Agent Bell arrived carrying a cardboard tray of coffees. “How about we go sit down at the conference table?”
“Is one of those for me?” Bryn asked.
“Of course. Sweet black coffee for you, drinkable black coffees for the rest of us.” Bell put the tray on the conference table on one side of the room.
“I knew there was a reason I like you best,” Bryn said, grabbing his drink.
They sat around the table and Bell cleared his throat. “Okay, here’s what we’ve got. So far it has been a lot of legwork, but wearenarrowing things down. Firstly, Gomez, you want to cover the cashier line?”
“Sure. We managed to track down all but one of the people in the cashier’s line. We checked out the women as well as the men to cover all bases. They’ve all been cleared and by that I mean every one of them has a solid alibi for one or more of the dates the victims were killed.”
“And the one you couldn’t find? I’m guessing it was the guy in the hoodie,” Gunnar said.
“Yeah. He was the only one whose face didn’t appear on camera in the checkout line, in the store or in the lot. He went into the parking lot but if he got into a vehicle it was parked in the one camera blind spot and left via that only exit that isn’t covered by a camera.”
“He knew his territory,” Gunnar observed.
Bell took over. “He did. We examined hours and hours of footage. We traced every vehicle we could identify that was in the parking lot at the time you and Bryn were in the store. We found one guy with an outstanding warrant who has since been picked up, two with outstanding parking violations, and a woman without valid insurance, but nothing more useful.”
“So it was a waste of time then,” Bryn said. He took a long swig of coffee.
“You can’t look at it like that,” Gunnar said. “A lot of investigative work isn’t glamorous. This is just being thorough, ruling out all options.”
“Don’t worry, Bryn, I’m getting to the good stuff. So having narrowed down the suspect to hoodie man, we switched our focus to trying to make a link between the victims. It took a lot of digging because there was nothing obvious. They are different ages, sexes, races. They have different backgrounds and live in different parts of the city. They don’t even have similar facial characteristics. Different eye and hair colors. We’ve done the analysis both with and without Betty-Jo because it’s likely that her death is related to your visit to the store.”
“Are you going to give us some good news?” Bryn said. He hated that someone may have died because of them.
“I am. We found a link. Walmart, would you believe it? The killer not only buys his groceries there, it’s where he finds his victims.”
“But these people were from different parts of the city, weren’t they? Why would they all be shopping at that store?”
“That’s the thing, they weren’t. We found that Ellie Evans had called in there before on her way to and from her kids’ kindergarten. Hunter Carshaw had a part-time gig with a delivery firm and had been to that store frequently, and Phan Minh Tuan had a family member working in the warehouse who he’d been to meet on several occasions. So there’s the connection.”
“That’s good work,” Gunnar said.
“That’s not all. Gomez, tell them about the locations, and this is real weird.”
Gomez tapped his pen on the table. “We put some people on researching the body dumps and they discovered something interesting. Ellie Evans was left on Hanbury Street in Concord. In the early hours of 8 September 1888, Annie Chapman’s body was found on Hanbury Street in Whitechapel, England. She was one of Jack the Ripper’s victims.
“We already knew that Oak Grove Cemetery where Hunter Carshaw was found is where Lizzie Borden is buried. She’s best known for being tried and acquitted for the brutal axe murders of her father and her stepmother in 1892. It’s one of the most famous unsolved mysteries in American history.”
“Lizzie Borden took an axe, and gave her father forty whacks. When she saw what she had done, she gave her mother forty-one,” Bryn recited the rhyme, getting several worried looks.
“What? It’s a nursery rhyme.”
“Moving on. Phan Minh Tuan was found in Parker Street Alley in Boston and that’s associated with the murder of Carol Stewart in 1989. Carol was shot by her husband, who initially claimed that a black man had carjacked their car and committed the crime. That led to a massive manhunt and significant racial tensions inthe city. But Charles’ brother confessed that Charles had orchestrated the murder to collect life-insurance money.”
“So, the first three bodies were found in places that could be associated with historical murders,” Gunnar said. “This guy is one sick puppy.”
“And the fact that his methods are different each time he kills suggests to our profilers that he’s experimenting. He’s looking to other killers for inspiration. It’s likely that he has an obsession with serial killers, or murderers in general.” Gomez’s grin was fierce. “We’re getting closer.”
“This is great,” Gunnar said. “I’d be looking at the employees next.”
Bell nodded. “And that’s exactly what we’re doing, but that’s a large store and it has over four hundred employees. It’s taking time and of course those are people who are currently employed—we also have to take into account those who have left, retired… It’s a huge job, though, thanks to Bryn, we can focus on Caucasian males.”
“How about the kill site?” Bryn asked. “Did you get anywhere with the symbol I saw and sketched for you?”
“Unfortunately, an arrow in a circle is pretty common,” Bell said. “We’ve had to switch our efforts elsewhere for the moment.”
