Chapter 17

Two hours later Markham sat alone at his laptop, the rain beating heavily on the hunting-lodge roof as he studied the driver’s license picture on the screen before him. The profile had been forwarded to him by the NC State Police. The guy had been on their missing persons list since mid-February.

William “Billy” Canning: thirty-eight, local boy originally from Smithfield, owner of a tattoo parlor in Cary—Billy’s, it was called. No criminal record, last seen on February fifteenth by his lover Stefan Dorsey. Keyword search in the missing persons database brought up a description of the tattoos. They were a perfect match to the markings on the corpse. The body had already been airlifted to Raleigh; would have an official ID in less than an hour and then it was off to Quantico for analysis.

The handle on the outside door rattled, and Markham looked up to find Andy Schaap entering with his jacket over his head. He plopped a stack of rain-stained papers on the table and sat down in one of the big chairs.

“Those are the only records he’s got,” Schaap said. “Dis- organized, takes cash mostly. Got a feeling there’s nothing there.”

Markham glanced briefly at the papers as his partner sunk deeper into his chair. Schaap slipped off his ring and began rolling it between his fingers.

“Sixteen,” he said, his eyes fixed on the large deer head above the fireplace. “That’s a big one. Sixteen points. You have to go by the spread, too—the distance between the antlers. Never understood the appeal of it—killing a beautiful animal like that. Wonder where they go when it rains. Raining like a bitch out there now.”

“Gurganus tell you anything else?” Markham asked. “Talk about any hunters who acted strange while they were here?”

“No one he could single out specifically.”

“His kid give you anything?”

Schaap shook his head and began bouncing his ring on the arm of the chair. Markham rose and went to the window—gazed out past the line of black FBI vehicles and into the woods.

“You really think he’s been here before?” Schaap asked.

“Yes, I do. Easy enough to get lost out there during the day unless you know exactly where you’re headed.”

“But why go through the trouble of lugging the body all the way up here when he could find other places with easier access?”

“There’s the rub,” Markham said, turning. “This spot is pretty far out from Raleigh. That’s quite unusual, isn’t it? Serial killers like Vlad—the organized, visionary types of high intelligence—they usually don’t stray this far from home. Usually like to hunt and dump in an area they know well.”

“We know from Donovan that Vlad kept him alive for a few days. His vocal folds were fried. Indicates he’d been screaming a lot before he was killed. Vlad had to have kept him somewhere where the neighbors wouldn’t hear. Someplace remote.”

“And we know Canning disappeared sometime during the evening of February fifteenth to the sixteenth, which means Vlad had to hang on to him for over two weeks before he dropped him off here. That is, if he stuck to the crescent-moon visual.”

“Jesus,” Schaap said, slipping the ring back on his finger. “The body would’ve already been badly decomposed if he killed him in the same time frame as Donovan. You think there’s a possibility that Vlad kept him alive for all that time?”

“The hair growth would point to yes, but we won’t know for sure until the autopsy. The body has been out in the woods for over a month, but Quantico should be able to approximate the time of death, and whether or not Vlad put him on ice.”

“This Canning is from Cary,” Schaap said. “Same as Randall Donovan.”

“Right. Canning was last seen on surveillance footage at a nearby gas station at around seven o’clock p.m. His car was found by his boyfriend outside his tattoo studio at eleven o’clock the next morning. If we work from the premise that Vlad lives closer to Cary than he does here, then the question becomes not only what links Canning to the other victims but also what links the actual places where the victims were impaled. A link that goes beyond their remoteness and a clear view of the nighttime sky.”

“What do you mean?”

“The fact that Vlad was determined to dispose of Canning way out here where there’s a good chance no one would find him for a long time tells me we’re dealing with someone who doesn’t care about us.”

“Us?’

“You, me, the public. If you’ll recall, in addition to being a demented sadist, the reason Vlad Tepes impaled his victims was because he wanted others to see them; wanted to strike fear in the hearts of his people and send a message to his enemies. If our boy thought he was Vlad the Third reincarnated, why wouldn’t he have displayed Canning someplace where he was sure the public would find him? Furthermore, why wouldn’t he have written the message on Donovan so it was visible to the naked eye?”

“But what about the message on Canning? That was visible to the naked eye. Even after all this time.”

“Right. But maybe that’s because Vlad didn’t expect us to find Canning so soon. Maybe the bleaching on Canning’s chest was unintentional. Maybe he didn’t get it right until Donovan.”

“So you think he impaled Canning all the way out here to hide him from us? To hide him but at the same keep to his crescent-moon schedule?”

“I don’t know.”

“Canning was a known homosexual,” Schaap said after a moment. “Which means he fits the historical Vlad’s victim profile just like the others do. Donovan, the crooked lawyer. The Hispanics, the drug-dealing gangbangers. Killing them is a message in and of itself, don’t you think?

“Yes.”

“But, this Canning being a homosexual—you think maybe we missed something with the other three men? Think there’s a possibility that Donovan or the Hispanics might have had some kind of secret lifestyle?”

“I thought about that, yes; will explore that angle when we get back to Raleigh.”

“Then, that could mean that the killer’s fixation with staking his victims through the rectum—are you thinking what I’m thinking?”

“That our man might be a gay basher? The impalement, a deranged representation of male-on-male sodomy?”

“If you want to put it that way, yes.”

“Who knows? There’s no evidence that Randall Donovan was a homosexual. However, do I think he could’ve had some kind of secret lifestyle? Yes, I do.”

“Well, regardless what team these guys played for, Vlad’s sending a message to someone.”

“I agree. But I think that’s where we’re getting off track.”

“The connection to the Islamic crescent moon and star, you mean? The Arabic, the ancient Middle Eastern scripts and all that?”

“Yes. The impalements seem to me now to be entirely self-centered. Purpose-driven in their methodological detail, yes, but important only to Vlad and whatever he thinks is seeing him from the sky. And the locations where he leaves his victims matter just as much. But only to him.”

“But the victims are supposed to see whatever’s in the sky, too.”

“That’s right.”

“Then do you think the phrase ‘I have returned’ could also mean Vlad’s return to the murder sites? To those locales specifically?”

“It’s possible, yes.”

“That would make it much more personal,” Schaap said. “And much more difficult to figure out the reason behind the murders.”

Markham shrugged.

“But even if Vlad has been here before,” Schaap said, “how the hell could he have found his way out there in the dark?”

“The dirt access road. He obviously knew about it.”

“But still, he’d have to know exactly where to stop. I mean, I suppose he could’ve Google Earthed it; plotted the coordinates and used GPS and night vision like Gurganus does. At the very least he’d have to have a map. Never mind lugging a body three hundred yards and sticking him in the ground.”

Markham was about to speak, then stopped.

“What is it?” Schaap asked.

Markham walked over to his laptop, minimized the Billy Canning file, and clicked on the Your Sky icon. “Maybe he is using a map after all.”

“The stars, you mean?”

“I’m not sure,” Markham said, staring at the Web page. “But I think we need to get back to the RA immediately.”