If a Tree Falls

by Robert I. Katz

  Over one hundred-fifty sexual homicides were known to be committed each year in the United States, and God only knew how many other victims simply disappeared, their bodies never discovered.

  Here, at least they had a pattern: female, slim, attractive, early teens, blonde or brunette, White, Hispanic or Asian, all of them raped and strangled with what appeared to be a leather belt.

  Kurtz sat at the kitchen table, nursing a cup of coffee, the folder spread out on the table. Lenore had wandered by twice, glanced at the papers, winced and walked away. Lisa and Gary were deliberately staying in the next room, watching something on the TV. Kurtz appreciated the quiet.

  One file contained information on known serial killers, nearly all of whom had been caught because they made mistakes. Luis Garavito had accidentally dropped a note that mentioned the name of his girlfriend near one of his victims’ bodies. Andrei Chikatilo was observed by two undercover cops attempting to speak to two young women. The cops followed him and caught him in the act of assaulting a third young woman. Alexander Pichushkin was identified by surveillance tape after a train ticket was found on one of his victim’s bodies.

  Let’s see…Moses Sithole and Sergei Tkach were both arrested after having been seen with victims. Gennady Mekhasevich, too clever for his own good, left a handwritten note next to a victim’s body, claiming she had been killed by ‘patriots.’ The police then examined over 550,000 handwriting samples demanded of the local population and actually got their man. In America, the authorities cannot demand handwriting samples, not without a warrant.

  Gary Ridgway often returned to the scene of the crime to have sex with the dead bodies of his victims. Kurtz shuddered. The infamous Ted Bundy, acting as a consultant, suggested that this might be the case. The police staked out one of the murder sites and sure enough, Ridgway showed up. Then, of course, there was Ted Bundy himself. A composite sketch was recognized by three different witnesses. An officer noticed him cruising an area and tried to pull him over. He fled. The officer pursued and found ropes and handcuffs in the car. He was arrested but the evidence was considered insufficient to hold him. He was finally brought to trial only when hair from numerous victims was found in his vehicle.

  Most of these people were completely out of their minds, not necessarily stupid, but driven by their compulsions to the point that they did stupid things. They made mistakes, some of these mistakes at least borderline deliberate. They had a compulsion to brag, to be seen, and to see themselves as important, worthy of the public interest and the authority’s respect. Most of them were caught, when they were caught, not because of brilliant police work, but because they were insane.

  Not all of them were caught. Jack the Ripper had never been found. The Long Island killer, who left the bodies of his victims, all known prostitutes, in sand dunes along the South Shore beaches, was still at large. Who knew how many serial killers were even now stalking their fiftieth victim, all unknown?

  Sometimes the cops had to have their noses rubbed in it. John Wayne Gacy was arrested numerous times. The witnesses were considered unreliable, or the evidence insufficient. Only when DNA from at least three victims was found in his car was a search warrant granted and the bodies of twenty-six young men found in the crawlspace beneath Gacy’s house.

  One of Jeffrey Dahmer’s victims escaped. Drugged, naked, he was escorted back to Dahmer’s apartment by two cops. Somehow, the cops didn’t notice a dead body lying in Dahmer’s bed nor did they bother to check the records which would have revealed Dahmer to be a convicted child molester on probation. After the cops left, Dahmer injected hydrochloric acid into the victim’s brain and ate his body over the next few days. Dahmer was finally caught when yet another victim escaped and flagged down two cops, who accompanied the young man back to Dahmer’s apartment and noted photos of numerous bodies in various stages of decomposition.

  Wow. Just…wow.

  The Clark County killer, or so the press had begun to call him, had so far made no mistakes, except for one: he had buried his victims in graves so shallow that a bear had dug two of them up. And even then, it was only luck that either body had ever been found. The Clark County killer had no compulsion to brag or even to be noticed. Quite the opposite.

  So far, everything they had was supposition. Male, Scots-Irish-Scandinavian descent, a van, an ATV, living not too far away in a home with a basement or outbuildings sufficient to hide and restrain his victims. It all seemed reasonable and all of it might be bullshit.

  Still, looking it all over, Kurtz did have a few ideas…

  Chapter 24

  “We’ve been making assumptions,” Kurtz said.

  “I love this ‘we’ stuff,” Bill Harris said.

  Kurtz glowered at him. “You interested or not? I can walk out of here right now.”

  Bill Harris shrugged. Drew Hastings looked fascinated. George Rodriguez sipped his coffee, an expression of mild curiosity on his face.

  “Go on,” George said.

  “You’ve got a composite sketch from Pittsburgh, the guy who was seen with Faye Lurie. That’s the only solid piece of evidence you’ve got.”

  “Pretty much,” Bill Harris said.

  “The rest of it is assumptions. If we’re making assumptions, let’s examine some of these assumptions a little more closely. We’ve been assuming that this guy is a hit man for the mob, who just happens to rape and strangle teenage girls as a hobby.”

  “Pretty much,” Bill Harris said again.

  “We’ve been assuming that’s why he was in New York: to kill somebody. We’ve been assuming that after he killed Steven Kyle, he decided to find himself a teenage hooker and kill her, too. You know, to celebrate.”

  George Rodriguez looked at Bill Harris and scratched his ear. “So?”

  “It didn’t work that way with Faye Lurie. He groomed her. He wined and dined her, got her ready for the big event. One of the guys you told me about, Brian Murphy? The Chameleon? He was seen in Toronto, St. Louis and New York. Maybe this guy has other reasons to come to New York. Maybe this wasn’t his first trip.”

  Drew Hastings smiled. A far-away look crept over Bill Harris’ face. “That’s…not stupid,” he said.

  George Rodriguez frowned. “Brian Murphy,” he said.

  Leroy Evans and Lew Barent were also not stupid. They had, as a matter of course, considered the possibility that Lydia Gonzalez’ murder was not so random as it had first appeared. They had interviewed the dead girl’s mother, her brother and as many of her cadre of friends as they could find. All had been reluctant to talk. None regarded the police as allies.

  Lydia Gonzalez had gone to a public school in Brooklyn. She had received indifferent grades but had not been obviously rebellious. Her teachers professed shock, both at her murder and her night time activities.

  Nobody knew anything, or if they did, they weren’t willing to admit it.

  “A lot of illegal immigrants in that community,” Leroy Evans said. “They try hard not to be noticed.”

  Bill Harris, Drew Hastings, George Rodriguez and Richard Kurtz sat in Drew Hastings’ office. The phone was set to speaker.

  “There’s no reason to think we would get more with a second pass-through,” Barent said.

  “Can you give it a try?” Drew Hastings said.

  Kurtz could almost hear Barent sigh. “Sure,” he said. “Why not?”

  Josephine Harden was big, Black and imposing. She had been a guidance counselor for twenty-five years. Barent and Leroy Evans had interviewed her immediately after Lydia Gonzalez’ body was discovered. At that time, she had nothing to offer. “Lydia was a very pretty girl, and a very sweet girl. She cared about other people, particularly her mother and little brother. She was not a good student, but she wasn’t the worst student, either. She studied enough to get by. She had ambitions to grow up and work in a beauty salon.” Josephine Harden hesitated. “She liked boys. Boys liked her.”

  Josephine Harden shook her head. “It’s a shame,” she s
aid.

  Barent and Leroy Evans had agreed with her. She had given them a list of young girls who might have been friendly with Lydia Gonzalez. All of them had been interviewed and all professed to know nothing.

  This visit was different. Josephine Harden frowned at both Barent and Leroy Evans. “It must be fate,” she said.

  Barent raised an eyebrow, at which Josephine Harden gave a resigned shrug. “A few days ago, one of Lydia’s little friends, Sofia Velasquez, came to talk to me. She was crying. She was feeling guilty. It seems that Lydia had confided in her that she was seeing somebody. An older man. A white man who drove a van and had a lot of money.” Josephine Harris sighed. “Sofia didn’t believe her. Lydia told her when this man would be meeting her. Sofia was watching.”

  Leroy Evans stared at her. “The night she vanished?”

  “No,” Josephine Harden said. “Two nights before. This was, apparently, a date.”

  “She’s one of the ones we talked to,” Barent said. “She had nothing to say.”

  Josephine Harden shook her head. “Before she told me this, Sofia made me promise not to reveal it to anybody. Sofia’s parents are both illegal immigrants, though Sofia was born here and is an American citizen. Sofia is afraid to attract the attention of the authorities. She doesn’t want to get her parents in trouble.”

  “But you’re telling us now,” Leroy Evans said.

  Josephine Harden sighed. “I was thinking of giving you a call, anyway. I either betray Sofia’s confidence or keep information hidden that might lead to a young girl’s killer being found. This is not an easy decision for me to make. When you walked into my office, it seemed that God was guiding my choice.”

  “God does that, now and then,” Leroy Evans said.

  “So, we had one of the female cops talk to Sofia,” Leroy Evans said. “Josephine Harden was present. Josephine is the no-nonsense sort, but all the kids trust her. She reminds them of their mothers; for some of them, the mothers they would like to have, and don’t.”

  Barent’s voice took over. “She saw the guy from across the street. He was driving the same van that the security cameras picked up. The guy’s behavior was interesting. He stayed away from the window. Just like last time, the cameras didn’t get much more than a shadow. Sofia Velasquez, however, got a good look at him. She’s willing to work with a police artist. We should have a sketch for you in a couple of hours. We’ll send it along.”

  Two hours later, the fax machine in Drew Hasting’s office buzzed and the sketch slid out. They all stared at it: white, with a full head of dark hair, a wide nose, full lips and arched brows, a long, thin face. “This look like anybody you know?” Kurtz asked.

  “Not offhand,” Drew Hastings said. “No.”

  Bill Harris pursed his lips and shook his head. George Rodriguez shrugged. “Something to work on,” he said.

  “What do you think of these?” Kurtz asked.

  Lenore frowned. Spread out on the table were six photographs, all male, one black, one Asian, one Hispanic, three white, plus two sketches done in pencil, both white males. Lenore put a hand on Kurtz’ shoulder and leaned over. “What are you asking? They’re guys.”

  “The five on the left are known rapist-murderers, who’ve never been caught. The one next to them is Brian Murphy, a suspected hit man for the mob and a known sexual deviant. Brian Murphy’s whereabouts are currently unknown. The other two are composite sketches of men who were seen with young girls who then vanished. One of the girls was the skull that you found in the creek.”

  Lenore shuddered. She sat down next to Kurtz and looked closely at all eight pictures. Kurtz watched her while she did so.

  “Let’s put these three aside for now,” Lenore said. She turned over the photos of the Asian, Hispanic and Black males. “The sketches are where the money is.”

  “I think so, too. So do Drew, Bill and George.”

  Lenore’s lip quirked upward. “Your new buddies.”

  “I amuse them, like a trained dog. I can do things that dogs are not supposed to do.”

  Lenore frowned down at the two sketches. “Notice, here…” She ran her finger around the outside of each face. “The overall shape of the face is similar. So are the ears.”

  “Okay.”

  “Ears are distinctive. You can change them with plastic surgery but they’re hard to disguise. Noses are different. So are the cheeks. Rubber or plastic fillers inserted into the nostrils will broaden the nose. Cheek inserts can make the upper face look rounder. Actors and makeup artists use them all the time. And hair is easy. It’s hard to disguise the actual shape of the eyes but a little makeup can give the illusion, and contact lenses, of course. Eyebrows…” she shrugged. “Not a problem.”

  “Are you saying that these two sketches are the same guy?”

  “Maybe. I wouldn’t doubt it.”

  “How about the photos, the three white guys. Could either of these be the same guy in the sketches?”

  “With plastic surgery? Sure. Without it, probably not.”

  “Okay,” Kurtz said. “Here’s what I’d like you to do.”

  “What are these?”

  “My wife is an artist,” Kurtz said.

  Bill Harris looked at George Rodriguez. Drew Hastings looked at Kurtz. None of them said anything.

  “I had her look at the photos and the sketches. She scanned them and ran them through a program she has on her computer, a morphing program.” He held up a stack of paper. “These used Brian Murphy, plus the two known white rapist murderers who’ve never been caught as the templates.” He held up a second stack. “These morph between the two police sketches.” He held up a third stack. “These start with both sketches and extrapolate, changing facial features in ways that could be accomplished by somebody who wanted to disguise himself, without plastic surgery.”

  “Huh,” Bill Harris said.

  Drew Hastings smiled at the other two.

  George Rodriguez held out his hand. “Let me see those.”

  Ten minutes later, Drew, Bill and George were tired of looking at men’s faces. “They all look alike,” Bill Harris said.

  “The ones close together in each stack look alike,” Kurtz said. “The further you go, the more different they look.”

  “How many of these are there?” George Rodriguez asked.

  “About five hundred.”

  “How are we supposed to make sense of five hundred faces?” Bill Harris said. “There are going to be plenty of matches with five hundred different faces, just by chance.”

  “It’s five hundred photos,” Kurtz said, “but a lot less than five hundred faces. Every photo is nearly identical to the ones on either side. According to my wife, there are no more than fifty distinct faces in the bunch.” Kurtz grinned. “However, take a look at numbers thirty-seven through forty-five or so in the Brian Murphy stack and then compare them to numbers forty through fifty in the morphed photos from the composite sketches.”

  Bill Harris brow wrinkled. He handed two pictures to Drew Hastings and another two to George Rodriguez.

  “Look a lot alike, don’t they?” Kurtz said.

  “There is a certain resemblance,” Bill Harris said.

  “And you have a database of pretty much every adult male in the state of West Virginia to compare them to.”

  “We do?” Drew Hastings said.

  “Drivers’ license photos,” Bill Harris said.

  “Yeah,” Kurtz said. “That’s what I was thinking.”

  “You do think a lot,” George Rodriguez said.

  Drew Hastings smiled.

  Chapter 25

  Computers work fast. Kurtz had given Bill Harris a compact disk containing all five hundred photos. It was a simple matter for Bill Harris to access the state-wide motor vehicle database. A few minutes later, they had five names. Two of these lived in the Southern portion of the state, well over a hundred miles from Clark County. One of the two was sixty-eight years old. The second was forty-three. Both were ma
rried. A third was seventeen years old, a junior in High School living with his parents, approximately forty miles from Clinton. The team agreed to set these three aside for the moment.

  The remaining two were John Billings and Seamus Sullivan. The two men looked a lot alike, both big, with long faces, high, arched brows, thin noses and dark brown hair. Both resembled the morphed composite from the police sketches and both looked at least vaguely like Brian Murphy. Both lived within twenty miles of the dump site. John Billings was thirty-seven years old, married, with three kids.

  Seamus Sullivan, on the other hand…

  Drew Hastings stared down at the drivers’ license photos of both men, smiling at them from the computer screen. “You know these guys?” Bill Harris asked.

  “Yeah. I went to school with John. He’s local and he married a girl from Marion County. He works for his daddy. They’re building contractors. He’s never been in any trouble that I know of.”

  “I remember him,” Kurtz said. “We played football together. He was okay.”

  “What about the other guy?” George Rodriguez said.

  Drew squinted his eyes at Seamus Sullivan’s photo, his face pale. “Seamus Sullivan,” he whispered. “Jesus.”

  Bill glanced at George.

  Drew took a deep breath. “I don’t know. He’s not from around here but he’s been living in these parts for at least ten years. I can’t say I know much about him.”

  “Let’s find out,” George Rodriguez said.

  An hour later, Bill Harris asked, “Why didn’t this guy come up before?”

  “He lives further away than our original group of possibles. Also, no van,” George Rodriguez said.

  “What does he do?” Kurtz said.

  “He works for a restaurant supply house,” Drew Hastings said. He narrowed his eyes. “I’m pretty sure he does have a van, now that I think about it. I’ve seen him driving it around town.”