Griffin looked at her. “Subjective? Because I know this guy’s profile inside and out?”
“If we’re going to catch this guy, we need to concentrate on the evidence and not a bunch of headshrink guesswork.”
“Guesswork?”
“Come on, Griffin. It’s all guesswork. You’re guessing at what’s going on inside his head and you’re guessing he’s going to make another move, when it’s obvious to anyone who’s objective about it that he’s pulling on your dick and having a big laugh.”
“Can you take that chance?” Griffin asked. “Gamble with someone else’s life that I’m full of shit,” he waved his hand at Karen, “that we’re full of shit and you’re the one with the correct read on the situation?”
“We have to be proactive,” Martinez interrupted, looking at Cassion. “Hank will brief the media, I’ll contact the district commanders, and Helen, you make that call to Williams tonight so Missing Persons is briefed and ready to go.”
Hank returned to his chair, putting away his cell phone. “That was Byrne. The FBI lab just sent over a set of reports on the Olsen evidence. They found something.”
“Oh?” Martinez sat up straight. “What?”
“A hair. Imbedded in the manila rope from the package with Theresa Olsen’s effects. Byrne’s upset they missed it.”
“I have to wonder about their competence down there,” Cassion said. “Sounds like a pretty fundamental oversight.”
“I don’t think that’s fair,” Hank said. “The lab’s under enormous time pressure and working with a serious backlog. Anyway, that’s why we’re using the FBI lab in this case, so we have a safety net. Byrne shipped everything from the Olsen case over to them two weeks ago, on the chief’s orders, and they’ve been going through it since then.”
“And?” Martinez prompted.
“The hair’s a small one,” Hank said. “According to their microscopical analysis, it’s an eyelash hair. The theory is, it was dislodged at some point when he was using the rope, maybe when he rubbed an eye without thinking, and it worked its way into the fibers while he was tying the rope around the package.”
“Finally,” Griffin exulted, “he makes a mistake!”
“Hard to believe,” Cassion said. “He’s been very careful so far.”
“He’s good, but he’s not a genius by any means.”
“Fucking right he’s not,” Karen said.
“They know it’s an eyelash hair?” Martinez asked.
“Byrne, being Byrne, gave me the mini-tutorial,” Hank replied. “Under the microscope, they can usually tell by appearance what part of the body a hair comes from. This one’s short, stubby, saber-shaped, and with no significant difference in the shaft diameter from one end to the other. Eyelash hair.”
“It could be from anyone,” Cassion said. “A worker in the factory, a clerk in the store where it was bought.”
“But it’s not,” Hank disagreed, “because there’s more.”
“I was hoping there would be,” Martinez said.
“The follicle was intact,” Hank went on, “so they were able to extract nuclear DNA. But Sandy, on a hunch, got them to take a sample of mitochondrial DNA as well.”
“I’ve never understood the difference,” Cassion complained. “Is this telling us anything useful?”
“Nuclear DNA,” Griffin said, “is found in the nucleus of the living cells in your body. It contains the recombined genes you inherited from both your parents. You know, the famous double helix? It’s unique to you as an individual—unless you have an identical twin, of course. Mitochondrial DNA, on the other hand, is in the mitochondria inside your body’s cells. It contains the same gene structure as your mother and your siblings, if you have any. So not unique, but definitely identifiable.”
“Yeah? So?”
Hank leaned forward. “They ran the nuclear DNA sequence through CODIS,” he said, referring to the Combined DNA Index System, a database of DNA profiles at local, state, and national levels. “They came up empty. Whoever he is, he’s never donated DNA to the system.”
“So it’s a dead end.”
“Not at all.” Hank glanced at Karen. “On a hunch, Sandy went through the other Rainy Day Killer files and discovered that in the Harrisville case they collected a lot of hair evidence.”
Cassion frowned. “Which one is that, again?”
“Harrisville, West Virginia,” Griffin said. “His previous stop before coming here. The victim, Annabelle Witten, was followed home from work and confined in her barn for three days before he killed her. It’s the only case so far in which we know his captivity site.” He looked at Hank. “Sheriff Anglehart was out of his depth and he knew it, but he was a smart cookie, just the same. He called in the state police and they spent a couple days in that barn. They came away with a real good collection of animal hairs, at least.”
“Human, as well,” Hank said. “They got a match on mitochondrial DNA between our eyelash hair and one of the hairs they analyzed from that barn.”
Griffin slapped the table with his palm. “Outstanding!”
“Okay,” Cassion said, “so that gives us a connection between the parcel you got and a previous case, but we still don’t know who the hell this guy is.”
“Come on, Cassion,” Karen growled, “get with the program. Now we’ve got physical evidence we can take into court and ram down this bastard’s goddamned throat.”
“Thanks to Sandy,” Martinez said. “It’s a start, anyway.”
“Our first break on the evidence,” Hank agreed.
Martinez looked at Cassion. “Are you still going to be in DC this weekend?”
“I have to be,” she said. “It’s a long-standing commitment.”
“That’s fine. Leave your cell phone on so you can be reached at all times, but I want Hank fully empowered to make whatever decisions are necessary if something goes down. Understood?”
Cassion shrugged. “Sure. His responsibility.”
Martinez looked at Hank. “Comfortable with that?”
“Of course.”
She could see in his eyes that he hadn’t known Cassion was leaving the city tonight. Cassion had already told Martinez about her plans to attend a weekend film festival in the capital in the company of several celebrities, none of whom were familiar to Martinez. She’d given her blessing to it, as much to clear the decks for Hank this weekend as for any other reason.
She could see, as well, that Hank suddenly understood Cassion’s unwillingness to take the killer’s threat seriously as a reluctance to put her weekend plans in jeopardy. She saw him reacting to the lack of professionalism it revealed, and she raised an eyebrow.
Let it ride, Hank, she thought. Now you have the green light to handle things your way without interference.
He nodded, getting the message.
Martinez stood up. “Keep me informed.” She walked out and headed straight for the elevator without looking at her reflection this time. She was all dressed up and had nowhere to go. Oscar was in Baltimore and she was here, wearing a red cocktail dress, about to call a taxi to take her home. She punched the elevator button and stepped back, watching the arrows, waiting for the one pointing down to light up.
26
Sunday, May 19: early morning
The headache woke Hank at 4:26 a.m. He spent ten minutes trying to get back to sleep, then gave up and eased out of bed. In the bathroom he found a bottle of analgesics and took a couple with tap water, then went back to bed. He tossed and turned, then eventually got up again, accepting the fact that he wasn’t going to be able to get back to sleep.
In the living room, he pressed the button that drew back the vertical blinds. It was still dark outside. Down in the quiet street far below, the black pavement glistened with wetness. Droplets clung to the outside surface of the window. The bad weather of the past several days was evidently going to continue for another day.
He fixed a pot of coffee in the kitchen, and while it was percolati
ng he went into the bathroom. While he was there, he turned on the wall-mounted flat-screen television and found the weather channel. Showers today, and for the next three days. The current temperature was 64 degrees Fahrenheit. After showering he turned off the television and returned to the bedroom. He walked into the closet and chose a pair of dark-brown cotton trousers, a violet linen shirt, and a two-button, medium-brown cotton sport jacket. Warm from the shower and the clean, fresh clothing, he felt a little better.
He poured a cup of coffee and took it into the living room. Contemplating his music collection, he chose an album featuring fifteenth- and sixteenth-century plainsong, slipped the disc into the player, and settled down in an armchair in front of the window, closing his eyes against the pain in his head as the male chorus performed a Sanctus attributed to Henry V.
He sipped the coffee.
The music was quiet, simple, soothing. It complemented the darkness outside, the tranquility of an early Sunday morning, the search for release from pain.
The telephone rang.
Setting aside his cup, he got up and walked over to answer it.
“Donaghue.”
“Another one,” Karen said. “I’m downstairs. How long will you take?”
“I’m ready,” Hank said. He glanced at his wrist, which was bare, and made a mental note to put on a watch before he left. “I’ll be down in a minute.”
“It’s not far.”
“Oh?”
“City hall.”
Hank said nothing, frowning.
“It’s him,” Karen said. “You’ll see. Hang up and get a move on.”
27
Sunday, May 19: early morning
This time, there was no overpass to huddle beneath while the scene was being worked by the medical examiner and the FBI crime scene technicians. Hank held an umbrella over his head, given to him by Butternut Allenson, and stood between Dr. Jim Easton, the ME, and Ed Griffin as they watched the corpse being placed into a body bag for transportation back to Easton’s morgue. The victim was another young, blonde female, and the nude, mutilated, chalk-white body was slick with rain.
Easton was uncharacteristically somber, rain dripping from his Tilley hat onto his raincoat, as Chalmers supervised the lifting of the body bag onto the gurney. He’d traveled to the scene himself, despite the earliness of the hour, because they were all aware of the impact that a second homicide by this serial killer would have on the city, and he felt that Chalmers should have his supervision and guidance. Once he’d arrived and inspected the body for himself, however, he’d stepped aside and motioned for Chalmers to proceed, his jaw clenched.
They stood in the open plaza facing the southern façade of city hall on Market Street, in the oldest part of the city. The center of the plaza was dominated by a large, ornamental fountain. The fountain consisted of an upper basin that was twenty-four feet in diameter, a middle basin that was sixty feet in diameter, and a lower basin that was one hundred and three feet in diameter. When turned on, as it had been for the past week in anticipation of the summer tourist season, water shot about fifty feet into the air from the jets in the upper basin and cascaded down to fill the middle and lower basins. The retaining wall around the lower basin was two feet high, made of concrete, and decorated at the key points of the compass with foot-long bronze sea creatures, including a sea horse, a dolphin, a crab, and a leaping fish.
The killer had seated the body on the edge of the retaining wall next to the crab, had lowered it backward until the upper body was submerged, had positioned the legs so that they were widely splayed open, feet on the paving stones, and had positioned the hands on the inner thighs. Again, the positioning of the corpse was intended to be obscene.
“What’s his thing with the rain?” Easton suddenly asked. “Is bad weather a trigger to his perverted sexual behavior?”
Griffin shook his head. “I don’t think so. He’d like us to think it’s part of his signature, part of some murky compulsion that begins with sex and ends with murder, but it comes across more and more like an MO he’s deliberately following. Studies have looked for a connection between rainy weather and rape, and rainy weather and homicide, but there’s no significant link.”
Easton shook his head and left to follow Chalmers and the body bag to the waiting ambulance.
Hank turned around at the sound of his name. Karen and Martinez crossed the plaza, umbrellas over their heads. Martinez walked up to Griffin.
“He’s early this time, isn’t he?”
Griffin nodded. “The victim must have died on him ahead of schedule. From the looks of her, she wasn’t in the best of health to begin with.”
“Based on body temp and the absence of rigor,” Hank said, “Chalmers believes time of death was between four and five this morning.”
“Karen tells me there are other differences,” Martinez said, turning to watch the gurney disappear into the back of the ambulance.
“Yes,” Hank said, following her gaze. He saw Chalmers hand Easton a tablet, which the medical examiner studied intently. “The mutilation this time included not only the breasts but the lower genitalia, and there were multiple stab wounds, about twenty of them, all post-mortem.”
“Rage,” Martinez said.
Griffin shifted his weight. “I agree. He expected another full day with her, and she let him down. He lost his temper. Uncharacteristically.”
Martinez looked around the plaza. “So maybe he made mistakes this time? Left evidence behind that will help us find him?”
“Byrne’s not hopeful,” Hank said. “The rain, again.” He turned and pointed behind them at Market Street. “There’s a ramp on the curb, by the corner. City vehicles use it to drive up onto the plaza. He came up that way, drove up to the fountain, left the body, and drove across the plaza to another ramp at the far corner.” His finger followed a path that was delineated with yellow evidence markers. “They’re working the tire tracks, but they’re mostly gone, washed out.”
Martinez shook her head.
“Plus, the municipality worker who was at the scene—”
“That was at six oh eight?”
“Correct. One minute before the responding officers arrived. First thing he did was drain the fountain, on orders from his supervisor. Byrne’s very upset.”
“I talked to Urban Eye,” Karen said. “They’re waiting for us.”
Martinez’s eyebrows went up. “They have something?”
“Oh, yeah.” Karen pointed at the city hall building. “The camera’s over there. On the clock tower.”
They all turned to look. Urban Eye was a relatively new municipal surveillance program that was still in the pilot phase. Modeled after similar projects such as Baltimore’s CitiWatch program, Urban Eye currently consisted of forty cameras and five civilian employees watching real-time video feeds on eight-hour shifts. Because it was run by the mayor’s office with funding in part from Homeland Security, it was currently headquartered off-site in office space rented by the city.
“The supervisor’s a retired cop, Bill Judge,” Karen said. “They caught the dump on video.”
“Well, that’s something,” Martinez said.
“Here’s something else.” Joining the circle, Easton handed Hank the tablet Chalmers had given him. “We caught a bit of a break, given the way the hands were posed, with the fingertips down on the thighs and clear of the water. There wasn’t any Waschhaut, or washerwoman’s hands, to speak of, so Chalmers was able to scan the prints and run them right away. We got a hit.”
“Elizabeth Mary Baskett,” Hank read from the screen. “a.k.a. Liz Baskett. DOB five-eight-eighty-nine—”
“Twenty-three years old,” Martinez said, upset.
“Place of birth, Denver, Colorado,” Hank went on, eyes scanning the record on the screen. “Her sheet includes loitering, shoplifting, misdemeanor possession of marijuana. That’s it. Occupation listed as musician. Address is an apartment in Springhill, not all that far from the university camp
us.”
“A kid,” Martinez said.
“Panhandler, from the looks of it,” said Easton.
“Busker,” Karen said. “Maybe she had a license. They specify the location they’re allowed to work.”
“Might give us the capture site,” Griffin said, hopefully.
At that moment, Eleanor Montgomery edged between the umbrellas. “I’ve got a media statement ready for you, Lieutenant—”
“We’ve got an ID,” Martinez interrupted. She turned to Hank. “Do you want to release the name right away?”
Hank handed Montgomery the tablet and looked at Griffin. “Ed?”
“Go for it,” Griffin said.
“Damned right,” Karen agreed. “Let’s get wheels up on this one right away.”
Hank looked at Martinez, who nodded. “Add it to the statement, and make it clear we believe it’s linked to the Theresa Olsen case.”
“Using the Rainy Day Killer nickname?” Montgomery said, looking from Hank to Griffin.
“No,” Griffin said. “I wouldn’t. The media will add it anyway, but it’s important that it doesn’t come from you.”
Montgomery looked at Hank, who nodded. She gave him the tablet. He passed it back to Easton. As the medical examiner turned away, Martinez shifted her feet.
“Jim, this is at least a day early. Is it possible she died from something other than strangulation, like cardiac arrest?”
Easton smiled thinly. “I got the memo, Ann. Sarah and I will look closely at her heart along with everything else. Don’t worry, we won’t miss anything.”
As they watched the medical examiner walk away, Martinez’s smart phone buzzed. She took it out, looked at the call display, and turned away to answer it.
“Where’s Horvath?” Hank asked Karen.
She motioned toward the crime scene tape along Market Street. “Talking to witnesses.”
“Let the others finish that. Grab Horvath and go see what Urban Eye’s got.”
“Will do.”
“Follow up on the busking and see if she had a license. If so, find out where it was for.”
“Will do.”
The Rainy Day Killer Page 16
