second in a series. He had heard enough on the phone from the local sheriff to suggest that the same killer could be responsible, but he wasn’t going to draw any conclusions till he had scoped the scene. The CSIs had finished earlier, but the supervisor was on hand to give a report. On Sebastian’s specific request, the body had been left in situ. December on the shores of Lake Huron meant that decay would be slow and the gas boiler in the house had not been turned on.
‘Sir?’ Sebastian’s assistant, Special Agent Arthur Bimsdale, a twenty-eight-year-old so fresh-faced he could still have been at junior high school, handed him pairs of overshoes and latex gloves, as well as a white protective suit.
When they were ready, the detective in charge, a heavily-built man by the name of John Jamieson who smelled strongly of sweat, took them inside the house. It was in a state of disrepair, the paint flaking and the wood distressed.
‘No sign of forced entry,’ the big man said, looking round. ‘There were no tire tracks in the driveway apart from the vic’s truck. And no recent footprints around the house except the vic’s.’
‘So we have a ghost.’ The smile on Arthur Bimsdale’s lips froze when he caught Sebastian’s eye. ‘Sorry, sir.’
In the living room they were joined by the senior CSI, a blonde woman with a heavily lined face.
‘Traces?’ Sebastian asked.
‘We’re analyzing,’ she replied. ‘Nothing that stands up and begs for attention.’
‘Prints?’
‘Comparisons are underway. Most of what we’ve got so far belongs to the victim.’ She shook her head. ‘A killer this organized would have been wearing gloves.’
Sebastian turned to the detective and noticed that a single hair nearly an inch long curled from the policeman’s left ear. ‘Witnesses?’
Jamieson shook his head. ‘As you can see, there aren’t many houses in the vicinity, and it’s quiet up here during the week.’
Peter Sebastian looked around the room. It was furnished by what must have been original pieces dating from the fifties, many of them in poor condition. The floral wallpaper was faded and the curtains frayed. There were piles of CDs, books and newspapers around the floor. The juxtaposition of old and recent objects struck the FBI man.
‘The place used to belong to the vic’s aunt,’ Detective Jamieson continued. ‘She died early last year and he took it over. Guess he didn’t have time to do any refurbishments.’
‘Has the dead man been positively identified?’
‘Well, not officially. Seeing as the body’s still here and…how we found it. But the sheriff knew him.’ The detective bit his lip. ‘So did I. Met him once at a charity disco.’
Sebastian’s nostrils flared. ‘That’s another reason to show respect by using the man’s name.’
Points of red appeared on Jamieson’s cheeks. ‘You’re right.’ He looked down. ‘As far as I’m concerned, the body is definitely Sterling Anson’s.’
The FBI man nodded. He had never liked the way law enforcement professionals deprived the dead of their personal identity by calling them ‘vics.’ It was a professional issue. If you kept in mind that people were unique individuals, you were more likely to nail their killers.
‘I understand Mr. Anson was quite a celebrity in these parts,’ he said, softening his tone.
The detective nodded. ‘Everyone in Detroit knew of him. Most people thought he was a great guy, but he did have his enemies. Someone tried to burn down the radio station when his show was on air a couple of years ago.’
‘Those fucking Nazis,’ the CSI put in. ‘After that, they called in the next time he was broadcasting live and said they’d get him sooner or later.’
Sebastian turned to Jamieson, who nodded. ‘It was a public phone and no witnesses came forward. We never caught them.’
‘And you don’t have any idea of their identities?’
‘No, we don’t.’
‘After all this time.’ The senior FBI man let several seconds pass to register his disapproval.
‘The thing is,’ Jamieson said, ‘he used to talk about the threats he got on air rather than reporting them to us. If he was telling the truth, there must have been dozens of them.’
‘All right, Detective, let’s see what you’ve got.’
They moved into the hall and toward the stairs. According to the briefing Bimsdale had prepared on the Bureau plane from Washington, Sterling Anson was a Howard Stern look-alike whose nightly talk show knocked lumps off anyone who demonstrated racist tendencies. He never hesitated to name names, and several companies had fired staff displaying prejudice. Businesses run by bigots had been harassed out of business. Anson was an obvious target for retaliation, even though he had never suffered personal physical attack. Until now.
‘I didn’t see any alarm system,’ Bimsdale said.
Jamieson shook his head as he led them to the second floor. ‘Seems he was too fearless for his own good.’
On the landing, where the metallic smell of blood was pervasive, the CSI stepped forward. ‘This isn’t pretty,’ she said, her hand on the first door to the right.
Peter Sebastian leaned forward and took in the badge on her chest. ‘Don’t worry, Martine. We’ve seen it all before.’ When the CSI looked at Bimsdale, who swallowed nervously, he amended his statement. ‘Well, I have,’ said his boss.
He followed the woman inside and immediately regretted his bravado. It was true that he had witnessed the worst that the country’s murderers could provide, but the scene by Lake Huron was a real eye-opener.
‘We think the killer may have been let into the house by the vic…by Mr. Anson,’ the detective said.
Peter Sebastian’s eyes were fixed on what remained of the talk show host. ‘Why’s that?’ Bending down, he lifted the cover of a plastic container on the rug below the suspended body. Two blood-drenched eyes stared up at him.
‘Like I said,’ Jamieson said, after a long pause, ‘there’s no sign of a break-in.’
‘But that’s not all,’ the CSI said, pointing to the curved piece of rolled steel from which Anson was hanging head-down. ‘There are traces of blood on the hook in the beam.’
Sebastian looked around at the congealing slick on the floor. There were spatters on the walls, too. ‘So his throat was cut before the hook was attached up there? You think that suggests the killer didn’t gain prior entry?’
The detective nodded. ‘The medical examiner said that Anson took a blow to the back of the head that would have knocked him out.’
The senior FBI man looked up at him. ‘Is it likely that a man with a history of threats would have opened the door to a stranger?’
Jamieson frowned. ‘If it was a stranger. We’re checking with his family and friends. His wife, who’s Chinese- American, said he was careful at their place in the city-they’ve got two small kids-but up here he was less concerned.’
Sebastian and Arthur Bimsdale got as close as they could to the hanging man, the younger agent visibly shaken. Sterling Anson, a Caucasian in his early forties, was naked, the ends of his long brown hair dipped in his blood. The wound across his throat was wide and clean-edged. Apart from the removal of his eyes, his chest and abdomen had been mutilated. He had been cut from groin to sternum, with another incision running across the belly button.
‘It’s inverted,’ Sebastian murmured, glancing at his assistant. ‘If he was standing the right way up, the cross would be upside down.’
Jamieson was immediately alert. ‘You seen something like this before?’
‘Not exactly,’ the FBI man replied, turning to the CSI. ‘Has anything been drawn or written in the house? Anything in red?’
The blonde woman shook her head. ‘What were you expecting?’
Sebastian didn’t answer. The swastika in Laurie Simpson’s apartment had been kept from the media to avoid copycat actions. ‘Have you been through all the rooms?’
