Mounted

by E. H. Reinhard

  “I’m not eating that,” Beth said.

  “You’re missing out. But, speaking of eating, so what are these dinner plans that you have for the evening?”

  “I guess I wouldn’t really call them dinner plans,” she said. “Nothing super important or anything.”

  “I believe dinner plans were the exact words that came out of your mouth earlier.”

  Beth remained quiet.

  “So what you’re saying is that you have a plan to go and do something for dinner but don’t actually have dinner plans?”

  “Right.”

  “That makes complete sense.” I stopped chewing and looked over at her. “So, are you meeting someone for dinner later tonight?”

  “No,” Beth said. “Who would I be meeting?”

  I sat in thought. Beth was playing the same kind of vague non-answer answer game that Karen had for years when she didn’t want to tell me something—or did want to tell me something but needed a shove. I figured I’d try the same method of extraction that I used with Karen. “Oh. Okay. Well, have a good time.” I said the words, went silent, and looked away.

  Not fifteen seconds later, Beth broke the silence. “I’m going to dinner by myself.”

  “You’re going out to eat by yourself? Those are your big plans?”

  “Yes. It’s kind of a long story, but basically when I was married to Scott, he’d never let me eat Indian food, which I absolutely love. He hated it, so that meant that I wasn’t allowed to like it or eat it.”

  “Sounds real logical.” I reached for my fountain drink in a cup holder. I took a big drink to wash down the food in my mouth and placed it back in the holder.

  “Exactly. It was completely stupid. So when we got divorced, the first thing I did was go out to an Indian restaurant and gorge. I honestly ate like two years’ worth of Indian food.”

  “Yeah, Indian food is good.” I pulled the wrapper on my Philly chicken sandwich back farther and took another bite.

  “I know. So that’s what I’m doing tonight. Scott and I were back together, and I wasn’t allowed. Now we’re not, and I am.”

  I chewed and spoke. “Well, enjoy yourself. Bring me back some butter chicken.”

  “You can come if you’d like,” Beth said.

  “We’ll figure it out later.” I jammed the rest of the sandwich in my mouth.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX

  Beth and I pulled into the parking lot of the Bureau office, parked, and headed inside. We entered serial crimes and walked straight to Duffield’s office. He was sitting inside with the phone resting between his ear and shoulder. He pointed at Beth and me and then toward his guest chairs.

  We sat. From the sounds of his phone call, he was speaking with someone regarding our possible suspect. Duffield continued his call for another minute or two, writing on a pad of paper as he talked. Then he clicked off and gave us his attention.

  “Our guy, William Allen David, was a sports anchor at this television channel that Erin Cooper-Connelly, the woman we found the print from, worked at prior to her disappearance,” he said. “She was also a sports anchor. Seemed she took the position after William Allen David was let go.”

  “The signature on the letters, The Sportsman, as in he was the sports man,” I said.

  Duffield nodded. “Yup.”

  “How did you find this out?” Beth asked.

  “First thing one of my guys did—ran his name in a search engine. He came up right away. That was an exec at the television channel that I was just on the phone with. Apparently, this Mr. David and the Cooper-Connelly woman weren’t the best of friends. He didn’t get into much detail but said that Mr. David had been asked to leave his position due to inappropriate behavior directed at Cooper-Connelly. This was a couple of years ago already, though.”

  “Her disappearance, what do we know there? Anything further?” Beth asked.

  “Not really. I called the lieutenant that was on the scene of the suicide. He said that the man had been deceased for a week or so before he was found. From all accounts, it looked like a standard gunshot suicide.”

  “Was the letter in his handwriting?” I asked.

  “Do you think our guy may have penned it?” Duffield asked.

  “Even if he didn’t, and it was in the deceased man’s handwriting, we have experience with suspects forcing victims to write letters,” Beth said. “It’s definitely not out of the question.”

  “I’ll see what we can do about looking into it,” Duffield said.

  “So where are we at now with locating this guy?” I asked.

  “I put in for all the records. Shouldn’t be too long. I pulled Houston and Braine off of their eyeball searching and stuck them on trying to get me a phone number on this guy so we can try to track it. Houston is contacting utility and cable providers in California. Braine is checking everything locally to see if anyone has his name on record.”

  “When do we circulate his name and photo?” Beth asked.

  “We’ve already done it through law-enforcement branches,” Duffield said. “The word is out on both vehicles as well. We’ll have to get something set for the press yet this evening. I want this guy’s face everywhere.”

  “We’re going to need to get a tech guy out to that restaurant to get us the video they have,” Beth said. “The assistant manager didn’t know how to make a copy but said we’re welcome to send someone over.”

  “I’ll get someone sent out. Contact name there?” Duffield asked.

  Beth pulled the kid’s card from her bag and handed it to him.

  “What about Collette and Tolman?” I asked. “Nothing out knocking on doors, hey?”

  “Nope,” Duffield said. “I actually tried both of them about twenty minutes ago and didn’t get an answer from either. I imagine that they’re conducting an interview. I left a message with the name, description, and vehicles that we’re looking for. I’ll try them again in a bit if I don’t hear back from them.”

  “They’ve been out there for a while,” Beth said. “I would think that they would have met with everyone local by now.”

  “Probably,” Duffield said. “But they did say that they were going to try to stop back at the places where they didn’t get answers at the door. Maybe they caught a couple of people home the second time around. Here, let me try them again.” Duffield lifted his desk phone and punched in a number. He held the phone to his ear for a good thirty seconds before speaking up. “Tolman, it’s Duffield, call in to report and confirm that you received my last message with the ID of our suspect.” He reached out and pressed the button to disconnect from the call before dialing another number. Roughly thirty seconds later, he left a matching message for Collette on his voice mail. Duffield hung the phone back on its base. “Hmm.” Duffield rubbed at his eye.

  “What?” I asked.

  He waved away my question. “Did you guys want to see the photos from the latest package? They have them downstairs.”

  “Same as before, you said?” Beth asked.

  “Basically, though it looks like he did something different with the last woman. More wax museum than sideshow. That sounds awful, given the circumstances, but it’s really about the most accurate description that I can come up with.”

  Beth glanced over at me. “I’m fine with not seeing them.”

  “Come on.” I pushed myself up from the chair. “We need to put eyes on them.” I paused. “Probably not the best choice of words, but we need to look. Maybe one of us will see something in the photos that can give us a lead.”

  Beth grumbled and stood.

  Duffield remained at his desk. “I’m going to sit here and man the phone—I don’t want to miss a call, and they’ve been coming in pretty much nonstop. Plus, seeing the photos once was about enough for me. Find Witting down there. He has everything.”

  “Will do,” I said.

  Beth and I left Duffield’s office, took the elevator down, and entered the forensics lab. I spotted Witting with another man
in a white lab coat in one of the glassed-in cubicles on our right. Beth and I walked over, and I rapped on the door. Witting looked up from the file folder he held and handed it off to the man accompanying him. He walked toward us and opened the office door, closing it at his back.

  “Did Duffield let you guys know that we had the IDs and photos?” he asked.

  “We’ve been informed. The photos are what we’re here to see,” Beth said. “Unfortunately,” she added.

  “They’re in my office.” Witting waved over his shoulder for us to follow.

  Beth and I walked into Witting’s office behind him and took seats at his desk.

  He sat and pushed a manila file folder toward us. “This is them.”

  I slid the file in front of Beth and myself and scooted up my chair. I flipped the cover and stared down. The page contained a photograph of an ID—Katelyn Willard. I flipped the page to see her alive, ball gag tied around her head and stuck in her mouth. I tried to make out anything at all other than her in the photo. The wall she stood against was white-painted cinderblock. I saw nothing else in the photo, other than a young woman with a look of fear on her face—probably within minutes of being murdered.

  I flipped to the next page, where I knew what the photo would be. I stared down at the image of Katelyn Willard’s head, minus her body. I glanced left toward Beth, seated beside me. She took her eyes away from the picture and looked at the ceiling. I took in what I could from the background of the photo—a white-plastic-covered table and a couple inches of a bloody reciprocating saw blade—nothing telling.

  I let out a long breath and flipped the page. The mounted head looked similar to the others. Katelyn Willard’s hair had been dyed and trimmed. Green glass eyes replaced her natural brown. The wood backing plate on the mount was identical to the photos of women past. The hands were positioned in the same fashion as the previous women as well. I saw nothing else in the background of the photo that could lead us in any direction. I turned the page to the next image, which was again of a driver’s license.

  They’re arranged in there how they were contained on the film,” Witting said.

  I nodded and continued. By the fourth photo from the second woman, I’d realized what Duffield was talking about with his “more wax museum than sideshow” remark. The mount had a bit of a shine or gloss to it—as if covered in wax.

  I looked up at Witting. “Is this mount covered in wax?”

  “We believe it to be, yes. We have a blown-up image of the face. It appears as if the glass eyes are one with the eyelids, and the crease between the lips of the mouth is sealed.”

  “So that’s what he was referring to as to perfecting his method,” I said.

  “Well, if his goal is to get them not to decompose, like the taxidermists or whoever were saying, I guess it’s a better method than what he was doing,” Beth said. “Sealed in wax can’t decompose right?”

  “I would think it would decompose internally, but am guessing the wax would hold form unless it came into contact with temperature,” Witting said. “The hair still appears to just be glued, or really who knows how, attached to the head. I’d assume there is a scalp under there. I’d have to think that’s going to shrink and pull back over time.”

  Beth squirmed in her chair with a disgusted look on her face. I imagined Witting’s comments about interior decomposition and shrinking scalps weren’t sitting right with her. I looked back at the photo. The hair, again trimmed and dyed, green eyes—a thought popped into my head. I pulled out my phone and brought up the Internet.

  “What are you looking for?” Beth asked.

  “One second.” In my search bar, I typed the name of the girl we had the fingerprint for and then clicked for images. The results came up—rows and rows of photos containing a blond female sports anchor who bore an undeniable resemblance to the mounts our suspect was creating. “I just wanted to see how close these mounts look to the actual woman.” I turned my phone so Beth could get a look at the screen.

  Beth leaned in toward my phone for a better look. “They aren’t that far off,” she said. “It doesn’t feel like an accident that her print was there,” she said. “More like he wanted us to find it and make the connection. There isn’t a single print from him on anything, and there just so happens to be one from this girl? Why?”

  My phone buzzed in my pocket—I reached in, pulled it out, and glanced at the screen. “It’s Duffield upstairs.” I clicked the button to talk.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN

  William had attached her hair and scraped the wax from around her eye sockets, exposing her green glass eyes. He’d painted the sealed nostril holes dark so they appeared open and had finished applying her makeup. The mount was done, aside from one final touch. William leaned back in his chair, gazing at a mission accomplished. He’d fulfilled his threat to the woman who had taken everything he’d worked for in life.

  “Perfection,” he said. “Just need to get the mic, and then it’s on the wall for you.”

  William rolled his chair back and stood from the desk in the spare bedroom where he’d been working. He walked out to the kitchen and stopped just shy of the kitchen table. The floor from where he stood all the way to the door leading out was red. William stared down at the blood pool that had formed around the first agent he’d killed. He looked right to left—the blood started at the agent’s throat, under his head, an almost three-foot-diameter puddle. From the pool, the blood had run across the tile, using the grout joints as a path to the base of the cabinets under the sink. William followed the blood with his eyes all the way down the baseboard of the cabinets to where it had puddled near the kitchen trash can. He noticed the lower and then the upper cabinets on the wall, speckled with more blood that had sprayed from the agent’s throat while he was still vertical.

  “What a mess,” William said.

  He looked past the first body on the floor to the other agent, who was blocking the doorway leading outside. William’s gaze rose to the blood-covered white door. He walked directly toward the agent blocking his path outside, each footstep creating a void in the blood covering the kitchen tile.

  William leaned down, flipped the agent’s suit jacket to one side, took his weapon, and tucked it into his waistline. Then he stood and reached out for the bloody handle. William twisted the knob and pulled the door inward, which opened three inches before hitting the dead agent’s shoulder and stopping. William yanked the door by the knob, slamming it into the dead man—the corpse slid an inch or two across the blood-covered tile. William yanked again, harder, and his hand slipped from the bloody knob. William placed his hands through the gap in the doorway and gripped the outside of the door with his bloody fingers. He pulled and yanked repeatedly, and each time, the agent’s body slid a little farther back across the tile until William had enough room to squeeze through. He closed the door at his back and walked toward the shed.

  William entered the shed and passed the front of the Impala parked inside. On a shelf attached to the wall, near the top, was a box marked Awards. William reached up and pulled it down. He set it on the bench in front of the car and opened the top. Inside were the miscellaneous accolades he’d won during his time in broadcasting. He pushed a few items to the sides and dug down into the box until the color gold flashed in his eyes. William grasped a gold-plated microphone and took it from the box—an engraved award he’d won, signifying twenty years of excellence. He left the box sitting open, stuffed the microphone into a pocket, and left the shed.

  William entered the house through the kitchen again, slamming the door into the corpse of the agent and sliding him farther away from the doorway and nearer the cupboards beside the refrigerator. He stepped over the man’s head and walked through the blood covering the floor. With another high step over Agent Tolman’s body, William walked to the spare bedroom to get Erin’s mount and then returned to the basement.

  William stood, mount in hand, directly before his fireplace on the lower level. He stare
d Erin in the face as he hung the wooden base of the mount on the nail that awaited her. William stepped back, paused, and marveled at his achievement.

  “Are you ready for our broadcast?” he asked.

  His question didn’t receive a response. William walked to the far corner of the room and picked up the makeshift cell-phone tripod he’d created. He carried it to the rear of the couch and set it up. William placed his cell phone in the cradle at the tripod’s top, brought up the video-camera app, and centered the viewfinder on Erin’s mount. He leaned over the couch, grabbed the remote control from the couch cushions, and clicked the television on. William went through his cable box’s menus and clicked Play on the recorded sports highlights. He checked his cell phone’s viewfinder to make sure the television was in full view and then paused the footage.

  “Hang tight, Erin.” William laughed at his own joke. “I’m going to go get dressed, clean up a bit, and do my hair. I have to look sharp for this one.” He turned toward the stairs.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT

  Beth and I walked through the open door of Duffield’s office.

  “You got a number?” I asked.

  “Houston got one from the local cable and Internet provider in Sacramento,” Duffield said. “I just got off the phone with the tech department. If we can get a GPS signal, we’ll have his location within minutes.”

  “Provided it’s the same phone he has on him right now,” Beth said.

  “Provided,” Duffield said. When his phone rang at his desk, he snatched it from its base. “Duffield.”

  Beth and I sat in silence.

  Duffield scribbled something on his pad of paper. “You’re sure?”

  I leaned forward in my chair to get a look at what Duffield had written down—an address.

  “Thanks.” Duffield hung the phone up. “We got a hit on the phone number. The coordinates say that it’s in the area. Tech nailed it down to a home address.”