Timmy looked toward Danny for help, but the silence of his other brother denied him any. After an uncomfortable moment, Sarah interrupted to re-focus the conversation. “Besides his past issues, did Henry have problems with anyone here at the casino?” She positioned herself between Timmy and the glare of his disapproving siblings.
“I didn’t know him very well since he was new,” Timmy paused for a moment, “although about a week ago he ran into some trouble with a few members of the Chrome Horsemen. Security had to intervene and the guys were removed from the premises.”
Sarah looked questioning at the brothers, “Horsemen?”
“They are a motorcycle club, kind of have that 1% mentality,” Danny answered as he brushed a stray piece of hair behind his ear. “Don’t they have them in New York City?”
“We have some bike gangs, but I’ve never had any contact with a crew called the Chrome Horsemen.” She looked back to the floor manager. “So how did they seem to react to being escorted out?” She took up dictation in her note pad as Timmy answered.
“They made a scene. But everything those guys do is overly dramatic. They were screaming about getting cheated and they tossed a few unflattering comments toward Mr. Glazer, but our security people are top notch, and at the very first appearance of an issue, they swarmed the men and moved them toward the door.” He glanced over the open personnel file. “Says here that our staff heard one of the bikers threaten Mr. Glazer and vow to get his money back.
After jotting a few things down Sarah added, “Did any of the staff give a good description of these men?”
Before any of the O’Connells could answer, August, who had been reserved up to this point, chimed in. “There’s no need for that, I counted at least twenty cameras just in our direct path as we crossed the gaming floor.” He looked at the two older brothers, deliberately ignoring Timmy. “I’m sure you caught the incident on camera.”
“Very astute once again, Mr. Booker…” Danny began before being interrupted angrily by Timmy.
“We have over one hundred and fifty cameras in the casino,” he sneered. “There is nothing we don’t see.” The youngest brother was trying to pry back into the discussion. “Any time there is an issue on the floor, we save the footage digitally.”
“In case of any possibility that we may need it during litigation,” Danny added over the top of Timmy, who shot him a harsh look, but then recoiled back in a position submissive to his brothers.
“Either way, we would like to see that footage.” Sarah stepped back into the conversation. The testosterone was getting a little thick in the office for her liking. She closed her palm-sized notebook, “Where do you keep your archives?”
Five minutes and a maze of behind the scenes hallways later, Brent escorted Sarah and August into a security room that would make the NSA envious. One entire wall of the room was a monitor, displaying live footage from countless cameras within the casino.
A squat, prematurely bald man sat in a very comfortable looking chair in the center of the room, glass desk in front of him, covered in control buttons and joysticks. He swiveled the chair towards the door as his visitors entered and looked over the top of his glasses at them.
Finding himself suddenly imposed upon, the balding man stared at Brent. “Why are we having a convention in my control room?” As the chair swiveled to face them, Sarah could read his t-shirt: Every Day is Taco Tuesday, with a brightly-colored cartoon taco dancing on the center of his chest.
She stepped in the door and flashed her badge, “Berksville Police, I’m looking into the death of an employee at this casino.” She took two more steps forward so that she was intentionally looking down at him, nestled in his seat.
The man looked surprised and indignant. “Well, I didn’t kill anybody. I barely ever leave this room. And I would have seen someone killed within the premises.” Sarah was fairly sure by his agitated demeanor that they didn’t get many visitors in the security suite.
Brent finally joined the conversation. “Stanley, this is Detective Rime and Professor Booker. The bosses sent them and wanted me to tell you to help them in any way you can.”
With that, Brent rolled his eyes at the entire situation and left closing the door behind him. He silently lipped, “Good luck” to August as he disappeared into the hallway.
Stanley continued to look them up and down. Finally, he asked, “You’re the guy who was an FBI profiler right?” He looked past Sarah to August.
“Are you kidding me?’ Sarah blurted. “Does everyone know you in this city?”
August just silently shrugged as Stanley explained, “There was an article in the Berksville Gazette back a few years when the Professor here took the teaching job at the college. It isn’t every day that we get an FBI agent move to town, much less with such a distinguished career.”
Stanley pushed up his glasses and turned to the keyboard on his desk. He quickly punched in a password and a master menu popped up in the middle of the wall-screen. “Which boss sent you?”
“We spoke with both Danny and Shamus,” Sarah answered, figuring it would carry weight.
Then August added, “And Timmy, but he didn’t seem too happy about us coming.”
As if by magic, Stanley’s face lit up and the cloud of seriousness lifted. “Well then, what can I do for Berksville’s finest?”
Chapter 8- Homework
The next morning, the sun was just peaking over the foothills of the Adirondack Mountains, Benjamin Tronski had been out of bed for nearly two hours. He rolled the sleeves up on his flannel shirt and poured his second cup of coffee. Twenty-four-hour news played in the background as he sat down at his farm table. He opened a bag of tobacco and transferred a day’s worth into a small tin container that he found worked great for this purpose. As he closed the tin, the colorful logo of the mints that originally came in the container flashed on the lid. He placed the tin, his pipe, and a book of matches in one of his pockets.
Ski got up, slower than in subsequent years, and traced his path around the kitchen island to the coffee pot. The kitchen was decorated in a soft yellow color that matched well with the brown and gold of the granite countertops—all his wife’s idea. She was the designer in the house. As a matter of fact, he looked around and couldn’t help thinking to himself, This is all a big waste of cash, if it was up to me, I’d go live in an Airstream.
He opened one of the shaker cabinets and removed his thermos. Then moving past the fancy one-cup coffee maker that his wife had tried to get him to use, he let out a grunt. He pushed it further back on the counter and grabbed the glass carafe full of coffee from his cheap, one button coffee maker. Decades working on the road, driving truck, had taught him to simplify. He packed and traveled light, no need for luxury. Leaning against the counter he pressed a hand to his hip and scowled. Some mornings hurt less than others. This wasn’t one of them. But he had class today, and it was one of the few things he looked forward to.
For the first year after retiring, he had ambled around the house, doing odd chores he had meant to get done years prior, and generally just driving his wife crazy. He watched a lot of science and history television, but he could only sit for so long. It was his wife, who most likely recognizing that caged look in his eye, began suggesting activities to fill his days. She was constantly busy… line-dancing, music classes, aerobics, and lunch with the other ladies. All of which, in Ski’s eyes, was about as appealing as being set on fire.
It was a few months into her self-appointed mission to find him something to do that she threw a college catalog on the table one afternoon and suggested he take a look. “Even when we were young, I remember you always liked learning,” she said. “Not sure why you stopped.”
Chagrinned, he waited until she was out of the room to pick up the catalog and flip through its pages. It was true, he thought. Mainly the reason I like the science and history shows. So he signed up for the next semester, and at 78, became a college student. He didn’t even have to pay, wh
ich was the best part. Ski was delighted to find out that people can audit a class for only a few hundred bucks (with his senior discount). You don’t get a degree, but at his age, what did that matter. And being drawn to smart people, it wasn’t long before he found himself in one of August Booker’s classes.
Screwing the cap on his thermos, Ski glanced at his watch. I better drag my ass, he thought. I want to hit a couple garage sales before class.
A few minutes later, he was in his Volkswagen, a trail of dust sprawling down the driveway.
***
Sarah walked back down the college corridor, this time finding the door to Booker’s classroom open. The professor was sitting behind his desk wearing a charcoal suit and a blue and grey patterned waistcoat. He was staring at the projection screen and tapping his cane on the floor to a beat that was apparently just in his head. Kara was in a skirt and cowboy boots, cross-legged in the rocking chair on the other side of his desk. Max was typing furiously on his laptop. August looked up, his cane stopping.
“Detective! Please come in. We were just about to start.” He nodded to Max who touched his screen and the pictures they took at the crime scene came up on the projection screen. Everyone looked as Max spread the images out so they could all be seen.
August glanced at the cheerleader in the rocking chair. “Kara, why don’t you start us off?”
As if on cue, she popped out of the chair, mid-rock, and began, “This first picture is a close-up of the top of the branch. As you can see, there are fresh scratches and cuts deep into the bark. They match the gauge of the wire. Looks like the body parts were all hanging by the wire, just like you had thought.”
“How did you get that shot?” The professor asked.
“I climbed the tree and shimmied out on the branch,” Kara responded, nonchalantly.
Sarah noticed that while Kara tried to act as if it were no big deal, she blushed slightly when August commented, “Nicely done, kid.” The detective grinned, amused. So the cheerleader has a little crush on the teacher.
Looking at all of the photos of the scene, August finally asked, “Max what was the weather like the day of the murder?” Max keyed in some commands and quickly replied.
“Looks like partly cloudy, seventy-five degrees.”
“Wind speed?”
A few more keystrokes. “Nominal”
“So the wind didn’t cause the body parts to fall…”
“The bastard didn’t use a wire that was thick enough gauge to hold up the victim’s weight,” Ski’s gruff voice interrupted. The old man walked in carrying a cardboard tray of drinks. “Amateur.”
He handed the professor a coffee, tossed a soda to Max where he was seated, a few rows back, and then handed a to-go cup to Kara with a wink. “It’s one of those damned floofy latte, mocha, yuppie coffees you like,” Ski said. Then he turned and handed the tray with one coffee and some creamers and sugar packets to Sarah. “I didn’t know how you like yours, so I figured you could fix it yourself.
She thanked him and looked at August. “What does he mean ‘amateur’?”
“Max, what did Ski mean by that?” August quizzed his student.
“He means that it’s further proof we are dealing with a copycat. The real Puppet Master Killer, Samuel King, had at least two victims who were heavier than Henry Glazer. But, the wire he used never broke. So, while this new killer knows an awful lot of the intimate details of that M.O., he didn’t quite know how to pull it off. He didn’t even use the same wire.”
“Couldn’t he just have bought different wire?” Sarah asked.
August shook his head. “A serial killer like the Puppet Master Killer is consumed with the method of the killings, down to the smallest detail. You can let your captain know that Samuel King has not risen from the dead. We definitely have a different perpetrator.”
“Well, I guess that’s something. I would prefer to tell him we knew who the killer is.”
“Let’s see what else we have.” August turned to Max. “Did you get the email from Stanley over at the casino?”
On cue, surveillance video from the casino floor came up on the screen. The footage was focused on one blackjack table surrounded by a dealer and five players, three of which were wearing black vests bearing the silver stallion with wheels for legs, the symbol of the Chrome Horsemen.
Zooming in, it became clear that the dealer was Henry Glazer, the victim. The scene seemed normal for a few minutes until one of the bikers, a stocky man, with a shaved bald head, lost three hands in a row. Each time, he became visibly more agitated with every reveal of the cards. By the time he lost the sixth hand, the bald biker threw his losing hand across the table at Glazer and then his drink followed, splashing across the dealer’s face and shirt.
They watched the silent footage as Glazer lost his temper and met the biker halfway around the table. Both men began pushing each other and trading blows. Dressed in black suits, security swarmed in, dragging the biker and his friends off the gaming floor. A security officer was tending to Glazer, apparently checking that he was uninjured.
Sarah was trying to read lips from the video. “Max don’t we have any sound?” she wondered.
He shook his head. “Sorry, Detective. The floor cameras are set up for just visual. The point is to filter out any distracting sounds and to focus on any visual evidence of players trying to cheat the house.” He hit a button and four different angles appeared on the screen. “Plus, when looking at a number of different cameras at once, as I’m sure they do at the casino, the sound would all drown each other out.”
“I guess that means we need to track down these Chrome Horsemen and see what they have to say about the confrontation,” Sarah responded.
“Tracking them down won’t be a problem.” Ski chimed in. “When I was a trucker, there was a sports bar just outside of town that the Horsemen all congregated at.” Ski took a sip of black coffee straight from his thermos, wiping his mouth with his flannel sleeve. “But they aren’t what I would call ‘cop friendly’ if you plan on going in asking a lot of questions.”
“We’re not there yet,” August said. “We still have some more details to look at.” He nodded towards Max and more images popped up. The first were the three O’Connell brothers driver’s licenses. “Ok, move Shamus and Daniel off the screen.”
Sarah looked surprised. “You sure?”
“Definitely,” the professor answered. “Neither of them fit the profile. They are both too proud and assertive to copy someone else’s modus operandi.”
Booker motioned them away with his hand. “The surprise they showed had all the micro expressions of authentic reaction. They aren’t our guy.” Booker looked harder at the third brother’s photo.
“What about Timmy?” Sarah asked as she followed his gaze.
“He definitely has the rage. I purposely ignored him and spoke directly to his brothers. Did you see his reaction?”
“Yes, he nearly stepped on everyone else, trying to get your attention and focus.” She hadn’t thought that August had intended to agitate the younger of the brothers, but it had definitely worked.
“Something about him is wrong. Psychologically, he has lived in the shadow of his popular father, as well as his self-made older brothers. He is constantly trying to prove his worth. That’s why he became enraged by my dismissive attitude. All of that works with a violent profile, except for his submissive streak. He stepped right back in line like a chastened pup when his older brothers showed their teeth.” He tapped the cane thoughtfully once again. “And he has no connections to The Puppet Master. Why would he copy the MO?” He shook his head after another deep thought. He waved his hand to remove Timmy from the screen. As soon as the picture of the youngest O’Connell was out of sight, pictures of Aimee Glazer popped up on the screen.
“I don’t like her,” Sarah stated, stone-faced.
“Not much sympathy for the grieving widow, eh?” Ski’s eyebrows arched up as he lit his pipe.
Sarah gasped. “You can’t smoke that in here!”
The old man walked across the room and opened a window for air. “I’m eighty years old, sweetheart. If you arrest me now, I get three free meals a day and freakin’ cable TV. Beats the hell out of Social Security.” He puffed out a chuckle of smoke.
Sarah looked to August, who merely shrugged and turned back to the picture of the new widow.
“Why don’t you like her, Detective?” the professor asked, still grinning at the defiant smoker near the windows.
“I don’t know,” Sarah replied. “Call it a gut feeling or a theory.” At that, all three students gave looks of disapproval.
Kara grinned. “Professor Booker always says, ‘Don’t chase theories.”
“Chase evidence,’” Max and Ski also joined in the chorus. August’s face twitched in what could have been perceived as pride in his students, but the look quickly faded as he got back to business.
“Something that you saw or heard must have given you that impression,” His cane tapped back and forth as he began to pace. “As I said before: intuition is merely your subconscious mind performing deductive reasoning at a faster pace than you can consciously recognize. Close your eyes, Sarah, and think back to when we were questioning Mrs. Glazer. What stood out?”
Sarah reluctantly closed her eyes, her brow furloughing in deep thought. She tried remembering as much as she could about the interview in the Glazers’ mobile home. The more she concentrated, the more details began solidifying out of the fog of her memory.
The smell of cigarette smoke, the white walls, tinged with yellow from nicotine stains. The cheap furniture. She felt as if the chair she was in might tilt back all the way, dropping her backward on her head. Booker’s voice began to invade the scene. “She is in front of you now?”
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