by Chris Carter
‘Was she sexually assaulted?’ Hunter asked.
Agent Fisher peeked at Kennedy before replying. ‘No. Miss Rivers wasn’t touched that way.’
‘Why?’ Kennedy asked, his voice full of concern. ‘Was the LA victim raped?’
Hunter locked eyes with the NCAVC director. ‘No, she wasn’t sexually assaulted either.’
The room went silent again for a couple more seconds.
‘Any more questions?’ Agent Williams asked. ‘Or am I OK to carry on?’
‘Let’s carry on,’ Hunter suggested.
‘All right,’ the agent continued, pushing all the photographs on Hunter’s desk to one side. ‘Our killer’s second victim.’ He returned to his blue folder.
‘Wait a second,’ Garcia interrupted him. ‘How about the rest of the photographs?’
‘What rest of the photographs?’ Agent Fisher asked.
‘The crime-scene ones from the disused shed? The blood on the walls?’
‘What?’
‘There was no blood on the walls, right?’ Hunter asked, reading their puzzled looks. Once again, he called everyone’s attention back to the picture board. ‘Unlike Kristine Rivers,’ he explained, ‘Linda Parker’s body wasn’t found inside a shed or any random abandoned place. She was murdered inside her own house. Her body mutilated inside her own bedroom. And as you can see . . .’ he indicated a specific group of photographs, ‘the killer made a point of smearing most of the walls and the furniture with her blood.’
Kennedy and his agents stepped closer to have a better look at the photos.
‘So the killer didn’t do the same at your crime scene?’ Garcia asked.
‘No,’ Agent Williams replied. ‘Kristine Rivers wasn’t murdered inside that shed. Her eyes and scalp weren’t taken there either. There was no blood anywhere. The only blood we found had dried on her skin.’
‘The pattern here is all wrong for these to be blood splatters from arterial spray or something similar,’ Agent Fisher said. She was the only one still staring at the board. ‘What they look like is “get away” smears. A victim trying to escape her attacker.’
‘Yes, we know what they look like. Thank you.’ Garcia didn’t try to keep the sarcasm out of his tone. ‘But we don’t think that’s what they are.’
‘You think the killer put them there on purpose? Why?’
‘We’ll get to that later,’ Hunter said, stopping Garcia before he was able to explain. ‘Let’s carry on with the original sequence of events. We all know that serial murders follow a certain progression inside the killer’s mind. So for now we should stick with that as well, even if we don’t understand it. Covering things out of order, without having all the facts first, will just generate unnecessary questions and confusion. Let’s move on to the killer’s second victim before we get to the third, how about that?’
Everyone agreed and Agent Williams returned to his folder for a new eleven-by eight-inch photograph, a full-body shot.
‘OK,’ he said, placing the photo on Hunter’s desk. ‘The Surgeon struck again almost a month after Kristine Rivers, on March eleventh.’
If the photographs of Kristine Rivers had surprised Hunter, Garcia and Captain Blake, the second victim shocked them.
Thirty-Two
Before he began, Special Agent Williams allowed Hunter, Garcia and Captain Blake a few seconds to study the new photograph he had just placed on the desk.
‘I can see by the expression on your faces,’ he said, ‘that The Surgeon’s second victim has surprised you as much as it surprised us.’
The man in the photo was looking up from an open newspaper he’d been reading. The smile on his lips was gracious, but it was a sad smile, probably put on just for the sake of the photograph. His old-looking and ill-fitting clothes were clean but scruffy, as if they’d been slept in at least a couple of nights. The little hair he had left, two small islands just above his ears, were as white as milk, matching the color of his bushy eyebrows and his thick mustache. His deep, dark-brown eyes, just like his smile, seemed full of sorrow and the white in them, over their many years on this earth, had acquired a light-yellow tint, losing much of the sparkle that had once lived in them. His rosy face, together with his bony hands, seemed to be held together by a messy web of capillaries and thinning veins, running behind wrinkled and tired skin. He had the look of a man who was used to hard work and suffering. The look of a man who had accepted his destiny.
‘This was Albert Greene,’ Agent Williams reported. ‘An eighty-four-year-old, ex-school janitor from Wichita, Kansas.’
‘He was eighty-four years old?’ Captain Blake asked in a tone coated by a mixture of disbelief and disgust.
‘That’s correct,’ the agent confirmed, his voice solemn. ‘Mr. Greene was born and raised in Northeast Millair, one of the most impoverished and underprivileged neighborhoods in Wichita. His father passed away from pneumonia when he was only thirteen years old. Due to how poor his family was and the fact that he was the oldest of four children, Mr. Greene was left with the task of being family breadwinner; he had no choice but to drop out of school halfway through seventh grade and find a job to help his mother bring up his two brothers and one sister. He was never able to return to school.’
Agent Williams paused and made a somewhat sorry face. ‘Well, not as a student, anyhow. Between the ages of thirteen and twenty-three Mr. Greene helped his family in any way he could, jumping from odd job to odd job until, call it “life irony” if you will, he was employed as the school janitor at the same school he had dropped out of ten years earlier. He spent fifteen years at that school until it was closed down in 1972. By then, Mr. Greene had married and had had a daughter of his own – Jody Elena Greene. By the beginning of the next school term, Mr. Greene had secured a new job, again as a school janitor, but this time in Maple Hills, one of the most affluent neighborhoods in the city, working for one of the best high schools in the whole of Kansas. When he hit the age of sixty, he stopped being a janitor and became the main CCTV control-room operator. He stayed at that same job until he retired, at the age of sixty-nine, and probably only because arthritis had gotten the best of him by then.’
‘Jesus Christ!’ Captain Blake said, taking a step back from Hunter’s desk. ‘Are you telling me that this killer went after an eighty-four-year-old man ridden with arthritis?’
‘Yes, Captain. As sick as it sounds, that’s exactly what I’m telling you.’ Agent Williams turned to address Hunter. ‘Detective, you said that the LA victim, Linda Parker, was found inside her own house?’
‘That’s right.’
‘Well, so was Mr. Greene.’
Agent Williams reopened his blue folder and retrieved another four photographs, placing them on Hunter’s desk. Once again they were divided into two full-body shots and two facial close-ups.
‘You’ve got to be kidding me,’ Garcia said, uneven lines creasing the edges of his eyes as he cringed.
Captain Blake looked like she was about to say something, but words failed her.
Hunter stayed silent, his analytical stare moving slowly from one photo to the other.
‘I guess that now you really understand the reason for our surprise once we discovered what this killer had done to victim number three,’ Agent Fisher said.
The first two photographs on Hunter’s desk revealed that Albert Greene had also been stripped naked and left lying on his back, but not on some sort of dirty floor. This time, the killer had left his victim lying on a bed, in the exact same position he had left Kristine Rivers and Linda Parker – arms resting naturally by his torso, with his legs extended, ankles practically touching each other. But just like Kristine Rivers, Albert Greene’s body hadn’t been skinned, neither had his hands and feet been severed.
‘As you can see,’ Agent Williams proceeded, pointing to photos three and four, the facial close-ups taken at the crime scene, ‘the killer also took away Mr. Greene’s eyes, using the same method he’d used with Kristine Rivers, bu
t this time, no scalping.’
The skin on Albert Greene’s face looked even more wrinkled and fragile than it did on the first photo they were shown. His mouth was contorted out of shape and his eyes . . . his eyes just weren’t there. The killer had once again extracted both ocular globes, leaving behind two dark holes caked in dried blood.
‘Another orbital exenteration?’ Hunter asked.
‘Of the same professional standard he’d shown with Kristine,’ Kennedy replied.
‘And that’s why victim number three,’ Agent Fisher took over, pointing to the picture board, ‘caught us completely off guard. Two victims. Two asphyxiations. Two expertly performed eye surgeries. One scalping. Then, about a month later, we’ve got this – complete mutilation. Hands and feet hacked off, the body skinned like an animal’s, but the eyes . . .’ She indicated one of the facial close-up photographs of Linda Parker. ‘The eyes weren’t touched. No exenteration.’ She shook her head. ‘We weren’t expecting this.’
‘How about the carvings?’ Hunter asked.
Agent Williams reached for another photograph from his folder and placed it on the desk. Once again, the killer had carved his message into his victim’s back and, just like before, the message was divided into four distinct lines, containing what at first would appear to be an odd combination of letters and symbols. This time the killer had divided the lines as follows: First line – six characters. Second line – eight characters. Third line – eight characters. Fourth line – eight characters.
‘Mr. Greene’s skin was old and thinning,’ Agent Williams explained. ‘Very tenuous, and we believe that that’s the reason why this message looks a little messier than the previous one.’
This time Agent Fisher didn’t give Hunter any time to decipher it.
‘This time we have four words instead of only three – Pulchritudo in oculis aspicientis,’ she revealed, before addressing Garcia. ‘It means “beauty is in the eye of the beholder”.’
After a silent moment, Kennedy took the floor again.
‘So now you can probably understand our frustration, Robert. We’ve been working on this for over two months. Due to the similarities of the first two murders, we’ve been drawing up a few theories and pursuing some specific investigative avenues, but this third victim is like a dagger through the heart of most of what we’ve been working on so far.’
Hunter, Garcia and Captain Blake could clearly see why.
‘You said Mr. Greene was found inside his own house?’ Hunter asked.
‘He was,’ Agent Williams confirmed, displaying six new photos. These ones showed details of the room in which Albert Greene had been found – his own room. There was no blood on any of the walls. No blood on the floor. No blood on the furniture.
‘Any signs of a break-in?’ Garcia this time.
‘None,’ Agent Fisher replied. ‘And no signs of a struggle either, but then again, what sort of struggle could an eighty-four-year-old man with aching joints put up anyway?’
‘What about Mr. Greene’s wife?’ Hunter asked. ‘You said he was married, right?’
‘He was for many years,’ Kennedy replied. ‘But his wife, Elena, passed away six years ago. Mr. Greene lived alone in a small one-bedroom house in Murdock, another poor and rough neighborhood in Wichita. His daughter lives in Colorado with her husband and two kids. She would visit him twice a year, sometimes more, if time and money allowed. Mr. Greene never had a caregiver. Despite his age, he was still able to do everything himself, from going to the shops to cooking and cleaning the house. According to everyone we talked to, he was a very simple but proud man. He was alone in the house when the attack happened.’
‘So who found the body?’ Garcia asked. ‘And how long after the murder?’
‘One of his neighbors,’ Agent Williams replied. ‘Two houses down – Mr. Morales, who is sixty-nine. He’s also a widower and he and Mr. Greene were best friends. They tended to spend most of their days together. Each had a key to the other’s house. On the morning of the twelfth of March, Mr. Morales didn’t see his old friend sitting outside on his front porch like he did every day, so he got worried and went knocking. No answer, he used his key and . . .’
Garcia nodded, his attention back on the photographs on the desk.
‘We can talk details later,’ Agent Williams added. ‘Or you guys can read the files to your heart’s content, but this is the bulk of what we have.’ He stepped back from Hunter’s desk, placed his blue folder on top of a metal cabinet and faced the picture board. ‘I guess now it’s your turn. Tell us about Linda Parker.’
‘Before we do that,’ Hunter suggested, ‘how about we all take a twenty-minute break? We’ve been locked in this office for over an hour. I, for one, could use a trip to the bathroom and a cup of coffee.’
‘And a cigarette,’ Kennedy added. ‘I certainly could do with a cigarette right now.’
Everyone in the room agreed.
Outside the Police Administration Building, Hunter caught up with Kennedy as he lit his first cigarette.
‘We need to talk, Adrian.’
Hunter’s tone concerned Kennedy, but he kept a straight face. ‘Sure. What’s up?’
Hunter handed the NCAVC director the first portrait photograph they had been shown of Kristine Rivers.
Kennedy took a long drag of his cigarette.
‘OK,’ Hunter asked. ‘So who is she?’
‘What? What do you mean? We’ve told you that upstairs. Her name is Kristine Rivers.’
‘That I know. What I want to know is who she is.’
‘I don’t follow.’
‘Yes you do. You know exactly what I’m talking about, Adrian. No more bullshit. Who is this woman . . . really?’
Thirty-Three
‘I’m starting to get a little hungry,’ Officer Jack Palmer from the Tucson Police Department in Arizona said as he turned right on East Sunrise Drive. ‘How about we grab a couple of tacos or something?’
‘Not a bad idea,’ his partner, Police Officer Diana Bishop, replied as she adjusted her police belt. ‘I could certainly do with a burrito right now.’
‘Blanco Tacos?’ Officer Palmer asked.
‘Sure, either there or El Pueblito. They’re both great.’
‘Blanco Tacos is closer,’ Palmer replied, performing a quick U-turn.
Five minutes later they had ordered an Al Pastor burrito and a double portion of fully loaded tacos.
‘What do you want to drink?’ Palmer asked.
‘Just a bottle of water, thanks.’
‘No coffee?’
‘Nah, I’m drinking too much of that stuff. I need to cut down a little. I practically have coffee running in my veins.’
Palmer chuckled. ‘Yep, that happens when you keep on getting stuck with night shifts.’ He turned and addressed the stocky Mexican man behind the counter. ‘Can I also get a bottle of water and a large coffee to go, please?’
‘Sure, Officer.’ The man didn’t ring it through. ‘The water and the coffee are on the house.’
‘Oh, thank you very much. That’s very kind of you.’
Right then the police radios on both of their belts cracked into life.
‘Any units in the vicinity of East Miraval Place – Catalina Foothills. We have reports of a possible armed 10-62.’
Both officers exchanged an anxious look. ‘10-62’ was the police code for ‘breaking and entering’. Instinctively they both turned and looked out the shop window. East Miraval Place wasn’t far.
Palmer nodded at his partner. ‘We’ll take it.’ He faced the Mexican attendant one more time. ‘Sorry, but can you hold on to that food? We’ll come back for it. Trust me.’
As the two of them rushed out of the restaurant, Officer Bishop reached for her radio.
‘This is unit three-two-two, Tucson PD. We’re just around the corner from East Miraval Place and en route. Requesting full address.’
With the sirens blaring, it took them less than three and a half minutes
to get to the address dispatch had given them.
East Miraval Place was a dead-end street on the north side of Catalina Foothills, an affluent neighborhood on the north quadrant of Tucson. The street, like most of the neighborhood, had a minimalist style, where paving and concrete blended nicely with the desert landscape of cactuses, desert flowers and even the occasional tumbleweed, giving it a truly Old West feel. Sticking with the minimalist approach, most of the roads and streets in Catalina Foothills had no illumination, and over fifty percent of them had no nameplates or signs of any kind, making it very easy for even residents to miss their street or get a little lost in the process of getting home once the sun had set.
Despite knowing the area well, Officers Palmer and Bishop took no chances, following their sat nav all the way to their destination.
There were only five houses in the wide but short street, and the address they were given took them to the last house on the right – a large, single-story brick building with a three-car garage and overgrown desert vegetation as a live fence. Parked at the end of the driveway, just outside the garage, was a metallic silver Buick Encore. The lights on the outside of the house were on, but inside everything seemed to be in complete darkness.
‘According to dispatch the house belongs to Timothy and Ronda Davis,’ Bishop said, reading the information displayed on the in-car computer screen. ‘He’s a mechanical engineer and she’s a computer programmer. They both work for Raytheon.’
‘The weapons company?’
Bishop shrugged. ‘Must be. Do you know any other Raytheons around here?’
That made Palmer pause for thought. ‘All right,’ he said, a few seconds later. ‘Let’s go check this thing out.’ He jumped out of the car.
Bishop followed suit.
As they passed the Buick on the driveway, Palmer tried the door – locked. He then placed his hand on its hood – no warmth whatsoever. He shook his head at his partner.
Both officers unholstered their weapons.