The most famous cluster I knew of had been in South LA, from the early eighties through 2007. LAPD had tracked down five separate cases then, including the Grim Sleeper and the Southside Slayer. By the time all five of those files were closed, a total of fifty-five people had died, all within a fifty-square-mile area.
There had also been some recent coverage about the three killers operating simultaneously in Nassau and Suffolk Counties, on Long Island. The last I’d heard, two suspects were in custody, with one still at large, and the body count was up to thirty.
Now, Washington had the makings of its own cluster. I spent virtually all my time turning over these three cases in my head—thinking about methods, victim profiles, possible motives, and most of all, wondering where one of these guys might strike next.
Killer number one was the man I thought of as “Russell,” the supposed boyfriend of Elizabeth Reilly. He was the most unpredictable in a way, with four and a half years between his pregnant victims, and a probable kidnapping on his resume, too.
Number two was the one they’d dubbed the River Killer in the press. Three gay hustlers had been found dead so far, but my fear was that we just hadn’t found them all yet. Under normal conditions, it can take weeks for a submerged, decomposing body to build up enough gas to become buoyant and rise to the surface.
Killer number three was the least established, but he already had two different monikers. Some were calling him the Georgetown Ripper. Others were using the Barbie Killer, for the blond hair and perfect bodies on his two known victims. MPD had left those comparisons out of their official statements, but the media had picked up on it anyway.
That was the case that had me most on edge right now. Considering the apparent relationship between the River Killer and this guy, I couldn’t help feeling as though our Barbie Killer had some catching up to do. In the plainest possible terms, it felt to me like we were overdue for another dead blonde.
Three days later, it turned out I was half right.
This time, it was two dead blondes.
CHAPTER
54
THE BODIES WERE FOUND BY A HOUSEKEEPER WHEN SHE ARRIVED FOR WORK that Monday morning. Time of death was later determined to be somewhere around ten o’clock on Saturday night, which meant that these women were dead in their house for a full thirty-six hours. More bad news for the investigation. I headed over as soon as I got the call.
The place was a pink brick townhome on Cambridge Place, a well-to-do but tightly packed block of Georgetown. Still, there had been no reports of any screams, or disturbances of any kind.
“We’ve got no signs of forced entry,” Errico Valente told me at the front door. “The alarm system was disabled, too. Seems like he might have been admitted to the house.”
“Are there neighborhood cameras?”
“Yeah. It’s a private security firm,” he said. “We’re tracking down the logs right now.”
The bulk of DC’s municipal crime cameras are normally reserved for our most violent neighborhoods. The irony was that these two homicides had now put Second District, which is Georgetown, on par with anywhere else in the city, body for body.
From the home’s center hall, I followed Valente up to the apparent crime scene, a master suite on the second of three floors. The victims in this case were a mother and daughter, Cecily and Keira Whitley, ages forty-three and nineteen. Mrs. Whitley was divorced, but her ex-husband still lived in DC, where they’d raised two daughters. Keira’s twin sister was enrolled at UC Santa Barbara out in California.
Now the Whitley family had been cut in half.
Coming into the bedroom, I saw the mother first. She was laid out on the pale pink sheets of an unmade king-size bed. The covers had been pulled off and left in a heap on the floor.
Her daughter was on an overstuffed chaise longue in the corner, facing her mother. Marks in the carpet told me the chaise had been moved to that position recently.
Both victims were tall, attractive women, with the telltale signs of what had once been long blond hair. In fact, they looked quite a bit alike. Two more Barbies for the Barbie Killer. If there was any doubt on that front, the signature knife work clinched it. Both had incurred stab wounds to the left chest, abdomen, and right thigh, near the femoral artery. Dried blood formed a dark corona around each of their bodies on the mattress and chaise, respectively.
“Evil son of a bitch,” Valente said. “Just killing for killing’s sake.”
That seemed to be the case. There were no signs of sexual assault, or robbery. Mrs. Whitley’s blue leather purse sat clasped on a dresser by the window, and the heavy diamond studs in Keira’s ears had been left untouched.
Age didn’t seem to be a factor for this guy, either. The only real consistencies were the very clear physical type, the repetitive knife work, and of course, the chopped hair. It was virtually everywhere I looked—matted in with the blood on the furniture, but also lying in loose tufts, and endless random strands all over the room, and all over the victims themselves. It was as bizarre a scene as I’d been to in a long time.
But was one of those elements more important than the other? He was working something out, that was for sure. Maybe reliving a fantasy of some kind—over and over.
It was possible these women were surrogates for someone else, I thought. Someone whom our killer only wished he could get to. His dead mother, maybe. Or an ex of some kind. I didn’t really see a clear path to figuring that one out yet, but somewhere in my gut, the question felt like it was pointing me in the right direction.
Who was this guy—and who was he trying to kill, over and over again?
CHAPTER
55
BY THE TIME VALENTE AND I MADE A GOOD PASS THROUGH THE HOUSE, WE heard from the sergeant on the front door that a rep from Baseline Security had arrived. Errico radioed back to keep whoever it was outside, and we made our way out to the street to meet with him.
A black Range Rover was parked halfway between the Whitley home and the barriers at the end of the block. The man waiting for us there introduced himself as John Overbey, the owner of Baseline. His company worked for various neighborhood associations, providing video surveillance and away-from-home coverage where the city’s municipal cameras fell short.
It looked to me like business was good. Overbey’s green silk tie probably cost more than my entire suit.
“We’ve got one hundred percent coverage on this block,” he told us. “I started scanning the logs as soon as I heard the terrible news. And I’m pretty certain we’ve got your man.”
He kept eyeing the Whitleys’ town house while we talked. I’d want to get a look inside, too, if I were him, but Valente motioned for him to open his Toughbook right there on the hood of his car instead.
When the laptop screen flicked on, Overbey already had two side-by-side video images waiting. His time coding looked like a jumble to me, maybe some kind of in-house encryption, but he read it easily enough.
“That’s nine forty-six on Saturday night,” he said, pointing to the image on the left. “And the other is at ten fifteen. Both from the same unit, right over there.”
He turned and pointed up the block, to the corner of Cambridge and Thirtieth Street. In fact, I could see a small black box mounted under the second-floor window of the house on that corner.
“Let’s go chronologically,” Valente said.
Overbey brought the first image up to full screen and let the video play.
Unlike the city cameras, this one recorded a crisp digital color picture. The limitation was the fact that it had been taken at night. Cambridge Place was only sporadically lit by a handful of old-style street lamps along the brick sidewalk.
After a few seconds of empty footage, a man walked into the frame, heading up the block with his back to the camera.
“That’s him,” Overbey said.
There wasn’t much to see, except that he had a ball cap on, and a dark, knee-length coat. When he reached the Whitley home, he stepp
ed up onto the stoop and appeared to ring the bell.
It was chilling, knowing what was about to happen, and not being able to do anything about it.
The porch light came on. There seemed to be a brief exchange at the door, while the man pointed up the street several times. Finally, a blond woman stepped outside. It was too far away to tell if it was Mrs. Whitley or her daughter, but she put an arm around the man and helped him inside. As she did, he moved with a sudden, pronounced limp that hadn’t been there before.
“Probably told her he’d been mugged,” Overbey said, minimizing that recording and bringing up the other. “Now watch. This is twenty-nine minutes later.”
Again, we saw the same street scene as before, from the same camera. After a moment, the man stepped outside and closed the door behind him. He turned left off the stoop, then started back up the block, moving easily with no discernible limp at all.
As he came near the camera again, we saw his face for the first time. He even looked up, right into the lens for a split second, as he passed under it and out of sight.
“Right there,” I said.
“Yeah.” Overbey stopped, rewound, and froze the image.
The man seemed to be looking right at us. Valente leaned in to see closer, and then cursed under his breath.
“Look familiar?” he said.
It did. The face was similar, but not exactly the same, as the old man we’d seen on the security tape at the parking garage the night Darcy Vickers was murdered.
He looked about the same age, maybe seventy, but unlike the last time, this guy had a mustache and glasses. Two white shocks of curly hair showed under the ball cap as well. The last guy had been mostly bald.
“Those are prosthetics,” I said, at the same moment I realized it.
Valente nodded. “Some kind of mask, right? Jesus. That could explain a lot.”
“I don’t think he cares if we know it, either,” I added. “He obviously had a bead on that camera, the way he looked right into it. Maybe he even wanted us to see him.”
That could cut both ways, I thought. It might have meant he was confident for a reason, and we were never going to see past that disguise enough to pin him down.
Or, maybe he was starting to feel cocky—maybe a little too cocky for his own good—and we’d just turned a corner on this thing.
I looked up at Overbey. “Can you piece together his movements?” I said. “Try and figure out where he went from here? Or where he came from?”
“I’ll do what I can,” Overbey said. “Our service area only goes as far as Q Street. But you could pull from the city as well.”
“On it,” Valente said, tapping a number into his phone.
“Hey, Detective Cross?”
Someone else was there now. I turned around to see a uniformed cop trying to get my attention.
“What is it?” I said.
“You’ve got a visitor, detective.”
“A what?” That didn’t make sense. This was a closed crime scene.
The cop shrugged. “He said you called and asked him to come right down. He’s waiting over there.”
I looked up the street the way the cop pointed. There, in his usual hoodie and cargos, was Ron Guidice.
“What the hell’s that douche bag doing here?” Valente said. “You want me to get rid of him for you?”
“No,” I said. “I’ll take care of it. In fact, it’s going to be my pleasure.”
Somehow, Guidice had found his way into my crime scene. I was going to be sure to help him find his way out.
CHAPTER
56
I’VE GOT NO QUALMS TAKING A REPORTER BY THE COLLAR AND WALKING THEM back, if they’re compromising a scene. I’ve never actually had to arrest one before. But there’s a first time for everything.
“Hey! Guidice!” I said, heading right for him. “You’ve got to go.”
He stepped off the brick sidewalk to stand between a couple of parked cars as I came closer.
“Detective Cross, are you high?” he said, loud enough to be overheard.
“Very funny,” I said. I had no doubt this little head game was for my benefit. Guidice was too smart not to know he was trespassing on the scene at this point. But I was also determined not to get sucked into his bullshit.
“You’ve got five seconds to get back on the other side of those barriers.” I pointed to the top of the block, where a crowd had gathered. Some of them were even carrying protest signs—KEEP GEORGETOWN SAFE, WHAT THE HELL, MPD? I’m sure Guidice was loving those.
His eyes narrowed, and his pupils danced back and forth, taking me in.
“You are high, aren’t you?” he said. “I didn’t want to write about this until I was sure, but—”
“Ronald Guidice, you’re under arrest for trespassing on a designated crime scene,” I told him. I already had the bracelets out. “Turn around and put your hands behind your back.”
He was still between the cars, and I had to step in there to try to get him moving. But then, as I did, I felt a sharp, stabbing pain in my leg.
When I looked down, it was just in time to see Guidice pulling his hand back. He was holding something, but I couldn’t see what it was.
My next response was automatic. I hit him, hard. My fist sent a shower of blood out of his nose and down over his mouth. I probably should have stopped there, but the adrenaline had me, and Guidice was still standing. I countered the right punch with a left hook.
This time, he went down.
He landed on his back, looking stunned. My knee was on his chest now, holding him in place. My thigh was throbbing with the pain. He’d gotten me right in the muscle.
“What the hell was that?” I yelled at him. “What’d you stick me with?”
I’d barely started reaching for his pockets before two uniformed cops were pulling me off of him. A third cop knelt down next to Guidice and pulled him in the opposite direction, up onto the sidewalk.
Valente was there, too, and I saw Huizenga rushing over from her car.
“Alex? What’s going on here?” she said.
“He’s under arrest!” I pointed at Guidice. “Check his pockets! Book him!”
Guidice had gone slack, watching me as they held us apart. “Sergeant, your detective here is obviously on drugs. He just attacked me for no reason.”
He wiped the blood off his mouth, keeping his hand up high for the cameras at the end of the block.
“Alex Cross did this to me!”
“Come here!” I yelled at him, but Huizenga put herself in the way and walked me back. Valente had me by the arm, too.
“Pull it together, Alex!” Huizenga said. “Now tell me there’s a good goddamn reason for this.”
“He just stuck me!” I said.
“What are you talking about?”
“I don’t know. . . .” I said. “I don’t know what that . . . was.”
It was hard to concentrate, and my thoughts were starting to swim. I felt a tingling all over my body. A warm sensation crawled up through my limbs and into my head.
“I think I’m . . .”
I meant to say, I think I’m going to pass out, but I never got that far.
It wasn’t just a stab or an ordinary needle stick, I realized. It was something else. The last thought I can remember before I lost consciousness was that I’d just been poisoned.
Had Guidice killed me? Was I dying?
CHAPTER
57
I WOKE UP IN THE AMBULANCE. HUIZENGA WAS THERE. WE WERE MOVING.
None of it made sense at first, but quickly I remembered what had happened.
“Lie back,” Huizenga said, pushing me onto the gurney when I tried to sit up.
Two paramedics were perched on either side. One of them had a blood-pressure cuff on my arm. The other was radioing my vitals, presumably to whatever hospital we were headed toward. Georgetown, maybe.
“He stuck me. . . .”
“Just relax.”
“He . . .
”
I felt like Jell-O all over, except for a twitch in my hands. My head was still swimming. What the hell was this? I knew cognitively that something was terribly wrong, but somehow I couldn’t quite feel that way. It was like a euphoric state more than anything, with the fear and dread somewhere way in the background. I felt like I was watching the movie of my own emergency more than I was actually in it.
My eyes rolled. A paramedic lifted one of my lids to have a look.
“He’s nodding out,” the guy said.
That was the last I heard.
CHAPTER
58
THE NEXT TIME I WOKE UP, I WAS IN THE HOSPITAL. A FLUORESCENT BOX fixture was shining down on me. Instead of walls there was a blue curtain pulled around whatever examination room or cubicle they’d stuck me in.
Huizenga was still there. Bree now, too, I realized.
“Hey there,” she said, squeezing my hand. “How do you feel?”
I was still groggy, and floating on the last of some kind of cloud. I smiled, in spite of everything else. It was all a little blurry.
“How long have you been here?” I asked her.
“A couple of hours. It’s six o’clock.”
“What happened?”
“They found opiates in your bloodstream,” Huizenga said to me. “Mostly OCs.”
“Mostly?”
“A little morphine.”
“Ah.” I let my head fall back on the pillow. “I knew I recognized something.”
I’d been through my share of scrapes before—been given my share of morphine, too. The last time was when I’d been shot, tracking a case up to Vermont several years earlier.
Now, everything started coming back in pieces. I remembered the crime scene in Georgetown. The security company. Guidice—
I sat up all at once and threw off the thin blanket they had over me.
“Where’s Guidice?” I said. “Is he in custody?”
“Whoa,” Bree said. “Slow down, Alex. Take it easy.”