“If he’s a psychopath,” Vail said, “and I think that’s likely, they’re not nearly as affected by stress like you and I would be. So interacting with a dead body, out in public, wouldn’t cause the UNSUB the kind of anxiety we’d feel. And that’s why we often see a boldness to a psychopath’s behavior, a brazenness. They just don’t experience fear to the same depth that we do.” She curled some hair behind her right ear. “Do we have a TOD on the wife’s body?”
“About three hours before I called your boss,” Burden said.
Friedberg adjusted the glove on his left hand. “So either the UNSUB kept Mr. Anderson around for a while, or he killed him at the same time and stored him somewhere till he was ready to…do this. Transport him here and tie him up.”
Burden grumbled, “If it’s the same guy.”
“Doesn’t make sense he’d kill the husband at the house,” Vail said.
“Because…” Burden said.
“Because I’m assuming he planned all along to display the guy here. This was part of his plan. So why kill the guy at the house, then have to lug a dead body around? But if you could incapacitate him, tie him up and gag him, then have him walk wherever you want him to go, kill him closer to where we are, then pose him. It becomes a logistics issue.”
“How so?” Friedberg asked.
“Transporting a dead body bears a high degree of risk for the offender, right? He’s gotta drive around with a DB in his car. He gets stopped by a cop, he’s got a big goddamn problem. So where’s he gonna put it? Not in the backseat, in plain sight. Generally, the more risky it is, the more thrilling it is for these guys. So while he’d probably get off on the risk, there’s a difference between it being thrilling and just plain stupid. So he’d have to put it in the trunk.”
“Yeah, but lifting a DB out of a trunk isn’t fun, and it isn’t easy,” Burden said.
“Right. So that’s what I was saying. The best way to do this is to control him somehow. Using a gun, or a drug to make him drowsy, you can do pretty much what you want. Control is the key.”
Friedberg looked up at the column where the body had been fastened. “Soon as the ME gets us a time and a definite cause of death, we’ll be able to piece this all together. For now, we should look into the vics’ backgrounds.”
Vail lifted Anderson’s right hand and examined the fingers. “No defensive wounds.” She reached across the body and checked out the left. “Hmm.” She stood up and looked out, through the columns ahead of her. “What’s around here, in this area?” Vail asked.
Friedberg pointed. “Out ahead of us is a man-made lagoon. They do lots of weddings there. Navigating the seagulls can be a challenge.”
As if on cue, a cacophony of birdsong built to a crescendo. Vail ducked as several gulls sped past her head and swept through the rotunda. “What the hell’s that?”
“Every once in a while they go nuts. Hundreds of them.” He gestured out over the expansive, irregularly shaped pond, where the large gray birds were diving and climbing, darting and swooping. “Lasts a minute or two, then they quiet down.”
Over the water, the cloud of gulls eventually calmed, as Friedberg predicted.
“As I was saying,” Friedberg continued. “There are homes along the perimeter. Expensive ones, well maintained. That building you saw when we parked, directly adjacent to the property, is the Exploratorium. Kind of a hands-on science museum.”
A science museum. Perfect. “Let’s head back there, I’ll bet they’ve got some expensive equipment in there. With expensive equipment comes security cameras.”
“Hang on a minute,” Jackson said. “You may want to see this.”
They gathered around the criminalist. His gloved fingers spread the hair on the back of Anderson’s head, toward the base of his skull.
“Blood?” Burden asked.
“Looks like it. Bruising of the cranium. And over here,” he said, gesturing at the throat. “Those marks you were talking about, anterior C-spine. I don’t think they’re finger impressions, but we’ll know more once the ME examines him.”
Friedberg said, “Just like the wife. Assuming it’s the same UNSUB.”
“Or,” Vail said, “he could’ve struck his head on the cement while he was being pulled up on the rope. Or he could’ve fallen when he was killed. We don’t know at this point.”
Leaving Rex Jackson to finish his work, they headed back toward their cars.
As they entered the small parking lot, Vail stopped. “There.” She nodded at a panoramic lens mounted atop the tall adobe-tinted Exploratorium building, near an inside corner overlooking the arched glass doors of the museum. She traced the line of sight to where she was standing, at the mouth of the Fine Arts entrance. “But that might be a problem.” Below and in front of the building was a grouping of three gnarled and heavily leaved trees, partially blocking the view.
“We’ll take what we can get,” Friedberg said. He headed toward the entrance. “I’ll get started on securing the tapes.”
As Friedberg walked off, a bushy-haired man with iPod earbuds plugging his ears strolled in front of them. His hands were curled around a long bar that protruded from a rectangular shaped, three-wheeled cart, colorful stickers dotting its surface: Good Humor chocolate chip, Big Dipper, Popsicle Shots, Pink Panther, Scribblers, Snow Cone.
An ice cream vendor discovered the body.
“Hey, Robert! This the guy?” Vail asked, tipping her head in the direction of the vendor.
Friedberg cricked his neck, snatched a look at the man, and nodded.
Burden stepped in front of the man and held up his shield.
The vendor, who looked no more than twenty-two, pulled his right earbud free and, as he turned his head to reach for the left ear, his gaze found Vail. His eyes slid down her body. And his demeanor transformed. He straightened up. “Can I-do you need help with something?”
“Yeah. You are-?”
He narrowed his eyes and held out his hands palms up, indicating his cart. “An ice cream vendor.”
“No,” Vail said. “I got that. I meant, what’s your name?”
“Oh. Oh. Alex Montague.”
“Mr. Montague,” Burden said, taking back control of the interview. “We understand you found the body in there.”
Montague reluctantly pulled his eyes from Vail. “Yeah, dude was just hangin’ out there. Looked kinda weird. As I got closer, I was, like, what the fuck. He ain’t movin’. So I wheeled up far as I could, and well, it looked to me like the dude was dead. I mean, I’m no expert or nothin’.”
“That’s right,” Vail said. “The dude was dead. You’re a sharp guy. Expert or not.”
He didn’t like that retort, because he stopped looking at her with lust. He was actually frowning.
“So,” Vail said. “We’d really like to know if you saw anyone in the area the past few days who didn’t look right.”
“Didn’t look right?”
Burden shoved his credentials case into his jacket pocket. “Yeah. Like he didn’t belong. Or he was doing stuff that a typical tourist doesn’t do. Not just a tourist. Anyone, really, who might come around here.”
Montague shrugged.
“You been doing this a while?” Vail asked. “Selling ice cream here?”
“’Bout a year.”
“Good. Then you’ve seen thousands, if not tens of thousands of people, visit this place. Based on what those people look like, have you seen anyone lately who looked out of place?”
“Out of place, how?”
I wonder if brain cell transplants are possible yet. This kid needs some. Badly.
As she was pondering how to get some meaningful answers from Alex Montague, a woman nudged up to the cart, brushing Vail aside.