Death Angel (21 page)

“I hate it that everyone’s talking about
me. Even you and Chris.”

He left the room, and Kate bit her lip
to keep from crying.
 

Why
didn’t Chris tell him about their meeting?

She knew she was being unfair; it was
her responsibility to communicate with Richard. She should have explained in
her note that she was meeting Chris. The mere fact that she hadn’t, added
clandestine overtones to a simple situation.
 

Of course Richard had taken offense.
Part of his anger stemmed from the surprise. The other part was too much
pressure and a hangover. Eventually he’d see that their intentions were good,
if misguided. The sad thing was that in their efforts to protect Richard, she
and Chris had ended up hurting him.
 

And now Leidecker probably thought she
was having an affair with Chris Mayerling.

“Get on the phone to Squint,” Carl shouted
over his shoulder to Bea as she left the conference room. “Tell him I want the
pictures from the crime scene
now
.”

Carl directed his anger at Squint. He
needed to give it a focus outside himself. He should have listened to Bea.
She’d warned him not to settle on Richard Warner as the prime suspect. He had
let his past experiences compromise his objectivity. It infuriated him that he
might be responsible in some way for the second murder.
 

He had called a meeting of the crisis
team when he got back from the Warners. When it concluded, everyone scattered
to continue his or her assigned tasks. Thanks to the rain, they didn’t have
much to work with.

Pushing back his chair, he pulled out
another package of gum and tore it open. He glared at the foil wrapped stick of
gum as if it were to blame for all his problems.

He couldn’t believe it was two in the
afternoon and they still hadn’t ID’d the jogger. The man wasn’t carrying any
identification. He wore a Velcro wallet around his wrist. Inside was a key.
Nothing else. They’d run the jogger’s prints but had come up empty. They’d
given the media a description of the man and his jogging clothes. For the
moment they were stymied.

Bob Jackson had been over the crime
scene with his team. A spot had been located along the edge of the open field
where the killer might have waited for the victim. From this vantage point, the
jogging trail around the field was visible as well as the other trail that cut
back into the woods. Broken branches and trampled grass suggested someone’s
presence, but the rain had erased footprints and other relevant clues.

Diego thrust his head inside the
conference room door. “I think we may have an ID on the dead guy. Woman is on
her way in. Pretty upset, but all I could get outa her is that she thinks it’s
her boyfriend. Sounds like the real thing.”

“Great!” Carl started to rise when
Squint appeared behind Diego’s shoulder. He waved the man in. “Go ahead, Diego.
Let me know as soon as you talk to her.”

Squint hurried into the room. “Sorry,
Chief. Trouble with the toner.”

Without a word, Carl pointed to a cork
panel on the wall, and went over to help the photographer attach the pictures.
Once they were hung up, Carl moved closer to examine each one.
 

“Is the M.E.’s report in?” Squint asked.

“Preliminary only. You know Jack
Mortimer. He won’t submit a final report until every tissue sample’s been tested
for botulism and black plague.”
 

Carl eyed the photographer, raising an
eyebrow in question. His eyes thoughtful, Squint retied the blond ponytail
behind his neck before he spoke.

“I need to see the report so I can check
something.” He shook his head at Carl. “Nothing to tell until after I’ve done
some lab work. It’s something I saw through the lens. Just a hunch.”

Carl felt a jolt of excitement at
Squint’s words. The photographer saw more through a lens than most people saw
with their eyes.
 

“Get the preliminary report from Bea.”

Squint left.
 

After examining the pictures several
times, Carl returned to the conference table. He swiveled his chair to face the
windows, tilted back and put his feet on the end of the table. On the edge of
his vision he could see the pictures of the body. He tried to imagine the
series of events that led up to the man’s death. In his mind he traced the
jogger’s path around the open field into the woods where the killer intercepted
him.

According to the M.E., the jogger was
moving when he encountered the killer. The attack was a surprise. There were no
defensive bruises on the arms to indicate the victim had raised them to ward
off the first blow.
 

If the murders were random killings, it
would be hell to find some sort of link between the two before the murderer
struck again. Dropping his feet to the floor, he picked up the folder marked
“prime.”

After Jennifer Warner was killed, a set
of criteria was established. Make and color of car, PF license plates,
acquaintance with child, time availability and other factors were considered in
order to narrow down the possible suspects. The names fed into the computers
were the people the Warners knew, and anyone who had been identified from the
pictures taken at the funeral home and the cemetery.
 

Anyone who fit one or more of the
criteria was placed on the “prime list” and ranked according to the number of
categories they matched. With the discovery of the second body, the people
would be contacted again and a new list compiled.

If the child and the jogger were
randomly selected, the chances of finding the killer would be a matter of luck.
In a community the size of Pickard, the prime list made a good starting point.
If the crime was local, paths of even random victims would cross.
 

According to the original list, the
three who ranked the highest were Richard Warner, Mike Kennedy, and Christian
Mayerling. Warner and Mayerling had no alibi for the time when Jenny was
killed.

Earlier in the day Carl had felt so
guilty about his focus on Warner that he had practically absolved him from any
involvement with his daughter’s death. Aware of his own prejudice, Carl had
turned Warner’s file over to Bea who, throughout the investigation into Jenny’s
death, had argued for the father’s innocence.

He turned to Christian Mayerling’s file.
According to Kate Warner, Richard’s boss had called her on his car phone a
little after three and had met her at Dave’s Place around 5:15. Interviewed
after the discovery of the jogger’s body, Mayerling said he was delayed on the
expressway when he stopped to change a young woman’s flat tire. He hadn’t taken
down the woman’s name or license number, so there was no way to verify his
story. Dave’s Place was about fifteen minutes from the forest preserve.

Even though Mike Kennedy appeared to
have an alibi for the time of Jenny’s death, he met enough of the criteria to
remain on the prime list. Most abuse and abduction of children were committed
by relatives and family friends. Since the doctor was a trusted figure, Jenny
would have gone with him without question. For that reason alone, Kennedy was
still on the list.

According to the doctor, he’d left the
hospital at twelve-thirty for a two o’clock tee off at the Pickard Country
Club. He’d had a drink and a sandwich in the bar with the rest of his foursome.
With rain threatening, the game was canceled. He left the country club about
1:30 and went to the Sears store in the Pickard Mall to pick up some drill
bits. He’d browsed through a bunch of the stores, bought a pair of shoes, then
decided to catch the new Clint Eastwood movie. When the movie got out at five,
he went home. No one had seen him, so for all practical purposes, Kennedy had
no real alibi. The shopping mall was about a ten-minute drive from the forest
preserve where the jogger had been killed.

Working down the list methodically, Carl
went through each of the interviews to see if anything struck him as unusual.
It was slow going. Too much information to absorb in one sitting. After an
hour, his eyes burned and he squeezed them shut, rubbing his hands over his
face. Shoving the papers back into the folder, he tossed them into the center
of the table.

Squint entered without knocking. He
brought in more pictures, and without a word began pinning them to the cork
board. Carl pushed back his chair and crossed the room, standing silently until
all the pictures were up.

“While I was taking pictures at the
crime scene, I listened to the comments of the M.E. and the other cops,” Squint
said. “Conventional wisdom has it that we might be dealing with random
killings. First the Warner kid and then the jogger. Some psycho who abducted
the kid and then maybe returned to the scene and killed again. Right?”

“Maybe,” Carl said. “Nothing’s set in
stone. We have to consider every possibility.”

“The M.E.’s report said the man was
struck once in the face and then several times across the back of the head. Any
of the blows with enough power to be fatal. That’s consistent with my photos.
But there’s something you need to see.”

Squint pointed to the first picture that
showed the jogger’s entire body lying across the path. With his index finger,
Squint tapped a spot beside the jogger’s right foot.

“These are the man’s glasses. They were
broken by the initial blow. Shards of glass were embedded in his face. The
glasses probably fell to the ground before he was hit on the back of the head.
Otherwise they would have been under the body. Okay so far?”

“Yes.”
 

Carl leaned closer, staring at the
enlargement of the section showing the glasses. His scalp tingled as he began
to get a glimmer of what Squint had seen. The photographer had been watching
for his reaction.
 

“You see it too?”

“I think so,” Carl said, studying the
pictures.

The glasses were mangled pieces of glass
and plastic. They were lying in an indentation on the path, pressed deeply into
the mud.
 

“The killer struck the glasses twice
while they were on the ground. In this picture you can see the two rounded
depressions in the mud. The shape is consistent with the M.E.’s report that the
weapon appears to have been the shape and size of a broom handle. My hunch is
that the breaking of the glasses is significant.”

After Squint left, Carl remained
standing in front of the photographs. He was in no rush to leap to any conclusions.
Even if Squint was right, it could be taken two ways. In the first case, the
smashing of the glasses could have resulted from an excess of adrenaline in the
killer.
 

The second possibility was more
intriguing. The killer could have smashed the glasses out of spite because the
jogger had seen something that he shouldn’t have seen.
 

Carl turned at the sound of the opening
door. Diego entered, his teeth flashing in a wolfish smile. He closed the door
then strode across the floor, eying the wall of pictures.

“We’ve got our boy, Chief. His name is
Walter Hepburn.”

“Hepburn. Hepburn.” Carl could feel the
hair on the back of his neck bristle as he repeated the name. “Walter Hepburn
was the name of the jogger who discovered Jennifer Warner’s body. That’s the
dead guy?”
 

“You got it,” Diego said, slapping a
newspaper down on the end of the table. “This is a picture of Hepburn that
appeared in the
Pickard
Advocate
right after the kid’s murder. Check the running suit. I think
it’s the same one he was wearing when he died.”

Carl eyed the picture. It was difficult
to tell if the man caught in the circle of reporters was the same person he’d
stared down at in the woods. The sweatsuit looked to be identical.

“Who ID’d him?”

“A Carmen Hudson. Hepburn’s girlfriend.”

“This puts a different spin on things,”
Carl said. “Take a team to his place and see what you can find. Can we keep the
lid on this for a while?”

“I think so. I’ve got Miss Hudson with
Bea who’s going to take a statement, and try to get as much background as she
can on Hepburn.”

“Okay, get over to Hepburn’s before the
media muddies the water.”

After Diego left, Carl turned back to
the pictures of the body. It was too much of a coincidence that the same man
who discovered the first victim should become the second victim. Common sense
told him it was impossible.

He stared at the blowup of the smashed
glasses, considering various scenarios. If Walter Hepburn had seen Jennifer
Warner’s murderer, why hadn’t he said anything? His statement had been that
he’d lost his glasses and found the girl’s body when he was searching. Perhaps
he didn’t realize until later that he’d seen the murderer or the murderer’s car
or something else that might identify the killer.

If that was the case, and Hepburn was
killed because he posed a threat to the killer, how did the murderer know?