Drop Dead Perfect (An Ellen Harper Psycho-Thriller) (14 page)

She nodded, trying to create an impression of utter calm.

Two minutes later, her mouth was free. He’d been so gentle removing the tape and residue. His touch soft, the way of lovers. There was no question that he felt something for her, or at least the
idea
of her. She shivered.
Can this situation get any more bizarre?
She decided not to reflect on that.

Running her tongue over her lips, she felt how dry they were
, and the taste of the tape lingered, as did the odor from it being directly under her nose. No one ever thinks the smell and taste of duct tape can be a complete blessing . . . except they were. Somehow, they reminded her that somewhere the world was normal, and duct tape was part of that world. Stupid, maybe, but anything she could hang her hat on helped.

“Can I get you anything?” Kyle’s partner asked.

“Wa-water?” she said hoarsely.

“Of course.”

He pulled a bottle from his jacket and gave her a sip, then another, then another.

“You’ve been here a few hours. Not long enough to dehydrate you, but we also didn’t
want you to be uncomfortable waiting to . . . well, do you have to go to the powder room?”

“I’d like to do that too,” she whispered.

Even though she had no real urgency, it would be good to get up and walk, and maybe get a feel for where she was. One look at his face said that wasn’t going to happen.

“We planned for that. Your chair has a panel we can slide back
, and you can use the bedpan. You may not be able to feel it, but there’s no bottom on your panties. Forgive me for getting so personal, but it was necessary. We wouldn’t want you wandering around now, would we? Not until you’re ready.”

He reached around to her left hand and moved it over a small metal button and depressed it, using her fingers. She felt the cooler air rush up to her as the panel moved away.

“You can use it anytime you like.”

Good God. These two had thought of everything. Her heartbeat rose
, despite her effort to keep calm. Anyone who thought things out like this was driven. The question was driven to what?

The image of the young lady found in the park popped into her head. There was no doubt in her mind now that Kyle had brought that woman here. Had he also been the one to kill her? She chose not to dwell on the answer.

Joannie pushed the button, and the panel slammed shut.

“I’ll take care of that later. Okay?”

“Of course, darling Joannie.”

By now, Kyle was standing a few feet behind her would-be suitor, arms folded, wearing a curious look of anticipation.

The masked man said, “I have some questions for you, dear Joannie, but first, do you have any for me?”

Okay, girl. You better win an Oscar for this. Nothing else matters.

“What’s your name?”

He cocked his head to the right, and she watched his smile.

“Good question. You can call me Damon.”

“All right. Damon, it is,” she said, returning the smile.
“Damon. Why am I here?”

“To fulfill your destiny—and mine.”

“Can you tell me what that means?” she asked, her new companion—dread—wrapping itself around her.

“Yes, darling Joannie, I can. Kyle, my brother, found you for me. I love you and want you to be part of my life forever. To live with me. To let me take care of you. To be the one special woman in the entire world to me . . . and to have my children.”

CHAPTER-24

After Ellen and Brice had met with Lelani and shared
their thoughts about possible motives for the killer, the FBI profiler had taken a few notes and told them she thought they might be on the right track. She wanted to be informed if anything important developed, even before the next meeting. Then she left, saying she had hours of research to do. That had been fine with Ellen—and Brice, as far as she could tell. She had pissed around long enough. She
had
to get to the lab. Ellen jumped into her SUV and tore out of the parking ramp, making a beeline for her second home.

The trip from headquarters had taken over thirty minutes, but once she got on California, the excitement that greeted her every day was even more concentrated. She
steamed through the doors of her kingdom, this time with more of a purpose than ever. She not only had two murder scenes to analyze and report on, but she had Oscar’s death to solve, or at least help to solve. She grimaced.
Oscar
and
dead
in the same sentence was terribly wrong. But truth came that way sometimes.

Ellen slid off her leather jacket, hung it in the foyer, hit the keypad, and entered the main lab. She climbed into her lab coat—the one with her name stitched in red—then stepped farther onto the main laboratory floor and closed her eyes. The smell of clean and subtle chemicals used in evidence processing on a micro-level took her to another place. Her place. It felt like a homecoming, and she was the Queen, as her fellow techs often joked.

Lab rats embraced the very essence of the processes of science. Always moving with the straight-line purpose of anticipating the result of a test that might help capture a killer or, better yet, save another life. They especially enjoyed the challenge of creating the proper procedure for any evidence testing. Great minds working in creative ways. She knew deep down—if she’d allowed herself the indulgence more often—she was the best they had. Maybe that’s why this home was usually better than “home.” Maybe her coworkers were right; maybe she was the Queen.

Working the field had its pluses, including the excitement of tackling a new investigation with the intent of throwing together a preliminary theory . . . and sunlight. But nothing matched the lab environment for her. Theories were theories, and facts were facts. Theories had no restrictions and were prone to errors, misreads, and misunderstandings. Facts were more reliable. But both were needed to solve crimes.

Walking toward her office, Ellen scanned the main floor. Today her world of beakers and centrifuges had a little different feel. There was an intense mood to the normally subdued bustle. At any one time, there were twenty techs on a shift. Today it seemed like more. Maybe ten more. Big Harv and the rest of the brass really weren’t fooling around.

She moved behind her desk and flipped on her computer. As she began to sit down, Ellen glanced at the large mirror near her door just over the file cabinet. She stared at the woman in the reflection. Although the image was totally true, she saw herself differently. Her
auburn hair was in place, her oval face pleasant to look at, especially without those damn frown lines that had been a constant companion since Joel had left her. Her violet eyes seemed to be more hers than belonging to the ghost of the woman she’d been forced to accept each morning. Odd. Oscar’s death had been tough to take, and she hadn’t got a ton of sleep last night. The task-force meeting was nerve racking, if anything. Yet the angry edge she’d been harboring seemed to be buried, so far. Her therapist had said she just might wake up one morning and be a new woman, mentally. Ellen was tough enough; she just had to believe it. It was impossible to not bring into the equation how Brice had looked at her, spoken to her, and even asked her opinion.

“You in this world, Ellie?”

Ellen looked at the man in the opening of door and shook her head.

“Good morning,
Steve. No, I guess I wasn’t. Just trying to get my mind in order. We’ve got a million things to do, and time is what it always is: short.”

“Yes. That’s the norm, right?”
Steve Jansen, an assistant supervisor, nodded. He was a tallish man, good-looking with neatly cut black hair and strong shoulders. His thick, red-rimmed glasses hid his eyes. It was his geek trait. All the techs joked about their geek traits and would pick on Ellen because hers was internal, not external . . . thus the Queen references. But make no mistake, he was plenty bright and possessed the patience of a saint when it came to long, tedious tests, like DNA and fiber comparisons, which seemed to take forever even when the detectives were in a rush. Which was always.

“There’s another young woman missing, that may or may not be part of this. We don’t have any time to waste,” she explained.

“I heard. Another reason we have mucho staff working.”

“It always boils down to time. Time we never seem to have,” she said.

“You’re right. That’s why we started on the first batch of evidence bags last night and brought in more help. We didn’t really have to force anyone into overtime. People volunteered when they heard about Oscar. Some of the staff took the department up on a counseling session or two, but they’re all back. Determined to help. He was one of us. We’re doing double shifts and are happy about it.” Steve lowered his voice. “He was a good CSI, non-meat-eater or not,” he said, giving her a half grin.

“He was,” she whispered, surprised she could speak through her choked throat.

Ellen shook off the emotion that wanted to slap her around for the one-hundredth time. She sat up straight and exhaled. “Let’s find out what happened and make this easier on all of us. I want Oscar to be proud of us.”

“You’re right. One crew is wo
rking on the first murder scene, although they’re not absolutely sure what you want with the bags of dirt that look like . . . bags of dirt. The other four techs are working on Oscar’s crime scene. Also, Oscar had two bags from the second woman’s scene in his kit—one had a fiber in it and another had some black dirt. Not sure what we should be looking for on those either.”

Ellen’s mind came alive, and she felt inside her pocket and brought out both cell phones, carefully placed them on her cluttered desk, and spoke quietly.

“At the first crime scene, we found what appears to be Clara Rice’s cell phone buried in a plastic bag, about thirty feet from the body. The second one, Holly Seabrook . . . her phone was much closer to her body but also buried. I’ll be processing the phones, but have the techs search for traces of metal in the dirt that don’t belong to that soil table, as well as fibers, or maybe even insects, in any and all stages of life and death that might not be indigenous to those samples.

“We’ve got the geological reports for those areas, so we need to make that comparison. There were fibers on the victims’ dresses that have to be compared to the database. I also found three or four hairs at the first scene that have to be
analyzed. I know I found some at the second one that looked the same color, at first look anyway, but without those bags—the ones that went missing out of Oscar’s van—well, you know that my guess won’t stand up in court.”

Steve
nodded. “All right. That gives us some focus. You also sent one evidence bag that contained a plastic bag and a candy wrapper. Is that for fingerprints?”

“
Yes. It’s a long shot but we’ve got to go there. I also want to see the ME reports as soon as they come in. Both women had their necks broken, and I think identical vertebrae were fractured. Oh, and send someone downstairs to the morgue with the OCT laser scanner and see if we can get any latent fingerprints from the bodies or their clothes. That’ll get us going full bore for now.”

“Got it.”

Turning to leave, Steve stopped, glancing at his feet again. “What about Oscar’s . . . scene?”

“I’ll talk to those crews. I’ll be diving in as soon as I get these pictures processed. Meanwhile, I need an
update on everything they have: ballistics, pictures of the angles of shot penetration, skid-mark measurements, and IASIS reports to see if we get fingerprint matches. I especially want a close analysis of the netting in the back and how the evidence bags were cut away from it. Blade marks can be useful. I’ll want the autopsy report . . . everything. Everything. Then we all need to meet at the end of this shift. To compare notes.”

Steve
frowned and took a step in her direction. “Why?”

“Big Harv thinks these crimes could be related because the evidence disappeared.”

“Really? What do you think?” he asked, surprised.

“We don’t get paid to think. We just do our job and see where it leads.
Having said that, it could go either way, this could be some random act or not. We have to do our best to find out.”

She was on a roll. “Let’s get two people working on the camera system to see if we’ve got leads for vehicles or images clear enough to get the FBI’s facial-image crew involved.”

“That won’t be necessary,
beeyatch
,” said the woman pushing through the door.

Detective Bella Sanchez stood a few feet in front of Ellen’s desk. A scowling sneer
clouded her round face.

Just when Ellen thought that her ever-present anger might have begun a disappearing act, her buttons finally free of annoying pushes, she realized that this one, the Sanchez
Button, just needed a tiny nudge. Seeing Sanchez in her lab, her world, her sanctuary, was all it took.

Treading water in a sea of red, she got up, moved around the corner of her desk, and grabbed Sanchez’s lapel.

“What the hell are you doing here?” she yelled.