Playing Dead Part 49

the first book in the new FBI trilogy by Allison Brennan Coming from Ballantine Books

Available wherever books are sold

The murder had been ritualistic, brutal, and efficient.

There didn't appear to be any signs of a struggle, but here in the decrepit underside of Sacramento, that was difficult to determine. While the city did a fairly good job at keeping most of the streets clean, on the north side of downtown-away from the Capitol building and closer to the soup kitchen-the grime and unwanted bred. Here, the homeless weed through the garbage for something edible. Cardboard boxes had been pulled from the trash to shield them from an early heat wave.

Based on the lack of blood spatter, the victim had been p.r.o.ne when shot. But the victim had the same outward injuries as the other two known victims. His hamstrings had been cut clean through, incapacitating him.

"What are you thinking?" Sacramento PD Detective Dave Kamanski asked. He'd been the one to contact the local FBI office about the like-crime, and Meg was pleased to be able to work with someone she already knew and respected.

"His hamstrings weren't cut here. Not enough blood."

Kamanski frowned. "If the killer sliced his hamstrings first to prevent him from running, then shot him in the head, would there still be pooling?"

"I'm not a forensic expert," Meg said, "but my guess is that there would be some sort of spray or castoff." Without touching the victim, she inspected the deep gash in the back of his legs. She mimicked a slicing motion with her hand and then said, "I need the coroner's report, but it appears that the killer sliced right to left, cutting both legs with an even, fluid motion." She stood and said, "Turn around."

Kamanski did, looking over his shoulder at the tall blonde. She said, "I'm shorter than the killer and you're taller than the victim, but my guess is that the victim was walking somewhere, and the killer came and slice, cut the hamstrings. The vic went down on his knees-that should be obvious at the autopsy with early bruising or physical evidence of a collapse-and then even if the killer immediately sheathed the knife, there would be blood on the ground and castoff"-she looked to the left-"over there."

There was no noticeable blood on the ground or opposite brick wall. "But," she continued, "you'll want your crime scene unit to go over the area carefully."

"They're working it already," Kamanski said. "So you don't think he was killed here?"

He sounded skeptical, so Meg clarified. "No, he was definitely shot right here, as he lay p.r.o.ne-small caliber handgun is my guess, .22 caliber, behind the left ear. A .22 is very effective at close range."

Megan had seen far too many execution-style murders while she was part of the national Evidence Response Team that went to Kosovo ten years ago. Which led to the question of why disable the victim first if only to shoot him?

Megan already had the answer, if the evidence held true to the first two known victims: between the time the killer cut the victim's hamstrings to when he shot him, he'd received his sick pleasure from the torture. Debilitating the victim was simply to keep him from escaping.

"We need to find out where he was attacked and tortured."

"So this is connected with the cases on the hot sheet?"

"I can't say for sure, but the sliced hamstrings and the execution-style murder are two strong similarities. Neither detail was released to the media in either city of the first two killings, so I think it's probably the same guy. If the victim was tortured, that won't be obvious until the coroner strips the body."

The two previous victims had no visible marks until their clothing was removed and dozens of tiny pinp.r.i.c.ks were obvious.

First Austin, Texas, then Las Vegas, Nevada. Now Sacramento. The only thing those three places had in common-on the surface-was that they were large cities. The victims were single, male, between the ages of thirty-five and forty-five, tortured and murdered in their homes. While most serial predators stayed within one race, the first victim was black and the second-and presumably the third-were white. The first vic owned his own business and, though divorced, was by all accounts a devoted father. The second vic had never married, but had a rap sheet for minor drug charges, and worked as a mechanic. There was some indication that he had a gambling problem, which delayed the local police from reporting the crime to the national database, mistakenly believing it was payback for an uncollected debt. The hot sheet possibly linking the two had only been sent out last week.

"The deputy coroner just pulled up," Kamanski said. "Let me clue him in and we'll be back."

"Great. The sooner we get the body moved, the better." Already, decomp had set in from the layers of clothing the dead man wore coupled with the already high late morning temperature.

Kamanski walked away, and Meg frowned at the body. Something else seemed-odd. Because the victim was homeless and had been living on the streets long enough to disappear into the backdrop of Sacramento, his age was indeterminate. His clothes hadn't been washed in weeks or longer, so his hands stood out.

"Tate," she called to the new special agent a.s.signed to Squad Eight, the Violent Crimes/Major Offenders Unit of the Sacramento FBI. "Take pictures of his hands."

"I already photographed the body." But he squatted next to her and snapped a few shots with the digital camera, then with a film camera.

"They're clean," he said, surprised.

"Exactly. Another part of the ritual?" she wondered out loud. "Or had he fought back and scratched his attacker? Maybe scouring the hands was an attempt to get rid of evidence." She didn't have the hot sheet in front of her, but she didn't recall that the killer had cleansed his previous victims. If it was the same killer.

Under normal circ.u.mstances, Megan wouldn't be called out to a local homicide, but this murder matched two recent homicides in Texas and Nevada, prompting the Bureau to send out a nationwide alert about a possible serial murderer. Normally, such rather generic murders wouldn't have sparked the interest of the FBI, but the killer marked his victims in a very specific manner.

First, slicing the hamstrings to incapacitate the victim. Not fatal, but extremely debilitating and painful.

Next, restraint of some sort. Meg didn't touch the body because the coroner hadn't inspected it yet, but there were no obvious marks of restraint. Perhaps the wrists and ankles, which were concealed by his clothing.

Followed by prolonged torture. The hot sheet indicated that the first victim had been tortured for a minimum of two hours, the second victim four hours. But the torture itself was in dispute-there wasn't a lot of detail as to the method, only that needle marks were found on the victims but no known drugs were present. There was some obvious physical violence-the first victim had his fingers broken with a blunt object, the second victim's ribs had been cracked and broken from a beating. But no biological evidence had been found yet. The Quantico laboratory was a.s.sisting in processing trace evidence.

After the apparent torture, the victim was shot low in the back of the head, a cla.s.sic and effective method of execution. There was no obvious postmortem ritual.

"It's as if he plays with them then suddenly shoots them dead."

"Excuse me?" Tate asked.

"Talking to myself," she muttered. "And it doesn't fit with this crime scene. He wasn't tortured here." She itched to look under his clothing to see if the needle marks matched up to the photographs she'd seen of one of the previous victims.

"Agent Elliott," Tate said.

She looked up, not realizing that she'd been staring at the body, trying to make sense of a senseless murder.

Senseless to you, Megan, not to the killer.

"Is the coroner ready?"

"I don't know. But look." He pointed to a chain under the victim.

Only three p.r.o.ngs on the chain, or necklace, were visible, but the pattern was immediately recognizable. Dog tags.

A veteran.

Meg had always prided herself on her even temper and logical approach to problems, but suddenly her vision blurred and she wanted blood-the blood of the killer, the blood of a society that didn't value those who fought for them. Men like her father . . .

She pushed him from her mind and focused on the homeless veteran. "Detective!" she called, wanting an ID as quickly as possible. Wanting to know how this soldier had ended up homeless and dead.

Detective Kamanski was at the edge of the crime scene talking to a small group of people. Uniformed officers were along the perimeter to keep the onlookers from getting too close. He glanced at Meg, then approached with a casually dressed young black man carrying a medical bag.

"Agent Elliott, this is Deputy Coroner Roland Banks."

Meg shook hands, then pointed to the chain. "I think those are dog tags. We might be able to get a quick ID on this victim."

"That'd be nice," Banks said. "We have a few dozen unidentified homeless filling the deep freeze right now."

While Banks did his job, Kamanski said, "I called in a detective who worked undercover down here for several months last year. He knows this area and the homeless better than anyone on the job."

"Good. We need an insider. If we do have a witness, it could be hard to get them to talk."

"Exactly. Abrahamson is on his way down."

Meg asked, "So how do you want to handle the investigation?"

"We'll need to have your boss and my boss talk, but I'm open. Joint task force?"

They both cracked a wry grin.

"Can you take care of the canva.s.s and forensics? But if you need anything from our lab, let me know and I'll jump on it. And I'll start working the joint jurisdiction issues with Texas and Nevada, talk to both the locals and Feds and get copies of the files. It might help. Something connects these three men. It just doesn't seem random." To Banks she said, "I'd like to observe the autopsy."

"Probably first thing in the morning," the deputy coroner said. "They're already jammed up this afternoon."

"I'll be there. One thing I'm looking for are needle marks on the body. Very small, likely on the feet, neck, hands, and groin."

"The body is already in decomp, I don't know what we'll see underneath the clothes, but I'm not removing them here. The skin is already slipping."

"How long has he been dead?" Kamanski asked.

"In this heat? Decomp is telling me about twenty-four hours, but with this heat could be as few as six. I'll have to do some calculations, factor in his clothing, the position of the body-fortunately, he's not in direct sunlight. I'll take a wild stab-and I mean a not to put in your report guess-at six to ten hours. I know, he looks like twenty-four plus, but he's not."

Banks pulled out the dog tags. "Price, George L.," he read. "This looks like U.S. Army. No medical restrictions, blood type A negative. Christian. Have the social as well."

Both Meg and Kamanski wrote down the information. Tate snapped pictures. Banks put the chain down and Meg didn't hear anything. "Wait," she said.

"Excuse me?"

"There's only one tag."

Banks held up the chain. Carefully, Meg searched along the chain for another tag, as she said, "The two tags should be together. Either attached and separable, or the second tag on it's own small chain."

"There's only one tag," Banks said.

"Maybe he lost it," Kamanski offered.

"Not likely," she said, but she didn't discount the possibility. "Maybe the killer took it for a souvenir." Or another reason. Maybe he did lose it. Maybe he'd been injured or there was some other reason the second tag had been removed in the field when he was a soldier. It felt odd to Meg, but she didn't have any facts to base her instincts on so she kept her mouth shut.

An attractive brunette exited a nearby building across 12th Street and waved at Kamanski. "Dave, we found something you need to see," she said over the radio.

"That's Simone Charles, day shift supervisor for the CSU," Kamanski told Meg.

As Meg followed him over to where Simone waited, she used her BlackBerry to e-mail her boss about the victim's ID and the similarities to the two out-of-state murders. She added the single dog tag to the information and asked if the other two victims were also military.

Kamanski introduced them, and said, "So what did you find?"

"Follow me."

Instead of taking them inside the building, Simone walked past the door she had exited and down the alley a dozen feet. The alleyway was steep and narrow. To the right was a parking garage, to the left was the backside of a business. Ahead of them was the rectory attached to the Cathedral of the Blessed Sacrament, the oldest Catholic Church in the diocese.

She pointed toward the painted brick wall at the same time that Meg saw what had to be blood.

"Castoff," they said simultaneously. They were a good half-block from where the body was found.

Along the ground were bright yellow numbered cards and they told the story as Simone spoke. "We tested the wall, it came back positive for blood but we'll have to retest it in the lab. The victim was walking toward 11th Street, and the killer sliced his hamstrings, from right to left, and the blood spattered on the wall. But he had complete control of the knife, because there are no drops consistent with him holding the knife after the attack."

"Which means?" Kamanski asked.

"He sheathed it," Simone said. She demonstrated. "Slice-he can't avoid the spatter, probably because of the momentum and the suddenness of the attack-but he sliced, then stuck the knife right back in its case. Probably on his belt loop for ease of use."

She pointed to the numbered cards. "Those are from the victim. He fell here," she pointed to an area that had a pool of blood with two clean areas in between, where the victim had fallen to his knees. "Then was picked up and carried back that way." She started toward the building she'd exited, but then turned to the parking garage.

"I thought you left the building," Kamanski said.

"I did. Nothing there, but we're processing it anyway. It's the garage that I'm interested in."

"Wait," Meg said. "Did you say he was carried?"

Simone grinned. "Oh, yeah. Carried."

Meg looked at the ground, at the numbered markers, then saw what Simone saw. "No drag marks."

"Exactly," the criminalist said. "The guy couldn't have walked anywhere, so the killer would have to drag or carry him. The vic was pretty big, but I suppose a larger, strong male could have hoisted him over his shoulder." She frowned, looking down the alley.

"But then," Meg said, "the killer would have had his arms around the victim's legs." She demonstrated by pretending to haul something large onto her shoulder. "There wouldn't be this kind of blood trail. Maybe a few spots, but nothing this extensive."

"Yeah. Yeah I think you're right."

"That means there were two people?" Kamanski asked.

Meg nodded. "Carrying him probably under the arms. Lifting him up." She followed the blood spatters. "You can see some small, narrow drag marks in places-nothing deep, probably from his shoes." She made note to check the victim's shoes for scuffmarks.

Nowhere in the reports from the previous crime scenes had the investigators indicated there had been two potential suspects. Meg's heart beat rapidly with the new and valuable information.

The three of them followed the yellow markers into the parking garage. "I've already called for all security tapes, but there're many blind spots. The main entrance, exit, and all pedestrian entrances are covered, but not every inch of each parking floor. Still, we should be able to find the vehicle entering or exiting. The garage opens at 5 a.m., but it's unmanned-only those with card keys can get in."

"So the killer had a card key?"

Simone shrugged. "I don't know. He could have tricked the system, or walked in and stolen a pa.s.s from someone else's vehicle to get in. We'll figure that out when we get the tapes from security. Or he could have come in before the garage closed at 8 p.m."

Meg was cautiously optimistic. If they had tapes of the vehicle, they could have a view of the driver. Or pa.s.senger, if there were two.

In the center aisle of the garage, Simone stopped. Three parking s.p.a.ces had been cleared and yellow crime scene tape was posted. "People aren't going to like me. I closed the garage as soon as we found the trail, but there were already some people parked inside. They're not going anywhere until I finish collecting evidence." She pointed to what first appeared like nothing.