Looking Glass (The Naturalist Series Book 2)

by Andrew Mayne

  While profiling went on to become a powerful tool, it’s led more than one investigation astray as overconfident profilers paid more attention to their gut and intuition than to the facts.

  As my hero Richard Feynman would say, “It doesn’t matter how beautiful your theory is; it doesn’t matter how smart you are. If it doesn’t agree with experiment, it’s wrong.”

  I’m not an expert on the human mind or even the procedures that a detective follows to catch criminals. I’m a scientist with flexible boundaries, but still a scientist, accustomed to the samples in front of me telling me the truth. Sure, I might encounter an ant that disguises itself to look like a spider or even a leaf, but the ant isn’t trying to fool me personally.

  The Toy Man, on the other hand, is an intelligent free agent who can modify his behavior beyond his genetics and adjust to his environment in ways that I can’t predict.

  While the profilers at the FBI have thousands of cases to draw upon and make inferences from—for example, a correlation between one kind of stab wound and an obsession with women’s shoes—so far, my research has been based on what I can fit into a Euler diagram and chart in a spreadsheet.

  The sad truth about most serial-killer investigations is that they’re not even initiated until after the killer’s peak period; or worse, once they’re in place, investigators have to wait for more bodies to pile up.

  I’d rather not have that happen.

  Sitting on the edge of my bed, looking at the limited facts I have at my disposal and the desire to catch the Toy Man before he kills again, I’m going to have to go outside my logical comfort zone.

  Beyond Artice’s physical description and the mention of an accent he couldn’t place, I already have a hazy idea of a profile for this man, but I’m not very comfortable with what it tells me. His is a mind alien to my own.

  Whereas I live in the world of science and testable predictions, he resides in the realm of magic.

  And the rules of magic are utterly unpredictable.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT

  BELIEVERS

  Sitting at the back of the lecture hall, I listen to Professor Miriam, a small black woman with short gray hair and a powerful voice that fills the room, while her students dutifully take notes and casually ask questions during her presentation on the spread of Pentecostalism.

  I find myself enraptured as she talks about her field experiences visiting churches in Finland, Brazil, and other places. She’s my kind of academic: someone who steps outside the campus.

  As the class ends, her piercing eyes spot me, and she beckons me to the table at the front. “Theo? Come on down here.”

  I wait for her to answer the questions of some straggling students, admiring how she invites them to stop by the house for what I assume is a weekly picnic in her backyard, where she answers their queries and creates another opportunity for them to engage with one another.

  When we’re alone, she invites me to take a stool opposite her at the table. “First up, I keep telling them I don’t know anything about serial killers, but your e-mail was very polite.”

  “Thank you, Professor,” I say. “I don’t know much about them, either.”

  “Miriam, or Auntie if you have a passing grade in my class,” she says with a smile that tells me that privilege alone is probably its own incentive.

  I came across her work when I was trying to find an expert on rituals and magic. She’s written a considerable amount about that kind of belief in America and been routinely cited by other scholars—a sign of the quality of her work.

  “I had some questions about magic. I’m doing some research into the serial killer responsible for the murders in Los Angeles.”

  “Research?” she says skeptically. “Like the kind you did in Montana?”

  “Ideally, this outcome will be different.”

  “And you came all the way out here to talk to me? I’d think there are plenty of people in California that could give you better answers.”

  “Not exactly. I happened to be in the area and wanted to ask you some questions about rituals.”

  “Well, as I said in my e-mail, I get asked from time to time to look at cases where the police think there might be some kind of magic or ritual connection, but the problem is that we tend to see those connections when they’re not really there. Sure, sometimes serial killers like to draw some pentagrams, send letters to the newspapers saying they see demons and such, but more often than not, they’re just sick people looking for any excuse to justify their behavior.”

  I nod.

  “And after they’re caught, they like to build up their own narrative, creating even more elaborate stories than the little girl with the red hair gave them a hard-on.” She laughs. “Pardon me—sometimes I talk like that because it keeps my students’ attention.”

  “You seemed to have them in the palm of your hand. You’re an exceptional lecturer. I envy you,” I say sincerely.

  “I’ll tell you the secret.” She leans in over the table. “I love my students. Especially the challenging ones. I see them as my children. I recognize that even at that age, we’re still a kind of a parent to them. I embrace that. When people ask me if I have any children, I say about a thousand of them. Anyway, what led you to think this killer has some kind of unusual belief system?”

  “There’s a couple patterns. His victims all have green eyes or some other unusual feature, like albinism.”

  “That’s interesting. How is he able to select them?” asks Miriam.

  “For one, they’re all poor and come from broken families. But as far as finding them, it could be that he’s in a role where he encounters lots of children or he has access to records that makes searching for them easier.”

  “Like child services?” she replies.

  “Yes. That’s what scares me. He might have a dangerous amount of information available to him. Although, if he’s operating in multiple states, that would mean that he might not work for one particular municipality.”

  “Is there one company that handles those records nationwide?”

  That’s a brilliant question. Predox had listed a state software consultant as a potential vector. “Possibly a contractor that works in multiple states. Maybe even a subcontractor that fulfills the work for a local bidder. It’s one line of investigation I’m pursuing. But the reason I came to see you was that, besides the victims having unique characteristics, all of the killings appear to have taken place on a new moon.”

  Miriam’s posture stiffens. “That’s not in the news.”

  “No. I realized this when I started looking for factors the killer might be controlling for.”

  “Do the police know?” she asks.

  “I’ve e-mailed them . . .” Chen won’t even take my call. I keep getting pushed to voice mail any time I try to reach someone on the investigative team.

  Miriam taps her gold-painted fingernails on the table. “That’s peculiar. That’s actually a very strong magic connection.”

  “That’s why I wanted to talk to you. I was reading up about voodoo.”

  She chuckles. “Voodoo? Dr. Cray, that’s often about as accurate as calling Judaism paganism, or the Romans calling Christianity ‘that new Jewish thing.’ It’s a word that’s been spread so thin, it’s lost its meaning.”

  “Well, that’s why I came to see you. I’m just an ignorant biologist in search of enlightenment.”

  “You’re forgiven. The voodoo that you’re familiar with is probably the variety where African slaves mixed their folklore with Catholicism. But a great deal of what we call voodoo is actual African belief systems in places other than Africa.

  “Most belief systems that don’t have a central text like the Koran or the Old Testament become extremely pragmatic, adopting whatever else is around if it fits. New Orleans voodoo has a lot of French Catholicism embedded in it, while Brazilian forms have incorporated some of the indigenous beliefs from there.

  “As I’m sure you know, green eyes a
nd albinism are considered supernatural in about every culture because these people were clearly marked by god. The problem is that in some cultures, this can be a mark of evil and an indication that these people are to be scorned. In Africa they call them ‘witch children,’ and every year a thousand or more are murdered in remote villages. Which is not unlike how having a particular birthmark could get you accused of being a witch in America not too long ago.”

  “Would this man be killing these children because he thinks they’re witches?”

  Miriam considers this for a while. “Possibly. But in communities where they do those kinds of ritual killings, it’s almost always someone they know and have attributed misfortune to. I assume these children are unknown to him beforehand. Right?”

  “Probably,” I reply.

  “In what condition have the bodies been found?”

  “All I’ve seen are bones and bits of ligament. I don’t know what they found below the ground. The police have said absolutely nothing about that.”

  “And the bones that you’ve seen, were they physically connected?”

  “No. Almost all of them were loose and separate.”

  “Very interesting . . . ,” she says. “Very interesting.”

  “What?”

  “It sounds like the bodies were chopped up.”

  “Yes. I understand it makes them easier to dispose of.”

  “But unnecessary if you have a big backyard to bury them. These children may have been butchered.”

  My stomach begins to churn. “To what purpose?”

  “He’s not just killing witches—he’s taking certain body parts for magical purposes.”

  I feel like I want to throw up. “So it is ritual? Like a cult?”

  “Ritual, yes. Probably not a cult. And it’s even worse than you realize.”

  “What on earth can be worse than someone chopping up little boys for magic spells?”

  Her answer leaves me speechless.

  “He’s eating them, too.”

  We both sit in silence. Everything she said makes sense, but the facts were too separated and too behaviorally rooted for me to come to the same conclusions that she did.

  “Let’s just hope they’re going to catch him. Didn’t they arrest a person of interest in Brazil?”

  I slowly shake my head. “Yes, and there may be a connection, but I don’t think it’s him. The last missing child disappeared while that man was in jail.”

  “I didn’t hear about that on the news,” she replies.

  “It’s not. They think all the murders happened in Los Angeles.”

  Her eyes pierce right into mine. “Oh, Lord, not here . . . Not again . . .”

  CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE

  BOTANICA

  I’ve been around magical belief in one form or another all my life, from the Texas churches distant family members tried to draw me toward to the shamans and medicine men I encountered doing research in South American jungles. I once even imbibed a potion to make the locals happy and had a surreal experience resulting in me waking up in a tree making monkey noises. Ten years later, my colleagues doing field research in Honduras tell me the locals still ask when the Monkey Man from America will return.

  Yet, as I walk through Yewe’s Botanica—a metaphysical store of sorts—in a poorer section of Atlanta, I realize that I’ve frequently been around belief in magic, even involved in token ceremonies, but have never really been immersed in it.

  The small store is filled with special prayer candles, powders, and oils with names like Dove’s Blood and Mr. Guyer’s Luck Powder, as well as a variety of totems ranging from feathers to rocks with shells glued to them like eyes.

  I have no idea what any of this means. Are they based on some kind of preexisting magical history? Or is Mr. Guyer an entrepreneur concocting new product lines?

  I notice that a number of the items have Los Angeles–area addresses on them, which tells me I overlooked a very important vector while I was there.

  The proprietor of the botanica is a wiry, mahogany-skinned older man who looks like he has West Indian ancestry. When I entered, he was on the phone explaining to a customer that they had been out of something called Snake Bite for several weeks, but were expecting a shipment from the distributor in a few days. Thank goodness for that.

  My purpose in the shop is to get an understanding of what this world is like and to try to learn what kind of network the Toy Man may be a part of.

  One of the things that’s become clear to me, when it comes to serial killers who are centralized in one or two areas, is that they’re usually connected to some kind of social grouping that relates to their victims.

  For John Wayne Gacy, many of his victims were the young men he hired to work on his construction projects. In addition, he mingled with male hustlers while also spending time with cops. More than one parent of a missing teen pointed to the man who spent a lot of time around the young people he’d hired.

  Lonnie Franklin liked to party with hookers who had crack cocaine addictions. His friends were aware of this part of his life, and some even suspected his intentions were darker. Long before the police were on to him, prostitutes were warning one another about a john with violent tendencies.

  Atlanta serial killer Wayne Williams fancied himself a music producer and even had his own amateur radio transmitter. It would come out later that he promised many of his victims the opportunity to become a music star. When police first stopped him, he said he was on his way to audition a female singer who didn’t actually exist.

  All three of these men traveled in circles in which they could meet victims, but they also intermingled with people they aspired to be. Gacy hung out with cops. Franklin liked to be around other “players.” Williams tried to roll with music producers.

  If the Toy Man really believes he’s in the realm of the occult, then it seems likely that in both Los Angeles and Atlanta, he’s at least familiar with the people in that scene.

  At the front of the shop, there’s a bulletin board filled with flyers for prayer groups, psychic readers, healers, and a variety of other supernatural cottage industries.

  “Anything I can help you with?” asks the owner.

  I try to phrase my words so I don’t sound completely ignorant. “I . . . was wondering . . . I don’t know much about this . . .”

  “Neither do I after fifty years. What kind of problem do you have?”

  I turn away from the flyers. “Someone has been troubling me . . .” Better to keep it vague than make up a lie I’ll lose track of.

  “The purple one. Some say that helps.” He points to a shelf filled with different-colored candles.

  I take a purple one off the rack and set it on his counter. “Anything else?”

  “A talisman?” He realizes he’s got a sucker on the line. “Let’s see.” He makes a gesture of surveying his shop before settling on the shelf of high-priced items behind him. “Some say a crystal like this might work. It’s onyx, I believe.”

  He sets a faceted schorl on the counter. It’s not even remotely related to onyx, but I don’t quibble. “How much?”

  He studies me for a moment, trying to decide what high price to settle on after telling me an even more ridiculous amount. “It’s one hundred. But I can let you have it for seventy-five dollars.”

  I pick it up, pretending to assess the value. “Okay . . . if you say it will work.”

  He shrugs. “I only know from my own experience.”

  Not a great sales pitch, but I’m not here to play the skeptic. I pull out a wad of hundred-dollar bills and set one on the counter.

  He sees the bills, which is what I wanted.

  “I don’t know the right way to ask this,” I start to say, “but I was wondering if you might be able to tell me where I could find someone. Somebody who knows about, what’s the right word? Hexes?”

  He points to a flyer on the board. “You want Ms. Violet. People say she’s the best. What’s your name, by the way?”
>
  I’m sure he’s asking me this so he can tell Ms. Violet that he sent a mark with a fat wad of bills over to her establishment.

  “Craig,” I reply.

  He hands me my change and a bag containing my purchases. “Go ahead and take the flyer. I think she’s who you want to talk to.”

  I’m sure she is. If she’s the one he sends the richest clients to, then very probably she’s also one of the most important people in this network, and quite possibly someone that the Toy Man has encountered.

  CHAPTER FORTY

  BLESSED

  When I pull up to Ms. Violet’s practice, there’s a group of people sitting on plastic chairs outside the house, apparently waiting to be seen.

  Her home is in an older neighborhood of mid-twentieth-century houses with gravel easements and slightly overrun lawns.

  My rental car is the most expensive one parked in front of the house, with the exception of the Mercedes in the open garage.

  When I walk up the sidewalk, a tall black man who appears to be in his forties, wearing a button-down shirt and khakis, greets me with a firm handshake.

  “Mr. Craig, Ms. Violet is so glad you could pay her a visit.”

  This must be the man I spoke to on the phone, Robert. He explained to me that Ms. Violet was a woman of God and provides her services for free. If I try to offer her money, she’ll take it as an insult.

  When I asked when I could visit her, he told me that there were a great number of people waiting to see the wonderful woman. After a long pause, I inquired about making a donation and was told that I could see her the next day as a thanks for my generosity.

  “How much is appropriate?”

  “We had a man yesterday who tried to give her one thousand dollars, and that was too inappropriate,” Robert informed me. “If he had been a rich man, that would have been acceptable. But he was poor, and it hurt Ms. Violet to think that his children might go hungry.”