Chapter 3:
They sat in Lipschitz's office for a good half an hour, with Chris and Rita filling the Cap in on the latest murder and answering Devon's occasional request for a little more background. She knew she'd have the chance to ask more questions later, but she also wanted to start from as clear a picture as she could. That said, whenever possible, she preferred listening to talking. She believed you could often learn more by sitting back and letting people follow their own thoughts rather than trying to direct them. Her observational skills had played a significant role in her quick rise up the FBI's special investigations ranks.
Rita started the briefing. She needed to work it through out loud, anyway, to process some of the chaos whirling through her head. "Chloe's body was discovered just before 9 this morning by a couple of local workmen who'd been hired to do some repairs on the pier at the north end of Pinewood Park beach." Rita glanced down at her field notes tablet, possibly hoping something more useful would magically appear there. "They went down to check the integrity of the pylons and found her crumpled beside a support post in the middle section of the pier. They called 9-1-1 as soon as they checked to see that she wasn't breathing. There were a few other people out on the beach… the early morning surfing and running crowds, but no one was particularly close to the pier. Uniforms are still canvassing, but so far, it sounds like there were no earlier 9-1-1 calls because no one there saw her until our friends the handymen showed up."
"And you're checking into their story?" Lipschitz asked the question to which he already knew the answer.
"Talked to the pier's owner; their story checks out. Just a bad luck morning for them, finding a dead girl when all they wanted was a cigarette and slow work day." This was Chris, giving Rita a chance to collect herself again. "We'll keep running background on them, but they seemed pretty shaken up." Chris paused and glanced over at Rita before continuing. "Chloe was in the same condition as our first two victims: heavy bruising over most of her body; clothes ripped; lots of wounds… I'm guessing from the same knife as the other two girls. Keisha's doing the work-up now; she should be able to give us the details in a few hours."
Devon was looking at Rita, who was being the consummate professional, but was also clearly working hard to keep it together. "How do you know her name was Chloe?" she asked softly.
When Rita didn't respond right away, Chris chimed in: "She showed up a few weeks ago at the teen drop-in centre where Rita volunteers…"
"Night Moves." Rita interrupted him. "We try to connect runaways with social services, or at least a motel and hot meal. Try to help them get off the street, get them counseling. Whatever we can." She'd lost some of the fight in her voice. Devon wasn't doing the usual officious F.B.I. dance; she actually seemed concerned about the case and not just about the glory of getting her name in the paper.
"So you knew her then?"
"A little." Rita's voice caught, but she quickly continued as though nothing had happened. "She was a sweet kid. I thought she was persuadable. She clearly didn't want to go home, but she seemed like she might be willing to think about counseling and finishing a G.E.D. course so she could find work off the street."
"I'm sorry," Devon said simply, and then waited for them to continue updating the Captain. Rita nodded, grateful for both the sincerity of the sentiment and its brevity.
Chris and Rita took turns answering the Captain's questions and confirming the preliminary similarities between this case and the first two. It was getting harder to avoid the realization that they were facing a potential serial killer, which might make the resources of the FBI somewhat useful, though they weren't prepared to admit this out loud just yet. And this being Palm Beach, the rich and wanna-be famous were clamoring for the police to "hurry up and do their jobs." If they didn't catch a break soon, someone was going to have to get fired just to keep the wealthy appeased. And, of course, the mayor would probably call another press conference to take them to task for failing to keep the streets safe—and failing to allow him to take credit for restoring "law and order" to this over-privileged town. It was enough to give Lipschitz indigestion. As the briefing wore on, he reached into his top desk drawer for some antacids. Before he could pry one loose of its foil wrapper, the phone rang again.
"Lipschitz" he barked into the receiver and almost immediately rolled his eyes. Covering the mouthpiece with one hand he said to the three detectives in his office, "It's Donovan. Calling on behalf of the mayor." Harry dragged out the word like a petulant boy in the school yard. "You three, go. Work this case." He waved his hand toward his office door, shooing them out. They rose quickly to give the Captain his office back.
Into the phone he whined, "Donovan, please. Do I look like a miracle worker? My detectives are working triple time on this…" They lost the end of the sentence as they closed the door behind them. They stood outside his office, looking at each other a bit warily. Chris broke the silence before it could build any real tension. "I'll get you a chair," he said to Devon, " and you can join us at our desks." He gestured vaguely to the two nearest the Captain's office, arranged so they were facing each other. "You can help us wade through these witness statements until Keisha has something for us."
Once they were seated, Chris and Rita filled Devon in on the background she hadn't already gotten from the briefing. All three girls had been runaways in their late teens. They'd been living mostly with their informal "street families," sleeping under piers and highway overpasses, occasionally in a flea bag motel if the group could scrounge enough money together. As best they could figure from the little information the girls' friends would give the cops, the young women weren't regularly turning tricks, but might on occasion if desperate for money, or if it meant a slightly cleaner and less crowded room for the night.
"So we can't rule out a bad john or someone who gets his kicks from hurting prostitutes," Devon interrupted.
"No, and we haven't. But we also haven't gotten any strong leads on that front," Chris replied.
"We haven't gotten any strong leads at all," Rita muttered, tossing a file folder so hard it knocked half the contents of her desk top onto the floor.
"I got it," Chris jumped up to gather the mess. As he put the pens and papers back on Rita's desk, he lingered a few minutes to give her a quick shoulder rub. Devon observed the easy intimacy they shared, but said nothing.
As Chris was returning to his desk, Keisha strode through the palm tree cutout doors to the squad room and made a bee-line for the three detectives. "We got a serial psycho on our hands" she announced.
"You're sure?" Devon asked.
"I'd bet a year's salary on it. All three girls…they had massive contusions in similar patterns over most of their bodies."
"What do you think caused them?" Chris queried.
"My best guess? Brass knuckles. Look here." She pulled out three photos, one of each victim, and laid them on Rita's desk. Chris and Devon stood on either side of her to look at the evidence as well. "The bruises are of similar depth and width.. And if you look at these…" she paused to point out a few distinctive bruises on each girl, "what do you notice?"
"All three of them have contusions on their sides with the same odd, three-prong marking," Devon said almost immediately. And then she got excited. "Which means it might be the same deformity—let's call it his 'calling card'—because our guy apparently has brass knuckles with spikes, but one spike is worn down or broken." She was smiling now. A clue. What a beautiful thing.
"Yes," Keisha said, nodding quickly. "It's subtle, and harder to see on our girl from this morning because the bruises aren't as old as they were on the second girl, but I think that's what we're looking for."
Rita nodded appreciatively, as Chris said "Nice work, K. You're the best."
"You know it."
"What about the knife," Rita asked.
"That's the same, too, best I can tell."
"Any guesses on what kind of knife we're looking for?" Devon asked. She had her own information on the two Miami victims, but they hadn't gotten around to talking about those girls yet. She was curious, though, to see how much overlap there was.
"My best guess is a small Bowie knife, maybe a 7 and a half or 8 inch blade. It has a bit of a curve on the tip."
"What's your ETA on the time of death?" Rita was back to thinking about her last conversation with the young blonde woman she hadn't been able to help.
"Based on liver temperature and rigor, sometime between one and two a.m."
"Seven hours," Rita said softly. When Chris looked quizzically at her, she explained, "She was on that beach for seven hours before anyone found her."
"Or a little less, maybe." Keisha added. "I do have one more piece of good news for you."
"Keisha, you've been holding out on us? Bad girl!" Chris just couldn't help himself. He flirted with women. Especially Keisha. It helped cut the tension. And she was good at it.
"Saving the best for last is my gift to you, Chris." Keisha winked at him. "We found three fibers under her fingernails. The lab is analyzing them now. So she was killed somewhere else, I think, and then dumped. Maybe not right away."
"Fibers. Our guy is getting lazy," Chris whistled happily.
"Or cocky," Devon chimed in sourly.
"We haven't seen fibers on our previous victims. Could be a break! I'll let you know what we find out," Keisha said as she gathered her photos back into the file folder and playfully slapped Chris's arm with it as she turned and left them to work their cop magic with their new intel.
As Chris and Devon sat back down, Rita asked, "so how does this fit with your Miami cases?"
"Too well," Devon said. While she'd be happy if they could solve those earlier murders by solving the Palm Beach cases, the thought of a serial killer on the loose didn't exactly fill her with joy. "Our M.E. didn't say anything about the unique brass knuckle pattern in the bruising, but it was subtle. I'm going to ask him to take another look." Chris and Rita were nodding, pleased that Keisha had found something the Feds had missed. "And the knife pattern fits what we found on the first two girls. At this point, I'd say there's a better than 70% chance that it's the same guy." Rita nodded in agreement.
"Or woman," Chris said with a tip of his head and knowing glance toward the two women in front of him. "Let's not be sexist in our assumptions." The two women just looked at him silently for a long few seconds. "Yeah, you're right" he finally conceded. "Probably a guy."
"Probably a white man, early-30s to early-40s. Maybe as young as late-20s, but I doubt it," Devon specified. She wasn't technically a "profiler," but knowing basic criminal psychology went a long way toward working up a suspect sketch. "Could be Hispanic, given that one of the girls in Miami was Mexican and your second girl was Latina." Chris and Rita had located the girl's family a few days ago, up near Pensacola: white dad, Columbian mother, three younger sisters. The family wasn't wealthy, but there was also no obvious reason for their daughter to have run away. They were strict, they admitted, but only because Mirabella had started breaking curfew and hanging around with a bad crowd. They had worried about her and tried to set her straight by tightening the reins and imposing more rules and restrictions. She rebelled, and then she left with her loser boyfriend of the week. That had been five months ago, and they hadn't heard from her since.
"Great. A 29-to-45 year-old white or Hispanic male in Palm Beach. That narrows it down." Rita's frustration flared again.
"Sammy, it's a start. We'll get him," Chris willed her to focus, and to trust in their skills, their teamwork.
"Uh, 'Sammy'?" Devon couldn't help herself from asking.
"Slammin' Sammy Snead" they sang in unison, and explained the origin story of their preferred term of endearment. This time Devon smiled at their intimacy, but still said nothing.
They turned back to reviewing witness statements for anything they may have missed. Having Devon there to bounce the statements off of provided some welcome new eyes and ears and a couple of fresh ideas they would need to follow up on. But after three hours of detailed working through the five crime scenes they were now treating as one case, they hadn't made much in the way of significant new headway.
"Listen guys," Devon finally said. "It's nearly 3.30. We've been at this for hours and we're talking in circles. Also, I'm starving. I need food. Now."
"Hah!" Chris exclaimed. "Get a load of this, Sammy. The Federal Agent can't work through a little hunger." He was teasing Devon, who just rolled her eyes.
Rita just smiled lightly. She was still wary of the agent, but warming fairly rapidly. Devon was working hard, not taking shortcuts. Thinking things through and being respectful of her and Chris's work and ideas. It was a nice change from the usual dismissive and bullying approach too many of her FBI colleagues took when they deigned to darken the door of the PBPD.
"We've got a taco truck with your name on it," Rita offered to Devon by way of a peace gesture after their rocky start this morning.
"Perfect," Devon said. "So long as there's lots of grease, and some coffee better than this," she said, grimacing at the hours-old sludge at the bottom of her mug.
"If it's grease you want, you've come to the right place" Chris assured her as they all rose to leave for their hard-earned, and very late, lunch.