Seeing Red

by Heidi Brod

  SERAPHINA

  A psychopathic serial murderer doesn’t end the violence after one horrifying kill but waits in the darkness, lurking in the shadows and looking for his next victim. He has no conscience or empathy. Often, there is no revealing confession. They are organized and intelligent, and often leave no trail of witnesses, fingerprints, or DNA.

  I don’t think my husband is a killer, although I made him out to be one. For me, fear has been replaced by a much more useful emotion: rage.

  Most of the time, the killer is a stranger, one who’s not motivated by revenge, jealousy, or greed.

  I will not allow myself to be made a victim again.

  Jacob is standing behind me, grasping the gun, which is smaller than I remember, more compact. He’s wearing old faded Levi’s and a black hoodie. He puts the earmuffs over my ears and hands me black glasses.

  “If you are going to take a shot, it better be the one that kills,” he says. “Are you nervous?”

  “A little. I didn’t grow up around guns.”

  “My father was a guard and weapons instructor at a maximum-security prison, and that made him view the world in a different way. I never learned to ride a bike. Instead, I learned to shoot in my backyard,” Jacob says.

  “What does it feel like when you pull the trigger?” I ask.

  “Powerful. You need to focus on your breathing and staying calm. It will stabilize you so that you won’t lose your balance from the recoil.”

  The sound of laughter floats in through the glass window and distracts me.

  “Those are the ‘guntry club girls’ in the booth next to us.”

  “The what?” I ask.

  “They come here every week instead of golf and call themselves ‘the guntry club girls’. We’ve got Wi-Fi, comfy lounge chairs, a catered lunch, and they like to shoot. Take your finger off the trigger until you’re ready to shoot. Focus and don’t take your eyes off the target, and always point your gun downrange. You need to know your target and what’s behind it.”

  He hits a button, and the target floats forward on a line.

  “You can handle anything, Seraphina. It’s about building confidence. When you draw your gun out there, you have to accept responsibility for someone dying. Watch me.”

  He lines up the gun and pulls the trigger, a clear shot through the center of the target.

  A copy of the New York Post sits on a table in the other room. I can see Jessa’s face on the cover, but I can’t read the headlines. I’m distracted.

  “A semiautomatic has a slide and is magazine fed. The slide racks back every time so you need a firm grip on the gun. Now you try.” He hits the button, and a blank target comes into frame.

  I point the gun. I’m distracted.

  “This isn’t a slow dance. Sometimes you only get one shot. Own the moment.”

  I line it up. I shoot straight down the middle. The recoil of the gun knocks me back a little at first. The gun goes up, and the shell is ejected, a feeling that will take some getting used to.

  “How did it feel?” Jacob says.

  “It feels like control and power. How long does it take to get really good?”

  “It’s muscle memory, like any other sport. You need to practice. If you come here every day for the next seven days and just practice, it can happen pretty quickly.”

  “What are my options to carry and conceal? And please don’t show me anything pink.”

  Jacob laughs. “You have so many options.”

  “A purse carry?”

  “You can’t get to it fast enough, and what happens if someone steals your purse?”

  “Inside the waistband?”

  “I would go with the Flashbang Bra Holster.”

  “Are you serious?”

  “Yes. You don’t wear office clothes, and you’re petite. Did I teach you how to rack the slide?” he says, smiling.

  “Did you just say ‘rack’?”

  “I did. A semiautomatic pistol uses the energy generated by firing the first round to expel the spent casings and draw in the rest of the rounds from the magazine. The first round has to be chambered manually. That’s called ‘racking the slide.’

  “I’ll get someone to help you with that holster, love. Keep practicing.”

  My mind wanders again. I lock eyes with Jacob. He has a look of curiosity mixed with concern.

  “It’s going to take some time. You just need to be patient.”

  I think about my child, my silver lining. Everything I do is for her.

  Out the window, dark clouds move through the affluent shores of Rumson, the tranquil waters now dark and choppy.

  It reminds me of my dream last night.

  I was playing in the backyard with Sky, drawing a rainbow on the concrete in pastel-colored chalk. She was older, with beautiful golden curls spread down around her shoulders. She was laughing and jumping rope. The sun surrounded her, creating a golden halo. The laughter was like a melody. In the distance, I saw a tornado forming.

  The wind whipped the clouds into a dark vortex of heavy gray smoke, violently twisting and turning, threatening to swallow us up.

  I knew that wasn’t right and that you couldn’t have a bright day filled with sunshine and a tornado less than a hundred miles away, threatening devastation.

  “Will you let me disappear?” Sky asked.

  I tried to answer, but I had lost my voice. I couldn’t move; my feet were frozen as if in cement.

  “Mama, will you save me?”

  She had the beautiful face of an angel. I still had no voice, and then Harper was there. He was just watching me, and they spoke in unison, all of us thrown into this macabre turmoil that the approaching violent tornado had created.

  I tried to scream; the tornado ripped closer, destroying everything in its wake. Before I could grab Sky, she was caught up in it and vanishing into a black hole of destruction.

  I woke up frightened and alone, made my way to the nursery, and slept on the rocking chair.

  My mind is preoccupied now, working out the dream and its meaning. Jacob is still talking. I have faded away again. This must be what madness feels like.

  “Seraphina, I know you’re afraid. You’re not alone. I’m here to help you. You’re safe now. You have to keep moving forward. You can’t keep holding on to what is already gone. You’re not a victim. You’re a survivor and a fighter.”

  “I can’t remember what happened that night in Boston. I have no real memories of it. I just remember waking up in the hospital.”

  Then came my tears, tears that illuminated and revived; the same ones that had frozen around my heart began to melt and regenerate.

  Jacob stayed with me, teaching me the proper stance and how to draw.

  “You keep tightening your grip as you pull the trigger. See how you keep hitting the target too far down and to the right? Stay loose. You’re tightening up. Keep breathing.”

  I shoot. The bullet pierces the bull’s-eye.

  “I think that’s enough for today. You can come back tomorrow. Every day if it makes you feel better. For some people, this is an important part of recovery.”

  “Thanks, Jacob. I’ll be back tomorrow morning.”

  At home, I walk through the rooms of the dark, quiet house. I feel alone and frightened, even with Birdie and Sky sleeping soundly down the hall; those pictures from Jessa’s murder haunt me. Her smile, suspended in a wicked slant, mocks me, even in her demise.

  Death is a demon, voracious and self-indulgent. It sounds an alarm deep in the soul, threatening the very core of our existence. It’s gnawing away at our worst fears; it’s a powerful sorcerer, planting the seeds of doubt and misfortune until they are soon overgrown weeds.

  Is it my reflection I see in the vulture’s eyes? The thought of it makes my blood run cold.

  Fifteenr />
  SERAPHINA AND HARPER

  The flashbulbs go off around Harper. He feels the heavy weight of dread and fear, sitting like an anvil on his chest.

  The headline of the New York Post reads, “Swift, Justice Served!” His heart is banging, rapid and hard; his jaw is clenched, pulse racing. This arrest wasn’t anything he anticipated, but the evidence against him had been overwhelming.

  Harper sits in the same interrogation room, this time on the other side of the table, as they interview him.

  Overnight, someone had anonymously sent photographs of Harper and Jessa fighting from the night of the murder. The incriminating evidence makes him look like a madman who is one step away from wielding a scalpel and brutally murdering his girlfriend.

  The photos show Harper grabbing Jessa roughly, Jessa fighting back, Jessa crawling toward him, and the whole sordid affair caught on film in black and white, like still shots from an old movie.

  Scraping samples showed Harper’s DNA was found under Jessa’s fingernails, and his fingerprints were all over her apartment, along with his DNA on the swabs of the rape kit. It’s as if someone had planned the perfect murder and set him up to be the killer.

  He thought about Jessa mouthing the words help me on the video stream and realized someone had put her up to it. Harper could count his enemies on one hand, and none had the motivation to pull off a perfect crime like this.

  Belle, ADA Kane and Agent Walthrop were waiting for him at the office that morning to break the news and brought him into the interrogation room.

  After he listens intently to everything they have to say, Harper finally addresses the room. He says, “I admit to having an affair with Jessa, but do you really think I’m capable of murdering a woman like that?”

  Agent Walthrop throws his hands up in a defensive gesture and says, “You want us to question whether or not you could actually commit a crime so heinous, right, Harp? Isn’t that all part of your plan?”

  Harper isn’t afraid to invoke the Fifth. He knows he isn’t guilty, and invoking his Fifth Amendment rights would keep him from doing any more damage answering these questions.

  Agent Walthrop goes on, “I think you didn’t realize your new girlfriend was a working girl, a paid escort. You had everything to lose, so you wanted to keep her quiet. She had all of the power. And judging from your financials, your wife owned you too. The truth would have cost you everything, and that’s your motive,” Walthrop says.

  “We put a rush on the rest of the testing, including DNA. We should know more in a day or so,” Belle says, obviously pissed at the turn of events.

  Harper should have confided in Belle when the affair with Jessa first happened. They could have brainstormed, come up with a plan, and gotten out in front of all of this direct evidence.

  “Did you find out where those anonymous e-mails came from or anything more on the murder of Brooke Beck?” Harper asks.

  “Not yet,” says Walthrop.

  “Then you really don’t have all of the answers yet, do you? I think you’re embarrassed and need somebody to take the fall. I think you’re setting me up. I had an affair with Jessa Dante, and that is all,” Harper says.

  “Harper Swift, you’re under arrest for the murder of Jessa Dante,” says ADA Kane.

  They set the bail at $500,000. Harper pays and hires a lawyer, the best in the city. At first, he was furious at Seraphina. Her antics yesterday had cast a bigger spotlight around him as a prime suspect in the wake of Jessa’s murder. He spent most of the night stewing, angry as hell at her. He knew forensics would turn up the heat on him and that there was enough direct evidence to incriminate him. He just didn’t realize he would be thrown into the fire so quickly.

  He goes over the steps in his mind, like he had been taught to do in any unsolved homicide case. Only this time, he is the suspect.

  He remembers the clue from Brooke Beck’s murder: Heaven has no rage like love turned to hatred, Nor hell hath no fury like a woman scorned.

  Brooke Beck’s murder led to his affair with Jessa, which led to Seraphina’s rage after discovering his affair that night in SoHo.

  It’s as if someone is one step ahead of him, each move carefully planned and coordinated, as if his life has become a game of chess, the board springing to life, leaving him facing a loss and the ultimate death of his king.

  He begins to wonder if Seraphina may have been telling the truth and whoever is after her is now taking revenge on him, carefully plotting and knocking him out of the equation with deception and lies.

  He stays silent at the news conference, waiting for it to end so he can talk to Belle and a cybercrime specialist. He needs to figure out who is sending these e-mails. He needs to put the pieces together before it’s too late.

  Yao Lu is with computer forensics, a cybercrime specialist. She has bangs that hang down in front of her face and dark hair, with streaks of bleached-blonde at the ends. She wears a thick skull ring on her finger and scans the screen as her fingers dance across the keyboard.

  “Can you tell me who sent this e-mail?” Belle asks.

  She takes her headphones off and folds her delicate arms across her chest, rolling her chair over to another laptop open in the corner, Skrillex playing in the background.

  “You don’t get many personal e-mails do you, Belle?”

  Despite his bad luck, this makes Harper laugh.

  She says, “It’s impossible to trace these. The links are useless, and the websites are hidden.”

  Belle looks at the white pieces of printed copy paper with lines of code.

  “It came through the dark web, which bounces it all over the world before it ends up with you.”

  “How do we search the dark web?” Harper asks.

  “Well, see, that’s the thing. Without boring you with all of the computer jargon, you can’t. The dark web is a section of the Internet not discoverable by conventional means, like Google or search or by directly entering a website URL.”

  “Why? Isn’t it like Amazon, Facebook, or anything else that exists with an online address?”

  “These websites are completely hidden; you can buy or sell anything because it’s an underground marketplace. This looks like Tor. They disguise their web traffic to keep things anonymous.”

  “Is there anything we can do?”

  “If I can access the computer server and run it from here, I can try to use a hacking tool, NIP network investigative technique, to uncover the IP addresses involved.”

  “How long will it take?”

  “I’m not sure it’s going to work. I may not be able to get around the encryption. You have to give me some time.”

  “Is this legal?” Harper says.

  “It’s controversial, but you’re no stranger to controversy. I’m sorry, Harp. This could take months.”

  Harper stands up, stretching his arms up, trying to break up some of the knots in his back. The beat of the music is drilling a hole in his brain.

  “Hey, can I turn this off?” Harper asks.

  “Sure, old man,” she says, smiling.

  “Seems like someone is really trying to remain anonymous.”

  Yao says, “Now on Brooke Beck’s computer, I was able to track her search history. She spent a lot of time on Internet detective sites, mostly researching the Renaissance Killer, the Boston serial killer. She’s also been researching you, Harp. She seems to know everything about you.”

  “Why?”

  “I thought maybe you could tell me.”

  “I was in law school at Harvard during the time of the Renaissance Killer and the Boston murders. I only know about them through the media reports and Seraphina. Did you get anything else off of the browser histories?”

  “Those girls worked very hard. If you can call that work.”

  “What do you mean?” Harper asks.

 
; “They both had very popular deep webcam sites.”

  “What is a deep webcam site?”

  “You’ve never heard of Bate, where amateurs live stream erotic porn? They’re tipped with tokens. It’s a huge business. It looks like Jessa was ranked the third-most-popular porn website last year.”

  “Do they give awards for that?” Belle asks.

  “The Cammies?” Yao says, laughing.

  Harper isn’t laughing. “Anything else we can do?”

  “I installed software on both of your computers that allows me to monitor your activity and track your location from here. This way, if anything else comes in, we’ll have it in real time. Just try not to watch too much porn, because I’ll be watching you while you watch it,” Yao says, trying to lighten the mood.

  The thought of porn couldn’t be further from his mind. Harper decides he will stay at Belle’s apartment on his pullout couch for the night.

  By now, the reporters will have camped outside his home, ruthlessly waiting for a glimpse into his demise.

  He has sent extra security to the house to take care of Seraphina and Sky. He realizes his family is in danger, and he needs to put the pieces together before it is too late.

  In the morning, he will apologize to Seraphina. He isn’t sure she is done giving him the cold shoulder, punishing him for his infidelity. He still loves her, even more now that he realizes she isn’t crazy—or maybe still crazy, but in the way that he has always loved her for.

  The strange African poison used in the Boston murder makes the possibility of a serial killer very real.

  Walthrop was a rising star with the FBI, having worked with NCAVC, the National Center for the Analysis of Violent Crime, a major branch of the FBI’s Critical Incident Response Group. They investigate and research behavior of serial and violent criminal behavior. Serial killers and rapists are almost always male.

  Harper says, “If the murders are connected, the killer needs to have the strength to move and cut these bodies. We can’t rule out the possibility of a ‘visionary’ killer, given the ritual element to Brooke’s murder. It doesn’t fit the profile of a psychotic. He’s organized and has managed to leave a trail of victims behind, if the Renaissance Killer and the Boston killer are related to Brooke Beck and Jessa Dante. I’m not sure what it all has to do with Seraphina and the night she was attacked.