“Yes,” Hans said without hesitation. “Female killers can be just as cold-blooded and merciless as their male counterparts. Was there any bruising on the torso?”
“I don’t know. I only saw the one autopsy report.”
“If you consider that the victims were, in a sense, poisoned with drugs-even if they took the drugs willingly- which made them compliant, then were suffocated, without any sexual component, that makes it even more likely to be a female killer. I wouldn’t rule out the current suspect, of course, but I’d hesitate to bring the case to the U.S. Attorney without solid physical evidence tying him to the murders.”
“Suzanne Madeaux is a smart agent,” Lucy said. “I shouldn’t have said anything.”
“But it’s been on your mind. I’m glad you called. How long are you staying in New York?”
“I don’t know. Sean said until we find Kirsten. And maybe when we do, she’ll be the eyewitness we need to indict Wade Barnett.”
TWENTY
Suzanne and Vic Panetta split the search warrant-she took Barnett’s residence, Panetta took his office.
Barnett lived in a secured high-rise in the upper nineties off Central Park West. The tall building with views of Central Park from the higher floors was bordered by older four-story town houses, some single residences and some converted into apartments. Suzanne preferred her flat on the Lower East Side to the opulence of Barnett’s apartment building, but she admitted that she coveted one of the brownstones.
Not in the cards on a government salary.
She flashed her badge and warrant to the doorman, who rang the manager on duty. Ten minutes later, she was let into Barnett’s nineteenth-floor five-room apartment.
It was a larger version of his office. Cool gray carpeting; white leather furniture; lots of steel and glass. Yankees posters-framed and signed; an eclectic version of art on the walls from realistic charcoal drawings to flashy, bright paintings that didn’t appear to be anything specific. But the framed artwork that caught Suzanne’s eye were photographs of abandoned warehouses. She recognized the printing supply house where Jessica Bell had been killed.
“Where do you want us to start?” asked Andie Swann, from the Evidence Response Team.
“Photograph everything, then dedicate someone to the computer and any electronics. Our warrant covers everything in his apartment and any storage, in addition to his car. And can you also get someone to pull down those photographs?”
“Of the buildings?”
“Yes. I want to know who took them and when and ID every site.” She didn’t immediately see photographs of the first three crime scenes, but that didn’t mean they weren’t around.
She turned to the manager. “Does Mr. Barnett have a vehicle stored on the property? Any storage unit?”
“We have an underground garage where he has a slot, number 103. We have storage units, but he doesn’t rent one.”
She said to Andie, “Send someone down to the garage to check on the status of the car and arrange for transport.”
The manager said, “Oh, no, he never drives it. It’s a classic.”
“What good is a car you can’t drive?”
“I suppose he might take it out on occasion, but I haven’t seen it missing in months. It doesn’t have a roof.”
“You mean it’s a convertible?”
“No, it doesn’t have a roof. He bought it at auction, and the roof was damaged. He only drives it on nice days if he’s going out of town.”
Suzanne looked at Andie and Andie nodded. She would check it out. “Prints, fibers, and trace,” Suzanne called after her.
“Mr. Barnett is a good tenant,” the manager said. “We’ve never had any problems with him. No complaints.”
“Good to know,” she said in dismissal. “You’re welcome to stay and observe, but I ask that you stay in the hall. Let my people do their job.”
“No, go ahead; just please let me know when you’re leaving so I can lock up.”
“I’ll be putting a police seal on the door,” she said.
Suzanne slipped on latex gloves and walked through the apartment. A large living area, a separate dining area, a kitchen that was bigger than her entire one-bedroom apartment. And the view of Central Park was nice. But the best thing about the place was the light-lots of windows, lots of open space. Two bedrooms, two bathrooms, and an office. Large space for a bachelor. Had to be at least 2,000 square feet. Maybe more. For a New York City apartment with a view, that was rare and pricey.
Suzanne walked through the apartment slowly, taking in the atmosphere, imagining Wade Barnett living here. Killers came in all shapes and sizes and economic classes. Psychopaths weren’t rich or poor; black or white; men or women. Suzanne believed any human being had the capacity to kill, given the right motivation. But while most people killed only when they were in immediate jeopardy, psychopaths killed for pleasure. Whether it was a gangbanger who had no regard for human life or a serial killer with a sick, twisted view of women, they could come from any socioeconomic background.
She wouldn’t allow Wade Barnett to get away with murder because he was rich.
While Andie was down in the garage and her team methodically worked through the apartment, Suzanne went to Barnett’s office, which was more cluttered than the living areas. The computer tech was already at work, and Suzanne focused on the contents of the desk. They were already working on getting Barnett’s financials, but because he was paid by a trust it was tricky. She’d leave those details to the accountants and lawyers.
Nothing jumped out at her. Baseball, architecture, and the historical society. His bookshelves were lined with books on those same three subjects, with few exceptions. He had three Yankee game balls, all signed by the player who’d hit a home run. They were displayed under lights, behind glass. An award from a local preservation society was prominently displayed on the wall, next to a picture of the former mayor handing a teenage Wade Barnett a plaque.
On the surface, Barnett appeared to be an all-around good guy. Arrogant, but a longtime advocate of things he cared about. What turned a guy like this into a serial killer?
Andie Swann walked into the office. “Car’s clean. No way he drove that out to Brooklyn on Saturday, not with the weather. The interior is immaculate, no water damage, nothing to indicate that he’s used it recently. I asked security to prepare the logs for every time he took the car out from October first through today, and one of my team is vacuuming for trace, but I don’t expect anything.”
Andie asked the computer tech, “When are you going to be done in here?”
“He recently wiped histories and deleted a bunch of files, but it’s a surface job. I can put it all back together at the office. It’ll take me thirty minutes to label, log, and box everything up.”
Suzanne hoped the computer yielded hard evidence because there was no way any more serious charges would stick to Barnett just because he’d lied about knowing the victims. DNA or finding the victims’ shoes would be ideal. Even if she could prove that he was at all four parties and knew all four victims, she wouldn’t be able to get the U.S. Attorney to bite unless there was physical evidence tying him to at least one of the murders.
One of Andie’s people stepped into the office. “We found this letter in the nightstand drawer of the main bedroom,” he said to Suzanne and Andie. The letter had been sealed in a plastic bag and tagged.
The tech continued. “There was a stack of writing paper. We also bagged it because of impressions on the bottom sheets. We might be able to get something from those. This was at the bottom of the pile, and folded.”
“Thanks.” Suzanne took the undated letter. It had an angled crease and was only partially written. Suzanne often did that when she was writing to her eighty-nine-year-old grandmother, who refused to get a computer, if she misspelled a word or decided not to tell her something. She’d written Gram her first year of college and received the
