Mystery: The Card Counter: (Mystery, Suspense, Thriller, Suspense Thriller Mystery) (12 page)

“Still better than nothing,” I said as something else occurred to me. “Why didn’t he kill her?”

“Didn’t have enough time, maybe.” Collins mumbled, still glancing around the scene.

“No, that can’t be it,” I replied. “It doesn’t take any time to slit someone’s throat. He had plenty of time to finish her off.”

“That meant she was never going to die, if you’re right and the method didn’t matter in the end.” Collins said, as we were on the same page now. “He’s only targeting men. For now,” Collins said. “He used to only attack players, and then the M.O. changed when we lowered the available options.”

“Fair enough,” I replied. “We can’t assume anyone is safe at this point.”

A moment later, one of the agents came into the room. “We’ve got a problem.”

Collins and I went out to see the paramedics who’d arrived on the scene to treat Mrs. Bennett. The terror she had endured for the last few hours along, with the knowledge that her husband was dead, had caused her heart to stop. After a few quick bursts with the paddles, they managed to get a rhythm and get her out onto a stretcher. Collins and I watched in disbelief as the medics stabilized her and hauled her out of the house into a waiting ambulance. “Fuck me,” I swore under my breath. As bad as our luck had been, she was still alive. That would have to do.

“So much for our witness,” Collins growled, stalking around the room. His anger surprised almost everyone in the room but me. I’d seen him this angry before, and it only happened whenever he got very close to a suspect, only to lose them. “We’ll be lucky if we get a chance to speak with her by the end of the friggin’ week.”

“As long as we get our chance.” I could tell he was upset, but we still had a witness and we were going to get her statement, even if I had to pistol whip her doctor to get into her room. She was blindfolded, but the killer didn’t plug her ears. She could have some very valuable information that could help us decode what the hell this was all about, and that could point us in the right direction to solving this case and getting our man.

I walked over to Agent Collins. “Let’s go get some fresh air. We need to take a breather before we get back in there.”

Collins looked like he wanted to protest, but knew that I was right. I walked him out of the Bennett house and onto the front lawn. I still had the shotgun in my hands, so I walked back to my car and put it in the trunk. I was too lazy to take off the tactical vest, and slammed the trunk shut just in time to realize how much press was stationed outside our parameter.

Collins was frustrated and I couldn’t blame him. Despite our best efforts to get here as soon as possible, we had just missed our assailant, and by mere minutes from what I could gather. Worse yet was the fact that not only had our killer attacked another family member from the team, but this time he’d assaulted one of the parents. This wasn’t getting any prettier.  I sent a text to make sure that the players had contacted all their families to warn them. Agent Collins looked like he was going to be sick so I walked over and put a hand on his shoulder. “Are you going to be all right, Peyton?” I asked.

“I’ll be fine,” Collins replied as he collected himself.

Based on the files I was reading, he’d been chasing this killer for the better part of a year, and this likely was the closest he’d gotten to him yet.

“We’re going to get him,” I said as I patted his shoulder. “He’s not going anywhere.”

“What makes you say that?” Collins asked.

“This is ground zero,” I answered. “Whatever reason this person thinks is worth killing for, it happened here. I’m sure of it.”

That said, I left the agents behind to comb through the crime scene. I was too tired to put up with that now. I went back to the station and immediately went to the officer the Captain had assigned to look into the team’s history to see if there were any complaints against them. I stuck my head into the file room where a single officer was scouring through papers and reading something on the computer screen in front of her. I softly knocked on the door to get her attention. “Officer Jones, I presume?”

“Yes, Detective Walker,” she called back.

“How are things going?”

“Slow, and I haven’t found a single thing.”

“Well, I have some good news,” I said as I put down a photo of the football player that was killed out of town. “This player used to attend State before transferring away because of the spending scandal.”

“Okay, what about him?” Jones asked.

“He was killed several months ago,” I answered. “Whatever upset this killer, it happened when this kid was here. Our suspect traveled to another state to make sure he got his fair share of payback. So whatever happened, it occurred when he was here. Confine your search to everything that happened between when he arrived and when he transferred away. He was only here a single year, so that should narrow your search down quite a bit.”

“All right, detective,” Jones replied as she began to split her papers based on what fit into the time frame and what didn’t.

As I walked back to my desk, Captain Bancroft came out from his office and met me halfway. “Walker, you look about half as bad as I feel.”

“I’ll be all right,” I protested.

“Head home and get some sleep,” he instructed. I didn’t want to head home, but I knew that at this point it was pointless to remain at the office. “With the feds here, you have all the help you need, but you’ll be useless to us all if you don’t get any sleep. Go home.”

“Okay,” I said as I held my arms up in surrender. He was right anyway. I was so tired I could barely keep my eyes open. I drove home, making good time since the roads were clear at that time of the night. When I walked through the door it was around four in the morning. I checked my phone for messages, and all I had was a text from Flo. The remaining families had been warned and were safe. That was all I needed to hear. There were no other messages so I set the alarm on my cell for 10 in the morning and then lay down. I remember thinking that Collins was more likely to wake me up than my alarm before I faded off to sleep.

Turns out I was wrong, as the alarm from my cell phone woke me up at exactly 10:00 a.m. I was so tired that I had fallen asleep in my clothes again. This time I made an effort to change my shirt, tie, and apply some fresh pit-stick before getting ready to run back out to work. I checked my phone, but there were no messages from Flo or Officer Jones, which was a shame because I’d been hoping Jones had found something by now.

I made a few slices of toast and a cup of coffee for myself before finally getting out the door and back on the road to work. I kept checking my phone, but there were still no messages from anyone. It was at this point that I decided to check something else before going to the station. I went back to the Bennett house, eager to do a little snooping around now that I was actually awake and not running on adrenaline like I was the night before.

There were uniforms still guarding the house from outside. They didn’t bother me as I walked under the tape and into the house where a few feds from Collins’ team were still combing through the scene and looking for anything that would help our case. I walked by them and made my way to the same hall I had engaged with a shotgun less than 12 hours ago.

Rather than enter the parents’ room, which was where the crime scene was, I went into the other bedroom, which belonged to their late son, Wally. I fished around for photos, letters, or anything else that might be a clue to why he was killed. But the room was clean and rather clutter free. It was evident that his mom was keeping things tidy for Wally while he was in college.

What caught my interest was the computer in the corner by the window. I took a seat and turned the machine on. From there I started to look for pictures and check programs for anything suspicious. I clicked the email icon and found something very interesting. There were several emails addressed to Wally that were in the trash bin, entitled,
You dirty fucker! You’ll pay!
As a detective, this was the one thing that I wasn’t willing to pass by. When I opened one of the many emails that were repeatedly sent to Wally, I finally found the clue I was looking for. The email read:

Dear dirty bastard:

While it’s only been a year since that despicable thing you and your friends did, I wanted to make sure you are aware of the karma that’s coming back to haunt you. You and your friends are going to pay for what you did to her. I’m going to make you suffer like she did and then I’m going to kill you.

I printed the email and then did a count. There were well over twenty copies of this exact email sent to Wally over the course of the 12 months prior to his death. I opened some of the other emails sent from the same address, and attached to those emails were links to various news stories.

I clicked on one of them to see that it was a story about the death of one of his teammates who had transferred out of town. The killer had gone to a lot of trouble to threaten Wally. I could only imagine how scared Wally must have been, knowing that someone was out there killing his friends. By forwarding those stories to the star college player, the killer was sending a very clear message to Wally: he was next.

I had told Flo from the very beginning that this reeked of something personal, and this email proved that my instincts were right on the money. As I was thinking about what this poor kid had gone through prior to his murder, there was a loud knock at the door. I turned to see who was standing at Wally’s door. “Peyton. Did you manage to get any sleep?”

Collins smiled. “I managed to get a few hours. Did you find anything?”

“I did.” I got up from the desk and motioned Collins to sit down. “We need to get a tech geek on this computer to trace the IP address that sent him this email,” I said, placing the paper in front of him. “There are dozens like them on Wally’s computer. Our killer was harassing the poor kid for months prior to his death.”

“I’ll get someone on it right away,” Collins said as he scanned over the letter. “Why didn’t Wally report this?”

“I think this might be our reason,” I said, pointing to middle of the letter. “Wally did something bad and was most likely afraid that if he filed a complaint, he might be investigated himself. Whatever Wally and his friends did to this girl, this is why our killer is out there murdering people.”

“What about the cards?” Collins asked.

“I don’t think we should concentrate on them,” I answered. “This is the real motive behind the killings.”

“You mean like a distraction from his true intentions,” Collins suggested.

“Exactly,” I said. “There is no complex killer with a puzzle for us to solve. There never was. The only reason this killer is leaving playing cards with us is to distract us and attempt to hide his true motives. For the price of a cheap deck of cards, this bastard has been making us chase our fucking tails and made it the best purchase he’s ever made.”

“You’re right,” Collins said, though he didn’t seem impressed. “Killings are never that complicated, and for a few measly dollars, that piece of shit has been suckering us with a fucking decoy.”

“Let’s not focus on that. Let’s focus on this instead,” I said, waving the email in my hand. “We need to find out what incident this killer is talking about. Once we find out what Wally and his buddies did, we’ll find our killer.”

“Whatever it is, Wally seems to be at the center of it,” Collins added. “We checked the computers of all the victims in the other states. None of them had letters like this in their email. I would have remembered that.”

“We’ll work from there. I’ll get back to the station and let’s concentrate on complaints against Wally instead of the whole team.” No sooner had I said that than my cell phone started to buzz. I was hoping it wasn’t another body, but the call wasn’t from dispatch. It was Flo. I quickly turned on the phone. “This is Walker.”

“Jake, we have a situation here,” Flo answered.

“Is everyone all right?” I asked.

“Everyone is fine, but there’s someone here to visit one of the players,” Flo answered. “I’ve asked the person to leave, but she’s refused.”

“Tell this person that if they don’t leave you and the players alone, they’re going downtown for disturbing the peace.” I paused for a moment. “Why are you calling me about this?”

“I’m calling you because the person refusing to leave is your daughter,” Flo answered. “It’s Cassie.”

This was about the last thing I needed to hear, but I suddenly understood why Flo was calling me regarding the matter. “I’ll be there in 15 minutes.” I closed the cell and cussed under my breath.

“What’s going on?” Collins asked.

“Nothing urgent, but something I have to deal with myself.” I pointed to the computer as I walked out of the room. “Trace those emails. This might be the big break we’ve been waiting for.”

“No problem,” Collins said as he watched me leave. “I’ll call you the minute we find out where they came from.”

I wanted to go back to the station and check in with Jones, but this was obviously something I had to take care of right now. It took me only 10 minutes to drive to the hotel. Once I got there, I walked up to Flo, who was standing in the lobby waiting for me. It wasn’t the fanciest hotel in town, but it was nice enough to keep the complaints from our guests to a minimum. As I walked up to Flo, I could see Cassie sitting there on one of the lobby couches, and I could see her face and attitude change when she noticed I was there. “Cassie, what are you doing here?”

She paused for a moment. “I’m here to visit my boyfriend.”

“You have a boyfriend?”

“Dad!”

“Okay, let’s start from the beginning,” I said as I raised my hands. “You’re here to see who? And this time, please give us a name.”

Cassie paused again. “I’m here to see Melvin Saunders.”

“I see,” I said as I walked over and sat on the sofa across from hers. “And when were you planning to tell me about this Melvin fellow?”

“I’m not sure,” Cassie answered honestly. “I knew you’d eventually find out somehow, but I was enjoying my privacy while I still could.”