by Tyler Porter
“Put me through to Captain Connors,” he spat as he maneuvered through the house to the front door. “What do you mean he isn’t there? Well, where is he? Fuck! Send all available units out there right now!” He hung up, jammed the phone into his pocket and broke out into a run toward the car cursing under his breath.
I followed without a word and climbed into the passenger seat. My door wasn’t even fully closed when the car leaped out of its idle position on the curb. Hunt sped down the street with his grill lights already flashing. He sounded the horn as we approached the stop sign and he flew through it taking a right turn so sharply that the back end up the car slid slightly before whipping back straight again.
“Alright,” I said calmly. “You wanna tell me what’s going on?”
“Captain Connors never showed back up to headquarters.”
“Okay, well I’m sure he is still at the hospital waiting for an update on Simmons,” I said, trying to reason things out.
“He’s not. He left the hospital. He called in and said he wasn’t feeling well and that he was taking the rest of the day to sleep it off,” Hunt barked.
“So, he got a bug, everything is fine,” I lied.
“Everything is not fucking fine! Didn’t you see what I just saw? This sick son of a bitch looked up his address! He used Simmons log-in right after he got done slaughtering his wife! He is there right now, and Captain could already be fucking dead for all we know!”
I didn’t speak again. I knew he was right. I knew it from the moment I saw what was on that screen, but it didn’t change the fact that we needed to remain calm. Emotions were the reason this thing had gotten so far out of control and until we could get our emotions in check, this guy was always going to stay a step ahead. I rested my chin on my fist and stared out the window as the car pulsed down the road.
I knew how we had to approach this, but it didn’t make me feel any better about the situation we were driving toward. Our killer had looked up Captain Connors address and the thing about it that bothered me the most was that we were able to figure that out. He’d been so careless, so arrogant, that he hadn’t even bothered to close out the browser to keep us from seeing what he’d looked at. No attempt to hide it whatsoever.
I was mauling this over in my head as we moved closer and closer to Neil’s residence. It was a good half an hour from Simmons’ house with traffic during the day. The traffic was slowing us down, but I was thankful for the daylight. Bad situations got progressively worse at night. I forced my mind back to the computer. Why? Why a bread crumb now? Serial killers, statistically, got better with each kill, not worse. They left less behind whereas our killer was leaving more.
That’s when it hit me. It wasn’t that he was getting sloppier, he was getting tired of waiting for us to catch up to him. That’s what this whole thing had been about to begin with. It was a game to him. He wanted me to play and when I refused and retired, he took it up a notch. We haven’t made any progress since Shelby’s murder, so he goes after our team directly and not only that he leaves a blatant clue as to what he is going to do next. He is getting bored with us.
He is making the game more intense on purpose, not by accident. Then, another realization dawned on me. What if the game is over? Right now, we have several units, including Hunt and I, on our way to a location that he left up on that screen. He had to know that we would get to Captain Connor’s house as soon as we could…he planned on it. He’d left that page up on the computer because he wanted us to go there. This was an ambush.
The epiphany hit me as we pulled onto the street that Captain Connors lived on. It was on the outskirts of the city, but still well within the limits. The houses in the area were a little further apart and the properties were bigger than they were in the heart of Helena. Captain lived on three or four acres and on it sat an old brick house, a garage, a shed and an outbuilding that Neil used to restore classic muscle cars.
I could see three black and whites as we approached and two unmarked sedans. Hall, Perez, and Cooper were here too. The whole team was here and that made my realization make that much more sense. If he was on the property and he did it right, he could take each one of us out one by one. An auto or semi-automatic rifle with a decent scope would do the trick. Add a silencer and this could be a mass cop killing without ever even knowing where he was shooting from. I didn’t like this at all.
A group had formed in the Captains driveway and it seemed they were prepping to breach. They were all adjusting their bulletproof vests, checking that their magazines were full, loading rounds and making sure that the safety on their weapons was off. Hunt pulled in behind the last cruiser and parked, jumping out to head toward the group before the car had even come to a complete halt. I made my way out of the passenger seat and followed.
“Alright,” Hunt started as he approached the group. “I’m Detective James Hunt, I’m in command of this operation. Someone fill me in on what we know so far.”
“From what we have been able to verify,” Detective Hall started addressing the group. “Captain Connors left the hospital around 10:30 this morning, called headquarters and said he wasn’t feeling well. We can only assume that at that point he returned home. We have not been able to get into contact with him to confirm.”
“Okay, that means that we treat this as an emergency evac op. As most of you know, late last night, Detective Marty Simmons and his wife were attacked in their home. From what we can tell, they were attacked by The Optometrist. Karen Simmons was DOA, and Detective Simmons is in critical condition. As we conducted a secondary search of the Simmons residence, I discovered that our killer used Detective Simmons log-in to penetrate the department’s intranet and find the address of Captain Connor’s home,” Hunt said pointing to the house. “We will act as if Captain Connors is in immediate danger, but will proceed with caution as we must assume that the unsub is close by, if not already on the premises. He will be armed, dangerous and he will not go quietly.”
I held my tongue as hard as it was. It killed me how little Hunt had learned from working under me all those years. The Optometrist. That garbage was used by the media to gain attention to their trash websites and news channels, not by us. All that did was give him the recognition he was looking for and here Hunt was playing right into it like it was his first week in a uniform.
I slowly began walking toward him as the rest of the group continued preparing. I couldn’t stand here and watch him leading in this way while innocent people were dying. I could almost swear that he saw me coming out of the corner of his eye, and when he did he gave the order to move forward toward the house.
“Alright, spread out. You three take the shed and outbuilding,” he said pointing to three officers. “Perez, Hall you two take the back. Cooper, you’re with me, we’re going front. Let’s move!”
“What about me boss?” I asked him letting the snarky vibe of my comment ring loudly.
“You’re a consultant, not an officer. Stay here,” he said without looking at me.
I stayed put as the rest of the group moved onto the property toward their designated targets. This was wrong. All wrong. The feeling in my gut was one I was familiar with. My old man always told me when I was growing up that your gut won’t lie to you. When something feels wrong, it is, and this was wrong. I watched as they reached their entry points and held, waiting for Hunt to give the final signal to breach. I dropped my head with a deep sign as he gave it. I heard nothing for several minutes, and I began to feel a slight bit of relief, but then I heard the gunshots.
Chapter 21: Sooner or Later
This wasn’t part of the plan, but I couldn’t hold back my frustrations anymore. I couldn’t believe it. I went out of my way to leave him a clue. A blatant fucking clue that should have been impossible to miss. I was so sure that he would find the bait. I thought maybe that would bring some of his splendor back. He’d obviously lost a step, bu
t this was getting ridiculous. I’d helped him. He had no idea what to do and I left him a lifeline. The dumb fuck couldn’t even find it himself.
This was supposed to be something that he could find to feel some sort of pride or confidence again. Hell, Connors was never even a part of the picture, but I needed something to get him into gear. Even giving it, he was still stuck in whatever rut he’d walked into when he retired. So what happened? I had to make it right, again. I had to call an audible mid-play. Now, here we all were, one big happy family on Neil Connors’s property.
I had to admit though, it’d worked so incredibly well. Everyone spreading out and everyone being on their own. It made it too easy. I’d have to make it look good. Hell, they’d gotten this far and had only done so because I’d let them. It was time to heat things up a little more. I stayed quiet, hidden away in my spot, just waiting for the right time.
I could feel it coming. My heart rate was beginning to pick up. I looked down at my gun admiring it. It had always intrigued me that something so beautiful could cause so much damage. It was poetic. I pulled the slide back carefully and quietly, letting a brass, nine-millimeter round slip into the chamber. Once I was sure the time was right, I put my finger on the trigger, lined up the sights on the barrel precisely and fired.
Chapter 22: Another Name
“It’s Cooper! It’s Cooper!” Those were the only words that I could make out after the gun shots rang out.
I moved toward the house, again disregarding the fact that I was not an active officer. I didn’t give a damn about policy or procedure, not when it came to the only people in life that I cared about. I ran across the grass and jumped up onto the front porch. I stopped for a brief moment, pulled out my Glock from my side and entered the house.
I moved in with my gun aimed in front of me. I could hear noises somewhere in the house. Voices. People murmuring or talking. It was just a dull roar and I could only make certain words. Cooper, blood, Captain Connors, ambulance, backup. They didn’t make sense separately, but I was putting a pretty good picture together by just those few words alone.
I cleared the ground floor and took aim upward as I climbed the stairs to the second floor. With each step, the murmuring grew louder. When I reached the top of the stairs, I instantly dropped the barrel of my gun toward the floor as to not have it pointed at my own men and women. They were all there huddled around someone, but I couldn’t tell who it was until I was right there with them.
It was Hailey Cooper. She was fighting hard to keep her eyes open. They flickered every few seconds and I could see her straining, willing them not to close. There was an ever-growing pool of blood under her and I could see, from where I was standing, the bullet wound just under her rib cage. She was strong and solid, but lucky still relatively petite. A bullet entering there would have gone straight through and out the other side.
I tried to tune out the sound of her wheezing and gasping for breath. I chose, instead, to focus on the sound of the sirens coming closer in the distance. The ambulance coming to transport her to the hospital. But would it be enough time? It was a pretty bad hit. Suddenly, I realized what exactly we were all doing. We were all standing around our comrade who’d just been shot, but no one seemed to be worried about who’d shot her. He was here in this house only moments ago and could still be.
I slowly looked around us on the second floor. It was clear to see that there wasn’t anyone lurking in a corner. No pair of eyes watching through a bedroom or bathroom door that was slightly cracked open. He could be anywhere in the house, but there was a giant probability that in all the chaos he’d been able to simply slip out the back door and make his escape once again. I looked back at the group and it was only then that I, for the first time, noticed the man standing in the back of the group. Captain Connors.
As I placed my gun back in its holster on my hip, I could hear the paramedics entering the house downstairs. One of the other officers shouted out letting them know to make their way up to the second floor. Once they arrived, the rest of the group scattered making room for them to scoop Cooper up onto a stretcher and begin lowering her, carefully, down the stairs. I moved around the other officers to Captain Connors.
“Neil, are you hurt?” I asked him, looking him up and down seeing no obvious wounds or injuries.
“Hurt? No. I have no idea what the hell is going on here,” he said.
“What are you talking about?”
“I was sleeping, and my own team comes bursting into my house, doors kicked it, guns going off, and I come out of my bedroom to find Cooper shot and bleeding on my floor.”
“It doesn’t make any sense,” I said out loud, but more to myself than to him.
“Yeah, I agree, what the hell are you guys busting into my house for?” he said angrily.
“That’s the part that doesn’t make sense Captain. We did a secondary of Simmons’s place, found that our guy used his log in for the intranet and looked up your address. When dispatch told us you never went back to the office, we came straight here.”
“Came straight here for what?”
“We thought you were his next target. We were right about one thing, he was definitely here, but we were wrong about you being his next target,” I said rubbing my forehead.
“How do you know that?”
“He had to have gotten here before us. He was already in the house. There’s no telling how long he was here before we got here. If you were his target, he could have done what he needed to do and left, but he never touched you. You never even knew he was here until we busted in.”
“What your point Norris?”
“My point is something is missing…he waited for us,” I said, saying it out loud as the realization hit me. “He meant for us to find that clue on Simmons’ computer. He knew we would come directly here, and he waited for us.”
“But why? Why here? Why put himself in a situation where he is surrounded by cops? Why risk not being able to escape? I mean he did all the same, but why take the chance?”
“To raise the stakes. He’s getting impatient. We’ve just assumed that he’s been getting sloppier, but he hasn’t. He’s purposely leaving breadcrumbs to help us keep up with him,” I said.
“Okay, I’ll buy that, but this? I mean, he literally put himself in a situation with little to no chance of escaping. How is he pulling this off? He was able to lure an entire unit to this house, shoot a detective in cold blood and then slip past a team of police officers to disappear without anyone seeing a thing?”
A pit formed in my stomach so suddenly that I thought I might vomit. I could feel the sweat starting to trickle down my back as the realization grew inside my chest. I had to swallow multiple times before I could put my sentence together. I knew that once I said it out loud, it was real, and it would be a real lead. Something that could not be taken back and must be pursued to the end. Captain Connors could clearly see that I was struggling, and he gave me a worried look at what I might say next.
“There’s only one way he could pull off something like that.”
Chapter 23: Off the Scent
I’d watched nothing but the news since everything went down to the Connors home. It was well past the time for another press conference to update the media as well as the public on the developments of the case. It was time that they fill everyone in on the terror that had continued at the hands of The Optometrist. Honestly, I’d never really considered that they would give me a name, but it had grown on me.
My legal name wouldn’t strike fear into the hearts of every man, woman and child the same way a name like The Optometrist would. I was more than willing to accept the title. If I was honest, I was even a little flattered. It may have taken way more effort that it should have to get Casey Norris to look at me, but the public had given me one hundred percent of their attention and one hundred percent of their fear.
There
had been near constant warning to keep windows closed and lock doors at night. Neighborhoods that had never experienced any sort of crime were terrified that theirs would be next to be victimized. This kind of art should be celebrated and by more than just some freak in the sticks like Frank Jarmin. There would be documentaries about me in the works before I was done. Biographies would be written and rewritten long after my death to ensure the world would never forget.
All-in-all, I’d already accomplished my goal. I’d done what I’d set out to do. I’d gotten more attention than anyone in the history of Helena. Hell, I’d gotten more attention than any serial killer in recent history. Eyes were on me and they would be for a long time to come. I could just stop. I could just stop and they would never know a thing. I would disappear into the shadows and the world would always wonder.
I couldn’t, though. There was one man who still wasn’t looking hard enough. One man who still wasn’t paying enough attention. It was right there in front of his stupid, arrogant face, and he could see it. He just wouldn’t open his fucking eyes. No matter. His eyes would be wide open before I was done with him and until then I couldn’t stop. I wouldn’t stop. He was the reason that this all started and it would not end until I watched the very last ounce of life exit his corpse. Ever since the first time I saw him choke back tears, I have craved to see his eyelids overflow with water.
I was caught up in the beauty of that thought when I was snapped out of my trance by the television. Some news reporter on channel seven was announcing breaking news. Breaking news that brought an immediate smile to my face. The very thing that I’d been waiting on. The reason why my eyes hadn’t left the screen. They were calling a press conference.
