Serial (5 page)

He glanced at the street and saw it empty. This was his last chance to walk away. Once he was committed, there would be no turning back.

Isaac let out the stale air he’d been holding in and drifted around the corner. If this was to be his swan song, so be it. He affected a limp and hunkered low to conceal his height. The layers of clothes he’d piled on would limit identification, keeping every inch of his skin out of sight of the cameras.

His every footstep sounded like a gunshot as he crossed the tiled walkway, which led toward the stairs. He was glad he didn’t have to go that far. The glass frames of the courthouse reflected the streetlights and seemed to illuminate his every move. Isaac could feel his hands trembling as he clutched the bags. This was the stupidest thing he’d ever done.
This coming from a serial killer.

The sound of an engine drew his eyes to the street, and he froze. His heart fluttered to a stop as he glanced over, peering through the narrow slot between the cap and scarf. He nearly wept as he saw the late-model station wagon roll by. His pulse revved in his veins as Isaac turned away to keep from looking guilty.

“Appearances,” he whispered to himself as he forced his feet to move.

He kept his head down to avoid the cameras and continued with his labored gait. He drew closer and closer, the darkness seeming to make way before him, keeping the bright shine of the lamps on him. He swore they would pierce his disguise and he’d hear the wail of sirens and the screech of tires as his fellow officers closed in. He laughed at his foolishness and kept walking. At last, he reached the flagpole, grinning as he rapped his knuckles against its solidness.

Right then, he heard another vehicle nearing. He hunched against the pole and hoped the car would roll by without seeing him. He wasn’t so lucky.

A bright spotlight erupted from the vehicle and swung across the courthouse stairs. Isaac clung to the cold flagpole as the light swept closer. His stomach roiled. He could see the shape of the vehicle behind the whitewash of the light, but he didn’t need that to know it was a police cruiser. Before he could decide what to do, the spotlight was on him. There was nowhere to hide.

He’d been caught.

He sighed and turned toward the light as a voice broke over a loudspeaker. “Find someplace to hole up, dumb ass, there are killers on the loose.”

The spotlight clicked off, leaving Isaac standing there blind. His pulse roared in his ears. He blinked away the dancing spots as the cruiser pulled away from the curb and roared off. The red tracers of its taillights disappeared around the corner as he caught his breath. The officers hadn’t cared enough to get out of the vehicle.

Isaac shook his head as his adrenaline tanked. He set his bags at his feet, rubbing his hands to chase away the tingling numbness that had crept over them. The quiet squeak of his gloves made him think of mice.

Worried the officers might circle around to see if he’d complied, Isaac kept his back to the building and unfastened the guide rope. He reached into the first of his bags and pulled out a roll of pinkish material and let it unfurl. Across its pale surface was tattooed a serpent poised to strike, its forked tongue extended. Isaac had inserted a couple of eyelets into the edge, which he used to attach the moist banner to the flagpole.

From his other bag, he pulled the homeless man’s head. The eyes hung from their sockets and swung like gory pendulums as he lifted it. A railroad spike had been driven through the skull, wire attached at each end that came together at a simple hook. Isaac fastened the hook to the makeshift flag and ran the whole of it up the pole. A trail of gore-covered bones, like the tail of a kite, clattered out of the bag and rose up behind it.

Isaac watched the street as he tugged on the rope, raising his flag until it clanged to a stop. He quickly looped the rope around itself, and headed off toward the street. He didn’t look back, remembering to hunch and limp as he turned the corner and ambled toward the shadows of the nearby alley. Once in its sheltering darkness, he straightened and cast the bags aside and kept moving. He didn’t stop until he reached the residential area where he’d parked his car. Out of sight of eyes and cameras, he stripped away a couple layers of his disguise and tucked them under his arm.

Isaac was gone a moment later.

Chapter Eleven

Bane watched the news break and marveled at what he saw. Despite it only being dawn, it seemed as though all of El Paso had turned out to bear witness to the Ripper’s response to his challenge. A crowd milled in the background, a community gathered in terror. Like the gawkers, he couldn’t help but stare, amazed at the sight that fluttered in the stiff desert breeze.

In their eagerness to get the story, many of the networks were broadcasting live. There was no attempt to blur the ghastly images or hide the location of the crime. They simply filmed while the gaggle of reporters, each so crowded they clustered in each other’s shots, rambled on and tried to make sense of what they were seeing. There was little sense to be had, but
he
knew what it was.

The flag was made out of the flesh of someone’s back, that much was clear. The artwork was crude, but the coiled snake symbol stood out boldly on the pale skin. That was the message in the murder:
Don’t Tread on Me
. The head was nothing more than confirmation for the police that this was a Ripper kill, the bones just pretty little ornaments to feed the fear. The Ripper was adding to the body count.

He’d expected the kill, the night before silent, but the sheer boldness of the act both thrilled and daunted him. The Ripper had gone to the very heart of the city and planted his flag, both literally and figuratively, for all the people to see. He’d strode into the fire and had come out unscathed.

There was something to admire there, though he couldn’t bring himself to do it. Bane would need to strike again and knock the Ripper from his throne, once and for all. The path was set.

Chapter Twelve

Morning came and went for Isaac, his world filled with frantic talk of the Ripper’s latest kill. He kept his smile in check as his fellow officers rushed to get back out on the streets to keep the people of El Paso calm. It was a failed battle. The early newscasts had run raw, so the unedited photos of the crime scene had flooded the Internet. There was no stopping it now. The fear was out there. Outside of bringing the Ripper down on live television, there’d be no reprieve from its effects.

In between typing the worthless reports of his home visits the day before, Isaac loaded up on coffee in the breakroom and watched the drama unfold on TV. Though the police had cleared the area around the courthouse, there were far too many tall buildings nearby to stop the flow of news. The reporters simply stormed the neighborhood and found vantage points too difficult for the officers to rein in. Isaac watched as officers scurried about the scene, the crime scene techs lowering the
flag
. Isaac took a sip of his coffee as he saw the banner come down. He resisted a salute.

A bustle of movement drew his attention to the hall. He stepped out into the corridor to see Detective Mendes and Captain Garcia, followed by a half-dozen uniformed officers, burst through the station doors.

“We’ve got him on film,” Garcia called out as he hurried past Isaac. A broad smile brightened his weary face.

Mendes gave a shallow nod as he passed, his chest puffed in pride. Isaac stepped in line with the group and followed after. He wanted to see the air sucked from the detective’s lungs.

The group went into the viewing room and the captain loaded the disc from the courthouse. The cameras queued up and the room went quiet as the Desert Ripper appeared on screen. Sighs and muttered curses followed. Isaac glanced over at Mendes and saw his shoulders slump as he stared at the screen. Isaac knew there was nothing there. No discernible trait stood out, and he had to stop from congratulating himself out loud.

Garcia growled and fast-forwarded the video. He smacked the remote and leaned in close when the cruiser confronted Isaac. “Son of a bitch!” he shouted when the spotlight dropped and the officers drove away. The room went deathly quiet. “They fucking had him.” He pointed to the car on the video, shouting to Mendes, “Find out who the hell those morons are and bring them to me.” Garcia threw the remote across the room and stormed out. The uniformed officers slunk away as Mendes just stared at the screen.

“Probably not the excitement you were looking for, huh?” Isaac asked, doing his best not to smile. Mendes spun around, glaring. “Don’t feel bad, Detective, he’s made a fool out of all of us, so you’re just the next in line.” He pointed to the video image of himself. “That’s the closest anyone has gotten to actually seeing the Ripper…not counting his victims, so congrats. You’re ahead of the game.”

Isaac walked away, leaving Mendes fuming behind him. Back in his office, he settled at his desk and sipped his coffee. Chills tickled the nape of his neck as he re-lived the scene from last night. Right underneath the eyes of his fellow officers he’d staked his claim to the city courthouse. If Bane was going to top that, he’d have to step well outside of his established comfort zone. He’d make a mistake; he’d have to.

But if he didn’t, Isaac wanted to be prepared. He gathered his case files and headed for the door. Mendes was in the hall as he left his office.

“I guess you think you’re hot shit, huh, Grant?”

Isaac shrugged. “Not at all. I just don’t like other detectives sticking their noses into my business.” The snarl on Mendes’s lips eased off a little. Isaac pushed. “What was so interesting in the pictures you looked over? You like seeing hacked-up little girls?”

“Fuck you, man. It ain’t nothing like that.”

“Then what is it, Detective? All the pictures there and you only looked at the chopped-up torso of the kid. There has to be a reason.”

Mendes’s cheeks burned red. He stuck his hand in front of Isaac’s face and spun off, storming down the hallway. His muttered epithets followed him until he turned the corner. Isaac stared after him. Mendes hadn’t just been chasing excitement. The detective must have seen something in the pictures that Isaac hadn’t.
What was it?

All thoughts of his next kill chased from his mind, Isaac made his way home. He needed to look those photos over again. There was something he was missing.

Chapter Thirteen

Isaac sat hunched before his laptop, tapping furiously at the keys. He’d stared at the photos of the young girl’s torso for hours, comparing it to the first two Bane victims. It was clear that the first two kills had been random, no pattern or organization to the wounds. The girl was different. For all the damage, there was some vague something that stood out. He’d even sat down and played connect the dots, drawing the lines carved into the bodies onto a piece of paper. The resulting image from the girl’s injuries was almost demonic in nature once he was done nailing down all the points, but the sketch was hardly something he could run a legitimate search on. It was still just a bunch of lines.

His back hurting from hovering over the coffee table, Isaac snatched up the computer and put it in his lap and settled into the couch. The image was getting him nowhere. Frustrated, he connected to the department’s database and searched for anything similar in the serial killer files. Nothing popped up, not that he expected it to. Successful killers were loners whose calling cards were often nothing more than a personal device or feeling that had no context outside of the killer’s mind. There was no obvious connection outside of their narrow lives.

After flipping endlessly through the millions of images in the database, Isaac rubbed his eyes. He glanced over at the muted television and read the ticker as it scrolled by. There’d been no new developments in either of the murder cases. He looked back at the computer and wondered where to go next. It hit him right then.

If Mendes had actually recognized the slashes as something more than wounds, and he wasn’t just being voyeuristic, then maybe there was something in
his
life that might shine some light on the photos. Isaac went to the personnel files and brought up Mendes’s. As a senior detective, Isaac had access to the personnel records, though he couldn’t alter them. Only the captain and above could, but Isaac could read them. He searched through to Mendes’s file and saw the hard stare of the detective pop onto the screen. He scrolled through the file, grunting when he realized Mendes had been born and raised in El Paso, having been on the force there before he’d moved to LA.
 

Typical of most cops raised and recruited from rough cities, Mendes had a criminal record. It was all petty stuff, from shoplifting to public intox, and small-time gang affiliations, but there wasn’t anything major, nothing to keep him off the force, no real red flags. Seemed all of his infractions had started when he moved to LA. Isaac skimmed the information about Mendes’s mother dying early in his life and his father leaving the boy with his grandmother before disappearing. He’d had a hard life.
Who hadn’t?

Mendes had been a part of the Rampart group, opting out a short while before they were busted for their criminal activities, and he appeared to escape the investigation. He’d been in Homicide ever since. Though he wasn’t commended, there was nothing in the detective’s jacket to show he was anything but a solid officer who toed the line.

Nothing interesting there, Isaac scrolled down farther to see a few more pictures of Mendes, the LAPD having documented his scars and tattoos for identification, should the need arise. He stared at the blur of the tattoo at his neck, but it was just that, a blur. It had been poorly covered, but there was no way to identify what the image had been. Isaac scrolled farther when a small tattoo at the crook of Mendes’s elbow caught his eyes. He clicked on the image to zoom in. A hard knot formed in Isaac’s stomach when he saw it clearly.