A Killer Like Me (31 page)

After a few seconds delay, the reporter says, “They’re not releasing any details, as you can imagine, Randolph, but the continued presence of members of the serial-killer task force lends credibility to the speculation that this crime was the work of the Lamb of God.”

The killer loves hearing them call him that.

“Can you tell us what exactly is fueling that speculation?” the anchor asks.

“Well, no one is saying it officially, but sources close to the investigation have told me that detectives found something inside the house that is consistent with the other known serial-killer murders.”

“Have they identified the victim?”

The street reporter presses his earpiece deeper into his right ear. “So far, Randolph, the police have not released her name.”

“Can you tell us more about what it was that the investigators found that links—that may link—this case to the other serial-killer cases?” the anchor asks.

“Randolph, one source told me that the killer left behind a telltale mark, something the source would not describe in detail, obviously in order to prevent copycat crimes. However, the source did say that the telltale mark was something the serial killer mentioned in a previous communication with the police, likely the letter we’ve all heard about, and it was something the killer said he would leave behind at future crime scenes.”

The bleary-eyed anchor thanks the reporter and promises more updates later in the newscast if new information becomes available.

The killer is stunned.

If imitation is the most sincere form of flattery, then someone has just paid him a huge compliment.

But who?

Somewhere in the back of his mind an idea begins to take shape.

Murphy found out about the mandatory evacuation when he and Gaudet got back to the office at 9:00
PM
, after more than eight hours at the Wingate crime scene.

All of the other homicide detectives were gathered in the outer office listening to Captain Donovan brief them on the latest news from headquarters.

“At zero six hundred tomorrow everyone in the department except Homicide is going on hurricane duty,” Donovan said. “All city services will be shut down except for police, fire, and EMS.”

The announcement was a shock to Murphy. He had not seen the news or listened to the radio since yesterday morning, nor had he heard anyone on Wingate talking about the storm. Or if they were, he hadn’t been listening. All he had heard was a constant replay of Marcy Edwards gasping for breath. “I didn’t think the storm was that close,” Murphy said, more to himself than to anyone else.

Standing in the doorway of his closet-sized office, Donovan shook his head. “It’s halfway across the Gulf of Mexico and headed straight for us. They’re saying it’s going to be another Katrina.”

Murphy hoped not.

He had spent the first forty-eight hours after Katrina in an eighteen-foot fishing boat, motoring around the Lower Ninth Ward, pulling people off rooftops. Then he hooked up with some SWAT guys and spent the next three weeks dodging sniper fire from the projects and chasing looters. They worked twenty-three days without a break, with barely any support from the department. They had no functioning radios, no clean uniforms, no fuel for their cars, no shelter, and no food other than what they could scrounge. During that same time, two hundred fifty of their fellow officers ran away.

The only funny part of the whole thing was when an overweight, out-of-shape, Hollywood action star showed up with his ponytail and his semiautomatic AR-15 to “help” the cops. Through some connection in the chief’s office, the actor tagged along with SWAT on a looter patrol. Halfway through the patrol, the aging actor, sweating buckets and looking like the last days of Elvis Presley, jumped into a supervisor’s car and rode back to the command post. The SWAT guys never saw him again.

So much for Hollywood heroes.

“It’s a phased evacuation,” Donovan said. “From six a.m. to six p.m., Plaquemines, lower Jefferson, and Saint Bernard parishes will move out. Then from six p.m. to six a.m., the rest of Jefferson Parish will evacuate. Finally, beginning at zero six hundred Tuesday, Orleans Parish residents will head north.”

“What’s our assignment?” Gaudet asked.

“As of tomorrow morning, the task force, along with A and B squads, will continue working the kidnapping. C Squad will handle any non-serial-killer calls.” Donovan slapped his hand against the wall like a gavel. “Go home and pack a bag, gentleman, because when you get back here tomorrow morning there is no telling when you’re going home again, or even if your home will still be standing when you get there.”

Donovan backed into his office and slammed the door.

“Merry Christmas and happy motherfucking New Year to you too,” Gaudet mumbled as the gaggle of detectives broke up.

Murphy and Gaudet walked into their squad room and headed for their desks. “Have you heard from Doggs or Calumet since this morning?” Murphy asked.

“Not a peep.”

“Are they still part of this task force?” Murphy said. “They didn’t bother responding to the . . . the scene on Wingate.”

Gaudet started chuckling.

“What?” Murphy snapped.

“I heard you blew your lunch on the lawn.”

As Murphy dropped into his chair, images of Marcy Edwards lying dead and bloody on her bathroom floor flashed through his mind. “I drank too much last night,” he said. “I guess the smell got to me.”

“I thought you were home sleeping.”

“I had to get to sleep didn’t I?”

The Wingate crime scene had been brutal. After Murphy finished talking to the lab tech who was busy collecting his DNA-laced cigarette butts, the coroner’s investigator showed up and Murphy had to help him and Gaudet roll the body and examine it. He had almost puked again. Staring at the dead woman, he had convinced himself that as soon as he got home he was going to put his gun in his mouth one last time and finally pull the trigger.

Later, while he was riding back to the office with Gaudet, Murphy changed his mind again. Focus on the case, he told himself. There was a chance the mayor’s daughter was still alive. Find her and catch the killer, then decide what to do.

Murphy snatched his portable radio off his desk and called for Doggs and Calumet. He got no answer. “Do you have a cell number for either of those idiots?” he asked Gaudet.

After shoving a pile of papers around on his desk, Gaudet found a yellow sticky note. He read out a telephone number.

“Which one is that?” Murphy said.

Gaudet shrugged. “Does it matter?”

Murphy picked up his desk phone and punched in the number. Joey Dagalotto answered.

“Where the hell have you been?” Murphy said.

“Murphy?” Joey Doggs asked.

“Yeah, it’s Murphy. Where the hell have you and Calumet been? You left us at the Wingate scene all day.”

“We were running down a lead.”

“A lead?”

Gaudet peeked around his computer monitor.

“It’s a long shot,” Doggs said, “but we were going back through all the case files and we found a good picture of a tire track from the crime scene near Michoud Boulevard.”

Murphy remembered the scene and the tire impression. By his tally, the dead prostitute was the killer’s fourth victim. She had been strangled with a cable tie and dumped in an isolated spot off Interstate 10, out in the alligator-infested bayous of eastern New Orleans.

During his initial survey of the crime scene, Murphy had spotted the tire track in the mud. He ordered a crime-scene photographer to take high-resolution photos of the track. Then he had a lab tech make a cast of it. “I sent pictures of the tread pattern to the FBI lab three months ago, but I haven’t heard anything back from them.”

“We have a way around that,” Doggs said. “Calumet’s dad owns a tire shop in Metairie, so we showed him the pictures. He said the print is from a Goodyear Aquatred Three, which isn’t that common in New Orleans. He called somebody at Goodyear and got us a list of local customers who bought that model tire.”

“On a Sunday?”

“We actually got the list Friday night. We’ve been working on it ever since.”

“Doing what?”

“Narrowing it down.”

“How many people are on it?” Murphy said.

“A hundred and fifty.”

“That’s a pretty big list.”

“There were more than that, but Mr. Calumet said the tread looked pretty new, so we asked the Goodyear guy to give us only sales that went back six months from the day the body was discovered.”

Regardless of whether he killed himself or not, Murphy wanted the serial killer arrested. His mind ran through the investigative angles. “Did you prioritize the list based on criminal-history checks and sex-offender-registry listings?” he asked.

“Yes,” Doggs said.

“What’d you come up with?”

“Forty-seven people. We started interviewing them last night.”

“Good work,” Murphy said. “You get anything?”

“Not yet. So far we’ve only found thirteen customers, but we got nine DNA swabs. We’re asking everybody we interview for one just in case we recover DNA from a victim.”

DNA. It conjured an image in Murphy’s mind of the crime-scene tech squatting in the street, picking up cigarette butts with a pair of tweezers.

Murphy ignored the image. “Pay careful attention to the ones who refuse,” he said, “and don’t discount women who bought tires, or men over, say, fifty. They could have husbands or adult sons living at home. Run the addresses in MOTION and check out any males under forty who’ve used those addresses in the past two years.”

“Thanks,” the young detective said. He sounded excited. “Look, I just got home, but I can come back in if you need me.”

“You know the mayor called for an evacuation?”

“Yeah, I heard it on the radio.”

“You and Calumet need to be here at six a.m. Donovan said we’re staying on the case, but bring your tactical gear, because we won’t be going home for a while.”

“Just like last time, huh?”

“I hope not,” Murphy said. Then he hung up.

He had been in two shootings in the weeks following Katrina. One he reported, one he didn’t.

Hearing the fire in the young cop’s belly made Murphy less inclined to shoot himself when he got home, at least for now.

Gaudet, who had been staring at Murphy while he was on the phone, said, “What up?”

Murphy gave him the short version.

“Got to hand it to those kids,” Gaudet said. “That’s not too shabby a piece of detective work.”

“No it’s not,” Murphy said, but he was still thinking about DNA.

Sunday, August 5, 9:25
PM

The killer arrives at the house on Burgundy Street much later than he intended.

It’s Mother’s fault.

She is panicked about the approaching hurricane and tomorrow’s mandatory evacuation. She wants him to drive her to Baton Rouge, where she has booked a hotel room. But he is not evacuating. He needs to stay to finish his work. He told her that he has been designated as one of the city’s essential employees, excluded from storm furlough and exempt from the evacuation order.

“You, essential?” she scoffed. “You must be joking.”

“I’m responsible for maintaining vital records and the integrity of the court system.”

She barked out a short, phlegmatic laugh. “You’re a low-level clerk.”

He jiggled a set of keys in her face. “Essential enough to be entrusted with keys to the office.”

In reality, he is just a low-level courthouse clerk. So low that he does not have his own keys to the office. Several months ago, he simply lifted his boss’s keys and had them copied on his lunch hour. He does most of his “research” at night, when the office is empty.

“How am I supposed to get to Baton Rouge?” his mother whined.

“You have a car, Mother. Drive yourself.”

They argued back and forth for more than an hour, about the hurricane, about the evacuation, about what a failure he was as a son.

Finally, he stalked out of her “side” of the house.

“Where are you going?” she shouted at his back. “Don’t you walk out on me.”

He ignored her.

After leaving his mother, he went to the darkened courthouse and let himself into the office where he worked. The file he was looking for was missing from the storage racks. At the deserted main desk, he checked the police logbook. The file, the divorce record of Edwards vs. Edwards, had been checked out yesterday by Detective Sean Murphy. Last night, the former Mrs. Edwards had been murdered in her home. Coincidence?

I don’t think so.

From the courthouse, the killer had gone back to his apartment to type another letter. Then, as he had earlier that day, he hand-delivered it to its intended recipient.

On Burgundy Street, the killer unlocks the wrought-iron gate at the foot of the driveway. Above him the sky is black. He hears the wind whipping through the trees. The storm is coming. After pulling his Honda into the driveway and relocking the gate, he slips into the dark house. In his hand he carries a plastic shopping bag.

Standing in the foyer, beneath the second-story landing, he eases the door closed behind him. He holds his breath and listens for a moment. Other than the wind swirling through the attic rafters, the house is silent.

He climbs the stairs and pauses on the top landing. His little pet is quiet. That is how he thinks of her, as his prize, his little pet. He never had a pet. Mother wouldn’t allow them. Once, when he was twelve, he tried to bring home a stray cat. He was going to keep it hidden in a small shed in his backyard, feeding it from table scraps, but on the way home the frightened cat had scratched and bitten him. As he strangled the foul beast it had scratched him some more.

The killer creeps down the hallway to the first door on the right. He pushes it open. The room is just as he left it, wooden chair to his right, camera and tripod to his left. Lying on the floor between them, in the dead center of the room, is an antique flattop steamer trunk.

The heavy trunk is four feet long, nearly three feet wide, and stands two feet tall. The wooden-slat exterior is reinforced with iron bands. The lid is fastened with a brass latch and secured by a heavy combination padlock.