Tracking the Butcher

by William Joiner

  “Detective Kim, I need you to stay here and cover home plate,” Lieutenant Gray said.

  “Sure thing, Lieutenant.”

  “Where’s McBean?” Lieutenant Gray asked Bywater.

  “He’s in the restroom, sir.”

  “All right, Elgie and Doctor Connors, you’ll ride with me. Bywater, you and McBean take your own car.”

  “Right, sir,” Bywater said.

  Elgie, Gray, and Connors ran down the stairs and to an unmarked patrol car. Bywater informed McBean about the murders, and they ran down the stairs to their assigned car.

  Chapter Sixteen

  When Lieutenant Gray, Elgie, and Lucas arrived at Rackham Street, they found two black and white units were on scene. Two officers were inside—the other two officers were cordoning off the area. Lieutenant Gray and the others entered the residence and were met by one of the officers.

  “Hello Lieutenant Gray, according to their mailbox the deceased are Roxanne and Douglas Whiteford, I’m Officer Alvin West, my partner is Phillip Thorpe. It appears that the attack occurred in the kitchen, but the bodies are in the bedroom. I suggest you start with the kitchen. I’m sure you noticed that the air conditioner is on full blast. We left it on.”

  “Good call, Officer West,” Elgie said.

  The three walked into the kitchen and found it a bloody mess. This didn’t look like the other Butcher crime scenes. There were no chairs facing each other. It appeared there were no chairs used at all.

  “The attack started here,” Elgie said as he pointed to the kitchen sink. “It appears there is a second attack at the doorway. I would guess that the wife was attacked at the sink while doing dishes. The husband was attacked when he came in, then the bodies were dragged into the bedroom. What do you think, Lieutenant Gray?”

  “I think we should take a look at the bodies,” Lieutenant Gray replied.

  “Right, let’s take a look,” Elgie said.

  In the bedroom, they found a man and a woman in bed covered to their necks, and the comforter was bloody. It appeared that the man’s neck had been slashed from ear to ear.

  “This is definitely a different crime scene,” Lieutenant Gray said. “Are you sure that was the Butcher that called you?”

  “Yes, I’m sure, but this certainly isn’t his usual kill. What do you think, Lucas?”

  “I surmise that he was unable to subdue them like he has successfully initiated with his other victims. Due to his lack of control in this situation, it ended up being a frenzied attack. I hypothesize that’s why he concealed his prey. He wasn’t proud of his work this time. That’s probably why he failed to contact the media like he has done in his previous murder of a marital union he thought was destined for dissolution.”

  “He probably broke into the house while they were out like he did with Vanessa and me,” Elgie said. “I believe they came home together. He was probably hidden and caught the wife at the kitchen sink and attacked her there. When the husband heard the attack, he came into the kitchen and was cut probably from behind—it’s the best vantage point to cut someone’s throat. At any rate, he was unable to carry out the killings in the fashion he likes.”

  “Then he dragged the couple into the bedroom and put them in the bed,” Lieutenant Gray said.

  “That’s the way it appears,” Elgie said. “We’ll know more when the SID team gets here. Alice Cranee’s here, let’s see what she has to say.”

  “Hello, Lieutenant Reynolds. If you’re here, it must be another Butcher case.”

  “Yes, it is,” Lieutenant Gray said. “The bodies are in the bedroom.”

  “Who are you?”

  “I’m Lieutenant Gray. I’m the officer in charge here.”

  Investigator Cranee looked over at Elgie. He nodded.

  “Okay, Lieutenant Gray, lead the way.”

  Once in the bedroom, Alice Cranee first noted the cold from the air conditioner.

  “The air is up full blast. Apparently to throw off time of death. Their faces look like they’ve been posed.”

  “Posed how?” Lieutenant Gray asked.

  “You see how both have the same expression. Both of their eyes are closed, and their mouths were forced into a smile. The comforter has holes in it, knife cuts most likely,” Investigator Cranee counted them. “I count twenty-two on the female victim and twenty-one on the male. Most, if not all, were made postmortem.”

  “That provides some insight into his psyche,” Lucas was obviously shaken by the sight of the bodies but pulled himself together well enough to provide adequate information without his usual educated flair. “He’s been trying to tell us that he has control over his killing, but this tells us that he has a compulsion to inflict the twenty-two stab wounds even if his victims are already dead. This kill was probably not as satisfying as his usual kills. That’s why the posing—it gave him a sense of control. Also, since his fantasy image of how things should go wasn’t met, he’ll probably kill again—soon.”

  “How soon is soon, Lucas?” Elgie asked.

  “Probably within a few days—perhaps this weekend. As a matter of fact, that is likely since it’ll be hunting season at the bars.”

  “Let’s ask the SID team to check the computers in the house when they get here,” Elgie said. “Maybe we can find out how the Butcher met with Mrs. Whiteford. We also need to know if she frequents Jimmie’s in Hollywood since the Butcher met both the previous married victims there.” Elgie looked over at Lieutenant Gray. “Sorry, I didn’t mean to ignore you, I’m just used to being in charge.”

  “That’s alright, you saw the ball, and you went for it,” Lieutenant Gray said. “Investigator Cranee, will you be able to estimate the time of death with the cold air slowing decomposition?”

  “Yes, but it’ll be a rough estimate.”

  “I think they were killed yesterday,” Elgie said.

  “Why yesterday?” Lieutenant Gray asked.

  “The Butcher called me today but tried to throw off the time of death. That indicates to me that he killed them at some time that he doesn’t want to be associated with him. I don’t know why. I’m guessing that I’ve seen him, and he thinks I might be on to him, and he needed an alibi—but that’s just speculation.”

  “That’s a good guess,” Lieutenant Gray said. “I think since she was washing dishes at the kitchen sink when she was attacked, they were probably killed last night after dinner.”

  “Or this morning after breakfast,” Elgie said. “I don’t think we’ll know—is that correct, Alice?”

  “Yes, the time of death estimate is thrown off that much. It could conceivably be last night or this morning.”

  “McBean and Bywater are here,” Lieutenant Gray said.

  “McBean, you and Bywater canvas the street,” Lieutenant Gray said. “Ask if they saw anything this morning or last night that was out of the ordinary. An unfamiliar car or someone they didn’t know going into the Whiteford's house. Any kind of foul ball.”

  “Right, sir, we’ll get on it,” Bywater said.

  “I hope the SID team gets here soon,” Elgie said. “I’m dying to see what’s on that computer.”

  “I can help you with that, sir,” Officer Thorpe said. “I have an associate degree in computer technology. Getting into an email account shouldn’t be too hard.”

  “We primarily need to know if she had an ad up on any casual sex websites,” Elgie said.

  “That shouldn’t be a problem, I’ll just check her browser history.”

  Officer Thorpe took a seat behind the computer in the living room. In a few minutes, he had found a site that Roxanne Whiteford visited often.

  “Here it is, sir, Intimate Encounters is what it’s called. There is an active account. Check this out, she’s got a nude picture of herself with the ad.”

  “I thought the Butcher could have met Mrs. Whiteford through one of these sites like he did Mr. Wain,” Elgie said. “He probably saw how easy it is to lure someone over the internet and not have to risk
exposure like he would in a bar. It was only a matter of time before someone remembered him leaving with a woman.”

  “Of course,” Lieutenant Gray said, “he could always have the woman meet him for a line drive outside of the bar like he probably did with that Haskell woman.”

  “I think the only reason that happened is that Margret Haskell was afraid her husband may be watching or have her followed,” Elgie said. “Stacy Haskell said his son had suspicions that his wife was cheating. He probably confronted her at some point.”

  “That makes sense,” Lieutenant Gray said. “I have an idea if he didn’t meet the Whiteford woman on the internet. Let’s check the bar where the other ones probably met the Butcher. If he hit two homers there, it makes sense that he would try the same play.”

  “Do you mean Jimmie’s in Hollywood?” Elgie asked.

  “Yeah, Jimmie’s,” Lieutenant Gray said.

  “Jimmie’s in Hollywood,” Elgie said.

  “Yeah, that’s what I said, Jimmie’s.”

  “The bar—it’s called ‘Jimmie’s in Hollywood’ not just Jimmie’s.”

  “So, that’s why you’ve been saying the whole thing,” Lieutenant Gray said. “I thought you were just repeating where it was. I thought it was annoying, like the same pitch over and over again.”

  “Lieutenant Gray,” Officer Thorpe said, “she has an email account on the site, but it’s password protected. You’re going to need a forensic computer technician to get into that.”

  “Regardless of whether he met her on the internet or not,” Lieutenant Gray said, “he still had to meet her somewhere, and I’m betting that somewhere is Jimmie’s in Hollywood. He seems as comfortable there as a runner on third base.

  “Now that I think of it, we can stake out Jimmie’s in Hollywood and photograph every couple that leaves the bar. If one of the women gets killed, we’ll know who she left with.”

  “I don’t think he’ll go back to Jimmie’s in Hollywood,” Elgie said. “It’s too much of a chance he’ll be recognized. The last thing he wants is to be a regular and have the bartenders know who he is.”

  “You’ve got a point, Elgie,” Lieutenant Gray said.

  “We could try getting the email address of the person that contacted Roxanne Whiteford and try contacting him ourselves,” Elgie said.

  “Why not just trace the email address to home plate?” Lieutenant Gray asked.

  “I’m sure he used a public internet connection and is not likely to use the same email address twice,” Elgie said. “Here comes Doctor Brooks and the SID team. We can see what’s under that comforter now.”

  Doctor Brooks and company entered the front door. Doctor Brooks spoke with Investigator Cranee.

  “Hello, Doctor Brooks, I’d like you to send a photographer in the bedroom. The couple is in the bed, and I need to get the comforter off them so I can examine the bodies.”

  “Sure, I’ll have it photographed, and the comforter and top sheet collected for analysis. Is the bedroom where the crime took place?”

  “No, the attack occurred in the kitchen, and the bodies were dragged to the bedroom, put in bed and posed including their facial expressions. Their eyes are closed, and they’re smiling.”

  “Smiling?” Doctor Brooks said. “That’s strange, a bit unusual—have you ever seen that before?”

  “No, this is my first time.”

  “Okay, team, let’s get started,” Doctor Brooks said. “Banner, start taking your photos in the bedroom, then get the kitchen and the rest of the house that has any evidentiary value. Cowie and Fuller take the bedroom, once it’s photographed remove the comforter. Get a shot of the top sheet if there is one, then remove it. Lobb and Wolf, you two take the kitchen.”

  Doctor Brooks’ team attended to their tasks. Once they completed removing the top bedding Investigator Cranee examined the bodies.

  “The time of death was most likely last evening,” Investigator Cranee said. “The stab wounds in the torso were delivered postmortem and were all deep like the final wounds he inflicts on his living victims.

  “Mrs. Whiteford was stabbed in the back and probably through the heart. The M.E. will have to determine that. Either way, the stab killed her in a few minutes. She may have still been alive when she was dragged to the bedroom but was dead by the time the Butcher stabbed her in front. The husband was stabbed in the abdomen, and his throat was cut. He died fairly quickly. The Butcher counted the original stab wound in the husband’s abdomen as one of his customary twenty-two stab wounds, which is why I only counted twenty-one cuts through the comforter.”

  “Once again, Alice,” Elgie said, “thank you for being so thorough.”

  Bywater and McBean finished canvassing the neighborhood and came back with no additional information. No one saw anything. No strange cars, no strange people, nothing. One of the neighbors reported that she saw the Whitefords come home at around eight-thirty the previous evening. Lieutenant Gray sent Elgie back to the tip line office, but did so nicely, while he finished up at the crime scene.

  Back at the tip line office, Elgie took incoming calls and waited for something to happen. While it was on his mind, he called Captain Greer to ask her to rotate the clerks on the tip line and told her about his suspicions about how the Butcher is getting his information about the investigation. She agreed to rotate the staff and tell Lieutenant Gray why. Elgie told Captain Greer that he suspected the leak was coming from the task force and he wanted to limit the information they were privy to. Captain Greer advised Lieutenant Gray that he should keep an eye on his staff. Gray didn’t believe it could be one of his staff leaking information to the Butcher.

  The rest of the night was quiet. Elgie thought about what to do next. What was the next move he could make that would be allowed by Lieutenant Gray, or could he just go ahead and do whatever he wanted and deal with the fallout later? He decided on the latter. Since Lieutenant Gray wasn’t back in the office yet, he decided to call Quinn and ask about the status of the investigation.

  “Hello, this is the Butcher Task Force Office,” Quinn said.

  “Hi, Quinn, this is Elgie.”

  “Hey, Boss, what’s up?”

  “What’s going on with the case?”

  “The crime analyst cross-referenced men who owned white pick-up trucks a year ago with men arrested for solicitation of prostitution. She found eleven men we’re considering potential suspects. Lieutenant Gray requested and received two additional detectives to follow up on those leads.

  “Lieutenant Gray also requested the aid of a geographic profiler to find out where the Butcher might live or work. Get this, the profiler said he most likely works downtown. That narrows down from eleven to three, but if we look at all of the males working downtown that narrows it down to probably thousands, at least hundreds.”

  “What about the hair?” Elgie asked. “Did they get a DNA profile?”

  “Yeah, Doctor Brooks says they got the profile and ran it through the California DNA database and CODIS but didn’t find a match. He says they’re going to do a search for family members of the suspect. Doctor Brooks says they use what he called a familial DNA search for that. He says the familial DNA will give us the father, son, or brother of the DNA donor. He’s been doing the DNA stuff himself so he can get it done quickly.”

  “Has Lieutenant Gray interviewed Michelle Chambers?”

  “No, he sent me to do it. She didn’t really have anything to add though. She says she didn’t get a good enough look to describe him to a sketch artist.”

  “Okay, thanks for the information.”

  “No problem, Boss, anytime I can be of service just call. You can call me on my personal cell if you want. In case you wanna know something without Lieutenant Gray knowing about it. For what it’s worth, I think you got gypped out of leading this investigation. I think we had a better chance of catching the Butcher with you than with Lieutenant Gray.”

  “Thanks for the vote of confidence, but our opinions don’t mat
ter to the chief of detectives.”

  “Okay, I guess we’ll all have to live with it. Talk to you soon.”

  “Okay, I’ll see you at tomorrow morning’s meeting.”

  “You know you aren’t really invited, right?”

  “Yes, I know that. I’ve never let an invitation stop me from attending a party before, why should this be any different.”

  Elgie gave the Butcher some thought, how might he go after his next victim and when. If Lucas was right, he should strike this weekend. He’ll probably find a victim on the internet and meet her somewhere. Maybe at one of the clubs—from there he’ll take her to his apartment or wherever he kills them and kill her then. He won’t be patient enough to wait and kill the husband too. Perhaps if I look for his dump site. He seems to dump in Hollywood for some reason. Maybe he lives in Hollywood? The geographic profiler only determined where he might work not where he lives.

  Elgie stayed in the tip line office until six-thirty when he decided to go see Michelle and find out when she was going to get out of the hospital. Since she was supposed to stay with him and Vanessa when she got out, he thought adjoining rooms at the hotel would be a good idea until they returned to the house. On the way to the county jail, he thought about the Butcher.

  He, unfortunately, had no doubt that Friday night or Saturday the Butcher would strike again. They’ll be another body discovered on Saturday or Sunday, or he’d get another call. He was dreading either, but there’s no way he knew to stop it. He had to unmask the Butcher and soon.

  As he was driving his personal cell phone rang, it was Quinn.

  “Boss, I thought you should know that the forensic computer analyst got into Roxanne Whiteford’s email,” Quinn said. “He found the email from the person she met last night. We think it was the Butcher. The email address was established at the library downtown, and there was no photo with the profile, but there was a description. It says he’s six-one, slim build, which is consistent with Michelle Chambers’ description.”

  “Okay, once again, thanks for the information. Hopefully, that will provide us, or rather you and the task force, a place to start.”