The Watched (CSI Reilly Steel #4) (3 page)

Todd felt the sudden desire to try to put her back together, good as new, the way
you could with a toy, and he had to swallow around a lump in his throat. No one could ever put this poor girl back together. But he set his jaw; what he could do was piece together any clues he found to find the monster who did this, and help nail the son of a bitch to the wall.

He raked his thick
dark hair back from his face and thought, not for the first time, that he needed a haircut. Between that and the clear blue eyes and fine features he’d inherited from his mother, he’d earned the nickname ‘Pretty’ almost immediately. One of the reasons he got on with his partner, senior forensic investigator Bradley Ford, was that the 42-year-old never used the moniker. Part of it could’ve been that Bradley’s Italian heritage had given him fairly exotic looks that attracted quite a bit of attention too.

Todd raised the camera and started snapping photographs from every angle. He’d learned to detach himself from what he saw through the lens. If every time he had to document a crime scene he saw the body as a person, he would’ve quit long ago. But too detached was just as dangerous, he knew. His father – esteemed
ex-FBI criminal profiler Daniel Forrest – had taught him that.

So Todd
had learned over time to try and balance emotion and professionalism, yet now at thirty-six years old and ten years working with Tampa CSI, he still wasn’t sure he’d gotten that particular equilibrium right.

He
always took a few minutes when he was first on a scene to allow himself to absorb the shock and horror, and grieve for the victim. Then he shut down those emotions and studied the area like he was trained; as a scene with separate components. The dead person was no longer the body of a human being, but remains to be studied and analyzed.

Once he finished photographing, he retrieved a small glass vial from his forensic kit and dipped it into the bloody fountain water. He wiped the glass clean with a sterilizing wipe and stripped off his gloves, carefully depositing the wipe and gloves into a hazard bag. As he pulled a second pair of gloves from the toolbox, he idly wondered how many gloves his team went through in any given month. It depended on how many crime scenes they were call
ed to and how many of the team were on site. So far this month, things had been busy.

While his colleague
went over the body with tweezers, vials and bags of his own, Todd scoured the immediate area around the fountain for anything forensically interesting or important. He ignored the chatter of the local cops as he sought out and collected seemingly mundane items in the hope they would lead the chief investigators to the killer.

He and Bradley
took their time, doing everything by the book. They were meticulous and good at their jobs, and by the time all of the samples had been packed up in the CSI van and the corpse released to the coroner for autopsy, the pair had been at the scene for over two hours.

Mo
st of the cops had drifted away, the monotony of what the forensics team was doing boring them. Neither Bradley nor Todd paid them any mind. While Todd scoured further out in the hope of finding the murder weapon, Bradley sent their intern back to the lab with the samples to begin analysis. He then joined his partner in the hunt, Bradley’s dark eyes intense as they each studied every inch of the courtyard.

When Bradley’s phone rang, the senior investigator paused to answer it. He was good enough to talk and search at the same time, but Todd knew that his partner was to
o professional to take the risk – no matter how minute – that he might miss something.

Some people, it was said, wore their hearts on their sleeve but Bradley wore his feelings on his face. And now
, judging by the shift of expressions on that face, Todd knew the call was nothing good.

‘OK
, we’ll be right there,’ Bradley said into his phone before ending the call.

‘
Be right where?’ Todd asked, straightening. ‘We’re not done here yet.’

‘We are now.’
His partner was already moving. ‘Let the cops finish the canvass for the murder weapon.’

Todd had no choice but to follow,
still arguing as they made their way through the complex’s entryway toward Bradley’s SUV.

‘Don’t worry,
this is already looking like an open-and-shut case,’ Todd’s colleague continued. ‘Detective has an eye-witness who places two known members of the Russian mob at the scene, arguing with the victim. She was pregnant and seems the father wanted her to have an abortion. The witness heard one of the men say that if she didn’t, he’d give her one.’

Todd stopped short.
‘Are you serious? That’s just . . .’

‘
Despicable? Heinous? Sickening?’ When Todd gave him an exasperated look, Bradley said, ‘I could go on. I own a thesaurus. Monstrous? Deplor—’

‘
How can you be so flippant?’

Bradley’s eyes darkened
even further. ‘Department shrink says it helps us keep our sanity. Didn’t you get the memo?’

‘
Look, I just want to bury this bastard in forensic evidence so deep he’ll never see the light of day again.’

‘
Todd,’ Bradley’s voice softened and he put a hand on the younger man’s shoulder. ‘All joking aside, I know how you feel, but from what I’ve heard, I think you’ll have a much harder time finding a word to describe the scene we’re headed to now. Pure evil is what comes to my mind.’ He got into the SUV.

Todd stood for a moment, dumbstruck. Truth was, he usually made more
wisecracks than Bradley about the things they encountered day-to-day. His partner was right, it was a coping mechanism and, the way he saw it, a damn sight healthier than some of the other vices available to people in their line of work. But while Todd could find the dark humor in a dentist killed by his own drill, or a pimp beaten to death by a hooker, he paled at the thought of what his been-around-the-block colleague might consider ‘pure evil’.

When
he and Bradley arrived at their second crime scene of the day – this one just off a roadside close to the holiday town (and Todd’s old childhood haunt) of Clearwater Beach, at first he thought there were three corpses: one in the truck, one behind the truck and one by a tree. Two appeared small and he immediately felt his gut clench. He hated working cases involving kids.

As he climbed out of the SUV, he was trying to figure out what had happened. At first, it looked like the truck had crashed into the tree and the children had been thrown backward. Maybe they’d been in the truck bed? A parent driving recklessly
with kids in the bed of a pickup was certainly idiotic, heinous even, but evil?

Maybe if it had been intentional –one of those tragic murder-suicides. If so, it was a lot more creative than using a gun.

Todd took a deep breath before he and Bradley got any closer to the carnage. Wouldn’t do to look weak in front of the uniforms. In addition to being the partner of one of the best forensic investigators in his field, he had the added pressure of the Forrest name and reputation to contend with. Somehow, it made people automatically expect Todd to be smarter, tougher and more capable, as if his dad had discussed cases in detail with him since childhood.

When they were still a few yards away, Detective Julie Sampson stepped in front of them, her pretty face full of warning.
‘Watch out.’

‘
What?’ Todd started to ask, then noticed what the crabgrass had partially obscured. Someone had lost their lunch. ‘Who’s the rookie?’

Julie scowled. For a petite brunette with a baby face, she could look fierce
when she wanted to. ‘The officer who shot the man in the driver’s seat actually, Mr Insensitive.’

It didn’t take a genius to figure out who she was defending.
‘Not my fault your boyfriend has a sensitive stomach,’ he shot back.

Julie looked at him warily.
‘How’d you know I was talking about Ralph?’

‘
Word around the station is he’s a fast shooter . . .’

It took a second for the insulting innuendo to register, and when it did, Julie’s cheeks turned bright red and her temper flared.

Bradley had already moved on, leaving Julie’s partner, Mark Reed, to handle the situation. ‘Enough flirting, we have a serious situation on our hands here.’

‘
Flirting?’ Julie sputtered. ‘With him? I’d never . . .’

Todd let that slide since
, in fact, she had.
They
had. It was the oldest story in the book. Their eyes met, the attraction was instantaneous and they’d tumbled into bed just a few hours later. And that, of course, had led to ‘You never called. You said you’d call.’ Todd had tried explaining that he’d been in quarantine after being exposed to a toxic virus from a corpse he’d examined. It sounded like an excuse and she’d never forgiven him for it.

‘
Fact is, I wouldn’t lose my cool about shooting some moron driving like a maniac with his kids in the back of his truck.’ Todd didn’t bother to mention that he wouldn’t have been stupid enough to draw on an unarmed man in any case. There was a whole other department that would take care of that.

Julie’s indignant expression was quickly replaced by confusion.
‘What are you talking about?’

‘Those two kids.’
Todd gestured toward the remains.

‘
I think you’d better have a closer look,’ Mark said softly.

Todd squinted and saw the chains that Bradley was currently examining. Then the pieces clicked into place and he realized what had disturbed Bradley so much upon taking the call.

The remains weren’t in fact a couple of kids, but pieces of a single body torn asunder.

His jaw tightened.
‘Well then, Ralph should’ve cheered, not puked, after shooting the sicko who did that.’

‘You don’t get it, Todd.’
Julie’s eyes flicked toward the crime scene and then away. She’d seen quite a bit since joining homicide so the look spoke volumes. ‘The guy in the driver’s seat didn’t do this, but we didn’t know that at the time. The girl was still alive when we arrived. The truck started to move and Ralph did what he thought was right. He shot the driver.’

‘T
he way the driver was tied up, his foot was propped on the accelerator.’ Mark picked up the story. ‘When his body went limp, the accelerator depressed and . . . well, you can imagine the rest.’ He swallowed hard.

‘Shit
. . .’

As
Todd tried to visualize how it had all gone down, he followed Bradley to where the arms of the girl’s body – which had come apart from the torso – lay. But all thoughts vanished from his head as his gaze rested on the face of the victim. Her pretty visage was contorted, jaw still open in a silent scream.

And he immediately thought again about the little Russian doll.

‘Holly,’ he whispered, feeling the strength go out of his legs. He staggered, struggling to stay on his feet, then swallowed, fighting down the bile in his throat.

That caught Bradley’s attention. His head came up, pale eyes widening when he saw his face.
‘Todd?’

Todd didn’t answer. He couldn’t take his eyes off of the body, the familiar blond hair matted with blood and dirt,
mischievous sparkling eyes now horribly glassed over.

He turned and ran a few steps away, barely making it back to where
the other cop had vomited before contributing his own lunch to the mess. He looked up to see Julie Sampson staring at him, scorn evident on her face. He didn’t care.

Todd
put his hands on his knees and closed his eyes, before immediately opening them again, the image of that face seared into the back of his eyelids. All of the horror he’d felt at the other scene earlier, the anger that someone could do that to another human being, all of that paled in comparison to the myriad emotions racing through his body just now.

This wasn’t just some faceless, nameless corpse. It wasn’t even someone he felt sympathy for. This was
Holly. The chubby little girl with pigtails who’d begged him to push her on the swings on summer visits. The scabby-kneed, gawky eleven-year-old who always wanted to hang out with the closest thing she had to a big brother and was overjoyed when he’d taken up a permanent job in Tampa. The beautiful young woman who’d called only a few months ago to tell him that she’d met the man of her dreams. The little girl who used to adore playing with that babushka doll.

Todd’s
knees finally buckled and he didn’t try to stop himself this time. A part of him wanted to pass out, to not have to deal with this a second longer. But he didn’t faint, and he ignored the urge to curl up and let his grief overtake him. Summoning up a reserve of strength he didn’t know he had, Todd shakily pushed himself to his feet.

‘
Come on, man,’ Bradley asked as he strode across the sandy ground, his face unusually serious. ‘Not more than two minutes after you rag on a cop for losing his lunch, you nearly pass out yourself? I know this is bad, but what’s with the rubber chicken routine? We’ve seen more disturbing things in the drain of the locker room showers.’