He pushed his way in the front door to find an agent sitting with a laptop hooked into the house phone. Sally came down the steps in her robe to find him.
“You should be sleeping,” Mac said, concerned.
“With all of this going on? Right.”
“Sorry.”
“Not your fault. So is it the guy? Is it this Rubens?”
“Yes,” Mac replied as he headed into the kitchen. He grabbed a beer and the pasta salad leftovers and sat down at the eating nook.
“So what happens next?”
“I report to the Washington Field Office first thing in the morning and go to work.”
“For how long?”
Mac suddenly realized where part of Sally’s concern rested. Sally understood what he did from time to time: the cases, the hunt, the search and his tendency to go all in on it. As a former prosecutor, she knew how important that was. But, they were getting married in six weeks. Was he going to be tied up in an investigation all that time? Was it going to interrupt all of that?
“I don’t know how long, Sally. My recall on this guy is he hangs around for a few weeks, kills the four women in rapid succession and then disappears.”
“But you don’t know that.”
He reached for her hand. “I’m going to be at our wedding. This is not going to get in the way of that, the honeymoon, anything. I won’t let that happen.”
“What if this Rubens doesn’t leave you a choice?”
The phone rang.
It was late.
Mac immediately went to the living room and to the house phone the agent was sitting by. “I don’t have to tell you that the longer he stays on the better.”
Mac nodded as he picked up the receiver. “Hello.”
“Home so soon?” It was him, the masked taunting voice. It was Rubens.
“I was anticipating your call.”
The voice laughed. “Well, if you did, then score one for Mac McRyan. Is it okay that I call you Mac?”
“If that works for you, it works for me.”
“Good. Quite the work of art, wasn’t it?”
“Oh, quite,” Mac replied casually, wanting to talk to him, get a feel for him. “Lisa White is just the first of The Three Graces you’re going to kill, isn’t she?”
“Mac, I so love that painting. The use of color is magnificent. There’s the paleness of the Graces’ bodies contrasted against the darker ornate background and then that blast of dark blue over the left Grace’s head just explodes onto the canvas. It’s that blue that drew me to that painting. It was one of his later works but in my opinion, one of his best. I simply felt compelled to honor it here in our nation’s capital.”
“So is this how this is going to go now? You’re going to start calling me for these little chats?”
“From time to time. Opponents must talk in a game like this. But look, I know you want this call to last but it’s not going to happen. All I want for now is your cell phone number.”
Mac gave him the number. “Aren’t you worried we’ll trace you?”
“Not tonight.”
The line went dead.
The FBI agent was on the phone, and then covered the mouthpiece and reported. “We had to triangulate it. The call was coming from southwest of Baltimore, up where Interstates 95, 895 and 195 all weave together. He was moving and I suspect it was a drop phone. He probably pitched it out the window the second he was done.” The agent got back on the phone. A search would be made for the cellular device.
While the agent did that, Mac listened to the playback of the call with Sally listening in.
“Is he crazy?” Sally asked.
“Psychopath,” Mac answered. “But, as I’m sure I’ll learn in the morning, a very smart one.” He played it back one more time, thought about calling Wire and then decided it could wait. There was nothing more that could be done tonight. He reached for Sally’s hand. “Come on, let’s go to bed.”
“How can you possibly sleep?”
“Because I have to,” he answered wearily.
Upstairs they quickly and quietly went through the mechanics of getting ready for bed. Sally got into bed first and Mac followed a few minutes later, first setting his alarm for 5:30 A.M. before extinguishing the lamp on his nightstand and laying his head back on the pillow. He stared at the ceiling, the case disturbingly running through his head as he tried to settle his mind.
“Mac?”
“Yeah, babe.”
“Catch the bastard.”
CHAPTER FOUR
“What’s a gunner?”
Mac was up and out of the townhouse by 5:55 A.M., a light mist of rain falling, making for a cool and damp morning. Along the way, he stopped at Starbucks for a large coffee and breakfast sandwich. He pulled into the FBI field office parking ramp, drove underneath the building and slotted his SUV to the right of a bland, brown four-door Taurus. He unfolded his wiry, athletic six-foot-one-inch frame out of his BMW X5 while Wire pulled in right beside him. They were inside the FBI DC field office by 6:15 A.M. Special Agent Grace Delmonico, a friend of theirs who they worked the Reaper case with almost a year ago now, was inside awaiting their arrival in the elevator lobby.
“Special Agent Gracie Delmonico, we ride again,” Mac greeted, extending his hand.
“Good to see you, Mac,” she answered, taking it. “I really wish it were under different circumstances.”
“Have you been up all night?” Dara asked, giving their friend a quick hug.
“Galloway and I both were, pulling things together,” Grace replied tiredly as the three of them exited the elevator and walked back to an expansive conference room. “Galloway went home but will be back. He scheduled a meeting for 9:00 A.M. to get the whole team together. In the meantime, we’ve pulled the FBI files on Rubens as you requested,” Delmonico stated, waving her arm toward the conference table. On the long narrow table were stacks of investigative files, as well as a series of banker boxes and a small stack of hardcover books, not to mention laptops and other materials Mac had requested.
“Wow, this is a lot of stuff to try to get through,” Wire sighed worriedly.
“And there will be more, a lot more. So let me tell you what is here,” Delmonico suggested as she walked along the left side of the conference table. “First, these red folders contain an overall summary of Rubens, the victims and the investigations. It’s the ten-thousand-foot read. I’d start there.”
Grace moved down the table. “These twelve tall stacks of brown expandable folders are the FBI’s individual files on Rubens. In the stacks of folders are all the paperwork, notes, interviews and reports for the twelve prior victims. The banker boxes that are behind the stacks of folders are where you’ll find the physical evidence, pictures and anything else relevant from the crime scenes. The small brown file at the end is what we have on Lisa White thus far. It isn’t much but I’m sure that will change throughout the day as more data is collected, we interact with MPD and get the medical examiner’s report.”
Delmonico walked around the end of the table. “On the other side of the table here are more banker boxes. These sets of boxes contain copies of the investigative files from Boston, Chicago and Los Angeles police that the Bureau has a copy of. We’ve already heard from the Chicago and Boston police, telling us if we need anything else to call. I’m sure we’ll hear from L.A. as well. It’s still pretty early out there but these are complete copies of each police department’s files on Rubens.”
“Is this all available electronically?” Wire asked.
“You’ll be able to remote into the case management system.”
“What’s with the books?” Mac asked, noticing the stack at the end of the table.
“Those are all of the books written about Rubens,” Delmonico replied. “Two of them are from the FBI’s April Greene.”
“We heard about her last night,” Wire said.
“She’s a profiler from the Behavioral Analysis Unit down at Quantico, or at leas
t she used to be. I think she’s a consultant now. She’s writing books and traveling the country speaking and consulting on cases, but she’ll be around for this, I’m sure. Rubens kind of made her.”
“That’s what the director said last night,” Mac noted, flipping over one of the books to see the picture of Greene on the back and read the book jacket description of her background.
“Anyway, at last count, she’s written six books on criminal psychology. With regard to Rubens, her two books are titled The Homicidal Artist and Inside the Mind of Rubens. There are a few others that have been written—two of particular interest are the ones written by Hugo Ridge.”
“Who’s he?” Wire asked, lingering over the picture of Ridge on the back of one of the books.
“He was a crime reporter for the Boston Herald when Rubens started ten years ago. His reporting on the murders was picked up nationally and he made a name for himself. By the time Rubens reappeared in Chicago four years later, Ridge was writing crime features for World News Magazine and he covered the murders in Chicago and turned it all into a bestselling book.”
“Really?” Wire asked.
“Yeah,” Delmonico replied. “You two should appreciate that. By the way, I thought you were both really good on 60 Minutes.”
“Thanks, I thought it went well,” Wire replied. “I’m not so sure about him though,” she said, throwing a thumb in Mac’s direction.
“It went fine. Unfortunately, I got to enjoy that it was over for all of five minutes before Rubens called.”
“Well, on that front,” Delmonico transitioned, “Ridge’s first book was simply called Rubens. Four years ago when Rubens popped up in Los Angeles, Ridge covered it again for World and turned it into a follow-up book titled The Killing Game. That one won him a Pulitzer.”
“Catchy title,” Mac suggested, ignoring the book and scanning the markings on the banker boxes.
“It is,” Delmonico replied, and then sighed. “As much as it pains the Bureau to admit it, Ridge’s books were good, contained a great deal of detail and added some keen insight, and while they were non-fiction, they read a little like a novel. In fact, he’s started writing novels and he’s doing quite well.”
“What would you read?” Wire asked Grace.
Delmonico shrugged. “Probably April Greene’s.”
“Why do you say that?” Mac asked.
“Greene’s books are more the bricks and mortar of what makes Rubens tick, the profile of him, who she thinks he is at least psychologically as compared to other killers she’s studied, of which she’s also written extensively. It’s really the other books from which she’s gotten rich which have led to the speaking and lecturing and so forth. She pops up on CNN and FOX News from time to time when there is a big murder case, a serial killer or a particularly brutal homicide somewhere in the country that garners interest, and she provides insight on what motivates the killer and what not. The books on Rubens are a heavier read because she gets pretty deep into the weeds on him.”
“And Hugo Ridge’s books?” Wire asked.
“I’d say they’re probably more for entertainment. His books are more about the victims, the designs of the crime scenes and how Rubens taunts the police, the more sensational aspects of the cases,” Delmonico replied with a yawn. “Give a look if you want—you might get some insight, especially if you want background in three hundred pages or less.”
Mac snorted his skepticism as he flipped open the top of a banker box.
Wire detected his cynicism. “You know, you wrote a non-fiction account of an investigation.”
“Yup, and it’ll be coming to a theatre near you soon,” Mac deadpanned. “However, I seriously doubt our book will ever end up in an FBI investigative file, nor should it.” He sensed her disapproval and glanced over in her direction. “Your interest wouldn’t have anything to do with the dust jacket picture, now would it?”
“Oh, now you question my integrity.”
“No,” Mac replied, not looking up. “Simply your taste.”
“Sometimes you can be such an incredible asshole.”
“So Sally tells me.”
“Maybe I should question her taste,” Wire needled.
“You wouldn’t be the first.”
“In any event,” Delmonico stated, getting them back on track. “This is pretty much everything. Meeting at 9:00 A.M. Until then—” She waved to the table with an exhausted smile. “Enjoy.”
Delmonico peeled out of the conference room and Mac and Wire looked over the table of information. They both grabbed a summary file, sat down and started getting educated.
The summary report was thirty-six pages in length. It started with a short rundown of all twelve victims over the ten years from victim number one, Nicole Franzen, staged in the pose of Aphrodite in the Rubens painting The Judgment of Paris. She was strangled, very similar to how he imagined Lisa White had been strangled. However, there was no clock and no clue left behind; those elements apparently came later on. The last victim four years ago in Los Angeles was Ronda Hollister, a sculptor, who was drugged and then smothered. She was posed like the woman in the portrait Leda and the Swan, as a dead swan was found at the scene. However, before Rubens was able to finish his masterpiece completely, the police somehow got a lead that Hollister was the next victim. It was the closest the police had ever come, missing Rubens by mere minutes. How they learned about Hollister was something Mac was keen to find out.
He read through the full summary once and then went back over some parts of it again, while Wire started flipping through some of the individual case files.
Finished, Mac dropped the folder onto the table. He took a sip of his now lukewarm coffee and leaned back in his chair with his hands clasped behind his head and closed his eyes.
After a minute or two, Wire broke the silence. “Thoughts?”
“Twelve prior victims,” Mac replied. “And the one thing that really sticks out to me is there isn’t any sort of consistent useful description of our killer. In Boston, they had one guy they thought was the killer. He lived in the same building as the first victim and then was seen on video within five blocks of victim number two in the hours after she was killed. They apprehended the suspect, but then victim number three was killed while he was in custody and number four was killed while he was under police surveillance. He wasn’t the guy and other than that, Boston PD had nothing.
“In Chicago, there were vague descriptions of a man ranging from five-foot-seven to as tall as six-foot-two. One pegged the man as having short brown hair and a different witness for another victim said she thought the new man in her life had longish gray hair down to his shoulders. The summary suggests that the descriptions were likely not of the killer but simply people who’d been in the vicinity of the victims in the day or two before the murders. None of the victim’s friends, co-workers or family members ever actually met the man in their victim’s life, although in almost all cases people thought there was someone new.
“In the series of Los Angeles murders, there were varying descriptions of new paramours: one with a dark beard who was of stocky build, another with black hair and a dark mustache, and still a fourth that had him as a thinnish blond with longer, almost surfer-like hair. There is no consistency to height, weight, hair color or appearance. Again, no friend, family member or co-worker ever met a boyfriend of the victim so again, the descriptions, to the extent they exist, are worthless.”
“I saw that,” Wire answered.
“Of course, as the summary indicates, we don’t even know if the descriptions we have are really of our guy. These were all descriptions from a distance of men a witness thought they saw with or near the victim.”
“Could just be random or it could be that he’s always changing his look.”
“The forensics report section references hair fibers that were collected at three of the murder scenes, two in Chicago and one in Los Angeles. The fibers are fake and probably from wigs of some kind, so he’s c
hanging his look,” Mac continued. “It’s not that hard if you have the right supplies and have some skill, which our guy clearly does. He spends months, maybe years, setting up these killings.”
“This April Greene seems to thinks he spends a long time seeking out his victims,” Wire added. “He knows them very well by the time he meets them.”
“All of which allows this guy to get close to them. Rubens knows what kind of men they would be most attracted to and which buttons to push to get the women to go for him. I bet he spends a lot of time hunting for possibilities. Once he’s assessed the field, he assembles a list and uses some process to whittle it down to four. Then, the targets set, Rubens moves in all Rico Suave-like, and they melt because he pushes all of their buttons. He gets them to let their guard down and he strikes. Usually, it is in the victim’s apartment, although he used an abandoned building once. His most common method is strangling eight times with his hands, including last night. He’s also smothered two women and used a nylon rope once. He’s also used a bat, and most gruesomely he used a knitting needle, sticking it right into the victim’s ear and into her brain.”
“We have no consistent description of the killer and no consistent method of killing. What is consistent?”
“The victims. He has a very distinct type. They are all, as the summary report suggests, Rubenesque.”
“Plus-sized women,” Wire noted.
“Correct, but that’s not all,” Mac continued. “The victims are not just voluptuous. They are also women who appear to be shy, reserved, introverted and overlooked. Nobody ever notices them. You can see it in the summary—these women had few friends that could provide background. They all were employed yet at work, they had few close friends. As for the victims that did have some good friends?” He shrugged. “It would appear that those people knew very little about a man in their friend’s life, although they suspected something was up.”
“A woman has a certain glow, a way about her, when she has a man in her life,” Dara noted.
“Yes, she does,” Mac agreed. “And for a few of the victims, their friends knew of a new man but there’s never a name and none of the victim’s friends ever actually met the man. Not once.”
Next Girl On The List - A serial killer thriller (McRyan Mystery Series Book) Page 4