by Greg Enslen
They scared kids into getting into bed and remaining there, or the possibility of them, however unlikely even in the minds of children, kept the kids on the right path through the woods on the way home from school. Adults rarely dealt with the possibility of monsters except in cheesy movies and hastily written novels about werewolves and vampires.
But Julie was beginning to believe in the existence of monsters. Not the hulking green kind, whose maws dripped with blood as they hid hunched over in closets to jump out and eat some kid, but the kind that lurked in the pages of these reports around her. There were monsters out there, real ones, that preyed on the innocent and the trusting, killing and maiming and torturing for the sheer enjoyment of it. These monsters didn’t look any different from regular people - it was only on the inside that they were monsters, following some twisted agenda. If they were huge hulking titan with metal bolts sticking out of their necks, they would’ve been much easier to deal with. And much easier to catch.
That was the thing that scared Julie the most: these people could look just like anybody else.
Julie shook her head, trying to forget the doubts and worries that nagged at her mind, and moved the small Black Diamond Killer printout over to grab the third report. This report was quite thick, though not nearly as thick as her first report, and it contained short case histories of all the unsolved ‘digit collection’ cases from 1966 to 1996. She’d picked that particular range because Warren had suggested she start 30 years in the past - any cases further back than that, the files were usually only partials and would be of little help to them. And even if there were some type of break in one of those cases, it had happened so long ago there would be little chance of a final resolution - the victims' families, the original case investigators and even the perpetrator himself would probably all be gone by now, and even if they weren’t, people’s memories tended to forget the fade over the years.
Julie grabbed the Black Diamond Killer report and began reading.
After about ten minutes, she was having difficulty continuing. The printout was simply a list of the possible murders in the Seattle area from 1980 to 1985 that the Black Diamond Killer was suspected to be involved with, but the details and garish quality of the murders left Julie shaken. So many women, killed over those short few years, some of them not found for months later, their decomposing bodies found in shallow graves or under thick undergrowth, some of them dumped rudely in the deep ditches near the Sea-Tac Airport, some of them had been raped--
Julie closed the file and left her office, needing to go for a walk, to clear her head. The weather outside was clear and sunny, the sidewalks in downtown D.C. drying out. The news this morning had said that Hurricane Mandy would move into the area over the next few days, and that DC might even start to get showers on Thursday morning, followed by several days of heavy rain. Julie had briefly toyed with the idea of leaving the building and walking down the block to the old Post Office building, one of her favorite close eating places, but decided instead to head up one floor to the cafeteria and grab a soda or something.
It was just after 9:00 in the morning and the cafeteria was deserted. The breakfast rush had ended over an hour ago, and the cooks in the back wouldn’t begin serving the lunch crowd for another couple of hours. The grills and steam tables and even the rotating toaster that employees used to toast their bagels and toast were shut down, and Julie saw one man scrubbing one of the wide gray grills, cleaning off egg and bacon grease. The only part of the cafeteria still open was one register and a table that held a picked-over selection of cold donuts, muffins, and bagels. The soda dispensers were still on, though, and Julie grabbed herself a blueberry muffin and a large Coke.
“Not too busy, huh?” she asked the one lady with an open register.
The lady shook her head. “Always really slow this time of day, but it makes up for the busy times. You have yourself a good day, okay?”
Julie thanked her and took her change, pocketing it. And thought of a question that had dogged her all the way up here. “Excuse me, but do you know where the Library is?”
“Sure, child. It’s right by the 7th Street entrance. I come in that way every day.”
Julie thanked her again and headed downstairs. She always came in the Pennsylvania Avenue entrance because it was the closest one to the Old Post Office Metro Station, so she’d never seen the 7th Street entrance or visited the Library. She’d been thinking that maybe instead of just reading the list of possible murders, she should read any books that the FBI had on the Black Diamond Killer.
A few minutes later, Julie walked back into her office and set her soda and muffin down. She had a short stack of reports and one hard-bound book that she’d checked out of the Bureau Library, an expansive room located on the east side of the building. The librarian had been very helpful, and he’d allowed her to remove the files from the library (after she’d shown her ID), but had admonished her not to take them home. Some of the information in the files was still marked sensitive, he’d said, and taking them out of the building would be a breach of security.
The hardcover book was actually a bound report on everything known on the Black Diamond Killer, including pictures, sketches of the murder scenes, witness accounts, an FBI personality profile, and a chapter dedicated just to the Killer’s physical description. Julie sat back, propped her feet up on her desk, and began reading.
This case was one of the most notorious in the history of the U.S., and Julie was surprised to hear that the case was still ongoing. The King County Police Department, where most of the murders had evidently occurred, had formed a Black Diamond Task Force to investigate the killings, and even though no murders that fit the profile had been reported since 1986, there was still an annual report published and investigators assigned to the cases. A toll-free phone number was even included in the report in case anyone had any new information about the murders.
Over the course of the investigation, a total of 49 unsolved murders had occurred in the Seattle/Tacoma Washington area over a stretch of about 6 years. Several other unrelated murders were investigated by the Task Force and solved by their exhaustive investigative work, but they were unsuccessful in even obtaining a full description of the Killer who stalked and killed without retribution.
In most of the cases investigated by the Task Force, prostitutes figured heavily in the tastes of the Killer. A good percentage of the women found murdered were known prostitutes and most worked the same area in Seattle, an area known as “The Strip”. Because of the activities that these women were engaged in, it made it very difficult for the Task Force to investigate their murders - in some cases, the Task Force couldn’t even pin down the time that some of the women had disappeared. Few clues turned up, and as body after body surfaced in murky rivers and small lakes or turned up in shallow graves near the Sea-Tac International Airport, the investigators became more and more frustrated with their inability to find a suspect. Several men were detained and questioned over the course of the investigation, but all four primary suspects in the Black Diamond killings were eventually cleared.
Julie searched the book and pictures for clues, and eventually it paid off. In one brief area of the book, the original FBI agent attached to the case, now dead several years, wrote about another curious aspect of the case, one that had never been released to the public but had been a serious avenue of investigation for those trying to track the killer: in many of the murders attributed to the Black Diamond Killer, there was always some part of the victim’s body missing.
Julie sat up a little straighter and continued reading. Keeping the information from the public had been, at first, another method used by police to keep cranks and weirdos seeking attention from confessing to the crimes. The police and the Task Force members never released that information, and only those confessors who would mention it were ever seriously considered as suspects - of course, they were all interviewed and eventually dismissed, having guessed that parts of the victims were miss
ing.
But the real Black Diamond Killer was a disturbed individual, if the reports and profiles that she read from the Task Force members held any weight at all. In almost every case the victim was missing a part of one of her fingers, most often the pinkie. Why the Killer was collecting parts of his victims was not even considered - only the fact that the Killer was tying all of the murders together for the cops. In any other case that would have led to joyous cheering from the cops, but in this case, it didn’t really help much - all this pattern told the cops was “yes, there’s a hideous killer out here carrying out all of these murders, and you can’t catch him.” In some ways, the extra clues were only more frustrating for the cops - they knew they were dealing with a serial killer of historical proportions, but none of that information helped them catch him.
An FBI personality profile had been done on the Black Diamond Killer, and Julie read it with interest. The most likely suspect in the murders, based on the information gathered so far in the case, would be a white male between the ages of 20 and 40, a heavy smoker and drinker. Exactly how they had come to these conclusions was not explained in the report, but Julie knew that there were whole offices in this building who specialized in this sort of investigation and psychological profiling, so she figured that they probably weren’t far off. The report also suggested that the killer would be very intelligent, enjoyed the outdoors, and probably had some background in perverted sexual acts or had in the past frequented a prostitute. Sketchy, but then any information on the killer would be useful.
Julie flipped through the back of the book, looking at the pictures of the 29 known victims and the other 20 women who were killed around the same time and location but were not considered official victims of the Black Diamond Killer - evidently the Task Force felt that the Killer was sticking with his M.O. and any victims not missing parts of their fingers or toes (in just a few of the 29 cases, parts of the toes were missing instead of the pinkie) were dismissed as copycat killings, carried out by other deranged individuals who were trying to emulate the Black Diamond Killer’s actions but simply did not have all of the information available to the cops. The pictures of the women were varied: in some cases they were high school portraits of smiling girls; in others there were simple snapshots and Polaroid’s of others. Most of the victims had been prostitutes but a few were not, and it seemed to the Task Force that the Killer was less concerned with who his victim was but more concerned with where he picked them up. Investigation showed that all but 2 of the 29 victims were thought to be on “The Strip” or in the surrounding area when they disappeared.
Julie set the book and other files aside and pulled the green Cray printout towards her, glad that she’d spent a little time getting to know the case instead of just sitting here staring at this depressing list of crimes. All of the crimes in this report of hers were connected to the Black Diamond Killer in some way or another, but she decided to go ahead with the Task Force’s assumption that the Killer was also a collector, and Julie’s overall plan was to link these killings to others in different areas of the country. She pored through the Black Diamond Killer report and scratched out those cases that were not related (in some of the cases, the Cray’s’ search engine had picked up on phrases in the reports like “much like the Black Diamond Killer’s methods” or “investigator went on to become a Black Diamond Killer Task Force member”, murders that had nothing to do with the actual Black Diamond Killer case) and narrowed the stack down to the 29 killings previously mentioned in the book. She separated out those sheets that contained the murders which she felt were attributable to the Black Diamond Killer and tossed the other sheets onto the floor, spreading the ones she kept out on her desk and trying to categorize them by date and location.
It appeared that all of the killings appeared to have taken place within a twenty mile radius over a period of about five years, and Julie wondered if the Killer was just toying with the cops investigating the case. No one could kill and kill repeatedly and never leave any clues - the FBI Psyche report had said that this guy was smart, and they must have been right. And the investigators’ frustration must’ve been monumental, knowing that there was a killer out there with a very distinctive method of execution, in most cases strangulation, and a killer that always left his very distinctive calling card at the scene, or more accurately taken from the scene, and still they couldn’t track him. It must’ve driven them crazy.
She sat back from the reports and thought about it. If this Black Diamond Killer had come into the Seattle area in 1980 or 81, and left around 1986, he must’ve come from somewhere. And barring the possibility that he died or was arrested on another charge, the Killer must’ve also left the area and gone somewhere else. A chill ran down her back, thinking about the possibility, however small, that the maniac might still be out there, and might even right now planning another murder. The FBI reports had mentioned they estimated that there were at least 30 serial killers operating in the United States at any one time, and the Black Diamond Killer was thought to be one of the best in history at eluding capture. Could it be possible?
She stood and walked out into the hallway, flipping through one of the two reports sitting on the creaky table in the hall. One was the massive ‘all extremities’ report, but for now she was only interested in the ‘fingers and toes’ list that Chris had printed yesterday. She flipped through the smaller stack, finding the listings for 1978 through 1981, and tore them out of the stack. Julie headed back into her office, sitting down and starting in 1981, she read each six-line case summary, eliminating those that didn’t occur in the Seattle area (or those within a day’s drive of Seattle) in 1981. Several of the same names from her Black Diamond Killer list appeared here, and she circled those cases that could’ve been carried out by the same person.
1981 held several of the Black Diamond Killer cases, five cases from the Portland Oregon area, about 200 miles south of Seattle, and a couple of unsolved ‘collection’ murders from the Yakima, Washington area. All of the murders could’ve been carried out by the same person, and none of the dates of the victims deaths, whether they be exact dates or only coroner estimations, could’ve eliminated them from all being done by the same person.
She needed a wall map of the Pacific Northwest, and maybe another one of the United States in general. Logging into the building LAN, she requested help from the LAN administrator as to who she could order these items from.
While she waited for a response, she started on 1980. There were only one or two suspected Black Diamond Killer slayings in the Seattle area that year, and after those, Julie was unsure what to do. Perhaps she was tracing the Black Diamond Killer back to where he came from by looking at other murders outside the Seattle area, or maybe she was just wasting time. What if the Killer had come down out of Canada? What if he hadn’t killed before, or his murders were so spaced out that she couldn’t backtrack them? She continued through 1980 and circled 43 killings that fit her parameters, but she couldn’t see any type of pattern - all were extremities collection cases, but many could be eliminated by distance and time factors. But as she looked at the stack of pages on her desk, she realized that a search like this could take months, and she just didn’t have the patience.
But the Cray downstairs did.
Julie picked up her paperwork and headed downstairs.
Norma Jenkins dropped off the last of her kids at the Sinclair Elementary School and drove the bus around back. Most days, between the last drop-off run to the Elementary school at 9:45 and the first pick-up run from the same school at 2:15, she usually took the bus around the back of the Elementary school where the towns three other buses were usually parked and washed her bus, spraying it down with soap and water. People had no idea how dirty a big yellow school bus could get, and it took almost daily washings to keep it clean.
But today, as she pulled the bus up next to the others, she was interested in only one activity. She wanted to read the paper. And the bus was clean from two day
s’ worth of rain, anyway.
She’d seen the paper’s headlines today, and the murder of Lisa Stevens was the talk of the town. She’d heard a couple of moms discussing it at one of the stops as they pushed their kids aboard Norma’s bus, and the other three bus drivers had been talking about it this morning before they’d started the High School run. Most mornings Norma didn’t contribute to their little conversations, but this morning she had had a couple of questions, and the other three members that made up the entire Liberty school bus driving squad had looked at her oddly, as if they’d gotten used to her silence and aloofness and were unsure how to deal with her sudden attempts at conversation.
The other three bus drivers were grouped together again as Norma pulled up. Jake was hosing mud off of his bus, the number 2, and Jess and Lynda were standing near him, chatting. Norma felt no need at all to join their little group, but she did wave and say hello before heading inside to the Elementary School’s empty cafeteria to scratch up a little snack and read the paper.
The Liberty Gazette wasn’t a bastion of newsgathering might, but it usually did manage to gather the news and organize it into a suitable form, but today, as Norma munched on a bagel and pored over the paper, the new story seemed very thin, short on details and long on supposition. There were no direct interviews with any of the family members or the girl who’d originally reported the girl missing, and only a short blurb from the off-duty fireman who’d found the murdered girl. For the first murder in Liberty in a few years, the case certainly wasn’t making it into the paper much. Or at least most of the facts about the case were missing.
Not that the paper wasn’t trying to get the details - no, Norma could easily spot it when a police case was being held very close to the vest. The only insight into the truly grisly details in the case had been the result of a question from some other journalist at yesterday’s press conference, an exchange that seemed to suggest that the girls’ tongue had been cut out - a disturbing detail that Norma was sure the Liberty Police Department had wanted to keep under their hats, but it was usually hard to keep the really sensational details of a case under wraps. She remembered the difficulty they’d had when Jasper Fines had been in town, and the trouble Sheriff Beaumont had gone to to keep the details of the victim’s slayings out of the public eye.