Every Breath You Take

by Jay Zendrowski

  Chapter 30

  Pepper and Chin returned to the station and filled Inspector Caruso and the others in on their meeting with Drummond.

  "Chin and McTavish were right," Pepper said, "the guy is an arrogant prick, all right. But he's cool as a cucumber, too. He didn't get rattled once, even when I mentioned The Sandman." He turned to Wallace. "Did you send a reply back to that message from early this morning?"

  "Yeah. I sent it a little while ago, but nothing's come back yet."

  "What did you say?"

  Wallace pulled out the phone. "I thought he might be proud of himself for what he did to that girl with the whip, so this is what I said: "Working on your artistic skills, I see. What did that girl ever do to you? Have you got something against blondes? We're coming for you, Sandman. You're the one that's going to get stung."

  "That should piss him off," Caruso said, "which is exactly what we want. He's more liable to make a mistake if you keep pressing him."

  The group turned as Janssen walked in, still dressed in her scrubs, pulling the elastic band out of her blonde hair and shaking out her ponytail. "I don't have any good news for you, Inspector," she said, addressing Caruso. "The guy was just as clinical and meticulous as he was with the Redmond girl. There's not one print on anything we found at the crime scene. Nothing on the whip, nothing on the note, nothing anywhere. This guy definitely knows what he's doing."

  Caruso shook his head as he looked around at the others, none of them surprised by Janssen's findings. "What about the tox screens?"

  Janssen nodded, her ice-blue eyes showing the sympathy she felt for the two girls who had been so brutally murdered. "Yes, the same type of Rohypnol was present in the Skinner girl. And the bleach, just like Yvonne Redmond. Plus, there were traces of the sodium pentobarbital, which is what he used to render her unconscious." She held her fingers up to her own neck, as if she was about to give herself an injection. "He got her right in the neck, where I noticed that little red mark, and with that stuff, she would have dropped like a stone. If he approached her from behind, the location of the entry wound would indicate the suspect was right-handed and somewhat taller than the girl."

  "So after that, it was the same method as the Redmond girl," Caruso said, absentmindedly twisting his watch back and forth as he spoke to Janssen. "After subduing her with the injection initially, he kept her incapacitated with the Rohypnol while he raped her, and then in the end, he injected her with the bleach?"

  Janssen nodded. "Yes, that's consistent with all my findings. Like Yvonne Redmond, she'd probably had a heparin lock in her foot. There was bruising and swelling on this girl's foot as well. He would have been able to feed her saline through that, and then he would have injected the bleach into her through that as well."

  "Okay, okay. Thanks, Tanya," Caruso said, grimacing as he turned to the rest of them. Chin stuck Alicia Skinner's picture up on the murder board next to the picture of Yvonne Redmond. The similarity between the two girls was startlingly obvious. "Jesus, he's really got his type, doesn't he?"

  Pepper stepped up and looked at the two pictures. "Like you said, these two could almost be sisters. It makes you wonder if he knew a girl like this in his past, or whether he's just a sick bastard who likes blue-eyed blondes."

  "It could be both," Wallace said.

  "I don't give a shit what the guy's reasons are," Caruso said, his lips twisted as he looked ready to spit nails, "we just need to stop this asshole." He turned to Wallace. "Do you make anything of those song lyrics, anything special jump out at you?"

  "Other than what we talked about that he seems to be screwing with us again-nothing. Obviously he chose it because of what he did with the whip, the same way he chose Poison Arrow."

  "Has he responded to that post you put on the website?" the Inspector asked, looking at Pepper.

  Pepper had checked the website moments ago once he and Chin had returned from the university. "No, that's still a dead end. No response to our personal message to him, and no new postings on the site by him either."

  "Somehow we've got to get a grip on this guy." He looked down at his watch. "Shit. I've got to meet with the Chief. The mayor's been calling and wondering what's happening." He looked around and addressed the team. "Keep at it, people, we're due for a break."

  The detectives went back to their desks as the Inspector grabbed his sports jacket and left the room. Pepper knew it was at times like this that he was glad they had Caruso on their side. He took a lot of flak for the squad and warded off the assholes as best as he could. Pepper's land line rang, and he picked up the phone.

  "Detective Pepper."

  "Detective Pepper, Anthony Fragakos, Channel 10 News. What can you tell me about the body that was found behind that convenience store on Adelaide Street? I hear the crime scene bears a striking resemblance to the Yvonne Redmond murder?"

  "I don't know where you're getting your information, Fragakos," Pepper said, the anger in him building at the idea that some beat cop had a loose lip.

  "C'mon, Pepper. You know as well as I do that it looks like the same guy. Pretty girl, blonde hair, blue eyes, found in a dumpster. What can you tell me? C'mon, nobody will know it came from you."

  "Not now, Fragakos," Pepper said, slamming the phone down angrily.

  "I take it that was your old buddy on the phone?" Wallace said, looking over from his computer screen to Pepper.

  "That Fragakos really pisses me off. He knows far more about the situation than he should. It sounds like one of the cops at the scene was talking, or maybe Fragakos is our guy."

  "Fragakos? You're kidding?" Wallace said, giving Pepper his full attention.

  "No. I never liked the guy, and something just doesn't feel right about the questions he's asking about this case. Did I tell you I ran into him at the liquor store and he almost threatened me?"

  "Threatened you? How?"

  "He basically said he could break my career and I had no idea how much power he and the media had these days-some shit like that."

  "What a windbag."

  "He drives a silver four-door car, too."

  "What?"

  "Yeah, a Toyota Camry. I saw it when he drove out of the parking lot that night."

  "No shit?"

  "No. I didn't think anything of it at the time, because I knew he was getting under my skin. When I noticed it, I looked around the parking lot. Do you know how many silver cars are out there? It seems like every second or third one nowadays is silver. Anyways, I mentioned it to Caruso and he's having Fragakos checked out."

  "Good," Wallace said as he returned to his computer screen. "Ah geez, I can't believe it."

  "What?"

  "I'm doing a Google search on the type of whip we found at the crime scene. Guess where you can get one?"

  "Probably any local sex shop, right?"

  "There is that, but you can also order them online from Amazon, or thousands of other places that carry them. So that's just as much of a dead end as our arrow."

  The Inspector came back in and went straight to his office, just as the phone on Wallace's desk pinged. There was something about that distinctive sound from the Bartolucci kid's phone that seemed to pierce the atmosphere like an early warning system. All the team members came over to Wallace's desk, and even Caruso limped over from his office, his troublesome hip giving him serious problems.

  "Is it him?" the Inspector asked.

  "Yes," Wallace said, calling up the e-mail message. He scanned it over quickly, and then read aloud: "You're right, my good friend Sting. You ask what that girl did to me. Why nothing, but that doesn't mean that girls that look like that shouldn't get what they deserve. You should have seen the look in her eyes when I entered her-every one of them had the same look. All of them deserved the whip. I was happy that she couldn't cry out, that would have spoiled it for me. You should try it-feel the sting, Sting. Whip it, whip it good."

  "Jesus," Chin said once Wallace looked up. "This sick fuck is really getting off o
n this, isn't he?"

  "Yeah," Pepper said. "He's really starting to enjoy his little game now. Look at how long this message is. He's never done that before. Rupe, read that part again about them deserving the whip. There might be something there."

  Wallace looked back at the phone. "You should have seen the look in her eyes when I entered her-every one of them had the same look. All of them deserved the whip."

  Caruso looked over at Pepper and nodded as they listened to the words again. "Okay, people," the Inspector said, addressing the group. "Let's start researching cases in the past that have the same MO. It sounds like this guy has done this before, probably to the first girl that started him down this road. We would have remembered this if it had happened in London, so I think we need to look further. Remember that Drummond was living in Toronto for a number of years. See what you can find out there. Do your searches Canada wide. I'll contact the FBI across the border. See if they can help us out. I think he's finally given us something-let's see if we can find out what it is."

  The detectives returned to their desks, Wallace printing off the message and circulating it to all of them.

  "What are you gonna say in response to that message?" Pepper said.

  "Geez, I don't know. After that, I'm not sure what to say now. I'm gonna have to give it some serious thought."

  The door to the squad room opened and McTavish walked purposely into the room, looking buzzed. "Inspector," he called out as he strode across the office and threw his jacket on his chair.

  "What's going on, Ian?" Caruso said as he came out of his office.

  "I found out some interesting information about Drummond." For the next fifteen minutes or so, he briefly touched on his fruitless trip to Toronto, but went on to relate the story of the interview he'd had with Dr. Seaton, sharing the details of her encounter with Drummond, as well as what she knew about why he'd left his position in Toronto. "At the end," McTavish said, summing up, "she basically said it wouldn't surprise her in the least to hear that Drummond was capable of something like this."

  "But you did mention that she said she would refuse to give any kind of official testimony?" Caruso asked.

  McTavish paused, before giving a hesitant nod. "Uh, yeah, that's right. But Inspector, how much more do we need before we can bring this guy in? Or at least get a search warrant for his house?"

  Caruso shook his head, thinking about Drummond's lawyer. "We're gonna need more direct evidence than that, but I'm going to go and talk to the Justice of the Peace, see what he has to say." He stood back and nodded to McTavish. "Good work, Ian. That woman's statement starts to tie a lot more strings together." He gestured towards the other team members. "They'll bring you up to speed on what's been going on since you left. We had another message from The Sandman."