Profile of Fear: Book Four of the Profile Series (Volume 4) (2 page)

Pulling out his cell phone, he dialed Diego. “Where are you?”

“Convenience store about a half mile away.”

“It’s her. She’s driving an old blue Toyota RAV4.”

“I see it. She just passed me. What do you want me to do?”

“Follow the bitch and keep an eye on her and my kid. Don’t let her out of your sight. She spotted me, so be ready. We may have to move fast. I want my kid unharmed and delivered to me. And don’t kill Donda.
I
want that pleasure.”

Tossing the cell phone onto the passenger seat, he slipped the key into the ignition, started the car, and exhaled a sigh of relief. He’d found the kid. Not that he wanted a fucking rug rat around. But his mother, that was another story. That kid was worth her weight in gold to him. He needed to get back in his mother’s good graces, and the kid was the way to do it.

His mother had been harping about wanting a grandchild since he hit puberty. Which was surprising since Juanita Ortiz wasn’t exactly Mother Teresa when it came to human kindness. If displeased, she’d been quick with a hard slap to Juan’s face, and if that wasn’t enough to get his attention, she’d get creative. There were times he winced with pain as he sat at his school desk, welts on his ass from his dad’s belt, or a branch from the weeping willow tree in the backyard. When he was nine-years-old, she poured boiling water onto his back as a punishment for disobeying her. Neighbors heard his screams and soon Social Services came to visit. They put him in a foster home and charged her with child abuse. But in a year, they’d returned him to Juanita, believing her claims of finding God and changing her ways. That would have been believable if the beatings hadn’t continued.

Through the years, Juanita Ortiz made sure her son was useful. She started him out with shoplifting by the time he was three, delivering packets of cocaine as an adolescent, and helping her run a prostitution and drug ring in his teens. The sex and drug trade proved to be lucrative, so much so that she attracted unwanted attention from the Feds. So she packed up her things and fled to Mexico, leaving Juan behind to fend for himself. It was south of the border that she hooked up with Miguel Vega and the powerful Vega drug cartel.

Things were going fine for him, until he became the focus of an FBI undercover operation three years ago. Luckily, he was able to escape to Mexico and the protection of both his mother and the Vega cartel. Things went well until he and Miguel Vega had a misunderstanding about the drug and trafficking money Juan brought into the cartel. Miguel wanted ninety percent of the take. Juan disagreed and packed away $50,000 of Miguel’s take. When Donda was found, he was determined to return to the United States to collect his kid.

Distance didn’t impede his mother. Not once did she loosen her control over him. She was living in another country and things still went
her
way.

Her lover, Miguel, wanted kids. No longer able to have a child on her own, she wanted Juan’s kid, her flesh-and-blood. It was Juan’s job to bring his little girl to her. What his mother wanted, she got. And she wanted his kid badly.

Chapter Two

Noah Roberts gulped a swig of hot coffee, then twisted the cap back onto his thermos. He glanced at his father, Mason, who was driving the truck, and thought of his future—the day when he would take over the helm of Roberts Sanitation Company. His father wasn’t getting any younger, and rheumatoid arthritis was kicking his ass.

The business had done well the past eleven years and they’d added ten sanitation trucks to their fleet. Just last night, they’d signed a contract to collect trash from each store in the Sycamore Mall, which had been built in the seventies but had new management. Lucky for the Roberts Sanitation Company. Not bad for a family, who not long ago, lived from paycheck to paycheck, with little left over.

They approached Sycamore Mall off Route 136 and began the ascent to the back of the mall. It was their first day to serve the mall and they knew the importance of first impressions, so they both wore crisp new uniforms and the truck was sparkling clean from the scrubbing it had gotten the night before.

When they reached the back of the complex, Noah noticed the stores’ dumpsters lined up like toy soldiers. His father would stop the truck at each dumpster, and Noah jumped out to check inside every dumpster before it was loaded onto the truck.

A couple of years ago, a woman searching for aluminum cans in a trash bin was dumped into the back of one of their trash trucks; the driver emptied the bin without realizing the woman was inside. The truck driver was about to press the compacting button when he heard her screams. Noah’s father now demanded that each dumpster be checked thoroughly before loading—no exception.

Mason Roberts pulled the truck near the first of several dumpsters outside the Macy’s store, and Noah leaped from the truck. Immediately he was assailed by a smell so repugnant, it almost knocked him on his ass. Damn it. One of Shawnee County’s residents had probably dumped their dead pet or road kill in the dumpster at Macy’s. As he approached the dumpster, the stomach-churning odor hit him like a brick wall. Instinctively, he covered his nose and mouth with his hand and moved closer. There were actually three dumpsters sitting side-by-side with about a foot in-between. Searching for the source of the stench, he twisted his ankle on a rock, throwing him off-balance, and he fell to the pavement. As he picked himself up, he noticed something dark sandwiched between the first and second dumpster. It was a long, black, plastic garbage bag with its yellow tie fluttering in the breeze. He cursed again. Why couldn’t people put their shit in the dumpster instead of leaving it for him to pick up?

As he pushed the first dumpster to the side, he noticed his father getting out of the truck and heading toward him. “What’s going on?”

“There’s a bag here that needs to go into the dumpster,” Noah called out as his father pulled his undershirt up to cover the lower part of his face.

“Smells like something’s dead.”

Noah reached down to lift the bag. “Whatever it is, it’s damn heavy.”

“Probably a deer or something. I’ll help you with it.”

Noah untied the yellow plastic strip. A sickening odor rushed at him thick and pungent, and he felt bile rush to his throat. He struggled not to vomit. Opening the garbage bag to the sunlight, he looked inside into the face of a young woman who lay in the bag, wide-eyed, with her throat cut ear-to-ear.

Chapter Three

Deputy Gail Sawyer was the first to arrive on the scene with sirens screaming and lights flashing. A janitor smoking a cigarette lingered near a set of dumpsters sitting alongside the building. She parked alongside a garbage truck and then leaped from her vehicle. The distinct odor of death assailed her senses.

“Go back inside!” She barked at the janitor as she pointed at the door. “This is a crime scene. Unless you’re a witness, get your ass out of here.”

He went inside as a young man in a yellow uniform headed toward her. An older man in the same type of uniform sat on the ground on a slope facing the Wabash River, looking very pale and wiping his mouth with a white rag. Looking the younger man over, she saw “Roberts Sanitation Company” embroidered on his shirt.

“Did you call this in?”

“Yes. I’m Noah Roberts.” He steered her attention to the ditch. “That’s my dad, Mason, sitting over there. I found a body wrapped in plastic wedged between the first and second dumpster.”

“Did you move or touch anything, Mr. Roberts?”

He shook his head. “Just touched the plastic to pick it up so I could toss it in the dumpster. It was too heavy, so I opened the bag to see what was inside. That’s when I saw the girl.” Pale and visibly trembling, he weaved a little and Gail grabbed his arm to steady him. Been there, done that. The first time she’d seen a dead body, she’d nearly passed out and couldn’t eat for a week.

As the first uniformed officer to arrive on the scene, Gail realized the importance of her performance. Her ability to secure the scene and record events in her report could mean the difference between a successful prosecution, or a vicious criminal going free. She was working toward a detective badge. That meant no mistakes.

“Show me where the body is.”

Noah led her to a set of three dumpsters. The body lay between the first and second dumpster. “If you don’t need me, I want to go check on my dad.”

“Sure. But don’t leave the area. The detective in charge is on his way. He’ll want to ask you some questions.”

Gail had almost reached the plastic bag when she heard the skidding of tires close behind them. Her supervisor, Sgt. Cameron Chase, had arrived, with Deputy Larry Rice in a patrol car right behind him.

Cameron turned to Deputy Rice, who was getting out of his car. “Get your crime scene tape and secure the scene. No one gets inside the tape. Including other deputies. No one disturbs this scene. If the media arrives, make a barrier at the entrance road and keep them behind it.”

Approaching Gail, he pointed to the two garbage men. “Who are they?”

“The younger one found the body.”

Cameron slipped on a pair of latex gloves. “Anyone else around?”

“When I arrived there was a janitor, but he’s inside the building now.”

Cameron bent down and opened the bag to see the body inside. The young woman’s face was a grotesque mask frozen in terror, her eyes and mouth gaping open.

“Gail, get the coroner and crime scene technicians out here pronto. I’m not putting any trace evidence in jeopardy by searching the bag for an I.D. We can get that later from the coroner or crime scene techs.”

Carefully, Cameron walked around the dumpsters. Gail joined him after she made her calls.

“Is it odd to you that he’d dump the body in such a public place?” Gail asked.

“This is not where the murder occurred. The victim’s throat is cut, which means a lot of blood, and I don’t even see a drop. He chose this place to dump her body. It’s almost as if he wanted it found. I mean, this county is filled with wooded areas and agricultural farms. He could have buried the body in a shallow grave and it might have taken us months or years to find it.”

“Why would a killer want a body found quickly? It seems to me he’d want to buy time to get away. The sooner the body is found, the sooner we start investigating.”

“Not sure. Maybe he wanted the body found to send a message to us. He thinks he’s smarter than we are and doesn’t think we’ll connect the dots. He wouldn’t be the first sociopath to make that mistake.”

Gail retrieved her cell phone and began taking photos of the crime scene. “Did you recognize her?”

“Not sure. The body looks like it’s in pretty bad shape. I did notice she was a teenager with brown hair, which could be any one of the young girls that’s in my missing persons file.”

Indicating a surveillance camera mounted near Macy’s back door, Gail said. “Silent witness. We may get lucky and the crime was recorded.”

Chapter Four

Dr. Bryan Pittman, Shawnee County Coroner, waited patiently in his autopsy room for Cameron to arrive. He stood over a stainless steel table where the body of the young woman found in the dumpster lay under a white sheet.

His job was done. He tried to keep his mind compartmentalized, focused on the work itself, and not on the dead body of a girl around the same age as Hailey Adams. Lord knows Hailey had given him fits since he started a relationship with her mother, Mollie, but he had grown to love her—teenaged angst and all. There was nothing he wanted more than to marry her mother and become Hailey’s father.

Not that she wanted a dad. Mollie’s first husband had died in an accident when Hailey was just a baby. The only man who had come close to fathering Hailey was Cameron Chase, who had dated Mollie. But that was in the past—before Bryan and Mollie had fallen in love. Sgt. Cameron Chase, head of the County Sheriff’s Major Crimes Unit, was one of his best friends, and why Cam hadn’t told him that he and Mollie were involved was a mystery that he hadn’t solved. He kept waiting for the right time. But was there a right time to tell your friend that you were head-over-heels in love with his ex?

Bryan checked his watch and surveyed his surroundings. A walk-in refrigerated room was to his left, kept at a constant temperature near forty degrees Fahrenheit. His autopsy room was tiled for cleaning and disinfecting, and had a stainless steel operating table in the center. The scale for weighing body parts hung from the ceiling over the table. There were stainless steel trays, pans, scales, sinks, and tables, making cleanup easy. His staff did a good job keeping the room spotless, probably for self-preservation. The odors would be obnoxious if they didn’t. Even with sterilization, the smell of human decay lingered in the room, but he’d developed the ability to ignore it and focus on the job at hand.

“Good morning, Dr. Pittman.” Alvin Asher, one of his assistants, came into the room to deliver a set of sanitized instruments. Most of his staff considered Alvin a nerd, complete with black-rimmed glasses and an ever-present set of ballpoint pens in the pocket of his lab coat. He was a good-humored young man who deflected teasing from his co-workers with ease. What kind of cruel joke was it to name your kid ‘Alvin,’ especially in an era when ‘Alvin and the Chipmunks’ were popular? It couldn’t have been easy for Alvin growing up, having to deal with constant jokes about something he couldn’t change. Bryan had respect for Alvin, and had no doubt he would make an excellent coroner someday.

After Alvin left the room, Bryan took a quick glance at the instruments he’d delivered. There were a couple of Striker saws for ripping bone, suturing materials, saws, knives, and scalpels. Nearby was a tape recorder Bryan would use to dictate his findings during the next examination.

“Hey, hope I’m not late. In case I am, I brought a peace offering.” Cameron walked into the room, holding up a white bakery bag and wearing a wide smile.

“Let me guess. Mollie’s chocolate, chocolate-chip muffins. In that case, all is forgiven. Before we get started, were you able to view the tape from that surveillance camera at the mall?” Bryan watched as Cameron rubbed Vicks VapoRub under his nose.