The Watched (CSI Reilly Steel #4) (24 page)

‘
I take it that’s a film you’ve seen.’

He didn’t want to have to start all over again with another writer, but time was growing short, especially if someone had figured out the connection between
Sheldon’s disappearance and the murders. There’d been nothing in the news about a connection, but the Maestro couldn’t risk it. Being questioned twice in the last week had made him suspicious of just how much was known.

‘I’ll do it.’
Sheldon’s shoulders slumped. ‘Just tell me what you want.’

‘Very good.’ T
he Maestro could feel the grin spreading across his face. It was time to begin the next phase of his plan. Next time he wouldn’t need to use someone else’s work for the investigators and detectives.

He
could use something entirely original.

CHAPTER 27

‘
Where is everybody?’ Reilly asked as only a couple of days later, following a frantic call from Captain Harvell, she and Daniel approached yet another crime scene. The killer was now seriously escalating and the department was panicking.

‘
I think a better question is why they had to put up a tent around the body.’ Daniel sounded like he didn’t want to know the answer to his own query.

The
dread grew with each step that took her closer to the sterile white tent. It reminded Reilly of the quarantine areas she’d seen in movies, which of course was what made it particularly frightening with this serial killer. As Detective Reed approached them, she could see his grim expression even in the dim evening light. She really didn’t want to hear what he had to say.

‘
Please tell me our killer didn’t decide to go with a scene from
Outbreak
or
Contagion
this time.’ Daniel spoke as soon as the detective was close enough to hear. ‘I’m not really that fond of quarantine.’

‘He
didn’t put that up. We did,’ Detective Reed stopped in front of them rather than falling in alongside them, forcing both to stop too.

Alarm bells started to go off in
Reilly’s head. Whatever was inside that tent had to be more graphic than anything the authorities had seen so far. And since they’d already had one person torn in two, another boiled, someone melted by acid and a face demolished, Reilly was positive that she didn’t want to know what lay inside the tent.

A
nd she certainly didn’t want to see it.

The detective went on.
‘Trust me, this is one we don’t want reporters sneaking a picture of. We’ve got a perimeter set up, but figured better safe than sorry.’

‘
Is that where all the uniforms are?’ Reilly asked. She scanned the area again, seeing only the faint outlines of people at the edge of the park.

‘
We’ve got a few at the entrance to the tent, but everyone else is making sure no one gets close.’ Detective Reed ran his forearm across his forehead. ‘Not that anyone wanted to be near this.’

Reilly
’s unease ratcheted up a notch. She’d never seen a detective sweat quite so much, at least not in this way. Compared to the 105-degree day, the night’s low 90s was nothing for Florida. This wasn’t normal perspiration from the heat, this was something else.

‘
What’s in there, Detective?’ Daniel asked, his tone suggesting that he didn’t want to know any more than Reilly did.

And he’d seen a lot in his fifty-odd years.

‘Have you ever seen the movie
Braveheart
?’ Reed asked. ‘You know how they keep the camera on Gibson’s face and hands during the execution scene?’ He pressed the sleeve of his jacket against his lips and didn’t say any more.

Reilly
heard Daniel swear, but was unable to say anything herself. She’d always hated that movie. It was great up until the ending, whereupon her imagination had filled in the blanks and made her ill for days.

She still couldn’t watch it
, just because she knew what would be coming. It was a scene she always thought of when she heard people talk about how kids today were desensitized to violence. Executions like that back then had been a form of public entertainment.

Apparently, the
Maestro shared the same twisted mentality as the people of that particular era.

Reilly
inhaled deeply through her nose, just close enough to catch a whiff of decay carried on the night breeze. She was prepared. She could do this.

And she continued to tell herself that as she
and Daniel followed the detective to the tent.

‘
He’s taken more victims in two weeks than most serial killers do in their entire lifetime and we’re no closer to catching him now than we were when he started.’ Mark Reed was pacing, but Todd ignored the detective, choosing instead to focus on the trace analysis he was running from the
Braveheart
murder scene. Everyone knew the senior investigator’s habit of pacing and ranting when he was frustrated.

‘You and Julie mak
e any headway with the film festival people?’ Bradley stood and cracked his back. He’d been hunched over his microscope.

Reed
sank into his chair and tossed a nearby empty Chinese food box into his trash. ‘Complete dead end from what I can see. As is what happened to that screenwriter.’

‘Actually . . .
I may have something on that,’ Emilie’s voice was soft.

Todd
started. He’d almost completely forgotten about the redhead in the corner.

While she was always quiet
, the last few days – especially that
Wizard of Oz
scene – had really taken a toll. Her smile was a shadow of its former self and, like the rest of the investigative team, lines of weariness showed at the corners of her eyes. She dutifully put in her time, staying over whenever she was asked, but the joy that had been on her face the first time Todd had met her was gone. Was it this sense of shared horror, he wondered, that had recently brought her and Bradley together?

‘
That strange splinter that you found in the alley,’ she said to Todd as all eyes turned toward her, ‘it’s amber.’

‘
Amber?’ he echoed. What was amber doing in the alley outside a Florida hotel?

‘
Actually, a really rare form of amber,’ Emilie clarified. ‘Only available from a handful of places in the country.’ She held a piece of paper out to the detective. ‘I made a list. The closest one to here is in Miami.’

‘Thanks
. I’ll go call Julie.’ Reed ran his hand through his hair as the technician went back to her station. ‘The DA’s all over the department for not having found this psycho yet. But at least the media outcry about the murders is forcing the department to split resources more evenly between that and the Sheldon thing now.’

‘
No ransom demand for Sheldon yet?’ Todd had been concentrating so much on the murders that he hadn’t paid any attention to the missing screenwriter case since returning from the crime scene a few days earlier.

‘Nothing.’
The detective shook his head. ‘As much for the daughter as for the negative publicity, they’re telling the public that Sheldon’s still considered a missing person, but word is the department is looking for a body, not a survivor.’ He headed for the door. ‘Thanks again for this. Keep me updated if you find anything else.’

As the
detective exited the lab, Todd spoke up, giving voice to the theory that had started to bounce around in his head. ‘There was nothing in that alley that indicated a murder. Not really even any signs of a struggle. A small amount of blood. No bone fragments, evidence of a shooting. Nothing to suggest a body had fallen. Sheldon wasn’t killed in the alley,’ he said.

‘
But why would a kidnapper take someone like Drew Sheldon only to kill him somewhere else?’ Bradley asked. ‘It’s not a matter of money because there’s been no ransom. And it’s not like middle-aged men are targeted for sex crimes, at least not in the kidnapping sense.’

‘
Then why snatch Sheldon in the first place?’

A curse from the other side of the lab drew everyone’s attention, effectively ending the conversation about the missing writer.

‘Sorry,’ Peni apologized. She’d been putting in almost as many hours as the investigators, running traces on five different computers. ‘I thought I had the slippery little weasel, but he bounced his signal again. There’s no way that he saw me coming because two others changed . . .’ She stopped.

‘
What?’ Bradley asked, sitting up straighter.

‘
Three of them changed even though I was only getting close on one.’ Peni frowned. ‘Why didn’t I see it before?’

‘See
what?’ Todd glanced at Bradley but he looked just as confused.

‘
He’s using a routing program to change the origin points on each feed. I didn’t catch it because they weren’t using any distinguishing pattern that I could see. Too many variables.’ Peni turned to Todd and Bradley. ‘The program alternates when it bounces the signal to another server. Maybe three minutes the first time, nine the second, fifteen the third. Another may be set up to switch every four, eight and sixteen minutes.’

‘
So each feed has its own set of instructions as to when it changes the signal.’ Todd frowned, not sure if he was understanding correctly. He was good at research and understood the machines he used on the job, but any sort of intricate computer work was beyond him.

Peni nodded.
‘Because the amount of time between each shift change is based on that feed’s particular algorithm, it looked like they were all changing randomly – as if a person were doing it rather than a program.’ Her voice took on an admiring note. ‘Pretty smart.’

‘
Does this mean you can’t trace it?’ Bradley asked.

‘
Please,’ Peni scoffed. ‘I said it was pretty smart, not up to par with me. All I need to do is pick apart the signals, and search for the commonalities between the different feeds.’

‘
Well, you’re soon going to have another feed to add to your trace,’ Detective Reed announced as he re-entered the lab, his tone jaded. ‘A jogger in River Park just found a decapitated female.’

‘Another decapitation?’ Todd couldn’t believe what he was hearing. First
Braveheart
,
now . . . what?

Bradley nodded at Todd to go, who dutifully grabbed his things.

‘Am I the only one,’ Emilie asked, as he headed for the door, ‘mentally going through other movies featuring decapitations and wondering what the hell you’re going to find now?’

‘Same here
.’ Todd exhaled heavily. ‘I’m starting to wish I hadn’t watched so many violent movies growing up. Or,’ he frowned as he recalled the Wicked Witch’s horrible demise, ‘any movies at all.’

CHAPTER 28

‘This guy’s really starting to piss me off,’ Detective Sampson greeted Daniel and Reilly as they ducked under the crime scene tape. ‘This is a weird one.’

‘
How can it get any weirder than what we’ve already seen?’ Daniel asked.

Reilly wasn’t sure s
he wanted to know, and the female detective didn’t answer, just stepped aside so she and Daniel could see the body.

Well, that was new
. . .

The victim had been a tall red
head, but that wasn’t what made this so strange. The opulent dress of red velvet not only didn’t belong in a city park, it didn’t belong in this century. The way the body had fallen into the grass had prevented the majority of the dress from becoming too . . . messy.

The same, however, couldn’t be said for the head. Half of the woman’s auburn hair was caked with
blood and her fair skin, chalk-white in death, was in startling contrast to the dried blood on her face.

‘
What in the world?’ Daniel stopped short.

Reilly kept walking, trying to stay out the way of Todd, who was already on site and processing the scene. He nodded a terse greeting as she
skirted the pool of blood, approaching from the victim’s feet. A pair of ugly, old-fashioned shoes peeked out from beneath the full skirt. Reilly’s eyes narrowed as she scanned the costume. Something about this looked familiar.

When it clicked, she swore under her
breath and straightened. She knew why she recognized the dress. ‘It’s Mary, Queen of Scots.’

‘
What?’ Todd paused from photographing the victim’s head. Seeing an antiquated costume on a decapitated victim may have been a bit strange, but it was hardly on the level of the other things they’d seen from this killer.

‘I try not to watch too many horror movies,’ Reilly took a step to the side to allow him a clearer shot of the torso. ‘But I’ve always liked historical films and books. Particularly those about English royalty.’ She motioned back to Daniel.