The Ninth Life

by E. H. Reinhard

  “Jim,” I said. “This is a work-related call.”

  “Work-related, huh?”

  “Yeah. I’m at a scene that is identical to the first homicide we found courtesy of Larry Koskinen.”

  “What?” he asked.

  “White Acura. Female body in the back, stabbed, nines written on her face in blood.”

  “Seriously?”

  “Yeah. There’s more. The car has a stolen Wisconsin tag and a plate frame with my damn name on it.”

  “What the hell do you make of that?”

  “I don’t know. Some kind of message.”

  “How did you get the call? Did someone report it, or what?” he asked.

  “I got the call straight to my desk. The female confirmed that it was me on the phone and then reported a body at a location before hanging up. It’s the same shit that Koskinen did. I tried calling the number back, no answer. The voice mail that came on belonged to a woman named Erica. What’s going on with Koskinen up there?”

  “Nothing that I know. Still in his little padded room in Madison. Well, I don’t think it’s actually padded. Either way, I have to think that I would have heard something if he wasn’t where he was supposed to be.”

  “Do you mind checking up on that for me? See what you can find linking a female to him.”

  “Yeah, I can make a few calls and see what I can dig up.”

  “I’d appreciate that.” I looked up the street to see a pair of marked patrol cars driving toward me. “Let me know what you get. We’re just getting going on this scene here.”

  “Sure. I’ll give you a ring back a little later.”

  “Thanks, Jim,” I said.

  “Not a problem.”

  I clicked off from the call and stuck my phone back into my pocket. Hank still stood at the rear of the car. I rejoined him, catching another glimpse of our deceased female. “See anything else?” I asked.

  “There’s a strap coming from under her body. It looks like leather.” Hank craned his neck and then moved to the car’s quarter panel to get a different view into the trunk. “She’s lying on a purse.”

  “We’ll get into it after we get the body out,” I said.

  My phone vibrated against my leg. I pulled it out. The screen said that it was the station calling. I clicked Talk.

  “Kane,” I said.

  “It’s Terry. I got some news on a cell phone number that Captain Bostok gave me. He said that I should call you with the results.”

  “Yeah,” I said.

  “That cell phone number belongs to an Erica Osweiler. Right now, the phone’s location is North Jefferson and East Oak. Just a couple miles, if that, from the station.”

  “That’s where I’m standing,” I said. I stared into the trunk and focused on the cell phone. A red light flashed on the phone’s top. “And I’m pretty sure that I’m looking at the phone that made the call. I’ll touch base with you when we get back to the station, Terry. Thanks.”

  I hung up from the call and took my notepad from my pocket. I flipped to the page where I’d written down the caller’s number and punched it into my phone. The call rang once in my ear before the screen on the phone in the trunk lit up and showed my number calling.

  “Shit,” I said. “The call to my desk came from this phone. See if anyone in that record store saw someone near this car in the last hour. Find me something.”

  “Yup,” Hank said and walked to the store.

  I turned to see the patrol cars parked behind the cruiser that Hank and I had arrived in. A pair of officers approached. The one leading was short, husky, and had a brown flat-topped buzz cut—Officer Tony Hersman, a ten-year veteran that had transferred to our department from the Orlando area. As the two crossed the intersection toward me, I got a look at the officer behind him—six foot, average build, short dark hair, and dark sunglasses, Officer Chris Troyer. Troyer was one of our patrol officers that worked SWAT when needed.

  The pair stopped a few feet from the back of the car. I could see Troyer looking past me at the woman in the trunk. Hersman stared off toward the building that Hank was inside, appearing as if he didn’t wish to see the remains.

  “What can we do, Lieutenant?” Troyer asked.

  “Is it just you two, or are more coming?” I asked.

  “We have a few more en route,” Hersman said.

  “Okay. Let’s get your cruisers blocking off the street here. We don’t need anyone driving past and looking at this. As soon as you guys do that, start knocking on doors. Find me someone in this neighborhood that saw something. Tell the other guys from patrol the same.”

  “Got it,” Troyer said.

  “And see if any of these places have any kind of security cameras,” I said.

  The pair went to move their cars.

  Hank walked out from the record store. “Nobody saw anything,” he said. “Just the two employees inside.”

  “Did you get their names and info?” I asked.

  Hank pulled two driver’s licenses from the inner suit pocket of his jacket. “Yeah, I’m going to the car to run these two quick,” Hank said. “Who did you call?”

  “My old partner, Jim. I asked if he could look in on Koskinen. I don’t know.”

  “They damn well didn’t release him, did they?”

  “Zero chance,” I said. “Mental hospital or not, he’s never seeing the light of day again.”

  “You said he killed four women and his parents?”

  “Brutally,” I said. “And he did his damnedest to try to kill me.”

  Chapter 4

  Eve moved her thin, straight blond hair from the side of her round face and peered through the window’s blinds. She held a pair of binoculars to her light blue eyes, focused on the car. It had been fifteen minutes since she’d called Kane’s desk, walked past the Acura, and tossed the phone into the trunk. The house she looked out the window from was for sale, empty, and a block over from where she’d parked the car. Breaking into the home took only a moment. A large plot of vacant land separated the home from the parked Acura. Eve’s field of vision was of the car, three of the four storefronts of the redbrick building behind the Acura, and the back of a yellow house that had been turned into a realty business. Trees and the yellow building blocked her view of anything farther to her right.

  Eve took the binoculars from her face and gave her eyes a rub; they were tired from the little sleep she’d had the night before. After killing the woman and driving to where she’d selected to park the car, she walked the five plus miles back to her condo before calling a cab and having them take her back out to the apartment complex to get her car.

  Eve waited another couple of minutes before a man in a suit caught her attention. She brought the binoculars back up to her face. The man wasn’t Kane. The guy’s shoulders weren’t wide enough, though he did look as though he could have been a detective. Eve watched the man cup his hand around his face and try to get a look into one of the storefronts that was papered over.

  “Hmm,” Eve mumbled. “I wonder if he sent someone else? That’s not as fun.”

  Not more than thirty seconds later, she saw a big bald man in a suit appear from the corner of the yellow building. He turned and looked directly across the vacant parcel of land and straight at the house where she stood. Eve ducked out of instinct, dropping the binoculars to the hardwood floor. She crouched to the side of the window and reached out to steady the hanging blinds from swaying.

  “Shit,” she said. She stared down at the sheath for her knife hanging off her hip.

  Eve needed to find out whether the man had seen her. She scooped up the binoculars from the floor and looked out through the opening of the blinds at the bottom of the window. Eve adjusted the wheel on the binoculars to get a better focus. The man still stood in the same spot. Despite the fact that the man had a thick beard, she was sure that it was the lieutenant. He looked exactly as he did in the photos she’d seen.

  “Well, hello, Lieutenant,” Eve said. “
I hope you didn’t have anything pressing the next few days.”

  She watched as Kane turned and appeared to be speaking with the guy across the street, just a couple of feet from the nose of the car. Eve brought her line of sight back onto the man Kane spoke to. The guy opened the door to the record store, the storefront farthest left on the building, and walked inside.

  She brought her sights back on the lieutenant. He was gone.

  Eve waited.

  The motion of someone crossing the street toward the back of the car caught her eye. Eve yanked the binoculars to see the lieutenant frozen in place at the Acura.

  “See the plate. See the blood,” Eve said.

  She saw Kane wave someone to him. A moment later, the other guy joined him at the rear of the car. Eve saw Kane point at the blood and then knock his fist on the side of the car.

  “Good job, Lieutenant. Now open the trunk. It’s for you. This is all for you.”

  Eve continued to watch. Kane appeared to give the other guy some orders, and he walked away. The lieutenant remained at the back of the vehicle. He made a phone call but still didn’t attempt to open the trunk.

  “Come on. Just open the damn thing,” Eve said.

  He didn’t. Kane stood at the rear of the car and on the phone until the other man, who Eve was then certain was another detective, returned and handed him a pair of gloves.

  “Okay, now open it,” Eve said.

  Kane put the gloves on and lifted the car’s trunk lid.

  “Yes,” she said.

  The lieutenant stared inside of the trunk.

  “Are you putting it all together, Kane? Are you figuring it out? Do you have any idea of what is coming?”

  Kane looked as if he was speaking to the other detective. He took a couple of steps from the back of the car and stood near one of the redbrick building’s storefronts. The other detective remained at the Acura.

  “Okay,” Eve said. She got one last good look at Kane. “We’ll see you soon.”

  With Kane and the other detective preoccupied, she knew this was her window of opportunity to leave before any more police arrived. Eve stood, pulled her phone from her pocket, and dialed. A voice mail played a couple of seconds later.

  “He came and found what I left,” Eve said. “Call me when you can. I love you.”

  She hung up.

  Chapter 5

  Hank and I had stayed on scene for the better part of two hours. We had an ID on our victim, Erica Osweiler, a twenty-three-year-old college student that attended the University of Southern Florida. The car was hers. The cell phone was hers. She’d relocated from West Virginia. The officers out knocking on doors had come up with nothing. No one had seen the car arrive, who parked it, or anyone near the vehicle. We didn’t find any place that had security cameras outside. We remained on location until Ed, our county’s chief medical examiner, removed the body. He’d said that the woman had been killed eight to twelve hours prior. Rick, our department’s forensics lead, had the vehicle towed back to our station’s lab. The time inched up on one in the afternoon.

  I sat across from Captain Bostok at his desk.

  “So how did that call go?” Bostok asked.

  I pulled in a large breath and let it out of my nose. “About what you’d think. Sorry, your twenty-three-year-old daughter was stabbed to death while she was out of state in college.”

  “When are the parents coming?”

  “I spoke with her father. He said that he’d contact the girl’s mother and they’d be on the first flight down. I guess her parents are divorced. Her father did tell me where she was living. He said that she was renting a room from a woman named Billie Webber.”

  “Get a phone number?” Bostok asked.

  “The father didn’t have it. Figured I’d try to get a number on the roommate from the cell phone. If I can’t for some reason, I’ll take a drive over there. Her father gave me the address. The place is off of Livingston, under ten miles from the university.”

  “What do you have Rawlings and Jones on?” Bostok asked.

  “Jones isn’t back from the dentist yet. Hank was down in the forensics department the last I knew.”

  “And Rick?”

  “He wanted to try to get more prints from the car back here in the garage. He lifted a couple sets on scene, which he was going to have Rob start running right away. I haven’t heard anything on that front yet. He also has the phone that called my desk downstairs. Again, he says that there are prints on it, so I imagine it will get printed and passed off to tech to see if they can do anything with it.” I felt my phone vibrate against my leg. I slipped it out and looked at the screen. Jim was calling. “One second, Cap. This is my old partner calling me back. Maybe he has something.”

  I clicked Talk.

  “Yeah, Jim,” I said.

  “Hey, Kane. He’s there. Just like he should be. Nothing sounded off with the assistant director that I spoke to.”

  “So he’s accounted for,” I said.

  “He is.”

  “Okay. Did you find any kind of females that he was in contact with?” I asked.

  “He hadn’t had any visits and isn’t allowed contact with the outside world,” Jim said. “As it was and should be.”

  “What about other guests of the state?”

  “I asked. His contact with other inmates is supervised. The assistant director said that Koskinen, for all intents and purposes, is a model patient, or inmate, or whatever you want to call him. Not a single thing in his file to note. No disciplinary measures, no violations, no anything. You might be dealing with someone who just happened to have some kind of infatuation with Koskinen, or his crimes, and wasn’t in contact with him personally.”

  “Okay,” I said. “All I needed to know.”

  “All right, Kane. That’s about all I have for you. I’m going to have to run here. Give me a ring if you need something else,” Jim said.

  “Yup. Appreciate you looking into it. I’ll be in touch.” I clicked off from the call and looked back at the captain. “Well, it wasn’t Koskinen directly is what it sounds like.”

  “So we’re looking for a copycat,” Bostok said.

  “Appears so.”

  “So if this is directed at you, and someone recreated this guy’s first murder, are you thinking that it’s someone from up there?”

  “Um,” I said, “I haven’t really thought about it. It’s not like the guy is a household name down here. I guess I’d lean more toward someone from up there.”

  “But how are they familiar enough with you to take this shit to you down here? To know that this is where you live now?”

  “Good question,” I said.

  “Family of his, maybe?” Bostok asked.

  “Parents dead. No siblings. He didn’t have a single family member at any of his court proceedings.”

  “Does he get visitors up there?” the captain asked.

  I shook my head. “Not allowed.”

  “Well, I’d keep kicking those kind of questions around. Anyway, so if we’re dealing with a copycat, what’s next?” Bostok asked.

  “More bodies.”

  “Give me some background on this case,” Bostok said.

  “Shit.” I leaned back in the captain’s guest chair and put a leg up over my other knee. “What do you want to know?”

  “Everything. How did it start?”

  “He called the station to report the first. The call just happened to be transferred to my desk. I was a sergeant at the time. I get on the line and a man, Koskinen, introduces himself as the powerful one. He says that he plans to take nine lives and that he’s already taken some. Didn’t give an exact number. He says that he’s left me a body and gives a specific location. He hangs up after that. I go to the location to check it out, and sure as shit, if there isn’t a car parked with a body in the trunk, just like the vic we found this morning.”

  “And the call reporting it,” Bostok said.

  I nodded. “The next day, o
ur station gets another call. He asks for me by name and gets put through to my cell phone. I was out on an investigation. Again, he introduces himself as the powerful one. That time he stayed on the line a bit longer. He was asking questions about me personally before he stated where a body was and hung up. He called two more times after that. Our tech department got some things together to try to see where the calls were coming from, but by the time we got to either of the locations, which were pay phones, he was long gone.”

  “How many did he kill?”

  “Four women in a little over two weeks, but he’d already killed his parents. I’ll get to that in a bit. Anyway, I caught him before he killed the fifth woman.”

  “And they were all stabbed?” Bostok asked.

  “He’d beat them or choke them until they could no longer defend themselves and then would start with the knife. These all happened in 2004. The first one he reported to us was a young woman found in the back of a white Acura—same as today. She’d been stabbed nine times and had nines written in blood on her face. We figure he did it with his finger, though we never did get his print in their blood on any of the victim’s faces. After the first, the next we found in an alley against the side of a building, stabbed nine times, nines written on her face. It went on from there.”

  “What’s the significance of the nines?”

  “He’s some kind of devil worshipper. Or actually, I don’t know what the hell he is. But the number nine has a relationship to Satanism. He has the number nine tattooed all over his body. He has three big nines tattooed on his back and three on his face, one under each eye and another on his forehead, the same as he’d put on the women. From his fingertips to his shoulders were tattoo sleeves, all satanic, if you want to call it that, in nature—pentagrams and the like. Covering his entire chest and stomach was a huge elk tattoo. The elk was seated on a throne and holding a scepter. There was a flame between its horns.”

  “How the hell does an elk hold a scepter, having hooves?” Bostok asked.

  “I’m pretty sure logic, or realism, wasn’t playing into the tattoo selection,” I said.