CHAPTER SIXTEEN
Two days later, Alison and Special Agent Hartley were called to Washington, D.C., where another body had been found. Another death, another copy-cat staging, and another batch of photographs.
"She still won't give me a name," Hartley complained. "Two and a half days in custody, and she refuses to give me the name of her contact in the force or from the FBI or wherever else she’s getting her information from. She knows she’s going to jail, and it’s not a short sentence. Does she really think that we can just give in and tell her she can go free when we’re about to view our fifth dead body in this case? "
"I don't know what she’s thinking," Alison said. "She obviously wants a trial, and while she’s been pretty stoic about what she wants to do next, I have it on good authority that her lawyer is pressuring her to give you the name. I know she wants to protect her source so she can get more information in the future for her podcast, but she’s not going to have that if she’s convicted of obstruction of justice. "
"I thought that Angela Wu’s contact might come forward once they heard what’s going on," Hartley said. "Seems like they’re just fine with someone going to jail because of the information they supplied them."
"It’s not only that," Alison said. "They get in trouble also for supplying the information."
"And that’s on them," Hartley said. She took the off-ramp as they reached the city.
"I know that information is passed to the press on a regular basis, but most of it is innocuous. This is different. We’re dealing with a serial killer, and someone is passing information that has the possibility to derail the case.
And we don't know what the contact told them.
We only have what was said on the podcast before it was cut off, and Wu won't divulge anything. "
"It’s awful," Alison admitted. "Do you let someone go to jail for what is essentially breaking the law, or do you confess and lose your job and go to jail yourself? At least we were able to get in touch with the two members of her podcast team to confirm Wu’s alibi, and if this murder is connected, then Wu has the perfect alibi. She was in custody when it happened."
"Sterling wasn’t," Hartley said as she took another corner. "We still don't know where he is, but it’s been two days without being able to get in contact with him. That’s definitely suspicious, right?"
"Yeah, it is," Alison admitted. "And he does fit the profile. He must be bitter with how he was treated by the FBI and other local agencies. He was brought on to cases and let go of them quickly in some cases. I’ve talked to some other people, and they’ve confirmed what Dr. Carver told me.
With the simpler cases, he did fine, but he struggled with the deeper cases.
There must be a lot of pent-up frustration.
And he was forced into early retirement. "
"So, we clear Wu, but hope she comes to her senses after some more time in custody when she realizes that she’s going to jail.
There’s no backing down from this from our side.
Either she goes to jail to protect someone who’s breaking the law, or she helps us convict the person who’s more in the wrong. "
"I don't want to get into the psychology of loyalty and how she might not believe there’s a chance of her going to jail because that possibility is so far removed from her regular life. I really hope she comes to her senses because if she goes to trial, she will be convicted."
"Okay, we forget about Wu for the present and let someone else deal with her for now," Hartley said. "In the meantime, we treat Sterling as our main suspect. His cabin has been located, but there’s no evidence that he or anyone else has been there in some time. He also hasn’t returned home. The search of his house uncovered nothing except the museum pamphlet. We’re in contact with the museum to discover if he used a credit card there or to spot him on any of the cameras in the areas where the more valuable exhibits were on display. "
Alison nodded. "It makes sense that he would go there before targeting Maria Chen to scope out the building beforehand.
If we get him on camera, then it confirms it to me.
It can't be a random chance that he would travel across state lines to go to a museum where someone was then killed, only to disappear soon after. "
"This must be the place," Hartley commented.
Alison looked ahead to see the flashing lights of police vehicles out front of the derelict warehouse on the edge of the city.
When Hartley pulled up behind the farthest vehicle from the warehouse, a uniformed officer approached, holding his hand up for them not to go any further, even though the special agent had turned off the vehicle by then.
Hartley took out her badge and pressed it to her window so the officer could see it. Then she got out and asked to speak to Detective Nolan.
"Yeah, follow me," the officer said. He led them to the front of the building. "Just wait here while I get him. You might want to prepare yourself before you go in there. It’s not pretty, and…you know."
"Oh, no!" Hartley gasped. "Is there like blood and everything in there?"
The officer glared at her before entering the building alone.
Hartley turned to Alison with a horrified look on her face. "Did I just say that?" she grimaced. "I really tried to bite my tongue."
"I really hope there’s no blood," Alison said. "I might faint."
Hartley laughed, but quickly stopped when the officer emerged with a suited man.
"Detective Nolan," he said, holding out his hand and shaking Hartley’s hand first before shaking Alison’s.
"Thank you both for coming. We’re all sure this is the same killer you’ve been dealing with, but we wanted to be sure.
Nothing’s been touched yet, and we’d appreciate it if you could be quick in there so we can get the body down. "
"Down?" Alison asked.
"Yeah," the detective said. "Follow me."
He led them into the darkness, but as soon as they were inside, the small room brightened as their eyes adjusted. A door to their left was closed. A hallway led straight ahead of them.
"The Butcher," Detective Nolan announced as he led them into the hallway and down it. "He was active five years ago. He strung up his victims by hooks and then cut them and let them bleed out. No connection butchery of any kind, no connection to the victims, nothing to tell us why he did it."
"Nothing to tell you why he did it?" Alison asked. "So, you caught him?"
"We did," Nolan confirmed. "Three victims over a period of a few months. We managed to catch him after he’d abducted the fourth, but before he had the chance to harm them.
He came willingly when he was caught, but didn't say a word to us about the murders after that.
He would talk for hours about everything else, but not a word about why he did it.
We knew it was him, but we never knew why. "
They were led out of the hallway and into the large warehouse area.
The sight took Alison by surprise, but not in the way the officer outside might have envisioned. She was used to grizzly crime scenes, but every so often she encountered something different.
A dead body was hung from a large hook attached to a pulley system.
The deceased wore a harness that had been attached to the hook, making it easy to hoist the body up.
The head of the deceased hung forward, with the chin touching the chest. The arms hung limply to the sides of the torso, and the entire body swung ever so slightly back and forth.
The feet were bare. The feet were covered in blood. When Alison noticed that, her eyes immediately moved down to see the shoes and socks placed neatly to the side of the large pool of blood beneath the body. Then she looked back at the body.
"The dorsalis pedis artery was cut on both feet," Nolan said. "At least, that’s what they tell me. Apparently, it’s a major artery on the top of the foot. If the killer is recreating the Butcher murders, then the victim was left to bleed out."
"Do we know who the victim is?" Hartley asked.
"No," the detective replied. "We’ll lower the body once you’ve both taken a look, and then we can check for ID and get started on examining the body."
Alison stepped forward first. She got as close to the body as possible, where she could still see the face without craning her neck at an extreme angle. She looked up at them, likely another innocent victim chosen by their killer.
The one thing that differed from the three previous crime scenes was the lack of photos attached to or arranged around the body, but when she looked down at the large pool of blood and spotted what she thought was missing.
The photos weren’t missing, but hidden. Alison couldn’t see any of the people in the photographs, but she could make out the square shapes in the blood.
They would need to wait for the blood to be cleaned up before they knew who was blamed.
"It’s horrible," Nolan said, now by her side.
"The photographs were placed before he was cut. He was probably still alive when the killer placed the photograph on the floor, possibly conscious even. There’s no one around here for miles, so the victim could have screamed, and no one would have heard him. "
Alison took one last look at the body, noting that both feet had been cut.
She had no idea how long it would have taken for the man to pass out from his wounds.
She took a step back and watched Hartley as she circled her body.
There wasn’t a lot either of them could do other than confirm it was the same killer.
That was, unless the photographs didn’t turn out to be of people from the original case.
Alison doubted that. It was almost certain that the same killer was involved.
She looked over at Hartley as she came back around to the front of the body, avoiding stepping in any blood.
"Yeah, you can bring it down," Hartley said.
She and Alison stepped away from the body to give the forensic team room to work.
The hardest part would be lowering the body, not into the pool of blood below.
They were dealing with two halves of a crime scene that were best not to mix: the body and the bloody photographs.
Detective Nolan joined them at a safe distance from the body and blood.
"What was the mistake?" Alison asked. "In the original case, what mistakes were made?"
"I thought you might ask that based on what’s come before this," Nolan said. "I went through the original case files myself this morning, and there are possibly some mistakes that I’ve missed or went over my head, but there was a pretty big mistake at the time."
The forensic team positioned a large stretcher below the body and above the pool of drying blood so that they could lower the body onto it and then carry it into a different area of the room to take an initial look at it before it was sent for an autopsy.
"What was the mistake?" Alison asked.
"They made a wrongful arrest early in the case," Nolan said.
"It wasn’t long after the first murder. They were pointed in the direction of a knife maker who made all sorts of blades, and when they spoke to him, he made a run for it.
That was enough to bring him in. They interviewed him, and he never once denied it.
They didn't have any physical evidence, but they thought they had enough to charge him with the murder. It wasn’t until the second body showed up that they realized their mistake.
By that time, they had someone in custody for three months, and he was about to undergo a trial. A lot of people were fired over it."
"Yeah," Alison said with a sigh. "That’s exactly the sort of thing that our current killer is looking for. If they hadn’t arrested the wrong guy and continued to look for the actual killer, they could have saved the second victim, or the third one, at least."
"I’ll need you to send over those case files," Hartley told him. "I also want you to put the word out for any sightings of Kenneth Sterling. I’ll share the details we have on him. He’s been missing for at least two days, and he’s assumed to be our killer.
The guy who was initially arrested, the one who made the knives, is he still in business? "
"I don't know." Nolan shrugged.
"Check if he is," Hartley instructed. "Then, if he is, find out who bought knives from him recently. The killer knows the case inside out, and it would be a special kind of irony for them to buy the knife used to kill our victim here from the man who was wrongfully arrested for the initial murder."
"Yeah, I’ll get on that," Nolan said. "Whatever we can share with each other to catch this guy. I don't know what it’s like back in Philly, but there’s something spreading through the streets. People are worried, and it’s not only here.
A lot of cities are worrying, and that worry will turn to panic in time. "
"That’s what the killer wants," Alison said. "They want to spread their message, and the best way to do that is through fear."
"What’s the endgame?" Hartley asked. "Do they really expect anything to change? We can't overhaul the system. They must know that’s not how it works."
"It doesn’t matter anymore what they might or might not know," Alison said. "They’ve made their choices, and this either stops when they believe they’ve gotten their message across or when we catch them. We have to hope it’s the latter."
"Hey, we have something here," one of the forensic techs called.
Alison, Hartley, and Nolan immediately ceased the conversation and walked toward the body being examined on the stretcher.
One of the forensic techs was lifting something pinched between their fingers, but Alison couldn’t see what it was.
The tech deposited it into an evidence bag and sealed it.
They held the bag up for everyone to see.
It was only when Alison got closer that she could make it out. In the bag was a long, black hair.
"It was wrapped around his pinky finger," the tech said. "It looks like he grabbed it and held onto it."
"This could be just what we need," Hartley said. "Finally, a stroke of luck. Let’s hope there's a match in the system. If there is, then we have our killer."
Alison held the bag up to take a closer look.
"Or…" Hartley said curiously. She stepped closer to Alison, taking the bag and holding it by Alison’s head. "Perhaps the hair wasn’t an accident."
"There are a lot of people with black hair," Alison pointed out.
She looked at the hair in the bag again. It did look a lot like one of hers, the same color and length. Was the killer sending them a message?