Malevolent (Lieutenant Kane series Book 1) Page 8

  “Where are you on the case? Do you have any suspects?” A reporter interrupted.

  I nodded. “As I said, our team is still working a number of leads. From the evidence we gathered on the first case, we believe that our suspect may be a cab driver. Our first victim was last seen entering a taxi at Tampa International. What we would like to do is ask anyone who had witnessed suspicious activity involving a taxi to phone into the station. We are looking for things like verbal altercations with the drivers, especially if you are a female. We will be stationing additional officers at the airport and will be checking into the cabs and cab drivers coming and going from that area.”

  A reporter from the Tampa Tribune spoke from the back of the room. “Why are you bringing in the FBI?”

  I tried to hold back my annoyance. The press in the room must have missed the part where I’d told them to hold their questions until the end.

  “The TPD has a great relationship with our FBI field office. They have resources and databases that are unavailable to us at a local level. The captain called them to lend us a hand. They are sending us over a profiler to work with the team that we have assembled. Once that profile is complete, we will release it to the press.”

  “Lieutenant Kane, in your opinion, what kind of person are we dealing with here?”

  Clearly, the press was just going to keep firing questions at me.

  “Anyone who commits acts of violence on women is sick and depraved in my opinion. That’s going to be it for me, guys. I’m going to turn it back over to Sam James to wrap up. Thank you.”

  I stepped away, and Sam took the podium.

  “That is going to be it for us for today. We have to let our team get back to the investigation. I’ll take a couple quick questions if you have them ready.”

  The media rustled around writing notes and going over what they heard in the briefing. Rich Brimley, a reporter for the Tampa Tribune, threw up a hand.

  Sam pointed at him for his question.

  “Mr. James, we heard that the women wore lingerie. Can you comment on that?”

  “They were dressed in a similar fashion, yes.”

  “Just to confirm, lingerie?”

  Sam nodded.

  Chris Marks, from Channel 2, raised his hand.

  “Yes, Chris, your question?”

  “Are the two victims connected? And how did they die?”

  “We are investigating if there is a connection now. We are not going to get into the specifics of how these two women’s lives were taken. One or two more questions, and we will wrap this up here.”

  A voice spoke up in the back: J.R. Steele from Channel 6. “Yeah, I got a question. Are we dealing with a serial killer here?”

  “Mr. Steele, I believe it’s premature and reckless to jump to that conclusion. Right now, we believe the two cases are related. That is the extent of it.”

  “Reckless? We have two women, murdered and dumped wearing the same outfit a few days apart? Who’s to say there won’t be more?”

  “Mr. Steele, let’s let the police do their job before foreshadowing events that haven’t taken place. The TPD’s homicide division has an exceptional track record of solving cases and bringing the perpetrators involved to justice. We have every confidence that will hold true here. That’s all for today. Thank you.”

  Sam stepped from the podium. We left the media room for the hall.

  Chapter 16

  The phones in the police station lit up after the press release. Most of the calls were about typical arguments with cab drivers about their fare. In hindsight, I realized I should have been more specific about what we were looking for. We took all the calls regardless and weeded through them. Ed called to tell me that he’d finished the report and was faxing it over. I told him I would call him to go over the results when the report hit my desk. Very disturbing was his quote.

  My desk phone rang again. Our secretary up front told me I had a call waiting from Lisa Cotter. I clicked over to the waiting call.

  “This is Lieutenant Kane.”

  “Hi, it’s Lisa Cotter from Stanley and Wallace.”

  “Hi, Lisa.”

  “We watched the press release from the office here, and well, I’m sure it’s nothing, but we figured we should call.”

  “Did someone remember something?”

  “Well, not really, but it might be related.”

  “Okay, related how?”

  “Well, Diane had this client, a twenty-year-old with drug charges that he wasn’t going to get out of. Diane put together a plea deal with the prosecutor. The kid wouldn’t take the deal. He wanted to take his chances in court. Diane urged him again to take the deal while it was on the table. The kid refused and went before the judge and jury. They found him guilty. The judge handed down a sentence of twelve years.”

  “How long ago was this?”

  “About a month ago. His father, Kevin O’Hare, was furious with the outcome. He blamed us. He called Diane a number of times before she stopped taking his calls. Her voicemail would be filled with the guy cussing her out and telling her she failed the family.”

  “So an unhappy family member of a guilty client. I’m sure that happens quite a bit. Did he make any threats?”

  “He did threaten her in the last couple phone calls, and there’s something else. The guy’s father drives a cab.”

  It didn’t account for the first victim. However, it was a credible threat that had to be looked into further. It was the best lead we’d gotten from the phone calls. I wrote down the guy’s name and told her we would get on it. I gave Timmons in patrol a ring and asked him if he could put it out to his cars and bring him in.

  I headed out of my office for the station’s fax machine. Ed’s autopsy report sat on top—seven pages total. I scooped it up and headed to my office. The light for my voicemail at my desk was flashing. I ticked the button to play the message, which was Hank telling me that he had her on video getting into a cab, just like Sarah McMillian. He said they had more footage of the cab than last time and he had a copy of the video in hand. He was making his way back to the station.

  I called Timmons right back and told him our second victim had also gotten into a cab at the airport. He said he’d put the word out to question every cabbie that pulled through the TPA. I told him to have an officer watch for any single women that got into a cab and to get the car’s plates. He agreed.

  I sat down at my desk and started reading over the autopsy report. Her cause of death was comminuted skull fractures. The following page covered the other injuries she’d suffered. A word stuck out at me: leucotomy. I pulled up the Internet, searched it, and immediately dialed Ed.

  The receptionist transferred me over to his desk. He picked up right away.

  “Ed Dockett.”

  “Hey, Ed. Kane.”

  “Look at the report?” he asked.

  “Leucotomy.”

  “I take that as a yes. It looks like we have an amateur Psycho Surgeon on our hands.”

  “Psycho Surgeon?” It sounded as though it came from a bad B movie.

  “Well, not like that. Psychosurgery is what operating on the brain to effect a mental state is called. When you think of a lobotomy, that’s psychosurgery.”

  I jotted down psychosurgery in my notes. “Got it. Is that what the stitches on the side of her head were from?”

  “Yes. Underneath the flap of skin, someone used a hole saw to cut a piece of her skull away so they could access her brain.”

  I leaned back in my chair. “Geez.”

  “Well, I removed the loose piece of skull. There were slices in the brain matter of the frontal lobe, consistent with a leucotomy. This procedure was well above and beyond drilling into someone’s head and pouring in boiling water.”

  I shook my head. “What does a leucotomy do?”

  “That’s the thing. It could do nothing or kill her. It could also leave her in just about any state between those extremes. Doctors tried these procedures wit
h mental patients from the nineteen thirties to the fifties. They would slice into sections of the brain and see if they got the desired result, whatever that may be. If someone suffered from depression, they would make cuts to the prefrontal area of the brain and see what happened. If the patient suffered from schizophrenia, same thing. Doctors quit this sort of thing in the early seventies. It was pure quackery.”

  I grabbed a pen and wrote down the highlights of what he was saying. “Where would someone learn this?”

  “They wouldn’t. Our guy is experimenting.”

  “Great.” I let out a deep breath. “Tell me about the cause of death.”

  “Comminuted skull fractures. She had lacerations and bruising to the right side of her head and significant skull damage to the other. The shape of the bruises is consistent with heel marks from a shoe. I think someone stomped her to death. That was after the brain procedure.”

  I rubbed my free hand over my head and dug my palm into my eye. “So she was alive after the leucotomy?”

  Ed paused before answering. “Yes.”

  I shook my head. “Okay, Ed. I didn’t get a chance to go over the tox screen. Anything there?” I flipped through the sheets to find the toxicology report and went down the list. There were high levels of two drugs. One was the same as the first victim, Xylazine. The other I wasn’t familiar with.

  “Yup, tested positive for Xylazine, the same horse tranquilizer that he used on the other woman. This time there was another, Buprenorphine. It’s an opiate and an odd duck, for that matter.”

  “Bu-pren-or-phine.” I did my best to try to pronounce the drug. “Can you spell that for me?”

  He did.

  “I never heard of it. Not a street drug, I’m guessing?”

  “Nope. You might have your best lead there,” Ed said.

  “How’s that?”

  “It’s hard to get. Real hard. Regulated like you wouldn’t believe. The drug is something like thirty times stronger than morphine.”

  “What do they use it for?”

  “It’s used in treating opioid dependency, but that would be in pill form. This wasn’t. There were no traces of it in her stomach, and I have a few needle marks on her arms and legs.”

  “So, injected?”

  “Yes.”

  “Anything else?”

  “The cut marks on her hand were interesting.”

  “Interesting how?”

  “Well, flip to the page with the drawing of the body. It indicates where her injuries were.”

  I thumbed through the papers until I found the page. “Got it.”

  “The cuts just looked strange to me, so I put her hand under magnification and looked at the wounds. There is one with inflammation around it. The others don’t show any signs of it.”

  “So, what do you think?”

  “Well, I’m going to get Rick to come over and take a look. I want to know what he thinks before I make a definitive conclusion on it.”

  “Hunch?”

  “Think the one was when she was alive and the others were postmortem. But like I said, I’m going to hold off on a conclusion until I get Rick’s opinion.”

  “All right. Keep me updated.”

  “I will. Find this guy quick, Kane. I’m not looking forward to what comes in next if he does this again.”

  “Thanks, Ed.”

  Everything in the autopsy report got put into a file folder. I needed to give the captain an update. I walked next door to fill him in. He had his office door closed. I gave it a knock and entered.

  “Cap.”

  He looked over at me from his computer screen and took off his glasses. He pointed to one of the guest chairs. “Have a seat. What have you got?”

  “Well, we have new information.”

  “I’m listening.”

  “Good news first. I took a call from Lisa Cotter, the woman who worked with our second victim. A former client was making threats to Diane. The guy drives a cab. Timmons sent the word out to pick him up.”

  “Can we connect him to Sarah McMillian somehow?”

  “Don’t know yet. I’m going to stay here until they bring him in. I’ll run the interview myself.”

  He nodded. “What’s the bad news?”

  “I talked to Ed. Our guy is experimenting with his own form of lobotomies.”

  A blank looked crossed the captain’s face. “Experimenting with his own form of lobotomies?”

  “Yeah. Well, the last one was a leucotomy. He cut a hole in Diane Robins’s skull and sliced into her brain.”

  Captain Bostok sat quiet for a minute. “Any other good news?”

  “Maybe. The toxicology screen found a drug in her system that’s not easily accessible. I’m going to dig into that and see what we can come up with.”

  Hank knocked at the captain’s door. The captain yelled for him to come in.

  He took a seat next to me and surveyed the captain and me. “We get more bad news or something?”

  “I’ll give you the highlights in a bit,” I said.

  “All right. Well, we might get something from the airport’s video—got a pretty good view of the cab. I just dropped it off with Murphy in tech.”

  The captain nodded. “This thing is going to turn into a shitstorm real quick if another body turns up. The FBI profiler will be here at ten a.m. I want you both here before nine for a morning meeting.” The captain rolled his chair away from his desk. “Rawlings, we don’t have enough overtime on the books. Go home. Kane, do whatever you’re going to do until they bring that guy in for questioning.”

  We left the captain’s office and closed the door. I filled Hank in on the autopsy details and told him I would see him in the morning. He asked if I would call with an update later and check in on Murphy’s progress with the video. I agreed.

  Chapter 17

  The road split, sending him to the area for arrivals. Taxi cabs formed a single-file line. Police cruisers came into view up ahead. Police officers were patrolling the area. A cop stepped out from the curb and motioned for him to park. He pulled to the curb behind the other cabs. A cop leaned into the taxi in front of him, talking with the driver.

  A knock on his window startled him. His eyes darted to the left. A fist banged against the glass again. As the man pulled his knuckles away, he spotted a badge.

  He rolled down the window. “Can I help you with something, Officer?”

  “We’re just doing random checks. Can I see the registration for the car, your license, and proof of insurance?”

  “Sure—one minute.” He rummaged through the glove box and found the papers. “Here you go.” He handed over the proof of insurance and registration.

  The cop held them in his hand. “Driver’s license too.”

  “Oh yeah, sorry.”

  From his wallet came the license. They all belonged to someone else—a former coworker. He’d lifted the wallet from the guy’s desk at work. His coworker was close to the same height and build. At least he had been at the time. He hoped the cop wouldn’t notice the weight difference. The hair and eye color were the same. His lack of a beard made the small driver’s license photo irrelevant. The cab registration and insurance were legal, just under the former coworker’s name, Dan Ellison. He’d had to check the guy’s mailbox every day for three weeks to intercept the vehicle and credit-card paperwork. As soon as he did, he switched everything to paperless bills. He wouldn’t need to worry about the cab registration for another year.

  The cop took the information from him. “Be back with you in a minute.”

  “No problem.” He rolled his window back up.

  He sat in the car, wondering why the police were all over the airport. He wondered if it was for him.

  I’ll have to see what this cop knows when he gets back.

  He patiently waited the five minutes before the officer returned.

  The cop walked to the cab’s window. “Can you remove your hat for me?”

  He complied.

&nbs
p; The cop looked at the driver’s license and then him. “You dropped a few pounds, huh?” the cop asked.

  “Cancer.” He pointed to his stringy hair. “Treatment is eating me alive.”

  The cop’s mouth turned to the side. “I’m sorry. Here you go, Mr. Ellison.” The cop handed him back his paperwork and driver’s license.

  “It’s just Dan. Mr. Ellison is my father.” He let out a chuckle. “What’s with the random check?”

  “We have interest in taxis working the area.”

  “Well, maybe I can help. I know most of the drivers that work the airport. What are you looking for?”

  “It’s just part of an investigation.”

  The cop wasn’t going to give him anything.

  A fat sixty-some-year-old stood at the curb, motioning for a cab.

  The cop pointed over to the man waving. “Looks like you have a fare waiting there. Have a good day, sir.”

  Everything told him to drive away, but it would have drawn attention. He scooped the guy up and turned up the volume on the CB. The chatter from the cab drivers on the radio told him the police had held a press conference earlier. They mentioned they were looking for a cab in connection with two murdered women. Another driver confirmed that he’d read a story about it in the Tampa News Daily. Halfway across town, he got rid of his passenger and headed for the nearest newspaper box. He found one carrying that paper on the corner of Fowler and North 22nd. He pulled the cab into the parking lot of the fast-food joint on the corner and hopped out. At the metal newspaper box, he fished fifty cents from his pocket and plugged it into the machine. He pulled out the evening addition and carried it back to the car.

  Small text at the top corner read: Serial killer driving the streets of Tampa? Story on page six.

  He unfolded the paper to the page and tossed the rest on the passenger seat. He browsed the article. The photo from the press conference was of Lieutenant Carl Kane, the lead investigator. The article stated the police were looking for a cab taking women from the Tampa airport. The article mentioned the lingerie but not the branding or how they died. What he’d heard across the cab’s radio was all they had. While it wasn’t a lot, it was enough to throw a wrench into his immediate plans. His eyes went back to the photo and then to the caption below. The caption included a quote from the lieutenant.