Chapter 20

Two weeks later Bob was coming home from the gym, still dressed in his sweats. McDill had instructed them, superfluously, not to see each other until after the trial. He had been noncommittal after his questioning of Bob, concerning what his defense would be. "I have some ideas," was all he'd say.

Bob turned the last corner and started toward the entrance to his apartment building. A car pulled to a stop at the curb next to him and the window rolled down.

"Get in!" came a male voice he recognized. It was Don Simpson, his old peer in the detective division.

"Why?"

"Just get in," said Don. He sounded anxious. "They might have your place staked out."

Bob didn't look around. He opened the door and slid into the seat. Simpson pulled out into traffic immediately.

"Man did you ever poke a stick in a hornet's nest," said Simpson.

"You investigating me now?" asked Bob.

"No, IA is taking care of that. You're on an occasional watch list. They aren't on you full time, but they're interested in your comings and goings."

"Why?" asked Bob.

Simpson looked at him with a look of disbelief. "Well duh," he said.

"So what do you want?" asked Bob.

"Why didn't you tell me about her when I told you the guy was her rapist?"

"Would it have done any good? What would you have done with the information?"

"I don't know. Maybe nothing. We just wanted to close the cases. But if you'd have told me one of his victims was present at the time of the explosion..."

"I'd gotten to know her by then," said Bob. "We played racquetball together quite a bit." He was being careful to only say what IA already knew.

"Yeah, well that's just fuckin' weird too," said Simpson. "You got something going with her?"

"What do you want, Don?" asked Bob. "I'm probably already toast. You don't need to put another nail in my coffin."

"Not at all," said Simpson. "You're nowhere near being toast. They're trying to figure out how to keep you from being a fucking hero!"

"I don't get it," said Bob.

"Remember I told you we were going to shut everything down?"

"Yeah."

"Dillworth wouldn't let us run the DNA on the evidence we had from the different scenes. We had hairs and epithelials under the fingernails of a couple of the other victims. We even had some prints off of a can of soda the guy helped himself to at one scene, but Dillworth said there was nothing to compare it to."

"OK," said Bob.

"So we never actually tied him to all those rapes. The guy was buried as a John Doe and we had to fudge a little when we told all the victims their attacker was dead."

"OK," said Bob again.

"But when this Fetterman thing blew up, they went back and reinvestigated all the cases. They ran the DNA. It really DID tie all the cases together." He looked over at Bob.

"You have a point," said Bob. "Why not get to it?"

"The point is that now that she confessed to killing him, they had to identify him. The prosecutor was foaming at the mouth, because he was going to have to try her for killing a John Doe. You know that's almost impossible. The commissioner was livid. IA was already involved, but he called in the state patrol to review all the cases. So they ended up doing a full blown location analysis of all the rapes, and narrowed down where the guy probably lived. Then they did a house to house canvass, trying to find somebody who went missing. They got a hit on a guy named Gilbert Kinneson, who stopped paying his rent, but left everything in his apartment. The landlord still had all his stuff in storage, because he was afraid the guy would show back up and sue him if he got rid of it."

Don looked around, as if to see if they were being followed, and went on.

"So they took HIS driver's license picture and put it in some photo lineups on all the cases the task force had closed out. They got TEN more hits, Bob. All the women he'd left DNA evidence with nailed his picture, and there were TEN more beyond that, Bob! All cold cases. The motherfucker set some kind of record, and it was YOU who brought about the further investigation. The chief has egg all over his face and the Commissioner of Police is asking all kinds of questions about why this wasn't all done in the first place!"

"He should ask Dillworth why it wasn't all done in the first place," said Bob. "He's the captain of detectives. He's the one who called all the shots."

"We fucking know that," grumbled Simpson. "And by now IA knows it, too. He's running scared, because it's coming out how he mismanaged shit and caused cases to go cold. And IA tied all the cases together by using the MO on the Fetterman case ... including your questions about the orgasm thing."

"You're shitting me," said Bob, finally surprised by something.

"Not at all. They got an FBI profiler involved, when the original DNA came back, and he said it was definitely part of the guy's MO. So they went back and asked all the victims and every fucking one of them finally admitted it had happened during their rapes as well. And TWO of them admitted he came back again! It was so fucking bizarre I about peed my pants!"

"So how do you know all this?" asked Bob.

"One of the IA detectives is my brother-in-law," said Simpson, grinning. "I'm not supposed to know any of this, but I had to tell you, cause I knew you were hurting."

"So why are they watching me?" asked Bob.

"Cause they're pissed that a traffic cop showed up everybody else on the fuckin' force," said Don gleefully.

"I didn't show anybody up," said Bob. "I just tried to do my job."

"That's the whole point!" said Simpson. "Dillworth has been shown to be incompetent. The chief looks stupid, and the commissioner's embarrassed as hell, too. They're trying to do damage control, but I'm telling you, buddy, heads are gonna roll."

"Well that's it for me then," sighed Bob. "When the shit starts, it rolls downhill. They'll want me gone, if only so I don't remind them of all the trouble."

"Maybe," said Simpson. "But IA isn't being nearly as nasty with the rest of us as they were in the beginning. A MAJOR fucking serial rapist was identified because of you, my friend. And the detectives aren't pissed at you at all. We've all had to close cases we knew needed more work, but when Dillworth made decisions, there wasn't anything anybody could do. They've even interviewed retired detectives."

"So what do you want from me?" asked Bob.

"Nothing," said Don. "I just thought you ought to know you didn't screw up as much as you thought you did."

"I DID screw up, though," said Bob. "I didn't turn in the lighter."

"OK, so you bent the rules. Look at the payoff. I mean they have to slap your wrist, but they can't fuck you over because they're afraid you'll blow the whistle on the whole thing. They're still trying to keep it quiet."

"You're shitting me!" said Bob. "What about the state guys being involved? And that FBI profiler? They can't keep it quiet. And why would they WANT to? What about all the PR for identifying the guy?"

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