The Crucifix Killer

Forty-Four

Washington Square is located at the beach end of Washington Boulevard, just across the road from Venice Beach. It’s home to several well-known bars and restaurants, including the Venice Whaler. Monday nights aren’t their busiest night, but the place looked full of activity with a colorful young crowd in shorts and beach shirts surrounding the large bar. The atmosphere was relaxed and pleasant. It was easy to see why Isabella would’ve enjoyed a drink or two at this bar.

Hunter and Garcia arrived at the Venice Whaler at five-thirty and by six-thirty they’d talked to every member of staff, including the two chefs and the kitchen porter, but the more people they talked to, the more frustrated they became. Long or short hair, beard or no beard, it didn’t matter. No one seemed to have ever laid eyes on anyone that resembled any of the computer-generated sketches.

After talking to the entire staff, Hunter and Garcia decided to ask a few of the customers, but their luck didn’t change and Hunter wasn’t surprised. This killer was too careful, too prepared, took no risks and Hunter had a strong suspicion that picking potential victims out of busy and popular bars wasn’t really his style – it was too dangerous – too exposed – there were too many factors he couldn’t control.

After leaving a copy of the sketches with the manager they moved on to the next bar on their list – Big Dean’s Café. The outcome was a carbon copy of what had happened at the Venice Whaler. No one remembered seeing anyone that looked like any of the images.

‘This is turning out to be another wild goose chase,’ Garcia commented, visibly bothered.

‘Welcome to the world of chasing psychopaths,’ Hunter said with a cheesy smile. ‘This is what it’s like. Frustration is a major part of the game. You’re gonna have to learn to deal with it.’

It had just gone eight o’clock when they came to the third and final bar on their list for the night – Rusty’s Surf Ranch where beech-colored wood was the main theme. Behind the small bar a single barman was happily serving the loud crowd of customers.

Hunter and Garcia approached the bar, grabbing the attention of the barman. Half an hour later and the entire staff had been asked the same questions and shown the same pictures – nothing. Garcia couldn’t hide his disappointment.

‘I was really hoping for some sort of a break tonight…’ He thought better of what he’d just said. ‘OK, maybe not a break, but some kind of development,’ he said, rubbing his tired eyes.

Hunter surveyed the restaurant floor for some seating space. Luckily a party of four were just leaving, vacating a table.

‘Are you hungry? I could do with some food – let’s grab a seat.’ He pointed to the empty table and they both made their way towards it.

They checked the menu in silence, Hunter struggling to make a decision. ‘I’m actually starving. I could have half of this menu.’

‘I bet you could. I’m not that hungry, I’ll just have a Caesar salad,’ Garcia said indifferently.

‘Salad!’ Surprise in Hunter’s voice. ‘You’re like a big girl. Order some proper food, will you?’ he demanded dryly.

Reluctantly, Garcia reopened the menu. ‘OK, I’ll have a chicken Caesar salad. Is that better, Mom?’

‘And some BBQ back ribs to go with it.’

‘Are you trying to make me fat? That’s way too much food.’

‘Trying to make you fat? You are a big girl,’ Hunter said laughing.

The waitress came up to take their order. Apart from the Caesar salad and the back ribs, Hunter also ordered a California burger and some fried calamari for himself together with two bottles of beer. They sat without saying a word, Hunter’s observant eyes moving from table to table, resting on each occupant for only a few seconds. Garcia regarded his partner for a minute and then placed both of his elbows on the table leaning forward, his voice low as if whispering a secret.

‘Is there anything wrong?’

Hunter moved his stare back to Garcia. ‘No, everything is fine,’ he said calmly.

‘You’re looking around like you’ve seen something or somebody.’

‘Oh that. I do that a lot when I’m in public places, it’s like an exercise that has carried on from my criminal psychology days.’

‘Really… like what?’

‘We used to play this game. We’d go out to restaurants, bars, clubs, places like that and we’d take turns picking a subject in the crowd, watching him or her for a few minutes and trying to profile them as best as we could.’

‘What, just by watching them for a minute or so?’

‘Yeah, that’s right.’

‘Show me.’

‘What? Why?’

‘I just wanna see how it works.’

Hunter hesitated for a moment. ‘OK, pick someone.’

Garcia looked around the busy restaurant but his eyes were drawn to the bar. Two attractive women, one blond, one brunette, were having a drink together. The blond one was by far the more talkative of the two. Garcia had made his choice. ‘Right there, over at the bar. See the two girls by themselves? The blond one.’

Hunter’s gaze fell on his new subject. He observed her, her eye and body movements, her quirks, the way she spoke to her friend, the way she laughed. It took him only about a minute to start his assessment.

‘OK, she knows she’s attractive. She’s very confident and she loves the attention she gets, she works hard for it.’

Garcia lifted his right hand. ‘Wait up, how would you know that?’

‘She’s wearing very revealing clothes compared to her friend’s. So far she’s run her hand through her hair four times, the most common “notice me” gesture, and every so often she furtively checks herself against the mirror behind the bottle shelves at the bar.’

Garcia observed the blond girl for a while. ‘You’re right. She just checked herself again.’

Hunter smiled before carrying on. ‘Her parents are rich and she’s proud of that. She makes no effort to hide it from anyone and she knows how to spend their money.’

‘Why do you say that?’

‘She’s drinking champagne in a bar where ninety-five percent of the customers order beer.’

‘She could be celebrating.’

‘She isn’t,’ Hunter said confidently.

‘How do you know?’

‘Because she’s drinking champagne and her friend is drinking beer. If they were celebrating her friend would be sharing the bottle with her. And there was no toast. You always toast when you celebrate.’

Garcia smiled. Hunter continued. ‘Her clothes and handbag are all designer. She’s never placed her car keys back into her handbag, preferring to leave them on the bar in plain view, and the reason for that is probably because her key ring shows some prestigious car emblem, like a BMW or something. She’s got no wedding ring and anyway she’s too young to be married or have a well-paid job, so the money has to come from somewhere else.’

‘Please go on.’ Garcia was starting to enjoy the exercise.

‘She’s got a diamond-encrusted W on her necklace. I’d say her name would be either Wendy or Whitney, those being the two favorite names beginning with W of rich parents in Los Angeles. She loves flirting, it boosts her ego even more, but she prefers more mature men.’

‘OK, now you’re pushing it?’

‘No I’m not. She only returns eye contact from more mature men, ignoring the flirtation of younger guys.’

‘That’s not true. She keeps on checking out the guy standing next to her and he looks quite young to me.’

‘She’s not looking at him. She’s looking at his cigarette pack in his shirt pocket. She probably gave up smoking not so long ago.’

Garcia had a peculiar grin on his face when he got up.

‘Where are you going?’

‘Check out how good you really are.’ Hunter looked on as Garcia started towards the bar.

‘Excuse me, you don’t happen to have an extra cigarette do you?’ he said, approaching the two women but directing his question to the blond one.

She gave him a charming and pleasant smile. ‘I’m sorry, but I quit smoking two months ago.’

‘Really? I’m trying to myself. It’s not easy,’ Garcia said, returning the smile. His eyes moved to the bar and onto her key ring. ‘You drive a Merc?’

‘Yeah, just got it a few weeks ago.’ Her excitement was almost contagious.

‘Very nice, is it a C-Class?’

‘SLK convertible,’ she replied proudly.

‘That’s a very good choice.’

‘I know. I love my car.’

‘By the way, I’m Carlos,’ he said, extending his hand.

‘I’m Wendy, and this is Barbara.’ She pointed to her brunette friend.

‘It’s been very nice meeting you both. Enjoy the rest of your evening,’ he said with a smile before returning to Hunter’s table.

‘OK, I’m even more impressed now than I was before,’ he commented as he sat down. ‘One thing is for sure. I ain’t never playing poker against you,’ he said, laughing.

While Garcia was testing Hunter’s profiling skills, the waitress had come back with their dinner. ‘Wow, I was hungrier than I thought,’ Garcia said after having finished his BBQ ribs together with the Caesar salad. Hunter was still munching on his burger. Garcia waited until he was done. ‘How come you decided to be a cop? I mean, you could’ve been a profiler, you know… gone and worked for the FBI or something like that.’

Hunter had another sip of his beer and used the napkin on his mouth. ‘And you think that working for the FBI is better than working as a Homicide detective?’

‘I didn’t say that,’ Garcia protested. ‘What I meant is that you had a choice and you picked being a Homicide detective. I know a lot of cops who’d kill for the chance to work for the feds.’

‘Would you?’

Garcia’s eyes didn’t shy away from Hunter’s. ‘Not me, I don’t really much care for the feds.’

‘And why is that?’

‘To me they’re just a whole bunch of glorified cops who think they are better than everyone else simply because they wear cheap black suits, sunglasses and earpieces.’

‘First day I met you I thought you wanted to be an FBI agent. You were wearing a cheap suit.’ A smirk on Hunter’s face.

‘Hey, that suit wasn’t cheap at all. I like that suit, it’s my only suit.’

‘Yeah, I could’ve guessed that.’ The smirk turned into a sarcastic smile. ‘At first I thought I would become a criminal profiler. That would’ve been the logical move after my PhD.’

‘Yeah. I’ve heard you were some kind of child prodigy, a genius in what you did.’

‘I moved through school faster than usual,’ Hunter said, playing it down.

‘And is it true that you’ve written a book that’s used as a study guide by the FBI?’

‘It wasn’t a book. It was my PhD thesis paper. But yes, it was made into a book and the last I heard it was still used by the FBI.’

‘Now that’s impressive,’ Garcia said, pushing his plate away. ‘So what made you choose not to become an FBI profiler?’

‘I spent all of my childhood immersed in books. That’s all I did when I was young. I read. I guess I was starting to get bored of the academic life. I needed something with a little more excitement,’ Hunter said, revealing only half the truth.

‘And the FBI wouldn’t be exciting enough?’ Garcia asked with a mocking smile.

‘FBI profilers aren’t field agents. They work behind desks and inside offices. Not the kind of excitement I was looking for. Plus I wasn’t ready to lose the little sanity I had.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘I don’t think most human brains are strong enough to go through the journey of becoming a criminal profiler in today’s society and come out on the other side unscathed. Anyone who decides to put themselves through that sort of pressure inevitably will pay the price, and that price is too high.’

Garcia looked a little confused.

‘Look, there are basically two schools, two main theories where criminal profiling is concerned. Some psychologists believe that evil is something inherent to certain individuals, they believe it’s something people are born with, like a brain dysfunction that leads them to commit obscene acts of cruelty.’

‘Meaning some believe it’s like a disease, a sickness?’ Garcia asked.

‘That’s right,’ Hunter continued. ‘Others believe that what causes a person to go from being a civilized individual to becoming a sociopath are the series of events and circumstances that have affected that person’s life so far. In other words, if you were surrounded by violence when young, if you were abused or mistreated as a child, chances are you’ll reflect that in your adult life by becoming a violent person. Are you with me so far?’

Garcia nodded, leaning back on his chair.

‘OK, so quick and dirty, the profiler’s job is to try and understand why a criminal is acting the way he is, what makes him tick, what drives him. Profilers try to think and act just like the offender would.’

‘Well, I figured that much out.’

‘OK. So if the profiler can manage to think like a criminal, then he might have a chance of predicting the criminal’s next move, but the only way he can do that is by deeply immersing himself in what he thinks the criminal’s life is like.’ He paused for a swig of his beer. ‘Disregarding the first theory because if being evil is something like a disease, there’s nothing we can do about that. There’s no way we can go back in time to reproduce an offender’s aggressive or abusive childhood either, so the only thing left is the offender’s present life, and here comes step one of profiling. We take a guess at what his life might be like. Where he’d live, places he’d go, things he’d do.’

‘A guess?’ Garcia looked incredulous.

‘That’s all profiling is, nothing but our best guess based on the facts and evidence found at the crime scene. The problem is that when we walk in the footsteps of such deranged criminals for long enough, acting like they do, thinking like they do, immersing ourselves so deep in such dark minds, that unavoidably leaves scars… mental scars, and sometimes the profiler loses track of the line.’

‘What line?’

‘The line that keeps us from becoming like them.’ Hunter looked away for a moment. When he spoke again his voice was sad. ‘There have been cases… profilers that have worked in investigations of sadistic sexual offenders becoming obsessed with sadistic sex themselves, or going the opposite way, becoming sexually inadequate. The simple thought of sex being enough to make them sick. Others that have worked brutal murder cases have become violent and abusive. Some have gone as far as committing brutal crimes themselves. The human brain is still pretty much a mystery, and if we abuse it for long enough…’ Hunter didn’t need to finish the sentence. ‘So I chose to abuse my brain in a different way, by becoming a Homicide detective.’ He smiled and finished the rest of his beer.

‘Yeah, and that is some abuse.’ They both laughed.

A mile from Rusty’s Surf Ranch a well-dressed man checked his reflection against the full-size mirror in the entrance lobby of the Belvedere restaurant. He was wearing a tailored Italian suit, freshly polished shoes, and his blond wig suited him perfectly. His contact lenses gave his eyes an unusual shade of green.

From where he was standing he could see her sitting at the bar, a glass of red wine in her hand. She looked beautiful in her little black dress.

Was she nervous or excited? He couldn’t really tell.

All that time at the supermarket, all those months he’d been working her, feeding her lies, getting her to trust him. Tonight his lies would pay off. They always did.

‘Hello, sir, are you here to meet someone or will you be having dinner by yourself this evening?’

In silence he stared at the maître d’ for a few seconds.

‘Sir?’

He glanced at her once again. He knew she’d be perfect.

‘Sir?’

‘Yes, I’m meeting a friend. That lady by the bar,’ he finally replied with a pleasant smile.

‘Very well, sir, please follow me.’