by M. Z. Kelly
“Any thoughts on why our suspect waited four years to kill again?” Ted asked. Bernie was sitting between us in the back seat, enjoying the attention my big partner was lavishing on him.
Dawson cocked his head toward Wallace as he drove. “Lavern thinks he was in prison for another crime, out of circulation. I’ve got another theory.”
“Anything in the databases that’s a match to our crimes?” I asked, thinking something else might have been missed.
Dawson shook his big head, then tilted it back in my direction. “Just the Georgia case.” His eyes found me for an instant. “Aren’t you gonna ask me about my theory, Buttercup?”
“It’s Kate, in case you’ve forgotten.” I made no attempt to hide my irritation. “So, what’s your theory, Shirley?”
Dawson laughed, looked at Ted in the rearview mirror. “I like it when she gets testy, shows a little spunk.”
Ted didn’t respond.
“We’re waiting,” I said, not bothering to conceal the irritation in my voice.
“I think he’s been building up to this moment, planning his crimes, and choosing his new proxies.”
“Or parolees,” Wallace said, referencing the fact that both Gorm and Monroe had been on parole.
Dawson went on, “I also think The Prophet’s killers are more than just proxies. He’s careful, meticulous, and precise in what he does. He engages in a ritual and tries to choose carefully. When he’s done with a killing, he makes the proxy part of his crazy tableau and moves on.”
I glanced out the window as we turned off the freeway and hit the surface streets. If Dawson was correct, it put an entirely new slant on our case. I knew from past experience that proxy killers were often duped, sometimes using emotional leverage, but a dedicated follower who was being controlled by an insane murderer was something in another realm. I was thinking about a case I’d worked involving a killer who went by the name Azazel when Ted interrupted my thoughts.
“What about the Lori March kidnapping?” Ted asked. “Her mother said that she didn’t go to church on a regular basis and, as far as we know, there was no poem left anywhere. It doesn’t fit with the other killings.”
“It could be that William Monroe was an apprentice who went sideways,” Dawson said. “Maybe he wanted the girl for his own purposes and they both ended up paying the price.”
“Could be,” Ted agreed. “We’ll do some more follow-up.”
Dawson’s pale eyes found us in the rearview mirror again. “You’ll both get a better picture of what I’m talking about when you meet Lucas Caufield.”
“Who?”
Dawson pulled into the parking lot of the West Fellowship Congregation Church and said, “We’re here. I’ll fill you in on the rest later.”
TWENTY ONE
We found Pastor Joshua Graham in his office preparing for his Sunday sermon. He was with a young blond woman he introduced as Cynthia Turner, his new secretary. Turner was attractive, with a body almost as perfect as Natalie’s. I was wondering about how professional their relationship was as I explained to Graham why we were there.
After I’d given him the barest of details about the Florida killing, I said, “The perpetrator of that crime sent a poem to the pastor where the girl attended church. We need to know if you received a similar letter before Jenna was taken.”
Graham swallowed. His gaze went over to Cynthia Turner for an instant before finding me again. “I don’t know anything about a poem.”
The pastor had barely made eye contact with me and his body language had closed down. I’d dealt with enough suspects to know that he wasn’t being truthful, something that also wasn’t lost on Joe Dawson.
“Listen to me, Reverend Randy,” Dawson said. “I know what a lie looks like and I’m staring at it. Where’s the poem?”
Graham’s eyes were downcast and he mumbled something about not knowing what we were talking about. Dawson walked over, grabbed him by the collar, and shoved him out of the office into the parking lot. “It looks like we’re going to do this the hard way.”
“What are you going to do?” Graham asked.
“I’m taking you to jail, you booger-eating moron.”
“For what?”
“Aggravated ignorance for starters, that’s after the BDD chews on you for a while.”
Dawson slapped the cuffs on the preacher, as Graham asked him what he meant.
“Big Damn Dog.” He shoved the pastor toward the car where Bernie was in the backseat, salivating. “And, just so you know, the mutt likes nuts and your little tea bag will do just fine.”
“Stop.”
We turned and saw that Cynthia Turner had followed us out of the office. She came over and handed me a single piece of paper. “Here’s what was left. I found it on my desk the day Jenna was taken.”
I snatched the paper out of her hand and turned to Graham. “Why did you keep this from us?”
He refused to meet my eyes or answer. I turned back to Turner. She had tears in her eyes as she said, “Everything’s my fault. Joshua was supposed to pick up Jenna at the beach the day she disappeared, but…we…we were together and he was late.”
“She was already gone when I got the poem,” Graham said. “It wouldn’t have made any difference.”
Dawson stepped forward and grabbed the reverend by his shirt collar. “You don’t know that.” The big FBI agent’s gaze travelled between Graham and Turner. “You two were playing gobble the knobble while Jenna Collins was being raped and tortured. I might not know what the fuck hell looks like, but I sure as shit know one thing. You two will have front row seats in the god-damned furnace.”
TWENTY TWO
It was late in the day by the time we got back to FBI headquarters. We made plans to meet with what Joe Dawson promised would be the taskforce from hell the first thing in the morning and go over The Prophet’s poem in detail. He also promised that he’d fill us in on Lucas Caufield, someone he said was an expert on The Prophet.
Since we were in downtown Los Angeles, I made arrangements to go by the coroner’s office. It was Brie’s last day at work and I’d promised to help pack up her belongings for her medical leave.
I found Brie in her office, putting pictures and some personal items in a box. She didn’t notice me at first. I stopped and watched her for a moment from the doorway. My beautiful friend seemed tired and vulnerable. I blinked back tears as she looked up and saw me.
“Thanks for stopping by,” she said, coming over and hugging me.
“Not a problem. I was in the neighborhood chasing serial killers anyway.” She chuckled and I took a moment to update her on how our Stone Canyon case had become The Prophet.
“So, he also left a poem for Jenna Collins’ preacher?” Brie asked after I explained the tie-in to the Florida case.
“Yes, only Joshua Graham withheld it, apparently because he was busy screwing the church secretary. Joe Dawson, who’s with the FBI, thinks The Prophet is going to resume his killing spree in this area.”
Brie sighed. “Sometimes I think I need another line of work, maybe something simple like being a dog walker.”
I looked at Bernie who was panting by my side. “I’ve got your first customer.”
We chatted for a few moments as we packed a couple of boxes, Brie telling me that her ex-husband had promised to help her during her surgery and recovery. “He’s going to take me to the hospital and make arrangements for a nurse to help me out the week after the surgery.”
“And Lily?”
“She’ll stay with him for the first couple of weeks, then we’ll see.” She found a tissue and brushed a tear. “My ex is living with his girlfriend.” Her watery eyes met me. “Maybe it’s wrong, but the truth is I’m jealous that Lily will be with them.” Her tears came again. “And then I think about what will happen to her if...I…if I don’t survive.”
She broke down, sobbing in my arms. After a few moments, she took a couple of deep breaths and regained some control.
When she’d recovered, I said, “I want you to listen to me, Brie. You are not only going to survive, you are going to continue to be a great mom to Lily.” I held her hands. “And someday a grandmother to her children.”
She managed to laugh. “I guess for the time being, I need to take this one day at a time.”
***
After I left Brie and drove to my apartment, the tears I’d been holding back flooded my eyes. It wasn’t just what Brie had said about possibly losing everything, including her daughter, that unleashed a torrent of emotion. It was the losses I’d suffered in my own life.
My father, who was also a cop, was murdered, gunned down by a then unknown assailant in front of me when I was only four years old. A few months back, the truth about his killing had finally been revealed to me by my adoptive mother. A man named Ryan Cooper had shot my father in a jealous rage when he learned that his former girlfriend, Judy Crawford, had been in a relationship with him while they were separated.
Years later, Cooper married Judy Crawford and then had come after me when he’d learned that Judy was my biological mother, something that had been withheld from me until recently by my adoptive mother. After Cooper had battered my birth mother, ultimately resulting in her death, he tried to kill me.
My half-sister had saved my life by shooting and killing her own father. Lindsay was still dealing with the emotional fallout from what she’d done, as well as having been molested by her father as a child. The thought of her now possibly being pregnant seemed too much to bear.
In the past few months my adoptive mother had suffered her own mental health problems, probably because she realized that withholding what had happened from me all those years was the wrong way to handle things. I’d moved in with Mom a few weeks back, thinking I could help her sort through everything, but it had only made things worse. When I’d recently moved into my own apartment, our relationship had become strained, at best. I wasn’t sure if we would ever find common ground again.
It was probably a combination of everything; Brie’s illness, the senseless murder of beautiful young girls at the hands of a mad man, and my family problems that had left me feeling emotionally drained and vulnerable. I wondered if I’d ever be able to pick up the pieces of my life again.
When I got home, I took a long hot shower. When I’d regained control over my emotions I called Lindsay. I got her voice mail and left a message for her to call me. It occurred to me that my sister might be avoiding me because she was embarrassed about her pregnancy. If that was the case, I knew that I’d need to be persistent. Lindsay needed to continue her therapy sessions and I was determined to find a way to make that happen.
I was about to get ready for bed when there was a knock on my door. I opened it to find Natalie, Mo, and their friend and fellow actress on their sit-com, Hollywood Girlz, Carly Hogg, with a couple of bottles of wine.
“We thought you could use a mini-bender PJ party before ya nod out,” Natalie said, holding up the bottles of wine. I saw that she and Mo were wearing their pajamas.
“You’re in need of some Two Buck Chuck therapy,” Mo agreed.
“We would have brought Chuck but he’s in the hospital after we played a game of roller coaster last night,” Carly said. I saw that she had on a shirt that said, I Don’t Suffer From Insanity, I Enjoy Every Moment of It.
“Roller coaster?” I said.
Mo rolled her dark eyes and looked at Carly. “Kate’s never done nuthin’ that a missionary wouldn’t do. You’re gonna have to spell it out for her.”
That was Natalie’s cue. “It’s when the woman is on top and…”
“Never mind,” I said. “I get it.”
I was exhausted but couldn’t think of a polite way to turn them down, so I invited them in. “Let’s make it a short therapy session,” I said after we all took seats. “I have to be at work early.”
We chatted and drank for a few minutes, polishing off the two bottles of wine, before the conversation eventually turned to my case. “I heard that psycho killer’s leaving notes around town before he whacks the girls,” Mo said before downing the last of her wine.
“What? How did you…”
“Mo gets more chinwag than a high school drama queen,” Natalie said, referencing street gossip. “She gets all the Hollywood dirt.”
“I heard they’re now calling our boy The Prophet,” Mo added. “And he’s one sick mofo.”
I saw no reason to deny what she already knew. “That pretty well sums it up.”
They went on for a moment, pumping me for information. When I said I didn’t know anything more, Natalie changed the subject. “Sonny’s still working on lining up that fantasy for us. We thought you could tag along; forget your troubles for a night.”
“What kind of fantasy?” I asked, thinking about our recent Spice Girl performance.
“I can’t say until the details are all worked out, but it should be a ton of laughs. What do you say?”
“I say the last time we all got together I was a Spice Girl and the time before that I was a nude Christmas tree ornament.”
“I saw you in the paper,” Carly said, slapping a knee. “You were the naked angel on the top of the tree.”
“Don’t remind me.”
“What do you think, Kate?” Mo said. “You’re gonna go bonkers dealing with these psychos unless you learn to relax and have some fun.”
I stood up and yawned. “I say it’s time for me to nod out.” After a chorus of boos, just to get rid of them I said, “Let me think about the fantasy. I’ll let you know.”
***
The next morning, Ted and I drove to FBI headquarters in downtown Los Angeles with Selfie. The lieutenant had allowed us to include our crime analyst on the task force, maybe as a way to appease us since Christine Belmont and Alex Hardy were also being included.
Selfie, who despised the two detectives even more than I did, glanced out the window as they passed by us on the freeway. “Maybe there’s a way we could turn The Prophet loose on those two.”
“I doubt that he’d waste his time with them,” I said, brushing a hand across my linen skirt.
I’d taken the opportunity to wear something other than dark pants and a blazer, my usual homicide outfit, knowing that I would be in meetings most of the day. My insomnia had, once again, been in full force last night, resulting in me getting only a couple of hours sleep. I was also concerned because Lindsay hadn’t called me back.
“Maybe we should use them as bait, put them in a cave,” Ted suggested, referencing our fellow detectives.
“I’ll bring the wasps,” Selfie said.
The taskforce assembled just after nine in a large conference room on the third floor of the FBI headquarters. The LAPD side of the table consisted of myself, Ted, and Selfie, along with Belmont and Hardy. Bernie wasted no time, finding a corner to take a snooze in during the proceedings.
Joe Dawson headed up the FBI group, that included Lavern Wallace and Allison Schwab, a special Agent from the Los Angeles office. They were joined by Jeremy Spender, a civilian profiler who we were told worked with a private think tank group out of Boston. Special Agent Janice Taylor, another profiler, assigned to the Behavioral Analysis Unit at Quantico, completed the federal side of the taskforce.
I’d worked with Taylor on the case that had come to mind earlier. A killer who had gone by the name Azazel, had used a proxy killer named Myra to carry out a series of homicides before she tried to kill her sister. The federal profiler was both attractive and brilliant, and I hoped that she would be a positive addition to the taskforce.
“Okay, listen up,” Dawson said after introductions. “I’ve got about as much use for these kind of meetings as the dog.” He glanced at Bernie. “Smartest guy in the room.” He then cut his eyes to his partner. “I’ll let Agent Wallace summarize what we know, then we’ll discuss things, and divide up duties.”
Dawson worked on a crossword puzzle, something that I knew he was addicted to, as Laver
n Wallace began summarizing our case. The agent did a good job of tying our crime to the two out-of-state cases that we were now familiar with, including discussing how The Prophet had sent a poem to Joshua Graham and the pastor in the Florida case. Wallace went over the earlier poem and then brought our attention to the poem we’d confiscated from Graham yesterday.
“I’ve put the lines from the Florida poem and the one taken from the pastor in Seal Beach on the overhead, so we can all take a look at them together,” Wallace said. He dimmed the lights and in a moment we saw the handwritten message on a screen at the far end of the room as he read the words aloud.
“What do we have,” the girl asked The Prophet,
“Is life of value or merely for profit?”
“The answer, my child, is in the design.
Look around and here’s what you find.”
The room was quiet for a long moment after Wallace finished. Dawson finally spoke up, “Anybody got any bright ideas about this crap?”
Allison Schwab, the local agent who looked like she was barely out of college, spoke first. “I think the lines form the beginning of a larger poem. The Prophet is sending us a continuing message when he murders the victims. I think we’re going to see more lines, more killings, before the poem is finished.”
Dawson didn’t look up, ignoring her and not acknowledging Jeremy Spender, the Boston profiler who said, “There’s much more to it than that.”
Spender was in his forties, bookish, and plain. He was tall and gaunt with a raspy voice. Something about him reminded me of what TV commentators often said about serial killers being quiet and serious, like your next door neighbor.
Dawson’s pale blue eyes eventually found the profiler and his forehead tightened. “Why don’t you enlighten us, Sigmund?”
The profiler did a stare down. Dawson didn’t blink but finally said, “Well?”
Spender cleared his throat and began expounding on what he said was the theoretical basis for the crimes. His discussion went on for several minutes and included terms like comorbidity and cognitive dissonance before he finally summarized his thoughts. “Our suspect is likely under thirty, a white male with a generalized anxiety disorder. His psychosocial development is fixated at an adolescent stage. He’s antisocial and probably impotent, acting out of rage over a past molestation.”