Risk

by Jaime Johnesee

  “You guys go, I’ll head over to ERT and see if I can’t get the results as they come in.” Alex squeezed my shoulder. “Be careful.”

  “You, too.” I gave him a hug and left with Quinn.

  “Hey, Q?”

  “Yeah?”

  “Can we grab a Fresca on the way?”

  “Really?”

  I just grinned as an answer. He sighed and nodded.

  Next stop, refreshing grapefruity goodness.

  Chapter 25

  WE PULLED INTO the lot at the high end condo complex where the latest victim lived. There was still an officer on the door and he looked fairly green. As we approached, he halted us and asked for our ID.

  “We were at the first two scenes.” I held up my badge as I spoke. Quinn held his up, too.

  “You’ll have to let me know if they were this bad.” He was visibly working to calm himself.

  “They were pretty bad. I plan on stopping by psych before I leave.” Quinn clapped the man on the shoulder and advised him, “Make sure that you talk to them, too. They’ll be able to dull the nightmares you’re going to have.”

  “Man, I don’t think that’s at all possible. You’ll see.” He gagged and stepped out of the doorway and tried to calm his breathing again.

  “Shall we?” My stomach was in knots and I was hoping Quinn would say no.

  “Unfortunately.”

  Damn. I steeled myself and walked into the condo. The familiar cry for the death of AWFA was written in blood on the main wall of the living room.

  We followed a trail of blood and other bodily fluids until it ended in the bathroom. He hadn’t taken as long with this one as he had the others, but he’d definitely used the same amount of hatred and malevolence.

  There was a massive pool of blood and what appeared to be gobbets of flesh spread over the bathroom floor. The body itself had been removed, but we had been sent pics of the scene with the body in place. I called them up on my cell and held it up to the room as it was now.

  The reek of blood, urine, and feces hung heavy in the air.

  The photos showed a woman who had been disemboweled. The simple fact that pieces of her own intestine had been found in her teeth and stomach made the scene even more horrific. We’d have to wait for test results, but there’d been no waste found at the other scenes.

  He’d used the drugs on his other victims and it had allowed them to mentally escape the tortures he was visiting on them. The report said that the ketamine probably had them tripping so hard they had no clue how bad it was until it was too late.

  I was guessing there’d be no drugs found this time. Based on the fight up and down the hallway, and the smears everywhere that were so unlike our first two scenes, I was fairly certain our guy had just gone full brutal on this lady.

  But why?

  I Googled her to see what I could find out. She didn’t look like the sort that would be attracted to AWFA. She had a lot to do with the LGBT community and her girlfriend was black. Not exactly hate group material.

  AWFA tended to feed on cisgendered white men and women. Though many of the new recruits were people just finding out about supers, they tended to go for those with backgrounds in hate and violence.

  “Something isn’t right here.” I filled Quinn in on what I’d found.

  “I agree. She isn’t his normal target. But what is it about her that might have made him deviate like this?”

  “Hey, she has one of those Employment Webs accounts for people looking to connect in their field of work. Well, fuck me running.”

  “Let me guess, a background strong in computer science?”

  “Bingo.”

  “So now we know why he chose her. But why the torture?”

  “Because he can’t kill without it. It’s not just a signature, it’s his compulsion. He likes to watch them eat themselves.”

  “Sick fuck.”

  “Yeah, unfortunately these sorts of aberrations are becoming more and more prevalent.” Quinn frowned.

  “It scares the fuck out of me.”

  “Me, too.” He looked around, grabbed my cellphone, and held it up, taking another look at the brutality visited upon the poor person who had once lived here.

  My phone rang in his hands and he dropped it, surprised. I caught it before it hit the floor and answered it.

  “Reece.”

  “Sam. Hey, it’s Alonso.” One of my former coworkers and all around awesome fellow.

  “Did you guys find something?”

  “You could say that.”

  I held up a finger to let Q know I’d be right back and walked down the hall to the bedroom. “Go ahead Alonso.”

  “You were bang on. It’s a mirrored box. Essentially everything is still where it is supposed to be, but it looks like it’s gone. Once the heat is off the account the withdrawal can be made, and bang, payday.”

  “Does he know it’s been found?”

  “I don’t think so. There’s a virtual spider web around the box, and if it hadn’t been someone as smooth as Charlie-bird operating the keyboard, your rabbit might have been tipped.”

  I grinned at his metaphor. Yeah, I liked thinking of this guy as my rabbit. I almost always get my bunny.

  “Is there a way we can move his connection, and trap, to a dummy account? That way he won’t be tipped off and we don’t have to worry about the money disappearing?” I hoped there was a way to do what I was asking.

  “Yeah. It’s going to take some time. Until then, we’ll be back-tracing everything we’ve got on him. Motherfucker’s bouncing off everything, including the Times Square Jumbotron.”

  “Good luck, Alonso. If anyone can nail this dude, it’s you and Charlie-bird.”

  “You better hope so, this guy’s a beast.”

  “Thank you for doing this.”

  “Good luck, yourself.”

  “Thanks, man.”

  “Can’t believe you left us to go play with freaks who eat other people.”

  “Well, the virtual world was just too safe for me.” Even though I knew he couldn’t see it, I grinned.

  “I guess so. Charlie-bird says this guy is a demon and he thinks you need to be careful.”

  “Thanks, and tell Birdman I miss him.”

  Charlie Byrd, aka Charlie-bird, aka Birdman, was a brilliant hacker. He could read computer code the way I can read a book. It made sense to him in a way that nothing ever had to me. I admired him for more than just his techy skills. Besides being brilliant with all things 1 and 0, he was pretty wise when it came to people, too.

  He’d called my move to CID (Criminal Investigative Division) before I’d ever even considered it. In fact, it was only his mentioning that I’d end up there that got me interested in the area in the first place. I was glad he and Alonso were on board with us. Our killer didn’t stand a chance.

  “Will do. Watch out for yourself, Sam. People have been moving you around the chessboard before you even knew there was one. I sent you a file you might be interested in. I found it as I was moving around the unsub’s spider web. Be careful with what you do with the info. I’m not sure how reliable it is. Gotta run, call me later.”

  The next thing I heard was a dial tone. Great. Because we’ve learned that mysterious files with my name in them are always a good thing.

  Fuck.

  I headed back to the bathroom and filled Quinn in.

  “Interesting, but not surprising.”

  “Why is it not surprising?”

  “You’re good at what you do. The second someone sees that they’re going to begin following your career and trying to place you in the right fit.”

  “Yeah?”

  “How do you think I wound up here with a rep for profiling? It was all Gerry.” He gave me the ghost of a smile.

  Since he was still looking through pics of the scene and the dead woman’s social media photos, I took a glance around her house.

  “Hey, Sam?”

  “Yeah, Q?” I called from the
hallway.

  “Do you see a jade jaguar statue anywhere?”

  “Not offhand, why?”

  “Look for one, will ya?”

  “Sure, why?”

  “Just see if you can find one. I want to make sure I’m sure before I say anything.”

  “Okay, sounds mysterious, but I’m in.” I began looking in all the niches and bookshelves, then in drawers and cabinets.

  Before long I’d looked all over the house and in every nook and cranny, to no avail.

  “There’s no jade jaguar anywhere,” I told Q as he walked by me holding a cherry blossom made from glass.

  “He took it with him.”

  “Who, the killer?”

  “He must have. Look at this selfie on her MyBook page. It was uploaded the day she died and there’s a jade jaguar on her bathroom counter. I looked through all of the pics of the crime scene and there was no statue. Anywhere. I thought for a minute that maybe she moved it to another room or something.”

  “Did you just use the term selfie?”

  “Yeah. I had you go looking hoping you’d find it somewhere else in the apartment. Huh, I guess it’s not here. Why would someone steal a statue? Jade isn’t particularly valuable, is it?”

  “Nah, something like that would’ve gone for a couple hundred bucks but she’s got other pieces worth way more than that.”

  “So why take it?” I asked.

  “To confuse us? Get us to focus on it, instead of something else? But then he would have no clue we would know about the jaguar.”

  “Could it be something personal to him?”

  “What?” He was lost in thought.

  “Is it possible he took it not for value, or to throw us off, but because it actually meant something to him?”

  “How so?”

  “What if he’s a cat shifter?” I asked.

  “You mean—?”

  “Yeah. What if our killer is a were and he is targeting AWFA because they targeted him first?”

  “More than probable, but seems pretty obvious. So why take the jaguar?”

  “I have no idea. Maybe it appealed to him; maybe he was worried it would point to him.”

  “It’s possible. I can’t get a bead on this guy like I usually can. It’s frustrating as hell.”

  “I hear ya.” I couldn’t get the jaguar out of my mind. “I’m going to look around some more.”

  I moved to the kitchen and began checking cupboards as well as the fridge and freezer. There was no sign of the statue anywhere. It struck me as odd and I was certain the killer had taken it with him. I get moving tchotchkes around, but it seemed awfully coincidental that the night before her death this jaguar was in her bathroom, and then after her murder it’s gone.

  I called pawn shops all over the city and gave a description of the jaguar statue. I asked that if one came in they call me directly. I wasn’t sure the killer would pawn the statue, but something told me there was a reason he grabbed it and that it wasn’t because he liked it. There was a similar statue—but it was a dragon—that sat on a shelf in the living room, unmolested.

  “Hey, Sam! Check it out, I found something.” I ran back to the bathroom and saw Q holding a plastic grocery bag.

  The top was off the back of the toilet.

  “What’ve you got there?” I brushed forward as he began to open it.

  Our jaguar statue sat in the middle of the white plastic.

  “Why would he put this in the toilet tank? Even if he’d used it as a weapon there was no reason to hide it in the toilet tank.”

  “Why wasn’t the tank searched?”

  “Good question.” He took the statue out of the bag, holding it in one gloved hand.

  “Do you think he planned on coming back for it?”

  “I have no idea.” He turned the jaguar over and we both looked at every inch of it for answers.

  Unfortunately, we found none. I took a swig of my Fresca and Quinn began photographing the jaguar from every possible angle. He felt sure it held the answers we needed to solve this case.

  I half-heartedly wondered if it wasn’t just a way for the killer to mess with us.

  If I wanted to mess with the police I’d absolutely grab something that had no value or connection to the case and do my best to make it appear as though it did. Somehow, I didn’t think that was the situation here. That statue meant something to the killer.

  “Quinn, if the killer is organized, then what are the chances that the jaguar could connect to him in some way?”

  “What do you mean? Do you think he’s a shifter?”

  “I don’t know, but what if he is the one who bought the statue for the victim?”

  “That doesn’t make any sense, though, Sam. Why would he try to hide it? Why not leave it in plain sight? We’d have had no clue it had anything to do with her death and would’ve written it off as a knickknack.”

  He made a good point. By choosing to hide it, the killer was making a statement that this statue had something to do with him. I wracked my brain trying to come up with some reason as to why the killer had hidden the jaguar.

  I considered what Quinn had proposed, that perhaps he was a shifter. Maybe in a post murderous haze he saw the statue and felt like it would be a clue to his identity. That could explain why he’d hidden it and why he was so loathful of AWFA, but it just didn’t feel right.

  I know it’s cliché to speak of the cop intuition thing, but it’s real. My intuition was telling me that there was some other reason he’d hid the jaguar. Something that had to do with the statue itself more so than the killer.

  “I don’t know. Maybe Grace can pull some info off it for us. I’m double checking the place to see if there are any more things hidden.” I bee-lined it for the half-bathroom off the hallway and checked the toilet for any stash.

  Nothing.

  After a thorough search by Quinn and I, nothing else was uncovered. We took the jaguar with us and, when we got to the car, I bagged and tagged it from the evidence kit we had grabbed before we left for the scene.

  Before lifting it out, Quinn had taken shots of the statue from inside the tank, and again on the counter by the sink. He emailed these to Grace, with a CC to Gerry, then he bagged and tagged it. I wasn’t sure if we’d ever figure out the meaning of the jaguar, but I took heart knowing the FBI wouldn’t quit until they had tried every manner of figuring out this riddle.

  Granted, this was one hell of a puzzle.

  Chapter 26

  I DIALED ALEX. I couldn’t shake the thought that perhaps our killer was a shifter and that maybe the statue had spooked them.

  “What’s up, Sam?” Al’s smooth tone brought a smile to my face.

  “Our killer hid a jade jaguar statue in the vic’s toilet tank.”

  “Weird. Why wasn’t it searched before now?”

  “I asked the same question. Speaking of questions, you’re a shifter, can you think of any reason why you’d hide a jade jaguar … you know, if you’d just killed someone?”

  “I’m sure you guys have already considered that he has a tie to the statue itself.”

  “Yeah, we already went through that. Thing is, if he was connected to the statue itself, then he’d have done a better job leaving it where it was, because it’s just a gift to a friend and has nothing to do with the murder. Quinn found it in some social media pics the vic had uploaded the day of her death. The jaguar statue was in one of her bathroom selfie shots. He took a look around and noticed it was missing from the scene.”

  “Why are you calling me?”

  “I just wondered if you could think of a reason the killer would hide it that we may not have.”

  “I can’t think of anything that would make me grab a statue after torturing someone.”

  “Thanks, anyway.”

  “Cats are playful. It’s possible he’s torturing as a form of play. Sorry, I know that doesn’t explain why he’d grab a statue.”

  “I was thinking he looked up and saw it aft
er killing her and maybe worried it would tie him to her and felt the need to hide it.”

  “It’s possible, sure. Then again it’s possible he is suffering delusions and thought the cat was talking to him.”

  “I know it’s a long shot, but there’s some reason he hid this thing and I can’t stop thinking it is the key to figuring out who this guy is and why he’s doing what he’s doing.”

  “Sometimes people are just evil. There isn’t always rhyme or reason to everything, Reece. Sometimes a psychopathic nutjob is just that.”

  “I get it, but why would a nutter take the time to hide something like that when he’s cleaned up all fingerprints and other criminally related evidence?”

  “I can’t tell you. Then again, I’m not a psychotic murderer.”

  “Are you suggesting I go find a killer and ask them?”

  “No, I’m suggesting you don’t let the statue distract you from the other aspects of the case that might be just as important.”

  “Like what?”

  “Well, she was found in her bathroom, instead of the bedroom and—while she had eaten part of herself, like the others—he’d disemboweled her. With the others he forced them to eat their meat. This one he forced to eat her own offal. He sees her as less than his other kills. Maybe go at that line of investigation and keep the jaguar on the burner in the background.”

  “Yeah, thanks, Al. See you soon.”

  “Love you.” He hung up before I could say it back. I smiled and put my phone back in my pocket.

  “Hey, Q, maybe we’re going at this thing all wrong. What if this one had nothing to do with AWFA?”

  “After looking around the scene and checking out the pics, I honestly don’t see this vic associating with any kind of hate group.”

  “I don’t see it, either, but there must be some reason our killer targeted her.”

  “Now to figure out exactly what that reason was without screwing up everything. We have AWFA members back at the office under protection and, if I can be honest, I’d like to kick these hatemongering SoBs out on their asses. We need to find out why this woman was killed and get the killer before I go insane with all the hate around the office.” I leaned against the wall.