The captain nods and bounces his gaze between the both of us. “And that’s exactly why I don’t want you to see it. Keep this to yourself, Detective. We don’t want the suspect’s lawyer getting wind of this.”
Kace nods his head and looks at me with pleading eyes.
Maybe he should go plead to the woman he was with last night.
I swivel my head around, ending the conversation. I was not interested in hearing his excuses. “The captain and I have some things to discuss. Without you.”
“Fine. We will talk about this soon.”
Without glancing in his direction, I nod and stare at Cap.
Once the door fully closes and Kace is gone, Cap begins, “First off, let me start with my initial thoughts: this is not the proxy killer’s normal method; we may be dealing with a copycat or this may be a distraction tactic—something our killer has in place in case of getting picked up.”
“This is true,” I offer. “I didn’t know you had picked up a suspect.”
Cap holds the evidence bag with the bullet up and studies it, no doubt comparing the engraving technique to Coralee Mitchell’s bullet. “Within the last few days, we’ve received a few of these messages. If things weren’t hard enough, people are playing around with a serious case and turning these into fucking Valentine’s Day cards or something.”
“It’s the ammunition for my sidearm,” I point out. “After going to Nolan’s office, something kept gnawing at my brain, so I went home and went over all Kace’s notes...” I trail off, realizing I could get Kace in trouble, and then I thought more about it, and I didn’t fucking care. “And—”
“Stop.” Cap leans back on his chair and grips his armrest, turning his head this way and that while contemplating his actions. When he finds one internal thought he likes, he swiftly nods his head. “Don’t tell me anything that can get you in trouble. You were on medical leave and ordered not to directly interfere with the case in an official capacity. You and Kace disobeyed my orders. Until yesterday, you did not have the official okay to come back.”
His emphasis on yesterday cues me to his meaning. “Yesterday, after Kace left me....”
Cap gasps softly and wheels his chair closer. He leans forward, offering me some condolence. “I’m sorry.”
“He wouldn’t answer any of my calls, and I didn’t want to make a scene at the precinct, so I went home and spent the whole night going over the files from his desk.” I leave out the fact I took a bottle shot every time I started over. “I didn’t notice much, except that the bullet message matches the gun registered to the victim. The one for Elijah Bitten Senior, Coralee Mitchell, and now mine.”
“And?” He writes something down on his yellow paper, which captures my attention.
“Maybe he, or she, has access to gun databases.”
“It’s a theory,” he speculates. “We’ve started poking around private investigators and technicians, even looking into people from The Tank.”
The crime lab. “Technicians,” I mumble back, rubbing an itch behind my ear. “He’s smart. I mean not of average IQ.”
“Do you propose I ask the nurse to take an IQ test in order to vindicate her?” Cap scoffs. “That’s merely speculation.”
My gut is telling me it’s not. “People have come forth with bullets, right? But not just today. There’s an older man who lost his wife eight years ago.”
The detective nods. “Not many relevant people have come forth.”
Probably because they are holding on to that name for a rainy day.
“Yes, we didn’t think much of the case. Of the ones we have, same story: courier drop-off, lots of fingerprints on the packages, none matching any other of the bullets, except for one.”
My ears perk up. Why did his conversation seem so familiar?
“The nurse’s. She was also the one in the ER when you were shot. She was the one who came to tell us Tyler had passed.”
“She’s one of the couriers.” Multiple apps. “Maybe she delivered these packages and lied to us. I don’t think it’s the nurse.”
“Proof doesn’t lie, Eleanor.”
“But it’s open to interpretation,” I remind him. “You want this woman to be the killer so you can end the case, but what happens when more victims turn up?” These courier positions cannot be set up ahead of time.
“Money-Life is a newer app. You can shop for paying jobs by scrolling through a list.” I pull out my phone and bring up the application. “It’s easy to sign up, but you have a three-hour window. If your job isn’t accepted within three hours, you have to post it again. Buyers and sellers get rated. So, if you take a job and you don’t show up, your rating goes lower and then you get kicked off if you go below a two.”
Cap takes my phone from me. “You posted a job?”
I had. “You can create a profile and post right away or accept right away. There’s no intermittent period. Whoever posted the job, did it at four, and at seven this morning, there was a messenger at my door delivering my package. You had the nurse in holding, so how did she post it?”
“A friend or an accomplice?” Cap brainstorms with me. “A lot of drug dealers use this to traffic in the city.”
Drugs. Pregnancy Center. “Do you think the doctor from the Pregnancy Center has anything to do with the proxy murders? He’s smart, already evading capture, and he doesn’t get his hands dirty.”
Even as I list the reasons, something doesn’t sit right with me.
But it does sit right with Cap. “We handed off our case against him to another department, in order to pursue the Bullet Man.” Cap shoots me a scalding glare, daring me to give him shit over it, and makes a call. “Bring me all the doctors who the nurse has worked with before working at the hospital.”
Back to the nurse again.
“Elle, I’m going to ask you to go home. Leave this with us, and I’ll figure out why the precinct has been implicated.”
“What are you going to do?”
“I’m going to show this to the nurse. Do you want to come with me? I could really use your help.”
“No—” Because I’m no longer interested in the Bullet Man…
“Captain? Do you read me?” The radio goes off, static crackling in the air.
Cap snatches it off his desk and presses the transmitter. Before he can answer, the voice, I recognize as Frank’s, fills the air. “We have another victim.”
“Shit. You continue patrolling the neighborhood and await orders.” Cap heaves himself up. “I’m getting really tired of this shit.” He opens his door and shouts, “Dalton, get your ass back in here. We have work to do.”
In less than a minute, a sad-eyed Kace walks through the door, looking at me like I had finished breaking his heart.
I wasn’t done yet.
13
Answer Me
Eleanor Devero
The desire for revenge is wired within me. It rushes through my brain and burns through any rational thought, clouding my vision.