Allison Brennan - Speak No Evil

“If he lets you in, you’re good to go. What does Jim have right now?”

“Nothing yet, but he’s working on it,” Carina said.

They sat in silence, reviewing the logs, when Patrick suddenly exclaimed, “I have an idea!”

“Give it to me,” Carina said. “I’ll take anything at this point.”

“What if we set Scout up?”

“How?”

“He has an e-mail alert through the MyJournal system that let’s him know whenever certain Web pages are updated. One page is that Elizabeth Rimes I told you about. We send an e-mail ostensibly from her to Scout with a redirect to my account.”

“For what purpose?”

“To get him into a chat room. To keep him in one place until we can locate him. If he’s logged on as Scout, I can find him within an hour.”

“I like it. I really like it.”

“Thank you, sis. I aim to please.”

“How long to set it up?” Nick asked.

“A couple hours, maybe less. I want to make sure we protect Elizabeth Rimes, alert the Atlanta police to keep an eye on her. We know Scout is in San Diego, but on the off-chance that he slips through.”

“I agree. I don’t want to jeopardize a civilian.”

“And I need to set up the technical end. I’m going to ask Dillon to chat with him online-he’s good at pulling people into conversations and he’ll know what to say.”

“Perfect. Thanks, Patrick.”

“I’m going to get started on it,” Patrick said, standing. “Sorry to leave you with all this paperwork.”

“I live for paperwork,” she said sarcastically.

Carina and Nick ordered dinner in. The task force room looked like a war zone, and they had come to the conclusion that until forensics came up with evidence they could use, or Patrick got a hit on his trap, they had nowhere else to look.

Carina was about to call it quits for the night. It was Saturday and there was little they could do until they had something to work with.

Then Jim Gage rushed into the room. “Good, you’re still here.”

“Like I’m going anywhere in this lifetime,” Carina said. “What is it?”

He waved a paper around. “I got a hit.”

“DNA match?”

“Almost as good. I have a match to a relative.”

“Explain,” Carina said.

“Mitchell Joseph Burns.”

“Burns,” Carina said. “You matched DNA to this Mitchell Burns? Is he a relation to Kyle Burns?”

“I don’t know at this point.” Jim pulled out a chair and sat. “Nearly eight years ago Mitchell Burns raped a woman in West Los Angeles. He used a condom, but either there was a tear in it or he wasn’t careful. Semen was found around the toilet bowl in the woman’s apartment.”

“And it matched Mitchell Burns? Was he already in the system?”

“He’s a repeat offender. Served four years for two counts of forcible rape.”

“Is he still in prison?”

“No, I’m getting to that,” he said impatiently. “He served his time, then a series of rapes popped up in West LA. When the investigators ran the DNA from the vic’s toilet, it hit on Burns. They went to arrest him, but his wife said he walked out one day and never came home.

“Ironically, the same day he raped the West LA woman.”

Jim let that sink in before continuing. “So when I ran the DNA we extracted from Becca-”

“Wait,” Carina said, “I thought you said you didn’t have anything from Becca.”

“I should have told you, but I was swamped running DNA myself. I don’t have to tell you how shorthanded we are right now.”

“I’m sorry, it wasn’t an accusation-”

“No, I should have said something. Anyway, I found a hair with a follicle in one of the layers of plastic wrap. One hair, that’s it. There’s some other trace evidence-wool from a blanket, some cotton fibers-but this was the only DNA evidence. So I ran it against the database and it popped up Mitchell Burns. But there’s something else.”

“What?”

“Another commonality to our current murders.”

“Glue?”

“No, but close. Burns gagged his victims with a black bandanna and tied them to the bedposts with white nylon rope.”

“White rope is common,” Nick said.

“But black bandannas aren’t,” Carina added. “So he broke into their house to rape them?” Carina wasn’t surprised. It was common, but her fear that no one was safe even in their own homes was deep-seated.

“Yes. Ground-level apartments in low-security buildings. He was a repeat offender, and had used the bandannas in his previous crimes as well.”

“Any particular reason?”

“None that was in the file.”

“But you said he’s not in prison.”

“He’s still missing. LAPD watched his house for a while, but he never returned.”

“Maybe he realized he’d made a mistake and ran,” Nick said.

“That was my thought.”

“Eight years is a long time to disappear,” Nick said. “Especially a wanted man and repeat offender.”

Carina wrapped her mind around the information Jim had given her. “So the DNA matched a known rapist who has been missing for eight years?”

“No,” Jim said. “Mitchell Burns didn’t rape our three victims. But a close relative did. A brother, first cousin, uncle, son.”

“Son.”

“He has two. According to the police reports, he had two minor sons at the time of his first arrest twelve years ago, twelve and five.”

“That would make them about twenty-four and seventeen,” Carina said. “Names?”

“They’re not in the record, but get this. Burns’s wife moved to San Diego six years ago.” Jim handed her another sheet of paper.

“Here’s the address of Regina Burns. She lives in University City.” University City was between downtown San Diego and La Jolla to the north.

Carina gathered the information and checked her weapon. “Who wants to take a bet that Kyle Burns is the rapist’s son?”

No one took the bet.

“Do you want backup?” Jim asked Carina.

“We’re just going to talk to Kyle Burns first, then Mitchell Burns’s wife,” Carina said. “If Regina Burns confirms what we think we know, we need to put twenty-four/seven surveillance on Kyle Burns and fight for a warrant.”

“It’s going to be next to impossible to get Kyle Burns in with what we have. No attorney will allow him to submit to a DNA test.”

“Then we’ll have to find other evidence to give us probable cause for an arrest. Then we can get his DNA.”

“Don’t you need a warrant for DNA?” Nick asked.

“In California all you need is probable cause for an arrest. Everyone arrested for a felony in California is subject to DNA testing.”

With a solid lead at last, Carina rushed from the room, and Nick followed.

Hi Scout:

I’m so sorry about Felix. How awful! If anything happened to my kitties, I would be so upset.

I’ve been visiting my mother for the last week and haven’t had time to e-mail you. My mom’s been sick and we’ve had a hard time with it. I just hope she gets better. The doctors are afraid the cancer has come back, but I’m praying it’s not that again.

If you want to talk about Felix, go ahead.

By the way, I’m really struggling in one of my classes. You really helped me with my midterms last semester, in calculus, remember? Do you think you have time today to help with another problem? I’ll hang out in the private chat area. I have Room 303 reserved and open on my computer. I’ll be studying here all day, so if you can help just pop in.

Elizabeth.

Dillon composed the e-mail from “Elizabeth Rimes” and sent it off to Scout’s public e-mail account through the MyJournal server.

“Smart kid,” Patrick said.