The Ackerman Thrillers Boxset: 1-6

by Ethan Cross

  Marcus said, “What are we looking at?”

  The evidence bag appeared to hold some type of smashed computer components, but he hoped that Finley had more details to share than that.

  Finley said, “These are the remnants of an iPhone.”

  Andrew took the bag in hand and examined the pieces more closely. He said, “How can you tell what kind of phone? There’s no way you’ve had time to have the pieces analyzed that thoroughly.”

  Finley laughed. “No, but I cheated on that with a little detective work. Amongst those components is a piece from a SIM card. Enough of the digits on the card were readable that the cellular company was able to figure out who it belonged to and what kind of phone.”

  Marcus slapped Finley on the back and said, “An iPhone. Nice work. I don’t suppose you asked the phone company for—”

  Finley said, “Yes, sir. I requested the call logs. They are all in my report.”

  Marcus noticed that Finley had a bit of a speech impediment that caused his words to come out thickly, like tree sap. He wondered if that Sam Elliot mustache hid the evidence of a cleft palate. He noticed a desk in the corner. There were pictures on it, scattered among grime-covered reports and forms. Finley was in the photos with two older men in one and a much younger woman in all the others. Finley had black under his fingernails, which made sense considering his line of work. Finley also had signs of cauliflower ear, a condition often found in competitive wrestlers. Marcus filed all the information away in his mental database. He couldn’t help it.

  Andrew said, “What about GPS data?”

  “I have the list of destinations printed up and sorted by date.”

  Marcus stuck out his hand and said, “Finley, it’s been a pleasure. You do excellent work. I’d give you a kiss but I’m afraid your mustache may bite me.”

  Finley laughed and said, “He only bites if you ask real nice.”

  As they were heading out of Finley’s office, Marcus dialed Stan and put the call on speaker.

  “You are a go for Stan. Please keep your arms and legs inside the vehicle at all times.”

  Marcus said, “The Dive Shop. What is it?”

  He had guessed that the receipt had come from a business that sold climbing gear, assuming that cave diving was the focus of The Dive Shop.

  Stan said, “I spoke to the manager, and she was able to pull up more info on what was purchased. Well, rented actually. Our bad guy rented five full sets of scuba gear. Breathing masks, tanks, the whole enchilada. She told me all the technical names for everything. I wrote it all down somewhere if you need that.”

  “So the place is an actual dive shop? As in underwater diving. In the middle of Arizona.”

  “Oh yeah, they have pools where they teach diving and a sales and rental shop.”

  Andrew said, “I’m more concerned as to why our guy needs five sets of diving rigs.”

  Marcus thought about that. A poison gas? Smoke? But they wouldn’t need a full scuba load-out for that. Then he remembered the map of the mine. There had been a section on the map marked as flooded.

  The receipt was a good clue. A clue that could have been easily discarded and destroyed but was instead left for them to find. Maybe it was too good of a clue.

  Marcus closed his eyes and gritted his teeth. Then he said, “Stan, they recovered the remnants of Debra Costello’s iPhone. It was smashed to bits.”

  Stan said, “That’s tough to do. Those things are pretty sturdy. And believe me on that, I have attempted the obliteration of one.”

  “Exactly. Which suggests that there was something on the phone that someone doesn’t want us to see. So here’s what I was thinking. On my iPhone, it is set to automatically back up the phone when I plug it in at night.”

  “Yeah, it backs up to iCloud,” Stan said. “Wait, now I’m with you. If I can break into her iCloud account, I can get a fresh copy of her phone. I can then set that up in an emulator, and we’ll have access to her phone like it was never gone. But you realize that this will only restore her last backup. The info that made our crazy friend go all Gallagher on that thing may not even be there, if it was new data.”

  “I understand. It’s better than nothing. You have five minutes to resurrect that phone.”

  “Whoa, just the data download alone will take—”

  Marcus hung up the phone and said, “So here’s what’s bothering me.”

  “Stan hates it when you do that to him.”

  “He’ll get over it. Do you want to hear it or not? You’re always telling me to share information.”

  “What’s bothering you?”

  “The photos and the receipts were in sealed, watertight bags. Why?”

  “It’s all he had. He used it as a garbage bag to clean out his car.”

  “Then why not just dump the bag’s contents into the sewer. Destroy them and scatter them. But he didn’t do that. He left the evidence preserved for us to find. And both bags were in places that were difficult to find as clues, but they were in places that good investigators do sometimes think to check.”

  “Or maybe you’re just being paranoid.”

  “You’re not paranoid if people really are after you.”

  “Maybe Judas just slipped up, and we caught it. Go us.”

  “Or we’re being led. We’re still playing his game, by his rules.”

  Andrew said, “Say that we are. What are we going to do about it?”

  Marcus closed his eyes and rubbed his cross tattoo. “Look at the GPS report. Where did he go yesterday?”

  Marcus heard the shuffling of paper, and Andrew said, “This is a great report. Finley looked all of them up on Google Maps and made notes. He marked one that looks out of place for Reese. It’s a residential address. He had driven to that address three times. Finley checked, and the address Reese put in is the home of Becky Takashima. The report says that Finley sent a uniform to do a stop at her home in order to check on her. She’s fine and hasn’t seen anything unusual.”

  “I want to talk to her.”

  “I figured.” Andrew was making notes on a pad of paper. The kind that flipped forward. Spiral-bound. It reminded Marcus of when he had first made detective. He had never needed to make notes. He had always remembered all the details. But he also didn’t want to look out of place or seem cocky, and so he had pretended to use a notebook. He had eventually turned it into an animated flip-book.

  Andrew finished his note and was about to say more, but he stopped when he saw Finley approaching them from down the hallway, a cell phone still in his hand. Finley said, “Sheriff just called and wanted me to let you know that they’re bringing in Bradley Reese’s body. Sheriff said you would want to see Reese and the other body ASAP.”

  Marcus looked at Andrew, who just shrugged. Marcus said, “What other body?”

  Finley said, “They pulled two bodies out of the mine. That’s all I know.”

  Marcus asked, “Where are the bodies now?”

  *

  Maggie leaned against the high-back leather chair and tried to catch her breath. She hurt all over. Jerry was only toying with her, but she guessed that so far he had shattered her ribs and dislocated her wrist.

  Jerry laughed as he flexed his muscles in the light from the nearly risen sun. He said, “I thought you’d be tougher than this. Federal agent and all. Thought you’d put up more of a fight.”

  “Did the others fight you, Jerry? Is that how you like it? Does it take beating up a woman to turn you on?”

  “It wasn’t supposed to be like this.”

  “How was it supposed to be? Did you think you would declare your love for me, and I’d run away with you? Number one, I don’t even know you, and you don’t know me.”

  Jerry spun on his left foot and roundhouse kicked half the contents off Powell’s desk. “You didn’t want to know me! You’re just like the others. You feel the connection, but you ruined it. You think you’re too good for me, so you won’t accept that you’ve found your soulm
ate.”

  “And how many ‘soulmates’ have you had, Jerry? How many women have you raped and murdered?”

  He kicked out her feet and pummeled her torso with his fists. She thought that he had called her Amy at one point, but it could have just been a scream. He did a lot of screaming. And a lot of punching. When he was done, she was in a lot of pain.

  But during his tirade, she had managed to roll closer to the window sill where Jerry had laid her Glock 19 pistol.

  She knew now that she couldn’t take Jerry in a straight-up fight. He was skilled enough at hand-to-hand to give Marcus or even Ackerman a challenge. He probably spent hours every day on his body and his technique. The more she saw of his shirtless torso, the more she thought that his muscles were defined to the point of being disgusting, like his skin had been stretched over a bag of coiled snakes.

  Jerry stopped his barrage and started pacing and mumbling to himself. His limp had grown even more pronounced. She made out the word “ruined” but could understand little of the rest.

  Not that she really wanted to understand.

  The problem was that Jerry was doing his pacing between her and the Glock.

  She spat blood on the floor. She knew that Jerry would end up beating her to death, raping her, or some combination of the two if they continued on like this. She had to end this fight quickly and decisively.

  Something about the nature of what was happening seemed familiar. She considered what she knew about Jerry. The limp. The beating. Rape.

  She said, “You’re the San Diego Strangler. I read your case files.”

  “I never liked that name. It’s not original enough. When I choose my code name, I’m going to pick something that will be legendary.”

  “So you don’t have a cool serial-killer nickname like Judas and Demon? You’re not a full member of the squad yet? Oh, that’s sad.”

  “I’ll be a senior vice president when Judas takes over. And there’s nothing little about Demon or his influence. You have no idea. No clue the level of players you’re rolling with.”

  “I’m starting to understand. Maybe we can still get to know one another better. Maybe we can start over. Tell me about how big of a player you are.”

  Maggie took a few steps closer to Jerry. She hated standing within kicking distance, but her Glock was directly behind him, and she had to reach that gun.

  She closed the gap between them to a couple of feet. Jerry had stopped pacing and mumbling, but he still had that feral, chemically stimulated look in his eyes. She did her best to seem a little flirtatious without being obvious about it. She wasn’t very good at flirting and using her feminine wiles for her gain, and she was pretty sure that she wasn’t being very sexy as she forced a smile and batted her eyelashes. She had actually received a bit of formal instruction on acting but had never taken to the craft. It was a good thing that guys were so easily enamored by pretty much anything that any woman did with even the slightest hint of sexual implication.

  Jerry said, “I thought maybe you would skip this step.”

  “What step? What are you talking about?”

  “Usually the women I kill go right down this list of ways they can try to distract me or confuse me. Flirting. Attacking. Bargaining. Pleading. Threatening. Trying to reason with me. Trying to humanize themselves. But you see, Maggie. None of that works. I thought maybe you realized that I’m too smart for all that.”

  “I’m not trying to trick you. This job doesn’t pay very well, and it’s killing me. The way I’m headed, I’ll end up as one of those strange old cat ladies. If I live that long, which is unlikely. I think maybe I should consider your offer.”

  She took another step toward him. He was a bit shorter than her, but she was hunched over and clutching her wounded ribs and struggling to breathe, which brought them eye to eye.

  Jerry met her gaze and whispered, “The only thing on your mind is the pistol behind me.”

  He kicked her in the stomach, and she flew backward and landed beside Powell’s desk, the wind knocked out of her.

  Jerry picked up the gun and said, “I’m going to rape you now, Agent Carlisle. You were meant to be my soulmate, but it’s too late for that. Now, I will taste your soul, and then I’ll make sure that no one ever tastes it again.”

  *

  The medical examiner’s office was, thankfully, adjacent to the garage, which was connected to another larger building that likely held the administrative offices and county jail. The buildings were made from a textured adobe the color of sand, but they were mostly glass with large, expensive looking foyers and facilities. The whole place looked brand new. And, according to Andrew, Sheriff Hall had a few offices like this scattered throughout his jurisdiction.

  Travis Hall and his department were no backwoods operation.

  As Marcus made his way from the county garage to the county morgue, he couldn’t help but think of the money and resources Hall had at his command. But he didn’t envy the sheriff one bit. All he saw when he looked at these new facilities were headaches and responsibilities. He saw mayors breathing down his neck and politics and hundreds of thousands of taxpayers seeing him, as sheriff, as the face and hands of justice. All those people looked to Hall’s department to hold society together. All those victims. All of their parents. Their spouses. Children. All looking to him to do what was right.

  Marcus didn’t envy the sheriff in the slightest. He could barely manage a small team of investigators and a son. Sheriff Hall probably had ten kids and managed a few hundred people and millions upon millions of dollars in resources.

  The medical examiner’s office was much like the others he had seen. Metal examination tables. A rolling cart containing the tools of the trade. A wall of pull-out body trays retracting back into refrigerated storage. All very clean. Very sterile.

  Unfortunately, they had arrived before the bodies.

  As they waited, Andrew asked, “How do you think Maggie’s holding up in there?”

  “As well as could be expected under the circumstances.”

  “You know what I mean. Is she going to freak out and go off like she did in Pittsburgh?”

  “And do what? Go on a killing spree?”

  Andrew said, “No, but she could get a lot of people hurt.”

  “It wasn’t that big of a deal.”

  “She stabbed that killer in Pittsburgh eleven times. I could guess the order of the stab wounds when I saw the photos. She kept stabbing him even after he was dead.”

  “So she got caught up in the moment. That guy had just tried to kill her. She was scared and fighting for her life.”

  “Then why did you cover for her? Why did you lie?”

  “I don’t know. It’s what I do. I didn’t want any of you questioning her like you are now. I wanted to protect her. I didn’t want her to feel like a freak. Like she was going crazy and everyone knew it.”

  Andrew said, “Is that how you feel?”

  “Sometimes. It is what it is. In regard to Maggie, she’s going through something. I don’t know what it is. I don’t know if she knows. I’m trying to be there for her as best I can. And figure it out as we go along.”

  “You don’t have to figure it out alone.”

  The doors opened and a man and a woman in white coats wheeled in a single body zipped in a dark-green plastic bag atop a metal gurney. The two medical techs looked tired. Their eyes were red rimmed and droopy, like they were the night shift approaching the end of their day. They took their time with everything they did. One guided the way while the other pushed.

  Marcus supposed they had no reason to hurry. Their patients were already dead. But he was thinking about the people who were still alive. The ones counting on him to keep them that way.

  He walked up to the first body bag as soon as they stopped. He had no idea whose remains he would find inside, but not because he had no theories. Simply because he couldn’t tell from the bag’s shape if this was the male or female body.

  Marcus kn
ew that one of the bags would contain the remains of Debra Costello, Powell’s missing daughter.

  The other would be a decoy. A body that Reese had placed at the bottom of that pit.

  Marcus now believed that Bradley Reese was Judas, and Reese had faked his own death in order to manipulate them.

  He unzipped the first bag to reveal the bloody remains of a woman. She had been deceased for several days. Marcus could tell. Andrew could probably explain the telltale signs, but Marcus just knew approximately how long she’d been dead because he had seen enough bodies in his time to get a feel for such things.

  He recognized the woman from the pictures on Powell’s desk. He had been correct in his assessments. It was Debra. Although being right didn’t feel like a win. He had assumed from the facts that Debra was dead. He had even expected to find her body here. But the confirmation still felt like a major loss.

  Andrew whispered, “Damn it. There’s one mystery solved. What do you think we’ll find in the other bag?”

  “My guess, as much as I hate to guess, is that it’s some homeless guy or target of opportunity that Reese used as a decoy.”

  “You think that Reese faked his own death? That he’s Judas?”

  “I think that Judas is the codename for a mercenary and serial murderer who was paid to orchestrate all this. I think he came here, analyzed the situation, and decided that the quickest way to get the access he needed was to manipulate Powell.”

  “And the quickest way to Powell was through his daughter. If you’re a young and attractive guy like Bradley Reese. The timing works. He’s only been around for a matter of months, and he’s already engaged to Powell’s daughter and has become one of his executives with complete access to Foxbury.”

  Marcus said, “So Reese is using Debra to get close to Powell, but then he actually falls for her. But something happens with her. Who knows what it was. Something sets him off, and he kills her. Maybe that’s when he decided to pin it on Jerry and fake his own death. Reese is the only one who makes sense for all of it. And honestly, I’ve always had a feeling about him. My instincts say it’s Reese. I’m as sure about this as I’ve ever been about anything. He faked his own death. He’s our killer.”