Anatomy (5 page)

“I have told you the truth,” Munz said. Did his words sound
as hollow to him as they did to her?

“We have you under surveillance,” Nicole blurted as Ruben’s
eyes dilated. She knew they wanted to keep that a secret, but why, if Munz
wasn’t the killer? Nicole was pretty damned sure she knew what the professor
was hiding. Well, she knew if Harbinger had been at all correct in his
assessment. “And you weren’t home with your wife.”

The lawyer seemed concerned, looking to his client. “I
wouldn’t say anything, Dr. Munz.” He urged his client to the door, but Nicole
stepped in front of them.

“I get it that you want to keep your…activities private,”
Nicole sympathized. “But people are dying. Your secret pales in comparison to
another person being dissected alive.” Munz refused to look her in the eye. “I
know you don’t want that.”

Ruben put a hand on her shoulder. “Maybe we should let them
go and bring the professor back in when—”

“Or, you could tell us right now what you were doing last
night.” Nicole shrugged off her partner’s restraint. “Your wife has perjured
herself, Dr. Munz. We can prosecute her for that.” The professor finally looked
up. She’d found the chink in his armor. His wife. “She knows, doesn’t she?”

Munz’s lips pursed together. Nicole was close, but not correct.
“She suspects, then?”

“What are you talking about?” Levinson asked.

“Yes,” her partner added tersely. “What exactly are you
implying?”

The professor knew, though. Nicole could tell, as his eyelid
twitched and his hand trembled against his pant leg.

“I have the right not to incriminate myself.”

Nicole couldn’t allow the smile she felt inside to reach her
lips. She still needed him to confess to his actual crime. “We aren’t
interested in prosecuting you, Dr. Munz. But we do need you to tell us what you
were doing last night.”

Still, the man seemed hesitant. She had to find something
else to apply the right pressure to break the seal of shame. “My guess is that
you disabled the cameras in the anatomy lab, but did you remember to turn off
the ones in the hallways? The ones that will show your repeated after-hours
trips to the lab?”

By the way his lips clamped down, she guessed not. “And are
you absolutely certain we won’t find biologicals,
your
biologicals, on
the cadavers?”

“It’s a victimless crime,” Munz blurted out.

“Whoa, whoa, whoa,” Levinson intervened. “How about my
client and I confer before—”

Nicole stepped around the lawyer. “What is, Dr. Munz? What
have you been doing in that lab? At night? By yourself?”

“They don’t want anything. They don’t have expectations,”
the professor stammered out. “They don’t fight.”

“Dear God,” Ruben whispered. “You’re a necrophiliac.”

Munz turned on his heel. “We prefer the term daisy pusher.”

Nicole didn’t have to hear anything more. The professor was
a pervert, but he wasn’t their perp. She made for the door.

“Where are you going?” Ruben asked.

“To search for the actual killer,” Nicole stated, then left
the room. As the door shut, her eyes adjusted to the dim lighting of the
hallway. She found her captain standing at the observation window. Nicole
glanced around, but he was the only one there.

“What the hell was that about, Usher?” Captain Glick
demanded.

“Where’s FBI Special Agent Harbinger?”

Captain Glick frowned. “What Special Agent?”

“The one you called in to help with the case?”

Glick shook his head. “I didn’t call in any FBI agent. And
back to why you—”

A laugh erupted before Nicole could stop it. Harbinger
wasn’t even on official duty, yet was closer to solving the case then they had
come in
months
. “I’m sorry, sir, but I’ve got to follow up a lead.”

“Without Torres?”

Definitely without her partner.

* * *

Kent sat at a corner table in the back of the Decadence
Café. He blew on his hot chocolate, causing the whipped cream to tremble and
dance across the dark surface. Everyone else around him was drinking an iced
tea, or iced latte, or iced something aruther. Given the fact that it was ten
o’clock at night and still ninety degrees with one hundred percent humidity,
Kent didn’t blame them.

However, he found the warmer it was outside, the warmer he
liked his drink. Call him a contrarian that way.

As he waited for his hot chocolate to cool just below
scalding temperatures, Kent studied those around him. More than half of the
patrons he and Nicole had lured here. You could tell them from their furtive
glances and barely contained excitement and shame. He had made sure to tell
each of them to order something different, with a twist.

Never before had café-goers been so interested in what
everyone else was eating. Who would be brave enough to get up and introduce
themselves to their supposed blind date? Kent had certainly manipulated each of
them, but that didn’t mean that he hadn’t tried to match each of them with
someone compatible. It felt like it was his civic duty.

He might be a puppet master, but he liked to think of
himself as a benevolent one. Well, perhaps not benevolent, but at the least
indulgent. The café door opened to reveal a petite brunette with a badge on her
hip. Once again, he pulled a string, and look who followed.

Nicole spotted him and headed straight over. “Special Agent
Harbinger.”

“Please,” he said, indicating to the chair across from him.
“Once you’ve seduced together, I believe you should be on a first-name basis.”

“Kent, then,” Nicole said as she sat down. “You weren’t
called in.”

Leaning back, Kent took a sip of the hot chocolate. The
barista had been right. That shot of spearmint really did liven up the drink.
“I never said I was.” Off of her frown, he continued. “Your paramour was the
one that ousted me as a profiler. I was simply observing.”

She cocked her head. Both of them knew there was nothing
simple about his presence here, but she didn’t push it.

“So how was it?” Kent asked.

Nicole shrugged. “It’s good that we’ve eliminated Munz and
can move on.”

“That’s not what I asked though, is it?” he pointed out.

The detective shifted in her seat, her fingers playing with
an empty sugar packet. “I could…” she stopped, then started again. “It was like
I could sense his internal resistance, then the cracking of his composure. Not
in a psychic way, just in a…” Nicole pointed to her midline, “Physical way.”

Kent knew exactly what she was describing. Most cops called
it their gut, but really it was a complex set of visual and auditory clues,
filtered and sorted by the brain, before the autonomic system sent the message
down to the belly. There was very little instinct about it. For the most part,
it was a learned craft that could be cultivated if one wished and was willing
to risk opening themselves up to it.

“Again, not what I asked.”

Nicole let the packet go. “It felt pretty damned good.”

Kent grinned. That’s what he’d thought. “And what do you
think of our handiwork?”

“What do you mean?”

“Look around,” Kent said. “Recognize anyone?”

Nicole turned in her seat, surveying the room. “I don’t —”
She stopped herself, then swung back to him. “No. They can’t be.”

“Oh, but they are,” Kent said, then took another sip. “Can
you guess who’s who?”

A smile flickered at the edge of her lips as she studied
those around her. She pointed to the chubbiest of the bunch. “Chastity4U?”

“Very good,” he purred. “And MelissaOTK?”

Nicole nodded toward a redhead wearing a dark purple
bustier.

“Now, knowing what you do,” Kent stated, “reimagine your
profile of the killer.”

The detective’s eyes narrowed. “He certainly has far more
social skills than we had anticipated.”

“Online,” Kent reminded her. “That is a whole other set of
skills. But I was speaking more to his baseline personality.”

“What do you mean?”

How this reminded Kent of his days of teaching at Quantico.
Okay, so it was only for one class, but still. There was a certain thrill to
watching someone else’s mind expand.

“Talk to me about how he disposes of the bodies.”

Nicole opened her mouth, but shut it again. She thought a
bit longer before answering. “He is a bit of a showman.”

“Exactly,” Kent concurred. “After all that work and flare,
do you really think he would be content to sit back and let the police take it
from there?”

“You aren’t suggesting…”

Kent was about to acknowledge that that was exactly what he
was suggesting when the café door opened again. A tall, ravishing brunette
entered, her long black dress hugging every curve. Her heavy eyeliner expertly
applied, then smudged just enough to give that smoky look.

“Ah, but here is the showstopper,” Kent stated.

Nicole turned to take in the new beauty as the grin fell and
was replaced by a frown. “Jaime? The EMT?”

Ah, if a picture was worth a thousand words, the look on
Nicole’s face was worth a million.

“But…but…” Nicole balked. “Why would you lure her here?”

“Oh, my darling,” Kent cooed. “I allowed her to
lure me
.”

* * *

Nicole didn’t bother to open her mouth. Gibberish would just
fall out. Her mind had to grasp the several bombshells that had just been
dropped.

First Kent was suggesting, or, more like the profiler,
telling her that the killer had inserted himself into the investigation. That
someone she knew was the killer. Second, Jaime standing in that doorway. The
EMT that had lured Kent here.

She couldn’t be the killer, could she? Everything about her
was so wrong for the crime, yet here she stood, not looking a thing like she
did while on the job. She had transformed from mousy to seductress in a few
short hours.

The woman’s dark eyes passed over Nicole, then flickered
back. Recognition registered. The smooth self-confidence was replaced by a look
of barely contained panic. Jaime turned on her heel and headed back out the
door.

Nicole knocked her chair over rushing to follow. “Police,”
she announced as the room turned to her. Dodging past MelissaOTK, Nicole hit
the door and burst out onto the street. No Jaime, though. Just her partner. He
must have followed her here. Under other circumstances Nicole would have found
that a bit overbearing—right now, though, it was a godsend.

“Ruben, did you see Jaime?”

“The EMT?” Ruben asked, glancing around the empty street.

Nicole didn’t have time to explain. “Did you see a woman in
a long black dress? Hot? Smoking hot?”

“Yes, she hurried off to the south, but—”

Not bothering to answer him, Nicole struck off, knowing that
Ruben would follow.

“I don’t understand,” her partner said as he hurried to
catch up. “Actually, I don’t think I understand the last few hours.”

And Nicole really couldn’t help him, not while busy checking
out side alleys trying to find Jaime. The EMT couldn’t have gotten very far.
Not in those stilettos. Then she heard it. The click of heels against the
pavement. Nicole took the next left, rushing down the alley. Was that a flash
of red from the bottom of the EMT’s designer shoe?

Pulling her weapon, Nicole quickened her pace. While Ruben
un-holstered his weapon, as well, he didn’t sound any more sure than he had
been a moment ago. “We are chasing down Jaime?”

There she was! Nearly to her car. They couldn’t let her get
away, but they were pretty damned far off. Then an arm reached out from a
doorway and clotheslined the woman. Jaime flew off her feet, landing on her
back, clutching her throat. Kent stepped from the shadows, adjusting his cuff
links.

“What the hell is going on?” Ruben demanded.

Nicole got Jaime up, patted her down, making sure that she
wasn’t carrying a weapon. “Jaime has been using chat rooms to lure victims.”

Ruben took a step back. “Do you mean that…”

Catching her breath, Nicole nodded to the profiler. “Kent
thinks that the Professor inserted themselves into the investigation. Jaime was
the first on the scene this morning.” Nicole found a small label in Jaime’s
purse. It read “Ureter.”

Ruben read the label. “You crazy—”

“Wait,” Jaime croaked out, trying to clear her throat. “I
didn’t kill anyone.”

“We will see about that,” Nicole said, handcuffing the EMT.

“No,” Jaime said. “I just sold the crime scene photos.”

Kent stepped forward, “No, that’s not all you did.”

The EMT nodded slowly. “And stole evidence to sell to the
murder memorabilia auctions, but that’s it.”

Nicole looked to Kent, who didn’t seem surprised. Nor did he
correct Jaime.

“She isn’t the killer?” Nicole asked, feeling her heart sink
in her belly.

“Oh, heavens no,” Kent answered. “I mean, we already know
who the killer is. Don’t we?”

* * *

“What the
hell
are you talking about?” Ruben demanded,
stepping forward, taking charge.

“It’s the crime scene photographer,” Kent answered,
nonplussed. “Didn’t I tell you?”

“No,” Nicole snapped.

“Oops, my bad.”

Ruben felt like he’d just walked in on a Wagner opera
halfway through, in its original German. “Nikki, what is going on?”

But she didn’t answer. Instead, her brows furrowed as she
frowned. Clearly, her mind was whirring a mile a minute. Unfortunately, Ruben
couldn’t wait for her to come up for air.

“What makes you think that Roy is the killer?” asked the
profiler

“Um,” Harbinger said, acting as if Ruben wanted to know why
the sun rose in the morning. “He had access. He had suppressed rage. He was the
only one at the crime scene that reacted when I called the killer stupid.
Clearly he has body image issues—do I need to go on?”

“Yes,” Ruben growled. “Yes, you do. Because no jury in a
millennium is going to convict on that thin of, Jesus, it isn’t even evidence.”