The Avenger

by Jo Robertson

  She frowned in disapproval. "You like playing loose with Fourth Amendment rights, don’t you, Agent Holt?"

  "I don’t mind getting my hands dirty when it’s necessary. One of those hookers was nearly beaten to death with the metal end of a golf club."

  Torres rose, shoving back from her chair. "Vargas may have beaten a prostitute, but that doesn’t tie him to your Dead Language Killer." She angled her head at him. "Are you suggesting that Vargas is your killer?"

  He didn't answer her question. "Doesn't it intrigue you that Diego Vargas’ reach is so extensive and so uncontrollable?"

  "It's impossible."

  He gripped the chair back and leaned forward. "Wouldn't you like to nail him for every illegal act he's ever committed?"

  Jack knew Torres wanted Vargas badly. During the tape of her single interview with the councilman, he'd been suavely polite, acting the perfect gentleman, revealing absolutely nothing. "Come on, drugs, gangs, and violence. Why not murder hiding behind that slick mask?"

  He watched her face as she gave in. "All right." She held up a finger like an instructor. "But I ask the questions."

  Vargas was late, and from the beginning, the interview was rocky. The city councilman sat stiffly across the table from them. A behemoth identified only as Santos leaned against the wall near the door, his arms folded across a massive chest, one foot crossed over the other at the ankles. A bodyguard, Jack suspected. For a man like Santos hands alone were enough.

  Torres introduced Jack as her assistant. Vargas bowed his head in an old-world gesture. An American-born Mexican of migrant farm workers, he had the distinction of being the first in his family to attend college. According to his campaign advertisements, he was a true man of the Latin community.

  Around five-ten, with a burly girth, he carried his size solidly. On his meaty hands, he wore a wedding band studded with baguette diamonds and a stunning emerald ring. He dressed nattily in a three-piece light-weight wool suit and a white dress shirt with cuff links that matched the stone in his ring.

  Vargas brushed a manicured hand through a mass of thick black hair and then tugged at his mustache. He had the broad, flat nose of a Mexican peasant coupled with the high forehead and cheeks of a Castilian descendant, but underneath it all Jack recognized a civilized bandido, a thug beneath the fancy clothes and manners.

  "Su desear ser mi commando." Vargas spread his hands broadly. "Your wish is my command, Ms. Torres. I want to cooperate in every possible way with the authorities."

  "Of course." Torres fiddled with her pencil for a moment, and after a few benign questions, said, "Tell me about your childhood, Councilman."

  "Mi familia?"

  "Yes, your family. Tell me about life growing up the youngest son of alien workers."

  Jack noted the negative connotation of the term "alien."

  The ruddy flesh of Vargas' neck deepened and he made a circular gesture with his head, as if to release the tight collar of his shirt. "My parents were migrant farm workers, hardly alien."

  She'd touched on a sore spot, Jack thought. Now she was getting somewhere. He glanced at the bodyguard who stared back flatly, but otherwise hadn’t moved.

  "And did you work with your parents in the fields?" Torres continued.

  "They wanted me to be educated. They did not wish for me to do menial labor."

  "How do you feel about women, Mr. Councilman?"

  "Women?" Vargas smoothed first his hair, and then the thick bush of his mustache in a habit Jack recognized as buying time to formulate an answer.

  "Yes, Mr. Vargas, women. Your mother, your wife, your sister. How about the women in your employment?"

  "My mother is a saint." His voice held a tone of near reverence. "Likewise my sister." Was the sister an afterthought? Secondary to the esteem he obviously held for the mother?

  "And your wife, Magdalena? Is she a saint too?"

  Vargas curled his lip. "My wife, she has… issues."

  The man leaning against the wall shifted. The burning coal of his eyes revealed nothing, but it seemed the dialogue had caught his interest.

  "What kind of issues does Mrs. Vargas have?"

  "Let us say that Magdalena has a very fanciful imagination."

  "She claims that you’re abusive toward her."

  Vargas snorted. "As I said, mi esposa es muy imaginativa, very fanciful."

  "Are you saying you’ve never hit your wife?"

  "Dios, of course not. I do not harm women. All my life I have treated the women in my life as queens." He spread his hands in an innocent gesture. "Princesas."

  Torres flipped open a file lying on the table between them. At the sudden movement, the bodyguard took a step forward and stood directly behind his boss.

  Jack tensed in his chair and spoke for the first time. "Mr. Santos, please step back."

  Santos’ face remained impassive as he moved to his position against the wall and Torres snapped a warning look at Jack. He shrugged. It was possible Santos had gotten a knife or a small caliber pistol past security. There were ways, and Jack knew a man like Santos wouldn’t want to be armed with only those brutish hands.

  Torres pulled out the first picture and accompanying hospital emergency room record. "January 22, this year, Placer Memorial Hospital. Mrs. Vargas was treated for a broken ulna, right arm, along with contusions to her torso and legs."

  She slapped another photo and hospital report on the table. "August 19, Bigler Memorial Hospital. Bruises to her forearms and back. March 29 of last year – shall I continue?"

  "You bitch," Vargas spat, leaning so close the garlic on his breath wafted across the table. "You think you can intimidate a man like me? These reports mean nothing." He swept his hands disdainfully across the span of documents. "They prove nothing. Magdalena is a very clumsy woman. She frequently falls or stumbles, often when she has been drinking."

  "Drinking?" Torres sounded surprised.

  "Ah, you did not know about her alcoholism. That is too bad. It is well-documented." Vargas stood to leave, straightening his lapels and adjusting the knot of his tie. "You should have done your homework, ADA Torres."

  Torres stared at Vargas’ retreating back, anger and disappointment on her face. Santos uncurled lazily from his position on the wall and leaned across the table to whisper in her ear before he followed his boss. When he reached the door, he turned back to appraise her with an inscrutable expression. Then his large, scarred face split into a grin, revealing strikingly beautiful white teeth.

  "What was that about?" Jack asked. "What’d he say?"

  Before answering, she rubbed her neck as if to warm a chill. "He said it’s not a good idea to cross a man like Mr. Vargas."

  "A threat?"

  "Possibly."

  "Someone in your office should've caught the alcohol charge."

  Torres glared at him."Yeah, if it's true."

  *

  At the court house Olivia and Jack gathered in Slater's office while Jack brought them up to date on Torres' interview with Vargas. He removed his jacket and loosened his tie while Olivia took off her sweater and draped it over the chair back. She wore jeans and a white short-sleeved top which draped softly over her breasts. Her hair was fastened in a loose knot at her nape. He ignored the fact that she looked about sixteen.

  Slater had set up a small white board against a portable easel and provided dry erase pens. He explained the grisly scene that had awaited the first workers at the zoo early this morning. An unidentified young woman had been trapped in the lions' habitat and mauled by a mother lion and her cub. "Both animals ingested portions of the woman's stomach."

  "That's new," Jack said calmly. He glanced at Olivia who rubbed her hands up and down her arms.

  Slater continued in low tones. "After the animals were euthanized, a necropsy exam was performed on the mother lion. That's compulsory in this county when a captive animal kills a person."

  "Anything?" Jack asked.

  "Another note."

 
"Bastard wants recognition for his handiwork," Jack growled. "He made sure there'd be an autopsy of the animals. He's letting us know what idiots we are."

  "Why the zoo? Why this kind of death when he hasn't used it before?" Slater asked.

  "Death by wild animal?" Jack speculated, raising an eyebrow at Olivia.

  "No, not a wild animal," she corrected. "A caged one."

  "Makes no sense," Jack muttered. "Why so public? So immediate? A zoo, for God's sake? What the hell does that mean?"

  "Is it a coincidence it happened by my home?" When no one answered, Olivia paled and bolted for the door.

  Jack reached her just outside the restroom. Her drawn face and wild eyes tore at him.

  "Look, I'm sorry I dragged you into this." He kept his tone cool, distant so he wouldn't haul her into his arms and try to kiss the injured look off her face.

  "I just need some water."

  He took her elbow and guided her inside the ladies room where she splashed cold water on her face. He handed her a towel.

  "I'm fine." She batted his hand away. "I'm fine," she repeated as they returned to Slater's office. Looking more composed, she sat down and reached for the briefcase on the floor, waved a small yellow legal pad. "My research notes. I did some work this weekend."

  Jack saw the color return to her face and felt relieved. He'd already decided to take off for a day or two – she'd likely consider it abandoning her again, he thought wryly – and liked knowing she'd be okay while he was gone. The vague restlessness that always meant he needed to get away by himself had started to jitter over his body. Isolated, he could let the Change take over completely – no holding back – and insinuate himself into the killer's mind.

  Not just yet. But soon.

  Olivia held up copies of the notes from the original case. "I've been studying these at home, and even though they're written in Latin, I don't think the writer knows that much about the language."

  "What do you mean?" Jack asked.

  She flipped through pages of the legal pad. "The messages are simply common phrases or portions of classical writings. For example, the first one… "

  "Nunca fidelis."

  "It's simplistic. Even you got it."

  "Even me." Jack smiled.

  She ignored him, all business now. "And the mailed note, Abyssus abyssum invocat, or 'hell calls hell,' is a common aphorism. It means loosely that one misstep can lead to another one." Olivia gestured toward a reference book she'd hauled in with her. "A person could find that phrase in any etymology book like this one with little understanding of the language itself."

  "So the notes don't tell us the writer's level of Latin expertise," Jack said flatly, wondering why the first linguists hadn't suggested that.

  "Not specifically," Olivia countered, "but they do show his focus – Latin. I think he has an affinity for this time period. The fact that he uses Latin at all indicates some kind of connection to the language or the world that fostered it." Olivia continued earnestly. "And, Jack, I believe there were four notes in the original case, not three."

  "Four?" he scoffed.

  "I've been thinking about this. You said the first note was mailed after the second body and note were discovered. But why send it through the mail instead of leaving it with the first body? What if he did leave one with Angela Buckley and the police didn't find it?"

  Intrigued, Jack stared at her. He'd entertained the same thought, but had dismissed it early on. Pathologists rarely made that kind of mistake.

  "All the bodies had a note with them," she continued. "Do killers change their basic – what do you call it?"

  "Signature."

  Olivia nodded. "Look at this latest murder. The killer forced you to find the note. It's important to him." She leaned forward in the chair. "They missed the first note."

  Was it possible, Jack wondered?

  "Olivia might have something," Slater said. "Let's go over each murder again and see what correlation we can find." He stood, retrieved a marker from the desk and turned to the dry erase board.

  "First," Olivia said, "the girl who was buried alive in Virginia." Slater wrote the name, place and method of death on the board.

  "Second, the lawyer, beaten to death in Las Vegas," Jack added.

  "The crucifixion death was next," Olivia said.

  Slater leaned against the wall. "Then after four years your UNSUB started over again."

  Jack nodded. "The Utah woman and then the beating death of Keisha Johnson."

  Olivia flinched but remained stoic as a stilted silence came over the room. Slater walked into the bullpen and poured fresh coffee for all of them.

  Jack reached for his coffee. "Okay, if the killer kept his pattern, the next death should've been crucifixion."

  "But it wasn't," Olivia said.

  Jack's frustration crept through. "Yeah, instead we've got a new method. Death at the hands of a caged animal."

  Slater glanced thoughtfully at the jottings on the chart. "That assumes you've discovered all the victims." He chewed thoughtfully on his lower lip. "Maybe he didn't change his pattern. Maybe you missed someone."

  Jack didn't want to imagine an infinite number of bodies spread around the country. "You think he killed someone between the Salt Lake murder and now?"

  Slater shrugged. "Could be."

  "That would mean he's accelerating his behavior." Jack thought a moment. "If he's as arrogant as I think, he wants credit for his work. We have to assume he left notes at all the crime scenes." He scruffed the hair back from his forehead and blew noisily through his mouth. "We'll have to look at the Johnson crime scene again."

  He turned to Slater. "Can you spare Harris to check North Shore?"

  "Sure."

  "Let's try another attack," Jack said, straightening up. "What elements connect all these deaths?"

  "The language and the culture," Olivia said promptly.

  "The notes all sound like warnings," Slater added.

  "One more point," Jack said, turning toward Olivia. "What about the note found in the mother lion?" He pulled the facsimile out of his briefcase and pushed it across to her, then wrote the words on the board below the other Latin phrases.

  "Quam ferocissimus leo bestiarium oppugnavit. Facilis descensus averno," she read and thought a moment. "Actually, it's two sentences that translate literally, 'As fierce a lion as possible attacked the beast-fighter,' and 'easy the descent to hell.'" She paused. "Doesn't make a lot of sense, but it is different from the others. It demonstrates a working knowledge of Latin grammar. He's not just copying from a book."

  Jack bulleted these characteristics in another column on the dry erase board. "Okay, so this last note shows the killer really knows Latin. Plus, he's becoming more confident. This death is close in time to the last one."

  Olivia frowned. "But what does it mean? Is the beast-fighter the woman killed at the zoo? Or the killer?"

  Jack contemplated the question, came up with nothing.

  "And what about the second half of the message?" Olivia added. "It's ambiguous. Whose descent is it? Does he refer to himself or the victim? Does he believe the victim deserves to be in hell or is he bragging about how easy the killings are for him as a murderer?"

  "Lots of questions, no answers," Jack muttered.

  "This note was found inside the mother lion's stomach, right?" Olivia asked. "What about the cub?"

  "You think there might've been another message at this crime scene?" Slater asked.

  "Something seems left out of the message," Olivia replied.

  "Like 'easy for… ' or 'easy but…?'" Jack asked.

  Olivia nodded slowly, looking off into the distance. "You know, in addition to gladiatorial games, the Romans liked to watch a staged hunt. They called it a venatio, and bestiarii were beast-hunters who tracked down wild animals in the arena."

  "So the killer thinks of himself, not the victim, as the beast-hunter," Jack concluded.

  Olivia shook her head. "Not necessarily. In Ro
man times, the victim could be a political prisoner hunted for sport and punishment."

  "I'll personally supervise the exam on the cub," Slater said, "and assign Harris to relook at the Lake Tahoe crime scene."

  Jack glanced around. "That's it, then," he said. "Tomorrow at eight." He kept his back to Olivia while she gathered up her papers.

  At the door she turned and looked back, locked eyes with him. Slater glanced back and forth between them as if he'd guessed their relationship. Shit. No keeping secrets from Slater.

  Jack's blood thrummed in his veins, hot and heavy and anticipatory. Desire scrabbled his brain and lust scratched at his loins. God, he was desperate for her again.

  Chapter Seventeen

  Jack's aloofness had irritated Olivia all day. What had it meant? A quick release of the sexual tension that crackled between them like jolts of electricity? Part of her wanted to get in his face, confront him about last night. But another part of her was afraid of the answer.

  After several restless hours, she finally slept.

  Sometime later the jangle of her phone roused her. Groping for the receiver, she pressed the talk button and spoke groggily. Jack's voice from the other end of the line jerked her upright. "What's wrong?"

  "Another murder."

  Oh, no. "Where?"

  His voice sounded strained. "A town called Grantsville in Tuolumne County. Slater just called me. Be ready in fifteen minutes. I'll pick you up."

  Olivia was waiting on the porch ten minutes later. She'd pulled her hair back into a ponytail, slipped on jeans and a sweatshirt, shoes and socks, but otherwise hadn't taken time with her appearance. As they drove off, Jack's face looked drawn in the greenish light from the dashboard. He looked frazzled, like he was running on sheer adrenaline.

  During the drive north to the sheriff's office, he filled her in on the details. "The victim was a male, older teenager or young adult."

  "How was he killed?"

  Jack slapped the heel of his hand on the steering wheel. "Like victim number two, he was hanged, crucified, but this one was hung upside down."