[2017] The Extraction Page 6

  I turned back to the cop who supplied the gear. “You got a flashlight on you?”

  “Yeah, take this Streamlight.” He detached a black cylinder from his belt.

  “Thanks.”

  “Just make sure you give it back when you’re done.”

  Pointing the beam in front of me, I stepped out of the morning’s bright sunshine…and into a nightmare.

  Water stains covered the mobile home’s dingy walls, and a musty odor filled the air, as if the place hadn’t been deep-cleaned since being pulled to this spot God knows how many years ago. Intermingling with this long-term smell was the pungent stench of death, the foul smell of a corpse cooked inside an uncooled trailer over a July weekend.

  Once in the living room, the flashlight proved unnecessary. Investigators had set up floodlights on stands to illuminate the crime scene.

  A soiled couch lined the far wall of the single wide. In the middle of the room, a skinny man with thinning, blond hair and black cowboy boots sagged in a chair. He had been bound to it with coils of thick nylon rope wrapped around his arms and legs. A smaller length of the same rope secured a wad of cloth in his mouth, gagging the man.

  A pool of blood encircling the chair explained the body’s exceptionally blanched pallor. The man had bled out. That much was clear.

  Careful to avoid the foul liquid, I stepped forward for a closer look, waving away a cloud of flies congregating on the body. The man’s pants had been pulled down. That must have occurred prior to his being roped to the chair, given how tightly he was bound. His groin was a mangle of sliced flesh and blood. More partially dried blood appeared in a trail running down from his neck. And bruises on his cheek and a black eye indicated a beating had been administered before the fatal damage had been inflicted.

  Suppressing a gag, I turned to Detective Nolan, the FBI’s lead investigator. “Did the first case look like this?”

  “Yeah, a lot. Dude tied to a chair…gagged…beaten…balls and pecker cut off and neck cut open…the murder weapon was a knife the perp sourced from the vic’s kitchen and left behind. Only real difference is that in the first case, the guy lived in a real house.” He glanced around the room. “Not that it looked much better than this.”

  No wonder they called me after only the second crime. No way this couldn’t be the same perp.

  I couldn’t resist asking the obvious question. “No prints on the knife?”

  Nolan arched an eyebrow in his best do-I-look-like-an-idiot? fashion. “No.”

  “What about a tox screen?”

  Nolan cocked a half smile. “Funny you mentioned that. I just sent a sample for this guy an hour ago. Won’t get it ‘til later today. But the first guy had Ketamine in his system.”

  “A date rape drug. That’s interesting. It explains how the perp was able to get the victim tied up so nice and tidy.”

  “That’s what we were thinking. If I had to guess, I’d say this guy’s tox screen will show it, too.”

  “Yeah.” I walked around the victim to examine his other side. “Do we have felons with this MO listed in the Vault?” I asked, referring to the FBI’s crime database.

  “A few have MOs that are somewhat similar, but the crimes are decades old. Or the offender has died or is still in prison.”

  For the hundredth time, I suppressed my frustration that ViCAP, the FBI’s Violent Criminal Apprehension Program, had never realized its potential. ViCAP is a database designed to help catch the nation’s most violent offenders by linking together unsolved crimes from different jurisdictions. But such a small number of agencies actually populate it with their cases, it’s virtually worthless. It certainly might’ve helped track down this perp.

  “What about recently released sex offenders?” I asked.

  “I’m running that now. So far there’s a few, but no one I like for this. Their crimes are more run-of-the-mill.” He glanced at the vic and exhaled. “This kind of attack…it takes a special breed.”

  That’s for sure. Whoever did this was filled with anger. You don’t cut off a man’s genitals on a whim. And the sheer physical strength required to commit this crime suggested a male offender.

  I pondered the idea of examining previous criminals. I liked Nolan’s approach, but could he be narrowing his search too much? Could the key to this crime be anger rather than the perp’s specific MO? Felons exposed to the criminal justice system know how it works. Perhaps an ex-con decided to change up his MO to throw authorities off track.

  Rather than suggest to Nolan he wasn’t doing his job correctly, I opted to do a bit of alternative research on my own. Back at my desk, I searched for felons who’d been court ordered to attend anger-management classes. And I searched for sexual crimes in which “anger” or “angry” had been used in the case notes. From that combination of results, I filtered out all ex-cons who were still incarcerated, living far away, or deceased. The remaining list still contained dozens of names. And there was no guarantee my criminal would be on it. But it was a start.

  CHAPTER 17

  Two days later, I crossed the final name off my list.

  Dammit! Talk about being back at square one.

  All my experience and instinct cried out that this was an anger-driven crime, most likely a victim of childhood sexual abuse striking out at men who somehow symbolized the offender’s abuser. My gut told me this explanation was right. If that was true, it implied my method of compiling the list of suspects had been flawed.

  So maybe not completely back to square one. I had a likely motive. What was needed was a deeper analysis of the victims in order to improve the search.

  As I reached this conclusion, Nolan rang. “The dick slicer struck again. Want to come?”

  “Yeah,” I replied. “Give me the address.”

  The grizzly scene inside the drab house bore an eerie resemblance to that of the mobile home. The victim’s body was found in the living room, his body tied to a chair with yards of nylon rope. He appeared five or ten years younger than the last guy, but the pattern of beating, mutilation, and a final slice to the neck looked to be the same.

  Nolan entered moments after me. “Toxicology confirmed both of the first two vics ingested Ketamine. And both of them had their carotid artery cut.” He stooped to examine this victim’s neck. “Looks like this guy’s carotid was nicked, too.”

  “The incision isn’t very big,” I observed, “like they knew just where to cut. Perhaps the perp is some kind of medical professional.”

  “Yeah, maybe. Or he just got lucky.”

  I doubted luck had anything to do with it but kept this thought to myself. I joined the detective in examining the corpse, especially the dozens of gray coils holding it in place. “It’s the same kind of rope as the other crime scenes, isn’t it?”

  “Looks like it. The rope used on the first two vics was Zoro half-inch nylon. I’d bet this rope is, too. And the forensics team noticed something interesting about the rope used on the first two vics. It was cut, not fused together the way ends of normal commercial nylon rope are.” He pointed to one of the strands on the current victim. “It’s the same here—cut. They sell this stuff on giant spools. My guess is the rope used on all three vics came from the same spool.”

  I nodded. “Makes sense. Drug them and bring plenty of rope to tie them up. Then you can do what you want.”

  Moving away from the body, Nolan frowned and shook his head.

  “What is it?” I asked.

  “Forensics wasn’t able to do much for us in the first two scenes. The perp didn’t leave any fingerprints. And there was trace evidence of latex on the bodies and on the knives he scrounged from the kitchens to use as the murder weapons. I was just thinking we’ll probably strike out here, too.”

  I nodded as a strange scent wafted into my nostrils. I moved closer to the body. “Do you smell something?”

  Nolan took a whiff and shook his head. “My nose has never been any good. What is it?”

  “Something sweet…li
ke perfume or aftershave.” I leaned over the side of the victim’s neck that hadn’t been sliced open. “I don’t smell it here. Only on the rope.”

  Nolan shrugged. “Not sure what you make of that, though. There wouldn’t be enough on the rope to trace it back to the manufacturer. Besides, even if we did, what then? There’d probably be thousands of people buying whatever product it turned out to be.”

  No arguing with that.

  Lacking better leads, I visited the evidence room back at my HQ building. Sure enough, the same aroma lingered on the ropes used to bind the other two victims. It’s doubtful anyone at the second crime scene could have detected it over the stench of the decomposing body. But here, in a plastic evidence bag, just enough of the distinct aroma lingered to be detected over the deathly odor that also clung to the strands.

  Could this help? Possibly. During the two days of working through my list of ex-cons, I had composed a mental portrait of the offender: sexually abused as a child—living in a traumatic environment over which he had no control. As an adult, this sex-abuse victim dealt with the trauma by seeking to punish similar predators, dominating them physically the way he’d been dominated as a minor.

  Based on the sheer physical violence of the crime scenes, we had all assumed the perp was a male. But the aroma on the ropes had me rethinking that supposition. The smell could be aftershave, but probably not. It carried a nauseatingly sweet scent, like the cheap perfume sold at mega-stores. It had to be perfume—which meant the perp was probably a female.

  This revelation could make a huge difference, because it suggested an entirely new avenue for a female perp to pick up victims: dating websites and nightclubs. After all, hooking up was a prime reason many people visited those locations.

  It stood to reason the perp wouldn’t want to leave an electronic trail via a website, but Nolan’s team checked it out just to be thorough. Sure enough, only one of the three men had attempted online dating, and that had been four years ago. That avenue dead-ended in hours.

  That left our hopes pinned to teasing out a suspect from the nightclub scene. Nolan’s team had interviewed the victims’ families and friends, looking to understand the victims’ lives and create a timeline of movement the night each died. All three had been relatively poor single males who lived alone and in distant Atlanta suburbs. None of them had been the type to carry credit cards, rendering it impossible to trace them via electronic charges. But the second victim, Jordan Myers, had stopped at an ATM at 8:00 P.M. the Saturday night he died. Could we use this to test my theory?

  I shared my nightclub idea with Nolan. He was skeptical about the notion of our perp being a female but had his team follow up on the bank transaction. Within minutes, they located The Roundup, a country bar, two blocks north of the ATM. Myers had died with his boots on—literally. The well-worn Laredos on his corpse suggested he might have frequented that kind of joint.

  I decided to pay a visit to The Roundup myself. Positioned on the edge of an aging strip mall, the club’s drab exterior provided little basis for enthusiasm. But a walk inside felt like a trip in time, back to the days of the wild west, complete with a long oak bar and the white, enamel handles of a dozen on-tap beers. Only a row of flat-screen televisions mounted on the wall behind the bar broke the spell.

  The manager, a rotund fellow with a bushy mustache, nodded at the badge I presented. “What’s up?”

  “A man named Jordan Myers was murdered recently. Does the name sound familiar?”

  “Jordan? Yeah. I knew him. I heard about…what happened…on the news.”

  “So he was a regular?” I asked.

  The manager lifted himself onto one of the barstool seats. “Yeah. He was a quiet guy…usually came in by himself.”

  “Do you remember if he came in last Saturday?”

  He wiped his brow in concentration for a moment before his face brightened. “Yep! He did. I remember him buying the usual—Bud draft.”

  “Did anyone come in with him?”

  “No, not that I saw.”

  “What about after he arrived here?” I asked. “Did you see him speaking with someone else?”

  The manager drew stubby fingers through his thinning hair. “Not that I recall. It was busy that night, the usual Saturday craziness. And Jordan, he usually sat in back there, behind Ernie.” He nodded in the direction of a mechanical bull. “You can’t really see people back there. If he did meet up with someone else, I wouldn’t have known.”

  “Do you have security cameras? With recordings?”

  “Yep, we have a few. The feed is saved to the laptop in my office. The recordings are kept for a month, then auto-erased.” He drummed two fingers on the countertop. “But that might not help.”

  “Why?” I asked.

  “The cameras don’t show those seats where Jordan sits…uh, sat. We only have them on the entrances and dance floor.”

  “I’ll take whatever you have,” I told him, pulling a business card from my wallet. “How soon can you send them?”

  “Right now.”

  The security-camera files were waiting in my e-mail by the time I arrived back in the office. Presumably, Myers entered the bar not long after withdrawing money from his bank account. I set the main-entrance recording to the time of his ATM transaction, then began studying my screen, waiting for the victim to appear.

  Sure enough, Myers appeared on-screen, paying the cover before entering the crowded bar. Even for an FBI agent like me, studying the image of someone so recently departed lent an eerie, sad quality to the recording. Perhaps Myers wasn’t a man of means, but surely he wanted to live as much as any of us. What would induce someone to target a nobody like that for murder? And a complete stranger, no less, based on witness statements that the victims had never known or heard of each other.

  This was the reason my job existed—to explain the method to the madness.

  I continued to study the main entrance. But if one of the Roundup’s women turned out to be the criminal, how could she be picked out from the dozens of women streaming in and out of the bar? My best bet would be studying the security recordings to see if Myers left with someone.

  CHAPTER 18

  Two hours later, I rubbed my tired eyes. The recording had finally revealed Myers leaving—alone. Half a day’s work, and it looked like my latest theory wasn’t panning out, either.

  Or was it?

  The core purpose of my job boiled down to using crime-scene evidence to construct a profile of a repeat offender. Balancing that kind of psychological reconstruction with more evidence-gathering constituted an iterative process. In other words, the evidence informed the criminal’s profile, which in turn suggested new evidence to seek out. I decided this stage of my current investigation would be best served by using the evidence at hand to refine the criminal’s profile.

  What kind of person did the evidence from these murders suggest?

  Methodical…careful…detail oriented enough to buy all the supplies ahead of time and select victims who shared the same poor socioeconomic background. Perhaps she shared this background with them, too.

  And the perp selected victims whose residence type increased her odds of getting in and out unseen. Perhaps it was a coincidence that none of her victims lived in an apartment or condo. But most likely, she had screened for victims who owned their own place, specifically because traveling to those locations exposed her to a lower risk of being spotted.

  The forensics team hadn’t found any tire tracks from one victim’s residence that matched those of another’s. This fact suggested the perp rode to the homes of her victims in their cars, which would mean she had no vehicle of her own at her victims’ houses. But in that case, how did she get home after murdering them? No way would she have used a taxi. Even the dumbest of criminals would realize such a move would render it child’s play for police to track them down. She must have walked home, perhaps working off the adrenaline boost of each murder. Or perhaps she caught a bus on a distant
line.

  An epiphany rolled over and through me, catching me by surprise. The rope used to bind all three men had matched, meaning that she supplied it, not her victims. If our perp rode home in her victim’s cars, that meant she brought the rope with her into the clubs. And each crime scene contained a shit load of rope. She must have been packing an extra-large purse to store it in.

  But wait…Jordan Myers wasn’t seen leaving with anyone. Of course, this perp had proved to have an eye for detail. She could’ve guessed the police would review security footage and made a point to leave at a different time from each victim.

  I reset the security footage of The Roundup’s main door to seconds after Myers left. My concentration never wavered as I examined each lady departing over the next twenty minutes.

  Nothing.

  Could she have been smart enough to exit via a different door? I queued up footage from a seldom-used accessory door, one that exited into a side street on the opposite side of the building from the parking lot. If I were this criminal, someone who liked to plan things out, it’s the one I’d use.

  Bingo! Ten minutes after Myers left, a petite woman wearing jeans, a black t-shirt, and a tan broad-brimmed cowboy hat passed through the side door. She carried an oversized, beige Vera Bradley bag. That thing was huge, looking as much like a duffle bag as a purse. Could this be our perp? If so, she had planned her escape well. The hat blocked any view of her face from the security-camera footage.

  In order to leave the club, she had to have entered it first. I returned to the footage from the main door and observed it for an hour before witnessing her pass through. The footage was too grainy to capture a good image of her face, but the pale woman’s general details suggested an age of mid-thirties and a height barely exceeding five feet.

  Could this petite woman really be the perp who had brutalized the victims? The one we had first assumed must be a man? A moment of pondering was all I needed. My investigation would proceed based on what the evidence suggested, not on what my initial assumptions had been. Yeah, the lady was small, but that didn’t prove she was innocent. With the benefit of adrenaline and a healthy dose of psychotic rage, people can pull off all sorts of unexpected feats.