He laid the body out, positioning the pieces, before guessing at the bedroom from which the bathroom ran, en suite, and got it right first time. He hummed when he showered, a wordless tune, thinking how much more civilized it was cleaning himself properly like this than it had been in the desert and in the park, from the canister. Too much blood from the trucker and the whore had dried on him, stiffening his skin. He shuddered at the physical memory.
Dry but still naked he returned to the lounge, finally replacing Carr’s clothing beside the body, ensuring that each piece was in perfect alignment with that beneath it.
‘I’m afraid General Carr won’t be able to visit his wife today,’ he said to the efficient ward receptionist who immediately answered the telephone.
‘Is there a problem?’ she asked at once.
‘He’s come down with a cold. His doctor doesn’t think it would be fair for him to bring it into the hospital.’
‘Quite right.’
‘It might be a couple of days.’ It wasn’t enough just to die. He had to rot.
‘I’ll tell Mrs Carr.’
‘How is she?’
‘No improvement, I’m afraid. Can I tell her who called?’
‘Someone the general knew a long time ago. She wouldn’t recognize the name.’
The janitor, who was doing something to the wood chips around the plants, looked up enquiringly as Taylor emerged from the elevator. ‘Morning?’
‘Morning.’ In the reflection he realized he still had the Myron Nolan face.
‘Visiting?’
‘Someone I knew a long time ago.’
The man looked at the satchel containing the scalpels and the souvenir eye. ‘Mind me asking who?’
Shit! ‘General Carr. Enquiring about his wife.’
The janitor relaxed. ‘Not at all well, I hear.’
‘Getting better, though.’
‘That’s good to hear. Have a nice day.’
‘I already have.’ As he walked away Taylor, who was Myron Nolan, obediently recited the mantra and the Tzu creed, water every existence with the blood of others.
Chapter Seven
Wesley Powell felt like the host of a party at which everyone else had arrived before him. They might have started without him – almost had done – but he’d catch up by the end of this first examination, he determined. If his FBI career was on the slide he’d end it on his terms, not through internal political manoeuvring.
The incident room had been created from a small, side-officed conference room on the sixth floor of the Bureau building. Filing cabinets had been assembled along the entire corridor wall, at right angles to which a battery of screen-flickering computers was installed. On the opposite side of the room evidence boards designated by name to each victim had been erected on easels and upon them were displayed scene-of-crime photographs, maps, diagrams and Michael Gaynor’s artist impression of the man he’d encountered in Lane Park. In front of them stood two female file clerks, one almost glandularly fat, the other contrastingly thin. Both smiled hesitantly at Powell, who nodded back. Both were middle aged and seemed totally unmoved by the horrific photographic collage they had made.
The oval conference table that dominated the room was already set for the meeting, red-covered, alphabetically indexed dossiers prepared in front of six places. Harry Beddows gestured Powell towards the top of the table, a man bestowing an honour, and took the seat that put him directly to Powell’s right. Geoffrey Sloane, the forensic psychologist profiler assigned from Quantico, was to Powell’s immediate left. He remained expressionless on Powell’s arrival, although they knew each other. Amy Halliday faced Lucille Hooper, next to whom sat forensic scientist Barry Westmore. Both girls smiled towards Powell, who nodded back but didn’t smile.
Beddows patted the file before him, sweeping his arm around the room and announced, ‘We’re in good shape, up and running, and it’s down to Amy. I’d like personally to thank her. What she’s done is remarkable.’
‘From what little’s available, it’s certainly damned impressive,’ agreed Sloane. He had a thick, phlegmy voice.
The dark-haired girl smiled again, looking towards Powell. He said, ‘So what have we got?’
‘Amy’s created the master file and computer programs,’ said Beddows. ‘Let’s have the outline from her.’
‘Billie Jean Kesby was well known to El Paso vice,’ began Amy, at once. ‘Able to steer Maddox to some friends, clubs she worked out of. Story is that she met a guy asked her to go on a trip with him, to San Antonio …’
‘Description?’ demanded Powell.
She shook her head. ‘None of the other girls saw him, apparently. Billie Jean used to advertise, in local sex mags—’
‘She have an answering service?’ broke in Powell, again.
‘Machine,’ confirmed Amy. ‘Maddox has the tape. It’s on its way.’
‘We can get voiceprints but they’re only useful after we make an arrest, as confirmation of an identity,’ said the head of the forensic team. Westmore was a small, intense man who blinked a lot behind thick-lensed, rimless spectacles.
Amy indicated Gaynor’s recollection of the man he had seen in the park. ‘Even though Billie Jean’s friends say they never saw the guy she went on the trip with we’re wiring that to Maddox, to have it run by them just in case. If necessary I can work from that drawing to create three-dimensional computer graphics …’ She coughed and Beddows edged the water carafe along the table towards her. She smiled, gratefully, and went on: ‘I’ve accessed military justice records. There was a Leroy Goodfellow in a temporary army stockade in Florence, Alabama, from late 1944. Same time as Jethro Morrison, as Goodfellow says. Jointly sentenced for the theft of army materiel, each given five years, served a total of nearly nine, additional sentencing for being involved in a prison riot and assaulting a guard. Broke both the guy’s legs.’
‘A con who tells the truth: very rare,’ said Sloane.
Powell had worked with Sloane on the flawed militant group investigation and had been warned by Beddows that the psychologist had filed a complaining memorandum direct to the Director absolving himself from culpability after the mall bombing. At Beddows’s insistence Powell had written an answering, rebutting defence – Sloane’s assessment was that the bomber had been a loner, without any organizational back-up – but remained unsure whether that hadn’t drawn more attention to the screwed-up episode than it had alleviated blame. The psychologist affected pipes with bowls fashioned into animal heads but played with them constantly, like worry beads, more often than he smoked them. Today’s shape, revolving through his fingers, was a horse’s head.
‘He overlooked the extra sentencing,’ Powell pointed out. ‘And he had nothing to lose by telling me what he did.’ And everything to gain if the old man and Jethro Jnr had worked a scam over the jewel robbery, he thought.
Amy turned towards the pathologist and said, ‘The murder wounds are unusual …’ and then stopped, invitingly.
There was a hesitation before Lucille said, ‘I’m betting on an ice pick as the murder weapon. The dimensions would fit. But the amputations are surprisingly clean. Could even be a proper medical scalpel. I’d have thought it impossible for someone without an element of medical knowledge to have decapitated three people – three people who were already dead and had to be manhandled into a cutting position – and to have emerged each time between the third and fourth cervical vertebrae and the facet joints without bone damage. But the cutting edge did, every time. Without touching a bone on either side.’
‘It could well be someone who’s worked in medicine. Hospital orderly, Medicorps, a doctor even,’ came in Sloane.
‘And it’s a man, even if it isn’t the same guy that Gaynor saw in the park,’ picked up Lucille. ‘The semen DNA definitely isn’t that of Gene Johnson, so it’s got to be that of the man who had sex with Billie Jean before he killed her and Johnson. And he’s young, not much older than mid-twenties. There was a high sperm count.
We get him we can convict him.’
‘And he’s very dark haired,’ came in Westmore. ‘We recovered quite a lot of hair from the dismantled cab of Johnson’s rig. Hair DNA matches that of the semen. I’m pretty sure I’ve got his fingerprints, too. We lifted Johnson’s and Billie Jean’s. There was a third set, particularly around the glove box from which the gun was taken.’
‘You getting any sort of picture from this?’ Powell asked the psychologist.
‘Some,’ said Sloane. ‘He’s definitely young, strong. Have to be to move around the 196-pound dead body of Gene Johnson. A complete sociopath, violently schizophrenic. We know he’s capable of normal sexual intercourse but he probably gets more sadistic satisfaction from inflicting pain, although it’s usually important for the victim to be alive when that pain is caused, to heighten the sensation of absolute power. Obviously some vivisection knowledge, although we shouldn’t tie ourselves in too tightly on it being medical. Could be a butcher, veterinary, work in a slaughterhouse. The neatness with which the clothes are folded and left at the scene indicates a strong obsessional streak in the insanity. Cleanliness will be important to him: I’m surprised, considering the bloodstaining there would have been, that he chose to kill outside, in a desert and a park where he couldn’t clean himself at once. The cross in the forehead has religious connotations. But not a belief: an anti-belief. That’s why the head is cut off. The cross is the religion and God, the decapitation is killing God. The removing of one eye is the usual serial killer souvenir syndrome. There’s no shortage of money: he’s easily able to go from one side of the country to the other, so we’re not looking for a bum or a drifter.’
‘Pretty much classic serial killer scenario, apart perhaps from the savagery of the mutilations and the religious overtones?’ queried Beddows.
‘That’s what I think the evidence shows so far,’ agreed the forensic psychologist.
‘I don’t,’ disputed Powell. Thank God he had more than just his intuition, he thought.
There was a stir around the table. Tight-faced, Sloane said, ‘You know something the rest of us don’t?’
‘No,’ said Powell. ‘Serial killing is random, right? Sociopaths striking at random?’
‘Usually,’ said Sloane, refusing to commit himself outright.
‘Gene Johnson was a horny guy. Seems to have spent all his time involved in or hunting sex when he wasn’t driving his rig. Our killer knew that: had checked Johnson out, watched for some time. That isn’t random. Our killer went all the way to El Paso to get a hooker Johnson didn’t already know, someone who wouldn’t tip Johnson off for money that she’d been paid to pick him up in a truck stop the killer knew, from surveillance, Johnson stopped at every Wednesday. When he made contact with Jethro Morrison, our man convinces him it was someone he knew more than forty years ago, during Morrison’s first prison sentence. Which the killer also knew to be in Florence, which was only a temporary jail. Morrison served a total of thirty-one years in various penitentiaries. Why specify where he first did time? That isn’t random. These are different killings. Planned. Prepared for.’
A stir went around the table again. When no-one else responded Westmore said, ‘They’re valid points.’
Stubbornly Sloane said, ‘We’ve only got Leroy Good-fellow’s word, about Florence.’
‘A con who tells the truth: very rare,’ echoed Powell.
‘This is the first time we’ve examined what we’ve got,’ came in Beddows. ‘We can’t be specific, this early.’
‘That’s exactly my point,’ insisted Powell.
‘Which I think we’ve all taken,’ said Beddows.
‘What there isn’t any dispute about is that we’ve got a homicidal maniac on the loose, wandering from one side of America to the other. So what about going public, warning people?’ Powell spoke directly to the division chief, putting the onus for a decision on the man.
Amy said, ‘I could do the three-dimensional computer graphic from the artist’s drawing in two or three hours, to issue to television along with any media release.’
Beddows shifted, uncomfortably. ‘There’s always the danger of shaking other crazies out of the trees. Copycat stuff. Or creating a challenge to the guy himself. We go public and the public are going to expect an arrest and start asking questions when we don’t quickly make one.’
‘Like they are when he kills again and it becomes obvious we knew the risk but didn’t issue a warning,’ persisted Powell.
‘I feel we should think about it a little more,’ said Beddows.
By which the man meant waiting until he’d got a decision from the Director, Powell guessed. Insistently he said, ‘I don’t think we should wait long.’
Powell didn’t consider he’d caught up by the end of the meeting but decided against extending it by further suggestions, which he was surprised no-one else made. When it broke up, Beddows followed him into the temporary side cubicle, only just stopping at the last moment instead of taking Powell’s chair, as task force leader, behind the desk. Instead the man perched awkwardly on the desk edge.
Beddows said, ‘I thought that was useful.’
‘For a first meeting,’ qualified Powell. ‘You intend all along to include me in it, Harry?’
Beddows frowned. ‘What are you getting at?’
‘It was already fixed. What if I hadn’t been ready to come back from Birmingham?’
‘Director wants movement on this,’ said Beddows. ‘It was only preliminary, going through the motions. I’m not marginalizing you.’
‘That’s good to hear.’
‘But there is something.’
‘What?’
‘There’s been a complaint, from San Antonio,’ declared the division chief. ‘Sheriff and the medical examiner.’
‘The sheriff was obstructive and the pathologist incompetent,’ said Powell. ‘It’s not important.’
‘It might be,’ said Beddows. ‘Maybe you should get your own memo on file.’
‘Harry, I’m busy. Internal affairs or the Director want an explanation, I’ll give it to them when they ask. I’m not going to spend my time defending myself against things that don’t need a defence. It’s not going to be a problem for you.’
‘It was you I was thinking it might be a problem for.’
Bullshit, thought Powell. ‘Trust me.’
He’d just finished fully reading Amy Halliday’s immaculately prepared dossiers when she came through the door, knocking as she entered. She said at once, ‘You pissed off at me?’
‘No.’
‘Got the impression you were.’
Powell shook his head, embarrassed now at his earlier attitude. If there had been any lack of consideration – insufficient consultation – it was hardly her fault. He’d come close to being immature. ‘I’m not.’
‘In that case why don’t we lunch and talk about the things we didn’t cover at this morning’s meeting, which maybe we should have done?’
She had every reason for her confidence, he thought, regarding her quizzically. ‘If it was that obvious why didn’t you raise it?’
‘Like I said, I had the feeling I’d already upset you. So I held back to follow your lead.’
They went to the New Old Ebbitt opposite the Treasury building because it was a convenient walk from Pennsylvania Avenue but there was half an hour’s wait at the bar for a table. Amy joined him with martinigin, straight up with a twist – but refused a second. At least two men of whom Powell was aware made their admiration obvious but Amy did not appear to notice. Her hair was perfectly bobbed and he was conscious of only the barest of make-up. He didn’t think the suit could be silk, but it had a sheen and there was an optical illusion where it folded, changing the dark green to grey. She didn’t seem as petite as she had at their first meeting.
It wasn’t until they’d got their table and ordered – scrod for him, Caesar salad for her, with a Napa Valley Chardonnay – that Amy said, ‘I agree with you. This isn’t normal serial �
��’ She grimaced, pulling down the corners of her mouth. ‘OK, I know I’ve got no right or training to challenge a qualified forensic psychologist but since I’ve been in Analysis I’ve compiled eight serial killing profile histories. I know the difference between serial routines and serial patterns. These don’t fit.’
‘So you know what I want?’ said Powell, testing.
‘The common denominator. I’ve asked Maddox to hurry the Johnson family background and I’ve pulled everything I can from Records on Jethro Morrison. Trouble with Morrison is that so much of his sheet isn’t on computer database. What’s on paper I’ll transfer to disc. And I’ll go ahead and make the graphic of the artist’s drawing, list Gaynor’s physical description alongside. We’ll have to go public some time. When we do, we’ll be ready.’
‘That impression might be a picture of a man Gaynor wanted to meet, rather than the one he did,’ warned Powell.
She shrugged. ‘It’s all we’ve got, at the moment. Any other ideas?’
‘I wish I had just one.’
‘You want any changes to the incident room?’
‘You set it up?’
She nodded.
‘Why didn’t you tell me?’
‘You are pissed off with me!’
‘I thought you might have said.’ Powell was uncomfortable, embarrassed at himself.
‘I thought Harry told you. It was his idea: his place.’
‘It’s not important.’
‘It is,’ she argued. ‘The most important thing is that you and I don’t fall out. Have any misunderstandings.’
‘We won’t,’ promised Powell.
Beth was in when he called and said she hadn’t decided what she wanted to do that Saturday but that she would, by the time he picked her up. It was only when he replaced the receiver that he realized he’d forgotten to buy Beth anything in either San Antonio or Birmingham. He really didn’t like being a part-time father.
Chapter Eight
Powell detoured back across the 14th Street Bridge from his Crystal City apartment to a florist he knew in the Washington Hotel complex to buy the cactus. The salesperson, with a promising southern accent, immediately disappointed him by not having anything unique to Texas so he bought one with a single red flower, like a protruding tongue, that she assured him grew in every desert she’d ever heard of, including those in Texas. He dumped the identifying DC wrapper in an outside trash can and continued on the north side of the river to cross the Key Bridge into Arlington.
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