Chicago, Illinois

2012

“Here he is! The man of the hour!”

Applause exploded as Durango Masters got off the elevator; every man and woman was up on their feet, watching him enter the bull pit. He bowed from the shoulders, smiling bashfully at the attention he knew he deserved, but wasn’t sure he wanted. It had been a long two years working the strangler case, two years of sacrificing time with his fiancée, his friends, two years of sacrificing everything in his life outside these four walls. But it had all paid off, and now he could finally concentrate on the wedding plans Sarah had taken mostly on herself.

He could live now.

“Here’s to a future free from that monster,” he’d said to Sarah last night as they broke open a bottle of champagne they’d been saving for that very moment.

“Here’s to us. To marriage. To happily ever after. To our future.”

She’d smiled when she said it, but he could see the sadness in her eyes, the understanding that this wouldn’t be the only case that would take him away from her. She knew how important his job was, understood how important it was to him. She’d stopped asking him to open his own private security firm as some of the other guys on the force had done, stopped asking if maybe he could find another profession that wouldn’t result in his obsession with crime scenes and homicidal maniacs. She didn’t understand how the deaths of women he’d never known in life could haunt him so much after their deaths. But she loved him, and that had kept her by his side even when there were whole weeks when he didn’t come home longer than to shave and change his clothes.

Durango intended to make it up to her. He would take some of the time off he’d built-up, and give her a honeymoon she’d be talking about years afterward. He’d remind her why they were together, why she stuck it out despite everything. He’d show her how much he appreciated her love and her support.

He’d begun last night. Holding her in his arms after everything was said and done . . . it was all the reward he ever could have asked for.

“Ladies and gentlemen,” the captain called out as Durango walked toward him, “Detective Durango Masters! The detective who took down and hauled off to jail the most notorious murderer this city has seen since John Wayne Gacy in the seventies!”

Durango stopped beside the captain and turned to his coworkers, forcing a smile as they continued to applaud him. “Please,” he said, raising a hand to them, “we all worked this case, we all had a hand in catching the son of a bitch. The only thing that matters is that he’s off the street.”

That only increased the volume of the applause. Someone shoved a glass of sparkling grape juice into Durango’s hand, the closest thing they could have to alcohol at nine o’clock in the morning on a work day. He raised the glass to his coworkers, and they raised their own, finally quiet as they each took a sip in toast to him. But then the chatter began, people coming up and patting him on the back as if he’d just won a gold medal or something.

Durango was relieved when he finally escaped to his office. He closed the door and stepped back, leaning against the front of his metal desk, moving automatically with the rock of the damn thing as it leaned down on its missing foot. The entire wall across from his desk was covered in crime scene photographs, notes, possible suspects, and everything else he’d felt might help him find this killer. Two years ago, the She was a student at Northwestern University, premed. She’d had a bright future that included a fiancé whom she’d dated since her freshman year of high school, parents who adored and fully supported her, friends who thought she was an angel walking the streets. Her name was Natalie.

“We did it, Natalie,” he said softly, his eyes moving to the high school graduation photo her mother had given him, so that he would never forget why he was looking for this man.

“I don’t want you to remember her as that body lying in the park. I want you to remember her as a lively, intelligent girl who was determined to make this world a better place.”

Natalie had been the first. Three months later, it was Christy. And then Jane two months after that. He stayed steady for a while, every two months. Kylie. Amanda. Cassie. Joyce. There was a seven-month gap between Joyce and Melinda. But he made up for it by killing Tina less than a month after Melinda. Tina was the last; though Durango knew there would be more if they didn’t catch him.

Eight victims. Eight too many.

Durango ran his fingers through his hair before pushing away from the desk and beginning to peel the pictures and notes off the wall. He’d been at a loss as to the connection between the victims in the beginning. There seemed to be no connection. Natalie was a student, Christy a professional woman. Natalie was found in a park that all her friends swear she never visited, Christy in the backseat of her own car. Jane was a stay-at-home mom who was found in her own backyard. Kylie a student, but she didn’t go to the same school as Natalie. They all seemed to have been chosen randomly. The only thing they had in common was their appearance.

It haunted Durango from the beginning because, in some strange twist of fate, all the victims of the Harrison Strangler—they called him the Harrison Strangler because Natalie was found in Harrison Park—looked strikingly like Sarah.

Blond women were not uncommon. But there was something about each of these women—the cut of their hair or the lilt of their nose—that was too much like Sarah. One even had a tattoo on her hip that was like one Sarah had. It was just . . . it was almost like whoever was doing this knew Sarah, knew Durango’s relationship to her, and targeted these woman because of that. As much as Durango knew that was impossible, it still bothered him.

It couldn’t be a coincidence, could it?

But then he found another connection. Each of these women were on a mailing list for a small boutique whose computer files were hacked months before Natalie’s murder. The killer used the mailing list for the boutique’s catalog to find his victims. Once he found that connection, it was only a matter of time before the computer gurus here at the police station could trace the hacker to find him.

Yesterday afternoon, Durango walked into the man’s basement apartment and put the cuffs on him himself. It was the most satisfying thing he’d done in all his adult life.

Durango became a cop to put away the scum of the earth. He understood there were some crimes—and some criminals—he’d never be able to solve. The death of his own mother, for example. She was the reason he became a cop, the reason he took every one of these murders home with him every night. He would never be able to put her killer behind bars, but he could stop other women from suffering her fate if he worked hard enough, if he worked quickly enough.

Yesterday, he’d stopped another killer. And tomorrow, with God’s good graces, he’d begin hunting down another. He might not be able to get justice for his mother, but he’d be damned if the Harrison Strangler touched another girl.

Durango was sliding his notes and pictures into a file box when the phone on his desk began to ring. He picked it up absently, mumbling his name into the receiver.

He’d always remember that moment of silence that followed.

“Masters? This is Detective Petrovich from Arlington Heights. I’m at your apartment. I think you should head over here . . .”

* * *

They’d already removed her body when he arrived. Durango thought there would be signs of a struggle, a broken latch on the door, smashed furniture. All he saw was a lamp that had been turned over beside the couch. It wasn’t even broken; it was as though it had been laid intentionally on its side rather than violently overturned. There was blood on the couch, small drops that had formed teeny circles on the arm rest. He’d laid her head there when he was done with her.

Sarah . . .

“The coroner puts the time of death at eight this morning.”

Durango shook his head. “I was still here then. I didn’t leave until about ten after. She was awake, preparing for her morning run.”

“There was no sign of a break-in.”

Durango stared at the detective. “Why don’t you just come out and say it, asshole! Tell me you think I did it!”

Images of the other murders, the women’s bodies splayed out as though he’d adjusted their limbs, staged them according to some picture in his own fucked up mind. Their heads pillowed on their arms, their legs crossed at the ankle. The bruises on their throats obscured by the tilt of their chins.

Had he left Sarah that way, too?

“Detective Masters, are you listening to me?”

He wasn’t. He didn’t care what this asshole had to say. He wasn’t going to solve this case, because his vision was too narrow, his experience too jaded.

Durango pushed passed the detective and his uniformed lackeys. Someone grabbed his arm, but he heard the detective tell them to let him go.

“We know where to find him.”

He drove like a bat out of hell, his thoughts only on one thing: finding Dirk Francis. He had to be working with a partner. There had been no indication of such a thing, but if it was true—obviously it was true—Durango had to find his partner and crucify him for what he’d done.

It took every bit of willpower he had to control his emotions when he arrived at the jail. No one had heard the news yet; no one knew that his fiancée lay in the morgue across town, or that some idiot thought he might have had something to do with it. They had no reason not to let him in.

“Dirk Francis?” the sergeant on the front desk asked for the third time.

“Yes. I don’t think I stuttered.”

The sergeant had no comeback for that, causing Durango to wonder what the hell was going on.

“He should be awaiting his arraignment. I was told it wouldn’t be until after the lunch break this afternoon.”

“Yes, sir. But—”

“Please tell me he’s still here. Please tell me you fuckers didn’t screw this up!”

Another cop came into the reception area and must have recognized Durango, because he immediately came to the locked door to wave him through.

“Where is Dirk Francis?” Durango demanded.

“I thought they would have called you.”

“About what? You didn’t let him out with some sort of paperwork snafu, did you?”

“No, sir. Francis isn’t going anywhere but the morgue.”

Before Durango could ask what the man was talking about, he pushed open a door and the stench of drying blood filled his nostrils. It brought to mind the blood drops on his couch back at the apartment. But there was so much more here. Enough to have caused the death of more than one human being.

“He must have smuggled a razor blade in somehow. Morning crew came in to bring him his breakfast and found him on the floor. His wrists slashed clear to the bone.”

But Durango was no longer looking at the floor. He was no longer looking at the pools of blood that were already coagulating. He was staring at the words Francis had written on the wall before the blood loss made him too weak to continue.

YOU GOT IT WRONG, MASTERS. TRY AGAIN.

Durango fell to his knees, vomit flowing before he could even retch.

Sarah.

Sarah was dead.

Thoughts of her flowed through his head as people around him spoke loudly, as movement vaguely registered somewhere in the back of his mind. All he could think of was her, lying in their bed last night, smiling as he slipped her reach, running naked to the kitchen to get the bottle of champagne. followed him as he moved, the laughter on her lips when the bubbles from the champagne tickled her nose. The full weight of her breasts as she lay back, falling to the sides as her perfect nipples seemed to beckon him back to her. And he’d gone, held her tight, but clearly not tight enough.

He never should have left her this morning. Never should have walked out of that apartment.

“Sarah!”