Mystery: The Card Counter: (Mystery, Suspense, Thriller, Suspense Thriller Mystery) (7 page)

“Who is this?” the other side asked.

“This is Detective Walker,” I calmly replied. “I need a favor.”

“What kind of favor?” Tina asked.

“I need you to report that we’ve taken the football team into custody and have them all at the station for questioning.” I waited for a response.

“Is this true?” Tina asked.

“Half of it is.”

“Why do you need me to do this?”

“To prevent the body count from going up any further.” It was the best I could do. Any more information and I would have risked giving away my secrets, which I had no intention of doing.

“All right, but you owe me big time,” Tina said, and the line went dead.

I looked over at Flo, who’d been listening to my conversation with the reporter, and she nodded her approval. If the suspect thought the players were all at the station being questioned as possible suspects, then they were safe because the killer might get a kick out of them being grilled for something he did. The irony would force the killer to hopefully take a breather and back away from his or her current bloodlust.

This would buy us some time and, hopefully, with the help from the feds, the case would move ahead and we’d get to the killer before another person had to bite the dust. I had every intention of cutting this killer off at the knees, and I hoped that this person wouldn’t take their frustrations out on a new group of people. It was a gamble, but I was sure this person’s anger was only for the team, for whatever reason it was. By taking them out of the equation, I was hoping it would stop the killing.

I left Flo and the forensic teams behind and headed back to the station. I needed to see if there was any more information from the labs, especially from the samples and the kit from Wally Bennett since that had come in first, as well as to check with the Captain about the incoming federal assistance.

When I arrived at the station, I was pleased to see some reports from the lab waiting for me on my desk. I grabbed a cup of coffee, sat down, and started to read through them, not even bothering to complain that no one had called my cell to announce their arrival. A lot of the reports confirmed what I had long suspected ... the victim was raped by the suspect, but there were no traces of DNA. There was evidence of a synthetic plastic, which would suggest that the suspect used a condom. Based on the information that I processed, we were looking for one really sick individual. When Captain Bancroft noticed that I was there, he walked over while I was reading the file. “What do we know?”

“Not much more than we started with.” I put the folder down and sighed. “I’m hoping that relocating the remaining members of the team and coaching staff will give us a little breathing room. This suspect is targeting this group for a reason. With them all under watch, there’s no reason the killer will strike anyone else.”

“Let’s hope so,” the old man replied. I could tell he wasn’t happy about it. “Are those the reports from the lab on the first victim?”

“That they are,” I replied. “It confirmed the victim was sexually assaulted, so it’s safe to say the others were, as well. There was no trace left, either, so this suspect is covering their tracks to avoid detection.”

“So what exactly are we looking for?” the Captain asked.

“A man who seems to have a beef with the football team and staff.”

“Seems a little extreme to rape and kill for being cut from the roster.”

“I would agree. Whoever is doing this is taking his revenge out on them for a reason. If we find out what that reason is, then we’ll find our man.”

“Do we have enough to go on?”

“A bit. We’re looking for a male now. That’s a start.”

“What about height?”

“We have no camera of him, not much to work from.”

“Well, he had to be strong.”

“That’s not entirely true. He did taze them. That might suggest he needed to do that because he wasn’t strong enough to overpower them.”

“Or perhaps it was just to get the person out of the way before someone noticed what was going on. Either way, we’re talking about football players here – not the weakest victims.”

“True.”

The Captain paused for a moment. “Can’t we guess his height?”

“Based on what?” I asked.

“Well, he did rape them. Can’t we tell based on the size of his˗?”

“No, we can’t,” I snapped back. “How tall is the porn star, Ron Jeremy?”

The Captain paused for a moment. “He’s short in stature. Good point.”

“You think?”

“Alright, I get it,” he conceded. “Yet, our guy is attacking men.”

“I know. It’s why I think this is something personal.”

“We need to get a profile going the moment the FBI gets here.”

“Yeah, like those are easy to put together.”

“I don’t need the backtalk right now.”

“Sorry.”

“I realize this isn’t going to be an easy case, but I need you at your best or we won’t come close to solving it before someone else gets hurt.”

“I know.” I rubbed my eyes again, tired from the lack of sleep. “It’s just a shame we can’t pick when killers go on a spree.”

The Captain paused for a moment. “Is this your weekend?”

“Of course it is.”

I could tell what he was thinking. “Flo has things under control. Go home and come back tomorrow after you drop the girls off at their mom’s.”

“Are you sure about that?” I asked. Just the idea of leaving him and Flo kind of felt like deserting the frontline when shit was hitting the fan, which made me feel guilty for wanting to go home.

“I’m sure,” Captain Bancroft replied. “If something big happens, we’ll get in touch. I’ll get someone else to file through the paperwork. Like you said, the team’s being watched, and that should slow him down.”

“I’ll take it home with me.”

“Not a fucking chance,” the Captain corrected me. “There’s no way anyone is taking this shit home. If you forget it at the pizza place on your way home, it will be on the front page of The Times tomorrow.”

“All right,” I said as I stood up and put my coat back on. “Thanks.” The idea of heading home to be with the girls before they went to bed sounded good. I could probably clean up a bit before Cassie brought the girls home. I promptly left and drove home, which wasn’t bad since traffic was a little lighter at night on the way to where I lived. 

When I pulled into the driveway, I saw another car parked by my place. Cassie didn’t have a car and I quickly realized whose car it was. I dreaded the moment. As I stepped out of the car, I took a deep breath and closed the door softly in an attempt to hide how angry I really was.

She was sitting on the front porch in a chair by the front door, and rather than ignore her, I thought it best to start talking now and get things over with. “Beth.”

“Jake,” Beth called back.

“You do realize the sole reason I pick the girls up from school is to avoid meeting you.”

Beth seemed unaffected by my wit. “Where are the girls?”

“They’re not here,” I answered.

“I gathered that much, asshole.”

“They’re out with Cassie.”

“Cassie’s here, too?” Beth asked.

“I convinced her to stay here for the week while things are really bad on campus; she dropped by almost as soon as I got off the phone with you,” I answered. “Since I had to go back to work, I gave her money to take the girls out for pizza and a movie – she’d come over to spend time with them anyway,” I fibbed.

“You know, if you don’t want to spend time with the girls˗”

“Is that what you really think, Beth?” The conversation was starting to heat up but I didn’t care. “Do you really think I wanted a serial killer to start torturing and murdering kids at Cassie’s campus so I wouldn’t spend time with Abbey and Sandy? There are people dying out there, Beth, and the fact that Cassie was very close to it scares the shit out of me. That’s why I go in when they call me.”

“You’re over-reacting,” Beth sniped back.

“No, I’m not.”

“You’ve always been full of shit, Jake.”

“The second victim was found in her dorm.”

There was a long pause after I made that statement. There was no way she could know that. I had only been there earlier today so there was no way the press could have released that information, if we’d even released it in the first place. I could tell the comment cut Beth pretty deep. Cassie was very close to the violence this time, and unlike previous paranoia I’ve displayed as a father, this one seemed to have legs. “I had no idea it was this bad.”

“Beth, you have no idea how bad this is at all,” I said as I walked closer. “These are some of the most brutal killings I’ve ever seen, and I’ve seen a lot of sick shit in my time. These kids are Cassie’s age. Do you think I can sit on the sidelines and let someone else do it when this is going on? There are parents out there who are living what are my worst fucking nightmares, and you have the audacity to accuse me of being selfish because I want to bring this piece of shit in as soon as possible?”

“There are other cops in the station, Jake,” Beth countered. “The world isn’t going to end if the great Detective Walker has to pass on a single damn case!”

“So you think I should tell my boss to fuck off whenever he calls me to come in?” I snapped back. “He doesn’t do that often, and I like my job. Sometimes it means going back when called in. I’m not going to apologize for being good at my job.”

“You could apologize for being a bad father.”

“A good father would want this sick piece of shit behind bars or in a morgue!” I yelled back at her. “I want kids to stop dying and if that makes me an asshole in your books, I don’t fucking care!”

“Don’t talk to me like that,” Beth angrily replied.

“This is my fucking house!” I yelled back as I pulled a pair of cuffs out of my pocket and waved them in her face. “Just being here is a violation of our court agreement. I suggest you leave right now.”

“Or what?” Beth said back, daring me to do something about it.

“Or I’ll call in and have a few uniforms haul you down to the station for trespassing and disturbing the peace.”

Beth looked like she wanted to scream back at me, but thought better of it. “You’ll hear from my lawyer.”

“I wouldn’t expect anything less, you fucking whore!” I called back as I watched her walk across my grass to her car. I walked into the house as she was pulling away, but my heart sank as I turned on the light. All three of my girls were sitting on my couch in the living room. They had come home early and had heard everything we’d said outside.

Sandy was crying in Cassie’s arms, and just the sight of that broke my heart as I began to recall all the terrible things I’d said to their mother just outside the door, only minutes ago.

After a pause that lasted at least a minute or two, Cassie finally spoke up. “We grabbed a few pizzas, wings, and a video, hoping you’d come back early.”

I sighed and sat down on the coffee table. “That was very sweet. You shouldn’t have done this for me. I don’t deserve it.”

“Yeah, well.”

I wanted to say something, but there was nothing I could say. What I had done was inexcusable, and somehow a horrible day managed to get much, much worse. One by one, all three girls went upstairs to their room. I wanted to call them back down to talk, but now didn’t seem like such a good idea while they were still upset. At least they’d stayed downstairs long enough to eat with me.

I’d been divorced for close to half a decade now, and despite how angry I was about the separation and the affair that led to it, I’d worked hard never to bad-mouth my ex when the girls were present. I did it out of respect for them more than out of respect for their mother, who I didn’t like very much. There was a time when she’d actually had the nerve to ask if we could be friends. I said no because I couldn’t be friends with someone who claimed to love me and then stabbed me in the fucking back the way she had. And, at the time, I was still fucking in love with her, so what else was I supposed to do?

Nice people didn’t do that to their friends, and she was the last person I would ever consider my friend. I tried to be nice to her when the kids were around, but in this case, it had never occurred to me that they might be in the house, hiding away to keep me out of trouble, but when I came home alone, trouble was what she gave me. They’d hidden from their own mother so she would assume we had all gone out together, and I repaid that loyalty by bad-mouthing their mom in front of them.

I sat down on the couch and looked down at the left-over pizza and DVDs that were on the other side of the coffee table. There were two pizzas; the first one was a deluxe with green peppers, pepperoni, and mushrooms. The other was my favourite: sausage, feta cheese, and anchovies. They’d picked up some girly movies, but with the gruesome shit I have to tolerate at work, I never had any issue with the girly movies.

I was sincerely touched by their efforts to include me in their plans, despite the fact that I’d hardly been there all weekend. I took out another piece of pizza and ate it while thinking about what an ass I’d been when I spoke to their mother earlier. They were good kids and they deserved better. Was it possible their mother was right? Maybe I was the bad father she’d accused me of being, a short time ago. That asshole who picked his job over his family; the one who didn’t care that he was missing out on family memories because he was too busy protecting the rest of the city as if they were all his children. Maybe she was right.

I ate a few more slices of pizza and then took the leftover food into the kitchen and put it in the fridge for breakfast the next day; the girls always overestimated how much they could eat.

I cleaned up the kitchen before heading to bed and I was about half done when Cassie came down to the kitchen. She didn’t say anything at first; she grabbed a slice of pizza and some soda from the fridge, and sat down on a stool by the island in the middle of the kitchen. I stopped cleaning the counter and turned to face my eldest daughter. “Hey.”

“Hey,” she replied. That was a good sign.

“Pretty rough weekend, eh?”

“You could say that.”