“What are you saying? That I should be happy?”
“Danni made a choice that saved her life. It was her choice. Be thankful for that. Now I have to find the man that owns her.”
He listened to his wife blow her nose.
“Do you think she’s still alive?” she asked.
Linderman had asked himself the same question a dozen times since speaking to Crutch. There was no absolute way to know. But then he’d reminded himself of something. If Danni could survive the likes of Simon Skell, she could survive anything.
“Yes, I do,” he said.
“You’re not just saying that, are you?”
“No, Muriel. I think our daughter is alive.”
His wife breathed heavily into the phone. Her heart was racing, just like his own, the sound the only punctuation in a world filled with awful silence. It was a sound the parent of every missing child knew. Of a distant heartbeat, waiting to be found.
He rose from his chair. “I’ll call you tonight. Promise.”
“I love you,” his wife said.
Linderman entered the conference room and apologized for holding everyone up. Five clean-cut agents sat at an oval table with bottled waters in front of their laptops. Each agent acknowledged him with a slight dip of the head.
Wood stood at the head of the table with his jacket off, waiting to start. “Good afternoon. I’d like to introduce Ken Linderman, supervisory agent of the CARD unit in the FBI’s North Miami office. Ken is an old friend and trusted colleague. Ken has asked for our help in dealing with an unusual situation. Please give him your undivided attention.”
The five agents shifted their attention to Linderman. Two were Asian, two African-American, one Latino. The FBI had changed a lot since Linderman had joined. Back then, ninety-nine percent of the agents were white, and most gatherings had resembled a sitting for a Norman Rockwell painting.
“This morning I met with an inmate at Starke Prison named Jason Crutchfield, also known as Crutch,” Linderman said. “For the past year, Crutch has been communicating with a serial killer in Fort Lauderdale named Killer X. Mr. Clean has been abducting violent teenage boys, and attempting to groom them into becoming serial killers. Crutch has been helping him.
“During our meeting, Crutch attempted to broker a deal with me. He gave me some scant information regarding Mr. Clean’s occupation. He also offered to give me information about my daughter, who was abducted six years ago by another serial killer named Simon Skell.”
The coffee cup was in Linderman’s hand. Crushing it, he tossed the cup into a plastic pail. Everyone in the room was watching him.
“In exchange for this information, Crutch wants me to leave him alone, and not talk to the parole board next year when his sentence is reviewed,” Linderman went on. “Crutch has good reason for wanting me to stay out of his hair. Since being incarcerated, he’s been linked to twenty-four killings in different parts of the country.
“I want to put the screws to Crutch, and scare him into telling me what Mr. Clean does for a living, and also what happened to my daughter. That’s where you come in.
“The twenty-four killings are over a decade old. At the time, the police didn’t know they were linked, or that a serial killer was involved. I’m guessing that a lot of DNA evidence has been lost since those crimes were committed. We’re going to need to dig deep to find what we’re looking for. Any questions?”
The five agents at the table exchanged glances. Something was obviously bothering them. The Latino agent raised her hand. She looked about thirty, with curly dark hair and a round, almost sweet face.
“Yes,” Linderman said.
“Special Agent Amanda Cruz,” she said. “Do you think you should excuse yourself from the investigation, considering the circumstances? I mean, it is your daughter.”
It was an honest question, deserving of a thoughtful response. Being too close to an investigation led to poor decision making, and lapses in judgement. Cruz had every right to ask Linderman if he was up to the task.
Linderman picked his words carefully. He wanted to tell Cruz not to worry, that he could handle it, only something was preventing him from doing so.
Rage.
The feeling was strange. Like he was flying down the highway at a hundred miles an hour. Fearful of losing control, yet not caring if he did.
His rage began to boil over. He felt the overwhelming desire to curse out Cruz, and call her ugly names. Bitch, whore, wetback, came to mind. He imagined Cruz talking back to him, and the angry response it would incur.
He bit his tongue to stop the words from rushing out of his mouth. He’d never cursed a woman in his life. The amount of times he’d raised his voice to Muriel he could count on one hand. This wasn’t him.
So who the hell was it?
He didn’t know. He counted silently to five, and the rage slipped away.
“I probably should excuse myself,” he admitted. “Only we have a ticking clock. A teenage boy in Fort Lauderdale has been abducted. We need to move fast.”
The answer seemed to satisfy Cruz, and she nodded thoughtfully.
“Any more questions?” Linderman asked.
The other four agents at the table shook their heads.
“Good. Let’s get to work,” Linderman said.
Chapter 35
Linkage analysis.
The words had become a catchphrase within the FBI during the past decade, and had helped track down and capture more serial killers than any single piece of forensic science.
The concept behind linkage analysis was simple. By examining behavior that was contained in three distinct components of a crime, law enforcement would be able to draw a more complete picture of a killer, and as a result, bring him to justice.
Standing at a white drawing board in the front of the conference room, Linderman used a magic marker to write the three components of linkage analysis.
Modus Operandi (MO)
Ritual
Signature
The five agents from the Jacksonville office stared at their laptops. Each agent had read Bob Kessler’s report about Crutch. Also on their laptops were the homicide reports from the six cities where Crutch’s twenty-four victims had been discovered. The police departments in those cities had emailed Linderman the information which they’d collected on those killings, hoping to get the cases off their books.
“Let’s start with Crutch’s MO,” Linderman said. “Anyone want to take a stab?”
The line brought grins from the group. Cruz went first.
“It’s identical in each killing,” she said. “The victims are raped and killed and left in a wooded area that’s frequented by picnickers and nature lovers. Their bodies are naked, and have been bitten around the face and neck. In each city, three of the victims were severely beaten with a blunt instrument, while a fourth victim was not. According to the autopsy reports, each victim died from massive blood loss.”
Linderman wrote each item in bold letters next to MO on the board. Then he turned around to face Cruz. “Do the victims share any similarities?” he asked.
Cruz scrolled through the homicide reports. “The victims who weren’t beaten were all young, and small in stature.”
“How young?”
“Late teens.”
“How old were the other victims?”
“In each city, there was one victim in her late forties, while the other two were in their mid-twenties.”
“Should we assume he’s profiling his victims before he kills them?”
“It would appear so.”
Linderman wrote these items next to Ritual on the board.
“Who wants to go next?” he asked.
Waller, one of the two African-American agents, spoke up. Tall and broad-shouldered, Waller carried himself like an athlete, his hands animated as he spoke.