The 7th Victim

by Alan Jacobson

  But there was no God at this crime scene, or so it seemed to those with even a rudimentary understanding of religious belief. God would not have allowed Sandra Franks to be murdered. God would not have created monsters capable of committing such heinous acts.

  “Damn reporters,” Vail said.

  “Just doing their job,” Robby said. “Cut ’em some slack.”

  “I don’t like them blocking my way and shoving mikes in my face. I’m here to do a job, too, and they’re in the way.”

  They stood in the back of the room, staring at the walls, at more murals. Hancock had arrived and was waiting outside with Manette and Bledsoe until the forensic unit had finished documenting the scene. Since Vail and Robby had already been in the house, they figured it was best to stay put rather than tramp through the evidence again.

  “So what do you think it all means?”

  “This guy is very bold, Robby. A lot of serial killers prey on prostitutes.” She turned to him. “You know why?”

  “Because they won’t be missed.”

  “Exactly. No one would know they’re missing for days, weeks, sometimes months. By then, the trail is cold.” A technician’s camera flashed. “So the question is, why is this guy picking middle-class women? What is it about them that feeds his fantasy?”

  “He knows one that he hates.”

  “Or knew one. His fantasy goes back a long time, don’t forget.”

  Hancock came up behind them and caught sight of the far wall, where the offender’s “It’s in the” message was scrawled. “I get it,” he said under his breath. “I get it! It’s like a puzzle you can’t figure out, and then when you do, it’s so damn obvious you can’t believe you didn’t see it before.”

  Vail’s eyes found Robby’s in a sideways glance.

  “He’s hidden something,” Hancock continued. “The hand, he’s telling us where the hand is. The left hand. He’s telling us it’s in the house. It’s in the drawer, it’s in the refrigerator, in the bedroom—”

  “It’s in your head,” Vail said. “You can’t assume it means anything.”

  Hancock turned away. “You’re wrong. He’s telling us something.”

  “He could also be a whacko.” Vail shifted her gaze to Robby. “At this point, all we can say is that either the offender is a nut job—in which case his message means nothing—or that he’s quite sane and it carries great meaning to him. The fact that he used the victim’s blood tells us it was likely done postmortem. She was either badly injured or dead. And if she’s dead, which is likely, then he’s taking a huge risk to spend more time there. Longer he’s there, more chance he gets caught. For what? If we go with the odds, he’s not a whacko. So the message means a great deal to him. But it’s not intended for him. It’s meant for the victim, or for whoever discovers the body.”

  Vail paced a few steps back and forth, reasoning it through. “If it’s a message for us, we have to ask: What’s he trying to tell us? Is it something that’s true? Or something that’s false? Is it literal . . . do we have to start looking for something—the hand, like Hancock is suggesting? Or is he taunting, playing with us?”

  Vail stopped, regarded Robby for a moment. “Do you see why you can’t jump to conclusions about any of this?” She looked at Hancock, who was staring at the wall, attempting to appear as if he hadn’t heard what she had said.

  But suddenly, he turned toward her. “And sometimes you can overthink something, Detective Hernandez. That’s what your friend is doing here. She knows so much, she’s trying to impress you, confuse you with issues and questions and all sorts of bullshit that’s got nothing to do with anything.”

  Vail’s arms were clenched across her chest. “The only bullshit in the room, Robby, is what Hancock’s dishing up. But you know what? This message could be bullshit, too. There was a case where the offender wrote ‘Death to the pigs’ in blood. It was so Hollywood, it was weird. It scored pretty high on the bullshit radar for me. Turned out he took the phrase from a Life magazine article, and he wrote it at the scene to throw us off. You know how long people spent mulling over ‘Death to the pigs’? Was it meant for cops, or did he just hate pork?”

  Robby laughed.

  Vail placed a hand on his forearm. “Listen to me, Robby. Right now we can’t make any assumptions about it. You want to help Hancock look for the missing hand, go for it. Maybe you’ll find it—or you’ll find something else. I don’t know. But to me, the most significant thing to consider from that message is that the offender took the time to write it in the first place. It meant a lot to him, and it’s my job to find out why.”

  “He didn’t finish the sentence,” said Sinclair, who had just walked in the door. “You’re talking about the message, right? What I want to know is, why didn’t the fucker finish the sentence?”

  “Good question,” Vail said.

  “Maybe he wants us to finish it for him,” Robby said.

  Hancock threw up his hands. “Which is what I’ve been trying to do. It’s in the kitchen, it’s in the drawer, it’s in the closet. . . .” He walked out of the bedroom, still muttering.

  “He okay?” Sinclair asked.

  “He’s never been okay.”

  Robby asked, “So what do we do next with this message?”

  “We can run it through VICAP. Bureau keeps a database of crime stats just for this reason. It’ll give us a rundown of other cases where offenders have written messages in blood—in any bodily fluid, for that matter. It’ll tell us what we know about those cases and those offenders. Maybe we can make some connections or establish some patterns or parallels. Offenders don’t leave messages very often, so it’s a pretty isolated type of activity. Database is going to be small.”

  “Meantime, we keep plugging away and asking questions.”

  “The day we stop asking questions,” Vail said, “is the day we should turn in our badges.”

  TWO HOURS LATER, the task force members were huddled in their new base of operations, which had been haphazardly thrown together over the past two days.

  It was an old brick house two miles from the latest victim’s home, on a mature street with seventy-five-year-old houses. The rooms were dark, lit only by incandescent lamps standing on the floor. Long shadows loomed across the walls, and everyone’s faces—being lit from below—looked like something out of a Bela Lugosi horror flick.

  A couple of plastic folding tables had been opened in the middle of what had previously been a rectangular living room. There were no shades or blinds on the windows, and the continuous pelting of the glass by the wind and rain created streaks of water blown across the slick surface.

  “We got a telephone here?” Mandisa Manette asked.

  “Not yet,” Bledsoe said. He lifted a medium-size cardboard box from a stack in the corner of the room and dropped it on one of the card tables. He leaned back and swatted at the dust that rose from the box. “I ordered five lines. Four for voice and DSL, one for fax. Be here in a day or two. Till then use your cell.”

  Bledsoe ripped open the box and removed a few rubber-banded markers. He looked around the room and craned his neck to catch a glimpse of the kitchen. “Who are we missing?”

  “Hancock,” Vail said. “I say we start without him.”

  Bledsoe smirked, then leaned close to Vail’s ear. “Lay off, okay? The guy may be an asshole, but I’d rather not poison the pool. Let the others find out for themselves. I don’t need any trouble, none of us do. Just cooperate with him.”

  “Yeah, yeah, fine.”

  “You okay, your knee? Hernandez said you twisted it.”

  “Went down in the vic’s yard.”

  “You need to go? Get it taken care of?”

  “I’m good. Don’t worry about it.”

  Bledsoe nodded, then spun around. “Okay, everyone into the living room. Let’s get started.”

  The front door swung open and in walked Chase Hancock. He closed his umbrella and shook the water onto the linoleum floors that were
already slick from the detectives’ muddy shoes.

  Hancock glanced around, then crinkled his nose. “Who chose this rat hole?”

  “We wanted to make you feel at home,” Vail said, “but we can’t get the stench right.”

  “Cute, Vail, very cute.”

  Bledsoe waited for everyone to situate themselves, then took his place at the head of the room. “This is going to be our home until we catch this guy. The accommodations are pretty crappy. I’ve got eyes, I can see. You don’t have to tell me. I’m having some stuff done on the place over the next week or so, to make it functional. One thing it won’t be is nice or comfortable. They don’t want us getting too cozy here. Feeling is, if we like our surroundings, we won’t be in any rush to solve the case.” Moans erupted. Bledsoe held up a hand. “I know it’s crap, but I’m just telling you how it is. Now, I know it’s late—what the hell time is it?” He pulled back his sleeve to see his watch.

  “Eleven-thirty,” Bubba Sinclair said.

  “Jesus. Okay then,” Bledsoe continued. “Let’s get started so we can all get home sometime before the sun comes up.”

  Vail thought of Jonathan and remembered she had an appointment with an attorney in the morning. She had already called in to get the time off, and she would have to pull Jonathan out of school. But it was the first step in getting him out of Deacon’s reach.

  “Our guy struck again this evening. Vic named Sandra Franks. Dental hygienist with a doc on the west side. Hey, Hernandez, you’re tall. Why don’t you write all this down on the whiteboard?” He tossed Robby the bunch of rubber-banded colored markers.

  “What does being tall have to do with—”

  “It’s late, let’s just get through this so we can go home.”

  Robby stepped up to the whiteboard and wrote, “Sandra Franks, dental hygienist.”

  “Dental hygienists are weird. They work P-T at lots of different offices,” Manette said.

  Bledsoe nodded. “Which means our workload just increased. Sin, find out what other docs she works for and while you’re at it, round up their patient lists. Perp might be on there.”

  “Will they give us their patient lists? Confidentiality—”

  “Come on,” Manette said. “Who’s gonna get bent outta shape over a freaking root canal? They give you problems, lean on ’em. They’re dentists, they don’t want no trouble. Besides, we’re not asking for their records, just a list. You want, I’ll do it.”

  Sinclair’s bald head flushed with anger. “I can handle it.”

  “Good,” Bledsoe said. “There’s a bunch of things we’re working on, so I put together a quick summary of what’s going on and who’s doing what. You can add Sin’s assignment to the bottom.”

  “How do you want to handle the perp’s message?” Manette asked.

  Bledsoe pulled a small spiral notepad from his sport coat pocket, flipped a couple of pages. “‘It’s in the . . . ,’” he mumbled. He shook his head, then said, “I think we should attack this like we would any other piece of evidence. Karen, you have any new thoughts on this?”

  “Nothing I’m willing to share just yet.”

  “Look, I know you don’t like to guess, but right now we’ve got nothing to go on. Even a guess would send us in a direction. Might be the wrong one, but it could also be the right one.”

  “I’ve got one,” Hancock said.

  Vail rolled her eyes. “Here we go.”

  “I think it means he’s playing with us, taunting us, daring us to find the severed hand.”

  “And?” Bledsoe asked. “Did you find it?”

  “Not yet, but—”

  “Look, Bledsoe, you wanted my opinion, I’ll give it to you,” Vail said. “Right now there are too many possibilities. So I’ll tell you what my gut says. This message meant a lot to this offender. He took great risks to leave it for us. I don’t think it’s taunting per se, but I think he’s trying to tell us something without directly telling us. He doesn’t want to make it too easy. But bottom line is, there is meaning in it. Just what that meaning is, I don’t have a clue and a hunch wouldn’t be worth anything. Hancock’s got a hunch and it means nothing.”

  “To hell with you, Vail,” Hancock yelled. “You’ve been on my case since the minute I walked through the vic’s door. What did I ever do to you?”

  Bledsoe shook his head in disgust. “Okay, all right, enough.” He turned to Vail. “He’s right, Karen, lose the attitude.”

  “Damn straight,” Hancock said.

  “I’m consulting VICAP, see if we get any hits on similar cases,” Vail said calmly.

  “Who’s got the vic’s employers?” Sinclair asked.

  “Hernandez,” Bledsoe said, “that’s yours. Check out the people the vics worked for. Then check out their customers. Anything pops up that’s even possibly suspicious, let’s all discuss it.”

  “Got it, boss.”

  They spent the next two hours running scenarios and making phone calls and assembling lists. The usual bone-grinding police work. As they rose to disperse, Bledsoe gave a quick whistle. “Before I forget. Expenses. Save your receipts, give ’em to me in an envelope marked with your name every Monday for the previous week. Make sure you write down what each receipt is for. I’ll get them to admin at my house and they’ll send it through internal review. So don’t be ordering no three-course meals. Now go home and get some rest. We’ll meet here every morning at eight. You can’t make it, let me know. We’re on flex time, but I don’t want anyone taking advantage. We got us a killer to catch, and each day, each hour, each minute that passes we don’t get something accomplished means some other woman is closer to being cut up. Clear?”

  Everyone nodded, then dispersed. Vail walked over to Hancock, who tilted his chin back and looked down his nose at her. She said, “I think you were right, Hancock. About the artistic feel to the murals. Just wanted you to know.”

  Hancock regarded her for a few seconds before responding. “You know, I could’ve done your job, Vail. I could’ve been a profiler.”

  Vail pulled a stick of gum from her pocket and folded it into her mouth. “What do you want me to say? Wasn’t my decision.”

  “That’s what you want to think. No guilt that way. But I’m over it, I’ve got a good job. And I’m in charge. I don’t need to take any orders from superiors. I call the shots.”

  “Glad it worked out.” Vail turned to gather her papers, but Hancock grabbed her arm.

  “I know you said some bad things about me.” His voice was low, as if he didn’t want anyone else to hear. “I won’t forget that.”

  Vail’s eyes narrowed. “Don’t threaten me, Hancock. Nothing you say or do scares me. You come at me, I’ll crush you under my heel. Don’t you forget that.”

  Vail grabbed her leather messenger bag and winked at Robby, then walked out the door.

  fourteen

  Charcoal gray thunderclouds threatened a downpour, but thus far they had held their load. Karen Vail had a ten o’clock appointment with her family law attorney but stopped at Deacon’s house on the way. If there was an amicable solution to the custody issue—meaning no attorneys involved—she wanted to find it. She liked her attorney but had no desire to fund another of his five-star resort vacations.

  She didn’t think Deacon would go for it, but she was prepared to make a Mafia-style offer: one he couldn’t refuse . . . one that would waive her rights to the house. If there was one way to get at the armored organ Deacon once called a heart, it was through his wallet.

  Vail stood at the peeling steel gray wood door and felt like a trespasser. It’d only been eighteen months since she had moved out, but in that time she had become a different person. A person who couldn’t stand the man who owned the house she used to call her own. She put her hands on her hips and glanced down at her feet. Did she really want to ring this bell? Did she really want to see Deacon?

  She could go through her attorney, have him handle everything, and never have to see her ex’s face agai
n. But if she could appeal to the side of him she used to love, the good-natured, hard-working soul that shriveled into oblivion, maybe get him to agree—

  The wood door swung open and revealed a disheveled forty-year old man, leather-grained face and wild, pepper-colored hair. A stained white T-shirt hung over faded jeans. He may have stood near five-eleven, but his large-boned frame and new paunch made him look larger than that. He stepped closer to the screen door. “The fuck you doing here?”

  Vail immediately marveled at how an individual could descend so quickly, and completely, into Dante’s Inferno.