Deadly Web

by Michael Omer

Hannah was having trouble concentrating. She’d been awake for twenty-four hours, and even a river of coffee could barely stave off sleep by this point. She was trying to detail the facts of the case to Jacob, but she kept mixing up the names, times, and facts. Jacob’s blue eyes were full of confusion as he tried to untangle the mess.

  “No,” she said. “Fizz was just the bartender’s nickname. His real name is, uh… Theodore.”

  “And who is Damion Cosmatos again?” Jacob asked.

  “He’s the victim’s… Hang on,” Hannah blinked and rubbed her eyes as she checked her notes. “Damion? Uh… Oh! He’s the taxi driver.”

  “The one you called for Fizz?”

  “No, the one who witnessed the suspect escaping.” Her voice was on edge. She knew she was explaining it badly, but she still felt irritated that Jacob wasn’t even trying to telepathically understand what she was trying to say.

  “Good morning,” Mitchell Lonnie said, walking into the squad.

  “Hey, Mitchell,” Hannah said, her heart jumping, or plunging. Perhaps both. She forced herself to meet his eyes and smile calmly as she said, “I’m just filling Jacob in about a murder case we caught last night.”

  Mitchell and Hannah had joined the force together. She’d been promoted to detective before him, but he’d followed her only two months later. They’d gotten along nicely until her screwup in the Jovan Stokes case. Mitchell had reacted badly, snapping at her, and they’d hardly talked for weeks afterward, even though he had apologized several times. Though she had forgiven him, it was harder to forgive herself, and she was never entirely comfortable when he was around.

  Mitchell had thick, wavy black hair, tanned skin, and wide shoulders. Like his sister Tanessa, Mitchell turned heads wherever he went, and Hannah had seen women act like fools in front of him more than once. His green eyes always seemed full of sorrow, giving him the aura of a man who understood people’s pain.

  “Okay,” Mitchell said. He joined them, bending over her notes, his head nearly touching hers. “What do we have?”

  His aftershave reminded Hannah of freshly cut wood and cloves. There was a note to it she couldn’t quite place. Sandalwood, maybe.

  She tried to ignore his close proximity as she once again detailed the murder of Frank Gulliepe. “We have patrol officers watching Chad Grimes’s house in case he gets back,” she said. “He seems to be the primary suspect right now.”

  “What about his family?” Mitchell asked.

  “Haven’t talked to them yet,” Hannah said. “His sister is autistic. She’s hospitalized in a place called the Wexler Center.” She rubbed her eyes again.

  “You should go home and rest,” Mitchell said.

  “Like hell,” Hannah said, snapping her eyes open. “I need to talk to the sister. And I think there’s a girlfriend—”

  “You need to sleep, Hannah,” Jacob said, touching her shoulder gently. “We’ll notify next of kin.”

  She could feel her resolve draining as her shoulders sagged. Jacob didn’t seem to put her on edge like Mitchell did.

  “Fine,” she said. “But if Grimes shows up, you call me and wake me up, okay?”

  Jacob nodded.

  Satisfied, Hannah stood up and turned toward the door, only to suddenly halt in place. Damn, she had totally forgotten about Mikey, the Devin Derkins wannabe. She muttered curses as she sat down, dialing the Sheriff’s office, ignoring Jacob and Mitchell’s stares.

  The cheery voice of someone who’d had a good night’s sleep answered. “Sheriff’s office, this is Yvonne.”

  “Yvonne, this is Detective Hannah Shor,” Hannah said, “Listen, we arrested a drug dealer last night, and put him in our holding cells. Can you send someone to pick him up?”

  “Why didn’t you take him to jail when you arrested him?” Yvonne asked in a testy voice.

  Hannah gritted her teeth, and tried to remind herself that Yvonne was just doing her job, and wasn’t inherently evil. Probably. “We had some issues that needed addressing first,” she said, knowing she had just said a meaningless, unhelpful jumble of words. “Everything is now resolved. Can you pick him up?”

  “What’s the prisoner’s name?” Yvonne asked.

  “Devin Derkins,” Hannah said, thinking about her soft bed.

  “Okay, we’ll send someone over soon.”

  “Thanks, Yvonne,” Hannah said, relieved. She hung up the phone, stood up, and stumbled outside.

  Mitchell was reading his e-mails, trying to avoid thinking about Pauline, and the fact that today was her birthday. She had left him two months before, right in the middle of the Jovan Stokes case, and he was far from over her. She had been the love of his life, and he was still struggling to figure out what went wrong.

  A brief fling he had with an FBI consultant called Zoe helped to ease the pain, but she had left to Boston when the case ended. They had two brief chats on the phone, but neither of them pushed it further, and he hadn’t heard from her for over a month.

  Despite his valiant efforts, memories from her last birthday kept popping into his mind. It had been a rainy day a year ago. He had taken the day off, and they’d spent the entire day snuggling in bed, watching movies and having sex.

  He sighed. Maybe work would keep his mind busy; a murder investigation ought to get the job done. This was technically Hannah and Bernard’s case, but no one expected them both to work on it without any sleep. The first few days of a murder investigation, when the trail was still warm, were crucial; they all usually worked together to solve it. Mitchell and Jacob would naturally pick up the slack.

  Mitchell grabbed Frank Gulliepe’s phone from Hannah’s desk and started methodically extracting information from it.

  To a detective, a phone was a treasure trove. It was amazing how many details about a person’s life one could learn from such a small device. The navigation application gave him Frank’s work address, a place named Yorrick & Rodrick Co. From the call log, Mitchell learned that Frank placed a daily call to the Wexler Center, where his sister was staying. Additionally, he’d spoken with a woman named Lyla several times.

  Frank’s Instagram account had pictures with a woman named Lyla, and Mitchell assumed it was the same one. She was beautiful, with golden-tanned skin and smooth, jet-black hair. She reminded Mitchell of an actress, but he couldn’t remember which one, or point out any movie she’d played in. By browsing Lyla’s own Instagram profile for several minutes, Mitchell determined that her full name was Lyla Harper, and she worked as a waitress at Bill’s Pizzushi Place, whatever that was.

  As Hannah had figured out, Frank had maintained a lot of Twitter accounts which he used to harass several women. Mitchell managed to find some fake Facebook accounts used for similar purposes, as well as seven different e-mail accounts. The amount of hate and venom in the messages of those accounts made Mitchell want to take a shower. He made a list of all the Twitter accounts, Facebook accounts, and e-mail addresses of the harassed women. About half of the harassing accounts were suspended, and he assumed they’d been reported to Twitter.

  The browser history didn’t reveal much. Frank had periodically visited some blogs from his phone, as well as cnn.com. There was nothing else there, but this wasn’t surprising. Many people did most of their browsing from their laptop, tablet, or desktop computer.

  It was a well-known fact in the squad that if anyone knew how to sniff out relevant information from that enormous entity called the internet, it was Mitchell. He would open dozens of tabs on his browsers, scanning multiple profiles, searching for parts that clicked, or digital references that overlapped. Captain Bailey had recently procured him a second monitor for his computer. Now, when he was fishing for information, dragging browser windows across the two monitors, he looked like a criminal mastermind, monitoring the secret agent bumbling around in his evil lair.

  Using Frank’s phone, Mitchell could scan Frank’s friends list on Facebook. He found several connections between that list and the harassed women. There was a
Melanie Foster, who was both a Facebook friend and one of the main targets for Frank’s attacks. Two others were both Facebook friends and victims as well. There was one celebrity comedian, living in a different state, whom Mitchell doubted Frank knew first hand. It seemed Frank targeted women he knew personally and women he didn’t.

  After checking Melanie’s profile, Mitchell established that she and Frank worked in the same place. The connection to the other two Facebook friends wasn’t immediately apparent.

  Lyla Harper, Frank’s current partner, had one shared friend with Melanie. A coincidence? Probably. People had shared friends. In fact, according to Facebook, Mitchell’s cousin was Lyla’s friend as well.

  Somewhere in the background, he heard Jacob speaking. He tuned out the noise, and dug deeper.

  Jacob was talking to Matt on the phone. Matt sounded weary, and Jacob could sympathize. Matt had been woken up in the middle of the night, and had spent the last six hours painstakingly collecting samples from the crime scene and carefully documenting it. Now he was in the laboratory helping to analyze the findings.

  “The killer was careful,” Matt said. “He wiped the doorknob before leaving, and I’m pretty sure he didn’t touch anything else. We have several fingerprints from the apartment; they don’t all belong to the deceased, but I doubt any of them are the killer’s.”

  “Okay,” Jacob said, glancing at Mitchell. The young detective was looking at multiple open browser windows. Recently, Jacob had found himself feeling crippled next to his partner. He could hardly check his own mail, never mind cross-reference different social networks. How long until his supervisors noticed he wasn’t as useful as the other detectives in the squad? These days, it wasn’t enough just to interrogate well, or have a nose for details.

  “The good news is Hannah and Bernard were right,” Matt said. “The killer was waiting in the hallway. We found some scuff marks in the dust where he was hiding. I think he was tapping his foot while he waited.”

  Jacob tensed. “Fingerprints?”

  “No fingerprints, sorry, but he was biting his fingernails. I have a few samples. They definitely belong to someone male. I’m sending those to the lab, see if they get a match in CODIS, but it’ll take some time.”

  “Okay, good,” Jacob said, thinking yet again that CODIS was a really cute name for something that should have been named the great scary big brother who knows us all by our DNA.

  “The pills in the medicine cabinet are definitely Ecstasy,” Matt said. “So this guy was buying drugs.”

  “Yeah,” Jacob said. “We think we know who he was buying them from. Could be the guy who killed him.”

  “Good. Many of the sex toys in his bedroom were used recently. We found some dried bodily fluids on two vibrators and on one of the dildos, and fecal matter on another dildo.”

  “Okay,” Jacob paused for a second to consider the fact that fecal matter on one of the dildos was a reasonable phrase to use in a conversation. “When you say recently…”

  “The past three months.”

  “Right.”

  “At least two different partners.”

  “I see.” Was Frank seeing two women simultaneously? A jilted lover could have motive.

  “According to the triangulation of the blood marks found in the apartment, the victim was standing when he was stabbed. His position in the room was pretty much where we found him. I’ll send you the exact measurements. There are some spots of blood on the floor which probably dripped from the killer’s knife as he was leaving the apartment. I’ll send you their position as well. I found another spot in the hallway.”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “That’s all I have for you so far,” Matt concluded.

  “Thanks, Matt. Keep us updated.” Jacob hung up the phone and got up. He went over to the coffee pot, poured two mugs, and gave one to Mitchell, who thanked him distractedly.

  “We have some fingernails which are almost certainly the killer’s,” Jacob told him. That got Mitchell’s attention.

  “Any fingerprints?” Mitchell asked, turning away from his screens.

  “Afraid not,” Jacob said.

  “Okay,” Mitchell said. “I have the girlfriend’s work address.”

  “The immediate family should be notified,” Jacob said.

  “Parents?” Mitchell asked.

  “I don’t know, but the people at the Wexler Center could probably give us a hand there,” Jacob said.

  “So who first?” Mitchell asked. “Girlfriend or family?”

  Jacob sighed. “Family,” he said unhappily. “We should really start with the family.”

  Chapter Six

  The Wexler Care Center was only five minutes away from Frank Gulliepe’s apartment. Jacob expected a sterile white building, something similar to a hospital, but in fact it was a charming brown brick building, surrounded by lush green grass spotted with trees and small flowerbeds. It stood in clashing contrast with the rest of the neighborhood, which consisted mostly of old decrepit structures covered in graffiti and soot.

  Jacob and Mitchell parked their car and approached the glass front door, which was locked. There was a small intercom to one side, and Jacob pressed the button.

  A voice emanated from the speaker. “Yes?”

  “Police,” Jacob said.

  “Yes, Officer,” the speaker said. “How can I help you?”

  “You could open the door,” suggested Jacob.

  “What is this about?”

  “It’s about a murder investigation.”

  The door buzzed open. Murder investigation seemed to be the secret password.

  The lobby was well-lit, the walls painted light blue, the floor white and clean. There were several pictures on the wall, all of them displaying various bodies of water: a stream, a lake, a sunny beach.

  A woman sat behind a pearl-white front desk. She didn’t wait for them to introduce themselves. “My name is Mrs. Pendergast,” she said, standing up and walking around the desk to stand in front of them. “What is this about, Officers?”

  Mitchell introduced Jacob and himself, as Jacob examined Mrs. Pendergast. She was about forty, with a deep brown complexion, short brown hair, and tight lips. She seemed angry, though Jacob suspected this was her natural expression. People with tight mouths always seemed unhappy. She wore a pearl necklace and large gold earrings. Combined with her name, her appearance gave her an air of aloof superiority which Mitchell frequently saw in low level managers and bad teachers.

  “We’re investigating a murder, Mrs. Pendergast,” Mitchell said. “I believe the sister of a man named Frank Gulliepe is staying here?”

  At the mentioning of Frank, Mrs. Pendergast’s mouth relaxed a bit and her eyes softened. Jacob was impressed by the transformation. She suddenly seemed more like a kindly aunt than an angry headmistress.

  “Of course. Melinda Gulliepe. Is her brother all right?”

  “I’m afraid not, Mrs. Pendergast. He’s dead.”

  She covered her mouth with her hand in horror. “Oh God!” she said, and leaned on the desk. “How did it happen?”

  “We are not at liberty to say,” Jacob said.

  “But… You said it’s a murder investigation, then… then… did someone…” Mrs. Pendergast blinked, tears appearing in her eyes.

  “I understand Frank was here yesterday?” Jacob asked smoothly.

  “Yes. He comes… came here every Tuesday afternoon. He visited his sister.”

  “What was Mr. Gulliepe’s relationship with his sister like?”

  “Oh, he loved her. It’s very rare to see such dedication between siblings. Parents, sure. Most parents regularly come to visit their children here. Sometimes even daily.”

  Jacob briefly imagined having a child in a place like this. The thought was ghastly and he pushed it away, shuddering inwardly.

  “But siblings?” Mrs. Pendergast continued. “Frank was a rare person. Every Tuesday and Thursday, like clockwork. And every other weekend, as well. Melinda w
as dearly loved.”

  “What about their parents?” Mitchell asked.

  “Both their parents are dead,” she answered.

  Mitchell and Jacob exchanged looks. There would be no knocking on Frank’s mother’s door to tell her that her son was dead. In a way, it was a relief.

  “Did Frank seem different yesterday evening?”

  “Well, I wasn’t on shift yesterday, so I didn’t see him,” Mrs. Pendergast answered. “You’d have to ask someone from that shift.”

  “Could you please let us talk with the person in charge of yesterday’s shift?”

  “Well, Dorothy Hobart was in charge… but she had a double shift and was awake all night. I’m sure you don’t want me to wake her up.”

  “Actually,” Jacob said. “If you could wake her up, it would be most helpful. This is a murder investigation.”

  “But I… of course.” Mrs. Pendergast sighed. She pulled a phone from her pocket and dialed, then waited with the phone glued to her ear, clearing her throat every two seconds. Finally, the person on the other side of the call seemed to pick up. “Dorothy? It’s Linda. I’m really sorry to wake you up. I… Yes, it’s nine-thirty. I’m sorry, but the police are here. They say that Frank Gulliepe was killed last night... Yes! It’s terrible. Poor Frank… I know you saw him only yesterday, dear, that’s why I’m calling you. They want to ask a couple of questions.”

  Jacob nodded silently at Mitchell, indicating that he’d take the call. Mrs. Pendergast babbled for several minutes more, then passed the phone to him. “This is Detective Cooper,” he said. “Could I have your name, please?”

  The lady on the other side sounded as if she was weeping. “My name is Dorothy. Dorothy Hobart.”

  “Mrs. Hobart, I’d like to ask you a few questions.”

  “Okay.” Dorothy Hobart said, sniffling.

  “Did Frank seem different yesterday evening? Was he worried, or preoccupied?”

  “No, he was his usual self.”

  “Could you describe what he did during his visit?”

  “Well, I wasn’t exactly following him around. He usually got to the center at about four-thirty, and then spent an hour and a half with his sister.”