Lawyer Trap

22





DAY FOUR–SEPTEMBER 8

THURSDAY


Teffinger was still working the crime scene at the railroad spur when Davica called. “I saw the news,” she said, “about finding two more bodies. So I’m ready to accept your apology for thinking I was involved with any of it.”

Teffinger smiled.

“Who is this?”

“Not funny,” she said. “Come over tonight. I have something to show you.” She hung up before he could say anything.

Sydney showed up a few minutes later, walking toward him with a Cheshire Cat grin on her face. “Good news,” she said, handing him three pieces of paper—black-and-white printouts of a young woman talking on a payphone. “That’s your anonymous caller.”

“You sure?”

“Positive,” she said. “This is definitely the phone used for the call, and the time on the security camera tape exactly matches the time of the call, from start to end. Plus she looks stressed.”

Teffinger was impressed.

“Good work,” he said. “I suppose now you think I owe you lunch or something.”

She punched him in the arm.

“Lunch? Dinner at a minimum,” she said. “Got some more news for you too. The head definitely belongs to Rachel Ringer, like our caller-friend said.”

“Any word yet who the other one is? The one without the eyes?”

“Nada.”

Teffinger studied the caller’s face again.

“Let’s get a press conference set up ASAP,” he said. “I want her photo on the five o’clock news. She’s up to her eyeballs in this and I want to know how.”

Sydney shook her head.

“If all I’m getting out of this is a lunch …”

“You’re also being paid, don’t forget.”

“Right, but I would be extra motivated if there was a dinner involved.”

Teffinger held his hands up in surrender.

“Okay,” he said. “Fine. But this is blackmail, for the record.”

She smiled. “Black female, actually. I choose the restaurant.”

Ouch.

“Just be sure they have a two-for-one special.” He looked at his watch for the first time in hours: 3:25. Shit. “I got to run,” he said over his shoulder. “Be back in an hour.”

He headed over to see how Marilyn Black was coming along. It was turning out that she was more alone in the world than he first thought. Her father skipped out when she was just a baby. Marilyn ran away from home when she was fifteen and had been on the streets ever since.

When he walked into her room she was asleep.

He held her hand for a half hour and then told the orderly, “Be sure she knows I was here.”

On his way back to the railroad spur, Teffinger called Leigh Sandt, Ph.D., the FBI profiler who had proved to be so invaluable on both the David Hallenbeck and Nathan Wickersham cases. She was a Supervisory Special Agent assigned to the National Center for the Analysis of Violent Crime (NCAVC) at Quantico, Virginia. Luckily, he actually got her on the line. As usual, she listened patiently as he explained the situation.

“The thing that puzzles me the most is the four different methods of murder,” he said, referring to stabbing, beheading, suffocation, and slitting of the throat. “Oh,” he added, “I almost forgot to tell you, the last one we found—the one with the slit throat—had her eyes gouged out too. We haven’t found them yet. The guy ate them for all we know.”

She asked a number of questions.

The ages of the victims.

Physical descriptions.

Similarities.

“This is a tough one,” she said. “Given the widely divergent causes of death, I’m leaning towards multiple murderers, maybe a cult of some kind, or a gang initiation. But I’m also not inclined yet to totally rule out one murderer—maybe someone with multiple personalities, or one personality but multiple fantasies.” She cleared her throat and added, “Looks like you’re going to be all over the news again.”

Unfortunately, that was true.

“It’s already getting big,” he said. “And they don’t even know yet that a head was cut off and that eyes were gouged out.”

“That’ll leak out,” she said.

“Probably,” he agreed.

“I haven’t seen an agency yet that can keep that level of noise under wraps, including my own,” she said.

As soon as he hung up, Sydney called.

“Where are you?” She sounded panicked. “You said you’d be back in an hour.”

“En route.”

“Well, hurry up, the press is here.”