A Different Dawn (Nina Guerrera) Page 7

  Buxton looked thoughtful. “Agent Guerrera, why don’t you and Detective Perez interview him? Detective Perez knows him, and you’re former local PD. That might help.”

  Perez nodded. “I’ll set it up.”

  “We’ll make headway faster if we split up,” Buxton said, looking around the table as he spoke. “Agent Kent, team up with Agent Breck and go over the Doyle investigation. Agent Wade, you can review the police files from around the country as they come in. Agent Guerrera can work with Detective Perez on the Llorona case.”

  Kent looked like his breakfast had given him heartburn.

  “I’ll start making phone calls,” Perez said, ignoring Kent’s glare. “All our documents have been converted to digital files in the record-management system—we call it RMS. In order to access those files on my computer, I have to put in a request to have that case added to my queue.”

  Breck’s antennae went up at the mention of computer technology. “You mean you can’t just access the file in the database?”

  “Not without authorization,” Perez said. “No detective can freely peruse hundreds of thousands of cases going back decades at will. Access is restricted to investigations the detective has been assigned to work.”

  “I have an appointment to update the Phoenix police chief this morning on what we’re doing,” Buxton said. “Would it help for me to ask him to expedite authorization?”

  Perez laughed. “That’s overkill. I’ll call my commander and make the request. Once I tell her you have a meeting with the chief, she’ll make it happen. We can get started reviewing the reports a lot more quickly that way.”

  Buxton turned to Wade. “As the lead profiler, I’d like you to join me in providing an overview to the chief while we wait for the first reports from the other jurisdictions to come in. Everyone else can head out. We’ll reconvene here later today.”

  They had their marching orders. She was grateful for a chance to work on the Llorona case, because to unravel the mystery of how the unsub had waged an undetected campaign of terror over almost three decades, she would have to start at the beginning.

  Chapter 12

  Nina glanced up at the tiny camera aimed down at her as she stood beside Perez on Detective Martin O’Malley’s front porch.

  Perez had been able to access the Llorona case file from his laptop about twenty minutes after he called his commander. Nina had reviewed the information briefly, deciding she would rather go over it in detail with the detective who wrote it. During the drive to his house, Perez had repeated his earlier caution that O’Malley was grouchy at the best of times and, unlike most detectives on the PPD, highly resentful of the FBI.

  She considered herself warned.

  Perez rang the doorbell and knocked three times. Nothing.

  After a full minute of silence, she cut her eyes to him. “I thought you said O’Malley was home and was expecting us.”

  “He is,” Perez said. “Doesn’t mean he’s going to talk to us.”

  The door jerked inward, taking her by surprise. A barrel-chested man with a substantial paunch, sparse gray hair, and a scraggly full beard stood, blinking in the sun.

  Perez dipped his head briefly. “Good to see you, Marty.”

  Martin O’Malley grunted by way of answer, then glared at Nina with puffy, red-rimmed eyes. “You’re keeping some piss-poor company these days, Perez.”

  Unsure whether this applied to the entire FBI or her personally, Nina tried for diplomacy. She stuck out her hand. “Nina Guerrera.” She made sure to leave out Special Agent.

  O’Malley made no move to take her hand. He turned to Perez. “You don’t need Feds to tell you how to run an investigation.”

  Nina dropped her hand back to her side. “Actually, it’s your help we could use right now, Detective O’Malley.”

  His eyes narrowed as they settled on her again. “I’ve seen you on TV. You’re that Warrior Girl.”

  “If you know that,” she said, “then you also know I was a cop before I went to the Bureau.”

  He gave her an assessing look. “What made you go to the dark side?”

  She shrugged. “Wanted a bigger sandbox to play in.”

  He let out a croak that might have been laughter. “May as well come in and get this over with.” He turned and retreated into the dark recesses inside.

  Nina felt like the billy goat who answered the troll’s questions correctly and had been allowed to cross the bridge. Perez trailed her as they passed through the foyer and into what looked like a home office. O’Malley lowered himself into a seat behind a scarred desk covered in stacks of papers and decorated with mementos from his law enforcement career.

  “What’s this about?” O’Malley gestured toward two dusty chairs nearby. “Perez would only say it had something to do with a case from my time in Homicide.”

  She appreciated Perez leaving it to her to frame the discussion. He obviously knew how important the order of questioning in any interview would be. That included victims, witnesses, suspects, and previous investigators.

  She opened with a generic question to see how much O’Malley kept in touch with current events. “You may have seen the news recently about the Doyle murders?”

  “Which someone tried to pass off as a homicide-suicide,” he said. “Yeah, I heard some stuff.”

  As far as she knew, the media hadn’t reported many details about the Doyle investigation. “How did you know about the crime scene staging?”

  “I keep in touch,” he said. “Go down to the lodge for lunch at least three times a week and hang out with the guys.” He gestured around at the quiet house. “Ever since Connie died, it’s not like I’ve got a lot of things to do.”

  “If you’ve been talking to other detectives, then you know the scene was set up to put it on the mother.”

  “That’s what I heard. The woman takes out her husband and child, then does herself in the bathtub.”

  She was certain the detail about the bathtub hadn’t been released to the public. O’Malley’s sources were accurate. “Do you recall working a case where the mother killed her husband and baby before committing suicide?”

  His bushy gray brows drew together, then shot up. “The Llorona case. That was ages ago.”

  She leaned forward, watching his reaction. “Twenty-eight years, to be exact.”

  He cocked his head to one side, considering. “You think that case has something to do with this one that just happened?”

  “We’re looking into it.”

  O’Malley gave her a shrewd look. “You don’t work out of the Phoenix field office. You work back east with those profilers. You wouldn’t have come clear across the country unless there was some reason to believe a serial killer was involved.”

  “Right now, this is just preliminary,” Nina told him. “We’re trying to—”

  “To figure out if I screwed up the Llorona case.” He looked from Nina to Perez and back again. “You’re thinking I let some damn serial killer slip through my fingers and he’s at it again here in Phoenix.”

  Nina held up a placating hand. “We don’t know if—”

  O’Malley shot to his feet. “Out.”

  She kept her seat, hoping to calm him. The interview would be over unless she took a chance on him and revealed an important piece of the investigation. Right now, she wanted access to O’Malley’s memories, not just his reports.

  “How about if I let you in on some information we’ve been holding back?”

  “Yeah, right,” O’Malley said. “The FBI is like a toilet. They suck all the shit in, and nothing ever comes back out.” He crossed his arms. “In other words, it’s a one-way flow.”

  He plainly didn’t believe she would be straight with him. She took the plunge anyway. “Look, if this is a serial killer, he’s managed to fool a lot of top-notch detectives from some of the best police agencies in the country for years. He’s extremely clever and resourceful. He knows how to hide his tracks.”

  O’Mall
ey narrowed his eyes. “What other departments?”

  “New York, LA, Chicago, Houston, Philly, and San Diego.” She leveled him with a hard stare. “You need to keep all of this to yourself.”

  He sat back down heavily. “Damn, how many cases are there?”

  “We believe there are eight,” she said. “He hits once every four years.”

  “On the same date,” Perez added.

  “Leap day,” O’Malley said. “I remember it like it was yesterday. It’s one of the ones you never forget.”

  Now they were getting somewhere. “What stands out?” she asked.

  “I was going through my second divorce at the time.” O’Malley’s jaw hardened at the unpleasant memory.

  Nina pulled him back on track. “About the case?”

  “I’m getting to that.” He gave her an indignant look. “Anyway, wife number two, Brenda, was a piece of work. That woman made my life a living hell.”

  Nina thought she knew where he might be going with this. “You were having marital trouble when you were on the case.”

  O’Malley’s expression darkened. “The day after I got called out on the Llorona case, I had an appointment at my attorney’s office to meet with Brenda and her pit bull of an attorney. She wanted half my pension, and we’d only been married two years.” He thumped his fist on the desk. “Screw that.”

  “Getting back to the Llorona case.” Nina found she had begun calling it by the nickname everyone in town used. “You might have had some other things on your mind when—”

  “Bullshit.” He glowered at her a moment before going on. “I know how to compartmentalize. When I’m on a case and something’s bothering me, I shut that shit down. Nothing distracts me.”

  Nina wondered if O’Malley realized how much the mere memory of his bitter divorce had distracted him from describing the investigation to her now.

  “We pulled your case files,” Perez said, gently redirecting him. “Could you go over them with us and walk us through what you found?” He opened his laptop and turned it toward O’Malley. “These RMS files are scanned and downloaded from the original murder book.”

  On the way over, Perez had explained to her how all police reports had been digitized. Instead of plowing through dusty and decaying files that were subject to loss, misfiling, or damage, now everything was searchable, safely stored in the cloud.

  O’Malley put on his reading glasses. “Can you believe I used to bang out my reports on a typewriter back in the day? Now everything’s digital, even my old pencil sketches of the scene. Damn.” He leaned close to the screen. “Oh yeah, I remember how this part of town used to be. Palomino Villa. Blue-collar neighborhood, mostly Latino. Pretty quiet, considering.”

  “Considering what, exactly?” Nina asked, allowing a slight edge to her voice when she posed the question.

  O’Malley glanced up, perhaps realizing he was speaking to two Latinos. “Uh, I mean to say that it was a nice starter home.” He cleared his throat. “It was their first place. They had just moved in about two months before the murders.”

  Certain this wasn’t what he had been referring to, she made no response. Perez didn’t seem to feel inclined to let him off the hook, either, letting an awkward silence build until O’Malley changed the subject, pointing at a copy of one of the crime scene photos.

  “There’s the open shoebox. I remember that lying on the floor in front of the master bedroom closet.”

  She followed his gaze. “I believe the report said there were love letters from another woman to the husband hidden inside?”

  “Burned,” O’Malley said. “Only part of one of the notes was legible.”

  “It was typed.” Nina peered directly at O’Malley. “Didn’t you find that strange for such a personal communication?”

  “Who am I to say how lovers communicate?” He waved a dismissive hand. “Maybe her handwriting sucked.”

  “Did you ever figure out who the other woman was?” Perez asked.

  “Never did. We dusted the unburned part of the paper for prints and came up with nothing. None of his friends or family knew anything about a mistress either.”

  Nowadays there would be ninhydrin testing that could bring up prints on many different kinds of surfaces a lot more reliably.

  She pressed him again. “Did you find it odd that the woman who sent it never touched it?”

  “Not particularly.” O’Malley looked defensive. “And before you ask, I also didn’t find it strange that she never came forward. Could you blame her, given the media circus? The families might have done her in.”

  She switched to a new line of questioning. “How were the families when you interviewed them?”

  “How the hell do you think?”

  She suppressed a sigh. “I mean, did they offer any other theories about what happened that night? Did they go along with double-homicide-suicide?”

  “No one ever believes something like that. Of course both families wouldn’t accept it. The wife’s relatives kept saying she was a good Catholic girl and would never commit murder or suicide. They also made a big deal about how the baby hadn’t been baptized yet, so her mother wouldn’t have sent her soul to purgatory by killing her.”

  “What did you think about that?” she asked him.

  “I thought they were in denial.” He shrugged. “The wife just had a baby. Some women go batshit after childbirth. Then she finds out her man is cheating on her?” He snapped his fingers. “Off the deep end.”

  “What about the husband’s family?”

  “They had two children—both boys.” O’Malley shook his head. “About a year after Victor died, their older son was killed in combat overseas. When I asked about Victor, his parents told me he was a God-fearing man who was devoted to his family and would never have an affair.”

  “What about the murder weapon found at the scene?” Nina asked. “Did either family remember one of them having a gun?”

  “Everyone we asked said they didn’t own any weapons,” O’Malley said. “Not even for self-defense.” He jabbed a finger at her. “And don’t look at me like that. A lot of folks don’t tell anyone they own a gun. The neighborhood they lived in could be dicey at times.” He raised his hand to forestall any accusations. “I’m not saying that because it was a Latino area either.”

  Nina stayed focused. “Did you trace the weapon that was found at the scene?”

  “We ran it through ATF. It hadn’t been used in a crime. Serial number led back to a gun shop in Mesa that went out of business a couple of years before the murder when the owner died. The shop owner’s family got rid of all his records, so we filed a request for a hand search through the federal purchase database. Took a few weeks, but we got a response. The buyer turned out to be some lowlife in Mesa who ended up getting shot in a drive-by. No one knew what happened to his gun after the guy was killed.”

  “Hard to imagine how the weapon would have ended up in Victor Vega’s house,” Nina said. “He had no criminal record or connections.”

  O’Malley spread his hands in an elaborate shrug. “Gun might have changed hands sixteen times before it ended up at that crime scene. It’s not like there are any records kept when a private citizen sells a firearm to another person.”

  Nina clicked on a document summarizing the results of a neighborhood canvass. “No one heard a gunshot the night of the crime.”

  “Small-caliber revolver,” O’Malley said by way of explanation. “The house was on one of the larger lots and backed up to a wash. There was only one neighbor close by, and they were out of town.”

  She figured the unsub, who had proven himself to be extremely thorough, probably knew that fact. She scanned the array of photos scrolling by as Perez swiped the surface of the computer screen with his index finger. The crime scene bore silent testimony to the unspeakable horror that had been visited upon the home that night.

  Studying the images of the bodies frozen in time, she reached out to stop Perez. “Wait, let me se
e that photo again.”

  He scrolled back to the previous picture.

  She used her thumb and forefinger to expand the image. “Look at the wall.”

  “I don’t see anything,” O’Malley said.

  “Exactly.” She heard the excitement of discovery in her own voice.

  O’Malley frowned at her. “What are you talking about?”

  “I’m talking about a void in the blood spatter.”

  “A what?”

  She zoomed in more. “If you look down near the lower edge of the picture, you can make out where Victor’s blood hit the wall. Look closer, and you’ll see a blank space inside the area surrounded by blood.”

  “It’s not blank,” O’Malley said.

  She nodded absently, her mind already racing ahead. “It’s got a thin trickle or two of red, but that’s from droplets rolling down from their contact point above the empty spot. That blank part never got spattered with blood.”

  Perez turned to her. “What are you saying?”

  “I’m saying someone moved Victor’s body after he died.”

  “Maybe he crawled a bit after he was shot,” O’Malley said in a half-hearted tone.

  She arched her brow at him. “You know that didn’t happen. The round hit him point-blank in the face, just above the nose on the lower part of the forehead. He would have been dead before he took his next breath, with no ability to make any move at all.”

  It was the kind of shot snipers made when a hostage taker had a gun to someone’s head. When the bullet penetrated that part of the brain, it short-circuited all movement. O’Malley knew it too. Every cop did.

  She turned back to Perez. “Let me see the autopsy photos.”

  He clicked another subfolder in the file.

  She studied pictures of the husband’s nude body taken before, during, and after the procedure. Next, she examined photos of the wife, beginning with those taken at the crime scene.

  Realization dawned. “Holy shit.”

  “What now?” O’Malley looked irritable.