The 7th Victim

by Alan Jacobson

  “Okay, listen up,” Kilgore said. He positioned his headset so the mouthpiece of his two-way radio was squarely in front of his mouth. “Radio communication or hand signals only from this point forward. We fan out and establish a perimeter fifty yards off the house. When all looks secure, we’ll move in and breach the place. You’ve all got your marks. Check in as each of you hit them. Remember, this guy is dangerous. Word is he used to hunt fox, so he’s obviously a good shot. Be careful, treat the situation as if he’s got an arsenal in there. We don’t know what to expect. Questions?” He waited a beat, surveyed his team, then said, “Move out.”

  “Which team you want us with?” Vail asked.

  Kilgore stiffened. “That’s the problem with having you here. I’ve got nowhere to put you.”

  “We’ll form our own team,” Bledsoe said.

  “What if I don’t have extra headsets for all of you?”

  “Give us what you got. We’ll stay together, out of your way. But once you secure the place, we need to be in there right behind you.”

  Kilgore stepped to the back of the truck, lifted the canvas covering, and slipped beneath it. He emerged a moment later with six spare headsets. Handing them to Bledsoe, he said, “Don’t change the frequency. And stay out of the way. Above all, don’t fuck up my operation.” Kilgore spun and ran off into the brush to catch up to his team.

  “You gonna take that, Blood?” Manette asked.

  “I did and I will. Remember the reason why we’re here.”

  Sinclair pulled on a black ball cap to cover his shiny bald head and slipped on a headset. He motioned for Del Monaco to go first. “You gonna be able to make it?”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “You’re carrying some extra tonnage and this is gonna be a long hike.”

  “Extra tonnage,” Manette said. “I like that. Mind if I use it, Sin?”

  “Be my guest.”

  “The ‘extra tonnage’ doesn’t slow me down,” Del Monaco said. “I pass all the physical endurance tests the Bureau requires. But thanks so much for your concern.” He motioned Sinclair ahead of him, then fell into formation behind him.

  THEY TREKKED through the forested stands of pine and cedar and occasional oak, emerging at a clearing and hugging the tree-lined perimeter for cover. After nearly an hour’s hike, the various SERT members were beginning to call in, stating they had reached their positions.

  For the task force group, Robby led the way at the point, with Bledsoe following in the second position. Manette was third, Sinclair next, Vail, and then Del Monaco pulling up the rear. Despite his assertions about passing the endurance tests, Del Monaco had never hiked through forestland on uneven terrain after having gone thirty-five straight hours without sleep.

  By the time all team members were in final position, daylight had melted to dusk. The quarter moon was hiding behind cloud cover, and the temperature had plummeted another several degrees. Their breath was vapor, a dangerous situation when involved in covert maneuvers. For the task force members, who lacked night-vision goggles, the darkness was a double-edged sword: though it provided them adequate cover, it also prevented them from seeing unknown objects in unfamiliar territory.

  From what they could see in the failing light, the house appeared to be a medium-sized clapboard two-story home that looked very much its one hundred and fifteen years. The paint, or at least what was left of it, was peeling and faded. The porch decking was cracked and dry. It was for this reason that Kilgore had wanted the Virtual Earth photos: he saw what appeared to be decking and knew, from his years of experience, that wood and nails and the ravages of weather produced noises one had better not encounter when attempting to launch a surprise attack. Due to Kilgore’s diligent intel, the team members were prepared and followed a preplanned route around the deck.

  Vail bent her mouthpiece away from her face and asked, “Now what?”

  Bledsoe stood beside her, both of them hunched behind a largetrunked redwood. “Now I kick myself for not asking them for night-vision goggles.”

  “Most important thing is that they have them.”

  “How’s your knee?” Bledsoe asked.

  Robby had seen her pop a couple Extra Strength Tylenol just prior to beginning the hike, but she had shrugged it off. “I’m not going to let a little pain stop me.”

  “A little pain?” he had asked.

  “Okay, a lot of pain.”

  Now, after the long hike, she framed it with level-headed realism. “As long as I don’t run out of pain pills, I’ll be fine.”

  “When this is over,” Bledsoe said, “we’ll get a chopper in, fly you out of here.”

  “Not exactly how I’d pictured my own private limo.” She inched to her right and watched as the first tactical officer moved to the left of the front door frame. Though the other four team members had gone around to the back door and were engaged in similar maneuvers, they were outside Vail’s line of sight. She pressed the earpiece against her head. She didn’t want to miss this.

  “Unit one in position and ready to move,” the anxious voice said over the headset.

  “Unit two, three, and four ready.” Vail immediately recognized Kilgore’s voice.

  Vail’s heart was slamming against her chest.

  “Unit five, six, seven, and eight ready.”

  “Hold all positions,” Kilgore whispered. He moved his fist in front of the door and banged it hard several times: the knock-and-notice. “Patrick Farwell, this is the sheriff,” he shouted. “We know you’re in there. We’ve got the place surrounded. Come out with your hands up.”

  The house remained dark, the air still.

  “Flash bang, sir?” asked one of the officers.

  “No.” Kilgore’s voice was stern. “Stick to tactical.”

  Another voice over the radio, probably from the back. “Unit eight reports no sign of movement.”

  “Roger that,” Kilgore said. “On my mark.” After waiting a beat, he said, “Go!”

  The first position moved aside and the second officer stepped up with a Stinger battering ram. “Second in position. On my mark. Go!” He swung back the thirty-five-pound steel cylinder, then arced it forward and breached the door, sending shards of splintered wood flying in all directions. The position three team member, Lon Kilgore, rushed the house.

  Vail put her head down and concentrated on the voices coming through her headset:

  “Entryway, clear.”

  “Kitchen, clear.”

  “Living room—hold it—body, I got a body. Male, looks to be in his late fifties maybe.” Pause. Then: “Dead. Rest of living room, clear.”

  Vail turned to Bledsoe. “What the hell?” She bent the mike back in front of her mouth. “How long has he been dead? What’s the apparent COD?”

  Kilgore’s voice crackled through her headset: “Get off the damn radio!”

  “Shit,” she said, rising and moving out from behind the tree.

  Bledsoe grabbed her left arm. “Wait here, Karen. Let them clear the house, then we can go in.”

  She pulled herself free with a windmill of her shoulder. She yanked the Glock from her side holster and stepped toward the house. “I’m going in now.”

  Robby, ten feet back behind another tree, emerged and followed her forward. “We’re coming in,” Vail announced.

  “Upstairs bedroom, clear. Holy shit—”

  Vail stopped, instinctively raised her weapon with both hands. “What?”

  “This is one sick fuck,” the tactical officer said. “All sorts of shit hanging around up here. And I mean hanging. Five severed hands strung up from the ceiling. Holy, Jesus.”

  Vail exchanged a knowing glance with Robby, then proceeded up the steps toward the fractured front door. She moved slowly into the living room, where she came upon the body.

  “Upstairs bedroom two, clear,” another voice said somewhere in her ear. But she was not listening. She was staring at the face of Patrick Farwell.

 
; Her father.

  The Dead Eyes killer.

  seventy-two

  Frank Del Monaco knelt beside Vail and matched her gaze. “I don’t get it,” she finally said.

  “He unraveled,” Del Monaco said. “Just like the others.”

  “What others?” Robby asked. He was standing behind them, his hat and headset dangling from his left hand.

  “All the serial killers. They reach a point where the killing gets to be too much even for them to handle. Even though they have no moral sense, deep down they know what they’re doing is wrong. It’s not enough to stop them, but the pressure builds to the point where they can’t deal with it. It’s an end game.”

  “But suicide?” Robby asked.

  “They get sloppy,” Vail said. “Their fantasies get more violent, their order disintegrates into disorder. Organization into disorganization. That’s how we caught Bundy. If we hadn’t caught him, he might’ve eventually done himself.”

  “Linwood’s crime scene certainly was an indicator,” Del Monaco said, “though we didn’t see it that way. I think we still called it right. The personal connection, the overkill.”

  “But the violence wasn’t just because of that,” Vail said. “He was coming undone at the same time. Maybe killing Linwood, the woman who took his daughter from him, was too much for him to handle.”

  Del Monaco shook his head. “More like he had done what he needed to do, what he’d fantasized about doing, for the fifteen big ones he’d done in the slammer. He got out and bang, he saw women who reminded him of Linwood when she was younger, the way he remembered her the last time he’d seen her. Even though he may not have consciously been aware of it, he killed them because he was killing her, over and over again.”

  “Then he somehow found her. Found Linwood. And he went after her.”

  “What’s the COD?” Sinclair asked, walking into the room.

  Del Monaco answered: “Gunshot wound to the forehead. Lots of stippling on the face. Close range, an old thirty-eight. Gun’s still in his hand. Looks like a suicide.”

  “How long ago?”

  “Just a guess, but I’d say a day, maybe a little less.”

  “Let’s get a powder residue, just to be sure,” Sinclair said.

  “Karen,” Bledsoe called, “you should see this.”

  She rose and followed his voice up the stairs to the bedroom. Five left hands hung from the ceiling with thin fishing line. In the lighting, they appeared to be floating in mid-air. “Five . . . tell the lab we need to know which one’s missing.”

  Bledsoe nodded. “Then there’s this.” He led her down the hall into the bathroom. Scrawled on the mirror in lipstick were the words “It’s in the blood.”

  Vail sighed deeply. She looked around the old bathroom, the toilet the kind that had a wall-mounted water tank and a pull-chain flush mechanism.

  “Looks like we got our man,” Bledsoe said.

  Vail nodded. “Yeah.”

  “You okay?”

  She pouted her lips. “I thought I might feel something, like I’d been here before. Because I have, I must have been. I was an infant here, till Linwood had the sense to get the hell out.” Her eyes bounced around the bathroom and into the hallway. “But I don’t feel anything.”

  “You were a baby. What do you expect?”

  “I don’t know, Bledsoe. I just thought I’d feel something. Then again, there aren’t that many things that move me these days.”

  Just then, she noticed Robby standing in the doorway. “I’ll move you,” he said, taking her hand.

  She followed him out of the bathroom and whispered up toward his ear, “You already have, Robby. You already have.”

  seventy-three

  Gifford stood at the head of the conference room, addressing the profiling unit, Vail at his side. “I think we all owe Agent Vail sincere thanks for a damn fine job in helping break the Dead Eyes case. And for standing by her convictions. I know we all doubted her at various times in the past eighteen-plus months. I’m as guilty as anyone else, and for that I apologize.” He looked over at Vail, who felt that Gifford was genuine in his apology.

  “Thank you, sir. I appreciate it.”

  Applause broke out for a brief moment but stopped at Gifford’s raised hand. “Let’s all get back to work.” He leaned over and whispered into her ear. “Meet me in my office in ten minutes.”

  THE MANNER IN WHICH GIFFORD had approached this morning’s recognition of her efforts, in front of the entire unit, was completely unexpected—and was thus something Vail had been unprepared for. Though it meant a great deal to her, she could not fully appreciate it because both her body and mind were in fairly rotten shape. She felt as if she had been run over by a truck and wanted nothing more than to crawl back into bed and sleep for several days.

  Following the episode at the Farwell ranch, Vail had been airlifted off the property by a county chopper and taken to a waiting cruiser at the Fairfax County Police Department’s Mason District Station. She then had been driven back to Robby’s house, where she took another two Tylenols and fell asleep in bed, without even changing out of her dirty clothing. She had awakened to a call at 9 A.M. from Gifford’s secretary, asking her to report to work in one hour.

  Now, as she sat in Gifford’s office, the haze of the past forty-eight hours still hovered over her like a thick fog. What did he want to talk to her about? Reinstatement? Not possible with the charges still pending against her. Then what, a commendation? Not likely, for the same reasons. Commending an agent whose ass was still on the line for assault was . . . poor timing.

  Gifford strode in and sat down behind his desk. He leaned back and sighed. “I know you and I have not always seen eye-to-eye, but I’m ready to move past all that. You came through big time. I know there were others on the task force, but you were a big part of the winning team. Good work, you made us proud.”

  “Thank you, sir.”

  “There is something I wanted to talk to you about. It’s a step toward regaining your job, assuming, of course, you’re cleared by judge and jury.” He scanned his desk, moved a file, and found the document he was looking for. “Here’s a list of three Bureau psychologists. Pick one and make an appointment.”

  She took the paper. “A shrink?”

  “A shrink. It’s for your own good. Anger management, for one. OPR will want to see that in order to clear you of their own investigation. Also, given all the crap you’ve just been through, and are still dealing with . . . it’s for your own good, really.”

  Vail pursed her lips. She couldn’t argue with that. “Okay, sir. I’ll make an appointment.”

  Gifford nodded, then his phone buzzed. “Go home and get some sleep. Get that knee of yours examined. I want you back full strength when the time comes.”

  She smiled, arose gingerly from the chair, and then left.

  seventy-four

  Vail walked, or rather hobbled, back to her car feeling no pain. And it was not just from the Tylenol she kept popping. It was because for the first time she could remember, she had been afforded the respect she thought she had always deserved but had never received. She climbed into her car, pulling in the left knee slowly, then headed out of the commerce center’s parking lot.

  She intended to heed Gifford’s advice about getting some sleep, but first she needed to make a stop. She arrived at the hospital, made her way up the elevator to Jonathan’s floor, and heard “Code Blue! Code Blue. All available personnel. . . .”

  Her brain still in a stupor, her mind suddenly focused on a grouping of white lab coats at the entrance to Jonathan’s room. “Oh, my God!” she gasped, then took off down the hall, fearing the worst. Thoughts pored through her mind as she whizzed by the rooms along the long corridor: he was doing so well! Small steps, pieces to the puzzle. My son, my son. . . .

  A group of hospital personnel in scrubs ran past her down the hallway. In the back of her mind, Vail realized the emergency was for another patient on the floor, not Jona
than. But she was not completely tuned into her thoughts yet, and she fought through the mass of white coats congregated in the doorway, grabbing and pushing bodies aside. The interns were huddled around Altman, who stood beside Jonathan. Her son’s eyes were open and he was smiling.

  “Mom!”

  “Jonathan?” She stepped forward, arms outstretched, and an instant later felt his hands on her back, patting her gently. Finally, she released him and leaned back to look at him.