Stalking Susan (4 page)

CHAPTER 6

I
’d seen it before and I had experienced it personally. The loss of a loved one can cause survivors either to turn their back on religion, or to seek solace in it. I’d done the former. Susan Moreno’s father apparently had chosen to embrace God. He lived alone in a split-level home in the old part of Bloomington, an inner-ring Minneapolis suburb. The living room décor was biblical. Crucifixes and Madonna figurines. A sanctuary to the loss of his sixteen-year-old daughter. But I misjudged what that loss was.

“Oh, my life did not end when Susan died. My life ended when she was born.”

My shock did not thwart him.

“My wife died in childbirth. Susan killed her mother.”

I couldn’t speak, and that doesn’t happen too often. I wasn’t sure if I was more disturbed by his words, or by his candid delivery of them. I looked away from him, toward a wall where a baby sampler hung. It read
SUSAN
and was embroidered with white lilies, her date of birth, and her weight and length.

“Susan means ‘lily,’” Tim Moreno said. “I only keep that because my mother made it. Lilies symbolize purity.”

So Susan meant “lily.” I made a mental note to research name origination as a possible clue. I had always associated lilies with death. Just as I was thinking he must have named her as a constant reminder of his pain, he explained that Susan had been his grandmother’s name. He stressed that the choice had ended up being a poor one for his daughter.

“Susan wasn’t pure,” he told me. “She was Satan’s whore. That’s why she died.”

“She didn’t deserve murder.”

“Neither did Christ. But as He rose again, so shall she, if forgiven by the Lord.”

He didn’t offer me coffee, he wouldn’t go on camera, and he didn’t seem to care whether her killer was ever caught or not.

“Leave now, TV lady.”

I wished I could cry for Susan Moreno; her father apparently never had. But I hadn’t cried for anyone, even myself, in months. Years ago I had realized one of the reasons I stay in this business is selfish. Like a leech, I feed off the emotion of others. Their sorrow, their pain, their anger satisfies an emptiness that used to bring me to tears when I sat alone in a viewing booth replaying their interviews. That Tim Moreno felt none of these things unsettled me. I’d cried plenty in the days after my husband died. Since then, nothing. I was in search of a good cry, but couldn’t seem to find one.

“I’ll let you know if I learn anything.” I always like to leave the door open for a return visit.

His final words to me: “If He wills.”

As I walked down the driveway, moonlight reflected off a large garden of white lilies.

CHAPTER 7

T
he Moreno house was just minutes from the Mall of America, so I stopped by to see how Garnett was adjusting to his first days on the job, and to fill him in on the chase.

The Mall of America put the Minneapolis suburb of Bloomington on the world retail map in 1992. More than 4 million square feet of entertainment and shopping space. Complete with an indoor amusement park and a giant aquarium stocked with sharks. Last Valentine’s Day a couple even got married underwater, live on the
Today
show.

I couldn’t help noticing the signs posted on the doors:
MALL OF AMERICA BANS GUNS IN THESE PREMISES
. Similar signs greet visitors of churches, restaurants, and other buildings throughout the state. Years ago Minnesota Republicans got a conceal-and-carry law through the legislature by burying it in a natural resources bill along with ice fishing, snowmobiling, and litter. Any establishment that didn’t want armed customers posted the signs and hoped for the best.

Outside Garnett’s office, twenty monitors for a hundred security cameras filled the wall. Not fuzzy black-and-white images like you see in banks and gas stations, but crisp color pictures as good as any police mug shot. Some screens were divided into quads, but the click of a mouse could bring any of them full screen and enlarge the image.

Two security guards monitored the monitors. One was a young black guy with muscles and attitude. The other guard had a gray balding head, like a Franciscan monk. They glanced up as I moved by, then returned to switching the screens from camera to camera. First a food court, then an escalator, then a parking ramp. I felt myself getting drowsy watching them.

“How do you keep from zoning out?” I asked them.

The older guy laughed. “Don’t try to watch everything. Just watch for what don’t belong.”

“Like some of the juvies,” the younger guy added.

In its early years, MOA had become a popular and convenient hangout for gangs because it was on the downtown bus lines and it was open late. Skirmishes became frequent; shoppers became nervous. Not wanting turf wars over Legoland, the mall had started a “safety policy.” After four in the afternoon on Fridays and Saturdays, anyone under sixteen has to be accompanied by an adult.

“We spot ’em, we radio the bouncers.” The young black guard waved an impressive walkie-talkie in my face. “Trouble spots are always up on screen.”

He pointed to an eye-level row of monitors. One showed the area by Johnny Rockets restaurant. Another, just outside the Paul Bunyan flume ride. Others showed skyway entrances between the mall and parking ramps. “Most of the other cameras rotate through the screens, unless we see something that needs closer inspection.”

The console in front of him looked like a video game board. He pushed a lever and a camera zoomed in close. Another lever shifted the scene sideways.

“Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain,” Garnett said, as he walked up behind us.

“Frank Morgan,
The Wizard of Oz,
1939,” I replied. “The guys here were just giving me a behind-the-scenes tour.”

“Don’t give away all our secrets,” he told them.

The rest of the administrative staff had gone home a few hours before. He ushered me into his office overlooking the roller coasters of what used to be called Camp Snoopy. Partially unpacked boxes filled one corner. Propped on a shelf, a plastic sign read
REMEMBER, WE WORK FOR GOD
, the motto for Practical Homicide Investigation. I recalled it from his desk at the cop shop.

“Better security than even the Indian casinos,” he said. “And we need it. With a name like Mall of America, we’re not only a tourist destination, we’re a terrorist target. A symbol of conspicuous consumption in America’s heartland. Wouldn’t have half the problems I’ve got if they’d called it the Bloomington MegaMall.”

“You probably wouldn’t be making half the money you are either. I bet it’s a nice bump from the public payroll.” I noticed the suit and tie he wore were nicer than his usual wardrobe. Good enough for on air, even.

“Nice hours. Better benefits. Extra vacation. You might want to pick up an application on your way out, Riley.”

“Come on, Nick, you know only TV can satisfy my ego,” I teased him. “Really, you didn’t take all your vacation as a cop, what makes you think you’re going to take even more now?”

“Then I had a job I couldn’t bear to leave. Now I’ve got a job I can’t wait to leave.”

“Then how come you’re still here tonight?”

“Just getting the lay of the land so my instincts will kick in if I need them.”

“A little while ago my instincts were telling me to stay far away from Susan Moreno’s father.” I briefed him on my encounters with the Susan families. Garnett knew the players; he’d met them years earlier when their anguish was rawest.

“I’m guessing Mr. Moreno wasn’t terribly heartbroken when you told him his daughter was dead,” I said.

“I thought he was nuts then, no reason to change my diagnosis now.”

“Did you ever look at him as a suspect?”

“Yes. He is delusional, just the kind of guy who’d kill ’cause the voices told him to do it. No one could vouch for where he was that night. But when folks like him are pushed, they usually confess their sin. Remember, she’d also been sexually assaulted, and I just didn’t see him good for that.”

“How come you never told me about the Susan cases earlier?”

“There are lots of cases I never told you about. The chief didn’t buy a connection, and I didn’t have any proof to sell it otherwise.”

“So you think the name and date might just be coincidence?”

“Might.” He nodded. “Except there was one other thing that made these cases different. I’d be willing to connect the killings based simply on that.”

“What?”

“The victims were re-dressed.”

“Re-dressed?”

“Yeah, the killer put their clothes back on after.”

I thought back to the crime scene photos and realized he was right. I wondered what else the file told him that my eyes had missed. “How unusual is that?” I asked.

“Different from most homicides I’ve worked.”

“And why would he do something like that?”

“It could be part of his signature.”

A signature is something a perpetrator feels compelled to do. It goes beyond what’s necessary to commit the crime. Often it has a sexual component. Murderers change their MO as they learn better ways to kill, and better ways to stay ahead of the police. But signature may reflect an inner need they can’t change. Signature can also be a clue that catches a killer.

“That re-dressing stuff wasn’t in the news stories,” I told him.

“We held it back as something only the real killer would know. It wasn’t difficult; neither case got much publicity.”

The brutal images from the file lingered in my mind. “But you’re telling me and I’m a reporter.”

“Yeah, I’m going to trust that you see the sense in keeping a few things off air. But I also want you to understand why my cop gut is telling me this is the same killer.”

“Sometimes my reporter gut tells me things, too. What does the chief’s gut say?” I asked.

“Police chiefs don’t have cop guts. They’re administrators. The last thing the chief wants is a serial killer on the Minneapolis chain of lakes. Most of the money in this city lives on that water. If our guy had been snatching victims from that neighborhood instead of dumping them there, we’d have heard a whole lot more commotion.”

“So the chief isn’t covering anything up; he just doesn’t want to find evidence of a Susan killer?”

“He didn’t encourage that direction of the investigation.”

“Did he discourage it?”

“When he heard the addresses, he showed up at both crime scenes, Mayor Skubic by his side, probably to make sure the deceased wasn’t a campaign contributor. Police procedure calls for as few folks behind the tape as necessary. Yet he VIPs them through, they get in our way, muck with the evidence. Their very presence could contaminate the crime scene and complicate the investigation.”

“That’s why you never let us reporters back there.”

“Right. If anyone drops fibers or leaves a print, it’s one more person to eliminate, and a sharp defense attorney can use it to embarrass us. The chief knows better; you don’t see him out on location when it’s a drive-by shooting in north Minneapolis.”

“Bosses are hell in the field,” I agreed. “But pragmatically, I still don’t understand why any killer would take the time to put a victim’s clothes back on.”

“That’s why it’s so unusual,” Garnett said. “Psychopaths often like to leave their victim naked. Accomplishes two things. Shocks whoever finds the body. Plus, as a practical matter, nudity cuts down on the amount of evidence they leave behind. If it were me, I’d have thrown the body, naked, in the lake. That takes care of fibers and hair evidence.”

“So the killer was taking a risk. Why?”

“Might be trying to undo the violence. Restore the victim’s dignity. I’m trained in reading evidence, not Freud. But if our unsub is a serialist, a profiler could have some insight. I’d say the perp was bolder the second time around. He didn’t just dump the body. He displayed it. He propped it against a tree because he wanted it to be found, and quickly.”

“But why?” I asked. “There’re places within a half hour of here where a body would never be found. At least not until hunting season.”

“Might be remorse. Maybe he wanted the body to have a proper funeral. Clearly, he felt comfortable in that neighborhood and didn’t worry about attracting attention. If we play the odds, he’s probably a decent-looking guy.”

“How come?”

He shrugged. “Ugly serial killers have a harder time attracting victims.”

“You’re terrible.”

“I’m not joking. Look at the stats. Look at their mug shots. But my hunch is that deep down, our unsub is a show-off.”

“I thought you thought he was a cop.”

“Cops are the ultimate show-offs,” he answered. “Though that’s not why I think he might be blue. Our guy left no DNA, nothing for the forensic team. Might suggest some familiarity with crime scenes. Could be on the processing end, like a cop, or could be on the receiving end, like a con.”

“What does that mean?”

“Might have been questioned in an earlier crime, like rape. Might have had to give samples. Might have even spent time in prison. Might have learned how to be more careful next time.”

I was absorbing this information, playing with it in my mind, as Garnett continued.

“There’s another reason he might have a law enforcement connection.” He lowered his voice. “The year after the second Susan, I set up an anniversary stakeout around Lake Calhoun. Waited all night with a couple of unmarked squads.”

“And?” I pressed.

“Nothing. All quiet. Nobody died that night, at least not from foul play. But some of the guys at the local precinct were joking about it ahead of time, thought it was a waste of time. If the killer was one of us, he might have heard about the sting. Chief didn’t think it was a good use of resources. After that, I kept it hush-hush.”

“Hush-hush?”

“Every November 19, from midnight till dawn, I go on stakeout cruising the lakes. But not this year. This year, I’m retired.”

“If this were an Agatha Christie book, you’d be the killer because you’re the least likely suspect.”

As Garnett smiled, he shrugged his shoulders. “Better check me out, Riley. Like I said, he might be a cop.”