Bishop. Hand rising next to her head, she moved it side to side, widening its reach with each pass, letting it fall only when Bishop turned back in his own time.
“You can’t see, can you?”
Going rigid, Bishop gave the truth away before he could feign the ignorance.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about. I see fine.”
“Straight on,” Beck said. “But your peripheral is gone. So is the hearing on your left side.”
“I don’t know what you think you know -”
“It’s not what I think I know,” Beck countered. “They can test it. All they’ll have to do is pull you for an eye test or a hearing test, and you’ll be done.”
“What are you going to do, Rookie?” Bishop dropped all pretense as he took a step her way. “Tell the lieutenant?”
“I’m not going to tell anyone,” Beck said. “But if you tell your team, they can watch your back.”
“I watch my own back.”
“Yeah. That worked out real well for you tonight.”
“You think, just because Martinez picked you, you’re irreplaceable?”
Finger in her face, Beck imagined, if she was anyone else, she might feel intimidated.
“You’re not. Stay the fuck out of it.”
When Bishop dropped the tough-guy act to walk off, Beck realized she had just undone all the progress they had made in the past hour, and the only person she had sabotaged was herself.
9 - Metro Homicide - Friday, 9:45 a.m.
They’d been in there since Beck got to work. Fifty minutes. Behind closed doors. Bishop sitting across from Martinez’s desk, Martinez nodding every so often in seeming agreement, Beck could only imagine what he was telling him.
“You worried?” Williams asked.
“Nah.” Eyes returning to her computer, Beck debated whether she really wanted to spend her last moments in Metro Homicide writing up a report.
“You look worried.”
“My first week here, I sent a superior officer home with a swollen spleen, and I shot somebody.” Beck had also called Bishop on something that could easily get him desk duty, if not forced retirement, but Williams didn’t know that. He wouldn’t. Not unless Bishop forced her hand.
“I’m not saying you haven’t kept busy.”
Sliding over in her chair, Beck watched the grin materialize on Williams’ face. Though, his attempt at alleviating her worry didn’t last long.
“Nash?”
Beck glanced back to watch Martinez gesture her into his office.
“You know, Williams, I’m really going to miss you when I’m gone.”
Williams’ eyes trailing to the lieutenant as she got up, it was clear he wasn’t nearly as unconcerned as he pretended to be.
“Have a seat,” Martinez ordered as Beck walked through the door.
Taking the one next to Bishop - the only seat available that wasn’t behind Martinez’s desk - Beck glanced over, no less certain in her fate when Bishop just stared across the office.
“Bishop and I have been talking.”
Yeah. All morning.
“He told me what happened last night. That was a good save.”
Beck read something like this once, in a book about good supervisory techniques, how one should always say something nice before canning someone.
“He also told me he’s been having some trouble with his vision.”
That not expected, Beck glanced Bishop’s way again, but he carried on in his contentment of pretending she didn’t exist.
“He didn’t know how bad it was until you were in the house last night. He realizes what could have happened, that he could have been killed, or could have gotten someone else killed.”
That certainly wasn’t how it sounded the last time he and Beck talked.
“This is really unfortunate timing,” Martinez said. Which was odd. If there was a right time for a cop to lose his vision, Beck had never encountered it. Bad guys with bad attitudes, bullets flying, hidden evidence, an ability to see everywhere at once was pretty much a necessity of the job. “We have a bit of a situation here.”
“Okay,” Beck uttered when it became clear Martinez was waiting for some sort of response out of her.
“What do you know about the Twenty-year Killer?”
Caught entirely off-guard, Beck was surprised to find Bishop at last looking at her when her eyes drifted his way again.
“I was… twelve… when he was arrested,” she said. “But he tortured people, right? Carved them up? Mutilated them?”
“That’s right.” Martinez grimly nodded. “We have reason to believe he’s about to do it again.”
“He’s out of prison?”
“He was never in prison,” Bishop said.
“I thought he was caught by the FBI.”
“Someone was caught by the FBI,” Bishop responded, and, nothing they were saying meshing with the history she knew, Beck shook her head to try to make it make sense.
“Could you start from the beginning?”
“Of course,” Martinez said. “The Twenty-year Killer made his first kill in 1975. At least, that’s when he started here. After that, he reemerged every few years between ’75 and 1995.”
Beck nodded at the part she already knew.
“Sporadically. Aside from the torture itself, which varied by weapon, style, length, the killer had no m.o. No preferred victim type. He was an indiscriminate killer, which is why he was never caught.”
“The year after the FBI put Donald Lock in prison for the murders,” Bishop took up the tale. “I received a thank you note. Postmarked Cleveland. That was the year the Cleveland Butcher murdered nine people before disappearing. The next year, a card came from El Paso. That same year, twelve torture victims found in the city were blamed on the Mexican drug trade crossing the border.”
“Did you tell the FBI this?”
“Of course, we did.” Bishop looked to Martinez, as if questioning Beck’s presence there. “They determined the deaths unrelated. As far as they’re concerned, they got the right man. Other jurisdictions have also put men into prison for similar murders, in every decade since the Twenty-year Killer first appeared. But these were not separate killers. These murders were all done by the same man.”
“We believe that’s where he disappeared to between sprees here,” Martinez said. “He was killing in other cities.”
“So, what makes you think he’s coming back?”
“Two weeks ago, Bishop got a letter.” When Martinez motioned his way, Bishop produced the slip of paper in a plastic sleeve. “You can read it, but the abridged version is he’s coming back, and he is planning to kill one person a week for the next twenty weeks.”
“The next twenty?” Beck’s head snapped up. “As in, starting this coming week?”
“That’s right,” Martinez said, and Beck swallowed as she slid the protected letter onto the edge of the desk.
“What does this have to do with me?”
“Bishop got closer to this guy than anyone has ever gotten. He got a good description. He tied all the victims together. A lot of jurisdictions didn’t even make the connections. He was getting close when he called in the FBI. They were the ones who dropped the ball on this. They were too quick to make an arrest. We think that’s why he wants to come back. He says in the letter he’s giving Bishop one last chance to catch him.”
“That’s weird, isn’t it?” Beck said. “A serial killer who wants to be caught?”
“Well, we assume he doesn’t really want to be. He just wants to play the game again. Problem is, Bishop can’t play it alone. Especially now. He shouldn’t even be in the field. He needs someone to be his feet on the ground, and to be his eyes.”
“Me?” It took Beck a moment to come to the realization, and when she did, she was no less confounded. The last time they talked, Bishop told her, in no uncertain terms, to fuck off. Now, he wanted to be professionally conjoined?
“If you agree, Bishop will be yo
ur third. He’ll work on this case with you and Williams.”
“No.” Beck didn’t even need time to consider. “I don’t agree.”
“Why the hell not?” Bishop had the nerve to ask.
“Because this is your case.” Beck turned to him. “Your serial killer. God knows, I wouldn’t want to build my career on stealing someone else’s collar. Am I excused, Sir?”
Martinez spreading his hands in helpless dismissal, Beck rocketed out of the chair and back out the door.
“What happened?” Williams asked when she got to her desk, and it occurred to Beck he might want the opportunity, that it was something she probably should have at least discussed with Williams before tossing it over her shoulder on the way out of Martinez’s office. “Heads up.”
Glancing back, Beck saw Bishop coming. Continuing through the bullpen and out the department door, she wondered how far she was going to have to go to get away from him.
“Are you stupid?” Clearly, the hall wasn’t far enough. “If you are dumb enough to throw this opportunity away over a goddamned grudge -”
“I don’t have a grudge.” Spinning around, Beck worried, from the veins popping out in Bishop’s forehead, she was going to give him a heart attack next. “I have foresight. You don’t like me. Why would I think that, if this goes bad, your failure to catch a murderer for twenty years won’t all fall on me?”
“This is the biggest case that has come through this department in the history of the Metro PD, and you’re just going to hand it off to someone because you don’t like me?”
“I. Don’t. Trust. You.”
Plain truth stopping Bishop’s raving, much to Beck’s surprise, the silence that fell in its aftermath was eerily absolute. Turning to get some