Reticent (A Lieutenant Harrington Thriller Book 6) Read online

  Reticent

  by

  E. H. Reinhard

  Copyright © 2022

  All Rights Reserved

  AUTHOR’S NOTE

  This book is a work of fiction by E. H. Reinhard. Names, characters, and incidents are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental. Locations used vary from real streets, locations, and public buildings to fictitious residences and businesses.

  The scanning, uploading, and distribution of this book via the internet or any other means without the permission of the publisher is illegal and punishable by law. Please purchase only authorized electronic editions and do not participate in or encourage electronic piracy of copyrighted materials. Your support of the author’s rights is appreciated.

  E. H. Reinhard

  http://ehreinhard.com/

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  Reticent

  Fresh off his honeymoon, Homicide Lieutenant Nash Harrington is thrust straight into a high-profile case.

  In Harrington’s absence, Miami’s budding serial killer, someone the team has been after for months, has struck again.

  With almost no leads or evidence to go on, Harrington and the team must think outside the box to do everything in their power to reel in this killer before he strikes again.

  But little do they know that the man the press has dubbed the Midnight Murderer may have been under their nose the entire time.

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  Table of Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 1

  His first kill, twenty years ago and completely justified, had given him a taste of murder. And while he’d gone through a gamut of emotions after taking that first life, something else had accompanied the act, something he couldn’t place at the time. With each additional killing, he got a better picture of it. He finally put his finger on the lone emotion that had been lying just below the surface—pleasure. He tried to drink away the feelings, the urges. Alan tried to drown himself at the bottom of a bottle, but that only made him want to kill even more. There was simply nothing that quenched his thirst quite like blood.

  Chapter 2

  “Hey, look who finally made it back,” Steve said.

  I glanced over my shoulder at him as I worked the lock on my office door. “Yeah,” I said as I twisted the handle and pushed the door in. “We landed about two hours ago. Only seventeen hours late. Grab my mail there.” I walked to my desk and took a seat.

  Steve pulled the mail from the basket attached to the wall outside my office door and followed me in. He tossed the mail on my desk and grabbed a chair across from me. “Well? So how was it?”

  “I would consider it a successful honeymoon,” I said. “And Spain was very, very cool. But the trip back was a mess.”

  “You missed your flight or what?”

  I shook my head. “Technically, but it was kind of out of our hands. First, our flight from Valencia to London was delayed over an hour. Then when we landed in London, we had to take a cab from the Gatwick airport we landed at over to Heathrow to catch our flight home. Of course there was an accident on whatever the hell road we were on that set us back another half hour. Which, combined with the original delayed flight, turned out to be just enough time for us to miss our connection. We couldn’t get another flight until early this morning, so we had to stay the night in London.”

  “I guess on the bright side, you probably got to see London too?”

  “Nah. The airport isn’t anywhere near anything you want to see. Plus, it was late. We did hit a little pub and restaurant that was pretty cool, but aside from that, our London experience was mostly about six hours in an airport hotel. I’ve got a million photos and stuff I’ll show you later.”

  “Cool,” Steve said. “Speaking of photos, Sasha has a pile from the wedding that she sent over to Amy.”

  “She got them,” I said. “We were looking them over on the plane.”

  Steve gave me a nod. “How’s the ring feel? Still weird?”

  I rolled my wedding ring around my finger with my thumb. I’d looked at probably a dozen different rings of various metals and designs. Tungsten, titanium, gold, silver, and platinum. Designed and plain. But I went with a simple gold band. No bells, no whistles. It got the point across—I was married. And a regular old traditional-style ring had its place.

  “It’s still a little different,” I said. “Not the meaning of it, just the fact that I’m not really a jewelry kind of guy. Never wore a ring in my life.”

  “You’ll get used to it,” Steve said. “So it’s a quarter to six. And you just landed after a trip from overseas. Why the hell are you here?”

  “I figured I’d grab my mail and have a look at my work email. That and get the case file on the Harding, Paul, and Adams murders. Look over everything that was added to it since I left. That way, I’m up to speed in the morning.” David Adams was the latest victim of the area’s budding serial killer, and our suspect had left a letter with him that promised more deaths.

  “And Montgomery,” Steve said.

  “What’s Montgomery?” I asked.

  Steve rattled his fingertips on the edge of my desk. “It’s Dylan Harding, Sara Paul, David Adams, and Pamela Montgomery.”

  “He killed again?”

  “Yeah. Five days since she was found now.”

  I held up my hands. “Nobody wanted to tell me we had another?”

  “Look, I like going over to your house. I’m also pretty fond of sitting at your bar and drinking your beer. Generally enjoy hanging out. How happy do you think Amy would be with me if I called you during your honeymoon to tell you that? She’d probably not be super jazzed if I got you good and stewing on something thousands of miles away at work while you’re supposed to be enjoying yourself.”

  I jammed my palm into my eye and gripped the back of my neck. “Point taken.” I leaned back in my chair and wound my finger in the air. “Let’s hear the details.”

  “No note or letter or anything, but the MO is the same. The woman was found in her car, parked in her driveway. The motor was running, lights on. Single GSW to the head. Phone in her lap, window down.”

  “Any connection to the others?” I asked.

  “Nope. She was found down in Cutler Bay, so we’ve been working with the PD down there.”

  “Who found her?” I asked.
“What do we know there?”

  “Her neighbor,” Steve said. “The guy said that he thought he heard a scream or shriek or something. He went outside and looked around. He saw the neighbor’s car in her driveway, parked and running with the lights on. He said he figured maybe it was a belt squealing.”

  “Like a belt on a car?” I asked to clarify.

  “Yeah, power steering or air-conditioning belt or something making noise. Anyway, he chalked it up to that and went back inside. Well, two hours later, he takes the trash out and sees Montgomery’s car still in the driveway, lights still on, engine still running. Something told him to go and check on the situation. He said he got a chill up his back as he approached. He just knew something was off. Well, he gets to the driver’s-side window, which was down, and sees her slumped over inside. When he opened the door to check on her, the interior light lit the scene. Blood everywhere. He called 911 and got the PD out there.”

  “So we should have a pretty good time on when this happened,” I said. “With a witness hearing a possible scream. Any sightings? Video?”

  “Zero,” Steve said.

  “Ballistics is a positive, though?”

  Steve nodded. “It’s a match.”

  I let out a hard breath, and as I rocked back in my chair, a thought bubbled up. “Wait. So the guy possibly hears a scream but doesn’t hear the gunshot?”

  “I was waiting on you to ask that,” Steve said. “And yeah, that’s a mystery in itself. But one that I think we’ve solved.”

  “How’s that?”

  “The brass we recovered was subsonic. That with a suppressor is probably just quiet enough with a single shot to go unnoticed or at least unrecognized for what it is.”

  “Even if the guy was using subsonic rounds and a suppressor, you’d think the sound of that would still carry more than the sound of a scream, if that was in fact what he heard. Colt didn’t mention if there was anything ballistics-wise that would say if a suppressor was used?” I asked.

  “I asked him, and he said you wouldn’t be able to tell if one was used or not, at least not a real one, meaning something not homemade that the bullet would have to penetrate, like a bottle or oil filter or something along those lines. And a subsonic-suppressed nine-millimeter is pretty quiet.”

  “I’d actually like to hear that but another time. What do we know about the victim?” I asked.

  “She was single. Worked as an RN at a local medical facility. The Cutler Bay guys have been running interviews with coworkers, friends, and family. It doesn’t sound like anything out of the ordinary had been going on. No problems with people, no mentions of anyone following her or anything like that. I think we have to go with the fact that our killer is just selecting random people. Which unfortunately makes our job considerably harder.”

  “Yeah, it does,” I said.

  “So we’ve got a matching murder weapon and a matching modus operandi. About it,” Steve said. “Your FBI guy didn’t get back to us with anything?”

  “Unless something is in my email. I have to think that he would have called, though. You were there when I originally talked to him. He said nothing like I described rang a bell. But he said he’d look though their files over there and let me know if anything he had sounded like it could be a match to our guy. He also said that he wanted to know if we had any more. Maybe I’ll give him a ring tomorrow if I don’t have anything in my email from him.”

  “He’ll probably come down with a crew of agents and pull this from us if you call him.”

  “Nah, he was good last time with the Wendell thing. Just him and another agent. I think we all worked together pretty well.”

  “Yeah,” Steve said.

  “Anything new besides this Montgomery woman?” I asked.

  “Two,” Steve said. “One from last Thursday and another from Sunday night. Thursday was a domestic. Husband, who is our suspect, is MIA. And then on Sunday night, we had one that’s gang related. Garcia has been plugging away on that, but you know how that goes. Nobody wants to talk in the hood.”

  “Sounds about right,” I said. “Chestnut isn’t back yet?”

  Steve shook his head. “He’s still out.”

  Ryan had been giving Ramirez a hand on the night shift while Chestnut was out dealing with his ailing mother, yet it had been going on a couple of months. While Ryan didn’t seem to mind working nights, I imagined he would rather be back with the regular team and back to his schedule on days.

  “That’s been a couple months now,” I said.

  “Yeah, that’s gotta be pretty rough for Chestnut,” Steve said. “I’m not exactly sure what the health issue is. Or if this is a recovering kind of thing or a hospice situation. Either way, mother in bad health is no bueno.”

  “No, it’s not,” I said. “But as far as us here, I’m going to have to figure something out with Ramirez. Lending him Ryan was only temporary, and if Chestnut is going to be out for much more time, Ramirez is probably going to have to hire someone to replace him. Has Ryan said anything? Annoyed to be on nights or anything?”

  “Nah, not really,” Steve said.

  “I’ll talk to him tomorrow and see what he says. All right. Anything else?”

  “Nah, that’s about all that I have for you. Garcia has been working those two cases, and I’ve been working with the Cutler Bay guys.”

  “Is Garcia already gone for the day?” I asked.

  “He had an interview with someone over in the Liberty City area at five, but I’m not sure if he was coming back here after or not.”

  “I’ll just catch up with him tomorrow. I assume that Colt is in touch with the forensics department down there in Cutler Bay?”

  “He is,” Steve said.

  “Good.”

  “Okay, well, I think you’re up to speed. And as much as it’s been a slice catching up, I need to get back to it. Sasha and I have dinner reservations at seven, and I need to get my ass moving.”

  “Where are you guys going?”

  “The Ranch,” Steve said.

  I gave Steve a nod. I knew the restaurant—a chain steakhouse over at the mall. The last time I stepped foot inside the place, I was with a dozen other officers and had to put a pair of rounds in a guy’s chest.

  “Josh Graham,” Steve said.

  “Yup. I was just thinking about that.”

  Graham, a man mentally broken by infidelity, had launched a homicidal rampage through the city that started with him killing his boss and, after a handful of other homicides sprinkled in, ended with him in a cage awaiting trial. Yet the memory of the prior case had brought up another memory. That same night, after taking Graham into custody and a short trip to the hospital, I had asked Amy to marry me.

  “Well, shots fired in the place or not, they have a hell of a chimichurri steak, which hopefully, I’ll be ordering in about an hour,” Steve said.

  “Go do what you’ve gotta do. Is the file on the Harding, Paul, Adams, and now Montgomery stuff all updated?” I pointed at my computer.

  “The file on my desk has everything we have,” Steve said. “I didn’t get it completely copied into the system yet.”

  “All right. Can you just bring me what you’ve got? I’ll make a copy of everything.”

  “Yeah, I’ll grab it for you.” Steve shoved the chair back from my desk and stood.

  “Okay. I want to take it home with me and go over it. See where we can try to focus our efforts starting tomorrow.”

  “Sure.” Steve walked to the door and stopped. “There’s not a ton there in the file that we haven’t already been over, but who knows? Maybe your fresh-off-vacation eyes will pick out something that had gone overlooked.”

  “Sounds good,” I said. “Is Halloway in? I didn’t see him in his office.”

  “Nah, he had some kind of a meeting. Left about an hour ago.”

  “All right. Maybe I’ll give him a buzz later or something.”

  “Yup.” Steve wrapped his knuckles on my office doorframe
as he headed out.

  I powered up my computer and logged in to my email. While I’d been glancing at my emails on my phone during the trip, I was more focused on enjoying my honeymoon, Amy, and the travel abroad. Steve dropped the case file in my office, and I started weeding through my in-box. There didn’t appear to be anything from Agent Rawlings at the bureau, and most of the emails were internal, mainly me being copied on emails from other departments to Homicide. I spent the better part of an hour browsing through the messages, yet nothing seemed overly pressing. After another fifteen minutes of sorting through the snail mail that had come in while I’d been away, I took the case file and locked up. I had a new wife to get home to and a pup that I hadn’t seen in a week and a half.

  Chapter 3

  I pushed open the front door of the house. “Honey, I’m ho—”

  The words didn’t get from my mouth before I was mauled by a dog. Lucky was on two legs, jumping and crying as she tried to lick my face.

  “Hold on, girl.” I knelt and set the file in my hand on the floor, and Lucky put her paws over my shoulders and covered the side of my face in slobber. I did my best to pet her and keep her flapping tongue away from my mouth and eyeballs. “Okay, okay. I missed you too, buddy.” Lucky pushed off of me, made a circle, then came back for more.

  “Geez,” Amy said. “Get a room.”

  I laughed, gave Lucky a good ear scratching, and stood. “What? She’s happy to see me. Don’t act like she didn’t do the same to you.”

  “Yeah, she did.”

  Lucky pranced toward the sliding glass patio door, which was open, and Amy petted her as she passed.

  “Did Bill say she was good?” I asked.

  “No problems. Not that there would really be any.”