MOSAICS: A Thriller Read online

  Olsen’s wife originally said that the night Callahan was murdered her husband had gone out to walk the dog, but the dog had come back on its own. After being pulped by her husband, she retracted everything and claimed her husband never left the house that night. Olsen was booked for the assault and aggravated battery of his wife and was currently serving five years in Centinela. Despite not a single scrap of Callahan’s DNA had turned up from Olsen’s possessions, both the investigators and the prosecutor had no doubt he’d done Callahan in and let the case go cold.

  I turned to the autopsy report.

  With the exception of the fingernail marks, Callahan’s face looked strikingly similar to Amy’s. In both murders, the cause of death was strangulation, the mode homicide, and the manner unknown. Callahan’s skull was fractured at the side, consistent with a fall. Hair and blood had been found on a cinder brick where he’d been attacked. The assassin had strangulated him from behind and let him fall and hit his head. Tox results on Callahan’s face had yielded sulfuric acid, lye, and potassium hydroxide.

  He’d been whacked with a drain cleaner.

  A note at the end of Callahan’s autopsy report stated that the deceased was HIV positive and taking anti-retroviral drugs. Something at the back of my head told me this was an important detail, but somehow I couldn’t come up with a specific reason, so I let it drift.

  On the other hand, no tiles had been found near Callahan’s body and no skin flaps had been removed from his body. Amy had been murdered in her house, while Callahan outside, in a well-hidden spot: the complex’s dumpster was secluded in a nook between the south wall of the building, which only had frosted bathroom windows at higher levels, and a high cinder block wall that separated it from the next-door property. Still, if this turned out to be the same killer, in Callahan’s case he probably felt in a hurry to leave and didn’t have the time to indulge in any trophy collection.

  I sucked on the paperclip and considered the odds. A gay man versus a medical doctor. Burnt alive versus spared the agony. The act itself was remarkably different: Amy’s assassin tortured her and took pleasure in it. Callahan’s killer went for domination first. An escalation in rage or a copycat? Could the similarities be just coincidences? And if it really was a copycat, why go through all the trouble of reproducing the crime almost identically, and then leave the four tiles as a distinct signature?

  Vargas’s rugged smell wafted my way. I watched a uniformed officer escort him out of the squad room. Hands deep in his pockets, Satish came to lean against his desk.

  “The girlfriend confirmed his story,” he said.

  I rolled the paperclip around my teeth. “He coming back for a poly?”

  “He said he’d think about it. We know where to find him. And we’ve got his voice on tape for comparison with the nine-one-one call. Worth a try. What’d you think of his story?”

  I crossed my arms, my skepticism written in bold letters all over my face. “That she was no nun he could’ve figured out by himself. And at that point, he would’ve given us anything just to make us happy and not spill the beans to his parole agent. However,” I clicked the paperclip against my teeth. “The streetlight wasn’t working, I noticed that too. He wouldn’t make that up. He was there at night, for sure. To do what—that’s what we need to find out.”

  Sat let out a long sigh, slid behind his desk, and opened Amy Liu’s murder book.

  I leaned forward and pressed my point. “This guy has a rap sheet, a prior, and worked at the vic’s place. And yet we have nothing on him because the little we had we flushed down the toilet. We could’ve booked him and let his parole agent grill him.”

  Satish donned his reading glasses and flipped through the murder book. “He’s not our man, Track. His second alibi checks, too.”

  I spit out the paperclip. “What second alibi?”

  Sat tilted his head toward Gomez’s office. “An old acquaintance of yours. Forensic psychiatrist Adam Washburn.”

  * * *

  Dr. Adam Washburn wore a Darwinian beard to compensate for his shiny baldness. Heedless of the heat in our prehistoric building, he wore a long-sleeved shirt with no tie. And he didn’t sweat. Not a drop of perspiration, not a hint of a scent other than the laundry detergent from his clothes. He sat at one end of the table and placed a notepad and a blue folder side to side in front of him. He waited for the rest of us to gather around the table while pinching the tuft of hairs sprouting under his lower lip, his pate glistening under the fluorescent lights.

  Gomez’s forehead looked like a mushroom top beaded with morning dew. He took the seat next to Washburn and rubbed one eye so hard I thought the other one was going to pop out of its socket. Satish and I sat across the table from the two of them, me still miffed about the inconclusive interview with Vargas, and Sat as unscathed as ever. I leaned casually toward Washburn and took a long sniff in his direction.

  Nada. The man didn’t have a smell.

  Freaked the hell out of me.

  Gomez tapped the table with his pen and checked his watch. “We’re still waiting for Detective Courtney Henkins, from Northeast Community. She was lead on the Callahan murder case.” He exhaled his usual whiff of halitosis and sighed. “Let’s go over what we’ve got so far, shall we?”

  Wobbling his head, Satish gave a brief summary of the crime scene, field interviews, and the declarations left by the witnesses on Amy’s case, topping it with Vargas’s profile and the little chat we just had with the guy. Over the whole account, Washburn pinched the hairs beneath his lower lip, eyes fixed on either his notepad or the crime scene diagrams in the open murder book. He spent a long time staring at the autopsy pictures and, from to time, scribbled a handful of words on his notepad in a convoluted and illegible handwriting.

  Only when Satish had finally covered everything did Washburn raise his gray eyes, deep set beneath eaves of gray brows, and said, “I don’t believe Vargas is your killer.”

  I straightened up, but before I could utter any word of protest, the door sprang open.

  “Sorry I’m late.” A short, hefty woman strode inside the room and noisily dragged a chair away from the table. “Henkins,” she said, taking a seat. “Northeast Community.” She peered through small, blue eyes, a defiant face parched like a fig after a drought. “So. What did I miss?”

  She smelled of whiskey, dog drool, and lull days spent at the beach.

  Jeez, I need to retire too.

  Despite Washburn’s icy presence, the temperature in the room rose drastically. Lady cops are a breed on their own. They want to be treated equally, which means there’s no way to handle them right. If you assume they’re gay, turns out they’re not, but if you don’t, sure as hell they are.

  Satish broke the silence. He wore his most polished smile, leaned across the table, and stretched out his hand. “Satish Cooper,” he said, over Henkins’s unconvinced handshake. “And this is my partner, Track Presius. We took over the Liu case and were hoping to learn more from you about the Callahan murder.”

  A classy man, my partner.

  Henkins sized him up. “You a lady’s man, ain’t you? Sure, I can tell you about the Callahan case. It generated a lot of hoopla last January. It was a career case. The press was all over it, all the boys in the division wanted it, and I was the one in line to get the call. They stuck me with a gung-ho rookie who did his best to ruin the case, and then they all shrugged when it became yet another sixty-dayer to turn in.” She leaned forward on the table and crossed her arms. “Anything else you’d like to know?”

  I fetched a paperclip from my pocket, straightened it, and stuck it in my mouth. “Poodle?” I asked.

  She cocked her head and studied my face. “Terrier,” she replied.

  “Female,” I said.

  Henkins indulged in a hint of a smile. “Name’s Pearl. Got her from the shelter five years ago.”

  I reciprocated the courtesy. “Mine’s a mutt. Half shepherd, half Labrador. Do you believe Olsen killed Callahan?�
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  The hinted smile disintegrated. “We all did at the time, didn’t we?”

  At the other end of the table, a long wrinkle bolted across Gomez’s forehead. “Well, then,” he said. “Now that we’ve greased our way across divisions and established a path of collaboration, maybe Dr. Washburn can proceed to expose his thoughts on the kind of offender we’re dealing with.”

  Washburn cleared his throat. He took two pictures of the bodies, placed them side-to-side in the middle of the table, and said, “There’s a good chance we’re dealing with the same offender.”

  The wave of heat Henkins had brought in chilled instantly.

  “Well that’s good news,” Henkins said. “You guys get to reopen my sixty dayer.”

  Eyes fixed on the two photos in front of him, Washburn pried open the killer’s mind for us, and the more he talked, the more I became convinced the shrink had a secret admiration for the asshole we were trying to catch.

  “This offender is organized and methodical. He’s smart, possibly highly educated and well inserted in society. Think of individuals like Dr. Michael Swango, a physician and former US Marine. Or Dennis Rader, the BTK strangler: he was in the air force for four years, happily married, and a deacon in his local parish. By destroying the victim’s face, our killer dominates his prey. He wants to annihilate his victims’ identity, make them a nobody.”

  A respectful silence followed. Gomez doodled pensively while running a hand across his wide forehead. Henkins bobbed her head in assent. Washburn drained his glass of water and resumed his spiel. “He probably takes his time after each killing. He’s still rehearsing his ritual, as demonstrated by the escalation in the second killing. To offenders like this one, a crime scene is a work of art. It becomes his shrine. He’s still practicing, though. He didn’t get enough satisfaction from the first kill, not enough attention. So this time he leaves us a message, the four tiles. Why four? What do the colors mean? I’m afraid we won’t be able to answer these questions until he kills again.

  “There’s no sexual act. No rape, no sign he masturbates at the scene. His orgasm is reached with the kill. We’re looking at somebody with a dominating mother and an absent or indifferent father.

  “His interest in the second victim’s feet and scalp is fascinating. I wonder if we’re dealing with another foot fetish, like Jerry Brudos. I see a man who’s struggling with his emotions. He wants more from each victim, exploring new ways to get greater pleasure. Searching for new ways to get his orgasm, if you will. I can see the violence escalating, moving up to full mutilation. Taking the scalp could be just the beginning. The cooling off period between killings may shorten. He’s already gone from using the acid on the body to marring the victim while still alive. Next time, he might take the victim’s feet as souvenirs, to relive the pleasure. When the police searched Brudos’s home, they found two amputated breasts he was using as paperweights. This is how these offenders operate. Our killer is not there yet. He’s still learning.”

  “One hell of a learning experience,” I said.

  Washburn shunned me with his glacial stare, while his index finger caressed the corner of one of the autopsy photos. “We’re just seeing the tip of the iceberg, Detectives. This offender has killed before—maybe got to practice with pets, or prostitutes—and I have no doubt he will kill again.”

  From a dark corner in my head, a voice whispered in my ear.

  Once a killer, always a killer.

  The voice smelled of rusty metal and rancid food, of stiff air, moldy walls and ancient sweat, of—

  Washburn snapped his folder closed. “Expect more killings. These offenders are predators and summer is their hunting season.”

  And with that, the temperature in the room dropped to freezing.

  No wonder Washburn never yielded a drop of sweat.

  * * *

  Satish shook his head. “Breasts as paperweights. How sick is that?”

  “By the end of the meeting I could’ve used my balls as a door stop,” I replied.

  “Still not getting along with Washburn, are you?”

  “The man doesn’t have a scent.”

  He lined the little boxes of Chinese take-out on his desk and laughed. Wafts of chicken, steamed rice and tempura tickled my nostrils.

  “Come on,” I said. “So Vargas’s not our man and we need to look for an educated and polished guy with a double life. Are we supposed to take all this as gospel?”

  Satish split his chopsticks and dipped them into his rice box. “I’m with Washburn on this one, Track. South Central was my beat for five years back when I was a street copper. People out there die for nothing. A carjacking, a drive-by, a dispute over dealing turf. They shoot and run. They don’t do acid—that kind of acid anyway.” He pointed the chopsticks at me. “This ain’t a South Central crime.”

  The sun was coming down, blinking through the Venetian blinds and bathing the walls in a warm, pinkish light.

  I dug into my box of teriyaki. Save for the watch commander, the squad room had already been vacated. A few Rape Special detectives were working late in the room next door, dicks like us beating the trail while still hot.

  “For that matter,” I said, plopping a chunk of beef in my mouth, “this ain’t a sexual crime, either, despite what scent-less Washburn says. He may have all those books to back him up, and all those hours spent picking brains back at the joint, but I’ve got my practical experience.”

  “It doesn’t have to be rape to be sexual.”

  “That’s not what I’m saying. Think about the Broadway murder, two summers ago. Victim found sprawled on the floor, naked, stabbed twenty-nine times, of which fourteen in the groin. Her clothes were never found.”

  Sat took a long swig of Coke. “I remember that. The killer stabbed her eyes, too. There’s no knife here, but there’s acid, which serves the same purpose.”

  I made a face. “Yeah, but he takes off the socks and then backs away. What the hell, now that he’s killed her he gets frigid?”

  “You’ve heard Washburn. The guy’s still exploring.”

  I swallowed another chunk of meat. “The Jane Doe down in Baldwin. Naked, again, stabbed in the groin and chest. Left breast missing, right nipple bitten off. Sat, these perps go for the stuff they can’t get from women—that’s why they kill them. Our guy isn’t interested in any of that. He’s got a different agenda, and he leaves the tiles behind to tease us.”

  Satish shrugged, my argument no more convincing than Washburn’s. “He’s just not there yet. He’s got a repressed Oedipus complex.”

  “Bullshit. Guesswork based on some theory that we all want to murder our fathers and fuck our mothers.” I scraped the bottom of my food box and sucked the last noodle. “Oedipus’s myth isn’t about that.”

  Sat squashed his box, drained his Coke, then tossed everything in the trash. “No? What’s it about, then?”

  “About a bunch of fools who thought they could get away from their own fate. Truth is, no matter how hard you try, your fate is always gonna come back to bite your ass.”

  Satish crossed his arms and leaned back, one of his dreamy smiles plastered across his face. “Sounds like somethin’ my old man would’ve said.”

  He said nothing else for a little while, the skin between his brows pinched together like pizza dough. “You know what this reminds me of, Track?”

  I rose and slid my jacket on. “Can’t wait to hear it,” I said.

  He gave me a puzzled look. “Jeez. You missed me that bad, huh?”

  “In some twisted sort of way.”

  Our steps resonated in the deserted hallway.

  Strange night to be catching a faceless killer.

  Satish was lost in one of his stories. “It reminds me of prasada,” he said.

  But then again, all killers are faceless and all summer nights have a tendency to be strange.

  “Prasada?” I repeated.

  Satish pressed the elevator call button and bobbed his head. “It means
‘cooking for the gods.’ It’s a big deal in India. There’s a whole ritual that goes with it: you have to thoroughly wash before and after cooking. You can’t taste the food while you make it. You’re supposed to meditate and pray as you cook. And you can’t eat until after the gods have eaten.”

  “Good luck with that.”

  The elevator chimed, the doors slid open and we stepped inside. “As always, you miss the point, Track. Ma would make rasgulla to please the gods. She’d place two or three in a special plate and set the plate in front of the altar. After that, we’d all bow our heads and close our eyes while she’d recite Om Namo Narayanaya over the rumble of our empty stomachs. When done reciting all prayers, she’d return the food to the kitchen and we could finally eat.”

  “So, the gods wouldn’t literally eat the food?”

  Satish winked. “Except one time they did.”

  We exited the elevator. The lobby was dimly lit and had the distinct smell of old building material and wood decay, mixed with remnants of fried beans from back when the cafeteria was there.

  Outside, hot air yawned in our faces. I jingled my car keys and pondered. It was past dinnertime, the honks of traffic had tapered off, and downtown was cloaked in a hazy sunset. Cruisers at the end of their shifts turned into the San Pedro parking lot, while others left to prowl the night beats. Pink clouds spilled into the sky and reflected off the glass façade of Parker Center.

  “Ma threw a fit when she opened her eyes and one ball of rasgulla was missing. And then she started the investigation. Except, she already knew the perpetrator.”