Cold Silence (A High Stakes Thriller) (47 page)

Within a foot of him, Casey stopped and turned back as though she was looking for something. He felt himself tighten as she moved toward the gun. He couldn't risk letting her reach it. Without pausing, he attacked, pushing through the pant suits hanging in her closet and knocking the door open. With a swift arc, he landed the cattle prod on her shoulder.

She screamed, but the shock dropped her easily, giving him a chance to gag her. He took the first handkerchief and balled it, stuffing it in her mouth.

Her fight returning, she landed an elbow to his midriff.

He had prepared for that. His muscles were tight and strong. He took her hand and twisted it back, pushing her to the floor. She tried to look up at him, but he held her face to the ground. Never let them see your face. It made them too powerful. He drew the needle from the holster on his leg and jammed it into her arm.

She fought against him, but he held her down. Within minutes, she would be silent, complacent. It would give him time to prepare his work. He wouldn't let her go unconscious.

"Hello, Mac," he said as her fight started to weaken. He drew a blindfold from his pocket and tied it across her eyes.

She tried to make a noise but couldn't.

He would give the drug another minute and then he would remove the gag.

Pulling her to her feet, he pushed her toward the chair.

With a quick turn, she swung her leg, connecting with a hard blow to his chin. She reached for the blindfold, but he caught her arm and hit her hard with the cattle prod until he almost felt the burning flesh.

She tried to scream as she fell over, collapsing from the shock. From his medical studies, he knew that the stun gun drove the muscles to work at a pace that outstripped the metabolism, forcing the body to convert sugars to lactic acid and making the muscles nonfunctional. Basically, it caused a transient yet polarizing acidosis. It had worked perfectly.

Rubbing his face, he could feel the tenderness in his jaw. Her kick would leave a mark, he knew.

At the small desk chair, he pushed her down. He drew a roll of duct tape from his pocket and taped her body against the chair, leaving her arms free. Next, he taped each wrist to an arm of the chair.

As he finished, she started to talk again. Pulling down the handkerchief he had made into a gag, he leaned down and whispered in her ear. "I'll let you talk, Agent McKinley, but only if you behave."

"The Cincinnati Butcher."

He cackled. "I'm disappointed in you, Mac. I thought we understood each other. This isn't butchering—this is art."

"Art?" she scoffed, trying to sound strong and brave. But he could hear the vibration of fear in her voice. "You're a basic killer—abused as a child. There's nothing special about you," she added, her voice steadier.

He tightened his jaw, forcing himself to control his anger. She wanted him to react. He was in control here, not her. "Oh, but there is. I'm going to show you how special. The great masters didn't do the kind of work I do. Leonardo da Vinci wasn't as good."

"You're going to compare yourself to da Vinci? And here I hoped you might be one of the brighter ones. But it sounds like you're just crazy."

He tensed his jaw. "I am not crazy."

"Your mother told you that, didn't she? Called you crazy? And stupid, too, I bet. That wasn't very nice of her, was it? Did you become a killer to get back at your mother, Mr. Butcher? That would certainly make sense. Sometimes even parents do hurtful things. I'd like to hear what she did. I'd like to know how she hurt you."

She took a breath, her spine straightening, and he knew she was stalling. It was all a bluff. She knew nothing about him.

"I'm guessing your father wasn't around much," she continued when he still didn't answer. "He left when you were little, didn't he? Did your mother blame you? Let me guess, you've never had a normal relationship with a woman, have you? Women scare you a little, don't they? Your mother certainly did. She was tough, wasn't she? You thought she didn't love you. So, now you can't relate to anyone, am I right? Pretty much a loner?"

He shook his head, fighting to keep her words from penetrating. "No," he whispered to himself, his hands pressed against his ears. She was trying to fuck with him, just like they were always trying to fuck with him. He wasn't listening.

"Did you light fires to get back at her? How many things did you light on fire? Lots of things? Did you ever burn down anything big?"

He felt his arms shake against his head. "No," he said, more strongly. Keep the words out. "No fire."

"How about animals? How many animals did you kill? Did you chop them up, too? Did you wet your bed, Mr. Butcher?"

"I told you, I am not a butcher," he spat.

"Right, you're da Vinci," she said, her voice skeptical. He noticed her response came more slowly, and he could sense the drug taking control. "Did you wet your bed, Mr. da Vinci?"

"You've said enough. Shut up." He moved the point of his knife to her neck.

Her jaw shook, and he saw her fear in the motion of her lip. The pendulum of his emotion swung from anger to anticipation as he roped in his control, pulling the brimming fury back inside. He would have plenty of time to be angry later, but he couldn't let it affect his work.

"Oh, Mac, it isn't about killing. It's so much more. But, let's not argue. I'm going to show you."

He watched the panic in her brow and lips as she fought against the constraints. Smiling to himself, he opened his bag and pulled out surgical gloves. With his black gloves off, he put on the surgical gloves and drew his scalpel.

He ran his fingers across the warmth of her skin.

She shivered and squirmed, but there was nowhere to go.

"Did you know the tendons in your hands are like a musical instrument?" He drew the scalpel across the back of her right hand, splitting the skin.

She screamed, and he grabbed her shoulder hard. "I would prefer not to be violent with you, Mac. I'd like to do this with finesse. It's art—not violence. But if you make another sound, I'm going to have to put the gag back and be rough," he warned.

Tears soaked the blindfold as sobs choked her. Still, she remained silent.

He watched for a moment before continuing. Removing the thin skin layer from her hand, he ran his gloved fingers across the structure that lay beneath. "I really wish I could let you see this, Mac. It's quite fascinating."

Casey didn't move.

"Did you know that as the tendons pass under the transverse carpal ligament, they are enclosed in two specialized synovial sacs?" he continued. "The larger of the two holds the tendons for the Flexores digitorum sublimis and profundus—it's called the ulnar bursa. Those are your flexor tendons—the ones that allow you to extend your fingers out, say to shoot a gun perhaps."

Finding the outer edge of the ulnar bursa, he held it between his fingers then slipped his scalpel beneath it. The sound of her screaming in pain was heaven to him.

Chapter 1

March 2000

Inspector Jordan Gray reached for the ringing phone, careful not to wake his wife. Shaking himself awake, he sat up in bed.

"Gray," he mumbled into the receiver. He glanced over at his wife's empty side of the bed and ran a hand over his unshaven face.

Every time he woke up, he expected her to be lying there next to him like nothing had happened. But something had happened. A lot of somethings. She'd left two weeks ago—taken Will and Ryan and gone back to L.A. "Home" she called it. She had even enrolled the boys in school there for the rest of the year. Shit.

"You there, Gray?" repeated the patrol officer.

"I'm here."

"We got another one—a puppet."

Jordan swallowed hard and shook his head, fighting to retain his objectivity. "Caucasian female?"

"This one's black."

Jordan raised an eyebrow. It didn't sound like the same killer. "Age?"

"Same as the white girl—maybe ten or eleven."

"Can you identify her?"

"No, sir. You'd better come down."

Blood flowing hot and angry like lava, Jordan took down the address. "Don't let anyone touch her until I get there."

He dropped the receiver and flipped the bedside light on, staring past the empty side of the bed as he reached for his pants. "When it rains, it fucking pours," he mumbled.

He was out the door in four minutes.

As he pulled his '93 Explorer down Fifty-second and onto 580 toward San Francisco, he glanced at his cellular phone. It was three a.m. His sons, Will and Ryan, were in L.A. They were safe. Still, Jordan couldn't stop his fingers from dialing to make sure.

"Hello," came his mother-in-law's voice, like a snappy crow.

Jordan cringed and started to hang up when he heard Angela on another extension.

"It's Jordan, baby."

His mother-in-law quipped something he didn't hear and dropped the receiver. Bitch.

"You know what time it is?" Angela said, her voice filled with the sleepy tone Jordan loved.

"I know. I'm sorry. I had to check. The boys okay?"

"They're fine. They're asleep, Jordan. We're
all
asleep."

"I know." Why had he called? Because he needed to hear that his sons were okay. Was there something so wrong with that? "You okay?"

She stifled a yawn. "Fine. Are you in the car?"

"Yeah."

She sighed, and Jordan knew she was thinking she'd been right about him and his job. Damn. What could he do about it?

"You okay?"

He pictured Angela lying in bed. Man, she was beautiful. "I'd be better if you were here."

Angela sighed. "We've been through this, Jordan. I can't live like that. You're crazy all the time. And what's worse is you don't talk to me about it, we don't share things anymore."

Jordan nodded. "I know. Listen, can you guys come up for the weekend? I can get off, and we can go see the Warriors."

"You hate the Warriors."

"But you like 'em."

He could hear her smile through the phone. "You can come down," she said. "Why don't you call later?"

"Okay," he said. "I love you, Angie."

"I know you do. Be careful out there, Jordan."

He heard the click of the phone on her end and set the cell phone on the seat. What the hell was he doing chasing down psychopaths when his marriage was failing and his sons were 500 miles away? To make things worse, his partner was on medical leave, and he hadn't been assigned a new one. So he was working the case alone. His life was shit.

* * *

He stopped at the curb of the crime scene in San Francisco's Mission District. The mouth of the alley was littered with cans and bottles and the remainder of some homeless person's cardboard box home. Jordan didn't move. Instead, he scanned the area for stragglers. The body would wait. No one would touch it. The girl was beyond saving. But if the perp were here, he wouldn't stay long. There were too many people looking around to risk staying and being spotted.

"The sickos love to watch the excitement they've created," a seasoned inspector had told him years before. "Look for them at the scene, at the site of the body dump, the fire, the robbery, whatever. Look in the crevices and cracks, in the crowds of bystanders watching. That's where they'll be. And that's the best place to catch them. Because they can't stay away."

At three in the morning, though, this particular scene would be an easy place to spot an outsider. Other than the two local news vans, four cop cars, and an ambulance, the street was deserted.

From the head of the alley, Jordan could tell where the girl's body had been left. The buzz of police surrounded her as dense as vultures around a kill. Thick yellow crime-scene tape blocked off the area, but the reporters constantly pushed forward to test the borders like dogs edging along an invisible fence. Three officers held them at bay. As he passed, the reporters pushed after him.

"Keep 'em back," Jordan commanded as he moved past the shouting voices. But this crowd was nothing in comparison to the numbers that would show up when the story really got out.