by Edwin Dasso
“Carter. It’s Brandt!” yelled as he threw open the door.
No response.
No gunshots.
No welcoming bullets.
A rapid look inside.
No Carter.
Had she been taken already? Maybe she had gone out to eat. No, probably too late for that. A drink with friends, perhaps? Could be, if she had any.
He tried her phone again. Still switched off.
He returned to the lounge and took a quick look around. Jim Beam bottle, a third left, empty glass, used, phone plugged into a charger. The contents of the coffee table spoke volumes about her life. The TV was on, volume turned very low, the remote thrown haphazardly on the couch.
He reached into his jacket for a pen and notebook. He had to leave her a note. An explanation. A warning.
He recalled the wiretap and made a quick call to his friend. No use of her phone all day, only one incoming call from her brother three hours ago, that would be shortly after he had dropped her back here. The recording was just like the other one, said his friend. Not even a greeting in normal English.
He added ‘call me, urgent!’ to the bottom of his note.
25
Back in the Bureau, Brandt still had not heard back from Carter. He was worried, more so than he was prepared to admit. Slumped in a chair, his eyes were fixed on the whiteboard, mesmerized by the twist that the numbers had contributed.
Sacramento. Redding. Elk Grove. Lake Tahoe. Napa. Imola.
S.R.E.T.N.I. or maybe I.N.T.E.R.S.
However when the number that had been discovered hidden within the body bags the killer, Mister X, had left, were taken into consideration, 7 and 8, that meant there were at least eight victims, not six as he had assumed.
That also meant C… A… R… T… E… R… was not the end of whatever the serial killer was trying to spell. Possibly two more letters. Hopefully, not more.
Now to the reason he had rushed over to Carter’s apartment. The other body bags had also revealed numbers. They had, in the order the bodies were found, 1, 6, 5, 2, 8, 7.
It had occurred to Brandt that the problem they were having in making sense of the place name clues, that is if they were clues and not just his wild imagination, was that the words Carter’s spreadsheets had thrown up did not seem to fit in the context of the case. At least, if there was a link somewhere, he had not found it yet. But the numbers, applied to order the place name initials spelt out
S… T… 3… 4… E… R… I… N.
Close up, he had not seen it, but that step away, ignoring the numbers:
STOP ERIN.
Carter was the killer’s target.
Now she had gone missing.
He contemplated putting out a BOLO. Be On the Look Out for a Bureau agent, a fellow Law Enforcement figure. The District Attorney would have something to say about that. Was this just a little more than a hunch? Had he got this wrong?
“Hi, Jim. Didn’t expect to see anyone here at this hour.”
Brandt, absorbed in the letters and integers floating between the whiteboard and his senses, shot up from his chair, almost grabbing his gun as he twisted to face the newcomer.
“Whoa! Hey, it’s me, Jim. Slow down.” Noah Adams held up both hands, palms toward Brandt.
“You damn well near gave me a heart attack, Noah. Jeez. What are you doing here? It’s gotta be almost midnight.”
“Ten past, actually, but I could ask you the same thing.”
Brandt turned to face the whiteboards.
“We had a break in the case. There were numbers on the inside of the body bags. I took them to be ordinals. I applied them to the place names and got that!” He pointed at the alphanumeric string on the board. “The killer is after Carter. I went to her apartment, but she’s not there…”
“Gus’s wife… Gus is a psychiatrist I know at Imola. Anyway, his wife was coming to Sacramento tomorrow and said she could stay with her daughter if she drove me over tonight. I saw Carter about forty minutes ago, on my way here.”
“What?”
“Yeah. She was driving a dirty, white panel truck.”
“Where? You sure it was her?”
“Interstate 80, just after Cordelia. She was heading south. I’m pretty sure it was her, but, as I only met her today, maybe I’m wrong. I’m still a little shook up by that meeting with her twin. Does she drive a van?”
“No. As far as I know, she doesn’t have a panel truck. Could be someone else’s though. South…?”
Brandt stood and walked to the map he had hung on the whiteboards.
“South,” he repeated. “What’s south?”
“Well the I-80 ends in San Francisco. If the message with the place names is STOP ERIN, then ’O’ and ‘P’ are the initials of where the next two bodies will be found. “What towns or cities with those letters do we have?”
“In the State? Too many. Just the ones that start with ‘oak’ probably number fifty or so.”
“Why did you say the south? Is Erin…?” Adams left the sentence hanging, not sure how he was going to complete it.
“If I’ve not screwed up on this, STOP ERIN identifies her as the killer’s objective. Therefore, if she’s heading south now, in a vehicle that’s not hers, could the killer be crouched down beside her, holding her at gunpoint as she drives to the place where he’s going to take her life? So the Interstate 80 South could mean…” Brandt ran his finger down the freeway on the map, looking for places on or near the highway which began with the two missing letters. “Richmond has various neighborhoods that begin with ‘P’. It could be any of those. Then there’s Oakland, of course. Did you get the license plate of the truck?”
“The front one was missing. I didn’t see the back one.”
“Shit! Alerting both Richmond and Oakland’s Police Departments to a possible kidnapping of one of our agents by a suspected serial killer…”
“I’ll make the call. I’ll call the FBI. I know some people in both places and I can get things moving quicker.” Adams paused, thinking. “Jim, can you do something for me? Don’t ask me why. I’ll explain later. Can you check for the white van leaving or returning to Sacramento on the days immediately before the last three kills. Traffic cams, and such.”
“Why?” asked Brandt.
“The killer might be from here. I’ll explain later.” Adams took out his phone and paged through the contacts list. He found one of the numbers he was looking for and dialed. As he walked into the hallway, he raised the phone to his ear and began speaking.
Brandt looked around the room. Something was not right. His gut was telling him he was missing something more. As he waited for his call to be put through to the Traffic Operations Center, though he knew his chances of locating someone there at this hour was slim, his eyes were riveted on the whiteboards. He felt a headache coming on. His eyeballs felt like his lids had been replaced by sandpaper. He needed coffee, but knew that would only make his headache worse. What was it Carter had said about obsessions after retirement? Well, he was dammed sure he had one now, before retirement.
Noah returned to the room.
“Both Fed offices are moving. They are monitoring traffic cameras and other video feeds, and have mobilized the cops too. It’s a needle in a haystack, Jim, a white panel truck in California. There must be a million of them; but at least we’re looking.”
“Good. Can’t get anyone to check the traffic cameras until the morning. I’ve left messages and spoken to the Center’s manager on her cell. She wasn’t happy about being called at this hour, believe me.”
“So what now?”
26
Brandt kept looking at the whiteboards.
“I have a rumbling in my gut that I’m missing something.”
“I know exactly what you mean.” Adams sat in the spare chair, tiredness overcoming his features like a wave racing up a shoreline. “I’m bushed. I’m so tired, I think I’ve gone ten rounds with Tyson in his heyday.”
“Did
Tyson ever go ten rounds with anyone? It’s been a long day…”
“I know, Jim, but that meeting with Carter’s twin… I’ve dealt with many extreme cases in my time, but that guy, Tobias, really spooked me out. There were a couple of moments…” He shook his head, trying to free the memories seemingly stuck in front of his mind’s eye.
“What? Is he violent? Aggressive?”
“We played chess…”
“Chess?”
“Yeah. But it was no ordinary game. Tobias has an IQ off the scale. He’s killed three people too; his father at age 7, and two inmates while interned. You know, if it wasn’t for the fact he was locked up in Imola, I’d probably put him down as our principle suspect for these killings. These number and letter clues;” Adams waved a hand at the whiteboards, “he’s easily capable of coming up with something like that. He kept repeating that it was the game that mattered, not the end result. Oh, by the way, did Erin call her brother when you were on your way back?”
“No, why? She was tired too. I told her to take the rest of the day off, and she’ll be in late tomorrow as she’s meeting her doctor. That’s why I’m so worried our Mister ‘X’ was waiting for her and has taken her to be his next victim. Her phone was charging in her apartment. I didn’t see her firearm though, but that means nothing. The killer could have taken it. No sign of a struggle of any sort either. Carter is a fighter, Noah. I don’t think she would go that easily. She was a military cop and can handle herself too. Even if the killer got the drop on her and took her gun, disarming him would not have been too hard.” He paused, glancing back at the whiteboards again. “Why do you ask if she called her brother? She spent most of the time in the car catching up on her sleep.”
“Oh, no reason. Just… aw, forget it. I’ll ask her or Tobias when we next meet.”
“You’re going to see Tobias again?”
“Yeah. Unfinished business. There’s something…”
Both men let the seconds pass quietly, each lost in their own thoughts.
“So, what can I do to help you with that?” asked Adams eventually, pointing at the whiteboards.
“It’s those damned numbers. ‘X’ went to a lot of trouble to hide them inside the body bags. The fact they were there, and the way they were used, implies he has an overall plan, and he’s been working through it since he started killing. The first kill, here in Sacramento, a relative of the Attorney General. That got everyone’s attention, yet, somehow, I get the feeling the rest of the victims were almost chosen randomly. I can’t find a pattern in ‘X’’s selection. Nothing seems to connect the victims, except for the two in Napa. Joyce called to tell me they were a couple; lived together at the vineyard. I suspect that’s where they were taken. Earlier I called Carter’s commanding officer in the military. As her name came up in the word puzzle, I thought that if I couldn’t find a connection between the victims and the cases she’s worked here at the Bureau, maybe this is somehow related to her years as a military cop.”
“And? Did you get anything?”
“He’s out of the country at the moment. They said they would get a message to him and he would call me back when he could.”
“So all that leaves us with the puzzle. You know, I know it sounds crazy, especially coming from a psychiatrist, but the planning that went into the body bag numbers, the seeming lack of interest in choosing victims, the creation of the puzzle itself… ‘it’s all about the game’. It keeps coming back to me. He also said something that made my hair stand on end. He said ‘there is beauty to behold in the moves, deceit, hidden traps, direct attacks, distractions’, I’m paraphrasing but that’s the gist. Supposedly, he was referring to the game of chess, but I suspect he might have been talking about this case. If he was, there’s only one way he has access to the details; through his sister. Yet your wiretap hasn’t given you anything other than the cryptophasia, right?”
“No, nothing. Her brother called her from the hospital. Must have been after you two spoke. That call was all screeches and nonsense so I’ve no idea what it was about. He was probably just updating her on your visit.”
Adams shook his head again.
“Maybe,” he muttered.
“What?”
“Nothing, Jim. Let’s go back to this word game we have. What if the numbers are also related to the victims in some way. Have you compared their ages, dates of birth, social security numbers to see if anything pops?”
“Yeah. In fact, I went that route before I figured out the easier solution with the place names. Moreover, if I’m right about STOP ERIN, then the word we couldn’t work out is ‘pointers’; nothing else fits. What could that mean?”
“‘Deceit, distraction, hidden traps’,” quoted Adams. “I think that might have been just that; something to distract us from the real game.” He paused. “Does the word have any connection with Carter?”
“I don’t know. I have her file locked in my desk. I’ll go have a look. I’ll grab some coffee too. How do you want yours?” He chuckled, already knowing the reply.
“Black and sweet, just like me!” He too laughed. It was a game they had played since the first time they had met.
While Brandt was away, Noah Adams decided to try a fresh look at the puzzle, but from the perspective of the victims. He wrote the six names down on one of the spare yellow pads, in the order they had been found. He wrote Erin Carter as the seventh name, then crossed it out. The chess game came to mind again. He had been programmed, conditioned into making the moves Tobias wanted to try out his experimental strategy from the Short-Timman game. It had been masterful. What if…?
He tore the page from the pad, scrunched it into a ball and threw it at the trash bin in the far corner, falling short by half a meter.
Conditioning. Standard operating procedure for a serial killer investigation. Look hard at the first victim. It was usually not a random choice. There was usually a solid reason, affecting the killer directly, that connected the first victim with their murderer. Sometimes it was obvious, like the killer’s estranged mother, then victims who looked like her. Other times it was more subtle. Perhaps this case was the latter. If Erin was the target, why go after her only once you have killed six others. Distraction? If it were true, it shows a patience in the killer that was in sharp contrast with the acceleration in the frequency of the last two murders. Result: we, the investigators are stumped. Why? Because we have been conditioned to follow a certain procedure when investigating a serial killer case. ‘X’ was leading us by the nose.
So, forget the victims.
Think of them as pawns on the chessboard, only useful for claiming territory or distracting the opponent while other moves were happening.
Adams’ thoughts were interrupted by a ringing, the sound of the old style telephones of his youth. Brandt had left his phone on the table. Noah looked towards the door. No sign of the big man. He picked up the phone and spoke.
“Special Agent Brandt’s phone, Doctor Noah Adams speaking.”
“Doctor?”
“Who’s calling?” The interference on the line suggested the devil himself was making a long distance connection.
“This is Captain Morrison, US Army Military Police. You are?”
“Oh, I’m the psychiatrist assisting the DOJ task force investigating a serial killer. Special Agent Brandt isn’t in the office, though he will be back in a few minutes.”
“I can’t call back, sir. I’m in Afghanistan. About to embark on a mission. What is it you wanted to know about Warrant Officer Erin Carter? I was her commanding officer.”
“What can you tell me about her, Captain?”
“As an MP, efficient, single-minded, tough.”
“And as a person?”
“Not one to mix with the troops. Kept to herself.”
“Why did she leave the Army?”
There was a long pause. Adams thought the call had been dropped.
“Captain Morrison, are you still there?”
“Er, yes.
Is this an official query?”
“Whatever you tell me will be off-the-record unless it is directly pertinent to our investigation, sir.”
“Is Carter a suspect?”
“No, why would you think that? We believe she might be a victim.”
“Oh. Well, off-the-record, Doctor, she was a suspect in three homicide cases while under my command. We could never prove anything and she concluded all three cases by identifying other perpetrators.”
“Did these confess?”
“No sir. All three were killed, resisting arrest. However the evidence presented by Carter was air-tight.”
“So why was she a suspect?”
“I suspected she was creating cases for her to solve, so she could climb the ranks. I think that’s how she made the transfer to Criminal Investigation so rapidly too. Problem was, I couldn’t prove anything. It was just a string of small details that added up to a big nothing. Anyway, she exceeded protocol on one delicate investigation and was asked to leave or face a court martial. End of story.”
“Wow, that’s pretty heavy, Captain.”
“What is, Doctor? We never spoke. Does this help you with your case?”
“It certainly puts everything into a new perspective, Captain. Thank you. Stay safe over there.”
“Doctor, can I ask you for a favor? If… I mean…”
“Don’t worry, Captain. I think I know what you mean. I will call you personally once this case is over. That okay?”
“Yes sir. Good luck.”
Adams placed the phone back on the desk.
“What the…”
27
“Look what I found!”
Brandt’s booming voice preceded his entrance into the room. He was balancing two mugs of steaming coffee on top of a folder, which Adams presumed was Carter’s file. Noah reached out and relieved him of the cups, placing the one with cream on the desk. He sipped at his mug.
“Great coffee. Where did you get this?”
“When you pull long nights in the Bureau from time to time, you lean a few tricks. For example, the coffeemaker we use every day, which we all know makes an undrinkable sludge, is not the place to go at two in the morning. However, a couple of floors above, in the Executive office suites, their assistants look after the coffee supplies and make their bosses and their visitors decent brews using much better equipment. So you want a decent cup of Joe, take the elevator. I borrowed a couple of clean mugs too, but I’ll take them back before people turn up for their jobs.”
