Match Play

by Poppe, D. Michael

  The forensic team, under Dr. Cochran’s supervision, performs all the prescribed tasks; evidence is collected, samples and prints are taken, the bodies are identified, bagged and made ready to be sent to FBI headquarters for autopsy. The entire scene is photographed, and then photographed again, especially the writing on the chest. The LA Times is bagged and also the meticulously marked piece of newspaper on the floor close to the torso of Emily Cho.

  Schein asks the San Diego detectives to contact a local lock company to secure the residence. Anything golf related is collected, bagged and marked, as well as Emily Cho’s clothing items in the hamper.

  When it is determined that her keys and car are missing, several calls are made until they discover the car is found abandoned at Aviara.

  The bloody towels in both bathrooms are bagged and marked. Samples are taken from each blood spot on the floors, the bathtubs, sinks; every spot is noted for identification.

  Agent Schein has a reputation for reviewing the scene after it has been processed and today is no exception. He studies every bit of evidence for himself before it is disturbed. He takes copious notes; in his mind, each piece of evidence is pregnant with clues and he considers it a personal failure if anything is missed.

  When the forensic team concludes their responsibilities, Schein makes another tour of the entire house, looking for anything they might have missed. He knows there must be an explanation for the missing hand and eyeballs, but what is it? After his inspection of the bedrooms, he walks slowly back up the hallway.

  He reaches the front bathroom, enters and lets his eyes drift around the room. The tub is smeared with blood, and there is more blood on the floor beside the tub. He turns the light on and lets his eyes follow the walls around the room. It is then that he notices an irregularity in the pattern of the window curtain adjacent to the bathroom sink. He walks up to it and there, amidst a collage of red and green parrots is a smear of blood.

  “Hey! Somebody bring me a medium bag!” he yells out the door.

  Dr. Cochran quickly appears with the bag. Lou removes the curtain from the rod and carefully folds it with the blood smear upright and inserts it in the bag. He asks the coroner to mark it, then bends down and looks for more blood on the floor. After close examination, he is satisfied there is none.

  He starts to stand when the face of the sink catches his eye. It is an old, cast iron, wall-hung sink, typical of a house this age. The front rim is perpendicular to the floor and about four inches wide. He cranes his neck, follows the rim around to the side that faces the wall and with his head pressed against the wall, he can see the wall side of the rim.

  There it is! A single drop of blood has fallen on the edge of the sink but has not dripped to the floor.

  “Dr. Cochran! Get one of those forensic techs in here with a blood kit!”

  A technician immediately appears at the door with a kit.

  “There’s a drop of blood on the outside rim of this sink, the side against the wall. Get as much of it as you can.” Lou points and steps back to get out of the way.

  The tech is on his knees in front of the sink as Lou walks out. He stops in the living room and finishes another page of notes. His eyes slowly scan the room and satisfied nothing is missed, he closes his notebook. The totality of evidence is so overwhelming it’s like being snow blind.

  The tech from the bathroom passes by. “How’d you do on that blood?” Lou asks.

  “I got all of it, sir,” the tech answers, holding up the kit.

  “Good! All right, Dr. Cochran, let’s secure the scene and get back to the office.”

  In the car, after a few miles of pensive silence, the two of them discuss the murders.

  “What kind of impressions did you get? Anything in particular stand out for you?” Lou asks.

  “I think it’s interesting that there is no Aviara scorecard. He must be distraught; he wins but can’t brag with a card. He has no compassion, evident in the manner he leaves his victims. He will kill anybody who gets in his way. The absence of victim two’s eyeballs can only be a symbolic gesture, and it probably has something to do about her seeing him. I have a theory about her hand…”

  Lou interrupts her. “I think there was a struggle with the second victim; she fought back.”

  “You might be right about the struggle and the missing body parts seem to validate it. We’ll have to wait for the autopsy for more conclusive evidence.”

  “Are you finding southern California to your liking? We have an open position in the coroner’s office, and if you like it here, I can talk to Tom Bachman.”

  “It’s really beautiful, but I’ve lived in the desert a good part of my life and I love it. If this case wasn’t so compelling, I more than likely would have declined the assignment.”

  She seems to drift off into her own thoughts, and Lou lets the discussion evaporate to concentrate on driving while mentally reviewing his notes.

  Carlsbad, California, Monday, March 25

  Chapter 21

  Steve Johnson has just hit his tee shot on the 18th fairway, a long par 4, a fading low shot that followed the dogleg right. His playing companions acknowledge the shot and each hits their own fine tee shots.

  He had enjoyed honors on the tee since the thirteenth hole when he had birdied and taken the skins for the tenth through the thirteenth. So far, he has won $480 less his own $20 for each of the four holes, but the winnings are a recovery from having lost a couple of holes on the front nine.

  His riding partner, Brad, hits his 1 iron again; he can really blister it, straight and long, he isn’t very far back from any of the others who have all hit driver. They proceed down the fairway; everyone is enjoying the round, even though one of the players, Bill, hasn’t won a single skin. Unless he wins this hole he will lose $360 on the round.

  “I’m really enjoying playing with you guys today, thank you for including me,” he says, sounding grateful.

  “No problem, Steve, we’re enjoying it too. Well, maybe not Bill.” Brad laughs. “We regularly play on Monday mornings; will you be in town next Monday? We would like the chance to get our money back.”

  “No, I’ve got to leave the middle of this week, probably Wednesday,” he says. “I have to get back to Sacramento and work.”

  “Too bad!” Brad rolls the cart up beside his ball and jumps out.

  It is late afternoon when they reach the clubhouse; settling up requires a round of beers and some careful math. Steadman tries to pay for the beer, but isn’t allowed since Bill, the loser of the round, has to pay. When the winnings are calculated and the first beers are empty, Steadman buys the next round for the three men, takes his winnings, excuses himself, and leaves.

  He didn’t think about the time as he reached the end of the on ramp and had to merge with a river of cars going five miles an hour. He silently chastises himself…this is the wrong time of day to be on the freeway. He creeps along with the annoyance of traffic and after a few miles decides to exit.

  He drives a short distance on the surface streets and realizes he is between Encinitas and Carlsbad. He remembers he has a pocketful of cash and decides to enjoy something French for dinner. He uses his voice activated GPS and asks for directions to a French restaurant.

  David enters the restaurant and is pleased with his choice. It is small, intimate and clean. Edith Piaf’s soft voice is floating in the air mixing with the aroma of bread and spices. He is early and gets the full attention of an idle staff. He declines the escargot but orders the goat cheese salad and a bottle of wine.

  His entrée is cassoulet with lamb and pork, cooked to perfection. He orders dessert, banana flambéed au rum and decides he better have some coffee. He is sleepy when he finishes his meal, after all day in the sun and now sitting in a cool quiet environment, not to mention an entire bottle of wine.

  As he walks to his car, David Steadman is startled to find that night has fallen on his perfect day. He isn’t quite sure what part of town he’s in or how far i
t is to the I-5. He shouldn’t have had that last glass of wine, because he’s too impaired to manage the GPS and can’t get it to work.

  He is westbound and within a few miles he is able to see the I-5 but can’t find the entrance from the street he is on. He turns right at the next intersection with the thought that he can follow the freeway until he can find a street with an on ramp.

  Soon the condition of the buildings and the streets is deteriorating. The flow of traffic around him is decreasing to the point that he begins to feel apprehensive. He can still see the freeway but sees no signs indicating an on ramp. He spontaneously guides the Navigator into the outside lane and makes a U-turn across traffic.

  Then he sees flashing lights in his rearview mirror.

  “Dammit!” He thinks of the Glock and slows down, keeping his eyes on the mirror and hoping the police car will drive by. The patrol car stays behind him, so he pulls into an abandoned parking lot. They park behind him and two officers step from the vehicle. Each has a flashlight focused on him as they approach. He rolls down his window, unfastens his seatbelt and reaches for his wallet.

  The police caution him to keep his hands on the steering wheel, which he does.

  “Do you know why we stopped you, sir?”

  “I’d guess it’s because my U-turn back there was illegal.”

  The officer requests identification and when David hands it to him, he returns to the patrol car.

  “What are you doing in San Diego, sir?” asks the other officer.

  “I came to play golf in sunny southern California.”

  “And what are you doing in this part of town?”

  “I went out to dinner after playing golf at La Costa and got turned around on my directions. I couldn’t find the I-5,” David responds.

  The other officer returns with David’s papers and tells his partner they’re clear.

  “You’re good to go, Mr. Steadman. The next street is Faraday. Take it south, it’s about a half mile to Cannon, then west to the I-5. You can enter going either way.”

  “Thank you very much. I certainly didn’t intend to break any laws,” he says, trying his best to control his anxiety.

  The officers say goodnight and return to their patrol car.

  David places the papers on the seat, waits for the police to turn off the flashing lights, then signals and pulls into the inside lane following the officer’s directions. He reaches the freeway and merges with northbound traffic.

  He releases a sigh of relief. This type of anxiety evokes memories of the past when he thought he might be caught.

  When he was ten, a policeman stopped him in Oak Park riding home on his bike. He had a butcher knife in a paper bag in the front basket of his bicycle. He had traveled to an adjacent neighborhood looking for stray dogs and sped through a stop sign on the way home.

  It was lucky he had already thrown away the bait. He had just started collecting dog’s eyes at that time and he hadn’t really refined his technique, so all the bag contained was the bands used to restrain the dogs, tightly holding their mouths, paws and bodies so he could remove his trophy.

  The officer noticed the handle of the knife and asked what he was doing with such a large knife. He said he used it to cut up an old inner tube to make the large rubber bands that were in the bag, to make a slingshot when he got home. The officer cautioned him about riding through stop signs and about the use of a slingshot and told him to make certain that he returned the knife to an adult when he got home.

  Thinking back, he wonders why he always took the left one. He can’t remember ever removing a dog’s right eye.

  He had been lucky that day he hadn’t gotten a trophy.

  Los Angeles FBI Office, Tuesday, March 26

  Chapter 22

  Lou Schein paces around the table in the conference room, pivots and turns his attention to the papers and photos on the table and the crime board. Roger Payne had spent most of Monday night coordinating the evidence; he walks into the room. “Good morning, sir.”

  “Hello, Roger. Thanks for putting in the time last night to get this together. We should have the autopsies within the hour. Dr. Cochran is in the lab.” He motions to a chair for Payne.

  Lou returns his attention to the crime board. The crime scene is extraordinarily similar to that in Phoenix, except the murderer has left his golf ball in the house, presumably because there was no door from which to hit it.

  He glances back and forth between the headshots of Deborah Beatty and Emily Cho; they have the same eyes…lifeless orbs that once filled innocent brains with a thousand images. They are now staring from two faces drained of all their warmth, each suspended over a pool of cold blood.

  He studies the photos of the torsos, which remarkably resemble golf greens if one suspends their knowledge of what they actually are. The depressions from the removed breasts are carefully filled with white powder. The food coloring is evenly spread over the abdomen. The pennants, stuck in the navels, are standing still, lifelessly hovering over the holes, the women’s vaginas which have been violated with the maniacal insertion of a golf ball.

  Lou loses his train of thought. How could someone dismember these young women? How can a man who has ever loved a woman, hold a breast in his hand and carve it from a woman’s body?

  Phillips and Gibson enter the conference room. “We’ve impounded the victim’s LPGA car,” Gibson says. “The keys were in the ignition. It’s being delivered to the crime lab for the forensic team to work on. The victim’s golf clubs and shoes were in the trunk. No one at the golf course had paid much attention to it until one of the employees who knew the victim thought it shouldn’t be there.” Gibson glances at the crime board and sits at the table. She smells strongly of cigarettes.

  Lou directs his attention to Phillips. “How did you do on deciphering that scramble from the LA Times left in the living room?”

  “The scramble was not difficult to decipher. I used a program designed to find solutions to word puzzles. The circled letters are the first letter of each word in the phrase and the program determined the possible combinations, most of which were nonsense. It finally settled on “An Eagle Disappears in the Desert.” I think he’s telling us he is going to Rancho Mirage. Or it could be a reference to golf. Usually an eagle is made on a par 5, and ‘disappears’ can be a reference to the word mirage.”

  Lou explodes out of his chair, beaming a smile. “Great work, Phillips! We might just be one step ahead of him now.”

  Phillips, flipping through the requested reports from the golf courses, looks up. “Hey! Here’s a response from the La Costa Golf Club. They actually had a player sign in as Steve Johnson yesterday. Surely, it can’t be our guy?”

  Schein spins around and points his finger at Phillips. “I want you out there as quick as you can. Question everyone, the staff and players. Find out who this guy played with and follow up on every lead. If he was at La Costa yesterday, he may still be in Carlsbad. If we’re lucky, someone may have seen what he was driving.”

  After Gibson and Phillips gather their paperwork and leave, Lou stands in front of the screen monitor and the crime board, trying to absorb every detail, contemplating the mindset of the killer. Why golf? Is he a golfer, caddy, sportscaster, or sports writer? What drives him to kill? What emotion or need does this ritual satisfy? Is it possible this monster will kill at least eight more women?

  Lou’s eyes fixate on the scramble Phillips deciphered. An Eagle Disappears in the Desert….Will he stop killing and vanish if he scores the third hole as eagle? The team believes he will play a par 5 at Rancho Mirage but do not yet know how he determines his score. The man will be hard to stop.

  Chapter 23

  Do you have to drive so fast?” asks Phillips. “We should have plenty of time to interview everyone. If not, we might get back late or we can spend the night if we don’t get done.”

  “I’m not spending the night.” Gibson reaches for a cigarette.

  “You aren’t going to
light that are you?”

  “Why are you such a wuss?” She sticks the cigarette in her mouth but doesn’t light it.

  “You’ve heard of secondary smoke? I don’t want to get cancer from partnering with you,” Phillips says.

  “Don’t you have any vices?” Gibson smirks, cigarette hanging from her mouth with a relaxed casualness.

  “I’m addicted to computers and all kinds of computer technology.”

  “What about a girlfriend? What do you do on the weekends? Do you have interests beyond work?”

  “I like to read and I like puzzles; mathematical and perceptual types. And I like to go to the park and feed the birds.”

  “Oh, great!” Gibson sneers. “While you’re at the park feeding the little birdies, I’m at the shooting range perfecting head shots.”

  Agents Phillips and Gibson arrive at La Costa Golf Course a little after eleven a.m. The starter shows them the tee time sheets, indicating that Steve Johnson teed off at ten-thirty the previous morning with Brad Billingsly, Bill Stevens and Jerry Maag. The starter and the staff know all of them. The men play every Monday morning with another guy, Ken Mosley. Ken hadn’t made it this time, so the starter put Mr. Johnson out with the other three. He’d seen them when they came in after the round and everyone appeared jovial.

  Talking to the pro, Gibson gives the briefest explanation about why they are trying to find Steve Johnson. The pro said Mr. Johnson paid cash and seemed pleasant. Gibson asks if he and his staff would look at the sketch and agree to meet with the sketch artist if they have anything to add.

  No one saw Mr. Johnson leave or saw his car.

  Phillips and Gibson are eating lunch in the course cafeteria. Phillips calls in the names of the three players to the Wilshire office. He stresses the urgency of locating these individuals, specifies a fifty-mile radius from the golf course to start; it is San Diego County, after all. He expects to hear back from the office before they finish their lunch.