Cross Cut (10 page)

I decided not to deviate and just played along.

“The question still remains: why did Lynch go into the ladies’?” I said half heartedly. I’d lost interest really. The real question I wanted the answer to was whether Ryder had found the impostor Lynch yet. My day was just getting started, though. That would have to wait.

“Follow me to headquarters,” Kacie said. “We can stop for milkshakes or something.”

I opened my car door and leaped inside. It didn’t take much thought. Ryder knew damn well I wasn’t getting through everything today anyway.

“Yeah, lead on,” I said.

I followed Kacie on the way to the FBI, Los Angeles Division. Three blocks west on the way I saw a familiar face. Two, actually. That of Laura Harles and Robyn Faith. I could’ve stopped, but decided against it.

13

I shivered when I entered the morgue’s storage room, and I’m not entirely sure it was because of the cold air that ran through the ventilation shafts.

After our milkshakes we took a detour to the city morgue where Guy Lynch’s body was being held, about five minutes away from the federal building. The visit to the morgue would otherwise be unnecessary, however, the medical examiner that did the examination was apparently in the building. At least, she should have been. After ten minutes I felt like I was wasting time.

The morgue attendant was in his fifties. Twitchy, with body odor. He seemed intent on keeping his eye on us, as if we were there to steal a body or two.

I rubbed my hands to keep them warm. Kacie, however, seemed to relish the cool air. She leaned gracefully against a desk and showed no signs of discomfort.

Doctor Dimmel, Medical Examiner, entered the room and gave a sharp “hello” and walked over to the relevant chamber drawer.

“Sorry to be curt, but I have two appointments booked for two o’clock and I’m late for both,” she said, opening the drawer.

Here was Guy Lynch, in the flesh. I’d never seen him alive, only someone like him. His face was bulky and eyebrows bushy. Very little difference between him and the fake Lynch, however, the eyes were definitely the giveaway.

His chest was a mass of incisions since the autopsy. I immediately noted the horizontal cut was lower than the photographs I had seen of the other victims, just as Kacie had said.

“Why are you here? I sent the report over yesterday,” Dimmel said.

Kacie nodded toward me. “Thought I’d show him for real, while the body’s still here. Better than photographs, don’t you think?”

“Not really.” Dimmel groaned. “Was a pain in the ass to examine, what with the killer’s incisions getting in the way of my Y incision. Couldn’t you have just read the report?”

“Don’t be awkward. Take us through what killed him,” Kacie said.

Dimmel frowned and cleared her throat while pointing at the skull.

“Cause of death—fracture of the carotid canal. Not to be confused with the blunt force trauma to the back of the head. He was dead long before any of the incisions were made—”

My mind shut off for a while, as I was sure I had heard all this before. I heard Dimmel say the fatality was rare in such a situation. Normally, the fracture Lynch had suffered was found in racing accidents. Dimmel was skeptical that a forward fall to the ground could cause it, but saw no reason to think otherwise.

“There is also some damage to the rib cage—not caused by the incisions. Also to the windpipe. It’s almost as if the victim had been beaten in various places before the fatal blow to the head,” Dimmel said.

We moved onto the incisions, particularly, the horizontal. Dimmel was halfway through when I regained my interest.

“—as I keep telling you, Agent Cordell, I didn’t do the other autopsies. However, looking over the previous victims’ reports, I would say the cuts differ greatly. Not necessarily on the outside, it’s just the depth here is weak. But, then again, this so called
Cross Cutter
seems to be inconsistent with all the incisions.”

“Even so, this cut is abnormally low,” Kacie said.

“Yes.” Dimmel nodded. “The depth was enough to break the skin, obviously, but just barely. The knife here was not lunged deep after the sternum and dragged through, like the previous murders. It’s more like—how should I phrase it—like cutting a pizza. You cut through to the base and stop. You don’t cut through past the cardboard box and then into your kitchen worktop. Essentially, that’s what happened here. The killer cut to the base and that’s it.”

“Well, thank God someone was prepared to give it to me in layman’s terms,” I said.

Kacie laughed and Dimmel frowned and replaced the sheet over Lynch and closed the drawer.

“So that’s why there were no guts on the floor,” I said.

Dimmel maintained her frown and shook her head. “Even the incisions from the other murders were never right for disembowelment, as it were. The horizontal cuts are too high. A vertical cut alone is rarely enough. As for Mr Lynch here, the horizontal cut had the right location, but nowhere near enough depth. In fact, if it weren’t for the head injury, it could have taken quite a while for him to die from the incisions.”

I nodded and put my hands in my pocket and swayed. I then looked at Kacie and said, “The FBI think someone else did this, don’t they?”

“It’s an idea we’re playing with.” She imitated my sway and looked to the ceiling. “But given the other inconsistencies, who knows. The Cross Cutter is making it difficult, whether he knows it or not.”

We were interrupted by Dimmel’s harsh, throaty voice. “If you knew all this, why the hell did you come here?”

Kacie smiled and took me by the arms, as if we needed to escape. She turned and gave an innocent smile toward Dimmel.

“To tell you the truth, I just wanted ten minutes in here. It’s far too warm outside.”

14

At around 2PM I sat in a dark room on the sixteenth floor of the federal building on Wilshire Boulevard. I had the temptation to open the blinds and a window, but decided against it when Kacie entered with a mug of coffee, sporting the FBI logo. I took my jacket off and wrapped it around the chair. I’d left my P230 in the glove box, to avoid embarrassment at the metal detectors downstairs.

“Where is everyone?” I asked.

“Working,” Kacie said. “Or at lunch. We’re not all pen pushers.”

I took a sip of coffee and fumbled at my visitor’s pass. “No resistance to letting me in, then.”

“Nah. The Assistant Director couldn’t get those files to Miss Genius quick enough.”

“Seems she couldn’t read them quick enough. She was up till 2AM looking through them.”

Kacie nodded. “So, what’s her angle?”

“No angle.” I lied. “Just me doing the legwork.”

“Hmm, why don’t I believe that?”

“You’re FBI, you don’t believe anything.”

Kacie grinned.

“Why did you invite me here anyway?” I said.

She cleared her throat and said, “Figured you might want to meet some people helping to put a profile together for the Cross Cutter. We’ve got our own criminal profilers, as well as a psychiatrist we use from time to time.”

“Not sure that would be any good to us. Ryder has little time for that kind of stuff.”

“Why am I not surprised. What about you?” She leaned back with interest.

“Beats me. I’ll take any opinion, but I’m inclined to agree with her. I’d give a decade’s pay for any shrink or profiler to tell me exactly what kind of person she is.”

“You don’t need a psychiatrist to know she’s a narcissist. Dare I say, a high Mach.”

“I have no idea what that is, but I resent it on principal.”

Kacie smiled and waved her hand. “Look it up,” she said. “Anyway, if she isn’t applying such thinking, how does she intend to catch a serial killer?”

I shrugged my shoulders. “That’s why I’m out on errands. After the trip with you I was supposed to be tracking down Nora Klyne’s family.”

“Ah,” she said with a smile. “Hate to break it to you, but we already tried that angle. That the Cross Cutter knew Nora Klyne somehow. Got us nowhere.”

I put down my coffee mug and didn’t reply. I knew she’d practically marry me for the information on Lee Lynch and the impostor Lynch, but it didn’t seem worth the trouble. I’d sooner wait to see Ryder solve the case without either of those facts escaping. I figured the probability of success was low, and I’d never put money on it. That’s what clients are for.

Kacie had pulled me away from the seemingly empty sixteenth floor to the fourteenth. Of the few dozen or so cubicles within the centre, about half of them had someone working at the desks. Most of them with telephones cradled in their hands.

We bypassed the main hub and arrived at a small conference room with a table with eight chairs. Only one of the four window blinds was open to the far right. The light shone on a middle aged man wearing an inexpensive suit. He looked at me as if I wasn’t welcome, a feeling I’m all too familiar with. I usually reply with a cocky grin; as if to say, I’m here, deal with it.

“Ader, meet Special Agent Liam Bingham, Criminal Profiler.”

I nodded and held up my palm. “Hey.”

“Hello,” he said plainly. He turned his attention to Kacie. “The meeting isn’t for a half hour.”

Kacie brushed back her hair and smiled. “Meeting—what meeting?”

“The meeting we arranged for 3PM. Agents from the BI were suppose to be here to discuss the profile.”

“Oh,” Kacie said in a high voice. “
That
meeting.” She patted my shoulder. “I just wanted to share your insights with the detective, that’s all”

He looked at me again and frowned. “He can wait till 3PM.”

I could tell in his voice that he didn’t want me in the room. He probably wouldn’t want me at the 3PM meeting either. As much as I can tell people to deal with my presence, I can’t force them to give me what I want. Well, not with the P230 in the glove box.

“Hey, I know when I’m not welcome. Keep your hocus pocus to yourself,” I said, turning my back.

“Hocus pocus? Just how ignorant are you?” he said.

Bingo. I smiled, knowing I’d hooked him. “I don’t go for all that psychology stuff. Would take something great to convince me.”

He pushed his seat forward and shuffled his jacket over his neck. “I can assure you my profession has helped track down several criminals in as little as two years.”

“Well, hooray for that,” I said. I sat down three chairs from him and Kacie played along by sitting beside me. “Go on then.”

Bingham cleared his throat and shuffled his jacket again. He put his arms out across the table and perused a sheet of paper he’d laid out on the table. He pushed four separate sheets across to me and he nodded.

“Those are the profiles we came up with previously. It has changed somewhat over time. Until the fourth murder, we assumed the murderer to be male, white, aged thirty to forty. Lives centrally in California. But then the female victims came.”

I held out my hand. “Skip what you thought a year ago, what now?”

“Well,” he said. “We still think the killer is a white male. In his forties. Socially capable, with mild intelligence. Physically strong. His motive seems to be purely thrill based as there has never been any sexual aspect to the crimes.”

“That it?” I said. “That hardly narrows it down.”

Bingham sighed. “The point of a profile is to help prioritize suspects, not find them. Besides, I haven’t got to his motive. The process of his murders are the same, but the execution wavers. Which implies it is not the act of killing he enjoys. It is the end product. He likes to see life taken away. He likes to watch them hang there. To see something become nothing. Our killer is a watcher. To him, the gain lies with simple destruction. That is all.”

I rubbed my chin a while and almost slapped myself, when for a second, I almost found myself going for my notebook.

I said, “Forgive me—but that doesn’t sound right. Some of the victims died before being hanged. And the killer still cut them. What explains that, seen as you say ritual and execution has little to do with it? If all he wanted was destruction, why didn’t he just watch Lynch on the floor when he cracked his skull? Also—”

A slow clap from behind interrupted me. I looked over my shoulder and found a smart, strikingly attractive woman in the doorway. Mousy brown hair, pulled back, wearing a white blazer and designer glasses. A stray bang of hair came up and over her glasses and she didn’t remove it even when she spoke.

“Well done. I can tell I am going to like you,” the woman said.

Kacie swung round on her chair and Bingham gave what could only be described as an anxious grimace. Kacie held out her hand and introduced her.

“Sorry, Ader, this is Doctor Bishop.”

“Cassandra, please.” The doctor smiled. She presented herself amicably, with her hands behind her back. The smile was straight and she never let it sag. “You are the detective, I assume?”

“When I can’t help it, yes,” I said.

“What a strange way to put it. And when you can help it?”

“Oh, then I’m just an investigator.”