Criminal Minds (Fox Meridian Book 4)

by Niall Teasdale

  There was a short pause and then, ‘The chapter house received a call from one client asking why Sister Georgina failed to arrive for an appointment. I also have the name of the client before that one.’

  ‘Okay, arrange interviews for both.’

  ~~~

  ‘Thank you for seeing me so quickly, Mrs Lorie,’ Fox said as she sat down in the offered chair. Philippa Lorie was probably forty or so, but she had had a fair bit of work done to keep herself looking younger, and she clearly worked out from the trim, fit body she was not concealing especially well under a thin robe. It was noticeable that her pale blue eyes were reddened: she had been crying.

  ‘I can’t believe Georgina’s dead. And on the way to see me!’

  ‘I understand you rang the chapter house this morning to enquire after her?’

  Lorie nodded. ‘I was a little angry. I was expecting her at eleven, but I was going to ask her to stay the night. She often did when she could and I enjoyed her company. She reminded me of my wife… Uh, well, I wasn’t worried too much when she was late and I’d had some wine. I fell asleep on the sofa, woke up around three and she still hadn’t shown up or called. So I went to bed and called the Sisters first thing. They said they’d enquire after her and then they called back and… and told me she’d been killed.’ Lorie’s eyes were brimming again and, as far as Fox could gather, the tears were quite genuine.

  ‘I’m sorry, Mrs Lorie.’

  ‘Thank you. Georgina was my favourite. I almost exclusively used her. My wife died three years ago and I just can’t bring myself to date again yet, but a woman has needs…’ There was just a hint of embarrassment in her voice, a desire to justify herself.

  ‘I don’t judge, Mrs Lorie. One of my closest friends is a registered prostitute. As far as I’m concerned, you’ve nothing to be ashamed of. I didn’t know Georgina, but I’m going to do everything I can to catch the man who did this.’

  ‘I’m sure you will. I’ve seen you on the news feeds, Miss Meridian. I’m sure you’ll do your best. I can’t believe it happened so close to here. When I heard from the Sisters, I looked out. You could see the police all over an alley just south of here. Another block or two and she would have been safe with me. Just another block or two…’

  Fox was not especially good at comforting distraught people, so she thanked Mrs Lorie for her help and headed down to the street, walking south to where the body had been found.

  That something had happened there was fairly obvious because the city had gone through and removed every last trace. The sidewalk had been scoured in a three-metre radius, so had a nearby wall, and then the trail of cleansed ground moved into the alley. He had, Fox guessed, slit her throat out on the street, in plain view, but at eleven at night in this neighbourhood it was unlikely that he would be seen. Then he had dragged her ten or so metres into the alley as she bled out. Whatever ‘mutilation’ had been carried out, it had happened there: the ground had been cleaned to a near-sparkling shine to remove any evidence.

  Fox let out an exasperated grunt. ‘This is fucking awful police work. I’d imagine she’s under pressure, but I’d have had this entire area screened off instead of letting them sandblast the whole place.’

  ‘It seems that the metro authorities want the deaths kept as quiet as possible.’

  ‘Someone out murdering and mutilating women he comes across? Yeah. Okay, so he seems to be targeting prostitutes, but how does he know they are? He could get it wrong and anyone could be a target.’ Fox frowned. ‘How does he know? The first was a street girl, right?’

  ‘That’s what the media said. The second was a sprawler so the same probably applies.’

  ‘But Sister Georgina was doing out-calls. How did he know that the woman he saw walking down the street was a target?’

  1st October.

  ‘I know why Detective Rutherford was amused,’ Kit said as Fox entered the virtual room which had been set up for the murders.

  Fox saw it almost immediately too. ‘Four dead. She has four murders by the same killer.’

  ‘Yes. Sister Naomi sent over the file in the early hours and I’ve been working to get the data presentable overnight. As you suspected, the case files are… light.’

  ‘What do we have?’

  ‘On the eighth of September, Nadine Truly was murdered in Queens. Her throat was cut and her abdomen opened. Her internal organs were removed and piled beside her body, except for the uterus which was not found at the site. She appears to have been lured into an alley. One witness reported seeing her with “a tall, dark man,” but there is no detailed description.’

  Fox examined the crime scene photographs. Truly had been left a bloody mess tucked into a corner of some alley which was probably now spotless. It had not been. ‘Okay, next.’

  ‘Jodine Cooper, murdered in the Brooklyn Sprawl on the seventeenth. Almost identical MO, but this time the heart and liver were missing. Yesterday there were two. Anne Milden and Georgina Parton. Miss Milden was a registered prostitute, but was not working at the time of her death. She was out for a drink with friends and on her way home. She died around ten and then Sister Georgina was killed just before eleven.’

  ‘Missing body parts again?’

  ‘Kidneys for Miss Milden, heart for Sister Georgina. No indications of sexual assault in any of the cases.’

  ‘Thirty years ago we’d have been checking organ banks, but no one uses other people’s organs anymore. Okay, do your magic on all of them. Associates, any known clients, the works.’

  ‘I’ve already started. The new LifeWeb interface MarTech have produced is so much more efficient than the old one. It’s a pleasure to work with.’

  Fox grinned. ‘I’m glad to hear it. I’ll mention it to Jackson next time I see him. Any luck with Sister Georgina’s other client?’

  ‘He has agreed to see us at eleven a.m.’

  ‘Prioritise him then. Make sure we have everything we can get on him before we talk to him.’

  ~~~

  Harold Grover took his meeting with Fox in his home office, sitting in a large, power desk chair, behind a large power desk formed of black plastic which looked like obsidian. He dressed in a black, high-collared suit, and his black hair was swept back in a fashionable cut which tended to disguise his receding hairline by making it look part of the style. He kept his nose high and his grey-blue eyes were hard.

  Fox was not intimidated for two reasons. The first was that she had met Harper August, a man who knew how to wield real power with a calm disdain for human life which entirely belied his behaviour since being arrested. The second was Kit.

  ‘According to Sister Georgina’s notes,’ Kit said, ‘Mister Grover likes to dress in women’s clothing and then be “forced to endure” anal penetration by a strong woman.’

  Fox managed to keep the smile off her face through an exercise in supreme self-control. ‘Mister Grover, I understand you procured the services of Sister Georgina Parton last night. You were probably the last person to see her alive.’

  ‘I have a semi-regular appointment with Ms Parton,’ Grover replied, and there was a hesitancy in his voice which negated the snooty look. ‘We spent an hour together, approximately, and she left at eleven forty, approximately.’ There was a slight pause. ‘Alive. She was alive when she left.’

  Fox nodded. ‘Of course. Why do you hire the services of a registered prostitute, Mister Grover?’

  ‘I have certain… preferences which I find difficult to fulfil with other women. The Sisters guarantee absolute discretion which is important to a man in my position.’

  ‘And I assure you that I guarantee the same security. Under the circumstances, Palladium Security Solutions is operating under the same rules as the Church. Sister Georgina didn’t mention anything odd, did she? Someone following her, perhaps? Someone she’d seen who worried her?’

  ‘My relationship with Ms Parton was entirely business. We did little talking outside the, um, role play element of our interactions.’ />
  ‘I see. Could I just confirm that, when she left, Sister Georgina was wearing a short, black dress and thigh-high boots?’

  ‘That’s correct. She had a bag, not a large one, over her shoulder.’ The bag had been found at the scene with an assault spray in it: she had had no chance to use it.

  ‘Thank you, Mister Grover. If you think of anything which might help, please contact me at Palladium. I assure you that anything you may say will be kept in complete confidence.’

  ‘He might have done it,’ Kit said on the way down to ground level, ‘if he thought his secret might be revealed. But then why the other victims?’

  ‘It wouldn’t be the first time someone’s committed several murders to hide one. The idea’s cropped up in fiction so often that it’s practically a first thought among some people planning a homicide. I don’t like him for it, but… Did Rutherford check that he remained in the building after Sister Georgina left?’

  ‘No. Detective Rutherford seems to have applied very limited imagination to the case.’

  ‘Huh. Do a search on her. Rutherford. See what you can find out from the public sources.’ Fox frowned, walking out into the arcology’s lobby as the elevator doors opened. ‘You know, there’s something about the dates of these homicides that’s bugging me. What’s special about the eighth of September?’

  ‘Running a search… There was an airplane crash in nineteen ninety-four in Pittsburgh. Star Trek premiered on NBC in nineteen sixty-six.’

  ‘Maybe narrow it to murders?’

  ‘Of course, Fox. Oh! Eighteen eighty-eight–’

  ‘Annie Chapman, the second victim of Jack the Ripper.’

  ‘Yes. Found in the Spitalfields area early in the morning of September eighth. Her throat had been cut, twice, her abdomen sliced open, and her uterus removed. There is no matching death on the seventeenth, but on the thirtieth there were two deaths. One, Elizabeth Stride, has some doubt attached to it since there was no mutilation, but some believe the Ripper was interrupted. Catherine Eddowes was killed soon after Ms Stride, and with the classic MO. Her left kidney and a lot of her uterus were missing.’

  ‘And we have two dead on the thirtieth, plus the extra on the seventeenth. Could be coincidence. No reported murder matching Mary Nichols. That would be the thirty-first of August. Run a search on homicides reported in the media on that date. Anything involving a blade and cuts to the throat, maybe he was interrupted that time.’

  ‘Of course, Fox. I have located another sequence of related murders which does include the seventeenth of September.’

  ‘Oh?’

  ‘Yes, Silas Evan Bent. He killed seven women in twenty fifty-three before being caught in October. He is currently serving seven consecutive life sentences in Rikers. His rather violent, gruesome acts have attracted various “fans.”’

  ‘Okay, we’ll look into it. Put a request through for the case files, normal channels.’

  ‘Of course, Fox. We seem to have a wealth of data very early in this case.’

  ‘Yeah, well, sometimes that’s not such a good thing. Makes it hard to see the psychopath for all the nutjobs.’

  ~~~

  ‘Silas Evan Bent certainly qualifies as some form of psychopath,’ Kit said.

  ‘What do you have?’ Fox asked as she examined the photograph of a bald-headed man taken by a news cameraman outside the court before Bent’s trial. ‘I was in the Army back then and killers in New York weren’t on my radar.’

  ‘I got most of this from media reports and the details released at his trial. He seems to be a rather perverse rapist with an unsubtle method of making his crimes harder to track. His first attack was May twenty-third, twenty fifty-three. He used the same technique on six other women, ending in October when he was caught after the final death on the seventeenth. He would cut into his victims’ throats, puncturing the carotid arteries, and then rape them while they bled to death. He is on record as saying that his first two victims “died too quickly because I was sloppy, but I got better at keeping them alive until I started carving them after that.”’

  ‘Carving them?’

  ‘In an effort to make forensic analysis harder, he would cut open their abdomen and remove every part of their sexual organs he could find. These were then placed between their legs and incinerated.’

  ‘Sick fuck.’

  ‘Sick, and also sloppy. He messed up on the last victim, leaving behind semen which was DNA profiled and he was arrested within twenty-four hours of the attack. The only evidence linking him to the first six crimes was method and, while he was convicted, he remains in Rikers as appeals against the first six charges are progressed.’

  ‘And if the appeals fail, he’ll be shipped to Cold Harbour. Okay. You said he had groupies?’

  ‘Yes. An underground internet fan club developed after the fifth death. The numbers are unknown, but a report I found from INN suggested fifty to one hundred people who ascribed superhuman powers to Bent. He is intelligent and quite charismatic, and he has a good understanding of anatomy, self-taught. They are convinced that he was betrayed by someone he trusted and that the evidence against him was faked. He, after all, could not possibly have made a mistake.’

  Fox was silent for a few seconds, considering. ‘Well, it doesn’t quite seem to fit, but the kind of dysfunctional looney who would fall for that kind of concept might not be capable of getting it up to rape someone. Keep digging, and get me an appointment to see Bent.’

  ‘In Rikers?’ There was some alarm in Kit’s voice.

  ‘I’m not going to invite him here for tea and cakes,’ Fox replied. ‘Yes, in Rikers. I’ve been there before. It’s no worse than any visit to Hell.’

  2nd October.

  ‘Oh… that was terrible,’ Marie moaned, hands cupping her flaming cheeks.

  Sam and Fox, sitting on either side of her on Fox’s sofa, turned to look at her. ‘What was terrible?’ Fox asked.

  ‘Everything! I’m so embarrassed you had to sit through that. I wouldn’t have if I wasn’t in it.’

  Fox smirked. ‘Well, the plot was clichéd and I told Nathan Shark he needed a consultant for the police work bits.’

  ‘And your co-star has the acting ability of driftwood,’ Sam added.

  ‘But you may be being a little hypercritical.’

  ‘Searches on your LifeWeb profile have increased significantly, Marie,’ Belle said as she appeared beside the virtual screen where the credits were still rolling.

  ‘What does significantly mean?’ Marie asked.

  ‘The percentage would make no sense since there were almost none before the stream started. You were averaging seventy per minute until the sex scene.’

  Marie let out a little whimper. ‘And then they fell off?’

  ‘And then they increased to one hundred and sixty-two per minute. This was concurrent with a number of comments being left on your public profile page, some of them lewd, but all of them complimentary. The rate is now at two hundred and nineteen per minute. The lewd comments are less frequent, but the compliments continue.’

  ‘Oh.’

  ‘You were about the only good thing in it, Marie,’ Fox said.

  ‘And the sex scene was… quite stimulating,’ Sam added.

  ‘It was?’ Marie asked, looking a little bewildered.

  ‘I’ll demonstrate later, but even your wooden colleague failed to demolish it.’

  ‘Even if he acted like a wounded dachshund trying to hump my leg?’

  ‘Even with that.’

  ‘I have Sister Naomi Lind wishing to contact you,’ Belle said.

  ‘Oh, she wants to complain…’ Marie whined.

  ‘Don’t be an idiot,’ Fox told her. ‘Put her through on conference, Belle.’

  Naomi’s avatar was seated, legs crossed, in her uniform, though her wimple was missing. It suggested to Fox that this was a live view and Naomi was off-duty. She was also smiling. ‘Is our young novice taking it badly?’ Naomi asked.

  ‘Jus
t a little,’ Sam replied.

  ‘Sister Naomi,’ Marie said, ‘I am so sorry.’

  ‘Why? M. J. was an exemplary Sister, you portrayed her well. I think NAPA should complain about your love interest, but I’m sure they’re used to police work being handled incompetently in the media.’

  ‘They are,’ Fox confirmed.

  ‘I did a quick straw poll before coming to call you.’

  ‘H-how many of you watched it?’ Marie asked.

  ‘Oh, we put it on in three of the lecture theatres. The general opinion was “needs work, but M. J. shone.” You’re a hit with the Sisters of Corruption, Marie.’

  ‘Well, at least I didn’t let you down. After all the time and effort you put in–’

  ‘We put in. That’s us and you. I hope the reviews are good tomorrow.’

  Marie sank into her seat, hoping the cushions would swallow her. ‘Oh, I don’t think I’ll be reading those…’

  ~~~

  ‘The story was a hackneyed retelling of a tale so well known that we could almost recite it ourselves,’ Fox read aloud while Marie cringed at Sam’s dining table, ‘and Detective Wallace might as well have been invisible for all his presence on the set–’

  ‘Please stop,’ Marie whimpered.

  ‘–and yet we found ourselves glued to the stream as M. J. and the Ripper, surely as poor a title as any we have seen, unfolded before us. Only the empathy we felt for M. J. Kelly, ably played by total unknown Marie Shaftsbury, kept this tale of murder and lack of suspense from vanishing without trace into the depths of IB-Nineteen’s Friday night programming.’

  ‘Marie Shaftsbury,’ Sam said before Marie could respond, ‘should be cast into the darkest dungeon imaginable.’

  ‘What?!’ Marie squeaked.

  ‘Her performance in M. J. and the Ripper may be responsible for redeeming the profession of licensed prostitutes and turning the Sisters of Corruption into heroes where once they were almost pariahs. It is impossible to watch this performance without coming to empathise with M. J. Kelly, a fragile figure of depth who rises to the challenge. Shaftsbury gives us a truly strong female lead character, tough, dedicated, and compassionate.’