Taboo by Casey Hill

boyfriend were killed.
    Reilly’s heart pounded faster in her chest.
    ‘Find what you were looking for?’ the uniform asked. She started quickly; she’d forgotten he was there.
    ‘Sure did,’ she replied, trying to hide the tremor in her voice as she stared at the title along the spine.
    There, by the side of the victim’s bed, and clean as a whistle, was a copy of The Interpretation of Dreams by Sigmund S. Freud.
     
    A gruff voice answered the phone. ‘Kennedy here.’
    Reilly cursed inwardly. She had been hoping to speak to Chris Delaney. She could only imagine what his cynical partner’s reaction would be.
    ‘It’s Reilly Steel from the crime lab,’ she said. ‘I think we’ve found something relevant to the Ryan case.’
    ‘Go on,’ he replied, cagily. As Reilly expected, he made little attempt to hide his suspicion of anything to do with the GFU.
    ‘Well, first of all, we’ve found material evidence common to yours and another more recent crime scene,’ she began.
    ‘OK …’
    ‘We just processed another case – an apparent suicide victim, Jim Redmond. Seemed fairly straightforward until we found a sample of paint and animal hair at the Redmond scene that matched samples we found at your Ryan scene.’
    Kennedy was immediately sceptical. ‘What’s a suicide got to do with us? Maybe the common stuff has come from one of you lot – you walked it in or something.’
    Reilly was ready for that. ‘I’m pretty certain that isn’t the case,’ she said. ‘I’ve spent the past few months drilling the problems with cross-contamination into my guys and I’d have to say their entry preparation is absolutely meticulous now. You’ve seen what we wear – nothing can get through those dust suits, and we change them after each crime scene.’
    Kennedy remained resistant and Reilly figured the last thing he wanted was complications to his already baffling case. ‘Then one of our guys could have walked it in,’ he protested. ‘There was a bunch of uniforms at the Ryan place – it was like a bloody circus if you ask me.’
    ‘Considered that too,’ she countered. ‘I’ve already checked with the attending unit and nobody at the Ryan scene was common to this most recent one – the locations are at different parts of the city.’ She cleared her throat. If the paint sample had caused him to bridle, she knew that the Freud connection was sure to push him over the edge. ‘But there’s something else that links them …’
    It was a moment before he responded. ‘Go on.’
    ‘Jim Redmond left a suicide note. I’ve just discovered it contains a Freud quote.’ When Kennedy didn’t answer, she went on. ‘Sigmund Freud, the father of modern psychology?’
    ‘Yeah, I went to college too,’ he growled. ‘What about him?’
    ‘Well, here’s the other coincidence – there was a copy of Freud’s The Interpretation of Dreams on Clare Ryan’s bedside locker when she died.’
    ‘So? Nothing unusual about that – she was a psychology student.’
    ‘It had no blood splatter on it – so it had to have been added after Clare and the boy died.’
    He grunted, unwilling to concede.
    Reilly spoke quickly. She could tell she was losing him. ‘Don’t you think the fibers and the Freud connection are just too much of a coincidence? If there’s any chance these two cases could be connected, however remote, it means that someone else must be involved and—’
    ‘Look,’ Kennedy sighed, wearily. ‘I know that conspiracy theories are all the rage where you come from, but here things are usually more straightforward—’
    Reilly was about to reply when on the other end she heard a shuffling noise, and a curse.
    ‘Reilly? Chris Delaney here,’ the other detective said, coming onto the line. ‘I’m sorry about that. My partner’s having a bit of a bad day. What have you got for us?’
    She let out a deep, pent-up breath. ‘I was just explaining that we have some interesting new evidence on the Clare