Looks that Deceive: MedAir Series, #1

By Braxton DeGarmo

Two prominent medical malpractice attorneys are dead.

Can you imagine the stuff flowing downhill into Detective Lynch Cully's lap?

From his lieutenant's office. From his chief's office. The mayor's office. The governor.

He's already facing the toughest case of his career: a serial assailant who leaves his victims unable to testify.

Are these cases related? 

Has the perpetrator upped his game?

Amy Gibbs, RN is a newly recruited med-evac flight nurse who left the ER, its stress, and memories of a certain detective behind. 

On one fateful call, she hears the deathbed confession of a man whom police are seeking as a person of interest in the attacks. 

Within hours, the lives of Amy Gibbs and Lynch Cully intertwine in a story that unravels a web of identity theft, electronic eavesdropping, and stalking amid a confusion of identities.

Can Lynch move one step ahead of this killer? Or is the distraction—of a girlfriend he regrets leaving—too much?

A great thriller? Bodies-yes. Plot twists-yes. Reading past your bedtime-yes. See why so many readers have discovered the MedAir Series. Download Looks that Deceive now, but be forewarned: it won't cure your insomnia.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Christen Haus Publishing
• Release date: May 23, 2013
• ISBN: 9781943509010

Braxton DeGarmo

Braxton DeGarmo spent over 30 years in Emergency and Family Medicine, both in and out of the military, before retiring to focus on writing in 2014. He writes from a Judeo-Christian worldview, but he writes his stories to reach and entertain people of all backgrounds. Many of the incidents in his books are based on real occurrences, people, and experiences in his own life, such as learning to escape a water crash in a helicopter. Human trafficking, medical kidnapping, government corruption, and other social injustices have become the premises used for his stories. And the technologies described in his books are all current . . . and possible.

Book preview

Looks that Deceive

A Medical Thriller

by

Braxton DeGarmo

Christen Haus Publishing

Copyright

Looks that Deceive – Copyright © 2013 by Braxton DeGarmo. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of Braxton DeGarmo.

Paperback and eBook Edition Publication Date: May, 2013

Second edition: September, 2013

Paperback ISBN: 978-1484983263

EBook (mobi): 978-1-943509-00-3

EBook (epub): 978-1-943509-01-0

This is a work of fiction. The characters, incidents, and dialogs are products of the author’s imagination and are not construed to be real. Any resemblance to actual events or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental. The use of real places and companies is done to add a sense of reality, but the circumstances surrounding such use is also fictional. The employees of such companies, their actions, and their comments are fiction and should not be construed as implied or explicit endorsements by or the beliefs of said companies. The use of public figures, such as politicians, is also done for the purpose of realism. Actions or comments attributed to them may be fiction, but may also come from public records, such as their own writings.

Cover design by Rocking Book Covers

For more information, go to

www.braxtondegarmo.com

Dedication

This book is for all of the EMTs, paramedics, nurses and pilots who are involved in pre-hospital care, both flight and ground crews. You do make a difference.

Author’s Note

Looks that Deceive is the first book in my MedAir Series of thrillers. We’ve all read novels about serial killers, but what if someone could actually inflict a worse fate on someone? This is the story about the hunt for such a person, a story filled with current day issues such as identity theft, cyberstalking, and more. Based on real science, it could happen. I hope you enjoy it.

One

Did your doctor miss the diagnosis? Call Brumly, Grimshaw, and Payne. Has a medical error led to the loss of a loved one? Call Brumly, Grimshaw, and Payne. Has your doctor failed to rid you of your accursed hemorrhoids? Call Brumly, Grimshaw, and Payne.

Their ads flooded the local television channels throughout the night and early morning and again during a myriad of afternoon talk shows, resulting in unrivaled success for the corporate partners. Their two-story office building in Ladue—an inner ring suburb of St. Louis with its population of 8,500—with its worn, but stately, red brick Georgian architecture and park-like grounds, looked as if it had occupied its lot for decades. Ladue was a neighborhood defined by its history, its classical style, and its well-heeled, country club populace; and the building radiated that character. From its ivy-covered southeast corner to the hammered copper rooster weathervane on its cupola, the building presented itself with a refined elegance that lent its occupants a sense of permanence and a genteel air of sophistication.

Yet, within the two-year-old brick veneer, with its synthetic ivy and mail-order reproduction weathervane, there was a state-of-the-art legal firm with posh offices, chic conference rooms, a heavily secured computer network, and an unrivaled media production complex where the partners produced more than slick courtroom visual aids. Brumly, Grimshaw, and Payne, LLC had spared no expense to attain that image of gentility.

Edward Payne glanced at his watch. Six fifty-eight. His legal assistant had just left for the evening, and he decided he would stay no longer than seven-thirty before he, too, would leave for home. The last to leave. He would have it no other way. Turning from his beautifully hand-carved teak desk and matching credenza to his computer, he hit a keyboard combination that saved his current case file first to the firm's network server and then to an off-site backup server. Data security and preservation. It was a lesson learned quickly by many companies following the catastrophic loss of the World Trade Center.

As he opened his last case file for the day, the monitor flickered. A second later, he sat bewildered, watching a strange flow of random characters march across his screen. His first instinct was to initiate an emergency shutdown of his system to prevent the spread of a potential virus, but the current of digits, letters, and dingbats mesmerized him. He couldn't have been watching for more than 15, 20 seconds when the horizontal stream ended, and a digital clock materialized in its place. Six fifty-nine and 30 seconds.

What the . . . He reached for his phone to call their network administrator. The dial tone clicked in, and he punched the first digit of the speed dial number as the clock hit six fifty-nine and 45 seconds. A new message appeared. Goodbye Edward!

At seven o'clock, as he heard the second ring of the administrator's distant phone, a fireball erupted from the first and second floor windows, and 1535 Ladue Road became a flaming memory.

* * *

Lynch Cully, startled from a sound sleep, glanced around, momentarily confused by his surroundings. His bedroom didn't have beige walls and four old, wooden desks, their edges worn smooth by years of hard use and their surfaces cluttered, as stacks of paper fought recently-purchased computer hardware for space. Maps, charts, and a large dry-erase board sat interspersed along the walls. It took a moment to remember stopping by his office to pick up another unsolved crime file.

His unexpected, three-day call-up to the MCS, the Major Case Squad, had turned into an unprecedented stint of three weeks of twelve to fourteen-hour days, seven days a week. This case had taken on a life of its own. Just when it seemed to grow cold, a new victim ratcheted up the political heat. Half a dozen local departments had given up detectives to the squad for extended duty. And the way things were going, those half a dozen police chiefs didn't expect their people back anytime in the near future.

To say he looked worse for the wear would be an understatement. He worked his hands through his ruffled oil-black hair to smooth it out and then checked his watch. Twenty-one thirty hours. Ten, maybe 15, minutes had passed. If that was a power nap, who drained my battery? he thought, feeling worse than before sitting down. His lower back and neck, stiff from stretching the top third of his six-foot two-inch frame across the top of a much too small desk, ached as if he'd been there for hours. The side of his face tingled from the pressure of laying it atop his forearms.

Lynch arose from the desk, still wobbly, and pulled his keys from his pocket. He unlocked a nearby file cabinet, opened the second drawer, and rifled through the cramped jumble of manila folders. He sighed in frustration. The file he needed wasn't there. He released his breath slowly, took a deeper breath, and started at the beginning of the folders once again, taking care to move through them one by one, more slowly this time. Ah! There it is. I'm more tired than I thought.

He slid the folder up and out from between its neighbors, opened it to assess quickly its contents and, satisfied, closed and relocked the cabinet. Back at his desk, he placed the file in his open, overstuffed briefcase and with more effort than he thought it should take, snapped closed the case, and prepared to head back to the MCS's temporary headquarters. No, what he needed was to drive home and go to bed, in his real bed, not on a couch that, like his desk, would award him a stiff back and sore shoulders come morning should he fall asleep there. The file would be there for review over breakfast, a meal he planned to enjoy for the first time in three weeks.

Lynch was three yards from his car and a night's sleep when he heard the click of the electronic door lock behind him.

Cully!

He stopped, closed his eyes, and took a deep breath before turning to respond. It was his supervisor, Bob Janick, a good cop, mediocre detective, and astute politician who had played his cards close to his vest and pulled an ace from someplace dark to move up to team leader. The two men's styles were about as compatible as a breast-baring costume malfunction at a Pentecostal tent meeting, but he knew why Janick tolerated him and continued to grant him excellent ratings on his yearly evaluations. He made Janick look good. Their team's solve rate was the best in the county, due largely to him, the wunderkind, Lynch Cully. Yet, their arguments frequently threatened the thin filament of camaraderie connecting them.

Lynch had never been the compliant child, but he disliked being described as rebellious. Among the first signs of his defiance was his refusal to use his first name. That was his father's name, not his. At the age of 30, he wasn't even sure where the name 'Lynch' came from, other than it was most likely what his father wanted to do to him during some really rough teenage years. Gifted in mathematics and the sciences, he resisted the harangues of his parents to utilize his intellect fully, as they defined 'fully.' His physician father had encouraged him to follow in his medical footsteps, while his university professor mother was a bit more broadminded. Still, they had both blown aneurysms when he chose police work. To them, this was yet one more mutinous act, but he saw no future in a profession hamstrung by insurance companies and government.

Criminology, Psychology, and Investigative and Forensic Science interested him, and human behavior mystified him with its unpredictability, its range of emotion, and its sometime moral depravity that could lead to grave mistreatment of others. More importantly, he had a gift, one that made him perfect for his current assignment. Rebellious? No. Independent? Yes. The term 'maverick' suited him, and he embraced its roguish undertone.

Lynch turned to face his team leader, who had caught up to him. Hey, Janick. What's up?

We are. Got a probable homicide we need to check out. You want to follow me, or ride with me?

Now? Look, I'm on loan—

Yeah. I know. I know. You look like you've been run hard and put away wet, and I figure you need more than a good night's sleep. But your boss at the squad wants you to check into this one. Fire's out, and our presence is requested.

Fire? My case has nothing to do with arson.

Maybe. Or maybe now it does. You're the guy who sees things no one else sees, right? A lawyer got toasted, along with his entire building. Janick started for his car. Coming with me?

Two

Amy Gibbs sat at the antique, round maple table in her breakfast nook and sipped her Slim·Fast breakfast. The kitchen was spotless, for a change—a sign of her not cooking in over three weeks, not of a penchant for housekeeping. Unlike the kitchen, the rest of her modest three-bedroom ranch home, purchased three years earlier in the community of Saint Peters, reflected her penchant for housekeeping. Friends teased about her early landfill style of décor.

Despite their opinions, her home was her dearest symbol of freedom and independence. She had been in college while her father completed his last tour of military duty overseas, but she lived with him for a long, quarrelsome year when he retired to the city and she started her nursing career. She wanted to spread her wings of adult autonomy, yet he clung tight. A widower and single parent for over a decade, he had displayed enough empty-nest angst for several sets of parents, and retirement had added to his anxiety. So, to help him move on and to regain her sanity, she moved out to share a home with two friends for two years before striking out to buy her own place. This was it, her castle.

She stared at the paperbound Pre-Hospital Trauma Life Support, or PHTSL, manual opened across the tabletop, reviewing yet again the sections on field immobilization and intubation of head trauma patients. Her brain couldn't absorb anymore. Normally, she didn't doubt her medical abilities, but . . . She flipped another page and arose to pace the floor, mentally reciting the steps involved in rapid sequence intubation.

The phone rang. She didn't need any interruptions, so she glanced at her Caller ID before picking up. The trauma center?

Hey, girlfriend. You ready?

Hi, Macy. Macy Johnson was one of her closest friends, having worked together for over a year in the E.D., the Emergency Department, of Mercy Medical Center, a regional trauma center.

Amy, still walking a tight circuit between the table and farthest counter, mulled over Macy's question before answering. Despite five years of experience as an Emergency Department and Critical Care nurse, the concept of pre-hospital care was a new dimension in her healthcare universe. She had always appreciated the paramedics, bringing patients into the E.D. immobilized and splinted, airways secured, blood samples drawn, and intravenous access established—most of the time. But she had never fully recognized their working conditions. For her, the lighting was nearly always ideal, the supplies readily on hand, the conditions clean and dry. Now, reflecting upon her work over the last two months, she had a newfound respect for the people who worked in all weather conditions, across all forms of terrain and water to deliver the ill and injured to the hospital.

I don't know. I guess I'm as ready as I'll ever be. I'd better be, she thought.

Eager to start her new job, she'd been flying the third seat on their medical air-evac runs, and assisting the active team.

Quit pacing!

I'm not—

Yes, you are. I can tell.

Macy, I just have to qualify on today's testing, or they'll drop me from the flight roster altogether. The lack of certification could force her back to the Emergency Department, a prospect that stirred mixed feelings. She sighed. Do they still need per diem nurses at the E.D.?

I won't answer that question because you won't need the work. You know this stuff inside out, forwards and backwards, girl. You're gonna do just fine. Why, my cousin Damian took that course last year, and—

Thanks, Macy. I've heard this one already. Macy always compared life to events within her ubiquitous family. Wish I was as convinced.

Amy leaned over the table and stared at another diagram as she talked, then looked up at the clock on the microwave. She needed to cut this conversation short.

Well, I'm convinced. I'd wish you good luck, but you don't need it. Look, I get off work at three this afternoon. I'll meet you at Yancy's to celebrate. I'll be there about four-thirty, waiting. Okay?

Okay. Thanks again for the encouragement. I have to get going.

She hung up, closed the manual, and rushed to the bedroom to finish dressing. Why was she having trouble getting psyched up for this course? Growing up with four brothers had toughened her. In high school and college basketball, she'd always thought of herself as a competitor. She worked hard and played hard. Why couldn't she approach this course as she did a game?

Maybe because this wasn't just a game.

In reflection, the MedAir System, with its fleet of a dozen 206L-4 LongRanger IV and 430 helicopters, was her ideal job. They handled mostly critical cases—major trauma, time-critical cardiac patients, and the like—and rarely played taxi like the ground units. And she was flying. Her father, Andrew Gibbs, had been an Army Lieutenant Colonel and aviator, and she could remember watching the airfields as a young child, pretending she was soaring above, through and below the clouds with him. He had relished teaching her to fly the small single-engine Cessna he still owned and pampered fifteen years later, and his passion had infused her. In the air, he was no longer a father struggling to relate to his sole female offspring, but a companion and mentor, sharing his skill and zeal with her.

Twenty-five minutes later, she entered the von Gontard Conference Center at Mercy, heading toward the PHTLS course. She wandered past a row of vending machines, her eyes straying toward a pack of powdered donuts. Was it just the stress of the course, or had she metabolized her high-energy meal in a meager 30 minutes?

Hey, Amy!

Amy looked past the robots of temptation, glad for the diversion away from the white carbohydrate hip padding. A paramedic she knew well from the E.D. and more than a few Happy Hours with fellow nurses, met her halfway to the classroom doorway.

Hi, Brad. Ready to get this over with?

Did you see this? He reached behind and pulled out a section of newspaper tucked into his pants at the small of his back. He quickly unfolded and refolded it to a specific article, and then handed it to her. Read.

Amy took the paper and scanned the morning edition's front page. The headline, Lawyer killed in fiery explosion, spread across the top of the page. Beneath it was a photo of a two-story brick building in flames, fire trucks and firemen at its side working to contain the fire. She began to read the story, and as she moved past the fold of the paper, she saw the small photograph of a familiar face. Edward Payne. Ambulance chaser no more, she thought, putting two and two, his image and the headline, together. She continued to read.

The plague of late-night television. We'd be up at night after a run, too keyed up to sleep, and this guy's ads took more airtime than the late-night movie. Read between the lines. Brad pointed to a particular paragraph in the article. Newspeak, straight from the police manual on subterfuge reporting. Sounds like someone toasted the guy on purpose.

Amy read the paragraph and nodded in agreement. Subtle, but obvious to anyone with even a little bit of knowledge of how the police dodged simple questions. By tomorrow the case would be clearly marked both arson and homicide, and the detectives unfortunate enough to get saddled with this one would be dragged before a dozen high muckety-muck political types putting on the pressure to solve the murder faster than CSI's weekly 42-minute resolutions. The case file had peptic ulcer written all over it.

And . . . Brad moved to turn the page. . . . you done with that part? He didn't wait for an answer and flipped the page over far enough to reveal another photo of the scene. Check the photo.

Amy scanned the grainy black-and-white image, but saw little more than the same building from a different perspective. Her face must have shown as much.

You don't see it, do you? He pointed to one side of the photograph. Three men standing near a fire department vehicle. Look closer. Familiar? Isn't that a certain detective? An old boyfriend perhaps?

Amy's stomach churned, and it wasn't hunger. She focused on the three men in the picture, and a slight smile eased across her face.

Brad stood up tall and smiled. Yeah. I thought you'd like that. Deserves a case like this one.

Three

Amy's heart pounded as she reviewed the test and her answers. More than half of the attendees had already left for lunch. Her own gut grumbled. Should she go through it one more time? No. She gathered her things and arose, walked to the front of the classroom and handed in her answer sheet, managing a feeble smile at the test's supervisor. He gazed up from the test he was grading and smiled back.

As if reading her mind, he said, I'm sure you did fine.

Thanks. Amy exited the room and liberated a long sigh of relief. At least that was over. She wondered if the E.D. had any open shifts the following week. She doubted she'd be flying.

Outside, she saw Brad with a platoon of paramedics, some of whom she knew, arranged on and around a few cement benches adjacent to the building. The gorgeous, late August day, with a combination of azure skies, warm sun, and brightly planted gardens surrounding the benches, beckoned her to join the group. From her vantage point through the glass double doors, the conversation looked animated. They all seemed to join into the discussion, which appeared to center on the newspaper passing from man to man.

Hey, Amy. Please join us. Have a seat. He pointed to the place he had just vacated, right in the middle of the throng. We were just talking about the article I showed you this morning, and about lawyers in general.

Yeah. Sure won't miss that face on early morning TV, another medic offered.

A number of others made comments, typically in the same vein. One man, however, stuck out of the group by his silence. Amy focused on him as the others bantered back and forth. He remained remarkable by his stillness in the animated group. He also looked familiar, but she couldn't place where she'd met him.

A tall, redheaded man said, Looks like someone took the bumper sticker seriously. You know the one. Help keep America great: kill a lawyer!

The others laughed, prompting the silent one to speak up. You guys are sick.

Oh, c'mon, Reilly. You gonna stick up for these personal injury bozos who sue at the scent of money?

No. The guy might really be obnoxious on TV, and he might make a ton of money off the unfortunate, but that's not reason to celebrate his death.

Give us a break, Reilly, another man stated. We all know you're in cahoots with these lawyers.

The group went quiet, all eyes on the paramedic as if he were a spy in their midst. Amy had run into a few scouts at the hospital and had mixed feelings about these people who received finder's fees from lawyers for passing on the names of potential cases. Yet, such a person had succeeded in ridding the medical community of one grossly negligent physician by collecting a series of names of people injured by the drug-impaired surgeon, a man with powerful political connections. That one paramedic accomplished what the state refused to do.

Reilly finished chewing his food. That was a one-time thing, and you know it. Ms. Gibbs here can testify to that. He smiled at Amy.

Amy cocked her head and stared at Reilly. The back row of the courtroom. You sat through the entire trial, didn't you? I saw you when I testified. You're the one responsible for bringing down Constantino.

Reilly gave a brief nod. There wasn't a medic present who could fault him for that action.

And for the record, I took no lawyer's fee. Considered it a public service. He took another bite of his sandwich as the others watched him chew in silence. As he finished his meal and wadded up the paper bag to toss it into a nearby waste can, he continued. Still no reason to celebrate this lawyer's death. He stood to leave. He was a man with family and friends. I actually met him on a number of occasions, and he was a reasonable guy. Five kids and a wife. Oldest kid's twelve. How do you think they all feel this morning? He reached the doorway into the building and turned back to the group. But what's really eating me, is that my sister was his legal assistant. She left that building ten minutes before it blew up. Would you be celebrating if she had still been there?

Four

Lynch didn't know where the energy came from, but he had remained with Janick until well past midnight and then had trouble sleeping. He never had trouble sleeping, until this case. And now, a small voice inside told him this lawyer's fiery death was not the result of an undetected gas leak, even though the official cause was still days away. His only redemption was a message on his answering machine telling him not to report for duty until one p.m.

When he awoke shortly after ten a.m., he felt refreshed for the first time in weeks. He took a leisurely shower and followed that with a breakfast of champions, 4-H Club champions that is. A three-egg ham and cheese omelet, with a rasher of bacon, a small rib-eye steak, and a tumbler of whole milk. Who cares about cholesterol? he thought as he dumped the warm mass of fat and protein onto a plate. God bless Dr. Atkins, or whoever came up with this low-carb, high-fat diet. In reality, indulging in such a meal was a rare and sporadic exception to his diet, but it helped him maintain his sanity at times.

And he had found his sanity on trial frequently over the previous several months. Even now, as he dug into his breakfast, he saw her. He knew what she would say about his feast. She liked a carnivorous meal as much as anyone he knew, but as a nurse, she always preached moderation. This meal was far from moderate. Why exactly had he broken off all contact with her? Sure, he'd seen his mom and sister both abandoned by husbands who put their careers ahead of their marriages. He was married to his job as well and rationalized that he cared too much to put her through the stress lived daily by the women in his family. But still, he had been crazy to give her up. Now, she haunted his dreams. Only by delving deeper and deeper into work did he maintain his balance.

He opened his briefcase and extracted the file from his office. He reviewed its contents and then pulled out a larger folder from which he retrieved a stack of papers, crime scene photos, hand-drawn diagrams, and notes. He organized and spread them across his dining room table. The two crimes shared a number of markers: female aged 25 to 35, dark-haired, slender, and most importantly, in the legal profession. However, the outliers sullied the case, making it appear as if there might be a copycat involved.

The media had taken to calling the attacker the LA Rapist, but the moniker had nothing to do with geography. Although the attacks stretched across a wide span of the metropolitan area, there had been no geographic pattern such as might happen in a series of assaults in a single neighborhood. Every victim had been discovered in her own home or apartment, usually by friends or family. Neighbors reported no disturbances. Yet, over an eighteen-month period, this individual had assaulted nearly a dozen women, all fitting that physical profile and all being legal assistants. Thus, the nickname.

And to call him a rapist hardly fit the crime. Not a single victim had been sexually assaulted, but that fact had been withheld by the police in the early cases. The media had made their faulty assumption based only on the profile of these young women. By the time the information—that no sexual assaults had occurred—leaked to the press, the nickname had already taken hold, and the press refused any attempt to modify it.

At first, the attacks occurred every eight weeks, almost like clockwork, leading the Major Case Squad to squander much time unsuccessfully investigating the possibility that the rapist was a businessman with a schedule that brought him to the area with such regularity. More recently, the timetable had become more erratic with intervals ranging from six to eight weeks. Lynch saw this as an acceleration, as a sign of the attacker's growing confidence, not some fluke. How long would it take the goon to step up to every four to six weeks?

He reviewed the photos and notes. The victims had no bruises, abrasions, strangulation marks, or lacerations—no signs of struggle or defense wounds. However, they all had what appeared to be a single puncture wound consistent with venipuncture at the crook of the elbow. Vaginal trauma was absent, and nothing indicated a rape had truly occurred. Absolutely no fingerprint or DNA evidence had been discovered. Each woman was found alive, in a persistent vegetative state from an anoxic brain injury that removed all cognitive function. They would never be able to testify against their attacker, never have the satisfaction of seeing closure or justice served.

To Lynch, death might have been the favorable alternative.

He couldn't image the horror these victims' families now endured, to see their loved one living like that, maintained by feeding tubes, managed by catheters and adult diapers, and repositioned on a regular basis to avoid bedsores. Lynch wanted to get this guy so badly it had affected all of his relationships. He hadn't dated since leaving Amy. He had no desire to do so. Just like he'd lost his desire for beer with his buddies, or a Sunday Rams' game, or a relaxing jaunt into the countryside with his camera. He hadn't even seen his own parents in over a month.

Lynch scanned each photo to get an overall image of that portion of the scene. Then he homed in on specific facets of each photo, looking for details, which he listed and categorized in a meticulous relational database he had developed on his laptop computer. He had the critical data on all of the crimes he had ever investigated. Obvious evidence went into one of several categories such as blood, DNA, prints, or weapon. He categorized a perp's methods by means of access to the scene, types of injuries or item stolen, cause and manner of death, and other factors that might be useful in defining a modus operandi. Items that seemed out of place were listed one way, while normal household items were listed another. Some were cross-referenced more than one way. He then had a series of search algorithms that could pick up items common across all selected crime scenes. With each new case, he added more information to the database and refined his own methods for analyzing that data.

For the LA Rapist, a clear M.O. had emerged, and his latest suspected case, plus the lawyer killed in the blast of the previous night, were outliers. Lynch wondered whether or not they even belonged with the earlier, serial cases. Yet, he couldn't simply dismiss that possibility. Serial assault could graduate to murder. The latest female victim, Patricia Shriver, was not a legal assistant but a lawyer, and she had been found dead at her home, not in the expected vegetative state. She was also in her early forties, but physically she fit the profile of the other assault victims. Edward Payne clearly did not match that profile, but he did share two common traits with the female attorney. Both were big in medical malpractice torts, on the side of the plaintiffs, not the doctors. And both now rested under the brown side of the grass.

* * *

At ten 'til one, Lynch pulled into the back parking lot of the Richmond Heights police department where the Major Case Squad maintained its temporary op center for the Shriver case. He skirted past a handful of remote transmission television vans in front of the station and hoped he had passed by unrecognized. The political pressure bearing down on the MCS would jump logarithmically with this violent death of a second prominent attorney.

At this early stage, Lynch could see no commonality between the two victims or the mode of death except their area of legal specialty, and he had no desire to stand in front of the media and stonewall them. He disliked standing before the media. He liked being a sergeant, sticking the PR work to the lieutenants and higher ups. Unfortunately, his rank hadn't helped him avoid that task. Compared to his lieutenant, Lynch was eloquent and photogenic, movie-star material.

Inside the building, he plopped his gear down onto a ten-foot-long, folding leg table where he could spread out as needed. He loosened his tie, opened his collar, and prepared to work.

Cully! Fix the tie. You're heading out front with me, said Colonel Albert Dandridge, the chief of the Webster Groves police and current commander of the MCS. Dandridge, known simply as the Chief by most who had ever served with him, was nearing retirement. He no longer stood quite as erect as in his glory days as a military intelligence officer who found his way into civilian police work and had distinguished himself as the lead detective on a number of very high-profile cases of national interest 20 years earlier. His white hair made him look older than his stated years, and the paunch across his middle told of the many years since he had seen active fieldwork. Still, he hid the years well, his always-crisp, starched uniform and well-trimmed mustache providing a distinguished image that matched the man's famed intellect. He was a man whom Lynch fully respected and admired. Dandridge sat on the squad's board of directors and had personally taken command of the investigation into the serial assaults because of its high media profile.

And I hope you have your quota of B.S. stored up for these media yahoos.

Lynch rebuttoned the shirt and tightened his tie, and then looked for a mirror, window, or anything offering enough of a reflection to check his appearance.

It's straight enough. Let's go! Dandridge waved him on while holding open the door.

The two men strode

Reviews for Looks that Deceive

[Coby Prins · Rating: 2 out of 5 stars]

Half the size would have done it. I lost interest after chapter 20.

[Erika Grobb · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

The romance factor had interesting twists. The characters were strong and easy to like. The tension in plot was riveting. The surprise ending was unexpected but an enticing segue to book 2.

[Andrea Joson · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Really enjoyed this one. Anticipating the rest of the series.