CHAPTER 37
“Chase? You okay? It sounds like you’re running,” Drake asked.
“I’m just walking fast. Did you catch the news? My press conference?”
Drake shook his head, glancing around Ken’s penthouse, his eyes moving from the wood fireplace, which Drake was ninety-percent certain was illegal in a new building such as this one, to the gold-framed oil paintings on the walls.
He didn’t see a TV.
“No, haven’t seen it. How did—”
“Don’t. Do yourself a favor and don’t watch it.”
The exasperation in Chase’s voice caused him to sit upright and to stop slouching in the ultra-comfortable chair.
“What happened?”
“Nothing. I just went off the rails a bit. If you’re not calling about that debacle, what’s up?”
Drake picked up the e-reader in his free hand and turned it on.
With a sigh, he said, “I got another story… Part III was delivered right to my tablet thingy.”
There was a pause. When Chase spoke again, she was no longer breathing heavily, and her voice was muted.
“Seriously? Jesus, Drake, what does it say? Is there another body?”
Drake frowned and turned the reader on by pressing the button that had been hidden until Screech had showed him. He scrolled to the third image of the woman’s face, blood smeared across her lips. He clicked on it and read the first few lines out loud.
“The girl’s wrists were tightly bound to the goalpost, her body forming a cross shape. She was naked, and even from a distance Sergeant Cristin Allan knew that rigor mortis had set in. She reached up and moved a few strands of frozen hair from her face. The woman’s eyes were wide, her lips covered in scarlet blood.”
Drake’s heart was racing as he read the words.
Sergeant Cristin Allan… Sergeant Chase Adams.
“Fuck,” Chase whispered. “I—hold on a sec.”
Drake heard her hand cover the mouthpiece, then in a muffled voice she said, “Hey, Officer, any homicides checked in yet? In the last hour or so?”
There was an exchange that he didn’t pick up, then Chase spoke again, clearly this time.
“Nothing—no new bodies. Goddammit, does it say where the body is? Goalposts… like at a soccer field? School yard, maybe? It can’t be at the barn… I have two officers there day and night, on rotation. And there are no goalposts there. Drake? Drake?”
The door to the elevator suddenly pinged, drawing Drake’s attention. Ken Smith stepped out, immaculately dressed as always, his silver hair perfectly coiffed. Only he looked different this time, and it took Drake a moment to realize why.
The man was frowning.
“Drake? You still there?”
“I have to go,” Drake said quietly into the phone.
“What? What do you mean you have to go? Drake? Dra—”
Drake hung up and stood. He finished his drink and put the empty glass on the table beside the chair.
“Detective Drake,” Ken said, unsmiling.
Drake scowled.
I wish you wouldn’t call me that.
“This better be important—I’m a busy man. Tell me you have some good news… a video of the doctor with his manager.”
Drake shook his head.
“No. I have everything in place, but—”
Ken’s frowned deepened.
“What do you want then?”
Raul, as if responding to the change in pitch of Ken’s voice, suddenly appeared at Drake’s left.
He instinctively took a step back.
“Everything okay here?” Raul asked in his thick accent.
Ken nodded.
“Fine. Drake was just about tell me why he’s interrupted my afternoon.”
Drake decided it was best to just come out with it.
“I need cash. A loan.”
Ken’s eyes flicked over to Raul for a split-second, and it dawned on him that the man wasn’t angry so much as he was surprised.
And his glance over at Raul…
They’re following me, Drake thought suddenly. That’s why this is a surprise. They’ve been following me, and they didn’t expect me to come here. Not like this, anyway.
Ken’s eyes narrowed.
“What do you need the money for?”
Drake ignored the question.
“I’ll get it back to you—it’s a loan, not a gift. I just need a few weeks.”
An uncomfortable silence ensued, and Drake feared that Ken was going to press him for why he needed the money. And those were details that he didn’t feel like getting into with anyone, let alone him.
But, instead, he said, “how much.”
“Twenty.”
Ken nodded, then turned to Raul.
“Go get him the money.”
Raul bowed his head and left through the kitchen and out of sight. When he was gone, Ken focused his eyes on Drake.
“The report on the doctor was a trade for the information I gave you about Craig Sloan, about Dr. Moorfield and the tribunal. The package Raul handed you last time was for the video that you will provide me shortly. But this—”
As if on cue, Raul reappeared in the foyer and handed a plain yellow envelope to Ken, who tapped it against his palm.
“This one is for the Sergeant.”
Drake felt his heart rate quicken.
“What about her?”
“The press conference—you need to tell her to keep a wrap on whatever she—whatever you—are dealing with… the dead women. Another serial killer, panic in the city, that doesn’t work for me. Not now, anyway.”
Ken held the envelope out to Drake, who grabbed it. When he tried to pull away, however, Ken held fast.
“Ten is to keep this case, and the Sergeant, under control. The other ten… that’s for something else.”
Drake raised an eyebrow.
“Something else?”
Ken let go of the envelope, and Drake slipped it into his jacket pocket.
“I’ll tell you when I need you again. In the meantime, get the footage of the doctor. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have to go back to work.”
With that, the man spun on his heels, then left in the elevator without another word, once again leaving Drake with Raul. Only this time, he was twenty thousand dollars richer.
CHAPTER 38
Chase was furious.
There was another book, another murder, and Drake had the nerve to hang up on her.
I should never have brought him on board, she thought.
But it dawned on her that even if she hadn’t made Drake a Special Consultant on the case, he would have been involved anyway, given that someone had delivered the mysterious e-reader to him.
Somebody wants Drake to remain involved with the NYPD. But who? And why?
Chase shook her head. She had little time for these questions when there was a body out there somewhere, hanging from goalposts.
She hurried out of her office, moving toward the one that she had once shared with Drake, and leaned inside.
Agent Stitts sat in front of his computer, punching away at the keys. She knocked once to get his attention, and he looked up at her, a startled expression on his face. When he realized that it was her, however, his eyes narrowed.
“What’s up?”
Chase wasn’t sure if it was her body language or something else, but the man somehow knew that this wasn’t a social call, that she wasn’t going to ask him to grab a late lunch.
“Come with me,” she said curtly. “We have to visit Dunbar.”
Stitts nodded and stood, making his way to her side without saying a word.
“Drake was sent another book,” Chase said quietly as they made their way down the dimly lit staircase toward the Records room.
Agent Stitts stopped and turned to face her, eyes wide.
“Already? So soon after Charlotte?”
Chase nodded.
“This—”
“I know,”
Chase said, cutting him off. She knew what he was going to say, and it would do neither of them any good to say it out loud.
Too many perked ears, even here, in the basement of 62nd precinct.
The killer was moving quickly now, so quickly that he wasn’t even waiting for them to find the body before publishing the story—at least to Drake’s device.
Which posed a significant problem for Chase and her team: mainly, what might happen if the author, if L. Wiley, suddenly flooded the market with books? How were they to know which ones were real, where they should focus their efforts, and which were just made up?
And if the public found out? If there were suddenly hundreds of books called Scarlet Grin or Maroon Sneer or Crimson Smirk? Then what?
This case, unlike all of the others, had to be solved as soon as possible. They had to catch the killer before he struck again.
“What does it say? Where’s the body located?”
Chase shook her head, thinking back to the way that Drake had just suddenly hung up on her. She had brought him on board to help with the case, but so far the only thing he had done is provide them with the stories—which had simply been delivered to him.
Other than that, he had done nothing. Except for being preoccupied, lost in thought like some goddamn middle-aged philosopher.
“Nothing—he had to… he had to go.”
Another eyebrow raise from Stitts, but before he could ask for details, Chase deliberately opened the door to Records and stepped inside.
Officer Dunbar was huddled over a computer, his large frame illuminated by the bluish glow from the screen. The walls on one side of the room were lined with cabinets, paper files that had yet to be digitized, while the other was stacked with hard drives and glowing lights.
The old and the new.
Drake and Chase, working together in… abstraction.
“Dunbar, we need—” Chase started, but stopped when a flicker of movement caught her eye. She leaned around Dunbar’s desk.
A young, thin man with a shaved head looked up at her. He smiled at first, revealing a set of teeth that looked too small for his mouth, but when he saw the expression on her face, he immediately grew serious. His eyes flicked to Stitts and then he jumped to his feet.
“Sergeant Adams, I was just leaving to get a coffee. You want?”
Chase shook her head, and the man, whose name escaped her, fled the room. When he was gone, Stitts closed the door.
“What? What’s up?” Dunbar asked nervously.
Chase moved to behind his chair.
“There’s been another murder,” she said flatly.
Dunbar swallowed hard.
“What? Where?”
“Don’t know yet. That’s what I’m hoping you can help us with.”
And Drake, too, if he ever decides to call me back.
Dunbar turned back to the screen and called up L. Wiley’s author page on Amazon.
There were three books now, all with the same image of the woman with the bloody lips, all a different shade of red.
“Shit,” she swore as her eyes fixed on the third book. Despite what Drake had told her, deep down she had hoped that he was wrong. “It wasn’t online an hour ago.”
Dunbar clicked the cover and then read book synopsis.
It was only a single sentence.
Another murder and the police are no closer to finding out who the killer is.
“He’s mocking us,” Agent Stitts remarked.
Chase felt her anger rising and she pulled the cell phone from her pocket. She clicked redial, but after a single ring it went right to voicemail.
She swore.
“We have to read it—we need to find out what’s in there. Where the body is. If there are any clues to the killer’s identity.”
Dunbar chewed his lip.
“We can’t buy it.”
Chase frowned.
“What? Why not?” A glimmer of hope. “It’s not for sale?”
Dunbar took a deep breath before answering.
“Oh, it’s for sale, but we can’t buy it. I’ve been reading a little bit about this whole indie publishing scene. Apparently, it’s all about visibility. With over 60 million books online, it’s not necessarily about the quality of book you write—although that plays a role—but it’s about discoverability. People need to see your book to buy it. And every time someone buys the book, it jumps up the ranking a little, gains more exposure.”
“So what? Get to the point, Dunbar.”
“I noticed a disturbing trend over the last few days. The first book—Red Smile Part I—has been trending upward. Not by much, but it’s ranked ten thousand spots higher than this morning even.”
“What does that mean? How many people have bought it?”
Dunbar shrugged.
“Impossible to know exactly, but I’m guessing it’s sold about ten copies a day since its release.”
“Which makes what? Fifty total sold?”
“About that.”
“So we don’t want to buy the damn book because that will push it up the rankings, is that it?”
Dunbar nodded.
“Exactly.”
“Then we need Drake’s copy,” Agent Stitts chimed in.
Did your intuition tell you that? Chase thought angrily, but then breathed deeply, trying to keep her cool.
He was just trying to help—they all were. Even Drake, in his own way. At least that was what she hoped.
“Shit.”
A silence interrupted only by the mechanical whirring of the hard drives stretched out for several seconds.
“We have to take it down,” Chase said at last. “We have to get the books removed before anyone else downloads them.”
“I thought you said you didn’t want anyone at the eBook vendors to find out about it? That it might be leaked that these books are about actual murders?” Dunbar said.
“We have no choice. Let’s hope that if we take the books down, the killer will lose interest, that without a venue for their work, they’ll slow down,” Chase replied, but even as the words exited mouth, she knew that it was a long shot. Killers didn’t tend to slow down between crimes, they sped up.
Her arms suddenly started to itch.
They worked faster, the crimes becoming more gruesome as they sought the feeling of their first kill.
As they fed their addiction.
She turned to Agent Stitts.
“You think we can get the vendors to give up L. Wiley’s real name?”
“I can try to put some pressure, but these companies… they’re massive. Even with a subpoena, they can tie us up in legal garbage for years.”
Chase swore again.
Sometimes the wheels of justice worked so slowly that they were barely moving. Sometimes the wheels of justice were square.
But Drake, he isn’t bound by the same rules… maybe…
She shook the thought from her head.
“See what you can do on that front. We gotta stem this, and quick.”
It was only then that she noticed Dunbar shaking his head.
“What now?”
“If we shut down Wiley’s account, they can just open another one. Put the book up under another name… L. Wile, maybe, instead of L. Wiley.”
Chase felt her frustration rising.
“Then we need to get the vendors to give up his name. Twist their arm, do whatever it takes.”
Dunbar’s expression soured and he opened his mouth, but then closed it again.
“Just say it,” Chase demanded. “Jesus, just say what you’re thinking.”
“It’s just… online, people have been reporting that these pen names are sacred. The bigger vendors guard them very tightly, to the point that there has never been a leak. There’s also a case where a judge subpoenaed their records for a specific book that contained a photograph from an armed robbery, a previously unpublished photo that contained critical evidence, and while eventually the book was pulled, the author’s re
al name was never revealed.”
“Shit, you’re just full of good news today, aren’t you?”
Dunbar looked down.
“Sorry, I’ve just—”
“I can still push, see what happens,” Stitts offered.
Chase shut her eyes and breathed deeply. When she opened them again, she found herself focusing on an array of smaller book covers below Red Smile.
“What are those?” she asked.
Dunbar followed her finger.
“Also Boughts.”
“Also what?”
“Boughts—an automatically populated list of other books bought by people who bought Red Smile. Supposed to help buyers find other books they might like. Sort of—wait a second.”
Suddenly excited, Dunbar whipped his mouse about and hammered at the keyboard. A couple of seconds later, the screen was segmented into three panels, one for each of the books.
He then started to scroll through the Also Boughts, capturing the images of the covers and dropping them in an image processing program.
“What now?” Chase asked.
Dunbar clicked several more times and then brought the image processing screen to center stage.
“These are all the books that the people have bought in addition to Red Smile. A lot of authors buy their own books to get the also bought machine started… if L. Wiley has written other books under a different pen name, they might be in this group of eighty or so books.”
Chase was nodding now.
They might be onto something.
“Cross reference this with the books that Tanya and Melissa and Charlotte either bought or took out from the library. Maybe this is how he’s targeting the victims.”
Dunbar opened several files and then the screen became a blur of text. More windows popped up and then disappeared before she could get a good look at them.
“I was already running program to find similarities in the victims’s reading patterns, but the number of books that it had to scroll through—especially with Melissa—was immense, and there was a lot of overlap, but—” he clicked a button and then smiled when only three covers showed up on the screen. “Using the Also Boughts, there are only three books in common to all of the vics, and the Also Boughts.”
Chase leaned toward the screen so quickly that she almost knocked heads with Dunbar. A frown immediately formed on her face as she read the titles out loud.
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