He was cocky, quick to leap to broad conclusions and straight-up sexist. There wasn’t a woman in the entire SPD who could stand to work with him. And to think she’d just been about to spend a relaxing evening with Kate and the kids.
“Yes.” Kessler gave Ryan a hard look. “Is that a problem, O’Neil?”
Ryan raised his hands. “Nope. Not for us, sir.”
“The chief...”
“Excuse me, sir.” Evelyn threw a shielded glance at Ryan. “The chief?”
Chief Diaz had been responsible for bringing her to the Seattle Police Department. He, Captain Kessler and Ryan were the only officers privy to her complete, sealed file. Though she knew the chief had watched over her—and her career—like a concerned older brother, once her move had been completed, she’d set out to prove herself, by herself. And prove herself she did. Her promotions, as the youngest woman to make detective, had been of her own merit. Still, she wasn’t deaf to the murmurs that the chief favored her.
Having him involved tonight spelled disaster. She took a deep breath and shifted her weight. Kessler’s blue eyes were dark with concern.
She didn’t need any more trouble from Sanderson. Her working relationship with him had gone from bad to worse when she had made detective before him. He’d protested just loud enough and made a not-so-subtle hint about her connection with the chief. It was a load of shit. But still...try as she might to ignore his egotistical arrogance and remain calm and professional, he always found a way under her skin.
Since her promotion, she and Ryan had been kept away from Sanderson. But apparently their luck had just run out. Great.
Kessler glared at her from hooded eyes and motioned for her to sit, which she did. He ran his forefinger over the top of his thumb, picked at his cuticle. Evelyn frowned. She’d picked up that tell during the first month reporting to him. What was making him so anxious?
“Given your background and your closing rate, the chief believes you’ll be an asset to the case.”
She leaned back into the uncomfortable chair, its faux leather groaning.
“And the case is?” She crossed her arms, cautiously intrigued.
Kessler hesitated. His face was ashen, the calm in his eyes dissipating.
“Captain?” Ryan broke the silence in the fishbowl room.
Kessler cleared his throat and, without blinking, answered. “It appears to be a family annihilator case. But something is off....”
She froze as the term family annihilator tumbled from Kessler’s lips. A low whistle came from Ryan as he rubbed his hand over the black scruff on his jaw.
She balanced on the edge of an emotional cliff, and she knew it. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Ryan take a step toward her. She gave a tight shake of her head. He stopped, lifted a brow.
Evelyn straightened. She’d opened up to Ryan years ago, after an interrogation that had shaken both of them. She trusted him, and he’d sworn to always keep an eye out for her—no matter how independent and strong she thought she was.
But she didn’t need Ryan, or anyone for that matter, to keep her from tumbling over the cliff’s edge. She could manage it herself, for crying out loud. She reined in the suffocating emotions. She was seasoned at corralling her galloping heart—she’d spent years perfecting the task.
With the help of her therapist, she recognized that emotions didn’t make her weak, but strong. She wasn’t a statistic, but a survivor. Everything she’d walked through made her the woman—and most importantly, the detective—she was.
Kessler picked up a thin case file off his desk and leaned toward her.
Swallowing hard, Evelyn took it from him. She knew her partner had noticed her brief hesitation and seen the emotions dance behind her eyes. To most people, she was unreadable. But Ryan wasn’t most people. He read her like an open book. He’d noticed. If Kessler did, he didn’t say anything. Her lips tightened into a hard line as she flipped the file open.
“Appears?” she said to no one in particular as she studied the photos.
“Yes. It’s the second such case in the past two weeks—in the same precinct, with similar family units. Those photos—” Kessler motioned to the brightly colored crime scene images “—are from the first.”
She flipped through the photos. The wife’s body lay at the feet of what appeared to be her husband. The back of his head was missing. Evelyn swallowed the bile that rose in her throat. With each sweep of her eyes she cataloged the grisly images of the husband and wife. She continued skimming through the photos, then stopped. A young child lay on her back, a deep, crimson gash across her throat. Evelyn’s hand trembled. Her throat tightened, rage and grief warring within her.
“Have either of the husbands recently lost their jobs?”
“No. They’re both successful in their respective industries,” the captain replied.
Evelyn tapped the photos on the table.
Something wasn’t right.
Men who took their family’s lives fell into one of two categories: angry at their partners and seeking revenge, or hopeless and despondent and believing their family was better off dead. It was usually a reaction to a loss of some kind—a job, a wife. They were typically mid-thirties to middle-age, socially isolated and had been depressed or frustrated for a long time. For many family annihilators, the act of murder was a way to reestablish control.
At first glance, neither of these men fit that profile.
So what triggered this violence?
“Family annihilator cases are extremely rare, especially with family units like this,” she said without looking up.
“I agree.”
“Do we have any leads?” Ryan sat next to Evelyn, peering over her shoulder at the photos.
“Why bring us on now? Why not with the first case?” Evelyn passed the glossy five-by-sevens to Ryan and glanced over at him uneasily. She hadn’t wanted to hand the photos over, concerned about how they might affect him. They made the perfect pair: he was lighthearted, she was serious; he played by the book, she pushed the boundaries. While she held people—and the emotions they garnered—at a distance, Ryan was all in. Had always been all in. It was one of the many qualities that she loved in her partner; he felt deeper than any man she’d ever met. And she couldn’t even imagine what those pictures would do to him if they’d hit her so hard.
Ryan began to flip through the photos, then stopped. He looked up, his face hard. “Tell me this isn’t happening. Tell me this isn’t fucking happening. Here. On our stomping ground.”
He held the same photo of the young child with her throat slit that she’d stopped at. The child looked to be about Ava’s age. His hand shook. A muscle in his jaw jumped. They’d seen some twisted things while working homicide. The seasoned—burned-out was more like it—detectives told them it’d get easier. That seeing the capacity of the sickos out there was par for the course. They encouraged both her and Ryan to disengage. Total bullshit. So yeah, she could only imagine that the photo made him see red.
“The Langdon case was a priority,” Kessler said. “We needed your full efforts to close that one down. At the time, we thought it was a one-off. But with this fresh crime scene...”
Evelyn’s mind scrambled to categorize the information they’d been given. Her gaze swept to the captain. She did a double take. The corners of his mouth were turned down in a tight grimace as he clenched and unclenched his fists.
Evelyn leaned forward and gripped the armrest. “Does the chief think serial?”
Ryan’s head snapped up.
“I didn’t say that.” Kessler’s jaw twitched. No police officer