by G. M. Ford
“Turn off the flashlight,” he said. Dougherty thumbed the light, and for a moment they stood in total darkness until, with the flick of a switch, a purple light appeared in his hand. “Ultraviolet,” he said. He held the light up to the wall. “Look.” Dougherty stepped in closer. In the ghostly light, a glowing chartreuse stain spread upward along the wall like a galaxy, thick and dark at the bottom, then growing more sparse as it flew upward and outward and finally trailed off in a series of bright yellow dots.
“Blood,” he said. “You spray a little luminol on it, and it doesn’t matter how old it is or how hard anybody tried to scrub it off, luminol will light it up.”
Instinctively she reached out and touched the stain.
“Hubby was laying right here.” He smoothed out a place in the darkness, then walked over next to the imaginary bed. “The perp stood right here. He or she was right-handed.” He raised his free arm. “Just hauled off and hit the victim, like this.” He demonstrated a chopping motion, then pointed to another splash on the wall. “First one didn’t kill him,” Warren said. “So the perp hauled off and belted him again. This is the mark from the second.”
She winced. “What a bad way to go,” she said.
“Are there any good ways?” he asked. When she didn’t answer, he turned the light her way. “Look behind you,” he said.
The floor showed a ghastly trail of yellow and black blotches leading back to the door, some of the trails wispy, where they’d been painted by hair.
“They go all the way through the house and out the back door. See the black spots?” he said. “That’s where somebody tried to clean up afterward.” He shook his head. “Waste of time.”
They followed the trail to the head of the stairs, where a river of yellow stains adorned every tread, culminating in a pool of chartreuse at the foot of the stairs. He pointed with the purple light. “See how the blotches are all over the place? Not in a straight line? On the walls in some places. That suggests the victims were brought to the upper landing and then just kicked down the stairs, one on top of the other, until the perp had them all down there and could drag them out the back door.”
Dougherty looked behind her. Another pair of ghostly trails meandered down from the far end of the dimly lit hallway. Warren pointed the light in that direction. “Boys’ room’s down the hall.”
She wandered that way, as if in a trance. Warren followed along on her heels. “Same blood spatter patterns in there. Their blood’s on top of the hubby’s, so he must have gone down first.”
He opened the door for her and stepped inside. She stopped in the doorway, unable to force herself any closer to the pair of yellow stains that glowed ominously from the far wall. She turned away, flicked on the flashlight, and walked back down the hall.
She stood at the top of the stairs, seeing the movie of how it had come down. Hearing the wet thunk of the ax as it sliced through flesh and bone. Watching the spray splash along the wall. Eldred writhing in agony, only to take another blow. Seeing the limp bodies cartwheel down the stairs. And although her rational mind knew it wasn’t possible, the odor of blood began to creep into her nostrils. That metallic odor of liquid electricity that once encountered seems to weld itself permanently to the olfactory memory. She aimed the flashlight down the stairs. “Let’s get out of here,” she said. “This is just too creepy.”
She took the stairs at a lope, burst through the blackout curtain into the brightly lit parlor, to find Corso huddled up in the far corner with Fullmer and Dean. The pile of equipment along the front wall was mostly gone now, packed into the vans and about to be carted off.
Claire and a pair of black-jacketed technicians scooped up the rest of the gear. “See you back in town,” she said to Warren, and then followed the other two out the door. A phone beeped. Dean picked it up and began to listen.
The space heaters had ceased to glow. Outside, the generator had stopped. A couple of minutes later the cables had been rolled up and stowed in one of the vans. Dean moved to the corner of the room so the tables could be folded and carried out the door. Corso wandered over. He nodded at Warren, who winked at Dougherty as he lugged an armload of equipment out the door.
“I think the little guy’s sweet on you,” Corso said.
“Warren?” She looked his way. “He’s all right.” She chuckled. “He knows a little too much about maggots for my taste, but who knows?” she said. “It’s been quite a while. He makes the right moves, he might get lucky.”
Corso sneered. “All he’s missing is a stepladder and delusions of grandeur.”
She waved a cautionary finger in his face. “You never know, Corso. Sometimes these little guys…” She used her hands to measure off a foot and a half of space. “You’d be amazed,” she said. Before Corso could respond, Fullmer and Dean appeared at his elbow. Dean snapped his phone closed and stuck it into his suit-coat pocket.
“That’s it here,” he said. “Sheriff’s gonna send a crew out in the morning to board the place back up.” He tapped the cell phone in his pocket. “We got a hit on the car the de Groot guy bought. I’m gonna need to get to a land line for the details.”
Fullmer took a last look around the room. “What a dump,” he said.
“Oh, I don’t know,” Dougherty said. “I’ll bet they had it fixed up real cute.”
For the first time all day, everybody smiled at once. Dean led the procession out the door, where the late-afternoon breeze had freshened. Only the blue Chevy Citation and the white van remained. Warren stood at the back of the van, polishing his glasses.
“You going back into town?” Dougherty shouted at him.
“Yep,” he said with a tentative smile. “You want a ride?”
“Why not?” she hollered over the wind. “You can tell me more about those maggots.”
The prospect seemed to cheer Warren no end.
26
Dougherty used her fork to roll scrambled eggs along the rim of her plate. Corso sipped his coffee. “Don’t play with your food,” he said.
“Didn’t I ask for my eggs scrambled soft? You heard me ask her, didn’t you?” She jabbed at the eggs. “These things are hard as a brick.”
“So…was it?”
“Was it what?”
Corso leered and held his hands two feet apart. Then three.
She laughed. “Bigger,” she said, dropping the fork onto the plate. “Actually, we walked down to the park. They’ve got a winter carnival kind of thing going on. You know, ice-skating, rides, all that kind of thing. We rode the Ferris wheel.”
“Sounds positively bucolic.”
“He’s a really sweet guy. An MIT grad.”
“Lordy be.”
She dabbed at her lips with a paper napkin and then dropped it onto the eggs. “We gotta get out of here, Corso. We’ve done what we can with this thing. This place is starting to drive me crazy. Reminds me of where I grew up in Iowa.”
“Midnight tonight,” Corso said, “the grand jury’s term expires. After that I can rent a car on my own credit cards without having those two cowboys show up and haul my ass off to Texas.”
“You owe me a phone.”
“Soon as we get out of here, I’ll buy you a dozen.”
Corso covered his cup with his hand, but this time the change in the light wasn’t the waitress looking to freshen his cup; it was Special Agents Fullmer and Dean standing in the aisle next to the booth, all showered and shiny.
Corso and Dougherty moved over against the wall. Dean slid in next to Corso. Fullmer opposite. “We’re out of here,” Fullmer announced. “From now on it’s Madison’s baby.”
“De Groot’s Chevy was found along State Route 83 near Lake Geneva, Michigan,” Dean said. “Looks like it blew a head gasket and he deserted it.”
“Real close to Chicago,” Fullmer commented. “Probably cabbed his way into the city. Looking to lose himself in the crowd. We’re checking on it now.”
“We’ll get him,” Dean promised. “It’
s just a question of when. We’ve got a federal warrant out for him. Interstate flight to avoid prosecution. Whenever he stops wandering around the city, we’ll collar him for sure.”
“You really think Madison’s going to take the ball and run with it on this Sissy Warwick thing?” Corso asked.
“Nothing to run with,” Fullmer said. “The one-ton truck was sold fourteen years ago to a guy in Wayne, Indiana. He died in ’89. The signature on the change of title reads Sissy Marie Holmes. Truck’s been sold three times since. Finally ended up at the bottom of a creek bed on a farm near Davenport, Iowa, which is where it rests to this very day.”
Dean smirked. “Coupla agents from the Minneapolis office were real upset about having to climb down and verify the VIN number.”
“So that’s the end of that lead,” Fullmer said.
“Nothing on the personal items either,” added Dean. “We blew up pictures of the furniture from the family album. Showed them to every antique and used furniture dealer in the upper Midwest. Nothing. Nobody remembers seeing any of the pieces…which, considering the time frame, isn’t surprising.”
“Presuming this person named Sissy Warwick is still alive, all we can say for sure is that she hasn’t generated a scrap of paperwork since the day in ’87 when she signed that title transfer for the truck. Not a credit card receipt, or a library card, or a driver’s license. As far as the computer is concerned, she’s dropped off the face of the earth.”
“Sounds like we struck out,” Dougherty commented.
The agents passed a glance back and forth. “Not quite,” Dean said. He reached into the inside pocket of his suit coat, pulled out a black-and-white photograph. He held it close to his chest and took a peek.
“The prints we got from the house,” Fullmer said. “The computer says they match a young woman busted twice for assault and intent to commit prostitution in Cleveland, Ohio. Five months after you say she ran off from the nuns.”
“Used a straight razor on a couple of johns. Gave one of them eighty stitches.”
“Damn near separated the second guy from his equipment,” said Dean.
“Nitty met gritty, neither of them wanted to press charges,” Fullmer said. “Both of them married. No way they were going to tell their stories in open court. Bad enough explaining the stitches to the wife.”
“They still don’t want to talk about it,” Fullmer said. He looked to his partner. Dean tilted his head as if to say “why not?” and then dropped the picture on the table in front of Corso. Mug shot. Cleveland Police Department. Number 1258793.
It was like people said. She could have been anything. Greek, Spanish, Puerto Rican, African-American…no telling. Fine, even features and a little turned-up nose. Brown wavy hair, looked like it had been given an old-fashioned marcel job. A pair of eyes so light-colored that if you didn’t know better you’d swear they had to be tinted contact lenses. A dark bruise covered her badly swollen left cheek and gave her face a mismatched quality, as if it had been hastily assembled from spare parts.
Special Agent Dean couldn’t keep the sour look from his face. “You know, Mr. Corso, when you got lucky on the grave, I figured it was just that…dumb luck.”
“That’s still my theory,” Fullmer said, without a trace of a smile.
His partner waved him off. “No, Gene,” he said. “We gotta give credit where credit is due. Rest of the world had fifteen years to figure out what it took Mr. Corso here about a week to get a handle on.” He shook his balding head. “No denying it.”
Dougherty leaned forward across the table. “So then…you guys are satisfied that all these women are the same person?”
“Far back as Allentown anyway,” Fullmer said. “Sheriff Trask say that’s the woman she knew as Sissy Warwick, and the Castigliones were just as certain. That was the girl who called herself Mary Anne Moody.”
“Castigliones?”
Dean nearly smiled. “The sisters, Agnes and Veronica Castiglione.” He looked to his partner for verification and got it.
“What about New Jersey?” Corso wanted to know.
Dean sighed. “Home office is working on that,” he said. “Seems they’re having a heck of a time finding anybody who will admit to ever seeing the girl.”
“What about Rodney de Groot?”
“Mr. de Groot hasn’t returned to his cabin since the day of Dr. Rosen’s shooting. We’re assuming he’s still somewhere in the general area, but haven’t been able to put a finger on him as yet.”
Fullmer reached out and tapped the mug shot. “Told the arresting officer her name was Nancy Lee Jamison.”
“Always three names,” Dougherty said. “First, middle, and last.”
“It’s a big extended family thing,” Corso offered, “where everybody in the family is named after everybody else in the family. It’s the middle names that let them sort out exactly who’s who.”
Fullmer said, “So as of right now, there’s nothing that ties this person directly to our office’s geographic area of responsibility.”
“There’s all kinds of things that tie it to New Jersey,” Corso argued.
“Such as?”
“Such as the way the crimes were organized. Except for the hooking beef, these were crimes that took some planning and forethought. The way I see it…you’re seventeen years old and you figure out a way to off your whole family, make it look like you went up with them, so’s nobody’s looking for you afterward, you pretty much got your criminal shit together, as far as I’m concerned.”
“There’s no profile for somebody who only kills their families,” Dean said.
“Fuck the profiles,” Corso snapped. “There’s an attitude behind all of these crimes. I can feel it. Somebody who truly doesn’t give a shit…no conscience whatsoever, at least not the way most people have one. Somebody who’s been pushed so far that something snapped inside and made it okay for them to do whatever they had to do to survive.” Corso looked from agent to agent. “Come on…you guys have got to feel it too. Help me out here.”
Before they could deny it, the waitress arrived with two more white mugs and a fresh pot of coffee. The FBI declined the offer and slid out of the booth. “It’s not enough,” Fullmer said. “None of it leads forward. For all we know, she’s dead and buried. It’s just not the kind of thing we can be spending resources on.”
Corso grabbed the mug shot from the table and offered it to Fullmer.
“Keep it.”
“We sent out a flyer,” Dean said, “asking for anything in the past fifteen years where a whole family either died or disappeared with the mother turning up missing. We drew a blank. No such animal.”
“What about the ritual behavior?” Corso asked.
“What behavior was that?” Dean asked.
“All the stuff that wasn’t necessary for the commission of the crimes.”
“Like?”
“Like standing around and watching your family go up in flames.”
“You’re talking about the drawings,” Fullmer said.
“And posing the dead sister in an obscene manner. Laying her family out naked in the backyard. And throwing the family album into the grave with them.” Corso spread his hands. “None of those things were necessary to the crime. They were necessary to the emotional needs of the perpetrator.”
He looked to the FBI men for agreement but got only stony looks in return. “None of it leads forward, Mr. Corso,” Agent Dean said. “Maybe back before nine-eleven we could have pursued something like this, but not anymore.”
“It’s a dead end,” Fullmer said. “There’s no warrants or wants out on her. We’ve got no legal reason to pursue the matter.”
“What about her dead family? What about the girl they found in her bed?”
“Bergen County hasn’t made up its mind yet, but if you ask me, all they’re gonna do is create an open file on the matter.”
“There’s a very disturbed woman out there somewhere,” Corso said. “She’s killed ei
ght people that we know about and injured several others.” Corso cut the air with the side of his hand. “And we’ve still got gaps in her life. Everyplace she goes, people end up dead.”
Dean shook his head. “Even if we assume she’s still alive, there’s no guarantee she’s going to hurt anybody else.”
“So you’re assuming what? She’s seen the error of her ways? She’s cleaned up her act and is raising a family somewhere in central Florida?”
“We’re not assuming anything,” Dean said. “Including that she’s still out there somewhere.” He pointed at the mug shot. “She was leading a high-risk lifestyle. You do that kind of thing for thirty years, you generally end up dead before your time.”
Dean squared his shoulders and buttoned his suit jacket. “I don’t know whether you’ve noticed or not, Mr. Corso, but these days we’ve got a world full of people who want to kill us. People who are sitting around plotting our doom, while you’re eating eggs. So I hope you’ll excuse us if we get back to doing what we get paid to do.”
They stiffed the waitress. On the way out, Agent Fullmer pinched a piece of honeydew melon from the breakfast bar and popped it in his mouth. He was still chewing contentedly when he turned the corner and disappeared.
Dougherty read Corso’s expression. “This thing’s really got a burr under your saddle, doesn’t it?” Corso put his nose in his coffee and left it there. “We’re not just trying to waste a week on the lam anymore, now are we?” she prodded.
Corso slid over to the aisle. “It’s like Dr. Rosen said about writing his thesis on the Ramapo People. Finding them was like finding some lost Amazon tribe or something.” He looked hard at Dougherty. “You heard Agent Fullmer. There’s no profile for a multiple family killer. As far as we know, nobody’s ever done it more than once. There’s a unique personality at work here. Something nobody’s ever encountered before.” He shook a long finger. “She’s evil the way a shark is evil.”
