I See You (Arrington Mystery Book 1)

by Elle Gray

  “You will find Jordan in the back seat of a blue Ford minivan in front of the art theater on Western,” he says. “She, unfortunately, had to be bound and gagged to prevent any— mishaps. I also sedated her, but the effects should be wearing off in the next hour or so.”

  “Sounds like you thought of everything.”

  “In my line of work, it pays to eliminate all the risk you can.”

  “Is that what you call abduction and extortion? Your line of work?”

  He laughs, and I shake my head. I hate the way the voice modulator makes his voice sound. It’s creepy.

  “No, this is merely a means to an end. Distasteful. Truthfully, I hate doing it,” he replies. “But one must do what one must in the service of a higher calling.”

  “And what exactly is your higher calling?”

  He pauses a moment and seems to be considering something before he speaks again.

  “My work is of the utmost importance,” he says. “And I take it very seriously.”

  “And what is your work exactly?”

  “You are a very intelligent man, Mr. Arrington. You have very keen insights and a sharp wit about you,” he says. “But do not presume you know me simply because you can work up a profile. As I mentioned, sometimes profiles are mistaken.”

  “Judging by the tension I hear in your voice, I’d say my profile hits pretty close to the mark,” I reply. “You sound… defensive.”

  “Hardly,” he replies. “I am intrigued, however.”

  “About what?”

  “About you,” he says.

  “Is there something, in particular, you’d like to know?” I ask. “Perhaps we can get a drink and talk about it.”

  “Maybe another time.”

  I can’t explain it exactly, but I feel like I’m being drawn into Hayes’ web. I’m powerfully intrigued by him as well. For whatever reason, something about him is triggering something inside of me. I really want to find and catch this man. It’s not just for Jordan. She’ll be home with her parents safe and sound shortly. There is just something about him that’s setting off the red flags and warning bells in my head. For all his bluster about how this is only a means to an end, he’s done this before. And he might do it again.

  There is a lot more to this man than meets the eye. He’s got many different facets to him, most of which are obscured from my sight. But the more I listen to him speak, the more small details I pick up on, the more I want to know. No, need to know. And it’s because I think Hayes— or whatever his real name is— is more than just a kidnapper and extortionist. I can’t say why for sure, but I am positive, beyond all reasonable doubt, that this man is a far bigger evil than he’s letting on. The man on the other end of the line is a monster. A bona fide, bodies in the crawlspace under the house, heads in the refrigerator, monster.

  “Before we part ways for the night,” he says, “I would like you to remember three names: Kimberly Griffin, Arnold Cooper, and Jackson Wilkerson.”

  “And what am I supposed to do with those names?”

  He laughs quietly. “I think you’ll discover for yourself, once you do a little digging,” he says. “You won’t find a James Wilder, but you will find something else you are not expecting.”

  A tingle of excitement sends an army of goosebumps marching across my skin. I don’t know for sure what I’m going to find once I run down those names, but something is telling me that it’s going to confirm what I’m already thinking… that this man is a monster.

  And it’s up to me to catch him.

  “Goodnight, Mr. Arrington,” he says. “And I wish you all the best.”

  The line goes dead in my hand. I stare at it stupidly for a moment, as if expecting him to call back. He doesn’t, of course. He got what he wanted and pointed me in the direction of that which I want.

  I pull away from the curb and drive to the art theater. In the back of a blue minivan, I find Jordan just as he said, bound and gagged, sedated and asleep, but otherwise completely unharmed. I let out a small breath of relief. I was right about him after all.

  As I drive her back to the Morgans’ home, I mull the names over for a moment. None of them mean anything to me. But Hayes would not have given them to me if they didn’t mean something. I suppose they mean something to him. Though I have the certainty of feeling that in time, those names will come to mean something to me as well.

  Just as I have the certainty of feeling that this is not going to be the final time I am going to hear from the man calling himself Hayes. I feel as if I’m being inexorably pulled into something much, much bigger. And far more sinister.

  And as terrible as it seems, I’m excited about it.

  Nine

  Arrington Investigations; Downtown Seattle

  “Jordan made this for you,” Brody says and tosses a card down on my desk with a grin.

  I pick up the colorful card made from a piece of construction paper. On the front is a giant happy face with hearts all around it and on the inside are the words, “Thank You!” in big, bold letters. It makes me smile.

  “That’s sweet,” I say. “But it’s not like I did anything. I dropped off a couple of bags and drove their daughter home. Uber could have done that.”

  “Don’t sell yourself short. You put yourself in harm’s way for Jordan,” Brody says. “Kayla and Joseph aren’t going to forget that.”

  I lean back in my chair and look at the card. The Morgans have been generous and thankful for me bringing Jordan back to them. And likely because they’ve been handing out my card over the past few weeks, we’ve gotten a steady stream of clients walking through the door. Mostly bitter men and women looking for dirt to use against their spouses in their forthcoming divorce proceedings. It’s been an education.

  I have spent more time camped outside of hotels than I care to admit. This is not the sort of work I’d envisioned myself doing when I hung up my shingle. I’d imagined doing more important work. But I suppose not every single case is going to be exciting. It was the same way when I was with the SPD— some calls were a rush of adrenaline, while others were routine and boring. I suppose you have to take the good with the bad.

  The one thing that’s stuck with me though is him. Mr. Hayes. I’ve tried running down the names he gave me, but as of yet, I’ve not come up with anything concrete. Nothing to tell me why he gave me those names, who they are, or what it means. I know it means something; otherwise, he wouldn’t have given them to me. But what?

  “How is she doing?” I ask. “Jordan?”

  “She’s good,” he replies. “Kayla says the night terrors are starting to subside.”

  “Good. That’s good.”

  He drops down into the chair across from me and slumps back casually. “So what’s on the docket for the night?”

  “I have to follow Murray Taub and get photos of him with his eighteen-year-old mistress,” I groan.

  “Murray Taub? The guy who owns that chain of steakhouses?”

  “One and the same,” I confirm.

  “That guy has to be like sixty,” Brody scrunches up his face in disgust. “And he’s out there with high schoolers?”

  “According to the soon to be ex, Mrs. Taub.”

  “Hey, say what you want about me, but at least I keep it strictly twenty-one and up. I can’t mess around with anyone who can’t at least have a drink with me. That’s just nasty.”

  A man stands on the other side of my office door, and I wave him in. He’s tall, lean, has shaggy hair, glasses, and a mustache. He’s got on a red ballcap with our cable company logo on it with matching coveralls. He walks over, thrusting his aluminum clipboard at me. I take it and sign my name to the work order attached to it and hand it back.

  “I think we’re good to go here, Mr. Arrington,” he says, tearing one of the sheets off the work order and dropping it on my desk. “Checked all the lines and computers in the office, and everything looks okay.”

  I nod. “Thank you.”

  “Happy to hel
p,” he says. “Just call us if you have any problems.”

  I give him a nod, and the man turns and leaves my office. Brody watches him go and turns back to me.

  “I thought you were the computer guy,” I say. “Why’d we have to call a repairman?”

  “Just needed some networks set up. He contracts with building maintenance. Besides, I’m a computer wizard,” he corrects me. “I don’t do IT grunt work, but if you need the skinny on anybody, anywhere, then I’m your guy.”

  “Nobody says ‘the skinny’ anymore.”

  “I do.”

  “That’s why you’re single,” I say. “So, any luck with those names?”

  He shakes his head. “With nothing but names to go on and zero context, I don’t even know what I’m looking for,” he says. “And let’s face it, those aren’t exactly unique names. There are hundreds of people with those same names scattered around the country. Teachers, doctors, husbands, wives… no way to tell who it is this guy wants you looking at or why.”

  “It has to mean something,” I mutter to myself.

  “I think he was yanking your chain, man. I think he wanted you to do what you’re doing right now— chasing your own tail trying to figure out the meaning behind all this,” he says. “I bet you he pulled those names out of thin air just to make you spin your wheels.”

  “Actually, I wouldn’t be so sure about that.”

  We both snap our heads up to see Blake standing in the doorway. I’d been so consumed with my thoughts I never even saw her come in.

  “Hey, man,” Brody says. “I’m offended. You call the Feds to do the deep dive? What do you even have me around for?”

  “Comic relief.”

  Brody laughs and gets to his feet. “You’re a jerk,” he says. “I’m going down to Starbucks. You guys want anything?”

  “The usual,” I say.

  “I’ll have what he’s having,” Blake adds.

  “See?” I say. “This is what I keep you around for.”

  He gives me the finger and laughs as he leaves the office. I get to my feet and give her a hug. I open the door to my office and lead her out to the main floor, dropping down at the large conference table near the window. She takes the seat across from me, dropping her satchel on the table beside her.

  “Sorry, was feeling claustrophobic in there,” I say. “Good to see you, Blake.”

  “Good to be seen.”

  After Brody and I had come up empty with the names for a week straight, I’d called Blake to see if she could find anything. She’s got access to state and federal databases and can do a far deeper dive than we can.

  “So, I take it you found something?” I ask.

  “Of course I did,” she scoffs. “Did you really think I wouldn’t?”

  I give her a small grin. “I figured if I couldn’t find it, there was nothing to be found.”

  “Wow, your arrogance knows no bounds,” she raises an eyebrow.

  “You’ve known me how long? This can’t be news to you.”

  “No, I just keep hoping to humble you at some point by reminding you that you’re not infallible.”

  I laugh. “You having better databases to work with doesn’t mean I’m not infallible,” I tell her. “Just so you know.”

  “Keep telling yourself that.”

  I know people think I can be arrogant. It’s one of the reasons I was dismissed from the force, wasn’t it? But the truth of the matter is that I have a very low tolerance for nonsense and ignorance. And I’m not afraid to call people out. Those two things have combined to give me a bad rap in some circles. Some think I’m the kind of guy who holds himself apart from others. The sort of guy who thinks I’m better than anybody, or as Deputy Chief Torres so eloquently put it, that I’m the smartest kid in the room.

  Frankly, there are a million different opinions about who I am floating around out there. Everybody seems to know me better than I know myself. They all have an opinion about me. It’s one reason I tend to hold myself apart from people and keep everybody at an arm’s distance. They call me arrogant and aloof. I simply say I’m sick and tired of other people thinking they’re entitled to have an opinion about me or tell me who they think I am. It’s part of the price to be paid for growing up in the spotlight cast over the family I was raised in.

  Blake knows that. She gets it and sees through the walls I put up around myself. As do the people I deem most important to me. Everybody else, those who don’t know me and I don’t want to know, can beat it as far as I’m concerned.

  “So what did you find?” I ask.

  “I pored over data from all over the country,” she says. “I started with the obvious— kidnappings. But none of the names listed were children who were kidnapped.”

  “I have a feeling that he does this from time to time, but it’s not a real regular thing for him.”

  “Right. So then I started digging through homicide cases,” she says. “And I found a nexus between the three names.”

  “You did?” I ask, honestly a little surprised.

  She opens her satchel and produces three file folders with a flourish. She tosses them onto the table and grins at me. I lay them out in a line and open them one by one, quickly scanning through the police reports, but nothing in them overtly stands out to me at first blush.

  “Kimberly Griffin, age twenty-nine, of Taos, New Mexico. Died of manual strangulation,” Blake recites the particulars by memory.

  “Prostitute,” I say, reading from the report.

  “Arnold Cooper, age thirty-seven, of Scottsdale, Arizona,” she continues. “Died of exsanguination caused by a severing of the carotid artery.”

  “Construction foreman.”

  “And Jackson Wilkerson, age eighteen, of San Diego, California. Died of blunt force trauma to the head,” she says. “His skull was literally bashed in.”

  “College freshman.”

  I look up from the files and eye her questioningly. “I don’t see the nexus.”

  “Look at the crime scene photos,” she says. “Look at them carefully and tell me what you see.”

  I pull the crime scene photos for Kimberly Griffin and study it closely. She was a redhead. Pretty, if a little rough looking. Or at least, she had been in life. Her skin is pale, her eyes wide and unseeing. I turn to the construction worker and find him with that same fixed look of death on his face I’ve seen on more corpses than I can count in my life.

  There is a clean, smooth slice across Arnold Cooper’s neck and a wide pool of dark, viscous blood all around him. He’d definitely bled out. I finally turn to the college kid, and this one makes me wince. There are no discernible features left of his face. A blood-soaked baseball bat lay near the body, obviously discarded by the killer.

  “Man. You weren’t kidding,” I say. “His skull was bashed in.”

  Blake says nothing. She crosses her legs and sits back in the wide, plush chair, her hands folded in her lap. She just watches me. Waiting. I examine the pictures again closely, taking in all of the details, my mind absorbing them like a sponge, and when I get to a close-up shot of the kid’s body, I pause. My eyes grow wide, and my mouth falls open.

  I find the close-up body shot of all three murder victims and set them all down in a line. It doesn’t take me long to find what I’m looking for.

  “Well, I’ll be,” I mutter. “Why wasn’t this flagged before now?”

  She shrugs. “Different states, different MO’s, different jurisdictions, wasn’t relevant to the murder,” she says. “At least, it didn’t seem to be relevant to anybody at the time.”

  “I’d say it’s pretty relevant now.”

  She nods. “Yeah. To say the least.”

  On the inside of the left wrist on each victim is a tattoo of a cross with a flame behind it. It’s small and discreet. Nothing in this day and age of people tattooing every square inch of skin on their bodies. It looks like a temporary tat, which is probably why it didn’t get flagged. But as I look more closely at i
t, I see that there’s something a little strange about it. I look up at Blake.

  “Were these… painted on?”

  She nods. “My best guess is a template and an airbrush or spray can for fast application.”

  “Jesus,” I gasp.

  “Pretty sure he’s not involved with this,” she quips.

  “Probably not,” I say. “Okay, so this guy is sending us a message.”

  “No, he’s sending you a message,” she replies. “He told you about these three. What’s he trying to tell you?”

  I look at the three summaries sitting before me, scanning the information, taking it all in, and there is one thing that stands out to me: these murders were all committed in 1998. Twenty-two years ago. If there is a message for me here, I don’t see it just yet.

  “He’s been at this for a long time,” I muse.

  She nods. “A serial murderer who’s been killing for two decades running.”

  “I don’t think these were his first murders though,” I say. “I have a feeling that one’s special. Not one he’d share with me.”

  “Probably right,” she says. “But why is it important to him that you know what he’s been up to for the last twenty years?”

  I sit back in my chair and work through the question. It doesn’t take me long to hit on the answer. It seems too easy, but in my experience, the simplest answer is usually the correct one.

  “He wants me to chase him,” I say. “He wants to match wits with me to see if I can stop him. Those names are his challenge to me.”

  Blake’s expression grows sober, and I see her body tense up as she looks at me. She knows I’m right. And I can tell by the expression on her face that she doesn’t like it. Not one bit.

  “You can’t get involved with this,” she says quietly. “This is dangerous, Pax. Way too dangerous for you.”

  “Then why did you bring me the files?”

  She trails her fingernail along the grain of the wooden table. “Mostly, I wanted to see if my own theories were right. If I was only seeing what I wanted to see, or what was really there.”