Vengeance is Mine - A Benjamin Tucker Mystery

by Harry James Krebs

  The room was almost full by nine o’clock. I looked around but didn’t recognize anyone except Netter, and Detective Frank Cox from the Wake County Sheriff’s Department. But I couldn’t miss a tall, attractive redheaded woman sitting at one of the tables, scrolling through something on her iPhone.

  The meeting began with Mayor Harvey Richards giving an opening statement of thanks to the task force members. Then Netter took over.

  “You should each have a white binder,” he said. “Inside is the member contact list and their jurisdictions. This is a multi-organizational task force, but the lead responsibility for the investigation lies with the City of Cary. This is because the first victim, Renee Clancy, was murdered here in Cary. Also, we have resources here that many of our neighboring communities are unable to provide.”

  Netter introduced the key members of the task force, who included investigators from the cities of Raleigh, Durham, Chapel Hill, Cary, and Apex; and also Sheriff’s detectives and crime scene investigators from Wake County. Representatives from the Capital District of the State Bureau of Investigation, the North Carolina State Highway Patrol, and the redheaded lady I’d noticed earlier, FBI Special Agent Lainie MacKenzie, were also seated at the table. Key members would meet each morning at nine o’clock, seven days a week. All other members were invited to attend on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays.

  I thumbed through the binder and examined the remaining contents. Included were police reports from both homicide investigations, crime scene photographs, and medical examiner reports.

  Netter displayed a photograph of a woman on the screen in the front of the room. “This is Renee Jean Clancy of 3812 Greentree Place in Cary. She was thirty-two years old. The photograph you’re looking at was taken on March 2.” He then displayed a crime scene photo showing Clancy’s nude, decapitated corpse. She was staged sitting up on the bed in the master bedroom with her hands holding an open Bible—her head was missing from the scene. “This is how she looked on Monday, March 16. Ms. Clancy’s live-in boyfriend, Jeff Walker, left for work at two-thirty in the afternoon and returned to find her in this condition at eleven forty-five that evening.” Netter then played an audio of Walker’s frantic 911 call.

  Clancy wasn’t romantically involved with anyone other than Walker, who had been living with her for the past eighteen months. They’d met on the internet.

  Walker worked as the front desk attendant at the Cary Inn, where his presence on the afternoon and evening of March 16 was confirmed by co-workers and hotel guests, as well as security camera video. His relationship with Clancy was stormy, but there was no indication Walker was involved with anyone else, and investigators didn’t find a significant motive for murder.

  Renee Clancy had been divorced three years earlier after a six-year marriage. There were no children from the marriage, and the divorce appeared amicable. Clancy’s ex-husband currently lived in Miami and was remarried. According to him, he hadn’t spoken with Clancy for two years.

  Clancy had worked as a sales representative for four years in the housewares department of the Sears store at the Cary Towne Center Mall. Her supervisor and co-workers said she was a very personable, hard worker. There were no known instances of unpleasant exchanges between Clancy and co-workers or customers. Still, investigators were reviewing the sales records credited to her over the previous eighteen months.

  The home on Greentree Place had been purchased by Clancy three years earlier. She’d taken advantage of the drop in housing values and used money borrowed from her parents as a down payment. The surrounding neighbors were understandably shocked by her murder and couldn’t believe what had happened. They all said Clancy was a kind person, a good neighbor, and someone always willing to participate in community activities. None of them could provide any helpful information to the police.

  Clancy’s head was missing from the crime scene, indicating that the perpetrator had taken it with him when he left. It was discovered on the deceased’s gravesite fifteen days later on March 31 by a groundskeeper at Resurrection Cemetery in Cary. In a final act of disrespect, the murderer had styled Clancy’s hair into a long braid and wound it around her neck. Details pertaining to this discovery had not been released to the media.

  The circumstances surrounding the second death were presented by Detective Arnold Erikson of the Apex Police Department. The victim was thirty-five-year-old Carla Diane Knudsen of 233 West Pine Meadow in Apex. Erikson displayed a photo of Knudsen, who had the same physical characteristics as Clancy, including height, weight, hair color, and approximate age. He displayed a photo of the crime scene taken in the victim’s bedroom. Like Clancy, the remains were nude with the head missing from the scene. She was also staged sitting up on the bed with her hands holding an open Bible.

  Her lifeless body was discovered on Friday, April 3 at seven thirty in the evening by her eleven-year-old daughter, Sarah. A neighbor found Sarah outside in front of the house, screaming hysterically.

  Knudsen was divorced from thirty-eight-year-old Lester David Knudsen of Garner. The divorce was highly contentious, with the conflict centering on child visitation rights and the property settlement. Mr. Knudsen was ordered to pay eight hundred and fifty dollars a month in child support, plus he was forced to relinquish his interest in the marital home. In return, he was able to keep the retirement annuity he had accumulated through his place of employment, Garner Electric, where he worked as an electrician. He was current on his child support obligation.

  Mr. Knudsen claimed to be at his home in Garner at the time of his ex-wife’s death. However, he was alone, and this could not be corroborated.

  Ms. Knudsen was an agent for State Farm Insurance out of an office on north Highway 55 in Apex. Her co-workers liked her and knew of no incidents involving altercations with any of her clients.

  Investigators could find no evidence that Ms. Knudsen had been involved in a romantic relationship since her divorce.

  At ten o’clock, the task force took a short break to relieve those who had consumed too much coffee. I poured myself a glass of orange juice and walked outside. Netter was already standing on the sidewalk puffing on one of his hideous cigars and speaking with Detective Cox. As soon as I joined them, my cell phone buzzed. I pulled it out, looked at the caller ID, and shook my head.

  “Uh-oh,” Cox said, watching my reaction, “looks like woman trouble.”

  I returned the phone to my pocket. “It’s my divorce attorney,” I said. “I wonder what Jennifer wants now. She probably found a pimple on her ass and is blaming me for it. Why can’t this lunatic pay her a visit and do me a favor?”

  “Christ, Tucker,” Cox said, “that’s pretty sick.”

  He laughed and turned to Netter. “Hey, how ‘bout the babe at the table with the dark red hair?”

  Netter exhaled enough smoke to pollute the city of Cary. “FBI profiler from Quantico,” he said. “She’s up to talk after the CSI lady.”

  Cox raised his eyebrows “Whoa … no shit? All that and brains too. Well, I wouldn’t mind giving her my profile some night.”

  “Now who’s the sick bastard?” I asked.

  CHAPTER 3

  When the meeting resumed, Dr. Stanley Huffman, the Wake County Medical Examiner, presented autopsy results on both victims. But I had difficulty concentrating on his presentation. He had an uncanny resemblance to Bela Lugosi and at two points, I almost burst out laughing. All that was missing was the cape.

  But the crime scene photos quickly erased any trace of the humor I’d seen in the situation. The victims had been staged for optimal effect upon discovery. They had each been sexually assaulted, and seminal fluids recovered at the scenes would provide DNA identification markers that could be compared to potential suspects.

  The heads were removed post-mortem. Thank god. “The crime scenes were grisly, but the amount of blood and spatter would have been significantly greater if the victims were still alive during the act,” Huffman said, before stepping down.

 
; Angela Dreckmann, Chief Crime Scene Investigator for the Wake County Crime Lab, walked to the front of the room and began her presentation. She was a bland, very plain looking woman in her early sixties who exuded professionalism and technical competence.

  Dreckmann started by saying no unidentified fingerprints were found, and then she went into a lot of CSI stuff—hair and fiber analysis, blood spatter, DNA. She displayed side-by-side enlargements of gray hairs found at the two scenes. “You’re looking at hairs of the variety Felis Catus Coeruleous—a common Chartreux house cat. Neither victim had access to such an animal, so it’s possible the perpetrator has a pet cat.”

  Next she showed a slide of a potential tool that could have resulted in the markings that Huffman had discovered on the fourth cervical vertebrae of both victims. It was a DeWalt cordless reciprocating saw with a wood-cutting blade, twelve inches in length, with six teeth per inch. Dreckmann said the saw could be one from several manufacturers. However, chemical trace analysis of minute white paint and cobalt particles retrieved from the wounds of both victims was consistent with blades packaged and distributed under the Milwaukee brand.

  She then presented a split screen image. “What you’re looking at here are traces of bloody footprints left at the Greentree and West Pine Meadow crime scenes, respectively.” She flipped to the next slide. “These are those same footprints digitally enhanced. They are identical. Both are men’s size eleven, right-foot prints. The sole pattern matches high-top work shoes sold under the names Taylor Work Outfitters and Johnson & Burns, distributed in ten states in the southeastern U.S., including North Carolina.”

  “The reason we’ve concentrated on the right shoe print is this anomaly here.” She pointed to the screen. “There appears to be a small piece of the right heel missing. You can see it in both photos. These prints are significant evidence if we can find the matching pair of shoes. For that reason, this information cannot be released to the media.”

  She advanced to a slide showing a Bible. “The Bibles at both crime scenes were the King James Version, Pure Cambridge Edition,” she said. “They appear to be in new condition. Other than those of the victims, no prints were present, and in both cases, they were found only on the front and back covers.”

  The presentation was finished with several magnified photos of carpet strands that I didn’t give a crap about, but I guess they proved the same strands were found at both crime scenes, possibly from carpet in the perpetrator’s car.

  Dreckmann left, but no one noticed. All eyes were focused on FBI profiler Special Agent Lainie MacKenzie as she walked to the front of the room. She was tall and trim with hair more red than auburn, pulled straight back into a bun. Her flat heels and perfectly tailored navy-blue pantsuit accentuated her long, slender legs. She displayed a presentation and began.

  “You’ve probably heard the media refer to our subject as The Headless Corpse Killer. Such references are detrimental to these types of investigations because they present the subject as a monster—almost supernatural in nature. He is, in fact, a human being, prone to the same imperfections as any other individual. In short, he makes mistakes, and it will be these mistakes that will result in his undoing.

  “I refer to our subject as Jack Plum—Jack, as in Jack-the-Ripper, and Plum, as in Professor Plum from the board game Clue.” A few muffled snickers could be heard, but they quickly stifled.

  “Based on statistical studies, Jack Plum is a white male between twenty-five and forty years of age. He is a sociopathic underachiever with low self-esteem. He has completed high school with poor to average grades but possesses no formal education beyond that. Because of his antisocial tendencies, he is not married or involved in a romantic relationship.”

  Lainie explained that Plum had difficulty relating to authority figures, such as supervisors, police officers, clergy, and the like.

  “He’s unable to interact appropriately with the public,” she said, “thus eliminating sales personnel, telemarketers, and insurance agents as probable suspects. Instead, he works with his hands … and he’s good at what he does. We could be looking for a carpenter, plumber, electrician, cable TV service technician … something like that.

  “Plum has no outstanding physical or behavioral traits. He will not stick out in a crowd. However, he is narcissistic, psychotic, and sexually deviant. He feels no remorse for these attacks, no matter how hideous they may be.”

  She continued talking as she flipped through her slides. “You are all here to determine who has committed these horrific acts. As a profiler, I am tasked with answering why—why these particular victims, why kill them in this manner, or for that matter, why kill them at all? The answers usually lie in the perpetrator’s signature.

  “You’ve heard earlier that he removes the heads of the victims and takes them with him. These are not souvenirs or trophies. I theorize that he takes them to provide visual sexual stimulation during masturbation, reliving the entire experience with each ejaculation.”

  “Christ,” I muttered softly.

  MacKenzie added, “These victims were not chosen because of anything they had done to him. They were chosen because they have significant physical characteristics or traits that are similar to someone else who betrayed him, probably during his adolescence. This betrayal was likely some form of abuse, physical or sexual, at the hands of someone he trusted—a parent, sibling, neighbor, teacher. When the object of his betrayal is identified, you will find that she was a white female of medium build with long black hair worn in a braid at the time of the abuse. She, too, has probably been murdered and also decapitated by Plum.”

  “He will eventually be driven to contact authorities or the media. He believes he is smarter than all of us and has a need to prove it while he increases the body count to impress us. I am surprised we have not yet heard from him.”

  Lainie pointed to a police sergeant to my left who had his hand raised.

  “What’s the significance of the Bibles?” he asked.

  She nodded. “Good question. It’s no coincidence that both Bibles were open to Romans 12: Verse 19.” She pulled a notecard from her pocket and read from it. “'Dearly beloved, avenge not yourselves, but rather give place unto wrath: for it is written, Vengeance is mine; I will repay, saith the Lord.’ These are vengeance killings with religious and sexual overtones.” After responding to a couple of mundane questions, she sat down.

  Lieutenant Netter finished the session by giving miscellaneous details that were similar about both crime scenes. In both instances, all doors and windows were bolted and locked except for the front door, which was closed but unlocked. There were no signs of forcible entry, so the victims may have let Plum in the front door. Also, the crimes occurred in the late afternoon or early evening.

  He wrapped up by giving assignments to the non-local investigators. I would develop theories on how Plum gained access to the victims in their homes. The SBI would dig into the backgrounds of the victims to search for any common threads between them, and how they may have previously come across the instrument of their demise, Jack Plum. They would also investigate the Bibles and where they may have come from. Agent MacKenzie was working on other cases and needed to get back to Quantico for a few days. She would refine Plum’s profile as more information became available, and she would return if there were new developments.

  Netter, Cox, and I left the building together.

  Lauren Roman, the blonde investigative reporter from News 14 Carolina, was waiting with her cameraman. As we walked, she shoved her microphone in Netter’s face.

  “Lieutenant,” she said, “would you give us a breakdown of what was discussed at the task force meeting?”

  “I have no comment,” he replied. “We’ll be scheduling periodic updates with the media, probably starting tomorrow. Until then, I have no comment. I’m sorry.”

  Roman continued badgering. “We’ve been hearing that members of the task force, such as you, are taking these crimes very personally.”
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br />   Netter stopped and looked at her. “I can assure you that all members of the task force are highly professional and understand the importance of this investigation. There are no personal feelings at play here.” He began to walk away but Roman persisted.

  “Lieutenant, would you comment on the rumor that there’s a satanic cult performing human sacrifices in the Raleigh area?”

  He pulled out a cigar, bit the end off, and spit it out. “Whoever started that rumor is a fuckin’ idiot.”

  The incompetent interrogation by Lauren Roman was disgusting. I was more qualified for that position than she was, but I didn’t have blonde hair, long legs, and perky breasts. However, I was convinced my ass was every bit as nice as hers.

  Cox walked off to his car and Netter joined me next to the Jag. “I guess they’ll have to bleep that part out,” I said grinning.

  “Stupid bitch,” Netter said as he took a drag on his cigar. “I gotta tell ya, Tucker. I want this motherfucker bad. I take it real personal when someone does something like this in my town.”

  I raised my eyebrows. “Personal? What about that professional bullshit you just handed Roman?”

  He angrily flicked the ash from his cigar. “I lied,” he said.

  CHAPTER 4

  It was sunny and warm when I got back to the estate, and Oscar greeted me at the back door of the main house in a delirious frenzy. Even though I had let Roberta know earlier I wouldn’t be back for lunch, she still left a covered plate on the kitchen island for me. A yellow sticky note on top said “you eat this mister Ben.” On the way home, I’d grabbed a corned beef sandwich for lunch. I wasn’t hungry at all, but I lifted the cover just to take a peek. A large chunky chocolate brownie stuffed with pecans, three slices of Gruyere cheese, and a small bunch of purple seedless grapes—and a dog biscuit.