The Night Monster

by James Swain

  We stopped at the corner, and Suzie leaned down to pet Buster. That was when I saw the tears pouring down her face. It made my heart ache to think that Richard Knockman had been controlling her life like this, and I handed her the leash.

  “Why don’t you walk him?” I said.

  “Cool,” she said, managing a half smile.

  CHAPTER 28

  ebecca Knockman was standing on the sidewalk in front of her house with Burrell. Suzie ran to her mother, and they embraced. Looking for missing kids didn’t always have happy endings, and I probably should have been celebrating, only I was in no mood for that. Sara Long was still being held captive by a couple of sociopaths, and I needed to rescue her. Burrell came down the sidewalk toward me.

  “I need to take Suzie and her mother to headquarters and get statements from them,” Burrell said. “Follow me, and I’ll get the unit started on your request.”

  “Sounds good,” I said.

  I pulled my keys out of my pocket. My heart was pounding the way it did when I was working a case, my radar on full alert. I was ready to slay the dragon. Burrell placed her hand on my arm.

  “Hold on a second,” she said.

  I gazed into her eyes. Their expression was one of concern.

  “I don’t want us to be at odds, Jack,” she said.

  “Nothing wrong with an argument between friends,” I said.

  “It was more than that.”

  I looked deeply into Burrell’s slate-blue eyes. I had hurt her. She was one of the best friends I had, and there was no excuse for that.

  “I’m sorry,” I said.

  Burrell crossed her arms in front of her chest and waited me out. I didn’t know what else to do, so I gave her a hug. She didn’t seem to mind that I was covered in sweat, and hugged me right back.

  “That’s more like it,” she said.

  I followed Burrell to police headquarters on Andrews Avenue. She got me a visitor’s pass at the front desk and took me upstairs to the War Room, which was used as a strategy center during emergencies like wildfires and hurricanes.

  “I need to get the Knockmans squared away,” Burrell said. “Stay here, and I’ll send over the other detectives from Missing Persons so you can get started.”

  Burrell left before I could thank her. I went to the window and looked out on the vast parking lot. It occurred to me that I hadn’t told Burrell what I was searching for. Nor had I mentioned that I had proof that Sara Long and Naomi Dunn’s abductions were linked. Burrell needed to know these things, and soon. Otherwise, our friendship would take another major hit.

  A noise turned my head. My old unit had silently entered the War Room and lined up behind me. Their names were Tom Manning, Jillian Webster, Rich Dugger, Shane James, and Roy Wadding. I had trained each one of them to find missing people, and it made me proud to know they were still at it.

  “You’re back,” Manning said.

  “Just for a little while,” I replied. “I don’t know how much Burrell told you. I need for you to make phone calls to police departments around the state.”

  “What are we looking for?” Webster asked.

  “Missing young women who were nursing students,” I said.

  “Over what period of time?” Manning asked.

  “The past eighteen years. So far, we have two victims, both of whom were tall and athletic. I’m guessing this will hold true for the others.”

  “How do you know there are more victims?” Webster asked.

  I hesitated. Experience came from practice, and practice made perfect. Mouse and the giant had done this many times before—that was why I was having such a hard time catching them. There were more victims, and they were hiding in musty police files across Florida.

  “Trust me,” I said. “There are more.”

  The War Room was outfitted with sixteen phone lines, and my old unit was soon talking to their brothers-in-arms around the state. They didn’t need me looking over their shoulders while they worked, and I crossed the room and stood at the windows.

  I stared at the mind-boggling sprawl, the cookie-cutter developments and cloned shopping centers stretching as far as my eyes could see. Growing up, two hundred thousand people had lived in the county; now it was almost two million. The past was gone, and I could not look at what had replaced it without feeling regret.

  “I’ve got a hit,” Manning called out ten minutes later.

  I went to Manning’s desk. The detective sat with his necktie undone and a phone pressed to his ear. He cupped his hand over the mouthpiece before speaking.

  “I’m talking to a detective in Alachua County,” Manning said. “Guy’s going to retire in two weeks, so he pulled out a stack of cold case files to give to the guy replacing him. He was reading them the other day, and found a case from twelve years ago where a college girl disappeared. She’d been in the nursing program at the University of Florida in Alachua.”

  My hands gripped the back of Manning’s chair. “Can you get this guy to e-mail you the file?”

  “He doesn’t know how to operate a scanner, so he’s going to fax the report to me.”

  I went to where the fax machine sat and made sure there was paper in the tray. Sixty seconds later I grabbed the sheets as they were printed. The typeface was faint, and I held them up to the light as I read. The missing girl’s name was Cindee Hartman, and she’d been twenty when she’d vanished. Cindee hailed from Orlando, was tall and comely, and played on the women’s field hockey team. Cindee’s apartment had been ransacked during her abduction, the furniture all but destroyed. The abduction had taken place over a holiday weekend, and there had been no witnesses. The report referenced the fact that Cindee’s complex was where Danny “The Gainesville Ripper” Rolling had butchered three students in 1990. Although the complex’s security had been updated since the killings, Cindee’s abductor had still managed to avoid detection.

  My hands started to tremble. Two similar abductions could be written off as a coincidence, but not three. Cindee Hartman had proven my case.

  “Find what you were looking for?” Manning called out from across the room.

  “Yeah,” I said.

  I ran down the police station stairs and outside to my car. Buster danced on the upholstery as I hopped in and grabbed the Naomi Dunn file from where I’d stuck it between the seats. I got out of the car and shut the door, and he howled disapprovingly. Buster didn’t like to be left alone, and was letting me know it in no uncertain terms.

  His barking grew louder. I saw people pop their heads out of their cars and from windows inside the building. Buster was going to stir the whole place up if I didn’t do something. I opened the driver’s door, and my dog happily scrambled out.

  I locked my car up, and dragged Buster inside by the collar. The desk sergeant was yakking on the phone, and I got onto an empty elevator without being spotted.

  Next stop was the War Room. I made Buster lie down in the corner, where he promptly fell asleep. Then I got to work.

  In the room’s center was an oval table covered with empty coffee cups. Sweeping them into the trash, I pulled a photograph of Naomi Dunn from her file and placed it on the table. To the right of Dunn’s photo, I placed a photo of Cindee Hartman from her file, and to the right of that, the photo of Sara Long I’d been carrying around. Then I found a yellow legal pad, and ripped away three sheets.

  I placed one sheet beneath each of the photos. Using a black Magic Marker, I wrote down the date of each woman’s abduction, and beneath that, the things that linked them—age, athleticism, and the fact that they were all nursing students.

  I stepped back to stare at the information. One thing immediately jumped out at me. Cindee Hartman had been abducted four years after Naomi Dunn. Then there was a sixteen-year jump to Sara Long’s abduction. That was a long time. Serial abductors were similar to serial killers in that they tended to abduct in cycles. I didn’t see a cycle here, and kept studying the women’s photographs.

  A hand touc
hed my arm. I was too absorbed to turn around. Webster shouldered up beside me. Webster had worked Vice before joining Missing Persons, and had seen her share of ugly. The expression on her face was particularly grim.

  “Something wrong?” I said.

  “We just found two more victims,” Webster said.

  CHAPTER 29

  he victims’ names were Victoria Seppi and Karen Kingman.

  Seppi was from Chatham, a small town thirty miles due west of Daytona Beach. She had been studying nursing at a Daytona community college when she’d gone missing from her dorm room in the fall of 1999. Tall and athletic, Seppi had swum competitively in high school and played water polo at the YWCA. She was so similar to the other victims it was unnerving.

  Because Seppi had been living in Daytona at the time of her disappearance, the Volusia County Sheriff’s Office had handled the investigation. At first, the cops had focused on Seppi’s boyfriend, a biker with a string of arrests for selling speed on Daytona Beach. When the biker had come up with an airtight alibi, the case had gone cold, and the investigation had been put on the back burner, where it had remained until now.

  I found myself shaking my head as I read the Seppi report. Back when I’d run Missing Persons, I’d made it my business to be familiar with every “open” missing person case in Florida, but I had never heard of Victoria Seppi. That was because the Volusia County Sheriff’s Office hadn’t classified her as missing, but had simply left the case open. I didn’t know what their thinking was, and probably never would.

  I went to the next report. Karen Kingman had been a nursing student at Pensacola Junior College when she disappeared in the summer of ‘04. A native of the nearby town of Brent, Kingman had played tennis in high school and gone to the state championships in singles twice. The photo in her report showed an athletic young woman with dimples in her cheeks, shoulder-length blond hair, and a radiant smile.

  Kingman’s abduction had occurred over the Fourth of July weekend, when her apartment complex was nearly empty. While there had been no witnesses, the evidence at the scene had indicated that Kingman had not gone quietly. Her blood had been found throughout her apartment, along with several torn pieces of clothing that had been identified as hers.

  Pensacola is in Escambia County, and the local sheriff’s department had handled the investigation. They had launched a massive search that had included the police from neighboring Alabama and Mississippi. The Florida Department of Law Enforcement and the FBI had also gotten involved. Hundreds of law enforcement officers and volunteers had looked high and low for the missing girl, and found nothing.

  I had followed the Kingman case closely at the time. What I remembered most was how little information the Escambia police had given to the media. Withholding information was common with active investigations, but not when cases went cold. I would have to call the Escambia police, and ask them if they would now be willing to share the information they had.

  I spread the photos already lying on the table, and placed Victoria Seppi’s photo between Naomi Dunn and Cindee Hartman’s. Then, I inserted Karen Kingman’s photo between Hartman’s and Sara Long’s.

  “I need a map of Florida,” I said.

  Webster found a road map of Florida. I placed it on the table next to the five victims’ photos. Using a red Magic Marker, I circled the five cities where the victims had disappeared, and below the circles, wrote the dates of each disappearance. Then I took a step back.

  “There’s been one abduction every four to five years,” Webster said. “What do you think they’re doing with them?”

  It was obvious to me what was going on here: These young women were fulfilling a need, with each one replacing the last. Sara Long was the latest victim, and would later be replaced by another college student studying nursing.

  “They’re keeping them until they stop being useful,” I said.

  “God,” Webster muttered under her breath.

  I continued to stare at the map. Something important was right in front of me, but I couldn’t put my finger on it.

  My eyes settled on Naomi Dunn’s photograph. She was smiling in it. I had looked at that photograph so many times I felt as if I knew her.

  Then I saw what I’d been missing. Naomi was first.

  My hand slapped the table in anger. I had missed clues before, but never one this obvious.

  “What’s wrong?” Webster asked.

  I pointed at the circle on the map I’d drawn to signify Dunn’s abduction.

  “Serial abductors are like serial killers,” I said. “They start out timid and weak, and grow strong. Their first abduction is always committed near where they live.”

  “A safe zone.”

  “That’s right. Fort Lauderdale was these guys’ safe zone. They were living here when they abducted Naomi Dunn.”

  I took the stairs to Burrell’s office with my footsteps ringing in my ears. Her door was wide open, and I stuck my head in.

  “Are you busy?” I asked.

  Burrell sat at her desk facing her computer, her face illuminated by the faint images on the screen.

  “I’m watching Howdy Doody,” Burrell replied.

  Howdy Doody was cop speak for hardcore porn. It was not the kind of stuff that I expected Burrell to watch, and I came around her desk. Playing on her computer was a grainy video of a heterosexual couple having sex, the woman bouncing atop a man on a bed. The woman had bleached blond hair and enormous breasts that defied gravity. Her partner was a huge guy, his upper torso covered in garish tattoos.

  “Who are they?” I asked.

  “The guy is Tyrone Biggs, Sara Long’s boyfriend,” Burrell replied. “The bimbo is named Sky. She’s an exotic dancer at a strip club called Showstoppers. Sky tried to sell this video to the TV stations. The stations thought it was too sleazy, and turned it down, so Sky sold it to a tabloid news show. Deborah Bodden at Fox sent it to me as a favor.”

  “Why is this tape important?”

  “Take a look at what’s playing in the background.”

  I brought my face up to the computer screen. A boxy TV sat on a dresser behind the bed. A women’s basketball game was playing on it.

  “It’s the Lady Seminole’s game from two nights ago,” Burrell explained. “Sky had sex with Biggs while he watched his girlfriend play basketball. The tape lasts for about an hour, and proves that Biggs didn’t abduct Sara Long.”

  Burrell shut off her computer. The screen went blank, and for a long moment she did not speak. I put my hand on her chair, and stared at her profile.

  “You okay?” I asked.

  “No, I’m not okay,” Burrell said. “I sent the mayor this tape, and now he’s claiming he never told me to arrest Biggs. Chief Moody has shut himself in his office, and won’t talk to me. They’re playing politics with a poor girl’s life.”

  “That’s how they’ve lasted so long.”

  Burrell laughed without smiling. It was a dead sound. Her eyes, which were normally dancing, were equally dead. She’d been running Missing Persons for six months, and she was already being thrown under the bus. It was the nature of the beast, and there were times when I wondered how I’d lasted as long as I had.

  “Come with me,” I said. “I want to show you something.”

  ———

  We went upstairs to the War Room. The photos of the five victims lay on the table with the map of Florida beside them. Burrell studied the photos and map with a look of disbelief on her face. I gave her a moment to absorb everything before speaking.

  “Sara Long was taken from her motel room by a pair of serial abductors,” I said. “These are the rest of their victims.”

  Burrell glanced into the faces of the other five detectives from Missing Persons, who stood silently on the other side of the table. “You in agreement on this?” she asked.

  The other detectives nodded in unison. Burrell turned to me.

  “Should I call the mayor?” she asked.

  “Fuck the mayor,”
I said.

  The other detectives burst into laughter. Burrell was in no mood for games, and shot them a murderous look. The sound quickly died.

  “So what exactly are you suggesting I do?” Burrell asked.

  “Call Deborah Bodden at Fox News, and tell her what you’ve found,” I said. “Tell her that a pair of serial abductors have been abducting young women in Florida for the past eighteen years, and the detectives in your unit uncovered them.”

  The other detectives broke into smiles. They were going to be heroes when this was all over. Burrell wasn’t sold, and continued to press me.

  “What about Sky’s sex tape?” she said.

  “What about it?”

  “The tape proves that we arrested the wrong guy. I’m still screwed.”

  “You’re spinning it wrong.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “If Sky had handed over the tape to the police two days ago, you never would have arrested Tyrone Biggs. Right?”

  Burrell considered what I was saying, then nodded.

  “Sky withheld evidence that crippled your investigation,” I went on. “Because of her, you made a false arrest. Let Biggs go, and throw Sky in the county lockup.”

  “You’re saying I should make Sky the bad guy.”

  “Sky is the bad guy. She deserves whatever she gets.”

  “That doesn’t seem right somehow.”

  “You want to take the fall, be my guest.”

  Burrell gave me a funny look. I could tell that she didn’t like what I was saying. Burrell was one of those cops who wanted to do her job well, and for people to like her. I had never had that problem.

  Burrell shook her head. “I don’t know, Jack.”

  “Just do it. You’ll thank me later.”

  “You think so?”

  “Yes, Candy, I do.”

  Burrell started to reply, then looked down at her side. Buster stood by her leg, wanting to be petted. Burrell scratched the top of his head.

  “What do you think, boy?” she asked my dog.