"It's just a job, Jack. Don't take it personally. It's what you do to make money, so you can live your life. I want to catch this guy as much as you do. You saw what he did to those women. Hell, look what he did to my mouth. But when I walk out that door, I leave work behind."
"This particular work seems to be following me wherever I go."
Herb frowned. "Get some rest. Take a day off. Call up that dating service and find a nice guy and get laid. Do something, for God's sake, other than police work. Fifty years from now, when you're dead and buried, you want the epitaph on your tombstone to read "She was a good cop"?"
I thought about it.
"Fine," I decided. "I'll take the afternoon off. Can you manage the store while I'm gone?"
"Consider it done."
"I'll see you later."
"Live your life, Jack. You've only got one."
I nodded and left.
When I got home, I spent the next four hours thinking about the case.
Chapter 15
IT'S ALL IN THE PLANNING.
If you plan out every detail, you can get away with anything. The trick is to delay the gratification until the planning is complete. That's why he's been caught in the past -- because the thrill of the crime overrode common sense. But that won't happen again. He now thinks of planning as an appetizer. Foreplay. It has become fun in its own right.
He's planned this spree so well that he'll be able to kill all four girls within a week, while still allowing himself time to enjoy each one. It's a tight schedule, made even tighter by the sudden interest he's taken in Jack Daniels, but the months of plotting and watching and waiting are paying off. By next week he'll be history, a Chicago legend, leaving behind a legacy of terror and unanswered questions.
He had to dispose of T. Metcalf that morning, wanting to keep her a bit longer but unable to deal with the smell. It's risky, dumping the body that way twice in a row, but it adds to his supernatural mystique. He's looking forward to the headlines.
Charles sits on his basement floor amid the barrels of gasoline, and stares at the gory red spot where he violated the corpse only hours ago. Tomorrow he'll have another one to take her place. Until then, he has more planning to do.
Jack is the cause of it.
He's expected all along to attack the cop in charge of his case. But he's dwelling on Jack more than he expected to.
Maybe the media is the cause of it, and all the attention he's getting makes him want to show off. Television mocked him, now it fears him. Justice.
Or maybe, after weeks of scheming and plotting, the idea that Jack wants to stop him before he's finished makes her just as bad as those whores who forced him to undertake this mission in the first place.
What is Jack doing now? How is the case progressing? Is she living in fear, worried she'll be attacked again? Does she feel helpless and powerless? Is she angry because she can't do anything to stop him?
Maybe he'll give her a call and find out. It's time to kick it up a notch, give her some personal treatment. She wants to go up against him? Fine. She's going to regret that decision, for the rest of her life.
Which won't be very long.
But why call, when he can drop by? After all, he knows where she lives.
The Gingerbread Man closes his eyes and begins to plan.
Chapter 16
I WOUND UP TAKING A NAP, which was a mixed blessing. It refreshed me somewhat, and gave me some much-needed rest, but when my eyes opened, it was only five o'clock in the evening and I knew I'd never get to sleep come bedtime.
So I smoothed the wrinkles from my suit, took some pain medication and some cold medication, and went back to the only office in the city that never closed.
Herb was gone when I arrived, home with his wife and his life, work no longer on his mind. The ME's report was waiting for me on my desk, another rush job courtesy of the mayor's office, and I took a sip from my vending machine coffee and sat down to peruse the atrocities inflicted on another poor girl.
The first bit of news that leaped out at me was the time of death. The ME placed it at about seven P.M. the previous night. The killer had kept the body around for a lot longer than he'd kept the first one.
He'd hurt this one a lot more as well. This girl had thirty-seven wounds of various lengths and depths, but the ME indicated that several of the wounds had been reopened. Microscopic steel fragments matched those from the previous vic, indicating the same knife had been used. Histamine levels, coupled with a partially bitten-off tongue and the fingernail marks on the palms that Hughes pointed out, indicated they were premortem. She'd been tortured, the ME estimated for as long as four hours.
Death was caused by massive blood loss. Hopefully shock had spared her some pain. There were fibers found in wounds on her wrists and ankles, twine once again.
She was missing all of her toes, her labia minora and majora, four fingers, and both ears. None of them were recovered. No semen was found, but the obvious sexual nature of the crime inferred that rape might have occurred, and the perp either pulled out or used a condom.
Her urine contained traces of sodium secobarbital, the needle puncture mark on her upper left arm.
No identification was found, and the girl was officially dubbed Jane Doe #2. An expert mortician worked on her face and hair for almost two hours to make it appear as lifelike as possible. Then a digital photograph was taken, and the eyes were electronically drawn in on a computer.
This restruct picture was given to the media in time for the six o'clock news, along with a similar photo of the first Jane Doe. If anyone knew either girl, or had any information related to the case, they were asked to call the task force number. Herb had set up a unit of six desk officers to field calls, all of whom had been sufficiently briefed on the case to be able to weed out the crackpots and thrill-seekers.
The second note had been written in the same ink, on the same paper. No prints, hairs, or fibers were found on the note.
The two 7-Elevens were eight blocks apart. I thought about putting plainclothes cops on stakeouts of every convenience store in Chicago, but we would have needed five hundred people to cover the hundred-plus stores around the clock. Instead I put teams on the fifteen stores within a twenty-block radius of the first crime scene, and then drafted a flier to hand out. It told convenience store employees to keep their eyes out for anyone trying to steal garbage cans, drop off garbage cans, or fake a seizure in their shops.
After drawing up the letter, I called down to the desk sergeant and had her round up all the uniforms in the building. The night shift was treated to the same video of the Alka-Seltzer kid as the day shift, with similar results. No one recognized the suspect or the MO.
I hadn't even hit a third of the cops in the district yet, but my optimism was beginning to sag. Mug shots were now filed on computer rather than in books, and I did a quick search of young white male shoplifters and came up with more than eight thousand hits. Even with help it would take a zillion years.
I took a deep breath and let it out slow. If there was any connective tissue between what we had so far and our perp, I was too dense to see it. I was no closer to catching this guy than the day I'd taken the case.
I put in the videotape of the second crime scene and viewed it, seeing for the first time Benedict remove the note from the body, which had been stapled to Jane Doe #2's buttocks. After that it only got grimmer, made even worse because the picture quality was so good.
The first crime scene was videotaped at night while raining, by someone who had problems differentiating between focus and zoom. This video was clean, clear, and in your face. When the tape ended I had no desire to watch it again right away.
But I did watch it again. And again after that, numbing myself to the gore and trying to find something, anything, that might give me a clue.
During the fifth or sixth viewing, my mind began to wander. Was this how I was destined to spend the rest of my life? Benedict was home right now, with his wife. Maybe they were watching TV together, or making love. Or, most likely, eating. But whatever they were doing, it was together. They were sharing their lives. I was here, alone, watching the end of someone else's.