Eternal by V. Forrest (new reading TXT) 📗

Agent Kahill. I’m strictly heterosexual, although I don’t get the chance to demonstrate it nearly as often as I’d like.”

It was Fia’s turn to laugh. In another life, if she had another life, she might like to have been friends with this woman. “I didn’t think you were. And it’s Fia.”

“Ann,” she said. “Look, Fia, I called because I’m at that point in the case where it’s time to box up the evidence and stick it on a shelf and I don’t want to do that. I was hoping you could look at this other case”—she tapped the manila envelope—“and tell me if you think this is the same guy.”

Again, Fia eyed the envelope. She remembered feeling that night as if she had seen the girl…the alley…something before. “How old is it?”

“Fifteen years in October. Crime scene was only two blocks from where Casey Mulvine was found. I’d like you to look at these photos. It didn’t occur to me at the time, but if you compare them to the Mulvine crime scene photos, I think maybe these girls were posed. She hesitated. “By the same killer.”

“Serial killer who hasn’t struck in fifteen years?” Fia tried not to sound too much like the arrogant, doubting FBI agent she could sometimes be when dealing with local police.

The lieutenant shrugged. “Told you, I’m grasping at straws. But I can’t get anyone in my office to bear with me long enough to consider the possibility and you…you were there. You got the vibes.”

Fia wanted to crack a joke about the “vibes,” but she didn’t. Sutton’s observation was too accurate. Accurate enough to make Fia uncomfortable.

“Serial killer,” Fia mused aloud.

“Look…I know you don’t know me,” Sutton said, “but my instincts are good and I’m telling you, this is the same man. I don’t know if he’s killed others in the area and we just haven’t put it together, or if he’s been out of town or in jail, or happily married until his wife dumped him last month, but he’s done it before.” She paused. “And I’m afraid he’s going to do it again.”

“I’ll have a look,” Fia agreed, reaching for the envelope. As her fingertips touched it, she felt that same eerie tingling she’d gotten the night she entered the alleyway to meet with Sutton.

So, was it the crime or was it the cop?

It’s the mature thing to do, Fia told herself as she cruised the block for a parking spot. It’s the only way to settle things between us. For good. The only way to put this relationship behind so I can move forward.

She hadn’t really come up with the mantras on her own. All she was doing was repeating the things Kettleman had said in their session yesterday.

Fia rounded the block again and braked behind a UPS truck double-parked. She glanced at the manila envelope on the seat beside her. She didn’t have to slide the faded photos out to see them. They were burned into her mind, the brand still sizzling at the edge of her tender flesh.

Maria Pulchecko, age twenty-one. Blond, like Casey Mulvine. About the same height and weight. She was found in the alley behind what had been the Clover, a pseudo-Irish pub, in the eighties. The place had since been sucked into the city’s creeping blocks of renovations, old brick buildings that had been divided into one bedroom and studio apartments.

A nursing student, Maria Pulchecko had also been raped and strangled, but with her bra, not bare hands. A slightly different MO than Mulvine’s killer. But what was giving off the creepy vibes was that she was found lying in the alleyway in a position almost identical to Casey’s. And, as Sutton had observed, she didn’t appear posed…not until you compared the two women. Then, they eerily appeared to be the same woman…the same crime scene.

A copycat killer? Possibly. Who? A cop, an emergency technician, a neighbor who had seen Maria Pulchecko sprawled in the alley fifteen years ago and had been dying to mimic the crime?

Fia laid on her horn. What was the UPS guy still doing out at eight o’clock at night? She craned her neck, trying to figure out if she could squeeze by him, but there wasn’t a chance. A massive SUV prevented that escape maneuver.

More horns began to sound behind her and she glanced up in the rearview mirror. Being an agent, seeing dead women in alleys and men without their heads made her suspicious. Any one of the drivers behind her could be ready to blow a gasket, could pull a gun from his or her glove compartment and start taking potshots.

A young Asian woman in a brown uniform jogged across the street, waved to Fia, and jumped into the UPS panel truck.

Five minutes later, Fia had parked her car and was walking into the bistro where she had told Joseph she would meet him. It had to be somewhere public, she had insisted. And not a bar. He had a table for them in the back. She slipped into her chair, glancing at the candle flickering on the table between them and the single red rose in a bud vase beside the chrome salt and pepper shakers.

“Could you have found a better-lit table?” she asked, tossing her bag on the chair beside her. Joseph had always been a romancer. And he’d been good at it. And he’d known it.

“Hey, you picked the restaurant,” Joseph replied smoothly.

She looked to the waiter. “A tonic water, please.” She glanced at Joseph. He’d shaved before he’d come and still smelled of expensive shaving cream. He’d always had a problem with a five o’clock shadow but he’d only ever shaved in the evening for big dates. “He’ll have another of whatever it is he’s drinking.”

Fia waited for the waiter to walk away before she leaned back in her chair, crossing her arms over her chest. “Okay, enough of this. I want to know why you’re here and when you’re going.”

“Why I’m here?” He opened