For the span of a full minute, the only sound comes from the buzz of the fluorescent lights and the hum of the refrigeration units. I try to rally my thoughts, get my questions in order, but my mind doesn’t cooperate. “I’ll add that to the profile we’re building.”
I stare at the deep grooves cut into her wrists. The bloated abdomen. Her hands and feet. I try to see her as she must have been when she was alive. That’s when it strikes me that neither her nails or toenails are painted. This woman is totally unadorned. No highlights in her hair. Her earlobes aren’t pierced. No jewelry.
She is plain.
A dozen vehicles jam the street in front of the police station when I pull up. I see a ProNews 16 van parked in my reserved space and I’m forced to park half a block away. I slap a citation beneath his wiper on my way in.
Inside, the place is a madhouse. Both Lois and Mona stand at the dispatch station, manning a switchboard gone wild. T.J. sits at his cube, the phone to his ear, his back to the room. Glock slouches in his chair in his cubicle, his fingers pecking at the keyboard. I wonder where Skid and Pickles are, and realize they’re probably still at the Huffman place.
Steve Ressler spots me. His cheeks glow red as he rushes toward me. “Is it true there was a second murder?”
“Yes.” I don’t stop walking.
He keeps pace with me. “Who’s the victim? Has she been identified? Has the family been notified? Is it the same killer?”
“I gotta work, Steve,” I say. “Press conference at six.”
He tosses a dozen more questions at me, but I push past him and head to my office.
“Chief!” Mona’s hair is wilder than usual. Heavy on the eyeliner. Pink shadow. Clashing red lipstick. She’s ready for the cameras.
“How long has it been like this?” I ask.
“A few hours. I stayed to help Lois.”
“I appreciate that.” Across the room, Steve Ressler gives me the evil eye. “Everyone behaving?”
“Ressler’s a pushy asshole. Norm Johnston’s off the chart.”
“Tell anyone who asks there’s a press conference at six in the high school auditorium.”
“Gotcha.”
In my office, I flip on my computer and grab a cup of coffee while it boots. My phone rings. I look at it to see all four lines blinking in discord. Ignoring all of them, I dial Lois.
“Did you check missing persons reports?” I ask.
“Nothing, Chief.”
I think about the young woman at the morgue. I should be surprised no one has reported her missing. But I’m not. “Remind everyone of the meeting at four.”
“You mean the one that was supposed to start ten minutes ago?”
“And send Glock in, will you?”
“Sure.”
I’m still thinking about the second victim when Glock walks in. “What’s up?”
“Close the door.”
He reaches behind him and the door clicks shut.
“I need you to drop everything,” I begin.
He moves to the visitor chair and sits. “All right.”
“This is just between you and me, Glock. No one can know what you’re doing or why. And I can’t tell you everything.”
“Tell me what you can and I’ll run with it.”
Relief flits through me that he trusts me enough to work blind. “I want you to dig up everything you can on a man by the name of Daniel Lapp.”
“Who is he?”
“He’s local. Amish. No one has seen him in sixteen years.”
The time frame doesn’t elude Glock, and for the first time he looks surprised. “He’s Amish?”
“People assumed he fled the lifestyle.”
“He got family here?”
I nod. “A brother. I’ve already talked to him.”
“He give you anything?”
“No.”
Glock studies me a little too closely. “You going to tell me why we’re looking at this guy?”
“I can’t. I just need you to trust me, okay?”
He nods. “Okay. I’ll see what I can dig up.”
Just like that. No questions. No objections at being left in the dark. I feel a pang of guilt. Like maybe I don’t deserve that kind of trust.
“This a priority?” he asks after a moment.
“The highest,” I answer, and hope to God he can find what I could not.
CHAPTER 16
The storage room down the hall from my office has undergone an extreme transformation from catchall to command center. An eight-foot folding table surrounded by mismatched chairs sits in the center of the room. At the front, a half-podium squats atop a rickety card table. Next to the podium is an easel affixed with a pad. Someone nailed a dry-erase board to the wall. A single telephone sits on the floor next to the wall jack, and I realize the cabling won’t reach all the way to the table.
Glock and I are the first to arrive. I’m glad because I need a few minutes to gather my thoughts and mentally prepare. It’s important for me to appear competent and in control, particularly since the investigation has become multi-jurisdictional.
“Not bad,” Glock comments, referring to Mona’s and Lois’s ingenuity.
“It’ll do in a pinch.” I muster a halfhearted smile. “How bad is my eye?”