Cross Cut

by Rivers, Mal

  The colonel wasn’t kidding, it made for a tough read with all the black lines running through it. The first few pages were essentially a prelude to the capture and arrest of Lee Lynch. Ryder’s name was mentioned, as a junior agent who provided intelligence that led to an unused building in Jalalabad, south of the main bridge. Further information seemed lacking, and was probably tied to an individual in-depth report, which I didn’t have time to photograph within my two minutes.

  There were a couple of photographs of the early victims. One showed the incisions down and across the body, which was laid out on a table inside a rustic basement. All the victims had their arms laid out beside their bodies in a curious position, as if they had webbed out their hands on the table. Various angles of the photographs showed the grim and squalid environments, possessing all manner of stains, dirt and, of course, blood. The places and locations were all in different parts of Jalalabad, but in similarly dark and unused buildings.

  According to the postmortem reports, a sharp blade was used from the top of the sternum, but didn’t penetrate deeply until reaching the xiphoid process (bottom of the sternum). From then, the cut was deep, straight down. Various organs were either damaged or severed entirely. The horizontal cuts were directly below the rib cage and executed in two separate motions from either side. This made sense when you consider the killer couldn’t continue one straight cut from left to right, when there had already been a vertical cut. Not without making a jagged transfer across it.

  There were other pictures, but they added nothing relevant. I’m not fond of gore, and see no reason to harp on about it. The records were also incomplete. I’d only managed to get bits and pieces of the latter victims within my two minutes.

  I spent the rest of the time skimming for a name. Any name that could be chased down. Someone who knew Lee Lynch, or could shed light on the events back in 2001. One name comes straight to mind, of course—Kendra Ryder. I don’t say she keeps things from me, but she inevitably does. Although, I saw no sinister reason for her neglecting to tell me about Lee Lynch.

  The other name was Dale Huntington, the arresting agent. His name appears frequently toward the end of the file. A long shot, seen as he probably knew as much as Ryder. But the fact he usurped Ryder’s glory suggested he may have known something worthwhile.

  Another name, which could be another long shot, was the guard that shot Lee Lynch. His name was Zeus Higgings. Naturally, when I say long shot, I don’t mean in terms of finding him. I'd wager there aren’t many Zeus Higgings’ in the global directory. But in terms of gaining information, it was a long shot. As long as the one that killed Lee Lynch anyway.

  I put the file down on the tray in front of me and called the attendant for a scotch, then realized I’d have to water it down some. We were touching down in an hour and it would be past midnight. I didn’t want to risk dozing off while driving back to the beach house.

  Later I would look out the window and see the lights of LA. I’d see the colors in full luminance and offer up a disinterested yawn.

  10

  2AM at the beach house and I expected it to be dark inside, and the occupants dead to the world. I was wrong.

  The office directly faces the front door down the hallway, and a familiar orange light came from the crack in the door. I walked slowly, and retrieved my handgun from my inside pocket. If Cristescu or one of his crew was in there, I was ready to pop them.

  I approached the door and pushed it with my left hand while raising the P230 in my right. The aquariums glowed bright blue among the orange glow, and, low and behold, Ryder was sitting—on the floor, with seven cardboard boxes strewn across the floor. Her blazer was missing. She had just her blouse on, the two top buttons undone, which she quickly remedied.

  “The hell,” I said.

  She looked up at me quickly. She was alert, which I attributed to the empty coffee cup on the desk.

  “Ah, you’re back. The devil was that demonstration for?” she said.

  “Taking precautions.”

  “Pah.”

  “You do know it’s 2AM, and you have to be up in three hours to go fishing?”

  She tilted her head toward my desk and glanced at my clock. “I was unaware of the time. I have been studying.”

  “No kidding. I assume something interesting kept you up till this time? The only thing awake at this time is the ocean.”

  She shook her head and her bottom lip crept up and over her top lip, in a bizarre frown. “Quite the opposite. I kept going with the hope of discovering something. The news you gave me this afternoon didn’t help. I dislike a day of work with no return.”

  “Work?” I said. “Sixteen hours of the last forty were spent on a plane.”

  “Quite.” She tried to hide her yawn as best she could. “We have never been so close to failure at such an early stage.”

  I moved over to my desk and plugged my cell phone into my laptop. It took a few minutes to print out the photographs of the records from Quantico and paper-clip them together.

  “Well, it wasn’t a complete bust. The colonel I saw left a file on his desk, so I decided to take pictures.” I dropped the pages on the floor and she regarded them.

  “You say you saw a colonel?” she asked.

  “Yeah, Smith. Felt like an alias, like he was off the record even talking to me.”

  “And this is a record from back then?” she asked, thumbing through the pages

  “Certainly. Isn’t very helpful, though. Not unless you like filling in blanks.”

  She skimmed over the pages for a while, as if she was looking for something particular.

  I coughed. “I can save you the trouble. There’s nothing in there that could give us a straight out clue. Many of the redacted lines seem to repeat, though, but that’s no good to us. All we know is the same unknown person is constantly mentioned.”

  Ryder thumbed across the papers again and nodded in agreement, as if my suggestion seemed valid. But, unless she had a way to fill those blanks, I didn’t see the use of it.

  “There are a couple of names in there that might be worth looking at,” I said.

  She skimmed some more and when she finished, she said, “Yes—Dale Huntington and Zeus Higgings.”

  “Uh-huh. Speaking of which—I thought you said you caught Lee Lynch?”

  “I did.”

  “Not what that says.”

  “Reports often depend on who write them. Which is possibly why these FBI files aren’t producing anything.”

  I decided to ask one last time. “So you captured him, and this Huntington took the credit?”

  She looked at me for a few seconds and closed her eyes. “I caught him,” she said. “Huntington captured him. The definition is different.”

  “Oh,” I said. “So you did the legwork and he made the arrest.”

  “That is the summary of it, yes.”

  “Nice to know you were a lackey at some point in your life.”

  “Pah.” She rose from the floor, stretched, and retrieved her blazer hiding behind her desk. “Time for bed.”

  “Wait a minute,” I said, holding out a hand. “Don’t you have anything to say about back then?”

  “Nothing relevant, no.”

  “Then surely Huntington doesn’t know anything either.”

  She’d reached the door now. She looked back and her eyes showed signs of tiredness. “That may well be the case. But I was not involved in the aftermath. He was.”

  “But why—”

  “Bedtime,” she said, shaking her head. “In the morning, we will assess the task ahead.”

  I let her go, half expecting her to tell me to lock the door, but she didn’t. I went into the kitchen to grab a glass of water for the night. As I walked past the seven cardboard boxes, I was tempted to sit down and have a look, but kicked them under her desk instead.

  11

  The morning after was the same as any other. Despite a late bedtime, Ryder had been to the pier. When she arr
ived back at 9AM I wasn’t in the kitchen, I’d had breakfast early and decided to bury my nose into the FBI’s files. They were copies, of course, but well photocopied, even the photographs.

  It would be laborious to describe, in detail, every single murder and everything related to it. Time wise, there was no definite pattern to the murders. The first two were within six months of each other, and the third quickly followed the second within a fortnight. The fourth, fifth and sixth were within eighteen months of each other, the seventh and Guy Lynch within three months.

  The victim before Lynch was female, twenty-nine years of age, found in her home bedroom, hanging from a light fixture with rope in the form of a noose. The incisions were apparently made postmortem. The murders usually took place inside the victims’ homes, although, there were exceptions. Murder number three, male, thirty-one, took place in an alley outside an apartment belonging to his girlfriend. Victim number five was hooked up to a pulley in a warehouse, incisions made while the victim, female, forty-two, was still alive.

  I could go on with the variables, but it was safe to say the only recurring theme the killer cared about were the incisions. The hanging was a recurrence, but done variably, in different ways. Some of the victims had been drugged before being hanged, others had bruise marks where they had been knocked unconscious

  When Ryder came downstairs from changing she looked over the aquariums before sitting. Pink blouse this time, and her hair wasn’t as straight as it usually was.

  “Good morning,” she said with one firm nod.

  I nodded. “It was morning when I got back.”

  “Indeed.” She breathed deeply and clasped her hands together. “To business. Pass me those boxes.”

  I complied and watched as she sifted through them. She put aside all but three boxes; one, three and seven, corresponding to the murders in order, of course. She got out the files and opened them, and then looked at me.

  “As well as Guy Lynch, we will be concentrating on these three murders,” she said.

  “How so? Did you toss a coin or something?”

  “No, of course not. I am merely applying focus, so as to reach an outcome quicker.”

  “I see.” I snickered. “Care to explain your focus?”

  She called Melissa for some coffee and then pursed her lips. “The first murder is based on the simple fact it was the first, and deserves consideration. Naturally, after looking at these yourself, you at least recognize the killer has variation?”

  “Sure,” I said, with an air of pride. “Aside from the whole cutting thing, the killer doesn’t really stick to a motif. Victims are either male or female, age gaps—crime scenes sometimes vary. So the Cutter isn’t strict, even with the hanging.”

  “Yes.” She smiled. “You are improving.”

  I smiled back, but it didn’t last. My confidence wasn’t good enough to improve on my reasoning.

  “I still have no idea why you’ve picked out the other two files,” I said.

  She tapped a single finger on her desk and then passed me the two files. “Variation is a crude thing. Often time people will cease trying to predict events or circumstances prone to variation. But the point remains that variation, as a subsequent action of an event already recognized, has its limits when there is the minutest sign of a root. It can only revolve around an origin that possesses order and predictability. If it didn’t, it wouldn’t be variation, it would simply be chaos.” She gave a half nod to the files I had in my hand. “Our killer may be varied, or flexible, but he or she does not act in chaos.”

  I nodded, pretending to understand what the hell she was saying. “So, you’re saying amongst the variables, these two are the most varied?”

  “Yes. It isn’t particularly clear in the photograph, but further reading within the autopsy report of Jake Segal, victim number three, states that there were two incisions made on the right, horizontal cut. This didn’t happen with any of the others. So it deserves consideration.”

  “Wasn’t that the one in the alley?” I asked. “Not the most comfortable of environments, maybe the knife slipped or something.”

  “Perhaps. Why the killer chose the alley is another point. There’s also the girlfriend, her statement here is underwhelming at best.” She paused while I wrote this down in my notebook. “The seventh, Nora Klyne, is interesting for another reason entirely, and that is she most likely knew our killer beforehand.”

  I paused for a while, and then skimmed through the file, finding nothing that brought out such a fact.

  “Okay, I’ll bite. How do you come to that conclusion?”

  “Going by the report, there was no sign of forced entry. In the first and sixth murder, the killer forced the locks on the doors. The crime scene photographs from Nora Klyne’s house show a relatively stable environment aside from the bedroom. There were two wine glasses, one half full, the other full, with no finger prints. She had company during the time she was killed. Perhaps—no, it was the killer.” She told me to turn the page. “The half full glass contained ketamine.”

  I looked at the report some more and realized this was hardly a great piece of deduction from Ryder. She was basically summarizing the report and clearly the FBI was investigating along the same line. They had tested the wine glasses for prints, and found none on the full glass.

  I shut the file and leaned back in my chair and said, “Okay, so it sounds like number seven could be the clincher. We find out how Nora Klyne knew the killer and, hey, presto. Except that’s full of holes because clearly the FBI had the same idea and got nowhere.”

  Ryder looked at me and her eyebrows lifted slightly. “Surely, that is why I manage to earn a living doing what I do.”

  “Yeah, I guess.” I stood and took the printouts from the Quantico records from my desk and waved them. “Where do we stand on this? Do we continue or ignore it?”

  “It would be foolish to ignore it. I have noticed you seem more inclined to the possibility that the past has relevance here. Certainly more than you did two days ago”

  “Yeah, you could say that. I don’t buy the whole, the method doesn’t stand out as unique, and neither do you. Lee Lynch might be dead, but something is going on here, and I think you know more than you’re telling me. You wanted permission to breach our agreement—if you want to honor that request, tell me, are you holding something back?”

  Ryder paused and adjusted her mouth at least twice, the words not quite making it out. It was rare to see her choose her words, so that in itself was an answer. She was reaching, and at the very least, deflecting.

  I sat down again, when Ryder finally said, “I have missed nothing relevant. We have a mutual trust, don’t we, Ader?”

  “Of course,” I said promptly.

  “Then let us leave it at that. I do not claim to be completely righteous. I will admit to you that I perhaps left this too late. We all have our flaws, for one reason or another. We each hide or ignore facts for our own sake.” She paused for a while and cleared her throat. “It’s worth noting, however, that I am not the only one aware of the events twelve years ago. The relevant authorities have yet to come forward to the FBI regarding the similarities between our killer and Lee Lynch.”

  I nodded. “Yeah, as far as we know. Seems to me whatever happened twelve years ago has stayed buried. Letting it out of the bag now would cause a stir, and not just for the CID and the army. Better be careful—maybe the government will send out a hitman to silence you.” I grinned in bad humor.

  She snorted disagreeably, dismissing such a thought. She then looked at the redacted passages for a while and bit her lip more than twice. I decided to wait on the sofa until she had made up her mind.

  She looked up and said, “See if you can locate Zeus Higgings. It would be useful to learn of Lee Lynch’s time in prison. The chance his influence somehow escaped those steel bars and found their way to California is minute, but possible.”

  “Not Dale Huntington?” I asked.

  “No—no
, I see no use in that. Not yet.” She paused for thought. “It would be pointless to ask any of the officers and agents from that time. Even if they were in possession of greater facts than I, the chances of them letting them go is low.” She pulled her chair back slightly and crossed her legs. “Regarding the murders from then and now. No doubt they are similar, but there is one major difference—”

  “Yeah,” I interrupted. “The victims back then weren’t hanged.”

  She regarded me for a mere second. Not with awe, just quiet satisfaction.

  “Yes,” she said.

  “Want me to apologize for taking your glory?”

  “Pah.” She rose from her chair and walked over to the furthermost aquarium, which contained the patagonians. A rather dull looking breed in my opinion, silver with brownish outlines, but little is known about them. I think that’s why seahorses intrigue her. The fact that research is sparse, and new species are found regularly just adds to their mystique. There was a stool by the window that she used when she watched them. She always smiled. Like a child at a pet store. Few things brought her happiness, but they did. She turned to face me from the stool and said, “The schedule for today, then—”

  She gave me the list. The first was to check the restroom in Anaheim, and if I could arrange it, a meeting with an FBI agent to go through some things. The next part was to visit the girlfriend of Jake Segal, victim number three. After that, I was to look into Nora Klyne. Which could involve talking to any number of people. All that, and there was still Zeus Higgings to look into. Not to mention the staff at Gillham and Mane. Something told me I wouldn’t get round to half of the list, and I may as well state right now that I was correct in that assumption. Ryder was the kind of employer whose endeavors were never ending, so you could never clock off early, but, at the same time, she didn’t begrudge me for not completing the tasks within a day.

  I wrote it all down, as usual. I got my stuff together and made sure the P230 was in my inside jacket pocket. If Cristescu was following me, he’d better watch out.