“Better if we’re stationary,” I replied. “Corners are disruptive to my typing.”
“Sorry but taking corners is better than trying to drive through buildings.”
“Smart ass.”
I flipped open my notebook and typed the name of the mysterious pale visitor to Sarah Ng’s into the Sentinel search engine. A list of names and photos filled the screen. I narrowed the list by state and then county. That gave me six prospects. Six people named Kristopher Lette. Only one worked for a power company. That was encouraging. Even better that he lived locally. As I checked the other profiles, the surname wriggled about in my gut and poked me a few times.
“Kurt, we know someone with the surname Lette?”
He turned toward me, shifted his sunglasses to the top of his head and watched my screen.
“Does sound familiar.”
It should. “The journalist, Rosanne. She’s Rosanne Lette.” I’d emailed her earlier.
Crap, media briefing. Damn!
Running out of day to get that organized, I recognized a certain amount of reluctance on my part when it came to briefing the media and opening parts of this case to the public. People needed to know but panic wouldn’t help. The media breathing down our necks made our job harder. It was a balancing act and so far doing nothing was winning.
“Is she related to that Kristopher Lette?” Kurt asked, cocking his head as he squinted at the screen.
Sun rays bounced off the screen at odd angles. I tipped the screen forward slightly to combat the glare.
“None of the six Kristopher Lette’s have rap sheets so I haven’t got a lot to go on. One moment …”
I entered Rosanne Lette’s details. Up popped her driver’s license. I compared her address to each Kristopher. None matched. So if she was related they probably weren’t living together.
“Bit hard to tell,” Kurt said, sliding his sunglasses back over his eyes. “We’ll run the names through a few more databases later.”
“We need to look at employment records for the Lette who works for the power company,” I said.
“Police spoke to him?”
“Yes, but I want to do our own investigation.” Something felt off. “Doesn’t hurt to double-check.”
“Something bothering you, Conway?”
“You haven’t heard from Noel Gerrard, have you?”
“No, not since the Navy Yard incident. Problem?”
“His mom called me. She’s worried, she hasn’t heard from him in six weeks.”
“Tried calling him yourself?”
“Not yet, but I will.” I shut down the laptop. “I’m sure it’s nothing. Gerrard is capable of taking care of himself.”
And everyone else in his immediate vicinity.
Late afternoon had run into early evening. My eyes drifted to my watch before I climbed out of the car.
“Somewhere you’d rather be?” He shut his door and joined me on the pavement outside another house flying crime scene tape.
I nodded. Police cars parked on both sides of the street, officers milling around the front of one house. Too many people on scene. Time to weed out the unnecessary people.
“What’s wrong with this picture?” I said to Kurt as we walked side-by-side up the path to the house.
“I’m on it,” he replied and changed trajectory. I carried on and spoke to a group of police officers about twenty feet from the door.
“I’m Agent Conway. Who is controlling this scene?”
They looked at each other. One pointed to a uniformed police officer near Kurt, who was writing in a notebook. “Officer Mendez.”
“And you four are here why?”
“We were told to wait, ma’am,” the youngest of the quartet said.
“Wait’s over, officers. Let Mendez know you’re leaving the scene. How many cops are inside?”
“One. She’s just inside the door.” He pointed at the house. “It’s Mendez’s partner, Christy Reid.”
“Medical personnel?”
He shook his head. “No, ma’am.”
“Anything you need to tell me? Y’all traipse through the crime scene?” I passed my notebook and pen to the cop nearest me. “Write your details and pass it on.”
The young cop answered my question, “No, ma’am. We’ve been out here the whole time.”
Kurt appeared on my right. “We’re good. Mendez and his partner will stay.”
“This group is on their way,” I replied, shooing the police officers toward Mendez.
“Back to our previous topic,” Kurt said, guiding me up the path with a hand in the small of my back. “You need to be at that dinner tonight.”
“I should be but it’s not a need exactly.”
Pre-wedding. Whole family. Last minute details. Time for us all to touch base before the big event. My fingers massaged the back of my neck for a moment, working some of the tightness from my muscles.
“Go, we’ll take this.”
I checked the time again. We stopped walking.
“It’s early yet. Let’s just see what this crime scene is like first?”
“Conway …”
“I’ve got a crime scene to investigate, a press conference to organize and bodies piling up. Now’s not a good time.”
“It’s never going to be a good time. You can go, we’ll handle it from here.” Kurt winked at me, his voice remained good-natured, bordering on amused. “Slacken those reins a bit, Conway. As much as we love having you with us, we are capable.”
“I can’t just
go
, this case is ramping up and we need to get in front of it before the Unsub kills anyone else.”
“We can handle it, Conway.”
“I know you can. I can’t. I can’t walk out on these women.”
Kurt regarded me for a moment before accepting my response. Could I go eat, drink, and socialize knowing more women would die? Not without guilt. Mitch wasn’t marrying someone who had a nine-to-five and he knew I couldn’t walk away.
Sam appeared next to me. “Chicky Babe.”
A smile flashed in his direction. “Come on, boys,” I said with a hint of Mae West. “Let’s go see what we have.”
We filed up the path to the house. Kurt swung open the door and was greeted by a police officer who asked for ID.
“SSA Conway!” A female voice called from the street. I turned to see a reporter yelling for me and trying to dodge several police officers. Rosanne.
Great, just what I need.
Already I felt the Fourth Estate hounding me. Seeing her didn’t make me want to set up the media conference in a hurry. A voice in my head reminded me I liked Rosanne. I grumbled back at the voice, Let’s not get too giggly too quick. Like’s an awful strong word.
Her appearance struck me as spooky. I fought the temptation to ask her what the fuck she was doing at my crime scene. Instead, I called out in a pleasant tone, “I’ll talk to you soon. Need to get in here first. Wait for me?” It didn’t kill me to be nice.
Imagine that?
“Sure. Which car is yours?”
I pointed to the first black Suburban. “Wait by the car.”
Sam, Kurt, Lee and I donned gloves and booties then entered the house, following the Fairfax PD officer to the bathroom. Once again the victim was in the shower.
I turned to the police officer. “You’re Officer Reid? Mendez’s partner?”
She nodded. “Yes, ma’am.”
“Officer Reid, tell me what you know?”
“This is Karen Frederick. She is twenty-seven and a teacher.”
“Who called it in?”
“The victim’s friend. She came by to pick her up for yoga.”
“And?”
She consulted her notebook and a witness statement. “Jessica Shannon knocked at forty-thirty and got no answer. She texted the victim. No response. She rang the victim’s landline. No response …”
Why didn’t the friend assume she was out?
“… Her car was in the driveway. Jessica walked around the house and heard the shower running. She waited twenty minutes. The shower kept running. After half an hour she called the police, fearing her friend had fallen and injured herself.”
“First on the scene?”
“ Mendez and me, ma’am.”
“And you found?”
“Karen Frederick dead in the shower.” She consulted the notebook again. “Access through a rear window. An upturned garbage can under the window.”
“Was the window forced?”
“No. I think it was already open.”
“Anything else?”
“Karen didn’t go to work today. She was home, sick.”
“Thank you.” I passed her my card. “Email your report directly to me, please.”
She nodded and moved away.
I rested on the doorjamb and spoke to Kurt. “Guesstimate on the time of death?”
“Maybe this morning. Reason?”
“So far all the deaths have been morning and discovered in the morning. One a day. If Karen was killed this morning, then the Unsub has escalated the hell out of his killing. Two in one morning?”
“The victimology is intriguing me,” Kurt said.
Something niggled in my brain. Karen was in the shower. Karen was unwell. Or was she unwell? Wouldn’t she tell her friend and cancel yoga? What if the killer called in while she got ready for work?
“I’ll be right back.” I hurried after Reid. “Hey, wait up. Got a question for you.”
She spun on her heels and stepped toward me as I ran down the hallway.
“Yes, ma’am.”
“Who called her place of employment and said she was ill?”
She flipped open her notebook again, read something, and then looked up at me. “She texted her team leader.”
“Thanks.” I turned to go back to Kurt.
“You don’t think she did?” Reid asked.
“I don’t know if she did or didn’t. I think it’s unwise to assume she did until we know for sure. Did you find her phone?”
She shook her head. “What makes you think she didn’t send a text herself?”
“I don’t know. I might be wrong.”
Lee strode toward me and heard my comment. He grinned. “Might be wrong. Officer, if Agent Conway thinks something is amiss, it usually is.” He touched my arm. “A word, Agent.”
“Thanks, Officer Reid.”
Lee and I went back to the bathroom. “Problem?” I asked.
“Kurt found the note,” Lee said, passing me an evidence bag that I hadn’t noticed he was holding.
I read the words aloud through the plastic, “‘I watched you fade away.’”
Sick bastard.
I passed it back and wrote the line in my notebook underneath the others. And underneath the memorial from the newspaper. The newspaper contained more lines, an entire stanza.
“Okay, so far we have,” I said rocking my right heel, “‘Everything that came before, lies fragmented on the floor. Don’t take it personally. It wasn’t easy. I broke when you looked at me.’” I paused for a second. “Those lines came from crime scenes. Then we have the rest of what I believe is that stanza, and we got that from
The Washington Post
today. It goes like this … ‘Life cracked wide open. Everything that came before. Spilled over the screen. Seeped into the keyboard. Shattered across the desk. Laughter replaced it all.’” I stopped and let the words sink in. “And now we have … ‘I watched you fade away.’”
No one said anything for what felt like an eternity.
“Sounds like the poem is going to get longer, Chicky Babe,” Sam said.
His words rasped like a bastard file on my spine.
“I thought he was writing the poem as he killed, but he isn’t,” I said. “The newspaper had more and the memorial was in today’s paper. Terri was killed today and her line featured in the stanza.” The words contorted and finally lined up again. “I think the line we found here is part of a new stanza.”
“Terri was killed this morning and her name was in the paper, why wasn’t Karen’s?” Sam asked.
“I don’t know,” I said. But it ramped up my curiosity. “And who was the anonymous tipster? We would’ve got a call anyway once police were on scene.”
Images flashed before my eyes. I couldn’t distinguish clear boundaries to say how many images. They blurred then sharpened. Faces. Dead women. Then the male I’d seen through Terri and Serena’s eyes. Finally a glimpse of a different face.
I held my hand out to Lee; as if knowing my thoughts, he dropped the evidence bag into my outstretched hand. I looked at it again. Satisfied the handwriting matched the others, I gave it back.
“I need a few minutes with Karen,” I said.
Lee and Sam moved out the door. Kurt stayed. “Do what you do, Conway, I’m just here to observe.” He moved back to the doorway.
I dropped to one knee near Karen’s head and said, “I’m Ellie. I’m here to help.”
An exotic scent emanated from the body, its warmth filling me. I knew that scent. I breathed deeply letting the overall aroma reach deep into my nose, allowing my mind to associate the components with names. Neroli, citrus, tobacco, pepper, bergamot and lavender. Dolce & Gabbana Pour Femme? My eyes were drawn to the shower caddy. Shampoos, conditioners, body washes. Nothing appeared missing. Nothing matched the scent I could smell.
Maybe it didn’t come from her but from the Unsub.
I breathed the scent again. Cedar. Dolce & Gabbana Pour Homme. It wasn’t from her. And I hadn’t smelled it at any other scene.
“Karen, show me who did this?” I said in her ear.
Her head turned to me. A spark ignited in her cloudy eyes as her hand reached up and pointed to the mirror. I clambered to my feet. From where I stood, I could see the doorway and Kurt’s reflection in the mirror. Steam filled the room, edging across the mirrored surface, leaving a gap in the middle that framed a face. No Kurt’s. Brown eyes, shaved head, strong jaw. His slightly tanned face lined with age and wear. The mirror fogged over and he disappeared. I sank down next to Karen, thanked her and promised to find the man responsible.
Kurt stepped forward when I finally stood up.
“From the outside there isn’t a lot to see, but I have a feeling you have something to tell us …”
“Different Unsub,” I said. “This guy is older than the other one. Fifty to fifty-five. He has a shaved head, brown eyes, strong jaw and wears Dolce & Gabbana Pour Homme.”
“We haven’t released details to the media so it’s a bit early for a copycat killing,” Sam said from behind Kurt.
“It’s not a copycat. There are two Unsubs. They’re working together,” I replied, surprised by my own confidence.
Pain behind my eye started up. It felt like a needle pushing into my brain. The sudden onset of pain reminded me I hadn’t slept in two days or eaten since yesterday. Things were on the way to getting pretty damn ugly unless I corrected one of those things.