Skin Deep (Station Seventeen #1)(98)

“’Fraid not,” Hollister said. “No fingerprints, no hair, no fibers, and no boot prints on the hardwoods. The slashes to the couch and mattress were made with an undetermined serrated weapon, of which I can think of about two dozen varieties off the top of my head, and the marker used to write the message on the mirror is the most widely manufactured in the country. Truth? We’ve seen serial killers less methodical than this fucking guy.”

“Dammit.” Isabella slumped in her chair. “So we have nothing on the break-in and nothing on the fire.”

“Nope. Maxwell and Hale are still finishing up that assault case from this morning, but they checked in to say they’ve heard exactly zip on the final report from the fire marshal.”

Kellan’s gut dropped. “Yeah, I pulled the reports that both Gamble and Hawkins made from the call. Looks like the water probably trashed any evidence you might find that DuPree or any of his guys were in the house when the fire started.”

“Great,” she said, pinching the bridge of her nose between her thumb and forefinger. “So we’re back at square one.”

“Not necessarily!”

The words snagged Kellan’s full attention, and he turned toward the top of the stairs, where the intelligence unit’s tech guy was hightailing it into the office.

Isabella lasered her sights in on him, her eyes sparking with hope. “Capelli, tell me you have something.”

“That I do. Grab the boss. He’s gonna want to hear this,” Capelli said. A few seconds later, when Sinclair had come out of his office, the guy continued. “I just got some background on our guy, and it’s a doozy. Ah—”

He paused to look up at Kellan, his eyes darting to Sinclair in obvious hesitation, and Kellan got the message loud and clear.

“I can go.” He shifted to find his feet, but a pair of protests stopped him mid-move.

“No.”

Kellan processed the holy shit pumping through his veins at the fact that Sinclair’s voice had been the one to join Isabella’s.

“We don’t normally disclose case details with members outside of the unit, and that rule still stands,” Sinclair said. “But given the extenuating circumstances of Walker’s involvement and the fact that he could still be a potential target, he might as well stick around for the update.”

He turned to level Kellan with a frosty stare, and ooookay, guess the guy hadn’t quite gone the forgive-and-forget route on the mouthing off Kellan had given him a few days ago.

“Provided that you keep everything discussed here strictly confidential,” Sinclair added.

Kellan dipped his chin in a deferent nod. “Copy that.”

Capelli blinked, but quickly got back to business. “Right. So I had a friend over at the FBI field office run some background checks for me, to see if there was anything higher up the food chain than I had access to. Turns out, he got a hit on one of the government databases in New York.”

“New York?” Isabella asked, stepping back on the linoleum in obvious confusion, and yeah, sign Kellan up for the sentiment, too. “I never found any record of DuPree living or working in New York.”

“That is because he was a minor at the time. The hit is from the Department of Child and Family Services in Syracuse, and the case file was sealed, which is why it took a couple of days’ worth of digging to find.”

“Sealed why?” Hollister asked. “Even if DuPree was a minor at the time, the record should still at least show that files were charged against him.”

Capelli’s brows went up. “Not if he was the victim.”

Kellan’s jaw unhinged. No way had he just heard that right. “DuPree was the victim?”

“Yep. Looks like there was an investigation into abuse by his mother. A school guidance counselor noticed what she listed as ‘abnormal behavior’, so she requested a follow-up from DCFS. DuPree initially accused the mother of abuse, but it looks like he later rescinded.”

“So no charges were ever filed?” Sinclair asked.

“No,” Capelli said, shaking his head. “And mom fell off the radar not long after that. The notes from DCFS are sparse, but the school counselor was pretty adamant that DuPree was potentially dangerous.”

Isabella froze beside him. “Dangerous how?”

Capelli’s pause definitely wasn’t lost on Kellan, or probably anyone else standing in the intelligence office. “According to this, he was ‘substantially anti-social, distant, displayed a lack of empathy for those around him as well as a lack of remorse for wrongdoings.’”

“Wrongdoings,” Hollister repeated, and this time Capelli’s pause lasted longer.

“The list is pretty long, but the Reader’s Digest version is that he threatened two teachers with bodily harm, followed through on similar threats made to at least a half a dozen students, and although it was never proven, he was looked at pretty hard for vandalism to the school principal’s car and for killing a neighbor’s cat.”

Kellan couldn’t think of a single curse word that adequately covered this. “The guy is a freaking sociopath.”

“At first glance?” Capelli asked. “Yeah.”

“Okay,” Sinclair said. “I want our profiler on this, right now. Moreno”—he turned to look at her, and oh hell, Kellan knew the look in the sergeant’s eyes couldn’t mean anything Isabella would like—“I want you in protective custody.”