So Close the Hand of Death

by J. T. Ellison

  “I think I’m being followed,” she whispered to the man. “Can you watch out for someone who doesn’t belong?”

  “I’ll do what I can, ma’am, but we don’t get a lot of normal folks running around in the middle of the night. Are you Mrs. Keck?”

  She only flinched a little bit at the Mrs. designation. Too young to be a widow, too old to be a Miss. And Ms. always sounded like a mosquito buzzing out of the person’s mouth. At Flynn’s school they simply called her Miss Colleen, in that quaint Southern way that kept children on a more formal but still personal level with their parents’ female friends. Of course, it was only for the women, she didn’t have a single recollection of someone ever saying Mr. Tommy.

  The guard was looking at her, perplexed. Oh, please tell me I didn’t say that aloud. She tried again.

  “Yes, I am. I’m here to see Lieutenant Jackson.”

  “Yep, you’re on the list. Sorry about your husband, ma’am. They’re waiting for you. Just go knock on that door over there, someone will let you in.”

  “Thank you.” She fought back the urge to tip him, almost laughed out loud. After her years as a journalist, she was so used to handing out the twenties when she was in need of information the reflex was ingrained into her.

  Flynn had miraculously stayed asleep during her panicked flight from the parking garage. She blessed his father’s genes. Where Colleen would start and wake from the tiniest click or knock in the house’s night, Tommy could sleep through a tornado siren going off next to his bed. He was forever sleeping through his alarm. Flynn was the same way: easy to fall asleep, hard to rouse.

  Her third knock was answered by a handsome black man, about six feet tall, impeccably dressed. She almost laughed out loud—who looked that good, that put together, at three in the morning? He smiled at her and she saw the gap between his front two teeth. He looked like a rock star, someone she couldn’t place. She had his CDs though. Damn, what was his name? Lenny something. She racked her brain. Kravitz. That was it.

  He saw her trying to place him and smiled wider. He must be used to the double take people did when they saw him. Of course, that was what most folks in Nashville did—the country music capital of the world attracted a bevy of famous musicians, songwriters and singers, not to mention several actresses and actors who enjoyed the illusion of privacy Nashville afforded. Folks might look twice when Nicole Kidman wandered into Starbucks with Keith Urban and Sunday Rose, but they’d never do anything more than smile politely and say good morning. It just wouldn’t be polite to hit them up for an autograph when they were just trying to fuel up on caffeine.

  He ushered her inside. “You must be Colleen Keck. I’m Detective Ross. Sorry about all this.”

  “You and me both, Detective. Have you heard anything?”

  Ross closed the door behind them and gestured for her to follow him. “No, nothing yet. We all just got here. The LT is on the phone to some of her contacts. I think she’s expecting you to brief us, can you do that?”

  “I can. Is there someplace I could lay Flynn down? I’m not sure I want him hearing this.”

  “Yeah, we can finagle something. I’ll ask one of the shift detectives to keep an eye on him and page me if he wakes up. They’re slow tonight. Will that work?”

  “You must be a father, Detective.”

  He smiled at her. “Nope. My mom was a reporter, and my dad worked the overnight shift. I got used to waking up in strange corners of the city. Always felt better if someone was around to tell me she’d be back in a second.”

  They came to the conference-room door. He took Flynn from her arms and made his way back out of the room.

  Taylor Jackson was on the other side of the room, sitting on what looked like a countertop, one long leg dangling beneath her, talking rapid-fire into a cell phone. She must have been sitting on the other foot, she looked like a very blond crane. Two other men were sitting at the table, flipping through files. One was cute, rangy with floppy brown hair, the other more obviously reserved, with blond hair graying at the temples. She mentally dubbed them Frick and Frack. Wondered where the hot guy had gone with her kid. Wondered why she was thinking that.

  Colleen took a couple of deep breaths. It was all going to be all right.

  Jackson was wrapping up her phone call now. She flipped the cell shut, stowed it in her pocket, and crossed the room to Colleen. She didn’t smile, exactly, but her face was welcoming.

  “Hell of a thing,” she said, sticking out her hand to shake. Colleen took it, grateful for the warmth.

  “Good to see you again, Lieutenant.”

  “Take off your coat, have a seat. Detective Ross took care of you?”

  “Yes, thanks. He’s just put Flynn down for me. I’m sure he’ll be back in a moment.”

  Jackson cocked her head and looked at her, but said nothing. Damn. She must have sounded a bit possessive of Detective Ross. Strange, she was feeling possessive of the man. She’d only met him five minutes before for God’s sake. Hormones. Her hormones must be in gear. It was probably getting close to her time; she always got a little horny when nature was about to make a visit.

  God, Colleen, get your head in the game. She was getting punchy. No sleep plus a bucketful of stress and a healthy dose of fear did that to a girl. She tried to redeem herself by resorting to her most professional tone.

  “So, Lieutenant, what do you have?”

  Jackson turned and went to the table, sitting across from Colleen. “Trouble. A boatload of it. I need you to tell me everything you know about the murders.”

  “Where should I start?”

  “How about telling us where you got the information about the killings in San Francisco in the first place?”

  Colleen shook her head. “I can’t do that. I have sources. If I burn them, they’ll never speak to me again. I can’t give you their information. I’m sorry.”

  Jackson stared at her, then sighed. “Okay, we’ll come back to that. Why don’t you just start at the beginning and share what you’re comfortable with?”

  Colleen could tell the woman was trying hard not to be adversarial, but there was the tiniest bit of anger in the soft words. She didn’t blame her—of course Jackson would want the names of the sources. But Colleen had no intention of burning anyone if she could avoid it.

  “I knew there was something up when I got a couple of emails from San Francisco telling me there had been a murder that looked like the Zodiac. You have to remember, this happens a lot. People love to imitate him, and there are false alarms all the time. But something felt different about this. Right afterward, emails came in from New York and Boston. At first I thought it was some kind of joke, but it felt wrong. So I started digging. The reports I was getting were right on. I double-sourced everything. Two nights ago, three different cities were struck by copycat killers. They imitated the Boston Strangler, Son of Sam and the Zodiac. Yesterday morning, you had a fiasco in Nags Head, North Carolina, that I’m convinced was related.”

  “You’re convinced. No one in the law enforcement community was drawing correlations between these four sets of murders, but you, a semi-pro true-crime blogger, immediately recognized a pattern. So you went off half-cocked and posted your theories on the blog, thus drawing the ire of some creep who decided to spook you.”

  Colleen raised her chin a fraction. She refused to be condescended to. When Jackson said it aloud, she had to admit, it sounded absurd. But she knew she was right. Knew it in her heart.

  “Say what you will, but I was right. And that’s what I do, Lieutenant. I run a crime blog. Sometimes the criminals I’m discussing read that blog. It’s a free world. But here’s the important thing—I help the police solve cases all over the country. People have an inherent mistrust of the police, of the system. They think if they tell the truth, or rat on a friend, the police will somehow sweep them into the case. I provide a forum for people to share tips, insight and information with law enforcement anonymously. I’m very good at drawing conclu
sions. I’m self-trained to some extent, but please don’t forget, I worked the crime beat for years and I was married to a cop. A good cop. Tommy taught me everything he knew. And you were one of the ones who taught him.”

  Jackson gave Colleen a half smile. “Touché.”

  “Please don’t blame me for all of this. All I’ve done is report the facts as I’ve seen them. Just like any good investigator would.”

  Jackson ran her hands through her hair. Colleen was jealous, because the more rumpled it got, the sexier it looked. Her own hair would do nothing of the sort; when it was mussed up, it just looked like she’d slept on it for days.

  Jackson put her hair into a fluffy ponytail, then started playing with a ballpoint pen. “No one is faulting you, or blaming you, Colleen. I wish you had come to me before you shared your theories with the rest of the world, yes. But what’s done is done. We just want to know what’s going on, and why you and the Felon E blog are being used as the vehicle for these murders. We’ve confirmed that everyone that we know of who’s been killed was a participant on your blog. Did you issue some sort of challenge to them recently, a contest or something?”

  “Not that I know of. I went through my archives before I came down. I’ve done a couple of blogs on the Zodiac in the past, especially when they did the movie, but none on the Boston Strangler or Son of Sam. I haven’t ever run a contest, that’s not my kind of thing. As for a challenge, I don’t know what you mean.”

  “Could you have accused someone of something, or asked your readers to rally around a certain case or victim?”

  Had she? She racked her brain and came up with nothing. She shook her head mutely.

  “Then why would he decide to use your blog in particular, of all the ones that are out there in the world? Why you, Colleen?”

  Why me indeed. A deranged fan? A killer she’d helped put away who’d gotten parole?

  “I can’t tell you that. I have no idea why. All I know is what I reported, and the fact that my commenters are dying because of it.”

  “Not because of your story, I don’t think. Your blog’s been in play for a while. I wonder if you simply stumbled across something you weren’t supposed to.”

  “Well, yesterday’s hacking certainly left no doubt that whoever is responsible is aware of the blog, at the very least. There must have been a hundred comments that said, ‘I know who you are.’ And no one, no one, knows who I am.”

  “Someone obviously does. Your contacts know who you are, don’t they? Or is everything you do anonymous?”

  Jackson had a disconcerting way of leaning forward as she talked, right into Colleen’s personal space. It was a good, solid interrogation technique: make the victim feel like they mattered, that you were hanging on every word. Colleen got the sense that very little passed by Taylor Jackson. She paid attention to every word out of Colleen’s mouth, but was reading the context, her body language, the unspoken as much as the spoken. Tommy had said she was one hell of an investigator. Colleen understood how that could be the case—she was able to pry information out of the littlest details.

  “Everything I do is supposed to be anonymous. I protect my identity as much as possible, especially from my contacts. They call me Felony. It’s a private joke—”

  “Yeah, on the blog’s name. I get it. So if they don’t know who you are, how do you get them to talk?”

  “Any way that I can. I give them a sympathetic ear, mostly. Some want money. I’m willing to donate a little bit to the cause, twenty here, twenty there. I won’t pay up front for a scoop. They have to be willing to share without recompense, I’ll only pad their paws after they give me verifiable information. Honestly, you’d be surprised at how many people want to help for free, simply to see the right thing done.”

  “How many people do you have in Metro?”

  Colleen almost laughed. Almost. Jackson’s face had hardened; she didn’t like this. Colleen couldn’t blame her. The idea of her whole department leaking like a sieve might be a difficult point to swallow.

  “I don’t have anyone in this office, if that’s what you’re asking, Lieutenant. That’s as far as I’m willing to go discussing my contacts. Right now, they aren’t relevant. What we need to be worrying about is the fact that the victim pool is my commenters.”

  “I don’t think anything is irrelevant, Colleen. We’ve already had a leak. One of the news stations in New York called here just a bit ago, asking questions. So first things first. Take down the blog,” Jackson said.

  Colleen stiffened in her seat. “No.”

  “Colleen. Be reasonable. You’re putting your readers at risk every moment they’re still in play. They count on you for entertainment, for news. Let them know they can count on you to keep them safe, too.”

  “I won’t do it. I refuse to be chased off because some lunatic has it in for me.”

  “Has it in for you? It’s your commenters he’s killing. Your livelihood. Without the fans, would your blog be anything? Of course not. Really, Colleen. Listen very carefully. You’re playing with fire. You’ve got too much to lose. This man will stop at nothing to get what he wants. You are disposable. You don’t matter to him. You’re a means to an end, and he will use you then kill you when you’re no longer necessary to his little games. In the meantime, a lot of innocent people are going to be caught in the crossfire. I’m telling you, we need to take the blog down.”

  “No. Absolutely not. I won’t be bullied into submission by a lunatic, or by the police. If I take it down, it will send a clear signal to everyone in this industry that they can be scared out of business. I have to stand up for all of us.”

  Jackson paused for a moment, then threw up her hands. “Fine. I’m sorry you feel that way. I suppose we’ll just have to take it down for you.”

  Colleen rose from her chair. Fury coursed through her. “Don’t you even think about—”

  “It’s already done.” Jackson nodded to the door, where the handsome Detective Ross stood, a small frown on his face. “How—”

  “Detective Ross is one of the finest forensic detectives in the country. He’s taken the site down, set in motion a system to contact your commenters and alert them to look after their safety.”

  “You can’t do that. It’s illegal. Client confidentiality.”

  “Once they leave a comment in the ether, it’s public domain.”

  “No, no, no. It’s not. It’s a private domain. They have to register for the site. It’s only open to commenters who have opted to give me their information, and those are the only ones who can participate in the comments. I have a strict privacy clause in place, drawn up by an intellectual-property-rights attorney, that they must agree to, not to mention the rights of the hosting company and the content management system I use. There is an expectation of privacy by joining my group. You can’t contact them without my permission, or a warrant.”

  Jackson got right in her face. “Please. Give me a break, Colleen. It’s just a blog. And if it’s that private, the killer is on that list of people. We need those names.”

  Colleen started to sputter, but Jackson held up a hand. “Don’t bother getting outraged. You’re lucky we aren’t charging you with obstruction. We need to be serious for a moment. Sit back down, take a deep breath, relax and start talking. You came to me for help, remember? Quit wasting my time if you don’t have anything to add to the discussion besides bullshit.”

  Colleen stayed on her feet. “You’re a bitch.”

  Jackson laughed, short and knowing, then grew serious. “Maybe I am. But I’m much more worried about saving lives than us being girlfriends. Okay? Can we stop playing around and get down to business? People are dying, Colleen. You, and your son, are in grave danger. If you won’t do it for me, think of Flynn. Think about what Tommy would want you to do.”

  Colleen was defeated. She recognized the feeling. She’d just been outplayed. She didn’t like it, but she had to respect the gamesmanship. For Jackson to use Colleen’s dead husband and
her living child against her was low, but it had served its purpose. She tamped down her own anger, sat back at the table and pulled a notebook from her bag. Flipped it open. Started to read aloud. Enjoyed the look of pure shock on the lieutenant’s face as she started reading off the victims’ names and her website numbers, and the Pretender’s victim pool grew exponentially larger.

  Thirty-Three

  Taylor left Colleen in the conference room alternately vocalizing her anger with Taylor and casting coquettish glances at Lincoln. She found a quiet corner at the end of the hallway. The industrial fluorescents were over-bright. Or maybe she was overtired. She glanced at her TAG Heuer watch, it was nearly morning. The interview had taken almost an hour, with Colleen fighting her every step of the way. She had enough information to go forward, but something was missing. Specifically, why Colleen had been targeted in the first place. There were plenty of true-crime blogs on the web. Even a couple of other national sites that were run out of Nashville, according to Colleen. So why her? There was something missing, a piece they were overlooking, but damn if she could see what that was.

  Taylor leaned back against the wall and closed her eyes. What kind of game was Ewan Copeland playing? Was he responsible for the murders in New York, San Francisco and Boston? There was no way he could possibly be in all three places at once—he could have committed one of the series, but not all three, on two separate coasts. There was only one conclusion: he’d finally actualized his training from the Snow White Killer and recruited a group of apprentices to work alongside him, even going so far as to bring his own sister into the mix. The thought sent chills to her very marrow.