Not quite for nothing, he reminded himself. His mother would be avenged. The man responsible would feel the same pain Benning had felt all those years ago, watching her final moments and knowing there was nothing he could do to take away the pain she was feeling.
And that moment was close.
Just two more victims, and it would all be over.
His mother would finally be able to rest in peace.
Chapter 34
The warrant came through two hours later, and the team got to work. Josh was still working public records, while Hank was contacting banks and other financial institutions and Corrina looked for properties in Benning’s name. While ownership was easy to establish, there was no rental database. So far, they’d looked for properties he owned, but it could be that he had a long-term rental. Unlikely—the landlord would no doubt want to inspect the place at least once a year—but possible. She would have to find all registered owners of more than one property, then look at each property to determine whether it was suitable for the killer. With 3.6 million housing units in the metro area and more than half of them rentals, it was an impossible task.
Josh appeared next to Corrina. “I found something on the family. Benning has a sister, Emma Halsey.”
“Married?”
“No. The mother’s name was Josephine Halsey née Benning. She had Seth when she was still single, married Jake Halsey two years later, then had Emma. She didn’t change Seth’s surname for whatever reason.”
“What about the mother and father?” Corrina asked, excitement rippling through her.
“Father lives in Des Moines, Iowa. Moved there nine years ago.” Josh paused for dramatic effect, and Corrina could read the triumph on his face. “Josephine Halsey died of bladder cancer thirteen years ago.”
Corrina clenched her fists. Yes! “It’s gotta be him.”
Josh agreed.
Corrina called McCrae with the update. In return, he told her that Benning hadn’t shown up at his house, but there was a BOLO on both him and the vehicle.
“Wanna circulate his picture as a person of interest?” the detective asked.
Corrina knew it was the smart move, but there was a chance that the neighbor had been mistaken about the driver of the van. Travis had planted the seed, and it had taken hold. If the neighbor had been mistaken, naming him publicly would be counterproductive. With his mug shot on the news, Benning would go into hiding for sure.
“Let’s hold off, for a little while at least,” she said. “If we don’t find him in the next twenty-four hours, we’ll go public.”
“If you say so, but I gotta say, if we do it now, it could force him to call off any more attacks. And I think he struck again recently.”
“You do?” Corrina asked.
“Uh-huh. Got a misper that raises some flags. It came in early Wednesday but wasn’t passed to my team. Someone didn’t get the memo, apparently. The missing woman is Susan Harper. Her husband’s a lobbyist here in LA. I got people digging to see if he might have angered our guy.”
“Pass me the details, I’ll get some people on it, too. Any leads?”
“Her car was found abandoned two miles from the nearest CCTV or traffic camera. Forensics combed the vehicle but got nothing. We have an eyewitness, but from the initial report, it’s pretty vague.”
“Okay. Let me know if anything comes in. We’ll do what we can from this end.”
“I will.”
The conversation had petered out, but Corrina was reluctant to end the call. It was good talking to him, even though she’d only seen him hours earlier.
Someone’s smitten!
She chased the thought away. It wasn’t the time.
“Oh, there was some news. Remember Conrad Veldman, Sarah Veldman’s husband?”
“Yeah, the sixth victim,” Corrina said. “What about him. Is he suing?”
“Unlikely. His secretary walked in on him just as he blew his brains out.”
“Sweet Jesus.”
It was inevitable that some of the family members would take this hard, but Corrina hadn’t expected any to go that far. She wondered what she would do if anything like that happened to Connor, and though suicide wasn’t her first thought, she couldn’t entirely dismiss it. It would be tragic to know a loved one had died in such terrible circumstances, but to know that it was done because of your actions…
At least on that point, her conscience was clear, though she suddenly wanted to be with McCrae. To see him. To hold him.
“I’ve gotta update Travis, then I’ll be going to see Benning’s sister. You free to join me?”
“Wish I could,” McCrae said, “but I want to interview that witness. Hopefully I can shake something out of her.”
“No problem,” Corrina said, though inwardly she was disappointed. “I’ll let you know what I find out.”
She ended the call and went to speak to Josh at his desk.
“Show me what you’ve got on Emma Halsey.”
Josh moved his screen so that Corrina could see it, and she jotted the address down on a scrap of paper.
Corrina went to Travis’s office and let him know the latest, then returned to her desk to look the home up. The moment she opened Street View, she saw an email notification in the bottom corner of the screen.
She knew what it was before she even opened it.
Chapter 35
Chapter Ten
The typical American isn’t the brightest beast on the planet. The average IQ is 98, ten points lower than Asian countries, Singapore and Hong Kong. Hell, even Mongolia has a higher average. And when you think about it, “average” means there are some people with higher IQs, and some with lower.
Guess which half Harvey Mettle targeted.
That’s right, the dumber half. The ones who wouldn’t know a get-rich-quick scam if it bit them on the ass. And he did a good job of it, convincing twelve thousand people to “invest” in his fund. They entrusted him with over $150 million of their money, believing that he’d give them an 11% annual return at a time when the banks were offering less than 0.1% on savings. That should have been a red flag in itself, but no, the phrase “too good to be true” hadn’t filtered down to these people.
Harvey Mettle’s slick website, glossy brochure and charming manner convinced these people, who were at or nearing retirement, to park their savings for three years. When they did, he used that money to pay his early investors the percentage rate he’d offered, then sought more suckers to pay the others when they came due. Sadly for Mettle, the bear market of 2008 caused many people to move their funds into more secure investments, but when they asked to withdraw their money, it emerged that Mettle had been running a Ponzi scheme all along.
Shock! Horror!
I know, it was their own fault. If you’re gullible enough to fall for sales pitches like that, you deserve everything you get. But the thing is, without people like Harvey Mettle, people wouldn’t be losing their life savings. He wasn’t investing it in a stock portfolio like he could have. No, he was imply siphoning off millions to fund his own lifestyle, while putting all the investors’ funds at risk. Actually, it wasn’t really a risk. The money was spent the moment it hit his bank account. There was little chance of the majority being paid back.
Naturally, the market crash and Mettle’s inability to repay investors led to the SEC launching an investigation. Mettle was arrested, charged and sentenced to just two years in prison.
Two years!
He must have had some connected friends, or the judge was on the take, because two years was nothing. He had to pay restitution, of course, but the most the SEC could account for was $15 million, just 10% of what he’d scammed out of the pensioners. The rest had vanished. Mettle claimed his take from the scheme was just $20 million and he was ordered to pay that back.
After just three months behind bars, Mettle’s lawyer asked for his sentence to be commuted to house arrest given his failing health. Several doctors signed him off as gravely i
ll, and his request was granted. Strangely enough, just three days after his sentence ended, he was seen at social events mingling with his rich friends, looking healthier than ever before. A true miracle!
Ingrid Mettle, strapped to my table of doom, insisted that her husband really had been sick, and the timing of his recovery was purely coincidental. I didn’t believe her. She also said she had nothing to do with his venture. I thought that was the truth. Still, I broke both of her arms. Just the upper parts. I thought I’d save the lower parts for later.
Ever had your arm broken, Harvey? Hurts like a bitch, let me tell you. Especially when someone keeps jangling the bones like I did. Made poor Ingrid shriek like a demon.
I explained to her why I was doing it, Harvey. I told her that your greed was what forced my hand. She told me that no-one was forcing me, I was doing it of my own free will. She said you’d already been punished by the courts.
But she was wrong.
I was forced to do this. Successive governments have had decades to make society fairer, to rule for all the people, not just the ones with money and influence. There have been speeches in congress highlighting the inequalities rampant in this nation, but what have they ever achieved? Nothing. Talking about it won’t change anything. Wave a placard outside the Capitol building, what happens? Jack shit. Kidnap someone’s wife, husband or kid and torture them to death before hacking them to pieces? People start to notice.
So yeah, I was forced to do it. I had to, because nobody else would. Millions of people feel the same way, they just won’t make the sacrifice. That’s what this is, after all. I know I’m not going to come out of this alive, but then again, I was going to die anyway. Maybe not this year, maybe not for another fifty or sixty years, but one day I will. And I’d rather go knowing that I made a difference for millions of people, not just for myself.
I mean, what’s the alternative? I could work another thirty or forty years for a company that pays me slave wages and offers the bare minimum benefits demanded by law, getting just ten days’ paid vacation a year. And that only after you’ve worked for them for a year! Ten days! When are you supposed to live? All that half of American workers do is survive. They pay the rent, the utilities, food, heating, health insurance, phone and car payments, and what’s left? Netflix if they’re lucky. For those that aren’t, a second job beckons. Fifty years ago, Americans worked to live. Now they live to work. This is supposed to be the greatest nation on the planet, but its people are treated like slaves. The crazy thing is, many people know it and do nothing about it. They shrug their shoulders and say, “what can we do about it?”
THIS is what you can do about it. Let the greedy rich know that we’re no longer their playthings. We want a fair wage for a fair day’s work. We want healthcare regardless of income. We want tougher sentences and proper corporate manslaughter laws. We want an end to congressional grift: no more kickbacks to shape law.
Ingrid Mettle thought I was ranting, telling me my ideas were unworkable. I tell you, I was surprised she still had an opinion after what I’d done to her. Kudos, Ingrid. You sure had some balls. Had crinkly skin, too, after I blowtorched her face.
But if I’m honest, there was no point trying to convince her. Like religion, she’d been indoctrinated, and it takes a lot to change a person’s mind. A lot more than injecting their buttocks with caustic soda, that’s for sure. Believe me, I tried.
And so I did the usual things to Ingrid that I’d done to the others. Snip! Snip! Bye-bye fingers and toes. Breasts? Eyes? Ears? Nose? Won’t need those where you’re going.
And so, like the others before her, Ingrid Mettle is in the ground, rotting away.
And it’s all Harvey Mettle’s fault.
Chapter eleven
Take a deep breath. Hold it. Now let it out. That was oxygen, given to us by the trees and plants of the world. Without them, we die, yet some people think it’s perfectly acceptable to cut down large swathes of the Amazon jungle in order to make money.
Illegally.
James Rodriguez is one of these people.
Because of his actions, his daughter Carla is no longer a person in the real sense of the word.
Here’s how it worked. James Rodriguez and his logging company, Bealtrix Corale (henceforth known as BC), secured a concession from the right-wing Brazilian government to harvest a one-thousand-square kilometer area of the jungle. That’s a quarter of a million acres, each acre expected to yield roughly $2000. Everything was legal, with permits paid for and everything.
Only, BC wasn’t satisfied with such a small area. No, they wanted more. Now, you’d think such a big outfit as BC would have the ability to work out just exactly how much land they were allowed to work on, where the boundaries were, where their activities must cease. But you’d be wrong. BC cleared the area they’d paid for, but instead of replanting to ensure a new crop as part of the deal, they just kept logging. And this wasn’t the first time. Two years earlier, they’d been granted permission to cut down several square miles of forest in Maine, only to take double the allowance of timber. The company was fined, but clearly they didn’t learn their lesson, because they did the same thing in Brazil. Only, instead of taking twice the amount they’d paid for, they took SIX times. And to compound their guilt, they had a paid informant in IBAMA (the Brazilian Institute of Environment and Renewable Natural Resources). This was the organization that would enforce quotas and issue fines for malfeasance. The informant would tip them off when agents were about to pounce for inspections, and BC would ensure their heavy machinery was out of the area when the raid came.
Now you might think “What’s the big deal? It’s just a few stupid trees.” Well, those few extra stupid trees made BC a profit of over $3 BILLION. That’s over and above the amount they got for the permits they paid for.
And that wasn’t all. In the process of clearing the land, they destroyed the homes of an indigenous tribe. One hundred and sixteen people displaced, their village destroyed, their livelihoods wiped out.
BC, of course, denied any involvement, but several witnesses fingered them for the destruction. James Rodriguez eventually admitted that his company might have “inadvertently” strayed beyond the bounds of its agreement and agreed to compensate the Brazilian government for 300,000 acres of logging, just over $500 million dollars. That still allowed him to walk away from the venture with a huge profit, while the people who had lived in the jungle for generations were left homeless and destitute.
If you think about it, BC could have stuck to the original—and legal—agreement and made a profit (after expenses) of around $200 million. That’s a big slice of dough. James Rodriguez, as sole owner, could have taken half of that and lived fairly comfortably for the rest of his life. But no, that just wasn’t enough. A man who already had three homes worth a combined forty million bucks had to find a way to make ten times as much, and he didn’t mind breaking the law or ruining the lives of over a hundred people to do it. That’s before we even consider the lasting damage to the environment.
I wondered if the wood used to create my table of doom came from Brazil. Was it constructed from BC lumber? That would be the ultimate irony, I think.
I would have asked Carla, but she couldn’t talk. You see, I’d clamped her face while she was still sleeping, so her mouth was stuck open. It was all she could do to stop herself drowning in her own saliva. You know that feeling when you’re at the dentist and you’ve got your mouth open and it collects at the back of your throat and you have to close your mouth a little to swallow? Well, Carla couldn’t do that. All she could do was make gargling noises. Even when I drilled her teeth, her shrieks were garbled, like she was under water.
Carla had nice teeth. Two hours later, she didn’t.
Was it worth it, James? Your daughter is dead because of you, and you’ll have to live with that. I’d like to think it’ll bother you for the rest of your life, and if it does, I hope you live to a ripe old age. I hope you suffer for years to come,
and think of her every time you wake up in one of your mansions paid for with her blood. Think about how I cut out her tongue, her eyes. Imagine being blind and still having to go through nine hours of torture, James. Not knowing when the next hit is going to come, or where it will be. One minute you’re recovering from amputated fingers, the next…BHAM! Your knees are crushed with a hammer. It must have been terrifying for her. If you’d been satisfied with $200 million, you could be chatting with her over dinner right now, but your greed did this. You’re where you are now because of your actions.
I hope it hurts, James.
I hope it hurts real bad.
Chapter 36
Seth Benning always felt a nervous tingle when he was close to his next victim, but this time it was different. This was the one he’d been building up to. After ten years, he was so close to his ultimate prize that the butterflies threatened to overwhelm him. But he took deep breaths and thought calming thoughts, waiting for his pulse rate to drop and his hands to stop shaking.
She was sitting outside the coffee shop where she tended to eat these days. It was close to her place of work, and his timing had been perfect. She normally left work at lunchtime on a Saturday, but receiving the tenth and eleventh chapters that morning had been enough to make her stay for the day.
Jess’s oversized purse was on the table, next to her plate. On the other side of the dish, her cell phone held her attention as she sliced at her chicken breast and popped a piece into her mouth.
“That’s her,” Seth said to Kenny Blake, the actor he’d hired. “Red hair, white blouse, floral skirt.”
Kenny was a student at a local drama class, nineteen and keen to earn a few bucks. Seth had spun a tale of how he was infatuated with a woman and wanted to get to know her, but was too shy to do so. He said he’d come up with a way to make a dramatic introduction, but he needed help. That was where Kenny came in. The boy had been skeptical, until Seth handed him two hundred-dollar bills.
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