Chapter Fourteen #2
“Pretending he wasn’t affected, then disappearing to think it through?”
“Exactly. He’s ‘changing his sweater’ because of an imaginary stain. Then we’re heading to the FBI.”
“We can’t stop working because of this,” Warden said, “but keep a very close eye on him, okay?”
“Always.” Gunnar shut the door and waited for Bryn at the bottom of the stairs. He heard the thunder of Bryn’s footsteps as he came down them.
“How is it you make enough noise for a herd of elephants?” Gunnar teased.
“Loud stairs. Not my fault,” Bryn replied with a shrug.
“Let’s go.”
Once they were on their way, Gunnar let the silence linger for a bit before speaking. “You can talk to me, you know. How are you feeling about this?”
“I’m not sure how I should feel,” Bryn admitted, fiddling with a loose thread on his jeans. “Attracting the attention of a prolific serial killer wasn’t exactly on my to-do list today.”
“Fair point. When you read him in the interview room, you were only asked about his strongest memory. You didn’t look at his future intent. Or did you?”
“Maybe.”
“You’re making this hard, Bryn. What did you see?”
“Nothing good.”
Gunnar’s patience was wearing thin. He ran a hand through his hair. “Bryn…”
“All right! I saw a bloody knife, bare skin covered in cuts and…a pair of black leather gloves discarded on the floor. My gloves.”
“His intent was to kill you?”
“Not sure about kill. Torture, definitely. You saw the way he looked at me, Gunnar. Pure hatred.”
“And you kept that to yourself all this time? It’s been weeks.”
“He was locked away. If I’d read him again that future would have changed so what was the point of sharing?”
“Oh, I don’t know…so you didn’t have to carry the burden of that knowledge alone?” Gunnar hated that Bryn hadn’t felt able to share.
“I’m used to it. I don’t want to fill other people’s heads with the horrors I see. I don’t want that shit in your head. It’s my safe place and it shouldn’t be polluted.”
Gunnar gripped the wheel harder. “Is that how you see yourself? Polluted?”
“Don’t you?”
“Not even close. Fuck, Bryn, I don’t know how you deal with all the shit you’ve been put through but to me you’re special. Precious. And I don’t mean because of what you can do.”
“Then why don’t you do something about it? We’ve been dancing around each other since the day we met. You must know I have feelings for you. Very unprofessional feelings. The things I want you to do to me…” Bryn’s voice trailed off. “Fuck, I didn’t mean to let that out.”
“You touch me all the time. You have to know I have feelings for you too.”
“So…”
“So what?”
“So why haven’t you pinned me down and fucked me to with an inch of my life? I know you want to…amongst other things.”
“Because we’re partners. Because I’m older than you. Because we’ve been getting to know each other and it has only been a few months. Besides, Warden would detach my balls and make himself a desk ornament with them if I went near you.”
“There’s nothing in GCR’s rules that says partners can’t date.
You are six years older than me, that’s hardly a massive age gap, and it’s been several months, for fuck’s sake.
Warden I can’t do anything about, but he does want to keep me happy-ish, even if he doesn’t show it.
Removing important parts of your anatomy wouldn’t help with that. ”
“We’re here, so this conversation will have to wait. Don’t get distracted.” And that goes for you too, Ericson. Ogling that pretty ass could get us both killed.
When they got into the FBI building, it was Agent Gomez, Bell’s partner, who provided their escort to the incident room.
“Haven’t seen you for a while, Gomez,” Gunnar commented.
“I’ve been off work. Got some nasty complications from a bout of food poisoning and it took a while to get over it. Something called hemolytic uremic syndrome, which can lead to kidney failure. Never going near prawns again.”
Way too much information. Bryn ignored the stares as he walked into the room. One or two people gave friendly waves and those he nodded to, somewhat surprised. “Where’s Bell?”
“With the boss. He’ll be back soon.”
“Any news on Templeton?” Gunnar asked.
“Nothing. He’s a ghost. We think he must have had help because several cameras that should have caught him leaving the hospital were out of action that day.
There was also a fatal fender bender nearby, which meant potential witnesses were all looking the other way.
Literally. If he got into a vehicle, nobody saw it. ”
“The GCR sent over the letter that was left on my windshield at the Wolf Run?”
“Yeah. It’s gone into evidence but forensic analysis didn’t come up with anything useful.”
“Yeah, I could have told you that without rummaging around in anyone’s head,” Bryn said. He wandered over to the board displaying the photographs of the Walmart killer’s victims. “What about the case we can do something about? How’s that going?”
Gunnar came and stood at his shoulder. “Let’s go sit down and give them time to tell us, okay?”
“Okay, I’m just…Impatient to catch this guy.”
“And I’m sure they are too, but the investigation has to be thorough and you know yourself that there were a huge number of angles to close down.”
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 we are narrowing 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 in the 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.”
“Maybe we could get Emmett to take a look at that, Gunnar,” Bryn suggested. “He might be able to magic up one of his algorithms if we gave him a few parameters to refine it with.”
“Good idea. You have any problem with that, Bell?”
“Not at all. Any help you can give us will be welcome.”
“Then I guess we’ll get back to HQ.” Gunnar stood and extended his hand to Bell. “You hear anything about Templeton…”
“You guys will be first on my call list, believe me.”
Bryn didn’t offer a handshake. Even with his gloves on, he wasn’t sure it would be welcome, even though Bell had shaken his hand before. He took a last look at the board, making sure the four faces of the Walmart killer’s victims were firmly burned on his conscience.
He and Gunnar left the building and headed out to the parking lot. Gunnar kept his body between Bryn and the building.
“This is the FBI, I think their parking lot should be safe,” Bryn said.
“I don’t want you getting any extra holes in you. I’m being cautious.”
“And there’s a wonderful image.”
Once they were in the car, Bryn said, “We were only calling him the Walmart killer because of that touch in the checkout line, but turns out we had the name right all along.”
“Yeah, it seems so.”
“They’ve gotten further than I expected them to, if I’m honest,” Bryn said. He stared at passing cars out of the side window as they drove along. “Dr. Templeton has got clean away, though, hasn’t he?”
“I wish there was something I could do or say to make that better,” Gunnar said. “He’ll be tracked down eventually.”
“Let’s hope so. I don’t want to be constantly looking over my shoulder wondering if he’s going to jump out from behind a bush or something.”
Gunnar chuckled. “Somehow, I don’t think that’s likely. I do think he’ll want to mess with your head. He’ll turn this into some kind of game. He’s arrogant and he’ll think that he’s far more intelligent than we are.”
“He might be right.”
“Individually, maybe, but as a team, I don’t think so.”
They traveled in silence for a while. Bryn wanted to bring up their earlier conversation but didn’t know quite how.
Somehow it didn’t feel right, in the midst of everything that was going on, to focus on whatever there was between him and Gunnar.
Maybe later, when we’re alone. There’s so much work to do but I won’t let him hide behind those lame excuses he gave me.
I may have to deal with the uncertainty of being stalked by a serial killer, but I don’t have to put up with Gunnar avoiding what I know he wants. What we both want.