Signature: A David Wolf Mystery (David Wolf Mystery Thriller Series Book 9)

by Jeff Carson

  “She was tied up with hemp rope, which we found in her wrist tissue.”

  Click. Sally Claypool’s left ankle, which was also deeply bruised and scabbed.

  “Same thing with the ankles. By the abrasions, it looked like she was hogtied, with her hands lashed to her feet behind her back.”

  Click. A close up of her fingernails.

  “Analysis of the dirt under her fingernails did not match the dirt composition of the area she was found in, which suggests she was brought somewhere else for a short while before she was taken to her final destination. Gene?” Lorber tossed his assistant the clicker.

  Gene was gazing up at the screen and the clicker bounced off his chest and clattered to the floor. He bent over and picked it up, and when he rose his face was so filled with blood it looked like his head might pop.

  “The dirt is, uh, a conglomeration of many geological strata found in the Quaternary Alluvial fan in the Chautauqua valley—the different types of rock dumped out of the steep canyons onto the valley floor.”

  Gene cleared his throat. “We did a close examination of the dirt at the scene and compared it to under her nails. The dirt at the crime scene, on that entire section of the river and to the south, has a high iron content. Hence the reddish color of the dirt south of town. The dirt under her nails does not have high iron content. We know through the composition that it is from the alluvial fan that came out of the Rainbow Creek valley and flowed north, in the same direction of the Chautauqua River.”

  “Which means?” MacLean pointed his pen in the air.

  “So the killer took her somewhere north of where Rainbow Creek comes out of the mountains,” Wolf said.

  Gene nodded and pointed at Wolf. “Yes. The dirt indicates she was taken north. Held for a short period of time, and then taken to where she was killed.”

  The assistant ME tossed the laser clicker back to Lorber like it was a live grenade.

  Lorber caught it without looking. “Rainbow Creek got its name for a reason—because it has so many minerals and other materials running down it from those mines up the valley. We found all those minerals under her nails.”

  “Okay, I got it,” MacLean said.

  Click. A side view of Sally Claypool lying on her back. The underside of her body was deep purple.

  “As you can see, the blood pooled in her back, at the same angle of the slope of the riverbank she was found on, which suggests she was brought there alive and strangled where she lay. It’s also suggesting the killer then put her in this pose.”

  Click. Back to her on the riverbank.

  “And he left her for the river rats to find the next day. Clearly a display. Rape kit was clean, no sexual activity within the time of her incarceration.”

  Click. Indentations in the sand next to the river came up on screen.

  “These are shoe prints of our killer, but unusable except to suggest it was a man with a sized nine to twelve shoe who brought her there. You can see some washed out scrape marks, suggesting he placed her body on the ground and pulled her into place. Other than that, they tell us nothing. The rain erased anything useful such as shoe tread pattern and exact size.”

  “As far as the rest of the scene,” Lorber shook his head, “Clean as a whistle. It rained at least one inch two nights ago, and it cleaned her and everything else in the vicinity. We found little save the hemp fibers embedded in her wrists, and the dirt under her fingernails. Otherwise, we’re looking at too much environmental interference. Absolutely nothing at all from the perpetrator. Except for what he wanted us to find. Her.”

  Lorber gestured to Luke.

  She stood and walked to the front of the room. “Thank you Dr. Lorber.”

  “And I take it there was no DNA under her nails?” Wolf asked.

  Lorber shook his head and nodded at Gene. “None. We think he kept her tied up, strangled her, and then untied her. If she was conscious, that keeps her from fighting back, and keeps any defensive wounds off our assailant.”

  Lorber looked around the room. When no more questions came he handed the clicker to Luke.

  “Any more questions for Doctor Lorber?”

  No one spoke. The five county officials seated next to MacLean looked queasy. They were used to dissecting county budgets, not human beings.

  Luke gestured at Wolf. “Chief Detective Wolf, you conducted the interviews with the campers nearby on the river, correct?”

  Wolf nodded. “My detectives did, yes.”

  “Would you like to come up to the front and tell us what they said?”

  Standing up, Wolf took position next to Luke. “There were three camps within a quarter-mile of where the victim was found. One down river, two up river. All of them within distance of being able to hear something, and perhaps see something, but that would have been on a normal night. Since it was raining they all gave similar stories—they were holed up in their tents until the morning. They saw and heard nothing.” He sat back down.

  “Thank you Detective Wolf.” She bent over her computer and chose a different file on her desktop. Clicking it open, a hokey looking font flashed up on the screen that read, “The Van Gogh Killer.”

  “All right,” Luke said. “We’ve covered Sally Claypool. Now let’s get everyone up to speed with what we have on our Van Gogh Killer.”

  Clicking her handheld pointer, the next slide of her presentation came up.

  It read: Modus Operandi.

  1) Strangulation.

  2) Semen inside victims. (Non-match in NDIS to date)

  3) Lacerations.

  4) Tying of victims’ wrists and ankles.

  5) Abrasions, bruising.

  6) Display of corpse.

  7) Severed ear.

  8) Fentanyl injection.

  “You can read the list up here,” Luke said, “and see the MO matches closely with Sally Claypool. The strangulation, the lacerations, the tying of the wrists and ankles, abrasions and bruising on the body, the Fentanyl injection, the display of the corpse for the public to see, and most importantly the severed ear—it’s all there for Sally Claypool. But,” she circled item number two with her laser, “there was no semen inside Sally Claypool, no DNA from our killer. Not the case with our killer down south. He left semen in each of his victims.”

  She clicked the button and a slide came up that was segmented into eight different squares. Within each square was a head shot of a dead victim on an examiner’s table, each with a missing ear, save the first victim who still had both ears.

  Groans passed through the room.

  “Seven victims in all, but we’re including the first victim here,” she circled the first square with her laser, “because although the killing did not follow the same MO as the others, she still has both ears, semen with DNA matching the killer was found inside her.”

  “How was she killed?” Lorber asked.

  “Blunt force trauma to the head and chest.” Luke clicked the button again and a map came up on screen.

  The map was of southwestern Colorado, with the four corners of Colorado, Utah, Arizona and New Mexico borders butting up to form a plus sign in the lower left corner of the screen. There were eight red dots on screen, all contained within the Colorado borders.

  “These are the locations the eight bodies were found. As you can see, it’s quite a spread of territory the killer covered, but all within Colorado. Silverton, Colorado was the first. The one with blunt force trauma, and not strangulation. That was Jessica Meinhoff, our number one here.” She circled the laser. “It’s also important to note that in Silverton, Jessica Meinhoff was not displayed like the others, either. She was found along a hiking trail. Two: Downtown Cortez, Maria Chico. This was the first body to be displayed. She was found on a neighborhood sidewalk in much the same position as our Sally Claypool. Three: Bayfield, Samantha Winston. Also displayed. Number four …”

  She listed the eight victims and their locations, of which three were found within Durango city limits.

 
; “The timing is over two calendar years, ending at the end of the summer two years ago. The frequency of the kills went up in the end, almost to a frantic pace, with the last three murders occurring in three consecutive months in the summer until,” Luke snapped her fingers, “it all came to a stop.”

  She clicked back to the eight victims and circled the laser on number eight.

  The headshot photo was like the others—swollen, closed eyes, black bruising on the neck. Her hair was crow black, her skin pale clay.

  “This is Rose Chissie. Our final victim down south, killed right before our killer,” she paused and chose a word, “took a break. Rose Chissie grew up on the Ute Mountain reservation, south of Cortez, and then moved up to Durango after high school, where she attended trade school and met a woman named Mary Attakai.

  Luke paused for effect.

  “Yes. They are related. Mary Attakai is your deputy Jeremy Attakai’s little sister.” Luke slipped a leg on the edge of the table and sat. “I mentioned the killer got more frantic in the final months of his killings. The amount of time between killings became shorter. The display locations more brazen. One victim was found in the middle of an intersection of the side streets of Durango. And no, there were no witnesses.

  “But in the end, it looks like his recklessness caught up to him. Because on August twenty-third, he was staking out a parking lot of a restaurant where our eighth victim, Rose Chissie, worked. Mary Attakai came to pick her up, and our man abducted them both. He incapacitated both of them, drugged them with a needle, put them into his SUV, brought them out in the desert, and began doing his thing with Rose Chissie. Mary woke up and miraculously escaped on foot, eventually making it to the highway, and was picked up by a trucker, who brought her to the hospital.

  “She gave law enforcement a description as an overweight, long dark hair, bearded man. But that’s all she had.”

  Wolf’s heart pumped harder as he thought about the man near the river. He’d had a dark beard. Long, dark hair.

  “She also said that he’d been wearing some sort of mask as he was attacking Rose,” Luke continued. “A Native American ritualistic mask. She said he lifted the mask for a second, and she ran away. I said earlier that her escape was miraculous, because she ran straight off the edge of a cliff.”

  The room let out a collective gasp.

  Luke nodded. “Her wounds corroborate her story of tumbling down a tree from top to bottom until she hit the ground. She had multiple contusions, scrapes, bark embedded in her skin, but no broken bones. The hospital found she had fentanyl in her system.

  “Her story is she got up and walked out of the valley, all the way to highway 550, where she was picked up by a trucker. With all that happened to her combined with the drugs in her system, we’ve been taking her description of her assailant with a grain of salt.”

  “What about the vehicle?” MacLean asked. “Did she have a description of that?”

  “Her description of the man’s vehicle was a white, midsized SUV. Older than new, she said. The man? Fat. Hairy. But quick.”

  MacLean cleared his throat. “Excuse me.”

  “Yes.” Luke clasped her hands behind her back.

  “But my Deputy Attakai, and check me if I’m wrong, isn’t an overweight man with long hair and a beard. In fact, I’ve seen his photos from La Plata County SD when he worked down south, and he never had long hair and a beard, nor was he ever fat.”

  “Correct.” Luke raised her eyebrows, as if to ask if he was done.

  MacLean sat frozen with one hand in the air, then he dropped it.

  Pushing off from the table, Luke clicked the clicker and a picture of the dirtiest SUV Wolf had ever seen in his life came onscreen. It was reddish brown from the mud that caked every inch of its surface from the roof to the rubber on the wheels.

  “Five days ago a company carrying out a fracking well cleanup project unearthed this south of Durango. They pulled it out with their excavators.”

  Luke clicked to the next slide, which was a rear perspective of the SUV. The words Ford and Explorer were wiped clean of dirt and the green Colorado license plate had been cleaned to reveal the number.

  “The company informed La Plata SD about their find. The department traced the SUV’s registration and came up with the name Fred Wilcox. Seen here.”

  She clicked a button again, and a headshot of a man came up on screen.

  Fred Wilcox’s hair was a tangled mess, pulled back into a ponytail. The skin of his face was pasty white, the lower half covered in a greasy beard. He had oil pool black eyes that were wide open, like he’d been photographed the moment after somebody told him he had a month to live.

  Wolf’s first impression was that they were looking at a cold-blooded killer. If you decided there was no humor in the ludicrous facial expression, then all that was left was psychotic murderer. There was no in between.

  “Looks like a perfect match for Mary Attakai’s description,” MacLean said. “Minus a Navajo mask I guess.”

  Silence descended on the room.

  Luke clicked again. Tight, blue carpet filled the screen. It was filthy, stained with maroon and brown, streaks of black and tan. There was a woman’s shoe lying in the upper corner of the photo.

  “This is the interior of Fred Wilcox’s Ford Explorer. This shoe had Rose Chissie’s blood on it. We tested the rug in the back of the Explorer and found DNA matching our eighth victim, Rose Chissie. Subsequent testing has matched a different sample of blood to our sixth victim.”

  “So,” MacLean snorted, “Fred Wilcox is the killer. This fat guy with a beard, just like Deputy Attakai’s little sister said. So why are you guys so erect over Deputy Attakai being the culprit?”

  The room turned and looked at MacLean.

  MacLean blinked.

  Luke clicked the pointer again, and a picture of a cell phone came up on screen. It had push buttons and a one-square-inch screen, not a small television like the ones most people carried. A dumb phone. A burner phone.

  “We found this phone in the center console. It took us a while to clone it and access the data, but when we did we found this was a burner cell purchased in southwest Colorado at a big box retailer. There was one phone number it had called repeatedly, and only one.

  “Our techs tried to locate the phone it had been calling but got nothing. The other phone was dark. Not transmitting at all. That was a few days ago. But then we were surprised that the next day we tried again and someone answered. The duration of the call was short, but long enough to locate it. It was transmitting to cell towers here in Rocky Points.”

  “We triangulated it to a few hundred square meters. A small space, relatively speaking, but not exact by any means. And found the epicenter to be the front of this building.”

  Once again Luke let silence descend on the room.

  “That’s when you came into town,” Wolf said.

  She nodded. “That’s when we came into town. We set up surveillance cameras at various points outside your building, and we called it again. But unfortunately there was no answer. And since that moment, since that first call that was answered, it’s been shut off.”

  “And then Sally Claypool was murdered,” Wolf said.

  Luke nodded. “Before we could coordinate anything with you, Sally Claypool was murdered, and we’ve been on scramble mode ever since.”

  “But you heard Sally’s mother talk about how she had been dating Deputy Attakai,” Wolf said. “And you thought about the phone call coming from the building so you thought it must have been him.”

  Luke gave a non-committal shrug.

  MacLean raised his hand. “I hate to beat a dead horse here, but, you found the truck down in Durango that all but proves the killer was Fred Wilcox, so you came up here and went after Deputy Attakai?”

  She said nothing.

  “Why would you do that?” he asked. “Why are you in the slightest bit interested in my deputy?”

  “Because there was a second killer,�
�� Wolf said.

  Every head in the room turned toward him.

  “What?” MacLean asked.

  “There were two cell phones, because there were two killers,” Wolf said. “There are missing pieces of the MO, because only one of them killed Sally Claypool—the one who isn’t Fred Wilcox, would be my guess. Otherwise, we’d be finding his DNA inside of Sally Claypool. Otherwise, the feds wouldn’t be here looking for someone who isn’t Fred Wilcox. They wouldn’t be arresting Deputy Attakai.”

  The heads of the room turned back to Luke.

  She said nothing, just gave a look to her superior, raised her hand and clicked the button again.

  Another slide came onscreen, and another gasp swept across the room.

  There were eight squares again, all with different colors of flesh inside each box. But this time they were looking at feet. Left feet.

  In all the pictures except the first square, there were red stumps where the big toes should have been.

  “Good work, Detective Wolf.” Agent Luke stood and paced. “When the FBI were called into southwestern Colorado after the third killing, we were surprised to learn that local law enforcement had been hiding a piece of the signature from the public—a severed left big toe.”

  Dr. Lorber slapped his knee and leaned forward in his chair, smiling.

  “As we’re all aware of,” Agent Luke said, “Sally Claypool did not have a severed toe. If Fred Wilcox had done it, and he followed the MO of his previous eight victims, then we would have found DNA inside of Sally Claypool. But we didn’t.”

  She set down the laser clicker on the table and held out her hands.

  “That’s where we’re at, folks.”

  MacLean let out a long sound that sounded like a laugh. “Okay, so let me wrap my brain around this. You find Fred Wilcox’s truck buried in the ground four days ago.”

  “Five,” Luke said.

  “Whatever. You figure out, from the DNA inside—his and the victims’—that he’s the killer … or one of the killers.”

  “Correct. We found his hair in the driver’s seat. We found the DNA of two of the victims, blood and hair, in the back. We then checked his DNA against the database and found it to match the semen found inside—”