by Jim Laughter
Morris, a 55-year-old white man, twice married and divorced, with three children between the two marriages, had been with the bureau twenty-three years. He’d spent eight years with the Dallas City Police Department, and another sic with the Texas Highway Patrol before applying to the FBI. He’d worked dozens of the most violent murder cases and kidnappings to come along. Now here he sat, alone, befuddled, hung over, no one around to share his headache or frustrations.
And now this; another murder case that didn’t make one damn bit of sense. Prostitutes slaughtered all over the country in the most brutal fashion and he had no idea who could be behind the murders or why; this last one right here in the nation’s capital. But what could he do?
Murder in Washington D.C. was nothing new. The city reigned as one of the highest per capita homicide cities in the country. Over twelve hundred murders and other violent crimes had been reported in the last year alone.
So why the hell am I so worked up about this crap? Morris thought. Three more people will get themselves shot, stabbed, or brutally murdered before the day is over anyhow. Ain’t one damn thing I can do about it ′cept fumble through these damn pages and try to make sense of it.
One of the last major cases Morris handled involved a serial killer that traveled the country’s interstate highways in a motorhome. He and his team of investigators called him the interstate serial killer but the bureau dubbed it the Apostle Murders case, so named because a maniac preacher believed God had ordained him to restore order to the modern church by recreating the martyrdom of the original apostles of Jesus Christ.
Lunatic son-of-a-bitch ran my ass all over the damn country before we were able to trap and kill the crazy bastard in his own son’s church in Aurora, Colorado.
If it hadn’t been for the religious training of a rookie agent, George Benjamin, who’d overheard a conversation between he and his regular partner, Special Agent Lynn Keller, that case might have never been solved.
Benjamin, Morris thought. Rookie kid from Oklahoma. Fresh meat right out of the academy, and in five minutes he stumbles onto clues that haunted me and other senior investigators for six damn months. Dumb-ass kid stands there at the damn file cabinet eavesdroppin' on privileged information. Next thing I know the rookie punk takes over my desk, my chair, and my case, then tells me I’ve got my head shoved up my ass? I should’a throwed his smart-alecky ass right out the damn window like I wanted to.
But truth be told, if it hadn’t been for Benjamin, there’s no telling how long the string of murders would have lasted before the preacher’s pattern could be discovered. How many more people would have been murdered, or martyred, according to Benjamin, if he hadn’t been in the right place at the right time to overhear their conversation?
“Even a blind bear finds a honey tree ever now and then,” Morris muttered to himself. He remembered thinking he’d grown too old for his job and had overlooked vital information that was right there in the files. He’d even considered turning in his gun and badge and retiring back to his hometown of Lubbock, Texas, then just as quickly dismissing the thought.
“I ain’t no damn quitter.”
The office door opened and Lynn Keller pushed through, followed by George Benjamin. She was dressed in her usual two-piece business suit; dark blue with a burgundy open-collar blouse. A non-descript purse hung from her right elbow. Morris knew the purse was actually a designer model from some faggot designer—Georgey something-or-other. But Keller was a damn good partner and investigator. He could have done worse.
Keller carried two cups of coffee; Benjamin carried one. Morris knew without asking that the cup in Keller’s right hand was for him; hot, black, full to the brim just the way he liked it. He also knew Keller’s cup contained a mocha something-or-other cow shit chocolaty sissy drink that smelled like a melted Hershey bar.
Benjamin, on the other hand, didn’t drink coffee. How the hell an agent with the FBI could say he didn’t drink coffee was beyond his comprehension. Instead, Benjamin’s cup would be full of tea; hot tea like that bunch of limp wrist sissies in England drink. A little sugar and cream with the lid pressed down tight and even all the way around so it wouldn’t drip onto his perfectly starched button-down shirt. His hands and clothes were always so clean, and his teeth sparkled. His suit jacket matched his pants which had a perfect crease running down the middle of each leg to top off spotless wing-tip shoes. Everything about the rookie was so damn neat.
Three damn years, Morris thought. Three damn years and the kid is still as neat and clean as the day I met him. Sick! No man should be that damn neat.
“You’re in early,” Keller said.
She wanted to say he looked and smelled like a sack of warmed over bullshit but she could see by his bloodshot eyes that he’d had a rough weekend. His suit was obviously the same one he’d worn every day last week. Coffee stains on his lapels attested to the fact that it hadn’t been to the cleaners in God only knew how long.
He might have changed his shirt, Keller thought. Looks a little cleaner than the rest of him.
Morris just glanced up at Keller when she sat his coffee cup in the center of the stained blotter next to a photograph lying on his desk. The full-color picture of a woman severely brutalized stared back at her. Her throat had been slashed from side to side, almost severing her head. She had deep cuts across the bridge of her nose, both eyelids, and both of her cheeks.
The tip of her nose and one of her ears were missing. Her long blond hair was twisted and matted with blood and what appeared to be dried leaves. Puncture marks on her naked upper torso suggested she’d been stabbed repeatedly, and her abdomen was ripped open in the most brutal fashion. One of her intestines was pulled out and draped over her right shoulder as if her killer had been in a mad frenzy of murderous rage.
“She been identified?” Keller asked.
Morris shook his head. “Nothin' yet. Should be pretty soon.”
“Have they identified the murder weapon?”
“Same as always. Knife or scalpel. Pretty sure it’s a knife this time.”
“Have they moved the body?”
Again, Morris shook his head. “They’re waitin' for us get over there.”
Keller picked up the picture and held it to the light. “What could make one human being do this to another?”
“What makes you think this sum'bitch is human?”
Morris took a tentative sip of his steaming coffee. He leaned back in his chair and rubbed his tired eyes.
God, I can’t go on like this.
“You got any ideas, Professor?” Morris called across the room to George Benjamin.
Morris often called Benjamin professor because the young agent had graduated from Oral Roberts University in Tulsa, Oklahoma before dropping out of post-graduate seminary to join the FBI. Both of Benjamin’s parents were still professors at the university, so Morris enjoyed playing devil’s advocate against the rookie’s religious training.
He also enjoyed ragging Benjamin about his African heritage. He’d thought several times during their first investigation that he’d goaded the rookie enough to cause a confrontation. With only one exception, Benjamin held his temper.
Old man’s gotta have some fun.
“No sir,” Benjamin answered. “Not yet.”
“No ancestral tickles from your old African homeland about this one?” Morris teased. “Your old witchdoctor grand-pappy not calling out to you with some juicy clue to help us break this case?”
“Not yet, sir,” Benjamin answered without looking up from the laptop computer he’d just activated.
“But if I hear from him any time soon, I’ll let you know.”
Smart ass rookie, Morris thought.
Redneck.
Benjamin, tall and athletic, 30-years old with dark black skin and close cropped hair, sat at his desk against the outer wall near the window, the same window Morris and Keller had threatened to throw him out of almost three years ago the first day he’d stumbled into
their case about the Apostle Murders serial killer. He knew Morris liked him, or at least Keller said Morris liked him. He liked Morris too, despite his continuous racial remarks. He knew it was just his way. Annoying and aggravating, but just his way.
After solving the Apostle Murders serial killer case, Morris had even shaken his hand and invited him to stay with his team of homicide investigators.
So much had happened since then. He’d matured under the guidance of Keller and Morris and they’d worked several significant cases together. He believed he’d earned their trust and confidence. Morris was still capable of being an insufferable bigot at times but he’d learned so much from the man that he couldn’t bring himself to regret his decision to stay with the homicide unit. He assumed the day would come when he’d have to confront Morris directly about his racial innuendos, but not today.
He and his wife, Latrice, had decided to start a family. Well, they hadn’t exactly decided, it just happened. Their parents had been delighted to become grandparents for the first time. Now that a second grandchild was on the way, a girl this time, they were beside themselves to the point Latrice’s parents had threatened to sell their home and move to Washington. Only his persuasive argument that he could be transferred with the bureau changed their minds. He and Latrice could only imagine what it would be like having her parents so close by, even though the prospect of free child care was appealing.
Now he was part of an elite investigation team and the rumble of protest his unprecedented promotion caused within the bureau could still be felt down the corridors of power. Agents that had been with the bureau for years complained they’d been passed over in favor of a rookie agent fresh out of the academy.
It reminded him of Freddy Corleone in the second Godfather movie complaining to Michael about wanting respect and being passed over as the new Don of the Corleone Family. Morris’ words to them were that if they’d get off their dead asses and solve a case once in a while, they’d get promoted, otherwise for them to shut the hell up and leave the boy alone. He appreciated Morris’ confidence but why did he always have to be so racial? What was it about his African heritage that bothered the senior agent so much?
“How many is it now?” Keller asked.
“Hell if I know,” Morris answered. “They’re all over the damn country. North, south, east, west. Ain’t no damn pattern to 'em. Just hookers gettin' theirselves cut to pieces. I ain’t never seen nothin' like it.”
Keller studied the picture again. The brutality of the crime made her skin crawl and the hair on her arms stand on end. She’d seen viciousness before but never anything like this.
She thought about the Beltway Sniper case in October 2002 when two men shot and killed ten people and injured three others from the trunk of their car in and around Washington D.C. She remembered thinking the sniper had to be a cold, calculating, immoral monster to target people at random while they filled their car with gas, or loaded groceries, or exited restaurants.
But this killer, whoever he is, must be a special kind of lunatic—someone with a deep psychosis of hatred for women. She wouldn’t be surprised if when they finally did catch the killer, to learn that he’d murdered his own mother or other significant women in his life. She knew the psychological profiling department was trying to create a profile of the killer. They just didn’t have enough material to piece together a significant portrait of him.
“Here’s another one right here in DC,” Morris said. “Not two damn miles from this very building.”
“Another prostitute,” Keller stated. Morris nodded.
“Why prostitutes?”
“Easy targets. God knows there’s enough of 'em around here.”
“Supply and demand?”
“Can’t have a town full of politicians without the proper entertainment.”
“Now, Dunc. It’s a senate election year, so don’t stir up any muddy water.”
“I’m just sayin' that hookers and money go together like pigs and slop.”
“Are we still talking about the hookers?”
Morris smiled his impish grin at Keller.
“Take your pick. They all feed at the same trough.”
George Benjamin listened to Keller’s and Morris’ exchange and thought it odd the two senior agents could discuss the death of this woman in such casual terms. Didn’t they know she had a family somewhere? That she had a mother and father, brothers and sisters, or even her own children that would mourn her death? Is there a latchkey kid somewhere in the city crying for a mother that will never come home?
Benjamin thought about his own wife, Latrice, mother of a rambunctious 2-year boy and pregnant with their second child. Would they discuss her death in as casual a manner if they didn’t know who she was? And although Latrice worked as a paralegal at a law firm not too far from their small apartment and could take care of herself in a fight, he wondered how he or her parents would cope if she were to end up under the knife of a maniac. Surely someone cares about these women.
Benjamin studied the list of names and locations of the victims. They were all so random and scattered. And although the majority of the slayings had been right here in the nation’s capital, with exception to the brutality of the murders, there didn’t seem to be any viable pattern.
“I wonder why the cities are so distant from each other?”
“George?” Keller said. “Do you see a pattern?”
“No, not really. But we’re assuming these murders are all being committed by the same killer, right?”
“Uh-huh.”
“And we’ve got victims in state capitals and major cities all over the country; Seattle, Chicago, New Orleans, Denver, Miami, and even Cincinnati. All killed in similar fashion, and at times only a day or two apart, then nothing for two or three months.”
“So?”
“So how does the killer get from Seattle to New Orleans in less than a day, commit a murder, disappear and kill again in DC within ten hours? He’s got to be flying.”
“Maybe it’s Superman and he’s pissed that Lois Lane ain’t puttin' out,” Morris said.
Keller and Benjamin looked across the room at Morris who had leaned back in his chair, his cup of coffee perched at his lips, a mischievous twinkle in his eyes. A drop of coffee fell from the bottom of the cup and trickled down the senior agent’s tie. He didn’t notice or care.
Keller ignored Morris’ sarcasm. She knew he was just as concerned about the murders as she or Benjamin. He just chose to show it in a different manner.
“And you don’t think he’s flying commercial, do you George?”
“No ma’am.”
Keller cringed. She hated being called ma’am. It made her feel old. She’d instructed Benjamin to call her LK—short for Lynn Keller. He usually remembered but forgot from time to time, especially when concentrating on something. It didn’t matter with Morris. He just called her Keller. She couldn’t remember a time when Morris had called her anything else. Smart ass sometimes but usually just Keller.
“So what do you think?” she asked Benjamin.
Morris leaned forward and placed his elbows on his desktop. Benjamin watched the agent’s eyebrows furrow and a smirk form on his face, anticipating that he’d say something stupid. Just because he’d been able to identify the religious connotations of the Apostle Murders serial killer didn’t mean he had a viable answer now.
“I’d rather not say just yet.”
He saw Morris’ mouth turn up at the edge, his smirk hidden beneath the scruffy handle-bar mustache he never seemed to trim.
“But if you had to say?” Keller asked.
Benjamin shook his head. He wasn’t about to step out onto another limb and make a fool of himself, not with Morris waiting to pounce on him. Morris still blamed him for taking over the Apostle Murders case and stealing his thunder.
“Just say it, kid,” Morris said. “You think this killer is some rich sum’bitch that flies around the country in a private jet, don’tcha?”<
br />
He didn’t respond.
“That he gets his rocks off cuttin' up women while he sits back sippin’ champagne and eatin' caviar.”
Again, Benjamin didn’t answer.
“Well, that’s the craziest damn thing I ever heard.”
“Yes sir.”
“And I don’t wanna hear no more crap like that! You hear me, boy?”
“Yes sir,” Benjamin said.
He didn’t like the boy part of the order but he understood that Morris was just as confused and concerned as he was. It also confirmed to him that Morris had formed the same idea about the killer; that they were dealing with someone who had access to either high finances or high power, or both.
Keller finished reading the initial report on their latest victim. She looked at the Casio watch on her left wrist.
“7:30,” she said. “I guess we should go on over to the crime scene and see if we can find anything.”
The brutal images of the murder caused her to leave her mocha latte untouched on her desk.
∞∞∞∞
So much blood. The image of the prostitute, her throat cut, her naked body with the abdomen cut open, the acrid odor of her intestines—all of these things haunted his mind. He didn’t know why he had to kill these women. There was a driving force inside of him, forcing him into the night. It was as if a voice from the past inhabited his mortal being, pushing him, guiding him, leading him from one woman to the next.
It had taken over an hour to clean the blood off the plastic-covered car seats. His bloody clothes and gloves were safely incinerated in his basement furnace, never to be touched or worn again. His knife, the extension of his own hand, had been cleaned and sterilized before being locked away in the glove compartment of his Town Car.
It would be light soon and the images would fade away. The sinister man that haunted his dreams would disappear into the night. He’d be normal again.
Chapter Four
Police crime scene tape cordoned off the Lincoln Memorial. Morris, Keller and Benjamin arrived a few minutes after 8 a.m. Seven Washington DC police cars formed a parameter around the structure. A coroner’s wagon was parked on the sidewalk at the base of the steps.