Some Degree of Murder (13 page)

I watched him for a moment. Then I asked Toni, “Who is it?”

She
didn’t answer.

“Toni?” the guy down the street called.

He stepped into the alley and moved to the side of the wall where it was darker. My eyes had already adjusted to the low light so I watched him as he walked. When he neared, I leaned into Toni and pretended I was kissing her. I gripped her hard by the upper arm.

“Okay, buddy, time’s up.”

I turned to look at him, but kept my head close to Toni’s so he couldn’t see her face. “Fuck off, man.”

“I’m serious,” he said. “You’re done here.”

I didn’t answer.

“Listen,” he said and stepped toward me.

I
whirled toward him and lashed out with my left fist. It caught him completely unaware. I followed with a hard right to the tip of his nose. The second punch landed with a sickening crunch. The man’s knees wavered and he took a stumbling step to the side. He raised his hands weakly in defense.

I took a powerful step toward him and threw a roundhouse punch as hard as I could. My fist landed on his jaw with a satisfying smack, right on the button. He crumpled to the ground.

Toni let out a small cry. I turned and pointed at her. “Shut it,” I growled at her, “or you’re fucking next.”

I looked down at the fallen figure
. His coat was splayed open. Something glinted in the weak light from the street. I leaned closer and peered at his waist.

Shit. He had a badge on his belt. He was a cop.

I reacted immediately, crouching down next to him and running my hands around his waist. I came across his holstered gun right where I expected. I busted open the snap and pulled it from the holster. Then I stood and turned my attention to Toni.

“Who is he?”

She stared at me, her lip trembling.

I stepped closer and jammed the barrel of the gun under her chin. “Answer me.”

“Paul,” she stammered. “His name’s Paul.”

“What’s his last name?”

“Hiero,” she said.

“You’re kidding me. Hiero?”

She shook her head. “That’s his name.”

I lowered the gun. “What kind of cop is he?”

She stared at me, uncomprehending.

“Is he a vice detective, or what?”

“No. He works patrol.”

“Then what the fuck is he doing here?”

She didn’t answer right away, and that answered my question. “I get it,” I said. “You two got something going on, right?”

She nodded reluctantly.

Cops and whores, I thought.

“Tell Hiero I’ve got his piece.” I shoved the gun into the back of my pants. “You understand that if you tell the Brotherhood that I’m looking for them, I’ll be back?”

She nodded and rubbed the side of her face.
Her eyes flicked to the still unconscious Hiero.

I
stood, combing my hair with my fingers. Then I turned away and walked deeper into the darkness of the alley, knowing full well that at that moment I was the scariest thing moving in that neighborhood.

My desk was cleared of everything except two files. Fawn Taylor and Serena Gonzalez.

I pulled the Taylor file toward me and opened it.

I flipped through the medical report, looking for the tox-screen. I paged all the way through the autopsy but didn’t find one. I checked again. Still no report.

I picked up the phone and dialed. It rang twice before someone picked up.

“Forensics Unit. Whitaker.”

“Cam, it’s Tower. Let me ask you something.”

“What?” His tone was guarded.

“Any reason why a tox-screen wasn’t done on Fawn Taylor?”

“No.
One should’ve been completed.”

“There isn’t one in my file. Can you hunt it down for me?”

“Sure. Listen, I’m glad you called.”

“Good news, I hope.”

“Not really. I sent those two hairs off to the FBI. I don’t know if they’ll end up being the same guy or not, but the Fibbies may be able to extract some DNA. The turnaround time on that is four to six weeks.”

“Four to six
weeks
? Jesus, Cameron, can’t we get a little priority?”

“Everything the Bureau gets is either a murder or kidnapping or serial rape.”

“Yeah, but six weeks?”

“They’re busy and backlogged, just like the rest of us.”

“Yeah, yeah. My heart bleeds for federal agencies and their tribulations. Tell me you’ll keep on top of this.”

Cameron said, “I will” and hung up.

I paged through the Taylor file some more, reviewing facts that I already knew and hoping something would hit me.

Nothing did.

I was reaching for the Gonzalez file when the phone rang.

“Tower,” I said and turned over a photo of Serena Gonzalez at the dump site.

“Detective Tower? Ernie Williams, Salinas PD.”

“That was quick.”

“Sometimes things work out. Last night, I ran into three of the Gonzalez crew and Lucia was with them. I pulled her aside and we had a long chat.”

“You get anything?”

“I don’t think so. She hadn’t heard about Serena being murdered yet, so the first part of our talk was her getting a grip on things. After that, she told me everything she knew. It just wasn’t very much.”

“Anything might help,” I said.

“All she could really say was that Serena left to get away from her family. She didn’t have any boyfriends to speak of and definitely didn’t have any that she had problems with.”

“Did she write to Lucia after she left town?”

“Occasionally. She mostly got postcards from wherever Serena was staying.”

“Which was where?”

“L.A., first. Then Portland, Seattle and finally up there in River City.”

“What did the postcards say?”

“Not much. She’s in a new town, she’s got a new job, that kind of thing. No boyfriends ever mentioned.”

“She ever mention to Lucia what kind of work she was doing?”

“Lucia said waitressing and secretary work. And some kind of cashier up in River City. I didn’t have the heart to tell her she’d been lied to.”

“Were they very religious?”

“What do you mean?”

“It may be nothing, but I found a couple of pages book marked in the Gideon Bible in Serena’s motel room. I don’t even know if it was her that did it.”

“Well, they’re almost all Catholic, I can tell you that,” Williams said. “I don’t know that she was particularly devout, though. But who knows? People live double lives all the time.”

“That they do.” I moved the receiver away from my mouth and scratched my chin. I was surprised to find stubble there. I must’ve forgotten to shave again.

“Like I said,” Williams finished. “Not a lot of help.”

“No,” I agreed. “But you never know.”

“Call me if I can do anything else.”

We hung up.

After closing the Gonzalez file, I leaned back in my chair and stared up at the ceiling.

I considered my options. I could head out to the crime scenes and re-canvass the area. I could go re-interview witnesses. Neither one was likely to turn anything up. I could sit on my backside for four to six weeks and hope the FBI miracle workers back at Quantico could solve my cases for me.

Or I could start over. Pretend I didn’t know anything about either case and approach both with fresh eyes.

Which one first? Taylor came first. Gonzalez was freshest.

I moved the Gonzalez file off the top of the Taylor file and set them side-by-side. Then I paged through both slowly until I reached the close-ups of the crime scene positioning. I looked back and forth between both.

That’s when I noticed something. Something subtle that I couldn’t put a finger on before. Maybe it was nothing. But it was there. Fawn was lying on her back. Serena was lying on her back. In both photos, the chin jutted upward, as if both women were staring up at the sky.

Or their killer.

A signature pose?

I’d rejected any thought of a single killer from the very first moment I went to Serena Gonzalez’s dump site. Why? Because it was too fashionable in today’s serial killer obsessed world to connect those dots? Stupid. Trends and politics should never outweigh logic in an investigation. Just stupid.

“Okay,” I mumbled. “We’ll run it from the top. See how stupid I really am.”

Victimology. Always start with victimology.

Both females. Check.

Both under twenty. Check.

But Fawn was White and Serena Hispanic. So there’s a minus.

I looked down at both pictures, side by side. Sure, Serena was Hispanic. There could be no mistaking that. But her skin was fair for a Latina. And she was beautiful. So was Fawn. So maybe, if it’s the same guy, maybe he doesn’t care about race.

Okay. So that’s not a check or a minus. It’s a neutral.

Both worked in the East Sprague corridor. Check.

Both worked in the sex trade.
Loosely, anyway. Stripping was a long way from being a prostitute but it was a lot closer than working a cash register. Check.

Both bodies were dumped. Check.

Both dump jobs were ignoble and degrading. Check.

Both died of strangulation. Check.

I double-checked a page in both files and leaned back again. Check. Both had bruising on the wrist, probably from being tied up for some period of time.

Both women were sexually assaulted. Check.

Little or no transfer evidence on the body. Check.

That bothered me. From the day I made detective, I’d been taught that Locard’s Law was supreme. It was the law of transfer. When a suspect commits a murder or a rape or any crime, transfer exists. He brings something to the scene. He changes the scene. He leaves something at the scene. He takes something from the scene with him when he leaves. Any or all of these things happen, according to modern police science, even if they only occur in microscopic or trace amounts.

So, if this is the same guy, how come no transfer evidence is showing up? One pubic hair and one head hair. And the head hair was questionable. It could belong to anyone. Hell, so could the pubic hair. How many other men rubbed up against Fawn Taylor in the last few days of her life?

How does he avoid transfer?

Condoms. Gloves. Plastic coated trunk for transport. I suppose that was a start.

What else? What other checks or minuses?

Serena was stabbed. Fawn wasn’t. Was that a minus? Or, if it were the same guy, was he escalating?

I gathered up both files. The walk down the hallway was a short one. The Crime Analysis wing consisted of one large room with several cubicles. I weaved through the maze until I reached
Renee’s desk.

She was mid-bite when I rounded the corner. A powdered donut jutted out from her mouth and when she saw me, she jumped.
The donut broke off and she cupped her hands, catching it.

“Ugh,” she grunted at me and laid the donut on a napkin on her desk. A cup of steaming coffee sat next to it. She pointed to her cup and then across the room where a full pot was brewing. I set my files down on her desk and quickly poured myself some coffee into a Styrofoam cup. When I returned, she was washing her bite down with her own coffee.

“Busted,” I told her.

She shrugged and adjusted her thin glasses. “You want something?”

“Yeah. I need some fresh eyes.”

“Run it for me.”

I gave her all the details I thought mattered and some I wasn’t sure about. She listened carefully, interrupted seldom and then only to clarify. When I finished, she stared at the wall and absently handed me her empty coffee cup. I refilled it and put it in front of her and waited patiently.

After a few minutes, she reached for the cup and took a sip. She nodded and muttered her thanks, then began thumbing through the files. I refilled my own coffee and sipped it from the Styrofoam cup and read the cartoons she’d cut out from
Foxtrot
and
The Far Side
and pinned to her cubicle wall.

“Interesting,” she mumbled, then looked up at me. “Sexually motivated murder doesn’t just pop up in a vacuum, you know?”

“What do you mean?”

“If this is the same perpetrator, then he did not begin his career with Miss Taylor.”

“You think it’s the same guy?”

She nodded slowly. “I would say so. Almost identical victimology, similar crime scenes, same cause of death. Both sexual assaults. Even this little pose here. Do you see that?” She pointed to photos of both Fawn and Serena. “See how he’s tilted their chins unnaturally? It’s almost like they’re looking up at something. If he were to stand at their head, this tilt would make it appear that they were looking right up at him.”

“If it is the same guy, then you’re saying he’s killed before?”

“No, not necessarily. The perpetrator may have stopped short of murder. But I’d be willing to bet that he has committed assaults before. And rapes.”

Renee turned to her computer and started typing. A couple minutes later, she said, “Okay, here it is.”

I leaned over her shoulder and looked at the screen. She pointed at data with the mouse pointer.

“I went back twelve months and put in criteria. Basically, we’re looking for rapes or assaults with some of the elements of your homicides. Within the last year, there have been two rapes that somewhat fit. Both are unsolved.”

She hit a button on her keyboard. “I’m printing off both reports for you. In both cases, white male perpetrator, manual strangulation involved, and sexual assault.”

“Suspects?” I asked.

“None named.”

“Only two cases fit?”

“Well, no. There were actually five that fell into the criteria, but three were solved and all three of those men are currently incarcerated or deceased. That leaves these two cases.” She tapped her finger on the computer screen. “Maybe this is your perpetrator. Maybe he started out with a rape and graduated to sexual homicide.”

“It would be textbook,” I said with a shrug.

“The textbooks are there for a reason.”

Renee stood and disappeared around the corner. When she returned, she plopped a small stack of paper on top of my files. “Hope this helps.”

“It does. A lot.” I gathered up my files and the reports. Then I turned to
Renee.

She sat primly in her chair, holding her coffee cup and watching me. I leaned forward slightly. “
Renee, I’d really like to work on this for a little while longer. If people start thinking serial killer on this…”

“There’ll be a task force.”

“Right. And four or five more dead bodies will pile up while they figure out who’s in charge and how to reinvent the wheel.”

Renee
sipped her coffee, then set the cup down. “Right now, we’re just talking theory. If another body shows up, then I think we’ve moved past theory and more people need to get involved.”

“I hope it doesn’t come to that.”

“Me, too.”

The apartment complex on Nora Avenue had paint peeling from the trim. It was one of many tri-plexes scattered throughout the lower north side of River City. Eva Patterson was the first victim in the reports Renee gave me. Her last known address was in number two.

I could smell a barbecue nearby as I mounted the rickety steps and knocked on the apartment door.

When no one came to the door, I leaned across the porch and tried to peer in the window. The thick white curtains obscured any view. I returned to the front door and knocked again. Still no answer. I raised my fist to knock again when I heard the jiggle of a doorknob.

“Who the hell is it?” came a disgruntled voice from doorway of number three.