Body Count Read online

  Once in my office, I ring and leave a message for Sam and send her an e-mail.

  I try desperately to refocus my mind on my cases. I try not to think of Josh, to replay the events over and over in my mind. Him touching me…me touching him… The only way to get my mind off last night is to absorb myself in a profile. I pick up my files and choose my next case. The Whistler case in Canada.

  I’ve only just read the coroner’s report when Sam drops by.

  “You rang, honey?”

  I smile, beckoning her into my office.

  “That’s a big smile,” she says, obviously already guessing or hoping something’s happened between Josh and I.

  I nod and smile again, confirming her suspicions. Sam closes my office door.

  “So, what happened?” she asks with glee.

  “We trained. We had dinner. And we wound up back at my place.”

  “It’s about time. How was it?”

  “Great. Really great.”

  “So Marco showed you a good time?” she says with a wink.

  “Yes,” I say and feel myself blush.

  If Sam was Australian, within a couple of minutes she’d have me giving her a blow-by-blow reconstruction of the whole evening’s events. An Australian woman wouldn’t be satisfied with yes as a response.

  “You can’t wipe that grin off your face, can you?”

  I laugh.

  “And you’re an official double agent now.”

  “I guess so. But I presume I’ll only be hearing that term from you. I certainly won’t be telling anyone else about this yet.”

  “When’s your next date?”

  “I don’t know.” I furrow my brow. “We didn’t talk about that.”

  “Don’t worry! He’s sweet on you.”

  “I hope so. The last thing I want is a one-night stand with a fellow agent.”

  “Stop being so serious. Besides, it ain’t gonna go that way.”

  “God, could I do with a dose of your confidence.”

  She laughs, her loud, raucous laugh. “You certainly don’t have any reason not to be confident. Especially with men. You’re smart, tall, blond, gorgeous and thin, not to mention good-hearted. Too good-hearted.”

  “Stop, you’re embarrassing me. Besides, you’re forgetting stubborn, untrusting, shy and defensive.”

  “You? Stubborn?”

  “Very funny.” I pause, seeing a way to introduce the other topic I desperately need to speak to Sam about—another one of my “traits,” these dreams and nightmares. Hopefully Sam can come up with a rational explanation. But I stop myself. It’ll sound too crazy.

  “The bad news is I didn’t get much of a chance to look over your profile,” I say instead.

  “You mean your profile.”

  “Yeah, right. My profile. I had a quick read, that’s all.”

  “Any thoughts?”

  “There’s something missing. There’s more to him.”

  “I agree. But what?”

  “I’m not sure yet. We can hand it to Rivers now, or we can work on it some more tonight.”

  “Well, you’re going to have to deal with Rivers because I’m officially off this case.”

  I’m worried about missing my deadline, but the profile’s not right yet. “Let’s hold off for a day. I want to get this perfect.”

  “Up to you, honey.”

  “I’m going to take the wimp’s way out though. I’m sending him an e-mail.” I type a quick message. “Done.” I click the send button.

  I was so excited about telling Sam about Josh, I’ve totally forgotten about the killer and his note. Sam was unnerved yesterday.

  “Any sign of him. The killer?” I ask.

  “No.” She speaks softly. “All’s quiet.”

  “You are being careful?”

  “Of course. I checked the apartment as soon as I got home last night. Then checked all my locks before I went to bed. I’ve also been wary about being followed.”

  “Good. And the boys in blue?”

  “Cops did two drive-bys that I saw and probably a few more in the middle of the night.”

  “Good,” I repeat. “So how are you feeling about the note?”

  She pauses. “To be honest, I’m still a little bothered by it, but I’m off the case now…kind of.”

  “But does the killer know that?”

  She shrugs. “I’ll be extra careful for the next week or so.”

  I raise my eyebrows.

  “Okay, until we nail the guy.”

  “That’s better.”

  “I don’t think I’m a target. He’d be stupid to take an FBI agent.”

  “True.”

  “Anyways, you’ll be there to protect me tonight.” She smiles.

  “Together, we’re indestructible.” We both laugh.

  It’s eight at night and Sam is serving up bean burritos at her place. She lives in Key Towers, a sixteen-story apartment block in Alexandria, which is less than ten miles from the heart of D.C. It’s a really nice apartment complex and we’ve even talked about moving into a larger apartment in the complex together when our leases run out. Sam would be a great roommate. Her apartment is modern, with cream carpet, thin Venetian blinds and the safety of white decor in the bathroom and kitchen. She has livened the place up with splashes of color, including two bright red sofas.

  Sam plonks down my plate and a bottle of beer in front of me.

  “It’s like having a husband,” she says.

  “I thought it was only Australian men who liked to have beer served to them.”

  “A universal male thing, I’d say.”

  I laugh.

  Sam dishes up her own burrito and keeps talking. “I had a case once when I was working homicide…a poisoning case,” she says, slopping some guacamole and sour cream on top of the bean mix. “A woman poisoned her husband. I interviewed her and she looked me in the eye and said she just got sick of cooking his dinner and serving him beer every night.” Sam rolls her burrito, sits down and takes a swig of beer. “So one day she’s cooking their evening meal and decides, ‘Hell, I don’t want to do this tomorrow, or ever again.’ So she gets some rat poison from the shed and mixes it in with his meal.”

  “Nice.”

  “It gets better. She wanted to go for justifiable homicide.”

  I laugh. “That would open up a floodgate.”

  “The law didn’t see it as justifiable, but I bet there’d be a lot of women who would argue for it.”

  “You think you’ll ever get married?” I ask.

  “Me? I don’t think I’m cut out to be a wife. Besides, I’ve got other plans for my life.”

  “Such as?”

  “I want to be the first female director of the FBI.”

  “You have got plans,” I say, not sure how serious she is.

  “Well, I don’t know about director, but I do want to get somewhere with my career in the Bureau. And I want to travel. What about you? Do you think you’ll ever get hitched?”

  “Maybe…one of these days.”

  “Marco could be your man,” she says with a wink.

  “It’s a bit too early for that sort of talk.”

  I play with my meal and take another sip of beer.

  “Anything wrong, honey?” Sam says. “Worried I’m poisoning you?”

  I laugh. “No. If you wanted to kill someone, I reckon you’d be a gun kind of girl.”

  “Do you now?”

  “Just a shot in the dark.”

  “Ha, ha. And what about you?” She studies me through narrowed eyes, moving her head from side to side slowly in an exaggerated gesture. “You’d like to do hand-to-hand combat. You’d want to do it the hard way.”

  “Only if I knew I was going to win.”

  Sam’s eyes are on me, watching my fork circle a mound of refried beans.

  “Oh, come on, Sophie.”

  I quickly shovel a big forkful of food into my mouth. But it doesn’t stop her.

  “I know something
’s up. Is it Marco?”

  I finish chewing. “No. Everything’s fine. In fact, he paid me a visit and booked our next date.”

  “Really?”

  “He’s going to cook for me. At his place.”

  “Really?” repeats Sam. “So things are going well.”

  “Yeah. I think so. Like I said, it’s early days.” I smile. “But he seems to have a lot of attractive features.”

  “I’ll say.”

  “I’m not just talking about that.”

  “No, I know. He’s a nice guy. Even if he is a ladies’ man.”

  I draw a quick intake of breath and open my eyes wider.

  “I’m joking. I’m joking,” she says. “Jeez, you are sweet on him.”

  “Yep.” The truth is, I’ve been pushing Josh away for so long, and now I’ve done an about-face. I’m falling for him all right, and hard. I barely want to admit it to myself, let alone Sam.

  We finish our first burrito and Sam dishes us both another one. We’re halfway through when she broaches the topic again.

  “If it isn’t Marco, then what’s up?” she asks, taking a mouthful.

  I take a deep breath, preparing myself. Sam leans in.

  “I don’t know how to say this without sounding crazy. Totally crazy.”

  “Just spit it out, girl. You’re amongst friends. Well, friend.”

  I still hesitate. Do I really want to do this? Once I tell Sam, there’s no going back. But I need to get someone else’s opinion, and Sam is the only candidate. I don’t think I have a choice. I take the plunge.

  “I’ve been seeing things. About cases.”

  “What do you mean?”

  I don’t respond. How do I say this?

  Sam gives me a long hard look.

  I stand up, move away from the table and stare into the distance. “It sounds crazy.” I turn around and take a breath. “You know Jean, from your D.C. case file?”

  “Yes.” Sam puts her fork down and turns in her seat to face me.

  “Remember I recognized her and told you I must have seen the file.”

  Sam nods.

  “I’ve never seen that case file before. Hunter never showed it to me, but I’ve seen her. Twice in fact.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I had a dream. A nightmare. And in it I saw Jean, dead, positioned just like she was at the crime scene.”

  Sam doesn’t respond.

  “And then there’s the latest victim—Susan,” I say.

  “What about her?”

  “In the dream I saw her walking to her car.”

  Sam’s face wrinkles in confusion. “Susan was abducted in a parking lot, just like Teresa.” She stands up.

  “Yes, I know. I saw her from the killer’s perspective.”

  “Okay. Okay. Let’s think about this logically.” Sam sits on the sofa and rests her chin on her hand.

  “There’s one other thing.”

  “What?”

  “The night Susan was killed, I witnessed her murder.”

  “In a dream?” Sam seems unconvinced.

  “Not quite. I was dropping off to sleep when it happened. It was after you left my place, at exactly five past midnight. I saw Susan being killed.”

  “What do you mean saw?”

  “It’s like seeing a series of still photos or watching a poor-quality video. Images of her flashed into my mind.” A tightness comes across my chest and I fight back the tears and panic.

  Sam tries to absorb it all.

  “Has this ever happened before? In Australia?”

  “I often have bad dreams, but I usually don’t remember them.” But as I say it I’m taken back twenty-five years, to John. It had happened before. The week John disappeared I had several nightmares, but the worst one was on the night he was taken. It was so vivid, and when I woke up John was gone. The police decided he was a runaway, but I knew what had really happened to him. He was kidnapped and murdered. I’d seen his murder with my own eyes. I’d felt his killer’s emotions. I tried to tell the police, I tried to tell Mom and Dad, but no one believed me. After a few days, I doubted myself—why would I think and say something so horrible? It was just a nightmare. But then weeks passed. Months passed. And still no word from John. By then it was too late. Just over a year after he was taken, John’s body was found in the bush, sixty miles from Shepparton, where I grew up. Maybe if I’d made them believe me, I could have stopped it.

  “Sophie?”

  I wipe the tears from my cheek and turn around. “I used to get hunches, but everyone gets hunches.” I’m not ready to tell Sam about my brother. Not yet.

  “Lots of police work is based on hunches,” Sam says. “But that’s not what we’re talking about?”

  “Not this time.”

  “Getting too involved?” She’s grasping at straws now.

  “I wish it was that simple. But no matter how involved I get, how could I see these things? I thought it was my imagination until I saw Susan lying there in that flower bed.”

  Sam nods, obviously bewildered by it all.

  “Have you ever worked with a psychic?” I stumble over the forbidden word.

  “Yes, a couple of times. They were helpful. Once, the woman actually saved a young girl who had been abducted.”

  “Sam, I’ve been fighting this for days now, and it’s the only explanation.”

  “Okay, so let’s assume you’re having premonitions.”

  Another taboo word.

  “It’s crazy, isn’t it?”

  Sam thinks before she speaks. “I don’t know much about this stuff, Soph, but I know you. I trust you.”

  I smile, relieved.

  “Have you had any more premonitions about the D.C. killer?” she asks.

  “No, not since the other night, when Susan was murdered.”

  Silence.

  “I think we’d better keep these visions of yours between the two of us for the moment,” Sam says eventually. “Unless you want to tell Marco.”

  “Are you crazy? That’d scare him off for sure!”

  She laughs. “Possibly. What about Dr. Rosen?”

  “I thought about her. But I don’t want this on my record. Especially when I don’t really know what’s going on yet.”

  As the Bureau psychologist, Amanda would feel compelled to tell Rivers or Pike. She’d probably think I was crazy and pull me off active duty. Another burnout in the BAU.

  “Okay, so we’ve agreed. We’ll keep it between the two of us.”

  “I know it must sound weird.”

  “Well, it’s certainly a little out there, but it does happen. So, you haven’t had any other visions?” She breaks the tension with a little too much emphasis on the word visions.

  “No.”

  I’m relieved to have a confidante, except that talking about it makes it sound even crazier than when I think about it in the confined space of my mind.

  She stands up. “Come on. I’ve slaved over the stove and you’re going to let it go to waste.”

  I laugh and we sit back down and finish our dinner. After we’ve cleared up she empties her briefcase onto the kitchen table and we spread out the D.C. photos.

  “So Jean is the girl you saw dead?”

  “Yes, but she had a strange marking on her thigh. Just below her hip and on the outside. A tattoo, I think. It looked Celtic.”

  Sam picks up a photo of Jean, dead, and examines it closely. “I can’t see anything, but I’ll ask Flynn and Jones for a blowup. Her thighs are cut up pretty bad. It might be tough to see a tattoo.”

  “He’s really gone overboard with the stabbing,” I say.

  “Yes, but like we talked about at your place, it’s still controlled, rehearsed, rather than an overkill pattern.” Sam shuffles her profile to the top of the pile. “I’ve officially classified him as an organized offender.”

  I nod. Organized offender rings true with other elements of the crime too. They tend to plan their attacks in detail, use restraints, p
ersonalize the victim, demand submission and transport the victim or body. Our guy did all these things. Perhaps the time of death was a moment of disorganized MO, but the killer was definitely in control of the abductions and murders. Unfortunately for us, organized types are also harder to catch—they tend to have high IQs.

  “Any trophies?” I ask.

  Serial killers usually take trophies of their kills so they can relive the murder over and over again. Just looking at the trophy gives them pleasure, in their sick way.

  “Jean usually wore a bracelet, but it was never found, and Teresa used to wear a ring on her little finger.”

  “It’ll all be evidence,” I say. The serial killer’s habitual trophy-taking usually forms part of the physical evidence against them. That’s partly how they got Milat’s conviction for the backpacker murders in Australia. The police found water bottles, backpacks, scarves and even a tent belonging to the victims in Milat’s attic. Pretty good evidence in a court of law. “When was Susan abducted?” I ask.

  “Looks like three days before she was killed.”

  “Susan for three days, Jean for five days and Teresa for eight days.”

  Sam nods and picks up a photo of Jean.

  “So…um…do you want to touch the photo? To hold it?”

  I look at Sam quizzically, not understanding. Then it hits me—psychics like to touch things. It can trigger their visions.

  “Oh. Yeah. Right,” I say awkwardly.

  I take the photo and close my eyes, waiting for something, but I’m not sure what. I feel ridiculous. A smile plays around my lips.

  Sam picks up on it and next thing I know she’s chanting. “Ommmmmm. Ommmmm.”

  We both burst out laughing.

  “This is ridiculous!” I snort in between laughs. I take a mouthful of beer and then almost send it across the room as another peal of laughter escapes from me. I put the photo down.

  My near miss with the beer sets Sam off and she collapses onto the chair, laughing hard.

  But the moment of release disappears quickly. I look into the eyes of Jean once again and a searing pain races through my eyes. I fall forward. Sam rushes to me and for a moment I see the shadowy figure of a man play across my field of vision. It’s the killer. But before I can make out any of his features the vision fades.

  “God, honey, are you okay?”