Sigma Curse - 04 (3 page)

Then Venn got really interested.

*

H
e called Beth first, to put the kibosh on their evening. She took it easily, said she’d stay a little longer at work, maybe grab a coffee with a couple of colleagues, then head over to his place anyhow. Venn felt a surge of exultation in his gut.

If he made it home tonight, she’d be there. Even if she was asleep.

Next, Venn called Harmony Jones. Kang had suggested he involve her from the get-go, because they were going to be dealing with the FBI, and it would be good to have two of them there right away. It would add weight to the DSP’s credentials.

“Jesus,” Harmony muttered.
“Now?”

“Yep,” said Venn. He told her about it. Felt her hesitate down the line, but only for a moment.

She said: “Meet you there. Twenty minutes.”

Venn arrived at the morgue fifteen minutes later. He waited in the underground parking lot until, two minutes and forty seconds afterwards by his watch, Harmony’s Crown Victoria came roaring down the ramp, unnecessarily fast as if she was chasing a perp.

“You got here quick,” Venn said as they headed for the elevator. “Were you home?”

“No,” Harmony said shortly.

She didn’t elaborate. That was when Venn first noticed something was up with her.

*

I
t was in a second underground parking lot that Venn dumped the Jeep. The building was a medium-sized one for this city, neither in the same league as the skyscrapers around it nor obviously dwarfed by them. It was an office block, one Venn had never visited before.

They ran a small gauntlet of security at the elevator and in the lobby before being issued with visitor ID cards in plastic wallets which they clipped to their jackets. Mort Teller, the FBI man they’d met at the morgue, greeted them at the foot of the stairs.

“Come on up,” he said. “We’re on the second floor, so if you don’t mind walking...”

They entered an open-plan office with glass walls and doors, that looked like an old-fashioned press room. A bunch of men and women, seven in all, sat or walked around, drinking coffee, working computer keyboards, shuffling papers. They glanced up as Venn and Harmony entered, though in a mildly curious manner rather than with the restrained hostility you saw in a movie Western when a stranger walked into a saloon.

“Let me introduce you to the task force,” said Teller.

––––––––

“F
ran Rickenbacker.”

Her handshake lingered, and was firm. It wasn’t a bonecrusher – Venn was a big man, and she’d know she couldn’t hope to match him so didn’t try – but there was definite assertiveness in her grasp.

She’d been the first to stand and approach them, and Venn was instantly aware that she was either Teller’s second-in-command or his partner. A tall woman of around forty, she was dressed in a sharp but unflashy business suit without the jacket on. Her chestnut hair was casually tied back but would otherwise have tumbled around her long face, which was sharply planed, all cheekbones and edges. Her eyes were level and dark, and wary.

Quite an attractive woman, Venn thought, though she was a little too thin, as if she either over-exercised or didn’t get round to square meals as often as she might.

“Joe Venn.” He held her gaze.

Teller said, “Lieutenant Venn and Detective Jones are joining us from the NYPD’s Division of Special Projects.” He seemed to be addressing the room in general. Venn was aware Rickenbacker would know this stuff already. “We’ve just been to see the body at the morgue.” He swept his arm across the room, pointing people out one by one. “Agents King, Abbot and Leonard. And our administrative assistants, Deb Parker, Tom Wylde and Meredith Smith.” The men and women, three of each, raised their hands or nodded in turn. They carried on what they were doing, and Venn didn’t feel the need to go round and pump each one’s hand.

“Okay,” said Teller, clapping his hands together. “Gather round, people, and we’ll do a recap.” Venn and Harmony pulled up seats, while the others walked around the desks or wheeled themselves into position on the castors of their chairs. On one wall of the office was a large smartscreen, with a placeholder image already up. Teller strode over to the screen and stood to one side, while Rickenbacker placed herself at the other. She stood with her arms folded, as if asserting her authority again.

Teller picked up a combination pointer and clicker.

The first slide to come up showed the dead man, Dale Fincher, but fully alive. It was a straight-on, head-and-shoulders shot with him facing the camera, unsmiling. His hair was short, in a buzz-cut, and his chin slightly raised. A strong face.

“So here’s what we know,” Teller said. “Dale Fincher, thirty-three years old, died some time between nine p.m. Last night and three a.m. This morning, as a result of an icepick-sized object being driven up through his brain. He was tethered to a bed at the time, and there was no sign of a struggle. Branded on his forehead, probably before death, was the Greek sigma symbol.” Teller clicked on to the next slide. This one was also of Fincher, but showed his whole body. He wore military uniform.

“Fincher was a corporal in the US Army, based at Fort Irvington upstate. He was on leave of absence with a bunch of buddies last night, drinking at a bar in Greenwich Village – the Rococo Club – when some woman came over and started coming on to him. He left with her. His buddies didn’t go along, for obvious reasons. This was at approximately seven o’clock last night. That’s the last anyone so far reports seeing of him.” Teller glanced across at Rickenbacker, who picked up as if on cue.

“Fincher wasn’t scheduled to return to the base until tomorrow evening.” Her voice was strong and clear, and carried the slight rasp of a heavy smoker. Venn had noticed the odor of cigarette smoke on her clothes when he’d shaken hands. “His buddies expected him to show up some time, but they weren’t unduly worried when he didn’t appear back at the bar. They tried texting him, got no reply, and assumed he’d gotten lucky with this woman and was otherwise occupied. They went on their way, hit a few more bars, and eventually crashed out at the apartment one of them had here in Manhattan. Next morning, around eleven-thirty, one of the buddies tried texting, then calling Fincher. They’d been planning to meet up that afternoon and take in a football match. When he still didn’t answer, they began to get antsy. They tried calling his home in Albany, but there was no answer there either. Eventually, they called Fort Irvington and reported him missing, admitting they felt a little foolish doing so.”

Teller took over.

“At around the same time Fincher’s pal was making his call, one of the domestic staff at the Roebuck Hotel in Chelsea entered a room and found Fincher like that, spreadeagled and killed. The hotel IDed him immediately, which wasn’t all that hard since his wallet was still there. Nobody understood quite who he was at first, which is understandable enough. But the local cops ran his name through their database as soon as they secured the scene, and discovered quickly that he was both an active member of the military, and the son of Judge Marilyn Fincher of the New York Supreme Court.”

“And then the proverbial hit the fan,” Harmony said.

Both Teller and Rickenbacker looked at her, the latter with irritation as if she’d committed a major social gaffe.

“Pretty much,” Teller agreed. “Our local FBI took over quickly, much to the annoyance of the NYPD, as you can imagine. In fact, the wrangling delayed things, up to the point that a compromise was reached. This would be a Federal investigation, but the NYPD would be intimately involved. In the form of the Division of Special Projects, which is where you come in, Lieutenant Venn.”

Venn felt all eyes turn toward him.

“It doesn’t make sense,” he said.

Teller raised an eyebrow. “What doesn’t?”

“The murdered man is the son of a judge. That makes it a high-profile case, sure. But not necessarily one that warrants a Federal task force. The NYPD handles this kind of thing all the time.”

Teller wagged a finger at Venn appreciatively. “You’re right. Well spotted.” He paused. “But there’s another aspect to the killing. Something you won’t know yet. It isn’t the first.”

Venn waited. The tension crackled in the air as if from a power cable. Clearly, everybody else in the room apart from Harmony knew the punchline.

Teller said: “Five weeks ago, a man named Barnaby O’Farrell was found killed in a similar fashion. Not tied up, but on his bed at home, with the same kind of injury through his head. And a sigma symbol branded on his forehead. Then, eleven days ago, the body of a homeless John Doe was discovered in an alleyway off Varrick. Same thing. Single stab wound through the brain, and sigma on the face.”

Venn became alert. His demeanor didn’t show any change.

Rickenbacker said: “We’re looking at a serial killer.”

*

“T
he definition depends on which authority you listen to.” Teller had started to pace a little, back and forth in a short path. The slide on the smart screen had changed to the FBI’s website, and a document titled simply The Serial Killer. It appeared to be some sort of academic monograph.

“Some say two or more killings by the same person in the space of thirty days or more, others three killings. Three is I believe a safer definition, because it reduces the element of coincidence. These killings are usually carried out in a similar manner. Usually, but not exclusively. So, for example, there may be different MOs employed each time. This of course makes identifying a pattern far harder, and you’ll see that there may be far more serial killers out there than we’re aware of, if some of them are carrying out their murders in such a different way each time that nobody’s spotted a link yet.”

He changed the slide. A bullet-point list of facts came up.

“A lot of lay people believe the typical serial killer is a white male. This is in fact wrong. The majority of them who’ve been identified are, yes, white males, especially here in the United States. But it’s estimated that up to twenty per cent may be African Americans. Similarly, approximately one-quarter are female.”

Venn thought:
Fincher was picked up by a woman
.

As if he’d read Venn’s thoughts, Teller said, “Serial killers usually work alone, but they’ve been known to team up. The Hillside Stranglers in Los Angeles in the 1970s... they were a couple of guys who’d help one another out. Team working simultaneously makes our job more difficult and a little easier. The killings may be more complex when there are two people involved, and the elimination of clues such as DNA samples is more easily achieved when you’ve got two or more people working. On the other hand, the more people there are involved, the more likely it is one of them’s going to slip up and leave some trace behind.” He glanced at Venn. “You may be thinking that our guy, Fincher, got picked up by a woman, who then lured him into a trap where he was killed by an accomplice, a man. It might otherwise seem implausible that a young, fit soldier could be killed so efficiently by a woman. Yes, this is of course one possibility we need to consider.”

He resumed his short, choppy pacing, after clicking over to another slide. “As far as the typical psychological profile of a serial killer goes, I’ll provide you with some detailed literature you can read at you leisure. But the basics are these. The killer is in most cases of average or even slightly below average intelligence, though some are brainy. There are five principal motivations for serial murder, each one associated with a slightly different personality type. In this case, we can probably eliminate a couple of motivations. I say this with caution, because it’s early days and we really don’t know quite what we’re dealing with here. But basically, this is looking not like a frenzied attack, but rather a cold and clinical slaying which suggests some factor at work other than bloodlust.”

“How did the other two killing get picked up?” Venn said. “The two men who were murdered with the same MO?”

Teller raised his eyebrows. “Damn good work on the part of the NYPD,” he said. “As soon as the local cops who caught the Fincher killing saw the sigma symbol, they recognised it as some kind of possible ritualistic feature and hit the databases, looking for something similar. The first murder, the Barnaby O’Farrell guy, was thought at the time to be the result of a home invasion by druggies. There was evidence of forced entry, the victim had put up a fight, and the whole thing was generally messier than our case. The killing took place out in the Bronx, and the dead man, O’Farrell, was divorced and living on his own, with no close family. It sounds like the local cops investigated it fairly thoroughly, but didn’t think the sigma clue amounted to much, and assumed it was some kind of gang thing. So the case went cold.

“The next one, the homeless guy in the alley, almost got missed. Only when the cops who picked up the Fincher killing ran ‘sigma’ specifically though the databases did they make the connection. The victim still hasn’t been identified. He was in the end stages of severe alcoholism, a real down-and-out, and needless to say his death wasn’t treated as a priority case. But two, and now three murders with a similar MO... it was enough for us, the FBI, to become involved.”

”They sound like practice killings,” said Venn. “The first two. Leading up to this one.”

Rickenbacker answered: “It’s a possibility, yes. I’ll agree it looks that way. But here’s the thing. Sometimes the first killing or two in a sequence is deliberately made to look like the killer’s warming up, honing their technique. That’s intended to muddy the waters, to confuse the cops. In such cases, later killings have no more significance than the early ones. They’re just meant to look that way.”

Teller clicked onto a new slide. Venn wondered why he was bothering. He was clearly in command of his audience, and they didn’t need the distraction of dense text on a screen. The slide was another page from the monograph on serial killers, this time listing demographic features of the assorted victims in various historical cases.

“So,” said Teller. “We’ve spent the day examining the three victims. Three that we know of, by the way. There may be others who haven’t been discovered yet. All three of them are male, aged thirty and above. All three are, or were, white. And that’s about all they have in common. There’s no link as regards social class. Barnaby O’Farrell was blue collar, a ticket clerk for the New York subway. The John Doe we of course know nothing about, but we can assume his background was a humble one. Dale Fincher, on the other hand, is from affluent Connecticut stock. His mom’s a judge, as we know. His father died when Dale was four years old, but he was an Army major, a West Point graduate. There’s nothing obvious that these three men had in common with each other.”