R.S. Guthrie - Detective Bobby Mac 03 - Reckoning Read Free Page B

remembers the victims who would never be.
    Babies that would never be born. Love that would never blossom. Marriages that would never happen. Graduations put on indefinite hold. Children that would not cope with their parentless environments and would turn to crime themselves or to doing drugs or both.
    When we were unable to solve a crime—when the murderer went undetected and worse, killed again—well, therein lay the frustrating part of the job. How to face the families and friends of the deceased and tell them we’d done all we could. It happened. We had many unsolved homicides each year, regardless of how much they weighed on my heart and how furious they made my lieutenant.
    And in the case of the Judas killings, we were now eight deep in just over a year and at times it felt as if we were no closer to the killer than we were on that first frosty morning.
    The morning we found sixteen year-old Deena Ballou’s upper and lower torsos, nude, in the open field across the street from the Capitol Building, separated in two pieces as cleanly as if she’d been born that way. I recognized the pose right away; the decedent’s arms were placed above her head and her legs spread open in a clearly sexually-suggestive way, her mouth cut in a Joker smile.
    The Black Dahlia .
     

     
    I was driving home after a rare short shift. Only fourteen hours. Things had gone more than a little stale with Judas, which normally meant he was preparing another victim. He’d kill her—or another he’d been preparing—unless we got to him within a month or so. The profiler’s best theory was that he mentally broke their will by showing them, every hour, every day, how they were going to die. But not when. Each victim had died by having her neck broken by a hangman’s noose; our theory being that the victim was dropped through the hole of a make-shift gallows. Bruising and lacerations were consistent with the body swinging and hitting the sides of the contraption. Splinters were also found, indicating a wooden execution device.
    The reason we knew of the mental breakdown was because he had them sign a typewritten note, each of them, before they died. Each note made a similar confession and was typed on old parchment with what appeared to be an equally old typewriter. The signatures were confirmed against those of each individual homicide victim. Deena Ballou— our Black Dahlia —left the first note:

 

 
     
    Our profiler was still working on his theory for the posing of the corpses to recreate the crime scenes of infamous killings. And the Judas fixation—where they intersected.
    I had my own theories.
    The radio squawked out of the darkness, startling me.
    “Car seven-seven, this is Dispatch, over.”
    I picked up the transmitter. “Seven-seven, over.”
    “Hostage suicide situation at Clawson and Spear. Request you respond, over.”
    “Mary, I’m a homicide detective. I work with them after they’re dead.”
    “Guy’s got his little girl in the house and is asking for you specifically, Mac. Suspect’s name is Gerry Kelp.”
    “Ten-four. Show seven-seven responding. Over.”
     

     
    It became clearer to me what was happening on the drive over and the new theories in my head did not make me feel better. The Homicide Unit—i.e. me , in that particular case — had been called in by the Special Tactics division of the DPD, not only because the hostage-taker had been our suspect, but mostly because they knew it was me who’d gotten through to him; me who had buddied up enough to get him close to talking.
    They also knew it was me who blew it.
    During the suspect’s interview, Manny dug into his increasingly thinning skin. Bad cop. I came in a bit later and befriended the guy. It was standard technique. I’d studied his file, found some similarities between him and me—I put myself in his shoes. If I was sweating a homicide in an interview room, who would I want as my friend? So I became that guy. I’m not saying I am