“You know that we have cameras in our cars now, Jake. It’s not one of us.” He scoffed. “And what about the Jane Doe? She was walking!”
“I agree. But we still need to follow due process and pull the patrol logs, the video footage. We need to check.”
“You’re nearly captain, Jake. You’re close enough on the ladder to know how my boys will react to that.” Doug sighed and raised a beefy palm to rub over his mustache. “There has to be another way.”
“I can run it from Central. Captain Jimenez and I will be the only ones who have to know.”
“If you find anything untoward, Jake, and I mean anything, you come to me first. Before internal?”
Jake nodded. “Of course.”
“Fine,” Doug said, tiredly. “Let me know what you need.”
“You mind if I re-interview a few of the victims’ contacts and the couple who found Selma Holt?”
“Go ahead. Contact details are in the folder.”
Moving on from the internal investigation now—” Jacob said, just as the door opened and Burns and Williams came in, their twin expressions betraying their exhaustion.
Doug held up a hand, asking Jacob to hold on. “What did you find?”
Williams shook his head, his big shoulders shrugging with the movement. “Basically nothing.”
Burns added, “A teen recognized our Jane Doe. He didn’t know her name but says that he’d seen her walking home in the evening for the last year or so. His desk is pushed up to the window that overlooks the street. Apparently, she walks by almost every weeknight when he’s doing his homework. Always late at night, Monday through Thursday. He wasn’t sure about weekends.”
“Another single girl.” Burns and Williams turned to look at him. “You have another explanation as to why nobody has filed a missing person yet?”
“Her friends haven’t realized that she’s gone,” Williams confirmed.
“And more,” Jacob said. “We’ve just verified that she had a set routine.”
“Checks off availability and vulnerability,” Doug said, his hands on the waistband of his slacks as he looked at the board. He glanced at his detectives. “No single woman would walk more than three-quarters of a mile home in the dark, and I’m being generous with the distance in this neighborhood. Draw a radius map and stop in with her photo at every establishment open past nine at night.”
The detectives nodded.
“The other two were pretty set in their schedules too,” Burns said. Jacob glanced at him and he added, “Veronica Tally was a student; she literally had a schedule printed out on the organizer we found in her car.”
“Selma Holt?” Jacob asked, already knowing the answer.
“Never missed a day of work. Punctual to the minute, and that’s according to both of her employers.”
“So, he stalks them first,” Jacob suggested. “With women like this, women who had a set schedule, he might only have watched them two or three times beforehand.”
“Common enough for this MO,” Doug seconded off-handedly.
Jacob’s thoughts instantly went to Lola and he felt his chest constrict tightly as he consciously relaxed his clenched jaw. He curled his fists at his side. If it was the same man who had broken into Lola’s place, then she may be in more danger than he’d originally anticipated. He had to do something. If it wasn’t broad daylight, he’d have left to go and track her down already. As it was, he fully intended to tell her to go stay with the girlfriend she’d mentioned.
“Calm down, Jake. We don’t even know if it’s the same perp.”
Jacob glanced at Captain Brennan, surprised that he’d been so readable.
The older man shrugged. “I’ve been married to the same woman for thirty-three years. You got it bad.”
Jacob felt his stomach heave slightly in response. When he looked over at Burns and Williams, they looked back at him, confused, and clearly missing the subtext. Thank God. He did not want it getting around that a pretty woman with big, brown eyes and the softest skin he’d ever touched had tied him in knots. He’d never hear the end of it. The kiss that they’d shared, the kiss that he had instigated, was haunting him at every waking hour as it was. He couldn’t have any more distractions from Lola Michaels—not while he had to focus on keeping her safe.
Instead, he tapped his fingers on his thigh, impatient, and suddenly very frustrated. “So, we have three single women with fixed routines, similar physical descriptions, and CODs.”
“You thinking what I’m thinking?”
“That if this were any more textbook, we could write a thesis?”
Doug grinned but nodded. “Either this guy isn’t too smart or –”
“He’s really smart and leading us on,” Jacob finished.
“What now?”
“We might have a better idea once Burns and Williams run the radius search to ID the Jane Doe. I’ll re-interview the friends and family with the new direction in mind.”
Doug didn’t say anything, but Jacob knew that his double entendre had been caught by the slight tensing in the man’s posture.
“Agreed,” Doug said. He hesitated slightly and for just a moment, Jacob thought he might have thought of something else to add. “As for the Michaels girl…The feds are already on my ass about this. Even the DA,—Martha Petluski—contacted me this morning, told me I better start doing some damage control. She wants me to call the city attorney and the goddamn mayor, Jake.” With an exaggerated groan, he rubbed a single hand over his head. “The last thing I want is the FBI swarming us and saying that we failed to protect an obvious target.” He kept his eyes level, but Jacob could tell that Doug was getting a kick out of something by the way that his mustache twitched slightly with the smile on his face. “We’ve decided that it would be sensible to keep a closer eye on potential victim four,” he said, smugly.
“I don’t follow,” Burns said, his forehead wrinkled in confusion.
Jacob felt the blood drain from his face when he saw the look in Doug’s eye. “What are you doing?”
“Well, you did offer to help after all.” He swatted his leg as he chuckled, much to the bewilderment of Burns and Williams who looked at him like he’d lost his mind. “I’m electing you to point of contact for Lola Michaels.”
“With all due respect, Captain…that’s not a good idea.” Jacob tried to remain calm, tried to battle his ticking pulse. He could not be in the same vicinity as Lola Michaels for weeks and come out of it a sane man. He couldn’t even breathe around her. “I’m serious,” he said again. “It’s not a solid option.”
“Fine.” Doug grinned and Jacob got the distinct impression that he knew what was coming. “I’ll have Burns do it. She should be perfectly safe between having him there at night and the daytime patrols.”
Jacob growled under his breath, sending Doug into another round of cackles. Burns looked at Jacob, still confused, but chose to keep quiet when he saw the look on his face. Seeing no way out, Jacob said, “Fine.”
“I’m sure it’ll be a breeze.”