A Saint and A Sinner Ch. 12

"He's setting up a task force. He's got the Mayor and God knows who else coming in this afternoon."

She felt her stomach dip and slide at his words.

Task force. Think positive, even if she felt negative, dread coating her skin with goose flesh.

"Well, maybe it could help?" Even to her own ears, her words sounded lame.

His mind was racing. It was a little after noon. Maybe they could... Could what? he asked himself. Run out and find the killer standing across the street from the station waving a big sign that said 'I did it'. Maybe he would even be kind enough to have a blood stained knife stuck in his pocket, a map with the location of his house in the other. Yeah, right.

"We've got nothing." He hated to admit it. He hated to give up control of a case he was working.

It was a matter of pride, of the old Nick Saint gotta get my man creed. He had a good arrest and conviction record. Even some of the messier cases he had been involved with he had managed to turn around.

This was one of the messiest. No evidence pointing to anything but the torture that was suffered. The victimology and profile that he had worked up pointed to someone of higher intelligence. He worked a job where he was given a lot of leeway, maybe something where he did a creditable job but didn't try to excel. In his thirties, he had an older man's ability to be patient.

He had to have someplace that he took these women, someplace where he wouldn't worry about screams and having the cops show up at his door. The victims were killed by someone who felt tremendous rage, probably because of physical and mental abuse heaped upon him by his mother or other female relation. These women weren't just taken, abused and thrown away. They were kept for a while, tended to just enough to keep them alive for his games.

He could profile all day long, conjecture and suppose until he was blue in the face. But unless they found a suspect, the profile was just a useless piece of paper.

He had worked with others before, had been involved in more than one serial killing task force and knew that they could be an exemplary tool to catching the maniac. But he also knew that if too many politically ambitious people got into the mix, the politics became more important then the investigation. And the investigation suffered, meaning that people suffered and were killed.

He could see that happening here. He could see the Sheriff and the Mayor putting on the political boxing gloves, both wanting to be the ones to say, look what I did for my city. It would be a coup, it would set one or the other up to win next year's mayoral race.

And it would be a nightmare on the investigation.

What part he would play would be up to the Sheriff, well, him and his enormous ego. He could be pushed right out of the mix, knocked down to running minor crimes while some other detective stepped in and used what he had already done.

Not to mention what would happen if the FBI got involved. He had dealt with the feds before, had them try to walk all over him, come into his investigation and tell him what he should do, where he should go. Like hell if he was going to let the damn feds into his case.

Frustration pulsed through him almost like a living thing. He needed to do something, to go somewhere for just a while.

He looked down at Michelle, seeing the dark circles under her eyes, the wan smile she plastered on her face when she saw him looking. She needed sunshine and time away from death.

"Have you eaten lunch?" he asked suddenly.

"What?" Maybe she was more tired than she thought. He was just spouting about the sheriff and a task force that was being set up. Then he switched tracks.

"Lunch, you know, food, nourishment, stuff that makes us young boys grow? Have you had anything to eat since Chinese last night?" He smiled, thinking about what happened after Chinese. "I need to get out of here for a few. I thought we could..."

"Do lunch?" she finished for him.

"Cheeseburger with everything, large fries?" he tempted her poor empty stomach that was grumbling from too much coffee and not enough food. "Milk shake?"

"Chocolate?" she asked, greed suddenly in her eyes.

He laughed, amazed that after everything and the dread that still coiled around his spine, that he still could. "I'll even buy."

"You're on," she said, grabbing her jacket off the back of the chair she'd been sleeping in, laughing as he opened the door for her.