Judgment

by Carey Baldwin

  Spense nodded, this could definitely be their UNSUB, but you can’t arrest a guy because he fits a profile. You need actual evidence for that. Still, he was grateful Baskin had circulated their profile despite his skepticism. Mark of a good cop.

  “How long can you hold him?” Caitlin asked.

  “We can’t. This is his first DUI, so once he’s sobered up, he’s free to go, and he’s been stone cold for hours now. He’s answering questions voluntarily, so unless we can get a confession, we gotta let him go at his request.”

  “Will he take a polygraph?”

  “He’s declined. And he’s getting antsy. I’m expecting him to dip any minute.”

  “What about a search of his home?” Caity pressed Baskin.

  “We don’t have enough for a warrant, but Thompson’s got the touch. He’ll offer to drive him home. Graham’s car’s impounded. Maybe Thompson can strike up enough of a rapport to wheedle an invitation to come inside and take a look around. All depends on how comfy Graham gets with Tommy.”

  Caity look worried. And she should be. They’d have eyes on Graham, of course, but he wouldn’t be the first person of interest to give them the slip. But there was nothing to be done without more evidence. “I hate to agree with you, Baskin, but I don’t think we’ve got enough for a warrant either. We’ll have to keep digging.” Spense exchanged a glance with Caity, then turned again to Baskin. “Before we head out, you got a second? We’ve got some information we think you’ll be very interested in.”

  Chapter Nineteen

  Tuesday, September 17

  From: Man in the Maze <395204@253.0.101.212>

  To: Labyrinth

  Subject: Warning

  Greetings pupils. As always, thank you for your magnificent postings, but I’m afraid we must curtail them for a while. You see we are no longer safe. A brave lieutenant has eliminated one threat to our members, but more abound. And now I fear the lieutenant himself may present a danger to Labyrinth. The authorities may be close to identifying our group. Do not ask me how I know this. I have my sources. For this reason, I must ask you to refrain from posting until further notice. Though I always look forward to sharing your pleasures, we must be discreet.

  I may have urgent communication for you in the near future. So please continue to watch for my messages. In the meantime, this site is to be used only by me for my instructions to the group. We have always protected one another, and I vow I will keep you all safe and find a way for us to resume our games. Until then, stay prepared and watch for your chance. Anyone who collects a labyrinth will be rewarded as soon as it is safe to do so.

  Chapter Twenty

  Tuesday, September 17

  Rutherford Towers

  Phoenix, Arizona

  “I MADE COFFEE.” Caitlin gave Spense the perkiest smile she could muster when he appeared in the kitchen. Her side had ached most of the night, and between that discomfort and her preoccupation with the case, she’d hardly slept.

  Spense, on the other hand, had apparently slept rather well. They kept their doors open, and she’d heard him snoring from his room. Maybe something had triggered his allergies, or maybe he’d just slept in the wrong position, but snores or no snores, she’d found his presence reassuring.

  “Thanks.” He snagged the pot and poured himself a cup. “You’re up early. D’ya sleep okay? Because I thought I heard you snoring.”

  “That was you.”

  He grinned. “Nope. I think it was you.”

  Pushing her hair out of her eyes, she arched one eyebrow. It certainly had not been her. And it was time to change the subject to the thoughts that had kept her up all night. After the interrogation of Silas Graham yesterday, they’d had a long conversation with both Baskin and Thompson, filling the men in on the Man in the Maze. One of many questions the detectives had posed to them was how, if the Man in the Maze truly existed, did he connect with Kramer?

  “I mean there’s not exactly a Match dot com for serial killers. So how did they find each other?” Caitlin began the conversation in the middle of her thoughts, as if Spense could read her mind.

  But maybe he really had read her thoughts because he’d picked the thread right up. “My guess would be either personal contact or the Internet. You’d be surprised how many truly creepy sites are thriving out there. Which brings up another point. According to our profile, Kramer knew the Man in the Maze might be after him but he didn’t seem to know his true identity. If he had, I believe he would’ve given you a name.”

  He took a sip of coffee, and she noticed he was using the cup Jenny had brought over—­the one with the Man in the Maze motif. Her mind racing with possibilities, she pulled out a chair and sat down hard. Spense fixed her with an expectant stare. As if waiting for her to catch up . . . and suddenly she did. Good Lord. How had she missed it before? Of course they met online. That’s why Kramer didn’t know his real name—­he only knew him by his handle.

  “You think the Man in the Maze finds his students . . .” As soon as the word popped out of her mouth, her hand went to her chest. This was one of those little gems that comes as a gift. Apparently while she’d tossed and turned last night, her subconscious mind had been solving the riddle.

  Students.

  It was all so obvious now. Teachers didn’t usually confine themselves to one student. And the Man in the Maze from the legend had pupils, not a pupil. Spense motioned for her to continue like he was one step ahead and waiting for her to catch up. Maybe he’d been doing more than just snoring last night. “So like a cyber kill club or something? You think there may be other students? Because if there are . . .” She realized there were troubling sites out there, and illegal ones, too, but she’d never understood how they operated without being caught.

  “If there are more “trainees,” our UNSUB could be the Man in the Maze or any one of his minions.” Spense took a long slurp of coffee and gave her an appreciative look. “This is damn good, Caity.”

  She didn’t see how Spense could remain calm. Her legs were bouncing up and down beneath the table. She wanted to jump up and do something. But what? “Okay. If there’s a kill club, and if they have a Web site or loop or whatever, can’t you just call up one of your cyber guys at the Bureau and have him track the club down?”

  “I’m afraid it’s not that simple. Yes, the Bureau has their eye on this kind of thing. There’s an entire FBI division devoted to cybercrime, and dozens of specific cybercrime task forces, but it’s not that easy to locate these subversive groups. They come across our radar on occasion, but other times, we’re not that lucky. Have you ever heard of the deep web?”

  He wasn’t tugging his ear to signal semirhetorical question, so she answered, “No.”

  “Then let me explain it in terms a psychiatrist can relate to. You believe in the power of the subconscious mind, right?” This time he did tug his ear, so she kept quiet. “Well, these groups operate in the cyberspace equivalent of the subconscious mind.”

  Intent on this new information, her legs settled down, and her mind homed in on his words. “Go on.”

  “The brain contains all sorts of information that can’t be easily accessed. Most of the information is below the surface, and we often need a specific trigger—­like a smell or an old song—­to access those memories or that bit of knowledge. And sometimes, we need special techniques, like hypnosis to get to them. The deep web is a lot like that.”

  Instantly, she got it. Because Spense really had found an analogy she could wrap her head around.

  “There’s an enormous underground network in cyberspace. Just because you can’t see it doesn’t mean it’s not real. It’s there, only hidden. You can’t get into the deep web with a Google search, because the sites aren’t registered anywhere. And they operate mainly through file sharing, so there’s no static page.”

  “But, if
the sites are not searchable, that means they’re not accessible, doesn’t it? So how do ­people get to them?” Maybe she hadn’t gotten it after all.

  “Oh, they’re accessible all right. You just have to find the right trigger. By typing the right words into the address bar, it’s possible to stumble upon a particular site, and there are other ways if you know what you’re doing. But more likely a member who knows you, in person or from another site, recruits you. Most clubs require you to protect their privacy once they allow you in. There are programs that use layers of encryption, sometimes called onion routing, to direct traffic through a network of volunteer relays, making it extremely difficult to track a user’s location. Anyway, that’s my lesson for the day. Deep web for dummies.” He spread his palms. “Not that you’re . . .”

  She laughed at his sudden sheepishness. “No offense taken. I appreciate you dumbing it down for me.”

  A deep-­web kill club.

  That sounded like fiction, but she recalled a recent case . . . that one too had involved a cop . . . like Kramer. The group had operated in the guise of a fantasy role-­play site. From what she’d read, many of the members were indeed just engaged in role-­playing. She touched her throat. If the Man in the Maze really had his own club, and Kramer had been a part of it, how many of the members were just creepy role-­players, and how many were the real deal—­psychopaths out hunting their prey? And even if they rounded up all the club members, would the authorities ever be able to tell the difference? “They can’t all be real killers in the club. Surely some think it’s just a game.”

  “Undoubtedly. And that makes it damn hard to go after them proactively. How can you convict anyone from the club for their part in things? Is it a conspiracy to commit murder or mere fantasy? I’m not sure anyone can really know . . . until somebody turns up dead.”

  Spense’s phone buzzed again. He looked at it and held up one hand. Then he set his cup down too hard in its saucer, and it clattered, sloshing coffee on the tablecloth. Heaving a rough sigh, he said, “Saddle up, Caity. We gotta roll.”

  Chapter Twenty-­One

  Tuesday, September 17

  Sun Valley Apartments

  Phoenix, Arizona

  SILAS GRAHAM WAS dead. Acidity from her morning coffee rose in Caitlin’s throat, leaving a bitter taste in her mouth. An overripe, half-­peeled banana on the outdated linoleum counter saturated the room with the smell of rotting fruit, and she had to work hard to suppress her gag reflex. As she studied Graham’s slumped body, his cherry red cheek squashed against a glass breakfast table in his east valley home, her hands opened and closed at her sides in disbelief.

  Another cyanide poisoning.

  The room was crawling with uniforms, and Spense seemed to be climbing the walls. He’d worked his cube several times already and was currently up in Baskin’s face, arguing—­though she couldn’t hear what they were saying. CSIs swarmed the one-­bedroom apartment, and the air hummed with their voices. One was under the table now, swabbing suspicious spots and photographing Graham’s face from beneath the glass tabletop. They’d been instructed not to move the body until the ME arrived. Baskin motioned her over, and she joined the huddle on the other side of the room.

  “What the fuck happened here, Thompson?” Baskin’s gloved hands were in the air, and the vein that bisected his forehead seemed to have doubled in size. Red crept up around his collar. “You were supposed to escort Graham home yesterday and parlay an invitation to search the place, and that’s all you were supposed to do.”

  Thompson’s lips flattened, and a stony look came over his face. “I saw an opportunity, and I took it.”

  “You had every opportunity to pursue your line of questioning on camera down at the precinct. But you didn’t. You pull shit like this, it’s gotta be done the right way. You lie to a suspect, tell him you’ve got the goods on him when you don’t, you gotta do it on camera. Jesus H, Thompson, do you know how this looks?”

  Resentment flared in Thompson’s eyes. “It looks bad, I know. But we got the guy off the streets, didn’t we?”

  Caity had been watching silently, merely observing like Spense had instructed her to do, but she couldn’t restrain herself when she heard Thompson’s words. Silas Graham might be their UNSUB, the Ferragamo killer, but she doubted he was the Man in the Maze. Alive, Graham might have led them to a network of killers, but now . . . “This man is dead, Detective. Is that the way you’ve been trained to get criminals off the street?” Her face went hot, and she took a step toward Thompson. She was crowding him, and she knew it, but she took another step closer anyway. She could feel the nervous energy coming off him, smell his mint mouthwash.

  “I’m not going to apologize for my actions, especially not to you. You got no business here at my scene. I did my job, and I got a confession.”

  He did his job, all right. The swagger in his voice, the proud jut of his chin told her he’d do it again. Anything was fair game, just as long as he got his man. It was men like Thompson with their bullying, rogue tactics that led to coerced confessions from innocent men—­like her father. “You expect anyone to believe you followed procedure? Let me tell you what I think. I think you planned to question Graham off-­site so you could go maverick. I think you wanted to be free of the cameras, so you could use illegal means to an end. I think the gash on Graham’s cheek isn’t from landing facedown on the table. I think it’s from your fist!”

  Thompson put a hand in the air, a wide cut clearly visible on his right knuckle, and leaking blood under his latex glove. “You gonna let this bitch talk to me like that?” He was eyeing Baskin.

  Spense grabbed her by the shoulders and tugged her out of the way, then he was in Thompson’s face. His fists came up, and for a minute she held her breath, thinking Spense’s control might slip, and he might do something he’d regret. But he didn’t. He simply froze Thompson with an icy stare. “Listen to me very carefully, Detective. I want you to apologize to Dr. Cassidy, and I want you to do it now.”

  “I won’t. She came at me. She accused me of breaking the law.”

  “And you didn’t?” Baskin’s eyebrows seemed to be attacking his hairline.

  “I swear on my mother’s grave, no, I swear on my pension. I might’ve wanted to take the mofo out myself, but I wouldn’t do something that stupid. I’m not gonna throw my career away, I’m not gonna throw my life away for a scumbag like this.”

  As he edged closer to Thompson, a muscle ticked in Spense’s jaw. He looked like he was about to demand an apology for Caity again, and his fists were not only up but cocked this time. She caught Spense’s eye and tugged her ear to signal no response required. She didn’t want Spense fighting her battles for her. His whole body stiffened, and she saw his inner struggle on his face, but a few tense seconds later, he stuffed his hands in his pockets and backed away from Thompson.

  Caitlin used the moment of quiet to press her back against the wall, breathe deeply, and regain her composure. Then she stepped forward, and this time she didn’t crowd Thompson. “Suppose you tell us just exactly what happened.”

  “It’s like I said the first three times. I drove Graham home yesterday, and I gave him my number. So this morning, he calls me up, asks can he get a ride to the grocery store because he’s out of Jack, and I say sure, I’ll swing by. So I take him to Safeway and after, I get my foot in the door on the pretext of needing to take a crap. When I get inside, I figure I really should take a crap, or else he’ll know the whole thing’s a setup. So I go to the can and do my business, and he has his pornos right there by the john. Penthouse, Hustler—­he did have a stack of True Detective mags, but I figure that’s no big deal. Though I did hear a lot of serial killers like the detective magazines. Anyway, I was thumbing through a Hustler when this fell out.”

  He pointed to a photograph on the table. It showed the bloodied remains of a woman—­her torso battered and genitals sl
ashed. Ropes of tendons and flesh dripped from her neck. It appeared as though someone had half sliced, half ripped the head from her body. The head itself was not in the photograph. Caitlin forced herself to look at the image. Flinching now would only reinforce Thompson’s point that she really had no official business at the scene. Spense had allowed her in partly because she’d asked, but mostly, she suspected, he simply didn’t want to let her out of his sight. She eyed the doorway. If she threw up, it’d better not be in the toilet. There was evidence in that bathroom.

  “And that’s when I knew for sure Graham was our guy. So I sat down at the table with him, and I showed him the photograph, and he said it was just role-­playing. He said he downloaded it from an Internet site and didn’t know anything about the woman. Said he just used it to beat off. I want it noted that I wanted to beat him myself when he said that, but I remained professional. I next explained to him I was going to pull him back down to the station. I told him he could come voluntarily, or I could arrest him.”

  “You didn’t have any basis for arresting him,” Caitlin interrupted. “You don’t even know if this photograph is real, much less how he obtained it.”

  “I was lying to get his cooperation.”

  Her jaw clamped tight. Lies were par for the course in police work. Even Spense thought it was okay to tell a suspect you had proof that didn’t exist. “How did you get him to confess?” Her voice came out as a thin, shaky thread as her father’s face flashed in her memory.

  “I told him we lifted his fingerprints from that plastic pouch at the hospital, the one with the cyanide pill we took off your nurse.” Thompson’s lips stretched into a snarl. “Then he said there was no way that was possible because he’d been wearing gloves. By the time he realized his mistake, it was too late. I had him.”