Markham removed a photo of the victims: naked, side by side, impaled like Donovan, heads fastened to their stakes with the same thin black cord. However, unlike Donovan, the cord was tied tightly across their cheeks, causing their vacant, open eyes to stare straight ahead and giving their faces a strange, squished expression that reminded Mark-ham of Sylvester Stallone getting his face slow-motion punched in Rocky.
“Other than his record,” Gates said, “Guerrera is a bit of a mystery. Hadn’t been in Raleigh very long; was living with a cousin and two other men, illegals, all of them sending their pay back to families in Mexico, all ruled out as suspects. Guerrera’s cousin is still there, but the other two men have taken off. Raleigh PD has turned it over to ICE.”
“Looks like the Rodriguez kid was a straight arrow,” Markham said, reading. “Good grades in school, planned on attending community college for computers, it says.”
“He also had a part-time job at Best Buy and told the family he worked Wednesday and Saturday nights at a Mexican restaurant downtown. Raleigh PD followed up, found that the restaurant job was bogus. No record of him anywhere. Left open the possibility of the drug connection. Checked the kid’s cell phone bill and saw a number of calls from prepaid, untraceable calling cards. All that’s pretty standard for the drug dealers nowadays, but they couldn’t prove anything. Regardless, looks like whatever the kid was into on Saturday nights got him killed.”
“What about the kid’s brother?” Markham asked. “Says here Rodriguez has a sister, eleven, and a brother, fifteen. About the time the gangs usually start recruiting, isn’t it?”
“Nothing there. Family, the kids are devastated; parents moved them out of Fox Run to live in another apartment complex in North Raleigh. All dead ends since the beginning of March. Of course, Raleigh’s abandoned the MS-13 theory now that it’s been turned over to us, but who knows what will happen if the media gets wind of the similarities between the crime scenes.”
“What about the possible link between Donovan and the Hispanics exclusive of outside entities?”
“That’s being explored, yes, but nothing so far.”
Markham scanned through the Donovan file again.
“You’ll find what you’re looking for at the end,” Gates said.
The FBI forensics report. Alan Gates knew him well; knew that his former student would look next for the real reason why his boss had decided to pay him this early-morning visit—the answer to Markham’s “Why me?”
“The field office in Charlotte’s got a good team,” Mark-ham said at last, reading. “And I’ve heard of Andy Schaap—used to be one of the best forensic specialists around until the restructuring went down and he took the supervisory position in Charlotte. State medical examiner’s got a decent setup, where Schaap’s been working so far. ME’s preliminary report shows no physical evidence. No semen or saliva, no trace DNA; nothing left by the killer except—is this right? Comet residue?”
“Yes. Looks like our boy scrubbed the lawyer clean. Sound like a hit to you?”
“And the others? State ME find anything on them?”
“No Comet residue, no. Killer just shot and impaled them, but it looks like he did scrub them clean. ME found traces of water in their ear canals.”
“Covering his tracks?”
“Maybe.”
“But a bit too cliché, too simple if we’re speaking metaphorically of dirty drug dealers and a dirty lawyer—the Comet, the cleaning. You wouldn’t be here if you thought it was that easy a read, would you?”
“No, I wouldn’t. The killer wasn’t concerned about using Comet on Rodriguez and Guerrera. Might not have been important until Donovan; might have done something different to him that needed attending to.”
“Developing his MO, you think? Evolving?”
“I think so, yes.”
“The bodies—were they facing in the same direction?”
“Good question, but no. Rodriguez and Guerrera faced due east; Donovan, his body turned west, his head tilted back at almost a ninety-degree angle. The killer attaches a crossbar at groin level so the bodies won’t slide.”
“Then he’s a planner. It’s about more than just the violence of the impalement. The aesthetic is important, too. The display.”
“And the head tilted backwards?” asked Gates. “The glasses, the eyes open?”
“Textbook. The victim is supposed to see something and understand. However, the victims’ sight lines, the directions are different. Rodriguez and Guerrera, the cord across their faces, their eyes looking almost due east; Donovan’s body to the west, the cord around his neck, his head arched back looking up at the sky.”
“Right.”
“Our boy drops them off at night; has to have a van or a large truck. Might be a moon freak. Do the disappearance dates correspond with the new moon?”
“No, different visuals on the nights the victims were last seen. However, on the nights they were found, there was a crescent moon. Could be a textbook lunar pattern; seen it many times before. Most recently, in that long-haul-trucker case—”
“The crescent moon,” Markham said suddenly. “Isn’t that the symbol for Islam? A star inside a crescent moon?”
“That’s right.”
“Could he possibly be imitating Vlad the Impaler? The Romanian prince who was the inspiration for Bram Stoker’s Dracula?”
“I’m glad to see you’re still up on your history,” Gates said, smiling. “And that was my first thought even before I made the crescent-moon connection. After all, before Stoker immortalized him in Dracula, the historical Vlad was known as one of the great defenders against the spread of Islam during the Middle Ages. Definitely the cruelest, as his moniker would imply.”
“And the victims?” Markham asked. “Any Islamic connection?”
“None that we can see so far, but we’re looking into it.”
Markham was silent, thinking.
“Then again,” Gates said, “we could be totally off base. Everything happening toward the end of the month could indicate something with calendars, but why the displays in February and April and not March? Might all be just a coincidence.”
“You wouldn’t be here if you thought that.”
Gates shrugged and smiled, his eyebrows arching like a pair of thick, white caterpillars. Markham flipped again through the Donovan file, the forensics report.
“This light scratch that the ME notes,” Markham said. “The one he picked up near Donovan’s right armpit that looks like an arrowhead. Is that it?”
“Is that what?”
“The reason you’re here. The reason you’re convinced this guy is a wannabe Vlad and not just some cartel hit man with a flair for the dramatic.”
“Why you, you mean?”
“Yes. Why me? Why do you want to pull me off my new assignment at Quantico and fly me off to Raleigh when you’ve got good people in Charlotte? After all, that’s what you’re getting at, isn’t it?”
Gates rose from the table and dumped the remainder of his coffee into the sink, rinsed the cup out, and placed it on the counter upside down on a paper towel. The silence, the intended dramatic effect was beneath him, Markham thought, and suddenly he felt himself getting irritated.
Gates walked back to the window and looked out over the pond; but much to Markham’s surprise, he did not adjust his glasses.