“At least it isn’t going into circulation. Is there evidence that any bills made their way into the world?” the voice asked.
“We can’t tell, but I would say doubtful. There was about ten thousand dollars cash in the safe, so any short-term requirements would have probably been met that way.”
“Very well. Let me know if you need anything.”
The men exchanged a glance. They had to find the key, and to do that they needed the crime scene to be vacated by the police and things returned to normal. That could take all day—maybe even a few days. In the meantime they were dead in the water.
The taller man ordered a soda and settled in for the duration, watching the crowd watch the police watch the forensics group.
~ ~ ~
Ron went by the dead girl’s apartment with a crime scene team, looking for anything that might give them a clue on the identity or motivation of the killer.
She’d been renting a small studio in a run-down building, no doubt all she could afford. Posters on the wall celebrated various films noirs and techno-music releases. The décor was urban hippie; lots of trinkets and inexpensive Asian paraphernalia and decorations. Incense holders sat beside ashtrays, the butts of menthol cigarettes stubbed out haphazardly.
A small jewelry chest concealed a stash of marijuana and a few other chemical fortifiers: two hits of ecstasy, some Vicodin, and a bottle of prescription Klonopin from a pharmacy on the Upper West Side. That might have explained the Klonopin in her system. Or maybe not. Klonopin was a ubiquitous anti-anxiety medication, however, mixed with alcohol it was also a popular college knockout cocktail for guys who didn’t have the patience to wait for the green light from dates.
They spent several hours going through her things, and the impression Ron got was that she was a party girl having a good time, living la vida loca. Some birth control pills and condoms were ferreted away in the bathroom, so she was probably dating new men on a fairly regular basis.
She worked for a small import/export company on the West Side. There could be a link there, Ron thought—maybe one of her co-workers knew both Loca and her? There were a million potential threads, all possible, but unlikely. In Ron’s mind it circled back to Red Cap; that was the connection. He dutifully made a note of her employer’s address and booked a reminder to talk to the staff there. No doubt it would be another colossal waste of energy.
There wasn’t a lot to go on, nothing that stood out, and after spending the better part of the afternoon digging through the victim’s belongings, they were no closer to a breakthrough.
~ ~ ~
The killer thought about the interview that morning. It was inconvenient the murders had already been linked to the company, although in retrospect that was inevitable as he collected more trophies. He didn’t completely understand his compulsion for bike messengers; maybe it was simply his proximity to them, or maybe it was that they were all in such amazing physical shape. The girl at the club had been very satisfying, but not nearly as much as Loca. Something about messengers got his juices flowing.
The detective was bad news. He emanated danger to the killer and made him very uncomfortable; the man’s questions suggested he knew more than he was letting on, although he figured they were intended to create that impression. He wasn’t worried—he’d covered his tracks—but it was disturbing to have eyes prying into his work. He was finally getting somewhere, progressing in his highly-personal quest. He didn’t know how many more pretties it would take, but he was confident he was closer than ever.
Tonight was hunting night. He’d selected his next target carefully, had been eyeing her for some time. She was a lying whore, just like all of them. But two could play that game. She did have great hair and nice boobs, which in the end was more important than her character.
The cop was a concern, though, and not one to be treated lightly.
The killer hummed in the bathroom as he washed his hands, which he did at least thirty times a day; enough that he had to use moisturizer to keep his skin from cracking. The world was a filthy place, full of nasty, dirty people, and one couldn’t be too careful. Let the rest of the peons contract e. coli poisoning or infectious diseases too horrible to imagine. Not him. That was probably why he’d always had a hard time with sex—it was so squalid, so sloppy and gross, just teeming with filth and nastiness ready to infect an unsuspecting victim.
His mother had drilled that through his head again and again; as a devout Christian woman and a strict disciplinarian, she would wax distressed for hours on the perils of the flesh and the risks people encountered when they “got up to no good.” He’d been hearing that ever since he was a small child, and had no doubt it was true. All one had to do was open the newspaper to read about the evils running rampant through the population: AIDS, syphilis, herpes, gonorrhea, hepatitis C, parasites, warts, even flesh-eating bacteria.
No sir, he wasn’t interested in any of that.
He could still remember her vividly describing how men’s flesh would rot off their faces, and huge open sores would appear, pain beyond anyone’s imaginings afflicting the nerve endings. She’d impressed upon him that you could never tell by looking at a girl whether she was a cesspool of corruption and depravity—just to assume they all were.
When AIDS had surfaced, she’d seen confirmation of the righteousness of her beliefs, and had reveled in clipping newspaper accounts of the host of horrors afflicting the sinning masses—all because they were so vile, so profane and lascivious.
He kept humming as he exited the bathroom, with clean hands and a clean heart. To all appearances, a man with not a care in the world.
“Don’t you want me, baby…”
~ ~ ~
Tess was waiting for the officers to give her a ride home. They’d insisted on extending that courtesy, probably because they didn’t want her trying to navigate the city streets in shock. Nick was answering the fourth or fifth round of questions from the detectives, becoming more irritated each go-around. The forensics team was still doing their crime scene cleanup, which could last many more hours.
Nick broke away and approached her.
“Tess, I need to be here for awhile. Why don’t you go home, and I’ll meet you later?”
“Okay, Nick. I’ll do that,” she said, her mind a million miles away.
He checked his watch and smacked himself in the forehead.
“Shit.” He’d forgotten his gig that night. “I’ll be really late. I’ve got a show, and we can’t cancel. Will you be all right alone?”
“Sure, Nick. I’ll be fine. I’m not planning on going anywhere. You go do what you have to do…”
“I’ll call when I get done here,” he said.
“Fine, Nick.”
The officer waved her over. She unlocked her bike and disconnected the front tire from the frame. They managed to fit it into his trunk. The last image Tess saw before they pulled away was a gurney with a dark green body bag being wheeled toward a waiting ambulance.
~ ~ ~
Amy scratched her head as she read the toxicology report on the second victim. There just wasn’t anything that could have killed her. She’d personally gone over every square inch of both Loca and the second girl’s bodies, and there were no punctures or injections. Stomach contents were normal. There was nothing to suggest suffocation, or drowning, or electrical shock, or anything else that would explain her passage to the next world.
There was no evidence of sexual abuse—at least according to the conventional definition—either pre- or post-death, so that motive was as dead as they were. Amy had no doubt that serials like this one were driven by sex at some level. Sex and anger. The overwhelming majority of serials were males in their late twenties to early forties—it took a while for all that anger and frustration to build to a head.
Her phone rang.
“Amy Silva.”
“Hi Amy, it’s Ron. Listen, can I ask you to do me a big favor?”
“That all depends on what you
have in mind, Ron.”
Ron hesitated. Was she flirting with him?
“Your colleague Tom O. is working a double homicide from this morning over on West 47th,” Ron explained.
“I’m listening.”
“One of the two corpses was a security guard with pronounced cyanosis, and I found a small puncture in his neck. He didn’t move, so I’m betting whatever the agent that killed him was, it paralyzed him first, probably instantly. I’d really like to know the results of the toxicology scan,” Ron said.
“What were you doing at a double murder in mid-town? Is it related to our serial?”
“Peripherally. Or at least maybe,” Ron countered.
“Tom can be tight-fisted with his info, Ron, but for you I’ll do my best.”
“I appreciate it. Any updates on our two girls?” Ron asked.
“It’s strange. We know he’s killing them somehow, but I can’t find any indication as to how.”
“Could it be an aerosol? Something they inhale?”
“I thought about that, but the lungs aren’t giving up any evidence, and neither are the nasal membranes. And nothing’s showing up on the tox screens. So that’s a dead end.”
“Well he’s doing it somehow. I have a bad feeling we’ll get another shot at trying to figure out how.” He paused thoughtfully. “What about the blood? Where’s the blood? There should be at least some.”
“We found a bloody garbage bag in each of the dumpsters so far. We think he puts their heads on the bags before he scalps them. The blood pools to their backs once they’re dead, so there’s virtually none from the breast cuts.”
“He really tries to think of everything, doesn’t he? I just wish we knew why he was doing it; then we could predict with some sort of accuracy.”
“We’ll figure it out. It’s just going to take time.” Amy was trying to be upbeat.
“That’s running out, unfortunately. Thanks, Amy.”
~ ~ ~
Ron reviewed the stack of messages that had backed up while he was out interviewing, scanning them for any feedback from the national databases. One of the calls was from the FBI’s data center; the branch responsible for the agency’s cross-matching and profiling. He dialed the number.
“Jim Corell, FBI.”
“Hi Jim, Ron Stanford from NYPD. I was running a search for a serial who’s taking trophies and doing some very specific mutilation, and I got a message you called…”
“Hello, Ron. I saw your query and I tried for more obscure match-ups—files that didn’t necessarily have a one-hundred-percent match, but that were still interesting. There were two young women killed over a year ago in Ohio who’d been scalped, but there wasn’t anything resembling the eyes and the breasts. Not recently, at any rate.”
“What do you mean, not recently?” Ron asked.
“Well, about four and a half years ago, there were several punk rock-related murders in Pittsburgh, where someone took the eyes and the breasts, but no scalps. So close. But not that close,” said Jim.
“Could you e-mail the files on both of those, please, let me look them over? I think I vaguely remember reading about the Pennsylvania cases,” Ron recalled.
“Sure. And keep us posted if more of these come up. We try to stay current on the latest fashions in Crazy Town.”
“You bet.”
~ ~ ~
A late lunch with wine had made Gordon sleepy, and he’d decided to call it an early day and take a nap. The market had closed down; he’d made his money and bought his options, and walked away up for the day except for his oil futures, which were tanking. Not to worry, pretty soon there’d be a bigger demand for oil than anyone could have predicted.
He’d found the Burmese several banking contacts in Japan and Europe who would accept large cash deposits—they could confidently say the money wasn’t drug-related when it came from a government, even if one so closely associated with the heroin trade and Chinese criminal syndicates. So the conduit and distribution system for the first wave was in place.
Gordon Samuels didn’t consider what he was doing to be criminal or treasonous. His perspective was that he was simply leveraging a risky business opportunity. He had no particular dislike for, or allegiance to, the United States, or for that matter, Myanmar; he considered himself a pragmatic citizen of the world whose soon-to-be-billionaire status would enable him to be a nation unto himself.
Gordon rationalized that the U.S. was just as guilty of reprehensible behavior as any other nation, and shouldn’t be immune from the repercussions when smaller, less fortunate, countries tried to get a piece of the action. It wasn’t like he was aiding in genocide or shipping nuclear secrets to terrorists. He was just participating in a money-making opportunity that would ultimately only cost the American taxpayers an inconsequential percentage of their worth. Hardly noticeable—a sliver, a rounding error compared to the trillions confiscated by the banks in the financial crisis.
His cell phone vibrated.
“Samuels.”
“Ah, we seem to have a situation. We may need to ask for some local help in the near future.” The voice was unmistakable.
“Whatever I can do, I will,” he said. That was the only acceptable response, but he didn’t want to get into too much detail on a cell phone.
“It is possible we will call you again on a landline over the weekend and ask you to help our friends. They are making progress, but may have hit a stumbling block. It is too early to know for sure.”
“I’ll remain available at all times,” Gordon said, wondering what they wanted.
“Your understanding is appreciated. Perhaps it will be unnecessary. We will not call unless it is unavoidable.”
“Whatever you need, if it’s feasible, I’ll deliver.” Gordon had a good network of friends in high places. He figured they wanted him to call in a favor or two and get them some information. No big deal. It wasn’t like they were going to ask him to transport a dead body in his trunk or play trigger man.
“Have a good weekend,” the singsong voice said.
“You too.” Gordon stabbed the off button, calculating. He really couldn’t wait to get home and take that nap.
~ ~ ~
The police finally finished at the shop at five-thirty. The crime scene tape stayed across the door, and two officers watched carefully as Nick locked it, set the alarm, and pulled down the metal grid to protect the glass storefront. He gave them his contact numbers in case they needed to get into the shop again—they’d ordered him to leave it closed and taped for a week.
Nick had no problem doing so—technically Tess now owned the store and the inventory. He’d made a list for the police of the stuff her dad had kept in the safe, for placement on the “hot” list, and left a copy in the store so Tess and he could file insurance claims once she was back to normal.
Normal.
He wondered how long it took to get back to normal when you’d found your crippled dad tortured and killed.
Nick liked Tess, but it wasn’t love, and he didn’t pretend it was. He thought she was a cool chick, but he was in a band and wasn’t interested in getting tied down. He’d met her when she’d came into the shop to visit her dad, and they hadn’t started dating until almost two years after they’d first laid eyes on each other. One afternoon he’d invited her to a show, she’d accepted, they’d hung out, gotten drunk after, and fucked like minks all weekend.
They were enjoying the physical stuff and the companionship, but not thinking about anything more. That was fine by him. He had the band, which was priority number one, and the gig with the watches. He’d learned about them from his dad, who collected rare timepieces—fifty-two at last count. Nick had been raised around expensive wristwatches, had learned their nuances while growing up, and knew them cold.
When Robert had advertised for an assistant, Nick had figured he’d might as well apply. He’d correctly identified the first three watches Robert showed him, surprising the older man and landing Nick
the job. That was four years ago, and now he knew as much about Pateks, Rolexes, and Breguets as Robert did.
As Robert had.
Nick lived in a little apartment by New York University, but spent most nights with Tess. He’d graduated from NYU with a degree in philosophy, which was useless in the real world but had interested him greatly while in school. He’d dragged the student experience out as long as possible, but after six years he’d exhausted his academic excuses and his parents’ budget.
So he got the watch job and played with his band, which was enough for now. His dad threw him cash here and there so his life was comfortable, and he knew someday the family fortune would come his way, split with his sister. There’d be plenty to go around, so he wasn’t stressed over the future.
Nick checked the time, calculated he had a few hours before load-in at the club, and decided to return to his pad—take a shower and get ready for the show.
The Asians regarded each other as he ambled down the street, and proceeded to follow him from a safe distance.
Chapter 14
Tess lay on her couch, having slept for several hours after crying herself to sleep. She surfed aimlessly through the channels on the TV, hardly registering the programs, not caring. It was just something to do.
She reflected on the day, her dad’s killing, Loca’s murder, and felt dead inside. If she’d been the drugs or heavy booze type she would have been blotto right now. But that wasn’t her thing.
She’d ignored life for a long time, stayed in denial, lived in her own reality, and everything had been fine. Now she couldn’t do it anymore—life intruded into her world, and she’d been forever changed.
Tess had first pulled into her shell after her dad’s accident. When her mom had died, she’d thrown her back into learning programming, creating her own little safe technology cocoon where nothing could hurt her. After she’d snapped and started her wild period, she’d started using sex as a refuge from reality, and that had also distracted her for a time.
Fatal Exchange (Fatal Series Book 1) Page 10