by Tyler Porter
“This is Trish Statton reporting live from police headquarters in downtown Helena,” she said. “Our sources say that the team of detectives assigned to investigating the string of recent murders will be giving a statement on recent developments in the case of The Optometrist.”
The speed of my heartbeat increased almost immediately as she spoke the words. This was the kind of thing that made it all worth it. All the trouble I’d gone through. All the sleepless nights I spent out doing surveillance. All the hours I’d spent cleaning up blood and bile with the only pleasantry being so short-lived. I mean, the killings never lasted long. Even with their eyes forced open, it was clear to see when they were no longer there. Stabbing them more provided no further pleasure once the fear no longer oozed from their stares. I watched as Captain Connors took to the podium with Norris to his left.
“Earlier today, a member of the Helena Police Department, Detective Hailey Cooper, was shot during a raid in the pursuit of the serial killer that the press has taken to calling The Optometrist. Detective Cooper is in critical condition. The raid was in response to an attack late last night in the home of her fellow Detective, Marty Simmons and his wife Karen Simmons. Mrs. Simmons was killed on site, and Detective Simmons was transported to Helena General for emergency surgery. It is with great sadness that I must report that Detective Simmons died early this afternoon shortly after the surgery was completed.”
I laughed to myself. Those fools. How overvalued doctors and surgeons were. They get paid hundreds of thousands of dollars a year and are showered with praise over some fancy pieces of paper from schools no one has ever heard of and they can’t even stitch up a few stab wounds successfully. Between the fact that I was just too good at killing and that I’d given the buffoons at Helena General way too much credit, Marty Simmons would be joining his wife in the dirt. I turned my attention back to the screen as Captain Connor finished his initial statement and, general consultant, Casey Norris took the podium.
“Afternoon,” he started, “as Captain Connors stated already, we lost a good officer today. Marty Simmons spent his life protecting his community and he did so with dedication, integrity and valor. I had the honor of working with Detective Simmons for several years and I am grateful for the time that was able to spend working with and learning from him. Another member of our team is in critical condition as well at the hands of this monster.”
Blah, blah, blah, boring stuff everyone knows. After a few beats, I decided I was going to eat chicken breast for diner. That was if I wouldn’t fall asleep early from waiting for the part where Norris looks into the camera and begs the public for help.
I knew it would come, too. He would beg for help in finding me. Beg for any information that might get them a step closer to catching me. To my surprise, however, he didn’t do that. What he said next both shocked and excited me and at the same time tells me there just might be a chance that the old Casey Norris is coming back.
“In previous press releases we have not had very much positive information to report. Until now we have had no leads, no evidence and no direction of any kind in finding this killer. Until now. At this most recent crime scene, the killer let something slip. We are announcing this now in hopes that a friend or relative of this person will know something and step forward.”
He paused, cleared his throat, and looked around the crowd before delivering his final statement. “As of now, we believe The Optometrist to be a member of the Helena Police Department.”
Chapter 24: Ten Names
“I don’t like this Norris,” Captain said as we made our way back to headquarters from the press conference. “If he is a cop, and we just outed him, what’s to stop the psycho from coming in and blowing everyone away now?”
“Nothing’s stopping him,” I said lazily.
“That’s your answer? Well, that’s just fucking peachy. Now we’re gonna have a spree killer in the middle of police headquarters. That’s gonna do wonders for the citizens of this city.”
“Just relax, Neil.”
“How am I supposed to do that? How? You tell me. I have one detective dead, another in critical condition, my best resource is a retired cop who isn’t even legally allowed to be as involved as he is and now it seems my killer is someone on my own damn payroll! How am I supposed to relax with all of that happening?”
“This retired cop, who isn’t legally allowed to be as involved as I am, is the reason why this killer is not going to walk into the station and start shooting at random. Nothing about any of this has been random. Victims, locations, methods, messages, everything has been done and chosen for a reason. It has all been about me. This guy wants me and until he is finished with whatever game he is playing with me this isn’t done,” I said.
I knew he wanted to argue. It was Neil, he always wanted to argue, but he didn’t. He stayed quiet the rest of the ride, as did I until we parked in the lot at the precinct and were walking inside. It was me who broke the seemingly unending silence just as we about to walk through the main doors.
“Captain, there is a very specific way we need to handle this,” I said.
“What are you talking about?”
“We just announced on live television that we believe our killer to be a cop. Every single officer we have in that building is now on high alert. That makes things tense, but it is the absolute best time to compile a list of our best suspects. When we go in here, you need to immediately start setting up interviews. Announce it as if it’s a formality and start lightly questioning people at random,” I said.
“Lightly questioning? What is that going to do for us?” he asked.
“Don’t worry about that. I have a few things that I need to do, but I am going to write my own list and then the real questioning will start. This fucker has been begging me to get involved in this sick game, and I’m ready to play.”
I opened the door and walked inside leaving Captain Connors collecting himself outside. I strode through the building, holding my head high, chest out and shoulders back. I wasn’t naïve. So many people thought me arrogant to the point of ignorance. They believed my own ego and belief in my abilities would be the thing to get me killed one day. But I wasn’t stupid. I was well aware, whether I would admit it to anyone else or not, that this killer was unlike any that I’d come across in my career.
The truth was that we had been behind the entire time. Every kill had been carried out specifically to give us more and more rope and all we had done was hang ourselves. We’d failed. I had failed. I had three dead innocents, I’d lost a woman I loved, a deceased detective and another in the ICU all because this mother fucker was beating me. Beating me at a game I’d tried so hard not to play.
Now, I had no choice. This wouldn’t stop until my entire team was dead. If I had to play along, and if I had to die to get this to stop, then so be it, but one way or another it was going to stop. I rounded the corner into the bullpen and spotted Officer Charlie Wilt. Wilt was a young officer, relatively fresh out of the academy and, as far as I could tell, was scared of his own damn shadow. Not a good fit to be our man. I wasn’t in a position to trust anyone outside of my team, but Wilt was as close as I was going to get.
“Officer Wilt,” I said motioning with two fingers for him to come over to me.
“Yes sir?” he asked as he quickly approached.
“I need you to do me a favor and I need you to keep it to yourself, can you do that?”
“Absolutely, what do you need?”
“I need a list of every officer who responded to the call for the raid at Captain Connors earlier today,” I said looking around to make sure no one else was listening in on my request.
“Oh, sure, no problem,” he said smiling as if he’d accomplished something by simply agreeing to complete the task.
“Wilt, I need the list now,” I said, giving the extra nudge.
His face went s
lightly pale before he nodded and hurried off toward his desk. I retreated to an empty office on the second floor. Back in the 90’s, in my early years, the second floor had been full. Never really understood why. Maybe it was a hierarchy thing. The uniformed officers all worked on the ground floor while the detectives and ranking officers were given offices on the second floor.
Those were the days. Not so many rules and even less bull shit. Back then, I would have brought my suspect into a room and beat the truth out of him in three to five. Now, it took months to catch a break and just as long to file all the damn paperwork. Good old days. Regardless, I didn’t ascend to the second floor to reminisce. I did it to think. No one really came up to the second floor. It was generally used for storage anymore.
I didn’t want the rest of the team knowing where to find me. In fact, I didn’t really want anyone knowing where to find me. I needed to think and as much as I knew that two heads are better than one, I needed to think alone. I needed to be able to lay everything out in one place and just look at it. No outside comments, no theories, just time and silence. Thank fully the office, although vacant, offered a computer, printer, and white board. It did not, however, have a desk phone, which I was not about to complain on.
I logged in and started printing out every crime scene photo, every item brought in as evidence from the scene, portraits of every victim and everything else that we had in the case file. By the time I was done there was a leaning heap of papers and photographs sitting on the edge of the printer tray. I grabbed the stack and began tacking each piece up to the wall in a make-shift collage. I’d just about finished when I heard a floorboard creak behind me. I spun around, my hand diving for my gun, only to find Officer Wilt standing there, now in a state of shock.
“Fuck me, Wilt! You scared me kid,” I said with an internal chuckle.
“Sorry about that boss. I didn’t mean to sneak up on you, you were just so focused I didn’t want to interrupt,” Wilt said, some of the white dissipating from his cheeks.
“Don’t worry about it. Got that list for me?”
“I sure do,” he said handing me a sheet of notebook paper.
I gave him a nod, looked over the list momentarily, looked back up to ensure he’d gone and then returned to the computer. I printed out a headshot of each officer that was on site when the raid had taken place at Captain Connors’ home earlier that day. I hadn’t said it to Captain and no matter how much it hurt me to consider, these officers were my main suspects. They were all there when Hailey Cooper was shot and any of them could have easily pulled the trigger and just acted as a concerned compadre. Our killer wasn’t there before us, he was there with us.
Ten names aside from my own and including Hailey Cooper. My team, James Hunt, Alex Perez, and Aaron Hall. Underneath them I tacked the pictures of the uniforms that had responded to the call. Brandon Turner, Mark Reed, Shannon Thomson, and Mario Vaquero. I tacked up Captain Connors picture to the wall along with the rest. He hadn’t arrived with us, but he was there when everything went down which meant he was just as much a suspect as anyone else.
I was left with one picture in my hand. I looked down at it in disbelief. I walked over to the computer and picked up the list Officer Wilt had given me to double check. I was certain there was a mistake, but there wasn’t. His name was right there, last on the list. I’d printed it out and hadn’t even noticed as I was typing in names and printing pictures. It hadn’t even registered, and it should have.
Why would his name be on the list? He wasn’t a field officer. He would have had no reason to be at that raid. I hung his picture up and began shaking my head. It made too much sense to ignore. He was the perfect fit. All the makings of someone driven to the edge by a lack of acknowledgment. Staring back at me from the wall was the headshot of a smiling Jim Cullen.
Chapter 25: Good Things Come
“Jim fucking Cullen,” I murmured under my breath still staring at his photo on the wall.
My mind was all over the place. Cullen was the officer who managed the evidence room. He was the one who’d been through my field training multiple times but had never done well enough for me to pass him. He was the only officer I’d ever trained that hadn’t been able to get the count to three method down.
Count to three. The three fingers the killer left his victims with. The eyes stapled open for attention and acknowledgment. The text message that I’d gotten on Melanie Green’s cell phone right after I’d gotten it from Cullen out of the evidence room. Of course. It made so much sense now. Everything made sense. Throw in the fact that he was not a field officer, yet he was on site the very day Cooper was shot and the killer was nowhere to be found.
His obsession with me, with my acknowledgment. It was because he’d never made it to detective because I had never passed him. I’d never given him his fair due in his eyes. He felt like I’d overlooked him, and he’d been stuck in the cage all these years because of it. Jim Cullen was The Optometrist. There was no other explanation.
I burst out of the office and jumped down the stairs three at a time to first floor. I halted at the corner around which Cullen sat at the evidence cage desk. I carefully poked my head around the corner just enough to get a view. There he was. Sitting there, smiling to himself reading a newspaper. Surprise, surprise, the newspaper’s front page was an article on Simmons death and Cooper being shot in the line of duty.
There was a right and a wrong way to do this. If I just approached him now and tried to cuff him, it could end badly. I had to get him in a situation where no weapons were accessible, and no escape was possible. The questioning that Captain Connors was doing would be perfect. Everyone was being put through it, so Cullen wouldn’t feel singled out. I left the corner in the other direction and entered Captain Connors’s office letting the door close gently behind me.
“Well that’s a first, Casey Norris enters my office and doesn’t slam the door so damn hard that it makes me shit myself. Must be a better day than I thought,” he said looking up from his computer screen.
“As much as I would love to explore that narrative Captain, we have work to do.”
“You’ve got something don’t you?” Captain said eyeing me.
“It’s Jim Cullen,” I said.
“Cullen?” Captain said moving his eyes side to side trying to put a face with the name. “The evidence cage guy?”
“The very same.”
“And what brought you to this ridiculous conclusion? I can’t wait to hear this, he’s not even a field officer. If he’s our man, our entire theory about our killer being at my house when Cooper was shot is out the window,” he said.
“You’re right, he isn’t a field officer, but he was at your place when Cooper was shot,” I said laying the list down in front of him.
“What the hell was he doing there?”
“I have no idea, but it makes sense. He’s been here almost as long as I have and he’s wanted to be a detective under me the entire time, but I never approved him. He was shaky in field training and I just never felt he was steadfast enough for what we do.”
“That’s why he’s obsessed with having your attention, that’s why it has to be you who’s chasing him,” he said.
“Exactly.”
“Well what the hell are we waiting for? Let’s take the bastard down!” he said standing up behind his desk.
“Hold on, hold on,” I said holding my hands up in the air. “We can’t just go in there and trying to take him. If I’m right, he is ready to turn this into a war zone at the first sign that we are on to him.”
“Alright, well we can’t just let a serial killer run loose in police headquarters. What do you suggest?”
“Call him in for an informal interview. Tell him that you are doing it with all officers, and you want to be able to get his name marked off the list since you know it isn’t him,” I said.
“Okay,
and then what?”
“I’ll the do the questioning. Once we have him in the hot seat with no access to a weapon and only one door out which I’ll be standing in front of, that’s where we break the son of a bitch.”
I left his office just as he began talking to the phone with Cullen on the other line telling him exactly what I’d told him to say. Obviously, there was no need to have his name mixed up in this mess, so it just makes sense to get it out of the way. A formality. In the meantime, I made my way to bullpen where my team were gathered around the desk that Hunt had taken to using regardless of the fact that his promotion came with an office.
I got a nod from Hall as I approached and just a blank stare from Hunt. They weren’t talking as much as grieving as best they could in the middle of a police station. Hall and Simmons had worked together every day for years, as had Perez and Cooper. Her current critical state and Simmons death was taking a heavier toll than any of them would ever admit.
I had a process for grief. I buried myself neck-deep in work until there was absolutely nothing left to do but go home. Then I’d get myself a bottle and try really hard not to let the pain in. Sometimes it worked, sometimes it didn’t. I would have to wait and see if Simmons and Cooper would get to me through the effects of the amber liquid or not.
“How we doin kids?” I asked
“Had better days,” Hall answered almost immediately.
“Yeah…I get it,” I said placing a hand on his shoulder. “I get it.”
“Does Captain have any updates? Any leads? Anything?” Perez asked.
“A couple. He’s conducting interviews as we speak and…” I decided not to tell them about Cullen just yet. Maybe it was just my lone-wolf mentality coming into play, but something told me to keep it to myself for the moment.
“And what?” Hunt asked from behind me.
