by J. Bertrand
“I remember you now,” Lauterbach tells her, a twinkle in his eye. “You helped run the Hannah Mayhew task force.”
“That was me.” She gives a self-deprecating shrug. “Though it’s March who deserves the credit on that case.”
“That’s what he told me.”
Ignoring them, I start sifting through the reports on the table. All told, there are records on fifteen open homicides going back ten years. Scene photos, autopsy photos, an assortment of videos shot on-site by detectives and crime scene photographers. Out of curiosity and a deep-rooted morbid streak, I dig around for the macabre example Templeton cited to me, the severed head floating in the fish tank. There are things that strike a veteran homicide cop as darkly funny that would be horrific to anyone else. As far as I can tell, though, the beheading is not among these files.
Lauterbach goes for the light switch.
“Hold on a second,” I say. “You’re not gonna put me through another PowerPoint.”
“Not another one, no.” He flicks the light off. “Detective Cavallo hasn’t seen the first one, so I figured I’d catch her up.”
Sinking into a chair, I suppress my desire to moan. The Sheriff’s Department detective will not allow his inner showman to be denied. Cavallo tucks herself into a seat across from me, smiling at my discomfort. Spectators at old-fashioned bear baitings no doubt wore very similar expressions, anticipating the blood sport to come.
SATURDAY, DECEMBER 12 — 4:19 P.M.
Lauterbach reads aloud from a summary sheet while Cavallo and I follow along:
1999, Nicole Fauk, age 43
Kingwood housewife discovered in swimming pool. Probable 6” blade, not recovered at scene. [Suspect charged, convicted.]
“We’ll skip over that one for the time being,” he says, flashing me a smile. “Once you’ve seen the rest, maybe you’ll wanna come back to it of your own volition.”
“I only count fifteen cases on this list. Yesterday there were more than twenty.”
“Like I said, some of these I’ve looked at in greater detail than others. This is a work in progress, so as I’m able to, I rule them out. But the ones on this list are looking pretty solid, with one or two exceptions, which I’ll point out. Now, if you don’t mind . . .”
“Go right ahead.”
2000, Maria Olivares, age 28
Houston prostitute, multiple stab wounds, single-edged blade (probably 4”), not recovered. Body dumped in reservoir. No suspect.
2000, Shelly Lloyd, age 17
Student found in flooded ditch, ne Harris County, drowned and multiple stab wounds. Ka-Bar knife recovered at scene, partial print. No suspect.
“At the time, the Olivares case doesn’t seem to have gotten much attention. Just a hooker who got herself cut up. The body was in the water awhile. But the Shelly Lloyd murder was big news at the time. She was held down in the water and stabbed to death as she drowned. The murder weapon was an army surplus Ka-Bar knife—a clip-point 7-inch blade—but the partial print on the guard was never matched to a suspect.”
“And you think these two cases are connected?” Cavallo asks.
“It looks that way, doesn’t it?”
She gives a noncommittal shrug. “Right here, it says the knife that killed Olivares was probably four inches long, and you just said the other one was seven inches.”
“That’s the thing,” he says. “This killer isn’t attached to a particular weapon. He seems to use a variety of blades. Personally, I think he brings one with him as a backup but always makes a point of looking for available alternatives at the scene. Let me keep going and you’ll see what I’m talking about.”
He rattles off three cases from 2001—Kathy Ann Morrison, Tonya Stall, Mira Echeverría—before he gets to Amber Dawson from 2002, who was found in a ditch. He passes around a couple of crime scene photos. The young prostitute’s body, displayed on a coroner’s stainless autopsy table, is bloated from being in the water, her torso crosshatched with slashes.
“Those wounds could have easily been made by a Ka-Bar.”
“And they look nothing like what was done to Simone Walker,” I say.
“A killer’s profile can change over time. His technique evolves and develops.”
Next is a Jane Doe. Then a restaurant server. And then he gets to a familiar case, perking Cavallo up.
2004, Tegan McGill, age 29
Woodlands homemaker found in backyard swimming pool. Raped, stabbed, mutilated by kitchen knife, recovered at scene. Husband charged but found not guilty at trial. Alleged prosecutorial misconduct.
“But the husband did do it,” Cavallo says.
“You know that for a fact?”
“It’s common knowledge. The prosecution bungled the case, but that doesn’t make him any less guilty.”
“If you’d asked me six months ago, I would have said the same thing. Knowing what I know now, though, seeing the pattern here, the husband’s story makes a lot of sense. He left her by the pool and went upstairs to shower, and when he came back she was dead. Sounds crazy, doesn’t it? Unless you know there’s a killer with this exact MO and stalking his victims is how he gets off. Trust me, I’ve gone over the case file and this one fits like a glove.”
I suppress a sigh, but Lauterbach is undeterred. He opens the file on another prostitute, Janice Smith, summarizes the notes, then sets it aside for another vaguely familiar name.
2004, Dawn Nickerson, age 25
Houston paralegal found in bathtub, throat cut, similar circumstances to 2001 Tonya Stall homicide. Investigators theorized connection, but no suspect was charged. Mentally disturbed person confessed to both crimes after media coverage. Follow-up eliminated him from suspicion.
“It’s not me saying there’s a connection with Tonya Stall; it was the original HPD investigators. As a matter of fact, I have the documentation right here.” He thumbs through the nearest stack of reports, withdrawing a thin folder he’s marked in advance with a sticky note. Inside, a two-page report that I immediately recognize as one of my own. “You worked this case, didn’t you?”
The case was Ordway’s, but he had asked for help from Wilcox and me. While I was busy trying to dig up dirt on my bystander project, Wilcox came up with the connection to the 2001 case. Covering for my disengagement, he’d handed the find over to me. Write this up and it’ll look like you’re pulling some weight around here. So I’d knocked the report out and gotten on with my extracurricular work, forgetting all about the brutally murdered paralegal and the nurse from 2001. I feel a sickness radiating like heat through my chest. What had I told Wilcox this morning?
I cut some corners. I dropped the ball.
Clichés to hide behind. Both Lauterbach and Cavallo are looking at me, expecting some kind of response. I slide the report back without comment: “Keep talking.”
A cell phone company manager from 2005.
Another restaurant worker in 2007.
A third grade teacher for HISD in 2008.
“If Guzman’s your suspect,” I say, “he’s in the system. It was a DNA test that cleared him of killing Nicole Fauk. We have prints from the Walker scene, which don’t connect to him.”
“Those prints belong to the homeowner,” he says. “I’ve read the file, remember?”
“The homeowner is looking like a suspect.”
Lauterbach greets this news with a smile. “I don’t think a fifty-something English teacher is the person behind all this.”
“There’s not one person behind all this,” I say. “All these names, all these poor, dead women. Pile the paperwork up and I feel like we’ve been asleep on the job. And I’d love to be able to pin all this on some larger-than-life villain, so I can understand what’s motivating you right now. Problem is, you’re chasing the bogeyman. All this”—I sweep my hand over the spread of files—“it’s the work of many hands.”
“We shall see.” He folds the page in his hand over, examining the last entry. “We’re this far, so I might as
well finish . . .”
2009, Ramona Sanchez, age 30
Harris County fitness trainer, body discovered in swimming pool at private gym. Multiple stab wounds, mutilation, sexual assault. Several clients interviewed, no suspects. Weapon believed to be an 8” “survival knife” as in 2005 Mary Sallier slaying. Strong similarities to Simone Walker homicide investigation led by hpd Det. Roland March.
“Back in April,” he says, “I started off with the assumption that one of Ramona’s male clients did this to her. She had quite a few, and it wasn’t unusual for her to be at the gym after-hours. That hypothesis didn’t pan out, and when the ME came back with the description of the weapon, this time I immediately thought of Mary Sallier.”
I raise my eyebrows.
“The cell phone manager,” Cavallo says.
Lauterbach nods. “We went over the details a couple of times, me and Dr. Green, so when your case came up and it looked like a similar knife was used, she gave me a call.”
“Was this before or after Brad Templeton put your list of cases together for you?”
He glares. “You’re confusing things. I don’t make any apology for consulting Templeton. It’s not like you haven’t. When I first met him, I’d been working on Ramona Sanchez for months without getting very far. I suspected there was a serial killer, but I’m experienced enough to know that making that kind of claim before the facts are in can be risky. There are always small-minded people looking to cover themselves.” He turns to Cavallo, stabbing a thumb at me. “Case in point.”
“The problem,” I say, “is that Brad Templeton isn’t an expert on serial killers. He’s a writer with a nose for sensationalism. He’s also prone to hero worship, and I can see he’s moved me off the pedestal and put you on it. You talked about water being essential to the fantasy, but the real fantasy here is the one you and Brad have cooked up. You’re enabling each other.”
Cavallo pauses me with a half-raised hand. “But, March, there are some connections here.”
Et tu, Brute? When I told her I wanted an honest opinion, I never considered the possibility of her giving it while Lauterbach was on hand to smile and nod.
“If you gather enough material,” I say, speaking slowly, choosing my words, “and you look at it from enough perspectives, you’re inevitably going to find some commonality. You should know that, Cavallo. Remember that thing a few years back—the Bible Code? They put the text into a computer and discovered all these hidden messages by connecting the dots. The Bible predicted the Kennedy assassination, the Cold War, Adolf Hitler, pretty much everything. Only it turned out you can do the same thing with Dickens or whatever else you fed into the computer—probably even the phone book. You could find messages that really weren’t there.
“There’s no difference between that and this. If you strip a bunch of cases down to only the details that match, then hold them up side by side, they probably do look interrelated. But you could do the same thing with a hundred other cases, even if you had a hundred confessed murderers already behind bars. That’s what’s happening here. Donald Fauk confessed. He killed his wife. And all the similarities and parallels in the world don’t cancel that out. And besides, all of this, it forgets one thing.”
Lauterbach leans back in his chair. “What does all this forget?”
Instead of answering, I pluck the folding knife from my pocket, flipping open the blade. Slapping my hand onto the table, fully aware that what I’m about to do is deeply stupid, I stab the pattern into the wood: One, two, three. Four, five, six. One, two, three. Four, five, six. One, two, three—
“Stop it, March. Stop!”
Cavallo times her hand just right, clamping her fingers around my fist as it ascends, arresting the movement without spilling any blood. She looks at me like I’m crazy, and maybe she’s right.
“That,” I say, “is what the man who killed Simone did to her afterwards. Over and over. That’s the one thing you could have shown me to change my mind about your theory. But you can’t. Because it isn’t there.”
I close the knife and put it away. Both of them are stunned, both of them staring. The fresh gouges in the conference table are staring too, so I shift a stack of files to conceal them.
“I think we’re done here,” Cavallo says.
Lauterbach stands. “You are right about that.”
He follows us all the way back to the elevator, making sure I don’t have the opportunity to vandalize any more Sheriff’s Department property. Overcome by a sense of my own immaturity, I keep my eyes on the ground, not looking up until I’m in the elevator and the doors are sliding shut. Cavallo shakes her head at me like I’m a naughty schoolboy. A disappearing Lauterbach raises his hand and delivers a one-fingered salute.
SATURDAY, DECEMBER 12 — 7:44 P.M.
“I feel like I’m baby-sitting a spoiled brat,” Cavallo says.
Walking through drizzle under amber lights, she stays a few steps in front of me all the way down San Jacinto, throwing remarks like this over her shoulder as we go. I try closing the gap, but her anger proves to be a reservoir of strength, always keeping her a stride ahead.
“You accuse everybody else of operating with blinders on. Everybody else is twisting the evidence to fit some preconceived idea. Have you ever considered that maybe you’re the one wearing the blinders?”
“Lauterbach doesn’t have a case.”
“Not yet—but with more time he just might. Then what are you going to do? If you were smart, you’d try to make an ally of the man, just in case he’s really on to something. But your pride has to come first, doesn’t it?”
“He thinks Fauk faked the confession. He’s wrong.”
She wheels on me. “Are you sure about that? Whatever you think about Brad Templeton, I highly doubt he’d do an about-face without good reason.”
“Lauterbach is good at snowing people.”
“Or maybe what he’s saying makes sense, March. You wanted my honest opinion, so here it is. As of right now, the story he’s telling would probably be laughed out of court. I’m with you on that. But every investigation I’ve ever worked would have been laughed out of court on day one. The further he gets, the tighter the case will be. The media is already sniffing around the edges, which means—”
“Which means they’re as gullible as everyone else.”
“March,” she says with a sigh. “Talking to you is like driving nails with my bare hands. It takes too much out of me, and doesn’t do much good.”
“If you’d let me get a word in, I’ll explain why he’s wrong about everything.”
She raises her hands in surrender. “What’s the point? Convincing me won’t do any good.”
“I’d like to convince someone.”
“Is that all you want? Someone to pat you on the back and say you’re right about everything? I could do that, but then I wouldn’t be much of a friend. Or much of a cop. I’ve worked all of one homicide, so it’s not like I’m the expert. From what I know about Simone Walker’s murder, though, it sure looks like a serial killing.”
“Yes, but—”
“And you made the connection between her case and Nicole Fauk. You did. So are you gonna trust your instinct from ten years ago or trust your instinct today?”
The drive to her place consumes more silence than it does time. After she slams the door shut and dashes up the walkway to her front porch, I roll my window down for a parting wave. She disappears behind the door without turning.
Whatever I wanted from her, I didn’t get it.
My car follows a path of its own, taking turns and shifting lanes, carrying me toward home without going the full distance. I pull to a stop in the empty parking lot of a half-abandoned chain of storefronts, parking near the darkened entrance of what used to be a bar called the Paragon. On the radio they’re tallying election results, declaring Captain Hedges’s candidate the clear winner. A historic moment. I switch it off and listen to the rain.
On September 11, 2001, a woma
n sat at the bar inside the Paragon for hours, watching coverage of the terrorist attack on New York, downing one drink after another. When she finally left for home, she blew through a traffic light and struck the passenger side of Charlotte’s car. Since October of that year, I’ve kept coming back.
This is the trickle, the mountain spring that eventually swelled into my river of numbing pain. Tracing it back to the source has never done me any good. I still seem compelled to do it, though, to repeat the futile routine of nighttime vigils. Now that the bar has closed, one more victim of the economic downturn, I find I prefer the company. Alone at last with a swirl of blackness and no pretenses to maintain.
My phone begins to buzz. On-screen, a stack of missed calls. My cousin Tammy and, strangely, Reverend Curtis Blunt. The incoming call is from Quincy Hanford, probably looking for absolution after this morning’s disappointment, and I’m half inclined to ignore it. But I don’t.
“I have an idea about your email,” he says, almost panting over the line. “I could try explaining, but it might be easier just to show you.”
“Now? It’s eight o’clock at night.”
“That didn’t stop you before.”
“Where do you want to meet?”
Hanford’s condo in Midtown must have been acquired mid-renovation. Clearly he hasn’t done anything with it since. The wood floors are half refinished, the kitchen island comes with a plywood top, and down a short hallway there’s an unmade mattress sitting directly on the bedroom floor.
“Come on in,” he says.
In the living room, arranged on several folding tables, there’s a semicircle of glowing computer screens. Behind them, several scavenged server racks house banks of computers tethered together with multicolored cables.
Hanford sits enthroned in an ergonomic Aeron chair, probably salvaged from a corporate bankruptcy auction. He wears the same inside-out T-shirt he had on earlier, but he’s put on an extra layer of confidence. Home-court advantage.
“This might not work,” he says, the glow in his eyes belying the words, “but according to some hacker friends of mine it should. Originally I was thinking we could do it through a link in the email, only he’d have to click on that for the program to work. This way, all he has to do is check for new mail.”