Bill Harvey Collection

by Peter O'Mahoney

  “What do you mean?”

  “I mean it just took control of him. I’ve seen worst cases, but he was a sad one. I sit in on a lot of the sessions—just to get a feel for what is happening around the center. Gerard was one of the first cases I saw; he came in just after I started here. He showed me pictures of him as a youth, and his eyes looked so alive. He looked full of health and vigor, but the man that stood in this center was crushed. He looked like he was ready to give up. And nothing breaks my heart more when I see that look—the look of someone who has struggled enough and doesn’t have the energy to fight anymore. He was defeated.”

  “So he turned to alcohol?”

  “I guess so. That was after he left the treatment sessions here. He just stopped coming, like so many of them do. There’s not a lot we can do in that situation—a person has to want to change before we can help them. We can show them the ropes, but they have to want to climb the wall. We can’t force them to come in here to the session with the counselors. That has to be their decision.”

  “Did he have any enemies here? Anyone that would really hate him?”

  “We don’t judge people that come in here, Mr. Harvey.”

  “I don’t mean the staff,” he replied. “Anyone else? Anyone from his group sessions or people that were about at the time?”

  “Once people found out who he was, a lot didn’t like him—because of the past media coverage. They still blamed him for the lack of justice for the little girl. It was such a big story in the media; it was hard to miss. I must admit, at the time, even I was outraged. Of course, I didn’t judge him when he started coming here. We’ve all made mistakes in the past. But once he turned to alcohol to self-medicate, he was just another drunk. He wasn’t Gerard West the failed lawyer anymore; he was Gerard the lonely drunk. I think he was really comfortable like that, and that’s why he couldn’t move on from it. And a lot of people don’t like drunks, just because they’re drunks. But they forget to see the story behind what has happened. I don’t blame them, but it is important to remember that there are reasons why a person falls apart.”

  “No clues as to why he might have been murdered?”

  “Sorry, that’s all I know.” Valerie shook her head, wrapping her hand around her coffee mug. “But I must admit, when I saw a picture of the man accused of the murder, I didn’t think he did it. Gerard was a big guy with wide shoulders, and the accused didn’t look strong enough to take on Gerard. But that’s what the justice system is for, right?”

  Harvey looked to the ground. “Maybe. Anything else that can help me?”

  “The report says that we checked in on him a month before his death. One of the caseworkers found an address for him, and they went around to see him. They wrote that he seemed to be on the mend. He had just started at a temporary employment agency for office workers. But you know what it’s like—some of these men have the weight of the world on their shoulders. I guess he couldn’t stay on the wagon and must have fallen back into the throes of alcoholism.”

  “Alcohol and temp workers,” Harvey mused out loud. “That seems to be a recurring issue in my investigation.”

  “That’s all I know.” Valerie shrugged. “Anything else I can help you with?”

  “Does Caleb come in here often?”

  “Caleb? My son?” Valerie’s eyes squinted at the man sitting across from her.

  Harvey nodded slowly, waiting for her to continue.

  “You don’t think he’s caught up in this, do you?”

  “I don’t know,” Harvey responded calmly. “What do I know is that someone is killing drunks around here, and this center seems to connect them all.”

  “This center? No.” Valerie shook her head. “Not this place. We’re not connected to anything. And certainly not Caleb. He’s a good kid. He drops me off most mornings before work and picks me up sometimes, but that’s it. He doesn’t have anything else to do with this place, and he barely sets foot in here. He’s not involved, I guarantee that.”

  The mother’s love to protect her son was strong.

  Harvey retreated. “I’m sorry. Of course, he wouldn’t be involved. I just need to look at all the options here before more people die.”

  Valerie drew a breath, offended by the suggestion that her son was a killer. “That’s all we know about Gerard.” She drew the conversation away from her son. “You’ll find everything you need in the report that I sent through to Penny.”

  “Thank you for your help, Valerie.”

  He sipped the last of his coffee and stood to leave, inching one step closer to finding the killer.

  Chapter 23

  Jack Grayson yelled wildly at the large television screen hanging at the end of the bar. “Come on!”

  So much aggression. Such a release of testosterone.

  His beloved Lakers had won another game, and the crowd erupted at the buzzer as if they had had some influence on the outcome. Men and women high-fived each other, others hugged, some punched the air. Beer flowed freely—drunk at an extraordinarily fast pace. This was a time to celebrate, but Bill Harvey was not of that mindset.

  “It was a good win.” Jack came back to the booth at the back of the bar where Harvey was waiting, both hands around his cool glass. “What a game. We weren’t expected to win that. So electrifying.”

  Harvey’s reply was flippant. “Sure was. What a win.” Sports were not his thing.

  “Some people love sports.” Jack leaned in, defending his love for men throwing a ball in a hoop. “Sport makes us feel alive. It gives us a buzz of adrenaline. You should get into it, Harvey. You’d love it.”

  “And some people love killing homeless drunks. That’s what gets their adrenaline going, and that’s where my attention is now.”

  “That’s the problem with having a friend who’s a lawyer—I could never win an argument against you.” Jack threw his hands up in the air, surrendering to the conversation. “I don’t even know why I try.”

  As a private investigator, the demand for Jack’s skills was slowing down. The more information people put online about their lives, the less people need a foot soldier to do the hard yards. Now, someone in Frankfurt, Germany can find out as much about a person living in Lewistown, Montana as their next-door neighbor would know.

  It’s all there on the Internet.

  Recording every step of life, every new job, every movement.

  While Jack had skills in investigating online, it bored him. The real excitement, the real buzz, came from working the streets, talking to locals, tailing people. As a six foot four, tattooed, muscular male, he got his kicks working hard, and terrifying people when required.

  And he only got that work from Bill Harvey’s office.

  “Have you got time to investigate some people for me?” Harvey asked his friend.

  Despite the employer-employee relationship, the two strong men had a deep connection, a solid bond. They had each other’s back, and shared laughter over a quiet drink at least once a week. They were friends more than colleagues.

  “I’ve always got time for you, Harvey.” Jack smiled, having just spent the day on his computer, investigating a person for insurance fraud. He found photos of the man with a ‘sore back so bad that it meant he could hardly walk’ helping a friend move house, lifting a couch, and then a fridge. Those pictures were forwarded to the man’s former employer to deal with, and Jack received a nice little sum of money for only a few hours work at his desk.

  “This investigation has to be done carefully, and without contact with my office. Everything needs to come to me directly. I don’t want any emails or texts about this. You call me, and we talk face-to-face. Do you understand?”

  “Of course.” Jack nodded, a little confused. “Can I ask why?”

  “My new temp, Penny Pearson, has connections to this. I don’t want her to know what we’re doing, and I don’t want her to think that we’re looking into her.”

  “Your temp assistant? The one that is working for you
while Kate is on holiday?”

  “That’s right.”

  “What did she do? Steal some cash from the expenses?”

  “No. It might be a lot worse than that.”

  “You’ll have to spell it out for me. I’m not across all this stuff. You know that intelligence isn’t my strength.”

  Harvey looked around the bar, checking for any prying ears. There were none; they were all too busy cheering for men they had never met. “The homeless people that are turning up dead in Los Angeles. All the murders might be connected.”

  “A serial killer?”

  “That’s right.”

  “And you think Penny might be the killer?”

  “I don’t know. But all roads are leading to her, or someone closely connected to her. I need to know more about them before I charge ahead with any accusations. And I need to know it very quickly.”

  “And this is about your brother’s case? The one where he is charged with strangling a homeless man?”

  “It is.”

  Jack pulled out his phone, ready to type in the details. “Fire away. What’s her name?”

  “Penelope Jane Pearson.”

  Typing quickly into his smartphone, he searched Penny’s details. “Twenty years old, blonde, temp worker, currently working for you, former model, has worked at a lot of places… takes a lot of photos on the beach… looks like she lives with her aunt, Nicole…”

  “You got all that in a matter of seconds?”

  “That’s right.” Jack grinned broadly, his newly whitened teeth shining brightly. “It’s amazing what is publicly available to people. You’d be surprised.”

  “I already am.”

  He punched in more links on his phone. “But the really juicy stuff I can’t access yet. She has most of her social media accounts set to private, which means I have to be a friend of hers to access the details. I can see some photos, but not all of them.”

  “She’s not going to accept a friend request from you.”

  “She doesn’t need to,” Jack explained. “What I’m going to do is called ‘catfishing’.”

  “Catfishing?” Harvey shook his head. “You’ll have to explain it. This is a whole new world for me.”

  “Catfishing is when you create a fake profile online to appear familiar and comfortable with the target. I’ll create a profile similar to hers—I’ll create a profile of a young woman, fun with social pictures, and I’ll note that I used to work in a place that she worked. I’ll put up pictures that I’ve downloaded from somewhere else, something with lots of other people, and then I’ll send off friend requests to all her friends first. I’m bound to get a bite or two. Once we have two or three mutual friends, then I’ll send her a friend request.”

  “Sounds intensive.”

  “I can get it done in two to five hours, depending on how often she and her friends use the particular websites. While that’s happening, I’ll do some legwork and try to find out everything about her past. I’ll get the report to you once I have her friend request. Shouldn’t be more than five hours.”

  Harvey shook his head, stunned by the new world that was constantly growing around him.

  “Don’t be so anti-technology.” Jack laughed at the confused look on his friend’s face. “Technology is great, and so is social media. It connects people all over the world and lets people interact with others that they may otherwise have never had the chance to. Only yesterday, I got a message from a cousin in Italy that I’d never met. That’s a positive thing.”

  “Maybe.” Harvey took a long drink of his beer.

  “It’s just a cycle. A generation ago, old people like you were complaining about computer games. Two generations before that, they were complaining about the effects of television. Before that, they were complaining about cars. And probably before that, people were complaining about industrialization. Complaining about change is nothing new; it’s what all the people who can’t accept it do.”

  “Doesn’t mean it’s good for you. Doesn’t mean I have to accept the change.”

  “You won’t accept it because you’re a dinosaur. You’ll be extinct before you know it, just like the other dinosaurs.”

  “If a meteor hits, then we’ll all be extinct. And all that will be left will be the remnants of the Internet, pieces of social media detailing the lives of irrelevant people. Future societies will investigate those details like they do the pyramids of Giza. That’s what future species on Earth will be looking at—a self-absorbed culture taking photos of themselves every fifteen minutes. What a legacy.”

  “But people like Penny Pearson will be revered. They’ll be so much information about her that they’ll have college classes on her life. They’ll try to establish what life was like today, and she’ll be at the forefront of the studies. And people like you, people that don’t have an online presence, you won’t exist at all. You won’t even be a blip in her class.”

  “And that’s just what I want,” Harvey replied. “My legacy won’t be that I just existed, it will be that I made a change. My legacy won’t be that I smiled at a camera, it’ll be that I helped people lead better lives.”

  Jack laughed heartily. “You’re an old-fashioned man working in a new world. You should have been born one hundred years earlier. Lucky you have me to help you keep up-to-date.”

  A group of flashy Lakers supporters cheered loudly as they walked past the booth, interrupting the conversation with their loud chorus chants. The closer they got to the door, the louder they sang. Jack Grayson hummed the chant with them, desperate to join in on the celebrating, but remembering that he had to remain focused on the work.

  Once they had passed, Jack leaned forward again. “Anything else you want me to look into for this case?”

  “There’s one more name I want you to investigate. Again, it’s got to be quiet. Really quiet.”

  “Of course. What’s the name?”

  He drew a long breath, looking at his friend intensely.

  “Valerie Wood.”

  Chapter 24

  “Were they all drunks?”

  Bill Harvey approached Detective Matthew Pitt directly, questioning the investigation of the other deaths.

  “Ah…” Pitt thought for a few moments. “Homeless—yes, men—yes… and drunks, yes. I think so.”

  “So what we have is a killer who loves strangling men and hates drunks?”

  “Apparently. You think it’s a vendetta against drunk people? That seems a bit of a stretch, Harvey. Nobody hates drunk people that much.”

  Harvey slowly leaned back on the park bench, next to Pitt, letting out a huff while the world continued to buzzed around them. They watched as children ran freely through the park, people with rollerblades zipped past, young mothers talked loudly about their exciting days.

  He found it strange how the world continued to keep going around, moving with undeviating regularity, seemingly unaware of the frenzied violence, death, and hatred that simmered just beneath the surface.

  People wandered about their everyday lives without a care, ignoring the human hatred that drenched the atmosphere, trying to believe that the world was filled with goodwill and love.

  The pain, the terror, and the horror were swept aside, just far enough away to forget, or ignore.

  But it was always there.

  Always threatening to explode.

  Bill Harvey knew that well. He had seen more than his fair share.

  “Who hates drunk people enough to go around killing them?” Pitt looked confused. “This isn’t the days of prohibition. The general population has moved on in the world. And you would have to kill a lot of people if you wanted to rid the world of drunks. That would be an impossible task. Doesn’t add up for me. More like a serial killer picking easy targets. They’re seizing opportunities to waste these people. Maybe someone with the taste of blood. They do it once, and then they can’t get enough. Like my pal, Martin. He went skydiving for the first time on his fiftieth birthday, and a year
later, he’s doing it every weekend. He can’t get enough. He’s addicted to it.”

  Harvey shook his head at the comparison. “These deaths don’t seem premeditated, but they also don’t seem to be random occurrences. I think the killer snaps when they see certain situations.” Harvey leaned forward, resting his elbows on his knees. “The killer holds a deep hatred for certain people, and that hatred is exposed in the right, or perhaps wrong, situations. And the more they get away with murder, the more they’ll thirst for it.”

  “Well, there would certainly be plenty of fuel for that fire around here. Drunks are half our population.” Pitt laughed. “The killer must think this city is a field of opportunity.”

  “What exactly does the police profile say for this serial killer? What is it about my brother that matches your profile so well?”

  “I haven’t seen the full profile report, just bits and pieces. But it’s all the stuff you’d expect for a serial killer who spent his spare time choking homeless drunks to death. Firstly, they have to be strong enough to wrestle a drunk and get the rope around their neck—”

  “Maybe it’s not strength. Maybe it’s skill,” Harvey suggested.

  “Like a karate skill? Maybe.” Pitt shrugged. “Secondly, it’s most likely that the person is a loner. They live alone and spend a lot of their time alone. Not likely to be married, possibly in a relationship, but not living with the person. Thirdly, they’ve experienced some sort of trauma in their life that affects the way they interact with the world. This is apparently a very important factor. Although it doesn’t have to be a big moment; a smaller moment in childhood might also have had a massive impact.”