Page 39 of Unbearable

“Probably has to do with the phone call I just got.” They walked past the captain’s assistant into his office. They both took a chair when motioned to.

“I’m sure you already know,” Captain Bradford began by looking at Dex. “I’ve been on the phone with your boss down in Texas. Figured since you’re already up on the case it would be much easier to simply have you temporarily reassigned here for now.”

He turned to address Dover. “It’s time to pull some help in from the feds on this. I’ve also been on the phone with the Boston office making sure we don’t ruffle any feathers. They’re going to send over a couple of juniors to help with support.”

“Yes, sir,” she answered.

“You’re still in charge of this investigation,” he continued, splitting a look between them. “He’s just here for assistance. Understand?”

“Yes, sir,” she said again.

“Of course, whatever I can do to help the investigation,” Dex said, rising from his seat.

“Be prepared for a briefing tomorrow morning at nine,” Captain Bradford said before dismissing them by returning his focus to the papers on his desk.

“Yes, sir.” She couldn’t think of anything else to say.

“So what do you need from me?” Dex asked when they walked back into her office.

“Dex has been added to the investigation,” she said to bring Danny up to speed.

“Sweet. Welcome aboard, officially,” he answered. “By the way, we got another one.”

“Shit,” she swore. “Where? When?”

“Quincy. Before the one in Cambridge.” He handed her the paperwork just pulled from the printer. “I’ve already requested the files be sent over. Here’s what we have for now.”

They followed her into the incident room. Taking the dry erase marker, she began to add to the boards. The man had been named Terrence Oldman, and he was a civil engineer at a local firm. The rest was very similar to what they’d already seen. He was strangled by some sort of strap, dumped in the commons of a private high school, and had nothing on that identified him.

The only thing different was that Terrence Oldman was wearing a St. Patrick’s medal. It was what flagged the murder. “St. Patrick, patron saint of engineers,” Dex said before she could look it up on the phone herself.

“It looks like it was six months before the murder of Ian Moore in Cambridge,” she added.

“I’m expanding the search to the surrounding counties,” Danny said. “When I’m done, I’ll run it through everywhere else.”

“I can run it through our databases and see if anything hits,” Dex said.

“Do that, and I’ll go brief the captain about the latest victim.”

“Quincy said the files should be here before end of shift,” Danny informed her before leaving for their office.

“I’ll set up in the back of the room and see what I can pull up. As soon as the files show up, I’ll try to get last known whereabouts from Danny. We can hit that location as soon as possible.” Dex moved to a table at the back of the room and pulled his laptop out of a messenger bag.

Dover studied the printed pages one last time before returning them to Danny to organize in the book. She walked to the captain’s office for the third time that day to fill him in on the latest case so he wouldn’t be surprised at the briefing the nextmorning. She reached the office and was waved in before she could even speak.

“Sir?” she said, knocking on the doorjamb.

“I’m afraid to ask,” he said after looking up.

“We found an earlier case. About a month before the Cambridge one. This one was found in Quincy,” she said.

“You’d better have a seat,” he answered with a sigh. “Tell me there’s something in the file that will break this wide open.”

“I hope so, sir. They’re sending the files over now. Unfortunately, preliminary looks like they have pretty much what we have. I’ll have the ME’s office pull their records also. Maybe Sean can find something.”

“Sean?”

“Yes, sir. He’s the medical examiner working with us on these cases.”