by Tim Lebbon
APRIL 4
Very reluctantly, Colt had to admit that having two other pairs of feet to do legwork had its uses. He sat in his hotel room’s comfy chair while the X-goons sat in the two chairs by the table near the window.
Scully was filling them in on the autopsies of the two latest victims first. “There were no real surprises in either case. Which is unfortunate, since something new might provide us with a lead. However, both Eleanor Underwood and Dona Alvarez were killed by a serrated blade cutting open their carotid artery. Both stomachs were slashed post-mortem, and both women had a skin cream applied to their genitalia. The cream is still out for testing, but both Dr. Gardner and I are fairly certain it’s the same cream that was used in the other El Paso Ripper killings.”
Colt snarled. “Can we please not call them that?”
Giving a small smile, Scully said, “Sorry, that’s the phrase Dr. Gardner used. She’s an excellent pathologist. In any event, just as with the others, there’s no useful trace evidence. However, two things did give me pause.”
That got Colt’s attention. As Scully had indicated, something discrepant from the previous murders would have been useful, but hearing that it was the same thing again just made him want to bang his head against the wall.
Scully continued. “We did find some trace evidence, but it tested as inert matter.”
“So?”
“I checked the files, and that same inert matter was found on several other victims. I had Dr. Gardner pull the particles from the other cases so the lab can run more tests.” She sighed. “I may need to ship them to Quantico, though, the lab here is not exactly up to standards.”
“Yeah, welcome to West Texas,” Colt muttered. “After the last time I was here, the mayor, the governor, and I had a long talk about the inadequacy of the labs here. Nice to see they listened.”
Mulder shook his head. “I’m shocked, shocked, to learn that politicians misled you.”
Colt shot Mulder a look. “Casablanca? Didn’t think that was your kind of film.” Colt had no idea if the rumors about Mulder’s tape collection were true, although Agent DelVecchio had insisted that those tapes were his if something ever happened to Mulder.
Since Mulder didn’t rise to the bait, Colt turned his attention back to Scully. “You said there were two things?”
Nodding, Scully said, “There was dust in the mouth. Lab says it was disintegrated bone fragments.”
Colt leaned back, disappointed. “Yeah, that was in all the bodies. Figured it was part of the fetish thing.”
Mulder, though, after sitting slumped in his chair, sat ramrod straight all of a sudden. “Bone fragments? You sure?”
“The lab’s not so bad that it can’t identify bone,” Scully said with another of her small smiles. “Yes, I’m sure.”
“It could be corpse dust.”
“What kind of dust?” Colt did not like where this was going.
“Several Native American tribes have legends of skin-walkers—shapechangers who can take on the forms of different animals. Agent Scully and I encountered one last year in Browning, Montana.”
Colt shot Scully a look, but she had her poker face on. Of course, she wasn’t denying it...
Then he recalled one of the files on a case they had in Browning, where a local Native American was killed by a ranch owner, who was then killed, probably by the first victim’s son, who was shot by Scully in self-defense. Mulder’s report had mentioned skin-walkers and werewolves, while Scully’s only made a passing mention of “clinical lycanthropy.”
Mulder was still babbling. “In Navajo folklore, the yee naaldlooshii blows corpse dust into a victim’s face. It’s made from ground-up bones, ideally the bones of a small child.”
Speaking in what Colt instantly identified as a long-suffering tone, Scully said, “Mulder, even if this is like what we saw in Browning, in every legend, skin-walkers take on the form of animals.”
“True, but it’s not much of a leap to go from changing into an animal to changing into a person. Scientifically speaking, it’s probably easier, because there’s less shifting of mass.”
A bitter laugh burst from Colt’s mouth. “I can’t believe you used the phrase ‘scientifically speaking’ in that sentence.”
“But it does fit the evidence,” Mulder said insistently. “A killer who can change shape would explain why we have the same murders committed with the same methods, including the portions not revealed to the public, while having four wildly different suspects. It also might explain the inert matter. It could be the altered skin cells that the skin-walker uses.”
Tightly, Colt said, “Agent Mulder, I know for a fact that you graduated at the top of your class at Quantico—which leads me to think that it was a particularly dumb class that year—so I know that you simply had to be there for the part where they told you that an investigator doesn’t come up with a theory and find evidence to fit it. We find evidence and then concoct a theory.” Mulder started to talk again, but Colt cut him off. “I don’t want to hear it. What did you find out at the hospital?”
For a few seconds, Mulder just looked at Colt with that vacant stare of his. Then he grabbed a folder filled with several 8½ x 11 sheets of paper. “Private hospitals get all the best toys. Their security videos record onto super-8 tapes and they have a four-color printer. This is the guy Nurse Rossov was talking about. He started yelling at Nurse Alvarez at a little after three p.m. on the 31st.”
He handed Colt the folder. Opening it, he saw several slightly curled pieces of paper that felt a bit cool to the touch. Each sheet had screen captures from the surveillance tape of a tall man with short, dark hair and thick plastic-framed glasses arguing with Rossov. Each printout had a date and time stamp on the lower left-hand corner: “3/31/95 15:07,” and so on.
Colt let out a huge grin. “We got him.” He grabbed a file folder of his own. “Underwood was fired after she got into a fight with another telemarketer, a guy named Orville Hobloch. And when I say ‘fight,’ I mean a physical altercation. I got the photocopy of Hobloch’s driver’s license. The staff kept them on file.”
He pulled out the photocopy in question and handed it to Scully.
The picture on the Texas state driver’s license belonging to one Orville Hobloch was an almost perfect match for the picture of the person on Mulder’s fancy color printout.
*****
EL PASO POLICE DEPARTMENT HEADQUARTERS, CITY HALL
EL PASO, TEXAS
APRIL 5
“Look, I’m telling you, I didn’t kill those women! I wasn’t even in El Paso!”
Colt shook his head. They always pulled this.
EPPD had brought Orville Hobloch in without a fuss, as he was still unemployed and was sitting at home watching television, according to Detective Johnson. Now he was sitting in one of the small interrogation rooms in the portion of City Hall that was used by the local cops.
“Mr. Hobloch, we have video surveillance of you getting into a verbal altercation with one of the victims, and eyewitness accounts of you getting into a physical altercation with another.”
He shook his head. “I knew it. I knew you bastards would try to tie Ellie’s death to me. Look, yeah, we got into a fight. She was an uptight bitch and she got in my face. But I didn’t kill her. And I don’t even know who the other one was.”
“Nurse Dona Alvarez.” Colt placed the color printouts Mulder had gotten in front of him on the metal table. “This is you yelling at her on the 31st. She was dead two days later.”
“Look, I didn’t—” Hobloch looked at the printouts and his eyes went wide under his plastic-frame glasses. “Holy crapola. That guy looks just like me.”
“It is you.”
“No, it isn’t!” Hobloch started fidgeting in the chair. “You said that was the 31st? I wasn’t even in El Paso; I was in Corpus Christi. After I got fired, I went to visit my Dad out there. He doesn’t have a guest room, and I can’t sleep on his couch without it chewing up my back, so I stayed in a Day
s Inn. I was there from the 30th to the 3rd, including when that pop singer got shot.”
“What?” Colt knew that a Latina singer named Selena had been shot by the president of her own fan club in Corpus Christi on the 31st. He’d only paid mild attention to it because DelVecchio’s daughter was heartbroken and he couldn’t shut up about how little Maya was pounding her chest over it.
For the next two hours, Colt continued his interrogation of Hobloch. The man was temperamental, and he lost it and yelled more than once. It wasn’t hard to see how he got into an altercation with Underwood. But it was getting hard to see how such a hothead could be the meticulous serial killer he’d been chasing.
At one point, a knock came at the door, and Scully stuck her head in. “Excuse me, Agent Colt? Your wife’s on the phone. She says it’s urgent.”
Since Scully knew damn well that Colt wasn’t married, she was letting him know that she needed to see him outside without Hobloch knowing anything was amiss.
“Excuse me,” he said, following Scully out the door.
As soon as she shut the door behind him, Scully said, “It’s not him. He didn’t kill Alvarez, and I don’t know who Agent Mulder saw on the tape, but that wasn’t him, either.” She led him down the hall to a room with a VCR and a television. Mulder and Johnson were already there.
“Detective Johnson, Agent Scully, and I have been busy while you’ve been distracting Hobloch. Take a look at this,” Mulder said, and he pushed PLAY on the VCR’s remote.
“I got this from my granddaughter,” Johnson said. “She’s a huge Selena fan—got a shrine in her bedroom, even.”
The tape started showing a local news story from Corpus Christi about Selena’s murder. They were interviewing people who were staying in the same hotel where Selena was shot. The first was a hysterical woman, the second a black man who was pissed at all the people in the way of his hotel experience, and then a very familiar man with plastic framed glasses.
“Look, I think it’s a tragedy, but more because she was such a young woman. I mean, I don’t listen to the music myself, I think it’s garbage what kids listen to these days, but she wasn’t even 25 years old yet. That’s really just horrible.”
As he spoke, the caption at the bottom of the screen read ORVILLE HOBLOCH.
Colt shook his head. “That isn’t possible.”
Johnson said, “I talked to the hotel. They kept real close track of who was stayin’ and for how long on account’a what happened. Hobloch was there the dates he said he was, which means there ain’t no way he killed either Alvarez or Underwood.”
“All right, fine,” Colt said. “He’s out as a suspect. Go ahead and kick him.”
“We still have a suspect,” Mulder said. “Somebody who looks a lot like Hobloch was at that hospital yelling at Alvarez.”
Pointing a finger at Mulder, Colt said, “Don’t give me that shapeshifter crap, Mulder. We’ll check the evidence again, interview more witnesses, and find out who did this and how they found out about the skin cream.”
Rising to his feet, Johnson said, “’Scuse me?”
Scully cut off Johnson before he could continue in that hostile tone. “Agent Colt, the press coverage of these latest two murders has had no mention of the skin cream. It’s probably still a secret.”
“Well, obviously Frank Nobilis didn’t commit these two murders,” Colt said, “but the evidence that he killed the others is pretty compelling. Certainly the jury thought so.”
“Actually,” Mulder said, “I’ve been looking over the files on Nobilis, and there are a lot of holes in the case. There’s no physical evidence tying Nobilis to the scenes, the eyewitness accounts—”
Colt nearly exploded, and actually felt an urge to hit Mulder. “Where the hell do you get off? You’re here to assist me on this case, Mulder! You’ve got no business going back over old files.”
To Colt’s annoyance, it was again Scully who spoke. “They might be the same case. The whole reason you came down here is because it looked like it might be the same killer. We have to look at the case against Nobilis for the same reason why you looked at the cases against Montrose, Halverson, and Zipkis before going after Nobilis two years ago.”
Colt glowered at Scully. He couldn’t come up with a good response to that, so he stormed out of the video room rather than try to utter a bad one.
*****
DEW DROP INN, ROOM 120
EL PASO, TEXAS
APRIL 7
For the next two days, Colt decided to hammer on Hobloch. He was on the videotape, he was the only thing Alvarez and Underwood had in common, he had to be the one.
Unfortunately, he had an airtight alibi, especially since the footage of his being interviewed in the wake of Selena being shot was picked up by several stations. To add insult to injury, he rented a car to make the nine-hour drive to Corpus Christi and back, and his credit card was used at several gas stations and service stops along I-10 and I-35. The mileage on the rental car when he returned it matched the fifteen hundred miles it would have taken to drive there and back, plus a little extra.
Mulder and Scully weren’t doing much better. Reluctantly, Colt met with them in his hotel room again at seven p.m. The nutjobs were kind enough to bring some takeout from a local Tex-Mex place.
After swallowing a bite of enchilada, Scully said, “We reinterviewed the witnesses you talked to about Nobilis. Sue Dietrich said she wasn’t sure it was him anymore. Don Egan said you quoted him out of context.”
Colt rolled his eyes as he picked up his chicken taco. “Yeah, there was a reason why we didn’t put him on the stand. What about that old guy, Jim Tolley?”
“He refused to speak to us, saying you coerced him into testifying.”
“What? I did no such thing! Dammit! Two more murders, and now everyone’s backing off.” Colt slammed a fist on the desk.
After sipping his soda, Mulder said, “It wouldn’t be the first time that people rushed to make an eyewitness account in the heat of the moment. Especially regarding a serial killer that has been around as long as the El Paso Ripper has.”
“So we’ve got nothing?” Colt asked.
With a tilt of his head, Mulder replied, “Well, we’ve got a good case for Nobilis’s appeal.”
“That isn’t even a little funny, Mulder.”
“It wasn’t meant to be.”
Colt smirked. “Yeah, well it’s hard to tell with that deadpan of yours.” The smirk fell and he thought for a moment while gnawing on his taco. Much as he hated to admit it, the nutjobs were on the right track. “All right, let’s take what you’re doing one step further. I want to look back over everything, going all the way back to the first murder back in ’88.”
The phone rang. Colt climbed out of his chair and went over to the table between the two double beds and picked up the receiver. “Colt.”
“This is Detective Johnson. You need to get down to Concordia Cemetery right away, Agent Colt. We got us another body.”
*****
CONCORDIA CEMETERY
EL PASO, TEXAS
APRIL 7
“Keep the damn press out of here, will you, please?”
An EPPD uniform grabbed the photographer who had apparently climbed the metal fence on Yandell Drive to get into the cemetery to see the latest victim of “the El Paso Ripper.” The paparazzo was tossed out the cemetery gate, where plenty of other members of the fourth estate were congregated about.
The latest victim was named Julianne Koogler. Just like the others, it was a brunette woman with a slash across her belly, strangulation marks on her neck (but no evidence of a weapon that was used, just the ligature marks), skin cream applied to her genitalia, and dust in her mouth. Plus there was that inert material near the wounds.
Koogler had been placed on the ground of the cemetery, which was, unusually, more dirt than grass. It was the first cemetery Colt had visited that looked more like a ranch than a park.
Scully was off on the side talking o
n her cellular while Mulder examined the body alongside Colt. Pointing at the mouth, Mulder said, “More corpse dust.”
“Enough with that, please,” Colt said angrily.
Scully ended her call, lowering the small plastic antenna on her phone before pocketing it. “That was Quantico. They examined the inert material that was on all the crime scenes, and they don’t have any answers. They did detect some DNA markers, but nothing they could identify.”
“So it’s from something alive?” Mulder asked.
“Maybe—but they can’t figure out what it is. There’s not enough there.”
Colt frowned. “That doesn’t make any sense.”
“If anything about this case made sense,” Scully said, “Ms. Koogler would probably still be alive.”
“Yeah.” Colt sighed. “All right, let’s bag her up and get her away from the vipers. There’s no blood here, so she was probably dumped.”
Johnson had been chatting with uniforms and other detectives, and came over to where the three federal agents were standing. “We got us some good news there. Our bad guy made his first mistake. Whole mess’a people saw him dump the body.”
“When?” Mulder asked.
“‘Round 6:30 or so. Uniforms’re takin’ statements now.”
Colt nodded. “Okay, get the body to Gardner. Agent Scully, if you’d be so kind as to assist her?”
Scully said, “Of course.”
Colt noticed Mulder gazing out at the crowds of press and civilians all gathered at the entrance, held from squeezing through by a phalanx of cops. On the sidewalk by the metal fence on Stevens Street, several plainclothes and uniformed officers were talking to civilians and taking notes. “Maybe we’ll get lucky,” Mulder said. “The witnesses to the previous victims caught glances and quick looks from far away. This is the first time we’ve got really solid eyewitness accounts. If he screwed that up, maybe he screwed up something else.”
“Let’s hope,” Colt said.
As the three FBI agents walked past that part of the fence, one of the witnesses, a taller, older man wearing a cowboy hat, caught sight of them. “That’s him!” he cried while pointing a finger right at Colt.
