Tamara and I are functioning as equals. We share the work and the responsibility.”
And the blame if anything goes wrong, Pena thought. Aloud, he said, “I’m surprised the Denver SAC didn’t take over the task force himself.” A special-agent-in-charge normally grabbed the high-profile assignments for himself.
“He might have wanted to.” With effort Lovejoy stifled a sneeze. “Initially they unloaded the case on a couple of street agents-that is to say, us-because they thought it was just another random homicide that would never be solved. Once we detected what appeared to be a pattern, we were in too deep to be pulled off.”
“Lucky you.” Pena had one more question. “Where did his name come from? Mister Twister?”
“Not our idea,” Moore said. “Officially he’s the Trail Ridge Killer. But that’s not sexy enough for the media. There’s a line in a song-something about a Mister Twister. How loving him is like embracing a whirlwind; he destroys everything he touches. Must have struck someone as an appropriate image, and it just caught on.”
“Well,” Pena said as he found the Central Avenue off-ramp, “this guy’s sure as hell been cutting a swath of destruction across the great Southwest. And we usually don’t get twisters around here.”
On Veronica Tyler’s neck, near the puncture wound, the M.E. found a few droplets of clear fluid that must have spurted from the syringe. Serological analysis identified it as a 9.25 % solution of hydrogen chloride in water, with traces of n-alkyl dimethyl benzyl ammonium chloride and n-alkyl dimethyl ethyl-benzyl ammonium chloride.
“The same stuff used in the other six killings,” Moore said, putting down a faxed copy of the serology report. She had just looked at the crime-scene photos of Veronica Tyler, and for some reason she found it difficult to hold her voice steady. “The details of the injection were never made public in any of the cases. This is the real thing-no copycat.”
Nobody had expected a copycat anyway. The murder was right on schedule for Mister Twister. Seven victims in fourteen months. A new corpse every eight or nine weeks. Always on a weekend. Reliable as clockwork.
Detective Ashe studied the report, smoothing out the flimsy fax paper with one hand. “Hydrogen chloride. Is that like hydrochloric acid?”
“In a more diluted form.”
“Something he mixes up himself?”
Moore shook her head. “It’s toilet-bowl cleaner. A commercially available brand. Highly corrosive. He shoots it into the carotid artery, straight to the brain.”
“I guess that’s one way to think clean thoughts,” cracked a homicide cop, and the other detectives in the squad room, men in rumpled brown suits and loosened neckties, laughed nervously.
The Phoenix SAC, a silver-haired man named Gifford, shifted in his seat. “Is this stuff distributed nationally?”
Lovejoy nodded. “Unfortunately, yes. There’s no hope of tracking the purchase. The manufacturer reports moving thirty thousand units a day.”
“What about the syringe? You can’t just walk into a store and buy one, can you?”
“Under normal circumstances, no. Syringes are prescription items. There was some preliminary speculation that our man could be a doctor, but the M.E.’s who’ve done the postmortems don’t think so. He shows no unusual skill or knowledge in the placement of the needle. Possibly he’s an orderly or he works at a medical-supply firm.”
“Of course,” Moore added, “anybody can obtain needles on the street.” She’d seen enough of that in her childhood years.
Gifford frowned. “Dead end.” He seemed about to say something more when Ashe’s phone shrilled.
The desk sergeant transferring the call said there was a guy on the line who seemed to know something about the Tyler case. Ashe put him on speaker.
“Detective? Name’s Wallace Stargill. Call me Wally.” His voice, coming over the cheap speaker, had a hollow sound. “I tend bar over at the Lazy Eight on Second Street. Think I saw that girl in here last night.”
By this time Veronica Tyler’s family had been notified of her death, and her most recent photo had been released to the local media.
“Okay, Wally,” Ashe said, nicely composed. “You pretty sure it was her?”
“Yeah, damn sure.”
“Was she with anyone?”
“This guy. I mean, she was by herself at first, and then he sat down next to her. Seemed to be coming on pretty strong.”
“Can you describe him?”
“Not too good. It was crowded in there. The girl I noticed; she was a looker. As for the guy-I don’t know. He was dressed nice, I remember that.”
“Where are you now?”
“At the bar. I’m just opening up. Saw the report on TV while I was getting the kitchen ready for Julio.”
“Who’s Julio?”
“Substitute dishwasher. Our regular guy, Pedro, came down with the flu last night and had to go home early. Got a mess of dirty glasses here.”
Moore was out of her seat. “Tell him not to wash anything. We’ll be right over.”
The bar had a friendless, disconsolate quality in daytime. Upended chairs rested on rows of tables. Sunlight struggled through high, frosted windows. The smell of stale booze hung over the place like the odor of disinfectant in a morgue.
There was a kitchen at the rear where the overworked waitresses had deposited trays of used glasses. “Slow nights, I wash ’em myself,” Wally Stargill said to the small mob of agents and cops crowding in for a look. He was a tall, laconic man, his fleshy forearms crossed awkwardly over a spreading gut. “But Fridays and Saturdays are crazy here.”
“Crazy,” Gifford echoed, perhaps thinking of Veronica Tyler with an ampule of toilet cleaner in her neck.
Moore asked if the victim and the man who’d picked her up had left before or after Pedro went home.
“After.”
“So the glasses they used weren’t washed?”
“Probably not, unless I cleaned them in the sink under the bar. Like I said, I do that when we’re not too busy. Last night I doubt I got a chance.”
Moore pointed at the rows of glasses. Only Lovejoy knew her well enough to see that she was worked up. “He handled one of those.”
Ashe frowned. “What are you going to do? Print them all?”
“Right.”
“You serious?”
“Sure am.”
“There must be three hundred glasses here.”
“Then we’ll print three hundred glasses.”
Lovejoy cleared his throat, a tentative sound. “Conceivably we can narrow it down.” He turned to the bartender. “You happen to recall what the man was drinking?”
Stargill thought for a moment. “Beefeater on the rocks.”
“You’re certain?”
“Oh, yeah.” A sheepish smile. “I never forget a drink.”
“So it was a lowball glass,” Gifford said.
“That’s how we serve ’em.”
Lovejoy coughed again. “There would appear to be no more than thirty or forty of those.”
“All of a sudden this sounds a lot more practical,” Ashe said. “Got to warn you, though, our lab is pretty backed up. Staff cutbacks. You know the story.”
“Possibly we can requisition some help, expedite the process.” Lovejoy sneezed. “Damn. I hate this climate.”
“You hate all climates,” Moore said briskly. “Come on, let’s talk to I.D. Wally, may we use your phone?”
