CHAPTER FOURTEEN
Kate ate her sandwich voraciously as she listened to Darnell. She was hungry, but her feral chewing and swallowing was prompted by frustration, not hunger.
Darnell was at the head of the table in the small conference room at the Philadelphia Field Office, busy explaining that their lead with the Smith family was evaporating.
“None of them had a daughter named Nora?” Marcus asked, dealing with his frustration by pleading with reality to be different from what it was.
“None of them even had a daughter,” Darnell replied.
Marcus sighed heavily. “Well… shit. There goes that connection.”
“What about Cox?” Darnell asked. “Have you found any connection to Elijah Cox?”
“The killer’s our connection,” Kate said, swallowing the last bite of her sandwich. “Or the killer’s going to prove that this has nothing to do with Cox.”
Marcus looked at her in surprise, and she shrugged.
“I mean, at this point, I’m willing to accept it could be a copycat.
The ciphers are simple and lacking theological depth.
The crime scenes are highly organized, but there’s strong evidence this is a personal mission rather than a religious one.
Cox might be at large, or he might be dead, but either way, he’s definitely burying his head. ”
Her voice was rising as she spoke, so she stopped herself by sipping her coffee. Damn, she was frustrated.
Darnell shook his head. “There isn’t strong evidence for a personal motive. Both possible personal motives have led to dead ends. Unless we’re considering the possibility of two killers.”
“Don’t put that out into the universe,” Marcus protested. “This is bad enough as it is.”
“I’m only saying that I don’t believe we should discount the Lawgiver or his teachings as a possible driving force,” Darnell said. “We’ve been investigating this as an ordinary killing spree so far. I suggest we start investigating it as a Commandment Killing.”
Kate frowned at the insinuation, but she was interested in Darnell’s approach. Sometimes a fresh pair of eyes helped, and Kate’s were clouded by frustration right now. “What are you thinking?”
“I believe that Cox takes great care in selecting his victims.”
“Yeah, so do we,” Marcus replied, a touch defensively.
Darnell was unperturbed. “I believe it’s possible, even likely, that the people Cox selects are connected to him in some way.
Perhaps past parishioners or confessees of his.
Perhaps people who knew him before he turned to murder or people who have information that could be used to catch or stop him.
Have you explored this angle with the victims? ”
Kate leaned back in her chair and crossed her arms. “No,” she admitted, “but if that’s the case, then why has no one come forward?”
“I’m not saying that has to be the connection,” Darnell replied, “only that there is some connection. Since we don’t have a traditional lead, perhaps we should explore that.”
Marcus sighed heavily. “Well, we have nothing better to do, I suppose. Let’s—”
The door opened. The same junior agent who alerted them to Donna Frick’s body leaned inside. Marcus took one look at his facial expression and swore.
“One more?” Darnell asked curtly.
The agent nodded. “Yes, sir. An apartment in Trenton.”
Darnell pushed air through his nose, not a scoff so much as a very muted snarl. “Understood. Thank you.”
The agent nodded. “I’ll text you the address, sir.”
He backed out, leaving the three agents to stare at the remnants of their food and coffees.
“Well,” Marcus offered, “I guess we’ll have a fresh scene to start with to look for evidence of Cox.”
Kate couldn’t find the energy to see that as a silver lining.
***
Like Gerald Mace, this victim lived in a working-class neighborhood in one of the more dangerous parts of the city, in this case, Trenton, New Jersey.
This neighborhood, in the Southside of the New Jersey state capital, was in even worse shape than Kensington, Philly.
Its rowhouses were dilapidated, most of them vacant and left to rot.
The three-story brick building in which their victim lived and now died was in slightly better shape, but that only served to emphasize what a low bar that was.
The fading, overcast twilight lent a forbidding air to the property, and the buzz emanating from the halogen light fixtures that illuminated the interior only added to the horror movie imagery.
Then, of course, there was the body. Stabbed through the heart, propped up, this time on the old corduroy easy chair since there was no kitchen table in the compact three-room apartment, mouth sewn shut, blood pooling in front of the door, trailing to the chair, and soaking through Ray’s pants and into the chair.
Yeah, horror was the right way to describe it.
“Ray Castillo,” Gomez, the police sergeant assigned to liaise with the agents informed them. “Age fifty-eight, former loader for Northeast Transportation. That’s the freight rail a few blocks away.”
“Right,” Kate said, sweeping her flashlight over the scene.
“Neighbor found him on her way in from work,” Gomez continued. “Saw the door open and the blood. Went to her own unit, locked the door and called us. Didn’t want to go inside in case the killer was still there.”
“Good for her,” Marcus said. “That means the scene won’t be contaminated.” The sergeant looked pensively at his feet, and Marcus said, “Well, not more contaminated.”
Gomez cleared his throat and added, “I should also point out that Ray was an informant of ours for many years. He kept his nose clean, but he had his ear to the ground. We busted a lot of drug dealers thanks to his help.”
“Ever catch any murderers?” Kate asked, shining her flashlight on the cipher carved into his coffee table.
Gomez frowned. “No, not that I recall. He claimed he provided information in a murder case for Philadelphia some years ago, but we never verified that.”
The three FBI agents shared a look. Darnell nodded at Kate and Marcus. “I’ll follow up and find out if that’s the Avery case.”
He stepped outside. Marcus continued to question Gomez while Kate studied the cipher.
“Did anyone hear anything suspicious?”
“If they did, they’re not talking.” Gomez lowered his voice and explained, “This is the kind of neighborhood where you ain’t seen nothin’, ain’t heard nothin’, don’t know nothin’.”
“What about security footage?”
Gomez chuckled. “Building this old? I’m surprised it still has hot water.” Marcus frowned, and Gomez cleared his throat. “No, no security footage.”
Marcus sighed and turned to Kate. “I’m going to search for anything that might indicate a connection to Cox.”
Kate nodded and pulled out her notepad to scratch notes about the cipher.
Same coded Akkadian script, same furious, energetic handwriting, same concise message.
It opened with the commandment, then presumably contained a message for Kate—she still hadn’t decoded that portion—then continued with the judgment against the victim.
This man produced false evidence and presented it as the truth.
He sealed an innocent man’s fate and called it justice.
This night, true justice has been served.
The gloating was new. The previous ciphers were straightforward condemnations and warnings that the same fate awaited others. Did the change in tone indicate an end to the killer’s mission?
If so, that meant Kate had failed to stop them in time. On the other hand, it meant no one else would die. Kate decided she’d be happy with that result.
She glanced back at Ray Castillo’s body. No, happy wasn’t the right word.
She looked back at the cipher and worked on the middle portion, the part that should contain the message to her. The code was different this time. Kate tried several different substitution methods, but none of them gave her the answer.
That was another change. Whatever was written here was meant to be the primary message Cox had for her.
If it was Cox. She really couldn’t decide if they were looking at a Lawgiver-inspired killing or if they were looking at a copycat using his “preaching” as an excuse.
If the latter, then Kate feared an epidemic of murder spawned by one vicious man’s hate.
“I’ve got nothing,” Marcus said. “The guy’s apartment is bare. He doesn’t even have a receipt anywhere in evidence. We’ll take his cell phone and laptop to cybercrimes and see if they can pull anything up, but for the moment, nothing’s jumping out.”
Kate nodded. “Same with me.” She showed Marcus the cipher. “Whatever’s in that middle portion is going to be key.”
“That’s the part that’s the message to you, right?” he asked.
“If there is a message.”
Marcus looked at her. “You really don’t think it’s Cox, do you?”
She took a deep breath. “I think… that I don’t want to get my hopes up.”
Before Marcus could respond, Darnell walked back into the apartment. “Fellas, I’ve confirmed it with the court. Ray Castillo led the police to evidence used in the prosecution of Daniel Avery.”
Kate nodded. Cox or not, this confirmed the killer’s motive. She would focus on stopping this killer. If Cox was involved, he’d let her know.
After all, she was his favorite.