He jumped her, the rag over her mouth before she could scream or even react.
Instantly, he wrapped his left arm around her and lifted her petite five-foot frame off the ground. He went down on his right knee, pushed her down to the ground and laid on top of her, smothering her, pinning her underneath him leaving no room for her to fight or wriggle free, the rag never leaving her mouth, jamming it up to her nose, making her suck in the fumes, her efforts to break free simply futile.
It took a minute of breathing in the toxic fumes of the chloroform before he could tell that she went completely still and was subdued.
He rolled her over, Danica Brunner lying flat on her back, and ripped open her blouse, the buttons flying, the fabric ripping. He slid her skirt down and then her panties well below her navel to where he could see her pubic hair.
He took out the Ka-Bar and without any hesitation, plunged it into her just below her belly button, then twisted the blade violently and then ripped angrily upwards, grunting to get the jagged edge of the knife to slice up through her, the blood pouring out, her body convulsing. He quickly lengthened the vertical cut up and down. Next, he made the horizontal cut for the cross, the well-honed knife slicing deeply through the soft skin of her upper abdomen, taking the cut four to five inches left and then right of the long vertical gash.
Satisfied, he pulled the knife out of her and wiped the blood off on her blouse and put it back in the knife case. Next, he rolled her onto her right side, pulled her legs up to her stomach and folded her arms around her chest, putting her into the fetal position. Finally, he pulled out the plastic bag holding the verse and placed it in her right hand.
“That’s for Rena, you bitch!” he said under his breath.
The whole process took less than five minutes from when he’d put the rag over her mouth.
The Reaper pushed himself up, took off his rubber gloves and stuffed them into a plastic bag and put it into his backpack for later disposal. He slipped on black leather gloves and noticed her cell phone ringing again. He reached inside her purse for the phone. The display had a familiar number and then he heard them in the distance, the sirens.
• • • •
“She’s not answering,” Mac stated, putting his cell phone back in his pocket. “How do we know the picture is Danica Brunner?”
“Woman called in from California, said she went to college with her at Washington and Lee here in Virginia,” Keller reported from the backseat. “The woman said she was certain that was Danica Brunner.”
The FBI motorcade sirens and flashing lights moved what little traffic there was at midnight out of the way as they made their speed run down to Springfield.
“Have the locals in Springfield been notified?” Mac asked.
“They’re on their way,” Keller reported. Just then Keller’s phone rang. “I suspect they are there,” he added and answered his cell, “Special Agent Keller.” His head immediately went down. He looked back to Mac and shook his head.
• • • •
Springfield, Virginia, was a bedroom community located southwest of Washington, DC, just outside of the I-495 beltway. Mac and Wire arrived to find flashing lights and crime scene tape already up at the end of an alley. The FBI motorcade pulled up and parked. Mac and Wire put their FBI shields around their necks and showed their identification to a uniformed officer who, upon seeing the names, gave them an extra look of recognition, then a respectful nod before letting them under the crime scene tape.
They jogged a hundred feet down the alley to a small driveway where a black Audi A3 was parked. The door in the dark red cedar fence was open to the right of the garage. While pulling on rubber gloves, Mac and Wire walked through the opening in the fence which led to a winding paver path that weaved its way around the left side of the garage. Halfway down the path, lying partially in the bushes under the canopy of a low hanging branch from a tree, was the victim, twenty-seven-year-old Danica Brunner. She was posed in a pool of blood. Brunner’s lower abdomen was cut like all the others. However, this time even more viciously. Her belly was cut wide open, the slices longer and more jagged, as if she was cut in a frenzy and a hurry.
The Springfield police chief, a woman named Trudy Miles, greeted them both. “I’m sorry; this is an absolutely brutal night for you guys. Can’t tell you how sorry I am about Aubry Gesch. He was a good man.”
“You knew him?” Wire asked.
“I worked a case with him a couple of years ago. He was a pro’s pro.”
“That he was, Chief,” Mac answered but stayed on task. “What do we have here?”
“Just the person you were looking for, Danica Brunner,” the chief answered. “My men arrived ten minutes ago and knocked on the front door, which was answered by her boyfriend who was asleep on the couch. He led my men around the back and they found the body lying in the bushes. Other than checking for a pulse, she hasn’t been moved.” Miles nodded to the two-story house behind them. “The boyfriend was expecting her around midnight, which is usually when she shows up here. She’s been working nights lately, usually until 11:00 or a little later managing an art gallery.”
“That had to be … awful,” Wire said sadly, crouching down, looking at the wound. “To find her like … this …” Shock overtook Dara’s face as she inspected the cuts on Brunner. Even in the dark Mac could tell she was going pale.
“That’s something you’ll never forget,” Mac added, hands on hips, taking in the murder scene. “This is just … vicious,” he remarked, shining his light on the wound. “I wouldn’t say the other times he sliced women open were surgical, especially Sandy Faye, but this is more … I don’t know, brutal.”
“Escalated,” Dara added, her hand to her mouth. “He’s escalating.”
“Or he was just excited by what happened at the cabin perhaps, euphoric even, so much so he was in a exhilarated frenzy when he killed her,” Mac answered, nonplussed, evaluating the scene as if he had no pulse.
“Agent McRyan,” Chief Miles asked, “how can you look at this … I mean, it looks like she was attacked by a wild animal, for Christ’s sake. How can you look and talk about it so … calmly?”
Mac kept looking over Brunner while he answered, “That’s the sad part, really, Chief. This stuff doesn’t faze me anymore. It hasn’t for a while.” Which was one of the reasons he didn’t miss regular cop work as much as he thought he would; being away from the dead bodies had allowed him to get back in touch with his humanity. Still, even he was surprised at how unaffected he was by the state of the Brunner’s body; it was horrifying but it just didn’t affect him in that way. He was looking at it unemotionally, clinically. On the other hand, Wire wasn’t desensitized like he was. “You okay, partner?” he asked.
“Fine,” she answered, although she was anything but that. She turned her back to the body and tried to suck in some fresh air. “Let’s keep working.”
“Okay,” Mac turned back and leaned down to the body again. “Man, the wound is fresh. She hasn’t been dead long,” Mac stated as he walked back towards the alley and to the Audi parked in the driveway. He felt the hood, it was still warm, and shook his head. “I bet we missed by five minutes, maybe less.” Mac walked back and found her purse.
“Chief, I’m reaching inside her purse.”
“What are you looking for?” Miles asked.
“Cell phone.” The screen revealed four missed calls, all his, the first one made twenty-one minutes ago. “Damn it. We were so close.”
Mac looked back from the body to the path, leading to the driveway. The path followed the contours of the outside of the garage, turning left for five feet and then right as the path made its way to the back door of the house. The path was concealed under a canopy of mature trees and by a row of tall bushes. With his flashlight, Mac pointed towards a notch in the garage’s exterior where the path turned left. “He waited right there,” Mac suggested, pointing, angling the flashlight down. “Those footprints look fresh. I bet they’re si
ze thirteen. Let’s do things by the book and get a mold, Chief.”
“Will do.”
“So he got inside the fence, there’s no lock, and waited here, knowing she was coming because he’d been stalking her for days,” Wire suggested, now steadied, walking towards the house, stopping halfway. “In the dark, no way you could see him hiding there from the house. It’s too dark and the spot is hidden.”
“Did she come over regularly around midnight?” Mac asked the chief.
“Boyfriend says she did. She managed an art gallery that would close at 10:00 P.M. She would usually work another hour and then come over and spend the night. They’ve been together for a year. The poor guy, he was getting ready to pop the question.”
“Do we have a Bible verse?” Mac muttered, looking at Brunner’s hand. It was there, in a plastic bag. Mac carefully pulled it out of her fingers and held it up to his flashlight and read aloud: “Then said Jesus unto him, Put up again thy sword into his place: for all they that take the sword shall perish with the sword.” Mac studied the words, “I think that’s Matthew.”
“Very good, McRyan. Matthew 26:52 to be exact,” Chief Miles answered. “I teach Sunday school. With a name like McRyan, you must be Catholic.”
“As Irish Catholic as they come,” Mac replied.
“Chief, are your people canvassing?” Wire asked, getting back on task.
“As we speak, Agent Wire, every door is being knocked on,” the chief answered. “My people know what this murder is. They’ll be on their game.”
Mac handed Miles a copy of the photo array of Drake Johnson. “Chief, show everyone this photo. It’s the same one the FBI director talked about less than an hour ago. The Reaper is a man named Drake Johnson. He’s a former cop. If anyone gets a bead on him, they should immediately call for backup. The man is a beast and taking him alone is extremely dangerous.”
Miles looked over the photo. “I heard that statement by the director. Just how long have you had his name?” the Springfield police chief asked, curious.
“We’ve known for less than twenty-four hours, really since yesterday morning. The bureau thought they had a bead on him at a cabin up in Pennsylvania. Instead it was a trap.”
“The explosion?” the detective asked.
“Yes,” Wire answered. “So now there will be no holding back. The whole nation will know who the Reaper is, who Drake Johnson is. In this day and age, there will be no place for him to hide.”
“Where’s the boyfriend?” Mac asked. There was only one thing he really needed to know from the boyfriend.
“Inside the house,” he Springfield chief answered.
Mac and Wire walked inside the small two-story red brick house and found the boyfriend sitting at the kitchen table, elbows on his knees looking at the floor. Mac and Wire team interviewed him, walking through the last two days, getting the answers they largely expected. “Did you see this man hanging around?” Wire asked, showing him the photo spread of Johnson.
“No,” he answered. It appeared he’d not yet seen the news. “Is he this Reaper?”
“Yes,” Mac answered. “Look, I know you’re still in shock, but I have to ask some questions.”
“Okay.”
Mac pulled out the photo they’d taken from Randall’s computer. “You can see Danica in this picture. Do you know any of these other women in the photo?”
The boyfriend took the photo in his hands and studied it. “No, I don’t.”
“You’re sure?” Mac pressed. “None of them look even vaguely familiar?”
Sam shook his head.
“Did she ever mention the name Rena Johnson?”
“No.”
“How long have you known Danica?”
“We met a little over a year ago at a party. Up until then I’d never met or seen her before. How old is that picture?”
“Seven years,” Mac answered.
“Man, you’d have to ask her family,” he answered. “I can’t begin to tell you how reluctant Dani was to talk about her past, about college, about the years after college. She just never talked about it, like there were bad memories she was trying to forget. If the topic ever came up, she just kind of shut down and wanted to talk about something else. For whatever reason, she wanted to act as if those years of her life never existed.”
Mac and Wire shared a knowing look. The past she never wanted to talk about finally came back to get her.
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
“I think he symbolizes a cold-blooded sociopathic killer.”
4:00 A.M., the Hoover Building.
While Wire sacked out on the beat-up couch in the employee lounge, Mac sipped at a large coffee and read through the file the FBI had developed on Drake Johnson during the past twenty-four hours. Despite the fact that he’d read the FBI profile on the Reaper, confronted him once and spoke on the phone with him twice, this was really the first time he was actually getting some in-depth information on the man he’d spent weeks hunting for.
He was the son of Warren and Patricia Johnson of Auburn, New York. Nine years after his birth, he gained a baby sister named Rena. The FBI file revealed that while there was a nine-year gap between Drake and Rena Johnson, the two siblings were very close. In a short time, the FBI had obtained a number of family pictures and it was clear from the photos, the genuine smiles and affection that Drake Johnson loved and doted over his little baby sister. This was probably one of the reasons Drake Johnson stayed close to home, going to State University of New York (SUNY) at Cortland, a mere half hour away, and living at home for much of his college years. At SUNY Cortland, he majored in criminology and subsequently joined the police force in Ithaca just a half hour from Auburn.
Once with the police force in Ithaca, his record for his first eleven years was solid. His evaluations revealed excellent performance, several commendations and as a result, he was promoted to detective by the time he was twenty-nine years old. The only blemishes were the three brutality complaints, one for which he served a suspension, but otherwise he looked like a pretty solid cop.
The first real sign of trouble appeared nearly four years ago, a brutality complaint arising out of the investigation of a hit-and-run automobile accident. Johnson was alleged to have used excessive force in the arrest of the driver of the vehicle. Johnson served a short suspension but in reading the file and some analysis provided, the fact the incident involved a hit-and-run accident, not unlike the one that resulted in his sister’s death, seemed to serve as a trigger that started a downward emotional spiral for Johnson.
A second brutality complaint followed a year later arising out of a domestic dispute and investigation. The husband was found at a local bar and took a swing at Johnson when he and his partner attempted to arrest him. Johnson responded with a full onslaught, punching the man three times in the face, breaking his nose, knocking out two teeth and giving him two black eyes. Johnson attributed his reaction to the heat of the moment and fear for his own safety. Johnson’s partner backed his version and the witness accounts for others at the bar varied greatly as to the aggression of the suspect as well as the appropriateness of Johnson’s reaction. Mac had been through similar situations numerous times where his own survival instinct kicks in. However, as much as he was prone to side with any officer who defended himself from an assault by a suspect, even to him the response seemed exceedingly excessive.
His record then remained officially clean for two years, although in reading between the lines on the performance evaluations, it appeared Johnson continued to teeter on the edge. The FBI file indicated that two current Ithaca officers were interviewed and off the record stated that Johnson had developed an anger management problem and always seemed to be on a hair trigger, always ready to blow. “I think his sister’s death devastated him, the way she died, a hit-and-run and the driver was never found. It just ate him up inside.” Those same officers also said Johnson was an exceedingly good investigator, dogged and tenacious. Another officer stated: “I think
given what happened to his sister, he always identified with the victim. That made him a good investigator, he closed cases and that’s why I think they tolerated his temper and brutality issues. When he was on his game he was good for the statistics.”
Then his parents died. The same officers indicated that Johnson became depressed, started drinking excessively and was, at times, scary. Three months after his father’s passing, new trouble arose out of an interrogation of a rape suspect where Johnson was accused of “tuning” up the suspect to obtain a confession.
This time Johnson was suspended for thirty days, ordered to seek counseling and basically told that if it happened again, he would be done.
Upon his reinstatement, things seemed to calm down for Johnson. His performance as an investigator remained solid and the message seemingly received. As one of his former colleagues stated, “He seemed to turn the corner although you could tell he was fighting to keep things together.”
Then the break-in at the residence of Kevin and Rebecca Randall happened and the bottom dropped out of Johnson’s life. Mac figured, as did FBI analysts putting together the file, that somewhere in the investigation of the burglary, Johnson stumbled on the picture of his sister with Goynes, Wyland, Donahue, Faye, Drew, Rebecca Randall and Danica Brunner. Shortly thereafter, Johnson was involved in another investigation involving a domestic incident where a wife was brutally beaten but ultimately refused to make a complaint against her husband. Apparently, the incident set Johnson off. The husband came into a bar where Johnson was drinking. The report indicated that Johnson left the bar. He may have waited in the back for the husband. When he came out the back of the bar, Drake Johnson beat the man to within an inch of his life. While it was off duty, his job with Ithaca was nevertheless in the balance and the civil lawsuit would be forthcoming and he would almost certainly lose.
Two weeks later, while on suspension, Johnson staged his death. A couple of weeks later, Rebecca Randall was murdered. Two years later the Reaper killings began.
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