2 in the Hat (10 page)

“My first priority is to inventory, box up, and bar code everything for the evidence management system.”

“You’re the best. And you’re going to prove it by helping me out with a case.” He handed one of the coffees to Stone.

Stone led Mooney back to his office. “What case?”

“Josh Kipping. Alves brought you four slugs and some autopsy photos yesterday.”

“The Prom Night Killer.” Stone sat behind his desk and removed the lid from his coffee. “Interesting case. Multiple shots. One entry. Angel told you I matched the projectiles to the evidence from ten years ago?”

“That’s helpful.” Mooney flipped the cover off his coffee and took a sip. “But I already knew it was the same guy. What’s your theory on the single entry wound and the number of shots fired?”

Stone took a sip. “I think he’s using a machine gun.”

“A machine gun?” Mooney almost coughed up his coffee.

“Not a regular machine gun. Not something that was manufactured as such.” Stone put his cup down and got up from his chair. “Come with me. I want to show you something.”

Mooney followed him down the hall to the Secure Firearm Evidence Room where the guns were stored. Stone walked down the rows of shelves and came out with an evidence box. He led Mooney to the test firing room.

“What do you have there?” Mooney asked.

Stone placed the box on a table and removed the gun. “It’s an interesting case from a few years back, before I made sergeant, when I was just a detective examining firearms and testifying in court. It’s a twenty-two caliber Berretta semiautomatic, altered to fire fully auto.”

“I’d like to see how to do that.”

“Let me show you.” Stone took a stack of photos from the box and spread them on the table. “I had a second gun that was in pristine condition. Took the two of them apart and took some comparison photos. You can see in the pictures that the trigger bar arm has been cut by about a third in the altered firearm. You know how this type of weapon is supposed to work.”

Mooney nodded, focusing on the photos.

“When the gun is fired, the slide is forced back, loading the next round from the magazine and resetting the hammer. The bar arm’s supposed to hold the hammer in the cocked position until you pull the trigger again to fire the next round. With the bar arm cut short, the hammer doesn’t stay in the cocked position. The weapon keeps firing as long as you hold the trigger. It keeps firing until the clip is empty. Nine rounds. Unless it jams.”

“Does it jam?”

“Every time. I’ve never gotten it to fire the full nine rounds, but it always manages to pump out three, four, even five rounds.”

“Like we’ve found in each of the victims.”

“Correct. Let me show you.” Stone opened a file cabinet drawer, shuffled through some boxes and took out some .22 caliber ammunition. He fed nine rounds into the clip and slid it into the handle of the gun. He put on his sound-deadening headphones and handed a pair to Mooney before making his way to the projectile recovery tank. He put on his safety glasses. “Watch carefully, Wayne. It’s going to come out in one burst. To an untrained ear it would almost seem like one shot, but you’ll see and hear that it isn’t. The first time I fired this thing, I almost had a heart attack. I didn’t know it had been altered. I was just testing it to see if it was a working firearm and it took off on me.”

Stone positioned himself, the gun in his right hand, supported by the left. Then he squeezed the trigger. Mooney saw the flash from the barrel of the gun. He could hear it was multiple shots, but he wasn’t sure how many. He tried to count the shell casings as they were ejecting, but it happened too fast, the casings scattering on the floor.

Stone removed his ear protection. “I think that was five. That’s what it felt like.” He bent over and picked the casings up off the floor. “Confirmed. Five.”

“The bullets that killed these kids are also twenty-two cal. Were they fired from a Berretta?”

“I think so. Six lands and grooves with a right twist. Consistent with a Berretta. But I’d want to see the weapon to make a positive match. If this killer has a gun like this, altered in the same way, it would explain why you have multiple shots, but never the same number, and only one entry wound. And tattooing consistent with this gun barrel.” Stone placed the gun down on the table. “Wayne, you know this gun serves only one purpose. It’s a hit man’s weapon. Small caliber, so it doesn’t make too much noise. When you pull the trigger, it sounds like one round being fired instead of four or five. It fires so fast that the last round would be fired before the first casing hits the ground. And you know from experience that small caliber rounds can cause more internal damage to the victim.”

Stone picked the gun up again. “And this gun would be useless in a gunfight. You basically get one pull of the trigger and you discharge all nine rounds at once or the gun jams up. Either way, if you miss your target, you’re out of luck. The fight’s over and you’re a dead man.”

A
lves rang the buzzer outside the crime lab. He was tired. Putting
his head down on a conference room table for a couple of hours didn’t qualify as a good night’s sleep. Having nightmares and picturing your sleeping family alone in a dark house didn’t help.

“Can I help you?” Alves heard the pleasant voice behind him. A young woman opened the door to the crime lab. He had never seen her before. Blond hair, pulled back in a ponytail. She looked like a teenager, but she was probably a new criminalist, straight out of college with her biology degree. The new hires seemed to be getting younger.

“I’m looking for Eunice Curran?” Alves said.

“And you are?”

“Detective Alves. Homicide.” He had his gold badge clipped to his belt.

She left him at the reception desk and went back to check with Eunice. Following protocol. Good for her. Once she’d cleared everything with the boss, she let Alves enter the inner sanctum of the DNA lab and the evidence examination rooms. Eunice Curran was in one of those rooms, laying out the evidence she had recovered over the last couple of days.

“Hi there, handsome,” she said. “I’ve been expecting you. Like clockwork, you always show up the morning after…an autopsy, that is. But you’re usually not this early.”

“Never made it home last night.”

“I saw your buddy Sergeant Mooney across the hall,” she said. “That’s two days in a row I’ve seen you guys together. People are starting to talk.”

“Nothing to talk about. Mooney’s back in Homicide.”

“Good to hear. Let me show you what I’ve got…the evidence, that is.” She brought over two paper evidence bags. He could see the change in her face, in the tone of her voice. She was discussing her work now, so no more fooling around. “Here’s the wire that was used to secure the victims. I’ve kept them separate. It’s all identical black telephone wire, one of the fine, multicolored wires you find inside a telephone line. I pulled the evidence from the old cases. It’s a match. It looks like he’s taking ordinary telephone line, slicing off the outer casing and using the black wire inside. He probably likes it because it’s less visible to the naked eye than the colored wire, the reds, greens and yellows. It definitely serves its purpose. Thin, but sturdy.”

“Any idea where he got it?”

“Manufacturer’s a company called Teletech. They’ve been around forever. Seeing that it’s a match with the wire from the earlier crime scenes, I’d say he got a good supply of the stuff somewhere. Kept it on hand over the years.”

“Maybe he works for a phone company or a company that installs security systems,” Alves said. “He might be an electrician. Any one of those jobs would put him in regular contact with this kind of wire.”

“He could have bought it at Home Depot, like everyone else. Paid cash for part of a roll and kept it on hand. I don’t think it’s any indication of what he does for work.”

Alves shook his head. “Have you ever been to a mason’s house, Eunice?”

“You mean like a Benjamin Franklin, George Washington type Mason, or a tradesman who lays bricks?”

“Works with bricks.” He avoided the word lay. He figured she was through with the flirting, but why give her ammunition?

“I can’t say I have, but if you know one who’s not married, feel free to give him my number.”

“I’ll get on that.” He smiled. “If you ever get lucky enough to see a mason’s house, you’ll notice that all of the home improvements involve masonry work. New walkway, brick. New siding, brick. Garden edging, old bricks. Kitchen and bathroom floors are tile, never linoleum.”

“What’s your point?”

“My point is that people like to work with a familiar medium. If a guy works with concrete, he’ll put in a concrete walkway with a concrete apron around his house. My next-door neighbor is an electrician. If he gets bored on weekends, he changes light fixtures, puts in new circuit breakers and transformers. Once he even dug a trench in his front yard and ran PVC pipe underground so the power and phone lines running to his house wouldn’t be visible.”

Eunice tried to interrupt him, but Alves held his hand up.

“The most important thing I’ve noticed about this neighbor is that he uses pieces of that heavy Romex electric line—the kind with the positive, negative and grounding wires in the white casing—to tie things up. He uses it instead of rope. If he puts a ladder on the roof of his van, he secures it with a couple of pieces of Romex. Rolls up his garden hose for the winter and ties it with Romex. His wife plants a sapling in the back yard, he keeps it upright with a piece of rebar and Romex. He uses it for everything because that’s what he’s familiar with.”

“So your next-door neighbor is the killer because he likes to use electrical wire to tie things.”

“What I’m saying is the killer didn’t just choose this type of black telephone wire. It chose him,” Alves said. “Maybe that’s the case with everything he uses. Mooney brought this up last night and it got me thinking. What if this guy is with a local theater group? What if he does lighting and electrical work for them? That would give him access to the wire, the makeup, and the clothes. Working in theater would give him a reason to go to thrift shops, yard sales, and flea markets looking for used formal wear for men and women. No one would question it.”

“Problem is the makeup isn’t that heavy theatrical makeup. He caked it on the best he could so the victims looked good from a distance, but it was inexpensive makeup, like Revlon, the kind that’s sold in pharmacies and supermarkets.”

“This is the first time he’s used makeup,” Alves said.

“I noticed that. I guess he just wanted to add a new touch to his creation. Another thing. I’m not sure if this tells us anything, but the clothes smelled like naphthalene.”

“What’s that?”

“Mothballs. Old school mothballs. They still make them, but most mothballs today are made with dichlorobenzene. Less flammable.”

“So it makes sense that he could have had the clothes in an attic.”

“Or he just bought them at a flea market,” Eunice said. “Stuff someone else had stored away. So it doesn’t tell us anything, really.”

“I can’t help but think this guy has this stuff packed up and ready to go. We know he’s got a supply of the wire. We know he’s had the same gun all these years. I’m willing to bet he’s done the same with the clothes. What about the jewelry?”

“The first victim had a gold necklace, real emeralds.”

Alves had read in the reports that Kelly Adams’s mother loaned it to her for the prom.

“After that, costume stuff. Similar, but cheap glass beads. I can’t tell you if he bought the jewelry last week or ten years ago.”

“Eunice, are you familiar with the BTK Killer?”

Eunice nodded. “Bind. Torture. Kill. Dennis Rader.”

“Rader lived what most people would call a normal life, aside from the fact that he was a murderer. He was involved with his church, Boy Scouts, a regular family guy. But he had a ‘hit kit’ with pistols, knives, venetian blind cords, plastic bags, duct tape, electrical tape. He kept it all hidden in a closet until he went out on one of his ‘projects.’ Sometimes he shoved the stuff he needed into a coat pocket, sometimes he’d carry it in a black bag or a briefcase. Maybe our guy’s had his ‘kit’ stored somewhere over the years. I’m checking the local storage facilities. There weren’t that many ten years ago.”

“The next safest place would be with a girlfriend or wife, if he had one,” Eunice winked.

“Exactly. He had to have been living somewhere, with someone he could trust. Problem is we’re not going to find that person until we find the killer.” Alves felt a sudden surge of tension run from his shoulders up into his neck. He could expect a headache if he didn’t get some fresh air soon.

Alves needed to get back out on the streets. He’d had enough of sitting in offices and conference rooms, reading through old case files. Courtney and Josh were his latest victims, and that was where Alves needed to focus his attention. “Thanks, Eunice.”

“Any time, handsome.”

He went for the door, then stopped and turned back to Eunice Curran. “You’ll let me know if you come up with anything else.”

“I always do.”

I
found a broken meter,” Zardino said. “Never pass up a broken meter.”

“What good is it if it’s in Cambridge?” Luther asked.

“Stop crying.” But Luther was right. It had been a long walk in the hot September sun. As they rounded the corner onto Huntington Avenue, the Northeastern University campus came into view. “We’re going to be here for a few hours. I needed a good spot. Finding the perfect parking spot is one of my many talents.”

“You could have dropped me at the door.”

“If I’m walking, you’re walking.” Zardino smiled. “The good news is that you get to look forward to walking back.”

“Not today. I have a meeting with a client at the Youth Center. I’ll take the T when the conference ends.”

Zardino picked up the pace. “The mayor doesn’t like it if you show up late for one of his events.”

Luther lengthened his strides, and Zardino had to jog to keep up with him. Today was the mayor’s Annual Peace Conference, held every year around the time school started. Everyone would be there: elected officials, law enforcement, social services, professors, some students. The place would be packed, and he and Luther were speaking.