I opened the drawer and found a positive pregnancy test.
So he killed in the dark. The lights came on only after the victim was dead to facilitate his morbid removal of the victim’s flesh.
I looked back at the body and saw what I had seen before, a slim, blonde haired female. Five and a half feet tall give or take and no more than a hundred-twenty pounds. Lying down, there were no outward signs of pregnancy and likely none while standing either. She was still in her first trimester, only far enough along to have taken the first test.
“I’ve got the info you wanted.”
I jumped at the sound of Red’s voice, so lost in my investigation that I didn’t hear him hammering his way up the stairs. Graceful he was not. I closed the drawer before I turned around.
“No registered long guns, not that he has to anyway. Self-registering gun registry at its best. Why pay to register firearms you don’t legally have to register?”
I gave Red a simple look, one that said quit waxing political and get to the point.
“A Sig Sauer P229, standard issue. Looks like he bought himself one for some off-duty training.”
“He’s got it on him,” I said. “Where is he now?”
Red looked surprised. “He was sitting on the back deck with his Sergeant, smoking a pack and drinking a beer last I saw him. We haven’t let him back in since we got here.”
“Let’s go,” I said, already on my way downstairs.
I exited out the patio doors behind the dining room table and walked out to the deck, bathed in the faint glow of dawn. A young man in civilian clothes sat beside an older man in a St. Thomas police uniform, three chevrons on his shoulders.
“Constable Franchini?” I addressed him as an officer, providing him with something solid to grasp onto. He leaned forward and nodded. “My name is Lincoln Munroe, I’m a detective with Western Region.” He nodded again.
I watched him like prey watches a predator. He sat in a patio chair with a curved mesh back, quite comfortable by appearance, yet he leaned forward away from the back of the chair. It wasn’t a comfortable posture, sitting in that manner took more effort than leaning back or all the way forward. He sat with his arms against his sides, elbows beyond the vertical line of his back, barely moving his left arm as he lifted his beer and smoked his cigarette, both held in the same hand, a technique I doubt I could master. The right arm, the arm facing me, stayed fixed.
That’s where the gun was.
I considered drawing my weapon on him but decided against it. He wasn’t looking to harm anyone other than himself or the man responsible for the murder of his wife.
“Derek,” he said after a slight pause, a swig and a haul. “No Constable, I’m done with the force.”
I didn’t ask, not wanting to contribute to his feelings of hopelessness. I didn’t have to ask.
“Sworn to protect and serve. Fuck that. Couldn’t protect her. None of you fucks could either. We’re a joke, garbage men. We wait for the mess to be made then we come along and clean it up.”
There was nothing I could say to that. Policing is largely reactive, and the proactive work we do—drug busts, prostitution stings, and the tips we act on—rarely relate to murderers.
“Derek, I need you to give me the gun.”
He jerked his head toward me and his right arm moved further back, trying to cover what I hadn’t needed to see.
“It’ll be easier if you give it to us, Derek. You won’t use it on yourself. Maybe you wanted to, but your beliefs won’t allow it.” The Bible was his, I knew it now. “We have a team of detectives on this guy. You won’t find him before we do.”
His eyes turned to his feet, tears forming. “What do I have to live for? She’s dead, she’s fucking dead and she was...”
He cut himself off, unable to say the word he had barely had time to absorb.
“I know.” I reached out and put my hand on his shoulder. “You won’t kill yourself, I know that Derek. And if you kill him, you’ll spend the next twenty-five years in jail. Not a good place for a cop to be. We’ll catch him, I swear to God we’ll catch him. Now please, give me the gun.”
I slid my hand from his shoulder and placed it in front of him, breaking his line of sight. He reached his right hand back and removed the pistol from his waistband, placing it on my open hand with the same gentle care used when passing a sharp knife. His Sergeant sat there, mouth agape.
“Please don’t tell anyone,” Derek said, his head still hung low. “I don’t want them knowing I’m weak.”
“You’re not,” I said, then dropped the magazine from the pistol and racked the slide back, ejecting the chambered round. “You’re human. There’s not a man out there who wouldn’t think of taking his own life after finding what you found, and quite a few who wouldn’t have been able to stop themselves.”
The tear were flowing faster now, dripping onto the wood beneath him and beading on the freshly sealed surface.
“Take some time,” I said. “Get some sleep. I’ll need you at the station this afternoon. Here’s my number,” I said as I slipped him a card.
I handed his Sergeant the gun and magazine then pointed to the round on the ground in front of me. I lowered my voice, hoping Derek wouldn’t hear me. “Make sure this gets secured and keep an eye on him, alternative is taking him to the hospital under the MHA.”
A nod was all I needed. The Mental Health Act allowed police to apprehend a person and transport them to the nearest psychiatric facility if they were deemed to be a danger to themselves or others. Derek’s grief and response to it were natural, he needed to be with people who cared about him not stuffed in a small room awaiting a psychiatrist. As long as someone stayed with him, I wasn’t worried.
A familiar voice from behind me let me know Kara was here. I briefed her on the details and the inevitable question came, the one I had been asking myself.
“Why the guilt?”
“I don’t know.” I looked around as if hoping a clue would present itself. “Maybe he or his wife couldn’t have kids, maybe he lost a baby, maybe-”
“Maybe he just likes kids.”
She had a point. None of the murders had happened in homes with children. The first victim had kids but they had long ago moved out.
“Pro-lifer?”
She cast a glare of pure stupidity in my direction. “A pro-life murderer?”
“You’d be surprised how many people who are pro-life are also for the death penalty.”
Kara appeared lost in a tailspin of faulty logic. “We’ll figure it out once we catch him, I guess.”
All I could do was nod and hope it happened soon.
—4—
Kara and I spent two hours scouring the crime scene while getting in the way of the Forensics team, who in turn got in our way. I didn’t expect to find anything. We never had and I knew little had changed. What we were looking for was evidence of the one thing that had changed, the lipstick message. The killer had taken the lipstick, presumably the victim’s, with him when he left.
The thought crossed our minds that the killer was a female, purse carried, lipstick inside. But nothing pointed to this. All of the profiling that had been done pointed to a male. Female serial killers were a rarity and those that existed weren’t keen on targeting women. But regardless of our beliefs until we knew for certain that the killer was male we couldn’t rule out that we were chasing a woman. Or perhaps a couple? The physical force required to subdue the women was more in keeping with a male, as was the brutality of the killings. But what if the male had an accomplice?
Questions that we couldn’t answer filled our minds and conversations both at the scene and in our office following our return to the detachment, fresh beverages and lunch in hand.
“It has to be a man, everything points to a male.”
Kara was certain, and while I strongly agreed with her, I held onto my doubts.
“Prove to me that Sasquatch doesn’t exist.”
“I can’t.
I just know it doesn’t.”
“Why?”
“We would have discovered it by now.”
I smiled. The argument of skeptics. Not that I believed that cryptids—the Sasquatch, the yeti, the chupacabra—roamed the earth. I just kept asking myself, how can we prove that something doesn’t exist? I didn’t believe in a higher power but believed in the possibility that one existed if only because it had not been proven not to.
“We have no evidence. How can we rule out a female killer with no evidence to the contrary?”
“I just . . . have a feeling.”
“Good,” I replied through a mouthful of tea. I swallowed harder than I should have and started coughing. Red faced and eyes filled with tears I composed myself. “Hunches are important, you’d be surprised where a hunch can take you. Just don’t let it blind you from other possibilities.”
Kara nodded, unable to speak due to her laughing at my misfortune as I began coughing again.
With only a slice of pizza left in the box and no takers amongst us, I closed it up and moved it to the very corner of my desk. The single piece of pizza was the only thing that held it in balance.
I tore the top page of my calendar and revealed the page below it: June 8, 2011—remuneration; payment or reward. I doubted I would find a way to use that one today.
“Twelve forty-two,” Kara said aloud, a habit of hers I was still getting used to. “Derek will be in at fourteen hundred for his interview.”
I nodded, thinking of the pain he must be in and wondering if his healing process had even begun. How could it? The love of his young life lay on an autopsy table, and the home they shared was under police guard and taped off with a yellow line.
With my years in homicide I knew enough to remark at the stupidity of my prior thought. The family of a murder victim would not be able to begin their healing process, until the killer had been brought to justice—be it rotting in a pine box or in a jail cell.
Another detective had been tasked with speaking to the victim’s parents and younger sister, informing them of the death and trying to gather any information they could. Dupuis had been born and raised in London, where she met Franchini at a college party. They hit it off, began dating, he became a police officer, she an accountant. They decided to move south of the city, closer to Franchini’s work and away from the high taxes imposed upon Londoners. It was a move that led to her death. Her family could offer very little: she had no enemies, no jealous ex-boyfriends, no one who would want to do her harm. They couldn’t begin to understand it, they didn’t want to.
“I want you to do the interview,” I said.
“Are you sure? I’m more for interrogations, I don’t know if I’ll be able to handle a grieving widower.”
“Trust me, Kara, you’ll do fine. I wouldn’t give it to you if I thought you’d screw it up.”
“Thanks.” There was the smile that could brighten our dank little corner of the world. It had become a rarity although I could not say that I smiled more often, the weight of this case was bearing down on us both. Perhaps it was time for two titans to shrug.
* * *
I had sent Kara off with a pat and the back and some words of encouragement then sat staring at the new set of pictures for almost an hour. I walked down to the interview room and listened to Kara and Derek talking. Both were crying, going through the box of Kleenex left on the table like someone was going to take it away. Maybe I’d been an ass for sending Kara in there, even though I knew she could handle it and that it would make her a better investigator. She was strong. No one could have survived that interview. I picked up another box of tissues, knocked on the door then entered and apologized for my intrusion. I put the box on the table then leaned into Kara.
“I can take over,” I said in a whisper.
“I’m fine,” she told me and gave a near imperceptible wave of dismissal. Since I wasn’t needed, off to the cafeteria for another green tea and some lunch.
“Lincoln,” I heard George say, “empty seat.” He pointed at the seat to his left, ignoring the fact that of the six chairs at the table only his was occupied.
“In a minute.” I walked to the line to wait for my food. A few minutes later with an egg salad sandwich and a fresh tea in hand I sat at the table across from George.
He asked the dreaded question. “How’s it going?”
“Another killing, you probably heard.”
“Yeah, cop’s wife, eh?”
I nodded. “Kara’s interviewing him right now. I got one of the many detectives we have lying around to scribe it.”
“Watch the video later or read the Cliff’s notes?”
“Both, probably. I just can’t wrap my head around this guy.”
George nodded at me to go on. Our usual banter.
“The first victim, Jennifer Louise McEachern, neé Patterson. Born July seventeenth, sixty-three, Brandon, Manitoba. Moved to London in eighty-one, went to UWO and Althouse to become a teacher. Taught high school until for twenty years, then took a job as vice-principal at East Elgin High School in Aylmer.”
“South of the city like the rest of them.”
I grunted agreement. “She and her husband, Brent, moved to Port Stanley. He works at Ford Talbotville. Was going to retire early when the plant closed its doors this summer but I figure he won’t go back. Kids are out of the house now, empty nesters.”
“So he found her?”
“Came home after a night shift putting Crown Vics together. Saw her car and figured she was staying home sick until he found her in bed with half her neck missing.”
“Fuck.”
My thoughts exactly.
“Pronounced at the scene at 7:51 a.m. You should hear his nine-one-one tape, poor guy can’t get a word out.”
“What’d she look like? Typical blonde?”
“Not at all. White, homely—big nose, thin lips, narrow eyes, round face—short and heavy. Greying brown hair in a bob. Forty-seven but looked older, you know the sun worshiping type, wrinkles and spots.”
“Not your usual serial killer victim then. Nothing sexual?”
“Nope, told you that before. Nude when he found her but never slept nude. The clothes she was wearing when he left for the night, yoga pants and an old t-shirt, were never found.”
“What about the second one?”
“Daphne Maria Villanueva, born in Bogota, Colombia, December twelveth, eighty-five. Colombian minister father and a Canadian missionary mother. They moved back here a year after she was born. They wanted to get away from the violence, give her a safe place to grow up.”
“I bet they’re second-guessing that move now.”
Stupid comment but the one almost everyone would make. It was the truth and it would plague them for the rest of their lives.
“She went to Toronto for university, came back and took a job at Victoria Hospital as an ER nurse. Got an apartment in Tilsonburg a few blocks from her parents. Moved her Japanese trauma resident boyfriend, Daisuke Takahashi, in a few months later.”
“What did mommy and daddy say?”
“Threatened to disown her. No ring and no vows make pious parents unhappy. I should know.”
George laughed. “It was in-laws with you, eh?
“Which makes it worse.” In my case, it had even led to pressure from the future wife as well. I had barely escaped having holy water dripped on my forehead.
“Takahashi got home at 8:15 a.m. and found her dead. His nine-one-one call is chilling. Perfect medical jargon in crisp, precise English, I don’t even understand half of what he said. A bilateral incision, excision of flesh, signs of strangulation. He knew the cut was postmortem, he saw the petechiae in the eyes, conjuctivae I think he said, knew she’d been strangled. Even said it was cause of death. Then he broke down and his accent appeared, he started panicking and questioning who would do something like that.”
“He held together as long as he could, I guess. Maybe hoped he could keep reality at a distance if he
treated her like another patient.
“The rest of the call is in Japanese. I had it translated. He tells her how much he loves her and then starts praying. He was still kneeling beside her body when the first officer got there.”
“What about her?”
I knew what he meant. “Young, tall, slim and beautiful. Long dark hair, Hispanic features, deep brown eyes and perfect teeth.” Her light brown skin had shone under the florescent lights in the bedroom, giving an ethereal quality to her final portraits.
Kara came up behind George, her eyes rimmed in red and audible sniffles coming from her nose. I excused myself from George, told him to call me if he thought of anything, and went back to the office with Kara. Kara filled me in on the emotionally devastating interview.
It had gone as expected, with little information gained. Franchini was working when, at eleven at night, he received a phone call from Dupuis, a phone call that for a brief few hours changed his life forever.
“I’m pregnant,” was all she had said when he answered the phone. There was a moment for that to sink in followed by a scream of joy that startled the hell out of the elderly lady Franchini had been dealing with, a poor old widow who was certain she heard someone trying to break in through her balcony—on the eighth floor. Franchini apologized to her and carried on his conversation with the young mother-to-be. They spoke only for a few minutes before Franchini had to excuse himself to the prying questions of his complainant, desperate for some good news to brighten her lonely life.
Franchini finished the call, convinced the old lady she would be safe and to call nine-one-one again if she had any concerns, and tried to return to his duties. It was impossible to focus on policing with thoughts of painting a nursery, buying baby clothes and announcing the good news to all who would listen.
A coffee and conversation with his sergeant, cruisers pulled up beside each other in a desolate parking lot, had been enough to get Franchini sent home, accumulated overtime being used to make up for the few hours he would escape.
He rushed home, excited to wake Dupuis up and talk through the night about what they would name the baby, how they would decorate the room, would they find out the gender, and all the other questions first time parents face.