by Blake Pierce
“Who?”
“Ted Bundy,” she said.
Ripley bit her lip as the idea lingered between them. She looked back toward the whiteboard as though it was an idea she didn’t want the burden of confirming.
“It can’t be anyone else. It has to be Bundy,” she continued.
Ella went over the possibility again in her mind. Ted Bundy was the gold standard of evil, the serial killer to end all serial killers. Even decades after his death, his claws were still firmly dug into the fabric of American culture. Ted Bundy was as iconic as Monroe or Lincoln. If this unsub was going to escalate from Dahmer and Gacy, the only possible subject could be Ted Bundy.
“Bundy. Of course. I’ve tried my best to forget about that asshole. We were interviewing him when I first joined the Bureau. He was all I heard about for the first few years of my career.”
“Do you think I’m right?” Ella asked. She returned to the whiteboard and began frantically jotting down details of Bundy’s crimes from memory.
“Rookie, I don’t know. I wish I did.”
Ella ran a hand through her hair. She began shaking her head. A shortness of breath overcame her, along with a mild choking sensation in her throat. She looked toward the ceiling. She breathed heavily, then spoke in tones that wouldn’t sound out of place in a in priest confessional booth.
“What if I’m wrong, Ripley? What if I’m completely wrong, and we wind up with another dead body in our laps tonight? It would be my fault for not predicting his behavior effectively. I’ll have gotten another person killed because I couldn’t out-think this guy. And then what? He goes into hiding and we never hear from him again? Then every time I hear the word murder, death, serial killer, I’m reminded of the blood on my hands.” Ella leaned her head against the whiteboard. “I couldn’t live like that. I don’t know how any of you agents live like that.”
“Dark, we’re playing a game that we can never win. Tragedy comes with the territory. It’s not a failure if you don’t catch every unsub you’re assigned to. We miss a lot more than we hit, believe me.”
“But it’s more than that. I don’t care if I let myself down. I’ve failed myself before and I’ll fail myself again. But if I get this wrong, more people will die and it’ll be on my head. I’m not just failing myself here, I’m letting everybody down.”
“Rookie, listen to me.” Ripley jumped out of her seat, snatched the pen out of Ella’s hand, and turned her around to face her. She put her hands on Ella’s shoulders and looked her dead in the eye. “You’re going to have to trust your intuition on this one. I know I didn’t believe your theory at first, but that was because I didn’t want to. You had this right from the beginning, okay? Do you know how many profiles I’ve put together that didn’t yield anything? A lot. Meanwhile, yours leads us to an arrest in a single day. Out of everyone the FBI has to offer, why do you think I picked you to come out here?”
“What? You?”
“Edis showed me some suitable candidates and there was only one person on the list who I felt could handle it out in the field. That was you.”
Ella fell completely mute with shock. Up until now, she thought everything had been Director Edis’s doing.
“Oh. I had no idea you were involved.”
“Of course I was involved. You think I’d let them pair me with just anybody? I saw your previous work and I saw you at the shooting range and the gym more times than I can count. Honestly, when you got out here, I expected you to survive and nothing more. I didn’t expect you to thrive. But with how you took down Rick and Clyde, and how you’ve pieced this case together based on memory, I’d put my life in your hands, and that’s more than I can say about my previous partners.”
Ella nodded her head, unsure how to respond. She felt gratitude like she’d never felt in her life. “Well, thank you. I appreciate it.”
“You’ve got the talent, but talent is cheaper than table salt. What separates the successes from the failures is hard work. You scratched the surface of this guy with your profile, now you have to dig deep. You know the serial killers he’s copying, and you have an idea what’s going to come next. I wish I could offer my own advice but I don’t know these historical killers half as well as you do. I remember the basics but you remember the fine details. That’s how we’re going to catch him, okay?”
Ella took it all on board. “Let’s do it.” She grabbed her papers with a renewed sense of determination. She rushed over to her files, pulled out a pile of new folders, and slammed them on the desk.
CHAPTER TWENTY ONE
Coffee and crisp morning air helped clear Ella’s mental fog, and upon returning to the office now designated the War Room, her mind turned to the recent failed murder of Alex Bauer.
She stood before a map of the local area pinned to the precinct wall. Five dots indicated five murders, arranged in a distorted V-shape. Along the left-hand side of the V was where the precinct was located. Ella thought back to how many serial killers had been caught with the triangular technique. That was, pinpointing all of the murder scenes on the map often created a triangle shape. The person responsible then most likely lived near the center of the shape.
Harris and his team had scoured the Starksville area for footprints or tire tracks; anything that might indicate how this mysterious John arrived at the residence he had attacked Alex in. Their report indicated that the only tracks were from Alex’s Ford Focus, suggesting John must have arrived by cab, or taken a bus to the nearest station around a mile away, and walked. The deep grass made footprints difficult to unearth, but a specialist team was still working away.
Neighbors had reported no sightings of any strangers, but given the distance between the houses, Ella wasn’t surprised.
Forensics had provided a report of their sweep of the crime scene, and while there were no full fingerprint matches or DNA matches as of yet, one item on the manifest caught Ella’s attention.
Car key for Ford Focus 2009 Zetec-S model inc. metal split ring.
Or rather, what was missing from the manifest.
Ella pulled up a printout of the transcription of Harris’s interview with the escapee victim. Once the swelling in Alex’s neck had subsided a few hours after being taken to the hospital, he was able to communicate vocally again without discomfort, so Harris was able to extract much more information from him about the incident.
Ella speed-read the piece until she found the section she needed.
S. Harris: So you entered his house, refused his offer of alcohol, and sat down. Can you explain what happened next?
A. Bauer: He asked me about the car specs and I answered as best I could. Then he said he wanted to test drive the car, so I thought sure, why not?
S. Harris: And you passed the keys to him?
A. Bauer: Sort of. He grabbed them from me, really. I didn’t even have time to remove my key ring. It was a little metal thing with my name engraved on it. He just took the whole bunch.
Ella had double-checked with the forensic technicians and no key ring was found anywhere at the scene or in the grassy areas surrounding the home, despite the car key and split-ring being discarded in the home’s backyard.
This could only mean one thing: The unsub purposely took Alex’s key ring with him.
So far, Ella had been so focused on the fact that the killer brought things with him to the crime scene that she’d overlooked the things he might have taken away from them. The cogs began to whir and she turned her attention back to the whiteboard. She added a new row at the bottom of her table entitled Trophies. She began to jot down the thoughts as they infiltrated her head.
Edmund Kemper had kept ID cards and trinkets from the girls he killed.
Richard Ramirez kept various items he took from his victims’ houses.
Ed Gein was more known for the grisly trophies he kept than anything else.
Jeffrey Dahmer preserved various body parts in fluid.
And John Wayne Gacy went as far as keeping entire dead bodie
s in his home.
Ted Bundy, on the other hand, did something rather unique. While he also kept various trinkets belonging to his victims, one of his twisted perversions was to give jewelry from his victims to the women in his life. He got a thrill from seeing his victims’ possessions around the necks and on the fingers of living women, with them obviously being unaware of the objects’ origins.
Ella’s thought process was that if any jewelry had been taken from the previous victims, they could perhaps try and locate it adorning the figures of others. Alternatively, they could check any pawn shops in the area for recent jewelry bulks.
Therefore, her first step was the morgue. If she could determine that something was pulled off a body, that would be a decent enough starting point.
Ella looked through her notes and found the number for the coroner’s office. A receptionist picked up after three rings. Her voice was soft, with a North Carolina twang.
“Can I speak with Dr. Richards, please?” she asked. “The coroner.”
“I’m afraid not, sweetie. Dr. Richards left at eleven this morning. Said he was celebrating a birthday. Is there anyone else who could help you?”
“My name’s Agent Dark, and I’m working with the local police. I need to get over there and inspect some recent arrivals to your morgue. Would that be okay?”
“Unfortunately, we can’t let you in without an on-site coroner present. Dr. Richards will be back in the morning, if that’s any use to you?”
“No, it’s fine. Tell Dr. Richards happy birthday,” she said snappily.
“Oh, it’s not his own birthday. Someone close to him, he said. But I’ll leave him a message to let him know you called.”
Ella gave an abrupt thanks and hung up, then dropped her phone on the table in frustration. She needed to make progress immediately, or, given the extreme frequency this unsub was operating at, there would be another victim within the next twenty-four hours.
She opened up the case file on her desk and pulled out some of the autopsy pictures. If she couldn’t get there in person, photographs would be the next best thing. She laid them out and scrutinized every visible detail, looking for perhaps a faint mark where a ring or a bracelet or an earring used to be.
But as she held a photo of the first victim up to eye level, she notice something strange. In the background of the photo, she could make out the profile of Dr. Richards. Even in near blurriness, she could his attractiveness. He had a boy-next-door thing about him, something that Ella always found much more appealing than muscular physiques or defined jawlines.
In the few days since she’d seen Richards, she’d been so overwhelmed with everything that she’d forgotten what he looked like. When she thought about her few minutes with him, she remembered that he’d known about an obscure Mexican serial killer from the fifties.
But then something hit her.
She pulled out the transcript of Alex’s conversation again and frenziedly scanned it up and down. What had Alex said that John looked like?
He looked like a normal guy. He had black hair and brown eyes and was about five-eleven. Not young, not old.
The man in the backdrop of the autopsy photo fit this description exactly.
Ella considered the idea for a moment. Sure, it was a vague description, and these were all very common characteristics, but right now she needed something to cling on to.
Dr. Richards had recognized the names of the serial killers she’d mentioned, and what did he say about the cuts to the victims’ limbs?
These mutilations were carried out with almost surgical accuracy. I’ve been doing this fifteen years and I’ve never seen any kind of cuts like this before. Let me tell you, there’s not many folks in this neck of the woods who could pull off something like this.
But the more she thought, the more doubt crept in. Aside from looking similar and having surgical knowledge, almost nothing about Dr. Richards fit the profile. He was a medical professional, with no history or prior offenses. He was alarmingly good-looking, a stark contrast to the physical repulsiveness of the men this killer was emulating.
Kemper, Ramirez, Gein, Dahmer, Gacy. Physically hideous, sexually incompetent, zero charm, shunned by the opposite sex.
But then there was Bundy. Charming, alluring, confident, a lady’s man in every sense.
Suddenly, something she’d overlooked came to the forefront of her brain. It took a few milliseconds for her subconscious to make the connection, and when it did, it was like the last piece of a jigsaw had fallen perfectly into place.
Nervousness bolted into her stomach and sent her light-headed. There was a rush and a moment of clarity. This was it, this had to be it.
She knew who the killer was.
***
“Holy shit,” she said, jumping out of her chair. She rushed to the door, burst through it, and let it shut behind her with a deafening slam.
“Ripley,” Ella shouted, drawing the attention of almost every officer in the precinct’s main office. Ella ignored them. Ripley was furiously typing away on her laptop in the corner.
“What is it?”
“It’s Dr. Richards. Our killer is Dr. Richards.”
Ripley stood up and narrowed her eyes at Ella. “What? Are you sure?” She called Harris to join them at her desk, then the three of them moved into an office away from the prying ears of the other police workers. Harris shut the door behind them.
“It’s Dr. Scott Richards from the coroner’s office. It has to be.”
Ella’s eyes darted between them both. Ripley clasped her hands together as if to say continue. Harris squinted and scratched his head.
“Richards?” Harris asked. “I’ve worked with him for years. I really don’t think he’d do anything like this.”
“Look at the evidence. What did Alex say the killer looked like? Black hair, brown eyes, five-foot-eleven, a little bit weird. Remind of you anyone?”
“Miss Dark, that description applies to a lot of people. Hell, half my police squad could be the killer if we’re going off that.”
“No, there’s more. You remember how he knew about the serial killers I mentioned? He even knew that obscure one. And he said there weren’t many people who could pull off cuts like the one in the victims. That was his way of boasting to our faces. It was his way of showing he was one step ahead of us.”
Ripley and Harris exchanged a look that said the same thing. “It’s pretty common for a serial killer to insert themselves into the investigation somehow. And when they do, some of the more confident ones like to push the boundaries and see what they can get away with,” Ripley added.
“But that’s not all,” Ella said. “I called up the coroner’s office to see if I could see the bodies again, and the receptionist told me that Dr. Richards had already left for the day. He said he was celebrating the birthday of someone close to him.”
“So?”
“What date is it today?”
Harris checked his watch. “The twenty-fourth of November.”
“Exactly. Today is Ted Bundy’s birthday.”
CHAPTER TWENTY TWO
Ella had watched the atmosphere in the precinct go from reasonable chaos to calm in a matter of seconds, like she’d lit a fire under a wasp nest.
“We’ve got all our available officers on the hunt for him,” said Harris. “We’ve got his details from the coroner’s office and we’re checking every avenue. We know his license plate and his home address and we’ve got watchers on both.”
“Good. Keep an eye on the house from afar. Knock on the door, but if no one answers, don’t break in. Staking his house is the best chance we have of catching him. If he gets back and sees a broken door, he’s going to run a mile,” Ripley said. “What about his cell phone?”
“Switched off. But we’re gonna keep trying.”
“It’s useless,” said Ripley. “If he’s planning another attack, there’s no way he’d switch it on before he’s committed the crime. We need to find him another way.
Keep the hunt on for him all night.”
“We’ve grilled his secretary on his whereabouts and she’s got nothing. She said all she knew was that Richards said something about a birthday. Nothing more,” said Harris. “We’re doing everything we can, Agents. If we want eyes on every inch of this town, we’re going to have to call over some officers from another precinct.”
“Do it,” Ripley said. “Get your guys onto his colleagues, his family. Look into his bank accounts. See when he last used his debit card and follow the trail. This guy is somewhere in this town right now.”
“We have about twelve hours before he probably kills again. Call in every reinforcement you have to track this son of a bitch down.” Ripley turned to Ella and put her hands on her shoulders. “Rookie, I know I doubted you before but I think you’re dead right with this one. It matches up too well for it to be a coincidence.”
Ella had a feeling there was something else coming. A request. Ripley took a deep breath and continued.
“But knowing his identity is half the fight. When he switches his phone on and sees that a bunch of different numbers have tried to call him, he’s going to get suspicious. He’s probably going to know that we’re onto him, and then he’s going to hide.”
Ella’s face fell flat. “I know. We can hope that he just assumes it’s related to the autopsies of the new victims, right?”
“No. His suspicions will already be heightened. If he’s planning a murder, his emotions will be chaotic and uncontrollable. Paranoia will be rife. And besides, by that point he might have already claimed a new victim. Given how rapidly he’s racking up the bodies, we can’t wait around. We need to hunt him down before he can strike.”
Before Ripley said another word, Ella already knew what was coming. It was on her to predict his whereabouts, on her to walk a mile in this stranger’s shoes.
