Killing Ways Read online

  He remained silent and focused as he stripped her to her underwear. He slowly trailed his eyes down her body, shaking his head.

  ‘Now, you do not have the body I like to take pleasure from … but I’m going to do it anyway. It’s just I might not be able to … you know …’ He shrugged. ‘Doesn’t mean I won’t give it my best shot, though.’

  He laughed at that.

  ‘But you do need to shut the fuck up.’

  He pulled a rag from his left-hand back pocket and made a gag from it. Soon Carrie Longman’s sobs were sucked into the thick, filthy fabric.

  ‘I may have a way to solve this problem,’ he said. ‘The problem of you being …’ He shuddered. ‘You know what a titty fuck is, right?’ He pulled a photo from his other pocket. He showed it to her. She started to convulse. Tears poured down her face. He laughed as he pushed it between her breasts.

  ‘Now,’ he said, grabbing onto the waistband of her panties, ‘let’s see what we’ve got.’ He ripped them off, staring at her, opening the legs she was trying desperately to keep closed.

  ‘Nothing you can do now, sweetheart,’ he said. ‘It’s just you and me, this late-night romance.’ He opened his belt, and started pulling at himself. ‘This is your fault. I’m prepared to commit a felony for this, and I still can’t get a hard-on between your wide-open legs.’

  He started laughing, and as he was still laughing, he grabbed the broken branch he had set against the tree earlier that evening. He had carefully chosen it to exactly match the size of the biggest man who used to visit his mama when he was a boy.

  As he thrust the branch in and out of Carrie Longman, working on her utter destruction, his eyes were on the photo stuck between her bulging breasts. It was of Hope Coulson’s scrawny little ass and the two perfect stab wounds he had made above it. There would have been no real evidence of those very particular wounds when they had found her. Not after three hot weeks in plastic.

  He pressed Carrie Longman’s face hard into the ground. He heard a cracking sound. He could feel the blood pour through his fingers.

  Face down in the dirt and dying.

  THIS was it.

  Face down in the dirt and dying.

  He looked down at the branch. For a moment, he drifted, staring at the thickness of it. He remembered wondering at the time if the size of that man had hurt his mama as much as it had hurt him.

  18

  Ren had spent weeks creating a Wall of Horrors in her living room; pinned to the wall opposite the sofa were photos of faces, wounds, and dump sites. There were maps, single words, questions, answers: everything she could think of to help her catch a monster. She sat now on the sofa, with a bowl of dry Rice Krispies, staring at the block-capital bullet points of the Quantico profile that had come in the previous week.

  MIXED OFFENDER: ORG/DISORG

  AGED BETWEEN 30 and 45

  IQ ABOVE AVERAGE

  POWER ASSERTIVE / ANGER RETALIATORY RAPIST

  SOCIALLY ADEQUATE

  LIVES ALONE – DATES/ONE-NIGHT STANDS

  ABSENT/UNSTABLE FATHER

  HISTORY OF PHYSICAL AND EMOTIONAL ABUSE

  MAY FOLLOW NEWS MEDIA

  It had been easy to allow the apartment to become an extension of the office. She couldn’t ever imagine doing this in a true home. But this grim wall felt in place here.

  She finished her cereal and left the bowl beside the previous night’s half-eaten pizza. She had watched the faces from the sofa for hours, wanting never to have to add another photo.

  When she arrived at Safe Streets, there was a box on her desk, wrapped in pretty paper.

  Severed head inside. Has to be.

  ‘A housewarming gift,’ said Robbie. ‘Finally.’

  ‘Aw, Robbie!’ said Ren. ‘No way! Thank you so much. Can I open it now?’

  ‘Sure, go ahead.’ He was smiling.

  She started unwrapping it.

  ‘I just thought with what you said about your kitchen giving you a pain in your behind that maybe this might encourage—’

  ‘A block of knives!’ said Ren. ‘And I don’t think “pain in my behind” is a phrase I’d ever use, kind, non-cursing Mormon boy.’

  ‘Oh my God,’ said Everett. ‘It’s bad luck to buy someone knives.’

  I know this. But there was no need to say it to poor Robbie.

  Robbie looked distraught. ‘Is it?’

  ‘Yes!’ said Everett.

  But Robbie wanted the answer from Ren.

  ‘But I don’t see why,’ she said. ‘I mean, if you stood behind me and planted each of the knives in my back, that, to me, would be bad luck. But in a block, like this, that I could use every night to actually prepare dinner and think of your thoughtfulness, that’s very good luck.’

  Robbie smiled. ‘I’m returning them.’

  ‘No, you’re not,’ said Ren. Though I am finding it spooky.

  ‘He is,’ said Everett. ‘A pall has descended.’

  OK, shut up, Everett. You’re not helping the advancement of your relationship with Robbie.

  Robbie came over to Ren and prised the box out of her hands. ‘I’m sorry. I hope you’re not feeling jinxed.’

  Hmm. ‘Of course not.’

  Gary stuck his head into the bullpen. He had his jacket on.

  ‘We have another body,’ he said.

  ‘Our guy?’ said Ren, sitting up.

  ‘Too early to tell,’ said Gary. ‘Different physical type for one …’

  Carrie Longman had been left up against a tree under a pile of earth, branches, and leaves. She was naked, curled on her side, ruined.

  Different body type, different hair color.

  The ground was muddy underneath her.

  Even though it hasn’t been raining.

  I can smell it. She’s been washed down with bleach.

  A dog had found her, wrapped his teeth around her wrist and pulled her hand out from under cover. The dog owner was sitting, shocked, on a bench to one side, being tended to by a paramedic. The dog was pressed up against her leg.

  You little hero.

  The contents of Carrie Longman’s purse were scattered all around her: wallet, phone, keys, notebook, bus tickets, lip balm, a bag of trail mix, a card she had yet to mail, its ink bleeding, the name and address washed away. Ren followed the trail of objects to a squat row of bushes, where a damp pile of clothes had been thrown, alongside a piece of frayed rope.

  Ren looked up at Glenn Buddy. ‘Fuck this.’

  He nodded. ‘Her name is Carrie Longman. She was a social worker, thirty-three years old. No one realized she was missing for two days. She broke up with her boyfriend of six years last Friday. When work hadn’t heard from her on Monday, they just assumed maybe she was sick, or he had whisked her away somewhere because it was their anniversary. Nice guy. Apparently, once the asshole dumped her, she looked up Denver’s best dive bars and picked number one, Manny’s, went there for Open Mic night, texted a friend that’s where she was, drowning her sorrows. I’ve got some of our guys heading over there now. The friend she texted was away herself that weekend, so she just assumed Longman was sleeping it off. Tried her a few times, let her be.’

  Ren looked up. Mark Gaston was striding up the hill toward them. The sun was shining down as if to illuminate only him, like he was the hero prince come to save the kingdom.

  ‘Is it Kill Your Girlfriend Season in Denver?’ he said, putting down his bag, taking out a pair of gloves, putting them on. He crouched down.

  ‘She’s very dead.’ He glanced down at the tree branch jammed between her legs. He had no jokes for that. He looked up at Ren. ‘I think he might have … kicked that while it was inside her.’

  Ren closed her eyes.

  There was all kinds of depravity in the world and she had met it in all kinds of ways. She knew there were people who Googled crime scenes, and wanted the most grotesque photos, who would never stop at the graphic contents warning. There were people who loved torture porn, who wanted to be p
art of it, make it, watch it, jack off to it. And there were whole other levels too, levels that she had yet to meet and hoped never to. This felt like a step closer to a world she didn’t want to know, a world that these women were likely never to have imagined.

  ‘I’m sorry, but this guy is a maniac,’ said Gaston. ‘What he hasn’t done to this body … Who is he hating on? Every woman alive? Who didn’t dance with him at his senior prom?’

  19

  Ren sent Robbie and Everett to Carrie Longman’s autopsy the following day, hoping they could bond over the tragedy. She called everyone together for a briefing afterward, and directed Robbie to go through the findings. He stood at the top of the room, neat, shiny and earnest.

  I love your utter faith in justice, Robbie Truax.

  ‘Preliminary reports suggest time of death is consistent with when Carrie Longman was last seen at Manny’s Bar,’ said Robbie. ‘The cause of death was exsanguination as a result of sharp-force injury. Her stomach was slashed three times – twice on her left side, once on her right – using a short, curved blade. The weapon was not recovered at the scene. Carrie Longman was bound at the wrists with rope, and vaginally raped with a tree branch, which was kicked further into her, or, certainly, pushed with considerable force. It’s likely she was held face down during the attack. She suffered a broken nose, and had aspirated blood. The body was thoroughly cleaned in bleach to destroy trace evidence. The tree branch was also thoroughly soaked in it, as were her clothes and the rope. There was a piece of fabric, likely used as a gag, also soaked in bleach. Gaston said the lab will be lucky to find anything. Under the victim’s fingernails was completely scrubbed too. There were no hairs, no fibers. The victim’s blood alcohol level was 0.15. She probably wasn’t in any condition to fight back.’

  ‘So this guy had to have driven as close as he could to that location,’ said Ren. ‘He couldn’t risk leaving her body unattended, and he wouldn’t have been able to drag her and a giant bottle of bleach at the same time … unless he had help.’ She paused. ‘Why the different physical type? Especially when he knew he would be doing some of the same things he’d done before? Things that would link these victims.’

  ‘We did get one item our killer overlooked,’ said Everett. ‘It was in her jeans pocket – a napkin with what looks like her writing – I checked it against the notebook that was in her purse. Here’s a photocopy. It says: “tiny fingers pointing your way, needle’s pointing to your heart, sharps disposal, sharps disposal, now I know the way we’ll part … ”’

  ‘It’s like a poem or a song,’ said Ren. She Googled it. ‘It’s nowhere. Let’s see if her ex recognizes it. Also, that napkin could have been in there from the last time she wore the jeans, if she hadn’t washed them. It looks like a standard, white, cheapo napkin – it could have come from anywhere. But we’ll check with the bar staff at Manny’s – it was Open Mic night, so someone could have been singing their own composition—’

  ‘Ren, she wrote some lyrics on a napkin,’ said Gary. ‘They’re not in someone else’s handwriting. This is not a note a killer’s left behind: Now I know the way we’ll part: by me raping and murdering you, my name is … These were words that struck a chord with a jilted woman, probably.’

  Grrr. And why does ‘jilted woman’ always sound so demeaning? Why do we never hear of jilted men? ‘What if the killer made her write it?’ said Ren.

  ‘We’ll see if the lab comes up with anything,’ said Everett.

  ‘Janine and Everett,’ said Gary, ‘you go talk to the bar staff in Manny’s.’

  Janine and Everett?! What the fuck? Why them? Even though I love them.

  Gary kept talking. ‘See if anyone saw the victim write this on the night.’ He turned to Ren.

  And what the fuck is with that look?

  ‘So …’ said Gary.

  I need to get out of here. I am vividly aware of my weapons. Mainly my fists.

  Ren stood up, walked like a normal person into the hallway, then changed into long strides, stiff limbs, and held her breath until she exploded into the ladies’ room.

  Gary. Is. An. Asshole.

  And WHY am I finding myself attracted to him?

  Ren left the ladies’ room, and went into the A/V room.

  I want to hide in the darkness for the rest of the day.

  One after the other, she looked through videos of each victim’s last movements, up until Carrie Longman.

  I am good with video. I see things.

  Maybe there’s nothing to see here.

  There has to be.

  She kept looking. She concentrated on Hope Coulson. She had asked two DPD detectives to approach local businesses for video of the mystery night two weeks before Hope disappeared. One shop owner, who had gone out of business the following week, had yet to get back to her. Ren tried him again, left him a voicemail with a gentle reminder.

  At five o’clock, everyone gathered again in the conference room.

  ‘First off,’ said Janine, ‘Manny’s has no cameras trained on the crowd – just on the staff behind the till to discourage thievery. Secondly, they remember Carrie Longman, said she was very drunk, but was perfectly pleasant. She sat at the bar, and was alone the entire night. She didn’t really talk to anyone, though people were coming and going at both sides of her to order drinks. They’re already rounding up a list of regulars for DPD, so we can take a look at that. Also, because it was Open Mic night, they had a lot of strangers in there, but really, guys, there are never that many – see, what I did there? – people in Manny’s, so I don’t think this is going to be some epic trawl.’

  ‘We went to talk to Longman’s ex,’ said Everett, ‘who we can confirm is an asshole.’

  ‘Yup,’ said Janine.

  ‘He didn’t recognize the lyrics,’ said Everett, ‘but he said that Carrie had spoken about writing a novel. He thinks maybe that was why she chose a bar like Manny’s – to get a window into the grittier side of life, which makes no sense to me—’

  ‘Because in her job as a social worker,’ said Janine, ‘she was dealing with that all the time. The ex may just be trying to assuage his own guilt so he doesn’t have to feel responsible for her fleeing somewhere off the beaten track to drown her sorrows.’

  ‘Imagine breaking up with someone a) around your anniversary and b) then they’re murdered,’ said Ren. ‘That guy is going to be the pariah of plenty of fish. I mean piranha. There was a joke in there somewhere.’

  ‘It should have stayed in there,’ said Everett.

  Ren started pacing. ‘Back to what you were saying, Gary – I think the killer doesn’t want to get caught and Carrie Longman was chosen because she did not fit the profile. He wanted to avoid being predictable or having that murder linked too.

  ‘I want everyone all over this,’ said Ren, walking to the top of the room. ‘I don’t want to be here giving another briefing on another autopsy. He has now returned to killing a woman who is not a sex worker, though, of course, that doesn’t mean he won’t target one in the future. This time around, he used bleach not only to wash down the victim, but also all her personal effects, which means he must have made contact with them, for whatever reason.’

  ‘Robbery?’ said someone.

  Hmm. I don’t think so. She ignored it. ‘OK, everyone,’ said Ren, ‘I want to thank you for your great work to date, but I now need you processing information with greater speed and more efficiency than you have ever done before. Our end point is that we have this guy. I want your theories, I will have time for all of you, I will respect your gut instinct, I will respect your hunches. We are a team and we each come with different strengths. Use them, make me aware of them if you think I am not already. Everyone will benefit, all of us here, but especially the women out there who are afraid to go outside their doors.’ She paused. ‘We can do this.’

  We are all fucking amazing.

  20

  Ren’s cell phone rang as she was walking down the hallway to the bullpen. It was M
att, her wonderful, witty, intuitive, psychologically astute older-by-a-year brother.

  Man Most Likely To Be Avoided Right Now.

  Her finger hovered over the red button.

  Don’t be a bitch.

  She picked up.

  ‘Hey, sister, go, sister …’

  ‘Matthew!’ said Ren. ‘How are you?’

  ‘Good. How are you, mystery lady? I left you many, many messages.’

  ‘I know, I’m sorry, I’ve been busy – the raping and murdering going on in this city.’

  ‘Are you serving and protecting the citizens?’

  ‘Yes, I am. How’s Lauren, how’s Ethan?’

  ‘They’re all good, missing you. Last I heard, you were in a bar downing shots with a bachelor party. And before that, in a bar—’

  ‘Yes, I get it. I’ve been having fun.’ Which seems slightly more noticeable to you now that you’re a married, settled father-of-one.

  ‘Mom says you haven’t called her in a while.’

  ‘Mom is correct.’

  ‘Big brother Jay says the same.’

  ‘Ah, but what does Jesus say?’

  ‘OK,’ said Matt. ‘Can you hear me, Ren? I’m shuffling along here, I’m dodging branches and leaves, OK. I’m here. I’m out on a limb …’

  Ren stopped dead.

  Oh, fuck. This is about—

  ‘Here goes,’ said Matt. ‘Are you taking your meds?’ He said it in one go, comedy-fast for effect.

  ‘Yes,’ said Ren. God, this business of people giving a shit what I do …

  ‘Can you promise me that?’ said Matt.

  She nodded. ‘I can promise you that.’ But I won’t. Woo-hoo! Loophole! I have the capacity to promise you that.

  ‘OK,’ said Matt. ‘Just looking out for you. Making sure you’re feeling the rails underfoot.’

  ‘Don’t worry. I’m on the rails.’ But who says I need meds to be on the rails? Not that I would dream of saying that out loud. Especially not to someone who has no clue. ‘Matt,’ she said. ‘Seriously. How many people do you know who are case agent on a serial killer investigation?’

  Boom!