Presumed Guilty: (A Jefferson Winter novella)

by James Carol

  ‘What do you think happened here?’ he asked.

  ‘He dressed Alice in a prom dress and strung her up from the ceiling.’

  ‘Okay, but why do that? That’s the really interesting question. Why?’

  ‘He was making a statement. He wants people to sit up and take notice. He’s playing to the crowd.’

  Winter shook his head. ‘Wrong, wrong and wrong.’

  Yoko grabbed him by the arm and spun him around so that he was facing her.

  ‘Okay you little shit. Listen to me, and listen good. I brought you here because I thought you might be able to help us. God knows why I thought that, but I did. Now, so far all I’ve heard is a whole load of subjective speculation. Maybe you’re right, maybe you’re wrong. See, the problem with speculative bullshit like the sort you’re dishing up is that we won’t know if you’re right until Valentino’s in custody, and, by then, who cares?’

  He smiled a smug smile. ‘Get it all out there, Agent. Do I detect a chink in your armour? A crack in the ice maiden’s frozen exterior?’

  ‘Either give me something useful, or we’re leaving and Bubba’s going to have a new best friend to cuddle up to later.’

  ‘Okay, before I tell you how you’re going to solve the case, I need something from you.’

  Yoko’s eyes widened in disbelief. ‘You’re negotiating with me!’

  He nodded. ‘And the good news is that it isn’t that big an ask. All I want is to go along for the ride when you arrest this guy. Unless you count this morning, I’ve never seen an actual arrest. And that one doesn’t really count since my view of events was skewed by the way that cop was forcing me to eat the carpet. I’m curious to see how it goes down.’

  ‘No way.’

  ‘In that case, come find me when victim five turns up and we can discuss this again. Let’s see if that changes your mind. I’m betting it will. There’s nothing like a fresh corpse to give you a new perspective.’

  She glared at him. ‘I’m already in all sorts of trouble because of you. How much more trouble do you think I’d be in if I shot you? I’ll tell you. No more trouble. In fact, Dumas will probably be first in line to shake my hand.’

  ‘But what about poor Bubba? Won’t he get lonely?’

  Yoko glared some more, then headed for the door. She was shaking her head and cursing under her breath. Winter started slow-clapping in time with her footsteps.

  ‘Bravo, Agent Tanaka! Nice bit of acting. Now, how about you get back over here so we can solve this case.’

  She stopped in the doorway, did a smart about-turn, then walked back.

  ‘What gave it away?’

  ‘You over-cooked it a little. There’s no way you’re going to blow your cool like that. You’re way too much of a control freak. “You little shit”, that’s the sort of thing Dumbass would say.’

  Yoko nodded. ‘Yeah, you’re right.’

  He held out his hand. ‘I tell you how to catch this guy, you take me along for the ride when you arrest him.’

  She stared at his hand for a second, then shook it.

  ‘Promise and cross your heart?’

  ‘Don’t push it.’

  Winter walked over to the middle of the room and looked up at the hook holes in the ceiling.

  ‘You said earlier that the bad guy strung Alice up from the ceiling. I take it he did the same thing with the other victims too.’

  Yoko nodded.

  ‘And I’m guessing this was one of those details that you cops love to withhold from the media.’

  Another nod.

  ‘And your average woman weighs, what? A hundred and sixty pounds, give or take? That’s a lot of weight to be hanging from the ceiling. The hooks were pretty big, right? And they were screwed into the joists. They’d have to be to hold the girls up.’

  ‘The hooks were fairly substantial,’ she confirmed. ‘And, yes, they were screwed into the joists.’

  Winter nodded to himself like this was all making sense. ‘Have you tried to screw a hook into a solid piece of wood? It’s hard work. And I’m talking about a small hook here. Hooks the size this guy used, that’s going to be harder still. You’re going to need to drill pilot holes.’

  ‘But a drill’s going to make noise. Someone would have heard something.’ Yoko shook her head. ‘None of the neighbours at any of the crime scenes mentioned hearing a drill.’

  He smiled. ‘A cordless drill set on a slow speed won’t make that much noise. That said, I’m kind of with you on this one Agent. I don’t think he used an electric drill, but what about a hand drill? Yes it’s going to take longer, but it’ll still get the job done. This guy’s got plenty of patience. There’s something else you can add to your profile.’

  Yoko stared up at the ceiling. She was imagining the unsub standing on a chair, working slowly and methodically with a hand drill. What the kid was saying made a lot of sense.

  ‘Did you see Alice?’ asked Winter.

  She nodded.

  ‘And all the girls were slightly above average height? Five-six? Five-seven?’

  Another nod.

  He disappeared from the room, leaving Yoko to wonder what he was up to now. She heard him rummaging around in the kitchen, heard the clink and clang of banging metal. He returned thirty seconds later with a large pot and placed it on the floor directly beneath the hook marks.

  ‘Stand on the pot,’ he said.

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Because you’re too short.’

  She shrugged. Ask a stupid question. She kicked off her shoes and stood on the upturned pot, feeling ridiculous.

  ‘Close your eyes and picture Alice when you first saw her. Try and see her as clearly as you can. Every detail. Where were her arms? Where was she looking? Were her legs together or apart?’

  Yoko hesitated, and Winter said, ‘Just humour me.’

  As soon as she closed her eyes, it was like she was reliving that awful moment from this morning all over again. There was Alice Harrigan all dressed up for the prom. Skin the colour of porcelain. Eye’s wide and unfocussed.

  She took a deep breath and tried to push past the horror, tried to picture the scene from Valentino’s point of view.

  She noted the way Alice’s head was bowed, and the way she was cradling her left hand in her right.

  She noted the way her feet were placed.

  She noted how the overall picture was one of supplication, like a pilgrim standing before a saint.

  She noted how Valentino had made Alice appear weak so he would appear more powerful.

  She also noted how this case was getting under her skin more than any other case she’d worked in a long time, and blamed Jefferson Winter. Dealing with the sorts of monsters that she dealt with, every day you added more scar tissue to your soul. Do this long enough and your soul ended up completely covered.

  The thing with scar tissue was that it stopped the pain getting through, and that was a good thing. The novocaine numbness at her core was what made it possible to do this job without going crazy.

  But this kid had somehow managed to scratch through that toughened rawhide exterior. Just enough to make her soul bleed a little. Yoko wasn’t sure whether she should hate him or thank him.

  ‘Open your eyes and stand exactly how Alice was standing when you found her.’

  It took time, but eventually Yoko reached a pose she was happy with. She stood there under Winter’s scrutiny, her left hand cupping her right, her head bowed slightly, feeling even more ridiculous and self-conscious than ever.

  Winter nodded to himself like he approved of what he was seeing. That faraway look was back on his face, and for a brief, terrifying moment Yoko could almost believe it was Valentino standing in front of her. Then he spoke and that broke the spell.

  ‘You know, I hate nicknames, but you were right about calling this one Valentino. He really is an old romantic. A real charmer.’

  ‘Can I get down?’

  ‘Not quite yet.’

  He moved
closer and gently took her arms in his hands. Yoko flinched and resisted, and he whispered that it was okay, that she should trust him. He was talking to her like he was comforting an injured animal.

  She was surprised at the tenderness in his voice. She was even more surprised that she was actually buying what he was saying, that, for now at least, she did trust him. He lifted her arms up, kept lifting until they were high enough to duck underneath. He let go and her arms draped down over his shoulders.

  ‘Relax,’ he whispered. ‘You’re dead, remember.’

  Yoko exhaled and let her body go limp. Her hands came to rest on the top part of his back. Her head came to rest on his shoulder.

  He smelled of five and a half hours spent in a police interview room, and she reckoned she probably didn’t smell much better. She felt vulnerable, being this close to him. At the same time she felt safe, wanted. It was a peculiar contradiction that she didn’t understand.

  ‘What do you do at proms, Agent Tanaka?’ he whispered in her ear.

  To start with she didn’t get what the kid was driving at. And then it all became clear. For a split second she saw the world through Valentino’s eyes.

  ‘You dance,’ she whispered back.

  Winter started humming a gentle slow-dance melody, and for a while they swayed together in time with music that only they could hear.

  Chapter 21

  Yoko couldn’t take her eyes off the cooking pan. She was sitting on the edge of the bed, Winter beside her. He was close enough so she knew he was there, but not so close that he invaded her personal space. It showed a degree of empathy she wouldn’t have expected from someone so young. A degree of empathy she certainly wouldn’t have expected from a psychopath.

  The last five minutes had left her feeling unclean and somehow violated. It was as though Winter had taken her inside Valentino’s head and given her the full tour. She’d given lectures where she’d talked at length about getting inside the minds of serial killers, and she’d thought that’s what she did.

  She was wrong.

  Winter had taken her deeper than she’d ever been, deeper than she ever wanted to go again. She needed a cigarette, badly. But that would mean standing up and putting her shoes back on and going outside, and that wasn’t about to happen any time soon.

  ‘The way the bodies were posed was never for our benefit,’ she said.

  ‘Do you understand now?’

  ‘I think so.’ She paused then added, ‘How do you do it, Jefferson?’

  ‘I don’t know.’ A shrug, a shake of the head. ‘Honestly, I don’t have a clue.’

  She glanced over and saw that he was telling the truth. At least, he believed what he was saying, which amounted to the same thing.

  ‘I’m sorry. It can’t be easy.’

  He shrugged again, then said, ‘You’re looking for a puppeteer. A real-life one, I mean. He’ll be medium height and build, shy, socially awkward. He feels powerless in the real world, but in his fantasy world he’s God. He pulls the strings and his puppets dance to his tune.’

  ‘White male, late thirties or early forties?’

  A nod and a dry brittle laugh. ‘Yeah, you got that much right. Up until recently he was living at home with either his mother or father. In late March, early April that parent died, leaving him alone. That was the trigger. Fantasy merged into reality, and before you know it you’ve got four dead bodies on your hands.’

  ‘We need to look outside Prince George’s County,’ said Yoko. ‘That’s why the murders were clustered to the north of the county. He hopped over the county line, performed his kills then headed home. The border creates the illusion of safety. If the kills take place in Prince George’s County, that’s where you’re going to look, right?’

  Another nod. ‘Limit your search to a twenty-mile radius of Hyattsville, since that’s where the first murder happened. I’d be surprised if you don’t get any hits, but in the unlikely event you don’t, widen the search parameters by five miles at a time until you do. He is out there. It’s only a matter of time before you find him.’

  Yoko somehow found the energy to stand up and put her shoes back on and walk outside. Just being in the fresh air made it easier to breathe again. She could actually feel that raw place on her soul scabbing over.

  The same cop was on the door, and he looked as bored as earlier. The crime-scene investigators were milling around their vans. The lead investigator saw her and called over to ask if she was done. Yoko called back that she was, then lit a cigarette.

  ‘You really should quit those things.’ Winter stopped alongside her. ‘They’ll kill you, you know.’

  ‘It’s on my to-do list.’ She took another drag. ‘I’ll drive you back to College Park.’

  Winter snorted. ‘You’re not getting rid of me that easily. The way this works is that you’re taking me back to Upper Marlboro, and you’re going to drop me off at a diner. I’m going to order a burger and fries and a large Coke, and by the time I’ve finished you guys will have worked out who the unsub is and we can go and arrest him. Now that I’ve narrowed it down, even Detective Dumbass shouldn’t have too much trouble figuring out who he is.’

  ‘You’ve got it all worked out.’

  ‘And that surprises you?’

  The doors of the Crown Victoria unlocked with a thunk-click, and they climbed inside and fastened their seat belts. Yoko opened her window a crack to let the smoke escape and turned the key.

  Winter nodded to the cigarette. ‘Would you mind putting that out?’

  ‘Yes, Jefferson, I would mind.’

  She took another drag, then pulled away from the kerb.

  Chapter 22

  It took a little under an hour to track down Valentino and get another arrest warrant issued. Winter was halfway through his second Coke when Yoko arrived to pick him up.

  The list of puppeteers working within a twenty-mile radius of Hyattsville was short. The list of puppeteers in that area who’d lost a parent four months ago was shorter still. There was just one name.

  Calvin Fitzgerald held both a Maryland driver’s licence and a US passport. By cross-referencing the details held by the two issuing departments, a picture emerged of a forty-three-year-old white male who was five foot eight and bald.

  Calvin lived in Jessup, in neighbouring Anne Arundel County. The town was nineteen miles from Hyattsville, a short hop north along the 295. His mother died when he was thirteen and he’d been brought up by his father. He had never married, and had never moved out of his childhood home.

  No girlfriends. No boyfriends.

  His father died on 31 March, the night of the full moon. He’d been battling cancer for the best part of three years. Calvin had nursed him through to the end. Next full moon, he killed for the first time.

  Yoko lit a cigarette and Winter made a face. They were parked on Hargrove Avenue, an affluent neighbourhood made up of large detached properties. Tree-lined and tidy and no cars parked at the kerb, because everyone had a driveway and a double garage.

  Up until his retirement in 1994, Calvin’s father had been a dentist with his own practice. Financially, they were comfortable. No mortgage, no debts, a steady income from Fitzgerald Senior’s stock investments. Calvin had inherited everything.

  The Fitzgerald house was three-quarters of the way along the street. It stood out because it was the only one that didn’t have an immaculately cut front lawn. The paintwork was in need of a touch-up, too. Yoko guessed these were the sort of details that got pushed to one side when you were busy dying.

  ‘We’re here to watch,’ she said. ‘Understand?’

  ‘I understood the first time you said it. And the second time. And the five hundred and sixty-seventh time.’

  ‘Now you’re exaggerating.’

  ‘Sit, watch, don’t move. I get it. Genius-level IQ, remember? This isn’t exactly rocket science.’

  The radio was tuned to the Prince George’s Sheriff’s Office frequency. A crackle of static, then Charl
ie Dumas’s excited voice filled the air. ‘We’re good to go. I repeat, we’re good to go.’

  Four police cruisers came thundering down Hargrove Avenue and screeched to a halt in front of the Fitzgerald house. A fifth car turned across the street behind them, blocking the road, and a sixth did the same thing at the other end of the street.

  Four of the cars had Prince George’s Sheriff’s Office markings. The other two were decorated with the livery of the Anne Arundel Sheriff’s Office.

  Charlie Dumas led the charge. Geographical constraints be damned, this was his arrest and no amount of politics was going to stop him having his moment of glory.

  Yoko was happy to take a back seat and let him take the credit. The recognition she’d craved earlier didn’t seem important any more, not after what had happened at Alice Harrigan’s apartment. It was going to take a while to process that one.

  Dumas reached the front door first and stood aside while a cop broke it down with a battering ram. Yoko counted sixteen cops in all. Guns drawn, they disappeared into the house.

  Two minutes later they were out again. The only difference was that there were now seventeen people rather than sixteen. Calvin Fitzgerald was at the front of the procession, walking in front of Dumas. His hands were cuffed behind his back, and the way his head was bowed reminded Yoko of the way his victims had been posed.

  She was about to turn around and congratulate Winter when she heard the rattle of the passenger door handle. She reached out to grab his arm, but was too late. The door slammed open, banging all the way back on its hinges, and he was gone. She swore, fumbled the door open, flicked her cigarette away and broke into a run.

  He was already ten yards ahead, sprinting for the Fitzgerald house, the distance between them widening all the time. Yoko cursed the fact that her legs were so short, cursed the fact that she smoked. It didn’t matter how hard she ran, the kid was getting further away with every stride. It was like trying to chase down a racehorse.

  The cops coming out of the house became aware that something unscripted was happening. Dumas was first to react. He came to a stop and grabbed Calvin’s arm, just in case his prize was tempted to make a run for it.