The Old School detective instantly nodded in their direction and cut across the lawn toward them.
“Lorenzon!” he called in a husky baritone, as he neared them, the photographer trailing slightly.
“Andy Wallace,” Lorenzon said. “Haven’t seen you since that crazy asshole on the expressway, couple years ago.”
“That crazy asshole you shot, you mean.”
Lorenzon shrugged. “He didshoot at me first.”
“There is that. But tell me, Tate—was it worth enduring the shooting board?”
Lorenzon managed a grin. “You know, I think it was.”
“So much for nostalgia. What are you doing out here at thiscrime scene?”
“FBI investigation,” Lorenzon said. “Task force. And speaking of nostalgia…”
Wallace grimaced, glanced at the Gacy house. Then he nodded toward the photographer. “This is Daniel Dryden. Crime scene photographer with Cook County. Helping us out today.”
Lorenzon made introductions to Rossi and Morgan and they shook hands all around. Rossi explained to Wallace and Dryden about the copycat serial killer, the snail-mail photos to departments, and the investigation in general.
Rossi said, “We’ll talk to your chief about joining the task force. In the meantime, maybe you can get us caught up on what happened here.”
“Hell of thing,” Wallace said, shaking his head. “What kind of sick fuck thinks copying Gacyis a good idea?”
Rossi said, “That’s what they pay me to find out.”
They were about to get down to business when Wallace’s cell phone trilled.
He stepped away from them, answered, said, “No shit,” a couple of times, then clicked off.
He turned back to the task force members and said, “You guys were right. That was my captain— he told me he just got a picture in the mail.”
“Jesus,” Rossi said. “He’s not even paying any attention to the dates anymore.…”
Morgan said, “Definitely escalating.”
“This task force is growing faster than I’d ever want it to,” Rossi said. Then to Wallace he said, “Who found the body?”
Wallace said, “Meter reader. The house still has an old-style gas meter. Inside the house, in the laundry room. Reader had a key to get in and noticed the cover off the crawl space. He shone a flashlight down there, saw what he saw, then called us.”
“How did the killer get in here with the body?”
“Window in the kitchen in the back of the house,” Wallace said, gesturing. “He cut a hole in the window, slipped in, then unlocked the back door. It’s a quiet neighborhood. If he did it late at night, no one would have even noticed.”
Rossi asked, “Have you identified the victim?”
“White male, early twenties, no ID, still dressed, partially buried in the crawl space under the house.”
Morgan nodded toward the innocent-looking, nondescript bungalow. “House is vacant?”
“Has been, off and on, since Gacy,” Wallace said. “No one with even a vague idea of what went on in there has ever wanted to live in that house. Of course, there’s nothing vague about thiskilling— looks like it was done by someone who knew about the original crimes.”
“What makes you say that?” Rossi asked.
Wallace jerked a thumb at the bungalow. “I was a rookie when this went down back in ’seventy-eight and ’seventy-nine. I hadn’t been on the force six months when the excavation started. I hate this goddamn house. The body? To me, it looks like the killer, to pull this off? Hadto’ve been in the house with us back then.”
Rossi said, “It could be as simple as he saw photos. This thing was heavily covered.”
“Yeah, well, what we saw didn’t make the papers or any of the magazines or even the books about the case.” Wallace’s tone and his expression were grave. “He must’ve seen the actual crime scene photos.”
“Who had access to those?”
Wallace shrugged. “Really, just cop shop people.”
“From just around here, or Greater Metropolitan Chicago?”
“You know how it is, Agent Rossi. Cops cooperate. Somebody wants a look at famous crime scene photos, you show ’em.”
“But there’d be no record of who looked at them.”
“No. Nothing like that.”
Rossi and Morgan traded a wary glance. Rossi figured their UnSub would be a police buff, but maybe he was more than just a buff. He had never met this Wauconda detective, Jake Denson, but Hotchner had told him about the encounter. Now, Rossi wondered if Denson had some tie to their new John Doe, too.…
“Excuse me,” Dryden said. “But… I’veseen them. The photos?”
They all turned to him.
“And so have a lot of people all over the country, who have no connection to Chicago.”
Rossi frowned. “How’s that?”
“Well, I’ve seen the Gacy shots at forensic photography seminars, crime scene analyst seminars, and, frankly… if you know where to look… some of ’em are even on the Internet.”
Rossi sighed, shook his head. This news did not make their lives easier.
“We canvassed but got bubkes,” Wallace said. “This guy’s a ghost.”
Rossi laughed humorlessly. Then he said, “ ‘Even then the cock crew loud, and at the sound it shrunk in haste away and vanished from our sight.’ ”
Morgan’s forehead frowned and his mouth smiled as he said, “ Hamlet?”
Rossi gave up a rumpled grin. “It was either that or ‘I ain’t afraid of no ghosts.’ ”
After her meeting with SAIC Himes, Jennifer Jareau had returned to the conference room to find it empty.
This was not unusual. Though much of the public, and even some cops, thought what the BAU did was hocus pocus and that they sat in an ivory tower divining their profiles from crystal balls or tea leaves, the truth was they spent most of their time out in the field… which meant the media/police liaison spent a great deal of her time alone, or at least away from the rest of the team.
None of the agents had ever made her feel like anything less than a one hundred percent participant in the BAU, but it still nagged her, sometimes, that they were off busting their humps while she was sitting here in the office.
In her worst moments, she felt like the team mascot or the little sister who wanted to tag along and rarely got to. She worked hard and contributed to the effort, she knew that. Still, they were out in the field now.
And she wasn’t.
Going to her laptop, she hooked up a video feed with Garcia.
“What’s up?” her friend asked.
Jareau shook her head. “Everybody’s in the field.”
“But you,” Garcia said. “Listen, while you were—”
“Meeting with SAIC Himes?” Jareau offered.
“Yeah, while you were doing that, they got a call about another body.”
Jareau straightened, surprised she hadn’t been alerted. “Where?”
Garcia’s eyes widened, and—with much more melodrama than a mere address would seem to warrant—she said, “8213 Summerdale in Des Plaines.”
Jareau shrugged. “Oh-kay—what am I missing?”
Garcia stared at her a long moment. “That’s the former address of John Wayne Gacy.”
A momentary wave of nausea passed through her. “Great. Just swell.… All right, I better sign off, then. It’s going to get ugly around here. Uglier.”