FATAL FORTY-EIGHT: A Kate Huntington Mystery (The Kate Huntington Mysteries Book 7) (4 page)

The older of them, Supervisory Special Agent Timothy Cornelius, nodded cordially to her. He was a rugged-looking, forty-something man with salt and pepper hair. He wore a dark gray business suit, but he didn’t quite match her image of an FBI agent. After a moment, she realized it was because he slouched a little.

The younger, Special Agent Julie Wallace, couldn’t be much older than thirty and was quite attractive. The harsh lines of the navy blue suit she wore did little to hide her voluptuous curves.

She frowned at Kate and began asking the same questions they had gone over the night before.

Kate managed to hold on to her patience for a little while. Then she blurted out, “Haven’t you already read all this in the reports?”

“Yes,” SA Wallace said, “but we like to hear it again from people’s own mouths. Watch their faces and such.”

Kate narrowed her eyes. Maybe she was being paranoid, but this woman seemed to be implying that she was a suspect in Sally’s kidnapping.

Judith spoke up. “Ms. Huntington is not only a friend of the victim, but she’s also an experienced psychotherapist. I’ve contracted with her to help you all with the profiling.”

Judith, bless her heart, had come down heavily on the word
contracted
. She had just given Kate official status as a consultant for the Baltimore County Police Department.

SA Wallace huffed. “We hardly need a civilian’s help.”

Kate squashed the urge to tell this agent that she was already an experienced psychologist when the young woman was still in high school. Maybe even middle school. Suddenly Kate felt old.

“With the time factor involved,” SSA Cornelius said, “we can use all the help we can get.” His voice was a pleasant baritone. It reminded Kate of her first husband’s.

“Where’s Canfield?” Judith asked, pushing aside Kate’s thoughts of Eddie Huntington.

“He went directly to Sally’s apartment building, to help with the canvassing. Rob Franklin’s helping too, as well as some of the agency’s staff.”

Judith nodded, but SA Wallace bristled. “More amateurs?”

“Hardly,” Kate said. “They’re experienced private detectives.” She opted not to mention that Rob was a lawyer. She wasn’t inclined to give this woman more ammunition.

Wallace turned to her partner and opened her mouth.

Judith intervened. “These folks are friends of Ms. Ford. They are going to look for her with or without our blessing. Better that they do so under our direction, rather than getting in the way.”

Wallace’s mouth was set in a thin line but she didn’t say anything.

“My partner will be out in the field.” SSA Cornelius held out his hand in an after-you gesture. “Ms. Huntington. Everything’s set up in the conference room down the hall.”

Kate smiled up at him. “Please, call me Kate.”

He smiled back. “I’m Tim. After you.” He gestured again toward the door.

Eyes narrowed, SA Wallace shoved past Kate and left Judith’s office ahead of her.

Tim Cornelius had finished filling Kate in on the details of their profile. She sat back in her chair. “Victims posed, eyes closed, hands together on their stomachs. Doesn’t that indicate remorse?”

Tim smiled at her. “Very good, Kate.”

Warmth crept up her cheeks, one part pleasure, one part embarrassment. “Judith Anderson may have overstated my credentials a bit. The only profiling expertise I’ve got comes from watching
Criminal Minds
.”

Tim chuckled. “That show is surprisingly accurate, about some things at least. Yes, that indicates the killer has some remorse, but the question is why?”

“The torture and sexual assault were all done after they were dead, correct?”

“Yes.”

“All the more reason to think this guy was abused as a child. Trauma recovery
is
my area of expertise, by the way. He may be re-enacting the torture he suffered as a child.”

Tim nodded, a slight smile on his face–a teacher, pleased with a promising student. Then his face sobered. “Afraid that doesn’t help us find him, though. I probably don’t have to tell you how many abused kids there are out there, do I?”

Kate shook her head. She knew the statistics all too well. Fifteen percent of boys and over twenty percent of girls sexually abused by age eighteen. Almost that many were physically abused, and many–way too many–suffered both forms of abuse.

“This would be particularly bad abuse,” she said. “The authorities probably would have been involved.”

“Still doesn’t narrow things down much. This guy could’ve grown up in any state in the union, or in another country.”

“Hmm, he re-enacts the abuse he suffered, but postmortem. And he holds them for forty-eight hours first. Maybe he wants to see if anybody cares about them, because he felt nobody cared about what was happening to him.”

“That would fit with the notes,” Tim said.

“I assume you looked for crimes in the past with similar MO’s. Serial killers don’t usually start with killing.”

“Of course, back ten years. Nothing all that similar.”

“Maybe you should go back further,” Kate said, “now that we know this guy is older. If he started, say, twenty years ago, he might have gotten good enough to cover his tracks by ten years ago. Some of his later victims may never have been found. They’re still listed somewhere as missing persons.”

Tim tilted his head, then gave a slight nod. “Maybe he decides he wants some attention, so he starts leaving them where they can be found.” He picked up the receiver of the phone on the conference table and punched in a number.

“Hey Jane, this is Tim Cornelius. I need you to do some research for me on the New Haven case, the so called Forty-Eight Hour Killer.” He looked down at a file on the table and rattled off a number. The case number Kate presumed. “I need you to go back fifteen years looking for similar crimes, and if that draws a blank, go back twenty. Yeah, I know that’s a lot of work, but the guy’s raised his ugly head again, in Baltimore this time.”

When he hung up, Kate said, “Wow, you’ve got your own Penelope Garcia.”

Tim snorted. “Hardly. That’s one of the things on
Criminal Minds
that isn’t accurate. There are actually several BAU teams and they’re much smaller, two or three agents, like Wallace and me. And when we call in for tech support, we work with whoever happens to answer the phone in that department. Although once a tech starts on a case, they stick with it.”

Kate noted the use of his partner’s last name. An attempt to show her the same respect he would a male partner? Or a sign that he didn’t like the young woman?

“You don’t seem to mind working with civilians like your partner does,” she said.

“Nah, we’re the new, improved FBI. We try to get along with local law enforcement, not step on their toes if we don’t have to.”

“But that doesn’t extend to local civilians, or did SA Wallace fail to get that memo about cooperation?”

Tim Cornelius gave her a half smile. “Let’s just say that my partner is still new enough at this that she takes herself a tad too seriously.”

Kate suspected SA Wallace had always taken herself too seriously, long before she was an FBI agent. But she kept that thought to herself.

~~~~~~~~

6:00 a.m. Saturday

Skip blew out air and resisted the temptation to walk away from this whole thing. He hardly knew Sally Ford, but she mattered to Kate. And his daddy had raised him to look out for women. He wasn’t about to leave any woman in the hands of a killer if he could help it.

His daddy had also taught him not to hit women, no matter what. That was proving to be a harder temptation to resist at the moment. He reminded himself that he would go to jail for striking a federal law enforcement agent. That helped some.

He relaxed the fist he’d just now realized was clenched at his side. “I told you I’ve already canvassed this building,” he said to the young woman standing in front of him, her arms crossed over her ample chest. “Almost everyone answered their door. No one saw anything relevant.”

“Well we’ll have to re-canvas the whole building, to get those people who didn’t answer.”

He took a slip of paper out of his pocket and reached out to hand it to her. “These are the apartments that didn’t answer. I was a police officer for eleven years, been a PI for eight now. I
know
how to canvas a building.” He noticed his jaw was tight and willed it to relax, with little success.

SA Wallace left his arm hanging out in space for a couple beats before she took the list. She turned on the heel of her sturdy navy pump and walked away.

Skip was usually an easy-going guy. He rarely disliked people on short acquaintance, but he decided that he disliked this woman.

He rolled his tired shoulders and headed for the next building on Sally Ford’s block.

7:00 a.m. Saturday

Skip met Rose and Mac on a street corner to compare notes and regroup. No luck so far.

“Not surprising,” Rose said. “This guy’s pretty nondescript, and he’s trying to keep a low profile. Charles only remembered him because of the scene in that restaurant. How much ground has been covered so far?”

Skip ran his fingers through his hair. “Between us and the police officers Judith assigned, we’ve covered a five-block radius from Sally’s building. She’s with another group over at the trauma center’s building, and she has detectives interviewing the staff of that restaurant.”

“Police going out any further than five blocks here?” Mac asked.

“Yeah, Judith said they’re going to do ten blocks.”

Rose grimaced. “That’s a lot of canvassing.”

“Let’s go out to the tenth block and work our way in,” Skip said. “Meet the cops in the middle somewhere. Rose, how about calling SA Wallace and telling her that’s what we’re going to do?”

Rose took out her cell phone and punched in a number. “Rose Hernandez calling, ma’am, to report on our progress…Yes, ma’am, I realize you need to keep this line open. I’m calling with an update.” She quickly rattled off the addresses of the buildings that they had already canvassed. “Nothing useful to report, unfortunately…Ma’am, under the circumstances, I don’t think you can afford to do that. Time is of the essence if we’re going to save Ms. Ford’s life.”

Rose was gritting her teeth. “Ma’am, I was also calling to tell you that we are going out to the tenth block and work our way back toward your people. That will lessen the chances that we will duplicate efforts…No ma’am, we will
not
miss anybody.” She held the phone away from her ear and savagely punched the end button.

Skip couldn’t help but grin a little. He didn’t often see his partner rattled. But she did not suffer fools gladly.

“So it isn’t just men she dislikes, but ‘civilians’ in general.” He made quote signs in the air.

“Harumph,” was Mac’s commentary on the subject. He wasn’t an ex-cop like the rest of them, but he’d been a Green Beret for a decade. He no doubt considered being called a civilian an insult.

“May I suggest,” Rose said, “that we deal with Judith as much as possible from now on.”

They walked out to York Road, the main thoroughfare through Towson, and turned the corner. Manny Ortiz was walking toward them.

Skip frowned in the direction of the bodyguard who had recently been promoted to detective. The man wasn’t particularly tall but he was built like a brick wall.

“What’s the matter, boss?” Manny asked.

Skip didn’t mind volunteering his own time but he wasn’t sure how he felt about paying any of their operatives to do what was really the police department’s job. Without answering Manny, he turned toward Rose.

She responded to his question before he could ask it. “He volunteered.”

“Ain’t got nothing better to do today,” Manny said with a small shrug.

Skip shook the operative’s hand. He knew Manny had a soft spot for Kate, whom he had guarded on more than one occasion when the bad guys were threatening to win the perpetual battle between good and evil. “Thanks,” he said, “from me and Kate.”

Rose filled Manny in as they walked five blocks south on York Road. Then they split up to cover the buildings on that cross street.

Two blocks later, Skip hit pay dirt. He entered a new building and rang the bell of apartment 1A. After a moment, he heard shuffling sounds.

The door cracked open and a pale blue eye looked out at the center of his chest, then moved up to his face. It was surrounded by blonde lashes so light they were practically transparent.

“Sorry to bother you.” He wasn’t sure whether to say ma’am or sir. The eye was genderless. “I’m helping the police. We’re trying to locate this man.” He held up his copy of the artist’s sketch. “Have you seen him around here?”

The blue eye went wide, then the door slammed in his face.

Before he could begin to decide what to do next, a chain rattled and the door was flung open. In front of him stood a plump, middle-aged woman, wrapped in a fuzzy pink robe. Blonde hair the texture of straw stood out in all directions from her head.

“Yeah, I know the guy. What’d he do?”

CHAPTER FIVE

Sally shivered. Her face was sweaty, her torso too warm, but her legs were freezing. She opened her eyes.

A stirring to her right. The man’s face appeared over hers.

“Good morning, my dear.”

She tried to talk, but her mouth was too dry. She worked it to produce some saliva, then tried again. “I need to use the bathroom.”

“Of course. Let me help you up. I removed your pantyhose and your, uh… while you were sleeping. I figured you would have such a need when you awoke.” The man was actually blushing as he put one arm behind her and lifted her to a sitting position on the bed.

Her ankles were wrapped in wide leather straps, with sheepskin on the inside. The anklets were tied together with a short section of clothesline. Otherwise, her legs and feet were bare.

Belatedly his words registered. The blood drained from her face as he tugged her to a stand. She swayed on her feet.

What the hell else did he do while I was asleep?

“Don’t worry, Ms. Ford. I have no intention of assaulting you.” His tone sounded slightly offended.