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

by Jack Kilborn

  Tom stared at the sentence. Then erased it and started again.

  Please accept this letter as formal notification of my resignation from the Chicago Police Department.

  Delete.

  I fucking quit.

  But why, exactly, was he quitting? For Joan? Or for himself?

  Maybe some combination.

  He considered what Erinyes asked him in the chatroom.

  Do you enjoy your job, Tom?

  Tom dealt with the worst that humanity had to offer. He felt like he made a difference, but seeing man’s unrelenting inhumanity to man really took a toll on his psyche. It was depressing. And frustrating. And never-ending.

  The only good part of his job…

  The only good part of my job is when I leave for the day, and talk to Joan.

  I like helping others. I like making a difference. I like justice.

  But I don’t like being a cop.

  The realization hit with such force, it was like a blind man seeing for the first time. Tom stood up.

  To hell with a letter of resignation. I’m going to march into the Captain’s office and give him my badge and gun, right now.

  He sat down again.

  But first, might as well to a quick ViCAT search. What does another few minutes matter, anyway?

  CHAPTER 43

  Erinyes parks a block away from the Epsilon Epsilon Delta house, and then logs onto www.HotSororietyGirlsLive.com as administrator. She flips through all the live webcams. Seven girls are asleep, even though it was already past eight am. Made sense. The little whores stayed up late, chatting with their johns.

  Erinyes can’t see Kendal. She must still have her cams off. Her computer, cell, and Kindle are off as well. Erinyes remotely powers up Kendal’s cell—she’d manually put the app on it when Kendal was stuck in the mammogram machine.

  She’s asleep.

  Erinyes goes into the back of the van. Joan looks up at her, groggily.

  “You’re about to get a roommate,” Erinyes tells her as she gathers her things. She finished her old tube of make-up at Tom’s townhouse and takes the new one she’d just ordered out of a cabinet.

  “This is vantablack,” she says to Joan. “It’s made of carbon nanotubes. It’s the blackest substance known, absorbing 99.965% of the visible spectrum. That’s why you couldn’t see me in the bathroom. It absorbs light rather than reflects it.”

  Erinyes tucked the tube into her duffle. Then she takes the bag of crickets she bought at the pet shop and shakes a few into the aquarium. Joan’s eyes go wide when she sees what is in the tank, and she whimpers.

  “Yes, Joan. These are for you. They will help bring you atonement for your sins. Want to hear something really ironic? You could have prevented this easily. If you had said yes to Tom’s proposal, you wouldn’t be here right now. That was a really, really mean thing to do.”

  Erinyes squatted at Joan’s level, looking her in the eyes. “I know. Because I watched the whole thing.”

  Another whimper. Erinyes pats her on the head, then looks for and finds the folding map. She makes sure no one is on the street before she gets out the van. After locking it, she heads for the sorority house.

  A squad car is parked in front. Erinyes unfolds the map to full size, then walks slowly past the cop. She stops. Waits. Then turns back and walks briskly toward the car, her duffle bag hiding the Taurus in her hand.

  “I’m looking for this street,” she says, handing him the map as he opens the window. It’s not the cute cop Kendal was with earlier. This guy is old, pasty-looking. When his face is obscured by the map, Erinyes quickly checks for witnesses, then brings the 9mm up and shoots him six times in the head and chest.

  There’s no such thing as a true silencer. But the suppressor Erinyes bought online is a good one, and the shots are no louder than a strong cough.

  She opens his door by sticking her hand inside through the window, shoves his dead body over, and shuts the window. The map is all bloody, so she can’t keep it. A shame. Big paper folding maps were getting harder to find in the digital age.

  Erinyes locks the door, then briskly crosses the street to the sorority.

  The master key works as intended. Once inside, she strips down to the unitard, spreads on eye make-up, and puts on the gloves and ski mask.

  Then she puts a fresh magazine in the 9mm, and almost sheds a tear at the tragedy that is about to unfold.

  These sinners need to atone. A bullet in the head isn’t nearly enough Penance. They should suffer more than that. But this environment is too risky. Too daring. She needs to kill the girls, grab Kendal, and get out quick.

  Hopefully God will have mercy on them anyway.

  Erinyes heads for the first whore’s bedroom.

  Stops.

  Turns.

  Goes back to her duffle bag, and takes out the duct tape and butcher knife.

  Because there is always time for a little suffering.

  CHAPTER 44

  The ViCAT homepage, like a lot of the scam sites on the dark web, looked like it was designed by a high school kid running Windows 98. And it was just about as user-friendly.

  Tom did searches on the word Kendal.

  Three hits. None were recent, or fit the current MO.

  Next he tried Erinyes, Furies, Tilphousia, Megaera, and Alecto.

  Nada.

  Tom searched for castration, and got too many hits to wade through.

  Okay. I tried. Time to go resign.

  ViCAT had apparently outlived its usefulness. Just like everything else when user-interface ceased keeping up with technology. He wondered if some computer geek, like Firoz, could somehow update the system, make it more—

  Thinking about Firoz, Tom has a tiny blip of inspiration. What was that password he’d used to unlock Cissick’s computer? Demented? Demeanor?

  Demeter.

  Tom typed the word into the search box.

  He got a hit. A recent hit, for only an hour ago. A cop in Evanston named Ledesma had posted an entry about a girl on campus who had been sexually assaulted by someone who identified herself as Nurse Demeter.

  Tom read on, feeling the hair on the back of his neck tingle.

  Nurse Demeter had attacked a girl named Kendel.

  Kendal was spelled wrong, but that was close enough to get Tom on the phone with Evanston PD as fast as he could dial. After a few words with their operator, Detective Ledesma picked up.

  “Detective Tom Mankowski, Chicago Homicide. I just read your ViCAT report.”

  “So that old system really works? I just put that in this morning. Have you got something?”

  “You know The Snipper case? He’s cyberstalking webcam models named Kendal.”

  “Kendal Smith is a student at the university. She didn’t say she was a webcam model.”

  “Where is she?”

  “The Epsilon Epsilon Delta sorority house.”

  Evanston was maybe a twenty minute drive. “I can meet you there in fifteen.”

  “No need. She was really scared, so we’ve got a car outside.”

  “Radio him. Tell him to wait inside with Kendal.”

  “He just checked in fifteen minutes ago. But let me get him on. Give me a second.”

  Tom waited.

  “He’s not answering,” Ledesma said.

  “Send every cop you’ve got over there, right now.”

  Tom ran out the door.

  CHAPTER 45

  Kendal yawned, knocked on the shower door to make sure it was empty, and then went inside. The floor was damp, indicating recent use. Hopefully there would still be warm water. Kendal shut off the shower camera using the wall switch. The green light on the camera’s base blinked, then became red.

  She hung a hand towel over the lens, just to be sure, and then turned on the water in the shower. Even though it was likely already hot from whoever just used it, she still counted to thirty-five before checking the spout.

  The perfect temp.

  Then she
checked it again.

  And again.

  Someone in the house must have had a bad cold, because Kendal could hear the coughing even with the water and vent on.

  While under the spray she didn’t even try to avoid counting the tiles. She counted the soap dish in the wall as two, since it took up two spaces.

  Three shampoos and three minutes later, Kendal stepped out of the shower, toweled off, and walked down the hallway back to her room, closing the door behind her. She began to lay out some clothing on the bed, heard more coughing from the hallway, and remembered the Addalock Detective Ledesma had given her. Kendal wouldn’t be in her room long, but she attached it to the door anyway.

  When you had OCD, new habits died just as hard as old habits.

  Kendal dressed in black jeans, a red crew neck sweatshirt with her school logo on it, and was pulling on socks when someone tried to open her door.

  “Hello?”

  Kendal watched the knob jiggle.

  “Linda? Hildy?”

  No one answered.

  But there was a faint knock. And then—

  Scratching.

  Someone is scratching on my door.

  “This isn’t funny, Hildy.”

  The scratching stopped.

  Then the privacy lock in the center of the doorknob twisted, someone unlocking it from the other side.

  The doorknob turned.

  The door began to push inward.

  But it didn’t open. The Addalock stopped it.

  Kendal grabbed her new cell phone and hurried to the window, splitting the blinds with her fingers and peeking through. The police car was parked on the street, but with the sun’s glare Kendal couldn’t see who was inside.

  BAM!

  Someone hit her door, hard.

  Kendal was so scared she dropped the cellphone.

  BAM!

  She quickly scooped the phone up, accessed the onscreen keyboard, and dialed 911.

  “Kendal?”

  Kendal knew that voice.

  “911, what’s your emergency?”

  “Kendal?”

  It was Linda.

  Kendal switched off her phone. “Linda?”

  Another faint knock. Kendal took the three steps to the door, reached for the Addalock, then paused.

  “Linda? What do you want?”

  “I’m hurt… hurt bad…”

  Concern for her own safety was instantly replaced by concern for her friend, and Kendal disengaged the Addalock and opened the door.

  Linda’s face was pale, her eyes wide, her mouth open. She was wearing her red University tee shirt.

  No… it was her Spongebob shirt. Her favorite.

  Except that her Spongebob shirt was white. So why was it—

  Kendal’s breath caught. Linda’s shirt was completely soaked with blood. And then she fell to the side, revealing something black crouching behind her.

  Kendal didn’t think. She reacted. As the scream left her lips, Kendal dropped a shoulder and shoved past the man in the doorway, pushing him to the side as she sprinted down the hall.

  Twelve steps to the front door!

  Eleven-ten-nine-eight-sev—

  Kendal slipped on something, breaking the fall with her hands, phone flying, skin rubbing off the heels of her hands as they skidded across the hardwood floor. Her legs were caught in something. Kendal twisted onto her side, her eyes trailing the blood all over the floor, and coming to rest on Hildy, lying next to the wall, her eyes wide and a slash of gray duct tape covering her mouth.

  Hildy was quivering, making a keening, high pitched whine through her flared nostrils. Kendal tried to scoot away, and Hildy’s whine became a sealed-lip scream.

  Kendal looked at her own feet, and in that incongruous instant wondered how they’d become tied up in rope.

  Half a second later she saw the rope wasn’t rope—it was coming out of the big gash in Hildy’s belly, where both of her hands were pressed, like an expectant mother caressing her nine month old baby.

  But Hildy wasn’t caressing her unborn child.

  She was trying to stuff her insides back in. And Kendal had made the process much more difficult, because her feet were tangled up in loops of Hildy’s intestines.

  Kendal’s reaction was visceral, and she kicked and kicked until she was free of the innards and then she got a slippery foot under her, ready to dash to the front door only two meters away.

  And then she froze.

  I forgot my count.

  Twelve steps to the front door from the bedroom.

  Where did I leave off?

  Kendal stood there, rigid and immobile as a statue, as tears exploded from her eyes.

  Then something grabbed her from behind and clamped a wet cloth over her mouth, and Kendal’s lungs burned as the whole world became one, giant blur.

  CHAPTER 46

  While Detective Ledesma vomited into a garbage can, Tom winced at the corpse on the bed. Her bare thighs had been carved open, from the hip to the knee, and Tom inadvertently thought of the hot dogs his mother used to make when he was a kid, splitting them almost in half along their lengths to stuff them with cheese.

  “That’s seven,” Tom said. “And this isn’t Kendal?”

  “She had the bedroom facing the street,” Ledesma said into the can.

  “Can you check her face to make sure?”

  “Is it… all there?”

  The Snipper had cut the cheeks and nose off the girl one bedroom over.

  “Mostly,” Tom said. “What color are Kendal’s eyes?”

  “Brown,” Ledesma said, turning to look. “Oh—fuck—he cut out her eyes—”

  More retching. Tom knew this couldn’t be Kendal. He turned to leave.

  “I can’t tell if it’s her,” Ledesma said, catching his breath.

  “It’s not. This girl’s eyes are blue.”

  “Her eyes are gone, man!”

  “They’re not gone,” Tom said. “They’re on the dresser.”

  Tom left the bedroom, walking through the throng of cops and techies, walking to the front door, tugging off the blood-soaked paper crime scene booties he’d put on over his shoes, dropping them into the garbage can with five other pairs, and stepping outside where he stared up at the sun until his head began to throb.

  “What now?” Detective Ledesma, from behind him.

  “I’m done.”

  “Look, if this is a jurisdictional thing, we work with Chicago PD all the time. What’s our next move?”

  Tom closed his eyes, still seeing the afterglow of retina burn. “I’m done. I quit. My next move is going to my captain’s office and turning in my gun and badge.”

  Tom turned and stared at the guy, wondering if he was ever that young. “Is this your first murder scene?”

  “Yeah.”

  “It’s my two hundred and nineteenth. And each one of them,” Tom jammed his index finger against his temple, “is still up here. I’m done. I’m going to fly to LA, beg my girlfriend to take me back, and get a normal job. This—” Tom spread out his hands, indicating the two of them, the house, the whole world. “This is not normal. And it’s not healthy.”

  “He took her, Detective Mankowski. This animal took Kendal. I’ve been following the case. He’s never kidnapped before.”

  “So he’s branching out.”

  “Kendal could still be alive.”

  “I hope she is. I really do. And I hope you find her.”

  “The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.” Ledesma blinked. “That’s Edmund Burke.”

  “I fucking quit. That’s Tom Mankowski. Good luck with your investigation, Detective. It’s a kidnapping, federal crime, so the Feebies will probably take over. I’ll make sure my partner, Roy Lewis, gets in touch.”

  Tom didn’t bother with a handshake. He headed for his car, parked a block away.

  He didn’t feel guilt. He didn’t feel regret. His finely honed sense of civic responsibility wasn’
t berating him to turn around and assist.

  Instead, Tom felt an overwhelming sense of relief.

  He checked his phone, and was pleased to see there was a voicemail. But he wasn’t pleased to see who it was from.

  “It’s McGlade. I’ve been trying Jack, and her husband, Phin, for the last few hours. They didn’t get through. Then I checked a few sources and found out the Folk Nation—T-Nail’s gang—had been mobilizing for something big. So I picked up Herb and we’re driving up north to Spoonward, Wisconsin. If you ever owed Jack a favor, you can repay it by coming with us. Call me back, pronto.”

  Ah, shit. Tom owed Jack a lot of favors.

  He Googled Spoonward, saw it was a seven hour drive north.

  Then he tried Joan again. She didn’t pick up, so he left another message.

  Tom unlocked his car, climbed into the driver’s seat, and rubbed his face. Then he texted McGlade, since that was preferable to talking to the man.

  That Edmund Burke line that Ledesma had quoted; Tom knew it well. He’d used it himself, when arguing with Joan.

  The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.

  It was true. But Burke had another equally famous, equally true quote:

  Those who don’t know history are destined to repeat it.

  Tom stared into the sun again.

  He knew doing so hurt his eyes.

  But he did it just the same.

  CHAPTER 47

  Joan was dreaming about Tom, about how she hurt him, and she woke up hearing his voice.

  “…can’t live without. Call me back.”

  Then reality slapped her, full force.

  She was sitting up, her hands bound in duct tape behind her. Her ankles were also encircled, the tape wrapped around a curved, metal bar bolted to the floor of some sort of small room.

  No, not a room. A truck or van. Joan could hear an engine, feel the movement of the vehicle.

  Patchy, dreamlike memories of being carried, being gagged, were superseded by much sharper recollections of being attacked in Tom’s house.

  Someone has abducted me.