by Brian Haig
CNN shifted to the next story, and he pushed the mute button. Mistakes from this moment on would be perilous. The FBI weren’t to be underestimated. They were the A-team of law enforcement for good reason.
He briefly reviewed his progress and was satisfied. The killings were coming at them fast and hard. Before the cops could even finish collecting and analyzing the evidence from one murder, they were inundated with a crop of fresh clues from the next. They were human. Each new murder drew their focus away from the earlier ones. They were conditioned to look for the similarities and peculiarities, to fit everything inside a neat pattern, to try to understand the twisted mind that manufactured them, and in the process were led even further away from the real connections.
He returned to Anne Carrol’s photo and was struck again by how wildly out of proportion her nose was with her other features. It was huge and misshapen, had obviously been injured, the dominant feature of a face that was narrow and thin. That she’d never gotten it fixed mystified him. His most recent nose job had cost a mere three grand, done by a guy widely regarded as one of the best. For a thousand less she could have that bone shaved, those nostrils narrowed, and the woman would’ve spun necks. Lovely blond hair. Striking blue eyes. Lips a bit too thin and hard for his tastes, but she could’ve verged on loveliness.
She posed a considerable challenge, yet one he regarded as manageable. A solid six-the only warning flags were her background in law enforcement, thin as it might be, and her lesbianism. Subtract those factors and a full point would’ve been shaved off easily. Her lesbianism most likely accounted for her harebrained refusal to fix that damned nose, it suddenly struck him. He hated to generalize, but all those dykes seemed to feel they had a pass from the ordinary burdens of being female.
He had never done a lesbo before. This could prove knotty. Understanding his victims was his signature flair, the key to his success, he was convinced.
The thick textbook he’d hurried through the night before explained that women of her predilection tended to slip into two categories-the dominator, a male-like figure, and passive, doe-like types. He distrusted stereotypes of any form, though the textbook had been written by an expert in the field and deserved consideration.
Anne Carrol had been a soccer star in both high school and college, a bruising fullback to be precise. She drove a black cherry Jeep Wrangler, customized with silver mudflaps, no hardtop, and brawny, oversized tires. She climbed mountains for a hobby, having flown to Tibet the winter before for a two-week course on high-altitude Himalayan techniques. High pants, flannel shirts, and Sears work boots were her ordinary attire away from the office. She was a regular at the local health club, where she pumped some serious iron. He had stood in a corner, watched her bench 150 pounds, and was frankly astonished that a woman with her bony, birdlike build could pull it off.
She did not flaunt her lifestyle; nor did she make the slightest attempt to camouflage or conceal it. Two months before she had split up with a live-in girlfriend and moved on her own into a tiny efficiency in Crystal City, Virginia. She did not drink, and had stopped using drugs when she left law school and took a government job.
She had obtained a business degree before that, was analytical by inclination-in fact, was regarded as something of a prodigy at the Securities and Exchange Commission where she labored fourteen hours a day in its six-story headquarters. She was a registered Democrat, gave money to liberal causes, and corporate fraud was her passion and specialty. Unfortunately for her, she was also impatient, pushy, and sarcastic, the type who could and often did rub people the wrong way. The SEC kept her miles away from litigation. After an hour with her, juries would swoon for the defense, so her bosses wisely relegated her to the backroom, reviewing stock transactions and annual reports, picking and developing targets for the big boys upstairs.
He tossed down the photo and stared out the window into the courtyard of the Executive Suites. His room was in fact a suite, composed of a living room, an efficiency-style kitchen, and an expansive bedroom. The kitchen was a necessity, an enclave to hole up in complete privacy when he wasn’t in action. The less traces he left the better. He paid cash for his groceries and toted them up to the room. All three of his rental cars had been picked up out of town and driven in. His last plane ticket showed him flying out of Washington to Philadelphia, where he picked up the last rental car and drove back. An associate was, in fact, at that moment using his real charge card and ID to spread a trail of evidence across northern New Jersey and New York City. Electronically, there would be no trace he’d ever been in or around Washington, D. C.
Pictures and reports and observation sheets detailing the habits of his victims cluttered the bedroom walls. Not much longer-the walls would soon be bare and every last piece of evidence would be incinerated. He would progress through each and every room with bottles of Pine-Sol and Windex, and scrub away every last fingerprint and fragment of evidence. He had rented the suite for the entire month and planned to be gone a week early.
He moved to the bathroom, undressed, and studied himself in the mirror. His head was completely bald, shaved down to the skin, yet he moved his large frame into the tub, and began spreading shaving cream over nearly every inch of his body and head. It had only been a day since his last shave, yet nothing would be left to chance. The only hairs he did not shave were his eyebrows and lashes, as their absence would be noticeable, and that was the last thing he could afford. The cops could search the murder sites with a vacuum cleaner and find no trace of his DNA or fingerprints.
By that night, the profilers at the FBI would inevitably conclude that he was the very same L. A. Killer who had turned that city upside down three years before. Victim profiles, flawless planning and execution, the tortures and method of death-they’d study it all and reach the inevitable conclusion. Every bit of it was identical, down to necks snapped to the right and the ejaculations.
The cop labs would note how none of the sperm deposits matched the sets they had collected in L. A. a few years before, but then none of the sperm deposits matched each other either.
They would add the L. A. murders to the total and assume Carolyn Fiorio was victim number eight, not number three, and would pull their hair out to understand his logic.
The FBI would recall that the L. A. Killer also had that annoying habit of calling the press and offering them inside tips that infuriated their investigators. Like it was all a big game and he owned the board, which was exactly why he had called both NBC and CBS, offering them the location of the limo and a few very juicy details to taunt the FBI spokesman. Damned shame he couldn’t be there to witness the shock on the cops’ faces when they arrived at the murder site with the camera crews already set up and waiting.
By midnight a planeload of Fibbies would be packed on the red-eye to the coast, frantically rushing to get refreshed on the particulars of that case.
He ran the razor across his chest and chuckled. Funny thing was, long before two hours was up, Carolyn Fiorio had completely changed her mind about the death sentence. By the end there, she was probably the most bloodthirsty advocate in the whole damned country.
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
The Sun was gently setting as Janet and I peeled out of the parking lot, then through the wide boulevards of Rosslyn, toward Washington, and away from Carolyn Fiorio’s crowded murder site. At the first red light I turned to her and inquired, “Did you get the impression Spinelli’s pissed at us?”
She chose not to answer.
I said, more specifically, “Actually, he’s pissed at you. I think he likes me, and he thinks you’re jerking him off.”
“Nobody likes you.” She grinned. “And recall that he’s the one who keeps calling me.”
We both contemplated the road for a minute before I said, “What are you withholding and why?”
In reply, she asked, “Did you see the burn marks all over her legs and arms?”
“And the bruises, rope burns, and her broken neck. It was s
ickening. What’s your point?”
“They’re estimating he spent maybe thirty minutes with Cuthburt, and nearly two hours with Fiorio. The difference in ferocity was huge.”
“Maybe the killer has a thing for celebrities. Maybe their different hair colors set him off. Maybe he gets a twitch in his ass on Thursdays. I’m not particularly fond of Thursdays myself.”
“Don’t you want to know how this guy thinks? Get inside his head?”
“No. Wackos live in a world of dark depravity and twisted impulses. That’s a journey I’ll leave to the pros. And so should you.”
She stared out the window and said, “I just think…” and she let it drift off.
“What?”
“It… it doesn’t add up. DNA traces that don’t match. Lisa is simply murdered, Cuthburt’s beaten, then killed, and now, Fiorio.” She paused, and added, “The poor woman was brutalized, as though the killer had something to prove with her.”
“Like what?”
“Like he wanted to generate publicity and excitement. He went over the top with her-a circus killing.”
“Why would he do that?”
She ignored me and continued, “With Julia Cuthburt, he was inflicting humiliation and domination. The dog leash, the severe bruising on her butt, even the impertinent pose he left her in. Fiorio was tortured-methodically tortured. You see the difference?”
“Yes.”
“The lack of consistency should indicate something to us. I think the killer is staging.”
“Staging?”
“Not acting on impulses… staging.”
“Why?”
“I don’t know why.” She stared straight ahead and asked, “Do you think there are two different killers?”
“Wouldn’t it account for the differences? They match the generalities of the murder, but their individual pathologies creep to the surface and what they do to the victim before death appears different.” I turned and asked, “Yes? No?”
“What about the pace? He’s smart, and has to know that the faster he kills, the more likely he is to make a mistake.”
“And doesn’t that also point to two of them? Then they’re only killing every four to six days.”
“And how does he pick his victims?”
We appeared to be speaking at cross-purposes here-me trying to draw her out, her deliberately diverting me with these incessant mysteries. It’s an old lawyer’s stunt, you maintain control by asking questions.
And like Spinelli, I’d had enough of it. I swerved into the parking lot of the Orleans House, a restaurant on Wilson Boulevard, swung into a space, and parked. Janet asked, “What are you doing?”
I reached down into my briefcase, withdrew some printouts, and tossed them at her. She stared at the stack and asked, “What are these?”
“The sex cases Lisa was involved with.”
I said nothing as she arranged them on her lap.
After several moments, Janet put her finger on a line and suggested, “Here. This looks interesting. Lieutenant John Singleton. Raped a woman and slashed her with a knife. Sex and violence, the same ingredients we’re looking for, right? Also, he was an officer. Presumably he’s intelligent and resourceful, like our killer.”
I asked her, “Anything else?”
After a few moments, she plunked her finger on another sheet and replied, “Right here. Corporal Harry Goins, rape and attempted murder. Sex and violence again.”
She read through the rest of the printouts, but apparently no other cases jumped out at her.
Clapper’s executive officer had instructed Lisa’s former offices to blindly forward every case she’d been involved with that involved sex in any shape, form, or variety. The result was an interesting mix of weirdness and oddities. Sex brings out the best and worst in people, and defense attorneys see the worst.
Janet eventually straightened up and said, “Singleton and Goins. .. they’re the only two cases that appear to have a connection.”
“You’re sure?
“If these lists are complete, yes.”
“They are complete, and I selected the same two.”
“And did you run checks on them?”
I nodded. “Start with Lieutenant William Singleton. Lisa was his defense attorney. It was her second case, in fact.”
“Go on.”
“A girl from Fayetteville, outside of Fort Bragg, was jogging, someone pulled her into the bushes, cut her up a bit, then raped her. She gave the police a good description of her assailant: black, about six foot six, buck teeth, a nasty scar on his right hand. Some two weeks later, Lieutenant Williams was stopped for speeding through Fayetteville. The officer noticed a scar on his hand during the license exchange, that he was black, slightly bucktoothed, about six foot six, and he booked him.”
“And what happened?”
“Lisa got him off.”
“How?”
“Insufficient evidence. The semen swab taken from the victim somehow got lost. On the stand, the victim admitted it was dark, she was terrified, she wasn’t wearing her glasses, and she couldn’t be completely sure it was Williams.”
“But it could have been, right?”
“It would seem so.”
“So he’s in the running.”
“Not exactly.”
“Why not?”
“Died in a training accident two years ago.”
She shook her head. “We’ll cross him off.”
“Right. Now Harry Goins. He broke into the quarters of a Mrs.
Clare Weatherow, whose husband, a Special Forces sergeant, was on deployment to Bosnia. Goins raped Mrs. Weatherow, shot her in the head, and left her for dead. She wasn’t dead. Ballistics matched the weapon he was carrying, the DNA matched, he was identified by the victim-open and shut. Lisa gave him the best defense possible, but he was found guilty and sentenced to thirty years in Leavenworth, no chance of parole.”
“So he’s still there?”
“Cellblock C.”
I backed the car out of the parking space and said, “You got what you asked for, right?”
“Yes. Thank you.”
“Good. I’m happy you’re happy. It’s been nice working with you.”
She faced me and said, “What does that mean?”
“I quit. Or maybe, you’re fired. Pick a term.”
“Oh, stop this.”
I didn’t reply.
“Don’t you want to find Lisa’s killer?”
I still didn’t reply.
“What’s this about?”
Sometimes the best way for two people to communicate is to not communicate. Again, I declined to reply.
Well, the silence lasted a really long time, before she finally said, “Sean, stop this. I can’t do this without you.”
“Go on.”
“I need you.”
“For what?”
“Because… because I’m almost certain Lisa was murdered for some other reason than we know.”
I’d already been there, heard that, and I frowned to signal we were back at square one.
“Lisa called two days before her murder,” she informed me.
“And said what?”
“She was spooked. She thought somebody was watching her house.”
“Go on.”
“She saw a car parked in front of her townhouse one night. A few nights before, she had an eerie feeling somebody was watching her through her second-story window.”
“A feeling?”
“Yes. But Lisa was very levelheaded. You know her.”
Yes, I did, so I asked, “She had no idea who was watching?”
She shook her head. “I asked if she had anything to be afraid of. She said nothing specifically. I asked about grudges from old cases. She couldn’t think of any. She said, if she had time to research it, maybe…” She shrugged.
“Which you and I just did.”
“Right.” She added, “She also mentioned there were things about the firm that bothere
d her. I asked her what. She told me she was still running it down and wouldn’t be sure for a few days.”
“And…?”
“That was all.”
“No hints… no clues?”
“I sensed she didn’t want to talk about it. Either for client confidentiality or that it was just too vague. But it was her opinion that it had nothing to do with somebody following her.”
“But that was conjecture on her part.”
“Yes. But she sounded confident.” Her face turned slightly flushed and she added, “I should have pressed her more.”
And I should’ve been at the parking lot at nine, and the parking lot should’ve been better lit, and in a better world everybody would grow up happy and well-adjusted and there wouldn’t be any sicko assholes murdering young women.
But the world was far from perfect, and I therefore considered what Janet had just told me. Over the course of her year at Culpert, Hutch, and Westin, Lisa had worked for a number of partners on a number of issues. The guiding idea of this screwy working-with-industry program was to get exposure to the full panoply of corporate legal issues; thus every month Lisa was shuffled to another case and client. Her final month had been spent on Cy’s team, exclusively on the Morris Networks account. Assuming the firm was somehow involved, and I assumed no such thing, that left a wide breadth of cases she’d been involved with.
I recalled that Lisa had mentioned in our final conversation that she had things she wanted to share with me about the firm. But there was no sense of pressing urgency, nor any trace of fear or anxiety in her voice. I assumed then, as I assumed now, that she had intended to educate me about which piranhas and sharks I’d better not give a shot at my ass.
“I don’t see it,” I informed Janet.
“Maybe Lisa didn’t see it either.”
“Look, we just left our third murder site, where a woman was killed in an almost identical manner. Your sister was numbered, and spattered by sperm.”
“Thank you. I know that.”
“Then what’s the point?”
There was another moment of silence before she said, “The night Lisa was murdered, what made Spinelli conclude it was theft?”