The Playing Card Killer

by Russell James

  “Baby,” he said, “the pills are not an answer. They’re part of the problem.”

  “You can’t get right with that attitude. If you can’t see how much better you were with the meds, you’re just in denial. And I can’t help someone in that level of denial. Meet me half way, I’ll meet you half way. I have to go to work. Think about what I said. I’ll help you. I won’t enable you.”

  She hung up.

  He was officially and completely on his own.

  Chapter Sixteen

  Detective Eric Weissbard hated the First Amendment.

  Not the whole thing. Just the phrase ‘freedom of the press’. If he had a time machine, he’d go back to 1787, and hold Congress at gunpoint until they deleted it. That would probably make the Founding Fathers rethink the Second Amendment, but he’d take the good with the bad.

  Nothing screwed up police operations like the local press, especially television. Every reporter saw the Tampa market as their launching pad to someplace bigger, and everyone wanted a scoop to use as the rocket.

  You give them information off the record. You beg them to hold back some details. You explain how delicate some investigations are. You go out of your way to be polite, to use all that empathy everyone was always pushing down police officers’ throats. You do all that, and what do you get? Some idiot coins the term Playing Card Killer and you end up center ring in a goddamn circus.

  But Francisco had made sure that this circus opened. Hell, he raised the tent as soon as he leaked the playing card connections, something that would have made much more sense to keep quiet. But he couldn’t ride a wave of publicity if he didn’t create the swell. The backlash from Polk County around the scab of their ‘closed’ Karen Strong case being ripped off whipped through at the highest levels yesterday. Francisco had been kind enough to redirect the fury to Weissbard, the detective who had visited Wrassie without authorization.

  And this morning, the Viejo murder was on every station. The nationals hadn’t picked it up yet, thank Jesus, but that was just a matter of time. Weissbard sat on the armrest of the sofa in his living room and watched the ultra-bright HD TV in the otherwise dark space. The station already had a special banner for the killer, complete with a little suicide king playing card icon. Corrine Donovan stood in front of the police station, face framed by her preternaturally-glistening dark hair and plastered with a layer of makeup excessive for this early in the morning. Her breathless delivery sang with all the hot-button words like ‘terror’ and ‘lurking’ and a dozen more designed to make the public feel unsafe. Weissbard wanted to make her feel unsafe.

  “Why are you sitting in the dark?” Maryanne asked from the doorway.

  “Honing my night vision.”

  She flicked on the light. “Knock it off, Batman. How did all that detail get to the press?”

  “Detective Sergeant Ramon Francisco, Tampa PD. Rectum Extraordinaire.”

  “That’s good. You needed another reason to hate the guy. Looks like he was put in charge.”

  “Looks like it.”

  “It’s going to piss him off when you solve the case out from under him, isn’t it?”

  “It most certainly will.”

  * * *

  Weissbard was only at work twenty minutes when Francisco rushed into the squad room. “New body, washed up on the bay near St. Pete. Female and it looks like she’s got a card.” Weissbard rose and rolled open his desk drawer for his service weapon.

  Francisco ticked off the names of the two most junior detectives. “You two are with me on this. The rest of you keep following your leads. Swissbard, you stay put here to follow up on anything hot off the tip line.”

  Weissbard slammed his desk drawer closed. It hit so loudly nearly all eyes in the room turned to him. Francisco smiled and the two ‘lucky’ newbies raced out after him. Weissbard settled back down in his chair. Another round just went to Francisco.

  Chapter Seventeen

  Around 9:00 a.m., the television droned on as background noise while Brian lay on the couch and tried to escape from himself in a paperback sci-fi novel. It had been lying around unread for who knows how long. His other option was a horror novel about a couple moving into a haunted house in Tennessee, but he figured his imagination didn’t need any paranormal boost.

  He was on page fifty-five, with an alien race about to rain hellfire down on planet Earth, when a sentence from the morning newscast caught his ear.

  “Police today pulled the body of a woman from Tampa Bay, the latest work of an apparent serial killer.”

  Brian’s breath caught in his throat. He dropped his book, sat up and glued his eyes to the television screen. A police boat sat at dock. Near it, a paramedic rolled a gurney bearing a covered corpse to a waiting ambulance.

  “A fisherman noticed the body as he headed out to his traps this morning and alerted the police. Authorities identified the victim as Carmen Alessandro.”

  The screen cut to what was clearly a mug shot of a young girl, the kind who life had turned adult too quickly. Brian mentally superimposed the duct-tape gag, and caught his breath. She was the woman in the trunk.

  “Police confirmed a part of the story broken by our own Corrine Donovan, that the victim was found with a playing card on her person, and that this wasn’t the first local murder victim associated with the person now dubbed the Playing Card Killer.”

  The scene shifted to a harried-looking female police officer behind a microphone. “The last thing we need is to sensationalize this perpetrator, to feed a media frenzy by giving this twisted psycho some hyped-up nickname.”

  “Earlier victims include Ms. Meredith Viejo,” the TV anchor said, “whose body was found days ago in her car outside Brooksville, and Mrs. Karen Strong, an elderly widow found dead in her trailer home in Brewster last week.”

  “Holy crap,” Brian exhaled. The woman in the Volvo, with the yellow feather. And he’d had another dream before that. It wasn’t as sharp, but an older woman was strangled in it as well. It was probably that woman in Brewster. He’d seen every one of these crimes in his dreams.

  “Ms. Alessandro had a history of minor drug and prostitution offenses,” the reporter continued, “and was currently on parole. Police are asking anyone with any information about her whereabouts last night, or any information about the other victims of the Playing Card Killer, to call or text them through Tampa Bay Crimestoppers.”

  He cursed himself and wondered what the hell he had been thinking when he rationalized the yellow feather ‘coincidence’. It wasn’t a coincidence. It couldn’t be. A smack in the head with a baseball bat would have been less obvious.

  Then a worse thought occurred. The little girl from his other nightmare. She wasn’t on the victims list. But he’d seen her murder as clearly as two of the others. Who was she? Where was she?

  He pulled out his phone and started a search. He found a database for missing children and pared the results down to the Tampa area in the past two weeks.

  A list popped up. His heart sank. Five kids. Five kids missing in fourteen days? There were over four million people in the Tampa area. Out of that, maybe five wasn’t many, but that math didn’t make the number seem any less enormous.

  He scrolled through the list. A teen girl, a teen boy, two children presumed abducted by an estranged spouse. The last one was a little girl. Her school picture was next to her name, a lovely little girl in cornrows with one front tooth growing in to fill her big smile. Keisha Valentiner. Age six. Last seen over a week ago in north Tampa. The girl from his nightmare.

  Brian knew what happened to her. But the police didn’t. They hadn’t found her in that abandoned building with the filthy floors, lying with the three of diamonds tucked between her thumbs.

  He couldn’t rationalize this anymore, couldn’t escape the responsibility that lay on his shoulders. He had to tell the police. He knew what th
e killer looked like. Sort of. He knew he drove a silver car with a pretty big trunk. Whatever little he knew, it was more than the police had in their files.

  First, they’d guess he was crazy, then be completely convinced of it if they found out about his past. He looked down at the scars on his wrists, those reminders of his weakest moment. If he was going in to talk to the cops, it was going to be a long-sleeved-shirt day. He wouldn’t talk about himself at all. He’d just tell them what he knew.

  But he’d have to tell them how he knew. Well, he’d just explain very rationally that he’d seen it in a dream. Hell, that alone would make them think he was crazy.

  He’d have to somehow convince them he wasn’t. Make them listen. Before the Playing Card Killer struck again.

  Chapter Eighteen

  Weissbard bent over his desk and ran his fingers across the stubble on his scalp. Even without the glare of media attention, homicides were tough to solve. Most of the victims were poor. Most of those victims had records. Hardly anyone ever admitted to seeing anything. The ones who did often lied about everything. Every clue, every piece of evidence had to be constantly rearranged and reevaluated. Add in how quickly a promising lead’s trail could go cold, and every case was a race against the clock.

  And Weissbard sat manning a desk in the precinct, as far from any real police work as possible.

  Sergeant Bertram walked up to the detective’s desk. A shit-eating grin nearly split his face in two. Another born-and-raised Floridian, tight with Francisco and the Tampa Bay Boys Club. “Got a hot tip coming in, Detective.”

  Weissbard looked up at him in dejection. “Aren’t they all? Every lunatic for three counties has the hottest lead, the keenest insight, the final piece to the puzzle. What’s this one got?”

  “He’s solved all three murders for you. Seen the killer himself.”

  “C’mon, Bert. It’s already been a long day.”

  “Francisco says follow every lead,” Bertram said.

  That explained it all. That jackoff Francisco had made sure Bertram steered a few crazies his way, and good-ol’-boy Bertram was happy to oblige.

  Bertram turned and motioned someone to come forward. A slight twenty-something in faded jeans and shaggy hair under an Orange Star Trucking baseball hat stepped up beside him. Bertram shuffled back. “This is Brian Sheridan, your new lead.”

  The kid looked nervous. He kept tugging at the sleeves of his shirt. Who wears a long-sleeved T-shirt in Florida in the summer? Well, hell, he saw guys this age wearing ski caps, so who can figure out what people wear. Across the office, someone dropped a box with a bang. The kid flinched like it was a gunshot. Bertram stifled a laugh, winked, and walked away.

  Weissbard knew he was going to have to go through the motions here. He’d take some notes, then send the loon on his way. He just didn’t want to do it with an audience. He grabbed a pad of paper from his drawer and a pen. He rolled back from his desk and levered himself out of his chair. He winced at the weight he’d gained since he left the NYPD. He gave the kid a weary wave forward. “Follow me.”

  He led Brian into an interrogation room and closed the door. Brian took a seat at the table in the middle of the room. Weissbard dropped the tablet on the table and it hit with a slap. Brian shuddered. Weissbard collapsed into the other chair.

  “So, Brian. Tell what you can about these series of murders.”

  “This is going to be hard to believe.…”

  Weissbard tried not to roll his eyes. If he had a dollar for every nut job who started his statement with that phrase.…

  “But I’ve seen them happen,” Brian continued. “All three murders. At least I think it was three, but definitely two.”

  “So you’re some kind of psychic?”

  “No, nothing like that. I’ve never had visions like this before, not while I was on my medications.”

  This time Weissbard did roll his eyes.

  “I can tell what you’re thinking,” Brian said. “Crazy guy off his crazy meds.”

  “No, I wasn’t thinking that at all. Just tell me what you saw.”

  Brian started to tell him about the Viejo murder, reciting details already covered by every news outlet. Weissbard jotted down a few notes, mostly about errands to run on the way home.

  “And where did the killer leave the playing card?” Weissbard asked.

  “I don’t know. I woke up before I saw that part.”

  Weissbard nodded. A convenient excuse. That detail from the investigation hadn’t leaked out yet. “And you had this dream when?”

  “About six days ago.”

  “Why didn’t you come forward with this information then?”

  “I thought it was just a nightmare, until I saw it in the news. I still waited, though. I figured you’d think I was crazy.”

  Not like I do now, Weissbard thought.

  “But then I saw the other death, and I had to take the chance. I saw the killer murder a woman in the trunk of a car by the water.”

  “What kind of a car was it?”

  “I don’t know. It was dark. Wait, it seemed to be silver. Pretty big. Oh, a Toyota something.”

  “Didn’t happen to catch the plate?”

  “No, but it was from Florida.”

  That narrowed it down to several million Florida Toyotas. Weissbard’s stomach growled that lunch was overdue.

  “I saw the card on that woman. Tucked into her top before he put her in the water. A red card.”

  Fifty-fifty odds. Lucky guess. “And where was that?”

  “On the south side of the bay. It looked like a boat ramp that hadn’t been used in a long time.”

  That piqued his interest a bit. Given the currents, they suspected the body had floated up from the south.

  “You saw all this, but you didn’t see the killer? Is he wearing a mask?”

  “No.” Brian paused. “I see these things through his eyes, his point of view. I can see his hands. That’s how I know he’s white. And I saw a fuzzy reflection in the car window this last time.”

  “What did you see?”

  “Seemed a little taller than me, blond hair, short, spiky. Dark eyes.”

  Weissbard took a few notes, then cursed himself for letting this guy send him on a goose chase. He was a patient off his meds, after all. He clicked his ballpoint pen and retracted the point. He rose from his chair.

  Panic spread across Brian’s face. “Look, it’s wild, but you’ve got to believe me. You’ve got to help me. He’s going to kill someone else! I don’t want to see it. I don’t want to feel that velvet rope again.”

  Weissbard froze in place. “What rope?”

  “The braided rope he uses to strangle them. I can feel it in his hands as he tightens it around their necks. I don’t want anyone else to die, but I really don’t want to feel anyone else die ever again.”

  The cause of death for any of the women hadn’t been released, and Weissbard hadn’t seen it leaked on the news. But absolutely no one knew about the velvet rope. He’d only found out about an hour ago when the ME, Chamberlain, briefed the morning meeting and said they’d pulled red fibers from the necks of both victims.

  “What color is the rope?” Weissbard asked.

  “Red, I think. It’s hard to tell.”

  Weissbard lowered himself back into the chair. He clicked the ballpoint pen back into action. “Okay, let’s start from the beginning.”

  Chapter Nineteen

  Detective Weissbard had left Brian alone in the interrogation room for almost forty-five minutes. It seemed a lot longer to Brian. If someone wasn’t crazy, the Tampa police’s interrogation room could drive them to it. Silent. Empty. Gray. The place was little different from the holding cells down the hall.

  His image in the one-way glass along the wall looked like hell. His appearance hadn’t helped him sell his
story, a story he barely believed himself. But by the end, he was sure the detective believed him.

  A tall man in a charcoal suit entered the room. He wasn’t the detective Brian had spoken with earlier. He carried a file folder and an aura of authority. He was mid-fifties with one of those trim haircuts straight out of a TV commercial. He delivered an artificial smile Brian knew all too well.

  “I’m Kent Williams,” he said, without offering his hand. “Detective Weissbard asked me to speak with you.”

  “You’re a shrink,” Brian said with a sigh and put his head in his hands.

  “I am a psychologist,” Williams said.

  “There isn’t time for this,” Brian said. He looked up into Williams’ eyes. “The Playing Card Killer is going to murder again. We need to stop him.”

  “And you can help us?” Williams said.

  “That’s why I’m here.”

  “You’ve lived here all your life,” Williams said. He flipped open the file. “You’ve never had any contact with the police. You called off work to be here. Your information must be important.”

  Weissbard must have spent the time out of the room doing a little Brian Sheridan research while someone rustled up this shrink. Brian hoped that his medical records weren’t part of the package.

  “I can give the police details about the killer,” Brian said. Williams looked at him with feigned interest. “The news said that they didn’t have a description, but I do. He’s a white male, young, a little taller than me, with blond hair.”

  “And you saw the killer…?”

  Brian really didn’t want to do this part of the conversation again.

  “In my dreams,” Brian said.

  “He came to you in a dream.”

  “No!” Brian yelled. “I already explained this to the detective.”

  He got hold of himself so his frustration would not come across as lunacy. “Days ago, I started having these dreams.”

  “You dreamed you kill people?”