What Burns Within (25 page)

Craig blinked as the light went on.

“Can’t get much done in the dark, can you?”

Hawkins was still displaying that nervous energy so different from his usual demeanor, pacing, reaching out to fiddle with things and then pulling his hand back, like he’d just remembered he was in a crime scene.

“I’m just going over the checklists, making sure we’ve covered absolutely everything.”

Hawkins nodded, moving to the window, looking outside. “They’re getting restless, you know. Wondering why you haven’t cut them loose.”

“Respectfully, I didn’t think that was my call.”

“Right.” Hawkins spun on his heel, scratching his head, his gaze darting across the floor and around the room, looking at everything but Craig. “You’ve done a good job on this. I shouldn’t have charged in. Do we have everything?”

“As far as I can tell. I’m going to do one more walkthrough with the lists, but from what I’ve seen already, if Vish’s nephew wet the bed when he was having a nap three years ago, we’ll have the hard evidence to back it up.”

Hawkins nodded. “Good.”

“Maybe you should go ahead, tell them to pack up.”

“You’re sure?”

“I think they need to hear it from you on this one, sir. Besides, every RCMP officer is trained in evidence recovery. I can handle anything that might turn up, and if I see something big that’s been overlooked, I’ll just call them back. Vish and Lori are staying with family, so there’s no rush.”

“You’re going to be here for a while then?”

“As long as it takes for me to be certain there isn’t something obvious staring me in the face that I’ve overlooked.”

Hawkins walked out of the room without another word. Within minutes, Craig could hear a number of doors closing, followed by the sound of motors starting.

He walked to the window. Hawkins was standing on the sidewalk as the rest of the officers drove away. Hawkins turned, looked back at the house, then trudged back to his own car.

What a nightmare. Craig’s eyes took in things about the room he hadn’t really noticed before, the symmetry of the wall hanging, the way the display of flowers and figurines on the cabinet seemed to suggest they’d been stolen from a feng shui coffee-table book. His gaze stopped on a framed photo and he moved toward it, then picked it up.

Vish and Lori, posed, smiling, looking like the picture-perfect couple, Lori in a flattering dress unlike anything Craig had seen her in at work, Vish in a suit.

What did Vish do? He realized that, in all the tension of the investigation and, because he hadn’t interviewed Vish himself, he wasn’t sure if that had been relayed or if he’d just forgotten. Not that it really mattered. Once they’d ruled out Dan Chalmers when his wife was raped, it didn’t seem as important to know about the husbands. Especially not once Stephanie Bonnis had been raped in the exact same way.

Those first few weeks, looking as hard at the family of the victim as anyone else…Craig walked to the kitchen on autopi lot. He couldn’t blame them if they hated the police.

Each partner’s alibi had been checked by uniformed officers who were assisting in the investigation. None of them had ever given any cause for doubt.

There it was, the ever-important list of contact numbers. His finger traced the list until it came to Vish’s work. The Coquitlam Fire Department.

Craig flipped his notebook open and wrote that down. He could feel the pins and needles sensations in his arms, prickling their way up to his shoulders and his neck, but he shrugged them off and moved to the bedroom to review everything one last time.

TUESDAY

“What do you want first? Red-light camera reports or the open abduction cases?”

Ashlyn didn’t answer, but kept fiddling with her pen as she rocked up and down in her chair, which produced a cry for WD-40 every time she rapidly shifted position. Tain leaned across their desks and snatched the pen from her hands.

“You heard what Sergeant Daly said yesterday. If you spent half the night worrying about getting into that crime scene that’s unfortunate, but not my problem. Right now I need your head in the game. We have to get through this.”

Her mouth twisted as her eyes narrowed. “I know. What did you start on yesterday? The abduction cases?”

He nodded as he sank down into his chair. “I’m halfway through, and I’ve only found two that are even remotely comparable. It isn’t looking good.”

“Do you want me to start on the red-light cameras, or would you prefer to get through these first for sure? After all, Burnaby expects this. They don’t know about Greg Galloway’s due diligence.”

“You go ahead with the camera records. If it starts to look like I might not make it through the pile, you can always put those aside.” He glanced at his watch. “It’s eight am now. We have until ten, right?”

“As far as we know.”

He pulled the file and opened it, still having the feeling that she was watching him. When he couldn’t shake it after a moment, he looked up.

“What?”

“Can I have my pen back?”

“Only if you promise to use it properly.”

She stood and reached over to the second pile tottering on his desk, pulling the folders toward her.

He tossed the pen back and turned his eyes to the file.

“Do you want an examination table and a blanket?” Craig frowned at Bill Burke, the coroner, who responded with a simple smile. “You look worse than some of my regular clients.”

“You get repeat business down here, do you?”

“Ah, the wit is intact. Though that’s the kind of comment I expect from guys like Tain, who has been giving me repeat business lately.”

“Perp couldn’t kill him properly the first time?” Craig asked, thinking back to a moment and time when it had taken all his willpower to hold back from wrapping his hands around Tain’s throat and throttling him.

“He’s on the child abduction cases.”

The words impacted like a physical blow. He’d just been so glad it wasn’t him. “Oh, I didn’t know. What have you got for me?”

“Well, this isn’t news. It was clear she’d been strangled at the scene, and we didn’t need to cut her open to prove that. I did check her fingernails and teeth for any indication that she fought back and got a piece of this guy.”

The look on the coroner’s face told Craig the answer. “Nothing?”

“Not a thing. She gripped the ties instead of her killer. All the threads we did get matched them perfectly.” He slid a file off the counter. “But we got something off the ties.”

Craig frowned. “Shouldn’t FIS be handling them?”

Dr. Burke shook his head. “Not right away. They came to me to establish conclusively that they matched the ligature marks around her neck, which they do. But we did find a bit of blood on the ties. See this?” He passed Craig an evidence photo. “The streaking runs across the cluster of ties, which indicates it should match someone who handled them this way, so not from some accident that her husband had or anything else. Whoever bled on them definitely had them wound together in the way they were when your victim was killed.”

“Well, that’s something. Anything physical connecting this guy to the scene will help.”

“Unfortunately, I can’t promise you DNA.”

Craig felt like he’d shrunk half a foot. “Why not?”

“It’s a really small sample, not much for the lab to work with. I’ve sent the material over already, and I phoned personally and stressed how important this is.” He scowled.

“Let me guess. You were yelled at about the fact that of course they know it’s important after spending half the night at another crime scene.”

“Something like that. If I thought it would do any good, I would file a complaint.”

“I wouldn’t. One of our officers was raped before he killed Mrs. Sandhu.”

The scowl vanished. “I wish I had something more for you.”

“Me too.” Craig took the file copy and walked out the door.

A quick glance at the table was all Ashlyn needed to persuade herself that she should keep her eyes down.

Sergeant Quinlan had gone all-out, with Tim Hortons coffee, donuts and assorted cookies. It looked more like a social club event than a status meeting on an active police investigation into abductions and murders.

She wasn’t quick enough to avoid catching a glimpse of the sour look that emerged when Daly walked in.

Tain moved around her, putting himself between her and Quinlan’s end of the table. Within seconds Daly sat down on the other side of her and got straight to business.

“How far did you get with your background checks?”

Zoe Mullins responded with what could only be described as a seething tone. “Julie Darrens was nine. She played the flute and took lessons from a teacher in Burnaby. She sang in a youth choir and was about to start grade four at Holy Cross Elementary. From all appearances she comes from a stable family, three older siblings, no hint at discord, and she was a Girl Guide. Nothing out of the ordinary at all.

“Isabella Bertini was ten. She also lived in Burnaby, was a Girl Guide, and was about to go into grade five at the Burnaby Fine Arts School. She loved to draw.”

“Same Girl Guide troop?” Tain asked.

“No such luck,” Eric Urquhart inserted, appearing indifferent to Zoe’s glare. “Different packs.”

“There’s no connection between the Girl Guide groups.” Zoe cast a slit-eyed look at her partner.

“Still, there’s always the possibility they could have been on some sort of weekend camping thing together, a rally that had a number of local packs involved,” Ashlyn said.

“Ashlyn’s right. You need to check that out,” Quinlan told Zoe, who clenched her teeth as she looked down at her notes.

As though this case wasn’t bad enough already…. Ashlyn felt Tain tense beside her. That sixth sense kicking in, knowing him as well as she did, she didn’t need to look at him to know what he was thinking.

Zoe spoke deliberately, carefully. “Not to dismiss that suggestion, but Taylor Brennen wasn’t a Girl Guide, and she was never in Brownies. So far as we can tell, Taylor’s life was spent shuffling between her mom’s, her dad’s and her Grandma’s house. The only other thing she did regularly was look after her younger brother. Nobody indicated she participated in any activities, and she attended Sacred Heart Elementary.”

There was silence at the table for a moment. Ashlyn resisted the urge to scratch the place on the back of her neck that always itched when she felt uncomfortable.

“We have three girls, living in three different regions. Different schools. Two were Guides but in different packs. Beyond their gender, that seems to be the only thing any of them have in common,” Tain surmised. “Any chance we could be looking for a school photographer or a substitute bus driver or someone that might have seen all of these girls?”

“It’s possible,” Eric said, nodding. “We can check that out.”

“Of course, it is August. If this guy saw these girls during the school year, why start snatching them now?” Zoe said.

“We’re grasping at straws to come up with a lead in this case,” Daly said. “It’s definitely worth checking potential school links. After all, we do have someone who seems to be comfortable moving from one region to another. There’s no geographic link or focal area he prefers. Substitute support staff for schools seems our best bet, and we should still follow up on the Girl Guide angle. It’s always possible that someone who had exposure to a number of girls through a Guide activity saw Taylor and just took advantage of the situation.”

“That’s right. We know the perp planned to grab Lindsay—” Ashlyn began.

“How do we know that?” Zoe said again, glaring at Ashlyn from the other side of the table.

“Video shows him moving behind her, making slight physical contact. Then the video shows her returning to the hallway to retrieve a necklace. We’re guessing somehow he unlatched the clasp to lure her back out there. He grabbed her and took off. The necklace was found outside in the back parking area, though the video clearly shows it on the floor in the hallway. Her parents confirmed it belonged to her.”

“It’s too big of a coincidence,” Tain said. “The technical guys called over this morning and said they’d blown up the images. Nothing tangible about our guy that we can work with, but still, we know he targeted Lindsay.”

“Isabella and Julie were both taken in close proximity to their homes, Lindsay from a place she frequented on a regular basis with her church.” Ashlyn glanced at Eric, sensing she had his interest, though it was clear she had nothing but Zoe’s scorn. “Taylor was taken from the fairgrounds. Not her home, not her neighborhood, not a place she could normally be expected to be at.”

“Are you suggesting that she might have been taken by someone else?” Eric asked.

Ashlyn shook her head, slowly at first, then more emphatically. “There’s no reason to believe that,” she said, hoping her cheeks didn’t betray the truth when she thought about what Tain had said to her less than twenty-four hours earlier. “All I’m saying is that Julie, Isabella and Lindsay seem to have been definitely targeted. Taylor’s abduction could have been more of an impulse.”

“In which case, it would be more critical to find a link between the other three,” Daly said. “It is possible Taylor’s abduction was a crime of opportunity.”

“And it’s also possible it was someone else,” Zoe said. “After all, this guy is taking his time, with more than two weeks between the first two abductions. Then more than a month goes by and he grabs two girls on the same weekend? That’s a big jump.”

“I think,” Tain said, “it’s most important that we examine all potential connections right now and keep an open mind. We don’t have enough evidence to be sure of anything. We don’t even have a specific abduction site for Taylor Brennen. We’d be foolish to rule anything out conclusively based on her not fitting the tenuous connection we’ve found so far.”

“If Taylor Brennen wasn’t abducted by the same person, this investigation should switch back to Burnaby and we should assume the lead on the case again,” Zoe said, her eyes narrowing.

“That would be premature,” Quinlan said. “Right now, Coquitlam is handling this case with our assistance. Surely you’ve not forgotten that the arson investigation seems to be linked to the abductions? All the arsons have been in Coquitlam. Are you prepared to take the lead on that investigation as well?”

Zoe’s cheeks burned and for a moment, she glared at Ashlyn as though Ashlyn was personally responsible for every hardship she’d ever endured in life. Ashlyn turned her gaze back to the file.

“Right, so the next logical step is looking at Lindsay Eckert and seeing if anything about her connects to Isabella and Julie, as well as pulling substitute support worker and teacher lists for the schools involved, and records of who did school photography or anything else that could tie in.”