by Alex Kava
There were never greetings, a detail he appreciated, not wanting to waste time on pleasantries that were no longer necessary. This message contained two separate links that looked like news articles. It was something they did quite frequently, drawing each other’s attention to particular events and starting a whole new discussion. At the end of the message his friend simply wrote: YOU MAY BE NEXT. Probably another attempt at humor; he liked his friend’s dry sense of humor, their occasional exchange of playful barbs.
He clicked on the first link and again sat back to wait for the ever-slow connection. When the page finally came up, the headline startled him enough that he jolted upright, almost spilling his tea: Omaha Monsignor Knifed To Death In Airport Restroom.
CHAPTER 27
University of New Haven
New Haven, Connecticut
Maggie stood back and watched Professor Adam Bonzado turn the flesh-eaten skull around in his hands, holding it and examining it as if it were a jeweled treasure. She had never realized before how strong his hands looked. The long fingers like that of a piano player, careful and gentle yet probing the loose flesh, inquisitive without hesitating and without cringing. Gwen had given her a hard time, suggesting she had met her match with Bonzado—finally a man just as obsessed with evil as she was.
“I know there’s not much to go on with either of these,” Racine said, also standing back. She had placed the metal cooler on one of his classroom lab tables and let him open it. Maggie wondered if it wasn’t a professional courtesy so much as Racine wasn’t anxious to handle a human head with or without maggots.
“These are in much better shape than some of the ones that pass through here,” Bonzado said, lifting and looking at it from all angles. “I enjoy teaching, but this is the stuff I live for. Keeps me on my toes. Besides, I get to take two attractive women out to lunch.”
Maggie thought she saw Racine blush, but she looked away, pretending to be preoccupied with the contents of the room. Was it possible Racine had a crush on Bonzado? Long before Racine had hit on her, Maggie had heard rumors that Racine was bisexual. Still, it had come as a surprise. At the time, Maggie was married, obsessed with her work and naïve—or perhaps oblivious was a better term—to anyone’s advances whether they be male or female. Actually, when she thought about it, that wasn’t much different than what she was like now. Except for the married part, she was still pretty oblivious.
“And Maggie, I promise lunch will be much better than vegetable soup on one of my Bunsen burners.”
He glanced up at her as if to see if she remembered or perhaps to see if she would catch this one, this advance, this attempt at flirting. Case in point. Could he read her mind? Maggie couldn’t help smiling. Of course she remembered. The last time she had been to his classroom lab he had a pot of soup cooking alongside a boiling pot of human bones. It had sort of freaked her out when she saw him scooping up a bite. That was before she knew it was his lunch and not more human remains.
Bonzado laid the skull down carefully on the table in front of them and brought out a penlight, bending over to examine the inner orifices. The table was one of only two not filled with boxes of bones or lines of skeletons. Many of the skeletons looked like failed attempts at putting the pieces together, missing major sections.
Last time there had been many more pots, huge ones, boiling on the burners, filling the room with the smell of cooked flesh. Thankfully the burners were empty this time, perhaps because of the holiday weekend. Even the dryers and the sinks in the far corner looked empty, no bony hands waving up at them.
The shelves that lined the back wall, however, were just as crowded as she remembered with jars and vials, bowls and cardboard boxes, all filled with jigsaw pieces of bone, some labeled, others waiting, perhaps forever, to be identified or claimed.
A streak of sunlight came in the classroom’s double-paned windows, a yellow-orange splash that cast an eerie tone over the entire room. Maggie couldn’t help thinking they didn’t need the added sense of drama. Bonzado already looked like an actor out of Hamlet with skull in hand and a soulful look. That is, of course, if you could imagine Hamlet in a purple-and-yellow Hawaiian shirt, khaki walking shorts and hiking boots.
“The one we found Friday might be identified by sight. I’ve got someone checking against the missing persons list. Dental’s intact, too. It was in much better shape,” Racine explained, and Maggie wondered if she was simply trying to fill the silence. Bonzado didn’t seem to be listening. “Well, better shape if you don’t count all the fucking maggots it had on it. Jesus! I haven’t seen that many in a long time.”
“You’re lucky in this heat. The little suckers work fast,” Bonzado said. So he had been listening. “Where was this one found? Was it close to the water, too?”
“Is that Jane Doe A or B?” Racine asked, looking for the toe tag Stan Wenhoff had attached to each bag. Without the tags it was difficult to tell the two skulls apart. Racine rummaged through the cooler, searching for any ID that may have been left behind.
“It’s Jane Doe A,” Racine finally said, pulling out the tag. “This one was found in Rock Creek Park. A wooded area down away from the running trail. A woman and her dog found it. She called it in and gave the directions. Said her dog stumbled upon it.”
“It was preserved fairly well for being in the woods.”
“It was covered with leaves and dirt.” Racine was checking her notes from the file.
“Did you say a woman called it in?” Maggie didn’t remember seeing a name in the file and now she realized it may have never been given. “She didn’t take you to the site or meet you there?”
“No, she didn’t even come in to file a report,” Racine said. “Called it in to 911 and the dispatch operator took all the information.”
“And she didn’t leave a name?”
“No name.” Racine looked up from her notes and met Maggie’s eyes.
She could see the detective was thinking the same thing she was. Had it been the same woman caller who directed them to the bank of the Potomac on Friday? To another one of the killer’s dump sites?
“Did a woman call in the other one?”
Racine pulled out another file folder and started riffling through it. “Here it is. Jane Doe B was found outside a construction site for a new parking garage. The owner, a Mr. Bradford Zahn, contacted the police. Hmm…no mysterious woman caller.” She wasn’t pleased and shrugged when she looked up at Maggie. “So much for our theory.”
Bonzado appeared unfazed by it all. Instead, he had laid the head on its side and was examining the marks at the base of the severed skull.
“I can’t be certain what he used to cut off her head, but I’m thinking it was more like he chopped it than cut.”
“Chopped and ripped,” Maggie added. “The last victim’s neck had a lot of rips and tears.”
“This reminds me of a case I had a couple of months ago,” Bonzado told them. “All that was found was the right leg. It was fairly decomposed, too. Somebody fished it out of the Connecticut River. The chop marks were very similar to this. I kept trying to reproduce the marks, using just about everything I could think of. The closest match was a small hatchet, the kind you’d use for camping.”
“So it was literally a hatchet job, huh?” Racine laughed at her own joke.
Bonzado didn’t. But he did smile even though he went on to point out gashes on what was left of this victim’s split vertebrae. “Usually when a body’s dismembered, the joints and bones are sawn or cut with a blade. A sharp, blunt object like a hatchet or ax—or he could have even used a machete—leaves gashes in the bone from the attempts that didn’t quite slice through. That probably explains the rips and tears you were seeing in the skin and tissues, too.”
“There’s one thing that bothers me,” Maggie said as she watched Bonzado add some cleaning solvent to the bone. The liquid seemed to highlight the chop marks. “This guy has to be disciplined and organized enough to plan not only the murders, bu
t the drop sites. And yet, it’s almost as if he completely loses it after he’s killed them. The last victim showed signs of being strangled and hit over the head with a ball-peen hammer. A hatchet or machete just contributes to this idea that he sort of loses it.”
“Yeah, and what about that? Why not a saw or knife?” Racine asked. “Is it poor planning? Does he use whatever is handy?” Racine asked, but she was directing her question to Maggie, the FBI profiler, instead of Bonzado.
“He has to take them someplace safe to cut them up,” Maggie said. “Where could he go that just happens to have a hatchet or machete handy?”
“My dad keeps a machete in his garden shed,” Bonzado offered. “He claims it works for anything from hacking off tree branches to plucking up dandelions. As for the hatchet, someone who camps a lot might actually carry one around in his trunk with other camping supplies.”
“Even if he keeps it in his car, where the hell does he take them?” Racine wanted to know. “Cutting off someone’s head is a messy job. And it’s not like there’s a whole lot of gardening sheds in the District.”
“We can’t assume he kills them in the District,” Maggie said. “Just because their heads are dumped there.”
“Fair enough,” Racine said with no argument. Maggie thought she was awfully agreeable this trip. “So he could possibly have access to a cabin or toolshed, but he probably lives in the District, right? From what I know about serial killers, they don’t usually display their handiwork too far from where they live or work.”
“Excuse me, ladies.” Bonzado now had forceps and was bent over a patch of loose flesh, pulling it away from the base of the skull. “I might have something here. Mind if I pluck this off?”
“Whatever you need to do.”
Maggie came in close over Bonzado’s shoulder, but she wasn’t sure what had gotten his attention. The flesh was so decomposed it had turned gray and black in the areas where it remained attached. Even the cleaning solvent couldn’t help here.
“What is it?” Maggie finally asked, thinking something had been embedded in the flesh.
Bonzado carefully ripped off a piece of tissue about two inches in diameter. He held it up in the sunlight, but Maggie still couldn’t tell what it was that had gotten his attention.
“The epidermis is gone and I need to clean this up.” He was grinning now and it reminded Maggie of a proud schoolboy with a show-and-tell project. “If I’m not mistaken, I think this may be a tattoo from the back of her neck. The killer may have thought he removed it when it ripped off the top layer, but tattoos actually show up better deep under where the ink settles.”
“You think there’s enough to figure out what it is?”
“Hard to tell.” And now he was holding it up under a fluorescent desk light. “But if there is enough, tattoos can be pretty unique. We’ve identified victims by their tattoos in other instances.”
“So maybe the killer slipped up.” Racine sounded hopeful.
“Oh, yeah. I’d say he may have made a big-time boo-boo.”
CHAPTER 28
Omaha, Nebraska
Tommy Pakula left Clare and the girls outside under the canopy in their backyard. They eagerly excused him so they could discuss plans for the big Fourth of July bash later at Memorial Park without him breaking into his off-key rendition of the Beach Boys, just one of the has-been entertainment lineups for the event.
He didn’t mind. He had the family room to himself. Even better, he had the TV remote to himself. He clicked the TV on, switching channels, and leaving it on Fox News for background noise while he pulled out the file folders he had brought home. He didn’t usually bring home files, but something about this one bugged him and Weston’s taunt only made him anxious.
He pulled out crime scene and autopsy photos along with the reports he had downloaded from the Minneapolis Police Department. With no leads in their investigation they seemed to welcome his inquiries. Right now Minneapolis considered it random, but Pakula wondered if the killer knew that his victim was an ex-priest.
The Douglas County Crime Lab hadn’t much for him yet. It was too early. Medina had, however, tagged and labeled some of the trace she had collected. Locard’s Principle had come through for him many times in the past. No matter how careful a killer was, there was an exchange of debris that took place between the killer and the victim. It was inevitable. Unless the killer came to the scene in a sterilized suit he was bound to leave something—mud from his shoes, fibers from his shirt or if they were really lucky, hairs from his head.
Pakula looked over the plastic evidence bags Medina had included. The first one looked like bread crumbs. He held up the bag to read Medina’s note on the back label:
Location: Front of victim’s shirt.
Lab Test Conclusive—white unleavened bread.
Pakula scratched his head. He still couldn’t figure this one out. Why the hell would there be bread crumbs on the front of the victim’s shirt? No way could he have picked them up from the floor. Did one of the voyeurs who trampled in on the scene have a sandwich? Nothing had been left behind, so it wasn’t like the monsignor had put aside his dinner. Or if he did, was it possible one of the assholes who came in to take a piss, decided to help himself to a half-eaten sandwich? Sounded ridiculous, but he had seen stranger things.
Pakula picked up the next plastic evidence bag. This time he started to get excited when he noticed the short strands of hair. Hair wasn’t always a guarantee for DNA extraction. You needed the root or bulb or a part of it to get anything credible. Even two strands from the same person weren’t always conclusive. Right now with no evidence Pakula would take a single nose hair if it proved to be the killer’s. He read Medina’s label and let out a disappointed sigh. He wanted to toss the bag across the room:
Location: Strands taken from back of victim’s shirt.
Lab Test Conclusive—Canine hair. Breed Unknown at this time.
All his excitement and it was a fucking dog the monsignor had encountered, not the killer.
He glanced out the window. Clare and the girls were still under the canopy, laughing. No serious debates or arguments to bring one of them in, at least not for a while, so the coast was clear. He sorted through the photos and selected several to lay out on the cocktail table in front of him.
One from the crime scene showed Monsignor O’Sullivan crumpled on the floor, lying on his side, his legs twisted, and his crushed eyeglasses beside him. Pakula looked for a close-up of the glasses and quickly found it. They hadn’t broken like that from the fall. Someone had stepped on them. Maybe the killer. Possibly on purpose. He made a mental note to see if Medina had been able to pull a shoe print from either the lenses or from somewhere beside the eyeglasses.
He flipped through Medina’s notes on other traces collected: a stray French fry, a breath mint, several fibers, some tramped in clay and a couple of blades of some kind of weed. Could be all from the floor and have nothing to do with the crime scene. What would you expect from a commercial rest-room floor? Not much to go on. It was as if the killer walked in, stabbed the monsignor and walked back out without even washing his hands. There wasn’t a single bloody paper towel in the trash can. So he walked back out with a bloody knife and no one—not even the guy who thought he bumped into the killer—saw the knife. How was that possible?
Pakula left the photos on the table, but set aside the file folder. Now he was ready for Minneapolis. He scanned the police report. It was just like Weston had said—an outdoor festival during Memorial Weekend. The victim was stabbed in the chest in the middle of the crowd. No one saw it happen. No one claimed to see anything other than ex-padre Daniel Ellison fall to his knees, grabbing his chest. Maybe this one was random.
Pakula tossed several of the downloaded images onto the table alongside the Omaha ones. Not much here, either. He sat back, leaned his head against the soft leather of the sofa and absently watched Fox News top-of-the-hour news report, not really listening, his mind focused inste
ad on the scant evidence.
He was tired and frustrated and mostly he dreaded telling Chief Ramsey that he had diddly-squat. He wondered if Archbishop Armstrong’s only concern was to continue to keep secret the monsignor’s drinking habit. Maybe they didn’t even know what was in the missing leather portfolio. Or could it simply be something embarrassing but not incriminating?
Pakula remembered Armstrong several months ago expelling two students from one of the parochial high schools for accessing porn sites on a school computer, sites the kids claimed their theology instructor—a priest whose name Pakula no longer remembered—had shown them just the day before.
At the time, Pakula thought it was Armstrong’s knee-jerk reaction, an attempt to ward off the slightest suggestion of impropriety in the wake of the sexual-abuse scandals rocking other archdioceses across the country. Armstrong had managed to keep a squeaky-clean record—no criminal reports filed or any civil lawsuits pending.
Just then Pakula noticed the photo of a priest being shown on the Fox News update—his black shirt and white collar grabbing Pakula’s attention even before he could read the caption below. He grabbed the remote and punched up the volume in time to hear only “…was mysteriously stabbed during a fireworks display. No other information is known at the moment. Father Gerald Kincaid was the pastor at All Saints Catholic Church in Columbia, Missouri. He was fifty-two years old.”
Pakula could feel the prickle at the back of his neck and the twist in the bottom of his gut. He grabbed his cell phone and without hesitation dialed the home phone number for Chief Ramsey. No matter how much he hated to admit it, he was beginning to think Bob Weston might be right.
Somebody was killing priests.
CHAPTER 29