Malicious

by Jacob Stone

  The killer had planted a spy camera inside the store, and by using the store’s Wi-Fi connection, he was directing the video feed to a dark and untraceable corner of the Internet. By the time the waitress took his order, he had the feed running on his cell phone and his earbuds plugged in so he could watch and listen to what went on inside Hipster Dipster.

  The killer felt a thrill run down his spine when the small explosive device triggered and his Frankenstein-monster mannequin broke apart as he had planned and crashed to the floor. As he had also worked out, the seam of the pants split open, revealing what was underneath. He couldn’t help giggling as he watched the young pretty salesclerk faint and the skinny hipster dude catch her, and thought of how he might even be playing cupid with this falling domino. A voice close by startled him. He looked up to see the waitress grinning as she placed his cappuccino and éclair on the table. He removed the earbuds.

  “That must be some video you’re watching the way it’s cracking you up,” she said.

  He wondered for a moment if she had caught a glimpse of it, because if she had he’d have to kill her.

  “It’s a real sidesplitter,” he said.

  She smirked as if she found his choice of words odd but quaint. “Does it have cats in it?” she asked. “I wouldn’t mind seeing a funny cat video right now.”

  “Sadly, no cats. I’m allergic to them.”

  That brought a puzzled look, as if she couldn’t understand the non-sequitur he had thrown at her. In any case, it stopped her from doing any further flirting. He watched as she walked back into the bakery, and he decided that she couldn’t have seen any of the video. That was just as well. He was going to be busy enough as it was. He put the earbuds back in.

  The killer lay the phone down on the table, and leisurely drank his cappuccino and ate his dessert, and watched as the first police cruiser arrived at Hipster Dipster, then as several more police cruisers and an ambulance joined the party. Soon after that more cars came. A buzz started among the customers sitting at the other tables as they wondered what was happening. The killer, as he listened to the commotion inside Hipster Dipster, kept his focus on the cars that were arriving. It was after Morris Brick left one of them with his dog that the killer picked up his cell phone again so he could watch the video feed.

  He wanted to see Brick’s reaction to his handiwork, but the sense of someone standing next to him caused him to look up. Once again it was the pain-in-the-ass waitress, and this time she was trying to get a peek! The killer shifted the phone to make sure the screen was hidden from her, and he once more took out his earbuds.

  “You look like you’re enjoying that,” she said with a big grin.

  “A special video my girlfriend made for my eyes only,” he explained.

  That worked as well as if he had thrown a bucket of cold water on her, and in a heartbeat her grin deflated. Instead of walking away like she should have, she asked what he thought was happening inside that store.

  “Whatever it is, I’m sure we’ll see it on the news tonight.”

  She nodded as if that made sense, and finally walked away. He’d been smiling pleasantly from the moment she had interrupted him, but it was all he could do to keep from grabbing her by the throat and throttling her. Because of that meddlesome woman he had missed what was going on inside Hipster Dipster. He took a deep breath as he tried to calm his anger, but his hands still shook as he fitted the earbuds once again into his ears.

  The video showed Brick standing near the body, talking to a tall, bony bald man, who the killer knew from his research was Roger Smichen, LA’s medical examiner. The quality of the audio wasn’t as clear as he would’ve hoped, and the killer had to strain to hear what was being said. Even so, he ended up missing snatches of their conversation. From what he was able to make out, Brick wanted to know about the time of death, whether this was the rest of Heather Brandley’s body, and whether the killer had left him another business card. A thin, brutal smile tightened the killer’s lips when he heard Brick asking whether the body had been sexually violated.

  Really, Brick? You have to take this into the gutter? You can’t simply appreciate the brilliance of what I’ve done?

  Brick’s phone must’ve rung. The killer watched as Brick struggled to remove it from his pocket, and then as he stood like stone listening to whatever someone was telling him. After a minute of this, Brick walked out of frame. The killer sat intently waiting for him to return. Others were gathering around the body, but not Brick. The killer kept looking from his phone to Hipster Dipster’s front door, but wherever Brick was, he couldn’t spot him.

  Something caused the killer to look toward the café where he had tried to get a table when he first arrived; the one directly across the street from Hipster Dipster. A strangely familiar-looking man wearing a suit and dark sunglasses stood outside the restaurant. Late forties, short iron-gray hair. This man wasn’t much bigger than the killer, but he had a wiry toughness about him that was apparent from half a block away. From what the killer could tell, the man seemed to be searching for someone sitting in the café’s outdoor area. The killer’s cell phone rang. Not the one he was watching the video feed over, but a burner phone that he also carried. That didn’t make any sense. With Lopez dead, there was only one other person who had the number for it, and he shouldn’t have been calling him.

  The killer took the burner phone out and his blood froze when he saw the caller ID. Morris Brick. He realized then that Brick must’ve figured out that Lopez had called the killer yesterday to let him know that Heather Brandley was going on her run. He looked in the direction of the man standing outside the café and remembered where he’d seen him before. It was when the killer was researching Morris Brick and his firm. The man was one of Brick’s investigators. Ted Lemmon or Fred Lemmon, something along those lines.

  The killer broke out of his trance and turned off the burner phone. He looked up to see Lemmon walking toward the bakery. Jesus. Brick somehow knew the killer would be watching the store. That was why he called when he did. Because the investigator expected to hear a phone ringing where he stood outside the café. If the killer had gotten a seat there like he had wanted, it would have been over for him. Droplets of cold sweat snaked down his back. He had two choices: stay seated where he was and act as if he were just another customer enjoying a cappuccino and dessert, or leave. Whichever it was, he had to make a decision now!

  Lemmon was three storefronts away and moving at a fast clip. The killer’s mind locked on him as a fight-or-flight panic took hold. He fumbled with his wallet and dropped a twenty-dollar bill on the table. At least he had enough presence of mind to do that; otherwise the waitress might’ve made a scene.

  As casually as the killer could manage, he got up and headed into the bakery, his heart beating wildly. As he did this, he made sure not to look in Lemmon’s direction. Fortunately, he soon discovered the place had a back door for customers. He continued on through the bakery until he was out the door, and then he ran as if his life depended on it.

  Chapter 19

  From a quarter of a mile away Brad Pettibone thought he saw a car parked near the oil well that he needed to service. As he bounced along the private dirt road, his brow furrowed as he realized that not only was he right about a car being there, but that a man was leaning against it. His first thought was that Mark Sangonese might’ve gotten rid of his pickup truck for a sedan, but as he got closer he saw the man was taller than Sangonese and had a leaner body type than his boss’s squat, bull-like frame. The lines furrowing his brow deepened as he wondered who this guy could be.

  Pettibone pulled up next to the stranger and lowered his window. “This is private property, owned by Samson Oil & Gas. You got a reason for being here?”

  “I do. My name’s Charles Bogle. I’m investigating the disappearance of one of your co-workers, Karl Crawford.”

  Pettibone made a face at th
at. “I don’t think I ever spoke more than ten words to the man. I can’t help you.”

  “That might be so,” Bogle said. “But your boss, Mark Sangonese, told me I could talk to you. He even told me I could find you here.”

  “Why’d you pick me to talk to?”

  “Not just you. I’m talking to all the maintenance technicians.”

  Brad Pettibone was a large, rawboned man. As he stared at Bogle, his fleshy face folded into a scowl that would’ve made any bloodhound proud. “You can waste your time and ask me whatever you want. Just don’t get in my way. I need to get this well updated and calibrated by five.”

  Pettibone got out of his Ford Explorer, and moving in a slow, careful pace, opened the back and took out a toolbox, then what looked like a large metal suitcase. He handed Bogle the toolbox, and told him that he could be useful by carrying it over to the well. Bogle did as he was asked while Pettibone followed with the metal suitcase. When they got to the well, Pettibone took a socket wrench out of the toolbox, and went to work opening up the well’s casing.

  “Go ahead,” he said, grunting. “Ask me your questions, not that it’s going to do you any good.”

  “You never had any drinks or spent time with him?”

  “I told you I didn’t.”

  Bogle shrugged. “You could’ve been exaggerating.”

  “I wasn’t.”

  “Okay, I know that now. Was he friendly with any of the other maintenance technicians?”

  Pettibone turned and gave Bogle an openmouthed look as if he couldn’t believe how dense he was. “You drove all the way out here to ask me questions like those? I told you, I didn’t know the man. I have no idea who he was friendly with.”

  “You ever hear any rumors about him?”

  “I don’t hear rumors about anyone. Take a look around.” Pettibone clamped his mouth closed as he used the socket wrench to remove one of the bolts, then added, “This is my office every day. That brush and those cactuses are my only daily companions. Besides, I’m not the gossipy type.”

  “You must have some idea what happened to him.”

  Pettibone’s jaw muscles clenched as he muscled the last bolt. “I don’t have any,” he said. “It’s not something I’ve spent even a minute thinking about.”

  “That’s a bit callous.”

  “I told you, I don’t know him. What I worry about is servicing the wells I need to each day.” He wiped his brow, then said, “Besides, for all I know nothing bad happened to him. He could be somewhere in Mexico smoking weed all day and drinking tequila and whoring around all night.”

  Pettibone finally budged the bolt. After a half dozen turns of the socket wrench, he removed the bolt, then opened up the casing revealing the guts of the well. Bogle watched as the technician pulled out what looked like a computer motherboard from the machinery.

  “We’re replacing these on all the wells,” Pettibone explained.

  “Your boss told me about that. Something about advanced diagnostics.”

  A hint of bitterness reflected in Pettibone’s eyes. “That’s right. This way they can service more wells without paying us another dime. Look, I got to get the new board out of my Explorer. You can keep following me around and asking me questions, but I don’t see how it’s going to do you any good.”

  Bogle said, “You’re right. It was a wasted trip. Thanks for your time.”

  Both men walked to their respective vehicles. Pettibone busied himself with storing away the old motherboard, and while he did this, Bogle got in his car and drove off. After a minute or so, Pettibone pulled his head out from the back of his Explorer. He watched as Bogle drove over the dirt road that would lead to the highway. Once the car disappeared from sight, Pettibone stuck his head back into his Explorer, this time so he could use a screwdriver on the sidewall. After a few minutes, he had the sidewall opened up, revealing several square, white packages, each weighing approximately twelve pounds. While Pettibone knew the package couldn’t explode if he dropped it, he was still careful as he brought it and the new motherboard to the well. After hiding the package far behind one of the compressors so it couldn’t be seen if someone opened up the casing, he attached the new motherboard, and then went to work calibrating one of the high-pressure pumps, for all the good it would do.

  Chapter 20

  Morris’s phone rang. Fred Lemmon.

  “You were right,” Lemmon said. “He was outside watching. Just not from the café across the street. He was at a bakery half a block away. I saw him walking into it before I got there, but he must’ve taken off like a bat out of hell through the back door. Something else. I think he hid a camera inside Hipster Dipster. His waitress told me he took a table ten minutes before the police arrived and was glued to a video he was watching on his cell phone. I’m bringing her over now to the West Hollywood station to get a sketch done.”

  Morris waved Annie Walsh over. In a low, guarded voice, he told her that Lemmon believed the killer had hidden a spy camera in the store. She indicated that she’d get on it. Morris returned to his phone call with Lemmon.

  “Could she identify him from the video?”

  “No. She said his face was shaped differently. More angular. Also, long blond hair that was tied into a ponytail, a thick, bushy mustache, and a smaller, straighter nose. But the shape of his eyes was the same. I’ll call you as soon as the sketch is ready. You should get someone to search the back alley behind the bakery. Odds are he ditched his phone back there.”

  “Will do.”

  Morris disconnected the call and swore to himself. It had been impulsive on his part to call the killer’s phone. He knew that at the time, but when the LAPD got the records for the lobby phone in Heather Brandley’s condo building and found a number that was called yesterday that they couldn’t identify, he decided to play his hunch that the killer was watching the Hipster Dipster from someplace close by. If he had noticed a bakery on the same block with outdoor tables, he would’ve sent someone there also. But since the café across the street was the only place he could remember having outdoor seating, he coordinated with Lemmon to position Lemmon there and had three LAPD patrolmen waiting by the café’s back door in case the killer tried running. Then he made the phone call.

  Dammit! He should’ve handled it better. But he thought if the killer was watching from nearby, he wouldn’t be doing so for much longer. Morris had already been at the crime scene for over fifteen minutes before he got the call about the unidentifiable phone number. If his thinking had been clearer, it might have occurred to him earlier that the killer could be watching the store.

  Dammit!

  Walsh and one of the crime scene specialists approached him. The specialist told Morris in a whisper that they had found a covert pinhole camera planted inside a mannequin near the one that had been rigged up.

  “Odds are it’s using the store’s Wi-Fi to send out the video feed. We’ll bring in a computer forensics specialist and see if he can identify where the feed’s going. Maybe we’ll catch this maniac that way.”

  “He was watching the feed on his phone,” Morris said.

  “Which means he was first sending it somewhere on the Internet. Which further means he could be leaving behind digital fingerprints.”

  Morris didn’t think there was much chance of that. The killer had been too meticulous with his planning to make that type of mistake. From the intensity burning on Walsh’s face, she thought differently.

  “Okay, leave the camera where it is. Annie, in the event this guy is still watching the feed, what do you say we try to raise his blood pressure?”

  “Sounds good to me. The higher the better.”

  Roger Smichen was standing near the body. Morris sent him a text about what was going to be happening, and what Smichen needed to say, and then he and Walsh joined him.

  Chapter 21

  An hour later
the killer still couldn’t believe he had panicked the way he had. The investigator, Ted Lemmon or whatever his name was, would’ve been looking for a man with short red hair, a carefully groomed beard and mustache, and a square-shaped face. If the killer had just kept his wits about him and sat calmly at the outdoor table nothing would’ve happened. But in the end, no harm, no foul. He had been at the bakery long enough, and there had been no point staying even a second longer. Actually, there was no reason for him to be there at all, although he knew what had drawn him to the spot—there was something viscerally thrilling about being that close to Brick and all those other cops as they bore witness to his handiwork. In the larger scheme of things, it was only one domino, and there were so many more to fall, but still, he had been especially proud of this one. But that didn’t change the fact that he could’ve watched the video feed from anywhere. He still could.

  The killer checked the time. He had a few minutes before he was to meet the movie actress Faye Riverstone inside the swank Hollywood bar he was parked behind. No reason not to watch more of the video while in the safety of his car, especially since he was dying to see Brick’s reaction to his latest message.

  The signal from the bar’s Wi-Fi was strong enough for the killer to piggyback off of, and the killer navigated to the dark corner of the Internet where he was storing the video feed. He fast-forwarded through it until he reached video he hadn’t seen yet, and then he continued to speed through this also until Morris and that tough lady cop came into the frame and joined the skeleton-thin ME.

  Tell him about the message I left for him, the killer whispered to himself because he knew the ME had found the business card. He had watched when the ME removed the boots from the corpse and the card fluttered to the floor. The ME noticed it also because he picked it up with a tweezer-like tool and deposited it into an evidence bag (as if the killer would be careless enough to leave fingerprints!).