I parked my car about two hundred yards away and started walking in the direction of Cherry and Willow. I had wondered why Ray didn’t give me a specific address. As I made my way closer, I realized why.
Much to my dismay, San Jose police officers were coming in and out of several homes at once.
Had the madman killed several people at different addresses? What the hell was I walking into? This case was getting worse by the minute. A pit opened in the bottom of my stomach. I was genuinely scared to find out what had happened.
As I approached the perimeter of the crime scenes, I saw Ray standing next to Captain Lockett. Luckily, the Chief of Police was nowhere to be seen. In fact, Ray and the captain appeared to be the only two officers representing the OPD.
Obviously, jurisdiction went to the SJPD, but with these crimes targeting the entire Bay Area, I imagined officers from every big local city had arrived at the scene.
Several different houses had yellow tape around them as I looked down the block. I couldn’t see where the series of crime scenes ended.
Ray and the captain stood just outside the tape, looking inward. People milled around in every direction, but they were standing by themselves.
“Thanks for coming,” Ray said.
It looked like he may have been crying.
Captain Lockett nodded in my direction.
“What the hell happened?” I asked.
“It’s unfathomable,” Ray said.
I looked out at the multiple crime scenes and my imagination ran wild.
Ray continued. “Around twenty people have been poisoned by this fucking psycho.”
I was taken aback. With all the terrible things I’d imagined, I never could have expected something so extreme.
“My God, how horrible,” I said.
“Approximately fifteen homes in this area were delivered cookies between 9:00 and 9:30 tonight. They were all accompanied with this note.”
Ray took out his phone and showed me a screenshot. It was an orange leaflet, probably around three inches by four inches. Black block letters read:
You have been the greatest neighbors since we moved in. I love Willow Glen. This is a token of our appreciation and we really hope you enjoy the cookies! Love, Maxine and Bill.
A shiver went up my spine. He’d pretended to be a grateful couple to poison a neighborhood.
The MO was so far off from his original murders. For a brief moment, I wondered if it was the same killer. But I knew it had to be. This was the night of his next murders, after all.
I was scared. For myself, but most of all, for the people of the Bay Area. Most serial killers killed in one specific way. This was new. And downright petrifying.
I hated asking the next question, but I had to. “How many have died? Tell me they’re all just a little sick.”
Captain Lockett shook his head and I knew we weren’t going to be that lucky. Ray’s moist eyes should have given it away as well.
“Three have already died,” he said. “And ten more are in the hospital. Including several teenagers and a few young kids.”
I turned away from the two men in front of me, about to cry myself.
Teenagers and kids? I wanted to rip the heart out of the killer. Be left alone in a room with him and see what happens.
“What type of poison did he use?” I asked.
“They don’t know yet, but one officer told me they think it might be fentanyl. He headed to the hospital to talk to some doctors. I’m sure they will know shortly if they don’t already.”
“And Maxine and Bill are just some random neighbors?”
“It looks that way. The SJPD has been interviewing them. My guess is they’ve moved in recently and the killer knew that. And a neighbor said they are just the nicest couple, so people would likely feel compelled to try their cookies.”
“He certainly knows his crime scenes beforehand,” I said. “Just like Tiburon.”
“My guess is he scopes out the area for a few days. Probably found out who the new neighbors were.”
There was a brief silence in which none of us knew what to say.
“This is…catastrophic,” I said, searching for a word that fit. None could.
“And it will likely get worse. This is a very fluid situation, obviously. Who knows how many could be dead before the night is over?”
I shook my head. “I’ve never been more disgusted in my life.”.
Captain Lockett nodded. “I’ve been around a long time, and I can safely say the same thing. What a horrific act.”
It was as if we were trying to one-up each other with terrible-sounding adjectives, although we all knew none would suffice.
“There must be cameras around here, right?” It was a half question, half statement on my part.
“Not many. There’s no businesses. All residential. Two neighbors have cameras, but he didn’t drop off cookies to them. I’m sure that was no coincidence. But a few of the neighbors did see the man setting the cookies down. He didn’t knock or ring the doorbells for obvious reasons. If there’s any sort of silver lining, it’s that several families never tried the cookies. Some weren’t at home and others never saw them sitting on their doorstep since he didn’t ring the doorbell.”
“How did they describe the guy?”
“I heard this from my SJPD friend also, so it’s secondhand. A neighbor told him he had a hat pulled tight around his head. Plus a hoodie. Average height and weight and probably in his twenties or thirties.”
“Did any of these neighbors see him up close?”
“No. It appears he only left the cookies at about every third or fourth house. Trying to avoid being seen by every neighbor, who would have realized it wasn’t Bill. Or obviously, Maxine.”
“So how far down does this crime scene go?” I asked.
“We haven’t been to the end, but it stretches a few blocks for sure.”
“Just terrible.”
“And I don’t have much confidence we’ll get a good ID. The sun had set. This guy is nothing if not meticulous. Nightfall, a hat, a hoodie. It’s going to be next to impossible.”
“Maybe the fentanyl can lead us to the guy,” I said.
“Do you really think that?”
“No,” I admitted. “Like you said, he’s meticulous. It seems unlikely he’d allow himself to be caught that easily. And sadly, fentanyl probably isn’t that hard to get these days. Probably more a reflection on our country than anything else.”
“You ever write about any cases of poisoning?” Lockett asked.
I thought about it. “I seem to remember a husband trying to poison his wife. But certainly nothing like this.”
“I’d like to see that article, regardless.”
“Of course,” I said, although we all knew it would amount to nothing.
Hearing some loud noises, we turned around and saw a white van entering past the yellow tape.
“Can’t be the coroner, can it?” I asked.
“No. They got everyone to the hospital after the first few people started getting sick and they discovered the cookies.”
“Sadly, it wasn’t quick enough for some of them,” Captain Lockett said, stating the obvious.
“Probably more fingerprint experts,” Ray said. “Although I’m sure he was wearing gloves.”
No one said anything for a minute.
“Why was I invited out here, Ray?”
“The chief ordered it. He may not like you personally, but he said the reference to your articles is one of the few things we have to go on.”
“He’s right,” I said. “But I’m really no help out here.”
“I know, Quint. But I have to follow protocol. And maybe, just maybe something might have jumped out.”
“I guess,” I said.
More noises sounded behind us as a few cop cars exited the perimeter. With the exception of fingerprints and talking to neighbors, most of the police work would be at the hospitals now.
I hated imagini
ng people fighting for their lives at that exact moment. For eating a fucking cookie.
“This is going to be national news tomorrow,” Captain Lockett said. “After the first murders, we had the chance to keep it local. But it’s too late for that now. We’re going to be infested with media tomorrow. And probably the FBI as well.”
“Great,” Ray said sarcastically.
“We’ll keep in touch, Quint, but if the feds truly take over, you’ll probably be seeing less of us.”
“I’m not going anywhere. If you need me, I’m here. If not, I understand,” I said.
We heard Ray’s name yelled by one of the SJPD officers.
“I’ll be right back,” he said.
Tears still showed in his eye.
It had the odd affect of becoming contagious, similar to a yawn, because as I looked back at the houses, a tear appeared in mine as well.
I hung around for another thirty minutes, even though my being there was unnecessary. It’s almost like I wanted to postpone the inevitable. I knew that tomorrow morning the shit would really hit the fan.
The local serial killer was going to go national.
12.
“Nice to have you back! Looks like it’s been almost eight years,” the older, bespectacled woman—a really stereotypical librarian—said to me.
“Let’s blame Amazon,” I said. “It’s become too easy.”
When the death toll hit six that morning, I had to get out of my apartment. Imagining people choking to death, or vomiting, twisting in agony, or collapsing, or however they went, was driving me crazy.
Like Captain Lockett and Ray feared, it had gone national. It was the lead story on every national news outlet I saw.
America, and for that matter, the world, always had an infatuation with serial killers.
And here was one who had butchered a family of three to death and then killed six more through poisoning. He was getting his fifteen minutes, but worse, I expected he was going to get a lot more than that. I didn’t see an end in sight.
Early reports were that fentanyl was used. Just like Ray had told me.
After a local news station posted pictures of someone who had died, I turned the T.V. off.
And decided to do something that might help me understand this killer better.
I drove to the Contra Costa County Library-Walnut Creek, a mouthful of a name. I decided I needed to read some books on serial killers. And I didn’t want to wait a day or two to get them from Amazon.
The stereotypical librarian had been very polite, but as I set the macabre books on the counter, I wondered if she might change her tune.
Zodiac: The Shocking True Story of the Nation’s Most Bizarre Mass Murderer. The Bundy Murders: A Comprehensive History. The Big Book of Serial Killers.
“Not the usual books we get checked out on a Saturday morning.”
“Well, I’m not a usual guy,” I said, quickly realizing it sounded creepy considering the books I’d checked out.
“But I’m not a serial killer either. Just research,” I added.
The librarian smiled. “I know who you are! Quint, right?”
The name was on my library card, so there was no use in lying.
“Yup, that’s me.”
“I followed the Charles Zane case very closely. You’re a hero in my eyes.”
“I appreciate it,” I said.
“And I read somewhere that you were named after Robert Shaw’s character in Jaws. Is that true?”
Not sure what I’d done to earn the talkative librarian, but I wasn’t too happy about it.
“It is. My parents saw that movie on their first date.”
“I would have dated Robert Shaw,” she said and started to blush.
This wasn’t the “naughty librarian” I’d dreamt about as a younger man.
“He was quite an actor,” I said, hoping to expedite the check-out process.
She started scanning the three books.
“Wait, you’re not working on the new serial killer case, are you? I saw all about the second set of murders this morning. Dastardly stuff.”
Any other time and I would have found the phrase “dastardly stuff” humorous, but I’d lost the ability to laugh at the moment.
“Just doing some personal research,” I answered generically.
“You brought down the bad guy last time. Not the police.”
But she pronounced it po-lice.
“The police saved my life. And did all the behind-the-scene things to get the bad guys off the streets. I just got the credit.”
“If you say so,” the librarian said, but I could tell she enjoyed imagining me as the hero.
If I had to guess, she had a little crush on Robert Shaw’s namesake as well.
She put the three books in a little bag and handed them back to me.
“I hope you’ll be back, Quint!” she said. “And good luck going after the Bay Area Butcher.”
Great. Everyone was calling him that now. “It’s a terrible name.”
“You’ll catch him though, won’t you, Quint?”
I was tired of this conversation.
“The police will,” I said and turned to go.
“Hope to see you again,” she said.
Doubtful. I’d be returning these books through the mail slot.
The trip up to my apartment was no less awkward. Evelyn, an older woman around the librarian’s age, and Tad, a younger guy from the complex, were waiting at the parking garage elevator.
Several hundred people occupied four different buildings, so it was impossible to know everyone. But I knew these two. Tad lived on my floor and Evelyn was constantly complaining on the Avalon Walnut Creek Facebook page.
As I entered the elevator, I accidentally bumped into the wall and my books fell out of the library bag, sprawling around our feet.
“Oh my,” I heard Evelyn say.
The three serial killer books lay on the ground directly in front of her, with Ted Bundy staring straight up from the elevator floor. I scrambled to pick them up as quickly as I could, returning them to the bag.
“It’s nothing,” I said.
It was more than nothing to Evelyn, that much became obvious. She moved flush against the corner of the elevator, getting as far away from me as possible.
I looked at Tad for some relief and he smiled at me.
I wouldn’t be getting the same from Evelyn, who briskly exited when we arrived on the second floor.
“Scaring old ladies your thing?” Tad asked after the doors had shut.
I laughed. “I don’t think Evelyn has ever liked me.”
“Wow, you know her name?”
“She’s always complaining on Avalon’s Facebook page. Someone was up too late. A pigeon crapped on her balcony. Rap music was playing.”
“That’s her? Didn’t realize.”
“Management says she’s a handful. Somehow, I’m not surprised.”
“Not too friendly either,” Tad said. “But in old Evelyn’s defense, those are some jarring book titles.”
“Some light reading material,” I said.
He laughed. “I’d be afraid to see the hard stuff.”
I smiled, still a bit embarrassed from the look I’d received from Evelyn.
We arrived at the fourth floor.
“Have a nice day, Tad.”
“You too, Quint.”
And we both went our separate ways off of the elevator.
I spent the day reading about the most gruesome serial killers of all time.
The Zodiac Killer had always been fascinating, though mostly because of the aura surrounding him. He didn’t have the most victims. Far from it. But he did have some flair, writing letters and mocking the SFPD. Promising to shoot a school bus of children.
And maybe the most important reason of all.
He’d never been caught.
That had led to a few generations trying to find out who the real Zodiac was.
For a brief, brief
moment, I considered if our new guy could have been a return of the notorious Zodiac, but then realized the guy was most likely dead, and if not, in his eighties or nineties. No, this wasn’t the Zodiac.
Ted Bundy might be the most infamous of all American serial killers. His good looks and charisma certainly had a lot to do with that. And the fact that he escaped from jail two separate times just added to his myth. His murders were gruesome, including necrophilia.
Jeffrey Dahmer did the same and was probably the most well-known serial killer of my childhood. The things he did to people’s bodies were unbelievable, including keeping body parts soaking in formaldehyde. I couldn’t imagine what officers saw upon entering his Milwaukee apartment.
There were so many others. John Wayne Gacy, the clown killer. H.H. Holmes, the savage who killed during the Chicago World’s Fair in the late 1800s. The Garden State Killer, who had finally been caught in his seventies. Dean Corll. Gary Ridgway. Richard Ramirez. The list could go on for days.
I had hoped to find similarities to our killer. Some modus operandi that fit and could maybe paint a generic description. Unfortunately, with the most recent set of murders, finding a consistent MO was going to be very difficult.
Two sets of murders. Two completely different sets of circumstances.
Finally, after hours of reading the most gruesome stories imaginable, I started to draw some bath water.
I was a shower guy 99.9% of the time, but I felt the need to fully cleanse my body from all I’d read.
Cara had bought me a candle that sat in my bathroom and I even lit that.
Who the hell was I?
I sat in the bath for twenty minutes, trying to think what type of serial killer our guy was. Young and debonair like Bundy? A raving maniac like Gacy? Cool and calculated like Dahmer?
I wasn’t an FBI profiler, but I started to draw my own conclusions.
I’d go with: White, twenties or early thirties, in shape, intelligent.
I felt relatively sure of those four.
There were other characteristics that I believed to be true, but couldn’t be positive on: Bay Area native, heterosexual, owned a car.
The character trait I wrestled with most was whether he was outgoing and charming or more of a recluse. I could see him as either.
The Bay Area Butcher: (Quint Adler Book 2) Page 6
