The Rainy Day Killer (18 page)

“I didn’t see it real time,” Judge said. “I’m the one who a
uthorizes call-ins, and it took a few minutes to retrieve the footage and for me to take a look at it. Ideally, we see it as it’s happening and call it in right away. That’s happened before, and you can look it up. Our record’s good. It just didn’t happen that way for us this time, unfortunately.”

“We appreciate what you can give us,” Horvath said. “C’mon, Stains. Calm down. Let’s watch it again.”

Karen took a breath, counted silently to five, then stabbed a finger at Bump. “Sit,” she commanded. “Play it again.”

“Yes
, ma’am,” Bump nodded, reaching for the keyboard.

2
9

Sunday, May 1
9: early afternoon

“Look,” Griffin said, glancing over at Hank, “I don’t want you to feel like I’m crowding you, here.”

“I don’t,” Hank said from the passenger seat of the FBI-issue, black, unmarked Chevrolet Suburban.

“Because despite what I said to your commander
in the heat of the moment, I’m not jumping into field work.”

“I understand.”

“How’d I end up doing the driving, by the way? Isn’t this your gig? Aren’t I supposed to be the passenger, literally as well as figuratively?”

Hank smiled. “I don’t own a car, Ed, and they won’t let me sign one out
of the motor pool. For my own protection.”

“Oh, wait. I remember that about you now. You
can
drive, you just don’t. Why is that, anyway?”

“Just an eccentricity, I guess.”

“No, seriously. It interests me.”

Hank shrugged. “Almost everyone drives, Ed, so it’s not too hard to get a ride wherever I need to go.
Which leaves me free to concentrate on other things without worrying about rear-ending the guy in front of us.”

Griffin's eyes flew back to the street
ahead of them and his foot moved to the brake pedal, but he was several car-lengths behind the car in front of them. He exhaled, shaking his head.

District had dispatched
a car to Liz Baskett’s address, and the apartment was sealed. By mutual agreement between the FBI and Captain Turcotte, Butternut Allenson had been assigned to process it. When Hank called, Butternut assured him she was nearly finished, since it was a just a small studio apartment. Everything was photographed, and the fingerprinting was almost done. He would be free to poke around, pick things up, or turn them on.

Hank
ran a hand through his frizzy hair, glancing at Griffin. “Tell me something, has there been any indication so far that he visits his victims’ residences, either before or after?”

“If he does, he’s not leaving any physical evidence behind. Hegman in Pittsburgh was particularly interested in that question as well. He thought maybe the UNSUB was entering their homes as part of his targeting and surveillance work. Came up empty. No jimmied locks, no forced window frames, no missing keys, no witnesses r
eporting strangers at the victim’s door.”

“Anyone have any idea if anything had been taken?”

“Again, zilch. You’re thinking trophies.”

Hank
shrugged. “He bundles up their clothing and jewelry, purse, keys, wallet, whatever they had with them, and he sends it to us. I know it’s impossible to tell if he’s holding anything back as a souvenir or trophy, but wouldn’t it be much simpler for him just to throw their stuff away instead of taking the risk involved in sending a parcel through a local courier? My point being, it seems important to him that we receive everything he strips from them, possessions and body parts. To demonstrate his complete control over them.”

“I’d say that’s a pretty fair assessment.”
Griffin braked for a red light. “They take souvenirs for a variety of reasons. Sometimes it’s displacement, like when they take a victim’s ring or necklace and give it to their wife or girlfriend without telling them where it came from. It gives them an unspoken sense of control over them, and they fantasize about being able to kill them, instead. On the other hand, it may have some kind of symbolic meaning for them, like when they take a trophy from one victim and leave it with the next one. And sometimes it’s a memento that lets them relive the experience over and over again afterward.”

“Do you see anything like that with this guy?”

“If he’s keeping any kind of souvenir, I’d have to say it’s the video. It stands to reason he’s recording more than just his statement to police, don’t you think? If he wants to relive the experience afterward, I can’t see him bothering with rings or lockets or other stuff like that when he could just play video recordings. As for transfer, I’m still not convinced the victims are a substitute for some other intended victim, like his mother or a baby sitter or some other female in his childhood. He made that claim to Hegman in the first Pittsburgh murder, but then in the West Virginia video he retracted it, along with all that Native American bullshit he’d been spinning in Evansville.”

“Yeah, he’d talked about the
blonde baby sitter who’d abused him when he was a boy.”

“Then came out and admitted to Hegman it was crap. Stuff people were expecting to hear. A logical explanation for his serial tendencies. Sensing that people need a rational motivation for som
ething like this, when there is no reason that makes sense to a normal person.”

“I’ve studied the motivational models for serial killers,” Hank said, staring out the rain-streaked window. “I’ve read about dysfun
ctional social environments in their childhood, unstable parents, formative events like direct or indirect trauma, abuse or neglect, disturbing early sexual experiences, negative personality traits like chronic lying, fetishism, or aggression, negative cognitive patterns that lead to anti-social behavior. I’ve read about the so-called criminal gene, the extra Y-chromosome, or other possible genetic causes, brain structure abnormalities, and on and on and on. It seems like for every killer there’s another theory and another psychiatrist or scientist trying to make a career out of this stuff. In your books you discuss a basic motivational model, Ed, but I’ve never understood where you actually stand on it.”

“That’s because you’ve been avoiding my lectures,” Griffin joked. “Bottom line? I’m not a psychiatrist, I’m not a geneticist, I’m not a neurologist. I’m law enforcement, period.
Cassion’s right about that, as far as it goes. I study their behavior so I can describe it to others and, hopefully, predict future behavior based on past behavior, but that’s the
what
, not the
why
. I’m not the guy—we’re not the guys, you and I—who’ll figure out the why, and frankly, I don’t care. My focus is on catching them and making sure they don't do it again. Ultimately, I don’t give a shit if their brain has a piece missing or they have an extra chromosome or they collected pornography as a kid. If it tells me who they are—name, date of birth, last known address, current location—then hey, great. Otherwise, I’ll let other people nurse that headache. They can call me a pragmatist all they want. In my lexicon, that’s not a dirty word.”

The building in which Liz Baskett had lived on Davis Road was six blocks away from the university campus in a residential area dominated by students, the elderly, and low-income families. It was a three-story
, Federal-style brick house that at one time had been the home of a prominent merchant. It was now divided into as many separate living spaces as possible.

Unit 1-C was a studio apartment on the ground floor
, to the left of the main central staircase. The door opened into a six-foot hallway. When Hank walked in, he found his way blocked by the bathroom door, which opened out into the hallway. He rapped on it with a gloved knuckle.

“I’m just finishing up,” Butternut Allenson
said from inside.

“It’s just me,” Hank said. “Coming through.”

“It’s okay, I’m in the shower.”

Hank moved the door out of his way and walked into the main room. The apartment was a thirty-by-thirteen rectangle with old-fashioned plaster walls and high ceilings. On the left was a be
droom area dominated by a double bed and a wooden wardrobe. The bed was unmade. There was barely enough space to pass between the foot of the bed and the wall to get to the wardrobe, which might have explained in part the clothing that was haphazardly strewn about the place. Paperbacks were stacked against the wall. An old suitcase, standing on end, served as a bedside stand.

To the right was the living room/dining room/kitchen po
rtion of the room. Against the wall was an old couch that looked like it might have been picked from the garbage and should be carried back out there to be hauled to the dump. A large wooden spool from a construction site doubled as a coffee table and dining table. Hank looked at the remains of a breakfast—an open box of Froot Loops cereal, a bowl with a bit of milk in the bottom and a few stray loops, a glass with about an inch of orange juice left in it. Next to the juice glass was the classified section from last Thursday’s edition of the Glendale
Mirror
, folded to the Articles for Sale section.

Hanging on the wall over the couch was a framed poster a
dvertising a Neil Young concert at the Shakespeare Theatre in Stratford, Connecticut, on January 22, 1971. Pinned on the wall above the bed was another poster for the Big Sur Folk Festival in 1968 featuring Joan Baez and Judy Collins. Hank looked around in vain for photographs of Liz Baskett or anyone else.

“
Hard to call this a kitchen,” Griffin said, behind him.

Hank
looked at a counter, a few overhead cupboards, a sink, and a refrigerator. A small hotplate was plugged into an outlet above the counter.

The
far wall was dominated by a cheap, white particle-board desk and shelving unit. The surface of the desk was completely covered with stuff. Front and center was a Mac laptop. The lid was open, but the computer was not turned on. There was a film of fingerprint dust on it. Connected to the laptop was an expensive-looking USB microphone on an adjustable stand. Attached to the stand was a round pop screen, which vocalists use to filter out the popping sounds that can occur when singing words beginning with a “p” or “b.” Also attached to the laptop was a battered set of speakers and a pair of headphones. The mouse was wireless. Elsewhere on the desk, Hank saw a handheld digital recorder, a container of blank DVDs, and other assorted paraphernalia. Liz Baskett was obviously recording herself, perhaps preparing a demo disc of her music.

“Looks like she was serious enough about
it,” Griffin said, pointing at the corner of the room, between the end of the couch and the end of the desk, where an acoustic guitar in excellent condition stood on a metal stand.

“That’s a Martin twelve-string,” Hank said. “Even used, they’re not cheap. And a mandolin, behind it. The cases may be u
nder the bed.” He hesitated. “You’d expect to see a six-string, as well.”

“Maybe she had it with her
, if she was busking.”

Horvath had learned that she’d applied for, and received, a license to busk at a nearby mall. It would be their next stop.

They turned at a sound behind them. Butternut Allenson had emerged from the bathroom with her case in her left hand. She smiled at Hank and held out her hand to Griffin, looking at the FBI identification card hanging on a lanyard around his neck.

“Hi, I’m Butternut. You must be the BAU guy.”

“Ed Griffin.” He shook her hand, raising his eyebrows. “Butternut?”

She
smiled at him. “My husband’s a carpenter. On our first date, he took one look at my hair and said, ‘butternut.’ His favorite color of wood. So, Butternut it is.”

“Glad to meet you.”

“Anything interesting turn up?” Hank asked.

“The usual,” she replied, shifting her case to her right hand. “At this point I’m collecting, not analyzing, so I’ll run stuff when I get back. Lots of prints, of course, but probably mostly hers. Hairs in the drains, hairs on the furniture, miscellaneous fibers. I’m going to
grab the bedclothes now, and I left the desk for you to look at. I’ll take the laptop, of course, but tell me what else you want me to bring.”

“The musical instruments,” Hank said. “The microphone setup, headphones, the digital recorder. I see you printed the laptop. Did you turn it on?”

“Not yet,” Butternut said. “Be my guest.”

Griffin had drifted away, and was opening cupboard doors in the kitchen area.
Butternut began removing the sheets from the bed. Hank powered up the laptop. While it was booting, he took a closer look at the shelves above the desk. There were trade-sized paperbacks, including
The Idiot’s Guide to Getting Rich
, a biography of Al Pacino, and
The Hotplate Cookbook
. A plastic magazine holder was crammed with sheet music. Hank pulled out a one-inch black binder and flipped through pages of handwritten music notation and lyrics. He put the binder back and looked at bottles of vitamin C, salmon oil, and Aspirin, a cheap inkjet printer not attached to the laptop, and a tomato can filled with pencils, Sharpies, and ballpoint pens.

He looked at the laptop, which had finished booting up. It wasn
’t password-protected. The desktop was crowded with icons. Several kinds of recording and mixing software were installed on it. He looked at several icons for sound files and noticed one called “End of the Day.” He double-clicked on it.

Griffin opened the refrigerator. “She must have eaten som
ewhere else. There’s almost nothing in here.”

A six-string acoustic guitar played the introductory notes of a quiet song. A female voice began to sing:

What did you think

When you started this game,

You could just run away,