Simon Says... Scream Page 5

  “What was that all about?” Rodney asked, as he walked toward her with two cups of coffee.

  She looked at him in surprise. “What’s this? I get served now?”

  “Why not?” He shrugged. “You’ve bought me a couple.”

  “That’s true.” At that, she picked up the hot brew gently and replied, “I just talked to the parole officer. The kid was apparently a model prisoner. While he was inside, he got his degree in English Lit and is looking to become a teacher.”

  At that, Rodney’s eyebrows shot up. “With a criminal record?”

  “Well, he was a minor when he was charged and convicted.”

  “Right,” he agreed, with an eye roll, “so everything gets expunged.”

  “Sealed, at least.”

  “Same diff,” he muttered. “I wonder where the morality is on those, you know? When you apply for a job and when they ask all those questions, like if you can be bonded or if you have a criminal record? What do you actually say if it’s been expunged?”

  “I guess he could say no. How crazy is that?” she added, shaking her head.

  “But then if he were to say yes, and then if they ask more about it, then go do a criminal record check, nothing will show up, so he just looks like a liar.”

  “Right,” she noted. “I hadn’t thought of it that way. The parole officer also said that he’d never done anything wrong. He followed all the rules and regulations, and, on his very last day, he walked out the door, saying he was innocent of all charges.”

  “Great, so we’re nowhere.”

  “Not necessarily. I do have his last known residence.”

  “Where’s that?”

  “Well, that’s the part I don’t understand. It appears he has moved back in with his parents.”

  “Interesting.”

  “Well, the kid served ten years, has been out for five more, so has got to be in his early thirties by now—yet somehow he’s still the kid to me, the kid who got caught killing his sister when he was only sixteen. And he’s stayed clean, as far as we know,” she muttered.

  “Interesting.”

  “Only the two siblings in the family,” she stated, “so, if the parents believe the son had nothing to do with her death, they must have welcomed him back with open arms.”

  “Of course. That’s what would give them a sense of family again.”

  “I did ask the parole officer about this because no way her torture and subsequent murder could have happened to her without some place where she could have been held for a period of time, right?” Rodney nodded. She continued. “According to the file, the police believed the original crime was actually committed in the family home.”

  “I’m not sure how that works.” Rodney frowned, looking through his copy of the file. “Looks like they sold that place and moved to a different one.”

  “Well, I sure as hell wouldn’t stay in the same place where I found my daughter murdered,” she muttered. Kate brought up the address where they used to live. “Look at that. It’s empty—currently slated for demolition.”

  Rodney nodded. “Looks like it’s part of a rezoning area for a commercial development. That house is going down, and some mall or something is going up in its place.”

  “Hmm.” She looked at her computer screen a moment longer. “I’ll call and see if we can get in there.” With that, she quickly dialed the number for the current property owner and explained who she was.

  The woman on the other end replied, “Well, the building is slated for demolition, but we probably won’t get to it for about three weeks.”

  “I’m looking for permission to go in and to take a look at the old crime scene.”

  “You really think anything will still be there?” she asked in avid fascination.

  “No, I don’t think so, but I do want to go take a look, just so I can see it myself.”

  “Why would you want to do that?” the woman asked in disgust.

  “You’d be surprised what we can think of when on the scene,” Kate replied.

  After a moment of hesitation, the other woman stated, “I have to clear it with my boss.”

  “Yeah, you do that. And who is your boss, by the way?”

  “I’m not allowed to say,” she answered, her voice turning cagey.

  Kate rolled her eyes at that. “Fine. Get back to me, please. I’d like to get out there today.”

  “If not today, then tomorrow.”

  “It has to be at least tomorrow.” With that, Kate hung up, turned, then looked at Rodney. “It is slated for demolition. This woman is looking to get permission from her boss.”

  He snorted. “I just printed out the family history, work, employment, everything else we had on the daughter.”

  “Good.” Kate nodded. “It’s always interesting when we have a case that connects to the current one because, right now, we only have the victim to go by. We’re still waiting for an ID on her.” Just then her phone rang. She picked it up, checked her Caller ID, and smiled. “Hello, Dr. Smidge. Do you have any news?”

  “Cherry Blackwell. At least according to the ID on the breast implant.”

  “Cherry Blackwell. Thank you.”

  “I’m sending through her file too,” he added. “She was given knockout drugs. The pain would have kept kicking her awake, depending on the dose he gave her, it’s cumulative, and it looks like she had quite a bit. But some of it’s already out of her system. I would suspect repeated doses,” he noted.

  “Good enough. I’m just waiting on your report, and thanks.” She hung up, turned, and looked at Rodney. “Cherry Blackwell. That’s our victim. The report is coming through now.”

  His computer dinged at the same time hers did, as the reports landed in their in-boxes. She looked it up.

  Rodney ran the information on her implant through the database. “We have the name of her doctor.”

  “With a doctor, we should get our victim’s address. No address on Smidge’s report.” She picked up the phone and called the office of the doctor listed.

  As soon as she explained who she was, the receptionist replied, “I’m sorry, but all the patient files are confidential.”

  “This patient is deceased,” Kate noted. “So we’re looking for an address.”

  The other woman gasped.

  “We have the breast implant number, but we don’t have anything else.” Frowning at the silence on the other end of the phone, Kate tapped on her desk. “So, if you have any contact information, we need it.”

  “Oh my.” The flustered woman rambled off an address and a phone number.

  Making her repeat it, Kate wrote it down. “Good enough. When was she last in your office?”

  “Two years ago,” she stated, “so I don’t know if the address and phone number are current.”

  “Her last visit was two years ago?”

  “Yes.”

  “Good enough,” she replied, before disconnecting the call.

  Part of the information provided was also the insurance number for the medical plan she had used for some coverage of the original visits. With that, Kate tracked down some additional medical data. “She’s twenty-eight years old, and the DMV still shows the same address,” Kate told Rodney.

  “Parents and two brothers, both back East. Address on Aspen?”

  She quickly checked through what she had. “It doesn’t look like it.”

  “You want to go to your address first or phone the family?”

  “We should phone the family,” she muttered, but she hated to. Those calls were always the worst.

  “I can make that call, if you want,” Rodney offered.

  She looked over at him and nodded. “Do you mind? That would be great. Find out if there’s anything or anyone in her life.”

  “I know the drill,” he added, with an eye roll.

  She smiled. “I know you do. It’s just habit.” She got up and refilled her coffee cup, while he made the next-of-kin notification call. When she returned to the bullpen, he was still talking in a low voice, trying to calm down the family.

  “I’m so sorry to bring you this news,” he repeated, “and any help you can give us would be appreciated.”

  Once the call was done, and he’d scratched down all his notes, he turned to share what they had told him. “One of the two brothers is deceased, leaving just the one sibling behind. All the family lives in Toronto.”

  “Interesting,” she noted, “so our latest victim had two brothers.”

  “The other brother had been deceased for ten years, from a motorcycle accident.”

  She winced. “Pretty hard to survive that kind of an accident.”

  “It happens,” Rodney said. “But, more often than not, they don’t.”

  She nodded. “Did they know anything about her current life?”

  “She was working as a model sometimes. Other than that, she had a reception job at one of the offices downtown.”

  “Which office?”

  He gave her the name, and she immediately typed it in.

  “Look at that,” she replied, with some glee. “The home address I have for her puts her just a couple blocks from this work address.”

  “A couple blocks?” Rodney asked.

  “Right.” Kate nodded. “So what are the chances that she was actually picked up at that location?”

  “Pretty damn good, I would say. But she’s wouldn’t have been held at the same spot,” Rodney noted. “All high-end businesses in that area.”

  She frowned, nodded, and added, “We need to talk to her boss.”

  “We do, indeed.” Rodney hopped up, looked at her, and grinned. “You and your coffee.”

  “I know,” Kate admitted, as she held her coffee cup. “Let’s give it ten, and then we’ll go.”
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  He nodded approvingly, sat down again, while picking up his own coffee and taking a sip. “According to the parents, there was no sign of a current relationship.”

  “Hmm, she was pretty, a model. Surely a beautiful woman like that had dates,” Kate added quietly.

  Rodney tilted his head. “The parents did say she had a bad breakup about a year or so ago. They gave me the name—a Tyler Bjornsson—but, as far as they knew, the two had no contact ever since. So, a bad breakup, but not necessarily a bad aftermath.”

  “Possibly, yes.” She typed in the name. “Did they give you any contact information?” she asked.

  “Nope.” Rodney shook his head.

  She looked at her screen and frowned. “Looks like he’s a day trader in Vancouver. … And look at that. His office is in the same building where she worked.”

  “Not the same company though, right?”

  She shook her head. “No, not the same company.” Needing his contact information, she wrote down what floor he was on and added, “Maybe we can talk to him at the same time.”

  “Sounds good.”

  She tossed back the rest of her coffee and mulled over the emails that continued to pour into her inbox. “I don’t know why people send emails all the time,” she muttered. “Didn’t they get the message?”

  “What message was that?” he asked in surprise.

  “I’m on a case,” she snapped, her eyes glaring, as she turned to look at him. “I don’t have time for the rest of this shit.”

  “What shit is that?”

  “Plenty of review stuff coming up.” She groaned. “And paperwork to fill out now that I am well past the three-month probationary period.”

  “You didn’t do that yet?”

  “Have I had time yet?” she countered.

  He grinned. “Well, you might try telling them that but don’t expect them to listen.”

  She groaned again, louder this time. “Okay, fine. I’ll take it with me and work on it at home.”

  “How many times have you put it off?”

  She grimaced at him, shaking her head.

  He held up his hands. “Fine, fine, don’t talk to me,” he surrendered, “but you really need to deal with this review shit when it comes in. That way it’s done, and you don’t have to worry about it again.”

  “Yeah, until next year. Well, shit is exactly like that, isn’t it? You get rid of it once, but you turn around the next day, and you have to handle it again.”

  He stared at her for a long moment, then he burst out laughing.

  “It’s not that funny,” she muttered. But inside she was pleased. She rarely came up with witty jokes, and this one was not only witty but shitty as well. She even groaned at her own rhyme. But she hopped to her feet, grabbed her jacket, opened her desk drawer, and gathered her things. Picking up her keys, she said, “Let’s go.”

  Still chuckling, Rodney finished his coffee. “You know what? You are starting to fit in around here.”

  “Why? Because I can add shitty jokes to the conversation?” she asked.

  That set him off again, and she rolled her eyes and headed for the door. As they almost left the bullpen area, their sergeant walked in, looked at them in surprise, and asked, “Where are you two heading?”

  “You know our victim found in the dumpster? We’re headed to her place of work, as well as that of her ex-boyfriend, who works in the same building,” Kate informed him, “to have a face-to-face talk.”

  “Good enough.” Colby nodded. “I understand Dr. Smidge had something extra to add to this one.” His gaze went from one detective to the other.

  Kate turned and looked at Rodney. “Did you really say something to the sergeant?”

  He shrugged. “Hey, all is fair in love and war, and we live in the war zone more often than not.”

  She turned back to the sergeant. “Dr. Smidge noted that he remembered a case—from about fifteen years ago—where the victim also died in a similar manner. The woman’s brother was convicted as a juvenile, held in juvie from before and after trial, and he was released about five years ago now, after serving ten years.” She shook her head as she tried to do the math. “He successfully completed all requirements of his probation and is currently on target with no problems. The parole officer believes his assertion that he was innocent.”

  “Interesting, but it’s not like we haven’t heard that one million times before.”

  “I know, and I do have the address for the family. I wanted to take a walk through the old house, which was the crime scene.”

  “He killed her in the family home?”

  “Well, that’s another part that doesn’t quite fit. Anyway, the building is currently slated for demolition, and I’ve got a call into the development board, asking for permission to do a walk-through.”

  “That would be good,” Colby agreed, “although I don’t know what a crime scene from fifteen years ago would tell you.”

  “What it might tell me is whether it was even doable. Both these women were tortured, sir. Wrists broken, ankles broken, one breast removed, vocal cords slashed to keep them quiet, and finally a knitting needle through the ribs into the heart after the breast was removed.”

  He stared at her, shook his head, and frowned. “What a world full of sick people we live in.”

  “Well, there are sick people in this world,” she agreed, “but I don’t know that the world is full of them though.”

  “That’s hardly making me feel any better.” Colby waved them toward the elevator. “Go. Go get this one solved and out of my head. The last thing I want is to have a serial killer who’s done two of these murders on the loose.”

  “Dr. Smidge did acknowledge that it’s possible there could have been others in the meantime.”

  “In which case, the boy wouldn’t have committed the crimes, right?” He turned and looked at her.

  “Possibly a copycat killing in another area to keep it low-key, so the kid didn’t get released.”

  “That would be lovely,” he moaned. “What if the woman was killed to make it look like the kid did it?”

  “That would be sick, sir.”

  “Well, I’m going right back around to what I said to begin with. It is a sick world.” And, with that, he stormed down the hallway to his office.

  Kate punched the button to the elevator, shoved her hands into her pockets, and rocked back on her heels.

  “He’s got a point,” Rodney said.

  “He might have a point,” she muttered, “but we need more than points. We need forensic evidence. We also need a motive. That was the one thing Dr. Smidge said was missing before.” She sighed. “That is a lot for a brother to do to a sister,” Kate noted. “I don’t care how much you think you hate her. When you think about it, you’ve spent a lot of time with her, shared meals, playtime, TV, holidays, vacations. You hear one getting berated by a parent. You hear the other getting smacked around. You hear about troubles at school. They’re all connections. So, even though you may hate somebody, it takes a deeper level of absolute madness to turn that hate into something so dark that you’re actually willing to torture somebody for hours and days before you finally kill them.”

  She continued. “And that’s the problem with this case. I get that cutting the vocal cords provides a means to do this in any space. I mean, an apartment, a tiny room, or even a closet would probably be enough if you made it into a murder room. And that makes the location of the murder all that much more interesting.”

  “Interesting?” Rodney asked, his voice rising.

  She shrugged. “The kid’s bedroom? The kid sister’s bedroom? Like the victim’s room was maybe in the basement? Maybe the parents were in Europe for six weeks. I don’t know what to say, but that’s why I want to go see the house.”

  “No, I hear you,” Rodney agreed. “I don’t have a basement.”

  “I’ve seen enough houses with basements,” she added, “to know that, in some cases, they’re really nasty-ass locations and would probably be good murder rooms.”

  “Especially if it was a cold-cellar-type basement,” he mentioned. “The colder temps would keep her from bleeding too badly. And then … wait. Was there a sexual connotation to this current victim?”

  Kate frowned. “I don’t know. I don’t think Smidge answered that.” She considered that, picked up her phone as they took the elevator down to the main floor, then sent him a message. Was she sexually assaulted?