by J. L. Brown
Jade ran down the stairs and over to the stilled form. She stood over the body. His neck was tilted at an unnatural angle.
He stared up at her, eyes unseeing through the mask.
Christian rushed up to her, followed by other agents, Glocks drawn.
She didn’t bother to look at him. “You’re late.”
Christian said nothing.
Jade touched her nose. It still hurt, but the bleeding had stopped, and it didn’t feel broken. She dropped her hand and kneeled next to the body.
She glanced at Christian once more before removing the balaclava.
Staring back at her were the lifeless eyes of Landon Phillips.
CHAPTER SEVENTY-THREE
Crystal City, Virginia
The next day dawned cold and quiet.
Jade and Christian, in their dark blue FBI coats, braced themselves on either side of the front door to an apartment in a high-rise building in Crystal City. She had called earlier and no one had answered.
She knocked.
No answer.
She eyed Christian. He had his game face on. He nodded. She moved to allow Dante to insert a key obtained from the building’s management company. Dante opened the door and stepped back as well. Bomb-sniffing dogs entered first to make sure Landon Phillips’s apartment wasn’t booby-trapped. Members of the Critical Incident Response Group followed the dogs.
After five minutes, “Clear” came from someone inside.
Jade, Christian, and Dante entered. The vast apartment seemed larger with floor-to-ceiling windows on two sides. The sleek, modern furniture appeared brand new.
She peeked into the apartment’s sole bedroom off the kitchen. Queen-size bed, a dresser, and a nightstand with a lamp on one side and a pile of books on the other. The walls were devoid of pictures and there was no television. Landon Phillips had not spent much time here.
It was weird being inside his home. His room. That he had never invited her over was not lost on her. She felt sick to her stomach that she allowed him to kiss her.
She checked out the closet, small for an apartment of this size. Pulling on gloves, she knelt and examined the bottom of a pair of hiking boots. They had been cleaned, but she bet the tread would match the shoeprint found at the Liz Holder crime scene. She searched the rest of the closet, but didn’t uncover any obvious evidence. She returned to the living room.
A team of forensic analysts collected fingerprints. One analyst began vacuuming. Another cut out a small section of the carpet to take back to the lab to compare with the trace evidence collected from the crime scenes.
She mentioned the boots to an analyst and walked over to a bookcase bulging with books. She peered closer. The books, arranged in alphabetical order, aligned with the edge of the shelf as in a library. Like hers at home. OCD.
That’s why we got along so well.
Most of the books were political or philosophical: Hitler, Churchill, Roosevelt, Marx, Machiavelli, Locke, Sartre, Nietzsche. True crime and a few novels, predominately thrillers, also graced the shelves. Jade no longer read thrillers.
She lived them.
She pulled out one of Nietzsche’s books, Thus Spoke Zarathustra. A hole gaped in the center of the cover, made by a knife or a pair of scissors. Landon probably hadn’t recommended this one on Goodreads.
An electric guitar stood on a stand in the corner.
She walked to where Christian and Dante stood by a wall covered with pictures and newspaper articles, presumably of the victims and Landon’s exploits.
As she got closer, Dante and Christian exchanged a look before parting for her. Puzzled, she glanced at each of them and then at the wall.
Her lips parted.
The entire wall was a shrine to President-Elect Whitney Fairchild.
At all stages of her life. The newspaper article of her wedding announcement to Grayson Fairchild. The birth of her two children. The announcements for her candidacy for the House, Senate, and presidency. Campaigning.
She looked at Christian, unbelieving, and back to the wall. She leaned forward, scrutinizing a sketch of the president-elect, the likeness unmistakable. The signature was in charcoal. Landon Phillips.
Confused, she glanced over her shoulder at Christian. “What the hell?”
Christian, arms crossed in front of his chest, scanned the wall. “Maybe he was in love with his boss. What if these murders were all for her?”
“Like John Hinckley and Jodie Foster?” Dante asked, laughing. “Isn’t she a little old for him?”
Christian shrugged his shoulders. “Maybe it’s a cougar thing.”
“Or to help her get elected,” Jade said.
After surveying the wall for several minutes, they ambled over to the corner of the living room set up as an office. Three flat-screen monitors connected to a laptop still nestled in its docking station. A forensic examiner from the FBI’s Computer Analysis and Response Team worked on the laptop.
Dante gestured toward the large flat-screen television and the computers. He whistled. “Nice setup.”
“I wonder why he didn’t take the laptop,” Christian said.
The technician tapped the touch pad. “I’m not sure, but lucky for us he didn’t.” All three monitors sprang to life. The technician glanced back at them. “He also never set up a password. Guess living alone, he thought he didn’t need to. Today must be our lucky day.”
Jade, Christian, and Dante peered over the technician’s shoulder. One screen was filled with numerous Internet pages about Cole Brennan: his politics, his life story, and even an Architectural Digest article on his home. On another monitor appeared to be a transcript of a conversation or a chat. The last screen displayed the website for the American Values Conference. Had Landon been there?
Jade, Christian, and Dante left to allow the technician to finish his work.
As they walked down the hallway toward the elevator, she stopped. “Wait.”
She sprinted back to the apartment and straight to the desk. She stared at the screen with the transcript. Something about it nagged at her. She bent closer to read it. The technician got up from the chair without a word so she could sit down.
SusanB: It’s another example of big corporations squeezing out the little guy.
PittFan: Fuck yeah. The only welfare that matters is corporate welfare.
Oedipus: ‘Corporations are people, too, my friend.’
SusanB:
Oedipus: Please call me Oedipus.
JoanofArc: Did you all catch any of Cole’s show tonight? Scary. And I’m not talking about the Talk Show Killer.
PittFan: Cole’s a fucking idiot.
AlextheGreat: Guys, we listen to him so that we know what we’re up against.
Oedipus: I went to Cole’s speech in Philadelphia last month. It was horrible. He wants to eliminate all federal agencies and move their functions to the states or privatize them.
SusanB: The other party isn’t going to be happy until all minorities and poor people die or go away. I wouldn’t put it past them to be behind the killings.
JoanofArc: Why would they do that?
SusanB: To gain sympathy to win the election.
JoanofArc: That sounds a little farfetched. And we’re the ones always blaming them for concocting conspiracy theories.
PittFan: The killer deserves a goddamn medal if you ask me.
AlextheGreat: Violence isn’t the answer, PittFan.
Oedipus: Maybe for Cole Brennan it is.
Jade stopped reading. No question Landon was Oedipus. The cursor blinked next to “Oedipus” at the bottom of the screen. She remembered Zoe was SusanB.
Jade’s blood ran cold.
Did Zoe know Caleb was a killer? Did Zoe know Landon was Caleb?
CHAPTER SEVENTY-FOUR
Washington, DC
In the Senate Radio-Television Gallery room in the US Capitol, President-Elect Whitney Fairchild stood alone at the p
odium. She scanned the audience of reporters. She glanced at her notes and took a deep breath.
“Ladies and gentlemen of the press and everyone else who may be watching, through the efforts of law enforcement in several jurisdictions, but especially our Federal Bureau of Investigation, the perpetrator of the heinous crimes attributed to the TSK killer is now dead.
“Nothing can bring comfort to the families of the victims at this time, but I hope Landon Phillips’s death will provide them with at least a sense of justice and some measure of peace. I shall continue to keep these families in my thoughts and prayers and I ask all of you to do the same.”
She peered down at the papers on the podium without seeing them. All she wanted to do was cry, but she would not. Female politicians could not cry. A crying male politician displayed his sensitivity. A crying female politician revealed her weakness. A president—even a future president—could not be weak.
“How does it feel knowing that you’ve been working side by side with a killer for years?” a voice shouted from the back of the room.
“Devastating. Landon was hardworking, intelligent, and loyal. He would be the last person I would think capable of committing these heinous crimes.”
“A little too loyal, if you ask me,” a reporter commented. This elicited some nervous laughs.
“Why do you think he did it?” cried out another reporter.
“Who knows why? Who knows what demons he faced? Perhaps, in some misguided way, he believed he was helping me or the causes of our party by silencing the opposition, but that is not the way to prevail. We win by the validity and effectiveness of our ideals, ideas, and implementation of our policies. As a country, we win when two sides oppose each other, find common ground, and come up with the best solution.
“I, too, have many questions. Could these senseless deaths have been prevented? Is there any way I could have stopped them? How can we prevent this situation from happening again? But today is not the day for questions. Today is a day for healing. I will not take any more questions. Thank you.”
She picked up her notes and walked briskly off the stage, leaving behind an unusually quiet press corps.
CHAPTER SEVENTY-FIVE
Washington, DC
Dante pushed aside piles of transcripts stacked on the conference-room table at the Bureau. He placed a laptop in front of him and connected tiny speakers.
“I backtracked what Austin did. I listened to these recordings for weeks. Listen to this. Here’s a call to the victim—Sells—in Pittsburgh.” He clicked the play button.
“. . . Income and wealth inequality have increased significantly over the last thirty-five years. What do you propose we do about it?” came a voice from the speakers.
He stopped the recording, clicked on another audio file, and pressed play. “Tallent in Seattle.”
“Income and wealth inequality have increased significantly over the last thirty-five years. What do you propose we do about it?” said the same voice.
He pressed another. “Holder in New York.” The same sentence was asked word for word. Dante pushed stop, an expectant expression on his face.
Jade thought for a moment. “Sounds like the same voice. From the Northeast. Like the witness from Seattle said. I’d say Philadelphia. I had a teammate in college from Philly and she had that same distinct accent.”
“Confirmed by Linguistics. It’s definitely a Philadelphian dialect and it belongs to Landon Phillips.”
Jade looked doubtful. “He didn’t sound like that in person.”
Dante shrugged. “Maybe he disguised his voice. All three calls originated from Phillips’s cell phone number.” He hesitated. “This is what Austin discovered. This is why he died.”
A quietness descended around the table. Pat stopped clicking. Max stared at the wall. Christian’s head was bowed, as if in prayer.
Jade allowed the silence to continue for a few moments. “Good work, Dante. Okay. We’re not done. Talk to me about Phillips.”
Pat brought up a file on her computer. “Adopted by Addison and Maddy Hewitt when he was a baby, who christened him Caleb. Birth name, birthplace, and birth parents are all still unknown. We’re working on it. The Hewitts had a biological son named James, who died at thirteen. He was killed while riding a bicycle on a street near his home. The Hewitts adopted Caleb shortly thereafter. They had no other children.”
Max appeared thoughtful. “The Hewitts adopted Caleb to replace their dead child. You saw their living room. No wonder Caleb never measured up.”
Jade recalled the photographs of James Hewitt scattered throughout the living room. Not one picture of Caleb. The mother had to hunt around in the basement for a picture of him.
Christian stood and turned his chair around. He placed his forearms on the top of the chair. “Probably didn’t help the kid’s confidence growing up.”
Jade said to Christian, “The house was so quiet, remember? The dead son was still present.”
Max pushed up his glasses. “And Caleb was waiting in that house, year after year, for his birth parents to come back for him.”
“Sad,” Pat said. The way she always hunched over her computer reminded Jade of Schroeder from the old Peanuts cartoon hunched over his piano.
Dante leaned his chair back. “Why did he do this? To get his parents’ attention?”
“Maybe to hurt them,” Max said.
He lied about having a sister. He lied to my face about his mother’s bout with cancer, what his parents did for a living. He lied about everything. Except the guitar.
“He probably didn’t even like craft beer,” she said.
“Craft beer?” Dante asked, bewildered.
“Never mind,” Jade said. She shook her head, disgusted with herself. She thought back to the Holder murder. Phillips had called her the day after. She shivered. What kind of FBI agent am I?
“Are you all right?” Christian asked.
“Yeah. Just felt a chill.”
Pat continued her briefing. “Caleb Hewitt, a bright and gifted child, finished in the top of his class in high school. Family, friends, and neighbors described Hewitt as friendly but quiet. He preferred being alone with his books and his ideas.
“He was also a page for Representative Fairchild when he was a junior in high school,” she added. “I wonder if Fairchild remembered him from back then.”
“I wonder if his fascination with her started then,” Max said. He made a note.
Some people that knew him said the US invasion of Iraq infuriated him and propelled him into politics. He attended Chattenham College, which boasted a history of political activism. He also worked at the college radio station. This morning, Jade had spoken to the station manager during that time who told her Caleb was unhappy when the station launched a conservative program and confirmed that Caleb knew the first known TSK victim, the student conservative talk-show host Kyle Williams.
Cole Brennan was an on-air personality in Philadelphia at the time. The task force presumed Hewitt had listened to Cole’s broadcasts, which would have enraged him further.
Caleb Hewitt received his BA in philosophy from Chattenham. He left the school and the town and was never heard from again.
“Over ten years ago,” Christian said. “Maybe that’s why he lost his accent or pretended to anyway.”
A gap existed in Hewitt’s history until three years later, when Landon Phillips joined Representative Whitney Fairchild’s staff. Gone were the long, shaggy blond locks, jeans, and t-shirts. They were replaced by business suits, contacts that changed his brown eyes to green, nose job, and age-darkened light brown hair. He looked like a different person. Because he was.
The Hewitts had no idea their son worked for the woman who would one day become president. They wouldn’t have recognized him anyway.
*
Evidence proving that Caleb Hewitt, aka Landon Phillips, committed the murders began to come together. Analysts confirmed the carpet fibers found at the Taylor LeBlanc (Baton R
ouge) and Shane Tallent (Seattle) scenes matched the carpet in Phillips’s apartment. The carpet fibers found in the Pete Paxson (Houston) scene did not match. Pat found out Phillips had moved into his apartment after the Paxson murder. A baseball bat hidden underneath a floorboard in the living room was determined to be the murder weapon of his earlier victims. The bat had been wiped clean, but Forensics matched the blood residue, invisible to the naked eye, to the victims. So far, they hadn’t discovered any more victims.
And, of course, Phillips wasn’t talking.
“Oh,” Dante said, “and the reports came back on the contents of his medicine cabinet. Guess what they found?” He smiled at her. “Rohypnol.”
Her brow furrowed. “The date-rape drug used in the LeBlanc killing?”
“Yeah! The drug can also be taken to treat anxiety and insomnia. Phillips suffered from insomnia big time. We’re still trying to track down how he got it.”
She thought for a long moment. “Nate, the security guard at the college, told me they had had huge problems with date rape at the time Kyle Williams was killed. Dante, call him. Find out if any of the victims can identify Caleb Hewitt. Perhaps, we can provide them some closure.”
Dante nodded. No smirk this time.
She squinted her eyes at him, but said nothing.
Christian examined a file. “Living in Crystal City was convenient. He could walk to Reagan National airport.”
“Fairchild was traveling so often,” Jade said, “she may not have noticed his personal side trips. We need to check out his travel records.”
“On it,” Pat said.
“By the way,” Christian said, “they found detailed dossiers on his computer on all of his victims, plus the top fifty broadcasters in the country.”
“Insomnia can be a blessing for a workaholic,” Pat said. “He should have worked for us.”
Christian continued. “There was also a dossier on Fairchild.” He hesitated, and turned to Jade. “And you.”
I’ll bet.
She thought about their dinner together. Playing basketball. That kiss. She tried not to shiver.