by Hayton, Lee
A cat fight in an alley came to a halt as she walked past, the toms deciding the battle could wait until they relocated somewhere less populous. The side of her sneaker started to rub against the edge of her foot, a nail grown too long prodded its neighbor, and its neighbor prodded back. Victoria’s eyes closed as she walked, moving now in a dream.
Edwards’ theory was obvious once it was voiced. Already, it seemed true in a way that the best answers always did. It felt inevitable that the evidence would follow and line up like shooting ducks. That kind of inevitability was where mistakes crept in. Rules would be bent and morality broken because it didn’t matter as much when everybody knew who the culprit was already. When it was a forgone conclusion.
Home was drawing closer now. Ten minutes more and Victoria could pull in through the door and fall straight into bed, and sleep. The street light she walked under was glowing oddly, brighter than the rest. Her shadow stood in stark relief on the pavement underneath her feet. It faded as she moved on, then the next light did the same.
Victoria rubbed her eyes. She was too tired. Dr. Rueber’s voice echoed in her head. If your hallucinations have started again. Stupid thoughts. All that had happened was she’d walked herself into exhaustion and was dropping in and out of sleep. Like the folks stuck in their endless competition dancing in the twenties, asleep on her feet.
Reaching the back door, Victoria laid her head against the cool, wooden frame for a moment. Whether it was the endorphins from exercise, or just the chance to spend hours without having to think about anything important, she felt better. Good, almost. Maybe she should stop by the doctor’s office more often if this was what a fifteen-minute appointment earned her.
Accustomed to the noise of the street, inside Victoria thought she was clomping about like an elephant. Each noise, each creak of the floorboards, echoed around the sleeping house. Was it always so still?
Her mouth was dry, and she poured a glass of water, emptying half of it in one long swallow. Her phone beeped. A strident annoyance. Victoria pulled it from her pocket to check the screen.
“I was going to a party,” the message box said. “He’s coming, he’s coming, he’s coming, he’s coming, he’s coming . . .”
Two words, repeating over and over on her screen. Victoria gasped in fear while the threatening phrase pushed the opening message to the top until it scrolled out of sight.
Smoke curled in a long tongue from underneath the casing. The phone burned with terrifying heat until it grew too hot for Victoria to hold. She dropped it onto the bench and watched in horror as the screen first turned to a gibberish of pixels then turned black and empty. The plastic casing started to bend and warp.
An oven mitt hung from a hook near the stove. Victoria used it to push her phone into the sink and turned the tap on. The phone hissed like a vicious snake as it evaporated the first few drops of water. A flame shot out from the side. Victoria wrenched the handle further, sobbing with desperation. Noxious fumes rose in a smoky cloud from the phone. Her nose wrinkled in protest.
The message was gone. If it had ever existed. In Victoria’s head, Dr. Rueber’s calm voice intoned, “If your hallucinations have started again . . .”
Victoria placed panicked, shaking fingers over her ears as though she could block the voice, rising stridently in her memory.
#
“This is you, right?” Arnaud asked her over the breakfast table.
After dumping her sodden phone in the trash, Victoria had tried to go back to sleep. Tried to give herself the present of another hour’s rest. At first, the cough remaining from the odorous smoke kept her awake. Then her thoughts returned to the track they preferred, you’re to blame, you should have done more, you should have done less, and she kicked back the blankets in frustration.
When Victoria glanced up, he was pointing at an article on the front page of the paper. An old photo of Victoria, looking ten years older than her reflection this morning in the bathroom mirror, was set halfway down the page. Just above a photo of Gregory Mancini and below a photo of the Coby Thorpe crime scene.
“Yeah, that’s me. What’s it saying?”
“You killed a very bad man.” Arnaud kept reading, spooning dry cereal into his mouth while he did so.
“Can I get a lift to school?” Grace asked.
“Not today. You’ll need to catch the bus.”
Grace gave a huff and pushed herself back from the table, chair legs squealing.
“When I was in high school it was a privilege to catch the bus,” Victoria said. She’d made a start on toast, but the three-quarters remaining on her plate labeled her a failure. “Only the cool kids got to travel by themselves.”
“No, it wasn’t,” Grace said, hooking her feet through the chair legs and scooting it back into position. “Catching the bus has never been cool.”
“Everybody had parents who dropped them off at the school gate. It was embarrassing.” She screwed up her face. “Mom or Dad would want a kiss goodbye, and the whole class would see. The kids who caught the bus walked from the stop. Half of them would be smoking.” Victoria giggled at the look of horror on Arnaud’s face. “It’s not a suggestion, Dad.”
“Yeah, Dad,” Grace echoed. “I don’t want to smoke.” She stuck out her tongue. “The smell is horrible. Vaping, I could go for.”
“Vaping?” Arnaud said in horror. “What’s that. Some drug thing?”
Grace giggled again and shrugged her shoulders rather than answering. When she finished her fruit and yogurt, she walked off to change for school looking a lot happier.
“The cool kids caught the bus, eh?” Arnaud raised an eyebrow at her.
Victoria raised her right hand. “I swear, everything I said was one hundred percent true.”
“This woman,” Arnaud said, pointing back at the article. “She thinks you killed her son in error.”
“That’s what she thinks.”
“And the new murders, they’re targeting girls around Grace’s age.”
Grace’s school had been the second visit on Victoria’s list. The last one she’d crossed off. She hadn’t looked for the girl in the assembly she’d talked to but had seen the toss of Grace’s head as she left afterward. Grace hadn’t brought it up, and Victoria didn’t want to mention it in front of Arnaud, in case there was something between the two of them she was missing.
“Her school will have passed out information on what she can do to keep herself safe. The only girl’s targeted so far have been out, walking alone at night.”
Well, Coby had been. With Miranda, Dr. Guardiola hadn’t been able to pinpoint a time of death, so it was anybody’s guess. A copycat sticking to the old plan would have attacked at dusk, or later.
“The school will have talked to her?” Arnaud chewed his bottom lip. “She hasn’t said anything to me.”
“There’s a very specific profile that the killer is targeting,” Victoria said. She picked at the corner of her placemat, so she didn’t have to see the question in his eyes. The question she had no intent on answering. “Grace doesn’t fit, so if she takes reasonable care at night, she’ll be safe.”
As she pulled her hair back and fastened it into a tight bun, the last step in her preparation for work, Victoria realized that she didn’t know what type of girl Grace was. For many years, she’d thought Shelly was a good girl until she went speeding off the rails. Teenagers weren’t doing their job right unless they hid what they were doing from their parents. Or any adult.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
“I don’t understand how she’d even know the girls were pregnant,” Edwards said as he made notes. “Or how the killer would know,” he amended.
“Gregory Mancini used the helpline to find out, but that’s not happening,” Victoria said. She leaned back in her chair, brain frantically ticking through a chalkboard list of options.
“Maybe she has an in with a doctor. Maybe she volunteers at the family planning clinic.”
Edwards pulled the s
hort file up on the screen and scrolled down through the pages. “They didn’t both go to the same clinic. Here.” He pointed. “Only Miranda Walsham attended the family planning clinic. Coby Thorpe’s test results are through her pediatrician, would you believe?”
Victoria raised her eyebrows and shrugged. “Probably the only doctor she knew. They’ll both be computerized, though. That’s how we got their records so quickly.”
“To do that, she must’ve hacked into two completely different medical databases.”
“Most likely she paid for someone to do it.”
They looked at each other for a moment, concerned, then Victoria sighed. “Okay, it’s a long shot. But if she’s comfortable taking a contract out on teenage girls then having someone break into a computer system is a step back, not a step forward. She’s the only one with motive right now.”
“Unless . . .” Edwards trailed off and shifted in his seat.
“Unless I didn’t catch the killer the first time around and Gregory Mancini was a diversion,” Victoria finished for him. Her voice was self-critical. “Either way, that doesn’t matter. Someone must have found out that these girls were pregnant. I refuse to believe that there’s a killer on the streets targeting teenage girls who just happened to kill two in a row who were pregnant.”
“Who else would know?”
Victoria shrugged her shoulders. “This was the stumbling block last time. I thought I’d sorted it with the help line, but that can’t be the answer now.”
“Ray told you they weren’t his target audience, right?”
Victoria nodded. The helpline manager had said their main clientele was made up of sad and lonely middle-aged males.
“So where else would they go?”
“Online,” Victoria guessed. “Maybe there’s a Facebook group?”
“Pregnant girls are us?”
“There could be a forum offering support. I don’t know—it’s more your age group. What’s your suggestion?”
“We need to get these girl’s computers and examine their history.”
Victoria picked up the phone to place a call. “They’ll be down in the forensics lab if they’ve been brought in.”
#
“We’ve processed Miranda’s computer already, here’s the catalog of files and browser history.” Chuck Havana handed over a sheaf of papers, double-sided. “Nobody’s brought in Coby Thorpe’s computer.”
“Has anyone gone through her house yet?” Edwards asked.
Havana nodded. “We’ve got her phone back there, but there’s nothing on it. The battery must have overheated ‘cause the whole things fried.”
He pulled up a file on his computer and scanned the contents quickly. “No laptop. There’s a family computer noted, but the parents said she didn’t use it much.”
Victoria believed that. Who would search for help with their teen pregnancy in the same room with her parents and siblings watching TV?
“The battery thing,” she said, her mind poking cautiously at the memory of the smoking mess in her sink that morning. “Is that a common issue?”
Havana shrugged. “Not for her brand or model. It’s a slight risk with any lithium battery, though. It’s why airlines don’t like you storing them in your luggage.”
“The sites Miranda went on are for schoolwork, mostly,” Edwards said. “There are some groups she regularly visited online, but the names aren’t jumping out at me. Can we take this?”
Havana sucked his bottom lip in over his teeth. “I can send you the file. We like to keep a manual record here. Just in case.”
Victoria imagined that working with computer forensics gave you an important appreciation of the values of physical copies. “Send it through, then.” She screwed up her nose and tilted her head to one side. “You can’t get anything off the phone?”
An amused laugh was the only response.
“I wonder if we can sneak back into the high school and talk with some of the girls,” Victoria said. “If anyone knew where these girls would turn, it’d be them.”
“Want me to chat up Mrs. Sanderson while you creep into class? If I work my magic, I could take her under the bleachers for a few minutes.”
“Keep it in your pants, Edwards. What time does class let out? We could wait outside the school.”
“Officers caught accosting young girls outside school.” Edwards blocked his hands after each word as though framing a headline.
“What’s your bright idea?”
He held a hand to his chest. “I’ve already had my bright idea. That’s me done for the year.”
“Who took over the lectures?”
“I don’t know. How about we just get on Facebook ourselves and search a couple of them out. Who wouldn’t want to return my friend request?”
When Edwards made a good point, he made a good point.
#
“I’m glad you know what you’re doing,” Collins said back at the station house. She’d pulled a seat up behind Edwards as he navigated through his social media pages, pulling up girl’s profiles and sending them messages. “How do you even know their names?”
Edwards shrugged. “I’ve always been good with names. Bingo!”
“Who is it?”
“Ellen Jackson.” At Victoria’s raised eyebrows, “she was in the first class. Black girl at the front of the class.”
She nodded. “I remember. What does she say?”
“Hold on, give me a minute to build some rapport.”
Victoria knocked her knuckles on his desktop and scanned the station house. Most of the officers were out in the field, a response to the heightened investigative efforts. There’d been a news crew outside when Victoria and Edwards returned to the almost empty station. Coverage had been upgraded from local to national, so the pressure was on. No doubt, Haggerty’s face would appear on her TV screen tonight.
“Fuck!”
Victoria turned back to look at the screen. There was a scramble of pixels: pink, yellow, and green. Edwards thumped the side of the screen, then swore again as he reached under his desk to reboot.
“Your computer working?” Haggerty called from his doorway. “Mine just went down.”
Victoria’s stomach gave a painful twist of anxiety. “Just trying a reboot, Captain.”
Her jaw tensed as she waited for the OS to start up. Each familiar screen seemed strange now she was paying attention.
“Fuck,” Edwards repeated as the boot sequence stalled and spat out a load of gibberish. “We’re down too, Captain.”
Nausea caused an overproduction of spit in Victoria’s mouth. She swallowed, but it flooded full again. There had been years since they’d had computer issues in the department. A ton of money had been thrown at the problem to ensure that they never experienced them again.
“What about dispatch?” she wondered aloud.
Haggerty reappeared at the doorway as though summoned. “The whole buildings down. A tech guy is coming up so stick around and help him with whatever he needs, okay?”
He returned to his office without waiting for an answer.
“Try Stanton’s computer,” Edwards said. “He’s on a different server to me.”
“Captain just said the whole building’s down,” Victoria protested, but walked across and tried to boot it up anyway. The same tense wait for the same gibberish. “Nope.”
“What’s your data plan like?” he asked.
“My data plan is fine. My phone’s dead.”
Edwards looked her up and down for a moment. “You’ve been in this job for a long time, right?”
Victoria nodded.
“So, you’d have a bit of spare cash for emergencies?”
She pulled her wallet out of her back pocket and handed her credit card over. “Use this. And if I find that it’s still being charged next month . . .”
“As if.” Edwards looked offended. “I only scam people who don’t know how to find me. Catch.”
He threw her wallet back, and
Victoria tucked it away. “You have Facebook on your phone?”
“Yes, Grandma. Here we go, I’m back in.”
It wasn’t possible for Victoria to sit and watch over Edwards' shoulder when the screen was so tiny. She sat and looked through the manual files, hoping her old trick of reading the same information over and over would lead to a new idea. When a middle-aged man who’d sweated through his beige shirt despite the coolness of the day, walked out of the lift, Victoria guessed he was the promised computer technician.
“What do you need?”
“Just a computer, love. Got the ticket here.” He waggled a flash drive with the Police Department logo down the side. “Sorry I was so long, but we’ve had offices going down all over today. Complete madness.”
“Collins? Have a look at this.”
Edwards placed his phone down on the desk. When Victoria pulled a chair up beside him, he swiveled the screen toward her. “It’s a chat group where teen moms meet. Ellen thinks that may be where they were going.”
Victoria scanned anxiously through the screens of dialog, looking for the names. “I can’t see them here.”
“They’ll be using avatars and handles,” Edwards said. “Even when it’s not important, teenagers will do it. You’re not going to find Miranda and Coby listed.”
“How do we find out who they are?”
“We’ll need a warrant and Miranda’s IP address.” He took the phone and scrolled to the bottom, pointing to the company logo along the bottom. “Once this place hands over their records, we can track her chat and then find out who else was looking.”
Victoria nodded, then bent her head down. “How’s it going?” she asked the technician. He was almost out of sight under Arbeck’s desk, stirring up dust that the cleaners never seemed to notice was there. Or think to vacuum for.
“See for yourself,” he replied, nodding at Stanton’s screen. The usual backdrop of the department logo was showing. “I need to individually boot up each of the computers, then you should be good to go. Want yours done next?”
