Morbid Curiosity: Erter & Dobbs Book 3

by Nick Keller

  “It would have been nice to consult with your team first,” Milo said, trying to wrestle back his anger. They moved through the hallway after class.

  William switched eyes with DeAnna as she paced next to him. “I did. I brought it up to DeAnna, didn’t I?”

  She rebuked, “You brought it up, William, but I thought we—look, we came to the same conclusion that Mrs. Ferguson did. It could hurt our case.”

  William said, “How? Arguing how sick these unsolved crimes are will only support our side.”

  “Oh sure,” Milo said. “Look at all the blood and guts, Mr. and Mrs. Judge. Let’s keep funding.”

  “Exactly!” William argued.

  DeAnna volunteered, “We can’t turn the judges off. We’ll just lose credibility.”

  Milo laughed bitterly, “Yeah, let’s make the judges vomit on each other’s shoes and see how far it gets us.”

  Tanvir said from behind, “But I must say—”

  “It just would have been nice to be up front with your team before we presented what we have to Ferguson,” Milo said.

  “The one thing that—” Tanvir said.

  “We need to play it safe,” Milo said.

  “But if you think about—” Tanvir offered.

  “Winning this debate could put us in the state tourney!”

  “Fellas!” Tanvir shouted.

  They all stopped and turned to him shouting, “What, Tanvir?”

  He settled back and said, “William might have a point. If we offer moral obligation in reference to the inhumane nature of these crimes, it would only make a counter argument look apathetic. We wouldn’t lose our credibility. They would.”

  They all looked at each other switching eyes back and forth. Finally Milo said, “I don’t like it, Tan-V. It’s too far to stretch. We have a solid case as it is.”

  DeAnna shrugged. “I agree with Milo. We shouldn’t go changing things.”

  William threw his hands up, frustration showing. “Jesus, what are you all afraid of? We’re arguing crimes, here. Don’t you want to win?”

  “Actually, no we’re not. We’re arguing federal tax expenditure,” DeAnna said.

  William pursed his lips, embarrassed at his own outburst. He stared at her. He had so many reasons to be angry, so many reasons to want to hurt her. But he backed down. He had to. He said, “Alright, fine. Expenditure. We’re making a big mistake, but whatever.” He walked off leaving them behind.

  “William!” Milo called. But he didn’t respond, just sank into the crowd and was gone.

  Despite his team’s insistence of pursuing tax codes and federal funding, he couldn’t shake the killer whirling around in his head. He kept doubting himself. So his dad was in the same city on the same night as Portrait Killer. It didn’t mean anything. Heck, who knows—maybe they shared a conversation. Maybe they shared a beer. Portrait Killer was probably some ordinary joe, a regular guy walking around out there looking as milquetoast as the next.

  In truth, the idea was intoxicating.

  William looked to his bedroom door. His dad was supposed to come home tonight from Boca Raton. How serendipitous would it be to bump into Portrait Killer a second time in Boca Raton—and why not? Both men traveled, going from city to city. They probably booked the same hotels. Rented from the same car rentals.

  William cocked his head in thought. What if Tulsa, Oklahoma wasn’t the first time his dad had bumped into Portrait Killer? What if their paths had crossed before? The thought was too good to ignore.

  William stepped out into the hallway with his Portrait Killer notebook materials tucked under his arm, and peeked over the banister to the downstairs area. Mom was down there watching TV, sipping wine. An episode of Everybody Loves Raymond was showing. Mom never laughed. She just sat there looking forward as if she weren’t actually seeing anything, looking at nothing at all. William looked down the hall toward his dad’s home office. That door was always shut. Maybe he could sneak a peek at dad’s business books. Hmm.

  He went to the door knowing it was locked, so he produced a paperclip and unfolded it into a wire, and inserted it into the knob. They were cheap household accouterments. Picking them was easy. Concentrating, he felt the click and the knob turned. He looked back hearing canned laughter float up from below. He’d have to be quick. Dad would kill him if he caught him rummaging through his office.

  There was a rolltop desk with two sets of heavy, wooden drawers. Dad’s personal papers were in there—past job assignments, financials, everything. But most importantly, twenty-two years of old travel itineraries with dates, flight numbers, destinations.

  He lifted the rolltop away revealing desk shelves stuffed with office supplies. Everything was meticulously organized. And there were two small drawers. He opened one, found a bunch of loose sales receipts. Opened the other. There was a key ring with two keys and a small paper tag. The tag had numbers on it, like some sort of lock combination. One key was brass. That’s it!

  He unlocked the file cabinet drawer and pulled it open. Metal wheels scraped along the drawer rail. It made a creaking noise. He winced and looked back at the door. No one was there. Okay, he went back rifling through folders frantically, reading tabs, searching ravenously.

  There! Flight records.

  He pulled up the folder and laid it out on the floor. Papers were stacked and stapled with perfect organization. He picked one packet up and read it. These were definite travel itineraries. He laid the file folder aside and went to his research material. Flipping through Xerox copies he came to Portrait Killer’s crime records. He licked his lips, puffed the bangs out of his eyes drawing his finger down the page.

  There! Murder dates.

  “Yes!” he whispered. “Okay.” He swung over and plopped his dad’s itineraries next to the Xerox printouts. Time to compare.

  A noise came from downstairs. He looked up toward the door, listening, holding his breath. There were no voices down there, no fatherly noises. Mom must be in the kitchen putting a dish away. Phew.

  William reengaged with the task at hand running down Portrait Killer’s murder dates from most recent to oldest. The last murder had been fifteen months ago. There it was, the sixteenth family. July 20th of 2004. He thought, remembering. The Kalowitz family. Cincinnati, Ohio. Cinci. Home of the Red Sox.

  No wait. William corrected himself. The Reds. The Cincinnati Reds. Right.

  He scanned dad’s itinerary flipping each page, reading dates, reading destinations. Where had he been on those dates?

  Ah! There.

  Dad’s flight receipt showed an arrival date of July 17th, 2004. He would fly back four days later on the 21st, that flight originating from …

  Cincinnati Municipal Airport.

  Cincinnati. Home of the freaking Reds!

  He blinked, went cold.

  They’d both been there. Dad and Portrait Killer. They’d both been in Cincinnati.

  Skin prickled on his back.

  Their paths had crossed before.

  “You’re kidding me,” William muttered.

  His earlier hunch had been right. Dad and Portrait Killer had shared space and time before, fifteen months ago, in Cincinnati. Maybe there were others.

  William checked for Portrait Killer’s previous murder, his fifteenth family. The Mearlmans. November 7, 2002, Buffalo, NY. He checked his dad’s itinerary for that same date running a finger down the flight records. It showed Buffalo-Niagara International Airport. His finger stopped.

  “Holy shoot,” he whispered in disbelief. Again! Was there even more?

  Portrait Killer’s fourteenth family. August 19, 2001. Wichita Falls, TX.

  Oscar Erter’s itinerary. August 19th through the 22nd, 2001. Wichita Falls, TX.

  His jaw dropped. Next.

  Portrait Killer’s thirteenth family. May 9th, 2000. Phoenix, Arizona.

  Oscar Erter’s itinerary. May 9th through the 12th, 2000. Phoenix, Arizona.

  He felt himself go numb. Every time Portrait Kil
ler struck, his dad had been there. He had been in the same city every goddamn time.

  Portrait Killer’s twelfth family. February 11th, 1999. Baton Rouge, Louisiana.

  Oscar Erter’s itinerary. February 8th through the 11th, 1999. Baton Rouge, Louisiana.

  “Oh, God,” He felt sick. Tears accumulated, blurred his vision. He wiped them away. This wasn’t coincidence. This wasn’t random enough to be coincidence. This was design. There was intention here.

  William scanned for Portrait Killer’s eleventh family. March 15, 1997. Des Moines.

  He reached for his dad’s itinerary, hesitated feeling himself go faint. He looked down with misery spilling out of his eyes, saw the date, saw the destination, and threw the Xerox copy violently away from him.

  “Oh, Jesus, oh God,” he said voicelessly. “Oh, Jesus, oh, God.”

  The front door downstairs opened, then shut. He looked over as a new type of horror poured out of him. He heard, “Hello, sweetie, I’m home.” It was dad’s voice.

  The voice of Portrait Killer.

  He was downstairs. He’d just come home. He was moments away.

  Monster in the house.

  William scurried for the Xerox copy he’d thrown, collected it, shuffled all his papers back into a stack, jammed them into his notebook and got shakily to his feet in a rush. He went for the office door but stopped, looked back.

  Oh Christ!

  He’d left his father’s stuff everywhere on the floor. He darted back, dizzy and trembling, collected the papers, some in fisted wads, crammed them back into their file folder and jammed the folder mercilessly back into the drawer. He thrust the drawer shut. It banged like a shotgun. William jerked a look back toward the office door listening for footsteps coming up the stairs, waiting for a shadow to emerge. He waited, waited. There was no one coming, yet.

  Go, goddammit, go!

  He jabbed the small brass key into the file drawer. It dropped from his shaking fingers, landed on the carpet. He swiped it up and crammed it into the file drawer keyhole, poking three times, four times, before it went in. He locked it, jammed the key back in its top drawer and ripped the rolltop back down, closing the desk. In an instant he was back out in the hallway closing the office door, scanning through panicked eyes. He could hear dad downstairs popping open a bottle of beer. He was safe, in the clear. Thank God, thank God!

  He went back into his room, shut the door and sat on his bed trying to bring himself back to calm, wiping tears away. He trembled until he convulsed. He knew dad would come upstairs and into his room. It was his routine. He did it every time he returned from a trip. He was just a father, a dad, wanting to say hello to his family after being away for a few days. William couldn’t face him, couldn’t see him. Had to calm down, had to appear normal.

  Theraphosa. Be the spider. Be Theraphosa.

  William closed his eyes, took a big breath, exhaled, cleared everything away.

  His bedroom door opened. Oscar stood looking in.

  William opened his eyes. Everything was clear and gone. He found himself able to smile. “What’s up, dad?”

  “Hello, son,” he said, and stepped in. It was time to converse with a killer.

  “Hello, William Erter,” came the cool, subdued words of Dr. Graves. William’s eyes shot open and he pulled a tremendous breath. Everything was unfocused, but at least he could still see. His eyes still worked. And he felt like he’d been trampled by a herd of some large mammal, maybe Mastodon. Dr. Graves the man, no longer the monster, had obviously injected himself with his serum while William jiggled and thrashed on the table sizzling to a crisp, and had revived him after death set in. Now, he had pulled him back from the darkness.

  42

  Hobar And Dobbs

  Bernie’s Chrysler roared through William’s apartment complex parking lot with its rows of rectangular buildings and side streets, came to William’s door and slammed to a screeching stop. Bernie got out on the hunt, bottle in hand, not bothering with the passenger door. At the building’s entrance door, he yanked on the handle. It was for occupants only. It was locked. He took a step back preparing to open the door with a kick, but Jacky met him there and said, “Hold on, Mr. Bernie, wait.”

  He fished a small object out of his hoodie pocket, unfolded a long steel pin from it like a Swiss Army knife, and jabbed it into the keyhole. He played and jiggled for a few seconds and the lock disengaged. The steel security gate was next. Jacky worked it open, too. Bernie gave him a questioning look. The kid smiled gleefully holding the thing up and declared, “Never leave home without it, man!”

  “Jeez.” Bernie entered the building, raced down the hallway and to William’s unit door. He tried the knob. It was locked, so he invited Jacky to work his new magic.

  Jacky said, “Well, it doesn’t work on this kind of …”

  Bernie reeled back and smashed the door open with one powerful kick. The metal doorjamb snapped and the combo-slide lock mechanism shattered away. Jacky flinched back hitting a knee, covering up. When he looked back up he said, “Okay—that works, too.”

  They stood in the opening. “You got his computer, kid. I got everything else. Move fast.” Bernie took a sloppy swig from the bottle and ran across the long warehouse unit, up the far stairs and into William’s loft bedroom. The place was meticulous—bed made, everything dusted, no loose bills or papers. The guy was obsessive. It was part of his condition, Bernie supposed. He went to the study table with a small overhead lamp. There was a flip pad laying half open. William had poured over it. He’d probably spent hours sitting here, pondering every conceivable possibility, seeing the blank spots of the world in that complex head of his. He wrenched the pad up and flittered through it, probing on the quick. There were notes that looked to have been scribbled quickly, brain storming, streams of conscious. “I’ll take that,” he said, and slid it into his jacket pocket.

  To the side was a small voice recorder. William had been playing and rewinding it as well, over and over. He snagged it studying its digital face. There had been entries made. He pressed the play button. It was William’s voice relaying observations, discoveries. Bernie hit stop and thumbed it to the final recording, hit play. He heard William say:

  “This was some sort of crackpot surgeon’s setup, a sadistic hospital room. Hmm—all this takes space, an abundance of space. Minimum, eight hundred square feet, possibly more.”

  Bernie’s eyes went into slits. William had been studying something, putting things together in his head, following hunches. There was a pause in the recording, as if William’s mind drew toward a conclusion. Then he said in low, thoughtful words, “… abandoned warehouse.”

  The recording ended with what sounded like William dropping the recorder to the floor. Bernie nodded, sliding the thing into his pocket. He’d listen to it later.

  Next was the bathroom. He went in and threw open the medicine cabinet. There were bottles of shave cream and lotion, all with the labels facing out, and a prescription of Seroquel, William’s antipsychotic. “Yep—gonna need that.” He put that in his pocket, too.

  “Hey, Mr. Bernie, come see,” Jacky called from downstairs.

  Bernie bounded down the stairs and met the kid at William’s personal computer station. Jacky had already guessed his password and was shuffling files a hundred miles an hour. “See these? These are files I sent him the other day. He must’ve been ogling them.”

  “Why?”

  “Beats me. He called and said for me to look up URGENT in the public archives. Some philanthropy group. I found everything I could on them, sent them over.”

  “Why?”

  “Something about Doctor Hugh Graves, you know, the doctor that just disappeared—well, I started looking, and I found him.”

  “How’d you find his info?”

  “Mass-server farms, man. They have everything.”

  “Everything?”

  Jacky grinned knowingly. Bernie was stepping into his wheelhouse. “Yeah—every email every person h
as ever sent is stored away somewhere. What—you think deleting your internet history actually deletes anything? Ha—that’s just if you don’t want your old lady seeing your porn sites, dude, but out there in the desert—they got all your shit, man. They got all of everybody’s shit. Controlled by the Fed, and all that. Shoot—you just have to know how to break into it.”

  “And I’m assuming you broke into it.”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “Bullshit. How?”

  “Oh it’s real easy if you know manipulative firewalls, man—it’s what the Fed uses. It’s how I broke into your files at the P.D. All you got to do is isolate the security service app, locate the code, draft and insert a virus to shut it down, create a backdoor into the primary maintenance server, which gives you access to the whole shebang, then create a new user account through the admin creator program by breaking the pass code and …”

  Bernie flicked his hand at him. “Yeah, yeah, kid, I’m not that interested. Listen, when you were in their servers, after all that mumbo jumbo you just said, what did you find?”

  “I did a quick reference check for Hugh Graves, M.D., and entered all the proper criteria and Gazinga! There was, like, forty thousand of his past individual correspondences to, like, two thousand separate email addresses. I just cut out patients and professional acquaintances before nineteen ninety-nine. Came up with over two-hundred possibles.”

  “Possibles?”

  “Yeah, people he might’ve corresponded with on the down-low. People he might share information with, right? Well, this kept coming up. URGENT. Going all the way back to oh-twelve. There was, like, three-dozen email addresses. Thought that was weird. Figured they were all members of this URGENT. Then I rolled them all into an email list and sent it out telling anyone who might know about Doctor Graves to call the number attached to Professor Erter’s phone.”

  “His phone?” Bernie said, concerned.

  “Meh—it was a temp phone. Anyway, looks like one of them bit. That’s where all this stuff came from.” Jacky snapped his fingers, declared, “Damn I’m good!”