by Mike Omer
He pulled the folder with all the sketches out of his briefcase and handed it over to her. “There are some sketches there,” he said. “We wanted to know if you recognize any of these men.”
She opened the folder and looked at the first sketch. “That’s a nice sketch,” she said. “Did you draw this?”
“No,” Jacob said. “It was a sketch artist.”
“My granddaughter Bella goes to art school,” she said, looking at the sketch. “She’s very talented. She draws.”
“That’s nice,” Jacob said.
“She draws on the computer,” the old woman said. “She’s very smart.”
“Can you look at the rest of the sketches, please?”
She flipped a page. “This one is also very nice,” she said.
Jacob began wondering if she thought he was one of her grandchildren, showing her the picture he had just painted.
“Have you seen this man?” he asked her, but she didn’t answer right away.
Jacob glanced over at Bernard, who was leaning back, sipping from the small cup of tea. His fingers could barely squeeze through the teacup’s handle. He looked as if he was playing with a kid’s plastic tea set. He didn’t seem restless at all, but then again Jacob had never seen Bernard restless. The man had the patience of a Galapagos turtle.
Jacob, however, was getting impatient. They were wasting time. This woman was just looking for company; she hadn’t seen anyone. He leaned forward to take the folder from her hands, but she flipped another page and finally spoke again.
“Oh,” she said. “I thought you said you were looking for a man who lived here recently.”
“That’s right,” Jacob said.
“Well, you’re wrong.”
He blinked. “I’m sorry?”
“He lived here, but not recently. They moved away twenty-five years ago.”
“No, ma’am, we’re looking for someone who lived here until a week ago. If this sketch reminds you of someone you knew long ago, it’s just a coincidence—”
“I’m old, Detective, but I’m not senile,” she said, her voice becoming sharp. “Pete Stokes lived here with his family for almost fifteen years. The sketch doesn’t remind me of him. The sketch is him. Or at least, him as he looked thirty years ago.” She flipped the folder back at him, open at a sketch of the killer wearing a toupee of smooth black hair combed to the side, and a large fake mustache. “That’s Pete Stokes. But he was a nice man. I’m sure he didn’t do anything wrong.”
“How old was Pete when he lived here?” Jacob asked.
“About fifty, I think,” she said, leaning back in her rocking chair. “He was always very polite. And he did live in the apartment on the third floor, so you got that right.”
“Which apartment?” Jacob asked.
“Apartment 15. The one the cops broke into yesterday,” she looked at them, her face crinkling with a smile that exposed way too much gums. “What? Did you think I didn’t know? With the noise you people made?”
Jacob and Bernard glanced at each other. Bernard raised his eyebrows as if to say this was a dead end; she was talking about a man who would now be seventy-five, maybe eighty years old.
Jacob turned toward the old woman, his mind suddenly whirring.
“What family?” he asked.
“I’m sorry?”
“You said he lived with his family. Did he have a wife?”
“Yes. A wife and a son. I used to exchange recipes with his wife, Meggie. She could appreciate my baking,” she added, glancing at their still-unfinished strudels.
“How old was the son when they left?” Bernard asked, leaning forward. He was getting it.
“I’m not sure. He left for college a bit before, I think,” she said. “When they left he must have been about… twenty. Maybe twenty-one.”
“What was his name?” Jacob asked, his fingers tightening around the plate.
“His name was Jovan. Jovan Stokes. Such a sweet boy.”
Chapter Twenty-Five
Mitchell arrived late to work, and entered the squad room in the midst of a meeting. It was nearly noon. He was hung over, and tired after hardly sleeping the night before. There was lonely drinking, and there was lonelier drinking. Then he had almost drunk texted Pauline, but he was pretty sure he’d decided not to do so, which was probably his proudest recent achievement.
As he entered, everyone turned to look at him, though Hannah quickly looked away, disgust on her face. Even without their previous exchange, he knew he had earned the disgust. He wore the same clothes as the day before, he was unshaven, and, judging by the taste in his mouth, his breath stank. He wasn’t even sure why he had come to work. Jacob, who stood near the rolling whiteboard, looked at him and raised an eyebrow. There were no chairs available. Mitchell’s own chair was taken by Captain Bailey, so he leaned against the wall.
Jacob started talking. “As I was saying, according to this woman, twenty five years ago a man named Pete Stokes lived with his family in apartment fifteen. His son’s name was Jovan Stokes, and we’re almost sure that he’s our guy.”
Mitchell stared, blinking, feeling sick. While he’d been acting like a whiny brat, throwing fits and getting drunk, feeling sorry for himself, the rest of the squad had exposed the identity of the serial murderer. If he’d had to put a finger on the lowest point in his career, this was it.
What the hell was wrong with him? He’d always managed to keep his life and his work apart, he had always been professional. Why was he screwing up like this?
“The woman positively identified one of the sketches as Pete Stokes,” Jacob carried on. “And told us that father and son were very similar. We aren’t sure if Jovan Stokes purposefully chose one of the disguises to match his father’s looks—”
“Dressing up like his dad?” Zoe said, raising her eyebrow. “That’s a little Freudian.”
“Sure, I guess,” Jacob said. “In any case, we’ve managed to retrieve some info on Jovan Stokes.” He pointed at a picture taped to the whiteboard. In it, a man of about forty with short-cropped, light brown hair stared seriously at the camera. He had a small mustache and a beard, both trimmed carefully. His eyes were also light brown, his lips tight and pale. He looked as if he was constantly angry. “Jovan Stokes. Born in 1968 in Glenmore Park. He was a brilliant kid, top of his class. His family was quite poor—his dad worked in construction, and his mother was unemployed. When he graduated high school, he managed to get a scholarship and enrolled in the Boston University School of Medicine. He was one of the top students there as well. The image you see here was taken from his driver’s license. We believe that he has shaved his beard and his mustache since then. While studying in Boston, he met a woman named Wanda Johnson, and he married her in 1995. They’ve been married for eighteen years.”
Jacob paused and glanced at the whiteboard. There was a timeline drawn on the bottom. He pointed at its base. “On July 14, 2013, both Wanda Stokes and Jovan Stokes did not show up to work. No one has seen either of them since.”
“Are they both involved in the murders?” Hannah asked.
“Not likely,” Jacob said. “According to our friends in the Boston PD, two days after Wanda disappeared her sister, Sylvia Johnson, filed a missing persons report. She claimed that Wanda was about to divorce Jovan, and that she would never have disappeared with him. The most likely scenario right now is that Jovan Stokes killed Wanda soon after she told him she wanted a divorce. Their shared bank account was emptied a day before the couple vanished. They had about two hundred thousand dollars in the account.” He let that sink in. “No one has seen or heard from Jovan or Wanda Stokes since July 2013. It is probable that Jovan has false papers, and is nearly always in disguise,” Jacob said. “There’s a large gap in which we aren’t sure what he was doing, but then on February 10, 2015, Isabella Garcia was murdered.” He pointed at the timeline again. “So we have him in Boston at that time. Later, he moved to Glenmore Park—”
“He could have been h
ere all along, and simply driven to Boston to murder there,” Mitchell pointed out.
Jacob nodded. “That’s true.”
“Did anyone talk to the landlord of the apartment?” Captain Bailey asked. “He’d be able to pinpoint the exact date, and give us the name Jovan Stokes used. Maybe some additional information.”
“The previous landlord died from cancer three months ago,” Jacob answered. “The new landlord—that’s his daughter—is still trying to figure out her inheritance. Apparently the deceased left a mess. What she could tell us was that she could find no lease for the apartment, and that she remembers her dad saying that the rent for the place had been paid in advance, in cash.”
He paused, waiting to see if any more questions popped up. Then he moved to point at a picture of a lock of red hair. “This hair was found hidden inside the apartment. Originally, we thought it was Kendele Byers’s; it seemed to match her hair color. However, Matt found out that the hair is, in fact, much older.”
“How much older?” Captain Bailey asked.
“Matt is working on an estimate, he said that it’s at least ten years old, though it’s probably even older. Assuming that Jovan Stokes only moved to his childhood home recently, our current assumption is that this lock of hair was placed there when his family originally lived there.”
“An old victim?” Mitchell asked.
“Again, we have no way to be sure. It might belong to a victim, or a friend he had.” Jacob shrugged. “Anything’s possible. We intend to follow this lead and see where it takes us. For now, we’re focusing all our efforts on Jovan’s past. Bernard and Hannah will be going back to Boston, to work with Bernard’s buddies at the Boston PD on Wanda Stokes’s missing persons case.”
Bernard did not seem especially thrilled to meet his so-called buddies again. He wrinkled his nose as if confronted with a particularly ripe sample of French cheese.
“The rest of us will be trying to extract additional information here. There are numerous people who’ve had contact with Jovan over the years, and perhaps some of them might shed some light on his actions.”
“Okay,” Captain Bailey said. “I’m meeting with the chief later, and I’ll update her on our progress.”
With the meeting clearly finished, everyone began to move around. Mitchell was about to ask Zoe for his chair, when Captain Bailey said, “Detective Lonnie, join me in my office, please.”
It was an irregularly official request, and some part of Mitchell’s heart sank. He followed the captain to his office.
Captain Bailey sat down behind his desk of chaos. Mitchell looked around. All the other chairs had stacks of papers on them.
“You can move those papers there.” Captain Bailey pointed at one of the chairs.
Mitchell picked the stack of papers up, and after a moment of hesitation laid it gingerly on one of the piles on the table. Bailey grunted and moved the papers to a different stack. Apparently, Mitchell had disrupted his carefully managed filing system. Mitchell sat down.
“You’re off the case,” Captain Bailey said, not bothering to soften the blow. “Chief’s orders.”
“Because of the article in the Gazette?” Mitchell asked. “Captain, you know I just did what needed to be done.”
“It definitely contributed,” Captain Bailey said, frowning. “As did the hundreds of blogs and vloggers who trashed us for arresting Janice Hewitt and for trampling the First Amendment.”
“But this has nothing to do with the First—”
“Damn it, Mitchell, you act as if you just got here from Canada! You arrested someone for making us look like a bunch of idiots. Of course everyone will say it’s a First Amendment thing. It doesn’t matter if she filed a false complaint, or if she nearly got her boyfriend shot by the cops. She’s the hero here, sticking it to the man. You’re the villain who doesn’t care about freedom of speech. Did you see how many views she has on her last video? Over twenty-five million. You’ve practically made that woman’s career.”
“Fine, I’ll stay in the office, then. Try and track this Jovan from—”
“Mitchell, I don’t want you on this case either. You’ve lost your focus, and you’re acting like an asshole. Did you throw your mug at the wall yesterday?”
“Who told you that?” Mitchell asked, fuming.
“No one told me. Your friends have your back,” Bailey said, waving his hand dismissively. “But there was a big stain on the wall, and fragments of your mug on the floor. I don’t know if you realize, but I was once a detective as well, and I didn’t need to take DNA samples to know what the hell happened!”
Mitchell shut his eyes.
“I want you to take a few days of vacation. Go visit your sister. Spend some time with your girlfriend. Calm the hell down.”
“I don’t need a vacation. I can get myself together. I can help.”
The captain’s eyes narrowed. “Don’t make me suspend you, Lonnie. I will.”
Mitchell opened his mouth to argue again, and then closed it. Beyond the haze of rage and indignation, he knew it was all his fault.
“We’re done here,” the captain said, his voice calmer, but final. “Send your sister my regards.”
Jovan Stokes got out of the shower and walked slowly back to his bed. The weak light from the bedside lamp illuminated the small motel room. Someone had decided to go with a bright green color theme when they selected the sheets, wall to wall carpeting, and furniture; the result was less than inspiring. It didn’t matter. Jovan wasn’t really paying attention to the room’s design; it was just a place to sleep.
When he sat on the bed, his entire body shuddered. The worst was over. After the shooting, he had sewn and bandaged his wound himself, nearly fainting at the pain. Now his body felt as if it had gone through shock. He was weak and dizzy, and had a slight temperature. He’d bought some painkillers and was taking them sparingly, trying to get used to the pain. It wasn’t going away anytime soon.
He wasn’t sure what he should do.
For the past two years, he’d had a plan. He was chasing a moment, a memory, a feeling. A second of pure joy that he had once experienced, long ago. Nothing mattered, except for that moment. For more than twenty years he had lived numbly, his life dreary and boring. Incidents of pleasure, happiness, or even sadness were few and far between.
And then, one day, he had suddenly remembered there had been, once in his life, something else.
But now he wasn’t sure he’d ever reach that moment. His plan had encountered an unexpected obstacle. It had nearly cost him his life.
Tanessa Lonnie. She was the first to struggle in any meaningful way. And he hadn’t seen it coming.
Maybe he had to move on, choose his next victim, keep with the original plan. Yes. That was what he should do. He turned on his laptop, knowing the anticipation would make him feel alive again, give meaning to his actions. He waited for the anticipation.
Nothing.
It was as if something was broken inside him, and for a second he panicked, wondering if somehow he had hurt his head when he was shot, if he had maybe suffered some brain damage.
But no, there was a much simpler explanation. He did not want to move on. Because moving on wasn’t keeping with the original plan. The original plan was to select a victim and to stick with her, drawing out the anticipation, finally killing her. This plan was supposed to get him closer to that original moment of joy. But now one of his victims had gotten away.
He opened Tanessa’s file and stared at her. She was so similar to her. A lot more than the others.
Had she really known who he was? How? And how had she moved so fast?
He opened the local news site, wondering if they had added anything to their original, vague report of a shootout in a flower shop.
He stared at the screen.
Tanessa Lonnie.
A cop.
Bait.
A brief moment of rage and fear. The police had almost caught him! They must have figured out how h
e found his victims! And then they had created this bait, a woman who would snag his attention. Tanessa Lonnie, the sister of one of the detectives who was investigating the case. He shook angrily, nearly hurled the laptop at the wall. And then he paused, as he felt it once again.
Anticipation.
Tabitha Mermenstein had been the principal of Glenmore Park High School between 1981 and 1988, which meant she had been the principal when Jovan Stokes had attended there. Jacob hoped she would be able to tell him something that would shed some light on the suspected killer. As he sat in front of her in her living room, he fidgeted a bit, finding himself slightly nervous.
When Jacob had gone to elementary school, the deputy principal, Ms. Bell, had hated him. He’d had a knack for getting himself into fights, and often ended up in her office. There she would yell at him for what felt like hours, as he sat with his eyes downcast, trying his best not to cry. There was a rumor that if she ever caught you with head lice, she would shave your head in the gym while the rest of the class watched. To this day he wasn’t sure if this rumor had an inkling of truth in it. He had definitely never participated in such a ghastly ritual. But as a child, sometimes his head itched after he’d gone to bed, and he would lie awake for hours, horrified, certain the next day would be his day of shame.
Tabitha Mermenstein looked exactly like Ms. Bell. She had long, gray hair tied into a braid to which no head lice would ever dare come close. Her eyes would have made a hawk feel like perhaps it needed eyeglasses; all the better to spot kids fighting, or random head lice wandering about. Jacob realized that, for the first time, he was quite happy with the knowledge that he was entirely bald.
Of course, he would have to stop thinking about head lice if this interview was to progress in a satisfactory manner.
“What’s this about, Detective?” Tabitha asked, her voice clear and formal. She had offered him water when he’d come in, but that was as far as her hospitality went.
He cleared his throat. “Ms. Mermenstein, you were principal of Glenmore Park High School between the years 1983 and 1987, right?”