Apocalypse Journeys (Book 2): Finding AJ

by Melrose, Russ

"Yes," she told him.

  "I'm Beckerman. Sorry I wasn't here to greet you yesterday. Other business to take care of. Familiarize yourself with the case file. I'm sure you've seen the files online, but there's nothing like a physical file to get to know a case intimately. Seems your timing's about as good as it gets. Looks like there's been another Calligrapher killing. Chopper leaves in twenty."

  He dropped the file on Jules' desk, glanced briefly at her as if he could read her every thought, then walked out brusquely.

  Jules had been sent to the Vegas office to assist in the Calligrapher case. While she'd spent seven years in the bureau, she'd only been a behavioral analyst for six months. Another analyst had been removed from the case and Jules had been sent to Las Vegas to replace him. Beckerman had specifically requested her, but she had no idea why. She didn't know Beckerman, personally, but she knew of him. Over the years, he'd solved two of the FBI's most notorious serial murder cases. Jules was puzzled he hadn't asked for a more experienced analyst.

  Jules had scrutinized the case file in the database before she'd left Quantico, studying every aspect of the case—photos of the crime scenes, autopsy reports, victim profiles, interviews with friends and families of the victims, and police reports. There were no witnesses.

  She'd already begun to build a profile in her mind.

  *****

  A familiar stirring of anxiousness and excitement welled up inside Jules as the copter hovered above the sprawling, abandoned spa complex and its adjacent parking lot. This would be Jules fifth murder scene since she'd joined the bureau but her first as a behavioral analyst.

  Outside her window, off to the northwest, a range of beautiful red rock mountains sculpted the northern horizon. Jules was glad they'd finally arrived at the scene. She hated helicopter rides and this one had lasted close to an hour and a half.

  Beckerman pointed toward the red rock mountain range Jules had been admiring. "Snow Canyon," he said dryly.

  The helicopter swayed and tipped as it eased earthward. Ten seconds later it touched down and settled on the asphalt. The spa was located on the outskirts of Ivins, Utah—a small community ten miles west of St. George, a city of about eighty thousand. Beckerman had filled Jules in on the details of the crime scene locale during their flight.

  A half-dozen police cars sat parked near the entrance and several officers stood outside the front doors, securing the crime scene. The spa was a single-story, stucco complex stuck in the middle of nowhere.

  The downdraft from the rotor blades whipped Jules' hair as she emerged from the helicopter. She covered her hair with the flat of her hand to keep it in place.

  The spa looked as if it belonged in a western ghost town. The building had a layer of dust crusted into its walls. The local terrain was flat, and the dirt from the desert floor had been blasted into the walls by canyon winds. With its stucco walls and protruding wood beams, the building had an adobe feel to it. Weeds grew out of the cracks in the sidewalk and long-dead, flax-colored bushes littered the flower beds next to the walls. Every window in the complex appeared to be broken.

  Beckerman led the way. When he arrived at the entrance to the building, he spoke to the sheriffs of Ivins and St. George, both of whom were on the scene. The Ivins police had called the St. George police who in turn had called the FBI.

  Jules stepped into a white polyethylene Tyvek suit, and members of the Evidence Response Team did the same. Beckerman had informed her during the flight that he wanted her to accompany the team and observe the crime scene.

  Jules pulled the front zipper all the way up and slipped into a pair of shoe covers. A warm gust of June wind rushed at them from the canyon, rustling their Tyvek suits. Jules tightened the drawstring on her hood and put her gloves on.

  "Rodriguez, start with the doors." Beckerman gestured toward the front doors.

  Sarah Rodriguez was the lead Crime Scene Investigator in the Las Vegas office. She was a short, slightly plump, pleasant woman in her forties with watery dark eyes and an infectious smile.

  She and her team walked over to the front doors and began to check for prints.

  The St. George sheriff explained to Beckerman that the first police officer on the scene had gone inside to investigate and found the body in a massage therapy room. As with the other Calligrapher killings, an anonymous phone call had alerted police the morning after the killings.

  "Rodriguez," Beckerman said. "Initial walk-through. There's been one officer in the building. That's it."

  The sheriff from St. George gave Rodriguez directions. "First hallway to your left, fourth door down. Door's open."

  The double front doors were made of glass and one of them had been broken. Shards of glass were scattered on the floor just inside the door. A large push broom lay on the floor close by. Rodriguez, carrying her camera, opened the door with meticulous care, barely touching the door handle, and stepped carefully inside. The other three members of her team continued to check the doors for prints.

  Twenty minutes later, Rodriguez emerged from the building. The team had finished with the doors and collected several prints. No one expected the prints would belong to the Calligrapher. He hadn't left a shred of evidence at either of the earlier crime scenes.

  "Let's go," she called to the team. "Multiple sets of footprints. Follow my line."

  While agents Beckerman, Stohl, and Coleman waited outside with the police, Jules followed Rodriguez and the three other agents into the building. The inside of the building was filled with dust, especially the floors.

  Two of the agents carried the forensic supplies while the third carried a small cordless vacuum cleaner. Rodriguez walked all the way over to the right side of the hallway, hugging the wall to avoid a multitude of dusty foot prints. Jules knew Rodriguez would have already photographed the foot prints leading to the crime scene.

  A wide broom-sized swath, originating at the double doors led them down the hallway to the massage room. The Calligrapher had swept away any possible evidence of his shoe prints. Jules and the other two agents followed Rodriguez to the massage room door.

  The team member with the vacuum entered the room first. He carefully vacuumed the floor for trace evidence. Jules knew there wouldn't be any. The tile floor had been scrubbed clean along with the rest of the room. The room was forensically immaculate except for a few tracks of dust left by the original investigating officer when he'd entered the room.

  The other agents stood outside the doorway and watched the vacuuming. A strong smell of disinfectant permeated the room, intermingling with an airy scent of cinnamon. Jules was thankful the body was too fresh to have the smell of death yet. If the Calligrapher followed the same pattern, the murder was likely to have occurred sometime after midnight.

  The blinds on the two windows were closed and sheets had been draped over them. Jules wondered if he'd brought the sheets with him or if he'd found them on the premises. It struck Jules that he must have brought some kind of non-electric light source with him to do his work.

  The room had counter tops on opposite sides of the room with cabinets below them. The young woman's clothing sat neatly folded on top of one of the counters with her sandals sitting next to them.

  Once the floor had been vacuumed, Rodriguez began to take photos. She photographed the victim's clothes and the sheets covering the windows and circled the body and snapped photos from a variety of angles. Rodriguez moved smoothly and was meticulously precise with her shots. The other agents tested for prints around the cabinets and counter tops, though it was obvious everything in the room had been wiped clean.

  The victim lay posed on two massage tables that had been tied together at the legs with cable ties. Jules was struck by the absolute stillness of the woman's body. More than anything, she was fascinated by it. It was as if the woman was there and not there at the same time.

  When Jules was fourteen, she'd wanted to believe in resurrection, all evidence to the contrary. Not that her desire had arisen from a fear of dea
th or religious fervor. Even at fourteen, Jules thought it a senseless notion, but she pined for it nonetheless. She was praying for it the day her stepfather died. A last airy breath had escaped from his body, but Jules clung to the belief that he was still there, lingering inside the stilled form. She sat on the edge of his bed waiting patiently for his breath to return unable to accept that he was gone. After a while, she leaned over and whispered lightly in his ear for him to come back to her, but he never did.

  Jules steadied her wandering mind and began to focus on the victim's body. She reminded herself to stay detached. The woman's right hand rested on her stomach a few inches above her navel and her left arm lay next to her body. Her legs lay comfortably splayed like someone tanning on a beach. If you didn't look at her face, the woman might appear to be asleep or resting comfortably. Jules guessed she was around twenty years old, same age range as the other victims. Brunette, too, like the others.

  There were strawberry-colored abrasion marks on her breasts and her pubic area. Whatever the Calligrapher wore during his attacks chaffed their bodies as he moved over them. The attacks were sexual in nature, yet there were no signs of penetration or actual intercourse with the victims.

  The woman's eyes were wide with fright, and they stared unblinking at the ceiling. The skin around her mouth and nose had turned purple, and tiny red petechiae spots from the rupturing of small blood vessels stippled the purple areas. Both types of markings were signs of asphyxiation. The Calligrapher would hold his hand over the mouth and nose of his victims, smothering them to death.

  The plastic ties he'd used to tie her down had been cut but left in place at the outer four corners of the tables.

  Rodriguez carefully tilted the woman's head and checked for the needle mark on the back right side of the neck. She found the mark just above her shoulder and took a photo of it. The Calligrapher used chloroform to subdue his victims, then injected GHB into their necks.

  Sara Rodriguez waved a hand at Jules. "Come in and take a closer look. I'm done with the shots."

  Jules stepped into the room and moved to the massage tables. She wanted to get a closer look at the calligraphy carved into the woman's body. The letters AJ were positioned equidistant between the upper edge of the woman's pubic hair and her navel. The letters were about four inches high and had been cut into the woman's body in the flowing lines of elaborate Chinese text. Jules remembered from the case file that the calligraphy style was called Tsao—an ancient style of calligraphy. The Calligrapher had used a scalpel. The cutting had been done post-mortem and what little blood had spilled out had been meticulously cleaned away. The line cuts were so artistically drawn, there was speculation he either used trace paper or was an artist of some kind.

  Once he'd finished the cutting, the real artistry began. The Calligrapher carefully separated the skin and filled the lines with ground cinnamon. The cuts were a quarter-inch deep to allow for the cinnamon. The width of the lines fluctuated to define the character of the strokes. The strokes varied between a sixteenth of an inch in width and an eighth of an inch. There were also two teardrop strokes in the letter A. Jules thought the "A" looked like an abstract drawing of a two-story A-Frame home. The lettering was painstakingly precise. Experts in calligraphy estimated it would take up to two hours to create the intricately detailed lettering. The Calligrapher had to be incredibly patient. He also had to be supremely confident he wouldn't be disturbed or caught.

  After he'd finished filling in the lines, he would brush aside any residual cinnamon that rose above the level of the skin. Then he would use a clear silicone sealant to seal the cinnamon in place. By the time he'd finished, the cinnamon lettering was perfectly flush with the skin. The effect made it look as if the lettering were natural to the body. The only evidence to suggest otherwise was the reddish-pink tint that lined the edges of the perforated skin. There was no doubt in Jules' mind the calligraphy was a vehicle for the Calligrapher to show off his skills, his artistry. She believed he needed it as an outlet, and it would be an important clue to his identity. But she was certain there was more behind the calligraphy than mere self-aggrandizement. Jules didn't believe he was just autographing his handiwork. Homage was being paid here. To whom, she didn't know, but she felt certain discovering the identity of AJ would be the key to finding the Calligrapher.

  Jules stepped aside to let the team bag the hands and the woman's head to preserve any possible trace evidence. They hadn't found any defensive wounds under the woman's nails, but they followed procedure and bagged the hands anyway.

  Jules moved back to the doorway and began to piece things together in her mind. She knew the Calligrapher would be a high-functioning psychopath, someone who would blend seamlessly into the community, someone difficult to identify. He would be hiding in plain sight.

  She was certain he used the bodies as shrines to honor AJ.

  Rodriguez was on the phone with Beckerman, giving a preliminary report. After she was off the phone, she turned to Jules. "He wants you outside. Follow the same line out that we took in."

  Outside, Beckerman stood talking to Stohl. Jules knew of Stohl but had yet to meet him. Stohl was stocky in a soft way with rounded shoulders, his skin was remarkably smooth and permanently pale. He had short, light red hair, meticulously parted on the right side and slicked over to the left. Not a single hair was out of place.

  When she approached them, Beckerman turned to meet her. "The victim hasn't been identified yet," he informed her. "The St. George and Ivins police departments will be tasked with identifying the victim."

  Beckerman seemed distracted, lost in thought, and he let his gaze drift past Jules toward the mountains.

  Coleman was off to the side interviewing the officer who'd discovered the body. He was recording the interview but also scribbling notes on a notepad. Coleman was the liaison coordinator for the Vegas office. He worked with the region's local police departments, helping to coordinate investigations. He was tall and slender, not an ounce of fat on him, and his sleek build made it look as if his suit was tailored. Coleman was mostly bald with neatly-trimmed, tightly-napped hair on the sides. His skin was the color of deep amber.

  Beckerman cleared his throat. "Oh, that's right. You two haven't met yet. Henry, this is Agent Jules Vandevelde. Agent Vandevelde, this is Agent Henry Stohl. Henry is number two on the task force."

  Jules nodded at Stohl.

  Stohl blinked at her through the bright morning sun and gave her a disagreeable look as if she were an unsightly plate of food.

  "Hmm. So, this is your first serial," he said.

  She intuited Stohl's statement as a dig at her lack of experience as a behavioral analyst. While his statement didn't require an answer, Jules gave him one anyway. "Yes. First as a behavioral analyst," she told him, then paused a moment. "I did work the Billy Anderson serial in Cleveland three years ago. So, not really my first."

  Stohl didn't respond.

  "Henry," Beckerman said in his even-keeled voice. "I want you to give Agent Vandevelde anything she needs to complete her profile. Anything. I want to see that new profile as soon as possible."

  "Yes, sir," Stohl said.

  Beckerman turned to Jules. "How long will you need?"

  Jules rolled her tongue against the inside of her cheek as if she were calculating how long it would take, but she already knew. "I should have it by Friday morning, sir," she told him.

  Jules had been piecing together a profile the moment she found out she was being assigned to the task force. She'd studied all the information on file in the case and memorized virtually everything. Jules wasn't sure if she'd need to interview the friends and families of the victims yet. They'd already been interviewed by officers and agents, and she had access to the recordings and reports. It was believed the first two victims had been abducted outside college bars located near campuses. The bars were the last places they'd been seen, and they'd left alone. Jules suspected the victims were chosen at random, but she hadn't come to a conc
lusion about it. She'd inspect the files again before making any final assessments. Jules wouldn't leave a single stone unturned.

  Chapter 6

  Camp

  Jules had already repacked everything when the knock came at the door. All afternoon Addy had bent Jules' ear about staying in the home. At one point, she even became insistent. She couldn't understand why they couldn't stay there. Addy had grown comfortable with all the creature comforts the home offered—watching movies nonstop, having a comfortable bed to sleep in, and being able to shower. There was even a computer they both took turns using.

  "You could talk to the sheriff," Addy had pleaded. "It wouldn't hurt to ask."

  "No one is staying in town here, Addy," Jules told her. "They're all at the camp the sheriff mentioned. There's no way they're going to let us stay here. And it's best not to rock the boat. We're better off going along with things for now. We're new here."

  Addy frowned but didn't say anything more.

  Jules had grown fond of the house too, but she knew there was no chance they would be allowed to stay in the home. Knowing this, she'd spent an hour in the morning luxuriating in the bath tub.

  When Jules opened the door, Sheriff Conway stood on the one-step stoop. He wore dark-lensed Ray-Bans even though the sun had already begun to dip below the western skyline. He wore jeans again and a short-sleeve navy polo shirt. He smiled easily at them, his wry grin perfectly intact.

  "You're ready. Good," he said. "We need to get you settled into your tent before it gets dark."

  The original three boxes had shrunk to two, and Jules and Addy already held them in their arms. Conway lifted the box from Jules' arms.

  The sheriff angled his head and glanced at the small bald spot on the side of Jules' head but didn't say anything.

  "And, um …" the sheriff started, "… I just wanted to thank you, Jules, for not trying anything stupid."

  Jules grinned sarcastically as she lifted the travel bag off the floor. "Sure. Not a problem."