It was Kingsman’s fedora and coat, all right, only it was Timitz wearing them. He had taken them from Kingsman’s home while the judge was away giving a lecture at the Pritzker School of Law at Northwestern University.
Perhaps more impressive than Grimes’s mea culpa, however, was how quickly and accurately he was able to dissect the Dealer’s background, linking it not only to his motivation but also to the means by which he carried out his murders. Grimes joked that when we first met he understood only half of my book. Truth was, he had it down cold.
Elijah Timitz was the troubled adopted son of Bill and Mallory Timitz from Buffalo, New York. Bill was a demolition contractor whose company specialized in felling major structures using targeted explosions. Mallory worked as a technician at a platelet and neutrophil immunology laboratory. In other words, Elijah Timitz grew up around blood and dynamite. He was smart and had high standardized test scores but was known as a loner. As for his propensity for guns and knives, Grimes noted that Timitz had participated in survival camps in upstate New York and paid membership dues at two different shooting ranges.
Grimes was even able to discover how Timitz could’ve known Jared Louden’s rare AB negative blood type. As a research assistant for Judge Kingsman, Timitz had access to a police report of a DUI arrest in which Louden refused a Breathalyzer test in favor of having his blood drawn.
All in all, Grimes proved to be more of a journalist than people gave him credit for, myself included. He was thorough yet concise, writing in a style that was compelling without being overly burdened with hyperbole.
I couldn’t know it at the time, but he only made one mistake. Actually, it was more like an omission.
Only minutes after I was done reading all Grimes’s reporting in the Gazette, my phone rang. It was the landline.
I didn’t recognize the number, but I answered anyway.
“Hello?”
It was Timitz.
Chapter 103
THE FEELING was more than déjà vu as I walked into the forensic biology laboratory on East 26th Street. It was dread.
“You need to see something,” Dr. Ian Wexler had told me over the phone. “It’s Timitz.”
The Office of Chief Medical Examiner still reeked of antiseptic, but Wexler’s attitude toward me had completely changed when I greeted him in his autopsy suite. He’d read what Grimes wrote in the Gazette. He didn’t actually tell me that, nor did he have to. The fact that he dialed my number before calling the police said it all. Wexler was cutting out the middleman.
Apparently, Elijah Timitz had something else he wanted to share with me.
“It’s on his inner forearm, a few inches up from the wrist,” said Wexler, walking over to Timitz. I didn’t know it was Timitz until he pulled back the sheet covering him. “The onset of lividity removed the swelling and redness, but the raised skin still gives it away. It’s around two days old. Three tops.”
I was looking at a tattoo on Timitz’s arm. It was a black spade with an A in the middle of it. The ace of spades.
Had it been an old tattoo, the takeaway might have been different. Timitz liked cards, so—in keeping with permission theory—it only made sense that he would target his next victims by using cards. The fact that this was a new tattoo, and its location on his body, suggested something else entirely.
The Dealer was dead, but he wasn’t done.
Is it really possible?
If Timitz truly had one more trick up his sleeve, then it would be one for the ages. A serial killer who managed to kill from the grave.
“Who else knows?” I asked.
“Only you so far,” said Wexler. “Obviously, though, I’ll need to put it in my report.”
“Of course,” I said.
Wexler gazed down at Timitz. “You know, I usually never cover anybody with a sheet in here,” he said. “This guy, though? I can barely stand to look at him.”
I understood. Yet looking at Timitz was suddenly all I could do. I stared at the bullet holes, shots that I had fired. The holes were black, the skin around them singed. I stared at Timitz’s face, his almost serene expression. His eyes were closed, but it still felt as if he were staring right back, willing me on.
C’mon, Professor. You didn’t think I’d simply go gently into that good night, did you?
This was his plan from the very beginning. He always intended to die for his cause. But this part didn’t make sense.
He was hell-bent on exposing Judge Kingsman for being a pawn of an unjust legal system. Mission accomplished. Grimes wrote about it ad nauseam in the Gazette.
So why kill someone else? Who was the ace of spades?
Most of all, how could Timitz do it while lying here on this slab?
That’s for you to figure out, Professor.
This is really why I chose you.
Chapter 104
TICK-TOCK…
With a picture of the tattoo on my cell phone, I was quickly in a cab again and heading north to the Fiftieth Precinct to retrieve my bike. The other destination was on my way. I was going to stop back at Kingsman’s house, in Riverdale.
All things considered, the judge had gotten lucky. As Elizabeth could attest to, Emily Louden wasn’t exactly a crack shot. The bullet that hit Kingsman got him cleanly in the arm. It was in and out and only flesh. No bone. He’d be in pain for a few days, but he had the luxury of going home without having to spend a night in the hospital.
“Greetings, Dr. Death,” he said with a wry smile, standing in the paneled foyer of his Tudor home, wearing the same yellow socks and funky red robe he’d been wearing when we first met. With the blue sling supporting his arm, he had all the primary colors covered. “To what do I owe the house call?”
The Dr. Death wisecrack meant I didn’t need to ask if he’d seen the Gazette. He was up to speed on everything Grimes had written.
There was no certainty at this point, only educated guesses and good old-fashioned reasoning. If Kingsman was the link to all the previous victims, he somehow had to be linked to the next one.
Only this was different. Why would Timitz wait until after he framed Kingsman if the ace of spades were simply another one of his cases?
Of course, logic isn’t always the strong suit of serial killers.
For one reason and one reason only I didn’t begin by showing Kingsman the photo of the tattoo or even mention it. Timitz turned out to be the Dealer, but that didn’t explain where Kingsman had gone the night Timitz was at his house. It was nagging at me. I was curious.
When Kingsman hesitated after I asked him, I was really curious.
“I spent the night at the Harvard Club,” he said. “I was spooked when you and Detective Needham came to talk to me. Even though I didn’t think I was the queen of hearts, I live alone and didn’t feel safe.”
Fair enough. But the Harvard Club?
Kingsman wasn’t a member. He couldn’t be. He wasn’t a Harvard graduate, nor had he ever taught there—the only two ways you would be allowed to spend the night in one of the club’s guest rooms in Manhattan. Unless, of course, someone with enough clout pulled some strings.