The Inspector stepped in, “Hernandez, I want you and Lassiter to head out to St. Michael's tomorrow and talk with Father Stover. Find out about the robbery, his parishioners, whatever. Maybe he can be our 'Sister Anastacia'. Be sure to check in with the Rosemead police department and the county Sheriff's office too. Somebody there might know something or someone.”
Turning to Carly, she asked, “Well Professor what do you think? We've got a lot of similarities between our killer and yours.”
He shook his head, knowing she had the answer to the question, but playing to the rest of the room he responded. “Like I said, Inspector. It's a little spooky. Your boy is doing things only Dombrowski and the cops on the case in Denver would have known about. The physical similarities are a little too much though, right down to the fact that your guy is bald or balding also. The same hand size is a bit unnerving, particularly since Dombrowski had such massive hands for a man his height. Huge, meaty paws for hands. The type of hands who had done a lot of manual labor. Even the attitudes of the two killers are too close for me. This guy of yours thinks like Dombrowski in an innate sense. The way he uses things around and about him...a common sense factor or the simplistic approach.”
As an afterthought, Carly asked, “Tell me, where is Rosemead in relationship to the murder sites?”
“It's due east of the city, sir,” one of the detectives answered quickly. “Easy access by interstate, right into the neighborhood where the bulk of the bodies have been found. If the guy is operating out of Rosemead on Thursdays and Fridays, he's got an easy commute into town. In fact, if he comes in later in the day or in the early evening it's a relatively fast drive as there wouldn't be any commuter traffic to contend with in that directional flow. He could be in and out later in the night or early morning with ease.”
Carly knew the mode of operation and said so, “Just like Dombrowski. A real common sense way to operate. He moves fast, using the best traffic patterns.”
Diane interrupted, “Gentlemen, let's call it a night, it's almost nine o'clock. The learned Professor is probably burning on reserve fuel after his flight, the conference, and playing detective with the likes of us.”
“Diane, I'm fine if you want to go on.”
“No Carly, Sully's damn near asleep. Hernandez hasn't seen his wife that much in the last six weeks anyway, no need to have us break up a marriage. How about if I buy you a beer and we can try to wrap up some of this?”
“My pleasure,” he grinned honestly.
The ride over to the local tavern was filled with small talk, the most important to Carly was Diane's admission that being a single woman made having an all-consuming case easier on a personal life, since she didn't have one. Arriving at the bar, they shared a small booth amidst the clamor of off-duty cops, and the rancid smell of old booze. To Carly it was a slice of forgotten bliss. It was the prototypical ‘cop’ bar. Lots of liquor, lots of machismo, lots of loud voices trying to wear down a day’s worth of headaches.
As they sat quietly waiting for their drinks, Carly couldn't help but find himself staring at Diane. As a woman she was marvelous to look at, tall and strong, with a rich ebony complexion and angular face. As a professional, she was just as impressive to watch.... strong, decisive, driven. Mesmerized, he listened to her speak as she began to talk, missing most of the words but languishing in the soft tones of her voice.
Catching him in his reverie, she laughed in what he thought to be a most melodious tone, “Carly, are you listening to me? Or have you drifted off to sleep without telling your eyes to close?”
A sheepish, “Sorry,” escaped his lips. Taking a long draught on his drink, he rolled his neck to renew his attention and ease out the kinks.
“Stiff neck? I give a great neck rub if you need one?”
“Sounds fine with me, maybe we should head out of the bar though. It looks like it’s full of cops and we both know what terrible gossips they can be,” he responded in embarrassed laughter as the flirtation of the afternoon escalated to a new level.
She nodded her assent, swallowed the remains of her drink and stood. An expectant look passed over her face before it sunk into Carly, she had not been joking and took his retort with all seriousness. A smile nearly broke into a laugh as the realization of the situation lit the lamp in Carly’s dim thought process. He managed to stand clumsily, leaving the last of his beer as he watched her stride toward the door. She didn’t look back as she knew he would follow.
The drive to his hotel seemed as if it were a dream. At the hotel Carly vaguely remembered passing some of the seminar participants as he and Diane wound their way to the elevator and up to his floor. He recognized many but couldn't remember any of them by name, they were just faces to a man preoccupied with his companion.
Unbeknownst to Carly, his passage was followed with great interest as Merriwhether watched with amusement as the Professor and the Inspector passed through the lobby. For the president of MemoryLock it seemed as if his old colleague was up to his old and prurient ways...and he was right.
As if the room released them from some puritanical bond, Carly and Diane found themselves in each other’s arms as they crossed the threshold. Almost immediately they kissed deeply and passionately, arousing in both of them the mutual attraction that they had submerged all afternoon. Intertwined, they found their way to the bedroom.
By morning they were lovers.
Chapter Seven
The ringing of the phone woke Carly with a start. Alarmed by the sudden noise, disoriented by the strange hotel room, it took Carly a moment to realize where he was. The touch of the warm figure next to him, leg cast across his, caused him further confusion as to who was with him. As Diane raised her head from the pillow and she asked him in a throaty voice if he was going to get the phone, a flood of memories washed over him, giving him a sense of security and comfort that he resented being intruded upon by the unknown caller. He kissed her lightly on the forehead as he reached across her body for the phone on the bedside stand.
It was Sully.
“Professor Thompson, I'm trying to find Inspector Edwards and having no luck. Since you and she went out for a beer after we broke up last night, I thought you might know what her morning plans were, by chance....,” Sully timidly trailed off in his questioning, slightly embarrassed if his hunch on the Inspector's whereabouts turned out to be wrong.
“Sure Sully, she's here for a breakfast meeting with me,” Carly fibbed slightly adding quickly, “I'll get her for you.”
Cradling the receiver in his hand, so Sully couldn't hear him, he handed his phone to Diane with an impish grin. “Sully's a pretty good detective too.”
“He better be, he works for me,” she laughed. Turning her attention to the call, she took the receiver and asked her detective, “Sorry Sully, my phone is on the blink. What have you got for me Sully?”
“More bodies, ma'am. Two of them were found early this morning in an abandoned warehouse off 6th Street. It looks like they were killed last week, probably late Friday night maybe early Saturday morning. Forensics will let us know the exact time of death later today. There's no doubt though that it's our boy. An exact copy of Dombrowski's number four and five as the Professor described them yesterday. It would be the fourth 'Station of the Cross' where Jesus meets his mother.”
“Oh Lord...,” Diane sighed, turning towards Carly. Speaking over the phone, she gave him the grim news. “We got two more victims. Duplicates of your killer's 'Jesus and Mother Station'. Looks like they were murdered on Friday, maybe on Saturday. The bodies were found early this morning.”
Without waiting for Carly's response, she returned to the phone barking orders immediately, “Sully, give me the address of the warehouse. Professor Thompson and I will meet you there in about forty-five minutes. Then have everything we've got up to this point ready in my office by 11:00 a.m. for a full squad review. If we're right and it is the same guy, then he did three killings last Friday, not just one.”
&nb
sp; As she ended her call, Carly was up and readying for a shower and shave. “Diane, you're welcome to use anything in my ditty bag, if you need.”
“Thanks, I've got the basic necessities stashed in my purse. Remnants of my stakeout days as a grunt detective. I've got fresh clothes at the office. If you let me borrow your shower, I'll be set for the time being.”
Thinking about the new murders, she asked, “What do you make of these two new killings?”
“I don't know, this guy is rushing through Dombrowski's list of sins with a vengeance. Three murders in one day puzzles me. He's not as methodical or as ritualistic as Dombrowski and there is obviously no commitment to the first Friday schedule. It's like he's in a hurry for some reason.”
Almost to himself, Carly spoke in a near whisper, “I'm anxious to see this crime scene, if for no other reason than to get a feel of how this guy operates.”
Despite the passionate shower they shared, the two managed to make it to the crime scene within the forty-five minute deadline that Diane had told Sully they needed. Using her police car, it’s lights and siren helped clear a traffic lane through the busy city streets all the way to the murder scene. They spoke little, as each pondered the prospects of the facing two new victims. The seriousness of the morning nearly erased all thoughts of the night before, losing it in the brightness of the southern California day.
As they rushed into the warehouse, Sully and a couple of other detectives from the previous day's bull session were waiting for them with fresh coffee and what seemed to be old donuts. Carly eschewed the donuts in favor of the coffee and a stick of gum.
He smiled inwardly, as he watched the tall beauty devour donuts at a phenomenal rate. Definitely his kind of woman, just like Joy his ex-wife he thought...the appetite of a vulture, but slim and tawny of build. As the thought of Joy popped into his mind, he reminded himself with a guilty conscience to give her a call later and see if there were any messages left for him, as she tended his apartment and office when he was gone.
The old freight elevator in the building didn't work, so the group laboriously climbed the five floors of the vacant warehouse. The last business use for the building had been as a general storage facility, sort of a 'lock and leave' do-it-yourself warehouse. It was filled with small rooms of all shapes and sizes, catacombed throughout the cavernous structure. However, in the heart of Los Angeles’ worst neighborhood, people found that while they could 'lock', it was their belongings that would 'leave'. Repeated break-ins and robberies gradually forced the business to fail and the owners of building abandoned the effort, leaving the warehouse empty. The city and county eventually took possession in lieu of back taxes. The only hope for the antiquated structure and the neighborhood in general was razing it under one of the many urban renewal projects that swept the city periodically.
In various stages of breathlessness, the group arrived upon the fifth floor to discover a beehive of activity, leaving the empty echoes of their footsteps in the stair well. Almost to a man the rest of the homicide squad that Carly had met yesterday were at work there, along with several uniformed officers. Carly had a sense of Deja vu, as he looked about the room. He had been here before...a crime scene, abuzz with cops. The scene had an almost palatable aroma to it.
The bodies were still in place as the forensic unit was finishing its preliminary examination. The technicians from the coroner's office milled about trying to wait patiently before they could claim the bodies for the autopsies. One of the victims, an older woman with graying hair sat upright on an old wooden chair. Her head leaned to the left at an awkward angle. Despite the gag, she had a peaceful look about her, almost as if she had dozed off. Walking behind the chair, Carly could see her hands had been bound tightly with leather thongs.
The second victim provided a much different perspective. Younger, totally nude, she lay at the feet of the older woman. Her hands and arms were bound to a large beam that straddled her shoulders. Carly could see the lash marks on her lower back and from a side view it appeared that a gag was still in her mouth. As he watched her lying there, Carly could not imagine what she might have looked like alive, how she lived, the type of person she had been. The brutality of the acts, which had brought her to that point on the floor, had removed the essence of her humanity.
With a furtive glance towards Diane, Carly continued his scrutiny about the room. Detectives were examining what appeared to be blood in a circular pattern of stains on the floor a few feet from the bodies. Obviously the young woman had marched about the room until she joined the seated woman in a deadly murderous tableau. Carly had seen this very crime before, exactly this way...in Denver, fifteen years earlier.
“Well, Professor what do you think?” Sully asked breaking Carly's reverie.
“I think I saw it all before, Sully. If I'm right, you'll find that the young woman had been gagged, scourged, in that order. The lash marks were made by a cheap leather whip, fashioned from the same material that bound both of the victim’s hands. Next she was forced to march about the room tied to that damnable beam, perhaps for ten to twenty laps. Finally, as she neared exhaustion, she was led to the older woman in the chair. There she was sexually assaulted, first by sodomy then raped, as the other woman watched. Finally, her neck was broken, as her head lay in the woman's lap. As she slid to the floor, the killer then turned his attention to the other woman and broke her neck also. Aside from being tied to the chair and having her neck broken, you will find almost no other harm was perpetrated on the older woman. I would imagine that the older woman was kidnapped first, probably Friday afternoon or early evening. She was kept in this room until the killer came later with the younger woman. If he's holding true to his Friday schedule and I think he is, then they both died just before midnight.”
With a grim air of assurance, Carly added, “If this is the work of the same man and again I think it is, he killed the fourth victim just after midnight on Friday morning, then went out and started in on numbers five and six that afternoon.”
“A regular machine, eh?” Diane spat out the words as if they bore the taste of bile. “This pig is out of control. While there is some rhyme and reason if you are making comparisons to the Denver murders, this accelerated pace makes little sense. Why? Dombrowski was so caught up in his rituals and First Friday's, why is the copycat on high speed?”
Carly answered the rhetorical question, “He's afraid he's going to get caught, so he's in a hurry. Dombrowski didn't think about capture, all he wanted was to do his rituals. I don't think that he cared about getting caught when he was actually caught. It merely represented the fact he had to finally stop killing.”
“Professor, what was his point? What would have happened had he gotten through the 'Stations', would he have stopped? Would he have started over? What?”
“Who know? Particularly now. The last 'Station' depicts Christ being laid in the tomb. Maybe for Dombrowski that would have meant his demons were dead and buried. Maybe he would have stopped, maybe he would have killed himself. Maybe he would have gone into hiding and laid dormant, waiting for his resurrection and Second Coming. I don't know. It's pretty unnerving to think about the possibilities. At any rate, your boy is intent on getting through all the 'Stations' pretty fast. Maybe he's got a plan for what happens next and wants to get to it. Maybe these killings are just a prelude to something else.”
Angrily, Sully spoke up, “Then we damn well better stop him. The last thing we want is for him to think he's got a 'Second Coming' due him and some sort of heavenly kingdom awaiting. This bastard is going to fry in hell, after the State of California fries him first.”
Sully looked around almost out of breath from his rancorous spiel, as the others were taken aback at the sudden display of hostility and passion from the normally jovial detective. With a blush he muttered, “Sorry,” and hurried off to some unnamed task.
After Sully left, Diane spoke up. “I've never heard Sully so outspoken, but he's right. I think we have some megaloma
niac on our hands, who's not going to stop with eleven or twelve murders depending on how many 'Stations' he has. I think this whole affair is just a prelude to bigger and bigger things for this guy. For whatever reason he's going to pay his homage to Dombrowski, then I'm sure he's got his own agenda. Maybe he decides to emulate the Zodiac killer, or the Hillside strangler. Maybe he’s a serial murderer groupie and he is going to emulate them all. Our only hope is to catch him while he's still functioning in a familiar vein. Lord knows I cannot face, nor can the city of Los Angeles, whatever mania he has planned for after these 'Stations' killings.”
By 11:00 a.m., as ordered, the whole team had reassembled back in Diane's office. With a fresh change of clothes and a second shower, Diane appeared confident and in complete command as she organized the squad's review. The preliminary lab reports had confirmed Carly's initial speculations exactly. They had not identified the victims, but the Inspector had half the division combing the missing persons reports from the last few days, as well as having patrol cars circulate sketches of the victims in the immediate neighborhood of the murders, as well as the better known sex-trade areas. The assumption held by the group was the younger victim, if the killer was to hold to his earlier patterns, would be a hooker or a nude dancer or related to the sex industry in some way. It was anybody's guess as to the identity of the older woman. Whoever it had been, she had not been reported missing.
As each shred of evidence came into the squad room, Carly poured over it with agonizing detail and scrutiny. He grew increasingly alarmed by the similarities between this murder and its counterpart in Denver fifteen years earlier. While the discrepancies among the first four L.A. killings and the first four in Denver, were plentiful enough to think the killer knew a lot about Dombrowski but not everything, nonetheless the similarities were getting to be too specific for his comfort. This last killing was an exact replica of the sixth 'Station' Dombrowski had executed in every detail, done to the last bit of minutiae.
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