Fear Nothing (18 page)

For the first time, it occurred to her how rough the past six weeks must have been for him. She was the one who gnashed her teeth and growled about feeling powerless. Yet, how much say had Alex had in the matter? One morning, his wife went to work. And she hadn’t been able to dress herself, watch their child or do anything useful since.

He’d had to watch her suffer. He’d had to assist her with tasks that often increased her pain. And he’d had to shoulder the full load of parenting as well as household chores for the foreseeable future.

Yet he’d never once complained or snapped at her to get over herself.

He was there for her. Even now, he wasn’t demanding to know what she’d gotten herself into, or how dare she bring the dangers of her job into their home. He was thinking. Analyzing. Strategizing.

Alex wasn’t feeling sorry for himself, or for her. He was plotting how to get the son of a bitch who’d violated their home.

“So,” Phil said at last. He was sitting on the sofa, notepad propped on his knees, gray blazer rumpled, dark-red tie askew. Of all of them, he appeared to be taking the break-in the hardest. With D.D. out, this had been his case. And not only had a second victim been murdered, but now the killer appeared to be getting closer to them, without them getting any closer to him.

“So,” D.D. repeated. She’d moved a kitchen chair into the family room, where she sat with her left arm tucked against her ribs, an ice pack on the back of her left shoulder. After the impromptu physical therapy session with Dr. Adeline Glen, it seemed the least she could do. Plus, she was trying to prove to herself, if not to her pain specialist, that she wasn’t a complete control freak. She could try other pain management techniques. Yes, she could.

“Neighbors don’t have much to offer,” Phil continued. “Basically, a
person,
very average-looking, entered your home.”

Across from Phil, Neil shrugged. “Nothing we didn’t already know. Killer has entered and exited two other crime scenes without arousing attention. Blending in is obviously something the perpetrator does well.”

“But maybe we learned more about technique,” Phil said. “The suspect was disguised to appear as a home security company employee. We can go back to the other two crime scenes, see if they had systems, if there were any calls that came in that night. Or ask about other common service companies. Maybe a van marked ‘pest control’ or ‘plumbing.’ You know, the kind of thing that really didn’t stand out for the neighbors at the time, but if we return with more specific questions now . . .”

“Who is this guy?” asked Alex abruptly. He stopped pacing, stood in the middle of their modest, beige-carpeted family room and stared at them.

“Joe Average,” Neil spoke up. “Or maybe Jane Average. Statistics would argue for Joe, given that most killers are male. But again, the lack of sexual assault, not to mention any kind of useful eyewitness account, means we can’t rule out Jane. So maybe, just Average Person. We are looking for an everyday average person.”

“No,” Alex responded immediately. “Our suspect’s a killer. That already makes him or her a member of an extremely small percentage of the human population. And a double murderer who’s
not
a sexual sadist predator falls into an even smaller percentage of an already small percentage. So again, who
is
this asshole? Because right now, we’re not understanding this killer. And yet, he, she or it is getting to us just fine.”

D.D. thought she knew what her husband meant. “I paid a visit to a funeral home today,” she spoke up. “Thinking along the same lines, that we’re investigating a predator who commits incredibly macabre murders, except he doesn’t seem that interested in the actual killing part. It’s the postmortem mutilation that appears to drive him. Which made me think of someone who might feel more comfortable with dead people than living people, which made me think of people who work at funeral homes.”

“The Norman Bates syndrome,” Neil murmured from the love seat.

“Yeah. Except, when I interviewed the embalmer, he emphasized that successful funeral home directors excel at empathy. Not exactly how I’d describe our killer.”

Neil sighed, sat up. “Much like you, I’ve spent the day contemplating necrophilia.”

“This from the guy who spends all his time in the morgue,” D.D. muttered.

Neil scowled, clearly not in the mood. “Here’s the thing. On the one hand, our killer seems most comfortable with his victims postmortem. On the other hand . . . he or she or whatever is still not
that
into them. No sexual assault. Meaning by definition he’s not a necrophiliac—which just for the record, once again does not exclude our perpetrator being female. I ran across five or six case histories of female necrophiliacs just to ensure my research was icky enough.”

“Industry has a number of female embalmers, too,” D.D. added. “Just saying.”

“Meaning back to Alex’s point,” Neil continued. “We have two dead bodies and still no idea what’s driving these crimes. If these aren’t murders of pain, passion or punishment, what are they?”

“I think I might know the answer to that one,” D.D. said. “Given the lack of pain and punishment, I think it’s fair to say our killer isn’t driven by bloodlust. I think, in fact, our killer is not that into killing at all. Instead, he, she, it, may be driven by compulsion. Say a deep-seated desire to add to a very unique, very personal private collection.”

“What kind of collection?” Phil asked.

“Strips of human skin.”

The room fell quiet. Then Neil made a face. “Ed Gein, anyone?” he muttered.

Now everyone grimaced; Ed Gein was a notorious serial killer who’d once made a lampshade from human skin.

“Earlier today,” D.D. said, “when I pictured our unsub in my head, I kept seeing a lone guy, small of stature, limited social skills. If you think about his MO, ambushing his victims while they’re still asleep, drugging them quickly, killing them expeditiously . . . Feels to me like our killer’s primary goal isn’t venting displaced rage or satisfying twisted sexual cravings but to carefully and judiciously harvest strips of flesh. Which, theoretically speaking, means we’re looking for a socially awkward homicidal maniac with a fetish for collecting human skin. Sound good?”

Everyone nodded.

D.D. continued: “Except here’s the problem: Two problems, actually. One, my shoulder. Meet Melvin,” she introduced her injured left arm to her squad. “And two, the scene upstairs. Returning to problem number one and assuming for a moment our perpetrator is a male, since when does an antisocial skin collector have the balls to personally revisit his first crime scene? Crawling under the police tape, an act that would certainly call attention to himself, if not lead automatically to his arrest. Let alone, confront the female lead investigator of the case, and in some way I can’t yet remember but someday will, shove said investigator down the stairs? Those are some pretty bold moves for a killer who only attacks sleeping women.”

Alex pursed his lips. Slowly, Phil and Neil nodded.

“Same goes with the little scene staged upstairs. Suddenly, Mr. Antisocial is breaking into a cop’s house? In broad daylight? Staging his wardrobe and vehicle to appear as if with a security company, waltzing right through the front door, then leaving his personal calling cards next to my bed? I mean, the level of social engineering, let alone pure gamesmanship . . .” D.D. scowled, twitched her icing shoulder uncomfortably in the hard-backed chair. “Seems to me the same predator who’s interested in this level of direct confrontation and just plain
nah, nah, na, nah, nah,
na
is not the same guy who’d be content to ambush women in their sleep. So I’m wondering, especially given the lack of sexual assault and detailed physical description, maybe our killer is a woman, a female collector obsessed with human skin.” She couldn’t help herself; she thought immediately of Shana Day.

“For a woman, attacking other women would be more of an equal playing field,” Phil spoke up. “So not a socially awkward, low-self-esteem predator, but a female prepared to do whatever she has to do to pursue her compulsion. For someone like that, targeting the lead investigator, engaging in gamesmanship, wouldn’t even be so much of a stretch—especially if she perceives you as threatening to come between her and what she wants most, which is additions to her collection.”

“Except the card upstairs read,
Get well soon,
”
Alex muttered. “If D.D.’s presence is a threat to our killer, why encourage her speedy recovery?”

“And the killer could be male,” Neil spoke up. “Just saying, we shouldn’t get ahead of ourselves on this one.”

“The house was dark,” Phil said abruptly. Then he flushed, and that’s when D.D. understood what he meant. That house, the first crime scene, where she had plunged down the stairs. Phil had been one of the first detectives to find her. “When we got there,” he continued awkwardly now, “lights were out. Scene was quiet. We didn’t think anyone was there. Including you.”

He glanced at D.D. “Maybe the killer didn’t know you were there, either. He or she thought the scene was safe to revisit. Except, of course, it wasn’t.”

“I surprised the killer,” she whispered.

“Who retaliated by pushing you down the stairs,” Alex continued. “Who maybe even assumed you had plunged to your doom. Except no articles appeared in the paper about a dead detective found at the scene of a crime.”

D.D. frowned at him. “No articles appeared about an injured detective, either, right? The fact I’m incapacitated, indeed, must get well soon . . .”

They all paused, the implication sinking in.

D.D. said it first. “The killer found me. Has been watching. Only way he or she could know about my injuries.”

“No,” Alex said, voice suddenly firm.

“What do you mean—”

“It’s been six, seven weeks since your injury. Six, seven weeks where you’ve heard nothing. Till today. You tell me, what changed in the past twenty-four hours? Where have you been?”

And then she got it. “The second murder. A new crime scene—”

“Which you visited,” he goaded.

“Which I visited,” she agreed.

“The killer was there,” Phil supplied. “Still watching the scene, still checking things out. Another note for the file.” He turned to Neil. “Our guy, or gal, is a watcher. That could help us, definitely help us.”

Neil nodded, made a note. “But if the killer is a collector, why revisit the scenes? Isn’t that something normally done by sexual sadist predators to recapture the thrill of the moment?”

“It could still be a thrill crime,” D.D. said. “But it’s the harvesting that’s the thrill. The time postmortem, instead of the actual murder. But the same rules apply. The person wants to remember, recapture. That would be part of the whole value of the collection, the memories it evokes.”

Alex was staring hard at her. “You’re part of it now. The killer’s fantasy, need, compulsion. Maybe you surprised him or her the first time. And maybe the killer reacted with the impulsive decision to shove you down the stairs. But then you come back. You reappeared at the second crime scene, not even on the job, but still on the hunt. . . . That triggered something. Made it personal. You, D.D., made it personal.”

She caught it, just a whiff of blame, but it was enough. Her job had already caused her to injure herself. And now, her detective’s instincts had endangered her entire family.

“Do we even know today’s intruder is the same person as the killer?” she whispered, an exercise in wishful thinking.

Phil supplied what, deep down, she’d already known. “Same brand of champagne was left here as at the two murders, a detail that wasn’t in the papers. We’ve considered it a minor victory. Got the damn media to omit at least that much.”

“So it was definitely the killer who was in our house,” D.D. summarized, looking up at Alex. “A predator obsessed with harvesting human skin and taunting injured detectives.”

She didn’t want to sound bitter, but she did. She didn’t want to sound scared, either, though she still wasn’t quite that lucky.

“So what kind of killer is obsessed with removing strips of skin?” Neil asked.

D.D. sighed heavily. “Oh, I have some ideas on that subject, too.”

They regarded her blankly.

“Introducing Harry and Shana Day.”

 • • • 

S
HE STARTED WITH
H
ARRY
D
AY,
walking them through Harry’s spree of terror of forty years ago. The women he abducted, tortured and eventually killed. His own obsession for removing body parts, including the jars of excised skin found beneath the floor of his bedroom closet.

Alex and Neil remained blasé on the subject. Until she got to the last two tidbits. Harry Day’s older daughter, Shana, was a notorious killer in her own right, currently serving life in the MCI. And, oh yes, his other daughter was none other than Dr. Adeline Glen, D.D.’s new pain therapist.

“What?” Alex exploded. “That can’t possibly be coincidence. What if this doctor’s the one who just broke into our house? She knows all about your injury, as well as details from both murders since you discussed them with her. A daughter of a serial killer, she has good reason to be obsessed with a cop. Maybe she even pushed you down the stairs of the first crime scene, just so you’d become one of her patients.”

D.D. rolled her eyes, exasperated. “Oh, for the love of paranoid thinking . . . For starters, I was personally with Dr. Glen this afternoon—”

“What time?”

“I don’t know. One to two.”

“Break-in happened around three thirty. Doesn’t count her out.”

“Come on. I only started seeing Dr. Glen because Superintendent Horgan recommended her. And even then, if my fall had led to a minor injury or a different kind of injury, I wouldn’t need her services. So to assume some malevolent shrink shoved me down the stairs at a crime scene just to get me into her office . . . large margin for error in that master plan.”

“But Superintendent Horgan recommended her,” Alex insisted. “Meaning she’s known by the department, which has previously used her services. Meaning maybe not so unlikely that an injured cop would end up in her offices.”