(no subject)

[nike_ravus]

 Title: Custodian (4 of 7) (yeah, only 7: counting and me are not friends)
Author: Alsike
Rating: M, for Murder
Pairing: Look, do you want the various hook-ups or the true-love destiny, because either way I'm not telling you.
Summary: 

Sent to San Francisco to eradicate a leak, Jill, Emily and Claire wind up on the trail of a serial killer that leads them into the dark depths of the Connecticut Mafia.

 

 

Jill plucked the flash drive from the computer and hefted the files she had found.  She gave Heather a smile.  “Need this for evidence,” she said.  Heather nodded and they said farewell at the door.

“Can I call you if I think of something else?”

“Sure.”  Jill gave her the number to the house they were staying at.  It would be wiped and destroyed when they left.

When the black sedan had pulled away, Heather went into Tom’s office and flipped through the remaining files.  All the ones about the mob were gone.  That was valid enough.  But when she checked the computer every file related to the Cabots had been wiped, and Heather knew who had been in her house.

She went to the phone and dialed a number she knew by heart.

“Irina?”

*            *            *

Emily was compiling a list.  Detective Hogan’s most frequent calls on his cell were home, his wife’s school, the precinct, his partner: Warren Jacobi, and his boss Michael Logan.  It was actually pretty boring.  She had checked all the less frequently used numbers, but they were usually easily explainable, pizza, his daughter’s nursery school and kiddy gymnastics class, computer assistance.

There was one false alarm on the home phone records though.  One number was stripped from the records as if there were an anti-trace on it.  She wondered if this might be his mob contact with the Cabots, until she cross referenced the times of the calls with his cell phone use and realized that none of the calls were made while he was at home.  Maybe his wife had a lover.  And then she realized that the pattern was the same as those 10-10-2-20 numbers, where they route the call through a filtering switchboard before sending it through.  She was probably just being frugal about long distance.

Emily was about to die of utter boredom when she saw Sara approaching through the glass.

“Finished in lab two?”

Sara just looked blank.  Emily decided that she really needed to work on her joking ability. 

“I was actually wondering how you were doing.”

“There’s nothing I need to pursue with these.  Claire’s covering the precinct, and Jill’s got his wife, so unless I want to check out every place he’s gotten pizza there’s nothing for me to do.”

“Actually, there is.”

Both Emily and Sara jumped.  Catharine had snuck up on them again.  She handed Sara a sheet.

“Get your kit.  Warren Jacobi’s dead.”

Emily’s brow furrowed.  “Did he have any Cabot connections?”

“He had whatever his partner told him.”

Emily followed Sara down to the first bank of elevators.  This didn’t make sense.  Jacobi was one of the people they were likely to have to get rid of, but unless Claire had taken action on her own there was no reason for him to be dead.

She dialed Claire.  The phone picked up.

“Then, you see, Ricky has to fight all these other guys because they were pissed at him for smothering his nephews.  But Harry, who was the son of this welsh dude who tickled the queen’s fancy, he went to France…”

That wasn’t Claire.  If Emily could believe her ears, it sounded a lot like the bartender from the night before… explaining the Tudor ascension.

“Emily?”  That was Claire.

“Hi… We just got a call.  Warren Jacobi’s dead.”

There was silence.  “But I just saw him.  I was following him…”  There was another pause.  Emily imagined Claire checking her watch.  “…Two hours ago.”

“Sara and I are heading to the scene.”

“I’ll meet you there.”  The reception was muffled, as if Claire had pressed the phone to her shirt.  “I have to go.”

“S’ok.  I’ll see you later.”

There was another sound that Emily tried not to identify, but failed, and could not believe her ears.

“Where is it?”

“Were you having lunch with that bartender?”

Dead silence.

“Tell me where the scene is.”

Emily called Jill.  She caught her back at the house, going through the files she had taken from Tom’s computer.

“Warren Jacobi’s dead.”  Jill glanced at the list of contacts that Heather had given her.  It was longer than Emily’s list, adding in David Hodges, a poker buddy of his, but Jacobi was at the top.

“You didn’t-”

“It wasn’t one of us.”

“Tell me where.”

Emily and Sara still reached the location first.  It was another apartment, up external stairs.

“Go check it out.  I’ll get the gear.”

Emily started up the stairs, leaving Sara at the car.  The apartment building was undisturbed.  A few kids were playing on a landing.  A woman was hanging laundry from another.  Emily rounded a corner and nearly bumped into a tall woman with dark hair and a dark tan.

“Oh!  I’m sorry.”

“No problem.”  The woman smiled.  Her face was interesting, thin, straight, and well defined.  Her teeth were bright.  But she had three strange marks; one was a delicate white line across her forehead, joining her eyebrows above her nose.  There were two more tiny puckered lines that ran parallel to the line of her nose, one on each side.

She stood aside to let Emily continue up the stairs, which she did, glancing back only once, but the woman had gone beyond her sight.

Jacobi’s body lay on the floor in the hallway of his tiny apartment.  He was still wearing his coat, but there were two slits in the back that had blossomed with blood.  It looked like one of the thrusts had entered right at kidney level, and the other had severed his spine.  Besides the fact that the killer had chosen to stab him in the back rather than the front, the style was exactly the same as Tom Hogan’s murder.

Emily glanced around.  The killer had probably waited outside for the man to come home.  He waited until the door was unlocked and his victim stepped inside.  Then he would approach, kill, and leave.  Her training as a profiler said that this MO fit assassin far more closely than serial killer.  There was no elaborate ritual to it, just practicality.  But it also wasn’t random.  The Cabots wouldn’t have sent an assassin without telling them, would they have?  And if it was the Gilmores it still didn’t make sense.  Tom was pretending to be a part of the Cabots, so it would make sense for the Gilmores to choose him as a victim, but as far as she knew, Jacobi had no connections with the Cabots except through Tom.  And even if Jacobi had been investigating the Gilmores like Tom had been infiltrating the Cabots it would make sense for them to kill him, but not in exactly the same way as Tom.

It was the exact same way.  If it was an assassin it was an assassin with a personal agenda.  It wasn’t an elaborate ritual, but the ritual was there.  It wasn’t about pain or sex; it was about killing.  He had taken out both partners.  Emily had no idea why.

*            *            *

“So you’re saying that someone is hunting the same people we’re hunting, and it’s not an assassin but a serial killer or someone with a vendetta.”

Emily cringed at the harsh incredulity in Claire’s voice.  “That’s what it looks like.  We don’t really know who they’re hunting though.  If Hogan and Jacobi, say, put someone in jail, they might be the only targets.”

“You don’t think that’s the reason though, do you?”

Jill glanced between Claire and Emily where they stood in the kitchen.  Claire was reading Emily too well, and that wasn’t fair.

“The first killing was from the front, and there were no defensive wounds.  Even if the killer surprised him, he would have at least tried to block.  I don’t think it was the killer’s presence that shocked him into immobility.  It was something else.”

“If it was someone who he put in jail the recognition might have done it.”

“Except in that case it would have been an obvious threat,” interjected Jill.  “He would have tried to defend himself.”

Emily gave her a grateful look.

Claire frowned and paced across the kitchen.  “So you’re saying it’s someone that he knew.  Someone he didn’t perceive as a threat, and yet someone with the motive to kill him.  That’s a tough combination.”

Both Emily and Jill agreed.

Jill frowned leaning into the table.  “There’s just something strange about this.”

Claire snorted.

“Not the whole front/back familiarity issue… or maybe that is it.  It’s the knife.  Why a knife?  They’re more likely to be used in crimes of opportunity, not planned assassinations.”  Emily gave her an approving look.  Seriously, did she think Jill hadn’t picked up something about profiling in the three years they’ve been working together?  But approval was nice.  “There was a serial killer… ages ago, who did something like this, two knife wounds, usually from the front.  He killed kids mostly, though.  I don’t know if they ever caught him.”

Emily pulled out her computer and opened it up.  “Do you have a name or a date?”

“The Knifer, Austin, Texas,”  Jill paused, then smiled.  “I know exactly when it was.  That was the winter I joined the Cabots.  Twelve years ago.”

“How did you know about it?” asked Claire.

“We were all talking about it.  We were freaking out.  He was killing street kids.”

Claire took off her glasses and just looked at her.  Emily glanced up from the computer with a half grin.  “You were in Texas then?”

“Yeah, Seattle in the summers.  Texas in the winter.  Better than going home.  Not that they would have taken me even if I showed my face at their door.”

That had been a crazy time.  Everyone was on edge, not in the usual pot-haze that made such a crummy life livable.  Jill had done wilder stunts than ever, back then, culminating in trying to steal from a Cabot headquarters.  She had almost done it too, been ready to make off with four computers and a couple thousand dollars in cash, when they had caught her.  She had tried to talk her way out of it, and they had laughed, and said she was a good talker, and if she wanted to ‘start her real life’ she should give them a call.  A week later, after being beaten up by three guys for her stash, she gave them a call.  A new name and identity, one summer of office work, and she was in school again, kicking herself for giving up her free-floating existence for this shit.

“They did catch him,” Emily interjected into her thoughts.  “A high-school teacher who wanted to be a Jedi.  And the man who caught him: Officer Tom Hogan.”

Claire’s jaw dropped, and she stared at Jill incredulously.  “How the fuck-  Is this true?  Are you trying to bullshit me?”

Jill cracked up. 

Emily flashed her a dirty look.  “It's true,” she told Claire.  “Think of it as an incredibly lucky guess.  It will be easier to believe.”

“Jeez!  Why can’t I just be right for once?” cried Jill, still doubled over from amusement at the look on Claire’s face.

Both Claire and Emily gave Jill a disapproving look.

“Are you sure you didn’t check Hogan’s record?” asked Emily tentatively.

Jill scowled.  “Now you don’t even believe me.  But actually…”  She frowned and pulled the photo out of her pocket.  “Heather mentioned something about Hogan solving a serial case that got him his badge.  That guy murdered his girlfriend.”  She put the photo on the table.  “Lindsay Boxer.”

Saying that name made Jill feel sort of uncomfortable.  She looked at the girl, the smile.  Texan made sense now, if the Knifer had gotten her too.  But she couldn’t help but think that her knowledge of this woman being a Texan was a vocal one, not just the result of a picture in a paper.

“She’s on here.  Victim number five.”

Claire rolled her eyes.  “We’re missing the point.  Who is the killer?  Is he still in jail?  Any news of him being out?”

Emily looked over the screen of her computer with an apologetic expression.  “Texas is a death penalty state.  He was executed a decade ago.”

“Well!  We’re back at square one, since it couldn’t be him.”  Claire glared at Jill who raised her hands in defense.

“Couldn’t it be someone who knew about that killer?”  Jill offered hesitantly.  There was something about this that made sense to her, but she couldn’t explain why.

“You mean someone besides you?”

Emily was staring at the photo on the table.  “Jill, where’d you get that picture?”

“Mm?  Hogan’s.  Heather told me it was Lindsay.”

“Heather again,” muttered Claire.

“What can I say?  She had a lot of good info.”  Emily was still frowning at the photo.  “Why the interest, Em?”

“I ran into a woman who looked kind of like her today.”

“Huh.”  Emily looked really uncomfortable, and Jill opened her mouth to question her again.

“Sorry to interrupt.”

The three women looked up.  Catherine, undetected as usual, was standing in the doorway.  Behind her was Sara, carrying her case of equipment.

“There’s been another killing.  David Hodges.”

Sara waved over her head.  “Whoever wants to come with me…”

Emily jumped up.  Jill glanced between them and then followed hastily.

“Good,” she heard Catherine say as the door closed behind them.  “I wanted to talk to you alone.”

*            *            *