by J. D. Barker
“Just the feathers,” Gimble repeated slowly in that Southern drawl. She looked up at Dobbs with deep blue eyes. “Here’s the thing about those feathers. Not only are they all from the same species of sparrow, Henslow’s, he licks each feather before leaving it with the body.”
“What?”
Gimble nodded slowly. “This crazy, careful, no-fingerprint-leaving son of a bitch gives us a DNA sample at every murder.”
Dobbs wasn’t sure how to respond to that. Finally, he said, “How many?”
“Murders?”
He nodded.
“Eighteen.”
“Eighteen? Why haven’t I heard of this guy?”
Gimble said, “No two murders are alike. Spread out over thousands of miles. Multiple states, jurisdictions. We’ve kept the feathers under wraps. Going public with this guy would only create panic, possibly get him to change his MO, stop leaving the feathers, go underground. A guy like this can disappear. I’m not about to give him a reason to.” She glared up at Dobbs, and her face tightened. “No talking to the press, understand? As far as your local media is concerned, he’s responsible for one death here in LA and has escaped police custody.”
Dobbs nodded reluctantly. “Christ, eighteen dead.”
“Nineteen, counting the girlfriend.”
“Alyssa Tepper.”
“Right, Tepper.” Gimble shut off the iPad and turned back to him. “I’m gonna need access to his apartment, the Tepper scene, his work truck, a full report detailing every second he was in your custody,” she said, ticking off the items on her fingers. “Everything you got so far.”
“Whatever you need.”
“Our working theory is that Tepper somehow figured out what her boyfriend was doing, who he really was, so he shut her down.”
Dobbs considered this. It didn’t add up. “If he’s so careful, then why call the cops? Why not kill her someplace other than his own apartment and cover it up?”
Gimble turned back toward the storage unit. “Hey, Vela? You’re a clinical psychologist, right? Why does Birdman do the things he does?”
Vela had three boxes open and surrounding him on the floor. “Because he’s a fucking nut!” he shot back.
“He’s a fucking nut,” Gimble agreed, turning back to Dobbs. “Same reason your boy bothers to wear gloves while purposely leaving DNA at every crime scene. Same reason he calls the cops with his dead girlfriend still warm in the tub. He thinks this is some kind of game, and he’s decided it would be fun to toy with the local yokels. Up the stakes. See your faces while you try to figure it all out.” She shrugged. “I don’t know his motivation, and I don’t care. Now that we got a bead on him, my only focus is bringing him in.”
“How do you know it’s his DNA?”
Gimble smirked. “You think he’s got someone else licking his feathers, Detective? Some kind of surrogate licker in the mix?”
Dobbs said nothing.
She shrugged. “We found a hair at one of the crime scenes—number four—root still attached. At scene number twelve, his victim, Selena Hennis, managed to get in a good scratch before he strangled her. We pulled his skin from under her nail. In both cases, the DNA found matched the DNA on the feathers.”
Dobbs said, “We bagged numerous items from his place. Got a toothbrush and razor from Tepper’s apartment that most likely belong to him. Pulled another razor and toothbrush from a travel kit in his truck. He drank from a coffee cup at the station. We bagged that, too.”
“Has it gone out for processing?” she asked, then she shook her head. “Doesn’t matter. Pull everything, get it to my team. I’m sure I can get it processed in the Bureau lab much faster than you running it through FSC.”
Dobbs nodded. The Hertzberg-Davis Forensic Science Center was fast, but not Bureau-fast.
Gimble tossed the tablet onto the rear seat of the Suburban and started back toward the storage unit at a quick pace, calling out over her shoulder, “Let’s see what kind of secrets our boy keeps in his rented closet, Detective!”
Chapter Twenty-Six
Written Statement, Megan Fitzgerald
I imagine by now you’ve found my phone and pulled all the text messages between Michael and me. You seem thorough like that. My memory is pretty solid, but it’s probably best you refer to the actual texts from my phone rather than what I have below for this sort of thing. I’ll try to get it right but a girl can sometimes make mistakes. Right, Jessica?
Standing in Dr. Bart’s office, staring at his display case, I pulled my phone from my back pocket, then quickly wrote out a text.
Michael, r u there?
“Come on, come on,” I muttered.
My phone vibrated. Yes.
Where r u? R u safe?
Nearly a minute passed before his reply. Did you get into his office?
Yes—you were right, the baseball card is gone. Someone left a feather in its place.
How’d they get in?
Can’t tell. Nothing broken.
Anything else missing?
I looked back at the display case. I didn’t see any other feathers. And for each engraved display plaque, there was a corresponding piece of memorabilia.
I don’t think anything else is missing, I typed back.
When Michael didn’t reply for several minutes, I typed, Still there?
I looked at the clock on my phone and realized I had already been in here for nearly thirty minutes.
Thirty minutes was too long.
My phone vibrated, and I glanced at the display.
Can u get in the dark room?
My chest tightened.
No way!
The feathers, Meg—this is about the dark room.
No, no, no.
Please!
I quickly fired back, You said there’s a tape—did you listen to it?
Michael’s reply came much faster this time. Not yet. Soon. No opportunity yet.
I needed to change the subject. R u coming home?
Michael went silent again.
One minute.
Two minutes.
Then—
If you won’t go in the room, get Dr. Bart’s files. There’ll be a file on Alyssa Tepper—must be a connection somewhere. And maybe Roland Eads.
I turned and looked at Dr. Bart’s desk and the matching credenza behind it. I’d seen him reach into those drawers a hundred times, a thousand. Plucking out one file, returning another.
Patient files.
I typed, Do you have any idea how much trouble we could get into if someone found out we looked at those files?
Again, his response came fast. Not look—take! Get the files. Important!!! Hide them. Buy burner phone. Next contact from that only. Not your regular phone. Not anymore.
I stared at the message. A burner phone? WTF?
A second later: Meg, please!
My finger hovered over the keyboard. I don’t know when it started trembling. I should never have agreed to come in here.
When I finally typed a response, my hand had gone from trembling to downright shaking. My heart felt like it might burst through my rib cage. I sent back a single letter, all I could manage—
K.
You’d do it too, wouldn’t you, Jessica? If your brother asked?
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Dobbs
When Dobbs and Gimble reached the open storage unit, they found Special Agent Begley crouched over one of the dusty tire tracks on the concrete. He glanced up and nodded. “I sent photographs back to the lab. They’re running it. I want to try and lift one too.”
Dobbs frowned. “You’re not bringing in CSI for collection?”
“Begley here was a lab geek before I pulled him for this task force,” Gimble told him. “Twelve years with the Evidence Response Team Unit at Quantico. He’s my mobile lab. I call in for an ERT, and we have to wait on them, then watch that same half a dozen people traipse around my crime scene, moving a quarter as quickly and a third as effectively as Begley
. No time, no need.”
Begley had apparently heard all this before. He was studying the track again. “We’ve got a very narrow wheelbase. That suggests something small. Wide treads might mean we’re looking for some kind of sports car. He kept it alive on a trickle charger and fuel preservative.”
Gimble had already moved on. She was studying a label on one of the cardboard boxes. “What’s this address in New York? Looks like all of these were shipped to Kepler by a Megan Fitzgerald.”
Dobbs told her what he had learned about Kepler’s family.
“Think that’s where he’s heading?” Gimble asked.
The detective shook his head. “I doubt it. He’s adopted and had some kind of falling-out with the parents. His only family contact appears to be with the sister. The entire time we had him in custody, all he wanted was to talk to her. Meanwhile, she lit up his phone.”
“Somebody text Sammy and tell him we need a warrant for a data dump on the sister’s phone—all calls, texts, GPS.” Gimble snapped her fingers in time with each item.
“On it,” Vela said.
She turned to Vela. “Where’s my inventory? What have we got in here?”
“You said an hour.”
“I lied. He’s moving with a two-hour jump on us. We don’t have an hour. When I say an hour, I mean ten minutes ago.”
“Figured as much,” Vela said. “About half the boxes I’ve been through are full of books. Mostly nonfiction, heavy stuff—psychology texts, self-help. A lot of Freud.”
“Sounds like your dream collection,” Begley muttered.
“He was majoring in psychology at Cornell before dropping out his junior year. His father was a psychiatrist, mother’s a psychologist, and his sister is majoring in that field too,” Dobbs said. “We found similar audiobooks in his truck.”
“What else?” Gimble said, snapping her fingers again.
“I’ve got bins with socks, underwear, shirts, jeans. All look like they’ve been rifled through.” He pointed at the garment bags hanging from the metal clothing rack. “Those are all suits. Expensive—Armani, Kiton, Brioni. We’ve got dress shirts, ties, shoes, and matching socks in those bins under the rack. He definitely went through those.”
“So our boy fugitive dressed to the nines for his road trip,” Gimble said. “Anything to indicate he had cash stashed here?”
Vela bit his lower lip. “Nothing conclusive.”
“What about inconclusive?”
“You don’t like inconclusive.”
“I do today.”
Vela indicated the far right corner. “I found a safe back there. The door was closed but not locked. It’s empty.”
Gimble looked at Dobbs. “Did you get his passport?”
He shook his head. “We still have his wallet back at LAPD. Credit cards, driver’s license. My team didn’t find a passport in his apartment or his truck.”
Gimble looked up at the ceiling. “We’ve got to assume he’s got cash, possibly a passport, maybe even fake identification,” she said, thinking aloud. “He’s got wheels. Two hours on us. He’s not going to risk an airport. No need to take the bus or a train if you’ve got a car. He’s going to try and get away from here fast, so the real question is where would Mr. Kepler go? Port or highway?”
“If he makes the port,” Dobbs said, “he might be able to bribe his way onto a tanker. Any commercial travel and he’s got the same problem as an airport—cash transactions are monitored, and he’s got to assume we’re watching for his name or passport.”
Gimble’s eyes narrowed. “Please tell me somebody had the sense to flag his name? Both names?”
Dobbs nodded. “TSA and the other agencies were all notified when the BOLO went out a few minutes after he escaped LAPD custody.”
“Good boy,” Gimble said.
Special Agent Sammy Goggans appeared with Detective Wilkins behind him. Goggans balanced a small laptop in the crook of his elbow and typed with his free hand.
Gimble crossed over to him. “Tell me you got something off the cameras, Sammy.”
Agent Goggans frowned. “I got nothing on his exit from this place and nothing on facial recognition off the cameras on Seventh Street or the highway overpass down the block.”
“They scan every car, correct?”
Goggans nodded. “It’s not foolproof. They only get a view of the front seat, and with glare from the morning sun distorting images, I’d say only about sixty percent of what they capture is usable. It’s possible for someone to slip through.”
Gimble started snapping her fingers again, her mind clearly churning. She turned around, knelt, and studied the tire tracks carefully, then looked back up at Agent Vela. “Could these be fake? Some kind of ruse? Could our boy be on foot?”
“I don’t see how. I’m confident there was a car here and it was moved this morning. This guy seems smart. I think if he wanted to try and pull some kind of bait and switch, he would have given us a shot of the car, something to chase. He went through too much trouble to get a vehicle out of here unseen. He’s on the road.”
Gimble considered this, took out her phone, and dialed a number on speaker.
Dobbs leaned over to Goggans. “She always second-guess everybody?”
“Yep,” he replied.
“Heard that, Sammy.” Gimble winked at Goggans.
Her call was picked up on the second ring.
“U.S. Marshal Garrison.”
“Where are you on your search of this place? Turn up anything?”
“Nothing yet. Checked everything but your row. I don’t think he’s here,” Garrison replied. “The video footage I reviewed with Goggans indicates he made a beeline for his own storage unit, covered the camera, then left.”
Gimble glanced at Goggans, who nodded. Into the phone, she said, “Check the rest anyway. No unturned stones.”
“Copy.”
She hung up, shoved the phone back in her pocket. “Somebody get me a map.”
Goggans turned his laptop toward her, a map of California on the screen. “Already working on it. With a two-hour head start, accounting for traffic, I’d put him somewhere within this yellow band.”
Gimble’s face fell. “Christ, that’s a big grid. He could be halfway to Tijuana by now in an unknown car with an altered appearance.”
Part 2
Needles, California
Try a little experiment. Dress a millionaire in rags. Observe him. Watch the shift in his personality. This unintentional shift. The clothes do make the man. Thoughts alone don’t define us—we’re a complete package defined by the wrapping.
—Barton Fitzgerald, MD
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Michael
Your car will be ready in about five minutes, sir. They’re just finishing up the interior.”
Having memorized the address in Needles, California, I placed Roland Eads’s driver’s license in the breast pocket of my Armani jacket, glanced up at the cheerful young woman, and smiled. “Thanks, I sure do appreciate you squeezing me in without an appointment.”
She returned the smile. Suzy, according to her name tag. “It’s a beautiful car. The guys are fighting over it out there. What year is it?”
“It’s a 1969.”
She glanced over her shoulder at the man in white overalls getting a drink of water from the fountain in the corner. “A ’69, Brad. You win.”
I pulled back my right sleeve and glanced down at the Breitling Navitimer. Nearly eleven in the morning.
I’d been here for a little over two and a half hours.
Devil in the Detail had had no trouble fitting me in right away when I told them I wanted their VIP detail package along with several à la carte items I’d rattled off from their menu of services on the wall above Suzy’s head—around five hundred dollars in total. She told me it would take several hours. I told her I wasn’t in a hurry and didn’t mind waiting.
They quickly ushered my black 1969 Porsche 911 into the center bay, closed the
large door, and got to work. This was fortunate for me because Devil in the Detail was located directly across the street from the Stow ’n’ Go facility on Alameda. From their waiting area, with a six-month-old copy of Road and Track in hand, I had a clear view of the storage facility’s front entrance, and whenever the large gate opened, I could see my unit. While enjoying a complimentary coffee and several chocolate doughnuts, I watched Detectives Dobbs and Wilkins arrive about ten minutes after I’d left; they were followed soon after by a SWAT team and then two black Chevy Suburbans that were so obviously federal vehicles, they might as well have had FBI painted in big white letters on each of the doors and an American flag fluttering off the antenna.
I knew they’d quickly locate my storage unit.
I was certain they would hone in on the tire tracks and missing vehicle.
I’d found all the cameras in the storage facility years ago, and I was confident that by covering the few I did, I’d prevented them from getting an image of what I drove, so they’d have no means to identify the car.
I was well aware of the cameras located on Seventh and at the freeway overpass a few blocks down Alameda in the opposite direction, the only two traffic cameras nearby. I’d seen enough movies and television shows to know they’d assume I’d run. Based on estimated departure time, they would create a rolling window, a target search area. They’d most likely try to find an image of me behind the wheel of their mystery vehicle.
Rather than run, I waited.
In my head, I imagined their search area, a giant doughnut slowly expanding out from the center at ground zero.
I watched as the SWAT teams and U.S. marshals raced around the storage facility like ants on a hill. I watched as they picked through the various boxes and bins I kept there, no doubt wondering what was missing. There was nothing of real importance there—not anymore, anyway. I’d grabbed all the cash I had, nearly six thousand dollars, and whatever clothes I could fit in the trunk of the Porsche. When I’d left home, that car might have been the only thing I took that I actually cared about.
