Deeper Than the Dead

5

“This is the third victim in two years.”

“It’s the second.”

“In our jurisdiction. The second vic was in the next county, but it’s the same perp. Same MO, same signature.”

“Signature?” Frank Farman said. “Where’s his signature? Maybe he left his address and phone number too.”

Sheriff’s Detective Tony Mendez clenched his jaw for a beat. Farman, chief deputy, was old-school and resented the hell out of him for being one of the new faces of law enforcement—young, college educated, a minority, eager to embrace all the new technology the future promised.

“Why don’t we consult a crystal ball?” Farman suggested. “No need for any legwork at all.”

“That’s enough, Frank.”

Cal Dixon, fifty-three, fit, silver-haired, uniform starched and pressed, had been county sheriff for three years. He had a long solid career with the LA County Sheriff’s Department before he had moved north to the quieter setting of Oak Knoll. He had campaigned for the office on a promise of progressive change. Tony Mendez was an example of his promise in practice.

Mendez was thirty-six, smart, dedicated, and ambitious. He had jumped at the chance to attend the FBI’s National Academy, an eleven-week course for senior and accomplished law enforcement personnel—not only from around the United States, but from around the world. Classes ranged from sex crimes to hostage negotiations to criminal psychology. Attendees went away not only with an advanced education, but with valuable contacts as well.

Dixon had seen sending Mendez as an investment that would pay off for his department in more ways than one. Mendez was happy to prove him right.

“MO is how he did it,” Mendez said. “The signature is his own thing, something extra he does for his own reasons.”

He pointed at the head of the dead woman as deputies and crime scene investigators worked around her, searching for anything that might resemble evidence. “Eyes glued shut. Mouth glued shut. See no evil, speak no evil. He didn’t have to do that to kill her. That’s what gets him off.”

“That’s all very interesting,” Farman said. “But how does that help us catch the bad guy?”

He wasn’t being sarcastic. Mendez knew there were still plenty of cops who doubted the usefulness of criminal profiling. Mendez had studied enough cases to feel differently.

They stood in Oakwoods Park. The sun was gone. There was a crisp chill in the October air. The area around the shallow grave was illuminated by bright portable work lamps. The stark light made the scene seem all the more surreal and macabre.

The body hadn’t been buried there for long. Maybe a day at the most. If the corpse had been there for very long, it would have sustained more damage from animals and insects. If not for the gash on her cheek and the ants crawling on her face, the young woman would have looked like she was sleeping peacefully—undoubtedly a far cry from the reality of her death, Mendez thought.

He believed they would find she had been strangled, tortured, and sexually assaulted. Just like the two victims who had come before her.

He had worked the first homicide—Julie Paulson—eighteen months ago, still unsolved. The victim had been found at a campground five miles out of town, eyes and lips glued shut. There had been multiple ligature marks on her wrists and ankles, some older than others, indicating she had been held somewhere over a period of time.

Nine months later he had spoken with the detectives in the next county when their vic had been discovered. He had looked at the photographs of that corpse—a body that had suffered considerably from the elements before being found by hikers, just off a popular trail. The mouth had been more or less gone, along with one eye. The other eye had been glued shut. The hyoid bone in the neck been fractured, indicating strangulation.

“Neither of the others was buried,” Dixon pointed out. “Let alone displayed like this one.”

Their victim’s head was entirely above ground, propped up on a stone the size of a loaf of bread. Staged for maximum shock value. This was something new: the body left in a very public park, off the beaten path, but definitely in a place where it would be found.

“It’s risky,” Mendez said. “Maybe he wants attention. I think we’ve got a serial killer on our hands.”

Dixon took a step toward him, scowling. “I don’t want to hear those words coming out of your mouth again outside my office.”

“But this vic makes three. I can reach out to Quantico now.”

“Yeah, that’s what we need,” Farman said. “Some Feeb strutting around like the cock of the walk. Who the hell cares if this creep wet his pants when he was ten? What good is that? They’ll send some hotshot who just wants to be on the news to tell the world he’s a genius and we’re a bunch of stupid hicks.”

Dixon glanced over his shoulder at the crowd still gathered on the other side of the crime scene tape. “Nobody says shit about this crime possibly being connected to any other. Nobody says anything about the eyes and mouth being glued shut. Nobody mentions the letters F-B-I.”

Mendez felt the word “but” lodge in his throat like a chicken bone.

“I’m sending the body to LA County,” Dixon announced, his stark blue eyes on the victim. “We need a coroner who isn’t an undertaker by day.”

“They’ve got bodies stacked on top of each other down there,” Farman said.

“I can reach out to some people. We can get priority.”

“Sheriff, if this guy has killed three, he’ll kill four, five, six,” Mendez said, keeping his voice down. “How many women did Bundy kill? He confessed to thirty. Some people think the number was closer to a hundred. Do we have to wait for some more women to die before—”

“Don’t piss me off, Detective,” Dixon warned. “The first thing we need to do is find out who this young woman was. She was somebody’s daughter.”

Mendez shut his mouth and reflected on that. Tonight some family was missing a daughter. If they even realized she was gone, they would still have hope she could be found. They would still have the dread of uncertainty. In a day or two or ten—when this corpse was finally identified and given a name—their hope would become despair. The uncertainty would be over, replaced by the stone-cold fact that someone had taken her life away from them, brutally and without mercy.

And that someone was still out there, very probably hunting for his next victim.