Fifteen Times a Killer

by Alan McDermott

  The silence on the other end of the call was telling. Corrina was already livid before he replied.

  “Yeah, so I hired him. It’s not a crime.”

  “You fucking idiot! Do you realize how close I came to shooting that prick in the head? What were you thinking? I’m in the middle of an intense investigation and you think it’s a good idea to have strangers following me? Christ, you are the dumbest fuck I’ve ever known!”

  Corrina was surprised at her own outburst. Still, she felt her ex-husband deserved every expletive and more.

  “I had a right to know what you were getting up to,” Mike said.

  “No, Mike, you gave up that right when you walked out. You filed for divorce and you’re gonna get one. We are through, don’t you get it?”

  “If you were having an affair, that’s still relevant. Why don’t you just admit it?”

  It struck Corrina that he was recording the call. The sneaky bastard wanted to use it in the divorce proceedings to get custody of Connor. If that was the case, she’d give him something to take to his lawyer. She composed herself before answering.

  “For the record, I never had an affair while we were dating or when we were married. I haven’t been with anyone since you and I split up. And the reason we broke up was because you got it into your head that I was seeing someone when I wasn’t. Now that we are officially separated, however, I am free to do what I please. If I choose to book a hotel room tonight and fuck McCrae Loney, there’s not a damn thing you can do about it!”

  “I notice you didn’t ask about your son,” Mike said, and Corrina gripped the phone tight, her anger at his manipulation beyond anything she’d experienced before. He was only saying this for the recording, and she wasn’t going to give him the satisfaction of apologizing.

  “I called and asked about him this morning, remember? Or weren’t you recording that call? This call was to see if you’d wasted police and FBI time and resources, and it turns out you did. I’m going to leave it with LAPD to decide whether to charge you. Have a good day, Mike, and say Hi to my son for me. Tell him I love him.”

  She ended the call, happy to have gotten in the final blow, but still pissed at him for leading her on a wild goose chase. She’d let the threat of arrest hang over him for now. Maybe tomorrow, too. Hell, she might leave it a week, then send a couple of uniforms round to his place just to scare the shit out of him.

  Corrina was suddenly tired. It was a crappy end to a shitty day.

  She went back into the interview room, where McCrae was inspecting his fingernails and Tanner was staring at the door intently.

  “So?” the suspect asked.

  “My husband confirmed that he hired you,” she said.

  Tanner slapped the table. “I told ya. I guess I’m free to go.”

  “Not so fast,” McCrae told him. “You’re clear for the Fifteen-X killings, but you’re still on the hook for reckless driving. You caused a crash. Two people were seriously injured.”

  The smug look remained. “Only because I was running from an unknown madman with a gun.”

  “Yeah, you said that. But you also said you were paid to follow us, and you’d have to be the dumbest PI in the world not to know that I’m a cop and she’s FBI. If her husband didn’t tell you, it would be the first thing a PI would determine. That means you knew I was a cop and you ran anyway. That makes you liable for the crash. We’re also gonna check with the Bureau of Security and Investigative Services to make sure you’ve got a license to operate in California.”

  “He hasn’t,” Corrina said, her eyes still on Tanner. “It would have been flagged when we dug into his background.”

  Tanner’s mouth opened and closed as he sought a suitable reply, but Corrina didn’t feel like waiting around to hear it. “Don’t worry, you’ll have a chance to convince a jury that you’re so incompetent, you didn’t know that you were tailing two law enforcement officials.” She turned to McCrae. “Hand him off to a uniform. I’m beat.”

  “Interview terminated, 23:47.” McCrae turned off the recorder. “Game, set and match, asshole. You should have stuck to frisking old ladies at the store.”

  They left the room, and an officer escorted Brian Tanner to a cell.

  “You wanna ride home?” Corrina asked McCrae as they walked to the exit.

  “Nah, it’s out of your way. I’ll get a cab.”

  “Nonsense. Process Tanner and I’ll meet you in the lobby.”

  Corrina had to wait forty minutes for McCrae to show. He apologized for the delay but she brushed it off. She knew how things worked, and McCrae would follow the rules to the letter to ensure Tanner didn’t walk on a technicality.

  “I can’t believe Mike did that to me,” Corrina said as she drove toward McCrae’s home in Mar Vista. She told him about the conversation she’d had with her estranged husband.

  “I have to agree,” McCrae said. “It was an asshole move.”

  “Now I understand why Mike kept saying ‘I know everything’ the last time he showed at the house. I can’t help wondering how long Tanner was following me. Following us.”

  “It doesn’t matter now. Mike’s not stupid enough to try that again.”

  Corrina chuckled. “We can only hope.”

  When she pulled up outside McCrae’s home, Corrina shut off the engine.

  “You wanna come in for a coffee?” he asked her. “It’ll help keep you awake on the drive home.”

  Corrina was sorely tempted. She’d thought about this moment since the day they’d reconnected, but with a serial killer on the loose and her husband’s behavior, it just didn’t feel right.

  “I live fifteen minutes from here,” she smiled. “Besides, I don’t wanna wake Jean. That would be awkward.”

  “You won’t. She’s in Vegas with her sister. They flew out this afternoon.” He put his hand on hers. “But you don’t have to if you don’t want to.”

  Corrina knew what he was saying: we can wait if you’re not ready to do this.

  “One cup,” she said.

  She locked the car and they walked to the door. The moment McCrae closed it after him, Corrina attacked. She backed him up against the wall and pressed her lips to his, her hands gripping his face and her body pushing against him. McCrae responded, his tongue searching hers out. Corrina felt his pants bulging, and she dragged him into the living room.

  “Where’s the bedroom?” Corrina managed to ask when McCrae moved his attention to her neck.

  He pulled her down a hallway, their lips once again meshed together, abandoning clothes along the way.

  Chapter 31

  Corrina expected the next morning to be awkward, but McCrae made her feel as comfortable as if they’d been together for years. He made her the coffee he’d promised the night before and they chatted as they drank, discussing the case, his home, and life after the LAPD. Neither brought up what they’d done hours earlier.

  It was over cereal that Corrina remembered they had an unfinished task from the previous day.

  “I wanna go see Seth Benning,” she said. “Hopefully we can catch him at home at the weekend.”

  “Aw. I had plans for today.”

  “Really?” Corrina asked. “Does it involve nakedness and your bed?”

  McCrae sipped his coffee and his eyes smiled. “Little bit.”

  “It’ll have to wait, lover boy. We’ve got work to do.”

  They agreed to visit Benning at two in the afternoon. That gave Corrina plenty of time to get home, change, then pick McCrae up before driving to Van Nuys once more.

  When she arrived at her place in Santa Monica, she was glad to see that Mike was nowhere in sight. He would have demanded to know why she’d stayed out all night, and her response would lead to yet another fight. As it was, the house was empty. Corrina showered and changed into fresh clothes, made a light lunch, then drove back to McCrae’s house.

  He didn’t try to sneak a kiss when he got into the car, and Corrina suspected it was because he didn�
��t want to give the neighbors anything to gossip about.

  Not that they wouldn’t have noticed her car being outside his house all night.

  “I called Travis before I came over,” Corrina said. “I asked about a warrant to check Benning’s bank accounts, but he said we need more. John Mansfield already filed a lawsuit, and Ted Shearer won’t be far behind. Travis doesn’t want any more false alarms.”

  “But surely having his complete background would help our cause, not hinder us.”

  “I know,” Corrina said, “but Travis said if we pull Benning in and he finds out we got a warrant based only on a police interview from years ago, his lawyers will have a field day. He’s seen too many cases get tossed for abuse of process.”

  “Then we do it the old-fashioned way,” McCrae said.

  “Good detective work and a huge slice of luck?”

  “You got it.”

  Corrina checked her six all the way to Van Nuys, but it seemed her husband wasn’t stupid enough to hire a second private investigator to tail her. When they arrived at the street where Benning lived, she came to a stop a few houses away from his home. They watched for a few minutes, hoping to see signs of life, but the house remained quiet.

  “If he’s not home, I wanna check with the neighbors,” Corrina said.

  McCrae rang the bell and knocked on the door for good measure. He waited a full minute, then tried again, but the door remained closed.

  “Think he’s avoiding us?” McCrae asked.

  “Probably just poor timing. You wait here, I’m going next door.”

  Corrina went to the next house over and knocked on the door. An elderly woman answered.

  “Hi,” Corrina said, pointing toward the Benning property. “I was hoping to speak to Seth, but he doesn’t appear to be home. Have you seen him recently?”

  “And you are?”

  “An old friend,” Corrina lied. “I knew him back in Vegas. Thought I’d catch up while I was in town.”

  The old woman eyed her up and didn’t look convinced. “Doesn’t strike me as the kind to have friends, that one. Never even said hello to me once in the five years he’s lived there. Never came around to introduce himself, don’t even wave when I see him in the street. There’s something wrong with that one.”

  “Yeah, he was always the quiet type,” Corrina said, sticking to the script. “I just wanted to make sure I had the right address, really.”

  “Yeah, it’s the right place. Not sure when he’ll be home, though. Disappears for days at a time, he does.”

  “When was the last time you saw him?”

  The woman was staring at Corrina through squinted eyes. “Who did you say you were? You look awful familiar.”

  Corrina knew it was because she’d been all over the newspapers and TV since the Fifteen-X story broke, and it suddenly occurred to her that it was a bad idea to be seen looking for suspects. If this woman was clued in, she’d be onto the networks with a tip that Seth Benning was on the FBI radar, and that would send him into hiding. From now on, she’d let McCrae do the leg work. It was frustrating, because the best way to gauge people was to read them as they were talking, not reading a transcript of an interview or getting it second-hand.

  “Sorry to have taken up your time,” Corrina said, and turned to leave.

  “You’re not much of a friend,” the woman mumbled.

  Corrina looked back at her. “What was that?”

  “I said you’re not much of a friend.”

  Corrina was puzzled. “What makes you say that?”

  She pointed down the street, where a silver van was making a turn. “Because Seth took one look at you and skedaddled.”

  * * *

  Seth Benning tapped the wheel in time to the tune playing in his head. He’d done his grocery shopping for the next two weeks, by which time it would probably all be over. He was approaching the end game, and just had a few things to do at home before he would relocate to the house in the hills for the finale.

  He’d decided how it would end. The last twenty-four hours had been spent planning everything down to the last detail. He knew that no plan was ever perfect. One slight deviation by any of the players and the whole thing could turn to shit, but he was satisfied that wouldn’t happen. If something did go wrong, his fourteenth and fifteenth victims would still die, just not as horribly as he wanted.

  He cast such thoughts aside. Negativity was counterproductive. He’d succeeded so far, and he would continue to do so, no matter what they threw at him.

  He turned into his street and his breath caught in his throat. There was a man standing outside his house, peering through the window. That wasn’t what had shocked him, though. It was the woman talking to his bothersome next-door neighbor.

  The short white hair and lithe figure belonged to Corrina Stone.

  She’d found him.

  Or maybe not. If she knew he was the one she was looking for, she’d have gone in with an armed team to take him down, just like they had with Ted Shearer. He’d seen that on the news. No, Stone was fishing. She was probably coming to speak to him because of the hair he’d left at Cal’s house. The LAPD had spoken to him about it after she was reported missing, but he’d covered himself well. Leaving her blood all over Cal’s house had done the trick. Only, he’d exonerated Cal with his seventh chapter. He’d lied about wearing a protective coverall, when he should have said he’d picked a random hair off a chair at a barber shop and dropped it for the police to find. Yes, that would have been a better way of covering his tracks.

  It was too late now, though.

  It could be that she just wanted to eliminate him from her enquiries. Or maybe she suspected him.

  Or was it something else? Had she worked out that his dear mother had been tortured to death by the cancer caused by criminal negligence that went unpunished? He shouldn’t have mentioned it. He should have left it until the fifteenth chapter as planned. But the conversation with Dane Lewis seemed the right time to bring it up as it fit in with his philosophy that God didn’t exist. How could He? His mother did nothing to hurt Him, yet He let her suffer for so long. Why put her through that? Why give her cancer at all? Why create cancer?

  Because there was no God. It was a lie to keep the masses in check, nothing more. All religions were cults, period. The leaders of the churches made millions and gave nothing back. It was a pyramid scheme where those at the top got all the cash and the rest got worthless promises of eternal bliss in another life.

  But the hows and whys could wait for later. Corrina Stone was on to him, and he couldn’t let her stop him.

  Not now.

  He continued driving, past his home, past the agent and her companion. His name was McCrae Loney, according to Jess Duffey’s accounts in the newspaper.

  Benning turned his head away as he passed them, then maintained a steady speed until he was around the corner.

  He couldn’t go back to his home, but that was no big deal. He had everything he needed at the other house.

  He would have to move up the schedule, though. He still had plenty to share with the world, and it would only appear in the newspapers while he remained a free man. He had planned to send Jess the ninth chapter later that evening, but he decided to do it now instead of having to drive into the city later. It was just two taps on his phone’s menu and the document was on its way. Then Benning took a pair of latex gloves and a wet wipe from the glove box and cleaned his prints off the phone. He powered it off and removed the battery and SIM card. Once he got out into the hills, he’d throw them into the brush.

  His foot wanted to pound the accelerator as he drove west, but he stuck to the limit. If Corrina had seen him, she’d have the police looking for his vehicle now. That wasn’t a problem. He could easily explain why he’d driven past his own home. He’d say he was coming back from the store and realized he’d forgotten something. No crime there. Driving over the limit would signal that he had something to hide, though, so he eased off the g
as and cruised.

  Chapter 32

  Chapter Nine

  Sorry, Jess, but I’m going to steal your thunder again. I know you must love digging the dirt on the people I’m targeting, and that’s fine, but when I read your articles about the reasons I did what I did, it comes across as opinion.

  I want them to hear it from me as fact.

  The person I want to hear it most is Ellis Sloane.

  Jess will fill you all in on the details, but Ellis works for big pharma.

  BIG pharma.

  So big, they brought in $20 BILLION last year. And do you know what accounted for a lot of that income?

  I’ll tell you.

  Insulin.

  Let me tell you a little about Insulin. It was developed in the 1920s by Canadian doctors, Frederick Banting and Charles Best. They initially got secretions from dogs, then cows, and the first patient was injected in January 1922. It caused a severe reaction, but 11 days later, a successful injection was carried out. A year later, a patent was granted and sold to the University of Toronto for the nominal sum of $1.00. In the letter of transfer was this:

  The patent would not be used for any other purpose than to prevent the taking out of a patent by other persons. When the details of the method of preparation are published anyone would be free to prepare the extract, but no one could secure a profitable monopoly.

  In other words, they were making the drug free to anyone who wanted to produce it. They knew that some greedy company would try to get a monopoly on the life-saving drug, and that’s exactly what happened.

  Now, we have three big US companies accounting for 90% of the world’s insulin sales, and one of them was headed up by Ellis Sloane. Diabetics pay on average $210 for a one-month supply of human insulin. If the drug companies charged $100 PER YEAR, they would still make a profit.

  Jane Wardell, from South LA, was a diabetic. After losing her job and health benefits following a round of layoffs, she found that she couldn’t afford her monthly supply of insulin. So, like tens of thousands like her, Jane started rationing it. She would only take a third of the normal dose, because that was all she could afford.