by James Hunt
The killer was winning.
After a while, Palmer and Winterguard came out, speaking to one of the uniform officers that was helping to work the scene.
“Two cameras watch the entrance of the building, but there are no other recording devices inside.” The officer was short, just a few inches taller than Susan. He had long arms and broad shoulders. “The camera that was watching the back of the building was destroyed, and the lock that was on the back had been broken, most likely with a crowbar.”
“Let’s start narrowing down the streets nearby where we might be able to pick up any extra CCTV footage,” Palmer said.
“He would have checked for that,” Susan said. “He picked the back door because it was the least visible. He knew the cameras would be where they were. This was something he planned. Something he wanted me to see. He’s been a step ahead of us since the beginning. We’re not going to find him on video. Not unless he wanted us to find him.”
Palmer and Winterguard exchanged a glance, but then reiterated for the officer to check for footage anyway. It was the smart play, though she still didn’t believe that they would find anything.
“Susan,” Palmer said, speaking as though it wasn’t the first time that he’d said her name. “Do you have a place that you can go for the night?”
She knew she didn’t, but she wasn’t about to be put into some surveillance house. It was the last thing that she wanted, and it wouldn’t do her any good otherwise. “I do.”
“Okay,” Palmer said. “You can go in and grab a change of clothes after they move the body.”
“Detectives?”
Both Palmer and Winterguard were pulled away to speak with one of the techs that were taking a look at the door frame, leaving Susan alone on the couch again.
From her position in the living room, Susan had a clear view of the bedroom, and she saw Allie’s body being placed into the bag after the team from the medical examiner’s office had finished with their work. What was the killer trying to do? Was he trying to piss her off? Egg her on? Break her?
Susan circled that last thought and then nodded slowly to herself. He went after Allie to make a point. He was trying to get Susan to back off.
Allie’s body was wheeled out, led by one of the blue-suited medical examiners in the front, and another in the back. They had the hoods of their jumpsuits pulled down, and neither of them looked at Susan as they pushed Allie’s body out into the hallway.
Susan knew that the neighbors who had poked their heads outside would see the body bag. She knew there would be questions, and press, and more attention than she wanted to deal with.
With the body gone, Susan entered the room, putting a few things in a bag from the dresser, which had been cleared to use by the techs from the state crime lab on the scene.
She had already checked to see if there had been anything out of place, but she found nothing. She hoped that they would have better luck than she did.
Both Palmer and Winterguard offered to give her a ride, but she turned them both down. She didn’t want either of them to know where she was going.
Susan requested another Uber, ignoring the blatant stares and whispers from her neighbors as she left the apartment.
When she reached the elevator, she hung back, seeing that the two workers from the medical examiner’s office were still trying to figure out how to get Allie down into the lobby with the lifts that they had.
Susan then remembered that the only service elevator required a particular key from maintenance. She was about to offer to call when he showed up. After they left, Susan decided to take the stairs. Her footsteps echoed all the way down, and by the time she reached the side exit of the building, she received a notification on her phone that her Uber was ready.
Susan paused at the front of the building, peeking her head outside to check to see if the news crews had arrived, and already saw a few of the vans setting up. She emerged from the cover of the building, keeping her head down as she spotted her ride and then headed toward the vehicle. She held her breath as one of the news crews started to set up a camera, spotting her out in the open, but it was either too early in the morning, or they didn’t think Susan knew anything. Either way, it was fine with her.
Susan hopped into the Uber, the driver greeting her with a gruff hello that was muffled from behind his morning coffee.
“South side?” the driver asked, checking the destination that Susan requested.
“Yes.”
“Everything okay?” He asked.
Susan glanced back to the building and the news crews that were set up. “No. Not really.”
The driver made a comment about all the police in the area, but Susan said she didn’t know what was going on. After that, he kind of got the hint that she didn’t want to talk and he kept quiet. But while the only noise came from the low hum of the talk radio show that played over the speakers and the hum of the tires against the asphalt, inside Susan’s head, there was a shouting match with herself.
She was upset about what happened to Allie, about what happened to Charlie, about what happened to all of the kids that had been affected by Winger’s sick mind. She wondered how long he must have been doing unspeakable acts to those kids and shuddered over the truth that it was probably a very long time.
The man was in his sixties, and even if he started just ten years ago, the numbers would have been insane. She remembered all of those pictures on the wall, the dead stare in their eyes.
When the buildings they passed on the road signaled they were in the right part of town, Susan asked the driver to pull over. He offered to stay, and she told him she wouldn’t be long.
Susan kept her head down as she walked around the next corner and out of sight from the driver. It didn’t take long to spot the nearest dealer. The exchange was quick, Susan giving him the cash for the drugs with a quick sleight of hand, and then returned to the car.
Once she arrived at the hospital, Susan checked in with the nurse at the front lobby before heading to the ICU.
Susan was glad that she had her badge because, without it, she knew that she wouldn’t have been able to see Charlie. She wasn’t a relative or a spouse, and the hospital was strict about who they let in to see their patients. But when she checked in with the floor nurse, she discovered some news that not only relieved her but also terrified her.
The swelling in Charlie’s brain had gone down, causing him to wake from his coma. He had been taken off of life support and moved out of the ICU to one of the recovery floors.
“Miss?” the nurse asked after Susan kept quiet after hearing the news. “Are you okay?”
“Yes.” Susan didn’t smile and quickly backtracked toward the elevators. “What floor did you say he was on now?”
“Seventh,” the nurse answered.
Susan nodded, and turned, her mouth suddenly dry as cotton. She smacked her lips and rolled her tongue around the inside of her mouth to try and get some saliva working, but she wasn’t successful. She hit the up arrow button on the elevator and waited for her ride.
Butterflies wreaked havoc on her innards, and Susan wondered what was next for her and Charlie. If he was out of the gang, then it meant that he was more serious about their relationship than she had previously thought. But was she ready for something like that?
The elevator doors opened, and her nerves gained momentum as she headed for his room. She had expected to find him awake but was glad to see him asleep.
Susan remained in the doorway for a moment and watched him. The swelling on his face had gone down, but they’d put fresh bandages on him, which helped him looked healthier than he had been the first time she saw him.
Susan tiptoed into the room, heading to the far side of his bed, and gently placed her hand on top of his. He was warm. He was always warm. Even in a cold place like this and still trying to fight for his life, he was warm.
She let him go and sat in the chair watching him sleep.
It was hard look
ing at him in that condition, especially after finding Allie dead. But that was why she stopped at the south side before heading here.
With the room empty, Susan quickly removed the speedball and rolled up her sleeve. Less than a minute later, the needle was in her arm, but she kept the presence of mind to put the paraphernalia back in her jacket before she passed out.
35
Susan slept hard, the sleep needed and deep. But the morning slumber wasn’t without those nightmares that she knew would plague her. The faces of those that had been killed now haunted her.
But while they followed her through the streets of her dreams, she was thankful that they didn’t speak. They only clung to her like shadows in the bright of day, stretching far behind her. A shadow was always connected to who you were, to the whole of your being. And while that darkness might always follow her, she didn’t have to keep looking back at it.
Slowly, the longer Susan slept, the more the ghosts started to whisper. At first, she could only see their lips moving, and she heard no words. But eventually, their whispers filled her ears, the dead questioning why Susan didn’t save them from their terrible fates.
Just when the whispers reached a crescendo, the voices of the dead vanished and Susan was awoken by the sound of doctors being paged over the hospital speaker system, and the darkness that she had fallen asleep in was now replaced by the sunlight through the open blinds.
The light was divided into horizontal lines, and Susan adjusted herself so one of the tracks was out of her eyes. The fog of sleep lingered in her unconscious mind, and she struggled to stay awake.
“Good morning,” Charlie said.
“Hey.” Susan straightened up in her chair and cleared her throat. “How long have you been up?”
“Not long,” Charlie answered.
It had been little more than a day since the last time she saw him when he had been whole and healthy, but it had felt more like a lifetime.
Susan reached for his hand. She was quiet for a moment, staring at their fingers, which were intertwined. “Why didn’t you tell me you were going to get out?”
Charlie sighed. “Because I knew what you would say. And I didn’t want you to worry about it, to think that this happened because of you.”
Susan lifted her gaze to meet his. “But it did happen because of me.”
“No,” Charlie said. “It happened because of choices I made a long time ago. Because of a path that I took, and it’s no longer a path that I want to go down.” He tightened his grip on her hand. “It’s over, Susan. I’m out.”
“They could have killed you,” Susan said. “They nearly did.”
“It could have happened, but it didn’t,” Charlie said. “And now that it’s over, we can start fresh for ourselves. I’m not just out of the gang, Susan, I’m out of that life. Got rid of my stock. I had to give Marco half my cash too, but I’ve got enough to float me for at least a year. And that’s enough time to find a real job, maybe go back to school. I want to fix my life so we don’t have to hide.” He raised her hand to his lips and kissed the top of her skin so gently.
“I’m glad you’re out.” Susan quickly reclaimed her hand from Charlie’s and leaned back in her chair. Her heart cracked when she saw the look in Charlie’s eyes, the brief expression of betrayal and hurt. Hurt because she couldn’t give him the one thing that he wanted: her.
The pair lingered in uncomfortable silence until a nurse came to check on Charlie.
“We’ll keep you here for at least another forty-eight hours to ensure you’re still on the right track to your recovery.” The nurse was short, with shrew-like features. It was the nose and glasses, the way that her eyes, nose, and mouth were clustered tightly in the center of her face. “We’re going to change your antibiotics, get you something that will help speed up the recovery process.” The nurse made a few more notes on the file, checked the IV levels, and then placed the folder back in its holder before she made her way to the door. “The doctor will be in to check on you in a little bit. In the meantime, if you need anything, just buzz.”
Charlie kept his eyes focused at the end of the bed. “You don’t have to be here if you need to go.” He never looked at her in the eyes when he was upset.
“I don’t have anywhere to be,” Susan said, and then, hoping to change the subject, she brought up the case. “Allie’s dead.”
Charlie peeled his eyes away from his toes, and the passive-aggressive nonsense disappeared as quickly as it had come into existence. “What are you talking about?”
“There’s a man,” Susan answered. “He’s killed three people already. All of them were drug users, all of them were runaways. All of them female. The first two victims attended the same recovery shelter, so we thought it might have to do with the people who ran that facility. But they were caught up in something else.”
And Susan went through all of it. She talked about the kiddie porn that they found, and how Winger used the shelter as a way to confiscate the drugs and then sell them on to pay for his child pornography ring, and how the two men who worked at the shelter were complicit in what they knew about Winger’s intentions.
By the time she was finished with the story, it had sounded crazy even to Susan, and she had witnessed the events first-hand.
“Sounds like things kind of fell apart after I went down,” Charlie said.
“They did,” Susan said. “Maybe try not to be gone for so long next time.”
Charlie held her gaze, and she noticed that his eyes had gone glassy. “Are you sure you want a next time, Susan? Because if that’s not what you want, then tell me now.”
Susan hesitated. “I care about you, Charlie. I do. More than I’ve cared about anyone in a long time. And I think that it’s great that you want to go straight. But you’ve only seen a part of who I am.”
Charlie nodded. “Just do me a favor?”
“What?”
“Don’t make me wait too long?”
Susan nodded. “I won’t.”
“Thanks.” Charlie sighed and then readjusted himself on the bed, trying to get comfortable. “So, what are you going to do about this killer?”
Susan slouched further in her chair and then rubbed her eyes. She was still tired, but she made it a point to keep herself from sliding all the way down. She knew that if she fell asleep again, she might not wake up until tomorrow.
“I don’t know,” Susan said. “I’m at a dead end. No leads. No new evidence. Nothing.”
Charlie was quiet for a minute before he spoke. “How do you know it was only three girls?”
“What do you mean?” Susan asked.
“You said that there were only three victims,” Charlie answered. “What if these girls weren’t the first ones he killed? What if there were others and no one knew about it?”
Susan considered it. The way that the girls had died, and the execution of his plans (save for his hurried abduction of Ginny) had been nearly flawless. And that perfection could have come from previous practice.
“That’s not a bad idea,” Susan said.
“I'm chock full of them,” Charlie said.
Susan stood. “Are you going to be all right if I head out? No plans on leaving any other gangs, right?”
“I only have one more appointment,” Charlie answered. “But I’m hoping that they’ll go easy on me when they see that there really isn’t much to break.”
Susan shrugged. “I don’t know about that. You still have that other leg and that arm.” She pointed at each of them half-heartedly and without emotion, playing it up the same way that Charlie had. “Still plenty of things to break.”
“Good to know,” Charlie said.
Susan didn’t know what else to say and instead kissed him on the forehead before she walked out of the room. She knew that she would eventually need to give him an answer on what she planned to do, but she didn’t know how much more time she would need. And right now she needed to focus on finding the killer. Because he was still
out there, and Susan knew that it was only a matter of time before he struck again.
36
Susan made a detour back to her apartment, unsure of what she’d find when she arrived. She called Palmer on the ride over, asking if they had finished processing the scene.
“We’re all done,” Palmer said. “But you’re probably going to get quite a bit of questioning from your neighbors. I don’t think they enjoyed being up all night with our crews there.”
“Well, it’s not like I knew them very well to begin with.” She cleared her throat and then glanced out the window. The sun was shining. She hadn’t seen it in a few days and forgot how beautiful the city could look when it was out. It had even warmed up, and despite the wind, she hadn’t caught a single whiff of seafood all morning. “Any updates on the case?”
Palmer grunted. “We analyzed the DNA samples from Foster, Marsh, and Winger against the blood we found at Box Town and no one was a match.”
“Right,” Susan said. “Anything else?”
“The media is having a field day, and we have our first national news story tonight about the killer,” Palmer said. “Once that story goes viral, we won’t be able to stop the flood of calls that will come in from every corner of the country and every person with something to say.”
“I can’t imagine what Winterguard thinks about it,” Susan said.
“I’m pretty sure he’s still having a stroke,” Palmer said.
Susan laughed at the thought of the old detective actually going through a stroke. She knew that it was wrong to laugh, but she couldn’t help herself.
“I’m gonna change and shower and then head into my precinct,” Susan said.
“I’ve gotten approval from Captain Hart to let me leave you all of the depositions from the interviews. Maybe you can find something in them that we couldn’t get. You tend to do that.”
“Thanks, Palmer,” Susan said.
“You’re welcome, Q.”
The call ended, and Susan rubbed her eyes again. She still couldn’t shake the fog from her lack of sleep, and she wondered how much longer she was going to last without coffee.