Unleashed

by Jacob Stone

  “In my other pocket I got a bag of something white and powdery that will make us both feel wonderful. Are you game?”

  He pulled enough of the baggie out of his pocket so she could see what it had inside.

  She nodded. It was a slight movement. Almost imperceptible. But he knew right then he had her. Later that night, after she was drunk and out of her mind on coke, he would bring her back to his apartment and he’d spend hours, possibly even days, humiliating her and doing whatever was necessary to transform her into a full-fledged honeypot. Assuming she wasn’t one already.

  The irony. He didn’t need a honeypot now that he had a cash cow like Hardacher to milk, but life was so much more pleasurable whenever he had a honeypot squirming under his thumb.

  He got off the stool, offered her his hand, and led her to a back room where they could have some privacy.

  Chapter 38

  Morris stood in the kitchen of the Marina del Rey apartment and looked over the room in which Jill Kincade had been brutally murdered. The chairs Frey and Kincade had been bound to with duct tape were seven feet apart and positioned so that Frey would have been facing his fiancée throughout the ordeal. It was the same setup as the Meagan Campbell murder.

  When they first arrived at the apartment, Walsh walked Morris through the attack, explaining how it was almost a carbon copy of what happened to the Campbells; the killer first surprising and incapacitating Alex Frey, then chasing down Jill Kincade. The savageness unleashed in both attacks made Morris think of a kill-crazy mountain lion that had found its way into a sheep pen. Later, after the victims were bound and helpless, the killer’s actions became more methodical, as if he were following a script as he cut and stabbed Kincade. The very first thing he did with Jill Kincade, and most likely also with Meagan Campbell, was cut off her nipples. Was there an underlying reason for that, or simply to shock and horrify Frey? After the initial mutilation, the cut and stab wounds were mostly superficial at first, at least according to Roger Smichen’s examination, but by the end became vicious and disfiguring.

  Morris wondered about that also. Was the killer hoping that Frey would take him up on his offer and end Kincade’s life before she suffered the worst of her gruesome injuries? Or was it to give Frey false hope that Kincade might survive if he tried waiting out the attack, and to inflict the greatest amount of psychological pain?

  They had come to the apartment for two reasons: First, so that he could get a sense of the murder site and pick up vibes about the killer, and secondly to find a list of the engagement party attendees, because it seemed likely that the killer had crashed the engagement party. At least that scenario could explain how he knew about Frey’s brother and the couple’s favorite pizza.

  Morris’s train of thought was interrupted by Annie Walsh calling out to him from the bedroom. He left the kitchen and brought Parker with him to the apartment’s only bedroom. The look on Walsh’s face showed that she’d found something.

  “The invitation list?” he asked.

  “Not yet. But worst case, we should be able to put one together from the gift cards. Take a look at this.”

  She pointed out the two cheesy coffee mugs for the “world’s cutest couple” that had been left on a small pile of wrapping paper.

  Morris frowned as he looked at them. Parker seemed interested in them also and Morris had to keep the bull terrier on a short leash to stop him from grabbing one of them.

  “It could’ve been a gag gift,” he said.

  “There’s the box they came in,” Walsh said, nudging an empty box on the floor with her toe. “I didn’t find a matching gift card. Frey had told me during our first interview that Jill, being a highly organized person, had scribbled the matching present in all the opened cards, and none of them mention any ugly-ass coffee mugs.”

  Morris’s frown deepened. He took a photo of one of the mugs and texted it to Gloria Finston, then got the FBI profiler on the phone and put it on speaker so Walsh could listen in.

  “Did you see the photo I sent you?” he asked.

  “Of a sickeningly-sweet chintzy coffee mug?”

  “Yep, that’s the one. Would our killer bring a matching set of these to Frey and Kincade’s engagement party?”

  “Was a card attached?”

  “Not that we could find.”

  “My professional opinion, yes. He wouldn’t want to crash the party empty-handed and risk undue attention, and he’d find the gift a perverse joke, given what he was planning to do to the engaged couple.”

  Walsh grumbled under her breath, “Funny, I thought I said the same, but in fewer words.”

  Parker grunted in sympathy.

  Morris ignored both of them. Earlier, he had arranged with Margot Denoir for Finston to appear that night on a special prime-time Hollywood Peeper, since Finston thought if she were to put out a bogus and insulting motive for the killer, he might contact them to correct the record, and Margot thought having a scoop on the new serial killer plaguing LA would bring in massive ratings, so it was a win-win for both sides. He asked whether she should mention the coffee mugs on TV tonight.

  “If we show a photo of it, someone might remember selling a pair to our killer and save us a day or two,” he said. “It could also put the killer in a panic and make him think we’re breathing down his neck. I just don’t know if that’s what we want to do with him. It could make him more cautious.”

  “Or it could have the opposite effect,” Finston said. “I still don’t have that missing puzzle piece I need to better understand what’s motivating him, but if he starts feeling cornered he might strike out more violently than he’s been doing. That’s my sense with the limited information I have. I believe for now we’re better off proceeding quietly, and that the most we want to push him is to see whether we can coax him into contacting us.”

  “You’re the expert,” Morris conceded. “Be careful with Margot tonight. She’s more ruthless than she looks. I adore her and have known her for years, but when the camera’s rolling, you should think of her as a blond piranha in high heels. The woman’s a pro and no one’s better at going for the jugular once she smells blood.”

  Morris could imagine Finston smiling her tiny V-shaped smile as she told him she’d be on the lookout for any traps Margot might try laying for her. After he got off the phone, he told Walsh they needed to find the stores in the area selling these mugs.

  “I’ll get Greg on it,” she said, referring to Greg Malevich. “This psycho screwed up buying them. He screwed up even worse if he had them gift-wrapped at the store. The employee doing it would remember that.”

  “The store might also have video surveillance.”

  “Which means we need to get right on this,” she said.

  If anything, she was downplaying the urgency of the matter. Many of the stores with video surveillance only kept their video for a few days before erasing it. This meant the team would be working late into the night, tracking down the stores in the area that sold these godawful mugs with the hope of finding video of the killer while it still existed.

  While Walsh got Malevich on the phone, Morris had Parker lay down and he then started collecting the cards from the unopened presents. Some were taped to the outside of the gift, others were left inside the box. Each guest needed to be interviewed and all photos taken at the party needed to be collected. Walsh finished talking with Malevich and joined him.

  “How’d you get Parker to behave himself?” she asked. “I would’ve thought he’d be trying to muck around in this mess you’re making.”

  It wasn’t that much of a mess. Morris was carefully unwrapping the gifts, digging out the cards, and flattening out the wrapping paper in a single pile. Still, that was exactly the type of thing a curious bull terrier would want to stick his nose into, and instead Parker was lying on his side. The dog lifted his bullet-shaped head at the sound of his name.
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  Morris said, “It’s getting close to d-i-n-n-e-r-t-i-m-e, so the little guy’s going to be on his best behavior. The one time of day when he actually listens to me.”

  Parker dropped his head back to the floor and let out a low groan, as if he suspected he was being unfairly maligned.

  After they successfully collected all the cards, Morris called Natalie to tell her he would be working late, but promised to be home by midnight.

  “This killer made a mistake,” he told her.

  “You picked up his scent.”

  Natalie didn’t say this as a joke. She thought of him as having a sort of bloodhound instinct—that once he picked up the right clue, the perpetrator was as good as caught.

  “Almost,” he said.

  Chapter 39

  Margot Denoir took her seat five minutes before airtime. She offered a sleek, well-manicured hand to Gloria Finston and breathlessly apologized for not being able to chat more before the show.

  “Morris, bless him, scheduled this at the last possible minute,” she complained, her words tumbling out in rapid-fire. “It will be a miracle if we’re able to pull this show off without a major catastrophe. God, I must look a mess. I barely had any time for makeup.”

  The stage crew was rushing around the set, but as far as Finston could tell, things were under control. The show’s producers had gotten their hands on a wedding photo of George and Meagan Campbell and also a photo of Alex Frey and Jill Kincade beaming happily with their arms wrapped around each other’s waists, and had blown them up so they’d be prominently in the background. As far as Margot Denoir looking like a mess, quite the opposite. She was stunning in a brilliant red dress and high heels that showed off gorgeous calves. Her makeup had been expertly applied, and her big, blond poofy hair looked almost shellacked so that not a single strand would fall out of place, not even if a hurricane struck. Denoir was in her late forties and had at least five years on Finston, but she also had a lithe, size-two dancer’s body and an ageless beauty about her, and Finston looked downright frumpy by comparison. Of course, that was the point of the comment. To make sure Finston recognized how frumpy she looked in her dark gray suit, sensible shoes, unstylish haircut, and no makeup other than a small amount of blush. Anything to gain a psychological edge.

  Finston smiled thinly. It was never a good idea to engage in psychological warfare with an expert. “I’m sure we’ll have your TV audience so enthralled that they won’t notice the laugh lines.”

  Alarm flashed in Denoir’s eyes over the prospect of an imperfection showing through her layers of makeup, but then she caught on to what Finston was doing. She looked suitably impressed, as if she was realizing how badly she had underestimated Finston earlier.

  “I’m sure you’re right,” Denoir said, straight-faced. “But what matters is that we inform the public about this horrible Cupid Killer. And, of course, do what we can to aid in his capture.”

  Finston hadn’t heard that name before. “Why the Cupid Killer?” she asked, genuinely curious.

  Denoir seemed pleased with herself. “I came up with the name myself, and will be unveiling it tonight. Quite fitting, don’t you think, given how this animal targets such attractive young couples who are so deeply in love?”

  “The Campbells were separated.”

  “I heard they were in the process of reconciling,” Denoir stated, casually brushing off Finston’s comment. “Besides, the name tested off the charts with our focus group. By tomorrow, that’s what everyone will be calling this psychotic monster.”

  The director interrupted them, signaling that they would be going live in thirty seconds. Denoir picked up a sheet crammed with notes so she could give it one last look, while Finston was left pondering the accuracy of that name. Even though Jill Frey and Meagan Campbell were a similar type—both short, petite and very pretty, with similarly shaped faces, she was convinced that the killer’s true targets were Alex Frey and George Campbell; that he was torturing and killing the women only to inflict mental anguish on the men. Because of that, she’d been trying to figure out what Frey and Campbell had in common besides being in their twenties, well-off, and good-looking. She hadn’t considered that the killer chose them also because they appeared to be happy and in love with a certain type of woman. The killer might not have known that the Campbells were separated, or about George Campbell’s recent affair. He might’ve simply seen them at the Beverly Hills restaurant where the couple dined Monday night and picked them because Campbell fit his other requirements and that the couple seemed happy together, or he might’ve latched onto them earlier that day for the same reason. If that was what happened, it meant the killer acted impulsively, quickly choosing his victims, as opposed to stalking them over a period of days. Which meant he’d be killing again soon…

  The cameraman began using his fingers to count down from five. Finston’s mind was racing with these thoughts and she barely paid attention as Denoir introduced her and launched into her spiel about the Cupid Killer. She felt as if she could almost grasp onto the missing puzzle piece that would allow her to see what was truly motivating this person.

  “Is it true that this fiend tortures the woman with a knife while he forces her partner to watch?”

  Denoir asked this innocently enough, but Finston caught a trace of a gotcha look from her. The police hadn’t released that detail to the media yet. It was possible that the Hollywood Peeper staff had gotten it from a hospital worker who had overheard Alex Frey, or even from a family member. It was also possible that it had been leaked by someone within the LAPD. Morris had warned her that he suspected Commissioner Hadley of feeding Denoir information in exchange for favorable treatment. Anyway, she couldn’t see any harm in admitting the truth about this, and when she did, she caught a glimmer in Denoir’s eyes that told her there were more leaks.

  Denoir leaned toward Finston, a look of horror coming over her face as she asked whether this fiend cut the nipples off both women. Finston had to admit to herself that Morris was right. This woman was good. The tremble in her voice was impressive, but even more so was the way her face seemed to drain of color, and how she appeared to be waiting with bated breath for Finston’s answer.

  “The salacious details of what this killer does aren’t important,” Finston said. “What is important is understanding what motivates him. That’s what will help us to build a profile that will lead to his capture.”

  If Denoir was disappointed by the answer, or lack of such, she didn’t show it. Not even a blink. Instead, she continued her bated breath act as she played along and asked what motivated this animal.

  “I’m afraid it’s rather cliché. He’s got mommy issues.” Finston’s smile sharpened as she thought about how Dennis Polk would react if he were watching this special edition of Hollywood Peeper and heard her say that. That’s right, Dennis, this one is for you. “He needs to murder his mother over and over again.”

  Finston was rather pleased with that answer—not only because Polk would be spitting coffee out of his nose (or beer, or whatever he might be drinking) if he were watching, but that it served two other purposes: One, it was so off base and flat-out wrong that it would cause the killer to think they were incompetent, and lead to overconfidence and him making mistakes; and two, it might tempt him to reach out to set the record straight.

  Her answer also caused Denoir to blink—both figuratively and literally. She couldn’t have been happy that it contradicted the Cupid Killer name she invented.

  Denoir made a sour face and said, “That sounds a bit clichéd.”

  “Clichés exist for a reason.”

  “You don’t think that he’s doing what he is because he can’t stand seeing these couples who are madly in love and have their whole lives to look forward to?”

  Finston was impressed with Denoir’s insight, but while that was partially true, there was still a missing piece to the puzz
le that would explain the killer’s true motivation, because there was something else driving him.

  Finston smiled sadly at the TV host and lied, saying, “Sorry, but it’s the mommy-issue thing.”

  Denoir didn’t want to give up that easily. “Why did he tie up the men and make them watch?”

  “Because of his impotency, which he blames on his mother.”

  Denoir’s jaw dropped. “He’s killing these women because of a limp dick?”

  “Exactly.”

  Denoir’s cheeks reddened as she realized she had accidentally said limp dick on the air. That was a no-no. Instead of arguing any further about how implausible she found Finston’s theory about the killer, she asked whether Finston had been able to deduce anything else about the Cupid Killer. Denoir wasn’t willing to give up on the name, even if it no longer fit based on what the FBI profiler claimed.

  “From a witness description, he’s in his twenties, has blue eyes, is six feet tall, and between a hundred and sixty and a hundred and seventy pounds.” Finston didn’t mention the tattoo on the underside of the killer’s right wrist, because Alex Frey was not able to describe it due to his concussion. It was possible it was a smudge or birthmark instead, and besides, without being able to describe the tattoo, she’d be drawing suspicion upon potentially hundreds, if not thousands, of millennials living in Los Angeles, which could have the added consequence of sending the police on numerous wild goose chases. “As I have already mentioned, he’s impotent and rages about his mother, which he carefully hides from others. He can appear charming and can fit into a social gathering without raising suspicions. He’s also impulsive and violent. This is a very dangerous individual and people need to stay alert.”

  Denoir asked, “How are they supposed to do that?”

  “He’ll be looking for more couples to victimize. People need to pay extra attention to whether anyone is stalking them, and if you believe someone is, do not approach this person. Instead, go into the nearest store or restaurant and call the police. People need to exercise extreme caution.”