The First Commandment

He opened the woman’s right eye first and then the left, liberally applying the substance and making sure each eye had been completely covered. His job was almost finished.

Roussard removed a screwdriver from his tool belt and pried the lids loose on each of the buckets. He grabbed a towel from above the toilet and tossed it just outside the bathroom door. It was time.

Prying the lids off both buckets, he emptied their contents over his victim, still lying unconscious in her bath, and then hurried from the bathroom, making sure to close the door firmly behind him.

Roussard wedged the towel beneath the door and fixed it in place with more duct tape. He then removed the cordless drill from his tool belt along with a handful of screws and secured the door firmly to its frame.

He walked back outside, replaced the orange cones in the van, and slowly drove back the way he had come.

At the San Diego Marriott Hotel and Marina, Roussard changed out of his coveralls, rubbed the van down for fingerprints, and headed for his dock. The boat was right where his handler had told him it would be.

Once he had navigated his way out into the open, inky-black water, he took out a clean cell phone, dialed 911, and gave the address of a woman in need of assistance on Coronado ’s Encino Lane.

When asked for his name, Roussard smiled and threw the phone overboard. They would piece together who was responsible soon enough.

Chapter 20

BALTIMORE, MARYLAND

Tom Gosse, the funeral home’s director and namesake, had told Sheppard that he’d rather not have their conversation tape-recorded. That meant that the reporter had been forced to take notes, and he was the world’s shittiest note taker.

He couldn’t blame Gosse for not wanting to be on tape. If the story he was telling was true, someone had already been killed to keep it quiet.

Sheppard sat at his kitchen counter nursing a Fosters as he flipped through his notes. The funeral director was a solid guy. Several times during the interview, Sheppard backtracked and pretended to mess up the facts in order to trip him up, but Gosse was unflappable. There was no question in Sheppard’s mind that the man was telling him the truth.

According to his story, about six months ago he’d been at the chief medical examiner’s office doing a pickup. While waiting for the body, he had hung out with a pal of his, an assistant ME named Frank Aposhian. According to Gosse, they were pretty good friends. Their boys attended the same high school and the men played cards together a couple of times a month.

During Gosse’s pickup, his conversation with Aposhian was interrupted by two men who identified themselves as FBI agents and requested to speak to the assistant ME in private. As Frank was in charge of the office that night, the request didn’t strike Gosse as odd at all. Law enforcement officers came and went all the time in the ME’s office, and it definitely wasn’t for the coffee.

One of the agents followed Aposhian into his office while the other began examining corpses. But not just any corpses-he only seemed interested in unclaimed bodies, more commonly referred to as John Does. Many of them were found in parks, under bridges, or in abandoned buildings, often half-eaten by rats or stray dogs by the time they were discovered.

Their fingerprints were run through local and national databases and investigators were assigned to try to uncover their identities, but more often than not they went unidentified. Mortuary science students practiced their embalming techniques upon them, and the John and Jane Does were then placed in plywood coffins to be interred in the nearest potter’s field.

What struck Gosse as odd was that the agent didn’t appear to know what he was looking for. He didn’t carry any photos with him. He simply moved from corpse to corpse checking them over as if he were shopping for a new set of golf clubs.

When Aposhian appeared moments later with the man’s partner, the agent pointed at one of the bodies, and the assistant ME wrote down the number from the toe tag and went back to his office to process the paperwork.

The body was bagged and loaded into a nondescript van, and the G-men disappeared.

When Gosse asked his friend what the deal was, Aposhian told him that he’d been instructed not to speak about it. Apparently, the corpse wasn’t a John Doe at all, but rather a person who had been involved in a serious felony case.

That’s where the story should have ended, but it didn’t. The FBI agents had presented the proper paperwork to claim the body, but had insisted that Aposhian hand over the ME file on it as well. They explained that the Bureau was involved in a complicated sting operation that would be jeopardized if the man’s death became public. It was an unusual request, but the men were polite and had all their paperwork in order, so Aposhian had no reason to get into a pissing match with them. It wasn’t until months later that the assistant ME realized his mistake.

One of the mortuary science students working with him that night had retrieved the wrong file for him. When Aposhian called the local FBI field office to try to correct his mistake they told him they had no record of an Agent Stan Weston or Joe Maxwell ever being assigned there. He next contacted FBI headquarters in Washington, D. C., but they informed him that they didn’t have any agents by those names in the entire Federal Bureau of Investigation and that maybe he had made a mistake.

Aposhian checked his notes. There was no mistake. None of this was making any sense.

He handed the John Doe’s fingerprint card to a woman named Sally Rutherford. Rutherford was one of the office investigators and Aposhian’s girlfriend of eleven months. The next day, there was an email printed out and waiting for Aposhian on his desk.

According to Rutherford, there was some sort of mix-up. The prints came back as belonging to a man who had been killed in a shootout with police in Charleston, South Carolina, days after the FBI agents had taken the John Doe from their facility. The investigator had a call in to the Charleston Police Department and was waiting to hear back.

Aposhian figured it was all just another bureaucratic screw-up, but changed his mind the night his FBI agents paid him a return visit.

Gosse, who was at his friend’s apartment for poker night, didn’t recognize the men at first. After all, it had been six months since he had first seen them at the ME’s office.

They asked to speak to Aposhian outside, and when he returned, he was visibly shaken. Whatever these guys told him, it wasn’t good.

Gosse asked his friend what was going on, but Aposhian didn’t want to talk about it. In fact, saying he didn’t feel well, the assistant ME cut their game short and sent his poker buddies home.

When Gosse was back at the ME’s office for a pickup the next day, he was about to knock on Aposhian’s door when he heard an argument coming from within. He stepped away from the door just as it opened and Sally Rutherford stormed out. Gosse wasn’t one to pry, but his friend looked tremendously upset.

It was obvious Aposhian needed to talk, but the man didn’t want to do it at the office. They decided to meet at the funeral home later that night.

When his friend got there, Gosse transferred the phones to the answering service and broke out a bottle of Maker’s Mark. He set two glasses on his desk and poured a couple of ounces in each. Gosse was a born listener. He didn’t force the conversation. He waited for his friend to speak, and when he did, the man shared with him an incredible story.