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Dartmouth, June 14
9:15 a.m.
Corpse. Devil.
Devil. Corpse.
Allan shook his head. What did it all mean?
Killers who left behind messages for police weren’t new phenomena. They had done it many times before. Blood on walls. Lipstick on mirrors. Cryptic symbols daring to be cracked.
But what psychological purpose did the words serve the suspect in this case? He’d written them for a reason. Were they taunts just meant to leave everyone scratching their heads? Or did the words have real meaning?
The suspect had obviously spied on Todd Dory and Blake Kaufman before he killed them. He learned their routines, familiarized himself with their neighborhoods. That’s how he’d known of the outside security camera at Atlantic News. That’s how he’d known Kaufman had gone out earlier. Had he followed him to Dooly’s, then came back to lay in wait?
Allan sat in his car on Primrose Street, just down from the crime scene. Officers continued to guard the perimeters set by the barrier tape. Earlier, the employed tenants of buildings 28 and 30 had to take cabs to work. Until Ident gave the okay, the rear parking lot and the vehicles within it remained off limits.
Morning burned bright. The rain had left a pleasant freshness to the air, rinsed it clean of the urban funk. The sky was a rich blue, piled with cotton clouds.
Allan glanced at the media personnel camped out across the street, filming and snapping pictures, hoping for a spot on the evening news or paper. A pretty blonde reporter stood in front of a camera, speaking into a microphone.
Blake Kaufman, like Todd Dory, would get a paragraph, maybe two, in the Chronicle Herald. He’d get a mention on the six o’clock news. Then he’d be forgotten until a suspect got caught. It wasn’t that dead gangbangers didn’t matter; their crimes just mattered more because they usually involved innocent people.
Allan let his gaze roam up the brick face of 28 Primrose, stopping at the top-floor windows. He wondered if Kaufman’s apartment hid any clues, any breadcrumbs that could lead to a suspect.
The folder on the seat beside him had grown thick with the canvass reports he’d compiled over the last five hours of working the street, banging on doors and rousing people from their beds. Little more than rumor and innuendo had resulted from it.
Some people wouldn’t answer. Others, even if they had known something, wouldn’t talk. Allan knew they were probably afraid of retaliation or being labeled as snitches in a neighborhood accustomed to crime, violence and police sirens. In the past five years, seven percent of all serious calls to headquarters had come from here. Drugs. Assaults. Murders. Robberies. No one wanted to get involved in any of that. Witness cooperation was a big issue in most homicide cases.
Allan leaned his head back in the seat, trying to blink away the grittiness from his eyes. A kind of sickening languor gripped his body. The effects, he knew, of being up for more than twenty-eight hours straight.
He cringed at the task still ahead of him. Interview staff that had worked at Dooly’s last night and view the security videos during the time Kaufman had been there. Check businesses in the area for cameras that looked out at Primrose Street and Jackson Road. Screen the surveillance footage at the two toll bridges. If the suspect lived in Halifax, he had to have driven over one of them, unless he’d taken the scenic route through Bedford.
Allan had to return to the addresses that had never answered during the initial canvass. He also wanted to release the video from the Atlantic News security camera to the media. It might jog the memory of potential witnesses. Even someone close to the suspect might recognize the clothing, the bag on his back.
Jim Lucas appeared from the alleyway between the two apartment buildings. Allan watched him carry a few evidence bags and envelopes to the Ident van parked in front of him. His camera dangled in front of his chest.
Allan leaned his head out the window. “Find much?”
Jim looked over and held up his index finger. He opened the rear doors of the van and put the bags inside. When he closed the doors, he walked over, unzipping the front of his coveralls down to his stomach.
He said, “We searched every square inch of that parking lot and backyard. Rain’s fucked everything.”
“I figured that.”
“We did find a shotgun pellet,” Jim said. “Double-aught buck.”
“Where’d you find that?”
“Next to the building. There was a deflect in the brick beside the window of a basement apartment.”
Allan nodded. “Coulter told me one had gone through Kaufman’s leg. He dug out eight of them.”
“Same caliber?”
“Yeah. Double-aught.”
“Were there any other wounds we didn’t see?”
“No,” Allan said. “Coulter told me that stab wound through the eye lacerated Kaufman’s brain stem. Death was pretty quick.”
“Do you have any idea who this guy is?”
Allan shook his head. “He has a history with the Black Scorpions. If I can figure out what it is, I’ll find him.”
“He’s ballsy. I’ll give him that.”
“Yeah. Ballsy and determined.”
“He’s likely to go after Higgins next.”
“Let him,” Allan said. “We have eyes on Higgins now.”
Jim grunted his disgust. “Seems like a big waste of manpower if you ask me.”
“I know. But it’s our job.”
Jim leaned against the car, his palms on the roof, and the camera swayed in the open window. “Harvey and I never found much else back there. A wad of chewing gum behind the Dumpster. Still soft. Two cigarette butts that looked like they were recently smoked. Not sure how relevant any of it is.”
“Anything and everything can be evidence, right?”
“That’s right,” Jim said. “If the lab can profile the items, this guy might have a record. He might be in the Convicted Offender Index.”
Allan shook his head again. “Still can’t see him having a cigarette while hiding behind there. The smoke would be a clear giveaway to anyone who came outside. Now the gum?” He twitched his shoulders. “Maybe.”
“You might be giving this guy too much credit, Detective. People are stupid. They do stupid things. He gets bored. Not thinking, he lights up. Tosses the butt on the ground. Blamo, leaves part of himself behind.”
Allan cocked an eyebrow at him. “That might be a stretch.”
“Maybe,” Jim said. “But hey, I’m just trying to be optimistic. Better than being a wet blanket.”
Allan smiled. “Did you find a spent shell anywhere?”
“No. My guess, the guy never pumped the action.”
Allan leaned toward that premise now. Until he had seen the word written on the knife, he’d wondered if the suspect had jammed the shotgun. But that wasn’t the case at all. He’d wanted to use the knife so he could leave his strange message behind. He’d used the shotgun only to handicap Kaufman first, a bigger and tougher opponent for him to handle otherwise.
“Find anything else?”
“Nothing.” Jim drummed his fingers on the roof. “The guy kept to the grass. Never stepped in any soil. The impressions he left behind only suggested his direction of travel. We couldn’t even work out the size of the prints.”
“What’s Harvey doing?”
“Going over that parking lot on Jackson Road.”
Allan gave another nod.
“Did you get the warrant for Kaufman’s apartment?” Jim asked.
Allan picked it off the dash, held it up. “Just got it.”
Jim tapped out the first five beats of “Shave and a Haircut.” “Let’s go.”
