Eighteen
The techs found a shoe print and some fingerprints, as well as blood on the lever, some drops on the floor, and this.” Marsh held up a small evidence bag that contained a piece of black plastic.
Marsh, Jack, and I were standing outside the restroom while the CSIs were still working inside.
“It’s part of a phone,” Marsh continued. “The only piece that was found. It was in the back corner of one of the stalls.”
“So he smashed the phone and the dispenser. He was obviously blinded by rage from the phone call,” I said. This only supported my conclusion that this guy was our unsub.
“He may have rushed out of here, but someone cleaned up,” Marsh said.
“Jose said that Leslie had found the guy’s date picking something off the floor,” I reminded them, not sure if Marsh was around when the owner had said that.
“Her cleaning up after him tells me something else,” Marsh started.
“Yeah. She could know more than we thought,” Jack said and looked at me. “She might not just be in danger; she might be involved.”
“Well, we’ve never been able to establish how and where the unsub abducted his victims,” Marsh reasoned. “It’s almost as though they vanish into air. No drugs showed on the tox screens for West or Sullivan. It’s possible they were coerced at gunpoint or under threat, of course, but if a woman was working with the unsub, she’d be a lot less intimidating and threatening.”
“They could have been persuaded any number of ways,” I said. “We’ve lent credibility to the killer knowing the victims’ routines, so he could have gotten close to them, built up trust.” I wasn’t ready to fully roll over to the girlfriend being involved just yet. “Organized killers are often in long-term relationships. The partners are usually oblivious to their mates’ true natures.”
Marsh ground her hands into her hips, the evidence bag dangling from her grip. “Sure, but there have been—and still are, I’m sure—partnerships among serial killers.”
“Statistically, they are more likely to work alone,” I rebutted, feeling a bit like a jerk, but I didn’t care for a detective assuming the role of profiler and trying to show me up in front of Jack—again.
“Statistically.” Marsh paused. “But there are always exceptions to stat—”
Jack held up a hand, and Marsh stopped speaking. “None of this is getting us any closer to our unsub—or Kelter.”
“Or the unsub’s girlfriend,” I added. “Think about it this way. If she had any idea what her boyfriend was up to, why would she pick up pieces of the phone and stick around? She would have hightailed it out of here, too, but she didn’t.”
“Yet she refused to wait for the cops.” Marsh punctuated her stance with pressed lips and raised brows.
“She was afraid. Understandably so,” I said. “And assuming she was in the dark about her boyfriend, she’d think he destroyed his own phone.”
Marsh’s eyes widened. “She wanted to smooth things over.” Then she smirked. “She could be planning to get him a replacement, and if she does and she activates the phone, we can track her down.”
“Wouldn’t she need his cell provider and account information to do that?” I took pleasure in poking the tiny hole into Marsh’s suggestion.
“Nope. Just a SIM card,” Marsh replied without missing a beat.
“But she picked up all the pieces of the phone but the one you hold in your hand,” I said.
“Either she didn’t know that or she took them with her so we couldn’t lift prints.” Marsh raised her brows, stressing the fact she still hadn’t released the girlfriend as a potential partner to our unsub.
“Doesn’t explain the other prints left behind. Why not wipe everything down, including the towel dispenser?” I asked.
Jack paced a few steps and tapped his shirt pocket. “We just need to find the two of them.”
He was obviously as frustrated as I was, and we might need to rely on forensic evidence to lead us to them. Then again, the man ran off. Was it simply a matter of escaping or was he unconcerned about the prints and DNA that he left behind? Or had the call thrown him off so much that he never even considered what he was leaving behind?
I took the evidence bag from Marsh and looked closely at the contents. “It’s the bottom corner of an iPhone,” I said, holding mine up next to it.
Marsh pursed her lips, and she quirked an eyebrow. “You do realize how many people have iPhones, don’t you?”
“I never said that fact would lead us to him,” I served back. “I was just making an observation. But you said they got some prints.” I squared my shoulders and stared Marsh in the eye. “Any off this?”
“A partial thumbprint off that, yes.” Marsh bobbed her head toward the evidence bag I was holding.
So he got the call, smashed the phone to the ground, punched the dispenser, and ran out of here. “You mentioned shoeprints and blood, so the girlfriend didn’t try to clean up anything besides pieces of the phone?” I asked to confirm.
Marsh shook her head. “Doesn’t look like it.”
“See, right there,” I said, starting to feel cocky. “She wasn’t worried about the blood being tied to her boyfriend. If she had knowledge of his crimes or worked with him—”
“She would have been,” Marsh finished.
“Right.” I was a little stunned we agreed.
“And he wasn’t worried about leaving trace behind because—” Marsh scowled “—he’s not in the system.”
“My earlier thoughts were leading me there,” I confessed. “Let’s hope she gets him a replacement like you mentioned.”
“Doing so would fit with the kind of woman she seems to be—submissive, loyal, probably always wanting to make things right,” Marsh reasoned.
“Well, if she sticks to the script, we’re golden,” I said.
“Yep. And she will.” Marsh sounded confident, and it was abrasive.
“Guess we’ll see.”
“She will,” she repeated. “And when it’s activated, we’ll have the bastard.”
“We’ll be closer,” Jack corrected and looked at me. “Get the picture of him over to Zach and Paige.”
“On it, boss.” While I was sending off the message, Jack’s phone rang. He answered, and as the seconds ticked by, I could feel that something was wrong. It only took one look at the set of Jack’s jaw to tell me someone was dead.