by Tyler Porter
“You? Why?”
“He didn’t show up to headquarters this morning. He’s never been late as long as I’ve been here, and he always answers his phone. Seven calls went to voicemail. I just thought maybe he’d gotten food poisoning or the flu and couldn’t stop puking long enough to call.” She buried her face in her hands.
“So you went to check on him,” I said.
“I did. Hunt was going to go, but I volunteered to so that he could focus on the case…he’s been so on edge over everything lately…I think he’s just overwhelmed so I didn’t want this to get added to his plate.”
I didn’t say anything. I had a hundred questions that I was ready to throw at her, but she’d obviously been through enough for the moment. Cooper was always one that I tried to go easy with. I knew from her record that she’d had a rough time growing up, and I’d always had a bit of a tender spot for her. I thought the silence was going to stay for a while, but as I stood to get up, she spoke again.
“It was him Casey,” she said.
“What do you mean?” I asked, already knowing exactly what she meant, but hoping I was wrong.
“It was the same guy…the guy from our case…the one who killed Shelby.” She looked up at me so fast I though her neck might snap off realizing too late what she’d said and who she’d said it to. “I’m sorry.”
“It’s alright,” I said after taking a moment to get myself under control. “How do you know it was the same guy?”
“I saw it…it was awful. Blood everywhere. Marty had stab wounds all over him, but—”
“But what?” I asked.
“But all the wounds were done around major arteries. Almost like it was done deliberately so that he wouldn’t bleed out immediately.”
“You think our guy left him alive on purpose?”
“I don’t know. In all the previous killings there were direct puncture wounds to major arteries and in this one he missed every single one. It just doesn’t seem accidental.”
“Hailey,” I said before letting a moment pass while I tried to figure out the best way to phrase what I needed to ask next. “Tell me about his eyes.”
“They weren’t stapled like the others…and he wasn’t missing any fingers, but Karen.” She stopped cold.
“Go on,” I said.
“She only had three fingers left on each hand, and her eyelids were…God it was like a nightmare.”
“I understand,” I said. “Take your time.”
“They weren’t stapled…they were missing.”
“Missing? Like they’d been removed and taken from the house?”
“Not just removed. Coroner says they were ripped off by hand.”
“Fucking hell.” I sighed.
“That’s not the worst of it,” she said quietly.
“Fuck me, how could it get any worse?”
“Marty had ligature marks on his wrists and there was a chair in the bedroom in the middle of the floor,” she said as she gave me a look that told me everything I needed to know.
“No…no.”
“The best we can make out is that while he was…working…on Karen…the sick fucker made Marty watch.”
Chapter 19: Brutality Lives On
I sat on the bench now myself staring blankly at the floor after Perez had taken Cooper for a walk to get some air. It was Captain Connors who eventually wandered over to sit next to me. The two of us sat in absolute silence for several minutes, both of us leaned over with our arms resting on our knees and our heads hung low. We didn’t have to say it. We both knew what the other was thinking. He may have been the boss, but up until my retirement I was in charge of this team and we had both failed to keep our team safe.
This wasn’t just personal anymore. This was a blatant attack on our unit. This monster had gone after the only person I had in the world outside of work, now he was going after the only family I had left. That made it personal for all of us. Neither of us spoke because neither of us knew what to do next. We’d both been so decisive over the years and, for maybe the first time in our careers, we were completely clueless as to what the next step was.
“Cooper’s pretty shaken up over this,” he finally said. Just like Neil, state the completely fucking obvious.
“Yeah. I would be too if I’d gone through what she did today.”
“Look, we’ve had our differences over the years, Norris. I haven’t always liked you and vice versa, but this is our team. Retired or not, amount of experience irrelevant, this is our team. I haven’t always given you your fair due, but I want to now. I have no idea what to do. I’ve never dealt with anything even close to this…I don’t even know where to start fixing this.”
“The first thing you need to know Captain, is that you will never fix this. No one will ever be able to fix what happened in that house.”
“Okay, so what do we do? Just keep going like we have been? Wait for him to take the rest of us out one by one?”
“For now, I’m going to that house. I need to see for myself what happened. I need to see what’s changed. It’s possible he left something behind this time. Not only did he attack two people instead of one, he left one alive. That’s a huge swing.”
“Fair enough, just keep in mind you’re a consultant Norris. You can’t just barge in there and take over the place. There are uniforms there who have a job to do,” Captain Connors said.
“Don’t worry about me, worry about them,” I said, nodding to the team before walking over to them.
“How we doin kids?” I said as I approached Hunt and Detective Hall, and they both just nodded in response. “Hall, why don’t you go catch up with Perez and Cooper? She’s pretty shaken up—she could use all the support she could get.”
Detective Hall did as I suggested without a word, the sorrow written all over his face. Hunt wasn’t much different.
“How ‘bout you?” I asked him.
“What about me?” His tone was a little sharp for my liking.
“Easy kid, I just wanna make sure you’re okay,” I said, truly trying to disarm him a little.
“You really wanna know? I’m not okay. I’m not! My own team is getting slaughtered under my nose. My team! I am the one who is supposed to fix all this, but all anyone seems to give two shits about is when you are going to show up to save the day!”
“I know how you feel, but that doesn’t matter right now,” I said trying to bulldoze past having to have the conversation that I knew was inevitable. “I need you to come with me to Simmons’s house.”
“We don’t need to go anywhere together. I got this. Do you understand that? I can handle this without you and your ‘consultation.’ I don’t need it. I’ve been to the house already and I’ve seen what I need to.”
“I am asking you to come with me. A fresh pair of eyes and two heads instead of one. Come on, for Simmons.”
“No! Why don’t you go home? I’m sure one of your teacher’s pets will call you when we get news about Simmons. Until then, we don’t need you here.”
“I’m gonna ask one more time, come with me to the house and let’s take another look at this thing,” I said trying to stay calm, but failing miserably.
“I said no, and I said go home. Go! Get the fuck outa here, I got this,” he yelled giving me a stern shove which was just enough to push me over the edge I’d been tilting on the entire conversation.
I jammed both hands toward him grabbing two fistfuls of his shirt while forcing him back against the wall. He struggled against me, but I kept hold tight. I pulled him toward me and slammed him back against the wall before getting so close to his face with mine that our foreheads were touching.
“I get it Hunt, I really fucking do, but you gotta get past this shit! I know that you want to prove yourself and show your stuff, but this is bigger than that! People are fucking dying now!” I wa
s screaming in his face and letting out anger that had been building up ever since I’d retired. I took a second to breath hard before ending my statement on a calmer note. “This is real life shit and if you don’t stop letting your ego out of control, the rest of the team is going to die on your watch.”
He seemed to calm down a bit, but said nothing and shrugged me off before walking ahead of me toward the exit. I followed, assuming he was giving in and heading to the Simmons residence. If not, this thing might explode right there in the hospital. The animosity between us had been brewing for so long it was bound to boil over at some point and a thirty second screaming match was not going to be the end of it. I knew this for sure.
Surprisingly, he walked out of the hospital, across the parking lot to an unmarked sedan, climbed in and hit the unlock button so that I could climb in on the passenger side. I slid in and kept my eyes forward deciding that if he wanted to talk about the issues between us, he would have to man up and start it. He didn’t. The silence prevailed as we made the fifteen-minute drive out to the house. As we pulled on the street where the house resided, we could see from the very end of the road that a crowd had formed outside the home.
The property itself was taped off and uniformed officers were ensuring that no one set foot on the actual property, but that didn’t stop the media and neighbors from hoarding just beyond the tape. The flash of cameras could be seen from hundreds of yards away and as we got closer the overwhelming thunder of a thousand questions being asked of the officers boomed indisputably. We parked next to a black and white police cruiser and made our way through the crowd.
We made it about halfway through the sea of bodies before the first news anchor noticed me and Hunt. They saw his badge, a dead giveaway, and they knew exactly who I was. Once it was known by one, it was known by all and the mosh pit began to close in around us. A crime scene held enough tension on its own without the help of a hundred shouting gossip hounds shoving their microphones in your face.
We shoved through quickly and ducked under the tape nodding at the officers standing guard before moving into the house. I took an instant to enjoy the peace as I closed the door behind us shutting out all of the lights and noise. The bliss didn’t last long though as Hunt was in no mood to dottle. He moved away from the entryway and made his way up the stairs with me a few paces behind.
At the top of the stairs he made a turn toward the master bedroom, not bothering to stop in any other room in the house. Mistake number one. I made a mental note to address it later. He walked into the master bedroom where a couple of crime scene techs were pulling samples from the carpet and walls. I walked into the room and looked around. It was more than I could have ever imagined. Our killer was definitely changing and evolving, but the scary part was he wasn’t just changing or improving—the brutality of his handwork was getting worse.
Chapter 20: The Scavenger Hunt
I did my best to stay out of the way of the techs, but I was more so just trying not to pass out. This kind of stuff wasn’t new to me by any means, but having it done to someone on my team was very new. It was a distinct attack on my family, and it made my stomach turn. The wooden chair sat in the middle of the floor facing the bed. The chair itself told a story. The reddish black substance had dried, but that only made it easier to see just how much blood there had been.
There were two pairs of handcuffs attached to the chair, one on each side. That was how Marty was restrained while our killer worked on Karen in front of him. The bed itself wasn’t even worth looking at. I knew from the previous murders and from the smell what I would see. A sea of red. I’d dealt with enough blood recently, someone else could take on that particular detail. I moved around the room and was, without saying it out loud, looking for the eyelids.
It was the strangest damn scavenger hunt I’d ever gone one, but the fact that they were missing all together was incredibly significant. I searched around on the floor as I carefully stepped around the space but found nothing. I dipped into the master bathroom which was attached to the master bedroom. There were tiny orange and yellow tabs scattered around the room on the walls, sink, toilet, bathtub and floor.
A shade of pink smeared along the white tile flooring. Had the killer cleaned himself up after? No, impossible. If not, then why all the blood in the bathroom? Unless either Marty or Karen had been in the bathroom when he’d arrived. I hurried back out into the bedroom and walked up the head of the bed paying attention to the nightstands. The one on the left featured a book called The Eye of Romance along with some reading glasses. The one on the right, just a silver wristwatch and a small lamp.
It was clear that the left side of the bed was Karen’s side. I looked at the pillows. The pillow on the right, which would have been Marty’s, had blood splattered on it. Marty had definitely been sleeping when the killer arrived and had been hit with something either while he was sleeping or as he woke up. I looked at the pillow on the left. No blood splatter. However, there were small dots of blood on the wall just above where Karen would have slept.
My thinking was the killer had hit Marty with something first, subduing the greatest threat. During that, Karen had woken up and he’d hit her next. They were both in the bed when the killer arrived, but if that was the case why the blood in the bathroom. It didn’t make sense. I moved back to the bathroom and, careful to step around any blood, moved closer to the bathtub. There was water in the tub and the drain had been plugged.
So much about this didn’t make sense. First the massive change in behavior. Attacking two people instead of one and attacking them in their own home on a quiet street in the middle of the city. That was a huge shift. Generally, this killer was abducting his victims and taken them somewhere more secluded to carry out the killings. With this one, he did everything right there in their bedroom. Not only that, but he made one watch him torture and, eventually, kill the other?
The biggest issue that I had with this attack standing out and being different from the others was that he left someone alive. Marty would have seen this guy, gotten a look at his build, how he moved, heard his voice, maybe even saw his face if the fucker was too arrogant to wear a mask. Our killer knows how to kill. There hasn’t been a single mistake in that area since the case opened. Now he drastically changes the way he carries out a murder and leaves a witness? Something was wrong.
Then there was the bathroom. Blood on the floor and water in the tub, neither of which made the slightest bit of sense. The more I thought about it, the more it became clear that there was more about this murder that was different from the others than was the same. Two fingers were removed from Karen and her eyelids were taken. Small change from being stapled, but I could assume the slight change was due to the fac that this was done onsite, not in some remote location where he would have had all of his normal tools at his disposal.
The location, the number of victims, the witness left behind. Too many dots weren’t connecting. I knew there was a reason behind all of it, but it was eluding me. Something was there. Something telling me exactly what I needed to know, but it was cast in shadows. What was it? What’s here? I left the master bedroom without saying anything to Hunt, who was talking with one of the crime scene techs.
I moved down to the next bedroom and turned the knob on the closed door. The door swung open into their home office. I walked inside and began to look around. I had no idea what exactly I was looking for, but I didn’t have any other ideas at the moment. I suppose I was just hoping for something to jump out at me.
Everything looked normal. None of the files or paperwork looked to have been tampered with. There was a large, black, steel safe in the closet, it was shut and locked. The computer sat idle on the desktop, its screen in sleep mode. Nothing was out of place. I walked across the hall to the spare bedroom and began the same process. Looking around hoping for some sort of sign. Something. Anything. I needed something to bring to the team.
; They needed some sort of hope right now. We had a team member in the hospital with no guarantee that he was going to make it, his wife stuffed into a body-bag and a serial killer who I was sure was hunting the rest of us and through it all we didn’t have a single lead or shred of evidence to tell us what to do next. We were sitting fucking ducks just waiting to see who the next one to be attacked in the night would be. The frustration seemed to feed off of itself growing fiercer with every passing second that I didn’t see something to go on.
I sat down on the bed and let my hands fall to the comforter. I squeezed fistfuls of the fabric in each hand as hard as I could. I squeezed so tight that my forearms began shaking. I held until the pain in my arms was too great and I couldn’t hold on any longer. I brought one hand up and massaged my forehead trying to calm myself down. I knew that emotions were going to take me in the wrong direction. I needed to be rational and logical. Cool-headed. Being frustrated and wanting to break something was only going to take me further away from finding anything useful.
After another minute or two, I forced myself up to my feet and walked back to the hallway. I turned to the left and went to head for the stairs, but out of the corner of my eye, I saw Hunt in the home office. I turned toward him to find him leaning over the computer, moving the cordless mouse around on the screen. I entered the room behind him and stayed quiet as I watched.
The screen came to life and illuminated the thing the previous user had been researching. Whoever had been using the desktop had been logged onto the police headquarters intranet. At first, I didn’t think much of it. It would make sense that Simmons would have been working at night, we all did, but then, when Hunt turned his head to look at me over his shoulder, I knew there was more to it.
I moved closer to the monitor and took a keener look and what exactly was pulled up. I knew, immediately, that the previous user was not Marty Simmons. The information on the screen was the police personnel file for Captain Neil David Connors. The area of the file that had been viewed last, that was still pulled up on the screen, was his home address. Before I’d completely registered what it all meant, Hunt was on his cell phone and booking it down the staircase. I followed and listened as he was patched through to the precinct.
