Chapter Nine
CHAPTER NINE
Eight quarts of meats and sides covered the speckled Formica counter in the suite’s kitchen. I borrowed two chairs from my room and rolled them over, my eyes fixed on the food.
“Yo,” Shooter said, arriving first. She’d changed from the white pullover she wore like a uniform to a white long-sleeve shirt.
I moved the boxes that held proteins into one group, the sides into another.
“You okay?” she smirked, watching me arrange the boxes into a perfectly straight line.
“Of course.”
The others arrived a minute later, with Cassie getting there last, double-fisting hotel coffee in cardboard cups. Everyone grabbed food, and I pulled up my laptop as a signal it was time to get going. Shooter hopped up on the counter in the suite’s kitchen, her iPad on her lap, while Frank leaned against the far wall, no food in front of him. I’d rarely seen the man eat. Richie sat on the arm of the small couch, a plate balanced on his knee.
When we met back in Jacksonville, we always started with victimology, but today I had divided up assignments by person.
“Okay,” I said. “Completed reports by eight a.m. But for now, let’s go around the room and see what cross-connections come up.”
Everyone stared at me, and I felt what Frank must feel every day. All eyes on him. The expectation of leadership.
I turned to the rookie. “Richie, what’s the update on the organs?”
He put down his food. “Right, so, from the head down, I’ve got bags that contain brain, pharynx, larynx, trachea, heart, spleen, and liver.”
Deliberately, I placed my tri-tip aside.
“Lungs, gallbladder, kidneys, pancreas. In the miscellaneous category, some joints.” He consulted his notes. “Large intestine, small intestine, bladder, and the penis. I’ve photographed all these.”
“With your work phone?” Shooter asked.
“Uh-huh.”
“So you got dick pics on your work phone? This is the new FBI, rook. You can’t have dick pics anymore. I got rid of all mine.” She nodded convincingly. “Big collection.”
Cassie smirked, but said nothing. Richie took off his suit jacket and rolled back his dress shirt to the elbows.
“And the cuts?” I asked.
“The cuts appear to be made with a blade that’s flat, not serrated,” Richie said. “They’re smooth and clean. I can perform some tests to replicate them, but I’m thinking a surgical instrument or an Exacto blade.”
“The labels?” Frank asked.
The rookie held up his laptop to show us a picture. His arms were muscular under his dress shirt.
“I believe they’re from a Brother P-touch label maker,” he said. “I matched the built-in font and the size of the strip. Judging by the width of the bags, I’d assume the vacuum sealer was commercial. Probably a twelve-incher.”
Shooter snorted.
“And the rest of the body?” I asked. “Did you make a reverse list—of what’s missing?”
Richie shrugged. “A lot more is gone than is here, Agent Camden. Muscle groups, skin, joints, bones, cartilage, skull, tissue, eyes, ears, hands, feet. A couple dozen other organs.”
I waited.
“I’ll make a formal list,” he said.
“Good. Who’s next? Shooter?”
Shooter put her food aside. Her plate was piled high with barbecued pork. Not a chunk of vegetables or tofu in sight.
“All right,” she said. “I spent the day at Otero Prison in beautiful Chaparral, New Mexico. Home of the Fighting Lobos, in case anyone’s wondering.” She looked down at her iPad. “Barry Fisher had six visitors in the last year. But I got three to run by you, Gardner.”
I took a single bite of pulled pork and again put my plate aside, shifting over to my laptop to take notes.
In large federal and state prisons, the process of visiting an inmate is highly regulated. You cannot simply show up and see the incarcerated without being on their list. There are limits on the number of visitors at one time, as well as the total visits each day, month, and year.
“First, I got a victim’s daughter,” Shooter said.
“The daughter of someone murdered back in the eighties?” Richie asked.
“Exactly,” Shooter said, pointing at him with her plastic fork full of pork.
“Which victim?” Frank asked.
“Janice Salcedo. The daughter who visits is Aileen Salcedo. She was nine when her mom was killed.”
Janice Salcedo was victim number two. In 1985, she was separated, and her daughter, Aileen, was living with her dad.
“Apparently Aileen makes a trip once a year from her home in Hemet, California, to Otero Prison. Each year, she and Fisher spend an hour in the prison visiting room. She asks him to admit what he’s done wrong and tell her where the rest of her mother’s body is buried.”
“And what does Fisher do?” I asked.
“He sits in silence. She prays for him, then leaves.”
A couple decades of road trips from the San Jacinto Valley in California were not nothing.
“Aileen’s last visit was the day before Fisher got out,” Shooter added.
“And did the old dog tell her anything?” Frank asked.
“The warden put one of his best guards on detail this year,” Shooter said. “He made a couple laps around the table where they were sitting. Eavesdropped. Fisher’s mouth never moved.”
But what was this woman’s connection to Ross Tignon? After all, wasn’t our working theory that the same killer took down both men?
“Why is she an interesting visitor?” I asked. “I’m sure there are other family members who—”
“Because this year Aileen moved to New Mexico permanently,” Shooter said. “She rented a house a half mile from here. Keep in mind, that’s not her moving near Otero Prison. Otero’s a half hour away. She moved to Rawlings. Two miles from Fisher’s brother’s house. Even though supposedly no one knew that his brother was putting him up.”
“Interview her tomorrow,” I said, making a note on my laptop. “Find out if there’s a connection to Tignon. If not, move on. Now, you said three visitors. Who’s the second?”
Shooter pulled her shirtsleeves back to the elbows. The material was made of the same waffle mesh used in thermal underwear. Below it, her tattoo of the Olympic rings was visible on a freckled forearm.
“Second’s a writer,” she said, looking down at her notes. “Jonas Goldstein.”
“He’s writing a book about Fisher?”
“I don’t think so. I went through his social feed.” Shooter held out her iPad, which displayed two images. One was a selfie of a man, taken alongside a life-size statue of Superman. The other displayed the same man, standing in a lobby with angled contemporary pillars, on which movie images were projected. “It’s HBO,” she said. “Their new building in LA.”
“So this writer’s trying to get a deal with HBO?” I asked.
“After his prison visit, Goldstein tweeted that he locked down some exclusive story, hidden away for four decades,” Shooter said. “A tell-all documentary. We gotta assume it’s about Barry Fisher.”
“Pin down how big this project is,” I said. “If what this writer wants is HBO’s best ratings ever… and he’s trying to make it happen by giving Fisher a dramatic ending…”
“Understood,” Shooter said.
“And who’s visitor number three?”
“Number three might be something or nothing. A priest visited Fisher two weeks ago Friday.”
The rules at most institutions didn’t count visits by clergy against a prisoner’s number. Still, the religious had to register.
“You get a name?” I asked.
Shooter blew a gust of air that moved her reddish-blond bangs out of her eyes. “Maurice Merlin.”
She held up her iPad, which showed a photo of a white man with a scruffy beard and unkempt sideburns. The photo was taken at Otero Prison as part of their check-in procedures.
“Odd thing is, Maurice Merlin wasn’t on Fisher’s visitation list.”
This meant that Merlin had showed up without notice. At that point, it was Fisher’s choice to see him or not.
“And Fisher met with him?”
“Uh-huh.” She nodded.
Normally all three of Shooter’s leads would interest me, but we had two murders to contend with. Which meant we needed a connection to Ross Tignon, too. Otherwise, how did someone know to pluck Tignon from hiding?
“Tomorrow I’ll run down all these clowns,” Shooter said. “By the end of the day, I figure I can eliminate one or two of them from involvement in both murders.” She took her plastic fork and stabbed one of the chunks of tofu in the untouched box. Winked at me and swallowed it.
“Okay.” I looked around. “Cassie, why don’t you go next? Did you follow up with Fisher’s brother?”
“Kenny Smith,” she said, standing up from the love seat. Cassie had changed into black tights and a pink V-neck tee that bore a long chemical equation: C 8 H 11 NO 2 + C 10 H 12 N 2 O + C 43 H 66 N 12 O 12 S 2 . It was a science-geek shirt; the chemicals listed were commonly known as dopamine, serotonin, and oxytocin.
Put together, the three were the formula for love.
“I talked to Kenny by phone,” she said, pacing as she talked. Cassie was petite, but muscular. “I also set up a time in person to chat. Tomorrow morning, breakfast. You, me, and him, Gardner.”
“But you found something?”
“Hells to the yeah,” Cassie said. “I mean, at first he gave up nothing. We shot the shit, and I’m being patient, you know. Chitchatting. Small talk. Warming him up.”
Frank smiled, still leaning against the wall. Cassie didn’t chitchat. She asked questions. Relentlessly. At two hundred miles an hour.
“About a half hour in, Kenny suddenly remembers he showed the house to someone.”
Frank’s body came off the wall, and his smile disappeared. The boss had done the initial interview with Fisher’s brother and come up with nothing.
“Apparently, little brother Kenny got a call,” Cassie said. “Sounded like one of those schemes where they’re just dialing for dollars, you know? Seeing if you’re in distress or your mortgage is about to default. The caller says he’ll pay top dollar for your house.”
“This is Kenny’s place here in Rawlings?” Frank confirmed.
“Yup,” Cassie said. “But the brother wasn’t in default. In fact, his loan was paid off years ago. But the guy said he was paying above market. Kenny thought he’d hear him out.”
“He took the meeting in person?” Frank said.
“Oh yeah.” Cassie smiled. “A white guy, he told me. Brown hair.”
“So the brother met this guy at the house where Fisher was murdered?” I asked.
“Not just that. The brother gave the guy a tour of the place. Kenny’s like a human Zillow, Gardner. A walking Redfin.” She imitated the brother, saying, “‘Two bedrooms, one bath, fourteen hundred square feet, pool-sized backyard.’ And get this, Kenny even mentioned that if the guy wanted to make an offer, he’d better do it quick. Now go ahead, Gardner. Ask me why.”
“Why?” I said.
“Because Kenny told him he was about to let his brother stay there after he got out of prison.”
“Oh for God’s sake,” Frank said. “He told a stranger that Barry Fisher was about to live there?”
Cassie grinned, pleased to have found a detail the boss had missed.
“Did he get this investor’s name?” I asked. “An email or phone number?”
“Only a name,” Cassie said. “Creighton Emwon. I looked it up, b-t-dubs. No such guy, at least locally. The boys in Albuquerque are checking further.”
“So someone came here to Rawlings on January second,” I said. “Toured the house.”
“Unless we’ve got tunnel vision, that’s gotta be our killer,” Shooter said.
“It may well be,” I said. “We just need the connection to Tignon’s murder in Ashland.”
Frank adjusted his posture. “It does address the question you and I were debating earlier, Gardner, about how a killer got to work so quickly in the house here in New Mexico. Without worrying about casing the place.”
“Sure.” I nodded. “He’d been given a tour a week earlier.”
Cassie picked up her barbecue, a sign that this was all she had to tell us. As she did, I noticed her meat was on a separate plate from her rice. A third plate held her veggies.
“All right,” I said. “Frank, how was the crawl space?”
“Dusty,” he said. “But I undid the drainpipes from the tub with a monkey wrench. Three guesses on what I found in ’em?”
“Blood evidence?” Richie said.
“Nope.”
“Fragments of bone?” Shooter guessed.
Frank shook his head again. “Gardner?”
“Fish meat,” I said.
It was a reference to my story about Nabokov. Everyone except Frank looked confused.
“Exactly,” Frank said. “Nothing in those pipes at all. Which I’m guessing our case lead here already figured.” He smiled curiously. “Maybe even lied to me about earlier?”
“I needed positive confirmation,” I said, using Frank’s words. “Confirmation without bias.”
“Well, I took out eleven feet of pipe, Gardner. That’s a lot of confirmation. There was even this curved trap.” He made the shape of a U with his hand. “The kind of junction where little pieces of bone would drop with gravity. Stay there for years as water flowed above them. No bone in there.”
“And the Luminol?” I asked. “Did you spray the bathroom with—”
“The bathroom was clean,” Frank said. “No blood smears. No blood at all.”
Just as I’d suspected, the tub hadn’t been the place where Barry Fisher’s body was chopped up.
Richie was squinting. “So nothing happened in the house?”
“Barry Fisher had a kill site in the eighties,” I said. “Far away from where he was abducting those women.”
“So whoever did this murder is copying that,” Shooter said.
“Yes,” I said. “Cutting Fisher into pieces somewhere else, then bringing him back to the house in bags and sticking him in that fridge.”
“And the bleach in the tub?” Cassie asked.
“A misdirect,” I said. “This guy is playing games with us.”
“If you’ve got a theory,” Shooter said from where she sat on the counter, “I’m not clear on why you’re holding it back from the team.”
“A fair criticism,” I replied. And the truth was, I did have a theory as to why the cuts were so clean on the organs here in New Mexico and so messy on Tignon in Texas.
“Ross Tignon made messy cuts back in 2013 when he attacked the three women in Florida,” I said. “But Fisher in the eighties was more precise.”
“So our killer isn’t just making some sick homage to old murders,” Shooter said. “He’s imitating them, down to the method and blade.”
“Which means he has information about past crimes that few people know,” Frank said. “Is anyone checking if this guy is law enforcement?”
“Cassie is.” I turned to her. “You’re liaising with Marly in HQ, right?”
“At this point, we’re besties,” she said.
I considered how our suspect was making his way around town. “I’ve been thinking about traffic cams,” I said. “Rawlings is a town of only sixty-two hundred, but they must have two dozen reliable cameras. Banks. Post offices. Then there’s neighborhood camera systems. Ring and Nest cams.”
“You’re thinking some camera captured a vehicle heading to Fisher’s house?” Cassie said.
“Not just one camera.” I held up my hand, moving a finger down, one at a time, as I spoke. “Monday morning when our killer arrived. Later when he left with the body intact. Then when he returned before noon on Tuesday with the organs in bags. And the last one when he left again after stocking the fridge.”
“So four trips?” Richie said.
“Precisely.”
“Richie and I can chase down those cameras,” Shooter volunteered.
“After that, talk to this Maurice Merlin,” I said. “Find out what connection the priest had to Fisher. What they talked about.”
“Done,” Shooter said.
“So we’re assuming it’s one killer?” Cassie asked.
“Male and under forty,” I said. “He’s driving, and he made the trek from Ashland, Texas, to here in Rawlings, New Mexico.” I stood up. “He could still be here, even. But my assumption is that he’s left already.”
“He’s prepping for another kill,” Frank said.
I nodded. “It’s too risky for him to fly around the country, and he’s using a lot of equipment. I imagine he’d want his own transportation. A van or an SUV. Something easy for hauling bodies.”
“Should we start looking into prospective targets?” Cassie asked.
“Meaning what?” Richie asked. “Other serials as possible victims?”
“I like that idea,” I said. “Places nearby. Phoenix. Los Angeles.”
Shooter made a noise with her nose, and we all looked over. “This is not me talking, guys.” She put up both palms. “But there might be some people who think that maybe we let this guy get a couple more notches on his belt. The people he’s clearing off this Earth… these are not good people.”
Gallows humor was common in law enforcement, and I didn’t fault Shooter for saying what everyone was probably thinking. Still, it had to be shut down.
“We don’t have the luxury of choosing which murders don’t count, Jo,” I said. “Plus, we need to know how he’s locating these victims. The all-mighty FBI didn’t know where Ross Tignon was. I ruled him dead seven years ago.”
“Like I said,” Shooter said. “Not me talking.”
But it was probably how the conversation had gone in the director’s office in D.C. before PAR was put in charge. If we failed, what great loss was there?
I shifted the discussion. Told the team I wanted to focus on Ross Tignon. Apply our collective brainpower to seeing connections.
Frank moved over to the couch and sat down. “Seven years ago, did the Tignons have kids?”
“No,” I said.
“Has anyone checked in with the wife?” Shooter asked. “The husband supposedly died in that fire in 2013.”
“You’re wondering if the wife knew what really happened?” Frank said.
Shooter shrugged. “If you loved your spouse and you weren’t really dead, you might find her and tell her, once the coast was clear.”
“Someone should take a run through her credit,” Cassie said. “Her social security.”
I looked to Frank. “Why don’t you take that on?”
We circled around like this for another ten minutes, until I’d filled a page with questions.
“What makes us so sure that Tignon went inactive?” Richie asked. “Shouldn’t we check unsolved cases in the Dallas area? Missing women? Anything that matches his old MO in Florida? In case he just moved locations.”
“Rook’s got a good idea,” Shooter said.
I nodded, wondering why I’d not thought of this myself. “We left Texas pretty quick to come here. Someone should go back.”
Everyone’s head was down over their computers and notepads.
“Richie,” I said. “You’ll contribute the least to solving the case here. Why don’t you go.”
Frank and Cassie both looked up, their eyes huge. And the voice in my head made a tsk sound. My phrasing had been wrong.
“Whatever you need, Agent Camden,” Richie said. “I’m here to help.”
“Go tomorrow once you’re finished with the organs,” I said. “Check in with the Dallas office when you arrive.”
I let everyone go then, knowing they still had to write up their reports and get them to me by morning.
Richie hung back. “I’ll help you clean up.”
I moved to the room next door and grabbed two trash cans, one from the bedroom and the other from the bath.
“Agent Camden,” Richie said after a minute, “I can do more than administrative tasks, you know.”
“I am aware of that.”
“So the Texas comment… me heading there?”
“You wanted to look into other crimes Tignon may have committed, correct? The ones that match his MO in Florida?”
“I think it’s worthwhile,” he said.
“Then it makes sense for you to be in Texas. You can liaise with local police.”
Richie nodded slowly, collecting the sides we hadn’t eaten. “So that’s why you said I should go?”
“Why else?” I asked.
Richie tossed the containers that held potato salad and baked beans into the trash and carried the can out to the hallway to get the smell out of the room. Piled the extra napkins and unused plastic silverware on the counter.
I watched him. I am not the kind to fill empty spaces, but earlier Richie had not satisfactorily answered the question of why he had chosen PAR.
“You were number one in your class,” I said.
“Yeah,” he replied.
“Statistically, nearly every top-five graduate either returns to their home state or selects New York, Miami, Chicago, or LA.”
“Not me,” he said. “I chose Jacksonville.”
“You have relatives in the area?”
“Nope.”
“You just… like northeast Florida?”
“Seventies and eighties in the spring and fall,” he said. “Yeah.”
I stared him down, never blinking. Richie had put his jacket back on. It was cut as well as Frank’s.
“I guess I was curious,” he said finally. “Puzzles. Stalled cases. The promise of solving something impossible.” He glanced around the room, his face anxious. “I should go. Gotta write up my report still.”
After he left, I closed the door to the adjoining room and put on CNN, mostly to get some imagery flowing in my periphery.
At some point, my eyes became heavy, my mind filled with images of bloody kitchens and bags filled with organs. And me, back in the field after four years in a cube.
And two before that in a windowless building in the El Paso office.
“Time is a strange mistress,” my old partner Saul used to say. He was philosophical that way. Always saying things that meant something and nothing at the same time.
There was a point in my life where everything I cared about was connected by at least one point to Saul Moreno. I met his daughter Anna when Saul and I stopped one day at the bank where she worked. And for the first time in my life, I had other things on my mind than solving cases.
Anna brought out a lightness in me that was strange and pleasing, even while it was uncomfortable. She was a brunette with olive skin and hair the color of a chestnut in some places and dark chocolate in others. We moved in together; a year later, we found out she was pregnant. When she asked if I could imagine life without her, I answered honestly, and logic dictated I put on my best suit and walk with her to city hall.
We named our daughter Camila, and things became wonderfully settled. Delightfully predictable, the way I liked. I fell into a rhythm of getting up early and taking care of our baby, then running three miles along the Venetian Causeway before going in to work.
I have never considered myself lucky, because I do not believe in luck. But with Anna, I felt like I was the most fortunate person in the world.
Then, one night, I was up late with Camila and saw something. A piece of Anna’s business paperwork I couldn’t help but analyze.
It began with a state seal.
In every version of Florida’s seal, there is steam coming off the boat. But in this one, there was no steam. To others, this might appear to be an inconsequential detail. To me, it was a reason to search through my wife’s business documents.
I stayed up that whole night while Anna slept, at first moving through a series of spreadsheets that did not tally properly. From there, I found a locked hard drive. I tried Camila’s birthdate, and it opened, revealing a bank account under Anna’s name with which I was not familiar. Then images of counterfeit heavy-metal certificates bearing the names of defrauded senior citizens.
In my mind, three options appeared. Then two. Then only one.
In the morning, I went to my boxing gym and hit the bag until the skin on my knuckles was gone. But it brought me no peace. So I walked home, called the RICO task force, and explained what Anna and her boss had done. They arrested the pair at the bank where they worked at 3 p.m. that afternoon.
Two hours later, her father Saul had a heart attack.
The family was in shock, more over the stress I had caused Saul than anything illegal Anna had done.
But who had they thought I was?
The pursuit of the truth had become my life’s singular goal. My comfort zone. And love? Love was a new emotion for me. That night it felt strange and illogical.
On the jet yesterday, I’d been contemplating that time period, from the Tignon case to when everything went sour with me and Anna and her family. The reemergence of Tignon had triggered something, had caused me to wonder: Could this new investigation be a chance to put my career back on track? My life?
Saul had been beloved in Miami. When the incident with Anna happened, he had recently retired. But now, seven years had passed. New personnel had joined the FBI. And no one at PAR knew me back then.
But one part of the equation had stayed the same.
Me.
Three years ago, at Thanksgiving, my uncle Gary had asked, “Would you do it again? Seeing what became of Anna? How you were forced to ask your mother-in-law to help raise your own daughter?”
Before I could answer, my mother interrupted. “Are you asking would Gardner still have the courage to do the right thing, Gary? To tell the truth and honor his commitment to the Bureau?”
Uncle Gary just smiled and asked me to pass the peas. Among Camdens, certain faults were understood, if not commended.
The truth, however, was more complex than my mother’s answer.
There is an expression I use frequently in written reports at PAR: “judging by results.” Meaning it is not relevant how the investigating officer thought at the time about a crime. Or even what he or she thought after. All we can do is judge the scenario by its results.
For what happened with Anna, the results were simple: my fifty-seven-year-old partner Saul had a heart attack. My daughter cried herself to sleep every night for two years after her mother went to prison. And I have not been in a relationship since Anna was arrested.
Judging by results, everyone lost.