Copycat

Also by Erica Spindler

SEE JANE DIE

IN SILENCE

DEAD RUN

SHOCKING PINK

ALL FALL DOWN

About the Author

The author of twenty-five books, ERICA SPINDLER is best known for her spine-tingling thrillers. Her novels have been published all over the world, selling over six million copies, and critics have dubbed her stories “thrill-packed, page turners, white knuckle rides, and edge-of-your-seat whodunits.”

Erica is a New York Times and USA TODAY bestselling author. In 2002, her novel Bone Cold won the prestigious Daphne du Maurier Award for excellence.

Erica

Spindler

Copycat

www.mirabooks.co.uk

For Rita J Spindler

mother, mentor, best friend

AUTHOR’S NOTE

When I decided to set Copycat in my childhood home town of Rockford, Illinois, I didn’t fully realise what a great setting Rockford would prove to be, or how much I’d enjoy making that “trip home.” Nor would I have been able to guess that I would actually finish this novel while living in Rockford, displaced by a she-devil named Katrina.

I discovered that much about Rockford has changed in the years I’ve lived away—but much has not. It’s still a close-knit community of hardworking folks who don’t put on airs. Families come first, people are welcoming and really good pizza can be found on almost every block. With all that in mind, I offer an apology: sorry, but in this type of novel people have to die, neighbourhoods must be singled out for murders to occur in and yes, somebody has to be a really twisted bad guy—even in a breadbasket community like this one.

Everyone I spoke with at the Rockford Police Department was welcoming, and they were consummate professionals. Special thanks to Deputy Chief of Detectives Dominic Iasparro, Officer Carla Redd and Identification Bureau Detective Gene Koelker.

Huge thanks to my sister-in-law Pam Schupbach, the most big-hearted woman I know. Not only did she act as hotelier, tour guide and chauffeur while I refamiliarised myself with Rockford, but she housed me again after hurricane Katrina, even taking on the role of babysitter so I could finish this novel.

On the home front, thanks to Mariea Sweitzer, former St Tammany sheriff’s deputy, for the information on phone trace technology—great help for a technology-challenged writer.

Finally, appreciation to the people who provide day-to-day professional support: my agent Evan Marshall, editor Dianne Moggy and assistant Kari Williams. And as always, last but first, thanks to my family for the love and my God for the blessings.

part

one

1

Rockford, Illinois Tuesday, March 5, 2001 1:00 a.m.

The girl’s hair looked silky. He longed to feel it against his fingers and cursed the latex gloves, the necessity that he wear them. The strands were the color of corn silk. Unusual in a child of ten. Too often, as the years passed, the blond darkened until settling on a murky, dishwater color that only bleach could resuscitate.

He cocked his head, pleased with his choice. She was even more beautiful than the last girl. More perfect.

He bent closer, stroked her hair. Her blue eyes gazed lifelessly up at him. Breathing deeply, he let her sweet, little-girl scent fill his head.

Careful … careful …

Mustn’t leave anything for them.

The Other One insisted on perfection. Always pushing him. Demanding more. And more.

Always watching. Every time he looked over his shoulder, the Other One was there.

He felt himself frown and worked to smooth the telltale emotion from his face.

My pretty baby. Most beautiful creation. Sleeping Angel.

The woman detective, Kitt Lundgren, had coined the name Sleeping Angel Killer. The media had jumped on it.

The name pleased him.

But not the Other One. Nothing, it seemed, pleased him.

Quickly, he finished arranging the scene. Her hair. The nightgown he had chosen just for her, with its pink satin bows. Everything had to be just so.

Perfect.

And now for the finishing touch. He took the tube of pale pink lip gloss from his pocket. Using the wand, he applied a coat of the gloss to the girl’s lips. Carefully, smoothing, making certain the color was even.

That done, he smiled at his handiwork.

Good night, my little angel. Sleep tight.

2

Tuesday, March 5, 2001 8:25 a.m.

Violent Crimes Bureau detective Kitt Lundgren stood in the doorway to the child’s bedroom, a queasy sensation in the pit of her stomach. Another girl was dead. Murdered in her own bed while her parents slept just down the hall.

Every parent’s worst nightmare.

But for these parents, this family, a nightmarish reality.

The sounds of a scene being processed swirled around her. The click of a camera shutter, a detective on his cell phone, a muttered expletive, conversations.

Familiar sounds. Ones she had become accustomed to along with losing her squeamishness years ago.

But this was a child, the second victim in six weeks. Another ten-year-old girl.

The same age as her Sadie.

At the thought of her daughter, her chest tightened. Kitt fought the sensation, fought to keep focused on this child. On nailing the monster who had killed her.

He’d left the first scene eerily clean. Now they had another chance. Maybe this time the bastard had screwed up.

Kitt entered the bedroom. She moved her gaze over it, taking in the girlish interior. Walls painted a delicate blush pink. White provincial furniture, a canopy bed. Ruffled white eyelet curtains that matched the canopy. A shelf of American Girl dolls. She recognized Felicity; Sadie owned the same one.

In fact, the room was a near replica of Sadie’s. Move the bed from the right side of the room to the left, add a desk in the corner and change the paint color from pink to peach.

Focus, Kitt. This isn’t about Sadie. Do the job.

She glanced to her right. Her partner, Brian Spillare, had already arrived. He stood with Detective Scott Snowe, one of the Identification Bureau detectives. There were nine detectives and a supervisor in the ID Bureau. Unlike most big, urban PDs, crime scene techs in the Rockford Police Department were sworn officers, highly trained in all areas of evidence collection. ID processed the scene for fingerprints and trace evidence, collected blood and analyzed blood splatter and spray, retrieved bullets and casings, and ran ballistic checks. They had also been known to collect insects and larvae from corpses, whose life cycles aided in the determination of time of death. In addition, the ID guys were responsible for diagramming and photographing every scene and attending every autopsy, which they also photographed.

The fun never stopped for those guys.

After recovering the evidence, they shipped it to the state crime lab, located just down the street from the Public Safety Building, or PSB, as they called the structure that housed not only the Rockford PD, but the sheriff’s department, city jail and the coroner’s office as well.

The deputy chief of detectives had sent the entire ID Bureau to the scene. Kitt wasn’t surprised. Two dead children in six weeks was a very big deal in this family-first industrial town that averaged only fifteen murders in an entire calendar year—none of those typically blond, blue-eyed girls safely tucked into their beds.

Kitt caught her partner’s eye and pointed toward the bed. He held up a finger, indicating she wait. She did; he concluded his conversation with the other detective and crossed to her.

“This guy is really starting to piss me off,” he said.

Brian was a big guy. One of those easygoing, teddy-bear types. In his case, a teddy bear with freckles and red hair. His cuddly good looks masked a damn impressive temper. If a bad guy crossed Brian, he invariably wished he hadn’t.

She would love for Brian to get his hands on this bastard.

“You been here long?” she asked.

“Maybe fifteen minutes.” He glanced toward the victim, then back at her. “You think he’ll go for three?”

“I hope to hell not,” she said. “He certainly won’t if we catch his ass.”

He nodded, then touched her arm, leaned toward her. “How’s Sadie?”

Dying. Her daughter, her only child. Kitt’s throat closed as emotion swamped her. Five years ago, Sadie had been diagnosed with acute lymphatic leukemia. She had rallied so many times in the past, from chemo and radiation treatments, from the bone marrow transplant that hadn’t been successful, but Kitt sensed she had given up. That she simply didn’t have the reserves to hold on much longer.

Kitt couldn’t speak and shook her head. Brian squeezed her arm, understanding. “How about you?” he asked. “You hanging in there?”

More like hanging on, by her fingernails. “Yeah,” she managed to say, the catch in her voice giving her away. “As best I can.”

To his credit, Brian didn’t call her on it. He, more than anyone other than her husband, Joe, knew what she was going through.

Brian gave her arm another gentle squeeze, then released it. They crossed to the victim. Kitt pushed all expectations of what she would see from her mind. Yes, it appeared the same unknown subject, or UNSUB, had killed both these children, but she needed to come to this scene, this murder, fresh. A good investigator always let the scene and its evidence tell the story. The minute a detective started doing the talking instead of the listening, objectivity—and credibility—went out the window.

The first look at the dead girl hit her hard.

Like the last one, she’d been pretty. Blond. Blue-eyed. Save for the gruesome indications of death—lividity, petechiae (blood vessels broken in the eyes and lips) and the advancing rigor mortis—she appeared to be sleeping.

A sleeping angel. Just like the last one.

Her blond hair fanned out around her head on the pillow, like a halo. Obviously, the killer had brushed and arranged it. Kitt leaned closer. The killer had applied lip color to her mouth, a sheer pink gloss.

“Looks like she was suffocated,” Brian offered. “Just like the last one.”

The absence of outward signs of violence and the petechiae supported suffocation, and Kitt nodded. “Which means the killer applied the lip gloss postmortem.” She glanced at her partner. “What about the gown?”

“Same as the last. Mother says it’s not hers.”

Kitt frowned. It was a beautiful gown, white with ruffles and tiny pink satin bows. “And her father?”

“Nothing new. Neither of them touched the body. Mother came in to wake the girl up for school, took one look at her and screamed. Father came running. Called 911.”

She would have found the fact they hadn’t touched their child weird, but with all the press about the previous murder, the mother would have only needed one look to know her daughter had been a victim of the same monster.

“We have to check them out,” he said.

Kitt nodded. Overwhelmingly, fewer children were murdered by strangers than by their own family, a statistic that seemed impossible to most but was a grim reality for cops.

However, this time they both knew the chances of this being a domestic incident were slim. They had a serial child killer on their hands.

“Like last time, it appears he came in through the window,” Brian said.

Kitt glanced at her partner. “It was unlocked?”

“Must have been. Glass is intact, no marks on the casing. Snowe says they’re going to take the entire window.”

“Footprints on the other side?” Kitt asked, though since it hadn’t rained in a week, the earth below the window would be rock hard.

“Nope. Screen was cut, nice and neat.”

She brought a hand to the back of her neck. “What does it mean, Brian? What’s he telling us?”

“That he’s a sick prick who deserves to be skinned alive?”

“Besides that? Why the lip gloss? The fancy nightgowns? Why the little girls?”

From the other room came a sudden, rending wail of grief. The sound struck Kitt way too close to home and she shuddered.

How would she go on without Sadie?

Brian looked at her, face tight with anger. “I have daughters. I could go to bed one night and the next morning find—” He flexed his fingers. “We need to nail this bastard.”

“We will,” Kitt muttered fiercely. “If it’s the last thing I ever do, I’m bringing this son of a bitch down.”

part

two

3

Rockford, Illinois Tuesday, March 7, 2006 8:10 a.m.

The shrill scream of the phone awakened Kitt from a deep, pharmaceutically induced sleep. She fumbled for the phone, nearly dropping it twice before she got it to her ear. “H’lo.”

“Kitt. It’s Brian. Get your ass up.”

She cracked open her eyes. The sunlight streaming through the blinds stung. She shifted her gaze to the clock, saw the time and dragged herself to a sitting position.

She must have killed the alarm.

She glanced at Joe’s side of the bed, wondering why he hadn’t awakened her, then caught herself. Even after three years, she expected him to be there.

No husband. No child. All alone now.

Kitt coughed and sat up, working to shake out the cobwebs. “Calling so early, Lieutenant Spillare? Must be something pretty damn earth-shattering.”

“The bastard’s back. Shattering enough?”

She knew instinctively “the bastard” he referred to—the Sleeping Angel Killer. The case she never solved, though her obsession with it nearly destroyed both her life and career.

“How—”

“A dead little girl. I’m at the scene now.”

Her worst nightmare.

After a five-year hiatus, the SAK had killed again.

“Who’s working it?”

“Riggio and White.”

“Where?”

He gave a west Rockford address, a blue-collar neighborhood that had seen better days.

“Kitt?”

She was already out of the bed, scrambling for clothes. “Yeah?”

“Tread carefully. Riggio’s—”

“A little intense.”

“Territorial.”

“Noted, my friend. And … thanks.”

4

Tuesday, March 7, 2006 8:25 a.m.

Detective Mary Catherine Riggio, M.C. to everyone but her mother, turned and nodded to Lieutenant Spillare as he reentered the murder scene. None of their fellow officers who witnessed the exchange would guess that the two of them had a personal history—an ill-conceived affair during the time he had been separated from his wife.

The affair had ended. He had gone back to his wife, and she to her senses. She had been considerably younger, new to the force and starstruck. Brian Spillare, then a decorated detective with the Violent Crimes Bureau, had been larger than life, on his way up the RPD ladder. His on-the-job war stories had affected her like an aphrodisiac. Where most women reacted to “sweet nothings” whispered in their ears, stories about bullets, blood and busting the bad guys revved M.C.’s engine.

No one had ever accused her of being a typical girl.

She had come away from the affair, heart intact and an important lesson learned: playing hide-the-salami with a superior was not the way to be taken seriously. She’d vowed to never put herself in that position again.

M.C. crossed to the lieutenant and was immediately joined by her partner, Detective Tom White. Tom was a thirtysomething African-American, tall and slim with elegant features. He and his wife had just had their third child, and the nights of interrupted sleep showed on his face. All in all, Tom was a damn fine detective and a good man, and though their partnership was new, it was solid. He respected both her skills and instincts without any of that annoying “Me Tarzan, You Jane” crap.

During her year in the Violent Crimes Bureau, M.C. had gone through a number of partners. She was, admittedly, intense and ambitious. She recognized that about herself. She recognized that a little softening around the edges would endear her to her fellow officers, but she just couldn’t bring herself to change. If she felt she was right, she fought for it—no matter who thought otherwise. Even a superior, like Brian Spillare.

Warm and fuzzy was for baby ducks and bunnies.

“This looks familiar, doesn’t it?” she said.

The lieutenant nodded. “Unfortunately, very familiar.”

Five years ago, a series of three murders had sent the city, a town located ninety miles west of Chicago on the edge of corn country, into a panic. The nature of the crimes and the fact that the victims were all blond-haired, blue-eyed girls, murdered in their own bedrooms while family members slept nearby, had struck the very heart of the community’s sense of safety. M.C. had been working patrol at the time; they’d gotten calls for every bump in the night.

Then the killings stopped. And after a time, life had returned to normal.

Now it appeared he might be back.

She narrowed her eyes on Brian. He no longer worked in the Detective Bureau, but had been promoted and was supervisor of the Central Reporting Unit, or CRU for short. The CRU took all calls to the RPD, was responsible for all accident reports and registered all sex offenders.

But she understood his interest in this murder. He had been one of the lead detectives assigned to the original case. The other had been Kitt Lundgren.

M.C. struggled to recall the details of the case, of Detective Lundgren’s part in it. Solving the Sleeping Angel murders had been the department’s biggest priority; Lundgren’s leadership had been the talk of the RPD. The detective had become obsessed with catching the perpetrator. She’d let other cases slide, had defied her supervisor and was rumored to have let the killer slip through her fingers. M.C. recalled stories of bungled crime scenes, alcohol abuse and ultimately, forced leave.

A leave Lundgren had only recently returned from. One that had included a stint in rehab.

M.C. frowned. “Lundgren’s a head case.”

“True,” Brian said. “But with what she’s been through, she’s earned it. Cut her some slack.”

Tom White stepped in. “Pathologist’s here.”

The coroner’s office employed two full-time forensic pathologists. They went to the scene of every death, made the official pronouncement of death, examined and photographed the body and brought it to the morgue for autopsy.

This one, Frances Roselli, the older of the two, was a small, neat man of Italian descent.

“Frances,” Brian said, crossing to him. “It’s been a while.”

“Lieutenant. Not long enough, no offense.”

“None taken. You know Detectives Riggio and White.”

He nodded in their direction. “Detectives. What’ve we got?”

“Dead child,” M.C. said. “Ten years old. She appears to have been suffocated.”

He looked to Brian, as if for confirmation. “Sounds like the Sleeping Angel Killer’s MO.”

“Unfortunately, that’s what it looks like.”

The pathologist sighed. “I could have lived the rest of my life without another one of those cases.”

“Tell me about it.” Brian shook his head. “Press is going to be all over us.”

M.C. looked at her partner. “Let’s get the door-to-door of the neighborhood started. See if anybody saw or heard anything unusual last night.”

Tom agreed. “I’ll get a couple uniforms on it.”

“The house is for sale. I want a list of every Realtor and every prospective buyer who’s been through.”

“Looks like it’s been freshly painted, as well,” Tom said. “Let’s get the names of painters and handymen who’ve been within a hundred feet of the place.”

M.C. nodded, then turned to the pathologist. “When will you have a report?”

“As early as tonight.”

“Good,” she said. “Expect a call.”

5

Tuesday, March 7, 2006 8:40 a.m.

Kitt double-parked her Ford Taurus in front of the modest home. To keep the curious away and provide parking for official vehicles, the first officers had cordoned off the street a hundred feet in both directions. She saw the coroner’s Suburban, the crime-scene van, a half-dozen patrol units and an equal number of unmarked squad cars.

She swept her gaze over the home—a small blue box, probably not even a thousand square feet of living space. Outsourcing and downsizing had hit Rockford hard. Industries like Rockwell International and U.S. Filter, once major area employers, were gone. Other, smaller outfits continued to limp along, but the forecast looked bleak. Last total she heard, the area had lost thirty thousand manufacturing jobs. A drive through town supported that figure—there was one empty factory after another.

Kitt had lived in Rockford, a meat-and-potatoes kind of community with a large Italian and Swedish population, all of her forty-eight years. In truth, she’d never even toyed with the idea of leaving, even after Sadie died and her marriage ended. Rockford was her home. She liked living here. Folks didn’t put on airs, fabulous pizza could be found every second block, and if she craved a bit of glitz and glamour, Chicago was just over an hour away.

Frankly, she rarely craved the glitz and glamour. She was one of those people who found comfort in middle-class familiarity.

She climbed out of her vehicle, and the gray, chilly day enveloped her. She shivered and hunched deeper into her jacket. In northern Illinois, winters were hard, springs slow to come and summers too short. But the falls were glorious. She figured the residents deserved it for sticking out the rest of the year’s weather.

She crossed to the crime-scene tape and ducked under it, then headed directly for the first officer. She signed the scene log, ignoring the curious glances of her fellow officers. She didn’t blame them for their interest; she had only returned from forced leave eight weeks ago and had been assigned nothing but no-brainer assault-and-battery cases.

Until this morning, uncertain of her own emotional strength, she had been fine with that. Grateful Sal Minelli, the deputy chief of detectives, had allowed her back. She’d melted down on the job, big-time. She’d jeopardized cases, endangered her fellow officers and the department’s reputation.

Sal had championed her, as had Brian. She would be forever in their debt. What would she have done otherwise? She was a cop. It was all she had ever been.

No, she thought. Once upon a time, she had been a wife. And a mom.

She shook the thought off. The memories that came with it. The ache.