JF Gonzalez - Fetish.wps (25 page)

“Remember when Rosie Williams was found how some of your pals here thought she wasn't part of the series?” Bernie Haskins continued, an inflection of contempt in his voice at his mention of the LAPD. “You and I were smarter than that. We knew this guy had killed her. And remember our talk that night at dinner?"

“Right,” Daryl was nodding now. They had gone out to eat at a Chili's Bar and Grill and had talked all night about the recent discovery. “You thought that our man had hung on to Rosie for as long as he could and that disposing her signaled that he was tiring of her and getting ready for another. In essence, he was going through the cycle again, reaching the low point of his psychosis and gearing up for the high point."

“Right.” That night they had talked about the “cooling off” periods exhibited by serial killers when they were calm and in control after a kill, using the high from the murder and the memories preserved from it to live it over and over, sometimes helped by something personal they had taken from the victim. In this case, the actual victim. They had also talked about the “upswing,” when the killer started warming up for the next kill, getting antsy, anxious to begin anew. It was much like a junkie yearning for his next fix.

“I told you, ‘you watch,'” Bernie said, jabbing a finger at Daryl behind the desk.

“'He just dumped this one and he's obviously had her for a while. Maybe he wanted a little variety with this one, found her in the
LA XPress
, called her up and she came over.

Women like her are easy prey for predators like our guy. So he kills her. Jacks off to her dismembered corpse, gets his jollies off, whatever. Something about her appeals to him very strongly and he decides to keep this one to relive the fantasy over and over again.

Why, I have no fucking idea. Maybe she gives head just as good dead as she did when she was alive. And then a few months later he kills Charley Ramirez. Only he doesn't hang onto him for no more than a day or two. He does that with all the men he's killed with the exception of that first one—what's his name?"

“Lorenzo Cardenia,” Daryl said.

“Right,” Bernie Haskins said. “He kept the body of the Lady of the Ocean for three months, and she was most likely the first kill that he felt very comfortable with.

Then he kills Lorenzo and keeps him for a few weeks. Shortly before he dumps Lorenzo, he bags Louis Hernandez. He dumps Louis and Lorenzo at the same time. Why he didn't keep Louis around longer, I don't know. Louis was a good looking kid."

Daryl nodded. Louis’ mug shots had showed an incredibly handsome Latino, one that certainly would cause many female hearts to swoon.

“Then in January he kills Gloria Aldrette,” Bernie continued. “And while he didn't keep her for as long as the Lady of the Ocean, he dismembered her in the exact same manner. Then he kills Javier Perez and dumps him a day later, then he kills that other still-unidentified man that was found in the San Gabriel Mountains. Then there is the remains of Phillip Parker, who was found decapitated in that boxcar in Riverside in June of last year. All the men up to this time, I might add, have only been decapitated, not dismembered. Two of them were further emasculated."

“Then he kills Rosie,” Daryl said, his mind tracking down the murder series.

“Right,” Bernie said, emphasizing the point by slapping his hand against the back of the chair lightly. “He kills Rosie Williams and instead of dumping her a day later like he's done since Gloria Aldrette, he keeps her. Then he gets a taste for male flesh and kills Charley Ramirez. But the point is this: around February he starts growing a little tired of her, starts to yearn for something more familiar. Up till now, all his victims have been local Hispanics, with the exception of our still-unidentified San Gabriel man who was most likely Caucasian, and Rosie, and quite possibly the black victim from ‘89. Anyway, he plucks this Chrissy girl off the street. That's a little more to his taste. It satiates him enough so that he's able to relive that fantasy with Rosie, who is probably by now a bag of bones and putrefying flesh."

Daryl made a face. Picturing how it was for this guy was only too revolting.

“He's been slowing down because he's had Rosie to help him re-live the fantasy for awhile. But now she's gone, no use to him anymore. He dumps her remains, and begins working on planning his next. He hasn't had a man in nine months, at least as far as we can tell. So he kills this guy a few nights ago."

Daryl was nodding to Bernie's analysis and now he had a thing to add himself.

“And because he hasn't had a man in almost nine months, and hasn't made a kill in almost five months, he's excited. The lust is too strong for him. He can't control himself, he is immersed in the lust of his perversity."

Bernie was nodding, getting into it. “Yeah."

“He's so into this sick, twisted fantasy of his that it boils over,” Daryl said, regarding Bernie, waiting for the reaction. “And this time he gives in to the impulse.

After decapitating this victim, he not only disembowels him and removes all his internal organs, but he cuts through the victim's rib cage with one single, decisive stroke and rips out the victim's heart with his bare hands."

Bernie's mouth dropped open, his eyes wide with shock. “Jesus Christ,” he whispered, the color draining from his face. “Are you fucking serious?"

Daryl nodded. His features were grim. “I'm not joking. He gutted that man before he bisected the torso. I took a look inside both bags when I got there, and my initial thought was one of puzzlement—they really struck me as odd. I didn't give it much thought for the first few hours, since we were trying to find the rest of the victim and whatever clues we could find. But then as I drove over to the coroner's office behind the rescue unit that was transporting the remains and walked in with the ME as he carried both pieces in a basket it started to hit me. The coroner took both pieces of the torso out of the bags and gave them to Steve for us to deliver to the lab for analysis, but first he gave both pieces a quick look-over. And that's when we noticed it. The Butcher had gutted him, slit him open from about here,” he motioned to just slightly above his groin,

“to about here,” and he traced his fingers up his stomach and chest ending at the breastbone. “Dr. Ulrich was just beside himself. This was the third Torso victim he had personally worked on, but he had read enough of the previous six from his predecessor that he was probably expecting the same old same old.” In November 1996, Dr. Samuel Ulrich had been elected to the office of Los Angeles County Coroner, defeating Dr.

Albert Howison by a narrow margin.

“He actually
disemboweled
him?” Bernie asked. His face had a hollow, shocked look. He looked the way people look when something weird happens, like witnessing a dog speak French or an infant recite Shakespeare.

“Dr. Ulrich is ninety-nine percent sure,” Daryl said. “He didn't have time right then to do a complete autopsy. But he did a preliminary check and found that he had been pretty thoroughly gutted. Stomach, intestines, gall bladder, spleen, all that shit."

“And the heart?” Bernie asked.

“Ripped right out. Dr. Ulrich said that judging from the wounds, it looks like the Butcher disemboweled him from the bottom up.” Again, Daryl traced his finger from his groin to slightly below his sternum. “After he cleared his insides out he stabbed him in the chest and cut downward.” He made as if he was stabbing himself, his fist tracing from his breastbone down to his sternum. “He cut right through the ribs and the breastbone and just reached in and ripped the heart out. He was pretty precise, too."

“Like he knew what the hell he was doing."

Daryl nodded. “Yeah."

They were silent for a moment, both of them staring at each other. Daryl knew what Bernie was thinking. This act of mutilation was a departure from the norm for the Butcher. Up until now he had shown restraint in mad mutilations of this type, preferring instead to be neat and articulate in his carving of his victims. Disemboweling suggested that their killer was slipping further over the edge of insanity. A sexual sadist who disemboweled his victim was a very sick individual indeed.

Bernie finally broke the silence. “Has Peter Murphy or the Chief had anything to say yet?"

“Nothing yet,” Daryl said. “I imagine both are making statements to the press tonight. I was waiting for you to get back into town to see how you wanted to handle it."

“We need to have a meeting,” Bernie said. He stood up and put the chair back behind the desk in front of Daryl's where he had found it. “All Butcher Task Force members. We need to regroup and brainstorm on how we're going to handle this one. Has all this information been entered into the computers?"

“It's being done now."

“Good. I'll call the FBI tomorrow and speak with Rexer. He might have some insights."

“Bernie?"

“Yes?"

“It's going to get worse."

“Christ, Daryl, don't say that. We'll get him. The psychologists back in Virginia are going to have a field day with this new information. It should take only a day or two for them to get a handle on where his mind is at now and it might give us something new to go on."

“No, I don't mean the case itself,” Daryl said. “I mean the way the killings are affecting the community."

Bernie paused. “Is there trouble?"

The pit of unease that had settled in his stomach earlier that afternoon now blossomed. “Some. The local news stations had stories about this latest killing all over the airwaves within an hour of the discovery of the body. We hadn't even ID'd it yet as a Butcher killing, and the news stations were already broadcasting that the latest Butcher victim had been found and that it looked like another gang member. As you can imagine, these remains were found in gang territory—Tortilla Flats, this time—and the response was predictable. As of now there is a tactical alert in all of Los Angeles County and officers in riot gear have been dispatched to the East Los Angeles area."

“Jesus!"

“There've been a few skirmishes,” Daryl said. “Nothing major. A few people have been arrested for disturbing the peace, resisting arrest, that sort of thing. The officers are mainly in there to calm down the public and keep people from getting out of hand."

“I see what you mean though,” Bernie said, stroking his chin in thought. “It could get worse. Dammit, we need to catch this guy."

“I know,” Daryl said. He felt the need to catch the Butcher grow stronger. It felt like a personal vendetta now. He felt that he had a responsibility to catch the Butcher. It weighed on him heavily, more so than a few days ago when he was just starting to put everything regarding his relationship with Rachael into perspective. It especially weighed on him more since his talk with Dickinson. As of today, Dickinson had told him that the DA was investigating whether they should press charges against Daryl and Steve.

Nothing was official yet, and Dickinson had reluctantly allowed Daryl to remain on the case. And then this latest victim turns up.

He looked over at Daryl. Both men were thinking the same thing:
if we don't get a
break in this case soon and this psycho continues cutting up his chosen prey, we are
going to have a full-on war in Los Angeles.

One hundred thousand gang members in Los Angeles alone.

Twenty-five thousand police officers. Another five to ten thousand SWAT Team members.

There was the National Guard, maybe the local Marines, which might push the numbers up past fifty thousand. But after that, what then?

The tensions were reaching boiling points. Gang members weren't sophisticated enough to wage a rampage against civilized society, were they? But get the emotions boiling, get the people that live in those areas worked up enough, and they would have more than they could handle. It would be worse than the LA riots of five years before.

God help them if that happened.

Chapter 15

July 23, 1997, 6:00 p.m.

Excerpts from the Channel 2, 4, and 7 News at 6:00 p.m:

“I am standing in a neighborhood bordering Echo Park and Boyle Heights,” the pretty young Asian woman was broadcasting as the late afternoon sun cast rays of gold from behind the frayed houses behind her. “This is a neighborhood that has seen much fear and unrest in the past few weeks. All at the hands of a faceless serial killer that police are calling the Eastside Butcher."

A pre-taped segment appeared showing a pan of the gully in Echo Park where the first two victims were found. Yellow police tape and police officers could be seen at the bottom of the gully. “Ever since the discovery of two murdered gang members in September of 1995, residents have been up in arms over the police reaction to the killings, which occur randomly and without warning."

Channel Four was showing a close up of a young Hispanic man, the subject of a news interview in another neighborhood that could have been an exact carbon copy of the rival channel. The young man was gesturing with his hands as he spoke. “This guy that is doing this, killing all the homeboys and homegirls, the cops don't care about finding him.

Because this guy is only killing Mexicans and stuff, they don't care. If he was killing white people he would have been caught by now."

A voice-over as a male newscaster feeds into the broadcast. “This is the most common reaction when the residents are asked to describe their feelings about the serial killings that have plagued this area for almost two years. While most of the gang members we spoke to insisted that the killings were the work of rival gangs, we spoke to one young gang member who had a different opinion. He would only go on camera with his face obscured by a bandana."

The camera cut to a young Hispanic gang member crouching in an alley. Behind him, the wall was stained with graffiti. The gang member was wearing baggy shorts, black shoes, and a white baggy t-shirt. He had a blue bandana pulled over his mouth and nose like a bandit from the old west. His face was conveniently blurred for the broadcast.

“It ain't a gang thing,” he said, his voice muffled. “At least I don't think so. The homey's that are sayin’ it's a rival gang doin’ it are like, jumping to conclusions. Because it's different gangs that are getting killed, you know what I'm saying?"