by Leslie Wolfe
Doc Rizza took a deep breath of air before continuing, then slowly exhaled. “With these three cases excluded, I can say all his cases were identical. Probably Garza will make serial killer history, because he didn’t evolve, not in the slightest. He killed everyone quickly and painlessly, all family members. Then he posed them around the dinner table, and spent an inordinate amount of time with them. He lived with the dead family. He slept in their beds, ate with them at that table, watched TV, took showers. Can you believe that?”
Tess and Gary stared at Doc Rizza, both speechless, waiting for him to continue.
“Death is messy; it comes with total loss of sphincter control. Can you imagine eating at a table with dead, decomposing people? Ugh… Anyway, after thirty-six to forty-eight hours, he’d leave, just in time to prevent getting caught by housekeepers or nannies.” He paused for a second. “He left lots of DNA and plenty of trace evidence at the crime scenes. It’s normal, when you consider he lived in those homes for so long. The DNA we had collected allowed us to get him convicted, although in these three cases there was no DNA evidence. We just assumed he couldn’t stay, so he didn’t have the time to leave any behind. I think that was a big mistake, the way we discarded the lack of DNA evidence. Oh, and the dental records didn’t match.”
“What do you mean?” Gary asked.
“We took impressions of Jackie Meyer’s bite marks. I have everything here,” he showed them. He extracted an evidence bag from a case box, and unwrapped several cream-colored molds. “This is the bite impression of the Meyer family killer. They don’t match Garza, but we explained it away easily. It’s not that exact of a science, bite-mark analysis.”
Tess’s frown deepened. “What’s that?”
“This one?” Doc pointed at another mold. “It’s a stab impression, one of the fatal Meyer wounds. I hoped it would help us narrow the list of possible murder weapons.”
“It doesn’t look anything like a knife,” Tess replied, examining it with curiosity.
“That’s because it was an abdominal wound. As soon as the knife was pulled out, the organs rearranged in the cavity, and most of the wound pattern was compromised. It didn’t bring any value, but I’d taken the mold anyway, so I kept it in the archives. Molds only bring value in wounds that penetrate muscle or bone.”
“I still can’t understand how these three cases were lumped together with Garza’s. They are worlds apart.”
“Not really,” the doc replied again, his calm not budging. “Against thirty-one other identical cases, these discrepancies seemed like minor anomalies. Maybe he was interrupted and didn’t have time to perform his ritual. Maybe he stabbed Mrs. Watson because he ran out of bullets. Or maybe he was disrupted. Again, maybe he was naturally evolving, like most serial killers do.”
He stopped talking for a while, then rubbed his forehead with a heavy sigh. “I guess maybe we were too afraid to think we could have two monsters killing families in our town. It’s possible we couldn’t even conceive of that notion.” He swallowed hard, then gulped some water from his uncapped bottle. “Yes, in retrospect, I think you’re right, Agent Winnett. We should have seen it, a long time ago.”
19
Reflections: The Art of Choosing
Just picture yourself hungry, craving, lusting for a mouthful of gratifying taste. You’re standing in front of a crystal bowl filled to the brim with luscious, appetizing apples. Immediately, a Red Delicious catches your eye. You almost pick it from the pile, enticed by the heart-shaped contour in bright, vivid red, the color of pure, fresh blood. You anticipate the loud crunch your teeth will make when biting off a cool, crisp chunk.
A Gala apple smiles at you, nestled right by the Red Delicious. It’s the sweetest of them all, shiny and glorious in its red and yellow skin, perfect in its uniqueness. Underneath, a Braeburn beams in green, golden yellow, and tame red, there if you crave the awakening of its rebellious, tart taste. If you like your apples to fight you, that’s your choice. That, and Cripps Pink, barely visible under the others, but just as tart and crunchy. Or maybe you’d prefer the fully blossomed flavor of a sweet Fuji, to satisfy your more refined senses. Go on, don’t let your hand hesitate, pick one, and enjoy! Take in that scent, with every glorious bite. Feel your lust subside, replaced by deep satisfaction.
Whatever your choice, I want to ask you, what made you choose one apple over all the others? Can you explain? Of course, science has spent valuable resources assembling countless lengthy words packed together in even lengthier phrases, to explain the act of choosing. When, in fact, it’s simple.
We, as educated human beings, love the privilege of choice. It comes with wealth, abundance, and freedom, and we value it immensely. With a single apple in the bowl, there is no choice. Yes, there is science behind every choice.
But I consider it, first and foremost, an art.
It has to do with the anticipation of the reward each apple will bring. It has to do with the satisfaction we’re craving, the constant quest for gratification that enslaves us. That’s how I choose my apples, and probably, you choose them the same way. I always choose the one who has the most promise for a delectable experience. I choose the one most likely to satisfy my thirsting senses.
That’s how I chose Jackie Meyer. To me, she was a Honeycrisp. Light, auburn-blonde hair, green eyes, and flawless skin. She walked by me one day, oblivious to who I was, and continued going about her day not realizing I was a few steps behind her since that moment. When I wasn’t studying her, I was planning every detail of my feast, making sure that no one would believe The Family Man wasn’t to blame. Copycatting him worked wonders with the Watsons, and there was absolutely no reason why it wouldn’t work again.
Soon enough, I had planned everything and knew her life in detail. I set the date and struggled those few days before with the adrenaline rush that wouldn’t cease. I couldn’t sleep anymore, and my hands had this almost permanent tremor I since learned to associate with excited anticipation. I lived on coffee and adrenaline.
I took to the gym more and more. I had joined a gym after the Watsons, realizing I had to build my strength so I could enjoy those special moments without physical limitations imposed by my own body. I needed to be fit and strong, stronger than ever. I worked out diligently, six days a week, and it showed. It helped with the anxiety too. Yes, I was anxious, I have to admit. Not scared, there’s a difference. A predator isn’t scared, and neither was I.
I had a difficult choice to make. I wanted to possess Jackie completely, but the thought of Donna and that near-disaster in college still held me back. I felt a tremendous urge to feel that power over her, completely, with the core of my being. But I wasn’t ready… not yet. I wasn’t ready to do it right, without taking unacceptable risks.
I was preparing for it though, as fast as I could, without raising suspicions. I needed to learn all that I could about the forensics of rape, about DNA evidence, about the course of typical investigations. It was a lot, and I wasn’t ready yet. I couldn’t wait though, not anymore. I craved my Honeycrisp with every fiber of my being, and it couldn’t wait any longer. I couldn’t wait.
In my dreams, I smelled her warm skin, and every morning I woke up erect and yearning to lose myself in her softness, to taste every inch of her silky perfection. I was in pain.
The day of the feast didn’t disappoint by much. Her green eyes turned almost black when she screamed, pleading for my mercy. Her thin, pale body writhed under my hands, weaker and weaker, until it conceded defeat. When my teeth pierced the pearl-white skin of her breast, my mouth filled with her incredible flavor. I took my time with her, following the steps I had so carefully planned for days in a row. The rush of exerting such power over a woman’s body cannot be expressed in words. I’ve tried before and failed. I cannot convey the exultation, the poetry of such a heady high. I wanted it to last forever.
Nothing does, though.
The following day, I had to return to my normal life, with the memory of
my recent experience to keep me company during the most tedious parts of my days, and a small souvenir, something no one will ever miss. Yes, I do have a normal life, you know, that’s the tip of the iceberg that I am. For the longest time, I’d worked hard at becoming normal, at extinguishing that all-consuming fire that burns dreams of lust and power into the fabric of my soul. I spared no effort. I’d finished college and become successful at my work. I married a beautiful woman, and started a family. I even went to church every now and then; not because I’m a believer, but because that’s what’s expected of me, and that’s how I maintain the power I hold over everyone in my life. I became really good at what’s expected of me, at being the powerful, successful man with a nice family and a good life.
That means, my dear friend, should you ever become the apple of my eye, you won’t see me coming.
20
The Chameleon
Back upstairs, in the conference room, no one spoke a word. Tess ruminated about the information shared by Doc Rizza, and the more she thought about things, the more everything made sense. She could see which part of the killings were the unsub’s own, and which part had been done out of the necessity to emulate The Family Man. The two sets of crime scene attributes separated clearly now, like oil and water.
Fradella barged in, still panting. He’d probably climbed the two flights of stairs in a hurry.
“We didn’t release it,” he said. “There’s no trace that the Townsend rape was ever shared with the media.”
Michowsky let out a short, loud breath of air.
“Then you know what comes next?”
“The interviews?” Fradella asked.
“Yeah, all of them. We need to be sure no one mentioned it to him during an interview.”
“But that’s hours and hours… It’s been years since they caught him, and every now and then someone goes over there and talks to the creep.”
“Or I’ll just go back over there myself and ask him again,” Tess offered. “Might be a better use of our time.”
“And he’s suddenly going to open up and share, huh?” Michowsky pushed back. “How delusional can you get, Winnett?”
“He’ll talk to me; I’m sure of it.”
“Why the hell would he do that?”
“Because I’m the first cop to take him seriously about these three cases. No one else bothered.”
“That you did,” Michowsky replied morosely.
She didn’t pay attention to him, and stayed focused on the crime scene photos pasted on the board. The timeline gaps before the Watsons and after the Townsends bothered her the most.
“I know what he is, this unsub,” she said. “He’s a chameleon. The same way he emulated The Family Man, he might have emulated others.”
“But isn’t this against everything we know about serial killers?” Todd pushed back. “Everything I read on the subject says each serial has his own MO, own signature, something that aligns with his specific pathology.”
Tess nodded. “That’s mostly correct, yes.”
“Mostly? How can it be mostly correct?”
“I don’t think we understand his entire pathology yet,” Tess replied. “Until we can figure out what happened here,” she added, pointing at the gap on the board before the Watsons, “we can’t fully understand his motivations. We don’t have enough information.”
“He’s obviously a sexual predator,” Gary said.
“He is, although I struggle to understand this twisted evolution. Serial killers evolve from rape to killing, not the other way around. Any theories?”
They fidgeted a little, but stayed silent.
“All right, let’s spell it out,” Tess offered. “He jumped from no torture, to four hours, to six hours. Definitely evolving in terms of torture. If we consider the torture as a preamble for rape, then we know what he was building toward. If we know that, we’ve identified his core pathology, which is anger excitation. The rest was… camouflage. It’s the women he wants. That’s why the victimology wasn’t making any sense.”
“But you just said we can’t understand his pathology, because we lack information,” Fradella said.
“I said we can understand his core pathology, but not more. We still don’t know why he evolved the way he did. Where is he coming from, this unsub? We still don’t know.”
Todd grabbed the marker from the edge of the board, and drew another victimology matrix.
“When we looked at victimology for the families,” Todd said, “there wasn’t any common denominators, other than general age bracket, thirty to forty years old, and low risk, suburban families. These families never interacted, never beat the same paths. But neither did the women, because we looked at their backgrounds when we did the families.”
“Yes, you did, but have you really looked at the women? Just the women, taken out of the context of their families? What do you see?” She tapped quickly on three photos, portraits of the three victims taken when they were alive.
“Oh, God…” Gary muttered.
“You see it, right?” she asked, looking at Todd.
“Yeah, I see it. Same height, same build, blonde hair, blue or green eyes. They could be sisters.”
“They could. Let’s discard the rest of their families. That was decoy. What do we see? How do we work these cases now? And why the hell didn’t he torture or rape Rachel Watson?”
Silence engulfed the conference room again.
“Come on, guys. Maybe he was emulating someone else before. Who was active in the area back then? Before the Watsons? You know the rule. If we find his first crime, we find him.”
Fradella looked to Michowsky for an answer.
“I don’t recall anyone of Garza’s magnitude, not since I joined the force. But the thing is, Garza killed for years before the Watson murder. Where was he, this perp?”
She sighed, frustrated. That was going nowhere. Then her eyes locked on a south Florida map hanging on the wall. She reached and took it down, then removed the print from the frame. Satisfied, she pasted it on the case board, and marked the addresses for the three murdered families with black dots.
“That’s not why that’s there, you know,” Michowsky said.
“Do I look like I give a damn about décor, when we have a killer at large?” Tess snapped.
Michowsky raised his hands in a pacifying gesture. He seemed miserable. It couldn’t have been too easy for him, but she didn’t have time for his sensitivities.
“All right, so this was his hunting ground.”
“His or Garza’s?” Fradella asked.
“Good point. Let’s map Garza’s with blue. Here, you do it, I’ll read the addresses.”
A few minutes later, a cluster of blue dots covered the southern part of Palm Beach County, Boca Raton, Fort Lauderdale, all the way down to Miami-Dade. Two of the black dots were in Palm Beach, while the third was on the northern edge of Dade County.
“Argh… Not much luck there,” Tess admitted. “I was hoping we could triangulate his hunting grounds for a DIVS search. Okay… let’s start with the following parameters,” she added, pushing her laptop toward Todd. “Palm Beach, Broward, and Dade counties. Go back twenty years. Unsolved cases: murders, rapes, missing persons. Add severe assaults too.”
“You’re forgetting these three cases show as solved.”
“I’m not forgetting, only I don’t have a fix for that. Tried cases disputed by the offenders are not logged in there as such. Even if they were, probably 90 percent of all cases would show as disputed. Very few people admit guilt in murder cases, even after they’re convicted.”
“Okay, got it,” Fradella said. “Filter out victims by gender?”
She bit her fingernail, thinking. “Um… not yet. Let’s see what we have, then we’ll decide.”
Fradella pushed enter, and the wall-mounted screen displayed the results.
“Whoa…” Michowsky reacted. “We’ll never get through this. Where do we start?”
DIVS had
returned hundreds of unsolved cases in their area and time span. Filtered, after removing all gang and drug-related crime, and murders that didn’t involve an assaulted female victim, they broke down as fourteen unsolved murders, forty-two rapes, sixteen missing persons, and two assaults where the victims barely lived. In total, seventy-four unsolved cases that matched their search parameters.
There was no way of telling which ones of the seventy-four unsolved crimes The Chameleon had perpetrated.
21
A Request
Tess got out of bed at 4:00AM to get an early start on traffic on her way to Raiford. She was grateful for the buzz of the alarm, after tossing and turning every minute of the few hours she’d spent in bed. She struggled, thinking of another time when she’d felt so lost, so confused during an investigation. What made it far worse was the knowledge that The Chameleon, the faceless, traceless unsub, was soon going to make his move and silence the only witness he’d left behind: The Watson Girl.
She wasn’t going to lose Laura Watson, and she wasn’t going to ruin her perfect case-solving score. That was the commitment she made to herself, at first the night before, when she’d decided to do whatever it took to find The Chameleon, and then that morning, when she drove pedal to the metal the whole distance to Florida State Prison.
They’d already brought Garza to the interview room. She didn’t waste any time and went right in, pulled up a chair, and sat in front of him, across the dented and scratched metallic table.
He raised his eyebrows when he recognized her, but didn’t say a word. Just smiled a little.
“Good morning,” she said.
“Hello,” he replied, that flicker of a smile now clearly formed on his face. “What an honor, Special Agent… Winnett, was it?”
“Yes,” she confirmed calmly, although she knew he was faking the uncertainty he displayed.
