Nothing to Hide

by Allison Brennan

  “The press can just go pound salt for all I care,” Jerry said.

  Lucy refrained from grinning.

  Jerry continued. “We’re waiting on the autopsy. Talked to the morgue, they can’t fit him in tonight—they have a full house right now, and it’s the weekend so they’re short-staffed. Tomorrow afternoon, but might be Monday morning. Once we have the evidence processed we’ll go back and review each of the cases to identify any commonalities. This guy is going to make a mistake, and he might have already.”

  “Let’s hope it’s before another body drops,” Maria said. “The press haven’t connected these murders, but it’s only a matter of time, so the sheriff is taking a preemptive step. He’s going to announce it’s the same killer, unless you come up with something in the next thirty-six hours that says it’s not.”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  Maria left and Jerry sat in the chair across from Lucy. He stared at the papers laid out in front of her, then glanced up at the whiteboard where Lucy had created a time line.

  “You’ve been busy in half an hour.”

  “The time line was easy,” she said. “I had one already created from the information you’d sent earlier, and it was just a matter of adding the Garcia case.”

  “And did your magic ball tell you who the killer is?”

  She ignored the comment. “There are a couple of things to add to the MO,” she said. “The method used is consistent—pending Garcia’s autopsy—and the target—male victims—but I don’t think that we can now discount that each of the victims was married and under forty. All three were killed at night, between ten p.m. and two a.m., and their bodies were found within hours. The killer made no effort to conceal or move the bodies.”

  Jerry unwrapped his sandwich—it smelled real good—and said, “Just because the victims are married doesn’t mean that they weren’t random.”

  “But how are you defining random? Are they random because the killer picked them out at that moment, or random because the killer didn’t personally know them when he chose to target them?”

  He chewed, thinking about her comment. “Meaning, the killer either just decided to kill—which would mean whether they were married doesn’t factor into it at all—or the killer picked the victim, then stalked him, learning about him and his habits before killing him?”

  “It’s the latter,” she said.

  “Why do you think that?”

  He wasn’t being antagonistic at this point, which was a relief. “At a minimum, the killer spent a little time studying each victim’s routine.” Lucy rose and went to the whiteboard. “First, the crimes were committed in three different areas—northwest, southeast, and north of San Antonio. All were committed when the victim was coming home from work or a business trip. If the killer was just looking for a lone male, he would likely have stuck to the same area, and out of all of the areas, the rural area where Standish was killed offers the best protection for the killer—very few people use those back roads that late at night.”

  Lucy glanced at her notes, but she already knew the case well. “Standish was killed coming back from Houston. According to his wife’s statement, he’d been working in Houston Monday through Friday on a temporary construction job for the three weeks leading up to his murder. You confirmed with his employer that his shift ended at four thirty. He was staying at his brother’s house while working the job, went there to shower, have dinner, and left Houston at approximately seven twenty that evening, according to his brother. He called his wife at nine thirty when he was at a gas station to tell her he’d be home in an hour. At eleven, when he still wasn’t home, she called his cell phone and he didn’t answer. He could have been followed from the gas station.”

  “We viewed all security cameras in the area and found nothing to help us.”

  “Right,” she said. “His body was found two miles south of I-10 on a two-lane road he always took home, according to his wife.” She looked at the map. “Farm to Market Road. Between the I-10 exit and where his body was found, there are a few light industrial businesses, an auto body shop, a couple houses set far apart. His body was found just south of a quarry that—based on the website and the street view maps—I suspect has cameras, but he was around a bend, right before a series of long driveways that lead to residences. The road is remote, not a major thoroughfare.”

  “Your point?”

  “The killer had to specifically target him.”

  “He could have just have been the unlucky guy to get pulled over—if the cop theory is accurate—or was followed from the freeway.”

  “The killer targets lone males. At a minimum, he would have had to have spotted him at some point in order to follow him or … or stage something to force him to stop. Because though that road is not busy, especially at night, if the target was truly random, then was it just blind luck that the killer stumbled upon a male driving alone?”

  “You don’t want it to be random.”

  “No, I don’t—because he’ll be that much harder to catch. And in most random killing sprees, there isn’t this much time between attacks. Truly random killers who are not sexually motivated are rare. The sniper on the East Coast terrorized residents for a short period of time before he was caught, and chose his victims apparently at random. Israel Keyes, who was arrested here in Texas, killed for more than a decade, picking his victims at random and moving from state to state to avoid detection, but he was sexually motivated. Son of Sam—Berkowitz—picked many of his victims at random, and there’s a dispute whether they were sexually motivated because he didn’t rape his female victims, and he killed both men and women.”

  “And so?” Jerry said. “You don’t want him to be random, so what?”

  “What I want means nothing. I just don’t think that he’s picking his victims spontaneously. Maybe that’s a better word than random.”

  Lucy stared at her timeline, considering. Her analysis was falling into place, but there were still holes, and she needed to talk it out.

  “Four weeks between the first two murders and three weeks between the second and third murders. Is he escalating? Did he want to make sure the police weren’t onto him after the first murder, so waited longer for the second? And now … he’s emboldened. Three dead, he’s cocky and confident. If he has another target, he very well could speed up his time line.”

  Jerry didn’t say anything for a minute. He chewed another bite of his sandwich and slid the bag over to Lucy. “I didn’t know what you might like, and Doris who runs the shop downstairs said a turkey club is always a safe bet.”

  “Thank you,” she said. Was he thinking about her comments or just eating?

  She resisted the urge to keep talking, because she didn’t have anything else substantive to go on—she’d reviewed the evidence reports when she first got them, reread them now, and there was little physical evidence at each crime scene. Partly because of the terrain—the first victim was on a gravel pullout next to the road, killed only feet from his car. The second victim was in a golf course parking lot between the airport and his house—it was only a fifteen-minute drive, but for some reason he’d stopped. It was after midnight, everything was closed except for the theater across a wide boulevard from the golf course entrance. Why had he stopped? Cop or someone needing help?

  “Let me play devil’s advocate for a minute,” Jerry said.

  “Please do.”

  She was relieved he spoke, because five minutes of silence was making her antsy.

  “If the victims aren’t random, then in all likelihood they knew their killer and weren’t in fear for their lives. They exited their vehicle. If the killer isn’t a cop, they knew him or weren’t threatened by him.”

  “Agreed.”

  “Yet it could be that the killer followed them from their origin and when he suspected they were getting close to home—all three victims were found within a mile of getting off a major highway or thoroughfare—the killer acted.”

  “If it’s
a cop, he flashed his lights and pulled them over. I can see that. Yet in my experience, there is always a reason.”

  “Maybe the victims cut him off. Road rage.”

  “And he always carries a handgun, stun gun, sledgehammer, and duct tape in his car?”

  “This is Texas. Those tools are good for a lot of things, not just murder.”

  She was about to argue, then realized that her husband always had a handgun, tools, and duct tape with him—Sean had a concealed carry permit for his gun, he’d once half joked that duct tape was the most useful resource created by man, and he had a tool chest in his trunk with anything he might need on the road.

  “Road rage is generally immediate,” Lucy said. “Maybe rear-ending the car, yelling, drawing attention.”

  “But not unheard of. You’re the one who believes in the psychology garbage. So what would make a person mad enough to kill?”

  She fumed at the slight, but didn’t respond. “First, I firmly believe that almost everyone is capable of killing another human being under the right circumstances. I’m not talking about cops and criminals, I’m talking about average people. A mother home alone with her baby when someone breaks into the house. A father who snaps when his son’s child molester gets off on a technicality. A heat-of-the-moment argument. Sometimes it’s rash and immediately regretted, sometimes it’s not. But if these victims are because of road rage or a vehicular slight, that would mean the killer has the calm, ruthless patience to follow the victims for miles without tipping his hand—otherwise, the victims would have called nine-one-one, or they wouldn’t have pulled over. That calm patience that ends in a violent, albeit brief, attack seems … at odds.”

  “I have no idea what you mean.” Jerry finished his sandwich, crumbled the wrappings into a tight ball, and tossed it into the wastebasket in the corner.

  “The murders were violent, but they weren’t prolonged. There wasn’t uncontrollable rage. Hit the victims, beat them, duct-tape their mouth, shatter the bones in their hands, then shoot them in the face—”

  “I’m aware of the MO,” he said dryly.

  Lucy was getting angry. “Can I do a demonstration?”

  He looked surprised, then shrugged.

  Lucy walked out of the small office and down to the larger room filled with cubicles. She glanced at all the cops before she found one that matched the general build of the latest victim—Julio Garcia, five foot ten inches, 170 pounds. The other two victims were both six feet—the first a solid 200 pounds of muscle, the second a leaner 180. But Lucy wasn’t sure she could drag a two-hundred-pound man. “Deputy?”

  “Yes, ma’am. Deputy Bryce Hangstrom.”

  “May I borrow you for five minutes? And I need you to take off your utility belt.” She didn’t want it to get caught on anything when she dragged his body.

  He looked skeptical. Jerry stepped behind Lucy. “Go ahead, Bryce, I want to see what Agent Kincaid plans on doing.”

  Bryce smiled, took off his belt, and handed it to another cop.

  “We’re going to reenact the first crime scene because there was less space, but all three victims were killed in roughly the same manner.” The narrow space between the road and a gulley. She grabbed a stapler off a desk, then pulled a chair over to the large area in front of the elevator. “Bryce.” She motioned for him to sit. “Now just do what I say, and I promise I won’t hurt you.”

  He laughed and sat down.

  “Jerry,” Lucy said, trying to ignore the crowd of spectator cops who were watching her. “We know a few things. We know that the victim pulled over his car and there was no identifiable sign of malfunctioning. We know that the victim rolled down his window. And we know that the killer exited his vehicle without fear—the keys and phone were in each car, there was no attempt to call nine-one-one. I’ll be the killer.”

  She leaned over Bryce, as if looking down and through a car window, two feet away. She had the stapler behind her back. As she worked through this in her head, she realized that the killer probably had a backpack or purse or something to carry the hammer in. “Thank you so much for stopping. My car isn’t working, and the tow truck is an hour away.”

  “Maybe I can help,” he said.

  Lucy nodded and said to Jerry, “I think most people would help, especially if the person is clean-cut and doesn’t appear to be a threat. Maybe there was a car with the hood up. And this is the South—honestly, in California most people would drive on by, but here I’ve found people more willing to help.”

  A few chuckles, then a, “You’re from California?” in a derogatory tone.

  “San Diego,” she said, “the most beautiful beaches in the country.”

  She went back to her reenactment. “We know a few things about the attack, but the theory about the order of blows to the victim is based on the autopsy, and some of the findings are inconclusive. For example, you can often tell what blow was fatal, or which blow was first, either from the bruising or because of trace evidence from one part of the body to the other, and a good coroner will be able to count the actual blows based on tissue damage, but determining whether he was hit first in the chest then the groin, we don’t know. With the first victim, the coroner was firm on a couple of facts.” She had a thought and said, “Hey, can someone time this?”

  “Got it,” a female deputy said, holding out her phone.

  Lucy waited ten seconds to allow for the time it took to convince the victim to get out of the car, then said, “Okay, Bryce, get out of the car and follow me to mine.”

  He did.

  “What’s the first thing you would do if someone has their hood up?”

  “I’d be thinking they ran out of gas.”

  “With the hood up?”

  He shrugged. “Well, it’s dark, so I’d want a flashlight to see if something is obviously wrong.”

  “Or it could be a flat tire.”

  “That would be obvious.”

  “Not in the dark. You go around to check the tire you can’t immediately see and what? Squat? Do that.”

  He did. She took the stapler and said, “This is a steel-headed sledgehammer. We know it can do extensive damage. I’ve now hit you hard at the top of your spine—there was severe bruising and a chipped vertebra in the autopsy, enough to know that it was the single greatest force used in the attack. But he was hit twice on the back, once at the top of the spine, and once in the lower back. I would argue that if he was standing at the engine, the blow to the lower back would be followed by the upper back; in reverse if he was squatting.” She mimicked the two blows without actually hitting the cop. “Fall over,” she said to Bryce.

  He fell to the floor. “Even though I’m hurting, I’m going to fight back, because I know this guy is serious. Either rob me or kill me.”

  “I now sling the hammer—think a two-to-three-foot handle—into your groin. Are you fighting back now?”

  He winced. “I’m dying at the thought.”

  Laughter.

  “Standish was two hundred pounds, a solid guy, physically fit. The killer hit him multiple times.” She motioned with the stapler four to five times. “We know from the autopsy that the victim died from the gunshot almost immediately after the beating—minutes. We know that all three victims were hit with a contact electricity charge, likely a Taser in stun mode. Standish had a burn pattern on his shirt and subsequent tissue damage on the lower left side, so if the killer was facing the victim, he used his right hand.”

  “Ninety percent of the people in the country are right-handed,” Jerry said.

  “Just an observation, because if he had the Taser in hand, he had to put down his hammer. Or is he left-handed, and used his nondominant hand to stun the victim? Did he use it because the victim was fighting back?”

  “What about the duct tape?” Jerry asked. “We know the killer used it, but removed it before shooting him.”

  That made no sense, to take the time to tape his mouth. She frowned. She “stunned” Bryce, then pretend
ed to duct-tape his mouth. Now she hammered his hands multiple times, beating them into the ground. “Standish had a minimum of eight hits on his hands, shattering virtually every bone in both hands. It’s possible the killer targeted the hands first, but it makes more sense if the victim is incapacitated first with several serious blows to sensitive parts of his body. After the hands are smashed, he removes the duct tape and fires once, close range, directly into the victim’s face.” As she spoke, she held her fingers out like a gun standing over the victim. This felt right to her. It was dominate, finished. “Bang.”

  There was silence. “There was no robbery—nothing was taken off the body or the car except for the duct tape, which the killer brought with him.” To the female deputy she said, “Time?”

  “Three minutes, ten seconds.”

  More silence.

  “No more than five minutes between the time the victim stopped and the killer drove off,” Lucy said. “And probably closer to three. I spent time talking in the demonstration. This killer most likely didn’t do a lot of talking.”

  She held her hand out to Deputy Bryce. “Thanks for being my dummy,” she said to laughs.

  “Anytime.”

  Lucy waited until she and Jerry were the last ones in the corridor. “I see what you mean,” Jerry said. “Calm, but violent.”

  “This killer knew exactly what he—or she—was doing.”

  “She?”

  “Do we have evidence that the killer was a man?”

  “We don’t have evidence that the killer was a woman.”

  “Historically, if we’re dealing with a serial killer, and we have male victims who are not homosexual, fifty-fifty the killer is female. I’m not saying that here definitely—I’m just saying we can’t make an assumption right now.”

  Jerry thought a long minute. She was getting used to his slow deliberation, but it made her antsy. “Well, I see your point,” he finally said. “Would have to be a strong woman. Standish was two hundred pounds.”