“Do we have a time of death?” I asked, looking away from the wall.
“TOD is between midnight and one a.m. this morning,” Shooter said.
The call from Mad Dog had come in at 3:43 p.m. in Dallas, 1:43 p.m. here. Our killer had waited more than eleven hours between when he’d spoken to me—and when he’d entered the safe house.
“A local team started compiling a list of former killers who’d be likely victims,” Frank said. “Lazarian wasn’t even on the list. Agents were looking at parolees, mostly.”
“Not anyone on trial,” Shooter clarified.
“And here we have someone who wasn’t yet convicted,” I replied.
“A variation on the pattern,” Cassie said.
Shooter squinted. “Is it?” she asked. “I mean, technically Tignon was never convicted, either.”
“True,” I said. “But in Lazarian’s case, justice was expected to prevail.”
The evidence to convict Lazarian was, in fact, overwhelming. Yet Mad Dog had not waited for the jury.
I turned and faced the body. Beside the cuts in his neck, I noticed a bloodstain in the center of Lazarian’s chest. My mind shuttled through each of his victims, connecting pieces of their injuries to what I was seeing. The cut in the neck was similar to Nicole Conkert, his third victim. The wound in the chest recalled Katrina Bremer, victim number 2. I looked for some detail that could be an homage to victim number 1, but did not see any.
“What was he doing in federal custody?” I asked.
“There’d been threats against his life,” Frank said from behind me. “Lazarian was in solitary at County. On a ten-minute break to the infirmary, he was stabbed.”
“His attorney insisted that it wasn’t safe for him in jail,” Shooter said. “The county asked for assistance, and our LA office put him up here during the trial.”
I gloved up and leaned my body over the tub. Someone had stuck a stopper in the drain, and two inches of reddish-black blood had collected in the basin.
“How did he get past our people?”
“The agents got a text,” Frank said. “Federal agent down one block over and in need of assistance.”
I turned to face Frank. “That text went out to all LA agents?”
Cassie shook her head, answering before Frank could. “Just the two junior guys on duty here. It directed them to cuff Lazarian to the radiator and lock up all the doors to the safe house.”
More evidence that our killer was in or had been law enforcement. Only a Bureau insider would know which agents were on duty and how to get them to panic and ignore protocol. Only a cop would have a key to unlock those cuffs.
I turned back to the body. Ronald Lazarian’s trial had gotten headlines. His attorney had moved past the question of his guilt early on. He was getting press coverage because of a defense strategy. Specifically, the argument that his crimes were so heinous they could not have conceivably been committed by a sane person. It was a new approach to the insanity defense, one that could pave the way for use by other wildly violent criminals.
I thought about the value system our killer was using to select his targets. The word helper he’d used on the phone with me.
“The phone number the agents got the text from—” Shooter said.
“It was a burner,” I finished her sentence.
“Yeah.”
“And where is the medical examiner?” I asked.
“I’ll grab her,” Frank said.
A minute later, he returned with a Korean American woman in her thirties. She wore a blue FBI windbreaker over a crime scene coverall and glasses with purple frames.
“Wendy, this is Gardner Camden,” Frank said. He mentioned that he and Dr. Song had collaborated on a case six years ago.
“So you’re Gardner?” she said, her eyes flitting from the wall to me.
She moved closer then, beside Lazarian’s body. The victim’s frame was primarily suspended from the showerhead by the three inches of his neck that were not yet sliced through. I pointed toward the omohyoid muscle. “The inside cut there is sharper than the outside. What kind of instrument would produce that?”
“A surgeon’s blade,” Dr. Song said. “A number twelve or fourteen.”
The ME in Texas had mentioned this type of tool.
Dr. Song motioned to a particular area. “A twelve has a smaller, crescent-shaped curve. It can produce an indent like that.”
“Presuming you were keeping the body suspended until I arrived,” I said, “have you looked at the rest of him?”
“Quick visual only,” Dr. Song said.
“You find burn marks?”
She cocked her head at me, curious. “Yeah, there’s one on his buttocks.”
“Like from a cattle prod?”
“Certainly could be,” the doctor said.
“He’s combining elements of the murders,” I told my team. “Allison Fadden was Lazarian’s first victim. She was subdued with a stun gun. It’s probably how Mad Dog incapacitated Lazarian while the agents were gone.”
“The amount of risk-taking,” Shooter said, shaking her head. “He’s inside an FBI safe house. He had to be aware we’d trace the call and know he was in LA.”
I turned to face the ME. “Thank you,” I said.
“You’re very welcome,” the doctor replied, staying close by my side.
I was trying to get her to leave but wanted to be careful about how I phrased things. Not like I had with Richie in New Mexico.
“We appreciate your hard work,” I said, and Frank picked up what I was doing.
“We need to huddle as a team, Wendy,” he said. “We’ll bring you back in here in a smidge.”
Song left, and I pushed the door shut behind her.
“There’s a traitor among us,” I said, leaning against the sink. “The size of ‘among us’ is the only question. I had Cassie start with PAR.”
“With us?” Frank cocked his head.
“I’m pleased to report that everyone in this room has been cleared.”
Shooter squinted at me. “Thanks?”
“In Texas, I theorized that our killer might’ve been an angry fed, based on details from Tignon’s case,” I said. “So when he called himself a helper, I was thinking—”
“Vigilante,” Shooter interrupted.
I nodded. “Except now he’s actively interfering. Sending agents one way while he goes the other. There’s something larger here that we’re not seeing.”
I turned to Frank. I had been leaning on everyone’s strengths in a way that I had seen him do. But I hadn’t applied the same calculus to the boss himself. He had trained with the best profilers in the country. Given Richie’s interest in unsolved cases, I wondered whether this was also part of his request to be at PAR. A chance to work with Frank, as much as me.
“Do you have a profile?” I asked. “I presume that’s what you were working on in the diner?”
“Yeah, of course,” he said.
He stared from Shooter to Cassie to me.
“Should I do a drumroll?” I asked, recalling Frank’s question from two days ago.
“The guy’s actively looking for recognition,” Frank said. “He exploits others without shame or guilt. He didn’t like it when you corrected him on the phone, so we know he demands deference. Feels entitled. He wanted us to call him God; he looked down on the role of a pawn. I presume he’s probably felt that way his whole life. Like a pawn, that is.” Frank took a breath. “He wants to be chased, Gardner. But he views it the way a parent looks at a child chasing them.”
“As someone who can never catch up?” Shooter asked.
“Exactly.” Frank nodded.
I knew all of this already.
“What else?” I asked.
“I imagine he was expecting to rattle you,” Frank said. “In Dallas on the phone. He wasn’t expecting you to be so … unshaken.”
I’d been called worse. Unconcerned. A weirdo.
“That’s why he wrote your name on the wall,” Frank continued. “To get us focusing on you, as much as him. Maybe a picture of the wall leaks to the press. Right now, we’re controlling the media, and I’m guessing he didn’t expect that. None of his work is out there. The public can’t cheer about someone killing these awful men. Someone doing what the justice system couldn’t. Or talk about how we’re too slow to stop him. Specifically, how you’re too slow.”
The information was helpful, but it didn’t answer my question. How was Mad Dog getting his intel?
I needed to huddle privately with Cassie. See how far she had gotten into the list of agents who’d checked out Tignon and Fisher’s files. Now Lazarian’s, too.
“We need to keep this quiet,” I said. “No one can find out—”
Frank held up his hand. “That brings me to the last part of the profile. Mad Dog picked Lazarian because we can’t keep it quiet.” He pointed in the direction of the street. “See those two news vans? Lazarian’s attorney already put it out there that something bad happened. He’s gonna hold a press conference, and a firestorm will follow. The FBI will look foolish. PAR will be called incompetent. You’ll be called—”
“Then we muzzle the lawyer,” Cassie said. “Put him under protective custody.”
“It won’t matter,” Frank said. “Mad Dog will make sure it goes public.”
There was a knock at the bathroom door. When I opened it, a man in his thirties stood there. He was short and balding and wore a dark blue suit that was one size too big.
“Art.” Frank shook his hand. He explained that Art Koenig was the press information officer for the LA office.
“We’re not making a statement,” I said.
“That’s not why I’m here,” Koenig replied. “The media has connected the three victims.”
I swallowed. I couldn’t control this case. It was evolving in ways that were unpredictable and didn’t follow logic.
“How?” Frank asked.
“I don’t know all the details yet,” Koenig said. “But a reporter from USA Today just asked me if a vigilante is murdering serial killers. She mentioned Ross Tignon by name, and she knows about Lazarian. Said she has another name, too.”
Frank’s profile was right. Mad Dog had contacted the press.
“Did she provide any other details?” I asked.
“Yeah.” Koenig studied his notes. “Today wasn’t her first tip. The guy reached out to her forty-eight hours ago. She thought it was a prank.”
“A prank how?” Cassie asked.
“Well, Ross Tignon had burned to death seven years ago, so when she was first told that name—”
“What exactly did he say?” I asked.
“In his first contact,” Koenig said, “he told the reporter it’s lucky that regular people like him are standing for justice, since the FBI isn’t. She researched Tignon’s name. Saw he was dead. Thought the call was from a whacko.”
“And the next two murders?” I asked. “What’d he say about them?”
“Oh, you’re gonna love her answer there.” Koenig flicked his eyes. “If we want that information, she advises us to buy a USA Today. The only other thing she told me is the name of the person who leaked her the info.”
“Let me guess,” Shooter said. “His name is God.”
“No,” Koenig said. “The person who called her identified himself as Frank Roberts.”
Frank’s jaw tightened.
I wasn’t the only one the killer was playing with.