Cold-Hearted Concept

by Whitley Gray

  “Hogan.”

  “It’s Beck Stryker, Clay.”

  “On a Sunday? Must be important.”

  The Follower’s latest victim was high priority. “We have a murder here that matches Jane Doe’s and Perny’s.”

  Hogan groaned. “When?”

  “Yesterday. The Follower killed the girl who lived downstairs from Perny.”

  “Aw, the little brunette gal?”

  “Yeah. India Wexler. The murder took place in Perny’s apartment. GPS coordinates and a photo were texted to Dr. Littman Saturday morning.”

  “GPS. Same way the Follower notified us about Perny.” Hogan paused. “We’ve had no communication since Perny. Seems to be fond of toying with the police.”

  More like toying with Zach. “The latest victim also had a note in her chest for Dr. Littman.”

  “Bugger’s determined to see him involved, huh?”

  Yep. The Follower had gotten his wish. Zach was involved up to his eyeballs. “It would seem like it. We also have a skeletonized victim here whom we believe may have been killed by the Follower last winter—a fifteen-year-old girl. It was her barrette in the wooden box.”

  Hogan grunted.

  “Listen, Dr. Littman—Zach—has advised forming a multiagency task force.” SJ had loved having Zach on board and had approved the expanded task force—with one caveat: big expenses had to be run by her. “Ruskin’s out of commission, and Zach is covering his cases. He’s working on the Follower and trying to finalize Perny’s series. With two Follower victims in Omaha and two here, I’d welcome your participation, Clay.”

  “Not sure I can contribute much,” he said gruffly.

  “You know the first case from last October, the Jane Doe.”

  “Jane Doe 114 or JD 114. Still unidentified. Anyway, I figure with three female victims in the series, it’s easier to have a name for each. Not much of a fan of ‘victim number one,’ et cetera.”

  “Agreed. You know Jane Doe 114, and you know Perny as both a killer and a victim. We have Annika—the girl whose barrette was in the box—and Ms. Wexler. We need to catch this guy before he decides to do it again.”

  “I’ll check with the boss and let you know. In the meantime, you want copies of the case files for Jane 114 and Perny?”

  “Yes. That would be a big help.” He gave Hogan robbery/homicide’s fax number.

  “There’s something I was going to call you about,” Hogan said. “The lab discovered something odd about the items in that wooden box.”

  “Okay…”

  “The drivers’ licenses all had Perny’s fingerprints, as did each of the trinkets.”

  “Confirming he had direct contact.”

  “Yes. Here’s the weird thing.” A chair squeaked in the background. “The box itself has no fingerprints of any kind.”

  Beck paused midfidget. “None?”

  “None. Inside or out.” Hogan let out a gusty sigh. “The doctor’s bag and its contents have dozens of prints—all Perny’s.”

  “What about the barrette?”

  “No prints. The lab found microscopic starch granules, like you’d find in exam gloves.”

  “The Follower brought the box with him and planted the licenses and trinkets inside.”

  Papers rattled on Hogan’s end. “That’s my take.”

  “The Follower had to know what Perny was up to.” They were closing in. “They could have been friends.”

  “Don’t know if a couple of psychopaths are capable of friendship, but they’re connected somehow.”

  This was huge. “The Follower at least knew who Perny was and what he was doing, and at some point he must have decided to set Perny up to take the fall for Annika Unger.”

  “Uh-huh. Don’t get too excited there, Beck. The Follower had already killed Perny before you ID’d those remains as Ms. Unger. That barrette helped you identify her. Maybe he never intended to frame Perny. Maybe it was a backup plan. The Follower has his own killing agenda, but if law enforcement closed in, it would be on Perny.”

  “Then why kill Perny? The Follower couldn’t use Perny as a scapegoat.”

  “Excellent question.” Hogan cleared his throat. “Anyhoo. I’ll get back to you about the task force.”

  “Sounds good. Take it easy, Clay.”

  “Watch your six.”

  He disconnected. Wow. Wait until Zach hears about this.

  Chapter Sixteen

  “I don’t know, Beck. It’s hard to sort out what this means.” Zach sat adrift in a sea of paperwork. It was a reading-glasses day. A tale of two cases: The Crossroads case—even with the outlier in Nebraska—was straightforward. Seven victims, one killer. The Follower case was like a tangle of brambles. Every new piece of information made the case an order of magnitude more complicated. “I agree, someone other than Perny—”

  “The Follower.”

  “Yes, probably the Follower, put the wooden box in Perny’s closet.”

  “After filling the box with trophies, the Follower managed to hide it in Perny’s residence, near the murder kit.” Beck tapped the desk with each word. “The Follower knew Perny.”

  “Not necessarily. He knew where Perny lived and where he kept his trophies. The Follower could have planted the box without having any sort of relationship with Perny.”

  “Wearing gloves to avoid leaving a print.” Beck’s stormy gaze drilled into him, burning with intensity. “The murder kit was well hidden. The Follower didn’t just stumble across it. Hell, we didn’t find it the first time we tossed the place.”

  “Going in, you were suspicious he was the Crossroads Killer. Hogan would have kept at it and torn the place apart. It’s part and parcel of checking out the residence of a serial killer.”

  “How did the Follower know where to find the kit? It was stashed behind a wall, Zach.”

  “It wasn’t that hard to find. It’s typical for these guys to keep their trophies close. Perny was a law student. He had to have been cagey with anything that could be construed as evidence. If the murder kit had been in plain sight or inside a cupboard, that would have been suspicious in itself. So the items had to be hidden, but not in a particularly convoluted manner.”

  “By Perny? Wouldn’t a law student be the king of convoluted when it came to protecting that stuff?”

  “Yeah, but odds are Perny didn’t keep the trophies in the closet compartment. It looks like the Follower placed the items because he wanted us to discover them.”

  “He wanted you to find them. He knew you could. That’s why he wanted you involved, Zach. It’s part of his game.”

  That’s not why he wants me involved. “I don’t think he’s after my ability to ferret out evidence.”

  Beck laced his hands over his stomach. “It’s like he wanted you to solve the Crossroads case and then move on to the Follower case. Almost as if he’s saying, Perny’s run is over. Now it’s my turn.”

  Was that it? Literally a game in which the Follower wanted attention, so he eliminated the competition in Zach’s caseload? A “Look at me” scenario, not an “I’m coming for you” situation?

  Zach stared at the ceiling. “He hasn’t communicated that in his missives.”

  “Sure he has.” Beck was like a bulldog with the theory, refusing to let go. “Look at the poem. He tells you Perny is history, and he’s challenging you to ‘read between the lines.’ The paper heart found with India indicates he wants you to ‘get in the game.’ It’s sport to him. He wants you to admire his handiwork.”

  “It’s possible.” But not likely. It was more of a chess game, more a matter of who achieved checkmate first. A deadly game. And no way am I going to lay that on Beck. “But we don’t know much about him at this point.”

  “We know he’s a peculiar poet and a killer. Maybe if he sees you working the case, he’ll settle down.”

  Maybe he’ll kill the next person I talk to in public. “You could be right.”

  “Yeah?”

  “Yeah.” Zach ma
naged a tired smile. “Let’s get some good coffee before the task force meeting.”

  * * * *

  Zach’s head throbbed. The conference room was hot, overcrowded, and smelled of bitter coffee and men whose muskiness had exceeded the capacity of their deodorant sticks. Beck, along with Van, Richfield, SJ, Zach, and Ernie, an electronics and computer expert, composed the task force at present.

  Beck had gotten Hogan’s participation via speakerphone.

  Hearing that Annika and India were part of a serial-killer investigation had kicked everyone into overdrive. They were all over the place with theories; everyone had an angle. Molding them into an effective team wasn’t going well.

  At the head of the table, Zach fought the urge to pull the collar of his shirt away from his neck. “Okay. We’ve got two victims in Omaha—”

  “Perny and Jane Doe 114,” Hogan rumbled from the speakerphone.

  “Yes.” Zach continued, “And two here, Unger and Wexler. Since it’s likely the killer is in the Denver area, this will be the headquarters of the task force. We’ll be looking at each victim.”

  “Perny and Wexler were only a week apart.” Van crossed his arms. “If he’s devolving, isn’t it likely we’ll have another one soon?”

  Yes. Zach kept his thoughts off his face. “Right now, we don’t know enough to predict future behavior. That’s why we need to concentrate on the victims. The clues are in whom he chose. Who were they? Are there commonalities among them?”

  “He’s threatened to make you victim number five.” Richfield wore jeans and a green-and-orange plaid shirt. “Should we be looking at you?”

  “Agent Littman isn’t a victim,” Beck said. “Let’s stick to the ones we have.”

  “But—”

  “You hear me, Richfield?” Beck planted his fists on the tabletop. “Off-limits. Got it?”

  Crimson colored the rookie detective’s cheeks. He gave a sharp nod.

  God, Beck, don’t go all caveman on me. “The information is in the individuals he’s already taken.”

  “We should be looking at possible motives,” Van said.

  Wrong. Zach narrowed his eyes. “We should be looking at individuals.”

  “Where do we start?” Beck cut in.

  “A chart.” Zach approached the dry-erase board.

  “Why does he take the finger?” Richfield wiggled his pinkie. “Some sort of fetish, like Xavier Darling?”

  Damn. Zach had hoped to avoid discussion of Xav-D. “Darling took fingers as a trophy—a way to relive the experience. I don’t yet know what it means to the Follower.”

  The remnants of the blush had left Richfield’s cheeks blotchy. “Fingers did it for Darling?”

  A chill ran down Zach’s spine. Not precisely. Bones did it for Darling. Specifically those of the little finger. He had defleshed the phalanges, drilled a hole through the long axis, and strung them as a necklace. When they had caught Darling, the necklace had been fifteen bones long—three “beads” from each victim. It had been hideous.

  But not as bad as the hearts…

  “What do we know?” Van tapped a pen on his notepad.

  Zach uncapped the marker. Somehow calming, that familiar chemical odor. He divided the board into four columns. Atop the first he wrote, Victim #1/JD 114.

  “Victim number one, Jane Doe 114, killed the first week of October and left at the Crossroads Killer’s—aka Perny’s—dump site in Omaha. No clear cause of death. Missing the heart.”

  “Her heart hasn’t turned up,” Hogan added.

  Zach moved on to, Victim #2/AU. “Two and a half months later, Annika Unger disappeared from her neighborhood. The remains were found a couple of weeks ago in a forested area. She was skeletonized, which made it impossible to tell if the heart had been removed. Knife cuts on the right fifth metacarpal and missing phalanges suggested her finger was removed.”

  Beck asked, “Detective Hogan, were there similar cuts on the bones of the Omaha victims?”

  Papers rustled. “Not on Jane Doe. Yes on Perny. The finger was removed.”

  On the board Zach wrote, Victim #3/NAP. “The third victim was Nathan Andrew Perny. He lived in Omaha up until five months ago, at which time he moved to Denver. He was killed in Omaha a week ago, five months after Annika. We’re sure he’s the Crossroads Killer—the one who committed the six homicides in Omaha and buried the victims in a wooded area. That site was discovered in September last year. Jane Doe 114 was left there about two weeks after the exhumation concluded. Perny’s body was left nearby, and that’s significant.”

  “So the Follower killed…another serial killer.” Van raised his brows. “Is this guy a self-proclaimed Dexter?”

  “I don’t think so.” Definitely not. “The other three don’t fit with that.”

  “If Perny lived here, what was he doing in Omaha?” Van’s brow furrowed.

  “He’d lived in Lincoln, Nebraska, and attended law school there for three semesters before transferring to the University of Denver.”

  “Like Bundy?” Richfield asked.

  It was like herding cats. Theories, theories everywhere. “No.”

  Richfield grimaced and looked down.

  “Back to Perny. GPS coordinates were sent to law enforcement, leading to discovery of the body. Perny’s heart was taken as well as the right fifth finger, and he was castrated.” The note in Perny’s chest and delivery of the heart and poem to Minneapolis didn’t seem relevant at present. Those were personal. “The word ‘ONE’ was carved into his abdomen.”

  “But he’s the third vic.” Richfield held up three fingers. “Makes no sense.”

  “We’re not sure of how the numbers correlate with the victims.” Yet another unknown about the Follower.

  Next Zach wrote, Victim #4/IW. “India Wexler, Perny’s downstairs neighbor. Killed a week later in his apartment. GPS coordinates were sent to law enforcement to find the body. Missing the heart and right fifth finger. The word ‘TWO’ carved into her abdomen.”

  And notes to me on the ceiling and in her chest.

  “To summarize,” Beck said, “Missing the finger in three. Missing the heart in three, and in the fourth, indeterminate. GPS coordinates sent to law enforcement on victims three and four, who were numbered.”

  Zach nodded. “He seems to be delineating a series. I don’t know how Jane Doe or Annika fit in with that.”

  “What about trophies?” Richfield looked curious. “Perny took drivers’ licenses and jewelry. What does this guy take?”

  Zach capped the marker and set it upright on the table. “Body parts.”

  * * * *

  Beck needed to escape the confines of the conference room. Talk was well and good, but he wanted to hit the pavement.

  After Hogan signed off, Beck made assignments and sent everyone out to the field.

  “I’ll be available by phone if you need anything.” SJ looked pale. Her glasses didn’t hide the bags under her eyes. “Let’s get this guy, Beck.”

  “Working on it, ma’am.” Beck gave her a wry smile. She disappeared, leaving Beck and Zach alone.

  Zach fiddled with the dry-erase marker. “So what’s our assignment?”

  “I still think Perny and the Follower knew each other.”

  “Okay, then let’s look at who Perny knew and see if we can get a lead on the Follower.”

  Beck sat on the edge of the table. “Ideas?”

  “When you believed Perny had killed Annika, you planned to check with attorneys in the Country Club neighborhood to see if any of them could place him in that area.”

  “Yeah, but now we’re operating on the theory the Follower did it.”

  “It’s possible Perny and the Follower crossed paths via law school or practicing attorneys.” Zach laid the marker in the tray. “It’d be a start. If nothing else, maybe we’ll get a line on what happened with Annika that night and how the Follower came by her barrette.”

  Beck studied the list of victims. The people on the board des
erved justice—even Perny. Sometimes a man had to make his own luck. Beck pulled out his notebook and flipped to the list from Matt Unger. “Let’s go see some attorneys.”

  * * * *

  From the passenger seat, Zach watched the scenery slide by. The Country Club neighborhood was lovely—big houses with immaculate grounds belonging to the well-to-do gentry of Denver. But money couldn’t bring your child home safely. Money hadn’t made a difference the night Annika Unger had vanished.

  So far they were zero for two on having a dialogue with the attorneys on Matt Unger’s list. Sundays were usually productive interview days, but not today. Papanopoulis’s housekeeper said he was in Florida for two weeks. Day’s wife had informed them BFD’s managing partner was on the links at the Denver Country Club and wasn’t expected back for hours.

  “Third time’s a charm.” Beck winked and squeezed Zach’s knee.

  Zach wasn’t sure he’d heard right. After the apology, Beck’s tone held none of the earlier wariness, and he’d been more demonstrative.

  “Nementhal might be home.” Zach dropped his hand on top of Beck’s, and Beck turned his hand palm to palm and gripped Zach’s.

  “Unless she’s out of town or playing golf.” This would be a nice place to live. A place where a fifteen-year-old should be able to walk a couple of blocks without fear. Had Annika considered her parents overprotective? Was that why she’d headed out on her own that night, a teenager’s rebellious show of independence? How would she have run across the Follower?

  Beck steered into a drive and pulled to a stop. The whitewashed brick house was modest compared to its neighbors, not quite a carriage house but definitely not a mansion. Enormous oaks shaded the front yard.

  They got out of the car and walked up the serpentine brick path. Tulips bloomed on either side of the porch steps.

  Zach tipped his head toward the door. “Ready?”

  “Yep.” They climbed the stairs, and Beck thumbed the doorbell. Muffled chimes came from within, followed by the click of heels.

  The door swung open, revealing a young woman with inky hair, golden skin, and eyes of a green not found in nature. “Can I help you?”