The Shoulders of Giants (5 page)

“Don’t know yet, have to check it with ViCAP, and we’ve got the guys at Quantico putting a profile together of our guy.”

The ‘guys at Quantico’ were the FBI’s Behavioral Analysis Unit. I’d studied profiling a little at UIC, and I could read over my old text books when I got back to the office.

“They may have a little trouble with this guy.”

“Why’s that?” Scott asked.

“Three victims so far, male and female, black and white, killed in different ways, left in different places. The only obvious connection so far is a Z carved into the foot of each victim. They’ll probably come back with ‘White male, mid twenties to mid thirties, low IQ, menial job if employed at all, drives a shitty car and probably lives alone in an area close to where the victims were found.’ Your average serial killer description. They might even get some of it right, but remember, you heard it here first.” I was showing off, trying to remember as much as I could about profiling, trying to prove to Scott that I was up to the job.

“Actually, he’s probably African-American.”

“Most serial killers are white.”

“Yeah,” conceded Scott, “about 80%. But serial murder is usually intra-racial. More than 90% of black murder victims are killed by black perps. Anyway, I’ve got lots of leads to chase up. When I catch him, we’ll see if the Feds have come up with a good description.”

“They’ll generalize, Scott. Killers come in all shapes and sizes. Didn’t you ever watch
Columbo
?”

“Yeah I did. And you know what? Saw a rerun a few weeks ago where the ‘genius’ killer somehow managed to put a silencer on a revolver. Know why? Because it’s fictional, that’s why.”

He’d got me there. It was a good point, and I’d seen that episode too. But I refused to admit defeat.

“I’m not dropping the case.” I said, indignantly.

We had locked antlers like stags fighting for territory, and neither was ready to back down. I didn’t feel much like asking Scott for any help, and I doubted he was going to offer any, so I walked out, leaving my statement half finished. He would call me when he’d calmed down. Or I would call him. For now, I wondered if he did have lots of leads to chase up, or if that was just talk. I didn’t seem to have any leads. I would probably end up calling him.

When I got to the office it was nearly eleven. It had been a long day already. I checked through my mail. There were no letters from rich widows, wanting me to track down their stolen collections of priceless jewels. Just as well. I had work to do. I sat at my PC, and typed ‘ViCAP’ into Google. I remembered reading about ViCAP, the FBI’s Violent Criminal Apprehension Program, but I wanted to know more. According to the FBI website, ViCAP is a database of violent crimes, solved and unsolved. ‘Once a case is entered into the ViCAP database, it is compared continually against all other entries on the basis of certain aspects of the crime. The purpose of this process is to detect signature aspects/traits of homicide and similar patterns of modus operandi (MOs), which will, in turn, allow ViCAP personnel to pinpoint those crimes that have been committed by the same offender.’

So if Susan’s killer had been doing similar work elsewhere, ViCAP should come up with a match. I looked again at what I had. It would be difficult to go much further without help from the police, and I knew now that any help I could get would be limited. Scott was probably right not to want me getting in his way, but I couldn’t let it go. I skimmed the
Chicago Tribune
, looking for news of a body found on Oak Street Beach on Monday morning. The story was on page five of the Metro section.

Her name was Melissa Adams. According to the article, she was a 20 year-old African-American office worker who had been walking her dog on the beach early Monday morning when she was attacked. Her body was found next to the pedestrian tunnel by joggers. She had been shot in the face at close range. Her dog lay dead beside her, shot in the head.

The article on Richard West was larger, and on page two. The information was a rehash of the news report I’d seen the day before, next to a smiling picture of a happy family. West, his wife, and two kids. There was no link between the two articles. No connection had been made. Nobody knew their pictures were side by side in a Police Station on the corner of Belmont and Western.

From what I could tell, each victim had been killed sometime in the early hours of the morning, West on Sunday and Melissa Adams on Monday. Someone had been very busy. I wondered how many more bodies there were to find. I knew Scott was wondering the same thing. I got out my old text books to look for information about profiling. The hurried profile I’d given Scott in a moment of anger wasn’t a bad fit for a ‘disorganized offender’, and the Adams killing seemed to fit into that camp. The killing was done in the night, or at least very early morning; the body was left where it fell; and the crime scene was fairly chaotic, what with killing the dog too. It would have been quick. Boom. A bullet in the face and it’s all over. A bullet in the dog, to shut him up, and then leave.

Richard West would have taken longer. More care was taken over the whole business. Somehow, he was drowned – God knows how, maybe he was drugged first and then held under water. Then he was dressed, put in his car, and driven to the apartment he shared with his wife and kids. A time consuming, highly organized process. It didn’t fit with my profile at all. Organized killers lead organized lives. He would more likely be a college graduate with above average IQ, drive a nice car and have a steady job, maybe even a profession like doctor or lawyer.

The two crimes seemed so distinct, that I had trouble believing the same person had committed both murders. But then there was the Z. A little too bizarre to be a coincidence. Definitely one killer. There didn’t appear to be a motive yet. As far as I was aware, none of the victims had been robbed and there was no evidence of sexual assault. Often a mugger or a rapist will begin to use more force when they get more confident, and that is when they turn to murder. In those cases you can usually rely on a criminal record. A rapist will frequently have been picked up for, at the very least, indecent exposure; an armed robber will probably have a record for shoplifting, purse snatching, or something drug related. At first glance, this case was something different, something new. This killer appeared to have launched feet first into murder.

As for Susan Patterson, I needed more information. I didn’t yet know the cause of death, only that she had might have been injected with something two days ago, and left in the trunk of a car. I needed to know what had happened to her. I needed to know where she was between leaving Dutch’s on Friday night and being murdered on Sunday. I needed to call Scott.

“I can’t help you Jake.” He still sounded stressed from before. I had had a chance to cool off, but he probably had people making demands from all sides. When nobody knows when the next victim will turn up, everything gets a little more hectic.

“Look, I’m not asking for a free ride. Maybe I can help you. I didn’t finish my statement, so you don’t have all the information you might need.”

“Like what?”

“Well,” I tried to think of something that would hook him in. “You found a phone number written on Susan’s hand, didn’t you?” I prayed it hadn’t been washed off.

“Yeah. My next job is to check that out. How did you know about it?”

“The number belongs to a girl named Angel DeMarco. She lives on West Armitage. She told me she met Susan in a bar on Friday night, and gave her her number.”

“I’ll still have to check all that out. Still have to go talk to this ‘Angel.’ How exactly are you helping me out?”

“All I’m saying is, I know where she was, what she did, who she was with on Friday night. At the very least I can save you time. There’s just some things that I can’t find out without your help. I’ll stay out of your way, I promise. And I can identify the guys who beat me up last night. Who knows how they could be involved.”

“If you’re suggesting you’d withhold evidence unless I help, I could just arrest you for obstruction of justice,” said Scott, half serious.

“You could, but you know how stubborn I can be. I could sit in a jail cell for weeks before I break. Come on. You know me. I’m not going to go to the papers or anything. Let’s help each other out.”

Scott hesitated. “Okay. But I can’t give you too much detail, Freedman would kill me. The latest is that we’ve got the cause of death. Insulin shock. Doc says she could have been injected any time from Saturday night to Sunday afternoon. She was given an overdose, went into a hypoglycemic coma, and died. Also, looks like she might have been raped. No fluids, but there was some internal bruising. We’re thinking she picked this guy up in a bar and he took her someplace quiet.”

“Unlikely.” I said.

“Why?”

“Susan Patterson was gay.”

“Looks like you might be able to save us some time, after all,” Scott said. That was as close as I would get to an apology. “You want to come in and finish your statement?”

“Sure, there’s just a few things I want to check on first.” There was no harm in making Scott think I had some leads too.

Chapter 8

I mentally retraced my steps so far in an attempt to work out what I’d done that got the attention of two dangerous men. After speaking to Patterson I’d gone to Susan’s apartment, Dutch’s Bar and Angel’s apartment. With the phone calls as well I’d spoken to maybe a dozen people and had no way of knowing which of them, if any had tipped off the bad guys.

I clipped the articles on Richard West and Melissa Adams out of the newspaper, opened the top drawer of my new file cabinet, and started a file on each of them. I labeled a third file ‘Susan Patterson’, and started to type into my PC everything I knew about her so far. When I was done, I printed off a hard copy and put it in her file. I would have to find out as much as I could on the other two.

I wondered if somewhere, in some other part of the city, Susan’s killer was clipping newspapers, maybe even sticking the articles on the wall, like in the movies. I made a mental note that I should tell Scott if I happened to interview anyone who had stuck newspaper articles about the crimes on their wall. Still thinking of the movies, I decided to get a map of the city to put on my wall, and some push-pins to mark where the bodies were found, where the victims lived and worked, and anything else which might show a pattern.

I was beginning to think I may have been on the right track about the killer being a doctor, given that they would need to have knowledge of, and access to, insulin and hypodermics. In a morbid way, I was anxious to see how the next victim would be killed. For I had no doubt there would be a next victim.

It was after two, and I had more questions than I’d had that morning. Maybe that was a good thing. At least finding the answers gave me something to do.

From my file on Richard West, I made a note of the firm he worked at. Melissa Adams’ workplace was not named. I was sure it would be mentioned once the press made the connection between the crimes. As soon as that happened, I was sure there would be a full color pull-out-and-keep guide to all the victims.

I left the car at the office and walked to Leitz Futures Inc. on Jackson Blvd, the brokerage firm where Richard West had worked up until that weekend. The receptionist was smart and cheerful and served every visitor with a fixed smile.

I asked to see whoever had taken over Richard West’s workload, and the receptionist’s smile was replaced by a respectful solemn expression as she asked me to take a seat, and said she would ask Mr Connors to come and see me.

As I sat and waited in the bright white lobby, I wondered if I should have got a revolver as a backup, maybe a Ruger SP-101 instead of my Sundance .25. I’d chosen the automatic because it carried an extra round, was faster to reload, and the flatter shape meant it sat in the small of my back without ruining the cut of my jacket. On the other hand, six shots was probably enough in a back-up, given that my Glock carried seventeen. And the advantage of a revolver is that if one round doesn’t go off, you pull the trigger again, and it’s on to the next one, whereas with an auto, you have to eject the dud round before you can shoot. Which is kind of the reason for carrying a backup in the first place.

I was still weighing up the pros and cons when an extremely tall man with enormous eyebrows offered me his hand to shake.

“Lee Connors. How do you do? I understand you were asking about Richard. I’m afraid I have some bad news.” He sat in the leather chair next to mine, and put on a very serious face. It was the kind of face newsreaders use when they’re just about to announce an air crash, or a missing child showing up dead. I decided to cut him off before he got carried away.

“Actually, I know about what happened to Mr West, I’m working with the police on the case.” I said. Well, it was kind of true.

“Oh, I see. Or rather I don’t. How can I help you?”

“I was wondering if I could get a little background on him. What he was like, what he did in his spare time, that kind of thing. Did you know him well?”

“Oh yes, he was our best broker. Did you know he was just made employee of the year?” I shook my head and tried to look impressed. “Got a substantial bonus for that, and he earned every cent. As for spare time, he gave so much to the firm, he never seemed to be out of the old place, but he still managed to find time for the wife and kids.”

“Did he have any enemies?”

“Oh no, he was universally respected and admired.”

“Nobody was jealous of his success? Was he maybe pursued by any female admirers, seeing as how he was such a catch?” I asked.

“I’m not sure I like what you’re implying. Richard was very much in love with his wife. He would never have been unfaithful to Marie, he was absolutely committed to her. He never looked at another woman. When we were out on Saturday, he had nothing but orange juice, and he left early to get back to Marie and the children.”

“You were out with him on Saturday?” I asked.