“No deal,” replied Mashburn.
Burns looked at him with eyes of death. “I am going to say this one time, and one time only. I am speaking to Mr. Smith, not you. He is welcome to consult with counsel at any time, that is why you are here. You are welcome to whisper any nonsense in his ear you deem appropriate. But, sir, you will not address me again, other than to acknowledge what I am saying now, or this interview will be concluded, and we will be looking to extradite your client. You got that?”
Everyone in the room looked shocked. Mashburn looked around the room for help but received none. “Yes, ma’am,” he replied simply.
“Mr. Smith?” Burns looked back at him, her eyes afire.
“Yes.”
“Did you want to talk to us about these videos, or should I pack up and head back to Colorado?”
Mashburn whispered in Smith’s ear. Smith responded heatedly.
“What kind of immunity?” Smith replied.
“What we are prepared to offer you is Second Degree Murder in exchange for the person who made these. In Colorado, that’s a mandatory sixteen to forty-eight years, with the chance of parole in about a third of that time. You would not be charged with any other crimes. And all your illicit profits, all your financial assets, would be taken by the Canadian government. This is the agreement we have reached with the Canadian government. I know this is not easy, Mr. Smith, but if you don’t roll now, it’s going to get a lot tougher.”
“What about Canada?” he asked, waving his attorney off.
“Jim, will you get Sherry?” Burns asked. Jim Bergmann left the room under the pretense of getting Sherry Cox. They all knew she was watching behind the glass, but the charade marched forward.
As Sherry Cox came in and settled, Sandy Burns laid out the scenario. Sandy turned to Smith and said, “I wanted you to hear it from the Canadian authorities. All this will be documented and signed if you agree to it.”
Sherry Cox nodded. “Mr. Smith, in return for your agreement to plead to Second Degree Murder in the state of Colorado, you will cede all your illegally acquired assets to the Canadian government, and most importantly provide the killer in the videos.”
Mike Smith nodded. “How long before I have to give you an answer?”
Burns looked at him harshly, “Mr. Smith, we already have your videos, and we have identified two of the survivors. Our investigators are talking to them as we speak. If I get a call that we got the guy, this deal is off. This guy has at least two women that we know of right this moment. For all we know, he’s making one more video as we speak, and more people are dying horrible deaths. Frankly, the thought of you ever walking the streets again repulses me, but the bigger issue is catching this other guy.” Sandy Burns was close to tearing off Mike Smith’s head.
Smith paled and whispered quickly to Mashburn, then turned back to Detective Burns. “I have to ask you one more question before I agree. What if I do everything I can possibly do to help you, but you can’t find him?”
Burns looked at him inquisitively.
He continued against Mashburn’s protest, “I don’t know where this guy is, I only know how to help you find him. I’m willing to do that, but what I don’t want to do is give you everything I have, then go to Colorado and face the rest of my life in prison. I’m not very smart, but I’m smarter than that.”
Burns and Cox stepped into the hall. Upon returning, Burns said, “Mr. Smith, I can’t make you any promises there. If we find him, the deal will be as we have agreed. If we don’t find him, I will testify on your behalf to the extent I really believe you did everything you could. If you waffle, for all I care, you can rot. We need him, we don’t need best efforts. That’s as far as I’m willing to go. Your call.”
“I’ll take it on the condition you promise me you’ll tell me if you think I’m not doing enough. I’ll do anything and everything I can to help you find him. I don’t want to die in prison.”
“Agreed.”
The paperwork was finalized and signed. Burns and Smith, along with a brigade of Toronto Police, dropped by Smith’s house for key items. Burns and Smith were on a plane and headed back to Denver by mid-afternoon.
Mike Martin met Vince Burleson at the airport, and they headed directly for the Portland Mental Health Institute. After arriving, and navigating a mountain of paperwork, they were ushered in to meet Sally Winfield, who they’d known only as Jane Doe.
“Basically,” Martin said as they walked down the hall to the maximum-security area, “we can ask her if there’s anything she wants to tell us, see what she has to say, and leave. Beyond that, we can’t press her. Our hands are tied.”
Burleson was not quite so cynical. “I’m thinking she probably grew pretty close to Crawford during her time in here, so it probably makes sense to start there. Why don’t you do that part, then we’ll see if we can lead into the videos and the killing of Steven Blair from there.”
“Makes sense,” Martin agreed. The two entered an antiseptic, cloistered conference room with plastic everything and padded walls. Even the handles on the doors were recessed to ensure no one could get hurt in this room.
Sally Winfield was escorted into the room by two burly men in white uniforms. Clearly, they would ensure Martin and Burleson stayed in line. Two doctors followed behind. Sally was seated across from Martin in the middle seat, with the two doctors seated on either end.
“Hello,” Mike Martin started. “I appreciate your agreeing to meet with us today. My name is Detective Mike Martin, and I’m from the Portland Police Department. This is Detective Vince Burleson, and he’s with the Denver Police Department.”
She nodded at them and said, “You can call me Sally.”
“Thank you, Sally,” Martin continued. “We would like to talk to you about two things today, to the extent you are willing and able to do so. The first is Dr. Crawford and her disappearance.” At that, Sally winced visibly. “And the second concerns the time when you were kidnapped.”
Martin and Burleson had to be careful here. Sally did not know her actions with Steven Blair had been recorded. If they were to talk about this, they had to tread softly.
“Let’s start with Dr. Crawford,” Martin said. “What can you tell us?”
Sally bowed her head and started to cry. “I thought Dr. Crawford believed me, but now I don’t think she did. I told her about being kidnapped and forced to act in that horrible play, being raped by that man.”
“What does this have to do with Dr. Crawford being kidnapped, Sally?”
Sally continued to cry. “The man who kidnapped me promised me if I ever told anyone about this, he would kill me, but before he did, he would kill everyone close to me. The only problem is, I’ve never really had anyone close to me, except for Dr. Crawford. I told her about it only because she promised to put me in maximum security, and she promised to be careful. I thought she would be, but now I think she didn’t believe me, and she wasn’t careful.”
She spoke expansively for some time, throwing mountains of information at them. Martin was struggling to keep up, furiously taking notes for clarifying questions and to understand what she was saying. He dissected the information with question after question, while Burleson sat quietly by, taking notes in case he needed to follow up further.
“Sally, how long did it take you to go from Portland to wherever the kidnapper took you?”
“I don’t know, really, because I was unconscious both coming and going. And in the rooms where he kept us, there wasn’t any clock or outside light or anything, so I don’t have any idea.”
“Do you know why he didn’t kill you?” Martin asked. The two doctors bristled.
“No, it’s okay,” she said to them through tears. “In my script, in the directions, it told me if the other woman or I killed the man, then we would get to live. It also told me how to hold the knife so the man wouldn’t see it or touch it. It was also very specific about when I should start stabbing him.” She rocked with tears but waved off the
doctors. “No, I have to tell them about this if it will help find Dr. Crawford. As I’ve had time to think about it, and pretty much nothing else,” and now her eyes were distant, “I realized the man who raped me must have received similar instructions, telling him he had to kill us with that hammer.”
“What did the kidnapper say about letting you live?”
“In the instructions, it said if we did not kill the man, we would be killed, and if we did kill him, we would be returned home. After we killed him, and I went back to my room, he told me the conditions for returning home. I could not tell anyone about this, and if I did, he would kill everyone close to me. I thought the joke was on him, since no one was close to me, but then I met Dr. Crawford.”
“How do you think he found out you had told Dr. Crawford?”
“I don’t know a whole lot, but I’ve been around a lot of bad people in my life. My guess is he hacked into the system here, saw I had been moved to maximum security, and figured it out from there. For people who know what they’re doing, I don’t think it would be very hard.”
“You know, Sally, you should consider a career in law enforcement,” Martin said with a smile. “I think you’re probably exactly right about that.”
Martin and Burleson continued to question her but discovered little else they did not already know.
“Nicholas Lynch,” Nick answered anxiously.
“It’s Tom Wylie over at the Denver Post. I have it from a credible source that your wife has been kidnapped.”
“Off the record,” Nick said.
“Okay, off the record,” Wylie agreed.
“Tom, I’m a reasonable guy, and I think you know that. But if you print one word of this, and it in any way compromises my ability to find my wife and get her back, so help me god….”
“You got a minute?” Jillian Vargas asked as Nick worked at his desk. She was accompanied by Derrick Rhodes.
“What?” Nick spat.
Derrick attempted the role of moderator. “Can we see you in a conference room for one minute? You want to see this.” He marched off without waiting for acknowledgement.
Nick walked in behind them. They had already laid out the information on the conference table. Jillian spoke quickly. “We have preliminary forensics back on the hair and the print from Gary Knight. The print’s a negative, but the hair is a positive against the semen found. He’s our guy.” Jillian was clearly excited.
Nick was already moving. “Jillian, make sure we have two squad cars around Knight’s house right now. Don’t let him go anywhere.”
While Nick and Derrick Rhodes were driving to Knight’s house, Nick’s cell phone chirped.
“Nicholas Lynch.”
“It’s Vince. I wanted to brief you on what we found here.” He gave Nick the quick version of what they had found out from Sally.
“Do we have somebody working computer records, whatever the hell you look at to figure out if somebody has hacked in?” Nick asked.
“Martin’s group is on it here. I’m not technical, either, so don’t worry about it. Evidently, it’s a pretty slow process, but they’ll figure it out. From what I understand, though, anyone sophisticated enough to hack in, especially someone like this, we’ll never figure out who it is or where he is, only that it happened.”
“I think the important thing we figured out here is the threat he’s leaving with everyone, and evidently he means it, given Christine Crawford. This will be important when we follow up with Gary Knight.”
“When are you going to see him?” Burleson asked.
“We’re headed there right now. We should see him within fifteen minutes.”
“I hate missing this. Spare him no mercy.”
Nick ended the call, and his phone immediately rang again.
“Nick, it’s Sandy,” Burns said excitedly when Nick answered. She quickly briefed him on her time in Toronto and the fact she was bringing Mike Smith back with her, confession in hand. Copies of the video files were already being sent to the Denver Police Department. The originals would remain in Toronto.
“Mike has a cell phone that The Doctor will call on about the latest transaction. He’ll call to confirm he received the cryptocurrency transfer, or at least he always has in the past. That’s when he provides the encryption code so Mr. Smith can sell the videos. He should call within the next several hours, worst case a couple of days. We’re set up to triangulate, and we’ll figure out where this guy is.”
“Thank you, Sandy,” Nick said, although he was afraid Phyllis would run out of time before the call. “Listen, will you call Barela and make sure they’re working those videos?”
“They’re already on it,” she replied.
“We’ll see you when you get back.”
As they were pulling into Knight’s driveway, his phone chirped yet again.
“Lynch.”
“It’s Kelly Barela.”
“Hey, Kelly, I’m about to talk to Gary Knight. Can I catch up with you when we’re done?”
“Nick, you’ll want to know this. We got the video on Knight. He killed three people. This guy was vicious. I know he was forced to do it, but this is truly sick. He looked like he really enjoyed it. You’ll have to see.”
Nick was stunned, even knowing everything he knew. He sat in the car for an uncomfortable amount of time without speaking. “I’ll handle the questions,” he said to Rhodes.
“I sort of guessed that,” Rhodes acknowledged.
The scene from early in the morning repeated. Even without a warrant, Nick was planning to kick the door in. He didn’t care about due process right now, he cared about Phyllis and Christine Crawford. After more than a few seconds, Gary Knight answered the door.
Knight glared at them with through a one-foot crack in the door. “We’ve already done this today, Detective, I’m not doing it again.”
Nick put his left shoulder into the door, blasting into Gary Knight’s foyer and sending Knight sprawling to the floor.
“I didn’t really ask,” Nick said gruffly as Rhodes helped Knight to his feet.
Knight whined, “I’m not putting up with this shit. I’m not saying a word to you until my lawyer is here.”
“We have a video of you killing those three people.”
Knight looked stunned. “I doubt it.”
Nick said, “We’ve already run semen from the crime scene, too. Happen to be missing a comb?”
Knight kept looking stunned, and, Nick thought, very guilty. “What do you want?”
“I want this guy right now,” Nick said. “He’s taken my wife and another woman, and God knows who else, and I’m guessing he’s about to go into production again. It may be happening as we speak. You help us find him right now, I’ll hold to my opinion you were forced to participate in that sick snuff video. You call your lawyer and slow this down, my opinion will change. I suspect it will also become much more difficult to keep someone from releasing that video to the press. We know this guy has threatened you and everyone dear to you. We understand what an impossible situation he put you in. Of course he’s done it on purpose. But we have to find him, or he’s going to keep on doing this, terrorizing people to keep them quiet.”
Knight slumped into a plush chair, put his head in his hands, and began crying. “I didn’t have anything to do with it. This guy kidnapped me.”
While Knight was not looking, Nick made gestures to Rhodes to record everything that was being said. Rhodes nodded and started recording the scene on his phone. Nick knelt by Knight. “Gary, you’re going to have to tell us everything that happened, from the time you disappeared in Sacramento to the time he let you go.” Before having Knight speak, they read him his Miranda rights.
Evidently it was true confession time, because Gary had to purge himself before getting to the salient details the detectives needed to find the women. They allowed Knight to blather on for almost fifteen minutes, believing it would ultimately get him to the right answer more quickly. It was all Nick could do
not to choke the information out of the man.
“I’m a horrible person.” Nick remained silent rather than affirm this. Knight continued. “I formed the Coalition of Values because I want to be good, but I have such a hard time. I know the right things to do, and I do them most of the time. It’s just sometimes I can’t help myself. I have these urges, and most of the time I resist, but sometimes I can’t help it.”
Nick knew a good shrink could have a great time with this guy’s pathology. After a period of time, he said, “We all have good and evil in us. It’s okay. You’ve done some truly great things that have helped a lot of people. And you did something in Sacramento you shouldn’t have. These women are about to die. I need you to tell me what happened in Sacramento. How did you disappear?”
Knight nodded and wiped his nose with his robe sleeve. “After the keynote speech,” Gary started, looking at Nick to see if he was following.
“Yep, I’m with you. You disappeared after the keynote speech and reappeared about nine days later,” Nick clarified.
“I used a cell phone no one knows I have, a cell phone that can’t be traced back to me, and I lined up a prostitute. Of course, given my position, I couldn’t have her meet me at my hotel, so I arranged a rendezvous. Actually, she told me where to go. It was a motel in a seedier part of town.
He sniffled and continued. “I can’t even tell you why I picked her. I guess because she told me Coalition of Values participants got full service for half price. I see how she tricked me into drinking that roofie. After we had sex, she told me to lay back and relax, that it was two for one night. I thought I was having a lucky day. She gave me some champagne, and I’m sure she put the roofie in that. I don’t remember anything in the motel after that. The next thing I recall is waking up in some sort of a vehicle that was moving, probably an RV because I was in a bed. It seemed like there were other people in there with me, all unconscious. It was dark, and I was tied up. I didn’t stay awake long. I’m guessing The Doctor, or whoever was driving, heard me rousing and somehow put me back to sleep.”
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