Panic began to build in Brian. What was Weissbard doing looking into him? Brian thought the cop had dismissed him as a screwball. What had elevated him to the status of suspect? And what stupid answers had Sidney given that probably drove the cop’s suspicions even higher?
Brian hadn’t known before this that Sidney had been on parole. He thought fast.
“What did I do?” Brian said. “I should ask you the same question. That same cop was at my place, asking about you.”
Sidney’s expression shifted from confrontational to paranoid. “What the hell? I ain’t done nothing!”
“The cop didn’t seem so sure. What did he ask you about?”
“Work schedules, whether you’re a freak, that kind of shit.”
That wasn’t good news. “Same thing he asked me about you. I bet something’s going on here, like you said. And the first guy they look at is the guy with the record.”
“Don’t you know it!” Sidney said. “Been that way ever since, and my stuff was misdemeanor shit. Bet it’s one of those night-shift guys. Don’t trust any of those vampire types far as I can throw ’em.”
“Yeah, we need to watch our backs,” Brian said. “That cop comes back with more questions, I’m not saying a word, and I’ll tell you about it right away.”
“Yeah, same here.”
The train whistle blew again, this time with more insistence.
Sidney kicked open the door. “Yeah. Keep your shit together. I’m coming.” He stomped off in the crane’s direction.
“Damn it,” Brian whispered to himself. His whole body burned with an anxiety rush. How could Weissbard think he was a killer? He started his breathing exercises and tried like hell to calm down.
* * *
About 9:30, Brian did his end-of-shift yard check, and he needed the release. Sitting in the guard shack, worrying about Weissbard cooking up some whacked theory of Brian’s guilt, was eating him alive.
High overhead lights underlit the yard. It always reminded Brian of London in Jack the Ripper movies, just enough light to get by, just enough shadow to put him on edge. He walked the lot between rows of containers, shining his flashlight on the metal strip door seals then down underneath each mounted container to look for leaks or flat tires. Sidney had been busy and the lot was full. He couldn’t hear the crane now, so the rail cars must have finally sat empty.
Near the end of the row, a metallic clank sounded from the edge of the yard. Brian’s senses went on alert. A few months ago, some teens had snuck in while the back gate was open for the rail cars’ delivery. They had bags of spray paint and Brian had cut short their planned tagging festival on the combis. Something like that was the last thing he needed tonight.
He played his flashlight beam far down to the end of the row and saw nothing. He quickened his pace. Metal on metal clanked again somewhere up ahead and off to the right. He jogged to the end of the row and stopped.
He played the light to the right and lit up a collection of inverted, empty steel drums and the big blue dumpster beyond them. Nothing moved.
“This is the yard security,” he yelled. His voice had a little too much nervous squeak to be as commanding as he hoped. “The police are dispatched and on their way. Come out before they get here and things get hairy.”
No response.
Brian moved in closer. Sweat beaded on his upper lip. Situations like this were why he’d asked management to let him at least carry mace on the job. The lawyers said no. He shined the light up the narrow space between the rows of drums. Empty.
From behind the dumpster came the rustle of motion. He cocked one ear that way. Footsteps on leaves? A body brushing palm fronds? Muffled by the steel walls of the drums and dumpster, he couldn’t tell. The hairs on his arms pricked to attention.
He sidestepped across the dumpster’s front. The heavy metal lid lay closed. At the corner, he looked down the side and lit up the row of scrubby palms along the yard’s edge. He took a step forward.
Fronds rustled and something burst from between them. Brian jumped back, startled. The flashlight’s beam danced in his shaking hand. Two beady eyes flashed at him.
A raccoon. Bolt upright on its hind legs like a miniature grizzly bear. It bared its teeth, dropped to all fours, and sauntered off through the leaf litter.
Brian exhaled like a deflating tire. The killer’s visions had him strung tight as a harp string, and had sent his imagination somewhere dark. Two weeks ago, he’d have assumed it was a raccoon from the start, not some lurking psychopath.
He wiped the sweat from his brow and continued his inspection. He passed the silent crane. The rail cars were empty, but the light in the crane cab still burned. Sidney was nowhere to be seen. Brian figured he must have stoked Sidney’s paranoia pretty good if he’d taken off so fast after he finished that he left the crane lights on.
Brian returned to the guard shack. Sidney’s car was gone from the lot, departed while Brian was chasing wildlife around the empty drum maze. Brian guessed Sidney wouldn’t be sleeping well tonight either.
Things could turn around, though, he hoped. Cops following his tip should be swarming that closed convenience store about now. Maybe they would find some evidence, evidence that would point Weissbard well away from him.
Chapter Twenty-Four
Red and blue lights sliced through the night along Hillsborough Avenue. Not an uncommon sight, but the multiple cruisers and the roadblocks were enough to draw a crowd. Weissbard waited inside the barricade for the inevitable arrival of Detective Sergeant Francisco. Weissbard getting here first was not going to make the guy happy. At all.
A black, two-door, late-model Cadillac with flashing blue lights embedded in the grill came tearing down Hillsborough Avenue from the west. Weissbard took a deep breath. Francisco had somehow gotten himself assigned that car out of impound last year. The Caddy pulled up outside the barricades with a screech. Francisco stepped out and a uniformed cop practically fell over himself passing the detective through the barricade. Weissbard shook his head and walked over.
“How is it you ended up here before me?” Francisco said.
“I was screening items off the tip line, at your direction. One tip said there’d be a body in this abandoned convenience store. Turned out to be right.”
“Why didn’t you notify me when you went to investigate?”
“Most of these things turn out to be nothing. I didn’t want to waste your valuable time.”
Weissbard kept in just a whiff of sarcasm, enough to keep Francisco guessing.
They walked through the now-opened gate to the convenience store and passed the coroner’s van. They stopped at the front of the store. Both doors were propped open. The stench rolled out like a fog. Portable lights lit the interior.
“When did you get here?” Francisco asked.
“About an hour ago,” Weissbard said. “Went in through a slit in the fencing around back. As soon as I saw her, I called in backup and the coroner.”
Inside, Cal Cambridge, the coroner, knelt over the body of a girl. African American, in short shorts and a tight T-shirt. Flies buzzed around Weissbard’s head like fighter jets. He tried to wave them away. A gurney stood ready at the corpse’s side.
“Hey, Cambridge,” Weissbard said.
“Weissbard.” Cambridge stood. He was about six feet tall, shaved bald with high cheekbones. In the right light the coroner had the unfortunate tendency to look cadaverous. This was the right light. He noticed Francisco at Weissbard’s side. “And Sergeant Francisco’s here, despite a lack of media attendance.”
One of the things Weissbard really liked about Cambridge was his completely undisguised disgust for Francisco. Being in a separate chain of command was liberating that way.
“Screw you, Cambridge,” Francisco said. “What do we have?”
“Young girl, about six years old. Pr
obably going to match that missing-person report from this area a few days ago. Looks to have been dead about that long.”
Being a homicide detective inured Weissbard to a lot, but dead children always hit him hard. “Cause of death?”
“No sexual assault, thank God for her. No obvious wounds, except ligature marks around the neck. And you won’t be happy to see what I pulled from her hands.”
Cambridge passed Weissbard a clear evidence bag. The four of spades sat inside it.
“Damn it.” Weissbard sighed.
He handed the bag back. Francisco snatched it away. Two CSI technicians walked up behind them.
“I want every millimeter of this place screened,” Francisco said, and waved them in. “The killer left us something.”
But one look at the place set Weissbard’s expectations low. A filthy, empty room, with the body in it for days. And the Playing Card Killer had watched enough episodes of crime TV shows to never leave much in the way of clues. Out of hand, Weissbard wrote off finding a fingerprint on the playing card.
He stepped out into the fresher air and leaned back against the wall of the store. Inside, Francisco gave unnecessary direction to everyone. Weissbard knew he could walk away and Francisco would never ask where he went.
This was becoming a homicide detective’s nightmare. Four killings with the same signature and method, but with everything else different. Save gender, there was no commonality in the victims, the abduction locations appeared random, as were the locations where the bodies were found. No evidence but playing cards and a velvet rope to tie these things together. But three of the victims had something in common.
Brian Sheridan knew all about them. That screwball guy who Sergeant Bertram had dumped on him was going to turn out to be the lynchpin to solve this case. And Weissbard would do it well under Francisco’s radar until the very last minute.
Some unknown tipster called in about this body. Weissbard’s gut had a hunch who that concerned citizen might be. Time to track down that anonymous internet tip.
Chapter Twenty-Five
As the sun rose hot and overbearing over Tampa the next morning, the detective squad room thrummed tight with tension. Chalking up a serial killer’s victims wasn’t the department’s mandate. They were supposed to be preventing them. And whether each detective idolized Francisco or thought he was a jackass, they all wanted this killer caught. Leads went all over the place and detectives were fanned out across the county trying to uncover the identity of the serial killer.
Weissbard had kept Brian Sheridan to himself. First out of embarrassment for buying the story of someone Dr. Williams thought was one step from certifiable. But since last night, he’d kept it to himself because he was more and more convinced that betting the mortgage payment on Sheridan would pay out. One piece after another said that kid was tied to the killings. When it all proved true, he wanted the credit. He’d have fun shoving that back in Francisco’s face. Then he’d get the last laugh on Sergeant Bertram for sending Sheridan to him in the first place.
His precinct desk phone rang. The ID was from Washburn in what Weissbard called the Forensics Geek Squad. Computers, phones, internet, tech. What SWAT did with brawn, those guys did with brains. Weissbard picked up the phone.
“Weissbard.”
“It’s Washburn. I’ve got the IP and an address for that computer used to connect to the tip line.”
Weissbard flipped his notebook open to Sheridan’s apartment address. “Give it to me.”
Washburn read an address on Hillsborough Avenue. Weissbard cursed. He scribbled down the location. “How about those phone records I asked for?”
“Not here yet. I’ll call you when they are.”
Weissbard hung up. He searched the address on his desktop. Lourdes’ internet Café. Damn it. The bit of information he thought would seal the case against Sheridan instead practically disproved it. It made perfect sense that someone, anyone, could have found the body, then walked a few blocks down Hillsborough and sent in the tip.
“Oh, hell,” he said to himself. “I followed it this far. Might as well confirm it was a waste of time.” He pulled himself out of his chair, and headed for the parking garage.
* * *
Weissbard’s view through the front window of the internet café revealed rows of laptops lined up on folding tables. They stretched the length of the shotgun strip mall storefront. Half were in use, mostly by people Weissbard could stop for probable cause on appearance alone. Criminal intent has a look all its own. A Pakistani clerk sat at a desk beside the front door.
Weissbard stepped inside the internet café, detective’s badge displayed prominently on his belt beside the buckle, pistol sitting high on one hip. Faces turned in his direction. Eyes went wide with fear. A cacophony of keystrokes filled the air as browsers closed and users deleted histories. Weissbard smiled. Just the effect he was looking for. He turned to the clerk by the door.
“I’m Detective Weissbard, Tampa PD. Are you the manager?”
“Yes. I’m Rashid.” The clerk had a shrill, fast clip to his accent.
“Rashid, we had someone involved in a criminal investigation possibly use one of your computers. Do you have any records of who was logged on yesterday afternoon?”
“I’m sorry, all our client information is treated with the strictest confidentiality,” Rashid said twice as loud as necessary.
Tension eased from many of the faces at the laptops. Weissbard’s blood pressure ticked up. He leaned in closer to Rashid.
“You aren’t running a doctor’s office, or a confessional. You’re running a sleazy little shop where people download the porn they don’t want their wife to see, or wire money for whatever marginally legal business they conduct.”
“And all it takes is a warrant to see as much of that as you want,” Rashid said.
Rashid had obviously been well-coached by whatever consigliere the owner kept on retainer. Weissbard loved a challenge.
“Sure, I can get that. And it would have to be for a pretty broad period, maybe a week to be safe. Confiscating all the hardware would probably be the easiest way to check everything. Narcotics, Sex Crimes, INS and Homeland Security would probably want to look at it all, I mean, as long as it’s lying around. It’s the end of the month and we all need to make our arrest quotas, you know?”
Weissbard paused to let his vision of the future sink in. “Or you can voluntarily show me who was logged in on one IP address at twelve-oh-three p.m. yesterday. I’ll quietly finger my murder suspect, and your scumbag clientele over there won’t be any the wiser.”
They stared at each other. Then Rashid blinked and swallowed. Apparently coming back with a warrant wasn’t what he wanted Weissbard to do after all. He cleared his throat and retrieved a ledger from the side of the desk. He quietly opened it up to yesterday’s page without looking down.
“With discretion, please,” he whispered with a furtive glance back to his customers. “What is the IP address?”
Weissbard read it to him. He looked down a list.
“Station 21.”
Weissbard ran his finger down the ledger to Station 21. Mickey Mouse was signed in. Most of the names around it were bogus as well.
“I guess you don’t ask for ID,” Weissbard said. “This is useless.”
“But I can get you something else,” Rashid said. He turned back to his computer and began to tap keys. “Every laptop has a camera. Every camera takes a user picture for each session. Covering our ass in a worst-case scenario.”
“And that’s just the scenario you’re in, Rashid.”
Rashid tapped a few more keys. A printer behind his desk powered up and started to print. It spit out a picture. Rashid inspected it, spun it around, and slid it over to Weissbard.
“That was the gentleman on that terminal at twelve-oh-three,” Rashid said.
Weissbard looked down at the scared-looking face of Brian Sheridan.
Chapter Twenty-Six
From the moment Brian got home from work last night, he hadn’t slept. The anxiety alone made it impossible. He worried about all the things going on around the city, completely out of his control, and ready to come crashing into his life. What were Weissbard and the Tampa PD uncovering about the Playing Card Killer that pointed to Brian? What new murder was the killer planning? Was there a victim being stalked right now?
If anxiety hadn’t been enough to keep Brian awake, that final fear of a new innocent victim would have been enough by itself. Was someone else about to become the killer’s prey? He didn’t want to know about it, didn’t want to fall asleep and see it.
And he’d actually have to do worse than see it. He’d experience it. And while seeing through the victim’s eyes would be terrifying, seeing it through the killer’s eyes was horrifying, nauseating, and repulsive, all rolled into one. Brian had no doubt that the killer wasn’t about to stop. If he didn’t sleep, Brian couldn’t dream it.
After noon, he started to load on coffee laden with sugar. Every one of his doctors had told him to do the exact opposite to fight his anxiety and ADHD. But now he had to work against a short-term problem, staying awake through work. He’d get back to long-term problems eventually.
An hour into his shift at Orange Trucking, Brian started to nurture a new worry. He hadn’t seen Sidney. According to the time clock, the crane operator had arrived early, which was the polar opposite of a standard Sidney work day, where he clocked in to the second, even if that meant standing around for five minutes at the time clock waiting. Brian checked the schedule and two trains were due that evening, so Sidney would be busy, but by now he’d always worked in an excuse to pop in and tell Brian he was worthless.
Every reason he could come up with for Sidney’s distance seemed spawned from Brian’s own paranoia. Maybe the police had questioned him again. Maybe Weissbard had told him about Brian’s dreams, and now Sidney was scared to be in the same room with him. Maybe he really was doing something illegal at work, and the police investigation spooked him into keeping others at arm’s length. That would actually have been poetic justice after the guy had been such a long-time dick at work.
The Playing Card Killer Page 11