The 7th Victim kv-1

by Alan Jacobson

  “Shit.” She reached him at home.

  “Just got word,” he answered, not needing to ask who it was. The luxury of caller ID. “Thought you should know.”

  “What’s the address? I’ll meet you—”

  “Too risky—it’s one thing to work behind the scenes, but to show up at—”

  “You only get one chance to see a fresh crime scene, Bledsoe. I need to see it, experience it. We’ll deal with the details later. And the fallout.”

  “This one’s different, Karen.”

  “If it’s different, it may not be Dead Eyes. That’s why I need to see it.”

  “No, it’s different because of the MO, not the signature. He didn’t hit a middle-class professional. He hit a senator. State Senator Eleanor Linwood.”

  Vail felt a swirl of dizziness shake her. She reached out, grabbed the edge of the armoire, and somehow hung on to the phone. Her vision was gray snow, her body spinning faster than a merry-go-round. Her headache was instantly worse, pounding at her temples like a pair of anvils.

  “Karen, you there?”

  “Here. I’m . . . here. I’m just, give me a minute.”

  “I’ve gotta go, get over there. You want, I’ll call you from my car—”

  “No, I’m coming,” she said, her head clearing. “I’m coming. I have to come.”

  “Jesus Christ, Karen.” He paused a moment, then said, “Look, I don’t have time to debate this anymore. You wanna come, fine.”

  “Was everyone notified?”

  “Everyone, including Hancock, who’s probably at the scene anyway, and Del Monaco, who’s now on the task force. Chief’s going to be there, and probably the media—”

  “I’ll worry about all that when I get there.”

  “House is off Georgetown Pike—”

  “I know where she lives. I’ll see you there.” Vail hung up, steadied herself again, and hit the number for Robby. “You heard?”

  “Karen. Yeah, I’m out the door.”

  “Pick me up on the way.”

  There was a long silence. “You sure?”

  “Dead sure. I’ve got something to tell you. I’ll be waiting out front.”

  BARELY TEN MINUTES HAD PASSED when Robby stopped at the curb in front of her house. She got in and he pulled away in a hurry, barely waiting for her to close the door.

  “So what’s so important that it’s worth committing professional suicide?” he asked.

  “Eleanor Linwood is my mother. Was my mother.”

  “What?” Robby’s eyes locked with hers.

  “Watch the road, please,” she said evenly.

  “When’d you find this out?”

  “I confirmed it two or three hours ago. That photo we took from Mom’s—from Emma’s? I had it age-enhanced at the lab. It was her, it was Linwood.”

  “That software isn’t always accurate—”

  “I went to Linwood’s. I met with her, showed her the photo, told her what I’d found out from digging through records.”

  “She ’fessed up?”

  “Pretty much. Filled in some of the blanks, how she had the muscle to change identity. Refused to tell me who my father was, though. Afraid it’d ruin her career.”

  “And now she’s dead.”

  Vail glanced out the side window, watching the dark residences fly by beneath the occasional streetlight. “Now she’s dead.”

  “Coincidence?” Robby asked.

  She turned to him. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “I don’t know. Just seems funny. You find out she’s your mother and three hours later she’s a Dead Eyes vic.”

  Vail sighed. “Don’t know. What would the connection be?” She flashed on the chase through Sandra Franks’s backyard, the feeling the offender was there . . . that he had been waiting there for them. For her?

  “We’ve got to tell the task force,” Robby said.

  “Hancock probably knows. I think he was eavesdropping.”

  “Prick.” Robby drove on for a moment, then asked, “Any news on Jonathan?”

  She shrugged. “Some improvement. Small steps, you know?”

  “Some improvement is better than no improvement.”

  Vail frowned. It was the same thing Gifford had said . . . but somehow, it sounded more genuine coming from Robby.

  He accelerated and entered the interstate.

  POLICE CRUISERS, their light bars swirling in a rhythmic pulse, were blocking the entrance to the senator’s street. Robby badged the patrol officer and drove around the barricade. They pulled off to the side and approached Bledsoe, who was talking to a uniform near the rim of the circular driveway.

  In the harsh halogen security lighting bearing down on them, Bledsoe’s face looked weary and defeated. He nodded at Vail and Robby, then turned to Sinclair and Manette, who were approaching from his left. “Anything?”

  “We got some shoe prints in the dirt over by the south end of the house,” Sinclair said, motioning with his Mag-Lite. “Looks like they come from the woods. I sent a tech out to track them, get a plaster casting.”

  Manette said, “Means this guy came in on foot. Tells me he knew what he was doing, who lived here. That she’d have some kind of security.”

  Sinclair shook his head. “Not who so much as what. Look at the neighborhood. The person who lived here had money.”

  “Either way,” Bledsoe said, “he didn’t know about the security lights. Or he took a big chance no one would see him as he got close. Our guy’s a planner, he’d know about the lights.”

  Vail looked toward the side of the house. “I was him, I’d approach along that line of bushes. Motion sensors would be blocked. Lights would never come on.”

  “That’s exactly where the footprints are,” Sinclair said, “right along the bushes.”

  “They have cameras?” Bledsoe asked.

  Manette shook her head. “Hancock said the senator didn’t want to live like Big Brother was watching her. Didn’t think anything like this’d ever happen. Especially in this neighborhood.”

  “Get anything back on that email?” Sinclair asked.

  Vail’s gaze was still off in the general area of the house. “Nothing yet.”

  “We really could use some help on that—”

  “I know, Sin,” Vail said. “I know. I can’t make them work faster. I tried.”

  Bledsoe held up a hand. “Keep it down. Let’s at least look like we all get along, okay?” He nodded toward the house. “Sin, why don’t you go check on Hancock.”

  Sinclair frowned, then mumbled something under his breath as he headed off down the gravel path.

  “Hancock’s pretty shaken up,” Manette said, “so I wouldn’t expect too much from him.”

  Vail chuckled. “I never expect anything from him, so it’s not like this’ll be any different.”

  “I meant in terms of helping us construct a time line for the senator’s movements tonight.”

  “I can help with that,” Vail said. She glanced at Robby, then continued. “I came by earlier—”

  “Detective!” Approaching on the run were Gifford, Del Monaco, and Police Chief Lee Thurston.

  Bledsoe turned and opened a space in the huddle to accommodate the three men, who were dressed in nearly identical black wool overcoats.

  “Agent Vail, what are you doing here?” Gifford asked. His eyes narrowed as his arms folded across his chest.

  “I called her,” Bledsoe said. “Given the identity of our victim, I wanted my best people on it.”

  Gifford looked at Vail. “Agent Vail is under orders not to partake in any Bureau business.”

  “This isn’t Bureau business,” Bledsoe said. “It’s a multijurisdictional task force, which I’m heading—”

  “But I gave you a direct order to remove her,” Thurston said to Bledsoe.

  “With all due respect, sir, the idea is to catch this fucker. Karen Vail is a vital member of my team. The faster we catch him, the less people he’ll kill. And with
the senator’s murder, the heat just got turned up. Media’s gonna be all over us.”

  As if on cue, the downdraft of thumping helicopter rotor blades began whipping nearby treetops. The task force members craned their necks to the patch of illuminated sky . . . where a chopper emblazoned with the WSAW-TV logo—a bird with a magnifying glass—swung into view.

  “Speak of the devil,” Robby said.

  Bledsoe held out a hand, palm up, as if pleading his case. “Look, Vail’s the best. I need her help with this. Right now, I gotta catch a killer. I don’t care about politics.”

  Thurston reached up and caught his fedora that had been lifted off his bald head by a gust of chilled wind. “Apparently, you don’t care about following orders, either.”

  Gifford leaned in close and said something in Thurston’s ear. Thurston, a hand pressing down on his hat, bent his head forward, listening.

  Bledsoe grabbed the radio from his pocket and yelled to the uniform on the other end to do whatever was necessary to get the chopper out of the area. As Bledsoe shoved the handset into his pocket, Thurston turned to him.

  “Vail’s in, but we both have real problems with this. Next time you think you know better than me, you come to me first so I can knock some sense up your ass.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  Gifford pointed an index finger in Vail’s face. “I don’t want you showing up at any more Dead Eyes scenes.”

  “Let’s hope this’ll be his last,” Vail said. Gifford threw an angry look at Bledsoe, then turned away. Vail had thoughts about telling them Linwood was her mother, but that would open a door to a room she didn’t want to enter, at least not yet. With the tightrope she had been walking lately, she knew it was best to be completely forthcoming, because in a very short time Hancock would come out of his funk and tell everyone who had ears that Vail had gotten into an argument with the senator. But if she spoke up now, they would never let her view the crime scene, as she would immediately become a suspect.

  As Vail watched Gifford and Thurston walk off, Bledsoe rubbed his hands together. “Okay everyone, let’s go in and take a look around.”

  Del Monaco moved beside Vail and matched her strides. “You’ve got a set of balls, showing up here.”

  Vail brushed him aside with a forearm. “At least one of us does.”

  Manette, bringing up the rear, started laughing. “Good one, Kari.”

  Del Monaco, his fair skin reddened from the blistering cold, nevertheless displayed a blush of embarrassment. “Who the hell are you?”

  “Mandisa Manette, a dick with Spotsylvania County SD. And I’ve got a set of balls, too.”

  Del Monaco gave her an evil eye and moved into the house. Manette held up a hand and Vail palmed it. They shared a smile and entered the residence.

  VAIL FELT A TIGHTENING in her chest as she walked down the hall. Only a few hours ago she had made her way down this very corridor, Linwood leading the way. Was it a coincidence, as Robby had noted, that a short time after their meeting Linwood became a Dead Eyes victim? Was the episode at the Franks house related? Had the killer even been there, or had she been seeing things? Or was this all the product of Linwood’s ill-advised news conference?

  And in the back of her mind, the nightmares. Seeing the killer’s face—her face—in the mirror. . . . No. They’re just dreams.

  Everything was so confusing. She never felt so uncertain of things on the job. Her personal life was another story . . . a book full of uncertainty, each chapter building toward a divorce, climaxing with her son lying in ICU and herself sitting in a jail cell, arrested on an assault charge. No, not confusing. Fucked up.

  But until Dead Eyes came along, she always could grab the gun by the handle and drill the target. No uncertainty, no second thoughts. When had her life taken a left turn?

  She stepped around Del Monaco and Sinclair and grabbed Bledsoe’s arm. She pulled him aside, into the living room. “There’s something you should know.” She then proceeded to outline the details of her discovery of her relationship to Linwood, including the conversation she’d had with her earlier in the evening.

  Bledsoe brought both hands to his face and rubbed, as if he could scrub away the fatigue—and his mounting problems. He sat down heavily on the couch. “You realize this makes you a suspect.”

  “That’s why I didn’t say anything to Gifford and Thurston. For sure they would’ve sent me home.”

  He looked up at her with bloodshot eyes. “Where were you tonight after leaving here?”

  “I went for a drive, by myself. I ended up at home around nine thirty. I was about to take a bath when you texted me.”

  Bledsoe nodded, looked away, his eyes roaming the tall drapes and window. Finally, his eyes came to rest on Vail’s. “Did you kill Eleanor Linwood?”

  Vail held his gaze. “No, Bledsoe, I didn’t.”

  He didn’t look away, at least not for a long moment. Then, he rose from the couch. “Okay. Let’s go join the others.”

  She was surprised he took her word at face value . . . or, perhaps he had enough confidence in his abilities that he could tell when someone was lying to him. Whatever the reason, she was relieved he had let the issue drop so easily.

  They walked toward the senator’s bedroom. “There’s blood spatter in the foyer, near the garage,” Robby said as he joined them. “Looks like he bludgeoned her with a blunt object, maybe to the point of death, then dragged her into the bedroom.”

  “That doesn’t fit,” Vail said.

  Del Monaco was kneeling in the wide hall, examining the trail of blood they had all been careful to avoid. “No, it doesn’t.”

  They walked into the cavernous master bedroom and immediately saw the studied gazes of Manette and Sinclair. The scene laid out before them was more horrific than they had previously seen. Eleanor Linwood’s body was mutilated in the same grotesque manner as Dead Eyes’s other victims—with two notable exceptions: both her breasts had been severed, and her face was disfigured. More than just disfigured, it had been burned or peeled away, the remaining flesh and blood vessels and nerves exposed in a mess resembling raw meat.

  Bledsoe quickly turned, clutching a vomit bag to his mouth, and barfed. Whether it was the smell, or Vail’s relationship to this victim, or simply the fact that it had finally gotten to her as well, she had to cup her mouth and use her tongue to close down her throat and force down the bile that had risen.

  “Oh, man,” Robby said, looking away. “That’s bad. That’s bad. Worse than the others. Shit.” He walked out of the room.

  “This guy was pissed off, big time,” Del Monaco managed. “Very personal attack.”

  Manette shook her head. “Yeah, that press conference was a real good idea. I want to meet the guy who signed off on that one.”

  “She wanted to do it and Gifford didn’t see any harm at the time,” Del Monaco said. “I mean, he knew there was a risk it’d incite him, but he thought it could also scare him enough to slow him down, buy us some time.” He rubbed at his neck. “He never thought he’d come after her. She doesn’t fit the victimology at all.”

  Bledsoe wiped his mouth and turned his body strategically to avoid having to look at Linwood. “Okay, so he was pissed off. Does that explain . . . all this?” He took a sideways glance at the body and motioned in the air with a hand.

  Vail took a deep breath and forced herself to evaluate the scene. “It might. She really got in his face, challenged him big time on TV. But there could be more going on here. He might’ve known her. Or, at least, there might’ve been some connection we’re not aware of.”

  Manette shook her head. “There we go again, ‘might’ve this, might’ve that.’ Ain’t nothing you sure about?”

  “I’m sure this guy is escalating. For whatever reason, we’ve got a problem on our hands.”

  “We’ve had a problem,” Robby said. “Now it’s a nightmare.”

  Vail’s gaze settled on what remained of Linwood’s face. “I think this vic could be t
he key. Trauma to the face and head generally means a relationship between the offender and victim. Like Del Monaco said, this was a personal attack. And he didn’t merely disable her, like the others, he bludgeoned her before bringing her into the bedroom.”

  “Detective Bledsoe.” A forensic technician walked in wearing latex gloves. “You should see this.”

  Bledsoe led the entourage into the master bathroom. The technician pointed to a small drinking glass filled with blood.

  “Is that what I think it is?”

  “As near as I can tell,” the tech said, “it’s blood. We’ll run it and see if it’s the vic’s. Could be animal.”

  Robby knelt beside the glass. “Has it been dusted and photographed yet?”

  “Yeah, we’re done with it.”

  Robby held his hand out and the tech passed him a pair of latex gloves. He slapped them on and carefully lifted the glass up to the light. “Looks like he drank from it.”

  “Hard to say,” the tech said. “There’s a smudge where the lip print would be, and there’s a coating of blood on the inside of the glass. We still have to luminol the bathroom, but it may be he poured blood out of the glass into the sink.”

  “Or he drank from it and wiped it afterwards to smudge the print.”

  “Pretty smart offender if he did that,” Sinclair said.

  Vail moved closer to examine the glass. “We already know the guy is smart.”

  Bledsoe held a hand against his stomach. He looked a bit ashen and was heading toward the door. “Let’s move out of here, discuss this in the other room.”

  As they walked back into the bedroom, Manette scrunched her face. “I’m afraid to ask, but what does it mean, if the guy drank her blood? That’s beyond gross.”

  Vail sighed. “Drinking the victim’s blood, which our killer’s never done before, is stimulating, even exciting for him; it heightens his fantasy.”

  Manette shook her head. “Damn.”

  Everyone was quiet, alone with his or her own thoughts. Murder scenes like this one often prompted such a response. Pondering how someone could do such a thing to a human being. But they had seen plenty of murders during the course of their careers and most detectives reached a point where they became numb to stabbings and shooting deaths. But this went beyond what most of them were accustomed to dealing with. Even Vail and Del Monaco, though having seen some of this before, were nevertheless scratching their heads.