JF Gonzalez - Fetish.wps (15 page)

For a moment she felt tongue-tied, as if she had nothing to say and was facing a long night that would only end in disaster. What should she say to get conversation going?

What could she do to make herself sound like she wasn't such a fumbling idiot?

Best of all, how could she make it appear that she was attracted to Daryl without coming off like a slutty tramp?

Thankfully there was an easy answer to the third question. The twinkle in Daryl's eye, the smile on his face, the way he paid attention to her every word, told her that Daryl was interested in her. This put Rachael at ease. From there, conversation went easy.

They began dinner conversation with Daryl telling Rachael the latest developments in the Butcher case. “...so after six hours of interrogation it was obvious to me that George Van Patten wasn't the Butcher. We did a thorough check on the guy.

Checked his house, his car, place of employment. Hell, we even checked his parent's house. He isn't the killer, even though he seemed like a very likely suspect. You would think that anybody capable of ... well,
doing
what he liked to have these prostitutes do for him would surely be capable of some of the things the killer did to his victims. But when we showed George morgue photos of the Butcher's victims he actually became visibly ill."

Rachael bristled. “Hell, I think even
I'd
become visibly ill at the sight of
those
photos."

“Well, trust me, they're not pretty. And George's visible illness at the sight of them, and the opinion of our police psychologist who observed the interrogation, assured me that George isn't the Butcher."

“Anything new come up since you've ruled him out?” Rachael asked, sipping a glass of wine.

Daryl shrugged. “Not much.” He sipped at his wine and picked up a piece of bread from the basket that had been placed at their table. He broke the bread in half before taking a bite. “We have a special hot line set up with four detectives checking out the tips that come from calls. Most of the calls coming in are from a paranoid public.

Neighbors suspecting neighbors, women suspecting their husbands, that sort of thing.

People are also suddenly finding bones all over the city."

Rachael perked up. “Bones?"

“Yeah, bones,” Daryl said, a slight grin cracking his rugged features. “Damnedest thing. People will call and say that they've found a pile of bones in a field or in a parking lot or garbage dumpster and claim that they're human, usually coming up with some story about suspicious activity being seen in the area shortly before the bones turned up. In every case the bones turn out to be the remains of animals—usually chicken bones. A hobo's meal or something. In one case we found the bones of what turned out to be a St.

Bernard. In another, a Chimpanzee."

“A Chimp?” Rachael exclaimed.

“Yeah. Don't ask me how, or why, but it's true."

“What about your trip back to Indiana?” Rachael said.

“Ah yes, that,” Daryl said. “That has proved most interesting.” His dialogue was interrupted by the arrival of the waiter.

They ordered their meals—chicken marsala over pasta for Daryl, vegetarian lasagna for Rachael. When the waiter left Daryl took another bite of bread and resumed.

“That's the strangest thing about this case, the four murders that don't exactly fit the profile we have."

“And what's that?"

“Here we have seven people, nine if you count that black kid who was killed in

‘89, and the Riverside county victim, and all of them but the Riverside victim and the still unidentified number six have gang ties. They're all decapitated, and in some cases dismembered. Furthermore, all of them had pretty much resided within a ten or fifteen mile square area of each other. All of them showed some signs of being sexually violated post mortem—sorry, I didn't mean to get so graphic."

“No problem,” Rachael said. At the mention of
sexually violated
she had spilled wine in her lap. She grabbed a cloth napkin and dabbed at the front of her blouse and slacks, chastising herself silently for being so clumsy. Thank God the slacks were dark.

“I'm just naturally clumsy."

Daryl smiled. It was enough to melt the anxiety right out of her. “The basic thing is that all eight murders within the last two years are related. There's also a possibility that our unknown killer may have actually started this series back in ‘89 with the murder of our lone black victim. With me so far?"

“Yep,” Rachael said. She dabbed at the last of the wine on her blouse, folded the napkin up and replaced it on the table. She smiled at Daryl to show him that everything was all right.

“The FBI has linked the Riverside victim killed in June to our man, as well as three unsolved murders in South Bend, Indiana. These killings occurred in 1985, maybe 1984. A hiker found the first body, partially buried beneath some bushes in a wooded area about one hundred yards from the main road. The victim was male, naked and decapitated. He had been dead for about a month. A search was launched for the head but guess what they found instead?"

“Another body?"

Daryl shook his head. “A head, but not the head of their victim. What they found was the head of a pretty blonde girl who had gone missing three days before. She had been a prostitute. She had been dead about three days. They never have found her body, or the head of the first victim."

“Did they identify the first victim?” Rachael asked, breaking off a piece of bread and taking a bite.

“He turned out to be a male hustler. Can't remember his name now, but his story was familiar. Was kicked out of his home when he was a teenager because he told his parents he was gay. He tried making a living at legitimate jobs for awhile, but dipped into male prostitution. Got involved with drugs. He had a minor police record. Nothing much else distinguished him from other murder victims like him who often fall prey to serial killers. The homeless and the destitute, as well as prostitutes, are always a serial killer's favorite victims."

“I know,” Rachael said, slowly chewing her bread. “It's so sad."

“Six months later another body was found,” Daryl continued. He finished his wine and set the glass down on the table. “This was found by some Girl Scouts who were scouring the area on a field trip. The remains were found about half a mile from where the first two victims were found."

“My God, Girl Scouts found it?” Rachael was horrified; she had once been a Girl Scout, and the thought that a pack of them on an innocent afternoon of botany studies or some such could come across such a gruesome find was disturbing.

Daryl nodded grimly. “Unfortunately, yes. Fortunately for them though, the victim was already reduced to bones, which was all they found. Almost the complete skeleton, which was lying in scattered pieces along a fifty-yard area, some partially buried. A group of detectives aided by park rangers spent the next two weeks sifting through the field to find evidence and clues. They never did recover the skull."

“And it was the work of the same killer?” Rachael asked.

“That seems to be the opinion of the coroner,” Daryl said. “According to the South Bend medical examiner's findings, all three victims had been decapitated with crude efficiency by somebody who had a knowledge of anatomy. Although it was hard to tell how the last victim had died, the first two victims were killed the same way. And this is the strange part about this whole case."

“Which is...?"

Daryl poured himself another glass of wine from the carafe. “The woman was strangled to death—lack of oxygen in the blood and brain cells pointed to that, as well as slight bruising on the remaining neck area and lower chin. The first victim found had been stabbed to death."

Rachael saw the connection right away. “They didn't die as a result of decapitation as the victims here had."

“Exactly!"

“But the FBI still thinks they're connected?"

“They have a reason to.” Daryl took a sip of wine. “Whenever a crime like a murder occurs that could possibly be a serial killing, the FBI puts the information down in the VICAP computer database. You know what the acronym VICAP stands for?"

Rachael shook her head.

“Violent Criminal Apprehension Program,” Daryl said. “It's a large database that police departments all over the country enter data into when they input information about violent crimes committed in their cities. This program matches up certain ordinarily undetected similarities between different crimes. They note every single characteristic about the murder: who the victim was, what kind of sociological background they came from, their age and gender, physical appearance, that sort of thing. They note how the victim was killed, what kind of weapon the killer used, whether the victim was raped or sexually mutilated before death or after, whether the victim was tortured, and if so, how and with what instruments ... if this is too much for you, please—"

“No, no, it's okay,” Rachael said. She smiled, raising her glass of wine to her lips.

“I'm fine. This is interesting.” And it was. Morbid maybe, but she could handle morbid.

She'd handled it before hundreds of times during her tenure as a journalist. Daryl was just trying to be a gentleman.

Daryl continued, slowly, as if unsure of whether to remain on such a grisly subject. “They note all this stuff, as well as other things that may seem minor. Like whether the victim was killed indoors or at the spot they were found. They note the spot the victim was discovered in. Many serial killers dump their victims in certain locations after killing them, and some stick to a definite pattern. So they note the patterns and enter all this in the VICAP's computers. And when another murder gets entered into the computer with some of the same characteristics as another, the program flags it. The Indiana murders were all flagged for several reasons. One, the beheading of all the victims. Two, the evidence that the same type of weapon was used in the decapitations.

Three, the dumping site the victims were left in, and four, the class of victims the FBI characterized the victims as, being the lower strata—prostitutes and the homeless—two of which lived within the same general vicinity of each other. The unidentified victim was placed in that category as well, being that he was most likely homeless."

“What makes the FBI think these murders are related to what we have going out here?"

“Promise not to write about this in the paper?"

“Cross my heart.” Rachael traced an X over her chest and leaned forward over the table, listening eagerly.

Daryl held his fingers up, counting the reasons off. “The decapitations are one, as well as the social status of the victims. Those are the most obvious choices. The choice of murder weapon is another. The fact that the Indiana killer murdered his victims elsewhere and dumped them in a wooded area outside the city limits is another strong factor."

“But our killer isn't doing that,” Rachael protested. “He's disposing them in burlap bags and placing them in alleys, and leaving them in gullies."

“Which the South Bend killer would have done if South Bend was the same geographical size as Los Angeles,” Daryl said, sipping his wine. “Think about it. L.A.'s a big place. If our killer disposed his victims in a wooded area outside the city limits as the South Bend killer had, he would have to drive at least two hours to reach it."

“Okay, I can buy that,” Rachael said. She finished her wine and reached for the carafe to pour herself a second glass. “But why the long gap between killings? Surely the FBI would have been able to find other killings between ‘85 and ‘94 if other murders had been committed that fit the same profile."

“Correct,” Daryl said. “Only none have been found. There was a series of decapitation murders in Texas in the late eighties, but they don't fit the profile at all. The next time our killer makes another appearance with the same MO is the murder of Leroy Brown, the black victim killed in ‘89. The one after that was the victim from ‘94, the young woman from the East LA area, that seemed to be the beginning of his current spree here in Los Angeles."

Rachael took a sip of her wine, her mind whirring with a thousand thoughts. “I've read that serial killers often start out slowly, sometimes retreating into their ... oh, what do you call it? ... their self-deluded world of fantasy for years after their first killing, reliving it over and over in their minds. Sometimes they try to battle with the urges that makes them kill, and it's only when these urges grow larger that they finally succumb to them again. When they finally get on a roll and the police catch on that they've dealing with a serial killer, he's already been killing longer than they've thought."

“Exactly,” Daryl said, his eyes fixing on hers with a look that she thought was one of admiration. “Many times the authorities don't find out about the earlier murders until after the killer has been caught and he's confessed to them. And even with our latest techniques, we're still unsure of when a serial killer begins to murder people. The FBI estimates that there are at least two serial killers operating in every major city in this country today. Think about that; that's a lot of mayhem. A lot of bloodshed."

Rachael sipped at her wine. It was a very scary thought. Frightening.

“A perfect example of this is the Green River case in Seattle,” Daryl said, picking at another piece of bread. “I have a friend who worked for the Seattle PD when that case was all the rage. He told me that during the FBI's preliminary investigation into all murders that resembled those of the Green River killer, they came up with something like sixty-three unsolved murders between 1973 and 1982. These murders resembled the MO

of the Green River killer. Sixty-three! The Green River killer case file officially begins with murder victims being killed in the summer of ‘82—at least that's when Seattle PD

began making connections between all the murdered prostitutes showing up around the city. Think about that—if the FBI was correct in these findings, and if we assume that most serial killers begin killing well before the police even know they have one on their hands, this maniac could have already been killing for almost a decade before anyone even caught wind of him."