Something nagged at the back of Autumn’s mind. There was something she needed to remember from the past.
“Let me fucking go! Catarina!” A deeply accented voice growled from the doorway.
Hererra and Newman cursed as Autumn’s head whipped toward the front door. Two officers were doing their best to keep a bull of a man from entering the space.
“Let me see my fucking daughter!” The man’s jowls wobbled as he yelled before he bared his teeth like a wild animal.
“Mr. Casale,” Newman moved up front, blocking the view of Catarina’s bedroom. “You shouldn’t be here.”
“No. No. I will not leave until I see her.” His hard, dark blue eyes met Newman. Arturo Casale was shorter than her boss by four inches. Casale’s hands fisted at his sides as he stared back at the police chief.
“Why don’t we talk outside?” A grimace formed across Newman’s lips.
Autumn didn’t envy the man’s job of telling loved ones their family member was the victim of a violent crime.
The fight seemed to go out of Casale. He slumped back, and one officer cursed as they bore Arturo Casale’s full weight. “No… my little girl… Catarina!” Casale shouted, some of the garbled words in Italian and others in English. He moaned and folded in on himself as he wept.
Hererra and Diego burst into movement to help the two officers pick up the heavy man.
The head of the infamous Italian syndicate met Autumn’s eyes. His eyes were glassy, and tears tracked down his cheeks. He scrubbed the moisture from his face before meeting Autumn’s eyes again and spoke in a heavily accented voice, “Did she suffer…?”
Autumn gritted her teeth and swallowed around the lump lodged in her throat. “No.” It was the least she could give him. He didn’t need to know about her missing eyes yet.
Casale didn’t speak again as the officers escorted him to the elevator.
“The media will be all over this,” she murmured. It wasn’t similar to other murders she had helped solve. Yes, there was anger in the killing. But it was more than that.
Rage.
The newspaper clipping burned a hole in her pocket. Autumn felt like she was supposed to be the target. Why else would the murderer leave that article in plain sight? She had a feeling this wouldn’t stop at one murder.
The murderer knew what he was doing. The FBI called it an organized crime. Everything had been planned from start to finish. And somehow, he knew she would be there.
A niggling feeling told her this was about her.
Autumn walked into the conference room at the NYPD. She was late by about ten minutes. She took a seat near Diego and took a notebook out. Newman caught her eye, then looked to Hererra, “Give us a rundown of the facts.”
“Dispatch received an anonymous call at eleven-thirty last night about a murder at the victim’s home. Victim is a white female named Catarina Casale. She had ligature marks around her neck, and was found tied to her bedposts, her eyeballs removed from their sockets and Forget Me Not flowers placed over both holes. Authorities found the victim’s eyes in a homemade jeweler’s case along with a business card from a private sex club called Cat Tails. Cause of death pending M.E. report.”
Newman gave a curt nod, “MO?”
“We’re going with anger as a motivation, sir,” Diego said with a glance at Autumn. “With the severity of wounds inflicted, we also believe it may be about having power over the victim. We don’t know if it was an organized or unorganized attack yet.”
“Victimology,” Newman said in a weary tone as he rubbed the bridge of his nose.
“After interviews with her family, we found out Catarina was the youngest of six children to Arturo and Hannah Casale. She had no priors and no steady boyfriends. She frequented a private sex club, Cat Tails, reported by her cousin.”
“Would she have met someone at this sex club?” Newman asked, his hands laced together as he stared Autumn down.
She held his gaze until he looked away. Reading from her notebook, Autumn added, “Her cousin, Natalia, told us Catarina met with men at the club and brought them to the condo.” She leafed through her notes again, “The men usually left early in the morning.”
Newman leaned back in his chair, his chin between his index finger and thumb. “Let’s say Catarina went to this Cat Tails, met up with someone and brought him back to her condo. She opened the front door, walked in and was whacked in the back of the head. She wakes up tied to the headboard, struggles, the unsub strangles her to death, then takes her eyes.”
Suddenly, Newman’s secretary, Carrie, knocked, then opened the door. “I’m sorry, sir, there’s an important phone call on line one. That lawyer…”
Newman cursed, “Goddamned Scala,” he growled. With a sigh, he waved Carrie off. “I’ll take it in here.”
“Since Diego and I are at your disposal, Captain, what would you like us to do going forward?”
