by Steven James
Snap.
And, finally, number four.
Future—another woman. The other three statues were all turned toward her and she held up a baby to signify Charlotte’s dreams of the future. She was emerging from dogwood flowers—the state flower of North Carolina.
A hornet’s nest appeared in the branches, a reference to the time when Cornwallis called the people of Charlotte a nest of hornets because of how persistent and relentless they were in defending their land.
The bard clicked the final photograph.
During his time in the city he’d spent countless hours in Uptown Charlotte, doing research in the Carolina Room of the library’s main branch. Because of his familiarity with the city, he knew that, since the iconic sixty-floor Bank of America Corporate Center was identified as the primary terrorist target in Uptown, police officers stood guard around the base of the building all day—a security measure that had been instituted sometime after 9/11.
Today, in light of the attack on the NCAVC, the sidewalk surrounding the Bank of America skyscraper was closed off.
That was smart, but, really, it wasn’t this building that they needed to be worried about. The real threat was somewhere else nearby, and when everything played out this weekend, the story was going to be even more memorable than an attack on a skyscraper ever would’ve been.
Using his phone, he uploaded the photos to the site he was using to record his story. The page wasn’t live yet, but when everything came to completion, when the dust had settled, these pictures would prove to be the key to everything.
The drive to Columbia was another hour and a half. He would go down there, meet up with Corrine, and spend the night with her before bringing her back up here tomorrow.
After returning to the parking garage, he checked the back of his van, made sure that the eye bolts he would be cuffing her to were secured to the floor, then left Uptown and merged into the congested, sluggish traffic heading south out of the city.
11
I spent the afternoon and evening filling out paperwork and going back over the collected data about the bombing and about Jerome Cole’s death.
I uploaded everything I had to the online case file on the Federal Digital Database—dragging and dropping the photos and video, adding them to what the ERT had posted, inserting and merging my report with the ones that were already there.
As I did, I reviewed what we knew.
(1) No trace evidence had been found that might indicate who tortured and killed Jerome or how many people might have been present when it happened. The light switch had been wiped clean. No prints.
(2) Every major media outlet was leading with the story, and tips were pouring in to the hotline that had been set up. When you have something this high profile, it’s not unusual for hundreds of tips to come in every hour, and in this case our team was overwhelmed trying to follow up on them all.
(3) Jerome was last seen having dinner at a friend’s house. He’d left there around eight, and one of his neighbors remembered him returning home, driving up his driveway “sometime before nine.” We didn’t know yet if the killer was waiting for him in his house when he arrived.
(4) Field agents were working with local law enforcement to canvass Jerome’s neighborhood to see if anyone had noticed a car parked nearby or saw anything unusual leading up to his murder. They were also scouring the business district near the gas station where the semi had been found, looking for anyone who might have seen the guy leaving the truck or driving off in another vehicle.
(5) Twitter went crazy in the aftermath of the bombing, mostly in support of the FBI.
Using algorithms the NSA had developed, we located all the microblogs and messages—mostly from overseas and known Islamic extremist groups—that were in support of the bombing.
A joint team of our agents and NSA personnel were following up on the source of all those tweets.
So far, however, no groups had claimed responsibility for the attack.
(6) There was no shortage of Colonial- and Revolutionary War–era weapons buffs out there, but so far the team hadn’t found anyone who could offer us the kind of expertise we needed on tomahawk design. Two agents were still looking, still making calls.
(7) No prints on the semi’s side-view mirror. So far, no DNA, prints, fibers, or trace evidence in the truck. Whoever did this knew how to leave a clean crime scene.
It appeared that he was aware of what we look for and how to avoid detection, leaving only what he wanted us to find: the hatchet, the arrows, the book, but nothing else that would lead us directly to him.
But lack of evidence is evidence. It tells you something important about the offender’s preparation, sophistication, and background. Our guy had done his homework, he was forensically aware, and he’d thought things through.
Whoever committed the crime was organized and careful, not impulsive. The location of the semi, of Cole’s house, of the gas station all spoke to the timing and location of the crimes.
But how all that fit together was still a mystery to me.
We were missing a lot of puzzle pieces.
But we would find them.
I studied the numbers that’d been written in the book left on Jerome Cole’s body, trying to find connections between them and my previous cases, poring over the pages in the two books I’d authored, trying to discern what the numbers might have been referring to.
6'3" 2.53 32
After an hour without coming up with anything, I rubbed my tired eyes, then glanced absently at my phone to see if there were any messages from Lien-hua.
Nothing from my wife, but Tessa had texted me from her bedroom, asking when I would be ready to eat.
As I tapped my cell’s screen to text her back, I paused midmessage and stared at her phone number.
My thoughts began to rush ahead of me
I scrolled to the numbered keypad.
What if it isn’t a phone number, but a mnemonic of one? What if the letters on the numbers spell something?
Quickly, I worked up a chart, then scrutinized it.
Though I was able to identify a few words and phonetic combinations just by glancing at the columns, I wanted to make sure I didn’t miss any possibilities, so I went online to see if I could find a site that would calculate—if that was even the right word—words from phone numbers.
It took me less time than I thought it would. The site I found was apparently for businesses that wanted to create memorable phone numbers that spelled certain words.
When I plugged in the numbers, thousands of combinations came up, but only a couple dozen contained actual words.
Of those, ten caught my eye:
I wondered if the ones containing the words “fake” and “bled” would lead us anywhere—especially the one that spelled “me-bled-too.”
What about “o-e-bled-2”? Could it be a phonetic version of “Oh, he bled too”?
Does “Neal-Dea” refer to someone in the Drug Enforcement Agency?
Or what about “Feb” and “Dec”? February and December?
A timeline? A deadline?
All possibilities.
I uploaded the info to the case files, and a few moments later Tessa emerged from her bedroom.
“Ready for some lasagna?” she asked.
I knew that my vegan daughter was thinking of veggie lasagna. And probably a spinach and kale salad to go with it.
“I was thinking BLTs.”
“Don’t even tease.”
She’d never given up trying to convince me to switch to a plant-based diet, but today I was ready for her. As we walked to the kitchen, I nonchalantly said, “I heard on the BBC last week that the latest research shows that plants actually make attempts to communicate with each other.”
“There’s also research that they respond to soun
d and feel pain.”
“There you go.”
“So you’re saying what? That even I eat sentient beings? That’s your point?”
“Yup.”
“And meanwhile you eat bacon.”
“Yup.” I took some of it out of the fridge for my sandwich. I love a nice BLT with crispy bacon. Somehow that added crunch just makes the sandwich work.
“And what does the most recent research on pigs show?”
A pause. “What do you mean?”
“You know, that they’re more intelligent, self-aware, cognizant of, and sensitive to their surroundings than dogs are.”
“Oh, and let me guess: Despite that, people still imprison them in tiny cages for their entire lives and then mercilessly slaughter them in barbaric ways.” We’d been through this before. I knew the routine.
“Well said. And here’s the irony: You can make a pretty good living doing that to pigs, but try doing it to a bunch of golden retrievers and see where that gets you. I mean, just let a couple Dobermans kill each other like Michael Vick did and you get to spend nineteen months in jail.”
“Well, from what I remember, it wasn’t just letting a couple Dobermans—”
She went on undeterred. “Torture and slay a few thousand piglets a day and become a millionaire. Do it to a single puppy and you could end up behind bars, even though pigs suffer more anguish from squalid and confined conditions than dogs do. Yeah, that makes a ton of sense.”
I stared at the bacon for a moment, not really caring how sad the pig was who’d provided it for me, but then I glanced up and saw the look on my daughter’s face and slid it back in the fridge.
* * *
We ended up eating LTs, which just seemed to me like a lame salad in between two pieces of toast.
Afterward, she went to her room to work on packing for college, which she was leaving for in two weeks, and I turned my attention to the hatchet/tomahawk question while I waited for Lien-hua to get home.
Bypassing consulting with an expert for now, I read what the team had pulled up so far and added some online research of my own.
I found out that in Colonial times, hatchets were used to trade with Native Americans. Depending on where you look online, the term “tomahawk” apparently came from the Algonquin or Powhatan and referred to a tool used in cutting.
So, originally, tomahawks were the same as hatchets, but eventually, in the Revolutionary era, when they started to be used in warfare and as combat tools, their design changed and they became more lightweight, while hatchets remained heavier to serve their main purpose of splitting wood.
One was used to chop through logs.
The other was used to chop through people.
Based on its design, the object that had been left in Jerome Cole’s bedroom was a tomahawk.
Though it was made to kill, in this case it’d been used to brutalize him, to torture him in a way that was meant to let his death be a slow one.
I was evaluating that when Lien-hua parked in the driveway.
12
I met her at the door and when I gave her a kiss I could tell she was distracted, no doubt still mentally caught up in the case. I figured it would be best to allow her to get some things off her mind, so after confirming that she’d already had supper, I just went ahead and asked her where we were with the profile.
“The attack on Jerome was very emblematic,” she said. “The posing, the weapons used—there was a lot done at the scene that didn’t need to be done. But at least it helps us establish a baseline and a groundwork for understanding his signature.”
In our business, “signature” refers to the unnecessary acts that offenders perform at the scene, especially after the crime—positioning the body, covering it, wrapping it, specific ways of tying ligatures or ropes, sexual or physical contact with the body after death. Also, ritualistic or compulsive behavior that has some type of special meaning to the offender.
She went on, “Even the wound patterns were ritualistic—with the use of that tomahawk or hatchet.”
“Tomahawk, it looks like.”
“Yes, well, I can’t imagine how much pain Jerome went through before telling the offender what he wanted to know, but those wounds are—excuse the term—overkill. But they were. It went beyond just someone torturing him to get information.”
“Both of Jerome’s wrists, both of his elbows, both ankles and knees. There was a grim symmetry to it. Completion. Closure.”
“A grim symmetry,” she said, “that’s a good way to put it. And, as you noted in your report, the crime scene was organized. Also, the lack of physical evidence and no defensive wounds on Jerome tell us the offender was experienced. He apparently overpowered Jerome quickly—or he may have known him and that’s how the killer gained access to the house without forced entry. Cause of death, as it turns out, was from shock.”
She thought for a moment. “Based on the sophistication of the detonation mechanism and the type of explosives used at the NCAVC, we’re looking for someone with an above-average IQ. A history of working with explosives would be helpful, but studying some of the videos out there on the Web could compensate for lack of experience. No evidence that souvenirs or emblems were taken, but that’s just a preliminary finding.”
Killers often take some kind of token or souvenir of the crime so they can relive the experience over and over. Often serial killers will give the emblems to their wives, daughters, or girlfriends—hair clips, rings, watches. Every time the killers see those things they can be reminded of their crime. And they can feel that sense of power over life and death all over again.
“And he came prepared,” I said, “bringing the tomahawk and two arrows with him.”
“Yes. It might have been to make a statement or simply just as a ruse to throw us off. The consensus of the group is domestic terrorism, something with Native American rage against the federal government for wrongs of the past—but I’m not on board with that. I suppose it depends on what definition of ‘terrorism’ you’re using, but . . .”
“What? What are you thinking?”
“Why would domestic terrorists leave your book behind?”
“Good point.”
That reminded me of what I’d come up with regarding the mnemonics from the numbers we’d found at the site of Jerome’s murder. I showed the list to Lien-hua.
She examined the words and phonetic phrases, then said, “If Basque is involved, what about the combinations with ‘meal’ and ‘neck’?”
Though she’d brought up his name earlier, I hadn’t really been seriously thinking that he might be connected to any of this. However, I had to admit that it certainly wasn’t out of the question.
“We’ll have Angela and Lacey analyze all the combinations,” I told her, “see what they can figure out.”
Lien-hua tilted her head to the side and I heard her neck crack. She rolled her head to the other side and it popped some more.
I offered to give her a back rub to help her unwind. At first she declined.
“I’ll make it a good one,” I promised.
“Well, how can I pass up an offer like that?”
We went to the living room and I sat behind her on the couch.
I started with her neck and shoulders.
Even though recovering from her broken leg had slowed her down and put her kickboxing training on the back shelf for the time being, she’d still kept in shape and I could feel the strength of the toned muscles in her shoulders.
“It’s been a long day for both of us,” she said softly.
“Yes.”
I moved my hands down her back, kneading her muscles, massaging them.
Beneath my touch I could feel her beginning to relax.
So many people never find the love of their life. They search and search and come up empty and some
eventually give up the search for good. But I had a lot to be thankful for. First I’d found Christie, and, more recently, Lien-hua. It seemed like two distinct lifetimes that both contained far more happiness than I deserved.
When Lien-hua and I got married she took my last name. I didn’t ask her to; in fact, since she’d never been married before and had an established career and reputation of her own, I expected her to keep her maiden name, but she told me she wanted to make sure everyone knew she was with me now. “If I didn’t think it was forever, I wouldn’t do it.”
“It is,” I’d told her.
“For forever?”
“Yes.”
“I’m glad I found you, Pat.”
“I’m glad we found each other.”
Back before marrying Christie, I’d never really thought much about the cultural norm of a wife taking her husband’s last name, but I had appreciated the significance of the gesture from her and, more recently, from Lien-hua.
It is.
It’s forever.
I let my hands glide down to the small of my wife’s back. After a few minutes her breathing became calmer but also more intense, finding a soft rhythm in sync with the movement of my hands.
“As far as the profile,” she murmured, “there’s just a lot we don’t know.”
“Shh . . . We don’t need to talk about the case.”
But she did: “I think it’s too early to jump to any conclusions.”
“Now you’re starting to sound like me.”
“That’s not such a bad thing.” She reached around and took my hands, brought them forward so that my arms encircled her. Then she leaned back and let herself melt into my embrace. After sitting there for a moment she said softly, “C’mon, let’s go to bed.”
“It’s not even nine yet.”
“I didn’t say, ‘Let’s go to sleep.’”
“Now you’re really starting to sound like me.”