February's Regrets (Larry Macklin Mysteries Book 4)

by A. E. Howe

  With both pies and about a gallon of coffee gone, we all leaned forward and swapped notes. All of us had talked with people who’d seen suspicious cars, trucks or vans that they wanted us to look into. Only a handful sounded promising and had enough information to be useful.

  “You’re going to love this,” Susan said. “Mohammed Attica gave me a very detailed description of a truck he saw driving through the neighborhood.”

  “Oh, lord,” Julio groaned.

  Mohammed was a self-proclaimed community leader. Though he tended to bring a lot of bluster and drama in his wake, he truly did care about the people in his community and, every once in a blue moon, came up with a tip that was really important. Of course, he had also filed half a dozen civil suits against various county agencies, including one against the sheriff’s office that Dad still hadn’t forgiven him for, even though the suit had been dismissed. Dad had wasted a week of work digging up a bunch of evidence and providing it to the county attorney.

  “What did he see?” Despite his reputation, I wasn’t passing up anyone’s help.

  “A black Ford pickup. He called it a redneck truck. The guy driving it was white and wore a ball cap. He saw it parked about a block from his house. He thought that was on Friday and then he’s pretty sure he saw the same truck Saturday evening. Maybe around eight, he said. No tag. Maybe he could pick the guy out of a lineup, but he had no idea how tall or how much the guy weighed since he only saw him in the truck. When pressed, he said the guy probably wasn’t obese or super skinny.”

  There were possibilities there. Maybe the guy was cruising for victims, or he was a construction worker who’d been paid on Friday and was looking for drugs, or he was just a stalky ex-boyfriend. But it was information that might come in handy and Pete wrote it all down.

  We moved on to Julio, who had information on a van parked by the side of the road down from the Sweet Spot, possibly on Saturday. The woman who saw it thought it was funny because it was a utility van, but didn’t have any signage on it. She also found it odd that the windows were partly rolled down, but no one was in it.

  “Like she says, no one leaves their van unlocked around there,” Julio said, giving Pete a piece of paper with the woman’s information. “She thought someone was in the van. Maybe hiding.”

  Almost everyone else reported sightings that were too vague or would only be useful if we already had a suspect. A lot of witness testimony falls into the latter category. Someone saying they saw a blue sedan in the neighborhood doesn’t help you when there are thousands of cars that match the description, but when you have a suspect who drives a blue sedan, you can go back to that witness and have them pull the car, and possibly the suspect, out of a lineup.

  My phone rang with a call from the hospital. I listened, then hung up and told everyone, “Ray, our only real witness, just died.”

  On that depressing note, Pete gathered up all the reports and we called it a day. Pete and I made plans to meet at the office on Monday morning before driving to the autopsy. We were both looking forward to the opportunity to confer with Tolland.

  A call from Dad meant stopping by his place on the way home to brief him.

  “I see now why you didn’t want me to quit the department,” I said as I tried, unsuccessfully, to push Mauser’s large butt off of my lap. “You just like having an investigator that you can ask to come by your house and give you a briefing whenever you want.” I was only half kidding.

  “Nonsense, I do that with all of my deputies,” he said.

  Not like you do with me, I thought as I filled him in on the results of the neighborhood canvassing.

  “Typical.”

  “We’re meeting with Tolland tomorrow after the autopsy.”

  “I’ll be interested to see if Darzi finds anything that the earlier autopsies missed.”

  “Tolland forwarded all of the original reports to Dr. Darzi so he could compare them. He’s already compared them with the first victim in the latest series and he’s also looked at Tonya’s X-rays to compare the blunt force trauma.”

  Mauser thought I was ignoring him and turned around, attempting to lick my face. It’s not easy to have a serious conversation while warding off the attention of an animal that’s the size of a black bear.

  “Mauser, come on,” Dad said, to no effect.

  “I just wish there was a motive to work with. He’s apparently not a sexual predator.”

  “We never ruled that out completely. It’s still possible there could be a sexual component to this. A number of serial killers don’t actually rape their victims, but still derive sexual pleasure from the killing. Admittedly, without bite marks or any of the other tell-tale signs, it seems less likely,” Dad mused.

  “A cleaver doesn’t even seem as symbolic as a knife.”

  “True, not that I buy too much of that Freudian stuff,” Dad said, getting up and fixing a Kong for Mauser, which finally got him to leave me alone.

  I told him our plan to expand the suspect list.

  “It’s going to be bittersweet if we catch the guy and find out that we made decisions during the earlier investigation that meant we never had a chance of catching him. Regrets. They drive me crazy.”

  I knew that Dad wasn’t just talking about this investigation, but also some of the lost time with my mother. He’d always worked long hours. They were deeply in love, and she’d understood the demands of his career, but he’d told me once how much he regretted not spending more time with her. Maybe that was another reason I couldn’t commit to a career with the department. If Cara and I did become more deeply involved with each other, I wouldn’t want to feel the same remorse that Dad did now. There is a real conflict that can exist between a career as important as law enforcement and the time you have to spend with the ones you love. Or maybe it’s more about balance than conflict. I wasn’t sure I was strong enough to find that balance.

  “I’m not happy with what you did,” Dad said suddenly. I knew he was referring to last month’s debacle. “But you’ve got to push through it. If you don’t want to be a deputy for the rest of your life, fine. But come back and push through the humiliation now. You’ll be a better person for it. If I hadn’t been so mad at you, I wouldn’t have accepted your resignation so easily.”

  “I’ve got to get going. I’ll let you know how things go tomorrow,” I said, standing up and cutting off any deep discussions of my recent failings.

  As I drove home I felt a little guilty for leaving like that. The weather reflected my mood as a cold front brought lashing rain and winds. But solace was waiting for me at home—Cara and a big bowl of home-cooked chili. I tried not to think about anything else for a few hours.

  Chapter Seventeen

  I was up and out the door early on Monday. I met up with Pete at the office, and we took a few minutes to get our act together before we went to the autopsy. We organized the information we’d gathered from Sunday’s interviews so we could share it with Tolland; hopefully he’d have some to exchange.

  I drove, leaving Pete with his hands free to text back and forth with his wife and daughters.

  “Doesn’t Sarah have a job?” I knew his wife worked at a graphics company in Tallahassee.

  “Yeah,” he said while making rapid motions with his thumbs on his phone. How he could text so fast with those chubby fingers was a mystery.

  “Her boss doesn’t mind her spending half the day texting with you?” I prodded.

  “No. She does the work her boss asks her to and he doesn’t micromanage her time. Or badger her like some busybody partner. Besides, I’m not texting my wife. I’m texting Kim. She’s at home with the flu.” Kim was his younger daughter. “Shouldn’t you concentrate on the road instead of worrying about what I’m doing?” he pushed back good-naturedly.

  “Fine. If your thumbs fall off, don’t come crying to me.”

  We parked and headed for the morgue. Tolland was waiting for us at the front desk, looking tired but determined to finish the jo
b.

  “I figured I’d wait for you. No sense making Darzi cover the same ground twice,” he said, shaking our hands. “Let’s do this first and then we can go over our progress… or lack there of.”

  Dr. Darzi was walking around the corpse, making notes, when we came in. He’d told me once that one of the biggest mistakes a pathologist could make was not standing back and looking at the body. Sometimes it’s the forest you need to see.

  “Hello, hello,” he said, giving us a slight wave. Dr. Darzi never shook hands. Of course, I could count on one hand the number of times I’d seen him when he wasn’t wearing gloves. “I think you all have a problem.”

  “We knew that,” I said.

  “Yes, of course. But the problem is bigger than you think,” Darzi told us. “I’ve been studying the earlier autopsies.” He pointed to pictures and various autopsy reports that were laid out on a steel table next to Dawn’s body.

  We all moved closer as Darzi explained.

  “The original murders varied a bit in the initial attack. With the first murder, Tara Dunaway, you see there were three blows to the head. The first blow was glancing, the second to the back of the skull causing her to go down to her knees. From the angle of the final blow, he was standing above her and brought the blunt object down on top of her head. On the second murder where we have two victims, the woman, Tiffany Falls, was killed outright by the first blow to the back of her head. Her male companion, Jim Merrell, suffered several blows—one to the side of his head from the front, one to his arm, a defensive wound, and the final blow to the top of the head. The next three victims all suffered one mortal head wound from behind. He had learned how to kill efficiently.”

  “So what are you driving at?” Pete asked. Darzi held up a finger.

  “I’m getting there, my friend. While there was some variation in the method used to incapacitate the original victims, all of them received a number of cleaver blows to the back. Between ten and fifteen. And most importantly, they were all at roughly the same angle and the same depth. The murderer was standing, straddling the body and hacking down at the victims’ backs.”

  Darzi pointed to Dawn’s body, lying face down on the table. “Now we have the new series of crimes. The first victim in this group, Shawna Morton, was killed the same way as was this victim, and as he attempted to do to Tonya Williams. However, Morton received twenty-five chops to the back with a meat cleaver. Only two of them are close to the depth of the wounds on the original victims. All the rest are deeper and came from a variety of angles, as though he was in a frenzy. Now we come to the latest victim.”

  He waved his hands over Dawn like a magician presenting his assistant. We all looked at the poor woman’s back. It had been hacked pretty severely, but I didn’t think there were as many wounds as the pictures of the victim before her.

  “Doesn’t look like as many wounds,” Tolland mused, stealing my thoughts.

  “Not quite as many. But deep. Some of them cut into the bone. He was crazed as he hacked at her. I think he is becoming more intense. I’m not a profiler, but if I had to guess, I would say that he is in crisis. He’s dealing with it through these murders.”

  “So there’s going to be more,” Tolland intoned gravely.

  “And we probably won’t have long to wait,” Pete chimed in.

  We watched most of the rest of the autopsy, but didn’t learn much. We asked if there was a room nearby where we could meet while Dr. Darzi finished up with Dawn. His assistant showed us into Darzi’s office, where the walls were covered with gruesome pictures from hundreds, if not thousands, of autopsies. The bookshelves were filled with volumes on delightful subjects ranging from insect larvae life cycles to lividity analysis.

  “Hell, we should have gone to my office,” Tolland said regretfully, looking around at the macabre decorations.

  “On the bright side, there’s room for all of us to sit. We just have to remove various body parts to get to the chairs,” I said, picking up a model of a liver… or maybe it was a kidney.

  Once seated and trying to focus on each other instead of the gruesome surroundings, Pete and I updated Tolland on everything we’d learned so far.

  “I’m pushing the forensics,” he told us. “We’ve secured the cooperation of the FBI, but there’s some effort involved in coordinating with their office. I did get to talk with a man I respect. Some of their profilers aren’t worth dick, but this guy is solid. He’ll give you what he’s got without making up crap.”

  “Was he able to shed any light on the killer?” I asked.

  “Not exactly. But he did say that these killings suggest the killer is a narcissist. Told me I might want to double-check with the papers and television stations and make sure they haven’t received any mail, emails or phone calls from someone purporting to be the killer. He thought the purpose of the hacking was like a signature. The killer derives his thrill from the hunt and the kill. Then he puts his mark on the victim so everyone knows it was him.”

  “Interesting, especially in light of what Dr. Darzi said. He started out just putting his signature on the killings, but now maybe the savagery is more important,” Pete said.

  “We’ve already looked through the old reports for someone who might be trying to get close to the investigation, but I hadn’t thought of double-checking with the media,” I said.

  “There have been cases, like the Long Island Killer, where he contacted relatives of the victims in order to taunt them and to brag. We received a couple false confessions and some tasteless practical jokes during the first series of killings. No doubt, some of that will start back up now that it’s in the news again.”

  “We should have a new list of suspects to check in a couple of days,” Pete told him.

  “And I’ll have gotten at least a preliminary report on the forensic evidence we’ve gathered from the two newest murders. I also have our people going over the material that was collected at the original murder scenes. There have been a lot of advances in forensic science since then.”

  “What about the victims?” Pete asked. “They don’t look similar. Several have been African American, and the women look a little bit alike, but…”

  “I think it’s less about appearance and more about availability.”

  “They all lived or worked in the poorer sections of Adams County.”

  “And they were all young,” I pointed out.

  “True. That may point to availability again. Young people tend to stay out later at night. The killer probably waited until after ten to make his moves,” Tolland suggested.

  “We can estimate when and where most of them were abducted,” Pete added.

  “But Tonya’s is the only attack that we know had a witness. Unfortunately, he passed away yesterday,” I said.

  We were all quiet for a minute. “The hard part is knowing the difference between what’s important and what’s not,” Pete sighed.

  “It’s always that way. After the fact, a lot of things become obvious. Tougher to see all those clues when you’re running the scent,” Tolland said.

  “And we have to keep from getting attached to any one idea because the mind loves to make patterns where there aren’t any,” I stated.

  “Couldn’t be more right. Best we keep some of our more speculative thoughts to ourselves,” Pete said.

  “We collect and share evidence, but not theories. Sounds good.” Tolland stood up and promised us an update from his team soon.

  Before we left the hospital, Pete and I went up to see Tonya. They wouldn’t let us into the ICU, but she was awake enough that she managed a slight wave toward us after a nurse told her we were there.

  “What do you think?” I asked Pete during the drive back to Calhoun, mostly to keep him from texting the whole way.

  “I think we’re in the same position a lot of serial killer hunters find themselves in. We’re looking for a killer whose only motive is the desire to kill. Most homicides are solved by connecting the victim to the killer
by past association and discovering a motive for the murder, but I don’t think that’s going to work with this one. These days we’re lucky to be able to match DNA evidence… Assuming our killer leaves some at the scene and assuming that his DNA is on file somewhere.”

  “We could try setting a trap,” I joked darkly.

  “And I can’t think of a single case where a killer has been caught using a trap.”

  “Hmmm, me neither. Always works on TV. We don’t have any DNA…”

  “There’s been plenty of DNA recovered from the murder scenes, there’s just no way to prove that whoever left it is connected with the crime. It’ll be useful when we have a suspect, but not now,” Pete pointed out.

  “Right. So, no useful DNA, no obvious connection between the victims, no motive, no witnesses…”

  “Again, we might have a witness who saw the killer’s truck or van in the area, but we can’t be sure yet.”

  “But we do have several vehicle descriptions.”

  “From both these murders and the earlier murders.”

  “We should go through them all and cross-reference them with our suspects.”

  “At least it will keep us busy.” Pete didn’t sound thrilled with the project.

  Back at the office we agreed that Pete would go out and re-interview the witnesses that saw promising vehicles. I went to check-in with Shantel and her efforts to grow our suspect list.

  I found her sitting at my old desk. I stood over her, watching as she went through names and criminal backgrounds, cross-checking them with current police reports and utility records.

  “If I sit at my own desk, I get interrupted every five minutes with someone wanting me to answer questions or help with something.”

  “I understand. Not my desk anymore.”

  This caused her to stop and glare at me. “When are you going to admit that you’re working here?”

  “I’m sort of working here.”

  “You got a new job?”