Sudden Death (6 page)

CHAPTER

NINE

Wednesday morning was a whirlwind—Megan barely had time to pack an overnight bag and arrange for her neighbor Jesse to take care of Mouse—and by three p.m. central time, Megan landed in Austin, Texas. Hans had called for a liaison to meet them from the FBI’s Austin field office. Renny Davis was a tall, thin man with a complexion and sharp features that suggested part Native American heritage.

“Thanks for picking us up,” Hans said after introductions.

“My pleasure,” Davis said. “I’ve heard great things about you. I’m signed up for one of your classes in the fall—advanced victimology—as part of ERT training.”

“I look forward to seeing you in class,” Hans said.

They made small talk as they walked to Davis’s car. As the Austin agent drove, Megan asked, “Have you been involved with the Johnson homicide from the beginning?”

“Nope,” Davis said. “No need to be. I didn’t even know about it, other than a cursory news program, until headquarters issued the hot sheet.”

Megan looked at her notes. “That was issued on Friday. Three days before Price was killed. Vegas ran the M.O. and up popped Johnson, so they contacted their local FBI office about a killer crossing state lines. That was . . . last Wednesday.”

“I contacted José when I got the sheet. He’s the detective in charge, I’ve worked with him before. He told me they had shit—excuse me—and were hoping that Vegas would come up with something more. You headed there next?”

Megan glanced at Hans with raised eyebrows. “Are we?”

“Yes. If we get what we need here, we’ll be on a plane tomorrow night. The Vegas file is pretty thin. Either there was no evidence or it hasn’t been processed. We might be able to help expedite on that end.”

Davis asked, “Do you think he’ll strike again so soon?”

“
They
will most certainly kill again,” Hans said, “and sooner rather than later.” He explained his theory to Davis about why the killers waited a longer time between killing Johnson and Perry than Perry and Price. “That’s why it’s doubly important to scrutinize this crime scene even more carefully.”

“They could have been waiting for a specific day,” Megan said, “or they didn’t have a good opportunity. Perry had an on-again/off-again girlfriend. There’s nothing here about whether they were on or off and for how long. Just that she hadn’t seen him in two days.”

“Exactly,” Hans said. “They want their victims alone.”

“What did local police think happened?” Megan asked Davis.

“For a while the thought was organized crime. The hamstrings, the torture—restraint. As if he knew something or hadn’t paid up, or maybe screwed around with another man’s wife. But nothing connected. Even his ex was shocked and had nothing but good things to say about him.”

“Then why’d they divorce?” Hans asked.

Megan knew there were many reasons to divorce, even if you liked your spouse.

Davis shrugged. “José might know. Johnson was well-liked by friends and family, thought to be moody, and had a few friends from his army days who took his death pretty hard. But no one with a beef, no one who knew of a problem, no disgruntled customers.”

“We’ll need to talk to his friends from the army,” Megan said.

Davis pulled up in front of the main Austin police station. He slid an official business placard on his dash and they got out.

José Vasquez was much younger than Megan had thought after speaking with him on the phone. He looked about twenty, but being a detective, Megan figured he had to be closer to thirty. He was short and wiry, completely antithetical to his deep voice.

He and Davis knew each other, and Megan could tell that having the local fed with them was a big benefit.

“I found you a conference room,” José said, “and all my files are there. Got photos, the coroner’s notes you asked for, Agent Vigo, witness statements, evidence reports. The whole nine yards.”

“Can we get out to the crime scene?” Megan asked.

“It’s been cleaned out. Everything was left to Johnson’s kids, and his ex is selling the place and putting the money into a trust for them. Probably best thing, I wouldn’t be too keen on keeping a place where someone I cared about was killed.”

“But we can still access it, right?” she asked.

“I’ll get us in, just takes a call. Why don’t you sit down, make yourselves at home—coffee is right around the corner.” He left.

Hans sat down, full of nervous energy. Very unlike his usually easygoing demeanor. “Something up?” Megan asked casually.

“There’s something off. I don’t know what. I need more information, as much as I can get, and maybe I’ll figure out what’s bothering me.”

“We got the parking garage security tapes back. Someone scrambled the digital code.”

“And no one noticed?” Davis asked.

“They’re not monitored twenty-four/seven. They’re supposed to be a deterrent.”

“Seems like the killers would have had to know that, otherwise they wouldn’t have been comfortable sitting there for hours. What about the switched license plates?” Hans asked. “Is Sac P.D. following up on that?”

“Yes,” Megan said, then explained to Davis about the security guard making rounds in the garage and taking note of the license plates of cars left overnight. She then said to Hans, “What I don’t get is, they obviously knew all about the security at the garage, but how did they know Price would be there? The guy’s homeless.”

“Maybe they picked him up. Or have been following him for a few days, finding out where he liked to walk or sleep. Where was he attacked?”

“In the stairwell of the garage.”

“Could he have been sleeping in there?”

“It’s possible,” Megan said. “Black and his people are talking to the victim’s friends. But the homeless don’t like talking to cops. So far he’s not getting a lot out of them.”

But it made sense that the killers had watched Price, just like they knew when Duane Johnson would be coming home from work.

“I haven’t studied homeless psychology in detail,” Hans said, “but many who congregate in an urban environment like this have mental problems, often including drug addiction.”

Megan nodded. “But here’s Price, who didn’t appear to be an addict, who was AWOL and even the army didn’t know where he was. So how did these two killers rout him out? He was a specific target. How did they find him?”

“That’s a damn good question.”

Megan pulled out her cell phone and dialed Detective Black. She posed her question to Black, and added, “There may be a witness. Someone who saw something, maybe someone following Price.”

“The homeless in this area have had regular skirmishes with the local police. They’re suspicious by nature. They’re not talking to me. I’ve been trying.”

“What about your friend Abrahamson? The guy who went undercover? Pose the dilemma to him, maybe he can come up with something.”

“Good idea. When will you be back from Texas?”

“Anyone’s guess. I’ll keep you in the loop.”

“Appreciate it.”

Megan hung up and told Hans about the conversation. He was deep into reading the files. She picked up the evidence report and pored through it. The victim, Duane Johnson, had left his restaurant, Duane’s Rib House, at just before eleven Wednesday night, February 11. This was habitual, the restaurant stopped serving at ten, according to his employees, and they were always out by eleven. Duane worked every day except Mondays and had an assistant manager who opened five days a week.

It was this assistant manager, Joanne Quince, who began to worry when Duane was late on Thursday.
“Duane always comes in by four—I have to pick my kids up no later than five from the sitter. He’s never been late.”

At four-thirty, she called his cell phone, then his house phone, then his ex-wife, Dawn. Joanne left one of the waitresses in charge, picked up her kids, then left them with a neighbor and drove to Duane’s house. Dawn was already there, crying, and on the phone with the police department.

“We couldn’t live together, but I loved him. He was a great father. Never missed a child support payment. We had dinner together every Sunday, for the kids.”

When the police arrived, they found evidence that someone had picked the garage door lock. Duane didn’t have an alarm system, he lived in an attractive middle-class rural neighborhood—everyone had a couple acres, the modest ranch-style homes were set far back from the road, and a flood canal separated the front yards from the street. There were no fences, but no one would have been able to see inside the house. The blinds were all closed.

Johnson had been attacked in the garage after pulling in and closing the door behind his truck. The garage light had been loose, and while no fingerprints were on the bulb or surrounding assembly, the dust had been disturbed, indicating that someone had deliberately disabled the light. Johnson’s hamstrings were cut in the garage, then he was dragged into the house and duct-taped to a chair.

“Here,” Hans said, tapping a toxin report. “He had trace amounts of a tranquilizer—benzodiazepine class. He was a big guy. I wonder if he fought back even after being sliced.”

“Or,” Megan said, “maybe he saw someone. It says in the report that there was a disturbance and possible scuffle in the garage—two paint cans and a box of screws had been knocked over.”

“Did you get a tox report before CID took Price’s body?”

“No, but there are blood samples at the morgue and the pathologist sent them to his lab.”

Megan finished reading the reports, viewed the crime scene photos. The killers were precise. They knew their target and why they chose him. They had all the necessary supplies—knife, duct tape, needles to torture their victim. The attack and murder were well planned and well executed.

“I know what’s been bugging me,” she said.

“Shoot.”

“The evidence here—the plan. The methodology. This wasn’t their first kill. At least one of them had to have practiced, wouldn’t you think?”

Hans weighed her statement. “It’s a good bet that Johnson wasn’t their first victim, but there’re no other like cases in the country that have been reported to the FBI. I scoured the databases. I have an analyst on it full-time as well, contacting smaller local agencies who don’t regularly report or where the information was incomplete. Maybe something will pop—”

“But it might not be exactly the same. Maybe the first victim wasn’t hamstrung.”

“I’ve taken that into account.”

Megan looked at the photos but didn’t really see them. She wasn’t articulating her point well. “Where would someone learn how to use needles to torture? It’s like acupuncture, but with pain as the goal instead of relief.”

“A doctor. A trained acupuncturist. Anyone in the medical field or with some anatomy training.” Hans wrote rapidly on his pad. “I can’t believe I didn’t think of that before. But it makes sense. I’ll talk to my analyst and see what she finds after adding in that information. Perhaps an army medic.”

“But we don’t train our soldiers to torture like this,” Megan said.

“I wouldn’t know.”

“What if they practiced and then hid the evidence?”

“Such as destroying or burying the body?”

“Yes. Or allowing the wounds to heal. The coroner wrote in his notes that he almost missed the punctures, they were so small and many had already started to heal. I think we should be looking for executions.”

“Executions?”

“People killed with a bullet in the back of the head.”

“Ballistics would have matched Johnson’s with anything in the system. I have the ballistics report right here.”

“The detective in Vegas said they didn’t have their report back yet.” Ballistics could take weeks, sometimes months, to run through the system and find all crimes where the same gun was used. Unlike television, they couldn’t pop the bullet in a machine and yield every crime in which a particular gun was used within an hour, primarily because of a backlog of work. Expediting such tests and analysis was certainly something the FBI could help with.

All ballistics reports eventually ended up in an FBI database, but it was a product of time and manpower. The system was as up-to-date as possible, but still there were thousands of local law enforcement agencies sending in their records. A clearinghouse, yes, but nothing happened overnight.

“Maybe we should put out a call for execution-style murders within the last . . .” Megan paused. She wasn’t sure how long these two had been operating.

“Let’s go back twelve months to be safe,” Hans said. “Once they perfected their system, they would want to get started right away. I’ll call in the information. Good thinking, Megan. I should have thought of it earlier.”

The farther they drove away from Hidalgo, the more upset Ethan became. Agony tore at his gut. His intestines slithered around: snakes, twisting, tightening, poisoning him with sharp fangs. He’d fucked up. He let one get away. The overwhelming urge to turn around and cut the priest’s heart out had him whimpering.

She said, “It’s over, Ethan.”

“We can still go back.”

“No.”

Ethan slammed his head hard enough on the steering wheel that they swerved into the next lane.

“Don’t,” she said.

He slammed his head again. “I have to go back.”

“We stick to the plan. We’re halfway to Santa Barbara. There is no turning back.”

He cried out. “I can’t let him go. I can’t let him go. You changed the plan. It’s your fault!”

“You’re tired. Let me drive.”

“No!”

“Ethan, honey, listen to me. If we turn around we won’t be in Santa Barbara by Friday, and then we’ll have to wait a month. Do you want to wait an entire
month
to punish General Hackett?”

“We’ll do it the same way as the others. In his house—”

“He’s married.”

Ethan snorted, then he laughed so hard she had to grab the wheel to stop them from hitting an eighteen-wheeler head-on.

“Dammit, Ethan! Pull over.”

He did, still laughing. He didn’t know what was funny anymore. Or even if it had been funny. He just felt like laughing, the sound bubbling out before he could stop it. His sides hurt, those vile snakes slithering around, but he couldn’t stop.