Grave Deceit

by John J. Hunter

  “The body was almost entirely destroyed in the fire that was set to the car. We could only extract mitochondrial DNA from the few pieces of bones that were found.” The words tumbled off her tongue in quick succession. “Since mitochondrial DNA is inherited from the mother, your blood sample can be used to ascertain that the body belonged to your son and not the fugitive.”

  Martha’s expression softened. Slowly, she replaced the receiver in its cradle and took a deep breath. “It’s unbelievable the sort of things you get to hear if you live to be a hundred,” she said, shaking her head.

  “So you’ll help us?” Tyler asked.

  Martha looked daggers at him. “Of course, I will. I can’t let my son’s bones be used to feed the dogs. He deserves to lie in peace in his grave. And you really need to learn how to convey your message properly. Nearly gave me a heart attack!”

  Tyler did not respond to her chiding but by the look on his face, it seemed he would not have minded the consequences of the misunderstanding between them.

  CHAPTER 4

  The red sports car whizzed through the city, zipping past crowded beaches and shopping malls buzzing with eager customers. It cruised down the road heading toward the airport. The car joined the long queue of vehicles parked outside the airport. The front door opened and Harrold Brown stepped out, dressed in a crisp white suit and dark sunglasses and with a wide grin on his face. He closed the door behind him, tossed the car keys on the front seat through the half-open window, turned, and walked away.

  He retrieved a ticket from his suit pocket as he reached check-in. The polite woman sitting behind the counter glanced at his side checking for luggage and looked a little surprised that he carried no suitcases. “I pack light,” he said with a grin.

  The woman smiled, checked his ID, and provided him with a boarding pass.

  He thanked her and walked away.

  Outside, the car remained baking in the sun for the rest of the day. Dark clouds gathered overhead late at night and a thunderstorm gripped the city. The seat covers and floor mats soaked as the water dripped inside from the window left open. It wasn’t until the next morning that the shiny red car caught someone’s attention.

  The vehicle was reported to the police who immediately traced it to a man named Harrold Brown. Alice’s phone rang at eleven in the morning informing her of the abandoned vehicle. She panicked and called the local police authorities to perform a welfare check on Harrold. He was the only person with any direct link with Riley and she could not afford to lose him.

  The police showed up at his house only to find it devoid of all his possessions. It seemed Harrold had sold every single item that he owned except for the car which he used to travel to the airport and board a flight to Spain.

  Alice felt a crushing sense of defeat when news of Harrold’s escape reached her. She couldn’t believe that one of their prime suspects in the case had slipped so easily from their grasp.

  Martha's DNA had matched the DNA extracted from the body found in the car, leaving no room for doubt that Riley had contrived his own death in a car accident. But with Harrold gone, there was no way for them to catch Riley.

  She sat with her face buried in her hands, dejected. Adrian walked in and rapped her desk, making her jolt upright. “You don’t look so good,” he said.

  “I can’t believe he got away,” she groaned, letting her head fall on the desk.

  “Really?” he asked, raising an eyebrow. “Did you really expect him to stay put after we randomly showed up at his doorstep and asked him questions about Chris’s life insurance policy?” There was a sliver of annoyance in his voice. Maybe it was what Naomi said to him in the car that made him resent Alice a bit.

  She looked up with a defeated expression on her face. “Fine. It’s all my fault. I should have known better. I should have put tabs on him.”

  “What’s done is done,” he said. “No use thinking about the past. Let’s look somewhere else for clues.”

  “I’m out of ideas.”

  Adrian leaned forward, resting his arms on the desk, his eyes shining with anticipation. “Or maybe we should look in the past — Chris Murray’s past.”

  “I’m not sure I follow.”

  Adrian reached in his pocket and took out a business card. He placed it on the desk and slid it toward her with his finger. Alice looked at the card; Chris’s name was written in elegant italicized print underneath the company’s name, Murray Life Services.

  Her eyes went round with amazement. “Where did you find this?”

  “I did a little digging,” he replied with a big, satisfied smile on his face. "Turns out, Chris started the company back in the '80s. It aimed at getting people back on track; drug addicts, alcoholics, and homeless people. The company gave these people loans with very little interest and provided them with lodging since most of these people did not have a place to stay."

  "Wait." She held up a hand, it was all too much to take in. She had always thought of Riley as a kind of monster. The fact that he worked for humanity did not sit right with her. "Are you saying Chris Murray ran an NGO?"

  "Not exactly," he answered. "The people he helped had to work for him. It was a rather strange business model, so it's not a surprise that the company soon ran into legal troubles and went bankrupt."

  Alice heaved a sigh of relief. For a moment she was afraid that the loathing she felt for the man would be challenged.

  "But here's where the story gets interesting," said Adrian. "Murray Life Services keeps popping up in Chris's financial records over the next several years, even after the company supposedly ceased to exist."

  "Why?"

  "Good question," he pulled out a sheet of paper from his jacket pocket and placed it on the desk. "I guess that Chris was using the company to lure young women under the pretense of offering them jobs."

  "So there are more victims?" she asked, thinking about her and Tyler's mothers. Riley did sound like some kind of sexual predator. So that part about Adrian's finding didn't surprise her.

  "I looked up some of the women he hired over the years and most ended up dying under mysterious circumstances or simply vanished without a trace."

  A memory trickled into her mind of her mother introducing Riley as an accomplished businessman to her friends and she felt a surge of anger and disgust. She closed her eyes for a few seconds and took a deep breath. "How do we catch him?" she asked, seething with rage.

  "I've tracked every possible contact he might have in America. I suggest you tap their phones and see if Chris gives them a call. We just need him to talk long enough for us to calculate the coordinates and pinpoint his location."

  She knew very well that Riley would never put himself at risk by committing a rookie mistake like calling a friend in the States for help. She was sure he knew all his contacts were compromised.

  "Did he leave behind a money trail?" It was a long shot but she wanted to make sure they didn't miss anything.

  “He had been withdrawing small amounts from his bank account in the months leading up to his disappearance. His account only has a few hundred bucks left. I’m guessing he is using cash to avoid getting caught.”

  Disappointment flashed across her face. They could try tapping his contacts but she knew it would be of no use, he was far too clever than that. She realized with a crushing sense of defeat that they had lost him and there was no way to get to him. Adrian noticed her glum expression and spoke up, “We shouldn’t be looking at his financial records anyway.”

  Alice looked up. “We should be focusing on Harrold’s.”

  “Exactly,” he said, grinning. “Remember the million-dollar life insurance policy that he got? He attained an exorbitant amount of money in a short period. I’m pretty sure he couldn’t do away with it all.”

  Her lips finally curved into a smile. “Boy, am I glad to have you on the team.”

  “It’s a treat working with you as well. You have a way of finding cases with the most twisted criminals,”
he said with a wry smile. “Life with you around is never boring.”

  They set to work, tracking Riley’s contacts, and began tapping their phone calls and text messages, in search of anything suspicious. A large sum of the money Harrold inherited from the insurance company was transferred to a Swiss bank account. They were able to track him to a city in Colombia through his ATM withdrawals.

  After some time they ran out of leads and could not find his exact location in the country. Alice contacted the local authorities in Colombia, requesting their assistance in catching the criminal and bringing him back to the America to stand trial. Her spirits sank when weeks went by and there was no sign of him.

  Several times a day she would find herself tempted to give up the search altogether and move on with her life. During such times, when she was low on motivation, she would reach in her suitcase and have a look at the necklace. Just a glimpse of the coiled silver snake would fill her with an intense loathing and she would go back to working harder than ever to catch him, fueled by the hatred that she felt toward him.

  The list Adrian provided her of the women that Riley preyed on contained more than a dozen names. Her stomach would churn whenever she looked at it and she would feel a rising sense of nausea thinking about the families waiting for closure. It served as a second reminder for her of why she could not let him roam free on the face of this earth to mark his next victim and ruin another life.

  Sometimes she wondered about Tyler and his mother. She was curious to learn about his story and how Riley had found a way into their lives, but whenever she broached the subject with Tyler he came off as evasive. She was patient with him and understood that he was reluctant to discuss his past trauma with her, afraid that it would push him to a breaking point. Still, like a drug junkie, she wanted to learn as much about Riley as she could and kept trying to get Tyler to open up.

  What surprised her about Tyler’s encounter with Riley was that his mother had managed to survive. Mostly, the women who became Riley’s victims perished. This puzzling detail about his story made her want to know more about her and what she experienced after meeting Riley.

  Tyler had made it clear that he did not want her prying into him or his family. Her persistent attempts to gain access to his mother annoyed him and he pulled further away. Eventually they received a tip from an anonymous source about one of Riley’s friends. The source told them that he would turn up at a particular address and make a call to Riley using a payphone. Alice and Tyler drove to the street where the suspect was supposed to show up for a stakeout.

  Tall gigantic buildings of steel and glass soared before them, glinting in the morning sunlight. A crowd of pedestrians was milling about on the sidewalk underneath the buildings. An innocuous-looking payphone stood on the pavement at the corner of the street. The people walking by barely noticed its presence.

  Alice sat in the driver's seat drumming her fingers on the steering wheel impatiently. She glanced at Tyler, noticed a vein popping on his temple, and immediately stopped tapping her fingers. She knew her fidgeting annoyed him.

  The tip they received told them that the man would be dressed in khaki shorts, a gray T-shirt, and a baseball cap. She squinted at the passersby on the sidewalk across the road before them. They had parked their Toyota Camry behind a neatly trimmed hedge, partially hidden from view.

  "I love stake outs," she said, sardonically. "They are my absolute favorite." She glanced at Tyler and felt disappointed that he didn't bother to crack a smile.

  He stared at the people meandering over the sidewalk with a hard expression. Alice wondered if it was because he was concentrating too hard or because he hated every second of it.

  She leaned back in her seat letting out a loud exhale. There was an apparatus in the car for them to trace the call and find out Riley's location using the triangulation method. Tyler was all set to operate the machinery to calculate the coordinates.

  His sight was fixed on the payphone. Alice saw his clenched fists and set jaw and realized he was just as determined as she was to bring Riley to justice.

  "I was thinking about all the women whose lives Riley took," said Alice, warily. She knew she had to be subtle or else Tyler would cut her off. "It blows my mind how someone could be so cruel."

  "That's how psychopaths are," Tyler replied. "They don't have a conscience and they don't believe in morality. All they care about is getting away. That's all that they want. To satisfy their heinous desires and avoid getting caught so they can go on doing it for as long as they live."

  Alice pondered over his statement for a long moment. "I sometimes wonder what must have happened to the other people involved. I mean, the victim's families. I know I shouldn't be the one asking the question since I am one of those people whose life was left in ruins. I just never thought there would be others like me. I think I'd like to meet them — the other survivors."

  Tyler's head swiveled toward her. He glowered at her; his face contorted with disgust. "There you go again," he said through gritted teeth. "Isn't it enough that you know me and how screwed up I am?"

  "That's — that's not what I meant," she stammered, trying to extricate herself from the awkward situation. "I meant the other women."

  "You meant my mother," he spat. "Come on, this isn't the first time you've nagged me about her. Do you want me to set up a one-on-one interview between you two?"

  She stared at him, stunned by his sudden outburst. They had been working alongside each other for more than a year and she had never seen this side of him.

  He looked at her with venom in his eyes. "I see you won't ever let go of this topic, so let me tell you once and for all about what happened to my mother."

  Alice listened quietly to his tirade.

  "She went insane," he said. The anger that consumed him until then suddenly evaporated. "She's been in a mental institute for the past several decades," he said, his voice trembling with emotion.

  "And you think it was all because of Riley?" she asked.

  He was silent for a long moment as he thought about the answer. "I don't know," he said, looking incredibly sad. "I don't even remember much about the time she dated him."

  He looked out of the windshield at the people walking by. The man they were looking for still hadn't shown up. "She was always depressed. Getting up out of bed and going through the day was a big challenge for her."

  Alice waited for him to continue.

  "There were brief moments when she would be happy." His expression had softened ever since he started talking about his mother, telling her about his harrowing childhood. "Those were the best times. But they would never last for too long. Soon she would slip back into depression and lock herself in her room."

  They sat in silence for the next several minutes. "I know you want to talk to her to find out anything you can about Riley. But the truth is, her mental health deteriorated rapidly in the last few years and I don't want you to remind her of a time that would be better for her to forget."

  "I understand," she said quietly.

  Just then a male voice crackled from the car radio. "The suspect is on target. Please take note."

  Tyler grabbed the receiver, pulling it close to his mouth. "We're on it."

  They looked up and saw a man matching the description that was provided, strolling down the sidewalk, winding his way through the crowd toward the payphone. Tyler took out a small portable camera and started taking pictures. Half of his face was hidden behind the large sunglasses and the baseball hat.

  He grabbed the receiver, placed it to his ear, slid a few coins in the money slot, and began punching the numbers on the keypad with his finger.

  Tyler quickly picked up the device that was lying in the backseat and started pressing a few buttons. Soon the device connected to the payphone. It was attached to two sets of headphones. He handed one to Alice while placing the other over his ears, and they could hear the phone ring.

  The man at the phone booth cast furtive glances all arou
nd him. He looked terribly scared of being caught. Alice looked him over and felt a little surprised, noting that he seemed to be a teenager. It made her wonder how Riley might have befriended him.

  Alice touched the headphone over her ear and listened carefully. She held her breath as she waited for Riley to pick up. Her heart skipped a beat when she heard a click followed by a long pause. Peals of laughter erupted inside the headphones. She stared at Tyler as she listened to Riley’s derisive laughter. He looked as confused as her.

  He laughed for a long moment then abruptly stopped and the line went dead. Alice looked up and saw the receiver hanging with the teenage boy nowhere in sight. She pulled the headphones off, jumped out of the car, and bolted toward the road.

  She dashed across the road, dodging speeding vehicles and barely avoiding getting run over. As she reached the sidewalk, she began searching frantically for the boy. Heads turned in her direction as she ran up and down the length of the pavement like a crazed lunatic.

  Her heart raced erratically inside her chest and her breathing turned ragged and uneven. Finally, she bent over her knees and started taking quick short breaths. Her eyes brimmed with tears and her cheeks flushed from embarrassment. He had called just to laugh at her.

  “Alice! Alice!” Tyler came running after her. He held her shoulder and pulled her close. “We’ll catch him. Don’t worry, we will catch him.”

  She sank to her knees and let Tyler hold her. Shame, anger, and sorrow enveloped her. A part of her wanted the ground to break open and swallow her whole. She remembered that laugh from her childhood. She had heard it often in her house.

  As a child, her stepfather’s mocking laughter would instill fear inside her. She felt the same terror grip her as she listened to it now years later. The boy who had made the call from the payphone was caught a few hours later by local police authorities. He claimed that he was hired to make the call at a given time from the payphone on an online community and that he didn’t know who hired him.

  The incident left a deep impact on Alice. Her stepfather’s menacing laugh replayed in her head for the next several weeks.