Page 63 of Unbearable
She would return home and make up with Fox. Edmund wouldn’t dare go to her home. He would summon her when he was ready to see her again. She had no doubt that he would want her back. His urges didn’t just go away, and he needed his partner to help him with them.
Tossing the crop back on the shelf, she pushed the outer door open. She didn’t bother to check that it was closed before shewas running across the warehouse. She didn’t stop running until she made it to the nearest train platform. The T was just pulling in. Jumping on, she sank with a sigh onto a seat.
She would simply have to make it up to Edmund later. There was a man somewhere in one of the bars who would be her greatest mark. He would tick every box for Edmund, and she would be forgiven. Then she would convince him that they were still the perfect partners. One couldn’t exist without the other.
The train finally made it to her stop. She walked the last couple of blocks in exhaustion. What had started out as the perfect night had ended up in disaster.
Tomorrow would be better. At least she still had a roof over her head. Fox would never dare leave her. Edmund wasn’t ready for her to move in with him yet, but he would be. Eventually. Until then, she just needed to bide her time. Everything would be fine.
CHAPTER 24
“He’s escalating,”Dex said, staring at the body sprawled on the turf of the football field. “They’re escalating.”
“What’s happened to make him lose control?” Dover wondered aloud.
This time, the victim wasn’t lying relatively peacefully as if he fell asleep. The victim’s throats were always abraded, but nothing else was disturbed. This was way beyond that. The body had been stabbed repeatedly, the genitals cut off, there were what looked like whip marks everywhere, and his intestines lay next to him.
“Something made him angry. This is extreme overkill. It could have been his partner, this particular victim, or even some situation that has no bearing on this that made him snap. It might just be the break we need. I would be very surprised if they don’t find DNA on him this time.”
“Christ! You could warn a guy,” Sean said, stepping inside the tent.
“Why should you be the only one to get a warning?” she fired back.
“Fair enough,” he answered. He knelt down next to the body and opened his bag. “I can get you an approximate time of deathand then I say we let forensics process the scene. I’ll stay in here while they work in case they need me.”
“Let me know what you find out,” she said. She and Dex stepped back out of the tent. They wrestled off their Tyvek suits and tossed them in a bin.
With any luck, the next time she saw the victim it would be in a clean autopsy room. Preferably one that was air-conditioned. It was going to be another scorcher today. She would rather be sitting by a pool.
“Lawn company found the body,” Danny said. He had chosen to coordinate everything outside this time. “I have officers taking statements, but they don’t know anything. The head of the school is on his way here. I’ll have one of the other detectives interview him. I doubt he knows anything either.”
“I’ll pull prints,” a crime scene tech said, stepping past them. “They should start running shortly. Hopefully something will pop on this one.” He ducked inside the tent almost running into Sean on his way out.
“It’s going to take a while. They’ve already swabbed a bagful. We’ll put a rush on them,” he said.
“I’m heading back to the office. If we can identify him, I’ll start pulling everything we can find,” Dover said. “I’ll also ride the lab on those swabs and whatever else they can find. Here’s hoping this is the one that busts this case open. We could use a break.”
She started for her car with Dex beside her. He was texting something on his phone.
“I told my guys to be ready to run prints just to speed up the process,” he informed her. “Looking at that crime scene, there has to be DNA somewhere. It was too chaotic for there not to be something. I can walk it through our labs if you need me too.”
“Thanks, but I think everyone wants this guy caught. It’s a top priority at our lab now.” They reached the car, and she slidbehind the wheel. “Jesus, I’m tired of chasing this guy. We have to get ahead of him.” She rubbed her temples trying to will away the headache that had already started.
“We will,” Dex assured her. They drove back to headquarters both lost in their separate thoughts. Dover hoped Dex was right.
The incident room was buzzing with activity when they arrived. It wasn’t chaotic to the trained eye. Everyone knew their job and was carrying it out with efficiently. But to anyone else, it looked like a disturbed ant mound.
She was hit the moment she walked in with new information. Dex was being bombarded by his people, she guessed, with the same things. Unlike in the movies, the two groups worked very well with each other. Dex handed her a piece of paper.
“Listen up,” she said loudly after reading through it. “We’ve got a name. Popped on the global entry registration list.” She walked to the front of the room and picked up a dry-erase marker. They were starting to run out of room on the boards. More would have to be brought in if this continued much longer. “His name is Peter Hansen. He’s a professor in England, here on a research trip.”
“ME puts time of death at between ten and midnight,” Dex continued as Dover wrote. “Initial examination states cause of death can’t be determined due to trauma to the body. Visible marks on the neck strongly suggest strangulation, but there are also multiple stab wounds, and evisceration.”
“I need to know everything there is to know about Mr. Hansen. Where he’s staying, where he’s been, about his research plans,” she said. “Danny is tied up at the scene, so I need someone chasing down the bar. If our unsub held to the same pattern, he was picked up in one of the locals.”
“Got it,” someone in the room said. She didn’t bother to find out who it was, assuming they would do a good job.
“If you find it, get down there and interview everyone.” She pinned a recent photo of Peter Hansen to the board. “Someone saw this man. We need to know who he was with. With any luck there’s camera footage this time. I’m going to head to the medical examiner’s office and see if I can get them to move up the autopsy.”