The Night Stalker jc-2

by James Swain

  “A classic serial killer,” Burrell said.

  “That’s right.”

  “If I run a background check on every restaurant employee in the area, would you take a look at them, and see if you could pick him out?”

  I stared at the waves crashing on the beach. My nose was throbbing, and I was exhausted to the point that I could hardly keep my eyes open.

  “Sure,” I said.

  Burrell leaned across the seat, and kissed me on the cheek. “Thanks, Jack.”

  Buster froze at the bottom of the stairwell leading to my room. I carried him upstairs, and laid him on the bed. Then I examined myself in the bathroom. My nose was turning purple, and had a nasty bump over the bridge. No more GQ covers for me.

  I went downstairs to the bar. Two teenage girls were dancing in front of the jukebox while the Dwarfs ogled them from their bar stools. The girls were both slurping Diet Cokes, and I spoke to Sonny.

  “They legal?” I asked.

  “Naw. Tried to pass off some fake IDs, but I made them,” Sonny said.

  “Why didn’t you throw them out?”

  “Because I’m horny.”

  I went upstairs and found my detective’s badge. The department had let me keep my badge after I’d quit. You could say it was one of the few decent things they’d done. I went downstairs and pulled the girls off the floor. Going outside, I made them stand in the pouring rain while I read them the riot act. By the time I was done, the makeup had washed off their faces, and they’d promised to stay out of bars until they were legal.

  “Spoilsport,” Sonny said when I returned.

  “You have any pain pills?” I asked.

  Sonny fed me some Advil. I drank coffee, and waited for them to kick in. It took awhile, but I finally started to feel normal.

  The local news came on. The lead story was about Jed’s capture, and showed him doing a perp walk outside the police station. The images faded into a blaring headline. WHAT WENT WRONG?

  On the screen a familiar face appeared. It was Ron Cheeks, wearing his best suit and a smug look on his face. The pills churned in my stomach, and I grabbed the remote off the bar. Cheeks’s voice came booming out of the TV.

  “Jed Grimes was our number one suspect from the start,” Cheeks said. “All the evidence pointed to him. He abducted his son, and we knew it.”

  “Why didn’t the police arrest him before now?” a female reporter asked.

  Cheeks did a slow burn. “I was going to. Unfortunately, a medical condition forced me off the case, and another detective took over.”

  “Who was that?”

  “Detective Candice Burrell.”

  “Is she to blame?”

  “Detective Burrell is a fine police officer, and in no way is responsible for what has happened with this investigation,” Cheeks replied.

  “Then who is?”

  “A consultant the police hired to work the case.”

  “A consultant?” the reporter asked.

  Cheeks raised his hands in mock surrender. “It wasn’t my idea.”

  “Can you tell us who this consultant was?”

  “It was a former detective named Jack Carpenter,” Cheeks said. “Carpenter was hired by the family to find the boy, then hired by the police department as well.”

  “So there was a conflict of interest,” the reporter said.

  “I would say so,” Cheeks said.

  “Do you blame Jack Carpenter for what went wrong?”

  “He let the case drag on, and now Sampson Grimes and his mother are missing. Yes, I blame him.”

  I looked for something to throw at the screen.

  “Temper, temper,” Sonny said.

  The interview ended. Sonny took the remote out of my hand and killed the picture.

  “How’s your nose?” he asked.

  “It’s starting to hurt again,” I said.

  Sonny fed me two more pills. I swallowed them while looking into the future. Cheeks was campaigning to get his old job back. Considering how badly the case had gone, it just might happen. I could not imagine a more cruel injustice, and punched the bar.

  I went outside and stood by the shoreline. The lightning made it dangerous, but I didn’t care. My cell phone rang, and I answered it hoping it was Burrell.

  “Carpenter here,” I said.

  “Mr. Carpenter, my name is Father Tom Kelly,” the caller said. “I’m a priest at Starke prison.”

  The wind was blowing in my face, and I moved inside the bar’s open doorway, and sat at the bottom of the stairwell.

  “Let me explain why I’m calling,” Father Kelly said. “I counsel death row inmates at the prison. One of those inmates is Abb Grimes. I was watching the news, and saw that Abb’s son, Jed, had been arrested for murdering his father’s lawyer, along with many other crimes. I called LeAnn Grimes, and she told me to call you.”

  “What can I do for you?” I said.

  “I wanted to tell you that I think Jed is innocent.”

  “You do?”

  “Yes. I was there when Jed was saved.”

  I thought back to the photograph of the elderly priest I’d seen in Jed’s album, and realized this was the same man.

  “Saved how?” I asked.

  “Let me tell you what happened. A year ago, Abb told me that he wanted to see Jed before he died. I called Jed, and arranged a meeting. Jed came to the prison, and the warden let us meet in a cell, and eat a meal. Abb had asked me to wear my prayer shawl, which was given to me when I became a priest.

  “When our meal was over, Abb held my prayer shawl, and told Jed he was ready to meet his maker. Abb asked Jed to hold the shawl, and forgive him for his sins. It was hard, but Jed did it. He forgave his father. Then we prayed.

  “God was with us that day. Abb invited God into that cell by accepting his sins, and Jed accepted God by holding the shawl, and telling Abb he forgave him. God was there. I felt his presence.

  “Jed changed after that. He started giving his wife money, and got shared custody of his son. The transformation was real. Jed’s not a killer.”

  The rain blew through the open doorway onto my face, and a crash of lightning shook the building.

  “I know, Father,” I said.

  “Then you must prove that Jed is innocent. Based upon what I saw on the news, the evidence against Jed is circumstantial. Yet, the police are making Jed out to be a criminal, and saying he was breaking laws before this happened. You need to set the record straight.”

  “How am I going to do that?”

  “There is a detective named Ron Cheeks. Start with him. Cheeks destroyed a piece of evidence in Abb’s case.”

  “You mean the missing slippers,” I said.

  “Yes, the slippers. Jed found out, and confronted Cheeks. Ever since, Cheeks has been on a mission to destroy Jed. He pulled Jed into the police station fifty times, and arrested him for crimes he never committed.”

  “You think Cheeks is trying to frame Jed?”

  “Yes,” the priest said.

  I rose from the stairwell. Something had happened twelve years ago that had caused Cheeks to destroy evidence, and he’d been covering it up ever since. If I could find out why, perhaps it would lead me to the person behind these crimes.

  “I’ll see what I can do,” I said.

  CHAPTER FIFTY-ONE

  W ith a promise from Sonny to watch Buster, I drove to Tugboat Louie’s. The pain in my nose had turned to a dull, aching throb, and I stopped by the kitchen to get an ice pack. One of the cooks made a joke about my battered state.

  “You should see the other guy,” I said.

  I went upstairs to my office with the ice pack pressed to my face. Lying on the blotter was the transcript from Abb Grimes’s trial, the word slippers highlighted in bright yellow in the evidence log. Piper Stone had also tried to discover the secret behind the slippers, and now she was dead. I needed to find out why.

  I booted up my computer, and went online. Using Google, I typed in Abb Gr
imes’s name, and hit Search. Within a matter of nanoseconds, the search engine had pulled up more than seventy-five thousand different websites where Abb’s name was referenced.

  I scrolled through the sites. I was looking for one that had the surveillance video of Abb carrying his bloodied victim in the Smart Buy parking lot. The video had become public domain, and was regularly shown on TV documentaries. I felt certain that one of the sites would have it.

  I found a site called ragingmaniacs. com, and clicked on it. The homepage was done in bloodred, and was painful to the eye. The site was devoted to famous serial killers, and included a collection of videos taken at their trials.

  I quickly found the video of Abb on the site. It was simply called “The Night Stalker.” I clicked on it, and Windows Media Player filled the screen.

  Like most videos shot through a surveillance camera, the quality was poor. The tape showed Abb walking around the parking lot of the Smart Buy with his female victim draped in his arms. His face was masked by shadows cast off by the building, and at times he appeared to be laughing, although it was hard to tell. He walked stiffly, his arms holding the dead girl like she’d fallen out of the sky.

  I put my face next to the screen, and studied Abb’s footwear. As the clip ended, Abb’s right shoe was briefly exposed. It was in the frame for a few seconds, then vanished. Just long enough for me to see something.

  I walked down the hall to Kumar’s office and knocked on the door. He’d recently bought a new computer, and the screen had a much better resolution than mine.

  “It’s open,” he called out.

  I poked my head in. Kumar sat at his desk, buried in spreadsheets.

  “Jack, Jack! What happened to your nose?” he asked.

  “I got kicked in the face,” I explained.

  “Does it hurt?”

  “Only when I breathe. How would you like to play detective for a little while?”

  Kumar swept the spreadsheets to the floor. “Yes!”

  “First, I need you to help me burn a DVD.”

  “I can do that. My five-year-old daughter showed me how to burn DVDs the other night. What is it you wish to burn?”

  “A tape from the Internet.”

  Kumar got on his computer, and I directed him to the raging maniacs website. Soon “The Night Stalker” video was playing on the screen.

  “This is what I need burned,” I said.

  Kumar popped a fresh DVD into the computer, and typed in the instructions so the video was burned onto the DVD. I replayed the video, this time off the DVD.

  “What are we watching? An old horror movie?” Kumar asked.

  “It’s a tape of a serial killer named Abb Grimes.”

  “How gruesome. What am I looking for?”

  “I want to see what he was wearing on his feet.”

  We watched “The Night Stalker” video in silence. Toward the end, Abb’s right foot appeared from beneath his pants, and Kumar froze the frame. The picture was much sharper on Kumar’s screen, and I could see that Abb was indeed wearing a slipper. There was an image on the side of the slipper, and I strained my eyes to make it out.

  “Any idea what that is?” I asked.

  Kumar typed a command on his keyboard, and blew up the image. Then he fitted on his reading glasses and stared. “It looks like a cartoon.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “Yes. Why are you so skeptical?”

  “This guy was arrested for murdering eighteen women,” I explained.

  “So he must have been crazy,” Kumar said.

  “I need a copy of this,” I said.

  Kumar used the mouse to hit the print icon. Moments later, a four-color photo of Abb’s right slipper spit out of the laser copier. I held the photograph beneath the light on the desk, and studied it. Kumar was right; the image on Abb’s slipper resembled a cartoon.

  “I need to blow this up,” I said.

  “Not a problem,” Kumar said.

  Kumar placed the photo into the copy machine behind his desk, then programmed the machine to blow up the image. The copy machine began to print, and I grabbed the sheet before it hit the tray.

  Kumar came up behind me, and we both stared. The slipper now filled the page, and the cartoon was plainly visible. It was the smiling face of Fred Flintstone.

  CHAPTER FIFTY-TWO

  I drove to LeAnn Grimes’s neighborhood with my mind reeling. Abb Grimes had been wearing a pair of kid’s cartoon slippers the night he’d murdered his last victim, which was a clear indicator that something was wrong with him. Yet no evidence about his mental state had ever been presented at trial. I had to find out why.

  The storm had passed, and the sun was shining. I parked in front of LeAnn’s house. Now that Jed had been captured, the FBI had pulled up stakes, and I spotted a lone police cruiser with two officers parked a few houses away. My windows were rolled down, and I could hear the officers discussing the police’s ongoing search for Heather and Sampson. The tenor of their voices told me that they didn’t expect to find either of them alive.

  I knocked on the front door. It swung open, and I found myself standing face-to-face with LeAnn. She wore a somber black dress, and was dragging a suitcase.

  “May I come in?” I asked.

  LeAnn stepped onto the front stoop. Her eyes were ringed from lack of sleep, and her movements were slow and painful.

  “Please get out of my way,” she said.

  “I need to speak with you. It will only take a minute.”

  “I have to go see Abb,” she said.

  Then I understood the suitcase. She was driving to Starke to see Abb get strapped on a gurney and have a needle filled with a powerful cocktail of narcotics and life-ending drugs pumped into his veins. She was going to say good-bye to her husband.

  “I need to speak with you about the evidence that was destroyed in your husband’s case,” I said. “It will only take a few minutes.”

  A flicker of life came into her otherwise lifeless eyes. She dropped her suitcase in the doorway, then turned around and went into the house. I picked up the suitcase and put it in the foyer, then followed her inside.

  She dropped onto the couch in the living room. The bun in her hair had come undone, and as her hair fell onto her shoulders, I glimpsed the woman she’d once been.

  “What do you want to know?” she asked.

  I pulled up a chair. In my pocket was the photo of Abb’s slipper with the cartoon of Fred Flintstone I’d printed off Kumar’s computer. It was folded into a square, and I smoothed out the creases before showing it to her.

  “Your husband was wearing these slippers the night he was filmed in the grocery store parking lot,” I said. “Do you recognize them?”

  LeAnn’s eyes briefly studied the page. Then they locked onto me.

  “Let me tell you something about those slippers,” she said. “They were a birthday present from Jed to his daddy. Abb adored them, and wore them whenever he was home. After my husband was arrested, those slippers were taken and destroyed by Detective Cheeks, the man who arrested my husband.”

  “Why would Cheeks do that?”

  “Because he knew something was wrong with Abb. We all did.”

  “We?”

  “Me, the neighbors, even Jed-and he was just a little boy back then.”

  “How old was Jed?”

  “Seven.”

  “But he understood what was going on.”

  “Yes. You see, Abb suffered from insomnia. It got so bad that I took him to a clinic, where the doctor prescribed a new experimental drug. The drug let Abb sleep, but bad things started to happen. I’d wake up at night, and hear Abb banging around the house. One night I went into the kitchen, and all the chairs were turned upside down. I tried to get him back to bed, and he nearly took my head off. The next morning, I talked to him about it over breakfast, and Abb acted like it hadn’t happened.”

  “You said the neighbors knew something was wrong with Abb,” I said. “How did they k
now?”

  “Abb left the house at night and strolled around the neighborhood. One of my neighbors caught him peeking in their windows; another found him sitting in their car. He was scaring the daylights out of them.”

  Her voice had grown weak, the memories draining her. I didn’t want to make her suffering any worse, but I had to get to the truth.

  “What was the drug?” I asked.

  “I don’t remember.”

  “Did you contact Abb’s doctor to find out?”

  “The clinic went out of business. I tried to track the doctor down, but never found him. It was another dead end.”

  “Did you tell Abb’s defense attorney this?”

  “His attorney knew everything. He was appointed by the court because we didn’t have any money to hire a lawyer. He seemed resigned to my husband losing in court.”

  I thought back to the evidence log from the trial. It had contained everything that the police had taken from the Grimes’s house.

  “Did the police take the drug as evidence?” I asked.

  “Yes. It disappeared with the slippers.”

  “Do you think Detective Cheeks destroyed it?”

  LeAnn laughed under her breath, giving me my answer.

  “Did Jed know about the drug?” I asked.

  “Oh, Jed knew. It was so painful for him. He used to walk up to police officers when he was a little boy and say, ‘My daddy isn’t a bad man! He isn’t bad!’ When he grew older, the reality of what Detective Cheeks had done hit him, and Jed tried to confront Detective Cheeks. That’s when Detective Cheeks started to haul him in, and accuse him of crimes he hadn’t committed.”

  I leaned back in my chair. Everything Father Kelly had told me was true. Jed had been painted as a monster by Cheeks, and all because he knew the truth about his father.

  “Now, if you’ll excuse me, I must go,” LeAnn said.

  She went into the hallway to retrieve her suitcase. I tried to carry it outside for her, and she wrestled it from my grasp.

  “No, thank you,” she said.

  I watched her throw the suitcase into an old Chevy parked in the driveway beside the house. It was an eight-hour drive to the prison, and I found myself wishing she didn’t have to go it alone.