Chapter Eight

Alison grabbed the blanket with a balled fist and screamed. She thought about the weird dream she’d had last night. What was the name of that guy? Oh, right – David something…David…Florio! That was the name.

I must know the name from school or something. He must have been a real monster if I wanted to kill him so much. It seemed so real!

A loud ring sent a jolt of electricity through her.

Crap, it’s the phone! I must be late for work!

It was Jeannie. “What do you want? I don’t feel good, and I want to go back to bed.”

“You don’t have to rip my head off, Alison. I don’t care whether you go to work or not. Look, a strange phone number keeps showing up on my caller I.D. It’s the same number you used last night to call me for a ride home. I figured you accidentally brought home the wrong phone, but when I tried calling it back, no one answered. No phone mail. Nothing. No listing. So I called your regular number, and you answered. What’s going on?”

“Going on?” Alison asked with creeping apprehension.

“Allie, come back. Try again. I called you back several times this morning on a number that turns out to be foreign, like overseas foreign.”

“I must have dropped my phone at the Collective and picked up someone else’s. I haven’t been out since then.”

“Huh? Then what do you call last night’s adventure?”

Alison thought she might faint. “Jeannie…we went to this guy’s place last night?”

“Oh for God’s sake, Allie, quit fooling around! You said he was so hot he practically burst into flames.”

“Flames?”

“Yes, flames! What about the cell phone, Allie? Do you think it came from his place? Geez, what was his name again?”

“I have to hang up.”

“But what about the -“

Alison hit the off button and threw the phone on the bed. She ran to the computer to check the headlines. If anything in her dream really happened last night, she’d see it there.

***

From a window left open on David Florio’s desktop computer, Carter read Deborah Decker’s dating profile a dozen times or more. From the message thread, it seemed likely David and Deborah had met. Had she visited him last night? She left a phone number for Florio to call in her last text. Carter called, hoping she’d agree to talk to him. No person named Deborah Decker lived within 500 miles of the victim. He dialed the number she left but it was repeatedly forwarded to voicemail that did not identify its owner.

Later. The local Jersey P.D. had turned the laptop over to their computer lab who traced the address to Switzerland. They discovered quite easily that the I.P. address used to create Deborah’s dating profile also originated overseas. Too easily, in fact. The true owner of the I.P. address was counting on that. He was right under their nose hiding in plain sight. It was really very simple, so simple a child could have done it. He used the V.P.N. browser on his cell phone to send the lab team off on a wild goose chase while he used another one, and voila!

***

Carter met Deeprose in a local hole-in-the-wall café for a cup of coffee and an update meeting.

Deeprose shook her head. “This Deborah Decker mighta been an overseas scammer lookin’ to steal our victim’s I.D. It could be unrelated to the crime, Agent Carter.”

“Maybe, but we don’t want to make the mistake of overlooking something that might be important. No assumptions, remember? In any case, we know Florio was murdered and that’s something.” Carter looked grim this morning. There wasn’t much to go on.

“You mean the lab has determined the home’s occupant was the man burned to death?”

“I can’t begin to give the kind of detail Agent Seacrest could, but in a word, ‘yes’.”

“How’d she pull that off? Most of the victim was bacon.”

“She pulled a blood sample from the man’s foot, which was, surprisingly, still intact. She was able to match it to the blood type on file from his physician. It’s David Florio.”

“But it woulda matched a lot of people’s blood type. How’d she get proof positive?”

Carter grinned. “My wife has a way with people, Agent. Namely, Florio’s doctor. She got a positive I.D.”

“Did she find anything else from the scene that would help us, Agent Carter?”

“She most certainly did. There was no murder weapon, of course, but from a forensic standpoint, we have reason to believe Florio’s death was suspicious. Jill discovered some pretty interesting organic compounds at the scene using chromatography.”

“What’s chromatography? How does it work?”

“It’s a method of separating and analyzing mixtures of chemicals by flowing them over or through paper, glass, or gas. First, the mixture has to be dissolved in a liquid. We’d found the remnants of a liquid that dried on the victim’s pants. The lab crew placed the particles in airtight containers and got them back to the lab so Jill could use a process called gas-liquid chromatography to separate the gas from the original liquid. The compounds in the liquid form turned out to be lighter fluid.”

Deeprose eyed her cold coffee with disgust. “Still, it coulda been a suicide.”

“That is a possibility, of course, but would you kill yourself by setting yourself on fire? I can think of a half dozen better ways to go. Besides, the other liquid found at the scene was red wine, also spilled on the victim’s pant legs, as well as on the dining room floor.”

Deeprose stared absently out of the shop’s window, mulling over this new information. “Red wine and lighter fluid. Hmm. If he did have a dinner guest, she mighta doused him with lighter fluid to ignite the fire and with wine to feed it. Ah suppose he would have let a stranger in if he thought he was gonna get lucky. Ah don’t think this is suicide, sir, but Ah don’t see any evidence pointin’ towards a thrill kill or a copycat, either.”

Carter pursed his lips. “Not so fast, agent. Have you considered any other possibility besides murder, like an accident?”

“An accident, sir, with lighter fluid and red wine poured all over the victim?”

“O.K., so you’re pretty convinced it is a murder. Let’s think about that, Agent. If it’s just another murder, why are we here? After all, we have our own murder to investigate at the Cloisters. The only reason for us to be here would be to confirm whether or not it connects to the museum murder. By the way, you might want to start taking notes.”

Carter cleared his throat and dove into the conundrum. “Now. Fischetti more than suggests both are thrill kills; a thrill kill has a high possibility of tying together two seemingly unrelated murders. One doer could have committed two completely unrelated crimes for no other reason than the high of having done it. The victims could have been randomly chosen.

“However. If there are multiple and unrelated doers, which we now think there are, why are we here? Fischetti knew the possibility was strong that we would conclude they were separate and unrelated. We’ve done that. The possibility that both murders are thrill kills is extremely low- not impossible- but it would be a million-to-one shot. That leaves one remaining possibility.”

“And that is, sir?”

“He wanted to be certain he could rule out thrill kills but he thinks the two murders are still somehow connected, maybe by one entity – like the mob or some other group or individual. What’s your take on it now, Agent?”

“We’re pretty sure there are two separate killers from the differences in victims, crime scenes, and the method of murder. One was planned much better than the other. Mob hits or organized crime? Ah don’t buy that. Not flamboyant enough. Would you mind tellin’ me a little more about thrill kills, sir?”

Carter was in his element and loving it. “Thrill kills are not fad murders committed by people out for kicks on a Saturday night; they are committed by disturbed individuals looking for the self-gratification they can only get from taking a life. If he does it again and again, he’s a serial killer, but there’s one major difference between this type of serial killer and the ones we usually see; he chooses the victim at random, and there is no relation to or any feeling toward the victim, whatsoever. It’s rare, but it happens.”

“Can you give me a concrete example of thrill murders, sir? Actual cases?”

“In 2003, there were a string of thrill kills in New York. There were also several sniper shootings in Washington, D.C. the same year. There are three basic profiles of thrill killers. First, if the doer is a deeply disturbed individual, like a returning war veteran or a student who opens fire in a classroom full of kids, this type is usually prepared to die or commit suicide once it’s all over.

“Second, the doer might be a highly intellectual, even brilliant person who kills to show his superiority over the victim and the authorities. This person has delusions of grandeur, a super inflated ego, and seeks only to prove he is smart enough to pull off the perfect crime.

“Third, and this is by far the most likely, the doer has a constant feeling of inadequacy, and what drives him to kill is a need to wield power so that he can feel powerful. This killer also has serial potential.

“So what do you think our next move should be, Agent?”

Deeprose frowned as she leafed through her notes and tried to figure out what to look for next. “Well…we can still try to find the person whose photo appeared on the dating site. And we have that dark, grainy camera shot of the museum perp. Maybe the lab has some answers by now.”

The teacher in Carter was having a bang-up time. Deeprose was fully engaged and her brain was humming. Slogging through all the facts to come up with a suggestion for the next step of the investigation was a good habit for her to get into on her first case. It had always helped Carter see the issues, the possibilities and next steps.

“Both the name and profile are phony. Deborah Decker doesn’t exist. What makes you think the person in the photo is real?”

“Agent Seacrest’s discovery of the accelerant, sir. Ah found no container in the home or in the garbage cans which might have contained the lighter fluid.”

Carter looked at her with pride. “Aha! You think someone took the evidence away. Good job! But why a woman?”

Deeprose raised her cup of cold coffee and grimaced before taking a swig. “Because we have no other suspects except her, so we have to hope against hope that the photo matches a real person and that the video of the museum murder reveals a face.”

“Exactly.”

Carter dug his cell phone out of his suit pocket to read a text from Jill. “You will come to find that Agent Seacrest doesn’t like sharing information over the phone. She requests our presence at the lab.”

***

Seacrest held a photo in her hand like a trophy. “Thanks to six hours of shoeprint casting, I’ve got a partial print from the New Brunswick, New Jersey crime scene.”

Carter hadn’t realized he’d been holding his breath. It came out in a whoosh of relief. At the same time, Deeprose sucked in her breath sharply and held it, waiting to hear if there was more.

“The partial matches the Stridewell shoeprint found at the Cloisters.”

Deeprose let out her breath looking just as deflated as she felt. “So there is only one killer for the two museum murders? But even if we can find the museum killer, will a print be enough to place him at the scene?”

Seacrest placed the photo in Carter’s hands. “If he still has the shoes, yes. Besides, my job is to collect and analyze the evidence, not to solve or prosecute the case.”

Deeprose sighed and raised her hands in surrender. “Ah apologize, Agent Seacrest. Pardon my bad manners. My coffee fix was less than spectacular this mornin’. At least we have more to go on now, an’ it’s most appreciated. Perhaps one of them will make a mistake that will show their hand.”

***

Michael Santiago knew by the next morning the murder had been real and that he’d committed it. He saw the breaking story on ABC News and in the newspaper. He figured out he must have been drugged at that it could only have happened at the Collective.

The thing was, he didn’t care. He felt great. He wanted more of that drug, and he wanted to feel that power again.

I’ll get another invitation for next week’s meeting in a day or two, but I’ll bet no one gets dosed twice. It’s too big a chance to take. They probably pick first-timers only. It was probably in the drinks. Then they invite the newbies backstage one by one to meet the big team, and…bingo! The newbies are killers.

I wonder what their game is. Maybe they’d be willing to give me more of that drug to keep me quiet. Nah, that’s asking for a bullet between the eyes…Know what? I’m just gonna mix myself a very large vodka tonic, relax my brain, and think about it a little…

An hour and five cocktails later, Michael had his answer. There had been a girl at the meeting he followed home to Jersey. She was invited backstage which meant she’d also been assigned a murder. Right…Alison…Whiteway!

The next day I drove back to Jersey and followed her to the next town over when the girlfriend picked her up. They must have been driving to the victim’s place. And I was still outside when she met the other girl around the corner and drove away. I’m going to scare the hell out of that girl. I’ll threaten to blow the whistle on her. She has no idea who I am; she has no idea I did a murder myself. She’ll do anything I tell her to do. And what she’s gonna do is distract the Silver Man’s team at the next meeting just long enough for me to find their stash of drugs, grab them and run.

In a drunken stupor, he nodded off and slept like a baby, without remorse, fear, or shame.