“They do,” she agreed.“Whitaker, look her up in court records.See if you can find the skeletons lurking in her past.”
“Yeah,” Whitaker said.“Sure thing.”
He seemed excited to get out of the house.Kate couldn’t blame him.She’d encountered plenty of more gruesome scenes, but there was something viscerally disturbing about seeing someone’s body face down in a pool of their own blood.The killer hadn’t bothered to stage her.They just stabbed her and let her fall.
That was another difference between these murders and the previous commandment killings.In the previous murders, the bodies had always been moved, even if only a little bit.But both Derek Hammond and Michelle Santos had been left where they fell.
“I’m gonna talk to the neighbors,” Marcus said.“See if they noticed anyone suspicious.A vehicle or something.”
Kate nodded.Marcus stepped outside, and Kate took pictures of the cipher and the scene.This message was just as long as the previous one.That told Kate that the killer and victim hadn’t made noise.If the next-door neighbor cared enough to walk over on her walker and enter a smoke-filled house to check on Santos, then she would have reacted immediately to a scream.
Did the victims recognize the killer?Could that be why they didn’t cry out or try to run?
She thought of Derek Hammond’s face, the resigned expression cast up to Heaven as he sat in his chair, his life’s blood drained to the floor.Maybe they both believed they deserved their end.
She stepped out of the house to find Whitaker smoking a cigarette.He saw her and dropped it on the ground, tamping it with his foot.His face was a waxy color that reminded her a little too much of the dead body in the living room behind her.
“Sheesh,” he said.“Don’t know what it is about this that gives me the creeps so much.”
“These killings tend to have that effect on people.”
“You think it’s that guy again?”Whitaker said.“Cox?”
“Well, he’s in prison, but yes, I think he influenced this killer just like he’s done before.”
“God.”Whitaker shivered.“It’s like he’s Satan or something whispering into people’s ears.”
Kate allowed herself a small smile as she imagined Cox reacting to being called Satan.It was an apt analogy, though, wasn’t it?The Mormons believed that Lucifer was once God’s most cherished companion, equal to Jesus in stature.His fall came not because he wanted to supplant God but because he had a different idea about bringing people to God.
Jesus wanted to show people the way to a close relationship with God and leave the choice up to them.Lucifer wanted to force people to comply with God’s commandments and believed forgiveness was inappropriate.There was only obedience.Only judgment.Forgiveness, if it was granted, came from absolution, and absolution came from sacrifice.
“Did you get information on Santos yet?”
“Court didn’t have anything under that name,” Whitaker told her.“I gave them her social security number, pulled it from the card in her wallet.They’re looking into it, and they’ll get back to me.”
Kate nodded.Marcus trudged across the lawn to them.The flashing lights of the police cruisers and fire engines made him look larger somehow, like a mammoth churning through fog.
“Neighbor didn’t see anything, but there’s a service road in the ditch behind the neighborhood.The killer would have to climb a chain-link fence, but that could be where they got in.I saw tire tracks.Looks like a compact vehicle, narrow width.”
“I’ll have Buffalo Grove PD take a look,” Whitaker said.“In the meantime, unless you guys want to keep digging around here, I say we go back to the precinct.As information comes in, we can organize it and build a profile.”
Kate nodded again.She nearly asked Whitaker for one of his cigarettes, but Marcus was pissed enough at her without seeing her smoking a cancer stick.“All right.That works for me.We’ll follow you.”
As they drove away from the scene of Cox’s latest victim, Kate tried to put herself in the shoes of the killer.At the core of every commandment killing was the belief that the killings were justified.These weren’t murders, they were corrections.From the killer’s mind, she was only fixing mistakes made by others, bringing the world more in line with the one God intended.
Only it wasn’t God.Cox might not realize it or accept what he knew deep down to be the truth, but it wasn’t God he was serving.Every sect of Christianity believed that Jesus was God’s chosen messenger, His Son sent to absolve the world of its sins through kindness and love.Only one of God’s children rejected that message and insisted that punishment and sacrifice was the true path to salvation.When Cox got on his knees to pray, it wasn’t Jesus who heard his prayers.
And it wasn’t the Holy Spirit who guided the knife that killed Michelle Santos.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
“Got something back from the court,” Whitaker said.“Looks like Michelle Santos wasn’t always Michelle Santos.”
The trio was back at the 18thDistrict headquarters at the North Shore.Marcus had ordered pizza for dinner, the deep-dish variety that was more like a mozzarella dip in bread than the thin slices Kate was used to.Kate didn’t expect to be hungry, but when the meal arrived, she dug in voraciously.
She was mid-bite when Whitaker delivered the news, so it was Marcus who said, “Oh yeah?”
“Yep.Turns out Miss Santos was once known as Maricela Santana.”He waited for them to be surprised, and when they weren’t, he slumped slightly.“Right.I forget you guys aren’t locals.This was a big case when I moved here.”
