A Darkness More Than Night (6 page)
The deputy medical examiner who conducted the autopsy noted that interior damage to the neck was minimal. Neither the hyoid bone nor the thyroid cartilage was broken. This aspect, coupled with multiple ligature furrows on the skin, led the examiner to conclude that Gunn suffocated slowly while desperately struggling to keep his feet behind his torso so that the wire noose was not pulled tight around his neck. The autopsy summation suggested that the victim could have struggled in this position for as long as two hours.
McCaleb thought about this and wondered if the killer had been there in the apartment the whole time, watching the dying man struggle. Or had he set the ligature and left before his victim was dead, possibly to set some kind of alibi scheme into motion — perhaps appearing at a New Year’s Eve party so that there would be multiple witnesses able to account for him at the time of the victim’s death.
He then remembered the bucket and decided that the killer had stayed. The covering of the victim’s face was a frequent occurrence in sexually motivated and rage killings, the attacker covering his victim’s face as a means of dehumanizing the victim and avoiding eye contact. McCaleb had worked dozens of cases where he had noted this phenomenon, women who had been raped and murdered with nightgowns or pillowcases covering their faces, children with their heads wrapped in towels. He could write a list of examples that would fill the entire notebook. Instead he wrote one line on the page under Bosch’s name.
UNSUB was there the whole time. He watched.
The unknown subject, McCaleb thought. So we meet again.
• • •
Before moving on, McCaleb looked through the autopsy report for two other pieces of information. First was the head wound. He found a description of the wound in the examiner’s comments. The perimortem laceration was circular and superficial. Its damage was minimal and it was possibly a defensive wound.
McCaleb dismissed the possibility of it being a defensive wound. The only blood on the rug at the crime scene was that spilled from the bucket after it was placed over the victim’s head. Plus, the flow of blood from the wound at the point of the crown was forward and over the victim’s face. This indicated the head was bowed forward. McCaleb took all of this to mean that Gunn was already bound and on the floor when the blow had been struck to his head and then the bucket placed over it. His instinct told him this might have been a blow delivered with the intention of hurrying the victim’s demise; an impact to the head that would weaken the victim and shorten his struggle against the ligature.
He wrote these thoughts down in the notebook and then went back into the autopsy report. He located the findings on the examination of the anus and penis. Swabs indicated no sexual activity had occurred in the time prior to death. McCaleb wrote down
No Sex
in the notebook. Beneath this he wrote the word
Rage
and circled it.
No Sex
in the notebook. Beneath this he wrote the word
Rage
and circled it.
McCaleb realized that many, if not all, of the suspicions and conclusions he was coming up with had probably already been reached by Jaye Winston. But this had always been his routine in analyzing murder scenes. He made his own judgments first, then looked to see how they stacked up next to the primary investigator’s conclusions afterward.
After the autopsy he went to the evidence analysis reports. He first looked at the recovered evidence list and noticed that the plastic owl he had seen on the videotape had not been bagged and tagged. He felt sure that it should have been and made a note of it. Also missing from the list was any mention of a weapon recovery. It appeared that whatever had been used to open up the wound on Gunn’s scalp had been taken away from the scene by the killer. McCaleb made a note of this as well because it was another piece of information supportive of a profile of the killer as organized, thorough and cautious.
The report on the analysis of the tape used to gag the victim was folded into a separate envelope that McCaleb found in one of the binder’s pockets. In addition to a computer printout and an addendum there were several photographs that showed the full length of the tape after it had been cut and peeled away from the victim’s face and head. The first set of photos documented the tape front and back as it was found, with a significant amount of coagulated blood obscuring the message written on it. The next set of photos showed the tape front and back after the blood had been removed with a solution of soapy water. McCaleb stared at the message for a long moment even though he knew he would never be able to decipher it on his own.
Cave Cave Dus Videt
He finally put the photos aside and picked up the accompanying reports. The tape was found to be clear of fingerprints but several hairs and microscopic fibers were collected from the underside adhesive. The hair was determined to have belonged to the victim. The fibers were held pending further orders for analysis. McCaleb knew this meant there was a time and cost constraint. The fibers would not be analyzed until the investigation reached a point where there were fibers from a suspect’s possessions that also could be analyzed and compared. Otherwise, the costly and time-consuming analysis of the collected fibers would be for nothing. McCaleb had seen this sort of investigative prioritizing before. It was a routine in local law enforcement not to take expensive steps until necessary. But he was a bit surprised that it had not been deemed necessary in this case. He concluded that Gunn’s background as a one-time murder suspect might have dropped him into a lower class of victim, one for which the extra step is not taken. Maybe, McCaleb thought, this was why Jaye Winston had come to him. She hadn’t said anything about paying him for his time — not that he could accept a monetary payment anyway.
He moved on to an addendum report that had been filed by Winston. She had taken a photograph of the tape and the message to a linguistics professor at UCLA who had identified the words as Latin. She was then referred to a retired Catholic priest who lived in the rectory at St. Catherine’s in Hollywood and had taught Latin at the church’s school for two decades until it was dropped from the curriculum in the early seventies. He easily translated the message for Winston.
As McCaleb read the translation he felt the feathery run of adrenaline rise up his spine to his neck. His skin tightened and he felt a sensation that came close to lightheadedness.
Cave Cave Dus Videt
Cave Cave D(omin)us Videt
Beware Beware God Sees
“Holy shit,” McCaleb said quietly to himself.
It was not said as an exclamation. Rather, it was the phrase he and fellow bureau profilers had used to informally classify cases in which religious overtures were part of the evidence. When God was discovered to be part of the probable motivation for a crime, it became a “holy shit” case when spoken of in casual conversation. It also changed things significantly, for God’s work was never done. When a killer was out there using His name as part of the imprint of a crime, it often meant there would be more crimes. It was said in the bureau profiling offices that God’s killers never stopped of their own volition. They had to be stopped. McCaleb now understood Jaye Winston’s apprehension about letting this case gather dust. If Edward Gunn was the first known victim, then somebody else was likely in the sights of the killer right now.
McCaleb scribbled down a translation of the killer’s message and some other thoughts. He wrote
Victim Acquisition
and underlined it twice.
Victim Acquisition
and underlined it twice.
He looked back at Winston’s report and noticed that at the bottom of the page containing the translation there was a paragraph marked with an asterisk.
*Father Ryan stated that the word “Dus” as seen on the duct tape was a short form of “Deus” or “Dominus” primarily found in medieval Bibles as well as church carvings and other artwork.
McCaleb leaned back in his chair and drank from the water bottle. He found this final paragraph the most interesting of the whole package. The information it contained could be a means by which the killer might be isolated in a small group and then found. Initially the pool of potential suspects was huge — it would essentially include anyone who had had access to Edward Gunn on New Year’s Eve. But the information from Father Ryan narrowed it significantly to those who had knowledge of medieval Latin, or someone who had gotten the word
Dus
and possibly the whole message from something he had seen.
Dus
and possibly the whole message from something he had seen.
Perhaps something in a church.
5
McCaleb was too jazzed by what he had read and seen to think about sleep. It was four-thirty and he knew he would complete this night awake and in the office. It was probably too early in Quantico, Virginia, for anyone to be in the Behavioral Sciences Unit but he decided to make the call anyway. He went up to the salon, got the cell phone out of the charger and punched in the number from memory. When the general operator answered he asked to be transferred to Special Agent Brasilia Doran’s desk. There were a lot of people he could have asked for but he had decided on Doran because they had worked well together — and often from long distances — when he had been in the bureau. Doran also specialized in icon identification and symbology.
The call was picked up by a machine and while listening to Doran’s outgoing message McCaleb quickly tried to decide whether to leave a message or just call back. Initially, he thought it would be better to hang up and try to catch Doran live later because a personal call is much more difficult to deflect than a taped message. But then he decided to put faith in their former camaraderie, even if he had been out of the bureau for nearly five years.
“Brass, it’s Terry McCaleb. Long time no see. Uh, listen, I’m calling because I need a favor. Could you call me back as soon as you get a moment? I’d really appreciate it.”
He gave the number for his cell phone, thanked her and hung up. He could take the phone with him back to the house and wait for the call there but that would mean that Graciela might overhear the conversation with Doran and he didn’t want that. He went back down to the forward bunk and started through the murder book documents again. He checked every page again for something that stood out in its inclusion or exclusion. He took a few more notes and made a list of things he still needed to do and know before drawing up a profile. But primarily he was just waiting for Doran. She finally returned his call at five-thirty.
“Long time is right,” she said by way of greeting.
“Too long. How y’doin’, Brass?”
“Can’t complain because nobody listens.”
“I heard you guys are looking for the Drano over there.”
“You’re right about that. We are clogged and flogged. You know last year we sent half the staff to Kosovo to help in the war crimes investigations. On six-week rotations. That just killed us. We are still so far behind it’s getting critical.”
McCaleb wondered if she was giving him the woe-is-me pitch so he might not ask the favor he had mentioned on the message. He decided to go ahead with it anyway.
“Well, then you aren’t going to like hearing from me,” he said.
“Oh boy, I’m shaking in my boots. What do you need, Terry?”
“I’m doing a favor for a friend out here. Sheriff’s homicide squad. Taking a look at a homicide and —”
“Did he already run it through here?”
“It’s a she. And, yeah, she ran it on the VICAP box and got blanked. That’s all. She got the word on how backed up you guys are on profiling and came to me instead. I sort of owe her one so I said I’d take a look.”
“And now you want to cut in line, right?”
McCaleb smiled and hoped she was smiling as well on the other end of the line.
“Sort of. But I think it’s a quickie. It’s just one thing I want.”
“Then out with it. What?”
“I need an iconography baseline. I’m following a hunch on something.”
“Okay. Doesn’t sound too involving. What’s the symbol?”
“An owl.”
“An owl? Just an owl?”
“More specifically, a plastic owl. But an owl just the same. I want to know if it’s turned up before and what it means.”
“Well, I remember the owl on the bag of potato chips. What’s that brand?”
“Wise. I remember. It’s an East Coast brand.”
“Well, there you go. The owl is smart. He is wise.”
“Brass, I was hoping for something a little more —”
“I know, I know. Tell you what, I’ll see what I can find. The thing to remember is, symbols change. What means one thing at one time might mean something completely different at another time. You just looking for contemporary uses and examples?”
McCaleb thought for a moment about the message on the duct tape.
“Can you throw in the medieval time period?”
“Sounds like you got a weird one — but ain’t they all. Let me guess, a holy shit case?”
“Could be. How’d you know that?”
“Oh, all that medieval Inquisition and church stuff. Seen it before. I’ve got your number. I’ll try to get back today.”
McCaleb thought about asking her to run an analysis of the message from the duct tape but decided not to pile it on. Besides, the message must have been included on the computer run Jaye Winston completed. He thanked her and was about to disconnect when she asked about his health and he told her he was fine.
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