The Samaritan

by Cross, Mason

  I sighed and lifted my hands up: You got me. “Okay, it’s not just that.”

  “Now we’re getting somewhere.”

  “I do want to catch this guy, and I did talk to Boden. But I’m not being purely altruistic here, either. If I help you catch the Samaritan, it’s . . . You could say it’s good for my résumé.”

  She nodded, although I could still see skepticism. “Like a hotshot lawyer taking on a high-profile case for free, huh? So you can charge the next paying customer a lot more?”

  She paused and looked at me across the desk. I looked back at her, saying nothing.

  “Okay,” she said eventually. “Let’s see if you can help.”

  I got up, put my hand on the back of my chair, and dragged it around to her side of the desk.

  “First off,” I said, “we should let the FBI do the work on the historic cases. Forget about them for now. We need to focus on now, on Los Angeles.”

  She looked a little relieved, like I’d taken a weight off her shoulders. “So where do you want to start?”

  “Only one place to start,” I said. “With the victims.”

  43

  “The first one to be buried—the first that we know of—was named Rachel Morrow.”

  Allen called up the relevant file on the iPad and enlarged the picture—a standard head shot—with a swipe of her fingers. They’d almost certainly gotten the picture from the DMV. It looked like most of those kinds of pictures—a true enough representation of an individual’s general appearance, their race, gender, age, hair color, and all the rest of it, but somehow failing to capture the essence of the person. I’d read something a long time ago about why that was. Something about the combination of the harsh lighting and the low-level pressure of knowing that this picture was going to be on an official document for the next five or ten years.

  “The accountant,” I said.

  “Ten out of ten. How’d you know that?”

  “The news.”

  She snorted at that.

  “That was an unusual move, by the way,” I said. “Releasing the information about the wound patterns to the media.”

  “It wasn’t my move. When I find out whose move it was, I’m going to make sure it’s very difficult for them to move without the aid of crutches for a few weeks.”

  “Got my attention, anyway.”

  I touched the screen to minimize the picture, looking for the personal background information. It took me about five times as long as it would have done to turn a page in a file.

  “I hate these things,” I said. “You don’t use hard copy murder books anymore?”

  Allen smiled and shook her head. “You mean those blue binders that took up half the office? Some of the older guys are still attached to them. You know, the ones who are out of touch with the modern age.”

  I shrugged off the dig and handed the tablet to her. “New doesn’t always mean better. I like to lay everything out in front of me.”

  “You’re older than your years, Blake.”

  Allen called up the rest of the information I was looking for with a couple of deft swipes and gave it back to me so I could scan the rest of the file. The background information on the victim, details of her last-known whereabouts, her car, the last people to see her alive. I read the autopsy report. I examined a few of the pictures, focusing on that strange ragged wound pattern. If I’d needed any more confirmation after the news reports, after the cemetery, then here it was. I’d seen those wounds before. I’d seen the weapon that made them. I flipped back to the missing persons report and looked at the date.

  “She wasn’t even reported missing for a week,” I said.

  “That’s right. Husband was out of town, no kids. Last to see her were the people from work.”

  “Alibi?”

  “Finland.”

  I nodded, closed the Morrow file, and tapped on the file folder beside it. The name on the folder was Carrie Elaine Burnett. The reality TV star. I scanned through this one. It covered similar ground. Background, last-seen, autopsy. I knew that the three files would all follow the same grim narrative. And the trail for all three victims stopped at the same place: they were all last seen getting into a car at night, and from then it was as though they’d vanished off the face of the earth. Until their bodies were discovered.

  But there was one new wrinkle in the pattern with Burnett, because the last contact anyone had with her was not in person; it was by phone, to a dispatcher with the Automobile Club of Southern California, the local Triple A affiliate. I asked Allen about the call.

  “That’s right. Ten seventeen on the night of the tenth. Her car broke down in Laurel Canyon; she wasn’t sure why. She agreed to stay put and wait for the tow truck. It took the driver thirty-six minutes to make it out there. When he arrived, there was no sign of Burnett, or her car. That’s how we know the approximate time of the abduction—sometime between ten seventeen and ten fifty-three.”

  “And that’s what gives you an indication of the killer’s MO. He finds people at the scene of a breakdown, offers to help, and they’re never seen again.”

  “Like a Good Samaritan, only not so good,” Allen said.

  “Did you talk to the tow truck driver?”

  She rolled her eyes. “Believe it or not, you’re not the first person to think of this. As soon as we worked out the MO, that was at the top of our list. How else is he targeting this kind of specific situation?”

  “Sorry. I didn’t doubt you had.”

  “Okay. So yeah, we talked to the driver, of course. Iron-clad alibi.”

  “Iron-clad?”

  “Better: digital-clad. Onboard camera backs up his account. He was working all night.”

  I nodded and sat back from the table, thinking. In standard abduction cases, cops generally look for someone whom the victim would have reason to trust: an acquaintance, or somebody in authority. That wasn’t necessarily the case in this scenario: if your car breaks down, you tend to accept any offer of help available. Crozier could be anyone.

  “How about the last one, Boden?” I asked. “Same story?”

  “We don’t know for sure. But there’s enough similarities to say it’s probable. Both Morrow and Boden were definitely taken while en route somewhere by car. Both were driving alone and at night, both were in roughly the same vicinity. There’s one other thing with Boden. We have her on a gas station security camera right before she was abducted. And we think there’s someone else on the tape, too.”

  “You think?”

  “You don’t see him, only his shadow. We think he tried to get into Boden’s car, but it was locked.”

  I thought about that for a minute. “Do we know if Boden and Morrow broke down, too?”

  “No calls to Triple A. But in both cases, the car disappeared along with the victim. So far the only one we’ve been able to find is the Porsche Boden was driving, and that was a lucky break. The Samaritan should have picked somebody driving a less desirable car.”

  “Were they members?”

  Allen smiled. “You’re asking the right questions. No. Neither was a Triple A member.”

  “Could they have called another breakdown service, or a garage? Any calls to anyone at all?”

  “Morrow’s husband said she had a prepay cell, like you. No contract, so we don’t know who she might have called, if anyone. Boden’s phone had been switched off since earlier in the evening. Could be she switched it off herself; more likely, the battery died. You know what cell phones are like these days.” She tapped her own phone. “This thing holds a charge about as well as a one-legged rhino.”

  I smiled at that and tapped into the Morrow file again, scrolling through the personal details. I was looking for something, but I wasn’t sure what yet. Then I had it. “Where’s the car?”

  “I told you. We never found it.”

  “No, I mean there’s nothing about her car in here. What kind of car did she drive?”

  Allen looked puzzled, unsure why this
would be important. “It was a blue Honda Civic: not exactly memorable. Why?”

  “Maybe nothing,” I said. “I’m basing this on the assumption that the killer abducted her the same way as he did Burnett and Boden.”

  “Offering assistance at a breakdown?”

  “Yeah. And also the assumption that there was enough of a gap between the breakdown and the abduction for her to call somebody.”

  “Okay, but since we don’t have . . .”

  “She didn’t call Triple A, and she didn’t call any of her friends. So unless her cell was also out of charge, she must have called somebody.”

  I waited for a second and Allen caught up. “Like her regular garage. If it was open.”

  I nodded. “Exactly. Like I said, it might be nothing, but it’s worth a look. Given the resources at your disposal, do you think . . . ?”

  “ . . . that we can track down her garage using the vehicle?” Allen asked. “Sure, but it’d be quicker just to take a look at her credit card statements for the last year. If she’s taken her car in for a service or a vehicle inspection recently, we can get the address.”

  “Worth a look.”

  Allen got up. “I’ll be right back.” She turned back halfway to the door and opened her mouth to issue some kind of warning.

  “It’s okay,” I said. “I won’t go anywhere. I’ll take a look at the rest of this while you’re away.”

  Allen departed and the door closed with a click. I looked back down at the iPad and cycled through the victim photographs again. Morrow, Burnett, Boden. The three of them had enough physical attributes in common to show this series of killings conformed to a strict type. And that made it unusual in the context of the other killings nationwide. The FBI briefing Allen had been sent by the liaison was saved in a separate folder. I opened it up and found it was short and to the point: a relatively high-level summary, listing open and unsolved homicides and missing persons investigations in multiple states that might be tied to the Samaritan. In all, they’d listed sixty-three cases across eleven states: a one-man epidemic, and one that had gone unnoticed until now. The two North Carolina cases I’d found were included, too, but out of chronological sequence at the end of the document, which suggested they were recent additions. The dates would make them the earliest link in the chain. I had good reason to believe Sergeant Willis Peterson was patient zero in this particular epidemic.

  Just going by the summary details, it was clear Crozier had been very careful. Many of the murders were not officially murders at all, but missing persons cases where foul play was strongly suspected. Even if the FBI was correct in tying only half of these cases to the Samaritan, it meant bodies were rotting undiscovered in shallow graves from sea to shining sea. In the cases where the bodies had been found, it tended to be because the killer had made no attempt to conceal them—leaving them in their homes or places of business, or in secluded outdoor areas. The precise cause of death varied, and I wondered if this was as much to do with the urge to experiment as the practicality of avoiding detection. Perhaps the variety in the victim profile was the same—killing two birds with one stone.

  But Los Angeles was different, so far. Three young women, all Caucasian, all brunettes. Abducted in the same way, tortured and killed in the same way. I didn’t doubt that Crozier was behind these killings, but I wondered if the new consistency meant anything.

  I sat back in the chair and wondered how long it would take Allen to confirm whether the lead with Morrow’s garage was going to pan out. I thought about what she’d said about the tow truck guy they’d ruled out. After running over it again in my head, I decided she was wrong about one thing. She’d said investigating the tow truck driver had been a no-brainer, because “how else” could he be targeting these women?

  I thought back to what she’d said about the gas station and the shadow that looked like somebody trying to get in the car. I knew there was another way.

  44

  Damn it, Allen.

  Not for the first time, Mazzucco felt like putting in a request to Lawrence for a new partner. He couldn’t shake the frustration as he drove to the West LA station on Butler Avenue. As it happened, his old station before he made detective. He’d spent the past couple of hours confirming a suspicion, but he’d been thinking a lot about his partner, too.

  Allen. He knew what she was going to do. Knew she was going to go ahead and bring Blake into the fold despite his warnings. As soon as they’d confirmed that the guy really did have information they could use, that was all she cared about. And sure, Blake presented an intriguing opportunity that had appeared out of nowhere, but that was exactly why they needed to approach the man with caution—a word Mazzucco was beginning to suspect was not in Jessica Allen’s vocabulary. He’d known from the look in her eyes the whole time they were talking in the car that she was going to call Blake. He almost didn’t think she could help it: cutting any corners she had to in order to make progress faster. She’d been like this the whole time he’d known her, and by all accounts, for a long time before that. The two of them had never explicitly addressed the rumors, and up until now Mazzucco had liked that just fine. As far as he—if not all of his fellow detectives—was concerned, Allen was a blank page from her first day in the division. Why, then, was she so hell-bent on spilling black ink all over that blank page?

  Mazzucco was almost certain that she’d use the time he was over in West to talk to Blake and then present it to him as a fait accompli. So why had he made the trip, then? Federmeyer was a loose end. A loose end that needed tying, but one that could wait. Had he wanted this? Wanted Allen to make the call, but do it alone, so that he could duck the responsibility? He put it out of his mind as he approached the two-story building that was his destination. Such questions were impossible to answer, and dwelling on them was unproductive.

  He buzzed at the gate, then drove in and parked. As luck would have it, the man he wanted to speak to was on the front desk. Federmeyer looked up as Mazzucco walked through the glass entrance doors to the precinct. His eyes registered a split second of surprise, but he covered it nicely with a friendly grin.

  “Mazzucco,” he yelled out. “What brings a big shot like you back down here? Didn’t figure we’d see you again once you made detective. Caught the boogeyman yet?”

  Mazzucco shrugged noncommittally. “I can always find a reason to drop by the old place.” He did have a reason; two of them, in fact. He decided to go for the noncontentious one first, otherwise he might not get an answer to either question.

  “I wanted to check a couple of things with you. About the dump site.”

  “Shoot,” the other man said immediately. “Although, you’ll know better than me. Us guys get the glamour job—perimeter security. You know that.”

  Mazzucco wondered if that was a tell, or simply an innocent comment. Either way, he didn’t comment.

  “How you getting on with catching the Bad Samaritan, anyway?” Federmeyer asked. “I see the feds stuck their noses in.”

  “It’s not so bad,” Mazzucco said. “They get the headache of a few dozen cold cases across the country; we get to focus on the recent ones. All in all, I’d say I’m grateful for the help.”

  Federmeyer looked a little abashed, as though he couldn’t understand why Mazzucco would shy away from a little Bureau-bashing. “Anyway,” he said, the smile still in place, but the tone a little colder. “What can I do you for, Detective?”

  “Like I said, a couple of things I wanted to check. The kind of things a guy on the scene would probably notice. Like, did you see any suspicious vehicles around the area? I know we had the media and the paps and the looky-loos, but anything out of the ordinary? The same vehicle more than once, maybe.”

  Federmeyer shrugged and shook his head. “Not that I saw. Not that any of my guys saw; otherwise I’d know about it. One of the vics’ dads showed up a couple of times, but he talked to us direct.”

  “Richard Boden?”

  “That’s right
, Boden. Turns out he used to be on the job. San Diego police. Decent guy, you know what I mean? Wish we could’ve helped him.”

  “You happen to notice a dark blue Chevy Malibu at any point? Or anybody else speaking to Boden?”

  Federmeyer took his time, his expression telegraphing how deeply he was thinking. He was making a lot of effort to appear open and helpful. Too much effort. “Can’t help you. A couple of the paps got in close for pictures the first time he visited, but he chewed them out good. They kept their distance after that.”

  “Okay,” Mazzucco said. “Let’s back up a second. You said Boden spoke to you, and you wanted to help him.”

  Federmeyer’s eyes betrayed his suspicion immediately. “That’s right. That’s what I told you.”

  “Anybody else approach you? Anybody else you wanted to help?”

  A pause. “What’s this about, Detective?”

  Mazzucco looked left, then right. A few cops milling around, going to the coffee machine. A couple of grim-faced civilians sitting in plastic chairs near the door. No one within earshot. He leaned forward, putting both hands on the desk.

  “I know it was you, Federmeyer. Ragged wound patterns. You knew we were withholding that, and you sold it to Jennifer Quan at K-ABC.”

  “That bitch,” Federmeyer hissed under his breath. “What happened to protecting your sources?”

  “What happened to serious professional misconduct, Federmeyer? That information could compromise this whole investigation.”

  Federmeyer’s tone turned on a dime. “Come on, Mazzucco. We go way back. This ain’t no big deal.”

  “Way back,” he repeated. “You never liked me. And I happen to think leaking restricted information to the press, information that could compromise a homicide investigation, is a very big deal.”

  “Come on, Mazzucco.”

  “Detective Mazzucco. Yeah, it is a big deal when you decide to fuck with my case.” He paused, looked at the other man to let him know he was serious. “I’m reporting it to Bannerman.”