The Springfield police chief, a woman named Trudy Miles, greeted them both. “I’m sorry; this is an absolutely brutal night for you guys. Can’t tell you how sorry I am about Aubry Gesch. He was a good man.”
“You knew him?” Wire asked.
“I worked a case with him a couple of years ago. He was a pro’s pro.”
“That he was, Chief,” Mac answered but stayed on task. “What do we have here?”
“Just the person you were looking for, Danica Brunner,” the chief answered. “My men arrived ten minutes ago and knocked on the front door, which was answered by her boyfriend who was asleep on the couch. He led my men around the back and they found the body lying in the bushes. Other than checking for a pulse, she hasn’t been moved.” Miles nodded to the two-story house behind them. “The boyfriend was expecting her around midnight, which is usually when she shows up here. She’s been working nights lately, usually until 11:00 or a little later managing an art gallery.”
“That had to be … awful,” Wire said sadly, crouching down, looking at the wound. “To find her like … this …” Shock overtook Dara’s face as she inspected the cuts on Brunner. Even in the dark Mac could tell she was going pale.
“That’s something you’ll never forget,” Mac added, hands on hips, taking in the murder scene. “This is just … vicious,” he remarked, shining his light on the wound. “I wouldn’t say the other times he sliced women open were surgical, especially Sandy Faye, but this is more … I don’t know, brutal.”
“Escalated,” Dara added, her hand to her mouth. “He’s escalating.”
“Or he was just excited by what happened at the cabin perhaps, euphoric even, so much so he was in a exhilarated frenzy when he killed her,” Mac answered, nonplussed, evaluating the scene as if he had no pulse.
“Agent McRyan,” Chief Miles asked, “how can you look at this … I mean, it looks like she was attacked by a wild animal, for Christ’s sake. How can you look and talk about it so … calmly?”
Mac kept looking over Brunner while he answered, “That’s the sad part, really, Chief. This stuff doesn’t faze me anymore. It hasn’t for a while.” Which was one of the reasons he didn’t miss regular cop work as much as he thought he would; being away from the dead bodies had allowed him to get back in touch with his humanity. Still, even he was surprised at how unaffected he was by the state of the Brunner’s body; it was horrifying but it just didn’t affect him in that way. He was looking at it unemotionally, clinically. On the other hand, Wire wasn’t desensitized like he was. “You okay, partner?” he asked.
“Fine,” she answered, although she was anything but that. She turned her back to the body and tried to suck in some fresh air. “Let’s keep working.”
“Okay,” Mac turned back and leaned down to the body again. “Man, the wound is fresh. She hasn’t been dead long,” Mac stated as he walked back towards the alley and to the Audi parked in the driveway. He felt the hood, it was still warm, and shook his head. “I bet we missed by five minutes, maybe less.” Mac walked back and found her purse.
“Chief, I’m reaching inside her purse.”
“What are you looking for?” Miles asked.
“Cell phone.” The screen revealed four missed calls, all his, the first one made twenty-one minutes ago. “Damn it. We were so close.”
Mac looked back from the body to the path, leading to the driveway. The path followed the contours of the outside of the garage, turning left for five feet and then right as the path made its way to the back door of the house. The path was concealed under a canopy of mature trees and by a row of tall bushes. With his flashlight, Mac pointed towards a notch in the garage’s exterior where the path turned left. “He waited right there,” Mac suggested, pointing, angling the flashlight down. “Those footprints look fresh. I bet they’re size thirteen. Let’s do things by the book and get a mold, Chief.”
“Will do.”
“So he got inside the fence, there’s no lock, and waited here, knowing she was coming because he’d been stalking her for days,” Wire suggested, now steadied, walking towards the house, stopping halfway. “In the dark, no way you could see him hiding there from the house. It’s too dark and the spot is hidden.”
“Did she come over regularly around midnight?” Mac asked the chief.
“Boyfriend says she did. She managed an art gallery that would close at 10:00
P.M.
She would usually work another hour and then come over and spend the night. They’ve been together for a year. The poor guy, he was getting ready to pop the question.”
“Do we have a Bible verse?” Mac muttered, looking at Brunner’s hand. It was there, in a plastic bag. Mac carefully pulled it out of her fingers and held it up to his flashlight and read aloud: “Then said Jesus unto him, Put up again thy sword into his place: for all they that take the sword shall perish with the sword.” Mac studied the words, “I think that’s Matthew.”
“Very good, McRyan. Matthew 26:52 to be exact,” Chief Miles answered. “I teach Sunday school. With a name like McRyan, you must be Catholic.”
“As Irish Catholic as they come,” Mac replied.
“Chief, are your people canvassing?” Wire asked, getting back on task.
“As we speak, Agent Wire, every door is being knocked on,” the chief answered. “My people know what this murder is. They’ll be on their game.”
Mac handed Miles a copy of the photo array of Drake Johnson. “Chief, show everyone this photo. It’s the same one the FBI director talked about less than an hour ago. The Reaper is a man named Drake Johnson. He’s a former cop. If anyone gets a bead on him, they should immediately call for backup. The man is a beast and taking him alone is extremely dangerous.”
Miles looked over the photo. “I heard that statement by the director. Just how long have you had his name?” the Springfield police chief asked, curious.
“We’ve known for less than twenty-four hours, really since yesterday morning. The bureau thought they had a bead on him at a cabin up in Pennsylvania. Instead it was a trap.”
“The explosion?” the detective asked.
“Yes,” Wire answered. “So now there will be no holding back. The whole nation will know who the Reaper is, who Drake Johnson is. In this day and age, there will be no place for him to hide.”
“Where’s the boyfriend?” Mac asked. There was only one thing he really needed to know from the boyfriend.
“Inside the house,” he Springfield chief answered.
Mac and Wire walked inside the small two-story red brick house and found the boyfriend sitting at the kitchen table, elbows on his knees looking at the floor. Mac and Wire team interviewed him, walking through the last two days, getting the answers they largely expected. “Did you see this man hanging around?” Wire asked, showing him the photo spread of Johnson.
“No,” he answered. It appeared he’d not yet seen the news. “Is he this Reaper?”
“Yes,” Mac answered. “Look, I know you’re still in shock, but I have to ask some questions.”
“Okay.”
Mac pulled out the photo they’d taken from Randall’s computer. “You can see Danica in this picture. Do you know any of these other women in the photo?”
The boyfriend took the photo in his hands and studied it. “No, I don’t.”
“You’re sure?” Mac pressed. “None of them look even vaguely familiar?”
Sam shook his head.
“Did she ever mention the name Rena Johnson?”
“No.”
“How long have you known Danica?”
“We met a little over a year ago at a party. Up until then I’d never met or seen her before. How old is that picture?”
“Seven years,” Mac answered.
“Man, you’d have to ask her family,” he answered. “I can’t begin to tell you how reluctant Dani was to talk about her past, about college, about the years after college. She just never talked about it, like there were bad memories she was trying to forget. If the topic ever came up, she just kind of shut down and wanted to talk about something else. For whatever reason, she wanted to act as if those years of her life never existed.”
Mac and Wire shared a knowing look. The past she never wanted to talk about finally came back to get her.
W
hile Wire sacked out on the beat-up couch in the employee lounge, Mac sipped at a large coffee and read through the file the FBI had developed on Drake Johnson during the past twenty-four hours. Despite the fact that he’d read the FBI profile on the Reaper, confronted him once and spoke on the phone with him twice, this was really the first time he was actually getting some in-depth information on the man he’d spent weeks hunting for.
He was the son of Warren and Patricia Johnson of Auburn, New York. Nine years after his birth, he gained a baby sister named Rena. The FBI file revealed that while there was a nine-year gap between Drake and Rena Johnson, the two siblings were very close. In a short time, the FBI had obtained a number of family pictures and it was clear from the photos, the genuine smiles and affection that Drake Johnson loved and doted over his little baby sister. This was probably one of the reasons Drake Johnson stayed close to home, going to State University of New York (SUNY) at Cortland, a mere half hour away, and living at home for much of his college years. At SUNY Cortland, he majored in criminology and subsequently joined the police force in Ithaca just a half hour from Auburn.
Once with the police force in Ithaca, his record for his first eleven years was solid. His evaluations revealed excellent performance, several commendations and as a result, he was promoted to detective by the time he was twenty-nine years old. The only blemishes were the three brutality complaints, one for which he served a suspension, but otherwise he looked like a pretty solid cop.
The first real sign of trouble appeared nearly four years ago, a brutality complaint arising out of the investigation of a hit-and-run automobile accident. Johnson was alleged to have used excessive force in the arrest of the driver of the vehicle. Johnson served a short suspension but in reading the file and some analysis provided, the fact the incident involved a hit-and-run accident, not unlike the one that resulted in his sister’s death, seemed to serve as a trigger that started a downward emotional spiral for Johnson.
A second brutality complaint followed a year later arising out of a domestic dispute and investigation. The husband was found at a local bar and took a swing at Johnson when he and his partner attempted to arrest him. Johnson responded with a full onslaught, punching the man three times in the face, breaking his nose, knocking out two teeth and giving him two black eyes. Johnson attributed his reaction to the heat of the moment and fear for his own safety. Johnson’s partner backed his version and the witness accounts for others at the bar varied greatly as to the aggression of the suspect as well as the appropriateness of Johnson’s reaction. Mac had been through similar situations numerous times where his own survival instinct kicks in. However, as much as he was prone to side with any officer who defended himself from an assault by a suspect, even to him the response seemed exceedingly excessive.
His record then remained officially clean for two years, although in reading between the lines on the performance evaluations, it appeared Johnson continued to teeter on the edge. The FBI file indicated that two current Ithaca officers were interviewed and off the record stated that Johnson had developed an anger management problem and always seemed to be on a hair trigger, always ready to blow. “I think his sister’s death devastated him, the way she died, a hit-and-run and the driver was never found. It just ate him up inside.” Those same officers also said Johnson was an exceedingly good investigator, dogged and tenacious. Another officer stated: “I think given what happened to his sister, he always identified with the victim. That made him a good investigator, he closed cases and that’s why I think they tolerated his temper and brutality issues. When he was on his game he was good for the statistics.”
Then his parents died. The same officers indicated that Johnson became depressed, started drinking excessively and was, at times, scary. Three months after his father’s passing, new trouble arose out of an interrogation of a rape suspect where Johnson was accused of “tuning” up the suspect to obtain a confession.
This time Johnson was suspended for thirty days, ordered to seek counseling and basically told that if it happened again, he would be done.
Upon his reinstatement, things seemed to calm down for Johnson. His performance as an investigator remained solid and the message seemingly received. As one of his former colleagues stated, “He seemed to turn the corner although you could tell he was fighting to keep things together.”
Then the break-in at the residence of Kevin and Rebecca Randall happened and the bottom dropped out of Johnson’s life. Mac figured, as did FBI analysts putting together the file, that somewhere in the investigation of the burglary, Johnson stumbled on the picture of his sister with Goynes, Wyland, Donahue, Faye, Drew, Rebecca Randall and Danica Brunner. Shortly thereafter, Johnson was involved in another investigation involving a domestic incident where a wife was brutally beaten but ultimately refused to make a complaint against her husband. Apparently, the incident set Johnson off. The husband came into a bar where Johnson was drinking. The report indicated that Johnson left the bar. He may have waited in the back for the husband. When he came out the back of the bar, Drake Johnson beat the man to within an inch of his life. While it was off duty, his job with Ithaca was nevertheless in the balance and the civil lawsuit would be forthcoming and he would almost certainly lose.
Two weeks later, while on suspension, Johnson staged his death. A couple of weeks later, Rebecca Randall was murdered. Two years later the Reaper killings began.
Mac closed the file and looked at the picture of all of the victims standing in front of the minivan again, thinking what impact that must have had on Johnson when he saw it, the date in the lower right-hand corner, knowing that within hours of that photo, his sister died. As he scanned the picture, he ran his hand through his short blond hair. He’d looked at the photo a hundred times now and still, after that many looks, he couldn’t help but think he was missing something.
An hour later, now at the Hoover Building, Mac, Wire and Director Mitchell and another FBI senior agent named Dan Galloway sat at the large conference table in his spacious office, quietly sipping on coffee while the two of them briefed the director on Danica Brunner.
“How close were we to getting him or saving her?”
Mac held his thumb and index finger an inch apart, “A matter of minutes.”
“I shouldn’t have been up in Pennsylvania with Gesch,” Mitchell muttered, shaking his head. “I was so anxious to catch him, to be a part of it, to see it, that I lost perspective on what the director’s job is. No one case should consume all of my time.”
“Big case,” Wire stated. “Close by, political consequences, White House pressure. It was only natural to want to be there.”
“I’m not allowed that emotion,” Mitchell answered with a dismissive wave. “If I’m here, we react quicker in getting Johnson’s picture out, Danica Brunner’s picture out. If I am here, at a minimum, she is still alive.”
“Maybe,” Mac replied, studying the picture from Randall for what seemed like the thousandth time. “Who knows how things turn out if you’d have done this or that.”
“And Danica Brunner isn’t without some political consequences,” the director stated.
“How so?”
“I’ve just learned,” the director added, “that our victim has some political ties. She’s the niece of a big K Street lobbyist by the name of Hubert Brunner. Brunner has a great many friends in this town, the best of which apparently is Jesse Richardson.”
“The Senate minority leader? Good grief,” Wire muttered.
“The one and only,” the director answered. “Brunner is a close friend. I’m sure we’ll hear from ole Jesse today. He’s a bit of a bomb thrower for a leader.”
“Be nice if all he said was catch this bastard, and left the politics out of it,” Mac offered bitterly.
“True,” the director answered. “But he won’t. That’s not his style. Not with Danica Brunner dying. Speaking of dying, is he done? Is the killing over?”
“Everyone in the picture is dead,” Wire stated.
Mac snapped a look at Wire, “Say that again.”
Wire looked at him quizzically, “Everyone … in the picture … is dead.”
“I wonder.”
“What? You wonder what?” Wire and the director asked in unison.
“Not everyone in the picture is dead,” Mac stated, pulling the picture close again and a small smile crept across his face. “I’ve been looking at this picture for hours now, thinking I’ve been missing something.”
“And what are you missing?” Mitchell asked.
“Who took it?” Mac answered. “Who took this picture?”
“What makes you think whoever took it had anything to do with this?” Wire asked.
“A couple of things,” Mac answered. “First, see how Goynes and Faye have arms locked behind the other, Donahue and Drew have their arms around each other’s shoulders, and Rena Johnson, Rebecca Randall and Janelle Wyland have their arms all locked together?”
“Yeah, so?”
“Yet Brunner is off by herself, why?”
“She doesn’t know the other girls as well, I suppose,” Mitchell offered.
“Or, it’s
her
buddy who is taking the picture.”
“Rebecca Randall had the photo on her computer, though, so doesn’t it stand to reason that whoever took it was a friend of hers?”
“Possibly, or she’s a friend of both Randall and Brunner. Look, all of these women are connected through each other, but they were not all friends together. Donahue, Goynes and Sandy Faye, who was then Helen Williams, went to the AAHC Camp together. Kelly Drew was a long time friend of Hannah Donahue’s who had a summer place up near Auburn. Wyland is connected to Rebecca Randall from Syracuse University. Rebecca Randall is connected to Rena Johnson from growing up together in Auburn. What’s the connection of Danica Brunner? How did she fit into this group?”
Mac opened the file that Galloway brought in on Brunner. “Danica went to college at Washington and Lee. None of our group did. She was born and raised here in Virginia. None of our other victims were. She doesn’t fit, unless she fits …”
“With whoever took the picture,” Wire finished. “So there’s possibly …”
“One more victim out there,” Mac looked to the director. “Look, we need to get people all over this picture. We need to go through Randall’s computer again and see if we can determine how she received this picture. Wire and I need to go through Brunner’s life with a fine-tooth comb and figure out the connection. We may even need to simply go public with the picture to see if our person comes forward.”
“Okay, Mac,” the director replied. “We’ll do that. Agent Galloway, see to it.”
“Yes sir.”
“Wait a minute …” Mac began to protest.
Director Mitchell held up his hand. “Dara, do you mind if I have a word with Mac alone?”
“No sir,” Wire answered, looking at Mac, asking with her eyes, ‘what’s up?’
Mac shrugged his shoulders in response; he had no idea.
Once Wire closed the door to the director’s office, Mitchell got up out of his chair and walked around to Mac’s side of the table, bringing the coffee pot with him. He poured Mac a new cup. “Mac, I need a favor.”
“What is it, sir?” Mac asked, taking a sip of coffee.
“There is a press conference at 9:00
A.M.
,” the director replied, and then dropped one on Mac. “I need you to handle it with me.”
Mac looked up from his coffee cup, surprised. “Me?”
“Yeah, you.”
“Why?” The thought of addressing the media was not one he relished. Dead bodies didn’t bother him, the media did.
“Because Aubry Gesch’s scorched body is lying in the morgue. Grace Delmonico is too junior for the assignment and too traumatized from last night, she’s just not up to it. Nobody in the bureau, including your extremely capable partner out in the hall, knows the case better than you do. On top of that, you have a better understanding of the Reaper, of Drake Johnson, than anyone else. We’re as close as we are to catching this asshole because of you.”
“But sir, with all due respect, I’ve spent my whole career trying to avoid the media. I
hate
the media and, frankly, they hate me.”
“I know,” Mitchell replied. “And you’re probably nervous about facing them.”
“Well
yeah
,” Mac answered. “You saw how swimmingly my last brush with them went.”
Mitchell laughed, trying to lighten the mood, “That was a cluster, no doubt, but trust me on this, she wasn’t a legitimate reporter. No legitimate reporter goes where she went. She’ll end up on some two-bit cable channel doing D-List celebrity news soon enough. And between you, me and these four walls, I kind of loved how you went off on her. But listen,” the FBI director said, turning serious, “I’m really quite certain that you
are
the man I want up there with me.”
“Why?”
“A couple of reasons. First, after last night I need to project confidence and determination. Your blunt manner, your direct approach, your intensity and even arrogance is what I need up there with me,” Mitchell stated. “We were hit hard last night. I want to present someone who is a fighter and someone who knows the case inside and out. You check both of those boxes. Mac, you’re
exactly
what I need right now.”
“Who’s running the investigation now?” Mac asked. “Shouldn’t they be up there as well?”
“He will be, because it’s you,” Mitchell answered, stunning him for the second time.
“Sir, I’m temporary FBI, an out-of-work homicide cop from St. Paul.”
“Who’s out of work by choice.”
“Yes, that’s true, I suppose. You offered me a job, sir,” Mac answered exasperated, “but you can’t put me in charge. People will have your head,
not to mention mine
.”
“Look,” the director answered nonplussed, “Senior Special Agent Galloway will, by title, run the investigation and do all the bureaucratic bullshit for you. He’s efficient and can get and arrange for you anything you need. He excels at that kind of work. But when it comes to the actual running the investigation, that will be you, and until this thing is done, until we have this bastard, you report directly to me on it. He killed four of my men last night and two sheriff’s deputies. Whether he is done killing or not, we are never going to stop looking for this asshole.”