Taker of Lives: A Gripping Crime Thriller

by Leslie Wolfe

  You don’t understand anything about me and what I’m doing, now, do you? You still don’t see it. I desperately tried to show you the shallowness of that carefully designed wrapper that constitutes the public image of your idols and demonstrate to you that nothing’s left once that wrapper is torn, soiled, and dragged through the mud. Yet, you didn’t see any of that. Reading your comments was illuminating from that perspective. Instead of becoming aware of your beloved stars’ superficiality, you’ve grown sympathetic to their ordeals and completely missed the point I was trying to make.

  That hurt, you know, and I spent precious time wondering what would rattle you enough to make you see the prejudiced ways of casting fame and granting success in our society. However, you rallied in the millions, attracted to what spoke to your primal instincts: the lure of depravity, of corrupted values and degenerate sex. That’s what you want, don’t you? Be brave and admit it, safely, to yourself only and to me, by casting your discreet vote from behind a proxy firewall.

  While you squirm, figuring yourself out, I’m going through my own personal brand of disquietude.

  I took a life. I pushed that ketamine plunger all the way; seconds later, she was gone.

  And I felt nothing.

  No release, no joy, no exhilaration, no vindication. I felt absolutely nothing, as I felt for her pulse and found nothing.

  She felt absolutely nothing, as she slipped into oblivion from her deep, dreamless sleep.

  She and I both were robbed of something critical.

  I’ll explain.

  For Deanna, the ending came in an optimal way. After a life of luxury and little meaning, of self-indulgence and endless adulation from the masses, she died in her slumber, not understanding why, not comprehending what was going on with her, not realizing how she’d wasted her life and millions of others’. Just as her life had been, protected by whatever unknown yet fiercely powerful goddess of unadulterated, perpetual good luck, her death was ideal.

  For me, her death wasn’t liberating. Don’t be fooled by my ice-cold mannerism and the ability to control myself; underneath the surface I am screaming with rage for the life I should’ve had, for the doors that never opened for me, no matter how hard I tried, when for them those doors didn’t even exist. For a fleeting moment, I stopped obsessing over having the wrong gender, the wrong body, or the wrong hair color to attain success, and I pushed that plunger, hoping I’d feel vindicated, but she died too soon, without any turmoil, without agonizing fear written in her eyes, without screams that would resound forever in my mind and ease my own personal brand of pain.

  Well, that’s about to change.

  33

  A Promise

  “I can’t catch the Taker of Lives if I can’t bring myself to think like he does,” Tess said, almost shouting, although Fradella had done nothing to deserve it. He’d just asked if she had any new ideas, but her internal turmoil and self-doubt got the best of her and spilled over in the frustration undertones and the elevated pitch. After all that time, they still had nothing, or almost nothing.

  She stopped talking and stared straight ahead at the busy highway, calling on her reasoning to take charge. Once more, she went over what she knew about the unsub, and what she didn’t. The profile was incomplete, and she knew better than to leave it like that; after Deanna’s death, she had enough information to release a profile, although they still missed an important piece of the puzzle: access. The Taker of Lives moved freely inside the victims’ homes, as if he belonged, yet those families had no one in common that the investigators could find: no friends, relatives, or boyfriends; no vendors, no schools, and no patterns of behavior. They didn’t eat at the same restaurants or attend the same churches. No one recalled a visitor the night of the attack. It was as if the unsub didn’t exist.

  Doc Rizza had explained that Rohypnol, especially synergized by sevoflurane, or most anesthetics for that matter, would be responsible for a drug-induced amnesia, executed flawlessly by someone who knew their way around a drugstore. Maybe the unsub was a medical professional; he definitely had access to schedule 1 controlled substances.

  There it was, that damn word again: access.

  “You’ll figure it out,” Fradella said in a calm voice, as he took the highway exit.

  She shot him a quick glance, grateful for his vote of confidence, a confidence she wasn’t feeling. She wasn’t used to being uncertain, and that uncertainty made her angry. The Taker of Lives was still ahead of them, leading at an advantage, still pulling the strings, still taking lives, and she couldn’t let that happen anymore.

  She took a deep breath and closed her eyes for a moment. She knew what she had to do, and normally she wouldn’t think twice, forging ahead with little thought given to what could go wrong, because normally she was sure of herself, an experienced profiler with an envied 100 percent success rate in solving cases. However, this unsub was a far cry from normal, even by serial killer standards, and she couldn’t afford to make the tiniest mistake. Not when lives were at stake.

  With a long sigh, she acknowledged she needed help. She grabbed her phone and typed a quick message to Bill.

  “Ready to finalize the profile,” she said in the message. “Are you available to assist?”

  Just as Fradella pulled in at the curb in front of Kurt Briggs’ condo, a chime announced Bill’s reply.

  “Call when you get started,” Bill’s text read, short and to the point.

  They took a high-speed elevator to the twenty-first floor. It seemed eerily familiar, down to the discreet, pine-scented air freshener, and, for a split second, she wondered if she’d been in that building before.

  “It’s déjà vu,” Fradella said. “It’s just like Pat Gallagher’s building. These hot shots, they all live the same.”

  Kurt Briggs had the same athletic, self-assured demeanor they’d seen in Gallagher, but the similarities stopped there. Kurt was visibly devastated by the loss of his girlfriend. He led them into a vast living room that he’d converted into an office, equipped with a huge desk that held a computer and eight monitors arranged in two stacked rows of four, all dark, powered off. On the wall behind the desk, clocks with labels neatly printed underneath showed the time in London, Tokyo, and Shanghai. But Kurt didn’t care about any of that. Unshaven, for a few days at least, still in pajama bottoms and a crumpled T-shirt at almost eleven in the morning, he didn’t seem to care about anything anymore. The apartment was shrouded in darkness, not a single ray of sunlight making it through the heavy draperies, and the air was stale, reeking of metabolized alcohol.

  Kurt examined Tess’s badge for a long moment but didn’t ask any questions. Instead, he sat at his desk and powered up his computer. The monitors came to life, and, within a minute or two, started displaying charts and graphs of all sorts.

  “What can I do for you, Agent, Detective? The other cops have come and gone.”

  “I’m very sorry for your loss, Mr. Briggs,” Tess replied.

  He nodded without turning his head away from the browser window he’d opened. Fradella approached slowly, apparently just aimlessly wondering, but squinting a little when he read what Kurt was searching for. Then Tess saw his brow lift, as he shot her a concerned glance. What the hell was Kurt doing?

  “I’m hoping you could help us shed some light over the people close to the Harpers,” Tess said.

  “Have you noticed anyone stalking you two, or has Deanna mentioned anyone?” Fradella asked.

  “Stalking us? No.”

  “Perhaps one of Deanna’s fans got carried away?” he insisted.

  “No, she never mentioned anyone. All her fans post messages online, and those postings are all over the place, different shades of weird, but no one stands out.”

  “How about her family? Was everything all right there?” Tess asked, not very convinced the direction was worth pursuing. Her question was intended to jog his memory, to make him go through an inventory of recent events and experiences and uncover a det
ail that could prove relevant.

  “So, you’re a profiler, huh?” Kurt replied instead, while one of the monitors displayed Tess’s biography. “Is that stuff real? Or it only works in movies?”

  Yeah, he’s aggressive all right, Tess thought, remembering what Mrs. Harper had said about him, but that didn’t make him a killer. In his line of work, people were routinely assertive, driven, and very smart. The decisions they made each day relied on facts and data, and the ability to draw the right conclusions quickly, without emotion or hesitation.

  “It works,” she replied, curious to see what other search he was conducting now. He typed quickly, and the search result displayed on the screen made Fradella look away from the screen and plunge his hands in his pockets. That wasn’t a good sign.

  “Really? Why don’t you profile me?” Kurt asked, and turned around to face her, while behind him an interface was loading something. She couldn’t see what it was; she only saw a status bar progressing quickly.

  She smiled, weighing the challenge and holding his scrutinizing gaze. Maybe he needed some convincing before he’d be willing to collaborate.

  “Sure, why not,” she replied, then took a few seconds to observe the details in Kurt’s physical aspect, demeanor, and surroundings.

  He crossed his arms at his chest and leaned back in his seat. Behind him, the status bar finished running its course and shifted into an arrow symbol, the type displayed on streaming videos.

  “You were an only child, and you lost your father at a young age,” Tess said, “not older than seven. You weren’t an active child; you chose computers over any form of physical activity but ended up in good shape because you learned to combine the two for optimal performance. You care about performance more than anything else in your work. If it’s worth doing, then it’s worth doing fast and right.”

  He nodded a little sideways, and made a gesture with his hand, encouraging her to continue.

  “You wear white shirts and charcoal suits but prefer shorts and a T-shirt when you don’t have to dress up. You’re a bold risk-taker, but always set aside a portion of your gains and invest in a mutual fund or hedge fund, as if making sure you’re not overly confident in your abilities. A risk-taker, but one who’s smart enough to use a safety net.”

  “You checked my financials?” he reacted, visibly annoyed.

  “No, we didn’t,” she replied. “You asked me to profile you, and I did.”

  “Then how the hell did you know what I do with my capital gains?”

  She smiled politely but didn’t answer. This wasn’t the time or the place to train Kurt Briggs in the fundamentals of psychological profiling.

  “Better yet, why is an FBI profiler looking into Deanna’s death?”

  She drew closer to the monitors, enough to see what was displayed on the screen. He’d conducted a search for Deanna by name, and the video that was loaded on the screen, ready for viewing, bore the mark of the killer. Tess recognized the white, cursive font on black, although blurred under the video controls, that read Taker of Lives. It was the same video she and the team had watched a few hours earlier.

  She took a deep breath and decided to trust him with more information than she’d normally be willing to share with a witness or a family member.

  “The man who murdered your fiancée recorded the assault and streamed it on the internet. Unfortunately, Deanna wasn’t his first victim.”

  Blood drained from his face and his jaw slacked. As if hypnotized, he turned slowly to the computer screen and stared at the video, not daring to click the play arrow.

  “You’re saying…”

  She nodded quietly, then gave him a few moments to process the information.

  “This man entered the house, managed to drug both Deanna and her mother, then felt comfortable enough to record video for more than an hour before, um, the recording ends.”

  “What do you need from me?” he asked in a low voice, grinding the words between his clenched teeth.

  “Tell me who would’ve had the access. Who visited with them?”

  He shrugged, staring at the carpet, confused. “No one… She would’ve told me if anyone was visiting that night. She never had friends over that late. Deanna and I talked at about ten and she was fine. I don’t—”

  He looked at her, any intensity gone from his eyes; all that was left were sadness and powerlessness. The mark of the Taker of Lives; wherever he went, those were the only things left in his wake: powerlessness and devastation.

  “How does one take down such—” he started to say but couldn’t bring himself to finish the phrase. Instead, he gestured toward the monitor.

  “We can put you in contact with the Cybercrime Unit, and they might be able to assist,” Tess replied, but the tone of her voice betrayed her lack of confidence.

  “I don’t know how I’m going to watch this,” he said, thrusting his chin forward with determination, “but I will. Maybe I’ll recognize him, or something.”

  Tess offered her business card and he took it, staring at it for a long moment.

  “One more thing,” he said with a sad smile, “how did you know I proposed to Deanna? No one else knew but us.”

  She pointed at a small shopping bag bearing the logo of Barclay’s Jewelers, folded neatly on a nearby bookcase shelf.

  “I’m really sorry for your loss,” she repeated, as she walked toward the exit.

  “Catch the son of a bitch,” he said, then sprung to his feet and caught up to her just as she opened the front door. There was an intensity in his voice, an urgency she could understand better than anyone. “Promise me you’ll catch that sick bastard and make him pay.”

  She shook Kurt’s hand and replied, “I promise.”

  34

  The Profile

  Tortilla chips lent a slightly rancid smell to the conference room, but neither Tess nor Fradella seemed to mind. She grabbed a few and munched, not taking her attention from the Harper crime scene photos. She had to admit that photos were still the best way to examine a crime scene after the fact. Video conveyed far more emotion, and its dynamic, fleeting nature led to overseen details, because video focuses the viewer’s attention on the big picture, on the message, the action, and the sentiment it shows, not on minutia that could make or break a case.

  Why did the unsub bring ammonia, when he never intended to wake her up? Why did he have a gun? Its handle was indeed visible in the duffel bag tucked against the wall. Was he prepared to shoot anyone who might’ve surprised him? Or had he planned to shoot Deanna instead?

  More important, why didn’t he stream the actual murder? If he was such a desperate fame seeker, why didn’t he release the most explosive part of the video? Something told Tess he’d recorded that part, only he chose not to release it. Just like with the photos he took of Christina and Estelle, Tess suspected he’d kept a few as private keepsakes of his achievement. Maybe the missing scene from the video recording was the same thing: a trophy from his first murder.

  And finally, how does one prevent something that had already happened? She took a deep breath and cleared her mind of the last remnants of frustration. The answer came within seconds: one didn’t. This unsub was no different than those she’d caught before, whose victims were found buried in the forest or drowned in the ocean. Just like those bodies were discovered at any given time after their deaths, the Taker’s victims were exposed after a while, buried in the myriad pages of online content that compose cyberspace. The Taker controlled the moment they were found just as other serial killers before him controlled when their victims were discovered. Some weighed down their bodies with boulders, hoping they’d never again rise from the bottom of the sea. Others traveled to the darkest corners of the Everglades, where wild life was the best forensic countermeasure a murderer could hope for. Still they were found, and still she’d caught those killers and put them where they belonged: sometimes in the ground, other times on death row or behind bars for the rest of their despicable lives.
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  She took one last look at the Harper crime scene photos, then closed the file folder, arranging its content neatly. She was ready; she knew exactly what the Taker was and how to catch him.

  She smiled, a crooked grin that caught Fradella’s attention.

  “Glad to see the Tess Winnett I used to know is back,” he said, shooting her a quick glance over his laptop screen.

  “What are you up to?” she asked, taking another crunchy bite from a tortilla chip.

  “Donovan and I divided and conquered the searches for social media anomalies and commonalities. He has this amazing piece of software that quantifies the emotional state of the person posting a comment. I’m extracting all those profiles, while he’s looking for any other victims we might not know about.”

  “Got anything?”

  “Nothing yet. Since the beginning of the year, we’ve had one thousand, two hundred, and forty-two violent deaths in Florida, but when he applied the filters, there’s no match. Not even one. Maybe he hasn’t killed anyone else since Deanna, but Donovan isn’t buying it.”

  “Smart Donovan,” Tess replied. “I’m not buying it either. The Taker is escalating; no way he just stopped ten days ago.” She drank thirstily all the water she had left in a small bottle of Dasani, then sent it flying across the room, straight into the trash can. “Ready for the profile?”

  “Sure,” he replied, and the look of excitement in his eyes made her smile. She liked his eagerness to learn, to develop his skills, to become a better crime fighter.

  She dialed Bill’s number, and he picked up immediately. “Just give me a second, let me get settled in my office,” he said, and she could hear him walking quickly through a long corridor filled with loud people chatting. Then she heard a door close and the background noise vanished.

  “Okay, I’m set,” he said. “You might want to know Donovan set me up with a camera view of your whiteboard.”