by Cross, Mason
For now, they had to assume the two girls had been abducted together. If Dutton wasn’t here, that meant she was possibly being held somewhere. Maybe at the murder scene itself. That made finding Dutton the immediate priority, but so far there was no sign of her or the Porsche.
Allen sighed and came back to the reality show star. “Okay, tell me what we know about Carrie Burnett. Last Sunday would fit with what the coroner investigator said. Where was she last seen?”
“That’s where it gets interesting,” Mazzucco said. “She was last seen outside a club in West Hollywood, getting into her car with the intention of driving home. She was alone, it was nighttime, and she lives in Studio City. No sign of her since then. Or her car.”
Allen felt an adrenaline jolt. The similar circumstances suggested a link that could well be borne out once they were able to trace Kelly Boden’s last minutes. It did more than that: it suggested an MO. She started to work through the scenarios, conscious that Mazzucco had a couple of minutes’ head start on her.
“What do you think? A hitchhiker?” As soon as the words were out, she knew it wasn’t that. No female driver would stop for a random hitcher at night. Not in this century.
Mazzucco was shaking his head. “I don’t think so. There’s one other thing: the last person to hear from her wasn’t a friend or family member. It was a dispatcher at Triple A.”
“She had a breakdown?”
Her partner nodded. “Somewhere on Laurel Canyon Boulevard. No sign of her or her vehicle by the time the tow truck appeared.”
“He’s picking them up. Somehow he’s finding female drivers in trouble and he’s showing up like some kind of . . .”
“Good Samaritan?”
Allen raised her eyebrows. “More like a bad one. Can we get an ID on the Triple A driver?”
“I’m on it.” Mazzucco took his phone out again and scanned an email. “Kelly Boden’s father lives down in Reseda; somebody’s with him. You want to go there now?”
Allen nodded at the suggestion, registering that Mazzucco was making a point of deferring to her as the primary, even though he’d made all of the breakthroughs so far. “Yeah, let’s go talk to them. I’ll drive.”
They got into the Ford, Allen in the driver’s seat this time, and pulled out onto the road. Seeing the two new bodies had crystallized one thing in her mind: she’d seen this killer’s work before.
1996
It was a Wednesday, the last day of July. The midsummer morning sun was already high in the blue sky over Los Angeles, burning determinedly through the haze of smog. Though it was barely seven o’clock in the morning, the roof of the black Buick Century was already getting hot to the touch. He rested both palms on it, enjoying the sensation. He looked north, toward the Santa Monica Mountains, and thought about the day to come.
He heard Kimberley coming up behind him from the direction of the front door, trying to sneak up. He played along, pretended to be startled when she grabbed his shoulders and yelled, “Wakey-wakey.”
He turned to look at her. She was wearing cutoff jeans shorts and a black Nirvana T-shirt. Her long black hair was tied back, the ponytail fed through the strap at the back of the Dodgers baseball cap she wore. The brim shaded her brown eyes but could not mask her excitement at the adventure ahead.
A plaintive voice trickled out from the driver’s seat. “I’m gonna need gas money, you guys.”
He ducked his head to look inside the car, at the source of the whine. Robbie was a scrawny, red-haired kid. He wore baggy mesh basketball shorts and a gray T-shirt with the slogan The Truth Is Out There. He’d met Robbie for the first time a couple of days previously. Robbie didn’t go to their school; he was one of the other kids who lived with Kimberley, here at Blackstones. He wasn’t sure why she’d asked Robbie along on the trip, although he had a suspicion that it was because she wasn’t comfortable being alone with him just yet. He didn’t hold that against her. He was aware there were probably good reasons for people to feel that way about him.
“We heard you the first hundred times, kid.”
“Don’t call me that. I’m older than you. And Jason will be pissed if I return his car empty. Do you know what Jason will do to us if he’s pissed?”
He opened his mouth to respond to that but felt Kimberley’s hand on his shoulder again. Her face was tilted upward, the look in her eyes easy to read: Be nice.
“You’re the boss, Robbie,” he said, picking up his backpack by its strap and dumping it in the backseat.
Kimberley ran around the front of the car and got in the passenger side. “Are you ready? This is going to be great, I promise.”
He got into the backseat and closed the door behind him. He thought she was wrong. He thought it was going to be better than great.
10
He drifted into consciousness to the sound of distant screams.
His dreams had been fragmented and confused, as they always were. A little of the past, a little of the present, a little of what he thought was to come. He kept his eyes closed and savored the thick aftertaste of sleep. Memories of a long, hot summer two decades before, and of one day in particular. In the dream, images and sensations from that summer’s day had blurred and blended with more recent input. Last night. Darkness and rain and blood. Sunshine and a cool breeze and the creaking sound of an old sign hanging in front of an empty building. The kindred ways sunlight and moonlight glance off a blade
Dark hair and brown eyes. He knew he’d be seeing her again soon.
He opened his own eyes gradually, allowing them to adjust to the afternoon sunlight penetrating the narrow gaps between the blinds. Dust motes circled and whirled lazily in the light. As he allowed the world back in, he realized the far-off screams were not born of pain and terror, but of delight. Children playing in some backyard, or perhaps even out on the street.
He slid his legs off the bed and stood up. As was his routine, his hand reached for the photograph he kept beside him when he slept. He gazed at it for a few moments, the curve of a smile on his lips, and then replaced it on the table beside the bed.
He opened the door and walked naked across the narrow hallway to the opposite room. This had originally been the second bedroom, when the house had been a home, but now it was simply a place to work. It looked out on the backyard, which was enclosed on all sides by high bushes, providing quiet and privacy. There was a bed that had not been slept in in months or years, a squat two-drawer chest supporting an old-fashioned boxy television, and a desk set up in front of the window. On the desk were various tools and instruments and parts, grouped according to their uses. Some were of the digital and electronic variety and were new things, things that had been undreamed of in their compactness and intricacy even ten years before. Others were much more traditional and had not evolved or developed in a thousand years.
He had another kit to prepare, because he did not think it would be long until the next time. He sat down at the desk and started to lay out the tools and the parts he would need.
Before he got to work, he got up, walked back across the room, and switched on the television. He liked to have background noise while he worked. Music was his first preference, particularly oldies, but anything would do. Usually, he would switch the television or the stereo on, turn the sound down a little, and go back to the desk to work.
But today he didn’t move. Today he just watched the screen.
A helicopter view of the place in the mountains. His place. Cops in uniform and cops in suits and cops in overalls, digging up the earth in his place. Taking something that belonged to him.
He stood there for a long time, the task he’d begun forgotten for now.
11
Allen and Mazzucco left the home of Kelly Boden’s father with two things: confirmation of their hypothesis and an increased desire to catch the bastard who’d killed the three women buried in the hills.
Boden’s father had identified Kelly from a photograph taken at the gravesite without hesita
tion. Allen had been reluctant to show him, given the visible wounds, but he’d insisted. He was an ex-cop, which made it a little more personal. He’d taken the news without hysterics but had quietly asked the detectives to do all they could to find the person responsible.
Just as they were leaving, he stopped them at the door to ask if they’d found Sarah Dutton yet. Mazzucco shook his head. “Not yet.”
Boden’s voice was muted, almost as though he were speaking to them from much farther away. His eyes were pools of blackness. “I hope you find her. Safe.”
Allen did, too.
They got into the car, and Allen started the engine. She glanced across at Mazzucco, who was staring back at Richard Boden’s closed front door, his jaw set. She knew he had the same desire as she did to catch this guy, of course. But he was also a parent.
In the time she’d been working with him, she’d come to take for granted that Mazzucco wasn’t the kind of guy to go on and on about his family. He’d shown her the pictures right after his wife had given birth, of course. He’d given Allen and the others the obligatory details of time of birth and weight and that mom and baby girl were doing fine, but beyond that, you would barely know anything had changed, other than he looked a little more tired and spent a little more time checking his personal cell. Allen didn’t blame him for not wanting the two halves of his life to bleed into each other, for his work to contaminate his home. But still, something like this had to hit Mazzucco in a way she couldn’t fully understand.
“You ever think about what you would do, Jon?” she asked before she could stop herself. “If your kid was that age, if—”
Mazzucco cut her off mid-sentence, still looking at the door as he spoke. “I don’t think about it. Ever.”
After that, the conversation was sparser than was usual for most of the drive back downtown. They barely exchanged a word for the first ten minutes, each of them lost in thought. When Mazzucco grimaced and shifted in the passenger seat, Allen gratefully seized the chance for a break from the subject.
“Tauruses,” she growled, in a passable imitation of her partner’s voice.
The Ford Taurus was the department’s anointed replacement for the old Crown Victoria, a venerable warhorse that had finally been put out to pasture. Mazzucco, at six two, was no fan of the reduced legroom in the new cars.
“Clue’s in the name,” he said, not for the first time. “Los Angeles Police Department. We spend half the shift in the car, so you’d think they coulda given a little more consideration to comfort.”
“You’re right. Maybe they’ll go for limos next time they change the contract.”
They reached the office of the LA County medical examiner just before three o’clock. The Medical Examiner was a very thin, very bald man in his sixties named Burke. He wore a white coat that was probably in the slimmest size available, but it looked baggy on him. On his hands were heavy rubber gloves with the cuffs turned up. He ushered Allen and Mazzucco into the mortuary where Kelly and the other two, still officially unidentified, women lay. The room was cold, in temperature and in color: a polar blue. Harsh fluorescent lighting bleached every shadow.
Burke located the correct drawers by their locker numbers and pulled them out. The three bodies, covered with thin green sheets, lay on sloping metal tables within each drawer. Burke ambled past the three drawers, unceremoniously whipping back the shroud from each corpse. Allen winced as she saw the most decomposed body, the one they’d yet to identify. The yawning tear in her throat that had practically decapitated her.
“Any further forward in identifying our victims, Detective Mazzucco?” Burke asked in a bored tone of voice that implied he didn’t much care either way. He didn’t look at either detective, but as usual, favored Mazzucco over Allen if he had to address one of them. Allen wasn’t sure if he had a particular problem with her, but decided to give him the benefit of the doubt and assume he was just a sexist prick.
Mazzucco smiled and said nothing, deferring to Allen because it irritated him, too.
“As a matter of fact, yes,” Allen said. She looked at the most recent of the three victims. “Kelly Boden. She was a waitress, worked at a pancake joint over on Sepulveda. We just came from talking to her father.”
Burke shrugged. “One out of three isn’t bad, I guess.”
“It isn’t bad at all,” Mazzucco interjected, “considering the three of them came out of the ground a couple of hours ago. And as a matter of fact, we think we have an ID for this one, too. So I guess it’s over to you, Doc.”
Burke didn’t flinch at the rebuke, but he did turn to look at them. “I daresay I’ll have more to offer after the autopsies, but at the moment . . .” He waved a hand at the three decimated bodies before them. “What you see is what you get.”
“Meaning?” Allen prompted.
“Meaning you have three white women of roughly similar age. They’ve all been tortured with knives.” He paused and let his dull, colorless eyes run over the three forms. “Minimum of five different types of blade, I’d say. The killer has a tool kit. Signature wounds on the cheeks make it clear that he is attempting to make some sort of statement . . .”
“Attempting?” Mazzucco repeated, raising an eyebrow.
If Burke heard him, he didn’t acknowledge it, just continued unabated. “And, of course, it looks like the cause of death is identical in all three cases. Throat opened in a single stroke, severing of the carotid artery. Exsanguination ensued; death would have been pretty much instantaneous.”
Allen eyed the multitude of cuts on each of the women and wondered how instantaneous it would have felt to any of them after they’d been in this bastard’s hands for a few hours, or however long it took him to do all this.
“Any doubt these are all the work of the same man?” she asked.
Burke shook his head in a way that implied he thought the question ridiculous. “No doubt whatsoever, Detective. It’s not just the similarities in the wounds inflicted on these victims; it’s the way they’ve been inflicted.” He reached out and touched a gloved finger to the ragged edge of the throat wound of the nearest body. In the corner of her eye, Allen saw Mazzucco wince and swallow. She resisted the urge to do likewise.
“Look at the three fatal wounds,” Burke continued. “Absolutely no hesitation, no practice strokes, just one quick, deep cut, right to left. We get a few slit throats every year, but never this . . . practiced. Last time I saw anything like this was in Vietnam.”
“What are you saying? That this guy could be military?” Mazzucco asked.
Burke shook his head. “Not necessarily. I’m saying it’s somebody who’s done it before. Somebody who knows exactly how to cut a throat without screwing it up.”
Somebody who’s done it before. Allen’s eyes jerked across to look at the ragged cut across Kelly Boden’s throat again. “You ever see wounds exactly like that before, Doc? Even in Vietnam?”
Burke paused and looked at the three bodies again, the bored demeanor evaporating for a moment. “As I said, the skill and resolve that went into these killing strokes, I’ve seen on the battlefield. But you’re talking about the ragged pattern, aren’t you?” He shook his head. “That is unusual. A cut like this—a quick, single stroke of the kind I described—should have relatively clean edges. These are ragged, as though the blade had a particularly pronounced serration, or the blade itself curved in multiple places.”
Allen’s brow creased. “Would you be able to give us an idea of what the blade would have looked like? Could make it easier to find a match.”
The ME nodded, looking surprised to have stumbled upon two police officers with the capacity for independent thought. “Yes, given some more time. I’ve cleared my dance card for the three autopsies today, Detective. I hear this case is becoming quite the hot ticket.”
12
“What do you think?” Mazzucco said as they stepped out into the fresh air.
“I think spending most of your time around dead people probabl
y has an adverse effect on interpersonal skills,” Allen said.
Mazzucco shot her a sarcastic glance and said nothing else until they’d gotten into the car.
“What do you think about our perp?” he clarified as Allen started the engine and pulled out onto North Mission, headed southwest back toward the Police Administration Building.
Allen pressed the button to roll down the window before she answered. She savored the breeze on her face after the olfactory cocktail of formaldehyde and bodily fluids.
“He’s a sick son of a bitch. Burke’s right, though. He’s definitely done this before, and he’ll do it again.”
“And he’s working on a pretty fast cycle, too,” Mazzucco added. “Three victims in a couple of weeks, if the estimates are right. Three that we know of. So what next?”
“Next, we nail down the identification on Burnett and see if we can work out who number three might be. Maybe we’ll get lucky on the prints, or maybe we need to look at missing persons again. She’s been dead two weeks; somebody has to have missed her. I mean, she didn’t look like a transient or a junkie or anything.”
Mazzucco shrugged. “Difficult to tell for sure, the way he left them. No clothes, no personal effects, nothing to identify them beyond the tattoo on the Boden girl.”
“And he’s smart about DNA. The coroner investigator got jack at the scene: no foreign hairs, no skin under the fingernails. He’s being careful.”
“I think it’s more than that. It’s like he wanted to strip them of their identities, of everything that made them individuals. Like they belong to him now.”
Allen narrowed her eyes and gave him a sidelong glance. “You sound like a goddamn shrink, Mazzucco.”
He laughed. “We’ll be dealing with the real thing soon enough; you know that. Serials equal payday to those guys.”