Cuts Like a Knife: A Novel (A Kristen Conner Mystery Book 1) (44 page)

“But here’s the bad news. He’s planning one more kill. He said he wanted to say a special good-bye to us. There is one other detail he sent me. I don’t know how big of a deal this is. But he said nothing else will happen until summer. Not quite two weeks until you can move throughout our city with a feeling of relative safety.

“I can hear my critics already—and we know they mostly reside at city hall and the offices of what we commonly refer to as the ‘main-stream media.’ They will say that by going live I am jeopardizing the investigation and inciting a public panic.

“As is so often the case, they have missed the point. Airing this report won’t change the Cutter Shark’s plans. He wants the authorities to know what he is up to because he doesn’t believe they can do anything about it. In medieval times they would say he has thrown down the gauntlet.

“As to public panic. Don’t blame me. I’m just a private citizen. And if the police can’t do any better than they have so far, I may join the stampede out of town!

“The jungle is heating up, ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls. Stop back often. It may be good news or bad news or both—but at least it’s real news.”

68

I HAD TROUBLES getting online tonight so I couldn’t download and print a copy of the
New York Times
crossword puzzle. I did find a copy of the large-print edition of
TV Guide
that my mom brought over earlier in the week. They publish a puzzle every week. The clues that didn’t have anything to do with TV were way too easy. But most of the clues had to do with TV, and since I don’t watch much, I was in trouble. I did get the three-letter word for a fuzzy, extraterrestrial, sitcom character right away. Alf.

At least I think so, even though I never connected any of the three letters with another word. Another day, another meeting.

• • •

Our task force meeting went a couple of hours. We met at city hall in a conference room a few doors away from the mayor’s office, where Zaworski and Willingham were holed up with the politicians. The news conference that was called to announce a big break in the Cutter Shark case was cancelled. I can’t believe how close they came to plastering Dell’s name and face across the planet. As we waited, Don speculated they were working on damage control. I agreed with him.

The conference room was even nicer than the one we use at the regional office of the FBI in the State Building. An assistant to the mayor brought in a tray of glasses—they looked like real crystal—with the city’s seal etched on the side. There was an ice bucket and a full assortment of soft drinks. She came back a few minutes later, pushing a cart with full coffee service. That’s where most of us headed. Van Guten never moved, but nodded in the direction of the new group in from DC, and one of the FBI guys got her a small green bottle of San Pellegrino and a glass filled with ice cubes.

The brass walked in and Reynolds did most of the talking. He confirmed that Dell has a brother who was in and out of mental institutions from an early age. Willingham looks gray and weary. Maybe he got chewed out, too. He asked how everyone missed the brother. He saved his harshest glares for Reynolds and Van Guten. Blame is working its way down the food chain. Who is next? Reynolds, ever the cool customer, went on to explain that Dell’s brother, Dean, grew up with a different last name than Woods in the course of getting volleyed around the foster care system and was essentially “lost.” Van Guten announced she had run Dean’s data through a series of psychological corollary tests she uses. She thinks Dean Pierre, his last known pseudonym, fits the bill for our Cutter Shark. More so than Dell.

I think we
already have that figured
out without your tests,
I thought to myself.

“Our top priority is finding Dean Pierre,” Reynolds continued.
Duh.

He told us agents were being dispatched to Pierre’s previous known cities as we spoke. His picture will be posted on every law enforcement bulletin board in the United States of America, including every port authority, to make sure he doesn’t flee the country. Every cop in Chicago will be distributing his picture to shop owners, bartenders, waitresses, bank tellers, hotel and motel clerks, and anyone else who might remember seeing his face in the past year. The decision has been made not to officially put his face on TV or the newspapers yet—but that will happen within hours anyway. Someone from CPD will make a call to a friend at one of the stations and pictures will be smuggled to the outside world.

As we met, I looked at Dean’s pictures from every angle I could turn my head. Dean and Dell are certainly not twins but I can see the family resemblance. Dean has lighter hair and is clearly the bigger of the two. His shoulders are wide enough that he could be a linebacker for the Bears. He has to lift weights. This is a guy who could have punched me in the kidneys and put me down in a hurry.

“Priority number two is Dell Woods,” Reynolds said.

I knew he wasn’t the Cutter Shark, but no argument from me on that point. He has to come in and tell us everything he knows. If he won’t, he needs to be brought in. Instructions have been given to all law enforcement agencies that it should be assumed that both Dell Woods and Dean Pierre are armed and dangerous. I don’t think Dell is a threat to anyone but himself, but I understand that intentionally or not, he’s been aiding and abetting a potential killer and he, too, must be approached with extreme caution. I feel bad for him in a whole new way.

But I was right. He’s not the killer.

I am the obvious link to Dell, so my cell and home phones, my email and social networks—I only have fifteen friends on Facebook, which is embarrassing—will remain on live-access with federal agents both in DC and here in Chicago. After my parking lot incident, which everyone now assumes was Dean and not Dell—they are keeping a security detail assigned to me until the case is resolved. As boring as my life can be, I don’t envy the mind-numbing nothingness that my babysitters have ahead of them.

How long will this go?

We watched the ChiTownVlogger’s latest report on the Cutter Shark. Our killer is obviously using him to send us a message, and a tech crew is monitoring all the ChiTown Vlogger’s communications to find out how—and the message is quite clear: the next murder will happen on June 21, the first official day of summer, or shortly thereafter. Unless he’s smart and runs—we have his picture after all. Can we believe the message that his work is coming to a close in Chicago? He’s short on his city death quota, but his pattern is so messed up, I doubt even someone as deranged as him is going to worry about symmetry and order. But if he’s in the acceleration cycle Van Guten described, is he in enough control to wait? To leave?

The meeting raised more questions than answers.

I wonder again how we will know he is gone? How long will I need to watch my back?
Always and forever
I can hear Mr. Barry say.

As the meeting drew to a close, I asked the question that woke me up in the middle of the night: “If Grace Mills was Plan B, who do we think was Plan A?”

Everyone just stared at me.
Me?
“If it was me, I’d be dead,” I said.

“We’ve talked about that,” Blackshear said, “and have a couple ideas. Maybe something or someone interrupted him. Maybe he was just sending a warning then but didn’t plan to kill you at that point—but does now. He did refer to his victim as ‘special.’ So taking out someone who has investigated him and who is under police protection would well qualify you as special.”

• • •

I brush my teeth for the second time tonight. I shouldn’t have eaten that oatmeal cookie from the batch Vanessa made for us. I use the bathroom—no pink in my pee, my new obsession—wash my hands, and pad to my bedroom. I check the windows and then walk through my entire apartment to make sure everything is closed and locked up. I am going to call Klarissa back when I lay down, but as I pull back the covers on my bed there is an envelope sitting on my pillow.

My skin crawls, and I glance around, although I know I’m alone.

How in the heck did we miss that?

69

I PUT THE call in to Konkade. Reynolds is the task force commander, but Konkade handles the details.

“Konkade here.”

“Sergeant, this is Detective Conner.”

“Good evening, Kristen. I’m so pleased you are calling me to wish me a good night’s sleep. That is why you’re calling isn’t it?”

I sigh. He laughs.

“Didn’t think so,” he says. “I take it my wife is going to have to watch
Desperate Housewives
by herself tonight. What have we got?”

After explaining, I get off the phone and call Don.

• • •

Mom can’t come to my apartment without doing some cleaning.
Thank you, Mom
, I think, now that my place has become the new task force headquarters.

Konkade’s last instructions to me were not to touch anything. I was too tired to exercise my incredible powers of levitation, so I disobeyed his orders and put my tired rear end on the kitchen counter to wait.

Konkade called Bruce, the techie, but he was down at his mom’s house in Kankakee, at least an hour and twenty minutes from my place, even with no traffic on a Sunday night, so Konkade called Jerome next. Jerome showed up to handle the evidence. I’m praying it’s not a mushy card from my mom that she left on my pillow. I’ve never known her to refer to me as Detective—or misspell my first name. The envelope reads: Detective Kirsten. Maybe it’s the barista from JavaStar. He writes “Kirsten” on the side of the cup almost every time.

Jerome is first on the scene—you know you’re having a great week when your apartment is officially the center of a serial murder investigation not just once, but twice within forty-eight hours—and he lets me know he lives less than ten minutes away. I let him know that my mom had vacuumed and dusted after his last visit here, so he sure as heck won’t find much in the way of evidence—or dirt. But he still puts on his miner’s hardhat with a blue light and spends thirty minutes examining every square inch of my bed and bedroom.

By the time he comes out with the envelope held between a pair of rubber-tipped tweezers, the cavalry has arrived and my small place is packed. The brass has commandeered the kitchen and we working stiffs are sitting in my living room. I edge closer to the Formica counter that divides my kitchen and living space where Jerome has set up a light box. He.carefully lays the red envelope on it. Everyone has crowded in close, but I manage to muscle my way to Jerome’s immediate right. Hey, it is my letter.

Actually it’s a Hallmark card. Somebody cared enough to give the best. There’s a picture of a red rose on the front panel. The inside has no printed message, just a couple lines scrawled in the same crooked letters that were on the envelope.

You aren’ t bad, but
not nearly as good
as you think you are. I hope you haven’
t forgotten me already. We have unfinished business after all.
Until then . . . think of me often.

“Someone find me a sample of Dean Pierre’s handwriting,” Reynolds orders.

Dean’s decided to run. Please God. Don’t let
him get away.

70

June 15,
3:08 a.m.

I’M GOING
TO
miss this city. Not.

After such an auspicious, promising start, nothing went as planned. That’s never happened before. It still doesn’t seem
conceivable.

What went
wrong? Is it possible
I made mistakes? Possibly. Okay . . . probably. But even my mistakes are evidence of my greatness. Despite
living by no other man’s code . . . for no
other man’s approval .
. . for no god’s, no
nation’s, no family’s glory and honor but my
own . . . If I confess
to any shortcoming,
it is that of kindness
. . . I let down my carefully constructed defenses. Because of her.
I must admit . . . I grew . . . I grew . .
. fond of her.

I have
worked hard to hone my craft,
my art. This is not the end
of what and who I am. I pledge to make a new beginning. I shall arise out of the ashes like a phoenix. I will be greater than even before.

Undoubtedly my strengths have also been my undoing here. Discipline. Work
ethic. I have committed myself each day to
the perfection of my body and my being, without
break, for nigh on eight years now. I will
stop judging myself harshly. After Friday night’s ultimate act, I’ll disappear for a time. Perhaps a respite is
in order. I’ve never
traveled abroad. I’d kind of like to visit Paris, but the currency
exchange is murder. I
just said “murder.” Maybe that’s an omen.