A Different Dawn (Nina Guerrera)

by Isabella Maldonado

  Flashing Wade a grateful smile, she took the proffered cloth, mopped fat droplets from her short-cropped hair, and swiped at the rivulets trickling down the sides of her face.

  She glanced across the table at Special Agents Kelly Breck and Jake Kent, who made up the rest of her newly formed team. Breck’s sharp wit and sassy attitude—softened by her southern accent—came as a surprise to those who didn’t know her. A contrast she’d used to her advantage in dealing with criminals.

  Kent—a former Navy SEAL with a sandy buzz cut, hard muscles, and incongruous black-framed glasses—looked like he would be equally comfortable in a combat zone or behind a podium in a university lecture hall.

  Settling into her seat, Nina noticed tension in the lines of their supervisor’s features. Buxton never displayed strong emotion, but this morning he sat stiffly at the head of the table, pulled off his glasses, and pinched the bridge of his nose.

  Two neatly stacked manila folders rested in front of him. He tapped them with his long fingers. “If this is a pattern, it’s right up there with the most disturbing ones I’ve seen.”

  They all exchanged glances. Nina waited to hear the briefing.

  “ViCAP found a potential match between two triple murders committed in different cities precisely four years apart,” Buxton continued. “We’ve been tasked with determining whether they’re related and, if so, assisting with the investigation at the request of the Phoenix police department in Arizona.”

  The Violent Criminal Apprehension Program’s massive database was maintained by the FBI as a repository for crime information entered by law enforcement agencies around the country. The system was designed as a clearinghouse and centralized analysis point, a net created to link crimes committed across states and over time. Nina figured something bad had gotten caught in the net.

  “What do we know about the two cases?” Wade asked.

  Nina admired how the veteran criminal profiler shifted straight into high gear. Interest lightened his gray eyes as he opened an old-school notepad. Wade had the benefit of a doctorate in psychology and a couple of decades in the FBI to inform his theories about who had committed unsolved crimes sent to the BAU for input. This advantage, however, came at a high price. Continuously delving into the minds of both killers and their victims took its toll. Over two years earlier, Wade’s career had been temporarily sidetracked when one of his prior investigations ended with the death of a young girl he had not been able to save.

  In response to Wade’s question, Buxton pushed his glasses back on and turned to Breck, who had already grabbed her laptop from its soft leather case by her feet. “I sent you an encrypted file with crime scene photos and other information,” he said to her. “Can you pull it up?”

  Breck, detailed to their team from the Cyber Crime Unit, was never without her laptop, which seemed like an appendage rather than a piece of equipment. She propped it open in front of her, tucking a spiraling lock of long auburn hair behind her ear. “I’ll put it on the big screen,” she said, her southern drawl betraying a coastal Georgia upbringing.

  Nina turned toward the flat-screen monitor mounted on the wall as Buxton continued.

  “I’ll start with the most recent case, which occurred two nights ago in Phoenix,” he said. “An entire family was murdered in their home in the middle of the night.” He drew in a breath. “Mother, father, and their newborn daughter.”

  An image filled the screen. Nina found herself gazing at a sprawling Mediterranean-style estate situated on a lush green lawn surrounded by towering royal palms. A second picture replaced the first. A man who looked to be in his midthirties lay in a king-size bed, his head at an odd angle against the ornate headboard. He wore nothing but boxers, and blood covered his bare chest.

  The next screen showed an infant apparently asleep in a crib.

  “The baby was suffocated—no obvious injuries or trauma except for petechial hemorrhaging associated with hypoxia caused at the time of death.” Buxton swallowed audibly. “She was only eight days old.”

  Buxton nodded to Breck, who brought up the next crime scene photo.

  A woman lay slumped in a bathtub, dressed in a pale pink nightgown. A semiautomatic pistol rested in her slackened right hand, and a single gunshot wound pierced her right temple. She looked like one of the many suicide victims Nina had seen as a patrol officer before joining the Bureau.

  “I thought you said it was a triple murder,” Nina said, mentally processing the succession of images. “This looks like the mother killed her family before turning the gun on herself.”

  Buxton’s dark eyes met hers. “Because that’s how it was supposed to look.”

  Silent until now, Kent offered a theory. “Someone entered the home, killed everyone, then staged the bodies?”

  While Kent had been in the Navy, Uncle Sam had paid for his master’s degree in psychology, which he put to use in the field during prisoner interrogations on classified operations. After joining the Bureau, it had not taken him long to find his way into the BAU, where he repurposed his hard-won skills from fighting enemies to hunting predators.

  “Phoenix police Homicide detectives suspected a problem right away,” Buxton said. “They found a trace amount of blood residue in the foyer just inside the house. It appears the killer may have worn gloves and shoe coverings when he went upstairs, but some droplets must have spilled when he took them off before he left the house.”

  “He came prepared,” Kent said.

  “The blood in the foyer was a match for the father and had no logical explanation for being where it was,” Buxton said. “The father clearly died in his bed. He couldn’t have gone downstairs after getting shot through the heart. That was enough to get the PPD detectives looking for other trace evidence.” He gave Breck another nod, and she clicked on the next picture. “That’s when they found this.”

  Nina leaned forward and squinted at the screen. She made out a pale shoe print barely visible on the tile floor in the foyer. “That looks like a ghost print.”

  “They used an electrostatic lifter,” Buxton said. “According to the report, the Phoenix crime scene techs laid a sheet of Mylar on the welcome mat inside the door. Once static electricity raised the dust to the surface, they turned the sheet over, and the shoe print was there.”

  Nina smiled. “Nice work.”

  “They sent the image of the tread to their crime lab,” Buxton continued. “Ran a comparison with the shoes in our database and came up with a match for a Nike-brand running shoe two sizes larger than anything the father owned.”

  Breck pulled up a side-by-side shot of the tread from the crime scene and the sample from the database. They were identical except for wear marks on the shoe print taken at the murder scene.

  Buxton picked up the second folder. “That’s how we got a match to a case in New York City four years ago,” he said. “NYPD investigated a case in Manhattan where a mother, father, and newborn baby girl were murdered in their apartment. The deaths were staged to look like a double-homicide-suicide. In that case, the family succumbed to carbon monoxide gas fumes. The father and baby were both found in their respective beds, but the mother was seated in an armchair in the master bedroom. Every window was closed and towels were stuffed under the doors.”

  Breck closed the digital file from Phoenix and clicked open the one from New York. An image of a four-floor walk-up apartment building popped up on the screen.

  “There was a shoe print inside the apartment that didn’t belong there too?” Nina asked.

  “Not just any shoe print,” Buxton said. “The same brand and size as this new case in Phoenix. The wear patterns on the soles could not be conclusively matched, but that’s not surprising since it was a running shoe, and those don’t usually last four years for a regular jogger. The suspect would have gotten new sneakers before committing the second crime.”

  “Both crimes were staged to look like double-murder-suicides.” Wade looked up from his notepad. “Any other simila
rities?”

  “Just one.” Buxton paused until every eye was on him. “The case in New York occurred on February twenty-ninth.”

  “Just like in Phoenix.” Nina turned to Wade. “Why would leap day be significant?”

  Wade put down his pen and steepled his fingers. “Same victimology, same MO, if not in the manner of death, then in the way he tried to cover up his crimes by framing the mother.”

  “Same size and type of shoe print,” Kent added. “Same date.”

  “And leaving no sign of a break-in,” Breck said. “The killer would have to make entry in such a way that he wouldn’t wake up the family and the police wouldn’t find any evidence of his presence at the scene.”

  Buxton nodded. “I’m willing to concede that these two cases are related.”

  “The next question is, are there more?” Wade seemed to be thinking out loud. “Has he succeeded in getting other cases closed as homicide-suicides over the years?”

  Nina picked up his train of thought. “If he managed to hide his crimes, there would be no further investigation by the police, who probably wouldn’t enter the case information into ViCAP because they believed the perpetrator was dead. There’s one case near the West Coast and one on the East Coast. That means he could be committing murders misidentified as homicide-suicides anywhere in the country and it would be unlikely anyone would spot a pattern.”

  “Which would make recognizing a series nearly impossible,” Breck said. “This guy is smart.” She dragged her finger across the touch screen on her laptop, and Nina could see she was opening a new window. “We need to go back and check every leap day to search for any double-murder-suicides. I’ll have to run a simultaneous scan in multiple databases.”

  “What about non-leap years?” Nina said. “We should check February twenty-eighth and March first on the years in between.”

  Buxton jerked his chin at Breck. “Expand the search parameters to include the week before and after the end of February.”

  “How far do we go back?” Nina said.

  Buxton looked thoughtful. “Let’s start with twenty years.”

  “On it.” Breck tapped the keys. A moment later, she straightened. “I’ve got another one.”

  Nina leaned toward her. “Where and when?”

  “In San Diego, four years before the one in New York.” Breck clicked on one of the text boxes. “That one was closed as a double-murder-suicide.” She elaborated, eyes on her screen. “A mother, father, and their infant daughter.”

  “Nothing between?” Kent asked.

  “Nada,” Breck said, still typing. “Wait, there are more showing up now in a different system. Older cases on prior leap days that might fit.”

  Buxton frowned. “Give me a chronological list.”

  “That should only take a— Oh, no way.” Breck’s eyes widened.

  “What?” Nina couldn’t read the scrolling screen fast enough.

  Breck kept the cursor moving. “Starting at the beginning, there was one twenty years ago in Philly, then sixteen years ago in Chicago, then twelve years ago in Houston, then San Diego, New York, and now Phoenix.”

  “Are we sure twenty years ago was the beginning?” Buxton asked. “I chose that as an arbitrary starting point.”

  Breck resumed her typing. “Let’s go back another twenty years before the Philly case.” A minute later, she turned to Buxton. “The oldest incident I can find goes back twenty-eight years.” She paled. “And you’ll never believe where it all started.”

  Buxton, apparently not in the mood to guess, simply stared at her.

  “Phoenix,” Breck said. “There was a double-murder-suicide of two parents and their baby girl in Phoenix twenty-eight years ago. The next one was twenty-four years ago in LA.”

  “Then Philadelphia twenty years ago?” Nina asked, trying to keep the timeline straight.

  “Exactly,” Breck said.

  “Whatever else is going on,” Kent said, “we have a clear pattern. He only hits on leap day.”

  “Maybe not.” Wade stroked his jaw. “Perhaps he’s killed on other dates of significance to him.” He turned to Breck. “Can you reconfigure the search to include the event type only?”

  Breck’s brows shot up. “You want me to look for all reported murder-suicides in the past thirty years?”

  “Only ones that involve two parents and their infant child—and where the mother was the perpetrator,” Wade said. “That should narrow the results considerably.”

  While Breck surfed the databases, Buxton addressed the rest of the group. “We can’t be certain all the cases are related until we analyze the situation further. Remember that each one has been investigated and closed by local police years ago.”

  “True, but we also know this guy is careful,” Nina said. “And he’s had lots of practice.”

  Buxton glanced at Breck. “Any results yet?”

  “This will take a while,” she said, head down and fingers working the keyboard.

  He turned to Wade. “What kind of profile would you create for this unsub?”

  Referring to the perpetrator as an unsub, the FBI’s term for unknown subject, made it clear Buxton considered this a series.

  “I always like to start with victimology, and I’d prefer to review the rest of the case files before I go into any depth,” Wade said. “One thing is for certain, though. We have a person who repeatedly murders entire families, including the most innocent victims of all—newborns.”

  “He’s not schizophrenic, because this level of sophistication and planning demonstrates that he knows exactly what he’s doing,” Kent said, adding his observations to the mix. “That leaves one overriding conclusion.” He looked around the room. “Our unsub is a psychopath.”

  Chapter 4

  Two hours later, Nina stood back to study the whiteboard that covered most of one wall. “Why every four years?” She rested her hands on her hips. “Why leap day?”

  No one answered. The keyboard clicked under Breck’s fingers, Kent paced back and forth, and Wade cocked his head to one side as he peered over her shoulder at the crime scene collage. After the initial briefing, Buxton had traversed the room to sit at his desk and review expense reports while the team struggled to make sense of the senseless.

  Photographs crowded the whiteboard’s gleaming surface, held in place by circular magnets. The disturbing mural had slowly taken shape as Nina added snippets of information Breck printed from downloaded police files forwarded from around the country. Kent had devised a color-coded system using dry-erase markers to track their level of confidence about the initial findings in each suspected case.

  Breck had completed her search for other double-murder-suicides that had occurred on different dates and non-leap years. Whether due to an eyewitness, a suicide note with confirmed handwriting analysis, or some other means, they had been able to confirm the original findings of the police reports for each of the cases except the ones on leap days. When all other incidents were eliminated, they were left with a total of eight separate incidents in seven different cities spanning twenty-eight years.

  Nina examined the new data points. “Hold on a sec. If he committed murders every four years going back twenty-eight years, why do we have eight incidents instead of seven?”

  “You’re thinking that seven times four is twenty-eight.” Breck smiled at her. “But you have to think of the first one as case zero. Then there’s seven after that.”

  Nina felt her cheeks warm.

  “Let’s approach the unknown by examining the known,” Wade said, saving her from the awkward moment. “What patterns are there regarding victimology?”

  Kent stopped pacing to face the board. “The victims are similar in that they are relatively young couples with a first child born anywhere from six weeks to one day prior to the murders.”

  Wade nodded. “Their ethnicity and income levels vary, although none of the families would be considered economically disadvantaged.”

  “They
all lived in metropolitan areas,” Nina added. “There were no cases in rural communities. The housing is literally and figuratively all over the map,” she went on. “The two most recent cases occurred in a Manhattan apartment and a large single-level estate in Phoenix.”

  “He has a reason behind what he’s doing,” Wade said. “If we can figure out what it is, we’ll be a lot closer to putting a name to this guy.”

  Kent took a step closer to the whiteboard. “This is representational targeting.”

  Nina raised a brow. “Meaning what?”

  “He selects victims that stand in for something or someone else. Based on the variety of cases, it’s not their location, race, income level, profession, or religious affiliation.”

  Nina grasped the concept. “What they all have in common is the birth of their first child. That situation must mean something to him.”

  “Not just any first child either,” Kent said. “In each case, it’s a girl.”

  Nina processed that for a few moments. “So the suspect has a specific and symbolic target. He won’t deviate from his pattern, which makes him highly mobile and a planner. How does he know the victims, or if he doesn’t know them, how does he select them?”

  “We need more data,” Breck said from behind her laptop.

  “Which means we’ll have to get the police to reopen several closed cases,” Wade said.

  Kent blew out a sigh. “We’re not going to be popular.”

  She knew what he meant. Having come to the FBI from a large local police department herself, she understood the resentment they might have toward Feds wading in and questioning their entire investigation and the conclusions they had drawn from it. Police detectives worked a lot more homicides than FBI agents and viewed themselves as the experts. The thought gave her an idea.

  “Speaking of the different locations,” she said to Breck. “Could you pull up the largest US cities by population going back thirty years?”

  Breck’s cheeks dimpled. “Lucky for you, I can multitask.”

  “Tell me if any of the cities where we have suspected cases is not in the top ten,” Nina said.