Drained (9 page)

“Ready for the tour?” Brett asked.

She stood from the couch.

“Let’s start out back,” Brett said. He walked to the back of the living room and opened the door leading out to the expansive patio and pool area. After a half-hour walk around the grounds, he brought Monica back to the front of the house. He could tell by her stumbling that the drugs were taking effect. She’d finished her drink fifteen minutes prior. Brett punched in the code for the garage. The first door of three opened. His Jeep sat in that garage stall.

“Come on,” Brett said. “We’ll go through here so you can see the lower level of the house.”

Monica walked to him and put her arms around his neck. She pressed a leg between his. “Why don’t you show me your bedroom,” she said.

“Are you telling me you can’t wait until later?” Brett laughed. “Patience. Plus, Harry, the driver, should be here soon.”

“I thought you said his name was Henry.”

The drugs weren’t working quickly enough on the woman—she was still coherent enough to catch his error. Brett improvised. “It is. Sometimes, I call him by his last name. It’s spelled
H-a-r-i
.”

She slowly nodded, seeming to buy his explanation. “Maybe we can just stay here. I’m sure we can find something to do that will be fun,” Monica said.

Brett looked her in the eyes as she smiled at him. Her eyes were beginning to glaze over as though she was extremely intoxicated.

“Yeah, if you want. Let’s grab another glass of wine.”

He ushered Monica inside and parked her on the couch again. He went to the kitchen and fixed her another Rohypnol-filled glass of wine. When he brought the glass to her, she was passed out with her chin resting on her chest.

“It’s about time,” Brett said.

Monica woke up. “It’s what? Time? For what?”

“Here.” He handed her the glass of wine and took a seat next to her.

She brought it to her mouth and took a sip. “Where’s yours?” she asked.

“I was about to go to the kitchen to get it.”

Monica set the glass of wine down on the glass coffee table. She turned toward Brett and tried to pull him on top of her.

Brett held back.

“Come on. Let’s screw around,” she said. Her words came slow and slurred.

“Let me call the driver quick and cancel,” he said. He pulled his cell phone from his pocket.

Monica picked up her glass and took a large mouthful of wine. She swallowed then clanked the glass back down on the table, spilling some on the rug covering the tile.

Brett pretended to be having a conversation with someone while watching Monica from the corner of his eye. She leaned back on the sofa and closed her eyes as he continued talking to no one on the phone. Then Monica’s head fell to her chest—she was out. He planned to give the drugs a few more minutes to work before taking her downstairs.

I woke up a bit after seven in the morning, showered, and dressed. I sat at the small desk in my room, putting together a file of everything I wanted to go over with the families during interviews that day. I flipped the folder closed and dialed Karen, who picked up right away.

“Hey,” she said.

“Mrs. Rawlings,” I said.

“How was your night?” she asked.

I leaned back in my chair. “After I talked to you, I watched some television, had what I figured to be an eighteen-dollar gin and tonic from the minibar, and knocked out. About it. You?”

“I unboxed a few things and curled up with Porkchop on the couch. We watched a couple of sappy movies and cried. Ate popcorn.”

I smiled. “Date night with the dog?” I asked.

“Exactly. I’d rather it be you, but I’ll take what I can get.”

“Thanks, I guess?”

“What time did you say you had to go and meet with the victim’s families today?” Karen asked.

“The first one is at ten,” I said. “It sounds like we’ll probably have to leave here a bit after nine. Second one is at three this afternoon. Then we have to go this evening and view the scenes where the women were found.” A horn honked on her end of the call. “Are you heading into the office now?” I asked.

“Yeah. Some jerk just cut me off.”

“I’ll let you pay attention to driving,” I said.

“Okay. Call me later.”

“I will. Love you.”

“Love you, too. Be safe,” she said.

“Always. Bye.” I hung up.

I stood, hung my shoulder holster over myself, and pulled on my suit jacket. I needed a coffee but had never been a fan of the small hotel-room coffee makers and the kind of coffee they brewed—plus, I’d seen that the hotel had a coffee shop just outside the front awning. I put on my shoes and left my room. After a quick elevator ride down to the lobby, I left the hotel, made a right, and walked next door. The aroma from the coffee shop could be smelled from the sidewalk. I entered, and the inside of the coffee shop was a red-and-white nineteen-fifties theme. I headed to the counter, ordered two cups of what the barista recommended, filled my jacket pocket with sugar and packaged creamers, and headed back.

I rode the elevator back up and went to Beth’s room. I gave her door a knock with the toe of my shoe, and the door swung open. Beth stood before me in nothing but a towel. Her hair was wet. The television remote hung from her hand.

“Um,” I said. “Guess I should have maybe called first. I got you a coffee.” I held it out toward her.

“Set it on the table. Come in.”

“Um,” I said again. I took a step into the room and set her coffee down, holding the door open with the heel of my shoe. I fished the sugar and creamers from my pocket and set them next to the cup.

Beth went to the edge of the bed and took a seat, staring at the television.

I scratched at the back of my head. “I’ll let you get ready. Just come next door when you are.”

“Hank, just come in. Close the door. Did you see this?” She jerked her chin at the television and turned up the volume.

“See what?” I asked.

“They found another body in a Dumpster. It might be our guy.”

I walked into the room, and the door closed at my back. I stared at the television. “Is this coverage live?” I asked.

“Yeah.”

“What have they said?” I asked.

“Not much. It’s a female.”

“Is this local?” I asked.

She turned her head and looked at me. “Englewood. It’s on the south side of Chicago. It looks like some old grocery store or something.”

“Did the news give an address?” I asked.

Beth shook her head.

“Get ready,” I said. “I’ll call for the car.”

“Are we going there? What about our appointment with Jasmine Thomas’s mother at ten?” she asked. “We still need to stop at the local office and get those records as well.”

I thought for a second. The body in the Dumpster might not have been related, and I wasn’t the biggest fan of missing appointments with family members of murder victims. “Do you mind making the stop for the records?” I asked.

“Not at all,” Beth said.

“Okay. I’ll go check out the scene of this body dump and then meet you at the interview with the mother.”

“Sure. That works,” she said.

I used Beth’s room phone to call downstairs for my car, stopped at my room to grab the interview folder I’d created, and left. After a half dozen phone calls, I got through to Agent Andrews and got the exact location of the scene. When I let him know I was on my way, he said he was just arriving on location. I punched the address into my cell phone’s navigation—just ten miles away.

The drive took a half hour due to traffic—traffic I was forced to sit through because I didn’t have an official car with lights or a siren.

News vans with masts in the air littered the sides of the street around what was an out-of-business grocery store. The front of the rectangular building read Discount Groceries and Checks Cashed in paint across the windows. Numerous squad cars were keeping the rubberneckers at bay and the scene secure. I slipped my car down the news-van-filled side street and pointed the nose toward the Chicago PD Ford SUV blocking the driveway to the building. An officer walked up, so I lowered my window and removed my credentials from my pocket.

“Agent Rawlings, FBI,” I said.

“One second.” The officer turned and headed to the Ford. He backed it up enough that I could pull into the lot.

I drove in and pulled off to one side, next to a pair of what looked like government-issued Crown Victoria sedans.

The officer who had moved the SUV approached.

“The scene is behind the building here,” the officer said. “There are a handful of agents already back there.”

“Got it. Thank you,” I said. I walked the lot to the yellow police tape segmenting off what looked like an alley spanning the back of the grocery store. I pulled my bifold and showed my credentials to the officer at the tape.

The officer waved me through. “All the way in the back of the alley at the Dumpster,” he said.

I headed back, passing officers and what looked like a forensics unit looking around. Miscellaneous yellow evidence cones marked the cement. Two blue FBI jackets caught my eye. I walked over. Both men had their backs to me. One of the men appeared to be Agent Andrews, judging by the short blond hair. The other was short and round, a coffee in his right hand. The rounder of the two turned toward me. His hair was short, brown, and balding. He had hound-dog jowls and a line of sweat over his brow. His face looked as if he’d missed the last few mornings of shaving.

Then Andrews turned. “Agent Rawlings, this is Agent Frank Toms. He’s from my office.”

I shook the other agent’s hand. “Good to meet you.” Then I addressed Agent Andrews. “Is this our guy?”

“It looks like it. Female DB in a Dumpster. Needle marks consistent with the others.”

“Who found her?” I asked.

“Some scrappers called her in,” Agent Toms said.

“Scrappers?” I asked.

“Guys driving around looking for junk metal to recycle. They came in the alley; flipped the lid on the Dumpster, looking for junk; and saw the body. Called the local PD. The local PD called us.”

“They were questioned?” I asked.

“Yeah. Just a couple of scrappers. Nothing there,” Agent Andrews said.

“Is the body still here?” I asked.

Agent Andrews shook his head. “They took her about a half hour ago after the forensics team was done with her.”

“Do you want to walk me through the scene here and maybe get whoever is heading up the forensics unit over here? I’d like to talk to him,” I said.

“Yeah, I’ll walk you through.” He looked at Agent Toms. “Frank, why don’t you hunt down Nick.”

Agent Toms gave him a nod and walked off.

Agent Andrews walked me to the Dumpster. The lid was flipped open. I glanced inside—about a foot of old garbage filled the bottom. I spotted an old computer monitor, some glass beer bottles, and random garbage. I caught a faint whiff of what smelled like bleach over the stink of old garbage.

“Do you smell bleach?” I asked.

“I caught a hint of it before, yeah. Forensics thinks she may have been scrubbed down. I’m not sure there was mention of that in any of the files.”

“I know I didn’t see it.” I pulled out my notepad and made a note of it. “It could just be that the other bodies had been in the Dumpsters longer. The smell could have dissipated.”

Andrews bobbed his head, appearing to agree.

“We dusted and photographed everything. Nick, from our forensics team, can show you the photos on his camera. She was in here, facing up. The coroner put the time of death between forty-eight and seventy-two hours,” Andrews said.

I looked away from my notepad, at Andrews. “Do we know how much of that time she was in this Dumpster?” I asked.

He shook his head. “Not sure. She obviously wasn’t killed in the Dumpster, so less time than that.”

“Any ID, phone, or anything on her?”

“No phone but a purse with photo identification. The woman’s name was Rebecca Wright. Twenty-six years old.” Andrews ran his free hand over his head. “Just a kid.”

I wrote down the woman’s name and age. “Was she local?” I asked.

“Chicago area, yeah,” he said.

I pointed back up the alley. “The evidence cones. What did you guys find?”

“A couple of cigarette butts and a wad of gum. No idea if it belonged to our guy, but we figured we should mark them off and gather them for DNA.”

I nodded.

I noticed Agent Toms standing with a man in a white clean suit and yellow rubber gloves—a camera hung from a strap around his neck. “Is that the forensics guy there?” I asked.

“Yeah, Nick Freeman. He’s our lead,” Agent Andrews said.

“I’m going to go have a talk with him. I’ll be back with you in a minute.”

I flipped my notepad closed, put it back into my pocket, and headed over to Agent Toms and the forensics lead.

Toms walked back toward Andrews as I approached.

“Agent Rawlings,” I said.

Blond hair stuck out from the edges of the hood on his clean suit. “Nick Freeman,” he said.

“Do you have the photos from the scene?” I asked.

“Yeah, one second. Let me get them pulled up.” He took the camera in his hands and pulled the strap over his head. He pulled up the photos and faced the camera’s screen toward me before advancing through them.

The photos were of the woman contorted in the Dumpster. Large sunglasses covered her eyes. The woman’s arms were out to her sides, her legs bent at the knees. Her hair looked to be dyed blond, from the half inch of darker roots, and pulled back in a ponytail. She wore a black shirt and a small pair of denim shorts. One of her shoes was half off of her heel. The next photos were of bruising and needle marks to her arms and thighs. The following photos were more of the same, but to the sides of the woman’s neck. It was, without a doubt, the exact method used to kill the previous women. I went through a few more things with the forensics lead and thanked him.

Then I caught the time on my watch—twenty after nine.

I walked back to Agent Andrews, who gave me his attention.

“I have an appointment to interview some family from the other victims in a bit here, so I’ll have to head out,” I said. “When do you think you’ll have everything from the scene here put together and in a file?”