Cold-Hearted Concept

by Whitley Gray

  Two hours of pulling things apart and the sole confiscated item consisted of one sandwich bag of marijuana.

  Nothing they’d found suggested why Perny had been singled out by a ruthless killer, let alone any evidence Perny was the Crossroads Killer. If he was, he’d been careful not to leave anything at this location.

  The search had given Beck time to cool off. Zach had gone downstairs over an hour ago and not reappeared. For all Beck knew, he might have gotten a ride back to the precinct.

  There was no logical reason to be pissed off. Zach hadn’t invited himself. Hogan wanted a profiler involved; Ruskin couldn’t arrive until tomorrow. Hogan had taken advantage of Zach’s availability and borrowed him.

  Zach didn’t say no.

  But Zach knew the Crossroads case intimately and was in a position to provide useful advice. This wasn’t going to be a frequent occurrence. It didn’t mean Zach was leaving. This was merely convenience—a right-place, right-time kind of thing. Zach was committed to him. To them.

  Get over your insecurity, Stryker. Honestly, he owed Zach an apology.

  Hogan stalked over. “Anything?”

  “Nope. I think we’ve been through it all.”

  “I’d hoped there’d be something to point us toward the perpetrator. Or something tying Perny to the Crossroads case. Otherwise I’ve got the Crossroads Killer and the Follower on my hands.”

  “The Follower?”

  “That’s what we’re calling the cretin who killed Perny and Jane Doe 114 and took their hearts.”

  “If there is a Follower, I can see how he’d complicate things. I don’t envy you.” The only serial Beck had worked was the Olivetti murders last fall, back when he’d gotten together with Zach.

  “Dr. Littman still around?”

  “Not sure. I’ll run downstairs and check, if you want to round up the uniforms.”

  “Good enough.” Hogan moved toward the bedroom.

  Beck stripped off his gloves. He tore off a paper towel from a roll by the door and mopped off his hands as he headed downstairs. It was considerably cooler on the front porch.

  Zach was talking to a dark-haired girl and looked up. “Hey.”

  “Hey. We’re done.”

  Zach nodded. “This is India. India, this is Detective Stryker.”

  “Pleasure to meet you.” Beck nodded.

  “Likewise.” India stood and picked up a tray with an empty plate. “I’ll let you get back to business. Nice to meet you, Zach.”

  “You too.”

  The screen door banged shut behind her.

  Beck raised an eyebrow. “First-name basis, huh?”

  “Thought it was easier. Find anything?” Zach stretched his arms over his head.

  “Weed. That’s it. Looks like Hogan will have to go in a different direction.” Beck hitched one hip onto the porch rail in front of Zach. “You’ve got something on the corner of your mouth.”

  Zach’s tongue darted out and swept it away.

  God, don’t do that. Beck held back a groan.

  “Chocolate. India made chocolate chip cookies.”

  “Ah. Breaking bread with the natives?”

  “Yep. And I learned a couple of things.”

  Feet pounded down the stairs inside. Hogan emerged with the uniformed officers and Richfield.

  “How did it go?” Zach asked.

  “Unrevealing,” Hogan jerked his head toward the cars. “Let’s talk over there.” Everyone trooped after him. Hogan gathered them at the rear of the rental. “If this was his primary residence, we should have found more.”

  “Did you find any letters?” Zach asked.

  “No.” Hogan frowned. “Why?”

  “His neighbor said Perny had gotten upset around Christmastime about a missing envelope. It was serious enough that he got himself a locked mailbox. Whatever the letter was, it could have arrived later.”

  “We tore that place apart. Nothing. If he had letters, he must keep ’em elsewhere.” Hogan cocked an eyebrow. “And no murder kit.”

  Back to that? Beck drew a breath, ready to cut the topic off at the knees.

  “He’d want it nearby,” Zach said.

  Hogan shook his head. “Not there.”

  “Mind if I take a look?”

  Oh my God. Why can’t he let it go?

  Hogan held out an arm toward the house. “After you.”

  * * * *

  Sometimes the answer was right in front of you. Lots of killers hid their trophies but kept them accessible. It was possible Perny would have secreted them off-site, but Zach was betting on the apartment. There he could relive the excitement of the kill.

  With the others, he returned to number five. They’d left the place as-is after the search, with stuff scattered around.

  No surprise they hadn’t found anything. Perny would have been an organized killer—Zach’s profile had predicted as much. Charismatic, a man who could hold a conversation, not an asocial loner. A man who had likely started out with seemingly minor offenses like a Peeping Tom and worked his way up to murder. A man who had last killed sometime during the winter, maybe in North Platte, Nebraska.

  Now a man who himself was a victim. The predator had become the prey. He’d been executed, and his killer had unloaded significant rage on the man whose apartment Zach stood in.

  Trophies…

  The house was old. Growing up, Zach and his sister had played in the big Victorian owned by his grandparents. The place had been full of cubbies and crooked walls and loose boards. Zach had kept his marble collection hidden by utilizing that fact.

  The most secure location would be the most private. Zach headed down the short hall. “I’d like to see the bedroom.”

  “Go ahead,” Hogan said. “The door at the end of the hall is a closet. The one on the left is the bath, and the one on the right is the bedroom.”

  The bath was tiny and smelled of mildew—a claw-foot tub shrouded in a moldy shower curtain, a wall-hung sink, a toilet. The entire room had been tiled, including the ceiling. The window over the tub was painted shut with a thick layer of chalky paint. No, not in here.

  Beck stopped in the doorway. “See anything?”

  “Not yet. Did you pull the grates from the cold-air returns and heat vents?” He bent and squinted under the sink.

  “We did. Nothing.”

  “Bedroom next.”

  The bedroom contained a sagging double bed stripped of sheets, and a dresser. The contents of the drawers appeared to have been dumped on the bed, along with clothes on hangers removed from the closet. Zach crisscrossed the room, listening to the floorboards, absorbing the way they supported his weight. Nothing seemed particularly loose.

  Next he inspected the walk-in closet. A chain dangled from a bare bulb, and he pulled it. Harsh light illuminated medicinal pink walls.

  It was small, maybe four feet wide and six feet deep, with a rod on the left and a featureless wall on the right. An L-shaped shelf topped the clothes rod and extended across the end of the space. The aroma of mothballs and decades-old wool and wallpaper curled around him. The police had emptied the closet; nothing remained except a few hangers. The walls seemed intact to Zach’s inspection, as did the floor.

  Huh. The end of the closet probably butts up against a mirror-image space in the other apartment.

  Beck leaned against the doorjamb, watching. “Anything?”

  “Maybe.” Zach returned to the kitchen for a dinette chair and carried it into the closet. Steadying himself with one hand on the wall, he stepped on the seat. The ceiling had cracked in places, and a few chunks of plaster had lost their battle with gravity. None had left a hole in the lathe.

  A single horizontal piece of wood above the clothes rod formed the long part of the shelf; a separate smaller piece traversed the short section at the end. The wall at the end of the closet above the shelf had a flatter texture and was surrounded by a narrow strip of quarter-round molding where the wall met the shelf, the ceiling, and the other
walls. None of the other corners had it. Zach tapped along the wall above the long shelf. Solid thuds. Then he rapped the area with the different texture.

  Hollow.

  Zach’s pulse sped up. He tugged at the shelf, but it didn’t move. Damn. He jumped to the floor and inspected the three triangular brackets supporting that section of shelf. The vertical portions were tightly affixed to the wall with screws. Two of the horizontal struts beneath the shelf had nails; the third did not. Zach pulled out his pocketknife and pried the nails loose. This time when he tested the shelf, it pulled away.

  The area where the shelf had been had a tiny opening, just big enough for Zach to work in two fingers.

  Here goes nothing. He curled his fingers and tugged. The wall section swung up on unseen hinges, revealing a dark cavity beyond.

  Zach reached into his pocket, pulled out his penlight, and shined it into the hidden space. Hello.

  “Beck.”

  “Find something?”

  “Yeah. You’ll need pictures of this.” Zach hopped off the chair. “Take a look.”

  Beck stepped up, took the penlight, and directed the beam into the hidden compartment for long moments. “Holy shit.”

  “Yeah.” Zach held back a shiver. Secreted among drifts of dust and cobwebs in the hidden cubby was a black doctor’s bag and an old wooden recipe box. “It’s his. Let’s get the stuff documented, and then we can pull it out.”

  * * * *

  It took twenty minutes to get a tech there for photos. Zach had watched as they documented the crime scene, biting back suggestions he’d known would be unwelcome. A hundred pictures later, they’d removed the box and leather case, bagged them, and transported their finds to the lab while CSI moved in to do more evidence collection. Zach headed back to DPD with Beck. Hogan followed.

  In the DPD lab, Zach and the investigative team stood in a semicircle, staring at their prizes.

  “You want to do the honors?” Hogan asked Beck.

  “It’s your case. Go ahead.”

  Zach swallowed. Please, God, don’t let there be anything hideous in there.

  Hogan reached for the bag with gloved hands. In Zach’s opinion, the case looked new beneath its layer of dust. After undoing the latch, Hogan pulled open the top of the case. A crime-scene tech stepped forward with a light.

  Hogan gave a long whistle and reached a gloved hand inside. He pulled out a handful of brightly colored silk ties. A tech arranged them on the backlit tabletop.

  Beck checked the labels. “Tarka neckties. Expensive.”

  An icy finger stroked Zach’s spine. The brand found around the necks of the Crossroads victims. He cleared his throat. “What else?”

  Next out of the bag was a Taser, followed by a scalpel. Jesus. The blade would have been for torture before death.

  Hogan set a plastic bottle of high-end bodywash on the table. “He must’ve used this…after.”

  “The lab might be able to match it to the victims,” Zach said.

  Frowning, Hogan lifted out a black fabric garment and arranged it on the glass tabletop. “A priest’s shirt and collar. A costume?”

  “A disguise,” Zach said. “That may be how he got them to trust him.”

  “That’s it.” Hogan set the case aside. A tech came forward and took it to another table to begin further analysis. “Let’s check the box.”

  The recipe box’s wood had darkened with age. On the lid it had a green-and-red Tole painting of a Dutch girl and boy standing in profile and kissing. Inscribed in cursive was the phrase Kissin’ don’t last. Cookin’ do.

  “Looks old,” Richfield said.

  Beck flipped up the lid. For a moment he stared into the box. His throat moved in a hard swallow, and he seemed to gather his resolve.

  A chill settled over Zach, and his heart pounded in his ears. There weren’t recipes in that box.

  “Hell. I need photos and a pair of forceps.” Beck kept one gloved hand on the lid.

  Zach moved next to him and peered into the box. Jewelry and a pile of laminated cards.

  A tech took a few photos and handed Beck the forceps. Gingerly he grasped one of the cards and held it up. “Drivers’ licenses. And we’ve got some other stuff. A couple of rings, one earring…a wristwatch…a fake fingernail. A locket with a broken chain. Some sort of metal stud.”

  Zach peered at the last object. Crossroads victim number three. “That’s from a tongue piercing.”

  Seven items. Six trophies belonged to the six bodies buried in the woods. Zach was pretty sure the locket would turn out to belong to the seventh girl in North Platte and had caused the abrasion on her neck.

  The North Platte victim was proof that the killer hadn’t changed his MO. He required the necktie and privacy to get what he needed from the kill. Beyond the torture with the blade, he hadn’t mutilated the bodies.

  That left the Jane Doe missing the heart who had appeared at the Omaha Crossroads burial site last fall. The one that made no sense. Zach shuddered. No necktie for her, no token for her. She didn’t fit Perny’s MO.

  Perny hadn’t killed her.

  Someone else was responsible for the Jane Doe with the excised heart—likely the same individual who had killed Perny. The Follower.

  “We’ve got seven drivers’ licenses here,” Beck said. “Do you know the names of the victims?”

  They were etched in Zach’s memory; he’d never forget them. As Beck read each name, Zach checked off the list. All six Crossroads victims were present, as well as the girl from North Platte.

  Beck peered into the box. “There’s something stuck in between the bottom and the side.”

  Zach shone a penlight inside the container. The bottom of the box was thick—over an inch, judging by the height. Gold gleamed in the crevice. He lifted the box and gave it a gentle shake. Something fell to the table.

  “What is it?” Hogan asked.

  “Looks like a barrette.” Using forceps, Zach flipped it over. A red enamel heart the size of a thumbnail, inscribed with a gold letter A.

  Beck glanced at Hogan. “Fit any of your victims?”

  “No.” Hogan frowned. “I’ll have to run it by the families.”

  Something was off; Zach’s gut said as much. None of the victims had had such a barrette, and none had a first or last name starting with A.

  “This should take care of the Crossroads case,” Hogan said. “When we’re done here, I’ll preserve the chain of evidence and get ready to transport these back to Omaha. So we’re back to who killed Perny.”

  The Crossroads Killer was dead. The pressure of unseen ghosts clamoring for justice had lifted—Zach could breathe. It was a good feeling. Score one for the guys in white hats.

  The investigators filed out. In a low voice Beck said, “Good job, Dr. Littman.”

  The Crossroads Killer case had been put to rest. The issue of who had killed the killer—and Jane Doe 114—was someone else’s problem, not Zach’s.

  Chapter Seven

  “This case is going nowhere,” Van said from across the desks. “With a capital N.”

  Beck rocked back in his seat. “We’ll get there.”

  “Keep dreaming.” Van finished his hoagie and lobbed the wrapper into Beck’s trash can. The faint scent of tuna on rye hung in the air. God, that reeks. It was Beck’s least favorite sandwich; the odor reminded him too much of childhood. With his foot, he pushed the trash can in Van’s direction.

  In a way Beck felt sorry for Van, getting stuck with the skeleton while Beck had gotten to witness the solving of a serial murder. Mostly solved, anyway. Hogan was still with the crime-scene techs, gathering more information before transporting his evidence back to Omaha. Now that Zach had the Crossroads case figured out, life could settle back into the new normal. And that was a huge relief.

  “Anything new from Elmo?” Beck asked. The ME had promised to call with updates.

  “No, but we got an FBI bulletin from your boyfriend.” The snark came through like a slap.r />
  Temper flashed through Beck. God, he was sick of the constant needling. He’d love to bite back, to hassle Van until he made a mistake and outed himself. Beck drew a slow breath. Not my job to make the idiot face up to reality. “Where’s the bulletin?”

  Van pushed a piece of paper across the desk.

  It was a request for information about investigations similar to the Crossroads case. The salient points were female, blonde, evidence of knife play, strangled with a silk necktie, bathed, and buried nude, wrapped in a sheet.

  Well, he’d seen the ties firsthand. He owned a couple of Tarka ties, which was kind of creepy. Might have to get rid of those.

  Van gave the smirk that made Beck want to slap him. “Could be our perp, don’t you think?”

  If only it were that simple. “It doesn’t match. The skeleton was clothed. There was no sheet.”

  Wait a minute. She was blonde. The bones had possible knife marks, and the girl had presumptively been strangled. They’d assumed the silk around her neck was a scarf, but weather could have turned a necktie to degraded fibers. And Perny had lived locally since December.

  “Let me run it by the FBI.”

  Van’s eyebrows shot up. “What?”

  “You could be right.”

  “I was kidding, Beck. What—”

  Beck’s phone rang. “Stryker.”

  “It’s Clay. The barrette has no prints, but it looks like there are a couple of hair roots trapped under the clasp. We could get DNA.”

  DNA would help match the hair with the skeleton—if she was Perny’s—but didn’t solve the problem of identifying the remains. “We submitted a sample from our victim. If you run DNA on the hair, we might get a match.”

  “DNA is expensive, and the skeleton is your case.”

  True.

  Van tapped the paper in front of Beck and muttered, “Hey. You giving our case away?”

  Beck shook his head and swiveled his chair away. “I’d appreciate a copy of your results.”

  “I’ll have to clear it with my sergeant. Is Dr. Littman with you?”

  “No. You could try his cell phone.”