FOLLOW THE LEADER - Chapter 17
Chapter 17
Colin was wrong. My nemesis, Lt. Spears (aka “Shorty”)was still at his desk in The Homicide Division. That meant Terry and I would have to wait outside in the dark hallway.
Colin was wrong. My nemesis, Lt. Spears (aka “Shorty”)was still at his desk in The Homicide Division. That meant Terry and I would have to wait outside in the dark hallway.
My pulse quickened as I remembered
one hellish night in the interview room, many years ago. Just a few doors down
from where Terry and I stood.
Sergeant Spears
produced a short length of rubber hose from somewhere. He smiled as he stood in
front of me, slapping the hose against his palm. “Smitty and me were close,
see? You erased my friend tonight.”
“I
told you, I was just protecting myself.”
“Protect yourself from
this!” Whap! The first blow struck my
shoulder. Whap. My left cheek. Whap! My left ear…
I shook off the memory in time to see Spears leaving through
the back door.
“Are you okay?” Terry asked.
“I’m fine,” I lied.
“You were trippin,’ man!”
We saw Colin approaching. There was
one other cop eating his lunch at his desk. It was not Olsen, aka “Slim.”
“Follow me, gentlemen.”
We followed
Colin out of the office and down the hall.
He’s taking us to the interview room!
“Déjà vu?”
Colin asked as he opened the door.
“Anywhere but here!”
“Ancient history,” I deadpanned.
He led us into the bleak room,
closing the door behind us.
“No one’s going to bother us in
here.”
I could see black scuff marks on one wall. The
kind a boot would make. A dent or hole had been plastered over. In the middle
of the room was a small table that could accommodate four people. Most of the
time, there were two cops on one side, a lawyer and his client on the other. I
glanced around the room. Nothing much had changed. The table had cigarette
burns, even though it was against policy to smoke. A picture of the President
hung next to Old Glory. The ubiquitous
one-way dark window gave me chills. Someone could be watching us now, for all
we knew. The room stank of flop sweat
but there was something else.
“I smell shit,” I said.
“Better check your pants,” said
Colin.
“I smell it, too!” said Terry.
“Plumbing problem up on the seventh
floor,” said Colin. (I learned later that it had been going on for years.)
“Do I call you
Inspector Kelly?” asked Terry.
“We’re not in
England. Detective will do. While we’re at it, how do I refer to you? You want
to be he or she? Or does it matter?”
I had been
wondering the same thing.
“And what
about your name?” I asked.
“I’ll stick
with Terry for now. But if you’re
writing it, spell it with one r and an
I at the end.
“Got it,” I
said. Remember, it’s she or her!
“Okay, now that we’ve got that
straight, let’s move on,” said Colin. He
pulled out a three-ringed binder, and pushed it toward me.
“The Murder Book,”
I whispered to Terry, even though it was not a book. Someone had printed K.
ROLLINS on the cover with a black marker.
Colin glanced
at his watch and said “We’ve got forty-five minutes. That’s when the guys start
returning from lunch.”
Colin nodded
and opened the Murder Book. He turned the pages to a glossy black and white
photograph of Katherine Rollins’ body.
It was a
standard, blown-up crime photo with sickening details. The slightly twisted body
lay face down. Below her was bare cement. Terry and I studied it for a bit,
then I turned the page. The next photo featured her head and neck. It was
obvious her throat had been slashed, but there was a striking lack of blood
around the wound. I turned the page. The next grizzly shot showed her right
buttocks and hip. The charred initials L.K. were on her right hip.
“What do the
initials stand for?” Terry asked.
Colin
chuckled. “As if we knew!”
“Killer’s
initials?” I asked.
“Maybe.”
“Do all of the
other bodies have these two letters?” I asked.
“No. All of
the initials are different.”
A puzzled look
from Terry.
I shrugged.
Then I leaned down for a closer look.
“It looks like
a brand,” I said. “Like somebody branded her with a hot iron.”
I glanced at
Terry, who was turning green.
“You okay?” I
asked.
“I’m fine,” he
lied.
“The M.E.s all
agree with you,” said Colin. “Slim came
up with a nickname for the killer. He called him ‘The Cowboy.’”
“Brilliant,” I
said.
“Olsen probably
figured the press would pick it up. They didn’t. After three weeks of digging
around they dropped it.”
How much
digging? I wondered.
“Have you
found DNA?” I asked. “Other than the victim’s?”
Colin nodded.
“Different
each time.”
“What the
fuck?”
“Go figure,”
said Colin. “We think there were five different killers. And this is where it
gets crazy. It’s almost like each killer didn’t care what he or she left
behind. The first body, she leaves an empty beer bottle…”
“How do you know the killer was female?”
I asked.
“I’m no expert, but apparently
there’s a Y in male DNA. Absent that, female.”
“What else was left?” I asked.
“ Different stuff each time. They found a small lead toy with the old man.
Indian on a pony. We found a cigarette butt with lipstick on the filter near
the second body. A woman’s broken hair comb with the third.”
He hesitated.
“And the fourth?”
“Let’s see. A leather coin purse.
And before you ask, there was a charm bracelet near the body of Katherine
Rollins. Female DNA again. No match to the previous four perps. Michael Rollins
said the bracelet didn’t look familiar.”
I turned to Terry. “Any ideas?”
“So…” Terry began. “ Whoever she is
waits a year. She kills Katherine Rollins one year later. Here’s my question: Why
the big gap?”
“And how do we know the killer is
part of the bunch who did the others?” I threw in.
“We don’t know. You’re the genius, maybe
you can find out for us.”
I knew he was kidding, but he had
called me that before and I didn’t like it. Schoolwork had always came easy to
me, whereas Colin had to bust his ass, especially in Latin. He resented the
fact that I used to get better scores on my tests.
“I’ll take a guess,” I said.
“Go for it,” Colin said.
“Maybe Death Valley got too hot for
this killer. He or she moved north.”
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