Sure enough, Walker's trial started a week after our ninth victim's death. Abby seemed to be doing a lot better than she ha been before, which was a relief, at least, to me. Now instead of holing up in the interview room, she went with Casey to the courthouse. Two days after the trial began, we met with our tenth victim and our sixteenth note. We still had not identified the ninth, which, to me, at least, was quite disturbing: surely someone had missed her?
Fin and I were, for once, since this had all begun, working together again; we crossed the crime scene tape in silence, neither of us daring to say anything. It was about 4:30 in the evening; the streetlights weren't on yet, but they would be soon. Melinda stood just inside the tape, looking more upset than either of us had ever seen her. Behind her, the body lay out on the rubber mats leading to the playground structure, covered by a sheet.
"He tortured her," Melinda said, before either of us could ask. "I found rope marks, burns, cuts…I couldn't even make out her face." She sounded close to tears, not that Fin and I could blame her; she'd been at every one of these scenes for the past three months. But none of them had been like this.
Fin walked off to talk to CSU to avoid getting Melinda more upset than she already was; she left a few minutes later with her assistants, the body in tow. A toddler's pair of blue jeans lay not too far away from where I was standing. They were torn and stained with blood: Collins had killed this one here. I felt a hand on my shoulder and jumped, turning to see Fin standing there behind me. He held out the envelope CSU had given him.
"You want to, or should I?" he asked. I sighed and reached for the envelope, opening it and pulling out the latest note.
"Forgive me, Detectives, but I could not seem to control myself this time. I've sure you've noticed that, as well as the little clue I've left. I have heard that walker's trial has begun; I wish your ADA and ASA Williams luck; they'll be hard pressed to get a conviction here. In Baltimore, however, they might be luckier. But I digress. I must admit it's been amusing watching the department now that they know I've been into your precinct unnoticed. Perhaps next time your uniforms will actually be informed about all of this."
Fin grabbed the note before I could make up my mind to start tearing it to pieces. He shoved it into his pocket and motioned for me to follow him across the tape again. I did, and once the playground was out of view, I spoke.
"That sick son of a bitch," I muttered. "How the hell can anyone do that to a child?" My voice broke on the last word and I turned away; Fin sighed, but remained where he was, a few feet in front of me.
"We've seen stuff like this before," he pointed out. I didn't answer. He was right and I knew it; we had seen things like this, but never on this scale. Sure, we might've had more than one victim in a case or two…or three, but ten? It was nine too many; one I could have dealt with, but this…this was too much.
"You heard what Warner said," I said finally. "She couldn't even make out this one's face."
"But he left us something," said Fin. "He's slipping. He's afraid Casey might get Walker to talk."
"So why doesn't he just leave the damn city?" I demanded. "If he's so afraid Walker's gonna roll on him, why the hell doesn't he just leave and make sure we don't catch him?"
No answer came, not that I'd really expected one. We stood there in silence for a long moment before I reached into my pocket for the keys and tossed them to him.
"You drive," I said, "I'll probably get us into a wreck in this state."
Fin smirked at this, and I knew why: I was usually the first one to make some snarky comment about the way he drove. We continued walking, anyways, and when we reached the car, I got in on the passenger's side, leaning back and closing my eyes.
"I'm too damn old for this," I remarked. Fin snorted.
"That's what you get for not retiring," he said. "You got yourself into this."
"Yes, since all I did was answer the damn phone and draw primary," I said. "You'd probably feel the same way if you were stuck where I am."
"But I'm not, and I don't," said Fin. "If he walks into the precinct again…"
"He won't," I said, cutting him off, "He knows we're all going to be looking to see if he does."
Again there was silence. It was true, though, what I had said. Collins wouldn't be walking into the precinct again; he wasn't that stupid.
Even so, I still couldn't help but hope that maybe he was.
Surprisingly enough, Abby was still in a good mood by the time I saw her again, about two hours after discovering our latest victim. Walker's trial, according to her, anyway, was actually going fairly well. I had the feeling she was only telling me this to convince herself, but rather than cast my normal cynicism over her, I decided to leave well enough alone.
"I think we might be able to nail him," she told me, falling backwards onto her bed. "Might not be for everything, but there's still a good chance he'll do time."
"The question, then," I said, "Would be whether or not he's sentenced to serve enough time." Abby rolled over onto her side and made a face at me.
"No time is enough time for a bastard like that," she said. "Honestly, I'd prefer it if he got the death penalty, considering, but I'll take whatever I can get for this."
I hadn't expected anything less. Abby had always been the type to take whatever time served she could get for whoever it was that she happened to be prosecuting. It had earned her quite the reputation in the State's Attorney's office: she was to them what Kay had been, and still was, to the first shift.
"Who's sitting first chair in this, anyway?" I asked. Abby sighed and rolled onto her back again, staring up at the ceiling as she replied.
"I am," she admitted. "Casey somehow managed to talk your District Attorney into it; I don't know how, but it worked."
I don't know why, but I felt more than slightly relieved by this, even though I knew Casey was more than capable of sitting first chair herself. Abby was really the only one I actually trusted to handle any sort of prosecution related to this case, and it wasn't only because we'd been friends ever since we were kids. She had been assigned as a prosecutor the first time, and I felt that it was only right that she sit first chair this time, though I certainly wasn't about to say this to Casey.
"Hey, what's that look for?" Abby asked. When I didn't answer, she sat up, leaning over to wave a hand in my face. "Anyone home in there?"
"Yes, there's someone home, otherwise we wouldn't be having this conversation," I replied mildly. "You really think this is going to turn out the way we want it?"
"I don't see how it can't, but there's a chance that it won't," said Abby. "Walker's lawyers have had us in more than one place, but they haven't said anything."
"Maybe they've suddenly grown a conscience," I said dryly, feigning surprise. "Or maybe they've got kids."
"I doubt they've got a conscience, but maybe they do have kids," said Abby. A thoughtful look crossed her face at this and she leaned against the headboard before turning to face me again.
"You don't think they're doing it on purpose, do you?" she asked. "To make sure we get a conviction?"
"No defense attorney in this city is that stupid," I replied. "They've probably got something they're going to use against you later on in the trial."
"There isn't anything, though," Abby said, but she sounded uncertain. "At least, we don't think there is."
"Trust me," I said, "There's always something. I've seen stronger cases than this fall apart."
"Yeah, well, so have I," said Abby. "That's what scares me. These notes might not be enough to get him convicted."
Suddenly I remembered the blue jeans that had been left at the scene. The Crime Lab had rushed the DNA results to us once they'd found out which case it was in connection to. The blood had all belonged to our fifth victim, the two-year-old. But there had been something else…and that something else was all Walker's.
"You can add rape to the charges," I said finally, and Abby looked at me, startled.
"When did we find this out?" she demanded. "And when exactly were you planning on telling me about it?"
"As soon as we got the results," I said. I bent over to pick the folder up off of the table between the two beds in the room; Abby grabbed it from me before I could open it and read the results to her. It took her about three minutes to finish.
"Kayley Fiddler," she said, before looking up at me. "She was the two-year-old." It was more of a question than a statement, and I nodded; she cast a disgusted look at the results before shoving the file away from her.
"That bastard," she said angrily. "What kind of man willingly does that?" She trailed off for a minute as her voice started cracking, sucking in a breath and exhaling loudly before going on. "She was only a baby."
They were all only babies, even Claire Fisher, the sixteen-year-old who was so far, our eldest victim. Even if we in particular didn't think of them that way, their parents certainly had. Abby seemed to know what I had started thinking about, because she moved so that she was sitting beside me and leaned over so her head was on my shoulder.
"I can use this," she said. "There's no way a jury's going to let Walker off now." She sounded a lot more confident than I felt, which was of some comfort, though it wasn't much.
Her cell phone rang then, and we both froze. It rang a second, and then a third time before she finally reached out and flipped it open, putting it on the speakerphone setting again.
"Hello?"
"ASA Williams. I was starting to wonder if you remembered how to answer a phone." Collins' voice filled the hotel room, making it seem a hell of a lot smaller than it already did. Abby shifted so that she was sitting up, and scowled.
"You are one sick son of a bitch, you know that?" she demanded. "Leaving Kayley Fiddler's clothes at the last crime scene? You really think this is going to help you?"
"I didn't expect it to help me," Collins replied coolly. "I expected it to help you. I'm sure that this new evidence will make it easier for you and ADA Novak to get the conviction the both of you are so desperate for."
"You're the one who's desperate," Abby shot back. "There's got to be something wrong with you if you can't get any on your own."
She was coming dangerously close to crossing the lines that had already been set, but I doubted she cared, and I certainly didn't, either. Collins had been taunting us since the beginning; it was only about time that he started to get some of his own 'medicine'.
"I hate to disappoint you, but there is nothing wrong with me," said Collins, "At least, not that I am aware of."
"You're not aware of a lot, then, are you?" I asked, finally managing to regain my voice. "If you can't see what the rest of the world sees…"
"And what, pray tell, would that be?" Collins asked, cutting me off. I smirked, thankful that he was no longer able to see any of us. The door to the room opened and then slammed loudly; Abby jumped and peered around the corner to find that Kay and Tim had just walked in.
"You want to know?" I asked in reply. "I'll tell you. They see a sick, perverted bastard who gets off on kidnapping little girls just so he can rape them and then murder them."
"Someone's got a temper," said Collins. Kay snorted.
"You think he's got a temper?" she demanded. "What do you call the last victim you left us?"
"I call that a lack of self-control." Collins told her. "Certainly nothing to do with any sort of temper."
"The hell it doesn't," Tim said angrily. "You tortured her, Collins, and then you left her to die."
"So what if I did?" Collins asked. "Do you really think it makes a difference? She wasn't an only child; and it isn't as if her parents can't have more."
"Is that what this is about?" Abby demanded. "You're taking your anger out on these parents because yours didn't care one way or the other about you?"
"I would advise that you do not speak of thing which you know nothing about," said Collins. "I had a normal childhood."
"Obviously not," Kay said sarcastically. "Normal people don't grow up and do this sort of thing, Collins."
"And I suppose you would consider yourself normal, then, Detective Howard, you and the rest of the people you're working with?" came the reply.
"Yes," Kay said defiantly, "I would. More normal than you, in any case." Silence fell, and the only thing that any of us could hear was the sound of our own breathing. Muffled whimpering suddenly broke that silence, and all of us stiffened visibly.
"You hear that, don't you, Detectives?" Collins asked finally, maliciously. "I've got my next victim…but you won't be seeing this one any time soon; I plan on keeping her for a while."
The line clicked, then, and we knew that he'd hung up. Abby swore loudly and got up, starting to pace back and forth, up and down the length of the room.
"Number eleven," she said finally. "He's not going to keep this one for too long; she's an odd one."
There hadn't been any pun intended by this, but half-hearted smiles crossed all of our faces anyways. Humor was definitely something we needed, especially since there wasn't really anything else that we could laugh at without looking as if we didn't give a damn about any of this.
"He said he was going to keep her for a while," I pointed out. "A few days at the most…I think he's been keeping them longer."
"That would explain why we haven't been seeing these bodies so close together anymore." Kay sat in the space that Abby had just vacated and leaned back, running a hand through her hair. "I can't believe this."
Neither could the rest of us. This was the first that any of us had ever heard of Collins keeping his victims for a while before killing them and dropping them off in places where they would quickly be found. A sinking feeling settled over me at this, and I leaned forward, resting my elbows on my knees as I shook my head.
"When he calls again," I said finally, "He might let her talk to us."
"What good is that going to do?" Abby asked sarcastically. "He keeps calling from pay phones all around the city."
"No," said Kay, catching on to what I was getting at. "He's not going to do that anymore. Not if he's going to keep calling us…he won't want anyone to see the girl."
"Even if someone does see her, it's not as if she's going to make it obvious that she's been kidnapped," said Tim. "He's probably threatened to kill her if she does."
Silence fell again. He had a point, and a valid one, at that: Collins' main motivator was fear, and if there was one thing that he could use to scare a child, it was telling her that she was going to die if she did anything wrong.
Abby reached for her cell phone and flipped it open, looking through all of the incoming calls that she had received that day. Suddenly, she frowned and walked over to me.
"You recognize this number?" she asked, handing me the phone. I looked down at the tiny screen, and a split second later, my eyes widened in shock.
I did recognize the number. Kay had been right; for once, Collins hadn't called us from a pay phone, he'd called us from another cell phone…Elliot's cell phone.