by Jack Parker
"Wow… do you ever do that?" I wondered.
"No. I've never done that before because I never need more than one bug. So it's not worth the time to involve all of that software. But I've certainly heard of this set up. The police and the FBI use similar technology when they bug someone's house."
We continued to look around. Eric decided to look at the computer to see if there was anything on it that would give us a hint as to what his plans are. I volunteered to look through the various stacks of papers in the room to see if I could find clues there. And it looked like I had my work cut out for me because there were piles of paper over all of the desks.
There were a several free stacks of paper as well as a few dozen folders. I decided to tackle the loose papers first. So I grabbed a stack and started rifling through each sheet as fast as I feasibly could. I didn't have the time to analyze each one with a lot of scrutiny because there were probably hundreds of sheets of paper in this room. But spending a few seconds on each one gave me solid information about what he was doing in general.
"This is all surveillance type stuff." I told Eric. "Some of these are maps of neighborhood with handwritten notes on car and foot traffic every hour. Then there are a few major highway maps with the same types of notes. It looks like he's sat in his car tallying up all of this information a day at a time."
"Why go to that much effort to get that type of data?" Eric wondered.
"I don't know. Maybe if he's in a car chase he wants to know what his best routes of escape are. Or maybe it's one of those things where he's trying to figure out when the best time to strike his next target is." I explained. "And there are several stacks papers that are just details on just specific police officers. Nothing to gives us any hint of who he's going to kill next."
"The computer isn't really getting me anywhere either. I see a bunch of case files from various agencies as well as the recordings from the bugs he's planted. There are hundreds of recordings that go back all the way to the end of last year. That's several hours of audio on this computer." Eric said.
I finished going through all of the loose papers and started working on the folders. The folders were a completely different animal. Each one started off with a printed out newspaper headline highlighting a crime that occurred. Sometimes instead of an article about the actual crime it would be an article about the trial where the alleged criminal was found innocent.
"Each of the folders are specifically tailored toward one of the alleged criminals." I said.
Again, the amount of detail was staggering. An abbreviated police file of crime that the criminal had allegedly committed was there. There were a few pages noting the routine of the person, another few pages talking about specific habits and personality traits, and a few more pages of information that came from indirect sources like phone records and what not. And there was also a page that combined all of the information and suggested good times to take the guy out. Some people he tracked had more days than others.
"There's tons of information here." I pointed out once again.
"Yeah, this guy's determination… it's like nothing I've ever seen before."
"So it's looking like he's trying to gather all of this information for different reasons. The police files are there, and I'm sure there are recordings of each of these people. So he's making sure the guy is actually guilty. But then there's all the data about traffic and routines and all that that suggest he's trying to give himself the best opportunity to not get caught. He's placed listening devices around the police so that he'd know if they are getting close to him. And there's about twenty of these folders. So he obviously doesn't kill all of these people. Maybe part of his information gathering is determining which people are the lowest risks."
"And he always killed three people in every city, taking about a year off each time he disappeared. I always thought there was some weird ritualistic reason why he did it like that. But I never imagined that it was because he was spending day after day getting information." Eric said. "And maybe killing all of his victims in the span of a month is his way of lowering his chances of getting caught even more."
I've never heard of a criminal being so careful before, almost to the point of redundancy. He puts all of this effort into evading the police and making sure he has the right guy. No wonder he's been able to avoid the FBI for as long as he has. I had no idea what to expect when I walked into the hideout. But I didn't expect it to look as organized as this.
I was almost finished looking at the folders. I had put the ones I already checked in a stack to my right. And when I grabbed what was probably the twentieth file folder, I expected more of the same. Technically I was right. I was greeted with yet another newspaper article that acted as a cover page for the crime in question. The headline was 'Alleged Church Bomber Found Innocent of All Charges'. I had seen nineteen other headlines that were all similar in nature, but this was the first bomber. Something clicked inside of my mind when I saw that headline and I couldn't help but smile. It couldn't be that easy could it?
"Eric. For all of the people the Vigilante killed, I want you to look up the police report for the crimes. You said it's on his computer right?" I wondered.
"Hold on, let me find it." he responded. "Are you looking for something specific?"
"The autopsy file, specifically the cause of death and murder weapon. Go ahead and pull them all up." I told him. And after a few moments he had all the documents ready.
"Ok, so you want to start with the most recent one first? I have the autopsies right here, what do you need?"
"You have Forgero's autopsy up? That was the guy that killed the couple that walked in on him robbing the house? "
"Yeah. Let's see, the cause of death was…" he began to say.
"Their throats slit with a kitchen knife?" I interrupted him.
"…exsanguination of the jugular vein. Both of them. Murder weapon was a kitchen knife. Wow. How did you do that?" he wondered.
"Crayton was the 7th victim. He was the guy that killed a woman he was having an affair with so she wouldn't expose him. Let me guess… shot three times in the chest?"
"Yes. Are the answers in that folder or something?"
"And the last murder in Denver was Coffman, the store owner that killed off a competing store owner. I'm going to go with… multiple blunt force trauma and baseball bat?"
"Ok, now you are starting to scare me. How are you doing that?" he wondered.
"I watched all the videos that the Vigilante Killer gave me so many times that I know the details of all of the murders. And in every video, he kills these criminals the exact same way that they killed their respective victims."
I thought back to the explosion that put me in a coma two weeks earlier. The thing that always bothered me was why he would use a bomb to guard his house. Presumably he was trying to destroy evidence of what was in there, but by doing so he risks killing innocent people which was something he wouldn't do if he could help it. But as soon as I saw the file on the bomber, it made me think. What if that bomb wasn't for us? What if it was for a victim that he was planning on killing days later?
"So you are saying that this bomber was going to be victim number 9 and you just happened to show up and set off the bomb before he wanted it to go off?" Eric asked, after I had explained everything.
"Yes. And look, one of the last pages in the folder shows how he planned on doing it. This bomber was a real estate agent, and the Vigilante here has a list of what times he's going to show off a house. I recognized one of the addresses." I told him, pointing to the list of appointments that I was referring to. "It's the same house that the bomb was in. That's how he was going to kill this guy."
"But wouldn't that also kill the people he was showing off the house to?" Eric pointed out.
"According to these notes, this bomber always goes to the house the night before to straighten up the place a bit before the customers look at it the following day. That's when the Vigilante would have done it. He'
s showing three houses over the next three days, that's probably when he's going to strike. Is there anything on his computer that might be able to narrow it down?" I asked.
"There's an electronic calendar that has a symbols on it. But the important thing is tomorrow is marked with an X, the only other Xs for this month correspond to days where the other two victims were killed." Eric pointed out. "I noticed this earlier but figured this would be useless because we didn't know who the 9th victim would be. But really we still don't know even now."
"What are you talking about? This bomber is the 9th victim." I said.
"We know that at one point that was the plan. But maybe he changed his mind after the bomb he was going to use exploded ahead of schedule."
"He thought that this victim was the most ideal one before, and nothing has changed since then to make killing him any riskier. We didn't even make the connection that he was killing these people the same way they did in the crime they committed until just now. The FBI still hasn't made the connection and they've been on the case since the first victim: that jewel thief that got stabbed in the chest in New York!" I reminded him.
"Maybe you are right, but it isn't a sure thing." Eric said, and for awhile there was a silence between the two of us as we tried to figure out what the next move should be. But Eric broke the silence yet again. "Wait a second, you said stabbed."
"Yes. The girl from the jewelry store that died, Sharona, was stabbed to death. And that's how he died in the video as well." I mentioned.
"But the sales clerk in the jewelry store that got robbed was shot, not stabbed. And where are you getting Sharona from? Are you sure you are talking about the same crime?" Eric wanted to know.
"Aubrey Westfall, jewel thief. In the video he asked the Vigilante to fight like a man and he responded with 'Did you give Sharona a chance?' I'm absolutely sure that's what happened in the video, but we can watch it again to confirm it if you want." I said. I was positive of what I saw, but of course there was no way he could be as certain as I was.
"No, I trust you." he quickly reassured me. "It's just that in the police file the woman that died in the store was someone named Vikki. No mention of a Sharona anywhere."
Maybe it was nothing. It was his first murder. Maybe he hadn't developed his pattern of using the same method of killing as his victims had. Maybe he just got the name wrong. There isn't anything particularly unusual about that if he just flat out made a mistake. That's probably what the FBI thought when they found out about the discrepancy. But the fact that he used the wrong weapon AND said the wrong name made me think it was something.
The first thing we did was make sure this wasn't the only victim where the murder weapons didn't match. But the other 7 murders he used the same murder weapon and cause of death that the people he killed used when they committed their crime. Any names he used on the videos were references to the victims of those crimes; he didn't mix up anymore names. So the change-up on the first murder was the only time he did it.
"I wonder." I said as I thought of potential explanations for this new information. "In the video he mentions that the guy was responsible for other robberies. Maybe that's who Sharona is. It could be another victim."
"Maybe in his earlier years he robbed someone on the street and stabbed them in the chest as he tried to get away. It's possible." Eric said.
It took him awhile, but Eric got access to the police case file database in New York. He tried searching for case files where someone named Sharona got stabbed in a robbery. The first few attempts got us no results. He tried a few different searches, adjusting the phrasing of the words each time. And we were about to give up but on the last search it gave us a case file that matched.
"This is from almost… ten years ago. That would match up with the theory that in his younger days he pulled off a robbery/homicide. The murder weapon and cause of death match. And the victim is Sharona…" Eric suddenly got very quiet.
"What?" I asked curiously.
"The victim's name."
"It's Sharona right?"
"I mean last name. Look." he said. I didn't know what he was getting at, but I looked at the case file not knowing what to expect. His finger pointed at the relevant section of the case file and when my gaze shifted to that part of the screen the name was there, printed with small block letters making it easy to read.
Sharona Taylor.
CHAPTER NINE
We confirmed that the Sharona Taylor that had been stabbed to death after being robbed was Dan Taylor's wife. Or… at least we confirmed that his wife's name had been Sharona, and the time of the crime was a few weeks before Taylor's resignation in Denver. This all could have been one big coincidence but it just didn't seem likely. The fact that she was in New York without her husband was kind of strange if it weren't for the fact that I already knew about the picture with the note on the back saying that she was leaving and not to look for her. We also confirmed that this was the crime that the Vigilante Killer was referring to in his video. The autopsy report mentioned that Sharona had been stabbed twice with a knife, just like the Vigilante had done in the video.
So what did this mean? Did Taylor somehow get in touch with the Vigilante Killer after leaving the Denver Police Department and ask him to kill the man that murdered his wife? That sounded plausible, but then again how did Taylor find out who this man was? And more importantly, why didn't the Vigilante Killer give us the proof to show that the man was guilty in his video? He killed the man in the same style that Taylor's wife had been killed, but the evidence he left for the police in the video was to confirm him as the guy behind the murder of the jewelry store clerk.
The words of retired Agent Vickers came back to my mind. As soon as we had told him that the Vigilante Killer was in Houston where Dan Taylor was the Chief of Police, he went into a panic and started saying things like 'he knows' and 'I don't know how he found out'. Eric came to the conclusion that he was talking about some unknown evil that Taylor had committed that had gotten then attention of the Vigilante. But now that we know that his first victim had killed Taylor's wife, that didn't necessarily make sense.
We thought that the key to this case would be to figure out why Taylor resigned mysteriously from his Chief of Police position almost a decade ago. But finding the answer only led to more questions. And as I sat down on my couch back at my house, I could only trust the FBI to do their job. Eric called in the tip about where the Vigilante's hideout was. There was a lot of information in that house, far more than Eric and I could have gone through. The FBI had the manpower to go through everything in maybe a few hours.
The only thing I could do was relax. I flipped on the TV and started channel surfing. As I went through all the local channels, I noticed there was some kind of breaking news that all of the local news shows were reporting on. Curiosity got the best of me and I stopped on one of the channels.
"We received a tip from a concerned citizen that we passed along to the authorities concerning the Vigilante Killer's hideout. The FBI are investigating the tip and due to the number of FBI agents at the hideout at the moment, we think they have found something. In a second we'll go to our field reporter and see if he has any new information." said the anchor sitting behind the news desk on TV.
The cameraman had already been set up, and they were showing clips from the scene on a loop. It was indeed the same neighborhood and same house as the one I had just been at seconds ago. I knew Eric had called the tip in, but he called the police and not the media. Which means the reporter was lying about receiving a tip and they must've found out a different, far less ethical way. The other possibility was that someone from the police called the tip in for some reason, probably for money.
Something wasn't making sense. We had basically just left the hideout when Eric called the tip in, and it's already on the news thirty minutes later. It takes almost thirty minutes to get out to the place. If you add in the time it would take for both the FBI and the news corporations to round up t
he wagons and send people over to the hideout, there was no way they should be there in that amount of time. Unless… they knew about the hideout before Eric called the tip in. And there was only one other person who did: the Vigilante.
But why call a tip in to your own hideout? He might seem to be the type that likes to taunt the authorities, but it's always for a reason. He always gives the FBI videos so that they'll know the guy that he killed was one of the bad guys, which actually helps him because the law enforcement agents are less motivated to catch this guy. But this wouldn't help him. The FBI would swarm that hideout and pick apart every piece of information that they can find. They could easily put a unit on each of the people in those folders that were potential victims and that would allow them to catch him before he killed the guy tomorrow.
So he had one more day to make moves and then… wait a second. Of course! That's why he did it! They'll see that he set the date of his last kill to be tomorrow. And while every FBI agent at his hideout trying to piece together everything they can about this guy, he'll be with the 9th victim one day ahead of schedule. By the time they put everything together, there will be one more body and the Vigilante would be well on his way out of the city, taking away all of his secrets with him. I couldn't let that happen.
I frowned. I couldn't call the FBI and tell them they were making a mistake. I couldn't report a crime to the police because I wasn't 100% sure where he would be. There were only a few victims he had done research on that would be good targets to go after tonight and tomorrow. And at the front of the line was the bomber real estate agent. Fortunately I had taken cell phone pictures of all of the important documents so I had the address of the house he would be at tonight, the one he was showing tomorrow.