by Jack Parker
"Sure, but you always worked behind the scenes. Any criminal you were going after probably didn't even know about you. But now I'm sure the Vigilante Killer knows everything by now. What if you start to close in on him and he does something desperate to try and stay ahead of the cops?" she explained. I guess that made sense. It was the fact that suddenly I was getting to close to the action that made the difference.
I thought back to the moment I woke up. It was obvious she had just got finished crying. I could tell from her red eyes and tear stained face. Remembering that look on her face was heartrending. Apparently it had been nearly two weeks and recently it had looked like I might not make it, and that's what made her so worried. It was an understandable reaction, which is what made this request of hers so hard.
I didn't want to take a break from this case. And it wasn't as much that I didn't think the FBI would catch him in time, even though I didn't. Nor did I think that I was necessarily under some obligation to take this guy off the streets to protect the innocent people of the city of Houston because he wasn't as immediate a threat to anyone. The real reason why I wanted to stay on his case was because I knew if the FBI weren't able to catch him, I would never know the answer to all of these questions bumbling around in my head in regards to the Vigilante. As soon as he killed his next victim, that would be the 3rd of this city and he would then go back into hiding for another year. And when he makes his return who knows where he'll be?
"I want to help the FBI take this guy down. But if you are worried about me catching a stray bullet, I don't have to go out in the field with them. I can probably get away with working from home considering all that has happened. How does that sound?" I explained. I didn't want to outright lie and say I would take time off, only to turn around and work on the case behind her back. This seemed like a good compromise.
"Deal!" she wrapped her arm around my back and led me out of the hospital room.
I had to sign a few papers to officially be released by the hospital. Nothing important, just records that would show that I left on my own at the current day and time and nothing was wrong with me. They said that there should be no lingering effect from the surgery that I had gone through when I arrived at the hospital, but let them know if there are any side-effects just in case. I don't know if that's supposed to make me feel better about my current situation, but there wasn't much I could do anyway so I just tried to not think about it and I got to exit the hospital via wheelchair. I was about to wheel myself out of the building on my own, but Kari insisted she pushed me.
"We wouldn't want you to hurt yourself leaving the hospital, now would we?" she teased as she grabbed the handles on the back of the chair and began pushing.
"So what else changed while I was out?" I asked curiously.
"Well… let's see…" she looked away for a moment in order to think. "I heard someone just invented the hover-car."
"Yeah… I'm not buying any of that." I responded with a blank faced look.
"I'm telling you, it's in all of the papers." she tried to convince me with a bluff.
"It's definitely not in all of the papers."
"Well, not literally in all of them. I'm sure some were late to the story and couldn't get something written up by the deadline." she again kept going with the joke. I finally cracked a smile and laughed a little.
I took her digression as a 'no' to my asking if anything had changed while I was gone. I tried to think of anything else that she might not know about that could've changed. Maybe some new games came out. I was probably behind on a few of the TV shows that I followed, but I had a DVR recorder to account for that. My computer would be fine, although maybe it collected some dust while I was gone. I wouldn't be behind on any chores because I wasn't at my house to make a mess. I didn't have any plants to water or-
"What about Ash? I haven't been home to feed him this whole time." I asked, referring to my cat.
"Awe damn… that completely slipped my mind!" she replied, sounding a little angry at herself.
"Don't blame yourself. I'm sure he's okay." I tried to hide the worry in my voice.
"Don't worry about it." she said. Apparently I didn't hide it well enough. "Besides, I'm joking. I picked him up and dropped him off at a friend's house. He'll be fine."
"Oh." I was relieved, but didn't really know how else to react to the joke at my expense.
"Yeah. She knows what to do. After all, she has to deal with three big dogs that she owns."
"Big dogs? Do you think Ash made it for two whole weeks okay?" I wondered.
"Ok. I'm joking about the dogs, too. Man, I'm on a roll today!" she banged on the back of the wheelchair in excitement. "But in all seriousness she does have kids. Maybe that's worse depending on your point of view."
"Nah, he knows to stay away from strange people." I added.
"But one of the kids is an anti-cat… space… alien… um." she began to mumble. "Ok, I'll just stop with the jokes. That one wasn't going to be believable no matter how I finished it."
"Wait… anti-cat space alien isn't believable but someone suddenly inventing a hover-car is?" I tried to follow her logic.
"No, the hover-car thing IS real." she managed to say with a straight face, forcing another small chuckle out of me.
We made it out of the hospital with no issues. Her car was in the parking lot, so we both jumped in and took off towards the station. We decided the first stop should be the police station for two reasons. First of all, my car was still there. And second of all, I still wanted to tell the Chief about how I knew what the Vigilante looked like. We would have to go there eventually, so getting this out of the way first sounded like a good idea.
The ride to the station was routine. I sat in the passenger seat deep in thought while Kari listened to one of her CDs and sang along with every tune. And for the first time in awhile everything seemed to go back to normal, with the exception of being part of a career defining investigation with the FBI obviously. These were the moments I truly cherished since they reminded me that the more things changed, the more they stayed the same. I hung onto moments like these, because I knew that it wouldn't always be that way. Eventually something had to change. It was just inevitable… and it was my biggest fear.
Some people like it when things change because it makes for a different experience. There is the anticipation of discovery and the unknown. The thrill of doing something new, not knowing for sure how things would turn out. I can understand the feeling, but I just don't share it. For me, when things change it means that the situation is no longer predictable. When that happens I don't know how to respond because suddenly I'm in new territory. It makes it easier to make the wrong choices. Mistakes are much more common, and one unfortunate mistake can result in a disaster.
"I don't see the Chief's car." Kari noticed the moment we arrived at our destination.
"He probably parked on the other side of the building. He's done that before." I replied.
I was a little nervous about going into the station. I'm sure people knew by now that I was out of the hospital. And considering that I had almost died while working a lead, the other FBI agents and HPD detectives would probably have something to say when I made my first appearance. I didn't really know what to expect. Perhaps they would make some comment about how they were glad to have me back. I knew it was quite common even for complete strangers to go out of their way to make a statement about something significant that had occurred, whether it be good or bad. But I didn't want to be rude and ignore them, so I decided I should have a response prepared if that were the case.
What if they wanted to ask me questions about what had happened? That would be even worse. I would be the center of attention. Kari or Chief Taylor couldn't save me from the attention I would get. On second thought, maybe if I was able to avoid Foster and find the Chief somewhere in the building, I could just tell him what happened and he could relay the information to whomever wanted to know details. Not that there was much to kno
w. I saw the bomb and ran as fast as I could. Everything was a blur.
"What have you got?" Foster was asking someone about a lead I imagine. He wore a stern face that seemed to tell the world he didn't feel like messing around today. I feel bad for whoever accidently gets on his bad side today.
"I ran all the DNA from the room. It all came back to the people that lived there." said a man I didn't recognize. He had a lab coat on and a cap that said 'Forensics'.
The room we were in technically wasn't a room. It was just a main area with a lot of desks and chairs where detectives worked when they weren't out in the field. The main entry way where we were was on one side of the room, and the actual offices were on the other side. The group that included Foster was having a conversation around one of the desks.
There were three others there, and the only one I recognized was Detective Jay. The guy was essentially Taylor's second in command. The Chief had a lot of responsibility when he wasn't involved in a case, so he delegated a lot of the duties to Jay. Jay was pretty much the lead detective when Taylor wasn't around. Then of course there was the lab guy he had been talking to. The last guy was dressed in just a business casual outfit that didn't indicate what his role was. But if I were to guess, I would say he was a video expert. Jay didn't have a technology background, and I knew a large part of the evidence that was gathered was the video that the Vigilante left behind. They would need a video expert to analyze it, and since neither Foster, Jay, nor the lab guy were video experts, then that left that role to the one guy that was left.
"Fingerprints?" Foster wondered.
"Smudges. The only clean prints again came from the victim."
"Damnit." Foster balled up his hand and hit it on the desk, making a loud thud. Then he turned to the other unknown person. "Ok Brandon, what about the tape?"
"First we checked to see if it was doctored in any way, which it wasn't. No cuts or anything. We have one continuous piece of footage." Brandon explained. "We couldn't find anything that identified our killer. He kept his face away from the camera as usual, and we didn't get his face reflected on any other surfaces in the room. This guy is good."
They would soon know what he looked like. I could explain to the Chief how I was certain the guy from hospital footage was the guy we were looking for. He would be able to break it to Foster. And while I was at it, I gave myself a mental high five for guessing correctly that Brandon was a video expert.
"Maybe it's not that he's good but just that we're not good enough to catch his mistakes. Keep looking for things on that video." Foster sneered at Brandon as he turned to face Detective Jay "Jay, what have you been working on?"
"I've been looking for patterns." Jay explained. "We have video footage showing how he kills his victims. Sometimes he'll grab whatever he finds at the house, yet other times he'll use a gun or a knife he brought with him. He must think that you get points for style because he's used the widest arrangement of murder weapons that I've seen one single killer use. In all of the eight victims he has so far, three of them have been stabbed, two have been shot… we've had a guy killed with a baseball bat, one smothered, and one drug dealer that got killed via overdose with his own needle. When it comes to murder weapons, he has no patterns."
"Well this guy is smart. He probably knows that if he creates a signature for himself, it makes it much easier to determine which murders are his. And it also would be harder to put evidence together on the off chance we do figure out who this guy is." Foster added.
"But don't we get his videos of his murders anyway? We don't have to identify a murder as his because we'll get the video a few days later."
"That's a few days more of a head start that he has on us though." Foster explained. "Did you find anything else?"
"I had this idea that maybe it's the victim that's the pattern." Jay continued. "The Vigilante's personality suggests that something had happened early in his life that he's trying to make up for. Maybe he goes after people that have similarities with the guy that messed up his life. So I got data on everything I could think of with all of the victims: age, birth date, occupation, address, race, economic status… whatever. The point is, there were no trends to suggest he goes after a specific group of people. The only thing that we know for sure is that he has been to two other cities, New York and Denver, and he's killed three victims in each in the span of a month before he disappears for nearly a year. So if the pattern holds true we have about a week and a half before he's gone."
"So you are basically saying what we already know." Foster said.
"I guess so."
"So have you added anything new at all to our pool of information?" Foster asked, this time he seemed a lot more irritated.
"Only that you shouldn't look in those directions I've already looked."
Foster seemed very agitated. He had been working this case for years and it didn't seem like he had gotten any closer to catching this guy. I could understand the feeling. But even though I empathized with him, that didn't mean I wanted anything to do with the lead investigator on this case. I eyeballed past Foster and saw Chief Taylor's closed office door with light shining under the door to signify that someone was in the room. He must've left his cell phone somewhere else. That explained why he wasn't answering any calls.
With Foster standing in the middle of the room, chewing out the three guys that weren't able to give him anything, I tried to sneak around him so that I could get to the door to Taylor's office and just wait for him to be done. As nonchalantly as I could, I walked around the thrashing that Foster was handing out. And it was a normal walk except for the fact that I was going a little slower so as not to draw attention to myself. But I didn't want to walk too slow because that would surely look weird to anyone else in the room.
I got about halfway around and turned to check my surroundings. Kari was almost all the way back where we had started, and she had the silliest grin on her face and she flashed me a thumbs up sign as if to say 'your plan is working'. I have to say, that really did a lot to break the tension in the situation and it eased my nerves. I was able to walk somewhat naturally the rest of the way across the room.
I made it all the way to Taylor's office door and lightly knocked on the door. No answer. Maybe he couldn't hear the knock for some reason. I looked back over at Kari who was now about halfway across. Of course, she was able to pull off sneaking across the room without looking stupid at all. As we made eye contact she gave me a shrug, not knowing what to do about him not answering. I had two choices. One was to knock louder and risk Foster hearing it. The other was to wait a few minutes knocking lightly every now and then, but that risked Foster eventually seeing me anyway.
While I was thinking about this, I habitually jiggled the handle very slowly. But it wasn't locked like I thought it would be and my nervous habit accidently opened the door. I expected Taylor to yell from inside, because he was the type of person that didn't like his privacy being invaded. But when he didn't yell, that actually made me worry even more. Did he just not notice the door open? I peeked into his room real fast, expecting him to be intently staring at some piece of evidence, perhaps on his computer doing some work, or maybe even sleeping on his desk. But he wasn't even there at all.
"He's not here." I quietly said to Kari who was now standing right behind me.
"Well, maybe he's out in the field and forgot his cell phone." Kari explained.
"That's a reasonable theory, but what worries me is that Taylor isn't the type to leave his door unlocked with the light on." I said. Along with not answering his cell phone calls and his car not being parked in his usual space… leaving his door unlocked with the light on just added to the pile of things that made me think something had happened.
"Maybe he was in a hurry." she said.
"But he closed the door. If he had been in a hurry, the door would still be open." I mentioned.
"Maybe someone else closed it after he left."
"Or…" I began to say. "…maybe
his office was broken into somehow. A stranger might not know about his habit of locking the door behind him."
"How? And what did they get?" she wondered.
"There has to be evidence of a break in somewhere in here if that is in deed the case." I mentioned.
I started with the door handle. No scratches were on the lock that would normally indicate it had been picked. So then I started looking around the office. Nothing seemed out of place. I'm in this office often enough to remember the layout, and it doesn't look at all like the place had been searched. But then my eyes focused on a few papers neatly organized right in the middle of his desk facing the chair. What drew my attention to it was that the top paper had a short hand written note on it. Was it something he had been working on right before he left? But why didn't he take it with him?
"There's some kind of note here." I told Kari, and when I read what was on the note my mouth hung open in shock. "Kari? You might want to take a look at this."
"Why? What is it?"
I couldn't say it. I couldn't even believe it. It was just a regular piece of white printer paper and the only thing written on it was two words in what I recognized as the Chief's handwriting. All it said was "I'm sorry".
CHAPTER TWO
'I'm sorry' was all the note said. What could that possibly mean? What was he apologizing for? Did he do something that maybe the FBI didn't approve of? Maybe Foster railed into him for making some kind of mistake and this was his passive aggressive way of owning up to it.
"Welcome back, Mike." Foster said with a grim sounding voice from the doorway, startling me. "What are you doing here?"
"Hi." I waved nervously. I realized that I was in the Chief's office and that to a stranger it might look like I was doing something malicious. "I just came in here and saw that he left this note."
"Where has he been the past few days?" Kari asked.