Page 23 of Unbearable
“I’m not sure what we’ll do even if we find out she’s screwing around. Fox will never leave Ethan if he can prevent it. The only way Ethan would be safe is in Bailey’s custody, but I don’t see that happening,” she said. “Just don’t fuck this up.”
“Damn, she is related to Tyler,” Dex pointed out. “Is that what binds us, our attraction to hard-headed women?”
“Without a doubt,” Knox agreed. “If they’re not related directly, they’re put directly in our paths.”
“Oh, fuck off,” she responded, turning to return to her desk, but she was laughing as she entered the building. Her “extended family” was starting to grow on her, and that pissed her off for sure. Still, if she had to have a bunch of extra siblings thrust on her in her forties, these weren’t so bad.
“Everything okay?” Danny asked when she arrived at her office.
“Yeah, just dealing with family bullshit.”
“The new brother?”
“And a brother-in-law apparently. They’re coming out of the woodwork.”
“It’d freak me out to have all these siblings suddenly appear.”
“That’s the thing that worries me,” she said digging through the box on her desk. “There’s like a big age gap between the youngest two. Does that mean there’s a bunch more out there we don’t know about yet.”
“Could be. Guy wasn’t shooting blanks for sure.”
“No, he wasn’t.” She searched her desk for a moment. “Hey, what do you think about moving this to one of the incident rooms so we can spread out?”
“Good idea. I think I just stumbled across another one out in Cambridge.”
“No shit?”
“Same MO.”
Dover picked up a box from her desk and walked out into the hallway. There had to be at least one free incident room. If this kept going, they would have a task force by the end of the day.
Danny grabbed another box and followed her. They found a room no one was using and moved into it. Turning on the lights, she began building case files on the magnetic whiteboards at the front of the room.
She barely noticed as a fourth case was added to the boards. The more she worked, the more it looked like the cases were similar. She finally stepped back to take a look, and Danny whistled low beside her.
“You need to take this to the boss,” he said. “I’ll go see if anything new has popped up from our search.” She took a few more minutes after he left to get her facts straight. It had to be the same person doing this. What did they say? Three or more done by the same person was a serial killer. Though, she knew from her training that wasn’t always the case. With one last look at the boards, she left the room.
“How’s it going, Leah? Has he got a sec?” Dover asked the captain’s administrative assistant when she reached the office.
“Ask him yourself,” she answered. Leah had the tendency to be snarky which was probably why Dover had always liked her.
“Hey, Cap, can I talk to you?” she asked, sticking her head in the chief’s office. He motioned her into his office without looking up. She waited patiently until he finished what he was doing.
“What can I help you with, Detective?” he asked.
“I think we might have a serial killer, sir.” Damn, that wasn’t how she wanted to start the conversation. With all the facts swimming through her head, though, that was the first thing that popped out. He arched an eyebrow at her. “I mean, I think we’ve found a link between our cases and another. Two others actually.”
He sat back in his seat and waved his arm for her to continue.
“All four were successful men. They were all strangled by something like a belt, and the ME found a religious medallion on each one. A St. Matthew, St. Francis, St. Christopher, and St. Bernadette” she continued.
“St. Bernadette? That’s unusual.”
“Yes, sir. They were all left on private school properties arranged on their backs with no clothes or personal effects. Sean, uh, the medical examiner is positive they were killed elsewhere. Danny and I set it up in Evidence-2 if you would like to see what we have.”
The chief stood and followed Dover down the hall to the other end of the offices. There were already several other detectives in the room when they arrived. She let him study the boards for a minute before stepping up to them.
“The first is Ian Moore from Minneapolis here on business. He was found in Cambridge three months ago. This,” she said, pointing to the next picture of a handsome smiling man, “is George Goodwin from Buffalo. Dom is working that case and canspeak more on it. This is who we found last week. Trent Alleman who worked at Mass Gen and was found here in Roxbury.”