Sigma Curse - 04 (11 page)

*

T
he local NYPD cops had of course already interviewed the hotel manager and those of staff who’d been on duty Friday, the night of the murder. Nobody had seen or heard anything until the maid had found Fincher’s body the following morning. The night clerk, a young woman, recalled Fincher checking in.

“He was a good-looking guy,” she said matter-of-factly. “A little drunk. No, not drunk. Tipsy, maybe. And he looked nervous. Like he was –” She broke off.

Teller, who was with Venn, said: “Yes?”

She bit her lip. “I don’t know if I should say this, but... He looked like he was reserving a room to meet a call girl. Like it was the first time he was doing it. Cheating on his wife or something, you know?”

The receptionist told them Fincher had reserved a room under his real name, and given his driving license as proof of idea. He’d been emphatic that he would be there alone.

“But I knew he was going to sneak somebody up there,” The girl said, still nonchalant. “Happens all the time. We turn a blind eye. Even though it means we lose money, I guess.”

Nobody of note had come through the lobby for the rest of the night. The receptionist was sure of it. Venn assumed whoever had killed Fincher, whether the woman who’d picked him up in the bar or somebody she was working with, must have found another way up to his room. Possibly up the fire escape and in through the window.

The NYPD’s crime scene investigators had secured the hotel room. The FBI had taken over the scene lock, stock and barrel. The trouble was, a hotel room was always going to contain a ton of DNA from hundreds if not thousands of people, however clean the staff kept it. So it would be near impossible to determine among the specimens identified which DNA traces had been left by the killer.

There were no tell-tale traces left on the bedposts, somewhere the DNA evidence might be of use since most people staying in a hotel didn’t have occasion to touch them much. The posts had been wiped clean. The waterglasses in the bathroom, though they’d been removed from their plastic wrapping, had similarly been wiped of all human trace. Ditto the basin, the toilet roll holder, and everything else that might have been touched recently.

The killer was clearly a methodical person, and somebody with more than a grain of intelligence and foresight, too.

Venn and Teller spent the afternoon noodling around Chelsea, asking people here and there if they’d seen Dale Fincher with or without anybody else. Nobody gave them anything. After a couple of hours, Teller scratched his neck where his collar was irritating him.

“Ah, shit. We’re wasting our time.”

They headed back to the taskforce office and met up with the rest of the team. Rickenbacker and Harmony arrived a half hour later. They’d gone to the Rococo Bar in Chelsea to speak with the staff and patrons there.

From the atmosphere as the two women entered the office, from the body language between them, Venn got the sense they’d had a disagreement of some kind.

Rickenbacker gave them an update. “We have a little more on the woman who picked up Fincher. The barman who was working that night says she was tall. Like around five nine or -ten. He noticed that about her. Also that she was hot. She wasn’t wearing heels. He’d never seen her there before. She ordered a martini, but just the one, and he took her empty glass away and washed it, of course, so no DNA there.”

“That’s it,” Harmony chimed in. “Sweet jack shit.”

Venn looked from one to the other. They were avoiding one another’s eyes, and even their bodies were turned away, resembling like magnetic poles repelling each other.

“So we’ve hit a brick wall,” said Venn. “We need to look at the other killings. Try to work out the links, the patterns.”

Rickenbacker snorted. She was a good-looking woman, but her contempt made her almost ugly.

Teller said, “The reason for Fran’s reaction just then is that serial killers don’t tend to get caught that way, Joe. Not outside the movies. It’s rare that the pattern suddenly drops into our lap, and then that leads us to predict the killer’s next move and grab them that way. No. Hunting serial killers is actually straightforward. Not easy, but simple. We get there the same way you or any other cop solves a crime of any kind. Through dogged, plodding police work, gathering evidence, homing in on the likely suspects, making an arrest, and then wearing the person down until they confess.”

“Yeah,” said Rickenbacker. “A lot less romantic than you might have been hoping for.”

“Nevertheless,” said Venn, determined not to let her get the upper hand. “Those other two killings. Let’s review the evidence. Unless you’ve got any other ideas?”

They sat in a small conference room off the main office, Teller and Venn and Harmony and Rickenbacker, plus two of the other FBI agents, King and Abbott, and pieced together what they had.

The second victim to be found with the sigma brand on his forehead, the John Doe in the alleyway, was of course difficult to know much about. He was around fifty-seven or fifty-eight years old, was in a state of severe malnutrition and liver cirrhosis, and had shown signs of brain atrophy secondary to chronic alcohol abuse. He had nothing on him except the filthy clothes he wore: no ID, no wallet, not even a single nickel. Just a pint bottle of vodka. The precinct cops who’d caught him had found his prints on the bottle, but they matched nobody on file anywhere in the United States. Once again, there’d been no point looking for DNA evidence of his killer in the alleyway, because the number of people in the city whose genetic material was strewn there was just too great.

“Scrub him,” said Teller. “For now, anyway.”

The first victim, O’Farrell, was potentially more interesting. He’d been divorced, aged forty-one, and lived alone in a small apartment he’d been renting for the past three years since his wife had walked out. He was a morbidly obese man with diabetes and mild heart disease, but was functioning without problems in his job on the New York subway system.

O’Farrell’s apartment had yielded samples of DNA from six individuals, apart from him. Four of these people had been identified. His sister, who’d been staying with him for a week but had left for her home in New Jersey two days before his murder, and had a cast-iron alibi. Two workmen who’d delivered a new furniture suite earlier that week. And a friend of O’Farrell’s, who’d dropped by a few days earlier for a beer and to watch basketball with him.

The remaining two sets of DNA both belonged to men, and represented possible avenues of exploration. However, they were found on door handles, kitchen faucets and the arms of a couple of the living room chairs. It seemed unlikely that the killer, as methodical as they’d discovered her – or him – to be, would have been so sloppy as to overlook these areas when cleaning up. So Venn thought the DNA sets were most likely red herrings, and belonged to acquaintances of O’Farrell’s who were as yet unidentified but who probably had nothing to do with his death. Nevertheless, the FBI had run the DNA through the national databases. They matched nobody on file.

“You said there were signs of a struggle in the O’Farrell case,” said Venn.

“Yeah.” The other female FBI agent, King, spoke up. “The living room of O’Farrell’s apartment was a mess. Tables overturned, glass smashed. He had bruises on his face and his arms, and a gash on his forehead. They checked under his fingernails, by the way. No traces of DNA there.”

“But he was a fat guy,” said Harmony. “Out of shape. How’d he manage to put up a struggle?”

Teller said: “Maybe he knew how to carry himself in a fight. Maybe he was once fitter, and a brawler.”

“Or maybe the killer was inexperienced at that time,” said Venn. “Didn’t have the skill set to subdue a man quickly. With the hobo it was easy. He was too far gone to offer any resistance. But O’Farrell... he might have seen what was about to happen, run for the phone or something.”

“Yeah,” said Teller. “Anyhow, although as Rachel -” he nodded at King - “said, he had a cut on his head, the cause of death was established as a spike through his brain, from under the chin. Just like the others.”

“Which means,” Rickenbacker said, “the killer had gotten him under control before that. You can’t stab somebody like that in the heat of battle. It requires precision, a careful aim.”

“Okay,” said Venn. “Let’s look at what may be significant here. The method of killing, the icepick through the brain. The same in each case.”

Teller said, “It’s an efficient way of dispatching somebody with one strike. Not much chance of someone surviving that. But like Fran says, it’s tricky. You can only do it once you’ve got your victim already subdued.”

“And there’s the fact that all three of the victims have been white, and male,” Harmony chimed in. “You said earlier that may be coincidence.”

“Sure could,” said Teller. “There are a lot of white males in New York. The victims themselves aren’t necessarily significant in serial killer cases. Yes, sometimes you’ve got a killer who targets only women, because they’re generally easier to overpower, or prostitutes, because you can get close to them before you arouse suspicions. But often, it’s the act of killing that the murderer revels in. The act, and sometimes the ritual surrounding it. The victim just happens to be somebody who’s available at the time.”

“The gay thing. With Fincher,” said Venn.

They all looked at him.

“It means something,” he said. “My gut tells me that.”

Teller shrugged. “Okay. Gut instincts can be good. They can also be misleading. So, yeah, keep that in mind. But don’t follow it blindly, or you might end up deep down some alley.”

After ninety minutes of this, they decided to call it a night. Venn left with a gnawing sense of frustration. There’d been three killings, not one. Three crime scenes, even if the two older ones were several weeks old. There were plenty of places, he felt, they should be finding clues. Yet they had nothing but a grab-bag of tidbits, here and there. Details that might all piece together, but might also be utterly irrelevant.

He realized, as he suspected more experienced serial killer-hunters usually came to realize, that another killing could be just what they needed.

––––––––

I
n the elevator down to the parking lot below the FBI office, Venn said to Harmony: “So what went down between you and Rickenbacker?”

She didn’t look at him. Just glowered at the digital floor display above the doors. “She’s a royal pain in the ass.”

“How?”

“She treated me like some rookie all the way through. Insisted on asking questions first. Then, when I did get a question in, she either cut me off, or explained the question again, as if she was the minder of some retarded kid.”

“You talk to her about it?” said Venn.

“Yeah.” This time she looked up at him. “Of course I did. You know me.”

“And?”

“She was ready for it. She’d been baiting me. And she said I didn’t belong on the case. That I should stick to sniffing out corruption, or whatever it was the Division did. That you and I were only involved because of politics, and that it was going to screw up the investigation.”

“Huh,” said Venn. “I guess she picked on you because you’re junior to me. Cowardly.”

“And because I’m a woman,” said Harmony. “She’s one of those females you meet who’ve done good for themselves in a man’s world, and are desperate to prove that they can out-man any guy. So they treat fellow female cops with extra contempt.”

The doors opened at the parking lot. Venn said: “You want me to speak to her? Or to Teller?”

Harmony glared at him, anger flashing in her eyes. “Hell, no. Don’t you dare, Venn. I can fight my own battles. The last thing I need is her thinking I’ve come crying to you.”

“Okay,” Venn said as they stepped out. “But just don’t do or say anything that gets us kicked off the case.”

Her car was nearer than his. He was about to leave her there when he hesitated.

“Harm.”

“Yeah.”

“The other thing. The thing you were troubled about before. You never told me what it was.”

“That’s right.” She unlocked her Crown Vic and opened the door.

“You can tell me, you know. Maybe I can help.”

“Doesn’t matter. But thanks anyway.” She gave him a small, tight smile and dropped into her seat.

Venn shrugged inwardly and headed over to his Jeep.

*

T
hat evening, after dinner as Venn and Beth were clearing the dishes away, he said: “So this serial killer thing.”

“Yes,” she said, immediately interested. They were settling back into this comfortable routine, telling each other about the details of their respective working days. Venn was fascinated by Beth’s medical tales, even if he didn’t always follow them completely. And she seemed to take an intense interest in his work.

“The killer’s possibly a woman. She’s managed to kill one alcoholic down-and-out, which was plausible. One overweight guy in his apartment, which she managed after he put up a fight. And one young, fit US Army soldier.”

“A woman,” said Beth, stacking away a pile of plates. “A big one, you think? Strong?”

“No.” Venn thought of the description the corporals had given. “Slender, though tall. Not somebody you could picture as a fighter.”

“Well, if you ask me, she did one of two things. Either she drugged them. Or, she’s not working alone.”

“Yeah.” Venn began to mop up the suds on the kitchen counter beside the basis. “That’s one possibility. That she’s got an accomplice, and she’s the bait.” He paused. “If a person’s, like, in a psychotic frenzy, would that give them super strength?”

Beth smiled. “A lot of people misunderstand the word ‘psychosis’. It doesn’t mean you go berserk. It means you have some kind of disconnect from reality. You hallucinate, seeing or hearing or smelling things that aren’t there. Or you have delusions, fixed beliefs with no rational basis. Sometimes it can lead people to commit violent acts. But mostly it doesn’t. And it certainly doesn’t in itself turn you into some ferocious, super-human beast.”

Beth pottered about the kitchen a little, before saying: “I guess a person who’s manic might be able to achieve feats of strength they wouldn’t normally. But mania isn’t something you can control, turn on and off at will. It tends to spiral out of control. It just doesn’t fit in with the kind of methodical killings you’re talking about.”