The Dance

by James Goodman

  “Before you get all worked up, I want you to look at something.”

  “Don’t tell me that Captain Duke sent you out here. Why didn’t he call me? I guess he knew what I would tell him,” Tom rambled.

  “If you would close your mouth for five seconds and listen for a change, I will explain.”

  Tom made a motion across his mouth as if he were zipping it up.

  “I heard the call come in over the radio. Double homicide, bodies found in a bizarre condition, etcetera. I thought I would slip by and check it out.”

  “And the detective on the scene just let you traipse in and nose about?”

  “No, actually it took some persuading to get your brother from another mother to let me check a few things out.”

  “My what?” Tom wasn’t sure what she meant, but it sounded like an insult.

  “Nothing, I just meant he shared your sunny disposition. It didn’t take long for him to see that I had a point though.”

  “And that point would be?”

  “I think papa’s got a brand new bag.”

  “Why are you talking like this? Mother’s brother, brand new bag, are you on something, detective?”

  “No, I guess I’m still a little loopy from staring at all those files. What I am trying to say is, I think our guy’s responsible for this.”

  “The Puppeteer is into torture. I’m not sure what the hell you call what happened to them, but it doesn’t look like the Puppeteer’s usual scene.” He motioned to the bodies as coroner’s assistant loaded them onto gurneys.

  “Take a look around, Tom. Other than the condition of the bodies, this is exactly the same as every other crime scene created by him.”

  Tom looked at the dresser. “The tray is open on that stereo. Were there no signs of forced entry?”

  Anna shook her head. “They did find several prints, but I would bet a dime to a dollar they belong to the deceased.”

  “I thought this guy liked the attention. Why run the risk of us not giving him credit for these murders?” Tom surveyed the room. “Serial killers don’t just change M.O.s. That’s unheard of.”

  “I say we deprive him of that attention and let the media continue to think that we have another killer on the loose.”

  “Geesh, I don’t know, Anna. Is pissing this guy off really worth the panic the good people of this city will create if they think they have two maniacs to worry about?”

  “If it trips them up, then you’re damn right it is. Fear is fear. What difference does it make if it’s because of one killer or two? They will still look over their shoulders when they go into their homes at night.”

  “Detectives!” A fresh faced young rookie stepped into the room.

  They both turned to stare at the near panting young man. Officer Johnson was fresh from the academy, having only been on the force for two months.

  By the looks of him, you would think this kid just run a marathon. Tom eyed him with mild disdain.

  “There are surveillance cameras—” Johnson paused to catch his breath, “all around the outside of the house.”

  “Have you found the tapes yet?” Tom couldn’t believe their luck.

  “They’re wireless. Sergeant Cook said they are probably fed into a computer.”

  “Well, have you located the computer?” Tom prompted.

  “Yes, sir!” He nodded vigorously.

  “Do we have a picture of our perps?” Anna asked.

  “I wouldn’t know, ma’am. The terminal is password protected. We have an expert en route even as we speak.”

  “We have a hacker on the payroll?” Anna’s eyes grew wide with surprise.

  “Not exactly—” Officer Johnson began.

  “That will be enough, Johnson,” Tom interrupted. “Take us to it.”

  “What the hell was that all about?” Anna wanted to know.

  Tom held up a finger. It wasn’t until they were well down the stairs that he explained. “Sometimes we bring in low level offenders to do this sort of thing.”

  “Let me guess, in exchange for a little time off?”

  “Yes, it actually works out pretty well. One of the conditions of their release is that if they mention a word about anything they witness while helping us, all bets are off.”

  “Why couldn’t you just let him explain that to me?” Anna jerked a thumb in the direction of their escort.

  “Because it isn’t common knowledge and I didn’t want any of those forensic guys to overhear,” Tom replied, loud enough for Officer Johnson to get his point.

  They barely had enough time to enter the study before an orange clad kid in ankle and wrist bracelets was ushered through the door.

  “That’s your hacker? He doesn’t even look like he’s hit puberty yet,” Anna scoffed.

  “You would be surprised what some of these kids can do today. Hell, most of them are weaned from the bottle by video games.”

  “But look at—”

  “There you go,” the hacker proclaimed leaning back in the chair, silencing Anna’s protests.

  The screen flickered to life. A large popup window took up most of the available space. Four squares dominated the screen, each showing a different view of the house.

  “Why wouldn’t she have the cameras mounted on the house so she could see who was coming?” Johnson asked.

  “Because, she was more concerned with finding out what someone was doing to her house, rather than anyone sneaking up on her,” Tom explained patiently.

  “Good call.” Johnson began to laugh, but quickly fell quiet when he noticed no one else joined him. “I mean all things considered.”

  “Can you rewind those for us?” Anna asked of the hacker.

  “Sure thing, miss.” He quickly reached for the keyboard.

  “Not so fast there, hotshot,” Lieutenant Reiten barked. “Johnson, escort Mr. Ramirez here into the other room and wait with him there. We may need him later, but we definitely don’t need him here right now.”

  “Yes, sir!” Johnson pulled the hacker to his feet.

  “All right let’s see what we’ve got,” he said, after Ramirez was safely out of earshot.

  With a couple of keystrokes, Sergeant Cook had the images on the screen flowing in reverse.

  “Looks like you can add a B&E to the list of offenses perpetrated by Mark Sampson,” Tom smirked as they watched him and his cameraman back out of the house.

  “Nah,” Lieutenant Reiten said with a shake of his head. “We’re just gonna let him stew for a little while before cutting him loose. See if it doesn’t put a dent in that enormous ego of his.”

  They continued to watch the screens in silence, occasionally pausing the feed to get a better look at the people coming and going from the house. In every instance, it turned out to be either Sheila McCrae or Tina Garza.

  “How could we miss them?” Anna said as the date on the screen rolled into Friday.

  “We couldn’t have missed them. We were all standing right here.” Tom rubbed his temples.

  “But we have seen them alive how many times?” Anna insisted.

  “It just means the killer was patient. He probably spent several days in the home before he decided to act,” Sergeant Cook assured her.

  They went through the entire recording. It only held a week’s worth of data, but that should have been enough. Every person who entered the house, exited well before the last time Tina or Sheila appeared on the screen.

  “If it weren’t for the condition of the bodies, I would suggest we chalk it up to a murder suicide,” Sergeant Cook said with a shrug.

  “Damn it, we must have missed something.” Tom said in disgust. “Let’s go through the whole thing again.”

  “We can go through it again,” Sergeant Cook began, “but with all due respect, sir—”.

  “Of course we are going to go through it again. There is no way the person responsible for these deaths slipped in here past these cameras.”

  “As I said, with all due respect, sir
, one, or even two people watching these screens might have overlooked someone, but there with four of us here it is highly unlikely.”

  “Just start the damn thing over,” Tom barked.

  “All right, it’s your show.” He took a deep breath in an apparent struggle to maintain his composure.

  “Okay, let’s take it from the top.”

  *****

  “I’m at a loss here.” Tom looked utterly dejected as he followed Anna into her office. “How could our guys not be on that recording?”

  “I don’t know, Tom. There has to be something—,” she began, but had an idea mid-thought. “Maybe they knew about the cameras and they found a way to tamper with the video stream.”

  “Now they’re high tech computer whizzes as well as sadistic killers.”

  “Hey if your pre-pubescent wonder back there could do it, what makes you think they couldn’t?”

  “I guess it’s possible,” he conceded. “I’ll have the hard drive sent over to the lab. Maybe they can see if anyone tampered with the data.”

  “Okay, so what’s the next step?”

  “We have a few options at this point.” Tom rubbed his chin as he spoke.

  “Oh really?”

  “Well, very few but it is better than nothing,” he quipped, causing them both to laugh. “I know we went over those files with a fine tooth comb, but—”

  “You want to go back through them?” Anna was already shaking her head.

  “Now, hear me out.” He held his hands for her to wait. “We were able to construct a pretty good profile for Kyle, but we still don’t have much in the way of description.”

  “Other than he is big, scary and has a ‘wonderful’ imagination.”

  “I say we cross reference the few meeting times we were able to find with patients who were with Dr. Pearlman before and after those times.”

  “Hey, that’s a great idea.” She smiled in surprise. “With any luck, we can get a better description, or maybe one of them even noticed what kind of car he was driving. Tom, that’s brilliant. Why didn’t I think of that?”

  “It’s obvious that my superior mental prowess is far more in tune with this case than yours.”

  “Smart ass.”

  Chapter Thirty-Five

  It took them several hours to compile the list. By the time it was all said and done, they had a dozen people who would have had an opportunity to see the elusive Kyle. It took several days to track down and interview all of them. Tom was surprised at how uncooperative the majority of them seemed to be. Two of the patients were openly hostile when the detectives flashed their badges.

  “I can’t say much for the quality of people Dr. Pearlman chose to help,” Anna said as they walked away from the twelfth house.

  “It’s no wonder he went off his rocker, having to deal with these people on a daily basis.”

  “I know I would’ve,” Anna agreed. “And now we have twelve testimonies and twelve different descriptions.”

  “There was a big fella in there a few times. He had the nicest smile. What? No, he was just big and dark.” Tom mimicked the voice of the nervous young lady they had just left.

  “Do you find it odd that none of them could even tell us his hair color?”

  “You mean other than dark?”

  “Yeah, they couldn’t say whether it was black or brown or… anything but dark.”

  “Oh and don’t forget that he drove four different cars.”

  “Yeah, at least we have that—”

  “I think it’s stranger than the vague descriptions. I can understand someone not paying attention to a person’s face, but we had four sets of three people collaborate different descriptions of cars parked outside.”

  “It’s a start, though. We can run them against the DMV database and see how many owners have a first name that is Kyle or at least a variation of it.”

  “Dear Lord! This is going to be like finding a needle in a haystack.”

  “Hey!” Anna spun on him sharply. “At least we have a haystack to look in now.”

  “That’s true,” Tom replied absently as he opened his car door. “If we get this dropped off today, we have what… four days before any results come back?”

  “Yeah, I’d say we would be lucky if we saw anything in less than a week.”

  “Look.” Tom paused and took a deep breath. “I have a few… personal issues I need to deal with. Any chance you could go it alone until we get that data back?”

  “Sure.” She looked at him, brows pursed. “Are you alright, Tom?”

  “No.” He shook his head. “But I will be. I just need a few days to—”

  “No need for explanations. I’ll call you if anything comes up.”

  “I appreciate it, Anna.” Tom started to get in his car, but paused. “Oh and Anna—”

  She turned back to face him with raised eyebrows.

  “If Captain Duke asks—”

  “You’re hard at work.” She laughed. “I know the routine.”

  “Yeah.” Tom gave her a pained smile. “I’m beginning to think you do.”

  *****

  “So, do we have anything new?” Tom asked, popping his head into Anna’s office.

  Anna made a show of looking down at her watch. “Good afternoon, Detective.”

  “Afternoon, hell.” Tom laughed. “I managed to sneak in right at the end of the day.”

  “Your timing is impeccable,” she said with a smile. “I was just about to call you.”

  “Really?” Tom couldn’t hide his excitement. “Did the lab results already come in?”

  “No, but I found a lead on another former patient of Dr. Pearlman’s for us to check out.” Anna picked up a notepad from her desk. “Randy Norris is rumored to be a frequent patron of Archie’s Irish Pub and Grill downtown.”

  “I know the place,” Tom said with a nod. “How’d you find that out?”

  “I’ve got my sources.”

  “Well, let’s see how good they are.” Tom motioned for her to follow him.

  “Sounds like a plan.”

  Tom held open the door to the tiny pub. “Ladies first.”

  “And they say chivalry is dead,” Anna quipped as she entered the dimly lit bar.

  “Not dead, just on life support.”

  Tom scanned the faces of the few people who occupied the tiny room. Slim pickings in here. What are the odds one of these chumps is our guy? They approached the bar and motioned for the bartender.

  “Do you know a Randy Norris?” Tom leaned in close and kept his voice low.

  “Who’s asking?”

  Tom flashed his badge and the bartender stiffened. “Is he in some kind of trouble?”

  “No,” Tom assured him. “We just want to ask him a few questions.

  The young man rubbed his chin, looked down at the bar and took a deep breath. “Honestly, I haven’t seen the guy in weeks. He used to come in here damn near everyday, but…” He shrugged. “That’s why I asked if he was in trouble. I don’t know what happened to him.”

  “Great,” Tom muttered, turning to look at his partner.

  Anna cast a glance at her watch again. “As long as we’re here… do you want to get a drink?”

  “I don’t think that’s such a good idea, Anna.”

  “Oh, do you have your kids tonight?” She cocked her head to one side.

  “No, it’s just—”

  “So, you would rather go home to your empty apartment than have a drink with me? That doesn’t sound like the Tom Wiley I’ve come to know.”

  “Oh, what the hell,” Tom said with a shrug. “One drink won’t kill me.”

  Anna turned back to the bartender. “Can I get a Bacardi and Coke and a…?”

  “Jack and Coke,” Tom supplied.

  The bartender quickly poured their drinks and slid them across the counter. They each took their glass and Tom held his up for a toast.

  “To one helluva partner,” he said.

  “To an amazing job o
f overcoming poor first impressions,” Anna added.

  “So, when did you know you wanted to be a cop?” Anna asked after she took a sip of her drink.

  “I don’t know. I guess I just always knew that’s what I wanted to be. I can’t remember a time when it was anything different,” he said with a shrug. “How about you?”

  “My father was a cop. He was my hero. It just seemed right to follow in his footsteps.” Anna looked down at their empty glasses. “Do you want another?”

  “Sure.” Tom nodded. “Do you miss him?”

  “Of course, I do.” She cast him a queer look. “But not because of the distance. He and my mom died a few years back.”

  “Oh, damn. I’m sorry. I had no idea.”

  “Why would you? I’ve never mentioned them before.” Anna took a long swallow from her glass.

  “What happened to them, if you don’t mind me asking?” Tom tipped his glass, following suit.

  “Car crash,” Anna said, emptying the rest of her drink. “Barkeep, can we get another round over here?”

  Not wanting to be outdone, Tom downed the rest of his Jack and Coke as well. “Was it a drunk driver or what?”

  “No, it was a freak accident. Mom was driving out on Highway Ten. Dad was riding shotgun,” she paused to take another draw from her glass. “He always had her drive when they were together. I guess it’s because he spent so much time driving on the job.”

  “So he was a beat cop?” Tom asked, cringing as he saw the contents of her glass dwindling at an alarming rate.

  “Yeah,” she said with a nod. “But anyway. The official report said that they were passing a semi when their passenger-side front tire blew out. She jerked the wheel and they went under the trailer.”

  “Damn.” Tom finished his Jack and Coke while he mulled over what else he could say to her about the accident.

  “Do you want another drink?” Anna said, her voice slightly slurred.

  “No, I think we’ve had enough for the day,” Tom said, feeling a bit tipsy himself.

  “Yeah, we probably should get out of here,” Anna said, rising from her stool. She stumbled, catching herself on the side of the bar.

  “Easy does it,” Tom said, helping back to her seat.

  “I don’t think I’m in any shape to drive. How about you?”