Girl, Vanished (An Ella Dark FBI Suspense Thriller—Book 5)

by Blake Pierce

  “Yes, we will. You got a taste of murder five years ago, and you’ve spent every day since pleasuring yourself to the thought of it. It’s the only way a weakling like you can get your kicks. Once you got out, you went back straight back to killing, probably to claw back a sense of dominance after all the late-night beatings you took inside.”

  “Enough,” Steen shouted as he slammed his hands against the cell. “I didn’t kill those three guys, you hear me? I steal, I don’t kill. Mistakes happen. But I don’t kill.”

  Ella saw the chink in the armor. “Mistakes happen?”

  Steen’s pupils dilated in fear. He must have realized what he’d said.

  “Just tell us the truth, Kevin. Otherwise you’re in for a very long road ahead.”

  He began to pace around the cell like a captured beast. “I done him in, alright? Five years back. Windham’s brother. I wanted to teach him a lesson and things got out of hand, but I didn’t mean it. Happy now?”

  Ella celebrated on the inside but kept her demeanor calm. “Why didn’t you just admit this at your trial?”

  “Call me crazy but I didn’t want to go to jail for the rest of my life.” Steen sat back down and calmed himself. He’d just accidentally given himself a long custodial sentence.

  “Agent Byford, I’m done here. Anything to add?”

  “Not a thing. I think we’ve got everything we need. See you soon, Kevin.”

  The two agents left the suspect behind, still seething from his outburst. They made their way out of the holding cells and back up into the office.

  Byford had been wrong, Ella thought. They didn’t have everything they need.

  There was still a very pressing matter to attend to.

  They still needed to find out who the real killer was.

  CHAPTER TWENTY FOUR

  Tobias Campbell sat at a very old computer about ten yards from his glass prison cell, counting down the minutes, the seconds.

  Every Wednesday, the Category A inmates of Maine Correctional Institute were given access to the prison library where they could use computers, read books, play games, or study. Tobias was the only prisoner in the facility listed higher than Category A (the mythical Category X that many prison officials denied even existing), meaning his routine was different from the others.

  Tobias was prohibited from mixing with other prisoners, so guards wheeled a computer into his underground chamber every Wednesday evening. It was a formality more than anything, since Tobias didn’t really use the computer, not that he had much time for technology anyway. The computer had no Internet access and even no access to the localized prison Intranet. It was just a barebones machine with basic games, pictures, and some music files. Tobias usually just sat there for an hour, looking at the screen while an armed guard kept watch.

  But today, things were going to be a little different.

  Tobias Campbell hadn’t had a formal education, had never seen the inside of a school in his life. His entire upbringing took place within the carnival. A traveling carnival, with sideshow freaks, gaffs, conmen, and swindlers trying to make an easy buck off the gullible public. His father had been what was known as a carnival barker, the man whose job consisted of enticing people in to see their famous freak show. There are only two kinds of freaks, ladies and gentlemen. Those created by God, and those made by man. The creature in this pit is a living breathing human being that once was… well, that’s another story that happened a long time ago, a long way from here. Look if you must.

  Tobias’s first job as a curious 10-year-old boy was to walk through the carnival grounds and locate the marks, punters who had money to burn and could therefore be milked dry. He’d slip past them, marking their back with a piece of blue chalk. That way, the carnies at the stalls would know they were the punters to keep on the edge of a victory. Just one more try at ring toss. Come on, you’ll definitely do it this time.

  He struggled to pull it off at first, always pushing a little too hard. When the person realized some kid had defaced their clothing, Tobias just pretended like he was a mischievous little runt and fled. But over time, he became an expert. He was like a ghost, watching customers from afar, chalking them and then dispersing into the crowds. From the age of 11 onwards, no one ever could catch him. His fingers were so nimble they were like clouds on the end of his palm.

  But the real educators came from the carnival’s performers. Clowns, illusionists, card sharks, pickpockets. The people that could not only manipulate objects in unique ways, but could bend a person’s psychological responses to their advantage. Weaponized psychological manipulation. He recalled a magician making a coin disappear, over and over again, then explaining that it wasn’t his hands doing the work, it was the power of distraction. The fingertips were just the bullet, he said, the rest of the body was the gun. The closer you look, the less you see.

  The same man taught Tobias sleight of hand and how to apply it properly. He taught him how to guide a person’s attention wherever you wanted it. Pattern recognition exploitation, he called it, fooling the brain into thinking something had occurred when it hadn’t. Transferring a coin from one hand to the other, placing a ball in your pocket, swallowing a needle.

  Or stealing something right in front of an armed guard.

  Tobias’s fingertips grazed the underside of the mouse while he scrolled up and down the page. It was an old type of mouse with the ball inside, ancient by even his standards. It was all he deserved, he apparently.

  “Officer, I think I’m done here,” Tobias said. “I really have no use for this machine. Plus, I’m not feeling very good.”

  “Still got three minutes,” the guard said.

  Tobias smiled, sat back in his chair and put his hands behind his head and coughed loudly. He watched the clock in the corner of the screen and counted down until the moment of glory.

  Just three minutes, he thought.

  Three minutes until he could see Agent Dark again.

  ***

  Every cell in Maine Correctional Institute had a pull cord tied up at the rear. In the case of emergency, an inmate was to pull the cord for immediate medical assistance. The cords in Category A cells were placed cruelly high, and in a catastrophic medical emergency, the chances of an inmate being able to reach the cord were almost zero. It was one of the prison system’s little tricks to kill off notable inmates, Tobias knew.

  Tobias untied his cell-cord every day, so it dangled down at head height. Not that he’d ever used it.

  But that changed today.

  Every day at the carnival, Tobias would watch the magician perform his act from the side of the stage. Even after a thousand shows, his tricks fascinated the boy. There was one trick above all else that he would watch with unbridled focus and attention, the one trick of which the magician never revealed the secret.

  He used to call the trick Alive and Undead. The magician would call up a spectator from the audience to hold his pulse. Then, the magician would place a plastic bag over his head and claim he was going to cut off the oxygen to his brain. The resulting effect would be a zombie-like state of such euphoric highs that he couldn’t feel pain.

  Sure enough, the spectator would soon discover that the magician’s pulse had stopped beating – an impossible feat, surely. The magician would then walk on glass, pierce his skin with needles and hammer nails into his nose – all without flinching.

  How could it be? It was an illusion like no other, and one that left a lasting impression on the young boy watching from the wings. The mystery consumed young Tobias day and night, to the point that he fully believed the magician’s stage patter might be true. Maybe he really did kill and revive himself every night? Even after years of begging and pleading, the magician never revealed the secrets of this bizarre illusion.

  Then one winter morning, the carnival owner discovered the magician dead in his trailer. Suffocated, apparently, like all those nights cutting off his oxygen supply finally caught up with him. More mysteriously, was that the
magician’s notebook had vanished too.

  The magician and his unexplainable death taught Tobias more about himself than school ever could. And this was how 14-year-old Tobias finally learned the secret to this illusion, and if he was being honest, it was something of a disappointment.

  All he needed was a ball. Any ball, no matter its size or shape or toughness. A sponge ball would do, or a tennis ball.

  Or the ball from an old computer mouse.

  Back in his cell, Tobias concealed the ball in his armpit and sat on his bed. He remembered watching the magician from the side of the stage perform the same rite thirty years ago, wondering whether or not he was witnessing some esoteric supernatural practice.

  A minute later, Tobias’s pulse stopped beating.

  There was nothing supernatural about it. The fact that it was a simple biological response was much more fascinating to him.

  Tobias pulled the cord then collapsed onto the floor in a heap. Between violent spasms, he coughed up blood all over his white jumpsuit.

  He’d watched a thousand magic performances, night in and night out for over a decade.

  It was time to put on a show of his own.

  CHAPTER TWENTY FIVE

  Ella, Byford, and Sheriff Hunter stood between their offices in the NDPD precinct.

  “It’s him,” Byford said. “It has to be.”

  Sheriff Hunter scratched his stubble. He looked like he hadn’t seen a bed in weeks, Ella thought.

  “Same. That man has trouble written all over him. He’s got something to hide.”

  Both turned to Ella, waiting for her input. She looked back towards the holding cell area then tied back her admittedly greasy hair. She simply shook her head. Byford and Hunter both sighed in unison.

  “Ella, seriously? Just take one look at that man and you’ll get everything you need to know.”

  “There are a few things that don’t add up to me.”

  The sheriff’s phone rang but he clicked it to voicemail. “That man is a career thief. He’d steal anything that isn’t nailed down and then take the nails too.”

  “Exactly,” Ella said. “Stealing is in his blood. Alan Yates was rich as hell. Loveridge was an antiques dealer. Windham had thousands of rare coins. Yet nothing was stolen from any of the scenes? You think a hardened thief like that isn’t gonna sweep those places clean? Plus, he’s only been free for a month. He needs the money, and these crime scenes gave him the perfect opportunity.”

  Neither Byford nor Hunter had a response.

  “Secondly, why would he confess to one murder and not the others? He just cemented himself a long term, maybe even life inside. He might as well go the whole hog.”

  “Alright,” Byford said, “anything else, or are you done crushing our spirits?”

  “One more. What motivation does Steen have to kill these people anyway? It’s not like they have dirt on him. He’s dirtier than a pigsty and he openly admits it. If these victims did have something on Steen, wouldn’t they have dished it while Steen was safe behind bars? They’ve had five freaking years.”

  “Valid points, but I still think it’s him,” Hunter said. “We’ve had a few cops go through his house while you were in there. He’s got quite a few coins.”

  “But none from 1964, I’m guessing,” Ella said. “Just like the one I found in his jacket.”

  “Well, no, but still lots of coins.”

  “The year is crucial. That’s the key to this. If Steen was planning on killing, he would have a 1964 coin with him. The one I found wasn’t.”

  Hunter threw his arms up in defiance. “Whatever you say. I need a beverage. I can’t think straight right now.”

  “I’ll join you,” Byford said and followed Hunter down the corridor. Ella retreated into her office alone and collapsed on her seat. She planted her face down on the table, shut her eyes and drifted into the transcendent state between dream and reality, the state that nurtured subconscious connections between seemingly unrelated data.

  Kevin Steen didn’t fit. A career thief was a square peg, and the serial killer was a round hole. The two didn’t go together no matter how hard you forced them. Their mindsets and philosophies were at odds with one another. The thief took from crime scenes, the serial killer left things behind. The thief stayed in the shadows, unobserved from start to finish. The serial killer made himself known, taunting, terrorizing, boasting of his handiwork. This unsub fell into the latter category. From what Ella could tell, Kevin Steen wasn’t a show-off. If he did kill these three victims for whatever reason, he would done it as cleanly as possible and certainly wouldn’t have left a calling card. If this was a follow-on from his murder from five years ago, wouldn’t he have left coins in the victim’s eyes back then too? And why would Steen so willingly wipe out the people he sold his so-called hot property to? All he was doing was sabotaging his own business.

  What would Mia tell her to do here? The same thing she always did; strip away any preconceived notions and start with the basics. Ella brought up the patterns the unsub had shown.

  He was targeting older men, between 58 and 62. Their ages and genders weren’t a coincidence. This pattern would continue on with any future victims, of that Ella was certain.

  At every scene, the number 1964 appeared. This number did not relate to the victims. It related to something else. It might be the killer’s birth year, but the police database didn’t show any suspects born that year with a criminal history who also had links to the coin collecting world.

  Did the 1964 message need to be delivered in the form of coins, or were the coins surplus to requirement? Could he have spray-painted 1964 on the walls and delivered the same message? Could he have carved it into their skin?

  No. The coins were vital. They couldn’t be extracted from the profile.

  She applied these patterns to historical serial cases and sieved through the information in her brain. Images, names, and dates flashed by in a blur, and she found herself looking at the mugshots of three obscure serial killers.

  Luke Woodham, who left goat horns in his victims.

  Michael Hardman, who left ripped Bibles at every scene.

  Michael Kelly, who left behind strange masks.

  These men had nothing in common with her unsub, she thought. The only similarity was that they left behind something. Ella broadened the parameters in her head came up with three more names.

  Ted Bundy, who once left some of his girlfriend’s clothing at a crime scene.

  Dennis Rader, who left some his mother’s underwear alongside a dead body.

  And lastly and most clearly was her old friend Tobias Campbell, who’d scattered some of his mother’s ashes at every scene.

  Ella shot upright in her seat. It was these last three she zoned in on. In each case, the things left behind didn’t belong to the killers. Bundy and Rader left theirs for a sexual thrill, while Campbell scattered his mother’s ashes to frame his father.

  The circumstances were different, but the idea was the same.

  “Oh my God,” she said, pounding her fist against the table. “Of course. Why didn’t I think of that earlier?”

  Ella leaped out of her chair and moved to the whiteboard. She scrawled some chaotic thoughts about her unsub, his victimology, and then applied the same framework to the historical cases running through her head.

  There was a match.

  She suddenly thought of her conversation with Aleister Black outside the precinct. He’d said that their killer had access to a 1964 coin collection.

  He didn’t say the collection had to necessarily belong to the killer.

  Bundy’s girlfriend’s clothes were found at a crime scene, but she wasn’t the killer. Rader’s mother’s clothes were found on a dead body, but she wasn’t the killer either. These items were left behind as insults, signs of power and ownership. They were left on victims that were surrogates for their hatred.

  It was no different here. This unsub is tying these murders to someone else, just l
ike Bundy and Rader and Campbell did. This killer was a messenger, Ella thought. The object of his desire was someone around the ages of these men, someone born in 1964, someone who might not necessarily be connected to them.

  “Byford,” she shouted around the door, but couldn’t see any sign of her partner or the sheriff. “Damn it.”

  This couldn’t wait. She grabbed her jacket and headed back down towards the holding cells. There was someone in there who might just be able to help.

  ***

  Ella ran back into the underground holding cells at the NDPD building. Kevin Steen was the only prisoner in the row. She ran up to his cage and grabbed the bars, suddenly reminding her of her visits to Maine Correctional Institute.

  “Kevin,” she shouted.

  The suspect was lying on his wooden bed staring at the ceiling.

  “Fuck off.”

  “Listen to me. I need your help, and if you help me, I can help you.”

  Steen rose to a sitting position. “Help you, huh?”

  “Yes. What have you got to lose?”

  Steen rubbed his hands together. “Alright, lady. Try me.”

  “You said you know every collector in this city, correct? Stolen from them, supplied to them, whatever.”

  Steen shrugged, but the look on his face was one of approval. “Maybe.”

  “Coins from 1964. Specialist coins. Do you recall anyone who collected those?”

  White teeth showed through his wry smile. “What’s it worth?”

  “I don’t know the values. Any value.”

  “Not the coins, doofus. The information.”

  Ella gripped the bars harder. “You know someone?” She had to break this man down, no matter what it took.

  “I’ll ask again – what’s it worth?”

  “A reduced sentence. Better prison conditions. You’ll be treated like royalty inside.”

  “Absolute minimal sentence. Four years.”

  “Kevin, I can’t promise…”

  “Then get out of here,” he interrupted.

  “Okay, okay. I’ll make sure that happens. Now please, lives are at stake.”