“Each of these crime scenes is identical,” Waller pointed out. “The bodies were dumped in the woods near each other. The autopsy reports say the victims died at different times, yet they all ended up in the same place. Crutch brought them to the woods and did something to them, then left them.”
“At the same time?” Linderman asked.
“Yes, at the same time,” Waller said.
“How can you be certain?” Linderman pressed him. “For all we know, Crutch could have dumped the victims at different times.”
The conference room fell silent. Waller needed more facts to bolster his argument. The agent glanced at his laptop while gathering his thoughts.
“I don’t think so. Here’s why,” Waller said. “In each of the cities, hikers discovered the bodies. If Crutch had been dumping the bodies at different times, the bodies would have been discovered individually. That didn’t happen. In each city, the bodies were discovered together.”
Linderman liked where Waller was headed, but still wanted more proof.
“Why didn’t the police in these cities see this?” Linderman asked.
“They didn’t have the luxury of looking at six crime scenes,” Waller replied. “Since the autopsy reports indicated the victims died at different times, the police in each city assumed the bodies were dumped at different times. I think the police were wrong.”
“How can you be sure without evidence?” Linderman asked.
“The similarities in the crime scenes is our evidence,” Waller explained. “Serial killers are driven by ritualistic fantasies. These fantasies express the killer’s primary motivation for committing the crime. Crutch was killing his victims, then bringing their bodies to the woods to perform the ritual, then leaving the bodies once the ritual was finished. That’s why the crime scenes in the six cities are identical.”
Linderman added the points to the board next to the word Ritual.
Four female victims in each city
One middle age female (45-50)
Two young females (20-30)
One teenager female (15-18)
Bodies brought to woods to perform ritual
He examined what he’d written. They were getting closer to learning Crutch’s motivation, always a watershed moment when dealing with serial killers. His attention shifted back to the group.
“So what’s the ritual?” he asked.
Cruz again answered. “Crutch purposely chose wooded areas to dump his victims’ bodies. Those areas were all near hiking paths, and were well used by the public. There might be another connection here that we’re missing.”
“In the sites themselves,” Linderman said.
“Exactly,” Cruz said. “The police assumed the bodies were dumped in the woods because that’s where most killers dump bodies. But that may not be our killer’s motivation. The woods may have held some other significance to him.”
The door to the conference room opened. Wood entered holding two cardboard pizza boxes and a six pack of Coke dangling from his fingertips.
“Break time,” Wood announced.
Soon everyone was eating. Linderman had asked Wood to order the food, wanting to repay the group for their time in some small way.
“How’s it going?” Wood asked, biting into a slice of pepperoni.
“We’re making progress,” Linderman replied.
After break, the group studied the crime scene photos.
A plasma TV was wheeled into the room, and the police crime scene photos taken in the six cities were displayed. The majority showed the corpses after they’d been dug up from shallow graves. The sameness of the dead women was striking – the older victims were tall and thin, the youngest short and heavyset.
Looking at the dead was never easy, and the Jacksonville team viewed the bodies in silence, the only sound coming from their writing instruments as they jotted down notes.
“Who wants to go first?” Linderman asked.
Waller lifted a finger into the air. “The victims were all props,” he said.
The same thought had crossed Linderman’s mind. Not wanting to steal Waller’s thunder, he waited for the agent to continue.
“Crutch’s ritual requires four women of a certain size and age, an ensemble if you will,” Waller went on. “The victims are brought to the woods and put in specific positions so that Crutch can act out his ritual. Once the ritual is over, the women are tossed away, and he leaves. He’s more concerned about his ritual than hiding the bodies.”
The group nodded as one. Waller had hit the nail on the head.
“Very good,” Linderman said. “Now let’s figure out what Crutch’s ritual is.”
An agent named Jason Choy raised his hand. Choy was small and slight of build. The FBI had once placed height requirements on new agents that had prevented someone of Choy’s size from joining. Those requirements had been lifted when the bureau had realized that intellect was more important than physical size.
“Yes, Jason,” Linderman said.
“I think I found something,” Choy said.
The look on Choy’s face said that he’d struck gold. Choy spun his laptop computer around so the screen faced the room. On it was an aerial photograph taken by the police at the Atlanta crime scene. Aerial photographs were essential in recording crime scenes, as they clearly depicted geography, as well as physical relationships and distances.
Choy pointed at an object in the aerial photograph.
“Look at this,” he said.
Linderman crossed the room to have a look. The other agents leaned in to look as well. The object on the screen was rectangular, and within equal proximity to where the victims’ bodies had been found.
“What is it?” Linderman asked.
“It appears to be a picnic table,” Choy replied. “I think Crutch sat the bodies on the table as part of his ritual.”
“How can you be sure?”
Choy clicked the mouse on his laptop. Another photograph appeared. An aerial shot of the Raleigh crime scene. Linderman spotted the table in the photograph without having to be shown. It was right next to an outdoor barbecue in a clearing.
Choy ran through the other aerial photographs of the murder scenes on his laptop. There was a picnic table somewhere in each photograph.
Linderman was not going to jump to conclusions. He had the other agents pull up the aerial photographs on their laptops, with each laptop showing a different aerial photo. The laptops were placed on the table in a row, allowing the agents to view them side-by-side, and compare the murder scenes. By comparing the photos, it became clear that Choy had found a signature linking each of the crimes.
“I kept wondering how Crutch was propping the bodies up to perform his ritual,” Choy explained. “Then I spotted the table. It makes sense, don’t you think?”
Linderman swallowed the rising lump in his throat. Four women, one older, two early twenties, one a teen, sitting at a table like a family. His conversation with Bob Kessler came back to him. Kessler had said that Crutch may have killed his family. Was that what was going on here? Was Crutch killing his family over and over as part of his ritual?
He needed to call Kessler. But first, congratulations were in order. He walked around the oval table, and pumped Choy’s hand.
“That’s brilliant,” he said.
Chapter 36
They took a break. Linderman went outside and walked around to the back of the building. The afternoon had heated up, without a whisper of breeze in the air. He spotted a heron fishing at the edge of a retention pond. Keeping his distance, he pulled out his cell phone, and punched in Bob Kessler’s home number.
Kessler’s voice mail picked up. The retired profiler’s message was firm but polite. Leave a message and he’d call you back. Linderman had always liked direct, which was why he supposed he’d gotten along so well with Kessler when he’d worked for him.
He left a message and folded his phone. Already starting to sweat, he stood beneath a shady stand of oak trees. It was better here, the darkness a welcome relief from the uncompromising glare of sunlight. His eyes fell on the picnic table a few yards away.