~
Bryce had given Jack the phone number for Emily Foster’s boyfriend, Chris. Jack gave him a call, hoping Chris would be available to talk. The phone answered on the second ring.
“Hey.”
“Is this Chris Carmichael?”
“Yeah.”
Jack identified who he was and asked Chris if there was a time they could get together and discuss what had happened to Emily. Chris wasn’t too receptive.
“I don’t want to talk about Emily right now,” he answered.
Jack could hear the sadness in the young man’s voice. He knew he would need to tread carefully. “We are concerned there may be more going on here than just the flu; there have been three other young adults who have passed away with similar symptoms to Emily’s. I really would like to talk to you.”
“Well, where are you right now?”
“I’m on the Gretzky Parkway, headed toward the mall; where are you?”
“I actually live close to the mall; how say we meet in the food court? No, wait, why don’t we meet at Montana’s––quieter this time of day and I’m not up to being around a lot of people just yet.”
“I’ll be there in five minutes; I’ll be the old man waiting at the door for you.” Jack thought to try and cheer the young fellow up.
“I’ll be the young man who will look like he hasn’t slept in two weeks.” The phone disconnected.
Jack felt sick when he saw Chris coming toward the door of the restaurant. The young man had not been kidding; he looked like death warmed over––twice. The loss of his fiancée must have been an enormous blow to him. Hopefully this conversation wouldn’t upset him too much more than he already was. As Chris walked through the door, Jack pointed at a booth in the corner.
“Would you like a drink, Chris?” Jack asked as they sat down.
“Just water will be fine.”
Jack waved to the waitress. “Could we have a coffee and an ice water please?”
There was a moment of awkward silence before Chris opened the conversation. “So what would you like to know, Officer Nelson?”
“Call me Jack, please. What I need to know is exactly what Emily’s symptoms were?”
Chris filled Jack in on what happened. “She called me around twelve-thirty. She was already really unwell; she was so weak she could barely walk. I drove her to the hospital, and the nurse who helped us was really nice––I think her name was Karen. Anyway, she got us some help right away, and Emily was hooked up to an intravenous. The intravenous finished in the middle of the night and she seemed to be slightly improved. The doctor said it just looked like a touch of the flu, possibly aggravated by something Emily might have eaten, so he told me to take her home. If she got worse, I was to bring her back.
“I decided to stay with her, just in case. It was a good thing I did, even though it didn’t make any difference in the end. At least she didn’t die alone. When we returned to the hospital, one of the nurses recognized us and put us through immediately. A Doctor Campbell was in attendance. Emily was so sick, officer. They shooed me out of the room and then I heard Code Red blasting out, and there was a cart being raced to where my Emily was. I tried to get to her! They had these paddles … and they were putting them on her chest … and she was convulsing and … and…“ Chris put his head down on the table and his shoulders started to shake.
Jack gave him a few minutes to settle down before he asked his next question. “Did Emily say anything to you about receiving a nasty email?”
Chris glanced up, a puzzled look on his face. “No, I don’t think so. Not that I remember. I’d been away for a few days on business and had just gotten back. I gave her an engagement ring on Saturday; we were going to be married in September.” He paused. “Is there anything else you need to know? I have to be somewhere.”
Jack knew Chris didn’t really have to be anywhere; he just needed to get out of there. “There is one thing … who would we contact if we needed to have an autopsy done on Emily?”
Chris’s face went white. “She’s already buried,” he choked.
“We would be asking permission to exhume her body. Three other people have died in the past month––all with similar symptoms.”
“Are you saying someone might have killed Emily and these others?” Chris’s eyes opened wide.
“We are not sure of anything just yet. We’re hoping that maybe it is just a virus and if we are able to find out what it is, we can deal with it before it spreads. However, at this point, we are not ruling out foul play. One of the deceased received two very nasty emails.”
“I see. I’ll check Emily’s email for you and give you a call if she did.” Chris stood. “I gotta go.” He pulled a piece of paper from his pocket and wrote a number on it. “This is my cell. If you need to talk to someone about exhuming her body, I guess that would be me. She hasn’t seen her parents in years. I’m usually not home; you were lucky to catch me today.” Chris handed the paper to Jack and left.
Jack sat quietly and finished his coffee. This was looking more and more like the work of a serial killer. But the question was: how were all the victims connected? There seemed to be no association at all. He paid the waitress for his coffee and left, heading for the police station to talk to Bryce. Jack hoped there would be some news on at least one of the two autopsies.
When Jack walked into Bryce’s office, he knew right away there was an update. Bryce’s face was creased with severe lines. “Close the door, Jack, and have a seat.” He waited for Jack to sit down. “The autopsy report came back on Lauren, and it appears there was some kind of a poisonous substance in her system. The coroner does not think it is arsenic and he is going to be running further tests.” He paused. “What did you find out?”
“I talked to Emily Foster’s fiancé. He described symptoms exactly like the other three deceased. I’ve a bad feeling here, Bryce. I don’t think we are dealing with the flu or food poisoning. I believe we have a serial killer out there––just a gut feeling. I asked the young man if Emily had received any nasty emails. He said she hadn’t mentioned any, but he’s going to check her computer and get back to me if she did. Anything from Lauren’s yet?”
“No. The tech can’t find anything. Whoever sent these emails is good.” Bryce stood and walked over to his window. He stared out it for a few minutes. Jack let him be, knowing Bryce was thinking what the next best move would be. Finally he turned around. “We need to exhume the bodies of Emily and Brianna, and if we find the same traces of whatever poison this turns out to be, I am going to treat this as a murder case. I will probably call in an old friend of mine, Tessa Bannister, to help us out with profiling. We go back a long way, and I have used her before––she’s good. I would like you to work with her. You have a nose for these kinds of things, too.”
Jack scratched his head. He was being pulled in deeper than he wanted to be. “I don’t know…”
“I need you, Jack.” The tone of Bryce’s voice was pleading for Jack not to say no.
“Okay … just let me know what you require.”
Bryce asked Jack to talk to Chris and Caitlin about getting permission to exhume the bodies of their loved ones. He also asked if Jack would ask Caitlin about any strange emails her sister might have mentioned, and could he call Tyler’s mum and ask if Tyler had revealed anything about the same. Jack left the office with several tasks to accomplish.
~
Camden couldn’t wait to send his email to Owen. He raced up to his room when he arrived home, without saying hello to Emma. She was in the three-season room with Duke. He turned his computer on and pulled up the email, changed the name to Owen, and pushed send. Task finished, Camden headed downstairs, smiling.
~
Owen Bains left the gym in a hurry. He grabbed a banana smoothie for his supper because he had a house to show in half an hour and had forgotten his briefcase at the office. The guy at the drink counter––Camden––had looked at him
weirdly so Owen hadn’t bothered to leave him a tip. He seemed a bit of a creep lately; Owen had noticed Camden watching him several times, always with a disturbing look on his face.
Work had been lean for a few months. He guessed he had gotten into the real estate business at the wrong time––just as the economy had come crashing down. Thank goodness for his brother, Kevin, who had loaned him some money to keep him going until things picked up. Owen hoped tonight’s showing would yield him a good sized commission. It was a big house with a substantial price tag. He pulled up to his office and ran in.
“Left my briefcase in my office,” he explained to the receptionist.
She smiled. Owen was so forgetful, she didn’t think he was actually going to make it in this business. Nevertheless, he was cute, and she wouldn’t mind if he asked her out sometime. So far he hadn’t taken her up on any of her clues. As he raced back out the door, she called out: “Good luck, Owen. See you soon––with a contract!”
“Sure thing, sweetheart.”
Things didn’t go quite as well as Owen hoped, but he was going to write up an offer. The couple lowballed the price and Owen knew the vendor would not accept it. That meant going back and forth, probably a few times before the deal closed––if it closed at all.
When he got back to the office to type up the offer, the receptionist smiled. “Any luck, Owen?”
“Probably not. The offer is extremely low, but it’s our job to type them up and send them back and forth until we have a deal.”
“Need help?”
“Nah, I have it.”
When Owen was finished, he headed for home. He decided to take the offer to his client in the morning. He threw his keys on the coffee table and then went over and turned his computer on to check his emails, hoping there would be one there from Diana. It had been three months since she had spoken to him.
Owen glanced down the page and saw ‘JUST FOR YOU’ in the subject line. He didn’t recognize the sender, but the title made him curious. He clicked on it. “What the frig!” he shouted as he read the email. “Dear Owen: you are receiving this email because you have been very, very naughty. Do you know what happens to very naughty people? Think about it! When was the last time you ridiculed someone … ignored someone just because … blamed someone wrongfully? When was the last time you were nice to someone … really nice? When was the last time you helped someone … really helped? You are so pathetically naughty that I can’t stand it! Only you can turn this around and do something about it. I have given you the warning … now it is up to you to seek reconciliation. If you don’t, maybe retribution will come your way … if you have any friends who are just like you, pass this on to them so they can get help too … for every friend you try to save the retribution on yourself will be lessened … you know the drill … six to ten, maybe you won’t die … one to five, you will … signed: 666.”
Owen sent the email to his junk box, scanned to see if there was anything from Diana, and finding nothing, he shut the computer off and headed to bed. “Sick prick,” he grumbled, “wasting valuable network space.”
~
Camden checked his computer before heading off to bed. He stretched back in his chair and smiled when he saw Owen had opened his email. When he crawled under the covers, he spread out the full length of the bed before curling into the fetal position and going to sleep.
~
Toby was still thinking about what he had learned earlier that day. He was trying to figure out how he was going to tell Jack what he thought was going on. Jack had told him how the captain wanted him to help out on the case––that they both had the feeling there was a serial killer out there. Toby fully agreed, and he had a good idea who it was.
Friday, June 26, 2009
J
ack received a phone call from Bryce early in the morning. The autopsy on Tyler had come in, and the coroner had found traces of the same type of poison in his body as he’d found in Lauren’s.
“We need to move fast on this, Jack,” Bryce said. “It’s essential now to get the other families’ permissions to exhume the bodies as soon as possible. Whoever is doing this is a sick person!”
“I’ll get right on it,” Jack stated.
Jack headed home, and when he got there, he retrieved the piece of paper Chris had given him and dialled his cell number. He got the call answer: “Hey, this is Chris … leave me a message … I might get back to you.” Jack left his name and number and told Chris it was imperative he return his call as soon as possible.
Then Jack called Caitlin. He was hoping he would have been able to wait until Mitch was home. Caitlin answered on the sixth ring. It sounded like a child was crying nearby.
“Hello.”
“Hi Caitlin, Detective Nelson here. Do you have a minute?”
“Sure … Jimmy, come and get your brother for me! What would you like, detective?”
“We would like permission to exhume Brianna’s body. We need to do an autopsy.”
There was silence on the other end of the phone.
“It’s important, Caitlin. We think someone is actually poisoning people. We may even be dealing with a serial killer!”
“My God,” she breathed.
“I need to ask you another question … did Brianna say anything about getting a nasty email or maybe even two of them?”
“No, she didn’t mention anything like that. The only thing we talked about on the Friday night was that she had met some really nice guy at the gym. She didn’t tell me his name, though.”
“Do you have access to her computer?”
“Yes, it’s still at her place. It might be password protected, though.”
“Well, could you or Mitch check her emails for me? If she did have it password protected, I would like to pick up the computer and have one of our tech guys down at the station get into it. Would that be okay?
“I guess so.”
“About the exhuming?” Jack asked again.
“Sure … I guess. If she was murdered, I want to see the killer brought to justice. Do I have to sign any papers?”
“Yes, I’ll bring them by this morning. What time’s good for you?”
“Any time is as good as any.” She hung up.
Jack let out a sigh. He looked at the phone almost willing it to ring. He needed to hear from Chris. He walked into the kitchen and poured another cup of coffee. Toby was sitting in his usual spot on the back of the couch. As Jack took his first sip, the phone rang. Toby’s ears perked forward.
“Hello.”
“Hi, this is Chris. How can I help you?”
“We need to do an autopsy on Emily’s body; we need your permission.”
“I don’t know … actually, I don’t really think so. I don’t want her body all cut up.”
Jack was desperate. He hated having to tell all these people there might be a serial killer out there, but there was no other way. “We might have someone out there who is randomly targeting people. There was poison found in the bodies of two of the deceased. We need to see if the same traces are present in Emily. I already have the permission of the fourth person’s relatives.”
There was a clicking sound on the line. Chris was clicking a ballpoint pen. Finally, “Okay. Bring me the paperwork.” Chris rambled off his address.
“One more thing, Chris––did you find anything on Emily’s computer?”
“No, not that I could see, anyway.”
“Would it be possible for me to pick up the computer and take it down to the station? I would like one of our techs to take a look at it.”
“Yeah, I guess.”
Jack called to Toby, “Want to come with me this morning, old man? I have to go to the station to pick up the forms for these guys to sign. Then I have to get them signed and back to Bryce so he can get the orders going for the exhuming.”
Toby was ready and willing to go. The more he stayed involved in the investigation, the better off
he would be when trying to figure out what was going on. In the meantime, he might find a way to get his suspicions across to Jack. He stopped by his dish on the way out, just for a snack. A first-class detective needed to keep up his strength.
~
Owen presented the offer to his clients at ten in the morning. As he suspected, they laughed at the price. He tried to explain to them that he had told the couple they were too low, but Owen could tell his clients were far from impressed. They wrote it back at full price, stating that would send a message to these people. Owen knew the couple would not be able to meet the price. He was aware that they badly wanted the house, but one could only have what one could afford. Owen, of all people, knew that.
He went back to the office and retyped the offer. The receptionist made eyes at him. Didn’t she know he wasn’t interested? He totally ignored her advances. He rushed past her and into his office. Later that morning, he managed to get hold of the couple who wanted the house. They were devastated and said they couldn’t afford any more than they’d offered and not to even bother with the papers. Owen called his clients and told them there was no counter-offer. Then he shredded the papers and drove to a local bar for a drink, and, maybe, a bite to eat.
~
Camden mentioned to Emma, before heading off to work, they might have to move again. It was not going as well at the gym as he had hoped. He had already started to look in the papers for another job. Isabella had been giving him a hard time and clients were picking on him and blaming him for things he wasn’t doing. Camden told her that he hoped she wasn’t too upset, but he could tell from the tears hidden in the corners of her eyes, she was.
Are You Listening to Me? : A Detective Toby Mystery (9781927899403) Page 15