“You’re not sitting around,” Greene replied as she intensely studied the whiteboard.
“I’m not?”
“No,” the FBI behaviorist replied. “More than any of the other detectives in Boston, Chicago or LA, you and McRyan are playing the game.”
“I’m already getting sick and tired of hearing about the game with this asshole.”
“I hear you but like you said earlier, it’s all part of learning Rubens. It’s like poker. You don’t play the cards, you play the player. The cops in Boston, Chicago and Los Angeles for the most part played the cards. To my way of thinking, what Mac has you two doing is playing Rubens. In those other cities, the detectives chased Rubens like a standard murder case. He is anything but standard and the standard methods won’t work.”
“You sound as if you admire him.”
Greene blinked a few times and then slowly smiled. “I don’t admire him but I will acknowledge he fascinates me. I respect that the human mind can do amazingly great and amazingly cruel things and that merciless, disturbed people can do complex things. So I respect that and I recognize how hard he is to catch, which again is why I think you’re doing the right thing. In the other places, the police spent all their time interviewing witnesses, chasing weak leads, and nobody really sat down and tried to think of how Rubens was going about doing what he was doing. How did he identify his victims? Where did he identify them and what was his motivation? They let the clock dictate their actions. Those detectives never seemed to make a move, try something to smoke Rubens out. I didn’t think then and I don’t think now that’s how you catch him.”
“Other jurisdictions did what we’re doing. They checked surveillance footage, ran financials, talked to witnesses.”
“Yes, they did,” Greene answered. “But it was the lead detectives that did all of those things. It’s not how you catch him.”
“How do you catch him?”
“I’m not sure you can. But if you’re going to, I think you do what you are doing. There are plenty of good cops and special agents to run down the normal stuff. That DC detective, Coolidge, is good. Let him talk to people and interview the family. He’s smart enough to know if he hears or sees something you need to know about. What you guys need to do is focus on Rubens. Get inside his head. You think the case how he pursues his victims.”
“In other words, when Mac said the other day, ‘I’ve got three more women to play with’, that’s playing Rubens?”
“He said that?” Greene asked in surprise.
“Yes.”
“Interesting,” Greene answered with a smile.
“My God, you find this stimulating.”
“Absolutely,” April replied. “Don’t you?”
“Not the way you do.”
“That I get. Look, from a strictly investigative and behavioral standpoint, I’m absolutely fascinated to see if it works. Mac’s trying to figure him out, trying to anticipate his next move and trying to determine how to smoke him out,” Greene stated with a tone that said she was extremely interested in hanging around and watching it all play out. “And I think Mr. McRyan has asked a very interesting question up here, in my opinion.”
“What’s that?”
“Why is Peter Paul Rubens so inspiring to our killer?”
“Why is that? Why Rubens?”
“I don’t know,” Greene replied. “I’ve never been able to figure that out. In profiling and studying him, I’ve never made the connection. It might be that he just likes Rubens and this is his perverted way of honoring him or it could be that Rubens symbolizes something deeper.”
“I figure he had some bad experience with a plus-sized woman,” Wire suggested.
“Maybe,” Greene answered. “But staging them like in the pictures suggests to me there is more at play. The use of Rubens, the intricate staging suggests that there is more than just a bad experience with a voluptuous woman that has influenced him.”
“Didn’t anyone ever ask?”
“You mean did any of the detectives who’ve communicated with him, that Rubens has called and tormented—did any of them ask?”
“Yeah.”
“Not like that. Not until McRyan did the other night,” Greene replied.
“How did you know he asked that question?”
“I read the transcript of the call. He should keep asking that question.”
• • •
In the late afternoon, Mac continued to study the numerous photos of the Lisa White murder scene lying on the floor and then continually scanned the packed walls and cluttered shelves of the living room.
The clue had to be where the body of Lisa White was staged.
If this was a game, there were rules. And one of the rules, as established by Rubens, was that the clue was always in close proximity to the body, in the room where the body was found. In all of the cases where clues were left behind, whether it was Boston, Chicago or Los Angeles, the clue was in the same room.
Rubens was consistent on that account.
If he was also consistent, it would be a combination of something. If that wasn’t a rule, it was certainly a characteristic. The clue would be a name from a painting connected to a book. An obscure reference connected to something in a photograph. Lisa White’s living room must have been like a playground for Rubens. There was so much to choose from. There was far too much to choose from.
Mac uttered something to Wire about the Zodiac Killer code and he didn’t realize how right that comparison seemed to be until now. That was what made the process seem impossible. It was like solving a Rubik’s Cube or one of the Good Will Hunting math problems.
But it was there.
Mac worked his way from one wall to the next in the living room. It was a tedious process to come up with possible names. He worked his way through each photo or painting, looking for a name or a reference to a name. If he found a name combination, he would type it into his laptop and send it to Wire who would then have it checked.
Based on previous victims, the name could be the combination of a name and/or an object. The left wall was something of an entertainment wall. It contained a collection of pictures, paintings and three large framed movie posters: Charade, Breakfast at Tiffany’s and Sabrina. There were two signed framed pictures, one of Diane Keaton and another of Faye Dunaway, names that had been checked along with a number of black and white as well as color photos of movie marquees from old theatres from around the world.
Since all of the photos and framed movie posters on the left wall rested over a small couch, any first name he came up with was run with couch, sofa, love and seat. Thus far, he had run searches on Michele, Lois, Ronda, Vivian and Muriel Couch, Sofa, Settee, Chaise, Lounge, Daybed, Futon, Love and Seat, among other names. Out of those searches, two Rubenesque women popped, a Faye Couch and Joan Love. However, both women were married with children, not Rubens’ type. One would be with her daughter at a swim meet this evening and another was going to be with her husband and son at a track meet.
His most recent searches involved a photo of an alley next to a picture of a flowing river. So he tried all variations of the name Allison along with River, Creek, Stream, Brook, Tributary and Canal but nothing popped. At another point, he picked out a picture of St. Cecilia’s Church in Cologne that had a picture of a quiet country road to the right. He tried Cecilia Road, Roads, Rhodes, Street, Broadway, Lane, Avenue, Boulevard, Way, Path, Freeway and Highway. And since a Lisa White painting of a flower was never far away, he tried every first name against Flowers, Plant, Plante, Blossom and any other derivation of the word flower he could think of turning into a last name.
Such was how his day had progressed, going through all of the many objects of the home, trying to find a name combination of some kind, trying to see if he could determine how Rubens might have picked a clue or set it up. On the far wall, opposite of his position, were built-in bookshelves and cabinets. On the shelves were hundreds of books. He’d proceeded to run the book titl
es, author names and even had run the main characters in those books as names. Seeing where Mac was going, Wire had an FBI tech quickly set up a search program to rapidly run the names. He was getting results almost real time.
The problem was the results weren’t leading to any potential matches.
“Maybe this is exactly what he wants me to be doing,” Mac mumbled to himself. “Staring at walls, picking out names, hoping one is the right one in a metropolitan area of slightly over six million people.” Mac pressed on despite his doubts. At least for today, he was, to use a poker term, pot committed.
Wire and April Greene stopped by in the mid-afternoon to check in on him. They stayed for an hour. It served as a refresher for Wire and gave Greene a real feel for the crime scene as compared to the photographs back in the conference room at the field office. It also gave them an idea of what Mac was trying to do and what he was up against.
“Impossible,” Greene remarked as she and Wire began to leave.
“Not impossible,” Mac replied, sitting on the floor in front of his laptop. “But I’ll admit it here and now to you two and God, it’s really, really hard.”
In the early evening, he’d started working the right wall, which largely consisted of more built-in bookshelves filled with books and photos, not of people, but of famous places in Europe, including the Eiffel Tower, the Louvre, the Vatican, London Bridge, Big Ben and Parliament. It made him think of Chevy Chase as Clark Griswold from European Vacation going crazy as he couldn’t turn left out of a roundabout. “Look, kids, Big Ben, Parliament.” He then checked all of the actor and character names from the movie particularly if their address put them in nearby Chevy Chase, Maryland.
It was a long and tedious process, but if a name popped, he put it into the program, and in return, he could look at a DMV photo and other information that could be culled. He’d found two other possibilities from that side of the room, but quick checks revealed that the women named Joan Venora and Elizabeth Novel, while Rubenesque, were clearly not targets. One was married and would be spending the evening with her husband and the other was on a trip in Europe.
He’d been going nonstop for hours.
His eyes were tiring and a large yawn emerged. For the first time in hours, he checked his watch and saw it was nearly 7:00 P.M. Two hours to go. He’d fought the impending dread off most of the day but he could feel it coming. “Shit,” he sighed, an unsuspecting woman’s life a mere two hours from ending.
The front door slowly creaked open. He looked up to his left to see a welcome sight. Sally was standing in the entryway.
“How did you …”
She waved him off. “Wire and that April Greene told me. She said I should stop by and make sure you’re not turning into that guy from A Beautiful Mind.”
“You mean John Nash.”
“Yeah,” Sally replied while spinning around, taking in the surroundings. “The good news I guess is I don’t see any long yarn strings running wall to wall.”
He protested. “Sal, this is an active crime scene. You shouldn’t be here.”
“And I’m a former prosecutor who’s walked hundreds of these and you’re the obsessed special agent who needs to eat.” Sally held up two Jimmy John’s sandwiches. “Nothing but the best for you, buddy.”
He didn’t argue as he devoured two Italian Night Club sandwiches, two bags of kettle chips, and then washed it all down with a super-sized Diet Coke. While gorging himself, Sally slowly walked around the living room, taking in the surroundings.
“I haven’t walked a crime scene in a while,” she mused when she finally sat down next to him as he finished his second sandwich.
“Any thoughts?”
“Yeah, what you’re trying to do is find a needle in a dumpster full of needles.”
“What are you saying?”
“I’m saying I get what you’re doing, isolating yourself in here and trying to see what he saw, trying to think how he thought, but this place—” She waved around the living room and shook her head. “How are you supposed to figure it out? It’s impossible.”
“Not impossible. The clue is here,” Mac answered as he wiped his hands with a napkin. “Although right now I’d certainly agree to nearly impossible.”
“Yet you’re here? Why?”
“Because it’s not just about this victim, Sal,” he replied, sucking down the last of the Diet Coke.
Sally got it. “No, it’s about the victim after that and the victim after that, isn’t it?”
Mac tipped his head in acquiescence. “Unfortunately, when I get the name of tonight’s victim I’ll see the clue he left and—”
“That will tell you something.”
• • •
Promptly at 8:00 P.M., he knocked lightly on the door.
“Hi!” Audrey greeted with a big smile as she opened the front door. She’d made herself up with lipstick and a sleeveless dress in attractive shades of blue. “Oh, and you brought wine.”
“Yes, a nice white,” he replied as he leaned in and kissed Audrey on the cheek. “I know how much you liked this one when we dined last week.”
“Excellent, would you like me to open it?”
“Oh, no, no, no, I can do that,” Rubens replied. “Just show me to the kitchen and a corkscrew, of course.”
It was apparent to him that Audrey did not often drink wine at home. There was no wine rack of bottles and it took her a few minutes of rummaging through her kitchen drawers to find the long-lost wine-opening device, an aged corkscrew with flecks of rust on it. He used a knife to cut the seal and then deliberately went about twisting the corkscrew in. It took him a minute to work the bottle but eventually the cork emerged with a muted pop.
“Wine glasses?”
“Up to your right,” she replied.
“Ah, yes,” he replied as he retrieved two wine glasses. They were really glasses for red wine, but it appeared it was all she had. He wasn’t sure she knew the difference.
“Why don’t you go into the living room and make yourself comfortable,” he suggested. “I’ll finish this up and bring the wine in.”
“Sounds great.” Audrey retreated to the living room.
A half hour later, they were discussing the Women in World War I display at the National Museum of American History when he noticed the first effects. As always, the first sign was the eyes. There was a drowsiness creeping in as her eyelids ever so slowly and almost imperceptibly became heavier. That was a few minutes ago and now her movements were becoming slower and less coordinated and her speech was starting to slur.
Such was the effect of Rohypnol.
While he had no intention of raping Audrey, the effect of a date rape drug served its purpose and was slowly dropping Audrey’s defenses.
Audrey was starting to actually feel the effects as well, and the other thing he noticed was she started recognizing she was feeling them and belatedly sensing the danger.
He’d seen that happen before as well.
But it was too late.
They always realized it too late.
Audrey looked to him, looked at herself, and it was as if she recognized exactly what was happening. “You’re … you’re … him, aren’t you?” she slurred.
He nodded as he casually set his wine glass down on the coffee table as she made the effort to move off the couch, to try and flee but her body wouldn’t respond as she slumped away from him. The mind was still willing but her body wouldn’t respond. She couldn’t even raise her arms to fight him as he slowly laid her back down onto the couch cushions.
“You see, Audrey,” he said as he straddled her, using his legs to lock her arms to the side of her body, “one of the effects of Rohypnol is that it essentially paralyzes you.” He pulled rubber gloves out of the inside pocket of his tweed coat and pulled them onto his hands. She was trying to summon the energy to yell but he put his right hand over her mouth and continued. “It’s why men use it as a date rape drug. The woman becomes powerless against him
and it saps her power to resist.”
He reached back with his left arm for the couch pillow.
Rubens took one last look into her soft face. Her body was now essentially paralyzed.
She could still see, though, and her eyes were panicked.
Audrey knew what was coming.
There was nothing she could do to stop it.
He carefully positioned the pillow over her face and slowly pressed down with both hands. With his two hands and all of his weight, he held the pillow firm over her face, slowly increasing the pressure. He grunted as beads of sweat formed on his forehead as he maintained the constant pressure. He held the pillow in position, feeling her body spasm with what little fight it had left against the vise-lock that was his thighs pressed against her body.
After several minutes, he slowly pulled the pillow away and checked for a pulse, first on her neck and then at her wrist. There was nothing. He leaned down to her face and her mouth in particular and listened. There was no breathing. He placed his ear over her heart and there was no beat, not even any fibrillation.
It was time to go to work.
• • •
A little after midnight, Mac walked wearily into the conference room to find Wire and April Greene staring at the whiteboard with Lisa White crime scene photos spread out on the table and up on one of the boards.
He dropped his backpack onto one of the chairs and dropped himself into the next one in frustrated exhaustion.
Next Girl On The List - A serial killer thriller (McRyan Mystery Series Book) Page 11
