Murder Theory Read online

  While I have noticed at least one such correlation between terrorists, it’s about as conclusive as realizing that professional quarterbacks share some genetics. Far more people have those genes and don’t play professional football . . . or blow up city markets.

  In my nightmare scenario, my technology is used as an excuse to round up Middle Eastern men on the sole basis that they have a “suspicious” genetic profile.

  “Tell Figueroa we’re still doing feasibility studies,” I told Sheila.

  “Actually, I think Todd’s handling it,” she replied.

  My lab manager handling it made me nervous, even though Todd Pogue knows my thoughts on the issue. The last thing we need is another harebrained scheme that uses science to kill instead of save lives.

  In a staff meeting, I once belittled a research paper we’d received that proposed using aerial DNA scanners on drones to make sure that the incinerated people were actually the ones that had been targeted.

  “And I guess these geniuses plan on using the DNA to bring back the person if they got it wrong?”

  That caused nervous laughter from a few of my lab techs. When I scanned the list of researchers who’d written the paper, I realized that it included Dr. T. Pogue—my lab manager.

  The only other news from Sheila was that the FBI was trying to get ahold of me. This was nothing new. I only treat such requests urgently if the word subpoena is mentioned.

  “Hey, stranger,” says a familiar voice as I enter the Ecco restaurant in the Atlanta airport. Sitting at a table in front of me is Jillian, my long-suffering girlfriend, the woman who literally saved my life.

  We arranged this little rendezvous the moment I left the Moscow embassy. She’d been planning a trip to visit her late husband’s parents in Montana when the embassy thing came up and I had to fly out in the dead of night.

  Jillian is used to this kind of scheduling interference by now, and we do our best to accommodate it. I spend most of my time in my government-backed lab in Austin, but even that can be a twenty-four-hour job. To lighten the load, I hired Todd Pogue as lab manager—or rather, I was given him by the Pentagon—but he has turned out to be more of a clock puncher, and it feels like I spend more time settling disputes between him and others than actually doing research.

  And I’m supposed to be the difficult one who needs managing . . .

  I take a seat and have a sip of her wine. She reaches a hand across the table and caresses the back of mine. It’s these moments that keep me grounded.

  Jillian understands more than I ever will. She’s a former soldier, a widow, and a survivor of a horrifying ordeal, in which one of the most notorious serial killers in history tried to kill her in order to lure me into a trap.

  When other couples start to tell boring vacation stories, Jillian loves to say, “Theo, remember the time we were almost murdered by the Grizzly Killer?”

  We both share a dark sense of humor. She’s also learned to deal with what she calls “RoboTheo,” her name for me when I go into analytical mode and miss obvious social cues.

  I’m told I can be almost charming when I’m around her. “So, did things work out?” she asks.

  “Affirmative.” She knows that’s all I can say on the matter. “You?”

  “Pretty well. Things are going well at the Crust. We’re hiring some college kids, and I think I’ve got another baker.” She reaches into her bag and pulls out a small cardboard box. “Try this . . . but be warned, if you say ‘diet,’ I’ll stab you to death with a butter knife.”

  The Crust is the bakery she just started. While I never expected it to break even, she’s actually been turning a tidy little profit. Sometimes I fantasize about quitting the lab and working as her taste tester.

  I remove a dark cupcake from the box. Reddish-brown frosting is generously piled on top. One bite later I’m grinning.

  “Cinnamon, chocolate, and is that a little peppermint oil?”

  “Yes. And it’s Mexican chocolate,” she replies.

  “Another winner.”

  “I kept bringing cupcakes by the lab while you were away.”

  “Good girl. That’ll make them hate me less.”

  “They don’t hate you. Well, maybe Todd does. But Sheila is in love with you. She’d better watch it.”

  Although she’s in her late forties, Sheila looks much younger and is in great shape. Most of the guys in the lab have a secret crush on her. Probably Todd the most.

  I suspect that Jillian doesn’t just drop by to bring baked goods, but to remind Sheila that my army-trained killer girlfriend is around and watching.

  A waitress takes our order, and I let out a yawn. I try not to do the math of when I slept last.

  I spent the flight to Moscow on a State Department jet, trying to come up with some kind of scheme to help the embassy lure out the spy. They were hoping for breakthrough science. The best I could do was offer up the iodine test and the earwax sample. The latter actually can tell us if someone has been in a faraway city during the last several days. We found a way to compare the pollution in earwax from different cities. The technology works particularly well in China. Next time you’re in a foreign city and spot some free Q-tips in the bathroom, be warned: it might be an intelligence-gathering plot. While it’s not as telling as certain other forms of tradecraft, the Q-Test, as we call it, can tell you if someone was lying when they said they were in Shanghai when the Q-tip says Beijing.

  It’s a marginally useful trick. My life these days seems to be about coming up with such gimmicks rather than more groundbreaking technologies.

  “Is that man watching you?” Jillian says between bites of her salmon.

  “Yep,” I reply when I spot the clean-cut young man in a suit watching me from over by the host stand.

  “I think he’s trying to decide whether to come and talk to you.”

  Despite my best efforts not to be noticed, I developed a bit of a public reputation after I caught the Grizzly Killer. While I avoid interviews on the subject, I speak to law-enforcement agencies now and then, and crime documentaries on TV keep showing my face.

  Jillian is watching him and not trying to hide her suspicion. This is her looking out for me. When you’re a semifamous serial-killer hunter, you don’t exactly have the most stable fan base.

  “He’s harmless,” I explain while not looking in his direction.

  “How do you figure?”

  “Looks federal. Local. He might have been someone I spoke to here.”

  Jillian ponders the implication of the word here. That was the last case, the last killer.

  “Dr. Cray?” the man calls out to me.

  “Here we go,” I tell Jillian and wave the man over.

  He invites himself to a seat. “I’m Sean Nicolson. Special Agent Sean Nicolson. Atlanta FBI. You can call me Sean.”

  “Sean, this is Jillian.”

  “Ma’am. It’s a pleasure to meet you. I know all about your involvement in the Vik case. You’re quite brave.”

  Hopefully he doesn’t know everything. Jillian is the one who actually killed Joe Vik. I took the fall because I knew the killer had a lot of friends in law enforcement in that part of Montana, and we didn’t know what the repercussions might be for Jillian and her family.

  “What can we do for you?” Jillian asks a little too curtly.

  “I’m real sorry to interrupt, Dr. Cray. But I heard you’d be coming through here, and I was hoping to catch you.”

  “Theo. Just call me Theo. Catch me? I hope you don’t mean in a legal sense.”

  “Oh, no, sir. I have questions about a case.”

  Jillian and I exchange looks. We were both afraid this was going to happen. I get a lot of calls about cases. People expect me to do some kind of science mumbo jumbo and solve what could have been uncovered with old-fashioned detective work. It didn’t take a genius to find Joe Vik. The problem was the law-enforcement system there was broken and everyone was looking the other way.

  I shrug
. “I’m not really that useful in handling cases. I’m just a lab guy. I’m sure you’re doing the best work possible. If you’re looking for outside scientific opinion, I can refer you to the Computational Forensics Group at Bozeman. They’re actually up to speed on my methods and have improved them considerably. I refer all new cases there.”

  “This isn’t a new case, Dr. Cray. I’m talking about the Toy Man murders.”

  Jillian’s hand slides across the table to touch mine. Her fingers are as cold as my own.

  “The Toy Man?” I shrug again. “Oyo’s dead, and I’ve already given my testimony.” Testimony that I gave very carefully, because I was the one who killed him.

  “Yes. I know. I’m talking about the new murders.”

  CHAPTER THREE

  INCIDENT

  “Did they find a new location where Oyo buried bodies?” I ask. In addition to Los Angeles and Atlanta, I strongly suspected that he had a third killing ground in the Northeast.

  “No,” Nicolson replies. “I’m talking about here in Atlanta. Haven’t you seen the news?”

  “No. I’ve been a little out of reach. Are you saying new murders? Like people killed after Oyo died?”

  “Yes, but let me be clear: these aren’t murders we think he did.” Nicolson makes a nervous laugh. “That would be really weird. These happened at Oyo’s property outside Atlanta. Where you tracked him to.”

  “The garden and church camp?”

  He nods. “Right. We had a team of forensic techs doing an excavation there after we found a possible earlier layer of bodies.”

  “More children.” Jillian sighs.

  These things weigh on her as much as they do on me. I’ve shared with her some of what I feel when I wake up in the dead of night.

  “So we’re talking about older murders?”

  Nicolson shakes his head. “Two of our techs were just killed, and another one’s missing.”

  “Murdered? How?” I ask.

  “One was stabbed to death. The other was struck on the side of the head repeatedly.”

  Nicolson is earnest and seems genuinely troubled by the incident. These were probably people he knew—maybe not socially, but they were faces familiar to him. This has to hit especially hard.

  “And the third technician?”

  “Daniel Marcus. We’re afraid that he may have been abducted. Some of the blood at the crime scene belonged to him.”

  “Abducted?” I want to point out that in a case like this, the missing person is almost always the perpetrator. I’m not sure if Agent Nicolson is leaving something out or having a difficult time accepting the idea that the third person’s the most likely suspect.

  “That’s the prevailing theory at the moment. Marcus didn’t have a history of violence or any red flags, if that’s what you’re wondering. He’s a real good guy.”

  “This is tragic, but why are you reaching out to me? Your forensics people are more than capable of dealing with something like this.”

  His eyes dart around the restaurant, then land on Jillian. “Could we talk somewhere else? Maybe at the FBI office?”

  I have to be terse. “I’m getting on a plane in forty minutes. I’d like to spend that time with my girlfriend before she goes away for a week. If there’s something you need to share with me, then now is the time.”

  “All right, but please, please keep this confidential. We’ve had other violent incidents relating to employees working that scene. One agent’s wife is in a coma from a severe beating and there’s no suspect.”

  “And you think these things are connected?”

  “They all worked the Toy Man site when we uncovered the lower layer of bodies. About the same time when unusual things started showing up.”

  “Unusual things?” I ask.

  “Clay figures, animal bones, other artifacts our cultural-studies people associate with black magic.”

  “Oyo practiced rituals. That’s not unusual. I’d expect you’d find objects like that.”

  “Yes, but some of these have been left around the crime scene recently.”

  “Again, that should be no surprise. Famous crime scenes get all kinds of weird visitors.”

  “True, but FBI employees don’t usually start getting killed like the people who uncovered King Tut’s tomb.”

  “That’s a myth. Statistically they lived as long as anyone else in that time period.” I feel Jillian squeeze my hand. “But I understand where you’re coming from. People are spooked.”

  “Exactly. And right now, I don’t know if we’re on our best mental footing to look into this. We already have agents from DC here, which hasn’t gone over very well.”

  “What would you like me to do?”

  “I’d like you to give us your perspective on things. Maybe there’s something else about the case you’re aware of that we’re not. Right now, we’re trying to find Marcus. That’s the most important thing at the moment. If he’s still alive . . .”

  Nicolson has a decent poker face. There’s a lot more going on behind his eyes than he’s letting on. I can’t tell if it’s because he thinks Marcus is a suspect or because he has an entirely different theory that he hasn’t shared.

  I wanted to put the Toy Man in the past. So many aspects of the case were unsettling. His victims were primarily young African American boys with unusual features. He targeted kids in foster homes who were at risk. This made it hard even for locals to realize there was a serial killer on the loose.

  He killed for years in South Central Los Angeles and Atlanta while working as a reverend. He even ran a church camp next to his killing room here.

  The night I found him, he was about to kill another boy, but Oyo got away and almost managed to leave the country. He murdered two people and hid in their home while their children were tied up in the bathroom.

  I shot him through a plate-glass window. I told the police he was reaching for his gun.

  He wasn’t. I wasn’t going to give him the chance. I outright killed him.

  Which, in a way, means I’m not all that different from Constantine Konovalov. He killed for the state because they told him that Artemiev was a threat to their security.

  Someone who doesn’t know me might think I killed Oyo in an act of blind rage over what he’d done. Actually, I killed him in a moment of serene calm. It was what had to be done. I made a calculated decision and pulled the trigger. The risk of him getting away or slipping through the system was too great.

  I don’t know what’s going on in Atlanta, but Nicolson has lured me in. Oyo worked with an accomplice before. That man died in custody overseas. The thought that he or someone else could still be out there getting revenge chills my bones.

  From the way Jillian is looking at me, I can tell she’s probably thinking what I’m thinking: if this is related to Oyo, then I’m a target as well.

  Nicolson knows this but hasn’t said anything. There’s another agenda there. But I have no idea what that is.

  The smart thing to do is to walk away.

  Unfortunately, my curiosity doesn’t always lead me to do the smart thing.

  “Agent Nicolson, would you mind giving Theo and me a few moments?” asks Jillian.

  “Of course. I’m sure you two need to discuss this.” He gets up and leaves the table.

  We don’t need to discuss this. Jillian knows what’s on my mind. She holds my hands between hers and gives me a lopsided smile. “Poor Theo. They just won’t leave you alone.”

  “Poor Jillian. Stuck with the maddest professor of them all.”

  “I don’t know that I’m stuck . . .” She gives me a playful wink.

  I’m not the same man who went into the woods to find Joe Vik. The experience changed me. I became something different.

  What disturbed me the most when I looked at Joe Vik’s DNA, trying to find out what makes a killer, was that we shared more traits than I cared to realize.

  I have the need to hunt as well.

  CHAPTER FOUR


  THE EDGE

  I pull up in my rental car across from Oyo’s property and the adjacent church camp on the outskirts of Atlanta. An involuntary shiver goes down my back as the animal part of my brain recognizes where I am.

  A metal fence wraps around the perimeter of Oyo’s lot. No-trespassing signs and police tape cover the gate, warning citizens away. But that hasn’t stopped people from leaving flowers and pictures of the victims. Overhead, moonlight casts a bluish halo on the trees and overgrown shrubbery that were once part of the nursery that was there before Oyo bought the land. While it was connected physically to the church camp he operated next door, he’d cleverly hidden the ownership so that the two places were never legally connected.

  The wealthy donors who helped him purchase the land were his last victims. It chills me to think that he bought the church camp because it was located next to the overgrown garden and shed where he could conduct his murders in secrecy.

  Disadvantaged children getting their first summer camp experience slept no more than a hundred yards away from the room where Oyo molested and terrorized his young victims before killing them in the most savage ways imaginable.

  The man the world has come to know as the Toy Man has haunted me in a way that Joe Vik never did. Vik was a powerful force of nature. I’m convinced that he was born to kill. His actions were his own and he went to great efforts to conceal them, but he never tried to stop himself. On the night he attempted to kill me, he also murdered his entire family—mere props to be thrown aside when no longer needed.

  Oyo also had a compulsion to kill—and consume—his victims. But his murders were wrapped in religious rites based upon a hybrid mix of West and East African beliefs and Christianity. There are hundreds of shamans who have committed similar acts. In parts of Africa even today, “witch children,” boys and girls born with albinism or other uncommon features, are treated as outcasts and killed for their supposed magical powers.

  When I mention this to colleagues, they demonstrate the appropriate amount of horror at such barbarism. Then I ask them how many people they know who crack jokes about the disabled or mentally handicapped.