The Kill (19 page)

If he delved too deep, he’d see that the first victim shared the same last name as her.

Zack looked at her in awe. “Good memory.”

She didn’t comment. She’d memorized Missy’s case file.

“I’d bet our killer served with Hall in Vietnam. Maybe they were released about the same time. Maybe there was bad blood between them.”

“Are you suggesting that our killer set Hall up? Framed him?”

“Anything’s possible at this point. But I think we have to go with the assumption that they knew each other, and that gives us something to go on.” He picked up the phone and dialed an extension. “It’s not going to be easy to get military records, but I think your people can probably get them faster.”

Into the phone, Zack said, “Chief? Travis here. Look, I think we need to contact the Seattle bureau. I meant to call you this morning, but with looking for Amanda Davidson . . . yeah, right. . . . Two things. First, Agent St. Martin and I have a theory that our killer served in Vietnam and was discharged around April 1972—say between the end of 1971 and October 1972. Second, remember the marks on the victim’s forearms? Doug Cohn talked to several labs last night and the same marks appear on their victims. Twelve punctures. We need some expert guidance to help figure out what they could mean.”

Zack listened for a moment, then said, “Okay, you call and set it up, then have them contact me and Agent St. Martin and I’ll debrief them on what we’ve uncovered so far.” He hung up.

“You know,” he said, “after the chief puts in the request with Seattle, you should probably work as the liaison with your people. I don’t have a problem with it. I’ve met a lot of Feds who jerked this department around, but you’ve been fantastic. I wouldn’t have had half this stuff if you hadn’t brought it in.”

“I—” What could she say to that? She took a deep breath. “Zack, I think I should explain—”

“Hold that thought—I have an idea.”

“What?”

“Get Hall to cooperate.”

She blinked. “I don’t understand.”

“The guy who was just released. I’ll bet he knows exactly who we’re looking for. Even if he hasn’t thought of it, he’ll probably come up with a name if we ask the right questions—such as, did you know anyone who served in Vietnam who was in Redwood City with you? A lot of those guys would have hung out together. The atmosphere sucked for the military back then. I’ll bet he knows him, or can give us a couple of names of guys with a similar tattoo.”

Olivia didn’t know what to say. Yes, the idea was brilliant. Hall most certainly would have names. But the thought of her seeing him after she’d testified against him, back then and every time he came up for parole, terrified her.

But it had to be done. It was the biggest lead they had.

“I’ll call the district attorney’s office and ask them to get in touch with Hall’s lawyer,” she said.

“While you do that, I’m going to talk to Doug Cohn and see what’s going on with the lab files on those twelve marks.”

Zack walked by and squeezed her shoulder. The gesture was intimate as his fingers massaged her neck. “We’re close, I can feel it. Keep it up, and when we catch this bastard I’m treating you to dinner overlooking Lake Union.”

Then he left.

She let him go. She could have stopped him, told him exactly why she was here, but she didn’t. She was simply buying time.

In her notebook, she looked up the number of the San Mateo County District Attorney’s office, where Hamilton Craig was the D.A. She got passed from office to office, and finally someone told her he was unavailable and could they help her?

She didn’t want to talk to someone she didn’t know, so she hung up and found Gary Porter’s cell phone number.

Gary was the cop, now retired, who’d investigated Missy’s case and had come to every parole meeting to speak against Brian Hall’s release. He’d not only supported Olivia each time she testified against Hall’s parole, but had been the father figure she didn’t have during the original trial. Her own parents were so grief-stricken and distraught, they barely knew she was in the same room, let alone what she’d gone through telling the prosecutors and judge what happened the day Missy disappeared.

No matter what transpired with this case, even if she lost her job or her friends or Zack’s respect, she would never regret her decision if she saved Amanda Davidson from the emotional pain she’d suffered as a child.

Gary answered on the third ring.

“Gary, it’s Olivia St. Martin. How are you?”

“Could be better.”

“What’s wrong?”

He paused. “Didn’t you get my message? I left one on your home phone and at your office two days ago.”

“No. I didn’t. I—I’m not in Virginia right now.”

“Hamilton Craig was shot and killed. The police think he surprised a burglar in his house.”

“Hamilton?
He’s dead
?”

She rested her forehead on her hand, her skin suddenly clammy. She couldn’t imagine the vibrant district attorney who’d been larger than life to her as a child—dead. That was why she’d received the runaround at the district attorney’s office.

“The funeral is this evening.”

“I’m so sorry.”

“If you weren’t calling about Hamilton, why did you call?”

“There might be a lead in Missy’s murder.”

Long silence. “Oh?”

“I’ve been sort of unofficially helping on another case that has striking similarities to Missy’s. We think maybe Hall knew Missy’s killer.” She explained about the tattoos, what the Seattle witness saw, and Zack’s theory that the killer had served in Vietnam with Hall and perhaps had set him up, or at least knew him when he stole his truck.

Gary didn’t say anything for a long time.

“Gary?”

“Are you in Seattle now?”

“Yes.”

“I didn’t know you’d retained your field agent status.”

She didn’t respond.

“You don’t have to say anything. What do you want me to do?”

“I got the runaround at the district attorney’s office—they didn’t tell me about Hamilton—and I don’t have any other contacts there. I need someone to contact Hall’s attorney and see if we can interview him.”

“You?”

“Either the detective I’m working with, or someone down there. Not me, not personally. I know I can’t be anywhere around it. But I think Hall will cooperate, don’t you? Wouldn’t he want to know if someone set him up to go to prison?”

“You’re right, Hall will bite. Are you coming down too?”

“I—I doubt it.” She wanted to, but as soon as the local FBI stepped in, she’d be ordered back to Virginia. “But I’m going to try. I just won’t sit in on the interview.”

“I’ll contact Hamilton’s office and pass along the information. I’m sure they’ll help. How can I reach you?”

“My cell phone. Or better yet, have them call Detective Zack Travis of the Seattle Police Department.” She gave him Zack’s contact information, said goodbye, and hung up.

Olivia buried her face in her arms and breathed deep. Her life was spiraling out of control, but they were so much closer to finding Missy’s killer. That counted for something. Even if Zack sent her back to Virginia, or Rick Stockton fired her, she couldn’t discount what she’d brought to the investigation.

She had to focus on that.

The phone on the conference table rang. “Hello?” she answered.

“Liv, it’s Zack. Get down to the lab. The genius Doug Cohn just figured out what the marks mean and you’re not going to believe it.”

Eight people crammed into the lab conference room, which was half the size of the one Zack had commandeered for the Slayer investigation. Olivia hated the moniker the press had put on the killer, but it seemed to have stuck and she’d heard more than one cop use it.

Doug Cohn stood at the front, sheepish with the audience, fidgeting with his reading glasses as he took them on and off. In addition to Doug, Zack, and Olivia, Nelson Boyd, and Jan O’Neal were in the room, two of Doug’s staff introduced as Randy and Deb, and the chief of police himself, Lance Pierson.

Whereas Olivia thought she’d be nervous, the familiarity of the charts and information on the wall about science and forensics actually gave her confidence and comfort. Doug cleared his throat. “Thanks for coming. I’m going to make this as short as possible, but I think it’s important that we all understand how I came to this conclusion,” he said.

Zack spoke. “To catch everyone up to speed, first we focused on the trucks we know were used to transport the victim. Boyd?”

The young detective straightened. “Detective O’Neal and I went to six households in King County where both a Ford Expedition and a Dodge Ram were registered. Everyone was helpful, allowed us to inspect their vehicles, and accounted for where each vehicle was on the days in question.”

“What about the Expedition reported stolen the day before Benedict was kidnapped?” Zack asked.

“No sign of it. We’ve alerted all neighboring states to be on the lookout.”

“I’m inclined to agree with Agent St. Martin’s theory that the suspect steals a vehicle when convenient,” Zack said, “and replaces it before anyone knows it’s missing.”

“That would mean the killer has access to these cars for up to three days where no one would know it’s missing, or where he was free to use different vehicles and no one thought it was unusual,” Chief Pierson said.

No one said anything for a few seconds. “We need to contact all the rental agencies, car dealerships, and long-term airport parking attendants,” Zack said.

“Boyd and I can cover that,” Jan O’Neal said, making notes.

“I have a search set up on the auto-theft database,” Doug interjected, “so if any SUV or covered truck is stolen in King County or the surrounding area, I’m notified. There have been twenty-three reported thefts in the last two days, and Detective Travis has alerted patrols to put them on the priority list.”

“He uses them for transport primarily; he doesn’t kill his victims in the vehicle,” Olivia said. “That amount of blood would be impossible to eliminate completely.”

“But we’ve never found a crime scene,” Zack said. “The bodies are dumped.”

They glanced at each other.

“What about his own property?” Doug interjected. “He would need privacy, so it would be a large parcel. Maybe in the foothills. Someplace that has little or no foot traffic and few neighbors.”

“He’d be in a house, not an apartment,” Olivia said.

Doug nodded. “A place where no one could see him carry a body back and forth from a car into his house.”

“Attached garage or some acreage.”

“Or maybe he takes the victim to a far-off location to kill her, then dumps her body in town,” Zack said.

“Either way we’re looking for a private area,” Pierson agreed.

“Why dump the body in town? He could leave them exposed in the mountains and few people would find them.” Olivia thought about the twelve-year-long Bozeman Butcher investigation. They still hadn’t recovered all the known victims, and probably never would.

“Except for the first victim,” Zack reminded her. He told the room what he and Olivia had discussed about the possible spontaneous first murder, the body left in a more remote location, making a speedy discovery less likely.

No one had a good answer as to why the killer dumped the subsequent bodies in town.

Zack said, “I asked Doug to work with the labs in other jurisdictions where similar crimes occurred, thanks to the information provided by Agent St. Martin. The markings on the victim’s forearm bugged both Doug and me. Neither the coroner nor a cursory search in the criminal database yielded anything close to it.”

“The marks were made postmortem,” Doug said. “Twelve punctures in the victim’s forearm, uniform in appearance.”

Chief Pierson asked, “Does the number twelve mean anything? Is it a count of his victims?”

“We considered that, except that all his victims have the same twelve punctures. Twelve can mean anything—there are twelve apostles in the Bible, twelve is a dozen, it could be the age he thinks his victims are, almost anything,” Doug said.

“That’s why I asked you to contact the Seattle bureau,” Zack said to Pierson. “Agent St. Martin says their research department can look into it and see if it’s significant.”

“But we don’t need to consult with them anymore,” Doug said, “because we figured it out. At least, I think we did.”

“You did,” Zack assured him.

Doug stepped away from a corkboard where three sets of two pictures were posted. Olivia instantly recognized the second picture as being taken with a microscope camera. The cuts, which on the surface looked like punctures—almost like commas—were actually two distinct marks.

“The top pictures are from Michelle Davidson, the middle from Jennifer Benedict, the bottom from a victim in Massachusetts. As you can see, the marks are virtually identical on each victim. Clearly, this ‘signature,’ for lack of a better word, ties our killer with Massachusetts. And the other labs I spoke with have similar files, though many are in storage, as the cases go back twenty or thirty years.”

“Doug has done a fabulous job getting this information,” Zack said. “We have virtually every other jurisdiction working with us on this. We’re getting more information through fax and e-mail, and boxes of evidence shipped to us. But, because of the sensitive nature in dealing with Kansas and Kentucky because they convicted someone for those crimes, we decided not to contact them until we had a suspect in custody. Then we’ll share our information with those departments and they can decide what to do with the prisoners. There may be additional information we’re not privy to.”

“If we can keep the press at bay while we track down this guy, all the better,” Pierson said. “I don’t want to muddy the waters.”

Olivia had been staring at the marks on the victims’ forearms. They appeared to be small holes and lines. Hole, line, line, hole, line, line, hole. Then the pattern changed, if it was a pattern at all. “There are two distinctive marks,” she said. “Like holes and lines, but there doesn’t appear to be a pattern.”

“Very good.” Doug nodded his approval and picked up a metal-tipped pointer. “Actually, it was your information that tipped me off.”