Jack of Spades

by James Hankins

“If you can consider it lucky to get zapped with a stun gun in the middle of the night, then chloroformed, then locked in a closet, then you wake up to find your physically disabled kid missing an ear. Anyway, you’ve probably seen it before, but this, ladies and gentlemen, is our perp.”

  He held up a picture, taken off the Internet, of Galaxo, Starboy Avenger! Galaxo was bright yellow, from the tops of his stubby little antennae to the tip of his bulbous chin. He was bald. His brilliant green eyes sparkled with merriment. His grin was huge and happy, a gap between his two front teeth. Spader taped the picture to the board on the wall. He explained about the mask with the voice-changing technology, and two of the others present said their youngest kids had them. “I always did think that thing was a little creepy,” one of them added.

  “The kid who lives next door has a mask kind of like that,” Wilkins said. “Some robot from the movies, I think. All I hear when he talks is the kid’s voice with an echo. But it still sounds just like the kid to me.”

  “They’ve really improved the gadgets in these masks,” Dunbar said. “I saw a Galaxo one at Toys R Us. Had a sales clerk try it on for me. Could barely recognize his voice. His real one was lost inside the mask. All I heard was this freaking Galaxo character.”

  “That tracks with what we’re saying about him not necessarily wanting to kill his victims,” Cassel said.

  Spader nodded. “Right, because he wouldn’t bother to disguise his voice if he was just going to kill them anyway. Unless, of course, he just gets off on the whole Galaxo thing for some crazy reason of his own. Hard to say at this point. But you’re right, it certainly could be considered evidence that his primary goal isn’t the death of his victims. So,” he continued, “moving on, other than what I told you, we really don’t know much about the perp. He’s careful. Hasn’t left behind a print we can find. We took a cast of a footprint from the scene last night but I hear that it wasn’t good enough to give us much. He’s left behind no DNA evidence at any of the scenes so far. Got a few fibers could have come from his black running suit, and we’re looking into that. None of the neighbors saw anything.”

  “The tape he’s been using?” Matthews asked.

  “Generic. You can get it anywhere. Same with the tools he used on the victims, we think. Nothing fancy, no special instruments you can only find in a certain profession or anything like that. We’re not going to snap our fingers and say, ‘Ah, it has to be Dr. Kildare or Sam the Butcher.’ This was standard stuff you buy at Home Depot.”

  Dunbar said, “And you can get stun guns off the web, if you want.”

  “How about chloroform?” Wilkins said.

  “Leon’s working that angle. Anything so far, Leon?”

  “No, and there probably won’t be,” Fratello said. “It’s not that hard to get the stuff. Medical-supply stores, chemical-supply firms. Hell, you can get that on the Internet now, too. Of course, maybe these places have records of all their transactions—assuming, of course, that all the transactions are legit and not some under-the-table thing, which is definitely not a given here—but then there’s no being sure that our guy didn’t use a stolen credit card, or give a fake name and pay with cash. I’m still working it, but I’m not optimistic.”

  “When have you ever been?” Cassel asked.

  Fratello shrugged. “I’m not gonna argue with you there, Amanda. But let’s just say I’m even less optimistic than usual.”

  “How about the mask itself,” Matthews asked, “the Galaxo mask?”

  “We’re not gonna get anywhere with that,” Dunbar said. “Every toy store in the country sells that damn mask, and they sell a lot of them. The company started making ’em a little over two years ago. Our guy could have bought his any time since then. And they’ve sold millions and millions of these things. Even if we restricted our search to the northeast, or Massachusetts, even, there are crates of ’em sold every week.”

  “Speaking of the manufacturers,” Spader said, “we’re going to be adding to their troubles soon. I know the public has been made aware of Galaxo’s activities by the papers and news shows, but I don’t want it to seem like we’re not doing our part to warn the good people, so I want a bulletin to go out by this afternoon—flyers, copies faxed to radio stations and the papers, too—warning about a criminal committing his crimes wearing a Galaxo mask.” He turned to Dunbar. “By the way, Gavin, why don’t you pick up one of those masks for us, okay? I want to see how one of these things works for myself, how much it changes the voice.”

  “Any other toys you want while I’m there?” Dunbar asked. “How about a Frisbee?”

  “Just the mask for now, thanks. Getting back to the flyer, we’ll tell people to lock their doors. Don’t want to be too specific, though—we don’t want people freaking out. Besides, the news people are doing more than their share of sensationalizing this thing. We don’t need to help them. But it would be nice if we could be something of a calming influence. Tell the people to be on guard but they don’t need to panic. You know what I’m talking about. Can somebody put something together for release later today?”

  Wilkins raised his hand.

  “Thanks, Reggie. And that brings us, I think, back to the victims,” Spader said. “What do we see with them?”

  A moment of silence while everyone thought about it, then the Belmont cop said, “They’re all male, all Caucasian.”

  Spader nodded. “That’s right. And there’s not much more that they have in common, at least nothing that’s readily apparent. Wide age range, wide geographic range, though all in Massachusetts.”

  “They all lived in single-family homes,” Dunbar offered.

  Spader looked over at Dunbar. “Right, Gavin. They’re all from different economic classes, though. The first victim was an attorney, but he was a solo practitioner and didn’t make much or save much. Lisbon was a banker who did pretty well. Pendleton does some website design work out of his mother’s house, but he seems to rely on her for most of his support. They could only be considered below middle class.”

  “Any connection between the three?” Wilkins asked.

  “Not that we’ve found so far, but we’ll keep looking hard at that. The bottom line is, either this guy picked his victims at random or he didn’t.”

  “Now that’s what I call detective work, John,” Wilkins said, drawing another round of laughs.

  Spader smiled. “If he picked them at random, he still had to have found them somehow. Somehow, they each came across his radar screen. If we can figure out how, we might find him. And if he didn’t choose them randomly, then they were targeted specifically and we need to know why.”

  “Sure look random to me,” Fratello said.

  “Me, too, Leon, but we’re not ready to concede the point.”

  “Not saying we should. Just making an observation.” He stuck his cigarette into his mouth and reached into his pocket for a lighter, like he’d momentarily forgotten that smoking was prohibited, then yanked the butt from his mouth.

  “So,” Spader said, “if there’s a connection, we need to know what it is before this guy strikes again. With these people spread out over the state like they’ve been, I doubt they went to the same gym, used the same dry cleaners, shopped at the same supermarket, or had their prostates checked by the same doctor, but there may be something. Maybe they lived in the same apartment building five years ago. Maybe we have to go farther back than that. Where’d they go to high school? Grade school?”

  “You think it could go that far back?” someone asked.

  “Hell, I don’t know. Maybe they were all at Fenway last month to see the Sox whip the Yankees.”

  “Oh, my God,” Wilkins said and everyone turned and saw the serious look on his face. “If that’s the case, he could be planning to kill the other thirty-six thousand people at that game.” Everyone thought that one was a beauty and Wilkins smiled at Spader. The guy could be funny, but his shtick was wearing just a little thin.

  “Maybe I’ll have
you run that one down, Wilkins. Shouldn’t be too boring. Figure out everyone who was at that game, visit their homes, interview them all, write up a big fat report. Sound good?”

  “How about I keep my mouth shut for a while?” Wilkins replied.

  Spader said, “My point is, if he is in fact picking these people according to a plan, we need to figure out how he’s choosing them. We do that, we may be able to figure out his next target and stop him.”

  “They still look pretty damned random to me,” Fratello said. He was back to twirling his cigarette.

  “Noted, Leon. Again. I’m stating the obvious here, but we need to talk to all the victims’ friends—go through their address books, e-mail contacts, whatever, to get those names—and talk to everyone. That’s already begun on the first two vics. I’ll ask one of you to step forward and work on that for Pendleton. We need to cover as much ground as we can, talk to anyone we can think of. Employers, friends, ex-friends, lovers, ex-lovers, ex-spouses. Pendleton’s self-employed, but we should talk to someone at the library where he volunteers. I want to know what these people did in the two months before Galaxo got to them. Maybe they crossed his path during that time. Listen, you know the drill. We make calls, knock on doors, whatever we can think of.”

  “Not much to work with so far,” Fratello said.

  “No,” Spader said, “but maybe we’ll get something to run with soon. I’ve already spoken with the NCAVC coordinator in the local FBI field office and I’m putting together a package for the Behavioral Analysis Unit in Washington. They’re going to work up a profile on Galaxo for us.”

  A communal groan rose.

  “Yeah, I know,” Spader said, “we all have an opinion about FBI profiles, and some of those opinions probably aren’t real high, but sometimes profiles turn out to be pretty accurate, and I’ll take all the help we can get right now. We take it with a grain of salt, but keep an open mind, who knows? Maybe it’ll help us figure this guy out a little, why he does what he does. Maybe it’ll tell us enough about him for us to find him before he goes after someone else.”

  “Sounds wonderful,” Wilkins said. “Can they do my horoscope?”

  “Ask ’em to put next week’s lotto numbers in there, too, will you?” someone added.

  “Maybe they can tell me what happened to the body I had when I was twenty,” Cassel said. “It’s missing.”

  Spader held his hands up in mock surrender. “Okay, I hear you guys, but let’s give it a chance, okay?”

  “Let’s go back to Galaxo for a sec,” Fratello said. He shook his head. “Man, I feel like an idiot saying that. My sister’s kid wears Galaxo pajamas. Anyway, I was wondering. Did we run these crimes through ViCAP,” by which he meant the FBI’s Violent Criminal Apprehension Program, a nationwide data information system designed to collect, collate, and analyze information relating to violent crime, “and our own system to see if this guy’s MO sounds familiar? Maybe we’ll get lucky and get a lead that way.”

  Spader fell silent for a few moments. Dunbar lowered his eyes.

  Spader sighed. He didn’t want to go down this road. “Yeah, actually, there are a few similarities to a case of mine from a little while back,” Spader finally said. He saw understanding dawn in Fratello’s eyes. “You remember Eddie Rivers,” Spader continued. “Like our guy here, Rivers wore a mask. Galaxo cuts body parts off of his victims—a tongue, feet, and an ear. Rivers also liked to cut off parts of people, though he always took just the legs, while Galaxo doesn’t like to restrict himself.”

  When Spader stopped speaking, the room grew uncomfortably quiet. Spader knew that most people, especially cops, fell into two categories when it came to the subject of Eddie Rivers and John Spader. Either they felt that Spader wasn’t to blame for what happened, or they felt he was largely responsible for putting a truly twisted murderer back on the street to kill again, which he did almost immediately. Spader wondered which category the people at this table fell into. He actually believed most people had finally bought the party line, the one the state police brass had pushed internally, the one that placed the blame on retired Oscar Wagner, but Spader wasn’t naive enough to think that everyone had.

  “There’s more, too,” Spader finally admitted. “Rivers also spoke about choices. Galaxo, of course, offers his victims two choices, then acts on one. That’s what he seemed to do with Lisbon and Pendleton, anyway, and we have no reason to believe it was any different with Yasovich. Rivers, on the other hand, said one thing to his victims while he was with them. He said, ‘I have no choice.’ Also, as Gavin here noted, Rivers’s MO—and his peculiar fetishes—required him to choose single-family dwellings with backyards. So far, Galaxo has chosen victims with the same kinds of homes. And the geography involved is, in a sense, the same, too. Both Galaxo and Rivers moved from town to town but always chose a victim in Massachusetts. Finally, both perps used stun guns. That’s about it for the similarities.”

  Silence reigned again for a few moments. Someone cleared his throat. A chair slid a few inches on the floor with a sharp scraping sound. Spader really wanted to move on, so he said, “There are plenty of differences, though, in addition to those I already pointed out. Like the fact that Rivers seemed to want his victims to die while Galaxo seems to want them to survive, going so far as to call nine-one-one before he leaves the scene. I mean, the list of differences goes on and on.” He drew a breath. “Look, some of you may have guessed, but the new folks wouldn’t know. I was given this case in part because of its surface similarities to the Rivers case. Rivers has been officially missing since two weeks after he was released from jail. That was thirteen months ago.”

  After a brief moment of awkward silence, Matthews asked, “You think there’s any chance it’s the same guy, Detective Spader?” He spoke without a trace of judgment in his voice, like someone who hadn’t followed the Rivers story, someone who didn’t know Spader’s role in that tragedy. But, Spader knew, Matthews knew the story.

  Spader took his time answering. He didn’t want to appear defensive. He had to be careful. He thought about how to respond, then said, “Call me John, and as for your question, I don’t think so.”

  Wilkins said quietly, “Would you really put it past Rivers to open for business again? He was a sick puppy. From what I remember about him, if he wanted to start up again, he was just cocky enough to come back into our area to do so.”

  Spader sighed. Again, he chose his words carefully. “I don’t want us wasting too much time on the Rivers angle, but of course it’s something we have to pursue. So we should get his picture out there again, in post offices and at rest stops. Law enforcement’s been looking for him since his last murders, but the public might have forgotten about him, even after that America’s Top Fugitives episode on TV. So, someone want to take care of getting the word out?”

  A hand went up.

  “Thanks,” Spader said. He fell silent for a moment. Finally, he said. “Anyway, the brass picked up on the Rivers thing, too, and figured that if there was even the slightest chance he was involved in this case, I should be too. So here I am. And here you all are. And out there is an animal without a conscience, doing whatever he—” He paused, thinking. “No, he’s worse than an animal, because animals aren’t cruel by nature. What this guy’s doing—from the cruel choices he offers to the cruelty involved in acting on them—it’s beyond animal. He’s enjoying himself.”

  He looked at the faces of the victims on the whiteboard. Then he turned and looked at each face around the table, moving slowly from one to the other. As he did, he said, “This guy, this fucking Galaxo, he’s sick and he’s crazy, but he’s smart, too. He doesn’t leave anything for us. I feel like…I don’t know why, but I get the feeling he’s playing with us. And he’s going to play again soon, I think, too damn soon. It was twenty-two days between the first and second victims, then just twelve before the third. That may not mean that he’s going to keep accelerating, but then again, it may. The bottom line is that we may
not have much time before he strikes again, before somebody loses something important—maybe a part of his body, maybe his life.” His eyes drifted to the silly yellow alien face on the white board. “Unless we stop him first.”

  FIVE

  With his briefcase in one hand and a cup of coffee in the other, Spader had no hand free to shake the one offered to him by Oscar Wagner. Spader had left the other detectives on the task force inside Ten Fed working the phones, calling anyone who might know anything about Stanley Pendleton. There were different teams working on each of the three victims, assembling as much potentially relevant information as possible, with the less promising contacts made by phone and the more promising ones to be made in person. Spader himself had had a phone pressed to his ear most of the day, too, but was on his way now for a face-to-face with a few of Pendleton’s neighbors to see if anyone saw anything. The neighbors had been canvassed that night, of course, and again earlier today by phone, but Spader wanted to follow up with a few in person. Neighbors were like a lot of potential witnesses—they might have seen something, but they also might have developed temporary blindness. Better not to get involved.

  Spader wanted to see their faces when he spoke with them. He didn’t have much else to work with at the moment and he knew that yet another questioning might shake something loose, might lead a reluctant witness to think that the cops believed that he knew more than he was saying. Besides, Spader wanted to see the Pendleton’s house and yard again during the day. He was halfway across the parking lot when he saw Wagner leaning against a car two spots down from Spader’s police-issue Crown Vic. Spader smiled as he walked up to him. Wagner dropped the cigarette he’d been smoking and ground it beneath his heel. He held out his hand and Spader looked down at his own, which were full.

  “Hell,” Wagner said, “don’t worry about it.”

  Spader didn’t blame Wagner totally for everything that had happened—he took ownership of some of it himself—and didn’t want Wagner to think he did, so he handed the ex-cop his coffee cup, shook Wagner’s hand, then took his coffee back.