“It’s a damn shame, but he might have broken this door open. Let’s not assume Jimmy and Tessa just left it open.”
“We need to talk to Tessa, get her statement.”
Footsteps sounded behind them and Sheriff Hunter appeared. Ella smelled the lingering scent of stale smoke. “He must have come over the back. This door was open when we got here. When’ll people learn to lock their doors, huh?”
Ella refrained from agreeing. Blaming the victim for their carelessness was a cop out. The sheriff held up a small plastic bag in front of the agents.
“You might want to take a look at these,” he continued. Ella took them and held them to the light.
“The coins from the eyes.”
“Yeah. I’m not seeing anything special about them myself. I thought a better mind than me might catch something though.”
Two silver half-dollars, both identical. The face of the coin featured the side portrait of a very familiar image.
“Is that Kennedy?” Byford asked.
“That’s Kennedy alright,” said the sheriff.
LIBERTY. IN GOD WE TRUST. 1964.
“1964? This coin must be a collectible,” said Ella.
“It is a collectible but not exactly rare. You can probably pick this up off the Internet for five dollars these days.”
“You already checked?” Ella asked.
“I had a quick look, but I had a few special coins myself back in the day. Kennedy ’64s were common as mud.”
The coins were rusted with age. Only a glimmer of silver was left on them. “Can we get them reviewed? Appraised? There might be something on them that tells us where they’re from.”
“Once they’ve gone for fingerprinting, I’ll see what I can do,” Hunter said.
Ella pictured the killer placing the coins on Jimmy’s eyes, lodging them in with force. The brief flicker of light from them would have given the impression of life, like sparkling eyes forced to watch their own deaths. Maybe that was it, Ella thought. A dead body propped up to look alive, only for the finder to suddenly realize the grim truth. Without hope, there was no true despair.
“What do you think the coins mean?” Sheriff Hunter asked.
Ella handed them back to him. “Right now, I don’t know, but I’m going to find out.”
CHAPTER FIVE
Their new office for the foreseeable future was a single room at the NDPD precinct in downtown Newark. Ella knew the process pretty well by now. Sheriff Hunter led them through the open floor plan, past an endless clutter of desks into their rooms at the back. Ella and Byford got a few discerning looks as they came through, but most of the officers offered smiles and well-wishes as they passed by. In most cases, local officers were happy for the FBI to join their investigation because it meant less work on the whole.
Ella set up her rig in the gray office. The rectangular window offered a glimpse of the Delaware streets below. Distracting, but it was better than looking at blank walls. Byford set up opposite her.
The casefile was around thirty pages thick. Ella began reading everything about the first victim.
“Alan Yates, 59 years old. He lived eight miles from the second victim,” Ella said aloud. “Everything looks the same here. Same killing method, same modus operandi, same signature. The victims were even pretty close in age too.”
Byford tapped his pen between his teeth. “You know, after seeing that house, it doesn’t look like Jimmy was struggling for money. They seemed pretty well-off.”
“Yeah, same with the first victim judging by these photos too. Their house looks pretty modest. So we can rule out the possibility of debt?”
“Well, I wouldn’t want to make any assumptions, but it looks like it.”
“I agree,” Ella said. “This is too theatric to be about debt. If he wanted payback on these people, he wouldn’t stage them so specifically. He would just off them and be done. His message isn’t meant for the victims; it’s meant for the rest of the world.”
“How do you mean?” Byford asked, squinting his eyes.
Ella remembered what Edis told her about Byford’s past. He wasn’t so good at getting in the heads of these people.
“What I mean is this unsub isn’t killing for the usual reason killers do, which is sexual gratification. If he was, there would have been more mutilation, so we can rule out the possibility of him being a sadist. These murders are warnings. They’re his way of showing off. He’s saying look what I can do, and you can’t stop me.”
“I see. So he’s almost a domestic terrorist. Inciting fear for his own power trip.”
Ella hadn’t thought about it that way. “I suppose. Good observation. This should be right up your street then.”
“What did these men do for work? Maybe there’s a connection there.”
Ella leafed through the file. “Victim one was retired. Victim two was an antiques dealer.” Not much to go on. A dead end.
Sheriff Hunter opened their office door and peered his head in. “You guys set up okay?”
“Fine, thank you,” Byford said. “What’s the coffee situation around here?”
Ella laughed. She had wanted to ask the same question but didn’t want to be rude.
“There’s a machine down the corridor but it costs a few nickels. And speaking of nickels,” Hunter placed a small plastic bag on their table. “I thought you might want to see these. Just got them back from the lab.”
Inside the bag were two rusted old bronze coins. The faces had all but perished. “We got them cleaned up because we couldn’t make out any of the markings.”
“The coins from the first victim,” Ella said. She could make out the number one, a small inscription of a leaf and an indecipherable symbol. Then it hit her. “Oh, wow. Is that kanji? Japanese coins?”
“Nail on the head,” Hunter said. “One thousand yen, apparently. Now this one is worth a decent amount in the collector scene.”
Byford picked up the bag and studied it. He held it right up close to his nose. “Am I seeing this right?” he asked. “Or are my eyes playing tricks on me in my old age?”
“What do you mean?” Hunter asked.
Byford ran his finger over an inscription along the edge of the coin. “The year. It’s the same as the other coins.”
Hunter took it. “Well, bone me sideways. You’re right.”
“It’s from 1964?” Ella asked.
“Yup. I guess we couldn’t see it because it was rusted to all hell.”
A connection. A year. But what did it mean? Ella’s first thought was how they could use it to draw this unsub out.
“What do you think it means?” the sheriff asked.
“What if it’s from the same collection? Someone who collects coins from this year?” Byford said.
The sheriff scratched his stubble. “Gotta be careful. 1964 was a big year for coins. Must have been a million new coins that year because it was an Olympic year.”
Still, it was something, Ella thought. “Are both bodies at the coroner’s now?” she asked.
“Yeah, you want to go down?”
“Please,” Ella said. “There’s something I need to see.”