Death Notice (21 page)

With that, the press conference was over, although its end didn’t deter the reporters. Trying to squeeze out a few last drops of information, they crushed behind Kat as she turned away from them. She ignored them and hurried toward the station, where Lou and Carl waited by the door, holding it open so she could make a quick escape.

Once inside, she started designating tasks. “Lou, you should start manning the phones. I have a feeling those tips I asked for will be coming in any second now.”

As if on cue, the phone on Lou’s desk rang. She answered it, raised an index finger and whispered to Kat, “Tip number one.”

Kat next turned to Carl. “Track down Lucas Hatcher for me. Find out where he was last night. But don’t ask him. Ask his mother. She turned him in once accidentally. Maybe she’ll do it a second time.”

“Sure thing, Chief.”

Kat reached her office and found Nick Donnelly and Cassie Lieberfarb waiting inside. In each of Nick’s hands was a steaming cup of Big Joe’s coffee.

“Good to see you again, Chief,” he said. “You want leaded or unleaded?”

“Leaded.” Kat grabbed the cup Nick held out for her. “Better yet, high-octane.”

A pang of guilt hung in Nick’s chest as he watched Kat try to fend off her exhaustion with caffeine. This was his fault. He had seen the stitches on George Winnick. He knew they weren’t the work of the Betsy Ross Killer. Yet he and everyone else had been so eager to close the case. So Nick bought Ken Miller’s
confession, despite what his gut had told him. Knowing he had done so now made his gut queasy.

“I’m sorry,” he said. “I was wrong.”

“We all were wrong,” Cassie added. “The profile was right. We just didn’t trust it enough.”

Kat emptied the coffee cup, swishing the last drops around in her mouth. Upon swallowing, she said, “First, don’t apologize anymore. Second, since the profile is still right, tell me what kind of person we’re looking for. Because there’s a lot that I don’t understand.”

“Such as?”

“Why now? George was killed in March. Why wait until the Fourth of July to kill Troy?”

“There are two types of serial killers,” Nick said, “each with their own distinct traits. Disorganized, asocial offenders and organized, nonsocial offenders.”

“What’s the difference?”

Nick let Cassie take over. Understanding killers was her specialty. Catching them was his.

“Disorganized, asocial offenders generally have IQs below ninety and avoid most human contact,” she said. “They have trouble fighting their urges, sometimes killing impetuously with no attempt to cover their tracks. When finished with their crimes, they are capable of blocking out the experience entirely.”

“I’m guessing that’s not the kind of killer we’re looking for,” Kat said.

Cassie shook her head. “He’s an organized one. They’re the exact opposite. Highly intelligent, they’re equally as cunning. And they love to plan. Sometimes, plotting the hunt is more thrilling than the hunt itself.”

“It excites him,” Nick said. “Thinking about killing someone, planning out exactly how to do it. It’s foreplay to him. So that explains the time gap between kills.”

Her first question answered, Kat asked another. “What about the abductions? We know George was taken from his barn. And we know Troy was taken from the locker room. But they weren’t killed there and they weren’t found there.”

It was another trait of the organized killer. They favored abduction over killing on the spot. With them, it was a given that where a victim was found wasn’t the same place as where he was killed.

When Cassie explained this, Kat said, “And that begs the question, where were they killed? And how did they get there?”

“Last night, Rudy found some transfer on the coffin from the lake,” Nick replied. “It was a flower petal. Off a carnation, to be precise. Once pink, now wilted.”

“Where does he think it came from?”

“He has two guesses. One is that it was floating in the lake and stuck to the coffin. The other is—”

Kat could guess the rest. “The murder site.”

“Exactly,” Nick said. “So I’m thinking a basement of some kind. Perhaps a greenhouse or an arboretum.”

“As for transporting the body, we still stand by the pickup truck theory,” Cassie said. “It’s the most logical way for him to transport the bodies and coffins.”

“You keep referring to the killer as he. Do you think it could be a woman? Remember, the first fax number was registered to someone named Meg Parrier.”

While Nick had no idea how Miss Parrier was involved, he knew she wasn’t the one doing the killing.

“The killer is a man,” he said. “I’m sure of that.”

Cassie agreed. “Female serial killers are usually caregivers or prostitutes or, in the case of some of the Manson clan, brainwashed. They mostly use guns or poison, leaving the knives, rope, and mutilation to the big boys.”

“Fair enough. But how do you explain this?” Kat moved
to her desk, where another portable fax machine sat. “Henry Goll found it this morning.”

Nick eyed the machine. It was just like the first one Henry had brought in, gleaming and new.

“Perhaps the killer is gloating,” Cassie suggested. “He’s showing that he’s smarter than us. It’s the same reason he’s faxing the death notices in the first place. Organized killers love their mind games. It’s why they send letters to newspapers. It’s why they leave cryptic clues behind. The theory being that they subconsciously want to get caught.”

“And,” Nick added, “our job is make sure that happens. So this fax machine needs to go to Rudy.”

Cassie volunteered. “I’ll take it to him.”

That settled, Nick turned to Kat. “Looks like you’re stuck with me. What’s next on the agenda?”

“We need to pay a visit to someone named Caleb Fisher.”

“Who’s he?”

“The man who reported seeing the coffin in Lake Squall,” Kat said, elbowing Nick in the ribs as they left the office. “You can drive.”

Nick drove fast, with the windows down and the music playing loud. It was Creedence Clearwater Revival. A little “Bad Moon Rising.” A little “Fortunate Son.” Even a little “Proud Mary,” although he preferred the Ike and Tina version.

“I’ve been thinking a lot about the victims,” Kat said, trying to be heard over the wind and the music. “Why Troy? And why
George? There’s no connection other than the fact that Troy worked on the farm for one lousy summer.”

“There’s a connection,” Nick said. “Even if we can’t see it. Organized serial killers don’t do things without a reason. There’s a meaning behind the pennies over the eyes. A meaning behind the stitches and the embalming and the coffin. Just as there’s a reason why George Winnick was his first victim and Troy Gunzelman was his second.”

“So that means the killer knew both of them.”

“Not necessarily. He could have just spotted them on the street.”

Kat turned down the music. “Are you serious? He might have seen them walking around town and decided they were the ones who were going to die?”

Nick nodded. “It really could have been that simple.”

And that scary. A killer could pass a hundred people on the street and not look twice. Then he could see one person that stands out, for reasons sometimes unknown even to him. And that’s the person he’s compelled to kill.

“But why?” she asked.

“It depends on the killer and the psychosis. Some only target girls who wear pink. Or little boys in Mickey Mouse T-shirts. Or redheads. Or blondes.”

Or brunettes. He couldn’t forget about that.

“But he always has to see them, right? He wouldn’t pick out someone sight unseen?”

“Never,” Nick said. “There always has to be that visual connection first. Have you ever heard of Floyd Beem?”

Kat told him she hadn’t.

“They called him the Drugstore Killer. He was a traveling salesman on a route through the Midwest. At each town he stopped in, he’d go to the local drugstore. If the salesclerk
was a man or an older woman, he’d leave them alone. If it was a young woman with brown hair, he’d sit in his car and wait until they got off work.”

He didn’t know why he was telling her this. It didn’t have anything to do with the Perry Hollow murders. But, he knew, it had everything to do with him and what made him tick. So he kept talking, trying not to let a bitter edge seep into his voice.

“He’d then jump them and strangle them. After that, he threw them in his trunk and later left them on the side of the road. He killed six women that way during the course of two years.”

“And that’s all it took?” Kat asked. “Brown hair?”

“That’s all. He killed them because they had brown hair and maybe because they were nice to the bastard.”

He stopped talking, but it was too late. His anger was unmistakable. He saw Kat glance his way, noticing his clenched jaw, his fiery eyes. She knew this was personal.

“I’m hoping he was caught,” she said quietly.

“He was.”

“How?”

“The easy way. One of the drugstore managers saw the last clerk Floyd killed get into his car. He told the police, who caught him red-handed. He then confessed to the other crimes. Except one. That was never solved.”

He was relieved to see the lake slide into view. It meant a change of subject, which he welcomed.

“Turn right,” Kat said. “Onto Squall Lane.”

Nick turned onto a dirt road. Rising to their left was a hillside studded with old-growth trees. To their right was a smattering of lodgelike homes on sprawling parcels of land. All of them boasted winding driveways and private docks that jutted out into the lake.

Caleb Fisher’s house sat large and heavy amid a cluster of
pines and oaks. Three white-tailed deer nibbled the foliage next to the driveway. They bolted at the sound of the car, sprinting away so fast Nick had to slam on the brakes to avoid clipping them. He watched them spring across the road and vanish into the woods.

“That’s something I don’t see very often.”

“Welcome to rural Pennsylvania,” Kat said. “There are so many deer here I’m surprised they don’t have voting rights.”

Not wanting to hit a potential straggler, Nick pulled slowly into the driveway and parked next to a large red pickup truck. As he shut off the engine, someone emerged from the house to greet them. A grizzly bear of a man, he wore jeans and a gray T-shirt that strained to contain his barrel chest. A wild beard the same sandy color as his curly hair obscured his chin.

“Can I help you?” he asked.

His large hands were closed into fists as he approached the car. Nick wasn’t sure, but it looked like the man was carrying a large marble in each of them. Strange, but not completely unheard of.

“Are you Caleb Fisher?” Kat asked as she got out of the car.

The man took a quick look at her uniform. “Is this about the coffin in the water?”

“It is,” she said. “Mind if we ask you a few questions?”

“Sure. Come on in.”

Caleb Fisher gestured to the house, opening his hands in the process. When Nick saw what was in them, he did a double take. Mr. Fisher wasn’t carrying marbles.

Instead, nestled in each palm, was an eye.

Kat saw the eyes as soon as Nick did. And since he also had two eyes in his head, Caleb Fisher noticed their reactions.

“It’s not what you think,” he said, smiling cryptically. “They’re made of glass.”

One of them had to ask, so Kat did the honors. “What are you doing with them?”

“Come on in, and you’ll see.”

He led them across the lawn to the front door. When he opened it, a trio of beagles burst outside. They first made a beeline to Kat, running circles around her legs. When they lost interest in her, they moved on to Nick, who knelt to pet them.

“Don’t mind them,” Caleb said. “They love visitors, which makes them lousy watchdogs. An intruder would more likely be licked to death than attacked.”

He whistled and all three beagles trotted back inside. Kat and Nick followed.

Stepping inside, Kat saw that Caleb Fisher’s house could only be described as a hunting lodge designed by Frank Lloyd Wright. The décor left a lot to be desired. The furniture—plump chairs and sofas covered by quilts—was rustically threadbare. Hanging from the walls were the heads of practically every wild animal native to the continental United States. Several deer. An elk. A bear. All of them stuffed and thrown onto the wall like diplomas in a doctor’s office.