Cross Cut (7 page)

When I arrive at the long stay parking lot I’m listening to Martika’s ‘Water.’ I wait for the song to finish and grab my things and leave my handgun, the P230, in the glove box, and then rush to the airport, barely arriving in time for check-in. My flight was at noon and would last up to nine hours, but feel almost double that, especially with the change over at Dallas.

When I touched down at Richmond it was 11PM and I had had enough. It was too late to get the hire car so I opted for a scotch at the hotel bar. Shortly after I fell onto the bed in my room and didn’t rise till morning.

10AM, Wednesday, I sat in a small office in the Army Crime Records Division waiting for someone. I’d no idea whom. I spent two hours at the CID headquarters playing pass the message along to get absolutely nowhere. Just minutes before being escorted off the premises, they changed their minds and sent me to this smaller building, where cardboard boxes and folders are left to gather dust.

I amused myself for a while by inspecting the wall to my left, covered with various rules and regulations that had words even Ryder would struggle to describe, when a large, stocky man wearing some form of army uniform entered the room. He took off his cap and greeted me, and all I could do was look at his bushy mustache.

“Ah, a private detective. What a novelty. Colonel Smith at your disposal.” He sat and signaled me to do likewise.

“Adrian York, assistant to Kendra Ryder.”

“Yes. The name does mean something to me. Largely because I’ve been reviewing the file you wish to see.”

“Pardon my asking, but, why is a colonel like yourself doing this?”

“Oh, I’m not with the CID, of course. I happened to eavesdrop on your request that came in yesterday at the head office and I was intrigued. The incident back then caused a mess that the army was lucky to save face with. So when someone like you comes along, asking for a file very few people should know about, people get twitchy. I convinced them to give you a chance.”

“You say a few people—I take it that whatever happened was largely covered over?”

“Well, that would be one way to describe it.” He scratched his nose and changed to an inquiring tone. “What is it you’re after here?”

“Well—” I took a deep breath. “We’re not here to dig up the past. We’re looking into something in the present—the Cross Cutter killings in California, and we think there might be an angle related to those murders twelve years ago.

The colonel gave it some thought, and then changed his outlook and laughed at me, respectfully. “Oh, come now, really? What possible link could there be?”

“Beats me. I’m going on what my boss says. Apparently, the method is the same.”

“I won’t argue that, but it’s just coincidence.”

“My boss says coincidences are always to be regarded as dangerous. I may as well get to the obvious question—Lee Lynch—he hasn’t escaped and started killing again, has he?”

“Good God.” He laughed again. “No chance of that.”

“Is there any chance I could see him?” I asked.

“Absolutely not.”

I stared at him for a while and he just smiled. He twisted his mustache once and shook his head. “You have me wrong, I feel. The reason you can’t see Lee Lynch is because he’s dead.”

“Dead?” I said, my shoulders picking up.

“Yup. Four years ago, at Leavenworth in Kansas. According to his records, he was unstable, never talked to anyone, and had to be confined constantly in a supermax environment. He was fighting a death row sentence for years, but that’s not what killed him.”

I looked at him, bemused at why he was reading from the file. “You need the file to remember?”

“Ha.” He twisted his mustache again. “I had little to do with the event back then, or Lee Lynch’s incarceration.”

“I don’t want to be rude or anything, but I could do with talking to someone who knows more than the file.”

“Good luck with that,” he said, smiling. “The people you want either aren’t here anymore or
aren’t here anymore
, if you get my meaning. The case back then was handled so discreetly, that there are only a handful of people that could possibly help you. And you won’t find them. Hell, I won’t find them.”

“Aren’t they on the file?” I asked.

“You kidding? This thing is redacted to high hell. Damn good thing too. Most of the names aren’t even visible.”

“I suppose it’s wishful thinking that there’s a non-redacted file?”

He laughed. “If there was, it would have been burnt in a furnace and then shipped to the moon.”

“Our tax dollars at work, huh.”

He laughed again. He continued to glance at the file while still eying me.

“Anyway,” he continued, “Lee Lynch died four years ago in an attempted escape. He somehow managed to breach the first perimeter on the outside wing. He got as far as the secondary gate, when a guard from an adjacent tower shot him dead. And that’s it. Sorry, but your civilian has nothing to do with this.”

“He just shot him dead—like that?”

He nodded. “I suppose so. There was an inquiry, of course, but the guard claimed that he was going for a leg shot or something. It was a few hundred feet away, so nobody saw fit to argue. He left soon after, anyway.”

I groaned at this point. It was a simple fact that didn’t warrant the two thousand mile flight to Virginia. It was a breeze to think Ryder was expecting something more substantial. Hoping for me to find this Lee Lynch and figure out if there was any way his influence had reached California. Fat chance.

“You say he talked to no one, no one at all? None of the other prisoners, guards, imaginary friends?” I asked.

“Well, this is a file, not a memoir. But as I said, it mentions he was in constant solitary confinement. His psych evaluation does mention an unsociable and anxious attitude. Whoever did the report managed minimal conversation and that was all. He became irritated and frenzied easily, especially in small spaces. Perhaps being in prison slowly drove him out of his mind, that’s why he decided to break free.”

I decided to note some of this down on a notepad. I’m quite good at reporting straight out facts, but it never hurt to be thorough.

The colonel continued, “So, if you’re thinking someone is continuing a legacy, of sorts, I’d forget it. He had no meaningful correspondence for such a thing. His psychiatric report says as much.”

I couldn’t help but nod. “I thought as much. So, no one in the outside world knew about the killings in Afghanistan, beside the obvious?”

“Who knows. Guess it depends who people talk to. The press over here never got wind of it and it was contained, but it would be naive to think the locals at the time never figured out what was going on. Either way, I doubt a killer in the making is suddenly going to take on another’s MO. I’m no psychologist, but I’m sure it doesn’t work like that.”

“It’s called a copycat,” I said.

“Nah.” He sniffled. “Copycats copy famous killers for the fame and prestige. To glorify and give tribute. Why tribute something no one in the real world knows about?”

He made a good point and I had to agree. Cover bands on open mic night never play songs of the unknown. I decided it was hopeless and closed my notepad.

“Well, thanks for your time,” I said. “Miss Ryder thanks you, albeit from the other side of the country.”

The colonel nodded sluggishly and screwed his eyes a little as he thumbed up and down the file. “You say—Kendra Ryder apprehended Lee Lynch?” he said, knowingly. He had the same tone as my high school science teacher, who always asked questions with deeper interest. As if the answer was only a small part of understanding something.

“So she says,” I said as I stood.

“Hmm.” He twisted his mustache again. “Not what it says in the file. The names are carefully blacked out in the court reports. However, they remain somewhat intact for the incident report. It says the arresting agent was a Dale Huntington.”

He showed me the file and tapped his finger on the appropriate line. He was right. But that didn’t necessarily mean the file was. I saw no real reason why Ryder would lie about such a thing. Her name only appeared at the beginning of the file, which listed the intelligence that led to the arrest. I could only assume that someone else had taken the glory, and Ryder let it slide. She always looks back negatively at her career. Perhaps this was why.

The colonel rose from his chair and put his cap back on.

“I don’t suppose I can make a copy of that file?” I asked.

“I don’t think so,” he said. He placed the file on the desk. “I’ll be seeing you. I’ll send someone down to show you the way out in, oh, let’s say, two minutes.” He tipped his cap and winked and then left the room.

Within those two minutes, I managed to snap the majority of the pages with my cell phone. I had no idea what for, but I never trusted other people’s interpretation of what’s useful, and neither did Ryder. It would be something to read on the flight home anyway.

9

I was on the 5PM flight home, leaving an overcast Richmond airport as the plane ascended. There was little else to cover and I didn’t want to wait around in Virginia another night. I’d originally booked the flight for Thursday morning, but shelled out an extra couple of hundred for the privilege of being in my own bed. The expenses were on our client anyway, so the hell with it.

There was work to be done, and having phoned Ryder earlier, I was aware that she was making headway on the Cross Cutter by way of the first seven murders. No doubt the FBI had caved in to her request. They usually do. I gave her the short version of my trip and simply told her Lee Lynch had kicked the bucket four years ago, and that any link to him was either coincidence, or stretched beyond reason.

The more I thought about it, though, I was straining towards the latter, and not just because I apparently like the complex. My mind often U-turns when I’ve had a chance to consider things. I recalled Ryder’s earlier words, that the method of killing was
hardly unique.
I could understand what she meant by it not
standing to attention,
but it sounded like an excuse now. If you had witnessed something like that firsthand, no matter how long ago, there is no way you wouldn’t immediately suspect a link. Your mind would surely be on how great the link was.

Another point running through my head was the gap. Lee Lynch was caught twelve years ago, in 2001. Fast forward nine years, and the first reported victim in California appears in 2010. If there was a link, why nine years?

On the second leg of the journey, I gave consideration to the file I copied back at Quantico, which was a tedious process, having to zoom in and out on my cell phone so I could read the text. It would have been easier to wait and print it out at the office, but I had nothing better to do.

The colonel wasn’t kidding, it made for a tough read with all the black lines running through it. The first few pages were essentially a prelude to the capture and arrest of Lee Lynch. Ryder’s name was mentioned, as a junior agent who provided intelligence that led to an unused building in Jalalabad, south of the main bridge. Further information seemed lacking, and was probably tied to an individual in-depth report, which I didn’t have time to photograph within my two minutes.

There were a couple of photographs of the early victims. One showed the incisions down and across the body, which was laid out on a table inside a rustic basement. All the victims had their arms laid out beside their bodies in a curious position, as if they had webbed out their hands on the table. Various angles of the photographs showed the grim and squalid environments, possessing all manner of stains, dirt and, of course, blood. The places and locations were all in different parts of Jalalabad, but in similarly dark and unused buildings.

According to the postmortem reports, a sharp blade was used from the top of the sternum, but didn’t penetrate deeply until reaching the xiphoid process (bottom of the sternum). From then, the cut was deep, straight down. Various organs were either damaged or severed entirely. The horizontal cuts were directly below the rib cage and executed in two separate motions from either side. This made sense when you consider the killer couldn’t continue one straight cut from left to right, when there had already been a vertical cut. Not without making a jagged transfer across it.

There were other pictures, but they added nothing relevant. I’m not fond of gore, and see no reason to harp on about it. The records were also incomplete. I’d only managed to get bits and pieces of the latter victims within my two minutes.

I spent the rest of the time skimming for a name. Any name that could be chased down. Someone who knew Lee Lynch, or could shed light on the events back in 2001. One name comes straight to mind, of course—Kendra Ryder. I don’t say she keeps things from me, but she inevitably does. Although, I saw no sinister reason for her neglecting to tell me about Lee Lynch.

The other name was Dale Huntington, the arresting agent. His name appears frequently toward the end of the file. A long shot, seen as he probably knew as much as Ryder. But the fact he usurped Ryder’s glory suggested he may have known something worthwhile.

Another name, which could be another long shot, was the guard that shot Lee Lynch. His name was Zeus Higgings. Naturally, when I say long shot, I don’t mean in terms of finding him. I'd wager there aren’t many Zeus Higgings’ in the global directory. But in terms of gaining information, it was a long shot. As long as the one that killed Lee Lynch anyway.