by Kay Hooper
“What I’ve got to show you is just plain weird,” his deputy told him flatly.
“Christ. What is it?”
“Shorty said he made the comment to you that maybe this killer was drawing us a picture or something out there. With the blood and—everything else at the scene.”
“Yeah, I remember.”
“Well, he got to thinking, apparently. Even before he talked to you about it. Wondered if maybe there was a pattern in that mess none of us could see—at ground level.”
After a moment, Marc said, “I’m all for initiative. So where did he take the shot?”
“The roof. There was a ladder in the garage, he said. I didn’t ask too many questions.”
“Because he got something?”
Jordan took another step into the office and held out a photograph. “It wasn’t obvious until he did some digital work this morning, removing all of us, the equipment, everything that altered the scene from how the killer actually left it. But it’s obvious as hell now.”
Marc studied the photo for only a moment, then swore under his breath and picked up the closed folder on his blotter. “Come on. Time for you to meet the rest of the team.”
“There’s a team?” Jordan followed the sheriff from his office and down the hallway toward the conference room, adding in a lowered tone, “I’m not going to like this, am I?”
“You’ll like the team. You won’t like what they have to say.”
“I saw Paris out here a little while ago.”
“Yeah.”
“Dani too?”
Marc nodded.
“Since when do we work with civilians?”
“Since now.” Marc paused at the door of the conference room and gave his chief deputy a steady look. “Remember all those stories your grandmother used to tell you?”
The sick feeling that had been twisting in Jordan’s gut since he’d first seen Shorty’s overhead shot of the crime scene intensified. “Yeah, I remember. Are you telling me—”
“I’m telling you to keep an open mind.” Marc opened the conference-room door, adding, “And brace yourself.”
That’s a good forensics guy you’ve got there,” Hollis said absently about ten minutes later as she studied the photo pinned to the bulletin board on one side of the conference room. “He thought outside the box.”
“But how far outside the box?” Dani realized everyone was looking at her inquiringly, and added, “Could the killer know somebody would have the bright idea of getting an overhead shot? I mean, could he count on that?”
“And did he need to.” Hollis nodded. “Could be it was a little secret just for himself he thought nobody would discover. Something he could gloat over in private. I’m betting when we catch this guy, he’ll have lots of pictures. Maybe other trophies, but definitely photographs of his…work.”
Marc asked, “Because this scene was so obviously staged?”
“Because it’s staged so well. So precisely. In my former life I was an artist, and I can tell you this scene was composed, for want of a better word. The natural elements already present, the hardscape and landscape, have been used to balance and enhance his…embellishments.”
Jordan, sitting at one end of the conference table and trying hard to avoid looking at the crime-scene photos spread out too close to him, said, “Is how or why he left the message as important as the message itself? I mean, look at it. And somebody please tell me it doesn’t mean what I think it means.”
He had been introduced to the federal agent but was still trying to figure out why the FBI would have someone here unofficially rather than officially. If, that is, the “sign” left by the killer meant what he thought it meant.
What he really, really hoped it didn’t mean.
Dani said to Hollis, “It still isn’t enough, is it? To take to the Director? To bring the task force down here?”
Hollis picked up a marker from the table and went to the bulletin board. With quick, sure strokes, she highlighted what they could all see, a message left for them in blood and viscera.
The shape was a bit rough but unmistakable: a five-pointed star. And in the center was a ragged but all-too-clear number: 14.
Paris murmured, “Guess he wants to be a star.”
“He already is,” Hollis said. “In his own sick, unspeakably twisted way.”
“He must have picked that place, that particular backyard, very carefully,” Marc said. “And not just because it belonged to a vacant house. The hardscape and landscape there almost formed a star without his…additions, just like you said. He didn’t have to do much to connect the dots.”
“So it’s a message?” Dani ventured. “I mean, besides the obvious one?”
Jordan drew a deep breath and let it out very slowly and quite loudly, not speaking until he was absolutely sure everybody in the room was looking at him. Then, displaying what he felt was the patience of a saint, he said, “Speaking of messages. The number. Fourteen. Somebody please tell me it doesn’t mean what I’m afraid it means, that he doesn’t have another twelve victims lined up.”
The first thing Marc had told the others in the room was the information that forensics placed blood and tissue from two separate victims at the scene, so everyone was aware of that.
Hollis cleared her throat and looked steadily at the deputy. “I’m afraid it’s worse than that. He’s giving us his box score—so far. The two victims here make fourteen.”
“He’s killed twelve other women? In Venture?”
“No, he killed the first twelve somewhere else. In Boston, we believe.”
“Jesus. This is the same killer? The one all over the news who went on a rampage this summer and ended by butchering a senator’s daughter?”
“We believe so, yes.”
Jordan blinked, but before he could ask the obvious question, Marc said, “Unfortunately, we can’t call on the task force set up to hunt this animal down.”
“Why the hell not?”
Hollis said, “Because it isn’t the same M.O. Because we have no proof it’s the same killer.”
Jordan gestured wordlessly at the photo pinned to the bulletin board.
She shook her head. “He never numbered them before, as far as we know. Not the crime scenes, not the victims. In fact, we never had a crime scene before, just…dumping grounds where he left his victims. Nobody ever saw him, and the task force was never able to find any forensic evidence pointing to even a potential suspect.
“So, to an…unbiased…investigator, that number could mean anything. It could mean, as you guessed, that he plans on killing at least another dozen victims. It could also be a number important to him and him alone, for reasons we can’t possibly know yet. Hell, it could be his birthday, or an anniversary, or no more than a number he picked out of the air just to have fun with the cops.”
“You don’t believe any of that,” Jordan said.
“I told you what I believe.”
Jordan cocked his head slightly to one side, never taking his gaze off the federal agent. She was very attractive, which he had of course noticed immediately, but there was something else, a quality about her he couldn’t quite put his finger on. A kind of serenity, perhaps, as if nothing in life ever would or ever could surprise her. Or maybe it was the sense he had that her sharp blue eyes saw the things around her with a clarity he could only imagine.
Whatever it was, he found it intriguing.
Very intriguing.
“Okay,” he said slowly, “so why do you believe it? If the M.O. here is different, if there isn’t enough evidence to convince the task force or, I gather, the Director of the FBI that this is the same killer, then how come you’re so sure?”
Hollis turned her head and looked at the sheriff, lifting a brow.
“He’ll believe you.”
“Well, that’ll make for a nice change.” Hollis looked back at Jordan and said matter-of-factly, “We’ve been using psychics to track him since Boston. We had placed him in the g
eneral area of Atlanta when one of our mediums was contacted two days ago by your first victim, Becky Huntley. When her picture came up on the missing-persons database, well…”
Dani said, “John and Miranda didn’t mention that yesterday.”
“They didn’t see the need to go into specifics then and there.” Hollis shrugged, then offered Dani a faint smile. “I would have gotten around to it eventually, though.”
“Because you were the medium,” Marc said, his tone not the least bit questioning.
She nodded. “I was the medium. It’s another reason I was picked for this job.” She looked again at Dani. “Another reason I had to be here. Because Becky contacted me. And when a victim gets in touch, that’s pretty much a gilt-edged invitation from the universe to come to the party.”
9
THE INFORMATION didn’t make Dani any happier, but she knew better than to protest. Instead, she said, “I’m guessing Becky Huntley didn’t have anything helpful to offer you?”
“They seldom do, I’ve discovered. And when they do, it tends to be vague or cryptic. Becky said to pay attention to the signs, that someone was leaving us a trail to follow.”
Marc frowned at her. “Someone?”
“Yeah. Unfortunately, she didn’t stick around to explain that. Which is a real shame on several counts. As a rule, serials don’t leave trails, and the Boston killer certainly didn’t.”
“Or signs?” Jordan murmured, glancing toward the crime-scene photo on the bulletin board.
“Or signs. With serials, if they get caught it’s most often not because of stellar police work but because the bastard slips up. Makes a mistake. Leaves a victim alive, or doesn’t clean up after himself, or is otherwise careless.”
“But not because he leaves a trail,” Dani said.
“No, that’s not the norm. It would have been nice to get specifics from Becky, but the contact was just too brief.” Hollis grimaced. “Though I have to admit that I’m relatively new at this medium stuff, and I’m only now reaching the point where I can—sometimes—hear them.”
“Do you see them?” Jordan asked. As Marc had promised, he seemed to have no difficulty in accepting, without a blink, the reality of psychics and her own claims of being a medium.
She wondered why and made a mental note to find out later. She nodded. “Sometimes as clearly as I see you now. Other times, hardly at all.”
“That must be unsettling. Either way.”
“You could say that.”
With a slightly queasy look crossing his expressive face, Jordan said, “When you see them, they don’t look like…”
“Like they did when they were killed? Showing me how they were killed, how they died? No. No wounds, no signs of illness, not even especially pale—when I see them clearly, at least.”
“Do they ever tell you anything about…what comes after?” he asked, clearly genuinely curious.
“No. But something must, right? I mean—they’re dead but they still exist, somehow. They communicate. They seem to think, to feel, just as they did when they were alive. Personality intact, as far as I can tell.”
“And they stay like that?”
“You mean indefinitely?” Hollis shrugged. “I don’t know. All I can tell you is that once we’ve closed a case, murderer caught or killed, I don’t see or hear the victims anymore. Another SCU member, a much stronger medium than I am, says some spirits choose to remain in that state to serve as guides, but not many of them. No idea why.”
Before Jordan could do more than open his mouth to ask another question, the sheriff interrupted.
“Jordan, I know you’re curious. Hell, I’m curious. But let’s get our priorities straight. If this is the same son of a bitch who tore through Boston last summer, we’re looking at more victims, and probably sooner rather than later.”
“It’s the same killer,” Hollis said.
“Okay, it’s the same killer,” the sheriff said. “So, why here? Why pick Venture as his hunting ground? This is a long way from Boston, and a small town makes it far less likely he can disappear into the crowd.”
Dani shook her head. “He has to have some connection here, with someone or someplace. Something that drew him here. Isn’t that the only reason that makes sense?” There was an itch at the back of her mind that told her she had forgotten or overlooked something important, probably in her vision dream.
Hardly surprising, that. But damned frustrating.
“It’s certainly one of the few reasons,” Hollis said. “To ditch the anonymity of a big city for a small town, where strangers very likely get noticed, and quickly, is not exactly a smart move, especially if you plan to remain an active serial killer.”
“Maybe he panicked,” Jordan suggested. “If you guys were getting close—”
It was Hollis’s turn to shake her head. “No, the task force wasn’t closing in on him. But the media spotlight got awfully bright when Annie LeMott went missing, and brighter still when her body was found. Bishop believes that’s what drove the killer from Boston.”
“It makes sense,” Marc agreed. “But Dani’s right. I doubt this bastard picked Venture by sticking a pin in a map.”
Jordan said, “So I guess we’re looking for a connection.”
“Which,” Paris said, “is not going to be easy when we have no concrete facts on this man.”
“Not going to be easy.” Dani sighed. “Masterly understatement, I’d say, at least unless we’re able to pick up the right signs and follow this trail supposedly being left for us.”
“That’s assuming there is a trail,” Jordan said, adding to Hollis, “No offense.”
“None taken. I’ll be very surprised myself if we do find a trail. The universe is usually not so helpful.”
“And why would a killer be?” Dani said to the room at large.
Marie Goode, in addition to not being an especially fanciful woman, was also not a stupid woman. So finding a necklace that was not hers very late on Wednesday night in her supposedly safely locked-up apartment had sent her internal alarm bells jangling. Especially after the walk home and the creepy sensation of being watched and followed.
So she had done what any rational woman would, under the circumstances, and called the police. And uniformed sheriff’s deputies came, and took her statement, and checked all her doors and windows for her, and carried away the necklace, saying they’d look into it and promising that a patrol car would cruise past her complex every hour for the rest of the night, just to make sure there was nobody lurking out there.
That should have been the end of things.
Marie had tossed and turned fitfully nevertheless, leaving lamps on in her living room and her second bedroom, plus the outside lights, and getting up at least three times to check the doors and windows again.
By the time morning finally came, she was hardly rested, but it was a workday for her. She dragged herself out of bed and took a quick shower, unable to relax even after she was dried and dressed. She skipped her usual coffee for toast and weak tea, hoping to settle her jumpy stomach. It even worked.
Until she unlocked and opened her front door.
A dozen red roses that had been propped against the door fell over the threshold.
She didn’t even have to bend to read the card nestled within the green tissue wrapping. There was no envelope, just a plain white card with two words written in a flowing hand.
Hello, sweetheart.
Maybe another woman would have been charmed by a secret admirer leaving flowers. Maybe another woman would have enjoyed a much brighter day with that thought in her mind.
Maybe Marie would have. Except for that creepy walk home last night.
And the necklace left inside her locked apartment.
And the fact that the hair on the back of her neck was standing straight up once again.
It was broad daylight, and Marie’s apartment was less than a dozen blocks from the sheriff’s department.
She closed and locked t
he door, leaving the flowers outside. She got her pepper spray and her whistle, holding both in shaking hands.
And then she called the sheriff.
All we can do is work with the information we do have,” Marc reminded the group in the conference room. “We have crime-scene data, forensics reports, victim profiles. From Boston as well as here. Right?” He looked at Hollis with his brows raised.
She nodded and gestured to a very thick accordion file folder on the conference table. “In there is every bit of information Bishop felt we needed concerning the investigation so far. It’s not all the case information, obviously; that would fill boxes. But in there is a complete background and profile of each of the Boston victims.
“And his victim preferences are very important, we believe. In Boston, that was his only really consistent trait, and Bishop believes he won’t stray far from it, now or in the future. He always chose the same physical type of woman. Small, delicate, dark brown hair, brown eyes. Almost childlike.”
Jordan frowned, but before he could comment, Hollis was adding, “We also have Bishop’s latest profile of our killer.”
“Latest?” Paris asked.
“He started revising the original as soon as we knew the next hunting ground would be so far from Boston. So different from Boston. Plus…well, one other thing I did get from Becky was that the killer had definitely escalated in his sheer brutality but in so doing took a pretty large leap as serial killers go, which is unusual. That alone required a revision of the profile.”
Marc frowned. “A leap?”
“In the speed and degree to which he escalated in violence. The twelfth victim, Annie LeMott, was savagely beaten, and she was stabbed multiple times—but her body was left more or less intact. All of the victims in Boston were.”
“But not Becky,” Marc said. “And not Karen.”
“Shit,” Jordan muttered. And when everyone looked at him, he added, “I guess we are sure Karen’s dead too?”
“We’re sure there are at least two victims,” Marc confirmed. “And I’m willing to accept Hollis’s word that Becky is one of them, unless and until DNA results contradict her. Karen’s our only other missing person, Jordan.”