The Playing Card Killer

by Russell James

  Weissbard picked up his phone and started to dial. He needed a warrant.

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Brian’s stomach felt like he’d dropped a pound of lead into it.

  He’d skipped breakfast and opted for a mega coffee from a convenience store instead. Now all that liquid bathed his stomach in an acidic bath of caffeine and sugar. He reclined the driver’s seat of his car and tried to give his stomach a little room to digest.

  The over-the-counter sleeping pills hadn’t been worth a damn. Since he’d called in to work yesterday to talk to the cops, he’d taken a double dose last night and hoped for eight hours of blacked-out sleep. Instead, he tossed and turned all night and got zero. Drugs had held his hyperactivity at bay for years. Maybe dropping them now released all of that pent-up energy.

  He knew that wasn’t true. A mix of adrenaline and frustration had kept him wired and ready all night. He bounced between books and television and surfing the net and none of it made him any more tired. From the moment he left the police station, his anxiety had hit a new high, and for him that was saying something. He’d put everything out there for Detective Weissbard, and been rewarded with a visit from a criminal shrink. His quick escort out of the building afterwards told him everything he needed to know. Weissbard had handed him his card and said to keep him updated. But Brian knew they’d pigeonholed him into the harmless-whack-job box.

  He’d kept one thing to himself, his visions of Keisha, the little girl strangled and left in the decaying building. The police hadn’t found her yet. If he’d brought that up, it might have sounded weird, or worse, incriminating, giving Weissbard something that sounded more like a prediction than a confirmation. Weissbard seemed to believe him for a while near the interview’s end, and Brian had considered telling him about Keisha. But then the shrink arrived, and Brian knew exactly where he stood.

  There was the possibility Keisha had been found and hadn’t made the news cycle’s cut. That would lift a weight off his shoulders. Brian accessed the Tampa Police Missing Persons website from his phone. Keisha was still listed.

  No matter how they treated him, that didn’t mean the police shouldn’t know where that poor girl was, didn’t mean her family shouldn’t get some closure. The Playing Card Killer seemed meticulous, but he still might have left a clue at that crime scene. Everyone makes mistakes.

  Brian needed to relay more concrete information the next time he talked to the police, more than an embarrassingly vague vision like ‘the trunk of the car was silver’. He knew that little clue was useless the minute he shared it.

  He pulled the old Florida map out of his glove compartment. He preferred the way he could look at a bigger picture than his cell phone could give him. He needed to see if this murderer left a pattern, one he could hand to the police. On his phone, he called up the article he’d read earlier on the murders. He found the locations where Meredith Viejo and her Volvo were last seen, and where Karen Strong lived in Brewster, east of the city. He circled both. Karen’s body was found in her home, but Meredith’s was left in the Croom Wildlife Management Area. He found the park and circled that. It wasn’t far from where she’d gone missing. That made sense. The killer would have had to walk back to his own car after leaving her car and body in the woods. Perhaps he’d gained some confidence after killing Karen.

  Then Brian found Keisha’s home address. According to her parents, the girl couldn’t have been far from there when she disappeared. Brian had driven through that neighborhood off Hillsborough Drive a few times. It matched the feel of the houses he’d seen in the vision. He circled her house.

  The killer had murdered Keisha, and then taken her to the abandoned business, probably in his own car. He could have taken her anywhere. But on the other hand, how comfortable would he have been crisscrossing Tampa with a cooling corpse in his trunk? Brian guessed the killer would have stopped at the first place he saw that would meet his deranged standards. Or, if the man was a master planner, he’d found the place to dump the body first, then hunted a convenient, close target of opportunity. Either way, Brian’s guess was that the two locations would be near each other.

  He moved his seat back upright and burped something with an unappetizing flavor. He shuddered, started the car, and set out for north Tampa.

  * * *

  Hillsborough Avenue cut across north Tampa like a six-lane C-section scar, and like the blemishes from each stitch, small, borderline businesses populated the edges. Aging, lower middle-class ranch homes on unkempt sandy lots filled the uninspired street grid along both sides. If there was an antithesis of the Florida lifestyle sold on late-night TV commercials, north Tampa was it.

  The late-morning traffic was light enough that Brian could take his time cruising the right lane without starting a road-rage incident. He tried to recall the background of his vision, not an easy task when the terror in the foreground was so all-consuming. He could remember the floor, dirty, gray industrial-style tile. White specks from decaying or broken drop ceiling tiles were everywhere, like a snow flurry on frozen blacktop. The rest of the room that he could see was empty, the walls bare, one of them covered in plywood.

  That was no help. The building could have been anywhere.

  Well, not anywhere. It was definitely unoccupied, and the poor condition of the room made it unlikely that it was one abandoned unit in the middle of a bunch of occupied ones. The room was in a vacant building. And one that wouldn’t attract attention, because the poor girl’s body hadn’t been found yet.

  Brian made it all the way to I-75. He hung a U-turn and headed back west. The oppressive midday sun kept the sidewalks deserted. Fear that some of his assumptions were incorrect began to creep in. He strummed his fingers against the steering wheel. He couldn’t spend all day driving around here. He had to go to work today. He couldn’t miss two days in a row and expect to stay employed.

  The light ahead turned red. Brian slowed the car to a stop. A motorcycle rumbled up beside him. Unmuffled exhaust cracked and sputtered outside his door. Even with his window rolled up, the jagged noise set his teeth on edge. He stuck one finger against his left ear and looked away, wincing.

  Just a half-block down the cross street stood a closed convenience store. The corporate logos had been long ago stripped away, only the frame of the upright sign by the curb remained. The roof over the ravaged refuel island sagged as if exhausted. A chain-link fence circled the property.

  That place might fit the bill. Brian turned right on the red light and stopped across from the store.

  Plywood covered the windows from the inside. Perhaps that’s what Brian had seen in his vision, not a plywood wall, but plywood over the windows. Yellow warning signs hung on the fence, declaring that trespassing was forbidden due to toxic chemicals.

  Brian remembered a lot of stories in the news about old underground gas tanks that had leaked and contaminated the soil around them, and even poisoned the ground water in some soggier places of the state. Even crackheads might have enough functioning brain cells left to steer clear of this place, and leave the killer a little more time for any clues to degrade before someone found his victim.

  Brian pulled down a side street and up along the rear of the security fence. Near the far end, a few twisted metal ties held the chain link in place against a stainless-steel pole. The ties were much flimsier than those in the rest of the fencing. Someone had gone to the effort to remove the stronger ties, break in, and make it pretty easy for someone else to break in afterwards.

  Brian’s phone buzzed and startled him out of his concentration. The thought of it being another Totally You Institute message irked him. He picked his phone up from the car’s console. The incoming number was from Orange Star Trucking. He answered.

  “Hello?”

  “Hey, it’s Terry.” The day-shift security guard sounded worried. “Are you coming in today?”

  “Yeah, of course.
Why?”

  “Dude, you missed yesterday and I had to stay over at the last minute to cover you. I don’t need the OT, and I’ve got my son tonight. I need to know way earlier if you’re going to screw me over again.”

  “No, I’ll be there. I’m feeling much better than yesterday.”

  “Okay. Don’t go getting no ‘relapse’ between now and then.”

  Terry hung up. Brian shoved his phone in his pocket and shifted his concentration back to the fence. He could just call in a tip to the cops and have them check the place out. But what if this wasn’t the spot and he stopped looking? Keisha might not be found for who knows how long. He considered coming back when it was dark, then guessed this neighborhood at night wasn’t anywhere he wanted to be. He had no choice but to check it out now. Just a quick look around, and then he’d be back in his car.

  His left leg began the anxiety bounce. His heart fluttered. The dread of an impending anxiety attack bubbled up inside him like poisoned water.

  From the back seat came a rhythmic thud in sync with his bouncing leg. Then his seat rocked in the same cadence. Brian panicked that he was not alone.

  “Well, dig this groovy locale!” Mr. Jitters screamed into Brian’s ear.

  Brian jolted forward and slammed his chest against the steering wheel. The horn blared, startled him again, and he slammed back into the headrest.

  Mr. Jitter’s long, spindly arms shot forward over Brian’s shoulders. Bony hands clamped against his chest. They compressed Brian into the seat so hard he could barely breathe.

  Mr. Jitters screeched out a laugh and stuck his head across into the front seat. His top hat touched the glass. His painted face stopped almost cheek to cheek with Brian. A stink like rotting roadkill rolled off Mr. Jitters in waves.

  Brian flinched away. Mr. Jitters yanked him back.

  “You know what’s in that sweet little building?” Mr. Jitters said. “Rats. Mold. Broken toilets filled with meth addict shit. Rotted floors ready to collapse. All waiting on you.”

  Mr. Jitters’ nails jabbed into Brian’s chest and sent ten pricks of fire radiating across his skin.

  “Best thing though? That girl. She’s going to be there. Staring right at you with the same eyes you saw when she died. But buddy, the rats will have had a feast. Climbing all over her, climbing inside her. Hope you liked your last meal, because this place is going to bring it back up for a second taste.”

  Brian closed his eyes. The images Mr. Jitters described filled his imagination and he was certain every one awaited him.

  “You aren’t real,” Brian whispered in desperation. “You aren’t real.”

  The fingernails dug deeper into Brian’s chest. Hot blood oozed from the wounds.

  “Does that feel real, man? Does your pounding heart, ready to burst, feel real?”

  Brian reached for the door handle. Mr. Jitters slapped back his hand.

  Brian’s blood pressure spiked and his head felt ready to explode. Sweat seeped from every pore but his skin felt wildfire hot.

  “Better yet,” Jitters said into Brian’s ear. Even his breath felt oily, malevolent. “The killer might still be there. Knowing you’ll come. Waiting to make you the next corpse holding a playing card in your stiff, cold hands.”

  In panic, Brian lunged for the door. He threw it open and tumbled out into the weedy parking lot. He landed on all fours. His head swam.

  He turned and looked back into the car.

  Empty. No terrorizing back seat passenger.

  A pat of his chest revealed no blood where he’d felt Mr. Jitters’ nails pierce him. He focused on his breathing, on calming his racing heart.

  Everything Mr. Jitters said could be true. All his nightmares could soon play out in that closed convenience store.

  He rose to his knees.

  But he couldn’t let fear stop him. No matter what was in there, he had to look. Someone had to find little Keisha Valentiner. He staggered over to the fence. The area was deserted. He untwisted the top and middle ties. With one shove the fence peeled back enough to let him in. He stepped over the bottom tie and into the convenience store lot.

  Two restroom doors interrupted the flat, concrete-block surface of the store’s windowless back wall. Large, rusting padlocks secured both of them. Brian approached the store with a short sprint, and then worked his way around to the side. He tried to move in something less than an attention-grabbing dash, and not so close to the wall that he looked sneaky. He guessed he failed at both.

  He approached the corner. Two voices came from the front of the building. He backed up against the wall and froze. He realized that while everyone did that in the movies, it didn’t make him any less observable in the real world. He felt like an idiot.

  The voices came from two boys. Between the street slang and the Haitian accents, he couldn’t make out the words. But the tone was conversational, joking. Brian peered around the corner. The two boys appeared on the sidewalk, one in basketball shorts, the other in sagging jeans that exposed bright boxers. Neither wore a shirt to cover their bony torsos. They walked away from him, down the street, with light, bouncing steps.

  He sighed in relief. The boys moved out of sight, and Brian turned the corner. The street was empty. He headed for the front of the store.

  Weeds sprouted through cracks in the sidewalk along the building’s edge. Black mold stained the formerly white walls. In the parking spot in front of the door, just the faintest outline of a blue handicapped symbol remained. Brian stepped to the twin entrance doors. Two keyed deadbolts secured them, but jagged silver scratches gouged the surfaces of both faces. Faded decals on the glass offered the advice to push or pull, and another set displayed a half-dozen credit cards the store used to take. Like the big windows further down, plywood covered the doors from behind.

  But the plywood stopped just short of the door’s bottom. Brian knelt and peered through the two-inch gap. He couldn’t see into the store in the darkness, but he could see the floor near the doorway. That was enough to get his heart pumping harder.

  The tiles matched the ones in his vision.

  A sound caught his attention. Low, muted, droning. He placed one ear against the slit between the two doors. Buzzing. Lots of buzzing.

  He shuddered and pulled away. His mind filled in the picture. Flies. Hundreds of them. They wouldn’t be there without a food source, and nothing fresh had been in this place in years. Except the corpse left inside by the Playing Card Killer. He conjured an image of Keisha’s decomposing body, then quickly wiped it away.

  Anxiety spiked to new heights. His skin crawled at the thought of being so close to a dead body. His breathing accelerated. He didn’t want Mr. Jitters adding his play-by-play to this scene. He scrambled away from the door, and went straight back to the gap in the fence. He snagged a shoelace on the open fencing and nearly landed on his face. He finally made it to his car and locked himself inside.

  He didn’t need to see the corpse. Circumstantial evidence would be plenty good enough for him here. He started his car, and went straight for Hillsborough Avenue, ready for some distance between him and the dead little girl. He stopped at the red light, barely cleared himself for the turn, and headed east.

  He reached for his phone to call Detective Weissbard, then realized how stupid that would be. He didn’t need to be in this serial killer mess any deeper than he already was. He could instead call the anonymous tip line the news report mentioned, but he didn’t trust it. It would have to have caller ID. He could do it online from his phone. He wasn’t sure, but he doubted that was any more anonymous than a phone call.

  Two blocks down, an internet café operated in a shopworn strip mall. Around here, the cafés had replaced the banks of pay phones immigrants used to use to keep in touch with family back home. That place seemed like a safe option. Even if someone traced the internet connection back to one of those co
mputers, the trail would end there, not with him.

  Brian pulled into the parking lot. A quick search didn’t uncover any security cameras. A good sign. He got out of his car.

  Inside the café, rows of low-end laptops sat on folding tables. Wires and cables snaked away to power strips and wall sockets. An unwholesome collection of men occupied some of the cheap, white plastic seats in front of the computers. This was the other end of the spectrum from hipsters hanging out online in an upscale coffee shop. But there weren’t any security cameras here either. Apparently, users wanted their privacy, though he was certain for far darker reasons than his own.

  This place would do just fine. He started to compose the message in his head, the details, the location, and a specific mention that it was for Detective Weissbard.

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  The day-shift guard, Terry, sighed with relief when Brian arrived at Orange Star Trucking, apparently still wary that another afternoon of forced overtime might be in his future, no matter what Brian had promised. Twenty minutes after they changed shifts, a whistle screamed to announce a train’s arrival at the yard. Brian checked the manifests. Two were due tonight, and a bunch of trucks. That was good. A busy night would keep his mind off all the events he’d set in motion in north Tampa. His online tip was too specific for anyone to get it wrong.

  Sidney burst into the guard shack.

  “Shouldn’t you be unloading that train?” Brian said.

  “Screw that shit! I need to know what the hell you done. Why you have the cops calling at my apartment?”

  Brian’s stomach dropped. “What cops?”

  “Some fat detective. Asked me about you, about working with you. Man, you doing some illegal shit? Stealing stuff from the combis? Shipping out drugs? I don’t need none of that. I been off parole five years, don’t need no police shit going on.”