Sigma Curse - 04 (10 page)

Peters fought surprisingly hard for such a small woman, thrashing and scrabbling, and Sally-Jo realized she must have learned a certain toughness from her years on the streets. But those years were far behind her, as she’d said during her talk earlier, and she wasn’t used to fighting any more. Her heels tried half-heartedly to stamp down on Sally-Jo’s ankles and feet, but Sally-Jo avoided them easily.

She felt Alice Peters start to falter, the strength ebbing from her as her air was choked off. Sally-Jo held on, pulling hard but gradually easing the pressure, controlling it so that she didn’t overdo it and kill the woman.

At last, Peters’ hands dropped from the rope at her throat. It was a tell-tale sign.

Sally-Jo released her grip a little, holding on to the ends of the rope but no longer tightening it. Peters slumped, dead weight, and Sally-Jo lowered her to the ground.

She turned the woman over, ready in case this was a bluff. But Peters was unconscious, her eyes turned up behind the half-lowered lids so that only a rim of white was visible in each one.

Sally-Jo darted a look around her. They were still alone. Nobody was coming up the lawn. In the distance, she saw a couple of people strolling along the path that skirted the pond, lost in their won worlds.

Sally-Jo unwound the rope from the woman’s neck, noting the raw, chafed burn circling it. She squatted and hefted the woman over her shoulder. She was light, but she was still dead weight, with all the difficulties that posed in trying to lug somebody. Nonetheless, Sally-Jo was able to carry her deeper into the undergrowth.

When she’d gotten far enough in that she was satisfied, she went back and picked up the woman’s purse. She checked inside. The usual stuff: wallet, Kleenex, lipstick, cell phone. Plus the iPad.

Sally-Jo went to work swiftly. From her rucksack she took out several lengths of the same thin rope she’d used to subdue the woman. She rolled Peters over onto her face again and bound her wrists, then tethered her ankles. When she was satisfied the bonds were secure, she dragged the woman over to a tree and propped her in a sitting position against the trunk. With a last length of rope, she tied her to the tree by looping it several times across her chest.

Peters was breathing slowly but steadily. Her head lolled, but she managed to lift it each time it threatened to topple her forward against her restraints. It meant she was semi-conscious rather than completely out.

Sally-Jo stuffed a rag in the woman’s mouth and secured it with duct tape. Then she hunkered down next to the woman and said in her ear, low and clear:
“Wake up.”

The eyelids fluttered.

Sally-Jo slapped her face lightly. “Alice. I need you to wake up.”

When the woman still showed little response, Sally-Jo dug her knuckles into her breastbone. It was a method doctors used, she’d heard, of determining response to pain in an unconscious person. It had an immediate effect. Peters moaned sharply through the rag and lifted her head, her eyes flickering open.

Sally-Jo knew the woman was back to full consciousness when her eyes snapped wide in terror.

She began to thrash about immediately, writhing against the ropes that secured her to the treetrunk, trying to throw herself sideways, turning her head this way and that as if she could shake the gag free. A stifled cry escaped her lips, and Sally-Jo stuffed the rag in further and stuck a couple of extra strips of duct tape over it. She didn’t want the woman to gag and vomit, because she might aspirate.

With her lips right beside Peters’ ear, she hissed: “You need to calm down and listen to me right now.”

Peters stopped, turned her face to Sally-Jo. There was fear in her eyes still, yes, but also a kind of watchfulness born of years of being threatened by assorted people, and of the understanding that you needed to gauge the level of the threat at all times.

Sally-Jo smiled. “Good. We understand one another. Now, Alice. I’m going to show you some photos. I want you to take a good look at them. Don’t worry about me, I’m not going to make any sudden moves. Just concentrate on the pictures. Don’t try to make sense of them at first. If you focus on them, one after the other, you’ll understand.”

Confusion now competed with terror in the woman’s huge eyes. But she nodded quickly.

“All right.” Sally-Jo reached inside the Army jacket and drew out the collection of photos. She checked to make sure they were in the correct. Then she held them up before Peters’ eyes, one by one, giving her a good twenty seconds to gaze at each.

When she got to the ones with Frank, during and... after, Peters shrank away in horror. But Sally-Jo murmured gently: “Uh uh. Keep looking. It’ll all make sense.”

And she watched understanding start to dawn in Peters eyes. The woman stared at Sally-Jo, then back at the pictures.

“Yes,” Sally-Jo whispered.

She showed her the final photo, the one she varied each time. This one was of a church, some Baptist one in Kentucky she’d gotten off the internet. As expected, Peters looked bewildered again.

So Sally-Jo showed her the one of the Sikh temple.

Did she get it? Sally-Jo lowered her face until it was inches from Peters. The woman recoiled, staring up into her captor’s eyes.

There was... something there. A flicker of activity Not quite of understanding, but it was as if Peters’ mind was actively trying to make sense of what she’d seen. Groping for a solution to the riddle.

“Do you see?” Sally-Jo whispered.

The woman’s eyes searched hers. Then they took on a far-away look, as if something was starting to stir.

She nodded rapidly.

Sally-Jo tried to probe behind the woman’s eyes with her own. Tried to visualize the firing of the neuronal connections, observe the woman’s thoughts.

Peters nodded again, slowly, more emphatically.

Yes. Sally-Jo believed she did understand.

She straightened, examining her own feelings. There was no euphoria. No triumph at finally having gotten another human being – apart from Frank – to understand.

She was aware of a vast sense of disappointment. Of emptiness.

And she was aware, too, of the need to get moving.

She used the icepick. There was no particular reason other than that it was efficient. As soon as Peters glimpsed it as Sally-J drew it from the rucksack, she began thrashing once more, a groan escaping the muffle of the gag. Her hair was short, but Sally-Jo managed to get a firm grip on it with her left hand.

She steadied the woman’s head and inserted the icepick smoothly and swiftly.

The trees around her hissed in the slight wind that had risen, their depleted foliage rattling dryly. Sally-Jo stood looking down at Peters, now slumped forward so that only the rope across her chest held her up.

Had she succeeded? Time would tell. And Frank. He’d be able to advise her. For now, Sally-Jo felt a numbness even deeper than that of her skin where it was exposed to the winter air.

She felt her mind switch over to business mode, and set to work cleaning up.

––––––––

T
he day had been a frustrating one, and Venn was glad when it seemed to be drawing to a natural end and he could go home.

He and Harmony had met up at the Ninth Avenue office of the Division of Special Projects at a little after nine in the morning. The office was a small one, with only three staff. Four if you counted the receptionist, Shawna. There was Venn himself, plus Harmony, and Filiberto Vidal, the newest member of the team. Fil had gotten there first, and was already at his computer.

As he’d expected, Venn ached from his fight with the two soldiers the night before. He’d always experienced some discomfort in the days after a fight, but this time the spasms and twinges seemed more pronounced than usual. Maybe he’d been hit harder than he was accustomed to. Or maybe he was just getting old.

He’d already briefed Fil Vidal about the case, and had set him to work trying to work up a preliminary profile on the killer of Dale Fincher. There was very little to go on, but Fil had spent yesterday – Sunday – pulling up the files on the other two murders and going through them carefully, cross-referencing where he could. Like Venn, Fil had no particular expertise in the investigation of serial killing. He was a Puerto Rican cop whom Venn had hired six months earlier on the recommendation of Venn’s boss, Captain David Kang, and he had a special way with computers and spreadsheets and databases. Geek stuff, as Harmony called it. Over the last six months, Venn had been increasingly impressed by Fil’s quiet, no-nonsense approach to his job. Even Harmony, who’d disliked the man from the outset for no reason other than that he was new and therefore unknown, had warmed to him in her grudging way.

Venn was impatient to expand the Division, to start taking out higher-level cases, serious investigations into corruption at the City Hall level, which was what the Division was, after all, for. He conveyed a lot of this impatience to Captain Kang in their meetings together. The Division was Kang’s brainchild, his pet project, and he’d achieved spectacular successes with it thus far. He shared, or appeared to share, Venn’s enthusiasm for expanding the scope of their operations, and the Division’s workforce.

“It’s the goddamn money men, Joe,” Kang said from behind his desk, where his feet were propped up, during one of their evening bull sessions. “I’ve been promised more funds ever since the Salazar thing. Been promised the earth, virtually. But every time, it comes down to somebody with the political will to get behind us, chickening out at the last minute.”

Venn was of the opinion that they’d touched too many nerves with some of their investigations. That they’d made members of Congress uneasy, and that said members had a vested interest in keeping the Division small and therefore manageable. Otherwise some of their own dirty laundry might end up getting an airing.

“Yeah,” said Kang, sucking on a cigar. It was illegal for him to smoke it in his office, but he sat near an open window where the freezing winter air dragged some of the fumes away. “There’s that. You’re probably right, Joe. Which means, we’re screwed forever.”

Still. There was a kick, Venn had to admit, to be gotten out of busting open drug rings, organ trafficking conspiracies and corrupt landlords with links to government, all of which the Division of Special Projects had achieved in the last year, with their current skeleton staff of three active cops. Venn secretly wondered if he’d be able to handle a bigger outfit. He didn’t have any doubts that he’d manage it efficiently, but he worried that once it became too big, it would end up riven by the same politics and factionalism that marred every sizeable organization he’d ever worked in. That included the Chicago Police Department and, he was sorry to acknowledge, the US Marine Corps.

He spent today, Monday, first at his office and later at the headquarters of the FBI taskforce on the East River. He’d updated Teller and his team on what had gone down at the roadside bar the night before with Corporals Austin and Craddock.

“Jesus, Joe,” was Teller’s initial response. “You beat up two US Army soldiers?”

“They attacked me first,” said Venn. “And they won’t be telling. To admit that one guy, a civilian, kicked both of their asses isn’t something they’ll be broadcasting. No, they’ll claim they were jumped by a gang of bikers or something. And that’ll be the end of it.”

“You’re not a civilian, though,” said Teller. “You’re a Marine. As I understand it, you’re never an ex-Marine.”

“Anyhow.” Venn glanced at Rickenbacker, who’d listened to his account in silence, and was now watching him with an expression he could’t read. “We know now that Dale Fincher was gay, and in the closet. That might be significant. This may be a killer who targets gays.”

“Doesn’t follow,” said Rickenbacker. “First, how did the killer know he was gay, if he was so secretive about it? And second: we don’t have any evidence either of the other victims, the ones with the sigma brand on their foreheads, was gay.”

“We don’t have any evidence that they weren’t, either,” Venn pointed out. “It’s worth a look.”

Teller shook his head. “Why didn’t Fincher come out? Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell went out the window three years ago.”

Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell had been the official policy of the US Armed Forces from the Clinton Administration onwards. It meant that homosexuals were no longer barred from active service in the military, but couldn’t be open about their orientation either. The law had changed in 2011, so that members of the military were now permitted to be out and proud.

“The law doesn’t change attitudes all that quickly,” said Venn. “Fincher would still have faced a hell of a lot of prejudice. Plus, he may have had other reasons for not coming out. It’s not always because of peer pressure. Maybe he had problems accepting his orientation himself.”

He had a sudden thought, and looked at Rickenbacker. “You said the killer wouldn’t have known he was gay. What if the killer
did
know him?”

“The woman in the bar?”

“Yes. Or, maybe she had an accomplice. We considered that before.” Venn ran through the conversations they’d had in the FBI office the night he and Harmony had first been summoned there. “It might be a pair of killers, or even more than two. The woman might have been the bait.”

Rickenbacker sighed. Her voice was skeptical. Contemptuous, even. “You’re tying yourself in knots. Why would a woman be sent to bait a man the killer knew was gay?”

Venn felt a twinge of annoyance. In part it was due to the woman’s obvious dislike of him. But he also had to admit that she had a point, that he was clutching at straws. “Well, it was Fincher’s chance to show his buddies how not-gay he was. By going off with a sexy woman. Maybe... jeez, I don’t know.” He threw up a hand. “It’s all food for thought, anyhow.”

“Uh huh.” Rickenbacker turned to Teller, dismissing Venn. “So we need to go into overdrive today with interviews. The staff at the hotel in Chelsea. The bar staff at the Rococo in Greenwich Village.”

“Yeah.” Teller looked at Venn. “You up for some pavement pounding?”

“Sure.”