer to their killer. She knew Danny would get to work tracing Dawson’s whereabouts during his trip to Boston. Now to convince another district to turn over their case.
She returned to her office and put in the request for the case file from Cambridge.
Danny reported that Buffalo PD was sending someone to the law office to interview Dawson’s boss.
She doubted he could shed much light on what happened, but with any luck, he could tell them where Dawson was going that night.
“Hope I’m not interrupting,” Sean said, walking into the office. “I thought you’d want the final autopsy findings as soon as possible.” He crossed the room and dropped into the side chair next to her desk. “I emailed you a copy, but here are the hard copies of everything.”
Dover snatched the copies from his hand and began pouring over them.
“Nothing new to report. He was strangled by some sort of belt. I don’t think it was done manually because there are no defense wounds.
I did find a small needle mark on his neck, but whatever he was given doesn’t show up on the toxicology report.
My thought is he was kept alive for a while before death. At least twelve hours if GHB was used.”
“Thanks, Sean.” He was sitting close enough for her to catch the scent of cedarwood.
It took all of her concentration not to lean into it.
She mentally shook her head. There was no way she could develop a crush on the medical examiner during an open investigation of this magnitude.
It was completely unprofessional. Not to mention ridiculous.
“Alleman and Dawson were very similar except for the medals. I pulled Bianchi’s case back out and reviewed it also.
It’s definitely the same MO down to the same size strap used in your case.
I didn’t notice anything the other ME missed.
If you’d like me to, I can read over the Cambridge case when it arrives. Just let me know.”
“That would be great. I’ll forward it as soon as it shows up.” He smiled, and she couldn’t help but smile back.
“Yeah, there’s no special treatment there,” Danny mumbled once Sean left.
“Strictly professional.”
“Then why are you still grinning like a fool?”
Dover scowled. Snatching up the autopsy, she stomped out of their office. She needed to add the latest notes to the boards in the incident room anyway.
She wondered if Danny was right though. Was it possible Sean was interested? She shoved the high school crush thoughts to the back of her mind. Uncapping the dry-erase marker, she began updating the case boards.
Dom had been filling in the timeline for the Goodwin. He had last been seen at a bar in Southie in the company of a blonde woman. That was interesting. It wasn’t far from where they had traced Alleman’s last whereabouts to. She needed those files from Cambridge, now.
“Hey, Danny?” she said, stepping back into the office. “Do we have a list of all the Southie bars?”
“Should.” He pounded on his computer for a minute until the printer started to hum. “That’s a pretty big list,” he added, nodding at the printer. “What are you thinking?”
“Bianchi’s vic was last seen at a Southie bar with a blonde. It’s worth a shot. Alleman was also seen in Southie. Maybe that’s his hunting ground. Do we have a better photo of Dawson yet?”
“Just came in.” He handed her a photo of a young man smiling for the camera. Her heart hurt for the family who would never get to see that smile again.
“Can you hold it down, while I go see what I can find?” She checked her watch. “Everything should be open, but not too crowded yet.”
“Go on. I’ll call you if anything comes up.”
“Thanks, Danny.” She took the list off the printer and headed out.