Read The Love Killings for Free Online Page B
Authors: Robert Ellis
needed to dampen the sound. Like we said before, it would’ve been a loud night. There would’ve been shrieks and cries for help, at least until he could get them sedated. How many gunshots were fired?”
“Five,” she said. “One for each victim.”
“Okay, so Baylor needed to dampen the sound of five gunshots. The landing is surrounded on every side by other rooms. The exterior walls are a foot and a half thick. The only weak spot is the window. When I looked outside, the angle was off and I couldn’t see the carriage house. All I saw were pine trees and a steep hill. It was breezy tonight. I could hear the tree branches when we were standing in the drive. If it was like this on the night of the murders, any sound that leaked through the glass would have stayed right where Baylor wanted it.”
She turned and met his eyes. “In the wind,” she said.
Matt nodded. “In the wind.”
It hung there, in the warmth of the Crown Vic on a cold night.
When Brown spoke, her voice was soft and low. “I’ll let Doyle and Rogers know.”
Matt settled back in his seat and yawned, the sleep he’d lost last night beginning to catch up to him. After a while Brown switched on the radio to KYW, a news station that sounded a lot like KNX, the news station in LA. Headlines began at the top of the hour, with traffic and weather updates recycling every ten minutes. But tonight there was only one story in Philadelphia. Because the media had been given so little information about the murders, the stories and interviews were with retired members of various law enforcement agencies and physicians from local hospitals who had nothing to do with the investigation and could offer little more than speculation.
Most thought that one of Stratton’s former patients committed the murders in an act of revenge that got out of hand. Had Matt not been aware of the physical evidence, had he not walked through the crime scene, he might have thought the same thing. Stratton had used his patients as cash cows, administering chemotherapy and radiation treatments even though they were healthy. His vulgar thirst for money and power, his greed, contaminated his entire being. Like most narcissists, Stratton had evolved into a monster. And that’s exactly what would have attracted Dr. Baylor. As Matt tossed it over, he couldn’t help thinking that the barbaric nature of Stratton’s crime was what sent Baylor over the edge. This had to be why Baylor wanted to destroy Stratton’s entire bloodline. The fact that Stratton had taken the Hippocratic oath and broken his vows as a physician would have resonated with Baylor in spite of his own personal history and mental decline.
Matt looked over at Brown’s face in the soft glow of the dashboard lights. She knew that he was tired and not in the mood to talk right now. And he liked the fact that nothing about his silence felt uncomfortable.
Traffic on the expressway was light, and the drive downtown to the exit at Thirtieth Street Station took less than half an hour. As Brown circled the train station, Matt realized that everything was beginning to look familiar to him again. The FBI’s apartment was located in a section of the city called Fitler Square and covered a number of blocks that included the Schuylkill River Park. Brown turned right off Market Street onto Twenty-Third Street, heading south and making the cut over to Twenty-Fourth. A few minutes later she made a left onto Pine Street and pulled to the curb before a pair of four-story apartment buildings that were set directly across the street from the actual square. Matt gazed through the wrought iron fence at the benches and fountain and all the trees that would be leafing out in the spring and providing shade on a hot summer day. When he turned back to the pair of buildings, he noted the same sign, “Fitler Commons,” over both entrances.
“You’re on the fourth floor of the building on the left. It’s a front corner two-bedroom
“Five,” she said. “One for each victim.”
“Okay, so Baylor needed to dampen the sound of five gunshots. The landing is surrounded on every side by other rooms. The exterior walls are a foot and a half thick. The only weak spot is the window. When I looked outside, the angle was off and I couldn’t see the carriage house. All I saw were pine trees and a steep hill. It was breezy tonight. I could hear the tree branches when we were standing in the drive. If it was like this on the night of the murders, any sound that leaked through the glass would have stayed right where Baylor wanted it.”
She turned and met his eyes. “In the wind,” she said.
Matt nodded. “In the wind.”
It hung there, in the warmth of the Crown Vic on a cold night.
When Brown spoke, her voice was soft and low. “I’ll let Doyle and Rogers know.”
Matt settled back in his seat and yawned, the sleep he’d lost last night beginning to catch up to him. After a while Brown switched on the radio to KYW, a news station that sounded a lot like KNX, the news station in LA. Headlines began at the top of the hour, with traffic and weather updates recycling every ten minutes. But tonight there was only one story in Philadelphia. Because the media had been given so little information about the murders, the stories and interviews were with retired members of various law enforcement agencies and physicians from local hospitals who had nothing to do with the investigation and could offer little more than speculation.
Most thought that one of Stratton’s former patients committed the murders in an act of revenge that got out of hand. Had Matt not been aware of the physical evidence, had he not walked through the crime scene, he might have thought the same thing. Stratton had used his patients as cash cows, administering chemotherapy and radiation treatments even though they were healthy. His vulgar thirst for money and power, his greed, contaminated his entire being. Like most narcissists, Stratton had evolved into a monster. And that’s exactly what would have attracted Dr. Baylor. As Matt tossed it over, he couldn’t help thinking that the barbaric nature of Stratton’s crime was what sent Baylor over the edge. This had to be why Baylor wanted to destroy Stratton’s entire bloodline. The fact that Stratton had taken the Hippocratic oath and broken his vows as a physician would have resonated with Baylor in spite of his own personal history and mental decline.
Matt looked over at Brown’s face in the soft glow of the dashboard lights. She knew that he was tired and not in the mood to talk right now. And he liked the fact that nothing about his silence felt uncomfortable.
Traffic on the expressway was light, and the drive downtown to the exit at Thirtieth Street Station took less than half an hour. As Brown circled the train station, Matt realized that everything was beginning to look familiar to him again. The FBI’s apartment was located in a section of the city called Fitler Square and covered a number of blocks that included the Schuylkill River Park. Brown turned right off Market Street onto Twenty-Third Street, heading south and making the cut over to Twenty-Fourth. A few minutes later she made a left onto Pine Street and pulled to the curb before a pair of four-story apartment buildings that were set directly across the street from the actual square. Matt gazed through the wrought iron fence at the benches and fountain and all the trees that would be leafing out in the spring and providing shade on a hot summer day. When he turned back to the pair of buildings, he noted the same sign, “Fitler Commons,” over both entrances.
“You’re on the fourth floor of the building on the left. It’s a front corner two-bedroom