Eyes Never Lie

by Tyler Porter

  They didn’t argue, although it was clear they wanted to. It was understandable and I couldn’t blame them. If it was me who was being brought it as a suspect, I would hope they would have this same response. How else is one expected to react when the person they’d trusted and followed is accused of being a serial killer? I knew how I wanted to react. I didn’t want to believe it. It just made too much sense and it made sense in ways that I couldn’t explain to Hall or Perez, not right now.

  The killer had an obsession with my attention. With making sure that I see him and what he’s done. This whole thing has been built around me and every mover our guy has made has been made to make sure that I wouldn’t miss a second of it. The person doing this needs me to see him, needs me to acknowledge what he has done. Why? Because whoever is doing this feels that I have overlooked them. I’ve underestimated them somehow. Hunt fit the bill. He’d been under me for years when he could have very easily been promoted if he’d been a part of any other unit, but he was part of mine.

  There was no succession plan for him until I was ready to retire and hand over the reins and he knew it. Captain could have promoted him, but until I’d personally selected him to replace me, Captain hadn’t thought he had what it takes. His animosity toward me had grown recently and it had begun to show. I’d always known he resented me, but I thought after being selected as my replacement, he’d let it go.

  At some point, he’d lost it. He’d let that jealously and resentment build to the point where it’d broken him. Something was broken deep inside of him and now he was unraveling. He knew I was getting close when I landed on Cullen and knew that in questioning Cullen I would very quickly get to the truth. That Jim Cullen had nothing to do with any of this. That is why Hunt took a personal day. He knew that I was going to get to the truth.

  His apartment complex was in a nice area which was an odd thing to say. With a population of just over 30,000, Helena didn’t seem to have areas that weren’t. Still, as with any city, small or large, there were the rougher parts and there were the nicer parts. He lived in the latter. The occupants of the complex were clearly not used to seeing a fully loaded S.W.A.T. van approach accompanied by four police cruisers all with lights flashing.

  Several of the assumed tenants scattered upon seeing us pull up in front of Hunt’s building. They’d already clued me in that they were going to try to get him to come out peacefully. Nice and easy. He was on the first floor and his apartment was the first on the left, so they were confident the volume from the blowhorn would penetrate the walls of his unit. The S.W.A.T. team, luckily one not led by Eric Banner who’d led the S.W.A.T. team that had responded to the Frank Jarmin call, all piled out of the vehicle and began triple checking their weapons, always ready if things went south.

  Hall and Perez had already thrown on their vests and were standing ready, each of them with a hand resting on their holstered weapon. I checked my own firearm to ensure a round was loaded and began velcroing on my vest. Captain Connors wasn’t on site, but even if he was, it was safe to say that me being involved only as far as a consultant had gone out the window the second we’d decided that a cop was involved. The leader of the S.W.A.T. unit, a young, attractive woman named Sasha Richardson, began to speak through the blowhorn.

  “James Hunt, this is Captain Sasha Richardson. We have a warrant for your immediate arrest. Come outside, slowly, with your hands empty and up in the air!”

  Two or three minutes passed, and no one walked through the front door of the building. Several individuals peeked out through their windows on the second and third floors. Ideally, the building would be vacated, but we would have had to work right outside Hunt’s door to make that happen and there was no telling how this was going to go down. It wasn’t a risk we were able to take.

  “James Hunt!” she started again. “We do have the right to forcefully enter the premises to take you into custody. Come outside, slowly, with your hands empty and in the air!”

  Busting into an apartment with a spiraling serial killer inside was the absolute last thing that we wanted to do. There was no way of knowing what he might do, but there was high likelihood that Hunt had no intentions of spending his remaining years in a jail cell. Cops are well aware of what happens when they themselves are incarcerated. They generally don’t last long, and it generally isn’t a pleasant experience. Hunt was a tough kid, but he would be no different if he found himself surrounded by steel, concrete and some of the people he’d helped put away over the years.

  “James Hunt! This is your last and final chance to come outside slowly. If you do not comply, we will have no choice but to forcefully enter the premises to take you into custody.”

  As soon as she finished her sentence, she nodded to her unit. In unison they began flicking off the safety controls on their weapons and tightening their helmets. I gave a knowing look to Hall and Perez. No words needed to be said. If this went south, Hunt was only leaving that apartment in a body bag. They each nodded back at me, signaling their understanding of what was about to happen.

  Captain Richardson gave him about three more minutes. There was no movement that we could see inside the apartment and no movement at the front door. It was clear he had no intentions on coming out. Therefore, we were left with only one option. One final nod from Captain Sasha Richardson sealed Hunt’s fate. The S.W.A.T. team began moving toward the front door of the apartment and we fell in right behind with our guns drawn.

  Chapter 29: Last Chance

  If Hunt had been sleeping upon our arrival, he was definitely awake now. A massive, bald, tattooed member of the S.W.A.T. team known to us only as his nickname, Bull, was responsible for opening the locked door of the apartment. We don’t generally kick in doors during raids anymore. More often than not, we use a battering-ram style tool called a breacher, but this monster of a man seemed to take some kind of warped pleasure out of using his own brute strength.

  The door twisted and snapped off its hinges, flying several feet into the apartment and landing on the hardwood floor, the voluminous clattering echoing off the walls. We moved in, stepping over splinters of wood and steel screws spreading out in all directions. The S.W.A.T. team was better trained, better armed, and better protected by their twenty pounds of tactical gear. They moved through the space first with Hall, Perez, and me following behind them through the various spaces of Hunt’s unit.

  As we checked each room of the two-story space, we could hear others shouting ‘clear’ letting the rest of the group know that they hadn’t found anyone. Hall and Perez had followed S.W.A.T. on the first floor and I’d fallen in behind the two men who’d decided to take the second. We’d cleared every room with the exception of the master. The three of us grouped up outside the closed door, took a quick breather and moved in. Each called ‘clear’ relatively quickly and had done so before I’d even had a chance to get through the door.

  The space was small for the otherwise roomy apartment. I’d seen two other bedrooms that were bigger, but, for some reason, Hunt had chosen this one to sleep in. I’d admittedly never been to Hunt’s place before, and he’d never been to mine. It was intriguing for me to see how he lived. It painted a picture of someone completely different from the man I’d spent years training and molding.

  I’d always considered him to be on the disorganized side. His desk was always a mess, more often than not he had coffee stains on his shirt where it had dripped off the edge of his mug, and I could hardly handle riding in his department issued sedan with all the gas station soda cups and fast food bags littering the floor. Standing here in his bedroom, if I didn’t know any better, I would have sworn that this was not his place, that we’d made a mistake somehow.

  There was not a single item out of place. His bed was made, the corners of the comforter tucked into themselves as to make them sit just perfectly and not flare out messily. The carpet had been recently swept as was obvious from the vacuum tracks st
ill showing on the carpet. He had two black bookshelves, one stacked on top of the other. Not only were the books that resided in them placed in alphabetical order, but the books themselves were all the exact same height creating a straight line all the way across.

  I worked my way around the room and swept my finger along the dresser, bookshelves, and tv stand. Not a single sign of dust anywhere. I went to the closet, which the S.W.A.T. guys had already cleared. His clothes were organized by color and his shoes were separated by type. Sandals, then sneakers, then boots, then dress. Something wasn’t right, that much was clear. Why would he be a completely different person at work than he was at home?

  It didn’t make sense. This space was that of someone suffering from extreme obsessive-compulsive disorder, yet at work he was constantly surrounded by a mess. That would have driven someone with OCD insane. He wouldn’t have even been able to work in that sort of space, yet he’d managed to excel in it.

  I left the master bedroom and revisited the other spaces on the second floor for a second look. On first pass, they hadn’t seemed abnormally tidy like the master, but then again, I hadn’t been looking for it. Although each of the two additional rooms were relatively empty, the things that did reside in them were organized to perfection, the carpets freshly vacuumed, and not a speck of dust anywhere. The bathroom was the same.

  I moved back down the stairs and into the entry way, turning into the living room. I spotted the TV stand and went to it. It was open in the center containing only the cable box, then there were two cabinets, one of each side of the opening. I opened them both. One the left, DVD’s all in alphabetical order.

  On the right, were two shelves that had several different remotes. On for the TV, one for the cable box, one looked like it controlled a separate Roku device and the last appeared to work the ceiling fan. Each was laid very carefully based on size. I jumped up and moved into the kitchen just as the rest of downstairs group was arriving there after searching the laundry room and second bathroom.

  “What’d you think?” I asked Perez and Hall wanting their take before I shared my own.

  “Really clean…oddly clean,” Hall said.

  “Like ODDLY clean, like he went way out of his way,” Perez added.

  “So, the question becomes, is this place always like this? Or did he just get done wiping this place clean before disappearing?” I said to no one in particular.

  “Gotta be option two. Nothing else makes sense. There’s no way he could operate the way he does at work and like this at home, it’s like two completely different people,” Perez said.

  “I was thinking the same thing. He’s long gone,” I said as I turned to leave the kitchen.

  We got in our car and took off leaving S.W.A.T. at the scene to finish up, deal with the property manager and wait for the techs to show up and ensure we hadn’t missed anything. Clean or not, in our line of work double checking was standard. It was always possible to miss something that was right in front of you. Fresh eyes could do wonders. The silence reigned supreme for most of the ride, but just as we were approaching the department Alex Perez spoke up.

  “Wait a minute, I just thought of something. What if it was either option?” he asked.

  “What do you mean?” Hall responded.

  “I mean what if it wasn’t that he’d cleaned up to take off and it wasn’t that he lived that way at home and different at work?”

  “What are you getting at? What other explanation is there?” I asked.

  “What if someone was living there with him? Someone else who was keeping the place tidy?”

  “Okay, yeah, that could make sense but the guy isn’t married, he’s an only child and he doesn’t have any girlfriend or roommate as far as I know,” I said.

  “Cooper,” Perez said.

  “Cooper? What about her?” Hall asked.

  “Remember a few months back there were some rumors about those two? Hunt confided in me one day after it all blew over that they really were seeing each other secretly. They knew it was against department policy, so they were keeping it on the down low,” Perez said.

  “Oh yeah! I remember. Shit, that was actually a thing?” Hall asked.

  “Yeah, it’s a thing and think about Cooper’s desk. Think about her locker, her car. It’s all perfectly organized, nothing out of place. What if she’d been living with him?” Perez said.

  “She would know if he was out on the nights of the murders, she would know if he’d been acting odd during the investigation and she might know where he is now, maybe he has a place somewhere he goes to get away,” I said.

  “We need to talk to her,” Hall said.

  “Is she stable? Last I heard she was still in the ICU,” Perez said.

  “We’re gonna find out right now,” I said flipping on the flashing lights of the sedan. “He knows we’re onto him and she might be our only chance at finding him before he disappears for good.”

  “Worse than that boss…if she’s our last chance at finding him…he would know that too,” Perez said, the fearful realization showing in his eyes.

  Chapter 30: One…Two…Three

  The car slid to a stop at the entrance of the hospital. The three of us exited the car and began running for the front door in such haste that two of the three doors on the car were left open and the keys left in the ignition with the blue and red lights still illuminating brightly. We hadn’t actually been to see Cooper since she’d been shot. We’d been too busy trying to nail the son of a bitch who was responsible, so when we received word that she’d made it through surgery, we figured she could wait and needed rest anyhow.

  Now, we were all silently, but deeply regretting that decision. If Hunt knew that we were onto him and that we were on the trail, he would know that she was the one person who might be able to help us catch him. It would have only made sense that he would try to dispose of her. She was already incapacitated as it was and a detective from her unit showing up for a visit wouldn’t have alerted the hospital staff to anything being wrong. The lady at reception almost fell backward out of her chair when we came clambering up to her desk.

  “I need the room number for Detective Hailey Cooper right now,” I said showing her my badge as I spoke.

  She immediately looked back to her screen and began typing, a bead of sweat forming in the upper right corner of her forehead. It was clear she was not used to getting orders from police officers. I began stomping my foot quickly. It wasn’t so much to hurry her along as it was too let out the anxiety pulsing through my body. We should have been here earlier. Should have come to this conclusion earlier. I should have been better.

  Finally, she spoke again. “407, its just down the hall there, it forces you to go right, after the turn she’s the fourth door on the left.” She was fighting through her nerves and trying not to stutter.

  Not a thank-you and not another word. I turned and broke into a sprint down the hallway with Hall and Perez following closely behind. I’d been pretty fast in my younger years but had slowed down after I hit forty-five or fifty. Now though, with the adrenaline coursing through me, my legs were moving like they had twenty years ago. I cut around the corner and spotted the fourth door on the left. I didn’t slow in the slightest until I was moving so fast and was so close to the door that I almost ran past it.

  The three of us stopped outside the closed door and drew our weapons. For all we knew, Hunt could be inside the room with her right then. If he was, there was no telling how ugly this was going to get or how fast it was going to get there. From where I stood, I could see someone standing next to the hospital bed, but I couldn’t make out who. I stood on the right side of the door while the other two stood on the left. I began giving signals with my free hand letting them know that we were moving into the room on three. I mouthed the words slowly. One…two…three!

  We burst into the room and I momentarily r
ested my sights on the most terrified nurse I have ever seen. Within a second, I dropped my muzzle to the floor instantly bringing her out of harm’s way. Her face was pale and white as snow, her shoulders rose and fell as she breathed heavily trying not to hyperventilate. I would have had more empathy, but she would recover from the scare. Cooper was my focus.

  I moved past the nurse to the hospital bed where Hailey Cooper lay sleeping peacefully. I gently placed my hand on her shoulder and gave her a light shake. Her eyelids eased open and she blinked rapidly letting her eyes adjust to the bright lights of the hospital room. She looked at me and then at Perez and Hall. For a moment, her face showed fear. Fear that someone else on the team had been killed.

  “How you feelin kid?” I asked. “About as well as I can be with a hole in my stomach and these damn doctors and nurses constantly poking and touching it asking me if I feel any pain,” she said. “What’s happened?”

  Little time allowed for small talk, just like Cooper. She never had been one for chit chat. She wanted to get to the point. The information, the meat and potatoes. She could sense that something was wrong and she wasn’t about to let any more time pass without knowing what it was.

  “We had a break in the case,” I said.

  “That’s great, who are we going after?”

  “Hailey…have you been seeing Hunt outside of work? Romantically?” I asked.

  Perez dropped his head knowing she would realize he’d violated her trust.

  She just looked at me for several seconds before speaking again, neither denying nor confirming the question. “That policy is bull shit. Who we see and what we do when we are off the clock shouldn’t be the departments business. They control enough of our life as it is…” She was started to rant, but I cut her off.