Murder Theory Read online

  To be sure, they saw the sea differently than I do. They could read the currents, the winds, perceiving many elements I’m oblivious to. They also had their own instruments, like the sólarsteinn, or sunstone, as we call it in the Anglo tongue.

  While the sunstone was mentioned allegorically in medieval texts, historians and scientists weren’t quite sure if this was a real thing. Supposedly it could tell you where in the sky the sun was on a heavily overcast day—a not-too-uncommon condition in the North Atlantic.

  While the minerals cordierite and Icelandic spar have polarizing properties that could maybe sort of tell you where the sun was, people trying to use them came away with mixed results.

  The breakthrough came courtesy of two scientists at a laser-research laboratory who decided not to discount the other parts of the legend. The sunstone wasn’t only a piece of crystal you looked through to find the sun; it was also supposed to give the user the magical gift of being able to see the sun on an overcast day. That’s a subtle distinction to a modern person, but not to an ancient who didn’t have an understanding of the physiology of the eye to explain this phenomenon.

  The scientists tried an interesting experiment. They noticed that in a certain position, Icelandic spar could act as a depolarizer, making all the photons given off by the diffuse light take on random orientations. When they had people look through the Icelandic spar at a cloudy horizon, then suddenly yank the crystal away, they saw with their own naked eye a yellowish line where the sun was located. In theory, because of a small defect of the eye, looking through the sunstone made it momentarily hypersensitive to polarized light.

  At least that’s the theory. I don’t know if it’s true, but I like the idea that the Vikings figured out something practical about quantum physics and neurology that we’re only now beginning to grasp.

  I especially like the idea of a magical crystal that could help me separate the signal from all the noise.

  “This is the spot,” says the man as he catches his breath, “where we found the first body. Skylar Steven. You’re Dr. Cray? Right?”

  I extend my hand. Sergeant Newell shakes mine in a cold grip. He was the New Jersey State Police officer who responded to the first report of the triple homicide as he came on duty. He’s in his civvies: a thick wool jacket over blue jeans and tall black boots. A baseball cap shadows his face, which has a pale-parchment tone.

  “There was a tide pool here. Steven’s body was lying in it, still bleeding out. There were crabs all over him. What a sight. Something out of a movie. A woman and her dog found him. The paramedics got here first. They knew he was a goner. All that blood, it looked like he got run over by a boat propeller.” He points into the distance down the beach. “And then we found the other one and the other. This way.”

  I follow him down the shoreline as he paints a vivid picture of the morning he found the bodies. “I’m in the middle of calling this in, and people are starting to gather. Some college kid asks me about the other one. I’m like, ‘What other one?’ and then he points me to here.” Newell points to a small patch of kelp. “This is where I found Ernie Calder. He was lying faceup. Slashed like the others. His head was all tilted to the side. Ugh. What a mess. Yardley was over here. Just as bad.”

  Gallard’s case file has photos of the bodies. It’s not difficult to match the memory of those to Newell’s firsthand account.

  “Then what happened?” I ask.

  “I was standing here with a couple of other officers, waiting to see if the coast guard had any reports of a missing boat. That’s when I looked a little farther down the shore and thought to myself, We need to call homicide. I kind of had an idea, an image, of what happened. It all started to make sense.”

  Newell nods to a fishing pier jutting out into the ocean. Made from dark timber, the structure looks like something the Romans built and forgot about. It also looks ready to collapse into the ocean with the next pounding wave.

  I follow Newell onto the pier, and we slip through the metal gate blocking the entrance.

  “The thing was condemned, but some of the older guys still came here to fish. Local cops looked the other way.”

  The floorboards are covered in seagull crap and flaking paint. Some of the planks are missing, while others are rotting away in place.

  At the end of the pier, speckles of blood, fish scales, and more seagull droppings are splattered all over the wood. Off to one side, a whole section has been removed; fencing now covers the hole that looks straight down into the frothing waves.

  “The techs cut out the boards with the blood splatter. But I can show you pictures. When I got here and saw the puddles of blood and the seagulls walking in it, getting their goddamn feet wet, it wasn’t hard to figure out what happened. Someone went berserk with their fish knife and carved up the others.

  “It only took a few hours to figure out who that was. Carl Dunhill. He was a regular here, too. Nice guy. Quiet. But nice. He’d been friendly with the other guys—drinking and fishing buddies. We arrested him at work. He was a bridge tender.”

  I raise my eyebrows.

  “Yeah, that made things difficult. We showed up at the bridge and had to ask him to call in his replacement.”

  “How was he?” I ask.

  “Carl? He wasn’t the same guy. He was distant. I don’t know if that’s because he realized what he’d done. Or if he was just in his own world. Either way, he came with us but didn’t say much, other than muttering that it was a horrible dream.”

  “Where is he now?”

  “Serving three life sentences. I heard he’s in solitary confinement because he attacked some guards or something.”

  “Did he ever have any violent behavior before?”

  The officer shrugs. “Some drunk-and-disorderlys. He’d get pretty wasted. People saw him stumbling home fairly often.”

  “What about when they arrested him?” I ask.

  “He looked like he hadn’t slept much. But not hungover. You’d think a guy like that would have got himself shit-faced after doing something like that. But nope.”

  Interesting.

  I survey the pier and try to imagine how the FBI got any useful forensics out here other than the blood. With the salt water and waves that occasionally splash over the edges, it would seem close to impossible to get anything other than fish blood or seagull crap.

  “Do you guys usually use the FBI forensics lab?”

  “We have some kind of cooperative agreement, I think. You could ask Detective Gora for more details on that.”

  I put on a respirator mask and pull out a sampling kit. “I’m just going to collect some samples.”

  “Have at it. Take the whole pier if you want.”

  I scrape some of the rotten timbers and look for mold under the railings. To be honest, I’m doubtful I’ll find any trace of what I’m looking for here. This is not where Carl Dunhill got infected, if he got infected. But I’m here and I might as well give it a shot.

  The similarities between this case and Marcus’s are striking. The sudden change of behavior clearly stands out. Neither case involved a long-standing grudge or any other major trigger event. For Carl Dunhill, the file shows only a recent drunk brawl over a basketball score. In Marcus’s case, it was a bad performance review. These aren’t big triggers that push a normal person over the edge. They would only activate the hair trigger of a psychopath.

  “Anything else I can do for you?” asks Newell.

  “No. Thank you. I’ll probably be calling Gora with a hundred questions. But first I’ve got to drive to Pennsylvania to see another crime scene.”

  “Is it connected to this?” he asks.

  “I hope not.”

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  RUMPUS

  The houses on Worth Avenue are all run-down in different ways. Some of them are missing entire panels, exposing insulation. Others have overgrown yards or broken windows patched up with cardboard and duct tape. It’s like each home expresses its own kind
of failure: economic, health, old age.

  It’s dark out, and the one working streetlight is flickering on and off. I’d be more concerned for my safety if it didn’t look so abandoned.

  Raskin, Pennsylvania, police detective Duffy is waiting inside her car when I pull up to 4428 Worth Avenue. She glances up at me from her window. “Cray?”

  “Yep.”

  She gets out of her car, and I see she’s wearing black slacks and a jacket. Her auburn hair is cut close and she isn’t afraid to let some of her gray show. Although she’s short, her green eyes look straight through me, unafraid.

  Duffy seems immune to the cold, while I’ve got my hands in my pockets to keep them from turning white.

  Her words are punctuated by vapor clouds as she speaks. “I spoke to Benjamin Pale’s mother at the hospital. She gave us permission to look around the home. His brother, Robert, will probably be there.”

  Benjamin Pale, a thirty-eight-year-old factory worker, was convicted of trying to murder a supervisor at his workplace. One day he went ballistic, grabbed a box knife, and started to slash at his boss, almost killing him on the spot before someone intervened, slamming a chair into his head, knocking him out cold.

  When police conducted a search warrant on his home, they found the bodies of two prostitutes under a pile of boxes in the basement. They’d been killed only days before the incident at the factory.

  Pale’s mother, an invalid who requires oxygen—living at home then, now a hospital inpatient indefinitely—had no idea what the noises were coming from downstairs. His brother is a truck driver who had been away when the murders happened.

  “Just so you know, both the brothers are kind of odd,” says Duffy as we walk toward the one house on the street with a light on.

  “Odd? How do you mean?”

  “When we searched the home and found the two victims, we’d originally pegged Robert for the murders. He seemed more the type. Benjamin wasn’t really the angry sort.”

  “Tell that to his foreman,” I reply.

  “Well, yeah. Both of them are a bit on the spectrum. They’ve never left home, never been married, and I don’t think either has a friend to speak of. Anyway, we thought Robert killed the girls in the basement, but he’d been out of town, and we got a sample from Benjamin that matched.”

  “Does either one of them have a history of violent behavior?”

  “No. Kinda surprising. Nothing. Not even a domestic disturbance. Although I’m not sure they have any neighbors. Most of the houses here have been foreclosed on for years.”

  We reach the front steps of the two-story house. One yellow light illuminates a dull-gray porch with two sad-looking wooden chairs supporting plastic crates of car parts and empty bottles.

  Duffy knocks on the door and gives me a grimace as we wait for someone to answer. She pounds louder, rattling the light fixture next to the door.

  “Mr. Pale! It’s the police. We need to finish up a few things about the case.”

  The neighborhood is quiet. The only noise is a dog barking in the distance and the low hum of cars on the distant freeway. Duffy bangs her fist against the door again.

  From somewhere inside the house, we hear a squeak and a door shutting. Footsteps can be heard coming toward the door.

  The dead bolt unfastens and a man half a head taller than I stands there in a dirty white tank top. He’s got black hair with gray streaks and an unshaven face.

  “Yup?” he says.

  “I’m Detective Duffy. Remember me? We’re here to clear up a couple things about your brother’s case,” she explains.

  “What kind of things?”

  “Procedural.”

  He shakes his head. “I’m kinda busy right now.”

  I watch Duffy and can tell that she’s a little suspicious of his behavior. “It’s okay. We won’t be long. Your mother told us we could have a look. And she still owns the house.”

  “Yeah. Fine.” He pushes open the door and waves us into the living room.

  The inside of the house reminds me of a Sears catalog from 1982—with the expected wear and tear of the intervening decades.

  Time seems to have stopped while everything fell apart. I suspect that the time-capsule effect was created when the brothers’ father died. Mrs. Pale never bothered to change anything, and the sons were in no hurry to move on.

  I can relate. I lost my own father when I was young, and all my interests were sort of frozen at that point. I tried to be a doctor like him, and it didn’t work out, but I still feel his shadow to this day.

  Duffy makes her way to the kitchen. The sink is full of dishes, and garbage is piled up in the corner. Dirty footprints are all over the floor. I hear the jingle of a dog collar, and a shaggy, gray-black, medium-size mutt comes running up to us.

  Duffy kneels down and scratches the dog behind the ears. “Hey, Thomas! How have you been?”

  The dog soaks up the attention and does an excited spin. Robert seems indifferent to the animal. “Who are you?” he asks.

  “I’m a researcher helping the police department build some statistical software.”

  Duffy glances at me out of the corner of her eye. She doesn’t say anything about my lie but understands my hesitancy to tell him the same story I gave her—which involved using my government project as an excuse.

  “We’re going to have a look in the basement,” Duffy informs him—not asking.

  “Whatever.” Robert gestures at a door in the kitchen, then walks down the hall to the living room and picks up a newspaper.

  Duffy leads me down the stairs into the basement and flips on a light. I’d been expecting some dank, dungeon-like space.

  Instead it’s what I guess they used to call a rumpus room. There’s a pool table at one end, couches at the other, and an old television. It’s actually the cleanest part of the house—then it dawns on me.

  “What was it like when you found it?” I ask.

  She shakes her head. “A nightmare. Wall-to-wall boxes, newspapers, everything. The place was practically a garbage pit. We had to haul it all out in case there were more victims.” She makes a face. “And the rats. Good lord. We had to put barriers in the kitchen to keep them from infesting the rest of the house.”

  She aims her flashlight at a far corner. “That’s where we found the first body. Nora Morrant. She was a heroin addict that had been working around a liquor store ten blocks from here.”

  “She was killed in Benjamin’s car?”

  “Yes. Before the act or in the middle, they started to fight. We still don’t know over what. He beat her, then choked her to death. That’s when he panicked and drove the body here, throwing her in the basement.

  “The second woman, Shiri Lanham, was almost the same exact thing. Then he flipped out and tried to kill his boss the next day. Funny thing how a guy can just snap like that.”

  Creaking sounds come from the floorboards above us. Duffy’s eyes go upward, then land on me. In a hushed tone, she whispers, “Is it me or was Robert acting kinda weird?”

  “I don’t know his baseline, but yeah. He seemed very interested in that newspaper.”

  “Who reads newspapers anymore?”

  “Who reads newspapers from July 2004?” I reply.

  Her eyes narrow at my observation. “I’m going to have a look upstairs.”

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  VAPOR

  Robert Pale is back in his chair in the living room when we return upstairs. This time he’s reading an old Clive Cussler novel while Thomas sits at his feet, ignored. He looks up from the book he’s pretending to read. “You done?”

  “Almost,” replies Duffy. “We’re going to have a look upstairs.” She watches for his reaction.

  “What for?” he asks.

  “We want to take a look at Benjamin’s room.”

  “I got rid of most of his stuff. Whatever.”

  As we go up the steps, I can feel Robert’s eyes boring into our backs. I can’t tell if it’s suspicio
n, fear, or something else.

  There’s a jangle of dog tags as Thomas decides to follow after us, dashing between our legs and then waiting for us at the top of the landing with a “What took you so long?” expression on his face.

  Duffy reaches down and pets the animal again. “Poor little guy.” She casts a glance back at the living room, maybe thinking about saying something, but decides otherwise.

  The first room we encounter is Mrs. Pale’s. The lamp on the nightstand is on, revealing pink wallpaper and overstuffed cabinets holding dolls and crystal figurines. Oxygen tanks and medical equipment surround the bed. Pill bottles cover most of the available horizontal surfaces.

  She was clearly not a well woman before this happened. I can only imagine the toll it has taken on her health.

  A small air purifier is whirring away on a chair by her bed, still blowing a breeze over the spot where she normally lies. A stack of paperbacks stands at her bedside, most of the books bearing stickers from library sales.

  We go down the hall toward a closed door. I can’t help noticing the faded pictures along the walls. They show family photos from the 1980s. Two boys, I assume Robert and Benjamin, are in the images. They look relatively normal, if not a little subdued in their expressions. I don’t notice anything weird.

  They just seem like a quiet family—the kind you see at a Shoney’s wordlessly eating a meal together, their internal lives far more interesting than the ones they share with each other.

  The threat of an airborne pathogen is weighing at the back of my mind, but I don’t think a brief exposure would be enough. All the same, I avoid touching my face and decide to use a Vaseline nasal rub in the future to keep my nostrils from drying out and making me vulnerable. Wearing a mask or a hazmat suit might alarm people too much.

  “This is Benjamin’s room,” says Duffy as she pushes open a door. It’s a teenager’s room straight out of the late 1980s. Posters of muscle cars and bikini-clad women fill the walls. The floors and closet are bare. I assume his clothing was taken as evidence. Like the basement, it has a picked-over appearance.