Jess paused, waited for him to react, but he didn’t so much as nod. He just sat, his face impassive like he hadn’t heard her.
“I’ve run the numbers and statistically it is highly improbable to have this many suicides in such a short space of time. It seems suspicious.”
This time Director Taylor nodded though he still didn’t say anything.
Jess sat, willing him to say anything but he just continued to stare at her. Her skin warmed under the scrutiny. She coughed to clear her throat. “Despite what a lot of people think, teenagers are not as likely to commit suicide as middle-aged or elderly people. The chances of five boys choosing to commit suicide without some connection or precipitating event seems very unlikely.”
“Yes.” He nodded.
Relief washed over her when he finally spoke but it was short-lived because he didn’t follow it up with question or comment.
She sighed. “I think we should look into it, try to understand what’s happening at that school to make five boys think suicide was the only option.”
“I see.”
Annoyance flashed in her. He was acting like she had just told him the trains were running five minutes behind schedule, not that five kids were dead. “I would like to personally look into it. With my team,” she added. “If you give me two weeks, I think I could get to the bottom of what’s going on.” She only needed one, but she asked for two so she could barter. Suicide prevention was not in her team’s remit, but they owed it to Jeanie to figure out why her nephew had killed himself. And if they could prevent another kid from dying, then it would be worth it. She just hoped he saw it the same way.
Director Taylor reached forward and pressed the intercom button at the front of his desk. “Emily, can you send in agents Scott and Smart, please?”
Her skin heated as annoyance bloomed to fully actualized anger. He was dismissing her without even giving her the courtesy of explaining why he was turning down her request; he was just calling in his next meeting.
Jess bit the side of her mouth to keep from saying something she would later regret. He was her boss, she reminded herself. She expected more of someone in his position but the truth was he didn’t owe her anything but a safe work environment.
Twenty seconds later the door opened and two men walked in, both middle-aged and near enough six feet. Jess glanced up long enough to realize she didn’t know either of them, but both were nondescript enough that even if she had met them before, she would have promptly forgotten their faces and names.
Jess’s eyes narrowed when the thinner one pulled down the blinds on the small window to ensure privacy. He must have thought that Jess was going to be part of their meeting. She pushed herself off her seat to give it up to one of them.
“Agent Bishop, I’d like you to meet agents Calum Scott and Richard Smart. They are cyber agents investigating internet crime.”
She forced herself to smile even though she could really do without a meet-and-greet right now. Jess raised her hand in a stagnant wave. Her social skills could never be described as stellar; usually she could at least fake it, but she didn’t have the mental energy to make small talk.
“This is Agent Jessica Bishop. She is on Jeanie Gilbert’s team,” Director Taylor explained to them.
Jess glanced down, avoiding eye contact. It was a force of habit from years of fearing someone would recognize her and ask her about her father.
“Nice to meet you,” they both said, almost in unison.
“Yeah,” she nodded, “likewise.”
“Let’s all move to the conference table so everyone can have a seat,” Taylor said.
Jess glanced at the two chairs in front of his desk. There was enough room for all three of the men. He must have expected Jess to stay. Curiosity prickled her skin.
Director Taylor waited for everyone to take a seat. Unlike the Formica table in her team’s conference room, this one was black walnut with a stainless-steel inlay around the edge. Light reflected off its polished surface. This one was more decorative than functional.
“Could you please fill Agent Bishop in on your findings regarding The Last Supper? Agent Bishop is the one who discovered the body of the latest suicide victim. His name is—was—Levi Smith. His aunt is Special Agent Jeanie Gilbert.”
Jess’s eyes narrowed in confusion. What was he talking about? She looked around the table to see if she was the only one confused. She felt like she had walked in on a foreign film halfway through and someone had turned off the subtitles.
One of them, the one with glasses and a cleft chin, opened his briefcase and handed her a stack of papers. “Confidential” was written across the top in bold letters.
“For security purposes, I can only provide you with a hard copy of the report and it must remain in this room.”
“Of course,” Director Taylor answered on her behalf.
Unease crept along her skin and an ominous weight pushed down on her chest. “What is this?”
The thinner one rubbed the side of his sharp, beaklike nose. “We have discovered an online suicide game called The Last Supper, organized by an unknown curator. Levi Smith is the latest person to fall victim.”
Jess’s eyes widened. “Curator? What?” Questions fired in her from every direction but her thoughts would not slow enough to process the new information. That didn’t make sense. “Are you sure? These things are usually hoaxes.”
“We’ve been following it for several months.”
“Months?” She could not keep the incredulity from her voice. “You’ve known about it for months and you haven’t been able to shut it down?”
“The priority has been containing it and managing incidents as they arise,” Director Taylor said.
“Manage? You mean covering it up?” Jess asked.
The corners of Director Taylor’s mouth pulled down into a frown at the pointedness of her question. “I mean containment. If the media got hold of this, it would spread like wildfire. There would be copycats, and more people would be at risk. You know how these things can grow arms and legs. The aim is to manage this as effectively as possible while we find the person or persons behind the pact. This is an issue of public safety.”
She bit into the side of her mouth and reminded herself that he was the director of the FBI, a position that commanded respect. She took a deep breath to try to push out the anger she felt. “With all due respect, five boys have died. This is not contained.” She was not usually one for insubordination but she had just come from seeing a young kid’s dead body hanging lifeless for anyone to find. He wasn’t even in the ground yet and they were acting like he was just collateral damage sustained in the name of protecting the greater good. Levi was a person with a future and family that loved him. Jess wasn’t prepared to just forget that.
A look flashed between the three men seated at the table, a knowing glance, pregnant with the fruit of collusion.
“What?” Jess demanded. She could read people’s faces. Every micro-expression told the tales their mouths would not let them speak. “Is there something else? What am I missing?”
For a long moment, silence reigned, none of them willing to speak.
“Levi Smith wasn’t the fifth victim,” Director Taylor said at last. “He was the twelfth since the end of August. The problem isn’t just at Gracemount Academy. It’s nationwide. There have been cases in California, New York, and Texas, and then of course the cluster here at Gracemount.”
Jess’s mouth dropped open. “Twelve,” she repeated in case she had misheard.
Director Taylor nodded. His mouth tightened into a white slash.
Every molecule in her body vibrated with frenetic energy, desperately pushing her to scream, but she didn’t; instead, she tapped her fingers on the desk to the same frantic cadence of her heart. Twelve people were dead. By no sane person’s definition was this situation in any way contained. Contained would have been shutting down the responsible parties after the first death.
She continued to pound her
fingers and think until the jolt of the pounding numbed the bottom half of her hand. Several times she opened her mouth but snapped it shut again because she didn’t trust herself to speak.
“All males?” She asked a question because any commentary from her right now wasn’t going to be kind or helpful.
The one with the beak nose answered, “Nine males, three females. All between the ages of fifteen and nineteen.”
She nodded. The gender breakdown was in keeping with national statistics on suicides: men committed suicide at a disproportionately higher rate than women, though women attempted it more often. “Is there a website they’re all accessing?” What she wanted to ask was why they hadn’t shut down any website associated with the pact, but that question would be too ripe with accusation.
“We haven’t worked out all the details but it looks like the curator finds them through social media. Usually on Instagram. He seems to be looking for young people with pre-existing mental health issues to exploit,” the one with the cleft chin answered.
“Sorry, I didn’t catch your names,” Jess said. The conversation was too serious not to know exactly who she was speaking with. She stopped short of asking them their exact qualifications but only because she could look those up later.
“I’m Richard Smart,” the one with the bird nose answered. “And this is my partner Calum Scott.”
“Thanks.” She mentally noted that the one with the pointed nose was Smart and the one with glasses and a cleft chin was Scott. “What sort of mental health issues did they have?” she continued.
“Depression, anxiety, borderline personality disorder,” Scott answered.
“How would the curator know this without access to their medical records? That doesn’t make sense.”
“Kids these days have no filter, no boundaries. They were advertising their personal issues on the internet.” Taylor shook his head.
“Advertising? What do you mean ‘advertising’?” Jess asked.
Agent Smart glanced at the director before he shot her a knowing look. “Hashtags. They all had posts on Instagram that told the curator they had mental health issues. All had #depression or #anxiety. One had #BPD. The curator reaches out to troubled teens via direct message and asks if they want to play a game.”
“Wow. That’s so calculated.” A chill ran the length of her spine. She mentally added the new information to reasons she never wanted to have children.
“Not to mention the fact that no one should be advertising their deficits online. That will haunt them forever. Their future employers could just as easily have seen it. Kids these days just don’t think,” Director Taylor said.
Jess blinked. Deficits. He may as well have said “defects.” Jess was more private than most and certainly would not post anything about herself online—hell, she rarely even confided in actual living people—so she could not disagree with the director’s sentiment on that score, but she didn’t see mental health issues as anything to be ashamed of. Brains, like any other organ in the human body, were subject to a whole host of ailments. There was no shame in that.
Before Jess could say anything, Smart added, “There was also one girl who sought out the game when she found out her friend was playing. She used #CuratorComeFindMe.”
“So, it is spreading. Kids are finding out about it,” Jess pointed out. Their efforts at containment were even less effective than they thought if kids had heard about the game and were actively seeking it out.
Smart shifted in his seat. “We’re working with social media platforms. Any posts seeking out The Last Supper or asking for the curator are deleted.”
“Well, at least there is that.” Jess looked down at the packet she had been given. More than ever, she didn’t want to read it, but she opened it and started skimming the screenshots. “Once the curator makes contact, what happens?”
“The curator gives them a chance to back out. He says—”
“Or she,” Jess mumbled.
“What?” Smart said.
Jess glanced up, realizing that she had spoken the words aloud. “Sorry, I was just saying not all serial killers are men. Unless we have definitive proof this is a man, I think we should entertain the possibility it is a female assailant.” The correction was more for herself, a reminder that men did not have the monopoly on evil.
Scott nodded. “Yeah, true. We don’t really know much of anything about the curator other than it is one sick individual. Once he or she makes contact with the person, he or she then—”
“You can just say ‘he.’ As long as we all know it could be a woman, I’m comfortable with male pronouns.”
“Thanks.” Scott smiled. “It’s much easier. So, like I was saying, the curator gives the kid a chance to back out by taunting and saying he doesn’t think the kid can handle it because once you’re in, you’re in.”
“He’s baiting them,” Jess said. “That’s smart. It’s like a dare. Kids will do the stupidest things if someone dares them. Plus, he’s making it seem intriguing. Hell, I’d want to know what he was talking about.”
“Exactly,” Scott agreed. “But then once they’ve started, it turns sinister. That is when he tells them that he is watching them and will hurt or kill their family if they don’t keep going on with the twelve steps.”
“Twelve steps, The Last Supper. Those are some pretty overt religious references.”
“And it has to be completed in forty days, which is also in keeping with Christian theology.”
“Is there a religious component to it? Are we dealing with zealots here?”
“I don’t know.” Scott shrugged.
Jess glanced down at the packet again and then back up. She would read through it once she got a handle on what she needed to be looking for. “Take me through the steps. How does it go from a direct message to suicide? That’s a massive leap even if we factor in depression.”
“He uses classic mind control. It’s a slow but relentless violation of their boundaries until they are broken. The first step is innocuous, waking up throughout the night, never sleeping more than two hours at a time. The person has to check in every two hours or their family will be killed. This is paired with self-harming. It starts with a single cut on each wrist. The next day they have to make a cut at a perpendicular angle to the first.
“To form a cross?” Jess guessed.
“Yeah. They have to do that every day, and if the cut isn’t long enough or deep enough, they have to do it again. By the end of the forty days, their arms are covered in cuts.”
“He also makes them confess their darkest secrets. He works them, keeps pushing by pretending he has secret dirt on them. It’s really sad. The kids all buy into it and tell him all sorts of stuff,” Smart said.
“Like confession,” Jess said. This whole thing was reminding her way too much of her childhood in Catholic schools.
“Yeah,” Smart said. “And the final step is sending a picture of their last meal and then live-streaming their suicide. The curator reminds them throughout the game that they are being watched and their family will be killed if they don’t agree.”
“Wow,” she said again because she couldn’t think of any words to encapsulate what she was thinking.
“I know.” Taylor shook his head. “What sort of sick person would do this?”
Unfortunately, Jess had met far too many people who were capable of the darkest of depravities. Some looked out into the world and saw people going about their business but Jess saw monsters, trying to blend in as they stalked their prey. “What are you doing to find the person behind this?”
“We are currently monitoring social media and trying to trace the curator.”
“And?” Jess pushed.
“He’s using a proxy server. His IP bounces around the globe like a ping pong ball,” Smart said.
“You haven’t been able to track him in five months?” She tried but couldn’t keep the incredulity from her tone.
The color in Agent Smart’s cheeks
rose to deep scarlet. The cyber agent on Jess’s team, Tina Flowers, would have located the IP address by now, she had no doubt. Tina was that good, and just as importantly, she would not make excuses when she failed, she would just keep at it until she got there. “My analyst…” She paused for a second to consider how to phrase things without overtly offending anyone and getting their backs up. “Perhaps you could use some fresh eyes on this.”
Smart and Scott exchanged an uneasy glance. She could see the cogs turning as they formulated their responses. It was only natural for them not to want to turn over their case. No one wanted to be sidelined, but the truth of the matter was that they had had the best part of six months to crack it, but they hadn’t and now twelve kids were dead.
She cleared her throat. She hadn’t been back at work since Lindsay was murdered. If it had been up to her, she would have come back straight after the funeral, but unfortunately the bureau thought she needed time to get her shit together—or in the words of her therapist Dr. Cameron, process and grieve. But the time had not helped her. She couldn’t process what had happened because there was no way to make sense of any of it.
Jess wasn’t scheduled to come back for another week but there was no way she was going to sit this investigation out. She needed to be here for Jeanie. And she needed to be back at work for herself, to give her days structure and her life meaning again. Catching monsters wasn’t just what she did, it was who she was.
“My team should be on this case. We have skin in the game here. This is Jeanie Gilbert we’re talking about. The last victim was her nephew. She deserves to know what happened to Levi, and to see the person behind the suicide game go to prison.”
Scott’s nostrils flared. “Aren’t you on administrative leave?”
Jess forced herself to smile. “I’m not due back for another week but obviously the director can override that. Given the nature of this case and the fact you haven’t had a break in six months, it seems prudent to get more people looking into this.” She meant more competent people but she left it unsaid because everyone knew the score.
She glanced over at Taylor. His body language—his folded arms and the way he was angled slightly to face Scott—told her he wasn’t convinced by her argument. She had to appeal to him on another level, something more personal. “We have been very lucky in keeping this out of the media. It would just take one reporter to cover this story and then you’ve really opened Pandora’s box. You think we’ve had some bad press recently? Wait until America finds out we knew about a national suicide game and didn’t use every resource at our disposal to shut that down.” She paused for effect. “Ultimately, it’s your decision. The buck stops with you, so it’s your call… It’s your reputation on the line.”
Catch Your Death Page 4
