Latent Danger (On the Line #2)(2)

“Blanket, you think?” Ronan asked.

There hadn’t been any evidence of a blanket or other wrap around the body, but Zach would pull a few uniformed officers to canvass the area in case the killer dumped it nearby.

“Possibly—” Dr. Kane began the sentence, but Ronan finished it.

“But you’ll let us know more when you get her to the lab.”

“Exactly.” Dr. Kane grinned.

Zach hoped she’d find some trace evidence to give them something to follow up on. He cursed under his breath as he saw a news van pull up. The news had had a field day in March when a sniper was terrorizing the city. Now this.

So much for New Haven being a city without a whole lot of major crime.

“There’s something else, gentlemen.”

“What’s that?” asked Zach as he eyed the news vans. So far, the uniformed officer up on the road was keeping them back.

“Have you guys heard of the Marsh Killer?”

Ronan snorted. “Who hasn’t?”

Zach didn’t answer. The Marsh Killer was an old case. Very old. Thirty years back, three young women had been killed, their bodies found in the woods in New Haven. Only one had been left in the marshes in North Haven, but Marsh Killer had a better ring to it than Woods Killer, he supposed. His head had started running through the details of the case as soon as she’d said the words, and he saw the point she was making before she voiced it.

“There are...similarities.” Dr. Kane seemed hesitant to even say it.

“Jesus, I didn’t see it before. Did you work the case?” Ronan asked.

Dr. Kane shot him a look. “It was a little before my time.” Zach buried a grin. He wasn’t sure how old she was. He’d guess in her late forties. “I came into the department about eight years after the murders stopped, but I’ve looked over the files. I pull out cold cases from time to time and examine them.”

“I figured that would be on the state’s desk by now.” Zach was intimately familiar with the state’s cold case division for the very reason that he’d once been intimately familiar with one of its investigators. He didn’t dwell on the memory. Instead, he focused on what was pertinent. A case that old would have been transferred out of the city’s files and up to the state’s division long before this.

Dr. Kane nodded. “True. The state’s attorney sent it to them years ago, but as far as I know, they’ve never gotten anywhere with it.”

“We’ll need to see who in our department is assigned to work with them on it,” Zach said by way of response. Each cold case had someone in the local precinct assigned to work the case, but in a case this old, they probably weren’t very active with it.

Zach eyed the news trucks. The press was going to go crazy if they got wind of the similarities in the case. “How close are the similarities?”

Dr. Kane took her own look at the news vans before answering. “It’s not the same. The bodies were cleaned up and posed in that case, and the lipstick was neatly applied, not made to look clownish like they are here. But, the rope, the age and sex of the victims, method of death. All of that—it’s eerily similar.”

“A copycat on a decades-old case?” Ronan asked.

Dr. Kane tilted her head with a small shrug. “It’s possible. That, or coincidence.”

Zach had a feeling they felt the same way about coincidences as he did. In their line of work, they rarely cropped up. There wasn’t time to speculate further. A vehicle Zach recognized came to an abrupt stop behind the news vans. He didn’t wait for the couple to get out of the SUV. He moved that way as Ronan took a call on his cell phone.

By the time he got up to the road, the Senator and his wife were coming toward him. Toward the crime scene.

“Oh God, oh God, oh God.” They weren’t close enough for them to see the body. Maribeth Athill repeated the words over and over. There were sobs clogging her throat and he knew the woman had to be close to breaking down.

He hoped the cameras were far enough away that they wouldn’t hear his words, but he needed to stop her before she got closer. Seeing that girl right now wouldn’t help the woman. “It’s not her, Mrs. Athill. It’s not Carrie.”

She fell against her husband, a hand at her chest, but the tears came anyway. Tears of relief, most likely. Maybe also even a few tears at the fact their nightmare wasn’t over. Not having closure was a hell of a burden.

Zach couldn’t imagine what it would be like—no. He couldn’t even go there. Couldn’t let himself dwell on what it would be like to know Naomi wasn’t safe in her bed at night. That she might be out there somewhere hurt or worse.

Naomi’s parents had died when she was only ten years old. At the time, he and Luke were both still in the military, but Luke’s commitment was coming to an end. He left his career and raised Naomi. Zach had come to live near them when he left the military and had been a big part of her life. He would have done a piss poor job of raising her. Luke was better at that, but Zach still thought of her as a lot more than a niece.

“We heard on the news,” the senator offered as explanation for their arrival on the scene, but Zach doubted it was true. He had a feeling they had more than one person keeping them informed at the precinct. Someone had tipped them off when the call had come in. That person wasn’t doing them any favors. Being out here was the last thing they needed.