Undressed At Sea: A Psychological Thriller (Drew Stirling Book 2)

by Jayden Hunter

  “I went over all the similarities again this morning,” Turner said.

  He pointed to a whiteboard. “That’s it at this point.”

  He had written lists on the board. Everything that counted for evidence, all the reasons that had convinced the cops and the press that they were likely dealing with the same perpetrator in both cases. Both missing women were Caucasian females, with similar body types, similar ages, and medium-length blonde hair. They were petite and attractive, like Mena Suvari’s character in American Beauty, young, but clearly adults. Both had gone missing in similar time periods, most likely very late on a Friday night or possibly early the following Saturday morning.

  Both coeds had been at college parties, presumably drinking, although no witness could testify that either of them was drunk. The locations of the parties were under a mile apart. They both attended the University of California at San Diego, but here was no evidence that they’d been friends or even acquaintances, and they did not share any of the same classes. There was no connection between them except the circumstances of their disappearance. Neither woman had a criminal record or was known to use drugs, but often the family is the last to know, and other students might be tempted to lie. Neither woman had been suspected of running off with a boyfriend. Neither one of them had any known debt other than student loans. It was a stretch to think that there was any connection to organized crime or gambling problems. In fact, no reasons existed to suspect anything besides an abduction at this point.

  The idea of sex slave trafficking was on the table, but it was unusual for traffickers to take socially upward American college students who would be immediately missed and searched for. Too many good-looking, vulnerable women in the world came from impoverished places where the families did not possess the means to create pressure with politicians or the notoriety to get the press interested.

  At this point, however, anything was possible and keeping an open mind was good investigative technique. Turner felt suspicious of highly improbable coincidences, but it was entirely possible that the women had gone home late Friday and on the following Saturday had gone hiking or they’d gone to the beach. Lost hikers and drowned swimmers weren’t that uncommon in Southern California. It was simply the law of averages that sometimes humans found distinct patterns in things that were completely random. But his gut told him that these women hadn’t both gone into the woods weeks apart and then got lost hiking. Sure, it was possible, and he certainly wasn’t hoping for a third victim, but he was expecting one.

  “So, maybe we need a profiler,” said Detective Beck.

  The agents looked at him. They couldn’t tell if he was joking or not. Agent Tamboli, who told them to call him Tam decided to assume Beck was an idiot, or so it seemed to Turner, who rolled his eyes at his partner.

  “All FBI agents are profilers. So are you guys. There isn’t an actual position of profiler in the FBI; it’s a common mistake. There is a behavioral sciences department that studies and categorizes criminal behaviors for creating profiles of behaviors and indicators that could be used in the field. But much of what is hyped in the movies, television, and thriller novels is just that, hype. Whenever a major crime is prosecuted, most of the credit goes to old-fashioned police work.”

  “Yeah, quit fucking around, Beck,” Turner said. “You need to read some freaking Malcolm Gladwell for fuck’s sake.”

  Turner wasn’t in the mood for bullshit. He was skeptical of using profiling as if it was a magic trick that solved crimes in the first place, and he was embarrassed that his partner was being an ass. He was getting a headache, too, and his mood was changing from sour to rotten.

  “What’s that got to do with anything?” Beck asked.

  This time the second agent, Rick Stevenson spoke. “Gladwell wrote a bestseller titled Blink. He included a chapter about how profiling has been debunked and is basically useless. Of course, I think he went too far, but hell, that kind of shit sells books.”

  Tamboli added, “There’s still plenty of debate. But it helps to look in the right places, so for now, we’ll follow the most logical protocol and start at the beginning of the trail. The trailhead is the most logical place to start a long hike in the woods, and that’s where we are going to start here. The basics.

  “We are most likely going to be looking at a white male in his thirties or forties. There is a strong possibility that he’ll already be listed on the sex offender registry. It’s extremely likely that he lives in San Diego County, probably near the city. He may have been recently released from prison—”

  “Well fuck, we could have gotten that from watching CSI Miami,” Beck said.

  “Shut up already with the joking around,” Turner said. He rubbed his temples. “I’m getting a headache as it is without your smart-ass shit.”

  “That’s enough gentlemen,” Hernandez said. “Go on Tam.”

  Agent Tamboli stood and opened a briefcase. He pulled out a large folder file and out of that he removed a stack of printed sheets.

  “These are ViCAP sheets of known offenders within about a hundred-mile proximity. That’s probably overreaching, but we might as well start off extra cautious. This represents about 8% of sex crime registrations in the area. We have all those that have been released in the previous twelve months marked in red. That’s going to be the first place to start. Get your probation and parole officers involved in this; we’ll need all the manpower we can get.

  “The first thing we need to do is prioritize. We’ll get all these men narrowed down into four categories. Category one will be those who have rock solid alibis. Category Two will be those with reasonable alibis, men who have more than one person vouching for them and good reports with parole and families. Categories 3 and 4 are very similar, men without any alibis and previous records. Category 3 is for those that have been out of trouble for a few years, old crime and no recent problems with registration or law enforcement. We’ll put anyone in Category 4 who has been released recently or has an exceptionally violent record or has been in any kind of trouble in the last year. And I mean any trouble. A DUI, going through a divorce, a traffic ticket, a job loss, a death in his family. Anything. In fact, if you read someone’s file and get a creepy feeling, put it in Cat 4. That’s where part of this profiling comes into play. And, ironically, it’s what Gladwell’s book was all about. If something feels hinky, check it out. At this point, with no evidence, anything that bothers you is something to look into. We’ll look at everyone but prioritize from Cat Four to Cat One. Any questions?”

  Turner stood and walked to the white board. “I’m curious if you think I’ve missed something? I always feel there has to be something. Something right there hiding in plain sight.” He waved his hand in front of the board. “This is it. It’s shit. It doesn’t tell me anything except I have two missing girls that look alike. They may or may not have been abducted by a stranger. It’s fucking frustrating.”

  Agent Stevenson gave him a look of understanding. “You know, Detective Turner, I get your frustration, I do. It’s easy to forget that lots of young women go missing without a trace of evidence. There are plenty of famous cases that took years to solve. The Green River case, Ridgeway, and of course, Bundy. The BTK case. We don’t see tons of media attention or books and movies about all the cases that are never solved. Nobody gets justice in those unsolved cases, at least in this life.

  “But don’t lose hope. Realize that to solve this case, if it really is a serial case, it’s going to take time. We can’t conclude yet that these women are even dead. We have to wait to see if evidence shows up that shows the cases are related. What I can say is that good solid police work today may make a difference a year from now. Ten years from now. We need to do our jobs.”

  The room was silent.

  The Lieutenant cleared his throat. “I think we’ve done all we can with this meeting. I’m assigning a second team to this. We’ll get coordinated with the parole department. Is there anything else? Anything you ge
ntlemen think Detective Turner has overlooked?”

  “I see nothing missing,” Agent Stevenson said. “I’d like to point out a tragic reality we are going to have to face if we are dealing with a serial murderer. Imagine the devil showed up and offered us a deal: he could guarantee that no more women would go missing at this killer’s hand, but we’d have to forego justice. If we demanded justice, we’d be guaranteed that we’d catch the killer, but the cost would be more bodies.

  “Who in the room would want to sign up for that deal?”

  It was a rhetorical question, and nobody answered.

  But Turner got the point.

  In order for him to catch the bad guy in this case, if there was indeed a bad guy at all, he was going to have more missing women. To have a good chance at a successful arrest and prosecution, he was going to need a body.

  Fucketty, fuck. His headache got worse.

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  The FBI is currently seeking skills and degrees in: hard sciences such as biology, chemistry, physics, etc. If you have a foreign language skill, the critical languages we seek are: Arabic (all dialects), Chinese, Korean, Russian, Hebrew, Swahili, Albanian, Indonesian, Pashto, Punjabi, and Vietnamese.

  ~ FBI website

  Rick’s family is Mormon, and my family is Hindu, so we share a common background. Krishna and Jesus have much in common: a virgin birth, miraculous deliverance as children, both taught their elders as young men, performed miracles, and died for the sins of the world. We’ve both walked away from belief in myths and superstition, but the commonality in our childhoods helps remind me of the unity of men.

  ~ Special Agent Jimmy Tamboli

  ...................

  Special Agent Rick Stevenson drove their government-issued sedan as if he were borrowing his grandmother’s car.

  “You know that you don’t have to stop at yellow lights, right?” Jimmy Tamboli asked his partner while they idled at a red light.

  “It was about to turn red,” Rick said.

  “Okay.”

  “It was!”

  “I said okay.”

  “Yeah, but you were being sarcastic.”

  “It’s not in my culture to be sarcastic. Chinta mat karo! Drive. We’re going to be late.”

  Rick drove to their first destination, a rundown house in an older El Cajon neighborhood. He and Tam approached the door. He knocked. The man who answered was the man they had come to interview, which was good because a family member is often likely to lie and say So-and-so isn’t home. Anthony Winder, sixty-two years old, was still in his first year of parole. He had the wizened look of an old man that had spent too much time in the sun. He moved slowly as he opened the door.

  “I was expecting you sooner,” he said. His body twitched when he moved, and his eyes never rested.

  “Why is that?” Rick asked. As they’d agreed, he took the lead.

  “Those missing blonde girls. I read the papers.”

  “May we come in?”

  “You know you can.”

  Winder had no Constitutional right to demand a warrant as a parolee, and all three of them standing there were well aware of this fact. Rick asked, nevertheless, because every question had the potential to highlight something worth analyzing. Something to profile. Scrutiny was like a flashlight aimed into the dark or a magnifying glass used to read a map. Their job involved mind reading, guessing, and intuition. Every agent had personality quirks that affected their style of looking, but all investigation was based upon the same techniques and they’d been schooled by the best. Rick didn’t feel anything giving him pause; he looked briefly at his partner, and Jimmy nodded. They entered the residence of Anthony Winder.

  His parole officer had answered their phone call on their drive over and reported that Winder was compliant, he lived with his eighty-five-year-old mother, had a part-time job, and mostly stuck to home. Winder had served a little over thirty years for the rape of a twelve-year-old, blue-eyed, blonde girl.

  The house smelled of pet urine. It was dark, the musty curtains keeping out the sun. A wall of photographs covered the wall above and around the television set. A family shrine. The senior Mr. Winder had died five months previously, a fact which was among the several reasons this visit had been near the top of the list. Often family drama triggered criminals to lose control and act out.

  A second television was turned on in the kitchen. The Steve Harvey Morning Show was playing. Loudly.

  “Mom, turn that shit off,” Winder said. He turned to the agents, “Would you like to sit at the table?”

  “Perfect,” Rick answered.

  Allowing the subject to talk on his own was the best way to start an interview. Wait and see what is volunteered. If a subject jabbered about a topic they’d not known about themselves, it could lead to uncovering new evidence or new avenues of investigation. Interviews were always ventures into the unknown.

  They followed Winder into the kitchen. His elderly mother left out the side door, shaking a box of cat food. She completely ignored the officers as if they wouldn’t exist if she didn’t acknowledge them.

  “Here kitty-kitty,” she called out.

  “My mom loves cats. Always has,” Winder said. He sat and quit talking.

  “So, tell me about Robin,” Rick asked.

  “If I could change the past, sir, I would,” he answered.

  “And?”

  “And I regret my former life. I’m a changed person. I received Jesus Christ as my Lord and Savior on the inside. I am not the same man. Do you all know the Lord?”

  “You know, Anthony. Can I call you Anthony? Or do you prefer Tony? Or Mr. Winder?” Rick asked.

  “Tony.”

  “Okay, Tony. Let’s be straight here. We are all men. I want you to take a look at this.”

  Rick opened a file and pulled out a picture of Madison Reed. He placed it on the table. He remained silent, glanced at his partner who was still staring at their subject, and then looked to Tony.

  “Tony?”

  “Pretty girl. Drug addict. Sad. I have seen her picture on the television. I had nothing to do with her. I’m an old man now. I’m not like before.”

  “Yes. But you’re still a man, right?”

  “Sure. I’m a man. I know what you mean. I see that she’s a very beautiful, but troubled, young woman. Vulnerable. But I’m a changed man. I promise you that.”

  “We’re all men here, Tony. My partner and I, we understand how it is. We like pretty women, too. Just like the next guy. Are you sure you’ve never seen this woman before? I mean, outside of the news? Perhaps you ran across her at the supermarket?”

  “No, sir. I’d remember if I’d seen her before.”

  “Why’s that?” Jimmy spoke for the first time in the interview.

  “Well, she’s a got one of those faces. A model’s face. A remembering kind of face. A troubled face.”

  “So you’d like to fuck her. Is that fair to say?” Jimmy spoke with an even tone in his voice like he was asking about the weather or the score of a Chargers game.

  Rick watched for a reaction but saw none.

  “No. I’m a changed man. I gave my life to Jesus. I meant that. I can honestly say I understand she was a beautiful woman. But I didn’t do her.”

  “Why do you say was like you know she’s dead?” Rick asked.

  “Oh, I’m sure she’s not coming back. That’s what the news said.”

  “I don’t think they said that,” Jimmy said.

  “Well, it sounded like it to me.”

  Rick paused. He thought silently for a moment, then pulled out a picture of Jillian McCormick. He laid it on the table.

  “You ever see her?” he asked.

  “Nope. ‘Cept on the news. That’s the God’s honest truth. I wouldn’t lie to you men. I’m sitting here telling you the honest truth. I’ve paid my debt to society, and I’m living a clean life now. Don’t have anything to do with young women. The God’s honest truth? Except for my mother and a
few women at the church group, I don’t have anything to do with females. I’m dedicated, gentlemen, dedicated to the Lord. I know I earned my time. I did my time. Now it’s time to live straight.”

  “That sounds impressive, Tony. It does. But you have to understand that trust, in these situations, trust isn’t something you can base on words,” Jimmy said.

  “That’s right, Tony,” Rick said. “My partner speaks the truth. If we trusted everyone, well, where would that get us?”

  Tony sat. He didn’t speak or move. He looked and smiled with a childish grin. Rick couldn’t read whether it was an innocent grin or one of those I’m guilty but you can’t catch me grins someone gave you just before they lawyered up. Because Tony was on parole, he couldn’t ask for an attorney to protect him from being scrutinized, but he could ask for an attorney to be present if he felt pressured, and that would cost a lot of time. It would be wasted time, too, if he wasn’t the right guy, and it would be uncharacteristically lucky to be interviewing the bad guy right off the bat. He was their first interview, being near the top of the Category 4 list they’d complied for the joint task force. His distance from the University, approximately twenty miles away, put him on the outskirts of where they’d likely find their suspect, but an investigation had to start somewhere. Rick looked at Jimmy, and he nodded slightly.

  “Anthony, you’ve been very cooperative. Thank you,” Rick said.

  “Just being a good citizen.” Winder stood.

  “Why’d you say she was troubled?” Tam asked. “You said drug addict.”

  “It’s in her eyes,” Winder said.

  The FBI agents stood, and he followed them to the door. They stood in the living room, in front of the door, and forced Tony to go awkwardly around them. Before exiting, Jimmy spoke again.

  “You know, Tony, I think I’d like to take a quick look at your living quarters. You don’t mind showing me the way?” Jimmy pointed his hand down the hall.