Another Way to Die

by Philip Cox

  The problem is, however, that bacon-wrapped hot dog stands are illegal, or at least unlicensed, which means the same thing. From the point of view of a food health inspector, there is nowhere to properly prepare the food and hold supplies at refrigerated temperatures, no sanitary wipes or kitchen towels, and no thermometer to make sure the food is properly cooked. Hence the name Danger Dogs.

  Quinn would turn a blind eye to this absence of a licence and health danger: he had been stopping at this stand for years, as had many of his fellow officers, and had never heard of anybody being ill as a result of eating a Danger Dog. The nature of Quinn’s job meant that he would eat a lot of street food, some of it passable, some of it good, some outstanding. As far as Quinn was concerned, Danger Dogs came in the good category, especially when covered in ketchup.

  He consumed the dog as he drove to the station. Traffic was relatively light at six on a Saturday morning, and it was twenty minutes before seven when he arrived. Pulling into the station parking lot, he was confronted by the last thing he expected to see: Sam Leroy’s car.

  As he arrived at the Homicide Desk, Leroy looked up. ‘Couldn’t you sleep?’ he asked Quinn.

  Quinn shrugged. ‘I kind of woke up early. Thought I’d come in. What about you?’

  ‘I slept some.’

  ‘I see you’ve been busy,’ said Quinn, looking around at the walls. Three of the walls of the office had whiteboard screwed on, for the detectives to write up details of whatever case they were investigating. On the walls now were four lists. Each list was headed by a woman’s name. Below each woman’s name was the following, with the information added:

  Age

  status

  Ethnicity

  CoD

  penta?

  restrained?

  Sign of SA

  Lived

  Worked

  Found

  ‘I’ve already pulled the old case file. These are the four victims,’ Leroy explained as he pointed up at the whiteboards, ‘of the so-called Pentagram Killer.’

  Hands in his pockets, Quinn looked up and read through the list.

  ‘Look at the commonalities, Ray.’

  Quinn nodded as he read down the four lists.

  Leroy continued, ‘Look at their names. They’re all traditional American names, wasps.’ wasp is an acronym for White Anglo-Saxon Protestant, which is what all these victims appeared to be. ‘No African-Americans, no Hispanics, no Italian Americans. The only kind of exception is this one here.’ He pointed to the third name. ‘She’s French, as you can tell by the name. Works Downtown as a translator. Or worked, I should say,’ he added, correcting himself.

  ‘Look at their ages, Ray: twenty-seven, thirty, twenty-eight. She’s the oldest here, at thirty-five.’ He turned to Quinn. ‘The age may or may not be significant.’

  ‘All single,’ said Quinn. ‘None married.’

  ‘They were all single. Not married, not with partners. Although two of them had boyfriends. One of them had a girlfriend. But none of them had significant others. Now look at the causes of death.’

  ‘Multiple stab wounds to the chest,’ Quinn read out.

  ‘Yes, in every case. At least twenty, sometimes more. And done with considerable force. As if in some kind of frenzied attack.’

  ‘And penta?? Pentagram, I’m guessing.’

  ‘Yes. In all the cases, the cause of the death was the stab wounds. But they were never killed where we found them: like the Beetle last night, there was hardly any blood on the scene. But they all had this pentagram carved on their backs. So it seems after he’d killed them, he stripped them and cut the shape. We assumed they were dead at the time: the carvings were so well done, so precise - almost artistic - he couldn’t have done that if they were alive. Unless…’

  ‘Unless?’

  ‘Think about it. Even if they were tightly restrained, there’d be movement – a lot of movement – if he was carving shapes into their flesh. The lines of the drawings were so straight, so precise, they couldn’t have been conscious. There was a suggestion at the time that he could have sedated them, given them some kind of anaesthetic, or – and this is really off the wall – given them some kind of neuromuscular blocking agent.’

  ‘Paralyzed them, you mean?’

  ‘Yeah. Curare, or vecuronium. There are several others.’

  ‘But that would have to mean he was a doctor or something. You know, to be able to get a hold of that stuff.’

  Leroy nodded. ‘A position in the medical profession, yes. But none of them had any trace whatsoever of any blocking agent. Therefore, they had to have been dead already.’

  ‘I hope so, for their sake.’

  ‘Yes, that’s how Perez and I felt at the time. And every one of the victims had a smaller pentagram, carved in their inner thigh. Right leg.’

  ‘That’s sick.’

  Leroy turned back to the whiteboards. ‘Restrained. Yes, all of them had duct tape over their mouths, and all had their hands behind their backs, tied with grey, always grey electrical wire. We assumed they were restrained in that way before they were killed: why do it otherwise?

  ‘But it would have made it difficult to get their clothes off, even if they were dead.’

  ‘Yup, but we were talking a real sicko.’

  Quinn pointed up at the list. ‘SA – sexual assault?’

  ‘Correct. None of them showed any signs of sexual violence; not the type of injuries or abrasions you might find in a rape case. But - and this gets weirder by the minute - two of them had traces of lubricant. Now that might explain why there were no abrasions. And we found no DNA traces. No, that’s not quite true. In one case, there was a trace, and we were able to get a DNA extract, but that was from the victim’s boyfriend, and it had been there some time. Therefore, he was eliminated.

  ‘And the last three points: where they lived, where they worked, and where they were found. All different parts of the city. No pattern at all.’

  Quinn said, ‘Comparing that to the victim yesterday…’

  ‘She appeared to be of the same ethnic background. From a quick visual check. Certainly Caucasian. The age would seem the same as these. We couldn’t see if she was wearing a wedding band, but I’d take book she wasn’t. We’ll know for sure Monday. And I’m guessing when she comes up as a Missing Person, she’ll live and work… well, anywhere.’

  Quinn stood for a moment, silently reading the whiteboards one more time. ‘What does that say down there? Ramos? What’s that?’

  ‘That,’ replied Leroy, ‘is Professor Maurice Ramos. He’s a professor of Theology at UCLA. He gave us some advice last time around. But once Cordell was killed, and the murders stopped, the case was closed. I called him last night, on the way home.’

  ‘Advice on what?’

  ‘Significance of the pentagram. You never know, it might help. We have an appointment with him at ten.’

  CHAPTER SIX

  Vermont Avenue was the location for the first UCLA campus. Founded in 1919, it served 250 students. Ten years later, the university shifted to Westwood, to the current 419-acre site, between West Sunset and Wilshire Boulevards, and bordered vertically by Hilgard and Gayley Avenues.

  A short drive from the station, ten minutes tops, taking Santa Monica Boulevard eastwards, then Westwood to Wilshire, and onto the campus via Gayle Avenue. On the way there, Leroy explained to Quinn about Professor Ramos.

  ‘He’s a Professor of Theology here; or to be precise, he’s the Professor of Theology here, had been since you were in diapers. He was recommended to us by the Bureau first time round.’

  ‘The Bureau? You accepted help from those guys?’

  ‘Come on, Ray: you know I don’t have a problem with accepting their help when we need it. What I do have a problem with is them coming in and taking over an investigation. In any case, Perez was the senior partner: he got them involved. There was no need to involve them: all the killings took place in LA, the state line wasn’t crossed, but Pere
z felt we could use some assistance with profiling the guy.’

  ‘And?’

  ‘I haven’t had time yet to review the profile, as we had to get up here, but I recall a couple of things. First: he’s most likely a guy.’

  ‘I’d already figured that one out.’

  ‘Yeah, the profiler said that statistically the – get out of the way!’ As he spoke, he sounded the horn at a white pickup which had failed to turn left at the intersection with Wilshire. Once the truck had turned and they began moving, Leroy continued talking. ‘Where was I? Yeah, statistically, the perp was a man. Not impossible for it to have been a woman, but it would have to be one with higher than normal strength.’

  ‘And the victims were raped.’

  ‘It looked that way, yes. I’m talking about the lubricant we found. Okay, a woman would have done it with an object, but statistically the scenario there was so unlikely. Then there are all the other factors - the hunting knife, the tape, the electrical wire – and it all points to a man. A male Caucasian. Most likely a male Caucasian as statistically serial killers are attracted - if that’s the right word - to people of their own ethnic group.’

  ‘And the guy you shot – Cordell?’

  ‘Harlan Cordell.’

  ‘He was Caucasian?’

  ‘Yup, he was. But that was only part of it. But it wasn’t the profiling that led us to Cordell. It was a call from one of his neighbours; something about there being a lot of activity out back in the middle of the night. Then after Cordell was killed and we searched his house, we found…’

  ‘A hunting knife, tape, wire, and details of the victims.’

  ‘That was pretty much it. The murders stopped, we had caught the Pentagram Killer, and the case was closed. Here we are now. His office is in the Humanities Building.’

  Leroy had pulled up outside a large red-brick building. Typical of the many buildings on the campus, it was of an Italian Romanesque brick design, three floors high. The wide entrance was flanked by two ornate towers, each twice as high as the main building, and each topped with a belfry. This, and three similar buildings, were laid out around a grassy central quadrangle.

  ‘His office is on the second floor,’ Leroy said as they walked briskly up the half dozen steps to the entrance. He checked his watch. ‘Shit, we’re a few minutes late.’

  Up on the second floor, they found Professor Ramos’s office door, dark oak with an ornate gold embossed nameplate. Leroy knocked loudly, three times.

  They heard a voice from inside. ‘Come in, Detective.’

  The professor’s office was like a large Barnes & Noble squeezed into somebody’s lounge. Admittedly, a large lounge. All four walls were filled with ceiling high bookshelves, all crammed with books. There were gaps in three of the shelves to accommodate the entrance to the office, another door leading somewhere else, and the window. The window ledge was crammed with piles of papers. There were piles of books, magazines and papers all around the room, on the floor and on a dining-sized table. There was a desk the other side of the office: this too was covered in papers, untidily this time, compared with the rest of the room, which was busy and crowded but the piles of materials were in order.

  In one corner of the room was a small table. The professor was sitting at the table, working on a PC. Not a laptop or even a computer with a flat screen, but an old-fashioned cathode-ray personal computer. He stood up and walked over to greet the detectives.

  ‘Detective Leroy,’ he said, holding out his hand to shake Leroy’s. ‘I remember you from last time.’

  ‘Professor,’ said Leroy as they shook hands. ‘And this is Detective Quinn.’

  Ramos greeted Quinn and motioned them to two chairs in front of the desk. He sat the other side. He looked in his sixties, untidy iron grey hair, and was slim and short, about five six. Quinn assumed South Asian, but Leroy told him later that the professor was Filipino.

  ‘How rude of me,’ the professor said. ‘Can I get you gentleman something to drink? Tea, coffee, water?’ Both declined.

  ‘We’re good, thank, professor,’ Leroy said. ‘You recall that some years back you helped my partner and me with regard to a spate of murders.’

  ‘The ones with the pentagram? Yes, I remember. And you were with that other partner - what was his name? Perez? The Hispanic. What happened to him? Did he get sent back to Mexico?’ He looked over at Quinn. ‘That was very un-PC of me, wasn’t it?’

  ‘No, sir. Roman Perez is now our lieutenant. He got himself a promotion.’

  Ramos looked surprised. ‘Oh, did he? Well, good for him. Now, back to business. When you called last night, you said you wanted to talk more about that case. Not a problem for me of course; but why? Surely the case was closed years back. You found him.’

  Leroy said, ‘We did, and in fact the suspect was shot and killed while resisting arrest, but…’

  ‘But…?’ asked the professor.

  ‘Last night we had another murder, and the victim was killed and found in the exact same way as back then.’

  ‘Oh my gosh. So what do you think? You have some kind of copycat?’

  ‘That would be the obvious assumption, sir, yes. But there was one aspect of the original case that wasn’t made public - something he did to the women - that was repeated last night. Now a potential copycat could get most information about the killer’s MO by going online, but not this piece. Now, there are three possible explanations for this. One - we got the wrong man, though that is unlikely; two - somebody in the Department or the Coroner’s Office leaked it: again, unlikely given the time difference; three - he had an accomplice we never knew about. Once again, unlikely as serial killers don’t work in pairs.’

  ‘So, what’s your theory? And how can I help?’

  ‘To be honest, no theories at this time. The new case is only twelve hours old. But as a starting point, I’d like to revisit this concept of the pentagram. You recall one was carved on the back of each victim.’

  ‘Yes, I remember now. And quite ornately, too.’

  ‘Yes, very artistically. So, what I’m hoping to get from you, Professor, is an update, a review of the pentagram, its significance. Maybe if we can get a handle on where this guy’s coming from, we can build up a picture of who we’re looking for.’

  ‘I see,’ said the professor. He sat back in his chair, folded his arms and closed his eyes. ‘The pentagram, in a nutshell, is a five-point star. It’s a pagan religious symbol, one of the oldest symbols on Earth, incidentally, used as far back as 4000 BC. Have you ever read The Da Vinci Code?’

  ‘I’ve seen the movie,’ Quinn volunteered.

  The professor looked at him disdainfully. ‘The book.’

  Leroy and Quinn shifted uncomfortably in their chairs. ‘Um – no, I haven’t,’ they both admitted guiltily.

  Ramos made a dismissive gesture. ‘No matter. In the book, it refers to the pentagram as the sacred feminine or divine goddess. But in American pop culture, it more commonly represents devil worship.’

  ‘That sounds familiar from before,’ Leroy said.

  ‘Yes, I do recall we had a similar conversation before,’ the professor agreed. ‘But since our last meeting I did some further research. I was going to share it with you at the time, but you caught the man, and so I didn’t see the need to. We all moved on.’

  ‘Do you still have notes on this research then, Professor?’

  Ramos shuffled a few papers on his untidy desk and picked up a dog-eared legal pad. ‘I certainly do, Detective. Do you want to hear some more?’

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  ‘Did you want to take notes, Detective Leroy?’ asked the professor.

  Leroy coughed. ‘No, I’m good. If you can just give me an overview, and maybe we could take those notes you have. We’ll copy and return them, of course.’

  ‘Well, these aren’t exactly notes as such; just some scratchings and shorthand, and some of it is in Filipino. Here…’ He reached into a drawer and pulled out a small ring bound
notepad and passed this over to Leroy, who immediately passed it to Quinn. Quinn took out a pen and opened the notepad. ‘Keep it,’ the professor added. He took a deep breath, adjusted his glasses and referred to the legal pad.

  ‘What exactly is a pentagram?’ he asked. Leroy couldn’t help thinking they were listening to one of his lectures. His mind went back to his own days as a student. His eyes darted over to Quinn and he suppressed a smile at the sight of his partner eagerly poised to begin taking notes. Was Quinn a former UCLA student, he wondered.

  ‘The pentagram,’ the professor continued, ‘is a symbol of a star encased in a circle. It always has five points, hence pentagram. One point is always pointing upwards, and each of the five points has its own meaning. The upward point of the star,’ he read, pointing to the ceiling, ‘represents the spirit. The other four points each represent one of the elements – earth, air, fire, water. If a person wears a pentagram as a necklace, or any other form of jewellery, they are saying they feel a connection with the elements and respect the planet.

  ‘Now the number five itself. It has always been regarded as magical and mystical, yet human. We have five fingers on each hand and five toes on each foot. We are aware of five senses - sight, hearing, smell, touch and taste. We perceive five stages in our lives - birth, adolescence, copulation, parenthood and death.’

  ‘Three down, two to go,’ said Quinn, earning himself a stare from the professor and from Leroy.

  Professor Ramos harrumphed and continued, glancing at Quinn as if he were a naughty student.

  ‘The number five is also associated with Mars. It signifies severity, conflict and harmony through conflict. In Christianity, the crucified Christ had five wounds. There are five pillars of the Muslim faith and five daily times of prayer.

  ‘The mediaeval knight had five virtues - generosity, courtesy, chastity, chivalry and piety. These virtues were all symbolised in the pentagram device of Sir Gawain, who was one of the most important knights of King Arthur’s Round Table. The Wiccan Kiss is fivefold – feet, knees, womb, breasts, lips.’

  ‘I’m sorry, Professor,’ Leroy cut in. ‘The Wiccan Kiss?’