Read from the Beginning
Read Part 6
It took 45 minutes for the staff to get Eagan cleaned up and dressed in a new jumpsuit. They brought him into the small interrogation room where Parme and Gilbert were waiting and chained him to a metal desk. He sat in a metal chair looking miserable, refusing to make eye contact with either detective. Gilbert sat down across from him and took out his notebook. Parme stood, leaning against the wall behind him.
“What’s your name, sir?” Gilbert began.
Eagan told them who he was, where he lived and certain other details of his miserable life. Gilbert took careful notes. When the preliminaries were over, Parme stepped up to the table.
“Why did you turn yourself in?”
“Because I did something,” Eagan said softly. “Something terrible.”
“What did you do?” Parme asked, sounding like he couldn’t care less.
“I killed that poor girl, the one they found by the high school,” he said. He dropped his head until his chin touched his bony chest and appeared to be weeping.
“Do you mean Paula Kelly?” Gilbert asked. Eagan nodded. A tear rolled down the side of his nose and fell, hitting the metal table.
“Jesus,” Parme rolled his eyes and went back to the wall.
“Tell us how it happened,” Gilbert said.
Eagan looked up. He tried to rub his nose but the chain wasn’t long enough. It made a noise loud enough to make him jump when it reached its limit. He leaned forward and wiped his nose on the sleeve of his borrowed jumpsuit. “How what happened?”
The two detectives just stared at him. “You mean how I killed her?”
“Yeah,” Parme drawled. “Why don’t you start with that.”
“Well,” Egan fiddled with his chain for a bit and cleared his throat. “Well, I took her out to that building by the school, that little outbuilding they found her in and then I killed her.”
“How?” Parme asked.
“I hit her in the head with a heavy piece of wood that was in the shed.”
“And then what?”
“That’s it. I killed her and then I ran away.”
Gilbert looked over his shoulder at Parme and closed his notebook.
“Why are you lying to us, Arlington?” Parme said, approaching the table again with his big hands balled into fists. “Do you think this is some kind of game?”
Eagan cringed away from the table as far as his chains would allow, trying in vain to cover his face with his hands. “No! I’m telling you. I killed that poor girl. And I might do it again. You can’t let me go!”
Parme stared down at the small man with a look of disgust on his face. “Unchain him.”
Gilbert pulled a key from his pocket and moved around the table. Eagan acted more threatened than before and cried out that he was dangerous and that they couldn’t send him home.
“I’m afraid of what will happen!” he cried.
“Shut up!” Parme roared. Eagan deflated and sat in the chair weeping silently as Gilbert unchained him. “You’re lying about your involvement in a murder case. That’s obstruction of justice. You play that game with us again and I swear to God I’ll shoot you myself.”
Gilbert shot his partner a warning glance as he moved back around the table and pocketed his notebook. “You don’t have any information about the murder of Paula Kelly, do you Mr. Eagan?” he asked.
Eagan just sat in the chair and wept, his frail body swaying back and forth. “I can’t go back there. I’m afraid,” he said softly.
“Jesus Christ,” Parme swore and shook his head.
“What are you afraid of, Mr. Eagan?” Gilbert asked.
Eagan looked from Gilbert, where he sat in the chair opposite him, to Parme, who was leaning forward on his fists, staring at him with undisguised malice. Eagan’s eyes, rimmed with red, dripping tears narrowed and he bolted out of the chair and flew at Parme, his small fist hitting the larger man squarely on the nose and forcing him two steps back. Gilbert jumped out of his chair and caught Eagan by the wrist but was forced to release him in order to stop Parme from flying over the table at the smaller man.
“You sonuva bitch!” Parme roared. Gilbert struggled to hold his partner back as Eagan sat back down in the chair.
When Gilbert was fairly certain Parme wasn’t going to beat anyone to death, he stepped back away from his partner and turned on Eagan. Before he could speak, Eagan said, “That’s assaulting an officer. I know the law. Now you have to keep me here.”
Parme wiped his nose to make sure it wasn’t bleeding. It wasn’t, but his eyes were both watering.
“We’re not keeping you here, you little shit. We’re sending you downtown where you can spend the night with some boys that will beat your little ass good.” He turned for the door, still fuming. “See how you like that, you little bastard.” He left the room, slamming the door behind him.
Gilbert was left standing over Eagan, who looked calm for the first time during the interview. “That wasn’t very smart.”
“You can’t send me home now,” Eagan said softly.
“Where you’re going will be worse,” Gilbert said.
Eagan looked up at him and the tears started to well up again. “No it won’t,” he whispered
Read Part 8
Friday, March 28, 2014
Saturday, March 15, 2014
6. Life is a Dream and Then You Die
Read from the Beginning
Read Part 5
Arlington Eagan knew fear. He knew it intimately, every rough edge and jagged claw of it. Introduced in early childhood by events perpetrated by his father against his mother that he was too young to recall, they had grown close over the years. He had some memories of abuses at the hands of his father and neglect from his mother, but as most children do, he later ascribed the resulting emotions to hellish forces intent on his destruction, in an unconscious attempt to preserve the memory of loving parents. Such are children.
As a young boy, he tried to get the upper hand in the relationship, using logic and wisdom from elder teachers and bible school scholars. He sought knowledge of the unexplained and occult, the demonic and just plain mean in an attempt to hold his fear at bay through understanding. He learned a great deal, but it didn’t make him less afraid.
In the process, he gained a little knowledge of many worrisome things and found that a little information can be far worse than none at all, as his active imagination filled in the gaps and explained what could not be explained. And so he retreated to blanket forts lit up by night lights and a rubber doorstop under the closet door at night. He invented countless recipes for avoiding death by a demonic hand. If he brushed his teeth and then took a vitamin, checked the closet door and then said his prayers, he could sleep through the night without the darkness invading his dreams. Miss one part of the formula and he would wake in the night, screaming and alone, calling for parents who were too inebriated to respond, until his tears dried into river stains and he fell back asleep.
By adolescence, Eagan had given up quivering and quaking in response to his fears in favor of active flight, achieved initially through drugs but later through immersion in over a dozen different religious experiences. Some of them patented. Fear would not abate. It was a battle he was doomed to lose. In time, he learned to accept what fear held in store for him with a sort of despondent surrender. When he didn’t die before he was 25, he was shocked.
By that time, both of his parents had met their end, which was no surprise to anyone who knew them. Some who did were surprised that they had a son, having never seen Eagan until one of the funerals. Ill equipped to keep up his parent’s affairs, he lost the house and moved from place to place in the city until he secured the job at the cardboard box company and moved into the apartment on North Willis street.
It wasn’t long before his old fears made their way out of the dark and into his social life. He was unable to relate to most of the people he worked with and couldn’t even speak to a woman. He retreated into his apartment, decorated in a Spartan fashion to avoid shadows and other places where dark things could hide, and tried to live a simple life apart from the many, many things that he found fearful.
And it worked very well until a routine trip to the doctor, the same old man who had been treating him for over 20 years, revealed his condition. It appeared that all those years of fear and trepidation had taken a toll on his heart. He was told to walk and so he bought a fitbit and used it to track his movements to work and back. To increase his step count, he used the stairwell in his apartment building. He thought it was working, until he saw the spikes on his computer chart during times when he thought he was asleep.
The idea that his body might be doing things unbeknownst to him was terrifying. He’d studied enough about the occult to know that a person can be overcome by a demonic force and used for evil purposes. Being asleep made it easier. The more he thought about it, the more he imagined the evil that such an entity could do with his body.
And so he bought the camera to find out exactly what his sleeping self was doing. Watching the video nearly overwhelmed him with horror. Of course, he knew the name Paula Kelly. He’d seen both the television news and the local newspaper. Knowing that he had written that name down filled him with a cold dread and he couldn’t help but wonder if he had played a role in her murder.
But that wasn’t the part of the video that threatened to send him over the edge. In fact, seeing the candle and the parchment probably saved him from running screaming out of his apartment and into the morning traffic. No, what terrified him the most was the idea that he had walked down into the basement in the dark without a light. The idea of him in his pajamas walking down those narrow stairs and into the dark, alone with whatever terrors awaited him there, made him wrap his arms around himself tightly as he shook and wept.
Seeing the name on the parchment and having a bona fide reason to call the police saved him from going over the edge.
He knew he couldn’t go home. The idea that he might fall asleep and go back down those stairs consumed him. And so now, he was alone in a cell, in the dark, afraid to fall asleep. He thought about moving, which seemed like a necessity, but that would take time. He didn’t want to risk spending a single night there. He resolved to tell the police that he had killed Paula Kelly. They would be forced to keep him in jail until they realized he didn’t do it. By then, he would have had time to think up some solution. But it would surely involve moving.
And so his mind went around and around the problem as he lie on the narrow bunk until he finally fell asleep, though he didn’t know it.
He was packing things up in his apartment, ready to move, to start a new life in a safer place, without a creepy basement. He was happy, but tired from the effort of putting what little he owned into cardboard boxes, some of which he had actually made himself, he was proud to note. He sat down on his simple IKEA couch and laid back his head and fell asleep.
As he watched his eyelids fall, he screamed out inside, warning himself not to fall asleep, not to give in to the...but it was too late. He watched himself leave his apartment and walk to the end of the hallway. As he reached the doors to the stairwell, he passed the kid from 407, Boyle was his name, he thought. He worked down at the motor factory and came in late each night.
Inside, Eagan was screaming to Boyle to save him, trying to get his limp arms to reach out and grab him as he passed. Outside, Eagan just nodded to him. Boyle returned the greeting and moved on down the hallway. Eagan proceeded down the stairs.
With each flight down, his fear increased. He could feel his heart beating through his chest and by the time he got to the first floor, it was physically painful, a sledgehammer against the inside of his sternum. He moved down the hall toward the basement door, screaming wildly on the inside, but silent as death on the outside. He made it to the door and stopped. As if in slow motion, he reached out for the doorknob and turned it.
“He’s right down here,” said the officer in charge of the small block of cells housed in the local precinct house. Gilbert had read Smith on his nameplate but couldn’t remember his first name. Rarely were prisoners kept locally, as most were processed and shipped downtown to a much newer and larger facility. “He begged us to keep him in custody.”
Parme gave Gilbert a knowing look.
“Did we get a swab for DNA testing?” Gilbert asked.
“Yep, and prints. If he’s your guy, we should know it shortly.”
Officer Smith opened the last door. At the sound of its opening, a smallish man squatting in the center of the cell spun his head around to face them. His clothing had been ripped up and there were bloody scratches covering his face and torso. His eyes were wide and bloodshot. Spittle ran down his thin chin.
Upon seeing the officers enter, he screamed and rushed the cell door, throwing himself up against the bars hard enough to rattle the cage.
“Please!” he screamed. “Please! You have to wake me up!”
He stood their, pressed against the bars, clawing at the air in an attempt to reach the officers on the other side of the bars, his mouth a frothy mess, blood dripping from his scratches.
Parme looked at Gilbert. “Well, I’ll be damned. Maybe he is crazy.”
Read Part 7.
Read Part 5
Arlington Eagan knew fear. He knew it intimately, every rough edge and jagged claw of it. Introduced in early childhood by events perpetrated by his father against his mother that he was too young to recall, they had grown close over the years. He had some memories of abuses at the hands of his father and neglect from his mother, but as most children do, he later ascribed the resulting emotions to hellish forces intent on his destruction, in an unconscious attempt to preserve the memory of loving parents. Such are children.
As a young boy, he tried to get the upper hand in the relationship, using logic and wisdom from elder teachers and bible school scholars. He sought knowledge of the unexplained and occult, the demonic and just plain mean in an attempt to hold his fear at bay through understanding. He learned a great deal, but it didn’t make him less afraid.
In the process, he gained a little knowledge of many worrisome things and found that a little information can be far worse than none at all, as his active imagination filled in the gaps and explained what could not be explained. And so he retreated to blanket forts lit up by night lights and a rubber doorstop under the closet door at night. He invented countless recipes for avoiding death by a demonic hand. If he brushed his teeth and then took a vitamin, checked the closet door and then said his prayers, he could sleep through the night without the darkness invading his dreams. Miss one part of the formula and he would wake in the night, screaming and alone, calling for parents who were too inebriated to respond, until his tears dried into river stains and he fell back asleep.
By adolescence, Eagan had given up quivering and quaking in response to his fears in favor of active flight, achieved initially through drugs but later through immersion in over a dozen different religious experiences. Some of them patented. Fear would not abate. It was a battle he was doomed to lose. In time, he learned to accept what fear held in store for him with a sort of despondent surrender. When he didn’t die before he was 25, he was shocked.
By that time, both of his parents had met their end, which was no surprise to anyone who knew them. Some who did were surprised that they had a son, having never seen Eagan until one of the funerals. Ill equipped to keep up his parent’s affairs, he lost the house and moved from place to place in the city until he secured the job at the cardboard box company and moved into the apartment on North Willis street.
It wasn’t long before his old fears made their way out of the dark and into his social life. He was unable to relate to most of the people he worked with and couldn’t even speak to a woman. He retreated into his apartment, decorated in a Spartan fashion to avoid shadows and other places where dark things could hide, and tried to live a simple life apart from the many, many things that he found fearful.
And it worked very well until a routine trip to the doctor, the same old man who had been treating him for over 20 years, revealed his condition. It appeared that all those years of fear and trepidation had taken a toll on his heart. He was told to walk and so he bought a fitbit and used it to track his movements to work and back. To increase his step count, he used the stairwell in his apartment building. He thought it was working, until he saw the spikes on his computer chart during times when he thought he was asleep.
The idea that his body might be doing things unbeknownst to him was terrifying. He’d studied enough about the occult to know that a person can be overcome by a demonic force and used for evil purposes. Being asleep made it easier. The more he thought about it, the more he imagined the evil that such an entity could do with his body.
And so he bought the camera to find out exactly what his sleeping self was doing. Watching the video nearly overwhelmed him with horror. Of course, he knew the name Paula Kelly. He’d seen both the television news and the local newspaper. Knowing that he had written that name down filled him with a cold dread and he couldn’t help but wonder if he had played a role in her murder.
But that wasn’t the part of the video that threatened to send him over the edge. In fact, seeing the candle and the parchment probably saved him from running screaming out of his apartment and into the morning traffic. No, what terrified him the most was the idea that he had walked down into the basement in the dark without a light. The idea of him in his pajamas walking down those narrow stairs and into the dark, alone with whatever terrors awaited him there, made him wrap his arms around himself tightly as he shook and wept.
Seeing the name on the parchment and having a bona fide reason to call the police saved him from going over the edge.
He knew he couldn’t go home. The idea that he might fall asleep and go back down those stairs consumed him. And so now, he was alone in a cell, in the dark, afraid to fall asleep. He thought about moving, which seemed like a necessity, but that would take time. He didn’t want to risk spending a single night there. He resolved to tell the police that he had killed Paula Kelly. They would be forced to keep him in jail until they realized he didn’t do it. By then, he would have had time to think up some solution. But it would surely involve moving.
And so his mind went around and around the problem as he lie on the narrow bunk until he finally fell asleep, though he didn’t know it.
He was packing things up in his apartment, ready to move, to start a new life in a safer place, without a creepy basement. He was happy, but tired from the effort of putting what little he owned into cardboard boxes, some of which he had actually made himself, he was proud to note. He sat down on his simple IKEA couch and laid back his head and fell asleep.
As he watched his eyelids fall, he screamed out inside, warning himself not to fall asleep, not to give in to the...but it was too late. He watched himself leave his apartment and walk to the end of the hallway. As he reached the doors to the stairwell, he passed the kid from 407, Boyle was his name, he thought. He worked down at the motor factory and came in late each night.
Inside, Eagan was screaming to Boyle to save him, trying to get his limp arms to reach out and grab him as he passed. Outside, Eagan just nodded to him. Boyle returned the greeting and moved on down the hallway. Eagan proceeded down the stairs.
With each flight down, his fear increased. He could feel his heart beating through his chest and by the time he got to the first floor, it was physically painful, a sledgehammer against the inside of his sternum. He moved down the hall toward the basement door, screaming wildly on the inside, but silent as death on the outside. He made it to the door and stopped. As if in slow motion, he reached out for the doorknob and turned it.
* * *
“He’s right down here,” said the officer in charge of the small block of cells housed in the local precinct house. Gilbert had read Smith on his nameplate but couldn’t remember his first name. Rarely were prisoners kept locally, as most were processed and shipped downtown to a much newer and larger facility. “He begged us to keep him in custody.”
Parme gave Gilbert a knowing look.
“Did we get a swab for DNA testing?” Gilbert asked.
“Yep, and prints. If he’s your guy, we should know it shortly.”
Officer Smith opened the last door. At the sound of its opening, a smallish man squatting in the center of the cell spun his head around to face them. His clothing had been ripped up and there were bloody scratches covering his face and torso. His eyes were wide and bloodshot. Spittle ran down his thin chin.
Upon seeing the officers enter, he screamed and rushed the cell door, throwing himself up against the bars hard enough to rattle the cage.
“Please!” he screamed. “Please! You have to wake me up!”
He stood their, pressed against the bars, clawing at the air in an attempt to reach the officers on the other side of the bars, his mouth a frothy mess, blood dripping from his scratches.
Parme looked at Gilbert. “Well, I’ll be damned. Maybe he is crazy.”
Read Part 7.
Saturday, March 8, 2014
5. Breakfast of Champions
Read from the Beginning
Read Part 4
It was almost 7:00 A.M. before Gilbert had completed his work at the precinct house, which put him perilously close to breaking Parme’s first rule. Since his first day with his new partner, he had been required to meet him every morning at 7 o’clock sharp for breakfast at the cafe down the block. He hastily gathered the notes he had made and bolted from the office he shared with Parme and two other detectives, one of whom was Tremayne White, an imposing block of a man he nearly collided with at the door.
“Whoa, where you goin’ in such a hurry, Rookie?” White asked him with a smile and a clap on the shoulder.
“Gotta meet Parme,” Gilbert replied without slowing down. “I’m late.”
White watched him go, still smiling. “You’d better run, Rookie. You don’t wanna piss Walter off. He’ll shoot you.”
By the time Gilbert blew into the cafe, Parme was already mixing up his eggs and fried potatoes, while a stern looking, middle-aged or better waitress filled up his coffee cup. She looked at Gilbert without smiling, held up the coffee pot for him to see and raised an eyebrow.
“Yeah, coffee, please,” he said as he slid into the booth.
Parme didn’t look up. “You’re late.”
Gilbert started to order, but Parme cut him off. “I already ordered for you.” The waitress -- Barb according to the yellowed, plastic tag above her left breast -- finished pouring his coffee and went in search of his breakfast. Parme finished making a mess of his plate and then looked up at his partner. “Jesus, kid. You look like shit.”
Gilbert grabbed two sugar packets and ripped them open over his steaming coffee cup. “That happens when you work all night.”
“Worked all night on what? I like Eagan for this.”
Gilbert stopped pouring his sugar. “What! How do you get that? No evidence at the crime scene…”
“Kid, you’re over thinking it. We have a murder perpetrated by a crazy guy and three weeks later a crazy guy turns himself in. These cases aren’t that hard. All we have to do now is go back to his apartment and ask him some questions and he’ll break down and tell us the whole story. He wants to get caught. That’s why he turned himself in.”
“I’m not so sure.”
“You’re not so experienced. Give it a few days and everything will come to light. It’s always the same with these guys. He probably knew he was going to get caught, so he came up with this crazy, sleepwalking late night writing crap in a book thing to support an insanity defense, mark my words. We’ll go out to his apartment today to visit with him and you’ll see.”
Barb came back and dropped a platter with a couple of over easy eggs and a pile of greasy, fried potatoes in front of Gilbert. A shriveled up brown thing may have been a strip of bacon. He turned to thank her, but she was already gone.
“We don’t have to,” Gilbert said. Gilbert moved his fork through the eggs. He didn’t really like what he saw. He put his fork down beside his plate.
“Don’t have to what?”
“Don’t have to drive back out to his apartment. He’s still in the lockup.”
“Why? Who charged him?” Parme was beginning to get that look in his eye. It was the same look Gilbert saw when his partner realized they had missed out on the shooting that cost them the collar in their first case together.
“Nobody charged him with anything. He just didn’t want to go home.” Gilbert answered the unasked question in Parme’s face. “He said he was afraid to go home.”
Parme sniffed and went back to the ugly pile of breakfast food on his oversized plate. “He’s playing games. At least we caught him before he started working down his little list.”
“That’s the other thing,” Gilbert took a sip of his coffee as he worked out how he was going to broach this. He had only intended to think through the evidence a bit more when he returned to the office, but the more he got into it, the more he kept going. He realized he may have stepped over a line somewhere. He also realized Parme was looking at him, waiting.
“I spent some time on that list last night. That’s why I didn’t get to bed, actually. Well, that’s part of it.”
“What did you do?” Parme asked quietly.
“Well, I wanted to find out what I could about the people on that list. So, I ran them through our computers.” He paused but Parme didn’t say anything. “And the state police database.” Parme’s eyes started to narrow. “And the FBI…”
“Jesus Christ, Rob!” Parme threw down his fork. It landed in his breakfast pile. From across the room, Barb shot Gilbert a disapproving glance, which he tried to ignore. “Tell me you didn’t find anything so we don’t have a goddam paper trail that requires us to start reporting to every law enforcement authority in the country.”
Gilbert hadn’t considered that. In the aftermath of 9-11, all law enforcement agencies were tasked with improved communication and collaboration, which meant that management was tasked with measuring said communication and collaboration efforts, which meant more paperwork. In most cases a lot more. The result had been the typical unintended consequence that the agencies actually collaborated less to avoid the deluge of paperwork involved. But in light of what he had discovered overnight, it occurred to Gilbert that it might be worth it in this case. He decided to tell him everything quickly, in an attempt to get it all out before his partner pulled his service revolver and shot him.
There were 23 names on the list, not counting the victim in their case. Of those, 18 were not in the database, 4 were currently registered as missing in one or more of the three databases and 1 was the subject of an active murder investigation. He had requested a copy of the file from the state police.
Parme didn’t say anything, so Gilbert told him the rest.
“I figured that just because the names weren’t in our database didn’t mean they shouldn’t be, so I took the list down to Becky Carter to see if she could find out if they matched anyone living in our jurisdiction and what connections, if any, there were between them. Becky works in crime stats down…”
“I know who the fuck she is. What else?” Parme’s tone was low and dangerous.
“I did some research on the symbol on the front of the book. It doesn’t match anything we have in the gang sign database or any of the graphics libraries we have, but it reminded me of something I came across in college, so I did a pattern matching search and came up with this,” Gilbert pulled the folded up sheets of paper from his pocket, pushed his uneaten breakfast out of the way and unfolded one in front of his partner.
“What the hell is that?”
“It’s called the Sigillum Dei, or Seal of God. It dates back to the late Middle Ages, 15th Century or so. As you can see, the symbol is quite complex and is composed of two circles, a pentagram, and three heptagons.”
“Stop,” Parme growled. “What the fuck are you talking about? This doesn’t look anything like what was scratched into that book.”
“Well, right, it doesn’t really, but look at this.” Gilbert unfolded another piece of paper.
“What kind of crap classes did you take in college?” Parme asked.
“I don’t know, it was all part of the pre-law curriculum,” he replied.
“Why did you take pre-law to be a cop?”
“I didn’t.” Gilbert finished smoothing out the sheet. “This is the print out of the picture I took with my camera phone. The lighting wasn’t good, there’s a shadow…” Parme made a gutteral sound that served to speed up his partner’s explanation. “See how these marks along the inside of the circle line up with the vertices of the heptagons.”
Parmes eyes rose slowly from the pages to his partner. There was great menace in them.
“Look,” Gilbert said, quickly unfolding a third sheet of paper. “Here is a printout with the camera phone image in red over the Seal in black and white. Look at the overlap. It’s perfect.”
Parme glanced at the printout and then went back to his eggs. “It doesn’t look anything like it.”
Gilbert looked more closely at his work. “Well, you’re right, but that may have been the point. In the Middle Ages, occultists would often bend religious symbols to their own use by changing them. The most famous is the pentagram, but we also see it in the upside down cross and the use of cups as a suit in the Tarot. Although some say the Tarot pre-dates…”
“Will you shut the fuck up,” Parme said. He voice was calm, uncharacteristically so. It made Gilbert lower the paper he was studying and look at his partner. Parme went on calmly. “What you’re talking is a bunch of horse shit and it doesn’t have anything to do with this case. This is a bunch of crazy shit that anyone can look up on the Internet, which is exactly what Eagan did. It all plays into his defense strategy. Besides, there were no occult symbols identified at the crime scene and Wayne’s team handled it so we know he would have found them.”
Gilbert nodded slowly. It made sense that if this were part of the case and had any link to the murder, there would have been some sign at the crime scene. He also had to admit to himself that if it had been there, Singleton and his team would have uncovered it. If they knew what they were looking for.
“Now, let’s forget about your middle ages art class and focus on the case,” Parme said.
“Okay, it’s just that…” Gilbert began.
“Jesus Christ! Who did you share this with?”
“Just an old friend from college. He wasn’t in pre-law, but we crossed paths in Medieval Signs and Symbols. It was a psych class really, focused on how mass psychology is impacted…”
“I don’t give a shit.”
“Right. Anyway, he transferred out to a Jesuit school shortly afterward and he actually became a Catholic priest, if you can believe that.”
Parme reached down toward his pistol. The action made Gilbert speak faster.
“His name is Miller, Father Sean Miller and he’s not working with any law enforcement agency...that I know of.”
Parme’s hand returned to the table top carrying his wallet. He raised his other hand over his head for a second, without looking to see if the waitress noticed. She did and made her way over with the check. She dropped it on the table without a word and turned away. Parme pulled out a twenty for an eight dollar check and dropped it on the table. He didn’t look at his partner.
Gilbert realized that, for a second there, he actually thought his partner might shoot him. It was a horrifying realization, but the short burst of endorphins that had resulted from the fact that he hadn’t been fatally wounded by a small caliber weapon at close range emboldened him to change the subject.
“Why do you always tip her so much? She has to be the worse waitress I’ve ever seen.”
Parme pointed to the twenty, “Don’t touch that. I’m going to the office. You’re going home to shower and change. Be back by nine. Then we’ll interview our suspect and put this case to bed before the avalanche of paperwork you’ve created ruins both our careers.”
Parme got up and left without another word. Gilbert shook his head and folded up his notes. He suddenly had a burning desire to take a closer look at the photos Singleton’s team had taken at the crime scene. Just to be sure, he told himself.
Barb reappeared at the table, clearing Parme’s plate and coffee cup. “Can I get you anything else, sweetie?”
Gilbert was shocked by the kindness in the voice of a waitress who hadn’t given him or Parme the time of day in the many weeks they had been meeting there. The surprise must have been visible on his face.
“I’m actually not the worst waitress you’ve ever seen.” Gilbert felt himself turning red. “I’m the best. I know all of my customers and I treat them exactly the way they want to be treated.”
Gilbert had to admit, that made sense. Her borderline rude behavior was just the kind of service Parme would reward.
“I’m sorry, I thought…”
“No, you didn’t,” she answered brightly. “But then, thinking about me isn’t your job, is it? You haven’t touched your breakfast. You want something else? We have pie.”
Gilbert reached into his pocket and pulled out the first bill he touched. It was a five. He dropped it on the table and started to get up. “No thanks, Barb. I have to go try to save my job.”
She laughed. It was a surprisingly youthful and pleasant sound coming from a woman who had to be well past the halfway mark. “The name is Pat. Barb hasn’t worked here in years. And you don’t have to worry about keeping your job. Just keep on doing what you’re doing and Wally will stay happy.”
“Wally? Happy? He almost shot me.”
Pat, the waitress Gilbert had previously thought of as Barb, because that’s how she had been labeled, laughed again. “He was impressed. You didn’t notice?” Gilbert's mouth fell open.
She grabbed up the two bills and the check from the table and turned back toward the cash register with a smile. “You really are new, aren’t you?”
Read Part 6
Read Part 4
It was almost 7:00 A.M. before Gilbert had completed his work at the precinct house, which put him perilously close to breaking Parme’s first rule. Since his first day with his new partner, he had been required to meet him every morning at 7 o’clock sharp for breakfast at the cafe down the block. He hastily gathered the notes he had made and bolted from the office he shared with Parme and two other detectives, one of whom was Tremayne White, an imposing block of a man he nearly collided with at the door.
“Whoa, where you goin’ in such a hurry, Rookie?” White asked him with a smile and a clap on the shoulder.
“Gotta meet Parme,” Gilbert replied without slowing down. “I’m late.”
White watched him go, still smiling. “You’d better run, Rookie. You don’t wanna piss Walter off. He’ll shoot you.”
By the time Gilbert blew into the cafe, Parme was already mixing up his eggs and fried potatoes, while a stern looking, middle-aged or better waitress filled up his coffee cup. She looked at Gilbert without smiling, held up the coffee pot for him to see and raised an eyebrow.
“Yeah, coffee, please,” he said as he slid into the booth.
Parme didn’t look up. “You’re late.”
Gilbert started to order, but Parme cut him off. “I already ordered for you.” The waitress -- Barb according to the yellowed, plastic tag above her left breast -- finished pouring his coffee and went in search of his breakfast. Parme finished making a mess of his plate and then looked up at his partner. “Jesus, kid. You look like shit.”
Gilbert grabbed two sugar packets and ripped them open over his steaming coffee cup. “That happens when you work all night.”
“Worked all night on what? I like Eagan for this.”
Gilbert stopped pouring his sugar. “What! How do you get that? No evidence at the crime scene…”
“Kid, you’re over thinking it. We have a murder perpetrated by a crazy guy and three weeks later a crazy guy turns himself in. These cases aren’t that hard. All we have to do now is go back to his apartment and ask him some questions and he’ll break down and tell us the whole story. He wants to get caught. That’s why he turned himself in.”
“I’m not so sure.”
“You’re not so experienced. Give it a few days and everything will come to light. It’s always the same with these guys. He probably knew he was going to get caught, so he came up with this crazy, sleepwalking late night writing crap in a book thing to support an insanity defense, mark my words. We’ll go out to his apartment today to visit with him and you’ll see.”
Barb came back and dropped a platter with a couple of over easy eggs and a pile of greasy, fried potatoes in front of Gilbert. A shriveled up brown thing may have been a strip of bacon. He turned to thank her, but she was already gone.
“We don’t have to,” Gilbert said. Gilbert moved his fork through the eggs. He didn’t really like what he saw. He put his fork down beside his plate.
“Don’t have to what?”
“Don’t have to drive back out to his apartment. He’s still in the lockup.”
“Why? Who charged him?” Parme was beginning to get that look in his eye. It was the same look Gilbert saw when his partner realized they had missed out on the shooting that cost them the collar in their first case together.
“Nobody charged him with anything. He just didn’t want to go home.” Gilbert answered the unasked question in Parme’s face. “He said he was afraid to go home.”
Parme sniffed and went back to the ugly pile of breakfast food on his oversized plate. “He’s playing games. At least we caught him before he started working down his little list.”
“That’s the other thing,” Gilbert took a sip of his coffee as he worked out how he was going to broach this. He had only intended to think through the evidence a bit more when he returned to the office, but the more he got into it, the more he kept going. He realized he may have stepped over a line somewhere. He also realized Parme was looking at him, waiting.
“I spent some time on that list last night. That’s why I didn’t get to bed, actually. Well, that’s part of it.”
“What did you do?” Parme asked quietly.
“Well, I wanted to find out what I could about the people on that list. So, I ran them through our computers.” He paused but Parme didn’t say anything. “And the state police database.” Parme’s eyes started to narrow. “And the FBI…”
“Jesus Christ, Rob!” Parme threw down his fork. It landed in his breakfast pile. From across the room, Barb shot Gilbert a disapproving glance, which he tried to ignore. “Tell me you didn’t find anything so we don’t have a goddam paper trail that requires us to start reporting to every law enforcement authority in the country.”
Gilbert hadn’t considered that. In the aftermath of 9-11, all law enforcement agencies were tasked with improved communication and collaboration, which meant that management was tasked with measuring said communication and collaboration efforts, which meant more paperwork. In most cases a lot more. The result had been the typical unintended consequence that the agencies actually collaborated less to avoid the deluge of paperwork involved. But in light of what he had discovered overnight, it occurred to Gilbert that it might be worth it in this case. He decided to tell him everything quickly, in an attempt to get it all out before his partner pulled his service revolver and shot him.
There were 23 names on the list, not counting the victim in their case. Of those, 18 were not in the database, 4 were currently registered as missing in one or more of the three databases and 1 was the subject of an active murder investigation. He had requested a copy of the file from the state police.
Parme didn’t say anything, so Gilbert told him the rest.
“I figured that just because the names weren’t in our database didn’t mean they shouldn’t be, so I took the list down to Becky Carter to see if she could find out if they matched anyone living in our jurisdiction and what connections, if any, there were between them. Becky works in crime stats down…”
“I know who the fuck she is. What else?” Parme’s tone was low and dangerous.
“I did some research on the symbol on the front of the book. It doesn’t match anything we have in the gang sign database or any of the graphics libraries we have, but it reminded me of something I came across in college, so I did a pattern matching search and came up with this,” Gilbert pulled the folded up sheets of paper from his pocket, pushed his uneaten breakfast out of the way and unfolded one in front of his partner.
“What the hell is that?”
“It’s called the Sigillum Dei, or Seal of God. It dates back to the late Middle Ages, 15th Century or so. As you can see, the symbol is quite complex and is composed of two circles, a pentagram, and three heptagons.”
“Stop,” Parme growled. “What the fuck are you talking about? This doesn’t look anything like what was scratched into that book.”
“Well, right, it doesn’t really, but look at this.” Gilbert unfolded another piece of paper.
“What kind of crap classes did you take in college?” Parme asked.
“I don’t know, it was all part of the pre-law curriculum,” he replied.
“Why did you take pre-law to be a cop?”
“I didn’t.” Gilbert finished smoothing out the sheet. “This is the print out of the picture I took with my camera phone. The lighting wasn’t good, there’s a shadow…” Parme made a gutteral sound that served to speed up his partner’s explanation. “See how these marks along the inside of the circle line up with the vertices of the heptagons.”
Parmes eyes rose slowly from the pages to his partner. There was great menace in them.
“Look,” Gilbert said, quickly unfolding a third sheet of paper. “Here is a printout with the camera phone image in red over the Seal in black and white. Look at the overlap. It’s perfect.”
Parme glanced at the printout and then went back to his eggs. “It doesn’t look anything like it.”
Gilbert looked more closely at his work. “Well, you’re right, but that may have been the point. In the Middle Ages, occultists would often bend religious symbols to their own use by changing them. The most famous is the pentagram, but we also see it in the upside down cross and the use of cups as a suit in the Tarot. Although some say the Tarot pre-dates…”
“Will you shut the fuck up,” Parme said. He voice was calm, uncharacteristically so. It made Gilbert lower the paper he was studying and look at his partner. Parme went on calmly. “What you’re talking is a bunch of horse shit and it doesn’t have anything to do with this case. This is a bunch of crazy shit that anyone can look up on the Internet, which is exactly what Eagan did. It all plays into his defense strategy. Besides, there were no occult symbols identified at the crime scene and Wayne’s team handled it so we know he would have found them.”
Gilbert nodded slowly. It made sense that if this were part of the case and had any link to the murder, there would have been some sign at the crime scene. He also had to admit to himself that if it had been there, Singleton and his team would have uncovered it. If they knew what they were looking for.
“Now, let’s forget about your middle ages art class and focus on the case,” Parme said.
“Okay, it’s just that…” Gilbert began.
“Jesus Christ! Who did you share this with?”
“Just an old friend from college. He wasn’t in pre-law, but we crossed paths in Medieval Signs and Symbols. It was a psych class really, focused on how mass psychology is impacted…”
“I don’t give a shit.”
“Right. Anyway, he transferred out to a Jesuit school shortly afterward and he actually became a Catholic priest, if you can believe that.”
Parme reached down toward his pistol. The action made Gilbert speak faster.
“His name is Miller, Father Sean Miller and he’s not working with any law enforcement agency...that I know of.”
Parme’s hand returned to the table top carrying his wallet. He raised his other hand over his head for a second, without looking to see if the waitress noticed. She did and made her way over with the check. She dropped it on the table without a word and turned away. Parme pulled out a twenty for an eight dollar check and dropped it on the table. He didn’t look at his partner.
Gilbert realized that, for a second there, he actually thought his partner might shoot him. It was a horrifying realization, but the short burst of endorphins that had resulted from the fact that he hadn’t been fatally wounded by a small caliber weapon at close range emboldened him to change the subject.
“Why do you always tip her so much? She has to be the worse waitress I’ve ever seen.”
Parme pointed to the twenty, “Don’t touch that. I’m going to the office. You’re going home to shower and change. Be back by nine. Then we’ll interview our suspect and put this case to bed before the avalanche of paperwork you’ve created ruins both our careers.”
Parme got up and left without another word. Gilbert shook his head and folded up his notes. He suddenly had a burning desire to take a closer look at the photos Singleton’s team had taken at the crime scene. Just to be sure, he told himself.
Barb reappeared at the table, clearing Parme’s plate and coffee cup. “Can I get you anything else, sweetie?”
Gilbert was shocked by the kindness in the voice of a waitress who hadn’t given him or Parme the time of day in the many weeks they had been meeting there. The surprise must have been visible on his face.
“I’m actually not the worst waitress you’ve ever seen.” Gilbert felt himself turning red. “I’m the best. I know all of my customers and I treat them exactly the way they want to be treated.”
Gilbert had to admit, that made sense. Her borderline rude behavior was just the kind of service Parme would reward.
“I’m sorry, I thought…”
“No, you didn’t,” she answered brightly. “But then, thinking about me isn’t your job, is it? You haven’t touched your breakfast. You want something else? We have pie.”
Gilbert reached into his pocket and pulled out the first bill he touched. It was a five. He dropped it on the table and started to get up. “No thanks, Barb. I have to go try to save my job.”
She laughed. It was a surprisingly youthful and pleasant sound coming from a woman who had to be well past the halfway mark. “The name is Pat. Barb hasn’t worked here in years. And you don’t have to worry about keeping your job. Just keep on doing what you’re doing and Wally will stay happy.”
“Wally? Happy? He almost shot me.”
Pat, the waitress Gilbert had previously thought of as Barb, because that’s how she had been labeled, laughed again. “He was impressed. You didn’t notice?” Gilbert's mouth fell open.
She grabbed up the two bills and the check from the table and turned back toward the cash register with a smile. “You really are new, aren’t you?”
Read Part 6
Tuesday, March 4, 2014
4. A Watcher in the Night
Read from the beginning
Read Part 3
Most of the noise Singleton’s team had been making in the fourth floor apartment had been reduced to a low roar by midnight and the other residents on that floor found their way to bed. The only exception was a young man by the name of Mark Boyle who lived in apartment 407. He worked second shift and didn’t even get home until after midnight. By then, the hallway had been cleared, the yellow tape was gone and the team was leaving Eagan’s apartment and heading down to the basement to finish up there.
Boyle passed a couple of the techs on the stairwell, but didn’t pay them any attention. He entered his apartment unaware of the excitement his neighbors had enjoyed earlier in the evening. He watched television until well past 2:00 A.M. and fell asleep on the couch.
At about that time, in the apartment directly below him, Sandy Gallagher got out of bed and without turning on any of the lights made her way to the window and looked down into the street directly in front of the building.
She watched Singleton walk down the steps and out to his car. Then she watched Gilbert as he headed toward his own vehicle and then stopped.
She watched him from her dark bedroom as he turned around to stare at the building. As she watched, she cataloged his features and clothing. She studied his stance and then watched him walk to his vehicle and finally drive away.
Then, calmly, she returned to her bed and closed her eyes. She didn’t have to fall back asleep because she had never been awake.
Read Part 5
Read Part 3
Most of the noise Singleton’s team had been making in the fourth floor apartment had been reduced to a low roar by midnight and the other residents on that floor found their way to bed. The only exception was a young man by the name of Mark Boyle who lived in apartment 407. He worked second shift and didn’t even get home until after midnight. By then, the hallway had been cleared, the yellow tape was gone and the team was leaving Eagan’s apartment and heading down to the basement to finish up there.
Boyle passed a couple of the techs on the stairwell, but didn’t pay them any attention. He entered his apartment unaware of the excitement his neighbors had enjoyed earlier in the evening. He watched television until well past 2:00 A.M. and fell asleep on the couch.
At about that time, in the apartment directly below him, Sandy Gallagher got out of bed and without turning on any of the lights made her way to the window and looked down into the street directly in front of the building.
She watched Singleton walk down the steps and out to his car. Then she watched Gilbert as he headed toward his own vehicle and then stopped.
She watched him from her dark bedroom as he turned around to stare at the building. As she watched, she cataloged his features and clothing. She studied his stance and then watched him walk to his vehicle and finally drive away.
Then, calmly, she returned to her bed and closed her eyes. She didn’t have to fall back asleep because she had never been awake.
Read Part 5
Sunday, March 2, 2014
3. Done for the Night...Almost
Read from the beginning
Read Part 2
Gilbert and Singleton were the last to leave the scene. Gilbert had stopped thinking of it as a crime scene since there was no evidence that any crime had been committed here. Unless there was an ordinance against open flames near piles of old wooden furniture in the basements of apartment buildings. There probably was one, now that he thought about it, but it wasn’t worth staying at work until -- Gilbert glanced down at his watch -- 2:37 A.M.
Gilbert had stayed with Singleton and his team as they photographed, bagged and cataloged everything they could in the basement and up in the fourth floor apartment. It was time consuming work that could easily spell the difference between a case that stood up in court and one that failed on a technicality. Gilbert was impressed with Singleton and his team. He made sure to tell him so.
By the time they were finished, the most interesting thing they recovered from the scene was the book. It was interesting, but Gilbert wasn’t sure yet if it was a clue for use in his ongoing murder case.
He shook hands goodbye with Singleton, pushed open the apartment building’s front door and headed out into the night.
Only a gentle breeze blew now and it didn’t seem as cold. Before it left, the wind had spread a light sheen of snow over the neighborhood. The white crystals that covered the roadway and small yards that fronted the other apartment buildings diffused the glow from the streetlights and made everything brighter, like a night under the full moon he remembered from the small farm town he grew up in. But there was no moon out tonight.
Singleton passed him and moved on down the front stairs, promising to call him tomorrow with any results or insights. Gilbert mumbled his appreciation and followed. At the bottom of the steps, something stopped him and he turned around to regard the building.
It could have been any one of a dozen similar multifamily dwellings in this part of town, with nothing to distinguish it from the others but the numbers on the wall beside the glass front door. But there was definitely something different about this one. This one was home to a man who had dreamed up the name of an 18-year-old murder victim while allegedly sleepwalking in the basement of his building, five stories below his bed.
He got behind the wheel of the Ford Crown Victoria the city had provided for him and fired up the engine. It took a second for the wipers to clear the snow crystals off the windshield. The apartment building came into view as the thin black wipers drove away the snow. It stood there silently, giving up no secrets. He pulled out into the street and headed home.
In truth, it was all but inconceivable that there was any connection between the man who lived in this building and the murdered girl, Gilbert admitted to himself. Eagen could have heard her name on the news and then wrote it out of his subconscious later. The murder, at least the information that had been released about it thus far, had made it into the papers. At least one reporter was still working on the story, if tonight’s visitor was any indication. Logic told him that Eagan could not possibly be connected, but protocol demanded that every lead be investigated.
In a flash, he was back in school. Step one: list the known facts.
Fact one: Paula Kelly, 18, left a high school sporting event to walk home, was reported missing approximately 48 hours later, was located approximately 72 hours after that by a janitor employed by the school in an outbuilding used by the high school to store track and field equipment. She was dead.
Fact two: The manner of her death and subsequent dismemberment were such that the killer could only have been a complete sociopath, almost certainly insane. It was a messy, disorganized crime scene that didn’t fit the profiles of professional murderers. If it was a crime of passion, the passion was extreme anger and it had lasted a long time.
Fact three: No one present at the game, working at the school or living in her neighborhood had seen or heard from her anytime after the game ended that Friday night.
Working under the assumption that anyone capable of committing such a violent murder may have a history of mental instability and prior convictions, the detectives ordered a list of all known offenders and had begun to work it down, checking alibis with the goal of flagging anyone who didn’t have a good enough story about where they were that Friday night. So far, they had uncovered no leads. But there were plenty of names on the list and the work continued.
What they did have was plenty of forensic evidence, including a large amount of DNA information that the lab assured them belonged to someone other than the victim. There were also a number of partial fingerprints in the blood splattered around the shed. It appeared that the killer wore no gloves. No matches to either the partials or the DNA had been uncovered in the local database, nor those of the state police or the FBI. The work continued.
So far, everything he’d learned and experienced about police work had taught him that anything that happened, at least in our modern world, left behind clues. All one had to do to solve any crime was to systematically obtain the clues and decipher their meaning. The more clues you could collect, the faster you could solve the case.
Of course, it always helped if your perpetrator made mistakes. That could quickly reduce the time it took to move from crime scene to collar to arraignment. Anyone who had already made as many mistakes as were present at the crime scene would, sooner or later, make more. Then, they would have him.
Of course, his own history had taught him that solving a case and convicting criminals were not the same thing. Sometimes, you had all the clues and you knew exactly what had happened but you still couldn’t convince a prosecutor, a judge and a jury to return a guilty verdict. There was still the shadow of a doubt to contend with. That shadow had cost him someone very special once.
Well, technically, that wasn’t true, he reminded himself, hearing the voice of Dr. Willenshow as he did so. He hadn’t seen his therapist in many years and, as far as he knew, no one knew of that old relationship. It was buried deep in the protected court records of a minor. But occasionally, the good doctor’s voice would remind him of important things. In this case, he was reminding him that the case in question had unraveled because the police had done a piss poor job of collecting the evidence at the crime scene. The jury was left with no option but to admit that the prosecution’s case was drenched in doubt. That killer had gone free.
But he had been a killer. Of that, Rob Gilbert had absolutely no doubt.
Years of therapy, college training, experience as a beat cop and plenty of time now separated him from that old case. It had also prepared him to work on the case before him now. And in this case, it seemed, the detectives had another clue. Maybe.
Approximately three weeks after the murder of Paula Kelly, her name had been written on a scrap of parchment by a man who lived on the other side of the city while he was allegedly sleepwalking. How was Eagan connected? What was really written in the notebook? Were the other names also victims? Was Eagan crazy? If so, it could explain his ability to create both a chaotic crime scene and a perfectly organized apartment. If he was involved, why would be surrender himself to the authorities.
The not knowing was starting to eat at him. They needed to know more about this man, Eagan.
With a start, Gilbert released his accelerator, letting his vehicle coast down the empty street. For a moment he was disoriented. This wasn’t his neighborhood. Then he saw the police station building coming up on the left. He shook his head. Damn lucky, he thought. Driving without paying attention is a great way to get killed. He pulled into the lot and parked. He needed coffee, and answers. He exited the car and entered the building.
Read Part 4
Read Part 2
Gilbert and Singleton were the last to leave the scene. Gilbert had stopped thinking of it as a crime scene since there was no evidence that any crime had been committed here. Unless there was an ordinance against open flames near piles of old wooden furniture in the basements of apartment buildings. There probably was one, now that he thought about it, but it wasn’t worth staying at work until -- Gilbert glanced down at his watch -- 2:37 A.M.
Gilbert had stayed with Singleton and his team as they photographed, bagged and cataloged everything they could in the basement and up in the fourth floor apartment. It was time consuming work that could easily spell the difference between a case that stood up in court and one that failed on a technicality. Gilbert was impressed with Singleton and his team. He made sure to tell him so.
By the time they were finished, the most interesting thing they recovered from the scene was the book. It was interesting, but Gilbert wasn’t sure yet if it was a clue for use in his ongoing murder case.
He shook hands goodbye with Singleton, pushed open the apartment building’s front door and headed out into the night.
Only a gentle breeze blew now and it didn’t seem as cold. Before it left, the wind had spread a light sheen of snow over the neighborhood. The white crystals that covered the roadway and small yards that fronted the other apartment buildings diffused the glow from the streetlights and made everything brighter, like a night under the full moon he remembered from the small farm town he grew up in. But there was no moon out tonight.
Singleton passed him and moved on down the front stairs, promising to call him tomorrow with any results or insights. Gilbert mumbled his appreciation and followed. At the bottom of the steps, something stopped him and he turned around to regard the building.
It could have been any one of a dozen similar multifamily dwellings in this part of town, with nothing to distinguish it from the others but the numbers on the wall beside the glass front door. But there was definitely something different about this one. This one was home to a man who had dreamed up the name of an 18-year-old murder victim while allegedly sleepwalking in the basement of his building, five stories below his bed.
He got behind the wheel of the Ford Crown Victoria the city had provided for him and fired up the engine. It took a second for the wipers to clear the snow crystals off the windshield. The apartment building came into view as the thin black wipers drove away the snow. It stood there silently, giving up no secrets. He pulled out into the street and headed home.
In truth, it was all but inconceivable that there was any connection between the man who lived in this building and the murdered girl, Gilbert admitted to himself. Eagen could have heard her name on the news and then wrote it out of his subconscious later. The murder, at least the information that had been released about it thus far, had made it into the papers. At least one reporter was still working on the story, if tonight’s visitor was any indication. Logic told him that Eagan could not possibly be connected, but protocol demanded that every lead be investigated.
In a flash, he was back in school. Step one: list the known facts.
Fact one: Paula Kelly, 18, left a high school sporting event to walk home, was reported missing approximately 48 hours later, was located approximately 72 hours after that by a janitor employed by the school in an outbuilding used by the high school to store track and field equipment. She was dead.
Fact two: The manner of her death and subsequent dismemberment were such that the killer could only have been a complete sociopath, almost certainly insane. It was a messy, disorganized crime scene that didn’t fit the profiles of professional murderers. If it was a crime of passion, the passion was extreme anger and it had lasted a long time.
Fact three: No one present at the game, working at the school or living in her neighborhood had seen or heard from her anytime after the game ended that Friday night.
Working under the assumption that anyone capable of committing such a violent murder may have a history of mental instability and prior convictions, the detectives ordered a list of all known offenders and had begun to work it down, checking alibis with the goal of flagging anyone who didn’t have a good enough story about where they were that Friday night. So far, they had uncovered no leads. But there were plenty of names on the list and the work continued.
What they did have was plenty of forensic evidence, including a large amount of DNA information that the lab assured them belonged to someone other than the victim. There were also a number of partial fingerprints in the blood splattered around the shed. It appeared that the killer wore no gloves. No matches to either the partials or the DNA had been uncovered in the local database, nor those of the state police or the FBI. The work continued.
So far, everything he’d learned and experienced about police work had taught him that anything that happened, at least in our modern world, left behind clues. All one had to do to solve any crime was to systematically obtain the clues and decipher their meaning. The more clues you could collect, the faster you could solve the case.
Of course, it always helped if your perpetrator made mistakes. That could quickly reduce the time it took to move from crime scene to collar to arraignment. Anyone who had already made as many mistakes as were present at the crime scene would, sooner or later, make more. Then, they would have him.
Of course, his own history had taught him that solving a case and convicting criminals were not the same thing. Sometimes, you had all the clues and you knew exactly what had happened but you still couldn’t convince a prosecutor, a judge and a jury to return a guilty verdict. There was still the shadow of a doubt to contend with. That shadow had cost him someone very special once.
Well, technically, that wasn’t true, he reminded himself, hearing the voice of Dr. Willenshow as he did so. He hadn’t seen his therapist in many years and, as far as he knew, no one knew of that old relationship. It was buried deep in the protected court records of a minor. But occasionally, the good doctor’s voice would remind him of important things. In this case, he was reminding him that the case in question had unraveled because the police had done a piss poor job of collecting the evidence at the crime scene. The jury was left with no option but to admit that the prosecution’s case was drenched in doubt. That killer had gone free.
But he had been a killer. Of that, Rob Gilbert had absolutely no doubt.
Years of therapy, college training, experience as a beat cop and plenty of time now separated him from that old case. It had also prepared him to work on the case before him now. And in this case, it seemed, the detectives had another clue. Maybe.
Approximately three weeks after the murder of Paula Kelly, her name had been written on a scrap of parchment by a man who lived on the other side of the city while he was allegedly sleepwalking. How was Eagan connected? What was really written in the notebook? Were the other names also victims? Was Eagan crazy? If so, it could explain his ability to create both a chaotic crime scene and a perfectly organized apartment. If he was involved, why would be surrender himself to the authorities.
The not knowing was starting to eat at him. They needed to know more about this man, Eagan.
With a start, Gilbert released his accelerator, letting his vehicle coast down the empty street. For a moment he was disoriented. This wasn’t his neighborhood. Then he saw the police station building coming up on the left. He shook his head. Damn lucky, he thought. Driving without paying attention is a great way to get killed. He pulled into the lot and parked. He needed coffee, and answers. He exited the car and entered the building.
Read Part 4
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)