“It wasn’t that well planned out,” Walsh argued. “If he had repaired the power line before leaving, it’s possible customers would’ve seen Brandley’s corpse spinning around in that exhibit.”
“I don’t think that was important to him. He left Ms. Brandley the way he did for the police, not for the public. And of course, for you, Morris.”
“What about that message?” Morris asked.
“He wants you involved.”
“For what purpose? As a challenge?”
Finston shrugged her thin shoulders. “I don’t know. The killer has worked out some sort of overarching, grandiose story that he wants to impress the world with, and for some reason he’s included you to be part of it.”
Greg Malevich cleared his throat loudly enough to get everyone’s attention. “What if it’s not a serial killer,” he said. “Why couldn’t it be someone who wanted Heather Brandley dead, and came up with this to have us chasing after a serial killer who doesn’t exist?”
“It’s not impossible, and it should be looked into,” Finston conceded. “But given the elaborate measures that went into this killing, the other scenario is far more likely. I’m confident that we’ll be hearing from the ME that Ms. Brandley was drugged and unconscious when she was murdered, and that will also support that we’re dealing with a serial killer who will be killing again soon.”
“Why is that?” Malevich asked, unconvinced.
“Because I believe our killer is only interested in telling his story, and not in the pain he inflicts on his victims.”
Malevich mumbled something under his breath indicating that he still wasn’t convinced. Morris asked Finston, “Assuming you’re right and this is what it looks like, what happens if I don’t get involved?”
“He’ll make you get involved.”
“How?”
“He’ll start targeting people close to you.”
That was the answer Morris both expected and dreaded. Before he could say anything else, Walsh’s cell phone vibrated as it sat on the conference table. After a quick glance at the phone, Walsh informed the room that it was Roger Smichen. She answered the call, putting the phone on speaker. Walsh told the ME who was in the room.
Finston spoke up. “Hi Roger,” she said. “It’s me, Gloria Finston from the FBI. We worked together six months ago. Was the victim drugged?”
“Yes. There was enough pentobarbital in her system to have induced a coma. It might even have been the cause of death.”
“So in your opinion she was unconscious when she was killed?”
“Yes, without a doubt.”
“How easy is it to obtain pentobarbital?” Morris asked.
“It’s a schedule two drug. The FBI can answer that better than I can.”
“Anything else you can tell us?” Walsh asked.
“The best I can do is a three-hour window for time of death, putting it between five p.m. and eight p.m. yesterday. I started having thoughts after all of you left that a guillotine-type device might’ve been used, but on closer examination I was right the first time. A circular saw was used. Twenty-four-inch blade. No other indications of trauma or injury. I was unable to find a needle mark, so she was injected on a part of her body that we don’t possess.” Smichen’s voice dropped off before he added almost apologetically, “Her stomach was shorn open by the saw, and the contents must’ve been lost then, so I can’t tell you what she ate last. That’s about it, other than the plastic sheeting glued to her body. This was done meticulously. Almost surgically. I found no other foreign substance on her.”
Walsh said, “The perp must’ve cleaned her off after killing her.”
“Most likely. Look folks, I’ve got other bodies piling up here, so I’ve got to beg off this call.”
A click could be heard as Smichen disconnected the call from his end. Finston showed Morris another of her v smiles and asked what it was that was weighing so heavily on him.
“I can’t fool a profiler, can I?” Morris said.
“None that I know who work for the FBI.”
“I’ll take your word on it. I’m also guessing you already know what I want to ask you.”
“I think I do. Whether we have a better chance of catching the killer if you join the investigation and keep him on script, or if you don’t so that he attempts to improvise other murders to draw you in.”
“Very good,” Morris said.
Finston looked pleased with herself. “Even if we ignore the value that you and your team would bring to the investigation, we would be better keeping him on script. He would be more predictable that way, and I’m sure the other murders he has planned are as complex and risky as this one, which makes it more likely that he’ll make a mistake and give himself away. Also, no matter what we might say in a press release, he’s going to want to verify for himself that you’re involved, which means he’ll be watching for you at one of his future murder sites.”
“We need to have someone shadowing me and looking for him.”
“Exactly.”
Morris mulled this over. He wasn’t sure whether Finston was leveling with him or telling him only what he wanted to hear as a way to ease his conscience. If he forced this killer off script by refusing to play his game, and the killer chose someone close to Morris to force his hand, the police could be watching for that and would have a reasonably good chance of trapping this psycho. After the Malibu Butcher case, Morris had promised Natalie that MBI wouldn’t take on any more murder investigations, and for his own well-being he didn’t want to get near another serial killer, but he wasn’t going to allow his wife or his daughter Rachel to be used as staked goats no matter how much police protection they were given. He knew the moment he read Gilman’s text message that he was going to have to take this assignment no matter how much he had tried kidding himself otherwise.
His voice flat, Morris asked, “Let’s say MBI gets involved and we keep this killer on script. Couldn’t he still target someone close to me?”
“I don’t believe so. If he were planning to do that, I think he would’ve done it with his first murder. He has a specific story he wants to tell with these murders, and I’m confident that as long as you cooperate and play nice, he’ll stick to only telling his story.”
Morris took a deep, long breath through his nose and told Doug Gilman, “MBI’s available if you want to hire us.”
Chapter 10
The meeting lasted another half hour as Morris and the rest of the team worked out a game plan. The LAPD would continue to pull whatever traffic and surveillance video recordings they could locate within a five-mile radius of Star Wax in the hopes of finding vehicle license plates that were captured between three and three fifteen a.m. While no one thought it was likely that the killer was named R. G. Berg, that lead still had to be investigated, and Polk, with help from several LAPD detectives, would take that on. Morris agreed with Malevich that it was worth investigating the crime as a murder that was dressed up to look like something else, and so Malevich would go after it from that angle and would look for suspects who might’ve had a motive for killing Heather Brandley. The FBI would attempt to identify stores that sold the scaffolding materials the killer used to support Brandley’s body. Finally, Morris and Walsh would try to piece together Brandley’s movements from the day before in