Private Sector (22 page)

“Go on.”

“The DNA’s different.”

“Different? . . . explain
different.
”

“Hey, I know. Weird.” He added, “The sperm on Captain Morrow don’t match the sperm on Cuthburt. And there’s sperm on Fiorio’s leg, too. We’ll know by tomorrow whether it matches the sperm on yer sister or Cuthburt. But right now, we’re assuming we got a pair of idiots.”

Janet pondered this a moment, then said, “That doesn’t make sense, Danny. The profiles for serial sex killers point to loners and social misfits. They regard these events as very intimate.”

“I read the trade manuals. But it is what is.”

She asked, “Any pubic hair at either scene?”

“Only the victim’s.”

She was shaking her head. “That doesn’t make sense either.”

“Tell me about it.”

I suggested, “Unless the killers, you know, shave.”

Spinelli gave me a startled look. “Yeah. We hadn’t thought of that, you know, guys shaving down there. I mean, what kind of guy. . . ?”

I walked around a moment, trying to think about this newest development. I said to both of them, “So the killer knew Fiorio had this big event last night, like maybe it was publicized ahead of time?” Spinelli confirmed this with a nod, so I continued, “He probably tracked Fiorio for a few days and learned that she used a limo service. He waited outside her studio until the limo pulled up.”

Spinelli pointed at a spot between his eyes and informed us, “Martinez got there about thirty minutes ahead of schedule, called his dispatcher, and waited a block or two from the studio. Our guess is the killer walked right up to the car window, like he needed directions or a light, and Martinez, not knowing any better, opened it. Probably the gun was silenced. The powder burns on Martinez’s forehead indicate it was fired about three inches away. The barrel was pointed downward, like Martinez was looking up, and the killer wanted the bullet to go straight down the throat and into his chest cavity, but not exit, you know, so it didn’t leave a big mess Fiorio might notice when she got in. He even slapped a piece of electric tape over the hole, to keep blood from seeping out.”

“The type of pistol?”

“From the hole under the tape, we’re estimating a forty-five.”

“At point-blank range, directed straight down?”

“Right.”

“Expert technique and expert choice of weapon. The slow velocity and large caliber assures catastrophic damage. Probably used a soft bullet, so it didn’t ricochet off any bones, exit his body, and create a big mess.” He nodded as I added, “He probably held the door as she got in the car.” I asked, “Time of death, around nine, right?”

“Yeah.”

“And we saw what they did during their two hours together.”

Janet considered this, then suggested, “He apparently likes to get to know his victim. Or he likes his victim to get to know him.”

Spinelli said, “Different things.”

“Yes, they are. . . and I’d guess the latter,” Janet replied. “That he ejaculates afterward indicates . . . what?” She considered her own question, then said, “Cuthburt and Fiorio were bound and tortured. God knows what he intended for Lisa, probably some variation of that treatment. He breaks their necks because it’s manual, personal . . . the final domination. The climax must come right after he kills them. He never got to torture Lisa, and he still ejaculated.”

“You keep saying he,” Spinelli noted. “You doubt there’s two of them?”

“I definitely do doubt it.”

“Explain the DNA difference.”

“I can’t. But the whole act fits the silhouette and pattern of a killer who operates alone. The domination, time spent with the victim, the sexual release afterward, everything.”

He said, “Maybe two assholes formed some kind of bond. They coordinate, but act separately.”

She was shaking her head. “What are the odds of two of these maniacs getting together?”

He said, “Well, the FBI’s got a coupla their profilers studying this thing. We’ll have an assessment from the pros tonight.”

I said to Spinelli, “Anything else?”

He regarded us closely, apparently concluded we were lost causes, yet could not resist one more shot. He said, “Yeah. If either one of you’s holdin’ back on me, I swear I’ll fry your balls.”

I nodded, then escorted Janet back to my car. Oddly enough, my respect for Spinelli was growing. Respect; not affection. Cops are trained to analyze the facts and reach conclusions. But the really good ones have a nose for the invisible and a sort of intuition about people, and Spinelli was right—Janet was withholding something.

But not only from him. And I’d had enough.

CHAPTER TWENTY

H
e fingered the photograph of Anne Elizabeth Carrol even as he maintained a studious ear on the television coverage of Carolyn Fiorio’s gruesome murder.

The coverage was pleasingly pervasive: constant chatter on the news channels;a jarring succession of those pesky special reports everywhere else. Cold shock was the general mood. Every station made note of the awful irony that mere minutes before her appalling death Fiorio had taken a bold stand against the death penalty. Two stations promised instantaneous documentaries that night on her life and many impressive accomplishments. The one at 9:00 P.M. sounded more intriguing and he made a mental note to catch it. He had been using the remote to switch back and forth. His thumb eventually got so damned tired that he settled on CNN for its fifteen-minute updates.

The FBI Director had looked huffy and pink as he had galloped through the crime scene, preening for the cameras and struggling to create the impression that he and his Feds would nip this nasty thing in the bud.

Pictures of that long black limo had been shown from every conceivable angle and direction. Knowing the cargo made it appear gloomy and funereal. The local limo companies were about to encounter a cruel drop in business, he was willing to bet. The news helicopters circled overhead, mechanical vultures that showed shot after shot of cops milling around, jotting notes, taking foot imprints, stuffing their heads inside the limo, trying futilely not to look as generally befuddled as he was confident they were.

It didn’t help matters any when the FBI rolled out that smooth-tongued devil to spin the story. Hilarious really, watching him wriggle and squirm. He looked like he’d been kicked in the ribs when the reporters from NBC and CBS assaulted him with insights they just weren’t supposed to know. The FBI spokesman had finally seen it was a lost cause and fled from their incessant cameras and piercing voices.

The journalists were infuriated and emotional. Fiorio was one of their own and had died cruelly. A journalist gets it and the damned apocalypse has arrived. The bunch of phonies. More than a few were calling their agents and begging for a chance to fill her spot, dreaming of that six-million contract. Damned shame what happened to poor old Carolyn Fiorio, but hey, the world must go on.

The face he was looking for popped onto the screen and he jerked the volume back up. Jerry Rosen, CNN’s man on the spot, was peering into the camera, frowning grimly, and saying, “. . . and the police have only now admitted the connection between the three murders. Sources have told us that Carolyn Fiorio was brutally tortured and sexually assaulted before the killer broke her neck. The first victim, Lisa Morrow, apparently escaped the torture, perhaps because the killer feared detection. But the second victim, Miss Julia Cuthburt, was also tortured and sexually assaulted.”

Rosen nodded as the anchorman began asking him questions. “Yes, Harvey,” he responded, “the killer wrote numbers on their hands. One, two, three, and beside each number a slash and the numeral ten.”

The anchorman said, “That sounds ominous, Jerry. Are there any hypotheses about what those numbers might mean?”

“Well, there are theories that he intends to kill ten young women and he’s. . . well, he’s checking them off as he goes along. That could be wrong, however. The FBI spokesman cautioned us not to jump to conclusions. He claimed the numbers could be some kind of code or talisman, perhaps biblical passages, or dates of some sort.”

“Really . . . ?” the anchorman asked.

“Well, here’s the odd thing, Harvey. A high-level source inside the FBI investigating team has informed us that, three years ago, a series of gruesome murders occurred in Los Angeles. They were remarkably similar to what we’ve seen here. That killer also numbered his victims one of five, and so forth.”

“And was he caught?” the anchorman asked, deliberately leading his reporter.

“Never, Harvey.” Rosen looked sad. “He killed five young women and eluded the FBI. Until now it was hoped that he had died, or simply decided he’d had enough. It now looks possible that he simply hibernated.” He paused and stared melodramatically into the camera. “It now looks as if he’s visiting Washington.”

CNN shifted to the next story, and he pushed the mute button. Mistakes from this moment on would be perilous. The FBI weren’t to be underestimated. They were the A-team of law enforcement for good reason.

He briefly reviewed his progress and was satisfied. The killings were coming at them fast and hard. Before the cops could even finish collecting and analyzing the evidence from one murder, they were inundated with a crop of fresh clues from the next. They were human. Each new murder drew their focus away from the earlier ones. They were conditioned to look for the similarities and peculiarities, to fit everything inside a neat pattern, to try to understand the twisted mind that manufactured them, and in the process were led even further away from the real connections.

He returned to Anne Carrol’s photo and was struck again by how wildly out of proportion her nose was with her other features. It was huge and misshapen, had obviously been injured, the dominant feature of a face that was narrow and thin. That she’d never gotten it fixed mystified him. His most recent nose job had cost a mere three grand, done by a guy widely regarded as one of the best. For a thousand less she could have that bone shaved, those nostrils narrowed, and the woman would’ve spun necks. Lovely blond hair. Striking blue eyes. Lips a bit too thin and hard for his tastes, but she could’ve verged on loveliness.

She posed a considerable challenge, yet one he regarded as manageable. A solid six—the only warning flags were her background in law enforcement, thin as it might be, and her lesbianism. Subtract those factors and a full point would’ve been shaved off easily. Her lesbianism most likely accounted for her harebrained refusal to fix that damned nose, it suddenly struck him. He hated to generalize, but all those dykes seemed to feel they had a pass from the ordinary burdens of being female.

He had never done a lesbo before. This could prove knotty. Understanding his victims was his signature flair, the key to his success, he was convinced.

The thick textbook he’d hurried through the night before explained that women of her predilection tended to slip into two categories—the dominator, a male-like figure, and passive, doe-like types. He distrusted stereotypes of any form, though the textbook had been written by an expert in the field and deserved consideration.

Anne Carrol had been a soccer star in both high school and college, a bruising fullback to be precise. She drove a black cherry Jeep Wrangler, customized with silver mudflaps, no hardtop, and brawny, oversized tires. She climbed mountains for a hobby, having flown to Tibet the winter before for a two-week course on high-altitude Himalayan techniques. High pants, flannel shirts, and Sears work boots were her ordinary attire away from the office. She was a regular at the local health club, where she pumped some serious iron. He had stood in a corner, watched her bench 150 pounds, and was frankly astonished that a woman with her bony, birdlike build could pull it off.

She did not flaunt her lifestyle;nor did she make the slightest attempt to camouflage or conceal it. Two months before she had split up with a live-in girlfriend and moved on her own into a tiny efficiency in Crystal City, Virginia. She did not drink, and had stopped using drugs when she left law school and took a government job.

She had obtained a business degree before that, was analytical by inclination—in fact, was regarded as something of a prodigy at the Securities and Exchange Commission where she labored fourteen hours a day in its six-story headquarters. She was a registered Democrat, gave money to liberal causes, and corporate fraud was her passion and specialty. Unfortunately for her, she was also impatient, pushy, and sarcastic, the type who could and often did rub people the wrong way. The SEC kept her miles away from litigation. After an hour with her, juries would swoon for the defense, so her bosses wisely relegated her to the backroom, reviewing stock transactions and annual reports, picking and developing targets for the big boys upstairs.

He tossed down the photo and stared out the window into the courtyard of the Executive Suites. His room was in fact a suite, composed of a living room, an efficiency-style kitchen, and an expansive bedroom. The kitchen was a necessity, an enclave to hole up in complete privacy when he wasn’t in action. The less traces he left the better. He paid cash for his groceries and toted them up to the room. All three of his rental cars had been picked up out of town and driven in. His last plane ticket showed him flying out of Washington to Philadelphia, where he picked up the last rental car and drove back. An associate was, in fact, at that moment using his real charge card and ID to spread a trail of evidence across northern New Jersey and New York City. Electronically, there would be no trace he’d ever been in or around Washington, D. C.

Pictures and reports and observation sheets detailing the habits of his victims cluttered the bedroom walls. Not much longer—the walls would soon be bare and every last piece of evidence would be incinerated. He would progress through each and every room with bottles of Pine-Sol and Windex, and scrub away every last fingerprint and fragment of evidence. He had rented the suite for the entire month and planned to be gone a week early.