Red (25 page)

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Authors: Kate Kinsey

BOOK: Red
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So how had he found her here?
Oh, shit
.
You idiot! Marla told you to stay off the computer and to get rid of all your profiles!
Then the meaning of the message hit her, and she felt lightheaded.
You aren’t wearing the collar I sent you . . .
He was watching her.
Chapter 26
Lust’s passion will be served;
it demands, it militates, it tyrannizes.
—M
ARQUIS DE
S
ADE
 
 
 
 
T
he scene was beginning to feel a little too familiar. The surroundings were different, sure, and at least he wasn’t stepping in dog shit this time. But the blood and the body looked pretty much the same.
Except that he’d seen this body alive less than forty-eight hours ago.
Quinn Lee didn’t piss him off nearly so much this time. It was hard to hate a man missing a tongue and part of his penis.
“The woman who found him rolled him over,” Miles said, looking up. “He was on his stomach.”
“She thought he was still alive?” Griggs asked. “Talk about optimism. Where is she?”
“Paramedics took her to County. She’s in serious shock.”
“Shit,” Hanson said. “Poor Maggie.”
Poor Maggie, indeed. Hanson couldn’t feel anything but the most distant pity for Quinn Lee now—and, just perhaps, the smallest flicker of satisfaction tinged with relief—but he did feel sorry for Maggie. He supposed she must have loved Quinn, even if in the same complicated way Gina had. Maybe Quinn’s death was actually a lucky thing for Maggie; she would be spared the disillusionment that still lingered in Gina’s system like a toxin.
“TOD?” Griggs asked. “Best guess?”
“Sometime between midnight and three a.m.,” Miles said.
“What kind of photography studio is this, anyway?” Fortner was holding up a used condom with a pair of tweezers. “I’ve got three of these in the wastebasket.”
“All fresh?” Griggs grinned down at Quinn’s body. “Dude, you the man! Or I should say, you
were
the man . . .”
“Do you want me to test this stuff?” Fortner asked, staring in dismay at the assortment of sex toys and BDSM paraphernalia they found in one of the equipment cases. “All of it?”
“What in the hell do you do with this?” Griggs wanted to know, gingerly lifting a metal instrument with two gloved fingers.
“That’s a speculum,” Fortner offered. “A gynecologist uses it to open the vagina for—”
“Okay, okay!” Griggs dropped the speculum back into the open case. “Don’t really wanna know.”
“Yeah, sorry,” Hanson told Fortner. “But you can skip that one.”
Fortner was holding the tire thumper, still wrapped up inside the evidence bag it had been returned in.
“Gee, thanks, Hanson,” Fortner snorted.
Hanson’s cell phone began to vibrate. He fished it from his pocket and flipped it open.
“Yeah?”
“Where are you?” It was Gina, and Hanson’s heart sank. How did he tell her Quinn was their latest victim? How would she even feel about it?
“Um . . . I’m kinda in the middle of something right now. What’s up?”
“I got a call from Cherry. She got another e-mail last night.”
“She okay?” He stared at Quinn’s half-open eyes. The stupid little goatee was clotted with blood.
“She’s upset, but she’s okay. She wants me to come over, but since I’m not actually on the job, I thought you should come with me.”
“Uh-huh.” Hanson watched as Griggs went through Quinn’s pockets: a couple of wadded receipts, some change, and breath mints . . .
Wallet?
He mouthed at Griggs.
Griggs nodded.
Phone?
He mouthed again.
Griggs shook his head.
“Are you listening?” Gina asked in his ear. “You sound funny.”
Hanson sighed. He had never been any good at lying to Gina.
“I’m at Quinn Lee’s studio. Maggie found him dead this morning.”
Silence on the other end.
“Gee? You there?”
“Yeah. I’m here.” A pause. “I’ll wait for you in the morgue.”
 
He didn’t know what he expected from Gina. Hell, how was somebody supposed to react when an old lover was murdered?
He was relieved that she didn’t come out to the scene. But once Miles had the body cleaned up and on the table, she insisted on being there for the autopsy.
“It’s funny, isn’t it?” she asked softly.
“What?”
“How empty they look. Somehow that’s worse than the rest. That feeling that nobody’s home.”
Suddenly he felt a tickle along his spine. He’d seen lots of bodies, but now he tried to imagine looking at one so brutalized and remembering what it was like to hold
that
hand, to caress
those
shoulders . . . to kiss
that
mouth. To look into the eyes that you had gazed into a million times, only to see nothing at all looking back at you.
They said the body was merely a shell, but it wasn’t, Hanson thought. It was the thing you held on to.
He took Gina’s hand—shielded by the table, where Miles wouldn’t see—and squeezed. She squeezed back, but did not look at him.
“Same weapon?” he asked Miles. “Just like the others?”
“It appears that way,” Miles said shortly. “Something hinky about this one, though.”
“Hinky?” Gina asked, suddenly alert.
“I don’t know.” Miles shrugged. “I could be completely off base, but it seems like there’s more damage to the face, and look here—”
Miles pulled back the sheet to expose Quinn’s groin.
“Not so many cuts to the penis,” Miles concluded. “Or the rest of the body.”
“More bashing, less cutting?” Griggs asked.
Miles nodded.
“Maybe Quinn struggled more than the others?” Hanson suggested.
“Maybe the perp was interrupted,” Griggs offered. “Or he got spooked.”
Gina bolted out the door with a hand over her mouth.
 
Gina spent a long time in the ladies’ room, but when she came out, she was dry-eyed and professional.
“Autopsy finished?” she asked. “Anything new?”
Hanson nodded. She wasn’t looking him in the eye, so he decided not to piss her off by asking if she was okay.
“Pretty much the same as the others,” Griggs said. “Blood loss and BFT. Except that Miles thinks most of the cuts were postmortem.”
Gina glanced at him with her eyebrows raised.
“We didn’t find as much blood at this scene as the others.” Griggs shrugged. “He died quick, lucky bastard.”
“Maybe it was accidental,” Gina said.
“You mean the perp lost control, killed him sooner than he meant to?” Griggs asked.
“It’s possible,” she said. “Could explain the lack of as many cuts. Maybe it wasn’t as much fun for the perp once the victim was dead.”
For a moment, none of them spoke. Then Hanson remembered there was work to be done.
“We need to go talk to Maggie. She’s over at County.”
 
“I tried to see if he was still alive,” Maggie said. “I thought he could still be alive.”
Maggie’s voice was small and tight, but calm. They had given her a mild sedative after they’d gotten her blood pressure stabilized.
“Did Quinn use the studio a lot at night?” Hanson asked.
“It was his studio,” she said hollowly. “He worked all kinds of hours.”
“You sure it was just work?” Griggs said. “He use those eyebolts in the ceiling for . . . what? Hanging cameras?”
“He played there, too.”
“With you?” Hanson asked.
“With me. With others.”
“What time did you find him?” Hanson knew when she had called 911 and wanted to see if she slipped up with any unaccounted-for time.
“A little after seven, I think. I was in a rush because I knew I had to get the store open and there was an accident on I-440—”
“Hold on.” Hanson held up a hand. “I thought you lived upstairs with Quinn?”
“I do.” She closed her eyes and rubbed her forehead. “But on Sunday nights I take my momma to church, and last night I just stayed over.”
“Is this something you do a lot? Spend a night away?”
“Yes.” She sighed and looked away. “Especially when he’s got a date.”
“A date?” Griggs asked, his eyebrows rising.
“Quinn is polyamorous,” she said, tilting her chin defiantly. “That means accepting other lovers. It’s all out in the open. No lies, no cheating.”
Griggs grunted, and Hanson shot him a warning look.
“So you stayed away last night because you knew he had a date?”
“You agreed to this stuff?” Griggs shook his head. “Seriously?”
“Yes, I did,” Maggie said sullenly. “You can love more than one person at a time. Quinn needed other partners, and I wanted him to be happy. But I spent the night at my mom’s ’cause it’s easier than sitting upstairs listening to him fuck somebody else. There, I said it, are you happy now?”
“I understand about poly,” Gina said gently. “It’s not easy, especially if you don’t choose it. You had to accept it if you wanted to be with him.”
Maggie didn’t speak.
“You also didn’t want to be there,” Gina continued, “because sometimes he’d insist on bringing his other lovers to bed with him . . . and you.”
Maggie nodded and brushed away a tear.
“Yeah, you know Quinn, all right.” She laughed bitterly. “I’m supposed to be polyamorous, too, but I never wanted anybody but him.
“He was always pushing me to go out with other people. Sometimes I’d lie to him, say I had a date, just to make him feel better.”
“Do you know who his date was with?” Hanson asked.
Maggie shook her head.
“Sometimes he tells me.” Her fingers plucked at the edge of the blanket. “Sometimes he doesn’t. I don’t ask because I don’t always want to know.”
“Do you have any ideas about who it could have been?”
“No, except that it was probably some fresh meat.” She sighed. “If it was somebody I already knew about, he would have said.”
Gina’s phone rang “Superfreak.” She grabbed it from her hip and cut it off in mid-verse. She didn’t look at it.
“Check his phone,” Maggie said with another brittle little laugh. “He was always messaging or texting somebody.”
Hanson glanced at Griggs.
“We didn’t find his phone. Could he have left it upstairs?”
“No,” Maggie said. “He couldn’t live without the damned thing. He took it to the bathroom with him.”
Chapter 27
Who though he existed in the form of God
did not regard equality with God
as something to be grasped,
but emptied himself
by taking on the form of a slave
by looking like other men,
and by sharing in human nature
He humbled himself,
by becoming obedient to the point of death
—even death on a cross!
—P
HLLIPIANS
2:6
 
 
 
 
“Y
ou said Cherry called you?” Hanson asked Gina. “She got another e-mail from Kerberos?”
“She probably just needs some hand-holding, but I thought I’d go over there.”
“You two do that,” Griggs said gloomily. Hanson knew he got this way when a case dragged on with no new leads. “I’m gonna go talk to a couple of witnesses again. See if this maintenance guy rings any bells.”
Hanson and Gina stopped by the tech department, where someone explained the situation with Kerberos’s e-mails. The news wasn’t good.
“I should have just taken her laptop away from her,” Hanson said to Gina as he started the car.
“We made a copy of her hard drive. We didn’t
need
the laptop.”
“Well, we should have been monitoring her accounts.”
“We still don’t know that this is even related to our case. He could be just an asshole stalker. There are a lot more of those than there are serial killers.”
“I don’t like it.” Hanson shook his head. “All these people around Cherry turning up dead? It’s a hell of a coincidence.”
He was afraid to ask, but he did it anyway.
“How are you doing?”
“Don’t ask right now,” she said, her lips tightening. “We’ve got work to do.”
“All right. We gotta assume the killer took Quinn’s phone. Either he knows there’s something on it, or he thinks there might be.”
“Or he just wanted an iPhone,” Gina said.
“Quinn was straight, right?”
“Yeah. I mean, he would beat anyone, but sex?” Gina shook her head. “No, he didn’t like any dick but his own.”
“We found condoms in the trash. He was having sex with somebody last night. Either he had a date, the date left, and the killer got to him after, or . . .”
“Or the date was the killer.” She shrugged. “It’s possible.”
“Possible, but not likely.”
“Because a sweet little ol’ girl just isn’t strong enough?” Gina said in an exaggerated, sugarcoated accent. “Is that what you mean?”
“Don’t bust my balls. Some women may have the strength, but women in general just don’t kill this way.”
“No, women use poison or guns,” she said, staring out the window. “Or drive their kids into the lake in their minivans.”
“Maybe we’ll get lucky with the condoms. Otherwise we’re gonna have to interview half the city to find whoever he fucked that night.”
 
Cherry met them at the door in a T-shirt that looked as if she’d been wearing it for days.
“How could he have found my profile on Fet?” Cherry cried, pacing the living room. “I haven’t posted anything or sent e-mail to anybody—”
“Take it easy,” Hanson told her.
“Just about everybody has multiple profiles,” Gina said. “It wouldn’t take a genius to guess you had a profile on FetLife, too.”
“Who
did
know about your FetLife account?” Hanson asked.
“Well . . . just my friends. I mean, the ones I know in real time. I don’t use Fet for hookups or anything.”
“But you would have been listed as a friend on Kitty’s page?”
Cherry collapsed on the sofa and hugged a cushion to her chest.
“Oh, God, I’m so stupid!”
Hanson watched over Gina’s shoulder as she clicked the screen on Cherry’s laptop. She brought up Cherry’s profile—lillamb99—and clicked on the
Friends
link.
A page full of names—some with photos, some with icons—came up on the screen.
“There they are,” Gina said. “If he found Kitty, Paul, or Roger—or all three—he could have cross-referenced the friends listed on their profile pages.”
One of the photos caught Hanson’s eye:
Jason, 21 M Slave.
The buff boy with the piercings.
Gina clicked back to lillamb99’s profile.
“He may have sent the same message to every one of their friends,” Gina added. “In that case, he still has no idea which profile is yours.”
“But he’s been watching me! He knew I wasn’t wearing his collar!”
Hanson wanted to shake her again, then remembered she was too scared to think straight.
“Come on, Cherry,” Gina said. “Do you really think he expected you to?”
“Yes! He’s that crazy! You didn’t see the way he talked to me after—after. But you read the e-mails he sent! He thinks I belong to him!”
“I don’t think he’s watching you,” Gina insisted. “He said that to scare you. He doesn’t know where you are.”
“Well, he did scare me!” Cherry’s voice was becoming shrill. “Why haven’t you found him yet? Can’t you trace his e-mails or something?”
“We traced Kerberos’s e-mail to a computer,” Hanson said. “The problem is that we can’t find the computer.”
“How is that possible?” Cherry demanded.
“Tracing an e-mail only gives you the IP address it was sent from. His e-mails came from wireless Internet sites all over the city.”
“Can’t you find anything out from those?” Cherry deflated, looking like a bewildered child.
“He’s been using Wi-Fi from places like Starbucks, McDonald’s. Places where anybody can just walk in and use their laptop. We are checking security tapes to see if we spot anyone suspicious.”
Gina glanced at Hanson over Cherry’s head and Hanson shrugged. There was no use scaring her more by telling her just how long a shot it was that they would find anything.
One of the IP addresses belonged to a seventy-year-old retired schoolteacher. Kerberos had simply piggybacked onto her connection, just as he had several others.
They had people checking those neighborhoods, in case he lived nearby. But the locations were scattered all over. It seemed he was just driving around town, looking for access that couldn’t be traced back to him. Smart bastard.
Cherry buried her face in her hands and said nothing.
“You said he seemed intelligent,” Gina said. “Did he ever say anything that might make you think he worked with computers?”
Cherry sighed and raised her head.
“He told me how to get rid of cookies on my computer. I was complaining about the spam—”
“Give me your computer,” Hanson said.
“You can’t!” Cherry protested, beginning to cry. “I’m completely cut off from everybody and everything!”
“Look, we don’t know how smart he is,” Hanson explained. “The last thing we want is him tracing you
here
.”
Hanson and Gina got back in the car, where it had to be at least 100 degrees.
“Was that really necessary?” Gina asked. “Taking her laptop?”
“We know he’s at least computer literate, and smart enough to realize using Wi-Fi would be a dead-end to anyone trying to trace him. It’s safer just to remove any temptation that she’ll get back online and do something stupid.”
“So what now? Go verify Maggie’s alibi for last night?”
“I’m gonna get Brigham or Mercer to run that down,” Hanson said, rubbing his eyes. “I’m starving and you look exhausted.”
She didn’t argue.
When Griggs called, Hanson told him to meet them at a nearby twenty-four-hour chain restaurant where everything was sticky with maple syrup and grease.
“I hate this fuckin’ place,” he grumbled, sliding into the booth beside Gina and lifting a French fry from her plate.
Gina didn’t try to stab him with her fork. She’d hardly touched her plate. Hanson wondered if she was more than just tired and discouraged. If she was grieving, he could forgive her that. Quinn was dead, after all.
Then he noticed that Griggs was grinning around a mouthful of food.
“You found something?”
“I went to talk to the garage attendant who found Roger,” he said, then looked up at the waitress who’d come to the table. “Coffee, black. Steak and eggs, well done. Hash browns, scrambled and smothered.”
“Antone?”
“Antone doesn’t remember seeing any kind of maintenance guy, but he
does
remember seeing a white van with the name of some kind of air-conditioning service on it.”
“We didn’t see that on any of the tapes.”
“That’s because the van wasn’t in the garage,” Griggs said, stealing another fry. “Van was on the street. Antone saw it pulling away from the curb when he drove into the garage.”
Was it possible they’d gotten a real break? Hanson glanced at Gina, who still said nothing.
“Now, he don’t remember the name of the company. Just that it said ‘air-conditioning repair.’ Said it looked pretty crappy, like the company wasn’t doing too good.”
“Maybe it’s out-of-business,” Gina said, staring out the window at nothing. “Our guy coulda picked it up used.”
“Did Antone get a look at the driver?”
“All he saw was a baseball cap.”
Hanson tried to resist that little surge of excitement a cop always gets when something finally shakes loose. It could still be nothing. There must be dozens of beat-up HVAC vans being driven by guys with baseball caps in the city. But only one had been in the right place at the right time.
Then Hanson remembered the van idling on the street in front of the Inferno.
Thank God, it had been black.
But he still didn’t like it.
 
He liked it even less when he drove Gina back to her place.
“Fuck!”
she said as soon as she opened the door.
The place was a shambles. Books had been pulled from shelves, furniture overturned, and the big ginger jar lamp shattered on the floor.
“Shit, shit, shit!” Gina stepped over more broken glass to right a chair. “Goddamn it!”
“Don’t touch anything—”
“For Christ’s sake, Hanson! My fingerprints are already everywhere.”
“We still need to get CSU out here.”
She put her hands to her face, looking around through splayed fingers.
“Probably just a burglary,” Hanson said, rubbing her shoulders. He wasn’t sure he believed that, but what else could he say? “I’ll call. You see if anything’s missing.”
The techs dusted and photographed, while a uniform took down Gina’s statement.
It took a while for Gina to realize what was missing.
“My iPod’s gone, goddamn it!”
“You got insurance, right?”
“Insurance isn’t going to give me back all the music that was on it! Fuck!”
There had been a twenty-dollar bill on top of her dresser; it was gone, and so were the contents of her jewelry box.
“All they got was the cheap shit I wear every day,” Gina said, running her hands through her hair. “I keep the real stuff in the gun safe, and it hasn’t been opened.”
“You check the medicine cabinet? Sometimes junkies and teenagers break in just looking for drugs.”
The back door had been clumsily jimmied open. Hanson tried not to think of Cassandra’s back door, or the door to Robyn’s motel room.
“Everything’s still there,” Gina called from the bathroom. “Even a half-full bottle of hydrocodone. No self-respecting druggie would have left that.”
“So it was probably some kids,” Hanson said. “They grabbed what they could stuff in their pockets.”
“I’m still pissed about my iPod. And they broke my favorite mug, damn it.”
When the crew finally left, Gina sat on the edge of the sofa, her head in her hands.
“You’ve had a really shitty day. I’m sorry.”
“Now I’ve got to get that damned fingerprint powder off of everything.”
“Why don’t we just leave all this here for tonight. You come back to my place.”
She looked up and Hanson saw her getting ready to argue. Maybe she was thinking about Quinn, needing to grieve for him in private.
“We’re both exhausted,” she said, brushing the hair from her face. “And I have another appointment early in the morning.”
He’d been right about her absence that morning. She’d had a session with a paying client.
“Early morning is a popular playtime?” he asked, trying to keep his voice light.

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