Presumed Guilty: (A Jefferson Winter novella)

by James Carol

  The similarities between these victims went beyond the physical, though. Most significantly, they’d all lived alone, and they’d been single when the attacks happened. Abduction was the trickiest part of the process. That was the moment when the bad guy had to step out of the shadows.

  Where the ambush was staged was telling. At one end of the scale you had the risk-takers. Ted Bundy fit into this category. Some of his abductions had been incredibly high risk, but that was part of the game he played. The element of danger thrilled him. It got his juices going. On a couple of occasions he’d even snatched his victims off the street in broad daylight.

  At the other end of the scale you had killers like Valentino. These ones were shy and cunning. Sneakier, too.

  Valentino probably noticed his victims at work. Shopping malls were wonderful hunting grounds. The sea of ever-changing faces guaranteed anonymity. Granted, there were all those CCTV cameras, but unless you knew who you were looking for they were next to useless.

  And that was before you got onto the whole question of when Valentino noticed his victims. Had that happened a week before the attack? A month? It was possible that tens of thousands of people had passed through the mall since Valentino had been there. A hundred thousand.

  How did you pick one face out of a hundred thousand? Needles and haystacks didn’t even begin to cover it. This was on a par with going to the beach and trying to locate a single grain of sand.

  Once Valentino had chosen a potential victim, he would have stalked them to make sure they were single. These were attractive girls so invariably some of them would be in relationships, and then it would be back to square one.

  However, at least once a month he’d struck gold, which indicated that he was watching more than one girl at any one time, which took time, which meant that he was probably either unemployed or self-employed. Some bosses might be lenient when it came to lateness, but there were limits, and if you pushed those limits hard enough, you were inevitably going to get fired.

  After establishing a target was single, Valentino would have followed them to get a feel for their routines. What time did they leave work? How did they get home? Did they go straight there or did they stop at a grocery store to pick up a quart of milk and a microwave meal?

  On the day of the full moon, he would have waited until the quiet part of the afternoon. Siesta time. That part of the day where our senses dulled and our biorhythms cried out for sleep. He would have broken into Alice’s apartment and waited.

  The waiting was an important part of Valentino’s MO. All those elongated seconds, each one filled with anticipation and impatience, precious moments that conspired to wind him into a frenzy that could only find release with the flash and crackle of the stun gun.

  ‘Put these on.’

  Yoko was pulled from her thoughts by Dumas’s voice. The detective was holding out some latex gloves and bootees. He nodded for her to take them. Yoko slid the bootees over her shoes and snapped the gloves on.

  ‘Shall we?’ Dumas asked.

  Yoko followed him inside.

  The door at the end of the narrow hallway was open. She caught a glimpse of a drape that wouldn’t be in any room other than a bedroom, a shimmer of blue silk. She pushed past Dumas, all sense of etiquette gone, and hurried down the hall.

  Alice was standing in the middle of the bedroom wearing a baby-blue prom dress that was the exact same shade as Cinderella’s ball gown. Her arms were straight, the right hand cupping the left, and her head was tilted slightly to the right. The overall picture was one of supplication.

  It took a moment for Yoko to process what she was seeing. Alice’s skin was the colour of porcelain and her blue eyes were wide and unfocussed. She was obviously dead, yet somehow she was standing upright.

  Yoko looked closer and saw the hooks that Valentino had screwed into the ceiling. She looked closer still and saw the high-tensile translucent fishing wire that had been tied around her wrists and elbows then fed through the ceiling hooks.

  She saw the modified hair band. Valentino had added a chin strap to keep it in place. and there was a hook coming out of the side. The wire from this hook was fastened so that Alice’s head was tilted to the right.

  She saw all this with the rational part of her brain, but what she was really seeing was the illusion that Valentino wanted her to see: Alice Harrigan looking like she was about to walk out of her bedroom to meet her prom date.

  Chapter 6

  Winter looked up from his hands and smiled. This was Yoko’s cue to ask the next question. She’d seen this type of behaviour time and again, and understood the game he was playing.

  It was all about power and control. By setting the pace of the interview he was saying, I’m in charge here. What he was looking for was a reaction. He wanted her to keep asking questions so he could ignore her. He wanted to see her lose her temper. He wanted her to get frustrated.

  How she reacted wasn’t important, all that mattered was that he got a reaction. By sitting here quiet and calm and denying him a reaction she was saying, Actually, buddy, it’s me who’s calling the shots.

  In her own time she said, ‘Do you know how many psychopaths I’ve met?’

  ‘Interesting question. Given what you do, the simple answer is hundreds. Except it’s not that simple, is it?’

  ‘How so?’

  Winter rubbed his hands together and smirked. He had that expression on his face again, the one that gave the impression that this was the best game ever.

  ‘Okay, so some guy beats up another guy in a bar for no apparent reason and he gets labelled a psycho. The thing is, he’s not a psycho, he’s just some asshole with anger management issues. Your actual psychopaths, now that’s a different matter. And pure psychopaths are rarer still. You’re talking about something that might not actually exist.’

  Yoko lit another cigarette. ‘And given what you do, I’m sure you can give me a definition of a psychopath.’

  ‘You mean the murders?’

  ‘No, I’m actually talking about your college degree, but that works as well.’

  Winter glanced at the camera, then suddenly stood up and walked over to the mirror. He tapped the glass and a flat thick thud rang around the room. He gave the occupants on the other side of the glass a cheery wave, then sat back down.

  ‘The Hare Psychopathy Checklist is a twenty-point checklist designed by Canadian researcher Robert D. Hare.’

  He recited this like he was reading from a textbook, talking in the bored dull voice of a teenager who’d been asked to explain something so obvious that it was a struggle to open his mouth, never mind expel enough air to fill out the words.

  Yoko waved her hand, indicating that he should continue, her cigarette tracing a lazy smoke spiral in the air.

  ‘This checklist is split into two further lists that are referred to as factors, and each of those factors is split into two further subgroups. Factor One breaks down into interpersonal and emotional personality traits. That’s where you find the Machiavellian characteristics: the pathological lying, the lack of empathy, all that good stuff. Factor Two breaks down into lifestyle and antisocial behavioural traits. You still with me?’

  Winter smiled at her, and she nodded for him to continue.

  ‘Like I said earlier, there are twenty elements in the checklist. Each element is scored on a three-point scale, zero to two. A zero means it doesn’t apply, and a two means that there is a reasonably good match to the subject.’

  He stopped talking again, and Yoko nodded for him to go on. These pauses were shorter than earlier, which was probably due to the subject matter. What he’d been talking about before was personal, whereas now he was considering concepts and hypotheticals, which was obviously safer ground.

  ‘Okay, a score of thirty or above is indicative of a psychopathic personality, although for research purposes a cut-off score of twenty-five is sometimes used. In fact, a score of twenty-five in the UK is enough to get yourself classed as a psych
opath. They’re not quite so hardcore over there.’

  ‘Very good, Jefferson. I’m guessing you passed that module with flying colours.’

  Winter reached for his Coke and took a sip.

  ‘Your father is an interesting case.’

  ‘I’ve already told you: I have no father.’

  Yoko stared for a second, then continued like he hadn’t spoken. ‘When the Hare Checklist is applied he scores a thirty, which, although high enough to get himself classified as a psychopath, isn’t that spectacular. There are CEOs who score higher.’

  ‘And plenty of movie stars and rock singers, too. Heaven forbid we forget them. Do that, and it might be enough to tip them over the edge. Can you imagine? A lead singer going postal and shooting up the front row with an automatic rifle. That would definitely cause a stir. Look how upset everyone got when Jim Morrison flashed his dick in Florida that time.’

  ‘However,’ she continued, ‘some researchers believe that the elements relating to antisocial behaviour should be removed from the checklist. Now, when you do that something really interesting happens. Your father’s score jumps to a hundred per cent. In other words, your father is a pure psychopath.’

  Winter’s eyes narrowed. His lips were tight, his mouth shut even tighter.

  Yoko wondered if she’d pushed too hard. She reached for her coffee and took a sip. She’d got him talking, but that didn’t mean he wouldn’t clam up again in a heartbeat. She considered what to say next, weighing the pros and cons. Interviewing Winter was like walking a tightrope. One wrong step and you were going to plunge into the abyss. At the same time, if you didn’t take risks and try to move forward then you were never going to get to the other side.

  ‘You do have a father, Jefferson,’ she said finally. ‘Although, given where he resides right now, you might not have one for much longer. Your father talked about you when I went to see him. He told me all about the hunting trips you used to take. He said you were a natural.’

  Winter stared a while longer, then smiled. ‘Where are you going with this? Nature versus nurture, is that it?’

  ‘What do you think?’

  ‘I think that frogs should be wary of helping scorpions to cross rivers.’

  ‘And which one are you, Jefferson?’

  He reached for the Coke can and turned it through another full three hundred and sixty degrees. ‘And how high do I score on your charts, Agent Tanaka? Am I a psychopath?’

  ‘Without a shadow of a doubt.’

  Chapter 7

  They fell into another long silence. Winter was staring at his hands again, while Yoko was staring at the scratched brass Zippo on the top of her cigarette pack, and watching him in her peripheral vision. She was fascinated by how smooth the skin on his hands looked, how wrinkle-free and unblemished it was. Once upon a time, she’d had skin like that.

  Why was it that age showed up on your hands more than any other part of the body? What was that all about? People thought that she looked much younger than forty-two, but that was because they weren’t observant enough. If they bothered to look at her hands, they’d see the truth in every line and wrinkle.

  Faces lied. Hands didn’t.

  Yoko was happy to wait this one out for as long as it took. If Winter wanted to play mind games, that was fine by her. Bring it on. She’d eat him alive.

  While she waited, her thoughts drifted back to that morning. In her mind’s eye she could see the crowd that had gathered on Darnell Avenue. The police barriers were up and there had to be more than a hundred people. And all this had happened during the short time she’d been in Alice Harrigan’s apartment.

  The neighbours who’d been happy to stand by their front doors earlier were now part of the throng, jostling and gawping with the rest. There were plenty of cops milling about. Most were from the Greenbelt Police Department, but there were half a dozen men from the Prince George’s Sheriff’s Office.

  The media were out in force, too. TV, radio and print. The reporters and their technical entourages were fighting it out for the best positions, pushing the locals out of the way.

  Their vans were parked as close as they’d been allowed to get. The larger stations had the bigger vehicles, and bigger logos. CNN and Fox were there, along with a dozen other acronymic news channels. They’d probably camped out in nearby motels, too, so they could get here as soon as the news broke.

  A black coroner’s van was parked opposite the apartment, and a couple of guys with CORONER’S DEPARTMENT on their jackets were hanging around next to it, waiting for the okay to move the body.

  They were in for a long wait. This crime scene was too fresh. Forensics needed to do their thing before the body was released.

  Yoko didn’t condemn the people in the crowd, or the media, since that would be hypocritical. They’d come here to make sense out of the senseless, and, when you got down to it, wasn’t she here for the same reason?

  It was a little after nine, but already warm. The sky was a cloudless blue and there wasn’t any haze to burn off. Today was going to be a hot one. She walked to a nearby tree and stood in the shade for a while, watching and smoking.

  She turned her attention to the mass of people pressing against the barriers. She could have sworn the crowd had got bigger. This didn’t surprise her. Valentino was a big deal, everyone wanted a peek. The fact they wouldn’t see much wasn’t any sort of deterrent. They just wanted to boast to their friends that they’d been here.

  For a while she stood and smoked and studied the crowd. There was an equal number of whites and blacks with the odd Hispanic face thrown in, which was consistent with Greenbelt’s racial demographic.

  There were babies in strollers, octogenarians and everything in-between. People were chatting to each other, as relaxed as if they’d bumped into one another at the grocery store.

  Almost everyone was staring beyond the barriers, trying to see what was happening. Even when they looked away, it wasn’t for long. They might turn and speak to the person beside them, or glance towards the entrance to Darnell Avenue because they’d heard a vehicle, then they’d go back to gawping.

  One kid caught Yoko’s eye because he wasn’t doing any of that. White male, average height, late teens or early twenties. She focussed on a point ten feet to the left of him, just far enough so she could keep him at the edge of her peripheral vision.

  This kid was different from the rest of the crowd, and it wasn’t just the fact that he was acting like he couldn’t care less about what was happening on the other side of the barrier.

  He’d positioned himself in a place where he could get the best view of the crowd, and his eyes were moving from person to person. There was a greedy look on his face, like he was drinking up their reactions and just couldn’t get enough.

  The hairs on the back of her neck were tingling, and there was only room enough in her head for one thought. That’s our guy. It was going around and around inside her brain, making it hard to think straight.

  She stood very still, not wanting to make any sudden movements. Not that it would have made much of a difference. The kid was far too interested in the crowd to pay any attention to her.

  Unfortunately, the angles and distance made it impossible to see his face properly. Yoko wanted to know who she was up against. She wanted to look into his eyes so she could get some idea of what made him tick.

  She always liked to see her opponent.

  Yoko smoked her cigarette slowly, all the way to the butt, then made her way back inside. She found the crime-scene photographer taking pictures of the bath. She told him where the kid was standing, told him to hurry. Told him to pretend like he was James Bond on a secret mission and make sure the kid didn’t work out what he was up to.

  She found Dumas hovering in the bedroom doorway, grim-faced, the stress showing. He was taking this too personally, acting like he wished he could turn back time. Except that wasn’t going to happen. There was nothing anyone could do about Alice Harrigan’s murder. T
hat ship had sailed. Get over it and move on. Like her mother was so fond of saying: what was done was done and couldn’t be undone.

  However, that didn’t mean they couldn’t stop Valentino from killing again.

  ‘I think I’ve found your guy,’ she told him.

  Chapter 8

  When Yoko returned to the here and now, Winter was still giving her the silent treatment. She ordered some more drinks and Detective Dumas brought them in a couple of minutes later. He looked at her with a hopeful expression, and Yoko answered with a small shake of the head.

  His presence would change the whole dynamic in the room, and not for the better. She felt she was making progress with Winter. It was slow going, but it was progress nonetheless.

  Dumas banged the Coke can down in front of the kid, and Yoko knew she’d called this one right. The detective was just too hot-headed to be any use to her right now. The crappy coffee he placed in front of her needed three sugars to render it even close to being drinkable. Dumas left the room and Winter popped the lid of his Coke and took a sip.

  ‘Okay,’ he said, ‘since you’re playing nice cop, what do you want to know?’

  ‘I want to know where you were at three o’clock yesterday afternoon.’

  Winter took another small sip then placed the can back on the table. His eyes were locked on hers. She had his complete and undivided attention.

  This was something she had seen on numerous occasions. There was nothing these assholes liked more than reliving their crimes. And when there was an audience involved? That just made it all the more thrilling.

  ‘I was in Alice’s apartment, waiting in the living room for her to come back from work. I was really looking forward to spending some quality time with her. They say that the feelings diminish after the first one, that you’re forever chasing that original high. Bullshit. For me, it just got better and better.’