Slave to Love (4 page)

“Uh-huh. Well, I tried that strategy in high school. Can't say's it worked.”

He dabbed at a remnant of red lipstick. “Not a lot of dates, eh?”

Her lip curled wryly. “Not until college.”

He studied her for a second, wondering what the hell was wrong with boys back then. He wouldn’t have lost any time getting her in his back seat and—
Shit
. “Okay, I'll let you keep the eyes.”

“Gee, thanks.” Her amused smile turned sincere. “For everything. You've been awful nice to a damned female rookie.”

“Don't mention it.”

She broke eye contact and watched him toss the last towelette. “Going back up?”

He nodded, pulling out some more gloves. Definitely time to get out of there.

She plucked the jar of menthol from the kit and twisted it open. He almost groaned when she reached up and smoothed a slippery finger above his lip. For some reason he didn't tell her nobody used the stuff but wimps and first-timers. The gel felt cool and hot all at the same time. Innocent and incredibly erotic. It put him in mind of slippery fingers smoothing over other things in other places.

He jerked away, unwilling to let the fantasy go any further. “I have to get back up.”

“I'm coming.” She smeared menthol under her own nose and gingerly hoisted the trash bag.

“Caroline, you don't need—”

“Yes, I do. I'll never live it down if I hide in here like a chicken-shit. And you won't either.”

He picked up the kit and handed her a new pair of gloves. “Pretty smart for a damned rookie.”

“Bet on it.”

Ignoring the guffaws and pointed looks when they emerged from the powder room together, he marched straight up the stairs after directing a passing tech to dispose of the trash bag.

“Hey, McGraw?” she ventured, right behind him.

“Yeah?”

“So, when are we going shopping?”

He paused at the landing, shooting her a puzzled look. Her coy smile should have warned him. Like a dolt, he asked, “Shopping for what?”

He could already feel the first Arctic snowflakes swirling around him when she answered sweetly, “Black leather.”

Chapter 3

Before pulling open the door to the conference room the next morning, Caro took a deep breath and let it out slowly.

She'd do fine, she told herself. She'd survived the crime scene yesterday, and Mick had been okay with her small lapse of decorum. Nice, even. No reason to think he would have changed his mind about having her on the task force this morning.

She was a few minutes early. Mick sat at the head of the table totally absorbed in his work. He looked beat, his eyes filled with that soft, little-boy-lost look she'd seen on rare occasions when he didn't think anyone was watching. It never failed to spin her heart in her chest.

He glanced up, snapping to awareness.

“I can carve out a couple of hours around two this afternoon for that shopping expedition,” he said, returning a sharp gaze to the stack of files on the table in front of him.

“Okay.” She walked past and continued down the table. “I'll drop by your office.” She chose a chair close to the far end. “By the way, where will I be?”

He looked up again, brow raised.

“Where will my desk be? Or should I just use the one I've got in SIS?”

“No,” McGraw said quickly. “I'll dig up something. Use the task force room in the meantime. There's a computer and printer in there, and a copier, so you can write up the reports and get them out to everyone.”

She was glad she'd be billeted in the task force room, where the action was. She'd never been on a task force before and it would be exciting to see the complete workings.

He checked his watch when more people started filing into the large conference room. The main players on the Teddie Murders task force had all been pulled in for this morning's briefing. After the discovery of the third couple yesterday, the mood in the room was grim. Everyone looked exhausted as they took their seats. Many had been working seven days a week, sometimes twelve hours a day, since the first murders. Last night nobody'd gotten any sleep. Except her. Mick had sent her home because she was going on fumes, having worked the graveyard shift the night before and been up over twenty-four hours.

Caro could feel the tired, curious gazes pause on her as they traversed the length of the table. No doubt they wondered what an officer from SIS, barely out of Traffic, was doing sitting in the same meeting as the chief of Forensics, the head of FIS, the deputy Coroner, the assistant M.E., the head of Crime Analysis, three of PPD's best Homicide detectives, and a dozen of the department's most decorated uniformed officers. She fought back the urge to bite her bottom lip, and instead smiled across the table at Brady Washington, who grabbed a seat next to his partner Denny.

“Hey, Officer Palmer,” he said, taking in her prim business suit at a glance. She’d deliberately chosen it as a contrast to yesterday's outrageous get-up. “You feeling better today?” he asked with a wink.

She rolled her eyes and grinned weakly. “Yes, thanks.”

“That was one bad-ass crime scene. You done good, going back upstairs. Took guts.”

She warmed under his praise but was spared comment when McGraw called the meeting to order. One by one, the departments gave their reports on the latest murders.

“So far there's nothing concrete from the house,” said Maria Rawlins, Chief of Forensics. “We're working on a whole bunch of non-conforming hairs and fibers FIS found downstairs, but the neighbor said they had a dinner party Saturday night, so that's probably where they came from.”

“Do we have a guest list?” McGraw asked.

“Yep,” Bobby said. “Neighbor put it together for us this morning. Reed's team can call them all in to give statements and volunteer hair samples.” Officer Reed, who was in charge of the phone banks, gave a nod. Bobby continued, “Of course, the killer may have been one of the dinner guests.”

Several people at the table groaned. This would mean countless hours trying to connect all the guests to the previous victims, even though the probability of it being one of them was less than slim. Still, all leads must be followed.

“Anything else, Maria?”

The Chief of Forensics shook her head. “Nothing at this point. But it's early days. It'll take weeks to go through all the vacuum bags from all the crime scenes.”

“What about the bodies?” McGraw asked the assistant medical examiner.

As A.M.E. Bruce Benedict gave the preliminary report of how, precisely, the victims had met their demises, Caro's gaze was inexorably drawn to the man sitting at the end of the table. Despite the sleepless night she knew Mick had had as head of the task force, he was impeccably dressed as always. Jacket over a crisp white shirt, razor sharp creases in his navy blue slacks. Tie knotted just so. Short sandy hair neatly brushed. She noticed it had a slight wave to it, just enough to beckon a woman's fingers to smooth it into place. What would it be like to touch? Silky? Coarse? How would it feel, fisted in her hands as she pulled his face closer—

She came to with a start, almost dropping the chin she'd been resting on a palm as she stared at him. He was staring back.

Holy shit.

She had to get a grip. Fantasizing was one thing. Drooling was quite another.

The assistant M.E. was saying, “Same weapons seem to have been used. Fillet knife in the back. Large hunting knife for the frontal wounds. More on that in the report. Our team is checking local hunting stores for a likely match for that one, since it’s the more unusual. Of course, it could have been purchased over the Internet.”

“What about plastic and absorbent material in the wounds?” Mick asked, apparently unaffected by her scrutiny. “Same as last time?”

“It appears so,” Maria put in. “Very few fibers, but enough to analyze. We’ve narrowed the content down to a kind of disposable mattress pad for baby cribs. Available in every department and drug store in the country.”

“The sheets?”

“Still working on them. Teddies, too.”

“Thanks,” Mick said, and looked back at Caro. “Anyone else have anything urgent or new since last night?”

There was a murmur of negative responses.

“All right, then, if you'd all pass your morning briefs to Officer Palmer. From now on she'll be in charge of putting together and distributing the update reports to everyone.”

All eyes turned to her. She produced a smile and murmured, “Thank you,” to everyone who sent down papers.

“I'll get you the final autopsy reports as soon as they're done,” Benedict told Mick as he handed her the M.E. and Coroner's reports.

Just then a tall, rangy man wearing khakis and a sport jacket walked in carrying a briefcase. “Sorry I'm late,” he announced to the room in general, and went to shake McGraw's hand.

Mick rose to greet him. “Woodruff, I presume? Glad you could make it. Folks, this is Special Agent Tim Woodruff from NCAVC.”

Woodruff had arrived from the FBI's National Center for Analysis of Violent Crime early that morning, at the request of Chief Trujillo. Caro had heard that after the second set of murders, McGraw and Bobby decided to call in the big guns from Quantico for help. Gone were the days when high-profile cases were jealously guarded by local jurisdictions. With the dawn of the Information Age, law enforcement was finally learning the value of cooperation and sharing. At least this department was.

She was eager to hear what the FBI profiler had to say about their quarry.

After a few opening remarks, he got right down to it.

“Based on what we know so far,” he said, “this is who I think we're looking for: White male, mid to late-thirties but quite possibly older, above average intelligence, good-looking, socially adept, drives a flashy car. This man is macho, very neat in appearance, and needs to be in control. He dominates his sexual partners, and has a hard time maintaining steady relationships. Look for a history of sexual assault and/or rape. He's obviously into fetishism in a big way, and may have priors of breaking and entering to gather tokens or objects fitting his obsession with BDSM.”

Wow. She'd read about profilers gaining amazing insights from a simple written description of a crime along with a few photos. But when confronted with a real person analyzing this complicated case, it seemed fairly amazing. She'd have to do a lot more reading. Maybe corner Special Agent Woodruff and ask him for some specifics.

“Our guy is a very, very organized killer,” the FBI man went on. “Very precise. He's been fantasizing these murders for a long time, which is why I’ve upped the age range from the usual serial suspect. He has perfected his ideal scenario in his mind to the degree that the crimes are already all nearly identical. And that scenario is extremely complex and revealing. What we need to ask ourselves is why now? Why hasn't he acted on them before?”

There was a spate of suggestions from the floor. He'd been in jail. Maybe he’d done it before, but out of state. Something in his personal life had set him off, pushing him over the edge from fantasy to acting out. Woodruff nodded at all of the suggestions, and Caro took copious notes.

“What about the posing of the bodies?” she asked impulsively. “And changing the sheets and all?” She glanced up at Mick to see if she'd breached protocol, ready to defend her right to speak, but he was busy writing, too.

“Good questions. Very unusual situation to begin with, killing couples. There have been cases where a female in company with a male was targeted, but very few where both were deliberately killed and staged at the same time. That's a key factor and a big clue to this guy's head. We also need to figure out what he was trying to say by his method of killing the victims. Why stab and gut the men but strangle the women?”

“You mean why not just shoot them both, which would be easier,” she ventured.

“Exactly. In killing the men, he's telling us he's angry. A knife is a very personal weapon. Sexual, almost. The brutality of the deaths tells us he's got a whole lot of hostility and rage directed at whomever the male victim represents in his fantasy. And yet, he is very controlled in his rage. He uses two different knives, is precise with their placement and careful to absorb the initial blood spatter. Then he deliberately and savagely guts the men. It’s almost like he’s trying to shock us with the brutality once he has them under his control. Trying to make it look like a crime of passion, when in fact it’s meticulously planned.”

“And the woman? Why strangle her?”

Woodruff contemplated a spot on the wall behind the table. “With the woman, it's something very different. Subtle. There are no wounds, and despite the overt sexual context of the crime scene, he leaves her in a modest, even innocent pose. He cleans her up, along with the bed, and dresses her in white, hands folded over her chest. Almost reverently. Like he wants to leave her in a good light.”

He looked up and down the table at the members of the task force. “Our job is to figure out why.”

Caro thought about that as Tim went on to analyze other details of the crime and answer questions from the task force. If they could solve that one puzzle they'd be a lot closer to pin-pointing the murderer. It was something she'd have to keep in mind when she and Mick started meeting people at Brimstone. What deep need was the killer fulfilling by killing and leaving his victims in just this way? And which particular suspects were most likely to fit the profile?

Her musings were interrupted when everyone at the table turned to look at her.

“Officer Palmer and I will be going in undercover,” Mick was saying. “We're working with LAPD for surveillance, and hope to be able to spot the perpetrator before he does any more damage.”

“Dangerous,” Tim said, tenting his fingers in front of his chin contemplatively. “But...hell, it just might work. I'll have a real close look at any suspects you identify.”

“I was hoping you'd say that,” Mick said.

“You two should probably move in together.”

Caro stared incredulously at Woodruff, who had made the preposterous statement. Studying serial killers for years had obviously affected the NCAVC profiler's own mind. The man was out of his gourd.

“No,” she replied emphatically.

At the same instant, McGraw recovered from his shock sufficiently to utter a firm, “Impossible.”

Woodruff wagged his head back and forth. “It's up to you, of course, but I'd strongly advise it. All the victims were couples married or living together. As I said, this guy is highly organized. It wouldn't surprise me if he stalks, or cases, his victims well ahead of time. Remember, the credit card receipts all indicate the dead couples were at Brimstone during the week. But they weren't killed until the weekend. He's probably checking them out in the meantime. The fact that they all lived within several blocks of each other supports the theory that he’s probably killing in familiar territory, close to his home.”