Taker of Lives: A Gripping Crime Thriller

by Leslie Wolfe

  “The alternative is stalking,” Fradella offered. “If he’s not a close relationship, he would’ve stalked the victim for a while.”

  She wrote Stalker in the right column.

  “Why at night?” Michowsky asked. “Did he have to do this at night? The Bartletts are gone all day.”

  “Maybe Christina was gone too? Most of the time?” Fradella offered.

  “Maybe, or access was easier, safer without neighbors and gardeners and delivery drivers dropping by,” Tess replied. “This speaks to the repeat offender scenario.”

  “I think it speaks more to the drugs he used,” Michowsky said. “She was definitely subdued with drugs, right? If he assaulted her at night, early night like we know it happened, the victim had enough time to sleep it off undetected. Probably that’s why she had no idea she’d been assaulted.”

  “Right,” Tess replied. “Otherwise, if either of the Bartletts would’ve found her sleeping like a log in the middle of the day, they would’ve instantly known something was off. Again, speaks to the repeat offender scenario.”

  “That scenario is gaining steam,” Fradella commented, “but the crime feels personal. I don’t know how to turn that into anything useful though.”

  She wrote it down. “You don’t need to. It feels personal to me too, but I’m getting the repeat offender vibe at the same time. Oftentimes, a serial offender’s first victim is a personal acquaintance.”

  The room fell silent for a while, and Tess took a few steps to the right.

  “I meant to ask,” Fradella said, “what do you mean by desired outcome?”

  “In a murder, we know what the killer intended; to take a life. In this situation, we’re not sure, at least not yet.”

  Michowsky frowned. “This is assault, followed by cyberbullying, harassment, violation of privacy. What am I missing?”

  “What if he wants them dead?” Tess asked. “Or, say, punished for their fame, which he might perceive as arrogant or undeserved.”

  “Hence the title of this section,” Fradella said. “Desired outcome. But how will we know?”

  Tess pressed her lips together for a brief moment. There was no easy answer to that question. “We can only speculate, but once we figure that out, we’ll know what his MO is, and what his signature looks like, what actions he took, in addition to those required for the perpetration of the actual crime. His ritual, if you prefer. The signature gives a profiler the most insight into an unsub’s psychology. Right now, we don’t know where that line is drawn.”

  “What are our options?” Michowsky asked, ruffling his eyebrows even more.

  She took a sip of tea from a freshly brewed cup bearing the insignia of the Palm Beach County Sheriff’s Office. A small piece had been chipped away from the mug’s lip, and she turned the mug to avoid that section.

  “I’d say assault is one potential desired outcome. In this scenario, the unsub wanted the victim subdued, naked, and powerless. Like with any form of sexual assault, this is about power. He took photos as keepsakes from his assault, as collectibles, and shared them with the world to show everyone how powerful he is.”

  “Why wasn’t there penetration?” Fradella asked, and Tess could’ve sworn he blushed a little. “Doc Rizza said she wasn’t raped.”

  “Excellent question,” Tess replied. “Impotence could answer that and might also be his motivation for the crime. Maybe he can’t be around women anymore, because he knows he can’t perform.”

  “Or maybe he’s working up his courage,” Michowsky added. “This unsub is definitely smart, and sexual assault is a forensic deathtrap.”

  She nodded. “Yeah, that could work,” she said, then added some notes on the whiteboard. The words Power, Impotence with a question mark, Forensics and another question mark. “The second option is Harassment,” she said, writing the word in block letters. “If his intended outcome was to harass Christina, the assault was just a means to an end. He needed the compromising photos and did whatever he had to do to get them.”

  “It aligns better with the personal vendetta scenario,” Fradella said. “Christina wasn’t harmed physically in any way. Well, other than drugged.”

  “Correct. Then a third possibility is pain. He wanted her to live a life of shame, of suffering, to lose the life she’d made for herself, to be forced into hiding and never see daylight again. That also aligns with personal vendetta.”

  “You have a fourth potential outcome?” Michowsky asked, a little incredulous.

  “Yes, and that’s murder. Like I said before, he could want them dead, but not by his own hand. He delivers a devastating blow, then waits and watches until they die.”

  Michowsky whistled. “It’s far-fetched, don’t you think?”

  “For someone who gets off on people’s pain? No, it’s not,” she replied. “He might watch them, waiting for their despair to run its course. He might continue to stalk them after the assault has happened, to be close to them, to see them agonizing.” She took another sip of tea, now cold. “It’s the ultimate power trip. No one has more power over something than the one who can destroy it.”

  “Where are you getting all this from?” Michowsky asked. “All these theories?”

  She exhaled sharply. “From years and years of staring into the abyss, Gary.”

  Fradella chuckled quietly. “Not sure if you’ve noticed, but you started talking about them, when we only have one victim.”

  Tess shook her head gently, disappointed with her own Freudian slip. “Just a persistent, annoying gut feeling, that’s all.”

  11

  Nickname

  Tess checked the time, then turned toward the two detectives. It wasn’t that late yet, only 9:17PM, and she wanted to interview Christina’s friend, Santiago Flores, before the end of the day. The personal vendetta scenario still carried a lot of weight, mostly because of access to the victim’s home, and that typically meant someone close to the victim had been invited inside the home, rather than finding a smart way to break in, unseen and undetected by a sophisticated security system.

  “Santiago Flores,” she said, “what do we know about him?”

  “Clean record, no priors,” Fradella announced, going through various screens on the laptop. “IRS has him reporting revenue from various 1099s, but I recognize a few names. I see GQ, InStyle, Vogue, even Esquire. He’s doing okay; he pulled in almost five hundred large ones last year.”

  “Let’s pay Mr. Flores a visit, shall we?” she invited, already headed out the door.

  They caught up with her by the time she reached Michowsky’s Explorer. He unlocked the doors, and she hopped onto the passenger seat, while Fradella took the back seat.

  “Where’s your car?” she asked Fradella. “Did you leave it at the Bartlett residence?”

  “One of the CSU techies drove it back here,” he replied, somewhat surprised. “I didn’t think you noticed.”

  She smiled. Of course, she noticed such things. Up until two hours ago, she still hoped they’d be able to make their dinner reservations, but that had dropped off the calendar for the foreseeable future.

  Not waiting for Michowsky to start the engine, she dialed Donovan on speaker.

  “Hey, D,” she said, as soon as he picked up. “Still at it?”

  “Yeah, and I’ve got bad news too, although we were kind of expecting it.”

  “Shoot.”

  “An extended portion of the Bartlett home video surveillance data is missing. The deleted chunk starts sometime on April 9 and ends on April 24.”

  “How the hell did he manage that?”

  A moment of silence ensued, the only thing coming across being a frustrated breath of air that Donovan let out between his teeth.

  “I’d have to look at the system settings, maybe talk to one of the system experts. I was hoping he’d erased the data up until the moment he left the home and we might still catch a glimpse of him leaving the premises, because this is digital, you know. It’s not like you remove th
e VHS tape from the system and it stops recording until someone notices.”

  “Would you like to venture an educated guess?” she asked, thinking about Doc Rizza for a moment, and how reluctant the coroner was in making any assumptions. Apparently, people who work with measurable data don’t like to speculate much. Just like Doc, Donovan needed some convincing before sharing some useful scenarios.

  “Based on the specs I’ve seen online,” he eventually said, “the system records information on one of four hard discs, cycling through them one by one. Each disc holds about two weeks’ worth of video; all four discs combined cover about two months of surveillance on multiple channels. My guess is he did something to damage the disc that was in use at the time, without resetting the system or generating an error that would’ve caused it to switch to the next available disc.”

  “How the hell did he pull that off?” Michowsky intervened, sounding irritated. Tess threw a quick glance at him, surprised by his emotional outburst.

  “There’s no way of knowing, not without talking to the manufacturer tomorrow morning,” he replied. “But if I were to do it, I’d probably use a strong magnet, or an EM field generator. A more advanced user would be able to download a virus that deletes every bit of information that is stored on that hard disc, moments after it’s recorded.”

  “A virus? Jeez,” Michowsky reacted, still angry for some reason.

  “What kind of skill level are we talking about, D?” Tess asked.

  “Either relatively high, or at least someone smart enough to know what to buy from the street. Keep in mind, the alarm didn’t go off to begin with. That part was not tampered with.”

  “Yeah, I know. The Bartletts said they never arm it when one of them is out.”

  “Then, you know what that means, right?”

  “Yeah, I know what that means. The unsub knew precisely what to expect at the Bartlett residence. No forced entry means Christina invited him in. He is someone she knew well.” She paused for a moment; she was about to ask Donovan to work an impossible miracle for her, something so challenging she didn’t know if it was even possible, but it was worth a shot to try. “D, I need you to search for other victims. I know this sounds—”

  “Crazy? Like you’ve completely lost you mind?” he reacted, not unlike she’d expected. “What the hell am I supposed to look for? Nude photos with names attached? I’ll be buried in internet filth for months to come, and still have nothing to show for it.”

  “Let’s think through this,” she pleaded. “You know the drill. Establish search goal, then define parameters, one by one.”

  “This is insane, Winnett, and you know it.”

  “Parameters, Donovan, please.”

  She could visualize him pushing away from his desk, disheartened, almost bitter, then gulping some of that weird water he always had a hefty supply handy in a transparent travel mug.

  “What’s in that water of yours, D? I always wanted to ask.”

  “Jeez, Winnett, how the hell did you know I was drinking that right now? You’re scary.”

  She didn’t react in any way, giving him time to stop fighting her idea. Fradella grinned widely, visibly entertained by their exchange.

  “It’s lemon with rind, a few mint leaves, and a slice of cucumber,” he eventually said, seemingly back to being calm, composed.

  “Sounds tasty,” she replied. “Parameters?”

  “Um, yeah. Geography?”

  “South Florida for now.”

  “Age, gender, race?”

  “Let’s go with sixteen to thirty years of age, female, Caucasian.”

  “What are you basing these criteria on, Winnett?” Donovan asked, his voice still riddled with doubt.

  “This search only makes sense if the unsub is a serial offender, a sexual predator. They rarely cross gender and race lines, and almost always choose either adult or child; never both.”

  “Okay, what else?”

  “Cross-reference with recent suicides or attempted suicides.”

  “Going back how long?”

  “Say, five years.”

  “Got it. It still comes back in the thousands.”

  “Can you cross-reference these names against nude photos posted online with names attached?”

  “Whoa… That would take some doing. I’d have to write a rather complex piece of code that would crawl the entire internet looking for images, then parse their names, then cross-reference with DIVS search results. It would take weeks. Image search by a parameter such as ‘nude photo’ is still in its infancy. Artificial intelligence can’t tell a cat from a naked woman, you know. Not yet.”

  She swallowed her frustration and forced herself to think of alternatives. “All right, then, let’s attempt to define another parameter: fame. This is what you do best, quantify the unquantifiable, right?”

  Fradella chuckled quietly. “I’d like to see that one done,” he said in a low voice, meant only for the three of them.

  “I bet you would,” Donovan replied coldly. “Why do you think your vic’s fame is relevant, Winnett? One data point doesn’t make a pattern.”

  “The unsub destroyed her life. He took her life and dragged it through the mud. I’m thinking there must be some rhyme or reason behind this. Her fame can’t be a coincidental factor. I’m willing to bet it was a factor, maybe even a trigger.”

  “Taker of Lives… I like that,” he said with a hint of amusement in his voice.

  Tess frowned but decided to refrain from scolding him. Pasting nicknames on unsubs was never helpful; it created stereotypes in everyone’s thinking.

  “So, look for famous people against the database results? We don’t capture fame anywhere in our systems, Winnett.”

  “No worries, I’ll give you a way in. What happens when famous people get in trouble, any kind of trouble?”

  “All the social media and the tabloids are all over it.”

  “Because the unsub wants it that way,” Tess replied. “I believe the initial press release is part of his signature, or even his MO, if his desired outcome is to harass and cause pain.”

  “Got it,” Donovan replied, then hung up.

  They drove in silence for a while, but then Tess decided to ask a question that had been at the forefront of her mind for a while.

  “Gary,” she said hesitantly, then cleared her throat. “I meant to ask you, is there anything wrong?”

  He shot her a quick glance, then turned his attention to the crowded highway. “Why do you ask?”

  “You seem to have something weighing on your mind lately, that’s all.”

  “I’m fine,” he said, a bit harsher than his usual tone, then he clenched his teeth.

  He wasn’t fine; that was obvious. Then Tess realized she should’ve probably asked him that question when Fradella wasn’t present. Michowsky might have something to say in private. A brief jolt of self-directed anger coursed through her veins. For someone so adept at psychology, she sometimes was an unbelievable klutz.

  “It’s this stupid technology,” Michowsky suddenly blurted. “I’ve been on the job for almost thirty years, and now I can’t even follow half the conversations. How the hell am I supposed to do my job, and be good at it? Maybe it’s time to call it quits.”

  “You think a Donovan can replace a Michowsky?” Tess asked calmly.

  “You bet he could,” he replied bitterly, “only the bosses are used to doing the job the old-fashioned way, hence I can still pay my mortgage. Don’t you see, we solve our cases from the conference room these days. From the damn computer. No more chasing perps, no more outsmarting scumbags in interrogation.”

  Tess shifted in her seat, folding her left leg underneath her. “Listen, no amount of database searches can replace a good cop’s gut.”

  He fell silent again, grinding his teeth. His lips moved, as if he were battling words, trying to keep them locked inside his mouth. “You’re just saying that to make me feel better,” he replied quietly. “No need to sugarcoat
it, Winnett.”

  “I’m not,” she replied. “If I were, Donovan would’ve been a field agent by now, and he’s not, no matter how much he wants it, and how many times he tried to get that promotion. He’s just not field material. You are. Fradella is too.”

  “I didn’t see what you saw,” Michowsky said. “With the Taker of Lives, I mean.”

  Ah, great… the nickname had stuck.

  “I’d’ve gone home,” he continued, his voice riddled with bitterness, “maybe interviewed a few people over the next days, just to satisfy that curiosity I still have, because all this technology? I don’t even know where to start with it.”

  “Maybe at first,” Tess replied. “Technology or not, you asked the right questions all along, and that’s the core of our job. Why did Christina kill herself? How were those photos taken? How did the unsub—well, you’d probably called him a perp—but either way, how did he gain access to secure premises? Then you would’ve found the answers. Technology is just a tool, one of many.”

  She looked at him, realizing how difficult it must’ve been for him, a seasoned detective only a few years away from retirement, to openly admit he felt inadequate. Somehow, that didn’t make him look weak in her eyes; quite the opposite. Detective Gary Michowsky had moral and intestinal fortitude, and he’d just earned more respect from her in those few minutes than in their entire history of solving cases together.

  “There isn’t a trace of doubt in my mind that you’re one of the best cops I’ve met,” she said, as he was pulling in at the curb in front of Santiago Flores’ condo high-rise. “Not a single trace.”

  12

  Me: Waiting

  I watch her sleep, and I wait.

  Her slumber is peaceful, undisturbed, and her breathing is quiet, measured, the steady rhythm of life: perpetual, natural, healing.

  I can stop that rhythm. I can make it go away so easily it’s deplorable, not worth mentioning. One needle prick, one push on the syringe piston, and the rise and fall of her breasts against the sheets will stop, to never resume again.