Cheryl Bradshaw - Sinnerman

“You called me here to discuss a painting?’ she said. “Let me guess, the artist placed something in the background, a hidden clue of some kind, like those weirded-out pictures people used to hang in their bathrooms or in the foyer, and you can’t decipher what it is which has driven you bonkers, so you called me here to figure it out for you.”

We both laughed.

I shifted my body weight to the right and looked around the corner at Taye Diggs. He manned his post outside, oblivious to the girl talk, which was just how I wanted it to be. When I was sure his eyes were focused in a different direction, I lifted the painting from its position on the wall.

“Holy crap!” Maddie said.

I smiled.

“I don’t think obsession is the right word to describe what I’m seeing here,” she said.

Behind the painting on the wall was an oversized peg board about the same height and width as the TV, and on it was every piece of information I’d come across that related to the Sinnerman murders. There were photos of his female victims, newspaper clippings I’d saved, his killing timeline, a profile I’d created on him, and anything else I felt was relevant to the case.

Maddie sprung from her chair to get a closer look.

“How long have you had this here?” she said.

“I started to piece it together bit by bit a few months after Gabby died.”

“This is, like—amazing,” she said. “I bet you have more information here than anyone else on this case.”

“I wouldn’t go that far,” I said. “I haven’t been able to get my hands on most of the evidence, not even to copy it, but I did the best I could with what I had access to.”

“I’ll say,” she said. “Nick know about this?”

I shook my head.

“No one does,” I said.

Maddie zeroed in on a white piece of lined paper I’d tacked to the wall with the killer’s criminal profile on it.

“May I?” she said.

“Go right ahead. It isn’t the same one the cops have though—I came up with it on my own.

She lifted the page from the board and read it out loud.

SINNERMAN PROFILE

MALE, AGE 35-45

METHODICAL AND ORGANIZED

SOCIOPATH

KILLS FOR POWER, POSSESSION???

ABUSED OR POSSIBLY NEGLECTED OR ABANDONED BY A PARENT

INTELLIGENT, HIGH IQ

CHOOSES WOMEN OF SAME APPROXMIATE AGE, WEIGHT, HAIR COLOR

Maddie stopped about a quarter of the way through the list and said, “You forgot to add sick lunatic whacko, but other than that, you seem to have a good grip on this guy.”

“If it’s all accurate.”

“Oh come on, we both know you have a gift for this kind of thing. I’d be willing to bet you’re about ninety-five percent on target with all this.”

“The reason I wanted you to see this is because this time I want to be kept in the loop. With his last series of killings I couldn’t deal with it, and you and everyone else kept mum.”

“We were just trying to help you get through your loss,” she said, “and giving you all the details back then wouldn’t have been the right thing to do. We all knew that.”

“And I agree, but this isn’t some kind of blood pact you made with each other where you’re obligated to a vow of silence—things are different now. I know you have access to a lot of information, and I want you to share it with me.”

I stared her right in the eye and tried to gauge her reaction. She cocked her head to one side like she had taken it all in and then said, “Fine by me.”

“I bet the chief is going to tell you things too since the two of you are together now. You are still an item, right?”

“Item is taking it a bit far,” she said. “You know how I roll. I just go with it, but I never define it.”

Maddie didn’t like to get too committed to her men. It made her feel like she did when she was in high school and her mother strapped her down at home with all her siblings and she missed out on all the things most teens experience at that time of their life. Her preferred method of dating only worked if it was done on her own terms, which was why it surprised me that she agreed to date the chief in the first place.

“Don’t worry,” she said. “I’ll tell you as much as I can. But I want you to do something for me in return.”

“Anything.”

“Be careful,” she said.

“Always.”

“I mean it, Sloane. I worry about you,” she said.

Maddie’s cell phone rang.

“How’s it going, babe?” she said into the receiver.

“You’re calling him babe now?” I whispered loud enough for only her to hear. “When did that happen?”

She grinned and shushed me with her finger, but within a few seconds, the look of glee on her face turned to genuine concern, and she ended the call without another word.

“What is it?”

“Sinnerman’s killed again,” she said.

I grabbed my keys from the top of my desk. “I’ll drive.”

CHAPTER 16

The body had been disposed of in the center of the track at the city park. I was thankful when I looked around and noted that Nick and Coop weren’t there yet. A mass of spectators had gathered behind the thin plastic roped-off section of police tape.

Maddie stepped inside the perimeter and flashed her credentials to a male officer I didn’t recognize.

“And who’s this?” he said and thumbed in my direction.

“She’s with me,” Maddie said.

He shifted his attention from her to me.

“Where’s your ID lady?” he said.

“Look,” Maddie interjected, “we just came from lunch, and it’s not like I had the time to swing by my office so she could grab it. It seemed more important to me at the time that we get here as soon as possible, so why don’t you lay off and let us do our job.”

He didn’t seem to know what to say to that and let us pass. It didn’t buy me a lot of time, but it bought me a little, and I was determined to make every second count. I glanced back at Taye Diggs who shook his head but didn’t try to stop me.

Maddie approached a young male who was hunched over the dead woman’s body collecting various tidbits of evidence.

“What do you got for me?” she said.

“From what I can tell, the victim appears to have been killed less than twenty-four hours ago, and it looks like her wounds are an identical match to the woman that was killed the other day. Everything matches up except the number of lacerations to her thigh.”

I leaned in and counted them. There were five this time.

“Do we have a name?” Maddie said.

“She had an ID card from a university not far from here in her back pocket. Her name is Sasha Winters.”

“She looks a little old to be a university student.”

A car drove up and parked and out stepped public enemy number one and two.

“Uh-oh,” Maddie said. “Get ready for an ass-chewing sandwich.”

I retrieved my cell phone from my pocket with haste and snapped some photos of the victim and the crime scene and then slid it back into my pocket.

“Why is it that wherever I go, you seem to follow?” Coop said.

“I was with Maddie when she got the call.”

“And that makes it alright?” he said.

“It makes it the truth.”

“Here’s some truth for you—I want you out of here. Now.”

I looked over at Nick whose crossed arms told me all I needed to know about where he stood in all of it, and then I turned toward Maddie.

“I’ll catch a ride back to my lab with one of my guys,” she said. “You go on.”

“Call me later?” I said.

She smiled and nodded.

Coop frowned and Maddie gave him a hard stare and then looked back and me and said, “You bet I will.”

CHAPTER 17

The next morning I reappeared at the crime scene, but the difference was the body wasn’t there and everything had been cleaned up and life at the park was back to usual. It was hard to tell anything happened there at all. I wasn’t sure what I was looking for or why anything of any significance would have been left behind, but I wanted to explore the area anyway. It was of particular interest to me that the killer dropped his bodies off in the same place he picked them up. He was bold, and had one mad pair of cojones. That much I knew.