Butcher for years. Maybe we should talk to him and get his perspective, see if he thinks we have a serial killer here.”
“You’re right, he has the experience, but he’s the brother of our primary suspect. And besides,” argued Carina, “the definition of a serial killer is three or more like crimes with an established MO and-”
Will interrupted. “Don’t tell me you haven’t seen signs in Angie’s murder that point to something more than a crime of passion.”
She couldn’t argue with him. She’d been wrestling with it all night. “Point taken. But what if it is Steve Thomas? What if he’s the killer?”
“Then having Nick Thomas on our side might help stop another murder.”
“Has anything come back from the feds’ database on like crimes?”
Will shook his head. “The system is haphazard at best. And I read an article last year that serial killers often change and refine their method of killing. So our killer might have started with a different MO. In another state, maybe he strangled previous victims, or stabbed them-”
“Or maybe Angie is the first. Something about her set him off.”
“Like her sex diary.”
Carina’s phone rang. “Kincaid,” she answered.
“It’s Jim. I’ve typed the glue.”
“And?”
“Commonly used industrial-strength adhesive, available at most major hardware stores.”
“Match anything we found at Thomas’s apartment?”
“Sorry.”
“Thanks.”
Will was on the phone when she got off, so Carina cleared paperwork from her desk, her least favorite part of the job, until he hung up.
“Patrick has a printout of all of Thomas’s e-mails, Internet travels, and chat room logs for us,” Will told her. “He skimmed them, didn’t find anything big, but they’re worth a closer look. He has to run some computer program,” he waved his hand in the air, “to decipher exactly how many times Thomas went to the site and get an approximate amount of time he spent there. Since we haven’t arrested the guy yet, and Patrick’s preparing for a trial next week, he doesn’t have the time to thoroughly go through the reports, but he thinks by early next week he’ll have answers.”
“Such is our lives.” Carina frowned. “Will, why do I feel like this isn’t a priority to the department?”
“I don’t understand.”
“We have a dead girl. Eighteen years old. We have a suspect. True, only circumstantial evidence, but damn good circumstantial evidence. But Jim has priorities, Patrick has priorities, and this case isn’t it. I don’t like it. It makes me feel like Angie’s death has been relegated to the bottom of the list. That because she was a promiscuous young woman who posed in pornographic positions on her Web page, no one cares what happened to her.”
“That’s not true, Carina. You know that.”
But she was fired up. “Really? I know what? You heard the guys around the bullpen when they saw her MyJournal page. Reading her descriptions of having sex and masturbating. And the pictures! I have four brothers. I know what guys think about nudie shots.
“She’s dead. Just because a woman has sex with a lot of guys doesn’t mean she deserves to be raped and murdered. Suffocated. She was terrified when she died. She was tortured. It’s not fair that no one cares!”
Will pushed Carina back down in her chair and leaned over her. “Listen here, Detective Kincaid. Don’t
Carina took a deep breath. “I’m sorry. I wasn’t aiming that at you, Will. I guess…I don’t know. I’m just frustrated.”
He gave her a curt nod and leaned back against her desk, arms crossed. “We thought we had an easy case, open and shut, and it’s turned out to be anything but.”
Carina felt sheepish. Will cared as much about the victims as she did. She had to remember that he was not only her partner but her best friend. “Did Patrick say he had anything from Angie’s computer?” she asked, changing the subject.
“Oh, yeah. We have our work cut out for us. A lot of legwork, but maybe we’ll get a break.”
Will’s phone rang and he reached across Carina’s desk to answer it.
“Will Hooper.”
“It’s Patrick. Are you at your computer?”
“Two feet away.”
“Log on to Angie’s MyJournal page ASAP. Seems Angie’s friends have paid a tribute to their dead friend, and you’re not going to like it. I’m on hold with MyJournal security because Angie’s journal needs to be taken down. Immediately.”
He walked down the street, around the corner, and down two blocks to the Quik-Stop. He bought a newspaper, a thirty-two-ounce Coke, and a breakfast burrito, using the store’s microwave to heat it.
He sat at a picnic table at the park across the street, eating as he turned to the obituaries.
There it was. Angie’s memorial service:
He’d learned a lot from his mistakes with Angie. She was the first, and of course it wasn’t perfect. That’s why the end wasn’t satisfying. He’d kept her too long, for one. The excitement of that first night gave way to fear of being caught, an urgency that he couldn’t fulfill.
Last year he’d made a mistake, and it had taken him a full year to plan and gather the courage to go through with his idea.
He should have killed Randi, but he’d been too nervous to go through with it. Fortunately, he’d scared her into silence, and she’d since moved away.
He’d taken Randi to dinner and a movie. She was perfect. Shy, quiet, timid. All he wanted was to fuck her. They’d been dating for several months and it had been time.
They’d eaten dinner at a nice restaurant, seen a movie, did all the things they usually did on a date. Then he took her to a wooded park up in the San Diego hills with a distant view of the ocean and kissed her. She let him, her mouth soft and warm, tentative. They’d kissed before, but he wanted more. Needed more.
At first she gave him what he sought. Her breasts. Her neck. She let him touch her through her pants, but when he unzipped them she grabbed his wrist. “I’m not ready.”
She was out of breath.
“We both want this. You know it.”
“I thought…but no. I can’t. Just kiss me. I like that.”
So he kissed her and heated up. Kissed her and wanted more. He pinned her down in the dirt with his body-he was bigger than she-and she protested again. This time, he didn’t stop. He unzipped her shorts and she began to squirm and cry.
“Please, stop! I don’t want to do this.”
“I want to.”
And shouldn’t that have been enough? She was here, she liked him, she kissed him, and she wouldn’t let him fuck her? There was something very wrong with that, and he wasn’t going to let her get away with it.
He held her down, his body rigid, and she screamed. She screamed so loud he thought every person in town could hear. They would come and take him away.
It stunned him into stopping.
Randi was sobbing and he rolled off her. They were both covered in dirt and leaves.
“Don’t tell anyone,” he warned her. “If you tell anyone, I’ll kill you.”
“I won’t,” she whispered. “No one.”
