Kurt watched me as I inputted characteristics into the program.
“What did he look like?”
“Greek. He looked Greek,” I said, adding facial features.
“Nothing like Matthew Collins?”
Nothing olive about his skin: Collins was a whiter shade of pale. I steeled myself for a potential Procol Harum onslaught but no one skipped the light fandango or turned cartwheels anywhere. Just when I thought it safe to continue, they paraded sixteen vestal virgins past me and I hoped like hell there weren’t sixteen victims. Kurt cleared his throat. Procol Harum took their virgins to the coast and normality returned.
“Conway. You with me?”
“Yep.”
“Is Collins anything like the Unsub you saw?”
“No. But he’s not off the hook,” I said, looking up for a minute. Going for broke was a good idea. Not. Yet I knew I was about to say something else that’d elicit a frown from Kurt. “When I was chasing Collins I heard a song. An Ace of Base song, ‘I saw the Sign.’”
“Play it for me,” Kurt asked.
“Sure. Bet it’s on YouTube.”
I opened a browser and located the song. It successfully removed all traces of “A Whiter Shade of Pale.” “I saw the Sign” played while I carried on creating a likeness of the person I saw through the eyes of a dead woman.
Yeah, that’s normal. It felt like the new normal. May as well get used to it.
The song finished.
“What’d you get from it?” Kurt said.
“That she’d left Collins, that he was trouble. Have you run him through the system?”
Kurt nodded. “Nothing there. He’s clean.”
That just meant no one had laid a complaint, not that he wasn’t a violent ass. Why did I think violent? There was nothing to indicate he hit Serena or Jane. And he wasn’t the man I saw in the bathroom.
“Do something for me?” Kurt nodded. “Talk to Jane’s and Serena’s co-workers … ask if they ever saw bruises.”
“Collins?”
“Yeah, something about him. Why was he outside the house today?”
“You can ask him yourself when you’re finished up here. He’s in interview room four waiting for you.”
Great. Can’t wait.
My screen showed a picture of the man in the bathroom. I tweaked his eyes a little then sat back and looked.
“Come here,” I said to Kurt.
He joined me on my side of the desk. “That him?”
I nodded. “Look at all familiar?”
“No.”
Didn’t to me, either.
“I’ll run him through facial recognition and see if we get any hits back from our databases. I’m also sending a copy to the officer who raised questions about Violet Cramer’s suicide in Winchester.”
I hoped he could tell me if it was someone he’d seen and maybe why the person left town.
“You going to add the image to a BOLO?” Kurt asked.
“Yeah … Nah.” I had no evidence that he was the guy.
Could I go public without a real witness? Yeah, maybe?
“Hold off on the BOLO, I’ll have police go door-to-door in the vicinity of both crime scenes with that image. Maybe we can dig up someone who’ll confirm he was in the area.”
“Yeah, then we’ll send out the BOLO.”
I liked that plan. It’d make me seem less insane in the long run.
Rebel Yell
I walked into the interview room and closed the door behind me. The man at the small table in the middle of the room looked up. There was something about him. I couldn’t decide if it was violence I sensed, or something else.
“Matthew Collins,” I said, sitting at the table across from him.
He said nothing.
“I’m Supervisory Special Agent Conway.” I threw a half-assed smile at him. “See the game last night?”
“Yeah, as usual, the Wizards could’ve done better.”
“Yeah, they could’ve.”
“What’s this about? I don’t think it’s about basketball,” Collins said.
“Serena Sorensen.”
“We broke up.”
“So you said. Why was that? Who broke up with whom?”
He frowned. “How does that matter to you?”
“Humor me.”
“I broke up with her,” he said, running his hand through his hair.
“Why?”
He shrugged, rubbed his chin, and dropped his hands into his lap. “We weren’t getting along,” Collins said. His brow furrowed. “What happened at her house?”
“Thought you might be able to tell me …”
His eyes darted up the wall behind me to the camera in the corner. “I don’t know.”
“Why were you there?”
“I was going home and saw the police cars,” he replied, running his fingers through his hair again.
“Home from?”
“Work.”
“What kind of job finishes before nine in the morning?”
“I finished at seven.”
“I didn’t ask when you finished. Try answering the question.” I rephrased the question, making it easier for him to answer. “Where do you work?”
“I’m a paramedic, I work for the city.”
Tiresome short answers but he answered the question.
“Which house?”
“I’m with the four-forty.”
I ran that over in my mind a few times. The four-forty wasn’t far away. He didn’t go straight home.
“You finished at seven and?”
Silent for a few beats, it looked like he was trying to decide what to tell me.
“Went out for breakfast with a friend. I was on my way home when I saw the police cars.”
“The friend have a name?” It was like pulling teeth. I suspected if I started pulling his teeth he’d be faster with his responses.
“Is that necessary?”
“You’re a paramedic, you know it is.”
His agitation spilled over.
Time to change tactics. Cue friendly non-threatening Ellie. “How long have you been a paramedic?”
“Three years.”
“Like it? It’s a tough job.”
“It’s rewarding, can be tough.” He sighed. His shoulders relaxed. “Last night was tough.”
Something told me to wait, let him talk.
“We got called to a baby,” he said, running his hands through his hair. He looked up at me. “Sudden infant death.”
“That’s rough. Sorry.” That must’ve been hellish. Dead baby, distraught parents, and no good outcome. “You can’t save everyone,” fell from my mouth before I could stop it. “Sorry, that was trite. I didn’t—”
Shut up, Ellie. Just move on.
“Is being a paramedic something you always wanted to be?”
“Yes.”
“How old are you?”
“Thirty-two.”
So he did something before becoming a medic.
“What’d you do before?”
“Army.”
“Is that where you trained?”
He nodded.
“Wanna tell me why you tried to run?”
“Spooked.”
An army medic spooked by a fed? Nope. Not buying that.
“Try again.”
“I don’t know. A moment of stupidity?”
“You’re the one telling the story.” I kept my expression neutral. No judgment here. “Who’d you have breakfast with?”
He hesitated.
“Come on, Collins. Don’t make this hard.”
We could all be somewhere else. Anywhere else.
“A colleague.”
“Name?”
He sighed. “Sarah Ng.”
“That wasn’t so freaking tough was it?” I said, “And Sarah is?”
“… A colleague.”
“There’s more to it than that.”
“That’d be nice but it’s not looking good so far.”
Neutral became second nature. “I see.” I see. No, I didn’t but I wanted to. “Do you have a photo of Sarah?” Bit random.
He frowned and lifted his phone from his shirt pocket.
“I think so,” he said, scrolling through screens. Images flicked across his eyes. He stopped and handed me the phone. “She’s the one on the right.”
“Pretty,” I replied. Pays to check. Blonde. She looked similar to Serena and Jane and Violet. Ng conjured Asian traits in my mind but there were none evident in Sarah.
“What color eyes does she have?” I asked, handing him back the phone.
“Blue-green,” he replied. “Like the sea.”
“Good luck with her, Collins,” I said.
I continued our chat until I had plausible alibis for all three deaths. And all three alibis would be easy to check. He worked shifts and seemed quite social. When I brought up the subject of Serena again, he moved back in the chair and looked at me.
“Did you really break up with her?”
He shook his head. “No. She broke up with me.”
“Why?”
“I couldn’t keep it in my pants. She caught me with another woman.”
A player rather than a violent dickhead.
“Who was the other woman?”
“Jane Daughtry.”
You have got to be kidding me.
A sigh escaped. For all he was an idiot, I didn’t dislike the guy but the cheating thing didn’t make it any easier for him.
“You’ve made quite a mess. Does Sarah know?”
He nodded. “I told her.”
Ah, that would explain his reservations about any impending relationship. Good that he told her. Time to tell him what happened that morning.
“Serena was murdered this morning.” I watched him as he took my words on board.
“What?”
“Serena. She was killed.”
“Jane and Serena …”
“And you’re linked to them both.”
He shook his head; disbelief sailed across his face and leaked from his eyes. “That can’t be …” He rubbed his face with his hands.
“I’m going to keep in touch with you,” I said. “From my point of view, you are involved in this case. I’m prepared to acknowledge that could simply be bad luck.”
I would like to think it was bad luck.
Nothing tingled to let me know something bad was happening. “Meanwhile, I need you to remain accessible.”
“Of course.” He moved forward. Frown lines furrowed his brow. “I swear I didn’t kill anyone. What if this has something to do with me? What if Sarah—”
“I’m going to ask the PD to up patrols. Give me her address.”
I spun my notebook toward him and passed him my pen.
“You don’t know a woman called Violet Cramer do you?” I said as he passed the notebook back. I glanced at the address then at him. His frown deepened. He swallowed hard. Beads of perspiration gathered on his forehead. His shoulders heaved.
I jumped up and opened the door as he threw up all over the table.
Deep breath. Another deep breath.
Bile rose. I swallowed hard and used the wall outside the door for support. Retching continued from the interview room, the smell of vomit thick in the air. A horrible shaky feeling swamped me, sending the blood rushing from my face. Trying to control my breathing and focus on something nice took all my energy.
Just when I thought I’d lost, a shadow fell over me. Lee’s voice gave me something to focus on. “Chicky, hit the restroom. Get some water. I got this,” he said, sticking his head around the open door. “Collins, I’ll get you some water and someone will come clean that up. Sit tight.”
I pushed myself off the wall and hurried to the nearest restroom. Splashing cold water on my face helped. I caught sight of myself in the mirror. No living person should ever be that pale.
Maybe I wasn’t alive?
Welcome To My World
“You okay?” Kurt wanted to know as he entered my office.
“Yep, never better,” I replied, looking at him from over my screen. “You need something?”
“We could try the truth, how would that work for you?” He sat on the edge of my desk.
“About?”
“Whether you are feeling all right … because, Conway, you’re not usually spectral in appearance.”
As I suspected, I’m dead.
“I’m good.” I tried to dislodge the image of the interview room Kurt had stirred up. “I just …” It wasn’t happening. I switched gears and filled my mind with a flower-filled meadow and watched a dragonfly dart about.
“Not like you to have a sensitive stomach,” Kurt replied. “I’ll get you some water.” He chuckled as he opened the small fridge in the corner of the room.
“It’s not funny,” I grumbled as my meadow vista gave way to the computer screen.
“Oh, but it is, Conway,” Kurt replied, sitting a bottle of water next to my right hand. “It really is.”
I swigged on the water and concentrated on the screen. Ignoring Kurt.
“I’ve got Fairfax Police Department set up to patrol Sarah Ng’s home during the night and tomorrow morning,” I said.
My finger tapped the mouse button opening our email client. I scrolled through the latest forty emails. Nothing from Winchester about the sketch, yet. I’d hoped it’d set off a sudden flurry of information and we could stop more deaths.
Damn me and my Pollyanna ways.
I did a quick background check on Sarah Ng. Never been in any kind of trouble, twenty-five and a paramedic with the four-forty. Facebook tossed up family photos. Parents both Asian. I surmised adopted, like her older brother who appeared to be African-American. Digging around some more confirmed adoption from a Russian orphanage at age three. Her brother was adopted from an orphanage in Louisiana as an infant.
But if the deaths had something to do with Collins and not just the type of woman the Unsub enjoyed killing, then the danger level for Sarah Ng had ramped up a few notches. Leaning back in my chair I thought about Sarah Ng and her ever-diminishing survival rate.
Not worth the risk.
My hand lifted the telephone handset from the cradle on my desk. “Hey, Sandra, connect me to Fairfax PD?”
“Sure, anyone in particular?”
Names rolled around in my head. Josh. “Is Joshua Konstrum back with Fairfax?”
“He is,” she replied. “Connecting you in three …”
The line noise changed from hollow to ringing. Moments later I heard Josh’s voice. “It’s Ellie Conway. I need a favor.”
“Hi, Ellie.” He paused. Fingers on a keyboard filled the airway between us. “They’re calling your new case The Psycho Killer case.”
“Apt description but I’d rather that wasn’t made public. I need the PD to provide surveillance and possibly protection for a woman, tonight. There’s already a request to have extra patrols in her neighborhood, this is additional.”
“You got it. Send me the details. I’ll put a team together.”
That was easy.
Felt a little too easy. “Why so amenable, Josh? You’re usually pretty good at helping but you didn’t even ask about Murphy’s bar this time.”