Acts of Mercy

NINE

You’re acting a little antsy today,” Trula observed from her place at the counter where she was trying unsuccessfully to open a jar of cherries she’d canned earlier in the season. “What is it about this Fiona person that’s making you so nervous, Sam?”

“Nervous?” Sam frowned. “I’m not nervous.”

“You’ve been tapping your fingers on the table for the past”-she paused and looked pointedly at the clock-“thirteen minutes.”

“Tapping on the table is usually a sign of impatience, not nerves,” he replied, reaching for the jar. “And I am impatient. She’s a half hour late. It isn’t as if I have nothing to do but wait for her, you know.”

“No, I don’t know.” Trula handed the jar of cherries across the counter and he opened it with ease, the lid making a proud pop. “Hmmmph. I must be getting old,” she grumbled. “Old and weak.”

“Trula, I can think of a lot of words to describe you, but old and weak are not two of them.”

“You heard I was making Belgian waffles for brunch today, didn’t you?” She pretended to glare at him. “That’s why you’re sucking up to me?”

“No. I hadn’t heard that.” Sam handed the jar back to her. “Are you? Making Belgian waffles?”

“I promised Chloe we’d make them for her and her mom, to celebrate Emme coming home. As soon as they arrive, I’ll start. You’re welcome to join us. Assuming of course that your appointment hasn’t arrived yet.” Trula smiled. “It’s hard for people to take you seriously when you go into a meeting with whipped cream on your chin and cherry juice on your shirt.”

“You put whipped cream on your waffles?”

She stared at him as if he had two heads. “I said they were Belgian waffles, Sam. Of course, there’s-”

The doorbell rang.

“That’s probably Fiona.” He started toward the door, then looked back over his shoulder at the waffle maker Trula was setting up on the counter.

“Go,” she told him. “I’ll save you something. Maybe.”

Sam could see through the sidelights next to the front door that it was in fact Fiona Summers who’d rung the bell. They’d never met, but he’d seen her at several meetings. She almost always came in alone, usually just as the doors were closing, and always took a seat in the back of the room. He couldn’t remember her ever speaking out or contributing to a discussion. He didn’t think she’d been in his unit all that long and couldn’t remember where or when he’d first seen her. She was a self-professed loner, he recalled as he opened the front door. Just as he was.

“Hey, Fiona.” He stood back to permit her to enter.

“Sam.” She stepped inside, all business. “Nice to finally meet you. I’ve heard a lot about you.”

He raised one eyebrow.

“Miranda’s sister, Portia,” she explained as she set a bulging leather briefcase on the floor. “We ran into each other in the office yesterday, and she said that you and she went way back.”

“Yeah, we worked together a couple of times.” He started to shut the door behind her.

“Hold up.” She reached toward the door to keep him from closing it. “I have to go back to my car for the rest of it.”

“The rest of it?”

“The rest of the files.” She went down the front steps and Sam followed her. When he caught up with her at the trunk of her car, she’d already popped the lid. Inside were three cardboard file boxes.

“Let me give you a hand.” He reached in and stacked one on top of a second.

“Thanks.” Fiona lifted the third box and when Sam had cleared the trunk, she slammed the lid down. “I debated on how much to bring along, then figured the heck with it. I’d let you sort through and see what interested you. Normally, I wouldn’t do that with a PI, of course, but I talked to John, and he said to give you whatever you needed. Help you in whatever way I could.”

“Thanks, Fiona.”

“Thank John Mancini.” She smiled. “Like I said, normally, I wouldn’t do this for a PI who was working on a case of mine. But when the boss tells you to share, you share.”

He wasn’t sure if she resented the interference of her boss-his former boss-into her case, but the important thing was that she did bring all her files with her, which he greatly appreciated, and said so. He balanced the two file boxes on his hip and opened the front door.

Once inside, Fiona picked up her briefcase and asked, “Which way?”

“Straight up the steps, third door on your left,” he told her. “We can use the conference room, gives us more space to spread out.”

Ten minutes later, they were seated at the large wooden table, a stack of files in front of Fiona, two bottles of water and a couple of ballpoint pens between them. Sam twisted the top off one bottle and took a long drink. Obviously Fiona wanted to dole out the information her way, piece by piece, in the order of her choosing. Well, that was all right with him. He’d take it however he could get it. Besides, she was nice to look at: wavy dark hair pulled back in a high tail and green eyes set in a heart-shaped face, skin that was tanned just to the point of looking healthy, and a mouth that curled up just a little on one side when she smiled. She wore no makeup, but then, Sam thought, she didn’t need to.

So, yeah, Fiona could drag out this meeting for as long as she wanted to. Sam had all day.

“Here’s what I have on your case,” Fiona was saying. “I doubt if we have anything different here.”

She handed him a copy of her case recap report, which John Mancini had required of all the agents working in his unit. Sam scanned the notes. Fiona was right. There was nothing new.

At least, not until he got to about a third of the way down on the fourth page, where it was noted that the DNA from the skin cells removed from underneath Ross Walker’s fingernails matched that from the nails of one Joseph Edward Maynard.

“This Maynard case.” Sam’s heart began to beat a little faster. “Tell me about this one.”

Fiona sorted through her files and began to slide one out from the others.

“No, talk to me about it. Don’t read to me. I can read for myself later. I want to hear it the way you see it.”

“Okay.” She pushed the file away and sat back, an arm resting on each side of her chair, and swiveled slightly to meet his eyes head-on. “Twenty-two-year-old Joseph Edward Maynard was the son of David Maynard, of Maynard Appliances.”

She paused to let that sink in.

“That’s supposed to mean something?” he asked.

“Think about those commercial-grade ovens and stoves and refrigerators that are going into all the hotels and restaurants these days.”

“So this kid came from money. So what?”

“So here we have this kid from a wealthy family-probably the most affluent family in Kendall, Illinois-and they find his body-”

“From where?” Sam wasn’t sure he’d heard correctly.

“Town south of Chicago. Kendall. Not much there, but it’s a relatively affluent area,” she explained. “You’ve probably never heard of it. I hadn’t until-”

“I know Kendall,” he told her. “Carly-my wife-was from Kendall. We were married there. Her family still lives there.”

“Then chances are your in-laws would know the Maynards. They’re quite active within the community.”

“Carly’s dad recently retired as president of the chamber of commerce as well as chairman of the board of the bank,” Sam said. “If the Maynards are well-to-do the chances are damned good.”

“Well, there’s certainly a coincidence for you.” She paused. “Maybe we can call on them later to get a little more background, if we need it.”

“Tell me about this kid. What happened to him?” Sam tried to ignore the jolt he’d gotten when Kendall was mentioned. Coincidences always made him uneasy.

“His last weekend home before he was leaving for college, his senior year. Purdue. He goes out on a Friday night with a couple of his buddies to a local bar. His friends tell me he got up to go to the men’s room, around one, one fifteen AM, and never came back. After a while, they go to look for him, he’s not there. He’s nowhere. They figure he ran into someone, started talking, maybe went out to the parking lot, and went somewhere from there.”

“The guys are thinking someone, as in a girl.”

“Right.”

“Was he in the habit of doing that, picking up girls and leaving his buddies sitting at the bar without telling them he was going?”

She shook her head again. “They all said he’d never done that before.”

“What are the chances he ran into a pro, got an offer he couldn’t refuse, took off for the parking lot for a quickie, and ended up getting more than he’d bargained for?”

“That would seem to be the most logical explanation, except she’d have to be one hell of a girl to overpower him. He was almost six feet tall, close to two hundred pounds.”

“So she had an accomplice.”

“If it weren’t for the other cases, I’d agree with you. Fast forward to the following afternoon, some kids following the creek find his body underneath a bridge on the outskirts of town. Cause of death was manual strangulation but there were numerous postmortem stab wounds to the chest.” Fiona paused. “Sound familiar?”

“Go on.”

“Here’s the kicker. He’s found underneath a structure made out of cardboard, like a shelter had been built around him. The body was lying on a blanket underneath this cardboard house.” She reached for her water bottle and opened it, took a long sip, her eyes watching his face. When she’d finished drinking, she put the cap back on the bottle and said, “So say something.”

“Anyone see him leave the bar?”

She shook her head no. “The men’s room is right by the back door that leads to the parking lot. No one remembers seeing him, but then again, this is close to one in the morning after these kids had been drinking for several hours. Someone could have seen him, but might not remember.”

Sam rubbed the back of his neck. “Anything in the guy’s mouth?”

“No. But that brings us to my third case.” She started to reach for the file, then stopped. “You want it off the top of my head. Right. Okay. Next up is Calvin Adams. He’s in his early sixties. Homeless man who’s been battling both schizophrenia and drug addiction for years. He’s found lying on a park bench, stretched out as if he’s sleeping. A bottle of water,” she picked up the bottle in front of her and twirled it around, then tipped it upside down, “is standing upright in his mouth and halfway down his throat, the contents frozen solid because it’s winter.” She set the bottle down and said, “Here’s your chance to dazzle me with those mad investigative skills of yours. Tell me how the man died.”

“Manual strangulation. Multiple stab wounds-postmortem stab wounds-to the chest.”

“My God, you are every bit as sharp as they say you are.” She shook her head in mock amazement. “You know, it’s so rare that someone lives up to their reputation.”

“DNA match the others?” He ignored her sarcasm.

“No DNA this time around, but since what I’m thinking is the signature-the water bottle, which to my mind corresponds to the burger found in Ross Walker’s mouth-and with the MO being the same, I gotta think it’s the same guy. You’re free to offer up a different opinion, if you have one.”

“So you’ve drawn a line from the two where the physical evidence is similar-Walker and Adams-to the DNA match in the Walker and Maynard cases.” Sam stared into space for a moment. “So where’s the guy’s signature on the Maynard case? If we’re assuming it’s stuffing something into the mouth.” He paused again. “Maybe we’re not interpreting that correctly, though.” He thought for another moment. “Maybe somehow the signature in the Maynard case is the structure that was erected around him.”

Fiona pushed her chair back, opened her briefcase, and reached inside.

“Here are the photos from Maynard.” She opened a letter-sized brown envelope. “You’ve seen the photos of Walker, but we want to put them in context. You need to see all three together.”

She lined the photos up across the table, repeating the names of the victims as she did so. “Walker. Maynard. Adams.”

Sam stood to get a better look. He stared at each for a moment before moving to the next. After he’d studied all three, he said, “It’s in the prop. The signature is in the prop. The killer is telling us something, but I don’t know what it is.”

He picked up the photo of Joseph Maynard. “This structure is too well thought out to have been some random means of hiding a body. He was very well organized here. I’m assuming he brought the blanket with him? Do you know?” he asked Fiona.

“No one in his family had seen it before, and since one of his buddies had driven that night, it hadn’t come from the victim’s car. So yes, we are assuming the killer probably brought it with him.”

“The structure was carefully constructed. See here, it looks as if several large boxes were opened up and then pieced together to make the shelter.” He slid the photo closer to Fiona and pointed. “This is not the work of someone tossing cardboard boxes onto a corpse to hide it. It’s more than that. I just don’t know what.”

He placed the photo between the others and lifted the last one to take a closer look. The photo slipped from his hands and flipped over. On the back was written: Calvin Adams. Age 62. DOD: 2/9/09. Dutton, NE.

Sam stared at the writing, the hairs on the back of his neck standing straight up.

“What?” Fiona asked. “What are you thinking?”

It took several moments for Sam to put his thoughts together.

“I’m thinking this is the damnedest thing.” His eyes were still on the back of the photo.

“What?” she repeated, somewhat impatiently.

“I went to high school in Dutton.” He sat down, the photo of Calvin Adams in his hand. “The regional high school for all the small towns around where I grew up was in Dutton.”

She stared at him as if trying to follow his train of thought.

Sam stood and reached across the table for the other two photos.

“Walker was killed in Lincoln. Where I went to college. Maynard in Kendall, Illinois, where my wife grew up, where we were married. She’s buried there. Adams was killed in Dutton…” He looked down at Fiona, who was swiveling very slowly, very quietly, from side to side. “Am I imagining something here? Am I being paranoid? Is this some cosmic coincidence?”

“You know what Mancini says about coincidences, Sam.”

“Yeah. There aren’t any.” He tossed the pictures back onto the table. “I do not like what I’m thinking.”

“Maybe it is a coincidence,” she said thoughtfully. “Maybe this one time-odds being what they are-John Mancini’s theory will, by percentage, be proven wrong.”

They sat in silence for several long moments.

“Maybe you’re right,” he told her. “The chance that any of this could somehow be connected to me is practically zero. On the surface, it could be interpreted that way. I’m sure you’re right. This is one of those odd times when true coincidence comes into play.” He looked at her and smiled. “Sorry. It just spooked me for a moment.”

“It spooked me, too.” She laughed as if relieved. “For a minute, anyway.”

“Okay, spooky moment has passed.” Sam rearranged the photos. “Let’s see if we can figure out what our killer is telling us. Hamburger stuffed in the mouth. House made of cardboard. Empty water bottle in the mouth.”

“Maybe it’s the locations,” Fiona ventured. “Behind a soup kitchen for the poor. Under a bridge in a cardboard house. Sleeping on a park bench. Maybe they all relate somehow?”

“Excuse me.” There was a tap on the door frame. “Sam DelVecchio?”

Sam looked over his shoulder. In the doorway was a man in black, wearing a clerical collar. Years of training brought Sam to his feet.

“Yes, Father?” he addressed the man.

“I’m Kevin Burch.” The priest came into the room to introduce himself. “I’m Robert’s cousin. Trula told me you were up here, and I just wanted to pop in to meet you. I hope I’m not intruding.”

“Not at all, Father.” Sam took the hand the priest offered.

“It’s Kevin,” the priest told him. “Everyone here calls me Kevin. Robert’s kind enough to let me call this place home.”

He turned to Fiona.

“Ah, Father… er, Kevin…” Sam began. “This is Special Agent Summers. She’s with the FBI.”

“It’s Fiona.” She pushed back her chair to rise and Kevin waved her off.

“Don’t get up. Please. It’s nice to meet you.” He shook her hand as well, then looked at the table. “Looks as if I’ve interrupted something important here.”

“We’re just going over a case. The FBI has identified three victims that appear to be the work of the same killer. One of those cases happens to be the case we took on this week.”

“The good Samaritan from Nebraska.” Kevin moved closer to take a look. “The gentleman who was found behind the soup kitchen? A mission of some sort?”

“Yes.” Sam’s eyes darted to the photos, wondering if perhaps they might be too gruesome for the priest.

“Mallory called me about it.” He picked up the photo of Ross Walker and studied it, but did not flinch from the carnage. “Poor soul. Do you have any leads?”

“None. We were just discussing the fact that there are two other very similar cases that-”

“What’s in his mouth?” Kevin asked.

“A hamburger from a fast food restaurant,” Sam told him.

Kevin studied the picture, then picked up the next one.

“What’s this supposed to be, some kind of shelter…?” he asked.

“Apparently. It was put around him by the killer,” Fiona explained.

“And this?” Kevin next went to the picture of Calvin Adams. “The water bottle…”

“We don’t know what it all means,” Fiona said, “but we feel very strongly it’s connected somehow.”

The priest began to nod, as he replaced the photos in order, his expression solemn.

“If I could…” he began hesitantly.

“You have some thoughts, Father?” Sam asked. “Er, Kevin?”

“You’re Catholic, Sam?” Kevin asked.

“Yes.”

“Fiona?”

She nodded. “Me too, yes.”

“You’re familiar then, with the Church’s corporal acts of mercy?” the priest continued.

Fiona nodded. “The call to Christians to perform acts of charity and kindness to the needy,” she said. “To live as Christ would, treat our fellow man as He would.”

“Well said.” The priest then lifted the photos, in order, and dealt them out in front of the two investigators as if dealing from a deck of cards.

“Feed the hungry.” He peeled off the photo of Ross Walker. “Shelter the homeless.” Joseph Edward Maynard.

“Give drink to the thirsty.” Calvin Adams.

If a pin had dropped in the room, all three would have heard it land.

“Of course, being a priest, maybe I’m just reading into the photos what I see from my own perspective,” Kevin said. “Maybe it isn’t that at all.”

“No, that’s it.” Sam nodded slowly. “That’s it.”

“Except that Joseph Maynard was far from being homeless,” Fiona pointed out. “Calvin Adams was the homeless person.”

“But if the killer was selecting his victims at random, he wouldn’t have known that,” Sam told them. “And I’m just about one hundred percent certain that the victims were random.”

He explained that the killer could not have known that Ross Walker would have been the volunteer to take trash out to the Dumpster on the night he was attacked, but the killer had come totally prepared to commit murder.

“We may never know for certain if Maynard had been picked out ahead of time or if the killer had simply been in the parking lot, waiting for someone-anyone-to step outside.” He turned to Fiona. “You said that Calvin Adams was homeless and that he often slept in that park. In that case, he wouldn’t have had to look too far to find a victim. Especially if Adams was already asleep.”

“That’s true,” she said. “And since Adams was the only one of the three to have not fought back sufficiently to have gotten the killer’s skin under his nails, it does make sense that he could have been asleep when he was attacked.”

“So you have random victims but a specific… I don’t know what you’d call it.” Kevin frowned. “I’ve read a lot but don’t know if you’d call the acts of mercy thing his signature or his MO.”

“Signature,” Sam told him. “His MO is the way in which he goes about committing his crime. The strangulation, the stabbings. But the posing, the props-they’re part of whatever emotional investment he has in these crimes. That’s what links him to his victims, that’s his payoff, what makes these killings uniquely his. And that’s what will eventually lead us to him.”

“It’s going to be hard to figure out though, don’t you think?” Kevin was still frowning. “I mean, you have random victims in random places.”

“Maybe not so random.” Fiona stood and leaned against the table. “I’m still not so sure the locations are random, Sam.”

“What do you mean?” Kevin asked.

“Ross Walker was killed in Lincoln, Nebraska-home of the University of Nebraska,” Fiona said.

“Great football there,” Kevin noted. “I’ve been a Cornhuskers fan for years.”

“You go to school out there, Father?” Sam had never addressed a priest by his first name and had to correct himself again. “Kevin.”

“No, I went to St. Joe’s, in Philly. But Nebraska’s teams always get TV time in the fall. They’re always worth watching.”

“Sam went to Nebraska,” Fiona told him. “Right, Sam?”

“Right. I did. I’m Nebraska born and raised.”

“You play ball there?” the priest asked, seeming to be grateful to have the conversation move from murder for a moment.

“Actually, yes, I did.” Sam nodded. “I played center, backup my freshman year, started the next three.”

“You must have been good.”

“I had my moments.”

“Well, moving along here.” Fiona tapped on the photo of Calvin Adams. “Mr. Adams was killed in a park in Dutton, Nebraska.” She turned to Kevin. “Sam went to high school in Dutton.”

“Seriously?” The priest stared at the photo, then picked up the picture of Joseph Maynard. “Tell me you didn’t go to grade school in the town where this young man died.”

“No, I didn’t go to grade school there,” Sam said solemnly. “But my wife-my late wife-did. As a matter of fact, we were married there. Actually, she’s buried there.”

“Holy… smoke.” Kevin leaned against the back of the chair and exhaled loudly.

“That’s what we were discussing when you came in.” Sam reached for his water bottle, the sick feeling returning to his stomach. Hearing Fiona lay it out for the priest that way made coincidence seem less and less likely.

“We were thinking it was probably a coincidence that Sam had a connection to the locations,” Fiona added.

“Well, I’m not an investigator, but it seems to me that if the victims are random but the location is not, then the key would be in the location, right?” When he realized what he said, Kevin looked at Sam apologetically. “But does it really make sense that someone would deliberately pick places that had ties to you? Would someone really do that? I mean, I know on TV you see story lines like that, but in real life, do people do that?”

“I guess if they’re trying to get someone’s attention, they might.” Fiona stated what, for her, was obvious.

“If someone’s trying to get my attention,” Sam said slowly, “they’ve got it now.”

“But why would someone do that?” Kevin asked. “Why Sam? And why bring the acts of mercy into it?”

“The first question-why me?” Sam shrugged. “It could be someone who wants revenge against me for something, maybe for arresting them in the past, or maybe arresting a family member or a loved one. We can look into that through the Bureau’s records. But why the posing, feed the hungry and the rest of it? That’s the real question. And if we can find the answer to that, we’ll have the answers to all those other questions.”

“This is all speculation, Sam,” Fiona reminded him. “Maybe we’re reading too much into this. Maybe it is, as we discussed before, a creepy coincidence.” She thought for a moment. “Let’s look at this another way. You said this is your first week on this new job, right?”

Sam nodded. “Right.”

“Ross Walker was killed on February 9, 2008. How would someone in February of 2008 have known that in September of 2009, you’d no longer be with the Bureau? That you’d not only be working here, but that you’d be assigned to this case?”

Sam felt a prickle at the back of his neck.

“No one could have predicted that,” Kevin said.

“Right.” Sam turned to the priest. “I didn’t even know that a year and a half ago. So you’re probably right. It’s probably just one of those creepy coincidences. I guess they really do happen.”

“Sure,” Fiona agreed all too readily. “I’m sure that’s it. Proving that even the great John Mancini isn’t invincible.”

Kevin looked at her blankly.

“Our boss, John. His theory is that there’s no such thing as coincidence in a homicide investigation,” Fiona explained.

Kevin smiled. “I guess you can tell him that he can lay that theory to rest. Somehow this killer just managed to pick three towns in the Midwest that had a connection to Sam, but it could have been any three towns. Could have been any other three towns that had a connection to someone else, right? So there’s got to be another explanation, right?”

“Right,” Sam and Fiona said at the same time.

“Well, I’m glad we got that straightened out.” Kevin patted Sam on the back. “Good to meet you, Sam. Welcome aboard. I’m sure we’ll be seeing a lot of each other. Good luck with your case.”

“Thanks, Father.” She smiled as he left the room, then turned to Sam and said, “So we’re in agreement, then? We’re scratching the Sam connection here and we’re moving ahead?”

He hesitated just a bit too long.

“What?” Fiona frowned. “I thought we just agreed-”

“You have three murders where the MO is identical. What generally happens once a recognizable pattern is identified, Fiona?”

She didn’t answer right away. “Once the details are entered into VICAP, sooner or later someone will pick up the similarities.”

“And if there are three or more…”

“Someone will stick the serial-killer tag on them. And sooner or later, the chances are very good that the case will fall into the lap of the Bureau, where odds are-at the very least-it will be reviewed by one of the profilers.”

“And since there were only two of us working for John’s unit-Anne Marie McCall and I-sooner or later, the connection would be made.” Sam looked at Fiona. “Annie knows I’m from Nebraska. She knows I graduated from UNL. She would have brought it to my attention.”

“So if we go back to the theory that the killer is trying to get your attention, he would most likely have gotten it.”

“Right. I think the only real coincidence here is that I came on board with the Mercy Street Foundation at the same time Lynne Walker applied to have her husband’s murder investigated. If I’d stayed with the Bureau, the connection would have been obvious.” Sam sighed. “And there’s one other thing I should bring to your attention.”

She tilted her head to one side, waiting.

“My birthday is February ninth.”

He waited for the significance of the dates to click in. He didn’t have to wait long.

“Walker was killed on the ninth in ’08, Adams on the ninth in ’09. Maynard, though, was killed on the fifteenth of the month, right?”

“That’s right.” He swallowed hard. “August fifteenth. The anniversary of my wife’s murder.”

“Holy shit.” Fiona stared at Sam. “Why didn’t you say something when Father Burch was here?”

“Because I think that bomb ought to be dropped on Mallory Russo and Robert Magellan first.”

“I guess I’d better call in to the office and have someone start running a list of all the cases you handled over the years, and see if anything jumps out. It would have to be someone you pissed off really badly, Sam.”

“Well, that should narrow the field down to a couple hundred people and their families and closest friends,” Sam said dryly. “You can lay an awful lot of track in sixteen years…”