Chapter Sixteen
“Succinylcholine, or sux, is a muscle relaxer. Hospitals use it when they perform tracheal intubations. Veterinarians sometimes use it in the euthanasia of horses. This is not a sedative. It does not produce unconsciousness or anesthesia. Someone injected with a fairly small dose will suffer temporary paralysis. If his skull is then broken open, he’s going to feel a tremendous amount of pain, and he’s going to know exactly what is being done to him.”
Goodman paused for effect. “Sux metabolizes quickly, and can be difficult to detect, but we got lucky with our first victim. He had a genetic abnormality that caused the sux injected into him not to fully metabolize, and because of that we found it in his blood. Since we were later looking for it, we were able to find traces of it in four other victims. We also found needle-sized puncture marks on all the victims; all of them were either injected in the arm, shoulder, throat, behind the ear, in the back of the neck, and in one case, under the left eye.”
“Where would SCK get his supply of sux?” Morris asked.
“A hospital or surgical clinic, a racetrack, or a veterinarian office that handles large animals would be the easiest places, assuming that he doesn’t purchase it directly from one of the manufacturers. We looked at all the possible sources in the city, but it didn’t get us anywhere. It’s not a class A substance, like an opiate, although it’s far deadlier, and should be better controlled since it’s a nearly perfect murder drug. The records we found were shoddy at best, and it’s doubtful any of these places would’ve noticed if a package of sux had gone missing.”
“Here’s where we have a significant difference,” Smichen volunteered. “The toxicology report came up clean on Freeman. I also didn’t find any needle-sized puncture marks, and I checked carefully for that. As you said, if sux were injected into him, we might not have found it, but what I did find was that our victim was hit hard from behind with an iron pipe and that his wrists were taped together.”
“Interesting.” Goodman rubbed his chin as he considered this. “Obviously the killer used a different method to immobilize this latest victim, but that’s not necessarily significant. It could be simply that he hasn’t been able to locate a source of sux. Was the victim knocked unconscious?”
“If he was, he recovered consciousness before death. The killer didn’t bother gagging him, and from the way he bit his tongue, gums, and lips, he was struggling.”
“Then this still fits,” Goodman said, relieved. “The serial killer I’d profiled whom you know as SCK needs his victims to suffer. After he had immobilized his victims by temporarily paralyzing them, he broke apart their skulls with a chisel and hammer, and then used the claw end of the hammer to dig out clumps of their brain. This is every bit as cruel a way to kill someone as it sounds. SCK could’ve used an animal tranquilizer if his goal was to leave a message with the way he murdered his victims, but it was important to him for his victims to suffer emotional trauma, fear, and great physical pain that would be made even more acute by the sux. If this latest victim had been unconscious during the killing, then there’d be no doubt that we would now be dealing with a different person.”
“In some of the photos you showed I counted eight clumps of brain matter dug out. Was that consistent with each of the New York victims?” Morris asked.
“Yes. Why?”
“Ours had six clumps dug out.”
“That’s true,” Smichen said.
“That might not be that significant,” Goodman said. “This is over five years later and twenty-eight hundred miles away. SCK could’ve altered his signature for either a personal reason or to try to confuse us. As I’d hinted at earlier, he doesn’t care about getting credit for his murders. He kills because the pressure builds to an unbearable level and then he needs to destroy victims who remind him of people he holds a tremendous amount of anger against.”
Morris asked, “Who, parents and an ex-wife or girlfriend?”
“Possibly. Whoever they are I suspect they’re dead now, and it wouldn’t surprise me if SCK murdered them, or at the very least, severely injured them, although probably not in anywhere near as brutal a way as he did with these victims who’ve been serving as fill-ins.”
“So he’s looking for do overs,” Lemmon said.
“Yes. Exactly.”
Morris asked, “Why’s he been quiet the last five years?”
“The million-dollar question.”
“Could it be a copycat?”
Goodman shrugged. “It’s possible,” he said. “There are notable differences with this killing. I’ll have the victim’s remains shipped to the FBI lab, and we’ll be able to tell if the same chisel and hammer were used, not that that would eliminate this killer being SCK if they weren’t. It’s been over five years, it would make sense if he had to ditch his other tools and buy new ones.”
“Could this be a fluke killing unrelated to SCK?”
“Doubtful. We should be assuming it’s either SCK or a copycat. There had never been a reported murder anywhere in the United States like these before SCK struck in New York, and none afterwards until this one. That two individuals could share this never-before-seen psychopathy seems highly unlikely.”
The same dull throbbing Morris had felt earlier when Gilman had informed him that Stonehedge was going to be tagging along started up again as he appreciated what a mess this investigation was becoming.
“Let’s see if I can clarify this,” Morris said. “We could be dealing with SCK even though he killed Freeman differently than his other victims. Or we could be dealing with a copycat, which means someone in New York—either FBI, police, a witness, someone from the ME’s office, or possibly dozens of other potential sources, leaked the particulars of the SCK killings to our new SCK. Or this could be totally random. Some very angry psycho holding a grudge against Freeman who just happened to stumble on the same bizarre method of murder that SCK used.”
“Again, your last choice has a very low probability,” Goodman insisted
“But not impossible.”
“No, not impossible.”
Philip Stonehedge spoke up then, “Pardon my interruption, but the original SCK could be the source of the leak, if it is a copycat. Let’s say he got arrested five years ago and is now rotting in prison. He could’ve confided in a fellow prisoner who has since been released and is carrying out SCK’s murders for him. Or it could be any number of similar scenarios.”
“Not bad, Hollywood,” Polk grudgingly admitted.
Morris took a deep breath as he made a decision. “We’re going to have to investigate this on both ends,” he said. He nodded at his MBI investigators—Bogle, Lemmon, and Polk. “You three take the first plane you can to New York and try to find out where SCK’s been the last five years, and if it’s a copycat, who leaked what to whom. Myself and our esteemed LAPD colleagues will investigate things from this end.”
“What about Hollywood?” Lemmon asked. “You want us to take him with us?”
Morris shook his head. “No, Phil will stick with me.” Then to Sam Goodman, “My guys are going to need full case folders so they know who to talk to in New York.”
“Won’t be a problem.”
Morris gave his men who were still sitting at the conference table a quizzical look.
“I thought you three had a plane to catch?”
Bogle chuckled as he pushed himself away from the table. Lemmon reminded Polk that since Hollywood neither lost his lunch nor fainted he now owed him sixty dollars. Polk acted as if he didn’t hear this, and as he reached the door, he belted out to the tune of New York, New York, “If you can kill them there, you can kill them anywhere.” Lemmon commented that Polk was no Sinatra, no Bette Midler either, although in his opinion Polk looked more like Midler than Sinatra. Lemmon closed the door behind him, cutting off from those still in the soundproofed conference room what would surely have been a biting comeback from Polk.
For the next half hour, Morris strategized with the four LA police detectives. Roger Smichen was able to give them a four-hour window for when Freeman was killed, but it would help to narrow the window down, and it would especially help to know what time Freeman showed up at the house in Venice, and Malevich was going to keep digging for that information. The crime-scene specialists were able to lift over a dozen different fingerprints from inside the house. Given that the inside front doorknob had been wiped clean and that the only fingerprints lifted from the outside doorknob belonged to the realtor who had followed Freeman, there was little chance that any of these fingerprints belonged to the killer—but Walsh and the other two Los Angeles detectives were tasked to match the fingerprints with names, which meant fingerprinting every realtor and potential buyer who had entered the house. Once the Los Angeles detectives had left with their assignments, Morris asked Goodman, “When are you going to know whether we’re dealing with the original SCK, a copycat, or something else?”
Goodman didn’t need any time to think about his answer. “After the next two murders.”