and roasted tomatoes. But she was staring at the murder board, and did not taste any of it. The way this case was going, she was beginning to feel that she had bitten off more than she could chew. And it had nothing to do with what was in her mouth.
The photos and notes on the murder board dominated her thoughts. Along the left side, Burden had written pertinent key words: odd-shaped brass keys; flotation tanks; sensory deprivation; orientation of the bodies-facing the Bay; the numbers scrawled on the victims’ foreheads; the Cliff House tunnel; bars; retail stores; Mercedes dealership; cell phone shop; Mission San Francisco de Asis; printouts of the text “clues” the offender had sent them. And so on.
Dixon was clicking through the crime scene photos on her laptop, zooming in on some, standing back and evaluating others from a distance. “I wonder if it’s not necessarily the Bay, but the direction the vic was facing,” she said. “Or the street. Burden. I wasn’t at the Harlan Rucker crime scene. Which way was his body facing? Leavenworth?”
“Leavenworth’s in Kansas,” Vail said. “So that’d be east of-”
“No-no. I mean Leavenworth the street. Look.” Dixon pointed to the photo on her screen, which was zoomed 50 percent. “He was found at the intersection of Leavenworth and Bay Streets.”
Vail leaned closer to the picture. Wait a minute. “There’s a Leavenworth Street in San Francisco?”
“Yeah.” Burden pulled open the case file, then ran a finger across one of the pages. “That’s right-Leavenworth and Bay.”
They were quiet a moment. Then Vail said, “The Bay Killer leaves a vic at the intersection of Leavenworth and Bay. All his vics, except one, faced the Bay. There’s something here.”
Burden said, “Yeah. That is a bit weird.” He rose and stood in front of the board, examining the posted city map.
“Not all the vics were found facing the bay,” Vail asked. “Just the men.”
“Except for one,” Dixon said. “Russell Ilg. He was facing the end of a long tunnel carved out of the rock.”
“One of you called it a hole,” Vail said to Burden. “Right?”
“A hole in the rock, yeah. That’s what it looked like when we were-”
“The hole,” Vail said. “That’s what segregation’s called in prisons.”
They were quiet as they processed that thought. This is it. I can feel it. C’mon. Look. What are we missing?
Burden looked at the board, then pointed. “Tumaco’s place-SDL. Sensory Deprivation Lab. Think about it. Those flotation tanks. What is sensory deprivation?”
“Isolation,” Vail said. She rose from her seat. “Isolation. Segregation. The hole. Leavenworth.”
“Leavenworth’s a key to this killer,” Dixon said.
“Let’s get a list of inmates,” Burden said, “who did time at the penitentiary for-what? The past fifteen, twenty years?”
“I’d go farther back,” Vail said. “These are all elderly vics and if they have a tie to the offender, he could be an older UNSUB. Go back…five decades; start with 1960-no, make it 1950 so we don’t miss anyone.”
“I’ll get someone on that,” Burden said as he pulled his phone.
“Can an older guy commit these murders?” Dixon asked. “Does that fit your profile?”
Vail turned to face the board. “In terms of the female vics, an older offender can easily incapacitate them using his intellect. Even more so if he knew them. It may be enough to keep them from freaking out when they made eye contact. There are a lot of ways to gain control over someone. A gun, a knife, a stun wand. Once he’s got control, yes, very possible. As to the male vics, it’d require the UNSUB to be a fit older man. And remember, he used a rope for leverage. And the two that required a rope were slight, small men.”
“So it’s physically possible,” Dixon said.
Burden had hung up and was listening to Vail’s analysis. “What about your profile?”
“I would not have pegged this on an older offender. But that’s why behavioral analysis is but one tool in the forensic kit. If he’s disguised it well, I could’ve missed it.”
“Knowing that, let’s take a fresh look at these photos,” Dixon said.
Burden was staring at the murder board. A few moments later, he said, “Those numbers on their forehead.” He turned back to his PC and started clicking his mouse. “I may have something.”
“We have background sheets on our vics?” Dixon asked as Vail moved closer to the board to examine Rex Jackson’s photos.
Burden was now pounding the keys. “Robert was working on that. He had some stuff assembled, nothing detailed.”
“Let’s be smarter about this,” Vail said. “Instead of trolling thousands or tens of thousands of Leavenworth inmates, let’s take a shortcut. Any of our victims do time at Leavenworth?”
Dixon turned to Vail. “You mean, like inmates?”
Vail thought a moment. It doesn’t have to be inmates. Not inmates. Guards. “Anything. Inmates, guards. Especially guards. People in positions of power.”
“I’m sure Bureau of Prisons can get us that info, but we can’t wait till tomorrow. I’ll see what I can find online. Hopefully there’s a publicly available database.” He opened a new tab in the browser, then clicked his mouse.
“Those funky brass keys,” Vail said. “Let’s see if keys like that were used on Leavenworth during that same time frame. But how the hell are we gonna find that out?”
“We need an archivist,” Dixon said. “Or a historian who specializes in US penitentiaries.”
“I’ll give a shout to the guys in the other room, in case they-or the interns-know of a way to find someone at this time of night.” Burden lifted his phone and made the call.
“How does this get us closer to finding Friedberg?” Vail asked.
“Don’t know yet,” Dixon said, preoccupied. But she then pointed at the text message hanging on the board. “Folsom Street. One of those clues the offender texted us. He sent us to Folsom. Folsom’s a state prison.”
Prisons. Segregation. “There were, what, three bars at that intersection on Folsom? And what else was there? A cell phone store. Bars and cells.”
Burden hung up. “I heard what you said-bars, cells, Leavenworth, Folsom. What if we’re wasting our time? It might not be Leavenworth.”
