10:00 am

What’s going on here?

There’s a second body, same M.O., identical barcodes. Beverly barely had time to take a couple of photos before Lydecker came in and confiscated this body as well. How could he possibly get there so quickly? It seems he was expecting it. Has he been through this before? I asked Bev to touch base with coroners in other cities to see what they could come up with. Maybe there’s a pattern here that Lydecker recognizes. Maybe we will find some clues as to what is going on.

11:00 am

Beverly found nine more bodies, two in Chicago, four in Miami and three in New York. In every case, Lydecker has shut down the investigation. This is insane. Who is doing this and why are they tattooing the victims with Ben’s barcode? Max let me believe that the body she saw yesterday was Ben’s. Given the facts, I doubt that it was. They can’t all have been Ben. Were any of them? Is someone trying to hunt down Ben and these victims are a substitute? Why isn’t Lydecker trying to stop him? What does Max know about this?

1:00 pm

I convinced Max to come by during her lunch hour and asked her about the second body. Even over the phone, I could tell that she was reluctant to come here, that she was holding something back. When she arrived, her reluctance became painfully obvious. She wouldn’t even stand near me. It was almost as if she knew that whatever I had for her wouldn’t be good.

"Another body?" She asked, with a tone that suggested she was half expecting, half dreading this information. Why wasn’t she more surprised? I pushed and prodded her for an explanation. How could there be two bodies with identical barcodes? They couldn’t both be Ben. But I couldn’t get any straight answers from her. She didn’t know. She wasn’t sure. Still, I never expected the answer that she finally gave me.

"Ben killed those men, all right?" She said this with complete conviction. How could she know that?

"I just do," she said, not offering anything more, but there was fear in her eyes as she said it.

She knew and she lied to me. That’s why she blew me off so easily yesterday, why she sounded more like she had just delivered a package than seen her dead brother’s body. She was probably out there looking for Ben.

I asked her why she lied and she replied that she didn’t want people to know that her brother was a killer. But that’s not it. She is acting like she wants to protect Ben even more than she wants to stop him. What is she hiding? How does she know that Ben is responsible for these killings? Is it something about the M.O.? Is it something about Ben? Or is it something about her? I don’t understand why she is not talking to me. What has her so spooked? What doesn’t she want me to see?

3:00 pm

Max ordered me to stay out of this, but if she thinks I’m going to just sit back and let this thing play itself out she doesn’t know me very well. I don’t care that she refused my help. If there’s something I can do, I’m going to do it. Beverly just got back to me with the details of the killings. Maybe I can glean some additional clues from the profile.

• Bodies found in wooded areas.
• Males, ages twenty to thirty-five.
• Identical barcode tattoos, Ben’s barcode. Why Ben’s barcode?
• Necks snapped at second vertebrae. Bruising on neck indicates it was done with one hand. Indicative of an X5’s strength.
• Abrasions to face and arms indicating victims were running fast through dense brush. Running for their lives?
• Victims’ teeth were removed. A possible souvenir?
• Bodies were displayed in an open area, usually on a rock outcropping.
• Victims’ left arms were broken at the elbow, dislocated at the shoulder and twisted behind the back. Done post mortem.
• Madonna medallion found on a chain around some victims’ necks.
• Other bodies, including the first one found in Seattle, had a distinct mark on their necks, as if the chain had been forcefully torn off during the hunt.

The hunt? He’s hunting people? Is that what Ben’s doing, selecting his victims, marking them (the tattoos, the medallions), then releasing them into the woods only to hunt them down? And Max is out there in the middle of it. Why is Ben acting out this insane murder ritual? Why does Max seem to recognize it?

What’s going on here?