Taker of Lives: A Gripping Crime Thriller

by Leslie Wolfe

  Exhaustion was starting to show its effects, clouding Tess’s judgment and fueling her anger. Since Christina’s suicide, she’d caught little shuteye and even less sustenance. She’d pushed herself, thinking one more hour, one more suspect interview, and she’d catch the perp and be able to resume her planned vacation.

  Nothing of that mattered anymore; she barely felt the hunger, just a light tremor in her muscles. As for fatigue, it had become her second nature. She started a new coffee cup in the machine and closed her eyes for a moment, blocking the image of that dark TV screen that was bound to haunt her for a while.

  What was she missing? Never before had she felt so helpless in chasing a suspect. She’d never felt like the unsub could continue killing for as long as he pleased, and still get away with it. All the time she’d spent investigating the Taker of Lives, he’d always been the one in control.

  What was she missing?

  A bothersome feeling tugged at the edges of her tired mind, telling her she’d overlooked one critical detail. Okay, she was willing to accept that, but what was it? Had they rushed to any of the profile conclusions? The victimology was proven wrong, just that night, by the latest victim’s hair color. What if she’d made other mistakes, other assumptions that were wrong? Two data points don’t make a trend, she knew. Apparently, neither do three. Then, how many do make a trend, really? How many victims did they need to be positively sure of their profile?

  A knock sounded on the conference room glass wall, and she opened her eyes. Captain Cepeda stood outside the room with a gloomy expression on his face. She checked the time; it was after two in the morning. What was Cepeda still doing here?

  She opened the conference room door. “Come on in,” she invited the captain.

  “No need. You have another victim,” he announced.

  “Where? Who?” her mind jumped straight to the brunette they just saw on TV. Maybe the transmission had been live after all, and the time gap had closed.

  “Downstairs, in the lobby interview room.”

  She rushed downstairs and Fradella followed. She opened the door expecting to see that young, dark-haired beauty. Instead, a man in full military garb stood when they walked in and extended his hand. Another man, someone she recognized as a Miami-Dade detective, remained seated but waved in their direction, then flashed his badge.

  “I’m Detective Decker, Miami-Dade, and this is Jorje Estrada,” he said, pushing a file across the table in her direction. The file bore the stamp of Miami-Dade County Sheriff’s Department. “His sister was shot two days ago, in their home, while she slept.”

  Tess looked at the young man, whose windburned skin and calloused hands told her he was active military, probably just returned from deployment overseas. He wore Army colors and insignia, and she could still see the fine grains of desert sand clinging to his uniform and filling the room with an unfamiliar smell of dry, barren lands.

  His eyes were hollow and bloodshot, and his cheeks stained where tears had rolled until recently. He struggled speaking, his mouth gaped open in an attempt to articulate words.

  She opened the file and looked at the crime scene photo attached to the report. It matched the young brunette they’d seen on the streaming video. A bullet had entered her forehead dead center.

  “What was her name?” Tess asked, looking at Jorje.

  “Haley,” he replied. “She was twenty-two years old.” He clenched his fists. “I… raised her,” he added, choked with tears. “Our parents died when she was little, and Grandpa took us in, but I raised her. Now she’s gone, and Grandpa too. I came back as soon as they told me.”

  Tess frowned and looked at the Miami-Dade detective.

  “The grandfather found her in the morning and called 911. Then he stroked out before anyone could get there. Massive brain aneurism, the report said.”

  “I’m very sorry for your loss,” Tess said, watching Jorje intently. “Do you know of anyone who would’ve had a reason to—”

  “No one,” he interrupted. “Everyone loved Haley.”

  “What did she do for a living?” Fradella asked.

  “She had her own reality TV show on cable,” Jorje replied. “I wasn’t much of a fan, but it made her happy. That’s the only thing that mattered.”

  “Who would’ve had access to the property that late at night?” Tess asked. “Who would she have opened the door for?”

  He shook his head, then riveted his eyes to the floor and didn’t say a word.

  She exchanged a quick glance with Fradella. There wasn’t much they could learn from Jorje Estrada. His sister was nothing but one of a serial killer’s victims, no rhyme or reason.

  “Thank you for coming in, Mr. Estrada.”

  “Why?” he asked, looking straight at Tess. “Why does someone do that?” he looked briefly in Decker’s direction. “He told me something about a serial killer. Is that true?”

  Tess knew better than to confirm that fact to a grief-stricken brother and grandson.

  “We will investigate and let you know as soon as we learn something.”

  She shook the young man’s hand and left the room after thanking Decker for the late-night visit and for sharing the file. Then she rushed upstairs, eager to dive into the information found in that file.

  She set the file on the table, ready to plunge in, but then a thought crossed through her mind. Whether mission oriented or power assertive, the unsub wanted to be known, respected, understood. He wanted his voice heard and remembered, with accuracy, for the right reasons. A crooked smile stretched her lips. Someone as rational, intellectual, and controlled as the unsub would balk and shudder with disgust at the thought of being mistaken for a banal lust killer, an animal, a garden-variety pervert who has issues controlling his sexual urges.

  She typed a new comment on the Taker’s website.

  “Why are you doing this?” her entry read. “I don’t get it. You can’t get off without killing women? That’s fucking lame, brah.”

  She stared at the screen for several long minutes, but the unsub didn’t respond.

  43

  Baiting the Trap

  Tess entered the morgue with a spring in her step, so focused on Haley and her file that she didn’t react to the cold air and the faint smell of disinfectant in Doc Rizza’s fiefdom. She made eye contact with Doc and headed over to his desk. Through the window behind him, the early morning sunlight was beginning to throw darts of light, carrying hues of red and purple. A new day, the same old killer.

  “I have Donovan patched in,” Doc Rizza said. His voice sounded just as terrible and tired as he looked. He hadn’t shaved in a couple of days, and his stubble was gray for the most part, underlining the wrinkled chubbiness of his jowls.

  “Fradella too,” she heard the cop’s voice on the speakerphone.

  “Good,” she said, then took a deep breath. “I want to know why we didn’t hear about Haley the moment her body was found. Didn’t we have an alert on murders in Florida, with her parameters?”

  “Yes, her parameters,” Donovan replied, “only she was excluded because of hair color.”

  “You’ve got to be kidding me!” Tess snapped.

  “Computers are dumb like that, you know. They do what you tell them to do, not what you want them to do. We had confirmed victimology and we used that.”

  “Then I want us to be notified of any murder that takes place in Florida, regardless of parameters, the moment a body is found.”

  “Last year we had about twelve hundred murders in Florida,” Donovan announced.

  “That’s three per day. Let’s have everything hit our inbox. I don’t want to make the same mistake again.”

  “Speaking of inbox, you have an interesting email I think you should read,” Donovan said, and Tess thought she heard Fradella chuckle.

  “You’ve been poking around again, D?”

  “Just being of assistance.”

  “Yeah, right,” she mumbled, then took out her phone and checked
the latest messages.

  An email from Kurt Briggs, Deanna’s fiancé, read, “Agent Winnett, these are all the names I could think of, and any information I have about them. These people knew both Deanna and me and have interacted with us in the past year. Forgive me if I won’t sit idle waiting for you; I’ll start meeting with them today.”

  The email was dated that morning, Sunday, May 27, at 4:27AM, and it had an attachment, a spreadsheet with names. She remembered most of the names; they’d conducted background checks for some of them, interviewed others, but found nothing suspicious.

  “Take the list and run it,” Tess said, “full background, financials, whereabouts on the date and time of Deanna’s murder, the works. Track vehicle GPS where you can, cell phones too.”

  “Already on it,” Fradella confirmed.

  She ran both hands through her shoulder-length hair, moving it off her face and, for a moment, was tempted to grab a few strands and pull. Time was running out; it wouldn’t be long before the Taker of Lives would announce yet another so-called “live” performance, and they still had nothing.

  Michowsky’s concerns came to her mind; what happened to good, old-fashioned police work, and murders that made sense? They were forever gone, a phase in humankind’s evolution toward depravity that would never return. Just like him, she’d rather be barging through doors and interrogating suspects, than dealing in statistics and analysis and waiting in front of the TV for the Taker to strike again. The reality show from hell was about to start.

  “Doc, run us through the autopsy findings,” she said, forcing a breath of cool, morgue air into her lungs and pushing Haley’s file toward him.

  He pushed the file back toward her; most likely he had his own copy by now. “Single gunshot wound to the head, nine millimeter, bullet intact and ready for ballistics match. I estimate the weapon was fired from about four feet away.” He looked at his notes, flipping through several pages. “The same mix of chemical restraints: Rohypnol to start, then the inhalant, followed by an anesthetic shot, and finally, the ammonia to wake her up. No signs of trauma, no sexual assault. Time of death was May 26, at 3:30AM.”

  “How about the grandfather?”

  “Frank Cantrell, seventy-two,” Doc read from his copy of the file. “Traces of Rohypnol in his system, and a ruptured brain aneurism in the left temporal lobe. No other relevant findings.”

  She opened the file and read Detective Decker’s report. Miami-Dade County Crime Scene Unit had gone over the scene in detail, pored over every fiber, every particle, and found nothing that didn’t belong. Just like before, some areas had been wiped clean of fingerprints, but Tess stopped short before requesting CSU to get back in there, searching for residual trace evidence in the areas that had been swiped clean. There wasn’t enough time; the Taker of Lives was already on the prowl, about to end another innocent life. Or worse; maybe that had already happened.

  “Please pull all the murders that took place since Haley’s time of death, see if there’s a match, another victim we don’t know about.”

  “Already thought of that, and there’s no one who fits,” Donovan replied. “In the past two days, we had a couple of gang shootings involving drug dealers, an eighty-year-old male bludgeoned to death in his home for a bunch of trinkets, another burglary gone wrong that ended up killing a family of four, and an infant accidentally killed by a reckless nanny. Nothing fits.”

  “Crap…” she muttered. What was the Taker of Lives planning? Since he’d started his online perverted show, he’d had one performance per night, every night at midnight. He was going to have one tonight; she was sure of it. She glanced quickly at the wall clock hanging above the lab table, an old, black-and-white radio clock dating back at least thirty years. It was almost seven, and that meant they had only a few hours left before the nightmare started again.

  “I posted a comment a few hours ago,” Tess said. “Has he replied or engaged in any way?”

  “No,” Donovan replied. “I endorsed your message but saw nothing since.”

  “Let’s continue along the same lines, as insulting as possible.”

  “And say what?”

  “How about, ‘I know why you’re not showing the whole thing live. You’re into screwing corpses, aren’t you? You want your private time with those chicks.’ Then like and support these comments with others like it.”

  “Okay, you got it,” Donovan replied, with only a trace of hesitation in his voice.

  “What are you expecting he’ll do next, Tess?” Doc Rizza asked.

  “Escalate,” she replied. “Every night he’s grown angrier, deadlier, more determined, more violent. Sometimes, unsubs want to get caught, but this one doesn’t. He’s building toward something; a certain event, or maybe a specific victim, for whom he wants millions to pay attention. When he reaches what he’s after, he’ll disappear to never be heard from again, and we’ll have nothing.”

  “He killed Haley yesterday,” Fradella said. “That’s already escalated. How often can he kill?”

  “Keep in mind we’re not talking about a lust killer; he doesn’t need to build up sexual energy to strike again.”

  “Okay, but he needs to stalk, figure out access, layouts, home alarm systems, install surveillance, you name it,” Fradella said.

  “Something tells me his homework is already done, for all the targeted victims. He’s too organized.”

  “Speaking of surveillance,” Donovan said, “we heard back from Perez, the technician who screened and removed surveillance equipment from the crime scenes.”

  “Yeah? What did he find?”

  “Two things. One confirms your theory; all installed equipment had been running since mid-April.”

  “Okay, good to know,” Tess replied, frowning slightly. “Go on.”

  “You’re not going to like this. The person who leaked the Taker of Lives moniker was you.”

  “What?” she said, her voice high-pitched under the shock. “I never told anyone.”

  “You discussed the Taker by name with Fradella, and the cameras in Estelle Kennedy’s home picked it up.”

  “Argh…” she reacted, then started to pace the cement floor angrily. “Goes to say we shouldn’t use these nicknames, period. Not even among ourselves.”

  She stopped pacing and stared absently at the floor pattern, thinking. The Taker knew she was the investigator on the case. He’d seen her on camera; he’d called her out by name on his site, but what did it mean to him that she’d been the one to name him? The moniker had since become his brand; he was invested in it. He liked it; it was almost like he was proud of it.

  “D, please post another comment, this time under my own full name and title.”

  “Shoot.”

  “Say this: ‘I was wrong to name you the Taker of Lives. I thought you had the courage to do things live, but I was sadly mistaken. You don’t deserve it.’”

  “Are you sure about this?” Fradella asked. “He might—”

  “Come after me? We should be so lucky.”

  44

  Marla’s Song

  The music blared, and the people who were gathered around the immense pool clapped rhythmically, cheering, dancing, and singing along. Marla walked to the beat, swinging her hips and clacking her four-inch stilettos on the marble tiles, heading toward the gate. She pretended the cameras weren’t there; it was easier for her to play her part that way. She waited for her cue, a specific word in the song’s lyrics, when she froze in place, hands on her hips, then turned her head to look over her shoulder with an abrupt, exaggerated gesture, throwing her long, blonde hair into the air, a shiny wave of silk that moved on its own, as if it were alive.

  Then her husband caught up with her, and, on the beat, grabbed her elbow and turned her around, then leaned over her and kissed her lips. The music stopped, and the crowd erupted in deafening cheers. The camera still rolled, approaching them on sliders, then revolving around the two of them as they were lost in their fiery embrace. />
  “Cut!” she heard the familiar voice, but instead of letting go, she wrapped her arms tighter around Adam’s neck and kissed him again. He responded with torrid urgency, and for a moment she thought of leaving their guests alone for an hour or two and taking her man upstairs for a much-deserved celebration, just the two of them.

  “And it’s a wrap, you two,” someone else said, and several people hollered excitedly. “Whoa, you guys… Get a room!”

  She pulled away from Adam, regret for doing so lingering with the taste of his lips on hers, but they had work to do. They always had work to do.

  “Thank you, baby,” Adam whispered in her ear, “you were awesome.”

  She didn’t particularly enjoy shooting music videos with her husband, but her annoyance with the director’s arrogance and the producer’s constant nagging were nothing compared with the all-consuming jealousy she’d feel over whatever girl they’d cast in her place. Just imagining his hands on some model or wannabe actress made her blood boil. Hence, she replied with a smile and a quick peck on Adam’s lips, and decided to do as many of those videos as they’d want her to.

  The video they’d shot tonight was just bonus, a private performance set to reward and entertain their guests, but the cameras were always rolling, here, on stage, everywhere, and the nineteen-year-old was only starting to get used to it. She liked the glamour and the attention though; she relished the compliments and the envy written in women’s eyes over her haute couture attire and assorted jewelry, not to mention the man on her arm, voted sexiest man alive only last year. Life was good. No… life was awesome.

  She held Adam’s hand as they approached the table, set lavishly by the pool and lit by countless candles in sterling silver holders. The crowd continued to cheer, while caterers walked all over carrying trays with glasses of Dom Perignon Brut 1999, bought in bulk for about $400 a bottle. She grabbed a glass and sipped a tiny bit, not crazy for the slightly bitter taste, but wearing a dazzling smile nevertheless.