There were three hard knocks on the door, and then it opened. A portly nurse in a white gown looked in with a severe expression on her face.
“Medical,” she said simply, and Chase rose to her feet.
“Thank you, Hanna,” she said to the woman across the table from her. “And we’re going to catch this guy. I promise.”
Hanna nodded, but said nothing. Her demeanor had completely changed from when Chase had first arrived in the interrogation room.
She remembered what Stitts had said, that in his profile he had stated that the killer was a man who had been emasculated.
And yet none of the other victims had been sexually assaulted.
Chase pushed these feelings aside for the time being. The woman had made a claim, a very vivid and graphic account of a rape, and it wasn’t her job to judge her in this moment.
She would make sure that this man… that Colin Elliot, would be brought in for questioning. And if he did rape her, then…
Chase left the room, and headed to the adjacent one.
“Did you get that?” she asked, after entering. She clicked a button and the glass went dark, and the intercom shut off, offering Hanna privacy as she was examined and swabbed.
“Dunbar? Any hit on the name?”
Officer Dunbar didn’t look up, he just continued to type furiously.
“Not yet, working on it.”
She turned to Drake next.
“Something’s not right here,” she said absently. Drake was looking particularly pale, almost as if he were going to be ill. “You alright?”
“Fine,” he grumbled, even though it was clear that he was anything but fine.
Chase instinctively sniffed the air, trying to pick up the scent of alcohol, even though this was one of the first things she had done when Drake had come down to the precinct.
She smelled nothing, and then considered that this was perhaps that reason why he was acting so strangely, and looked sick.
After her brief addiction to heroin, she knew how bad things could get before they got better.
She swallowed, and tried to focus on the task at hand, on Hanna, on her story, on the killer that they so desperately sought.
“What’s not right?” Agent Stitts asked, bringing her out of her head.
Chase turned to the now black two-way mirror.
“The rape… the other girls, all four of them… none of them had signs of sexual assault, did they?”
Detective Yasiv shook his head.
“CSU and the ME’s office tested them thoroughly. Melissa had had sex recently, as recent as a day or two before she went missing, but her mother confirmed that she was seeing someone. An ex-boyfriend, and he was cleared. Incarcerated when both she and Tanya went missing.”
“So why now, then? If this Colin Elliot is our killer, why did he just start raping now?”
“And why did he let her go?” Drake added.
Chase agreed.
“It doesn’t make sense. Drake, in the books, was there any mention of rape?”
Drake shook his head.
“No. None. Only about the killing. And us discovering the bodies, of course.”
“Then why now?” Chase asked again.
“Maybe it’s not—” Drake began, but Dunbar cut him off.
“Got it! Colin Elliot, Elgin Street, Apartment four.”
Detective Yasiv grabbed for his coat.
“Elgin Street?” Chase repeated. “Where’s that?”
Dunbar finally looked up from his computer screen.
“You’re not going to believe this, but it’s right in the heart of the area that the IP address that posted the wereporn books pinged.”
Chase’s eyes bulged and she turned to Drake.
“Go! Go grab this guy and bring him in!”
Drake nodded, and reached for his own jacket. Then he looked at Stitts.
“You packing?”
Stitts nodded.
“Good. I’ll drive. Yasiv, you follow behind with a couple of uniforms.”
Chase planted both hands on the table and allowed several deep breaths when it was just her and Dunbar left in the room.
There was something else bugging her, and it wasn’t just Hanna’s story, or the inconsistencies with the killer’s MO.
It had something to do with Agent Stitts’s profile. It wasn’t right; they were missing something, something big, and yet she couldn’t put her finger on it.
“Fuck,” she said out loud, and when Dunbar looked over at her, she frowned. “Keep digging, Dunbar. I’ve got a feeling that this isn’t over yet.”
And then, to herself, she thought, it might not even be over when we arrest Colin Elliot.