True, he couldn’t give a shit about her now, but it was the way she tried to screw him in the end that still bothered him—almost as if she thought he was the one who’d been fucking around on her. She got the house, the kids, a nice fat alimony check, of course, but the judge stopped her short of taking the ring back. That’s why he still wore it. A big “Fuck you, bitch.” He toyed for a while with getting it resized for his middle finger, but decided against it in the end. Figured his wife would get the message anyway when he picked up the kids and she saw the ring on his right hand.
Schaap had slipped the ring back on and was about to signal for another beer, when he spied Markham standing by the vacant hostess station. Schaap thought he looked shorter than in his photo: clean cut, chiseled features, his jaw more pronounced. All-American apple pie, he said to himself, and made a mental note to order dessert.
Schaap waved him over.
“I apologize for making you wait,” Markham said. “I lost track of time. Drove out to the crime scenes, took me longer to get back than I expected. Left you a voice mail. Looks like you didn’t get it. Sam Markham, by the way.”
The men shook hands.
“Probably no reception in here,” Schaap said. “And call me Schaap.”
Markham slid into the booth across from him.
“Can I get you something to drink?” Schaap asked, signaling his waitress. “An appetizer or something?”
“A beer is fine. And no appetizer. They tell me the steaks here are the best in the city; want to make sure I savor every cent of my piece-of-shit per diem.”
“I heard that,” Schaap said, laughing, and ordered for the both of them. And as they exchanged small talk over a fresh round of beers, Schaap found his new partner to be quite pleasant and down to earth—much less brooding, much less “intellectual” than he had come to expect from all the water-cooler talk.
But after the waitress brought them their dinners, Mark-ham grew quieter—hardly touched his steak, for that mat-ter—and Schaap began to wonder if the celebrated Quantico profiler hadn’t been putting on an act simply to disarm him.
“I assume the report came back on that steak,” Markham asked out of nowhere.
Schaap looked up from his plate—was confused for a moment until he realized he meant s-t-a-k-e.
“Oh yeah,” Schaap said, swallowing. “Same as the others. Long piece of pine two-by-twelve that the killer rips down and tapers to a point. Standard lumber found all over the place—Lowe’s, Home Depot. Too long to turn on a wood lathe, so our boy makes them the old-fashioned way. Uses a wood plane and finishes them with a belt sander; takes his time to get the contours smooth and rounded.”
“Same process for the other two as well?”
“Yeah. I expedited them to the labs at Quantico. The Firearms-Toolmarks Unit came back with their report yesterday. Typical belt sander, it looks like; standard iron-bladed wood plane with about a two-inch-wide cut. The taper, the proportions from the base of the stake to the point are the same, but the heights are different. Customizes them to fit his victims. Guerrera was only five-three, but his stake had the same angle of taper as the other victims. Cuts them so they’ll go about three feet into the ground, but adjusts the height and the little crossbar according the length of the victim’s torso.”
“Since the Hispanics died of their gunshot wounds,” Markham said, “the killer could have made their stakes after he killed them. But with Donovan, he must have made his stake while the lawyer was still alive. Donovan died differently from the others.”
“From the stake itself, right.”
“FTU find anything else?”
“Nope. Trace Evidence Unit came up empty, too. No fingerprints or skin tissue other than the victims’. We were hoping our boy maybe got a splinter or something, but he must’ve used gloves. He’s pretty thorough; seems to know what he’s doing.”
“A woodworker then? Maybe makes a living as a contractor? Construction?”
“Maybe. I’ve already got things moving at the Resident Agency. Mobilizing task forces to begin covering those angles as we speak. A needle in a haystack, if you ask me.”
“Anything else happen while I was out of touch today?”
“Just news from our language specialist. Said that, although Vlad wrote on Donovan’s body from left to right, three of the scripts, the Aramaic, Arabic, and Hebrew, should’ve been written from right to left.”
“You mean he wrote his words backwards?”
“Yes.”
“Then he may not have known the etymology behind what he was writing.”
“Right. Also might indicate that he was copying the letters from someplace. Already got a Cyber Action Team working the Internet angle. So far, they haven’t come up with anything. No searches for the phrase, ‘I have returned’ in the languages in question. No IP addresses that look promising.”
“What about local searches for Vlad and impalement and whatnot?” Markham asked.
“Oh yeah, plenty of those, but no more than usual, I expect. Of course we’ll look into them, but if Vlad is as smart as I think he is, I’m willing to bet you another rib eye that he did his research the old-fashioned way at the library.”
“Why?”
“The stakes, the detail and care he puts into them. Pretty thorough, if you ask me. Wouldn’t make the mistake of getting caught on his home computer; would use a public one at least, but that could still pin him to a specific locale. I don’t see him fucking up that way. Just my two cents, for what it’s worth.”
Markham was silent, lost in thought. He looked vulnerable, Schaap thought—strangely human in his puzzlement.
“I’d like us to be straight with each other,” Schaap said after a moment.
Markham looked up at him from his half-eaten steak.
“I know you’ll want to go most of this alone. I know from what happened in Tampa that you work best that way. I respect that. And you need to know that I don’t harbor any resentment about Gates sending you into my territory. I mean it. Will give you my complete support with the understanding that I’m acting only as your NCAVC coordinator, as well as the point man for the local authorities.”
“I appreciate that,” Markham said.
“And I’m not going to ask you how you caught Jackson Briggs, either.”
Markham narrowed his eyes at him.
“I read the report,” Schaap continued. “Still have no idea how you got turned on to him. But what I’m saying is I’m not going to try to get into your head about things. You keep what you want to yourself, but you don’t have to worry about me cock-blocking you if you want to bounce things off me, okay?”
“Thanks,” Markham said, smiling.
“May I ask you one thing about the Briggs case, though? A minor detail?”
“Okay.”
“Is it true what I read? That he came after you with a samurai sword?”
“A ninja sword, I believe it was, but yes.”
“Caught you in the arm and kept slashing at you even with four bullets in him?”
“Three. The fourth was a head shot.”
“He cut you bad?”
“Not too bad. Got my jacket mostly—my left shoulder. Barely even a scar there now. Not much to brag about in the locker room.”
“Was he your first kill?”
“Yes.”
“Feel fucked up?”
“No,” Markham said simply. “Actually, it didn’t.”
A heavy silence—Schaap’s brain spinning.
“So what about our boy here in Raleigh?” he asked finally. “Anything other than the usual logistical groundwork that you want me to take care of?”
“Yes,” Markham said. “I need to get back to the crime scenes.”
“Tonight?”