Mounted

by E. H. Reinhard

  “Sure,” I said. “Hopefully, there is something to report.”

  “Right. We’ll talk later.”

  I clicked off and stood. A knock came at the door a moment later, so I opened the door for Beth, and we left for the bureau office.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  William sat in his studio, as he liked to call it. He’d converted his home’s master bedroom into his workplace for creating his mounts. Before him, Katelyn Willard’s skull was bolted to the framework he’d attached to a walnut mount—he’d removed the skin and brain and had boiled the skull the night prior. William reached out and ran the tip of his thumb along the modeling clay he’d applied to recreate facial muscles. The glass eyes had already been set, and the fiberglass resin and cloth to form the neck area that extended down to the mount had dried. William lifted the skull on its mount and walked to the table nearest the bedroom’s window, looking out over the grass of the backyard. He slid out the chair at the table, had a seat, and placed the mount before him. Across the table were various spools of waxed string, threading needles, cans of adhesives, and women’s makeup. William looked down to his right at the skin from her face, which he’d prepared earlier.

  His process for removing the skin from the skull was fairly straightforward—William ran a razor from the base of the neck, where he severed the head, up through the back of the hair on the scalp and stopped just before the hairline met the forehead. From there, he carefully peeled it away.

  William lifted the facial skin from the table and gently turned it inside out in his hand. He reached over, grabbed a can of spray adhesive from the corner of the table and sprayed the inside of the skin. When the total area was covered, he draped it over the skull and positioned it, running his hands over the face and applying light pressure to smooth the skin to the clay and bone beneath and allow the adhesive to make contact and set.

  He let his hands drop to his lap. His shoulders sank as he let out a long breath. “Better, but still not quite right,” he said.

  William shook his head while staring at the face. He grumbled to himself and spun the head so he could stitch it up in the back. After that, he was ready to apply the makeup, seal the face with a spray lacquer, and then work on her hands.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  Driving, Beth made a right down the street that bent around toward the Louisville FBI office. The building came into view as Beth slowed for a four-way stop.

  I stared through the windshield, across the grass, and over at the main Bureau building set behind a concrete-and-metal fence. The office building looked older—thirty or forty years was my guess. The red-brick main building was three stories and set partially into a small hill. At the building’s front, facing the street, was what I figured to be the main entrance. A big, rounded, gray overhang stuck off the building, supported by pillars. An American, an FBI, and a Kentucky flag flicked in the breeze on large poles stemming up from the landscaping. Beyond the flags was a break in the fence and what looked like the blacktop of a parking lot.

  “I think the parking lot is to the right over there.” I pointed.

  Beth clicked on her turn signal and proceeded up the small incline to the entrance. She pulled in and found us a spot in the mostly empty lot.

  “It looks like we have to walk through the guard building there to get into the facility.” Beth motioned toward a square building with fencing protruding from its sides.

  I nodded and stepped out of the car, taking my bag with the investigation files from the back. We headed into the security office and stood in a small room with a white floor. To our left was a bulletproof-glass window—dead ahead, a security door that led us back outside for the walk to the complex. A pair of benches lined the right wall below a large FBI insignia.

  I stepped to the window, where a thirty-some-year-old man leaned back in a chair, wearing a blue T-shirt with “FBI” written in yellow across it.

  I took out my credentials as Beth passed me hers. “Agents Hank Rawlings and Beth Harper from Manassas. We’re here to see Agent Duffield in Serial Crimes.”

  The man leaned forward in his chair and slid out a metal tray from below the window without saying a word.

  I dropped our credentials in, and he slid it back. I watched through the glass as he scanned both and sent them back through the slot at me.

  “Just a second, Agents. I’ll get you guys some badges made. You’ll be able to use them to get into the security doors. The next time you come through, you’ll be able to just swipe and enter. We also have a secured parking deck around the corner from the guest lot you guys used. If you’re making return visits, you can just use that.”

  “Sure,” I said.

  Beth and I took seats on the bench and waited in silence for a couple of minutes before he had us set.

  “Here you guys go.” He sent the metal tray out toward us with two plastic key cards with our names and faces on them. “The bar code on the back will get you through the secured doors. Head into the main entrance and use the elevators on the left. You’ll need to scan your card to access the elevator. Serial crimes is on three.”

  I scooped out the badges and passed Beth’s to her. I thanked the man, and he sent us through into the grounds. I hung the badge on its cord around my neck as we walked toward the main building’s entrance. We stepped through the doors into the building’s lobby, which was far more modern than I had expected. My original thoughts about the age of the building diminished—the building was either newer yet meant to look old, or it had had an extensive remodel. The floors were patterned marble—the center darker with lighter triangles arranged in a checkerboard fashion. A couple of midcentury-modern leather chairs and sofas sat to our right. A large reception desk stood at the back of the lobby. Beth pointed left at a pair of stainless-steel elevators set into the wood-coffered wall, and we walked over. I hit the button to take us up and scanned my card under the reader. The doors opened a second later and took us in.

  We stepped off on the third floor and walked down a long hallway. To our left was a solid wall, painted white with wood dividers every few feet sitting out a couple inches from the walls. The hallway wall on our right was all glass from the waist up to the ceiling, letting us see inside each room. A doorway was placed on our right every twenty or thirty feet, signifying what division of the bureau the nearby offices belonged to. Past a small cutout filled with a couple of vending machines and a stairwell, we found a large office. The interior of the room had smaller offices lining the walls and a center common area filled with individual desks. We approached the door and saw it was our serial crimes unit. I held the door for Beth, and we entered. A man in a suit approached, trying to get past us to exit the office.

  “Do you know where we can find an Agent Duffield?” I asked.

  “That office in that back corner is his.” He turned back toward the room and pointed at the office at the back right.

  “Thanks,” I said.

  He nodded and dipped past Beth to leave.

  We headed through the walkway between the desks in the room and made our way to the office door. Seated at the desk inside was a man on the telephone—he looked to be in his forties, dressed in a white dress shirt and gray tie. The man, whom I assumed to be Agent Duffield, had short black-and-gray hair and a round clean-shaven face. I knocked. He looked up from his desk and held a finger up to ask for a second.

  We waited a moment until he hung up the telephone. He wrote down a few things on a piece of paper before him and waved for us to enter.

  I pushed open the door. “Agent Duffield?” I asked.

  “Yeah. You must be Rawlings and Harper,” he said.

  “We are.”

  “Come on in.”

  Beth and I entered and shook Duffield’s hand as he leaned forward across his desk.

  “Matt Duffield,” he said.

  I pointed at myself and then at Beth. “Hank Rawlings. Beth Harper.”

  “Grab a seat,” he said.

  We did. />
  Duffield leaned back in his big office chair. “I’ve never seen anything quite like this in my time with the Bureau. I can’t even really put it into words.”

  “Agreed,” I said.

  “Well, you guys have a hell of a timing. The call I was on was in regards to this, or I should say could be in regards to this investigation.”

  “Something new?” Beth asked.

  “No way to know for certain at this point, but it could be. So here is what we did.” Duffield paused and scooted himself closer to his desk. “When we got word that these women had been reported missing prior to us finding out their identities from the killer’s photos, we alerted every law-enforcement agency and missing-persons department in about a hundred-mile radius. I wanted an alert the second a person was called in as missing. Well, that’s what that call just was. A sheriff’s station about a half hour from here just took a call.”

  “Does the missing fit?” Beth asked.

  Duffield groaned quietly. “It’s a twenty-two-year-old female, so it could.”

  “And this was the only one that has been reported?” I asked.

  “It is. I put the word through that the second anyone even attempts to file a report, I want this office notified. We have no intentions of letting the proper time pass to file an official report. If someone calls and says, ‘I think so-and-so might be missing,’ we’ll know. And that’s basically what just occurred.”

  “Do we have the information from this latest report?” I asked.

  “I just jotted a few things down from the phone call. The girl’s name that’s thought to be missing, cell-phone number, the roommate’s name who called it in, and the sheriff’s department it came from.”

  “Did anyone try to get a GPS location on her phone?” Beth asked.

  “Her phone and purse were found in her vehicle at her apartment complex.”

  “Probably not a good sign,” I said.

  “I’m going to get someone on banking and cell records on the girl. The local department asked the roommate to come in as soon as she could. They’re also trying to get a hold of the missing girl’s parents, to get them in as well. They sent someone out to the vehicle to collect evidence, but even with the sheriff’s office having the phone, a call or message could have been deleted, which is why I want to put in for the records. As soon as the chief deputy I spoke with has both parties in his building, he’s going to give me a call. I was planning on going over there personally. Hopefully, by the time I go over there, we’ll have some more information. Does that sound like something that you guys wanted to join me on?”

  “Yes,” Beth said. “But what are we going to tell them is the reason that we, as in the FBI, are there?”

  “Just that we are looking into missing persons in the area,” Duffield said.

  “And if they ask why?”

  “I’ll field the questions on that.”

  “Okay,” Beth said. “Any other developments in the investigation over the weekend?”

  He shook his head. “We haven’t come up with anything new.”

  “You know, I don’t think I heard the story of how this newspaper actually got the package,” I said. “I mean, I know it was mailed, but who was it sent to? Who opened it? Who viewed the contents? Who made the call to the authorities?”

  “It’s not in your file?” he asked.

  I shook my head. “Our file is basically the contents of the evidence sent, photos, and the missing-person reports.”

  “Oh, all right. You guys must not have gotten what we’d put together over the weekend. We basically have some more detailed photos from the film—segments of the photographs blown up for a better look—and the statements from our interviews at the newspaper. There’s nothing there that’s really groundbreaking, but I’ll make sure you get some copies of all of that. Um, the package wasn’t addressed to anyone in particular. One of the mail-room guys opened it. He didn’t do anything with the film but obviously read the letter. He took it to one of the higher-ups, who contacted the local authorities, which was Louisville Metro. They basically passed it off to us immediately after seeing what was on the film.”

  “I’m guessing the contents of the letter, combined with the photos, triggered something in the local law enforcement that they might be dealing with something beyond their scope,” Beth said.

  “Could have been,” Duffield said.

  “Where are we at with this in the press?” I asked.

  “It’s not,” Duffield said. “The Louisville Metro Police Department basically told the newspaper that it was probably a hoax but they’d look into it. When they saw what was on the film, they contacted us right away. I don’t think more than a handful of people at the PD even saw what was on the film.”

  “What about the families of the known victims we have? Who handled dealing with that, and what was said?” I asked.

  “I dealt with it personally. They know what happened, and we asked them—as hard as it is going to be—to not spread the word about this while we are investigating.”

  I shook my head. “None of that is going to work. This will be all over the news in days, national by the end of the week. I worked local law enforcement. If someone sees something like that at a station, it won’t be long before everyone inside the station knows about it—hell, I bet they already do. The families are another story. As soon as one person decides to talk, the whole keeping-it-under-wraps thing is over. We need to have something in place for when that happens because it’s going to. There are too many people who know—someone leaking it is inevitable.”

  Duffield nodded in agreement but said nothing.

  “The packaging, original letter, and film… Is all that in the building?” Beth asked.

  “Yeah, everything is in the lab downstairs. Did you want to head down there and take a look while we wait to get this call back?”

  “We do,” Beth said.

  “Any word on when the family that owns the house that the package was shipped from will be back in town?” I asked.

  “Wednesday morning,” Duffield said.

  “Okay.” I made a note of the day in my notepad.

  Agent Duffield rose from his desk. “Okay. Let’s head downstairs. I can pop in to our tech department and get someone going on this girl’s information, and you guys can have a look at the package and contents.” He took the piece of paper from his desk, and we followed him from his office.

  CHAPTER SIX

  We spent a half hour looking at a torn-open box, a letter in an evidence bag, and an old yellow roll of film before getting the call that the local sheriff’s department had the missing woman’s family and roommate at their building. The forensics team stated they’d found nothing on any of the items that could lead us in a direction, and as we were already aware, each item had trace evidence that latex gloves had been used for handling. We were still waiting to hear on banking and cell-phone records.

  Beth and I followed Agent Duffield up Interstate 71 toward the town of La Grange, where the Oldham County Sheriff’s Department was—a half-hour ride from the Louisville Bureau office. We exited the interstate and drove through the small town. Old houses mixed in with the older storefronts on the sides of the road. We stopped at the four-way stop sign at Main Street. I looked right and left to see angled parking at the fronts of hundred-plus-year-old brick buildings that made up the classic Midwestern downtown area. A handful of people were rummaging about, entering and exiting the mom-and-pop shops. Beth continued forward, following Duffield before he made a left at the next block. After Duffield’s left turn, he slowed in the street and turned left into a small parking area beside an old two-story red-brick building with a white balcony attached to the front. Below the balcony and above the entry doors was a sign that read Oldham County Courthouse.

  “I guess this is the place,” Beth said.

  “It looks like it.”

  Beth pulled into the small parking area and took an empty spot next to Duffield’s four-door
Toyota pickup. We stepped out.

  “The sheriff’s office is inside.” Duffield pointed his chin toward the red-brick building. “We’re going to be looking for Chief Deputy Patrick King.”

  I nodded. Beth and I followed Duffield toward the entrance. We entered the old building, told the woman at the front who we were looking for, and were escorted back to a small conference room. The woman that had led us back opened the door, poked her head inside, and after saying a few words, pulled the door open for us to enter.

  I followed Agent Duffield and Beth into a gray-carpeted room with bare white walls. A projector screen sat on the back wall behind a small stage with a podium. The center of the room was taken up by a long conference table with about ten chairs lining each side. A man, dressed in a uniform consisting of a white shirt with a badge on the chest and starred shoulder epaulets, sat at the table’s end. A thin black tie ran down the center of his shirt. To his sides were three women—the two on the left appeared to be mother and daughter—the older woman looked to be in her forties, the younger in her teens. The woman seated by herself must have been the roommate, looking to be in her early twenties. The three women and sheriff all stared at us. Duffield introduced our group, and we took chairs on both sides of the table.

  I sat across from the two women, who Chief Deputy King confirmed as the mother and sister of the reported missing woman—we still hadn’t caught their names. Both women had puffy red eyes from crying. I glanced right, toward the roommate, seated at my shoulder—she sniffed and stared down at the table.

  “We were just going through the last time Katelyn was seen,” Chief Deputy King said from the end of the table.

  The mother stared at me and cleared her throat. “I didn’t know that the FBI came in on missing-person reports,” she said.

  I glanced over at Beth, who was staring at Duffield. I had no intentions of telling the woman what we were actually investigating in the area, and I was pretty sure Beth had the same thought.

  “This one, we’d like to be a part of, ma’am,” Duffield said. “We’re actively investigating missing persons in the area.”