The Murderers' Club Read online

  “So what was our fella’s last meal?” I ask, glad of the layer of Vicks between my nose and the air.

  He peers into the dish. “Not much. His stomach is almost empty. Looks like we have a small amount of meat.”

  “Just meat?” I ask—not many people eat meat without some other accompaniment, like bread, vegetables, fries or something.

  “Uh huh. And not much of it.”

  Another oddity. Our vic is big and he’d need a lot of food to sustain his body. “Seems strange for a guy this size,” I comment.

  The ME nods. “I’ll send the contents off to the lab for further analysis.”

  Next he cuts away the small intestine, tying it off at each end before putting it into a separate metal dish, again making comments for the microphone. He examines the chest cavity and other organs, removing and weighing as necessary, before inspecting the throat section carefully.

  “The hyoid bone is intact, but I’d expect that given his age.”

  The horseshoe-shaped hyoid bone in the neck starts off quite malleable and doesn’t become brittle and prone to breaking until we reach our late thirties to early forties. In an older strangulation victim, the hyoid bone would usually be broken.

  “But manual strangulation is definitely our cause of death,” he continues. “Pending anything strange from the lab.”

  Of course it’s possible the victim was strangled and poisoned, and then the ME would have to assess which one was the primary cause of death.

  “Anything more on the time of death?” Darren asks.

  He shakes his head. “Eighteen to thirty-six hours is as good as it’s going to get.” Forensic pathologists use rigor mortis, liver temperature and the presence of lividity to estimate the time of death, but it can only be an estimate. Another avenue is insect activity, entomology, but it’s mostly useful in cases where the body is found days or weeks after death.

  Finally, the ME sews the V-section up. “Autopsy finished at—” he checks the clock on the wall “—five o’clock in the afternoon.”

  Darren and I leave the ME to clean up, and walk through the corridors of the Pima County medical examiner’s office. Outside, a water fountain glistens in the spring sunlight and a few people sit around it, enjoying the late afternoon sun. Compared to DC, it’s balmy.

  “So how’s Stone doing?”

  Darren shrugs. “Haven’t heard from her. If she got a match from the U of A or from a missing-persons report she would have called. Maybe his fingerprints will be on the database.”

  I nod. “If we don’t find any matches…” I leave the sentence unfinished.

  “I know. A John Doe.” Darren runs a hand through his hair. “I’d like to drop into the station real quick before we head back to my house. Okay?”

  “Fine by me.”

  We head west down East District Street and take a left onto the I-10, heading for Phoenix. We only drive for about five minutes before Darren takes Exit 258. After a few more rights we’re driving into the garage underneath the Tucson Police Headquarters at 270 South Stone Avenue.

  We catch the lift up to the third floor and make our way through the corridors to the Homicide area. Darren briefly introduces me to the other four detectives in his department, including the elusive Bolson.

  “And this is my real home.” He motions to a small open-plan cubicle that he and Stone share. Darren’s desk is tidiness personified and every sheet of paper, every pen, seems to have its own spot.

  “Doesn’t look very lived-in to me,” I tease.

  He shrugs. “Organized on the desk means organized up here.” He taps his head. I hope he’s wrong; otherwise I’m screwed.

  Stone is on the phone, but she looks up and gives us both a smile and a nod. It sounds like she’s still tracking down missing-person reports.

  With the show-and-tell over, Darren looks up to the far corner of the area and a glassed office. Etched on the door I can just make out the name Sergeant Harris, who is Darren’s boss. I didn’t meet Harris on my visit six months ago and I hope he doesn’t mind me hanging around. The FBI badge can open doors, but it can also close them. Some cops don’t like the Bureau on their turf.

  “Let’s go.” Darren makes a beeline for the office and I follow. He knocks once and Harris motions for us to come in. Harris is a big, burly man, with only a few strands of hair that he can still call his own. His face is round and red, and he definitely wouldn’t pass the Bureau’s yearly physical. Darren makes the introductions. Harris is polite, but I immediately get the sense he’s not overjoyed by my presence.

  “On vacation?”

  “That’s right, sir.”

  “Do you usually go to autopsies for fun?”

  I smile. “Not normally, no. Thanks for letting me sit in.”

  He nods but his face is still impassive.

  I look him in the eyes, not challenging him, but trying to make a connection. The truth, or at least part of the truth, often works. “You know what it’s like…when a body like that throws itself at you it’s hard to keep your distance.” We all know that the heart the killer drew on the vic’s chest is a message of some sort. The killer’s talking, and we just have to listen.

  Finally he smiles. “Yeah, I remember.” He moves to the front of his desk and props himself on the corner. It creaks slightly under his weight. “Darren tells me you specialize in serial killers.”

  “That’s right.”

  “Nasty occupation for a lady.”

  His words remind me of something my mother would say, but I’m guessing he’s testing me, baiting me.

  “Nasty occupation for anyone.” I pause. “But rewarding when you get your man.”

  “Yes.” Again the smile, the hint of nostalgic recognition. “Well, it was nice to get a couple of our unsolved murders off the books. For that I thank you.”

  The DC Slasher killed three women in Arizona and all three cold cases are now closed.

  “Anyway,” Harris moves back around his desk, “you’re welcome to sit in on this case.” He shakes his head. “Especially if you’re crazy enough to spend your vacation time on it.”

  “Thanks.”

  “We’re just getting it started for Stone,” Darren says. “That’s all.”

  Harris snorts. “I’ll believe it when I see it, Carter.”

  Back at Darren’s desk, he rolls a spare chair over from the corner and we crowd his computer terminal.

  “VICAP?” I say, assuming it will be our first port of call.

  “You bet.”

  VICAP stands for the Violent Criminal Apprehension Program and sits, alongside my unit, under the umbrella of the National Center for the Analysis of Violent Crime. It was created in the early eighties to investigate serial offences on a nationwide basis and has two main offerings: the VICAP software and twenty VICAP consultants based in Quantico. The software system is an online database of violent crimes. Police can log new and old cases in the system, and can also search the database for any similar crimes. So if you’ve just found a young girl whose body was mutilated in a particular way, you type it into the system and the database will return any matches, from anywhere in the U.S. It’s a great system, the only problem is that not all cops use it, so similar murders might not be in the database.

  The VICAP consultants work both reactively to a department’s request and proactively by continually monitoring cases that are entered by the cops and comparing them to other violent crimes. If any potential matches are found, VICAP will contact the local law-enforcement officers and coordinate an interstate, inter-team analysis.

  Once Darren’s computer is fired up, he launches the VICAP software. He types “heart shape on chest” into VICAP’s search facility, and hits Enter. We wait as the software trawls through the online database.

  After a minute or so the search function returns a “no matches found” screen. This is both good and bad news. On the one hand it probably means that this is the offender’s first homicide—unless the murder wasn’t lo
gged in VICAP—and first-timers are generally easier to catch because they make more mistakes. On the other hand, it also means we’ll only have the evidence at hand, with no other cases to help us analyze the killer and his or her patterns.

  “Let’s log it anyway,” I say. Logging the murder will take an hour or two as we go through the extensive online questionnaire, but it will get the homicide into the nationwide database. Logging it is also the first step to getting a VICAP consultant to look at the case.

  “You sure?” Darren looks at his watch. “It’s nearly six o’clock.”

  I shrug. “May as well get it over and done with.” Besides, as part of the same department, it would look pretty poor if I didn’t encourage the murder to be logged as soon as possible.

  We go through the questionnaire, entering all the details we know so far, including victim information, offender information and crime-scene data. Many fields we have to leave blank, but hopefully in the next few days some of this information will come to light.

  “I’ll call Quantico and get an analyst on it, too.”

  “Great.”

  I look at my watch—just after 8:00 p.m. on Friday. “It’ll have to be for Monday morning.”

  I dial the direct line of the VICAP consultant I’ve worked with the most, Barry Evans. I get his voice mail and leave a message with the basic details. I include the fact that we could be looking for a female or a younger killer. “He’ll look into it Monday morning, as soon as he gets the message.” I’m confident Evans will take action on the phone call quickly.

  “You jumping the queue?”

  I smile. “If you’ve got the connections…”

  “True. Well, let’s see what else we’ve got.” He turns to Stone, who’s on the phone.

  “Yes, okay. Thanks for your help.” Stone hangs up the phone. “My aching ear.” She rubs her right ear. “What an awesome day.”

  “What are you still doing here anyway? Go home, Stone.”

  “Look who’s talking.” Stone raises her eyebrows.

  Darren stands up. “Walking out the door right now. No luck?”

  I stand up, too, and stretch.

  “Nada.” Stone turns off her computer. “Although we now know the guy’s definitely not a U of A student.”

  “Really?” I lean on the partition. “Maybe the doer is.”

  BlackWidow: Any more news?

  AmericanPsycho: No. They’re still running the same stories.

  BlackWidow: So they haven’t IDed him yet?

  AmericanPsycho: Not yet, but they will. He’s got a record, after all.

  BlackWidow: They haven’t mentioned the heart either.

  AmericanPsycho: You know they don’t like to release all the details.

  DialM: True.

  AmericanPsycho: Our first kill has made its mark.

  BlackWidow: You know what they say—it’s never as good as the first time. I mean the very first.

  NeverCaught: My first was definitely special, but I enjoy it more now.

  AmericanPsycho: Sex or murder?

  NeverCaught: Both.

  AmericanPsycho: My first was fantastic. It was the same person.

  BlackWidow: Yes, they’re inextricably linked for me. It’s hard to have sex with someone and then not kill them.

  NeverCaught: I love that moment of realization. When they know they’re gonna die. That look is like a drug. You just want more.

  BlackWidow: Agreed.

  NeverCaught: If it’s a straight kill, they may not realize it until the knife penetrates through their rib cage.

  BlackWidow: That your weapon of choice, Never?

  NeverCaught: Yes. I love knives. What about you, BW?

  BlackWidow: Strangulation.

  NeverCaught: Really? You must be one butch chick.

  BlackWidow: My men are always handcuffed to a bed, and it’s during the act so they just think I’m kinky. Besides, it doesn’t take much strength if you know exactly where to apply pressure—the vagus nerve.

  DialM: The whole process has to be real slow for me. I chain them up and starve them. Can’t wait to get my Ling.

  6

  A woman runs down a corridor, trapped. Someone is close behind her, chasing her, laughing. He catches up to her and grabs her by her long, dark curls. He drags her down the corridor and she screams. They move into a bedroom and her screams become more hysterical.

  A knife comes down on top of her. The screams are soon silenced as multiple stab wounds take their toll. Blood spurts everywhere.

  She’s dead. He’s sitting on top of her, straddling her. He leans back and smiles, his eyes gleaming with frenzied satisfaction. He studies the blood splatters…beautiful.

  I wake up gasping for air. A violent shudder passes through my body as the last part of my dream swirls around in my conscious mind. What disturbs me most is the lingering sensation of the killer’s mind. He thought it was beautiful. Another shudder engulfs me, followed instantly by a wave of nausea. Despite the gore, my mind is still in that strange half-awake, half-asleep place. I give in to the tiredness and remain semiconscious in bed until roused by a faint knocking on my door.

  I wake up more fully, but still feel groggy and disorientated. “Come in.”

  Darren opens the door and greets me with a wide smile. “Morning.” Dressed in blue jeans and a long-sleeved white top, he holds a glass of orange juice in his right hand.

  “Hi.” I look at the bedside clock. It’s 8:00 a.m. “Wow, I can’t believe I slept so late.” That’s two mornings this week. And last night I didn’t resort to a midnight gym excursion.

  “You are on vacation.” He hands me the fresh juice. “Straight orange will have to do—I don’t have any carrots.”

  “I’m impressed,” I say, acknowledging his memory. I gulp down the juice and hand the glass back to him. “Thanks.”

  He nods, lingers for a few seconds and then turns. “There’s a towel on the chair for you.” He motions toward a wooden chair near the door and walks out.

  About twenty minutes later I’m showered and I join Darren at his small kitchen table. While he pours two cups of coffee from his brewer, I get myself a bowl of granola and cover it with milk.

  A couple of mouthfuls into my breakfast I decide to tell him. “I had a dream.”

  He sits down opposite me. “I take it we’re not talking about a stock-standard dream.”

  I shake my head.

  “So that’s two instances.”

  “Yes.” I drop my spoon in the bowl. “And I can’t figure out why. Why all of a sudden?”

  “Was the dream about our John Doe?”

  “No. A woman.” I roll my eyes, frustrated.

  “Well, I did have a theory on the John Doe.” He pours himself a large bowl of Cheerios.

  “Really?” I’m relieved Darren can shed some light on it, because I sure as hell don’t have a clue. “And?”

  He chews quickly and his Adam’s apple bobs with a large gulp. “The cases you’ve done the last six months, you said they’ve all been from Quantico.”

  “Yes.” I say the word slowly, trying to work out where he’s heading.

  “This time it’s not a photo of a crime scene. It is a crime scene. The body yesterday is your first time back at a real-life crime scene.”

  Darren could be on to something. I finish the thought. “So I’m closer to the case.”

  “Exactly. Physically and psychologically.” He scoops up a huge mound of Cheerios and shovels them in.

  “It’s a good theory, a great theory…except it doesn’t explain the dream last night, unless we’re talking about the same killer. But our first victim was male and strangled and the subject of my dream was a woman who was stabbed to death. Plus, it’s also different from the way the visions were triggered last time.” I voice the discrepancies.

  “Oh.” Darren seems somewhat disappointed. “So what do you think triggered your psychic abilities six months ago?”

  “People I cared about were i
n danger. The case was personal, even though I didn’t realize that at the time.”

  “And that was your first-ever experience?”

  We’re starting to get onto shaky ground, painful ground, and I don’t know if I’m ready to go there with Darren, not yet at least.

  “Yes,” I lie.

  “So you think you’re in danger now? Or someone you care about is?”

  I bite my lip. God I hope not. “I dunno.”

  We finish our cereal in relative silence, both overwhelmed by the thought of the killer being close again.

  I drain my coffee.

  “More?” Darren offers.

  “Have we got time?”

  “All the time in the world. We’ll finish up breakfast, drop into the station and then do something fun.” He pours out two half cups, finishing the jug. “So tell me about the dream.”

  I try to recollect the images. “A woman was killed.”

  “And you’re sure it wasn’t a normal nightmare?”

  “When I have one of these visions or dreams it feels different, more real. Plus I always have this overwhelming sense of impending doom afterward.”

  He nods. “What else do you remember?”

  I bite my lip again, trying to force the memories into my consciousness. “I remember a woman. She was stabbed. And I remember the feeling of…” I search for the word “…satisfaction that the killer felt during the act.”

  “Anything else?”

  “His eyes. I remember his eyes.”

  “That’s something. That’s good.”

  “Know offhand what percentage of the population has dark brown eyes?” I slam back into the chair and shake my head. It was like this with the Slasher case—hints of information but not enough to really make a difference. Still, this time I have a clear image of the girl. Maybe I can find her before it’s too late. Maybe I can save her.

  “You’ll get better at it. Try not to get frustrated. And remember what you said to me at the hospital in DC.”

  “I know, I know.”

  He reminds me anyway. “That your gift could help others.”