From the amount of carnage, she figured the police had arrived expecting to find two gay men with a plentiful supply of whips and chains on the premises. Copeland and his partner had been effectively married for the past nine years, though. Neither was the type to have met a sadistic killer in a pickup joint. Seeing the two of them together in the photograph suddenly reminded her of what Mike Posten had said about lovers and strangers—that they were the only people who could be truly open. He’d forgotten about
victims
. Murder victims, in particular, were the most completely open of all. The books they read, their favorite snack, the thickness of their pubic hair—all of it became a matter of public record for the world to behold.
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She often felt guilty about that, as if the only people who deserved to know her own secrets were the victims she knew so well.
She continued toward the bedroom, then froze in the open doorway. She was looking through the dark bedroom, directly out the window. With the lights off she could see outside. She had a clear view of the parked cars on the street, the sidewalk, the apartments on the other side. The alley, however, was pitch-black. Anyone could have hidden there, and Copeland would never have known it.
She was about to switch on the bedroom light, then stopped. With narrowed eyes she stared out the window.
She could have sworn that in the alley’s dark recesses lurked a tiny, glowing orange dot. She inched closer to the window, leaving the bedroom lights off. Halfway across the room she stopped and took another hard look.
Ever so slightly, the orange dot had seemed to move—but it was definitely still there, deep in the alley across the street.
Someone, she realized, was standing there smoking.
Her heart raced. She knew from countless other profiles created back at Quantico that, when it came to serial killers, the old stereotype was often true: They
did
return to the scene of the crime. They’d even been known to
“help” with the manhunt, so curious were they about the progress of the case. She pulled her gun from the holster and raced downstairs. If she could get down in time, she might trap him in the alley.
At full speed she rushed out the door, down the front steps and across the street. She took cover 99
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behind a car parked in the front of the alley and aimed her pistol across the hood.
“FBI!” she shouted. “Come out with your hands up!”
She waited a moment, squinting as she searched for the orange dot. It was gone.
“FBI!” she shouted, then listened. She heard nothing at first, but then came a slamming noise from somewhere in back. She suddenly realized it wasn’t a blind alley with only one way out—it must have had a rear exit. She jumped out from behind the car but stopped at the edge of darkness. She knew better than to run headlong into a dark alley, alone with no backup. She sprinted up the sidewalk a half-block to the next alley, which was lighted.
“Shit!” In the light, she could see plainly that the alley ran clear through.
She did the hundred-yard dash uphill, all the way through to the narrow street that ran along the back of the buildings. Her pace quickened as she rounded the corner and headed back up the block to the dark alley.
She stopped twenty feet away from the back entrance.
The wooden gate was wide open—the slamming noise, she realized, had been the sound of the orange dot getting away.
“Damn.” She was breathing heavy from the all-out sprint. She looked one way, then the other, but the street was empty. With her gun drawn she stared into the blackness. The thought of being so close brought a tinge of fear, but she didn’t let it show.
If he could somehow still see her, she wanted him to know: She was the one who’d crush him like his cigarette.
100
o
n Wednesday morning Victoria and the field coordinator from the FBI’s San Francisco office computer-interfaced via ISDN circuit with their videotape analyst in Washington, D.C. The security camera at the bank’s automatic teller machine had recorded the informant’s transaction last Friday afternoon, and Victoria had sent the tape back for analysis at the FBI laboratory’s Video Support Unit on the third floor of the J. Edgar Hoover Building.
Special Agent Brent Schullman looked fiftyish with yellow-gray hair and a dogged expression that had probably served him well in his early years in the military police. He had the huge calloused hands of a man who liked to fix cars or work in the yard, which didn’t seem to mesh with his designer suit and gold cufflinks. Victoria figured his wife must do his shopping, and the way he cleaned his eyeglasses with his silk Armani necktie seemed to confirm her suspicion.
The two agents sat beside each other facing the 101
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keyboard, computer and big twenty-inch color display monitor. Victoria worked the keyboard and mouse as the image appeared on the screen.
“Good morning,” Dr. Edelman’s voice resonated over the speaker.
Schullman did a double take, as if he’d expected to see the doctor’s face appear on the bright blue screen. Victoria sensed his confusion. “We’ll see the same thing here on our screen that he sees on his back in Washington,” she explained.
“Good morning,” she said into the speaker. “Dr. Edelman, I have Special Agent Brent Schullman here with me.
He’s the field coordinator and case agent for the San Francisco investigation. Actually,” she smiled, “I think the real reason he’s here is to see how his computer works.”
A chuckle came over the line from Washington, but Schullman didn’t seem to appreciate the humor.
“Anyway, Doctor, I know you haven’t completed your analysis yet, but I just got word from the lab this morning that the cigarette remnants I found in the alley near Copeland’s apartment were Marlboros, and the stock of paper indicates they were distributed and probably purchased on the East Coast. That makes it all the more evident that whoever was smoking in the alley probably didn’t live around there and had no business being out there. It made me curious to know whether you’ve been able to find any evidence that the man in the ATM video is a cigarette smoker.”
“Understood. Let’s pull it up and I’ll show you what I got.”
The screen flickered, and the grainy black-and-white 102
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image from the ATM security camera appeared on Victoria’s monitor. It was a frozen pose, showing one of the clearest images of a man in a ski mask standing at the machine.
“As you can see,” said Edelman, “there aren’t any obvious signs this man’s a smoker. No cigarette pack poking out of his pocket, et cetera. If I had a high-resolution color tape I could probably tell you whether his teeth were stained with nicotine. But not with an ATM tape. I searched for signs of ash on his clothing, but in black and white that’s extremely difficult to pick up. The only thing I found is this,” he said, zooming in on the right hand.
“Notice the thumb.” The zoom tightened until the screen filled with just the tip of the thumb. “See the little hole?
The glove is burned right through to the skin.”
“Like somebody who uses a cigarette lighter with his gloves on,” said Victoria.
“Exactly.”
“That seems a stretch,” said Schullman. “How do you know it’s a burn mark? Maybe he just takes his gloves off with his teeth and bit a hole through it.”
The zoom tightened further, as tightly as it could without reducing the grainy footage to a meaningless collection of black-and-white dots. “Notice the fibers around the hole,” said Edelman. “They’re not frayed, the way you’d expect them to be with biting and pulling.
They’re singed. It’s a burn mark.”
They stared at the image together, until both she and Schullman seemed convinced. “All right,” said Victoria.
“Is there anything else?”
“That’s it for now. I’ll call you if I get anything more.
So long.”
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“Thanks, Doctor,” she said as the line disconnected.
The screen turned a blank bright blue as she leaned back in her chair, thinking.
“You buy this burn-hole theory?” asked Schullman.
“If Edelman says it’s a burn mark, I believe it’s a burn mark.”
“But where does it take you?”
“Hard to say.
Somebody
was watching me at Copeland’s apartment, and whoever it was probably followed me there.”
“What’s your guess?”
“At first I thought it might have been the killer—a chain-smoker who stalks his victims and returns to the scene of the crime, curious about how the investigation is going.
Now it looks like it could have been the informant. We know he was here in San Francisco, since he used the ATM here. And if Edelman’s right, he’s probably a smoker. I just don’t know,” she said, sighing. “All I saw was an orange dot in the darkness. It could have been the informant, could have been the killer.”
“Seems to me you’re overlooking an obvious possibility,” said Schullman.
“What?”
“The informant
is
the killer.”
Victoria said nothing as she clicked the mouse and turned off the computer.
104
l
ate Friday evening Victoria cabbed it to the airport to catch the red-eye back to Washington, a five-hour nonstop that was supposed to leave San Francisco at 11:00 P.M. It was time to report to her supervisors. She’d spent most of the last six days working not with Schullman but with San Francisco Homicide, sharing everything she’d learned over the past three months and taking back little bits and pieces that might build on the collective knowledge of six—no, seven—different departments. One detective had compared it to earthquake seismology, how each murder was like another point on the Richter scale, increasing the intensity and complexity of the investigation exponentially rather than linearly. The analogy seemed to fit.
The victim’s roommate had added a new twist to the murder, making Timothy Copeland the first who didn’t live alone. Unfortunately, the killer had drugged him with an animal tranquilizer, and he didn’t recall a 105
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thing. His very existence, though, was enough of a departure from the previous murders to make them all attuned to the possibility of a copycat killer, especially since Mike Posten’s last article had blueprinted the way the killer had extracted the tongues.
Nearly a week had passed since she’d last spoken to Mike. She confirmed through her bank sources that he’d deposited a hundred thousand dollars in Ernest Gill’s account, right on schedule. She’d thought about calling him once or twice during the week, then thought better of it. Strange, but sparring with him was the thing she liked most about her job right now. But talk about ambi-valence: She knew their next conversation would probably mean another body.
She wondered whether trading jabs with Mike Posten was really all that much fun, or whether the rest of her job was simply too grim. Mutilated bodies, bloody crime scenes—experience had somewhat toughened her to such things. But something she’d never get used to was being a source of amusement for the boys in Homicide. Tonight had been the worst. Three detectives from SFPD had invited her along to happy hour, and she’d accepted just to kill time before heading to the airport. It was a noisy, smoky bar packed with the downtown professional crowd.
Her foursome was shoulder-to-shoulder in a Naugahyde-seated booth, two on each side. Victoria sipped chardonnay, but the three men were soon plastered on two-for-one shots of tequila.
“Hey, Santos,” slurred the oldest one. He was bald and so overweight that his jowls were hanging over his shirt collar. “What kinda name is that? Puerto Rican?”
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“Cuban.”
He licked the salt from his hand, belted back another shot, then sucked the lemon. His face cringed with a peculiar pleasure. “Cuban, huh? So, señorita,” he said in a bad Mexican accent, “you wanna roll my cee-gar?”
The three men laughed heartily.
You wanna wear your cajones around your ears?
she thought. But she just rolled her eyes and then checked her watch.
A wry smirk crept onto his face as he lit up a cigarette.
“You know, my ex-partner went to high school in Florida.
He told me all about you Cuban girls. Know what he told me?” He leaned across the table, as if to let her in on a secret. “Said third base is a snap, but that you never give up home plate. Have to save your virginity for marriage.”
Please.
She glared across the table, then gathered up her coat and purse. “Guess that’s my cue to leave.”
He grabbed her arm. “Hold on, sugar,” he said with a smirk. “Stay for a while. We promise to respect your virginity.” They burst out in laughter.
She sprung from the booth, then stopped and shot him a look. “Sergeant,” she said, “the only thing more disgust-ing than the thought of your puny dick inside my body is the fact that you three goons think this is even remotely funny.” She turned and left, ignoring a crack from one of them about how he loved it when she talked dirty.
She reached the airport three hours before her flight, but sitting alone in the Cloud Nine bar was far preferable to another thirty seconds with the Three 107
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Stooges. By 10:00 P.M. she’d consumed all the “cheez”
popcorn she could possibly stand, and she knew she’d strangle Ted Turner if she had to go “around the world in thirty minutes” even one more time with CNN. She was actually looking forward to that cramped airplane seat and the obligatory in-flight showing of last year’s major box office disappointment.
The ice cubes clinked in the glass as she finished off another vodka tonic, her second. Having logged more than a million miles with the FBI, flying was a fear Victoria had gradually learned to suppress.
Sleeping
in a metal tube some thirty thousand feet above ground was still another mountain to climb. She was exhausted, however, and with a few more ounces of Russian-ade, tonight might be the night.