John Steel Collection - Books 4-6

Chapter 13

McCall had put a request into Traffic for any CCTV footage around the diner. The description they had gotten from Bob made no sense. If their John Doe had something to do with the murder of Amber, why was he walking around half a day later covered in blood?

This whole case was making no sense. She stared up at the murder board to see if there was something that they had overlooked. From the corner of her eye, something moved, causing her to look over. Steel approached with two steaming coffee cups. She smiled as he placed them down on the comical coasters that sat happily on her desk. Steel pausing slightly before covering the coasters, the yellow ‘smilies’ all had different expressions. There was a stack of them next to a photograph of her with her mom and dad. It appeared to be an old photo, judging by the age she seemed to be. The British detective stared at the photograph for a couple of seconds. McCall looked up at him with a curious stare.

“Anything wrong?” she asked.

He turned and smiled before sitting in the chair next to her desk. “You must miss your father a lot.” Steel’s voice had a soothing tone to it. She looked at the small eight-by-five photo and nodded.

“It’s been eleven years this September. Eleven years since we got the call about his shooting in that hotel.” A small tear had gathered in the corner of her eye, but she forced back the emotion. Time enough to cry later, she thought. McCall picked up her coffee mug and blew on the pale-coloured coffee before taking a sip.

Time enough to cry laterSteel looked across towards the murder board. The collage of photographs and scribbles were all held together in their own little headings: SUSPECTS, VICTIM, PERSONS OF INTEREST.

At the bottom, a think black line denoted the timeline. A thick red bar reached from seven in the evening until ten o’clock in the evening, when she was found. McCall was aware that the ME had put ‘Time of Death’ at around eight to nine o’clock that night, but McCall liked to be more thorough and accurate than that generality.

The only picture in the ‘Suspect’ column was that of Tony Russo, and the likelihood of his guilt was looking shaky. Amber had been liked by everyone as far as they could see. But then who would stick their hand up and say otherwise during a murder investigation?

The door to the interrogation room opened, and Tooms and an angry Tony stepped out. Steel looked over to see the smug Russo sitting comfortably on his chair, waiting to be told to go home.

“So, what did you get from laughing boy?” McCall asked, not feeling hopeful when she saw Tony’s burning eyes.

“He has an alibi which we are about to check out,” Tooms told her. “But one thing he did say was that Amber had a twin.” The Tooms sat at the desk next to McCall’s.

Sam’s jaw dropped open in surprise.

“So, what you are saying,” Steel said grimly, “is that we have no clear idea who is in the morgue?” His expression was extremely serious.

McCall shot him a look of disappointment. “John Steel, did anyone ever tell you that you’re a very ‘glass half empty’ kind of person? I was going for the hope of Amber being still alive, but of course, you’re right,” she said, keeping the scowl.

“What else did you get from him?” McCall asked, this time looking over to Tony.

“Not much,” Tony spoke with a hint of disappointment in his voice. “He said he hadn’t seen her for months. Apparently, he hit on the sister, and Amber found out and told him to hit the bricks. I will contact Brooke and see what she can tell me. Hopefully, she has an address for this sister.”

McCall nodded at Tony in agreement.

“And what did you guys get from the meathead?” Tooms asked, hoping they had gotten more than they had.

“Well it appears that Mr Handy saw our runaway with a man a couple of days ago,” McCall said with a hopeful tone in her voice.

“Did you get a description?” Tony asked with a newfound vigour.

Steel smiled and nodded.

“Sam has gotten Traffic to send footage from around the time, but from what Bob told us we may have a match.” Steel pointed to the board with his thumb.

Tooms and Tony looked up at the general direction towards the ‘Persons of Interest’ section. They looked at each other, then in unison spoke loudly: “John Doe?”

Tooms shook his head in confusion. “So, your suspect is the guy with no memory?”

Steel nodded in answer to Tooms’s question. “Convenient, don’t you think?” Steel said with an almost evil grin, like the cat that got the cream.

“Well I hope it is him, I want to go home this weekend to see my mom,” McCall said, looking at the photograph once more. “In the meantime, CSU have his clothes and are testing the blood, once they finish the backlog that is.” She stuck out her bottom lip in disappointment at the situation. She looked up at the board for a second then stood up and grabbed her jacket.

“Where you are going?” asked Tooms, suspicious at the sudden movement.

“Off to the crime scene, see if we missed something.” McCall watched Steel get up from his chair to get ready to go with her.

“Let me know when the footage comes in and if I don’t see you guys, don’t stay too long, and I’ll see you in the morning,” she ordered as she headed for the elevator with Steel.

“Come on, let’s find that sister,” Tooms said, patting Tony on the shoulder.

* * *

As McCall turned onto 48th Street, she groaned at the sight of the mass of parked cars. Then as she drove up to the crime scene, McCall saw the red-and-white hazard tape and orange cones as city officials marked their spots for making repairs to the pavement.

The sun was high, considering it was late in the afternoon, but the heat had burnt off hours before, leaving a cool breeze. McCall found a parking spot near to the junction. The narrow street was made more difficult to negotiate because of badly parked, or as McCall called them, ‘abandoned’ vehicles.

The two detectives walked the forty or so feet to the building. Steel welcomed the walk, it gave him time to think, or as he called it “walk the walk.” A fresh gust carried Sam’s hair upwards, and she closed her eyes for a second to enjoy the ‘natural air conditioner’. Steel smiled at the sight and shook his head. If anyone had witnessed, her expression, they would have thought she was doing an advert for hair products or perfume.

“Come on, supermodel.” He laughed.

She shot him a friendly scowl and pretended to walk the catwalk to the apartment building. McCall stopped suddenly. She looked over at the taped off area to see the workmen wolf-whistling and applauding her performance. She bowed and headed inside, leaving Steel to look to the heavens and shake his head in disbelief.

McCall had used Amber’s keys to gain entry. The key chain was full of different sets of keys plus a small teddy bear. McCall had wondered if Tony had given her the bear as a present: perhaps a reminder from a date at a fair or just a simple gesture of kindness. The tiny panda looked worn, as though it had seen a lot of use or alternatively had been there awhile.

They ventured up to the fourth floor and stood in front of the yellow police tape. Using another of her keys, they opened the door and entered.

The afternoon sun acted as a spotlight. The sitting room was almost aglow with the natural illumination. CSU had taken what they needed, including the rug where Amber had bled out. On first impression, no one would have even consider there had been a murder in the room. Everything seemed as normal as could be. All perfectly straightforward, apart from the faint bloodstains on the carpet. The rug had soaked most of it up, but not all of it.

Steel stood in the middle of the room and stared into nothing. His body was solid, like one of the statues at the Metropolitan Museum. McCall watched him for a moment, a look of concern on her face. She knew what he was doing, for she had seen him do it before. He was re-enacting the movements of that night in his head. She also did the same when she got to a crime scene but seeing the way that he did it somehow scared her, and it was almost as if he could actually see the events taking place.

She had a good imagination for these things, but the imagination needed for this kind of work could only be gotten from experience. She dreaded to know what experiences John Steel had gone through in order to conjure up such nightmares. Steel moved his head slowly as if he was watching someone come through the door. He moved back as if to give them space to move uninterrupted.

John suddenly stopped and looked around the room. He had a confused look on his face as though something was wrong. Suddenly he dropped to the floor and searched the carpet, his hands gliding across the short fibres.

“Lost your contacts?” McCall asked jokingly. However, her smile faded as she realised, he was either ignoring her, or he had simply blocked out her existence. Steel stopped at one point before moving across the coarse brown flooring. His fingers swept another area. Then he stopped and stood up before turning towards her.

“Did CSU move anything?” he asked, his tone almost sounding excited.

McCall opened the report file and scanned the pages. She shook her head. “They only moved things in order to retrieve the rug, but they put everything back as they found it. Why?” she asked curiously.

“The couch and these tables have been moved.” He pointed out the large blue fabric couch and the two nesting tables on either side. McCall knelt to find the set of indentations from where the couch’s round feet had stood. Their shape and depth were consistent with how long the piece have furniture must have stood in that spot. By their look, McCall estimated it to be years—a lot of years.

“Someone moved the furniture!” she said, almost as puzzled as when she had watched him pat down the carpet. “Why the hell did they move the furniture?”

Steel looked around the room, then shook his head.

“I don’t know. But one thing is clear,” he said, helping McCall to her feet. “They were looking for something.”

She shot him a confused look as she straightened her clothes out.

“They?” Her tone was as if she was unconvinced. She wondered how he had come to such a ‘so exact’ assumption that there had been more than one person present. Sure, they were waiting for toxicology to come back, but she was sure that Amber had been knocked out by something. Chloroform was a possibility.

“How do you know there was more than one person, just from seeing that the furniture has been moved?” She sounded unconvinced.

John raised a hand and pointed to the furnishings. “There are no drag marks for one thing. If you move something that has been there a long while it’s going to leave a trail. Then there is Amber herself. How did ‘they’ or ‘he’ subdue her?” Steel could see the glint in her eye, as if to say that she had a theory, possibly a good one.

“Before you say chloroform, just ask yourself how they would have got it to her,” he went on. “She has a peephole in the door. If the killer was a stranger, she wouldn’t have opened it, which means she knew him or them. And if so, why would they do all this?”

McCall folded her arms in disappointment at his deduction. He had been right, and she hated to admit that.

“OK, Sherlock, what’s your theory?” she said, waiting for some elaborate deduction, some grand scheme revealed.

But Steel just shook his head and shrugged. “Elementary,” Steel started mockingly, causing McCall to scowl at him, “You see I don’t think they were after Amber. I think they were after the roommate.”

His statement shocked Sam McCall.

“In fact, I don’t think Amber had just moved in. I don’t think whoever did this expected her to be here. She shouldn’t have been here.” Steel pointed to the mountain of removal company packing boxes that were just visible through the open spare bedroom door.

“So, she surprised someone in here and paid for it with her life?” McCall suggested, looking around the room for more clues, but finding nothing but more questions.

“Yes, but she surprised them when they were doing what? They weren’t searching for something; the place is spotless. They could have thought Amber was the roommate, but then if so, why did they torture her?” Steel shook his head. Something didn’t feel right. In fact, something felt very familiar, and that scared him.

“Perhaps whoever did this didn’t know the face of the person they had to kill, only their address? They figured that there was only one person living here, so poor Amber just happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time.” McCall voiced her theory as she was opening one of the removal company packing boxes and sorting through its contents.

“Which would lead us to another question,” Steel continued. “Who sent them and why?” Steel caught a brutal look from his partner. “Hey, sorry, but it was your theory,” he concluded, before turning and heading for Tara’s room. Of all the rooms, this was the only one with photographs, making it seem almost as if she didn’t want to share them with anyone else.

He stopped as he noticed a blank space where a photograph had obviously once hung. The lonely nail looked out of place, but the paint had not faded, meaning it hadn’t been there long. The remaining photos were of Tara in the park, in which she seemed very happy. This suggested that she had been with someone special to her.

Sam McCall noticed that Steel was standing there at the wall, studying it as she closed the box.

“Is something wrong?” she asked, almost hoping that he might give her a clue.

“There is a photograph missing. And it looks like these were taken recently too.” He said, his thoughts lost in theories.

“Maybe the killer took it?” she suggested.

He nodded and looked closer at the area in the picture, hoping to get an idea of where it had been taken.

“Maybe the killer was in the missing picture?” he said, taking one of the pictures down and showing it to McCall, who was making her way over to him.

The glossy six-by-four was of the fountain at Bethesda Terrace. McCall smiled. She knew that place had cameras all over it.

“If we can find out when it was taken, we might get lucky,” he said, thinking the same thing as McCall. She opened the file again and looked at the crime scene photographs, observing the way that the body was positioned, the brutality. However, there did appear to be care taken in the undertaking of the deed. This wasn’t just a brutal killing: this was a torture. She looked at the photographs again. A shiver ran down her spine, one of such intensity that she nearly buckled. McCall looked over at Steel, who just stood there with a solemn look on his face.

“You think he’s back, don’t you?” she said, the dreaded words almost creeping out of her mouth. He nodded slowly. She felt an anger towards him. She wanted to scream at him.

“How long have you known that it might be him?” she demanded.

He shook his head slowly. “I suspected more than anything really. It was ever since I first saw the crime scene photographs. I didn’t want to say anything until I was sure.” His words were soft and calming, but she maintained her pained expression.

“And are you?” she said, almost hoping he wasn’t.

Steel shook his head again. “No, I am not.”

He could see that this was not what she wanted to hear. He felt her sudden fear of that monster’s return. The man who had unknowingly brought them together.

The man most knew only as … Mr Williams.