Festival of Deaths(103)
“Wonderful,” Jackman said. “What in the name of God makes you think this—this person—is a serial killer?”
“There’s the correlation in the methods reports, for one,” Gregor said. “I’ve looked at your methods reports on the death of Maximillian Dey. I have also looked, although more briefly, on what you got from the NYPD on the death of Maria Gonzalez. The methods in those two deaths were not similar. They were identical. You could have used one report for the other and nobody would have known the difference.”
“So?”
“So,” Gregor said, “it’s true that ordinary murderers repeat their methods. What they do not do is repeat them this closely. In order to repeat this closely—to smash just the same teeth, just the same part of the jaw, just the same place on the cheekbones; the accuracy is astounding for a pair of deaths effected with a blunt instrument—in order to do all that, you’d have to plan. I’d be interested in knowing if New York has any unsolved cases sitting around with identical methods. I would guess they have several.”
Jackman still looked skeptical. “The third one wasn’t so exact,” he pointed out. “Carmencita Boaz is still alive.”
“With Carmencita Boaz, he was interrupted,” Gregor said. “I’m telling you, John, there can be no other explanation. It has to be a set of serial killings.”
John grabbed a mamoul cookie and chomped down on it. His coffee was getting cold, untouched.
“What about all this business with the green cards,” he asked. “What does that have to do with anything?”
“The green cards are how this serial killer finds his victims.”
“I don’t get it.”
“Selling forged IDs that make illegal aliens look legal is big business,” Gregor said. “It’s also easy business, if you know what you’re doing. And it’s fast. I saw a report on 60 Minutes once—it might have been Inside Edition—where someone pulled up to a curb somewhere, asked for ID, and got it in less than half an hour.”
“Got a green card,” John Jackman said.
“And a social security card.”
“So what you’re saying is that this serial killer of yours supplies forged IDs to illegal aliens and then bumps off his customers?”
“Exactly.”
“Why?”
Gregor shrugged. “There isn’t any why with these people. Not the kind of why you and I would understand, anyway. We’ll find out once he’s arrested. Assuming he’s the kind who talks.”
“What if he isn’t the kind who talks?”
“Then our problem is going to be just a little bit bigger.”
“Gregor, if you really know who this person is, and if it’s really a serial killer we’re talking about here, then I think you’ve screwed around more than enough. I think you should provide me with a name and let me arrest this person.”
Gregor sighed. “Could you? Could you arrest, with what you have now? What do you have now?”
“Nothing,” John Jackman said reluctantly.
Gregor took a long drink of his coffee and picked up a couple of mamoul cookies.
“This is what happened,” he said. “Maria Gonzalez was killed at the Hullboard-Dedmarsh building, at work or just after work, and her body was stuffed somewhere for safekeeping. In the basement of the Hullboard-Dedmarsh building, maybe. Someplace temporarily safe but not safe enough. It was covered with a blanket or a plastic garbage bag. Then our killer took Maria’s keys, went up to her apartment, and ransacked the place.”
“Why?”
“My guess is that that forged green card wasn’t on her,” Gregor said. “The killer went up there to find it. Maybe he got angry when he was working. Maybe he just thought he’d put on a good show. At any rate, the status quo was acceptable until DeAnna Kroll sent out a hue and cry for Maria Gonzalez, and then the hiding place wasn’t safe any more. So our murderer brought the body upstairs—”
“How did he do that without getting seen?”
“It would have been very unlikely if the murderer had been seen,” Gregor said. “This fuss started between three and four o’clock in the morning. There wouldn’t have been that many people around. Besides, if the murderer had been seen, so what? Carrying something big and bulky wrapped in plastic—while The Lotte Goldman Show was setting up for a tape? Nobody would have noticed.”
“Maybe not,” John Jackman conceded.
“The murderer then put the body of Maria Gonzalez, minus her covering, into the storeroom. It must have been a blanket or something like that that Maria was wrapped in. Otherwise, why not just leave it with the body?”