Allison Brennan - Killing Fear

She touched his face. “Will-” She kissed him. “I’m glad we found each other again. Older and wiser.”

He rested his forehead on hers and she breathed in his warm scent. “I have to go.”

She nodded

“Being involved with a cop isn’t easy. It’s not a regular nine-to-five job.”

“Neither is running a nightclub.”

“I want to share everything with you, Robin, but some of it isn’t pretty.”

“You certainly don’t have to tell me that.”

“No, I don’t.” He paused. “How long are you going to keep Mario around?”

“I told Isabelle-who manages the art gallery-that Mario would handle security for the event.”

“Good.”

“But Sunday is Mario’s last day. I’m not going to have a bodyguard for the rest of my life. I can’t live like that.”

“You’ll have me.”

“That I can live with.”

It was six when Will arrived back at the station. Carina had already written up the report on the Sara Lorenz homicide. “During the canvass,” she said, “neighbors said that Sara was friendly, kept to herself, and told everyone she was an attorney. In fact, she was a paralegal but has been putting herself out as a lawyer. Doug found more money and the Feds are locking it down. Dominguez and Hazelwood met with the bank manager this morning, with a warrant from Stanton, and we now have all the bank records and contents of a safe-deposit box.”

“Busy day for everyone, not just us,” Will said. “What was in the box?”

“You’re not going to like it.” She slid over a folder.

Inside were copies of photographs of Robin. They’d been taken over time, over at least two years. “Sara,” Will said.

Carina nodded. “Sara kept a journal of Robin’s movements for the last twenty-six months, much more intensive in the last year since she started working at the Sin under the name of Gina Clover. There were also letters from Glenn to Sara about how to circumvent the system, how to create corporations within corporations, things like that. We have a good chunk of their correspondence and Doug is going over it now to create a better time line.”

“We know the gist of it.” Will looked through the pictures. Robin at the art gallery. Robin at work. Robin at the gun range. Many of the photos were taken from a distance. Some from odd angles, as if Sara had used a camera phone at waist level. “Sara was probably sending Glenn photographs to help gain his trust.”

“Lot of good that did her.” Carina rubbed her eyes.

“Go home,” Will told her. “It’s been a long couple of days. The Feds are tracking Glenn in Mexico, we can’t even take a shot at him down there.”

“Jim’s killer is still out there.”

“And we can’t do anything about that at six o’clock on Friday night.”

“What about you?”

“I-” He didn’t want to tell Carina he was working on Jim’s case. She would insist on staying, but she was going through an emotional wringer. “Just paperwork.” Not a complete lie. “If anything breaks, I’ll call you.”

“Promise?”

“Absolutely.”

Carina left and Will found himself alone in the task-force command center. It had been set up to track Glenn, but right now Will spread out his file on Anna Clark’s murder. Why had Jim called him? What had he wanted to talk about? Jim’s message hadn’t sounded urgent, but Will wouldn’t forgive himself anytime soon for not responding to it immediately.

The door opened and Hans walked in. Closed it behind him. “Got something.”

“And?”

“Gage’s phone records. He made a call last night to Dillon Kincaid. I assume you know him.”

“Yes, I didn’t know you did.”

“I worked with him on a case last year. I saw the 202 area code and called the number. I was surprised when he answered.”

“I wonder why Jim called him.”

“And talked for twenty-six minutes. We started talking, but I think you need to listen in. He’s waiting for our call.”

Hans put the phone on speaker and dialed Dillon’s number. He answered on the first ring.

“Hi, Dillon, it’s Hans with Will Hooper.”

“How are you doing, Will? How’s Carina holding up?”

“She’s okay. I just sent her home. I didn’t know we’d be talking.”

“You can fill her in later. I feel awful about Jim. He was a good guy, one of the best investigators I’ve ever worked with.”

“We’re going to have a huge hole in the department,” Will agreed. “Why did Jim call you last night?”

“He wanted to run through something that was bugging him. And I’ve been thinking about it all day. Hans filled me in on the differences in the crimes Glenn confessed to and the Clark homicide. What I keep coming back to is Jim’s thought that the cuts were made postmortem.”

“Which means what? That the killer didn’t want the victim to suffer?”

“Yes. The killer wanted to kill her, but not torture her. There was no pleasure in the act of killing. Killing was a means to an end. And especially since Anna wasn’t the intended victim. If you’re right and everyone involved in the case knew Anna was going to be out of town, then the killer was surprised when Anna showed up.”

“There was one more thing about Anna’s crime scene,” Will said. “Glenn always tortured his victims in their bed, then moved them to the front door before slitting their throat. But there was no evidence that Anna was even in her bed that night.”

“That fits in with your theory that the killer was waiting for Robin,” Dillon agreed. “The killer surprises Anna, subdues her-according to Hans she was petite, so it would have been easy for someone of virtually any size to slit her throat. Then, to make it appear that Glenn killed her, the copycat makes incisions in her body with an identical weapon. Jim said that it appeared that the marks were made twice?”

“Yes,” Will said. “We talked about that yesterday, that the killer traced and deepened the marks. But the coroner at the time didn’t make note of anything odd.”

“Sometimes, we only see what we expect to see,” Dillon said sadly.

“We’re no closer to figuring this out,” Will said. “I need to interview the seven people Jim spoke with between clocking out and going home. I’ll drag them all down to interrogation-”

“Good idea,” Dillon said. “But I think I can do you one better.”

“How so?”

“Jim was hung up on why you were paged. Pagers started going out of fashion even back then. Everyone had cell phones. But I think the person didn’t want to talk to you. The person wanted you to come to the apartment and find the body. You, Will, specifically you.”

“I don’t understand what you’re getting at, Dillon.”

“The killer was angry with you. I told Jim last night that this sounded like a premeditated crime of passion. I suggested that he look into Robin McKenna’s ex-boyfriends, regulars at the club, anyone who may have wanted her dead and planned on using Glenn’s M.O. to do it. But not just anyone could have access to Glenn’s hair samples and, according to Jim, no one in the media knew about the bleach until the trial. That was insider knowledge.”

“Not to mention using the exact type of knife. Those details weren’t revealed until trial either,” Will interjected.

“This murder was a crime of passion, but it was directed at you, Will,” Dillon said. “The individual has an above average IQ. Methodical, organized to the point of being borderline OCD. Narcissistic-not in the same way as Theodore Glenn who believes he’s above everyone, but to the extent that this person categorizes people as worthy and unworthy. That is how Anna’s death was justified, even though she wasn’t the target. Anna was unworthy because she was a stripper-it wasn’t a ‘real’ job in the eyes of the killer. In fact, the killer probably has disdain for working-class professions and individuals. But more important, this individual dislikes women in general. And this is what is key: