“Why would you remove Saranac Lake from the map?” Glutt asked. “It’s where we found John Doe and where the leg was found in the water.”
“Because the Rules of the Kill document found in the bear vault stated, ‘Disposal: By Water.’ From the picture I’ve gotten from the locals, in the winter Saranac Lake is one of the coldest, bleakest, and most desolate places on the map. It is, in fact, the coldest place in the United States. My intuition tells me that John Doe killed Maisy Grant down here.” I drew a circle encompassing Liberty, Fallsburg, and Claryville on the bottom of the napkin. “If I were a betting woman, and I am, I’d say that Doe drove the corpse a couple of hundred miles north to dispose of her in a place as far away from where he lived as possible.”
Cabrera circled the three southernmost towns with his finger. “So what you’re saying is that it’s all happening down here, in this thousand-mile area where Drade, Patrick, and the bear vault were found. If that holds true, our UNSUB followed Doe to Saranac lake and offed him after he disposed of Maisy Grant’s body.”
“Correct. Our UNSUB is a vigilante. The three men he stalked were all presumably murderers. Subject to verification, Doe murdered Maisy Grant, and Drade raped and murdered Eva and Holly Brown. Wendell Benoit made a very compelling case for suggesting that Phillip Patrick was responsible for multiple homicides along with his brother, Connor.”
Cabrera sat back in his chair. “I like it, Mather.”
“Oh, really?” I snickered. “You’ll sign off on my theory, hotshot?”
Cabrera sipped his soft drink and then winked at me. “Might as well ride your coattails—I’ve been doing it as long as I’ve known you.”
“That’s not true, is it?” Glutt asked with mild surprise.
“Sure it is,” Cabrera said with a smile. “I’ve been taking credit for her work since the day she got here. Mather’s my personal ticket to the district director’s office.”
Glutt was still licking her wounds. She peered at me sheepishly. “Must be nice to be so well respected.”
Moving on. “I’ll call Wallace from the car. I’m sure he’ll be happy to hear that we’ve narrowed down the field.” I took a bite of my sandwich. “So now we know where we want to concentrate our efforts. The question now is who are we looking for? Want to earn some respect, Rebecca?” I eyed her with purpose. “We don’t know squat about the type of person our UNSUB is. Pick up the ball and run with it.”
Chapter 29
Additional body parts had been recovered from Saranac Lake. Ken Morrison the SCUBA team leader was there when we arrived, standing behind a table of recovered appendages and looking like a fishmonger who was offering his wares to the marketplace. Since their first discovery, the divers had recovered a torso and two arms. They were arranged on the autopsy table like pieces of a Frankenstein puzzle. “Let’s see,” Dr. Frankenstein might say, “all I need is a head, a leg, and a giant spool of sutures,” before turning to Igor. “You fool, don’t forget to charge the Van de Graaff generators, and fetch me two large metal bolts.”
Morrison looked rough-and-ready in his jeans and flannel shirt. He had about three days stubble on his chin, and with those piercing blue eyes … I must admit I was smitten with the scurvy seadog. Not to worry, he was just a mind fuck—his flesh would never touch mine. He was just a little something to keep the old motor running until Liam and I were back together. Sexual tension helps me to think.
“Where’s Dr. Park?” I asked.
Morrison looked up and smiled, his eyes twinkling brightly in the well-lit room. “Should be back any minute—I think he’s still on his lunch break.” He glanced down at the autopsy table with a glum expression. “I think I’m gonna skip lunch today. This is her,” he said. “Maisy Grant. I can feel it in my bones. Park calculated the victim’s height from the dimensions of the leg and torso we recovered—they’re consistent with a woman about five feet tall.”
Maisy’s husband had sent us some of her personal effects, enough for Park to analyze her DNA and compare it to the leg that had been fished out of the lake. “Pretty grizzly way for a person to die. Do you think you’ll be able to recover the rest of her? It’s not much, but perhaps it’ll give her family some closure.”
He shrugged. “I hope so. We’ve covered the area pretty carefully already. The side scan sonar apparatus just arrived. It’s being outfitted and will be in the water this afternoon. It might help us find the rest of her, especially if the other body parts are covered by silt.”
The image of Maisy Grant’s head lying on its side under the mud materialized in my mind and made me shudder. God, that’s nasty.
The door swung open, and Dr. Park entered. He held a folder and smacked it against his open palm. “Here you go, Mather, I’ve got a 13-STR profile match. DNA from the recovered body parts matches the samples submitted by the victim’s family. The DNA also matches the blood found under John Doe’s fingernails and the pubic hair we found on him.”
Bingo! The positive identification of Maisy Grant lent credibility to my theory. I was convinced that Saranac Lake was merely a remote dumpsite for her remains and that we should be focusing on the thousand-square-mile area between Liberty, Fallsburg, and Claryville. Maisy Grant had lived in Goshen, which was not far from the three aforementioned towns. Our UNSUB had targeted Phillip Patrick and Leon Drade because they were murderers, and now we knew that John Doe was a murderer as well. I was confident that he was tied into the Rules of the Kill challenge because of the contents of the bear vault we had found near Claryville. “Have you ascertained the cause of death?”
Park bunched up his lips. “Not yet—I haven’t found a lethal wound. Perhaps after the head is recovered. I’d like to see trauma of some kind before I make that judgment. Without it, I’d just be speculating as to the cause of death. About all I know for sure is that the victim was dismembered with a chainsaw. We’re comparing chainsaws from different manufacturers in the hope of determining which kind was used on her, but the body was submersed in water for so long …” He puffed out his cheeks. “It’ll be a real challenge.”
The doors swung open again. This time a young woman in a lab coat entered the morgue. Official ID was clipped to her pocket, but she looked like a kid. Her hair was dark with thick bangs cut just above the eyebrows. She wore dark eye makeup and had an obvious piercing, a small silver nose ring.
“Hey, Sam, what’ve you got for me?” Park asked.
Sam was obviously short for Samantha. She handed Park a photo. “One of the state troopers found this in the woods not far from where the lake is being searched. It just came in over the web. The actual item has been processed at the scene and is being driven up here now.”
I looked over Park’s shoulder and studied the picture. The state trooper had found a spud bar and a chainsaw. Ordinarily they were the type of tools used by ice fisherman to cut holes in the lake, except that these tools were covered in dirt and there was dried blood on the chainsaw.
“There’s a serial number on the chainsaw that identifies it as a Husqvarna model,” Sam reported. “We traced it to a Lowe’s in Middleton, NY. It was reported stolen during a store inventory right before Christmas.”
Ideas began to click in my head. “That’s good news.” Let’s see, I’ll need a complete list of all the Lowe’s employees who worked in the store up until the time of that inventory but who are no longer employed there. I’ll place even money our John Doe is on that list.
Chapter 30
Anyone might’ve stolen the chainsaw. It could’ve been a current employee, a former employee, or a customer, but it would’ve been difficult for a customer to walk out the front door with such a large, boxed item. It certainly would’ve been a blatant and risky crime. Expensive power tools come boxed with security tags, and the store alarm would’ve sounded if the tag had not been deactivated at checkout. From the roster of store employees I had received, two hundred and six were still employed at the Lowes in Middleton, New York. Only eighteen had be
en discharged. State police and FBI were carrying out checks on all eighteen before going on to investigate the balance of the active employees, because it was my belief that one of the discharged employees was John Doe.
There must’ve been a psychological term to describe the change in Glutt’s behavior. She was no longer the chatty, eager-to-misbehave, and wayward rabbi’s wife. She now seemed intent and focused, determined to profile our UNSUB—almost obsessively so. She had called us in to review her profile of the killer, and I was hoping for some serious enlightenment.
The state police had moved a large number of officers into the area. All they needed was an accurate profile in order to hunt our UNSUB. Glutt entered the conference room at the Monticello police station, where we had set up shop. She was dressed in dark colors and had her hair up in a bun, the way many women put up their hair when they don’t want to be bothered with it. Glancing through the window, I saw Cabrera pull into the parking lot. “Cabrera’s here,” I said. “Are you ready?”
“Just about,” Glutt replied. “Give me two minutes.”
“Look at these,” Cabrera said as he entered the room, his face animated. “I think I found ’em, Mather. Feast your eyes.” He opened up a pastry box for me to look into. “That’s them, right?”
He made me grin. “I’ll have to put them to a taste test.” I reached into the box and hauled out a bear claw as large as a head of cauliflower. “That’s quite a specimen. Where did you get it?” There were some paper plates, coffee cups, and napkins atop a credenza. I liberated a set for each of us.
“I noticed this hole-in-the-wall bakery as I was driving out of Franklin County. I ate one on the drive down.” He shrugged. “Couldn’t help myself.”
“And?” I asked.
“Almost as good as sex,” he replied.
“Oh, thank God,” Glutt said cathartically. “I certainly hope you brought one for me.”
Cabrera and I chuckled. The laugh broke the tension that existed between the three of us. I smiled at her as I took a seat. “What’ve you got for us, Rebecca?”
“Our UNSUB is a sexual sadist, and that’s bad news,” she began.
“Why?” Cabrera asked as he reached for his bear claw.
“Because sexual sadists are the most resourceful and elusive of all deviant offenders. They’re dangerous and calculating … clever. They go to a great deal of trouble to plan their crimes because they don’t like surprises. Some of them even rehearse the planned attack in advance to minimize the chances of failure. It’s not uncommon for a sexual sadist to rehearse and refine his crime for long periods of time before actually carrying it out. They practice over and over again until they believe their plan is perfect.”
“I don’t think there’s any question that our UNSUB has a talent for planning. The mere fact that he was able to hunt down and kill three monsters demonstrates how intelligent he must be.”
“Takes one to know one,” Cabrera interjected.
“Still, he’s leaps and bounds ahead of us.”
“It would be fabulous if he could be taken alive so that we could benefit from his insights,” Glutt said.
“Just what the world needs,” I quipped. “A real-life Hannibal Lecter.”
“He’s also stunningly brutal,” Glutt continued. “I don’t know how he was able to control his victims, but he managed to imprison each within a vehicle and mutilate their genitalia. That’s not something a man will stand by and allow to happen if he has any way of preventing it.”
“So why’s he chopping off their junk?” Cabrera asked.
“Punishment,” Glutt explained, “pure and simple. He must know that these men sexually violated their victims before they murdered them, and he’s punishing them for it in the most violent manner he can comprehend.”
“You’re sure about that, Rebecca? No chance that our UNSUB is sexually dysfunctional?”
“I don’t think so, Mather. This isn’t about envy. This is about brutality. If he were dysfunctional, he’d be attacking women and punishing them out of sexual frustration. He’s targeting male killers and mutilating them. This is completely different.”
“I see.” I’m jumping-for-joy happy that she’s become productive. “What about the crime scenes—they’re almost identical.”
“The crime scene is probably the most important component of a deviant’s crime. It’s his canvas, so to speak, his masterpiece. This UNSUB has gone to inordinate lengths to stage these tableaus which chronicle his misdeed and wanted everything to be absolutely perfect. As I mentioned before, he might have rehearsed these crimes dozens of times before carrying them out.”
“So why make them all the same?” Cabrera asked. “If this was like a play, wouldn’t he want to have different scenes?”
“Not at all,” Glutt responded, sounding mildly disappointed with his questions. “It’s about creating an iron-clad imprint. He wants these acts chiseled in stone so that he can recall them over and over again. I wasn’t surprised to see that he used a video camera during his attack on Leon Drade and I wouldn’t be surprised if he recorded all of his crimes.”
“I mean, think about it,” I began. “All of his work is so elaborate. He staged this game, this Rules of the Kill, presumably to draw out murderers, and then went to great lengths to stage each attack. I’m sure he’s hoping these memories will last forever. The one thing I don’t understand is that he’s sacrificing innocent women in order to catch his victims. Doesn’t that seem inconsistent?”
“Not really,” Glutt replied. “They’re collateral damage, a means to an end. This is a brilliant monster and in his mind no sacrifice is to great.”
“So what does he look like?” Cabrera asked. “I mean, what kind of person are we looking for?”
“He’s probably white,” Glutt said, “but that’s only because most anti-social personality deviants are, but he could look like anyone. Most of the time these criminals are low-key everyday type people. He could be your next-door neighbor, a UPS man, or a garage mechanic—there’s just no telling about that.”
Glutt had given us a lot of data, but none that would give us a jump on apprehending our UNSUB. What we really needed was a break. Most psychopaths get careless because they never think they’ll get caught, and their behavior gets riskier with the passage of time.
My cell phone rang. It was Max Teller. “Think we figured out who your John Doe is, Mather. We checked dental records of all the ex-Lowe’s employees and found a match. The man’s name is Colton Hayes.”
Chapter 31
Saranac Lake, New York, January 24, 2014
Temperature: 21 degrees Fahrenheit. Temperature with wind chill: -6 degrees
The crisp blue sky began to lose its intense color as the sun retreated behind the rocky Adirondack peaks, and wisps of small clouds fled as if they dreaded the coming of night.
Colton Hayes waited within the Ram pickup truck with the engine running until the last ice fisherman started his engine and drove away from the campsite. As the sound of the departing vehicle died away, the howling of arctic air screamed by. Hayes could feel his truck rock back and forth as the powerful gusts pushed through. The local radio station had just announced that temperatures would continue to fall after sunset, down to at least minus five.
While still within the confines of the heated truck, he did a three-hundred-and-sixty-degree sweep, checking one last time to ensure that they were completely alone. “Don’t go anywhere,” he said as he grinned at the passenger in the rear seat. He closed the door and strode across the clear blue ice to the shanty he had rented for the day.
He turned on the battery-powered light and secured the shanty door. Even with the lights on, the interior was dark and shadowy. The damp air carried an intense bone-chilling cold that his down jacket and insulated boots could not stave off. He stared at the hole in the six-inch-thick ice that he had drilled with a hand auger, then placed his hands on his hips and huffed. The hole he had cut was not large enough, not by a long s
hot—it was merely a starting point.
His Husqvarna chainsaw had a short sixteen-inch bar. It turned over with one pull on the starter cord. The teeth on the blade began to gnaw through the ice. The chainsaw spit out a torrent of fragments depositing a large pile of shredded ice around his boots.
Hayes had steady hands and was capable of cutting an almost perfect square, but he rushed the job and fashioned an uneven rectangle in the ice. He was displeased with his handiwork and grimaced as he dislodged the chunk of ice with the blade end of a spud bar. “No matter,” he said as he unfastened the shanty door. The frozen lake contained an overabundance of fish, like lake trout, land-locked salmon, and perch, but Hayes had not come to take from the icy waters but to deliver.
“Still here?” he asked as he opened the truck door.
Maisy Grant was silent. She’d not said a word to him since the evening they had first met.
~~~
Hayes had trusting eyes and smiled warmly as he pulled up alongside Maisy’s dead car at the poultry plant. “Won’t start?”
It was midnight, and she had just completed her shift. Maisy shook her head. She had a hapless look on her face and was alone out in the vast employee parking lot. Cold rain fell as she searched for the hood release latch. She hadn’t grown an inch since her sophomore year in high school. She was barely five foot two, perhaps one hundred pounds dripping wet. “Do I know you?” she asked cautiously.
“I don’t think so,” he said. “I shuttle back and forth between here and the processing center in Ellenville. I’m a systems engineer. You?”
The Mather Triad: Series Boxed Set (Chloe Mather Thrillers) Page 35