Murder Theory Page 14

  “All I have is a flimsy profile. How’d you find Vik and Oyo?”

  “They had hot spots. Areas that they frequented. Habits I could detect. Whatever connects these victims is beyond me, and if I had to guess, most are chosen at random. That would be the scientific way to do it. And I mean random. Like have a random-number generator help choose your targets.”

  “So, no connection?”

  “Almost none. They fit a broad profile. Each one lived in an environment where Jekyll could expose them to the virus. But the Pale brothers have no idea who put that there. I suspect Jekyll broke in when nobody was looking.”

  “And Atlanta?” asks Gallard.

  “Well, there’s that. A high-profile murder scene like that, I don’t think he could resist. He had to go there.”

  “Along with the other cases. That’s his tell. He likes to visit murder scenes. Want to bet he’s been to all the big ones? Like the Manson murders? Dahmer’s apartment?”

  “I wouldn’t put it past him.” I think this over for a moment. “He’s a souvenir hunter.”

  “Looking for the virus? Right?”

  “Yes . . . but maybe not just that. Hold on. What if he’s been at this for a long time? Looking for something like Hyde?”

  “Okay,” says Gallard. “But what does that get us?”

  “Well, he may have thought there was a pathogen—which could mean anything from a fungus to a prion. He didn’t know what he was looking for. So that would mean he’d be collecting anything he could find in these locations. Soil, mold, bacteria. Anything.”

  “And then he found a virus,” says Gallard.

  “Right. So, he had to have the knowledge to know what it was. He may have found it in a couple murder scenes. Maybe in the suspect’s blood . . .”

  “What’s that tell you?”

  “I don’t know. But on another tangent, that tells me that he’s got a field kit for collecting multiple samples. He probably still collects everything.”

  “From crime scenes?”

  “Yes. Fresh ones. He’s able to travel at a moment’s notice and get behind police barriers.”

  “Okay. This helps my profile. He might disguise himself as something. Not a cop, because he’d be recognized as a fake. And we don’t let reporters in that close.”

  “Maybe he changes it up. Maybe he pretends he’s from some other agency. I don’t know. But the critical part is that we know he went to at least one crime scene after the fact, and likely others.”

  But how does that help us?

  “We could just wait for the next high-profile serial killer to get caught and see if Jekyll shows up.”

  “I can’t wait that long. But there’s something to that idea.”

  “I kind of meant it as a joke,” says Gallard.

  “Yeah, but it’s not a bad idea. If it were really horrific, our guy couldn’t resist.”

  “Do you think he’d show his head now, given that we’re after him?”

  “Why not? He doesn’t necessarily know we’re after him. Maybe the FBI’s institutional inertia is working for us.”

  “That’s a first,” says Gallard.

  “We need a honeypot . . . something to attract him.”

  “What about a revelation about an old case?”

  “I don’t know if that’ll do it. Jekyll’s still looking for something. Maybe he thinks there’s a more virulent version of Hyde to be found? I don’t know. Oyo clearly excited him.”

  Gallard doesn’t respond, thinking it through.

  A thought occurs. “He may have gone to Joe Vik’s house. I could ask around and see if there were any weirdos that were seen in the area. Of course, after the massacre every news agency in the world was there.”

  “Okay. Suppose you had a flamboyant, new murder scene. Then what? This guy has slipped in and out before. What would you do to catch him?”

  “Surveillance. I’d hide cameras everywhere. We’d monitor every face and cross-reference them—but secretly.”

  Gallard breathes into the phone as he considers it. “Yeah. I don’t think the surveillance part is that hard. Although getting the FBI to go along with it could be tricky.”

  “We might have to arrange for our own secret surveillance. I could probably drop a few drone cameras around a scene, leave them on rooftops, and set up our own perimeter surveillance. I even have some contractors I could hire.”

  “Are they good enough to spy on the FBI?” asks Gallard.

  “Half these guys are former CIA and DIA. Yeah, they’re good enough. They have toys the FBI doesn’t have. That’s if I even need them.”

  “Too bad they can’t provide a murder scene,” says Gallard. “I wouldn’t put it past them. But some things you don’t ask for . . .”

  “Although . . .”

  “Theo?”

  “Hold up. I’m thinking something over.” It’s insane . . . but it might work. “Ethical question: How far would you go to stop the next family from getting murdered?”

  “Pretty far,” Gallard replies without hesitation.

  “Okay, so we’re in agreement. We can do this.”

  “You do realize, though, that without bodies you’ll have about two minutes before the jig is up.”

  “Who said we won’t have bodies?”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

  BASEMENT

  Ned Rayner is waiting at the front gate of his compound when I pull up. A large fence on rollers stands between us as he appears to be deciding whether or not to unlock it and let me drive my rented cargo van inside.

  Set back in the woods just outside Raleigh, North Carolina, the house is a large one-story structure that resembles a pillbox more than a family home. A driveway off to the side leads to a basement garage. Two industrial air conditioners sit on cement pads next to the house. A white van with rusted paint is parked next to a brand-new Toyota Tacoma and a sporty BMW.

  Business is good for Rayner, whose business falls into a gray area of legality. Given the suspicious glances he’s giving me, even after I gave him a plausible alibi, I’m certain that some of what he does is decidedly not legal.

  Ned Rayner sells human body parts. Or to put it in precise legal terms, he provides services to entities looking to obtain human tissue. Selling human body parts is illegal, but it’s perfectly fine to charge for preparation, transportation, or any other fee you can come up with that basically amounts to charging for the donated tissue.

  The problem arises when body parts are collected from funeral homes and hospitals without the donor’s or family’s permission. This happens more frequently than people realize. Femurs and other bones are removed from the deceased and replaced with plastic pipe so the body doesn’t bend like Gumby when there’s a viewing. Other tissue, like ligaments and veins, can be taken without anyone being the wiser.

  Rayner, a tall, bald, imposing man in his late forties, looks me over, unlocks the gate, then tells me to park next to his truck.

  “Tendons? Right?” he asks.

  “Yep.”

  He presses a button on his key chain, and the garage door rolls up, revealing a Dodge Hellcat and a large workshop. A large refrigerator stands at the far end next to a sink.

  Rayner opens the refrigerator, revealing an almost empty interior. A foam cooler sits on the middle shelf.

  “This is less than two days old. I’ve got calf and thigh from three cadavers. How many do you want?”

  “All of it,” I reply.

  Over the phone, I told Rayner I was a broker working for a biotech start-up doing research on skeletal muscles.

  “All of it?” He thinks for a moment. “That will be four thousand dollars.”

  I pull out my phone. “Venmo? PayPal? Bitcoin?”

  “Venmo to BDT Pharma Services.”

  I send the money to him, and his phone buzzes.

  He checks the screen and nods. “That was easy.”

  “My clients are desperate,” I say. “They’re trying to beat a competitor to some p
atent I don’t understand.”

  I watch Rayner’s face as he thinks this over. He realizes that I must have just made a much larger profit than he did. Good. I want the greedy part of his brain to overwhelm reason.

  I check my phone as it buzzes from a timed call. “I gotta run. Gotta fly to Arizona to get some brain tissue.”

  Rayner’s eyes drift toward a door off to the side of the garage, directly underneath the large air handlers. “Brain tissue? How much?”

  I shake my head. “It’s kind of weird. I had to source someone across the country.”

  “Weird, how?” he asks.

  “I mean their request’s a little unusual. They’re not just after brain tissue. They need an intact optic nerve system and inner ear. They told me to get whole heads if possible.”

  Rayner lets out a laugh. “A whole head?”

  “Heads,” I reply, putting the emphasis on the S. “I think they may be working on some kind of trauma drug.”

  “Whole heads?”

  A human head contains several different tissues that have a ready spare-parts market. Corneas, teeth, gums, and parts of the brain can be used either in transplants or the preparation of medical treatments. While there are legitimate ways to purchase these parts, waiting lists can be long and supply can be limited.

  While it’s one thing to swipe a few tendons or veins from the body of a person who never volunteered to donate, taking the head would cause some alarm at the funeral.

  Which makes finding heads difficult—at least in the United States. In China it’s a different matter entirely. The state government is the largest supplier of human body parts, many of them harvested from political prisoners and religious dissidents. Some speculate that thousands of practitioners of the Falun Gong religion may have been disposed of this way.

  “Whole heads,” I reply. “I think my source has a line into some Chinese ones. Ideally we’d like to get some Caucasians, too.”

  “How much?” asks Rayner.

  “Per head? I’m paying five thousand for each one in Arizona.”

  Rayner strokes his chin, then takes out his key chain. “Follow me.” He walks to a side door and unlocks the massive lock above the door handle.

  “I have a source in Ukraine,” he tells me. “They have a problem with families not paying medical bills for the deceased. So I run a charity that provides assistance.”

  “To the hospital?”

  “Basically. They provide me with research materials.” He opens the door to reveal a brightly lit refrigerated room lined with large shelves. Entire bodies wrapped in plastic lie there like shiny mummies.

  “Holy shit,” I murmur. There have to be at least eighteen bodies here, including several small ones that make me cringe.

  “Yeah. What do you need?” he asks.

  I count up how much money I have in my bank account and what I can borrow. “How much for the whole lot?”

  CHAPTER THIRTY

  SERIAL

  Thirty years ago, Butcher Creek Boy Scout camp was filled with tents, cabins, and wooden buildings in good condition. Now it’s a rotting ghost town overtaken by the surrounding Kentucky forest. It was also the site of not only several Bigfoot sightings, but at least one UFO, dutifully reported by the scouts inhabiting the camp at the time.

  When I’m done with it, Butcher Creek is going to reemerge into the shadow world of conspiracy theories and folklore. I plan to do something truly horrible to it—turn it into the scene of the Butcher Creek Massacre.

  The setting sun even has me spooked as the trees go darker and the sky starts to fade away. Evil-sounding frogs croak while owls make threatening calls to their evening prey.

  I chose this location from Google Maps. It sits on federal land, guaranteeing FBI involvement. All the roads into it can easily be surveilled, and I found ample locations to hide cameras disguised as US Forest Service monitors.

  I created a Wi-Fi network that transmits to a satellite dish I hid farther in the woods. Should an investigator look for a hot spot, they’ll see a bland-looking USFS router that can’t be traced back to me.

  It’s a perfectly creepy spot. An interstate highway passes by a half mile away up a ridge, which offers a good vantage point from which to watch the part of the camp where I assume the police and federal vehicles will park. That’ll make this roadside perch perfect for television news trucks.

  I’ve got the location, the filming equipment, and even some ready-made press releases to send anonymously to both investigators and news agencies. All I have to do now is put my actors in place . . .

  Yeah. Easier said than done. Rayner sold me the bodies with the promise I would never mention his name. No problem.

  He assured me that they were all Ukrainians who died of natural causes. He claims they were flown into the United States aboard a cargo plane carrying medical equipment only two days prior.

  I’m not sure if I believe him, but it’s not important. The more pressing matter was trying to figure out a way to explain the presence of preserving fluids to the first investigator who takes a whiff of the bodies.

  My solution was to make that a feature, not a bug. I can’t just throw a bunch of bodies around and have people jump to the conclusion a serial killer is at work. The more likely assumption would be that a funeral home dumped off a bunch of bodies that were supposed to be cremated. That’s hardly the catalyst for headlines.

  No, unfortunately, I can’t simply bury the bodies. I have to hack them apart and then bury them in plastic bags with formaldehyde and leave creepy little notes.

  I already wrote the notes using a typewriter I bought at an out-of-state flea market in Raleigh. For the text, I bought a few copies of old science-fiction novels and plagiarized them.

  Words can’t describe how horrible I feel about this.

  Creating a horrific hoax like I’m about to do is going to cause a strain on local law enforcement, make people panic, and do who knows what to the families of my victims when word reaches them in Ukraine about the impossible fate of their loved ones.

  It’s for a good cause, I’ve convinced myself. If Jekyll shows up here, then we have a chance to catch him before he kills again. And to make sure he’s going to show up, I’m making sure what he really wants is here as well.

  I purchased a sleeping bag and some camping equipment, which I now set up inside one of the cabins. For cinematic effect, I nail photos and maps of constellations and planets I pulled from old magazines. The centerpiece is a telescope with a cracked lens that I etched with Egyptian symbols.

  A skilled investigator like Gallard might think the thing looks a little too staged. That’s fine. I don’t want the FBI to take too long to figure out what really went on here—except for who did it. I just want it to make the news and for Jekyll to drop by.

  I sit on a log that forms part of a ring around a campfire and stare at the naked corpse lying on the tarp before me and then at the hacksaw in my hand.

  “What the hell are you doing, Theo?” I ask myself.

  I used to wonder at what point the serial killers I pursued realized they were messed-up human beings. Was it a moment like this?

  I didn’t kill the young man staring at the sky, or the young girl lying next to him, or the dozen more still in my truck. Arguably, I’m giving them a better purpose than the one fate had chosen. They’re going to save lives.

  That is, the mutilation of their bodies is going to save lives. The horrible, sacrilegious desecration of their bodies, by me, is going save lives. Hopefully.

  As I stare at the fading orange reflection of the sun on the stainless-steel saw blade, I ask myself another profound question—why the hell didn’t I bring a power tool?

  The time for introspection is over. I’m sweating my balls off in my protective suit, and I don’t want to linger too long out here and get shot by some vigilante hunter—who, by rights, wouldn’t be judged too harshly for killing me in cold blood.

  Even I’m appalled by what I’m going t
o do.

  “Okay, Steve, time to save some lives,” I tell the nearest naked body. I have no idea what his name is. But I’m going to call them all Steve.

  I place his arm over a cinder block and get a good grip . . .

  Come on, Theo. You’ve seen death a hundred times. You’ve dissected corpses and even mutilated one to save your ass from Joe Vik. How hard can this be?

  Part of me is worried that all the Steves and Stephanies may not have died of natural causes. While Rayner’s claim to the bodies made sense, part of me wonders if this wasn’t a convenient way to get rid of some political enemies in Ukraine.

  A number of the bodies clearly show signs of blunt trauma.

  At least two have bullet wounds. Only half have autopsy incisions . . .

  Let’s put a pin in that for now. I can make Rayner tell me where he got them later on. If I find out there’s some kind of homicidal European strongman up the supply chain, I’ll pay him a visit.

  Okay?

  I find myself looking into Steve’s glassy eyes. “I promise you. Deal? Okay, then.”

  I’d say a prayer if I were religious, but I’m not. But I’ll bet Steve and his friends are.

  Okay.

  “Um, God, uh, forgive me for not believing. And forgive me for what I’m about to do. Uh, may they all rest in peace.”

  I look up to the sky as if I’m expecting Morgan Freeman to look down at me and wink, giving me his approval.

  I’m seriously losing it.

  I put the blade to Steve’s pale skin. Something touches my leg.

  “Ack!” I yell.

  It’s my phone buzzing. I tap the Bluetooth in my ear. “Yes?”

  “Hey,” says Jillian.

  I forgot I was supposed to check in with her. “Uh, hi.”

  “What are you up to?”

  “You don’t want to know,” I reply. I make a quick goodbye and go back to work.

  By the fifth Steve, it has stopped feeling weird.

  That’s what scares me the most.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

  VIRAL

  I haven’t been on Facebook since I left to go study ponds in Montana and ended up being accused of murder. My Twitter account has one post made at the behest of a teaching assistant. I couldn’t put a name to a face of any current television celebrity. In many respects, I’m about as pop culture ignorant as possible. That said, after watching the media explosion over the Joe Vik murders and then the Oyo case, I’ve had firsthand experience in how something sensational blows up. I went from one lone voice trying to call attention to the freakish number of missing persons in Montana and Wyoming to having cable-news crews knocking on my door at four in the morning to get a statement about the latest development.