Sarah Armstrong: Singularity Part 11

"Lieutenant, have you seen this mornings Galveston County Daily News!" Captain Williams growled. "How about the Houston Chronicle?"

"No, I havent. Why?"

"Well, I suggest you take a look. And I also suggest you get yourself into this office, p.r.o.nto."

"h.e.l.l," I said. "Matthews?"

"Yes. Matthews. Agent Garrity is on his way. Weve got a situation. The Galveston D.A.s office is furious. Even the governor called. Get in here. ASAP."

With some difficulty I sidestepped Moms pancakes, kissed Maggie, and arrived at the office an hour later. Friday morning, one full week after the Lucas murders, and the whole place bristled with unexpended energy. Sheila, the captains secretary, gave me one of those withering stares she reserves for those whove made her bosss blood pressure climb. I, of course, was the cause of all the anguish, my photo from the day before under the headline "Texas Ranger tracks serial killer." The subhead read: "Suspect in Lucas double murder."

A week on this case and Id made the front page of both newspapers, the Chronicle picking up the Daily News piece off the wire. The photographer caught me with a glint of surprise in my eyes, just as Evan Matthews popped the question, "Is this murder related to the Galveston double murders?" My non-answer, as David feared, was lost near the bottom of the article and hadnt put the matter to rest. Instead, it only made me appear to be hiding information, which, of course, I was. Matthews must be having a good day, I thought. Scooping the big-city rival newspaper twice on a case was a major coup.

"Sarah," David said, as I entered the conference room.

"Good morning," I said, warily glancing toward the captain who pulsed with anger. Behind him hung the chart he and David constructed a few days earlier to compare the murders. David and I had already written in the Mary Gonzales information, what little we had to work with.

"Didnt I tell you this could happen?" my boss said, slapping both newspapers down onto the table before me.

"Captain, let me explain."

"Explain? How can you explain?" he scoffed. "Isnt this precisely what I warned you and Agent Garrity about?"

"Yes, but-"

"But? Theres a but? I dont think so, Sarah. In fact, I know better."

Id never seen the captain so angry, not even the day a novice ranger crashed his squad car on the interstate, injuring himself and two civilians, during a high-speed pursuit of a guy who turned out to be just evading a traffic ticket.

"The governors already called headquarters, and they want answers. What am I supposed to tell them? That one of my best rangers couldnt keep her mouth shut?"

"Thats not fair."

"Not fair?" he echoed.

"No, its not fair," I said, my voice rising. "I told Matthews nothing. This is coming from someplace else. David can tell you. He was there."

"Is that the truth?"

David nodded.

"I wasnt at the Lucas estate when Sarah talked with Bobby Barker," he admitted. "But I can tell you that she told Matthews nothing. He arrived knowing everything thats in that article. At most, Sarah never denied his a.s.sertions."

"How could I do that?" I asked, my voice rising in indignation. "Its the truth. Weve got another murder, same MO in San Antonio. Weve got a serial killer. Evan Matthews is right."

"Right?" shouted the captain. "Whats he right about?"

"Instead of hiding information, we should be warning people," I said, standing up and walking toward the chart. "This morning, our chart has another murder. Number four. How many more before we own up to the fact that weve got an active serial killer on the loose?"

"Im not going to jeopardize the case against Priscilla Lucas, not yet," said the captain. "Not until were sure."

"Weve got a sketch, the San Antonio composite," I said, feeling my own anger rise. "Shouldnt it be on newscasts across the state tonight? Isnt that the best way to warn the public and bring this guy in?"

"No," said the captain, pounding his meaty fist on the table with a heavy thud. "Circulate a flyer on the Gonzales murder across the state. Identify the guy only as a possible witness in the San Antonio homicide. But in no way tie him to the other murders. Its too soon, Sarah. Think about it. We need more time."

"More time for what?" I said, seething. "So this guy can supply us with more tortured bodies?"

Captain Williams flinched as if Id slapped him.

"Thats not fair," said David.

With that, the captain and I looked at each other, and I felt my anger subsiding. Id just attacked a man I truly respected, one Id trust with my life.

"Sarah." He sighed. "Whats going on here?"

"Im being unfairly reprimanded. Thats whats happening here. I said nothing to Matthews. I told Bobby Barker absolutely nothing about any of our suspicions or the investigation. They both knew everything before I met them. Someone else is talking."

The captain sat down in a chair and pushed back, staring at the ceiling.

"Sarah, the least you could have done was warn me, so I wasnt blindsided," he said.

"Youre right. Im sorry."

"So, what do we do now?"

"We do nothing differently than we do every other day. We find the murderer, solve the case, just like we always do," I said, hoping the uncertainty welling in my chest didnt give me away. "We prove once and for all who killed Edward Lucas and Annmarie Knowles, and we put this matter to rest. We save lives by stopping this SOB."

"And how does that happen?" the captain asked. "What next?"

Id antic.i.p.ated that question but hadnt been able to come up with a ready answer. Grateful, I heard David speak up.

"We heard from San Antonio this morning. The partial print doesnt match anyone known to have been in the house. Theres a good chance its the killers," he said, my hopes rising. "We can run it through the computer and look for a match on the national database."

"While the lab guys do that, David and I will head to the valley," I said. "Weve got an eighteen-month-old murder there that could help tie these cases together."

"All right," said the captain. "But do what you need to do and make it quick because, as I see it, this things only getting worse."

The Southwest Airlines flight home from McAllen, Texas, that night took only seventy-five minutes but felt like one of the longest of my life. It had been a day filled with disappointment and bad news. First, shortly after wed arrived in the Rio Grande valley, the captain called to say the fingerprint Mary Gonzales had fought so valiantly to provide us proved too small a sample to compare with the database.

"Theres just not enough there to work with. If we get a full fingerprint, theres not enough to say if we have an exact match, but we will be able to determine if it conforms to what we have," he explained.

Then, our afternoon in the small town of Redbluff, fifty miles north of the Mexican border, fell far short of what wed hoped.

Driving from the airport, I was struck by how much the valley had changed, even in the five short years since Id been in the most southern reaches of the state. Among the citrus orchards growing Ruby Red grapefruit and oranges were subdivisions of trailer homes populated by s...o...b..rds, seniors from the North who in winter flooded area grocery stores.

Still, this wedge of Texas has historically been a hotspot for crime, and that hadnt changed. Nearly a hundred years ago, during Prohibition, rangers stationed on the border intercepted burro trains of bootlegged liquor crossing into the States. Today the cargos different: illegals and drugs.

In his office, where a poster on the window announced an upcoming golf tournament, Sheriff Tim Hagen, wearing tennis shoes, khaki shorts, and a blue polo shirt, pulled out his file on the murder of Sheryl Wilc.o.x, a forty-eight-year-old health-care aide. Before us we had an incomplete autopsy report with photos, conducted by the local mortician, photos of the crime scene, lab results, and witness statements. A former detective from Corpus Christi, Hagen ran down the case as he knew it. Wilc.o.x had been found on the deck outside her mobile home, in a rural section outside of town. In the crime-scene photos, she was nude, her throat cut, her arms and legs tied to a battered aluminum-frame lawn chair. Her chest was b.l.o.o.d.y with gashes. On the copies that came over the fax to our office, the gashes could have been interpreted as forming the pattern of a cross. Yet within minutes of arriving, David and I knew our trip had been a waste of time and resources.

Wed known before we arrived that the knots in the rope were wrong, square, not slip and overhand knots as in our four murders. And there was no b.l.o.o.d.y cross over the body. Still the murder had sounded enough alike to pique our interest. But when we looked at the crime-scene photos and talked to the sheriff, it became clear: this wasnt our guy.

The deciding factors were the gashes in her chest. Looking at the actual autopsy photos, it was easy to see that they bore no resemblance to our victims crosses. Instead, they appeared to be the result of a heated battle between the woman and her killer. Finally, the cause of death, not a clean incision as in our cases, the wound to her throat was a jagged, sloppy laceration that left the skin torn and bruised.

While disappointed, to keep the trip from being a total loss, we reviewed the evidence with Sheriff Hagen.

"This woman knew her killer," I said, looking at the photos of the woman left with her legs spread wide. "The murderer posed her to humiliate her. There was incredible anger."

"Sheryl had been working for an elderly couple," he explained. "She cared for the wife, who was dying from liver cancer. We thought at first that the husband might have done it. For an old guy, hes in good shape. There were rumors that theyd had an affair. Figured it had gone bad and he hadnt been able to take the rejection. But he had an alibi. He was on the golf course with three friends at the time of the murder. We sent him to Corpus for a polygraph and the guy admitted hed had the affair, but he said he knew nothing about the murder. The examiner said he was telling the truth. The test came out clean."

"What about the wife?" asked David, inspecting a close-up of wounds on Wilc.o.xs chest.

"We never seriously considered her," the sheriff admitted. "We questioned her about her husbands connection, but she claimed she knew nothing. She seemed heartbroken about the killing. Why do you ask?"

"Because my guess is that your killers a woman," David said. He picked up the sheriffs wire-rimmed reading gla.s.ses off the desk and used them like a magnifying gla.s.s to examine a photo of the dead womans face, then another of her upper body.

"See these marks?" he asked the sheriff, pointing to the womans chest.

"Yeah, what about them?"

"Send these photos to the M.E. in Houston, tell them we requested they take a look. They may disagree, but my guess is that they werent made by a knife," he said. "Looks like shes been gouged, maybe by long fingernails."

"You think that sick old woman could have done this?" the sheriff scoffed. "Thats possible?"

"Id question her."

The sheriff frowned.

"Missed our chance. She died about three months after the murder," he said. "The husband still lives here, but from the results of that lie detector, I doubt that, if she did it, he knows anything about it."

There were a variety of fingerprints found at the scene, and to ensure we werent prematurely dismissing the possibility that the case could be linked to ours, we took the precaution of e-mailing them to the captain. We both felt confident, however, even before the lab confirmed it while we waited for our return flight at the airport, that they didnt match the San Antonio fragment.

That evening, we skimmed above a shelf of gray-white clouds, on our way to Houston.

"Now what?" David asked.

"The composite should be in the San Antonio papers on Sunday morning," I said, grabbing at the last remaining straw. "That always starts the phones ringing."

"Sunday," he said, pressing the gray b.u.t.ton in the armrest and pushing his seat back. His eyes closed, and we flew the rest of the trip in silence.

Sixteen.

See if you can catch me," Maggie taunted, gliding backward.

"Maggie, you know I cant ice skate."

"Come on, Mom. You can do it. Just follow me," she ordered, sprinting away with a giggle.

Ice skating was something kids in Houston didnt do much of years ago, when I was growing up. We get an inch of snow here about every five years, and hardly ever ice. But I was willing to try.

Determined, I pushed forward. Breathing deeply, I concentrated on putting one foot in front of the other, keeping myself upright on the blades. I built speed, thinking it wasnt all that different from roller-skating, and I began to gain confidence, skating past a young mother coaching her toddler son and a pack of teenage boys with camouflage clothes and earrings who conferred in the center of the rink. I grinned with sincere satisfaction as I skated toward my daughter. Nearly close enough to touch Maggie, I held out my hand to her, then glanced to the right and realized that I was still moving and my skates were aimed directly at the padded barrier bordering the rink. I swiveled, hoping to stop, the way I remembered those Olympic figure skaters doing at the ends of their performances.

It didnt work.

Instead, my right ankle shot out from under me. On one foot, unable to regain traction, I slid forward, fluttering like a sparrow in water. Then my skate caught on a groove in the ice and I jarred to a stop, in control, both legs firmly on the ice.

"Good work, Mom," Maggie said, grinning. "Way to go."

Triumph.

Just then, my blades wobbled, and my skates shot out from under me. I fell, knocking my tailbone, hard. Flat on my back on the ice, I surveyed the amused faces of spectators peering down at me from balconies circling the ice rink in the center of the Gallera, the sprawling shopping mall that housed layer upon layer of Houstons ritziest stores. I was trying to remember why Id suggested ice skating instead of shopping, when Maggie, peering down at me as if I were the child, asked, "Mom, are you okay?"

"Fine," I said, holding up a hand. "Now pull me up."

We turned in our rented ice skates and headed to a second-floor restaurant to watch the other skaters try to outdo my performance. After baked potato skins and c.o.kes, we were in the process of inhaling hot fudge sundaes when I noticed David across the mall.

"Well, imagine this," he said, holding up a bag. "We both get the same idea on our Sat.u.r.day off."

"Not really," I said. "We were here for the ice rink. You didnt happen to be watching, did you?"

"No, should I have?"

"You missed a good one," Maggie said, grinning. "Mom plopped right down on the ice."

"Maggie, please," I said, feigning embarra.s.sment. "David, this is my daughter, Maggie. Maggie, this is Mr. Garrity."

"Youre the FBI agent working on that case with my mom, arent you; "What case is that?" I asked, surprised.

"The one in the paper where those two people got killed in Galveston," she said, licking a scoop of sundae off her spoon. "You know, where that lady got arrested, but you think its really a serial killer?"

"I didnt know youd heard about that," I said, motioning for her to wipe a fudge trail drizzling down her chin.

"Gram hid our newspaper, but Strings had one at his house," she said, with a shrug. "I dont know what the big deal is. You chase killers all the time."

"Well put, Maggie." David laughed.

"I didnt like your picture though," she said, scrunching up her nose.

"No?" I said. "Didnt do me justice?"

"It made you look really old," she said.