Justice For All

By Todd Nettleton

A series of gruesome murders.
An almost-total lack of clues.
FBI Agent Lukas Breyer must find the killer. But there’s not much to go on. Patrick J. “PJ” O’Reiley, Jr., is also waiting. He’s prosecuting attorney in King County, where the first body was found and where he hopes the killer will be put on trial.

10 years ago they were Harvard Law classmates. Now their paths will cross again

• Language: English
• Publisher: Todd Nettleton
• Release date: Aug 7, 2010
• ISBN: 9781452426518

Todd Nettleton

Todd Nettleton is the Director of Media Development for an international non-profit organization. He regularly writes for the organization's newsletter, which is read monthly in more than 500,000 homes. During more than twelve years of service, he has documented human rights and religious freedom abuses and interviewed victims in Sudan, China, Egypt, Turkey, Eritrea, Vietnam, Pakistan, Indonesia, Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, Bangladesh, Ethiopia, Myanmar, Colombia, Iraq, India and Azerbaijan. He has been interviewed more than 1500 times by various media outlets, including the Associated Press, Los Angeles Times, BBC, Moody Broadcast Network, Christian Broadcasting Network, Newsweek, The Voice of America and Trinity Broadcasting Network.Todd is a former sports writer and a graduate of Bartlesville Wesleyan College (now Oklahoma Wesleyan University). He has done postgraduate work at the University of Oklahoma.Todd did part of his growing up in Papua New Guinea, and the rest in Southern California.He and his wife, Charlotte, have two grown sons and two daughters-in-law. In his spare time, Todd enjoys reading, writing, music, travel and sports. He is the commissioner of a fantasy football league.

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Prologue

He braced himself and began to cut, carefully rinsing off each piece of the body before placing it into a large garbage bag and wrapping and fastening the bag. He cut as much as possible with the sharp hunting knife, using the electric cutter with the special blade only for bones.

The blood drained into the tub, and he paused occasionally to rinse it down.

It was a gruesome task, but this was not the first time he had done this. He had thrown up repeatedly the first three times. So he tried to do it while a little drunk, but that made him careless; and carelessness leads to mistakes.

After his experiments with a bottle of vodka by his side, he’d forcibly pushed the horror from his mind and saw it as a job that had to be done, like picking up dog poop in the yard or changing a baby’s messy diaper.

It wasn’t pleasant, but it had to be done.

1

Walking through a major airport anonymously wasn’t easy; not for Patrick J. O’Reiley, Jr.

It wasn’t easy when you were the only son and spitting image of Patrick J. O’Reiley, Sr., the minority leader of the United States Senate and two-time presidential candidate. It wasn’t easy when you were a high-profile prosecuting attorney in a major city, almost a fixture on the nightly news with conviction after conviction of drug dealer, killer, rapist and every other kind of criminal.

PJ, as friends and family called him from birth, was strikingly handsome. At 6-foot-3, the 35-year-old had a presence that filled any room he entered. His dark black hair always seemed perfectly combed, and his piercing blue eyes looked even bluer on TV. He’d been tabbed for political success since high school, and it seemed natural when he followed in his father’s footsteps through the University of Washington and then Harvard Law School.

His face had become more familiar since the killings started. As the Prosecuting Attorney in the jurisdiction where the first of the bodies had been found, it was assumed that his office would prosecute the killer, if the killer was ever found. He’d become a regular guest on TV news shows, doing 27 interviews on national TV since the first body had been found. He hadn’t told anyone, but that was eight more national interviews than his father had done during the same span.

He walked out of the restroom and headed back toward the baggage-claim area. He continued out the sliding door and hailed a taxi, trying to blend in to the pacing, suit-wearing, brief-case-carrying crowd of early-morning business travelers. He looked the part, with his gray suit, rumpled white shirt and power tie.

In fact, he fit the part exactly.

To the downtown LA Hyatt, he told the taxi driver as he tossed his black, designer-leather bag into the back seat of the yellow sedan, then climbed in.

After graduating from Harvard Law School near the top of his class, he took a job with the King County Prosecuting Attorney’s office in Seattle. Political spectators saw it as the first step along the path his father had taken to the United States Senate.

Two years later, he was promoted to senior prosecutor, the youngest person in the county’s history to hold that honored position. He became a highly visible prosecutor with a reputation as a cagey, passionate courtroom operator. He got the job done, popular opinion held, and sent the bad guys to jail. Five years later his reputation, and an endorsement from the retiring PA, had gotten him elected King County Prosecuting Attorney, where his list of successes continued to grow. As he sat in the back of the taxi, lost in thought, he had a reputation as one of the

Republican Party’s future stars. Many people, on both sides of the law, hoped that reputation would get him to Washington.

The senior O’Reiley had gone to Washington at 35, and was approaching retirement. Many in the Grand Old Party assumed he’d step down when his current term expired in two years, passing his mantle to his son and using his extensive party influence to assure there would be no challengers in the primaries.

PJ was working in that direction when his world was shattered by an event that made politics or prosecutions seem a travesty, causing almost a nauseous reaction in his stomach.

The shattering, world-turning blow hit more than two and a half years ago, on September 12th. It was supposed to have been a night of fun and frolic for the O’Reiley family.

PJ took his wife, Kathleen, out for a long dinner while a friend cared for eight-year-old Kelly and five-year-old Kaitlyn. After dinner and a play, PJ and Kathleen drove to pick up the girls in his Lincoln.

On the way, PJ took a call on his cell phone. It turned out to be a life-changing call. The CEO of one of Seattle’s prominent software companies had been found in his office, four bullet holes in his chest. PJ would oversee the sure-to-be-high-profile case when and if suspects were brought to trial, so he was called even before the body had grown cold.

He wearily put down the phone, thinking of the activities he’d planned after the girls were safely tucked into bed.

I’ve got to go to a scene, Kath, he said apologetically. There’s been a murder.

It was not an uncommon refrain in his marriage; his wife knew that arguing or complaining could not change her husband’s responsibilities, or his passion to be good at his job.

OK, she said simply, punctuating it with a gentle squeeze of his arm. It was that gentle squeeze and the brush of her fingertips against his skin that he always remembered later.

They collected the girls and took them home. PJ stayed long enough to see everyone inside and tuck his daughters into bed before kissing his wife passionately, apologizing once again for the demands of his job, and walking out the door.

As he pulled out of the driveway, the cell phone rang again. He put it to his ear.

Hurry home, his wife purred. I’m going to be waiting for you.

PJ smiled and promised that he would indeed hurry home. But he would never again see her alive.

2

It was the kind of San Francisco morning that made normal people want to stay in bed, turn off the alarm clock and sleep until noon. It was cold, and a light drizzle sent droplets of water down every exposed surface.

Special Agent Lukas Breyer didn’t have the luxury of staying in bed.

He’d not had the luxury of a full night’s sleep in six months, since he’d been assigned by the Assistant Director over the FBI’s criminal division to find a killer. The killings, which began two months before he was assigned to the case, hadn’t been far from his conscious thoughts since. He and the San Francisco field office of the FBI had come into the case when victim number four, a computer science major from Berkeley named Akiko Mazakito, had been found near Reno. It appeared that Mazakito had been kidnapped and taken across state lines, which gave the FBI jurisdiction. At the time, Lukas was an Assistant Special Agent in Charge (ASAC) in the San Francisco office and was put in charge of the case.

Victim number five was Jesse White-Eagle, a 44-yearold Navajo believed to have been killed on a reservation, making his murder a federal case due to federal statutes involving Crime on a Government Reservation (CGR).

When the killings continued and the case grew, generating more media attention, the FBI Director assigned Breyer as Inspector to oversee the case. He had the full resources of the FBI behind him and the job of catching the killer, no matter what it took. It was a job no one wanted, a thankless task coordinating hundreds of policemen and agents across half the nation. So far they’d uncovered almost nothing, and editorials in more and more papers from Lincoln to Los Angeles were calling for results, or for Breyer to be replaced at the head of the case.

Breyer had brought together a bright group of agents from a variety of backgrounds to work with him on the case, but to date his team was working with a whole bunch of nothing.

Since the previous September, 12 bodies had been found along interstate highways west of the Mississippi. The bodies were in pieces, dropped one piece at a time at precisely one-mile intervals wrapped in green garbage sacks, the kind that could be bought in any store in America.

The mode of operation was the same in all 12 cases: Death caused by poisoning, and dismemberment of the body had come after death.

So far, that was the sum of the FBI’s knowledge, and it wasn’t enough for Breyer, the media, or the public.

In almost 10 years of Bureau work, Breyer had never seen a killer leave such a dearth of evidence.

The first body, discovered September 13th, was that of a black prostitute from Spokane, Washington. She was found along Interstate 90 east of Seattle. The second body, discovered three weeks later, was a white homeless man believed to be from St. Louis. He was found along I-44 about 60 miles east of Tulsa.

Since those two, 10 more had been found, from South Dakota to Arizona and Washington to Louisiana. All killed the same way, and all cut into nine pieces and spread one piece at a time along interstate highways.

The victims ranged in age and ethnicity, with no discernible pattern. None were prominent members of society, and most hadn’t been missed by friends or relatives for days after their disappearance.

There’d been no hints and no messages from the killer. The bodies had been discovered by motorists, highway patrol officers or road crews.

For Breyer, the case had become an obsession, ever present in his mind. He thought of it as he lay in bed at night, and the thoughts resumed when the alarm called him to wake. He even dreamed about the case. He wanted this killer, and he wanted him soon…before the body count got higher.

Breyer showered quickly on this cold, gray morning, dressing as usual in a gray suit and conservative tie. His appearance would best be called average, for there was nothing particularly remarkable about him. He was of medium height and build, with widely spaced brown eyes and close-cropped brown hair. He owned the kind of face that seemed to remind people of somebody else, although they never could quite think of who it was. Lukas kissed his wife, Leyna, on the cheek before tiptoeing out of the room. She stirred and mumbled goodbye, but Breyer knew she wouldn’t remember it later.

He paused in the kitchen long enough to spread cream cheese on two rice cakes, then walked out the door to the garage. He checked the dashboard clock as he started the car — 6:22. Another early start to another long day.

Maybe, he hoped, this is the day we get a break.

3

PJ O’Reiley moved after the death of his wife and daughters. The house they’d shared in Lake Forest Park seemed ominous and lonely without the sound of Kathy’s laughter and the pitter-patter of their daughters’ feet. He’d sold the house six months after the murders, to the first person that made an offer, and bought a town house closer to his office.

He pulled his city-owned gray Buick into the parking garage. The trip from SEA-TAC airport after the flight from LA had been uneventful.

Grabbing his bag, O’Reiley unloaded three days of mail out of his box on the way into his townhouse. It was a three-bedroom, two-story unit, cookie-cut into a row of 11 others just like it. It still smelled of new carpet and paint, which were redone just before he moved in. Living there for almost two years hadn’t changed the smell or the feel of O’Reiley’s new living space or made it any more of a home.

The place was immaculately clean, because O’Reiley paid a young woman handsomely to keep it that way; she came three times a week. Her job was easy, for he came home only to sleep at night. He rarely even ate a meal there. In fact, there were many weeks she spent more time there than he did.

O’Reiley collected the newspaper off the front porch and sat down at the table to peruse the mail and paper, catching up on what his wife had always called domestic business affairs. The men who killed her had been caught, tried and convicted within nine months of the murders. PJ had assisted the prosecution in building their case, although he’d not been allowed to argue the case himself. All they’d let him do in the trial of the men who killed his wife and daughters was help in the prep and spend an hour on the witness stand. He felt driven to do more.

He was the killers’ target.

The attack was planned as a warning to him — to let him know his aggressiveness in attacking the Seattle underworld had been noted, and that it would earn him an early grave if he persisted.

The two animals sent to do the job were instructed to tie up his wife and daughters, then ransack his home. It was intended as a warning, not as the final assault.

Once inside his house, things had gone a lot farther than planned.

They had raped and beaten PJ’s wife and daughters, then slashed all three to death with machetes. It had taken dental records to positively identify PJ’s beloved Kathy after the brutal treatment.

Their conviction was easy. Evidence had been delivered to O’Reiley’s office that told the who, what, why and how and even gave an address for each of the perpetrators.

A police informer said the killers were given up for two reasons. On one hand, it was a message to other underworld employees to do what they were told and only what they were told. It was also a peace offering to O’Reiley — the chance to be sure his wife’s killers ended up behind bars — a chance to garner a little favor from the county’s chief prosecutor.

The offering served only to redouble PJ’s efforts to stop the criminals in his city. What had been 10-hour work days became 16 hours, an obsessive life few could match.

Kathy had been a balancing influence on her husband’s workaholic nature. She would accept no more than 10 hours at the office each day, no more than 13 during a trial. She gently but firmly demanded that he not work on Sundays but take the time to be with her and their daughters.

With her death, that influence was gone. Since the murders, he spent at least 15 hours a day at the office, sometimes as much as 20. He’d had a couch brought in, and some days he would spend what little time he slept on that couch, never going home. He rarely socialized and found the stares, questions and words of hollow sympathy, which people still felt obligated to offer, almost too much to bear.

Midway through the mail pile was an envelope that caught his eye. In the upper left corner was the Harvard Law School crest in a shiny gold foil.

For PJ, three years in law school at Harvard had been the best years of his life. They’d been years of intense intellectual stimulation, as well as social satisfaction. For the first time in his life, he was much more than the Senator’s son. Amidst the money and prestige of Harvard, he was just another student, and he reveled in the newly discovered anonymity.

The envelope was from the alumni office and contained an engraved invitation to the 10-year reunion of his Harvard Law class.

He had returned to Harvard once since graduation — five years ago. Could he go back now, without Kathy, the most precious thing he’d taken with him from Massachusetts?

He carried his flight bag up the stairs and into his bedroom. Setting the bag down, he thought of Kathy. In the months since her death, his mind never strayed far from the memory of his wife. He saw her face everywhere. He thought of her now, blinking back tears, and began to unpack.

How terrible the end must have been for her. Thoughts of her final moments of pain and terror haunted PJ, driving him to tears and thoughts of bloody vengeance. He forced them out of his mind before heading back down the stairs and to the Buick for the drive to the office.

4

Lukas arrived at work before almost every other agent. He flashed his badge as he entered the federal building and was allowed to walk around the metal detector and security station. Breyer took the elevator past the ATF and other federal offices in the building to the FBI’s area on the 13th floor, and then went to his office to map out the day’s activities for himself and his team.

Chasing a serial killer was an intricate and confusing business. It required the coordination of hundreds of people and thousands of tiny bits of information.

His first stop was the coffee pot, where he put in a new filter and grounds and started it brewing before entering his office.

Lukas believed, in his less-pressured moments, that his office was a small-scale picture of his mind: It was pleasantly cluttered, including a floor-to-ceiling bookshelf along one wall and a desk in the middle of the floor holding several piles of various depths.

On the wall behind the desk and the $300 leather office chair (the highlight of his promotion to ASAC, for whom leather office furniture is a federal perk) was his Wall of Fame. In the center of the wall was his Harvard Law degree, which he considered his greatest accomplishment thus far. Around it were his bachelor’s degree from UCLA, a picture of his FBI Academy class, a picture of his family, and a picture of him with the Director—all neatly arranged and hanging perfectly straight. Alone on another wall was a glass case which held a gray fedora, which had been worn by J. Edgar Hoover himself. The hat was a gift from his parents upon his graduation from the academy, and he later learned it had cost them more than $500. He didn’t have the heart to tell them that he was not a Hoover admirer, believing the late Director had misused agents to maintain his private home and misused confidential information on government leaders to protect his job and his precious Bureau. He knew that Hoover had also made the FBI what it was, and many senior agents he respected who’d worked under Hoover loved the man. So he’d hung the hat in his office, out of respect for his parents and to remind him of the temptations that his job could offer, and which he had sworn to avoid.

Lukas had always been a straight arrow. He was raised in a conservative Jewish home in San Diego, and had migrated northward — first to UCLA, then eventually to his current home in San Francisco after law school. Even as a child, Lukas had stayed on the right side of the rules. He was, his mother often bragged, the kid on the playground who put away the toys and broke up quarrels between classmates.

In high school his life had revolved around studies and sports, with little time for girls, close friends or trouble.

The result was a straight-A student and three-sport letterman who since graduation had spoken to less than five members of his high school class.

College had been much the same, although the sports activity had fallen to the intramural level. He also held down a job to provide for his living expenses. His tuition was covered by academic scholarships.

After four more straight-A years, he was welcomed to Harvard Law with open arms. He left only one close friend in LA — a fellow sports-and-grades freak that was headed to Stanford for medical school.

Being a straight arrow at Harvard was somewhat more difficult, because Lukas found himself vastly outnumbered in the student body. His conservative beliefs were also challenged by many left-leaning professors, and for the first time in his life, he had to be ready to debate and defend the values he held close to his core. He tried to keep a low profile, keep his nose clean and keep bringing in the grades.

One person changed his plans, and for doing so he married her. She was an undergraduate art major who brought an abstract viewpoint to Lukas’ ordered and precise world. He fell in love with her for her warm smile and the way she helped him to see things differently and to relax and enjoy life. She was his joy, and he often thought that losing her would be worse than losing life itself.

Leyna had supported Lukas completely in his desire to become an agent, and had already packed up their home and belongings three times, as the Bureau moved him from office to office and city to city. San Francisco had now been home for four years, and they were becoming more settled. He hoped they would be there a long time.

Lukas went back out to the coffee pot and filled his cup, then took a long drink, feeling the warmth flow all the way down to his stomach.

Walking back into his office, he grabbed the mail from his in-box, shuffling quickly past superfluous memos (an FBI specialty) and unnecessary status reports (how many ways could people write that they had nothing to go on, he wondered). At the bottom of the pile was a letter that caught his eye with the simple, majestic Harvard seal.

He opened it quickly, assuming it was yet another plea for funding from the school’s many rich alumni, a club to which Lukas did not belong. Lukas hated such letters, because they reminded him that most of his classmates were taking home checks three or four or 10 or 20 times larger than his.

The expected letter was not there, though. Instead, it was a simple invitation to the 10-year reunion of his law school class.

5

From the first days of his career, PJ liked to be at the office early. He loved the time before the secretaries and the less-ambitious Assistant PAs arrived, when the office was quiet and the coffee was fresh. He often thought that, with the silence, he could accomplish more between 7 and 8 a.m. than he could between 8 and 5, with the phone ringing and the constant distractions and interruptions.

That extra hour was even more important after he’d been out of town, when he had to catch up. And since the murder of his wife, he’d been out of town as often as possible. O’Reiley’s status as a senator’s son made him a recognizable face around the state, and the murder of his wife and children had put him on front pages across the nation, a position he’d resumed since the first of the grisly murders had occurred in his jurisdiction. A gifted speaker, he was now in demand across the country to speak to law schools, bar associations and law-enforcement organizations. His most recent excursion had been to the annual meeting of the LA Trial Lawyers Association, where he was the keynote speaker.

The busy speaking schedule earned him some extra income, but more importantly it had made him many contacts that would be extremely valuable should he decide to follow his father’s footsteps to the Senate. But for him, it was a more basic need that the busy schedule fulfilled: not to be in Seattle alone. Since the murders, his hometown seemed like a prison, and around every corner were reminders that he was alone in the world.

He found it possible to lose his loneliness in the action and new people of a conference or speaking engagement and enjoyed being the center of attention. Occasionally he met women at these conferences, and occasionally they slept together, filling for a moment his need to be close to another human being. These liaisons never produced a serious relationship. It didn’t take long for women to sense the chill that lived where PJ’s heart had been. He didn’t really try to hide it, and once a woman realized she could not warm that place, she quickly fell by the wayside.

The most attentive had been a third-year law student who introduced herself to PJ after he spoke at her graduation by saying that she worshipped the ground he walked on and would just love to work in his office. She was one of those bright, energetic women like Kathy had been; and she was a stunner: long, blonde hair; deep blue eyes; a body that showed she was very familiar with the inside of a gym; and a deep, glowing, healthy tan that only California girls really have. She had worshipped him that whole weekend in every way he wanted and had called several times after. He helped her find a job in the DA’s office in San Francisco, calling in a favor to move her to the front of the line. Her calls suddenly stopped after the job came through, but he wasn’t disappointed. He didn’t have the energy or desire for anything more than a casual relationship.

After a trip, there was always catching up to do at the office, and often his quiet, first hour was completely swallowed up by reading through his in-box pile: Briefs, bar association updates, letters, plea agreements, and on and on. He went through the stack quickly, jotting instructions or comments on sticky notes on various pages, then forwarding most of them to someone else to handle.

Welcome back, Cass’ cheerful voice said as she came through his door.

The office work went much smoother since Cass had taken over the day-to-day management. She dealt with most of the mail, leaving only the most crucial to take up his time.

Thanks, he sighed, leaning back in his chair and motioning her to one on the other side