Close Your Eyes

by Thomas Fincham

  Ellen rushed up to her.

  “What’s wrong?” she demanded.

  Without saying a word, the lady pointed at a woman in a wheelchair. She wore a dark sweater, sunglasses, and had long hair. She was sitting with her head tilted back.

  Ellen was not sure why the other woman had screamed, but when she looked carefully, she realized something was wrong.

  She moved in closer.

  There were deep sockets beneath the sunglasses, as if someone had scooped out the woman’s eyes.

  Ellen had to cover her mouth to stop herself from screaming.

  THIRTY

  Jo headed to the scene the moment she got the call. She raced down the steps, and when she reached the platform, she found Walters and Chief Baker locked in a heated argument.

  “It’s our case,” Baker said. “Detective Crowder will take over the investigation.”

  Jo spotted Crowder in the corner. He was staring at his cell phone. He looked like he had other things on his mind than the dead body found on the train.

  Walters replied, “It’s the same MO. We are dealing with the same killer.”

  “I let the FBI have the first one, but this one belongs to the Bridgeton Police,” Baker said.

  “It’s not about who gets the credit…”

  “It always is, isn’t it?” he shot back.

  Walters composed her feelings. “We are already working on a subway murder case. It doesn’t make sense for you to be working on one too.”

  “What if it’s not the same person?” Baker asked.

  It was Walters’s turn to raise her voice. “You really think random people are dropping off dead bodies on trains? Do you really?”

  “I never said that,” Baker claimed. “All I’m saying is there might be a possibility that the two cases are not connected.”

  “Well, they are. A serial killer is using the subway to dispose of his victims.”

  The mere mention of a serial killer gave Baker pause.

  The Special Agent in Charge and the Chief of Police stared at each other.

  “We’re a federal agency. We can supersede your authority,” Walters said.

  Baker’s eyes narrowed. “We got the nine-one-one call, so it’s ours. If I have to bring the mayor into this, I will.”

  “We already have our people on site. Plus, by standing here arguing, we are delaying the BTA’s operations.”

  “I don’t care. I already caved once. I’m not letting this one go.”

  Jo shook her head. Her boss and Baker were both going through a power trip. She walked over to them and said, “Why don’t the FBI and the Bridgeton PD work together on this one?”

  “What?” Walters and Baker asked in unison.

  “Yes,” Jo said. “We haven’t been able to make much progress on the first victim, so it might be better if we combined our resources.”

  Under normal circumstances, Jo would have preferred to work alone. She believed if another person joined her, it would only slow her down. Plus, she was well aware of Crowder’s reputation for womanizing and hardheadedness. She did not want to waste time and energy butting heads with him. But she knew if the case ended up in the BPD’s hands, it might complicate her own investigation. There was a killer on the loose who was playing an evil game. Jo did not want jurisdictional pettiness to get in the way of stopping him.

  Baker and Walters did not look convinced.

  “Look,” Jo said, “we’re wasting valuable time here. If we keep finding more dead bodies, believe me, it won’t look good for the bureau or the BPD.”

  Walters said, “Okay, I’ll go with it, but the FBI will run the operation. Your detective can join us. Whatever we do, we’ll do it together.”

  Baker mulled this over. He knew if he did not agree, there would be a stalemate. Plus, it would be good to get Crowder away from the station. Baker knew he had been going through some personal issues. Quite frankly, the man was in a funk. This might do both the department and him some good.

  “Alright. But when there is an arrest, the Bridgeton PD will also get the credit.”

  “Agreed,” Walters said.

  Baker waved Crowder over. Crowder slipped the phone in his pocket and strolled over to them.

  “Detective Crowder,” Baker said. “I’m sure you’ve met Agent Pullinger before.”

  “I have,” Crowder replied. “Agent Pullinger has taken quite of few of my cases.”

  Great beginning, Jo thought.

  The truth was that Jo had indeed taken over Crowder’s cases, though she would insist that she did not take them by choice. They were handed to her because the Bureau felt it was in their best interest to focus on those cases.

  Baker said, “She’ll be your new partner in this investigation. I’m sure both of you will get along nicely.”

  “I’m sure,” Crowder said.

  Walters said, “Ben is already in there. You might want to check out the body.”

  Jo looked over at Crowder. He gestured towards the train. “Ladies first.”

  Jo entered the train. She quickly spotted Ben. He was examining a body in a wheelchair.

  “I thought that would never end,” Ben said, looking up at her. She knew he meant the cat fight between Walters and Baker.

  “Detective Crowder will be working on the case as well,” Jo said.

  “Detective,” Ben said, nodding in his direction.

  Crowder nodded back.

  “So what have you found?” Jo asked.

  “Not much, I’m afraid, except that she was mutilated by having her eyes gouged out. And by the looks of it, the killer used a crude object.”

  “Do you know who she is?” Jo asked.

  “There is no ID on her person, but I’ve taken her fingerprints. If she’s in our database, we’ll know who she is.”

  Crowder leaned down and examined the victim’s face. There were hollow circles where the eyes should have been. Crowder’s mouth contorted in disgust as he moved away from the body.

  “Is there any writing?” Jo said.

  “What writing?” Crowder asked.

  “The first victim had a message carved on his chest. If it’s the same killer, I’ll bet there is a message on her.”

  “Let’s find out,” Ben said.

  He examined her arms and legs by lifting her sleeves. He peeked through her shirt collar and said, “Nothing on the chest. Maybe it’s on the back.” He pushed the body forward and pulled the shirt up.

  “I see something,” Ben said.

  Jo moved behind the wheelchair to get a better view.

  Scrawled on her skin were the words: WHAT THE EYES SEE.

  “What does that mean?” Crowder asked.

  “I don’t know,” Jo replied. “But whoever is doing this, he is leaving messages for us.”

  THIRTY-ONE

  Jo left the subway car and found Walters in a heated confrontation with a woman. Jo recognized her when she got closer. It was Ellen Sheehan. Jo had a few run-ins with her before. In Jo’s opinion, Sheehan was trying too hard to be taken seriously. This meant sometimes she could be a bit too aggressive in her pursuit of a story.

  “How did you know there would be a body on that train?” Walters asked.

  “I didn’t.”

  “The BTA employee told us that you were constantly looking at your watch.”

  “I’m on a tight schedule. I wanted to make sure we had enough footage for the evening news.”

  Walters narrowed her eyes. “I find it highly suspicious that you and your cameraman happened to be on the same train where another body was discovered.”

  “I don’t know what to tell you,” Sheehan claimed.

  “Why don’t you just tell us the truth?”

  “I told you, I was there to cover the public transit system. I interviewed riders on the train. You can talk to Walt, my cameraman. He’ll back me up. In fact, we have the footage to prove it.”

  “Do you also have footage of the victim?” Walters asked.

&nb
sp; Sheehan opened her mouth and then shut it.

  “Because if you do,” Walters continued, “we want a copy of it.”

  Sheehan crossed her arms. “You’ll need a warrant to see it.”

  Walters glared at her.

  Sheehan said, “I’ll let you have it, but under one condition: you let me interview you.”

  “Why would we do that when we can just confiscate the video?”

  “On what basis?” Sheehan replied.

  “Evidence that could be crucial in a murder investigation.”

  It was Sheehan’s turn to glare at her.

  Jo spotted Dennis Wilmont on the platform. He waved her over.

  “Agent Pullinger, right?” he said.

  “That’s right.”

  “The moment I heard about the second body, I got my guys working on it right away. Come, I’ll show you something.”

  Jo said, “Detective Jay Crowder is also working on the case. Whatever you have to show me, you can show him as well.”

  “Okay, sure.”

  Crowder joined them in the station’s security office. Inside, a transit officer was working behind a large monitor.

  “Run the tape,” Wilmont said to him.

  On the screen, they saw an empty subway platform.

  “What station is that?” Jo asked.

  “It was taken at Sherbourne Station,” the officer replied.

  “And that is…?”

  “Ten stations down on the southbound line.”

  “Okay.”

  They stared at the vacant platform. Suddenly, a man appeared from behind a pillar. He was wearing a checkered shirt, black pants, and a baseball cap. The man was pushing a woman in a wheelchair. It was the victim.

  The man stopped at the edge of the platform. He did not look up. Nor did he look left or right. He just stared at the tracks. More passengers appeared on the platform, but no one noticed him. Why would they? They probably thought he was with his mother or other relative.

  The train appeared on the screen and halted at the station. The doors opened, and the man wheeled the woman in the wheelchair inside the train.

  The doors closed and the train pulled out of the terminal.

  “Do you know where he got off?” Jo asked.

  The officer fast-forwarded the video. He then played it at normal speed. The next image was another platform. There were people already waiting for the train.

  “What station is that?” Jo asked.

  “Chester Station.”

  Jo squinted. In the middle of the platform, she spotted Ellen Sheehan, her cameraman, and a BTA officer.

  The officer was right. Sheehan was constantly looking at her watch, as if she was waiting for something to happen. But the video was not enough to prove anything.

  The train pulled into the station, and the doors opened.

  Jo watched as Sheehan, the cameraman, and the BTA officer entered the train.

  Just then, at the bottom of the screen, the man with the baseball cap left the train from another car. He had his hands in his pockets as he walked out of view.

  The transit officer typed on his keyboard and the image flipped on the monitor. The man took the escalators up and then walked through the turnstiles and out of the station.

  The man never once looked up.

  He knew where the security cameras were, Jo thought.

  THIRTY-TWO

  Rhodes gripped the steering wheel firmly as he pressed on the accelerator. Even though he hadn’t driven a car in over ten years, there were some things a person never forgot. The twenty-year-old Chevy Malibu felt good under his control. It had taken a few kicks to get it started, and the engine was a bit too loud, but for five hundred dollars, Rhodes could not complain.

  The salesman at the dealership had told him the three hundred thousand miles on the odometer was nothing to be concerned about. The black beauty, as he liked to call it, would give another three hundred thousand if Rhodes took care of it.

  Rhodes doubted very much if the car gave him even fifty thousand miles, but he was not planning on driving it for long. Right now it was more of a means to an end. Just as long as it got him from point A to point B without any trouble, Rhodes would be satisfied.

  It had started to drizzle. The rubber on the windshield wipers had worn out, but they were still enough to clear his view.

  Rhodes turned on the heater. The salesperson had already told him the air conditioning did not work, so Rhodes did not bother checking it. If the car made it to summer, Rhodes would roll down the windows.

  He was pulling the car into the back of the house when he spotted someone wearing baggy clothes and a hoodie sitting on the steps of his basement apartment.

  He parked the car and waited. He hoped the noise of the engine would make the person turn toward him.

  He then saw the person was also wearing big headphones.

  Rhodes grunted.

  He honked.

  The person did not turn.

  He honked again, this time letting it run longer.

  The person got up and turned.

  It was a girl.

  She wore baggy clothes. She had on dark mascara, dark lipstick, and she had a tomboy haircut

  “Sorry, I didn’t know you were back,” she said as Rhodes got out of the car.

  “Who are you?” he asked.

  “I live on the second floor with my mom.”

  Rhodes looked around. “Why are you out in the rain?”

  “My mom isn’t back from work yet.”

  “You don’t have a key?”

  “She doesn’t trust me.”

  “Why don’t you go to a coffee shop or a friend’s house?”

  “I don’t have any money, and my friends live a bit far.”

  “You shouldn’t be outside. You might catch a cold.”

  He was not sure why he was concerned. He did not know her, and it was none of his business what she did.

  “Is it okay if I just sit here? It’s better than sitting on my steps.”

  Rhodes looked up at the sky. The clouds had gotten darker. The drizzle would soon turn to heavy rain.

  “How old are you?” he asked.

  “Fifteen.”

  Rhodes would have invited her inside, but as a former cop, he knew it would not look good for a fifteen-year-old to be hanging around a man his age.

  “You can wait for your mom in my car,” he said.

  He let her in and then went inside his apartment.

  He had picked up a few groceries while on his way home. He went into the kitchen and fried himself a couple of sausages. He applied some butter to his toast and then pulled out a bottle of beer from a twelve-pack.

  The rain had started to come down heavy. He glanced out the window. He could see the girl in the passenger seat of his car.

  What if I hadn’t come home early? he thought. She’d be soaked by now.

  He sat down at the table and ate his meal in silence.

  Half an hour later, the rain had cleared out. He went to the window and spotted a woman approaching the house. She disappeared from view.

  Rhodes put the dishes in the sink and went outside.

  He was about to open the car door when he stopped. The girl was curled up on the seat. Her arms were wrapped around her knees and she was fast asleep.

  She is just a kid, he thought.

  He went back inside.

  The next time he came out to check on her, she was gone.

  THIRTY-THREE

  Jo found Chris sitting behind his laptop, watching a movie.

  “Is that what you do at work?” Jo said.

  Chris was not fazed. He just pointed to a triangular sign on top of his cubicle. It read DO NOT DISTURB, ON BREAK.

  “Flip it,” he said.

  She did. There was another sign underneath it: DO NOT DISTURB, NAPPING.

  “Flip it one more time,” he said with a smile.

  Jo did. The last sign read IF YOU ARE HOT (IRINA), PLEASE DO DISTURB.


  “Has Irina seen this?” Jo asked.

  “Yep, and she ripped it up. But I always print more.”

  Chris finally noticed the man standing next to Jo. “Can I help you?”

  Jo said, “This is Detective Jay Crowder from the Bridgeton PD. He’ll be working with us on the case.”

  “Hey, I didn’t know,” Chris said.

  Crowder shrugged.

  Jo dropped a DVD on Chris’s desk. “This is from BTA’s CCTV cameras. I doubt we’ll find anything, but find out whatever you can.”

  “Will do.”

  Chris turned back to his movie.

  Jo stared at him.

  “I’m on break, remember,” he said.

  She left him and took Crowder over to her desk.

  He took a seat across from her and smirked. “Nice office you guys got here. I had thought about becoming a Fed too, but I didn’t want to go through the academy. Too much work.”

  Jo was not in the mood for small talk. Crowder was here to assist the FBI in apprehending a serial killer. The sooner they captured the killer, the sooner this arrangement could come to an end.

  She said, “What do you think of the case?”

  On the drive over to the field office, Jo had given a copy of the case files to Crowder to read. She wanted him caught up.

  “I think we need to focus on the message the killer left on the victim’s bodies,” he said.

  Jo flipped open the file on her desk and retrieved a photo of the carving on the first victim. “What the hands touch,” she said. She then pulled out her phone and scrolled through the images until she found the one she took of the second victim. “What the eyes see.”

  “Right,” Crowder said. “The first victim’s hands were removed, which was referenced with a message on his body. The second victim’s eyes were removed. This was referenced with a message on her body. Maybe someone did something to the killer and he is punishing them for it.”

  Jo thought about it. “You think his victims had hurt him?”

  Crowder shrugged. “I don’t know, maybe. But what we do know is that most serial killers are usually acting out their deranged fantasies, or they reenact what they perceive as injustices done to them in childhood. For instance, if girls ignored or spurned them when they were young, as adults, they would try to correct this by overpowering women with the aim of controlling them.”