I learned some things, but nothing brought me closer to where the Butcher could be hiding or what his next kill might be.
Unfortunately, a lot of what I learned was about how the victims suffered at his hands. The autopsy reports had been particularly horrible. Especially those for the Langley family. ‘Sadistic’ would be an understatement to describe those killings. Luckily for our sakes, Lockett had removed the autopsy photos themselves.
The Butcher had complained about his nickname, pretending he wasn’t a savage, but the autopsies told a different story.
He may have been smart, and he had remained a step ahead of the police, but he was still a brute at heart.
What would such a monster have in mind for his final act?
I thought about this over the course of my walk. But as usual, nothing came to mind.
Well, that’s not exactly true. Everything came to mind, but nothing more likely than any of the others.
Fuck!
Cara was sitting up in bed when I returned to the apartment.
“I got my first text back from one of the guys,” she said. “Roy Irving. He said while he and his friend Scott were nice to Tyler, they really didn’t know him that well.”
I nodded. “That’s not a big surprise.”
“But he also said that Brendan Cabela knew him better. I asked if Roy had anything else, even the smallest bit of information that might be useful, and he couldn’t think of anything.”
“Have we heard back from Brendan yet?”
“No.”
“It’s still a little early, but we’ll try him again in a few hours,” I said.
“I feel hamstrung. Like there really isn’t anything else to do until the Butcher strikes. It’s depressing.”
I could have told her I agreed, but that would just take us down the rabbit hole of questioning whether we were accomplishing anything, or the black pit of admitting we hadn’t. And we’d done enough of that.
“Hamstrung?” I said instead.
“What? You don’t like that word?”
“I can safely say I’ve never heard you say it.”
“I know what you’re doing,” Cara said.
It was a playful, but knowing statement.
“Oh yeah, what’s that?”
“You’re trying to make little funny comments to keep my mind off the impending murders.”
“Am I wrong in trying to lighten the mood even just a tiny bit?”
“No, I guess not.”
“The alternative is much worse.”
“We’ve got to face that fact, Quint. There’s a very good chance that there is going to be a catastrophic event sometime in the next month. Likely sooner. And we’ll have to live with that for the rest of our lives. That we were unable to catch the Butcher before it was too late.”
“I’m not willing to even consider that possibility. There’s something in all the paperwork that we have. Or in the letters. Something that can help us catch him. I just know it.”
A few hours passed.
“Why don’t you text Brendan Cabela again?” I asked Cara.
“Alright.”
She bent over her phone, then straightened up.
“Done.”
“What did you say?”
“This is Cara again. Quint and I had a few questions if you wouldn’t mind calling or meeting up. Thanks.”
“Is it showing the message as delivered?”
Cara looked down at her phone.
“Yeah, it is. Yesterday’s message and today’s.”
“Weird that he won’t text back,” I said.
“Is it, though? If I had been friendly with a serial killer, I wouldn’t be in a rush to talk about it.”
“That’s fair. But wouldn’t you be in a rush to catch him?”
“Of course. It’s likely he doesn’t know anything that would help. And it’s possible he’s already talked to the police and doesn’t feel the need to talk to two civilians. Which is all we really are.”
Despite having started the arduous process of becoming a private detective, Cara was right. I wasn’t one yet.
“All you’ve said is true. And yet, this guy is one of our few possible leads. Can you find out his address? Let’s go to his place.”
“I could probably find it, but are you sure we should just show up unannounced?”
“Cara, I’m willing to do almost anything to try and catch the Butcher. Showing up unannounced at a prospective lead’s house doesn’t come close to crossing that line.”
“Okay. I’ll try and find it.”
And several minutes later, she did. Meanwhile, I’d accomplished nothing.
“Looks like Cabela is a pretty uncommon last name. Only one Brendan Cabela in the Bay Area that I could find. He’s thirty-two and lives in San Francisco.”
“Hmmm,” I said. “He lives in the city.”
“Quint, that means absolutely nothing. What do you think, the Butcher has convinced his former co-worker to now become a co-conspirator in murder?”
It did sound silly. And yet, the fact that he lived in San Francisco had piqued my interest. I still had a feeling that was the most likely city to be targeted.
“Plus, we should have expected that he lived in the city,” Cara said.
“Why is that?”
“When Lu gave us the phone numbers, his was the only one with a 415 area code. San Francisco, as you well know. The other two were 925 area codes. The East Bay.”
“That’s good detective work, Cara. What’s the address?”
“1584 Union Street. That’s the Marina, right?”
“Could be Russian Hill. Hard to say exactly where on Union one becomes the other.”
“Are we headed that way?” Cara asked.
“You know it.”
We both showered and changed. The city itself was often twenty or thirty degrees colder than Walnut Creek, so we both wore jeans. She threw on a green fleece sweatshirt and I wore a long-sleeved Lake Tahoe T-shirt I’d had for over ten years.
Hopefully our dressing casually would improve the chances of Brendan Cabela talking to us. A uniformed police officer or someone dressed in a suit might scare him off. At least, that was my thought process as we headed off toward San Francisco.
Halfway there, we received a depressing message.
“Brendan just texted me,” Cara said.
“What did he say?”
“I’ve already talked to the police and I’d rather not do any more interviews. I’m sorry.”
“Damn,” I said.
“We aren’t giving up that easy, are we?” Cara said.
I smiled.
“Of course not! We’re still going to his place.”
“Good!”
42.
THE KILLER
My fastidiousness should be quite obvious by now.
And it continued to manifest itself as I planned my getaway from Avalon Towers. I had known Quint and Cara were getting close and that I needed a backup. An alternative place to stay. If they discovered who I was, my name would be plastered on every news station and media outlet imaginable, making a hotel or Airbnb out of the question.
So I had come up with another one in my long line of brilliant ideas.
And it involved my lone friend at Caltenics, Brendan Cabela.
Although even saying that was a stretch. We were friendly, not friends.
Two weeks before Quint and Cara discovered who I was, I had already started to plot. I just had an overall sense they were getting closer to me. Call it intuition, or better yet, call it genius. Discovery wasn’t imminent, but that didn’t mean I shouldn’t start thinking. Living at Avalon was getting too risky.
Many possibilities had flooded my sordid mind. But one stood out.
I knew my co-worker Brendan Cabela lived alone in San Francisco. He had no girlfriend either. The apartment had been a hand-me-down from his parents, who had long ago passed on. Unlike my father, who gave his house to charity rather than giving
it to yours truly. Fuck that asshole!
With no parents, no girlfriend, and living alone, Brendan was perfect for what I had in mind.
He also performed at children’s birthdays, usually dressing up as Sesame Street characters. He’d made the mistake of telling everyone at Caltenics that one day and took a good ribbing. I had stocked that information away, then and there. Whether it would it become useful going forward depended on how everything played out.
Who would suspect Big Bird was about to kill people? I have to say, the idea grew on me as the days moved on.
However, if my plan was to succeed, I couldn’t have Brendan working at Caltenics. If the police found out that a co-worker of a serial killer was missing work, they’d probably be alarmed. And likely stop by his place. And I couldn’t have that happen.
So I got him fired.
In the break room, Caltenics had a small jar that contained petty cash. It didn’t hold much, something like a hundred or two hundred dollars. We’d been told it was there for any purpose we collectively needed it for, but mainly it was used to get more K-Cups for the Keurig Coffee Maker we had in the office. Whenever we ran out, employees were encouraged to buy more, take the money from petty cash, and leave a receipt with the K-Cups they had purchased.
Simple enough.
A day after hatching my plan, while no one was looking, I grabbed the jar of petty cash from the cupboard above the Keurig.
Later that day, when Brendan left his cubicle to get a coffee of his own, I put the jar in the bottom of his desk, hiding it behind a few other things.
As if the gods smiled down on me, we ran out of K-Cups later that day.
Virginia Gary, the oldest woman working at Caltenics, and a dinosaur for the coding industry, happened to be the one to put the last one in the Keurig.
“Where’s the petty cash?” she said to someone near her. “I can get some more on my lunch break.”
My cubicle lay a good forty feet away, but I heard Virginia’s loud voice clearly, and a sly smile crept across my face. Within a few minutes, several employees were looking in the cabinets around the break room to see if they could find the jar. To no avail, obviously.
That mystery became the talk of Caltenics for the rest of the day.
Who took the petty cash? Why? How could someone stoop that low?
That night, I grabbed the pre-paid burner phone I’d recently purchased and texted Lee Bavaro, the manager of the Walnut Creek Caltenics branch. He’d never be able to trace the phone so I wasn’t worried. I just concentrated on trying to sound like a genuinely concerned employee in my anonymous message.
I hate to snitch on a coworker, but I saw Brendan Cabela steal the petty cash earlier today. He threw it in his desk. I was too shocked to say anything, because I like Brendan. But I saw it clear as day. I hope you don’t mind that I texted this from a friend’s phone. I don’t want to be known as a rat.
The next morning, as I arrived at work, they were escorting Brendan off the premises. They must have waited until he came in and went through his desk, finding the jar of petty cash just where I’d left it.
He was professing his innocence while two security guards led him from Caltenics. And I watched him go, laughing on the inside.
Lee Bavaro, the man who fell hook, line, and sinker for my text, notified us later that day that Brendan’s employment at Caltenics had been terminated.
Phase One of my plan had worked to perfection.
I kept in touch with Brendan after his firing. Not that I cared what had happened to him, but I did plan on eventually showing up at his apartment in San Francisco. And it would have seemed odd to do that if we hadn’t been talking in the meantime.
Trust me, I’d thought out every aspect of what was to come.
He’d repeatedly tell me that he hadn’t stolen the petty cash and I had to keep playing along. I hated hearing him whine, but I needed him. So I listened.
And then everything changed. I followed Quint and Cara to Iron Hill Street and saw them talking to my former neighbors. They would surely find out that the Langleys and the Tillers lived a few houses from each other. And then he might found out that a man named Tyler Anthony Danovich grew up a block over.
Quint was getting too close.
It was time for Phase Two.
I immediately went back to my apartment at Avalon. I put my clothes and anything else I could stuff into my car.
Everything I couldn’t fit, or didn’t want, I threw down the garbage chute on the fourth floor. I wiped down all the walls to my apartment, despite knowing it was pointless. I didn’t have the time or resources to rid the entire apartment of my DNA.
Quint and Cara might still be a week or more from finding out I was the Butcher, but I saw no reason to tempt fate. The longer I waited, the more I risked having the police show up at Avalon before I could get out, leading to me spending the rest of my life in a cage. No, thanks.
However, I did have my fourth set of murders planned in two days’ time, so it wasn’t an easy decision. I mulled it over.
In the end, I concluded that staying at Avalon was just too big a risk. It was time to move on.
My original plan had been to keep paying rent at Avalon, so nothing seemed amiss, but I thought of something better. If I told them I was moving out, they’d come and clean the place to prepare it for a new renter, hopefully erasing any evidence or DNA I’d left behind.
Sure, it seemed inevitable that at some point they’d put the clues together and realize I was the Butcher, but why serve it up to them on a silver platter? I liked the idea of my apartment being cleaned completely. Make them work harder to find my DNA.
I called Kayla at the front desk and told her some bullshit story about my parents being sick and that I had to move out immediately. I told her that even though I’d already paid for the next month, they could start cleaning the apartment right away and renting it out as soon as possible. I wouldn’t be back. I must have sounded so thoughtful.
Next I called Brendan. I told him that I wanted to come by his place and talk to him. He wasn’t suspicious in the least; in fact, he seemed genuinely excited to see me. He was a lonely guy, especially after losing his job, and probably appreciated someone reaching out.
I had one more stop to make. I went by my bank and took out an astronomical sum of cash. In the process I received a few suspicious stares from the bank’s employees, but it was my money and there was nothing they could do about it. I made up a bullshit story about entering some big poker tournaments, not that it mattered.
It’s not like I was a wanted fugitive. At least not yet.
Certainly when my name was released to the world, they’d tell their friends that I’d come by their bank and withdrawn $20,000 cash from my checking account. What a great story that would make for them when it was too late to stop me.
I drove into San Francisco that night. On my way over the Bay Bridge, I saw a huge cruise ship docked down by the Embarcadero.
Would that not be the perfect getaway? You’re surrounded by people on a bus or a train. And driving out of state would just keep me on the perpetual run in the United States.
But a cruise ship, with my own room, that dropped me off somewhere in South America? Now that could work!
I arrived at Brendan’s place at nine o’clock that night, once it had gotten dark. I'd picked a time late enough to make it tough for anyone to see me enter his apartment, but not so late as arouse Brendan’s suspicions.
I took a backpack from my car and loaded it with some of the stuff I’d tossed in the back seat—my laptop, a few days’ worth of clothing, the fentanyl I still had left over from my cookie killings, and my cash.
He opened the door, we said a brief hello, and I walked on in. The less time standing outside of his apartment, the better. He didn’t ask why I was carrying a backpack and didn’t seem fazed by my entering his apartment so quickly. It appeared he was just happy to have the company.
Brendan stood an inch or tw
o shorter than me and slightly skinnier. But we had similarly colored brown hair, and as we exchanged pleasantries, I did think I could pass for him if necessary. He looked pretty young for his age, which was important since I was a good five years younger.
His place was a two-story flat, more a townhouse than an apartment. He obviously hadn’t done much since taking it over from his parents. It gave off a feeling of being not just old but museum-like, with antiques seemingly anywhere. There was ceramic clowns, Tiffany lamps, and even animal-footed ottomans. The most prominent colors were pale green and dark brown. No one would have guessed that a guy in his thirties lived there.
Brendan played the gracious host, seeming to enjoy showing me around the place. I bet I could have talked him into just letting me live there for awhile. But that would have led to too many complications. And once they showed my face on television, which I knew was coming at some point, he’d assuredly call the police.
No, Brendan couldn’t be around. I needed his townhouse, but I didn’t need him.
I struck gold early on in our conversation.
“Are you still entertaining kids at parties?” I asked.
“I sure am. It’s helped keep me distracted after that bullshit at Caltenics. The kids put a smile on my place.”
“I’ve always respected you for doing that. When’s your next one?”
“Next Thursday,” Brendan said. “They want me to be Elmo.”
“Very cool. Who’s throwing the party?” I asked, knowing if I could find out the name, I could probably find out where and when.
“Some woman named Vanessa. She’s got a daughter turning six.”
I had to get more information.
“Vanessa Charles, by chance? I know a Vanessa in the city with a young daughter.”
He responded just the way I hoped he would.
“No, this woman’s last name is Mathers.”
“Gotcha. It would have been funny if I knew the woman.”
Brendan smiled, but it was an awkward smile. I was way too good at getting information, but his expression made me worry I’d aroused his suspicions.
The Bay Area Butcher: (Quint Adler Book 2) Page 23