Deadly Abandon by Kallie Lane Page B

glance at Millette across the table. “Jacques, you want to take it from here?”
    Millette leaned forward, excitement flaring his expression. “Here’s where it starts to get interesting, Lieutenant. I called the suppliers Sal gave me and discovered there is only one manufacturer for the design. And Dr. McGill’s rosary is an older version of what is currently being manufactured. Fifteen years older to be exact.
    “The rosary was hand-crafted, the silver work on the chain distinctive, whereas the newer version is assembled by machine with no obvious tool marks. I have the suppliers pouring through old records now. Maybe we’ll get lucky and get a name and address for a large sale in the area.”
    “Hold it.” Sully stopped tapping the keys to focus on Millette. “You want to explain what you mean by a large sale, Jacques?”
    “I went back to Rainey Dubé’s house and guess what I found tucked in her underwear drawer?” Millette answered his own question without waiting for a response. “She had an identical rosary. Then I visited with Miranda Greene’s family and asked to see her personal effects. She was in possession of a third matching rosary. Her mother found it in Miranda’s apartment, in her lingerie drawer. The family hadn’t thought anything was unusual about it because Miranda was Roman Catholic.”
    “So, you’re thinking the killer has left an identical rosary among the personal effects of every woman he’s murdered?” Sully’s mind sifted through the profile Joelle had created on the unsub, or unknown subject.
    “The profiler I contacted believes our serial killer thinks of his victims as unclean. She also asked if he’d left any mementos with the bodies, which we now know he does. Added to that is Dr. McGill’s mystery phone caller who has a proclivity for religious music.” Sully cursed under his breath, leveled his dark gaze at everyone sitting around the conference table. “It seems we’re hunting for a sexual deviant who uses religion as his excuse to commit murder.”
    They were hunting a serial killer. The three identical rosaries confirmed it, and the public had a right to protect themselves. Sully knew this wasn’t the kind of case he could keep from the media. If he did, and the killer struck again, the mayor, the city, and the police force would be held jointly responsible.
    After some later discussion with his captain, a press conference was scheduled for early the next morning, when police mouthpieces would announce to the world there was a serial killer hunting in the Montreal area. Sully knew the scene would be wall-to-wall news vans and talking heads. The media would work themselves into a feeding-frenzy, especially if his team tied the current cases to the unsolved ones. The killer may have gotten away with murder for the past several years.
    Sully dreaded the mammoth headache the announcement would cause his task force. Newshounds would be dogging their heels from here on out, not to mention the mass hysteria and inevitable false leads which would flourish from this kind of sensationalism. Every lead would need to be checked out and followed up.
    An hour later, Sully rubbed his forearm, where the healing stitches tugged at the skin, and reached for a coffee to go along with a migraine-relief chaser. He had just hung up from a frustrating conference call with his team. Forensics had reviewed the evidence from the earlier cases but was unable to make a connection between the first three drowning victims and the current cases they pursued. The bodies would not be exhumed. They had been buried too long to offer significant scientific evidence.
    They did, however, hit pay dirt on the four-year-old, cold arson case. The charred remains of a pink-beaded, silver rosary had been discovered among the ashes of the victim’s home.
    It had been photographed and bagged by investigators at the scene. Forensics confirmed it was a match to the rosaries recovered from Miranda Greene,