CHAPTER EIGHT
The historic neighborhood of Brandywine Village was up in arms about the death of one of their own.
Kate stiffened when she saw the news vans parked at the intersection nearest the victim’s house.
Darnell glanced at Kate, noticed her expression, and drove past their turn.
“I’ll pull up behind the house and have the uniforms create a cordon for us.
Keep the collars of your jacket up and look down on the way in, and they shouldn’t recognize you. ”
“Might think about buying a hat, too,” Marcus suggested.
Kate rolled her eyes. “That’s not funny, Marcus.”
Marcus opened his mouth, decided better of it, and clammed up again.
Kate wasn’t exactly a celebrity, but with Cox on the run and all of the publicity surrounding him, the media was more interested in her than Kate preferred. Speculation would already abound that Cox was active again. She didn’t want to add more fuel to that fire.
And she didn’t want people scrutinizing her. She was barely holding herself together as is. She didn’t want some celebrity psychiatrist with a plastic smile analyzing her obsessive tendencies on national television.
So, as she stepped to the rear door of the quaint, two-story Victorian, she stood in between the tall, imposing Darnell and the shorter but more imposing Marcus, and looked straight at her toes.
Whenever a microphone or camera looked in danger of coming too close, one of them would snap at the offender, and the instrument would withdraw.
They made it inside without further fuss and encountered two Wilmington police officers flanking a pale and clearly uncomfortable detective. The detective sighed with audible relief when the FBI agents arrived. He eschewed greetings and got directly to business.
He gestured at the body sitting at the kitchen table. “Donna Frick, sixty-six. Schoolteacher, retired just last year. Killed, we believe, with a single stab wound to the chest that ruptured the aortic valve. Hence the copious amount of blood pooled under her chair. The, uh, sutures came after.”
Kate studied Donna Frick’s face. The woman was petite in life, svelte in build.
Kate pulled her phone out to take pictures of the sutures. The material was the same dull waxy thread used on Gerald Mace. “Darnell, do we have the coroner’s report from Gerald Mace yet?”
“Not yet,” Darnell replied. “We expect initial findings tomorrow.”
“We need it faster than that,” Kate replied. “This material looks unique. It might be a lead on the killer.”
“It’s catgut,” Marcus said. “Or at least it looks like it.”
Kate looked at him. “Catgut?”
“Yes. It’s a type of thread made from fibers taken from the intestinal lining of animals, usually sheep or goats, not cats. It’s commonly sold like this, with a coating of chromium salts to keep it sterile.”
Kate frowned. “How commonly?”
“It’s not anyone’s first choice anymore, but you can still find it anywhere.”
“So, it won’t be an unusual purchase.”
“We can look into it, but probably not enough to help us.”
She sighed. “All right. Well, we have that detail, at least. The killer stabs them through the heart or close by, then sews their mouth shut with catgut. I’ll look into catgut and see if there’s any religious significance. Maybe that will give us something. Do we have any security footage?”
“Killer took the ring camera and the recorder with him,” the detective said. “The residents of Brandywine Village voted against installing street cameras. Said it would ‘sully the picturesque nature of the old neighborhood.’”
“Of course,” Marcus said drily.
“Where’s the cipher?” Darnell asked. “Usually there’s a cipher with commandment killings, right?”
“We didn’t notice anything,” the detective said. “You mean the chicken scratch and stuff that they usually leave, right?”
“Right,” Kate said.
She put her phone away and pulled on a pair of latex gloves. Then she got on her hands and knees and looked under the table.
Right away, she found the cipher. “Here it is,” she said. “Right here underneath the table just above Donna’s lap.”
The detective flushed. “Oh. Yeah. We should have thought of that.”
Kate took pictures of the cipher. “Maybe, but the killer likely placed it here to ensure that only I could find it.”
Marcus stiffened. Darnell frowned at her. The detective gave her a blank stare, and Kate realized her mistake. It wasn’t exactly classified info that Cox often left messages specifically for Kate at crime scenes, but it wasn’t common knowledge either.
“Wait, only you?” the detective said. “Why only you?”
“Let’s focus on Donna,” Marcus said in a tone that made it clear that subject was dropped. “Who discovered the body?”
“Her sister, Carol. She showed up this morning at five-fifteen to visit.”
“Five-fifteen?” Kate asked. “Why so early?”
The detective shook his head. “We weren’t able to get that far. She went hysterical a few minutes after we got here. We had an ambulance pick her up and take her to New Castle Regional.”
“We want to talk to her,” Marcus said.
The detective started to lift his hands, then caught himself and lowered them. “Look, as far as I’m concerned, this is your crime scene now. The uniforms will hang out to call CSI when you guys are done, but I’m leaving the rest up to you.”
Kate looked frankly at him. He reddened but stood his ground. “We’ll just get in the way,” he insisted.
“You can make a phone call to the hospital to let the staff know that Miss Frick should expect a visit from us,” Darnell told him.
“Mrs. Ames,” the detective corrected. “She’s married.”
Darnell’s eyes narrowed. The detective decided that quibbling over details wasn’t helping and stepped away to make the phone call.
Kate turned her attention back to the cipher. At first glance, she could tell it used the same substitution ciphers the first one did. She took a few more pictures, then got to her feet.
“No footprints,” Marcus said. “We’ll dust, but we won’t find fingerprints either.”
“You’re sure?”
Marcus pointed at a small gray smudge on the tabletop. “That’s talcum powder from a latex glove. The killer made sure not to leave evidence.”
“There’s always evidence,” Darnell opined. “We just need to look hard enough and find out where it is.”
“Have you verified yet that Donna Frick was the witness in the Avery case?” Kate asked.
“I’ll call the court,” Darnell said.
He stepped aside to do that, leaving Kate and Marcus. Marcus checked for signs of forced entry while Kate examined the cipher.
The first line repeated the commandment: Thou Shalt Not Bear False Witness.
After that, the message continued with another reference to Kate. Those who offer poison and call it healing deserve the suffering they receive.
Kate frowned. Her father hadn’t poisoned anyone, though.
His stem cell research was still considered paramount to many medical treatments even now fourteen years after his death.
His results had been replicated by teams of doctors from renowned research universities and extolled in medical journals as one of the greatest breakthroughs in recent medicine.
What the hell was Cox talking about?
She wasn’t going to get an answer to that right now, and she didn’t want to start orbiting Cox again, so she moved on.
As before, once the commandment and the jab at Kate were out of the way, the code turned to the victim.
This woman spoke poison into willing ears and called it truth.
Her venom has now poisoned her. All those who bear false witness will suffer the same fate.
Marcus returned. “No forced entry. I’m guessing the killer was known to the victim.”
“We don’t have enough to say that,” Kate told him. “It’s possible that Gerald Mace and Donna Frick were both the type to answer their doors.”
Marcus frowned at Donna’s body. “Jeez. I don’t even open my door for the pizza guy anymore.”
“They were both older,” Kate said. “Maybe they came from a time when people still opened doors for their neighbors.”
“Maybe,” Marcus said, not entirely convinced. “I’m still leaning to the killer knowing them.” He thrust his chin at Kate’s phone. “Got anything from the cipher?”
Kate showed him. He skimmed it, then frowned. “Okay, same format as last time. The Bible verse, the jab at you, and then the reason they killed this woman. No other Bible verses, no reference to the Lawgiver, nothing theological beyond the commandment.”
He handed her the phone and crossed his arms. Kate watched his jaw work as he wrestled with a question he was clearly reluctant to ask. “Kate, I hate to go back to it, but are we sure this isn’t a copycat?”
Kate frowned at Donna Frick’s body. The style of her execution matched the Commandment Killings in spirit, even if they had their own flavor.
The cipher followed the Lawgiver’s format, but the lack of exposition and the limited reference to the Bible was a sharp departure from other Commandment Killing ciphers save for the objects Cox had used during the eighth commandment spree.
Reluctantly, she admitted, “No. I’m not sure.”
Marcus’s jaw continued to work. “The references to you are the part sticking in my head. There’s nothing here that necessarily references you, but the false healing part leads back to daughter of the false healer.
Neither of our victims were doctors, so…
” He sighed. “I guess what I’m saying is that I’m not sure it is a copycat. ”
Darnell returned. His grim face told them he brought bad news. “Just got off the phone with the courthouse. Donna Frick was not a witness in the Daniel Avery case. They still won’t tell me who was, but they confirmed it wasn’t Donna Frick.”
Marcus and Kate shared a look. “Did she know the Avery family at all?” Kate asked.
“Or the family of the victim in the murder trial?” Marcus added.
“I’ll check.”
He didn’t seem too hopeful.
“Damn it,” Marcus said, shaking his head. “It’s so much easier when the victims are actually connected to each other.”
He put his hands on top of his head and began pacing again. Darnell watched him for a moment, his scowl deepening the lines in his forehead, then turned to Kate. “The cipher isn’t telling you anything?”
Kate hesitated a moment, but the cat was already out of the bag, and they needed to work with Darnell. “I believe the killer is leaving messages for me in each cipher.”
Darnell didn’t seem surprised. “Why you?”
Kate took a deep breath and released it slowly. “That’s a long story.”
“What’s the short version?”
Kate met his eyes with a frown. His gaze didn’t budge. “I have two murders in my area of responsibility that you’re telling me both call you out specifically. I am not suggesting that you are in any way culpable in these deaths, but I do have to understand what the pattern is.”
“Fair enough,” Kate replied. “The first cipher references the daughter of the false healer. My father was a renowned medical doctor and stem cell researcher. The second cipher talked about people who offer poison and call it healing.”
Darnell raised an eyebrow. “I see. Any reason why they would hate your father?”
“No,” Kate replied. “I’ve done exhaustive research into my father’s past and the circumstances surrounding his death. I can’t find any evidence that he ever provided false healing. In fact, I find overwhelming evidence to the opposite.”
“Any reason why they’d hate you?”
Kate hesitated again. She really didn’t want to go into her history with Cox right now. It was bad enough that she was the obsession of a crazed serial killer. She didn’t want that gaining any more traction in the Bureau. Too many people wanted her fired anyway.
The Wilmington detective spared her the need to answer Darnell’s question when he returned to inform them, “I just got a call from the hospital. Donna’s sister is ready to talk.”
Marcus, who had paced his way into the living room, called back. “Good. Let’s see what she has to say.”
Kate nodded at the cop. “You can bring CSI in.”
The detective nodded. “Sure thing.”
The three FBI agents left the home and headed for the hospital where the sister of their latest victim could hopefully shed light on her sister’s past.
Kate could only hope that she’d find the light switch for her father’s past in time to understand what Cox’s latest master plan for her could be.