Presumed Guilty: (A Jefferson Winter novella)

by James Carol

  Chapter 17

  Yoko hurried outside, hoping she wasn’t too late. She’d asked Dumas for directions to the nearest pharmacy, and when he’d asked if she was okay, she’d uttered four words that could strike fear into the heart of any man: I got my period. She’d opened her mouth as though she was about to go into graphic detail, and Dumas had quickly reeled off a list of directions that she promptly forgot.

  She stood in front of the station house, hand above her eyes to shield them from the sun, and looked around for Winter. There were plenty of reporters, but no sign of the kid. She swore to herself and ran to the parking lot.

  Chrysler Way was right out on the edge of Upper Marlboro, too remote to be on a bus route. The kid would have to walk into town to catch a bus back to College Park, which worked to her advantage.

  Yoko climbed into her Crown Victoria, started the car, hit the gas and reversed out of the slot. She stopped at the entrance to the lot and saw Winter sitting on the kerb a couple of hundred yards away.

  His ass was on the pavement, his feet on the asphalt, and he was nodding in time to a piece of music. He was sat there like had all the time in the world. Yoko hit the blinker and turned into the street.

  When she’d got to within twenty yards, she noticed that the jacket and baseball cap he was wearing were decorated with sheriff’s department badges. She also noticed that he didn’t have any earbuds in.

  The way he was sat there nodding and staring blankly into space made her think of a doped-up asylum inmate. Just when she thought this kid couldn’t get any weirder, he did.

  She pulled over to the kerb and he stopped nodding. He jumped to his feet, stripped off the cap and the jacket and dumped them on the sidewalk. Then he let himself in the passenger side and got buckled up.

  Yoko was staring past him at the baseball cap and jacket.

  ‘What? Didn’t you see all those reporters?’ he asked. ‘If they’d worked out who I was, they’d have been all over me in no time. The disguise worked like a charm. I breezed straight past them and no one suspected a thing.’

  Yoko was still staring.

  ‘You’re pissed because I borrowed a hat and a coat? I think you need to get some perspective here, Agent. There’s a bad guy out there who likes to play bedroom games with his fun-buddies then leave them dangling from the ceiling, and you’re worried about that.’

  ‘First off, you didn’t borrow them, you stole them. Secondly, pick them up.’

  ‘Seriously?’

  ‘Seriously.’

  Winter laughed and shook his head. He got out of the car, dumped the baseball cap and jacket on the rear seat, then got back in.

  ‘There’s no excuse for littering,’ Yoko said with a completely straight face. There wasn’t even a hint of a smile.

  ‘So, where’s Detective Dumbass?’

  Yoko ignored the question. ‘Okay, Jefferson, here’s how this works. I’m going to drive you to Alice Harrigan’s apartment. You can have a look around but you don’t touch anything. Not a thing. You do what I tell you, jump when I say jump, breathe only when I tell you to breathe. You need to take a leak, you cross your legs. Nod if you understand.’

  He smiled then nodded.

  ‘One more thing. If you are screwing with me then I’ll find a federal offence to charge you with and you will do prison time. Someone like you, you’d get eaten alive in a federal prison. Am I making myself clear, because I’d hate there to be any room for misinterpretation. Remember: Bubba’s out there waiting, and he’s real anxious to meet his new buddy.’

  ‘Are you quite finished, Agent Tanaka?’

  ‘Yes, Jefferson, I’m quite finished.’

  ‘Detective Dumbass doesn’t know you’re here, does he?’

  ‘No, Detective Dumas does not know I’m here.’

  The kid’s smile was wider than ever. ‘Oh, this is so cool. You’ve got that whole ice-maiden thing down to an art, but scratch away at the surface and there’s a bad, bad girl lurking just beneath.’

  Yoko almost smiled. She managed to reel it back in at the very last second. ‘No, Jefferson, this is anything but cool. And whenever you start thinking this is some sort of game, just remember that Bubba’s waiting, and he’s so lonely.’

  Winter laughed, his face lighting up. For once he looked his real age. ‘You know, I’m really starting to warm to you.’

  ‘I wish I could say the feeling was mutual.’

  They drove the twenty-one miles to Greenbelt in silence.

  *

  Traffic was light, and thirty minutes later they turned into Darnell Avenue. Yoko stopped outside Alice Harrigan’s apartment and killed the engine.

  There were three police vehicles on the street: a sheriff’s department car and a couple of black vans belonging to the crime-scene investigators. There were a couple of TV vans, but nowhere near as many as earlier. The rest of the pack was back in Upper Marlboro, since that was where they thought the kid was.

  She looked over at Winter. ‘Remember what I said. When I tell you to jump, you jump.’

  ‘Yeah, yeah, I heard you the first time. It’s not like you’re talking to some kid.’

  ‘Actually, that’s exactly what you are. A nineteen-year-old snot-nosed kid who’s way too smart for his own good.’

  He made a sad puppy-dog face. ‘I’m hurt, Agent Tanaka. Really and truly hurt.’

  ‘Sure you are.’ She nodded to the media vans. ‘You’re going to need that baseball cap.’

  She got out of the car and he caught up with her at the entrance to the apartment block. He had the baseball cap tipped forward, hiding his scruffy black hair and those bright green eyes. The cop on the door was checking her ID, scrutinising it like he actually knew what he was looking at.

  ‘Who’s this?’ he asked with a nod towards Winter.

  ‘Someone who’s helping with the case.’

  ‘ID please.’

  Winter shrugged. ‘Must have left it in my other jeans.’

  ‘I’m under strict instructions not to let anyone in without seeing their ID.’

  Yoko glanced at the name tag above the Prince George’s Sheriff’s Office patch.

  ‘Officer Brownlow,’ she said, ‘as you can imagine Chief Detective Dumas is pretty busy at the moment. Now, if you want, I can call him and tell him we have a problem here. I’m sure he’d appreciate that.’ Yoko moved her head until the cop was forced to meet her eye. ‘Do we have a problem?’ she asked sweetly.

  The cop thought about this for all of two seconds, then said, ‘No, Ma’am, we don’t have a problem.’

  Yoko took her ID back and walked inside, Winter following at her shoulder.

  ‘You’re a bad, bad girl,’ he whispered.

  Because Winter couldn’t see her face, Yoko allowed herself the slightest of smiles.

  Chapter 18

  ‘Anyone home?’

  Yoko stood in the doorway of Alice Harrigan’s apartment, watching as four white-suited crime-scene investigators appeared from various rooms. She left it a moment to make sure no one else was about to appear, then flashed her badge and asked if they could give her a few minutes.

  The door had just closed behind the investigators when her cellphone rang. She fished it out, checked the caller ID, saw it was Charlie Dumas. She told Winter to stand still and keep his mouth shut, then hit the button to connect the call.

  ‘It doesn’t take forty minutes to make a round trip to the pharmacy.’ Dumas sounded pissed, and understandably so.

  ‘It does when you’ve got a lousy sense of direction.’

  ‘Which you don’t. You’re in Greenbelt, aren’t you? You’re at Alice Harrigan’s place with Winter.’

  ‘He says he can help. What have we got to lose?’

  ‘We’ve already wasted more than enough time with this kid. Too much time.’

  Winter started walking along the hall, and Yoko covered the mouthpiece of the phone and hissed for him to come back. He ignored her and kept walking.

 
‘Look, Detective, I really don’t have time for this. I’ll be back in Upper Marlboro in an hour. If you want to pursue this, do it then.’

  Yoko hung up and hurried after Winter. She found him standing in the middle of the living room with his eyes shut. His breathing was shallow and he looked completely relaxed. His face was blank and emotionless.

  ‘I told you to wait in the hall.’

  Eyes still shut, Winter pressed a finger to his lips. Ten seconds passed, twenty seconds, thirty. He opened his eyes.

  ‘Okay, show me the bathroom.’

  ‘Remember: Bubba’s waiting.’

  ‘And I’d like you to remember that the more distractions I have, the harder it is to do my thing.’

  ‘And what exactly is your thing?’

  ‘Later. Bathroom, please.’

  Yoko led the way and, while Winter went inside, she hung around in the doorway. The bathroom was tiny, four feet by six. It was almost as tiny as hers. If they’d both been in there, they would have been tripping over each other.

  Winter took a quick look around, then stood completely still, eyes closed. Again, Yoko was left wondering if he could get any weirder. At school she’d always been the odd one out, so she knew about weird, but this kid really was out there.

  Winter opened his eyes and said, ‘Bedroom, please.’

  Yoko shook her head and wondered what the hell she’d been thinking. This was such a waste of time. They weren’t going to get anything useful, and Dumas was going to complain to her boss because she’d gone behind his back, and that would be yet another black mark on her record.

  ‘It’s okay, I know what I’m doing,’ Winter said, as if he could read her thoughts.

  ‘I’m yet to be convinced.’

  ‘By the way, where’s your partner? I thought it was mandatory for all FBI agents to have a partner.’

  ‘That’s because you watch too much TV.’

  He studied her. It was like they were back at the station house again. The big difference was that there wasn’t a one-way mirror between them this time.

  ‘Nobody wants to play with you,’ he finally said. ‘That’s it, isn’t it?’

  ‘Just do your thing, and let’s get out of here. Unless you’ve got something that appertains to the case, I don’t want to hear it.’

  Winter snapped off a sharp salute. ‘Yes Ma’am.’

  Yoko sighed and shook her head and led the way to the bedroom. Winter went through the same song and dance as before. During his visual inspection he spent a long time examining the ceiling. The crime-scene investigators had removed the hooks but it was clear where they’d been screwed in.

  Once he’d finished looking around, he shut his eyes and just stood there absorbing the room. A couple of minutes passed. From time to time his eyelids flickered as if he was dreaming.

  He opened his eyes. ‘This is so cool, but do you know what would have been even cooler? Having the body in situ. That would have been awesome.’

  Yoko just stared, mouth slightly open, a perplexed expression on her face as though she couldn’t believe what she was hearing, which she couldn’t. For once, she was at a complete loss for words.

  ‘Okay, Agent Tanaka, would you like to know what really went on here?’

  Chapter 19

  ‘We know what went on.’

  ‘No, you think you know what went on. Which is a whole different ball game. If you actually knew, then you would have caught this guy by now. You haven’t, therefore you don’t know.’

  ‘So, what do you think happened?’

  ‘A courtship.’

  Yoko waited for Winter to expand on this. He didn’t. Instead, he walked back to the living room. She stood alone in the bedroom for a second, then followed.

  The kid was playing to the gallery and, since she was that gallery, and she was here, and she didn’t have anything better to do for the next five minutes, she decided to humour him.

  ‘This is where Act One took place.’ He said. ‘This is where he asks Alice out on a date.’

  ‘Asks her out.’

  Winter turned and glared at her. ‘It’s your turn to speak only when spoken to. If you want to catch this guy, that is.’

  ‘And you’re that sure of yourself.’

  He nodded. ‘Yes I am.’

  Yoko dipped her head slightly in a gesture of mock contrition that was filled with sarcasm. ‘Please continue.’

  ‘This is where he asked Alice out.’

  He watched her closely when he said this. Yoko stood completely still, mouth shut tight.

  ‘When she arrives home, he’s waiting here for her. Alice comes into the living room and he uses a stun gun to incapacitate her.’

  ‘Not a Taser?’

  Winter shook his head. ‘Remember, this is about wooing her. He wants to get up close and personal. With a stun gun he needs to be right next to her. Close enough to smell her. A Taser would be too impersonal because he’d be too far away.’

  Yoko nodded. ‘The first three victims had injuries that were consistent with a stun gun. We haven’t had Alice’s autopsy report yet, but I’m not anticipating any change to Valentino’s MO. Not at this stage. What happens next?’

  ‘Next, he uses duct tape to gag Alice. The last thing he wants is for any neighbours to hear any suspicious noises. Then he cuts Alice’s clothing off.’

  Yoko raised an eyebrow and shook her head slowly from side to side. ‘We haven’t seen any evidence of that.’

  ‘He cuts the clothing off because he needs Alice naked before the effects of the stun gun wear off. Have you tried to undress someone when their arms and legs are bound with duct tape? It’s impossible. So he cuts off her clothes. It’s the only explanation.’

  Winter stopped talking and stood completely still, a distant look on his face. ‘Okay, the reason you haven’t found any evidence is because he takes the damaged clothing with him. He feels guilty. He feels that by ruining Alice’s clothes, he’s somehow disrespecting her.’

  ‘Given some of the other things he does, I’d say a few ruined items of clothing isn’t that big a deal.’

  Winter sighed. ‘Yes, but you’re not the unsub. You look at this crime scene and all you see is violence and hatred.’

  ‘And you don’t?’

  ‘What I see is irrelevant. The only thing that matters is what the unsub sees. For him, this is all about love.’

  ‘You have got to be kidding.’

  A slow shake of the head. ‘I’ve never been more serious.’

  He moved to the bathroom and stood in the doorway.

  ‘I carry her in here and place her gently into the bath. I’m moving quickly because I want her dead before she wakes up. If she wakes up that would spoil everything. This has nothing to do with her suffering and everything to do with my pleasure.’

  Yoko noted the change from third person to first and it was impossible to stop the shivers running through her body. The kid’s face had changed, too, the muscles tightening, the eyes narrowing. It was almost as if he was turning into a different person right in front of her. The overall effect was creepy.

  ‘I slash her femoral artery because that’s the most efficient way for her to bleed out. Then I hack her heart from her chest. I use a big knife because it’s fast and efficient. I want to get this part over and done with as quickly as possible so we can get on to the real fun.’

  Winter snapped out of his trance as suddenly as he’d gone into it. He smiled at Yoko. ‘By the way, he doesn’t eat their hearts. I was just messing with you there. You think he keeps them as trophies, right? You think that’s how you’re going to nail him?’

  Yoko nodded.

  ‘Well, there you go, something we agree on. I’m also guessing that in your scenario he gets them out of the bath and takes them straight to the bedroom.’

  Yoko nodded again.

  Winter sucked in a sharp breath that whistled between his teeth. He shook his head. ‘I’m afraid, you’re wrong there. Now that he’s asked her
out, and she’s said yes, we move on to Act Two. Going steady. The first thing he does is get Alice cleaned up. He washes the blood away then he gives her a bath. He soaps her down, washes her hair. He spends ages on her hair.’

  ‘Then what?’

  Winter went quiet long enough for Yoko to wonder if he’d heard the question. His eyes took on that faraway look again.

  ‘Now we hang out for a while. I dress her up in some casual clothes. Some sweats and a T-shirt. We watch some TV. Reruns of Friends, that sort of thing. Chick TV. We chat and chill and have a good time. I do her hair. Brush it through and blow dry it because I want her to look her best later. Then we make out. We quickly move from first to second base. For third base we move into the bedroom. Somewhere along the line we pass the point of no return and consummate the relationship.’

  Yoko felt sick, the room felt too small. Part of it was the fact that the bathroom was claustrophobically tiny, but mostly she was completely creeped out by this kid. It took a lot to shock her, but right now she wanted to be as far away from him as possible.

  ‘How did you know about that?’ she asked. ‘We were very careful to keep that out of the press.’

  He snapped out of his trance, looked at her like he couldn’t quite work out who she was, then said, ‘You told me.’

  ‘I’m sure I didn’t. It’s the sort of thing I’d remember.’

  ‘You did, you just didn’t realise.’

  ‘Explain.’

  ‘It’s common knowledge that he cuts out their hearts, so I asked myself what could be worse than that. I came up with a couple of theories, then, when we were chatting back in the interview room I used your reactions to lead me to the correct answer.’

  ‘Not buying.’

  ‘Because you don’t give anything away? Because you keep those cards tight to your chest?’ Winter shook his head. ‘Agent Tanaka, I can read you like a book. Anyway, let’s move on to Act Three. Prom Night.’

  Chapter 20

  Winter glanced up at the holes in the ceiling as they walked into the bedroom.