Payback

by T. S. Worthington

  “Ok, I see how it is; I’m being gang raped here,” Arnold said.

  “Pretty much. Hey, Brian did you hear about the copycat murder of the Carver?” John asked.

  “I already tried, but the guy is just not interested,” Arnold said.

  “I’m sorry to burst your bubble guys,” Brian said. “I do have a lot of other work to do. Why do I feel like this is some sort of an intervention?”

  “Well, we couldn’t help but notice that you seem crazy bored and preoccupied lately,” John said.

  “I’m not that bored. But yea, sometimes the job does get you down a bit. It’s normal. It happens.”

  “But not to you. You are the guy who loves this place more than anyone and sometimes it seems like you would rather be elsewhere lately.”

  Brian groaned. He had been found out. They knew that he was getting burned out and that he was unhappy. Had it affected his job performance? He didn’t know. Was it just the attitude that he brought with him nowadays? Brian didn’t really want to get into it right then. He was still trying to wake up and fight off the urge to take a long morning nap. The seven hours of sleep he’d had last night were just not cutting it. Usually he lasted until the mid-point of the day before he decided that he wanted to curl up and take a long nap, but lately it was getting to him pretty much all the time.

  “I’m fine, guys.’ Brian insisted.

  “Well, ok but let us know if we can help cheer you up,” John said.

  “I don’t need cheering up. I’m ok. I am just going through a rough spell. I just turned forty. That is allowed,” Brian said pouring some more coffee. The pot was almost empty. That was the thing he hated about having his own coffee pot in his office—it was too damn small. He was too lazy to walk out to the common room to actually get some coffee and get some exercise while he was at it. He often swore that he could hear his blood start to coagulate in his arteries from lack of movement.

  “I never did,” Arnold said.

  “Well, you have more energy than the energizer bunny,” Brian said.

  “Well, he does have a point dad. You are a bad frame of reference here,” John joked.

  The chief hit him on the arm and started to leave the office.

  “You guys got to stop ganging up on me in the morning,” the chief said.

  Brian could not help but laugh as the man walked out.

  “So, you want to play some racquet ball tonight after work?” John asked.

  Brian groaned. “That sounds like it would require a lot of effort.”

  “Wow, this is not the dude I grew up with,” John replied.

  “I’m sorry to disappoint,” Brian replied. “Actually, I think that Amber has plans to cook the family a healthy dinner tonight and then it is game time.”

  “Game time?”

  “Yea, it is once a week thing where she insists that we all get together as a family and enjoy some games and festivities.”

  John could not stifle the laughter.

  “It’s not that funny,” Brian said. “It is really cool actually.”

  Arnold burst back into the office just then. He looked like he had seen a ghost.

  “There’s been another murder. Just like the Carver. It’s a double homicide this time.”

  Brian slipped his jacket back on and headed out of the office behind John and the chief.

  Chapter 2: Welcome to Paradise

  Brian could not believe what he had just seen. Two victims in a fairly nice neighborhood who had just been skinned alive. It was all coming back to him now just like it had back then. He had only worked on one of the crime scenes when this originally went down back in the day, but it was like the whole thing was happening all over again.

  Now they knew that this was not the work of the actual Carver. Ian Jeffries was still behind bars rotting away on death row as he had been the past ten years. Brian still could not believe that the court kept granting the man appeal after appeal, just wasting tax payer’s dollars to keep him alive. The man had butchered several people and terrorized an entire community. Why were they keeping him alive? It sickened Brian, and not just because he had a personal connection to it now. It was more than that.

  This murder was a young a couple. They had only been married for six weeks and were just starting their lives together. Why was this psycho doing this? Did Jeffries have some brainwashed kid working for him out here? Was that what happened? Brian knew that Jeffries had his fans and that he had confessed to far more murders than anyone even knew about. The man had even claimed to have a partner but none of this had ever been verified. They were mostly just the ramblings of a lunatic on death row.

  Ian Jeffries had a big online presence apparently from what Brian had gathered. Amber had no idea he did this, but Brian routinely checked out Jeffries online finger prints to see if there was anything being talked about in regards to his crimes. Jeffries himself was not allowed internet access of any sort, but Brian knew that in prison there were ways to get around that. He could bribe guards or other inmates to go online for him. Why in the hell they let any inmate have access to the internet in a maximum security prison was something that would forever boggle Brian’s mind. It was just one of several things that were leaving him bored of the job lately. There were just too many inconsistencies. He was tired of it all.

  But he had to admit standing outside enjoying the fresh air in the ninety eight degree temperature when it was only ten in the damn morning was a bit refreshing. A lot of people could not take the heat in the summer in southern Arizona, but it really didn’t bother him at all. He had grown up there and he actually enjoyed it.

  He had felt the first little twinge of excitement in a long time. Was this what it took? A few people getting completely butchered for him to feel anything with this job anymore? He knew that he needed to step out and find something else, and fast. But right now he had a case to solve.

  The biggest thing at the moment was media control. Brian had remembered a bit on how this should go down, but he still hated it. The media of today were even more relentless than they used to be because of the technology at their disposal. They could get the information onto blogs and social media within seconds from phones and a host of other devices. That was why it was even more adamant that the cops not say a word about anything at the crime scene.

  Brian finished his cigar—he had tried to quit way too many times—and stepped back into the house. The crime had actually happened in the upstairs master bedroom, but the entire house was swimming with cops and it all was being treated as a crime scene. Any time there was that much room for evidence to be collected then they had to operate that way.

  But he still hated the hustle and bustle of a homicide scene.

  Brian had asked to be moved from homicide to vice about a year before. He had grown tired of seeing thing like this and the only reason he was actually there now was because of his history with the case. There was only so many dead bodies that one could see before they just could not take it anymore. He had reached his limit of watching the awful things that people could do to each other a long time ago.

  But this case was his he felt. Arnold and John had not even asked him to step back because it was technically not his beat. One copycat murder was a random coincidence but two separate crime scenes—one of them being a double murder—was a message. Someone was trying to tell them something. What was it? What was going on here?

  “Any prints? You guys finding any semblance of this thing called evidence?” The chief walked around barking at the forensic geeks. He was getting annoyed and bullying them around a bit, which usually indicated they had not found shit. The chief could not stand when there was no evidence at a crime scene. There was a little known fact that if a murder was not solved in forty-eight hours then it was probably not going to be solved. That was too true too many times, Brian thought. If there was no physical evidence collected at the scene and they were not able to establish any motive, then th
e case would go cold and the killer would walk in ninety five percent of the cases. Just thinking about it pissed Brian off.

  The head lab geek looked up from dusting for prints and said no. The chief walked away disgusted. Brian tried to ignore the smell but the entire house smelled like death. The bodies had been sitting there rotting for close to forty-eight hours. They had been discovered when the husband’s employer had come looking for him when he had not reported to work or so much as called off sick for two days. When the employer arrived they noticed signs of foul play. Noticeably the smell as soon as they walked in.

  The stench of death was unmistakable for anyone and when you walked into the house it hit you in the face with a huge wave of disgusting that turned your stomach almost instantly. The smell was churning Brian’s stomach at that very second and making him regret every morsel of food that had gone into his body that morning. He had to get out of there soon. He just wasn’t cut out for homicide anymore. His body and mind had started to reject it before; that was why he had gotten out of it. He was a zombie at home and his mental and physical being had been in dire jeopardy.

  The victim’s employer, despite the smell had made their way up the steps to find the two victim’s both lying in pools of blood on the bed with their skins removed. That was the Carver’s M.O. Brian had often wondered what it was like to be skinned; how much pain would someone be able to stand before they were completely unconscious, never to wake up again? That thought had troubled him repeatedly over the years. The Carver took his time with things. He would skin someone until that moment and wait for them to wake back up. But eventually they would bleed out and they would never wake back up. Brian had to feel sorry for the ones that did not pass out first. They would have been awake for a much bigger percentage of their deaths.

  “We aren’t going to find anything,” Brian said.

  “I know, but dammit we have to at least give it our best shot. Everyone messes up eventually; we just have to hope that this is the time,” Arnold said.

  “Well, the killer has struck twice in quick succession and it doesn’t look like he is going to slow down any time soon.”

  “Those old homicide instincts are getting sharpened already,” Arnold said with a smile. He was happy as shit that Brian was helping them work a homicide again. Brian had to resist the urge to roll his eyes over the whole thing. He knew that he was pretty good at homicide and that the department might have suffered as a result of him walking away from it, but he had to do what was best for himself and his family. He knew that Amber had been so relieved when he had made that decision. He wondered what she would be thinking to learn that he was working a homicide case again and it was this case. He would just have to explain to her that he was doing it all for her. He was doing it all because he wanted to protect her and make sure that this case was done once and for all.

  But was this the same case? He kept thinking of it as the case of old, but this was a brand new perpetrator. This could not really have anything to do with the Jeffries case could it? He needed to find out. That was their best bet at finding the information that might lead to the arrest of the copycat before he struck again.

  “I wouldn’t say that. This feels like an alien world to me, Jim,” Brian said.

  “It will come back to you,” Arnold said.

  “I don’t want it to. I don’t know why I’m here. You guys don’t really need me here. You have this all under control I’m sure. I feel like I’m in the way,” Brian said. He was actually feeling a bit like a third wheel. Since he arrived on the scene all he had really done was brood, fight nausea, and wonder why he was not sitting behind his desk right now sorting through paper work on the trail of the North side crystal meth ring that he was working on. He had not yet located where they were cooking the stuff or figured out exactly how their distribution system was set up.

  He was starting to feel completely out of his element here. But it was pulling him in all the same. He felt like even a copycat of this case belonged to him somehow because he was so close to it.

  “Don’t give me that. I can see the spark in your eye. I know that you want to be here,” the Chief said.

  “Brian smiled good- naturedly as John patted him on the back. It did feel good to be a part of this particular team again, but he really felt off his game. Maybe Arnold was right and he was just going to have to get his feet wet and then he would start to feel like the Brian Graff of old, but he hope that he didn’t have to get too much practice in. That meant that they had to find this asshole before he killed someone else. If he hadn’t already.

  “Any signs of forced entry found?” Brian asked.

  “No. It looks like he picked the lock. The forensics guys talked with the team working the other crime scene and they confirmed that the same thing happened there and they confirmed it looked like the same exact knife too. The body at the other crime scene is about twelve hours older than these two.”

  “So he had these victims already picked and ready to go? He just packed up at the other crime scene and came right here to start this job? It takes a while to do this; you got to figure maybe the guy is on some sort of drug to keep himself going?”

  “Maybe. But you’d be surprised what people running on pure adrenaline can do. They can stay up for days. Maybe he is bipolar and he is killing on his high cycle?” John said.

  “That is possible, but if he is actually on a drug or even if he is bipolar then he is more apt to make a mistake. Did we have anyone talk to the neighbors yet? Did we canvas the neighborhood?”

  “We did, but nothing turned up. The guy was like a ghost. Same story at the other crime scene.”

  “Do we think that maybe these are not his first murders? Usually when a killer starts out they make a lot of rookie mistakes, but if the mistakes aren’t enough to get them caught then they learn from the mistakes and get harder to catch. At least until they start to unravel and their arrogance lets them get careless.”

  “The man is an encyclopedia of murder,” John said with a smile. “You should teach a class.”

  “Oh, I’ve had offers,” Brian replied.

  “Well, then why not do it?”

  “I’m not sure,” Brian said but he knew why. He had been approached by the local university on several occasions to teach a few criminal justice classes but he had turned them down, despite obtaining a PhD early in his career. He had continued his education while being a uniformed cop simply because he enjoyed the studies and he knew that it would help him rise through the ranks more easily and command a bigger salary when he got there. Little did he know that an accident would be the thing that helped him make detective and the salary bump was not that much more. It was kind of pathetic when you really thought about it.

  But he had entertained the notion of teaching. It sounded like it might be interesting to pass along his knowledge and his experience but to him it sounded more like something he wanted to do after retirement. And he wasn’t sure how he would feel talking about murder all day long. Would that put him back in that creepy mind state again? Like he felt himself being pulled into right now? He tried to shake it off and think about anything else, but he was already trying to walk around inside the killer’s head.

  “Well, what do you think about this? Any thoughts or nuggets of deep insight to share with us?” Arnold asked. He was clearly desperate for anything that Brian might have on what this person was thinking when they committed the crime.

  “You mean why is he copycatting the Carver? I am not sure. I would look at former victims---maybe people who had escaped the Carver—or maybe look further into Jeffries claim that he was not working alone back then. Of course we have to look at Jeffries and see if there are any former cell mates who might have been turned on by the adventure stories that Jeffries might have shared with him. And we need to see who has been coming to visit Jeffries and who he has been writing to. I know he gets a lot of fan mail, but we need to see if there are any people that he c
orresponds with regularly. It would be someone who was standing out among the flock.”

  “Alright. So we need to interview Jeffries,” Arnold said.

  “Yes, we do.”

  Chapter 3: The Past Returns

  Ian Jeffries was not the kind of man you would think of when you thought of a mass murderer who had terrorized an entire city. He was less than average height and couldn’t have weighed more than one hundred and sixty pounds. He had been a bit pudgier before his incarceration, but Brian guessed that prison food had to suck worse than he thought it might.

  Brian and John had gone together to interview Jeffries at Wilson Prison just outside of Phoenix about twenty minutes. The drive had taken longer than Brian had thought it might due to a huge car pileup on the freeway going out of town. The people in this city can’t drive for shit, he thought. They were all in a hurry and drove far too damn fast to get where they were going. Half of the deaths that occurred in the town happened due to massive car accidents. If you were driving around there then you were basically taking your own life into your hands. That was the way that Brian had always looked at it. When you got where you were going and you stepped out of the car it was not uncommon to breathe a sigh of relief that you had made it where you were going safely.

  Sitting across from the man who had almost killed his wife—skinned her alive even—was a surreal experience. Brian had actually never met the man in person before, except for at the crime scene. Many detectives and reporters had interviewed him hundreds of times, but Brian had stayed away from it. He had become too close to the case and far too emotional. He decided that it was best for him to just hang back and stay out of it. If he had really probed his own mind back then he would have decided that he didn’t want to work in homicide to begin with, but he had been color blinded by the shining flash of the promotion to detective. He had taken the job with a huge smile and went into the darkness wishing he was anywhere but there day after day.