by LS Sygnet
“Well good. At least you’re not simply taking my word for it. There might be hope for you after all.”
“Nothing jumps out and screams that this is linked to the other two murders,” Johnny said while my eyes continued to assess the rest of the room.
I gripped his arm and pointed to the wall behind us. “You might want to reserve that judgment for a few seconds, commander. Check it out. Second Chronicles 18:21. Pretty hardcore Old Testament message.”
He turned.
Scrawled in blood on the wall were the words: Now therefore, behold, the Lord hath put a lying spirit in the mouth of these thy prophets, and the Lord hath spoken evil against thee.
Johnny’s fists clenched. “Son of a... it’s the same religious bullshit we found with Tippet.”
“Which was remarkably absent from Goddard’s crime scene, Johnny.”
“As far as we know,” he said. “Somebody tampered with that scene, Doc. He wasn’t left backstage, he was moved there. God only knows what kind of message was destroyed.”
“Oh my God.”
“What?”
“Did CSD take the entire amplifier stack into evidence?” I asked.
“Of course they did. Why?”
“Did anybody bother to spray the grill with Luminol?”
“Helen, we already know that there was blood –” he stopped abruptly. “Which could’ve left microscopic trace in the pores of the metal if someone wiped off a message.”
“Or, similarly for the walls inside that semi-trailer. Is Pan Demon still hanging around town?”
“Madden said he had no plans to leave until Kyle’s funeral is held. This of course won’t happen until Winslow releases the body for burial.”
“And you won’t green-light that until his parents get back into town so you can notify them that Kyle is dead.”
“That doesn’t mean the crew is still around, Helen.”
“But that trailer should’ve been impounded, at least until Forsythe went over it with a fine tooth comb and made sure he had every microscopic trace of evidence.”
“Let’s talk to him when he gets here,” Johnny said. “And pray that it’s still in our custody. I’d like it sprayed down along with that speaker grill. If we missed the first message, it could put a whole new spin on this case.”
“Mm-hmm.”
“And speaking of how you don’t believe in coincidences,” Johnny began.
“Were we? Didn’t somebody say that Scott Madden had some sort of religious awakening in recent years? I’m pretty sure they did.”
“Oh yeah,” Johnny nodded, “though I doubt a Buddhist would be quoting scripture.”
“Maybe not. Being Buddhist in this country is about as trendy as listening to little boys with girly haircuts sing bad pop music,” I said. “Totally cool to do, but without any sort of substance or value added by the act.
“I wonder what Madden’s religious affiliation was while he grew up in Darkwater Bay.”
“Odds are about 85 percent in favor of Catholicism, Doc. Only 15 percent fall into the category of other.”
“Are Catholics rabid fanatics about homosexuality in this city?”
“I wouldn’t say rabid. We’re not religious activists, Helen.”
“Maybe not on that issue, but I seem to recall an uproar in recent years when Pope Benny conceded that using condoms to prevent the spread of HIV got some sort of special dispensation from the church. Birth control is still discouraged. And abortion? Forget about it. There are rabid Catholics about the choice issue.”
“Again, rabid is harsh.”
I didn’t remind him of our conversation in the shower earlier. It would’ve been inappropriate. CSD showed up to start processing the scene, and Johnny and I split with different priorities. Let him talk to Forsythe about the possibility of a missed message from the first crime scene.
I had bigger fish to fry. Briscoe had arrived with what I suspected, could be our perp’s message in all of this.
Chapter 31
Briscoe thrust a short stack of pages into my hands.
“This is it? It’s barely a dozen pages, Tony.”
“He packs one hell of a message into his sermon.”
I climbed into the front seat of the Expedition and flicked on one of the map lights. The horribly penned masterpiece was rife with thees and thous and shouldests. It was exactly what I expected to see written by some self-righteous schmuck too ignorant to realize that the verbiage used in the King James version of the bible was written in the contemporary language of the day. There was nothing mystical or particularly holy about old English.
“He’s a nut job, right?”
“Not by a long-shot,” I said. “Let’s not let our hubris get in the way of one glaring fact, Tony. We’ve missed our shot at figuring out what he’s trying to say while he killed two more victims.”
I scanned the contents of the brief document. The crux of the message was that the world was headed for hell. Baby killers, queers, drunkards and drug addicts had eroded the moral fiber of our society to the point that none of the aforementioned sins were particularly heinous in the eyes of the modern man. Therefore, our killer saw himself as the divine retribution mandated by God to punish the guilty and send a message to the world that it was time to change its evil ways.
It ended with his final warning. Thou must repent, for the love of money is the downfall of mankind, and the price of ignoring sin is to forfeit the eternal soul in damnation.
I tossed the ridiculous thing aside and muttered, “Bullshit.”
Briscoe’s face hung like rotted meat on a skeletal hook. Incredulity filled his eyes. “You can’t possibly think this guy is kiddin’ around, Helen. We got us three dead bodies that says otherwise.”
“I don’t doubt he has a deep seeded motive in all of this, Briscoe. What I doubt is that this diatribe is more than a smoke screen designed to do a couple of things at least.”
“Like what?”
“Make us scratch our heads and waste more time trying to figure out if he’s a religious nut or not, and get the paper sucked into the drama to create a state of terror in the city. And what better way to insure that the Sentinel will bow to his demands than to kill one of their own, one who in a matter of hours has become the most high profile journalist in the city? You once told me that she hitched her wagon to Crevan because she wanted to scoop the competition. Well, she did it now. She’s the story.”
“You really think it’s as simple as that?”
“Johnny wants my profile. Based on what I saw in that house and this nonsense I just read, I’d say it’s a distinct possibility.”
“But you ain’t a hundred percent certain.”
“Behavioral profiling never is. I don’t care how good someone thinks he is. There are no absolutes in psychology.”
“Still, we got three very different victims now.”
“Smoke screen,” I punctuated each word with a finger jab to his chest. “I don’t think the motive for killing Belle had a damn thing to do with Goddard and Tippet. Did I ever tell you about the prevailing theory during the height of the D.C. Sniper case?”
Briscoe shook his head, leaned in a little bit in anticipation of being taken into my confidence.
“Well, as it turned out, the government had enough physical evidence against the guy to not only convict him with the death penalty for his sentence, but they actually killed the guy with a lethal injection back in 2009. Some thought that his random kills were nothing more than a way to mask his true target once he got around to killing her.”
Briscoe frowned. “I recall hearing something about that on the news. Didn’t some folks think he planned to murder his ex-wife?”
“Bingo.”
“Now hold the phone there, missy. You ain’t suggestin’ that Puppy had a damn thing to do with this! He don’t got it in him to kill a bug, let alone Belle or anybody else.”
“Of course I wasn’t suggesting… she’s the smoke screen. Reme
mber?” I picked up the so-called manifesto and waved it under his nose, “This thing is part of the smoke screen. How does one best camouflage a hate crime? You start popping off people who in no way could be construed as part of that demographic worthy of extermination.”
Something obscure niggled in the back of my brain. I couldn’t bring it forward for the life of me. Our motive was there, in the manifesto, in the murders, maybe even in his choice of victims. Our killer was someone I talked to. I felt it in my bones. What had I missed?
“You’re gettin’ all spacey again, Eriksson.” Briscoe backed ten inches away.
I imagined him sprinting through Crevan’s front yard screaming for Johnny before I had a chance to go rogue again. It pulled a chuckle from deep in my belly. “I’m not running off to close a case alone again. Calm down. I’ve got a gut instinct that the answer to this has been staring me in the face from the beginning. Where are the witness statements from the first case?”
The driver’s door of the Expedition sprang open before Briscoe could answer. “CSD’s got the scene,” Johnny said. “And Forsythe said the trailer in question is still parked out at division. They haven’t finished processing it yet. Been sorta busy with more bodies,” he said. Eyes darted between Briscoe and me. “What the hell did I miss? Are you two fighting again?”
“No,” I said tersely. “I was telling Briscoe that I need the witness statements from the Goddard murder. I think I’m missing something critical.”
“It’s gonna have to wait,” Johnny said. “Tony, if you could oversee this scene until CSD is done processing and make sure the ME knows we need a cause of death ASAP, I’d appreciate it.”
“Where you goin’, John?”
He sucked air into his lungs. “The uniformed officers watching the marina just called me. The Goddard’s yacht pulled into the bay twenty minutes ago. They’re headed home.” Johnny’s eyes met mine. “Are you ready for this, Helen?”
“Do I have a choice?”
“They’re the only people in this mess who haven’t added their perspective,” he said. “Might be the impetus that pushes us in the right direction.”
Briscoe slammed the passenger door and saluted to his friend.
“What didn’t you tell Tony, Helen?” Johnny pulled away from the curb and sped through the residential area for the inner city freeway that would take us quickly to Bayshore and the marina.
“I want to see the witness statements. That’s it.”
“I thought we had an agreement that we were in this together,” Johnny said. “Or has something changed already?”
“My gut says I missed something big, particularly after I read this ridiculous manifesto,” I began explaining what I read between the lines. “Suddenly, I’m not sure we’ll find a message like we did with Bobbi Tippet and Belle Conall with the first victim, Johnny.”
“Because of this diversion tactic theory?”
“Yes. I think Belle’s murder was intended to make us look in another direction all together. This guy might’ve gotten scared when he realized that it was obvious that bias was a factor in the first two deaths.”
“Well it was pretty obvious. They were best friends. They were gay. They both had adopted the persona of women.” Johnny tapped his fist lightly on the steering wheel. “Women.”
“Yeah, I got that part, right down to the Adam’s apple Maya noticed at the first crime scene.”
“And we didn’t notice it,” Johnny said.
“Well, technically, Maya and I –”
“We as in the men at the crime scene,” he said. “You’d think we’d notice something like that right off the bat, wouldn’t you? Hell, we’ve got the damned thing. We ought to be able to spot it a mile away. Out of curiosity, I don’t suppose you can explain to me why we have this knob and the ladies don’t.”
“Mmm hmm,” I hummed a rather absent reply to his question. My mind was still scouring the obscure details of the case trying to figure out what I’d missed. “During puberty, the thyroid cartilage grows, gets longer and sort of fixes in one spot when the larynx becomes lodged in the throat. It’s not a primary sex characteristic, and women can develop one too.”
“So it’s not a given that a guy will have big one?”
“No,” I drawled. “Is that important somehow?”
“Does it have anything to do with having a masculine voice?” he asked.
I gazed at his profile, the prominent forehead, wide jaw with its sharp angles, the heavy stubble that had grown in less than a day around his coiffed goatee. Along the neck jutted forward the very trait in question. More deep words rumbled from his mouth.
“Doc, are you drifting off again?”
“No, Johnny. I was just thinking. The changes we were talking about, they start in puberty. What else significant happens during that period of maturation in young men?”
He frowned and glanced at me. “Let’s not play twenty questions tonight, dear.”
“Your voices change.”
“Ok, I’ll bite. Why is that suddenly sending you off into pensive la-la land?”
“What if the change in voice was so negligible that it wasn’t particularly different from say a woman whose vocal range made her an alto, for instance?”
“His voice box might not have all that junk making it look big and masculine.”
“And he might pass for female all the more.”
“Shit, Helen. Didn’t that little prick Underwood tell you he met a couple of babes in one of the amphitheater’s annex buildings that afternoon?”
“He did,” I nodded slowly. “And I’m wondering if we were ever able to find those ladies and confirm his alibi for the time of Goddard’s murder.”
“We’ll find out soon enough. First we need to talk to Kyle’s parents. I pray to God that these people aren’t as cold hearted as the Tippets were.”
“Is that why you want me to be part of this conversation? Sic the mean profiler on them if they don’t respond appropriately?”
Johnny chuckled and lifted my left hand to his lips. “It’s funny, Helen. I’m supposed to be this tough guy, hard as nails, the career detective who never gave up on the ideals he had as a young man. And yet I’m a complete wreck when people don’t act the way I think they should. Meanwhile, my better half is so much stronger than I am, and she knows it. You always have been, haven’t you? I hope you don’t hold that soft spot against me.”
It sucked me right back into the vortex of my silent but very emotional dilemma. It seemed like Johnny was unconsciously integrating more memories by the second. How much time did I have before he turned on me and yelled, “Murderer!”? He had no context this time, no mad love – even though my denial made me wish like hell that his actions spoke louder than words, I knew they didn’t. Until I heard him say it out loud, I love you, Helen, it wouldn’t be the same. Couldn’t be the same.
My throat dried in an instant, parched and packed with the most arid sawdust imaginable. This was all borrowed time.
“Now what on earth did I say to warrant all this tension? That was a compliment, sweetheart. I wasn’t being critical of you.”
“No, you were just being critical yourself,” I croaked. Where’s that handy bottle of water when you really need it?
“Doc?”
“You’re remembering so much, Johnny.”
“And you’re afraid of it, aren’t you?”
I nodded.
“Why don’t you just tell me what happened?”
Ha! The dilemma of exponential proportion paralyzed my vocal chords. What could I tell him, the lie that I fobbed off as truth last time? Or the real truth?
“Is it really that terrible?”
“You went to see my father,” I said carefully. Would a few carefully placed details make him spontaneously remember the rest? And would he react the same way this time as he had last time?
“Why would I do that?”
“Because I wouldn’t talk to you.”
“About your
past, this thing I sensed was eating you from the inside out.”
This was my worst fear come true. He was remembering shit that he wasn’t sharing with me. Maybe he already knew… and if I changed the story now, then what?
Better or worse doesn’t apply to matrimonial vows alone. Sometimes it applies to lying. Once you pick that story, for better or worse, you’re stuck with it. Regardless of holes or implausibility. It’s a marriage of a different kind.
“You thought I killed Rick.”
“I see.”
I peeked left. Yep, sure enough, the infamous masseter muscle of Orion seized in a hard bulge. “So I guess, because I threw you out before you really had a chance to explain yourself, that you wanted to sort of feel Wendell out, see if he thought I was capable of doing such a thing. I guess Dad didn’t have much faith in me either.”
Stony silence. I couldn’t read its source any more than I seemed to pull together a cogent profile of our current killer. I fumbled through the rest of it, at least that was how it felt from my incredibly apprehensive perspective.
“Wendell, I suppose, in an effort to protect me either way since you told him that the FBI was hounding me rather persistently as their primary suspect, put a notion into your head about how to make sure they didn’t suspect me anymore.”
“And?”
“The weapon they suppose was used to kill my ex-husband was suddenly found after a fire destroyed a waste management plant owned by Sully Marcos,” I said.
The vehicle slowed markedly, and I was sure Johnny didn’t realize it. At the same time, I had a sense that he was reliving yet another memory that was lost to him.
“I did it, didn’t I?”
“You only wanted to protect me, Johnny. You said you wanted to give me peace.”
His eyes, suddenly cold and accusing, turned on me. “So… Did you kill him?”
Apparently the blanks I filled hadn’t sparked the recollection of the plausible whopper I told. Either that, or it wasn’t nearly as plausible as I believed it was in the first place. “That’s part of what made me so angry, Johnny. I was terrified that the FBI would find out what you’d done, and then I really would look guilty.”