Plain Jane (8 page)

No matter Kent’s predilection for bizarre, unorthodox behavior, Ruben knew that he still needed to provide a commanding presentation for Glick to take the award-laden profiler off the case. And Ruben did not just want Kent playing second-string. He wanted the lunatic off the case completely. Out of Nicole’s life completely.

Out of
their
lives completely.

Ruben peeked to the clock again. 9:12. He looked to his captain, who looked at Nicole. His partner, in turn, looked toward the door. No Kent. No hint that Kent was even going to show up. Typical.

Wouldn’t that be perfect? The vaunted profiler simply forfeiting his position?

Glick would have to pull Harbinger from the case.

Ruben looked at his captain. How much longer was Glick going to give Kent? They had a lot of ground to cover.

“He’s late,” Glick demanded of Nicole.

Of course, she rose to his defense. “I’m sure—”

“He’s not coming.”

“Not coming?” a hidden voice asked. Ruben recognized the voice, but could not believe he had heard it. Kent continued, “I wouldn’t dream of missing this.”

Ruben sighed. There was no doubt it was Kent, but where in the hell was he? The room was filled to capacity, but no profiler. Then Ruben tilted the profile board to reveal Kent lying on a desk, reading a comic book.

Things definitely
weren’t
going Ruben’s way anymore.

CHAPTER 27

Kent stayed recumbent, seemingly intent on his comic as he soaked in the room’s reaction. Ruben was way too easy to read. If the detective were a cartoon character he would have steam coming out his ears and strange icons bulging in and out of his eyes in a distorted caricature.

Nicole grinned despite herself, and the rest of the room…well the rest of the room was abuzz.

Ah, he had not made an entrance this good since his first day teaching advanced profiling techniques at Quantico. In huge, bold letters, he had scrawled across the blackboard “Powers of Observation,” then hid up in the rafters. Students had filed in, clearly a little concerned that their new professor was not at the front of the classroom.

Concerned turned to freaked-out when one brave student risked a journey up to the podium and found blood smeared across the syllabus and a trail of red footprints leading to the emergency exit.

He didn’t even reveal himself when the dean showed up to investigate Kent’s mysterious disappearance. The profiler didn’t even budge when security was summoned to the scene of the mysterious “crime.”

Harbinger had just sat up there, silently laughing his ass off at the supposed brightest and best scrambling around trying to organize a manhunt. Finally he couldn’t contain himself. It had been his own snort of amusement that had given him away.

Yeah, that had been a great entrance. Of course, shortly thereafter he’d been fired. But still. The look on the dean’s face alone was worth it. Okay, maybe he should not have lied to the students and told them he had used HIV-infected blood as the lure. But come on, the scare those students got would ensure that they never investigated a potential crime scene without gloves ever again. Unfortunately, the bureau did not see it his way, and off to the think tank he went.

Out of the corner of his eye, Kent looked over the sea of blue uniforms and typical detective suits. They were all still trying to figure out how he had gotten behind the board and exactly when.

You know, sometimes fieldwork really was rewarding.

Glick recovered first. “Are you going to join us?”

Kent snapped his comic closed, very dramatically, as he swung upright. “And miss Wunderkind’s solving of the Sphinx’s riddle?” He slapped the desk for emphasis as he rose. “Not on your life.”

“Enough of the drama, Harbinger. Get over here.”

He complied. Ruben didn’t even try to hide his glower. Therefore, Kent made sure to sit right next to Nicole. Far closer than polite society usually allowed. Ruben looked like he was going to intervene, then regrouped and turned to the crowd.

“Let me clarify. I am not going to solve anything—”

“Now that’s bold,” Harbinger chided. Ah, after the night he had, this was going to be fun.

Ruben tried to move on as if Kent had not just interrupted him. “I’m just here to take a fresh look at all the evidence collected so far…”

Torres glared, as if challenging the profiler to speak up.

Kent was going to enjoy this briefing more than he thought. “Don’t keep us in suspense.”

Even through the detective’s naturally dark cheeks, you could see a flush of red. Before Ruben could retort, Glick stepped in. “Enough.”

Oh yeah, the profiler was definitely glad he showed up this morning.

The captain fixed Kent with a frown, then turned to Torres, “Go on.”

He could feel Ruben’s gaze, but Kent had already opened his comic book and was not about to give the detective the satisfaction of feeling like he had backed him down.

No one got that satisfaction.

CHAPTER 28

Nicole shifted uncomfortably next to Kent. She should have been pissed at him. He had left her handcuffed to her car in the middle of a downpour, for hell’s sake. It had been quite the stunt he had pulled, but in retrospect, what had she thought trying to play at Kent’s level of gamesmanship?

Last night he had simply reaffirmed himself as the master and she, the groveling student.

Now she worried for Ruben. Her partner had thrown down a king-size gauntlet at Kent’s feet. Just as she had done. Already, before the briefing even began, Kent had scored the first point. The people in the room craned their necks, not to see Ruben, but to watch the profiler.

Despite their fight the night before, Nicole still respected the effort Ruben put into living up to his gold badge. She caught his eye and nodded for him to proceed. Waiting for Kent’s acknowledgment was nothing more than a losing proposition.

Ruben started, then stopped and took a deep breath, then continued, “We have seen seventeen victims so far.”

“Wrong,” Kent chimed in.

“Seventeen
confirmed
victims,” he added.

“Nope. Thirty-one and counting.”

Rushing in before Ruben could retort, Nicole tried to soften Kent’s abrupt disagreement. “Only if you include the missing women who fit the victim profiles from the greater Boston area and Toronto.”

“Which I’m not.”

“Mistake.” The tone wasn’t aggressive, just definitive.

Nicole had to give Ruben credit. Instead of playing into Kent’s tit-for-tat game, her partner turned to their superior. “Captain?”

The older man frowned, his grey eyebrows nearly touching. “Harbinger, you will have to wait for your turn.”

In typical fashion, Kent did not acknowledge the captain as he read his comic book. The profiler could make compliance appear so very defiant. Nicole gave Ruben an encouraging smile. Kent could not keep up this juvenile behavior forever.

Seemingly poised, Ruben pointed to the long row of photos that showed both happy, smiling pictures of the victims and their gruesome crime scene photos, then lastly their autopsy shots. It was a brutal reminder of what was at stake. They were not here to salvage their reputations but to save another brunette from this violent death.

Ruben’s tone sobered. “All the women have been between the ages of twenty-nine and thirty-four. Natural brunettes, but a mixture of races. No children.”

Her partner could not help but look over to Kent.

The profiler showed Nicole his comic. “You know the meta-message that the red bow on Minnie Mouse’s forehead signifies, don’t you?”

Nicole cringed. Ruben needed to stop playing into Kent’s hand. The profiler could have shamed Einstein at a physics convention. To his credit, her partner seemed to sense this and decided to move on.

“There have been no direct or casual links between the victims.” Ruben pointed to the long sheets of police reports detailing their families, work history, and basically the victims’ entire lives. “We have run down their work histories and the places they frequented: grocery stores, restaurants, doctors, gyms, clubs, even fast food joints. Nothing connects them.”

Kent made a loud raspberry sound.

“
Nothing
. No common thread. No common connection. They must have been picked at random.”

“Wrong again, but thanks for playing.”

CHAPTER 29

There wasn’t much Kent ever regretted, however, that off-handed barb at Torres was one of them.

Not because he feared his rival’s brilliant repartee, but because it opened up a line of questioning that Kent did not want to go down at the moment.

“Really? And what is their connection?”

Keeping defensiveness from his voice, Kent answered, “I didn’t say I knew.” Then kicked up his arrogance quotient. “I know, however, that I should still be looking for one.”

Thankfully, Glick stepped in before Ruben could retort. “Then let’s keep the peanut gallery to a minimum.”

Acting his usual bastard self, Kent went back to his comic, this time to hide his frustration. While he might let Nicole think he came to the briefing to please her or that his ego drove him to go toe to toe with Torres, the actual reason was a little too raw for his taste.

Last night, after watching from the bushes to make sure that Nicole uncuffed herself and left safely, Kent had roamed the city alone, on foot. The profiler knew that he needed to pick a new high-probability victim, but he did not have much hope that the outcome would be much better than Joann’s. He was missing something. Some vital clue.

The killer’s motive eluded him. How could he protect these women if he did not know why the psychopath wanted them? Kent knew the superficial characteristics of the victim types: their height, weight, and hair color, but the killer had a core need that the profiler could not identify—a slim piece of information that tied all the women together.

In the dead of night, wandering the city, Kent had come to the harsh reality that he was tapped out. Inspiration was fickle and had fled the jurisdiction. Unfortunately, Kent knew of only one way to jump-start it. He needed to be challenged. He needed to be forced outside his previous conceptions of the case. The profiler needed to push against someone. Someone almost as good as himself.

While he would never admit it, even under the threat of death, Kent knew that person to be Ruben. The guy was uptight, but thorough. If there anyone could jog his intuition into high gear it was going to be the detective.

Ruben continued with his analysis. “Based on the systematic, meticulous pattern to these killings, we can surmise that the killer is Caucasian—”

“Nope.”

“Between the ages of twenty-two and twenty-nine.”

“Not.”

Damn it, Torres, you’re better than this. Give me something to work with.

“And is highly intelligent and attractive.”

“Only because the ugly, stupid ones are easy to catch.”

Snickers arose, though Kent took little delight in them. If he didn’t figure out that small but essential missing link soon, another woman was going to die. Maybe tomorrow, maybe even tonight. If Ruben didn’t help him narrow his search, another woman’s blood would be on his hands.

Glick’s frown quieted the room to silence. “Torres, please continue.”

Ruben pointed to Joann’s autopsy report. “The coroner confirmed that the killer did not take his trophy last night.”

A collective gasp broke out as the captain looked straight at Nicole and Kent. “But two of us knew that already, didn’t they?” The detective squirmed under Glick’s gaze, then jabbed Kent with the pencil. That woman really needed to find another way to express disappointment.

Typical Nicole, after poking him hard enough to leave a mark, she then rose to his defense. “He did not get a chance to take the uterus because Special Agent Harbinger interrupted him. We might not be a step ahead of the killer, but at least we’ve pulled within a half step behind. This remaining uterus could be the key to solving the case.”

A part of Kent was warmed by Nicole’s confidence, but another part really did not want any more pressure.

Ruben paused, making sure his partner was done. He kept it pretty close to his vest, but Kent knew it drove Rubin rabid mad when Nicole stood up for him.

“By his choice of souvenirs, we know that despite the lack of rape, there is a strong sexual component to the crime.”

Almost on reflex, Kent disagreed. “No, there’s not.”

Something Nicole said stuck in his craw. The uterus. It was the one new piece of evidence they had. A piece he had yet to figure into the equation. Squinting, Kent read the coroner’s report on Joann’s uterus as Ruben droned, “We can assume that he expresses his sexual rage, since he is impotent.”

“No, he’s not,” Kent said, but his mind barely registered what Torres had actually said. He squinted harder. Was he reading the report right? Despite it being Ruben’s briefing, Kent walked over to the autopsy result.

Joann Forme’s uterus showed an abortion.

Kent quickly scanned the other victims’ medical histories. Another had an abortion. And another. And another.

CHAPTER 30

Nicole watched Kent intently. Ruben kept glancing over his shoulder as the profiler rapidly reorganized his ever-so-carefully arranged files.

“He takes his trophy to show power over the women.”

“No, he doesn’t,” Kent responded, but Nicole knew that the profiler was only dedicating a hundredth of his mind to Ruben. Instead, Kent fixated on the newly arranged files. He paced back and forth, mumbling in a way that either indicated schizophrenia or brilliance.

Still, Ruben tried to maintain focus. “Which indicates that he had a strong father, but a weak mother, most likely a victim of domestic violence.”

“Noppers.”

Flustered, Ruben had to look down at his notes before he could continue. “Um… The killer. The killer will have a medical background—”

“Not even close.”

“His career is intellectually based and requires a level of an exacting precision not normally—”

Kent turned. “Where do you get this crap?”

Glick strove for calm. “I must insist that—”