Disarming Detective. Elizabeth Heiter

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СКАЧАТЬ “I guess we all have our secrets.”

      * * *

      AS SOON AS Logan walked through the door of the Blue Dolphin, he could tell he’d made a mistake. But Ella had already gone in, so he let the door close behind him and followed through the crush of tourists and locals, through the smell of sunscreen and salt water.

      Having lived in Oakville all his life, Logan knew a lot of the locals. If he hadn’t, he would have been able to separate them from the tourists by dress alone. The locals all wore layers in deference to the heat outside and the air-conditioning blasting inside. Most of them, acclimatized to much warmer weather come summer, were still in pants. The tourists sported flip-flops, cutoffs and tiny bathing suit tops, their wet hair still dripping from the nearby ocean.

      Crammed around a table near the front of the deli were four uniforms who’d set their sandwiches down as soon as they saw him. He watched the smiles quiver at the edges of their lips, the laughter dance in their eyes, and knew what was coming.

      Hank O’Connor was senior in the group, nearly as big across as he was tall. He gave his companions a nod, an unspoken “watch this,” then called out, “Hey Greer, catch your serial killer yet?”

      The rest of the table snickered, and Ella stopped staring at the menu above the counter long enough to glance questioningly from the uniforms to Logan.

      “I’m working on it, O’Connor,” Logan threw back. “How about you? Catch any speeders today?”

      The smile dropped off Hank’s face. They’d taken the detective exam at the same time. They’d both passed, but only one job had opened up and since Logan had been there longer, with more experience, procedure dictated that he got it. Hank was about as happy with Logan’s position as the chief was.

      Hank jerked a little straighter in his seat and Logan knew he should just have let it go. Hank had a bad temper, a long memory and a penchant for petty revenge.

      “Not everybody’s daddy can buy them a job,” Hank spat.

      As one, the cops with Hank went for their sandwiches again, their eyes cast downward.

      Familiar frustration filled Logan, threatening to overflow, but he clenched his teeth and turned back to the counter. He’d fought this battle too many times to bother.

      Yes, his family had a long history in Oakville. Yes, his father, the mayor, had been in office for years. Admittedly, it had given him some advantages in his life. But when it came to his career, it always seemed to be a disadvantage. Because no matter how hard he worked, there was always someone anxious to claim he was just trading on the Greer name.

      “Your family were the last ones to see the Crowley girl, right?” Hank pressed. “You spinning your serial killer story so nobody brings that up in the next election?”

      Logan’s fingers curled into his palms as he spun back toward Hank, acid on his tongue.

      With a speed he wouldn’t have expected from a desk jockey profiler, Ella ducked in front of him and held her hand out toward the table of cops with an overly cheery smile. “Officer O’Connor, is it? I’m Special Agent Ella Cortez, FBI. I’m here because Detective Greer’s serial killer theory looks promising.”

      Hank engulfed Ella’s hand in his own bear paw and shook it a few times, a startled expression on his face. His mouth opened and closed, but no words emerged. His companions looked at each other with equal surprise.

      Before they could recover, Ella grabbed Logan’s arm and steered him back toward the counter, ordering herself a sandwich. Logan fought his laughter until they were both out the door and back in his Chevy Caprice with their food.

      But any urge to laugh faded as he drove toward the marsh. Knowing Hank, both the fact that Logan was still pursuing the serial killer angle and the fact that he now had a cute FBI profiler in tow would make it back to his chief before the end of the day. Which would lead to a conversation that he had hoped to avoid a little longer.

      Swallowing a sigh, Logan eased his unmarked police vehicle off the side of the road as close to the marsh as they were going to get. “We’re hoofing it from here,” he told Ella.

      She stuffed the last bite of her sandwich in her mouth and got out of the car, drawing a deep breath that told him she wasn’t used to the heavy humidity. “I thought we were going to the marsh?”

      “We are.” They were standing off the side of the road, bracketed by hundred-year-old live oaks. Spanish moss dangled from every branch almost to the tall grass below, like a fuzzy gray curtain obscuring the path behind it. “Follow me. And stay on the trail. Snakes hide in the grass.”

      Behind the trees, the dirt path was packed down. Locals used it often to bike and walk or to get to the marshes for fishing. Right now, in the midday heat, the path was empty.

      It was also narrow, so Ella walked behind him. He could sense her taking in the details, so he wasn’t surprised when she asked, “Is the area we’re going to pretty populated?”

      “We definitely get locals looking for redfish, but not too many tourists wander back here. We won’t get out as far as where the body was found. To do that, we’d need a boat. The trail loops back around, which is where most of the runners take it, but there’s a split that goes farther out, about to the point the water will come up to at high tide. From there, I can show you where we found Theresa.” He glanced over his shoulder at her. “You’re wondering if this guy knew the area in order to get back here?”

      “That’s part of it. Also trying to determine how likely it is he’d run into other people. How much risk he’d take dumping the body where he did. Things like that help me figure out his personality.”

      “Hmm.” Logan dropped back so he could walk beside her and watch her face as she talked. They were a close fit on the narrow trail. Every few steps her arm brushed his and the feel of her skin fired way too many nerve endings to life. “From what I know of profiling, you’ll be able to tell me things like he’s a white male in his twenties.”

      From the reaction he’d gotten when he’d suggested bringing in a profiler to his chief, he knew skeptics joked that was all profilers were good for—looking at a crime scene and predicting that the serial killer was a white male in his twenties. Which happened to be the most common age range and race for serial killers.

      Ella’s mouth quirked, but with annoyance or amusement, he couldn’t tell.

      “The basic concepts behind profiling are actually pretty simple,” she said. “Take you, for example. Things like your upbringing, your intelligence, your personality—all of that contributed to why you became not just a cop, but a homicide detective. Creating a criminal personality profile analyzes that. I look at the evidence—things like the way he dumped the body—and figure out details of his personality. From that, I can say what kind of job that kind of personality would likely pick, what kind of environment he’d live in, if he’d be married, that sort of thing.” She shrugged. “Make sense?”

      “You make it sound easy.”

      “No, it’s definitely not easy. But it is pretty grounded in psychology.” As they reached the end of the trail, she turned to face him, and he instantly became hyperaware of how short the distance between them really was. “If I tell you he’s a white male in his twenties, there’ll be a reason behind it besides averages.”

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