Sarah Armstrong - 01 - Singularity (21 page)

“Mr. Ballard…” the judge growled.

“Along with our belief that this is too drastic a measure, your honor, is our growing concern for the public safety. Our readers, in fact all Texans, have a right to be forewarned when a danger exists. The citizens of Texas desire and have a right to be alerted, to be given notice to take precautions, if it is true that a dangerous murderer roams unimpeded through our fair state, killing innocent citizens like Ms. Knowles and Mr. Lucas.”

If the circumstances had been different, and I hadn’t been standing before him awaiting judgment, I might have enjoyed watching as the judge’s anger seeped into the courtroom, a crimson flush crawling up his fleshy neck from the cusp of his unbuttoned white shirt collar where it peeked out from under his black robe. But the judge let his irritation smolder and calmly addressed Mr. Jack Ballard, of the Houston firm of Quincy and Ballard, in an unemotional and precise
voice, his teeth gritted in a determined smile. “Sir, I’m sure that you’re a good attorney and that the
Galveston County Daily News
is acting in good faith by bringing you before me today. I’m certain that my friends at the newspaper, who have endorsed me every time I’ve run for office since first winning this seat in 1984, would not waste this court’s precious time simply in an effort to gain access to a cockeyed theory about a serial killer that’s only of use as material for tomorrow’s sensational headline, now would they?”

“Of course they wouldn’t, Judge,” said Ballard, studiously scoffing. “The
Daily News
asked me to come here today to speak to you only out of concern for the safety of our citizens, the voters who elected you.

“I’m sure you are here for only the reasons you’ve stated,” said the judge, his smile edging downward. “And I can assure you that I am going to take your concerns under consideration as I monitor this case.”

“Thank you, your honor,” the attorney said. “I appreciate that, but—”

“Mr. Ballard, I promise you personally, and I promise all my fellow citizens, that should anything, and I mean anything, come across my desk that I believe is information necessary to ensure the safety of the good people of Texas, I will not only rescind this order but I will call the editor myself to get out the word on this phantom serial killer you keep alluding to. Is that sufficient for you, Mr. Ballard?” With that, Judge McLamore stared down at the attorney from his bench, his expression that of a school principal with a repeated truant before him.

Not to be denied, the attorney objected, “But, Judge, we believe time is of the—”

“I know what you believe, Mr. Ballard. You’ve already told me,” the judge interrupted. “Now, may I proceed with this hearing?”

“Yes, Judge,” the attorney said, resigned. “But I’d like our objection
to your gag order formally recorded in the record, so we may appeal your decision to a higher court.”

Judge McLamore turned to the stenographer recording the hearing, a long-necked woman with dyed red hair, who wore a tight leopard-print dress and black high heels. Her name was Molly Sanchez and courthouse scuttlebutt had centered for years around her alleged affair with his honor the judge.

“Mrs. Sanchez, have you entered each and every one of Mr. Ballard’s objections and every single one of his golden words spoken in the courtroom today carefully into the official record of this hearing?”

“Yes, Judge.”

“Well, then, Mr. Ballard,” Judge McLamore said, his smile carefully anchored as he stared down at the man before him. “I ask you again, may I now proceed with this hearing?”

“Certainly, Judge,” said Ballard, who reluctantly reclaimed his seat beside Matthews.

That matter now disposed of, the judge returned his gaze to me, and I knew that I would be the recipient of all the added animosity Mr. Ballard had generated in a man I’d already heard from the bailiff had promised he’d have “that damn woman ranger” for lunch.

“I ask you, Lieutenant,” he said, seething. “Tell me, if you’re not the leak in this case, who is?”

“Judge, I’ve been too busy chasing a killer and working toward solving this case to worry about finding the leak.”

I’d never imagined that statement would put the matter to rest, but the judge leaned forward and frowned dolefully at me, waiting for something more from this troublemaker whose very presence had brought bedlam into his courtroom.

Just then, I heard a cell phone ring. The judge craned his neck about the room, looking for the offending party, but said nothing as David hurried from the courtroom. Maybe I wouldn’t have said next
what I did if I hadn’t noticed Scroggins and Nelson in the gallery’s back row. Both, but Nelson in particular, looked delighted with the spectacle the case had become, especially with my awkward position before the judge. In a calmer moment, I would have realized that this tack would win me no favors.

“I suggest the leak might as easily be here on the island,” I said, turning back to McLamore. “All the information I’ve gathered with Agent Garrity has been shared with Galveston RD. That agency and all their officers working the Lucas case were shown copies of the letter and all other evidence uncovered during this investigation. Perhaps GPD should initiate an investigation to determine who on their force might have released the information.”

“Are you insinuating, Lieutenant, that a Galveston officer investigating this case is leaking information to the press?” the judge asked, his voice thick with sarcasm. “Why would any officer working for GPD, the agency that initiated the warrant against Mrs. Lucas, leak information that could bring into question their case against her?”

I now faced a choice. I could explain my theory: that I was being positioned as a scapegoat to take the fall when the case against Priscilla Lucas disintegrated. I had no doubt that my suspicions were true and that Nelson and Scroggins knew they had a weak case. Neither was man enough to accept the blame when their indictment proved no more than a groundless accusation. But to do so, I’d have to publicly question—in an open courtroom—the validity of the evidence against Priscilla Lucas.

“I don’t know,” I said.

“You don’t know?” he said incredulously. “Did I hear you say that you don’t know?”

“Yes, Judge,” I repeated. “I don’t know.”

“When I was a young boy growing up here in Galveston, and I told my daddy stories he thought might not exactly be fact, he used
to say to me, ’Son, that bird ain’t gonna fly.’ Lieutenant, that’s what I’m saying to you now, in front of all the people in this courtroom,” the judge concluded.

Peering down at me, McLamore cinched his round face into a steely frown. “From this moment on, I want it known,” he said, ready to do what he’d intended to before I’d even walked into his courtroom. “Anyone on either side of this case, from the police, the prosecution, or the defense, who talks to the press regarding the murders of Edward Travis Lucas and Annmarie Knowles will be held in contempt of court and jailed. I promise you that I will tolerate no further leaks.”

Pounding his gavel, Judge McLamore frowned directly down at me. There was no doubt in my mind, and I knew in the minds of everyone in the room, exactly whom he was talking to.

“Judge,” I said, planning to protest my innocence one last time. But when I saw David gesture toward me from the back of the courtroom, I changed my mind. He had something. I knew it. “Judge, thank you. I assure you, I will respect your order.”

“I hope you do, and that you fully understand the punishment if you don’t. Putting it bluntly, not only your career but your freedom is on the block here, Lieutenant,” he said, then standing up, “This court is adjourned.”

Outside in the car, David explained what he’d just learned, that we had a possible break. In the lab, they’d discovered the dirt on the outside of the second envelope wasn’t garden-variety soil as initially assumed.

“It’s slag dust,” he said. “Residue from a type of rock-like substance formed as a byproduct of smelting copper.”

“So we’ve gone from plastics to copper smelting?” I said. “What does this mean?”

“That’s the $64,000 question,” said David. “The guys at the FBI lab are making phone calls. They should have some answers for us by the time we hit the office.”

He’d overestimated the wait. Moments later, while we were still in the car, my cell phone rang. It was Nguyen.

“I’ve got some information for you. First, the Fort Worth lab just called. The fingerprint from the Neals’ back window matches the partial print from San Antonio. The bad news is that we ran the full fingerprint through the system and we still don’t have a match on AFIS, so we still don’t have a name,” he said.

“At least we’ve now got a complete print,” I said. “That’s something.”

“There’s more. I’ve done some investigating. Turns out, this type of slag has a couple of specialized uses that may help you.”

“They are?”

“This is going to bring back some bad memories, Lieutenant Armstrong,” Nguyen said with a worried sigh. “It seems that the prime user of this compound is the railroad. It’s routinely used in a couple of ways, under track beds and as ballast in empty cars.”

“The railroad,” I repeated.

It was one of those moments every investigator dreads. How could I not have known?

I
don’t know why you’re so certain this involves the railroad. It’s not like last time, is it? It couldn’t happen twice?” Roger James said, scratching his head over a visit from a Texas Ranger and an FBI agent, unannounced and late on a Tuesday afternoon.

“It could be,” I said, still fighting the nagging doubt that it was possible, that there was any chance such horror could be repeated.

We were at the South Central Railways main office, a three-story brick building skinned with smoky mirrored windows, hidden behind a row of trees in far north Houston. I’d worked with Chief Special Agent James, in charge of South Central Railway’s police, years back, on one of the most terrifying serial murder cases in the state’s history, that of Angel Maturino Resendiz, dubbed by the press “The Railroad Killer.” For two years, Resendiz rode the rails, haphazardly choosing victims. An illegal immigrant who’d begun his career in crime as a burglar, he developed an insatiable taste for killing. In all, he admitted to at least nine murders in three states—Illinois, Kentucky, and Texas—including the brutal killing of a Houston doctor, the case
which earned him a cocktail of lethal drugs as Texas’s thirteenth execution of 2006.

How could we not have realized? I wondered. Why didn’t it occur to any of us that we might have a copycat?

Even as I second-guessed our investigation, I knew why: because these murders were so different from those of Resendiz, who raped then bludgeoned his victims to death. Because copycats were incredibly rare. And if we were right, he mimicked Resendiz in only two ways. First: if he was riding the rails, he most likely learned the tactic from watching Resendiz evade authorities for months as he circulated on thousands of miles of track that crossed not only city, county, and state lines but in and out of his native Mexico.

The second similarity: motive. Like our sadist, Resendiz claimed to be on a mission from God.

Should that have been enough? Should we have known?

No. If we connected every crime where the killer believed he or she was on a mission from God, we’d have enough gruesome cases to fill an anthology of murder. Every city has one, every year, men and women who kill their spouses, their neighbors, even their children, all claiming divine instruction, some delusional, others just plain evil.

In most ways, our killer was on the opposite side of the serial killer scale from the so-called Railroad Killer. Resendiz had been disorganized, left behind scads of fingerprints, clues, DNA. He’d attacked his defenseless victims while they slept. There’d been no bondage, no torture, just torrents of unleashed anger as he battered his victims to death. The bodies were discarded as they lay, sometimes covered with a sheet or a blanket, not posed as they were in the recent murders. And while our guy took no souvenirs, Resendiz pilfered small pieces of jewelry, little mementoes, gifts to bring his wife on his trips back home across the border.

I’d worked the Resendiz case only in a minor capacity, as a profiler,
and I ran into James for the first time when we collaborated on a statewide two-day roadblock of all trains in Texas. A blond, blue-eyed man with the build of a football player, he coached his young son’s soccer team and collected fly-fishing lures. During the Resendiz investigation, James proved resourceful, worked hard and long hours, and never backed down, not even when the case erupted into a public-relations catastrophe for the railroads. In the final weeks, as the frenzy built, Texans became so spooked that train whistles no longer evoked dreams of romance and faraway places but brought home the realization that Resendiz could be anywhere, at any time. Folks across not just the state but the nation, even those in small towns, locked their doors and windows. Families who lived near tracks kept their children inside.

“Let’s not talk about all this just yet,” I said. “Right now, we need to see if our suspicions are even probable.”

“We do use slag for ballast, but all the railroads do. So, how does that help you?” he asked. “This guy could have run across it anywhere. You know, it’s used to line track beds for every railroad in the country. He could have walked across a railroad track and picked it up.”

“We called Harkins Plastics on the way here,” I explained. “They ship their specialized resin, the dust that was on the first letter, exclusively on South Central trains. We could be looking at a guy who rides all the trains, but we’re also wondering if our guy is a South Central employee.”

James’s face turned a pale shade of yellow, and he looked suddenly ill. “Yeah, sure that’s possible. But he could have gotten that plastics debris other places, too, right?”

“Sure, anything’s possible,” I said, understanding why James didn’t like my line of reasoning. “Maybe I’m wrong, but just play along with me for a few minutes. We need to go over your map of the railway lines through Texas. All of them.”