Chapter Sixteen
The next day, Campbell sat inside his Chevy Tahoe in the police department lot.
He was looking at his laptop, requesting a video chat with FBI Special Agent Rudi Villanueva, based in the Bureau’s resident agency in Boise.
She happened to be a criminal profiler who specialized in serial killers, whom he had worked with in joint task force investigations when he was with the Boise Police Department.
When Rudi accepted the call, her heart-shaped face appeared on the screen. In her late thirties, she was green-eyed and had blond hair in a whisper pixie. “Hey, Sawyer,” she said cheerfully.
Campbell grinned. “Good morning, Rudi.”
“How’s life treating you in Reston Hills?”
Great on the romance front, he thought, but that wasn’t the purpose of his call. So he responded frankly, “Not as well as I’d like these days…”
“Oh?” Her eyes widened. “What’s up?”
Campbell told her about the two fentanyl-mixed-with-carfentanil fatalities connected to a cult, including the victims both found in the nude, with no indication of being sexually assaulted.
Though it appeared as if the deaths were unrelated to the two decades old murder of Lynda Boxleitner, it seemed worth throwing it into the mix, given the notable similarities.
“I’m wondering if the overdoses, coming so close to one another at the same park, could be something more than the supplying of fentanyl and its analog as a drug-induced homicide,” Campbell put out.
“Such as the deliberate actions of a serial killer operating inside or outside of the Braison Family cult—possibly for years…?”
Rudi contemplated the info he’d shared with her for a minute or two, digesting it as her profiler side kicked into gear, before responding coolly, “Aside from the realities of the fentanyl epidemic and its devastating impact on communities across the country, these scenarios you’ve laid out are certainly thought-provoking.
” She drew a breath. “So, without having more time to delve into the deaths and their characteristics, with respect to fatal ODs, there does seem to be some symmetry between the two recent deaths and the death twenty years ago—which isn’t to say they are directly related or orchestrated by the same person.
That being said, the cult angle is interesting. ”
“Okay,” Campbell said after hanging on her every word. “How much so?”
“Well, by its very nature, a cult is typically associated with a religious group of sorts that indoctrinates its followers to buying in to whatever philosophy they’re selling—usually going against the grain of mainstream society and, at times, drifting into questionable or aberrant behavior.
” Rudi sighed. “Anyway, based on what you’ve told me, the way I see it, there are likely two strong possibilities here relative to serial murder…
The first is that the two recent drug-related deaths are ritualistic killings by the cult in a ceremonial method of maintaining control over their followers—which, if true, would still qualify as serial homicides. ”
She ran a hand through her hair and continued, “The second, and probably most likely possibility, is that someone today—either within the Braison Family or not— was influenced by the Founder’s Day homicide from twenty years ago.
So there is a copycat killer deliberately mimicking it or pretending it’s the same killer to perhaps throw you off from the real agenda, while substituting the thallium sulfate for the more accessible fentanyl to carry out the killings. ”
Campbell peered at the screen and stated, if hearing her words correctly, “So, the unsub—if there is one—is probably reenacting the murder of cult member Lynda Boxleitner as a smokescreen to perpetrate the modern-day cult-related killings of Mia O’Dell and Jasmine Roxburgh with another motive in mind? ”
“That’s where I would go with this and what you need to figure out,” Rudi suggested. “Of course, there’s always the possibility—slim as it might be—that a cold case killer has lay in wait for two decades, till the opportunity came to resume Braison Family members.”
“Hmm…” Campbell weighed that angle. His current belief was that Stuart Reston had likely been the one to use thallium sulfate to kill his lover, Lynda Boxleitner.
Thus, there was little reason to think that someone else—perhaps who had been incarcerated for another crime or otherwise prevented from acting out—had chosen to target followers of Kenneth Braison.
Campbell preferred to believe that a killer was motivated to kill based on present circumstances and not past ones.
“We’ll see where this goes,” he said. “Appreciate your thoughts.”
Rudi smiled. “Always happy to help whenever I can.” She paused. “Good luck with your investigation.”
“Thanks.” Campbell ended the video chat. He certainly wasn’t counting on luck to solve this, but he was happy to accept it nevertheless. He closed the lid to the laptop and went inside the building.
* * *
“STUART RESTON?” GLORIA’S mouth stayed open in shock, as she stood in the conference room, which had a curved big-screen monitor, a rectangular wooden meeting table and leather chairs with wheels.
“Yeah, looks like he could have killed Lynda Boxleitner,” Campbell reiterated, standing beside her, after giving the chief and Georgina, along with other detectives sitting around the table—including one from the Cold Case Unit—the rundown on what he and his father had gotten out of Reston’s former gardener, Sidney Sedwick.
“If Sedwick is to be believed—and his argument was pretty persuasive, I must admit—he got his hands on some thallium sulfate at the request of Reston, who used it to poison Boxleitner, his lover—presumably to keep their tryst from being exposed, as she may have threatened to do.”
Gloria sighed. “Reston wasn’t even on our radar as a suspect, which I’m sure Mason told you,” she said, her voice rising an octave.
“He did,” Campbell acknowledged, hoping his dad wouldn’t be blamed for missing the boat here.
“Guess Reston’s prominent position in town and even apparently having an alibi of being with his wife, Eloise Reston, at the time Lynda Boxleitner was killed was more than enough to keep him from being looked at strongly as a suspect.
And Sedwick had an alibi as well that held up.
” Campbell suddenly felt the need to defend his father’s original investigation.
“Whereas Wendell Braison—whom Lynda was also linked to romantically and as a member of the Braison Family cult—was a more likely person of interest in her death, given the manner in which she died and other circumstantial evidence that pointed in Braison’s direction. ”
Gloria nodded and said thoughtfully, “Sedwick’s accusations, serious as they are, against a deceased Stuart Reston—in which Sedwick admits to being complicit in obtaining the poison used to kill Boxleitner—may not be enough to reopen the investigation formally.
But it does give us good reason to take the onus off Wendell Braison, with the long-held belief that he had gotten away with murder. ”
“I agree,” Campbell said, even if he wasn’t quite ready to say the same for Kenneth Braison, who was still a suspect in the current investigation.
Ulrich González, the slim thirtysomething, brown-eyed cold case detective, whose black hair was in a military-style undercut, looked at him and then the chief before saying, “I’d be happy to do some more digging into this if you like.”
Campbell took the liberty of replying unenthusiastically, “Knock yourself out.” He knew that it would ultimately be Gloria’s call and doubted she would want to prioritize this ahead of other cold cases that had more to work with at this point in time.
She didn’t disappoint him in dissuading Ulrich from this.
Georgina leaned forward at the table and asked for further clarification, “With the Lynda Boxleitner murder moving in a different direction, where does that leave us in connecting it to the OD deaths of Jasmine Roxburgh and Mia O’Dell?”
“Glad you asked,” Campbell told her with a slight grin.
“I think the Boxleitner death inspired a copycat to use a currently available poison to kill O’Dell and Roxburgh in a manner that links all three deaths to the Braison Family.
” He sighed. “The degree of that linkage and whether or not it amounts to a serial killer at large in Reston Hills remains to be seen.”
* * *
THAT AFTERNOON, CAMPBELL AND GEORGINA, along with armed detectives from the Reston Hills Police Department’s Narcotics Unit, a SWAT team, K-9 unit’s dual-purpose drug-detection canines, and US Drug Enforcement Administration special agents, converged on a ranch house on Quakely Road.
Based on evidence that strongly suggested that the fentanyl powder mixed with the potent synthetic opioid fentanyl analog, carfentanil had come from a known purported local drug dealer named Luther Valdez, a search warrant was issued for his Reston Hills residence.
Valdez, fifty-six, had served a dozen years in federal prison for various drug-trafficking offenses.
Now Campbell wondered if he was up to his old tricks, supplying the deadly drugs that killed Mia and Jasmine.
Just as important was, if true, whether or not Valdez had sold the fentanyl directly to the victims. Or to someone else, who had chosen to commit serial murder.
Campbell noted that there were two vehicles parked on the property—a black Mitsubishi Outlander SUV that was registered to Valdez, and a red Honda Pilot Sport SUV. The assumption was that the occupants of the house were armed, so they would act accordingly in executing the warrant.
Wearing a ballistic vest beneath his blazer, Campbell made contact with Georgina, also with a vest on, then the rest of the team, before giving the go-ahead for the raid to proceed.