Nine

8

L.A. County Sheriff’s Department

Homicide Bureau

Commerce, California

Monday, May 19, 3:15 P.M.

Hogan had a show going.

Brandon never ceased to be amazed at how quickly the lieutenant could put a presentation together. It was his forte-the ability to use computers had been no small part of Hogan’s rise within the department. Didn’t know shit about detective work, but that didn’t make him any different from most lieutenants, in Alex’s estimation.

In the time since he had received Alex’s first calls from Catalina, Hogan had managed to put together a computer “slide show.” Hogan had also loaded in photos Ciara had taken with a digital camera at the scene.

The conference room at the homicide bureau was crowded. Alex counted twenty-three people, among them Homicide Bureau Captain Bill Nelson, all of the other lieutenants, the head of the crime lab, Enrique Marquez and other detectives, as well as a public information officer, or PIO. Alex watched their faces. They were tense and serious, aware that the department was about to become the focus of a tremendous amount of attention, most of it unwanted.

Hogan had just finished going over the Adrianos case, and now a blurry photo of a smiling, narrow-faced woman appeared on the screen. Her long gray and brown hair was parted in the middle, her skin was tanned and creased. She had the look of a woman who had once been pretty but had not aged well. Nothing in her brown eyes reflected what she was capable of, which had probably been the key to her success as a killer.

“Valerie Perry was a white female, aged forty-seven,” Hogan said. Everyone had seen this one-it had probably been posted in every law enforcement department in the country, on the FBI’s Ten Most Wanted Fugitives flyer. Still, they stared at her face as if seeing it for the first time. “Until recently, she spent most of her time in the Phoenix area. She ran a boardinghouse and only accepted clients over sixty-five years of age, although for the past five years, most were in their eighties, and none were younger than seventy-eight. She carefully screened her tenants, making sure they were unlikely to have family members who’d be looking for them.” The next few slides were of elderly men and women. “She didn’t charge much to provide room and board, and although residents didn’t seem to stay there long, there was never a shortage of renters.

“Ms. Perry took nicer vacations than most people who do that for a living,” Hogan continued, “but her neighbors weren’t aware of that, among other things.” The image on the screen changed to excavations made in a large sandy yard. “Remains of ten men and three women whose Social Security checks were still being cashed were found behind Valerie Perry’s boardinghouse.”

The slide changed to the face of a young man with dark eyes and a weak chin. “The remains of a twenty-seven-year-old male were also found-apparently those of her accomplice and boyfriend. Perry and her boyfriend had a falling-out-he had found a new girlfriend, and apparently Ms. Perry wasn’t pleased about that. When the new girlfriend hadn’t seen him for a few days, she reported him missing. That led police to investigate, and it was discovered that Ms. Perry had already fled, taking a large amount of cash with her. That was in February of last year. Until this morning, she had not been seen since March of this year-that was when a national television program aired information about the case, and callers from locations in Colorado, New Mexico, and Nevada indicated that they had seen her over the intervening months. It was clear to investigators that she had indeed been in some of these places, but they failed to locate her. The trail went cold after that.”

“Which program?” Alex asked.

Hogan seemed a little put out by the interruption, but consulted his notes and said, “Crimesolvers USA.”

“Based in Santa Monica?”

“I believe so, yes. One of those shows that wants to be the next America’s Most Wanted. To continue-”

But this time the captain interrupted. “Why do you ask, Alex?”

Alex saw Ciara smile. Focusing his attention on the captain, he said, “Whoever is doing this is getting his information from somewhere. He has leads even we don’t have. If he’s not getting information from the FBI itself, or other law enforcement agencies, maybe this show is the answer. Have the other fugitives on the FBI list been featured on it?”

The captain looked to Hogan.

“Not exactly featured,” the lieutenant said carefully. “Not all of them. But at the end of the program, they do go over the FBI list, show the photographs of all ten.”

“Worth talking to the staff, then,” the captain said.

“Was she number seven or number eight?” the public information officer asked, not looking up from his notes.

There was a stunned silence. The PIO looked up anxiously, only to be met with the captain’s scowl.

“The FBI doesn’t rank the criminals within its top ten list,” Alex said. “There is no number one, two, three, and so on. A fugitive is either one of the ten or not.”

“Oh.”

“Lieutenant Hogan,” the captain said, “I believe you have some information about the other victim?”

It didn’t take Hogan long to find his stride again. He clicked something on his computer keyboard, and the projector showed a new image, that of a slender man with close-cropped blond hair. “You’re probably already aware that Harold Denihan was a member of Aryan Destiny, a white supremacist organization. The nearest branch office of this group is in El Monte, but Denihan was part of a Kentucky unit. He’s wanted in connection with the bombing last January of a Louisville, Kentucky, church two years ago. He was identified as the purchaser of components, and diagrams of the church and bomb-making equipment were found in his home. The bomb killed seven, but if things had gone as he had hoped, it would have been a much higher number. He appears to have been able to elude capture because he’s been aided by his knuckle-headed brethren.” He paused, looked at his notes, and said, “He’s also been featured on the Crimesolvers program.”

“Any chance the victims have some connection to one another other than being on the FBI list?” Captain Nelson asked.

“Not that we know of at this time, sir,” Alex answered. “We’ll check further.”

“It seems highly unlikely, sir,” Hogan said.

Captain Nelson took over the meeting. “You have probably noticed that we do not have a member of the Federal Bureau of Investigation present at this meeting. Undoubtedly, they will want to claim jurisdiction over these two cases, especially because others will have reason to believe that these individuals were brought here from other states against their will. None of that is proved, however, so-you may expect some delays before we are working with the FBI. These are homicides in our jurisdiction, no matter who the victims are, or where they came from. Sheriff Dwyer fully intends to cooperate with authorities in the jurisdictions where the victims allegedly committed their crimes, but as you know there have been recent difficulties between our department and the Bureau.”

Brandon exchanged a glance with Ciara. She rolled her eyes. “Difficulties” hardly began to describe the level of animosity between the leaders of the FBI and the LASD at the moment. The two agencies had worked together to bring charges against a number of Los Angeles County politicians accused of accepting payoffs from organized crime. The sheriff’s department had cooperated fully, knowing that federal charges would carry higher penalties on conviction. The FBI had not shared the information it gathered-nothing new there-and insisted on using its own lab, and only its own lab, to process evidence in a major sting operation. The cases were high profile, and Sheriff James Dwyer-who held an elected position-had enjoyed the positive press, even though he allowed the FBI to take more credit than many of his employees thought they deserved. But when the cases went to court, defense experts successfully attacked the FBI’s handling and testing of the evidence, and what had promised to be a source of pride in interagency cooperation became a fiasco.

For the last six months, department cooperation with the Bureau had been minimal. Brandon wasn’t surprised that the department was delaying working with the FBI, but wondered how long the sheriff would be able to ignore the inevitable pressure to involve the Bureau in the murders of three fugitives on its Most Wanted list. He figured it wouldn’t be long, but that wouldn’t be his fight, anyway. Politics were everywhere, and the LASD was no exception. His uncle’s sage advice and his own years with the department had taught him more than a few things about the delicate business of not becoming ensnared in them.

“What do you have to go on, Detectives?” Captain Nelson asked, snapping Brandon’s attention back to the meeting.

“At present, not much, sir. Detective Morton and I have questioned neighbors in the area of both scenes, and none of them saw anything. We suspect the victims were drugged, brought to these locations, and killed at the scene. We suspect the use of an anticoagulant, and we’re checking with area hospitals to determine if any thefts of such substances have been reported lately. We still have some checking to do in connection with the Catalina house-that scene had to be arranged by someone who knew the housekeeper’s schedule and something about the rental itself-so we’re looking into the rental history. Unfortunately, there are problems in connection with the rental company.”

“What problems?”

“They had a computer crash and tell us they won’t be able to retrieve the records.”

“Convenient, isn’t it?” Ciara said.

“I’m inclined to agree,” Captain Nelson said.

“They’ve got a good reputation on the island,” Alex said. “We’re going to see what we can put together from the paper records, and we’ll have someone check out the computer’s hard drive to see if the data can be recovered.”

“And the owner of the property?” Nelson asked.

“We’ve hit a couple of snags there,” Ciara said. “But we’ve confirmed that he’s been running a conference this past week, and it’s unlikely that he’s managed to do that and hunt these two fugitives down, kill them, and hoist them up in his own house.”

“Hmm. You have any other leads?”

Alex said, “The rope appears to be of a kind used by climbers, so we’ll be looking at sources for that as well.”

He saw the looks on the faces of the others in the room and knew what they were thinking. That he didn’t have shit to go on.

A man from the crime lab asked, “Do you think number ten-or whoever the killer is ranking as number ten-on the list is out there rotting upside down over a tub full of blood somewhere?”

“Could be. But for all we know, these three are the only ones that we’ll find here. We have no way of knowing unless we locate the other seven fugitives.”

“Or their bodies,” Ciara said.

The comment irritated Alex. Not once in his years with J.D. had he ever found himself wishing his partner would just shut the hell up. He had always watched J.D., taken his cues from the more experienced detective. He wondered if what really rankled was that Ciara didn’t defer to him as he had to J.D.

“Do we have anyone working up a psychological profile of the type of individual who might commit these murders?” Nelson asked.

“Not yet, sir,” Hogan answered. “But we’re going to try to get Shay Wilder to take a look.”

“Wilder?” one of the others asked. “Isn’t he retired?”

“Yes,” the captain said. “But Lieutenant Hogan is right-he’s the best person we could turn to for help with this. Let’s hope he’ll give us a hand.” He paused, then added, “Hard to figure out what’s going on with this one, other than who his targets are.”

“Detective Brandon,” the man from the lab said, “one of our techs said you know of a similar set of cases?”

Alex felt his spine stiffen. He glanced at Ciara, who quickly said, “That’s not exactly true. Your tech was eavesdropping on a conversation between my partner and me. The tech jumped to a conclusion-”

But the captain interrupted. “Not exactly?” he asked Alex.

“The tech apparently didn’t hear me say that the man who committed those murders is dead.” Seeing that wasn’t going to be enough, he told them about Jerome Naughton. “Eight victims that we know of. With the exception of Serenity Logan-his wife-none of them were from the Los Angeles area.”

“And you’re sure he acted alone?”

“Fairly sure, at least as far as the killings went. His stepson-Kit Logan-was undoubtedly traveling with Naughton during that time. From what he told us-and the evidence supported this-Naughton would find a victim, hang her upside down over a bathtub, and torture and kill her. Getting sprayed by arterial blood was apparently a turn-on for him. At various points in the process, he posed the boy with the victim, or had the boy photograph him posing with her.” Alex hesitated, then decided to leave it at that.

The room was tense, quiet. Nelson broke the silence by saying, “How old was the boy?”

“When he killed Naughton?”

“No. When this started.”

“About eleven.”

“God almighty,” Marquez said.

“He was able to tell us where the victims had been killed, and knew the exact locations of their burials,” Alex said. “Prosecutors in each of the cases didn’t believe there was any reason to suspect the boy was anything other than a captive himself. He was fourteen at the time he killed his stepfather. As far as I know, that’s the only murder he ever committed.”

“How did he kill Naughton?”

“Bashed his head in with a shovel. And undoubtedly saved a ninth victim’s life. She was tied up, starting to go through the same treatment.”

“Is that why he killed Naughton?” Ciara asked. “To rescue her?”

Alex hesitated, then said, “No.”

The others waited.

“He left her tied up in the house. We didn’t talk to Kit immediately after he killed Naughton, but he claimed that Naughton had kicked his dog, and that was what had set him off.”

A ripple of laughter went through the room. Ciara frowned. Alex had seen this sort of disapproval from her before.

“Go on,” Nelson said.

“He killed Naughton, took the dog, and ran away. He got to a pay phone and called his grandmother collect. His grandmother was Elizabeth Logan, and she had lawyers on the way before anyone in law enforcement talked to him. She claimed he was nearly incoherent when he called her, but she did get the information about the ninth victim from him, and she called authorities.”

“Ninth, right?” Marquez said. “That was the number on the mirror-nine.”

Alex shrugged. “Maybe there’s a connection, but why now?”

“Maybe somebody else kicked his dog,” one of the others said, and again there was laughter.

“Any idea where he is?” the captain asked.

“No, sir. I plan to try to find out, but-”

“But all hell has been breaking loose. I understand.” He paused, then said, “I’m forming a task force for these cases as of now. Detective Brandon will be in charge of this task force, and if-God forbid-any other cases bearing any resemblance to these three come in, they are to be referred to him immediately. Is that understood?”

Heads nodded all around.

“Whether or not the victims are on the FBI list,” Captain Nelson said, “similar crime scenes or staging should be reported to him at once. And any murder of a fugitive on that list, even if in a different manner, will be referred to him. Let me know what resources we can put at your disposal, Alex, and you’ll have them.”

Alex thanked him, although he wasn’t sure he was grateful. Nelson didn’t seem to hear him anyway-Alex realized that the captain was watching the reactions of Ciara Morton and Dan Hogan. Neither of them looked happy.

“Alex,” Nelson said, turning back to him, “I’ve arranged for a meeting with Sheriff Dwyer. He’d like to have us brief him before a press conference he’s scheduled, so we should head over there now.”