Humble Beginnings
Chapter Three: Methods
Atlanta, Georgia "You have anything yet?" John Grant actively inquired, as he carried a thick stack of manila folders under one arm, and haphazardly dumped them across the cluttered surface of the long, narrow table in the Command Center with a loud and deliberate thud. Heaving a rather tired sigh, he comfortably eased his tall frame into an empty chair, lightly placing a hand upon the back of his neck as he proceeded to stretch his worn muscles.
George Fraley grimaced slightly in response to the noise, before he resumed the task of letting his fingers briskly grace the keyboard of the laptop in front of him, slowly shaking his head. "I really hate to break this to you, John, but Rome wasn't exactly built in a day."
"Tell me something I don't know," he quipped, his gorgeous countenance immediately displaying a small hint of a smile.
"I wish I could. But as far as I'm concerned, this guy fell off the face of the earth twelve years ago, and didn't even resurface once to leave a single shred of evidence behind. It's mind boggling, really. Where's Bailey?"
"He's, uh, meeting with the daughter of the eighth victim from Forest Hills. Sam's in there with him. We're supposed to start going through the case files from the killings in nineteen eighty-four, and see if something pops."
"Stranger things have happened, haven't they?"
"Yeah, well, given this guy's knack for staying out of the limelight, I figure we've probably got less than twenty-four hours to get a handle on him before we find the second body." He reached for and grabbed one of the folders, opening it up to reveal a series of white papers scattered with loosely written notes and carefully typed fonts, studying the jovial face of an elderly man with a mane of curly white hair and bright green eyes. His oval-shaped visage bore a thin, trimmed white beard and a short, button nose, bringing out his more prominent brow while still managing to accentuate the deep wrinkles that spiraled down his red rosy cheeks. He was clothed in a plaid shirt with a pair of black suspenders slung across his chest, a bright red bow tie hugging the collar, and a miniscule decorative pin stuck to the fabric that warmly depicted a brightly decorated holiday tree. "Detective Tyler is supposed to have JoAnn Parks' sketch faxed over to us later this afternoon." He freed the image from the paper clip that previously held it, conscientiously placing a thumb over the glossy edge, as he proceeded to grasp it. "Hey, I'd bet good money he found this one at a shopping mall."
"It stands to reason, doesn't it?" George mused, quickly spotting the familiar resemblance. "I'll pull up the photo so we can get a closer look." He automatically tapped a couple of keys without a second thought, and speedily brought up the photograph John had only recently stumbled upon, providing a clear-cut close-up of the man who had broached the current subject of their admissible debate. "Vincent McPherson, age seventy-one. It says here that prior to his death he was employed at a local mall in Denver, Colorado, where he worked as...yep, you called it- a part-time Santa during the holiday season. He left behind a wife and son. The wife passed away from natural causes four years later, but it doesn't say anything about the son. For what it's worth, I guess it's a pretty safe assumption that he's still alive."
John merely nodded, as he continued to analyze the information contained within the file folder, quietly pursing his lips. "According to the police report, a fellow employee found Vinny in his house when he didn't show up for work. Single stab wound, too, just like Weatherby. Yeah, he knew where to strike, all right. That's not the thing that bugs me, though. Both victims, for all intents and purposes, would have and should have retired already. But they didn't, and as far as we can tell, they weren't even thinking about it. They showed an interest in the people at their jobs and wanted to give back to the community. It didn’t matter if they were getting paid or not."
"Okay, you're starting to scare me; because that sounds just a little too much like something Sam would say."
"She did," he admitted, grinning. "Actually, she mentioned how the recent murder may have been due to Weatherby being so well liked. I guess the same could be said about this guy. He gives off that great big cheery vibe, doesn't he? I mean who doesn't like Santa?"
"Probably his killer," George deadpanned, as he raised an eyebrow. "If you want to get even more specific, I'd also put good money on the kids that are forced to sit on his lap while they're balling their eyes out."
"Yeah and that was actually a rhetorical question," he mumbled, promptly seeing the error of his mistake. "Moving on."
"Fine. Look, for the sake of argument, let's assume that he really, really hates Christmas, and Mr. McPherson set him off one day, awakening his...inner serial killer tendencies. Vincent's death could have been the catalyst that started the whole thing."
"No, I'm not buying it," John proclaimed, absentmindedly scratching his chin. "Why would he go after this guy and leave all the other ones alone? There have to be millions of men who dress up like Santa all over the world around that time of year. You see them on the streets, outside buildings ringing their little bells, even office parties- they're honestly damn hard to miss when we're out there buying presents."
"Point taken. But shopping malls are just like shelters, aren't they? They usually have a lot of people that visit them, right? Maybe he just-"
"Hold it." He impatiently began thumbing through the pile of folders, deftly spreading them out one by one upon the table's surface for further examination, starting with the earliest manifestation and progressing towards the very last. He scanned each report in as much detail as time allowed, permitting his line of vision to wander over the pages with a strangely vague and yet all too mundane hypothesis in mind, his attention appropriately shifting itself to a new angle of focus. "George, you're a genius."
"Well, he's not the only one- but then again, I digress." Grace Alvarez, the team's forensic pathologist, approached them still clothed in her usual autopsy attire, a pensive expression unexpectedly falling over her face as she spared a terse glimpse at the enlarged screen they'd been adamantly considering only moments earlier. "You got a minute?"
"Yeah. Get the rest of the victims up there, and bring up their places of employment," John ardently instructed George. "You might also want to see if anything was missing from their homes."
"Hey, if you're half as stumped as I am, this guy deserves a Pulitzer," she retorted. "For what it's worth, I just can't seem to get a read on what he's going for."
"The cause of death couldn't have been too hard to pin down, though," he offered, shrugging.
"No," she reasoned, "it's homicide, so I'll give him that. Exsanguination from the single stab wound. He left her there to bleed to death, and he obviously got a kick out of knowing it worked. This dirtbag actually has the experience behind the method for his madness. But he's been honing the craft for years, hasn't he?" She made her way into her lab with him following close behind, discreetly reaching into a small rectangular-shaped box for a pair of gloves, and slipping them on with a routine nonchalance. "It's all very basic, which honestly doesn't...well, it just doesn't fit with the rest of the clues he's left us, does it? He values the sheer simplicity of it here in terms of the body, yet he still goes and makes up for that serious lack of depth in other ways. It's like he can't be bothered to do too much damage."
"The mask, the flowers, the candle, and the missing photo," John brought forth, confirming it aloud, as his gaze wandered over to the single cadaver occupying the silver-colored metal slab, a perfect Y-shaped incision carved from the top of each shoulder and painstakingly transpiring down the front of the chest. There was nothing cheerful or hopeful resonating off Rosemary Weatherby now, and her terribly lifeless pale skin did little to ease the notion that she would be able to find justice for the light taken out of her- let alone providing it for those who continued to grieve in her unexpected absence. "A killer's signature isn't always about how many times a victim's been shot or stabbed, is it?"
"You're right on the money," Grace advocated, "which is why I can obviously understand the amount of frustration Bailey's feeling towards this case. From what I've gathered, the problem with your guy is that he's anything but consistent." She fastidiously drew a white sheet over the corpse, directly shielding it from his view, while she aptly proceeded to further address him on her progress. "I highly doubt the samples taken from her hair or her fingernails will tell us anything we don't already know, considering she never actually confronted her attacker head on to fight back. There's no mistaking the lack of a struggle here, and he was counting on that, because the elderly usually wave this big red flag that renders them defenseless. It's not intentional, but it also doesn't help."
"You think she would have made the effort if she'd been aware of him in the room?"
"Hard to say. Aside from the stab wound, he didn't put a mark on her. She was in surprisingly good health for her age."
"Yeah, well, the same probably couldn't be said about Jolly Old Saint Nick back there, so the only solid link we have right now, is that he prefers to knock off the older victims first. Doesn't pose much of a challenge, does it?" He began to pace the modest space with his hands on his hips, his visage contorted in a troublesome grimace, his shoes slapping thoughtlessly across the floor as he moved. "I looked through the albums we collected from the Weatherby crime scene, and aside from the usual birthday parties, vacations, weddings...nothing stands out. Nothing. Why would he take one photo and leave the rest in the books? We've already established he didn't know her, so what would be the point? What could he possibly gain from it?"
"Too many uncertainties and not enough proof," Grace admonished. "He wasn't acquainted with her on a personal level, yet the killing was apparently very personal."
"There's that," he admitted, "and all it tells me is that he's a pretty screwed up whack job. It's not rocket science."
"Maybe not, but he has to have at least an ounce of sanity left in him to have pulled this off," she reminded him. "To keep pulling it off. I'm sure even Sam would agree with that."
"Sam believes he skips out on the post-mortem show, because it's the only way he can tell himself he's still human. But the way I see it, no one with any amount of decency left in him could have committed these acts. I've witnessed some pretty bad things during my time as a cop, and this is just icing on the cake. He's not looking for pity; he's looking to finish what he started twelve years ago. Sure, he goes and he stops for awhile, but it never really ends, does it? It doesn’t end for him or the families of the victims that'll continue to suffer."
"He's trying to erase some kind of past trauma," Grace offered, "and trauma that bad usually leaves a trail somewhere. You'll find it, and when you do, you'll have him."
"It's not that simple," he objected, shooting her an impatient scowl, while he released a fairly irritated and prolonged groan. "We've got to assume Bailey already interviewed everybody there was to interview twelve years ago. If nothing stuck out then, I don't see how it's going to stick out now. He might have ties to the community angle, he might not. He might be going for a male of undetermined age next, or...he might not. There are too many variables to toss around."
"So pick one and start digging," she suggested. "You'll make sure this guy pays for what he took, and that's not an assumption, its fact. You can't let yourself think any different."
"She's right, John," a voice insisted, as Bailey Malone advanced towards them, his interest drawn for only a moment to the white sheet that competently hid the faint outline of the corpse that lay beneath it, his deeply rooted resentment regarding the perpetrator still very much present upon his features. "George just got a hit from the search you asked him to run, and I'm pretty sure you'll want to hear about the photo that was missing from the Weatherby house."
"You found it?"
"It was an old family photograph dating back to the late nineteen twenties. Her daughter remembered it," he arbitrarily clarified. "She said it was of her mother and grandparents, and according to her, Rosemary never took it down. Apparently, this was one of the ways mom chose to share her memories from childhood, and Sam gets the impression Rosemary probably held those memories in the highest regard. Considering what we know about him already, and what we've learned about the victim's lifestyle, I'm inclined to support that theory. I realize it's not what you wanted to hear, but it brings us closer than it did before, and it might be something the murders have in common."
"Such as? I thought he never met her," John roughly objected.
"We're still surmising he didn't," he added, "but I believe it goes deeper than that. You'll want to listen to what Sam has to say, and we'll take it from there."
"Well, there you go," Grace murmured. "All is not lost."
"Not yet," John addressed her, "but it's still early." He bid her a rather brusque farewell, before he began to make his exit from the dismal room, grudgingly trailing the head of the Violent Crimes Task Force back to the confines of the Command Center. Nathan Brubaker was now occupying the seat next to George, a hot cup of coffee curled around his fingers, and a box of a dozen glazed donuts contentedly taking up residence directly in front of it. Sam was vigorously jotting down what appeared to be notes on a yellow sheet of lined paper, her curiosity thoroughly immersed in the photos portraying the innocent lives that had been so heedlessly crushed, as she keenly persevered in her deliberation between the two. "We're giving him a window, Bailey, and he's going to take it."
"You may be right," the other man accepted, "but we don't have enough on him yet to determine his next point of attack, and until we do, it would be in our best-"
"That's because the locations appear to be completely random," Sam informed them without warning, propitiously cutting into their conversation, as she steadily rose from her chair. She used her pen to point to and single out Vincent McPherson's jubilant snapshot on the screen above, then sharply aimed it towards the solemn representation of the woman next to him, her worn features indicating she was roughly around the same age. "There isn't anything special about them that warrants any kind of significance. Catherine Gregory from Aurora, Illinois, was living by herself at the time she was murdered, but George has already told us Vincent had a family waiting for him at home. Catherine's husband, David, had passed away two months before her death, and the couple has two sons who still remain in the area. She worked as a secretary at an accounting firm before her retirement. This tells us he's not targeting them because they lived alone or because they generated a sufficient source of income for most of their lives. It's quite the opposite, actually. Rosemary was by herself after her own husband's passing, but as we've had the experience of learning firsthand, she was very good about associating with others and making friends. Catherine was putting in hours volunteering at her local animal shelter right up until the week she died."
"George was right," John mumbled. "He goes where the people are, because it's easy to blend in. But it's just like you said back at Weatherby's- once he commits the act, he doesn't bother to stick around for the fireworks and the after party. He's in and out of there like his clothes are going out of style."
"Pretty much," she corroborated.
"Okay, so...what? You're saying he doesn't actually know where he'll strike next until he finds someone matching the criteria on his little list?" Nathan put in, his features wincing at the prospect, as his nose crinkled in massive distaste. "It must not take much to set this guy off."
"No, it doesn't," Sam agreed. "It's wherever he happens to be at that particular moment, and if JoAnn Parks is any indication, he's starting to fall apart at the seams." However, despite the obvious foregone conclusion, she began to instantaneously reassess it all in her head, her thoughts realigning themselves to cling to a much more divergent supposition. "It just doesn't fit him, though, does it? I mean by all accounts, he's truly dedicated and forthcoming with his actions. He's not about to go and jeopardize that by having a volunteer at a shelter recognize him and turn him over to the cops the minute she hears about him on the news. He practices more discretion than that."
"Well, I don't want to rain on anybody's parade here, but he did leave the knife and the mask at the crime scene," John pointed out, "and he made sure we knew that picture frame had nothing in it. Who's to say he's not going around playing Mr. Obvious now?"
"Speaking of which," George began, "I couldn't find anything telling me he's got a history of repeating it. There doesn't appear to be anything missing from the previous victims' homes. But given the investigations and the way they were conducted at the time, it could have been overlooked if he didn't exactly go out of his way to advertise it. It might have been something small before- something nobody would even miss. Jewelry, knick knacks, buttons...it'd probably be good if we didn't rule him out as a klepto just yet."
"All right, so change of plans. We're supposed to keep our eyes peeled for a murderous kleptomaniac who has a flower fetish," he threw in. "Great, got it. Any other details we can add to his already glowing resume?"
"If we're talking pros and cons, you can give him a big fat zero in the column for all things Santa, elves, and the outright chaos of the Christmas season," his coworker remarked somewhat smugly.
"Ha ha."
"Listen, I stopped by the Clark house on my way over here like you asked," Nathan intervened, rolling his eyes, as he contiguously changed the subject and accosted Bailey. "Let's just say that things aren't exactly quiet on the home front anymore."
"Clark," John repeated, his voice low. "Why does that sound like I've heard it before?"
"Laura Clark, eight years old," he disclosed. "She was the last victim from his eighty-four spree. It turns out Bailey was right about our guy letting them know he was back in action again. Mrs. Clark said she recently found twelve white roses on her front lawn with a black bow around them. He must've been tracking them for awhile, too, because he knew they'd relocated to Gainesville. Their last known address was still in Bismarck, North Dakota up until only a few years ago. That's where Laura was found when she...where it happened. They reported the incident with the roses to the local authorities, but it was dismissed as a neighborhood prank."
"That's a far cry from toilet papering someone's house or car," George observed. "I'm going to take a stab at this and say it doesn't even rank up there with egging the front doors or windows."
"He's re-emphasizing the innocence associated with the rose," Sam enlightened them, as her gaze touched base with the photo of the young victim, her wavy red hair and freckled cheeks a sharp contrast to the pale blue of her eyes. It was a school portrait, and the amicable smile Laura had happily put on display for the entire world to see, fleetingly reminded her of her Chloe. "A rose for each year that's passed since her death. She was a little girl, and innocence is the one thing that's literally impossible to get back under such tragic circumstances- especially for her family and the tremendous amount of loss they've obviously dealt with. White roses have also been documented as having a symbolic meaning in terms of new beginnings."
"This is confirmation that he's starting fresh," Bailey verified. "He's trying to say he can do better than the previous seven because he's assured himself he's already unstoppable, and-" He unceremoniously halted his speech, as a gangly man a short distance away began to frantically signal him, repetitively pointing to a phone he was holding, mouthing the words 'Malone' and 'urgent' in the same sentence. The black-rimmed spectacles he wore upon the bridge of his nose were clumsily slipping, and he nervously reached out with the index finger of his free hand to fix them, his dirty blonde hair an uneven mass of tangles. "Excuse me." Bailey reached him in a few long strides, diligently accepting the call, and speaking in hushed tones to the individual on the other end, his mood overtly unreadable. He rigorously grabbed a notepad off of a nearby desk, and pulled out a pen from beneath his suit jacket, no doubt paying close attention to the words that were relentlessly being recited to him. When he eventually disconnected, he returned the phone back to the gentleman who had previously hailed him, hastily making his way back over to his team. "That was Detective Tyler from homicide. They've taken a suspect into custody matching JoAnn Parks' description. He's waiting for us in interrogation."
"Well, that was fast. What about the sketch?" John demanded.
"They're faxing it now. If we're lucky, we can be there in a few hours."
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