Speak No Evil_ A Novel - Allison Brennan [37]
“We were preoccupied. It’s been a couple long days.”
“So Nick Thomas was responsible for taking the killer down?”
“In part. But what wasn’t widely reported was that Thomas was held captive by the Butcher, and afterward was hospitalized for more than a week.”
Carina nodded. “I thought he was walking a little stiffly yesterday when he followed his brother down to the beach.”
“If anyone knows about serial killers, it would be Sheriff Thomas. He’d been building the case against the Butcher for years. Maybe we should talk to him and get his perspective, see if he thinks we have a serial killer here.”
“You’re right, he has the experience, but he’s the brother of our primary suspect. And besides,” argued Carina, “the definition of a serial killer is three or more like crimes with an established MO and—”
Will interrupted. “Don’t tell me you haven’t seen signs in Angie’s murder that point to something more than a crime of passion.”
She couldn’t argue with him. She’d been wrestling with it all night. “Point taken. But what if it is Steve Thomas? What if he’s the killer?”
“Then having Nick Thomas on our side might help stop another murder.”
“Has anything come back from the feds’ database on like crimes?”
Will shook his head. “The system is haphazard at best. And I read an article last year that serial killers often change and refine their method of killing. So our killer might have started with a different MO. In another state, maybe he strangled previous victims, or stabbed them—”
“Or maybe Angie is the first. Something about her set him off.”
“Like her sex diary.”
Carina’s phone rang. “Kincaid,” she answered.
“It’s Jim. I’ve typed the glue.”
“And?”
“Commonly used industrial-strength adhesive, available at most major hardware stores.”
“Match anything we found at Thomas’s apartment?”
“Sorry.”
“Thanks.”
Will was on the phone when she got off, so Carina cleared paperwork from her desk, her least favorite part of the job, until he hung up.
“Patrick has a printout of all of Thomas’s e-mails, Internet travels, and chat room logs for us,” Will told her. “He skimmed them, didn’t find anything big, but they’re worth a closer look. He has to run some computer program,” he waved his hand in the air, “to decipher exactly how many times Thomas went to the site and get an approximate amount of time he spent there. Since we haven’t arrested the guy yet, and Patrick’s preparing for a trial next week, he doesn’t have the time to thoroughly go through the reports, but he thinks by early next week he’ll have answers.”
“Such is our lives.” Carina frowned. “Will, why do I feel like this isn’t a priority to the department?”
“I don’t understand.”
“We have a dead girl. Eighteen years old. We have a suspect. True, only circumstantial evidence, but damn good circumstantial evidence. But Jim has priorities, Patrick has priorities, and this case isn’t it. I don’t like it. It makes me feel like Angie’s death has been relegated to the bottom of the list. That because she was a promiscuous young woman who posed in pornographic positions on her Web page, no one cares what happened to her.”
“That’s not true, Carina. You know that.”
But she was fired up. “Really? I know what? You heard the guys around the bullpen when they saw her MyJournal page. Reading her descriptions of having sex and masturbating. And the pictures! I have four brothers. I know what guys think about nudie shots.
“She’s dead. Just because a woman has sex with a lot of guys doesn’t mean she deserves to be raped and murdered. Suffocated. She was terrified when she died. She was tortured. It’s not fair that no one cares!”
Will pushed Carina back down in her chair and leaned over her. “Listen here, Detective Kincaid. Don’t ever imply that I don’t care about a victim, or that I think anyone deserves to be raped and murdered. You’re walking a thin line here. Angie Vance deserves justice as much as any other victim in the city, and I’ll do everything I can to bring her some. So get off your high horse and let’s do the job right. Get some evidence against Thomas—or anyone