by Rick Murcer
“Sophie. Make that call to Josh,” he murmured. “We’re going to need them.”
Chapter-27
Dr. Fredrick Argyle sat on the edge of the stained mattress that caused his jail cell to stink like some sewer ditch, slowly stroking the long, purple welt that had risen above his left eye, compliments of one of the over-zealous USVI police officers assigned to make sure he stayed in line, that he succumbed to their pitiful rules.
He had been truly impressed. It had taken that officer much longer to reach the boiling point than he’d anticipated. It took a few attempts, but eventually he’d pushed exactly the right button, provoking the guard to hit him. Twice. He knew it would happen. It was unavoidable. How could they resist getting a piece of someone they loathed so intently? But it was more than that, wasn’t it? Fear caused nightmares to spring to life—and these pissy, little men were nothing if not afraid. Especially when he told the guard what he was going to do to his wife, his mother, maybe even his kids—in amazing detail.
“I just don’t think we were on the same page,” he grinned and touched the bruise again. The billy club had been hard, he’d even caught a glimpse of colored stars as he passed from light to dark and back to light. Through it all, he heard them call him sick, an animal, evil.
Evil? What exactly did that mean? The significance held different connotations for everyone. His time as a psychiatrist told him that was true.
For instance, some welcomed the companionship of a snake. The creatures were pets, seen as having value, personalities. Others could barely contemplate being in the same room with one. Even a small, caged one. Invariably, those afflicted with that phobia—ophidiophobia—associated the snake with devils or demons. Malevolence personified. They even quoted the Bible to justify their fear. If God thought snakes were bad news, then justification came easier.
Of course, if there really was a God, why would men like him be allowed to do what they do? He smiled again. He could teach the Bible-thumpers a thing or two about real fear.
Looking down at the chains running from his ankles to his waist and ending at his wrists, he couldn’t help reflecting on how long it would take to free himself. Minutes? Half an hour? No more than that. But that would be too easy, and he wouldn’t get to play with the stout, black woman who brought him his meals. No problem there. He didn’t really want to waltz with her anyway. There were other people to meet, people who needed to learn what he was teaching.
Once he was transported back to Lansing, the real bash would continue. And as usual, he’d be the life of the party, the star attraction. The masses would simply die to get close to him.
Argyle stretched his back as far as the restraints would allow and rolled onto the swaybacked bed. He could hardly wait.
Chapter-28
Alex Downs pressed the accelerator harder. The powerful engine surged, causing his stomach to do one of those flips. It was like flying down the last steep curve of a roller coaster. A big one.
He flicked a switch, and the red and blue lights swirled into life. Another switch and the siren bellowed out its authority, telling everyone to get the hell out of his way. He was a scientist at heart—in fact, it was what he lived for—but getting to drive a police cruiser, particularly like this, was a rush and not something he thought he’d get to do when he took the job. Perks were certainly in the eyes of the beholder, but this was over the top.
The corner of Waverly and Smith was buzzing with activity, cops and LPD cruisers everywhere. He parked his unit, grabbed his case, and hurried to the center of attraction.
Sarah Sparks, one of his techs (and a damned good one) stood just outside the yellow crime scene tape, cordoning off the body and the immediate area around it, forty feet in every direction. A perfect square. Sparks was concentrating on the camera they occasionally used to create virtual crime scenes. The process was called photogrammetry. It’s a technique that combines hundreds of different photos taken at a particular scene then sends them to a computer program that in turn creates a 360-degree image. It was helpful when a crime had been committed in a high traffic, public area, like this one. The images would be on file long after the scene was trampled and forgotten.
Alex cleared his throat, and she jumped. She turned quickly to see who had interrupted her train of thought. Her gray eyes grew larger than her thin face could seemingly accommodate. He grinned; she looked a little like a lemur.
“Easy there, Sparky.”
“Sorry boss, a little jumpy. And I’m glad you’re back.”
Sarah’s pretty face was a little more pale than usual. She was a tough kid, and homicides hadn’t bothered her up to this point. But she was obviously affected by this one.
“You okay?”
“Yes. I guess so. This one is . . . well, see for yourself.” She looked at the fast-food bag in his other hand, then back to him.
“You’re going to eat that over there?”
“Of course. I’m hungry.”
“But Alex . . .” Sarah’s face turned a whiter shade of pale.
He opened the bag, letting loose the rich aroma of greasy sausage and fried eggs. One whiff sent Sarah to the other side of the yellow tape, where she quickly rendezvoused with gut-wrenching heaves.
“Gets ’em every time,” he said to the cop standing near the camera.
He downed the food, and then he took out latex gloves from his case and moved to the body. The tall man lying on the pavement of the parking lot hardly looked human. He’d only been dead for maybe eight or nine hours, but the smell was far worse. The hot asphalt made sure of that. Scorching flesh was never going to be used for aromatherapy. This one definitely had the same bullet-hole pattern to the head and chest as the first victim at the White Kitty. His hands and ankles were bound with black leather, but this time, his clothes had been removed and the acid trail ran from his neck to past his thighs. It concentrated on the crotch area to the point that his willie’s stub was barely discernable. There was a small amount of gelatinous tissue welded to his upper right thigh, probably what was left of his testicles. The acid concentration was high, very high. Someone knew what they were doing.
Sarah Sparks crouched next to him. “You did that on purpose, and I have a long memory.”
“Bring it, girlfriend.”
Her smile beamed like the sun. “Someday, boss, someday.” She pointed toward the body. “There wasn’t a lot of blood, so this seems to be a dump site. We didn’t notice any blood trails or drag patterns, so I think we’re solid with the assumption he was killed elsewhere.”
Alex nodded. “Help me turn him over.”
His back and neck showed the same footprints and strange, deeper marks as victim number one. There appeared to be a bit of bone stabbing through the tattooed skin of his lower neck.
They rolled the body back to its original spot, and Alex stood up. “The damage to the back and neck was done postmortem, but the penis burning session was definitely antemortem.” He snapped his gloves off and rubbed the back of his neck. “The unsub is getting more aggressive, more violent. There is a lot of overkill here, more than the first. Okay, Sparky, what else can you tell me?”
“I’d say he was submissive and was into whatever game he and his killer were playing. He’s a bigger man, so it would have taken a lot to blitz him and then tie him up like this.”
“Good. Anything more?” asked Alex.
“We found a few bits of particulates from his hair and calves. Fibers that might be carpet strands and some black flakes I don’t recognize. We’ll go to work on them when we get to the lab. The fibers could mean he was transported in the trunk or on the floor of a vehicle,” answered Sarah.
“Or—”
“That the game started in the car, making it easier to dump the body. But that would leave copious amounts of blood in the vehicle. Sparks stared at the ground and then looked back to Alex. “Stolen car?”
“That’s what I’d do.”
“I’ll have one of the guys check out sto
len vehicles over the last couple days.”
“Excellent. Does ol’ stubby here have a name?”
“Stubby? Oh man, that’s just cold, even for you.” She shook her head. “Anyway, his name is Ben Morgan. He just got out after doing two years for white-collar crime: embezzlement from his former company. He was the CFO and apparently thought he wasn’t making enough.”
“I hope he enjoyed the extra money. It’s the last raise he’s ever going to see. Get it? Raise?”
“You just have no respect, but it’s not hard to see your point.”
“Sparky! Good one,” he laughed. “Okay. Let’s finish up here and let the ME get to work. I’ve got to get to the north side of town.”
“Boss, there’s one more thing that is kind of odd.”
Alex raised his eyebrows. “What?”
“There was a small roll of paper stuffed up his left nostril.”
“Paper?”
“Yes. It had the letter ‘S’ printed on it.” She held up the evidence bag, and the white swatch of paper winked at him, daring him to figure this one out.
Alex’s mind swam. He was the science guy. The profiler and detective gig was where Manny and Sophie came in, but he didn’t have to be a detective to see that this was a message.
He wiped the sweat from his forehead. In his experience, messages from serial killers were akin to drinking Kool-Aid with Jim Jones--really bad medicine.
Chapter-29
Manny walked into Gavin’s office, Sophie trailing behind, and stood silently, taking in the complete and unusual atmosphere of a police chief being shot in his private office. If the top cop in Michigan’s capital wasn’t safe, was anyone, anywhere?
“Kinda creepy,” said Sophie, her voice as soft as a summer breeze.
“That’s one way to put it.” He scratched the stubble of his two-day growth. “How could this happen? I mean, we have security desks on each floor, key cards and passwords just to get through the door. Not to mention the cops assigned to the lobby.”
Manny moved closer to the desk, past the CSU’s yellow numbered evidence markers, and stood in front of Gavin’s large, oak desk. The front of his tan leather chair was stained a deep maroon. The blood had run off the edge, dripping to the carpet and pooling just behind the desk. There were two vacant patterns in the middle of the stain where Gavin’s feet had been, leaving a butterfly-like shape.
To the left of that, on the carpet, rested one of the evidence markers. It was alone, away from the others, and seemed out of place. At first, Manny couldn’t see what it was guarding, but bending closer, he noticed a line of small blood drops, most shaped in oval patterns.
“What is it?” asked Sophie.
“It looks like cast off, maybe from the weapon.”
“Shooter’s blood?”
“I don’t think so. It’s not much, but it might show how close the perp had been to Gavin when he was shot,” answered Manny.
“If the shooter was that near, I mean, close enough to get blood on the gun, then one of two things is probably true,” said Sophie. “He was being held at gun point, or—”
“He knew them,” finished Manny.
He moved the chair and peeked under the desk, near where Gavin’s left leg would normally rest. The emergency button glowed in an intermittent green pattern.
“The Chief didn’t hit the emergency button, which lines up with what the officer on watch said.”
Sophie bent closer to the spatter. “That wraps it up for me; he definitely knew the shooter.”
“Just freaking great. It was someone he knew and apparently trusted. He let them get real close, with no sense of panic or fear.”
Sophie puckered her brow. “Another cop?”
She could be right.
Just then, Buzzy Dancer tiptoed to the door. “Hey guys. Good to have you back. I have the security camera recordings, such as they are, for you to look at.”
She was looking at the ceiling, trying to avoid seeing anything that remotely resembled graphic. No denying her gift with technology, but blood gave her nightmares.
Maybe we all should be more like Buzzy.
“What do you mean, such as they are?” asked Manny.
“They’re all messed up. Come see what I’m talking about, and then I’ll tell you what I think.”
Sophie and he stood over Buzzy’s huge computer monitor and waited as she loaded the video. Her eyes were bloodshot, and she wore almost no makeup, or any of her tart perfume—something Buzzy Dancer never went without.
Manny put his hand on her shoulder. “It’s not your fault, you know that, right?”
The pink-clad computer tech stared a hole through the monitor. A small, desperate sob escaped from somewhere deep in her chest. “I should have been here. I left a little early. First night of bowling. I usually stay until 8:30 or so. Last night I left at 8:00. I . . . I could have helped.”
“You could have just as easily been victim number two,” said Sophie. “Wait, you bowl?”
“Maybe. But I do have a gun, department requirements.” Buzzy flexed her left hand. “I carry a 180 average.”
“Now that’s a wee bit scary,” said Manny.
“My bowling average?”
“No, well, that too, but the whole gun thing.”
Buzzy smiled, putting her hand on Manny’s. “Thanks, both of you.”
The screen sprang to life, showing the outside of the security emergency door on the first floor.
“I checked all of the other feeds and what’s coming up next happened to them all, at exactly the same time. Notice the time stamp in the corner.”
It blinked 8:48, and the screen suddenly went blank, then turned to electronic snow.
“Whoa. That’s not good,” said Sophie. “What happened?”
“Our security system is CCTV, closed circuit television, which means it transmits directly from our cameras to our monitors in the security room. It broadcasts from point to point, making it much tougher to tap into. It’s tons more secure because it’s not blasting a signal that any hacker could pick up.”
Buzzy slurped her coffee. “I had the system run through a complete debug checklist, and there was nothing wrong on our end or with the software vendor’s equipment.”
“So this was an intentional jam? Can that be done?” asked Manny.”
Buzzy was just getting warmed up.
“There was a study done in Australia a few years back. Some PhD students discovered they could jam the security cameras at the local airport with just a PDA.” She grinned at Manny. “Personal Digital Assistant, to you, detective.”
“Learn something every day.”
“Anyway, their research showed, with a little tweaking, they could take down a network in a few seconds, and it was virtually undetectable. The system could then be restored in a heartbeat, making it appear that there had been a network congestion problem. That’s what our incident report showed, even though we’ve never had an interruption like that before.”
She turned back to the screen, fast-forwarding the video. “At exactly 9:01, the feed returned to normal. Thirteen minutes and, tada, it’s like nothing ever happened. Weird as Lady Gaga’s wardrobe.”
“Don’t you have to be some kind of tech guru to pull that off?” asked Manny.
“Nope. Internet sites can show you how, and it’s not very complex. About a two on a scale of ten.”
“So this was a planned hit, and the shooter went the extra mile to make sure no one got a good look at them,” pointed out Manny.
“Up and down four flights, with a close-up shooting sandwiched in, all in thirteen minutes, or less. Damn,” said Sophie.
Manny ran his hand through his hair. “There’s something else here. This looks like the same thing that happened at the White Kitty two nights ago.”
“You mean the security cameras going nuts?” asked Sophie.
“Yeah. Remember what the manager said, that it just popped back on, and they couldn’t find a problem.”<
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“I also remember her asking about your weapon.”
“Really? She asked about your . . . Oh my gosh,” giggled Buzzy.
“Stay on task, ladies.”
“Okay. Okay. So you think the camera thing might be a connection?” asked Buzzy.
“If it smells like crap . . .”
Sophie shook her head. “If you’re right, what links Gavin with the first victim?”
“I don’t know, but that could be the sixty-four-thousand-dollar question.”
The cell phone in Sophie’s pocket rang. She looked at the number. “Josh is returning my call.”
“Let me take it.”
“Hell no. I’m talking to him.”
“Sophie?”
“Manny!”
“Sophie!”
“Fine.” She gave Manny a dirty look and slapped the phone in his hand.
“Josh?”
“Not Sophie?”
“No, it’s me.”
“Has she ever been arrested, like for stalking?”
“Never convicted.”
“That’s a relief. How’s Gavin doing?”
“He’s hanging in there, for now. But it doesn’t look good.”
“Sorry to hear that; he’s a good man.”
Manny let out a breath. “I need your help. We’ve got four murders and another shooting. Three are related, so that makes it a serial-killer problem. It’s like Lansing’s being confused with New York.”
“Three? Not good. I have to talk to you about Argyle anyway. We’ll have him in Miami by tomorrow. After that, Max, Chloe, and I will be there.”
Manny felt his stomach flip when Josh mentioned Chloe’s name. He wondered, briefly, when that would stop. “Excellent. What do you mean, talk about Argyle?”
“It seems he’ll only talk to you and hasn’t spoken a word since he said so. He says he wants to talk about ‘the others.’”
“What others?”
“He wouldn’t say, but you know he’s no altar boy.”
“Could be nothing. Typical for his profile. He still thinks he’s in control. We’ll get to him when the rest of this is over. And Josh?”