The Impaler

Chapter 35

Friday, April 14, 9 a.m., the FBI Resident Agency, Raleigh

An emergency teleconference ordered by Alan Gates himself.

Sam Markham was tired and sat staring at his notes with his head in his hands. The Resident Agency’s conference room was small and cramped with almost two dozen agents seated double deep around a narrow oak table. They were already looking at him suspiciously, their message loud and clear: “This better be good, Quantico boy.”

But Markham didn’t give a shit. He felt confident about the cards he was holding, but at the same time felt guilty for not telling Schaap that it was Marla Rodriguez who’d blown the case wide open for him. Nonetheless, he would keep his promise to her. He owed her that and much, much more.

“You need anything, Sam?” Schaap asked, sitting next to him.

“I’m good, I think.”

“Still feel like we’re on the Twilight Zone. You hear from Underhill again?”

“Not since we talked yesterday. He said he’ll tag along with Gates this morning.”

“He’s got to be close to retirement now, am I right?”

“I hope not,” Markham said. “He’s the best forensic psychiatrist around. Still teaches at Georgetown. Developmental science, personality disorders. A lot like Gates, in that respect. They’ll have to drag him out kicking and screaming.”

“All set,” said an agent, handing Schaap the remote control. Schaap pressed a button, and the large teleconference screen flickered on to reveal the face of Alan Gates.

“Good morning, gentlemen,” he said. “You’re the last to come online, Agent Schaap. Do you have your visual and your PowerPoint feed ready?”

“Yes, sir,” Schaap said, holding up the remote.

“Thank you all for coming on such short notice,” Gates said. “Because of the nature of this investigation, time is of the essence. As you know, this conference is a joint linkup involving the FBI Resident Agency in Raleigh, the FBI Field Office in Charlotte, and the BAU here at Quantico. This is Agent Markham’s show, so if you have any questions, please raise your hands and wait for confirmation from him.”

The feed on the screen split into two: Alan Gates and a long shot of the conference room at the Charlotte Field Office. Markham quickly surveyed the faces watching him there—suspicious, cold, yet childlike in their expectations of him.

“Joining me now,” Gates said, his feed widening, “is Dr. David Underhill, chief forensic psychiatrist for the Behavioral Analysis Unit’s support team. Doctor Underhill has been working with Special Agent Markham to develop a preliminary psychological profile of the killer known as the Impaler. It’s all yours, Sam.”

The rustling of papers, the shifting of butts, and Sam Markham began.

“Thank you, Alan,” he said, leaning forward like a senator. “We’re pretty tired over here, so I ask for your patience if I become inarticulate.”

Silence, still not much sympathy in the air, but screw it, the soft sell was over.

“You’ve already been briefed on how I discovered the killer’s connection to the constellation Leo, as well as the crescent-moon visual and the murder sites being a mirror of the physical dynamic of the drag theater. Also, you should have in front of you a copy of the altered text that will be released to the press later this morning. You’ll notice that this version contains not only the original Arabic and Hebrew but also a partial of the Greek. It is this line that our linguistics experts modified into the Romanian with the hopes of satisfying both the media and any amateur sleuths who might give us trouble. They don’t know yet about the writing on Donovan, so we needn’t worry about addressing that.”

A hand went up in the Charlotte Office—their NCAVC coordinator.

“Go ahead, Charlotte,” Markham said.

“Do you think the Romanian might compel the Impaler to come forward and correct us?”

“I don’t,” Markham said. “Our boy was never concerned about public recognition of his crimes to begin with—never corrected the media with the original gang and drug angles, nor did he seem to care if we ever found Canning. The best we can hope for is that the Romanian will keep him in the dark about the true nature of our investigation.”

“I assume then,” the NCAVC coordinator sighed wearily, “that you are at some point going to tell us exactly what that true nature is?”

Markham had disliked this guy almost immediately—his cynical tone, the deep vocal resonance, and the way his right eyebrow was constantly raised like Mr. Spock’s.

Yes, you Vulcan prick, he thought—but instead said, “Let’s first establish whom we’re up against. Dr. Underhill?”

“Taking into consideration the context and methodological detail of the Impaler’s crimes,” Underhill began, “it’s safe to say our boy is a textbook visionary killer who believes some outside force is commanding him to kill. Indeed, his highly disciplined behavioral pattern—the custom measurements of the stakes, the precision of the writing, the scrubbing of Donovan with Comet—is quite common in cases in which the subject is suffering from some kind of severe delusional disorder. Most telling, however, is how all this relates to the killer’s selection of his victims in conjunction with the messages gleaned from the drag theater. You see, our boy not only thinks that he is receiving messages but also that he needs to send them back. Sam?”

“Given my initial premise of the killer’s connection to the constellation Leo, and that most likely three of the four victims were homosexuals, I originally suspected our victim profile would be based on a common sexual orientation. The fact that the historical Vlad impaled homosexuals only seemed to bolster this theory. However, during my investigation into Randall Donovan’s background, I could find no evidence of a secret homosexual lifestyle, and certainly nothing that connected him to the other three victims—that is, until I began to look for a connection somewhere else. First slide, please.”

Schaap clicked the remote, and the screen wiped into a pair of JPEG scans.

“Here we have both a map of downtown Raleigh and the Peugeot logo from Donovan’s car: a silver standing lion. Agent Schaap and I discovered that the route Donovan took to his office would have brought him very close not only to Angel’s but also to any number of intersections the killer might have taken to get to West Hargett Street. Thus, in light of the connections to the constellation Leo and the evidence we are about to show you, it’s our opinion that the Impaler first zeroed in on Randall Donovan because of the unusual car he drove: a Peugeot 307 with a lion logo on its hood.”

A gasp from somewhere in the Charlotte Office, and a hand went up at the Resident Agency. It was Big Joe the Sox Fan Connelly.

“Question here from the RA,” Markham said. “Clear slide and go ahead, Joe.”

“I’m not sure I understand. Are you saying that the connection between the victims has to do with a purely visual, almost superficial connection between them and the constellation Leo?”

“Not necessarily the constellation itself, but what it represents: a lion. Thus, the Impaler selected each of his victims because they bore a common visual—a mark of the lion, so to speak, that says to the killer, ‘This is the one.’”

“Then the Impaler chose Donovan at random, simply because he had the mark of the lion on the hood of his car?”

“Yes and no,” Markham replied. “To a certain degree, the lawyer was in the wrong place at the wrong time; meaning, he crossed paths with the Impaler when he was out looking for his next victim on West Hargett Street. But the fact that Donovan had a lion on his car is only part of the equation. We must remember that the Impaler needs confirmation from an outside entity to go ahead with his killing. This kind of delusional behavior is indicative not only of sacrificial types of killings but also of the type of killer who believes he’ll be rewarded somehow for doing as he is told.”

“But my kid wears a frigging Lion King T-shirt all the time,” Big Joe said. “Are you saying I should tell him to stop until we catch this guy?”

“I’m not saying that at all. The prevalence of lion imagery in our culture would make such an exclusive criterion impractical. And since we know that the Impaler is very patient and calculated, we can assume that the mark of the lion has to combine with another set of criteria—the first of which is the context of the presentation of the mark itself. The Impaler would not only have to identify the mark of the lion while he is hunting but its context must seem to him as out of the ordinary, perhaps almost supernatural. The serendipitous appearance of the lawyer in his rare Peugeot on West Hargett Street, as well as Jose Rodriguez’s Leona Bonita act in the drag theater, are only two examples of such contexts.”

“So the mark of the lion is some kind of visual omen?” Joe asked. “Like a black cat crossing your path or something?”

“That’s a good way of putting it, yes,” Markham said.

A hand went up in the Charlotte Office—Mr. Spock again.

“But what about the act of the impalement itself?” he asked. “I assume that you’ve explored the deeper psychological underpinnings; the impalements being a symbolic representation of male-on-male sodomy. And given the fact that perhaps three, if not all four, of the victims were gay males, are you willing to classify the killer as some kind of twisted gay basher? Perhaps a frustrated or latent homosexual who selects his victims from Raleigh’s gay population?”

“Again,” Markham said, “I can find no evidence that Randall Donovan was gay. Perhaps the Impaler began his search among the homosexual population, but then moved beyond that criterion. I think it’s too early to make a call on the Im-paler’s sexual orientation, especially when taken in the context of the sacrificial nature of the killings, as well as how our boy thinks he will be rewarded for all his hard work.”

“I understand that,” said Mr. Spock. “But if the connection between the victims lies in the mark of the lion and not in their sexual orientation, how does Billy Canning fit in? Of all the tattoos on his body, none of them were lions.”

“Point taken,” Markham said. “But again, the mark of the lion is only the first criterion in the Impaler’s selection pro- cess. With regard to Canning, there are many possibilities as to why the Impaler would’ve selected him in conjunction with the lion imagery. Perhaps Canning tattooed a lion on the Impaler’s body. I visited the tattoo parlor again last night. There’s a bulletin board filled with Polaroids there. Most were faceless close-ups of his work—a few lions, yes, but nothing that I could tie directly to the Impaler. The Polaroids have been collected into evidence, of course, and we’ll analyze them in conjunction with our working physical description—”

“You actually think the Impaler would’ve allowed Canning take a picture of him?” Mr. Spock asked.

“No, I don’t. Our boy is too careful, too meticulous to leave a calling card like that. If the Impaler did allow Canning to take his picture, I submit he abducted him at the tattoo parlor so he could snatch the Polaroid back. Who knows at this point? In my opinion, the most likely scenario is that the Impaler was inspired to kill Canning via a lion image he saw at the tattoo parlor itself. But the presentation of it would have to have been in a context that was out of the ordinary. Perhaps Canning suggested the lion tattoo. That would have been a good enough sign for the Impaler.”

“Most visionary killers are extremely narcissistic,” Under-hill said. “They consider themselves to be chosen ones, if you will, and sometimes believe themselves to be another person or supernatural figure altogether. The lion imagery is only part of the code our boy uses to communicate with whomever he thinks is commanding him to kill.”

“Yes,” said Markham. “And once he begins looking more closely at an individual, that person has to meet another criterion in order to be worthy of sacrifice. From the Impaler’s point of view, a homosexual would be a fine candidate, but not the only kind of candidate. No, the Impaler’s victims could come from almost any walk of life, as long as they are the kind of male the outside entity would desire.”

“That’s what we’re all so anxious to hear,” said Mr. Spock. “If this outside entity is not Vlad the Impaler, then who is he?”

Markham smiled.

“I’m getting to that,” he said—but stopped himself short of adding, You Vulcan prick.