[2017] The Extraction

by Steven F Freeman

  Miyake broke out his cellphone and scrolled through a series of photographs. “Yep.”

  “Left-handed,” I said, more to myself than my partner.

  “What’s that?”

  “The perp is left handed. That’s why the vics only have bruising on the right side of their faces.”

  Miyake cocked his head and froze. “Hey, that’s right.”

  I strolled counter-clockwise around the body, hoping to spot any other evidence of the killer’s habits. “Anything missing from the home?”

  “Not that we can tell, but it’s hard to be sure. She lived alone, just like the two other vics. Family doesn’t think anything was taken but can’t be sure.”

  I glanced at a flat-screen TV in the corner, a valuable object in an austere house like this. These killings had nothing to do with robbery.

  “Cause of death was strangulation?” I asked.

  “Yep. Bare handed, too.”

  I leaned over to study the bruising on the victim’s neck. Miyake was right. This marking displayed a thicker, more-irregular pattern than the bruising around her wrists. The faint outline revealed large hands.

  Killing someone with your bare hands around their throat. It screamed rage. But why? How could this guy be so pissed at complete strangers? I had a feeling that if I discovered the world inside this guy’s head, I wasn’t going to like what I found.

  I straightened up and stretched my back. “I get why you didn’t call me after the first vic, but the second corpse with her eyes carved out didn’t get you wondering about a serial killer?”

  “I wondered…even told the chief that. But you know how he drags ass on stuff like this. He was gonna put together a ‘task force’ next week, until we found her this morning.” He gestured towards the corpse.

  “And then called me in,” I finished. Hopefully Chief Prescott’s delay wouldn’t cost another victim her life.

  Miyake glanced around. “Where’s your buddy? I thought the two of you were coming.”

  “She’ll be here shortly—said she got stuck in downtown traffic on I-75.” By this point in my career, six years ago, Sampson and I had already established ourselves as the Atlanta FBI office’s go-to profiling team.

  I made a slow lap around the room, taking in any evidence that might help paint a picture of the killer. This was certainly a planned crime. The same ritualistic behavior carried out against three victims proved it. And the offender was careful to select black, middle-aged victims who lived alone, who had no household companions they could call on for help. This killer was organized.

  I stopped at the trash can in the kitchen corner. “Anyone gone through this?”

  “Yep,” replied Miyake.

  “Mind if I take a look?”

  “Knock yourself out.”

  I gloved up and sifted through the trash pile, hoping the killer had left behind something, anything, that would provide some insight to his psyche. Killers generally realize that anything they leave behind in the middle of a crime scene will be picked up as evidence. But you’d be surprised how often they believe that once an item goes in the trash can, the police won’t think to look in there. Newsflash, dumbass criminals: we do check the trash—every time.

  Unfortunately, this particular garbage pail yielded nothing of value—only coffee grounds, orange peels, empty cans of succotash, takeout bags, wet newspapers, and moldy bread.

  But no matter. The victim selection, the binding, the beating, the strangulation, the gruesome eye removal…there were plenty of other indicators from which Sampson and I could began drawing conclusions. Hell, the victims even resembled each other in appearance, at least in a general way. That had to be significant. But what was so important about this demographic that it signed these ladies’ death warrants?

  CHAPTER 24

  One of the reasons for my success as a profiler was that I assumed the worst about an offender’s intentions. I mean let’s face it, no one becomes a serial murderer by accident. These are some seriously twisted fuckers, so it paid to embrace that reality when trying to track them down. While some of my colleagues wanted to put a gentle spin on a serial criminal’s motivations, I usually went straight to the most degenerate explanation—not simply to be contrary but because the body of evidence typically suggested this interpretation was correct. And for the record, my approach turned out to be accurate in almost every case.

  Sampson arrived at the third victim’s house and stepped around the forensic analysts to survey the crime scene. She bent over to examine the victim’s face. “Holy shit.”

  “Yeah. It’d be nice to take this guy off the street.” I got her up to speed on the evidence, including case summaries of the first two victims Miyake had supplied a bit earlier. “You see the patterns, right? Patient…organized…consistent…brutal…enraged. Removing the eyes suggests a personal vendetta against someone.”

  She nodded, chewing over this assessment in her mind. “Anything else?”

  “Not directly, but we can make other inferences.”

  “That’s just what I was thinking. You said our perp selected victims who were all poor and living alone. Do you think that was a convenience…a way of choosing helpless victims who, in his view, society had already abandoned?”

  I exhaled. “Could be. But my gut tells me there’s a deeper meaning. These women’s physical characteristics were too similar to be coincidental. They were all between forty-eight and fifty-seven years old, African-American, slightly above average in height, and with a…shall we say…full build. The killer already filtered out a subset of victims based on their socioeconomic class and lack of housemates. There’s no way the vics would bear such close physical similarities unless the killer wanted them to.”

  Sampson nodded again. “Makes sense.” She wasn’t convinced, but that’s what made us a good team. Like I said, my yin to her yang. “But why would he want them to look similar?”

  “Think about it in the context of rage. My guess is he started out with deep-seated anger directed at a particular woman. Then at some point, this anger spilled out to all women matching the first one’s physical characteristics.”

  “That could explain why he only chose poorer woman. Maybe they matched the demographic of his original target, too. She might have come from a similar background.”

  “Exactly.” Now we were getting somewhere. Sampson knew as well as I that female murder victims often know their attackers. In fact, a fourth of murdered women are killed by their husbands, so it stands to reason that we’d take a good, hard look at a victim’s immediate family as a pool of suspects. “I’m wondering if the first vic was the original person our killer hated, the one who inspired him to gouge out eyes, and these other two are spillovers.”

  From the corner of the room, Miyake looked up from an evidence placard he was affixing. “If the first vic was the lady he hated, why kill the others?”

  “You’re applying heat-of-passion logic to a serial killer,” I replied. “It’s not like he caught his wife cheating and lashed out. Serial killers have an itch that only murdering someone can scratch.”

  “Sounds like a junkie,” said the detective.

  “Exactly. Only their fix is murder, not drugs.” I turned to Sampson. “So we start talking with the family members of the first vic?”

  “Why don’t you do that,” said my partner, “and I’ll speak with the second vic’s family? Then we’ll compare notes.”

  I nodded, ready to dig into the case.

  CHAPTER 25

  I sat in a ratty chair, across from a teary-eyed teen seated on a dilapidated couch. Russel was the only child of Gladys Joyce, the first victim.

  We sat in the dim lighting of her bare-bones home. Either the heat had been disconnected, or her son was dedicated to saving money on the bill. I wrapped my coat around me in as nonchalant a manner as possible. On the water-stained wall behind Russel’s head, a cross-stitched pattern in a cheap frame declared, “Jesus Is Near.”

  “I
know this is hard for you,” I said, “but I’d like to collect a bit more information about your mom.”

  “Why? It won’t bring her back.”

  “But it might help track down her killer. Wouldn’t you like that?”

  After a long sniff, Russel wiped his nose. “I don’t know what to think.”

  “You’re not sure if you want her killer caught?” This idea set off alarm bells in my mind, but I kept my cool and maintained a conversational tone.

  “It’s just…my mom was really into church. And I don’t mean just going there on Sundays. She helped other people, even though we don’t have much.” A tear tracked down his cheek.

  I waited in silence for the boy to continue.

  He locked me in a stare. “If it was up to me, I’d kill the guy.” His expression softened. “But how I handle this—finding my mom’s killer—is the last thing I can do for her. The Bible says we should forgive our enemies. I don’t think she’d want her killer put to death.”

  Maybe this guy was an award-winning actor, but my gut told me he was genuine. “You said your mom helped other people. Would she like it if her murderer killed someone else?”

  “No!”

  “Then we need to find him, before he strikes again. Your mom would approve of protecting her neighbors from being murdered, right?”

  A light dawned in his countenance—relief, from all appearances. “Yeah, okay.”

  Russel and I spoke for an hour, reviewing the details of the night Gladys was murdered. Almost every detail of the crime bore a grim similarity to the scene I had left an hour ago. By the end, I struggled to find a smoking gun that would lead to a suspect.

  “Did your mom have friends who visited regularly?” I asked. “Anyone she might have considered almost family?”

  A sad smile passed over his lips. “Mom loved everyone. And they loved her. Did you know back before she retired, she used to work in the cafeteria at Grayson Elementary, just down the road? All the kids there called her ‘Grandma’.”

  “I didn’t know that. She sounds like a terrific lady.” I paused. “Did anyone get mad at her recently? Did she get in an argument with anyone?”

  “No one ever got mad at Mom. I don’t know who’d want to hurt her.” His eyes glistened. “If I had stayed here and commuted to college instead of living on-campus, maybe she’d still be alive.”

  Nothing I could’ve said would have offered the kind of healing his heart needed, so I merely nodded.

  “So you like science?” I asked after a moment’s pause.

  “Yeah, but…how’d you know?”

  “The plaque on the wall near the kitchen. Second place in Clayton County’s Science Olympiad. Impressive.”

  Russel produced a sad smile. “Yeah. Mom was really proud.”

  “What was your project?”

  The boy’s eye lit up, the first time since I’d entered his apartment. “Hydrolysis as a means of identifying bacteria in anthropological samples.”

  “Damn! You only got second place for that?” I paused. “You’re going to a community college right now, right?”

  “Yeah. It’s the only thing I can afford.”

  “Have any plans after those two years?”

  “No. Me and Mom had been talking about it. But I haven’t thought about it since…” He let his eyes drop to the floor.

  I drew a business card from my wallet and passed it to the youth. “The FBI offers scholarships to promising candidates. If you’re interested, give me a call. I might be able to put you in touch with some people who can help you apply.”

  I called Sampson on the drive back to our building. “Any luck?”

  “Not much. Felt like déjà vu with the most recent vic, Ida Malone.”

  “Same here. Let’s rendezvous back at HQ.”

  I arrived at our work area before Sampson did. This gave me time to construct an image of our perp…

  He hated a particular woman with a passion. But he didn’t kill her immediately. Instead, he exercised patience, planning out a murder that in its gruesomeness matched the intensity of the rage he harbored towards her.

  The initial murder felt good…oh, so good. But perhaps to his surprise, it wasn’t enough. The fury persisted, provoking him to action once again. But not just any victim would do. It had to be someone who represented a good proxy of the original target of his hate or no pleasure would be derived from the murder.

  So somehow, he began searching for his next victim, weeding out anyone who didn’t match his deranged criteria. But how did he find them? The victims lived in different neighborhoods—not too far apart, but certainly not neighbors. They shared no church or social activities. Only Ida Malone left her house on a regular basis; the other two rarely did. How did he track down just the right victims among such a homebound population? Discovering the murder’s method of searching out his prey might provide the key to discovering his identify. But at the moment, I had no idea how to do that. To make things even stranger, all the victims died on Thursdays. Was that a coincidence, or did it carry some deeper meaning?

  When stuck in previous investigations, I found it helpful to review the detailed case notes, records of all crimes attributed to a single criminal. The activity refreshed details and in some cases presented new ones I hadn’t yet been aware of.

  Time to break out this technique again. I brought up the electronic files for Gladys Joyce, the first victim. The interview notes provided a pittance of new details but mostly covered familiar territory.

  Next were the photos. I lingered over the pictures of her bloody body, repulsed yet fascinated, like witnessing a hurricane’s devastating aftermath. Gladys’ corpse revealed no new information, so I moved on to the dozens of photos that captured the surrounding details of her crime scene.

  No cigarette stubs or ashes…no muddy footprints…no dirty cups or dishes the offender might have used while admiring his handiwork. Everything was depressingly clean.

  Lacking inspiration, I continued to flip through the pictures. Several images of her refrigerator appeared, both inside and out. They seemed like a waste of time until a detail caught my eye. A white plastic bag with “Ted’s Deli” printed on it in red letters rested on the second shelf. Wasn’t a bag from that same take-out place stuffed in the garbage can of Ida Malone, the third victim? Feverishly, I brought up the photos from Ida’s crime scene. Sure enough, both wrappers came from Ted’s.

  Of course, that could have been a coincidence. Lots of people order take-out, especially older ones who didn’t get out much. Especially older ones who didn’t get out much. Crap! It fit! This could be how the killer sought out older, female victims—delivering for a cheap restaurant that catered to multiple neighborhoods in the poor part of town. Such a job would provide access to dozens of homes—and potential victims—every shift.

  My heart rate accelerated. We had a lead.

  CHAPTER 26

  In the FBI conference room, Detective Miyake of the Atlanta PD leaned back in a chair, staring at side-by-side photos of Ted’s take-out boxes and bags from the first and last crime scenes. He pursed his lips. “A lot of people order from there.”

  “True,” I said, “but isn’t it odd that two of the victims ordered so recently that the materials were still in their house? It bears looking into, don’t you think?”

  “Yeah, for sure. It’s just…I wish the second crime scene had them, too.”

  The crime-scene photos from the second victim’s house didn’t reveal any materials from Ted’s, but that didn’t necessarily refute my theory. It could have been a simple case of the murderer not returning in time for any of the delivered items to remain on hand. Nonetheless, the lack of a trifecta with this evidence rendered Miyake less excited than he might have been. But like me, the detective had no other compelling leads in this case.

  Sampson had agreed with the offender profile I’d constructed. Together, we laid it out for Miyake so he and his team could use it to refine their search for the perp.r />
  This hand-off of responsibilities always left me with mixed feelings. On one hand, it certainly made sense for me to do my profiling job and let the detectives perform the actual searches, activities in which they were better trained and more experienced. On the other hand, having reverse engineered the mind of a criminal from the evidence he left behind, it felt odd to step away from the investigation—a bit like taking a lead in a race, then stepping aside. Who wants to jump off the roller coaster until it pulls to a stop?

  I usually tried to strike a happy medium—stay involved in the case, but more in the capacity of refining the offender’s profile as more evidence came to light. Since better profiles lead to more arrests, my bosses were happy with this arrangement. In this spirit, I rang up Miyake the next morning from my desk. “Any news?”

  “Yeah. Turns out a single driver from Ted’s made deliveries to all three vics.”

  “That’s great!”

  “Um…not so much. The driver, Sal Busby, has a rock-solid alibi for the last two murders. He was one of the organizers of a YMCA basketball tournament.”

  “The tournament lasted until midnight?” I asked, recalling Ida Malone’s latest time of death he’d told me the previous day.

  “For him it did. The tourney ended at nine, but Busby and his three counterparts stayed ‘til the wee hours of the morning working on the awards ceremony and after-event social. He didn’t leave until well after midnight both nights. All three other organizers confirmed.”

  That sucked. “What are you going to do now?”

  Miyake sighed. “I’m not sure. It’s back to the drawing board for sure.”

  “Keep me posted, will you?”

  “Sure thing.”

  I leaned back in my chair and mulled over this unwelcome news. It seemed my take-out theory had hit a dead end. Or had it? Was there more to this lead? Sometimes you don’t discover all the ingredients of a stew unless you stir the pot. My gut told me this lead was important, so I opted to push on it a bit more on my own. I know…not really one of my job responsibilities, but I was never one to color inside the lines anyway.