groundbreaking research on multiple personality disorder.
“Oysters in the house!” Sean calls from the garage door.
He walks in carrying a brown bag spotted with grease. He’s opening it on the kitchen table when his cell phone rings. Glancing at the screen, he says, “It’s Joey.” Detective Joey Guercio is his partner. “Joey? What you got?”
The smile vanishes from Sean’s face. “No shit? Was Kaiser around when they found this?…Okay. I’ll talk to him later. This could be big, though…. I appreciate it…. Yeah. They checking all the other vics for the same thing? …Okay. Call me with anything else they find.” He hangs up and looks at me. “There’s another connection between two of the victims. The first one and today’s. Colonel Moreland and Calhoun.”
“Through Malik?” I ask hopefully.
“No.”
“What’s the connection?”
“Vietnam.”
I couldn’t have been more surprised if Sean had said “Harvard.” “What about Vietnam?”
“They both served there. Moreland and Calhoun.”
“At the same time?”
“Their dates of service intersect. Colonel Moreland was career army. He served in-country from 1966 to 1969. James Calhoun was there in sixty-eight and sixty-nine.”
“What branch of service?”
“None. Calhoun was a civilian engineer on contract to the Department of Defense.”
I find it difficult to believe that this connection is relevant to our case. “Vietnam’s a big country. There were five hundred thousand troops there. Is there any evidence that the two men knew each other?”
“Not yet. The task force just found this out. But it seems odd, don’t you think?”
“Not really. Most of the victims are the right age for Vietnam.”
“Yes, but most people that age didn’t serve over there. A couple of my older brother’s friends went, but that’s all I knew. Now, out of five murder victims, we get two guys who did?”
I don’t answer. I’m thinking about my father and his Vietnam service. How many of my schoolmates’ fathers or uncles served there? None that I can recall. But I went to a prep school. Probably quite a few kids from the public school had fathers in that war.
“We’re forgetting something else,” Sean says. “Nathan Malik did a tour in Nam. Same time frame as Calhoun, which means he was there at the same time as Moreland, too. What do you think about that?”
“It is sounding less like a coincidence.”
“We could be way off on motive, Cat. This directly links the victims themselves, not women who happen to be related to them.”
“But you’re using Malik as part of that linkage, and we got to Malik through those female relatives.”
Sean nods. “You’re right. And if these murders have to do with Vietnam, why are we seeing sexual homicides?”
“Maybe we’re not. Maybe that’s just staging. Think about it. There’s been no sexual penetration of any of the victims. No semen recovered anywhere at the scenes, which means there’s not even masturbation going on. Not unless it’s into a condom, and I’m just not getting that feel from these scenes. To me, these killings look like punishment. Our UNSUB is punishing the victims for something in the past. The antemortem biting…. that could either be torture as punishment, or for humiliation. Like the nudity…humiliation.”
“You’re going too fast,” Sean says.
“What about the gunshots? Why aren’t neighbors hearing the gunshots?”
“We’re assuming a silencer.”
“For a Saturday night special?”
“Hell, you can get one for anything these days. Guys have machine silencers in their garage workshops now.”
“Sounds like something a Vietnam vet might know how to do. Calhoun’s body was found by his maid?”
“Right. Been working there seven years.”
As I search in vain for some new angle on the facts, Sean’s cell phone rings again. He looks at the screen, then up at me. “It’s John Kaiser. Kaiser served in Nam himself. I wonder what he thinks about this.” Sean answers, then listens for several moments. When he hangs up, his mouth is hanging slack.
“What is it? What’s happened?”
He shakes his head as though in shock. The color has left his face. “Twenty minutes ago, Nathan Malik called the task force and said he wants to talk to you.”
My blood pressure drops twenty points. “That’s crazy.”
Sean looks me hard in the eyes, and I know something bad is coming. “You haven’t heard anything yet. Kaiser’s outside right now.”
“Outside where?
“He knew I was here, Cat.”
“Oh my God. Are they following you?”
“I have no idea. Maybe Joey told them I was here.”
A hard knocking reverberates through the house. We both whirl toward the garage door as though expecting it to burst open, but nothing happens.
Sean looks at me in a dazed panic.
I shrug in resignation. “I guess you’d better let the man in.”
Chapter 15
Special Agent John Kaiser is taller than Sean, and he fills the space in my kitchen in a different way. He seems denser somehow. And though clearly more reserved than Sean, he seems capable of sudden action if that becomes necessary. The friendly face from the LeGendre crime scene is gone, replaced by a piercing gaze that misses nothing.
“Dr. Ferry,” he says, nodding curtly.
“Is this some kind of joke?” I ask. “Something you guys cooked up to scare Sean and me?”
“No joke. Nathan Malik has requested a personal interview with you.” Kaiser’s eyes tell me he’s not lying. “Do you have any idea why he might do that?”
“No. Of course not.”
“Did you tell me everything you remember about the period that you knew him when you were in med school in Jackson?”
“Absolutely.”
Kaiser glances at Sean, then back at me. “Would you remember everything from that time?”
“What do you mean?”
“You told me that you drank quite a bit in those days.”
The FBI man’s attempt at tact does not lessen my sense of violation. I look at Sean, but he’s staring blindly forward, his jaw set tight. “What the hell are you saying? What’s going on here?”
Kaiser’s eyes don’t waver. “You know what I’m saying.”
I take a step back, trying to tap my reserves of self-restraint. “Do I remember everything that happened at those dinner parties? Every word and gesture? Of course not. But everything big, I remember.”
“You never blacked out in Nathan Malik’s presence?”
“
“Dr. Malik hasn’t said anything, Dr. Ferry. I’m just trying to learn as much as I can.”
“I never blacked out in his presence.”
“Do you always remember when you black out?”
“How do you know I black out at all?” I ask, glaring at Sean. “Look, I met Malik under another name over ten years ago. He hit on me a couple of times. I rejected him. That’s it.”
