WEBCAM - A Novel of Terror (The Konrath/Kilborn Collective)

by Jack Kilborn

  Tom sat up. “I’ll take it in the other room so I don’t disturb you.”

  “I’m already disturbed, lover.”

  Yikes. Joan only called him lover when she was really pissed. Tom knew it was an attempt to mask her anger with patience, but it always came out as biting and sarcastic.

  Tom picked up his iPhone, saw it was his partner, Roy Lewis.

  Maybe it wasn’t a homicide. Maybe Tom would get lucky and it was Roy dealing with some terrible personal tragedy. Like cancer, or a car accident.

  “Are you dying of carcinoma or trapped in a burning vehicle?” Tom asked after answering.

  Hope springs eternal.

  “Worse,” Roy said. “The Snipper is back.”

  “Shit.” Tom had been fearing that for more than a month. The first murder had been Chicago’s goriest in nearly a decade. It was so calculated, so awful, that Tom was sure it would happen again. Someone who went through that much trouble didn’t do it one time only.

  “Yeah. Your hunch was right, brother. We’ve got a serial killer.”

  “Can you handle it?” Tom asked, peeking at Joan. If her eyes were lasers Tom would have been instantly decapitated. Not only did they have plans for the day, but it involved Joan going to the spa this afternoon, giving time for Tom to visit a jewelry store for a very special purchase.

  “I know you’re off, but you’re lead Detective on this one, Tommy. Can you sneak out without Joan waking up?”

  “Joan is up,” Joan said. “Hello, Roy.”

  Obviously Tom also had the volume too loud.

  “Hey, Joan,” Roy said as Tom held the phone away from his ear and put it on speaker. “Sorry about this. It’s a big one.”

  “How’s Trish?” Joan asked.

  “She’s, uh, next to me right now.”

  “Hi, Joan,” Trish said.

  “Want to grab some breakfast later? Maybe do some shopping?” Joan asked. “The asshole cops we’re dating won’t be around.”

  “How about nine? We can go to Yolk in the South Loop, then walk the Mag Mile. I’ll bet your fella would love to buy you some shoes. Roy’s gonna buy me some, right Roy?”

  “Anything for you, baby.” Roy had a sultry baritone and sounded a lot like Isaac Hayes.

  “Anything for you, baby.” Tom repeated to Joan. He didn’t sound like a soul legend. Tom sounded like Michael J. Fox when his mother tried to kiss him in Back to the Future.

  “See you later,” Joan said, then purposely turned around in bed, giving Tom her back. She was still naked from earlier, so Tom didn’t mind the snubbing because the view was nice.

  “Where’s the scene?” Tom asked.

  Roy gave Tom the address, and Tom reached out and trailed a finger along Joan’s shoulder, down her side, to her hip.

  “See you in twenty,” Tom said.

  He hung up, and snuggled up to Joan, kissing her neck.

  “You’re ditching me, and you think you’re getting a quickie first?” Joan said, snorting.

  “Hey, I’m buying you shoes.”

  “You don’t have to buy me anything, Tom.”

  “Good. Because my cards are maxed, and you earn ten times what I do.”

  She turned around to look at him, her eyes clear in the dark of his bedroom. “Long distance relationships aren’t easy.”

  “I know.” That was the reason Tom’s credit cards were near the limit. Travelling to Los Angeles six times a year.

  “Neither of us are ever going to quit our jobs.”

  “I know,” he said, kissing her chin.

  “This is supposed to be our time. And you’re working.”

  “You do the same thing. Last time I was in La-La Land we were having a romantic dinner at Bestia and you invited Johnny Depp to join us.”

  “That’s because you stood up and yelled Oh my god it’s Johnny Depp tell him to join us!”

  “Edward Scissorhands is my favorite movie. I always cry at the end.”

  “You’re not taking this seriously. For our relationship to work, we need together time.”

  “I agree.” He kissed her neck.

  “Don’t start something you can’t finish,” Joan said.

  “I can finish. Can you finish?”

  “I don’t know.” Joan sighed, then her lips met his. “I guess we’re going to find out.”

  • • •

  After they’d both finished, Tom dressed and drove and arrived at the crime scene. He held an insulated cup of coffee which advertised a Bruce Willis movie Joan had produced. The victim’s neighborhood was upscale, boutiques and cafes and wine shops. The apartments no doubt cost more than Tom paid monthly for the mortgage on his tiny, single-level townhouse in Norwood Park. He parked in an alley behind a patrol car, next to a dumpster that was filled to the brim, and made his way past the police line.

  “You had time to make coffee?” Roy asked, eyeing it enviously. Roy looked a lot like Richard Roundtree, but bald. Tom, in contrast, looked a lot like Thomas Jefferson. He even had the longish, reddish ponytail, which was getting to be a pain to brush every day.

  “Joan made me coffee after sex,” Tom said. “You didn’t get coffee after sex?”

  “Didn’t get coffee or sex. She took my Visa. Trish don’t like early morning homicide calls. She revenge shops.”

  “Ouch.”

  “No prob. I reported the card lost on the way over.”

  “Won’t that make her mad?”

  “I can deal with mad. I can’t deal with paying off five hundred dollar boots at 14.9% interest.”

  Tom paid 22.2% on his card, but didn’t say anything. They approached a uniform standing guard in front of the apartment. He looked queasy. Nametag said Wheeler.

  “What we got?” Roy asked.

  “The apartment belongs to Kendal Hefferton, twenty years old.”

  “Her name is Kendal?” Tom asked.

  The uniform nodded.

  “She’s the vic?”

  “Could be. It’s, uh, tough to make a positive ID. She’s… it’s…” Wheeler took a big breath. “It’s pretty bad.”

  “You first on scene?”

  “My partner and I took the call.” He raised his eyebrows. “You’re Detective Mankowski, aren’t you?”

  Tom nodded.

  “And you’re Detective Lewis?”

  “Yeah.”

  “I heard about that thing in South Carolina. That was some heavy shit.”

  “Neighbors? Wits?” Tom asked. He didn’t want to discuss South Carolina, and he knew Roy didn’t either.

  “Doing a door-to-door now. No witnesses so far. But no marks on the outside door or on this one. It was open when we arrived.”

  The previous victim’s locks hadn’t been disturbed, either. As if the killer had been allowed inside.

  Or could walk through walls.

  “Does the building have security cameras?”

  “No. But a few stores on the street do, and so do some TV stations. Live traffic cams. There’s a team getting copies.”

  “M.E. here yet?” Roy asked.

  “No. Just C.S.T.”

  Tom and Roy took disposable polypropylene shoe covers and nitrile rubber gloves from the boxes next to the door. There were also paper face masks and a jar of Vicks. Normally those weren’t needed until a corpse had begun to decompose, to cover the smell of rot. Tom raised an eyebrow at Wheeler.

  “The vic’s insides were… uh… you’ll see. It stinks. Bad.”

  Tom and Roy each took a mask and placed it over their mouths. Three steps into the apartment Tom realized he should have put some menthol gel under his nose. The smell of feces was so strong his eyes watered. Layered beneath it was urine, coppery blood, and acrid bile. The crime scene techies shooting video and ALS digital stills had full hazmat gear on, complete with their own breathing masks.

  “I’m grabbing the Vicks,” Roy said, scooting back outside.

  Tom took a deep, foul breath and held it, then ventured further into the abatto
ir. He took note of the laptop on the living room floor, open but with a dead screen. A woman’s shoe with an exceptionally high heel was next to it. He stuck his head in the open bathroom door; normal, but no shower curtain hung from the curtain rings. Then he walked slowly down the hallway, to where he assumed the murder scene was, based on all the techie activity. Still holding his breath, Tom’s eyes began to water from the stench hanging in the air. He came to the bedroom, peered through the doorway, and tried to make sense of what was on the bed.

  It was just as bad as the first. The media had dubbed the killer The Snipper because he cut off the eyelids of his first victim.. This made for a disturbing corpse; the fully exposed eyeballs, bulging and staring blankly into space, set into a face framed by horror and agony. But in this case, the eyeballs were only a fraction of the atrocities committed upon this poor girl. Her mouth and vagina were mutilated beyond recognition, and she’d been partially eviscerated, loops of intestines knotted around her naked torso.

  Smeared on the wall behind her, in blood or feces or both, was a single word.

  FURIE

  No shit.

  Tom had never seen a homicide with this much fury, and he’d seen some doozies.

  Someone touched Tom’s shoulder and he spun, coughing out his breath. It was Roy, offering Vicks VapoRub. Tom dug his finger in, smearing some under his nose, but not before he inhaled a stench straight from hell’s morgue.

  “It’s a bow,” Roy said.

  Tom gagged, spat into his own glove, and wiped it on his shirt rather than contaminate the crime scene. “What?”

  “Her guts,” Roy said. “The Snipper tied her intestines in a big bow. Like a Christmas present.”

  CHAPTER 4

  Erinyes is searching.

  Searching, searching, searching, always searching.

  Searching for naughty girls.

  So many naughty girls on the Internet. So many who need to be punished.

  The Internet is a porn wasteland. A cesspool.

  A biblical flood is needed once again, to wipe out all the sinners.

  But Erinyes knows that God doesn’t care. There won’t be another intervention.

  Sodom and Gomorrah is so old Testament.

  Even the New Testament is two thousand years old.

  Erinyes is writing the now Testament.

  God’s vengeance, right now.

  One dead whore at a time.

  Erinyes looks at pornography. So much filth. But it is filth from the past.

  Old sins.

  So much of the Internet is what people once did.

  Erinyes cares about what people are doing.

  Erinyes has to catch the sinners in action.

  So Erinyes watches webcams. Webcams are live. Webcams are now.

  Erinyes searches for the next naughty girl to be punished.

  Too many to choose from. But Erinyes is looking for someone specific.

  A specific girl.

  A special girl.

  Erinyes uses a brute-force attack.

  Erinyes IS a brute-force attack.

  Erinyes gets a hit, and logs in as the administrator.

  Erinyes is searching.

  Searching.

  No good.

  The specific, special girl isn’t there.

  Erinyes must try elsewhere.

  Sometimes the search takes a long time.

  The specific, special girl is tricky. She hides from Erinyes. She doesn’t want to suffer Penance.

  Erinyes is patient.

  Erinyes is patience.

  Erinyes can wait for as long as it takes to find the right girl.

  The specific, special girl.

  A sound, from the basement.

  Moaning. Crying.

  Erinyes looks up from the computer. Checks the time.

  Breakfast.

  Erinyes walks into the kitchen, gets the bag from the cabinet. Gets a bottle of water.

  Takes both into the basement.

  It’s dark. Erinyes’ feet creak on the stairs, and that prompts whimpering to emanate from the darkness. Whimpering, and the rattling of chains.

  Erinyes sees the bowl on the floor. Pours in dog food. Sets down the plastic water bottle filled with antibiotics, and picks up the empty.

  “I punished another one,” Erinyes says into the darkness. “Last night.”

  The darkness doesn’t answer.

  Erinyes looks at the concrete floor. The dried blood.

  Sinner blood.

  Old blood.

  “Perhaps we once again need new blood,” Erinyes says, shivering at the thought.

  There is a moan from the darkness.

  “I have ordered a new whip. You wore out the old one.”

  More rattling. More moaning.

  Erinyes leaves the basement. Locks the door. Goes to the computer.

  Erinyes is searching.

  Searching.

  Searching.

  Searching.

  Searching.

  Endless searching, for the specific, special girl.

  Erinyes checks the time.

  Lunch.

  Erinyes walks into the kitchen, gets the bag from the cabinet. Gets a bottle of water. Adds antibiotics.

  Takes both into the basement.

  The darkness swallows Erinyes.

  The dog dish is empty. Erinyes fills it with food. Takes the empty bottle. Leaves the fresh one.

  “Penance, tonight.”

  “Please… no more.”

  “This is for your own good. I’m saving your soul. You should thank me.”

  Erinyes listens to the crying in the darkness.

  Atoning for sins is painful.

  Upstairs again.

  Searching online.

  Searching searching searching.

  Erinyes takes a break from the searching, checks the local news.

  The police have already found the last one.

  Interesting.

  Then there’s another blunt-force hit.

  This one is different than a regular sexcam site. This is a sorority house on a college campus. The girls allow themselves to be watched by those who pay.

  Erinyes does not pay.

  Erinyes logs in as an administrator.

  Six girls. One house.

  Erinyes is searching.

  There.

  The specific, special girl is there.

  Now Erinyes is watching.

  Watching watching watching.

  Then Erinyes is finding out all there is to know about the specific, special girl.

  Erinyes knows the deep web.

  Erinyes knows darknet.

  Erinyes knows port scanners, and worms.

  Erinyes can get past firewalls. Past passwords. Past encryption.

  Erinyes is no script kiddie. Erinyes can hack almost anything. And if Erinyes can’t hack it, Erinyes pays other hackers.

  Bitcoin rules darknet.

  So Erinyes soon learns about the specific, special girl.

  Her credit rating. Who she owes. How much.

  Health insurance information. Medical and dental history. Mental health background.

  Bank statements. Income taxes.

  Scholastic records. Grades. Disciplinary actions.

  Court records. Family history.

  The specific, special girl has no more secrets. Erinyes knows all.

  “Hello, Kendal,” Erinyes says to the computer screen. “I’m Erinyes. Penance is coming.”

  CHAPTER 5

  Tom Mankowski returned to his humble, empty home. As he’d expected, Joan wasn’t there. Still out shopping with Roy’s girlfriend, Trish.

  Tom considered calling her. He wanted to hear Joan’s voice. After an entire morning spent with a dead body, he needed to speak to someone full of life. Tom dialed, and it went to voicemail.

  “Hi, babe. If you haven’t had lunch yet, let me know and I’ll meet you somewhere. If you have, how about Uno’s for dinner? Miss you.”

  Tom hung up,
rubbed his eyes, and wondered if he should hit the gym. Maybe a workout would help clear the ugliness from his head. But if he went that route he might miss Joan’s call. Instead, Tom stripped to his boxer shorts, did some push-ups and sit-ups and a quick round of curls with his barbell set.

  The sweat came.

  But the ugliness didn’t leave.

  He tried to push away the images of mutilation, and fill his head with facts instead of snapshots.

  The girls had much in common, even though their deaths were different.

  Both were webcam models.

  Both in Chicago.

  Both had been murdered in their apartments, bound to their own beds.

  Both had been tortured.

  Both had their eyelids snipped off.

  Both had extensive genital mutilation.

  In the first vic’s apartment, the killer had written PENANCE on the wall. In the second, FURIE.

  And both of the murdered women, perhaps coincidentally, were named Kendal.

  Tom thought about the first Snipper murder, Kendal Zhanping, six weeks previously. Her cause of death was exsanguination. She’d died of hypovolemic shock; blood loss, due to traumatic injury to the carotid artery.

  The ME guessed the weapon to be a butcher knife. The same one that had been shoved into her vagina had later been repeatedly shoved down her throat. The medical examiner, a no-nonsense guy named Blasky, wrote in his autopsy report that the genital and rectal mutilations “appear as if the victim was repeatedly vaginally and anally raped with the blade.”

  Tom went from curls to squats, with the weights at shoulder level. Tom hated squats, but as he grunted his way through them he was able to forget about the case and focus on how much his legs hurt.

  When he finished, Tom poured a glass of water from the sink, downed it, and poured another. He needed a shower. Not just to wash away the sweat, but to get the smell of death off of him.

  Two online sex workers named Kendal.

  A coincidence?

  Roy would be following up on any links between the victims. He’d made a few calls from the scene. They hadn’t worked for the same web modeling site; that would have been too easy. Neither of them had the screen name of Kendal, either. He and Roy had done some research into the sexcam business, and the vast amount of performers were anonymous, and took great pains to stay that way. Tom had assumed it was to avoid stalkers. When stripping and flirting on camera, Tom figured you wouldn’t want the unknown weirdo watching you to be able to locate you in real life. But it went beyond just weirdos. Tom and Roy had interviewed another model from Kendal Zhanping’s agency, and she’d been more concerned about her friends and family finding out than some psycho coming after her.