by Tami Hoag
For a moment he flashed back on that late March evening, walking to his car with his groceries, his mind on a case. That was as much as he had been able to recall. And even that memory had probably been manufactured by his brain. Witnesses had stated a guy in a hooded sweatshirt with a gun in his hand had walked up to him, demanded money. He hadn’t reacted quickly enough. The assailant pulled the trigger.
Three weeks went by before he regained consciousness and was told by his doctors that he was a miracle. The .22-caliber bullet had entered his skull and never exited. Only time would tell the extent of the lasting damage to his brain.
He had found it ironic. All his years in law enforcement, and he had never been injured. He, Mr. FBI, had to get mugged in a Kroger’s parking lot, shot in the head by a junkie.
Leaving the men’s room, he went to his desk. As was his habit since the Marine Corps, it was neat and orderly, and he could have laid his hand on any piece of paper he needed without having to make a mess. An orderly environment spoke of an orderly brain—except for the shards of brass in the middle of his.
After chewing down a handful of antacid tablets from his desk drawer, he made his phone call, got some information, and went back to the meeting where he handed Ken a piece of paper with a phone number on it.
The discussion had moved on to a series of sexual homicides in New Mexico near the Mexican border. The investigation was involving the Mexican authorities who were asking to send two of their detectives to Quantico for a crash course in profiling.
The morning wore on. Vince bided his time, letting the agents with active cases take their turns. As the meeting wound down, his friend at the head of the table made eye contact again.
“You didn’t come in because you missed looking at all these ugly mugs,” he said.
“No.” Vince cracked a lopsided smile and chuckled. “Where’s Russo? I came to look at her.”
Rosanne Russo was the only woman in the unit and more than used to taking a rash of shit for it.
“She’s at a conference in Seattle.”
“Damn. My luck.”
“What have you got, Vince?”
He rose to his feet slowly, so as not to touch off a bout of vertigo. “I’ve got a possible serial killer in Southern California. The guy abducts women, tortures them, and glues their eyes and mouths shut with superglue.”
“Pre- or postmortem?”
“I don’t know yet.”
“What’s the victim profile?”
“One of the vics had an old record of arrests for prostitution. No ID yet on the latest one.”
“How many vics?”
“Three in two years.”
His friend frowned. “That barely meets criteria.”
“Tell that to the dead woman they found yesterday. She was buried in a public park with her head aboveground.”
Eyebrows went up. Now it was interesting. This was a jaded bunch. There wasn’t much in the way of human depravity they hadn’t seen. It took something pretty out there to impress them.
“Photos?”
“They just found her late yesterday. No photos yet.”
“What about from the other two cases?”
“Were the other bodies buried in the same manner?” another agent asked.
“No and no.”
“You don’t have any paper on this,” his friend said. “I haven’t seen any paper on this.”
“Nope. I was just wondering if anyone had come across this See-No-Evil, Speak-No-Evil thing with the superglue before. Roy?”
Roy was the resident expert on sexual assault and sexual homicide, although they all had dealt with their share of it. Roy shook his head.
“I’ve seen eyes gouged out, acid poured in them. I’ve seen lips cut off, objects wedged in the mouth, mouths taped shut. No superglue.”
“Okay,” Vince said and took his seat again. “I was just wondering.”
His friend at the end of the table wore the my-ass expression. Everyone else got up to go to lunch, exchanging handshakes, concerns, and pleasantries with him as they made their way to the door. With him and the boss still sitting at the table, no one bothered to ask if he was coming to lunch.
When the door had closed and they were alone, his friend let his own concern show on his face. He got up and came to Vince’s end of the table.
“You grew a mustache.”
Vince swiped a hand over the coarse steel gray, not-exactly-regulation hair decorating his upper lip. “You’re very observant. You should be a detective.”
“Makes me think you’re not really back. How are you? Really.”
“The meds make me puke up everything I eat,” he confessed. “But I hear that’s all the rage these days among the beautiful people, so . . .”
“Should you be here?”
“Where should I be? Sitting in a recliner watching the hours of my life tick away? You might as well shoot me in the head. Oh, wait, somebody already did that.”
“What’s with this case?”
“A kid I taught in the National Academy classes a year or so ago, Tony Mendez, called me at the crack of dawn with this. The crack of dawn our time. Had to be in the middle of the friggin’ night where he is. He’s pretty het up about the case. His first serial killer.”
“If that’s what it is.”
“If that’s what it is,” Vince agreed.
“Where does the kid rank on it?”
“He’s the lead detective. He works for the county sheriff.”
“The sheriff gave him the okay to bring this to us?”
Vince made a face. “Not exactly. But the kid’s going to convince him.”
“And I’m going to learn to speak Italian.”
“Bella!” Vince said, laughing.
His friend shook his head. “How you still have a sense of humor is beyond me.”
“Hey, I’m a living punch line. I got shot in the head and lived to tell about it. That’s a big joke on somebody—the perp, God, me.”
“What do you want to do with this, Vince? This case won’t even come close to the standard. And we’ve got legit cases coming in for review every day of the week. If I had twenty profilers, they’d all be up to their asses in work.”
“This UNSUB has used the superglue at least twice, and probably on a third vic in another jurisdiction,” Vince said. “This time he literally plants his handiwork for public display. That’s (a) highly ritual ized behavior, and (b) escalating in terms of the attention he wants. He isn’t going to stop.
“And I like this kid Mendez,” he admitted. “He’s sharp. He’d make a good agent. I’d like to see him come to the Bureau.”
“And let me guess. He’s an ex-marine.”
Vince grinned. “Semper fi, baby. There’s no such thing as an ex-marine.”
“You want to mentor him.”
“He promised he’d take me deep-sea fishing.”
“There’s no way I get this approved through the unit chief. He’ll tell you if you want to teach he’ll get you all the class time you want.”
“So I go on my own time. I’m still on leave anyway. And then there’s the mustache . . .”
“On your own time, on your own dime. No per diem, no hotel room, no nothing.”
“Nancy’ll let me skip an alimony payment. She’s feeling guilty.”
“If she hadn’t divorced you, you wouldn’t have gotten shot in the head?”
“She is all-powerful.”
They were silent for a moment. His friend sighed. Vince sighed.
“Look, John, you know how I feel about going to the scene with these cases. For me, being detached from the setting, working out of this friggin’ tomb, doesn’t give me perspective, it doesn’t make me objective. I’d like to teach a hands-on approach to what we do, because for some of us that works better. If I can go out to California, be of some service nicking this dirtbag before he becomes the next Bundy, and cultivate a new agent, why not?”
Why not? Because the Bureau
had a book of rules and regs, and “why not” was not an approved reason for any action to be taken by an agent. “Why not” would have to go through the channels of ASACs and SACs, unit chiefs, and half a dozen committees on its way to the head of the Bureau. It sure as hell wouldn’t happen in his lifetime.
A knock sounded on the door, and a clerk stuck her head in.
“I’m sorry to interrupt, but there’s an urgent call on line two for Special Agent Leone.”
Vince went to the phone on the credenza and listened, then put his hand over the receiver and turned to his friend. “They just ID’d the vic from yesterday, and they’ve got another woman missing, both connected to the same women’s center.”
His old friend shrugged and smiled. “Go with God, my friend.”
15
“Miss Thomas, does the name Julie Paulson mean anything to you?” Mendez asked.
They had gone into a private family room in the funeral home. The drapes were heavy and the room reeked of stargazer lilies and gladi olas. Jane Thomas had sunk down into a corner of a velvet couch the color of a good cabernet. She was as pale as death, still shaken by the discovery of Lisa Warwick’s body.
Mendez had gone into overdrive at the realization that they had both a dead woman and a woman missing, and that both women had ties to the Thomas Center for Women. He had a million questions and wanted to fire them off like rounds from a machine gun, but Jane Thomas was fragile, and he had to be patient. Not one of his stronger virtues.
Jane looked at him, confused. “No. Who is she? Is there some reason I should know her?”
“She was never a client at your facility? She never worked at your facility?”
“Not that I remember. What does she have to do with . . . ?” She turned her head in the direction of the embalming room, unable to say the victim’s name.
“Oh my God,” she whispered, shaking. “Karly. You think she’s with the—the animal that did that to Lisa, don’t you?”
Cal Dixon put a reassuring hand on her knee. Mendez mentally raised an eyebrow.
“Jane,” Dixon spoke quietly, as if he were talking to a nervous horse. “Chances are Karly is with someone she knows. She probably just went—”
Jane Thomas steeled herself, sitting up a little taller. “Don’t you dare patronize me. We’ve been over this. Karly did not just anything.”
“Miss Thomas?” Mendez tried to bring her attention back to him, a little irritated at his boss for bringing an obviously personal note into the proceedings. “Julie Paulson was a woman found murdered outside of town in April last year. I’m wondering if she might have had a connection to the center.”
“April ’84? I was in Europe for several months. My parents own horses. Their top horse was competing in Germany and Holland. I went with them . . .”
Mendez knew why people in this situation rambled and digressed. If Jane Thomas was thinking of her parents’ show horses, she couldn’t be thinking about the horror she had seen in the room down the hall.
“Have there been any threats against the center recently?” Dixon asked.
“The usual kooks and religious fanatics.”
“What does ‘usual’ mean?” Mendez asked.
“The a-woman’s-place-is-barefoot-and-pregnant crowd. The whores-should-turn-to-Jesus-or-burn-in-hell crowd. The right-to-lifers, though I’ll never figure that one out. We provide our women with access to medical care. We don’t advocate abortion.”
“Do you keep hate mail?”
“Yes. In a file at the office.”
“We’ll need to see it.”
“Of course.”
“You said the victim—Lisa Warwick—used to work for you. When was that?”
“A few years ago. She was an administrative secretary and she volunteered as a victim’s advocate in her spare time, hand-holding clients who had to deal with the court system. She still does—did—that from time to time.”
“Any cases lately?”
“A few months ago. A client with a drug history was trying to get visitation rights to her children.”
“Was there an angry father involved?”
“No. Actually, in the end the father was so impressed with the progress his ex-wife had made, he withdrew his objection.”
“Why did Ms. Warwick leave the center?” Mendez asked.
“She went back to college to finish her degree in nursing.”
“She left on good terms with everyone?”
“Yes. Absolutely. You can’t think someone at the center could have done this.”
“We have to explore all possibilities,” Mendez said.
“It’s standard investigative procedure, Jane,” Dixon said. “We never know where leads might come from.”
“We’ll need to interview the staff,” Mendez said. “And the women—your clients.”
He could see that was the last thing Jane Thomas wanted.
“These women are fragile,” she said. “They’ll be scared to death.”
“They may have a right to be,” Mendez said bluntly.
“That’s a little premature, Detective,” Dixon said, giving him a steely look. “But we have to err on the side of caution.
“What do you know about Lisa Warwick’s background?”
“She’s from Kansas originally. I probably have a contact number for her in the old personnel files.”
“Ex-husbands? Bad boyfriends?” Mendez asked.
“None that I remember. Lisa was a very private person.”
“Did she engage in any risky behavior? Frequent bars? Drinking? Drugs?”
“I can’t imagine that she did. She liked to knit.”
“When was the last time you had any contact with her?”
“We spoke on the phone from time to time. She dropped in at the center a few weeks ago to say hi.”
“Do you know where she was working?”
“The ER at Mercy General, here in town.”
She put a hand over her eyes as she started to cry. Dixon got up from the couch and tipped his head toward the door. Mendez followed him out into the hall.
“I’ll go to the hospital and see what I can find out about Warwick,” Mendez said, still scribbling in his notebook. “I figure I’ll send Hamilton and Hicks to the Thomas Center.”
“What did your connection at Quantico say?”
“He’s coming out.”
“He’s coming here?”
“Yeah.”
“That’s not the usual protocol.”
Mendez shrugged.
Dixon didn’t look happy. “I don’t want a circus here, Tony. I don’t want this guy talking to the media. I don’t want anybody talking to the media.”
“That doesn’t need to be an issue.”
“That includes you,” Dixon said, thrusting a finger at him. “Dial it down. I know this is a big case for you, and you’re excited about it. That’ll make you sharp. But I don’t want you running off the rails. Understand?”
“Yes, sir,” Mendez said, falling back on tried-and-true marine respect for rank.
“I don’t want anything said about there being a possible connection between these victims.”
“No, sir.”
“I’ve seen a couple of those BSU guys grandstand and shoot their mouths off. I won’t have it.”
“No, sir. Absolutely not, sir.”
Dixon stepped back, sighed, looked around. “Go radio for a uniform to pick you up. I’m going to take Jane home.”
“Yes, sir.”
Dixon looked a little sheepish. “We’re friends.”
“Not my business, sir,” Mendez said.
“No, it isn’t.”
16
The Roache home was a modest bungalow in a slightly shabby part of town. The house could have used a coat of paint, but the place was otherwise neat. Someone had put a pot of rust-colored mums on the front step, adding a splash of fall color to the picture.
Anne rang the doorbell and waited. Cody’s mother had called
the school that morning to say that Cody was ill and wouldn’t be in class. Anne had found her thoughts drifting to him off and on all day. He was the only one of the four children who had discovered the body she hadn’t seen for herself. At the end of the school day, she got in her car and drove directly to the Roache home.
A small dog yapped its way through the house, followed by Renee Roache. Cody’s mother was small and weedy with limp brown hair and a pale complexion. She worked days as a waitress at a diner near the college where the pace was hectic and the tips pathetic. Her husband was a maintenance man who worked nights at Mercy General.
“Mrs. Roache, I hope I’m not imposing,” Anne said. “I just wanted to check on Cody to see how he’s doing.”
Renee Roache looked perplexed, as did the dog at her feet, a fat brown-and-white terrier, tipping its head quizzically from one side to the other. “That’s beyond the call of duty, isn’t it? It’s just a stomach bug.”
It was Anne’s turn to look puzzled. “Um, well, I had a feeling, after what happened yesterday . . .”
“What happened yesterday? Did something happen at school?”
“Didn’t Principal Garnett’s office call you?”
“Not that I know of. I ran out to get something for Cody’s stomach this morning. Maybe they called then. We don’t have an answering machine.”
“Oh,” Anne said, at a loss. Cody had obviously not told his mother about finding the body in the woods. It was a hard idea to grasp that a child would keep that kind of information to himself.
“What happened?” Renee asked, getting anxious.
Anne took a deep breath. “You might want to sit down for this.”
They went into the Roaches’ tiny living room where the television was playing a Star Trek rerun. Anne expected to see Cody on the couch, watching intently. Spaceships were his obsession. But the couch was empty and Renee offered her a seat there.
Dinner was cooking, the smell of roast chicken drifting in from the kitchen. The little dog hopped up on the couch to give Anne a closer look.
Anne told the story for what seemed like the tenth time in twenty-four hours. Cody’s mother sat, stunned.
“Why didn’t he tell me?” she asked, her voice as thin as she was. “He came running home yesterday with a bad stomach. He’d had an accident in his pants. I thought maybe it was something he ate at school, or there’s always a bug going around . . . He didn’t say a word.”