Glimpse of Death: A Riveting Serial Killer Thriller Page 24

  “You coming?” she asked Fradella, and he was quick to follow. Michowsky hurried along, but she stopped him.

  “Hey, I need you to find me the doctor who Katherine was secretly dating, and see what you can find out.”

  “Will do. How much time do you think Stacy has, considering what went down with Katherine?”

  There it was, a simple question summarizing all her fears.

  “I don’t know,” she replied simply, “I just don’t know.”

  48

  Awake

  Melissa opened her eyes, then closed them again. She felt dizzy and confused, and the reality she was seeing didn’t make any sense. She felt the cold hardness of the floor underneath her, and she opened her eyes again, forcing them to adjust to the harsh, fluorescent lights.

  Next, she noticed the young woman crouched next to her, with her legs folded underneath her. She stared at her with red, swollen eyes and an expression of immense sadness on her face. She looked somewhat familiar, despite the bruises on her face and the pallor of her skin. She kept her arms wrapped around herself, trembling.

  “Who… are you?” Melissa asked, feeling her throat parchment dry. “Where the hell am I?”

  The woman didn’t respond; she just bit her lip and looked sideways. A tear rolled from the corner of her eye, leaving a trail in the makeup she wore.

  Melissa pulled herself to her feet and looked around at the dreary room she was in. The barren walls, the massive door, the improvised shower in the corner, the dark window. A wave of deep panic grabbed her insides and twisted them hard, and breath left her chest in a quick, noisy burst. Her panic turned to nausea, as if someone had punched her in the pit of her stomach. She felt the urge to scream from the bottom of her lungs.

  Melissa forced some air into her lungs, trying to overcome her paralyzing fear. She looked at the woman’s familiar face and slowly she recalled where she’d seen her before. She recognized her, but that only made things worse. She remembered her beautiful, haunting face, as she’d seen it herself, walking proudly in the mall parking lot, while her own husband stared at her, fixated on her undulating form and her stunning eyes. She thought that had been the worst of it, but later, she’d seen the same unforgettable face in Special Agent Winnett’s case file, with a name scribbled in black Sharpie at the top of a full-color photo printout.

  “I… know how you are,” she said, grabbing the young woman by the arm so strongly she whimpered and pulled away. “You’re Stacy… Stacy Rodriguez.”

  “How did you know?” the woman asked. “How could you possibly know that?”

  “The feds… they’re looking for you. They’re looking everywhere for you.”

  Stacy clasped her hands together and rocked side to side, gently, keeping her eyes closed while tears rolled on her pale face.

  “They’ll be too late,” she whispered.

  “Oh, God,” Melissa said, as the next wave of realization hit her. “That means… We need to get out of here,” she said, suddenly remembering what she’d overheard in Tess’s room. All the women who were taken were raped and beaten, then killed, strangled with a rope. They didn’t have much time.

  She sprung to her feet and went to the door. She tried the handle, but the massive door wouldn’t budge. Feeling desperation choking her, she banged on the door as loudly as she could, until she could barely stand. Then she moved to the dark window, and tried to break it.

  “You don’t want to get their attention,” Stacy said pleadingly. “Please, stop. You’re making it worse.”

  “You don’t understand,” Melissa replied. “If we don’t get out of here, you’ll…” She stopped talking, realizing what she was just about to say.

  “I know,” Stacy replied. “I’ve been here a while, since Katherine was still alive.”

  “You met her?”

  “Yes… She’s gone now. They killed her last night. I saw everything,” she whispered, closing her eyes, as if to seek refuge within herself, away from the horrors of their prison. “Maybe you still have a few days, but they’ll kill me today or tomorrow. I remember… that’s what happened to her, to Katherine.”

  Melissa felt her knees weaken and sat on the edge of the bed, then covered her mouth as if to hold her screams inside. She desperately fought the urge, but the thought of never seeing her son again ripped through her heart and she let out a long, wailing sob.

  After a while, spent, she silenced her sobs and opened her eyes again, feeling a second wave of panic overtake her as a troubling thought gnawed at the edges of her mind. Was Derek involved in any of this, like she’d feared in her worst nightmares? Could he really be a part of what Tess had called, “the killing team”?

  She crouched next to Stacy and grabbed her hand with both of hers.

  “What do they look like? Please tell me… I have to know.”

  49

  Correlations

  Tess had dozed off on the couch in the captain’s office, giving in after her mind had turned to sludge and her vision became so blurry she couldn’t read the report data on the wide-screen display anymore. She woke up abruptly, startled by the approaching noises, and sat on the stiff couch with a long, pained groan. The site of her wound hurt with a pulsating, dull pain, and she felt every stitch like it’d been sewn with fire, not first-rate surgical sutures.

  She stood, a bit unsure on her legs, then walked into the conference room, still blinking from the lights. The clock on the wall showed twelve minutes after eight; she’d been asleep for almost four hours.

  Fradella and Michowsky stopped their argument when she walked in, and Doc Rizza turned toward her with a faint, tired smile.

  “What’s going on?” she asked, rubbing her eyes with her fisted hands.

  “It leaked,” Michowsky said, letting the air escape his lungs in a frustrated sigh. “This morning, on the news.”

  “Damn,” she muttered. “Do you have it?”

  Fradella was one step ahead of her, working the remote. Soon, he’d rewound the recording to its beginning, and she heard the voice of a news reporter speak, while the screen displayed first an image of Katherine Nelson, then a poorly executed sketch of the glimpse of death, the rope coiled around a man’s fists.

  “We’re only now learning that there is a dangerous team of serial killers on the loose in the area,” the reporter said, “and this young woman, a resident at the University of Miami Hospital, is their latest victim. Our sources tell us the killers like to threaten the victims prior to their abduction, by showing them what law enforcement, including the FBI, have been secretly referring to as the Glimpse of Death. Have you seen someone like this? Call the number on the screen immediately; your life could be in danger.”

  “Oh, crap…” she muttered. “Although I’m surprised we lasted this long.”

  “Hell is going to break loose now,” Fradella said grimly.

  “Screw hell,” Tess replied. “I’m worried the glimpse of death is gone. The unsub won’t do it anymore, not after this,” she pointed toward the TV frozen on a still image of the amateurish sketch. “Even for him, it will be too risky. Then, how will we know when he takes someone again?”

  No one replied, and heavy silence took over the room until Tess’s phone rang, resonating strangely against the glass walls. She picked it up quickly, after frowning at the name displayed on the screen.

  “Sir?”

  “Winnett,” SAC Pearson said, and, by the tone of his voice, he didn’t sound happy at all. “Why do I have a horde of newspeople on my doorstep this morning?”

  She swallowed a few loaded cuss words. “It’s in the news, the case we’re working on. It just hit, and they know the FBI is working it with the local LEOs.”

  “Ah, for Chrissake, Winnett… Since we’re working the case, would you be so kind to give me an update?”

  The sarcasm in his voice was tangible and searing; she cringed and closed her eyes for a split second. “We’re following multiple leads, and Donovan’s—”

/>   “Winnett, cut to the chase, will you? Do you have a suspect?”

  “No, sir, we don’t. Not yet. But we’re—”

  “Great… just great,” he muttered, then ended the call without saying anything else.

  She gently put the phone on the conference room table, when in fact she would’ve liked to smash it to bits against the wall.

  “That’s that,” she said quietly, speaking more to herself. Then she shrugged off the mental image of her angry boss and refocused. “Moving on. Gary, did you find Katherine’s secret lover?”

  “Yes, just spoke to him a couple of hours ago.”

  “At six in the morning?”

  “It worked out well, because of the time zone. The guy’s in Australia. He’s a cardiovascular surgeon on a three-week exchange program in Canberra. He left the day Katherine disappeared, and they’d just hooked up before she was gone.”

  “So, he’s not our guy. Any insight from him at all?”

  “Nope. They were having coffee and quickies now and then, that’s all. This doctor is married too.”

  “How about you, Doc?” she turned to the ME. “Any new findings?”

  “Nothing I haven’t already mentioned,” Rizza replied, then cleared his throat and wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. He looked tired and his eyes were bloodshot, a common trait they all shared after the past few days had started taking their toll. “Cause of death is a crushed trachea, just as I anticipated. Same fiber traces on her body, same DNA smudging.”

  “Smudging? So, you agree they left their mark on purpose?”

  “Looks that way, at least the rapist,” he said. “I have an advanced tox report on expedited order with your lab, and, because Katherine died so soon after her abduction, I have a much clearer mark of the needle he used to subdue her. He poked her with a medium-bore needle, nothing unusual about it, and injected her in the neck with propofol, just like before.”

  “And used the same Crown Vic for the body dump?” Fradella asked.

  “That I can’t answer,” Doc Rizza replied. “All I can say is that I found the same carpet fibers on her body like we found on Lisa Trask and Sarah Thomas, and those fibers are consistent with the Crown Vic model you have on video. But she was found inside an ambulance, and I have no way of telling, not for sure—”

  “Yeah, Doc, we get it,” Tess replied gently, and touched his elbow. “You should get some rest.”

  Doc Rizza shook his head slowly and stayed in his seat.

  Tess pulled out a chair and sat slowly, then leaned against the back, while her eyes stayed focused on the ceiling tiles. For some reason, staring at the ceiling helped her concentrate.

  “The timeline’s collapsing,” she eventually said, speaking slowly, thinking out loud. “They’re devolving; we’ve already established that. Stacy was taken only five days after Katherine disappeared, boldly snatched from a high-traffic area in broad daylight. What does that mean?”

  “Huh?” Fradella asked. “Not sure I follow.”

  “It means that regardless of how they’re devolving, or how much Katherine might have provoked them, they don’t budge from their set overlap of two days between victims, and from the bold abductions. Not to mention the glimpse sightings, three, not two, in Stacy’s case. That’s their core fantasy, guys, not the timeline. We’re totally screwed.” She looked at each of them intently, to see if they followed her chain of thought. “They could kill Stacy anytime, especially if they already took someone else we don’t know about. This is the third day they’ve had her. But the glimpse and the overlap are critical components. Let’s hope with the news coverage they’ll still feel compelled to show the glimpse.”

  She stood and went to the door. “Are you coming?”

  “Where?” Fradella asked, but grabbed his car keys and scampered behind her.

  “Let’s trail Stacy’s glimpse of death. I think we have the killer’s message all wrong.”

  “Wait, what?” Michowsky said, while Fradella stopped in his tracks and turned toward her.

  “We assumed he shows them the glimpse, then abducts them from one of the sites where the sightings take place. That’s what we thought happened with Lisa Trask. She saw the glimpse at work and at home, and she was taken from the office parking lot, the precise spot where she’d seen the glimpse. Then she was dumped at the second site of a glimpse sighting, her backyard. Almost the same happened with Sarah, who was taken from and dumped at the mall, where she saw the glimpse both times. That’s why we assumed he takes them and dumps them at the places of the sightings.”

  “Precisely,” Fradella said. “Why are you saying we got it wrong?”

  “Because Katherine was not taken from work, where she saw the glimpse, but from a busy street downtown. So was Stacy. She was taken from the street, during her lunch break, downtown, not at the office. We were wrong, guys; we jumped to conclusions.”

  “I still don’t follow,” Michowsky said.

  “It’s something you said, about coffee and quickies, that made me think about it. We profiled that the glimpse is a warning of sorts, but then what if he takes them from the place where they’re cheating? Katherine’s car was found in front of a coffee shop, and you just told me she had coffee and probably a quickie with the surgeon, right there where she was taken.”

  “A quickie in a coffee shop? Really?” Fradella asked, with an incredulous grin on his face.

  “Not in the coffee shop per se, but that time, that day, somewhere around there. Have a uniform show their pictures at the motels nearby; see what pops up. Then let’s find out where Stacy was going on that lunch break of hers. What if she was doing the same thing, only we don’t know with whom and where? No big surprise, Stacy’s car was found right in front of another coffee shop, and, if I remember correctly, the preliminary fact finding shows her at that same shop having coffee with a man. You guys pulled the video.”

  “If he takes them from the place of their cheating,” Fradella said, “does that means Lisa was involved with someone in her office?”

  “It’s a possibility,” Tess replied. “I don’t know what the mall location meant for Sarah. All surveillance video showed her browsing around that mall alone. I’ll ask Donovan to take another look, find out more about Lisa’s office life. Maybe he can look into Sarah’s life some more too.”

  “Maybe the unsub was wrong? This victim profile is incredibly precise and detailed; he could’ve made a mistake. Maybe Sarah wasn’t cheating.”

  “Then, what’s the meaning of the dump site?”

  Tess bit her upper lip and resumed her walk toward the car.

  “I think it’s maximum exposure to the people who needed to know about the cheating.”

  “How is dumping someone in their own backyard maximum exposure?” Fradella asked, and unlocked his car.

  “Lisa was the most reclusive of all; no one really knew her. Her family was targeted in Lisa’s case, just like the University of Miami Hospital employees were the audience in Katherine’s case. Everyone knew Katherine, and the unsub wanted to make sure they knew the real Katherine, by his standards. Now let’s trace Stacy’s sightings of the glimpse.”

  “This profile is too damn precise,” Fradella muttered. “I don’t think we have the big picture yet.”

  Tess repressed a long sigh. “Yeah, you’re right. Where on earth could the unsub see hordes of women, know that they’re depressed, and that they’re on the market, so to speak? Where?”

  “Well, the market thing you can tell,” Fradella said, turning a little red and clearing his throat quietly. “The way they look at you, you know. They, um, size you up, if you know what I mean.”

  “Huh, maybe they size you up,” Michowsky said, laughing. “Their eyes don’t even stop on me anymore, not even for a split second. Jeez, I’m old.”

  Tess didn’t laugh with them, her mind barely registering the exchange. Where? Where could he see them, and have access to so much information about them? Do they know him? Do they meet
somewhere, and that’s why later, when he abducts them, they fall prey so easily?

  Michowsky took the back seat, leaving Fradella behind the wheel. In his typical driving style, he took them to Stacy’s residence in just a few minutes.

  They rang the bell and immediately heard footsteps behind the door, rushing to open. A young, pale woman gave them a long look, then recognizing Fradella and Michowsky, opened the door widely to let them in.

  “Please tell me you found her,” she said, clasping her hands together in silent imploration.

  50

  Vantage Point

  Stacy’s wife sobbed hard, her thin shoulders shuddering convulsively with every gasp of air she took. In the neighboring room, the two little girls had started to whimper and fuss, while the detectives exchanged worried glances.

  Tess stood and touched Renata’s arm. “We need to go now; we’re pressed for time. I’m sorry I don’t have—”

  Renata grabbed Tess’s arms with both her hands. “Please! A serial killer has my Stacy; I’ve seen it on TV. If only she had listened… I begged her to report the man with the rope, but she wouldn’t listen. Please don’t give up on us. She’s all we have in this world.”

  There was nothing more they could say, no guarantees they could offer, and very little solace. Whether Tess wanted to admit it or not, Stacy’s odds didn’t look too good.