Repressed Page 13

  “I’ll call back when you’re alone. But keep this to yourself, Curt. Keep your appointments. Work your cases. Wouldn’t want your boss to get suspicious. And don’t fuck it up.”

  The line went dead.

  “What the hell was that about?”

  Morrison stared at the phone like it was going to wake up and bite his hand. Damn crackpots. Had to be. Right? “Roger.”

  “What the fuck does that dickbrain have to do with anything?” Petrosky put the car into drive and eased back onto the freeway.

  “Long story.” Morrison related the details as best he could, starting with the cell call the day after Bell’s murder and ending with the caller’s suspicions that Roger was taking bribes for pleading cases out. But Bell … the caller hadn’t seemed concerned with her at all. Was she just collateral damage or was she connected to Roger somehow?

  “Nothing that fucker does would surprise me. But the call … interesting.” Petrosky tapped his knuckles against the console. “When we get back to the precinct, we’ll look into it,” he said finally. “We’ve got a few minutes before we need to see the doc, so we can do a trace on the call with that triangulation bullshit, yeah?”

  Morrison nodded, but an urgent disquiet rose in his belly. He was just a bystander here, his number stolen and used in a killer’s game of intimidation, probably against Roger, the prosecutor who’d done … something to this asshole. So what kind of person were they looking for? If the caller had benefitted from a plea deal with Roger—if the accusations about bribes were even true—they wouldn’t be trying to expose Roger now. So maybe Roger had fucked this killer over, maybe jailed her—or him—despite a bribe, or … had Roger refused to take a bribe altogether? Then the killer gets out of jail, finds Roger and kills someone to make sure the cops pay attention. But …

  Morrison sucked air into his lungs as Petrosky pulled off the freeway and stopped at a red light that suddenly looked like an evil eye. You still don’t get it, do you? You see me but you don’t. But you’ll figure it out—you’ll remember me. And once you do, you’ll know exactly how to find me. Trusting his memory was dubious at best and for the life of him, he could think of no one who would threaten Roger like this, who would kill an innocent girl. No one who would know the intimate details of Roger’s life, well, no one except …

  But Shannon had nothing to do with this—the only thing that was keeping Morrison sane. The killer wanted Roger. Why, he wasn’t sure, but who didn’t want to fuck Roger up?

  Petrosky pulled into the precinct parking lot, but Morrison couldn’t shake the uneasy feeling in his gut, or the flicker of electricity running over his spine.

  19

  Triangulation wasn’t difficult. He clicked the mouse, entered Bell’s number, listened to the clack of the keyboard. Click click click. There was a time when the focus would have helped—mindfulness quieted voices and memories and cravings far more effectively than talking about those things, dwelling on a jaded past. But today his thoughts pressed in on him, loud and insistent over the sound of the keyboard. Why was he being dragged into this, and what did Roger have to do with Bell? Was the Acosta case connected? And, at the back of his mind, eclipsing all other thought like the remnants of a disturbing dream you were desperate to forget: Where the fuck is Shannon?

  He pulled his fingers from the keyboard and tried Shannon’s cell. Voicemail. He tried again, each buzz of the ringer more ominous than the last. Voicemail. He slammed the phone onto the desk, checked that it hadn’t broken, and opened another computer screen to check her cell records. Why hadn’t he thought of that yesterday? He was a fucking idiot. Morrison was hovering over the locate button when his cell pinged with a text and he flipped it over, heart hammering.

  Shannon:

  “Sorry, just got your message. Love you too.”

  Morrison:

  “Call me.”

  The phone stayed silent. On the screen the towers blinked. He clicked back and forth, from Bell’s cell to Shannon’s and back again, drumming his fingers on the desk as the first, and then the second, cell tower blinked onto Bell’s screen and stayed steady. If only they had better department funding and more up-to-date location equipment. Even 9-1-1 operators had a hard time locating callers with their outdated tracking systems.

  The third tower blinked once more and solidified.

  “Petrosky …”

  The caller using Bell’s cell was … there. Within a block of the precinct.

  Petrosky wheeled over from his desk and peered at the screen.

  “What do you make of that?” The disquiet in Morrison’s belly was spreading, wrapping around his chest. They’d called from the precinct. Was the caller watching him? Or Roger?

  “Fucking insider bullshit,” Petrosky said. “I don’t like it.” He grimaced and Morrison’s fist clenched.

  Insider bullshit—probably a reference to Shannon’s old buddy Griffen. But he was dead. “Griffen was delusional,” Morrison said. “Not likely it’d happen again, not like that.”

  Petrosky stood and shoved his chair toward his desk. It banged into the side and Morrison jumped, his pulse hammering in his chest so violently he might as well have been running a marathon.

  Petrosky raised an eyebrow, then lowered it. “Come on, Kid, it’s time to visit McCallum.”

  “Hang on …” On Shannon’s screen the second tower blinked. “Shannon texted me a minute ago.” If it is Shannon. He turned to Petrosky, trying to keep his voice slow and even. “Any news on the APB?”

  No reply.

  “Petrosky?”

  The boss’s eyes were glued to the screen. Morrison turned back to the computer. The last tower was blinking, and like the droning of every ring on Shannon’s unanswered cell, each pulse brought with it a sharper, fiercer pang of dread. Then it was up.

  Her cell was at the precinct too.

  20

  Maybe the system wasn’t working—it wouldn’t be the first time. Once it had traced all the anonymous 9-1-1 calls to an apartment on the east side, and the residents had almost sued the city for harassment when the cops kept showing up. But the cramp in Morrison’s belly crept higher through his chest, into his shoulders, into his neck.

  His entire body was stiff by the time Morrison emerged in the parking lot, Petrosky at his heels. Come on, Shannon, call. The air outside was electric with an impending storm and Morrison had to concentrate on the breath in his lungs to make sure they inflated. In, out. In, out. The sky had darkened and the thick, gray clouds had turned the lot into an apocalyptic sea of ash, stark against the neon green of the grass. Every car in the parking lot was empty, as was the lot itself, save for one wrinkled woman with a shock of white curls, creeping slowly toward the courthouse on a metal cane, wind plastering her hair to one withered cheek.

  The breeze scattered leaves and the occasional plastic bottle in an ominous soundtrack. Morrison whipped out his cell as they strode across the lot. Shannon was fine—had to be fine. Evie too. But he didn’t feel fine, every gust of wind from the heavens a whisper that his life was about to collapse. We’re looking for her. We’ll find her. And in the meantime … Morrison followed Petrosky’s gaze around the lot, up to the windows of the courthouse. No prying eyes, watching to see if he went to visit Roger’s office.

  Fucking Roger. But he’d have to go up there and at least let Roger know someone was trying to get his stupid ass arrested.

  “Who you calling, Cali?”

  “Decantor. Figured I’d let him know about the call on Roger. Maybe by the time we get out of our meeting with McCallum he’ll have something else on the caller.” Or maybe he’ll have something on the APB.

  Voicemail. Morrison clicked off. The muted thuds of their shoes on pavement vibrated through his body, a steady metronome to the frantic beat of his heart as they approached the door to Dr. McCallum’s office.

  “Morrison!”

  He turned to see Valentine running from the precinct, waving one beefy hand over his head. With ever
y step he took, the apprehension in Valentine’s eyes became more apparent—even the scar on his cheek seemed agitated.

  Petrosky’s breathing had increased. He shouldn’t be winded. He shouldn’t be. Was it his heart or was it …

  “I just ran into Decantor.” Valentine had reached them, panting. “He’s looking for you.”

  Stay calm. Morrison nodded, the muscles in his neck corded with nervous energy “I just tried to call him. I’ll run over after McCallum … unless it’s urgent?”

  Valentine didn’t respond, just stared at him with the hollow look of a Holocaust survivor. “Decantor said you guys have the same killer. For sure.”

  Petrosky stilled beside him.

  “He just came from the ME’s office.” Valentine averted his eyes, looking almost guilty, but of course he couldn’t feel guilty—there was nothing to feel badly about. No, not guilt. His friend felt awful. Distressed.

  Morrison’s heart seized.

  Valentine looked back up and met Morrison’s gaze. “Found a single hair at the Bell scene—blond at the root, black at the tip. Got a DNA match to the blood at the Acosta scene. And that spike thing … uh … that she was … penetrated with? Lab results concluded that it was the same object in both cases, or at least from the same batch of metal—there were patina fragments.” He wrung his hands. “And he scraped a number one on Bell too … on that spot between … you know. The taint.” He winced. “Before she died.”

  Morrison swallowed hard, trying to keep his breath even. It was about their case. Not about his wife. The case. Dylan Acosta. Natalie Bell. “We’ve got a few leads on ours too. We’ll be heading back to the east side after profiling with McCallum. Tell Decantor we can reconvene afterwards, go over everything.”

  “Oh, okay, yeah sure that sounds good.” But Valentine’s eyes were on the building, on his shoes, glancing back at the precinct—everywhere but Petrosky and Morrison. He looked like he wanted to run.

  Petrosky coughed and moved to Morrison’s side. “Spit it out, Valentine.”

  Valentine stared at them, his mouth working. Morrison couldn’t feel his chest. His legs were numb.

  Petrosky clapped twice in front of the man’s face. “Valentine!”

  “You need to talk to Decantor.”

  “You said that already,” Morrison said, softly, almost whispering, because his throat was too tight to do more.

  “Goddammit, just—”

  “We found Shannon’s car.”

  He said you guys have the same killer. And the killer had called him. Bile rose in his throat, blocking his airway. What if …

  “An hour ago. Gas station near Toledo, just over the Ohio border.”

  She’d barely made it out of state—an hour from the house, two tops. She’d been missing for all of yesterday. He glanced at the sky, the low-hanging clouds, the weak hint of late afternoon illumination. Nearly all of today too.

  Missing. But without a struggle? She’d have fought a kidnapper. Maybe she’d leapt from an overpass, thrown Evie into the river. No. What the hell am I thinking? No way. She had just texted him—she was fine. She had to be fine. She was fine, completely fine and probably pissed at him for not trusting her.

  Texted him from the precinct. And he hadn’t heard her voice.

  A glance at Petrosky’s face turned his insides to water, the apprehension he saw reaching for him with panicked fingers as tangible as his own. Petrosky had probably told himself it would be fine all the way to identify his daughter’s body. And then it wasn’t fine. Nothing had ever been fine again.

  If their killer had taken Shannon, she was in for a lot worse than a leap off a bridge. And his little girl—no. No. He faced Valentine. “You found her car. Did you find my wife?”

  Valentine’s eyes were glassy. He shook his head.

  Dylan Acosta and Natalie Bell—they’d been killed by the same sadistic fuck. The same sadistic fuck who had called Morrison. The vicious monster who had killed both his victims within an hour of first attacking them.

  A murderer had his family, and he had no idea where they were.

  Or if they were already dead.

  21

  Petrosky lit a cigarette with quick jerky movements as Valentine headed back into the precinct under the guise of getting the file. “They probably followed her until she stopped for gas, or to feed Evelyn, then grabbed her.”

  Morrison watched Petrosky’s acrid cloud appear and fly sharply away in the breeze like his own happiness—here, then gone. And again. Every time the wind whipped the cloud away he saw it taking pieces of his tenuous grasp on sanity.

  Petrosky coughed. “We’re heading over to—”

  “What? They were here! She’s here!”

  “She’s not, Morrison. You think this guy’s hiding Shannon at the courthouse? A screaming baby at the prosecutor’s office?”

  Screaming. God, they’d make her scream. Until they killed her. “I don’t know where the fuck he’s hiding her, goddammit!”

  Petrosky did not respond to his outburst, just said, “And that text you got … anything weird about it?”

  The smoke above Petrosky’s head was the embodiment of Morrison’s own boiling insides—fear, pain, bubbling in his belly and rising through his throat and escaping out his nostrils. But when Morrison exhaled, he saw no plume to indicate the existence of his terror.

  “You’re the tech genius. Couldn’t they just be shooting the signal around? Saying the phone is here when really it’s in butt-fuck Egypt?” Petrosky squinted at the sky as if the answer might be written in the indignant clouds.

  “I … maybe. Yeah.” They could be scrambling the signal, or they might have used one of those cards that puts any number on a caller ID. Which meant Shannon’s actual phone could be anywhere. Fuck.

  Petrosky cocked an eyebrow and blew smoke at the sky. “Our best leads are on the Reynolds case—we have a DNA match on the semen, so we know we’re looking for the same rapist. And that sick pedophile knows who the killer is. The object used to stab Acosta and Bell is unique—there has to be a way to trace it. I’ll talk to the ME, see if he can trace the metal itself.”

  “When’s the DNA back? The rest of the crime scene labs?” Morrison’s heart felt like it had stopped beating, but it was beating—had to be.

  “Ours is due by tomorrow.” Petrosky grimaced. “I’ll make it fucking sooner on both ours and Bell’s.”

  Morrison scanned the lot. Along the back, the upper boughs of the ash trees twisted in the wind, though he felt no breeze. In one corner, a maroon Suburban pulled into a parking spot, and a twenty-something white guy in a backward cap leaped out and started toward the sidewalk, hitching up his pants. The man gave them a cursory glance as he removed his ball cap, then disappeared up the stairs and into the courthouse next door.

  The world was starkly focused but Morrison could not seem to attach his thoughts to his body—his brain felt disconnected and fuzzy and wrong. The wind howled and silenced itself just as abruptly, leaving him with the emptiness ringing in his ears. Where did he need to go? What could he do?

  “We should talk to Roger.” Morrison turned to the building and glanced up at the third floor. Because the caller had threatened Roger. Because whoever had Shannon had a vendetta against Roger. Was Roger the reason Shannon had been taken in the first place? They surely were aware that Shannon wasn’t married to Roger any longer, but no one could mistake the way Roger had lusted after her from the moment she’d left him. If they were watching him, maybe they’d know that. So did Shannon know them too, get out of her vehicle willingly? Know them through Roger? From the prosecutor’s office? Shannon was stronger than she looked, though Evie would have slowed her down if she’d been forced from the car.

  Morrison’s chest burned. Evie. Shannon. Fuck. He couldn’t breathe. Maybe it was a misunderstanding: someone had swapped her plates in a parking lot, and any moment now she’d call from Alex’s. But he felt the wrongness of that deep in his belly. And if Valentine was rig
ht and it was Shannon’s car at that gas station—there might be something in the vehicle to help them find her. “We’ll go look at the car first.” He pulled out his phone to text Decantor.

  “Heading to Toledo. Meet back on the cases in a couple hours.”

  Petrosky ground the cigarette under the heel of his shoe and they walked across the lot, the ash trees leering at them. Maybe someone was watching, lurking behind a pine or a clump of brush. He could feel the rain spitting on his skin, but distantly, each drop merely a subtle pressure devoid of cold or wet. His shoes made a sickly squashing sound, like sucking a brain through a straw.

  Someone was trying to scare him. Probably used software like Trickster to fake a caller ID number. Maybe they’d done that to Bell’s phone too.

  Maybe they didn’t have Shannon after all.

  He felt the tug of denial and the hope it provided, but hope could be a sickness just as much as a godsend.

  If they had her … The world wavered, disappeared, returned, but this time he could no longer feel the thumping in his chest.

  They’d start with her car. If they drove fast, they could get there before the coming storm obliterated the evidence.

  Petrosky’s car smelled the same as it always did but everything felt heavier, dank, gluey in the back of his throat like the stale stench of cigarettes was going to drown him in a river of tobacco and confusion.

  He couldn’t call the police. He was the fucking police.

  It’s up to you, Curt, old boy.

  A shock, an electric buzzing jolted through his right hip. Morrison jumped and hit his head on the car window and his phone buzzed again in his back pocket. He jerked it out. Text message from Shannon. Or Shannon’s number.