Saturday, May 13th, 1995
Day One
I
Who knew that one phone call had the potential to excite an entire city overnight? Not the emergency dispatcher who answered one such call early on a Saturday morning.
Ring
Ring
Ri-
“London Emergency Dispatch, what is your emergency?” answered a 999-dispatching agent. Had she known the cause of that call, she likely would not have been slouched in her small rolling chair, holding her head in one hand and the phone to her ear with the other.
The call began as so many did with a caller screaming gibberish about some horror or another. Desperately, the dispatch agent would press the phone to her ear in an attempt to keep sound from being lost in the gaps of her ear, rummage through the sound salad for answers to who, what, when, and where. During this analysis, like all such calls, she needed to find opportunities to ask questions and write the nearly incoherent replies in her notepad. Her heart no longer came with her to the office. Being the answering machine service for the most violent city in England taught her to make it that way a long time ago. Night shifts were notorious for having very violent calls. However, she did not mind the night shift because at least it got her out of her empty flat. Plus, she was a night person.
It was cold in the large dispatch room, and she was on the sixth hour of her ten-hour night shift, a.k.a. her third cup of coffee. The coffee helped her stay warm in the 60-degree room. She assumed it was chilly to keep the dispatchers on their toes, though all it really managed to do was encourage blanket-and-small-heater smuggling.
Normally, she would pass the time between calls by reading her book and sipping on her coffee, the only thing keeping her awake. At this point, the book she was reading was now lying on the desk, the page she was on lying face down to not lose her place. The already cold coffee was sitting next to the book, half empty.
“Ma’am, please try and remain calm. I need you to tell me the address. What's the add... 33 Columbia Way? Is that corr...? OK. Yes. Ma'am, 33 Columbia W... ma’am, three-three Columbia Way, is that right? OK... Ma'am, you have to tell me what's going... A break-in? OK, you believe he was shot. OK, I need you to try to stay put on the phone and wait for help to arrive. Ambulance and police will be there... ma'am, please listen to me and don’t touch or do anything that I didn’t tell you and wait for the police.”
The dispatcher was staying very calm herself, her voice remaining level. She was well-trained to remain relaxed under what is often a lot of pressure, an essential trait for an emergency dispatcher. Unfortunately, the woman on the phone was not receptive to her attempts to keep her calm. That was understandable, though. She was going through losing her husband. But the dispatcher was familiar with situations like this and was not too stressed about it. The act was done, and all she could do was hope the homicide unit could use the remains and setting to identify the victim’s killer.
"What is your husband’s name? Yes, I understand he was killed. What is his name?" she asked, using the present tense, even though a man found shot and bled out for what may have been hours and who is not responding at all is probably gone. Still, there was no need to stress the wife out more.
"Victor Valory? That's his name?" Her pulse quickened at the name, and she took an instinctual glance up at the television in the corner of the room, which was showing some soap opera at that time.
She took a quiet breath to regain her composure. She would deal with the drama this would bring later. For now, this was just another murder report. She kept that attitude for about six seconds before Mrs. Valory said something she could not ignore.
“Ma'am!” she said in a sharp tone, gripping her pen tighter as she prepared to write something down of grave importance. “You just said the shooter branded your husband? OK. Ma’am, describe the markings and where they appear on his body if you wouldn’t mind. Don’t lift the shirt... OK. No shirt to speak of?” She scribbled down bullets of information, listening to the horrors being explained by the frantic widow. At some point, her hand felt paralyzed, ceasing its scribbling and instead just attempting to grip the pen in a state of rigidity. After maybe a minute, this emergency dispatcher, whose job it was to take calls about murders, drugs, and violence, was on the verge of vomiting. She eventually typed out the address and situation into her computer. She sent it to be forwarded to the police station. When the crime scene analyzers arrived, they also recognized why this was no ordinary murder scene.
II
“G’morning, sir,” Constable Roberts cheerfully greeted as he walked toward the Commissioner for the City of London Police, Wailes, from his side while carrying a paper cup of coffee. Chris Roberts was a 25-year-old police constable, wearing the newly customary white dress shirt and blue V-neck NATO jumper over a black stab vest, black trousers with a duty belt typical of his grade. He was carrying the standard 9mm pistol issued to all officers when on the job. However, he would admit he was not as practiced with it as senior officers wanted him to be. The belt also housed a small flashlight, handcuffs, and a spot for a taser or mace were the officer to get qualified in either of their uses, though, like the pistol, Chris had never found much motivation to get qualified in those apprehension aids, and therefore that pouch was used instead for his cigarette box.
Chris had an olive skin complexion, dirty blonde hair, and dark brown eyes. He was relatively short compared to most officers in the department, only coming in at the height of 168 centimeters. However, he was not teased too hard for his unfortunate genetic trait, sporting well-defined and thick muscles both in arms and legs.
Chris’s customary black tie was too tight for his thicker neck this morning which might have explained why his face was redder than usual. He was grinning friendly upon the approach of his boss’s boss but swiftly dulled it when he realized that the commissioner was not in the mood.
“What the hell is so ‘good’ about it, Roberts? The murder which occurred early this morning or the fact that I’ve been up since 2 because of it?” Commissioner Wailes sneered in his usual raspy drawl as he swiped the coffee from Chris with no concern over whether it was intended to be for him or not, which it was not. Chris was so thrown aside by Wailes’ response he had to stop and let the commissioner walk off without him. The commissioner clearly had had a long night.
Chris momentarily wondered if perhaps the commissioner was intoxicated but just then was interrupted by an unsurprisingly familiar laugh, soft and feminine, from behind him. He turned and saw a friendly but fierce-looking constable about his age walking up with a red binder labeled “MORNING BRIEFING” to her chest and a paper cup of coffee, similar to the one Robert’s just lost but with two servings of cream in one of her hands. She stopped when she reached his side.
The woman, Michèle, handed him the cup of coffee she had, and he gladly accepted and thanked her for it, sipping. Michèle was somewhat tall for a woman, with shoulder-length, silky dark-brunette hair, which she placed in a bun for professionalism. She had a fair complexion, though that was normal for a woman of Japanese and French descent. Her eyes were thin and a deep blue. Her features were rare and beautiful in the opinion of Chris and everyone else in the department. She was wearing the same uniform as Chris, a pair of black trousers, a blue NATO jumper, a stab vest, and a duty belt with a gun in the holster, customary of male and female police, and handcuffs. Unlike the department's men, she and the other female officers wore a red and white cravat. Unlike Chris, she did have her mace qualification. She, therefore, had the pouch over her left hip holding a canister of the nontoxic but highly aggressive gas solution.
“Don’t let him get to you, Chris. He has a hard case to crack,” she said in her soothing voice, her gently nasally R’s being the only part of how she spoke that gave a hint to her being a native French speaker. She was fluent in English, having lived in the UK since she was 8 years old. Still, anytime she spoke, she only said her Rs in the French style unless she paid close attention to her speech, which was rarely necessary for her line of work. This feature only increased her popularity in the department. Chris, however, was used to her Rs, having heard it nearly daily for more than a decade.
“I would know. I was assigned to work with him on the case he just mentioned,” she said. Lifting the binder in her arms to show proof. When she said that, Chris’s eyes widened, and he paused his drinking.
“You? How did you manage to get that opportunity?” He smiled, jokingly jealous of his long-time friend and coworker. Several years ago, he and Michèle joined the police force, and this case was an excellent break for her.
She shrugged, as astonished as he was. “I have no idea. Janet just handed me the brief about an hour ago when I came in and told me to read it. She said that I would have to brief Wailes on its contents. I’ll tell you how it went later, ok?” She was blushing as she continued her walk to the commissioner’s office. As Michèle knocked on the office door, she looked behind herself and smiled at Chris, still looking amazed. Still, Chris gave her a thumbs-up, and she entered upon the commissioner barking “Enter.”
Before she could finish closing the door, Wailes asked, “What happened last night, Moreau?” barking Michèle's last name more like the English name "Morrow" than the proper French pronunciation that sounded more like the word "Maroon" without the N. Michèle ignored the mispronunciation as she was accustomed to it as she walked over to where the commissioner sat at his desk, not to sit in the chair facing it yet, a little thrown by his forwardness. Instead, she looked down at the binder and began her brief by pulling a large stack of photographs from the file. Commissioner Wailes was young for a man of his position, having been on the police force for only a little over twelve years before being elected to the office of “The Commissioner for the City of London Police.” His hair was always cut short but was just long enough on top to see it was naturally curly. He wasn’t exceedingly handsome in the traditional sense but more attractive to people who don’t know him because he always kept his cards close to the chest. He also had a way of drawing people in with his large, brown eyes that always looked youthful but stern. His nose was thin and sharp at the end, and his skin tone was peachy.
He wore his usual attire, a full police uniform to include his cap with the red and white checkered band, his fancy pressed blouse and trousers, his ribbons and name tag looking polished, and his own duty belt, which held a beautifully polished 9mm pistol.
This particular morning, however, he looked different. His hair in the front was parted to the right, and his uniform seemed to have been put on in a rush, some buttons in the middle not even buttoned. His tie was not even pulled to his neck, instead drooping slightly by the top button. He was called in early and in a hurry because of some shocking phone calls from the panel above him.
She looked up from the photos and answered the question, which he barked as unscathed as she could. “Last night, there was a murder, sir. The killer went to the home of a man named Victor Valory and killed him while his wife was at a friend’s house for a girls’ game night. The wife came home at approximately 1:30 to find blood and death staining their new carpet. They live on Colum—”
“Stop talking like that, Morrow,” Wailes interrupted in frustration. “I didn’t pick you, a rookie, to work this case with me so you could act like this was just another Friday night murder, constable!” the commissioner commanded, his tone fierce. “When I woke up this morning, I received no less than thirty phone calls from chief inspectors and attended five meetings where people declared, ‘He’s back! He’s back!’ In these meetings, which included the panel, I had to attempt answering questions I couldn’t bloody-well answer or otherwise sit there with a thumb up my arse as men yelled over a bottle of whiskey about what to let the media know. I’m going to ask again, what the hell happened last night?” His face was red, irritated at how Michèle was so nonchalant about this case that made everyone familiar with the case flip out. He had some idea of the events that transpired, but he showed no sign he knew much. His fist was gripping the morning paper. She could recognize minor pencil marks on the top. The paper was too crumbled for her to read the pencil marks, though she figured it was just angry writings that would be illegible anyway.
Michèle had been trying to keep things cool but failed. She extended the arm and hand, holding the photos out into the commissioner’s reach. She responded simply, “Sir, I think the answers to your questions will be found in these photos that were taken at the scene of the murder.”
Wailes snatched the photos and turned his chair so the pictures were illuminated by the light through his half-opened blinds. At last, he motioned for her to sit while he perused the photos. As she did so, she noticed that his hand, previously a tight fist, was now loosened in discomfort upon beginning his examination of the images. She remembered not long ago that morning receiving those same photos for the first time and having to work diligently to control how queasy the gruesome scene displayed made her, fearing that vomiting would mean that her supervisors would realize she could not handle a case like this. It was comforting in a way that even a seasoned guy like the commissioner can look at a scene like that and feel uncomfortable.
In the photos, one could see a man lain on his stomach shirtless, dead in a puddle of his blood that originated from severe wounds on his back. There, engraved largely on his upper back with what had to be the work of an exceptionally large and dull knife, two capitalized M’s stacked, the cuts deep enough they exposed muscle and bone in certain areas. A note written on the back of this first photo stated that the initial autopsy showed a lack of hemorrhaging and inflammation around the wounds. According to them, this indicated that the cuts were created post-mortem. That meant the cause of death was instead the bullet fired into the center of his thoracic vertebrae, the upper area of his spine around his heart. This shot was taken from no more than four feet away behind him based on the actual blast radius, being that it was clean. The bullet hole was the basis for the middle point of the top M. The bullet had been removed from the body by presumably the killer him or herself. If there was anything Michèle and the others who were unfortunate enough to behold the scene could be thankful for, it was probably that Mr. Valory was not alive nor conscious of the horrific and otherwise painful carving of his back. The gruesome pictures of the murder scene wrote the story best, and the commissioner could hardly speak.
When Wailes was looking through the photos, Michèle took in the general cleanliness of the hardly seen inside of the commissioner’s office. Behind his large rosewood desk was a bookshelf with four shelves and a safe underneath. On the shelves were volumes of non-fictional accounts of police work from the 18th and 19th centuries, before fingerprints and DNA became common practice, interlaced with binders from recent and ongoing cases from the whole department, primarily intended to ease the transition between each office holder’s presences. She highly doubted anything about her work existed within those bindings. Michèle, after all, was a relatively new member of the department whose usual work was laying speed traps and writing parking tickets.
A row of ten pens was on the desk, all different styles and qualities, arranged by coarseness against paper. There was also a calculator, a standup, peel-off calendar that gave its user a new riddle for the day, the cup of coffee Wailes had just stolen from Chris, and a beautiful desktop personal computer, taking up only half the desk, the tower laying under the turned off monitor. Michèle only knew one use for computers in the office which was to access the police digital database. The database was created only that past summer, and select unfortunate interns added decades of old cold cases.
The lights to the office were off, meaning the only lights entering the office were from the sun outside and the windows separating the commissioner from the main office building. Both light sources had the blinds only partially opened, meaning that the whole office was rather dark. Some in the department theorized that the commissioner kept the overhead lights off because the sun was the only tool he used to know when to leave the office.
Hanging near the corner of the room by several awards given to him over his many years on the force was a gun. It appeared to be a very old-fashioned gun she could only imagine a John Wayne or Clint Eastwood type carrying. It had an old hammer and pin mechanism, the type you have to pull back on the hammer to shoot. The gun had a 6-shot cylinder and a nice black shine to it, maybe a third of a meter from what she could tell. It was on a plaque, and she could just barely make out the words written on the plaque.
A Peacemaker for
Chief Constable Wailes
I love you, son.
“But that’s impossible,” he finally whispered as he covered his mouth with his hand in shock. His mind obviously had known from what he had heard and what he saw now what everyone else was freaking out about. This was more than just a bad case of déjà vu. Like everyone else on the police force, it was almost an exact recreation of something he had seen only ten years prior. He marveled at the photos, absorbing every detail.
“The labs are looking thoroughly throughout the house and his body for the killer’s DNA as we speak. Mrs. Valory has been temporarily placed in accommodations. Still, we only have so much time to search the premises,” Miss Moreau explained, “And we’re working on keeping this as need-to-know as possible. All the media knows right now is what the wife let slip to some reporter’s tape recorder when the escorts were distracted. Still, it’s only a matter of time before somebody in the press realizes the description she gave in her frightened state sounds a hell of a lot like a Marcus murder.”
The commissioner winced when she said Marcus’ name, obviously having difficulty coming to terms with needing to talk about him even ten years later. He continued staring at the photos for just a minute or two more. Even though she had been only 15 years old at the time, she still remembered the work of James Marcus, and the ghost of him loomed deep within the conscious of the average Londoner. Suddenly the office phone rang. Michèle looked to Commissioner Wailes, who was busy carefully examining the photos from the scene. When it was apparent that he would not be deterred from his examination, she lifted the phone to her ear.
“Hello, this is Commissioner Wailes’ office, Constable Moreau speaking,” she answered in a professional tone.
“There is a man here to see the commissioner. Said you called him,” replied Susan Miller, the receptionist, who sounded a tad unsettled. At first, Michèle didn’t understand but then became immensely giddy.
“Oh, fantastique,” Michèle chirped, not able to stop herself from using the French pronunciation of fantastic in her excitement. “Yes, I can’t believe he decided to come. Please, let him in. Thank you." She nearly hummed as she lowered the phone into the base. In her excitement, she did not realize until this moment that Wailes had looked up from the gruesome images of the murder scene to instead aim a dagger at her with his eyes.
“What on earth was that about? Who did you just invite to my office, Morrow?” he asked with both confusion and disgust in his raspy voice after she finally linked eyes with him.
“Great news, commissioner,” she stated, grinning ear to ear regardless of the disgust. At this, Wailes laid the crime scene photos on the desk dismissively, turned his chair to face her, and created a steeple with his hands, concealing his mouth, waiting to hear what “great news” was making her smile at a time like this. She continued, pretending he was not condescending and acting as though he was actually interested.
“I know how much this case is riding on secrecy, which is why you requested that only the officers that you hand-select get briefed on it, but I have heard a lot of great stuff about this gentleman. He has a reputation in the criminal investigation field for solving challenging and confidential cases, especially ones where profiling the criminal was essential to solving the case. He is also known for being very secretive.’
“The only reason I heard of him in the first place was that while I was in Nice, France, last year, a journalist managed to get an interview with the main cop he worked with that month to bring down a drug trafficking operation.” She paused, waiting to see how he would react, but he revealed little change in mood at this knowledge.
“I managed to get a hold of the Bristol Police Department; the main way people get a hold of him. I called them about three hours ago asking if he would be available, but they told me they hadn’t seen much of him lately and doubted he could assist. I was not expecting him to show up today. And so quickly." Commissioner Wailes finally cracked, and a look of complete exhaustion arrived. He was less than joyous to just now be hearing about this.
He grumbled, “You were told this morning that details about this case need to stay between you and me. I don’t care how secretive he may seem; the truth is I don’t need some goddamn free-lancer coming in with his two cents worth of advice about how to run an investigation when I have twenty-two years of experience doing exactly that under my belt. How am I supposed to let you help me with this case when you’ve already started seeking outside advice?”
Michèle did not know what to say. Was it possible she already blew her shot to work on the case? Maybe it was foolish to think she ever had a chance, to begin with. Sure, she was widely considered a cut above her peers, but she could not imagine why Commissioner Wailes would choose her with how big this case seemed to be. Just the week prior, she was assigned to patrol parking meters with cars, using them past their prepaid hour. She ignored questioning her role in the investigation and continued to stick up for her choice to involve outside help.
“This man has single-handedly solved forty-three separate murder cases, including that one in the news last year. You know. The one where the kid was found dead on the side of a street in Lincolnshire? The kid was dead for days before anyone found him. This guy found out everything from the name of the lady who ran him over to what she was doing when it happened in only an afternoon using only the location of the cracking of his ribs and the brand of cigarettes that had dropped a few feet from the body. He has more than just two cents worth of advice.” She stopped herself from saying something like, “In fact, maybe you could learn a few things.” But the commissioner likely did not sense that in her tone.
The commissioner’s eyes widened, obviously impressed but still annoyed, "Forty-three? How is that possible, and I’ve never worked with him? How old is he?"
Michèle’s eyes nearly glimmered. "No one knows for sure, but certainly he is in his early twenties, sir.” And with that said, there were two knocks at the door.
Knock
Knock
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