Black Coral

by Andrew Mayne

  Holy cow. That’s a break, all right. But I’m not sure how much it helps us. And, frankly, I’m surprised that Sleazy Steve would poke his head up.

  “Now, despite these details, that does not mean Manifold is our killer. There could be leaks in the different agencies we’re unaware of. He could have had contact with the actual killer and been given this information. We consider the latter more likely than the former.”

  I mentally remind myself which one is “the last one,” then quietly nod in agreement. Still, if what Denton is saying is true, then Manifold really is a big break.

  “At this time, we have no plans to publish the full email, but we’ve agreed to let the Sun Herald publish a partial version,” says Denton. “And now, as to the reason you’re all here: we think this is a big mistake on Manifold’s part. I can’t get into the specifics, but we’ve developed a plan to locate him. We’re going to need your help with surveillance. We’re requesting you use personal vehicles and plain clothes. We’ll be giving each of you assignments, but we request that you do not share them with anyone other than your immediate supervisors. If word of our approach gets out, we may miss our only opportunity to catch him. Now, I’d like to turn it over to Detective Rowland to go over the specifics.”

  During the break, Hughes and I go through a packet that was handed to us. It’s a list of stores that sell newspapers that they want us to collect surveillance tapes from, plus nearby bus stops we’re supposed to watch.

  Hughes glances around the room at the other packets that have been handed to people. “That must cover every 7-Eleven and supermarket in South Florida. I’m not sure how watching half the state counts as effective surveillance.” He looks to me. “We’re supposed to photograph anyone buying a newspaper.”

  “Well, that does narrow it down a bit.” I pull out a copy of Manifold’s email and scan through the nonredacted parts, which doesn’t leave much—only the names of the Sun Herald editors and some details.

  “How do they know he even buys the paper?” asks Hughes.

  “I’m sure there’s an online aspect to the surveillance too. They’re probably covering all their bases. But, yeah, it does seem broad. Maybe it’s some kind of honeypot? They’re going to try to trick him to go to a certain web address?”

  “Him and every other crazy that reads the article. That’s still too broad. What’s the point of having us photograph every person who buys a paper?” asks Hughes, echoing my own thoughts.

  “What if it’s more than that?” I go back and look at the list of places we’re supposed to get security video from and check them against a map on my phone.

  “Like they already have a description of him?”

  I direct Hughes to the list. All the addresses are in the same zip code, although some of them are separated by a highway. “See that? They didn’t get this list from looking at a map.”

  Hughes shrugs. “What, then?”

  “I read somewhere that newspapers can target specific neighborhoods with advertising. What if they’re doing that with the print version?”

  “You mean publish different versions in different parts of town? Like, change some details?”

  “Maybe have slightly different email addresses for the reporter? It’s like one of Jackie’s logic puzzles. Send out two different versions based on location. If Mr. Manifold sends an email to John J. Doe at the Sun Herald instead of John M. Doe, then they know he’s in the area that got that specific edition of the newspaper.”

  “That only reduces the pool by a few million people,” says Hughes.

  “No. You could break South Florida down into as many smaller sections as you want—twenty-six for each possible middle initial, or whatever. And if they do another article with some other detail that he repeats in emailing to them, that breaks it down further. If a hundred thousand people buy a newspaper each day, then . . .” I do the math on my phone. “With twenty variations, you’d narrow it down to two hundred fifty people in two days if he responds each day.”

  “If he responds,” says Hughes.

  “I’m sure he will,” I reply. “I’d bet on it.”

  “Then that’s good news.”

  “I guess. Assuming Manifold is the Swamp Killer.”

  “Looks like the chief wants to talk to us,” says Hughes, noticing George motioning us to join a huddle with Denton and some others.

  “Uh, is this a good thing?” I ask.

  “Let’s find out.”

  CHAPTER FORTY-TWO

  NET

  Denton nods to me, which isn’t the worst possible reaction, though not the friendliest. He’s standing with the BSO and Palm Beach Sheriff’s Office detectives near a side table as George explains something to them.

  “McPherson,” George says, waving me into the huddle.

  Denton gives me another glance. “It’s been suggested that having you on disciplinary action may not be best for the case.”

  “What does that mean?” I ask.

  “It means that they don’t want a defense attorney to use a documented disciplinary action as proof before a jury that we screwed up,” says George. “As far as we’re concerned, there was no administrative leave.”

  Great, but that doesn’t take the sting away. I feel as much like a pawn as I did before. More so, actually. The idea that they can wave their wand and the Ministry of Magic can undo it all is a joke. But I don’t argue.

  “Okay. What can we do to help?”

  Denton points to the packet in my hands. “Same as the rest of us. Keep your eyes open. Take photos.”

  “Will it work?” I ask. “Narrowing it down by using different versions of the response?”

  His ears rear back like a cat’s, and his eyes dart to the other detectives. “Who told you about that?” he demands, clearly afraid there’s already been a leak.

  “Nobody. It seemed like the logical thing,” I reply.

  “We have reason to believe an approach like that could work,” he says, deciding not to deny it.

  “So, you’ve used it before? And it worked?” I ask.

  “McPherson,” says George. “Do you really not know when to shut up?”

  “Clearly I do not.” I try to clean things up. “I’m happy . . . we’re happy to do whatever we can. I think it’s a fine plan.”

  “I’m so glad you think so,” says Denton, not hiding his sarcasm.

  Well, I had it coming. He’s thirty years senior to me and doesn’t need my input.

  Feeling dismissed, Hughes and I leave Denton and George with the other bosses and step to the side.

  A tall young man with a bow tie walks over to us. He’s got an ID tag that says FBI analyst. “You’re McPherson and you’re Hughes, right?” he says, offering his hand.

  “Yes. And you?”

  “I’m Brian Merton. I’m with the CBL at the FBI—the computational behavior lab,” he explains.

  “Is that like profiling?” asks Hughes.

  “Sort of. But we let the computers do the profiling. I’m actually a computer scientist. We try to build a predictive model based on behavior.”

  “How does that work?” I ask.

  “It’s a prediction model. We start with ones that have been successful in the past, find one that matches this, and then add new details,” he explains.

  “Sounds sketchy,” says Hughes.

  Merton nods. “It is. Our models are wildly inaccurate right now. Barely better than human profilers.”

  “Barely better?” I reply.

  “Yes,” he says with a small grin. “That’s the important detail. They’re better and improving all the time. The goal here is to make them better faster. I overheard you talking to Denton about locational fingerprinting. Clever to figure it out on your own.”

  Ah, so that’s what it’s called. “Let’s just hope the killer doesn’t.”

  “Oh, he won’t,” says Merton.

  “That seems pretty confident,” says Hughes.

  He shakes his head. “I put t
he entire Manifold email through the system. It’s remarkably good at IQ estimation, social awareness, and a number of other factors. Manifold has average intelligence but thinks he’s much smarter than he actually is. Just sending that email was a sign that he’s unaware of how we can track people.”

  “Or he knows he can’t be tracked,” adds Hughes.

  “Fair point. But he matches up with the type that uses public computers, the kind you find in libraries, to send emails, because he thinks that’s safer than doing it from home—which is the exact opposite. We’ll get him.”

  “Unless,” I reply.

  “Unless what?”

  I try to put my finger on what I’ve been thinking. “Your experience with him comes through that email. Mine comes from his crime scenes going back three decades. The man I’m looking for has been very, very careful. So much so, nobody even knew he was out there.”

  “Like the Grizzly Killer,” says Hughes.

  “That was a fluke,” says Merton.

  “They said that about the Toy Man too.”

  Merton shakes his head. “I respect Dr. Cray, but those were outlier cases. Manifold is a classic attention seeker.”

  “But he wasn’t until now. Maybe he’s doing this to throw us all off.” I gesture at Denton and his group. “Have they thought about that? Like . . . why now?”

  “It’s all thanks to you. Because you found the bodies,” says Merton. “He knows time is running out. So, what does he do? He asks for a ransom so he can get away. That’s what changed. You threw him off his game.”

  I appreciate the flattery, but I’m not sold. “He’s smarter than this.”

  Merton sighs. “With all due respect, you need to rid yourself of the Hannibal Lecter mythos. These guys aren’t geniuses.”

  “Theodore Kaczynski was,” says Hughes. “And that weapon scientist Cray caught qualifies too.”

  “Outliers,” insists Merton.

  “I’m not saying this guy is Lex Luthor,” I reply. “I’m just saying that the longer one person stays in an area and doesn’t get caught, the smarter he has to be.”

  “The data says otherwise. Lonnie Franklin, Dennis Rader, and Dahmer . . . none of them were geniuses. Not by a long shot.”

  “They all preyed upon prostitutes or marginalized people,” I reply. “The Swamp Killer’s victims don’t fit that profile.”

  Merton’s about to say something, but he hesitates. Clearly this is a variable he hasn’t considered. “So, you think he’s smarter than us?”

  “I’m not making any assumptions,” I reply. “I just don’t want to underestimate him.”

  “Fair point. You’re working on your PhD, right? Anthropology?”

  “Archaeology,” I reply.

  “I can see it in the way you think. We should all talk later.” He nods to Hughes, then steps away.

  “That was weird,” Hughes says. “I like the whole let-the-computer-figure-things-out-and-remove-human-bias concept, but it reminds me of a saying: garbage in, garbage out.”

  I laugh. “Maybe. Let’s just hope Merton learns as fast as his computers. Us too.”

  “Do you think he’s right? That this is Sleazy Steve’s exit plan?”

  “Maybe. But whatever the intention, I’m worried we’re spending too much time trying to figure out where he’s going and not enough on where he came from.” I look across the auditorium at all the cops. “Imagine if we had these people talking to former classmates and poring through yearbooks. I bet we could figure out Sleazy Steve’s identity in no time.”

  “True. I think the task force is too obsessed with the mature, cautious serial killer who left the bodies in the swamp,” says Hughes, “not where he came from.”

  CHAPTER FORTY-THREE

  RIP CURL

  You reflect a lot on life while staking out a 7-Eleven. Both on your own life and that of those you see. I’m not a judgy kind of person—okay, I hate judgy people and dislike it in myself—but it’s hard not to be judgmental while watching the humans coming in and out of a convenience store.

  There’s the mom balancing one child on her hip while holding the hand of another in school clothes as she walks out somehow toting a jug of milk. Then there’s the middle-aged man in the dirty shirt with a case of beer and lottery tickets sticking out of his pocket. Clearly, she’s a kidnapper and he’s on his way to a senior citizens’ home to hand out beer and lottery tickets to lonely people. At least that’s how it works when I play the opposites game in my mind, trying to assume the opposite of everyone I see.

  I imagine sketchy-looking people as benevolent and the upstanding as shady. It would be more fun if I could share my mean observations with someone else, but Hughes is five blocks away, watching a supermarket. So I’m stuck inside my head.

  I get a photo of the lottery-ticket man, the fifth in the last hour, and make a note of which direction he walks off in. I have a mean thought about cockroaches disappearing into crevices and then feel a rush of guilt over my assumption. He could be a good guy, looking after his mother, and maybe he’s hit hard times. At least he’s not standing there looking back at me, judging me.

  I glance in the mirror at my own face. What do I see? Thirty is approaching soon. I have my mom’s laugh lines. The skin still has its freckles. Eyes like my father’s stare back.

  Who am I? What am I?

  Ever since high school, I’ve wanted to be an archaeologist. It was my science teacher, Mr. Friedman, who pulled me aside one day and pointed out that my experience in the water, diving shipwrecks, and my penchant for history could be put to use as something besides being a treasure hunter’s daughter.

  “Have you ever thought about becoming an archaeologist?” he asked.

  To be honest, no. That sounded about as likely as becoming a space captain for the Jupiter Navy. Not that my family was averse to college. Dad attended the University of Miami—and dropped out. Mom got her degree at Kansas State. But nobody else went that far.

  The police officer part came later, when I started working as a contractor for smaller departments that didn’t have dive teams or larger departments that couldn’t handle the more technical dives. Then came the offer to work part-time with Lauderdale Shores. Somewhere along the way, I realized I liked policing. Or at least parts of it. I liked hearing the name McPherson in a positive light when associated with law enforcement.

  But now what? Do I want to spend the rest of my life sipping lukewarm coffee, watching weirdos come in and out of a convenience store, hoping one of them is a serial killer?

  It’s certainly more exciting, at least in the moment, than spending months on an archaeological dig, hoping to find a manatee bone with human bite marks. But in the long run, those manatee bones are more fulfilling. I mean metaphorically, not literally. I’d never eat a manatee. I think.

  What’s next for me? Assuming Denton and company find Manifold, aka the Swamp Killer, aka Sleazy Steve, then where do I go from here? Catching the New River Bandits was a good thing but in no way deeply fulfilling.

  I like being underwater. Not sitting in a parking lot on a muggy day with the nearest body of water a stagnant canal three blocks away.

  My first archaeological dig was exciting. As a high school sophomore, I got to tag along on an excavation near Loop Road, out in the Everglades, where mobsters made booze and ran whorehouses. Digging through old trash piles and finding glassware and newspapers thrilled me. Which is weird, because I’d explored wrecks and made treasure dives hundreds of times. But this was different. It wasn’t about what we could find—it was about the stories the objects told us.

  A yellowed newspaper with cutout articles held far more interest than a corroded silver ingot. Who cut the articles out? What were they, and what was the person looking for?

  I went to the library the next week and pulled up that same Sun Herald paper from 1926.

  The “articles” that had been cut out were actually ads for bridal arrangements.

  Who was planning a wedding?
A prostitute? A lover? Was it a real wedding? Or just something in their head?

  As a cop, you don’t get the same kinds of mysteries. Sure, I can’t say for sure whether the twitchy man by the dumpster is a meth head or on crack, but I’m fairly certain I know the rough outline of his story. The details are just that . . . details.

  Even Sleazy Steve doesn’t hold too many mysteries beyond his identity. He’s got something wrong with his head. He kills. The end. There’s no way to romanticize that.

  “How’s it going?” asks Hughes over the phone speaker. I’d forgotten that we left it open.

  “Thrill a minute,” I reply.

  “I just watched a woman pee into a coffee cup,” says Hughes.

  “You might want to reconsider the internet sites you visit,” I reply.

  “No, she . . . oh, ha-ha.”

  “Is this our life?” I ask. “Is this the job?”

  “Would you rather be back in the cave with the alligator?”

  It takes me a long moment to come up with an answer. “Uh, no?”

  “When I was on patrol in Afghanistan, I was happy when nothing happened. But the boring days were never the best days. Even when people got hurt. I mean . . .”

  “I know what you mean,” I reply. “It’s like how zookeepers hide food from gorillas.”

  “They what?”

  “Zookeepers move the food around each day so the gorillas don’t get bored. They turn it into an Easter-egg hunt. The gorillas need challenges. The lack of one makes ’em go nuts. We need someone to hide our food,” I explain.

  “But not shoot at us.”

  “Ideally. You think—” I stop as I see a text message arrive.

  “You getting this?” asks Hughes.

  “Yeah.”

  We’re being pulled off surveillance.

  I text a friend at the Fort Lauderdale Police Department and get a response. Same thing.

  “It’s everyone. We’re all being pulled off. I guess that can only mean one thing . . .”