Criminal Minds Read online

  He parked in front.

  They were in the heart of Chinatown, the part tourists never ventured into. Chinese-American pedestrians strolled up and down the street and through the alley; several others sat on back porches of the three-story building that faced Wentworth, many smoking as they watched the strangers in the fancy SUV climb out into the late afternoon swelter.

  More sat on stoops along Twenty-fifth, all with their eyes on Morgan and Prentiss. The old cliché about Asians being inscrutable was contradicted by the faces whose eyes were trained on the two FBI agents—reading the distrust and suspicion there didn’t take much in the way of profiling skills.

  Prentiss, trying out a smile on several of the neighbors, asked, ‘‘How did a killer get that barrel into the apartment with this many witnesses?’’

  ‘‘My guess is it’s a little different at night,’’ Morgan said. ‘‘Chinatown’s always been a closed community to the Bureau. What happens in Chinatown stays in Chinatown.’’

  ‘‘You mean, ‘Forget it, Emily. It’s Chinatown?’ ’’

  ‘‘Something like that.’’

  ‘‘Well, according to the report, the police thoroughly canvassed the neighborhood.’’

  Morgan glanced at her. ‘‘What did they find?’’

  ‘‘They got exactly as much information as you would expect.’’

  ‘‘Meaning nothing.’’

  ‘‘Meaning nothing.’’

  Using a pocketknife, Morgan cut the crime scene tape. Then from the pocket of his slacks, he withdrew a key Lorenzon had given him and unlocked the door.

  ‘‘After you,’’ he said.

  Prentiss smirked; she was a good-looking woman and even her smirk wasn’t hard to look at. ‘‘I don’t care what anybody says, Derek Morgan—you’re a gentleman.’’

  They entered the dark building, each using Mini Maglites to help find their way through the shadows. Even though the windows lacked curtains, the glass was so grimy that little light made it through.

  Using her Maglite, Prentiss searched and finally found a light switch. She flipped it, but nothing happened.

  ‘‘Not a surprise,’’ she said.

  ‘‘No wonder no one saw anything,’’ Morgan said. ‘‘If we can’t see out, it’s a good bet nobody can see in.’’

  ‘‘Where was the barrel situated?’’

  Morgan glanced around in the gloom, getting his bearings.

  ‘‘Over there,’’ he said, pointing to a hallway that led to a bedroom.

  The layout was fairly simple: a living room led into a small kitchen with an eating area and a tiny bedroom down the hall, which led to the second floor and two more bedrooms and a bathroom. Morgan walked the whole thing and got the feeling no one had lived here for a long, long time—nobody but an occasional homeless inhabitant, anyway.

  Once he was back downstairs, he found Prentiss shining her light around the edges of the windows.

  ‘‘You read the report,’’ Morgan said. ‘‘When was the last time someone lived here?’’

  ‘‘Three years ago.’’

  ‘‘No one since?’’

  ‘‘Squatters maybe, but no one on the books.’’ Morgan nodded. ‘‘What do we know about the corpse?’’

  ‘‘Other than he’s a John Doe?’’

  ‘‘Yeah.’’

  Prentiss lifted one shoulder in a tiny shrug. ‘‘He was stuffed in the barrel postmortem. The UnSub poured lime in to keep the smell down, and to hasten decomposition—of course, that means the UnSub doesn’t know that lime actually helps preserve a body. I don’t know why people think lime speeds decomposition.’’

  ‘‘Old wives’ tale. Nasty COD?’’

  She nodded and raised a pale hand to her throat. ‘‘Cause of death was strangulation.’’

  Morgan watched Prentiss move to the next window in the front and start poking around the edges with her flashlight beam.

  ‘‘What are you up to?’’ he asked.

  She stopped and turned to face him. ‘‘One thing that wasn’t in the report was how the UnSub got inside. The door wasn’t jimmied and that barrel got in here somehow.’’

  Morgan nodded. ‘‘Right. He had to either have a key or he came in through a window and unlocked the door, so he could wheel the barrel in.’’

  They were already referring to the UnSub as ‘‘he’’—these murders seemed a man’s crime, nothing about it indicated a rare female serial killer, although the lack of sexual assault left that open.

  ‘‘If the UnSub had a key,’’ Prentiss said, forehead creased with thought, ‘‘where did he get it?’’

  ‘‘Or if he came in through one of the windows,’’ Morgan said, gesturing toward one, ‘‘why didn’t anybody see him?’’

  She put both shoulders into a shrug. ‘‘Late at night, probably. But with that barrel, he had to have it somewhere nearby.’’

  ‘‘The cops haven’t explained it?’’

  Prentiss shook her head. ‘‘I know it’s not supposed to be up to us to gather the evidence, but how this UnSub got into the place might tell us something about him.’’

  ‘‘Agreed,’’ Morgan said. ‘‘You keep looking here— I want to check something out.’’

  He went into the kitchen, where he turned the knob on a door he thought might adjoin the middle apartment; but he found a short hallway with the middle apartment’s door on the right, at the far end, and nearer, on the left, a stairway leading down.

  Shining his light ahead of him, he descended ten steps into a dank basement redolent of urine and mildew.

  No wonder nobody checked down here, he thought.

  Cobwebs drooped everywhere but in the stairwell itself, where they had been removed. A thick layer of dust coated the floor, the furnace, and a few scraps of worthless furniture. He shone his light on the floor and saw footprints in the dust.

  He used the light to follow them back to a half window on the far wall. One of two panes had been broken and the latch opened from there. The window was only about twelve inches high and twenty inches across.

  Now they knew something about their UnSub: he was a lot of things, but overweight wasn’t one of them.

  Morgan went back upstairs, told Prentiss what he’d found, and told her not to step on the floor. He had left the door open just in case, by some miracle, prints might turn up on the basement side.

  He got out his cell phone and called Hotchner and detailed to the team leader what they had found, and suggested Lorenzon get his crime scene team back right away.

  July 28 Chicago Heights, Illinois

  Dr. Spencer Reid felt a little bit like the kid who had been dumped on his older brother for the day. He rode in back of the SUV with Rossi and Tovar up front. The Chicago Heights detective was behind the wheel, even though it was an FBI vehicle.

  Up front, the two men were discussing baseball, the Chicago Cubs in particular, an area of expertise not among Reid’s skill set.

  Rossi was saying, ‘‘You really think this is the year?’’

  Tovar nodded as he drove them south. ‘‘They won the division last year, didn’t they?’’

  ‘‘Then got spanked by Arizona.’’

  ‘‘Yeah, but the pitching’s better now.’’

  Rossi shrugged. ‘‘Believe it when I see it.’’

  From the backseat, Reid watched the neighborhood change as they cruised farther south from mostly Caucasian to mostly Hispanic to mostly African-American. By the time they reached their destination, however, the neighborhood had become a middle-class melting pot of variant homes and blacktop streets with no curbs and no apparent storm sewers.

  Tovar drove through a neighborhood of well-tended homes that varied from ordinary single-story boxes to brick-faced two-stories that looked like they had fallen off the mansion truck and landed beside the road in the wrong neighborhood.

  ‘‘Odd mix of houses,’’ Reid said.

  ‘‘Yeah,’’ Tovar said. ‘‘Some of the old houses are being bought up
, torn down, and replaced by newer ones. Other oldies are getting the renovation treatment.’’

  ‘‘Gentrification,’’ Rossi said. ‘‘Gotta love it.’’ But he clearly didn’t.

  ‘‘Oh yeah,’’ Tovar said. ‘‘The neighborhood’s changing.’’

  Reid asked, ‘‘For the better?’’

  ‘‘Matter of opinion,’’ Tovar said. ‘‘Certainly isn’t better for the Andrews family.’’

  The Chicago detective pulled the Tahoe to a stop next to a plain but well-maintained one-story tan house surrounded by trees and bushes. ‘‘This is where the daughter was parked with her boyfriend when they were shot to death back in April.’’

  Reid looked around, trying to get a feel for the neighborhood. The houses were not terribly close together and they all appeared well cared for, a fairly typical middle-class neighborhood. Across the street, a park spread out before them, a parking lot on the far side of the block.

  ‘‘Quiet,’’ Reid said.

  ‘‘Too quiet, like they say in the old movies,’’ Tovar said. ‘‘No crimes to speak of, here.’’

  They climbed out of the SUV, each taking a moment to survey the area. Reid couldn’t take his eyes off the parking lot across the park. Trees shaded the cars that were nosed in, facing this direction. To see who was or was not inside those cars from there was impossible without binoculars or a high-powered camera lens. The powerlessness gave him an uneasy feeling.

  Rossi asked the Chicago detective, ‘‘Did the boy and girl park alongside the house and make out, you know, as a regular thing?’’

  ‘‘They had been dating for a while,’’ Tovar said.

  ‘‘I think it’s safe to say that night wasn’t the first time they’d sat there and necked, yeah.’’

  Reid nodded across the way. ‘‘That park would give someone an easy place to surveil the victims.’’

  ‘‘Of course,’’ Rossi said, ‘‘but how did he know they would be there on this particular night? Nothing indicates whether this was a randomly chosen couple, or one that the killer had selected and watched over time.’’

  Reid agreed.

  Tovar looked blank.

  Rossi said, ‘‘The boy, Benny Mendoza? His coach had taken Benny and his girl to the White Sox game that night. Benny was a promising young ballplayer. Anyway, the game got rained out late. The boy and girl didn’t get back till well after midnight.’’ Rossi made a face at Reid. ‘‘How the hell could the UnSub have known that?’’

  Reid considered that for a moment; then he put some pieces together. ‘‘Let’s suppose he was indeed stalking the couple.’’

  ‘‘Suppose away,’’ Rossi said.

  ‘‘If he’s re-creating Berkowitz’s crime, it’s the street he’s most concerned with—Hutchinson Avenue. What if he was stalking more than one couple along the street, and this one, Andrews and Mendoza, was the couple that happened to show up at the right time?’’

  Tovar said, ‘‘Wrong time, you mean.’’

  Rossi was looking at Reid, hard. ‘‘You’re saying it could have been anyone along the street?’’

  ‘‘It’s possible,’’ Reid said. ‘‘Son of Sam shot individuals as well as couples.’’

  ‘‘Dr. Reid could be right,’’ Tovar said. ‘‘The weather was bad that night. Rained like hell most of the evening. I doubt if there were a lot of people out and about.’’

  Reid said, ‘‘This isn’t the only house visible from the park.’’

  Rossi said, ‘‘It would be easy to watch most of the street from that parking lot.’’

  ‘‘There’s something else,’’ Reid said.

  The other two turned to him.

  "Our UnSub is patient. He takes care and exercises a certain artistry, but he’s not a perfectionist—he’s willing to fudge a little on his re-creations.’’

  Rossi eyed Reid skeptically. ‘‘And you’ve reached this conclusion how?’’

  Reid shrugged. ‘‘He waited.’’

  Rossi chewed on that momentarily. Then he said, ‘‘He sat in wait until his victims came along. Yeah.

  I’ll buy that.’’

  ‘‘No, I think you miss my point—I mean, he waited past midnight.’’

  The other two stared at him.

  ‘‘Technically,’’ Reid said, articulating something he’d discerned on first reading the report, ‘‘he missed the anniversary of the Son of Sam killing. He shot them in the early morning hours of the eighteenth.’’

  ‘‘What does that mean?’’ Tovar asked.

  Rossi sighed, gave Reid a little smile that meant, Nice going, and said to the Chicago cop, ‘‘It means that even though he’s re-creating crimes, our UnSub is willing to adapt his crime so that he gets his kill . . . even if it undermines the exactness of his recreation.’’

  Tovar still seemed confused. ‘‘And what does that tell us?’’

  Rossi tilted his head just a little, then righted it. ‘‘Even though he’s patient and highly organized in his planning, he’s going to kill—that’s the priority— even if it doesn’t fall within the exact boundaries of what he’s trying to create.’’

  ‘‘Or rather,’’ Reid put in, ‘‘re-create.’’

  Rossi nodded, then went on: ‘‘Reid used the word ‘artistry,’ and I think that’s right on point: in his own way, probably in his own mind, our UnSub is an artist. Instead of just painting or sculpting the things that inspire him, he’s acting them out.’’

  ‘‘It wasn’t clear until we got here,’’ Reid said, ‘‘but aren’t these jurisdictions where he committed the crimes rather far apart?’’

  ‘‘Yeah,’’ Tovar said, with a nod.

  ‘‘How far apart?’’ Reid asked.

  Tovar gestured vaguely. ‘‘The Chinatown crime scene is about an hour from here, depending on traffic. The Wauconda crime scene is at least an hour and a half north of here.’’

  Reid’s eyes tightened. ‘‘That tells us something too.’’

  ‘‘Which is?’’ Tovar asked.

  ‘‘He’s mobile,’’ Reid said.

  ‘‘He owns a car,’’ Rossi agreed.

  ‘‘What kind?’’ Tovar asked, a smile creasing his face. It was a joke.

  Smiling back, Rossi said, not joking at all, ‘‘Something inconspicuous, probably an older car that would blend in. It won’t be anything too flashy and the color will be something neutral or subdued, too. He’s been spending a lot of time planning these crimes. He has to’ve spent a lot of time in the areas where they took place . . . and no one noticed him.’’

  ‘‘Okay,’’ Tovar said, impressed. ‘‘I can get on board with that.’’

  Reid asked, ‘‘Were all the crimes committed at night?’’

  ‘‘This one was,’’ Tovar said. ‘‘The other two, the bodies were found well after the murders, so there’s no way to know for sure.’’

  Reid turned to Rossi. ‘‘If he’s spending this much time in these places, doesn’t he have to have some job freedom?’’

  Rossi nodded, once.

  Tovar asked, ‘‘Why not just unemployed?’’

  Rossi shook his head. He patted the SUV near where they stood. ‘‘Not likely with the distance between these crime scenes and Chicago gas prices. He’s got a job that allows him at least some freedom.’’

  ‘‘You’re sure of this?’’ Tovar asked.

  ‘‘It’s an educated guess,’’ Rossi said. ‘‘But a very educated guess.’’

  The Hispanic detective mulled that. ‘‘Maybe his wife works, or he’s somebody that doesn’t have to work, ’cause his family left him money or something.’’

  ‘‘Possible,’’ Rossi said with a tiny smile. ‘‘Not probable.’’

  Mind going a million miles an hour, Reid said, ‘‘His job doesn’t give him the satisfaction he needs, either.’’

  ‘‘Why do you say that?’’ Tovar asked.

  ‘‘These crimes are all about getting attention,’’ Reid said. ‘‘There’s no indication of
any sexual aspects to the killings, so the UnSub’s doing it for two things: self-satisfaction, a twisted sense of self-worth you might say; and, again, the attention.’’

  Rossi said, ‘‘You can’t be a performance artist if there’s no audience.’’

  Reid and Tovar both turned to look at the goateed FBI agent, his words having hit them both fairly hard.

  As Reid digested the idea, Tovar turned toward the house. Following the detective’s gaze, Reid turned as well and saw a stocky man of about five-nine striding across the yard in their direction. He had short hair, horn-rimmed glasses and a sad, pouchy face etched with a frown.

  Tovar stepped forward, hand extended. ‘‘Mr. Andrews.’’

  ‘‘Detective Tovar,’’ Andrews said politely. He wore khakis and a tan-and-brown striped Polo shirt. ‘‘Good to see you again.’’

  Reid and Rossi let the detective take the lead.

  Tovar said, ‘‘Vernon Andrews, this is Supervisory Special Agent David Rossi and Supervisory Special Agent Dr. Spencer Reid from the FBI.’’

  ‘‘We’re sorry for your loss,’’ Rossi said, shaking the man’s hand.

  Andrews nodded. ‘‘Thank you.’’

  ‘‘For what it’s worth, we’re here to help bring the person who did this terrible thing to justice.’’

  ‘‘If I can help in any way, don’t hesitate.’’

  Andrews was saying this as he shook Reid’s hand, the grieving man’s grasp limp and cool, a dead man’s handshake.

  Reid added his condolences.

  ‘‘Thank you,’’ Andrews said.

  ‘‘Mr. Andrews,’’ Reid went on, ‘‘we’d like to ask you some questions, if that would be all right.’’

  ‘‘Will it help find my daughter’s killer?’’

  Rossi said, ‘‘We hope so, sir.’’

  ‘‘Then please ask. But I’m afraid I don’t know what I can tell you that I haven’t already told Detective Tovar.’’

  ‘‘We know what happened,’’ Rossi said. ‘‘Right now, we’re more concerned with why it happened . . . and how.’’

  ‘‘I’m not sure I understand,’’ Andrews said.