The 7th Victim

by Alan Jacobson

  Next she checked her study, where the message was still scrawled on the wall. She would have to get some paint and get rid of that, and soon. It gave her the creeps. It reminded her Dead Eyes had been here, had violated her space.

  She moved back down the hallway, using the walls for support. As she stepped into the great room that contained the kitchen at one end and the family room at the other, she wondered if she was just being paranoid. Noises in the house. She hadn’t spent the night here in several days, ever since the profile had been stolen. She was unnerved, is all. A killer had been in her home, touched her things. Now she was back here at night and got spooked.

  She hobbled through the living and dining rooms, turning on lights. Everything was in its place. There were no messages scrawled across the walls. She chuckled silently, amused at letting herself get so worked up over nothing. Shame on you, Vail. You should know better.

  She sat back down at the kitchen sink and continued washing the pots.

  “WHAT’S OUR ETA?” Bledsoe asked.

  Robby looked around at the dark landscape flashing by outside the car. “Man, I don’t know. I never go this way. If I had to guess, five minutes, maybe ten.”

  “When are they going to invent flying cars, huh? Make our jobs so much easier.”

  “Were there any available units in her area?”

  “Different jurisdiction. Dispatch was putting out the word. Did you try her mobile?”

  “I texted and called her three times. I was kicked right into voice mail.”

  “Try the landline again.”

  Robby hit redial and waited. A moment later, he closed the phone. He didn’t need to say anything. Bledsoe already knew there was no answer.

  THE SMELL OF BURNT WAX and smoldering wicks irritated Vail’s nose. A draft must have blown out some of the candles. She hated that odor—she always tried to put a cup over the candle before it had a chance to burn out. Vail shut the water and reached for the dish towel to dry her hands.

  But it was not where she always kept it.

  A noise behind her, in the family room—and she grabbed for her Glock. Her wet hands fumbled with the leather strap, but she finally yanked the pistol from its holster. Three point stance, hands thrown out in front of her in a triangle. She slid down off the stool and immediately felt the pain of her body’s weight bearing down on her left knee. She swung around, keeping her hands fixed in front of her, moving in an arc. But she saw nothing.

  “Who’s out there?” she yelled.

  A flash of light to her extreme right caught her eye, and she spun and fired her gun in one movement—but suddenly the house went dark. There was no longer a doubt of if there was an intruder.

  Someone had cut the lights. The only questions were who—and where—he was.

  Then something else occurred to her. Vail knew she had pulled the trigger. But her pistol did not fire. In fact, it felt light. She pressed the release button with her thumb and the magazine dropped into her opposite hand. She stuck her index finger into the opening, feeling for the rounds. But there were none. Whoever was in her house had emptied her weapon.

  Shit.

  She shoved the magazine into the pistol and backed toward the sink to grab one of her large knives, but her foot caught the stool’s leg and she fell, the Glock flying from her hand. Her initial reaction was to feel for it in the dark, but she realized there was nothing to be gained. She pulled herself up, the pain in her knee now toothache-intense, and moved toward the counter where she kept her knife block.

  She realized too late that if the intruder had been smart enough to empty her Glock, and stealthy enough to move her kitchen rag, he probably had also removed other weapons of opportunity. Her knives.

  “Hancock, show yourself!” She shouted it into the dark air, hoping to elicit a response. Hoping for a chuckle if she were wrong, a voice if she were right. Something to give her a sense of direction.

  But before she could plan her next move, she heard a shuffle of feet. She threw her hands up and bent away from the noise bracing for impact—and got what she expected. Whack! Across the hands. Then a swift kick to her left knee. Pain ignited, burst through her leg, like fireworks exploding in her brain. She let out a groan, in that instant knowing there were going to be more fierce, angry blows.

  She crumpled in pain and was driven backwards to the floor, as a lineman would tackle a quarterback. And then she felt the weight of a body atop her.

  Vail swung her arms hard and hit something, something metal, and heard the object clunk against the floor. She immediately threw her hands up and grabbed clothing—then pushed the man back, away from her. Her eyes were now accommodating to the darkness and could make out what looked like nylon pantyhose stretched across his face.

  “Son of a bitch!” she shouted as he grabbed her neck with strong, vice-like hands.

  She tried to maneuver her legs to kick him, but he was sitting on her abdomen. Pinning her pelvis to the floor. He had done this before, she was sure. Highly intelligent, excellent planner . . . thirty to forty years old . . . her profile flittered through her mind while she tried to pry his hands loose.

  As the air left her lungs.

  eighty-one

  Bledsoe swerved, his tires crying in protest. He broadsided a parked Honda but continued on, the rear of his car dovetailing as he accelerated.

  “We’re close,” Robby said. “Maybe half a mile.”

  “I just hope dispatch got through to the sheriff’s office—”

  Just then, a police cruiser came speeding up behind them, strobe lights whipping in dizzying rhythm.

  “He’s either after us for hit-and-run or he got dispatch’s message.”

  “Let’s hope he got the message,” Bledsoe said, “’cause I ain’t stopping for nothing.”

  Bledsoe killed the lights a half a block away; the tailing cruiser followed suit. Bledsoe pulled up at the curb with a heavy foot on the brake while trying to avoid squealing the tires. Robby was out his door before Bledsoe and covered the postage-stamp lawn in four strides. Bledsoe motioned the cop in the patrol car toward the rear of the house.

  They drew their guns and stood on opposite sides of the front door. Bledsoe nodded to Robby, who stepped up and unleashed a wicked front-on kick.

  The door splintered inward. Bledsoe charged in, followed by Robby. They crouched low and moved quickly through the family room, their roving LED flashlights throwing an eerie flicker through the darkened house. Bledsoe tried the light switch. Nothing. He motioned to Robby to move on, toward the back of the house where the bedrooms were located.

  Robby started down the hallway—and saw something on the kitchen floor. Vail’s Glock. He knelt beside it, reached into his pocket and pulled out a latex glove, and snapped it on. He lifted the weapon, held it up to his nose. It had not been fired. He removed the magazine. Empty. “What?”

  Bledsoe came up behind him.

  Robby motioned to the gun. “Magazine’s empty. No shells. Hasn’t been fired.”

  Bledsoe squinted confusion. He turned and continued on through the house, his flashlight’s narrow beam bouncing around the walls. Robby remained where he was, trying to piece together what had happened. Why would she empty her weapon? That doesn’t make sense. Unless someone emptied it for her. Concern welled up inside his chest; his blood was pounding in his neck, in his head, in his ears.

  He moved toward the garage, using his small but powerful flashlight to peer under boxes and around corners. Vail’s car was still there; the hood was cool to the touch. Come on, Karen, where are you?

  He moved back into the house and met Bledsoe. “Anything?”

  “House is clear.”

  “Car’s in the garage,” Robby said. He rested his hands on his hips. “So where is she?”

  Bledsoe held up Vail’s BlackBerry. “Turned off. That’s why you didn’t get through.” He scrolled through the numbers stored in memory. “Three missed calls. All yours.”

  “I think we can as
sume she didn’t leave of her own choosing.”

  As they stood there, the looming silence between them was deafening.

  Finally, Bledsoe turned and headed toward the garage. “Let’s get these lights back on and take a good look around.”

  To Robby, that course of action seemed severely inadequate. But at the moment, he had nothing better to offer.

  eighty-two

  Vail’s head was bowed. Her shoulders ached and her neck was on fire. As consciousness returned, second by passing second, she realized why she was in pain. Her wrists were encircled by handcuffs secured to a beam, her body suspended above the floor, a few inches off the ground. Her ankles were shackled together, the loose chain dragging impotently beneath her.

  And she was naked.

  A single bare bulb stared her in the face, a few feet from her head. Close enough to feel the heat radiating from it. The remainder of her body was cold, the air chilled and drafty. A strong mildew scent tickled her nose.

  She blinked, trying to clear her blurry vision. She did not know what had happened to her after she fought for her last breaths. She remembered an intense electrical shock ripping through her chest. The only likely scenario was a stun gun.

  But there was so much that remained unexplained . . . chief of which was how Dead Eyes could have been resurrected. She had seen Patrick Farwell’s body on the ground. And the most telling evidence of all, the left hands.

  But what if the man lying there had not been Farwell? Their only photos of him were mug shots from twenty years ago. What if Farwell had found someone who resembled himself, took him back to his house, and executed him, disguising it as a suicide and expecting the police to draw the obvious conclusions, that the body was that of the Dead Eyes killer?

  If it was not, in fact, Farwell’s body, then the crime scene had been staged: making it look like something it was not. Staging was a telltale sign of an organized offender. That Vail did not see this sooner bothered her. Another missed sign. She had never wanted to accept that she was fallible. Yet as the pain in her shoulders and wrists increased, it served as a constant reminder of just how flawed she was. Kidnapped by the Dead Eyes killer, however, her fate was far worse than imperfection.

  Such a fate was not something she was willing to accept. Not yet.

  She closed her eyes for a moment, attempting to reinvigorate her night vision. The bright bulb, seemingly the only light source, had blinded her, and she wanted to be able to look into the darker recesses around her. Hopefully to gain some clues as to where she was.

  Closing her eyes provided a secondary benefit: it focused her senses. She swore she smelled something, a light perfume, more a suggestion than a statement. It was a scent she had smelled before. But where?

  When Vail opened her eyes, she looked to her extreme left, where a narrow shelf sat mounted to a bare plywood wall. The space was about eight feet across, the ceiling perhaps eight feet high. It almost had the look of a closet, though slightly larger. She moved her head and looked over her right shoulder. The underside of steps. This was some sort of basement, or dead space beneath a staircase. Dead space for Dead Eyes. The irony was not lost on her.

  Also not lost on her were the crime scene photos stolen from her house. Hanging to her right were pictures of the Dead Eyes victims: marked with what appeared to be red lipstick: their names, their identification, their personality—who they were as people—reduced to mere numbers on darkly grained plywood. They were all there, Marci Evers, Noreen O’Regan, Angelina Sarducci, Melanie Hoffman, Sandra Franks, Denise Cranston; and a newspaper photo of Eleanor Linwood, two knives protruding from the wall. Stabbed through the eyes.

  Vail now knew where she was: in the killer’s lair. She closed her eyes and tried to think. Tried to block the pain coming from her shoulder joints, which felt as if they were going to snap like the dead twigs she used to crunch beneath her heels in her parent’s yard in Old Westbury. What a far better place to be now.

  But her situation was not going to be solved by visualizing better times or reliving the past. She was a spider caught on a web, hung out until the predator could come along and eat her alive.

  Her legs, though cuffed at the ankles, were still free to move about. But the tractioning weight on her left knee was substantial. Which hurt worse . . . her shoulders and wrists or her knee . . . it was difficult to say. At the moment, none of that mattered. She had to shut off all pain, all thoughts of defeat.

  Visual examination of her surroundings told her there was nothing she could use to her advantage, no walls or stools, boxes or handles for her feet to gain purchase. She would have to use her legs to kick and, hopefully, win her freedom.

  Questions flooded her thoughts: Where was she? Down the street from her house or in another state? In the middle of nowhere? She thought of the bank, of the Alvin look-alike, of how there was no tactical team outside backing her up. Yet standing there with her Glock trained on the man’s head, she’d had control, she’d had power. What she would give to be back there.

  Because as precarious as it had been, staring down the barrel of a crackhead’s .38 Special, it was nothing compared to this.

  BLEDSOE WALKED BACK into the kitchen and joined Robby, who was kneeling beside a forensic technician.

  “Anything?” Robby asked.

  Bledsoe shook his head. “Nothing of use. There was a struggle in the kitchen. That’s about it. No obvious signs of forced entry.”

  “Anything on your end?”

  The technician looked up from his toolkit. “About the best news I can give you right now is that there’s no blood. We found a few footprints in the soil outside that don’t match any of your shoes. Sneakers, size nine, Reeboks, if I had to guess.” He stood from his crouch. “Latents galore, but it’ll be a while before we can sort them all out. Sorry. I wish I had more to give you. We may have more later.”

  “Later . . .” Bledsoe griped. He walked off with Robby.

  “So where does this leave us?”

  Bledsoe rubbed tired eyes. “We thought Patrick Farwell was Dead Eyes. Everything pointed to that, even the shit at his place. But he’s dead—”

  “Is he?” Robby asked.

  “Look, Hernandez, I know it’s late and we’ve been pushed up against the wall, but you’re not making sense. You saw the bullet wound. His body’s lying at the ME’s office on a slab.”

  Robby was waving his hands. “No, no. You’re missing the point. Someone was shot dead in that house. What if it wasn’t Farwell?”

  Bledsoe sat down on the family room couch, eyes searching the floor. “It sure looked like him. We had his mug shots—”

  “Yeah, from twenty years ago. Humor me. Call the ME, find out where they are in processing the body. See if they’ve run the fingerprints yet.”

  Bledsoe dug out his cell phone, then punched in the number.

  Robby stood there, trying to work it through. Feeling he was missing something, but not sure what. Then he realized what was bothering him. The email from the offender. He played it back in his mind: The hiding place smelled musty . . . it was small and dark. He watched everything through little holes in the walls. It had to be. If he was wrong, they would lose valuable time. But at the moment, there were no other leads to pursue.

  Bledsoe’s shoulders fell. “Can you run them ASAP?” he said into the phone. “The body may not be Farwell’s. Soon as you get something, call me.” He shook his head, then closed his phone.

  Robby grabbed Bledsoe’s arm. “I know where she is.”

  “You know? Or you think you know?”

  Robby hesitated. He had asked himself the same question. But he was relying on intuition . . . intuition and analytic logic. “How soon can you get a chopper here?”

  “If there’s one in the air, ten minutes. If not, longer.”

  “Make it ten. Karen’s life is at stake.”

  THE PAIN WAS STARTING to reach her limits of tolerance. Vail tried pulling herself up to alleviate some of the strain on
her shoulders. If her arms had been separated by just a few more inches, her position would be the same as the leg pull-up exercises she did to strengthen her abdominal muscles at the Academy gym. But because her hands were locked so close to one another, the increased strain on her arms only worsened the wrist pain.

  “Shit,” she said. It was her first utterance . . . but not her last. Figuring that the intelligent offender would have gagged her had he thought her screams could be heard, she knew that calling out for help would be a useless exercise.