by J. Bertrand
Don’t be surprised if this one comes back to bite you.
The screen displays a map of Texas zoomed in so that San Antonio and Houston form the base of a triangle with Dallas at the apex. Interstate 10 runs along the bottom with I-35 and I-45 forming the triangle’s sides. The map is labeled 2009.
“During the course of an ongoing investigation,” Lauterbach says, “I noticed similarities to an unsolved case I worked back in 2005. Digging deeper, I became aware of a number of open homicides with strong similarities. While the details changed from case to case, some things remained constant: female victims discovered in or around water, usually in their own homes, stabbed to death and frequently mutilated afterwards. Including the case Detective March here is working on, there are three this year.”
He touches a button on the laptop’s keyboard and three red circles appear on the map, two in the greater Houston area and one in Dallas.
“The further I went back and the wider I spread my net, the more I found. One in 2008, two more in ’07 . . .” More dots appear as the years change, each series coded with a different color. “None in ’06, but then there are three again in ’05. This goes all the way back to ’99, and there’s a total here of twenty-one homicides. And this is not counting deaths with similar circumstances where a suspect was charged and convicted. There are four more if you include those . . .” The additional dots appear, including one in the Kingwood area color-coded for 1999. “What that means is, we could be talking about as many as twenty-five homicides, and as you can see, there’s a pattern at work.”
The colored dots are clustered around the three cities: fourteen in the Houston area, eight around San Antonio, and three in Dallas.
“As I’m sure everyone in this room knows, Donald Fauk sold his house here and moved to Florida after his wife’s death. That was in 2000. From then until he was extradited in September of 2001, there were two homicides here that fit the pattern, and of course most of these took place once he was behind bars.”
The map dissolves, replaced by a lineup of photos, twenty-four victims arranged in rows of eight, the only one absent being Simone Walker. Dates and case numbers are affixed to most.
“After reviewing Detective March’s case file, I came to the conclusion that Simone Walker fits the profile, too.”
He taps the keyboard and the photo of Simone at the party materializes, the one I first saw on her shelf when Dr. Hill took me to her room. Seeing it again, a strange sensation comes over me, a mix of disappointment and shame. As if she’s looking down on me, her smile faked, trying to hide her sense that I’ve failed her.
Bascombe passes me another note: How are we not on top of this?
“When you say there are similarities,” the DA asks, “what exactly do you mean? Are these killings all the work of one individual, or do they just happen to have a few things in common? I mean, there’s a lot of women in Texas and a lot of knives and a lot of swimming pools. That doesn’t mean every time you find those three things together that it’s Colonel Mustard with the knife in the swimming pool, if you see what I mean.”
The ADAs crack a collective smile, letting their boss know they get the joke. Lauterbach takes it in stride.
“Some of these cases I’ve reviewed in more detail than others,” he says, “so I’m not standing here telling you each and every one belongs to the series. But if you look at those numbers, the reality of the situation has to sink in.”
“The reality?”
“Whelp, we’ve got a serial killer at work here. He’s active in our backyard and in several other jurisdictions on top of that. Based on the way the numbers are weighted, I think he lives here in Houston and travels often to San Antonio and occasionally to Dallas. When he’s on the road, he has enough time to identify victims and plan the murders. The question is, are we gonna put all our effort into defending past convictions, letting this guy continue to operate with impunity, or are we gonna wake up and start going after him?”
A pause during which all eyes move to the DA’s side of the table. “This is legit? We’re not talking smoke and mirrors here?”
Lauterbach advances the screen again, revealing the mug shot of a hollow-cheeked Hispanic male. “This is Raúl Guzman. In 1999, Detective Fitzpatrick identified him as a suspect in Nicole Fauk’s murder. Guzman was seen leaving a convenience store shortly after she did, and he had a sexual assault charge in his jacket. When his DNA was checked against samples from the scene, they came back negative.
“Of course, I had no idea about this when I interviewed Guzman in 2005 on my earlier case. He’d overseen some construction work on the victim’s house, and I had a witness who saw a pickup in the neighborhood the evening of the crime and gave a description that more or less matched Guzman’s truck. But he was drinking cervezas at a taquería while my victim was getting herself killed and he had half a dozen men who’d back his story, all of them employees. I didn’t like it, but what could I do?”
He taps the keyboard again, showing a copy of a Louisiana police report.
“Here’s the clincher. In 2006, the year we had none of these homicides, Raúl Guzman took a truckload of construction workers to Lake Charles, Louisiana, and made a bundle doing cut-rate repairs after Hurricane Rita blew all the roofs off. The local police talked to Guzman and two of his men for trespassing. They confronted a sunbathing teenage girl in her own backyard and a neighbor called police. Guzman said they’d been talking to the girl about fixing her roof, but that’s not what she said.”
“Did this go to court?” the DA asks.
Lauterbach shakes his head. “At the time, the officers accepted Guzman’s story that it was all a misunderstanding. They chalked it up to the language barrier. But knowing what we know, it looks like something else entirely.”
“So the theory is what?” Bascombe asks. “That Guzman and his crew are responsible for all of these homicides, that they’re working together? There’s no evidence of more than one suspect in the Walker case.”
“It’s too early for me to say exactly,” Lauterbach replies. “I’ve had as much trouble liaising with other agencies as I had with you. But it’s certainly a possibility. Where there are differences in the individual homicides, that could be the result of different workers being with him.” He glances over his shoulder at Bodeen. “But that really is speculation. Maybe Guzman is working alone. Maybe he’s not even the right guy. That’s something that needs investigating. So long as we’re wasting time on the one guy we know ain’t responsible, that’s not gonna happen, is it?”
“Let’s get the lights back on,” the DA says. “When we break up here, I want to review all this in more detail, Detective Lauterbach. In the meantime, I’m going to ask Lt. Bascombe to ensure that his people widen their investigation to accommodate the possibility of a serial killer. That does not mean that Donald Fauk didn’t murder his wife. At least for now, these are two separate issues. But if it turns out Fauk is innocent, I do not want to hold a press conference saying so unless I can name Guzman or whoever is responsible at the same time. Am I making myself clear, everybody?”
Perfectly clear. Lauterbach packs his laptop away with a smile on his lips, realizing what a huge concession he’s won. Bascombe isn’t looking at me, and Wilcox has a hand over his brow, looking like an actor in an aspirin commercial. The crime scene supervisor is still inspecting his copy of the appeal, trying to will himself into invisibility. The DNA evidence has only come up obliquely, and he couldn’t have relished the task of defending HPD’s disastrous track record on that score.
As the meeting breaks up, I can feel it starting already: the random whispers, the sighs of relief, and cutting through all that, a new energy, a new sense of purpose. The gathered prosecutors are feeling their way toward galvanization. Evil has a face now. There’s a target to hunt down. They entered the room afraid of one homicide opening up again, and now they’re leaving with the dream of closing twenty-five. Who wouldn’t make a trade like that?
Wilcox sli
ps toward the door. Since Bascombe seems to be angling for some one-on-one time with the DA, I follow my ex-partner out, hoping to get his take on what’s transpired. Bodeen frowns as I pass, but he doesn’t say anything. The slide show seems to have dampened his enthusiasm for me.
“This is classic you,” Wilcox says.
We have the elevator all to ourselves, ticking off the floors.
“What is that supposed to mean?”
“Dragging me into it, expecting me to cover for you—”
“You don’t have to cover for anything, Stephen. You were there, remember? You know the confession is good.”
“Here’s what I know,” he says. “I know I wanted to stay with Fauk when you went to pick up that rental, and you left him with Fontenot instead. I know I tried to stop you from doing the interview in the car, and you went ahead and did it anyway.”
“But listen—”
“No, you listen. If you did anything, anything at all . . . I’m not in Internal Affairs for nothing. I will come down on you like a ton of bricks, March. I promise you that. I already know you’ll sacrifice your own career, but you’re not dragging me down with you, understand?”
The elevator stops on the ground floor and the doors slide open. He bolts, leaving me undecided about whether to follow. What’s the point? He will believe whatever he wants, regardless of the facts. Wilcox is like Lauterbach in that sense, letting his preconceived idea rearrange the world around him, only Wilcox is obsessed with corruption instead of serial killers. Either way, we see what we want to see, making connections where there are none, ignoring obvious links when they become inconvenient.
I’ll say this for each of them. At least their ruling passions make them popular. There will always be ears ready to listen. Police corruption is an explanation you can get your head around, just like a serial-killing psychopath. The cops are bent because they’re cops. The killers kill because they’re killers. And all you have to do to end the corruption or the killing is put the person responsible behind bars. It’s an easy cause to rally round. And of course there are bent cops and serial killers, though not as many as people seem to think.
As I’m standing there, Charlie Bodeen breezes past, his shoulder dipped by the weight of his accordion case.
“You got taken,” he says.
Brad Templeton has a little place on Peden Street, a one-story in gray brick with white trim and a red Mitsubishi SUV under the carport. Instead of a yard, there’s a layer of fist-sized rock, an artificial riverbed accented with an ironic cactus here and there. He writes at a large table in the living room, where a wall of glass looks out over the equally rock-strewn backyard. Attached to the worn fence, a bright red bird feeder, and underneath it a stone birdbath.
Instead of knocking, I cut through the carport and let myself into the back, my leather soles making a crunching sound against the rock. Through the window I see him bent over his computer keyboard, fingers rapid as a piece of machinery, a chewed pencil between his teeth. When I pound against glass, Templeton jumps.
“You lied to me,” I say.
He sits there frozen.
“Open up, Brad. It’s your day of reckoning.”
“What do you want?”
My fist sends vibrations through the windowpane. One, two, three. “Open up.” Four, five, six. “Don’t make me break it, Brad. And don’t think I won’t.”
He circles the table and unhitches the lock, dragging the door open to release a rush of warm air. That’s a strange feeling in Houston, heat blasting from inside instead of out. Without a word, he retraces his steps, dropping back into his chair with a groan.
“Roger Lauterbach,” I say. “Tell me everything.”
Templeton rubs his eyes. “He’s a detective.”
“Keep going.”
“He works for the Sheriff’s Department.”
“And?”
“He’s an expert on Dean Corll, which is how I met him. He gave a talk about Corll for a local group, focusing on the police response or lack thereof. He told me he wanted to write a book someday—who doesn’t, right?—and we compared notes. A couple of weeks later, I got a call from him. He’d read all my books in the meantime and wanted to talk.”
He’s holding back on me. I can tell.
“About what?” I ask.
“I thought it would be about writing,” he says, “but instead he had a lot of questions about the Fauk case.”
He’s holding back all right.
“And this was when?”
“A couple of months ago. I can check if you want.” He opens a web browser on the computer and starts typing an address, which the software finishes for him. A lurid banner loads first: FOR THE VICTIMS, in red lettering, with a hack-job montage of black-and-white photos underneath, teenage boys from more than thirty years ago, some with buzz cuts, some with long hair. Underneath, in white on a black background, a column of text headed with THE HOUSTON CANDY MAN TERRORIZES THE YOUTH, a grainy photo of Dean Corll floating in the middle.
“What is this?” I ask, already knowing the answer.
Templeton scrolls down, revealing my cousin Moody’s school photo circa 1972. He looks like such a kid, even though I remember him as much older, practically grown-up. The text is littered with blue hyperlinks, so much information packed onto the page, so many old pictures, giving the material an almost psychotic intensity. Conspiracy theory sites always look like this, the form itself a stinging refutation.
At the bottom of the page is a contemporary photo of Tammy, Moody’s older sister, and a schedule of events listing bimonthly meetings at the public library branch in Katy. The meetings are news to me.
“There,” he says, clicking on the link for September’s meeting.
A photo of Lauterbach, innocuously smiling, pops up along with a blurb about a multimedia presentation titled Catching Corll: Lessons for Law Enforcement. According to his bio, Lauterbach has “a special certification in the investigation of serial crimes,” which probably means he sat through an in-service training with a bunch of other bored cops.
“This morning I endured one of his multimedia presentations, and let me tell you, I did not enjoy it. For one thing, I couldn’t help thinking you’ve been keeping things from me.”
“It’s not like that,” he says.
“I showed him your book, Brad. I gave him the link between Fauk and the case I’m working on. And I find he knew about it all along. You could’ve warned me what this guy was up to—and don’t tell me you didn’t know.”
“You’re right, I did. And I would have said something, but . . . you’re hard to talk to, you know that? You don’t listen.”
“I’m listening now.”
“Roger was working on a case,” he says, “and the details reminded him of another murder from a couple of years ago. When he read The Kingwood Killing, there were some similarities there, too. But obviously Donald Fauk had already been convicted, so how could there be a connection? I put some questions to Fauk—”
“You what?”
“In a letter. I asked him to clarify some things. He sent me back some newspaper clippings from the trial in New Orleans, the one where Gene Fontenot is supposed to have threatened that kid into confessing. He said that’s what happened to him, too. There was no point in telling anyone because they wouldn’t have believed him.”
“So how come I didn’t hear about Fontenot until today?” I ask. “That was three months ago, right? And you never said a word to me. You didn’t mention it Sunday, either. I asked you to check for strange correspondence and you didn’t say a word.”
His face reddens and he rotates his chair away from me.
“You have no idea what you’ve done,” I say.
“I did some checking, March, and there were more cases. A lot more. Women stabbed to death, their bodies left in swimming pools, bathtubs . . . One of them, this girl in San Antonio, she was decapitated, March. Her head was left floating in a fish tank.” His voice trembles with emo
tion. “Always the same pattern: the woman alone, the knife, the water. And I started to realize what it meant. I started to realize the mistake I’d made.”
“You made a mistake all right—”
“No, you made it. You made it and you sucked me in. You used me, March. You told me your stories and I believed them.”
His wet eyes bore into me, the accusation sharp enough to cut. I take a step back. I can’t help it. The pure rage of an idealist betrayed. I hadn’t realized until now what a façade Templeton’s world-weary act really is.
“Brad,” I say, softening my voice. “You don’t understand. There’s no connection between these murders. The DA said it himself. There’s a lot of women, a lot of knives, and a lot of water in this state, and having the three of them together . . . it’s a coincidence.”
“There aren’t any, though, March. You said it yourself. Everything’s connected. And anyway, one or two or three of these cases, that could be coincidence. Four, five, whatever, but twenty? Twenty-five? That’s straining credibility, don’t you think?”
“You don’t know what you’re talking about. Trust me. The guy who killed Simone Walker, he has a certain signature, a certain style, that is worlds away from cutting heads off and putting them in aquariums.” Just saying it, I’m tempted to laugh. “Lauterbach is obsessed, so he sees the links he wants to see. You’ve given him a gift, you know that? I’m guessing before he met you, he spent a lot of time daydreaming about a case like this, wishing he was hunting the great white whale instead of one sad domestic call after another. Now he’s giving PowerPoints to the district attorney and his boss is seeing nothing but dollar signs and headlines.”
He listens with sullen resignation, crossing his arms almost like he’s hugging himself. I can tell I’m not getting through, but I can’t stop arguing. Until now, I had no idea the scale of the disaster. This isn’t one rogue deputy throwing a roadblock into my path. Templeton did all the legwork, making Lauterbach’s serial killer fantasy come true, and he handed everything over to Fauk’s legal counsel, too. Which can only mean one thing.
