The Stranger You Know (26 page)

“And you’re not grumpy? You, who needs his solid eight hours to function?”

“Some things are worth losing sleep over.”

A small smile curved Claire’s lips. “I’m honored.” She gave a huge yawn. “Also half-dead.”

“That’s because you ravaged my body.”

“Me? I think you’ve got that backward. My body aches in places it never knew it had.”

Chuckling, Ryan pulled the blanket up around them and settled Claire by his side. “We’ll call it a draw, okay?”

“Okay.” She was already drifting off.

“Good night, Claire-voyant.”

“Good night, techno-whiz.”

* * *

Casey’s cell phone rang.

She felt Hutch tense up next to her even as she jolted awake.

Her gaze fell on the alarm clock on her nightstand—4:35. That could mean nothing good.

She grabbed the phone, looking at the illuminated screen. Another blocked call.

Her insides went cold.

“Who is this?” she demanded.

“It’s me, Red.” The scrambled voice rasped against her ear. “But you already knew that.”

“What do you want?”

“Didn’t your psychic come through for you this time? I guess not. Too bad she slacked off. This one was worth watching.”

“Who was it? Who’s the girl?”

“Let’s just say that your next family get-together is going to be short a member.”

Casey felt as if she was going to vomit. “Tell me who your victim was,” she managed.

“It was obvious she had your blood running through her veins. Feisty little thing. She put up quite a fight. That made the whole experience better. It was the best one yet.”

“You bastard.”
Casey had jumped to her feet, gripping the cell phone so tightly her knuckles had turned white.

“Don’t spend too much time grieving, Red. You’re next. Start saying your goodbyes.”

The line went dead.

Chapter Twenty-Seven

Casey stared at the phone for a long moment before turning to Hutch. “It was one of my relatives.”

Hutch rolled off the bed and went directly to her. He gripped her shoulders tightly, calming and steadying her all at once. “Let’s figure out who. We know the victimology. Who in your family is a redheaded female, younger than you—probably late teens to early twenties—most likely living within a reasonable driving distance of here?”

“I have a small family.” Casey was still reeling with shock. “And we never see one another. There was some kind of falling out between my mother, my aunt and my uncle years ago. I don’t even know what it was about. But I never got to know my cousins. And my father has no family at all.”

“Small means less work for us. We’ll go through every family member, estranged or not. Start with the nucleus.”

“There’s me, my brother, my sister and my parents.”

“Kids?”

“My brother and sister-in-law have one—a son. My sister and brother-in-law opted not to have kids.”

“Move on to your aunt and uncle,” Hutch said. “I know you don’t have relationships with them. But let’s review their kids.”

Casey frowned. “My aunt and her husband live in Boston. They have a son and a daughter who live near there, too.”

“Daughter’s age? Description?”

Casey frowned again. “I haven’t seen her since I was in my teens. Her name’s Allison. She’s either a year older or younger than I am. And she’s got short black hair.”

“So if she has kids, they wouldn’t be teenagers.”

“No.” Casey shook her head. “And her brother’s younger than she is. No spouses. No kids.”

“Move on to your uncle.”

“My uncle is the major outcast of the family. He and his wife moved out to Seattle. I think their two daughters live there, too.”

“Daughters?”

“Yes.” A niggling thought popped into Casey’s mind. “My uncle’s the baby of the family, so his kids are a lot younger than I am.”

“How young?”

The color drained from Casey’s face. “College age.”

“What can you tell me about them?”

“I don’t remember.” Casey drew a hand through her hair. “But I’ll call my mother and find out. Falling out or not, she keeps tabs on everyone.”

She reached for her phone and punched in her mother’s number.

Five minutes later, she disconnected the call. Her hands were shaking. “My cousins are in college, like I thought. They’re both girls, and both redheads. Maggie is twenty and goes to Williams. Trish is twenty-one and goes to Princeton.”

“Let’s run with that.” Hutch snatched up his own cell phone. “You track down one. I’ll track down the other.”

It didn’t take long to discover that Maggie had spent the night out with a bunch of her friends—and that Trish was nowhere to be found. Not a single one of her friends had seen her since she left for the library early that evening.

Hutch called the Princeton police department so they could begin a localized investigation and search.

But both he and Casey knew that wasn’t where the body would be.

Even before making the painful call to her uncle and aunt, Casey called Marc.

“Yeah, Casey,” he answered, instantly alert.

“I got a call from the killer.” She went straight to the point. “He said there’d been a new victim and that she was a member of my family. Hutch and I made some calls. My twenty-one-year-old cousin Trish is missing. She’s a student at Princeton. No one’s seen her in hours.”

“I’ll get a hold of the guys I know in the Sixty-second.” Marc referred to the police precinct that serviced the Bensonhurst section of Brooklyn. “They’ll contact the other precincts already involved in this case. Hutch will call in the Bureau’s New York field office. The more law enforcement we have out there searching, the better.” The muffled sounds in the background told Casey that Marc was getting dressed. “We don’t need to guess. The body’s somewhere in Bensonhurst.”

* * *

Trish’s lifeless body was found stuffed behind a trash can between two apartment buildings on 79th Street.

Casey and Hutch were already in Bensonhurst, working with the FBI, when the call came in. Casey took off by foot, racing to the crime scene before anyone could stop her. She pushed her way through the crowd until she reached the spot where the medical examiner was squatting down, examining the body.

“Oh, no,” Casey whispered, staring at her cousin. Even if she hadn’t pulled Trish’s Facebook photo, she’d know her. The family resemblance was undeniable.

Trish was crammed inside a canvas tarp, her head drooping awkwardly to one side, a chunk of her hair cut away. Stripped naked, her body was battered from what had obviously been a brutal rape. Her throat had heavy bruises on it—the signs of a vicious strangulation. Some of those bruises were hidden beneath the red ribbon that was neatly tied around her neck. In the center of the bow, two locks of hair had been tucked, side by side, at the base of her throat. And lipstick had been carefully applied to her mouth.

This time, Casey couldn’t control herself. She turned and leaned over the garbage pail, heaving until there was nothing left inside her. Shoulders still bent, she dragged air into her lungs, tears pouring down her cheeks.

Hutch came up behind her, gently rubbing her back in an effort to soothe her. There was no point in telling her it was all right when it clearly wasn’t. Casey’s cousin—a vibrant young woman with her whole life ahead of her—had been horribly violated and murdered. There were no words to make that reality go away.

“There was more than one assailant,” the M.E. announced, studying the strangulation welts. “They used gloves, but there are two sets of different size finger and hand marks on the body.”

“Glen Fisher.” Casey heaved again. “He did this to Trish, together with the other offender. They both... Oh, God.” She wrapped her arms around herself, shivering uncontrollably.

“Also, these two hair samples didn’t come from the same body,” the M.E. continued. “That’s visible even to the human eye. But we’ll have them analyzed for DNA evidence.”

“If the killer is following his usual pattern, one lock of hair belongs to our previous victim, Deirdre Grimes,” Hutch said. “I don’t know about the other.”

“Well, it isn’t the victim’s,” the M.E. told them. “The shade of red is different.”

The shade.
Something about that was bothering Casey. She forced herself to turn around and stare directly at her cousin.

“Her lip gloss,” Casey said, her voice hoarse and unsteady. “It looks exactly like the shade I wear. Can you have it checked?”

“Of course.” The M.E. rose to her feet. “Do you have a sample of yours with you?”

“Yes.” Casey dug through her purse, and came up with a tube of pale peach lip gloss. “Here. Check it against Trish’s. Then compare it to the lipstick on all the bodies. If it’s a consistent match, this whole lipstick thing is more than just an arbitrary fetish.”

“It’s yet another link to you,” Hutch said. He studied Casey’s expression, and recognized that she was a nanosecond away from melting down. “Let’s go home.” He pulled her jacket more closely around her. “There’s nothing more we can do here.”

“I have to call my uncle,” Casey murmured, talking more to herself than to anyone else. “I have to let him and his wife know. What in God’s name am I going to say? That a psychopath who’s after me raped and killed their twenty-one-year-old daughter for practice?” Tears welled up in her eyes. “This is my fault. I never thought of Trish or Maggie when I wrote up that list. They weren’t even on my radar. I don’t care if we were estranged, I should have thought of my own family members. We should’ve had Patrick’s security friends assigned to them. If we had, Trish might still be alive.”

“Stop it, Casey.” Hutch hooked his finger under her chin and raised it, forcing her to meet his gaze. “There’s nothing to be gained by blaming yourself. Even if you’d thought of her as a possible target, Trish was a college kid. She couldn’t have been shadowed 24/7. Glen Fisher, Jack Fisher, whoever the hell is the offender, would have found a way. Now let’s go home. You’ll call your aunt and uncle in the car. And then you’ll call your team. It’s time to close ranks. The killer made it clear that he’s coming after you now.”

* * *

The entire Forensic Instincts team was already at the brownstone when Casey and Hutch arrived, thanks to the phone chain Marc had initiated. Hero went straight to Casey as she walked in, greeting her with that loving instinct animals possess when they know something is wrong.

“Hey, boy.” Casey crouched down to scratch Hero’s ears and stroke his silky head.

“Are you okay?” Claire was the first one out in the hall, anxiously searching Casey’s face for signs of strain.

It wasn’t hard to find them. Casey was a basket case.

“I’ll never forget the sound of my uncle’s voice when I told him,” Casey replied, rising to her feet. “He was shattered. So was his wife. Part of their lives was taken away. And what could I say? There were no words to ease the pain.”

Claire walked over to Casey and gave her a tight hug. “I’m so sorry. I didn’t pick up on any of this. I should have.”

There was something odd in Claire’s tone—a deep sense of personal guilt. Casey was about to ask her about it, when Ryan stepped into the hall behind her. The expression on his face, the protective way he hovered near Claire—both of those answered Casey’s question. They’d been together last night. Claire’s intuitive instincts had been directed elsewhere. And now she was beating herself up over it.

“Don’t do this,” Casey told her quietly. “I have enough guilt for all of us. But Hutch is right. Guilt won’t flush out Glen Fisher or the other offender. That’s going to require skill.”

“Yeah,” Ryan said. “Especially since they’re clearly on their way to you.”

Patrick joined them in the foyer. “This place is like a fortress. I doubled the number of security guards stationed outside the building. And if you
have
to go out—and I repeat,
have
to—it will be with two men, not one.”

“Thank you,” Casey said gratefully. “But we can’t keep taking a defensive stance. It’s time to be proactive.”

“You’re not baiting the guy.” Hutch’s words were a flat-out command.

“I wasn’t going to. I’m not suicidal. There’s got to be another way. Fisher is going to make me sweat. Let’s use that time to come up with something.”

* * *

Jack pedaled his bicycle past the Forensic Instincts building for the third time that morning. He’d pulled his Yankees cap down low and his jacket collar up high. So his face was pretty much concealed.

Glen had told him to do surveillance, to see what the deal was at Casey Woods’s office. The fucking building was like a prison, with two guards standing outside the door and who the hell knew how many more inside. Plus there was her tough, cop-looking boyfriend and that navy SEAL who’d pounded the shit out of his uncle. Neither one of them was going anywhere.

Getting to her was going to be like getting inside Fort Knox.

Jack rounded the corner and took a break. He swung off his bicycle and bought a pretzel and a soda from a local hot dog vendor. Pedaling around was a pain in the ass, but he was in too good a mood after last night to let it bother him.

Taking care of that girl with his uncle had really gotten his juices going. He’d forgotten how awesome Glen was at this. Not just the sex or even the strangling, but the head games, the taunting threats. Casey Woods’s cousin had been scared out of her mind even before they’d laid a hand on her. And then, taking turns, prolonging the end—it had been great. Dumping the body near that navy SEAL’s place had completed the ritual.

Now it was time for the real deal.

He took a bite of his pretzel, thinking that, while he hated to admit it, he was glad his uncle was with him on this one. Glen was creatively brilliant. He’d work out how to get past the barricade surrounding Casey Woods. He was probably planning it right now.

And then they’d be on their way.

* * *

Glen stared at himself in the bathroom mirror at Jack’s apartment. He’d automatically gone in there to shave, before remembering that he now sported a mustache and the beginnings of a beard—both dyed the same deep red as his hair. He could have picked any color other than his own dark brown. But red seemed like the most ironically pleasing choice. So he was now a bearded redhead with brass-rimmed glasses and a limp—thanks to the two-inch lift he’d placed in his right shoe.

The new and unrecognizable Glen Fisher.

Exiting the bathroom, he reached into his pants pocket and pulled out the second carefully folded scrap of paper he’d brought from Auburn. Like the previous scrap, it had a name and phone number on it. This one read Henry Rand. Rand was a pawnshop owner with a useful side gig: identity forging. He was supposedly the best, at least according to the Auburn inmate who owed Glen.

Glen was about to find out just how good he was.

The timing of all this had to be perfect, like a well-choreographed ballet. Glen was setting up an exit strategy. And Rand was a key player in keeping that strategy on track.