“You wanted to know if there were any more suicides on the south side?” said the radio.
“Yeah?” said Dirk.
Lachlan sat forward again.
“Well, we got another body.”
CHAPTER NINE
“You still coming to crime scenes?” said one of the uniformed officers, looking me up and down.
“Why wouldn’t I be?” I said.
“You look about ready to pop.”
“I’m fine,” I said, rolling my eyes.
“It’s pretty gruesome,” said the uniform.
“She’s fine,” said Dirk, glaring at the uniform. “How is it your business, anyway, hmm?”
“Where’s the body?” said Lachlan.
We were outside a hotel room. The hotels in this part of the city were a little on the seedy side. Some of them even rented out rooms by the hour. We were close to the strip clubs, and there was apparently prostitution out here.
“Through here,” said another uniform, pushing the door to the hotel room open.
Lachlan and Dirk stepped through the door, and I followed them.
Inside the room was pristine and chilly. Apparently, the heat had been turned off. The curtains were all drawn, and the overhead lights were off, but the desk lamp had been moved away from the desk and plugged in on the floor. It was twisted upwards, so that it formed a spotlight on the body of the victim.
He was lying on the bedspread naked, facing the ceiling. His head was turned so that I couldn’t see his face.
There was blood on his thigh.
I stepped closer to get a better look. Not that I wanted to know, not exactly, but I was driven forward by a sick sense of curiosity.
The blood seemed to have come from a fresh piercing right through the head of the victim’s penis. A barbell, rainbow colored.
Lachlan raised his eyebrows. “He did that to himself?”
“Looks like,” said one of the uniforms, coming out of the bathroom with a plastic bag containing a bloody nail.
I cringed. He had shoved that through his— Ugh.
Lachlan swallowed.
Dirk looked fairly green as well.
Lachlan pulled on a pair of gloves and approached the body. He moved the victim’s face, and then I could see that his skin was pasty and gray, like dry cement. His eyes were wide open and bloodshot.
“What killed him?” said Lachlan. “He didn’t bleed out. There’s not enough blood here.”
Dirk put on some gloves too. She riffled through a stack of pornographic magazines on the end table and came up with a bottle of pills. “It’s empty.”
“So, he took too many?” said Lachlan.
“We can’t be sure until the autopsy comes back, but that seems to be the case,” said the uniform.
Lachlan looked up at Dirk. “I think this might be one of ours. You?”
She nodded. “No way am I buying a guy shoved a nail through his dick without magical compulsion.”
Lachlan gestured to the pills. “Unless he took the pills first? Are they opioids?”
Dirk eyed the bottle. “Yeah. Heavy-duty pain meds. The question is whether or not he was lucid enough after taking all these to actually do something like that.”
“Right,” said Lachlan. “Pretty fucking unlikely. This isn’t a suicide.”
“The killer’s not trying as hard to hide the fact he’s killing,” said Dirk. “This stretches belief as a suicide.”
“Wants the attention?” said Lachlan.
“Maybe,” said Dirk.
“And he’s speeding up,” said Lachlan. “That’s a bad sign.”
“Why?” I said.
Lachlan turned to me. “In the beginning, a killer will get such a charge from a murder that he might think he’ll never do it again. For months, even years, he’ll replay the memories of that incident, and it will sustain his urges. But eventually, it will wear off, and he’ll kill again. Thing is, that one won’t be quite as satisfying as the first. The feeling will wear off even sooner. And so he’ll kill again, and again. Our killer might be reaching the stage where the bodies really start to mount up.”
“But that means he’ll get sloppy,” said Dirk. “He’ll make a mistake. He’ll be easier to catch.”
“But it might take him killing three more people for that to happen,” said Lachlan. “We can’t wait for that.”
“Oh?” said Dirk. “You got some plan to find him already?”
Lachlan shrugged. “I might have some ideas.”
* * *
“No,” Dirk said. We were all back at the station, sitting around Lachlan’s desk. “Absolutely not. “That’s a terrible idea.”
“It’s not a terrible idea,” said Lachlan. “Historically, serial killers love the limelight. The more media attention he gets, the better. It’ll make him vain. It’ll make him screw up. It’s how we catch him.”
“There’s no good reason to involve the media,” she said. “Right now, the murderer thinks that we don’t even know that these are murders. He thinks he’s getting off scot-free. That means that he’ll be arrogant. That will make him screw up.”
“No way,” said Lachlan. “Deep down, this guy craves recognition for what he’s done. He’s been so, so clever, and if no one knows how clever he’s been, it’s almost as if it wasn’t worth it. He wants someone to uncover his masterpiece. He wants to be remembered for what he’s done.”
“You can’t know that,” said Dirk. “He may very well get spooked if he thinks we’re onto him. He might go on the run. We might lose our chance to catch him. Sometimes killers like this pull up stakes and head elsewhere to keep killing. We can’t chance that.”
“Not this guy. He thinks—he knows he’s smarter than we are. You don’t pull off a crime this intricate without having quite an ego. He’s probably very intelligent, and he would enjoy the idea of toying with us. So if he knew we were onto him, he wouldn’t go anywhere. He’d wait until this all played out. He’s convinced that he can outthink us, outmaneuver us. We tell the press that these are murders, not suicides. We lay a trap for him, and he walks right into it.”
“How is outing him as a murderer a trap? Besides, there’s all kinds of evidence that making a big deal about serial killers in the press has a negative effect on would-be killers. They dream of one-upping the killers they hear about, and those news reports help to shape the future killers.”
“Bullshit,” said Lachlan. “A person like the guy who’s killing these men? The deciding factor in whether he started killing people was hardly a news report. There’s something deeply wrong with him. He would have done it no matter what.”
“You can’t know that.”
Lachlan shrugged. “I think the research and study into the criminal mind tends to bear that out.”
“Well, I don’t.”
“Too bad,” said Lachlan. “Because I already sent a text to a reporter, leaking the crime scene location.”
“What?” Dirk was furious.
“I promised him an exclusive interview too.”
“Well, you’re canceling that interview.”
“You can’t make me do that,” said Lachlan. “You can’t make me do anything.”
“If you have a shred of decency, you’ll cancel it,” she said.
“Won’t matter. He’s been to the crime scene. He’s a good reporter. He’s going to figure it out. If he has to dig for it, it’s going to be an even bigger story than if he gets spoon fed.”
Dirk’s face was red. “I don’t believe you. You are so arrogant, so full of yourself. You don’t do things like that. We are supposed to be working this case together.”
“I never imagined you’d disagree with me,” said Lachlan.
“Because your ideas are so brilliant all the time.”
“Well, maybe not all of them,” said Lachlan, “but this one is pretty obvious.”
Dirk got out of her chair. “I have to walk away right now.”
“Seriously?” said Lachla
n, standing up too.
“I can’t look at you,” she said. She stormed off, her shoes clacking against the floor.
I looked around to see that half of the police in the room had been watching and listening in to this little discussion.
Lachlan collapsed into his chair. “Jesus.”
I chewed on my bottom lip. “You don’t think she was right, do you?”
He raised his eyebrows at me. “Not you too, Penny. You always back me up.”
“Well, to be fair, you do things, and I figure that you know what you’re doing, because you’re the cop. You don’t actually ask for my opinion ever. And you didn’t ask for Dirk’s either. You did whatever you wanted.”
“That’s how I work,” said Lachlan. “There’s a reason I don’t have a partner.”
“I thought I was your partner.”
“You are,” he said. “And you’re perfect at it.”
“Because I never question you?”
“No, because… because you’re a really good sounding board. And… because… because…”
“Don’t strain yourself there,” I said sarcastically.
“Hey, Penny, come on, you know I do value your opinion. I do ask for it. All the time. You know we throw stuff around in a case. And lots of times you disagree with me.”
That was true. But he was right more than I was, I had to admit. Still, he was wrong sometimes too. He’d been sure it was some suspect or other on certain occasions and been completely wrong. Thing was, this time around, we didn’t even have any suspects.
Unless you counted that Douglas person that Caleb had talked to us about.
I wondered when we were going to talk to him.
* * *
We were headed to talk to Douglas Gray. Dirk had come to collect us the following morning. She was polite but short with both of us, not saying anything more than she needed to say. She insisted on driving again, so we were in the same setup as before. Lachlan in the back, me in the front.
We traveled in silence.
Until Lachlan cleared his throat. “So, uh, what do you think about Gray, Dirk? You like him for this?”
“I haven’t even spoken to him,” she said. “I haven’t formed any opinions. I imagine you have, though. That seems to be your way.”
“I was thinking that if this Gray character were responsible, then what kind of person would he be, logically?”
“How could you possibly have any idea of that?”
“Well,” said Lachlan, “copycat killing tends to suggest depersonalization.”
“He’s not really a copycat, though, is he?” said Dirk. “When you spoke to Kinnan, I think you realized the murders were different on a deep level.”
“Right, but Gray clearly admires Caleb, so if he were the killer, he would be copying Caleb’s modus operandi, at least to a degree.”
“So, you think this guy will be a lot like Kinnan?” said Dirk. “If he’s not like Kinnan, we can assume he’s not guilty, that it?”
“Exactly the opposite,” said Lachlan. “I was saying about depersonalization?”
She made a face at the windshield. “Ooh, you picked a big word. I’m impressed.”
“It means that the killer probably separates his violent fantasies from his everyday persona.”
She scoffed. “He’s got multiple personalities?”
“Not at all,” said Lachlan. “A depersonalized killer might, however, take on a persona to kill. He might act differently than he typically would—carry himself differently, talk differently.”
“That’s different than multiple personalities?” said Dirk.
“Absolutely. People with multiple personalities typically aren’t even aware that the other personalities exist. Or if they are, they think of them as separate people entirely. This is more like… putting on a Halloween costume and acting different.”
I spoke up. “Feeling as if the persona gives you permission to behave differently.”
“Exactly,” said Lachlan.
“Bullshit,” said Dirk.
“It’s a real thing,” I said. I knew firsthand. Last fall, when Lachlan and I had gone undercover, something about dressing differently and talking differently… it had been the gateway for me. I’d walked through, and found myself tumbling down into the void.
I found myself growing sick to my stomach. How many deaths had Lachlan and I caused?
We were better than this serial killer. Weren’t we?
Anxiously, I rubbed my belly.
Neither Dirk nor Lachlan noticed. They were still arguing.
“…think you make things up and pretend as if they really exist,” said Dirk. “Is depersonalization a clinical term?”
“Does it matter?” said Lachlan. “This is how copycat killers think.”
“And how do you know that?”
“Because I did research,” he snapped. “I spend my nights reading up on this stuff.”
“Not taking care of your pregnant wife?”
We weren’t married, actually. Neither of us wanted that. But I wasn’t going to point that out, because it didn’t seem like something that was really salient to the conversation.
“I take care of her,” said Lachlan. “She sleeps a lot.”
“Hey,” I said, speaking up at that. “I’m sitting right here, you know?”
“Well, it doesn’t matter,” said Dirk, “because this isn’t a copycat, and this guy who’s associated with Caleb Kinnan is not our guy. Once again, we are wasting our time.”
“Yeah?” said Lachlan. “Well, you’re so brilliant about this, you tell us what lead we should be following?”
“We should be following the evidence,” she said.
“What evidence?” said Lachlan.
“Now that this has been reclassified as homicide, I’ve got the lab going through any piece of evidence we collected from the previous scenes—which admittedly, isn’t much. And, of course, we’re going over that hotel room from yesterday with a fine-tooth comb. We’re looking for any shred of physical evidence we can find. That’s how you solve a case, Flint. Evidence.”
“I’m not denying that.”
“You keep running around like Columbo. You think you’re going to corner someone, and they’ll confess to everything?”
“Maybe,” said Lachlan, who was now starting to sound sulky.
I turned to Dirk. “You think we’ll find some physical evidence?”
“It’s pretty hard to scrub everything,” she said. “If that killer left behind an eyelash or a fingernail, we’re going to find it. And since these murders seem sexually motivated, it’s likely we might even find semen.”
“Oh,” I said. “Well, that would be good.”
“DNA’s useless without anything to compare it to,” said Lachlan. “So, we need some suspects to get DNA samples from, right? You got any ideas for how to generate those?”
“The killer could have already been in trouble with the law. We might have his DNA on file.”
“Or maybe not,” said Lachlan. “Because most serial killers are straight arrows, putting on a perfect facade to the outside world. Like the serial killer that Penny and I caught last year? Anthony Barnes? He was a pillar of the community. Ran a home for kids and everything. There was no DNA on file for him. Then again, he was smart and dumped the bodies in the water. This guy’s smart too. He’s killing without even touching his victims, forcing them to do the dirty work themselves. He’s not going to leave any DNA either.”
“We’ll see,” said Dirk. “For now, I guess we go chase this ‘suspect’ of yours.”
* * *
“Oh, wow, are you here about the murders?” said Douglas Gray, who was wearing black eyeliner and a mesh black shirt over his wiry frame. He was about five feet seven inches tall, with a mop of unruly curls that looked dyed black, since his eyebrows were lighter. He grinned at us, bouncing on the balls of his feet.
“Why would you say that?” said Lachlan.
“Because you
asked about Caleb Kinnan, and these murders are kind of like his,” said Douglas. “It’s almost Caleb 2.0, you know? An evolution of the compulsion modus operandi, this time with intent. Caleb’s cool and all, but he was kind of sloppy. This guy, though, he’s real precise.” There was awe in Douglas’s voice, but I couldn’t tell if it was a mask for pride in a job well done.
Would a guy who was guilty give himself a backhanded compliment? Would he brag?
I couldn’t be sure.
“Sorry,” said Douglas. “I’m kind of into serial killers. Especially the magic ones. You guys want to come in?” He stepped aside from the door.
We all stepped inside his apartment, which was pretty messy.
I did notice that there was a poster of Charles Manson up on the wall over the couch in the living room.
Douglas scooped up blankets and discarded pairs of pants and deposited them all in a pile in the corner. He gestured at the now-clear couch. “Have a seat.”
We all exchanged a glance.
Rolling her eyes, Dirk flounced over and sat down. “Mr. Gray, where were you on the nights of July twelfth, September seventeenth—”
“Oh, wow!” Douglas put his hands over his mouth. “I’m a suspect? Seriously? I’m a suspect?”
“You’re excited about that?” I said.
He nodded. “You bet. That’s… wow. Wow!” He started bouncing again. Then he stopped and squinted. “Wait, wait, wait. Lachlan Flint and Penelope Caspian! You two are the ones who took down Anthony Barnes.”
“That’s us,” said Lachlan.
“So you met him,” said Douglas. “You met the Dragon Slasher. What’s he like? I wrote a few letters to him too, but he never writes back.”
“How many serial killers you write letters to?” said Dirk.
“Oh, I don’t know,” said Douglas. “Maybe four or five. I’ve written to more, but when they don’t write back, I tend to move on. And I like the magic ones the best.”
“You practice magic yourself?” asked Dirk.
“Me?” said Douglas. “Oh, no. I’m a regular guy.”
Dirk stood up, giving us an annoyed look. “I think we’re done here.”
“You’re leaving?” said Douglas. “Oh, I guess if I don’t use magic, I couldn’t have done it. But maybe I was lying, right?” He pointed at Dirk, then at Lachlan and me. “To throw you off. I could have been hiding the fact that I have rooms full of talismans.”
Fire Born (City of Dragons Book 5) Page 8