“But none from 1964, I’m guessing,” Ella said. “Just like the one I found in his jacket.”
“Well, no, but still lots of coins.”
“The year is crucial. That’s the key to this. If Steen was planning on killing, he would have a 1964 coin with him. The one I found wasn’t.”
Hunter threw his arms up in defiance. “Whatever you say. I need a beverage. I can’t think straight right now.”
“I’ll join you,” Byford said and followed Hunter down the corridor. Ella retreated into her office alone and collapsed on her seat. She planted her face down on the table, shut her eyes and drifted into the transcendent state between dream and reality, the state that nurtured subconscious connections between seemingly unrelated data.
Kevin Steen didn’t fit. A career thief was a square peg, and the serial killer was a round hole. The two didn’t go together no matter how hard you forced them. Their mindsets and philosophies were at odds with one another. The thief took from crime scenes, the serial killer left things behind. The thief stayed in the shadows, unobserved from start to finish. The serial killer made himself known, taunting, terrorizing, boasting of his handiwork. This unsub fell into the latter category. From what Ella could tell, Kevin Steen wasn’t a show-off. If he did kill these three victims for whatever reason, he would done it as cleanly as possible and certainly wouldn’t have left a calling card. If this was a follow-on from his murder from five years ago, wouldn’t he have left coins in the victim’s eyes back then too? And why would Steen so willingly wipe out the people he sold his so-called hot property to? All he was doing was sabotaging his own business.
What would Mia tell her to do here? The same thing she always did; strip away any preconceived notions and start with the basics. Ella brought up the patterns the unsub had shown.
He was targeting older men, between 58 and 62. Their ages and genders weren’t a coincidence. This pattern would continue on with any future victims, of that Ella was certain.
At every scene, the number 1964 appeared. This number did not relate to the victims. It related to something else. It might be the killer’s birth year, but the police database didn’t show any suspects born that year with a criminal history who also had links to the coin collecting world.
Did the 1964 message need to be delivered in the form of coins, or were the coins surplus to requirement? Could he have spray-painted 1964 on the walls and delivered the same message? Could he have carved it into their skin?
No. The coins were vital. They couldn’t be extracted from the profile.
She applied these patterns to historical serial cases and sieved through the information in her brain. Images, names, and dates flashed by in a blur, and she found herself looking at the mugshots of three obscure serial killers.
Luke Woodham, who left goat horns in his victims.
Michael Hardman, who left ripped Bibles at every scene.
Michael Kelly, who left behind strange masks.
These men had nothing in common with her unsub, she thought. The only similarity was that they left behind something. Ella broadened the parameters in her head came up with three more names.
Ted Bundy, who once left some of his girlfriend’s clothing at a crime scene.
Dennis Rader, who left some his mother’s underwear alongside a dead body.
And lastly and most clearly was her old friend Tobias Campbell, who’d scattered some of his mother’s ashes at every scene.
Ella shot upright in her seat. It was these last three she zoned in on. In each case, the things left behind didn’t belong to the killers. Bundy and Rader left theirs for a sexual thrill, while Campbell scattered his mother’s ashes to frame his father.
The circumstances were different, but the idea was the same.
“Oh my God,” she said, pounding her fist against the table. “Of course. Why didn’t I think of that earlier?”
Ella leaped out of her chair and moved to the whiteboard. She scrawled some chaotic thoughts about her unsub, his victimology, and then applied the same framework to the historical cases running through her head.
There was a match.
She suddenly thought of her conversation with Aleister Black outside the precinct. He’d said that their killer had access to a 1964 coin collection.
He didn’t say the collection had to necessarily belong to the killer.
Bundy’s girlfriend’s clothes were found at a crime scene, but she wasn’t the killer. Rader’s mother’s clothes were found on a dead body, but she wasn’t the killer either. These items were left behind as insults, signs of power and ownership. They were left on victims that were surrogates for their hatred.
It was no different here. This unsub is tying these murders to someone else, just like Bundy and Rader and Campbell did. This killer was a messenger, Ella thought. The object of his desire was someone around the ages of these men, someone born in 1964, someone who might not necessarily be connected to them.
“Byford,” she shouted around the door, but couldn’t see any sign of her partner or the sheriff. “Damn it.”
This couldn’t wait. She grabbed her jacket and headed back down towards the holding cells. There was someone in there who might just be able to help.
***
Ella ran back into the underground holding cells at the NDPD building. Kevin Steen was the only prisoner in the row. She ran up to his cage and grabbed the bars, suddenly reminding her of her visits to Maine Correctional Institute.
“Kevin,” she shouted.
The suspect was lying on his wooden bed staring at the ceiling.
“Fuck off.”
“Listen to me. I need your help, and if you help me, I can help you.”
Steen rose to a sitting position. “Help you, huh?”
“Yes. What have you got to lose?”
Steen rubbed his hands together. “Alright, lady. Try me.”
“You said you know every collector in this city, correct? Stolen from them, supplied to them, whatever.”
Steen shrugged, but the look on his face was one of approval. “Maybe.”
“Coins from 1964. Specialist coins. Do you recall anyone who collected those?”
White teeth showed through his wry smile. “What’s it worth?”
“I don’t know the values. Any value.”
“Not the coins, doofus. The information.”
Ella gripped the bars harder. “You know someone?” She had to break this man down, no matter what it took.
“I’ll ask again – what’s it worth?”
“A reduced sentence. Better prison conditions. You’ll be treated like royalty inside.”
“Absolute minimal sentence. Four years.”
“Kevin, I can’t promise…”
“Then get out of here,” he interrupted.
“Okay, okay. I’ll make sure that happens. Now please, lives are at stake.”
Steen inspected his fingernails then bit a chunk out of one. “Yeah, I know a ‘64 collector. I ain’t got his name though, and I never even met the man in the flesh.”
Ella fell back from the bars and despaired. She wasn’t here to play this man’s games. “You don’t have his name?”
“No, and it doesn’t matter anyway, because you’re not gonna find this guy in a million years.”