Page 121 of Obsession
OFFICER CHAPMAN
Chief of Police, O’Hallinan, is a ruddy man in his fifties with a severe face and bushy white eyebrows. When he is leaning back in his seat like he is now, his podgy gut provides the perfect support for his clasped hands. His eyes swing between me and Detective Briem and back. “The search revealed nothing?”
“That’s correct,” Briem speaks up in his barely used rumbly voice, making me wince.
O’Hallinan pins his beady gray eyes on me, his expression grim, patience hanging on by a thin thread. “Let me get this straight. You pushed for a search warrant,convincedme it would be a good decision that would lead us somewhere, and now here we are, no closer to hauling Hammond’s ass back to prison. Not only that, but now we have a media frenzy on our hands. Reporters camping outside that poor reporter’s home. And you have the audacity to come in here and ask me for permission to bring her in for questioning?” His stern gray eyes make me feel five years old. I open my mouth to plead my case, but O’Hallinan cuts me off, “Based on what grounds? It requires an arrest warrant, Mr. Chapman. Let me remind you, the searchwarrant found nothing. We don’t have anything to go by, no grounds to serve Miss Campbell with an arrest warrant, and she isn’t going to willingly agree to come in for afriendly chat.Not if she’s smart.”
I clear my throat. “I know she’s been seeing him.”
O’Hallinan says nothing. Just glares at me.
“If I can only get her to agree to a polygraph.”
“Absolutely not.” He shakes his head. “They don’t hold up in court.”
“We need to do something,” I argue. “Hammond has been free to walk the streets for how many weeks now? Miss Campbell is the key we need to capture him. He’s obsessed with her, and it’s only a matter of time until he seeks her out again. We need to be ready when he does.”
“Let me remind you that what you’re telling me is purely speculation, Detective. We need to tread carefully. The media is frothing at the mouth about the rumored doomed love story between a serial killer and his reporter. The last thing we need is to encourage a false narrative or to falsely accuse a young woman of aiding and abetting a serial killer.”
Antsy with agitation, I gnash my teeth.
“We need hard evidence,” he continues, pinning me with a look that says, “Don’t do anything stupid.”
Clenching and unclenching my hand, I nod reluctantly while Briem remains an emotionless statue beside me.
“We look incompetent,” I grumble. “Catching Hammond should have been an easy job.”
“We already look like fucking fools,” O’Hallinan reminds me, sitting forward and placing his forearms on the mahogany desk. His name sign gleams beneath the overhead lights. “Don’t forget that Hammond isn’t the only deranged serial killer on my plate. Detectives Gayton and Lozano are still no closer to finding The Bridge Killer.”
“The DNA sample didn’t come back with any results…”
O’Hallinan shakes his head, watching me. “He’s squeaky clean. No previous record.” Sighing, he leans back again, resting his hands on the armrests, his eyes skating between us. “We’ll continue with the surveillance of the house. We have also increased Andy Frazer’s security in jail. It’s not like Hammond can get to him behind bars, but we need to be seen doing something proactive. Leads continue to come in, and I have my best people sifting through them all. When I know something, you’ll know something. In the meantime, I need you to focus on locating Robbie. He’s out there somewhere.”
I snort, swinging my ankle from my knee and placing it on the floor. “We already know where the fuck he is.”
O’Hallinan burns me to a crisp with his glare. “If you knew where he was, your search warrant would have yielded results, yet you have nothing. Zilch. Don’t piss me off, Chapman. I already have enough on my plate as it is. I’m entertaining your theories because you’re a good detective. Take Andy Frazer, for example. I have already made some calls to ensure his security gets tightened. Why? Because you’re theorizing that he sexually assaulted Miss Campbell. You think Hammond killed the other men too, but we still have no bodies, no actual proof to say he is even connected with their disappearances. It’s all speculation and a fucking circus, if you ask me.” He dismisses us with a wave of his hand, and I rise to my feet, gritting my teeth with annoyance.
Briem follows me outside, a quiet shadow behind me as we walk past colleagues, smiling politely at a few, a quick nod in greeting to others. We exit the building, blinded for a brief second by the bright winter sun, and cross the parking lot to the sleek, black car. The temperatures have dropped, and the snow is thawing, dripping from the roof’s edge to our left.
I unlock the car and slide inside, pulling the door shut with a little bit too much force. Frustration ripples through me. Briem gives me a questioning look before strapping himself in and spreading his long legs as much as the small space allows.
“I know she’s protecting him,” I grumble, inserting the key.
Briem shrugs and scans the parking lot through the passenger window. “Our hands are tied. There’s nothing we can do until we capture him or get enough evidence to build a case against Miss Campbell.”
The engine roars to life, and I put it in drive. “What the fuck is Hammond doing with the bodies? They don’t just disappear off the face of the earth.”
51
SAVANNAH
With the phone pressed to my ear, I pace a hole in the kitchen rug, chewing my thumbnail. Anxiety has been my companion since Detective Chapman invaded my house yesterday.
Tossing and turning, I barely slept a wink last night, tormented with nightmares of the police storming through the bedroom door to arrest Robbie.
Where is he?
James’s voice drags me back from my racing thoughts. I blink, staring unseeingly at the closed curtains, a stream of sunshine breaking through the thin gap.
