“Okay then. So we follow this to its conclusion then. You ready?”
“Yeah, let's get this done,” Mathews replied and climbed out of the truck.
They were parked outside a large Spanish tiled roofed mansion which overlooked the picturesque red rocky terrain of the San Fernando Valley. Perched tentatively on the incline as it was, the residence was one mud slide away from a multimillion dollar insurance claim.
Costa and Mathews approached the door and knocked.
A lean man with a deeply tanned face and designer jeans scuffed just so in all the places one wouldn't acquire them naturally, answered the door.
“Yes?” He asked looking from Mathews to Costa with growing concern in his eyes. “Can I help you?”
“Mr. Cuther? Mathews asked.
“Yes. And you are?”
“Agent Mathews and agent Costa.” he said flashing his credentials and the man just blank faced them then leaned to look past them at their truck.
“We're just here to ask you about someone you used have in your employ. You are the owner of first response alarms, correct?” Costa asked.
“Uh, yes. Yes sir, I am.”
“May we come in Sir?”
“Of course,” the man said stepping aside and waving them along. “Of course. Please come.”
Mr. Cuther closed the door once both agents were inside. Costa looked around the place, nodding to himself with silent appreciation. The marble flooring of the hallway stretched into the main living area which had cathedral ceilings and a pattern of sun roofs that gave the house an air of warm sunniness. An oak banister spiralled up the stairs and wrapped around the balcony hallway of the upper floor.
“Please right this way.” Their host said and lead them onto the lower floor of the split level living room.
“Can I get you anything to drink Agent Mathews? Agent Costa?”
“No, we're fine. Thank you.” Mathews said taking in the view through the floor to ceiling windows.
“Are you sure? I just had this great wheat beer from a micro brewery in Costa Rica shipped in.”
“We're on duty.” Mathews said flatly and sat down on the couch.
“Yes, of course. Of course. Some water then?”
“No. Nothing thanks. This shouldn't take long.”
“Fair enough. How can I help?”
“How well did you know Danielle white?” Costa asked.
“Uhm. Fairly well, I would say. She was a good employee.”
“So you do remember her?” Costa asked.
“Yes, of course. I remember her very well. Danielle was with the company for three or four years. She was a hard worker, always punctual, reliable. Is this about her disappearance?”
“You're aware she had disappeared?” Mathews asked.
“Oh yes. You have an employee for that long, especially in this business, you of course wonder what has happened when they just stop showing up for work one day. Her mother was listed as an emergency contact on her application and I eventually phoned her to ask what had happened.”
“Do you always go through the trouble or tracking down your employees when they quit without warning?” Mathews asked.
“Well, no not always. But as I said, she had been with us a long time and I was prepared to offer her a raise if her reason for leaving was money related. That's when her mother informed me they had filed a missing persons report.”
“Did you ever spend time with Mrs. White socially?”
“No, never. Not unless you count our company Christmas parties.”
“Did she ever bring her boyfriend to the parties? Ryan Maynard?”
“Not that I recall, no. If you don't mind me asking detectives, why now? It's been what? Five years since she went missing.”
“We're not detectives Mr. Cuther. That would be the LAPD We're special agents with the FBI.” “I'm sorry. Of course,” Mr. Cuther said shaking his head embarrassed. “I watch a lot of cop shows on TV and it's always detective this and detective that.
“We're here because recently some information has come to our attention that suggests Mrs. White and her boyfriend may have disappeared under violent circumstances.
“Oh my... violent circumstances. What does that mean?” He asked, lifting his hands up and covering his mouth,
“We think they may have been taken. Abducted,” Mathews said flatly.
“Oh my,” he said again staring hangdog down at his plaid polo slippers and lifting his hand to his chest as though the news was about to bring on a heart attack.
“You have any idea why someone may have wanted to harm her? You know of any... Dangerous characters she may have been associated with?”
“I – I don't know,” He started. “I can't imagine her being involved with any sort of trouble of her own doing. She seemed so... I don't know. Innocent.”
“And attractive.” Mathews added.
“Excuse me?” Mr. Cuther said with a snicker.
Costa turned and shot a dagger over his shoulder at Mathews. That angle was neither subtle nor warranted but it was already out so he softened his eyes just a bit and Mathews understood it as a signal to follow through.
“Are you single Mr. Cuther?”
“I'm... Exploring my options.”
“Exploring your options,” Mathews chuckled. “I like that. I think I will use that one. Are you divorced?”
“No. Never married.”
“Rich, handsome and single. The ladies must love you Mr. Cuther.”
“Look. Danielle and I were not romantically involved if that's where you're going with this.”
“So you weren't attracted to her?”
“Uh, no. She wasn't exactly my type,” he said, then smiled and added for good measure, “I'm a homosexual.”
Swing and miss. Costa cut in with an apologetic tone.
“We have to explore every angle, you understand.”
“It's okay. I get it.”
“Did you and Danielle talk?”
“Did we talk?”
“Yeah, you know. Chit chat. Weather, politics. What we did on the weekend. That sort of thing.”
“Yeah. We talked, sure.”
“She ever mention someone named Victor Matherport?”
“Victor Matherport... Victor Matherport.” he looked up and away as if trying to access his memory. “No I don't think so. I can't recall anyways. But that name sounds familiar. Who is he?”
“Just a person of interest,” Costa said. If he didn't recognize the name there was no reason to alarm him. “Well, if you can think of anything. Anything that seems even somewhat relevant, please let us know. Here's my card.”
Mr. Cuther took the card and assured him, “Yes, yes I certainly will... uh good luck with the case.”
“Thank you for your time.” Mathews said as they exited the house.
Once back in the truck Costa loosened his tie and said, “I just don't see it. This girl and Matherport. Doesn't add up.”
“I'll take a look at her complete work history when we get back. Hell, there are a million different ways they could have known each other.”
“So you're fully on board with this?” Costa asked lifting a brow.
“What's that? Foster's theory?”
“Yeah.”
“It fills in a lot of holes. How do you think he came to it?”
“Hell if I know. He's a smart fucking guy. That's his world. Getting in their heads. Figuring out their thought processes and shit. I don't know how he got there but I trust him. If he say's he's sure, then we're going to follow through on it.”
“Yeah, but still... Quite the leap.” Mathews said as Costa started up the engine and they pulled back out on the road.
CHAPTER 17
The following are selected excerpts from part three of Richard Lansdown’s mini series, Man and Murder. Part three: Mister, Mister.
RICHARD LANSDOWN:
Man has always been fascinated with the concept of monsters. Tales of mythological creatures a
re as old as history itself. Minotaurs and gryphons. Dragons and Krakens. Then there are monsters who are still believed to be alive today: the Loch Ness Monster, Big foot, the Chupacabra. Though arguably, most think that if these kinds of monsters do exist they are merely undiscovered members of the animal kingdom. For the most part, modern man now understands that the concept of the monster is really just a metaphor. A symbol used in ancient religions and philosophy. Though there is still one kind of monster which fascinates us and that does exist. One which innumerable books, television shows and movies have been written about. The human monster. The killer. And there is no killer who is more an enigma, or who captures our attention more than the serial killer.
IMAGE: freeze frame video on Mister’s face.
RICHARD LANSDOWN
In two-thousand and six a new villain emerged in the American media. A serial killer who seems like he is straight out of the pages of a comic book. He paints his face and skin white like a ghost, wears an all white suit. A seemingly uncatchable individual who has been terrorizing the state of California with blatant disregard for the abilities of the authorities. He kills at random and then mocks police with videos, regaling them and the world with the details of his brutal crimes. He is the modern day monster. And he is very real.
TITLE CARD: Man and Murder Part Three: Mister, Mister.
LEON SHULTZ: (criminologist)
Mister is a very dangerous personality. Obviously. But what makes him so dangerous is not just his capacity for the ultimate violence. It's his charisma. He's reminiscent of Charles Manson or Ted Bundy in that way. Only he's better at it. What he's doing is similar to what the zodiac killer did. Taunting the police, mocking their ability to catch him. There difference being that the Zodiac killer only used letters. We never saw his face. Mister uploads videos directly onto the internet, literally letting you look him right in the eyes. So you take someone who is committing these horrible crimes, signing them by removing his victim’s eye balls so we all know it's him. And that in itself is something we can't help but be morbidly fascinated with, because we all instinctively want to know how a person, a member of our own species, could do something like this. And then he engages the police and the world really, with a kind of dialogue in the form of these haunting rants about the nature of man kind. It all makes for a very compelling narrative.
MARL LEVANT: (former FBI agent and investigative consultant)
This is what happens when we glorify these kinds of psychopaths. We end up with guys like Mister. A person who craves the spotlight, who has an insatiable ego that needs to be fed and after seeing countless examples of violent offenders getting their fifteen minutes he knows that if he is vicious and brazen enough, he will be rewarded with his as well.
DENNIS HOOD: (forensic psychologist)
What does he want? Well that's the million dollar question isn't it? The simplest answer is, he wants what only murder will bring him. Whatever feeling, or state that killing provides him is what he is after. It's a drug for him and that's the dragon he is always chasing. The scariest thing about serial killers is that their targets seem random. Or at least random within a target demographic. For instance, some serial killers only attack prostitutes, or in the case of Aileen Wuornos for example those soliciting prostitutes. Or it may be as simple as the race and sex of the victim or even the colour of their hair. It seems random and impulsive and in a sense some killers are controlled by impulse but the target always represents something deeply personal to the offender. In many cases I suspect it’s so deeply personal that it's subconsciously so.
LEON SHULTZ: (criminologist)
The removal of the eyes is very interesting. That is what investigative professionals refer to as the signature. An element of the crime which is not necessary for the completion of it. A serial offender who 'signs' his crime of course is looking for recognition. He wants people to know that the crimes signed in the same fashion are related. Of course he needs to sign his work but also fulfil some other drive. For instance, removing the skin of a victim to make clothing or a mask. But the offender knows that by doing so his past crimes will be linked together and attributed to the same person. The removal of his victim’s eyes and placing them below their feet doesn't seem to have any kind of practical utility and so one has to assume all Mister is hoping to accomplish with it, is the public's recognition of his work. The way a painter might sign a painting.
MARK LEVANT: (former FBI agent and investigative consultant)
Yeah, maybe he sees himself as an artist of death. The guy definitely has a flair for the dramatic. But I don't know. It just doesn't strike me as all that creative. Yeah the face paint and the costume and the video's. Yeah there's some production going on there. But if he was truly trying to create with violence or death, you would think the crimes scenes would have much more discrepancies. But he's doing the same rote steps over and over. He breaks into homes, kills and or rapes the inhabitants, and removes their eyes. That's not a creative process, that's a ritualized process.
THOMAS NEGUS: (psychologist)
He certainly is looking for fame. Or perhaps notoriety is a better word. We live in a very paradoxical time. As a culture we are looking at ourselves and at what it means to be human more than we ever have before. Part of the way we do this is through narrative. We consume an astonishing amount of narrative every day from all sorts of media. But never is the subject fully removed from the person playing a part in a movie or authoring a book. There is always a certain kind of mystique about the creators of narrative. And even, or maybe especially, with the advent of quote un-quote reality television we are immersing the human experience more and more into a new context that I don't believe is a healthy direction for us to be taking. That context it has created, is, to be seen is to be validated. It's the age old question, if a tree falls in a forest kind of thing. Only now we are asking, if a person lives but nobody see's him or hears him, did he exist? Well certainly in the cultural consciences the answer is no. He did not. So for many violent offenders I think it’s a case of preferring to be known as a despised maniac then to die feeling like a looser who nobody ever knew of at all. And in this light perhaps we can view Mister as a symptom of a kind of cultural sickness.
RICHARD LANSDOWN:
Is Mister really just the nightmarish result of a society obsessed with celebrity culture? Is he the prototype for a new kind of domestic terrorist? One who uses the connectedness of the information age to spread fear? Was the copy-cat he spawned engaged in a kind of hero worship? Will others be seduced into duplicating his horrible deeds in the pursuit of infamy? Nobody knows. What we do know is that as long has man has walked the earth there has been those among us who simply have no empathy. Those who hurt others simply because they want to; take because they can. And perhaps murderers and serial killers capture our attention so strongly because we recognize that we all have the capacity for violence. We all have the potential to be evil. We know that the only real monsters are the ones which dwell in man's heart. Most of us do not succumb to our darker angels. But every now and then, there is some of us who truly embraces their dark side. How long Mister's reign of terror will last, at the present we do not know. But what is certain is that even after he is caught, there will be others. For as long as man exists, so will murder.
CHAPTER 18
The second target he was instructed to attack was, judging by the smallness of the town house and the less then mint Honda hatchback in the driveway, a family at the lower end of middle class or perhaps a young couple just starting out. Maybe just a single person. A single lonely unlucky target in there eating a microwaved TV dinner in his underwear. It didn't matter. Jeremy would know soon enough and he-her-or-they would be dead.
His hands had been shaking all day but now had begun to wobble with Parkinson vigour.
He fumbled at the bottle of Xanex in his jacket pocket and shook two into his palm, popped and chewed. He waited until he could feel the chemical numbness spread through his
body and felt the familiar heaviness in the chest.
The lack of choices somehow had started to become reassuring. When this all came to light he only hoped – That what? People would understand? He didn't know what he hoped for. This was all going to end, he knew, with his death, either in one of these houses or on death row. But he had no choice. That was the only comfort now; the choicelesness of it.
He observed himself apply the paint, the costume. When he was done he was him. Dominated, owned, assimilated. He stared at Mister in the mirror and took a moment to swallow down into the bubbling acid of his knotted stomach anything that left inside him that was Jeremy.
He knew this would not be like the last time. This time the anger he needed was there. Anger at himself for doing this, or Mister or God or all of the above, but it was there. He had already determined to see this through. So whoever was in there was going to fucking die. They were going to fucking die and if they tried to make things difficult for him, well it didn't matter. Dead was dead.
He moved quickly to the backyard and stood carefully on a planter to get a view into the kitchen window. No movement, no light.
A door led into the attached single car garage and he could see through the small window on the door that the garage in turn, led into the house. He reached into the kill-bag and removed the small crowbar and dug it into the wood of the door, just behind the lock. It wasn't until the flimsy door splintered that he had the presence of mind to make sure he wasn't being observed. As far as he could tell, he wasn't.
Jeremy picked up his ghoulish tool kit, moved into the garage and from there entered the home through a door leading into the front hallway. The central air filled the little house with refrigerator coolness. He could detect a faint food smell in the air. Perhaps something fishy cooked earlier in the evening.
From where stood he could see a lamp was lit in the room closest to the front door, which was almost certainly the living room. Removing the hatchet from his jacket he raised it high in the air like a scorpion’s tail ready to strike and moved towards the light.
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