Another blurb, lol. Hope you enjoy it.
"Three days passed before they found the body," Lt. Hoyt told Matt as they stood in line waiting for coffee in a crowded bistro.
"How did she die," Matt asked.
C.J. listened to them talk, asking questions that she felt she had the answers to already. The woman had long dark hair, was in her twenties and had seen her killer's eyes before he had choked the life right out of her. And she had begged for him not to take her life, as it had been too late at that point to ask for less. That he not hurt her body and soul, as the window for that had closed.
"She washed up by the pier," Hoyt continued, "Some fishermen found her wrapped around one of the supports, her body battered like the others."
"The mark…"
Hoyt nodded.
"It was there like the others," he said, "probably burned into her flesh while she still lived. Hopefully, not while she was aware of it."
"Was it the same?"
"Too difficult to tell at this point Houston," Hoyt told him, "It had been mottled by the bruising and probably the branding itself. It might have been done sometime earlier."
"How long does he keep them?"
Hoyt sighed.
"Long enough to take the last part of their lives a nightmare. I'd call this man a monster but he's very human."
"A serial killer?"
Hoyt took the coffee that had been handed to him and sipped it slowly, straight up. He liked his coffee simple in contrast to a life that was anything but.
"I don't know," Hoyt said, "If so, he's not typical. The brand sets him apart from most known profiles recorded by the FBI's Behavioral Sciences Division."
Matt tried to focus on the details that were gleaned from the other bodies discovered when the ocean washed them ashore. Several common threads linked them but there were differences as well. C.J. just let them continue talking but inside, she knew. She didn't know how but whenever she heard of these cases of the women who turned up dead whether here, or in Boston, she thought of him.
She never said anything about it because she knew they would think her crazy. Oh they would never say it but the looks, she didn't want to see them. But she knew because she had checked in her mailbox this morning and it had been there.
Another postcard reminding her that someone was out there waiting.
When she had first started receiving them, she had believed it had been her then boyfriend Jonathan particularly one year around Valentine's Day when she had been working for the Houston Public Defender's office. Jonathan had to miss their planned weekend together to do some FBI training and she had received an unsigned card saying that its sender would see her soon. So naturally she had assumed it had been sent by her boyfriend. Only that hadn't been the case.
And even after they parted and went their separate paths, she occasionally received them in the mail at her home or the office. It unnerved her plenty as years passed that someone unknown out there kept tabs on her location and what she had been doing but he never showed his face nor his hand and so there was no basis to report these strange missives.
And this postcard had also been unsigned and told her that he expected to see her soon. Again nothing about the recent murder even though the timing coincided once again with the appearance of something written to her. She hadn't really told anyone even Matt that she received them. He would just joke about it with her anyway.
They had gotten their coffee and headed back towards one of the only empty tables. Hoyt had been up all night supervising another crime scene when he had been called out to this one before being relieved by a commander.
"It's really tough going to these scenes," he said.
Matt sipped his own coffee.
"I know, Vince used to say the same thing when he worked these murders."
Hoyt shook his head.
"We know they're linked," he said, "and the killer or killers could be operating elsewhere but we've got nothing on this guy, no suspects, nothing but trails that go cold."
"Are you sure it's the same guy," C.J. asked.
Hoyt nodded.
"The brand tells us that," he said, "There's nothing like it on a database anywhere."
"It looks like so many different things," Matt said, "and most of the time there's not enough of it left."
C.J. remembered the pictures that Hoyt had shown her and Matt of the victims' bodies or remains as they often were called. Pictures that hadn't been given to the media, and for good reason as they were very disturbing and she felt an invasion of the victim's privacy. Something that had already been stripped away by the killer before he left them to float in the oceans on both sides of the country.
Each photo of a dead woman had haunted her, had brought her back to a night that she kept hidden in her own memory. He hadn't killed her but he had taken something from her.
"C.J…you're being awfully quiet," Matt said.
She sighed.
"What is there to say Houston," she said, "These murders are awful and there's no end to them. It's as if…"
"As if what?"
She stopped talking and he watched her brow furrow as if she were trying to remember something. He noticed she did that a lot when another body of a young woman had been given up by the sea.
"I don't know…why are they branded like that as if they were cattle like back on the ranch and not human?"
"I don't know C.J.," Matt said, "Maybe dehumanizing them is part of his MO or at least his signature…or it might have other meanings."
She nodded, thinking about his answer.
"Maybe they are cattle to him," she said, "Something to be bought or sold among him and the others."
Both Matt and Hoyt looked up at her then and she felt like she had said too much.
"That's…interesting," Hoyt said, breaking the silence.
"C.J…who are the others," Matt asked.
She felt flustered then and shrugged, before sipping from her coffee.
"I don't know," she said, "I just have a feeling there are more of them out there."
"Could be this guy has an accomplice," Hoyt said.
But that's not what she meant at all. Because some years ago, she had been given a glimpse in a world that terrified her but also had illuminated to her that beneath the surface of all that she saw in front of her had been another world that operated under much different laws, where the people lived and conducted business in the shadows. A place where people in the wrong place at the wrong time could simply be erased to prevent exposure of that different world. After all, that had nearly happened to her and two of her friends.
Matt studied his best friend, dressed nicely in her business attire for the meeting that both would rush off to with a client after finishing their coffee. They had just gotten a case where a prize horse had been stolen and a ransom note delivered to its devastated owner, who happened to be a distant cousin of someone sitting on a throne in a small European country. But even though he saw the eagerness on her face to address a case involving one of her favorite animals, he saw unease there as well at the topic of discussion.
Not that he blamed her because the string of murders of beautiful women that had served as a backdrop to L.A. during the past several years haunted him too. But he suspected it affected her for different reasons and she looked at the latest death in a way far different than either him or Hoyt. Her face, it knew too much than either one of them did and he didn't know why.
Hoyt finally looked at his watch and said he had to head back home to spend some time with his young daughter who had a school project. They watched him leave, after he thanked them for listening to him.
"This murder's hit him very hard," Matt noted, "but then so have the rest."
"That's because there's no rhyme or reason to them Houston," she said, "They're no answers, no suspects just too many questions not to mention the certainty that it will happen again."
"This killer whoever he is won't stop until he's stopped."
"But who can stop someone who abducts women and keeps them before killing them," she said, "and then dumping them in the ocean."
"Eventually he'll slip up and start leaving clues."
C.J. looked doubtful as if she didn't think so. The man who she had met made no mistakes, made no rash decisions, everything meticulously planned out to the last detail. If he killed, would he be any different and she believed he had taken lives, one after the other for reasons she didn't know.
Suddenly a chill filled her even on the warm day.
"Let's just get out of here."
Later, she sat alone in the Jacuzzi at the penthouse suite. She had put in a solid day after the meeting with the client and after she and Matt had spent the afternoon analyzing the ransom note with some nifty software that had been given to them by Dan, a former police officer from Houston who had caught Chris' fancy. The initial analysis hadn't been encouraging but the hour had grown late so they had called it a day.
Matt had decided to pound out his frustration by lifting weights in the gym downstairs but not her. She decided to soak them away by allowing the swirling water to work its magic. And indeed it had begun to relax her as she leaned back and closed her eyes. Trying to think of anything but the latest woman who had wound up dead after running into the wrong person somewhere in L.A.
The note that she had received remained in her mind but really, nothing about it struck her as threatening about it except the dogged repetition. She had recently been stalked by one of her high school classmates, Christian Dean who had shown the same persistence in contacting her but included bouquets of flowers in the mix. Not long after that when she nixed his advances, he rewarded her by killing her boyfriend and then injuring Too-Mean Malone.
She had to kill him to get him to stop hunting her and still the notes came.
At first, she had thought back and wondered if Dean had sent them all these years but now that they kept coming after he lied buried in some grave somewhere, she knew he hadn't authored them. Dean didn't have this individual's sophistication in his approach. This guy knew about her life, major turning points like when she had won her first major case as a public defender, when she had first started working at Houston Enterprises even when she had won awards for her work. He had mentioned these things almost in passing in his notes.
But who was this man, who to her remained faceless…and why did he send her these letters and notes?
Chris walked in suddenly with a package in her hand followed by Matt who had a towel wrapped around his neck from working out. C.J. looked at both expectantly from where she sat.
"The package is for you," Chris said.
C.J. lifted herself out of the spa and wrapped a towel around her swimsuit. She picked up the package as both Matt and Chris looked at her.
"Expensive wrapping," she said, slowly peeling it off.
Matt sat down on the couch next to the Jacuzzi and faced her.
"An admirer?"
She tried to smile.
"I guess I'll find out."
She unwrapped it and opened up the box which looked like it came from a jewelry firm in Beverly Hills. Inside rested a golden bracelet, which shimmered in the light. A note sat next to it,
"I'm sitting here someplace near imagining you wearing your gift, awaiting the day when we meet again."
She looked up at both of them, surprise on her face. Chris looked like her eyes were about to pop out of her head.
"That's gorgeous," she said, "and very finely crafted."
C.J. knew that after all the jewelry cases she and Matt had worked together. The bracelet was top of the line and custom designed but who sent it?
Matt lifted a brow.
"Is there something you need to tell us C.J."
She shrugged.
"I have no idea who sent this," she said, "There's no name."
"Maybe he's shy," Chris said.
Matt watched C.J.'s face knowing how she had been impacted by her run in with Dean who had also began by sending her unsolicited gifts although nothing like that bracelet. She just looked at him confused but she didn't move to put it on as many women might.
Outside the doors at the ground floor of the skyscraper, a man in an Armani suit looked at his watch and knew he had an appointment to keep later in Paris. He waited until the limo arrived in front of the building to take him to the airport.
He imagined her slipping on his gift to her and of the day when they would be reunited once again. Not today perhaps but the time would come when there would be no more secrets.