by Mike Omer
A few minutes later, he was still talking to one of the clerks at the district attorney’s office, trying to explain that this was urgent beyond belief. The clerk repeated over and over that he understood, that they were working as fast as they could, but Mitchell felt like he didn’t realize how critical it was.
“Got it!” Hannah suddenly said. All of them gathered around her screen, where numerous images of the same machine were displayed. “I got the answer on a Reddit thread,” she said. “It’s a commercial meat grinder.”
Mitchell felt the blood drain out of his face, a wave of dizziness overcoming him. A meat grinder. The sick asshole. He felt a hand grabbing his arm, stabilizing him.
“Are you okay?” Jacob asked.
“Yeah,” he said, though he felt as if he never would be.
“Okay,” Captain Bailey said. “Either he found a commercial meat grinder somewhere in Glenmore Park, or he bought one. Bernard, Jacob, hit the phones. Figure out who sells those things, either new or secondhand. This looks like a damn heavy machine, so focus on anywhere within the state. Mitchell, try Ebay, Craigslist… whatever website you can think of that might sell these things. Hannah, try to figure out where in Glenmore Park you can get such a thing. Call all the butchers, supermarkets, and so on.”
Mitchell returned to his phone call, opening a browser to start chats with Customer Support at Ebay, Craigslist, and Amazon. His confidence grew. They were progressing!
Two hours later, his confidence was shrinking again. The marks of fatigue and frustration were starting to show themselves on everyone. At one point, after a particularly frustrating chat with Ebay Customer Support, Mitchell picked up his keyboard and slammed it on the table, breaking it to pieces. It seemed as if they were getting nowhere and time was running out.
Zoe was helping Hannah make phone calls. They managed to peg two butcher shops in Glenmore Park in which there were commercial meat grinders. The owners sent them pictures of the machines, but they didn’t seem to match the one Ricky Nate had sent Mitchell. Captain Bailey didn’t dispatch anyone there yet. If Jovan Stokes planned to crash one of those butcheries, they’d have to ambush him. Sending a patrol over to those places too early would simply alert the killer, making him flee.
Mitchell finally got the warrant for the phone number. His heart in overdrive, he called the phone company. The entire call felt like it took hours, though when he glanced at the phone screen once he finished the call, he saw it had been just under twenty-three minutes.
“Captain!” he said. “The call was made from New Hampshire!”
At that same moment, Agent Mancuso barged into the squad room.
“We got him,” she said. “He’s in New Hampshire, at a warehouse.”
The Feds had located a man who’d sold a commercial meat grinder three days before. The meat grinder was delivered to a warehouse in New Hampshire, about thirty miles from Glenmore Park. The Feds had contacted the seller, and received an image of the meat grinder. It matched.
There were no more commands to give. No phone calls to make. No websites to check. They all dashed to their desks, grabbing their car keys, their guns, their phones.
Mitchell grabbed his gun, then felt Captain Bailey put a hand on his shoulder.
“Detective Lonnie,” he said, his hand holding Mitchell firmly. “I need you to stay here. We might need a man to coordinate the efforts with dispatch, and—”
Mitchell pulled his shoulder away in rage. “Sir,” he said, feeling as if it were holding back a freight train. “This is my sister we’re talking about.”
“I know,” Bailey said. “That’s why I’m telling you to stay.”
“Go to hell,” Mitchell spat, feeling his face redden.
“Detective, if I have to, I’ll put you in a holding cell,” Bailey said sharply. “Don’t make me waste any more time.”
Mitchell took a step forward, but Jacob got between him and the captain.
“We’ll bring her back, Mitchell,” he said softly. “Trust me.”
Mitchell looked at Jacob, gritting his teeth. Finally, his shoulders sagged and he nodded, his throat clenching. Captain Bailey nodded at him gravely and walked past him, his foot crunching over a discarded keyboard key.
Jacob drove the car, with Captain Bailey in the passenger’s seat, navigating with a road map and his phone. They flashed past the other cars on the road, their speed constantly hovering around ninety.
“You can slow down,” Bailey said, his voice strained. “We still have some time.”
“We don’t know that Jovan will actually wait for one o’clock,” Jacob said, veering right to avoid running into a bus. “He might be grinding Tanessa as we speak.”
“Don’t say that,” Bailey said.
“It is what it is,” Jacob said. He felt sick. How would this day end? Would he be able to keep his promise to his partner? Or would he have to process another grisly murder scene? Images of possible scenarios flashed through his mind, and he wished he could turn off his imagination. When he’d been young, he had loved watching B movies littered with violence and gore. Now, as his imagination conjured images of Tanessa murdered in horrid ways, he regretted that pastime deeply.
The captain began talking to various people on the phone, trying to figure out their approach. Finally, after several phone calls, he turned to Jacob and said, “There’s a bend in the road, about two hundred feet before the warehouse. Park the car there.” He called Hannah and Bernard to tell them the same thing, then they drove in silence for a while.
“Do you think Jovan has a man on the force?” Jacob asked.
“No,” Bailey shook his head. “I think he was bluffing. If he had someone, he wouldn’t have walked into our trap in the flower shop. But he might be tracking Ricky Nate, or listening to police frequencies. There’s no way to know for sure. Turn right here.”
The car tires squealed as Jacob pressed the brakes, pulling off to the right. He felt the rear tires momentarily slide on the road as he wrestled with the steering wheel, straightening them in the right lane, narrowly avoiding a white Ford whose driver was honking furiously.
“If we end up in a ditch, we won’t get Tanessa back!” Bailey roared at him. “Slow the fuck down, Detective!”
He slowed down to eighty, gritting his teeth.
Finally, they were half a mile from the warehouse. Jacob pressed the brakes and the car slowed to a reasonable pace. His muscles relaxed. Until then, he hadn’t been aware of how tense his own driving had made him.
“There.” Bailey pointed at two parked Chevrolets. “Stop there.”
Jacob pulled off the lane, the car tires crunching gravel and dry leaves. He stopped the car just before the two Chevys. Six agents in body armor stood outside the cars. Agent Mancuso walked back and forth next to one of the Chevys, shouting into a shoulder mic. As Bailey and Jacob got out of the car, she stopped shouting, shaking her head.
“Only just managed to stop the damn chopper,” she said, her voice hard and angry. “Idiots nearly flew in, exposing us.”
Rows of trees stood on both sides of the road, and beyond them Jacob could see the occasional houses that spotted this area. It was a cloudless day, the sky was blue, and once Agent Mancuso stopped talking birds could be heard chirping. It was so calm, and ridiculously pastoral, considering the reason they were there.
Jacob took a deep breath, trying to focus. He was exhausted, and worrying thoughts gnawed at his heart.
“Do you think Mitchell will stay put?” Bailey asked.
“I have no idea,” Jacob said.
Some cars passed by, and then another Chevrolet showed up and parked behind them. Three agents got out of it. A second later, Bernard’s car appeared and parked behind them. Hannah and Bernard got out, and joined the group.
The agents and detectives advanced on the side of the road. They marched quickly at first, but as they reached the bend they slowed down. They were almost crouching as they circled the twist in the road, looking intentl
y for the warehouse.
It was beyond some trees, in a slightly unkempt field. It was made of concrete, painted beige, with a rolling steel door in front. Further away, they could see a small house, and it looked as if the warehouse was part of the same property. They split into two groups that took both sides of the warehouse. Two agents with sniper rifles disappeared into the foliage.
Agent Mancuso got to the rolling door first, her gun already in her hand. As Bailey and Jacob joined her, she nodded at the locking mechanism of the rolling door. It was broken, leaving a small slit in the door’s center. Someone had forced the door open. Jacob tried to peer through the lock, but couldn’t see a thing. The space inside was dark, or maybe something was simply blocking the view.
The second group circled the warehouse and finally joined them. One of the agents shook his head, indicating that there were no other exits. They took the left part of the door, and the group led by Christine Mancuso took the the right. The problem with a rolling door was that it couldn’t be opened with a kick. One of the agents, a six-foot tower of a man, bent down, preparing to pull the door open as the others tensed, raising their guns, fingers in the trigger guards. One of the agents held a flashbang in his hand.
The large agent pulled the door up, the metal curtain roll sliding with a metallic groan, the flashbang already tossed inside. Though he expected the explosion, the loud bang still made Jacob’s heart jump. The warehouse interior flashed and the agents burst inside with the detectives following them, guns raised, their eyes scanning the open space frantically.
There was no one there. The meat grinder lay against the wall, its metal gleaming in a shaft of light that broke through the smoke. There was no Jovan, and no Tanessa.
Mitchell paced the room, occasionally pausing to glance at his screen, where Tanessa’s photo was displayed. He felt like his nerves were about to snap. The only reason he’d agreed to stay was because he really didn’t feel completely in control. His mind was cloudy, and he couldn’t manage to follow a single thought through. He glanced at his watch again. They’d been gone for twenty minutes. They were bound to get there any moment. Jacob would call him as soon as it was all over, he was sure. He just hoped Jacob would have some good news.
“I don’t like this,” Zoe suddenly said. She sat by her desk, staring at the wall, a frown on her face. Her eyes were red and swollen. Mitchell assumed he looked even worse.
“Me neither,” Mitchell said, pacing again. “I guess we’ll get a phone call soon enough.”
“No,” Zoe said, shaking her head. “I mean… I don’t think that Jovan plans on killing Tanessa at one o’clock.”
“You think he already did it?” Mitchell looked at her.
“I don’t know. That whole meat grinder thing? It doesn’t feel right. It feels like he’s pandering.”
“Pandering?”
“Yeah. It’s like something out of a horror movie. Why would he do that?”
“Why would he do anything?” Mitchell asked angrily. “He’s a sick asshole! I mean… Why drown a girl? Why run over one? Why attack one with a sword? He’s nuts, Zoe. Making sense of his actions is useless.”
“I don’t think you’re right,” she said. “All of his killings were more or less clean—”
“Tell that to Tamay.”
“He was inside the car when he hit her. Gore isn’t his thing. He just wants us to get worked up.”
“He doesn’t even know we have the photo,” Mitchell said, leaning against the wall.
“He’s not stupid, Mitchell. He knows that we have the photo.”
“Whatever. He might just want to go out with a bang.”
“It doesn’t fit,” Zoe said, thumping her table forcefully. “Jovan is obsessive. He never deviates from his plans. He sends a victim the image of the murder weapon, and then he kills her with the same weapon.”
“What are you saying? That he sent something to Tanessa’s phone? We have her phone, and she didn’t get any new message from him.”
“No, that would be stupid. He knows we have her phone.”
“If you’re right, he has Tanessa,” Mitchell said. “He can just show her the murder weapon, and then kill her a few minutes later with it.”
Zoe stared at the floor.
“Do you think that’s what he’ll do?” Mitchell asked.
“Maybe. I don’t know.”
Mitchell resumed pacing the room. Why wasn’t Jacob calling?
“Even that’s a deviation,” he said after a while. “I mean… He already sent her the message with the sword. If he’s that obsessive, he has to kill her with the sword.”
“Yeah, but we have the sword in the evidence room,” Zoe said. “I don’t think he’s obsessive to the point of utter stupidity. He won’t storm the evidence room.”
“Maybe he sent the meat grinder image to get all the cops to drive to that warehouse,” Mitchell said, “and leave the evidence room unguarded.”
“That sounds like a plot from Die Hard,” Zoe said. “And it didn’t work, right? Only the detectives left the station. No, I don’t think he’ll go for the sword. He’ll probably show her a new image. Deviate just a bit from his original plan. It’ll upset him, but—”
“He doesn’t have to,” Mitchell suddenly said. He rushed to his desk and started scrolling through his files on the computer.
“He doesn’t have to… what?” Zoe asked.
“He doesn’t have to deviate. He doesn’t have to use the sword.” Mitchell double-clicked an image and it opened on screen. It was the image Jovan had sent Tanessa. The sword, leaning against the wall in the room of his old apartment, under a window. Through the window, they could see Peterson’s Mojo.
“There are two more murder weapons here,” Mitchell said. “The window, and the building.”
“You think he’s going to throw her off a building?” Zoe asked.
“Does it fit?” Mitchell asked.
She hesitated a moment. “It fits,” she finally said. “I think it does.”
“We have to go,” Mitchell said.
“Go where?” Zoe asked. “To Jovan’s apartment or that tall building?”
“Peterson’s Mojo is closer,” Mitchell said. “But we’ll alert dispatch. Get them to send patrol cars to both locations.”
He grabbed his keys and gun, and bolted toward the door. Zoe looked at the image on the screen one more time, and then dashed after him.
Chapter Thirty-Three
Tanessa’s head spun as Jovan pulled her out of the car. Her stomach was queasy. He’d injected her with something earlier. It hadn’t knocked her out, but it made her weak and dizzy, and it was hard to concentrate. Where were they? It looked like a back alley somewhere, but she had no idea where, and her vision was a bit blurry.
He held her by the nape of her neck, his fingers gripping hard enough to hurt. She tried to struggle, but it was a pathetic attempt, and he simply squeezed harder, making her whimper with pain into the rag stuffed in her mouth. He pushed her forward toward a heavy white door, and she stumbled, nearly falling to her knees. He’d untied her feet, but her hands were still bound tightly behind her back. He pulled the door open and shoved her in, never letting go. His other hand held a gun.
There was a staircase, and for a moment she thought he was about to force her up the stairs, though she doubted she could climb even three or four of them without collapsing. Instead, he pulled her aside and she saw another large metal door. An elevator. He pressed the elevator’s button. Tanessa tried to scream through the gag, but her scream was muffled, weak. Again, his fingers tightened, and he pressed the gun to her stomach.
“Don’t make me shoot you,” he said. His tone wasn’t angry. If anything, it was ecstatic, energetic.
The elevator door opened. There was a man there. For a moment none of them moved. The man stared at them, wide-eyed. Jovan lifted the gun, and she heard two loud explosions that left a high-pitched whine in her ears. The man jolted backward, smashing against the bac
k wall of the elevator, then slid down to the floor. Jovan pushed her inside, and pressed the button for the top floor.
She was nauseous from the drug he had injected her with, and when he’d shoved the gun barrel against her stomach, it had gotten worse. Now, as she stood above the man, a pool of blood spreading at her feet, she felt the bile rising. She choked as vomit clogged her throat and nose, her mouth blocked, unable to spit. Jovan cursed as he realized what was happening. He pulled off the masking tape that held the rag in her mouth and she coughed and spat on the floor, finally able to breathe again. She was bent toward the floor, the man Jovan had shot only inches away. He wasn’t dead, a remote part of her brain realized, but he soon would be. He was losing blood very fast.
The elevator stopped and Jovan pulled her out. She noticed that they were both leaving smudged red footsteps behind them as they approached another door. Jovan pulled a key out of his pocket and stuck it in the lock. She wondered where he’d gotten the key from. He turned the key and opened the door.
A blast of chilly wind hit Tanessa in her face. As Jovan grabbed her by her arm and pulled her out, she saw the sky above them, the ledge not far away. They were on a roof.
Jovan locked the door behind them, and smiled. He still held her tightly; she could feel his fingers burrowing into her arm. To her surprise, he didn’t move; he simply stood there for a while, doing nothing.
The chilly wind, and the fact that she could finally breathe regularly through her mouth, helped her to focus. What were they doing up here? Why didn’t he just kill her and get it over with?
“Can you feel it?” he asked her. She stared at him, confused, saying nothing. She wasn’t sure she could speak.
“I could drag this moment forever,” he said. “It’s even better than Gwen. It’s… perfect.”
They stood there for a few seconds, with Tanessa hoping he would give her just a bit more. Her strength was returning. She no longer felt the weakness in her arms or feet. She was still a bit dizzy. Just a few deep breaths more, and she’d have a chance at fighting him…