The Impaler

Chapter 54

Names, names, and more names—thousands of them scattered before him—but Andy Schaap held out hope.

The cemetery.

Yes, he thought as he bounced his ring on his desk. The cemetery was the beginning for the Impaler. The first star in his personal logo. The star off of which the rest of his constellation would be built.

But why the cemetery? Because the Impaler had a connection there that went beyond the name of Lyons. Schaap was sure of it. Someone important to him was buried there; someone who was connected to the identity on earth that needed to be remapped in the eyes of the lion in the sky. Planting Rodriguez and Guerrera outside the wall directly east of the Lyons plot was only part of the equation, as was the cemetery’s connection to the other murder sites that made up the Starlight Theater logo.

All theory, of course, and nothing really on which to base his assumptions other than a gut reading of the evidence so far. But Andy Schaap was sure he was on to something; and this little side investigation was going to be his baby. He’d gotten hold of the cemetery records soon after Markham left. That was good. That meant he could follow his leads alone; might even get a little credit for all the hard work he’d done.

Sure, he knew he was becoming a little jealous of Sam Markham. But didn’t Markham also keep things to himself when he was on a case? Isn’t that how he caught Jackson Briggs? Hell, he still never told anyone how he really did it.

Besides, there was nothing Markham could offer from Connecticut anyway. At least not until the medical records were obtained and the lists of servicemen and their units checked against them.

There were over two-thousand residents buried beneath the soil in Clayton’s Willow Brook Cemetery, and Schaap’s first order of business was to begin testing those records against a list of men who fit Underhill’s unit profile. And once those lists were complete, once he got all the names of servicemen living in the Raleigh area, his computer program would rank them in order of probability.

It was complicated stuff, Schaap thought; and without each list to test against the other, just using the cemetery records alone would be like shooting blind from the white pages. No, the cemetery records would only narrow down the unit lists. But even then, it would be slow going. Schaap had seen those names already—Davis, White, Brown, Anderson, Jones—common names that seemed to taunt him with the futility of his plan.

But fuck it. He would spend the whole night there if he had to, checking his lists against each other and developing a preliminary cross-section of candidates. Then, once he ran that list through a computer program that would rank them according to location—that is, remote areas in and around Raleigh that theoretically would provide the Impaler with good “working conditions”—Schaap would have a better idea where to begin. But he didn’t have much time before Markham returned Sunday afternoon; not much time to keep his little side investigation secret.

But Schaap would keep it secret. As long as humanly possible, he decided.

After all, isn’t that what Sam Markham would do?