by Whitley Gray
Rachel paused and gave him a knowing look that declared, Yes, this is how the other half lives. “Right this way, gentlemen.”
The living room looked like spring had moved indoors. Pale walls displaying modern art, a large wood-burning fireplace, spans of ivory curtains framing the windows. A pair of butter-yellow sofas faced each other across a glass coffee table bearing a coffee service. Spindly chairs covered with ivory silk were set at angles in front of the hearth, and a floral carpet anchored the seating area. Vases of mixed flowers gave a funereal scent to the place. Too idyllic a setting for the topic of conversation.
Matt Unger was six and a half feet of defensive lineman turned muscle-bound TV journalist. He had classic good looks with dark hair, dark eyes, and a million-dollar smile, currently hidden behind a scowl. His frame overwhelmed the fussy chair in the same way his personality monopolized the room. Bad attitude came off him in waves. “What do you know about my daughter?”
Beck said, “There have been a couple of developments in Annika’s case.”
“The police haven’t taken an interest since I filed the report.”
“Matt.” Mrs. Unger imbued the word with censure as she passed coffee to Beck. She’d chosen the couch opposite Beck and Van. “Give the detectives a chance.”
In contrast to her husband, she was diminutive and lacked color—platinum hair, pale makeup, expensive white slacks and shirt. A former Bronco cheerleader, as Beck recalled. She’d retired when she married Matt.
Balancing the china cup painted with delicate roses on his knee, Beck said, “There are a few things.” He forced himself to meet Unger’s gaze. “Do you have your daughter’s glasses prescription?”
Unger narrowed his eyes. “No, but I can get it. Why?”
“We’ve located a pair of lenses, and we’d like to see if they match.”
“We’ll get you the prescription,” Mrs. Unger said, hopping up. “I can call right now.”
Beck hated the hopeful look on her face. “Why don’t you hold off for a bit? We’ve got a few more questions for you.” And some really bad news.
Glancing at her husband, she sank onto the sofa.
Unger vibrated with intensity. “What else?”
“Did your daughter have a heart-shaped barrette with the letter A on it?”
Mrs. Unger splashed coffee over the side of the cup. What little color she had drained away. “How do you know about that?”
Unger shot her a sideways glance and then studied Beck. “Did you find the barrette?”
“Yes.” Beck set his cup on the table. “It was found among a collection of items discovered on a search. We—”
“Who’s the bastard who had her barrette?” Unger shifted forward, huge hands gripping the arms of the chair. “Does he have her?”
Good Christ. The man looked ready to lay Beck out with a full-body tackle. “The suspect is deceased.”
“Where the hell is my girl?” Unger snarled.
“We recovered a skeleton from a wooded area last week.” Van set his coffee on the table. “I’m sorry.”
Unger froze. His wife sucked in a breath. The silence crystallized and then shattered.
“No. Nooo.” Mrs. Unger’s words degenerated into a guttural cry. She fisted her hair as her face became a mask of agony. Beck’s heart twisted. The loss of a child was always the worst, the most unfair.
To his credit, Matt Unger moved to his wife’s side and grabbed her in a hug. He held her, rocking back and forth while she screamed and pounded at his chest. A single tear slid down Unger’s cheek before he buried his face in his wife’s hair.
* * * *
Coffee cup in hand, Zach came to a halt at the street corner. It was a pleasant day, sunny and warm. The morning had done nothing to exhaust his nervous energy, and going back to his lonely office had no appeal. He had his phone and an empty schedule. After two years of a high-powered work environment, case backlogs, and traveling, he’d progressed to a solitary and untethered existence in a lightless hole. Was that what his career had come to?
This way, I have Beck. Ultimately, building a life together was the priority. But there was a threat to that future, unless Zach could unravel the Follower’s words.
The heart of the matter is yours to discern.
Read between the lines, my dear Dr. Littman.
Soon it’ll be time for me to take another turn.
Come out and play. Signed, Your biggest fan.
Read between the lines. The stanzas were a puzzle; he’d become tangled in them. Profiling had taught him a lot about parsing words for deeper meaning. It took a special kind of psychopath to communicate with law enforcement: an organized, intelligent foe who believed he was smarter than the police.
The light changed, and Zach stepped off the curb.
As soon as he figured out what the Follower was up to, he could settle into his temporary role as a DPD psych counselor. God, that sounded depressing. He’d given up his job, his house, and his friends, and that was all he had to look forward—
Bzzz.
Zach dug out his phone. “Littman.”
“It’s Ruskin.”
“Hey. Didn’t expect to hear from you again until tonight.”
“Right.” Ruskin cleared his throat. “I need you to take a look at something.”
“Okay…what?”
“The autopsy on Perny.”
Uh-oh. Something must have shown up on the examination of the heart. “I can do that. What are you looking for?”
“I’d like you to read it cold and then call me back.”
Ruskin was a straight shooter—he didn’t play games. “I’ll be at my computer in a few minutes. Go ahead and e-mail it.”
“On the way.”
Zach rang off and started across the plaza.
* * * *
Upstairs Zach went directly to his e-mail. Ruskin had sent a brief note, with attachments for the contents of the Omaha murder book, autopsy protocol, and photos. The note contained what Ruskin had said on the phone and not much else.
Zach opened the Omaha medical examiner’s report.
Case #97: M-14-MAY-Doe, John (ID’d as Perny, Nathan A.). Associated cases #81-86 year to date “Crossroads victims.”
Department: Omaha Police
Officer of record: Hogan
Age: (estimated) 25 to 30 yrs.
Gender: Male
Circumstances: Body recovered from uninhabited wooded area. Liver temp same as ambient air temp.
Manner of death: Homicide.
Dumping in the woods meant something. The killer had taken a risk to deposit the body in that location, and he had timed the drop without getting caught. He’d gotten Perny’s car there. Organized. Intelligent. Cunning.
Cause of death: Suffocation due to paralysis, in turn due to the effects of curare. Foul play suspected.
Jesus Christ. Outside of the rain forest, curare was available only as a controlled drug and restricted to medical use, mainly after sedation to intubate surgical patients. The perpetrator had paralyzed the victim, left him to suffocate to death while conscious, like a hands-off strangulation. An extreme form of torture. Sadistic.
The suspect had access to curare. Employed in the medical field? Zach rocked back in his chair and rubbed his neck. Some days, he hated this job.
Focus. The rest of the report could hold clues.
External examination:
Height: 152 cm (5’ 10”)
Weight: 75 kg (165 lbs.)
Average height and weight. Perny’s killer would have needed to gain control quickly. A stronger male killer. Or a killer who disabled Perny somehow.
Head: Contusion over occiput consistent with blunt-force trauma.
Chest: Sagittal wound from neck to abdomen 45 cm (20.5”) in length (premortem). Multiple stab wounds to pectoral muscles. (See photos.)
Abdomen: Multiple lacerations on abdomen.
Pelvis: Multiple stab wounds to pelvis. The external genitalia have been severed a
nd removed (premortem). (See enclosed photos.)
Extremities:
Left lower extremity: Unremarkable. Right lower extremity: Unremarkable. Left upper extremity: Ligature marks on wrist. Right upper extremity: Ligature marks on wrist. Phalanges of the fourth finger missing, amputated through the metacarpal-phalangeal joint.
At the knuckle. Right at the knuckle. Horror washed over him, dimming his vision and forcing bile up his throat, bitter as the memory. Fuck. Oh, fuck. No. No. Couldn’t be the same.
Foul images crowded his head.
Ebony skin set off by irregular white beads clacking against one another. Beads drilled end to end along their axes, long and narrow. Beads whose contours and spiculated composition were consistent with human bone. Beads made from the three phalangeal bones of the right fourth finger, known as the little finger.
Sweat made him clammy, and he shivered. Had to be a coincidence.
Go to the internal exam. With shaking hands, he scrolled through the report to the review of the internal organs.
Cardiovascular: Heart missing.
Zach pulled up the digital images. Photo number one revealed a head shot of a man in his late twenties to early thirties. The next, the chest wound, a lot of tissue tearing, shards of bone protruding like teeth. Not smooth, not identical to Xav’s incisions; his had had surgical precision. These cuts weren’t like those victims.
Yeah, keep telling yourself that.
Stab wounds side to side formed a square around the splintered sternum. The abdomen and pelvis had an assortment of incisions. Below the ribs, there was a Z-shaped cut, like the mark of Zorro. Did that mean something to the killer?
Another slash crossed horizontally through the belly button. Hanging off this were three vertical lines about two inches apart. A bird? Line in the middle for the body, two wings angled down on either side. Zach squinted at the photo. Or a 3 tipped on its side?
With the computer, he heightened the contrast. The slash wounds stood out, dark against the backdrop of deathly pallor. He rotated the photo, situating the corpse’s head on the left. The hairs on his neck shot upright like soldiers on a battlefield.
Not a box. Not a Z. Not a bird. A message.
The killer had carved ONE into his victim.
God Almighty. Zach jumped up and paced. The case needed to go straight into ViCAP, to see if any other jurisdictions had reported something similar. Maybe the Follower had worked with the Crossroads Killer. Paired serial killers were rare but not unheard-of. Obviously, Perny’s murderer knew the dump site. Maybe he had that sixth sense some slayers had, recognizing similar psychopathology in their brethren.
Maybe he knew an incarcerated monster.
Finish. Just finish reading the damned thing. Call Ruskin and hand it off.
The abdominal exam echoed what Hogan had told him in the phone call—the rectum contained the missing genitalia.
Specialized collections from internal exam:
Paper from chest cavity, 8 cm x 8 cm. See appended photos #43–46.
The referenced picture showed a pulpy piece of maroon paper, folded into a crude square. In the next image, the pathologist had unfolded the scrap and laid it flat on a towel. A blood-soaked heart. Ragged edges, the words written across it unmistakable: Dr. Littman, your heart belongs to me.
Fuck. Hearing about it had nothing on seeing it. His mind could no more expel the image than the killer would stop at one victim. God, it couldn’t be happening. There could only be one Valentine Killer in a lifetime, and that one resided in a maximum-security prison.
But it’s similar. Too similar.
Darling was in the most secure facility in the United States. He had no access to the outside world.
Get it together, Littman. He turned, got a bottle of water out of the minifridge, and rolled it across his forehead. The cold sharpened his attention; he twisted off the lid and gulped half the contents.
The poem. Could the “numberless one” be the Jane Doe from last fall?
“Now the game is afoot, the true numbers begin.”
Pacing, Zach dialed Ruskin.
“Ruskin.”
“It’s Littman. I read over the autopsy.”
“And?”
Calm down. Get your head together. The report needs to be concise. “He took the little finger and the heart. Like Xavier Darling. That was never released. The killer has inside information about Darling’s victims.” How the perpetrator had gotten it was anyone’s guess.
“Anything else?” Ruskin asked.
“The pattern of stab wounds on the chest and abdomen…”
“What’s your take on them?”
“Did the Jane Doe last fall have similar markings?” Zach had never seen her autopsy.
“Hang on.” Papers shuffled. “Other than the crude excision of the heart via a cut through the sternum, no. You think he’s escalating?”
Not yet. Zach ran a hand through his hair. “It’s something worse.”
“Clarify,” Ruskin said in a clipped voice.
Zach swallowed hard. “Look at the frontal survey photo. Turn it so the head is on the left. The wounds spell out the word ‘ONE.’ Looks like he’s just getting started.”
Chapter Nine
“The boss isn’t going to be happy.” Van fell into step with Beck as they headed across the parking garage.
“Why do you say that?” Beck punched the button for the elevator. They’d gotten the name of the Ungers’ ophthalmologist, their dentist, and DNA exemplars from Annika’s toothbrush. It hadn’t been pleasant, but the visit had yielded important data.
“When Unger gets past the initial shock, he’s going to be all over our investigation.”
“The investigation is over as soon as we ID her. The tie-in to the Crossroads Killer is pretty tight. Perny is dead. Case closed.”
“When Unger finds out someone murdered the suspect, he’s going to go all investigative journalist on us and get involved.”
The elevator arrived. Beck punched the button for the third floor. “I don’t think so. He was pretty broken up about the news.”
Hearing about the skeleton had extinguished the last spark of hope that Annika would come home alive and well. The guy had lost his only child in a terrible way. Unger’s reaction had been more emotional than expected, but not vengeful. Why would he turn it against the department?
“Just wait.” Van stared at the numbers.
They got off at robbery/homicide. Maybe Zach was available for a late lunch.
“Beck?” SJ poked her head out of the office. “Can you step in here for a moment?”
“Yes, ma’am.” Now what?
Van raised an eyebrow and kept going.
Inside the office he rocked to a stop. “Artie?”
“Hey, Beck.” The ten-year-old’s copper-colored hair stuck up in messy spikes. His blue eyes were absent their usual mischief.
Detective Dan Halliday had died last year in the shoot-out that resulted in Beck suffering a shattered shoulder and PTSD. Dan had left behind a wife and two boys. Beck helped out when he could, but he wasn’t father material. Never having had a role model in that department himself meant he had little paternal know-how. But the boys had adjusted well over the past ten months.
Beck cleared his throat. “What’re you doing here?”
Artie wrinkled his freckled nose and squinted at SJ. “Can I talk to him alone?”
“Of course.” SJ gave Beck a tiny smile and stepped out, closing them in with the smells of vanilla, coffee, and preadolescent boy.
Beck settled in the chair facing Artie’s. “How did you get here?”
“The bus.” Artie fidgeted. “I used my allowance.”
“Does your mom know where you are?”
“No. And don’t call her. I need to talk to you man-to-man.”
Uh-oh. That was a phrase Dan had used when he wanted to talk to his boys about something serious. “What’s up?”
“It’s Mom.” Artie scowled.
Oh, boy. Here we go. Artie needed a dad to keep him in line, and Beck hadn’t been around as much since things got serious with Zach last winter. “What about your mom?”
“She’s going to marry Mr. Nance.”
Beck covered an escaping expletive with a cough. God. Marybeth’s neighbor was an asshole of epic proportions. She’d dated the man for a few months, but it hadn’t seemed serious. “What makes you think that?”
“They told us. Last night.” Artie’s blue eyes narrowed. “He’s a jerk.”
Beck agreed. He folded his hands and rested his forearms on his thighs. “Why do you think he’s a jerk?”
“He threw away my football, just ’cause I left it in the yard instead of putting it away.”
That was a little severe. Artie loved sports, and Nance had to know how much losing the ball would affect the kid. “You’re sure he didn’t just put it somewhere?”
“Nope. And it was the one my dad got signed by Peyton Manning.”
That bastard. Why would Marybeth put up with something like that? “I’ll ask your mom about it.”
Artie huffed. “Won’t help. She’s all lovesick and thinks he walks on clouds.”
“On water, you mean?”
“Whatever. He’s just an old bald shithead.”
“None of that, Art.” It was hard not to laugh out loud at the kid’s assessment. “How did Pete take the news?”
Artie pulled a face at the mention of his seven-year-old brother. “He’s all happy. Mr. Nance gives him books and puzzles and crap.”
“Okay.” Beck held up a hand palm out. “First, clean up your language. Your dad wouldn’t want you talking that way. Second, your mom is an adult. I’m sure she took you guys into account when she made this decision.”
“Why can’t you marry her? You’re cool. You were my dad’s friend, and you play with us and take us places, and…” Artie sniffed and swiped a hand across his eyes. “And you care what happens to us.”
Beck sighed. The boys knew about his orientation, but they were still on the young side to understand what it meant in depth. “Because…” Because I don’t swing that way. “Because I’m with Zach, buddy.”