Taboo (19 page)

Although Reilly wasn’t in the mood to talk about her recent experience, she understood the necessity of it. In fact, it was only when she sat down with the two detectives that she realized how shaken up she actually was.

It was now late evening, and while she had been sleeping at the hospital, her team had already processed the crime scenes – the lab and her own office.

And despite the personal aspect, she knew her assessment of the evidence they’d collected had to be as cold and ruthless as it would with any other.

Kennedy was in an unusually conciliatory mood. Although he had been dismissive of some of her methods in the past, he seemed to understand that this was no time to press his agenda. He carefully walked her through the whole scenario as it had unfolded, from the moment that Reilly had walked in the door of the building that morning until the point where she had blacked out.

‘But you don’t remember actually seeing the perp?’

She sighed heavily, frustrated at herself. ‘No. I was hit over the head as soon as I entered the stairwell, so I didn’t have time to register anything but the gun and then the
hypodermic. I’d still wager that the person was female though. How else would they have got through security with my pass?’

‘We’ll have to keep an open mind on that one for the moment,’ Chris said. ‘Seeing as there’s no CCTV in operation in this building.’

‘Yeah, what brainbox decided that?’ Kennedy growled.

‘I raised it when I took the job but was told it wasn’t considered a priority. I thought it was cute at the time,’ Reilly replied, kneading her forehead in frustration. ‘Little did I
know.’

Kennedy closed his notebook with a snap and settled back in the chair. ‘So what have we learned from all of this?’

‘We know how brazen our killer is for starters,’ Chris offered. ‘Getting up close and personal like that …’

‘But where is this all going, Reilly?’ Kennedy asked. ‘You’re the expert here.’

She rocked back in her chair, suddenly feeling drawn and tired. She ran a hand through her hair. ‘That’s the sixty-four thousand dollar question, isn’t it?’

‘OK,’ said Kennedy. ‘Let’s start with an easier one. Irrespective of whether or not it was our guy or some accomplice, why did the
perp come here today? Why expose himself, why take that risk?’

‘Because he’s enjoying himself and he wants us to know it,’ Chris suggested.

‘Right,’ she concurred. ‘He wants us to know it’s him, to think about him. It makes him feel special, important, to know that he’s constantly on our minds.’

‘Looking for attention, you mean? Sounds like a school kid,’ Kennedy said, gruffly.

Chris looked puzzled. ‘How’s that?’

‘You don’t have kids, you wouldn’t understand.’ He turned to Reilly. ‘You’ll get it
though – seeing as you’re into all this psychological claptrap.’

‘Go on.’

‘Well, when our kids started school, the teachers told us that one of the things that helps them adjust – and not be scared about going to school and all that nonsense – was for us parents to let them know that we’re thinking about them.’ He looked uncomfortable, admitting something so personal. ‘So we did. Every morning when I dropped the girls off at school, I reminded them of the family photograph I carry around in my wallet. And it worked.’

‘So they felt like a part of them was always with you,’ Reilly added, thoughtfully.

‘Yeah.’

She looked at him, lips pursed in concern. ‘We really need to talk to Daniel.’

Reilly woke from a deep sleep. She looked around afraid, half imagining someone hovering over her, hypodermic in hand. The sharp trill of her bedside phone brought her back to reality.

She glanced at the clock – 2.25 a.m. – and snatched up the handset.

‘Hey, Daniel.’

‘Reilly?
Did I wake you?’

Just hearing his warm baritone with its soft Virginia burr calmed her. ‘Yeah, but it’s OK.’

‘I was out earlier – I just got back and picked up your message.’ He let out a deep breath. ‘That’s been quite some day you’ve had. Are you OK?’

She sat up, pulled the covers up tight around her, and swept her hair back out of her eyes. She was wide awake now. ‘
It’s fine, I’m OK.’

He cleared his throat. ‘The tone of your follow-up e-mail was informative but rather dry.’

Reilly chuckled humorlessly. ‘What – did you expect to see evidence that I’d been crying on my keyboard as I typed?’

‘How are you – honestly?’

She considered a moment. Earlier she’d been too busy to really think about how all this had affected her – she’d just been trying to deal with it. ‘I’m …’ She paused. ‘I guess I’m still trying to understand what it means.’

Daniel laughed softly.
‘A classic Reilly answer.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘I ask you how you are – that’s a question on an emotional level. You tell me you’re trying to understand it – that’s an answer on an intellectual level.’

Reilly gazed out the window at the cloudy night sky as she spoke. ‘It really wasn’t meant to be evasive, Daniel,’ she replied. ‘I mean, yes I’m struggling to understand what all of this means.
The photograph, that one in particular and the note – what’s going on here? It’s like the killer knows me, knows about Jess too, but how? I’m worried now that there’s a lot more to this than meets the eye.’

And just then, the shell
cracked, the cold, professional demeanour that Reilly always presented to the world finally broke, and the tears began to flow freely.

Daniel, three thousand miles away, heard her soft sobs and knew what it meant. He felt three thousand light years away for all the comfort he could offer. All he could do was sit and listen, knowing it was what she needed, knowing that she just had to cry herself out. ‘It’s OK, Reilly, it’s OK,’ he murmured, softly.

She clutched the phone tightly, comforted simply by his presence on the other end of the line, images of Jess and her childhood flashing through her mind. He knew probably better than anyone how much it had affected her back then, how hard she’d tried to move away from it, put the horror of it all behind her. But now, to have it come back to haunt her, and here of all places …

Finally, the tears began to lessen. Reilly grabbed a tissue from the box on her bedside, dabbed her cheeks and blew her nose. ‘That was embarrassing,’ she sniffed, finally.

‘Not at all,’ Daniel said, gently. ‘I was just concerned that your phone might get too soggy and we’d lose the connection.’

She laughed quietly, and realized as she did so that she was already feeling better. ‘Thanks. Honestly. You’re the only one I can talk to about this. The guys I’m working with here don’t know, at least I don’t think they do.’ She thought again about Chris’s gentle questioning at the hospital earlier.

‘Well, that’s neither here nor there. The question is what does our killer know and is he using the information to try and undermine you? That would be my first guess. After all, these days it’s easy enough to do a basic background search on a person using search engines and whatnot.’

Reilly nodded. Of course, it would be easy enough for anyone who wanted to know more about her to have stumbled across the old newspaper articles and reports from back then.
And if you were searching for a weak spot …

‘Exactly,’ Daniel concurred when Reilly suggested that this might be the killer’s intention. ‘We already know that psychological games are a huge part of his MO. He’s getting a huge buzz from pitting his wits against one of the FBI’s finest. Middle-aged, red-nosed Irish cops don’t have quite the same appeal, do they?’

She smiled, realizing he was echoing her earlier description of Kennedy back to her.

‘So assuming he
has
locked onto me as an opponent, and figured Jess as my weak spot. How do I deal with it?’

‘Deal with it as you would any other. Disregard the personal – so as not to give him that leverage – and don’t afford him any special treatment.’ But there was something in his voice that made Reilly wonder if he had another, alternative theory to the one they were discussing.

‘You really think it’s that simple?’ she asked. ‘That he’s trying to gain an edge over the investigation by undermining me personally?’

‘It’s certainly the most likely option, yes.’

‘And the other?
Because I’ve known you long enough to tell that there’s something else on your mind, Daniel. Something you’re not telling me.’

Daniel’s voice was measured. ‘Whatever makes you say that? Clearly the killer has singled you out, dug up some information on your past and is using it to try and unsettle you. End of story.’

OK, so he wasn’t going to share his thoughts just yet, Reilly realized, at least not until he was sure of them. But there was something else Daniel was considering, she was certain of it. And whatever it was, she really hoped it wasn’t something that would necessitate digging up that troubled past and facing the pain of it afresh.

Two days later, Reilly was chomping at the bit to return to work.  At the insistence of her lab boss, she’d taken a day off to recover from the attack and while she’d been adamant this wasn’t necessary, there was no arguing with him.

She hated having to cool her heels at home when there was a killer on the loose and had used much of the time researching Freud and taboos online.  This morning she was itching to get back to the lab to find out what evidence the team had uncovered from the break-in but had been summoned to the incident room for an early meeting with Inspector O’Brien.  She could hardly refuse given what had happened at the lab and. it was vital that communications and relationships between all strands of the investigative team were solid.

However, it was no secret that O’Brien was good friends with Jack Gorman, the senior forensic investigator, and was likely to find Reilly’s methods about as appealing as he did. Reilly just hoped Chris and Kennedy would be there to stick up for her.

Armed with a strong coffee and a stack of case files, she made her way to the main conference room at the station. She gave a sniff of disgust as she entered the room – even though a smoking ban had been in effect for a couple of years, decades of tobacco usage had permeated the carpet and the furniture and stained the ceiling yellow. The room stank of it.

As was her habit, Reilly was the first to arrive. She was a good ten minutes early, which gave her time to choose a seat on the far side of the room and get her files organized.

It was a little after eight-thirty when O’Brien rolled in, with Chris and Pete Kennedy right behind him. Reilly studied the older man as he made himself comfortable. She’d put him in his early fifties, thick salt and pepper hair, worn a little too long for his age. He’d probably had the same hairstyle since the Seventies, she mused. He had a round face, a country boy’s charm, but Reilly could tell that under the bluff exterior he was sharp – you didn’t get this far in the job without being something of a player. It took thick skin and good political skills to rise to the top.

He gave Reilly a charming smile. ‘Heard you had quite a week, Ms Steel. You feeling all right now?’

‘I’m fine, thanks.’

He turned straight to the detectives. ‘You boys turned up anything useful on the break-in?’

Kennedy shook his head. ‘Nope, the guy just disappeared, like a fucking ghost.’

‘No CCTV at street level?’

‘We’ve picked up about twenty seconds from the cameras in the street,’ Chris said. ‘The intruder left the lab and headed straight into the café across the road. No one matching that appearance reappeared.’

‘He would have been prepared,’ interjected Reilly.

O’Brien spun around on her. ‘Would he now? How do you figure that?’

‘Assuming he is our suspect, our perp is a meticulous planner – the murders tell us that.’ She leaned forward to make her point. ‘That little visit would have been planned for days – I would imagine there was a change of clothes stashed somewhere in that café, or a back door out of there, something along those lines.’

Chris nodded. ‘We checked out the café – it does have a back door, out past the loos. It was busy with breakfast trade at that time, anyone could have slipped out the back unnoticed.’

‘Where does the back door lead?’ O’Brien asked.

‘Back alleyway – again, no CCTV.
From there, a person could have gone just about anywhere.’

O’Brien snorted in disgust. ‘I can’t believe we had a suspect right under our noses – in our own
shaggin’ building – and we let him get away!’

‘Jesus Christ, Chief,’ Kennedy replied, defensively. ‘This person was armed, knew the territory, had the element of surprise in his
favor—’

The rest of his sentence was cut off by a loud thump as O’Brien dropped a pile of newspapers on the table. Judging by the screaming headlines on the ones Reilly could see, the media had well and truly begun running with the serial killer angle.

‘Look at this shit!’ O’Brien thundered. ‘Taboo Killer! They even have a name for this gobshite now! And I’ll tell you one thing, if it gets out that there was a break-in at the lab, we’re in even deeper shit because they’ve the public thinking he’s running rings around us as it is.’

‘Sir—’

‘And what about the victims?’ he interjected, pointing at the front-page photographs of Gerry Watson and Clare Ryan. It could only have helped that these two victims in particular were younger and more attractive than poor old Sarah Miles and her aunt. There seemed to be no mention of Jim Redmond though, which meant that either they hadn’t realized his death was a part of this, or the manner of his death was simply not gratuitous enough for them. ‘What’s the connection?’ O’Brien thundered. ‘How is he finding them?’

Reilly looked at Chris. ‘We still don’t know that yet, sir,’ she replied. ‘Although based on what trace evidence we have, we’re thinking he might work in a vet’s practice, or maybe a lab somewhere – the lab identified traces of calcium sulphate at—’

‘Chalk dust?’ the older man sneered. ‘The state paid out millions for the fancy equipment the GFU have over there, and all you can come up with is feckin’ chalk dust?’

‘With respect, Chief,’ Kennedy began. ‘If it wasn’t for Steel we might not have made a link between the first two victims at all.’

Reilly looked at him, amazed at this concession. Meeting her eye, he gave her the briefest of winks.

‘Well that makes
ye a shower of even worse imbeciles then, doesn’t it?’ He threw his pen down on top of the pile of newspapers. ‘Tell me,’ he demanded, his tone suddenly harsher, ‘if we know so much about this psycho how come we haven’t caught him yet?’ His gaze traveled the room, finally coming to rest on Reilly again. It was what she had been expecting.

‘We do seem to know a lot about the perpetrator—’ she began, but he cut her off.

‘
Seem
to! We’re paying this profiler guy you wanted a
fortune
, for Christ’s sake! How much more bloody information do we need!’

She stayed calm. ‘We should have Daniel’s profile by the end of the working day.’ At least, she hoped they would. ‘But what I was about to say was that we seem to know a lot about him for a reason,’ she went on. ‘What we know is exactly what he wants us to know – no more, no less. He’s made no mistakes, no slip-ups. The trace evidence is the best chance we have of finding out more about him, where he works, the places he frequents, or where he might be hiding out, that kind of thing. Everything else we know is based either on clues he has deliberately left us. Like I said
, we’ll have an official profile to work with soon, but in the meantime, please be advised that my team and I are working literally around the clock on this.’

O’Brien continued looking at her for a moment,
then finally relaxed his gaze before turning to look at the two detectives. ‘So, if the lab doesn’t have anything useful to contribute, where are you two these days?’

Kennedy gave a resigned shrug. ‘We’re following a couple of leads, especially in relation to the victims’ families, but other than that—’

‘So we’re really no nearer solving this than we were when those Ryan kids showed up dead?’ he concluded.

‘I’m still not sure that’s a fair summary, Chief—’ Chris began.

‘Oh you’re not, aren’t you?’ O’Brien glared at him. ‘So tell me, Detective Delaney,’ he spat his name out with almost a sneer, ‘Who is this guy? And where is he going to strike next? Can you answer me that?’

The room fell silent. O’Brien slurped noisily on his coffee, stared from one to the other. ‘Let me tell you lot something, with a high-profile case like this, results are
everything
. I don’t care how fecking clever you all think you’re being, or what your lab results and fucking profiles tell you – until the moment you have that fecker banged up with a pair of handcuffs on him, you’re all just pissing in the dark. And right now I’m the one who’s getting wet!’