I met with Phillips to relay to him the information concerning Rich’s wake and funeral. He stared at me stone-faced while I told him this, and then told me that he’d make sure to pass it on to the department. After that I sat at my desk and waited for the ballistics and medical examiner’s reports. Word spread quickly about Rich, and detectives in the department came over to offer their condolences and ask about what happened. I wasn’t much in the mood to talk. Right then I needed more than anything to focus on the job if I was going to make it through the day, so I kept it short, mostly just telling them when the wake and funeral were, and then turning back to whatever piece of paper I was trying to make sense of.
The ballistics information came first. The bullets were .40 caliber hollow-points, and they were from the same gun used in the other two shootings. Not that that was much of a surprise. The medical examiner’s office called shortly after ballistics. The dogs were all fed barbiturate-laced meat before being killed. As far as when they were shot, the best they could come up with was that the animals had been dead five to seven days. A total of eight bullet wounds were located on them. The bigger news was that the blood found on the edge of the grass was human, and it didn’t match the earlier victim, Paul Burke.
“Any of these dogs bite someone?” I asked.
“Impossible to tell with one of them, but the other two, no.”
“What breed were they?”
“I think one was a pitbull mix; the other two, I don’t know. I’ll have a veterinarian take a look at them and get back to you.”
“How about sending photos?”
“Sure, I’ll send you what I have, but I’m not sure how much they’ll help given the condition they were left in. Scavengers and the rain the other day did a number on them.”
I thanked him for the call, then relayed the information to Hennison, suggesting he have the FBI try to match the blood against the DNA samples in their CODIS system. He told me he’d bring that up at a briefing meeting he’d scheduled for two o’clock to bring the other members of the team up to speed with the recent developments. “I’m going to need someone calling hospitals about dog bite victims,” he complained. The odds were the human blood left at the scene wasn’t from a dog bite to the perp but from a third party wandering onto the scene and being greeted by one or more .40 caliber slugs. Still, the former possibility was going to have to be checked into, and God knows how many dog bites New York City had in any given week.
While I waited for the two o’clock meeting, I started on the list of knife purchases. I was mostly on automatic pilot as I called people and tried to verify their whereabouts at the time Gail Laurent was murdered. Those that were able to give me something definitive, I would try later to verify their alibis, those that gave me something too vague to check, I arranged for them to come to the precinct to meet with me. All of them sounded indignant at this intrusion. With some it sounded genuine; with most, though, it was forced. I was surprised at how many of them I was able to contact. I guess a lot of these guys buying military knives over the Internet didn’t have day jobs.
At a quarter to two, Joe Ramirez wandered over to my desk. By then I’d been able to get through half of the list. He put a hand on my shoulder and told me how sorry he was to hear about Rich.
“They know what happened?” he asked.
“I don’t know. I didn’t press Mary about it when she called, but he didn’t seem right after his surgery.”
“How’d she sound?”
I shrugged. “About what you’d expect.”
“Christ,” Joe said, shaking his head. “You don’t expect to drop dead after a hip operation. Fucking world, huh? Rich was a good man, he’ll be missed.”
“Yeah, he will be.”
Joe took a deep breath and let it out noisily through his mouth, and then we were back to business. “Those dogs that were shot …” he started.
“Same guy,” I said. “Ballistics verified the same gun was used.”
“Chrissakes,” he said. “What’s this guy gotta be shooting dogs for?”
“He probably shot more than just dogs at the scene. Human blood was found also. A lot of it.”
“I didn’t hear that.” Joe’s gaze lowered as he considered that piece of news. “Jesus, we can at least hope it’s the perp’s own,” he said. “Maybe one of those dogs bit him.”
“It’s possible,” I said. “Except they were all drugged with barbiturates, probably before he ever got them there.”
“So whose blood is it?”
“Could be the perp’s, could be someone else’s. I guess we’ll find out.”
I checked my watch, saw it was a couple of minutes to two, and got out of my chair. While we headed to the meeting, Joe asked me how it went taking my kids to the baseball game. I told him I never made it, that by the time I left Friday’s meeting it was too late.
“Ah, shit,” he said, “I’m sorry to hear that. But it’s just a baseball game. Your kids will get over it.”
I nodded and told him he was probably right, not that I believed it.
Phillips wasn’t attending the meeting, but the rest of the team was already waiting in the meeting room, including Jill Chandler and her fellow FBI agents. Jill had the same sharper look that she had in the first meeting, with no makeup, her hair pulled back tightly, and an unflattering blue suit and flat-heeled shoes. Her look softened, though, as our eyes momentarily met and she gave me a wisp of a smile touched with sadness. From the overall somberness in the room, word about what happened to Rich must’ve spread to her and the other FBI agents.
Joe and I took our seats, and Jack Hennison spoke up to go over the morning’s discovery in Queens, as well as giving a rundown of what we’d gotten from the medical examiner’s office. When he finished, he asked the FBI agents if they could help in matching the human blood found against the DNA samples in CODIS. Agent Thorne, the thick-shouldered linebacker type, told Hennison he’d take care of it, but that it would take forty-eight hours to get the results back.
“I’ll arrange for the animal carcasses to be sent to our lab,” Thorne added. “They should be able to provide us a narrower window for when the shootings happened.”
Hennison looked eager to wrap up the meeting and asked if there were any questions. When there weren’t, he stood up, palms flat on the table so he could lean forward and look around the room. “That’s what we got,” he announced, his voice raspy, not much more than a growl. “We have no idea yet whether the other blood found at the scene is our perp’s or someone else’s, but until another body is found, we need to assume both are equal possibilities.”
“Not equal by any means,” Jill Chandler said.
“Why’s that?”
“Our killer is obsessed with obliterating his victims. That’s why he uses a .40 caliber pistol and hollow-points, as well as shooting them post-mortem with the gun muzzle directly against the victim’s skull. Something unexpected happened that made him change his plans; otherwise he wouldn’t have altered his routine.”
Hennison stood for a moment scratching his jaw, then shifted his gaze away from her. “Any chance he could’ve just been upset seeing what he did to that other dog?” he asked.
She looked at him like he was an idiot. “No,” she said.
Hennison’s eyes dulled, his skin color dropping a shade. He was fuming, realizing he’d lost fifty bucks to me on a stupid bet. From the look on his face, it was also clear he was trying to come up with a good crack back at her. Joe pulled the attention of the room away by asking her why our guy wanted to kill those dogs and why he chose a place as public as the grassy area between two highways.
“I first thought there might’ve been a socioeconomic basis for these murders,” Jill told him. “But not now. I’m convinced that what we’re dealing with is a full-blown narcissistic personality. What’s driving him is his message. This person is working from a carefully developed script, at least in his mind, and this script is sacrosanct and can’t be deviated from. This is why he didn’t shoot Mr. Lynch”—she flashed me a thin smile—“and why he had to remove the body of whomever he shot from that grassy area. While he certainly enjoys killing, it’s his message—his story, so to speak—that’s most important to him, and for whatever twisted reason, those dogs and where he left their bodies are all part of this story that he’s so intent on telling us.”
“What a load of crap,” Hennison muttered loud enough for the rest of the room to hear.
She turned to face him, a patient smile showing. “What is your theory, detective?” she asked.
“I don’t have one,” Hennison said. “I’m not a trained FBI profiler. But I’d have to think this asshole is just trying to fuck with us, see how many hoops he can make us jump through. I’d bet, though, he brought that blood with him to dump where he did. I don’t care how late at night it was. If he shot someone on the edge of the West Brooklyn-Queens Expressway someone would’ve seen it.”
Hennison was determined not to give up on our fifty dollar bet. He lowered his eyes from her and added without much enthusiasm, “I still think he stopped after the first dog only ’cause he didn’t have the stomach to shoot the faces off the other two. The guy’s probably deep down a dog lover.”
Jill Chandler couldn’t help laughing at that. It was a short burst that exploded out of her, and she covered her mouth with her hand to quiet herself. At the sound of it, Hennison eyes jerked toward her, his ears quickly glowing a bright red. The rest of his face turned just as red as he looked around the room and saw the other two FBI agents, as well as several detectives, barely able to suppress their own grins. Christ, I almost felt sorry for him. Grumbling something under his breath about the meeting being over and us needing to get our asses back to work, he left the room steaming. The rest of us followed, although at a more leisurely pace.
On the way back to my desk I stopped to pour a cup of coffee. While I was adding enough sugar to make it drinkable, Jill Chandler came up next to me. Even with my eyes fixed on my coffee, I knew it was her simply from the electric feel of her hip momentarily brushing against mine. Her hand touched my arm, and she told me how sorry she was to hear about my partner. I nodded and thanked her for that. We stood quietly for several moments. Then, as I was fumbling for another sugar packet, she asked how much I won. I turned to see her grinning at me, very pleased with herself.
“Detective Green, I’m good at what I do. From Detective Hennison’s asinine theory, and your reaction to it, you two obviously had a bet on how I would respond.”
“Fifty bucks,” I told her.
“That’s all?” she said, disappointed. “Too bad. It would’ve been nice if it had cost him more money.”
“It wouldn’t matter. The guy’s a notorious welcher. I’ll probably never see a dime of that fifty. You don’t like him much?”
“No strong feelings either way, although I don’t appreciate the way I’ve caught him leering at me, or his dismissive attitude toward what I do.” She hesitated, then asked, “Did you ask Mr. Lynch again about hypnosis?”
“Yeah, I asked him. He’s not going to do it, and I’d like to request that the FBI not bring it up with him again. He’s willing to help us out in ways he’s more comfortable with, and I’m afraid if we badger him anymore about hypnosis that will change quickly.”
She frowned at my statement. “I don’t see how that type of request could be considered badgering.”
“To him it is.”
I finished stirring a fourth and final packet of sugar into the coffee and started back to my desk. Jill followed me, still frowning.
“I know if we could tap into his unconscious mind …” she started, but she let it drop. Instead she told me she’d leave Lynch alone for now. “Although I’m not sure how many more chances we’re going to have to catch this killer,” she said. “Once he finishes his story, that’s it. I doubt we’d hear from him again.”
“So what’s the story this guy is so intent on telling us?”
“I have no idea,” she said. “And I doubt it would make much sense even if I did. But in his mind, getting it out is all that matters. You have to remember, we’re dealing with a full-blown narcissist. This is someone who is so caught up in his own grandiose view of himself that he believes anything concocted in his fevered mind would be considered brilliant by the rest of the world.”
I nodded noncommittally and went back to my list of knife purchases. Jill left only to return minutes later to hand me fifty dollars, a big grin stretched across her face.
“I shamed him into paying up,” she explained.
“Truly incredible,” I said. “And who said you can’t squeeze blood from a stone?”
I could tell there was something else on her mind, but she left without mentioning what it was. Later that afternoon I received photos of the dogs that were killed. The person I had spoken with was right. In the condition they were left there was nothing I’d be able to with the photos. We wouldn’t be able to put them on the news, and an owner wouldn’t be able to recognize a missing pet from them. The medical examiner’s office called shortly afterward to make sure I’d gotten them, and also to let me know that according to the veterinarian who looked at the dogs, they appeared to be a boxer, a Doberman shepherd, and a mongrel with some Rottweiler and Staffordshire terrier in it. I took all this to Hennison. He stared blankly at the photos and made a face at my suggestion to have someone call local shelters to see if anyone had adopted the breeds of dogs that were killed.
“A waste of time,” he said. “Our perp picked those dogs up off the street.”
“Then see who’s reporting missing pets. At least we’d know what neighborhoods he was in.”
“Yeah, maybe.” He turned away from me and wrinkled his nose as if he were smelling some bad cheese. “By the way, real classy move sending that FBI broad to collect your money for you.”
I couldn’t help laughing at that. “I didn’t ask her to do squat. She figured out the bet and collected payment from you all on her own. She’s pretty damn good, isn’t she? I’m beginning to think there might be something to her theory about what’s driving our perp. You talk to Phillips yet about playing up this dog story to the press?”
Hennison nodded. “He wants the story kept quiet,” he said.
The rest of the day I continued to focus on the list of knife purchases, and was able to eliminate half the names on it. The other half, either the alibis were too vague to be corroborated or I wasn’t able to track the person down. When my shift was over at five, I left. While I was sure Phillips and Hennison would’ve liked everyone to put in overtime until we made more headway, I wasn’t going to, at least not that day.
On the way home I used a good chunk of the fifty dollars I’d gotten from Hennison to get takeout from one of Bambi’s favorite Indian restaurants. Later, when I called Cheryl, several inches of frost came over the line, but she didn’t hang up on me and I heard her in the background asking Stevie if he was willing to talk to me. I thought there was a chance he would after his Red Sox pulled off a minor miracle the night before and had already taken an early two-to-one lead in game five, but he refused. Emma did get on the phone for about thirty seconds to tell me how mad she was at me. At least that was something.
After dinner I asked Bambi if she wanted to go to a nightclub in the neighborhood. She seemed surprised by my suggestion and asked me if I was feeling up to it after what happened with Rich, because if I wasn’t it would be totally understandable.
“Yeah, let’s get out of here.”
“You’re sure you’d rather not stay home and watch the game?”
I told her I’d rather go out, then waited three quarters of an hour while she dolled herself up and put on a new outfit. For the last few days I’d been trying to figure out how I was going to pay Earl what I owed him. Earlier today I had made a decision and called Joel Cohen, and we had arranged to meet at his club that night.