I arrived at the Orlando International Airport at 7:09 a.m. and filled out the Armed Passenger Authorization form outside of Terminal 2. Received my paperwork and headed toward Gate 73.
At the gate, I presented the same form to the agent, alerting him that I was carrying a firearm. The flight was half empty, and the agent put me in first class.
I reclined my seat and took out my laptop. Began constructing a timeline of the events I’d pinned down in the murders of Tignon and Fisher. A timeline that extended back before we’d been pulled onto the case.
WEDNESDAY, NOVEMBER 18
Kenny Smith visits his brother Barry Fisher in Otero Prison. Smith offers his brother a year of free housing, which Fisher accepts.
WEDNESDAY, JANUARY 1
Smith gets a call from a real estate investor using the name Creighton Emwon. Emwon is interested in buying the rental home for cash. Smith is intrigued and sets up an appointment for the next day.
THURSDAY, JANUARY 2
Smith tours Emwon through the rental home. He informs the investor that if he’s interested in purchasing, he needs to make an offer quick as his brother is moving in soon. Smith never hears back from Emwon.
FRIDAY, JANUARY 3
Barry Fisher receives a visitor in Otero Prison named Maurice Merlin. A priest.
THURSDAY, JANUARY 9
A man visits the home of Beverly Polis-Tignon, only to discover that Beverly has already passed. It is not clear if this is our killer.
MONDAY, JANUARY 13
The body of a man known as Bob Breckinridge is found dead in a home in Ashland, Texas, killed the previous day. Locals print the man and discover he is Ross Tignon.
MONDAY, JANUARY 13—SAME DAY
Barry Fisher walks out of Otero Prison in New Mexico a free man, after serving thirty-one years. The same afternoon, Fisher is most likely abducted from his brother’s rental home.
TUESDAY, JANUARY 14
I arrive in Ashland, Texas. An hour after I leave Jacksonville, Frank also leaves. He heads to New Mexico, where the body of another serial killer has been found, this time Barry Fisher, cut up and bagged. Frank arrives in the evening and locks up after sending the index finger to Albuquerque for an ID. The time between kill and discovery is speeding up.
I sat back from my laptop. The flight attendant had left a bottled water for me, along with a packet of miniature Oreos, covered in chocolate.
Eating the cookies, I divided my thoughts into two parts: curiosities and to-dos.
Under the heading curiosities, I contemplated the killer’s movements from New Mexico to Texas. There was a gap in time between his presence in Texas on the ninth, when he possibly visited the Polis home, and his reappearance in Ashland, Texas, on the twelfth, when he killed Tignon.
A similar gap existed in New Mexico. A tour of the home on January third. Then nothing for six days.
Did Mad Dog commit other murders in between, which have not yet been reported? If not, what did he do in the intervening time?
Or was he a local to one of these areas—Texas or New Mexico—and had simply gone home?
An image flashed in my head. Something I had noted the first day of the investigation but had not seen as relevant.
Tignon had a small bar cart off of his kitchen, with four bottles of liquor and ten highball glasses. Two of the ten glasses were turned face up, and each had a half inch of water in the bottom.
I took a mental note of this, then moved on to the to-dos.
The first related to how Mad Dog had located Tignon. My original theory was that he had received some information from Beverly Polis-Tignon. But now that I knew Beverly had passed a year earlier, this was impossible. So how did the killer find Ross Tignon in Ashland, Texas?
Shooter would be following up with Alex Polis, Beverly’s brother, about the cameras mounted on trees near the family’s summer home. If we found a suspicious man on camera, it might officially connect the two cases.
I closed my eyes for a moment. Felt a bump and opened them. The LAX tarmac appeared out the window. Twice in two days I had catnapped on a plane.
Passengers were getting up from their seats and gathering their belongings. I inserted the SIM card back into my phone and turned it on. Before I could stow it in my pocket, Frank was calling.
“Where are you?” he asked.
“LAX,” I said. “Do I need a car?”
“No.”
“Westwood?” I said, referring to the location of the main federal office in Los Angeles.
“No,” he said. “But not far from there. I’ll text you an address.”
Murder number 3.
“Who is it?” I asked.
There were nerves in Frank’s voice. “Maybe you want to look at the scene first.”
“Enough with the bias avoidance,” I said. “I’m the lead. Let’s hear a name.”
“Ronald Lazarian,” he said.
Ronald Lazarian wasn’t a convicted killer; he was on trial for a series of murders. But it was a foregone conclusion that he was guilty. He’d admitted as much himself.
“Gardner,” Frank said. “The murder happened in a federal safe house. With two of our own on the job watching him.”
The side door of the plane had opened, and passengers were muscling each other for access to the aisle.
PAR had been called in to consult on the Lazarian case last year. Specifically, Cassie and I. Which now connected one of the three murders to our unit. Two of the murders to me personally.
“Text me the address,” I said to Frank.
A third murder didn’t surprise me. That’s why I’d sent Shooter, Cassie, and Frank to LA. But a specific image was forming in my head.
“Lazarian,” I said to Frank. “Is his head cut off?”
Frank let out a deep breath. “Yeah,” he said. “Most of it.”