“Why was he there?”
“Huh?”
Walker.
“Why was he there? Why would he go to the Gray crime scene when there’d be dozens of cops. He has to know we videotape the crowds. He’d risk getting caught on camera.”
“So you’re saying the Gray murder wasn’t done by him?” Kowalski sounded as shocked as the rest looked.
“Exactly. It was always the one outlier. Gray wasn’t a widow.”
Nonkoh’s mouth opened but Shakespeare held up a finger, cutting him off.
“Yes, we have a very plausible explanation as to why that may have been, but, I’m willing to bet when ballistics reports on the latest slug, it matches the first six murders.”
Curtis held up a hand. “So what if it does. Doesn’t that disprove your theory?”
“No, what it proves is that the first six murders, and the eighth are definitely linked, and were all done by the person who stole the weapon from the seventh scene.”
“I’m confused—” started the LT.
“You’re not the only one,” muttered Trace so only Shakespeare could hear.
“Wait for it,” he said under his breath.
“Let’s assume ballistics comes back a match, why would that exclude the Gray murder?” asked the LT.
“Think about it. We taped every scene, never found any repeats in the crowds. So, why does the murderer come back this time? Because he fucked up and left the gun behind?” He shrugged his shoulders. “Could be. But I’m willing to bet it’s more like this. I’m the Widow Rapist, sitting at home, eating my Hungry Man microwave dinner, watching the news, and a report comes on blaming me for a murder I didn’t even commit. Now I’m pissed off, I’m offended. I hop in my car and head on over to the crime scene to see what I can find out, because somebody just did a copycat on me—”
“Holy shit!” exclaimed Walker.
“—and what do I find, the detective I know is working on my murders, because I watch the news. I decide, hey, here’s an opportunity to find out about this guy, maybe find out where he lives, just in case I have to kill him at some point, and then what should happen? The detective stops and leaves the gun in his car.”
“Locked car,” came Vinny’s voice over the television speaker.
“So what goes through my mind? I’ve been listening to the radio. The neighbors didn’t hear a gunshot. I know the copycat was surprised, so probably never got to finish the job. Probably didn’t get to clean up after himself! Now I know if I can get the gun, and it wasn’t used, the stupid cops will assume all seven murders were done by the same guy—which we did—and if there are any forensics left behind—which there were—the copycat will go down for all seven murders, and I can go about killing some more, or retire. So I decide to steal the gun, succeed brilliantly, then as an added bonus, fuck the career of the lead detective, getting him tossed off the case.”
Kowalski began to clap, shaking his head. “That’s the thinnest fuckin’ thing I’ve ever heard.”
“But you like it, don’t you?”
“Fuckin’ A. I don’t know how we prove it, but I think you’re right.”
Lieutenant Phillips pushed himself off the desk he was sitting on.
“So do I.” He walked over to Shakespeare and extended his hand. “And with respect to the gun, you have my sincere apology for ever doubting you.”
Shakespeare stood up and shook his boss’ hand. He felt his chest tightening with emotion as the rest of the room rose to do the same. He bit his cheek then waved them off.
“Thanks everyone, it’s appreciated, but we don’t have time for this.”
The LT let go of his hand with an understanding nod.
“I’ll let you get at it,” he said, walking toward his office.
Trace gave him a squeeze on the shoulder and he resumed his perch.
“So, now that we have a new working theory, we need to attack this from two different directions, because I think we have two different killers here.”
“The real”—air quotes—“killer, and the copycat,” said Trace. “You know what they always say when a wife is killed.”
“Look at the husband,” said Walker.
Shakespeare pursed his lips. “That’s exactly what I was thinking. All we have is his word for it that he walked in on the killer. For all we know, he could have been the killer. But”—he held up a finger—“we know the weapon was Cooper’s. So, we have a few possibilities here.”
“Cooper may have killed Sandra Gray,” offered Curtis.
“Or Cooper did kill Sandra Gray, and only Sandra Gray,” added Walker.
“Or someone stole Cooper’s weapon, and killed Sandra Gray,” suggested Nonkoh.
“You’re forgetting Cooper’s DNA,” said Shakespeare. “That links him to the crime. Now, it could be planted, but that means that when the gun was stolen, so was the DNA, probably from a hairbrush or something. If Cooper isn’t the killer, then someone was trying to frame him as the killer.”
“My money’s still on the husband,” said Trace.
Shakespeare pointed to Walker and Curtis. “You guys have been reviewing the old cases, what did we find between Cooper and Gray?”
“Absolutely nothing. When we investigated it before, we couldn’t find any link. Cooper’s a near shut-in, delivers the morning paper in his neighborhood like he has since he was a kid. Has no friends and only goes out to run errands for his mom. He seems to have no social life beyond his computer.”
“What about the computer? Anything there?”
“Nah, he wasn’t on Facebook or anything like that back then.”
“Now he’s everywhere,” interjected Curtis.
“He seemed to just play games on his Xbox, not connected to any of their live gaming where they can chat back and forth. From everything the lab guys could find, there was no evidence he had any friends in cyberspace.”
“I can confirm that,” said Frank, his voice booming from the television speaker as he leaned a little too close to the mike at his end. “I did a quick review of the notes and nothing unusual was found. Almost no email, no social media, nothing. Just one-player games that he seemed to play at least ten hours a day.”
“What about Gray? Anything that could have caused him to bump into Cooper at some point?”
Curtis shook his head. “No, he’s just a mail man. Has been for twenty years.”
“Neighborhood?”
“Nowhere near Cooper.”
Shakespeare tapped his chin, thinking. Cooper had no life, so the chances of him having a connection to Gray seemed slim to none. But Gray had a life. A job, a wife, a nice condo apartment. If he did murder his own wife, and he set it up as a copycat, he’d clearly set up Cooper to be the fall guy. But how did he know Gray?
“Let’s dive back into Gray’s background again. Check his job out, reconfirm he didn’t deliver mail to the Cooper residence. Hell, even a parcel once. Talk to the guys who delivered on Cooper’s route going back a few years before the Gray murder. Maybe they recall something strange.” Shakespeare turned to the screen. “Frank, any luck yet identifying our suspect’s car from the video?”
“Not yet, but hope to have something soon. I’m analyzing Trace’s security camera footage right now to see who might have picked up your witness.”
“Right now she’s missing, but we don’t know if that’s by choice. I’m leaning toward not,” said Trace.
“Who are we talking about now?” asked Walker.
“Sorry, Fiona Lipton is an escort who spent the night with Cooper. She’s his alibi, but she flipped as soon as she was out of the room. She was supposed to go home and meet me there, just in case anyone was watching the place, but she never showed. We’ve got footage showing her getting into a car, but only the bottom half of the car so Frank’s going to see if we can figure out the make and model, then we’ll look at the Columbus Circle traffic cams to see if we can pick up a license plate.”
“Focus on that, Frank,”
said Shakespeare. “She may be in trouble. If you have spare cycles, then look into my guy.”
“You know, Shakes, there’s something that nobody’s mentioned so far.”
Shakespeare looked at Walker.
“What?”
“Why is he targeting you?”
“What do you mean? That was obviously just chance that he followed me.”
“I’m not talking about that, although I don’t think I’d use the word ‘obviously’, since we really don’t know if he’s followed you before.”
“True, poor choice of words.”
“What I’m talking about is the message at the end of the video. He knows who you are, he knows your name, and he’s welcoming you back to the game.”
“Yeah, Shakes, what do you think he means by that?” asked Trace. “Is he talking about the new murder starting things up again, or the fact that you’re the lead again?”
Shakespeare shook his head. “No idea. But what we also need to figure out, is why he stopped for five years. Usually these guys can’t stop themselves, so what has he been doing?”
“Maybe it wasn’t a serial killer thing?” suggested Curtis. “Maybe there’s some connection here we aren’t aware of, and he killed his six, and it was over. Or, he killed his six, Cooper was stitched up as the killer of all seven, so he decided enough was enough and stopped, then with Cooper being released, he felt he could continue the job, since Cooper would still be suspect.”
“Yeah, and just to add more confusion to this mess, I’ve got footage showing Cooper leaving the hotel in time to kill Constance Reilly, and get back,” said Trace.
Shakespeare frowned, then moved from the desk to a chair, his ass finally deciding it had had enough of the desk’s edge. “If our unsub is a serial killer, he’s either been killing elsewhere for five years, or he’s been prevented from killing somehow.”
“Jail?” offered Walker.
“And released at the exact same time as Cooper? I can’t believe that.”
“Or, this is a revenge job or something like that, and we just haven’t found the connection.”
“If it was a revenge job, and he’d been getting away with it, then why stop? He’d gone that far, so what if he could leave Cooper to take the fall?” questioned Trace. “Either his motivations weren’t strong enough to finish the job, or he’s an incredibly patient man.”
“And if he’s incredibly patient,” said Walker, “maybe we haven’t gone back far enough. We looked back a couple of years on everyone. If this is a guy who can wait five years between kills, what if he waited five years before starting? Christ, we may need to go back to childhood for all we know.”
Shakespeare stood up. “Okay, we’ve got a lot to think about, and it’s all conjecture right now, but just keep it in the back of your minds when you’re doing your investigations.” He turned to the screen. “Frank, you keep me posted on the two videos you’re analyzing. MJ, look at the records, see if there’s something medical that might connect them. Also, look at the husbands. The victims were all widows. Pull the records for their deaths, see if there’s any commonality there. Vinny, let me know as soon as you hear back from ballistics.”
He turned to Trace. “You keep tracking Fiona down, and start looking into her past. Walker, Curtis, you try to find a connection between Carl Gray and Cooper. Kowalski, you and Jenner start going back further, see if there’s something that connects these people in their distant past. Nonkoh, start poking into the pasts of the husbands. See if there’s anything we may have missed. We always assumed the women were targeted because they were widows. What if their husbands were the original targets, and the women were secondary for some reason?”
The room stopped at Shakespeare’s last statement. Even Shakespeare stopped, his voice drifting as the last few words came out. It was a crazy idea, and he didn’t even know where it had come from. And it was an angle they had never taken.
Vinny was first to talk. “That’s a crazy idea, Shakes. But it kind of makes sense.”
“Yeah,” said Shakespeare, slowly, the idea still swirling in his head as he tried to rewrite the case to fit this new theory. “But if the husbands were the targets, why rape and murder the wives? Why not just murder them. Rape is something that’s a whole other level.” He shook his head then clapped his hands together. “Okay, let’s get back at it, and reconvene tomorrow morning, eight a.m.”
The room broke as Shakespeare’s phone vibrated with a message.
Where are you?
“Oh shit!” he muttered as he raced from the room.
He’d totally forgotten about the dinner with Louise and Aynslee.
“Where’s Carl?”
It was Ken Crawford, the last to arrive, that asked the question as he sat in one of the two empty dining room chairs in Allan Fisk’s small home.
“No idea. He said he’d be here. I tried calling but it goes to voicemail, and I texted, but nothing,” said Fisk. “Hope he’s okay.”
“Well, I’m sure he’s on his way. Probably car troubles or something,” suggested Crawford.
“Should we start without him?” asked Rebecca Sorenson.
Fisk looked about the table, looking for input from his guests, but finding none, made the decision for the group. “Let’s. We can bring him up to speed when he gets here.”
Nods of assent rounded the table, and Fisk took a sip of his coffee. “So, where do we begin?” he asked.
“Cooper. Are we still killing him?” Stephen Russell could be blunt and to the point sometimes, but he was right. That was the question to ask.
“Show of hands. All in favor?” he asked, their usual way of deciding.
Every hand went up, none reluctantly, including his own.
“Okay. When, how?”
“Sooner the better,” said Russell. “I heard on the news he’s staying at the Trump International.”
“How do we find out what room?”
Crawford raised a finger. “I took the liberty of bribing a bellboy. He has two rooms. He’s apparently in seven-oh-eight and his bitch of a mother in seven-ten.”
“Good work,” smiled Fisk. “How long are they booked there?”
“A week.”
“Okay, so we know where he is, and chances are he’s going to stay holed up there until things quiet down.” Fisk looked at the assembled faces. “Do we do it at the hotel, or at his house when he returns?”
Sam Bishop leaned forward. “I say the hotel. First, I don’t want to wait another week. Second, we don’t know where he’ll disappear to next. He has fans, apparently with deep pockets, so he could go anywhere, then we’ve lost him forever. Third, we know the police are sitting on his house, so there’s no way we can get near it. I vote now, at the hotel.”
“Agreed,” said Russell. “Like I said, the sooner the better. We just can’t take the risk he gets away.”
“Okay, then how?” asked Fisk. And this was the question that had been troubling him. Killing Cooper was easy. Getting away with it was the trick. He didn’t want to go to prison for delivering justice, and was quite certain none of the others did either.
And their silence spoke volumes on the forethought they had given the question. He looked from face to face. “Well?”
Sam Bishop shrugged his shoulders. “Shoot him.”
Crawford raised a finger. “First, you’d need a gun, not traceable to us.”
“You can get that in twenty minutes, easy,” responded Bishop.
“You believe your press too much,” replied Crawford. “Yes, if you know who to go to, then sure, you can get a gun easy. But who here knows who to go to?”
Silence.
“Second,” he said, adding a finger. “It would have to be silenced, since a gunshot would be heard by the other guests, and whoever did the shooting would be caught before they could get out of the building.”
“Coke bottle silencer?” offered Kara Long. “I heard about that on TV once.”
“That at best reduces t
he volume by a few decibels, and it’s hard to conceal.” Crawford looked forward. “And third, it’s easy to say you’re going to shoot someone, it’s an entirely different thing to pull the trigger when they’re right in front of you.”
Again silence reigned.
“Stab him?” suggested Sorenson, her voice betraying how bad an idea she already thought it was.
“I’d think that would be even harder than shooting him,” responded Fisk. “And a hell of a lot riskier for whoever would be doing it.”
“Fuck. Drop a piano on his head?” tossed out Sam Bishop with a huff, leaning back in his seat and folding his arms across his chest. “If we can’t shoot him, can’t stab him, how the hell else are we going to kill him? Wait for him to have a heart attack?”
“What about poison?” asked Kara Long, jumping up in her seat. “Agatha Christie uses poison a lot. Maybe we can poison him?”
More silence, but Fisk knew they were all thinking what he was thinking. This was the way. Poison was impersonal. It was safe.
It just needed to be delivered.
“I like it,” he said. “But how do we get him to take it?”
“And what kind?” asked Crawford.
“Can’t you just use a plain old rat poison?” suggested Long. “I mean, that’s what you see in the movies all the time.”
“He’d have to eat a ton of it,” replied Crawford.
“Don’t worry about it,” said Russell. “I’m a doctor, remember. I’ll take care of the poison. We just need to figure out how we’re delivering it into his system.”
As soon as the words were out of Russell’s mouth, Fisk knew exactly how they were going to deliver it.
“Delivering it won’t be a problem.”
SEVEN
Shakespeare leaned in and gave Louise a quick kiss. Aynslee jumped up and gave him a hug as soon as he straightened back up. He returned the hug, gently, then waited for her to sit again before dropping into the booth beside Louise. He glanced down and found about an inch of breathing room between his gut and the table edge.
Redeemer (A Detective Shakespeare Mystery, Book #3) Page 11