Shadow Man

  Jack Jr. appears in camera view, dressed in the same costume he wore when he killed Annie. He waves to the camera, and again, I get the sense that he is smiling. The smile is all for us; he loves that he is committing this crime on tape, essentially in front of us, without giving away a clue to his identity. He steps outside the lens. A moment later the music begins. Loud, almost deafening.

  I wish they all could be California giiirls…

  He moves over to the woman, cocking his head this way and that as he stares down at her. Then he holds up his weapon. Not a knife this time. A bat. He begins to dance and caper, waving the bat, putting his evil to the rhythm of the song. He makes a few false swings, just to terrify her further. Her eyes are bulging out, her face is turning red as she tries to scream through her gag.

  And now, like it did in the video of Annie, the montage begins. All of it is done with an unhesitating brutality. There’s nothing clinical or workmanlike about it—when he prepares to swing the bat, he raises it back and above his head, and when he brings it down, he puts his entire body into it. He’s not just breaking bones; I can imagine them shattering into powder. Each time she passes out, he stops and slaps her face until she wakes up. He wants her to be there with him, to be aware of what is happening to her. To feel every minute.

  He puts the bat down and climbs astride her. The rape begins. It’s brutal, designed for maximum motion. He wants to grind those broken bones, wants his fucking her to be the worst pain she’s ever felt. Again, each time she passes out, he wakes her up. It must have been like waking up to a nightmare, over and over again, I think.

  The rape finishes, and out comes the scalpel. He shows it to her. Grips her chin and makes her look at it, understand it. Her eyes follow the blade, fix on it as it moves down to her belly. I watch her start to go mad as he begins to dissect her, still alive. I look over at Leo. He is green, his face filled with horror. But he holds it together. He’s toughened up now, become someone he can’t unbecome.

  When the woman is dead and eviscerated, Jack Jr. stands up. He stares down at her for a long, long time. She looks like someone made her swallow a bomb and then blew her up from the inside out. He looks at the camera, giving us a thumbs-up. At that, the video ends.

  “You think you’re so funny,” I murmur to myself, enraged. “Keep smiling, fucker.”

  It feels as impotent as it sounds.

  Of course, part of me knows he never really smiles. There aren’t any smiles in him.

  Everyone else is silent, trying to process the images we just saw. Compartmentalizing.

  Dealing with it.

  “Check out that Web site address, Leo. Let’s find out who this woman was.”

  “I’m on it,” he says, quiet. He pauses. “How…how could anyone do that?” It’s a real question. His eyes bore into me, and they plead for an answer. I think for a moment before responding, choosing my words.

  “They can do it because they love it. It’s their sex act, and their need for it is greater, more demanding, than any junkie’s need could ever be. There are all kinds of reasons they become that way. But the bottom line is that they love what they do. Passionately.” I look at James. “What’s that phrase you came up with for them?”

  “Sexual carnivores.”

  “Right.”

  Leo shivers. “It’s not what I imagined. All of this.”

  “I know, believe me. This idea is perpetrated that it’s exciting hunting serial killers or baby rapers or other monsters. It’s not exciting. It’s consuming. You don’t wake up and go, ‘Boy oh boy, I can’t wait to catch that guy.’ You wake up and look in the mirror and try not to feel guilty because you haven’t caught him yet. Try not to think about the fact that he could be killing someone else because you haven’t caught him yet.” I lean back, shaking my head. “It’s not about excitement. It’s about feeling responsible when people die.”

  He looks at me for a moment longer, then does what he’s learned to do in the face of horror: He turns to his computer and goes to work. A minute later, he has what I need. “I have an address for the owner of darkhairedslut.com. It’s an apartment in Woodland Hills.”

  “Do you have a name?”

  “No, sorry. It’s registered to a business. Probably a sole proprietorship.”

  “Alan. Call LAPD for that area. Tell them to check it out. If it turns out that she’s there, I want them to close off the scene and let us know. No one in or out.”

  “Got it.”

  “It wasn’t obvious on this video,” James says. “At least not to me.”

  I frown at him. “What wasn’t obvious?”

  “That it was two killers, and not just one.”

  I look at him in surprise and then nod. He’s right. The fact that I had to ask him what he meant was proof that his observation was sound. If Jack Jr. had company, this time it wasn’t visible to the naked eye.

  “But they were both there,” James says. “I can feel it.”

  I look at him again, nod again. The dark train rolls on, chug-chug and choo-choo, and James and I remain firmly aboard.

  I turn to Leo. “I want to take a quick look at her Web site.”

  Callie looks bemused, or tries to. “I never thought I’d be ordered to surf porn, Smoky. This will make the second time.”

  “Something you usually do only at home?”

  “Very funny.”

  It’s a game attempt at gallows humor, but it falls flat. The images are still too vivid.

  “Here it is,” Leo says.

  We move our chairs so we can see the site he’s called up on the screen. The color scheme is a soft brown. I see a picture of the woman we watched Jack Jr. destroy, dressed in panties and nothing else. Her butt is facing us, cocked in an age-old saucy pose. She peers over her shoulder, smiling a coy smile, while one finger is cocked in a “come hither” way. She looks like someone doing porn. But she also looks pretty and alive and human. Unworthy of what we’d just seen.

  I’M A DARK-HAIRED SLUT, a logo states across the top of the screen. To the right of her picture are additional, smaller photos. While the truly explicit is only hinted at, the message is clear. This is not about erotic posing or cheesecake shots. There are strategically censored photos of oral sex, anal sex, sex with other women, sex in groups. Smaller type confirms this: I love to suck cock and swallow cum, I live for gang bangs and getting fucked up the ass, and I absolutely LOVE to eat PUSSY!

  “Versatile young woman,” Callie remarks.

  I shake my head. “I’ll say.”

  Further graphics let us know that she does live cam shows and that she throws sex parties for her fans. Members only, of course.

  Leo takes us through another two pages of this, leading toward the final destination of the sign-up page.

  “Now what?” I ask. “I’m not using my credit card for this.”

  “I don’t think we’ll need to,” Leo says. “I have a hunch.”

  He clicks on the link for members entry. A box appears on the screen, asking for a user name and password.

  “I bet that he picked the same user name and password for this site that he did for your friend’s. The user name was jackis and the password was fromhell.” He types these in as he says them and hits the OK button. A page appears that says Welcome to my hot members-only area! “Voilà,” Leo says.

  “Good thinking.”

  He scrolls down the page, which is essentially a menu of the features offered within this part of the site. Things like personal photos, my video clips, my live cam, my amateur friends. The one that catches my eye is photos from the member sex parties.

  “I wonder…” I muse.

  “What, honey-love?” Callie asks.

  “The member sex parties…I’m thinking that he might not have been able to resist that opportunity. Having sex with her, knowing that he’d be killing her soon—it’s something I can see him doing.”

  “It would heighten the anticipation. The sense of power he felt.”

&
nbsp; This is a common thread for serial killers. The tracking, the watching, the planning; these things can be almost as intoxicating for them as the finale.

  “I think there’s a high probability that that’s true,” James says. “We could download all the photos. Extract the faces of all the men and run them through some facial-recognition databases.” He shrugs. “It’s not all that thorough yet, but it’s worth a try.”

  Anyone who thinks law enforcement is all excitement doesn’t understand this part of what we do. We’d like to move at a dead run, but we are forced to be methodical. We cast out nets and lines, like fishermen. Not one, but many, over and over and over. Look for prints, one net. Warrant for a subscriber list, another. Facial recognition, yet another. Again and again, casting and pulling in, usually coming up empty. Not caring what we catch. A shark or a minnow, whatever, anything that will take us toward the killer. It’s a race of turtles, measured in inches, not yards.

  “Do it. You and Leo.”

  I walk over to Alan. “You reach LAPD?”

  “I did, and I’m going to meet them there.”

  “What about Dr. Child? Did you reach him?”

  “Yeah. He was pretty grumpy at first, but all I had to do was give him a quick rundown of what we found today. He got interested fast. Wants a copy of the report couriered over to him tonight, and he said he’ll be ready to see you on it in the morning.”

  “Good. Callie, get that report from Gene and make sure it gets to Dr. Child.”

  Callie heads for a phone as Alan heads out the door. I go to my desk, rummaging through it until I find my address book. I look through it, finding the phone number I want.

  Tommy Aguilera. A former Secret Service agent, now working as a private security consultant. We’d met during a case involving a senator’s son who had developed a taste for rape and murder. Tommy ended up having to shoot him, and in the political firestorm that followed, my testimony was the only thing that kept him from losing his job. Tommy had said to let him know if I ever needed anything, with emphasis on “anything” and “ever.”

  I dial the number, thinking about him. Very, very serious guy. A constant poker face. Speaks in a soft voice, but it’s not the softness of someone who is shy. More the softness of a snake confident in its ability to strike.

  He answers after four rings. “This is Tommy.” The voice is exactly as I remembered it.

  “Hi, Tommy. It’s Smoky Barrett.”

  A pause. “Hey, Smoky. How are you?”

  I know Tommy is being polite. It’s not that he doesn’t care how I am. It’s just that he’s not a small talk kind of guy.

  “I need your help on something, Tommy.”

  “Tell me what you need.”

  I explain it to him, telling him about Jack Jr., how he’d been in my house and appeared to be following me.

  “There’s a strong possibility he’s tracking you electronically.”

  “That’s one part of it. If he is, I want to know. But I don’t want to let on that I know.”

  Silence for a moment. “I understand,” he says. “You want me to tail you.”

  “Right.”

  “When?”

  “First I want you to check my vehicle and my home for bugs or tracking devices. Then I want you to shadow me. This could be an opportunity to catch him. Maybe the one place he’s being foolish.” I hesitate for a moment. “To hell with it. You should know. There are two of them.”

  “Working together?”

  “Yeah.”

  “When do you want me to start?” No hesitation.

  “I should be home tonight around eleven. Do you mind meeting me then?”

  “No. I’ll see you there. Don’t worry if you run a little late. I’ll wait.”

  “Thank you, Tommy. I really appreciate it.”

  “I owe you, Smoky. I’ll see you later tonight.”

  I hang up, musing. Tommy is definitely a no-nonsense guy.

  I watch Callie finish her phone call.

  “So?” I ask.

  “I reached Gene, honey-love. He’s getting a copy of the report couriered to Dr. Child.”

  “How long would it take you to put a scene kit together, Callie?”

  She raises her eyebrows, surprised. “It depends on whether or not Gene has one already—a half hour?”

  “Go see him and get things ready. If it turns out that there is a crime scene, I want you and Gene to do the initial processing personally, before we let LAPD forensics in there. This is our first opportunity to see things fresh.”

  “You got it, honey-love,” she replies, and whirls out the door.

  And then it hits me. One of my epiphanies. I shouldn’t be surprised. I am in the groove, all forward motion and senses turned up to maximum.

  “Listen up, James, Leo,” I say, excited. “Tell me what you think about this.” I sit up and they give me their full attention. “Both times they’ve killed, they’ve signed up for access to the members’ areas of the Web sites concerned, right?”

  “Yep.”

  “And both times, they chose the same user name and password combination. So…”

  I see Leo’s eyes widen. “Right! So there’s a chance that they already picked their next victim and signed up there as well—maybe with the same user name and password. Or, if not the same, along the same lines. The Ripper theme.”

  I grin. “Exactly. I can’t imagine that there are that many companies that will process charges for adult sites.”

  “No, there aren’t. Less than a dozen.”

  “We need to contact every one of them, James. You and Leo. We want them to search through their systems, looking for that user name and password combination, as well as variants. And then we need it matched up to a Web site. I’m talking about waking people up out of bed.”

  James gives me a look of grudging admiration. “Competent. Very competent.”

  “That’s why I’m the boss and get paid the big money.”

  His lack of retort is like a compliment from someone else.

  I’m talking to Alan on my cell phone. “We got a scene, Smoky,” he says.

  “Who’s the primary from LAPD?”

  “Barry Franklin. He wants to talk to you.”

  “Go ahead and put him on.”

  There’s a pause, and Barry’s voice comes through. He’s not pleased. “Smoky. What’s with denying us access to our crime scene?”

  “It’s not like that, Barry. At all. This is just our first chance to see a scene from this unsub fresh. You know how that is.”

  A pause, followed by a sigh. “Sure. Can I go in, at least? You know I won’t fuck things up.”

  “Of course you can. Can you put Alan back on?”

  “Sure thing.”

  “So he’s cool to let us on the scene?” Alan asks me.

  “Yep. And I’m leaving with Callie and Gene in about five minutes. We’ll see you there.”

  “Got a name on her, Smoky. Charlotte Ross.”

  “Thanks.” I hang up.

  Charlotte Ross. Promiscuous, yes. Of dubious moral character, maybe.

  None of these traits merits a penalty of torture, rape, and death.

  38

  RUSH HOUR ENDED at 8:00 P.M., so it doesn’t take us long to get to the address in Woodland Hills. It is a small, single-level condo, not dripping with prestige, but nice. It fits the neighborhood.

  I park and we all get out of the car, heading to the front door, where Alan waits.

  “Where’s Barry?” I ask.

  He jerks a thumb toward the door. “Still inside.”

  “Have you taken a look?” I ask.

  “No. I knew you’d want to see it first.”

  He knows. Years of working together creates this kind of symbiosis.

  I poke my head in and call for Barry. He appears from inside another room, and he walks toward me, moving out of the house onto the porch.

  “Thank God,” he says, reaching into his coat. “I needed an excuse to come out
and have a cigarette.” He pulls out a pack and lights up, inhaling and then exhaling with a blissful expression on his face. “You want one?”

  “No, thanks.” I’m surprised to find that I mean it. The desire to smoke evaporated somewhere between finding out about Alexa and picking up my gun again.

  I feel gratified and lucky that Barry is the primary on this case from the LAPD. I’ve known him for almost a decade. He’s short, pudgy, and balding. Wears glasses and has one of the more homely faces I’ve ever seen. Somehow, despite these shortcomings, Barry is always dating pretty, younger women. There’s something about him; you get the sense that he is larger than the body he wears, and he has a supreme confidence without being arrogant. A lot of women find that combination of self-assurance and a good heart to be irresistible. He’s also a brilliant homicide detective. Very, very talented. If he were in the Bureau, he’d be on my team.

  “You itching to see the scene?” he asks.

  “Tell me the basics first. Before I go inside.”

  He nods and begins to recount. He doesn’t refer to any notes. He doesn’t need to—Barry has a photographic memory. “Victim is Charlotte Ross, twenty-four years old. Found tied to her bed, already deceased. She was cut from sternum to pelvis. Internal organs appear to have been removed, bagged, and placed by the body. Tremendous bruising to arms at the elbows, legs at the knees. They look broken. Contusions look like he beat her with something.”

  “He did. With a bat.”

  He raises his eyebrows. “How do you know that?”

  “He sent me a video of it. This is the second woman—that we know of—that he’s done this to.”

  “There’s no official time of death, but I’d guess it has to be at least three days. She’s pretty ripe.”

  “That fits with the general timeline.”

  He draws in another lungful. Gives me a look of thoughtful regard. “So what’s this about, Smoky?”

  “What’s it always about, Barry? A psycho who thrives on pain and terror.” I rub my eyes. I’m tired. “This unsub targets women who run personal adult sites on the Internet. He…” I hesitate. “This all has to stay between us for now, Barry. I’m not ready to release anything to the press.”

  “No problem.”