by Jacob Stone
Morris’s cell phone rang. He gave the caller ID a quick glance. He had to clear his throat before asking Hadley whether this was about the Nightmare Man. A purely rhetorical question on his part, because what else could it be?
Hadley’s normal blustery voice had been reduced to something chastened and hollow. “I don’t know how it’s possible, but that psycho is back,” he said, as if he couldn’t believe it. “Goddamn it, why couldn’t he have stayed gone?”
* * * *
Morris found Doug Gilman waiting outside the West Hollywood apartment building. Gilman was the mayor’s deputy assistant and, for the last six months, also Rachel’s boyfriend. Eighteen months ago he arranged for MBI to take the lead on the SCK investigation once the murders moved cross-country from New York to Los Angeles. It turned out to be a good career move for him and led to his promotion after Morris and MBI solved the case that had baffled both FBI and New York officials for five years. It also put political pressure on the mayor’s office to keep bringing MBI into other serial killer cases so they could assure the good people of Los Angeles they were doing everything possible to catch the fiend terrorizing them.
Gilman gave Morris a curt nod and held up paperwork that he needed signed. Morris had taken a taxi from Bel-Air so Bogle could continue tailing Bobby Gallo, and he and Gilman had talked over the phone, working out the details for MBI to be hired and take the lead in the investigation. While Gilman looked impatient and harried, his skin appeared its usual tanned color, and that was all Morris needed to see to be sure that the mayor’s deputy assistant hadn’t yet ventured inside the dead woman’s apartment. Gilman tended to get green around the gills when in the proximity of a dead body, and Morris had seen it happen after Gilman simply heard the grisly details of a murder. What the Nightmare Man did to his victims went far beyond what Gilman might’ve previously glimpsed. Or what any sane person could ever imagine.
Morris took the eleven-page contract from Gilman. Most of it was boilerplate, and the payment rate had already been set by the city when MBI was hired for the SCK investigation, but he read over the two clauses that mattered to him: the one that gave MBI autonomy to handle the investigation as they saw fit and ignore any directives from Police Commissioner Hadley, and the other that allowed MBI to control the message given to the media. After verifying that the clauses were as they had discussed, he asked Gilman for a pen and signed the contract with a gold-plated Cross pen that had likely been given to Gilman as a college graduation present, or maybe something he had given himself after his promotion.
“I remember the Nightmare Man murders when they happened in 2001,” Gilman confided once he had the signed contract stored away in a briefcase and the pen handed back to him and secured within his inside suit jacket pocket. “I was thirteen at the time. They scared the heck out of me even though nobody ever said what was done to the women.” He shivered noticeably. “Just hearing the name of the killer gave me the willies. I’m sure what I imagined had to be far worse than what happened.”
Gilman had said the last part more as a hopeful question. Morris knew he didn’t want to know any details, but he couldn’t help himself from shaking his head. Gilman winced, his mouth weakening. He was likely picturing even worse things happening to the victims than he had imagined as a thirteen-year-old.
“Try not to think about it,” Morris suggested.
“Easier said than done.” Gilman gritted his teeth and shook his head violently as if he were shaking and clearing an Etch A Sketch. “I gave myself a crash course on the Nightmare Man after finding out about this murder. Not any of the details about what was done to his victims, but other aspects. When I was thirteen I must’ve heard about how these murders also happened in 1984, but that seventeen-year gap didn’t make an impression on me then. It did today.” Gilman gave Morris a hard, flinty look. Stone cold enough to be impressive, and Morris realized that this was Rachel’s influence, that her toughness was beginning to rub off on him. “Tell me straight,” Gilman asked in a voice every bit as hard and flinty as his stare, “should Commissioner Hadley have been prepared for this?”
“I don’t know,” Morris admitted. “We knew the number seventeen held some sort of importance with this psycho, so if he was going to start killing again, this is when you’d expect it. Hadley, though, had good reason to believe he would either be in his eighties or dead, which makes it a tough call to frighten a population for something you don’t think has much chance of happening.”
“They’re going to be frightened when they hear about this.”
“They will,” Morris agreed.
“I saw the police drawings of the suspect. The one done in 1984 and the one made in 2001 where he was aged seventeen years. How come that didn’t lead to his arrest?”
“I couldn’t tell you. My dad led the investigation back in 1984, and he believed the witness was legit. But sometimes a police sketch just isn’t enough, even if it’s a good one.”
Gilman asked, “Was everything done back then that could’ve been done?”
“No. There was an avenue of investigation that I thought should’ve been taken that wasn’t.”
“Why wasn’t it?”
Morris showed a pained smile. “Chalk it up to office politics. It happens. But I’ll be looking into it now. In fact, I have been for the last few days.”
“Really? You’ve been expecting this?”
“I thought it was a possibility.”
“Did you call Hadley? Never mind that.” From the way Gilman began fidgeting, he didn’t want to hear the answer, probably already knowing what it would be. He peered at his watch and frowned. “I have to give a press briefing in a half hour. I’ll make sure to get those two police sketches to the media, and I’ll get a third drawing made with the suspect aged another seventeen years. We’ve got a hotline number already set up, and I’ll give that plenty of attention. Anything I should mention in particular? Leave out?”
“The public needs to be vigilant. Hadley is going to love this since it’s going to generate hundreds of false calls, but it can’t be helped. Ask for people to call the hotline number if they see anyone suspicious in their building or neighborhood late at night. You need to stress that. This psycho is far from done.”
“I’ll get the message out. Don’t worry.”
“People need to be careful about who they open their doors to. If you don’t know the person, you don’t open the door. Period. I also would like to see everyone get better door locks.”
He expected his last comment to elicit a groan from Gilman, and it did. “Morris, as thrilled as our local locksmith association would be for me to announce something like that, it would cause a panic, and the mayor would have my head.”
“Figure out a way to imply it then. As far as things not to mention, don’t give any details about the murder. Think of this as a virus we’re trying to contain. The last thing we want is to spawn any copycats.”
“Don’t worry about that. I couldn’t give out any details even if I wanted to. I don’t have them.”
They shook hands. Gilman turned to leave, but he looked back at Morris, worry weakening his eyes and mouth, the hard flinty look from earlier completely erased.
“The victim, Lori Fletcher, is close to the same age as Rachel. I have a recent photo of her that I’ll be giving to the media. She was very pretty. Petite, dark-haired. Looked a lot like Rachel. Should I be concerned?”
The ten previous victims were all Caucasians. Their ages ranged between twenty-two and forty-seven. Four of them were either married or living with someone. Three of the victims were killed when their partners were either working a graveyard shift or traveling on business; in the fourth case, the husband had been rendered unconscious with chloroform and was found bound and gagged in the same bedroom where his wife was butchered. The victims were brunettes, blondes, and redheads. Some were pretty, others not. Socioeconomic
ally, they ranged from white-collar middle class to wealthy. As far as Morris could tell, the killer showed no discernable pattern in choosing his victims.
Morris said, “We should all be concerned.”
Chapter 26
On his way to the apartment, Morris walked past at least a dozen patrolmen and plainclothes officers. Hadley wasn’t one of them. It didn’t surprise him that the police commissioner was keeping his distance. When he saw Detective Greg Malevich standing outside the apartment taking a smoke break, he asked if Detective Walsh was inside.
“Annie’s back at the Wilcox Avenue station interviewing the two unlucky citizens who found the victim.” Malevich took a drag on his electronic cigarette and blew the vapor out from the side of his mouth. “One of the neighbors is home, and I got nothing from her other than she’s not happy that I’m out here smoking. A few minutes ago she stepped into the hallway to give me the evil eye. I’d go outside, but I’m waiting for other neighbors. Besides, there’s no secondhand smoke from these things.” He scowled at the pen-shaped device, and under his breath added, “I need to get that smell of death out of my throat. I’ve been tasting it ever since going in there.”
Morris clapped Malevich on the shoulder. He well understood the sentiment.
The victim’s door had security plates on the doorjamb and the edge of the door that interlocked and would keep someone from breaking in with a crowbar. The weak point, though, was the lock. Any standard door lock can be picked given enough time. Morris opened the unlocked door, waved over one of the crime scene specialists, and asked her to turn the deadbolt once he closed the door. He took out his lockpicks, and after he heard the click of the deadbolt being turned he went to work. Malevich saw what he was doing and timed him. While Morris worked on the lock, he asked Malevich about the electronic cigarette. “Aside from the occasional cigar, I didn’t know you smoked,” he said.
Malevich took the device from his mouth and frowned at it. “Back when I was in the Army, I was two packs a day,” he said. “I quit cold turkey once I was discharged and met Keira. I can’t explain the impulse that made me do it, but two weeks ago I picked this up at a vape shop in Venice. Keira would not be happy if she knew. This is only my third time using it, but I got to tell you, Morris, I’m glad I got it right now. Not exactly a PSA moment, huh?”
Morris was noncommittal about his answer. He knew the stresses in working Homicide, and he knew what was waiting for him inside this apartment. Whatever you have to do to make it through the day.
It took him four minutes and eighteen seconds to unlock the door. Not the worst lock he’d ever encountered, but certainly not the best either. The killer could’ve had a key or been skilled with a lockpick.
“Not bad,” Malevich noted with a thin smile. “When you get sick of running MBI, you can start your next career as a cat burglar.”
With his best poker face, Morris said, “Parker would not approve.”
He headed inside the apartment. Joining the young woman who had locked the door for him were several other crime scene specialists, all of them busy in the small living room either vacuuming up fibers, hair, and other tiny debris from the floor or searching surfaces for prints. The bathroom door was open, and Morris spotted a specialist inside examining the bathtub drain.
He nodded to the specialists he knew from his time on the force and continued on to the bedroom. From force of habit he wrinkled his nose at the smell of disinfectant. As nauseating as he found the odor, the stench it covered up would be worse. When the victim died she would’ve evacuated her bowels, and there would’ve been other unpleasant odors mingled in with it. Burnt flesh. The coppery, metallic smell given off by spilt blood. And an odor that was hard to define, but was nonetheless unmistakable and potent: Fear.
Morris closed the door behind him after stepping into the room. He first glanced toward the foot of the bed where the grisly “17” should’ve been. It had been removed, but a bloodstain left behind outlined the message. The medical examiner, Roger Smichen, was examining the body. He looked up to offer a bleak smile.
A weariness showed in the ME’s eyes, and his smile reflected something tragic. Smichen was long and bony, and his scalp completely bald and his face hairless aside from sparse, light brown eyebrows. It might’ve been the way the light struck his sunken cheeks, or it could’ve been because of the overall gloominess of the situation, but he appeared paler than usual, more cadaverous.
“As much as I enjoy your company, Morris, it’s a shame to see you dragged into yet another of these depraved murders,” he said. “Especially given that this one stands far apart from any I’ve ever seen.”
He knew Morris had resigned from the force and started MBI because he’d had his fill of serial killers, yet this was the fourth time he and MBI had been brought into one of these cases.
“This is unfinished business for me,” Morris said.
“You worked the murders back in 2001?”
“Yeah.” The sight of the victim flashed Morris back to the others. The same cruel damage had been done to her. She’d been left naked on the bed, and large lumps of flesh had been cut away, nails torn off, small circular burn marks showing on her raw wounds. If he looked closely enough, he knew he’d see ligature marks on her wrists and ankles from the killer binding them. In the other murders, the killer had used nylon rope.
The ME had inserted a clamp in her mouth to keep it open so he could more thoroughly examine her throat. Morris dreaded moving any closer. He didn’t want to see a rat’s tail protruding from her throat. Something, though, was different. There were puncture marks on her lips that he hadn’t seen with the other victims.
“2001 was before my time,” Smichen said somewhat whimsically. “I was still in Indiana then learning the craft of my trade, or I guess you could say, preparing for the big leagues here in LA. I haven’t had a chance yet to look at the autopsy reports for the earlier victims. Any obvious differences you can see?”
Morris could see that all of her fingernails had been pulled off, and all but three toenails. “How many wounds?” he asked, his voice coming out as a growl.
“Seventeen. The same number of burns, all of which are circular, one-eighth-inch diameter. He must’ve heated a metal rod and used that to burn her.”
“The same as with the other victims.”
Smichen pulled off one of his latex gloves and pushed his hand over his scalp. This was a mannerism Morris had seen once before from the ME when he was dealing with a particularly cruel murder. Something to briefly get his mind off what had been done to the victim.
“This was all done while she was still alive,” Smichen said. “I’m sure you’ve seen the outline of the message he left for us. Any idea why the number seventeen is so important to him?”
“We never figured it out.” Despite himself, Morris’s voice still came out as a heavy growl. He also realized his hands had clenched into fists. He concentrated to unclench his fingers so they would hang loosely at his side. A trick he learned years ago was if you forced your body to relax, your mind often would relax too. “There’s a rat lodged in her throat, right?”
“No. There was a rat that had been either coaxed or forced into the victim’s throat and blocked her air passage long enough for her to die from asphyxiation. You can see this from these swollen veins and signs of cyanosis.” Smichen pointed out the several veins that had swollen on her face and neck and a bluish discoloration on the inside of her lower lip. “When she was found, the rat had crawled out of the throat and was trying to force its way from her mouth.”
“That’s different,” Morris said. “With the other victims, the rats had been pushed through a hollow pipe and into the victim’s trachea. They were dead when they were removed, and from their broken limbs and other damage, the ME thought a narrow metal rod was used to push them deep into the throat.”
“I found a circular abrasion along t
he back of the throat indicating that a hollow pipe with a quarter-inch diameter was used, which, as I’ve since found out, is just big enough for a juvenile rat to squeeze through. I also found singed fur and a bruise on the rat’s hindquarters that showed it was pushed with ostensibly the same rod that was used to burn the victim, just not hard enough to cause the same damage you claim was done to those other rats, or for it to remain lodged in the throat. This rat, though, was very much alive, or at least it was when it was removed from her. It has since been sent to the lab to be examined.”
Morris moved closer to the body. “What happened to her lips?”
“They were sewn together. If they hadn’t been, the rat would’ve escaped.”
“That wasn’t done with the other victims. Time of death?”
“Between midnight and three in the morning. I’ll have her taken back soon for a full autopsy, and I’ll see if I can narrow it down more.”
Smichen stood. He made a face as he stretched and worked out a kink in his back. “I’ve been at this an hour already,” he explained. “I’m not as young as I used to be. Anything I should be looking for?”
“Ammonium carbonate was used with the other victims to keep them conscious.”
“Good enough. I’ll check for elevated liver enzymes.” Smichen showed a pained expression as he continued to knead his long, bony fingers into his lower back. “I’m getting too old for this,” he said. “I’d been thinking I could hold on for another five years, but after today I’m not so sure. Did I ever tell you that my wife and I are thinking of retiring to Lisbon?”
“Portugal?”
“That’s right. Donna and I have been there four times on vacation. Stunning city. On our last trip we did some house hunting. I could buy a nice villa for half of what I could sell my house for here. The idea of a quiet life is very appealing right now.”