Blind: Killer Instincts

by Sidney Bristol

  He wanted to punch something, so he’d feel anything except the rage burning him alive.

  There was no denying that he was a sucker. He’d known her story, painted her as the victim, another casualty like himself, all the while ignoring the truth. For a few brief moments, he’d thought they’d clicked. That she got him in a way most women ran from. But it was all too convenient.

  He didn’t know if he’d confront her about it, if it was worth facing his own foolishness, but he’d have to figure that out later. For now, he had a case to work, and the Behavioral Analysis Unit from the FBI to meet.

  Jacob pulled up to the ancient gas station off Interstate-35, south of Norman. This far out, there wasn’t much except pastures and hills. The small brick building must have been around since the sixties, if not earlier. At one time it had probably been a crucial fueling stop, but now it was rundown, and the only patrons were either locals or long-haul truckers.

  There were a couple of patrol cars, two black SUVs, and the forensics van blocking off most of the lot designated for eighteen-wheelers. Only one big-rig occupied the space. Yellow tape roped off a large portion of space, including the rig. Most conspicuously, there was a cluster of suits that had to be the FBI.

  “Detective Payton?” A tall man with close-cropped blond hair and a hard stare walked toward him.

  “I am. Are you Special Agent Brooks?” He offered the agent his hand.

  “Ryan Brooks. Brooks is fine. We were waiting on you to begin.” He tipped his head back. “Some weather you have here.”

  Jacob chuckled. “Yeah, you might want to do without the jackets. Has the CSI team started?”

  “Yes, we cleared them to begin photographing the scene.” Brooks gestured toward the other agents. “Let me introduce you to my team.”

  The introductions were made in brief—names and specializations only. There were two dedicated profilers, a PR guy, a young woman who had so many letters behind her name he wasn’t sure what she really did, and Brooks.

  “I’d like my guys to talk to the attendant on duty,” Brooks said and gestured to two men in slacks and sports coats. There was a deadly air around the two that made Jacob glad they were on the same side.

  “Sure. You don’t have to ask my permission for anything. Chief asked you to come in and chose me to work with you as liaison because of my connection.”

  “And you’re cool with that, mate?” Connor Mullins, one of the profilers, asked. He was a tall, lean man, with the body of a swimmer. His accent wasn’t exactly American made.

  Jacob opened his mouth and closed it. He couldn’t say that his LT was an incompetent asshole with a grudge against him and this case, so he shrugged.

  “Politics,” he answered. “I want this guy caught and put behind bars. Bringing your team in seems to be the fastest, most economical way to make that happen, and I will do whatever it takes to catch him.”

  “Well we’ll do that.” Connor glanced at the other man and nodded toward the gas station. “Shall we?”

  The duo strode off to begin their part of the investigation as a news truck rolled in.

  “That’s my cue.” The black agent buttoned his jacket. “Police haven’t confirmed they are working on a copycat, correct Detective?”

  “That is correct, but the news is spinning it that way,” Jacob replied.

  “I can work with that. Should I know anything about the current racial climate?”

  “What?” Jacob blinked at the man.

  “I’m a black man about to go on TV. Is that a good idea?”

  “Yeah. Sorry, I’m a little one-track minded right now.”

  “It’s all good. Just want to know if I should put him on the camera instead.” Benjamin thumbed at Ryan and grinned.

  “Take care of it, Ben.” Ryan nodded at the camera crews.

  “I’ll keep them busy.” Benjamin strode toward the camera crews.

  Jacob turned to the remaining two. “All right, where would you like to start, Agent Brooks?”

  “Patrol said the eighteen-wheeler belongs to a Laura Winthrop.” The red-headed woman gestured to the truck. “She was a long-haul trucker who made regular stops at this station for the last ten months, but only on her return trip.”

  “How do you know that?” Jacob blinked at the woman’s near-emotionless face.

  “I read her driving log.”

  “And she only stopped at this station on her return trip. Why?” Brooks asked.

  “There was a note from nine months ago. She couldn’t navigate into the station at night due to a lack of visibility. She likes the homemade pies the owner’s grandmother sells here. There were six of them in her truck when it was searched.”

  “And you read the whole log?” Jacob asked. They couldn’t have beaten him to the scene by more than twenty minutes.

  Brooks chuckled. “Speed reading. Agent Perez is nothing if not economical.”

  “Yo, Payton.” They turned toward the lead forensics guy. “It’s all you. Just don’t touch anything, okay? And if you need to throw up, do it in the garbage cans. We still might find something out here.”

  Jacob and the two agents circled the back of the gas station. The stench slammed into them like a wall. He swallowed hard and breathed through his mouth.

  The three of them clustered around the door to the women’s restroom. The forensics team had placed plastic milk crates upside down to create a walk way so as to not disrupt the evidence.

  “So much for having a clean scene,” Jade Perez muttered. “Don’t show this to Lali. She’ll scrub her hands until they bleed.”

  “What do you see?” Brooks asked.

  Jacob swallowed the bile he could taste at the back of his throat. Good thing he hadn’t had more than a glass of water and the coffee at the Kelleys’, or he might lose it. He’d seen a few ugly crime scenes in his life, but this was the worst.

  Laura Winthrop lay on her back, bound and gagged. They wouldn’t know the cause of death until after the autopsy, but he could take a guess.

  “Bludgeoned to death, like the others. Christ.” Jacob shook his head.

  “The others?” Brooks asked.

  “The old TBK cases, and the first copycat TBK victim.” He wiped his mouth against his forearm.

  “The marks on her face and chest indicate the suspect used something with weight to it,” Jade added.

  “The patrol officer who responded found a bloody wrench on the sidewalk.” Brooks replied.

  Jacob shoved down his annoyance that such a major detail hadn’t been relayed to him. But, he wasn’t the case officer anymore. He was the detective gopher for the FBI. It was a tough pill to swallow, even if it was the best decision.

  Jade leaned over the threshold, her long, red ponytail swinging over her shoulder. “The gag appears to have been an afterthought. It looks like it’s torn from a shirt or something. TBK never gagged his victims.”

  “Probably from the acoustics. Can you imagine how loud her screams would be in here? I bet he didn’t think through that. He’s probably younger, still figuring out who he is.” Brooks asked.

  “There might be trace on it. He doesn’t gag his victims, so he would have had to improvise. It could be the suspect’s shirt. Do you notice that spot on top of the toilet? There’s a void.” Jade pointed at the blood-splattered toilet, and the spot that was still relatively white.

  “We have a deviation from the plan and a void,” Brooks mused.

  “There was a similar void at Harold’s house,” Jade said.

  “I’m wondering—could he be taping these?” Jacob glanced at the two agents. He was too used to talking through a scene to keep his comments to himself.

  Brooks and Jade stared at him.

  “It’s just an idea.” Jacob shrugged.

  “No, no, it’s brilliant,” Brooks said.

  “It would make sense, judging by the positioning.” Jade scrutinized the place, gaze narrowed, lips tightly compressed.

  “This had to be plan
ned. He picked this location.” Jacob turned to survey the expanse of wilderness that backed up against the gas station. There wasn’t anyone to see the crime. “I don’t think it’s chance that the room is practically sound-proof. Someone had to see him. Last week, last month. He’s been here before. I interviewed Harold Espinoza’s neighbors this morning, and they mentioned a substitute mailman who said his name was Mitchell. TBK’s real name was—”

  “Mitchell Black,” Jade blurted.

  “Good point, Detective,” Brooks said. “I want to call Lali and get her working on that.” He stepped away, pulling out his phone.

  “Do you think she was still alive when he started cutting out her eyes?” Jade asked.

  He glanced at the woman, more than a little disturbed by the question. What would it be like to have your eyeball dug out of your skull?

  “Pre- or postmortem will tell us more about his psyche,” she explained.

  “TBK. Torture. Blind. Kill. She was alive for this. What does that say about him?” Jacob wasn’t sure he wanted to know the answer.

  “The eyeballs are his trophies, we know that much. Or at least he perceives them as trophies. They might not be his trophies, as in this TBK’s, they could be part of the ritual.”

  Jacob blinked at the woman. She stared at the body, hardly blinking, as if she saw something not evident to his gaze.

  “The original letters you showed us were signed TBK.” Perez shifted her attention to him. “The new ones are TBKiller. It’s his identity. Is he taking the eyes because TBK did, or is he taking them for himself? What kind of a relationship does our copycat have with the original killer?”

  “I...don’t know.”

  “Neither do I. I need to go over the files from the correlating TBK case. There might be something there.”

  “Like what?”

  “An identity. There’s a difference between TBK and TBKiller. Those differences will be more pronounced the more kills our copycat makes because he’s finding his identity. It’s like cooking. The first time, you follow the recipe. After that, you sort of improvise to get the results you want.” She smoothed her hand down over the long tail of red hair. “I really want a donut. Do you think they’re still selling stuff up front?”

  “I have no idea.”

  “Hm. I’m going to go check.” She pivoted and headed around the side of the building.

  Jacob glanced from Jade to the victim, unsure which was more unnerving. Jade recited these things as if she were a robot, dry facts, no emotion or physical reaction. It made him think of the TV serial killer, Dexter. In a way, the lifeless corpse was a more settling companion.

  His phone chimed with an incoming message. He hovered over the delete button when he saw who it was from.

  Emma.

  Was he a fool for wanting her?

  I really am sorry. Let me make it up to you tonight.

  The next message was an address and a picture of a dirt bike. She wanted to make up by allowing him into that part of her life? Was that what this was? He didn’t know, and honestly there wasn’t time to figure out the intricacies of a complicated woman. He blew out a breath and pocketed the phone.

  His brain needed to be here. In the moment. With the vic. If the copycat was evolving, he was going to screw up. That was how they’d catch him.

  Jacob knelt, leaning toward the body. Her hair was bound in a braid, her head thrown back. They hadn’t identified the victim by her face, between the bludgeoning and the lack of eyeballs, they’d trusted her license and the owner of the freight company that owned the truck in the parking lot.

  There would be another letter today. The media coverage at the station was going to be crazy, but that was now the domain of the FBI. In a way, it was nice to not have to deal with those details. He might only be playing a supporting role, but he could expend all his effort on finding the killer.

  5.

  E

  mma took her foot off the gas as Jacob’s Wrangler exited the highway some distance ahead of her. She’d kept her distance as much as she could and still tail him.

  I shouldn’t have followed him, she thought for the hundredth time.

  It was too late to turn back now, despite what her conscience said. The car she’d borrowed from Amanda was running on E.

  Jacob was getting out of his Jeep at the station by the time she coasted down the ramp onto the service road. She slouched in her seat on the off-chance he’d glance her way, but he never did. The little store was clogged with people from one side to the other, most in uniform or with a news crew. Two vans bearing the emblem of TV stations rolled down the ramp ahead of her. Word was getting out fast. The bad part for her was that there wasn’t anywhere else to stop for gas. It was one of those exits to nowhere, with one station and what looked like a livestock supply store across the street operating out of a shed held together by duct tape and bailing wire. There was another truck at the pump, so at least she could get gas. Eventually.

  The influx of reporters could entertain the officers while she got gas and hightailed her ass out of there. If Jacob caught her at this scene, he might never forgive her, and that was becoming unacceptable.

  She wanted to see the scene with her own eyes, even if she knew it wasn’t going to happen. The next best thing was being near it. Killers often came back to their crime scenes to relive the kill. Maybe she’d see him.

  Then what?

  What could she possibly hope to learn from this?

  “I’ll get gas, and go. It’s not a crime,” she muttered to herself.

  Jacob was never going to forgive her, and she had no one to blame except herself.

  She clung to her decision to leave as soon as she could as she cruised down the service road. The cars and people were little flecks in the distance, growing larger as she approached.

  Somewhere between sex and cuddling, she’d begun to fall for the man, against her better judgment. But the heart never listened, did it?

  Emma rolled into the station and took the farthest pump from the action. She killed the engine and glanced around, but Jacob was nowhere to be seen. The front of the store appeared to be business as usual, so maybe she didn’t have anything to worry about. The only pumps roped off were those for the long-haul truckers.

  “Get your ass in gear,” she told her reflection in the rear-view mirror.

  Emma pumped gas, keeping her head down and minding her own business. There was no way Jacob would see her. He had way too much going on to pay any attention to random people pumping gas. Except the skin between her shoulder blades prickled, as if she were being watched.

  Glancing over her shoulder, she only caught sight of the news vans. No Jacob. No one that appeared out of place.

  And yet, if anything, she felt the sensation even stronger.

  What the hell was going on?

  She peered around, trying to appear casual, but no one seemed to be taking any interest in her. There was one other person pumping gas, some suits in the gas station. Across the street at the feed store a couple of trucks were clustered together. No doubt the locals gathering to rubberneck and talk about each other. There was also a car up on the overpass. Maybe it was broken down, or maybe they were curious locals. That was it. Nothing too out of the ordinary.

  Whatever. She needed to get her happy ass out of there.

  Emma filled up the tank as a thank you to her roommate and sped out of the station, relieved more than anything else she hadn’t seen a single thing of note. She didn’t breathe easy until she was headed north once more. Sitting at the red light she pulled out her phone and texted Jacob a quick, “I’m sorry,” message to ease her conscience.

  He didn’t need to know her transgressions, but she had to make this right. She’d keep her nose in her own business from now on.

  Okay, that was a lie. She’d still be curious as hell, but she wouldn’t follow Jacob to another scene. That was right out.

  The room Jacob had set up to run his investigation from had a who
le new look. The FBI had taken his dry erase board for Harold Espinoza and begun one for Laura Winthrop.

  “Detective Payton, Stevenson said you had a theory about the first victim,” Brooks said as they entered. “I’d like to hear it.”

  The FBI agents turned almost as one toward him, their gazes falling on him and hanging like weights around his neck. He was a good detective—it was born into his blood—but these guys lived and breathed serial killers. What did he know they wouldn’t?

  “Yes.” Jacob cleared his throat and approached the first board.

  “Your father arrested TBK, correct?” Brooks asked.

  “He did.”

  “Sir?” The red-haired woman, Special Agent Jade Perez, held up her hand.

  Brooks gestured to the woman.

  “Thank you.” She nodded at her supervising officer before turning toward Jacob. “Before we look at that, I’d like to establish that we are not looking for the original TBK, and that we are—in fact—looking for a copycat. I think this will help us with the profile.” She turned to him. “The original signature, will you show it to me?”

  “Does this need to happen now?” Brooks asked.

  “Yes, because I know what you’re going to ask, and that’s if the correct person was convicted of being TBK. I have a theory. Please, give me a moment?”

  Brooks nodded and gestured for Jacob to continue.

  The contents of the original evidence boxes he’d retrieved were spread out on a table against the wall, as far from the window as you could get. He appreciated the deference shown for the older documents, already yellowed from age.

  Jacob leafed through the box until he came to the folder containing the documents. “TBK never sent in anything in his own handwriting. It was typed on an old typewriter, one of his letters was done at the public library, he even cut and pasted words from a magazine. The only thing handwritten was the signature.”

  “The new signature isn’t hand written. Was that detail made public?” Perez followed him to the table, her intense gaze nailing him to the spot. She had no concept of personal space. Hell, if he wasn’t careful he’d knock her over.