With the folder in my hand, I stood and crossed the room to the far wall where the magnetic white board waited with victims’ photos in a timeline. Left to right. I added things we’d learned in the last twenty-four hours. Under that, I attached photos from the crime scenes of the notes found. Lastly, I added my own comments, initial impressions, what I considered missing objects from the scenes and which scenes I thought different, as in a different Unsub.
Resting against the edge of my desk, close to Lee, I surveyed the board. I’d considered our timeline wasn’t correct early on, discovery isn’t always the order in which things happen. We were waiting on the ME’s reports, those reports would include time of death. I walked to the board and rearranged the photos, sliding them into various new positions on the board, hoping to get a new perspective.
It felt as though he spent more time with Jane or in Jane’s home. Did he want her death to look like a suicide? Was he experimenting with death, finding his comfort zone? All things are possible.
After messing with the photos and the order of deaths, I put them all back in the order of discovery. What I knew felt right. The pieces were forming a cohesive picture.
I surveyed the images and words in front of me. This time, I took the memos left at each scene and stacked them in chronological order. The newspaper with the memorial notice sat on the coffee table by the couch. I cut out the notice and added it to the whiteboard then drew lines from the relevant victims to the clipping.
“The poem bothers me,” I said to the wall.
“Did you say something, Chicky?” Lee asked.
“I’m not thrilled by this stanza.”
If the second is as long as the first, we are likely to see a lot more victims. Not a comforting thought.
“You think the Unsubs are just warming up?” Lee’s words sent cold spikes through my brain.
“I hope not. But yes, that’s what I’m thinking.” There was something hinky about the double-up in deaths. “It could be because there are two Unsubs, communication might be slipping a bit. Two deaths in one day seem like a communication error.” Or the second Unsub got tired of playing second fiddle and wanted to be in on the kill.
“Chicky, we could find more double-ups.”
“Yeah.”
Not something I wanted to think about for too long with bodies piling up and leads thin on the ground; and I still needed to hold a media conference.
Screw it.
How did they choose their victims and how much planning went into the deaths? From what I could tell, there had to be prior contact or the victims were followed home ahead of the deaths. Sleeping pills in the morning coffee: that level of planning scared me. How did the Unsub get the pills into the coffee? The victims had coffee in their stomachs or on their breath and so far, two had sleeping pills in their systems. It made sense that the delivery method for the pills was coffee.
But when? Could the Unsub have been in the houses the night before the murders? What if he stayed the night, waiting for the morning?
That thought stopped me in my tracks.
We had no evidence to suggest anyone else but the victims stayed in the houses. I didn’t recall anything in the reports. Didn’t mean I hadn’t missed something, though.
“Lee, anything to suggest anyone else stayed in any of the houses?”
“Looking.” The quiet clicking of the keys on his laptop stopped. “Thorough searches of the homes in question turned up nothing of note. Victims didn’t appear to have shared their beds with anyone recently. Spare bedrooms were home offices and craft rooms, the ones that had spare beds showed no sign they’d been occupied recently.”
“Thanks.”
The number of victims had the potential to work in our favor. The more people killed, the greater the risk for the Unsubs. The more victims, the more we’d learn. I couldn’t shake the feeling that something else was going on here. Something I couldn’t see.
Where was the music when I needed it?
I sighed and slid back into my chair.
My cell phone chimed with a text message from Sean saying he’d driven by Gerrard’s home. It was empty with a sold sign in the front yard. I typed a quick thank you and asked Sean to check into Gerrard’s financials.
Dammit. Not great news about the house. Sold his house and went where?
With another sigh, I shook Gerrard from my thoughts. Phoebe and her house sat front and center, Gerrard would have to wait a bit longer.
“Phoebe moved to her new house two and a half weeks ago, so the Unsub met her in that time or stalked her within that time.”
Lee looked up. “We have a time frame?”
“Well, the beginning of one, maybe. Unless, she knew the Unsub before moving.” Chucking the cat among the pigeons is what I do best. “I need to look at Phoebe’s life over the last few months.”
“I’ll carry on with this search while you start on Phoebe.”
I pulled up Phoebe’s Facebook and Twitter accounts, running back over her timelines looking for new people, comments, anything that indicated someone new on the scene. Or someone had paid more attention than they used to. About fourteen days back on her Twitter feed, I found a name I recognized. Kristopher Lette. He’d added one of her tweets to his favorites.
“Lee, Kristopher Lette follows …” I stopped and corrected myself. “Followed Phoebe on Twitter. As far as I can tell, there was no direct interaction and she didn’t follow him back.”
“I know that name. Refresh my memory?”
“ Police spoke to him after he approached Sarah Ng’s home. They described him as thin, pale, and almost translucent.”
“The vampire,” Lee said with a grin.
Vampire and an Unsub with a blood-spattered bag. A connection?
“It’s possible he’s related to the journalist Rosanne Lette.” I looked at Lee as he continued searching through files on his laptop. “The vampire thing is sending up flares in my brain.”
Lee chuckled. “I can only imagine what’s going in your head. Did he do anything beyond watching?”
“Favorited a tweet about her new house.”
“She didn’t have location turned on did she?”
I scanned her tweets looking to see if the GPS sign appeared anywhere.
“Not then, she didn’t, but a few months earlier she did … her old address showed up when I typed a tweet.”
“Jeez.”
“Yeah.”
Lette could’ve used the old address to find her new location. Public tax records of house sales and purchases. Time-consuming searches if you don’t know where to start, but he had an address.
Lette wasn’t either of the Unsubs I’d seen through the eyes of the dead women. So why was his name popping up? Vampires like blood. I needed more information on Lette.
“You all good there?” I said to Lee, standing up.
“Yep, you going somewhere?”
“Not far, need to make a call. Be back in a few.” I picked up my cell phone and wandered into the hallway.
“What’s the likelihood of you being home soon?”
The warmth in Mitch’s voice flooded through me. “I’m not sure. Hey, Mitch … did you find out anything about Rosanne and her possible son, Kristopher?”
“Not a great deal. She didn’t talk much and wouldn’t be drawn. Even mom couldn’t get her yapping about any kids she may have.”
Sometimes it’s what people don’t say that tells me the most.
“Did she mention a son at all?”
“She said she had a boy in his twenties and that was as far as the conversation went.”
“Did she refer to him by name?”
“No.”
“Thanks.”
“Sorry I wasn’t much help, El.”
My smile bounced over the airwaves. “But you were M, you were. I’ll see you when I see you.”
“I’ll be here.”
We hung up. So Rosanne didn’t like talking about her son. That fascinated me. It was at odds with the parents I knew. They all talked about their kids’ achievements or lack of; you didn’t always get detail but the sense of pride or disappointment was evident as they spoke.
Ideas about why a mother wouldn’t talk about a son sparked an inner debate. He could be some kind of freak. He could have a criminal record. He could be estranged for a variety of reasons, not all of them bad. I paused; in my experience, someone cropping up in a case of mine was usually bad. I saw no reason why Kristopher Lette’s appearance would be an exception.
I walked back into my office stepping over Lee’s outstretched legs to get to my desk.
Still reading old case files, Lee glanced at me as I sat and scooted my chair into position.
“You good?”
“I’m good,” I replied. “How you doing?”
He grinned. “Got it, Chicky. The company is KS.”
“Based?”
“Milan and New York.”
“Got a contact?”
“I have, Chicky.”
“I need to talk to whoever that is first thing.” My eyes settled on the row of clocks above my door: nearly eight. Too late to make a business call.
“Our files say a man by the name of Sasha Petrovovich is the person we want. He’s head perfumer and jewelry designer. His wife is Kendra Masters. They own the company.”
“And Mr. Petrovovich is based where?”
“He’s based at the New York head office.”
“Great.”
The Rolling Stones’ “Hand of Fate” bounced from the direction of the closed window. As I listened to the lyrics, I saw an image of a vampire shoot a man, grab a girl and run.
Well, fuck, that was something.
“Chicky?”
“The vampire … I think he killed someone to save a girl from a violent relationship,” I said.
Lee’s right eyebrow shot up. “That’s quite the quantum leap, from talking about a perfumer a few moments ago …”
I shrugged. “‘Hand of Fate’ …” Was all I had by way of explanation.
“Rolling Stones. Gimme a minute, let’s pull up a YouTube clip.”
We listened in silence.
“I’d be surprised if he did work for a power company. Not hard to falsify an ID. And saying you’re from the power company is a good way to get someone to open the door. Or maybe he really does work for a power company and is using that to get inside houses.”
“Does he look anything like the Unsubs you saw?” Lee said.
“No, that’s the problem.” I thought about the situation with Lette some more. “I also think the girl he saved is someone Phoebe knew.”
“Why?”
“Because I can’t find a reason for Kristopher Lette to follow Phoebe on Twitter. I found no evidence of interaction between them and yet I have the feeling there was a connection.”
“Maybe her tweets were interesting?”
“Only if you like knowing what she ate for breakfast, lunch, and dinner.” Or how many miles she ran in a week.
“Does he follow a lot of people who talk about food? Could be his thing.”
“Don’t imagine vampires care about food.” I rechecked his Twitter feed. His tweets were all about art and how tough it was to get gallery space. I skimmed a few feeds from some of the people he followed. Mostly artists and musicians.
“You really think this guy killed someone to save a girl from a bad relationship and that Phoebe knows the person?”
Did I think that? It sounded a bit more nuts than usual. “I don’t know what I think, but something’s eating at me and it’s to do with Phoebe and Lette.”
“All right. I’ll play. Do you think Phoebe knew about it?”
I shook my head. “She would’ve said something to someone. We’d know by now.” The thought that Lette found a way to legitimately knock on doors and possibly gain access to houses fermented as Lee’s fingers clunked on the keyboard in front of him. I called Sam on my cell.
“Hey. Did anyone you spoke to during this investigation mention someone from a power company being in the area?” I waited, listening to the rustle of turning pages.
“No, Chicky Babe. No one mentioned door knockers of any sort.”
“Okay, thanks.” I hung up.
“You sure Phoebe would’ve talked if there was something going on?” Lee ventured.
A frown formed. “What did you find?”
“Ever meet Phoebe’s sister?”
“No.”
“Check this out.” Lee spun the laptop to face me.
He’d pulled up photographs of a woman, depicting facial injuries, massive amounts of torso bruising, a broken arm, and a gash on the back of the head.
“When?”
“The most recent is the image of the gash at the back of her head and that’s three weeks ago.”
“And the woman is Phoebe’s sister?”
“Yep.” He sighed. “The day after that photograph was taken at the hospital, her husband disappeared.”
“Disappeared?”
“Yeah, he went away on business and no one has seen him since.”
“What kind of business?” I asked.
“The lawyer kind,” Lee said with a grimace.
“He’s a lawyer?”
“Yeah, the scumbag is a lawyer. He was bailed out within three hours of his arrest for male assaults female and left on a business trip the next day. Failed to appear in court. There’s a warrant out for his arrest.”
“I don’t think anyone is going to find him …” I said.
“It doesn’t sound like it.”
“What’s the feeling on this, from a police perspective?”
“That he took off and has a new identity, new life.” He read for a few seconds. “Warrants are active but the case is on hold. No one is turning over any stones to find this guy.”
“Why is no one actively looking for him?”
“I’m looking, Chicky, but nothing is mentioned here.”
“We could do the whole new-identity-new-life thing within a few days. But we have access to experts at setting up backstopped new identities. Who else has that capability?”
Lee’s eyes met mine. “You think he’s in Witness Protection?”
Did I? “Don’t think we can rule it out.”
“Let’s keep that in mind.”
“I want to know where Lette was when the lawyer disappeared,” I said. “And the wife?”
“Christine Locke, she’s still in the family home. There is a protection order to prevent him coming near her should he resurface.”
Yeah, because they work.
I wanted to talk to Christine Locke. “I’m going to take a run at Phoebe’s sister … see if she knows anything that might shine some light on this case.”
“What about her husband?”
“Locke …”
“Yes.”
“I came across that name during this investigation.” I sat back in my chair. “Is the lawyer Charles Locke?”