Chapter 15
SHANE SPREAD OUT IMAGES from the three crime scenes on the conference room table, then on the far side of the table, he put images from the crime scene from Boston that Kara had brought to his attention. The victim was a twenty-five-year-old male who had gone to Boston College, then worked at a local marketing firm. He’d been born and raised in Rochester, a fact that was too close to all the other cases to be a coincidence.
Across from the table were two large corkboards filled with suspects, possible connections, timelines, and other information. Kara had used the whiteboard to draw a diagram of victims to persons of interest, but it all led them to no one in particular. He leaned on the table, putting his weight on his knuckles. His gaze went from Emily, bound with rope, gagged with duct tape. Face up. Her eyelids closed over empty sockets. Hair perfectly styled. Clothes folded neatly next to her. He compared that to the crime scene at Gregory’s apartment. Still difficult to see such a badly-decayed body. Shane wasn’t sure what was worse that, or a fourteen-year-old girl. Then he glanced at the case in Boston. His stomach churned looking at the young man with his gut sliced open and his intestines pulled out of his body.
Shane turned his attention back to Gregory’s crime scene photos. The body was laid out on his belly. His wrists pulled overhead, held together with duct tape. Ankles crossed, also held together with duct tape. His clothes folded neatly next to his body.
Shane shifted his gaze to Iris. The only real difference in the crime scene was the stained carpet. He glanced back to the case in Boston. The body propped up on the bed. Blood everywhere. Hands and feet tied with rope. There were no candles. But his clothes were folded neatly on the chair next to the bed. Shane leaned in to get a closer look.
A light tap on the door jerked Shane from his thoughts.
Captain Morrell leaned against the doorjamb. “Are you sure you’re up for this?”
“I told you I was when I agreed to be lead.”
“You didn’t agree,” Morrell said. “You were assigned, and I didn’t really give you a choice.” Morrell was a good cop, but he was better at being a leader than in the field.
“Then why ask me now?”
“With everything that has happened—”
“Are you worried I’m going to be distracted? Unable to do my job?”
“I wouldn’t have given it to you if I thought that,” Morrell said. “But after everything we’ve been through over the years, I owed you a private conversation.”
“I appreciate that. But I’m good to go. I’ve got full-time help and Kevin is in school.” Shane looked back down at his images. “You good with the team I put together?”
“I approved it,” Morrell said. “I’ve got to head back to my office. Kara is prepping Cleary for the press conference.”
“Is Cleary sober?”
“Probably for the first time since his daughter was murdered. His hands are shaking. Not sure we really want to put him in front of a camera.”
“Kara told me they’re going to give the press conference together.”
“Almost rather the Feds do it alone. Kara is quite impressive.” Morrell pushed off from the doorjamb. “But, then again, it shows Cleary is backing all of us. On board. We need that in the eyes of the public.” With that, Morrell disappeared into the hallway and Shane scanned the images once more, slowly blinking once between photographs, hoping something would jump out at him.
Shane heard more footsteps approaching. So much for spending some alone time with the victims.
Pollack and Benster stood at the door. “Iris’s apartment was clean. No prints other than hers, her kid, and the kid’s father, whose alibis checks out.”
“I figured,” Shane said. “What about the candles?”
“They come from all over the place. We’ve got requests in to get batch numbers to see what stores,” Pollack said.
“We’ve got the BrightLite candles narrowed down to two consultants in this area,” Benster added. “One in the city and the other consultant is in Fairport. We’re going to talk with them today.”
“After that,” Pollack continued, “we’re going to head out and interview some of the soccer coaches and refs again. See what else we can dig up.”
“Appreciate it,” Shane said. “I’m going to ask you the same thing Morrell just asked me.” Shane turned his head. Pollack stood in the doorway, while Benster leaned against the wall, both hands behind his back.
“No need,” Benster said. “We know what being part of this task force means.”
“Pollack? You good? You’ve got a wife and a couple of kids.”
“My wife has only known me as cop. She’s got my back. I’ll make it up to the kids when I can.”
“Alright,” Shane said. “But after you’re done with the two interviews, go home. Take a few hours with your family.”
Pollack nodded.
“I’m not married. Hell, I don’t even have a girlfriend,” Benster said. “I can come back.”
“No,” Shane said. “We work in the same teams we’ve been working. Take a nap. Watch a movie. Get laid. We’re all going to need to take time to rest and release.”
“Just call me if you need anything,” Benster said.
“Will do.” Shane turned his focus back to the images as the two detectives headed down the hallway. Shane had arranged the images so the bodies were all exactly as they were at the scene. If the head pointed north, he placed the image that way. He studied every detail of each one, trying to match something to each scene. He even measured out the placement of the candles around the body. They weren’t exact, but they were close.
For the Boston case, he used the notes filed from the detectives to arrange the photos, but there were more differences than similarities.
The ticking of the clock on the wall taunted him. He didn’t look up. There was something in these images he was missing.
The alarm on his phone was set for two different times. First was the press conference. Second was when his son would be getting out of school. Until then, he wanted only to focus on these four cases.
He pressed his knuckles into the wooden conference table. He glanced between the first image of Emily and the corkboard across the room, checking the timeline, the connections to the other victims, and persons of interest.
Still didn’t give him any insight.
He decided to rearrange the images, putting the four victims at the top of the table. Below them the different images from the crime scenes, trying to match them this way. He did this for another forty-five minutes.
He smelled Kara’s perfume before she walked into the room. He allowed himself a reprieve and glanced in her direction. Her hair flowed just over her shoulders. He was glad she hadn’t worn it up. It was a nice distraction for a moment. “You’re a sight for sore eyes.” He was rewarded with a smile, but it faded quickly.
“How long have you been in here looking at those?”
He glanced at his watch. “Going on two hours.” He let out a long sigh and then sat down, tapping on one of the images from the Boston case. “Can you make that out?”
Kara lifted the image. “Looks like a tattoo.”
“The report doesn’t mention a tattoo. I want to find out what that is.”
“I can see if our tech can blow up the image, and I’ll call our Boston office.
“Thanks.” He leaned back in his chair, taking in the beautiful woman leaning against the corner of the conference table. “What’s on your mind?” he asked.
“Just talked to the M.E.”
“And?”
“Did you know that the medical school reported five cadavers missing?”
“Yeah,” Shane said. “Months ago. I think they were found. Some stupid prank a bunch of pre-med students thought would be funny.”
“Not all were recovered. We just found one.”
“Where?”
“Genesee River,” Kara said.
“What does that have to do with our cases?”
“The cadaver had new incisions; the medical school checked their records and this particular one was scheduled for a class at the university, so all of the organs should have been inside the cadaver.”
“I take it this cadaver was missing organs.”
Kara nodded. “All the ones that can be harvested.”
Shane pinched the bridge of his nose. His pounding headache returned at full force. “So, you’re thinking our killer also has a thing for cadaver organs?”
“I’m saying anything to do with organs could be connected,” she said. “Most serial killers perfect their kills over time. I’ve seen many where their first kills are so different from what they ended up with that we had no idea it was them.”
“But why a cadaver?”
“Profiler doesn’t think it has much to do with the person, but the organ, which brings me to weird item number two from the M.E.: Iris was strangled. But what’s really disturbing is that her liver was taken.”
Shane had believed Iris had an organ removed, so this wasn’t shocking news. “We’ve got eyes, kidneys, and maybe a cadaver’s organs. What makes a liver more disturbing?”
She handed Shane a folder. “Because she’d had a partial liver transplant eight months ago.”
“You’ve got to be kidding me.” Shane snagged the report and starting reading. “That’s two vics who had the same organ they received as a transplant removed.”
“Make it three.”
“Excuse me?” Shane looked up over the report. His eye twitched, along with his right thumb, itching to text his son, but he’d still be in school. In class. With his phone off.
“I was just in with Cleary, going over the points of the press conference. He informed us that Emily had a cornea transplant in her right eye because of an accident. The transplant was less than a year ago.”
“Way to bury the lead, Kara.” Shane slammed his fist on the table. “You should have started with that.”
“I started with a chain of events,” she said calmly. “All important for different reasons.”
“Whatever.” Shane’s mood didn’t improve with her calm voice. “I can’t believe Cleary is just telling us this now.” Shane stood quickly, dropping his chair to the floor with a loud thud. “His daughter is murdered, her eyes cut out of her head, and he doesn’t think to tell us about an eye transplant?”
Kara lowered her chin, tilting her head, and raised one eyebrow. “He was certain, after that note, that Haughton killed his daughter in a drunken rage, and frankly so were we.”
“Why didn’t the M.E. know this? Her medical records. Why wasn’t that cross-referenced?”
“He couldn’t tell looking at Emily’s eye sockets, and her medical reports were delayed in getting to him. Gregory’s body was too decayed, but with Iris he could tell as soon as he opened her up.”
“Fuck.” Shane paced the width of the table. He could feel Kara’s eyes on him, but he didn’t look at her. The fact that they missed this very important piece of information from day one was on him. No one else. Just him. He didn’t ask the right questions. He didn’t look in the right places. “We’re dealing with a methodical killer, and it’s not about the victims now as much as it is the organs.”
He heard Kara’s feet scuff on the floor.
He glanced in her direction. She stood in front of the whiteboard. Eraser in one hand, pen in the other, scribbling the new information.
“This isn’t going to be easy on you,” she said.
“I’ll be fine.” But he wasn’t entirely sure about that as his hand covered his cell phone in his pocket. “We need dates of the transplants and, just to be thorough, I want to know if the Boston victim had a transplant.”
“Already on it.” Kara pointed to the papers she’d brought in. “Those are the dates of the three transplants. They were all in the last year. No more than nine months out but no sooner than six months. But what stood out was they were all on a—”
“A Thursday,” Shane said. He picked up the report on the Boston case. “This guy was murdered on a Thursday as well.”
“Could be a coincidence.”
“You know better,” he said, knowing her statement was meant to calm his nerves. “We need to know when the cadaver went missing.” Shane pulled out his phone and tapped the calendar, scrolling back… “Shit.”
“What?” Kara asked.
“Kevin’s heart transplant was on a Thursday.”
Kara dropped her pen. The sound of it bouncing on the tile file echoed. Shane’s heart hammered. His breath caught, causing him to cough. In his experience, there was never such a thing as a coincidence.
“We need to get the donor list for the last year,” Kara said. She quickly moved across the room. Her fingers wrapped tightly around his bicep.
“Not that easy,” he said. “There are strict protocols in place protecting where organs come from. Besides, what would be the basis for the warrant? They’re so far apart there’s no way that all the organs came from the same person. What’s the motive? We don’t know why this person is taking organs. Could be several different reasons. Until we find that motive no way are we going to get the United Network for Organ Sharing to give up their records, except for maybe our victims. Beyond that, neither they nor the government are going to release any names outside of that.”
“But if all of our vics were murdered on Thursdays and they all received organs on a Thursday—”
“I’m sure we can get the donors for our vics, but I doubt we can go any more widespread than that.”
“We need to know,” she said. “We need to try.”
“We can try,” Shane said, knowing exactly where she was going. He placed his hand over hers, which was still curled around his arm. “I’m worried my son may be in danger. But we need to write the warrant for our vics. For the case, specifically. Work out from there.”
“But if we—”
“No.” He laced his fingers through hers, guiding her into a chair as he sat across from her. Even if his son’s transplant hadn’t been on a Thursday, he’d be troubled by the current findings. “If we go for too much, we might get nothing. We start with our victims and then we gather more information to get more.”
“It’s Monday. If our killer hasn’t already killed by Thursday we’re going to have another dead body.”
“You don’t think I’m aware of that?”
“We’re at ground zero, and I don’t like the unknown and how that unknown might be connected to your son.”
“We don’t know that it is.” Shane felt his vocal cords shake. It obviously hadn’t gone unnoticed by Kara, as she raised her brow. “Look,” he said, “besides knowing where my son’s heart came from could fuck with both my psyche and Kevin’s; we’re only in one aspect of the equation. And—”
He pressed his finger over her lips when she opened her mouth.
“If my son hadn’t had a transplant, you know what I’m saying is the best, most logical, course of action.”
“But Kevin did have a trans—”
He shut her up this time by pressing his lips against hers in a tender, but quick, kiss. “I know,” he whispered, “but we have to follow protocol to the letter on this one.”
She leaned back in her chair, breaking off all contact except her one hand grasping his. “I really don’t want to give this press conference.”
“You have to,” he said.
“I know.”
“What are we going to give up?”
“Butterflies and organs,” she said.
“So, everything but the candles. Why not leave out the organs?”
“Because we’re going ahead with calling him a bad copycat of the Organ Slayer.”
“No matter what we tell the public, we’re going to have panic.” He leaned back, still holding her hand, rubbing his thumb across her soft skin.
She leaned forward. “Yesterday...”
“Was perfect,” he said. “I told you I care about you. That hasn’t changed.”
She jumped when Foster’s voice echoed across the room, “Excuse me.”
“What?” Shane asked, not caring that he was still holding Kara’s hand and his gaze with her eyes was unbreakable.
“Cleary’s ready.”