Watch Me (Jefferson Winter 2)

by James Carol

  But this unsub wasn’t motivated by money. His motivation was much darker. It wasn’t enough for someone to die in the most hideous way imaginable, he needed the validation of an audience. And what better audience than one made up of the people who were hunting him? He wanted to rub our noses in it. He wanted us to acknowledge his genius. He was saying that he was cleverer than us.

  He was wrong.

  The first film clip had been the equivalent of a movie trailer, a way to grab our attention. And it had worked. Every cop in Eagle Creek was here. Every cop except one.

  They all screwed up eventually. All of them.

  00:00:18.

  The room had been quiet when I’d first got there. It was even quieter now. Everybody sat completely still, staring at the screen, waiting for something to happen. Willing something to happen. The only other time I’d ever known a roomful of cops to be this quiet was when news came through that the body of a kid had been found. That produced a different kind of silence, though. A stunned silence. This silence was anticipatory.

  00:00:03.

  I watched the three turn into a two. An eternity passed and the two turned into a one. Everyone was holding their breath and leaning forward.

  The one turned into a zero.

  33

  Nothing happened.

  I stared at the line of zeros on the laptop. Turned my head to look at the distorted numbers on the big screen at the front of the room. Back to the laptop again. Wherever I looked, I was seeing the exact same thing. Two zeros followed by a colon, then another two zeros followed by another colon, and then the last two zeros.

  00:00:00.

  Time passed and still nothing happened.

  Three seconds, four seconds, five.

  ‘Now that I wasn’t expecting,’ I murmured.

  ‘What the hell is this?’ Shepherd muttered beside me.

  And then all hell broke loose. Suddenly everyone was up and moving and talking at the same time. It was like a dam had burst. The tension just let go in one huge rush. After so much silence and stillness, all that sudden movement and noise was an assault on the senses.

  ‘I don’t get it,’ said Shepherd. ‘Why go to all this trouble? It makes no sense.’

  ‘The link to the website and the film clip, that was sent by email, right? Maybe the unsub’s going to contact us the same way again.’

  ‘Good idea.’ Shepherd sat down in front of the laptop and went to work.

  It wasn’t a good idea, though. Not even close. Even as I’d made the suggestion, I knew it wasn’t going to help. The unsub’s first film had been all about getting an audience. He’d got his audience but, for whatever reason, he’d chickened out of his grand reveal.

  If he had followed through, someone else would be going up in flames right now, and there’d be a crowd of cops staring slack-jawed at the screen. He would have posted the film on the countdown website. He would have talked to his guy in Mumbai or the Philippines or wherever and arranged it so that when the countdown hit zero the clock would have disappeared, and been replaced with the new film.

  But for some reason that hadn’t happened. Why? What had gone wrong? Because something must have gone very wrong, something significant enough for the unsub to pull the plug on a plan that he’d been putting together for a very long time.

  ‘Nothing on email,’ Shepherd called out. ‘But maybe that’s because he hasn’t got around to sending it yet.’

  I shook my head. ‘Keep checking, but I’m telling you now that you’re not going to get anything. That countdown was an absolute. The clock hits zero and something has to happen. That’s how it works. It’s like when an illusionist makes the girl disappear. The impact comes from the girl reappearing on the balcony at the exact moment the box is opened. Making her disappear is easy, getting the reveal right, now that’s where the real skill comes in. There’s no point in the girl reappearing ten minutes later, or an hour later when everybody’s gone home.’

  ‘So what now?’

  ‘I don’t know about you, but I’m going to go and get some sleep. I’m exhausted. A few hours’ shut-eye and I can come at this thing fresh tomorrow.’

  Shepherd looked disappointed, like this wasn’t the answer he was expecting.

  ‘There is a bright side,’ I added. ‘At least nobody else died.’

  ‘I guess that’s something’

  ‘It’s definitely something. One less victim is always going to be a reason to celebrate.’

  I said goodnight and left the conference room then retraced my way back to the main entrance, the noise of fifty people speculating and theorising and getting nowhere fast dulling into the background. Outside, I lit a cigarette. The flicker of the Zippo flame made me think of Sam Galloway, and again I wondered what the hell was going on. What had happened to make the unsub abort?

  I clicked the lighter closed and stared up at the night sky as though the answers might be hidden up there, somewhere in the infinity of space. That cool breeze was still blowing up from the south, a blessing after the fierce heat of the day. The moon was big and bright enough to dim the stars. Even so, there were plenty of stars up there. This was a country sky rather than a city sky. A big sky. The light pollution levels out here weren’t high enough to steal the stars.

  The station-house doors banged open. I turned expecting to see Taylor, but instead of a six-and-a-half-foot tall black giant, I was looking at a five-foot-ten white septuagenarian wearing a black silk shirt and a black Stetson. Jasper Morgan came over, arm outstretched. We shook.

  ‘You’re Jefferson Winter?’

  ‘And I’m guessing you’re the Glenmorangie guy.’

  He smiled at that. ‘It’s a good whisky.’

  ‘It’s a very good whisky.’

  ‘You’re being looked after?’

  ‘I’m getting the five-star treatment all the way.’

  ‘Good to hear. Anything you want, you just ask, okay?’

  ‘Okay.’

  Jasper nodded to my cigarette. ‘Don’t suppose you’ve got a spare?’

  I handed him the packet and the Zippo and he lit one.

  ‘I quit years ago, but you know.’ He shrugged and nodded towards the station house.

  ‘Yeah, I know.’

  Jasper took a long pull and smiled to himself. He had the look of someone getting reacquainted with an old friend.

  ‘What can I do for you, Mr Morgan?’

  Jasper took another drag and glanced up at the endless sea of stars. At that moment he looked small and insignificant, just a sprinkling of cosmic dust that had coalesced into the shape of a man for the blink of an eye. The universe didn’t care if he had a billion in the bank, and it sure as hell didn’t care if he was the big man in Eagle Creek.

  ‘I grew up with Joe Galloway, Sam’s daddy. He was only forty-three when he passed, and that day was one of the saddest of my life. He’d been going for all those years with a dicky heart and didn’t know. One day it just blew up on him. Forty-three is too young. Way too young. Anyhow, me and Joe had an arrangement. Anything happened to one of us then we’d look out for the other’s family.’

  He took another long drag on the cigarette, blew out a cloud of smoke and looked heavenwards again, an old man lost in long-ago memories. I had no idea how it had gone down. Late-night drinks, perhaps, two good friends sharing a rare whisky. The talk turns philosophical, philosophical turns to hypothetical. A deal is struck, then sealed with the crystal kiss of glass against glass.

  Or maybe they’d been out for the day, watching their boys play together, and got to wondering about all those apocalyptic what-ifs.

  However it had gone down wasn’t important. What was important was that the deal had been struck, and honoured. Arrangements like this were nothing new. I don’t have kids, but if I did I’d want to know they’d be okay if anything happened to me. What parent wouldn’t?

  ‘Sam was like a son to me. I can’t believe he’s gone.’ Jasper dropped his half-smoked cigarette onto the g
round and crushed it out. ‘Whatever you normally charge, double it. Hell, charge whatever you want, I don’t give a shit. Just find the bastard who did this, okay?’

  Jasper turned and strode off. His shoulders were as square as they’d been when I first saw him, his back just as straight, but he wasn’t fooling anyone. I’d seen my share of hurt and grief, and Jasper Morgan was hurting bad.

  He climbed into the Caddy and turned the key. The big engine growled to life and the dazzle of bright headlights flooded the lot. The car pulled gracefully out of its slot. It paused at the entrance, then hung a right, the red tail-lights glowing then disappearing. The doors of the station house opened again and this time it was Taylor. He was grinning like his lottery numbers had come up.

  ‘Dan Choat,’ he said, breathless and still grinning.

  ‘Our Ted Bundy clone?’

  Taylor nodded.

  ‘What about him?’

  The grin widened. ‘He’s not here.’

  34

  We’d phoned ahead and Hannah was waiting on the guesthouse steps when we got there five minutes later. Morrow Street was a graveyard. The bar owners had called it quits and shut up early for the night. The neon rocket on the front of Apollo’s was switched off and the shadows behind the diner’s windows got greyer and darker the deeper you stared.

  Hannah climbed into the back of the car. She leant over into the front, her head bobbing between mine and Taylor’s. She was holding a banana and motioning for me to take it, like I was a monkey in a zoo. ‘Got to watch your blood sugar, right?’ she said in response to my questioning look.

  I took the banana, peeled it, took a bite, and did my best to ignore the smug expression on her face.

  ‘A thank you would be nice, Winter. Didn’t anyone ever teach you manners? Someone gives you a gift, you smile sweetly and say thank you. That’s the way it works.’

  ‘If it had been a candy bar you would have got a thank you. But it’s not a candy bar.’

  ‘And there you go again with your awesome powers of observation.’ She laughed and got settled into her seat. ‘This is so cool. It’s like being in the movies.’

  ‘Yeah,’ Taylor said from the passenger seat. ‘We’ve finally caught ourselves a lucky break. It’s about time.’

  ‘There’s no such thing as luck.’

  ‘So what would you call it?’

  ‘Painstaking, methodical detective work.’

  ‘So, Dan Choat’s our bad guy,’ said Hannah. ‘I always thought there was something suspicious about him.’

  ‘No you didn’t. And I quote: “I went to school with Dan Choat, but I can’t see him being involved in something like this.” This was the guy who always called his teachers ma’am or sir, remember?’

  Hannah ran a hand through her hair and stretched out on the back seat, getting herself comfortable. ‘Whatever. The point is that we know who did this, and we’re going to go and bust his ass.’

  I finished the banana and dropped the skin into the door pocket. Then I put the car into gear and pulled away from the sidewalk, Taylor calling out directions. One a.m. and the streets we drove through were as quiet as Morrow Street. There was the occasional bedroom light, the occasional kaleidoscope flicker of a TV lighting up the drapes, but for the most part the houses were in darkness. We passed a park that had a baseball diamond marked out on it, a school that was as empty and lifeless as the old oil refinery.

  Kennon Street was just inside the town limits, up on the north-east side of Eagle Creek. Dan Choat lived halfway along in a detached two-storey clapboard house. There was a small neatly kept yard out front, a single garage off to the side, flowers in the regimented beds, and a white picket fence. I slowed when we reached the house, but didn’t stop. Cruised past. The lights were all off. Either Choat was asleep, or he wasn’t here.

  Fifty yards on I hung a right, then parked up and killed the engine. We got out and walked back to Choat’s house, headed quickly up onto the porch. Kennon Street was dead. Not so much as a single light on in any of the neighbouring houses. I got Hannah and Taylor to bury themselves as deep into the shadows as they could get, then went to work with my lock picks.

  Thirty seconds later we were inside, pulling the door closed behind us. Taylor had his Glock out. The gun looked tiny in his massive hand, like a toy. A big old Smith & Wesson would have looked like a toy. He went to say something and I pushed my index finger hard against his lips to shut him up.

  For a second we just stood listening to the tales the house was telling us. A clock ticked loudly in one of the rooms. A refrigerator rattled to life in the kitchen. There was nobody on the lower floor. The place smelled clean to the point of overkill. Forest glades and ocean breezes and orange groves.

  I put out my hand and gave Taylor a hard stare. It took a second for him to work out what I was asking. He shook his head. I made gimme, gimme gestures with my fingers and he shook his head again. I mouthed the magic word: Shepherd. He glared for a second, then handed me the gun butt first.

  I pointed to the stairs and we went up together, the Glock leading the way, Taylor and Hannah at the rear. Three-quarters of the way up I hit a creaky floorboard. The sound of it giving way was as loud as an explosion.

  We all froze. Nobody spoke. Nobody breathed. A wall of silence closed around us. At any second that wall was going to come crashing down and Dan Choat would come busting through the rubble, his service revolver in his hand, and demand to know what the hell we were doing in his house.

  That wall of silence closed in tighter, and was suddenly shattered by a solitary tick from the clock. Time started up again and we all breathed a little easier. I nodded to the offending stair, made sure that Hannah and Taylor knew exactly which one to avoid. There were three rooms on the second floor: two bedrooms and a bathroom, their doors wide open. It took less than five seconds to confirm what I already suspected.

  Dan Choat wasn’t here.

  35

  We went into the main bedroom and switched on the light. The bed was neatly made up and everything was properly squared away. There were no clothes lying around, no clutter.

  And there was definitely no sign of Dan Choat.

  I gave Taylor the Glock and he clipped it into his holster. ‘Okay, Hannah, time to do your thing. I want to know everything there is to know about this guy.’

  Taylor gave me a puzzled look.

  ‘Extreme people watching,’ I said and his expression became even more puzzled. ‘You’ll like this,’ I added. ‘She’s got a gift.’

  I sat down on the bed to watch. Hannah started with the bureau. She opened the top drawer and carefully went through the contents. She lifted out a T-shirt, sniffed it, then put it back in the drawer exactly how she’d found it. Taylor was hovering in the doorway, uncertain what to do. His eyes kept flicking between Hannah and myself. He was looking like a kid trapped in a giant’s body again. I patted the space on the empty side of the bed.

  ‘Get your ass over here, Julian. Take a weight off.’

  ‘Julian? Really?’

  ‘Still haven’t worked it out then, Winter?’ Hannah called over.

  ‘Still haven’t worked it out yet.’

  ‘Two hundred bucks says you don’t.’

  ‘It’ll be a pleasure to take your money.’

  I patted the bed again and Taylor came over reluctantly and sat down. ‘Tell me everything you know about Dan Choat.’

  ‘To be honest, I don’t really know that much about him.’

  ‘Would you describe him as one of those people who keep themselves to themselves?’

  Taylor nodded.

  ‘Quiet and polite?’

  Another nod.

  ‘Always greets you with a cheery hello.’

  Another nod.

  ‘The sort of fellow who’s happy to help you out if you get stuck in a jam?’

  Another nod.

  ‘I’m liking the sound of this guy more and more.’

  ‘No you’re not.’

&
nbsp; ‘He’s the closest thing we’ve got to a suspect.’

  ‘Which is a totally different thing altogether,’ Taylor replied. ‘You don’t think he’s our guy, do you?’

  ‘Let’s see what Hannah has to say, shall we?’

  I stretched out, hands behind my head, back against the headboard, toes pointing towards the door. Hannah had reached the closet and was riffling through Choat’s uniforms. He had five in total, which, again, smacked of overkill. The most you’d ever need was three. One for wearing, one at the dry cleaners, and a spare. Each uniform was in its own black suit bag.

  There was a rack with ten pairs of identical black shoes on it, four pairs on the top row, six on the bottom, all of them polished to a high sheen. Overkill again. There weren’t enough shoes to put him in the same league as Imelda Marcos, but there were enough to make me wonder.

  ‘Finished here,’ said Hannah.

  ‘Go and check the bathroom.’

  Hannah left the bedroom and returned a minute later. I sat up on the bed and crossed my legs.

  ‘Okay, tell me all about Dan Choat.’

  ‘Well, for starters, he’s got serious mom issues. I mean, look at those drapes and that bedspread. Who the hell in their right mind would have something like that in their bedroom?’

  She was right. The drapes were horrific. Fussy and floral, lots of pinks, purples and lilacs. The bedspread looked like a really bad impressionist painting.

  ‘Also,’ she went on, ‘his underwear has been ironed. His underwear. T-shirts and jeans, too. Everything’s so neat it’s creepy.’

  ‘Maybe his mother is still alive,’ I suggested. ‘Maybe she does his laundry for him.’

  ‘No, his mother’s dead. This used to be her room. That’s the only explanation for those drapes. Even someone as terminally single as Choat wouldn’t choose them.’