The Avenger (16 page)

"Death by wild animal?" Jack speculated, raising an eyebrow at Olivia.

"No, not a wild animal," she corrected. "A
caged
one."

"Makes no sense," Jack muttered. "Why so public? So immediate? A zoo, for God's sake? What the hell does that mean?"

"Is it a coincidence it happened by my home?" When no one answered, Olivia paled and bolted for the door.

Jack reached her just outside the restroom. Her drawn face and wild eyes tore at him.

"Look, I'm sorry I dragged you into this." He kept his tone cool, distant so he wouldn't haul her into his arms and try to kiss the injured look off her face.

"I just need some water."

He took her elbow and guided her inside the ladies room where she splashed cold water on her face. He handed her a towel.

"I'm fine." She batted his hand away. "I'm fine," she repeated as they returned to Slater's office. Looking more composed, she sat down and reached for the briefcase on the floor, waved a small yellow legal pad. "My research notes. I did some work this weekend."

Jack saw the color return to her face and felt relieved. He'd already decided to take off for a day or two – she'd likely consider it abandoning her again, he thought wryly – and liked knowing she'd be okay while he was gone. The vague restlessness that always meant he needed to get away by himself had started to jitter over his body. Isolated, he could let the Change take over completely – no holding back – and insinuate himself into the killer's mind.

Not just yet. But soon.

Olivia held up copies of the notes from the original case. "I've been studying these at home, and even though they're written in Latin, I don't think the writer knows that much about the language."

"What do you mean?" Jack asked.

She flipped through pages of the legal pad. "The messages are simply common phrases or portions of classical writings. For example, the first one ... "

"Nunca fidelis."

"It's simplistic. Even you got it."

"Even me." Jack smiled.

She ignored him, all business now. "And the mailed note,
Abyssus abyssum invocat,
or 'hell calls hell,' is a common aphorism. It means loosely that one misstep can lead to another one." Olivia gestured toward a reference book she'd hauled in with her. "A person could find that phrase in any etymology book like this one with little understanding of the language itself."

"So the notes don't tell us the writer's level of Latin expertise," Jack said flatly, wondering why the first linguists hadn't suggested that.

"Not specifically," Olivia countered, "but they do show his focus – Latin. I think he has an affinity for this time period. The fact that he uses Latin at all indicates some kind of connection to the language or the world that fostered it." Olivia continued earnestly. "And, Jack, I believe there were four notes in the original case, not three."

"Four?" he scoffed.

"I've been thinking about this. You said the first note was mailed after the second body and note were discovered. But why send it through the mail instead of leaving it with the first body? What if he did leave one with Angela Buckley and the police didn't find it?"

Intrigued, Jack stared at her. He'd entertained the same thought, but had dismissed it early on. Pathologists rarely made that kind of mistake.

"All the bodies had a note with them," she continued. "Do killers change their basic – what do you call it?"

"Signature."

Olivia nodded. "Look at this latest murder. The killer
forced
you to find the note. It's important to him." She leaned forward in the chair. "They missed the first note."

Was it possible, Jack wondered?

"Olivia might have something," Slater said. "Let's go over each murder again and see what correlation we can find." He stood, retrieved a marker from the desk and turned to the dry erase board.

"First," Olivia said, "the girl who was buried alive in Virginia." Slater wrote the name, place and method of death on the board.

"Second, the lawyer, beaten to death in Las Vegas," Jack added.

"The crucifixion death was next," Olivia said.

Slater leaned against the wall. "Then after four years your UNSUB started over again."

Jack nodded. "The Utah woman and then the beating death of Keisha Johnson."

Olivia flinched but remained stoic as a stilted silence came over the room. Slater walked into the bullpen and poured fresh coffee for all of them.

Jack reached for his coffee. "Okay, if the killer kept his pattern, the next death should've been crucifixion."

"But it wasn't," Olivia said.

Jack's frustration crept through. "Yeah, instead we've got a new method. Death at the hands of a caged animal."

Slater glanced thoughtfully at the jottings on the chart. "That assumes you've discovered all the victims." He chewed thoughtfully on his lower lip. "Maybe he didn't change his pattern. Maybe you missed someone."

Jack didn't want to imagine an infinite number of bodies spread around the country. "You think he killed someone between the Salt Lake murder and now?"

Slater shrugged. "Could be."

"That would mean he's accelerating his behavior." Jack thought a moment. "If he's as arrogant as I think, he wants credit for his work. We have to assume he left notes at all the crime scenes." He scruffed the hair back from his forehead and blew noisily through his mouth. "We'll have to look at the Johnson crime scene again."

He turned to Slater. "Can you spare Harris to check North Shore?"

"Sure."

"Let's try another attack," Jack said, straightening up. "What elements connect all these deaths?"

"The language and the culture," Olivia said promptly.

"The notes all sound like warnings," Slater added.

"One more point," Jack said, turning toward Olivia. "What about the note found in the mother lion?" He pulled the facsimile out of his briefcase and pushed it across to her, then wrote the words on the board below the other Latin phrases.

"Quam ferocissimus leo bestiarium oppugnavit. Facilis descensus averno,"
she read and thought a moment. "Actually, it's two sentences that translate literally, 'As fierce a lion as possible attacked the beast-fighter,' and 'easy the descent to hell.'" She paused. "Doesn't make a lot of sense, but it
is
different from the others. It demonstrates a working knowledge of Latin grammar. He's not just copying from a book."

Jack bulleted these characteristics in another column on the dry erase board. "Okay, so this last note shows the killer
really
knows Latin. Plus, he's becoming more confident. This death is close in time to the last one."

Olivia frowned. "But what does it mean? Is the beast-fighter the woman killed at the zoo? Or the killer?"

Jack contemplated the question, came up with nothing.

"And what about the second half of the message?" Olivia added. "It's ambiguous. Whose descent is it? Does he refer to himself or the victim? Does he believe the victim deserves to be in hell or is he bragging about how easy the killings are for him as a murderer?"

"Lots of questions, no answers," Jack muttered.

"This note was found inside the mother lion's stomach, right?" Olivia asked. "What about the cub?"

"You think there might've been another message at this crime scene?" Slater asked.

"Something seems left out of the message," Olivia replied.

"Like 'easy for ... ' or 'easy but ... ?'" Jack asked.

Olivia nodded slowly, looking off into the distance. "You know, in addition to gladiatorial games, the Romans liked to watch a staged hunt. They called it a
venatio,
and
bestiarii
were beast-hunters who tracked down wild animals in the arena."

"So the killer thinks of
himself,
not the victim, as the beast-hunter," Jack concluded.

Olivia shook her head. "Not necessarily. In Roman times, the victim could be a political prisoner hunted for sport and punishment."

"I'll personally supervise the exam on the cub," Slater said, "and assign Harris to relook at the Lake Tahoe crime scene."

Jack glanced around. "That's it, then," he said. "Tomorrow at eight." He kept his back to Olivia while she gathered up her papers.

At the door she turned and looked back, locked eyes with him. Slater glanced back and forth between them as if he'd guessed their relationship.
Shit.
No keeping secrets from Slater.

Jack's blood thrummed in his veins, hot and heavy and anticipatory. Desire scrabbled his brain and lust scratched at his loins.
God, he was desperate for her again.

Chapter Seventeen

Jack's aloofness had irritated Olivia all day. What had it meant? A quick release of the sexual tension that crackled between them like jolts of electricity? Part of her wanted to get in his face, confront him about last night. But another part of her was afraid of the answer.

After several restless hours, she finally slept.

Sometime later the jangle of her phone roused her. Groping for the receiver, she pressed the talk button and spoke groggily. Jack's voice from the other end of the line jerked her upright. "What's wrong?"

"Another murder."

Oh, no.
"Where?"

His voice sounded strained. "A town called Grantsville in Tuolumne County. Slater just called me. Be ready in fifteen minutes. I'll pick you up."

Olivia was waiting on the porch ten minutes later. She'd pulled her hair back into a ponytail, slipped on jeans and a sweatshirt, shoes and socks, but otherwise hadn't taken time with her appearance. As they drove off, Jack's face looked drawn in the greenish light from the dashboard. He looked frazzled, like he was running on sheer adrenaline.

During the drive north to the sheriff's office, he filled her in on the details. "The victim was a male, older teenager or young adult."

"How was he killed?"

Jack slapped the heel of his hand on the steering wheel. "Like victim number two, he was hanged, crucified, but this one was hung upside down."

Olivia stared at him, feeling the horror of it. An upside down crucifixion had particular significance in theological circles. "Where?"

"I told you, Tuolumne County."

She shook her head. "No, I mean where did they find him?"

"In the basement of an unused country church."

"Was the scene like the other one, the Walker man?"

"Slater thinks so. The call came in from the sheriff down there. They called him because the man's driver's license lists an address in Elysian Hills. That's Bigler County's jurisdiction."

During the rest of the drive, an uneasy silence hung between them like the cloying weight of regret. Olivia breathed a sigh of relief when they finally pulled into the courthouse parking lot.

Slater waited for them in the conference room where they'd met previously. He'd transferred the case data onto the large white board that covered the narrow end of the room. Jack could tell from his disheveled look that he'd been up all night. His first words confirmed it.

"The Sheriff in Tuolumne County called around two this morning," he said, yawning and stretching his arms high over his head. "I just got back from Grantsville. About an hour and a half south of Sacramento." He added the latter for Jack's benefit.

He handed Jack a copy of the police report. "Victim's a twenty-year-old male student at Bigler Junior College, name of Carl Bender. Body was found at 12:45 this morning by some high school kids camping out at an abandoned church located off Highway 99. Teens go there to fool around, make out, do dope."

Slater looked from Jack to Olivia and back again, and if he wondered why Olivia had come along, he was wise enough not to ask. "The murder occurred out of my jurisdiction, and I had no way of knowing it'd be related to this case until I got there."

Jack nodded but remained silent, merely stared at the report of Carl Bender's death, thinking another dead body, another mistake.

"This incident looks a hell of a lot like the murder of the Walker man in your original case," Slater said, spreading an array of crime scene photos across the conference table and tapping one of the pictures. "The body was naked, hung upside down in the basement of the church."

Jack picked up the top photo. Although the scene wasn't anything more than he'd expected, the effect still jarred him. The macabre display showed the victim splayed and hung on a makeshift cross with ugly holes through the wrists and ankles. Only the inverted position was different.

"COD the same?" he asked routinely.

"He bled out at the scene," Slater replied. "Lots of blood evidence. Some of it could be the UNSUB's."

"If we're lucky."

He handed the photos to Olivia who blanched at the grisly displays before she held one close to her face, eyeing the enlarged image of the wrist piercings.

Then Slater dropped the bombshell. "The thing is Carl Bender's been dead for at least a week."

"That means he was killed before the girl at the zoo," Jack said.

"So he hasn't gone out of order in the killings," Olivia murmured. "Just added a new method."

"Something else," Slater added. "The coroner recovered a note stuffed inside the Bender kid's mouth."

Olivia looked from Jack to Slater. "That's good, isn't it?"

"Hope so," Jack mumbled, taking the dry erase pen and moving toward the board.

The burial deaths were circled in black and a number one written beside them. The beatings, number two, circled in blue. He drew another line around the crucifixion deaths with a red pen and wrote number three beside them.

"And the death at the zoo." He circled the words unknown female with a green pen.

"What did the note say?" Olivia asked.

Slater handed the paper to Jack who wrote the words on the board:
PONTIFEXMAGNACUMCURAVICTIMAMOBTULIT.

Olivia stared at the letters for a moment, then taking the pen from Jack, drew vertical lines, separating them into what he assumed were different words.