Prati set his cup down and removed the lid. “Because as I said back at your house, killers don’t know we can put these things together.”
“I get that, for sure. But Marcks is a smart guy. Smarter than most offenders we’ve encountered. From what I can tell, he’s law enforcement wise.”
Prati again stirred his coffee. “But you’re not talking about Marcks, you’re talking about his accomplice.”
Right. Vail rose from her chair. “I’ve gotta go. I need to look into this other guy, the potential partner.”
Prati stood up. “So I was helpful?”
“Richard, if this theory proves out, you may’ve just saved our asses.”
49
Vail texted Art Rooney that she had some pertinent information on his case, then stowed her phone and popped open her car door.
She looked around the Mason District parking lot and flashed on her run-in with Marcks. Not a run-in. An ambush.
She surveyed the area as she headed to the Marshals’ RV, determined not to be caught unaware again.
Vail walked into the command post to a crowded room—which was not saying much considering its compact size. Everyone was present.
“I’ve got some stuff to discuss,” Vail said as she maneuvered her way to a seat.
“We’ve all got a number of things to address.” Hurdle set his coffee mug down and rested his foot on a nearby ledge. “As I was saying, we’ve now got a second jerkoff in the wind. And since we were having so much success with the first one, I’m pleased as punch to have to add another to our plate.” He nodded at Morrison. “Jim, you’ve got something on the Buick?”
“We found it in a ditch by the side of the road not far from Great Falls Park. Covered by brush, well camouflaged.”
“So he’s probably got new wheels,” Walters said. “Let’s make sure local agencies notify us of all stolen vehicles.”
“Already being done,” Hurdle said, “but I’ll make sure they’re on top of it.
“You don’t think he’d go back to that same used car lot,” Vail said.
“He’d be an idiot to do that,” Ramos said. “And we know he’s a smart sonofabitch.”
Unless he figures we’d think he’s crazy to go back there. “We should put an undercover there.”
“I think it’s a waste of time, but easy enough to do,” Hurdle said. “Rambo, set it up. Ben—what’d you dig up on Scott MacFarlane?”
“Long sheet, but nothing that landed him in prison for more than two or three years at a time. A couple drug felonies for possession and an ADW that was pled down,” he said, using law enforcement parlance for assault with a deadly weapon. “Did ten months at county. Oh, and an attempted rape that was thrown out.”
“He’s obviously got a good defense attorney,” Vail said.
“He was living in Richmond, moved to Roanoke, then supposedly lived out of a trailer on some property he inherited from his uncle.”
“He still have that land?” Ramos asked.
“Nope.” Tarkoff flipped a couple of pages in his notebook. “There was some weird thing with the title and he lost it. I didn’t have time to look into the problem, but bottom line is he doesn’t have that property or the trailer that was on it. But when they took the deed over, they found evidence of firearms storage and what appeared to be an underground bunker.”
“Bunker,” Walters said. “What kind?”
Tarkoff pulled up some photos on the PC at his station, angled the screen toward the group, and then clicked through the pictures. “Freeze-dried food, six dozen liter water bottles, LED tactical lights, shortwave radio. That kind of stuff.”
“Looks like MacFarlane is a survivalist,” Curtis said.
“At best.” Ramos leaned in for a closer look. “A militia member at worst. Preparing for the government apocalypse where the black helicopters descend and declare martial law. Could be why he was prepared with a submachine gun. In case we came knocking.”
“We did,” Vail said. “And he came up shooting.”
“That does go along with stuff we found in the Gaines residence,” Curtis said. “Guess I should refer to it as the house he commandeered.” He reached over and pulled out packets of stapled sheaves of papers. “Good lead-in to what I wanted to discuss. Got a printout of preliminary forensic findings, including an inventory of items found throughout the Gaines house.” He handed copies to Vail, who took one and passed the rest to Morrison, seated behind her.
She began looking over the report, stopping at the list of DVDs. “So it wasn’t Gaines’s face in the video we watched.”
“No,” Curtis said. “Either way, that’s got no impact on our ability to catch Marcks or Gaines. Cyber team’s evaluating the metadata on the discs to track their source.”
Walters folded back a page. “Might help us catch the scumbags who create and distribute this trash. And maybe the ones who commit crimes against children. But it’s not gonna help net us our guys. Directly, at least. Unless there’s a local connection.”
“I agree,” Hurdle said. “We’ve got child pornography charges on him, but that’s an administrative matter, way I see it. First we gotta find these knuckleheads. We’ll worry about prosecuting them after the fact.” He paused, no doubt realizing that both were concerns. “Whatever. You understand what I’m saying.”
“We don’t have any confirmation yet on MacFarlane?” Vail asked as she glanced over the itemized inventory.
“I was told DNA’s being run. Problem is, we don’t have any exemplars on file. I asked the lab to reach out to MacFarlane’s sister, who lives in New Jersey. Not perfect, but it’ll give us a real good idea if he was staying in that house with Gaines. And before you ask, yeah, we’ve got her under surveillance. Phone calls, email, text, all being monitored in case he contacts her.”
As Vail’s eyes moved down the page, she got stuck on two words: diethyl ether. That’s a chemical and it’s got ether in the name. She pulled out her phone and tapped out a quick text to Prati.
“Karen. Yo, Vail.”
She hit “send” and looked up. All eyes were on her.
Hurdle lifted his brow. “You said you had some things to discuss.”
“Yeah, I, uh, I do.” And depending on what Prati says, I may have more. “Yesterday, before Marcks got the drop on me, I mentioned an arson case the BAU’s handling. I wasn’t sure if it had anything to do with Marcks. But I found out some stuff that leads me to think there’s a connection. What, who … I’m not sure yet.”
“Don’t keep it to yourself,” Morrison said.
“I think I was telling you about the chemical—” Her phone vibrated. She glanced at the display. Prati responded to her text. “Hang on a sec.”
diethyl ether is the chemical name.
ether is the common name for the
chemical like water is the common
name for h2o. so--same thing
Vail looked up from her cell. “And it just got a little more interesting. So the anesthetic that Marcks used to temporarily subdue his victims was also used as an accelerant at the arson scenes, for the crime concealment fires.” She explained why such an approach was unusual. “But we know that Marcks is gay. And ether is sometimes used by homosexuals during sex. So that explains why he’d have it, why he’d be familiar with it and its effects. And I’m willing to bet that the label has a warning on it about its flammability.”
“Does look increasingly likely there’s a connection,” Hurdle said.
“And,” Vail said, holding up the forensics inventory from Gaines’s house, “there’s a six-pack of Sterno cans listed here. The arsonist used Sterno as well. Thomas Underwood, one of the founding profilers back in the late seventies who drew up the original assessment on Marcks, initially thought there might be another UNSUB, an associate. But he abandoned that theory. Now it looks like he mi
ght’ve been right.”
“Gaines?” Curtis asked. “Or MacFarlane?”
“Don’t know. I would’ve said Gaines—but given what we’re hearing about MacFarlane … we don’t know enough to say yet. That said, on this inventory of items taken from the Gaines house, there was a small bottle of diethyl ether, which my expert tells me is the chemical name for ether.”
They chewed on that a minute.
“So, what does this mean?” Ramos asked. “That the guy who was Marcks’s accomplice on the serial killings is also setting these fires? He’s an arsonist?”
“Looks that way.”
“How does this help us?”
“It gives us another avenue of investigation,” Hurdle said. “Let’s get up to speed with the investigating agency on these fires, see if there are any forensics we can track that’ll give us a lead on where to look for these guys. If this accomplice is getting his chemicals locally, maybe it dovetails with something we’ve got on Marcks.”
That’d be helpful. If we actually had something on Marcks.
“You mentioned there were a couple of fires set after Marcks escaped,” Tarkoff said. “Any chance he’s involved?”
“Hard to know,” Vail said. “But now that there looks to be a tangible connection I’ll look at this case differently. I have a message out to Art Rooney, the profiler—” Her Samsung vibrated again and she held up an index finger while she answered the call. “Art. Just talking about you. Got something interesting on your case.”
“Saw your text. And I’ve got some things to tell you, too, on the arsons.”
“I’d like to share that with my task force. Can you Skype? We’ve got a setup here at the command post.” Vail glanced at Hurdle, who nodded. She got the user ID and passed it on to Rooney.
Two minutes later the Skype tones were beeping and bopping over the RV’s speakers. Rooney’s face filled the forty-inch flat screen that was mounted at the front of the room. They huddled around the TV as Vail made quick introductions.
“You first,” Vail said.
“Arson is no different from any other serial offender,” he started, giving the other agents and detectives a quick and dirty primer. “He has a particular way of operating that is identifiable to him. MO just like a homicide.”
“Behaviorally,” Vail added, “we look for those things that are unique to that offender. Things he does a certain way because it’s familiar to him and because it’s got meaning to him. Forensically, obviously, we can also look at fingerprints he may’ve left on the items he uses. But the items he uses gives us something else, too.”
Rooney picked it up. “If an arsonist has a certain way of setting the fire, it can provide linkage among the cases we’ve got where we’re not sure if they’re related. And if we can find a relationship, a forensic or behavioral trait from one case, added to something from another case, it might make the difference in whether or not we find the UNSUB.
“In this case, we had six fires that all appeared to be set by the same arsonist. In the most recent one, the investigators found remnants of a wooden match—and, most significantly, a small dollop of wax that chemically matched one from a case he remembered handling about six years ago. In that case, the offender used a candle with a hole drilled a quarter inch below the wick. He stuck a wooden match through the hole, then soaked the match in the jellied substance they use for chafing dishes.”
Morrison turned to Vail. “Sterno.”
“Sterno,” Rooney said. “So this offender placed the match very close to the wick. The candle started to burn and when it hit the wood, the flame traveled down to the head of the match where there was jellied string. It lit up and went down to the Sterno can, which had the rest of the jellied substance—and a rag doused in gasoline that hung down to the floor.”
Rooney clicked and crime scene photos appeared on the screen. “Can you see these okay?”
“Affirmative,” Hurdle said almost absentmindedly as he studied the image.
Successive pictures showed a flame-scorched Sterno can, remnants of a match, a candle.
“So this fire was not successful,” Ramos said.
“Right.” Rooney’s voice was off-screen, the crime scene photos still visible. “Which is the beauty of linkage. We now know that this earlier crime scene may in fact be the UNSUB’s first attempt. And he screwed it up. The fire didn’t really take off. We found a partially burned body, too.”
“Very elaborate setup,” Curtis said. “What’s the point? Is this just something he enjoys?” He turned to Vail. “What do you call it, ritual?”
Rooney answered. “No, this is part of his MO. At first glance, it sounds like this guy’s a nutcase. Why such a far-fetched contraption? It’s a simple explanation, really.”
“A delay mechanism,” Curtis said. “To allow him to leave and get away. Once he lights the candle, he leaves. It gives him plenty of time to get a fair distance from the home before it goes up in flames.”
Rooney clicked away from the photos and back to his face. “Exactly, detective. We thought he chose houses in the boonies because they’re served by volunteer fire departments, which have longer response times. But there’s another reason.”
“He takes a long time at the scene setting up this elaborate candle and wood match contraption. If he’s in the middle of nowhere, there’s a greater chance he’s left alone. Fewer visitors, less chance some neighbor or friend is going to drop by or walk in on him. Theoretically.”
“Right again. This delay mechanism is another purposeful, well-thought-out scheme.”
“Smart offender,” Vail said. Just like Marcks. And then something Rooney said hit her. “They found a body at that crime scene?”
“That’s what I was told. I just got this information from the investigator and I called you first. I’ll have to get more details on that early case.”
“I’d be very interested in seeing if that body had parallel lines carved into the abdomen. And excised genitalia.”
“I don’t think there was that much left intact. But you’re still thinking these arsons are related to your case?”
“That brings me to what I’ve got for you.” Vail explained how she had discussed the case with DEA agent Richard Prati and his background as a chemical engineer. “And the diethyl ether you found at your recent crime scene. We found it at Marcks’s buddy’s house, along with Sterno cans.”
“I need the forensics report on that, see if those cans match mine.”
“I’ll make sure you get a copy,” Curtis said.
She mentioned the homosexual use of the chemical and reminded him that Marcks had used it to temporarily disable his victims.
Rooney leaned back away from the camera. He rocked in his chair a few seconds, then said, “Okay. You’ve convinced me. I think you’re on to something. We should compare files, share info. Have you discussed this with Tom? It was his case way back when. He may have some insight, given time and distance. We all mull our cases, let them percolate over time, right?”
“He’s in Hawaii shooting his new series.”
Rooney chuckled. “That guy. Books, TV shows. Retirement’s been good to him.”
“I’m going to sit down with him when he gets back. But I’ll try him again, see if I can pull him away from the cameras for a few minutes.” She thanked Rooney and signed off. “I’m gonna call Stuart Sheridan and cross my t’s, make sure that stuff isn’t his.”
She pulled out her phone and dialed, identified herself, and reminded him who she was. As if he would forget.
“Mr. Sheridan, we found a few other items at your place that I just want to make sure aren’t yours. They’re not illegal, but it has great importance to our case.”
“When can I get into my home?”
“We’re almost done with our investigation. I can ask someone to call you with a better answer. But di
d you or your wife have a bottle of ether in your laundry room? It’s also known as diethyl ether.”
“What the hell is that?”
Guess that’s my answer.
“A chemical.”
“Not ours.”
“You want to check with your wife?”
“Hang on,” he said with the enthusiasm of a turtle. He muted the phone with a hand and called to Nancy, asked her something, then returned to the call. “No. She has no idea what I’m talking about. And of course now she wants to know why I’m asking.”
Oops. Guess he didn’t tell her about the squatter. “Sorry about that. What about Sterno cans?”
“You mean the fuel they use for catering? Chafing dishes? No, we haven’t had any events or major dinners at the house in years. Certainly nothing that we’d hire caterers for. And I’d never store chemicals or flammable fuel in my basement. Asking for trouble.”
You have no idea.
“That’s what I thought. Sorry to bother you with—”
“Why would this guy have that stuff in my house?”
“Nothing I can discuss right now,” Vail said. “But it may have connections to another case we’re looking at.” She thanked him and hung up before he continued asking questions she would not be able to answer.
She then called Underwood and was left chuckling at his voice mail greeting: “Shooting in Hawaii. The TV series kind, not the handgun kind. Leave me a short message and I’ll call you back.” She told him what they discovered regarding the offender using the same chemical as both an anesthetic and an accelerant and that it was important she speak with him before he left Hawaii. She had just hung up when several of their phones went off simultaneously.
“Goddammit,” Hurdle said as he read the text from Leslie Johnson:
another body
def a blood lines vic
Vail locked eyes with Curtis. “Terrific.”
The Darkness of Evil Page 28