The Impaler

by Gregory Funaro

  “Yes. Looks like our boy scrubbed the lawyer clean. Sound like a hit to you?”

  “And the others? State ME find anything on them?”

  “No Comet residue, no. Killer just shot and impaled them, but it looks like he did scrub them clean. ME found traces of water in their ear canals.”

  “Covering his tracks?”

  “Maybe.”

  “But a bit too cliché, too simple if we’re speaking metaphorically of dirty drug dealers and a dirty lawyer—the Comet, the cleaning. You wouldn’t be here if you thought it was that easy a read, would you?”

  “No, I wouldn’t. The killer wasn’t concerned about using Comet on Rodriguez and Guerrera. Might not have been important until Donovan; might have done something different to him that needed attending to.”

  “Developing his MO, you think? Evolving?”

  “I think so, yes.”

  “The bodies—were they facing in the same direction?”

  “Good question, but no. Rodriguez and Guerrera faced due east; Donovan, his body turned west, his head tilted back at almost a ninety-degree angle. The killer attaches a crossbar at groin level so the bodies won’t slide.”

  “Then he’s a planner. It’s about more than just the violence of the impalement. The aesthetic is important, too. The display.”

  “And the head tilted backwards?” asked Gates. “The glasses, the eyes open?”

  “Textbook. The victim is supposed to see something and understand. However, the victims’ sight lines, the directions are different. Rodriguez and Guerrera, the cord across their faces, their eyes looking almost due east; Donovan’s body to the west, the cord around his neck, his head arched back looking up at the sky.”

  “Right.”

  “Our boy drops them off at night; has to have a van or a large truck. Might be a moon freak. Do the disappearance dates correspond with the new moon?”

  “No, different visuals on the nights the victims were last seen. However, on the nights they were found, there was a crescent moon. Could be a textbook lunar pattern; seen it many times before. Most recently, in that long-haul-trucker case—”

  “The crescent moon,” Markham said suddenly. “Isn’t that the symbol for Islam? A star inside a crescent moon?”

  “That’s right.”

  “Could he possibly be imitating Vlad the Impaler? The Romanian prince who was the inspiration for Bram Stoker’s Dracula?”

  “I’m glad to see you’re still up on your history,” Gates said, smiling. “And that was my first thought even before I made the crescent-moon connection. After all, before Stoker immortalized him in Dracula, the historical Vlad was known as one of the great defenders against the spread of Islam during the Middle Ages. Definitely the cruelest, as his moniker would imply.”

  “And the victims?” Markham asked. “Any Islamic connection?”

  “None that we can see so far, but we’re looking into it.”

  Markham was silent, thinking.

  “Then again,” Gates said, “we could be totally off base. Everything happening toward the end of the month could indicate something with calendars, but why the displays in February and April and not March? Might all be just a coincidence.”

  “You wouldn’t be here if you thought that.”

  Gates shrugged and smiled, his eyebrows arching like a pair of thick, white caterpillars. Markham flipped again through the Donovan file, the forensics report.

  “This light scratch that the ME notes,” Markham said. “The one he picked up near Donovan’s right armpit that looks like an arrowhead. Is that it?”

  “Is that what?”

  “The reason you’re here. The reason you’re convinced this guy is a wannabe Vlad and not just some cartel hit man with a flair for the dramatic.”

  “Why you, you mean?”

  “Yes. Why me? Why do you want to pull me off my new assignment at Quantico and fly me off to Raleigh when you’ve got good people in Charlotte? After all, that’s what you’re getting at, isn’t it?”

  Gates rose from the table and dumped the remainder of his coffee into the sink, rinsed the cup out, and placed it on the counter upside down on a paper towel. The silence, the intended dramatic effect was beneath him, Markham thought, and suddenly he felt himself getting irritated.

  Gates walked back to the window and looked out over the pond; but much to Markham’s surprise, he did not adjust his glasses.

  “You’ve been in ten years now, Sam,” he said finally. “Only reason I didn’t ask you back after five is because I knew you’d be happier in the field. Agents are banging down our door to get reassigned to BAU, but it never occurred to you to put yourself in for a promotion back home, did it?’

  “I thought about it.”

  “That’s a load of crap. Your biggest fear is becoming a bureaucrat, a pencil pusher like me. You need your boots on the ground; would rather take orders and get things done than give them and lose touch with why you signed up with us in the first place. And that’s your problem. You’re too ob- sessed with your work; you’ve let it define who you are to the exclusion of everything else. It’s why I played the personal favor card with you, but that’s not why you agreed. No, only reason you took me up on my offer is because you know deep down you’ll be more of an asset here.”

  Markham said nothing.

  “We were lucky to have you in Tampa with Briggs. I think because you were already assigned there, you don’t believe we couldn’t have nabbed him without you.”

  “I got lucky in Tampa.”

  “Maybe,” said Gates. “But you didn’t get lucky in my class. Your paper, your application of that physics principle to behavioral science—what was it called again?”

  “The superposition principle. Says that the net response at a given place and time caused by two or more stimuli is the sum of the responses that would have been caused by each stimulus individually.”

  “Of course,” Gates said, arching his eyebrows again.

  “It’s most often applied to wave theory,” Markham added. “Or in the case of my paper, to almost-plane waves converging diagonally in a body of water. More of a metaphor, really, if one were to apply it to both the predictability and unpredictability of human behavior in a linear system such as—”

  “Over my head,” Gates said, waving him to stop. “I just remember it had something to do with the wakes of two ducks swimming side by side. How their waves would intersect and come out on the other side of each other unbroken. First time a trainee ever dumped something like that on my desk. Physics. And to think you were an English teacher before you joined us. History minor in college, too, from what I remember. Qualified under the Diversified Critical Skill. That kind of thing just doesn’t happen anymore.”

  Markham shrugged. “You give me too much credit. I don’t quite understand the physics of it all, either. Was only a metaphor for gut instinct, that briefest of moments when the waves from the hunter and the hunted are one. It can’t be measured scientifically. At least I don’t think it can.”

  “I still don’t get it. Only that what you’re saying makes perfect sense to me. It’s the same thing with Jackson Briggs in Tampa. I’m still not sure how you caught him. I just know that you did.”

  “And the reason you’re here?” Markham asked. “That thin, oddly shaped little scratch near Donovan’s armpit?”

  “That’s not the reason the Bureau initially got involved. Because of Donovan’s profile, because of his involvement with the FBI’s case against Ernesto Morales, when we got wind of Donovan’s murder, Charlotte sent Schaap to Raleigh.”

  Gates reached into the inside pocket of his overcoat and handed Markham the first of two glossy photographs. Yes, Markham thought, Gates had been waiting to show him his aces all along.

  “This first picture,” said Gates, “is a close-up of Donovan’s chest under normal light. You’ll notice the scratch on the right pectoral near the armpit is almost imperceptible in the photograph. Schaap bought into the dirty-
lawyer idea at first, and thought the bleach from the Comet might yield some clues under the Wood’s lamp. He never expected to find this.”

  Gates handed Markham the second photograph. It was a close-up of Donovan’s torso on the autopsy table. Under the ultraviolet light, Donovan’s skin looked bluish-purple. The writing was a faint, glowing pink: a series of neat lines running across his chest in what looked to Markham like hieroglyphics from a pharaoh’s tomb.

  He felt his stomach tighten, his tongue go dry.

  “According to Schaap,” Gates said, “the killer could’ve used a charred stick or something. Whatever he used, it was just a little too sharp when he started.”

  “And even though the ash would’ve rinsed off much more easily than ink,” Markham said, studying the picture, “the stick and the properties of the ash could still damage the epidermis enough to react with the Comet and also remain invisible to the naked eye. Did they find any other chemical residue?”

  “Other than the chloroform in Donovan’s nostrils, no. But Schaap has two running theories regarding the writing: the first, that the killer wrote on Donovan for some reason having nothing to do with the final display; the second, that the killer intentionally used the Comet to produce the effect you see before you.”

  “That would mean he’s not trying to cover his tracks.”

  “Well, not if you approach it from the angle that the writing was meant to be discovered by someone with a UV lamp.”

  “And Rodriguez and Guerrera?” Markham asked. “State ME use UV on them?”

  “No, not standard unless the murder is sexual in nature. Guerrera’s body was sent back to his family in Mexico, but we fast-tracked a court order for exhumation of Rodriguez. Family’s been notified, taking place as we speak. Kid’ll be shipped with Donovan to Quantico later today.”

  “A possible message then,” Markham mumbled to himself. “But to whom?”

  “The official autopsy report on Donovan won’t be issued for a while. But given the crossover on the case, until we can get a gag order, Schaap and the ME are going to delay submitting anything about the writing. His funeral has also been delayed while his body undergoes further analysis in our labs here.”

  “And the writing?” Markham asked. “You’ve already sent the information to our language specialists?”

  “Yes,” said Gates. “Report came back late last night. A single phrase written over and over in six ancient scripts: Aramaic, Hebrew, Arabic, Babylonian Cuneiform, Egyptian, and Greek.”

  “Nothing in Romanian?”

  “No.”

  “What does it mean?”

  Gates motioned with his finger for Markham to turn over the photograph. He obliged, and felt his stomach go cold when he saw his boss’s handwriting on the back. It read simply:

  I have returned

  Chapter 3

  Now he was the General.

  Seated at the computer in his white robes, the General scrolled his mouse to the top of the Web page and hit the print button. An article from the Raleigh Sun about the murder of Randall Donovan—details still sketchy, appeared to be some kind of drug hit, investigation ongoing. Just as he expected. Everything part of the equation.

  The General rose from his chair, tore off a piece of Scotch Tape from the roll on the workbench, and retrieved the article from the printer. The cellar felt cold to him this morning—colder than usual—and as he sauntered out of the workroom, he thought he could feel his nipples grow hard.

  “I thought I heard you calling. You thought you heardme speak.

  Tell me how could you think I ’d let you get away?”

  The music in the background was much softer than it had been for Randall Donovan. “Dark in the Day” was the song—a Clone Six remake of the 1985 version by the one-hit won- der High Risk. The General had been only five years old when the original came out, but still he remembered it from the days before his mother died. There had been messages back then, too—keys to his understanding of the equation—but back then, through the ears of a child, the General had simply been too stupid to understand.

  Now, however, the General understood the equation perfectly. The others were capable of understanding, too, but they needed to be reeducated, needed to hear the song over and over—old and new, old and new—to finally understand like he did.

  “There were many who came before me, but now I’ve come at last,

  From the past into the future, I’m standing at your door.”

  The General entered the adjoining room—the reeducation chamber, he called it—and taped the article to the wall. He stood back and admired how it looked among the others—thousands of messages he’d printed from his computer or copied on the machine during his day-life.

  All parts of the equation.

  The General breathed deeply. The dentist’s chair and the floor were clean now, and the room smelled refreshingly of Pine-Sol.

  “I thought I heard you calling. You thought you heardme speak.

  Tell me how could you think, I ’d let you get away?”

  “Your body is the doorway,” the General said along with the Clone Six lead singer. And then the chorus kicked in.

  The cover version was slightly different from the original, but the message was the same—always the same, always part of the equation. Just as it had been long before his mother died.

  The General often thought about his mother, but never about his father. He knew him only from a yearbook photo that his mother sometimes showed him before bedtime. “All right,” she’d say. “You can kiss your father good night.” The General could no longer remember what his father looked liked; only blurry rows of black squares that smelled in his mind like perfume and old paper. His mother kept the yearbook hidden underneath a loose floorboard in her bedroom, and made the boy promise never to tell his grandfather she had it. And the boy kept his promise.

  For even as a boy, the General always kept his promises.

  Smiling, the General walked from the reeducation chamber, down the darkened hallway, and entered into the last of the cellar’s three rooms: the Throne Room.

  The General dropped to his knees and bowed his head.

  The Throne Room was the smallest but most sacred room in the house. It had once served as his grandmother’s pickling closet, but was now empty except for a large wooden throne at the far end. The General had constructed the throne himself out of pine—it had to be light enough to carry, that was part of the equation, too—and the softness of the wood made it easier for him to carve the intricate designs that adorned the arms and legs and back. He also painted the throne gold and illuminated it with a single spotlight hung from above. The General had stolen the spotlight during his day-life, but unlike the belt sander and other tools he’d taken from his place of employment, his boss never missed it.

  “I shall return, my Prince,” the General whispered, but the figure on the throne did not respond. That was all right. The General hadn’t expected the Prince to respond. Not today. Not for a few days, perhaps, or at least until the General fulfilled the next part of the equation.

  9:3 or 3:1 was the proper ratio, the equation that held the key to the formula.

  The Prince understood the equation. And although he was demanding, he also understood that his General had worked hard to keep the formula in balance—knew that it was time for him to rest. After all, the Prince was a general, too. The supreme general, a general spelled G-E-N-E-R-A-L in big capital letters—the most fearful of them all, in fact. “The Raging Prince,” his soldiers used to call him on the battlefield; sometimes, “the Furious One.”

  The General rose to his feet, bowed perfunctorily, and turned off the spotlight. He climbed the cellar stairs in the dark, emerged into the kitchen, and locked the door behind him. He was hungry, but would wait until lunchtime. He had learned to resist temptation; needed to stick to his diet and keep his muscles lean. No more cheeseburgers. General’s orders. That had been the hardest sacrifice of them all. He really missed th
e cheeseburgers.

  Then again, war was all about sacrifice, wasn’t it? At the very least, war was not meant to be easy. Even for the greatest generals. Nonetheless, the General felt confident in his mission. He’d been preparing for it for two years now; could see the results of his hard work in the sinews of his muscular physique; could feel his growing strength in the ease with which he lifted the heavy loads during his day-life.

  And the Prince had rewarded him for all his hard work, had promoted him to second in command. A general, too. A warrior-priest who served only the Prince.

  Then again, the General was born to serve. And hadn’t the Prince been grooming him for this mission nearly all his life?

  The General made his way quickly from the kitchen, through the hallway, and up the stairs to his bedroom. He was going to be late today, and would have to work doubly hard to keep up the appearance of his day-life. But that was all right; the Prince would allow him a respite before the big push toward May. Yes, now that he had laid the groundwork for the Prince’s return, everything would come together much more rapidly in the weeks to come.

  Everything would have to if the equation was correct.

  And the General was sure the equation was correct.

  Chapter 4

  “The appeal from Stokes’s mother was denied,” Gates said. He stood with Markham on the tarmac, at the bottom of the mobile stairs unit that led up to the FBI plane. “Connecticut Supreme Court struck down her request to postpone his execution. Found that Stokes was entirely competent to drop the appeals process on his own behalf. The execution will proceed as planned a week from Saturday. He wants to die, Sam.”