Taker of Lives: A Gripping Crime Thriller Read online

  They pulled over in front of one of the high-rise buildings on Lakeview Avenue, and moments later they rang the doorbell of a seventeenth-floor apartment.

  She recognized Pat Gallagher from the framed photo on Christina’s night table, the moment he opened the door. A second later, she didn’t recognize him anymore. He was drawn, his eyes hollow, his face pale. A slight tremble reverberated through his fingers as he held the door open. He seemed afraid, not heartbroken; only scared to death. He’d just returned from his travels; a wheelie stood close to the door, untouched, and he’d loosened his tie, but hadn’t taken his shoes off yet.

  “Pat Gallagher?” Fradella inquired, showing his badge. “Detectives Fradella and Michowsky, Palm Beach County Sheriff’s Office. May we come in?”

  He stepped out of the way, then closed the door after them. “It’s three of you,” he said in a hesitant voice. “Usually it’s two.” He looked at Tess directly. “And you are…?”

  She pulled out her ID. “Special Agent Winnett, FBI.”

  “Oh,” he replied, taking a step back. He didn’t say anything else, resigned to stand and wait, seemingly too tired or otherwise exhausted to ask any more questions.

  “I’m afraid we have some bad news, Mr. Gallagher,” Tess said. “Christina Bartlett, your fiancée, died last night.”

  His jaw dropped, while blood drained from his face. He let himself drop onto a couch and clasped his trembling hands together in his lap. “What happened?” he asked, barely speaking above a whisper.

  “She committed suicide, Mr. Gallagher.”

  “Oh, God…” he said, then covered his mouth with both his hands. “I had no idea… I swear, I didn’t know she was…”

  He stopped talking mid-phrase and didn’t continue. Tess found his choice of words interesting to say the least.

  “Has anything happened to her recently that could explain her gesture?” Tess asked, hoping he’d come forward with whatever information he already had.

  Gallagher shook his head, still cupping his mouth in his hand. “No… I don’t know,” he eventually said, then he looked at Tess briefly and rephrased. “Until last night, I had no idea something was wrong.”

  “What happened last night?” Michowsky asked.

  “I was in New York to close a sale. She called me late, after midnight, and told me she…” His voice wavered. “I’m assuming you know about the photos?”

  “She told you about them?” Tess asked.

  “Yes, last night.”

  “What exactly did she say, Mr. Gallagher?”

  He frowned and looked away, trying to recollect his thoughts.

  “She said that someone had sent her a link, and that she didn’t know when they were taken. She was… devastated.”

  “Was she crying?” Fradella asked.

  “Not at first, no. She pleaded with me to hop on an earlier flight and come home, to not leave her alone.”

  “You obviously didn’t,” Tess replied dryly, aware she sounded cold, judgmental.

  “No… I—I broke up with her,” he said in stuttered, barely intelligible words.

  What an outstanding human being, Tess couldn’t help thinking. That poor girl, she must’ve been out of her mind with despair. She breathed and managed to curb her anger enough to trust herself to speak again.

  “Why? What happened?” Tess asked innocently.

  “You don’t know how these things are,” Gallagher pleaded, not daring to look at any of them. “Once a photo like that is out there, on the internet, you can’t take it back, you can’t delete it. It’s worse for a celebrity. It’s over. Those photos are now on millions of personal computers, and from there they will get uploaded a million more times.”

  “You wanted to distance yourself, to protect your reputation, your career,” Tess said in an understanding tone, encouraging him to spill everything.

  “You see, I had no choice,” Gallagher replied, sounding relieved. “Even by having been associated with her in the past, my reputation, my career could already be destroyed by now. It broke my heart, but I had to do it.”

  Tess breathed again, slowly, taking her time. What heart?

  “Her call history shows a forty-seven-minute conversation with you sometime after midnight, then a number of calls she made to you after that long conversation, calls you didn’t pick up,” Fradella said. “Care to explain?”

  Gallagher looked briefly in Fradella’s direction, then lowered his gaze to the floor. “There was nothing left to say.”

  “I see,” Tess replied, reminding herself how pointless and damaging it would be to tell that man what she thought about him. Instead, she asked, “Do you know of anyone who wanted to hurt Christina? Rival models, angry exes?”

  “It’s a cutthroat industry,” he replied, “but that’s why they use agents. The models don’t interact much with one another. Of course, there’s some jealousy among them, but no one really comes to mind. No exes either; we’ve been together for three years.”

  “Who else would she have talked to?” Tess asked. “Any close girlfriends?”

  “She didn’t have much of a social life; she worked a lot, and when she didn’t work or travel, she spent her time with me,” he said, sounding more and more sure of himself with every phrase that came out of his mouth. His guilt hadn’t lasted long; Tess doubted it was real to begin with. “There’s this one girl, Althea Swain, but she’s more like a moth.”

  “A moth?” Michowsky asked, setting down a Realtor of the Year award in heavy crystal he’d picked up from a bookcase shelf.

  “You know, someone attracted to the flame of her fame, always willing to go to fashion parties, or wear whatever clothes Christina didn’t want,” he replied. “Not really that much of a friend. Christina knows who and what Althea is, only she doesn’t care. She likes her company. Liked,” he corrected himself, without skipping a beat. “But I doubt she would’ve shared anything with Althea, not about those photos anyway. No one knew, not even Christina.”

  “She seemed perfectly okay in the recent past?” Fradella asked, slowly walking toward the bookcase, where Michowsky wanted to show him something discreetly, without drawing Gallagher’s attention.

  “She seemed her usual self,” Gallagher replied. “Sometimes tired, but okay. She had a shoot in Tokyo last week that was exhausting, then she flew to Buenos Aires the next day. What a life,” he added with a trace of unspoken envy in his voice. “If there’s nothing else,” he said, standing and showing them to the door.

  “We’ll be in touch, Mr. Gallagher,” Tess replied between clenched jaws.

  They were silent the entire time it took the elevator to transport them to the ground floor, but the moment they were in the Explorer, Tess turned to Michowsky with an intrigued expression on her face.

  “Okay, spill it. What did you see in there? You two were looking at something.”

  “His photos,” Michowsky replied. “The bastard has photos of himself with a lot of beautiful women, and he keeps them in plain sight. Christina probably loved those,” he added with a wry grin. “My wife would set on fire any such photo of me with other women.”

  “Then she’d probably castrate you,” Fradella added with a chuckle, “just to be sure.”

  “She probably would, yeah,” Michowsky said. “If Christina weren’t dead, I’d say she’s better off without that bastard.”

  “True,” Tess replied, “but we still have nothing. I don’t believe Gallagher had anything to do with this, no matter how much I’d like to throw his ass in jail. He’s selfish and cruel and a jerk, but none of that is a crime.”

  They drove in silence for a while, headed toward the office. She wasn’t paying any attention to the beautiful day, the blue sky, or the warm rays of the spring sun; all she could think of was Christina’s killer, and how he’d gain access to the property. Boldest unsub she’d ever seen. Such boldness was never a good sign.

  “Doc Rizza confirmed it’s a suicide,” Fradella announced, going throu
gh email on his phone. “No other findings. The tox screen is still pending, though.”

  “I’m surprised we haven’t been pulled off the case yet,” Michowsky said. “Because it’s not a homicide—”

  “The hell it isn’t,” Tess snapped. “We talked about this.”

  “Yeah, yeah, we did,” Michowsky said, taking his hands off the wheel for a moment and raising them in the air, in a pacifying gesture. “But the coroner’s ruling—”

  “We can still make the case for homicide, despite the coroner’s ruling; you know that. That girl was murdered, just as if someone shot her point blank.”

  “The DA might disagree.”

  “And I don’t give a rat’s ass,” Tess replied, raising her voice. “I want this murderer to pay for what he’s done.”

  Approvals

  The two detectives dropped Tess in front of the FBI headquarters, then drove off, quickly disappearing around the corner. Before entering the building, she stopped for a second and looked up at the gray structure with its tinted windows and many pillars, trying to see if the light was on in her boss’s office. As usual, Special Agent in Charge Alan Pearson was there. She couldn’t think of a time when he wasn’t, from early dawn to late at night.

  She went straight upstairs and didn’t slow her pace until she rapped her knuckles against his doorsill. Then she remained politely outside, waiting to be invited in. He didn’t look up at first, engulfed in reading the contents of a file folder. The folder itself was green, a color the bureau rarely used, and it wasn’t embossed with the bureau’s logo. SAC Pearson seemed absorbed by his reading in an intense way. Whatever he’d found on those pages caused deep ridges on his forehead, a grim expression on his face, underlined by tension around his mouth, and a rarely seen, loosened tie knot. His jacket hung abandoned on the back of his chair, also not something she’d seen that often.

  She shifted her weight from one foot to the other, willing herself to wait patiently, although patience wasn’t something she could be accused of, regardless of circumstance. SAC Pearson worked his way through another couple of pages before she knocked again.

  “I heard you the first time, Winnett,” he said, his eyes still riveted on the mysterious file’s pages.

  “Sir,” she acknowledged, remaining just outside the door.

  “Come in,” he eventually said, closing the folder before she could get close enough to catch the slightest glimpse of its content. “Sit down,” he said, then rested his hands on top of the unmarked folder and looked at her inquisitively. “I heard you’re working on a case that’s not ours,” he said, cutting to the point in his typical style.

  How the hell did he know already?

  She chuckled quietly. “Anything I could help with?” she asked, pointing at the green folder.

  “You’re on vacation, Winnett. You haven’t taken time off in years. Why don’t you act like it and give everyone a break?”

  He sounded harsh and irritated, but she thought she saw a flicker of amusement in his eyes.

  “I stumbled across this case that I wanted to talk to you about, sir. I believe you already know the situation?”

  He nodded. “The suicide that you’re looking into? Yes, I know some of the details. It’s not our case, Winnett. Palm Beach County Sheriff’s Office needs to officially request our assistance. We don’t just show up and step on people’s toes, demonstrating no respect for jurisdiction. I’m surprised complaints haven’t started to pour in yet.”

  A nervous smile touched her lips. “I’m trying my best to avoid complaints, as ordered.”

  “It’s not even an active investigation, Winnett. Coroner ruled it a suicide.”

  She shook her head. “Some time ago, in the recent past, someone broke into the family’s home, while everyone was there, and somehow managed to subdue the victim, strip her naked, and take compromising photos of her, which he then published online with her name attached. The victim killed herself because of that. This is a homicide.”

  “It’s cyberbullying, Winnett, harassment,” he said. “If we catch him, we might be able to make a manslaughter charge stick, but not a murder charge. Why the sudden interest in this case? We have more serious cases lined up, if you really can’t be persuaded to take a few days off.”

  She thought for a second before replying. His question made a lot of sense, and she didn’t have a rational answer to it; more like a gut feeling, something she’d seen in the unsub’s behavior that was troublesome on so many levels.

  “This unsub is fearless and extremely organized. I’m guessing you’ve heard whose home he broke into, right?” A nod from Pearson and she continued. “He’s not stopping here. He’s a sexual predator who’s evolving, who will not stop at taking pictures without leaving a scratch or a bruise on his victims. For now, he’s just playing.”

  Pearson’s frown deepened. He rubbed the root of his nose between his thumb and index finger for a moment, but the frown didn’t go away.

  “What are you saying, Winnett?” His voice sounded tired all of a sudden.

  She leaned forward across the desk. “I’m saying this wasn’t a one-off, sir. This unsub is just getting started.”

  “How do you know it’s not personal? It seems personal to me. Vengeful. The type of thing someone close to the victim might do, a discarded boyfriend, a rejected fan. Someone who has firsthand knowledge of the home’s layout and the family’s routines.”

  “It is vengeful and very personal, I agree,” she said. “But I wouldn’t write this unsub off just yet. His actions reek of injured narcissism, and his modus operandi is the most efficient I’ve seen in my entire career. You know, just as well as I do, how this story ends.”

  Pearson leaned against the back of his chair with a sigh, more like a deep breath loaded with frustration. “What do you need from me?”

  She smiled, glad he didn’t bring up the cost of such an investigation, all wagered on her hunch. “I’ll get the Sheriff’s Office to request us, to make things look good on paper,” she said, “but first and foremost, I need Donovan’s time approved. He’s the best analyst we have, and we can’t hope to break this case without someone who can track every bit of the information the unsub has put out there.”

  “He’ll be thrilled,” Pearson said, his sarcasm also not something she’d seen before in the contained, always-professional senior investigator. “He’s off tomorrow and Tuesday, going to the Keys with friends on a fishing trip for the holiday weekend. I’ve already approved his request.”

  “I could still ask him, right?” she asked, her smile waning, replaced by concern.

  “Yeah, you could.”

  “Thank you, sir,” she said, then stood, ready to leave.

  “One moment,” Pearson said, then took a sip of water from an almost empty bottle of Dasani.

  She took her seat and waited, watching his fingers dancing nervously on the green folder.

  “Off the record, Winnett,” he eventually said, “have you ever used FBI resources for your personal interest?”

  What the hell is this about, she wondered, feeling a pang of anxiety ripping through her gut. Pearson’s question brought back almost forgotten memories, from when she was a rookie agent, trying desperately to find the man who’d assaulted her, who’d left her fighting for her life on the dark streets of the city, only weeks before she’d started training and orientation at Quantico.

  “Um,” she said, swallowing with difficulty, her throat suddenly dry, “many years ago, I searched for the assailant in an unreported rape case,” she eventually said, aware her voice sounded constricted, unnatural. “I’d hoped that if I identified the unsub, then the victim might have the courage to file a formal report.” She swallowed again. “Why do you ask?”

  “Would you do it again?” Pearson asked, ignoring her question.

  She frowned a little, studying him carefully. “Am I digging my own grave right now?”

  He looked at her straight, and she couldn’t find a single glimme
r of deception in his gaze. “No, Winnett, just helping a colleague.”

  “In that case, hell, yes,” she said, feeling the constriction around her throat melt away. “That colleague of mine has friends in the FBI, ready to help. Just keep that in mind.”

  Me: Watching

  I watch her sleep.

  It’s dark in here, only the faint rays of the full moon slicing though the venetian blinds cast faded, diluted lines of silver on the wall. A night light, shaped like a crescent moon and plugged in by the door illuminates the thick carpet at the foot of the bed, where she let her slippers drop from her feet before climbing between the soft sheets.

  It’s quiet in here, so quiet I can hear her breathe. She seems serene, untroubled by nightly visions of terror. Not everyone has those; only some, those unfortunate people whose past has taught them fear and anguish and sorrow and pain. But her? No, there are no monsters in her dreams. Not yet.

  It’s peaceful in here; the only movement is her chest rising and falling with every breath she takes, rustling the sheets with a barely audible sound, repetitive and hypnotic like distant ocean waves crashing against the shore. I stand by the wall, engulfed in shadows, and watch every breath of air filling her lungs, then leaving her body after it fulfilled its purpose. There’s a melody to her breathing, so soft and gentle that it’s barely discernible, yet it’s memorable and distinctive, like a signature or a fingerprint. I’d recognize it anywhere.

  She feels safe in her sleep. She’s pushed the covers off her body and thrown her perfectly shaped leg over them, where cooler air can touch her warm skin. She’s perfectly unaware of herself, any trace of the day’s self-consciousness now gone. When she sleeps, she’s really herself, not who she thinks she needs to be.

  I admire her body and almost groan, hating the T-shirt she’s wearing, a dark, loose piece of useless cotton that doesn’t do her any good. It hides who she is, who she really is. Why is it that some parts of our bodies must stay hidden from view, when they’re just as beautiful as the rest? Who decided that, and why is everyone rushing to obey? That damn T-shirt conceals her beauty, keeps the world from seeing her how she deserves to be seen. My eyes follow the curves of her body, hating the red bikini she slipped on right after taking a shower, another piece of useless fabric that stands in my way.