by KJ Kalis
“You’re right. We’ve seen this over and over again,” Kat started to feel like herself, the last wisps of lightheadedness washing away as the breeze from the open car window pressed against her face. “There’s always a lead. We just have to find it.”
“Hope you’re right,” Van said. “We need a break now more than ever.”
When they pulled up to the front of Rebecca Blake’s apartment complex, there were two unmarked sedans, three police cruisers, a van from the medical examiner’s office, and a few other cars dotted through the parking lot. The front door to the complex had been propped open, an officer standing by, watching people come in and out. “You live here?” he asked.
“No, we are here to see Detective Dawson,” Van said.
The officer raised his head slightly. “He’s in the office. Right through that door.”
Kat followed Van through what looked to be a small lobby, a bank of small brass doors with numbers on them against the wall where residents could pick up their mail. To her left, there was a glass door marked office. It had been propped open as well. A woman was sitting at the desk, an officer leaning over her, and Detective Dawson standing close by, watching the computer screen. “Detective?” Van said.
As Detective Dawson glanced at them, Kat noticed how tired he looked. He was one of those people that seemed to always look exhausted, pale skin, puffy eyes. It was even more so now. She wondered if he ever looked healthy. “Yeah, thanks for coming.” He pulled them off to the side, “About the other morning…”
Van put his hands up, “No problem. We are all under a lot of stress with this case. How can we help?”
Detective Dawson glanced them, seemingly surprised at how quickly they had moved from enemies to allies. “Well, I had a funny feeling I missed something at Rebecca’s apartment. That wasn’t exactly the case. Someone dropped off a box that contained her body sometime during the last twelve to twenty-four hours. We don’t have a cause of death yet. The medical examiner just took her back to his lab.”
Kat felt her shoulders relax a little. It was good news that Rebecca had already been removed. Normally, she wasn’t skeevy about dead bodies. She’d seen a lot of them and had even killed a man who was holding Jack as a hostage. But for some reason, this case had upset that balance.
Dawson pointed to the woman sitting at the desk and the officer. “That’s Roxanne. She’s the landlord. We managed to get the video surveillance they have, which isn’t much, transferred to this computer. The electronics are back in that tiny closet.” Dawson shook his head, “Trying to fit my big body in that little closet just wasn’t working.”
Kat managed a weak smile. At least Dawson was trying to joke with them. That was a good sign. “You suspect that the killer is the one that dropped off the body?”
Dawson shrugged, the lapel from one side of his jacket flopping over. “It’s just a hunch. At this point, we’ve got no way of knowing if the killer is the one that dropped off the body or if he hired someone to do it.”
“But you suspect a male?” Van said.
Dawson nodded. “Most serial killers are male. There have been a few exceptions in history, but not many. And, given the trauma to the first set of bodies, that’s the theory I’m working on.”
Kat thought about it for a minute. Dawson was probably right. The killer was likely a male, especially given the fact that he was moving the dead bodies as he disposed of them. “Have you considered that maybe it’s a pair of people?”
“Listen, I’m willing to consider anything, including aliens and zombies, because at this point, unless we find something on Rebecca’s body or in the videotape, I’ve got zero. I’ve never been on a case like this before. There are no leads at this moment.”
“Detective?” The officer standing next to Roxanne motioned him over, “I think we might have something.”
Kat followed, Van right behind her, as Dawson took up his post behind the computer screen again. “Look,” the officer said. Kat glanced at her name badge. It read Morris. She was the officer that had been feeding Stephanie information. Kat wanted to pull her off to the side as soon as she could to introduce herself, but for the moment she refocused on the screen. It was broken up into four quadrants, showing four different views of the apartment complex. She felt surprised that there were only four cameras in the entire complex. It was an enormous building. How four small cameras could be expected to record all the information they needed, she wasn’t sure. The first view in the upper left-hand corner was the office, the second was the lobby where the mailboxes were. There was a third camera angle that covered the back parking lot and the fourth camera covered the front and side parking lots.
Cheryl Morris put her hand on the landlord's shoulder. “Roxanne, run it at fast-forward, but not the super-fast one. Show them what we found.”
Kat heard the keyboard click. Roxanne used her pink painted fingernails to jab at the computer. The video began to go forward, about twice as fast as normal human motion, but not so fast that they couldn’t see what was going on. Kat squinted at the screen. From where she was standing, she could see the view of a van pull up in the parking lot. The camera couldn’t catch the far side of the van, but a few seconds later, she saw the driver roll a dolly out with a large box. “Pause it right there,” Cheryl said. “That looks like the box to me.”
Dawson nodded, “Me, too.”
Cheryl looked at Roxanne, “Okay, play it forward, but slowly.” The video started to move again, showing the man rolling the furniture box toward the front door. They lost the view for a moment until he came into focus in the lobby. “Did he buzz in?” Dawson asked. “Do we have any way of knowing that?”
“From what I can see, it looks like he used keys,” Roxanne said. “Our system doesn’t record who goes in and out. Their unit key gets them in and out of the front door. All the tenants have a separate mailbox key. That’s it.”
Kat watched silently, absorbing the images in her head. The man she saw on the screen was wearing coveralls, just like the kind you’d expect to see someone if they worked in a machine shop, or as a delivery person, or as a janitor. He had a baseball cap pulled down low on his face and wore glasses. Kat squinted at the screen, but there was no good view of his face. Kat felt her stomach tighten. This had to be the killer, she thought. But identifying him based on a grainy video would be nearly impossible. Cheryl’s voice interrupted her thoughts. “So, we lose him for a few minutes, but you can see him come back through the lobby. There’s no box.” She pointed to the screen, “If you keep watching, you can see him pull out of the parking lot.”
Van leaned forward, “Any chance we got a shot of his license plate?”
“No,” Cheryl said. “That was the first thing I looked for. The video camera is oriented in a way that his plates weren’t recorded. We got a quick shot when he pulled in, but the area around the plate is fuzzy like the camera had something on the lens.”
Kat gritted her teeth together. “So, we can see the guy, but we don’t know who he is.”
Dawson nodded, “Sure seems that way.” He sighed, “Okay, Morris, let’s get a copy of this video over to forensics. Maybe they can make something more out of it than we can.”
Morris nodded. “I’ve got extra flash drives in my cruiser. Let me just go get one.” She looked at the landlord who had slumped in her chair, her eyes fixed on the ground, “You did good, Roxanne, you did good.”
The woman perked up for a moment and then looked back at the floor, “I just can’t believe that someone walked into the building with a dead body and dropped it off in an apartment of mine. How is this possible?”
It was a good question, Kat thought. “Listen, Roxanne, is it?” The woman nodded, “I’m only guessing here, but whoever took Rebecca, probably took her purse as well. If her keys were in it, he would’ve had easy access to the building and her apartment. With the coveralls and baseball hat on, it’s nearly impossible to see who he is. This isn’t your fault.” Trying to help
Roxanne through her feelings of guilt made Kat feel a bit better. She glanced at the door. “I’m going to go get some fresh air.”
Outside, there was a slight breeze. It felt good on Kat’s skin. She took a couple of preventative deep breaths, hoping her body wouldn’t go haywire again. From inside her purse, she pulled out a notebook and sat down on the curb of the parking lot. On a clean page, she wrote the four victim’s names in a line from top to bottom. Chelsea Atkinson, Daniel Arthur, Ben Boyd, Rebecca Blake. She tilted her head to the side. There was something about the series of names that seemed strange to her. What was it? Her eyes ran up and down the page a couple of times. She doodled a little at the bottom of the page and then looked at it again. It hit her. She jumped up and ran back into the office, nearly slamming chest first into Dawson, who was walking out into the parking lot. “I think I found something!” she said, holding the notebook out to him. “Look! Do you see it?”
“No,” Dawson looked confused. “I’m not trying to be snarky, but I don’t see what you’re getting at. You wrote their names down on a piece of paper?”
Van and Officer Morris came up behind them. “What’s going on here?” Van said. Kat saw him glance from her over to Dawson, “Is there a problem?”
Kat wasn’t surprised that Van was a little defensive, given the interaction they’d had with Dawson the day before. “No, I think I found something. Look. Does anyone see it besides me?” Kat handed her notebook over to Cheryl Morris who held it so they could both see it. Cheryl whispered, “Are you friends with Stephanie?” Kat nodded. Van, still staring at the book, shook his head.
Kat pulled the notebook back. She uncapped her pen and circled the first letter in each last name, drawing a big circle around each of them. “Look again. Do you see it?”
Cheryl nodded. “Oh my gosh. The first pair have the same first letter in their last name. Same thing with the second pair.” The color drained from her face. “It’s like this guy’s going in alphabetical order by last name.”
Dawson leaned over and stared at Kat’s notebook. “I would’ve never seen that. Not sure if that helps us identify the perp, but it definitely shows a pattern.”
Kat was simultaneously happy and sad. Happy because at least they had found one pattern the killer was using. Sad because of the lives that have been lost. “You know what that means, don’t you?” she said. “We are only at B. There are a lot of letters to go…”
24
Layne Clark had just left her downtown office building. She had a ton of work to do but decided that taking it home where she could concentrate might be better than the noisy office. Tax accounting required concentration, and with all the new associates that the firm had just hired, quiet wasn’t how she’d describe her office. Noisy, chatty, yes. Quiet, no. The weight of her briefcase was pinching her left shoulder, but there was nothing she could do about it until she got to her car in the parking garage. More folders were piled in her right arm.
Layne enjoyed her work, for the most part, she thought, as her heels clicked across the concrete floor. One of the perks of her job was having a dedicated parking spot in the parking garage. It didn’t matter what the weather was doing, not that the weather in California did all that much, but she never had to worry about finding a spot. That was at least one good thing. She got to her car, set down the briefcase near the trunk, and managed to spill the files on the ground as she reached for her purse, the paperwork scattering everywhere. As she scrambled to pick them up, she heard a car door behind her. “Can I help? It looks like you dropped something.”
She didn’t bother to look up at the person who was speaking to her, focusing on not losing confidential and proprietary information to the parking garage, only hearing a male voice. “I’m okay,” she said. “Thanks for offering, though.”
“I insist. I can’t let you run around the parking garage like this,” the man said.
Layne glanced at the man who was helping her. He had on thick glasses, a button-down shirt, and pressed khaki pants, his hair cut short and combed neatly off to the side. “Thank you. And I thought chivalry was dead.”
Layne gathered up the rest of the papers, and stood up, noticing a few had blown away, fluttering at the front of her car. She stepped in front of the man, “I need to get those,” she said. As she leaned forward to pick them up, she felt the warmth of an arm and then something covering her face. She couldn’t breathe. The last she remembered were the papers blowing away, tumbling in the wind.
Joseph hefted the woman’s body into his van. She was out cold. The chloroform-soaked rag had done its job. As he knelt over her, securing her wrists and ankles with zip ties and tying a gag around her mouth, he checked her pulse. Nice and strong. Maybe even a little on the fast side. Her skirt had gotten pulled up in the process of getting her in the van. He averted his eyes and pulled it back down, covering her with a blanket so no one would see her body.
The woman’s purse was sitting on the front seat of the van. He rifled through it, looking for her wallet. He already knew her name. “Welcome, Layne. It’s nice to meet you in person,” he said. “While you are resting, if you don’t mind, we will pick up your partner.”
Joseph put the van into gear and eased his foot off the brake, allowing it to creep forward. He drove back out to the entrance, looking left and right before turning back out onto the road. Up ahead, he looked for the alley entrance, the one that would lead him back to the garage entrance. He circled back around, behind the underground garage. “There are always people coming in and out, Layne. We can’t risk someone looking to closely at our van, now can we?” Joseph said, glancing behind him. She was still out cold. “Unfortunately, we need to find someone to join you. My experiments require partner participation. And I know exactly who I’m looking for, just like I knew that I was looking for you.”
Grabbing someone off the street was not the wisest plan, Joseph knew. He pulled back into the parking garage under the office building where Layne worked, passing through the first level, but not seeing what he was looking for. “Patience, patience, Layne,” he said, although she hadn’t muttered a word. “I know you are eager to meet your partner for the experiment, but we have to find him.” As the words came out of his mouth, Joseph turned the bend to look at a new row of cars. On the end was a souped-up hatchback, with a young man walking toward it. “Ah, yes, there he is.”
Joseph’s heart beat faster. He knew from watching Evan Chapman that he took his lunch precisely at one o’clock each day. The office building had made it amazingly easy for him to find the people he needed. Customized nameplates on every parking spot might have seemed like a perk to people working in the building, but they were a perk to Joseph as well, who could easily match names, cars, social media, and people with very little effort.
Joseph eased the van up in front of Evan’s car, blocking it in. Without saying anything, he got out and walked to the back, opening the doors.
Evan was staring at his cell phone and glanced up, “Hey, man, can you move your van? I gotta get out.”
Joseph didn’t say anything, a lump in his throat forming, the burn of adrenaline in his muscles. From watching Evan and studying his social profiles, he knew that Evan worked out a lot. Joseph would have one chance to add him to his experiment. If he missed and Evan got away, he would have to dump Layne and start all over again. That would be a disappointment he wasn’t sure he would survive. His experiments required perfection. These two subjects were exactly that, perfection.
Joseph waited, still standing behind the van doors, where Evan couldn’t quite see him. He pretended to be looking for something. He waited, barely breathing.
“Yo! Can you move your van, dude?” Evan said.
Joseph stayed exactly where he was, knowing the moment was coming.
Within a few seconds, Joseph felt someone behind him. The stun gun was on, fully charged and ready to go, covered only by a small towel. The fingers of his right hand were already wrapped tight around it. “He
y, mister…”
Before Evan could get the rest of the words out of his mouth, Joseph wheeled around lifting his shoulder and elbow, aiming the stun gun right for Evan’s neck. As soon as it connected, Joseph pressed the switch, the charge crumpling Evan’s body to his knees.
Joseph didn’t miss a beat. He tossed the stun gun into the back of the van, bent over and scooped up Evan’s body. The young man was heavier than he appeared, probably by a good thirty pounds. Joseph grunted a little as he lifted him, struggling to get his upper body in the van. Once his torso was in the back of the van, Joseph stepped up inside, grabbing his arms and dragging his legs inside. Joseph inched his way to the van doors, practically sitting on the unconscious bodies, squatted down, and slammed the two van doors closed as fast as he could, crawling back past the bodies to the front seat. He grabbed a second set of cable ties and a gag to secure Evan, who hadn’t moved. As he settled back in the driver seat and clicked his seatbelt across his chest, he whispered, “Welcome, Evan. So nice to meet you in person. Meet Layne. She’s your partner for this experiment.”
Joseph took a moment to dab at the sweat that had bubbled on his brow and used his fingers to comb his hair back into place. He put the van into gear and slowly drove out of the parking garage, heading for the shop.
As soon as he got on the freeway, his breathing started to slow. “Mother would be so proud,” he mumbled to himself. He might have to go and visit his parents tonight. It gave him comfort to know they were holding hands in their bedroom, just as they should be. He liked going to visit them. They were always there, always steady, never moving.
About two miles from the exit, the same one he used to get to Grand Ridge College, flashing lights appeared behind him. His breath caught in his throat as he stared at the blue lights getting closer and closer. There was no way the police could have found him already, he told himself. There was no way for them to identify the van. He swallowed hard as the police cruiser got closer, slowing down. He wasn’t speeding, so he had no idea why the police cruiser was coming up so fast on him.
