This man was cool, calm, and calculated. He had a plan, and Suzan was beginning to lose hope that anybody would be able to stop him, least of all herself.
Chapter 53
Chase dug a toe into the gravel road as she spoke into her phone.
“Beckett, there’s been—wait, who’s there with you? Suzan?”
“Nuh-uh. I’m here with Drake and Screech. What’s up?”
Chase sighed.
“There’s been another murder, Beckett. Electrocution; tow truck driver on the outskirts of the city, looks like it happened a few hours ago.”
Her eyes drifted to the body of Toby Teagar, a forty-four-year-old tow truck driver, a father of seven.
“Shit,” Chase muttered, shaking her head. She was used to death, and even to murder, as much as one could become comfortable with the heinous act, but this was different. It was different because she knew how the next victim was going to die, and it was all taking a toll on her.
“Dammit,” Beckett said. “What happened?”
“I don’t know—this one is messed up. It looks like the tow truck driver was charging a battery by the side of the road when something went wrong; the scene is staged to make it look like he accidentally clipped one of the leads to his neck. Burnt right through his thin coat and shirt. No sign of any other car. This one… it’s not as neat as the others. I mean, why would the tow truck driver be charging a battery at the side of the road? And how the hell did he manage to electrocute himself? I don’t know if our killer is getting sloppy, or if he’s just desperate to get to the end of his fucked up game. Either way, I can’t see it taking more than another day or so before he kills again.”
Hearing the words as they came out of her mouth made her feel sick to her stomach.
“Beckett? You still there?”
“Yeah. I’m gonna put you on speaker phone, hold on a sec.”
Chase waited.
“Drake here; Drake and Screech.”
Drake’s voice was comforting.
“We have another one, Drake. Electrocution.”
“I heard. The killer’s cooling off period is getting shorter. Shit, I wouldn’t be surprised if he already has his next victim picked out.”
“Wait,” Beckett interrupted. “Did you say that the guy shocked himself with a car battery?”
Chase glanced over at Toby’s body again. He was lying at his back, his vacant eyes aimed upward.
“Yep, it’s certainly made to look that way.”
Beckett cleared his throat.
“Yeah, sorry, but it’s just not possible.”
“What do you mean?”
“It’s a myth. You can’t even get a shock from a car battery, let alone electrocute yourself. It’s only twelve volts. The source of the electricity must have been something else.”
Chase looked around again. They were on a dirt road, with nothing but… what had Detective Yasiv said? Weeds and allergies. Yeah, that was a fairly apt description.
“I don’t know what to tell you, Becket, but that’s how it’s been staged. Anyways, it doesn’t really matter how he died, only that it looks exactly like the photo from the exam.”
There was only silence from the other end of the line.
He’s getting sloppy and no longer cares if his crime scenes are ruled homicides instead of suicides or accidents. Either he’s not worried about getting caught, or he’s moving so quickly that he doesn’t think we can catch him in time.
Chase hoped it was the former, but she had a sneaking suspicion that the latter was the case.
“Throat slit—with hesitation marks.”
“Excuse me?” Chase said, coming out of her own head.
“The next one,” Beckett replied. “Is a woman with her throat slit with hesitation marks. Hey Chase, can you do me a favor?”
Chase squatted by the body of the tow truck driver, indicating the other uniforms to take a step back.
“Yeah, go ahead.”
“Check for any marks on the vic’s skin; kinda like a small smudge of ashes.”
Chase leaned close to the singe mark on the man’s shoulder, peering through the hole in his shirt and jacket.
“You mean around the wound? His skin is all black and charred.”
“No, no, not around the wound. Somewhere else. Somewhere that isn’t related to the injury.”
Chase’s eyes narrowed and she searched the body. There was nothing on his hands, which had started to stiffen, or on his face, either.
“Naw, I don’t see—hold on a sec.”
She leaned over the man’s neck, looking at the side opposite the wound. There, just below her ear, she saw what looked exactly like what Beckett had described: a smudge of soot or ash.
“Yeah, there’s something here—on his neck. What is it? What’s this about?” Chase asked as she stood.
“It’s on all the bodies. I’m not sure what it is; I’ve got my tech guy on it, but he hasn’t come back yet. No fingerprints, unfortunately, but he’s going to tell me what it is and hopefully where it came from.”
“A calling card?” she asked.
Drake answered her.
“Certainly looks that way. We found something else, too. Something about a website where people send messages? Like a—hold on a sec,” when he spoke next, he was barely audible. “A what? Bulletin Board?” his voice became clear again, “Chase, Screech wants to talk to you.”
“Alright, go ahead.”
“It wasn’t a website, but a bulletin board. I think that Eddie was posting on there, communicating with someone with the handle Arsonist514. Things went silent about a month ago, but then just the other day someone started posting in the thread again. A, uh, hold on… someone who goes by SC123. Anyways, seems like it might be related, given the ash or soot or whatever.”
SC123?
“I already have Dunbar trying to find anything about med students, I’ll get him on the website thing as soon as we wrap up here.”
“Bulletin board,” Screech corrected.
“Right. Can you pass the phone to Beckett for a sec?”
Chase heard the phone being passed around.
“Yeah, Beckett here. What’s up?”
“Am I off speaker?”
“Yep.”
“Do you know if Suze—” and then it hit her.
SC123. Suzan Cuthbert 123.
“Fuck,” she gasped.
“What? What is it?”
“SC123? You think that it could be Suzan Cuthbert—SC? Have you spoken to her in a while?”
There was a short pause, during which she heard Beckett’s breathing pick up as if he was walking briskly.
“No,” he said quietly. “I haven’t seen her since yesterday when we were together. Told her to get back to class.”
Chase chewed her lip.
“Fuck, I hope to god that she listened. Go check on her, would you?”
“Yeah, I’ll give her a ring. I’m sure she’s fine. Tough as nails, that one. She was the one who found the soot, by the way. Listen, do you need me to come out there to clear the body?”
Chase shook her head.
“No, there’s a junior ME already on scene. He’ll bring the body back to you. I’ll talk to Rhodes again, see if I can get him to open an investigation. This is the only death that I can see him having a hard time chalking it up to an accident, staged as it is, especially given what you told me about the battery. I don’t know if I can get the stubborn bastard to bend, but we need more manpower on this, Beckett. He’s going to kill again. And soon.”
Chapter 54
Drake left Triple D in a fog of confusion.
Another victim, so soon after the last. And only two more to go.
He and Beckett had planned to go together to speak to Dr. Tracey Moorfield, but at the last minute his friend had pulled the chute, telling him that he had to follow up on something at the morgue.
Drake had felt a twang of jealousy when Chase had asked to speak to Beckett privately,
but he thought it was more than simple jealousy. They were keeping something from him.
Something that they didn’t want him to know.
Drake shook his head, trying to clear his thoughts.
Stay focused. There will be time to find out what their big secret is later.
He made his way across the city to the university, taking the route suggested by Beckett. He parked, and then strode through the cool evening toward the faculty club, where Beckett had assured him that Dr. Tracey Moorfield would be.
Despite his friend’s assertions that he wasn’t going to get anything out of her, it was still worth a shot. Officer Dunbar and Screech had their computers, but there was still a role for good old fashioned police work.
He hoped.
The door emblazoned with the gold plaque bearing Dr. Tracey Moorfield’s name was ajar, and Drake knocked heavily so that it opened wider with every rap.
“Dr. Moorfield?”
He heard someone clear their throat.
“Yes? Who is it?”
Drake put a hand on the door and pushed it open, leaning into the opening. A well-dressed woman with thin lips drawn into a frown, not entirely unlike Mrs. Armatridge and her cronies, sat in a large wooden chair, papers spread out before her atop a massive desk.
“Dr. Moorfield?” he said again, putting on his most charming smile.
“That’s what it says on the plaque, doesn’t it? Unless the university decided to change that, too.”
The smile slid off Drake’s face.
What had Beckett said? She’s like going bareback with a woman with vaginal something or other?
He shuddered at the thought of vaginal anything with this woman.
“What do you want?”
Drake stepped into the room.
“Did I say you can enter?”
Taken aback by this, Drake froze mid-step.
Dr. Moorfield sighed heavily.
“Well, you’re already in now. I’ll ask you once more, what do you want?”
Drake put his foot down and decided to forgo any small talk. He doubted if academic offices had emergency buttons beneath their desks like they did at the bank, but if they did, he suspected he only had a few seconds before Dr. Moorfield’s arthritic digits pushed it.
“I’m here to ask you a few questions. About six murders.”
One of the woman’s eyebrows raised, and she put her pencil down on the desk.
“Are you a police officer?”
“No, not exactly.”
Dr. Moorfield frowned.
“Not exactly? You’re either a police officer, or you aren’t. There is no in between. Which one is it?”
“I’m not,” Drake said flatly.
“So why is a civilian coming to my office to ask questions about murder?”
Drake grimaced and he considered that Beckett might have understated the crust on the doctor.
“Well, I was a police officer once—a detective, but—”
Dr. Moorfield held up a hand, stopping him mid-sentence.
“I’m not interested in your life story. What do you want?”
Drake’s blood pressure started to increase.
“These murders… the killer is copying your pathology notes. I believe that my friend, Dr. Campbell visited you earlier?”
Dr. Moorfield scowled.
“They let anyone become doctors these days. In my time, you had to be intelligent to be a doctor. Now, it seems all you need is hair dye and tattoos.”
Drake felt like they were having two separate conversations, and he tried to get them back on track.
“Right, well I think that the killer might have been a former student of yours. Is there anyone that you can think of that might have been… I don’t know, different? Someone with a vendetta, maybe?”
The woman’s eyes went dark and a brief silence fell over the office.
“Get out,” Dr. Moorfield said. “Get out of my office.”
Drake held his hands up.
“Dr. Moor—”
“Get out!” she suddenly shrieked. “I don’t know who you are, or why you are coming up with nonsense about murders only to bring up something that happened years ago, but I’m not falling for this.”
“Dr. Moorfield, I—”
“Get out! Get out! Get the hell out of here!”
For such a small woman, such a wire rack of a human being, Dr. Tracey Moorfield certainly had a set of lungs on her.
Ears ringing, Drake stood in the office for a moment, trying to wrap his head around what had precipitated this. Then, watching as the elderly woman’s chest heaved up and down, fearing that she was going to have a heart attack or a stroke, he spun on his heels and left the office.
“What the hell was that?” he grumbled on the way back to his car.
Maybe good old fashioned police work was dead after all.
He took his cell phone from his pocket and dialed Screech’s number.
“Screech, I’m going to need the names of the people on the tribunal board. Beckett was right, I’m—”
But then he spotted something in the parking lot that drew his attention and he stopped speaking.
“What the hell?”
He squinted into the evening at a sleek black motorbike parked not twenty spots from his own.
Beckett’s bike.
Only Beckett had said that he had urgent business at the morgue, not at the university.
Oh, there was a secret all right. And Drake hated being out of the loop.
Chapter 55
“Come on, Suze, pick up your damn phone,” Beckett grumbled. At first, he thought that Chase was just being paranoid, that there was no way that SC123 was Suzan, trying to get in touch with the internet persona that might very well be their killer. But now, after trying her at home, and having to make up some story about Suzan missing class to appease her mother’s anxiety, and calling her on her cell phone a half-dozen times and her not picking up, he wasn’t so sure.
And then there was her cryptic message—Beckett, it’s Suzan. I’ve found something online. Give me a shout when you get this.
Beckett hurried into the NYU medical building as he listened to her phone ring. He walked briskly toward his office, hoping to find her inside.
She’s asleep. She fell asleep at my desk. Or at the library. That’s why I can’t reach her.
But when Beckett made it to his office, his heart sank. The door was closed, and the lights were off.
That’s okay, she just turned off the lights before taking a cat nap behind my desk, he thought, his mind trying desperately to convince him.
He tried the door, but it was locked.
She locked the door, too, just to be safe. After all, there’s a murderer out there.
A robotic voice on the other end of the line told Beckett that the voicemail of the person he was calling was full. He swore, and then hung up the phone. Pulling his set of keys from his pocket, Beckett knew deep down, even before he threw the door wide and found the room empty, that Suzan Cuthbert wouldn’t be inside.
“Damn,” he muttered as he flicked on the lights. “Where the hell are you, Suze?”
Beckett slumped into his chair and swirled his mouse, waking his computer. Surprised that it was still on, he leaned forward and typed in his password.
A web browser was already open, and when Beckett saw the address at the top of the page, his heart skipped a beat.
“No, c’mon, this can’t be happening.”
Suzan had logged into the bulletin board, and there was a new message pending. His hand trembling, he scrolled over to the envelope icon and, after a deep breath, clicked on it.
“No,” he moaned.
Beckett scrambled for his phone, quickly dialing Chase’s number, his eyes locked on the private message from Arsonist514.
“Chase, we have a problem. A fucking huge problem,” he said when she answered.
Beckett shook his head as he stared at the message, trying to will it away.
<
br /> Okay Suzan, see you soon :).
Chapter 56
Chase left the crime scene in the capable hands of Detective’s Yasiv and Simmons, and hurried back to the station. She wasn’t looking forward to another meeting with Sergeant Rhodes, but at this point, she could see no way of avoiding it.
They had to catch the killer before he struck again.
If he hadn’t already, that is.
Armed with photographs from the most recent crime scene, of poor Toby Teager, Chase raced across the city and pulled into 62nd precinct just as night descended on New York. She recognized the similarities between what was happening now and the Butterfly Killer case, but the most recent killer was a different beast entirely. Dr. Mark Kruk had murdered people who had tortured him in his youth, and while this in no way justified what he did, citizens of New York could rest easier knowing they weren’t involved. Now, however, there was someone out there targeting random people, murdering them without hesitation, without remorse, all to fulfill some sick, twisted fantasy.
Yet that wasn’t the worst part; the worst part was that there was a serial killer out on the streets of New York City—a serial killer who had already killed six—and nobody knew about it. She despised the media and their propensity for inciting panic with five-second sound bites, but there was something to be said for transparency. Without it, with all of NYC in the dark as a killer roamed their streets, Chase just felt dirty.
She kept her head low as she made her way to Sergeant Rhodes’s office, making sure not to make eye contact with anyone that might serve to distract her.
With a deep breath, she knocked once on Rhodes’s door and then opened it without waiting for an answer.
Rhodes looked up at her over top of round spectacles that were pulled low on his narrow nose as she stepped inside.
“Well come on in,” he said with a frown.
“There’s been another murder,” Chase said.
As expected, her bluntness gained Rhodes’s attention, and he lowered the newspaper he had been reading, which, Chase noted, was opened to pre-election polling results.
Detective Damien Drake series Box Set 1 Page 46