Allison Brennan - Killing Fear

“Will, it’s Jim Gage. I wanted to bounce a couple ideas off you. No rush, call me in the morning.” He hung up.

Thing was, he couldn’t get the idea out of his mind. Even though it was well after one in the morning on the East Coast, Jim called Dr. Dillon Kincaid at his house. Dillon was a private practice forensic psychiatrist who had consulted often with the San Diego Police Department until he moved to Washington last year.

Dillon answered on the third ring, half-asleep.

“Sorry to wake you,” Jim said. “It’s Jim Gage from San Diego.”

“Jim. What’s wrong?” He sounded more alert.

“Everyone’s fine,” Jim said. “I have a difficult case and wanted to run it by you.”

“Hold on.”

A minute later, Dillon picked up another extension. “Okay, what’s going on?”

“This is loosely related to the Theodore Glenn case.”

“Have you caught him?”

“No. It’s about his last victim. We think someone else killed her and framed Glenn.”

Dillon didn’t say anything for a long minute. “That would mean someone with inside knowledge of the case killed her.”

“Yes. A cop or a criminalist.”

“And how can I help?”

“Will is working with a Fed on this, Agent Hans Vigo. We had a talk this morning about the intended victim being Robin McKenna. It was her roommate who was killed, but Anna was supposed to be out of town the night she died.”

“Go on.”

“What I can’t get my mind around is that someone-either the victim or the killer-called Will Hooper at twelve fifty-five a.m. from the victim’s apartment. Anna was killed within thirty minutes of that call.”

“So she could have been dead or alive at that point?”

“Yes.”

“What do you want from me?”

“I don’t know, someone to bounce ideas off of. I feel like something is here, but I can’t clearly see it.”

“Let’s backtrack. Tell me about Anna.”

“She was a twenty-one-year-old stripper at RJ’s. A lesbian, but most people didn’t know that. She’d been roommates with Robin McKenna for six months. Quiet, kept to herself. She’d apparently been molested by her father for years, according to Robin. Her mother divorced him, and she and her daughter were trying to work out a relationship, which is why Anna was heading to Big Bear for a weekend with her mom. But her mother was delayed, and Anna apparently turned around and came back to San Diego, though that’s conjecture.”

“And Anna knew Will?”

“She would have had his number because he interviewed all the employees of RJ’s during the investigation into the first three murders.”

“Where’s Anna’s father?”

“Back east somewhere. You don’t think he killed his daughter?”

“And planted evidence against Glenn? No, unless he’s a cop.”

“No. A middle manager at some computer company in Massachusetts.”

“What about Robin McKenna?”

“She was closing at the bar that night. She was delayed-when Will saw the lights on in the bar, he went there instead of the apartment across the street.”

“Wait-she was in the bar while someone else called Will from her apartment? Why did Will think that Robin had called him?”

“Because Anna was out of town.”

“And a cop would just go over to the house and not call back?”

“They were romantically involved.”

“Ah. So he gets the page and heads over there. I remember the Glenn case. He targeted strippers. Why couldn’t he have been the one to kill Anna? There was evidence, right?”

“Yes, but-we now have new evidence. An alibi for Glenn. It’s pretty tight, Dillon.”

“So you don’t think Glenn could have killed Anna.”

“No.”

“What physical evidence did you have?”

“Hair.”

“Easy enough to plant. What about the M.O.?”

“On the surface, identical. Multiple cuts with an X-ACTO knife, body doused in bleach, throat slit. But looking at the evidence more critically, the cuts appear shallower than the first three victims and there are fewer marks. We also believe that the marks were made postmortem, but that’ll be hard to prove at this point.”

“Why wasn’t that noticed at the autopsy?”

“If the coroner was rushed, it wouldn’t have been obvious. Again, we’re going off the crime scene photos on that one and it’s a close call, especially after the bleach.”

“Hmm.”

“So?”

“So what?”

“Was Robin the intended victim?”

“I don’t know.”

“That doesn’t help.”

“Okay, let’s play this out. Anna Clark was supposed to be out of town. I assume this was common knowledge?”

“Yes.”

“So the killer would have every reason to believe that Robin would be coming home, alone, that night. So he breaks into the apartment, and either finds Anna there, or Anna arrives while he’s waiting for Robin. He has to kill her.”

“If Anna arrived while the killer was there, the killer would have to have called Will.”

“Was the phone dusted?”

Jim looked over the reports. “Yes. Only smudged prints.”

“That’s odd.”

Jim’s stomach sank. Why hadn’t he seen that before? There should have been clear prints from at least whomever used the phone last.

“The killer wore gloves. Called Will. Why did he want Will to find the body?”

“If Robin was the intended victim, the killer knew about Will’s relationship with her. Wanted Will to be the one to find her,” Dillon said.

“That’s almost exactly Glenn’s M.O.,” Jim said. “Glenn got his thrills first from making his victims suffer, then watching Robin’s reaction to the news when she learned they were dead.”

“But Jim, Anna’s killer hasn’t killed again, at least not in the same manner. Which suggests that this was a personal crime. A premeditated crime of passion.”

“Passion?”

“Look at Robin’s ex-boyfriends, other people at the time who may have stalked her.”

“It sounds too coincidental that she would have two stalkers-Glenn and this unknown killer.”

“She led a public life, exposed herself in front of thousands of men. I can see how more than one might be unbalanced enough to kill.”

“But to also be a cop?” Jim made a note. “At least this gives me something to go on. Thanks, Dillon.”

“Anytime, Jim. And I’ll think more on it. Call me if you have anything new, I’m happy to help. But you should run the scenario by Will and Agent Vigo. He’s a good guy, by the way. I’ve worked with him before.”

“Glad for the recommendation.”

Jim hung up, drew up a detailed time line and the list of suspects. He also made a note that perhaps someone in law enforcement who wasn’t directly involved in evidence collection had accessed the information. It wasn’t unheard of, and the evidence locker wasn’t restricted to law enforcement personnel. Anyone from the D.A.’s office to cops to the crime lab could go in there and simply sign in. They could easily lie about what evidence they were viewing. No one double-checked, unless they were removing it from the locker.

And something as small as a few hairs could easily be concealed.

Ten minutes later his doorbell rang. He rose from his desk, glanced out the peephole, confused more than concerned.

He opened the door. “You could have called.”

“I could have.”

Jim barely noticed the gun until three bullets hit him in the chest.

Will knocked on Robin’s door after midnight. He’d debated going home, but he wanted to see her. She’d seemed so lost after she learned that the woman helping Theodore Glenn had been in her employ for the past thirteen months.

Mario had left one of his men guarding the door. “Detective,” the man acknowledged.