Black Coral by Andrew Mayne

Author:Andrew Mayne [Mayne, Andrew]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781542009645
Publisher: Thomas & Mercer
Published: 2021-02-15T16:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

MATERNAL INSTINCTS

I’m standing on Run’s back patio, looking at police reports on my iPad as the sun sets in the west. The lights of the houses and buildings across the waterway flicker to life like a thousand fireflies. Boats drift across the channel, sending waves into the sea wall in a gentle drumbeat. It’s a beautiful night outside my head, but I’m too absorbed in eyewitness accounts and forensic details to appreciate it.

I keep tabbing back to the three infrared maps George was able to get for us from the nights when we think Sleazy Steve may have seen DEA undercover units and bailed on going to his graveyard.

The idea of a graveyard was only a notion until we ran it by Amelia Teng, the Florida Atlantic University professor who has done some insightful research into criminal psychology. What I like about her is that she takes more of a zoologist’s approach, focusing on actions instead of trying to mind-read suspects.

Her papers are filled with exhaustive databases of details that sound mundane but actually make sense: for instance, serial killers often stock up on energy bars and drinks when they’re in their killing phases. Which makes sense if you realize that someone like Sleazy Steve might not want to stop at a McDonald’s drive-through with a dismembered body in the back of his vehicle.

When we showed her Grace’s Polaroid photo and the evidence of instant-camera use by the killer, she showed us a correlation between people collecting symbolic trophies, like photographs, before moving on to physical ones, like body parts.

She said something else that made sense: our suspect being so image-driven may suggest a strong attraction to pornography, especially anything explicitly violent or transgressive. This has us extending our potential suspects to men who have been cited for criminal violations relating to that.

It doesn’t help us narrow potential suspects down, but it does help us understand who we might be looking for if he crosses our path.

Run leans in over my shoulder. “What are you doing?”

“Oh, work stuff.”

“Huh,” he says.

Tonight is pool, pizza, and movie night with Run and Jackie, but I’ve been too obsessed with this case to partake in the fun.

“Being a cop is a twenty-four-hour job,” I reply.

“So is being a mom,” he says, taking the iPad from my hands.

I’m about to snap at him, of all people, for saying that to me, when I feel slender arms gather around my waist and drag me to the edge of the pool.

“Incoming!” shouts Jackie as she pushes me in, fully clothed.

I float back to the surface and look up at her giggling face. “Jackie!”

She puts her hands on her hips and wags her finger at me like I’ve seen my own mother do a thousand times. “You know the rules.”

Ah, yes. The rules of pool, pizza, and movie night: if you’re not in the pool by seven p.m., you’re fair game to be pushed in.

Whoosh! There’s a huge splash as a squat figure jumps into the deep end.

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