On the walk to the car, Paula asked, “You really think the killer has medical training? I don’t need another reason to hate going to my gynecologist.”
“You heard Dr. Kelly. Every cut was made with exact precision.”
“Or lots of practice,” she said.
Both detectives got in the car and buckled up. John started the engine and backed from the parking lot. “Remember back in high school biology? Dissecting frogs?”
“Not my favorite day. That smell. Every time I attend an autopsy, that formaldehyde odor reminds me my class was right after lunch. We had pizza that day, and I threw up all over my frog. I was so embarrassed. I never understood why they made us do that nasty stuff.”
“That’s kinda what I’m getting at, minus the pizza. The killer treats his victims like lab specimens. Every cut is exact, the bodies are opened up—he knows what he wants; he’s not bumbling around looking for something, exploring,” John said.
“Cold, direct, and all business. We can run a check on doctors who lost their licenses and complaints filed against hospitals or insurance companies,” Paula suggested.
“It’s a start, and I can’t wait for the doctors to start throwing up the ‘patient confidentiality’ flag as soon as we start digging.”
John pulled the unmarked sedan into the police department parking lot and nosed it into an empty slot near the door. Too late in the day for a call to Jimmy Franck, the snitch, as he’d be deep in a dime bag by now. If Jimmy had anything, someone would have called it in. Inside, shift-change briefings started for the evening units before they hit their assigned patrols. John and Paula entered the hallway and passed the briefing room when a graveled voice called out.
“Hey, Penley, you got a minute?”
John backtracked a few steps to the briefing room door and saw Sergeant E. B. Collins leaning on the podium at the front of the briefing room. The thirty-year veteran ran the briefing for the evening shift, where he issued the latest “BOLOs,” or be-on-the-lookout notices, officer-safety bulletins, and crime-mapping updates. The latter involved geographic information systems, what Sergeant Collins referred to as “video game voodoo magic.” Collins preferred the time-tested approach of word-of-mouth information dissemination.
Seated at a half dozen tables were the patrol partners that made up the evening shift. The group was a mix of younger officers paired with veteran training officers and those who chose the evening shift to steer away from brass-heavy day-shift politics.
John looked over at Paula and said, “I’ve got this if you want to take a run at getting the medical licensing information on vigilante doctors.”
“I’ll get it started with the state medical boards,” Paula said. She continued down the hall toward the detective bureau offices.
John ducked inside the briefing room. “Sergeant,” he said.
“Detective Penley, would you care to give us an update on the body fished out of the river last night?”
Collins retained the same formal approach in public that John experienced when Collins was his training officer years earlier. Although when together in a patrol unit, Collins had softened and even shed a tear when John’s daughter, Kari, was born. He said it was allergies.
John approached the front of the room near the podium, and before he started, one of the older officers called out, “Was it that dirtbag, Cardozo?”
“The body was identified as Daniel Cardozo,” John confirmed.
“Any relation to Luis ‘Puppet’ Cardozo?” an officer asked.
“Brother,” John said.
The officer high-fived another longtime officer.
“That’s enough, Stark,” Sergeant Collins chided.
“Cardozo and the West Block Norteños were pains in the ass every time they crossed the river. What’s the deal with celebrating there being one less? They breed like cockroaches anyway,” Stark said.
“Detective, is it true that Cardozo was dismembered and gutted, like the others?” one of the younger officers asked.
“He was, although we haven’t released that publicly,” John said.
“The dude had that coming,” Stark responded.
John stiffened. “Nobody deserves what happened to Cardozo. The family doesn’t even have a complete body to bury. Our killer has taken three victims, and the only connection we have is that they were all associated with street gangs. We don’t know why Mercer, Johnson, and Cardozo were chosen. Cardozo’s body was not hidden like the prior two; he called us after he dumped the body this time.”
“How do you know this ain’t the start of a gang war, picking off thugs one at a time?” Stark said.
“We all would have heard something on the street if this was another gang turf problem,” John said.
The rookie officer asked, “What does he do with them? I mean the arms, legs, heads—what does he do with them?”
“Who cares. It ain’t like Cardozo’s gonna need them anymore. Tell you what, Rook, if you pull over a car with a half dozen feet in the trunk, then you know you cracked the case,” Stark said to snickers from the group.
“All right, that’s enough,” Sergeant Collins said, cutting off the response to Stark’s comment. “Detective, what do you need us to look for?”
“We feel that Cardozo could be the key. We are holding back the medical examiner’s specific findings, but I can tell you the killer treated Cardozo differently from the prior two. Listen to the chatter on the street and see if you can pick up anything that tells us what Cardozo was up to in the last few days. Everything so far supports the claim that he had cut ties with the West Block Norteños, so if you hear anything to the contrary, shoot it to Detective Newberry or me,” John said.
“Screw Newberry,” an officer in the back called out.
“Somebody better find this guy’s footlocker before Stark’s foot fetish takes over and he keeps them for himself,” an officer commented from the back row.
“That’s enough. You heard the detective—you hear anything pertaining to Cardozo or these murders, get back to him. Anything else, Detective?” Sergeant Collins asked, signaling that he needed to get on with his shift briefing.
“That’s it. Thanks, Sarge.”
John turned and left the room, the rookie officer’s question nagging at him. What did the killer do with all the body parts? Nothing had turned up. Not so much as a single arm, leg, or shred of muscle fiber. By the time he arrived at his desk, a concept had crystallized.
He’s a collector.