Girl Undone (TJ Peacock & Lisa Rayburn Mysteries Book 3) Page 7

  “It’s fine. Let’s get started, shall we?”

  They sat across from each other as they’d done every time Kelsey had been to Lisa’s office, and Kelsey’s gaze was drawn once more to the lake. “It must be nice working here. This view is awesome.”

  “Have you given any thought to the things we talked about last time?” Lisa asked.

  “Yeah, but there’s something I want to say.” Her eyes met Lisa’s.

  “You can tell me anything, Kelsey.”

  “I’m changing the rules. I don’t want any of what we talk about to go back to my aunt.”

  “That isn’t something new, Kelsey,” Lisa said. “I never said I would to discuss our meetings with your aunt. The only thing we signed off on regarding sharing, is if you told me something that would help us find who took you. I could tell TJ—and even that had to be with your permission.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “Of course. TJ will have questions for you from time to time, though. Sometimes tiny details that you don’t think are important make a big difference.”

  Kelsey’s lips thinned.

  “If it would make you feel better, bring your aunt with you next time and I’ll explain it again to both of you. Would that help?”

  “That’s not necessary. But promise me, if my aunt tries to get anything out of you, you won’t give in.”

  Lisa smiled. “Stronger people than Rina have tried to intimidate me.”

  “I believe you.”

  “Kelsey, can you tell me anything more about Aiden?”

  “Why? He has nothing to do with what happened to me.”

  “You know you cannot be sure of that, don’t you?”

  “I’m sure.”

  For some reason, the girl still wanted to protect the man. “Some men are very good at convincing women of things,” Lisa said, not wanting to anger the girl, but feeling as though the subject had to be addressed.

  “Is that all you want to do today? Point the finger at Aiden?”

  “Kelsey, we can talk about whatever you feel is important. But you do want to find out who did this to you, don’t you?”

  Lisa let a moment pass. “Are you still hoping he’ll come back to you?”

  The answer to Lisa’s question, if she hadn’t known it before, was clearly visible in Kelsey’s hazel eyes as they misted over.

  Lisa said, “Everyone has to deal with heartbreak at some time in their lives. But we have to learn how to move on once we’re done grieving.”

  The girl stood and walked to the window, her back to Lisa. “He loved me. I know he did.”

  Lisa had heard those words over and over—and not only from women Kelsey’s age—

  from women who had been dumped for “the other” woman or even, like Kelsey had, for the wife. Many of these women couldn’t stop believing that what she’d had with the man was special and would bring him back someday. Rather than trying to persuade Kelsey to change her mindset, Lisa asked, “Do you ever hear from your mother?”

  Kelsey snorted. “Yeah. Whenever she’s not using, she sends a card at Christmas or on

  my birthday, depending on the timing. Want me to tell you how many I get?”

  “That must be difficult for you.”

  She shrugged. “It used to be. I don’t think about it much anymore.”

  “What do you think she would say to you today if she knew what had happened to you?”

  “I have no idea. But I know her opinion of men. Can a woman be a misogynist in reverse?”

  “Yes. That woman would be a misandrist.”

  “Then that’s my mother. She lives her life going from one man to another, but she really hates every one of them. They’re just a means to an end for her, a way to get drugs. She told me men only want to use women, which is ironic because that’s exactly what she does with men, uses them to get what she wants.”

  “Kelsey, there are good men in this world, men who would never hurt a woman they care about or even a woman they don’t like.”

  Her eyes misted. “I had a good man. Alan never would have hurt me.”

  There it was—her mystery man’s real name. Lisa had to persuade the girl that it was time to find him, investigate his role in what happened to Kelsey, if any.

  20

  Detective Conlin shook his head when he saw the décor in Bart’s bedroom. Kosik was either gay or in the closet. No straight guy would have sheer, yellow curtains on the windows and a bedspread that looked like a field of wildflowers. In front of all three windows were wrought iron stands displaying more of those froufrou plants like the ones downstairs in his office. Conlin had just begun searching Bart’s anally organized closet—his clothing arranged by color and each identical hanger an exact distance from the next one—when Bart dashed in holding an open laptop.

  He passed it to Conlin.

  Conlin read the email from Headliner. “Sure you didn’t send this to yourself?”

  “Piss off,” Bart replied as he grabbed the computer and turned to leave the room.

  “Take it easy, I was just messing with you.” He didn’t trust Bart for a minute not to take advantage of the situation and write about the murder, but Conlin couldn’t see the guy having the balls to raise his fists, much less kill someone. Unlike the Bart that wrote the crime blog, Conlin saw that the real Bart Kosik was a shrinking violet, pun intended. Richard reached for the laptop. “You know we have to keep this, have the techs go through it.”

  “Yeah, I figured.” Richard saw that the message had been sent as an email, so the guy hadn’t been in the house again. Maybe the email could be traced, but he doubted finding Bart’s Headliner would be that easy.

  The detectives finished their examination of the premises. Although the search wasn’t the most exhaustive Conlin had ever performed, it had, for the most part, along with a visit to Jennifer Hoff by another detective, exonerated Bart from suspicion.

  It was nearly two in the morning when Conlin and his partner left carrying Bart’s laptop. Conlin planned to have the computer crimes division go over it to see if they could ferret out where the email had come from, but he wasn’t feeling optimistic. The sender, while not appearing to be the sharpest arrow in the quiver—probably by design—wouldn’t have been dumb enough to send an email that would expose his location.

  Conlin arrived home an hour later, surprised to see that TJ had left the Christmas tree lights on even though they were on their dimmest setting. He was relieved to see that the playpen, while still in its spot next to the tree, did not hold JR.

  When he crawled between the sheets after eating some leftover meatloaf and taking a hot shower, he was surprised when TJ turned over and hugged him. “Nice welcome. You’re usually out cold by now.”

  “Lot on my mind,” she said. “Wanna run somethin’ by you.”

  “Can it wait until morning—or I suppose I should say—until a little later in the morning?”

  She grabbed the clock. “Huh. Didn’t think I was asleep that long. What kept you out so late?”

  He pulled her over to him and spooned against her back. “Bart Kosik. He found a body next to his garage.”

  In one swift move, TJ sat up and turned on the lamp next to the bed. “What? Tell me about it, and don’t say it can wait till mornin’.”

  21

  Late the next morning, Conlin got a call from a policewoman named Cynthia in computer crimes who told him that the email sent to Bart from Headliner traced to a big-box appliance store south of Milwaukee that sold electronics.

  “Pretty clever,” she said. “There have to be thousands of people in and out of those places on any given day.”

  “I didn’t think those display models were hooked up to the Internet.”

  “They didn’t used to be, but this is a new day, Detective; people want to try the wares before they buy. Give the store a call if you want, but I’m pretty sure they would only pay attention if someone lingered on one of the demos too long. Your guy would have sent his messa
ge and taken off.”

  Amazed at how perps excelled at finding new ways to do business, Richard called the store and talked to the manager of the department that sold computers. In a pronounced southern accent, he told Conlin exactly what Cynthia had predicted. The chance that a store clerk noticed who had left the message was like finding fly shit in the pepper. Conlin told him he’d send someone over anyway and to be sure the same people who’d been working in the department the day before would be on hand.

  With that angle all but dried up, Conlin moved on and managed to get through to the ME from the night before, Margaret Koslowski. Her voice was deep and raspy, like she’d just been outside on a smoke break. “You have excellent timing, Detective. I was about to call you.”

  “Then that’s one thing going right so far today.”

  “Sorry to hear that. Anyway, I finished the autopsy on your Jane Doe. She’s going to remain that way unless you can connect her to a missing person.”

  “Dammit. I was afraid of that. Any sign of sexual assault?”

  “None. Cause of death was as expected—blunt force trauma to the head. The hands came off post-mortem. Time of death was within three to four hours before she was found, so sometime around eight p.m. No fancy dental work, no tats, birthmarks, or unusual piercings. She’d never given birth. I couldn’t swear to it in court, but it looked like she had a miscarriage or maybe an abortion recently, possibly several months ago. Her hair was shaded with platinum streaks, natural color a dark blond, she was five foot seven and one hundred twenty-four pounds. No trace on her, hairs, semen or threads. That’s about it. I’ll send you the final report in a few days.”

  “Enough left of her face for a sketch artist?”

  Koslowski exhaled loudly into the receiver. “Possibly. I’ll take a look again and let you know. See if you can line up someone who’s trained for that kind of work.”

  Richard knew just the person. “Already got someone. I’ll send him over.”

  After he hung up, Conlin called Chang in computer crimes. Chang, the head of the department for the last year, had studied digital facial reconstruction but seldom had the opportunity to use his talent. Since heading the computer crimes division, Chang had taught others the skill set, but in Conlin’s opinion, no one else had reached Chang’s level of expertise. He didn’t have to twist the man’s arm—Chang promised to get on it as soon as possible.

  Uniforms were out scoping Kosik’s neighborhood but hadn’t called in anything

  yet. Without witnesses to interview, that left Kosik’s hate mail to go through—a dreaded task, since the odds that the murderer had contacted Kosik before now weren’t great.

  He found Justin, his partner, in a conference room where Justin had all Bart’s

  messages laid out in chronological order.

  “How should we do this?” Conlin asked.

  “The easiest way is to go through the letters that were mailed first and find any

  that have return addresses, contact those. Meanwhile, we can shoot the emails over to computer crimes. They can let us know if any of them are traceable.”

  After sifting through them, only a few of the mailed letters had return addresses, or names that could be identified. Justin held them up. “Which ones do you want?”

  Conlin grabbed two of the letters and took them back to his desk. The first one read as if it had been written by someone who hadn’t finished school—grade school; the spelling and word usage was that of a third grader. Kosik had received it after writing a scathing piece on pedophiles. Conlin remembered that blog. After expounding on how leniently the system dealt with child molesters, Kosik had gone on to suggest the best solution would be to drop all molesters off on a tropical island that was too far from land for any possibility of escape. “Let the maggots feed off each other.”

  Based on his experience with pedophiles, Richard thought the island concept wasn’t a half-bad idea. The address on the letter was for a Wilma Templeman and was located in St. Frances, a suburb southeast of downtown Milwaukee. He found the phone number and dialed. The woman who answered sounded as though she was in her eighties.

  “Is this Wilma Templeman?” he asked.

  “Yes.” The woman added, “It is.”

  Richard explained who he was and asked her if she lived alone.

  “I do. What does that matter? I haven’t done anything wrong.”

  He checked the date on the envelope. “How about a year and a half ago? Did you live alone then?”

  She paused so long he thought she might have hung up. Her voice soft and crackly, she said, “My grandson Raymond lived with me then.”

  “Can you tell me where Raymond lives now?”

  “He’s in prison,” she said, in a voice so low Richard almost had to ask her to repeat what she’d said.

  “I’m sorry about that,” he lied. Then he asked her Raymond’s last name and how long he’d been in jail. The woman provided the answers he needed. He took the information and ended the call.

  He quickly found out that Raymond Geller had been imprisoned six months earlier, after having been convicted of child molestation for the second time. As a repeat offender, Geller wouldn’t be seeing the light of day for a long time. It was always possible that he’d somehow gotten computer access in prison, but Geller was off the hook as a suspect since he couldn’t have been in Bart’s house or have murdered the woman.

  The other letter, intelligently worded, was from a man angry about Kosik’s praise of the Milwaukee Police Department. Conlin couldn’t recall that blog; one of Kosik’s recurring themes was to degrade the MPD. He seldom praised them. The worm glommed onto every error cops made and seldom put the spotlight on their successes. Apparently this letter writer didn’t like Bart’s one-time offering of praise for the MPD.

  The address traced to an apartment in the third ward, a tony neighborhood just south of downtown Milwaukee.

  The phone rang five times before being picked up. “Karl Lister.”

  Richard introduced himself. “Mr. Lister, were you living at this address five months ago?”

  “I was. What is this about, Detective?” The man’s voice hinted at homosexuality, with a soft lisp that almost sounded deliberate.

  “Do you recall writing a letter to a man named Bart Kosik?”

  Rather than answer Conlin’s question, he said, “I watch the news, Detective. I know what happened last night at Mr. Kosik’s residence. I should have known you would be persecuting gays rather than looking for the person who killed that poor woman.”

  Richard had no beef with the gay community, but the guy’s attitude warranted an in-house interview. “Mr. Lister, I have to ask you to come down here and answer a few questions. Will this afternoon at about two work for you?”

  “Ask me questions about what? I don’t know anything.” His voice had raised an octave, the lisp gone. “I’ll be there, but it will be with my attorney.” He hung up the phone.

  Lister showed up at the station fifteen minutes early, sans attorney, wearing a dark-blue suit with a light-blue shirt and a yellow tie. Diminutive, he couldn’t have been more than five foot five. Richard had vetted him earlier and found he’d never been arrested or even had a parking ticket. He managed an exclusive men’s clothing store in Shorewood.

  Richard questioned him briefly and found he had an alibi for the night of the murder, one that Richard checked out quickly when he left the room to get them coffee. Lister hadn’t killed the woman or contacted Bart. He was merely a small man with a big chip on his shoulder, evident with every word in his responses. When Richard said they were finished, he left grumbling about police harassment.

  Justin hadn’t fared much better. Neither of the letter writers he checked out was from Wisconsin and both also had alibis.

  “What do you think?” Justin asked. “Will our computer crimes people have any luck with these?” He made a sweeping gesture at the email messages spread out on the table.

  “I doubt it, this feels
like a new threat. And this case won’t be a big priority for them, so it’s going to take time to get the results.”

  They were interrupted when Conlin’s phone rang. Cynthia Koslowski from the ME’s office was calling.

  “Yeah, what have you got for me?” Richard asked.

  “Is that any way to talk to someone who just did you a big favor?”

  “Do you want me to grovel?”

  “No, a pretty please with lunch attached would work,” she hinted. Richard rolled his eyes at Justin. He’d heard stories about the woman hitting on cops.

  “Sure,” he laughed, keeping it light. “I’ll call Domino’s and send you a pizza.”

  “Cute. I did some X-rays on your Jane Doe. Looks like she had a history with someone who liked to knock her around. Either that or she was a stunt woman.”

  Richard sat up, unsettled by the news. “Cynthia, I’m going to put you on speaker so Justin can hear you.”

  “All right,” she began, “Jane Doe has had broken ribs, shoulder, both arms, and even her jaw. No pins, though, nothing that could give you a link to a doctor or a hospital. That’s about the best I can do. Your guy Chang was here, took a lot of pics and said he’d work on getting a facial for you as soon as he had time.”

  She clicked off.

  “Well, fuck a duck,” Justin said. “This guy wasn’t just blowing smoke—he’s offing abused women.”

  22

  TJ got a late start that morning because JR’s grandmother had a dental appointment. Donna, Jeff Denison’s mother, lived in the apartment behind TJ’s office during the week in order to stay with JR. Donna’s residence in the apartment had solved a huge problem for TJ, enabling her to work her business and still feel that her son was being well cared for. The arrangement suited them all.

  TJ and Richard had been on a hiatus from their two-year relationship when she had spent one reckless night with Jeff Denison that resulted in her pregnancy. TJ and Jeff had grown close during the time when, along with Lisa and Eric, they’d been investigating the disappearances of abused women. The next day Jeff had been murdered by a ruthless killer. Eventually, TJ and Richard got back together, and he had accepted JR as his own.