The Golden Ratio

by Cole McCade

  Seong-Jae sighed, closing his eyes and pressing the hot Styrofoam of his cup against his aching, throbbing temples. “Please do not turn this into a matter of theatrics. Just because we are not actually dealing with the corpses at the moment does not mean this is not a somber matter.”

  “Fair enough,” Aanga said. “Here’s the kicker, then.” He paused for dramatic effect anyway, and Seong-Jae opened his eyes, glaring at him. “Every last one of these men was incarcerated in two thousand and one.”

  “Fuck. My. Life,” Seong-Jae hissed, and Malcolm groaned, tilting his head back against the chair and staring at the ceiling.

  “He knew exactly what he was doing,” Malcolm said. “Nearly two decades in there, getting to know people, finding out their stories…he already had them picked out to throw off the trail. He was just waiting for his moment.”

  “The question is still whether or not he anticipated assistance from outside,” Seong-Jae pointed out. “Or if he had simply planned and hoped for his moment due to negligence that likely would have happened sooner or later, in such a poorly run facility.”

  Aanga smiled faintly. “Inefficiency always did irritate you.”

  Seong-Jae just looked at him flatly.

  Do not.

  He did not want Aanga trying to bring up small reminders of fondness and intimacy, now.

  He did not want him bringing them up at all.

  Malcolm frowned. “They’re all local to Phoenix?”

  Aanga nodded, folding his arms over his chest. “Every last one has a local address in Phoenix and the smaller surrounding communities.”

  “That’s interesting.” Malcolm’s eyes narrowed, slate blue gleaming as he stared fixedly at the cork boards, stroking his beard. “After his last kill in two thousand and one, something chased him from Los Angeles to Phoenix, where he screwed up, ran afoul of the law, got himself arrested and sentenced within a year. That tells me that changing out of his home environment disrupts his mental state. He’s a creature of routine and order, and having to adapt to a new physical space possibly changed his psychosis.”

  “It tells me,” Seong-Jae murmured, “that we need to re-open that old case file and determine what made it different. Different enough that he felt the need to flee Los Angeles.”

  Lips pursed, Aanga drummed his fingers to his inner elbow. “We should also check local residences, follow up and see if we can find neighbors, next of kin. Next of kin will do a lot to trace one of them back to Los Angeles, maybe. It’s a thought.”

  “Garza can do that,” Seong-Jae said. “At the very least the initial information gathering so we can quickly narrow down leads and eliminate non-viable suspects.”

  “Possibly close in on him that much faster, too,” Malcolm said. “Like I said, he’s a creature of routine and order. He might not even be consciously aware of what’s driving his initial choices, but I would be his next move would be to seek safe, familiar ground where he can reorient himself in his identity. He’ll want to return home. Especially if there’s anything there he wants to retrieve. Anything important.”

  Aanga’s breaths sucked in audibly, eyes widening. “Trophies?”

  “Trophies,” Malcolm confirmed. “If we can figure out what his trophy is, we can work his profile and track him that much faster. Unless his trophy was the murder weapon. Did forensics find it on scene?”

  “Nothing but the batons he used,” Aanga said. “They’re running them for prints, but as far as the blade he used for cutting and skinning—nothing.”

  “So he kept it,” Malcolm said. “The blade itself may be the trophy, but…I don’t know. If he reuses blades between kills, it’s not unique. He’d want something to make each one special.”

  The old wolf stood, then, pacing toward the corkboards, his powerful frame moving with a prowling, easy strength; Seong-Jae thought someone would have to know him to see the tension in him, the way he had wrapped himself up in an invisible, tightly-woven shroud of self-control to focus on the work and only the work.

  I am sorry, he thought.

  But he could not take it back now.

  And he would not be ungrateful for Malcolm at his side.

  Malcolm frowned deeply at the photographs, his bulk gently edging Aanga aside; he trailed his fingers through his beard, then tapped his curled knuckles to his mouth.

  “He’ll have saved past trophies from every prior kill,” he said. “The first was probably an impulse, but it became the formative template.”

  “So we should re-open the first case file as well,” Seong-Jae said. “Perhaps identify missing body parts. One thing of note is that any parts that were segmented out during dissection were not taken with the suspect at the time of the murder, but left behind as a tidy heap of refuse. It is possible that during autopsy, missing segments of skin, flesh, portions of bone, may have been overlooked.”

  “I don’t think so,” Malcolm said, shaking his head; he had his hair down today, just a subtle sign that he had a headache, and it tumbled over his broad shoulders now as he tilted his head to one side, stopping in front of Neil Samson’s mug shot. “Those bits were trash to him. The bad parts he cut out to suit his design. He wouldn’t want to keep imperfection. But since he couldn’t keep the perfect dolls he made…”

  “He may, perhaps, have retained keepsake objects belonging to the victims,” Seong-Jae said.

  Aanga whistled softly, a little up-and-down note, his brows sinking in low crags over his eyes. “That’s going to be a problem, with how old these cases are. We don’t have recent crime scenes we can analyze prior to the prison break, and it won’t be easy to find anyone connected to the deceased who might actually remember anything missing or out of order after all this time.”

  “We’ll be better off looking for where the trophies are hidden than trying to figure out what they are from old crime scenes. He’ll probably want them back, wherever they were left,” Malcolm answered.

  “Someone would have had to care for his home in his absence,” Seong-Jae said. “Either that, or he would have had to forfeit his lease on any rental.”

  “If it was something particularly gruesome and obvious,” Aanga said, “someone would have noticed. It would’ve come to light and ended up included in his court records.”

  “Unless he concealed them exceedingly well,” Seong-Jae corrected.

  “Either way,” Malcolm interjected, “we have to assume the trophies are hidden and he wants to retrieve them now. Ego and pride wouldn’t let him do otherwise. New trophies would just be incomplete shadows to a complete collection.”

  “So you think that’ll be his first destination?” Aanga asked, and Malcolm considered, before tilting his head in grudging acknowledgement, eyes narrowing.

  “It’s likely,” he said slowly.

  “You have doubts?” Seong-Jae asked.

  “It depends on if he was forced to leave Los Angeles without his trophies. I don’t think he would if he could help it, not with the obsessive nature of the crimes and a dark triad profile, but if he left in a hurry or was forced out quickly under duress…”

  No one spoke, until Aanga cleared his throat sharply and tugged at his tie, smoothing and tightening its rather loose knot. “We should split our focus between Phoenix and the Los Angeles area,” he said firmly. “His entire kill radius was inside the city or near the outskirts in some of the L.A. farmland areas. So it’s likely any trophy cache would be there, or in the vicinity of a local Phoenix residence.”

  “It is possible,” Seong-Jae said, “he is en route now. If we establish a broad enough search net to intercept…”

  Aanga cut him off with a sharp sweep of his hand. “It won’t help much when he’s now got over two days’ head start. It’s only a five-hour drive from here to the California border. He could be there by now, if he’s gotten transportation.”

  Malcolm grimaced. “Or he could be on foot, hiding out…we just don’t know.” He shrugged, thick shoulders rolling tightly. “I say we can’
t risk it. News bulletins, air sweeps, trackers on the ground…we need to have eyes leading west.”

  Aanga eyed Malcolm. Something gleamed in his gaze, almost as if he was assessing Malcolm—while Malcolm hardly seemed to notice, drawn into his own inner world, entirely focusing on the crime scene photographs and mug shots without acknowledging the subtle hint of challenge flaring around Aanga like the first bristle of a defensive cat’s tail.

  Seong-Jae did not like this.

  And he hoped it was not over him, even if it would not be any better if Aanga were seriously taking Malcolm’s input as a challenge to his authority simply because Malcolm had been included in this investigation against Aanga’s will.

  For a moment Seong-Jae caught his eye, before shaking his head subtly, mouth tightening.

  Aanga’s eyes narrowed further, before he sighed, looking away. “I’ll put a call out for local law enforcement between here and L.A. Send over the mug shots and names. Their PR teams will get the right information to the right news contacts.”

  Seong-Jae eyed him, then stood, pacing closer to linger on the images of the seven men. Only one of these men was a murderer. The others…barely even criminals, petty small men who were only one step over the line from being as innocent as anyone human could be.

  One out of seven.

  He wondered if, perhaps, that was the ratio of monsters to men.

  With how often he looked into yet another dead, empty face, blanked of life by anger or greed or passion or jealousy or sheer sadistic malice…

  He was willing to believe that one in every seven men might well be a monster, rotten to the core.

  Marvin Dorcier caught him; there was a certain shallowness to his eyes, a certain…deliberate blankness, but he could just as easily be in shock, drunk, or high; Seong-Jae was very likely grasping at straws.

  Still, he stared into their mottled blue-green shade, fading to a ring of almost yellow close to the inner iris.

  Searching.

  Searching as if those eyes could speak to him, and tell him the story of why this man had returned as if he knew—as if he knew Seong-Jae had understood his pattern, and had something to say to him in bone and in blood.

  “What can we do to use their criminal history to eliminate at least one suspect?” he murmured.

  “Right now, nothing,” Aanga answered reluctantly. “They’re all compulsive repeat offenders. They all engaged in antisocial behavior, even with minor offenses. That right there is our usual gateway pattern for a serial, even if we’re tracing it backward right now.” He shook his head, dusting off his slacks with restless hands, then pinching their creases. “We can’t risk overlooking any of them, and letting him slip through the cracks.”

  Seong-Jae held his tongue, just scanning the printouts of each man’s criminal record, drifting from one side to the other; Malcolm also remained fixed on the pages tacked to the corkboard, stepping closer to Seong-Jae…until their arms bumped, and Malcolm stopped, his bicep and shoulder remaining pressed warmly against Seong-Jae’s.

  He did not look at Seong-Jae.

  He did not need to.

  The fact that he stopped moving, remaining in place with his gaze fixed on the board, said everything.

  Said, I am here, and we are here together.

  And so they were.

  And so Seong-Jae remained.

  “He was incredibly thorough,” Seong-Jae murmured, leaning in and squinting at the dates on the arrest records. “No one has a single arrest prior to two thousand and one. All people who began in that year, and escalated quickly—likely due to some stressor aggravating their antisocial behavior.”

  Malcolm rumbled softly in agreement. “So that their patterns would all be the same and we couldn’t rule anyone out by who had a history in Phoenix long prior to his arrival. He’d have been friendly with them all, but…not someone who stood out, I think. Not your typical compelling predator. I’m thinking more Mr. Rogers charisma than Ted Bundy. Bland, harmless, unassuming. Look at these faces. These aren’t the faces of men you put your guard up around. They’re the faces of men you don’t notice.”

  “So people would not suspect when they vouchsafed seemingly minor details in casual conversation with him,” Seong-Jae said. “Or when he overheard, unobserved, in their vicinity. No one would have suspected he was constructing profiles of them for use in his eventual escape and disappearance.”

  “Huh,” Aanga said from behind them, a touch of grudging admiration in his voice. “The two of you really do play damned well off each other. We might actually crack this.”

  “That’s the plan,” Malcolm muttered, then glanced over his shoulder, thick brows quirking. “Even putting Garza’s teams on this locally, we’re still looking at a lot of slow ground work.”

  With a tight shrug, Aanga shot back, “I’d rather do it slow and right than fast and wrong.”

  “Slow and correct may still result in further deaths,” Seong-Jae said. “He may begin killing aboveground while we are distracted digging into his old burrows.”

  “No rabbit metaphors, Seong-Jae.” With a groan, Aanga turned away, pacing to the window and prying two slats of the blinds apart to let a white-hot glow of sunlight shine past, glinting off his glasses as he peered outside. “I don’t think we need to worry just yet, considering his prior escalation cycles lengthened rather than shortened. More bodies, but more time in between. And if he’s smart, he’ll go to ground and establish a new identity as someone safe, normal, non-threatening, before he picks up his habits again. We just have to follow the trail and catch him before he becomes someone else.”

  “I don’t think so.” Something in Malcolm’s voice was dark—dark, troubled, heavy. “I don’t think we have much time at all.”

  “Why is that?” Seong-Jae asked.

  “He lost nearly two decades of active kill time.” Malcolm tapped one blunt, thick finger against the arrest date on the printout beneath Kevin Arnsford’s mug shot. “He may not be near death, but he’s past his prime for easy violence against whomever he wants. He’s at an age where he’ll have to be more careful in choosing his victims, but will also have to shorten his cycle before he gets to a point where the risk is no longer worth the reward.”

  He paused, brows drawing together in just that way he had—that way that said something was turning over, grinding through one rational pathway after another, guided by Malcolm’s particular combination of quick-leap intuition, compassion, and the rationale of so many years of experience.

  Somewhere along the way, Seong-Jae realized…

  He had not simply come to care for Malcolm, trust him, rely on him.

  He had come to respect him.

  And admire him.

  “Frustration,” Malcolm said abruptly, as if he had lit on some key answer. “Frustration is going to be his key driver. That’s what we need to keep in mind when trying to anticipate him. He’ll be frustrated over no longer having years to plan his next kill. And he’ll be frustrated over having to bypass his ideal victims for those who don’t fit his criteria just because he may not be able to overpower his ideal victims anymore. Though…” He ground his teeth, then shook his head. “He’s already shown he can handle an uncanny number of victims of reasonable strength and size through deceit alone, but he was also driven by adrenaline and the knowledge this was his only chance. If he doesn’t want to get caught…from here on out, he’ll be more cautious.”

  “More cautious means less satisfaction in the risk reward,” Seong-Jae added. “Which means increased frustration, and increased frequency in an attempt to reach that high more often, since it will not last as long between less satisfying kills.”

  “So what you’re saying…” Aanga trailed off, grimacing.

  “What I’m saying is that he doesn’t have much time left.” Malcolm’s gaze was fierce, hard, as he looked from Aanga to Seong-Jae. “And neither do we.”

  [10: LOVE IS A NOTION]

  MALCOLM NEEDED SOMETHING OTHER THAN coffe
e, but the idea of food was repellent.

  He took another deep swig of his sixth cup of black coffee as he stared down at the forensics photographs from the prison; they were no less grisly in print, and they turned his stomach. He’d already gone through stacks of them, marking up points of interest, making notes on a legal pad, the only sounds in the silent room for the last few hours himself, Seong-Jae, and Joshi sorting through stacks of evidence reports, photographs, preliminary witness statements taken by Garza’s team of deputies.

  Malcolm had a list of names of people he’d want to talk to further, both prisoners and guards, particularly a few who had been marked as principal witnesses. Just to get more insight on what had happened off-camera, and on who was in solitary that day. As far as he could tell, the prison guards deliberately didn’t log who was transported to solitary for real or imagined infractions, or what rooms were occupied or not.

  Because without records, there was no record of who came out a little more bruised than before.

  Fuckers.

  But right now, the prison crime scene wasn’t his primary concern; there was no solve to be found here. This was just detritus left in the killer’s wake.

  The local police could handle breaking all of this down and sorting out what to do in the wake of it. All that mattered there was keeping the chain of evidence clear so everything was admissible in court once they caught the fucker.

  He just wanted one clue to point him in the right direction, so he’d know which stones to start overturning.

  He’d marked several points on the crime scene photographs—discrepancies such as a guard who weighed a solid two hundred pounds of muscle or more, estimated, taken down by a wound to the temple, blunt force, but clearly swinging from in front of him, and yet he hadn’t managed to defend himself or incapacitate his much smaller assailant despite being armed with a gun.