Lieutenant Trufant Read online

  He knelt next to her, careful not to allow his knee to touch the damp concrete. At fifty-two and six-foot-three, kneeling was not as simple as it used to be. The pavement beneath him looked clean, but the suit was expensive, and he had ruined too many of them over the years. His shoes were another story. He would have to leave them on the balcony again tonight.

  The first victim was nude now, and Trufant saw burn scars all along the left side of his abdomen and thigh. Mixed in with the burns were smaller scars that looked like shrapnel wounds and skin grafts that had healed years before. Wounds of war. What horrors had this man witnessed and what memories had died with him?

  He studied the gash across the man’s neck. At first blush the wound seemed simple, one deep, long horizontal slash exposing his larynx and the thyroid cartilage—the laceration severing the carotid artery, the jugular vein, and the man’s trachea in one movement. No easy feat for anyone, especially considering the weather and the fact the killer had to crouch next to the victims, who could have woken up and confronted him.

  “There are no signs of defensive wounds,” the doctor said. “I would say the time of death would be just after midnight, hard to be sure though with all the rain and the low temperatures, but I would say midnight at the earliest. There was a lot more blood mixed in with the rainwater that has drained off into the sewer. Both men died quickly, which is odd if it was one perpetrator. There are no signs of a struggle, and I would think the sounds of a man dying would have woken up the second victim.”

  “Is it like the others?” Trufant asked.

  Dr. Lew glanced up at him and looked back at the heavy man in the plaid coat.

  “I think so. I wasn’t on the scene of the last one, but I saw the results, and of course the dates match up. The only difference I see so far is we have multiple victims this time.”

  Trufant kneeled again and looked at the crude tattoo on the man’s calf, a five-pointed star and ARMY spelled out in capital letters. The tattoo was done by an amateur, probably a fellow soldier in boot camp. It was old and faded, much like the man himself. But as bad a shape as the man was in, he would still have made a formidable adversary. It had to take some balls to kill these two men with a knife, some big balls or a lot of confidence. And why two this time?

  Today was April 11th, six victims now in two years, eight if he counted the two in Chicago. All eight killed on either April 11th or December 1st. The big guy was an Army veteran and probably served in Iraq like the previous victims. Trufant looked at the smaller man, still dressed in clothes too large for his thin frame. The gaping wound was identical, and he nodded to himself knowing he was right. Some big balls maybe, but a lot of skill too.

  The last two victims had served in different units in Fallujah between 2005 and 2008. What was this second guy’s story—Army, Marine? His age looked to be right, but there were no tattoos, no wounds. Physically, he looked more like an accountant, but even the Army needed accountants. Trufant would know soon enough.

  The first six victims had one thing linking them together, one common denominator. They had all served in the US military. He looked at the dead men and hoped one of them might provide something, a single clue that would define motive.

  “No ID on either guy, Emma. We’ll have to ID them from prints like the last two,” he said as he took off the latex gloves and threw them in a red biohazard bag. “Call me when you’re ready to autopsy them.”

  His phone rang as he walked back to his car, and he saw it was the chief. Trufant knew what the man was going to say, but he answered anyway.

  “Chief Lozano?”

  “Trufant, how is it I hear about these two homicides from a television reporter and not my own homicide lieutenant?”

  “I was just about to call you, Chief, but I had blood on my hands and didn’t want to contaminate my phone—you know how it is, right, Chief?”

  “Don’t be sarcastic, Trufant, I did my time on the road. The media is already camped outside my office. I want you here in thirty minutes to tell them what you know—thirty minutes, Trufant!”

  Trufant looked at his watch, just after ten in the morning and he was pissed off already. Lozano had a knack for finding his weak spots. Maybe Adelaide was right, about his anger issues at least.

  She had always been there when he needed to talk, especially after a rough call. But something changed when he transferred to homicide and began bringing death into their home.

  ***

  An hour later he walked past several television news vans, ignoring the reporters standing next to them, and into city hall. The department’s public information officer met him at the front door, and Trufant handed the man some handwritten notes on the back of a paper napkin.

  “You talk to the media and tell the chief while the two of you were enjoying your late breakfast, I was eating a muffin out of a McDonald’s bag.”

  In the comfort of the homicide office, Trufant and two of his inspectors watched the first video on the big screen. The rest of his squad were still out on the street, knocking on doors trying to find more footage, but this was a good one and was pointed right at the sleeping men.

  “There are six of them, Jesus!” he said.

  Five bodies—all men, wrapped in plastic and raincoats. The sixth man arrived at 11:05, if the time stamp was accurate, and covered himself in a large piece of stiff cardboard. By midnight they all appeared to be asleep.

  Twenty minutes later, a seventh person came into view, wrapped in a raincoat or possibly the same black plastic the sleeping men were using.

  Trufant’s phone rang. He paused the video, and this time the call was from the station’s front lobby.

  “Trufant,” he said.

  “Lieutenant, there’s a woman to see you in the lobby.”

  “My wife?”

  “No, sir.”

  “I’ll be right down.”

  Whoever it was could wait another few minutes, and he returned to the video.

  The seventh man knelt between the two victims, facing the big guy, as they were now calling the man in the plaid coat. There was no movement except for an occasional wisp of fog drifting past the camera. Then Trufant saw a glint of steel and the big guy’s leg jerked, touching the second victim and waking him up. As the second man lifted his head, the new arrival’s arm slashed out like lightning, and they saw the black gash appear on the man’s throat.

  “Damn, he’s fast!” Amato said.

  The man’s head bounced once on the sidewalk, and again there was no movement except for the dark pool forming between the two victims. Trufant watched the motionless seventh man as gravity began pulling the pool of blood toward the drain.

  “He’s waiting to see if anyone else wakes up,” Amato said. “Or he’s deciding if he wants to kill another one.”

  Trufant didn’t think so. “I think victim number two wasn’t planned. I think he heard or felt something, looked up and saw our subject’s face and was just collateral damage.”

  The subject finally stood and looked across the street, then took several steps away from the sleeping men. The shifting fog acted like a veil at times, leaving an odd, ghostly image on the screen. The far side of the street, the focus of the man’s stare, was entirely grayed out by the fog.

  “Now what’s he looking at?”

  “Hard to say, Carlos.”

  Then the man turned and walked southbound, disappearing into the fog.

  “Notice how he kept his face away from the camera?” Carlos said.

  Trufant fast-forwarded, wanting to see the sleeping men wake up and find their friends murdered. He watched the wisps of fog and mist race past the men, and the stiff cardboard covering one of the men drooped as it soaked up the rain and slowly fell completely apart.

  Then the man in black walked back into view from the far side of the street.

  “He’s back,” Amato said.

  The man knelt in the same spot and searched one of the victims. This was not the same man, Trufant realized,
too tall and not as thin, and from this view, he saw the shaft of a prosthetic leg. An eighth man now. “This is a different guy,” Trufant said.

  The man put something in his pocket and walked back across the street and out of view.

  “Damn it! Who the hell was that?” Carlos asked.

  “Let’s hope we get a few more videos as clear as this one and maybe we’ll find out.”

  His phone rang again, one of the junior inspectors. “Lt. Trufant, I got an ID on one of your guys, Gerome Callaway, forty-one years old, last known address was in Murfreesboro, Tennessee. The National Crime Information Center shows a few misdemeanor arrests, mostly drunk and disorderly. His last arrest was three months ago here in SF, urinating in public. He used his Tennessee address and was released with time served. No warrants, no current driver’s license either, but there was a DUI arrest in Tennessee five years ago.”

  “The big guy?”

  “Yes, the one with the tattoo.”

  “Any mention of military history?”

  “No sir. I can check on it too and so far, nothing on your other guy.”

  “Okay, thanks.”

  His phone buzzed again. Chief Lozano. He let it ring until voice mail took it.

  Trufant watched the rest of the video, and just as the sun rose, so did the first survivor. The blood stains were changing from black to crimson now as the sunlight brought out the colors. The older man that had been using the cardboard stared at the gaping wound on his friend’s throat.

  He shook the man next to him, and one by one the four men grabbed their belongings and walked out of the camera’s view.

  Why hadn’t any of them called the police?

  “How does this guy know which of them were veterans?” Amato asked.

  “There’s an answer somewhere, but I’ll be damned if I can see it,” Trufant said.

  Passing pedestrians stepped around the dead men without ever looking at them. It was the store owner who finally called the police, and although the rain had washed most of the blood away, it didn’t hide the gaping wounds on the men’s necks.

  “Thanks for the call, folks!” Amato said.

  Trufant probably had thirty minutes before the chief knocked on his door.

  “Carlos, call the guys on the street and have them go two blocks north and south on Mason Street, and let’s see if we can track the subject and the new guy with the prosthetic. We can expand it out as far as we need to later.”

  Ten minutes later the medical examiner called.

  “Carlos, want to go to an autopsy?”

  ***

  On the way downstairs they stopped in the lobby, and Trufant looked through the glass door.

  Sitting in the waiting room was an attractive Asian woman in her early thirties, well-dressed in a maroon skirt and matching jacket. He opened the door, and the woman stood.

  “Lt. Trufant, nice to see you.”

  “Have we met?” He offered her his hand, and she placed an envelope in it.

  “I’m afraid not. But you’ve been served.”

  The woman turned to leave, and Trufant saw his neighbor’s name and business address on the envelope. The neighbor was a divorce attorney, and after thirty-two years of marriage, Adelaide had finally decided to end it.

  “Bad news, Lieutenant?” Amato asked.

  “Not really, give me a second.” He stepped back through the door and put the envelope through the shredder, watching the tiny strips fall into the basket.

  His marriage had begun to fail last summer, but it had turned bitter in the last few months before Adelaide finally moved out.

  Marcus, you are letting this job eat you alive. I want the old Marcus back, the one I married. I don’t know if it’s this grudge with your chief, or these damned homicides, but you’re not the man I married. When you can put all that aside and be my husband again, call me.

  How long ago had that last conversation been? Six months or was it seven now?

  “Okay, Carlos, let’s go.”

  ***

  Twenty-nine hundred miles away, Leilah Aquino sat in the library of King’s College in Manhattan. Wearing latex gloves, she logged on to her new Gmail account. There was one new message, and she read each word carefully, took notes, and deleted the account.

  She looked around, making sure she still had this section of the room to herself. With her new Monteverde fountain pen, she began writing using the slow and deliberate strokes her mother had taught her so many years ago. Once she was satisfied, she carefully folded the paper and put it in an envelope, wiped down the keyboard, and walked out. An hour later, the letter was in a public mailbox in Grand Central Station.

  ***

  Dr. Lew and two other examiners stood over the body of Gerome Callaway. She pointed out the burns and the scars on his left thigh and abdomen. In several areas on his back, small squares of skin had been removed and used as grafts on the worst of the burns.

  “My guess is most of this damage occurred at least ten years ago,” she said. “Some of the contracture—the tightening of the skin—has been treated more recently with the grafts. No doubt he was in constant pain ever since.”

  Callaway’s body had been x-rayed, and Lew pointed to dozens of small fragments in the areas matching the wounds. Most were small, no bigger than BBs, but one wedged up next to his spine was the size and shape of a bottle cap.

  “He was also a heavy drug user. There are cutaneous stigmata in all the normal injections sites. Look here,” she said, pointing to the inside of his elbows and the veins in his feet.

  Trufant could see the vertical scarring following a vein just below the man’s skin.

  “This wound,” she said, touching the victim’s neck with a gloved finger, “was probably done from left to right using something sharper than an ordinary knife. Usually, you can see evidence of elasticity as the skin shrinks slightly on withdrawal of a regular knife, even a sharp one. This blade was thin, non-serrated, almost like a scalpel, and entered the skin at a right angle across the throat. You can see the slit started and ended almost identically.”

  “Like he was a professional?” Amato asked.

  “I don’t know about a professional, Inspector, but he knew what he was doing. Let me show you the difference with the second man’s wound.”

  John Doe was lying on his own stainless steel tray across the aisle.

  “You can see the difference as this wound is not as perpendicular, more of a diagonal to the throat. The entry and exit of the knife’s blade is not as even, not as calculated, and as you told me, this was probably done as the victim was lifting his head. Other than that, the wound was just as thorough, deep enough that it scored the C4 vertebrae.”

  John Doe looked closer to fifty, and thinner, almost gaunt compared with Callaway. There were no tattoos or significant marks other than a small scar on his abdomen that Dr. Lew thought was probably the result of hernia surgery.

  The body had been washed, but there was still dirt under the nails of his hands and feet, feet calloused by years of walking in shoes that were probably worn-out or the wrong size.

  “Lieutenant, if you’re ready I’ll go ahead and get started,” Lew said through her mask, holding the tiny scalpel in her hand.

  “We’re going to pass, Emma, I’ve seen enough and there is still too much to do.”

  ***

  Before heading back to the station, they ate lunch at The Codmother on Beach Street. Trufant enjoyed the distraction lunch provided. For those brief minutes he could distance himself from the emotions of the job, the pain and suffering of others, and he enjoyed Carlos’s company. But he couldn’t stop thinking about those damned divorce papers. He had never given up hope that the two of them could work it out, that once these homicides had been solved, things would be different. Adelaide had always shared his emotions, his empathy for the victims. Had he changed, or had she?

  “Come on, L.T., I can see you’re pissed off about something. What is it?”

  “Adelaide
has filed for divorce, at least I think she did. Those papers earlier were from my neighbor. He lives on my floor, two doors down, and he specializes in divorce. I probably should have read them. Too late now.”

  “Sorry, that’s gotta be painful. I was hoping you two would patch things up.”

  “Thanks, Carlos, it may still happen.”

  Carlos was hired after spending six years in the Navy. Trufant had read one of the man’s first reports as a patrol officer and noticed how well it had been written. He had recommended Carlos’s transfer to the investigations bureau and eventually moved him over to homicide. “How’s your mother doing, Carlos, she still in Mexico?”

  “She’s doing okay, still in Ensenada with her sister, the woman just won’t leave. We’ve tried everything to get her to move up here. The immigration paperwork is all done, but she’s stubborn, says she wants to die in her homeland.”

  “I can understand. Leaving your homeland is a hard thing for a strong woman to deal with and she doesn’t speak English. Christ, my mother still curses in Creole.”

  Trufant finished the last bite of fish and dabbed a fry in malt vinegar. Lunch was over, and once again the weight of the two dead men rested square between his shoulder blades.

  With Carlos behind the wheel, they pulled into the station in time to see the chief and his aide driving out. Through the passenger window, the chief mouthed asshole as they passed by. Trufant gave the chief a quick salute as they parked.

  “He’s going to be pissed, L.T.”

  “Don’t I know it,” he said, taking two steps at a time up the back stairwell.

  A patrol officer was waiting for them in the homicide office.

  “Lt. Trufant, these videos just came in.”

  Carlos and Trufant watched another color video, one of four taken from cameras along Mason Street. He fast-forwarded until 10 p.m. when the first of the six homeless men walked past the camera.

  “It’s the old guy, the first one to wake up,” Carlos said. “He shouldn’t be too hard to find.”