by Robert Ellis
“Who’s the victim? Who’s the girl?” Matt repeated, feeling even more anxious now.
Doyle reached for a blue three-ring binder in his briefcase, set it before Matt on the desk, and leafed through the pages until he found a crime-scene photograph.
“It’s not a girl, Jones. It’s a family. An entire family. Jim and Tammy Stratton, their two daughters, Jennifer and Kaylee, fourteen and seventeen years old, and their son, Jim Jr., who was thirteen. They were well off. They lived in the suburbs outside Philadelphia, a town called Radnor on the Main Line.”
Matt could feel his chest tighten, his pulse quicken, the hot load of adrenaline bursting through his veins as he leaned over the photograph for a closer look.
Could he handle it? Was he ready?
The image had been shot with a wide-angle lens and included the entire crime scene. It was a large open space, the image too dark and vast to offer much detail. Matt could see the husband propped against the wall with his two daughters on either side—all three stripped of their clothing and holding hands. On the floor before them, Tammy Stratton’s nude body had been left on her back with her legs spread open and her naked son draped on top of her. It seemed clear that the killer had placed the boy on top of his mother after their deaths and with purpose. Even in a wide shot like this one, Matt could see that their genitals were touching.
But what struck Matt most about the photograph was the extraordinary amount of blood coating the bodies and flooding the entire crime scene. As he focused on Stratton and his two daughters, he noticed that the gunshot wounds to their chests were in roughly the same place—far enough away from the heart that it would have continued beating. In spite of the odd shape of the wounds, their placement seemed too deliberate and precise to be a coincidence. Matt’s eyes drifted back to all the blood, and he wondered if this was intentional as well. The killer may not have wanted them to die from the actual gunshots. Instead, he may have wanted them to linger until they bled out.
Why?
Matt took a deep breath and exhaled. The nicotine gum wasn’t working. When he looked up, he caught McKensie and Doyle measuring his reaction to the photograph. Any questions he might have had as to why either one of them seemed anxious were answered by a single image, a single picture, a single glimpse into Dr. Baylor’s demented mind.
“Only six weeks have passed,” Matt said. “And this is a long way off from slashing a girl’s face. What happened to this family is new territory. How do we know it’s Baylor? What makes you so sure?”
Doyle stood up and leaned against the filing cabinet. “The short answer is that he made a mistake on a night that had to be completely chaotic.”
“What’s the mistake?”
“A fingerprint. A dead match.”
“Where? What did Baylor touch?”
“The girl’s nipple. Kaylee, the seventeen-year-old. She was home from boarding school for the holidays. She arrived on the afternoon of her death.”
Matt sat back in his seat and chewed it over. In Baylor’s four previous murders, his wrath had been directed at a parent of the victim. Someone who appeared to be in good standing but had committed a crime or exhibited the will to commit a crime in order to gain personal wealth and power. Most of the doctor’s targets, if not all, were narcissists driven by greed who thought the world revolved around them and only them. In Baylor’s fractured mind, taking a child away from them, taking away the one thing in their lives they couldn’t buy or replace, was his way of punishing them for their hypocrisy. His way of sentencing them to a life of ruin that he felt they deserved. That’s why he disfigured each victim’s face. He wanted the parent to see the hideous aftermath and carry the image of their dead child with them to their grave.
Baylor reveled in the horror, the punishment. Baylor got off on it.
But this was an entire family, and Matt didn’t know what to make of it. As his eyes swept over the image for a third time, it suddenly occurred to him that no one was left behind to grieve or feel any loss or pain. By murdering his audience, Baylor was making the leap from utter darkness into what? The abyss was three miles back. What could be left?
Matt turned to Doyle, his voice barely audible. “Anything else that points directly to Baylor?”
“Mrs. Stratton was raped. There’s enough semen for the lab to make a match. And we’ve got a second fingerprint. Better than the first. It was lifted off the girl’s fingernail.” Doyle paused a moment, then narrowed his brow. “They were freshly polished.”
Matt got up and started pacing, his mind stoked. Baylor got off on painting his victim’s nails with polish. He’d seen it with his own eyes.
He shook his head. It all seemed so incredible.
“When did this happen?”
“Just a few days ago,” Doyle said.
“I haven’t seen or heard anything about it. Something this big, you would think—”
Doyle cut in. “My guess is that you will in about four hours.”
“Have you named Baylor as a person of interest?”
“Not yet. Not until we have to. Believe me, Jones, once the details start coming out, well … Baylor couldn’t have picked a worse place to reappear than Philly. A serial killer worked the city, when was it? Ten, fifteen years ago? He worked it hard. People are still frightened.”
Matt knew exactly who and what Doyle was talking about because he had been a teenager living with his aunt in New Jersey at the time. Eddie Trisco and what the media labeled the ET Killings. An estimate of the number of Trisco’s victims had changed over the years, but had finally settled in at somewhere between thirty and thirty-five young women. Before leaving for Afghanistan, Matt heard that the house Trisco rented in West Philadelphia had become something of a tourist attraction offering an endless line of curiosity seekers a walk through the basement and what everyone was calling the dead room.
Matt let go of the memory and took another look at the photograph. “Who was the doctor after?” he said. “Stratton or his wife?”
“Stratton,” Doyle said. “He was an MD and ran half a dozen upscale clinics in the suburbs and around town. Last August two patients came forward claiming they were given chemotherapy and radiation treatments only to find out from another doctor that they never had cancer. Once detectives got a closer look at Stratton’s practice, the number of patients receiving chemo and radiation seemed unusually high. When they got a look at his books, the money coming in from Medicare and health insurance companies seemed even higher. Millions and millions of dollars higher. Stratton used his patients as cash cows. Most of them, ninety-nine percent of them, will never recover from what he did to their bodies. When Stratton was confronted with his crimes, he never showed any remorse. All Stratton cared about was Stratton. Until his death he was out on bail waiting for a trial date. It would have been a federal prosecution. His story made the news. He fits Baylor’s hit list like a glove.”
No one said anything for a while. Except for the sound of the fan straining to push cooler air through the vent in the ceiling, the office had turned quiet. Matt looked at McKensie staring back at him with an odd expression on his face and realized that his lieutenant hadn’t said anything since he first sat down.
Doyle checked his watch, then reached into his pocket and pulled out an envelope.
“It’s a ticket, Jones. LAX to Philly. The flight takes off at 11:15 this morning. The FBI has formed a special task force in the hunt for Dr. Baylor. I’d like you to consider joining the team. I’d like you to help us hunt down this maniac and put him away for good.”
A beat went by. Matt’s eyes flicked over to McKensie, then back to Doyle.
“Why me?”
Doyle handed over the envelope. “Because you’ve got all the right instincts, Jones. The intelligence. The imagination. Because you’re the one who broke the case.”
“But he got away. He escaped.”
Doyle nodded. “And that’s why we need you. Inside that envelope with the ticket is a busi
ness card for a special agent in charge at the FBI’s field office in Westwood. If I were you, I’d go home and pack. At eight sharp make sure you’re in Westwood. You’ll need federal credentials to join the task force and to get your firearm on the plane. The special agent will swear you in as a deputy US marshal. Your application was submitted yesterday, and you cleared the background check a couple hours ago. After you sign the application and get your picture taken, you’ll be issued a new badge and ID. If you’re there by eight, you should be able to make that flight without breaking a sweat.”
Matt opened the envelope, found the business card, and checked the ticket. LAX to Philly, without a return.
“It’s a one-way trip,” he said.
Doyle shrugged. “It’s an open return, that’s all. I’d like you to finish what you started, Detective. I’d like you to be there when we reach the end. We need your help to get there.”
CHAPTER 3
Matt tossed his duffel bag onto the bed and walked into the bathroom to pack his shaving kit. Through the mirror he could see McKensie staring at him from the doorway.
“I don’t like it,” McKensie said.
“Don’t like what? You offered to drive.”
“I did, Jones. But that doesn’t mean that I don’t think everything about Doyle’s offer is bullshit. I didn’t sign off on this.”
“Then who did?”
“He spoke to the chief once you passed your background check. The order came from him.”
Matt watched McKensie lower his head, then turn away and step out onto the deck. The wildfire was still burning through the south side of the canyon. Although Matt’s house had survived the past few hours, he wasn’t so sure his luck would last. The winds had picked up, the flames beginning to swirl like a long line of red-hot cyclones. When he and McKensie first arrived, he could see the firefighters retreating down the hill to the sand on the canyon floor. The house on the end had just begun to burn.
Matt tried not to think about it and ripped open a bag of new razors. Glancing into the mirror, he felt a sudden chill wriggling up his spine, and stopped.
McKensie was staring at him with that dark glint in his eyes. He was still on the deck, but he was appraising him again. And he had a certain presence. The shock of his white hair cut against the raw sound of his voice. His heavily lined face and barrel-chested body that reeked of unchecked power and strength.
The man flashed a wicked smile his way and laughed. “You’re not ready for this, Jones. You’ve still got monsters swimming in your head.”
Matt turned and gave him a look. “I was cleared,” he said. “I’m good.”
McKensie laughed again, his voice booming. “No, you’re not. Don’t you think I can tell? Don’t you think I can see it? The last thing you need is a case like this right now. You need something easy. Something that makes sense. A guy kills his wife because she cheated on him. A wife kills her husband because he’s a jackass. See what I mean? It’s different. It’s not messy. You’re not chasing some lunatic who gets off on killing kids. You’re not chasing a whack job like Baylor.”
“This was my case, Lieutenant. It’s still my case. Doyle’s right about that.”
“You really are a dumb fuck, aren’t you?”
Matt didn’t say anything, turning back to the bag of razors and tossing a couple into his shaving kit. As he thought about it, he had no idea how long he would be away.
“Why you, Jones? Just answer me that. Why you? And why did it sound like the Feds were begging?”
Matt remained quiet. It was the first question that had come to mind when Doyle made the offer, and now, with McKensie beating his chest, Matt still couldn’t find an answer that made any sense.
Why him?
He was doing his best to ignore the reality because he wanted to be there. He needed to be there. He had to be part of the end.
“You’re a rookie,” McKensie went on. “You were shot by a dirty cop less than two months ago. You took three more rounds a couple weeks after that. Tonight an assistant US attorney shows up at your door and says what? You tell me. What do you bring to the table that he can’t get ten times better from somewhere else?”
“He looked like a good guy,” Matt said.
McKensie narrowed those bright-green eyes of his. “He’s Department of Justice, Jones. He’s a suit. He’d sell you out for a headline.”
“I’ll be part of the special task force. Another set of eyes.”
“You think anybody has time to teach you on the job? A case like this? A madman like Baylor?”
“But I know him. I know Baylor. And I’m the only one who does.”
McKensie flashed another wicked grin from the darkness, the wildfire burning behind his back like a curtain on the devil’s stage.
“Now you see it,” he said. “And now you don’t.”
Matt grimaced. “Now I see what?”
“Don’t you get it, Jones? Doyle is using you. He knows Baylor saved your life when you were shot. He’s knows Baylor removed the bullet and sewed you back up. He’s not sure why. How could he be? But you’re the only human being whom we know the doctor spared. He’s using that knowledge because he thinks there’s a reason. For Doyle, prosecuting Baylor would make his career, so he’s all in. He’ll do anything and everything it takes to win. Using you, even if it doesn’t work out, even if it means losing you, is just the price of doing business on his way to an office on the top floor.”
Matt couldn’t help thinking how much McKensie sounded like Baylor right now. He took a deep breath and exhaled. He was doing everything he could to overlook his gunshot wounds and the aches and pains his doctor said would take another five or six months to subside. It required effort, and he didn’t understand why McKensie was trying to chop him down at the knees. Why McKensie was working so hard at it. He unzipped a pocket in his shaving kit. As he swung the mirror open, he could see McKensie lunging into the small room.
“Look at the fucking meds you’re on, Jones.”
“I’m good,” he said.
“Really?”
Matt gave McKensie a hard look up and down before tossing his prescriptions into the shaving kit and zipping up the pocket. Then he walked out, grabbed his duffel bag off the bed, and lugged it through the living room to the front door. He slipped his shaving kit and meds into his briefcase beside his laptop. When McKensie finally gave up and followed him outside, Matt took a last look at his place, switched off the lights, and locked the door.
He was tired of hearing McKensie list all the reasons why he should stay in Los Angeles. All the reasons why he should park himself on the sidelines and stay out of the chase. Matt didn’t hold it against him, and wished that he could have told McKensie why he needed this case so much. All those other reasons he couldn’t explain or talk about to anyone.
Dr. Baylor was the one who got away. The shadow who had turned his dreams into nightmares ever since his escape. The face he couldn’t help seeing when he closed his eyes.
It was 7:30 a.m. The sky was black with smoke, the sun unable to break through the darkness. McKensie’s car was parked on the street and covered with ash. The entire atmosphere felt odd and haunting. Matt tossed his bags onto the backseat, climbed into the passenger seat, and checked the envelope for the special agent’s business card. As McKensie pulled away from the curb, Matt peered down the hill. Another two homes on the south side of the canyon were engulfed in flames, the fire enormous, even breathtaking. When he glanced up the block, he noticed a handful of cops knocking on doors.
The evacuation had begun on the north slope.
He looked back at his house, his home. It seemed so small and out in the open. It was made of wood and needed a fresh coat of paint. It looked so vulnerable.
He tried to shake it off. He tried to get a grip on himself because he knew there was nothing he could do about it.
McKensie had called it right; the monsters were still swimming inside his head—still alive and kicking. But all of
that was okay. Riding on the backs of monsters would give him everything he needed to see this through. Even better, the trip to Philadelphia would put him within a couple hour’s reach of his father, the King of Wall Street. Matt needed the monsters in order to settle a debt that had turned grim. He needed the monsters to slay the dragon and find his way back home.
CHAPTER 4
The story of the Stratton family murders broke on national news just as the plane reached airspeed and made the slow, torturous climb over the Pacific. That’s when Matt’s TV switched on and CNN interrupted their schedule with a special report from Philadelphia.
There was no mention of Baylor. No connection to the serial killings in LA and New Orleans. In fact, Matt was struck by how little information had been released. He switched between the cable news channels, then flipped back again. The stories were thin to none on every network.
But like most attempts to keep something buried, every reporter and news anchor seemed to sense that something was wrong and, whatever it might be, was probably extraordinary.
Matt could hear it in their voices and see it on the screen. He could feel it.
It was in the video images of the Strattons’ mansion hidden behind the stone wall and obscured by a carriage house and long row of leafless trees. The patrol units parked along the property line, and the massive blue tarp blocking the narrow driveway. A press release stating that within the first hour of discovery, the case had been passed from local authorities to county detectives, and now, two days later and for reasons that hadn’t yet been explained, the FBI and Department of Justice were involved.
Nothing ever moved that quickly. Unless the crime defied the imagination and was extraordinarily vicious like this one.
As Matt looked at pictures of the victims provided by friends and family, a handful of snapshots from happier times released by the FBI’s field office in Philadelphia, he wondered how long it would take the media to figure it out. How long it would take them to guess, or when the first leak would occur. But even more, he wondered how much time Doyle and the FBI’s task force had before they would be forced to step before the cameras and answer more than a handful of difficult questions.
