Deadly Obsession

by Jack Parker

  "Actually I might not be able to help you out there. I worked on the same team with him but only really knew him on a professional level. We didn't go out for drinks or anything."

  "Do you remember anyone else that worked with him that might know more?" Eric asked. The captain didn't respond immediately but turned and walked to his desk, motioning us to follow. He sat down and accessed his computer.

  "That was almost ten years ago, but I remember a few people that were in his inner circle. He trusted some people here more than others. It's actually quite common in law enforcement considering how much is at stake with this job." he said as he was typing at his computer. Moments later I heard the sound of something being printed. "I think this list should be more than enough help."

  "Thank you." Eric told him. I nodded in agreement to show that I appreciated the help as well.

  "I can't guarantee that all of those people still live in Denver." said the Captain, "But the first guy on the list, Tom, was one of his closest associates. I would start there. I'm sure he knows a lot about the former Chief."

  "And he lives in the area?"

  "Yeah, I believe he's retired. He went off to work for the FBI after Taylor resigned. The guy's a genius. I think if anyone would be able to shed some light on this issue it would be good old Detective Vickers."

  "Did you just say Vickers?" I asked. The Captain looked over at me as if he were surprised I knew how to speak.

  "Why? You guy's know him already?" he replied.

  It had to be a coincidence right? Agent Vickers had been forced into resigning from the FBI after helping the Vigilante Killer elude capture in Denver last year. Rewind back almost a decade before when Dan Taylor had been the Chief of Police in Denver and he worked closely with this same guy, and for some reason he resigns and disappears from the public eye for a while, only to reappear again in Houston and do the same disappearing act now. It made sense to want to try to connect all of these strange events involving these two people, but it just didn't fit. The only thing connecting the two other than their time together at the Denver Police Department is this weak connection with the Vigilante Killer.

  "Who is this Vickers fellow and why is it such a shock for him to be on this list?" Eric asked as soon as we left. I hadn't told him about Agent Vickers because it was a minor detail from the Vigilante case and as far as I was concerned it had nothing to do with Taylor or the Vigilante Killer other than the fact that he was friends with victim number five.

  "I told you about the two FBI agents that were working the case, Foster and Aguilar. Originally it was Foster and Vickers, but Agent Vickers was forced to resign because of suspicions that he helped the Vigilante evade the authorities." I explained.

  "Why do they thing he helped out the Vigilante Killer?"

  "I'm not sure, but I imagine they strongly suspected that there was someone within the FBI that told him they were coming, and then later on they found out that victim number five was a good friend of former Agent Vickers and they put two and two together."

  Not much else was said about that, and soon we made it back to the hotel. Eric decided he would try to figure out if he could access the old police records that would tell him what cases Taylor and Vickers had been working on around the time he resigned. I guess his theory was that Taylor resigning was back then had something to do with one of the cases he worked. Maybe if he could connect it one of the Vigilante Victims he would have a link between the past and the present.

  While he was doing that I went back to watching the videos of all of the murders, once again. It was better than doing nothing, and since I wasn't nearly as computer savvy as Eric was, this was the only thing I could do. I paid much more attention to the victim that had been responsible for Agent Vickers' friend's death this time. But there was just nothing that seemed unusual on the video.

  It started at night, like all of the other murders did. He walked in, said his normal bit about how bad the guy was and got overly emotional at times. The criminal pleaded with the Vigilante saying that it was an accident and he only did it in the heat of the moment trying to get away from the store he just robbed. More things were said, but the guy just kept going back to the fact that he wasn't really a killer. It wasn't much longer before he got tired of talking and stabbed the guy in the chest.

  We both eventually called it a night, deciding we should get some sleep and wake up early the next morning so that we could see about interviewing former Agent Vickers. Tomorrow couldn't come any sooner, and when the time finally came to track down where Vickers lived, it took no effort and we were out of the room within an hour of getting up.

  He lived about half an hour away from the city. The ride gave me an opportunity to appreciate the city and its surroundings. We had been busy roaming the streets the past few days and so this was the first time we had gotten a good look at what made Denver so much different from Houston. The most obvious thing I noticed was the weather. The hot and humid climate of Houston was far different from the cool and dry temperatures in this city. They call Denver the Mile High City for a reason: because of it's location in close proximity to the Rocky Mountains and the fact that it is literally a mile above sea level.

  And that was the other thing about Denver that was a drastic contrast to Houston. If I were to take an hour drive in any direction out of Houston I would see miles and miles of flat land. But go thirty minutes West of Denver and you found yourself driving in between two mountain peaks that seemed to stretch endlessly upwards. This was all new to me as I had never traveled this far west before.

  "Ok. When I called him earlier I used the same lie about us working on a book that I used with the Captain. No need for us to put him on the defensive from the get-go." Eric explained before we knocked on the door to this guy's house. "However, I imagine at some point in order to get good information from him we'll have to bring up his connection with the Vigilante Killer and see how he reacts to that."

  "Well, I'm probably not going to say anything anyways so I won't be able to blow your cover." I joked.

  "I guess that works." he answered with a grin.

  The next few minutes weren't incredibly interesting. He knocked on the door, Vickers answered it and invited us in and led us to his living room and we all sat down. His house was actually pretty nice looking. The house was a long ways from the road, and we had to go through a densely wooded area to reach the clearing where his house had been built. The material that the house was made out of, whatever it was, had been painted brown making it look kind of like a log cabin. The interior was decorated in the same way.

  However, the old time-y log cabin feel was over as soon as I caught a glimpse of the rest of the house. It had the things one would normally expect from a nice house: expensive furniture, an elaborate entertainment system and a fully loaded kitchen. Mr. Vickers himself looked like… a retired FBI agent. I guessed that he was probably five or ten years younger than Taylor, which would've put him in his mid-forties; average height and build, clean shaven with gray hair. I could tell he was a cop the way he carried himself. I remember Taylor had that same confident posture when I had worked with him.

  "You were the guys that called asking about what Dan Taylor was like when he worked in Denver?" asked Vickers.

  "Yeah. People say you were the closest to him when he was the Chief of Police here. I don't know if you have any stories or if you just wanted to talk about what kind of person he was." Eric said, taking out a notepad and pen. I guess he really wanted to sell the lie that we were working on a book.

  "He was one of the best guys I've ever worked under. Usually the Chief of Police is more of a political or administrative position in most cities because they are supposed to be responsible for everything. Maybe they offer to lend a hand on high profile cases because they want the cameras on them. Not Dan. Usually he hired people to help him with the administrative and political side of the job and spent most of his time in the field." Vickers said.

  "Why didn't h
e just stay a detective then?" asked Eric.

  "He could be a stubborn man sometimes." the retired agent replied with a reminiscent laugh. "He didn't like being told how to do things. If he was the Chief of Police, the only person he had to answer to was the mayor, but he never had to deal with the mayor as long as everything ran smoothly. It was a lot more work, but he also had more freedom."

  Vickers was telling me things about Taylor that I already knew. I already knew about how he liked to work cases even though he probably could've gotten away with staying behind a desk and ordering others around. I knew all about his personality. He treated every with respect, but he was a lot more open to people that were in his inner circle. Eric of course didn't know all of these things, so this interview was his way of finding out what Taylor was like just as I had this past year.

  "It sounded like he was married to his job." Eric said.

  "Yeah. I mean, we all were in a way. It's a very demanding job." he replied, taking a sip of his coffee. "But he was more committed than most. I guess if you are on top of the totem pole that's the way it should be."

  "It must have been hard on his family for him to be at work all the time."

  "Of course it was." Vickers responded. "He had a wife and son, and Dan did the best he could to be a husband and father. He just had a weird way of showing it sometimes."

  "How so?"

  "A lot of the time he got a little too invested in the outcomes of some of these cases we worked. And once he got to that point there was nothing you could do to stop him from catching the guy. Unfortunately that meant a lot of late nights at the office and a lot of unpaid overtime. Maybe he thought in a way he was making the streets a little safer for his family, but his wife didn't see it that way."

  I remember Taylor being like that when we worked together too. I guess I reasoned that because he had been separated from his wife for the longest time it was only natural for someone to put more into their work. But it never occurred to me that he was the same way back when he was married. I suppose that is why his wife left in the first place.

  "Did they get into fights at the station or something?" Eric wondered.

  "Oh nothing like that, he told me about him and his wife fighting a lot though." Vickers explained. "I told him the answer was simple enough: just don't work more than you have to. I never understood why he couldn't stop himself from working too many hours on some of these cases."

  "I've heard of some people that bury themselves in work so that they can escape from the their duties as a parent. Maybe that was the real reason he was here all the time." Eric suggested.

  "No. He wasn't one of those deadbeats that never want to spend time with their families. He loved his wife and especially his son." Vickers responded with a slight edge to his voice. "He talked about his son all the time… bright kid. Back when he was just becoming a teenager he was way ahead of the other kids at school."

  "Our research shows that he resigned from his post here, but there wasn't really much information as to why." Eric changed the topic a little. "No article in the newspaper or anything. Do you know anything about why he eventually left?"

  "No clue. His decision to leave was so sudden and he never even told me why. I haven't seen him since that day." the former agent answered. "I imagine the stress suddenly got to him and he just decided that now was a good time to retire."

  I thought that was a lame answer. He used to be a detective, so he must've thought of all the potential reasons why he could've left and weighed the pros and cons of each theory just like I had. It sounded like the guy was as close to Taylor as I had been. Was it possible that he had actually thought out all of these possibilities, but then when he couldn't find any answers he eventually decided to let it go? Or maybe… maybe he was hiding something.

  "For such a suspicious way to leave a prominent position in the city, surely you must've come up with some better theories than 'stress'." Eric said. Apparently he had the same feeling I had.

  "Oh, believe me… I've thought of them all. But the truth was that when Dan left, things got kind of hectic at the station and I just didn't have the time to investigate the matter any further. I thought that after a month he would calm down and contact me to tell me he was okay, but he never did. For a while I thought that he had gotten into trouble and it got him killed. But he resigned on his own free will, so if he was in trouble somehow he would've found a way to communicate that to me. And he hasn't turned up dead in the years since that day, so my guess is he's retired somewhere out in the country enjoying the rest of his life."

  "There is one theory that you probably haven't considered." Eric pointed out. Was he really about to say what I think he was?

  "I doubt it, but go ahead and shoot."

  "He left suddenly and never told anyone why, and you said yourself you haven't heard from him since then. Maybe he didn't want anyone to know why he left." Eric told him, trying the best he could to beat around the bush.

  "And why would that be?" Vickers asked.

  "Well…" Eric began to say. "…did you find any dead bodies after the fact who's time of death was estimated to be a little before the time Mr. Taylor resigned?"

  "What are you trying to say!" Vickers asked furiously.

  "You said yourself that he sometimes got overinvested in some of these cases. What happens when he doesn't catch the guy? What happens when the guy he's sure did it walks free and all that work he put in goes to waste?"

  I didn't think Taylor would be capable of doing something like that. But as Eric kept pressing Vickers about Taylor's past, outlining what his motivation might have been that led him to doing what he did… I just couldn't help but think that this might be possible. And I kept going back to that conversation we had the day I was put in a coma from that explosion at one of the Vigilante's hideouts.

  On the way to the hideout it was Kari, Taylor and I in one car with two detectives in another that followed us there. We were talking about the possibility that friends and family of some of these victims might've talked with the Vigilante at some point and given him the evidence he needed to be sure he was after the right guy. I had a hard time believing it was possible, because to me it would be just like pulling the trigger yourself. Then inevitably that led to the question 'could you pull the trigger on a guy that had wronged you if you knew you could get away with it' being posed.

  Kari and I answered no, but Taylor's answer was different… and I remember it word for word. He said that it was different because he was a detective, but if for some reason he couldn't get the guy thrown in jail and he was down to just the one option. If something like that had happened, he said he wasn't sure if he would do it or not. Sure, he didn't say flat out that he would do it, but he also didn't say he wouldn't.

  "He wouldn't cross that line." Vickers said, trying to hold back his anger.

  "Why not?" Eric asked.

  "You think that's the first time that he wasn't able to catch a killer? He doesn't always win, and if he went on a murderous rampage every time he let a killer go free there would be a lot more dead bodies to show for it! Dealing with failure is part of the job and he wouldn't destroy his life over something so seemingly insignificant!" Vickers raised his voice.

  "That certainly didn't stop you from doing the same thing." Eric tried to apply more pressure on the ex-FBI agent to try and get him to talk.

  "Is that was this is about?" he said irately. "The mistake I made that got me forced into retirement has nothing to do with Dan Taylor. Are you guys even writing a book? You must be reporters trying to ruin a man so that you can write an award winning story about a ex-FBI agent helping a serial killer!"

  Eric was about to respond, but I held my hand up. Both Eric and Vickers saw my movement and waited, wondering what I was going to do next. I knew that if we were going to get anywhere with Vickers now that he knew we weren't writing a book, it would help if he knew the real reason we were here was to try and help out his former friend. And the only person t
hat could explain that to him was one of his current friends.

  "We're not writing a book." I finally said. I fought back my anxiety so that I could say what I needed to say. "Eric here is a private detective from Houston. We lied about who we were but not about the reason we were questioning you. All we want to know is if you have any information about why he resigned all of those years ago."

  "Why does someone from Houston want to know about what happened in Denver nearly a decade ago?" Vickers asked.

  "Because for the past several years Taylor has worked with the Houston Police Department… getting appointed as the Chief of Police only within the past couple of years. And I've been working with him as a consultant for the past year." I explained.

  "And?"

  "And well… I don't know if you are aware, but the so-called Vigilante Killer that was here in Denver last year has been in Houston for the past couple of weeks." I continued. I glanced over at Vickers and he had the most shocked look on his face.

  "It can't be a coincidence… it just can't…but I don't know how he found out… I never..." he started mumbling to himself.

  "What are you talking about? Who found out?" Eric urgently asked.

  "…And recently he resigned from his position again without any kind of warning or goodbye." I continued once more. "After some poking around I found that the last thing he did before resigning was compare a cassette tape he has with him to an audio clip we had of the Vigilante Killer and it was a match. We don't necessarily know what that means, but-"

  "No, no, no, no, no, this can't be happening… he knows… but how?" he kept mumbling to no one in particular.

  "Who knows?" Eric kept trying to press Vickers for answers.

  "Damnit! Maybe somehow… no, with everything lining up there's just no way it can be anything else." he starting mumbling a little more adamantly.