by Ellie Marney
“We come at things from very different perspectives—you with your creative sensibility, and me with my scientific bent—but I believe we’re alike in so many ways. It would be exciting to meet at some point. Perhaps there’s something I can do to lighten your burden—you only need ask. You know my offer still stands, and I would be delighted if you would consider donating. Not a complete donation of course, haha, but a professional exchange between friends.
“I hope your studies are going well, and the FBI isn’t bothering you too much. Your recent subject seems fascinating. Perhaps when you’ve tired of her, you might point me in the right direction—”
Emma turns away.
“I do enjoy a challenge.” Scott’s voice is sharp. “That’s it.”
Cooper watches Emma as he speaks in reply. “Can you tell me about the signature, please?”
“Your friend, Siegfried. It’s signed in blue pen.”
“Does Gutmunsson know you have the letter?”
“His mail typically arrives early—he’ll know if we’re holding it. But he isn’t aware of what arrives when. Pradeep sorts the mail before he enters the big room with Simon’s breakfast and correspondence, so we could pull this letter for at least twenty-four hours before Simon would be any the wiser.”
Cooper focuses now on the softly blinking red Conference light on the phone housing, then he makes a decision. “Dr. Scott, I’m going to give you some instructions. I’d like you to keep the letter and envelope in the bag and hold it in your office. No one should be allowed to touch it. I’m sending someone from Washington to collect it. Does Gutmunsson’s paper trash go out with the garbage? I’d also like you to cancel the garbage collection for this morning.”
“I think the garbage has already gone.”
Cooper grimaces briefly. “Okay, then I need to find out where it’s delivered and disposed of. Otherwise, let Pradeep arrive on shift with Gutmunsson’s breakfast and the rest of his mail as normal. Don’t interrupt his usual routine at all and don’t mention the letter. I might need to interview him at some point. I’ll call you in advance of our arrival.”
“Certainly.”
“Thank you for contacting me about this so quickly, Dr. Scott, I appreciate it. Please thank Pradeep as well. I’ll be in touch again shortly.”
Cooper ends the call, presses more buttons, speaks over his shoulder to Martino.
“Mike, I’m taking this one, and I’ll need you with me on the ground. Call Howard Carter and tell him to hold the fort at Berryville today. Talk to him about the press conference—” His call is answered and he changes tack. “Gerry, it’s Ed. I need Carlos Dixon to suit up and collect a letter from St. Elizabeths asylum that was sent to Simon Gutmunsson. It sounds like the Butcher.… No, he’ll need to delay the court appearance, this takes priority. Tell him he’ll need a partial kit. Prints and trace from the asylum’s superintendent, the mail delivery guy, and Gutmunsson’s attendant… No, Gutmunsson hasn’t touched it, but we have him on file anyway. Organize a team to do a trash hunt—the hospital has already released the garbage, they’re finding out where it went.… We’ll need Documents, so tell Linda to get set up. Also Hair and Fiber, and you’ll want to see if you can get anything off it.… Yeah, I’ll be there in an hour.”
As Cooper calls Dr. Scott again to confirm arrangements around Dixon’s arrival, Emma turns back and looks at him. “Are we coming with you to Washington?”
Cooper nods at her over the handset as he speaks. Bell frowns, leaves the room. Martino has already flipped a notebook open and started scribbling.
“… be there in about twenty-five minutes. Thank you, Dr. Scott, you’ve been really helpful.” Cooper disconnects, starts gathering his jacket and his own notebook as he turns to Martino. “Carter needs to cooperate with the chief in Berryville, guy by the name of Donahee. I’d prefer to delay the press call, but if Donahee can’t do that, if he’s under too much pressure, tell them to go ahead. Carter will want to stand at the back and be a presence, but don’t make it official. No statement at this time, no immediate threat to Berryville residents, out of respect for the families we’re waiting to hear back on investigative analysis—you know the drill. If he’s forced to say something, he should refer to Donahee’s operation, keep the local force on-side. And tell Carter I want the whole damn town door-knocked if they have to—somebody must’ve seen this bastard.”
Cooper and Martino open the door and head out, and Emma realizes she’s supposed to follow. “Where are we going?”
“Motor pool.” Cooper’s pace is brisk. “Where the hell is Bell?”
“I don’t know, he just took off.”
Martino lifts his notebook. “I’m gonna make those calls, Ed.”
“Stay near a phone,” Cooper says. “Use Jack Kirby’s office if you need it. I’ll call as soon as I have word.”
“Good luck and good hunting.” Martino gives an almost-salute, splits off toward Behavioral Science.
Emma matches Cooper’s strides. “This is Butcher-related—won’t Raymond be pissed if we come along?”
“This is Gutmunsson-related, and nothing is confirmed yet. That letter could have come from anyone. Raymond can suck on that for a while.” Cooper smacks the elevator button. “I want you to see the letter and give me your thoughts. That mention of ‘your recent subject’ spooked you, didn’t it?”
Emma tries to shrug. The idea that she’s now been a topic of interest for three different multiple murderers fills her head with a shriek of white noise.
“I might need you to go see Gutmunsson again, and soon.”
“Damn right you do.” Anger firms her knees. “I can handle it.”
The motor pool guy is disorganized; a number of vehicles have not yet been returned. While Cooper goes off to raise hell, Emma stands in the corner. The workshop smells of machine oil and solder and that synthetic air freshener they seem to use in the vents of every government car she’s ever ridden in. Cooper stops shouting and points at her, points at a dark blue Ford Fairmont. Bell arrives back in a rush with a brown paper bag in one hand. They all make for the car from different directions.
She and Bell arrive first, and she wrenches the car door open. “We’re walking the letter through Scientific Analysis.”
“I should’ve grabbed that jacket,” Bell muses. “Won’t Raymond be—”
“No. Nothing’s confirmed about it being the Butcher yet.”
“Lord, teach me to split hairs like an FBI agent.”
The car has front and rear bench seats. Emma holds the panic bar when Cooper guns it out of the bay doors and into the light. Bell protects his head as Cooper takes the last traffic hump at speed.
“Buckle up.” Cooper speaks over his shoulder. “Mr. Bell, I hope that’s coffee I’m smelling.”
“Watch out, it’s hot.” Bell unloads three polystyrene cups with lids from the bag he’s been balancing so carefully.
“I knew I did the right thing, taking you on.”
“Eat,” Bell commands as he presses a packaged sandwich into Emma’s hands.
It’s cream cheese, but she’s still grateful. She leans forward in her seat. “We need to find out where the letter was mailed. And how Simon’s supposed to reply.”
“That’s something you’ll need to ask him when you speak with him,” Cooper says.
“He’ll say he was never lying,” Emma points out. “That we just never asked the right questions.”
“No, I don’t expect the incarcerated sociopathic narcissist to actually admit that he lied.” Cooper’s glance in the rearview is dry. “Think of a strategy to use with him.”
Cooper switches on the flashers and the siren on occasion, so the ride to Washington goes fast. Emma has a stressful moment at FBI headquarters security check-in, when she thinks she’s left her ID lanyard in her room at Jefferson. She tastes Cooper’s irritation for a shameful moment before she finds the lanyard in the pocket of the jacket she still has tied around her waist.
&nb
sp; The feeling in the elevator, on the way to the lab, is different from the last time they visited: She and Bell aren’t out-in-the-cold trainees anymore, they’re part of the team. Emma reminds herself that Cooper has exacting standards. She sincerely hopes she’s able to meet them.
When they breach the doors, Carlos Dixon is in his court trousers and shirt and tie, with a lab coat thrown over the top. “I got back ten minutes ago. Gerry has it, but you’ll be damn lucky. And that onionskin paper is bad news.”
“Is he in the examining room?”
“Yeah, he’s got the laser on it. The garbage got dumped at the solid waste place off Capitol Street Southeast—the team’s there now. But if there are other letters, they might have already been incinerated.”
Cooper swerves quickly through the common room and its stacks of containers, Emma and Bell chasing after. Gerry Westfall is in the Latent Prints examining room, looking unhappy.
“The envelope is dirty as hell, and this letter paper is almost as bad as Kleenex.” Westfall settles the letter into the document case next to its envelope and strips off his gloves. “I got perspiration smudges, maybe off a wrist. Nothing else but smooth prints from the surgical gloves he’s using, like off the chains and the other surfaces in Berryville. I’d like to fume it, but I’d better give it to Linda first before I stain it. Glenn’s already taken a few bits.”
Nerves pinging, Emma has to step backward suddenly as Cooper reverses course to find Glenn Neilsen.
“He’s in here, on the scope,” Dixon calls out.
Neilsen’s hair sticks up at the back in that peculiar way as he angles over a microscope eyepiece in the lab. When Cooper arrives, Neilsen just waves briefly with one hand, his attention still on the slide.
“Glenn?”
“I’ve got, um—” Neilsen raises his head and blinks owlishly. “A curly hair from the attendant, and what looks like a piece of a whisker. There’s a stain, which I think is from the superintendent’s hand cream. Carlos is doing a comparison.”
“Gerry wants to send it to Linda, you okay with that?”
“Go for it. I’m still working these up.”
Cooper nods, and then they’re backtracking again, this time to an office where a woman in her early forties is waiting patiently, knees crossed. Linda Brown is wearing a necklace of mahogany beads that glow against her umber skin, and she is as neat and put-together as her office space.
“Good morning, Ed. Gerry said it’s on its way.”
“Linda, this is Emma Lewis and Travis Bell. They’ve been working the detail on Gutmunsson.”
“Nice to meet you—I won’t shake while I’m wearing gloves. Find a seat.” Her chin lifts as Westfall arrives with the document case. “Here we are.”
Westfall is puffing a little. “I’d like to fume it when you’re done, Linda.”
She nods. “I’ll look after it. Gerry, you need to quit smoking if that walk was enough to make you blow.”
“May as well ask me to quit breathing.”
“Get out of my office, then, if you want to smoke.”
Brown takes the case and opens it, carefully transfers the letter onto her dark work blotter with forceps, leaving the envelope. She switches on a strong lamp. The office air goes quiet as she reads the letter’s contents. Emma feels heat climb up her neck, then remembers that Brown doesn’t know what the final lines mean. Once Brown is finished with the content, she photographs the entire letter in sections.
“I’m going to need some additional time with the phrasing and grammar, to be thorough. But the use of contractions like ‘there’s’ and ‘you’ve’ already suggests a younger subject. There’s no coded language I can make out.”
“That’s fine,” Cooper says.
She switches on another lamp at a sharply oblique angle to examine for indented writing. She tries again with a filter.
“No impressions.” A different filter. “Just the press here, on the left and right edges from the typewriter bail rolls. A bit of tracking—could be a crumb or a bit of trace stuck on the cylinder. This typewriter has seen some action.”
“What makes you say that?” Cooper asks.
“Some of the keys are sticky—do you see where the lowercase a drops sometimes? Most of the capitals are quite strong, which makes me think we’re dealing with someone who’s not a comfortable touch typist. But the machine itself is old. It’s using a fabric ribbon, and the type design is very cute—I think this was written on an older model Olivetti, maybe even a Valentine. I’ll need to examine more, but I’m pretty sure.”
“Are they common, those machines?”
“Not anymore. They were first released in 1969.” She glances up at Cooper and her eyes have an unsettlingly predatory glint. “Find me his typewriter and I can use the TYPE classification system to nail him with this.”
Cooper makes a thin smile. “Talk to me about the paper.”
“I can see why Gerry’s sighing. I don’t think he’s going to get anything off it, even with the iodine. The cotton fibers in the onionskin are at least as old as the machine, and they’re just going to leach. There’s a little tear here, on the end of the fold—I think the attendant might have snagged it getting it out of the envelope. Now let me look at the signature.”
Brown completes photography on the letter from above and all angles, flips it with her forceps to photograph the reverse. Then she flips it back, switches off the bigger lamps, and darkens the room to use a handheld ultraviolet light, scanning minutely. Emma hears Bell’s soft breathing close by. She gets a sense of Brown’s office as some kind of outer space bubble, airless and quiet. When the ordinary office lights come back on, it’s a shock.
“It’s a blue ballpoint,” Brown says, “and it’s contemporary, but I won’t be able to narrow down the specific pen. I’ll need to use solvent to tell you which ink—are you okay for me to cut away a little section for the liquid chromatography?”
“This letter isn’t going to its receiver,” Cooper confirms.
“The handwriting is undisguised—he hasn’t used any embellishment, or written with his nondominant hand. He’s right-handed, by the way, but you already knew that. You don’t think that’s his name, Siegfried, do you?”
“He used Gutmunsson’s nom de plume in the salutation, so no. I think he’s using a moniker. I’m not sure what ‘Siegfried’ means.”
“Don’t you? Ed, you need to do more reading.” Brown takes the envelope out of the case with her steady forceps, deposits it into another clean case for continued examination, closes up the case with the letter to send back to Westfall for fuming. “Siegfried was the hero from Norse mythology. He slew the dragon Fafnir and married the Valkyrie Brynhild.”
“How do you know all this stuff?”
She grins. “Benefits of homeschooling.” Her grin fades. “The legend goes that Siegfried bathed in the dragon’s blood, and it made him invincible.”
Emma stares at the letter and feels a chill.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
The front of the envelope is addressed to Gutmunsson, care of Evelyn Scott, St. Elizabeths Hospital, 1100 Alabama Avenue Southeast.”
Westfall has crowded them into his office, which looks like someone exploded an illegal ordnance inside it, and Bell is trying not to stare. How does the guy get any work done in here? The office is darkened and everyone looks at a section of the pale wall as Westfall displays stills from the video camera he used to record images of the front and back of the envelope.
“Zip code is correct. The letterhead is for real—that’s a genuine faculty envelope from Georgetown U.”
“So either the Butcher figured out that Gutmunsson’s studying there,” Bell says, “or Gutmunsson tipped him off somehow so they could correspond without alerting the St. Elizabeths staff.”
“Georgetown has a medical school,” Emma says immediately. “The Butcher is young—he could be college-aged. A student maybe?”
Bell looks up. “He could be getting the ether throug
h the med school.”
“But this letter wasn’t sent through the med school,” Westfall says. “It’s care of the English department. Sender is a Dr. Gordon Lord.”
Emma groans. When Cooper looks over, she makes a face. “George Gordon Lord Byron. Simon’s obsessed with the Romantic poets. It’s the subject of his dissertation.”
“We need to check the Georgetown mail service.” Cooper is propped on the edge of Westfall’s paperwork-covered desk, arms crossed. “They’ll have both an internal and a USPS system, so it might involve some digging.”
Emma cocks her head, leaves the room as Westfall adjusts the display to show another image of the envelope.
“Everything seems legitimate. The postmark tag is some kind of departmental code.”
“How is Gutmunsson supposed to reply?” Cooper asks.
Everyone spends a little time thinking about that.
“To avoid suspicion, he’d have to send his reply back to the English department, surely,” Westfall says.
Cooper squints at the display. “Is the Butcher collecting his mail from the college in person?”
“If he’s going to school there, maybe yeah,” Bell says. “Or it might be forwarded on to his parents’ house, or something.”
“Unless you think someone in the English faculty at Georgetown is the Butcher,” Westfall adds.
Bell turns to Cooper. “We’ve been tracking this idea that the Butcher is young. Could we have the age range wrong? Could he be a professor or a teacher at Georgetown?”
Cooper frowns. “I don’t think so. The young victims, his physical strength, even the tone of this letter… everything we have about this guy feels young to me.”
Emma walks back into the room. “If the envelope is mailed on campus and shows a departmental sender, it’ll be tagged with that department’s postmark so the postage cost can be credited back.” When Cooper looks at her, she shrugs. “I just called the central mail service office at Georgetown University and asked.”
“So the Butcher mailed the letter on campus. He used the faculty envelope and the departmental-sender line to make sure it was tagged as coming from Georgetown U.”
