“She doesn’t want any,” Dottie said, looking up at James, who was standing with his arms crossed.
“Of course she does,” James said. “Everybody wants cake. Maybe she just doesn’t know what it tastes like. Put some in her mouth and she’ll love it.”
“Are you sure that’s a good idea?”
“I’m positive,” James said, but he didn’t sound convincing. They had been running to the doctor constantly, asking him what could be wrong with their little girl, and just as constantly they had learned that some kids were just slower developed than others, that there was nothing to worry about, that Elizabeth would catch up eventually; she was just very small and needed more time. She would learn how to eat real food soon enough.
“No grown-ups live only on milk,” the doctor said, chuckling. “Just let her take the time she needs.”
So they had done so far. But both of them had started to doubt if the doctor was right. James had started to think that they just needed to force Elizabeth into situations where she had to do things she didn’t want to. Like put some toy she wanted far away on the floor and tell her to crawl for it, but so far, it hadn’t worked. Elizabeth just gave up on getting the toy and found something else to hold in her hand instead. They had even taken away the bottle at one point. Told her there would be no more milk, that now she was supposed to eat real food, but that had only resulted in her simply not eating anything, and after two days, the doctor had told them to bring back the bottle because Elizabeth couldn’t bear to lose any more weight. She was too fragile and small.
“Just force the fork into her mouth,” James said to Dottie. “Once she tastes the cake, she’ll want it.” He sounded irritated.
Dottie did as he told her to and forced Elizabeth’s mouth open with her fingers, then scooped the cake inside the baby’s mouth. She then pulled her fingers out, expecting the baby to start crying, but she didn’t. She just looked at her mother with the sweetest little smile, then spat the entire piece of cake out using her tongue. The remains of the chocolate cake ran down her chin and ended up on her shirt.
Chapter Thirteen
March 2015
Sheriff Ron Harper was on the phone when I knocked on the door to his office.
“Ah, Ryder, come on in,” he said, and pointed at a chair. I sat down, holding Shannon’s email in my hand. I had printed it out for him to look at. Meanwhile, I had asked Richard, our researcher, to find everything there was about the Miami shootings for me.
“What’s up?” Ron asked, when he hung up the phone. “How far are we on the stabbing case?”
“Almost done with that one, sir. But there is something I need you to take a look at. You know Shannon King, right?”
Ron rolled his eyes. “Christ, Jack. Everyone in the country knows about you two. It’s on the cover of every damn magazine in Publix.”
“Of course.” I blushed slightly, thinking about the pictures of me in my board shorts. It was quite intimidating, knowing everyone in the country pretty much had seen the picture. The boys at the office had teased me a lot, placing the magazine on my desk or calling me bad boy whenever they could get away with it. I had told Shannon it didn’t bother me, but of course it did a little. I liked to live quietly. But if that was the price I had to pay to be with her, then I did so willingly. She was worth it.
“Shannon received this email today and she handed it over to me,” I said and showed it to him.
Ron put on his glasses and looked at it. Then he looked at me with a shrug. “So, what is this? Some stalker or what? Why is this a police matter?”
I explained everything Shannon had told me at my parents’ bar, and told him I thought it was an important matter, that we couldn’t ignore it.
“As far as I know, they got the guy,” he said. “Case is closed, Jack. We’re not touching this. A few emails aren’t going to change that.”
“Listen to me,” I said. “Shannon is freaking out. She is certain this is from the killer. Shannon doesn’t remember everything from the first emails, but she said he wrote that her song, “Guns and Smoking Barrels” was his favorite song of hers, and that it made him realize what it was he needed to do. She feels awful and has been blaming herself all these years.”
“I know that song,” Ron said and started to sing out of tune.
“It was her first number one hit, but she told me she hates it because of this, because of what this bastard wrote to her. She thinks he got the inspiration to do the shooting from hearing her song.”
“That’s awful,” Ron said. “But the case is closed, Jack. I feel like I’m repeating myself here. This is just some lunatic writing his favorite singer creepy letters. Nothing new in that. Case’s closed. If they don’t open it in Miami, we can’t do anything about it.”
Ron looked at me for a long time, while leaning back in his leather chair. Ron was a good guy. I had always liked him. But he was also a hardhead sometimes.
He shrugged. “We have plenty on our own plates as it is, Jack. Like I said, if they don’t open the case in Miami, then there is nothing much we can do.”
I growled at Ron, then walked back to my desk and found a stack of papers from Richard. It was all about the shooting in Miami in 2009. I opened the file and started to go through it. Richard spotted me and came over. He was a tall and skinny guy with a nice smile. Why he never got married was beyond me. He was such a nice guy. Used to play pro-baseball in his younger days. Had been a promising pitcher until an injury drastically changed his entire career. After that, he decided to go into the force like his old man had been. He loved to fish in his spare time. I always told him to start surfing instead. There would be plenty of time to fish when he grew old.
“I got what I could find on the computer,” he said. “The case is six years old, so the rest is paperwork and probably down in Miami. I can send for it if you’d like, but it’ll take a couple of days.”
“I am going to need that,” I said. “And try to figure out who worked the case back then.”
Richard smiled and put a post-it on my desk with a name and a number on it. “Already done. I’ve also contacted the IT Department and told them to try and track the email address you gave me as well.”
“Excellent.”
I looked at the post-it and saw a name I recognized well from my past.
Chapter Fourteen
March 2015
I called my old friend and colleague at Miami Beach Police, Tim. It was his name on the post-it from Richard, I was pleased to know. I had spent many hours with Tim, watching crack-houses and busting drug dealers in downtown Miami. It was a dangerous job, but I loved getting those bastards off the streets. Apparently, he had worked for the homicide division in Boca Raton at the time of the shooting.
“Jack, old buddy! How the heck are you?”
“I’m good, thanks.”
“I heard you moved to Cocoa Beach?”
“Yup. Best place in the world. I get to surf every day. Living on the beach.”
“Are you staying at your parents’ place?”
“Right next door. Got a condo for me and the kids. Right on the beach.”
“Sounds good. Maybe I should swing by some day. Stay for a weekend with the girlfriend.”
Tim always had a new girlfriend. He was never known to settle down with the same girl for longer than a few months at a time.
“You should do that.”
“I hear you got yourself a new girlfriend too,” he said.
“Sure have.”
“I can’t believe you nailed Shannon King. She’s like the sexiest woman alive, man. How did you meet her?”
“She stayed at my parents’ motel for a little while. I helped her out with some stuff,” I said, trying not to get into too many details. I had to be careful what I told people when dating a celebrity. Not that I thought Tim would ever rat me out, but he might tell someone else, who would sell the info for money. Shannon had warned me how fast things spread.
“I’
m glad to hear that, buddy. So, when are you coming back? We need you here. I miss you, man.”
I inhaled deeply, then looked at the picture of me and the kids taken on the beach in front of my parents’ motel. The happiness in their eyes made my heart melt. “I’m not,” I said. “I like it here.”
“Really? In small town Cocoa Beach? Man. I feel so abandoned down here. You left me in the middle of a case, man.”
“I know. Sorry about that.”
“That’s alright. I got a new partner and we solved it without you. So, what can I do for you?” Tim asked.
“I’ve stumbled onto something that might interest you.”
“Yeah? Like what?” Tim asked.
“It’s regarding the movie theater shooting in 2009.”
Tim went quiet. I knew him well enough to sense his smile stiffen. “I’ll be…The case is closed.”
“I know. I just need to know some details. You caught him, right?” I asked.
“He killed himself in his home. I found him there myself. After he shot those poor people in the theater, he slipped out of the emergency exit where he had come in. We have a picture from a surveillance camera of him when he arrived at the mall and parked his car close to the emergency exit. We tracked the plate to a Laurence Herman, and when we stormed his house, we found him dead. He had shot himself. The case is closed, Jack.”
“I know it is. I’m just sniffing around a little. Thought maybe you could help me.”
“Not going to happen. I am not touching this case again.”
“So, let me ask you this. How sure are you that this guy was the shooter?” I asked, looking down at the case files Richard had printed out for me.
Tim paused. “It was him, Jack. No doubt about it.”
I knew him well enough to sense his hesitation. He wasn’t sure at all. I had gone through the material again and again, and I couldn’t get it to fit. It had probably haunted him for years.
“You know just as well as I do that the autopsy concludes that Laurence Herman died between three and three-thirty in the afternoon. The shooting took place at five thirty-five. The guy was already dead, man.”
Tim inhaled sharply. “They could be wrong about the time of death,” he said. “Happened before. There’s always a margin of error. We have the surveillance pictures. They show Laurence parking his car right outside of the emergency exit and him coming out afterwards and driving off.”
I grabbed a copy of the surveillance pictures and looked at them while I spoke to Tim.
“First of all, you can’t see the person’s face on those pictures. He’s wearing a hoodie. Second of all, where did you find the car?”
Tim breathed again. “In a ditch in Ft. Lauderdale. It had been set on fire.”
“Exactly,” I said. “How is Laurence Herman here supposed to make it back to the house in Boca and kill himself if the car is in Ft. Lauderdale?”
“He probably just drove it up there because he knew it had been seen on surveillance photos and wanted to get rid of it.”
“Would he really care about that if he was going to kill himself afterwards?” I asked.
Tim sighed, annoyed. I was getting to him. I could tell. I just hoped I was pushing his buttons enough.
“Jack, Goddammit. How am I supposed to know what goes on in the head of a man like that? He’s nuts. Insane. He had just shot eight people, women, men, and children. I don’t think he was thinking very clearly at that moment, if you want my opinion. Maybe he didn’t intend to kill himself afterwards. Maybe he was overwhelmed by guilt. He had, after all, just killed a lot of people. It’s bound to get you thinking. Even the worst mass murderers must feel some kind of regret, don’t you think?”
“I’m not sure they all do,” I said. The killer’s psychology was my field of specialty. “Some feel relief. In a true psychopath, the anger has been building for a long time, and when they finally let it loose, when they finally do it, they feel a sense of great relief. Some are even happy, since it has been building for so long. A malignant narcissist feels no guilt afterwards. He feels the weight on his shoulders lifted. Fifty pounds of emotional weight lifted. He feels like he’s the master of his own destiny. He doesn’t need anything or anyone. The murder isn’t over when the victims die. The murder is over when his anger against them recedes. That’s why he keeps killing. He is still killing them even after they're dead.”
“Okay, Mister Expert. But it’s also true that most mass shooters kill themselves afterwards. Who’s to know if it’s planned? It’s not like we can ask them afterwards, right?”
I wasn’t getting through to him. I felt frustrated. What more did he need to know? I had to convince him. My gut told me I simply had to.
“True. But I need you to open the case anyway. I have reason to believe it might be worth it. I have reason to believe the killer is about to strike again.”
Tim went quiet, then he exhaled. “No way, Jack. This case was the worst I ever worked on. I loathed it. I love you, buddy, you know I do, but I’m not doing it. Sorry. I simply can’t.”
Chapter Fifteen
March 2015
I tried my hardest. I told Tim about the emails and about Shannon’s involvement, and made him promise to keep it from the press, but nothing helped. Tim was not going to reopen the case. Without him reopening it, there was no way I could get Ron or the rest of the team involved either.
It meant I was on my own with this.
What if they were right? What if it was just some lunatic writing the emails and not the killer? It was certainly a possibility. But, then again, it could be him. It could be the killer of four people from that evening six years ago. I couldn’t take the risk of not taking this seriously. I didn’t dare to. How would this person, this lunatic, know about the emails in the first place? How would he know what to write? If it wasn’t him in the first emails either, how did he know the shooting was about to happen? It made no sense. The fact that Shannon had received the emails hadn’t been mentioned anywhere in the media. Shannon and her old manager were the only ones who knew. If this was the killer writing her again, then there was no time to waste. I had to stop him. The movie theater shooting was the most ruthless mass shooting in Florida’s history. The killer had shot at entire families, even children, while they were watching the newly released movie The Princess and the Frog.
The report said the shooter bought a ticket, entered the theater, and sat in the front row. He was wearing a hoodie in the theater, which the usher noticed, but didn’t comment upon. It wasn’t that unusual. The AC kept the theater very cold and people wore lots of clothes inside. Other than that, he was wearing jeans. The usher had noticed he had seemed to hide his face in the hoodie when handing him the ticket, but just taken him for being some weirdo. He saw weirdoes every day. About twenty minutes into the film, it was believed the shooter left the building through an emergency exit door, which he propped open with a plastic tube.
He allegedly then went to his car, which was parked near the exit door, and retrieved his guns. Thirty-five minutes into the film, at five-thirty-five p.m., he reentered the theater through the exit door.
He then fired a 12-gauge Remington 870 Express Tactical shotgun, first at the ceiling and then at the audience. He shot first to the back of the room, and then toward people in the aisles. A bullet passed through the wall and hit someone in the adjacent theater. Witnesses said the fire alarm system began sounding soon after the attack began and staff told people in all theaters to evacuate. One witness, a mother with her child, had been in the restroom, and according to her statement she had heard the shooting and screaming on her way back and never reentered the theater. She had lost her husband, while her daughter had been hit by a bullet that ricocheted from the ceiling, but it only hit her in the arm.
I leaned back in my chair with a deep sigh and looked at Beth across from me. My new partner had this aura about her that made people keep their distance from her. I didn’t know her story yet, but I was guessin
g she was one of those officers who was married to the force. She seldom smiled and I often didn’t quite know what to say to her. But now, she looked up and our eyes met. Her eyes were actually pretty. Probably the prettiest feature about her. Otherwise, she was small and plump and hadn’t been first in line when God handed out female bodies. But I liked her. Even if she kept everyone, including me, at a safe distance.
“So, what’s going on with you, Ryder?” she asked. “You haunting ghosts from the past?” She nodded at the pictures and papers on my desk, all telling the story of the mass shooting. I hadn’t told her what I was doing yet.
“Looks like it, doesn’t it? I don’t know what I’m doing, to be honest,” I said. I looked at my computer screen and found the web camera from the pier. The waves looked intriguingly good. I needed to get out of there. Clear my head. There was still an hour before the kids came home on the bus.
“Go ahead, Ryder,” Beth said. “I’ll cover for you here. Out there is a wave with your name on it.”
Chapter Sixteen
March 2015
Stanley couldn’t eat any more. His stomach was hurting from all the food he had consumed over the last few days. And it kept coming. He kept getting a plate set in front of him, then a gun to his head with the order to eat. He had thought about trying to fight his guardian and get out, but didn’t dare to. What would happen to Elyse if he did?