Bachelor Cop

“Prematurely gray hair?” Liz asked. “How come she doesn’t dye it?”

“I kind of like the streak in her hair, although I wish she’d fix herself up so she doesn’t look like a vagrant. And it’s white, not gray.”

“Bet you five bucks she didn’t look so frumpy before the assault,” Jack said. “It’s camouflage. She’s hiding, and blames herself. Why not? Everybody else probably blames her.” He shook his head.

“Assuming we reopen the crime as a cold case, what do you plan to do that the original detectives didn’t?” Gavigan asked.

“Same as always,” Randy said with a shrug. “Go over everything again from the beginning.” That meant revealing to Streak that he knew about her assault. She wouldn’t thank him for checking up on her. Might not thank him for reopening her case—and half-healed wounds—either.

“Long shot,” Gavigan said.

“All our cases are long shots,” Randy said. “Look how many we close.”

Liz and Samuels nodded.

“All right, talk to Detective O’Hara. He may already have info on similar assaults. And try not to step too hard on his toes, will you?”

“Thanks, Lieut,” Randy said.

“Now, how’s the Murchison killing coming?” Gavigan asked Liz.

An hour later, he closed the meeting.

As she passed Randy on her way to the ladies’ room, Liz said, “If you need somebody female to talk to this Streak, I’ll be happy to interview her.” She patted her belly. “Didn’t you say she has two kids? I can ask her advice about motherhood.”

“You meet her kids, you might be scared off motherhood.”

“Too late for that. Seriously, she might say things to me she’d be embarrassed to tell you.” Liz laid her hand on his arm. “We need to get this guy before he rapes somebody else. Anything I can do, let me know.”

“Ditto,” Samuels said from across the room. “I hate these guys.”

CHAPTER SIX

RANDY BROUGHT LATTES and a dozen chocolate doughnuts to his meeting with Dick O’Hara at the West Precinct.

O’Hara was a big man, solid but not fat. He had the basset-hound eyes of a man who had seen too much in his forty-plus years. He wore his sandy hair in a buzz cut, and even at ten in the morning his khaki slacks looked rumpled.

“I’ll accept help from the devil himself if it gets this guy off the street,” he said. “This is one creep I hope shoots it out with the TACT squad, although life without parole would make me happy.”

“We find him, you get the collar. No problem.”

O’Hara waved a hand. “Your team makes cases we don’t have time to work. The hell with jurisdiction.”

The two men settled down at O’Hara’s beat-up government-issue gray desk. Around them other detectives leaned on desks, chatting amiably, while another group surrounded the coffeepot. The room seemed almost tranquil this early.

O’Hara shoved a stack of folders and two loose-leaf binders to Randy. “You’re welcome to look through the evidence boxes, but these might bring you up to speed quicker.”

Randy set his cup down. “A hell of a bunch of notes for one rape case. What’s in these that didn’t make it into the electronic file?”

“The others.” O’Hara narrowed his eyes. “You’re saying you don’t know the guy has probably raped at least five more and killed three?”

Randy choked on his doughnut. “I only started working Dr. Norcross’s case officially a couple of hours ago. He’s a killer?”

“After he raped three victims a second time, he killed them.”

“He came back?” God, Streak! Did she know that she was still in danger from the same rapist? Randy ran his hand over his face. “Man, I feel like an idiot.”

“No reason to. You’re playing catch-up, and you were smart enough to start at the right place—me. Officially, we still have no forensic evidence to say the assaults are connected.”

“But you’re sure they’re connected?”

“Damn straight. Like he signed his name. You got time?”

“As much as it takes.”

O’Hara settled back in his chair and wolfed down another doughnut. The chair creaked under his weight. “I’d bet my pension he’s sexually assaulted more than the victims we know about. Report rate’s higher than twenty years ago, but women still take showers and hide what happened.”

“They still feel guilty.”

“Yeah, and the lawyers make ’em feel worse on the stand.” O’Hara swigged his coffee and chewed half of another doughnut. After he swallowed, he said, “You know as well as I do that most rapists don’t stop with one. You’d have connected the dots once you programmed the computer to kick out similar cases.”

“If I knew the proper parameters to enter.”

“Call me a short cut. The first one we know about was a lawyer. Six months later came a Realtor, then another four months after that the professor.”

“Dr. Norcross was raped two years ago. You’re saying he’s been out there over three years?”

“And not one suspect in all that time. You notice a pattern here?”

Randy nodded. “Professional women.”

“Take a look.” O’Hara pulled a set of photographs from the top file, turned them around and slid them across the desk.

Since they were taken after the assaults, the women looked like hell. Black eyes, split lips and cheeks, blood in their hair. Randy looked away from the shot of Helena. He wanted to roast the guy over an open pit and flay him alive.

“Well?” O’Hara asked.

“These women could be sisters.”

“Right. They’re all over medium height, slim, well-dressed, with dark hair, although the lawyer’s hair was short. She was six-one and no pushover. He didn’t hit her hard enough, so I guess he was still perfecting his technique. She fought hard until he knocked her out, but she didn’t draw blood, or if she did we didn’t find it. A DNA match to somebody in the system, and he’d already be in prison.”

“Could she give a description?”

O’Hara shrugged. “Shorter than she was, but that could mean six feet. Total body covering including face and head mask. Something slick. Possibly a wet suit. Stands to reason he’d wear latex gloves, as well. No eye color, no skin color. He could be purple for all we know.”

“What about the rest?”

“Here’s number four. A pediatrician.” O’Hara shoved two photos across the table. In the first, the woman looked as beat-up as the others. The second was a photo of her body.