Next Girl On The List - A serial killer thriller (McRyan Mystery Series Book)

by Roger Stelljes

  “Do you know where Walter lives?” Mac inquired.

  “No.”

  “Did you have a phone number for him?”

  “No, I didn’t.”

  “What number did he have for you?”

  “He called me at work and he called me here at home.”

  “On your home line?”

  “Yes.”

  “Do you have a cell?”

  “Yes.”

  “Did he ever call you on that?”

  “No. I gave him the number, but he never called on my cell. It seemed odd. Most everyone else calls me on the cell, not that I get a ton of calls.”

  Mac and Wire shared a knowing look. “Martha, we’re going to need to get your home phone records. Are you okay with that?”

  “Yes.”

  “And for your work phone as well.”

  “I don’t want any trouble with my employer.”

  Wire smiled. “Don’t worry about that. We’ll handle that and there will be no problems.”

  “Okay,” Mac started. “I want to go back to when you first met Walter. Tell me what happened after you met. Did you go on a date?”

  “We went on a few,” Martha answered, pulling a pillow up to her chest nervously, the idea, if not the reality that she was a target of Rubens setting in. “After I met him, a week later we had coffee. Then another week or so after that we met at another showing at the Wilson Gallery and then some days later we had dinner at a little out of the way place up in Falls Church. It was after that night I never heard from him again.”

  “Why do you think that is?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Tell me about the dinner,” Mac pressed.

  “It seemed totally fine. We were having a nice time discussing an upcoming showing at another art gallery that included a discussion with a professor from James Madison. It was really a lovely night because we were talking about possibly going to the showing. I was so happy as well because a friend of mine who I hadn’t seen in a long time was there that night and swung by the table. It was so good to see her and reconnect and it was kind of fun to have someone to introduce Walter to.”

  “Did you introduce her to Walter?”

  “Yes.”

  “And after that night, you never saw or heard from him again?”

  “No.”

  Mac and Wire shared another knowing look. Walter was Rubens.

  “Do you think Walter, or the man I thought was Walter, is really this killer Rubens?”

  “We think it’s very possible,” Mac replied ominously. “You fit the profile to a T of a Rubens victim. We think he follows his possible victims for some time before he approaches them. During that time, he follows, he conducts research to learn as much as he can about the women. Once he approaches them, he goes on quiet dates with them, building up their trust and confidence. And it works because he’s done all the leg work, learning what is important to the woman, what her interests are, what she likes, what her history is. However, as part of that, we also think he has certain rules that he follows and one rule is that he never meets family or friends. Not one victim has ever had a friend or family member be able to describe Rubens.”

  “How come?” Martha asked.

  “They never met him because we think he follows this rule. Now this man you call Walter, he disappeared and never contacted you again after he met your friend. No follow-up contact, no explanation. He just up and disappears, cutting you off cold.”

  Martha simply nodded, now curled up in a ball on her couch, suddenly petrified.

  “Martha, it is a good thing you called,” Dara said as she moved over to the couch and sat down next to Martha, touching her arm, comforting her. It wasn’t hard to see her processing everything, realizing just how close she came to being a victim.

  Mac leaned forward in his chair. “Martha, I need you to come with us. We’re going to sit you down with an FBI sketch artist,” Mac stated. “And I want you to call your friend. I will have a patrol car pick her up and we’ll bring her down to the FBI field office to sit down with a sketch artist as well.”

  “Isn’t the footage from the video you already have enough?”

  “More is better,” Dara answered, looking Martha in the eye. “That footage is from a distance. You were more up close. With a sketch artist, you can provide more fine detail that we can’t get from the video. That will help us have a better chance to identify him. The clock is running and he has another victim in his sights.”

  “He disguises himself,” Mac added. “And we think he constantly changes up his look, so the more descriptions, the more details, the better chance we’ll have.”

  “Do you think he’ll come after me still?”

  Mac nodded. “It’s possible, which is why after you’re done with the sketch artist, agents are going to come back here with you while you pack a bag. We’re going to put you under protection until this is over. So what do you say? Are you ready to come down and describe Walter to our sketch artist?”

  “Okay,” she nodded. “Let me get my purse.”

  • • •

  Rubens was drinking a coffee, walking along the sidewalk on the opposite side of the street, observing the front of Martha’s townhouse, evaluating a potential approach when a black BMW X5 pulled up. Out of the Beamer exited McRyan and Wire.

  He froze, looking right at the two of them.

  Thankfully, the two special agents were oblivious to his presence, just an anonymous man walking on the sidewalk on the opposite side of the street. But they were going to Schreiber’s house.

  Forty-five minutes later, he’d walked to the other end of the street to the south. He observed from that comfortable distance when McRyan and Wire walked down the front steps behind Martha.

  He was too late.

  • • •

  Mac followed Martha and Wire down the steps and the group walked north towards the X5. The two women were talking about jewelry, Dara easing Martha’s discomfort by asking about the long necklace she was wearing.

  “I get a box once a month from this company,” Martha explained eagerly. “It always includes two dresses, two blouses and some jewelry. I keep what I want and send the rest back. This necklace was in last month’s box.”

  “It’s really nice. What is the name of this company?” Dara asked. “I should look into it. I never have time to shop.”

  Mac’s phone started ringing. “Excuse me,” he said and then answered his phone. “McRyan.”

  “Nice press conference yesterday,” the masked voice greeted.

  “I thought I gave it a certain flair,” Mac stated, snapping his fingers at Wire. “You disagree, Rubens? I thought I described the current situation, what you do, your potential victims, and how you hunt them quite accurately. It’s how we found that video footage of you.”

  “It was fiction, Mac.”

  “No, it wasn’t, and you know it,” Mac replied, putting his hand to his ear so he could hear over the siren of the patrol car passing him. “Otherwise you wouldn’t be calling.”

  “To the contrary. You think you know, but you don’t know anything about me,” Rubens replied, his voice fading out due to the sound of a siren.

  A siren.

  Mac slowly spun around.

  “Really, you sick son of a bitch? You don’t think I know anything about you,” Mac continued as he scanned the area southbound on 8th, walking more briskly toward the sound of the siren. “You don’t think I’m starting to figure you out? To understand how your mind works?”

  “You think one press conference scares me? Do you know how many press conferences have been held about me? That one was no different than any of the others held about me over the last ten years. It won’t help you.”

  “It already has,” Mac replied. He started to focus on a man a block and a half down, walking away on the opposite side of the street. The man was of medium height, maybe a little pudgy, wearing a gray hoodie and black baseball cap and moving just a little too q
uickly to not be noticed. The man was holding a cell phone to his right ear, walking away but then taking a sly look back. “You’re absolutely certain it won’t help?”

  “Absolutely—you’ve got shit.”

  “Then how come I’m looking at you walking south on NW 8th Street. Gray hoodie, black ball cap, cell phone to your right ear?”

  The man glanced back again and locked eyes with Mac.

  Mac took a step toward the man and then he knew for certain it was Rubens.

  Rubens took off.

  “It’s him! It’s him!” Mac screamed as he took off at a full sprint. Wire was right behind him, still on the phone, but now calling the MPD.

  “Where?” Wire yelled from behind.

  “West side, gray hoodie,” Mac yelled as he crossed the street, dodging cars.

  “I don’t see him! I don’t see him!”

  “He just turned the corner to the right,” Mac replied, now across the street and hauling ass down the sidewalk at a full sprint.

  Mac veered right around the corner and the street turned southwest and straight ahead was a mass of people at a three-way corner for NW 8th, New Hampshire Avenue and Quincy Street where a multi-vehicle accident had occurred. It was where the patrol unit was heading. It’s where other patrol units were arriving.

  “Where did he go?” Mac asked out loud as he approached the crowd around the accident, took out his identification and raised his voice. “Listen up! I’m an FBI agent. Did anyone see a man with a gray hoodie and black baseball hat running this direction? Anyone?”

  All he got were shakes of the head from the bystanders who’d been more focused on the accident.

  “Damn it.”

  Mac ran across the street to the crowd on the south side of Quincy Avenue, holding up his identification again. “Did anyone see a man in a gray hoodie and black hat running along here? Anyone?”

  “Hey, aren’t you the guy after that serial killer?”

  “Yes, did you see the man I’m describing?”

  “I saw a guy in a gray hoodie run cross the street over there.” The man pointed west on Quincy. “and then he ran between the buildings. Hey, was that man the—”

  Mac didn’t wait for the man to finish his question, instead sprinting west to the gap between the buildings, the apartment buildings to the right running southwest on New Hampshire and the buildings to his left running along the east side of Georgia Avenue running south. He pulled out his Sig Sauer as Wire came up behind, gun already drawn. They quickly but cautiously worked their way through the gap, a small, narrowing alley between the buildings.

  Mac scanned the right, Wire the left.

  They came out of the walkway, which opened out to a large open space filled with people. There was a bus stand to their right, taxis lined up to the left and the Georgia Avenue-Petworth Station for the Metro straight ahead.

  They both scanned the area, turning, looking for any sign in the mass of people for the gray hoodie, black baseball cap and sunglasses.

  “You’ve got to be kidding me,” Wire growled.

  “You take the bus stand,” Mac gestured, “I’ll try the subway.”

  • • •

  “Close the doors, close the doors, close the doors,” Rubens kept saying in his head as he anxiously watched the stairway down to the subway platform, his hoodie in his right hand and the black ball cap in the left.

  He expected McRyan or Wire to come flying down the steps any second.

  Even as the doors closed and the train started pulling away from the platform, he peered nervously at the steps.

  He exhaled a sigh of relief and then checked the map for the next station.

  He wasn’t out of the woods yet.

  • • •

  Mac rushed down the steps and stopped three short of the bottom to scan the crowd. He looked to his left as the train for the northbound track approached.

  There was a man with a gray hoodie but he was tall and thin.

  He noticed two black baseball caps, but a woman wore one and another was on the head of a man in his early twenties.

  Mac pivoted to his right to the emptier platform for the southbound train. There were three people standing on that side. He approached a woman in a stylish dark blue workout suit with a black nylon athletic shoulder bag. “How long ago did the southbound train leave?”

  “I don’t know, maybe five minutes ago,” she replied. “I think I just missed it.”

  Mac reached for his cell phone.

  • • •

  The doors opened for the Columbia Street Station and Rubens quickly exited the train. The black baseball cap was now rolled into the hoodie that he carried under his right arm. He rapidly ascended the steps up to the street level and immediately started walking east on Irving Street. He’d made it a half block east on Irving when a police patrol unit suddenly turned onto the street and raced by, lights flashing.

  He kept walking, increasing his pace.

  A few seconds later, he looked back to see that the unit stopped at the station. The two officers exited the vehicle and ran toward the steps down to the Metro station platform.

  • • •

  Mac and Wire braked hard to a stop at the Columbia Street station. There were two patrol units awaiting their arrival.

  “I think we missed it,” a uniform officer reported. “When we arrived the train had already pulled out of the station.”

  Wire was already on her phone, having Galloway get the footage for the video cameras for both the Columbia Street station and Georgia-Petworth Station.

  “Son of a bitch,” Mac muttered. “We had him.”

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  “It’s like a drug and he’s an addict.”

  He was in safe territory now; at least as safe as southeast DC could be.

  From the Columbia Street Metro Station, he walked eight blocks east, dumped the gray hoodie and black hat in a random garbage can and two blocks later picked up a cab that dropped him off near the Lincoln Monument. He blended into the midday Saturday tourist crowd and walked as casually as he could along the National Mall toward the Capitol at the other end.

  At the Washington Monument, he stopped and purchased a blue sweatshirt, red golf visor and a pair of cheap wrap-around sunglasses. Around the back side of the Capitol, he hailed a cab across the street from the U.S. Supreme Court building. Fifteen minutes later, the taxi dropped him eight blocks from his final destination.

  As he made his way back, he continued to check back over his shoulder, walking in a block to block zigzag pattern with the final destination being his small office in Southeast DC. There were no pursuers.

  He finally allowed himself to breathe easy when five blocks short of the office a patrol unit rolled by and gave him nary a look. A second patrol unit a few blocks later ignored him as well.

  The long trek back gave him the opportunity to reflect on his strategy. Undoubtedly the manhunt would now be heightened with the chase. His obvious play would be to go into hiding and let the heat dissipate.

  But with that, his next target could get nervous, could start wondering and having questions.

  She could call McRyan. At a minimum, in an abundance of caution, she might cancel.

  There were thirty hours left. She needed to be put at ease. The suspicions could not be allowed to creep in.

  He entered the dilapidated office building via the narrow rear entrance and went immediately into the back room. In the office, he opened the metal cabinet, began assessing his appearance options and contemplated his look for his next move. He’d spent many hours trying to get a read on Eleanor before he’d approached her. She so loved coffee shops and poetry, so he’d gone with a little more of a beatnik look with her. It was a look that the FBI did not yet have, so that was an element working in his favor.

  With first a small dollop of face glue and then his two index fingers, he expertly pasted a small black beard on the bottom of his chin and then a small soul patch underneath his bottom lip. Ove
r his head, he pulled on a black turtleneck and then slipped into some black pants and black loafers. Rather than the beret he’d worn before, he selected a black leather newsboy hat and slipped on some black sunglasses with green tinted lenses. In totality, it was a look entirely different than anything remotely close to what McRyan now had. It was like nothing the FBI was warning women to look out for.

  • • •

  In the mid-afternoon, with the manhunt of the area around Columbia Street station cooling in intensity, Mac and Wire retreated back to the FBI field office and out of the media spotlight. The media monitoring the police scanners heard the Rubens name, heard there was a sighting and where and they descended on the area.

  It was good news and bad news. They had another look at Rubens, they would have two new sketches shortly and the day’s excitement kept the story front and center; maybe there would be another Martha or two out there that would come forward.

  That was the good.

  The bad was self-explanatory.

  “I can’t believe it,” Wire groaned, leaning over in her chair, staring down into her coffee. She looked back up to Mac, holding her right index finger and thumb an inch apart. “We were this close, Mac. We were this fucking close.”

  Mac simply nodded, not saying anything, sitting back in his chair staring at the white ceiling tiles, too angry to speak. They were that close.

  Down the hall, Martha Schreiber was meeting with a sketch artist regarding the man she’d met that went by the name of Walter Olson. Her friend had recently arrived, the one who met Walter up in the restaurant in Falls Church. She was meeting with a separate artist.

  An FBI tech stuck his head in the room. “Agent McRyan, I think we have something you should see.”

  Mac and Wire followed the agent to a small office containing a wall of monitors.

  The tech sat down at his desk, his partner to his left. “We’re working with a series of cameras for the Georgia-Petworth Metro station. This one to the left is off the stairway down from the street. The other one is for the platform. You said we should be looking for a man with a gray hoodie and black baseball hat. We might have that.”