Serial Intent

by Steve Bradshaw

  From the Tahoe, he watched Sally park her Malibu. He savored her walk to the condo. Just the thought of what he would do to her in three hours made his wait even more erotic. It was an important part of his thrill—the imagery.

  He waited for her to go to bed—the last light out. She had to be asleep when he let himself in. No alarm system and no pets meant he could go early. He preferred to sit in his girls’ living rooms in the dark. He could revel in his heightened fantasy—the violation and the smells. Sometimes he would take off his clothes. He always took time to select the perfect knife from the kitchen—the strongest blade and wood handle. And he would layout the six-foot clothesline. There were four, one for each ankle and wrist.

  Everything was perfect. Frank Peters knew perfect. He had done it many times before. He had come to Chicago to disappear, and for a new hunting ground. He could hide in a high crime-rate area with ease. He left a dozen dead women behind in four southern states. The time to move on had arrived. The noose was tightening. No one would look for him in Illinois in the winter.

  Police had his DNA and fingerprints, but they did not have his identity. Frank Peters had never been arrested—there was no record. When Frank got to Chicago, he met Mason and Dunn at the area CVT meeting. He knew the grieving group would be the perfect place to hide and to find women alone in the world.

  The time had come. Sally Day’s bedroom lights were out, two hours had passed. Frank turned off his car and country music. His heart beat a little faster, he was aroused. Frank reached for his hat and the door handle. “You are mine Sally Day,” he crowed in the quiet interior of his warm Tahoe.

  “No she’s not.”

  The words hung in the dark. Peters lifted his head and stared straight ahead. He let go of the handle and the hat and swallowed hard. Was it happening? Was he finally going insane? Was Sally Day the one who would push him over the edge? Is thirteen the magic number?

  Peters had been talking to himself for so long that he did not know which of his invented characters had just spoken to him. Was it the judge? Was it the wise ass? Or was it him being the man who once was good, the one who always lost the argument?

  “You’re done, asshole.” The words hung in the Tahoe.

  Peters straightened in his seat—now he knew he was not alone. He kept his eyes straight ahead. He had to think. This was new. He was at a disadvantage.

  I was so busy thinking about what I was going to do to Sally Day that I did not tend to the basics. I forgot to look in the backseat. Peters had a passenger all the way from Birch—but who? The back and side windows of the Tahoe were tinted—Peters had them prepared for daytime abductions. Now that prep worked against him.

  His eyes searched the rearview mirror. He could not find his passenger. He had to position him based on sound. He had to have a conversation. That would work. That would distract his passenger, too. “What do you want?” Peters asked as his fingers slid off his hat.

  “You’re a sick man.” The words floated, but from where? Peters needed more. He had to know exactly where his mystery passenger sat in the dark backseat.

  “I’m not sick,” Peters said. “I have dedicated my life to stopping killers. That’s why I’m here tonight. I’m watching over another delicate flower, a young woman in danger—she lost her friends to monsters. She asked me to protect her tonight. Why do you think I’m parked here? I’m watching to make sure she’s safe.”

  His fingers touched the cold steel barrel of his .38 caliber Glock. Peters had one second to get off one shot. He had to work it up into his hand, and get his finger on the trigger.

  “Heather Palmer . . . Beverly Martin . . . Carole Bergeson . . . Mary Grambling . . . Susan Stringer . . . need I go on, you pathetic animal?”

  On his last word Peters had had enough. He raised his gun and shot into the back of his Tahoe. Burnt gunpowder filled the air and the explosion muted the world.

  Peters had made another mistake. His calculations were off. His passenger sat in the dark in the most impossible position to reach. Before a single second ticked off, the clenched fist dropped like an anvil and Peters slumped over. The serial killer would not be visiting Sally Day.

  Morning came three hours later. The prints in the snow leaving the Tahoe were gone. Three days later they discovered the man behind the wheel and dark tinted windows. The freezing temperatures had slowed decomposition, but could not forever hide the smell of death. The Chicago police were called. At the death scene, untrained observers thought the dead man had committed suicide. Bystanders watched the morgue clerks slide the body into the crash bag. They saw the bloody head and watched CSI remove the Glock from the front seat with a stick in its barrel. Not until later would the facts begin to trickle out. Dr. Provost would confirm what Winston had hypothesized at the crime scene.

  The cause of death had nothing to do with the gun. The man identified as Frank Peters died from head trauma recently observed with other victims. The microscopic examination of the crushed cranium and ruptured brain tissue revealed a single blow to the parietal bones (top of the skull) rendered the man unconscious. It was the opposing bilateral pressure applied to the temporal regions that caused death. Winston did not use the medical jargon in his report. He described a human vice grip—hands pressing the sides of the head together. The holes on the back of the skull were from thumbs pushing through occipital bone.

  It was standard operating procedure to submit Frank Peters’ DNA to CODIS—the combined DNA indexing system containing DNA profiles from the federal and state level. In the routine effort the medical examiner learned more about the dead man lying in his freezer. Frank Peters was a serial killer wanted in four states.

  Twenty

  They would have to be as high as me to get me in their crosshairs.

  Eldon Babcock came out of hiding only after he heard the sniper that killed three at the Chase Tower had been found dead a few blocks away—homicide. Standing at the edge of his office on the 97th floor of the Willis Tower, he still felt unsafe. His creasing head wound took more than a hundred stitches and three days for the swelling to go down and oozing to stop. Now with a bulky head dressing and unbearable itch, he peered out the edge of his ten-foot windows and wondered if he was still a target. Who sent him the message the night Marcantonio was killed? There were four head shots in the room that night. Why was his not fatal?

  He pressed the button and waited for the mechanical drapes to close the eastern and northern exposures of his corner office. He avoided his desk—too obvious. Instead, he sat at the small conference table in the alcove. His OCD had made him thorough. Regardless of the assignment, he was a stickler for details and a methodical development process for an organized plan. At the moment his life was on the line. His world was in total disarray.

  Scanning each page in the files stacked before him, Eldon absorbed the PI reports a third time. He had studied them prior to the Marcantonio shooting and again during recovery. Still looking for answers, he set up another meeting with the three investigators. Fitz, Cranston, and Michaels were reluctant to come out of hiding. The Chase Tower shooting put their lives at risk. The Chicago Tribune told the world they were working for the Marcantonio crime family. In an instant they were the topic of rival families, the CPD, and the FBI.

  Eldon Babcock saw no reason to correct the Tribune. They did not need to know he was the one employed by William T. Marcantonio and the PIs worked for him. Eldon’s lucrative arrangement ended when Marcantonio’s head exploded. Fortunately the two million dollar retaining fee had been deposited into his personal bank account days earlier. Now Eldon’s focus had turned to more personal matters—his survival.

  To secure his future, he had to find out who had Marcantonio and his five henchmen killed. In addition, Eldon had to find out who killed the sniper. Dropping dominos held the secrets that could set him free. The bootlegged POD video had grown in importance. The mystery visitor on 27th Street could be on a shared mission.

  “I don’t like this a
ny more than you,” Eldon said stirring his coffee. “The good news is we’re alive and the sniper’s dead.”

  Leaning back in his chair Fitz twiddled his thumbs on top of his belly. With a smirk on his pudgy face, and eying Babcock’s bandage, he said, “Do you know why you got a new part?”

  Eldon straightened a stack of files a third time. “I don’t find that amusing, Bill. I will remind you that you work for me. That can change.”

  “Seems to me your benefactor lost his head and you lost your contract,” Fitz barbed as the others looked at their shoes.

  “Although the family could request a continuation of my legal services, I have not heard from them. I assume they are quite busy with funeral arrangements and other important personal matters.”

  Cranston huffed. “Come now, Eldon. You know better. Marcantonio ran illegal operations for fifty years. The man has a lot of enemies eager to take control of his now unattended assets. I would not be surprised to see the family wiped out.”

  “I’m not holding my breath for a phone call, Mark. My business arrangement may be over, but that has no bearing on why we’re here. Everyone is smart enough to know it is in our best interest to figure out who is killing who and why. Only then can we manage our exposure.”

  “Seems to me the man with the new part in his hair is the one exposed,” Fitz said. “I don’t see how the three of us have any reason to be here.”

  The blowers cut off. The room fell silent. Fitz had made a startling point. Eldon Babcock’s next words would decide everything. “The Marcantonio family has several dangerous enemies,” Eldon said. “Someone tried to disrupt their operations. Someone wanted the kingpin dead. They killed the most guarded man in the state. It seems to me the Chicago Tribune named you three gentlemen as employees of this mafia kingpin. That can’t be good for your business. Someone’s work may not be done yet, gentlemen. Fortunately I have not been named. I am a victim visiting my accountant—wrong place at the wrong time. My arrangement is stealth, gentlemen. You three survived a meeting where three men died. Seems to me you have two problems. You are targets of the Marcantonio family, and you are the targets of their enemies.”

  “Wait a damn minute,” Fitz bellowed. “We can tell the Tribune to print a retraction.”

  “Why would the Chicago Tribune print a retraction on something they could not corroborate? I’m certainly not putting that gun in my mouth, gentlemen.”

  “I should shoot you myself,” Fitz spewed.

  Cranston held up his hand to shut down Fitz and to calm a squirming Michaels. “Eldon makes a good point. None of us would do what Fitz told Eldon to do—go to the newspaper. Look. Eldon’s right. It’s the way things are. To add insult to injury, if we were to attempt a retraction we would only increase our exposure, and no one’s gonna believe it. Face it, Bill. We’re screwed.”

  Eldon set down his coffee cup with a flat smile. “I have no intention of leaving you holding the bag. I’m only pointing out one of many reasons why we need a concerted effort to solve this puzzle. It benefits all of us.”

  Michaels nodded. “I’m on board.”

  “Me too,” Cranston said.

  Fitz glared at Babcock. “I don’t know when or how, but one day I will get you back.”

  “Let it go, Bill,” Cranston snapped. “Let’s get to work. I have some conclusions and thoughts on all this. How do you want to go forward, Eldon?”

  “I’ve been going through each investigation report looking for common threads. Our focus has been on people and events prior to the Chase Tower shooting. That’s good because we need to understand what led to it. Only then can we get our hands around the total picture.”

  “An unknown entity systematically terminated Marcantonio henchmen,” Fitz said.

  “What connects those killed?” Babcock asked.

  “I looked into the backgrounds of the three I had—Bordon, Newman, and Pazrro. These guys were animals,” Cranston said. “They all had records a mile long—robbery, rape, theft, assault, and murder. They had at least two charges for murder. They were acquitted or found guilty to a lesser charge. They served short sentences, less than six years. Their criminal records are terrible. They got away with a lifetime of terror.”

  “I looked at sniper-fire deaths in the city over the last six months,” Michaels said. “I came across two more—Eric Ramsey and James Pender. These guys fit the mold. They had long criminal records and served minimal sentences for murder. They had top legal help.”

  Fitz crumpled paper in a ball and threw it at Cranston. “You guys got nothing. Of course people who work for Marcantonio are scumbags—what a surprise, please.”

  Eldon flipped through a few files and pulled out a page. “This is a profile done on thirty of Marcantonio’s top people—more henchmen. The five killed by a sniper are different from the thirty on this page. The majority of the thugs working for Marcantonio had felonies—robbery and assault. They did not have charges for rape or murder. Their jail time fit their crimes.”

  “What’s your point?” Fitz squawked.

  “We’re onto something,” Cranston said. “Someone is targeting the serial offenders who beat the legal system. Their records say they’d do it again. They were real monsters.”

  Michaels left the table to pour more coffee. He paused and turned to the group. “Is it possible we have a vigilante going after Marcantonio’s worst people? I don’t think they care about his illegal businesses. They are hunting the monsters.”

  “Two of the five killed by a sniper were not employed by Marcantonio but had similar criminal histories.”

  “How many vigilantes hire a sniper?” Cranston asked.

  “How many vigilantes are snipers?” Fitz said.

  “We can conclude this vigilante group—for lack of a better descriptor—is behind these linked shootings. I do not believe it is a rival organization,” Michaels said. “If it were, the kills would be more random and portions of the Marcantonio operations would be taken over.”

  “They’re targeting in the city of Chicago, shooting the worst of the worst,” Eldon said.

  “People who have killed and beat the criminal justice system,” Fitz muttered.

  “Serial predators,” Eldon added.

  “They have an agenda and rules of engagement. They have the necessary unsavory connections to contract quality snipers,” Cranston injected.

  Fitz smiled. “It explains why they marked Eldon. He is part of the judicial problem. He defended a monster, James Harvey Pender.”

  Although he loathed Fitz for what he happily shared, Eldon had reached the same unfortunate conclusion. In Eldon’s defense, Cranston yelled, “You are an irritating fool, Fitz. I’ve had enough of your arrogant, self-serving narratives. I suggest you close your mouth or I will come around this table and beat the hell out of you.”

  “Fitz has always been a royal pain in the butt,” Eldon said. “Unfortunately, he is right. I defended James Pender. My wound is likely due to that fact. Someone is clearly unhappy with the legal process. They are well on their way toward fixing it.”

  Fitz sunk in his chair and stared at the group without uttering another word. Cranston could beat him senseless if there was a second event and Babcock allowed it.

  “We agree there is a vigilante group out there killing what I call serial predators,” Michaels said. “That’s still all we know. I’m afraid we are still at square one.”

  “Maybe not,” Eldon said. “Their operations have been interrupted—their sniper is down. There have been no shootings since the Chase Tower and Burnham Hotel incidents.”

  “Where would one go if they wanted to hire a sniper?” Cranston asked.

  Fitz sat up with a sinister smile. “The best snipers are in Detroit.”

  “That’s it,” Babcock said. “We need to connect with Detroit. When they get the call from Chicago, we find the vigilante group. It will cost us, but it’s our only way. We pass the information to the Marcantonio family.”

 
“And our lives go back to normal,” Cranston said under his breath.

  “I have some connections in Detroit. I will need a lot of money to buy that kind of information,” Fitz said. “I’m thinking $100,000.”

  Babcock nodded. “Good. Make contact tonight. I will arrange for the money.”

  “I’m still not satisfied working only one avenue,” Cranston said. “Eldon’s assessment was accurate, we are exposed. Time is not on our side. One of us could be taken out tonight by one of many enemy factions out there, or a rogue member of the Marcantonio family who wonders why we were not killed along with their patriarch. ”

  “We don’t have a lot more options,” Fitz grumbled.

  “What about the POD video?” Eldon asked.

  “That’s what I had in mind,” Cranston said. “We have at least one case where someone other than a sniper targeted Marcantonio’s people. We’ve all seen the video, the mystery man on the vacant lot on the South Side. That man—with unique physical characteristics—seemed to be there for Mr. Pender, the one shot by the sniper. I submit he and the sniper had similar agendas but not a coordinated effort. They both acted independent of the other.”

  Michaels opened his briefcase and pulled out a half-dozen still shots. He studied the first and passed it around. “I have a talented friend in the IT field—computerized enhancements. He takes a photograph and loads it into a special program. There are thousands of calculations made to optimize grain densities, variations between pixels, color balance, contrast, and a lot of other things I cannot pronounce. It builds what he calls ‘logical bridges’ between existing pixels.”

  “Wait a minute,” Cranston said. “What’s a pixel?”

  “A pixel is the smallest picture element in an image.”