Page 30 of Copper

Coleson shrugs and smirks. “Or just someone that knows how to cover the tracks.”

Someone smart and knows how to cover up a crime scene. “Any ties to Murphy Beckett?”

“Ah,” Coleson points to the ceiling like he has a great idea. He shifts his always-present toothpick to the other side of his mouth. “As a matter of fact, guess what club this guy is a member of?”

“Is there a motorcycle in the garage?”

“Ding, ding, ding!”

“Any payments or business ties?”

“Nope. Just the club membership card in his wallet. Oh yeah, wallet is intact and not taken. There’s no cash in it, but I don’t know if the killer took anything. It looked like it wasn’t touched. It would be smart not to touch it. The more a perp handles things, the more opportunity to leave skin or prints behind.” Coleson sniffs and puts his hands on his hips. “I think Daniels and Hammons are related, and I’ll treat them as such. Cannon doesn’t fit, though. Cannon was just bizarre that he was tortured and cut up while the others weren’t. Different dirty work people but maybe the same orders from Murphy Beckett?”

“Possibly?” I look around the room, thinking and gnawing at my lip.

Two men were hastily murdered in the last few weeks. Someone took their time with George Cannon. What Ellen said about Beck Lenin comes to mind. He was violent with Lucy and got rough with the petite Ellen. Something scratches at my brain, but I can’t nail it down.

“There’s good news, though,” Coleson says from behind me.

“The killer left a signed confession so that I don’t have to make an ass of myself by telling the press we have three murdered men in a few weeks and absolutely nothing to go on?”

He holds up a baggie with a hair in it. “Found this in the living room. It’s definitely not the victim’s.”

I look away from it and back to the dead man on the floor. “One lone hair? After all of these forensics on all these crime scenes? No viable footprints. No fingerprints. Nobody saw anything unusual. No suspects we can pair with the fibers we do manage to find. No DNA with a system match yet.” I blow out a breath and stand, snapping off the gloves as I walk to the kitchen. “And this hair was in the living room and not even on the back porch area where he was killed? Are we checking it out and running the DNA through the system?”

“Yep. Bartlett from forensics says she can have results to us by later tonight if the person is in the system. If it belongs to the one of millions of hookers that come to the house, we’ll be able to narrow it down if we’ve ever arrested the person. At least we can ask some questions.”

I laugh sarcastically and shake my head. Coleson frowns. “You don’t like this theory?” he asks.

“Did the neighbors say there are lots of women through here?” Coleson silently nods. He looks down because he knows what I’m going to say next. “It doesn’t feel like a woman. It feels like a man who is angry, has a small dick, and is pissed off about something. The guy had hookers in his house all the time, and he wasn’t exactly a housekeeper,” I say, waving my hand around the kitchen and the old pizza boxes and overflowing trash. “I’m actually surprised we only found one single hair that didn’t belong to the victim.”

“We also found a pair of panties. We sent them for evaluation, but they were, well, they were kind of crusty and hidden under his bed, so I don’t think they were from today.”

“Any porch cameras nearby?”

“A few with nothing unusual around the time it happened. I say nothing unusual because most of the neighbors have the sensors set to only pick up something when it comes on their own property. One is set to pick up outside their own yard, but there’s a bush blocking the view.”

“Jesus Christ. We have nothing. It’s like an angel of the Lord just swoops into the houses and kills these pieces of shit like a vigilante of the Chicago suburbs.” I pause and brace my hands on Todd Daniel’s kitchen counter. I have half a mind to open the fridge to see if he has any beer or something harder. “How much do we even care?”

“Honestly, not as much as if it was happening to decent people, but I still don’t want a killer on the street, and I don’t want you to look like an asshole on primetime television.”

I smile. “Thanks.”

“Besides, if we can tie him to Murphy and get a warrant, that’s solving a whole other bag of dicks.”

Coleson and I stand in a dead man’s kitchen in silence, fuming at our own ineffectiveness as Mitchell comes around the corner. “Detective Coleson, I’m sorry to bother you, but the coroner’s here for the body.”

My eye catches a stack of takeout menus and odds and ends on the counter, and I rifle through them as the coroner troops in with his team and greets Coleson. I block out their conversation as I go through the stack, mildly curious what the man orders for takeout, until I find a half page of paper torn off from a yellow legal pad. The paper is stuffed in between a Chinese takeout menu and a bank statement, and I recognize it as an address on Stone Street. I squint at it and shake my head a little like I’ve been punched. I know that address, but it rattles around in my head for a moment before I can place it. When I do place it, I practically vomit.

It’s Lucy’s.

Chapter 14

Lucy

Thenightmareisusuallythe same.

Beck comes home from a trip, usually smelling like cheap whores who wear even cheaper perfume. I’m in the kitchen with the requested smile on my face and pretending not to notice my husband got laid while he was away. He’d always say, “Lucy, I don’t want to see your hangdog face. I want pleasant. No man wants to see a woman’s problems. You’re my wife and exist for my pleasure. Fucking smile.” Then, he’d pinch my cheeks and force me to smile until I got it right. Many times, he’d force me to smile while he beat me and wouldn’t stop until he was satisfied with the look on my face.

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