The clock was ticking, we had to figure out where the next incident was going to happen and we had twenty eight days to stop the massacre. The “Murder Board” this time was all female, three sisters from Georgia (Sue, Laura, and Fran Springer), a local girl that lived on the other side of the park, and an unknown woman that had really been worked over.
Mary Nighthorse's room mate was distraught but she was determine to help. She was asked if Mary had ever traveled to Washington or knew anyone there. Both of these were met with negative answers. She said that Mary was from Buffalo Creek, New York and her parents were still living close to the Casino. She had moved to the big city determined to be an artist. I looked around the apartment and noticed the scenes of ancient as well as modern tribal life reflected in very good and bold paintings. We had lost a future treasure with her death. The room mate worked at Sarabeth's and that night Mary had gone to dinner as a reward to herself for a interview that looked promising. Mary's flat mate said, "I served Mary dinner and that was the last I saw of her. If only she had stayed around till I got off, we could have walked back together." I asked a question for the first time of a witness. "What time did you last see her." I thought midnight was a little late for a working girl. "She left around eight. Why is that important." the girl asked back. Margaret casually talked about just getting all the details. But I could see that her eyes had taken on a very serious gaze when she heard the young waitress's reply.
When we stepped out, Crawford turned to me and exclaimed, "Where was she between eight and midnight?" I mused on that and it was a very good question. Maybe the next victims will give us a clue.
The three Springer sisters had traveled from Georgia. They had won tickets to the America Ballet at the Guggenheim. They probably left the ballet soon after it was over at eleven. Agent Crawford had talked to their parents and found out that this was the first time the girls had ever been out of the state.
The woman whose face had been so savagely disfigured was still an unknown. The forensic artist had made a sketch of how she might have appeared but it was a long shot on identifying her. Asian was the only clue. Was she a tourist, resident, or visitor from another state, who knows. I hope someone turns in a missing person on her.
Once again there just didn't seem to be a link between these and the others in Washington. The only people who knew each other was the couple in Washington and the sisters from Georgia. This was beginning to irritate me. I have always been very good at figuring out puzzles, crossword, codes and mazes. Why couldn't I get a handle on this.
My Agent wasn't turning out to be the legend that I had heard she was and I wondered why she hadn't shown that spark. I had gotten close to a couple of the other agents and on a whim I mention this. The guy who sat at the desk directly across from her looked at me and said. "You didn't hear this from me." He proceeded to tell me that Crawford (I swear he called her just Crawford.) and her husband had hit a very rough spot. It seems that a few months ago a pregnant Agent Crawford had gotten into a ruckus with a bodyguard of one of the local rapper groups that were passing out counterfeit money. The guy had gotten in a lucky hit to her ribs before she threw him over her shoulder and ended the brawl. She won the fight but lost the baby. Then her husband said that it was just to dangerous for her to have a family and be an agent. She had to choose. She choose to be an agent. He resigned and move back to California and the divorce is pending. "WOW." I realized that she was doing better than I could have done with those crosses on my back.
Realizing that she needed something to take her mind off her divorce and this case, I asked her if she wanted to drop by the local "cop shop" drinking hole for a beer or two. I could tell by the expression on her face that she started to say no, then something came into her eyes and with a slight smile the reply came out, "Yeah, why not."
I guess the frustration of the last few weeks hit me that night. Normally I am a two drink limit type, but this evening I slugged down one after another and would not listen to reason that was being told to me by the lovely Agent. The next thing I remember is waking up in my bed at about four in the morning and having to go to the bathroom. I looked into the mirror at the sobering up drunk and when I smacked my lips I could taste the stale beer. I grabbed the mouthwash and got that taste out of my mouth. This move sure was fortunate for me for when I started for the kitchen, I noticed the small bundle of femininity curled up in my recliner in the living room. I got a blanket and was putting it over her when she looked up and pulled me down and kissed me with such abandon that the world turn rosy and I felt a feeling that I hadn't had for awhile. The rest of the night passed with us back in the bedroom and it really felt right to me.
I woke back up at seven and since it was Sunday and she didn't have to go into work, I slipped out without waking her and headed downtown. If this was going to be solved, I was going to have to step up my game. I came in and used the huge table top computer screen in the conference room. I put the two murder boards side by side but that did not provide any more inspiration that before. I overlaid the street map of Washington and looked at the distance from the museum to the murder site. It was quite a haul with six bodies. A truck would have to be used to transport such a crew. I remembered Ralph and Al's van. Could he had used it and then returned the vehicle to the parking structure? I cleared the screen and then brought up the New York case. The distance from the Guggenheim to the crime scene in the Park was eight blocks and the direct path was one block over from Sarabeth's. Mary would have walked up to 5th avenue and then to the park. If she had run into the killer, she would have just been a incidental victim.
This was interesting but not really informative. Then I looked closer at the route from the Guggenheim to the murder scene. There it was.... Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum. That could not be a coincident. Two Smithsonians connected to the murders. I still didn't know why the victims were picked but I knew where.
A quick Goggle and I found a third Smithsonian.. The Udvar-Hazy Center in Chantilly, Virginia, where ever that was. I flipped open my phone and dialed. "Special Agent Margaret Kathleen Crawford I need you down here as soon as possible. I have one of the answers". It was less than fifteen minutes when the door to the office flew open and my Agent strode in. The first words out of her mouth were, "This had better not be a joke.." Then she saw my eyes and a gleam, I knew she had been keeping hidden, came to hers. I stepped back from in front of the table and point at the museum beside Central Park. "OMG".
Within a hour every agent in the unit was standing looking at the clue yours truly had found. They let me do the briefing and you have no idea how proud I was in the fact that I was being looked at in a way I never ever thought these professionals would do. When I turned up the final card and put the third Smithsonian on the map, there was actual applause. Margaret took over then and said "Next full moon, we will have this area of Virginia surrounded with every person we can spare. The murderer shall not succeed again."
We began to discuss how he picked out his victims. One theory was at each of the places he just grabbed who ever walked by without any personal motive. This looked to be the case. All of his prey in Washington were headed to the parking garage from the Gala. In New York the women seemed to be on 5th avenue and passing by the museum that night. If he got Mary Nighthorse at eight o'clock and the sisters around eleven, then he was one stone cold nerved psycho. Hanging around that long after grabbing the first was not any kind of rational behavior. Not enough was know about the unidentified Asian woman but like Mary, she probably just wandered by at the wrong time and got snatched.
I went back to my apartment that night and after I had fallen asleep, I felt someone sliding up next to me. "You are going to need better locks on your door if I am going to stay here with you." was spoken by the intruder. I replied, "I guess you have just got me in your power because I know I can't beat you in hand to hand. I will just have to submit and suffer the consequences." Laughter erupted from both of us as we k
issed and snuggled. I didn't know what I had gotten myself into, but I knew at the moment, that it was something I wanted.
The next couple of weeks made a change in Margaret's attitude. Half my closet was now filled with little FBI suits and the left hand shelf looked like the armory of a special forces commando. She just took over my life and I was powerless to resist her. I was happier at that moment than at any time in my life. Plain vanilla had won, take that ex-girlfriend.
It was a dark and stormy night.. no really it was. I was sitting in the van that was fitted out as the command center. I wasn't going to put my butt in jeopardy even with a vest. No sir, that is TV stuff not real life. Who ever had planned murders at these events had planned it well. The center was having a ball for veterans from the conflicts in the middle east that night. It was another of those big charity flings and there would be the cream of the military and congressional groups. This would also draw lobbyist of every color. There would be a huge crowd of potential victims and we still didn't know who he would choose. Around eleven the skies cleared and there was a full moon that would provide light to catch this SOB.
The party was winding down as it was approaching midnight. A town car pulled up and four of the guests got in. I was watching them on the CCTV and noticed that the car didn't turn toward I-28 but instead went toward Hwy-50. Of course I wasn't the only one noticing this and three of the black SUVs headed toward the car with their lights off. A tight tail was going to be used. The people in the car were big wheels and if they were killed, all of us would be "read the riot act". The car turned before it got to the highway and doubled back on a gravel road behind the museum. There was nothing back there and the dirt road only went to a small lake. This couldn't be on the up and up and the order to intercept was given. A helicopter that had been hovering out of sight, closed in and landed in front of the car as the others closed in on the back. Guns drawn and officers yelling, the driver opened the door and stepped out and took the spread eagle position on the ground. None of the passengers opened the doors or got out. I was preparing myself for another tragedy.
It turned out that all four in the car had been gassed as soon as they entered and were just unconscious. A victory for the good guys. There were still answers that had to be found and for the first time we had someone to ask. This was going to be one interview that I was going to be the guy behind the glass looking at the skill of the investigator.
When they ran his fingerprints there was no one in the system with them but his right index turned out to be a match to a fingerprint in a 2015 string of murders in Ohio. A thumb print in the 2014 Gypsy Hill killings found on a bottle in the front yard of the crime scene and thought to not be from the killer, matched his. A third match came up also. A finger print found outside the house on a fence post at one of the Maryvale serial shootings matched his left middle finger. The thoughts in those cases were that they were not done by the same serial killer due to the differences in the M.O. of each series of crimes. This created a mystery as serial killers have a reason they do the killings and they just don't change. This perp was not really a serial killer, he was a killer that hid his motive in the mystique of a serial killer. I looked at the person across from five foot Crawford and she made his six foot six and three hundred pounds of budging muscles look even bigger. I said to the others in the room. "If anyone can tear a shoulder apart, this guy could. I bet he could carry one body under each arm." We had him on four counts of kidnapping and he hadn't said a single word during the arrest and he wasn't talking now. He didn't even call for a lawyer.
It took three days before they were able to identify the guy, Ben Laird. His fingerprints had never been put on file, but a jail house informer saw his face on TV and had bargained with the bureau for a sentence reduction and a Snicker bar once a month. Ben had started life as a semi-pro football player in the Canadian League and then drifted south into the U.S.A. where he found employment for one of the Mafia Dons. The Feds had broke up that gang but by then he had developed a reputation for terror and mayhem. The Don he worked for had shown him how to setup an account offshore and this came in handy when he had to start his own freelance work.
As soon as they got a name, the accountants began to work on him also. After a month of tracking shell companies and off shore accounts, pay dirt was struck. How they got the info from that bank in the Caymans I don't even want to guess, but those guys in the Islands kept perfect records of all the money that had came into his account from people in the U.S.A. and Canada. He didn't fool with the other parts of the world I guess. Each of the serial killer sprees had a victim that could be tied to the person that made the money transfer to Ben. The other victims in each "serial killer" spree had just been camouflage for the real target. By this time I had all the suspense I could stand. I blurted out "Who was the victim in this case Maggie?", I call her Maggie now. She smiled and said "Two Victims and tonight in bed I will let you in on the truth." Well in the search for truth and justice how could I refuse.
Well folks we aren't going into what went on that night, but I can tell you the truth. We didn't know how the woman found out who Ben was and how to contact him, but she did. It seems that this married man was having an affair with a young lady he met in Japan on one of his charity research trips. It had gone on for almost a year before he brought her to New York and set her up in an apartment. That was why no one was looking for her and no record of her entering the country. His private jet landed at a small airport in Mexico and a limo ride from there to the east coast provided all the concealment necessary or so he thought. He had not counted on his wife finding out about the love nest but she did. That is why the girls face was destroyed, partly out of jealousy and also so that it could not be identified. All the other killings were just window dressing.
We figured out that Ben's real modus operandi was to create a link in his crimes that could be discovered so the police would declare the murders those of a serial killer. The link had to be so remote that it would take more than two episodes to figure out his method of picking the deceased. He would quit after three and change the way he did it for the next person that paid him. Sometimes he copied an actual serial killer and hid his involvement that way. The fact that we had got it on two was the only reason he was caught.
The Washington killings got the man and the New York set got the mistress. The third was just going to be for the disguise. Ben’s employer had gone through tremendous suffering to get rid of her husband but it just didn't prevent her eventual discovery. I was there when the new love of my life knocked on the door of Betty Lofton's suite and said those magic words... You have the right to remain silent...
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