Cuts Like a Knife: A Novel (A Kristen Conner Mystery Book 1)

by M. K. Gilroy

  The deputy director of the FBI takes off his rimless glasses, pauses dramatically, and looks at each person in the room, right in the eyes. I feel like he’s trying to peer into my soul. I don’t dare think of a sarcastic response to his comments. I’m afraid he would read my mind. Van Guten breaks the silence.

  “This is a fascinating case, Deputy Willingham,” she says. “Honestly, with the break in pattern, I suspect our friend might be going into an acceleration cycle. I hate to sound crass, but that’s not always a bad thing. That’s when organized killers get careless, make mistakes, and start leaving clues. None of which he has done to date.”

  Despite her best efforts, Leslie did sound crass.

  “Another death is never acceptable,” she continues. “But if it leads to our capturing him, it clearly beats the alternative of him just disappearing.”

  “Disappearing? What are you saying, Dr. Van Guten?” Willingham asks.

  “I know this isn’t what you want to hear after all you’ve been through,” she continues with a pointed glance at Reynolds, “but there is evidence that some serial killers burn themselves out at the acceleration stage and return to a normal life.”

  “Really?”

  Did I say that out loud? I did. I have never heard that before and here I am a college graduate with a degree in criminal justice. And I’m about halfway done with a master’s degree.

  “Let’s put it this way,” she says directly to me. “Many serial killings have gone unsolved with no record of similar patterns in the future. Did all these killers die? I doubt it. A few have quietly surrendered to the police; we suspect others have been killed due to their dangerous lifestyle or committed suicide; and yes, we believe some have gone underground, never to be heard from again. I correlate the organized killers who go underground with the general psychopathic population.”

  “How so?” Willingham asks.

  “A lot of people have never heard—and probably wouldn’t believe it if they did—that psychopaths cure themselves as they age. Starting at age twenty-one, approximately two percent of all psychopaths go into remission every year. In other words, the older a psychopath lives to be, the more likely he—or she—is to become a functional member of society.” She drones on, but I stop listening.

  I don’t quite believe the “cure themselves” angle. How could I? I attend AA and am pretty well versed in the principle that you have to acknowledge a Higher Power. That, and the fact that I’ve gone to church all my life, means I believe we need the help of God and other people in order to get better. Not sure I practice my beliefs like I should, but I do believe it.

  AA meetings never cease to amaze me. I’m not an alcoholic, but it does seem kind of natural to be there. Hi, I’m Kristen and I have an anger problem. No, that’s distancing the problem from myself. Hi, I’m Kristen and I’m an angerholic. Started small, but man I am all in, these last few months in particular. When I talk about my anger, not by name of course, everyone in the groups I’ve attended perk up and think I’m talking about vodka or cocaine. I wonder if my anger will be cured with age. Gray, the guy from Internal Affairs, suggested I’m heading for a burnout stage. That’s a scary thought.

  We’re at the State Building on Wacker, just south of the Chicago River and on the north edge of the Loop. I like meeting at the FBI’s place better than at our precinct. They have carpet on the floors; we have linoleum. Their conference room table is made of mahogany; ours is made from Formica. Their chairs are covered in soft leather; ours might have had cloth completely covering foam at one time. They have art on the wall; we have rust-colored water stains. Their ceilings have geometric flourishes and trims. Half our ceiling tiles have at least one major chunk missing or some discoloring we’d rather not investigate.

  But what makes meetings at their place infinitely better than ours is that they have a cool space-age machine that grinds coffee beans and brews an individual cup of the freshest joe in the world. Oh, and they have real half-and-half. As in liquid. The fresh bagels and lite cream cheese are a nice extra.

  An attractive young lady, young now being anyone that doesn’t have three or higher as the first number of their age, walks in and stands at the FBI deputy director’s left shoulder, waiting for him to acknowledge her. I wouldn’t interrupt him either. I didn’t refer to her in my mind as a girl, so maybe I am becoming more politically correct. I’m not sure that’s a good thing.

  “Thanks for the insights, Dr. Van Guten,” Willingham says. “I think you might have thrown us all for a loop on that one. Bottom line, we’ve got to catch this guy. I hope it doesn’t take our killer entering a period of frenzy to do so. But I sure as heck hope this guy doesn’t go underground. As much pain and suffering as he has wrought on this world, I want us to be able to tell some families that we have apprehended the man who killed their son or daughter.”

  “He’s killed men?” I ask.

  That was for sure out loud. I blurt it out quickly, interrupting again. Is my name Chatty Cathy?

  There’s a pause in the room among the FBI personnel. Zaworski looks up at Willingham and then Reynolds sharply. Willingham makes a church steeple with his forefingers. He looks at me and I can’t tell if he’s mad or amused.

  “What gives, Bob?” Zaworski asks.

  “At least three instances,” Willingham answers.

  “That’s not in any of the reports Virgil has generated,” I say, my voice cracking.

  How come everyone else can speak with poise and modulation and I sound like a blathering fool? Willingham looks at me, puzzled. “That’s Detective Conner’s nickname for PV, Project Vigilance,” Reynolds answers for me.

  Willingham narrows his eyes. Now I’m sure he’s mad. Then he smiles at everyone in the room. “Virgil. I love it.” He lets out a loud laugh and everyone joins him except Van Guten. She has the start of a smile on her lips. Might be a sneer.

  “What gives, Bob?” Zaworski repeats. “Are you holding out on us?”

  “Believe me, Captain Zaworski, I want you to have anything and everything you need to catch this guy. But you and your team do know that if we gave you every bit of data PV . . . uh, Virgil . . . has generated, you would have ten times the material to sift through than the 1,400 pages we’ve already handed you. In addition to that, we have another thousand pages on three unsolved murders that he might have committed but that we can’t definitively correlate. We believe he has killed three men, all of them homosexual. But all three murders predate Denver when the pattern we see emerging in Chicago began.”

  “Deputy Willingham, I think I’m to blame on this,” says Van Guten. “I think it was an oversight on my part to stress that the non-isolated event stream notebooks are thorough, but in no way complete. I hadn’t even thought of the male angle in years. We believe it was an experimental stage in his life that he did not pursue.”

  “I don’t care what you forgot and who is to blame,” Zaworski storms. Van Guten turns a deep shade of red. “But I do care that the FBI has been busting our chops over lack of progress and not indicated that there are more options we should be considering. This sicko has been in your jurisdiction a lot longer than ours. Make sure we know what you know.”

  The tension at the table is palpable.

  I break it by saying loudly, “I think I know one of the option areas we need to be considering.”

  Everyone is suddenly staring at me. I always have great things to say in meetings—but never seem to think of them until after the meeting is over. I think I’m in shock that I now hold the floor.

  “Well, you gonna tell us or do we have to play twenty questions?” Zaworski growls.

  “It’s his pickup grounds,” I say. “We’ve focused everything on AA meetings. But only twenty-nine of the forty-seven victims prior to Chicago attended AA. One out of three here have. He’s finding his victims in other places.”

  “Any ideas?” Reynolds asks.

  “Not yet,” I answer. “But can you ask Virgil to go back and see if the
re are any other settings that show up more than once?”

  “Consider it asked,” Van Guten answers for him. “Off the top of my head I know that bars will show up. I know he bought opera tickets somewhere and met a victim there. Not sure that happened again. But nothing else has seemed statistically valid. Oh, he has found several victims in health clubs. Beyond that I can’t think of anything. But I think Detective Conner’s idea warrants some further study.”

  “Some immediate further study,” Willingham interjects.

  “My apologies, Tom,” Willingham says to Zaworski. “If it seems like I’m pointing a finger at the CPD for lack of progress, let me assure you, I’m even more disappointed with my team’s failure to generate anything here.”

  If my eyes don’t deceive me, both Van Guten and Reynolds have a slightly red coloring on their faces.

  “We’re on Conner’s train of thought. And we at the FBI are going to get better and sharper in the days ahead or make some wholesale changes of our own. That brings up something else I need to mention.”

  Zaworski’s eyes narrow.

  “I’m bringing in another eight street soldiers from Fairfax. But we need more local investigators in the field as well. Reading the reports I see you’ve only got eight detectives, another sixteen officers, and maybe seven or eight tech and forensic specialists full-time on this. I question whether your team is big enough.”

  “We’ve got our best on the case,” Zaworski responds, unruffled.

  He barely glances in my direction. Other than Zaworski, I’m the only CPD present at this cozy little meeting. He’s probably wondering how I ended up invited to this high-level power breakfast. I also get the feeling he’s wondering if I’m really one of his finest.

  “And you’re not factoring in that we have another hundred and fifty officers and staffers working the case part-time. All told, we’re working the equivalent of sixty-one full-timers every day since the first murder. I know that for a fact because I just came out of budget meetings.”

  “When the Green River killer moved from Washington to Missouri, the Kansas City Police Department had the equivalent of fifty-nine full-timers per week,” Willingham quickly rattles off. “New York City had thirty-four officers, not counting background support, on Son of Sam for an entire year. Los Angeles created a whole unit that ran for a decade for the Zodiac Killer. Your Cutter Shark makes those guys look like amateurs.”

  “Help us out with some leads and I’ll put the whole Second Precinct on this,” Zaworski answers, his face red, his eyes flashing. “We have three murders and a very limited number of clues. We’re sifting the same bag of dirt over and over and over—and there isn’t any gold in it. I’d put more detectives on this if I had any real work to give them.”

  “Captain, I admire you and your track record,” Willingham responds. “But I’ll also echo what I’ve been suggesting for the past hour. Whatever it is we’re doing, isn’t working. Let’s do something different. Anything. Start there. There’s something you could be doing that you haven’t thought of yet.”

  Willingham pauses and looks at his aide who has been waiting patiently at his side for ten minutes.

  “Yes, Megan?”

  “Thought you should see this, sir.”

  He takes off his glasses and reads a printout she hands to him. It takes him about thirty seconds. He hands the sheet of paper back to Megan. He pinches the bridge of his nose as he looks at each of us around the table.

  “Anyone here ever heard of the ChiTownVlogger?” he asks.

  “A hack journalist,” Zaworski answers. “Sees himself as a friend and defender of the people. Used to be mainstream but now does some Internet report. He peddles every rumor and conspiracy theory associated with city government and he hates Mayor Doyle. He thinks Doyle got him fired from WCI. He’s got enough of a following that everyone in the city knows who he is. What’s he done this time?”

  “Let’s just put it this way,” Willingham says. “Brace yourself for a media invasion like you’ve never experienced before. I’m guessing that while we’ve been talking, ninety percent of Chicago now knows that this guy he named the Cutter Shark is a multitheater phenomenon. He posted a report that specifically listed Chicago as the latest of many cities. Oh . . . and he went live on a CNN Headline News interview an hour ago—they’ll be airing that once every thirty minutes all day.”

  • • •

  “Doing anything fun today?” Zaworski asks me.

  We’re in the elevator going down to the parking garage, which starts two levels below the street entrance to the State Building.

  “Not really,” I answer.

  “I was going out on Lake Michigan with my wife, daughter, son-in-law, and three grandkids.”

  “Sounds nice,” I say. “What kind of boat you got?”

  “I’ve got the Bayliner Buccaneer. It’s a thirty-five-footer that can sleep all of us. My one indulgence through the years. Know anything about boating?”

  “Not a thing.”

  “I won’t bore you then.”

  “I wasn’t bored a bit, sir. And I’m glad you get to go out with the family.”

  “Not going to happen for me,” he says. “I’ll call my wife on my way over to the mayor’s office.”

  “Uh-oh. Will that get you in hot water?”

  “She isn’t going to like it, but she’ll understand. We’ve been married forty years and a good part of the reason we’re still married is she understands a cop’s life well enough not to complain or waste her time getting bitter and trying to lay guilt trips on me when plans get messed up.”

  “Bummer.”

  Bummer? I’ve got to get better at this professional interaction thing. I’m not looking for a promotion for a long time, if ever. My goal was always to be a detective. It’s what I am and it’s what I love doing. Some teachers teach their whole career. Others want to be principals. I think I’m the be-a-teacher kind of detective.

  “The mayor and chief aren’t going to like what I’ve got to tell them either,” he says, now with a preoccupied tone. “And they aren’t going to be nearly as understanding as my wife,” he says with a forced laugh. “The city is nearly broke and they want us to do more with less—‘work smarter not harder’ is the phrase they used. Willingham wants us to work with more. In this case, as mad as I am at him, he is probably right.”

  The car stops, a bell rings, the doors open, and we exit the elevator and give each other a nod as we go opposite directions for our cars.

  “Conner,” he says.

  I stop and look back at him. “Yes, sir?”

  “Do something fun with your family today. Life is about to get miserable.”

  I nod awkwardly.

  “In case you were wondering,” he says, “that’s not a suggestion. It’s an order.”

  48

  “I’LL PICK THE kids up at six,” I say to Kaylen for the sixth time.

  I’m ready to hang up. I’ve got a few more calls to make and I need to think. I’m driving from the State Building to the Second Precinct. A whole lot of dynamics were going on this morning at FBI headquarters that I didn’t understand.

  “Are you sure, Kristen? Jimmy and I were just talking about all you’re going through right now. Life’s been so crazy this past year for all of us, we haven’t been there for you. This Cutter Shark thing is so scary. What happens to people that they become monsters?”

  “Hey, Kaylen, I’m actually doing okay today and I want to take the kids out and have them spend the night. I miss them! You and Jimmy do something fun, you know, get out the old Scrabble board or maybe play some Parcheesi. Jimmy can pop popcorn over an open fire in the back yard and lead Mitch Miller choruses.”

  “Ha ha,” she says with not even a scintilla of humor in her voice.

  “Hey,” I add, “if you’ve got other ideas, maybe even romantic ideas, you’re adults and you’re even married, so have at it.”

  “You are so dead when you get here, Kristen,” she sa
ys. She pauses and continues, “You know, that’s probably not the best choice of words right now.”

  Then she starts crying. I immediately swear to myself I’m not going to join her in crying. Kaylen cries easily. I don’t. This Cutter Shark guy is a shadow over the whole city. He’s getting inside people’s minds. Either that or big sis is about to finally own up that she’s preggo.

  “Kaylen,” I say as I bump into the parking lot, “I’m sorry I have to sign off but I’m at the office. We will talk more later. I promise. But I have to run now.”

  I sit in my car for five minutes, trying to get my thoughts focused on what I can get done in the next hour or two so I can obey Captain’s orders and do something fun with family. I crank up a classic rock station and listen to Chicago belt out “25 or 6 to 4.” I once heard a deejay earnestly explain that the “25 or 6 to 4” phrase was just something nonsensical someone in the group came up with at the end of a studio session so they could go home. Nonsensical? Gee, do you think so?

  Whether it was the peppy beat or a flare-up of my sarcasm gene, I now have my game face on and head into the building. I nod at the officers working the front desk and sign in. I eschew the elevator and jog up four flights of loud, metal stairs. The floor is reasonably quiet this Saturday morning but I can hear voices here and there. I get to my cubicle. There is another yellow sticky note in the middle of my computer screen:

  ROSES ARE RED

  VIOLETS ARE BLUE

  DOES THE FBI STUD

  REALLY LOVE YOU?

  Someone is going to pay for this. Shelly, if it’s you, leaving an apple on my desk is not going to get you out of this.