The Playing Card Killer

by Russell James

  “You got ten minutes,” the fatter of the two deputies said.

  “What? I was scheduled for eleven to eleven thirty.”

  “And it’s eleven twenty. Ten minutes and he has to be back for headcount and lunch in isolation. We don’t do room service around his visitors.”

  “You brought him here late,” Weissbard said.

  “We’re busy. Got a whole jail to run. Big surprise that an out-of-county cop’s interview with a murderer might not be at the top of the priority list?”

  The two deputies left him alone with Wrassie. Wrassie gave Weissbard a nervous once-over.

  “You ain’t from the county?”

  “I’m Detective Weissbard, Tampa PD.”

  “I didn’t do nothing in Tampa. Just here.”

  Weissbard hadn’t ever heard a confession before he delivered the opening question. Not from a guilty man, at least. He didn’t have time to get a rapport going with Wrassie. The wall clock loudly ticked away his evaporating ten minutes.

  “So what was it you did here?”

  “Killed that lady, Karen. Strangled her with a rope.” His hands shook against the table and set up a repeating jangle of his chains. Sweat dripped from his temples.

  “Why did you do it?”

  “Robbery. Needed money for some crystal.”

  It looked like he needed some crystal right now. “Why her?”

  “Trailer was out by itself. Looked easy. Didn’t plan on killing her. Didn’t know she was there.”

  “What was she doing when you broke in?”

  “Didn’t break in, just walked in the open door. Guess she was in a back room or something. Must have come out and startled me.”

  “Then why did you have a length of rope with you?”

  Wrassie thought a bit. “It was just there in the house, I didn’t bring it.”

  The ligature marks on the Viejo woman were pretty wide. Weissbard tried to imagine a middle-aged woman with a few feet of stout rope just lying around her trailer. He failed.

  “I threw the rope in the swamp after to hide the evidence,” Wrassie added helpfully.

  This guy couldn’t possibly do more to solidify the case against him. Wrassie might as well have been reading aloud the prosecutor’s opening statement for his upcoming trial.

  “You know Florida still has the death penalty for murder, right?”

  Wrassie’s eyes went wide. He yanked his chains hard against the table’s anchor point. “Uh, uh! Got a plea. Life, no parole. Max security. They don’t fuck with murderers in there.”

  “But Wendell, this is tied to a Tampa murder as well. That’s a separate crime, a separate trial, a separate sentence. We don’t plead down murder.”

  “Didn’t do nothing in Tampa! Ain’t got no car! How the hell would I get to Tampa?”

  Especially when he was in jail during the Viejo murder, Weissbard thought. But he pushed anyway. “Your buddy drove you to Tampa, the one with you when you killed Karen Strong.”

  “Wasn’t no one with me. I did this on my own. Didn’t kill no one else. Ain’t taking no other rap.”

  His time was almost up. He’d wanted Wrassie to bring up the connecting evidence, but Weissbard would have to force it in himself.

  “Then why the playing card?”

  Wrassie paused. “The what?”

  “The seven of clubs. What was with leaving the seven of clubs?”

  “What the hell you talking about? No one said nothing about no deck of cards.”

  Commotion sounded outside the interrogation room door. It burst open. The two deputies rolled in and began to unlock Wrassie from the desk.

  “I thought I had ten minutes,” Weissbard said.

  “Been ten minutes plus by my watch,” the fat deputy said. “He needs to go back in the hole.”

  The deputies yanked Wrassie up from his seat. He looked genuinely scared. “No one said nothing about some goddamn seven of clubs! What’s with that? I signed my deal!” They trundled him out the door and back down to the cellblock.

  Weissbard slapped his notebook shut and left the room, fuming. He headed straight for the duty sergeant, another beach ball in forest green. The smug look on his face made Weissbard even angrier.

  “Good luck with your case there in Tampa,” the sergeant said.

  “Good luck with yours here,” Weissbard said. “You’ve got the wrong guy.”

  “Signed confession says otherwise.”

  “Any defense attorney worth a shit will get a meth-addled confession tossed. He’s still detoxing now.”

  “His DNA is all over the crime scene. Had her wallet and cell phone and DVR when we picked him up.”

  “Well, he’s too small to have subdued her, too whacked out to have planned it. He can’t describe the murder, and you’ve got no weapon. He probably walked into the place after she was dead, and stole that shit to get high. Plus he doesn’t know anything about the seven of clubs.”

  Worry crossed the sergeant’s fat face. “The what?”

  “The card shoved in the woman’s dress. Did anyone find the rest of the deck lying around the house? Did they look? The next card in the deck ended up on a vic in Tampa.”

  The cop’s face returned to blasé. “Signed confession. Signed plea goes to the judge this afternoon. Wrassie gets life with killer status. Three hots and a cot and he’s happy to be off the street, back to what he thinks is home. County residents see a murder solved and feel safer. Everybody wins here.”

  “And the killer who’s still on the streets?”

  “Sounds like he’s on Tampa streets, Detective. You might want to go home and catch him.”

  Weissbard got as far as cocking his fist before exercising enough self-restraint to keep from beating this worthless excuse for law enforcement. Instead, he headed back to his car.

  After all, the worthless excuse for law enforcement was right. He still had a killer to catch.

  * * *

  Weissbard walked back into the detectives’ warren of desks. Detective Sergeant Francisco stood at the far end of the room, already mid-pontification. The rest of the detectives on duty, a few uniforms and their boss, Sergeant Bertram, surrounded Francisco in a loose semicircle. Francisco’s police-issue dark blue golf shirt looked starched for the occasion. Weissbard stopped at his desk, well within hearing distance, but not so close that he looked like he gave a damn about whatever Francisco was spouting. Because he sure didn’t. His invitation to this little shindig had been lost in the mail, as usual. All he had to do was catch his killer. Whatever was going on in Francisco’s world could just keep spinning. He took a seat behind his laptop, cleared the screen saver, and called up his email.

  “So,” Francisco said. “There’s a good chance each of you will be getting some detailed assignments from me over the next twenty-four hours. The chief was very specific when he placed me in charge of this investigation. He wants this solved now, before the general public makes Tampa Bay synonymous with a serial killer.”

  Weissbard stopped scrolling through his email. He looked up at Francisco. He must have whitened his teeth for the day because they were damn near blinding. There was another set of patterned killings going on in Tampa? What was bringing out the crazies?

  “Now so far,” Francisco said, “only two unsolved murders have been linked by the playing cards.”

  Weissbard’s jaw dropped. How the hell could Francisco know…? He glanced to the note pad beside his laptop. The top page, where he jotted down the details of the Karen Strong murder, was gone. That son of a bitch.

  “Let’s keep there from being a third,” Francisco continued. “Someone has come into our city to make a name for himself. That’s not happening on my watch.”

  Francisco nodded, as if somehow that meant he’d given everyone some sort of useful instruction, and then strutted back
to his office. Weissbard followed Francisco in before Weissbard even realized he was out of his chair.

  “What was all that?” Weissbard said.

  Francisco looked up, feigning he just realized Weissbard was there. “Swissbard? Eventually made the briefing, I see. In summary, once the chief saw the breadth of the Viejo case, he thought it should be in more experienced hands. Serial killers are serious work.”

  And high profile, Weissbard thought. This jackass was just angling for the chief’s job, and the publicity around this would sure get him one step closer.

  “You took the notes from my desk,” Weissbard said.

  “I don’t know what you mean.” Francisco grinned. “Just doing good old-fashioned shoe-leather cop work, and I turned up another unsolved case.”

  “You know that case is solved, right?”

  Francisco’s smile caved in on itself. “What?” He’d apparently taken the scant information from the note pad straight to the chief before checking into any of it himself. Typical.

  “Polk County got their guy. Full confession.”

  “Copycat,” Francisco rationalized.

  “Yeah, a prequel copycat. Good luck with that.”

  “I’ll need whatever notes you have on the case,” Francisco said.

  “I’ve filed everything with my reports.”

  “No, personal notes. Things are going to get heavy now that local TV has wind of this.”

  Weissbard’s anger went from blazing to thermonuclear. There was only one way the reporters would have any idea what was going on. Francisco had to have let them know. Which of course, he would have.

  “I’ll be sending you leads generated by the hotline calls,” Francisco finished. That was his way of saying he was completely in charge, and Weissbard was now an errand boy.

  For the second time in under an hour, Weissbard walked out of a room before he punched a member of Florida law enforcement.

  Chapter Fifteen

  It is night, but enough light reflects off the water to make out the area, a nondescript shoreline somewhere on Tampa Bay’s south side. The city’s skyline rises in the distance across the water, glowing shafts of concrete and steel that stretch for the stars. Noiseless waves lap the edge of a cracked concrete ramp in this silent vision. A warm breeze tickles the hairs on his legs. He’s wearing a T-shirt, swim trunks and flip flops. The situation feels off. This is the wrong time of day and the wrong kind of beach for these clothes.

  His focus shifts as he grips a key in his hand. Brian sees the dreaded rubbery covers on his fingertips. He recoils in panic, knowing that unfathomable evil is about to unfold at his hands, and he will be powerless to stop it. The tingle foreshadowing an anxiety attack sets in.

  He slides a key into the cylinder on a car’s silver trunk lid, right under the Toyota logo. The trunk pops open. A Florida license plate flashes by. A dim light flickers on and illuminates the trunk interior. The inside of the trunk lid has a big reflective safety decal that shimmers in the light.

  Inside, an Hispanic woman lies curled in the fetal position. A leather skirt too short to be attractive reveals legs scarred with track marks all the way down to her bare feet. One small breast hangs exposed from a cheap tube top. Black zip ties bind her ankles and wrists. A broad band of shiny duct tape covers her mouth, but underneath it, purple bruises are forming where she’d earlier been knocked unconscious. Beneath her, a thick, clear plastic drop cloth covers the trunk interior.

  He reaches in and shakes her. Her head lolls, her eyelids flutter. He shakes her again, harder. Brian can feel that he is yelling, sense the vibration in his throat, though he cannot hear a thing in this black-and-white world. He pulls her tube top up to cover her breast.

  She stirs to a level of coherence. Her eyes clear, focus on him, then widen in realization of her dire situation. Tendons in her neck go tight as steel cables as she screams into the duct tape gag.

  He reaches into his back pocket and pulls out the velvet rope. Brian doesn’t need to see it. He knows it now so well by touch alone, an enticing softness now turned repulsive. Brian tries to override his hands’ actions. In his mind he screams against the malevolence they are about to commit. The hands wind around the rope anyway. He is just a prisoner in this body, his orders as useless as grabbing jail cell bars and howling at uncaring guards.

  The woman tries to rise, tries to somehow affect an impossible escape with all four limbs bound. In his mind, Brian roots for her. But the emotion he senses tied to the hands he watches is one of excitement, of anticipation.

  He whips the velvet executioner around her neck. She jerks and squirms against the heavy plastic tarp. Last time, he killed quickly, crushed the airway shut like slamming a door. This time, the constriction is more measured, the pressure strong, but not overpowering. The terror in the woman’s eyes shifts to pleading.

  He leans into the trunk a bit for leverage. He rests against the edge of the car. His manhood swells tight inside his bathing suit, hard, throbbing.

  Both detached and immersed in this horrendous act, his disgust morphs to anxiety-ridden terror. He realizes the kill itself is no longer enough to satisfy. The malicious hands gripping the velvet must slow their work, so the killer can savor the woman’s panic as long as possible. It now makes sense why he risked awakening the woman first, instead of killing her as soon as he opened the trunk.

  But all good things.… The rope cinches one last time. The woman’s begging eyes fill again with horror, a look that says she knows, though unimaginable an hour ago, that Death reaches for her. Her skin pales. Her lips darken. Her eyes go still.

  Brian’s mind reels, repulsed by the murder, sickened by the torture, and disgusted by the sexual thrill it’s given his body. He prays that whatever power fuels this satanic vision lets him awaken, and break this awful connection.

  He picks up the woman from the trunk and slings her over a shoulder. He carries her to the shore. When he steps off the concrete pad, soft sand yields with each of his footsteps toward the retreating tide. He wades into the warm water.

  Waist-deep, he slides the corpse off his shoulder and lowers it into the bay. There is no reverence in the act, just the practical avoidance of a splash. He reaches into his back pocket and pulls out a playing card in a plastic baggie. The four of hearts. He slips the baggie inside the corpse’s tube top.

  A mental shiver runs through Brian. The killer protects the card, wants it safe from the corrosive bay waters. Wants to take credit.

  With one hand around the hem of the corpse’s skirt, and one at the base of its feet, he launches the body out into the bay. Its head breaks tiny waves like a ship’s bow. The body rolls face down. The tide catches it and pulls it away.

  He returns to the car’s open trunk and slams it shut.

  When he does, the rear window comes into full view. In it Brian sees a reflection, ghostlike and translucent, but almost indecipherable. A young man. Caucasian. Short, ultra-blond hair done in a porcupine of spikes. The face is a blur.

  The man sees his reflection and breaks into what looks like a smile. It seems at first a narcissistic action, a little moment of personal pride. It dawns on Brian that it is much more, much worse than that. Though he can’t clearly see it in his face, he can feel it in the man’s reaction. He is not proud of his appearance, he is instead proud to share it, to make a final reveal.

  He knows that Brian can see him.

  * * *

  Brian yelled and jerked awake in his bed. He threw off the covers and jumped to his feet, as if he needed to affect a physical, as well as a mental, escape from the nightmare.

  The vision was so real, so tactile. Even worse than the ones before. He swept his hands down his legs, certain that the waters of the bay would still drip from them. His legs were dry.

  The revelation didn’t calm him. The vision had been too vivid for his imagination to spawn
it alone. It must have had help from reality. Or insanity. Was one option worse than the other? Had he just seen another murder, or had his imagination stitched one from the cloth of his last nightmare?

  He’d only been asleep a few hours, but his brain didn’t care. He was too wired, too scared to even think about getting back to bed. He flicked on the TV. Normally the late-night programming grated on him, but now he needed it. He wanted something, anything, to take away the sense of being alone, of being stalked by some killer inside his own head.

  * * *

  The clock hit 7:00 a.m. and Brian ran out of excuses. Daniela would be awake, dressed, ready to leave for work. Any longer and she’d be at work, and he’d have a fresh excuse why he shouldn’t call. For the tenth time that morning, his finger hovered over the button on his phone to call her. He took a deep breath, and pressed it.

  Five rings in, he imagined the scene on the other end, Daniela staring down at her phone as it rang, deciding whether to pick up or not, deciding if Brian was worth the headache.

  “Hello?”

  The sound of her voice startled him. Scared him in fact. He didn’t speak.

  “Brian?”

  “Yeah. It’s me.”

  “You sound…spent.”

  “Rough night.” He paused, dreading the question he knew she’d ask.

  “Are you back on your medications?” she said.

  “Daniela, hear me out. I’m not. But it’s more than that. There’s something else wrong—”

  “Brian, no meds. That’s what’s wrong. When you were on them, you could sleep. No nightmares. You were good. We were good, or at least getting there.”

  “If you could let me explain, let me talk to you.”

  “I want to help you, Brian, I do. But I won’t help you if you aren’t going to help yourself. You step back up to where you were, I’ll step back to where I was, and we’ll figure all this out.”

  It sounded so simple, seemed to make so much sense. Dr. Kaufman’s prescriptions were in his apartment somewhere. Once filled, the white capsules could take him back to that hazy, half-living state.