Next Girl On The List - A serial killer thriller (McRyan Mystery Series Book)

by Roger Stelljes

  The agent rolled the tape. A medium-height man wearing black sunglasses rushed quickly down the steps, weaving his way through people down to the platform for the southbound train. The man went through the middle door of the train and turned around, intently watching the platform and steps, breathing hard.

  “No hat or hoodie,” Wire states.

  “No, he’s holding them,” Mac exclaimed, pointing at the screen. “The sweatshirt is rolled up and tucked under his left arm.”

  “Why not just toss them?” the tech asked.

  “DNA!” Mac and Wire exclaimed in unison.

  “He couldn’t risk it,” Wire added.

  “So he was as careful here, even under immense strain and pressure, as he was at all of those murder scenes,” Mac observed. “He is hardwired to leave nothing behind. Maybe that tells us something, too.”

  “He’s in the system?” the tech asked.

  “That’s possible,” Mac answered. “Although even if he was, we don’t have any DNA evidence from any of our murder scenes to tie to him.”

  “So where did he get off the subway?” Wire asked.

  “The next stop south,” the tech answered, pulling video up on another screen. “It looks to us like he gets off at the Columbia Street station.”

  He rolled the footage as the train pulled into the station. Once the doors started opening, the man burst out onto the platform and pushed his way through people to the steps up to the street. “That’s our guy,” the tech pointed with his finger. “The hoodie is under his right arm.”

  Rubens quickly made his way up the steps to the street level and disappeared from view.

  “Were you able to track him from there?” Mac asked.

  “Not yet,” the tech answered, shaking his head lightly and then on another screen pulled up a street map of the area around the Columbia Street Metro station. “If he went west, there is a shopping and restaurant area so we might find some security camera and footage that direction. Agents are on the hunt. If he went east,” the tech sighed. “Well, if he did that we’re probably boned. That’s residential and we’d lose him in there. It’s all houses. MPD doesn’t have any surveillance equipment in there.”

  The techs ran the tape over and over again with Mac and Wire, looking for any possible additional nuggets. It was surveillance footage, not of terrible quality but it wasn’t high definition and their man was disguised. The techs ran the tape slowly; taking stills of the best facial shots of the man they thought was Rubens.

  By this time, Galloway and Delmonico had entered, left and re-entered the room. “I’ve got people going back out and they’ll be combing the areas west and east of the station for any other footage we can get our hands on,” Galloway reported. “I’m not optimistic, but you never know.”

  “If nothing else,” Mac replied, looking to Wire, “we have these stills.”

  “And these sketches,” Delmonico added, handing them around the room. “From Martha Schreiber and her friend.”

  The sketch artists came up with two similar sketches. Both sketches displayed a man with a round face and a salt-and-pepper goatee. The only real noticeable difference between the two sketches was that on the one composed with Martha’s assistance, the man’s nose was bulbous on the end, with one nostril slightly larger and angled up more than the other.

  The sketches, however, were different than the man in the video. The Columbia Street station surveillance showed him without the goatee, although the nose seemed somewhat consistent. The sketches, while not a match for the bookstore, nevertheless revealed some common physical features with the facial hair and glasses.

  Was it the same guy?

  The body shape and height said yes.

  The way the man moved, slowly at the bookstore, more rapidly in the chase from the morning, suggested it was. The man’s movements were not athletic. He moved with straight arms and almost a shuffle at the store, but that may have been a bit of an act because in the surveillance video when he had to flee, the straight arms were there but the shuffle was gone and while he was no world-class athlete, he moved well and quickly enough to evade them.

  “It would be hard to get a conviction with that,” Delmonico offered.

  “Conviction, hah,” Mac answered. Grace was thinking too far ahead. “At this point I just want to identify him. Do that and then I can start worrying about building a case for a prosecution. And on the topic of identifying him, we are getting closer.”

  “The sketches and the surveillance don’t really match,” Wire suggested.

  “No, they don’t,” Mac replied as he waved for her to follow him back to the conference room. “And I’m not surprised, by the way. He’s always in some sort of a disguise or different look. He’s something of a chameleon.”

  “But we have some commonalities,” Wire replied, going along.

  “Yes,” Mac replied as he stood at the whiteboard and posted the sketches and still photos of the man they thought was Rubens. “There are some things he can’t change.”

  Their subject was Caucasian, approximately five feet ten inches tall and of average build. “I’d estimate between one hundred eighty-five and two hundred pounds,” Mac speculated.

  If the pictures were of the same man, it was apparent that he was wearing disguises. He had a beard in the sketches and surveillance video from the bookstore and Vietnam Memorial. There was no beard this morning based on the surveillance footage. But there was the noted similarity in movement. They also now knew that their man was approximately 5’10” and of average build.

  “He does have a bulbous nose,” Wire noted. “Like there’s a little ball on the end of it and that left nostril is bigger.”

  And there was a pattern. “He’s using beards, goatees, fu-mans and full beards,” Mac noted. “He is always wearing glasses of some kind—sun, tinted or regular, all kinds of different styles. And our man likes hats—baseball and tam caps, it seems.”

  “You definitely are developing a picture,” April Greene added agreeably. “In the last few days you’ve developed more information on him that anyone has in the last ten years combined.” She scanned the whiteboard. “This … is getting interesting now.”

  “One lucky break could do it,” Mac concurred. “Unless of course, we got our lucky break earlier and completely blew it.”

  They had a name now as well. Walter Olson.

  It was as vanilla a name as there was and undoubtedly not Rubens’s real name.

  It made Mac think of Minnesota. He wouldn’t have been surprised if there were hundreds of Walter Olsons in Minnesota, Iowa, Wisconsin and North and South Dakota. There were thousands of Norwegian Olsons in Minnesota, along with Andersons, Petersons, Gustafsons, and Johnsons. No matter, if they found a Walter Olson that had some similarity they were checking it out, anywhere in the country.

  And the events of the last twelve hours had left them with something of a photo array now.

  “We need to get this updated information out,” Mac stated. “Let’s make these all public.”

  “I’ll take care of it,” Galloway stated. “It’ll all be out within the hour.”

  Wire opened the top on a Diet Coke. “I wonder if maybe after today he’s spooked. Who knows, maybe he runs away.”

  “I don’t think so,” Greene answered, going into profiling mode. “I don’t think he’ll shrink away. His history says he’ll finish what he’s started because he’s put too much into it. To walk away now, wait a few years until he can come out of hiding is not something I think he’ll do. He loves the attention and the danger. I mean, think about it. He gives you clues…he gives you a clock. He called you when he was within a block or two of you today. By doing what you’ve done, you’ve heightened the experience for him. You’ve made it an even bigger thrill. It’s like a drug and he’s an addict.”

  “He’s not going to stop, is he?” Mac asked. “He’s not going to run now that we’re putting on some heat.”

  “No,” Greene answered. “N
ot in the least. For him the game is on. You two have gotten closer to him than anyone ever has. My read is he’ll view this as an even greater challenge and he’ll do whatever he has to do to rise up and meet it. It’s a game to him and you’re only to half-time.”

  “He’s not hiding, is he?” Mac asked, although he knew the answer.

  “No,” Greene replied. “He’s plotting his next move.”

  • • •

  Rubens walked into the coffee shop and spied Eleanor sitting at a table in the corner. He ordered a coffee and then made his way to the back table.

  “Eleanor, fancy finding you here,” he greeted enthusiastically, walking up with his to-go coffee.

  “Hi,” Eleanor answered brightly, a wide smile of happy surprise. “Do you want to sit down?”

  “I only have a few minutes, but I’d love to.”

  They both sipped their coffees and talked comfortably until he was satisfied she was not at all wary. “I’m so sorry, Eleanor. I’d love to stay but I need to go to meet my friend. I’m already late as it is.”

  “I’m really looking forward to tomorrow night,” Eleanor said with a smile.

  “As am I. So 8:00 P.M. tomorrow then?”

  “Yes.”

  “I will see you then.”

  Eleanor watched with a smile as he walked out the front of the coffee shop and away down the street. A minute later, the barista came over with a big smile.

  “Ellie, is that the new guy?”

  “Yes. I was so surprised he came in here that I forgot to introduce you.”

  “He seemed really nice and looked kind of cool and mysterious dressed in all that black. What’s his name?”

  “Tom. Tom Edwards.”

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  “I think you two are going to make fine detectives.”

  Mac perused the menu of the Fillmore. He didn’t really have a big decision to make; he was having a burger. It was simply a matter of which one. He ultimately decided on the President Taft. The burger was built much like the twenty-seventh president: it was big, two half-pound patties, three kinds of cheese, three bacon slices, an onion ring, an egg, not to mention lettuce and tomato. The burger might as well have been named the Heart Attack. Paddles and a “clear” would probably be needed after he finished it.

  The Fillmore had three big-screen televisions. Two of the televisions were set on sports, the other on CNN. Once again, he noticed the still photos from the various surveillance videos and the two sketches were on the screen.

  One thing Mac couldn’t complain about was a lack of media coverage. The message was getting out. “Problem is, who he was is not who he is going to be,” he lamented bitterly.

  “And Walter Olson is an alias that will no longer be used,” Wire added.

  Mac nodded in agreement. “That won’t be a problem for him. There is no way he would go through this much planning and preparation and not have worked that problem out. I’m sure he has more than a few aliases and I’m sure he doesn’t use the same one for multiple women.”

  “Someone must be making him identifications,” Dara replied, looking away in thought. “We could look into people we know who do that.”

  “But who and where? He could be using anyone, in any city and maybe even someone not in this country. I don’t see how we could even begin to investigate that.”

  “We could at least look into the local people.”

  “Yeah, we could,” Mac answered dismissively.

  “Hey, come on. I’m just trying to be helpful.”

  “I know,” he replied with a sigh and a head shake. He took a long pull from his beer glass. “I know you are. Sorry.”

  Their waiter appeared with two more beers and took their burger orders.

  Dara studied her partner and read his anger for something else. “So what’s really eating you?”

  “I keep going over this morning,” Mac muttered. “It was just the two of us. We should have had help … backup … resources. Hell, the MPD police station was right there. Right fucking there and yet we went naked.” His head slumped down. “What was I thinking?”

  “How could we have known he’d be watching?” Dara asked, not agreeing. “How? How could we have known that?”

  “Because we had to, Dara. He’s calling me. He’s obviously researched us. We went public. We tried to draw him and other women out. And what do you know?”

  “We actually did,” Wire replied with a sigh, shaking her head. “It actually worked. Go figure.”

  “And we weren’t prepared,” Mac griped angrily. “We could have that son of a bitch today. This should be over. We could be sitting here celebrating and nobody else would have died.” Mac took a long drag from his beer. “We could have had that asshole this morning and he slipped right through our hands. Hell, he can’t run for shit and moves like a penguin and we couldn’t catch him.”

  “We did get Martha Schreiber to come forward,” Dara stated. “She gave us a description. Her friend gave us a description. We have a lot more on Rubens now than we did.”

  “So?”

  “So today wasn’t a total loss. Quit beating yourself up. And you know what? There might be another Martha or two out there. We just need them to step up.”

  “Yeah,” Mac answered, and then a dark look overtook his face. “They should step up before he gets them.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I mean Rubens might not have been there following us this morning. He might have been—”

  “Re-hunting Martha?”

  Mac nodded.

  “I wonder if there are others?” Dara asked.

  “It’s possible.”

  “So again, maybe after the events of the last couple of days, they’ll come forward.”

  “If they don’t, and even if they do, I’m at Ruston’s tomorrow. I’m finding that damn clue if it kills me.”

  Wire looked off in the distance with a slight shake of the head.

  It was Mac’s turn to scrutinize his partner. “Spit it out.”

  “What?”

  “What do you mean what?”

  “Is spending your day locked up in Audrey Ruston’s house the best option? Is that the best way to beat this guy?” Dara asked.

  “I don’t know,” Mac replied. “The suggestion box is wide open. I’m all ears—what do you have?”

  “We could be out pushing the pictures.”

  “They are being pushed,” Mac countered. “They’re on every media outlet available. Galloway is running the photos and sketches through every photo recognition program we have. Uniforms and detectives are out all over town. So that’s being done. What can I possibly add to that?” He paused and stared at his beer glass. “Dara, unless we get some new lead to pursue, what else would you have me do?”

  “I don’t know,” Dara replied. “It’s just that it feels like sitting around and waiting and you never …”

  “Sit around and wait,” Mac finished and took a gulp from his beer. “I agree. Except this really isn’t sitting around and waiting. The clue? It’s there. The name is there somewhere. Rubens left it behind. He always leaves it behind. I just have to find it. I just have to get inside his mind and figure it out.”

  “Just don’t get too far inside his mind,” Dara cautioned.

  “Copy that.”

  An hour later, the burgers and another beer devoured, Mac pushed his way through the back door of the townhouse to find Sally in the kitchen, placing a wine glass into the upper rack of the dishwasher.

  “You should check out the living room,” she suggested.

  In the living room, he found a large stack of wrapped wedding gifts.

  “They’ve started arriving,” she reported.

  “Wow,” Mac answered. “Everyone we invited to the wedding is still coming, aren’t they?”

  “Yes,” Sally answered, slipping her left arm through his right. “But they don’t necessarily want to have to bring the gift. So FedEx and UPS it is.”

 
It had been a lousy day but seeing the gifts did make him realize better days, much better days, lay ahead. “It’s almost here, isn’t it?”

  “A month away,” Sally replied. “Are you ready?”

  “I can’t wait,” he replied, moving his right arm up around her shoulder and pulling her close. He kissed her lightly. “I can’t wait.”

  “You look tired,” she noted, touching his cheek and looking up at his face. She lightly ran her thumb under his jaw. “Your eyes are baggy.”

  “That happens when you haven’t slept for something like forty hours.”

  “Then let’s get you up to bed.”

  “I need a shower first.”

  Sally led him up the steps and then went in and started the shower for him while he slowly got out of his clothes. Mac stepped into the shower, closed his eyes and let the warm water run over his body. While he stood there, he thought back to something Wire had said.

  “Just don’t get too far inside his head.”

  As he let the hot water run over his body, his worry was whether Rubens was getting inside his.

  Mac could front it all he wanted, but the case was getting to him. One victim he could live with because he wasn’t even in the case yet at that point. Then the second victim, he could handle that, but now there would be a third with another in the offing and he couldn’t let go of the fact that it should be over. They should have caught him this morning.

  He leaned forward, putting his hands on the shower wall, keeping his eyes closed and let the heat of the water and the thickness of the steam work him over.

  Mac needed his mind clear.

  He needed to keep his cool and not let the clock and the pressure get the best of him. Keep calm, forget the last play, and make the next play was something his football coach used to say to him when Mac was quarterback. If you keep thinking about the last play, you won’t make the next one. You can’t go back in time so let it go, learn from it and move on.

  That was sage advice. He had to let the morning go and make the next play.