Lullabies & Dead Bodies, page 11
“That’s right. I think losing him so young really did a number on Jada. She’s scared to get involved with another man. Scared of losing him tragically. That’s why she’s been trying to push me away and keep us in a sex only situation.”
“What are you going to do?”
“Keep pushing back. Gently. Try to show her that I’m not going anywhere.” Pete sighed and shook his head. “I don’t know. Something about her tells me she’s worth it.”
Isaac grinned. He could razz Pete about the things he said last night about being done playing Jada’s games, but he didn’t.
“Well, then I wish you luck.” He may have smirked when he said it, but his tone was genuine.
“Thanks.”
“Taylor!”
They both turned to see Lieutenant Hayes walking toward them.
“Yes, sir?”
Gavin handed him a small stack of papers.
“The morning briefing is yours.”
“Oh. Okay.” Isaac glanced down at the papers in his hand. It wasn’t a big deal. He’d run the morning briefing before since earning his new promotion, but only when Hayes himself couldn’t be there. He looked back up at the man now. “Is this a test or something?”
“No. I just don’t feel like doing it.”
Isaac grinned at him and stood, leafing briefly through the notes and reports in his hands as he followed Hayes and the others into the small conference room. After he handed out a few assignments and went over the pertinent overnight news, everyone filed out and went back to the pit to start their day. Over half an hour later, he was going over the Lullaby case with Vega, Miller, and Dorn when Patrol Sgt. Bill Winger approached him.
“Sgt. Taylor?”
Isaac looked at his uniformed colleague. “Sgt. Winger. What can I do for you?”
“I have a woman down at the intake desk in hysterics. Name’s Tammy Lane. She says her daughter is missing, but she can’t tell me for how long or what happened.”
“How old’s the daughter?” Dread flooded his stomach like a boat sinking on Lake Erie.
“Seven. Which is what made me think of your case.”
Isaac glanced around at his team, and he knew they were all thinking the same thing.
“Pete, get her up here. Take her to an interview room so she doesn’t see this board.” He gestured to the case board they’d set up with gruesome images.
“Yep.”
Pete walked away with Sgt. Winger, and Isaac turned to Miller and Dorn.
“I’m going to let you two deal with her. Be delicate. Find out if our Janey Doe belongs to this woman. I’ll be watching from observation.”
“We’re on it, Sarge,” Miller said as she stood.
While she and Dorn headed for the interview room Isaac glanced around the pit until he caught Gavin Hayes’ eye. He motioned for the Lt. to follow him and then headed off after the others. He ducked into the observation room where Pete and Hayes soon joined him.
They watched Gerri Miller and Curt Dorn enter the room where Tammy Lane sat twitching and fidgeting. The woman was short in stature and rail thin. So thin she resembled a skeleton with skin. Her cheeks were hollow and sunken in, making her blue eyes seem larger, and she had sores around her mouth and scabs on her face. Her stringy hair was a dull and lifeless shade of blonde.
“She’s lovely.” The mumbled sarcasm was meant for him alone, but he’d said it out loud.
“Yep. Definite meth head,” Pete agreed.
“Why am I in here like a criminal when my daughter is missing?” they heard her ask.
“Ms. Lane, we brought you in here so that we could have some privacy.”
Miller placed a file on the table and she and Dorn each took a seat, and Isaac nodded at the gentle tone she was taking with the distraught woman. He liked Miller’s instincts.
“Sometimes it’s difficult for us to even hear ourselves think in that big open space with everyone else out there. I’m Detective Gerri Miller and this is my partner, Detective Curt Dorn. We understand your daughter is missing. Can you tell us about her? What’s her name?”
Tammy Lane seemed to accept Miller’s explanation, and she swallowed back a sob.
“Her name is Shania Lane. She’s seven years old and has light brownish-blond hair and brown eyes. She’s kind of tanned-skinned on account of she’s bi-racial, and she loves mermaids and strawberries and I can’t find her!”
She broke down into loud sobs that wracked her frail body, and Isaac watched Miller and Dorn exchange a look. Miller handed her a box of tissues. After several minutes Dorn cleared his throat.
“Ma’am, can you tell us where Shania disappeared from?”
Tammy shook her head. “I don’t know.”
“Were you at home at the time? At a store, or maybe somewhere else?”
“I don’t know. I-I don’t remember.”
Another look passed between Miller and Dorn.
“Why don’t you tell us what you do remember, ma’am,” Miller said, trying a different tactic. “When was the last time you saw Shania?”
Tammy didn’t answer right away. Her brow furrowed and she stared down at the table, thinking.
“She was high.” Isaac mumbled to himself mostly, but Pete and Hayes both looked at him. “She’s got no clue when the last time she saw her child was.”
“I don’t remember,” Tammy finally admitted.
“Okay. Ma’am, a little girl matching Shania’s description was found yesterday morning.”
Tammy looked up at Miller with wide eyes full of hope.
“Is she okay? Oh, my God, she must be so scared. Please take me to her!”
Miller slowly pulled a photo from the file and gently pushed it across the table.
“Ma’am, do you recognize this little girl?”
Tammy looked at the picture and let out an ear-piercing, forlorn wail of despair.
“Where is she? Where’s my daughter?”
Inside the observation room, Isaac sighed.
“We need a warrant to search Tammy Lane’s house for anything that might lead us to the kidnapping, rape and murder of Shania Lane.”
Isaac looked at Pete as he said the words.
“You don’t think she had anything to do with it, do you?” Pete asked.
Isaac shrugged a shoulder in a flippant manner.
“The point is, Tammy here can’t tell us any different. Was Shania taken from her home? From a grocery store? This woman has no memory of any of it. Either that or she’s lying through her teeth.”
“Either way, Ike’s right,” Hayes spoke up. “A search of her home is definitely warranted. You two get on that while Miller and Dorn handle her.”
Isaac nodded and he and Pete left.
Nearly an hour later they were standing in Tammy Lane’s poorly kept two-bedroom apartment where she lived with her only child, Shania. The dishes piled up in the sink and the clothes and papers strewn across every available surface gave testament to Tammy’s lack of housekeeping skills.
In the past, Isaac would approach these types of situations armed with a double layer of the thickest nitrile gloves he could find. Anything to avoid touching objects or people that might trigger a flash of unwanted extrasensory perception. But now, since working so hard to accept this family trait that had been passed to him from his grandfather, and his great-grandmother, and his great-great-great-grandfather before them — not to mention how many others along that same family line — Isaac clenched and unclenched his left fist before he purposefully reached out with his bare hand and grasped an old sweatshirt.
The flash was immediate.
Shadows of light played across his mind’s eye.
When they cleared he saw Tammy Lane telling Shania to go outside and play for a while.
The girl left.
Tammy pulled out her paraphernalia and proceeded to smoke her crystal meth.
She passed out on the couch, and Isaac gasped and tossed the sweatshirt away.
“You all right?”
He looked Pete in the eyes and nodded.
“What’d you see?”
Isaac swallowed.
“She sends the kid outside to play before she gets high. It’s her routine. Shania was regularly left alone and unsupervised for hours. There’s no telling when or where our guy snatched her, but my guess would be outside somewhere.”
He called for CSU to meet them, and within ten minutes the grounds of the apartment complex was crawling with crime scene investigators and a few uniformed officers who had set up a perimeter.
“I have my doubts that we’ll find anything worthwhile here since we really have no clue of our guy’s timeframe. How long after he snatches them does he actually kill them?”
Pete nodded. “I know what you mean.”
“And even then, the…”
Whomp!
The hit came out of nowhere.
The skin-to-skin contact completely unsuspected.
Razor-sharp claws gripped Isaac’s insides, like a wild bear feasting on his intestines.
The flash of violence rocked his core.
The man had come around the corner without warning and, in an attempt to avoid bumping into a uniformed officer, had inadvertently collided with Isaac instead, his bare arm brushing against Isaac’s ungloved hand.
“Oh, jeez buddy! I didn’t see you there. I’m sorry.”
The man grabbed Isaac’s hands and held on.
Isaac recoiled from the deadly talons ripping out his guts.
He jerked his hands free and backed away, gasping, and fighting for air.
Fighting to free his mind from the multiple images of brutality.
“This is a crime scene, mister! You can’t be here.”
“Hey! You cannot duck under police tape and keep walking, sir. The tape is there for a reason!”
Isaac could hear both the uniformed cop and Pete yelling at the man, but he was powerless. The flashes played on in his mind like a shock reel.
Stalking a woman.
A bar.
A clock.
A calendar.
“Ike?”
He shook his head, hard. An attempt to drag himself out of the trance.
“Isaac!”
He doubled over, hands on his knees, and sucked in long deep breaths.
Sidney!
God, he wished Sidney were here to touch him. Her touch always had a way of soothing him when his abilities went wonky.
“Man, are you okay?”
Pete sounded panicked, and Isaac tried to give him a reassuring nod.
“I’m all right, Pete.”
His voice sounded so far away.
“What the hell just happened?”
Isaac staggered to his full height and looked his partner in the eyes.
“That dirtbag touched me. Twice.”
He could see understanding slowly creep into Pete’s face.
“And you got a disturbing double psychic hit off that guy?”
He nodded, finally able to take a full deep breath.
“Shit, man. I’m sorry. You okay?”
Isaac hesitated and thought about the flashes he’d just been bombarded with — the things the man had done. So much violence. He was not okay. How would he ever be okay with that piece of shit walking around free?
“I’m fine.”
“You sure?”
“Yeah.”
Pete looked him over for a few more seconds. Then he walked away to answer a question from one of the CSU guys.
Isaac took another deep breath to steady himself. Then he pulled out his cellphone to check the date.
“Fuck.”
The date on the calendar in that last flash. It was today.
He’d just seen the future. On his own, without Sidney near.
His abilities were growing again.
10
All the way back to the station, Isaac was dogged with thoughts of the flashes he’d seen when that dirtbag slipped under the police tape and collided with him in the parking lot of Tammy Lane’s apartment building.
He’d seen unspeakable things in his flashes before. He’d even touched a colleague or two in the past and seen questionable things that truly bothered him. But the level of violence and downright cruelty he’d seen that man do in those few seconds, disturbed him greatly. The man was the lowest kind of low life — every bit as depraved as the Lullaby Killer they were currently tracking — and Isaac knew he couldn’t simply let it go. He didn’t even get the guy’s name, but he knew that he had to find a way to get that monster off the streets.
“Taylor! You’re with me.”
Gavin Hayes motioned to him as soon as he and Pete stepped into the pit, jarring Isaac out of his murky thoughts and beckoning him to follow.
“What’s going on, Lieu?”
“Seems Chief Branson is feeling some pressure from the Mayor over these two lullaby murders. Two little girls in three days has the news reporters buzzing like flies on shit, and the public is starting to panic.”
“We did know it was coming.” Isaac followed him back toward the elevators.
“Yeah, but I was hoping to have a little more to say before being pushed in front of the cameras.”
“Sir?”
“Mayor Kirk is demanding a press conference. She wants total transparency from this department. And Chief Branson, of course, wants me at the podium since it’s my homicide division.”
“And let me guess. You want me there since you insisted I supervise this investigation.”
“See? I knew you were more than just a pretty face, Taylor.” Hayes grinned at his own joke.
Isaac rolled his eyes.
“Am I going to have to speak at this thing, sir?”
“Depends on the questions. If something comes up that you have specific knowledge of being out in the field, feel free to jump in. Otherwise I might allow you to slide this time, although I probably will introduce you. We’ll see. But you’d better get used to it, Sergeant. If you fancy my job someday you’ll have microphones pushed in your face on the regular. Let’s go.”
All thoughts of the dirtbag from the parking lot were pushed aside, and he followed his lieutenant down to the main floor and out the glass side doors where the news media typically set up for press conferences such as this. As soon as they stepped outside Isaac was blinded by camera flashes coming from every direction.
He stood off to the side when Lt. Hayes took the podium and glanced around to see both Mayor Brenda Kirk and Police Chief Luther Branson also in attendance. To his great relief, Deputy Chief Jay Schiffer was nowhere around. The reporters began shouting out questions without preamble, and Hayes raised his hands to quiet them.
“I will begin with a brief statement of what we know at this time.”
Hayes’ deep rumble immediately quieted the rabid reporters, and Isaac clasped his hands in front of him in preacher fashion, as was his habit. He glanced around him, careful not to touch anyone standing nearby.
He listened to Hayes read off the facts surrounding both of the dead little girls, noting that Hayes did not give the reporters anything more than what had already been made public. Nothing about the lullaby snippets or the little girls’ bodies being staged in a similar fashion.
When he finished speaking he looked at the crowd of reporters.
“I’ll now take questions one at a time, please.”
As the reporters shouted at him, Hayes calmly pointed to one in the crowd.
“Lt. Hayes, is your department working on the assumption that the two cases are related?”
“We are looking into that angle, as well as the possibility that they are not related.”
He kept his response short and sweet and calmly pointed to another reporter.
“Lieutenant, can you tell us who is in charge of the investigation?”
Isaac’s insides plummeted to the bottom of his stomach.
“The case is assigned to four of my best detectives, with Detective Sergeant Isaac Taylor supervising.”
Hayes pointed to another reporter, and from the corner of his eye Isaac noticed Chief Branson look his way and give him a good once over.
“Is this the same Detective Sgt. Taylor that saved a young boy from drowning at Lake Erie several weeks ago?”
Isaac stood a little straighter. It was strange knowing he was on the public’s radar. He wasn’t at all sure how he felt about that.
Hayes’ gaze flitted to Isaac and then back to the reporters.
“Yes, it is.”
“Why are you not overseeing this case yourself, Lieutenant?”
The same reporter called out before Hayes could move on to someone else.
“I oversee every single homicide case at this department.” Hayes’ tone was clipped and precise. “Unfortunately, that means I can’t head up each investigation myself. Detective Sergeant Taylor has over fifteen years of experience in police work. The last nine of those years have been spent as a homicide detective with this department, where he has amassed the highest closed case record of the entire homicide division of the CPD. He is more than qualified to lead this investigation.”
Isaac’s jaw clenched and he tried not to feel exposed. Hayes pointed to another reporter.
“Lt. Hayes, do these murders resemble the Lullaby Murders from seven years ago in any way?”
“Why do you ask that question?”
A hush fell over the assembled reporters and everyone zeroed in on the one asking the question. Janelle Mandrake of channel 4 news. The woman glanced around, realizing that she was now the center of attention, and Isaac’s insides plummeted again, for a whole different reason this time.
“My office may have gotten a tip that there was some kind of connection.”
“A tip from where?”
Hayes’ deep voice held slightly more menace than Isaac was used to hearing.
“You know I can’t answer that, Lieutenant. Our sources are confidential, just like yours.”
A disingenuous smile was Hayes’ only response. Isaac knew he wouldn’t have been half as smooth if he were the one at the podium.
“Any other questions?” Hayes asked the other reporters. When more shouts about the Lullaby Murders from seven years ago were thrown at him, Hayes scowled. “That’s all for now. Thank you for coming.”
