by M. Z. Kelly
“There’s also a physical type the Angel prefers,” Collins said.
Kinnear agreed, telling us, “He prefers young women in their late teens, early twenties, with dark hair. That preference might be related to a past encounter, either with a victim or someone he was involved with in the past.”
Walling was scoffing as a woman rushed into the room and whispered something to Collins.
“Put it through,” Collins told her before she left the room.
“What’s going on?” Kinnear asked.
“There was a call made to the Richmond Police Department in Virginia a few minutes ago,” Collins said. “They’re patching it through to us. It’s a man, claiming he’s the Angel.”
FIVE
The room was silent as we all waited for the call to be transferred. From what we’d been told, a man had called the police department and given them enough particulars about his crimes that they believed he was, in fact, the Angel. Unfortunately, they either lacked the expertise to trace the call or had simply failed to do so.
When Agent Collins got word that he was on the line, she’d already set procedures in place with Tom Wilson to begin a trace as she put the call on speaker and answered.
“This is Agent Collins with the FBI. Who am I speaking with?”
The caller took a long time before responding. I had the impression he was enjoying the drama and suspense as he whispered, “This is the Angel.”
“Let’s talk about what happened tonight.”
There was another hesitation before he said, “The time for talk is over. I’m sure you saw what I did to the girl.”
Collins looked at Wilson, who was on another line. He shook his head, telling her they didn’t have a location on the call. “Yes, I saw what happened.”
He laughed. “You, along with millions of others. I’ll bet I had quite the following.”
“Tell me what you want.”
“I’m assuming you’re pinging my call and will have my location shortly, so I’ll make this brief. I’ve already received what I wanted tonight, but I’ve left you something special, Agent Collins. I think it will get your attention.”
Collins glanced over at Wilson, who was mouthing the words, Got him.
“What did you leave?” she asked the Angel.
Low, derisive laughter came over the line. “You’ll see soon enough. Sorry, but I’m sure you have my location by now. I’ve got to run, but, rest assured, I’ll be in touch soon.”
The line went dead, even as Collins asked him what he meant. When she realized the call had ended, she looked at Wilson. “Where is he?”
“A suburb between Richmond and Maymont. It’s about an hour south of here.”
“Let’s get in the air,” Collins said, rising from the table. “Get the locals on the line. Tell them to go to the house. If he’s not there, have them establish a perimeter. I want this bastard caught tonight.”
***
Olivia and I boarded the helicopter with Collins, Kinnear, four other agents, and Professor Walling, while the other taskforce members followed in another chopper.
We should be there in half an hour,” Kinnear announced when we were airborne. “The local police are en route now.”
“What do we know about the area?” Collins asked.
“A working-class neighborhood. The home is owned by Susan and George Rand. We’ve confirmed they have a daughter named Audrey. She’s a third-grade teacher at Middlebrook Elementary, unmarried.”
The head of our taskforce sighed. “It looks like it was the unluckiest day of their daughter’s life.”
After some discussion about the Angel’s phone call, Olivia asked Collins, “Has our suspect ever called after any of his previous crimes?”
“No. Tonight was a first, because of both the streaming and the phone call.”
“Just an impression, for what it’s worth. I think he’s well educated. His speech pattern indicates an organized thought process, someone who has planned things out. He also obviously craves the attention and notoriety of what he’s doing. He’s not someone who acts impulsively.”
“That’s consistent with what we know about him,” Kinnear said. “But what happened tonight definitely gives us more insight into his personality and motivation.”
I decided to tell them what was on my mind. “Do you think our suspect might have some background in information technology? He was obviously savvy enough to set up the Internet connection and mask his streaming activity.”
“It’s a possibility,” Kinnear agreed. “When we catch a moment, let’s ask Wilson for his thoughts.”
Kinnear’s eyes held on me for a long moment before I nodded and my gaze moved off. The NYPD profiler was handsome, and impeccably dressed in a dark suit. His strong features and full head of dark hair reminded me of the actor Richard Gere when he was younger. The profiler’s calm demeanor and insight was a positive addition to a taskforce that was obviously dedicated to their professions and determined to stop the Angel.
Then Professor Walling spoke up, proving he was an exception to the others. He’d overheard our conversation and voiced his own opinion as he patted his comb-over in place. “The Angel isn’t satisfied with tonight’s events.”
Walling’s pedantic manner clearly irritated Agent Collins. “What are you talking about?”
“Despite the audience, the attention he garnered wasn’t sufficient. He wants to engage with this taskforce. This is now personal.”
No one responded to what he’d said. Despite his abrasive manner, I thought what he’d said was likely. We were encountering a change in our suspect’s behavior pattern, something that could possibly make him easier to find, but also increasingly dangerous. It was imperative that we found him soon.
“We’re going to set down in a park that’s a block over from our target location,” Kinnear announced a couple minutes later. “We got word that Richmond PD has made entry into the house. Our suspect isn’t there.”
“Make sure they don’t touch anything,” Collins said. “What about a perimeter?”
“They’re working on it, but you know how things sometimes go with the locals.”
After setting down in Richfield Park, we were met by the police department’s SWAT team, and took their armored Humvee to the Rands’ small house. The street had been cordoned off, and uniformed officers were standing guard at the front door.
The crime scene was as bad as anything I’d ever encountered. The wounds inflicted on the victim made it likely that the Angel’s torture session had begun prior to him streaming images of his crime. There was blood everywhere, and I knew that the images of the victim, trussed up, with blood on the ceiling and walls, would haunt me forever. After a preliminary look at things, the feds had their crime scene people take over.
We were searching the residence when Hayden Kinnear found the Angel’s calling card in a home office. He called everyone over to examine his finding.
“I was careful not to touch it,” Kinnear said, indicating the photograph of an attractive young woman on the desk. “But I doubt there’s any prints, given his past behavior.”
Agent Collins took her time, moving closer and studying the photograph, which had the word NEXT written in red ink on it. When she was finished, she released a breath and said, “I know who she is.”
The profiler’s brows went up as they exchanged glances.
Emma Collins’ gaze went back to the photograph. “Her name is Lauren. She’s my daughter.”
SIX
The Angel watched the FBI agents and the others leave Audrey Rand’s house. Even though it was almost midnight, the street was full of his victim’s neighbors, onlookers, the press, and cops doing crowd control. It secretly thrilled him to know that he’d set everything in motion, but there was no outward sign of that. After all these years, the Angel was an expert at hiding in plain sight.
“Do you know what happened here?” a woman standing next to him asked.
He shook his hea
d. “I just got here,” he said, lowering his baseball cap before walking away.
“It was the Angel,” he heard another woman say from behind him. “He murdered a girl. It was on the Internet.”
The two women were joined by others who said they’d watched the killing. After a moment, he tuned them out. He was far more interested in Emma Collins, Hayden Kinnear, and the others. Knowing your enemy was essential to playing the game and keeping The Realm safe, and he knew most of the taskforce members by name.
In time, he began to focus in on the two women standing at the periphery of the group. One was a black woman, who he immediately knew could be a dangerous adversary. She occasionally scanned the crowd, looking for anyone or anything out of the ordinary. He surmised that she was a local cop, maybe brought in from one of the jurisdictions that he’d previously worked.
But it was the other woman who intrigued him. She was tall and slender, with shoulder-length dark hair. It was a physical type that attracted him, although she was older than the girls he preferred. Even from this distance, he saw her natural beauty. He imagined doing to her what he’d done to Audrey tonight, only worse.
“Everyone needs to move back!” a uniformed cop shouted. “There’s nothing to see here.”
As the crowd moved down the street, the phone in his pocket vibrated. He moved away from the throng of spectators, finding a place where he was alone to answer the call.
“I saw everything,” the woman said after he answered.
“Were you pleased?”
“You played well to the camera. It’s nice to see that you’re finally taking things to the next level.”
“I’m glad you enjoyed it.”
“I have an idea about what comes next.”
The Angel listened for a few minutes as the caller gave him her thoughts about his next victim, how everything should play out.
When she was finished, his gaze moved back up the street where the two cops he’d noticed earlier were moving in his direction. He knew they were planning to surveil the crowd, look for anyone suspicious. It was time for him to go.
“I’ll call you later,” he said, turning away and moving farther down the street.
“You haven’t told me what you think of my idea.”
“Let me give it some thought.”
“The time for thinking is over. This is your time to come out of the shadows and show the world what you’re capable of doing. It’s time to use your power and protect me.”
He chuckled. “I thought that’s what I did tonight.”
The caller screamed at him, then went on, again giving him her thoughts about what he should do next. Her lecture continued until he was tempted to shout into the phone, begging her to stop.
The Angel managed to control his emotions and resigned himself to her demands.
“I’ll do whatever you want,” he said. “You know I would never disappoint you.”
After ending the call, the man known as the Angel walked away, alone with his thoughts. He knew that, no matter what it took, he would do whatever the woman who called him asked. She was, after all, the one who had given him both his life and his power. A mother deserved a son who carried out her desires. Even if those desires required murder.
SEVEN
Olivia and I got back to our barracks at Quantico as the sun was coming up. We were told to get some sleep and meet back in the conference room at ten. Despite my long day and night, I lay in bed, tossing and turning for some time before dozing off. Last night’s image of one the most prolific and cunning serial killers I’d ever encountered skittered through my mind. If the Angel was going to be caught, we would need to catch a break that a decade of investigative work hadn’t achieved.
After our nap, Olivia and I got a bite to eat in the cafeteria before our meeting. We discussed the photograph of Agent Emma Collins’ daughter found at last night’s crime scene.
“It means the Angel not only knows who’s investigating him, he’s now made things very personal,” Olivia said. “It raises the stakes in a deadly game that’s already off the charts.”
I took a bite of my toast. “This case is about as ugly as things can get. At the very least, they’re going to have to provide Collins’ daughter with protection. There’s also the matter of public hysteria and the press.”
“Even though the video was taken down before the homicide occurred, I read somewhere that there’s been over a million downloads of what happened before that.”
“Hayden Kinnear and I asked Agent Wilson if he thought the Angel might have some background in computer science, given the level of expertise needed to stream and mask the video. Wilson said it was possible, but also said the necessary skills could be learned in a short period of time on the Internet.”
Olivia sipped her orange juice, then said, “We know that if the Angel follows his past pattern, he’ll kill again, taking one or more victims in the next seventy-two hours.”
We went on for a few minutes, talking about the new direction our case was taking, the change in our suspect’s behavior, his need for publicity, and the urgency of our investigation. The conversation then turned personal.
“I got a call this morning from that doctor I’ve been seeing,” Olivia said. “I briefly told Martin about our case, but sensed something had changed by the way he responded. I asked him if he was okay. He basically told me that he was having second thoughts about being involved with someone who’s chasing killers.” She sighed. “I think our relationship is history.”
I touched her hand. “I’m sorry.”
She blinked several times. “It’s probably just as well that he told me before things became more serious.” She took a breath before going on. “I also think he probably sensed that, on some level, I’ve never gotten over the death of my husband.” She chuckled. “There’s that, and also the baggage from my childhood, so I guess I can’t really blame him.”
Olivia’s husband had died while they were on their honeymoon, the victim of a drunk driver. Even though it had been a decade since his death, I got the impression she’d never recovered. My friend had also suffered extreme abuse as a child, at the hands of her father, while her mother stood by and took no action. She also suspected that her father had been responsible for the death of her younger sister, who, as a teenager, was found shot in an alley. She still carried both the physical and the emotional scars of everything that had happened.
I tried to sound upbeat. “It looks like it’s the single life for both of us.”
“Any word from Joe?”
I shook my head. “The last time we spoke, I made it clear that I only wanted to be friends. I’m not sure how he took it.”
She smiled. “What was that thing we said a few weeks back about us sharing a bond because of our childhoods? I think it was pretty accurate.”
I smiled. “There’s nothing like the bonds of trauma.” I glanced at my phone, seeing it was almost ten. “I guess we’d better go see what the latest is with our case.”
The same players as before gathered in the conference room, with one exception: Emma Collins wasn’t there. A couple minutes later, an agent named Bryce Hyland entered the room and explained that he was the new head of the taskforce.
“Special Agent Collins is being reassigned, given the personal nature this case has taken,” Agent Hyland explained. The agent was tall, with dark hair and intense hazel eyes. “I’m sure you’re all aware that a photograph of her daughter was found at last night’s crime scene. Both she and her daughter are being relocated and given special protection.”
After further discussion about adding other staff to the taskforce in the near future, another agent arrived. Hyland explained that she was a profiler who had worked with the Miami police department. “This is Detective Eva Valdez. She’s very familiar with the Angel case, having worked several homicides attributed to him in her jurisdiction over the past decade. You might also know of her work from the many books she’s written on criminology and serial
crime. I’ve asked her to come aboard to offer her insight.”
Valdez was probably in her mid-thirties, with short brown hair and deeply set brown eyes. She carried herself in a way that telegraphed power and intelligence as she walked into the room and took a seat next to Hyland. I’d seen her from past appearances on talk shows and book promotional tours, including a recent tour to promote a bestseller. It was a little like having a celebrity in the room.
After Hyland finished his introduction, Valdez addressed the group. “I’m here at the request of Agent Hyland, and, principally, because of what was streamed last night. It’s my opinion that we’re dealing with a killer who is not working alone.”
There were murmurs of surprise in the group before Professor Walling spoke up. “You really expect us to believe that a killer who’s been at work for more than a decade has, for lack of a better phrase, a shadow partner?”
“Let me tell you about a couple of homicides I worked in Miami, then you tell me what you think.”
Valdez took a moment to set up her laptop before displaying photographs of the Angel’s past crimes on the TV monitor and telling us about his victims.
“Delores Crawford was twenty-one, a student at the University of Miami’s School of Business. Her murder occurred on a Sunday night in April of 2012. She lived near the campus with two roommates, who had gone on spring break together in Mexico.”
Several close-up photographs of the victim were displayed. It looked like she’d bled out from multiple stab wounds.
“Despite what you see, the COD was asphyxiation,” Valdez said. “The cuts on the body were inflicted premortem.”