by S. C. Stokes
“Agent Collins!” Bishop exclaimed
Lying in the tub was a man. In his white shirt and tie he looked out of place.
“Easy, Bishop,” the man called out with his hands up. “Pretty sure the killer’s already gone. Once I started firing back, he lost interest fast.”
Kasey followed Bishop over to the tub. A pool of red became visible in the base of the bath.
“You’re hit!” Bishop exclaimed.
Collins had his hand pressed against his side, his fingers and the lower portion of his shirt stained red. “Yeah, he winged me as I came through the door. He mustn’t have been expecting me. I got a few shots off and managed to make it in here.
“He shot up the door, but I was in the tub so I’m fine. I put another one through the door and he thought better of coming through it. The place has been quiet for a few minutes. I figured I’d wait for some backup before moving just in case.”
“You don’t need backup, you need a hospital,” Kasey began, handing her gun to Bishop.
“Aw, it’s not that bad,” Collins replied. “I’ve certainly had worse. Pretty sure this one went straight through.”
Kasey slid past Bishop, knelt and examined the wound in Collin’s side. “Sure did, genius. So that hand of yours isn’t doing a whole lot. We need to get you out of the tub and stitched up before you bleed out.”
“No rest for the weary, huh?” Collins replied, trying to force a smile. “Who are you, anyway?”
“My apologies,” Bishop interjected. “Agent Collins, meet Kasey Chase. She’s our medical examiner and for the time being my crime scene tech as well. She’s been assisting me with the case and if she says you need a hospital, Collins, that’s where you are going.”
Kasey chimed in, “I’m telling you, Collins, you’ve lost a lot of blood. If we don’t get you stitched up, I’ll be giving you a second opinion…when you’re lying on the table in the morgue. Now stop being stubborn and let us help you out of that tub.”
Collins was determined to get out on his own but his arm failed him and he fell backward against the tub. “Ow,” was all he could manage through his gritted teeth.
Relenting, he reached out with his good hand. Kasey took his hand and Bishop hooked under his arm, and they heaved him to his feet.
“What happened to the others?” Collins asked. “Are they…”
“Dead,” Bishop finished. “All of them. What the hell happened here?”
“The officers were escorting the woman here to pick up some medication and supplies. We had barely got inside the apartment when the shooting started. Big fella in a trench coat and ski mask came bursting out of the bedroom. Had some sort of machine pistol, hosed us down good. I managed to get off a couple of shots as I dived behind the couch. When he ducked into the kitchen, I made my way in here and shut the door. I’m sorry I couldn’t reach the others. They were too exposed.”
“Trying would have only got you killed, Collins. Let’s get you downstairs. The paramedics will be here soon. They’ll get you stitched up.”
Kasey and Bishop helped Collins out of the bathroom and into the living room.
“Shouldn’t we check the rest of the apartment first?” Kasey asked.
“No need, Kasey,” Bishop replied. “If he was here, we’d know about it. He’d have already taken a shot at us. Besides Tac. Support will be here any moment. They’ll sweep the entire building, just to be safe. Let’s get Collins to the paramedics and make sure he’s stable first.”
Kasey nodded and together they helped Collins out of the apartment and into the elevator. At the bottom, they helped him out the lobby and down the front steps of the apartment building.
The street was packed now. One S.W.A.T van had arrived, its officers disembarking and preparing to enter the building. A cordon of police vehicles blocked the street and in the distance, the lights and sirens of an ambulance made its way down the street toward them.
One of the S.W.A.T troopers strode over to Bishop. “What have we got, detective?”
“One shooter, heavily armed, likely machine pistols. Shot up an apartment on the second floor. We have two officers down along with a civilian. Shooter hasn’t been seen in some time. It’s possible he’s already escaped but we need to be sure.”
“We’ll sweep the building. We’ve secured the perimeter. If he’s still inside, he’s not getting out.”
“Take him alive if you can, Sergeant. We’ve a lot of questions we need answered.”
The Sergeant nodded. “We’ll do our best, detective. Armed like that though there is no guarantee. If he fires on us, he’ll be neutralized immediately. We’ll not be burying any more of our men today.”
The ambulance made its way through the police cordon and Kasey waved it down.
As the paramedics disembarked, Kasey briefed them, “This is Agent Collins of the FBI. He’s taken a round to the right external oblique. We have an exit wound so it looks like the bullet has passed straight through. He’s lost a lot of blood though.”
The paramedic bent down and examined the wound before nodding. “We’ll take him from here. Don’t worry, Agent Collins. We’ll have you stitched up in no time, then it’s off to the hospital for further testing.”
Two of the paramedics unloaded a gurney from the van and Agent Collins was helped onto it.
The lead paramedic, a rotund man in his 30’s, looked at Bishop. “We heard there was an officer down. Is he still inside?”
Bishop’s face was downcast as she replied, “We have two men down inside, along with another victim. But they’re already dead. There is nothing you can do for them. Get this man to the hospital now.”
“It’s true,” Kasey added. “The three of them have been shot to ribbons. They have no pulse and haven’t had one for the ten or so minutes we’ve been here. There is nothing more that we can do for them.”
“But you can ensure this Federal Agent doesn’t join them,” Bishop replied. “So please, get him to the hospital now.”
“Aw, Bishop, I didn’t know you cared,” Collins replied.
Bishop smiled, a rare thing. Kasey didn’t need to be prescient to know what was coming next.
“Don’t flatter yourself, Collins. I can’t have my inter-agency liaison dying on me… far too much paperwork.”
Collins laughed, then grunted in pain. The head paramedic looked at the wounded agent again before replying, “If you insist. We’re out of here. Load him up, folks.”
The paramedics slid the gurney into the back of the ambulance and in moments it was snaking its way through the police cordon.
Kasey turned to Bishop and smiled.
“What on Earth are you smiling about?” Bishop asked.
“Well, I was joking about Mr. husky voice at the station but I’m not now. I’ve never seen you so worked up…”
“Kasey…” Bishop began.
“Oh, come on, Bishop. Tall, blond, and handsome there, he’s totally into you. If he weren’t in that suit, he’d look like a lifeguard from summer break.”
“Kasey, don’t you dare…” Bishop headed for the squad car.
“Don’t what?” Kasey teased as she followed her partner. “You were thinking it. I don’t blame you either. I’d let him give me some mouth to mouth any day.”
Bishop spun around, the color rising in her cheeks. “Kasey, if you don’t cut it out, I’ll shoot you myself.”
“If you do, just make sure you pop me in the same ward as Agent Collins.
Bishop threw up her hands in submission as Kasey’s phone rang.
“Saved by the bell,” Kasey chimed as she answered the call.
“Kasey, it’s Vida. You need to see this.”
Chapter Seventeen
Kasey burst into the morgue.
“What have you got for us, Vida?” Looking around, she stopped dead. There was paperwork on every surface of the usually pristine room. Vida had purloined a white board from somewhere else in the station and was hastily scrawling notes across it
. “What on earth happened here?”
Vida looked up from the white board. “Oh, Kasey, sorry, I didn’t see you come in.” He looked around the room. “Yeah, my apologies for the mess. I’ve been analyzing the dossiers on the killer’s targets. I needed a little more room to delve into each of them.”
Kasey made her way over to the board. “Found something interesting?”
Vida nodded. “A great deal actually. At first, I thought we were dealing with a killer who is working on a physical profile, hence why all of our victims look so similar.
“In cases such as these, it is easy to draw the conclusion that the killer is trying to right some sort of sleight in his past. Maybe he was rejected by a woman. After killing her, he finds that he is still angry, so he continues to kill women who resemble the one that first wronged him, at least in his mind anyway. At least, that is how these cases present initially.
“But two things have always bothered me with that hypothesis. First, the cold clinical nature of the killings. Murders that are crimes of passion are messy, the first is certainly. Each of the crime scenes we’ve seen have been clean, not a shred of discernible evidence left to give us a clue of the killer’s identity.
“The second is the changing nature of the murder weapons. In the first, our killer used his bare hands and immense strength to kill the victim. In the second he used a car. Why? It makes no sense. Using a car adds evidence we could trace. Indeed, it led us to his lair at Hudson Road. There he seems to have disemboweled the owner like a wild bear.
“If it weren’t for the similar appearance of the first two victims, we wouldn’t have even known what we were dealing with. Did I hear correctly that there was an attack on one of the other targets today?”
“Yes. Kelly Sachs. Kelly and her police escort were gunned down in her apartment. They were picking up some medication for her, but the killer was waiting. Gunned down the three of them in her living room,” Kasey answered, depressed that another body had been added to the growing tally.
“Gunned down you say?” Vida asked.
“Yes, some sort of machine pistol at close range. The three of them were dead when we arrived. Yet another weapon, a little less messy than his previous victims,” Kasey concluded.
“But effective nonetheless,” Vida responded as he flipped through the folders on the table. “Kellie Sachs, you said?”
Kasey nodded, but realized Vida had his head buried in the folder. “Yeah it was Kellie.”
“Aha,” Vida shouted, clutching a piece of paper. “She suffered from diabetes. The killer knew sooner or later she’d need her meds. That’s why he went after her next. With us scooping up the other victims, it was the most predictable target. All he had to do was wait.”
“Any idea of who he might go after next, Vida? If this guy isn’t afraid of killing police, none of these girls are safe. Even in custody. We need to grab this guy the next time he sticks his neck out.”
“I’ll keep looking, Kasey. In the meantime, you should know… I think he’s on some sort of deadline…” Vida heard it as soon as the words had left his mouth. “Sorry, no pun intended.”
“What do you mean a deadline?” Kasey asked.
“Well, normally you would expect a serial killer to go to ground as soon as they attract any attention from the police. They know that with increased scrutiny they are sure to be caught eventually.
“So normally they go quiet until the heat dies down. That or they move to a new city and start again. This guy, in spite of all the attention, is only becoming bolder. Now he is killing police to get through to his victims. It’s a level of determination beyond what you would expect to find. It’s dangerous, for us and the killer.
“The fact that he is accelerating his plans in the face of growing danger means he has some sort of time line he needs to meet. On top of that, the fact that he has stayed in New York City means these targets are not random. He’s not just killing young twenty-something brunettes that look alike. He’s killing these ones in particular.”
Kasey nodded along with Vida’s analysis. It made sense.
With Arthur Ainsley’s warning ringing in her ears, she asked, “We need a why, Vida. Why is he killing these women?”
She was desperate for any clue that might help her save the girls—and herself.
Kasey feared the reason might be beyond Vida’s understanding. Knowing the Werewolf was a magical creature opened a new realm of possibilities, ones Vida would not be familiar with.
Neither am I.
For the millionth time this week, she regretted just how little she knew about the world of Magic.
To her surprise, Vida had an answer. “Well, it took me most of the night and all of this morning to figure it out, but I believe I’ve found the common denominator in all of these targets.”
Kasey took heart. “What did you find?”
Vida’s cocky smile returned. “As I read through each of the target dossiers I kept running into the same piece of shared history.”
“What was it?” Kasey asked, excited that they were getting somewhere at last.
“Not a single one of these girls is a New York City native,” Vida replied. “Each and every one of them migrated here from somewhere else in the USA. Not a single one was born here. Do you know what the chance of that is? The chance that of twenty randomly selected New York City residents that not one of them would be a native?”
“One in a million?” Kasey volunteered, taking a stab in the dark. She preferred medicine to math.
“More like one in billions, Kasey,” Vida answered, tapping the folders. “This is no coincidence. This is the link. The killer is looking for someone in particular. He may not know who they are, but he knows roughly what they might look like and he knows they have moved to New York and are in their late 20s. I think he is hunting someone in particular.”
The revelation was a relief to Kasey. She’d been scooped into the pool of targets because she’d moved to New York after leaving the Academy. There was nothing in her past that would justify sending a killer after her. He must be looking for one of the other girls.
“Great work, Vida. Now we just have to find out which one he is looking for and what it is they know. Perhaps they witnessed a crime, and someone is cleaning up after themselves.”
“They’re certainly casting a wide net, Kasey, and they aren’t shy about it. Killing twenty women just to make sure you got the one you’re looking for… seems excessive,” Vida replied.
Kasey nodded along to Vida’s analysis. “Well, if we can solve this case, perhaps we will solve another as well. Clearly one of these girls is sitting on something useful. Now we just need to squeeze it out of them.”
“Yeah that’s the same thing Collins said,” Vida replied. “Speaking of, where is our towering inter-agency liaison?”
“In the hospital. He was trying to interview Kelly when they were attacked. Took a bullet in the guts for his trouble.”
“Oh, that’s awful,” Vida replied. “Poor guy has only been here for a day. Bit of a rough start.”
“Yeah, Bishop is up briefing the chief right now. Doesn’t look good when one of the FBI get shot on our watch. Bishop didn’t relish the thought of having to tell the chief.”
“Yeah…the chief. I wouldn’t want to trade places with her now, that’s for sure,” Vida said, shaking his head. “You don’t mess with West. Everyone knows that.”
Kasey nodded. With Bishop on the 4th floor and her injunction not to leave the station, Kasey was stuck.
Pulling up a chair, she lifted one of the manila folders off the table. “Mind if I take a look?”
“Not in the least. Maybe you’ll spot something I missed,” Vida replied, returning to his white board.
Kasey picked up the file and then placed it back down. Rummaging through the pile, she located the one she was looking for: Elizabeth Morrison’s dossier.
For some reason, he chose Beth first. If what Vida says about a deadline is true, some
thing about Beth must have stuck out as the most prominent target.
She began digging through the folder. Much of it she was already familiar with. Beth’s work history and relationship status, she was all too familiar with.
Thinking about Brad, Kasey felt a twinge of guilt. He might have been a dropkick but due to Kasey’s actions he was now in a mental hospital with his memories wiped, courtesy of the ADI. He didn’t deserve that. She made a mental note to be more cautious in her assessments in the future.
She continued reading and found a post-it note Vida had left in the file. ‘Moved to NYC’ was hastily scrawled across it. She scanned through the dossier. To her surprise, Beth Morrison had moved to New York in her teens. She had lived with her aunt until she had finished school. According to the file, most of her family lived in Los Angeles.
Kasey compared herself to the young woman to see if she could add anything further. The pair of them had moved to New York at roughly the same age, and both of them shared the same first name, or at least they had until Kasey had changed hers from Beth to Kasey. Reaching the end of the file, Kasey flipped it shut. That was about as far as the similarities went.
She grabbed the second file. It belonged to Brandy Cahill. Contrary to Beth Morrison, Kasey had almost nothing at all in common with Brandy besides physical appearance. From work history to food preferences, Kasey couldn’t find another single similarity.
Eventually, Kasey made her way to the end of the file where she spotted another one of Vida’s notes. ‘Born and raised in South Dakota. Moved to New York City.’
South Dakota. Now that’s interesting. She hadn’t known that before. South Dakota and its famous Mount Rushmore were home to the Academy of Magic; it was one of the Arcane Council’s best kept secrets.
Kasey had lived there herself as a student in her teens. I wonder if Brandy was a witch? While not an observation she could share with Vida, it may have accounted for why the killer had elected to run her down with a car rather than get too close.
She rifled through the folder and found Kelly Sachs’s. She had moved to New York City from Florida and had only been living in the city for three years. Reaching her work history, Kasey found something: Kelly had worked as an instructor in a local Kung-fu Dojo. It seemed the recently deceased young woman shared Kasey’s passion for martial arts.