“Let’s go,” I said.
“Isn’t our guy. Too early.”
Our unsub was on a two-week clock and this was only day eight. But sometimes a serial killer will go through a period of high stress and that pressure will cause them to change the timetable.
Zack winced in pain as he discovered his nose was bent sideways and in the wrong place. “Who broke my goddamn nose?”
“You did.”
He touched it gingerly and winced again.
“You want me to straighten it? I’ve done mine four times.”
“Okay, I guess.” He turned toward me and I studied it. Then I put a hand on each side of his busted beak, and without warning, pushed it sharply to the left toward the center of his face.
I heard cartilage snap and he let out a gasp. I leaned closer to check it.
“Perfect. Gonna hafta send you a bill for my standard rhinoplasty, but at least you qualify for the partner’s discount.” I helped him up. “Now let’s go. We gotta make tracks.”
“It’s fuckin’ killin’ me,” he whined, then started with half a dozen other complaints. “I ain’t all together yet. My eyes are watering. Can’t see. Gotta get another coat. This one’s got puke on it.” He looked around the kitchen like he was seeing it for the first time. “How’d I get here? You bring me home?”
“Stop asking dumb-ass questions,” I snapped. “We gotta go. The press is gonna be all over this. I’m twenty minutes late already.” Okay, I was pissed.
While he changed his coat and tried to stem his nose-bleed, I moved his van. Ten minutes later he was in the front seat of my Acura leaning against the passenger door. He had twisted some Kleenex and stuffed a plug up each nostril. The dangling ends were turning pink with fresh blood.
“The Kleenex thing is a great look for you, Zack,” I said sourly.
“Eat me,” he snarled back.
I stopped at an all-night Denny’s on Colorado Boulevard and got him some hot coffee, then we went Code Two the rest of the way to Forest Lawn Drive.
When we finally arrived at the location there were more satellite news trucks there than at the O. J. trial. This was the first big serial murder case in Los Angeles since the Night Stalker. The press had dubbed our unsub “The Fingertip Killer,” and that catchy title put us in a nightly media windstorm.
Two overmatched uniforms were trying to keep fifteen Newsies bottled up across the street away from the concrete culvert that frames the river. Occasionally, a cameraman would flank the cops, break free, and run across the street to try and get shots of the body.
“Damn,” Zack said, looking at the press. “They appear outta nowhere just like fucking cockroaches.”
We parked at the curb and ducked under the police barricade. Camera crews started photographing us as Zack and I signed the crime scene attendance log, which was in the hands of a young patrolman. A damp wind was blowing in from the coast, chilling the night, ruffling everybody’s hair and vigorously snapping the yellow crime scene tape.
“Detective Scully,” a pretty Hispanic reporter named Carmen Rodriguez called out as she and her cameraman broke free and ran across the street, charging me like hungry coyotes after a poodle. They ducked under the tape uninvited.
“Is this another Fingertip murder?” she asked.
“How would I know that yet, Carmen? I just got here. Would you please move behind the tape? We put that up to keep you guys back.”
“Come on, Shane. Don’t be a hard-ass. I thought we were friends.” She was trying to keep me occupied while her cameraman pivoted, subtly manuevering to get a shot of the body in the culvert forty feet below. I moved up and blocked his lens.
“You shoot that body, Gary, and I’ll bust you for interfering with a homicide investigation.”
“Everybody calls me Gar now,” he said.
“Unless you turn that thing off, I’m gonna call you the arrestee. Now get behind the tape. Move back or you’re headed downtown.” Reluctantly they did as I instructed.
From where I was, I could just make out the vic, lying half in and half out of the flowing Los Angeles River.
2
Zack watched Carmen and Gar head sullenly back across the street to the news vans parked in front of the sloping hills of Forest Lawn. The cemetery stretched along the lip of the river running for almost three miles, fronted by Forest Lawn Drive.
“Least they won’t have to carry the stiff far to bury him,” Zack noted dryly.
“Quality observation,” I growled as I looked down into the culvert at three cops and paramedics standing a few yards from the body.
Zack and I started along the lip of the hill, looking for the crime scene egress that I hoped the uniforms had been smart enough to lay out and mark for us.
As soon as we started walking, the pack of video predators across the street got active. They switched on their lights and moved parallel to us, gunning off shots as we headed toward Barham, looking for a pre-marked path.
“We’re gonna have to start wearing makeup,” Zack grumbled, sipping at the last of his coffee.
“Homicide Special,” I called out to the group of uniforms standing down on the levee. “You guys mark a footpath?”
“Go further left. It’s all flagged,” one of the Blues yelled back.
Zack and I picked our way along the ridge, being careful not to step on anything that might later qualify as evidence. We found the trail marked by little orange flags on the ends of metal spikes. Everybody coming and going from now on would use this path down to the levee. The idea was, by using a remote trail to the crime scene we would limit unnecessary contamination of the site.
If this followed the pattern set by the three previous homicides, our unsub had shot this victim at some other location, then moved the body, dropping it in the river. That meant this wasn’t the murder scene, it was a dump site.
Since getting this serial murder case seven weeks ago, I had been reading everything I could find on serial crime. It was a condition deeply rooted in aberrant psychology.
The FBI Behavioral Science Unit at Quantico has classified serial criminals into two basic categories: Organized and Disorganized. The organized killer is usually older, more sophisticated, and has a higher IQ. The crimes are often sexually motivated and the killer has managed to complete some form of a sexual act. Organized killers tend to scope out victims carefully, usually selecting low-risk, high-opportunity targets. The need for control is a major aspect of the organized killer’s MO. That need extends right down to the crime scenes, which are usually neat and clean. Some organized killers have been known to actually wash their victims and scrub down the crime scene surfaces with cleaning aids to eliminate trace evidence. After the murder, the victim is sometimes moved and often hidden. There is no standard motive for the crime such as love, money, or revenge. For all of these reasons, organized killers are extremely difficult to apprehend.
The disorganized killer is a much less developed personality. Generally, he is younger, has low social skills, and is sexually inadequate. Disorganized killers are screwups who aren’t able to hold jobs. If they do work, it’s menial labor. The crime scenes are a direct extension of all of this—bloody, often dangerously close to the unsub’s own residence. They tend to kill inside a comfort zone. The body is often left out in the open or right where it fell with no attempt to clean up or conceal it. The attack is often what is known as a blitz attack: an overpowering charge, usually from the front, using sheer force. There is little sophistication in a disorganized murder act and the unsub is generally much easier to apprehend.
There is a third type of serial killer who exhibits traits from both of the previous examples. This category, which is labeled mixed, happens for a variety of psychological and sociological reasons too numerous to list.
I had started both a preliminary criminal profile of the unsub and a victimology profile on the dead, homeless men, in an attempt to narrow down who my unsub was, and why he was choosing these particular tar
gets. So far under victimology, all the dead men were unidentified John Does with no fingertips. They were of different physical proportions, all Caucasian, and all mid-fifties to mid-sixties. I believed they were victims of choice because we had found the bodies all over the city, which led me to speculate that the unsub was searching for a particular kind of person who shared some trait I had not yet been able to isolate. Because of the mutilation, I felt there was a high degree of rage involved in the killings.
My criminal profile identified the unsub as male. All of our victims were white. Because most serial murderers did not kill outside their own ethnic or racial group, I also thought he was Caucasian.
The average age of all known serial killers is about twenty-five. Since this unsub was taking a lot of precautions, such as moving the body into a flowing river to obscure trace evidence, I thought this indicated a higher level of sophistication. For that reason, I had classified him as an organized killer. This pushed my age estimate up over thirty.
Further, the killer was not sexually abusing the victims, so while there was rage, he was not leaving semen behind, making me wonder if these homeless men were possibly father substitutes. The killer always covered the eyes of his victims with a piece of their clothing after he killed them. I reasoned if these were acts of patricide, then maybe he did this because he didn’t want these “fathers” staring at him after death.
Still, after three murders, everything I had seemed perilously close to nothing. I didn’t see how either profile was contributing very much. All I could hope was for the killer to screw up and make a mistake that would finally point us in a more promising direction.
When we got down to the concrete levee, I saw that the uniformed sergeant in charge was an old-time street monster. At least six-feet-four and two-fifty, he was one of those gray-haired grizzlies who are becoming scarce in today’s new police departments. Civil lawsuits have changed height and weight requirements and opened the job up to women and smaller men. I once had a Vietnamese partner who didn’t weigh a hundred pounds soaking wet including his uniform, shoes, and gun harness.
The old street bulls complained that cornered felons are tempted to attack small officers. The argument was that they were getting into dustups just because they had hundred-pound partners who looked vulnerable. Old-timers bitched constantly about the new academy graduating classes, full of “cunts and runts.”
It’s my opinion that the opposite may actually be true. Women don’t have to deal with testosterone overload, so instead of feeling challenged they employ reason. Small men tend to choose discourse over a fistfight. It’s a useless argument because there is no reverse gear on this issue. We’re never going back to the way it was.
The big sergeant approached. He had a weightlifter’s shoulders, a twenty-inch neck, and a face like a torn softball. There were seven duty stripes on the left sleeve of his uniform under a three-chevron rocker. Each hash mark represented three years in service, so I had a twenty-year veteran standing in front of me.
“Mike Thrasher,” he said, his voice sandpaper on steel.
“I’m Shane Scully and this is Zack Farrell, Homicide Special. You set this up good, Mike. Thanks.”
His frown said, What’d you expect, asshole?
I glanced around. “Has anybody heard from the ME or CSI?” Noticing they weren’t there yet.
“Apparently, the Rolling Sixties and the Eighteenth Street Suranos got into a turf war in Southwest,” Thrasher rasped. “A regular tomato festival. High body count. Last I checked, CSI was wrapping that up. Should be along any time.”
Usually, when you found an old guy like Thrasher with two decades of field experience still in the harness, it was because he loved patrol and didn’t want to give up the street. He told us he had roped off a staging area for our forensic and tech vans around the corner near Barham, cordoned off the lip of the riverbank, and asked dispatch for three additional patrol teams to help contain the angry news crews. Because of the bloodbath in Southwest, the night watch was stretched thin and the backup hadn’t shown yet. He’d also picked the route down to the body and flagged it. All of this while I’d been pushing Zack’s potato nose back into the center of his bloated, Irish face.
Just then, two more squad cars raced across the Barham Bridge, turned left on Forest Lawn Drive and parked, leaving their flashers on.
Sergeant Thrasher had separated the two teenagers who found the body. The girl was perched on a rock thirty yards to my right. She was a twitchy bag bride, speed-thin with pink and blonde hair and half a dozen glinting metal face ornaments. Her boyfriend was parked under a tree fifty feet from her. With his black Mohawk and milk-white skin, he looked like an extra in an Anne Rice movie. Even from where I stood I could see the white face powder. He was slouched against the tree trunk defiantly. His body language screamed, Get me outta here.
“Run it down,” I said to Thrasher, as I took out my mini-tape recorder and turned it on.
“These two found the body. They’re heavy blasters. I confirmed all their vitals. Addresses and licenses check out. Both are seventeen. Casper, over there, has an extensive juvie yellow sheet. Drugs, mostly. He went down behind two dealing beefs in oh-two and did half a year at County Rancho. Name is Scott Dutton. The girl is Sandy Rodello—two Ls. No record. They say they were down here looking for her raincoat that blew out of the back of his pickup, but since the Barham overpass is the space paste capital of Burbank, I think it’s beyond obvious, they were under that bridge slamming veins.
“Sandy’s the reason they called it in. She can hardly wait to get up there and do some TV interviews.”
“Ain’t no business like show business,” Zack contributed, slurring his words. Mike Thrasher looked over and sharply reevaluated him.
“Anything else?” I said.
“Putting the drugs and the bullshit about the raincoat aside, their story kinda checks. I made sure none of our guys touched the victim, and these two claimed they didn’t either. Except when they found him his jacket was pulled up over his eyes, same as the other three vics. They pulled it down to see if he was alive. They claim, other than that, they didn’t touch the body. But the corpse is still damp so somebody musta dragged him out of the water.”
“Not necessarily. The river’s been dropping fast the last two days. It could have receded almost a foot in the last six hours, and with this marine layer, the vic could still be wet, depending on when he got dumped.”
I spent a few minutes with Sandy Rodello and Scott Dutton. Drug Klingons, both in the Diamond Lane to an overdose. Sandy was in charge, Scott amped to overload. Along with the vampire face powder, he also had some kind of black, Gene-Simmons-eye-makeup-thing happening.
“You think we’ll get to be on the news?” Sandy suddenly blurted after they had confirmed the facts Mike gave me.
“Greta Van Susteren at the very least,” Zack quipped. “You might wanta think about hiring a media consultant.” Then without warning, my partner pulled the Kleenex twists out of his nose, spit some bloody phlegm into the bushes, and then wandered away without telling me where he was going.
Truth was, I would just as soon work alone. I was getting weary of Zack’s sarcastic lack of interest.
“A media consultant?” Sandy Rodello said, earnestly searching my face for a put-on. “No shit?”
“Let’s push on,” I said. “Do your parents know where you are?”
“Of course,” Sandy said defiantly. “They’re cool.”
“It’s okay with them you’re both down here doing drugs under that bridge at two-thirty in the morning?”
“Who says we’re doing drugs?” Scott challenged angrily.
“Twenty years of hookin’ up tweeksters, pal. I got a nose for it.”
“Well, your nose must be as broken as your partner’s,” Sandy said, and Scott giggled.
“You two need to go home,” I said. “I’m sending somebody from our juvie drug enforcement team over to talk to your parents tomorrow.”
>
“Big fucking deal.” Scott glowered and looked at Sandy for approval.
“We’re done. Get going.” I waved one of the Blues over. “Show Ms. Rodello and Mr. Dutton to their chariot. And make sure my prime witnesses don’t talk to the press. I see you guys doing interviews, and I’ll be forced to swing by your houses tomorrow and start taking urine samples. Let’s do each other a favor and just keep everything on the DL.”
“That’s so fucking lame,” Sandy whined. But I could see I had her worried.
After we got them out of there, Zack reappeared and we half-slid, half-duckwalked down the forty-five-degree concrete slope of the culvert until we arrived at the river. Then we worked our way back forty yards past the two cops and one paramedic to the body.
3
The victim was lying on his back at the water’s edge, his light cloth jacket pulled high under his armpits, but no longer covering his face as Thrasher indicated. The victim’s eyes were wide open and rolled back into his head. He’d been shot in the right temple, but there was no exit wound. The bullet was still lodged inside his head.
On the previous murders the head shots had all been through and through. Since we didn’t know where any of the killings had originally taken place, we’d never recovered a bullet before. Retrieving this slug might be the first break we’d had since Zack and I caught this case seven weeks ago. After we pulled on our latex gloves, I shined my light over the body, working down from the head, pausing to study his ten fingers. Each one was neatly cut off at the first knuckle.
“He’s in the club,” Zack said softly.
“Yep.” I didn’t want to move the body before CSI and the crime photographer got here, but I kneeled down and reached under the corpse, being careful not to shift his position. I felt his back pocket for a wallet, but already knew I wouldn’t find one. Unless we turned up a witness who knew him, he was going to go into the books as Fingertip John Doe Number Four.
I snapped on my recorder and spoke. “Jan ten, oh-five. Four-ten A.M. Shane Scully and Zack Farrell. Victim is in the L.A. River, one block east of Barham, and appears to be a homeless man in his mid-to-late fifties, no current address or ID available. All ten fingers have been amputated at the distal phalanx in exactly the same fashion as the three previous corpses. Cause of death appears to be a gunshot wound to the right temporal region of the head, but there is no exit wound. Respondents who found the body said his jacket was covering his face, same as the other three John Does.” I shut off the tape and motioned toward the dead man’s chest. “Let’s see if he’s got the thing under there.”
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