Gabrielle racked her brains, turning over the possibilities, but she could make no headway. It was maddening: Kassie had to be involved somehow – she knew the identities of the victims before anyone else and had inserted herself into the narrative at every opportunity. Also, she had reason to dislike them. And yet … there were aspects of her behaviour, aspects Adam Brandt had been keen to point out, that ran counter to the idea of Kassie being a threat to these people. She had insisted she was trying to warn Jacob Jones, something he had confirmed in his brief statement to the uniformed officers who dragged her away from him on North Michigan Avenue. Furthermore, her actions at Rochelle Stevens’ house and Lake Calumet could be read as suggesting she was trying to help the victims. The latter was particularly confusing – it was Kassie who had started the chain of events that led to their presence at Lake Calumet. If she was in league with their killer, why would she lead Adam Brandt to the kill site, disturb the attack on Baines, injure herself in the process?
Still Gabrielle pushed these doubts away. If Kassie wasn’t involved in these killings, if she was trying to help them, then she had to be telling the truth. But that was impossible. Gabrielle had never believed in the supernatural and she wasn’t about to start now.
However, she wasn’t stupid, nor had she spent years working cases to ignore the possibility that there was more than one potential explanation, that there was something she had not yet alighted on that would illuminate everything. Say the girl was mad, that somehow she knew or thought she knew who these victims would be, and was trying to help them, then that suggested that she had no connection to the killer and would never lead them to him …
Unnerved by this thought, Gabrielle pulled open her files once more. She knew it was pointless – staring at the photos of the victims was hardly going to inspire a flash of inspiration – but riven with doubt, she felt there was nothing to do but go back to basics, in the hope – the fear – that they had missed something.
She placed the photos of Jones, Stevens and Baines next to each other in a row. These were not the grim post-mortem images, but rather the photos provided by the families for use in their appeals for witnesses. They were happy, smiling photos and Gabrielle shuddered as she looked at them now. All these people had loved ones – partners, mothers, fathers, husbands, children – and yet they had been abducted and murdered without hindrance.
Their attacker had timed his actions to perfection. Jacob Jones’s fiancée had been away at a conference, Madelaine Baines’s family had been at work and school, and Rochelle Stevens had been targeted when she was home alone, watching her favourite TV programme. Unless their killer was extremely lucky, he had done his homework. This suggested that he was a stalker first and a killer second, yet there was little actual evidence to support this theory. Security footage feeds had not revealed any of the victims being tailed in the lead-up to their disappearance, nor had their neighbours spotted any suspicious figures or unusual activity in the run-up to their deaths. This killer was obviously scrupulously careful, but still you would expect something to show up, some evidence of his craft. How else would he know that Madelaine’s twins always played a softball match on a Thursday, that Rochelle was regularly home alone on Tuesday nights, watching her favourite show?
And now a thought landed. A thought so simple, but so insistent, that Gabrielle found herself rising to her feet. There was one way he would know all their movements without ever going near them. Rounding her desk, she hurried out into the incident room.
‘Montgomery …’
The young officer looked up, as Gabrielle approached.
‘Rochelle Stevens’ phone. Where is it?’
‘Right here,’ she replied, crossing to the evidence store and removing a plastic bag in which the young woman’s phone lay.
Slipping on latex gloves, Gabrielle took the bag from her. Turning the phone on, she opened the dead woman’s calendar. All her appointments, right down to casual coffee meets, grocery deliveries and television viewing, were scheduled there. This was a woman who liked to plan.
‘And Baines’s phone?’
Montgomery handed her a battered Samsung.
‘Recovered from her house, just like the others. We’re assuming the killer left them there so his movements couldn’t be tracked.’
Nodding, Gabrielle opened up Madelaine’s calendar. It too was rammed full of appointments, charity events, school pickups and softball matches. Gabrielle stared at the long list of engagements, her mind turning.
‘Was Baines’s phone synced to anyone else’s?’
‘Sure,’ Montgomery replied, looking momentarily wrong-footed. ‘To her husband’s, I think. They shared a diary.’
‘And do we know where Baines bought the phone?’
Montgomery stared at her for a moment, then started leafing through a mound of paperwork.
‘I think she got it from Phone Shack. She went there quite regularly, I think.’
‘Which one?’
‘West Town,’ Montgomery replied a little hesitantly, as if fearing she had overlooked something important.
Gabrielle digested this, before continuing.
‘What about Rochelle Stevens?’
Montgomery was already rifling through her files. Gabrielle watched her, hungry for answers.
‘I know she was with Verizon, had been for a while … She set her contract up over two years ago at a Talk Warehouse in the Loop. It’s near where she works, I think.’
Gabrielle stared at her. Was she barking up the wrong tree after all?
‘But I’m sure there was a payment from her account to a Phone Shack,’ Detective Suarez interrupted, crossing to join them. ‘A couple of months ago. It stood out to me, because she hadn’t used them before and it was only a one-off payment.’
‘Yeah, there it is,’ Montgomery confirmed, pointing to a line on Rochelle’s bank statement. ‘A one-off payment to the Phone Shack in West Town …’
She petered out even as she said it.
‘You’re thinking the Phone Shack is the connection?’ Suarez asked, handing the statement to Gabrielle.
Gabrielle paused before answering, trying to gather her thoughts.
‘All three victims were targeted when they were home alone. Now, Rochelle Stevens was out a lot. She had therapy sessions or social events most nights, except Tuesday, when she religiously watched Scandal. Baines was also very busy, but her girls always played a softball match on Thursdays, so stayed late at school. Neither woman was a regular tweeter or poster – you couldn’t monitor their movements that way – but they were both scrupulous users of their calendars, so if you had access to them, it would be easy to work out when they’d be alone. Jones was more of a home body than the others, but his fiancée was away at a conference on the night he was abducted –’
‘Which had been in his diary for weeks,’ Suarez added pointedly.
‘So we’re saying Jones visited Phone Shack too?’
‘Possibly,’ Gabrielle replied carefully. ‘Maybe someone there encountered them all, took the opportunity to clone their accounts or sync phones …’
‘If he did … then he could see all of their apps, their diaries … everything,’ Montgomery overlapped. ‘He could even pinpoint their whereabouts in real time, by switching on location services.’
‘Exactly. He’d know where they were, where they were going to be, when they were likely to be alone …’ Gabrielle’s voice dropped to a whisper as she concluded: ‘… he’d know everything about them.’
118
Kassie pushed the door open and stepped inside. There were numerous Starbucks in West Town, but this was by far the busiest, and though she had passed through it several times already over the last few days, she returned to it now, anxious to warm her bones after a deeply dispiriting morning. Making her way to a vacated table, she took ownership of an abandoned cup of coffee, hoping that the staff would think she’d bought it and leave her alone.
It was a good vantage
point – centrally located in the store, with a clear view of the entrance, the counter, the staff area. She examined the faces that passed by, trying to look uninterested as she read their fate, while quietly dying inside. Minutes dragged by and, as her mood plummeted, her desire for actual refreshment started to grow. The smell of the coffee was intoxicating and the sight of other patrons wolfing down almond croissants and granola bars was too much to bear. She’d forgotten to eat anything this morning and now, in spite of her dizziness and unease, her stomach was growling.
She delved into her pocket, eventually finding a twenty-dollar bill, the meagre remnants of her savings. Rising, she crossed quickly to the counter. A middle-aged Korean man was stationed at the register, awaiting new orders.
‘Latte, please,’ Kassie mumbled. ‘And a chocolate croissant.’
‘Sure,’ the man replied, in a flat tone of voice, taking the proffered bill and gesturing her to wait at the pass. Kassie moved along the counter and lingered, shifting from one foot to the other, as she did so. Moments later, a hassled young barista approached with her coffee.
‘There you go, ma’am,’ he said, his strong European accent mangling the words.
Kassie snatched it up eagerly, but as she did so, her eyes rose to meet his. Immediately, she felt a jolt of naked fear, an electrical surge of terror that seemed to rip right through her. Her mug tumbled to the floor, shattering as it sprayed her legs with hot coffee, but Kassie didn’t move. She could no longer see her server, was no longer in Starbucks. She was in a room she didn’t recognize, writhing in a pool of blood, gasping for air, as the life drained from her …
Screaming, she lashed out, trying to find purchase, some way to drag herself from that awful, gore-spattered room. Her hand connected with something and she grasped it eagerly – and now suddenly she was back in Starbucks again, gripping the startled barista’s shirt. The young man looked confused, even a little scared and was desperately trying to loosen her grip.
‘You need to leave.’
The young man hadn’t spoken, which confused Kassie. But then she became aware of the store manager standing right next to her.
‘You’re scaring the other customers. You need to go.’
He plucked Kassie’s hand away from the man’s shirt. Kassie glimpsed the barista’s name – Jan Varga – on his badge, but had no time to communicate with him, as she now found herself being marched towards the exit. Too late, she tried to recover the initiative, twisting in the manager’s vice-like grip, but her feet skidded on the floor, as he dragged her away from the counter.
‘You don’t understand. I have to speak to him –’
Her voice was high and hysterical. She knew she sounded crazy, but she had to try.
‘He’s in danger. Serious danger. I have –’
‘The only one who’s in danger is you,’ the manager replied angrily. ‘Now beat it, before I call the cops.’
Heaving the glass doors open, he shoved her outside. Regaining her balance quickly, Kassie charged back towards the entrance, but the burly manager stepped in front of her, blocking her path. She screamed and shouted at him – what the hell was this moron thinking? – but he remained unmoved. Beyond him, Kassie could see Jan being comforted by other baristas, but there was no way to reach him. Only she knew what lay in store for him – what agonies he would have to endure – but for now she remained a frantic but hopeless presence, on the wrong side of the thick glass doors.
119
‘No, no, no!’
Adam slammed his hand on the table, beating out the rhythm of his defiance.
‘It was never my intention to put my clients in danger.’
‘And yet that’s exactly what you did,’ Dr Gould countered forcefully. ‘You endangered the life of a vulnerable teenage girl, endangered your own life …’
‘And that was wrong. I’ve admitted as much. But I felt that, in the circumstances, we had no choice. A woman’s life was in danger and the police weren’t doing anything –’
‘So you chose to follow your client to Lake Calumet –’
‘I felt I had to, to protect her.’
‘Chose to believe the testimony of a troubled young woman,’ Dr Bown added.
‘If she was deluded, if she was making it up, then there would be no danger,’ Adam retorted quickly. ‘But if she wasn’t, if there was some truth in what she was saying, then I couldn’t let her go there alone.’
‘The proper course of action would have been to have sectioned her, for her own safety, and then to have removed yourself from responsibility for her care,’ Gould continued. ‘You have obviously become far too close to her.’
‘I have already passed responsibility for her on to a colleague, but as to sectioning her, I had no grounds to do so. She was cogent, she was lucid, she wasn’t in the midst of a mental health breakdown –’
‘So, you’re saying you believed her? You took her visions at face value?’ Dr Barkley asked, one eyebrow raised.
‘No, of course not.’
‘Then why were you there? If you didn’t believe her story, why did you go to the lake?’
There was no answer to this, of course. Not one which made sense anyway. Adam had been twisting on the wire ever since he met Kassie and was still no closer to defining the root or substance of her affliction.
‘Well?’
The question hung in the air. The massed faces of the board were expecting an answer, but what was the point? They would only follow it up with more unanswerable accusations. Why hadn’t he intervened more forcefully when Kassie first exhibited these self-destructive tendencies? Why had he revealed Rochelle Stevens’ private address to a client? Broken into her home? Why had he disregarded his training, every rule and protocol he’d ever been taught?
Rising to his feet, he stared at his accusers for a moment, surprising even himself by saying:
‘Do what you want.’
Then, turning, he marched towards the door.
120
Going into the back room, he pushed the door quietly shut behind him. The shop was busy now, a full roster of staff in action, and he couldn’t risk being disturbed. Crossing to the battered bank of lockers, he slid his rucksack off his shoulder and punched in the access code. Wearily the lock slid across and he pulled the locker open.
It was empty, save for a crumpled plastic bag. Snatching it up, he removed a couple of items from it. A spare ski mask. A crowbar. The cleaver. Stowing the objects in his rucksack, he shut the locker door and secured it once more.
Funny how useful this place had become. Billed as a staff recreation area, it was nothing of the sort – just a locker bank and a couple of chairs to complement the rising damp and rusty pipes. He used to avoid this place like the plague, but now he was a fairly regular visitor. His colleagues continued to steer clear of it, however, which suited him just fine.
It had become his sanctuary, musty and unpleasant though it was. Initially, he had stored his equipment at home, though ‘home’ was an overly affectionate term for the bedraggled house he shared with four other tenants. The rooms were small and cold, the bathroom dirty and the less said about the kitchen the better. Even so, he had liked it initially. Most of the tenants spoke little English, so weren’t likely to ask him why he occasionally disappeared for the night. They weren’t much interested in what he did during the day either, so were anyone ever to come there asking questions, they would prove to be of little help. Even the landlord, a huge Romanian guy who accepted the rent in cash without ever bothering to challenge him on his patently fake ID, would be unable to provide the authorities with any cogent information.
Over time, however, his enthusiasm for his rented home had waned. He didn’t trust the other tenants – he was sure that one or two of them had taken advantage of his absences to enter his room. The padlock on his door was designed to keep them out, but he was sure someone had gained access, rummaging through his cashbox. They wouldn’t have found anything incriminating there, but t
he intrusion had alarmed him and he’d decided to stow his gear at work, away from prying eyes.
It was strange how history repeated itself. His childhood home had been no less chaotic or unfriendly than the ramshackle house he now lived in. His mother had seven children, but two great loves – one of which she took from the bottle, the other from a glass pipe. Her kids had largely been neglected and would have starved were it not for the best efforts of his eldest sister, Jacqueline, who begged and borrowed to buy bread and milk. He had loved her at first, until she too became crabbed and bitter, eventually doling out more violence than even his mother. Generally, it was best to keep a low profile, which of course most of them did.
But that was never in his make-up. While others took neglect and misery as their due, he had not been prepared to go quietly. Now he shunned the attention of his fellow house dwellers; back then he went out of his way to announce his presence to his siblings. He would smash treasured keepsakes, urinate on their beds and expose himself to his younger sisters. They beat him for his troubles, labelling him a jerk, a freak, the runt of the litter. The memory made him smile. They’d thought they were better than him, destined to achieve more, to be the ones that got away and made something of their lives. How wrong they had been. They were all small-town addicts, drunks and fuck-ups now, a litany of bad decisions and failed marriages behind them, whereas his deeds would go down in history. He only wished he could be there to see their reaction – on the day they opened the newspapers and saw that he was the big dog now.
A Gift for Dying Page 29