CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
Kate rubbed her eyes and glanced at the clock. Ten-oh-nine. How had that happened?
Marcus had gone through the list of acquitted defendants from Whitmore’s and Hartwell’s research, twenty in all. He’d delegated finding other potential victims to the police department and stepped outside for “good coffee.”
The coffee in the breakroom was far from wonderful, but it wasn’t coffee Marcus was after.
It was movement. He wasn’t good at the tedious stuff.
He could do it when he absolutely needed to, but he preferred to be on his feet, tracking suspects, talking to persons of interest, looking for clues.
Kate was normally the one who picked at the minutiae of a case, needling apart every detail, obsessing over each facet until one of them reflected the truth.
Right now, she had no idea which facet to obsess over. The one she wanted to obsess over appeared to have less to do with this case than any previous commandment killing.
That made no sense to her. If it looked like a duck, walked like a duck, and quacked like a duck, then how could it be a barn owl? It just didn’t fit.
She got to her feet and started to pace when the door opened and Whitaker walked in.
He gave her a somewhat guilty half smile and said, “I just wanted to let you know I’ve officially stepped back from the case.
With Denny being one of the victims, my head’s just not in the right place.
I’m sorry I got in your way back there, and I’m sorry I really haven’t done a good job.
I didn’t think this one was gonna get to me the way it did, but…
” He took a breath. “Anyway, it’s probably going to go to Henriksen.
She’s on leave right now, but she’ll be back here tomorrow.
You’ll like her, she’s a spunky kid. Sharp as a razor. ”
Kate smiled empathetically. “How are you feeling?”
“Me? Like shit.”
They both chuckled, and Kate admitted, “Yeah. I hear that. I know that feeling very well.”
Whitaker shrugged. “Well… it happens, right? You win most of them, but every now and then, you take some pitches you just can’t read. That’s when the boss calls in a pinch hitter. You take your lumps, learn the lessons you can, then you come back for the next at-bat. It is what it is.”
“That’s an admirable attitude,” Kate said and meant it.
She’d fought tooth and nail on multiple occasions to remain on the Cox case in spite of considerable evidence that being here was damaging her mental health.
She still believed it was the right thing to do, especially after it became clear that Cox’s obsession with her wouldn’t change just because she wasn’t investigating him, but even absent the commandment killings, she wasn’t good at letting go.
It was a big part of the reason she’d never had a romantic relationship that lasted.
Mike crossed her mind briefly, the sweet, shy, innocent bookstore owner who remained so far, the only person willing to give it a serious go with her.
And she’d tried. She really had. But their relationship had been churned under the wheels of her job just like everything else.
Love was something people in her line of work got to read about when it went right and investigate when it went wrong.
It wasn’t something they got to experience.
Marcus crossed her mind then, and for the first time in a while, she thought of him and Cheryl sympathetically.
Cheryl had tried, in her own way, to make things work with him, but like Kate, Marcus was wedded to the job.
That would always be priority number one.
Maybe the latest tiff was more serious because she had finally accepted that and decided she didn’t want it anymore.
As for Kate and Marcus? They’d never have time to work on a relationship either.
Being together would only mean they’d get to screw each other in the hotel room while working a case and have awkward dinners with her mom when they weren’t working.
How long could that last before the shine wore off and left something duller than had been there before?
Whitaker sighed and got to his feet. “Well,” he said, extending his hand. “It was a pleasure, Special Agent. Whatever comes next for you, I wish you luck.”
“You too,” Kate said, standing and accepting the handshake. “Thank you.”
He chuckled. “For what?”
“For showing me that it’s okay to let go.”
His brow furrowed, but in the end, he decided not to ask what Kate was talking about. Once more, he showed the maturity to know when to let go. “Happy to help.”
He left the room, leaving Kate to wonder if she’d ever be able to walk away the way he did, or if she’d let the job grind her into dust until there was nothing left but a cracked paper shell.
The door opened again, and Marcus came in carrying two coffees. He handed her one and said, “Here. Doesn’t taste like shit.”
“What a wonderful tagline,” Kate said, accepting the paper cup. “You should go into marketing.”
“Maybe I will. Being a detective sure sucks on the heart.”
Kate looked at him and saw the grief in his eyes. She didn’t understand why this death in particular had hit him so hard, but her heart broke for him all the same. “I’m sorry, Marcus.”
He looked at her, and for a brief moment, the facade cracked.
Tears formed in his eyes, but he blinked them away and said, “Yeah, well… I’ll cry on your shoulder later.
In the meantime, we’re drinking coffee at quarter past ten, so I don’t think we’re getting sleep tonight. Might as well keep working.”
She reached forward and placed her hand over his. He flinched and looked at her, a cross between wariness and shock with just the slightest sprinkling of hope. How ironic that this was the first time in a while she’d felt sympathy without an undercurrent of romantic tension.
“It’ll be okay,” she said.
There was no way to know that, of course. There was never any way to know that. But sometimes it was good to hear anyway. Marcus smiled at her, placed a giant, rough bear paw over hers, and said, “Thank you.”
They remained that way for a short but wonderful moment. Then they pulled their hands to themselves, and Marcus asked, “Anything from the new cipher?”
“Well, the killer’s close to done.”
He raised an eyebrow. “You’re sure?”
“Yes. Their hands were shaky when they carved this one, and the content is more spastic and disjointed. Listen to this.” She pulled up the translation on her phone.
“Thou shalt not kill. But so many have. They’ve spilled their seed on the ground and that blood has cried to God.
God has placed His mark on me, and I have killed for Him.
I have corrected the errors in the ways of Man.
Only one remains. My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me? ”
“That it?”
“That’s it.”
He whistled. “Okay, yeah, they’re getting tired of this. That part about spilling seed on the ground. That’s… not about blood, is it?”
“Not in the Bible, no, but I don’t know if it matters here, or if the killer’s just losing self-control.”
“Hmm. And that part about God placing His mark on the killer. That’s Cain, right?”
“Yes. Rather than executing him for killing his brother Abel, God chose to put a mark on Cain instead. That mark made him unwelcome anywhere. He was cursed to wander the Earth and never have a home.”
“Is the killer saying they’ll never have a home?”
“I think so,” Kate said. “I think now that they’re closing in on whatever the pièce de résistance is, they’re feeling their doom approaching. That quote at the end of the cipher is Jesus’s final words before he died according to the Gospels of Matthew and Mark.”
“Huh. Does the killer think they’re going to die?”
“It’s possible. They know that serial killers almost never escape the death penalty. They’ll probably end up getting life in a mental facility if they’re as crazy as they seem to be, but they might not know that.”
“So, what’s the pièce de resistance?” Marcus asked. “I’ve gone through the research, and there aren’t any other cases bigger than these ones. Honestly, the Santos trial was the biggest one of the three. The other ones are all drug, prostitute, and gang related.”
Kate’s upper lip curled. “Worthless people in other words.”
“As far as the law-abiding people of Chicago are concerned.”
Kate crossed her arms. “This is ordinarily when I’d say the endgame is me or something related to me, but I don’t see any indication of that in this case.”
Marcus looked at her in surprise. “Wow. That is a shockingly mature admission coming from you.”
“Thank you so much,” Kate said drily. “I truly appreciate the compliment.”
“Well, you should. I’ve been thinking the same thing, but I didn’t want to say it out loud for fear you’d lash out and then abandon me.”
Kate smiled faintly. “I’m not that kind of girl.”
“Sure. Except when you are.”
Kate’s smile faded. Rather than confront that, she turned her focus back to the case. “We don’t know what the final event is going to be, so we need to keep looking at possible killers.”
“Yeah, but who? We went through everyone on the list. They’re all innocent.”
“Right,” Kate said. “I guess it could be someone who read about this on the news and got inspired, but it seems too personal to me. I mean, this killer genuinely believes they’re sacrificing their soul.
They’re terrified. But they’re still doing this.
For them to have a motivation so strong they would condemn themselves to hell suggests a deeply personal connection. ”
“So, who? Three different murders years apart. One of them didn’t even go to trial.”
Kate cocked her head. “Not criminal trial, but it did go to civil trial.”
“Okay, but that was a wrongful death lawsuit, not a jury trial. Dennison still got away with murder, but it can’t be someone connected to the courts.”
As it so often did, the answer fell on Kate violently. “Yes, it can. Oh my God. We missed it. How the hell did we miss it?”
“What? Miss what?”
“The stenographer. It has to be the stenographer.”
Marcus frowned. “They would have shown up on the list.”
“Not if their names were never a part of court records.”
“How would their names not be a part of court records?”
Kate got to her feet and started pacing, arms crossed.
Her heart started to quicken as the pieces of the puzzle fell into place.
“It’s not common, but some court systems hire out for stenographers rather than having a court reporter on staff.
Those companies will have the stenographers’ names and assignments on record, but the court might not. ”
“Okay,” Marcus said. “Any reason why?”
“Stenographers never interact with anyone. They’re basically a human recorder.
Some courts have even switched to automatic stenography or just straight audio recording.
Human stenographers are an archaic holdover that a lot of systems still use only for legal reasons, kind of like how a lot of DMV documents still need to be faxed even though the last time anyone saw a fax machine, Howdy Doody was the number one show on television. ”
“Okay, so the court wouldn’t feel it important to record the stenographer’s name any more than they would want the janitor’s name recorded who wiped down the benches after the session.
But they’d have the name of the company they contracted with, and that company would know the name of the stenographer they assigned. ”
“Exactly.”
“Okay. Then let’s figure that out.”
A quick phone call revealed that in all three cases, the Circuit Court of Cook County had hired Great Lakes Stenographers for their needs.
A call to the corporate number was a little less brief, but after a couple of minutes of working through hemming and hawing supervisors, Kate found herself on the phone with the Director of Operations who gave her the personal cell phone of the Chicago Area Manager who finally gave them an answer.
“Oh God,” the manager whispered. “I think that was Emily.”
Kate and Marcus shared an air high-five. “Emily who?” Kate asked.
“Emily Warren. She’s one of our most in-demand stenographers.
She can type over three hundred words per minute.
She was… let me see… Yeah, oh my God, that was her.
I had to go back to the archived records to confirm she was assigned to Friar v.
Dennison, but it was her. She had just started with us.
Oh my God. And she’s been so crazy recently. ”
That explained why the manager was so shocked when she realized who it was. It was easy to dismiss crazy behavior as eccentric and quirky until one connected it to violent murders.
“Crazy how?” Kate asked.
“About four months ago, she just started behaving… oddly. She started carrying a crucifix to work. Not wearing it like a necklace but carrying it in her purse. She would pull it out every now and then and mutter under her breath. We didn’t say anything because you know, people can be religious, but it started getting weird.
She would say things like how God needed a new instrument to perform the unsavory aspects of His will.
I remember that because I was in the lunchroom when she said that to another stenographer.
I had to ask her to keep those beliefs to herself when she was at work. ”
“How did she take that?”
“Well. She agreed, and we never had another incident from her. But she kept carrying the crucifix. And she hasn’t been at work for almost a week, and… Oh God. Do you think it’s her? The one killing these people?”
“Do you have an address for her?” Kate asked, sidestepping the question.
“Yes, I do. Hold on one second, I have to look it up on my phone since I’m not at the office.”
“Take your time.”
Kate looked at Marcus, who wore the grim expression he always did when the last push of a case came around. When the Area Manager gave them the address, he was on his feet before Kate could hang up.
The two of them left the office at a brisk jog. Kate looked at the dark sky and hoped that they’d find her before she once more took God’s judgment into her hands.