Signature Kill (9 page)

Serial killer
.

Behr woke with the words in his head, the ones he had been unable to utter to himself the day before.

A serial killer of women
.

He’d done his early-morning running and rehab—exercises with a thick band of rubber that caused the tissue and joint of his damaged shoulder to burn like napalm—and now stood in front of the grisly photo tableau that, along with the case files he’d been reading, told him that it was so. Whether or not Kendra Gibbons had met a similar fate, he had no idea. And he felt plenty foolish about it, because though he’d worked murders, he was no dedicated homicide cop. Then there was the fact that no one else, neither police nor journalists, had made the claim. He was alone on this. But it was in his head now and he couldn’t ignore it. That’s when the phone rang. It was the county forensics lab.

“I’m calling about the DNA sample that was submitted on the Northwestway Park body,” a technician said.

“Yes,” Behr said, feeling a jolt of anticipation about the result.

“It came back nonpositive.”

“Not a match,” Behr said. Disappointment at the lack of an answer mixed with relief that Kendra wasn’t officially dead.

“No match,” the technician repeated.

“Thanks,” Behr said and hung up. He gathered up the case files into a tall stack and began looking for a cardboard box.

“Welcome to the land of the dead,” Jean Gannon said, pulling off a pair of blue elbow-length rubber gloves with a snap. The basement mortuary area of Scanlon Brothers Funeral Home was bright white tile, stainless-steel sinks, yellow tubing, and shining oversized refrigerators. The space was cool and immaculate, with the sharp tang of preservative chemicals in the air.

“How’s it going, Jean?” Behr said.

“You know what they say …”

“Business just keeps rolling in?” he said.

She nodded and draped a sheet over the body of an elderly woman that she’d been working on and turned back toward him. Jean looked five years younger than she had the last time Behr had seen her and he told her so.

“Thanks. For me?” she said, lifting a supermarket poinsettia plant off the top of the cardboard box in Behr’s arms.

“Office warming,” he said.

“Everything changes, huh—none of the usual treats?” she asked, thinking of the customary liquor and chocolates.

“Someone down at coroner’s is the beneficiary of those. Real surprise to find you gone.”

“It was time,” she said. “Even though I hadn’t been there forever, it was starting to feel like it. I was surprised that’s what happened on account of getting into it so late in life, but it did.” Jean had only gone to med school and begun her career after a life as a mother and a wife and a marriage that had crashed and burned.

“So the new job agrees with you.”

“It’s still wall-to-wall stiffs. But the good part, besides playing with makeup half the day, is that most of ’em get to me when they should. You know? Occasionally there’s a young mom or dad, or you know, a kid.” She winced. “But it’s mostly old folks whose time has come. Not at all like working at the other place. Down there it just smelled like …”

“Hamburger?”

She nodded. “I just couldn’t seem to wash it off of me.”

Behr had a momentary pang of guilt over what he was there for as he put the box down on her desk.

“Well, I’m sorry for what I brought then,” he said. “I tried to lay off you when I heard you’d quit, but I couldn’t.”

“It’s not the same when it’s on paper.” She shrugged, pointing to a chair. “Sit. Wait.”

An hour and fifteen minutes and two cups of coffee passed with some nods and murmurs of recognition from her as she reviewed the case files. Behr figured she’d worked some of the bodies over the years when she was with the coroner’s. Finally, Jean closed up the folders and removed her reading glasses. She leaned back and stretched in her desk chair.

“You are a messenger of delight, aren’t you?” she said.

“Nothing but,” Behr said. “What does it say to you?”

“My opinion? If these are random kills, the world has officially gone to shit, and if this was done by one person, you’re dealing with some kind of fucking monster.”

“Is that the clinical assessment then?” Behr said. “Glad to see all that higher education put to use.”

“Hey, I calls ’em as I sees ’em,” she said. “Seriously, what’s your interest with all this?”

He told Jean about the billboard and Kendra Gibbons and how he’d come to this point.

“Bit of a ‘Hail Mary,’ isn’t it, Frankie?” she asked. “But I guess that’s you in a nutshell.”

He let that one pass before he said, “Even though a lot of the details are different case to case, you see certain related factors like I do?”

She nodded. “You know it wasn’t exactly my bag, but there’s at least a few, if not more, common elements to these.” She patted the stack of files.

“Is there any direction you can point me in?” he wondered.

She twirled a pen around her fingers and thought for a minute.

“Not me. But I know someone who may be able to help you,”
Jean said, taking out her cell phone and scrolling her contacts. “You may like her too. Most people are scared shitless of her, but you won’t be. She’s a criminal psychologist. From New York, relocated here a few years back. She’s got experience with this stuff. Worked with the FBI and NYPD.”

“A profiler?” Behr asked.

“You could call her that.”

Jean dialed a phone number. “Hi, Lisa? Jean Gannon here,” she began. “Yeah. No, you heard correct. No longer with the office …” There was a pause and Jean laughed and said, “I’m over at Scanlon Brothers, making ’em look pretty before they get planted.”

Jean listened for a moment, and then spoke. “Look, I’m calling because my friend—he’s an investigator on a case—could use your type of help. It’s kind of a fun one.”

Jean listened again, pulling the phone away from her ear and covering the receiver. “She’s saying she’s busy and doesn’t really do this type of thing anymore.”

“So it’s a no-go?” Behr asked.

Jean shook her head and whispered, “Blah, blah, blah. It’s the same shit every time. She’ll do it.”

“Yeah, no, listen, I hear you. But this is a really good guy, my friend. You’ll like him. Just give it a look. For me, all right?”

Gannon nodded, then handed Behr the phone.

“Frank Behr here,” he said.

“Lisa Mistretta, nice to meet you over the phone,” a forthright voice with a hint of an East Coast accent said back. “What do you got?”

“A bunch of murders that I think are related.”

“We’ll see about that. You got case files?”

“A mess of ’em,” Behr said.

“If the files are too big to e-mail, send me hard copies along with a CD-ROM.”

“I’ll compress ’em and send ’em,” Behr said.

“Fine. Send the hard copies anyway, please. I don’t like fucking with my printer if I can avoid it. The thing has it out for me.”

“Sure,” Behr said. “How long before we have a follow-up meet or whatever?” Considering the volume of material he was sending, he imagined it’d be at least a week.

“Well, I won’t know that until I see what you send,” she said.

“Of course,” Behr said. “And—” He looked to Jean, handing her back the phone. “She hung up. You want to give me her info?”

Jean scribbled down an address and an e-mail and handed it to him.

“Really appreciate it, and owe you one, Jean,” he said, standing.

“Yeah, yeah.”

“Why are people scared of her?” Behr wondered on his way to the door.

“You’ll see.”

“You ready for me? ’Cause if you’re ready, I’m ready.” It was Lisa Mistretta on his voice mail.

“That was quick,” Behr said when he called her back. It had been a day and a half.

“It was only a review, how fucking long should it take?” she asked, some amusement in her voice.

“Okay, where and when?” Behr asked.

She actually answered this time before hanging up.

“My place, at eleven, same address you sent the stuff.”

The house was a tidy brick job in Broad Ripple off East 61st, behind the bars and restaurants. Behr parked in the driveway in back of an amber-colored Infiniti SUV and could see Mission-style furniture in the living room beyond the house’s picture window. But standing in the doorway of the detached garage, an aluminum coffee cup in one hand, the other cocked on a curvaceous hip, was a woman with a mane of black hair. She wore tight jeans and a black turtleneck.

“This way, buddy,” she said. She only went about five foot five, but her attitude was much bigger. “So you’re Behr?” she said, sticking out her hand.

“And you’re Ms. Mistretta,” he said. Her grip was firm, her palm cool and smooth.

“Call me Lisa or you’ll remind me of my old lacrosse coach. The guy was half a fucking perv.”

“Frank.”

“Okay. Come on in, Behr.”

The car evidently lived outside, because the garage had been converted into a comfortable office. The concrete floor was covered with a plush white rug. A gray sofa and black leather chair offset a long brushed-steel desk topped by a high-tech computer. The shelves along the walls were lined with books, mostly clinical texts and medical journals. The only bright spots in the room were an orange beanbag that sat next to a low coffee table piled with the case files Behr had sent her, and Mistretta herself.

“Sit,” she said, pointing to the couch, and then curled up on the beanbag.

“So, thanks for this,” Behr said.

She shrugged. “ ’S no problem. I’m glad to. My feet were going to sleep and I didn’t even realize it,” she said.

“How’d you end up out here?” Behr asked.

“Indy?” she said. “New York—my New York anyway—became a fucking nightmare.”

“Because of the work?”

“Because of the work, and other things. Then about four years back, my husband got a chance to relocate here. So we came.”

“How’s that working for you?” Behr asked.

“Working pretty good. Winters aren’t bad. Nice house. Not much traffic. The boys are a little boring. No offense,” she said.

“None taken.”

“Though you look like
you
might have possibilities with a few drinks in you.” She pointed a thumb at a trio of bottles—high-end Scotch, vodka, and tequila—that rested on a silver tray atop a credenza.

“Not sure you want to go there,” Behr said. “And you said ‘husband.’ ”

“I think we still had stuff in the moving boxes when that was done. You know they say some marriages are made in heaven?”

“Yours made in hell?”

“On Earth, anyway,” she said. “He got a girlfriend, I kept the house. Fuck him. And how do you know where I’m willing to go?”

“Okay,” Behr said, smiling despite himself. “Can we talk about my case, such as it is, and save the rest of it for later?”

“All right, stick-in-the-mud. Your
case
, sure,” she said. “You know I charge a buttload of money for this ordinarily.”

“I’m aware,” Behr said, wondering if he’d successfully kept the twinge of pain he felt off his face.

“But I haven’t had a juicy one in a while. And I’ve missed it more than I thought. So I’ll go pro bono.”

“Thanks,” he said. “How about this: if I score at the end of this, I’ll take care of you?”

“What score?” she asked. Behr told her about Kendra Gibbons, that he wasn’t out to catch some killer, that he didn’t have definitive proof that she hadn’t just run off, but had started to wonder if she’d met a gruesome fate similar to those of some other victims, and that there was a reward in the case of an arrest and conviction.

“Who’s that patron saint of lost causes, Saint What’s-his-face?” she wondered out loud as she cocked her head with a look that seemed to calculate the odds of his endeavor succeeding. “Anyway, it’s a deal,” she said, and put her hand on a thin folder at the top of the stack. “Two of these are bogeys.”

“Really?”

“Yeah.” She nodded and flung the offending folder into a wire trash basket. “One, even though it was a knifing, lacks the control element.”

“But I thought—”

“Yeah, yeah, it’s an easy assumption to make. The other—do you even care or do you want to trust me? It’s not related.”

“Okay,” Behr said, feeling he
could
trust her. His eyes tracked across to the low table holding the remaining files.

“The other twenty-four, however, are, in my clinical opinion,
related,” she said, a more serious and professional tone in her voice now.

“Twenty-four?” Behr asked. He’d handed over the files on all thirty-seven unsolved murders of Caucasian female victims who had died by cutting or stabbing or had been dismembered.