“He’s making a mistake not keeping ambition like this to himself. People are noticing, March, and that’s gonna cost him. It’s gonna cost us. ’Cause I’ll tell you one thing right now. Homicide can’t do any better than Drew Hedges, but we could do a lot worse.”
I don’t know what to say, so all I do is nod.
“This conversation is between the two of us, understood? I wouldn’t be telling you this in the first place except that if I don’t, you’re gonna keep running afoul of him and I’m not running interference for you anymore.”
He heads back to his office leaving me dazed, feeling the same way I did the first time I realized my mother wasn’t coming home anymore. One of life’s supposedly unshakable foundations breaking open just under my feet.
A phone rings and after a while I realize it’s mine.
“This is March.”
“We need to talk.” The voice is vaguely familiar. “Something big is about to break, and if we don’t get out in front of it, you and me both are gonna get fried.”
“Who is this?”
“March, my feelings are hurt. It’s Charlie Bodeen. Make whatever excuses you have to and get over here. Now would be nice.”
At the party Saturday night, all Bodeen could talk about was the impending doom of Charlotte’s firm. She resigned her partnership years ago, after Jessica was born, and took on contract work for a variety of legal types, but the majority of her hours are still billed to the old firm. According to Bodeen, they’ve lost some bread-and-butter clients during the recession and are now facing serious cutbacks.
“But the cutbacks won’t be enough,” he confided. “That thing’s headed for implosion and you better make sure Charlotte’s aware of that fact.”
Since my mention Sunday morning, when Charlotte dismissed the subject out of hand, it hasn’t come up. I’ve had my hands full, after all.
I decide to humor the man with a visit. Not because I’m overly worried about Charlotte’s employment prospects, but the fact is, I could use the break. Bodeen’s office is in a glass mid-rise on San Felipe not far outside the 610 Loop, and all I can think about during the drive is the change in Hedges over the past few weeks, coming to a head during this case. The lieutenant’s edginess starts making sense. He’s known all along what the captain’s up to, and he’s been doing his best to screen it from everyone on the shift, picking up the slack.
Inside, I consult the board between the elevator doors, finding Bodeen’s practice listed on the fourth. It turns out to be a small suite of offices, just a reception area, a conference room, and three private offices. The secretary tells me I’m expected and leads me straight to the door at the end of the hall.
“Have a seat,” Bodeen says. And then to the secretary: “Close that door behind you.”
One of the walls is glass and the other three are bare apart from some framed degrees and a shelf overflowing with matched legal volumes. The room still has the bare unfurnished feel of his bolt hole in the district attorney’s office.
“I said something to Charlotte,” I tell him, “but she didn’t seem too concerned.”
He stares at me, then blinks. “That’s not what I called you about. I just got wind of something big and what I need from you right now is some reassurance. Because frankly, I’m blindsided by this thing and what I’m hearing makes absolutely no sense.”
“Are you going to fill me in or what?”
“It’s about Donald Fauk. Remember him? The guy we put away for butchering his wife and running to Florida with his new girlfriend?”
“I remember, Charlie.”
“What do you know about Donald Fauk filing an appeal?”
My mental gears make a grinding sound. Did I wake up this morning in an alternate universe? First my homicide is reclassified as the work of a serial killer by some boondock detective who can’t say well without putting a p at the end. And now Donald Fauk, who dictated a free and uncoerced confession of his crimes into my recorder, is filing an appeal?
“Is this some kind of joke?” I ask.
“Not in the slightest. It’ll be officially filed this afternoon. Now, tell me everything you know about the case. New developments, everything.”
“What new developments? There’s nothing. What could there be? Over the weekend I had lunch with Brad Templeton and he had a few things to say about Fauk. They’ve kept in contact apparently, and he claims Fauk is trying to start some kind of fan club on the outside.” The pulse in my temple starts to throb. “Look, I’m no lawyer, but you’re gonna have to explain to me how a guy who confesses on tape to the crime in excruciating detail turns around and appeals. On what grounds?”
He consults a legal pad on the desk in front of him, where a page of illegible notes has been scribbled down. “Number one, there’s some evidence that’s gone missing. They wanted to retest the DNA samples from the scene, saying your match came out of the same crime lab that self-destructed a couple of years later. They requested the samples, and according to HPD that evidence is no longer available.”
“DNA testing can be destructive-”
“No,” he says. “There were samples left, only now nobody can find them. Defense theory? You guys destroyed the evidence to make sure it couldn’t be retested.”
“That’s not true, and it’s also not enough for an appeal-is it?”
“Here’s the second thing. Apparently, Nicole Fauk’s murder is being looked at as part of a serial killer investigation.”
Lauterbach. I showed him The Kingwood Killing to dissuade him from making an impossible leap, and all he did was insert another link into his serial killer theory. But the story in the Chronicle said nothing about the Walker case, let alone Nicole Fauk. Where would Donald Fauk’s attorneys have gotten hold of this?
“Since when?” I ask.
He shrugs. “I found out ten minutes before I called you. All I know is, they had paper down at the courthouse and it’s about to be filed.”
“There’s this detective, this Sheriff’s Department guy,” I say, and then I tell him about my visit from Lauterbach, which requires an explanation of the Walker case and how it supposedly links up with the killing back in April.
“So you gave him the Fauk connection.”
“I gave him nothing,” I say. “And besides, this guy may be an idiot and a snake, but I don’t see him getting on the phone to Fauk’s lawyers and letting them in on the good news. He’s still a cop at the end of the day.”
“All I know is, they’re alleging Nicole Fauk’s murder is part of a larger series and that they have a list of open homicides with identical modus operandi. Since Fauk was in jail when some of these were committed-including the one you’re working on now-he couldn’t have committed them, which means-”
“Which means absolutely nothing because the man confessed. Besides, my open homicide wasn’t committed by the same person who killed Nicole Fauk. The killer imitated the crime scene photo reprinted in Templeton’s book.”
“It does mean something. . because of Number Three.”
“Go ahead,” I say. “Lay it on me.”
“March, that confession you keep talking about?” He looks me square in the eye. “They’re saying they have solid evidence that the confession you obtained was coerced.”
PART 2
A MIRROR BLINDING
This night has opened my eyes
and I will never sleep again.
— the smiths
CHAPTER 11
FRIDAY, DECEMBER 11–10:01 A.M.
The district attorney and an entourage of pinstriped ADAs anchor one end of the conference table with an extra rung of associates lined like gargoyles along the window ledge, obscuring the glass-and-steel view of downtown. On the other end of the table, the HPD contingent consisting of myself, Bascombe, Wilcox, and a newly appointed crime lab supervisor crowds one side, elbows touching, leaving plenty of room opposite for Roger Lauterbach and his boss from the Harris County Sheriff’s Department to spread o
ut. Just inside the door, Charlie Bodeen, the last to arrive, sits in a chair he dragged in with him, a wheeled accordion case at his feet. There are no water glasses on the table, and the thermal pitchers of coffee down the middle remain untouched. Most of us are keeping our heads down, pretending to reread bits from the Fauk appeal, even though the details should all be familiar by now.
The DA clears his throat. “Does anyone in this room have something to say?”
Oh, I have something to say, but a preemptive glare from Bascombe shuts me down. You’re not here to talk, he told me. You’re here to listen. Open your mouth once and see if I don’t shove something down your throat.
“Anybody?”
“The conviction is solid,” Bodeen says, waving his copy of the appeal. “And they’re not going to get a hearing based on this.”
“You don’t think so? I wouldn’t be so sure about that. Not having the DNA available for retesting looks bad, but it’s par for the course. If that’s all they had, you’d be right.”
“That is all they have. The rest is speculation.”
The DA turns to one of the lawyers blocking the window, a round-faced woman clutching a stack of papers to her chest, signaling her to commence with some prearranged briefing. She starts talking without looking up from her notes.
“An attempted homicide case went to Orleans Parish Criminal Court twelve weeks ago with the defense arguing that the investigating officer, Detective Eugene Fontenot, had extracted a false confession from the accused. During testimony, several past complaints about Fontenot’s interrogation techniques were entered into evidence, and the jury came back with a not-guilty verdict. I’ve been in touch already with the Orleans DA and NOPD’s Public Integrity Bureau, and there is definitely an ongoing investigation of Fontenot. They’re taking this very seriously.”
Bodeen interrupts with a sarcastic laugh. “So what you’re saying is, if a detective who had nothing to do with my case is accused-not convicted, just accused-of applying the thumbscrews in the here and now, the fact that eight years ago he helped with prisoner transport calls my conviction into question?”
“I’m not saying it,” the DA replies. “Fauk’s counsel is. And it’s no use arguing your case to me, Charlie. If it was my call, I’d obviously deny the appeal. When we argue this thing, though, my people need to be ready. Either we take this seriously or Donald Fauk will get his shot at overturning the verdict.”
Across the table from me, Lauterbach strokes his mustache. His boss-older, fatter, and grayer than him, but cut from the same cloth-throws his hands up in theatrical exasperation.
“Don’t y’all think maybe we’re jumping the gun here a little? Don’t you want to hear what my people have come up with before going on the warpath? ’Cause I’ll tell you one thing right now: this conviction ain’t worth defending, not from where I’m sittin’. I know y’all got your pride invested in this, but I’ve been through the whole case backwards and forwards and the one thing this isn’t is an isolated incident. This Fauk killing, it’s just one of a whole series of homicides, and if we don’t wake up to that fact, if we start going on TV saying otherwise, then the egg’ll be all over our faces.”
His outburst is greeted by cold silence. Bascombe keeps flexing his hands, like he’s trying to prevent a fist from forming, while on the other side of me Wilcox fiddles nervously with his ballpoint pen.
“With respect-” the DA begins.
“Just hear my detective out, that’s all I’m asking for. Let him talk, and if you still wanna go down with the sinkin’ ship, it’s your call.”
As much as I dislike the man, I have to admit I’m a little jealous of the way Lauterbach’s chief is backing his play. I can’t imagine Hedges or Bascombe doing the same for me, not in a roomful of prosecutors with the DA himself holding court. By the door, Bodeen raises his eyebrows at me, keeping up his smartest-man-in-the-vicinity act, but even he seems a little surprised at how committed the Sheriff’s Department supervisor comes off. In the lead up to this round-table, he’d led me to expect a dressing down for Lauterbach and company, not a fair hearing on equal footing.
“I really have to object to this,” Bascombe says.
The DA silences him with a raised finger. “Hold on a sec. With all that preamble, I think we might as well hear what the man has to say. I mean, I’ve already read what the detective shared with the Chronicle, but if there’s anything else he’d like to add. .”
Lauterbach bristles at the criticism, even though he had to know it was coming. Past convictions are like precedents in law. In theory you can always go against them, they can always be overturned, but in practice they benefit from extreme deference. Even stronger than the presumption of innocence is the presumption that, if a jury sided with the prosecution, the verdict was sound. By suggesting otherwise, Lauterbach threatens not just me and my reputation but HPD and the Harris County District Attorney’s Office, too. It feels nice for once to be sitting on this side of the table.
“Mr. District Attorney,” he says with icy formality. “You’re mistaken if you think I’ve shared anything with the media. I don’t know where they got their information, but it didn’t come from me. If it had, they’d be having a field day with this story. You’ll see why in just a minute.”
He opens a black laptop on the table and starts untangling wires, hitching the computer via a VGA cable to the projector on the table.
“There’s a PowerPoint?” I ask, rolling my eyes.
Wilcox crosses his arms and sinks back, the ballpoint clicking in my ear.
Nobody lifts a finger to help Lauterbach. Eventually his boss goes to the light switches, fumbling through the row until the projection screen whirs down from the suspended ceiling. After a moment, Lauterbach’s computer display appears on-screen. The cursor glides over a series of desktop icons, double-clicking on the presentation file. But not before I notice the title on one of his folders: TEMPLETON.
Bascombe scratches a note out and slides it in front of me: You need to have a talk with your writer friend. I nod in agreement, trying to work the timing out in my head. At the beginning of the week, Lauterbach seemed never to have heard of The Kingwood Killing, and now there’s a file on his desktop with Templeton’s name on it? Either the man works fast, or he knew more than he was letting on.
Don’t be surprised if this one comes back to bite you.
The screen displays a map of Texas zoomed in so that San Antonio and Houston form the base of a triangle with Dallas at the apex. Interstate 10 runs along the bottom with I-35 and I-45 forming the triangle’s sides. The map is labeled 2009.
“During the course of an ongoing investigation,” Lauterbach says, “I noticed similarities to an unsolved case I worked back in 2005. Digging deeper, I became aware of a number of open homicides with strong similarities. While the details changed from case to case, some things remained constant: female victims discovered in or around water, usually in their own homes, stabbed to death and frequently mutilated afterwards. Including the case Detective March here is working on, there are three this year.”
He touches a button on the laptop’s keyboard and three red circles appear on the map, two in the greater Houston area and one in Dallas.
“The further I went back and the wider I spread my net, the more I found. One in 2008, two more in ’07. .” More dots appear as the years change, each series coded with a different color. “None in ’06, but then there are three again in ’05. This goes all the way back to ’99, and there’s a total here of twenty-one homicides. And this is not counting deaths with similar circumstances where a suspect was charged and convicted. There are four more if you include those. .” The additional dots appear, including one in the Kingwood area color-coded for 1999. “What that means is, we could be talking about as many as twenty-five homicides, and as you can see, there’s a pattern at work.”
The colored dots are clustered around the three cities: fourteen in the Houston area, eight around San Antonio, and three
in Dallas.
“As I’m sure everyone in this room knows, Donald Fauk sold his house here and moved to Florida after his wife’s death. That was in 2000. From then until he was extradited in September of 2001, there were two homicides here that fit the pattern, and of course most of these took place once he was behind bars.”
The map dissolves, replaced by a lineup of photos, twenty-four victims arranged in rows of eight, the only one absent being Simone Walker. Dates and case numbers are affixed to most.
“After reviewing Detective March’s case file, I came to the conclusion that Simone Walker fits the profile, too.”
He taps the keyboard and the photo of Simone at the party materializes, the one I first saw on her shelf when Dr. Hill took me to her room. Seeing it again, a strange sensation comes over me, a mix of disappointment and shame. As if she’s looking down on me, her smile faked, trying to hide her sense that I’ve failed her.
Bascombe passes me another note: How are we not on top of this?
“When you say there are similarities,” the DA asks, “what exactly do you mean? Are these killings all the work of one individual, or do they just happen to have a few things in common? I mean, there’s a lot of women in Texas and a lot of knives and a lot of swimming pools. That doesn’t mean every time you find those three things together that it’s Colonel Mustard with the knife in the swimming pool, if you see what I mean.”
The ADAs crack a collective smile, letting their boss know they get the joke. Lauterbach takes it in stride.
“Some of these cases I’ve reviewed in more detail than others,” he says, “so I’m not standing here telling you each and every one belongs to the series. But if you look at those numbers, the reality of the situation has to sink in.”
“The reality?”
“Whelp, we’ve got a serial killer at work here. He’s active in our backyard and in several other jurisdictions on top of that. Based on the way the numbers are weighted, I think he lives here in Houston and travels often to San Antonio and occasionally to Dallas. When he’s on the road, he has enough time to identify victims and plan the murders. The question is, are we gonna put all our effort into defending past convictions, letting this guy continue to operate with impunity, or are we gonna wake up and start going after him?”
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