The sound of a door unlocking echoed in the big, empty foyer, breaking through the complete stillness of the house. Heels clacked onto the marble floor as a tall woman with long bleach-blond hair entered and gazed around with narrowed eyes and pursed lips.
The front door was not even fully shut behind her again, though, before she called out sharply, “Travis! Travis, where the fuck are you, you fucker?”
Resounding silence was the only response, and the woman’s voice quieted to an angry mumble as she continued to herself, “Goddamn piece of shit. Where is he? If he’s just been in here screwing someone this whole time, I’ll fucking kill him.”
Her hunt proved unsuccessful through the master bedroom, kitchen, and den, before she decided to try the indoor pool room. Her first glance showed the open space to be empty of people, but as she turned to leave, something caught her eye.
“What the hell?” She frowned in confusion at the sight of the hot tub, which appeared to be filled with...something that definitely wasn’t water, and that didn’t even appear to be liquid. Moving forward, she could only roll her eyes as she got close enough to identify the objects glinting from within the hot tub. “You’ve got to be shitting me,” she scoffed.
Her chuckle contained no amusement, as she reached out her hand to run her fingers over the large coins that reached all the way to the rim of the jacuzzi. “Only Travis would want to literally bathe himself in money,” she murmured. “Selfish bastard.”
Testing its depth, the woman submerged her whole hand into the metallic bath. She jumped back, startled, when her touch came into contact with something that had a decidedly different feel to it. Curious, she reached back inside, feeling around until she found something that she could grasp onto. She pulled upwards, freeing it from its confinement.
As the limp hand and arm came into view, the woman immediately dropped it and staggered backwards, promptly falling into a faint.
****
Act I:
D.D.A. Jill Bernhardt’s eyes widened as she drove up to the address she’d been given. The mansion was located in one of the wealthiest areas of San Francisco, sitting near the top of a hill in Pacific Heights, with an open view of the bay. Jill didn’t even want to know how much a place like that would cost, with its Italian neoclassical architecture and three-car garage off to the side.
Still, Jill supposed that she really couldn’t be too jealous of the guy. Not even the super-rich could avoid getting killed sometimes.
Knowing that Travis Martin’s story didn’t end well didn’t stop Jill’s impressed whistle as she entered the house, though. If anything, the interior surpassed the exterior in terms of lavish decor.
A cop on his way outside pointed her in the direction of the indoor pool, where she received a curt nod of welcome from Inspector Fong. Jill smiled in response but was inwardly disappointed. Her job was always more bearable, and usually a lot easier, when Lindsay and Jacobi were on the case.
Claire Washburn looked up from her work, glad to see that her friend had arrived. They made eye contact over Inspector Fong’s shoulder, and Claire was about to call Jill over when someone on the other side of the room beat her to it.
“Deputy D.A. Bernhardt! We’ve got something here you might want to see.”
Claire watched Jill for a moment longer and then turned back to the body in front of her, taking pictures as more and more of the corpse became visible. He had been found buried, quite literally, in a hot tub full of money. An increasingly large pile of coins was being collected to the side, as they worked to unearth their latest victim.
Whatever had happened – and Claire was in no way sure of what that might be, at this point – it was a strange way to die, to be sure.
Making her way around the edge of the pool and towards the officer who had called her over, Jill commented teasingly, “I sure hope you didn’t call me all the way over here just to keep me from seeing the body. I’m getting better about that, I swear.”
Officer Foley’s expression remained solemn, though, as he simply handed Jill an evidence bag, containing a single check, taped to a piece of cardboard for support. “We found this in the safe,” he explained, nodding his head behind him.
A glance over his shoulder revealed a safe embedded in the wall with its door open and its contents emptied. “It was left closed,” Foley continued, “but already set to the right combination. All that was in there was this, and a single coin. We’ve bagged that, too, but I don’t know what makes it so special. It’s only a buck.”
Jill’s gaze briefly returned to the officer’s, before she broke the eye contact to look down at the object in her hands; there was something written across the face of it, the bright red ink noticeable right away.
Bringing it closer to her face, Jill’s eyes quickly scanned across the scrawled message.
“Dammit!”
The loud and sudden exclamation caused Claire to jump, and a number of unis looked over curiously as well.
Claire arched an eyebrow in confusion as Jill – normally so professional while on the job – marched over to Claire’s side, shoving an evidence bag into her hands.
Clenching her jaw and crossing her arms tightly in front of her chest, Jill remained silent, not sure how to answer the unasked questions that lay beneath the M.E.’s curious stare.
It was only then that Jill even noticed the body, visible just behind Claire. It wasn’t gory, at least, but the sight was certainly disturbing, especially since Jill hadn’t taken the time to prepare herself. Claire couldn’t help but smile slightly at the almost comically disconcerted expression that crossed the attorney’s face.
Lowering her gaze to the item Jill had handed her, Claire read the words aloud, her voice coming out no stronger than a whisper.
“For the love of money is the root of all evil: which while some coveted after, they have erred from the faith, and pierced themselves through with many sorrows. Timothy, chapter six, verse ten.”
Claire closed her eyes tightly, taking in a deep, shaky breath, immediately understanding Jill’s earlier outburst and barely resisting the urge to utter a few expletives of her own. Her hands curled into fists, as she set down the evidence with obvious disgust. “Oh God, not another one,” she murmured miserably.
“Looks like it.” Jill, who had been tightly pinching the bridge of her nose, took a step forward and dropped her forehead down onto Claire’s shoulder.
They stood still for a moment as Claire reached up to gently stroke Jill’s hair. It was rare that they allowed their friendship to show through so clearly at a crime scene, but if ever there was time for an exception, they both figured that this situation certainly qualified.
Releasing a frustrated sigh, Jill straightened up again and reached for her BlackBerry, quickly scrolling to the appropriate number.
“Boxer.”
“Hey, it’s me,” Jill announced softly. “I got called in this afternoon, and I know you’re probably busy with something else, but...” Jill paused, trying to decide how best to continue. “I just think you’re going to want to be here for this one.”
****
Cindy was bored. And tired. She hadn’t been able to sleep well the previous night; she could sense that it was her dreams that kept waking her up, but her consciousness failed to hold on to any concrete remnants of the hazy memories. She had finally crawled out of bed a little before six in the morning, when it became clear that sleep had fully abandoned her.
Listening to her police scanner had proved more interesting than staring blankly at her ceiling, anyway.
So now Cindy lingered just beyond the police tape, bored out of her mind.
She’d received a gruff nod from both Lindsay and Jacobi when they first saw her, but Officer Cho seemed to be taking his position of police-tape-guard-dog more seriously than usual, and none of Cindy’s standard tricks for getting closer to things were working.
It wouldn’t have been so bad if she could have actually seen anything that was going on, but the arrangement of tall police officers crowded into a long and narrow alleyway seemed to be conspiring against her.
Cindy couldn’t even hope for any help from her other two best friends, since she hadn’t seen anyone from the D.A.’s office, and she’d managed to catch sight of that other M.E. – the one whose name she didn’t know, but whom she automatically resented, simply by virtue of not being Claire. Cindy couldn’t even imagine – didn’t want to imagine – what it would have been like if Claire had decided to go to San Diego.
Still, she was determined not to give up on the current situation. Eventually, Lindsay would come and tell her something, right? If Lindsay didn’t want Cindy wandering off to investigate things on her own, the least the inspector could do would be to provide something, anything, to help appease Cindy’s editor and her own continuous curiosity.
Or maybe Cindy should just work on coming up with some new diversionary tactics for getting past Cho.
Finally, a frowning Lindsay appeared, phone pressed tightly to her ear.
“Where exactly are you?” she demanded. “Give me an address.”
Lindsay stuffed her hands into her pockets, searching unsuccessfully for something to write with. “Whoa, whoa, hold up a sec. I can’t find a damn pen.”
A loud cough caught her attention, and she looked up to find Cindy watching her. Before Lindsay could say anything, the redhead simply chucked a pen at her. Lindsay caught it with one hand, just barely able to keep hold of her phone at the same time, and offered a small smile in thanks before turning her focus back to Jill’s voice on the other end.
“Okay, go,” she continued, cradling the phone against her shoulder and scribbling Jill’s directions on the back of her hand.
After hanging up with Jill, Lindsay quietly explained the situation to Jacobi and then promptly called Tom; getting them transferred to the Martin case took a bit of finagling, but she managed to persuade him within a few minutes.
Cindy kept her eyes on the inspector throughout both phone calls, but was largely unable to hear what Lindsay was saying, as she turned to face back towards the crime scene.
Her earlier boredom had fled in favor of curiosity and concern, though, and she was itching to know what had placed that firm scowl onto Lindsay’s face.
Lindsay turned around again and, with a jerk of the head towards Jacobi to alert him of the success of her second call, was ready to move out. Officer Cho lifted the yellow tape for her, and she ducked under, pausing for a moment beside Cindy.
Cindy stared back, waiting hopefully for Lindsay to clue her in. The peace between the two of them was still somewhat fragile since they’d talked things out during their latest conversation from opposite sides of the holding cell, and Cindy hated the fact that she still sometimes felt like she was walking on eggshells around Lindsay.
A small smile tugged at the corners of Lindsay’s mouth, and she turned to address Cho. “You know, you could have arrested her if you wanted to,” she commented idly, nodding towards the reporter.
Cindy felt her face instantly flush red. Normally, she might have simply laughed the statement off, but she’d been in a pissy mood for most of the day, and Lindsay really wasn’t helping.
“What the hell, Lindsay?” she exploded. “I have done nothing wrong! You haven’t even given me a chance to, because I’ve just been standing here, doing nothing, waiting around for you to come throw me a bone.”
“Cindy...” Lindsay murmured softly, only just managing to hold back a grin.
Cindy ignored her, steamrolling right over whatever else Lindsay wanted to say. “You can’t just go around arresting me simply because you feel like it! I know that’s your idea of a good time – ‘I know! Let’s throw Cindy in the holding cell, because I feel like exerting my authority today!’ – but there is nothing that you can arrest me for this time! There’s been no breaking, or entering, or...”
“Cindy...” Lindsay tried again.
“...tampering, or petty theft, or assault, or battery, or solicitation, or drug trafficking, or drug possession, or drug creation, or I dunno, whatever other random charge you could come up with. Presumably there has been a murder, or else none of us would be here right now, but I’m not the one who did it, and I wouldn’t know anything about it anyway, because you refuse to tell me anything! Besides, I-”
“Cindy!”
Something in Lindsay’s voice made Cindy instantly stop talking this time. She stared up at Lindsay defiantly, gritting her teeth when Lindsay brought her hand up in front of her face, obviously trying to hide a smirk. Cho simply looked back and forth between the two of them, eyes wide.
“Drug creation?” Lindsay asked curiously. She eyed the fiery redhead, half-worried that Cindy would physically attack her if she pushed much harder. Cindy was pretty cute all riled up, though, Lindsay had to admit.
Cindy frowned, almost pouting now. “Yeah, like whatever it is that they do in meth labs and stuff. I was trying to come up with all the absurd things that you might feel like arresting me for, but couldn’t think of the appropriate word.”
“Hmm. I believe you’re looking for ‘methamphetamine production’ or maybe ‘marijuana cultivation.’” Lindsay helpfully suggested. “And Cindy?”
“What, Lindsay?” Cindy asked, sighing in frustration.
“Look at the sign behind you.”
Cindy simply stared at Lindsay in confusion for a beat, before whirling around to look up at the building behind her, as Lindsay watched on in amusement.
Directly above Cindy’s head, a sign was affixed: “No loitering. Police take notice.”
Cindy groaned. “Seriously, Lindsay? Loitering? You’ve got to be kidding me.”
Lindsay simply flashed a wide grin and then turned to walk on towards her car. Jacobi stood waiting by his own vehicle with an obvious ‘What the hell is taking you so long?’ look on his face.
“Um, Inspector Boxer?” Cho called out to her retreating back. “You don’t actually want me to arrest her...do you?”
Laughing, Lindsay replied, “No, Officer Cho, I don’t.” She took another few steps before calling over her shoulder, “Hey, Thomas! You coming, or not?”
At that, Cindy’s sulk disappeared as she lifted her eyebrows in surprise. With a parting glance towards Cho, she hurried after the tall brunette. She had no idea where they were going, but Lindsay had invited her along, and that was all that mattered.
****
Jill, Claire, and Lindsay stood around Travis Martin’s hot tub, the former staring determinedly at the wall, while the other two gazed at the body that lay stuffed into the bottom. Martin had been quite a tall man, and it was not a comfortable fit, as evidenced by the cramped arrangement of the legs and head.
Lindsay, having already been shown the latest evidence, hadn’t said a single word since she’d stomped over a few minutes earlier and ordered a few unis out of her way. Her friends stood to either side of her, calmly waiting for her to speak.
Finally, Lindsay raked an agitated hand through her hair. “Talk to me, Claire,” she uttered, her voice low and rough.
Taking a deep breath, Claire began. “Our vic has been ID’d as Travis Martin, thirty-four years old. He was discovered by Charlotte Davis, Martin’s ex-wife. As for cause of death, I can’t say for sure quite yet. You can see prominent bruising around his neck...”
“So he was
strangled?” Lindsay interrupted.
“No, I don’t think so,” Claire answered slowly. She pointed to the area
in question as she continued, “The bruises are too high up on his neck.
It’s more consistent with what you’d see after a hanging, but so far
there’s no corroborating evidence for that.”
“All right. What else?”
“Well, I think it’s safe to say that both of his legs are broken. Limbs are simply not meant to bend that way.”
A small whimper could be heard from Jill, who’d accidentally let her eyes drift down to see the awkward positioning of Martin’s legs.
“I’m assuming the killer did so in order to make the guy fit in there,” Claire went on. “The irregular bruising over the rest of his body is most likely from the weight of all the coins that were dumped over him. Each one may be quite small, but put together – we’re talking thousands of coins, here – they’d really add up to a lot of weight and pressure. Plus, there wouldn’t have been much, if any, air under there. If he was still alive when he was stuffed in here...” Claire paused, suppressing a shudder at the thought. “Well, if the panic didn’t kill him, the lack of air would’ve gotten him pretty quickly.”
Sighing, Lindsay had one more question for the moment. “Time of death?” she asked.
“Again, I’ll be able to give you something more definitive once I cut him open, but I’d say that you’re looking at a 24- to 36-hour timeframe,” Claire explained.
The three of them lapsed into silence, as Lindsay took a deep breath and then suddenly spurred into movement, pacing back and forth. It was bad enough when they’d “only” had two unsolved murders by this psycho. Now a third body had shown up, and there was still no obvious connection between any of them. It was like the beginning of Kiss-Me-Not all over again, except the bodies were piling up a lot quicker this time.
Shaking her head, Lindsay forced herself away from that line of thought. Billy Harris had stolen five years of her life, not to mention her own father, and she simply couldn’t start thinking that this would be the start of yet another five years and countless lives lost in pursuit of a killer.
Just one step at a time.
“Okay,” Lindsay murmured, almost to herself. Turning to Claire, she continued, “You said the ex-wife found him? Where is she?”
Before Claire could answer, a new voice joined their conversation.
“She’s been taken to Mission Cross North.”
The three women turned to find Warren Jacobi approaching them. “Hello, ladies,” he greeted Jill and Claire.
“The hospital?” Jill asked, her brow furrowing. “Why’d she get taken there?”
“I just finished going over things with Inspector Fong, and apparently she hit her head pretty bad. She fainted when she first found the guy and then called in the police once she came to again,” Jacobi explained. “I figured we’d finish up here, and then head on over.”
“Sure,” Lindsay agreed.
Growing increasingly antsy, Jill decided that she needed a slight change of scenery.
“Hey, do you know if Cindy’s here?” she asked Lindsay. “I called her shortly after talking with you, and she said that she was already on her way.”
“Uh, yeah,” Lindsay replied distractedly, “I told her to park around the corner somewhere and wait for us by her car.”
“I’m gonna go find her. Let her know what’s going on.”
With that, Jill hurried from the room, not slowing down until she burst out of the house, taking in a long deep breath of fresh air.
She exited the building just in time to see Tom Hogan pull into the driveway. He met her on the top step, where Jill stood waiting for her heart rate to calm down.
“You okay?” he asked with a frown.
“There’s a serial killer on the loose in San Francisco. He’s already killed three times, that we know of, and there’s nothing logical to tie these victims together, other than their killer’s habit of leaving a line of scripture at the scene.” Jill paused a moment, glaring at the lieutenant. “So no, Tom, I’m not okay.”
Jill moved forward, now fully understanding Lindsay’s need to bolt when they’d found the body of Chris Blake.
The killing of Travis Martin had rattled Jill more than the other two, somehow, though she couldn’t exactly explain why. The scene with Blake had simply been gross, and Jill hadn’t been able to focus on much beyond holding on to the contents of her stomach; then she hadn’t had to see Dellan’s body at all, and she’d been somewhat successful in her attempts to ignore the fact that the multitude of red stains all over the warehouse had actually come from a human being.
This one shouldn’t have been that bad. As crime scenes went, the one she’d just left, while certainly far from pretty, was relatively tame, all things considered. Jill had certainly seen a lot worse before.
Still, there was something especially unsettling about the whole thing. Maybe it was the fact that there was no denying the seriousness of the situation at this point. Chris Blake and Robert Dellan were so different from each other, it had been at least somewhat plausible to think that they really hadn’t been killed by the same person. Jill still didn’t know anything substantial about this latest victim, but three murders, all left with a line from the Bible? There was no way that it could be written off as a coincidence.
With that thought, Jill took another deep breath and then went off in search of Cindy. Hopefully the energetic reporter would be able to lift her spirits.
****
As Tom walked onto the scene his eyes were immediately and automatically drawn to Lindsay. It was still habit, after all these years, to look for her first. He had a feeling that she wasn’t going to be happy with what he had to say this time, though. Striding forward, he just jumped right in.
“Inspectors. M.E. Washburn,” he nodded to each of them in turn. “Look, I’m just going to come right out and say this. I’ve already been filled in on all the details, and I know what you’re thinking, but I don’t think we can say for sure that we’re dealing with the same guy as the one with Blake and Dellan. Right now, I want you to treat this just like a normal case.”
His abrupt statement was met with silence at first, before Lindsay and Claire spoke at the same time. “What?” they exclaimed.
“Lieutenant,” Jacobi began a beat later, “with all due respect, you can’t honestly think that this is just a coincidence, can you?”
Tom swallowed audibly and defensively crossed his arms in front of his chest, eyeing the three incredulous faces in front of him. “All I’m saying,” he continued, “is that we don’t know for sure. If you find anything to definitively connect the three of them, then I will fully back you up.”
“Uh, how about the Bible thing,” Claire commented wryly. “I’d say that’s pretty definitive.”
“It’s not physical evidence,” Tom countered. “I want physical evidence. Without that, we could just as easily be dealing with anyone who wanted Martin dead and happens to have access to any kind of news outlet. Info about this ‘Hallelujah Man’ has been all over the place. The Bible quotation could have been purposely left as a way to throw us off.”
“Or, you just don’t want to deal with the ramifications of another serial killer,” Lindsay practically growled. Her instincts told her that this was the same guy as before, and her instincts were rarely wrong. “I’m guessing that the higher-ups don’t want to call this what it is, because then people might start to panic. Goddammit, Tom! Treating this like any other case is just a waste of time, when we should be looking for connections between the three of them!”
“And automatically ignoring the possibility that this is someone different is just irresponsible!” Tom argued.
The ring of Lindsay’s phone interrupted any further dialogue. She thought about ignoring it but a glance down at the caller ID made her respond.
“Jill, you just left here five minutes ago,” she began right away. “What could you possibly need to call me for?”
There was a pause on the other line, and then Jill spoke, her voice sounding somewhat confused. “Um, Linz? I’m at Cindy’s car, but I’ve looked all around and I can’t find her anywhere.”
****
