He had studied overseas to obtain a proper education in his field, receiving his undergraduate degree in London and his master’s in New York, and was currently working on his doctorate in clinical psychology in San Francisco. For a year and a half, he had attended the University of San Francisco and excelled. Only recently had he taken on a job as a cabbie, not because he needed the money—his father paid for everything—but to do what he loved doing: studying people. He had planned on writing his thesis paper based on his observations and conversations with his fares.
By the sheer nature of who Vitaly was and what he was studying to become, anyone who entered his cab became subject matter. He was a very astute person to begin with, and not much got by him—a positive trait, Vitaly thought. Life had been perfect until that day across the bay when he had picked up those three people in Sausalito.
He’d followed his procedure, never straying, not even the tiniest bit. As soon as the passengers were in the car and their destination called out, Vitaly had done what he always did with each fare: he struck up a conversation. He studied their movements. He listened to their conversations. It had been no different with the trio in the back of his cab that day.
He had thought it strange to find a forty-something couple palling around with a woman in her early twenties. It would have been perfectly fine if she’d been their daughter, but she wasn’t—he didn’t need to be told that. She looked nothing like them, the ages weren’t quite right, and their conversation only confirmed it.
Most people would have seen nothing wrong with the situation, and that was expected; most people hadn’t made a career of studying people and learning the ins and outs of criminal psychology like Vitaly had for the last nine years.
It had been this area of expertise that made Vitaly first notice the man and the way he looked at Piper like a ravaged animal waiting to feast. And though he had tried hard to cover his intense stares with smile and laughter, the man swallowed often, licked his lips, and wiped sweat off his brow, even though the temperatures had been in the low seventies. It was as if he would pounce on her at any second. The more Vitaly watched, the more he’d thought something was wrong.
And then things got worse.
He had begun to take notice of the woman. He saw through her laughter, and hair flips, and her touchy-feely hands that always seemed to follow her way-too-agreeable nods; it had been clear that her role was that of an older sister, someone trustworthy. It’s as if she were putting on an act, too. They were two wolves in disguise, talking up a baby sheep. The mannerisms of the woman were nothing like the man. Hers had been polished enough that the untrained eye wouldn’t have blinked, but Vitaly had seen through her veiled deception.
As for the young girl, she hadn’t found anything unusual about her companions. It didn’t appear as if the girl had been forced to go anywhere. She was agreeable and friendly with the older couple. They were friendly. They were normal. They’d had her convinced she was in a safe environment.
Vitaly tried to converse. He watched. He listened. He diagnosed. He feared. The young woman had been willing to chit-chat with him, but the other two only responded with malevolent stares. She does not know. You must say something.
At first, Vitaly hadn’t believed what his mind had concluded. Surely, he must have gotten something wrong or jumped too hastily to his conclusions about the man and the woman. But what if he were right? The signs were there. Why couldn’t it be true?
Based on his observations, the woman was likely a sociopath. She was charming, very likeable indeed. A lot of people are friendly, but coupled with continuous lying, it starts to build a case. For instance, Vitaly found it very unlikely that this woman had visited the Amazon. The woman hadn’t stopped talking since she sat down inside the car, and she had told the most elaborate of stories fueled with adrenaline and involving high risk—a common characteristic.
Her low-cut tank top had barely been able to contain her full chest. The flimsy bra had been more for style than form. Was that enough to peg her as a sexual person, a clear trait of a sociopath? Vitaly wasn’t sure. There were many more telling signs, but hadn’t been able to make a full determination without further observation.
And the man—did he know?
If she was a sociopath and the man knew it, Vitaly got the impression that he didn’t care. Why? Based on Vitaly’s backseat diagnosis, the man was a psychopath; they tend not to be bothered by those kinds of things.
The man’s forced smiles and occasional chuckles had checked the box for superficial charm. He had moved in his seat and twiddled his thumbs. Psychopaths were known to suffer a never-ending battle with boredom. The way he looked at the young woman, in a predatory way. She was a prize to him, something he could have used to feed his psychological need. She was not human; she just was. To Vitaly, those signs had suggested that the man felt no remorse for his actions. Of course, Vitaly couldn’t prove any of it. It had all been just observation.
In the end, Vitaly had been left with two half-baked diagnoses that could go either way.
On their own, both the man and the woman could be dangerous. But if Vitaly’s theory had been right, that the man had been a psychopath and the woman had been a sociopath and they had formed a relationship to fuel each other’s needs, then that young woman was in grave danger.
On his way back to the city, Vitaly had replayed the drive over and over in his head. He wept as he thought of how he had done nothing, said nothing. He had let that poor, young girl exit the back of his cab and leave with those very disturbing people even though his gut had screamed for him to do something.
When he read the paper the next day, he had seen the mention of a dead hiker found on the mountain, and he knew who it was without even reading the rest of the article. He was responsible. His emotions only twisted further into a ball of self-hatred. He had known and had done nothing. He ignored all the signs.
I should have told them.
Vitaly knew it was wrong to withhold the information from the police, but he was scared—scared of what might happen to him, scared that maybe he might be implicated, or worse, that the couple would find out and come after him. After all, they knew what he looked like. His name had been clearly displayed on the cab license.
Streams of remorse trailed from his puffy eyes as the guilt inside burned through his chest. Vitaly reached toward the coffee table, past the bottle of vodka, for the true answer to his pain.
Vitaly’s problem wasn’t that he was an alcoholic. Deep down, he knew the real reason he had done nothing and had said nothing. He had known this reason for a long time—most of his life. Even though he had gone his own direction, left Russia and studied abroad for years, those were safe things. He’d had his father’s money to protect him and his father’s business to fall back on. The truth of the matter was that Vitaly was, and always has been, an honest-to-goodness coward.
And that’s why Piper Taylor was dead.
27
I was at my desk, with my back facing the door, when I sensed someone standing behind me. I thought it was Lucy, who I had put to bed over an hour ago. She had overcome her fear of the third floor and started sneaking up on me while I worked. “Lucy, is that you?”
“No,” said a voice in a poor imitation of a little girl.
I spun around in my chair and found Kang leaning against the doorframe with a smile on his face. My initial reaction had me jumping back a bit in my chair. “Dammit, Kyle. What are you doing here?”
“I thought we were going to hit up that Russian kid again.”
“I know that. What I mean is, what are you doing sneaking up on me inside my home?”
“Your Po Po let me in. She said you were up here and that she was on her way to bed.”
Kang hadn’t bothered to call and had shown up at my doorstep at nine. Of course Po Po had let him in, not because she knew him, but because she didn’t. And it wasn’t because he was a police officer, because he wasn’t wearing a uniform. No, she let hi
m in because he was Chinese, and she thought I had a date. She had sent him up the stairs unannounced.
Agent House had asked me once if it bothered my mother-in-law when I went out on dates, being that I had married her son and was now a widow. I had told her Po Po wasn’t bothered by it. At first, I’d thought she would be, but one day, she had told me that she was fine with me dating other men; she didn’t expect me to honor my late husband’s memory by remaining single. And plus, she thought me remarrying and having a man around the house would be good for the children. What she was against was me dating a man who wasn’t Chinese, and that’s why she had sent Kang straight up. I could have been naked in the bath, and she still would have sent him up.
I told Kang to wait downstairs while I freshened up.
“You look fine. You don’t have to do that for me.”
“I’m not doing it for you,” I called out as I walked into my bedroom.
To which he responded while heading downstairs, “All I’m saying is that you look good.”
Was that a real compliment or a flirty compliment? I laughed it off. Ten minutes later, I walked downstairs in jeans, a hoodie and my Oakland A’s baseball cap. Kang had made himself at home in front of the television.
“You like baseball?” He stood up and turned the TV off.
“I like the A’s.”
“We should catch a game sometime. I have a cousin who works for a radio station in Oakland, and he’s always giving away tickets.”
I grabbed my purse. “That sounds great.” Free tickets to an A’s game? I’m all over that.
Twenty minutes later, we arrived at Vitaly’s apartment. We were about ten steps from his front door when a gunshot rang out from inside. The front door was locked, so we hurried through the gate and toward the backyard. The curtains were open, and I could see Vitaly slouched to the side on the couch, lit only by the blue hue from the television. The rest of the apartment was dark.
I reached for the handle on the sliding glass door and pulled. Surprisingly, it was open. Kang and I entered and discovered that Vitaly had sustained a gunshot to the head—self-inflicted. He still held the weapon in his right hand; it looked like a Sigma 9mm.
Kang had already pulled out his cell phone and dialed 911 for an ambulance. I knew they would call it a DOA when they got here, but it was procedure. Why did you do this? Vitaly had seemed fine earlier, a little hung over and a little freaked out by our showing up on his doorstep, but generally fine. Was he hiding something?
While we waited for the ambulance and the detectives from the area precinct, we poked around the apartment and discovered he was first and foremost a student. “I guess this explains all the missed days,” I said, looking at a bookshelf full of textbooks. Most of them were psychology and sociology books.
“I’m going to take a look in the bedroom,” Kang said.
I nodded and continued poking around the living room area. There was an unopened bottle of vodka on the table in front of the couch where Vitaly sat. Something had him troubled. The table was a filthy mess: two filled ashtrays, a couple of empty coffee containers, crusted food spills, and used napkins. I was about to find Kang when my eye caught something scribbled on one of the napkins.
“Kang!” I shouted.
A beat later, he returned to the living room. “What is it?”
I pointed at the napkin.
Kang picked it up and read it out loud. “‘I’m sorry, Piper.’ He knew something.”
“Whatever he knew, it was enough to make him blow his brains out.”
28
“Yes, that’s the way. Yes! Yes! Yes!” Vicki vocalized in rhythm as she lay on her back. A muscular black man lay between her legs, rocking the bed on its frame each time he buried himself inside her. She gripped his meaty arms, her nails biting into his dark skin as she shook her head from side to side. “It feels so good. Don’t stop,” she said breathlessly.
Enough of the lamps in the hotel room were left on to create a relaxing mood while providing enough light for Jerry to film everything. He sat in a chair near the TV stand watching the thousand-dollar-an-hour black stud earn his pay. They had found his ad on an adult escort site that touted “a black anaconda between my legs.” Jerry responded to the ad and arranged for a time, with the condition that, if he didn’t live up to the advertised promise, he would be turned away.
The six-foot-two man went by the name Sampson, except he didn’t gain his strength from his hair. Vicki had squealed when he had entered their hotel room earlier. “What a fine specimen.”
She’d grabbed hold of his arm with one hand and fondled his chest with her other. This wasn’t the first time the Carlsons had brought another man into their bed. It was a treat for both of them, because Jerry enjoyed watching, and Vicki got variety. It also wasn’t the first time Vicki had taken a black lover.
She had ordered him to drop his pants immediately. “No sense in wasting everybody’s time.”
Sampson had unbuckled and let his pants fall to the carpet. He wore no underwear and was true to his word.
Jerry had started filming Sampson and his wife from the moment they hit the bed, obtaining all of the requisite porn angles. After forty-five minutes and three wailing orgasms from Vicki, Jerry thought he had enough of that type of footage and attached the handheld camera to a travel tripod. It allowed him to operate the zoom function with one hand while he used the other to stroke his semi-erect cock. He watched for a while as Sampson continued his effortless thrusting.
Eventually, his eyes wandered from the action to the television near him. He had left it on earlier and forgotten all about it, really. The sound had been muted, so he turned it up a tad to listen to bits and pieces of the news report. It didn’t seem to distract the two on the bed. Sampson had flipped Vicki over to her hands and knees, and she had started rocking against him.
Jerry turned his attention back to the television. A graphic appeared next to the reporter: The Cotton Candy Killer. Huh, this is interesting. He leaned in closer but had trouble hearing everything the reporter said due to his wife. The graphic then changed to a picture of two women captured by a surveillance camera. Jerry blinked his eyes and took a closer look. That can’t be. He looked away for a second, then back at the screen and focused once more. That woman… That’s my wife. And the other one—that’s Piper.
He wasn’t mistaken. He could pick Vicki out of any line up, even a photo like this that showed three quarters of a face from the top down. It wasn’t the best picture and thankfully she was wearing a wig, which made a big difference in her appearance, but still. How recognizable would she be in public?
Jerry thought back to that moment. He had chosen to remain outside for a smoke and thus had inadvertently escaped being photographed. I could have easily been in that picture; of course, I would have spotted the cameras and warned her. Jerry usually didn’t wear a disguise when he and Vicki were on the hunt, but seeing his wife on TV made him reconsider his actions. Until now, he had thought they were getting better with their crimes. This was a sloppy mistake, disguise or not. Vicki knew to look for cameras and avoid them. She’s losing her focus.
The graphic changed to a nighttime shot of the actual store in Sausalito where another reporter stood. The police must have talked to the owner of that shop. Jerry thought hard about what that person might have noticed about them. And then he remembered: Vicki had mentioned she had gotten the number for a cab company from someone in the store. That also meant a conversation took place. Eye contact had been made—more mistakes from his wife.
He switched off the TV right as his wife stopped her moaning. She lay under Sampson, hidden almost entirely by his muscled mass. She gave him a pat on the back, and he rolled off her. They both lay still, catching their breath.
“Did he cum inside you?” Jerry asked pointedly.
“No. I thought I would wait for later.”
Jerry walked over to the bed, leaned down and gave his wife a long, loving kiss. She smiled ba
ck at him as he pulled away, her hands still holding the sides of his face. “I love you, darling.”
“I love you, too,” he said, grabbing a hand towel next to him and dabbing it against her forehead.
“Help me up,” she said, reaching up with both arms.
Jerry pulled on both of them as she slid her legs off the bed and moved herself into a seated position. “Boy, that was fun, but I need to take a breather.” She kissed her husband once more before moving over to the lounge chair and kicking her feet up onto the ottoman. “I’ll be right here.”
Sampson was still on the bed, sitting back on his legs and still rigid as ever. Jerry lay down. He grabbed beneath his knees and pulled back on his legs, all while thinking about his dilemma. He should have been bubbling with excitement as he watched Sampson slather lube around his shaft and maneuver himself into position. But Jerry was too busy problem solving. His and Vicki’s situation had suddenly changed and not for the better. Jerry looked over at his wife. She smiled at him, unaware that her picture had been broadcast across the airwaves and labeled as the Cotton Candy Killer. What to do? He drifted farther into his thoughts, oblivious to Sampson’s forceful entry.
29
It was Thursday, five days since Piper Taylor had been killed—more than two weeks for Kang’s victims, whose cases had gone cold. My investigation was the only thing breathing life into his homicides, and I had slammed into another wall. Vitaly’s unexpected suicide was a huge disappointment. Clearly he had known something about what had happened to Piper, and that information had died with him that day.
There was a glimmer of hope, though. Tucker had begun to field calls regarding Piper’s death thanks to the media’s broadcast of the Cotton Candy Killer. Some people reported having seen her at the Ferry Building near Market Street; others had seen her on the ferry itself or at the Sausalito port. None of them could place the woman—yet. It seemed as though Piper’s beauty overshadowed anyone next to her. Our mystery woman might as well have been invisible. Is that why she picked Piper?
[Anthology] Abby & Sei Thriller Starter Page 10