Page 2 of The Italian Reckoning (A New York Criminal Empire #3)
SARAH
“ Y ou haven’t slept.” My captain places a plastic cup filled with lukewarm coffee down in front of me, sending the bubbles on top into a frantic spin.
Late morning sun peeks through the gaps in his blinds, creating an array of golden stripes across his crowded desk. It’s been hours since we found that body and I still feel like I’m in that cold, drafty building, staring down at her corpse.
“Is it that obvious?” My hair is coarse under my fingertips, but that doesn’t stop me from winding another strand around my fingers.
I need to shower.
Sleep.
“Don’t take offense. You usually look ready to rip someone apart every day, but today you look… rough.” He moves around his desk and drops into a chair that creaks loudly at the addition of his weight. Leaning back, he takes several large gulps of his own coffee and allows the silence to drag out.
How can I sleep? Last night’s discovery sent me right back into a darkness that I’ve been trying to shake for five years. It can’t be true. This has to be some sort of coincidence.
But after ten hours of telling myself exactly that, I know the truth.
At best, we have a copycat. At worst… It's really him.
After all these years.
The coffee sloshes up the sides of my cup when I try to drink it, betraying just how frayed my nerves have become in a few short hours. I try to ground myself by staring at the gold script scrawled across the captain’s nameplate.
Captain Brant Docherty .
“You’re going to call them, right?”
Brant lowers his cup. “Call who?”
My heart jumps. “The FBI. Montana. Whoever is still involved in this.”
“Sarah—”
“No! You can’t look at this and not see what I see. You can’t tell me this isn’t the same thing.”
“Sarah, what happened back in Montana was terrible. I know you carry a lot of guilt about that and coming here was a fresh start.”
“Not my choice,” I snap, slumping back in my seat.
“I know. Everyone did what they thought was best at the time and your placement here was supposed to be a fresh start. A new beginning away from all… that. After what happened, you deserve a new chance at life.” Brant waves one hand rather than saying what’s on both our minds.
Montana was a shit show. And it was all my fault.
Seeing the Saran Wrap covered in makeup brought back old, terrible memories I’ve tried to bury for five years because none of them have ever been helpful.
Anything of use that exists in my mind has been buried so deeply that I’m no help to anyone, and no amount of therapy has ever been able to dig up what I suppressed.
Those same therapists told me it was normal for victims to bury things deep, but that was never helpful.
A serial killer would be behind bars if not for me.
“You’ve seen the evidence.” Placing my cup down, I scoot forward on my chair. “We can’t ignore this.”
“Sarah, I’m not going to sit back and enable you to fall back into old habits chasing ghosts that simply don’t exist anymore. Last night’s killing is more than likely a Mafia killing.”
“But the Saran Wrap! The placement of the body, even the ligature marks around her wrists?—”
“Sarah!” Brant barks out my name. “Stop. You’re seeing connections where there are none. Wasn’t it also your suggestion that she was a kidnap victim and that’s why you requested her prints to be run through the missing persons database?”
“That was before I saw the wrap. Captain, you know all about The Painter. How he targets young women and keeps them prisoner for days, toying with them until he wants to kill them. He paints up their faces in extreme makeup so that it leaves an imprint on the Saran Wrap that he uses to kill them, and that’s exactly what we found last night! ”
My voice rises of its own accord as I speak, years of distress pouring out. That the one that got away could be back and operating in New York.
“We need to look into this! Find similar deaths over the past six months, reconnect with Montana to get the old files, and let people know he’s back!”
Brant sighs deeply as I retake my seat, having risen out of it unexpectedly.
“Sarah. I say this as your friend. You’re seeing connections where there are none.”
“But sir?—”
“No. Saran Wrap is a common murder tool. We see it almost every day because it’s snatched right off the shelf.
And the victim is a young woman, most likely out partying when she was snatched.
Of course, she was wearing makeup.” He sighs again, but this time it’s softer.
“I understand you’re triggered, but if you want to do right by this girl, you need to investigate her case and not lose yourself to cold cases. ”
He’s not getting it.
It’s right there in front of him and he’s just not seeing it.
Her perfect makeup imprint on the Saran Wrap is the biggest giveaway because The Painter’s key method of killing was to paralyze his victims in order to get the perfect transfer of makeup onto the plastic.
He wanted their final moments immortalized next to their bodies.
“Sir, can we at least look into this? Everything I’ve said fits and if you could just let me?—”
“Sarah. As your captain, I can’t let you go down this path, but if you need further proof that this is all in your head from a bad night…” He slides across a folder and taps it with his fingers. “There were no muscle relaxants found in her system. Doesn’t The Painter immobilize his victims?”
“Well, yes, but…” The paper is cool against my fingertips, but not as chilling as the truth laid out in black and white. No evidence of sedatives or muscle relaxants. It’s not his MO. “I…” Words fail me, and my chest tightens while I place the folder back on the desk.
“Do you need to take a couple of days?” Brant’s head tilts as he regards me.
“No, I-I’m fine. I just…” The similarities were chilling, but is this really all in my head? Did I just see one connection and run with it without stopping to think? “I’m sorry.”
“No apology needed. Take the morning, at least. And Sarah?”
I pause halfway to the door, my mind racing with disbelief. “Hmm?”
“Get some sleep.”
I’m numb all the way to the bathroom, caught on the single line of text stating that my victim’s blood was clear of the trademark drugs used by The Painter. Out of all the places I expected to be reminded of that asshole, it wasn’t here.
I thought I’d left all that behind in Montana with my failure.
Lightly kicking in each door, I make sure the bathroom is empty, then turn one of the taps on full until the water is ice cold. I gather handfuls in my palms and splash it against my face to shock my system out of an anxious downward spiral.
I’ve been turned up to a hundred ever since I saw the Saran Wrap, utterly convinced that asshole had somehow made it to New York. But Brant is right. It’s not him. There are similarities, sure, but they could be found in countless cases that have nothing to do with Montana’s serial killer.
“Fuck.” Staring at myself in the mirror, I track several droplets as they roll down my cheek and drip off my chin, soaking into my shirt. “Get it together, Sarah.”
Surviving in a city run by criminals isn’t easy for someone who let one of the most dangerous men in the country escape.
He’s been quiet for five years, and deep down, I know he will never surface again. But in just one night, I feel like I’m right back where I was five years ago, bearing the crushing weight of remembering just a single detail of that fucker’s face.
But I’ve buried it so deep I can’t even reach it, and because of that, he escaped justice, and the families of his victims never saw closure.
I remain in the bathroom for ten minutes, repeating breathing exercises taught to me by a therapist who spent six weeks trying to uncover my buried memories. She failed, but her breathing exercises were amazing.
Brant’s right. I need some sleep and to adjust my perspective. I’m in New York. My ghosts are back in Montana.
Drying my hands with a coarse paper towel, I leave the bathroom and run into the patrolman from last night.
“Were you waiting for me?” I ask, narrowly avoiding clipping him with my elbow.
“Was about to send someone in to see if you were okay.” He snorts as he hands me a sheet of paper.
“What’s this?”
“Our victim. Missing woman by the name of Belle Marino. She was reported missing five days ago by her uncle. And you’re not gonna like this.”
We stop outside my office, and the look on his face makes my heart sink. I already know the answer but I ask anyway. “Why am I not going to like this?”
“Her Uncle? He’s Gio Marino. And he’s balls deep in the Italian Mafia.”