“Okay, here she comes,” Tyler said. “Wearing red.”
An overweight, middle-aged woman wearing a shiny red rayon top and tan pants approached the store. Her graying hair was cut short and clipped back from her face with a cheap barrette. A name tag for the dollar store was pinned over her ample left breast. She looked a bit haggard, not acute haggard like she’d had a bad night’s sleep, but chronic haggard, worn down by a life that had delivered her to a job stocking the shelves at a dollar store.
“Meet Candy,” Tyler said. “A prime example of a stripper’s name on a non-stripper body. Works one-to-nine, five days a week.”
“Why her?” Brian tried to choke out.
“Why her, you ask? Because she’s random. Different place than the others, different age than the others, different job than the others. Bro, if we want to do this thing right, we have to be random. Start a pattern, and they figure it out. They forecast the repetition. Then one day, they’ll be waiting for us.”
The woman entered the shop. Guilt and dread filled Brian, knowing what torture awaited this undeserving woman. She had no clue what lay ahead, and Tyler’s randomness would have her die not knowing why the horror happened to her. He craned his neck to look up into Tyler’s eyes in the rearview mirror.
“Why any of them?” Brian said.
“You have to ask? Because they’re women. They’re all destined to screw up lives somewhere down the road. We take one life, and we’ve saved a dozen others from being totally tanked.”
“That’s—” Brian stopped himself before saying, ‘crazy’.
“Crazy?” Tyler said. “Get real, bro. Look at what our biological so-called mother did to us. Whatever prenatal drug and alcohol cocktail she bathed herself in gave us these little quirks we have. Then she sent us off to whatever screwed-up couple would take us in.”
Tyler’s face in the mirror blushed redder. His eyes hardened. “How’s your adoptive mother, dear Camilla? She’s a real prize isn’t she? All June Cleaver and nurturing to you? And your pseudo sister? An absolute peach of a girl, right?” His voice rose, the pitch sharpened. “Don’t forget, I’ve been living your life through your eyes for a long time. I know exactly how they are. Two prime examples of why we have to do what we have to do.”
Tyler punched the cigarette lighter into its receptacle in the dash. Then he scrambled into the backseat and hung over Brian like a vulture.
“And you just have one bad mother. I’ve had a bunch. Manipulative, resentful, abusive. I’ve seen it all. Sadism runs, like, deep in the gender, bro. Can’t you see that?”
The cigarette lighter popped out.
“One of mine, this was, like, her favorite thing. Talk on a trip in the car, a word, even a noise, and you got the Silencer.”
Tyler pulled the lighter from the dash and pointed it at Brian. The end glowed cherry red.
“Until I was twelve, I seriously thought this thing was called a Silencer, that it was an option parents bought in a car. And if I made a peep while I was in there.…”
Brian’s eyes went wide with fear. Tyler jabbed the lighter into Brian’s bicep below his shirt sleeve. A circle of searing pain set his arm ablaze. He screamed into the gag. Tears filled his eyes.
“…you got the Silencer. Best ADHD medicine in the world, I tell you what. And by God you were quiet after that. For days. And if you weren’t.…”
He plunged the lighter into Brian’s exposed thigh. Brian screamed again as a second wave of pain engulfed his body.
“That bitch taught me a lot about the power of persuasion. And there were more lessons where that came from. The world’s filled with one screwed up, twisted woman after another. They have it coming to them. What we’re doing is a goddamn public service, that’s what it is.”
The fury drained from him. He looked at Brian’s arm with empathy, as if he hadn’t seen the rising red blister until just then. “Oh, dude. Look what you made me do. Shit. Wait here.” He grinned, plucked at the zip ties and snort-laughed. “Sorry, couldn’t help myself.”
Tyler got out of the car. Brian whimpered in pain and rolled back to face the rear of the car. Through tear-blurred eyes he watched Tyler enter the dollar store. Tyler returned with two sweating cans of soda. He reentered the car and faced the backseat.
“Little bro, hold still.” He laid an ice-cold can against each of the swelling burns. Brian’s searing skin cooled like an extinguished fire. “Learned that one from another great foster parent. But he used beer. Better?”
Brian just nodded.
“You know what’s really choice about this? I bought these sodas from Candy. I mean, how funny is that, you know?”
Brian just winced against the pain in his arm and leg. Tyler slid back into the front seat.
“Well, I gotta say, this didn’t work out as well as I thought. You aren’t getting it. And you made me use the Silencer. Shit. I mean, where’d that come from, right?”
Brian knew exactly where that came from. The same twisted place that spawned the rest of Tyler’s sadistic perversions.
Tyler snapped his fingers. “Wait! Brainstorm! I know what I missed. Oh, bro, why didn’t I think of this earlier? It’ll set us back a few days, but it will be so worth it!”
Brian was immediately certain that whatever this new plan was, it wouldn’t be worth it at all.
Chapter Forty
Detective Weissbard sat at his kitchen table and absent-mindedly stirred a bowl of granola with a spoon.
“You can stir that forever,” his wife Maryanne said. “You’ll still have to eat it.”
“If I mash it up enough, maybe I can just drink it.”
“I’ll put it in the blender.”
“God, no.” He put a spoonful in his mouth and chewed with an exaggerated smile. “Mmm! Can you believe poor people have to choke down bacon and sausage?”
Maryanne sat down beside him. “You barely slept last night.”
“It doesn’t make sense,” Weissbard said. “Sheridan escaped, killed Johnson, then just disappeared. In the four days since he bolted from house arrest, there hasn’t been a sighting, a useful tip, nothing. His family sure wouldn’t help him. He didn’t have any friends to speak of. Even his ex-girlfriend was scared he’d be back to kill her. There’s almost no way for a guy with no money, no support, and no transportation to hide out for this long.”
“There’s always the chance he was hit by a car and died on the side of the road somewhere.”
“Wouldn’t that be great? Save the whole extravaganza of a trial.”
“Speaking of which, what about the judge who let him out on bail?”
“Suspended pending an ethics investigation. Had a few close financial ties with the defense attorney.”
“Someone has to put the ‘criminal’ in ‘criminal justice’, right?”
Weissbard smiled. His wife was always good for a laugh in almost any situation. He downed the last few spoonfuls of his cereal and turned the empty bowl up toward her.
“Happy?”
“Thrilled. Now go catch the bad guys.”
* * *
If there was one bright side to this whole mess, it was that Francisco had become the man in the hot seat for finding Sheridan. He was so busy scrambling to find the escapee that he hadn’t had any free time to devote to his vindictive anti-Weissbard campaign. And he sure as hell didn’t want Weissbard anywhere near any leads that might result in Sheridan’s recapture. Which left Weissbard free to follow his gut.
Every day, Francisco extended the search ring for Sheridan, convinced that the escapee was using that time to get as far away as possible from Tampa. Weissbard knew the opposite was probably closer to the truth. Sheridan was barely comfortable in his own skin, a creature of habit that kept to his crappy apartment, his crappy job, and the route between them. His girlfriend said she could barely talk him into
going to movies. He wasn’t about to take his anxiety-riddled life on the road. Weissbard was betting he’d gone to ground here in Tampa, right under all their noses.
Weissbard pulled into the police station. His phone rang. The caller’s number wasn’t familiar.
“Weissbard.”
“Detective? This is Daniela. You interviewed me about Brian Sheridan.”
A mental picture of the little brunette popped up. Hope soared that the killer had contacted her, that maybe he was on his way over to her house. Weissbard could have cops there in under five minutes. “Yes, I remember our conversation.”
“You asked me about a bunch of dates and if I was with Brian on any of them. I think I was wrong on one.”
Weissbard pulled out his notebook. “What do you mean?”
“Now I wasn’t trying to lie or anything. I was just real nervous, and the dates all blended together. You know? I looked again at the calendar for something else and thought, ‘Oh my God!’ But I’m fixing it all now, right?”
Why people can’t just cut to the chase? he thought. “Which date is different?”
“The first date you asked about, two weeks ago? I was with him that night. I think. I mean I’m pretty sure. That was the last night we were together. He had this bad dream and I got fed up with him being off his meds, and left.”
“And you’re sure of that?”
“Well, sort of, no. Wait, yes, I’m sure. I’m really sorry. This isn’t like perjury or something is it?”
“No, I’m just glad you called to set it straight. Sheridan hasn’t been in contact with you, has he?”
“Ahh! No! That you would have known right away.”
“Okay. I’ll be in touch if I need anything else from you. Call me if he calls you.”
The girl hung up. This little wrinkle was the wrong kind of development for this case. If the girl’s second recollection was correct, Sheridan had an alibi for the night of the Karen Strong murder. And all the murders were certainly the work of the same person, so if he didn’t do one, there was a good chance he didn’t do any of them. Then everything Weissbard had put together would fall apart like a cheap suit.
He took a seat in his car and slammed the door. He used the insulated silence to sort his thoughts.
Okay, first. The girl might not be remembering things correctly. This was her second take on the same events. There were a half-dozen reasons she might change her story, both conscious and subconscious. Witnesses were only reliable when they could be corroborated.
Second, even if she was right, that was a weak alibi. She didn’t leave in the morning, she left at night. Sheridan could have taken off from his apartment after she did, furious that his girlfriend dumped him, and taken it out on some other woman. Once he saw what a great substitute that was for a relationship, he stuck with it, and started his killing spree.
Weissbard jotted down all these thoughts in his notebook and snapped it closed. The awful sensation of having his case disintegrate before his eyes faded away. He tucked his misgivings back deep in his mind. He took a deep breath and walked into the station, all the while thinking of places Brian Sheridan, most certainly the Playing Card Killer, might be hiding.
Chapter Forty-One
Weissbard stared at a satellite image of Derek and Camilla Sheridan’s neighborhood on the monitor at his desk. He zoomed in and out, panned left and right. There were only so many options Sheridan had when he escaped from his parents’ house. He definitely hadn’t passed through the security gate at the entrance, and without a ladder, there was no way he’d ever get over the spike-tipped, eight-foot iron rod fence that enclosed the other three sides of the enclave. Since a sweep of the fence line that night hadn’t discovered any ladders, ropes, catapults, or trampolines, the swamp to the west was the only route he could have used to get away.
Highway 58 that bisected the natural area wouldn’t be much help. It ran straight, true and uninhabited for thirty miles, two lanes of unlit asphalt without shoulders or cross streets. There’d be no witnesses to anything that happened out there. He envisioned an unwitting motorist giving a ride to a guy alone in the middle of the night on a desolate road, a guy with a good story about wandering away from his campsite. Hell, maybe an accomplice had just parked and waited to pick Sheridan up in the wee hours of the morning.
Weissbard countered both stupid ideas. Sheridan had no friends, certainly none that would stick their neck out for him after the publicity of his arrest. And with a serial killer in the news, no one was going to give a stranger a ride anywhere in the middle of the night. But Sheridan couldn’t still be out there in the swamp. The alligators, cottonmouth snakes and mosquitoes would make even a tough guy volunteer for a jail cell instead. And Sheridan was no tough guy.
Weissbard’s desk phone rang and displayed the number of Washburn from Forensics. He picked it up.
“This is Weissbard. Give me some good news.”
“Say,” Washburn said, “do you always answer your phone that way?”
“No. It would just make the disappointment more pointed when no one did give me good news.”
“Well, I do have some for you, sort of. Why don’t you come take a look at it?”
Weissbard didn’t like the sound of that. A simple ‘Sheridan’s the killer’ would have been better. “Be right there.”
Minutes later, he opened the door to Washburn’s tiny rat hole of an office. Washburn’s indecipherable organizational system seemed to work for him, but to Weissbard it always looked like piles of folders, a dozen items open at once on his computer monitor and several machines on a long, cluttered countertop buzzing and whirring away, performing a host of incomprehensible analyses.
No one was certain if Washburn went out of his way to fit the forensics stereotype, or if being a geek came completely naturally to him. He had short, dark hair with a razor-sharp part on the left and wore an oversized pair of glasses with thick, black plastic frames devoid of any style. Every day he wore a lab coat, which he’d bought and had embroidered himself, since the police department didn’t mandate, or even recommend, wearing one. He gave Weissbard an excited smile when he looked up and saw him in the doorway.
“Detective! Excellent! I’ve matched the thumbprint on the last playing card to the thumbprint on Brian Sheridan’s booking records.”
“How good a match?”
“A perfect one. And that’s the rub. I tried to explain this to Francisco, but he either didn’t understand what I was saying, or didn’t want to. You were on the scene, so I figured maybe you’d get it.”
Washburn turned his computer monitor so both he and Weissbard could see it. He clicked on the corner of one open file. It filled the screen with two side-by-side black thumbprints on white backgrounds.
“The playing card print is on the left. Sheridan’s print is on the right.” Washburn pressed a key on the keyboard and a bunch of red dots populated the two prints. Green lines connected a dot on one print to the dot on the other. “Twelve matching points will hold up in court. I’ve got over twenty.”
There were times when Weissbard felt that pulling a quick answer out of Washburn was a frustrating chore. This was one of them. “And the problem?”
“Well, look at these two prints. Do they look the same to you?”
“Well, yeah. Even without the little red dots and green lines telling me so.”
“And that’s never true. When we take the booking print, the finger is rolled so we get the whole print. Real prints only get the contact surface, or some other partial impression. The one on the playing card is just as wide as the print on file. That means Sheridan had to roll his thumb across the card. I don’t know about you, but that doesn’t seem very natural to me.”
Washburn had a point, one that resurrected that sinking feeling Weissbard had when Daniela updated her take on Sheridan’s alibi.
“Then
I checked the rest of the playing card. There wasn’t anything as clear anywhere else, but I did get a partial on the back in the upper right-hand corner.” Washburn clicked some keys and brought up a new fingerprint. Unlike the others, this one was crescent moon-shaped. “Now, on this one I have a seven-point match with Sheridan. Not good enough to use in court, but good enough in conjunction with the thumbprint.”
“So that’s good, right?”
“Except for this.” Washburn ran the end of his pen along a jagged ridge near the center. “This might be dirt, but it sure looks like scar tissue. The finger had some kind of trauma that damaged the skin deep, like a burn. The seven points match, but this scar doesn’t.”
“Unless Sheridan burned himself after he was printed.”
“His prints are only days old. He’d have to burn himself between then and now. And have it heal. Miraculously.”
“Or like you said, he had dirty hands. He was killing someone and stuffing the body in a barrel.”
“Or,” Washburn countered, “the thumbprint was a fake and the other print doesn’t match because it was from someone else.”
Weissbard’s sinking feeling sank even lower. “Is that what you think?”
Washburn pushed his glasses higher up on his nose with his middle finger and shrugged. “Not really, but a defense attorney sure would. He’d use it to cast doubt with a jury. Especially if Sheridan’s finger isn’t scarred. I’m just saying you need another layer of evidence on top of this print to keep the case tight.”
“Jesus, man. You know your job is to make my life easier, not harder, right?”
“That’s why you’re getting the heads-up. You’re welcome.”
Weissbard went back to his desk. He shook his head in frustration at how seamless this case was a few days before, and yet now it seemed to have a lot of frayed edges. He stared at the map on his monitor, hoping that somehow it had changed for the better.
He switched over to the live feed from the tip line for Sheridan. Plenty had notes attached where they had been checked and dismissed. He scrolled past the completely unpromising entries where the Playing Card Killer was getting on a flight to Brazil or riding a coaster at Busch Gardens. He zipped past one entry, then backed up. Something in it looked familiar.
The Playing Card Killer Page 18
