Spectrum (The Karen Vail Series) (28 page)

Vail grabbed the edge of Hartman’s car door and pulled herself up as best she could, her thigh burning like a red-hot poker, her muscles quivering as she groaned and pushed with her right leg to get herself upright.

As Bodene limped away, Vail pulled herself erect using the side view mirror as leverage. “Federal agent,” she yelled. “Freeze!”

Did that ever work? Nah. Usually not.
But Bodene wasn’t too smart, because he turned toward her, his MAC-10 still in his grasp, and that was all she needed.

Vail fired again and flattened him against the pavement. And then she let go of the mirror and joined him in a heap on the asphalt as she heard the uneven scream of approaching sirens.

FOUR DAYS AFTER Vail was released from the hospital—with a dose of antibiotics, a few stitches in her thigh, and a bruised ego—the Office of Professional Responsibility initiated its review of the bank shooting.

That afternoon, Vail requested papers for a promotion to the Behavioral Analysis Unit, as the profiling group had been renamed.

Her ASAC laughed, then told her it was not that easy. She knew that, of course, from her conversation with Agent Safarik. But she felt she needed to do something. Aside from her goal of joining the BAU, hooking on with the FBI put her in a safer environment; the number of agents killed in the line of duty was far fewer compared with their NYPD counterparts.

Her boss assured her he would do everything in his power to help her get the promotion. Vail took that to mean the odds were no better with his help than without. But she appreciated his assistance nonetheless.

He told her that in two days she would start assisting a couple of local police departments with cold case files they needed an extra set of eyes to review. It had the benefit of taking her out of the field while OPR conducted its assessment, and he felt she could use a break from handling active cases. Translation: he would keep her behind a desk where she would not have to fire a weapon, or be fired at.

A numbingly cold day in mid-January with the threat of snow was not an ideal time to drive to the FBI’s Behavioral Analysis Unit, but she was still limping around, so she used it as an excuse to take a personal day and head to Virginia.

She arrived at the Aquia Commerce Center and made her way up to the second floor entrance, where she was buzzed in.

“I’ve got an appointment with Agent Safarik,” Vail said. While she waited for Safarik, the ASAC she had met six—no, seven—years before, Thomas Gifford, exited his office. He stopped and looked at her, but it wasn’t a “glad to see you look.” In fact, it seemed to be the opposite.

“Agent Vail,” Gifford said as he approached.

Oh shit. He remembers my name. How can that be? Is that good or bad?

“Agent Gifford. Good to see you again.”

“Why’s that?”

“Because I hope to have a desk here one day and it’s good to know the people you’ll be working for.”

“Your ASAC already contacted me. I told him we don’t have any openings and the near future isn’t looking so good, either. Sorry.”

Sorry? I’ve wanted to be a profiler for years, I’ve shaped my career around it. Sorry?

“Well, life’s funny sometimes,” she said. “You never know what’s gonna happen, right?”

Gifford gave her a look of confusion, then a dismissive nod and walked on. “Good luck with that,” he said as he headed down the hall.

A moment later, Mark Safarik came up the same corridor and smiled when he saw Vail.

“Everything okay?” he asked as he approached. “You look a little tense.”

“Am I being profiled?”

“Just a simple observation of your body language. Your hands are curled into fists.”

“Oh,” Vail said with a laugh. “That.”

“C’mon back to my office.”

Vail sat down in the chair opposite Safarik’s desk. A blue California license plate that read “DETECTIV” sat atop a bookshelf packed with three-inch ring binders bearing spines with provocative labels: Sexual Homicide, Psychopathy, Criminal Investigative Analysis, Autoerotica, Sexual Homicide of Elderly Females, Violent Crime Seminar/SFPD—among others.

“You have an interesting assortment of reading materials.”

He laughed. “Yeah. I’d like to say I’ve got eclectic interests, but it’s probably more accurate to call it—”

“Violent?”

“I was thinking ‘professional.’”

“I’ll accept that.”

“So this case you wanted to discuss. This is the one you told me about back in … ’99, right? Or 2000?”

“Ninety-nine. And I’m still not sure if I’ve got the first vic.”

“That’d be helpful, but it doesn’t mean we can’t do some good work without it.”

“You’re not gonna get in trouble for discussing this with me?”

“We like our rules and procedures, so if you want the unit to officially work the case, we’ve got to do it right. But on an informal basis, just you and me talking about it, we can certainly do that.”

“I saw Gifford in the hall. He knows I asked my ASAC about a promotion to the unit.”

Safarik’s eyebrows rose. “Really.”

“Means nothing. Gifford didn’t seem to want me anywhere near the BAU. Not sure why.”
Maybe my record at the NYPD made its way to his desk. Unless it wasn’t by accident. Did he check me out? Shit, did he talk with Kearney? Carrig? Mendoza? I’d be totally screwed.

“What’d he say?”

“No openings. Nothing in the near future.”

Safarik gestured for her to close the door. When it clicked shut, he held up a folder. “My retirement papers. I’m done here in six months.”

“No shit.”

“I’m gonna be doing the same thing with Robert Ressler for a private company. Twenty years with the Bureau, I’ve been fortunate. I’ve had a very rewarding career. Time to shake things up. Point is, there’ll be an opening here around July.”

Vail couldn’t help but smile.

“Okay,” Safarik said, leaning back in his chair, “so I made your day. No more clenched fists. Now let’s talk about your case.”

Vail recounted the details of each victim. Safarik listened intently, asking occasional questions.

“So what I’m hearing is that the offender is making the Greek women into the posers he thinks they are.”

“What do you mean?”

“Let’s say that there’s something in his childhood where a woman did something to him. Abused him or caused him to suffer some kind of hardship as a result of something she did. Maybe a prostitute or maybe his father had an affair with a Greek woman. Maybe he sees them as women who encouraged the flirting and then claimed innocence. It’s his goal to expose the fraud by showing everyone what kind of sluts they really are. He does this by posing them not just in sexual positions but in provocative positions.”

Vail nodded. “The hand, the fingers.”

“You said he used superglue to hold the digits in a specific position.” Safarik rifled through the file and pulled out a close-up of Carole Manos’s hand. “He positioned it to suggest the woman is curling her index finger as if to say, ‘Come here.’ He used superglue to get the finger to hold that curl.”

“That’s why he sits them up in bed and spreads their legs with their dress pulled up slightly, their arm raised as if gesturing, ‘come here.’”

“Exactly.”

“I like it,” Vail said. “So we’re looking for someone who’s got a beef with Greek women, someone who was wronged by them.”

“Maybe—keep in mind that it’s the offender’s
perception
of being wronged. To you and me, it may not seem that way. But it could be. I’m just saying keep an open mind. Don’t dismiss something because you don’t think it’s traumatic enough. It doesn’t have to be much because it’s in the offender’s mind. He creates this grudge and builds a ritualized behavior around how he’s going to play it out.”

“And what do you make of this Crinelli murder? He’s the only male.”

“That’s a little more difficult. First impression—and they can be wrong—is that this is a personal murder. Not too different from the others, really. Those are revenge killings. Maybe it’s the same thing with Crinelli. He was a mafioso, he’s got a lot of enemies. Maybe he wronged your offender, and this is how he disposed of him, his favorite way to kill.”

Vail considered this. “Okay. But how did this UNSUB get the drop on a mob capo? He was killed without any defensive wounds.”

“A ruse, perhaps. Somebody he knows and trusts. He lets him get close—too close.”

“There are finger marks on the back of the shard of glass that indicate he was killed from behind.”

“Right, so there’s little movement, little resistance. Or in this case, no resistance. No defensive injury. Any print detail?”

“None.”

“DNA testing wasn’t standard back then, but you may want to run it now. You might find some touch DNA on that shard.”

“Looks like he wore a thin latex glove, which is consistent with the other crime scenes. No latents at all. What do you make of what he does to the eyes?”

“Postmortem,” Safarik said. “They’re symbolic. Like posing the body. Emotionally, he’s got a deep-seated need to do it.”

“You sure?”

“Let’s keep this in perspective. I’m looking at this case and giving you an off-the-cuff impression. So, no, I’m not sure. But that’d make sense.”

Safarik looked through the file again. “I don’t see anything about Taser marks on the body. Talk with the ME. Check the photos again, get ’em blown up. That’d be an ideal way to incapacitate a guy like a capo who wouldn’t hesitate to kill you—and who can probably do it with his hands if he doesn’t have a weapon nearby.”

“I’ll see what we can find.”

“One last thing: I’m pretty sure Manos isn’t his first vic. Crime scene’s too neat. Just looking at these photos, at the vic, it was all very well thought out. He’s what we call an organized killer—bright, everything’s planned. Not a whole lot of blood, few defensive wounds because he knows how to avoid a confrontation or how to incapacitate them without a struggle. It’s possible he just put a lot of thought and study into it before killing Manos. But I still think there’s a first kill out there, not as complete as this, not as careful. He was still experimenting, learning to kill. This guy is very advanced.” Safarik closed the file. “That’s all I’ve got right now.”

“That’s a lot. Really good stuff. Thanks.”

He handed her the folder. “See if your ASAC can get you a position as an NCAVC coordinator in New York,” he said, referring to the National Center for the Analysis of Violent Crime. “You’ll interface with the unit and be one step closer to this chair.”

Vail thanked him and walked out determined to make the BAU the next rung on her career ladder. If Thomas Gifford had other plans, tough.

43

>MANHATTAN SOUTH HOMICIDE SQUAD

Monday, January 16, 2006

The sky was unusually dark and gloomy at 8:00 AM when Vail walked into the old precinct house where the homicide squad was located. She commiserated for a moment with a bunch of patrol officers and a handful of detectives she had known back in her NYPD days. They talked about grabbing a beer at the Pig and Whistle, a favorite Fed watering hole, when she caught sight of Russo across the room.

“You just stopping by for a visit?” Russo asked as he stepped into his office. “Shoulda told me you were coming.”

Vail followed him in and glanced around. Things were largely the same—department memos stuck to the wall, alongside a new framed photo of Sofia and one of Russo with Commissioner Carrig at a formal event. There was a bit more dust and a few extra stacks of papers on the desk, but otherwise it felt as if she had never left.

“Here on business. I need to talk with the detectives handling Hades. Slater?”

Russo grabbed his overcoat off the rack in the corner. “Good memory. He’s still got the case. But believe me, he wishes he didn’t. He used to have a hundred percent solve rate.”

“No one’s perfect.”

“I’ll let you tell him that. But you’ll have to wait for another time. He was called out fifteen minutes ago. Another vic.”

“Hades? He’s been dormant for years.”

“Far as we know. Also could’ve been in another state. Or prison.”

“You didn’t call me?”

“Karen, he got the call fifteen minutes ago. And it’s not your case any-more.” He held up a hand. “Sorry, I didn’t really mean that. But it’s true, you know that.”

“You still used to call me—”

“I’ll make sure you’re notified in the future. But hopefully we’ll catch this asshole and there won’t be any more vics.”

I don’t think I’ll hold my breath.

“Are we going to the scene?”

Russo, slipping on his coat, couldn’t help but smile. “We are.”

THEY PULLED UP in front of the building once known informally in police, and community, circles as Fort Apache. Vail knew it only because of its location and its relevance to her career.

“Welcome back to the South Bronx.”

“The place that launched me as a cop.”

“And almost got me killed. If it wasn’t for you.”

“You know,” Vail said, facing Russo with a playful tilt of her head, “Sofia never thanked me.”

“She probably doesn’t think you did her any favors.” He chortled as he nosed the vehicle in at an angle, its front end a few feet up onto the sidewalk, consistent with the other police sedans parked on either side of theirs.

“Your old stomping grounds,” Vail said, taking in the recently refurbished three-story structure, tan stone siding with large brick archways above each of the ground floor windows and doorways. “Why are we here?”

“This, Karen, is our crime scene.” He shoved the gearshift into park, sat back, and looked at her.

“Our what?”

“This here building, a landmark which used to house the 41st Precinct, which is now home to the Bronx Homicide Task Force, Night Watch, and the Special Victims Division, is where our new vic is located.” He winked, then popped open his car door.

“Hang on,” Vail said, following him under the yellow police tape and through the large wood doors. They stepped into a grand marble-tiled lobby that led up to a massive oak registration desk and wood-paneled wall that more closely resembled a judge’s perch than a duty officer’s work station. “How can a police station be our crime scene?”

Russo stepped up to the desk and spoke with the woman, who rose to greet him.

Vail glanced at the high-tech electronics, including a state-of-the-art surveillance system with four monitors set into an opening below the oak counter.

“Here you go,” Russo said as he handed Vail a pair of blue booties. “Follow me.”

She struggled to slip them over her shoes and ascended the well-maintained ivory, gray-veined marble steps to keep stride with Russo.
Good thing I loaded up on the Motrin this morning
. As she hobbled up the stairs, she pulled out her FBI shield and clipped it to her belt.

They emerged on the third floor and entered the homicide task force, a long rectangular room that spanned the length of the building. Detectives’ desks sat along the row of large picture windows.

Mounted on the far wall was a banner:

NYC DETECTIVES

the GREATEST DETECTIVES in the
WORLD

Serving the People 24 hours a Day

“I certainly felt that way,” she said, indicating the sign. “Now if we can just clear this case.”

“We?”

“You.”

Russo eyed her. “You happy with the Bureau?”

“Very.” She said it without hesitation. But did she answer too fast? She
was
happy. And until a week ago, safer. Or was it just an illusion?

“You’re limping.”

“You noticed,” she said.

“I’m one of ‘the greatest detectives in the world.’ Of course I noticed.”

They both chuckled, a throwback to old times.

“Shooting. Bank robbery. Took a couple in the leg.” She waved a hand dismissively. “I’m fine.”

“Of course you are.” He led the way past the metal desks. Above them hung a poster of the New York City skyline, prominently featuring the former Twin Towers, an oversize American flag superimposed behind it. A quote was lettered beside the flag: “Our unity is a kinship of grief and a steadfast resolve to prevail over our enemies.”

Amen to that.

“Sounds exciting,” Russo said.

His voice pulled her away from a quick flashback to 9/11. “Huh?”

“Your case, the bank robbery shootout. Exciting.”

“A little more excitement than I’d prefer. Three LEOs dead,” she said, slang for law enforcement officers.

They stopped midway into the room and turned right, through a door and into a corridor. An orange sticker on a filing cabinet reminded the detectives that:

PROPER TACTICS

SAVE LIVES

Cover ♦ Isolate ♦ Contain

“Where’s our vic?”

“You’re not gonna believe it,” he said. “
I
didn’t when the call came in.” They entered another section, walked past the room where lineups were conducted, and into the area containing the holding cells. Attached to the black iron diamond grating were traditional vertical metal bars. There were two entrances, one on either end, with a plain, varnished wood bench along the left cream-colored cinderblock wall.

This particular holding cell had something else inside: a dead female body.

A CSU detective was doing his thing, partially blocking Vail’s view. She moved aside to assess the victim. “Positioned like the others. Finger glued in place, legs spread like a slut.”

“Why the hell’s a Fibbie here?”

A man on the other side of the cell, just outside the bars, wearing a blue shirt and dark blue suit, peered across the way at Vail.

“This is Karen Vail,” Russo said. “Karen, Joe Slater.”

“So you’re Slater.”

“So you’re Vail.”

Slater was probably mid-fifties with a severely receding hairline. He was beer-belly heavy but carried his weight well.

“Heard a lot about you and your hundred percent solve rate,” Vail said.

“
Was
a hundred. This fuckin’ case is screwin’ it up. Thanks a lot for bailing on it.”

“Guess I knew when to jump ship.”

Russo looked uncomfortable with her last comment—perhaps sensing that the conversation could get out of hand fast. He cleared his throat and said, “Dyer here yet?”

“Downstairs,” Slater said. “Reviewing the surveillance tapes.”

“Ben Dyer?” Vail asked. She noticed Russo’s quizzical look. “Met him at your surprise party a few years ago.”

“Right. You’d like him. Shoulda introduced you two a long time ago. My mistake.”

“Well, looky here.”

They turned to see Max Finkelstein and, just behind him, Ryan Chandler.

“Max,” Vail said. “If you weren’t old enough to be my grandfather, I’d give you a big kiss.” She sidestepped him and embraced Chandler.

“What are you doing here?” Finkelstein said.

“This case is like a piece of gum on the bottom of my shoe. Can’t get rid of it. And with this vic, the offender’s definitely taking his game to another level.”

As Chandler set down his kit and Finkelstein gloved up, Vail stepped around one of the men and entered the jail cell, taking care to avoid the pooling blood, and knelt in front of the wood bench. “Pretty ballsy for him to come into a police station. Not to mention he had to be lugging the body somehow. This guy’s smart and careful. He knows what he’s doing. He’d assume there are cameras. We get any usable images?”

“Nothing yet,” Slater said. “Wore a ski mask, bulky coat.”

“And the body?”

“In a trash bag, far as I saw. But I only watched a couple minutes. I can tell you he took the elevator.”

“Still,” Russo said. “Very risky that someone would see him.”

“It was Sunday night. Place is dead, almost no one here except the Night Watch detectives. They went out on calls. And yeah, I checked. Both were bogus.”

“So he lured away the biggest risks,” Vail said. “He knows his way around the place. A cop? A PAA?”

Russo locked eyes with her. “You thinking Danzig?”

“If Danzig was our guy.” Vail turned to Slater. “You familiar with Dan—”

“Our one and only suspect? You kiddin’ me?”

“Chandler,” Vail said, “can you guys do a match of the body type and build of the perp on the video to Danzig’s vitals?”

He splayed open his kit. “Consider it done.”

Vail examined the woman’s fingers: glued in place. Her legs were spread and the dress was pulled up high on her thighs. The eyes were gouged and a glass shard was protruding from the neck. “Injuries the same as the others.” Vail stood up and stepped back out of the way. “Looks like COD is more like the recent ones—she wasn’t strangled. I’m guessing she was killed here, given the volume of pooling blood. You agree?” she asked, turning to Finkelstein.

“If you let me get in there, I’ll let you know.”

She stepped out of the holding cell and let Finkelstein pass. “Assuming I’m right about that, we have a radical shift in his MO. He brought the vic here alive—so he must’ve drugged her or incapacitated her somehow, killed her onsite, and then did his ritual with the body.”

“Ritual?” Russo asked.

“It’s a behavioral thing. I’ve been reading some papers a profiler at the Behavioral Analysis Unit gave me.”

“I thought Fonzarella killed that profiling shit,” Slater said. “Back in ’99. It was noted in the file.”

“He did,” Vail said. “But Fonzarella’s dead, and this is no longer his case.”

Slater crossed his arms. “It’s not yours, either.”

“I’m here for continuity. To help. You got a problem with that?”

“No,” Russo said firmly, addressing his comment to Slater. “We don’t.”

“Good, because I came away from the profiling unit with some insight into the offender. He kills the woman because it’s something he has to do to carry out his ritualized behaviors, which feed his emotional needs. But the stuff he does to her body afterward, that’s got nothing to do with the murder: gouging the eyes, stabbing the neck. He doesn’t
have
to do those things because she’s already dead. Follow?”

“Okay,” Slater said. “So what?”

“He does it because he wants to, because it’s comforting, it fulfills a need. It has deep meaning to him. The eyes are symbolic for something. Just like the way he poses the body.”

“What do you mean?”

Vail stood there, lost in thought. “I think he’s humiliating these women in death by positioning them—legs spread, dress hiked up—as if they’re sluts.”

“And how does this help us?” Slater said.

Vail sighed. “I don’t know enough to say. But I think it gives us an understand—”

“Understanding why this jerkwad did this shit don’t help us,” Slater said. “Does it now?”

I wish I knew enough to say, to put this guy in his place. It does help us, it has to.

Chandler glanced at Vail. She got the feeling he wanted to jump in to defend her but thought better of it.

“One thing that’s very upsetting,” Vail said, sidestepping Slater’s question, “is what’s gotten under his skin? What’s suddenly set him off? Why is he getting bolder, why is he taking on a lot more risk? Seems to me that he’s turning up the pressure on the department. Killing this vic in a police station—and a famous one at that—is putting it right in our face. It’s like he’s extending his middle finger at us.”

“You didn’t see it?” Chandler asked.

“See what?”

Russo walked a few paces and picked up a newspaper off a nearby desk. “This.” He headed back, then handed her the
Daily News
.

The headline consumed nearly the entire front page:

NYPD: HADES SLASHER

TURNS SELF IN, CONFESSES

Commish declines comment:

“Active investigation”

Vail looked up from the paper. “We discussed this years ago and decided not to do it.”

“That was then,” Slater said. “And we were nowhere, so we decided to stir the soup.”

“We?” She looked at Russo.

“Me and Dyer,” Slater said. “Chief signed off on it. We leaked to the press that the killer’s come forward and confessed. Our hope was that he’d contact us.”

“We didn’t do it back then because of the risk. This risk,” Vail said, gesturing at the body laid out before them. “It could incentivize him to kill again. And that’s exactly what happened: he wanted to make a very bold statement. He’s saying, It’s not
him
, dumbshits, it’s
me
. These are
my
kills.”

“Interesting theory.”

“It’s not a theory. Those Xs he draws on their necks. He’s marking his victims.”

“What?”

“Chandler.” Vail moved in closer and nodded at the woman’s head. “Does she have that logo on her neck?”

Chandler got in behind the victim with tweezers and a flashlight. “She does. Capital E, I, D, and a lowercase i.”

“An i,” Vail said. “At least we know we haven’t missed any.”