Kill Me Once (16 page)

Dana filled him in as they drove back to the LA field office.

‘So we’re looking for Satan, huh?’ Brown asked.

‘Either him or one of his minions.’

‘Charming. I’ll make sure I start bringing my crucifix along from now on.’

He paused and cracked the passenger-side window to let some fresh air into the car, then glanced down at his watch. ‘You ready to move on? We’ve got a full day of fun activities in front of us.’

‘So what’s next on the list?’ Dana said.

‘Well, first we’ll meet with the handwriting expert back at the office. Hopefully he’ll be able to help us break down the note stitched into the killer’s pants. After that we’ll go see the sketch artist Luz Moreno worked with the day after the murder. To top things off, we’ll meet up with the blood-spatter expert over at Mary Ellen Orton’s apartment in South Central.’

‘Sounds like fun. Let the games begin.’

Twenty minutes later they were back in the field office conference room downtown discussing possible motives for the killer. Maybe this time they’d make a real breakthrough.

‘He obviously hates women,’ Brown said. ‘No surprise there because they usually do. A revenge complex, perhaps? Maybe he had a horrible mother or a wife who dumped him? Like they always say, there’s a very thin line between love and hate.’

Dana was on the verge of coming clean with Brown when a soft rap sounded at the door. A moment later a large unkempt man in his early sixties entered the room holding a sheaf of papers in his right hand.

‘Hey, Fred,’ Brown said. ‘Thanks for coming.’

The handwriting expert smiled a full smile of brown teeth at Dana while Brown introduced them. Brown pulled back a seat at the conference table for him and he and Dana took seats opposite.

‘What have you got for us, Mr Spangler?’ Dana asked, taking over.

Spangler lowered his overweight frame into a plastic chair and spread photocopies of the Disneyland note out on the table in front of them. ‘Well, near as I can tell, it looks like a classic case of OCD.’

Dana studied the papers. ‘What makes you say that?’

Spangler leaned forward and traced the letters on the note with a ballpoint pen. ‘See here how each occurrence of every letter is exactly identical? That’s actually very unusual. Most people tend to write in
approximately
the same manner, but this guy is off the charts for consistency.’

He produced a small magnifying glass from the breast pocket of his rumpled suit and ran it over the note. ‘See here how all the Ds have exactly the same hump, and how each of the Es curls down in exactly the same fashion? It’s like that throughout the entire note.’

‘Don’t most people do that?’ Brown asked. ‘I know my handwriting’s always been pretty consistent.’

Spangler shook his head, sending his impressive jowls quivering into motion. ‘That may be the case, Jeremy, but you most certainly don’t do it with this precision.’ He rifled through his sheaf of papers and slid a transparency over the note. ‘I’ve copied down the letters in question. As you can see here, there’s not even the
slightest
deviation in any of them. It’s almost like he was using a typewriter.’

‘But he was using a normal ballpoint pen, right?’ Dana asked.

Spangler nodded. ‘A Scripto Blue No. 4, to be exact.

Anyway, that’s what makes this so goddamn unusual. He did this by hand – but he also managed to do it with the precision of a machine.’

Dana looked up at him over the papers. ‘What else does the handwriting tell us?’ This wasn’t really telling them anything they didn’t know or suspect already, but Spangler might just hold an ace up his sleeve.

Spangler leaned forward again, excited now. ‘Glad you asked. As you can see here, his writing also has a lot of pressure to it. That’s what makes it appear so dark. The heavier the pressure, the more emotional energy the writer possesses. Also, the lack of a slant is very important to note. People whose handwriting slants to the right are more likely to keep their cool under pressure than those who don’t exhibit any slant at all. People who possess very little emotional energy use light pressure and a leftward slant. They generally prefer to avoid confrontation. That’s definitely not the case here.’

‘So what’s your verdict, then?’ Brown asked.

Spangler looked up at him. ‘My verdict is that this guy doesn’t like disorder, Jeremy. In
anything
. My verdict is he craves perfection, even on a subconscious level.’

‘A pretty lofty goal,’ Dana said.

Spangler gathered his papers together into a loose pile and, with a groan, rose to his feet. ‘Lofty, yes, but I’d say this guy is pretty close to perfect already.’

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

Ten minutes after Spangler left the conference room, Dana and Brown made their way down the hall to Jim McGreevy’s office where they found him hunched over a large drafting table in the middle of the room, the fresh pencil in his left hand poised and ready for action.

At fifty-four and jokingly referred to as ‘Rembrandt’ by his less artistic co-workers, McGreevy was generally considered the best composite-sketch artist in the country. People everywhere knew his work, if not his name. His two most famous examples – or, more accurately,
infamous
examples – could be found in the ubiquitous composite he’d done of the Unabomber in 1996 and the widely distributed sketch he’d made of the phantom black man that Susan Smith claimed had abducted her two young sons out in South Carolina shortly after she’d drowned them in a man-made lake in 1994.

McGreevy looked up when Dana knocked on the door. ‘Special Agent Whitestone,’ he said, rising from his chair and extending his right hand. ‘I’ve been expecting you. Please come in.’

Dana shook hands with McGreevy, who then turned and smiled at Brown. ‘How you doing, Jeremy?’

Brown sighed. ‘I’ll be doing a hell of a lot better if you can tell us something we can actually use, Jim. I feel like we’re running around in circles here.’

Dana interjected, ‘We were told that Luz Moreno came by to see you the other day, Mr. McGreevy.’

McGreevy nodded. ‘Yes, as a matter of fact she did. Quite the little wildcat, that one.’

Dana smiled. ‘Tell me about it. I just got done talking to her myself an hour ago. Anyway, did anything productive come of the meeting?’

McGreevy nodded again and turned to unlock the large silver filing cabinet next to his desk. Reaching in, he extracted a folder and took out an eight-by-ten sheet of paper. ‘Ah yes, the composite of the Night Stalker copycat. Have a look for yourself.’

Dana took the sheet of paper from his right hand and looked down at it, suddenly feeling like she’d just been slapped.

The eyes jumped off the paper at her like a rapist in the night. Dark, simmering, unbalanced.
Los ojos de Diablo
. Luz Moreno was absolutely right. He
did
have the eyes of Satan.

He also had the eyes of someone else Dana knew from her past.

Almost almond-shaped with impossibly long eyelashes, the eyes were the exact same eyes that had visited her dreams every night for the past thirty-four years. A chill went through her, right to the bone.

Other than the eyes, though, the rest of the composite drawing was hardly remarkable. No other distinctive features you couldn’t find in half the male population of the United States. Still, the eyes were enough to make Dana’s heart thud in her chest.

Brown looked at the drawing. ‘Charming-looking fellow.’

McGreevy chuckled. ‘Homicidal maniacs usually are. I’ll tell you what – his eyes remind me of good old Charlie Manson’s. You know, how they looked in that picture on the cover of
Life
magazine? But young Miss Moreno insisted that’s what they looked like. Other than that, though, she wasn’t able to provide very much detail, I’m afraid. Actually happens quite a bit, to tell you the truth. The eyes are the only things anyone can ever seem to remember.’

Dana nodded. She knew the feeling. She remembered the eyes of the monster who had murdered her parents as well as she knew her own, but she wouldn’t have been able to pick the rest of his face out of a line-up if her life depended on it. ‘When’s this going to be released to the media?’ she asked, trying to disguise the undercurrent of fear rippling through her voice. She could no longer ignore the now very real possibility the killer was
her
killer. It had been just a feeling before, a very strong feeling, but a hunch that she could push aside as her overactive imagination working overtime. Now too many things were coming together for her to be able to dismiss her feeling as paranoia. She’d have to tell Brown about her past, and soon.

‘It’s already out there.’ McGreevy broke through her thoughts.

Dana was happy to hear at least this bit of good news. ‘Great. It’s one of the best leads we’ve got so far—’

‘One of the
only
leads we’ve got so far,’ Brown cut in.

Dana turned to him and smiled thinly, fear still rippling through her body. She took a deep breath and steadied herself. ‘Exactly. So what do you say we get back out there and try to drum up a few more before this jerk has the chance to kill again?’

‘Lead the way,’ Brown said.

They thanked McGreevy for his help and made their way back outside to the loaner car. As they drove over to Mary Ellen Orton’s apartment, they discussed the composite drawing that the sketch artist had prepared. Even though the focus was mainly on the eyes, hopefully somebody out there would recognise the rest of the face, no matter how bland the rendering, and they’d take another step toward tracking this killer down. Still, Dana knew she couldn’t rely on that. She and Brown had to start making some serious inroads through good old-fashioned police work.

Ten minutes later Dana slid the car into an open space on Drexel Street in South Central and she and Brown got out. It was their last appointment of the day. Dana just hoped this would give them something new. Each expert was painting a very ugly picture, but had they given them enough to actually catch the sick son of a bitch?

FBI blood-spatter specialist Jeff Simmons got out of his own vehicle fifty feet away and waved them over. He was wearing a snug pair of Levis, old work boots and a tight white T-shirt with a slogan on it that said ‘Talk Nerdy To Me’.

Simmons smiled at them as they approached, showing straight white teeth. ‘Pleasure, guys,’ he said. To Dana, he added, ‘Special Agent Whitestone, nice to meet you. Been hearing some really awesome things about you.’

‘Same here,’ Dana lied. ‘Your reputation precedes you.’

Simmons laughed and adjusted the canvas bag on his shoulder. ‘That’s what I was afraid of. Anyway, come on in and I’ll give you guys the grand tour.’

Thirty seconds later he lifted the yellow police tape stretched across the front door and led them into Mary Ellen Orton’s apartment. Dana stepped inside and was immediately surprised by just how
tiny
it was. Not much bigger than a studio apartment, if that. There was a small living room with a couple of pieces of mismatched furniture, including a rickety TV table with a pair of metal knitting needles lying across the top. To her right there was an even smaller kitchen. The musty smell of an old person’s home pervaded the entirety of the tight space, tickling Dana’s nostrils and making her want to sneeze.

A short walk that took all of five seconds led them to the only bedroom. In the middle of the hopelessly small space it looked as though a plastic Heinz ketchup bottle had exploded on the single bed shoved against the far wall.

Dana fought a wave of revulsion as Simmons passed out thin latex gloves for them to pull on. ‘What does the blood tell us?’ she asked.

Simmons dropped his canvas bag to the floor and pulled the blackout curtains closed. He flicked on a flashlight and ran the light over Mary Ellen Orton’s sheets. Dana blinked as her eyes adjusted to the new lighting.

‘There are three basic types of blood spatter,’ Simmons said, his frat-boy tone giving way to a decidedly more professional demeanour now. ‘Low, medium and high velocity. I’ll give you a quick rundown on each. Where do you want to start?’

‘How about we start at the beginning?’ Brown said.

Simmons nodded. ‘Good idea. The first thing to remember is that blood acts a lot like spilled water. Low-velocity spatter usually happens from drippage and comes from a force of impact of five feet per second or less. The size of the droplets is only a couple of centimetres. Say somebody was stabbed and they stumbled around the room bleeding. Low-velocity spatter happens in cases like that. It’s not from the initial injury, but more of a secondary circumstance.’

‘And medium-velocity?’ Dana asked.

Simmons waved the hand he was using to hold the flashlight, casting eerie dancing shadows on the ceiling. ‘Medium-velocity spatter comes from a force of impact between five and a hundred feet per second. Usually comes from blunt-force trauma, but a stabbing can cause it, too. Usually happens when someone is beaten to death with a baseball bat or a fist or something like that, though. We call it “projected blood”. It leaves a very distinctive pattern. Think of it this way: it’s like somebody shot blood through one of those Super Soaker water guns. Same basic result.’

Brown looked at the bloody sheets covering Mary Ellen Orton’s bed. ‘Pleasant thought,’ he said. ‘So that brings us to high-velocity spatter.’

Simmons nodded and refocused the flashlight on the sheets. ‘Exactly. High-velocity spatter travels more than a hundred feet per second, resulting in a fine spray. The droplets measure less than a millimetre in diameter, and that kind of spatter usually comes from gunshot wounds.’

Dana studied the sheets. ‘That looks like fine spray to me. Wouldn’t that mean high-velocity spatter? But the killer didn’t use a gun. He used a knife.’

Simmons nodded. ‘You’re right. But gunshot wounds usually cause spatter in the front
and
back. Obviously we’re not dealing with that here because there’s no spatter in the back, only in the front. So when we add the blood indications to our knowledge that the old woman was mutilated with a knife, it’s a pretty simple equation to figure out. And if you look closely you’ll see a void, which makes a knife our most likely suspect. This shit was up close and personal.’