“What about Stevenson?”
“I’ll reassign him temporarily to another case. Obviously he doesn’t like the idea any more than you do. In fact, he left the room abruptly when I mentioned it. Initially I wasn’t too keen on it either, but come to think of it, if this guy’s mobile, which we think he is, it’s entirely possible LA needs to be involved. This creep could live in their jurisdiction.”
“Screw the damned jurisdiction.”
“Look, what the hell do you expect me to do? I got the mayors in Dana Point and Irvine breathing down my back for an arrest of this perp. We got squat in evidence, and you’re out there like some lone cowboy on a mission.”
“Wait just a minute, chief! I’m doing my job. You got a problem with that?”
“When I don’t see any results, yes, I do have a problem with that.”
“Why did Gray come looking for this case? It’s not his area. None of the women have been killed in his jurisdiction. Just who the hell does he think he is?” McGregor was leaning into Richmond across a desk that was buried by paperwork. “Look, here’s the deal, pull anyone else off the task force you want. I’ll work with anybody, hell, even that rookie, what’s his name, Cramer? I’ll work with that wet-behind-the-ears punk before I’ll work with Gray.”
“I don’t recall giving you a choice.”
“Good God, I mean, what the hell do I have to do around here? I’ve been twenty years on the force, and you can’t at least consider someone else?” His body language backed down. “You’re a cop, a reasonable man, Bob. But give me a break. I’m telling you the only reason that Gray is down here is because he wants the publicity. Always been a sonofabitch publicity hound, even when he was in the academy. Oh, what the hell does it matter? I can tell I’m talking to a brick wall.”
Richmond said nothing.
“Jesus God,” McGregor moaned. “Look, I don’t need another partner.”
Richmond just glared.
McGregor tensed again, the veins in his neck visibly throbbing. “What the hell does Gray want with me? That fat-ass mayor put you up to this? What’s his name… Needlemayer, something? He’s the one that put you up to this? Damned politics. When am I ever gonna learn.”
“Look, McGregor. Needleman didn’t put me up to this. He’s a politician, but he doesn’t run this department, and he sure as hell doesn’t make any choices for me. I got a call from Sanchez last night, after the press conference, offering to help. That’s the plain and simple of it. He said Gray came back to LA and told him the condition of the body. Said it was the worst mutilation murder he’d seen in a long time. And right now, in case you haven’t noticed, we got jack shit on this guy. We got nothin’ solid on this perp, on your investigation.” Richmond threw the blame in McGregor’s lap. “So if you want the responsibility of an investigation that so far is going nowhere, then that’s fine with me. But I suggest you put your huge ego aside and let another agency help out, got me?”
“I don’t mind the agency helping out, if it’s not Gray.”
“I get it, you two aren’t the greatest friends. Hell, anyone could tell that. But do me this favor, will you? He’s one of the best and brightest in LA. They have offered his assistance. Take it.”
McGregor considered this in silence, sitting down on a standard-issue vinyl-back office chair.
“Really. So I guess you got a legitimate complaint about how I’m handling the investigation. I’ve been busting my ass, working the phones, interviewing witnesses. I’ve got half the black-and-whites combing Irvine for anyone that fits our guy’s look. Show of force to the community and all that.”
“That don’t mean jack.”
“Chief, you telling me that ain’t good enough?”
“Ain’t good enough till we get our man.”
“What if we don’t”
Richmond didn’t answer, didn’t even want to consider the possibility.
“Then we keep chasing bodies? And invisible perps?”
“Take the help, McGregor. You need it.”
“Okay. I’ll take it. But if Gray messes up this case, so help me God, I’ll come back here and set you straight.”
“You and I both know that’s bullshit,” Richmond said with a quick hint of a grin. “You’ve never been able to kick my ass, not since high school.”
Neither one wanted to admit it, but they both were right.
THIRTEEN
The constant assertion of belief is an indication of fear.
—Krishnamurti, The Second Penguin Krishnamurti Reader
Instinct told Cat they weren’t going to catch this guy through normal investigative channels. Toxicology had come up with nothing in the girl’s systems. No drugs, no barbiturates, no poisons. What was this guy into?
Sitting at a Medline terminal in the UCI Science Library, Cat learned what she could about sulfuric acid.
Housed in an impressive modern structure, the science library held millions of volumes on a wide variety of subject areas in sciences, medicine, and technology. Everything from genetic engineering to environmental impact on California’s wetlands could be researched at minimal costs.
Peering over tortoiseshell glasses, Cat waited for the screen to prompt her for a search. She typed in sulfuric acid, then the words “carcinogen” and “human.” It was early, eight o’clock. At this hour, the library felt big—empty and cold. Her fingers clicked across the keyboard at a fast clip, the keys the only sound in the library other than a reference librarian who seemed half asleep, sipping a morning coffee that Cat guessed she had snuck in.
The blue screen disappeared, replaced with a gray one. The first few articles she found were not what she wanted. Frustrated, she changed her query to include the word “sources.”
Initially, the computer search found much the same. However, the fourth article was interesting. She scanned the abstract, pulled up the full article.
Scrolling through, she realized it was what she needed. Quickly she typed in the commands to print and inserted a card into the slot that would automatically deduct the costs of copies. Cat spent most of the morning doing similar searches on a variety of databases, including Toxline, Cancerline, Toxlit, and Medica. She also searched RTECS, ETIBACK, and BIOSIS. A number of the studies provided relevant information on the mechanisms that might provide an insight into where this madman was getting his stuff.
Cat used her cell phone to get a main line for the people at DuPont Labs. After a short conversation with their engineers, she was assured that they would send an update summary of the scientific literature on sulfuric acid to her, via Federal Express next day air. It was too much to send via email.
By this time tomorrow, she’d have a wealth of information on sulfuric acid, its carcinogenic effects, sources, and production throughout the United States.
Leaning back, she put down her cell phone. Above, the sun peered out from behind silver gray clouds that hung on the horizon. Robins darted from a giant elm, its branches so laden down they almost touched the ground.
For the first time in a long time, Cat felt good about this investigation.
For the time being, with so little to go on, a voice inside her told Cat someone must have seen something. A struggle, maybe one of the girls with him.
Something.
Did people just keep their mouths closed? Someone had to have had their eyes open, seeing Jane Doe with someone. Still, as far as clues, they had nothing despite putting out where she had last been seen alive. Calls came in. Everything was being checked out, but most of it seemed from crackpots and wannabees.
No letters claiming responsibility. No phone calls to the cops. Nothing.
It was time to shake up the investigation, time for a statewide task force.
Time to take this thing national.
To some extent, the local politicians had been calling the shots, orchestrating the investigation from behind the scenes. Cat would change pecking order today.
From here on in, she was calling all the s
hots.
At noon, Cat sat at a conference table in the mayor’s office, watching men file in, all looking very stern and serious. McGregor sat next to her, then Richmond. Needleman seemed to have swapped the seersucker for a more serious looking gray double-breasted number. Craig Gray sat, all smiling and politeness. She wondered if she’d ever have the nerve to tell him to wipe it off his face.
Sanchez plopped down at the far end of the table, a dark, striking, handsome man who seemed to have demons of his own.
Cat had also invited Mack Holston, San Diego Police Department’s head honcho, and similar men from San Francisco, Riverside, San Bernardino, Santa Mateo counties, and Santa Barbara.
After the men were seated and the coffee poured, Cat stood. She did not smile but came straight to the point.
“Gentlemen, I’m glad you could all make it here today. What I’m about to say makes common sense in the wake of these senseless killings. What we have out there,” she glanced toward the window, “is a savage killer, a machine set on autopilot. Right now we have nothing to go on. No way of stopping him. And he knows it.”
She met each of their eyes with a serious and deliberate stare.
“Consequently, gentlemen, we are placed at a distinct disadvantage. He knows that too. And I believe he is enjoying his little game even more, escalating the killings because he knows he can.” She paused. “Because we have nothing. Because he has given us nothing.”
The man from Riverside County spoke up. “What about the DNA, tissue cultures?”
“Mr.,” Cat glanced at her notes, “Norris, is it?”
“Yes ma’am.” He tipped his cowboy hat slightly to her. He was the guy from the Inland Empire—San Bernardino and Riverside.
“In the first three cases, the burning was so severe that the epidermal layer of skin is pretty much gone. The first two girls, the only thing under their nails was their own tissue. This last one we pulled up, well, there was nothing left of her. The only thing we have is a star-shaped group of freckles. The ocean took care of her.
She’d been floating two, maybe three days.”
“So you got nothing?”
“Well, let’s just say the tissue samples, blood, and DNA we’ve sent in hasn’t been the most favorable evidence.”
“What about this guy’s MO?” San Diego’s chief, Norman Harley, asked. He was a big man, though well proportioned. He sported the type of tanned good looks that made Cat believe he was a fisherman, an outdoorsman of some type.
“That worries me. His MO is developing, as I believe his killing fantasy is.”
“How so?” Harley said.
“Initially the girls were beaten into unconsciousness, mutilated, burned, and left for dead in the middle of bush country. At some time during the killing ritual, I think it was likely each one woke up, but by then he had already started cutting. Shock sets in as the body loses blood. There was little they could do. You all know that?”
The men nodded.
“The first two, if they are the first two…” Cat believed there were more bodies in the California hills waiting to be discovered… “were killed over a long period of time. I think this guy enjoys watching them suffer. He may inflict the cutting over hours, even days, slowly weakening the victim. This is the reason the cuts are so precise. If he goes too deep, he kills them too quickly and his fun is over.”
“Bastard,” the detective from San Bernardino muttered under his breath. Harley’s ice-blue eyes glittered with anger. “So this guy’s a control freak, is that what you’re telling us?”
“Very much so. At least initially that’s what appears to be the case. He likes to be in control. My belief is that the first two killings were very controlled and that he had been planning out the mechanics of the attack, if not the identity of the victims, for a very long time, months perhaps.”
“You keep talking about the first two girls like they’re in a class by themselves. Why is that?”
“Because they very much are.” Cat had an assistant dim the lights and flip on the overhead projector. “The third girl is quite different.” A photo slide of Jane Doe’s corpse, shot from overhead, loomed large on a screen in front of them. Some of the men seemed alarmed, but Cat knew she had to get their attention. This was the way to do it.
“Gentlemen, meet Jane Doe. This is our guy’s latest victim, this young woman washed up in Dana Point. The reason I called you all here is to inform you that no one who knows this girl has come forward. We got nada.”
Cat’s eyes focused on the screen. “As a result, I believe it is important at this point to coordinate a statewide task force. I also believe a national press conference is in order. My motives are threefold. Number one, this girl needs to be identified. If we ID her, we might find someone who saw something suspicious. We also need to give her a decent burial. Right now she is being held in refrigeration in the OC coroner’s offices. Number two, no one has come forward to claim her. This leads me to believe she is from out of state. That worries me. If our guy is mobile, well, the resources that will need to be devoted to this case increase twentyfold. It’s also a reason to go national.”
Cat’s forehead wrinkled. “Third, and probably most disconcerting, is the fact that this body”—Cat used a laser pointer circling the mass of bloody pulp on the screen—“is entirely different from the other two.”
“We got a copycat?”
“No. I don’t think so, although I’ve considered that possibility. In all three cases, the lacerations are almost identical, with the largest wound to the abdomen. There is no way a copycat could know that. We haven’t released that kind of detail to the media. And the skill needed to make abdominal cuts like this, without piercing vital organs, is extraordinary.”
“What else concerns you about this Jane Doe?”
“Notice the ligature burns to the neck here.” She circled the laser’s red pinpoint. “And to the midsection, ankles, wrists. Distinctive circular marks. This girl was tied down, unlike the others. I believe standard nylon rope was used. None of the marks appears fresher than the others. She was tied down to something as he began to cut.”
Harley was scratching his head. “What’s the significance?”
Cat stood in front of the screen, the ghastly image projected on her white linen suit.
“He is escalating, his violence intensifying. As the fantasy develops, fleshes out in his mind, it is becoming more violent. He is losing control of himself, little by little over time, and the result is a more vicious attack. All three girls so far have not been touched in the face.”
“Why is that?” San Bernardino’s chief homicide detective spoke up this time, apparently taking the words out of Harley’s mouth.
“He likes to watch their faces. This sonofabitch, this man, deliberately leaves their faces alone. At our most basic, we are all animals, hunters. Evolution has shown nothing less. Rather than subduing that urge, this guy encourages it, and in doing so their faces are like his trophies. Watching their repeated struggling, watching them bleed, the slow process of shock, then the acid. He enjoys the pain etched on their faces for hours, maybe days.”
Secretly, Cat believed he videotaped each one of the murders. Or photographed them. So far she had nothing to prove it, so she kept it to herself.
“What a freak.” Harley shook his head.
“You see, by killing them in this manner, he is in control. Able to cheat death as it comes knocking for them, or at least slow its advance. What could be more exhilarating? The control of life and death.”
She stepped aside, allowing the men to focus on Jane Doe once more. “One other thing, we found evidence of manual strangulation as well. Notice the wider laceration and bruising about the neck.”
“So he hung them and strangled them?” San Bernardino’s guy was confused.
“No, the third girl only. Looks like he choked her with his hands first, probably into unconsciousness. Looking closely, you can see that with the rope marks, that thinner bruisi
ng is deeper and fresher than the wider bruising to the neck. What this tells us is that he choked first, then tied her down.”
“Okay.”
Cat continued. “And this was not a hanging. There is no inverted V-shaped bruise to the neck. The bruising line here is inverted in the opposite direction, downward. She was most likely tied to something, an eyehook or something, down below her waist. He dragged the rope down to her waist then used a slipknot to tighten it even further. See the star-shaped bruising to the back of the neck?” Cat circled the bruises as they came up on the slideshow, her voice keeping perfect time with each slide. “He used more force than was needed.”
“Tied her down like a hog,” Harley observed, shaking his head back and forth.
“And he likes to use his hands,” the homicide detective from Santa Barbara said, speaking up for the first time, his voice deep.
“Yes, at least on the last one. Not on the others. In the first two killings, he was very meticulous. Not this last one; he went to town on her. Rope, hands-on. That’s what concerns me. With each day, he is more dangerous.”
Cat looked down, gathered her thoughts, then lifted her head again.
“And one more thing. We can’t verify it based on this last victim, but my guess is that the sexual component of his fantasy will escalate also.”
“You mean he’s gonna start raping them?”
“No. Right now he gets off after the killings. We found semen on the first two girls. The last one we can’t tell. No penetration. My guess is it is his culmination of the killing fantasy, the ultimate feeling of power. Perhaps it is his way of sharing his victim’s voyage between life and death. Maybe in that split second of death, he feels the ultimate sexual…” She hesitated, searching for the proper word out of respect for the dead. “Gratification.”
Harley spoke softly now. “So start looking for a rapist?”
“No, I don’t think so. He does not rape, and we have no reason to believe he will now. I believe, without killing like this, he is impotent. However, he may attempt digital penetration.” Cat stopped speaking, deciding how to answer. “He may reason that if he is inside of them, with his hands, or some other object that he is touching at the moment of death, the bond between himself and the victim— between death and life—becomes even more real, more intoxicating.”
The Burning Man Page 10