Disarming Detective. Elizabeth Heiter
live oaks. Spanish moss dangled from every branch almost to the tall grass below, like a fuzzy gray curtain obscuring the path behind it. “Follow me. And stay on the trail. Snakes hide in the grass.”
Behind the trees, the dirt path was packed down. Locals used it often to bike and walk or to get to the marshes for fishing. Right now, in the midday heat, the path was empty.
It was also narrow, so Ella walked behind him. He could sense her taking in the details, so he wasn’t surprised when she asked, “Is the area we’re going to pretty populated?”
“We definitely get locals looking for redfish, but not too many tourists wander back here. We won’t get out as far as where the body was found. To do that, we’d need a boat. The trail loops back around, which is where most of the runners take it, but there’s a split that goes farther out, about to the point the water will come up to at high tide. From there, I can show you where we found Theresa.” He glanced over his shoulder at her. “You’re wondering if this guy knew the area in order to get back here?”
“That’s part of it. Also trying to determine how likely it is he’d run into other people. How much risk he’d take dumping the body where he did. Things like that help me figure out his personality.”
“Hmm.” Logan dropped back so he could walk beside her and watch her face as she talked. They were a close fit on the narrow trail. Every few steps her arm brushed his and the feel of her skin fired way too many nerve endings to life. “From what I know of profiling, you’ll be able to tell me things like he’s a white male in his twenties.”
From the reaction he’d gotten when he’d suggested bringing in a profiler to his chief, he knew skeptics joked that was all profilers were good for—looking at a crime scene and predicting that the serial killer was a white male in his twenties. Which happened to be the most common age range and race for serial killers.
Ella’s mouth quirked, but with annoyance or amusement, he couldn’t tell.
“The basic concepts behind profiling are actually pretty simple,” she said. “Take you, for example. Things like your upbringing, your intelligence, your personality—all of that contributed to why you became not just a cop, but a homicide detective. Creating a criminal personality profile analyzes that. I look at the evidence—things like the way he dumped the body—and figure out details of his personality. From that, I can say what kind of job that kind of personality would likely pick, what kind of environment he’d live in, if he’d be married, that sort of thing.” She shrugged. “Make sense?”
“You make it sound easy.”
“No, it’s definitely not easy. But it is pretty grounded in psychology.” As they reached the end of the trail, she turned to face him, and he instantly became hyperaware of how short the distance between them really was. “If I tell you he’s a white male in his twenties, there’ll be a reason behind it besides averages.”
Turning again, she squinted out over the marsh, her expression slipping back to serious, and after allowing himself another few seconds to watch her, Logan did the same.
He’d been to this spot hundreds of times before, but in the sudden stillness, he saw it as she might. The feeling of intense calm that came from being the only people there, then the slow realization that nature was moving all around. The murky waters, lapping against tall grasses. The curious expression of a wading egret, the distant lump indicating an alligator underneath.
“It’s pretty quiet,” Ella said.
He could almost hear her thoughts, calculating details about the killer. He’d picked an isolated spot where there wouldn’t likely be tourists. The body had been found in the morning, so the killer must have dumped Theresa before dusk, when the alligators would’ve been feeding. A smart killer. Patient.
Logan felt the blood drain from his face as he realized what else it probably told Ella. The killer knew specific details about the marsh. “He’s a local, isn’t he?”
Ella turned, and her deep brown eyes seemed to bore holes through him. “He’s not a typical tourist passing through for a week or two. He could be a local, either here or in one of the neighboring towns. At the very least, he’s been holed up here for a few months, getting familiar with the town and trolling for victims.”
A string of curses burst from deep within, a sour, sick feeling that he might actually know the person who had burned and then murdered his sister’s friend.
The sick feeling persisted when his cell phone trilled and the display read Chief Patterson. He hadn’t even finished “Hello” before the chief was yelling loudly enough that there was no question Ella could hear every word.
“Why am I hearing about you bringing the FBI to Oakville for your ridiculous serial killer theory? How often do you need to hear orders before you follow them, Logan? We’re investigating Theresa’s murder. We are not inventing more victims and we are definitely not scaring the whole town by turning an isolated crime into a huge spree!”
“Chief—”
“I’m going to tell you this one last time, Logan, and you’d better listen. There’s only so far that nepotism can protect your job. You drop this serial killer angle right now. Send this profiler home and get back to the station.”
“Chief, listen—”
The sudden dial tone cut him off. As he tucked his phone back inside his pocket, he prayed he’d made the right decision in bringing Ella here, prayed that one crazy theory wasn’t going to bring down the career he’d fought so hard for.
“Why isn’t she on a plane?” Chief Patterson folded his arms on his desk, glaring with an intensity he seemed to save just for Logan.
Chief Patterson was his father’s age. He’d headed up the Oakville PD for twenty years and his dislike of anyone with the last name Greer came from way before Logan’s time. Part of it had to do with the Greers’ long history of prominent positions in Oakville. And part of it had to do with the chief courting his mother before his father won her away.
Logan looked through the glass door of the chief’s office to where Ella sat perched on a chair along the wall, attracting attention from far too many members of their all-male police force. Logan scowled. She was here to consult on his case.
“Logan,” Chief Patterson snapped, making his head whip back around. “What part of my orders was unclear to you?”
“Listen, Chief, Agent Cortez agrees this crime looks serial.”
The chief’s scowl deepened, intensifying the lines that raked across his forehead and bracketed his mouth. “I don’t care what she thinks. I don’t buy into that profiling hokum. And I am not going to scare away all our tourism revenue with some ridiculous theory. If you keep pursuing this angle, I’m taking you off the case. I’ll assign it to someone else.”
But Logan knew that none of the other detectives in their small police force would want to touch the case, not after he’d had his hands on it. Just like none of them wanted to risk the chief’s ire by partnering with a cop named Greer. The uniforms joked that the position of his partner was like a revolving door. Right now, he was the only member of the force without a partner—which was true for most of his tenure as a detective.
But it didn’t matter if there was another detective who’d take this case; Logan wasn’t handing it over to anyone.
The chief didn’t give him a chance to say that, merely held up a hand. “There’s nothing your father can do about it. I won’t be cowed by political pressure. This is my office. I’m your boss and you’d better get used to it.”
Logan clamped down hard on his instant response. Not once had he ever used his family’s name—or his father’s position as mayor of Oakville—to get ahead in his job. If anything, they had held him back.
He