The Knight pbf-3

by Steven James

  Typically, killers only transport body parts to dispose of them or take them home as souvenirs. So why leave one body at the house and transport the other across town and then leave it at a public beach?

  I considered this: based on the two messages he’d left for me, the murderer knew who I was, knew I’d be at the crime scene Thursday afternoon, and knew I would be testifying in Chicago. So it was likely he also knew about my work.

  If that were the case, he was either very stupid-leaving me so many locations, the combination of which would help me track him down. Or he was very smart-perhaps choosing the abandoned mine and the public beach for no other reason than to misdirect the investigation.

  And since he’d been able to locate Sebastian Taylor, something no other law enforcement agency in the country had been able to do, I did not think this killer was stupid.

  No, not at all.

  As Cheyenne wound the car higher into the mountains toward Taylor’s house, I finished my coffee and realized that if she were to decide to try hers later, it wouldn’t be fresh anymore and consequently she wouldn’t enjoy it and might never fall in love with the world’s perfect beverage. So, as a favor to her, I drank hers too.

  “We should be there in about ten minutes,” she said.

  I turned to the list of possible suspects.

  Tessa heard Dora stirring on the bed but waited to see if she was ready to get up.

  Her friend’s real name was actually Pandora, but she didn’t like being constantly reminded of the story about the girl opening the box and unleashing all of the evil in the world-not exactly the coolest legacy to have. So pretty much everyone just called her Dora.

  She had cinnamon hair, shy, brown-black eyes, and a sort of normal, easily forgettable face. The two girls had totally connected the first time they met, even though they had, like, nothing in common.

  Oh: except that since Dora’s dad was the medical examiner, both of their dads dealt with dead bodies all the time.

  So at least there was that.

  Finally Dora leaned over the edge of the bed. “Tessa, you awake?”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “Sleep OK?”

  “Yeah. You?”

  A pause and then, “I kept waking up thinking about… you know.”

  “Yeah.” Tessa tried to think of something that would get Dora’s mind off the baby’s death. “Hey, I heard about this cool new Syrup Dive video. We should check it out.”

  Dora looked at her quizzically. “I thought you hated Syrup Dive? You told me their music was pangelo…”

  “Panglossian.” Tessa shrugged. “Well, maybe I changed my mind. C’mon, I hear the video’s sweet.”

  And so, even though Tessa really did think Syrup Dive’s music was naively optimistic-she went to Dora’s computer and mouse-clicked to YouTube.

  Added advantage: you don’t have to keep seeing pics of Dora’s smiling parents pop up.

  “Panglossian.” Dora swung her feet to the floor. “That Greek?”

  “Latin. I never studied Greek. Just Latin. And a little French.”

  Dora joined her beside the computer. “Is there anything you don’t know?”

  “I can’t figure out why I don’t laugh when I tickle myself.”

  She found the video.

  “And,” her friend said, “my story, Pandora’s Box. You don’t know that. I still can’t believe you never actually read it. Considering how much you read.”

  Tessa had never been all that into Greek myths. “I think I know it pretty well: Pandora was curious. She opened the box and out came all the pain and pestilence and disease of the world.”

  “Yeah, but that’s not all.” Dora yawned. “It has a surprise ending.”

  “I’ll check it out this week. I promise.”

  And then she pressed “play.”

  I had just finished Cheyenne’s coffee and was about two-thirds of the way through the case files when she broke the silence. “We’re here.”

  Looking up from the papers I saw that we were turning onto the long, sloping gravel driveway that led to Sebastian Taylor’s house.

  20

  Taylor had chosen to live on a dead-end road, which seemed tragically ironic to me, considering the circumstances.

  Rustic, yet sophisticated, the amber and tan house wasn’t pretentious enough to attract undue attention but still spoke of wealth and affluence just as I’m sure Taylor wanted it to.

  In addition to Brigitte Marcello’s car, which still sat in the driveway, two cruisers and two civilian cars, including Kurt’s, were parked outside the house.

  After taking a moment to show our IDs to the half-asleep officer standing guard, Cheyenne and I stepped into Sebastian Taylor’s living room.

  Lush carpet. Leather furniture. Civil War paraphernalia. Nouveau paintings that must have cost a fortune. I noted that the walls contained no pictures of either of Taylor’s ex-wives or any of his four children, and none of this surprised me. A well-stocked liquor cabinet sat near the door to the dining room.

  One of the officers from the crime scene unit was dusting for prints in the dining room, and I figured the other CSU members were probably in the garage, where the murders occurred. When I’m working a case I typically carry a pair of latex gloves in the back pocket of my jeans, but there were already extras waiting for us on the coffee table, so Cheyenne and I snapped them on. “Let’s start upstairs,” she said.

  I nodded and we ascended.

  Halfway up the steps she cleared her throat slightly. “You’ve been awfully quiet since we left your house, Pat. What’s going on in that mind of yours?”

  I took a second to collect my thoughts, then said, “In fifteen years as an investigator I’ve never come across a double homicide in which the killer dismembered two victims, then transported one of them to a secondary scene where it would be easily located and identified within hours.”

  “True,” she said thoughtfully. “Typically, he would have left them both or taken them both.”

  We reached the landing. “Exactly.”

  The upstairs of Taylor’s house was small. Just a master bedroom with an attached bathroom, a spare bedroom that he’d left completely empty, a common bathroom, and a landing which he’d turned into a computer workspace. Both the hallway and the bedrooms were decorated with earth tones that were carefully coordinated to match the carpeting.

  She led the way to the master bedroom. “What do you think the killer was trying to tell us by transporting only one body?”

  “I don’t know what he was trying to tell us,” I said. “But considering the facts so far, he has managed to tell me one thing.”

  “What’s that?”

  The master bedroom’s carpet was freshly vacuumed, probably by the CSU searching for trace evidence. The room looked pristine, nothing out of place.

  “That he’s unique in the way he thinks.” I knelt and scanned beneath the bed. Found nothing. Stood and glanced at her.

  “In other words,” she said. “Hard to pigeonhole.”

  “Seems to be going around.”

  “Makes me think of something I once read: it is essential for an investigator to understand his opponent’s intellect, training, and aptitude and then respond accordingly.”

  I paused. “My article last month.”

  “Yes. It was one of your better ones this year.” Her eyes became careful planets orbiting the room in precise symmetry. Occasion ally, she would move her lips slightly but then furrow her eyes and shake her head slightly as if she were having a quiet discourse with herself. “I didn’t agree with all your conclusions, but I did agree with the section about not expecting a person of inferior or superior intellect to act in conventional ways.”

  We entered the bathroom.

  “Well, that’s the one part I can’t take credit for.” Shaving cream and a razor lay on the counter. A laundry bin sat in the corner. I lifted the washcloth that was lying on top and gently held it against my cheek. Still slightly damp. �
�It’s not a direct quote, but the concept comes from C. Auguste Dupin’s approach in ‘The Purloined Letter.’ I credited him in the endnotes.”

  “I know,” she said. “I read them.”

  Now this was my kind of woman.

  I knew from the case files that the crime scene unit had found strands of Taylor’s hair in the shower drain. I saw nothing else of note in the shower area.

  “But,” she said, “I was surprised you’d cite a fictional story.”

  “Well, my daughter-that is, stepdaughter-she’s a big fan of Poe. She convinced me to read three of his detective stories. Not bad, actually.”

  “I’ll have to check them out.”

  We took our time exploring the upstairs rooms, then headed to the first floor where we found Lieutenant Kurt Mason sending one of the members of his crime scene unit to examine Brigitte’s car.

  As he left, Cheyenne approached Taylor’s liquor cabinet and pointed to a half-empty wine bottle. “Brunello di Montalcino, 1997. Nice. This man knew his wine.” She gestured toward the array of bottles. “But, there’s an awful lot of pretty potent stuff there. You think he had a drinking problem?”

  Kurt shook his head. “Someone with a drinking problem doesn’t leave half-empty bottles sitting around, or keep a shelf full of booze out in the open. He hides the bottles in the cupboard, under the bed, in the closet.” Whether or not Kurt realized it, his voice was becoming softer with each word. He knelt and peered through a bottle of vodka. “No. Taylor didn’t have a problem. He had a hobby.”

  Cheyenne and I exchanged glances. I was pretty sure Kurt didn’t drink, but I knew that his wife Cheryl had picked up the habit after their baby daughter’s death last winter. And, despite all the times I’d visited their home since he invited me to join the task force last January, I’d never seen any half-empty bottles lying around.

  Time to change the subject.

  “Prints and DNA,” I said. “Anything yet?”

  Kurt stood, shook his head. “Not a thing.”

  I looked in the kitchen trash can: a granola cereal box, a few crumpled napkins, orange peels. Closed the lid. “Listen, I’ve been thinking we should take a closer look at the victimology.”

  Cheyenne spoke, mirroring my thoughts. “The more you know about the victims’ lifestyle, history, and habits, the more you’ll know about the killer.”

  “Yes.” She’d obviously read one of my articles from last year too. Impressive. “How is he choosing them? Where did his life intersect with theirs? Let’s go deeper. Not just the typical things like acquaintances, place of employment, home address, club memberships. I want to know what route our victims took to work, where they rented their videos, where they bought their gas.”

  I realized I was giving orders and caught myself. “I’m sorry. I mean, that’s the approach I think we should take.”

  “We’ll get Robinson and Kipler on it,” Kurt said. He didn’t seem bothered by my tone.

  “I need to talk to Kipler anyway,” Cheyenne interjected. “I’ll give them a call.” She pulled out her cell and stepped into the dining room.

  When she was gone Kurt glanced at the door at the far end of the kitchen. “Have you seen the garage?”

  “Not yet.”

  “C’mon. It’s time you had a look.”

  21

  Taylor’s garage was a brightly lit sanctum for his freshly waxed Lexus SUV, which sat perfectly centered between the walls. A workbench skirted the west side. The room appeared spotless except for the wide, angular swathe of blood where the killer had done his work.

  Most of the evidence had already been removed from the garage and taken to the lab, including the ropes that had bound Taylor, the gag, and his corpse itself; but the manila envelope with the killer’s handwritten message to me was still lying on the workbench: “Shade won’t be bothering you anymore, Agent Bowers.”

  I slid the photos out of the envelope and found that they were snapshots of Tessa leaving her high school. Taylor had included a note that read, “She would be such an easy target. You should keep a better eye on her.-Shade.”

  My fingers tensed, and as I set down the photos I realized that, despite how much I value human life, I was glad Sebastian Taylor was dead.

  According to the case files, the tire impressions that had been found two weeks ago beside one of the mailboxes Shade had used matched the tread patterns on Taylor’s SUV. I asked Kurt, “Both of Taylor’s guns are at the lab?”

  “Yes.”

  “And neither had been discharged? Neither was loaded?”

  “That’s right.”

  The door to the house opened, and Cheyenne joined us again.

  “I think our guy emptied the guns while Taylor showered,” I said. “It was all one elaborate, twisted game.”

  Cheyenne looked a little confused. “Talk me through that.”

  “Taylor was well-trained. He never would have carried a gun without a chambered cartridge, and he would have almost certainly gotten a shot off at the intruder if either of his guns were loaded. I’m thinking the killer must have gotten into Taylor’s house, found the guns, and emptied them prior to the time Taylor entered the garage. The perfect time to empty the guns would have been while Taylor showered.”

  One of the CSU members stopped dusting for prints on the doorknob and stepped our way. Brown hair. Early thirties. Inquisitive face. I recognized him as one of the men who’d been waiting outside the mine when we investigated Heather’s body on Thursday. We hadn’t met yet, so I guessed he was new to the unit. I extended my hand. “Special Agent Bowers.”

  “Reggie Greer.”

  We shook hands, then I knelt beside the driver’s door and he squatted beside me. “See the blood here, under the car? Taylor must have approached the vehicle and was opening the door when the killer, who was hidden beneath the car, struck.”

  I gestured with my hand, imitating the slicing motion of the killer’s blade. “One, two. First the right leg. See the cast-off splatter over there?” Kurt and Cheyenne nodded. Reggie scrutinized the bloodstains.

  With my finger, I traced the outline of the blood spatter. “Taylor was already on his way to the ground when the killer sliced his left Achilles tendon. You can see how the blood spatter from the right leg begins perpendicular to the vehicle and ends parallel to it, so Taylor twisted counterclockwise on his way to the ground. Probably landed on his back. I can’t be certain about that, though. Bloodstain analysis isn’t my specialty.”

  I stood and looked around.

  Reggie was staring at me. “Blood spatter’s not your specialty?”

  “That’s right.” I was studying the sight lines out the window to Brigitte’s car. If the lights had been off inside the garage, her headlights would have partially illuminated the room.

  Reggie must have been listening in on my conversation with Kurt a few moments earlier, because he said, “But if the killer snuck into the house and unloaded the guns, why didn’t he just kill Taylor while he was defenseless in the shower? Why wait?”

  “Maybe this wasn’t just about killing him. I don’t think he wanted it to be over quickly: trap him in the garage, disable him, but leave him the guns to make him think he’d be able to get away. Like a cat toying with a mouse.”

  “Death isn’t enough,” Cheyenne said softly. “He wants to see them squirm first.”

  I heard a cell ring, and both Kurt and I reached for our pockets. When I pulled out my phone, I noticed I’d forgotten to turn it on for the day. Kurt tapped at his screen. “I gotta take this.”

  He stepped away. I turned on my cell, and Reggie resumed dusting for prints on the doorknob. Cheyenne stood beside me quietly for a moment, then said, “Did you get to the evidence list page in the case files?”

  I put my phone away. “No.”

  She pointed to a receipt on the far end of the workbench. “It’s for Chinese takeout. CSU found three empty cartons of food.”

  “You’re kidding me.” I checked the time on the
receipt. The cashier had rung it up at 8:18 p.m.

  “No. Brigitte picked up the food on the way here, but none of it was in her stomach.” Then she added grimly, no doubt referring to Brigitte’s dismemberment, “We didn’t need an autopsy to figure that one out.”

  But Taylor had showered, changed, and was about to get into his car when he was attacked… He wasn’t expecting takeout, he was expecting to leave…

  We could check the incoming calls and text messages on Brigitte’s phone, but for now it looked to me like the killer had somehow contacted her and convinced her to bring over the food.

  And the food cartons had been empty when CSU found them.

  Which meant that he ate the Chinese food while he killed and dismembered those two people.

  This guy was the real deal. As cold and disturbing as they get.

  “Has Dr. Bender completed the autopsy on Taylor yet?” I asked Cheyenne.

  She shook her head. “I don’t know.”

  I speed-dialed his number, and when Eric picked up I apologized for calling him so early, then asked how the sleepover had gone. “Good,” he said. “The girls are in Dora’s room right now on the computer.”

  It surprised me that Tessa was already awake, but I stuck to the case. “Eric, when is Sebastian Taylor’s autopsy scheduled?”

  “I’m leaving for the hospital in about half an hour.” Then he added soberly, “It’s been a busy week. I’ve barely been able to keep up. I plan to get started about ten.”

  I’m not a fan of watching autopsies. I looked at my watch: 9:09.

  It struck me that in less than forty-eight hours I would be back on the stand in Chicago. I decided not to think about that. “Is it all right if I swing by and have a look at the body before you get started?”

  “Sure. I’ll have Lance Rietlin meet you. He’s my resident this year. He’ll get you whatever you need. Something specific you’re looking for?”

  “I have a few questions about the wounds, the way he was attacked. I’ll see you there.”