Fifteen Times a Killer

by Alan McDermott

  The thought made him chuckle, but only for a moment. He had to be serious. It was so close now, and he couldn’t mess this up.

  Think, Benning. Think!

  He’d watched her plenty of times. When was her phone available? She always had it on the table when she was eating lunch, her eyes glued to the screen. He’d seen her do that every time she visited a coffee shop.

  And she usually sat outside.

  But he needed a distraction. How could he get her to take her eyes off it long enough for him to complete his task?

  He got up and walked around the room, doing circuits of the couch. It always helped him think.

  Come on, come on. It’s in there, I know it…

  It came to him in a flash.

  The bag!

  She always had that oversized purse on the table next to her. It was huge, big enough to carry her essentials for a two-week vacation. The bag was the key.

  But it would have to involve someone else. That was fine. He’d find the right person easily enough, maybe at the local drama school. Give them some bullshit about trying to impress a woman and pay them a couple of hundred bucks for five minutes of their time.

  Yes, that would work.

  And it didn’t matter if they went to the police after he’d taken number fifteen, because by then it would be too late. His job would be almost done.

  Except, he had to get number fourteen to play along, too.

  He didn’t try to plan that one out. Not yet. He would play fifteen over and over in his head until he had his actions committed to memory. Then he would practice his moves. Once he knew it would work, he’d think about the other one.

  His gaze returned to the TV. The man he’d framed was called Ted Shearer, according to a neighbor. Nice guy, quiet, kept himself to himself. The woman from next door said it was scary to think she’d been living next to a serial killer all those years.

  Someone’s already judged poor Ted, Seth thought.

  He gave himself another five minutes, then turned it off and went to his spare bedroom, the one he used as an office. On the computer screen were the first few paragraphs of chapter thirteen. Once it was finished, he’d send the next one to Jess. Number eight. But he would wait until tomorrow at the very least. If he sent it now, Agent Stone would know she had the wrong man. No, he would sit on it for now, but then he’d have to up the pace. There weren’t many days left, and so much of his story was still to tell.

  But only one more chapter to finish. Fourteen and fifteen were the first to be completed, the ones he’d been looking forward to all this time. The rest were to get his point across, but these were the big ones.

  He’d had to renumber them because of Miriam Crane’s passing. He’d originally planned to make twenty kills, a nice round number, but her death meant five people would be spared his wrath. It was either that or risk getting caught before he completed his mission, and that couldn’t happen

  And then his mother would be avenged. The people who’d done it to her would be punished, and they’d know the reason he’d done it.

  They had to know.

  They had to feel it.

  Chapter 27

  Jess was pissed.

  Pissed because Corrina hadn’t given her a heads-up on the arrest the previous day. She’d only found out about it on the morning news, and when she called Corrina Stone, she got nothing useful. Ted Shearer was claiming his innocence, but that was all the agent would reveal.

  Which in turn made Lehane pissed, because Jess was supposed to be cozy with the FBI, and the editor took it out on his new star reporter.

  Claire was pissed because…well, Jess didn’t care. Maybe she wasn’t getting any. Maybe she was, but it was from Lehane.

  With such a toxic atmosphere, the newsroom wasn’t a good place to be.

  Jess had told her boss that she planned on working from home, but he nixed the idea. He said he wanted her here, ready to react in case the feds revealed another surprise that she was supposed to be in on, not sitting at home with her thumb up her ass.

  Jess tried to make the best of it. She had her headphones on, an eighties rock compilation blasting in her ears, but that only made concentration harder. Her current task was looking for background on Shearer, but he didn’t have much of an online footprint. Standard Facebook page with updates on meals he’d eaten, places he’d visited and of course plugs for his electrical contractor business. From the interviews she’d seen on TV, the neighbors wouldn’t be able to shed much light on his life. He was a loner according to most of them, and she got the impression they’d all marked him as guilty before he would even see a courtroom.

  She’d know soon enough. Corrina had promised to call the moment he was charged, giving her yet another scoop. It might just be enough to get Lehane off her back, if only temporarily. He’d made it clear that he wanted miracles every day. For the money he was paying her, he expected nothing less.

  Jess began another search, but her heart wasn’t in it. She sent an email to Lehane saying she was going for her daily meeting with Stone, then picked up her bag and walked out of the office before he could reply.

  When she got to the bureau building, she had to go through the usual routine. Announce herself to the receptionist, then take a seat until Stone came to collect her. While she waited, she checked her emails, anticipating a shitty reply from her boss.

  She wasn’t expecting to see one from Fifteen-X.

  Unless he’d set up his email client to send it out at a pre-arranged time, Ted Shearer wasn’t the killer.

  When Corrina arrived in reception, Jess jumped to her feet.

  “I can’t do this today,” Corrina said. “I’ve got a suspect in a cell and we’re going to interview him again in an hour. I just came back to grab some papers to show him.”

  “You’ve got the wrong man,” Jess said.

  “Yeah, he thinks that as well.”

  Jess was enjoying this. It was payback for being kept out of the loop on the arrest. “How does he send his emails?”

  “From a cell phone,” Corrina said.

  “And he’s got one on him right now?”

  “Of course not.”

  Jess held out her phone. “Then explain this.”

  Corrina took it, and her brow furrowed. She walked into the office, Jess following. At Corrina’s desk, the agent unlocked her screen and checked her email. Sitting there was the forwarded message from Jess’s account.

  “I don’t understand. It can’t be him. It must be a copycat, or some nut pretending to be him.” She looked at Jess. “This is what happens when the story hits the newspapers. Cranks crawl out of the woodwork and make our jobs hell. We waste valuable resources chasing down every lead when they could be doing something productive.”

  “There’s one way to find out,” Jess said. “I’ll go to the scene and see if there’s a pair of crossed sticks. If there are, we know the killer’s still on the loose, because that was never mentioned in my articles.”

  Corrina weighed up the idea, then nodded. “Okay, I’ll send Josh to check it out.”

  “I can go,” Jess suggested. A miserable hike in the woods was infinitely more appealing than going back to the newsroom. “I know what to look for, and I won’t trample all over the scene. You said it yourself, you need everyone here.”

  There was another pause while Corrina mulled the suggestion over. “Fine,” she said. “I’ll get McCrae to arrange a uniform to meet you. Where exactly is it?”

  Jess opened the What3Words app and entered the code from the email. “About a mile north of Glendora Ridge Road in Angeles National park.”

  “I’ll make sure someone’s there in ninety minutes.”

  “Thanks,” Jess said, shouldering her bag.

  “And don’t go wandering off on your own. Wait for the cop. Understood?”

  “Jeez. Yes, Mom.”

  “I’m serious, Jess.”

  Jess sighed. “I’m sorry. Everything’s just been a pain in the ass
today. I should have listened to my dad and followed him into the family business. How stressful can it be to make rocket fins?”

  “I know what you mean. Sometimes I wish I’d chosen law instead of this. At least in a courtroom I know who the suspect is. My job is to find one man in a city of millions.”

  Jess put her hand on Corrina’s arm. “You’ll get him. I know it.”

  She turned and left, eager to know if the killer’s trademark sticks were where she expected them to be. If they were, she’d have the scoop she—and Lehane—craved.

  * * *

  Corrina watched Jess leave, then printed out the email and attachment. She didn’t bother forwarding it to Unger—he’d set up Jess’s client so that he automatically got a bcc copy himself. She did send it to McCrae, though.

  “Josh, Hank, task force room,” Corrina shouted as she walked to Travis’s office. She stuck her head in and gave him an update, then called McCrae.

  “Guess what just came in,” she said.

  “Our reservations for dinner tonight?”

  Corrina held back a laugh. She wanted to call him an asshole, but kept that in reserve, too. She didn’t want to make him think twice about being the way he was. If anything, she wanted to encourage his playful nature. Now wasn’t the moment, though.

  “We’ll see, after I’ve read chapter eight.”

  “You’re kidding. That means…”

  “Maybe, or it could be a crackpot looking for attention. You should have it now.”

  “I’m away from my desk,” he told her.

  “No problem. Read it and get back to me. Oh, and Jess is going up to the grave site to check for those crossed sticks. Can you send a uniform to keep an eye on her?”

  “Sure. Give me the location.”

  Corrina read it off, and a few moments later he said he had it.

  “Okay. Later.”

  She joined her colleagues and handed them copies of the printout.

  “Does this mean we’re cutting Shearer loose?” Josh asked after reading the title.

  Possibly, Corrina thought. Shearer had been co-operative so far. He hadn’t known his whereabouts on the dates the women went missing, but Corrina would have had trouble remembering what she’d done on a certain date three months ago, never mind ten years.

  He hadn’t been able to provide an alibi for the previous Friday. He claimed not to enjoy socializing—which he pointed out wasn’t a crime—so there was no one who could say for sure that he hadn’t been out murdering people. He’d been at home on that day, he said, watching an old movie on the TV. They were in the process of getting his Netflix activity log to verify that. It didn’t mean he watched it, though. He could have just left the TV on when he went out. She’d asked about the film and he’d told them the basics of the story, but it was over twenty years old, so he could have seen it several times before.

  As for a GMC, he didn’t have one or know anyone who had one. He drove an F150 as both his work and personal vehicle.

  The search of his house came up empty, too, and it was his only residence.

  In fact, the only thing tying him to the murders was a receipt found with the body, and he claimed anyone could have picked it up and dropped it in the grave.

  Combine all that with his nervous yet amiable demeanor and Corrina was beginning to believe him.

  She took a seat. “We’ll see.”

  Chapter 28

  Chapter Eight

  There’s no smoke without fire.

  Natalie Coleman (née Shaw) knew this, because I went to great lengths to explain it to her as she lay on the table of doom.

  Do you like that name? I just came up with it.

  The fire I’m talking about is the one that ravaged California a few years ago. I say fire, but it was more like fires, because it wasn’t the first caused by the company her father ran.

  Yeah, I know I said I’d let Jess reveal the reason for killing the rest of the victims, back in Chapter Six, but I had to speak up on this one. It really yanks my chain.

  John Shaw was the CEO of West Coast Gas & Electric, a utility company that decided that issuing dividends was more important than maintaining its infrastructure. Of course, it was. The executives are paid bonuses in corporate shares—amounting to about 120% of their salary—so if they issue dividends, the men at the top get rich. Stinking rich. Does it matter that the lines they failed to maintain spark forest fires that cost people their lives and homes? No, not at all. Transformer twenty-five years past its replacement date? Not an issue. It’s worked up to now, it’ll probably be fine. And spending money on cutting back trees so that they don’t short the line is out of the question. Yes, it’s part of the company mandate, but it costs money, you know what I mean?

  Imagine an airline skimping on maintenance and one of their planes crashes. Uproar, yes? Well what if they still didn’t do maintenance and planes fell out of the sky every six months. There’d be hell to pay.

  Not for West Coast G&E. After the first fire was attributed to their power lines, they did nothing. Then another fire. And another. And another. It went on and on, until one particular fire killed 85 people and destroyed over 18,000 properties. In the prior two years, West Coast paid out over $1.6 BILLION in dividends, money that could have been spent on safety and replacing their old infrastructure.

  Instead, it went in the CEO’s pocket.

  Look what it cost you, John Shaw. What I did to your daughter is your fault. Your greed is the reason she died.

  And do you know one of the things that really pisses me off every time I hear it?

  Customer safety is our number one priority.

  I call bullshit on that every time.

  Picture a company founder asking a bank to finance their venture.

  Founder: I’d like to borrow $3 million for a business idea.

  Bank: What sort of business?

  Founder: Selling a product I invented.

  Bank: What are your projected profits?

  Founder: Nothing. Our focus is customer safety.

  BULL. SHIT!

  Every business’s number one priority is to make money. End of. Period. No-one goes into business to ensure customer safety, or customer satisfaction. No-one.

  One day I’d love to see a reporter hear that phrase and respond with: How much did your company make last year in profit? And when the CEO replies, they should ask why it wasn’t all reinvested in customer safety. I’ll tell you why. Because they have to line the CEO’s pockets and those of the investors. THAT is their priority. Nothing and no-one else.

  I explained all this to Natalie as she lay helpless on the table. As I took off each finger and toe with practiced ease, I read out the number of people who had been affected by the twenty worst fires caused by her father’s actions.

  That was a lot of people. Daddy wasn’t affected, obviously. No, he’d bought a home here in LA, away from the fires up north. He wasn’t stupid.

  That wasn’t all I did, though, John. I didn’t just cut her fingers and toes off as she bellowed into the night. I put a car jack between her knees and expanded it, and expanded it, until I heard a satisfying CRACK! I peeled the skin off her face, her arms, her legs, her breasts, and poured rubbing alcohol onto the exposed flesh.

  I tormented her for nine hours, John. She pleaded and begged, first for her life, and eventually for death. But I didn’t accommodate her. I told her about the fire, then gave her some of her own, running a blowtorch up and down the length of her body. Not an inch was spared the flame, John.

  And I didn’t wait for her to die before cutting her up. No, I used a chainsaw to cut off her arms, and then her legs. Then she was just a body, bobbing up and down on the table, unable to do anything as I cut out her tongue, her eyes. I popped the first one out and turned it around so that she could see herself.

  She didn’t like what she saw, I can tell you.

  Then I just sat back and waited for her to go. She’d lost a lot of blood by this point, so it didn�
�t take long.

  I hope you think about her every time you check your bank balance, John Shaw. Every time you spend a nickel, think about how you earned it.

  Think about what it cost.

  And everyone else with the same mindset as John, be warned: I may be the first to make a real stand against your kind, but I’m damn sure I won’t be the last.

  Chapter 29

  “What about March 17th, 2015?” Corrina asked.

  Ted Shearer fell back in his chair and sighed. “I’ve already told you, I have absolutely no idea what I was doing five years ago. I could have been in a bar, or home watching TV. I don’t keep a diary.”

  The compliant attitude was gone, and Corrina couldn’t blame him. He’d been between the cell and the interview room for the last thirty hours, and his patience looked to have finally run out.

  “Interview terminated, ten-seventeen.”

  Corrina Stood while McCrae turned off the voice recorder. They left the room and a uniform went in to return Shearer to his cell.

  “We’re gonna have to kick him,” Corrina said as they walked to the coffee machine. “All we’ve got is the receipt, and that’s not enough to charge him. Even the most incompetent public defender could have that tossed as circumstantial.”

  “I’d like to have one more go,” McCrae said as he turned his cell back on. He always switched it off before going into the interview room. “He’s starting to crack.”

  “Okay. We’ll give him an hour to eat, then get him back in.”

  A detective stepped out of a doorway. “Mac! Someone wants to see you. Front desk.”

  McCrae handed Corrina a worn dollar bill. “You know how I like it.”

  While Corrina fed the money into the machine and made her selections, McCrae disappeared toward the front of the building. She took a sip of her coffee as her phone rang. She checked the screen and saw that it was Jess.

  “Did you find anything?” she asked.

  “The sticks are there,” Jess said.

  “Okay. Stay back and ask the officer there to tape the area off.”