The Tangerine Killer

by Claire Svendsen

  “How may I help you today?” she said.

  Sitting behind the white, glass counter she had the illusion of staring down at us despite the fact that she was seated. Her open mouthed grin revealed teeth as white as the walls around her. Bleached blonde hair was pulled back tightly in a well-controlled bun and her black suit made her the stark focus of the entire room, as I’m sure she had intended. Security cameras blinked down at us from every corner with evil red eyes. I knew we were being watched.

  “We are here to check out your amazing advances in maggot technology.”

  Olin quoted the advertisement from the sign outside and by the way he had his arms crossed in front of him, I knew he was trying to keep a straight face.

  “Yes of course. Would that be for yourself or perhaps for your friend here?”

  She raised a well plucked eyebrow and looked down her perfectly pointed nose at me as though I had some gigantic wound lingering under my clothes that needed the instant attention of some maggots. I fought the urge to reach over the counter and throttle her.

  “I certainly wouldn’t let a little thing like some maggots stand in the way of a nice long lifespan,” I said. “Would you?”

  “Of course not,” she said. “After all, that’s why we are here. Would you like a consultation? There is of course a nominal fee and little paperwork to sign. Do you have insurance?”

  She bent down behind the desk, revealing just enough cleavage to keep Olin occupied and pulled a stack of papers out of her drawer with a little cough. The wad of paper was almost as thick as a telephone book. That was when Olin pulled out his badge and the jar of maggots. He slammed them both on the desk with a stern smile.

  “Just let us see whoever is in charge.”

  “Of course, why didn’t you say so before?”

  She pressed a couple of buttons on one of her five phones and waited for someone on the other end to answer while she picked at a red nail. She gave off an odd vibe, part receptionist, part barracuda. I wondered what her deal was.

  “Someone will be with you in a moment,” she said sweetly. “Would you like to have a seat?”

  “No, we’ll stand thank you,” Olin said.

  She looked slightly crestfallen, as though she couldn’t understand why her body hadn’t charmed Olin. I wondered how she would really feel if she knew that his four year old son had been kidnapped by a crazed serial killer and we were running out of time. Just thinking about Parker made my stomach churn sickly. I was the one he had targeted, why hadn’t he just come after me? I wondered how things would have been different if he had taken me the night he came into my motel room and placed Jill on my bed. Would he have killed me by now and dumped my body in a river like Lisa? Or would I be lying strapped to a steel table with missing body parts? I broke out in a cold sweat.

  “Do you have a bathroom?” I asked queasily.

  The receptionist pointed to a white door almost concealed by a large potted plant. I wondered whether that was to deter clients from using the facilities or just to make them ask where it was.

  “You okay?” Olin asked. For the first time since we’d argued he looked concerned.

  “Fine,” I said. “As if you care.”

  I tried to make my exit look casual instead of the panicked flee I wanted it to be. The bathroom was stark and as blindingly white as the reception area. I clutched the cold, porcelain sink as the room started to swim around me. I splashed some cold water on my face. I had to shock myself out of this stupid panic.

  As I caught my reflection in the mirror for the first time I saw the toll that the last few days had taken. My eyes were sunken pits, my cheeks drawn and pale and I looked scared. I think that frightened me more than anything. I was on the verge of losing it and I couldn’t let that happen. I had to focus, I had to stay strong. I had no choice. Time was running out.

  The door to the bathroom opened and two women came in. They were in the middle of a conversation. I fled into one of the stalls and locked the door. I stood there, waiting and listening.

  “Did you see how cute he was?” said a woman with a slightly squeaky voice.

  “Oh totally hot,” the other agreed.

  “He’s a detective though,” Squeaky lowered her voice slightly.

  “So? You know what that means.”

  “What?”

  “Handcuffs!” she began to laugh.

  “Uh, you’re so gross Libby. Besides you know why he’s here don’t you?”

  “Why? Because of Toby?”

  “Don’t you think? Why else?”

  Squeaky was almost whispering now even though I’m pretty sure they thought they were alone in the bathroom. I was holding my breath. I wanted to know more about this Toby.

  “But he didn’t really do anything wrong. I mean he didn’t know it was wrong at the time. Right?”

  “I don’t know. I always get the feeling he’s watching me, he gives me the creeps,” Squeaky sounded a little scared.

  “Maybe he just likes you?”

  “Yeah, in a crazed stalker way? No thanks.”

  “Well we’ve all taken things from the lab at one point or another. I don’t see what the big deal is.”

  “Speak for yourself, I’ve never taken anything.” Squeaky was indignant.

  “Okay fine, you never took anything but technically you used company equipment to run your boyfriends sperm count.”

  “Oh my God, I can’t believe you would bring that up. You know how worried I was that something was wrong with me. Besides at least I didn’t do what you did with the mass spectrometer.”

  “I never did.”

  They were getting louder now. It was turning into a full blown argument about who had done what with the lab equipment. All I wanted to know was what Toby had done that would warrant their suspicion that Olin had come for him.

  “Whatever,” Squeaky finally relented. “I just hope he drags that creep out of here and they fire him. I don’t know what he wanted those maggots for but I’m sure it wasn’t anything good. I mean what kind of person takes maggots home in their lunch bag?”

  My heart jumped into my throat as I heard the words I had been waiting for and to the surprise of the two women, I burst out of the stall I had been hiding in. Squeaky screamed.

  SIXTY THREE

  Squeaky, whose real name turned out to be Anna, sat huddled together with Libby on the white couch in the lobby. They both looked like they’d been summoned to the principal’s office. Since escorting them out to Olin they had been increasingly reluctant to talk, especially when they saw that he was deep in conversation with the head of the institute. The man, who had small round spectacles and a receding hairline, looked especially worried. When I told Olin that they had information involving an employee who had stolen from the workplace, the man flashed an angry look at the two women.

  “Detective, I can assure you that we will fully co-operate in any way we can. Our institute is internationally renowned and fully funded by generous donations from many prominent people around the world. I cannot and will not have controversy and suspicion cast upon decades of groundbreaking work. It could ruin us.”

  He looked like a toad, his tongue darting in and out as he spoke and eyes magnified eerily behind his glasses. He was so flustered that he didn’t know what to do with his hands. He kept crossing and uncrossing his arms nervously. You would have thought that he was the one under interrogation.

  “Thank you Mr. Potts,” Olin patted the small man on the shoulder. “Perhaps you could locate this Toby for us.”

  “Of course. I’ll be right back.”

  He shuffled off hurriedly and I glanced at Olin, afraid to see hope mirrored back at me but his face was set in a neutral stare. We had work to do and his emotions were battened down just as mine should have been. Only somehow they had broken loose from their tether and were bubbling precariously beneath the surface. If I’d ever needed a cigarette, it was now.

  “I’d better talk to these two alone.” Olin
pointed at the two women who were both texting on their phones. “I hope they’re not stupid enough to warn this freak we’re coming for him.” He pointed at them before shouting out. “Hey ladies, no phones, got it?”

  They both turned red and stuffed their phones into their bags.

  “Need me?” I asked.

  “Not especially?” Olin raised an eyebrow.

  “I’ll be outside then.”

  “Okay,” he walked off.

  That stung. I didn’t want it to but it did. I had to get my emotions back in check or they were going to be the death of me.

  Outside it was hot. The air sticky with a hint of orange blossom that hung suspended in the air. A stone table with benches sat in the shade under several leafy palms. A small congregation of assorted people in lab coats had collected to smoke their little technical hearts out. I heard the chatter fall a decibel or two as I approached but I didn’t attempt to infiltrate their group, just stood off to the side where I leant against a particularly knobby palm and lit up. A couple of people stared my way and I gave a nod and a faint smile which seemed to satisfy them and they went back to their conversations. To be honest I didn’t really care. I wanted the cigarette more than I wanted to hear what they were talking about but bad news travels fast. Everyone was wondering why the police were there.

  The gossip ringleader was a woman with white hair, followed a close second by a younger man who was bald. They seemed to be the ones who had the most seniority in the group and, as it turned out, actually worked in the same department as Toby. The others were a mixed bunch of young men and women who were all hovering around like anxious hens waiting for grain to be thrown down for them.

  “He was creepy anyway,” one of the younger women commented.

  That seemed to be the general consensus among all the employees. Toby was a creepy guy who had scared more than one of the women that worked with him by his inappropriate comments. He had even touched one of them on the breast only she had been too scared to report it.

  “You should have told me,” the white haired woman scolded her. “I would have seen to it that he was fired immediately.”

  “I was scared,” the young girl’s voice wobbled as she spoke. She couldn’t have been much older than twenty. She had a pretty round face which she had applied just a touch of makeup to. She looked like the sort of young, naïve girl that would appeal to any predator, let alone one who had so far chosen his victims for their pale, supple skin.

  “I don’t care if you were terrified out of your mind,” she continued. “You should have followed protocol and filed a report. What do you think we have rules for?”

  The young woman shook her head, clearly as terrified of the older woman as she had been of Toby. The young man who was standing next to her put his arm around her shoulders in a protective way that suggested they were more than friends. I wondered what he thought of Toby caressing his girlfriend’s breast in the workplace.

  “We have rules so that we can nip this sort of thing in the bud, weed out the bad eggs if you know what I mean. Men like Toby Mathews are a liability waiting to happen. I knew we should have got rid of him after the last time.”

  “What last time?” someone from the back piped up.

  “Never you mind.”

  The old woman was starting to look a little flustered. The look in her eye told me she had just put two and two together and come up with more than four. She looked over as I flicked my cigarette butt to the ground and squished it under my shoe. I stepped into the group.

  “I’m sorry to intrude but I’d really like to ask you a few questions.”

  I gently took the old woman by the arm. It was sharp and thin beneath my grasp and now that I was closer I saw just how old she really was. Her finely applied makeup couldn’t cover a multitude of wrinkles and sagging skin, at least not up close. She pursed her lips as I led her through the crowd and back to the reception area and Olin. The whispers that had only been a breath of air now rose to a crescendo as we left the gawking co-workers behind. I had the feeling that there wasn’t going to be much work done in the labs today.

  Olin decided that it would be easier to take the two girls and the old woman back to the station for questioning. It turned out that the man who was fast becoming our prime suspect, Toby Mathews, had not shown up for work that day. In fact he hadn’t been in all week. Had not shown up for a single day’s work since our murders began and that was a giant red flag amongst his tally of perfect attendance.

  While Olin called for squad cars to come pick up the ladies, I pored over the file that had been provided by Mr. Potts on employee number 1743 Toby Mathews. On the surface he appeared to be a model employee, if not perhaps a little over dedicated. Working overtime, requesting lab access on the weekends, placing extra orders for equipment and supplies for his department for some project he was working on. Even with the file right in front of me I had no idea what exactly it was that Toby or his department did.

  “This isn’t really much help,” I told Olin as he came and stood beside me. “Other than a home address, I can’t fathom too much out about this Toby Mathews or what he was doing here.”

  “Well according to Mr. Potts, Toby was heading up an experiment involving the maggots and their ability to not only clean necrotic tissue but also regenerate growth when stimulated by a special salve. Apparently that’s all he can tell us because he is under some sort of confidentiality clause. I guess this is supposed to be the latest and greatest scientific breakthrough and his financial backers are deathly afraid the technology will leak out before they have a chance to get it out on the market.”

  “Well you can make him talk, can’t you?”

  “If I get a warrant and that’s going to take time that I’m not sure we have.”

  Parker. The bad feeling came flooding back.

  “Mr. Potts checked their inventory and they have a discrepancy in the amount of maggots that have been assigned to experiments so it’s not much of a stretch to assume that this is where our maggots came from. Whether this Toby Mathews is actually our guy or just the supplier, I don’t know.”

  “Well no one here liked him much that’s for sure but he passed his psych exam.”

  I pulled a sheet of paper out of the file which declared employee number 1742 a mentally competent and level headed person.

  “So what? He looked at an ink blot and said he saw a butterfly instead of a bazooka. That just means he’s smart not stupid.”

  “I think that smart is a given working in a place like this, besides when was the last time you came across a stupid serial killer?”

  “Never but that doesn’t mean that he could have become sloppy.”

  “So now what?”

  “We pay a visit to this guy’s house and see if he’s there.”

  Patrol officers arrived and escorted the waiting women graciously out to their cars. Olin was on the phone again, referencing questions he wanted the answers to when the women arrived for questioning. I stood flipping through Toby’s file, hoping something would jump out at me but nothing did. It told me his high school, where he went to college, even his social security number and his salary, which was far more than I would ever see in my entire lifetime. I guess it paid to be a genius. But there was nothing that told me what I needed to know to catch this guy. It didn’t tell me his hobbies, who he hung out with, what food he liked and where he shopped for his groceries. It was worthless. I slammed it shut in frustration and slid it down the counter away from me, burying my head in my hands to try and get some relief from the blinding white light that was starting to give me a headache. I pushed the folder a lot harder than I meant to and it slid all the way to the end where it splattered onto the floor, spreading its contents over the tile.

  “Shit!”

  “It’s okay. Let me help you.”

  It was the Barbie doll receptionist, stooping down to pick up the mess I had created.

  “Thanks.”

  I bent down to help,
hearing my own heartbeat pounding in my ears.

  “Are you alright?” she asked. “You look pale.”

  “Fine,” I said.

  “I’ve got to go,” Olin yelled to me across the room. “Something’s come up.”

  “Wait, I’m coming,” I scrambled to pick up papers and stand at the same time.

  “No. I’ll send a car back for you,” he called as he ran out the door.

  “Wait, what’s happened?”

  But Olin had gone and I wasn’t in a fit enough state to run after him between the pounding head and the throbbing ribs.

  “Shit,” I swore. What the hell was that about? How could he just leave me like that?

  I bent down to pick up the rest of the fallen papers and felt the receptionist’s stare burning into the top of my head. I looked up, squinting through the light and saw her stuff a piece of paper behind her back.

  SIXTY FOUR

  I had to stop bending over so quickly, my equilibrium was still not back to normal after getting knocked out by the blast. I stood up slowly. The receptionist turned a guilty shade of crimson and took a step away from me with a frozen look of fear in her eyes. She faltered slightly on her high heels. If she took off running she wouldn’t stand a chance. Even in my less than stellar state, I’d still catch her.

  “Give me the paper now,” I said. “I don’t have time for games.”

  “You don’t understand,” she whispered. “He’ll kill me.”

  “Who? Toby?”

  She nodded, her red lips quivering.

  “Look, the police can protect you. Just hand over the paper.”

  “I can’t,” she took another step backwards.

  “Oh for God’s sake.”

  I didn’t have time for this. Olin had gone and I had no idea where. I needed to know what was on that paper and fast.

  I lunged forward and as she turned to flee, I grabbed her wrist and snatched the paper that was crumpled in her hand.