WEBCAM (11 page)

“Tom, why is your phone even on if you have no intention of answering it?”

“I thought I’d turned it off.”

“You thought you turned it off, and still put it in your robe?”

“Just tell me what you want me to do, Joan.”

“I want you to be the kind of man who turns off his phone before he climbs into bed with me.”

Tom took the phone out of his pocket and pressed the button. “Done. It’s off.”

“Who was it?”

“I didn’t look.”

“Of course you looked.”

Tom couldn’t ever win an argument with Joan. She was always half a step ahead of him. Smart lady, one of the many things he loved about her.

“It was Roy.”

“Does he normally call at 2
A.M.
?”

“No.”

“So this could be an emergency?”

“Yeah.”

“So you want to make love to me while thinking about Roy?”

“Yeah. No! Joan, look, I’m trying here. I’ve had a real shitty day.”

“My day was shitty, too. I spent it waiting for my boyfriend to remember that I flew in from LA to visit him.”

Tom reached for her face to stroke her cheek, and she flinched away.

“Joan, how about we just ignore the phone and pick up where we left off?”

“Can we do that, Tom? Is that even possible? We’re both going to be thinking about the call. You’re going to be wondering what the emergency was, I’m going to be thinking that another poor girl is going to die because I want to be selfish and keep my man for myself. And the fact that you didn’t shut off your phone—whether it was intentional or not—shows where your priorities really are.”

The ring startled them both. Tom’s landline, on the nightstand next to the bed.

“Are you going to get that?” Joan asked.

“I’d rather not.”

Joan picked it up, not breaking eye contact with Tom. “Hello?”

Tom heard Roy mumble something apologetic.

“It’s okay, Roy, I was already up. He’s right here.”

She held the phone out to Tom. He didn’t move. When her eyes narrowed to slits he took it.

“Yeah, Roy.”

“We found the shower curtain, Tom. Had a knife in it, blood still on it. Enough to link DNA.”

“That’s great, Roy. But this could have waited until morning.”

“Crime Scene Team lifted latents. Ran them at the scene. Tom, we got a match.”

Tom’s heart rate kicked up, but he kept his face and voice neutral. “Okay.”

“Tom, did you hear me? We got him. Perp is on file. Registered sex offender named Hector Valentine. Thirty-eight years old, lives in Logan Square off of Fullerton. I called Judge Harbough, warrant is meeting us at the perp’s house.”

“It’s a man? What about Tanya? Isn’t she the suspect?”

“Could be his girlfriend. Or daughter. She’s an accomplice, we know that much. Hell, maybe he dressed up as her to throw us off.”

Tom held eye contact with Joan. “Well, congrats, Roy. Call me tomorrow, let me know how it went.”

“Tom, you drunk? We need to roll on this, partner.”

“I’m on vacation. You can handle this without me.”

“Is it Joanie? She angry with you? Tom, we’re going to catch a serial killer. This is a big deal. Tell her to chill.”

“I’ll tell her,” Tom said, intending to never tell her. “But I’m not going, Roy.”

“You need to go,” Roy said.

“You need to go,” Joan said.

“See, Tom? She told you to go.”

Tom frowned. “Apparently you both can hear each other.”

“Your phone is ridiculously loud,” Joan said.

“She’s right, Tom. It’s real loud. Sorry to take your man away, Joanie, but this is big. He should be there.”

“He’s all yours, Roy. We weren’t doing anything anyway.” Joan narrowed her eyes. “I was just about to go to sleep.”

Ouch.

Tom listened as Roy gave him the address. Joan laid down and turned her back to him.

“We’re going in with two teams, Tom, Crime Scene and Special Response. Meet you there?”

Tom hesitated.

“Tell him you’ll meet him,” Joan said to the wall.

Tom sighed. “See you in ten, Roy.”

He hit the hang up button and stared at the woman he loved.

“Go on,” she said. “Go arrest the bad guy.”

“Joan… I’m…”

“This is who you are, Tom. I know that. I fell in love with that. Now go be you.”

Tom considered trying to kiss her goodbye, realized he wouldn’t take it well if she rejected him, and instead began to dress, trying to seem like he wasn’t in a hurry even though he was.

Sixteen minutes and some bad traffic later he pulled up in front of the residence of Hector Valentine. The SRT—Chicago’s version of SWAT—was already there in force, as were Roy and the techies. Tom was apparently the last to arrive.

He walked up to Roy, who was talking with a Special Response Sergeant with the nametag
Breach
, which was so appropriate for a cop who broke into homes that Tom wondered if it was a nickname. Breach wore standard gung-ho tactical gear; a vest, helmet with faceplate, combat boots, a utility belt with so many dangling things it would make Batman envious. Tom listened in as Breach laid out the entry plan.

“Got four guys in the alley out back, one on each window, and four doing the entry. We also have snipers on the roofs there, and there.”

“Valentine inside?” Tom asked.

“Thermal reading on the upper floor. Hasn’t moved in five minutes. Suspect appears to be asleep. We’re going in three.”

“Good luck, Sergeant.”

Breach nodded, adjusted his helmet camera, then commandoed over to the rest of his team.

“Dispatch read me his rap sheet on the ride over,” Tom said to Roy.

“Yeah, typical scumbag. Raped a sixteen year old girl. Served seven out of ten.”

“He works as a fry cook at a burger joint.”

“Your point?”

“Guy dropped out of high school, Roy. Does this sound like a cyberstalker with hacking skills?”

“A print is a print, Tom. And we got three of them, all different digits, on the curtain, and the butcher knife.”

“I dunno. Something feels off.”

“Your optimism is the reason I love you so much.”

They watched the techie’s video monitor from behind Roy’s car as Sgt. Breach breached the front door. It was a clean entry, and within seconds they were upstairs and bearing down on a terrified, unarmed Valentine. Less than a minute later, they were dragging the cuffed perp out into the street.

“Think he’ll talk?” Roy asked.

It didn’t really matter. The chain of evidence had the man, cold. Tom guessed the CRT would find even more evidence in the house, something that would likely lead to Tanya. Angry as Joan might have been, Tom felt a surge of pride. This was why he stayed a cop. To take really bad people off the streets. It was important work, and he was good at it. Maybe it interfered with his personal life sometimes but—

“Ah, hell,” Roy said.

“What?”

“Check out his hands, Tom.”

Tom’s eyes trailed down the perp’s back, to his cuffed wrists and hands.

“Ah, hell,” Tom repeated. “Those prints, were they lefty? Index, thumb, and middle finger?”

“Yeah. Shit.”

Shit and then some. Hector Valentine only had two fingers on his left hand, and they weren’t the ones Tom just mentioned. Tom knew a little something about fingerprint evidence, and he was pretty sure the owner of the fingerprints needed to be in possession of said fingers in order to convict. Unless they found Valentine’s severed digits in a box in his house, this wasn’t their perp.

Tom followed Roy over to the man. Up close, he did look like a picture of that Ukrainian actor Tanya had mentioned, Maddoks with the impossible to pronounce last name.

“When did you lose your fingers, Hector?”

Tom noted the stumps had healed, and healed well. This was an old injury.

“Back in June. What are you arresting me for? I didn’t do nothing. I’ve been clean. I couldn’t do anything, even if I wanted to.”

Valentine stared at his feet. He seemed more defeated than indignant—not what Tom would expect from someone dragged out of his bed by the cops in the middle of the night. If he really was clean, he should be angry, not glum.

“How did it happen?”

“What, my fingers?”

Tom and Roy nodded.

“The darkness took them. To punish me.”

“What does that mean, Hector?”

“I was asleep, in my room. The darkness came up to me while I was sleeping. It sliced my fingers off and vanished.”

“Do you do drugs, Hector?”

He finally met Tom’s eyes. “It wasn’t drugs! Drugs don’t chop your fingers off in the middle of the night!”

Roy, using his
I have infinite patience voice
, said, “Tell us exactly what happened.”

“I want my lawyer.”

Tom placed his hand on the perp’s shoulder. “Hector, we found your fingerprints at a murder scene. But if you can tell us about your missing fingers, then it could prove you didn’t commit the murder.”

Tom watched Valentine’s face spark with hope. “It was the darkness! I swear!”

“Okay, how did the darkness take your fingers?”

“It was late. I was in bed, watching TV. And the closet door opened.”

“Someone was in the closet?”

“The darkness was in the closet. It came to me. I raised up my hands to keep it away, and the darkness cut them off.”

The guy seemed sincere enough. “How?”

“First they were there, then they were gone.”

“Where did they go?”

“I told you. The darkness took them. To punish me.”

“How do you know it was to punish you?” Tom asked.

“Because the darkness told me so.”

“What did it say, exactly?”

“It said, ‘You’re a bad man, and must be punished.”’

This wasn’t getting anywhere productive, but Tom gave it one more try. “Hector, this darkness, can you describe it?”

“Black. The blackest thing I’ve ever seen. No shape. I couldn’t see the edges. And it wasn’t thick. It was like it was flat. Like a shadow.”

“Anything else?”

“Yeah. The darkness had eyes.” The hope on Valentine’s face fractured, and fear shone through. “The darkness had brown eyes.”

Five minutes later they were in Hector’s bedroom, wearing the standard booties and gloves. Hector Valentine was a pig as far as his sexual deviancy went, but he was also a pig when it came to cleanliness. His house was a sty, and smelled just as bad as the Dumpster Tom had climbed out of earlier. Old food wrappers, dirty clothes, and body odor cut through the aftershave Tom wore and made him wince.

“Last forty-eight hours, I’m about ready to cut off my nose,” Roy said.

“It’ll spite your face.”

“I’ll deal with the spite.”

“Look on the bright side. Guy obviously doesn’t have a maid. So maybe we can find some trace of the darkness, even though it has been five months.”

“You believe that bullshit he was spouting?”

Tom looked at his partner. “Do you?”

“He sounded sincere. For a rapist.”

They walked around a discarded pizza box and Tom noticed the closet. Standard cheap hollow-core door, aluminum knob. He opened it slowly, as if some supernatural darkness was going to spring out and start lopping off digits.

“Is that a hole?” Roy asked, pointing.

There was a black spot on the inside of the door, at eye-level. Tom squinted at it.

“I don’t know what that is.”

He touched it with his finger. It wasn’t a hole. It was solid. And though he could feel the door behind it, he couldn’t see the door. It was as if his finger was touching something that was both solid, and a void. Some of the black rubbed off on his purple nitrile glove, which was one of the weirdest things Tom had ever experienced. Where the black was smudged on his finger, his finger seemed to disappear. Like it had been erased.

“Don’t tell me someone invented vanishing cream for real,” Roy said.

Tom peered closer. The black made his finger appear two dimensional. There was no depth to it. Blacker than black.

“The darkness,” Tom said.

“You mean some dude was hiding in the closet, wearing that black stuff all over his body?”

Tom nodded. He noticed more of the black substance on the inside doorknob, and on the closet carpeting, Then he left the closet and surveyed the room. In the corner, on a desk, was a flatscreen monitor. Tom went to it, and noticed the webcam attached to the top. It was pointed at the closet.

The left and right hemispheres of Tom’s brain ping-ponged some ideas around.

Tanya said she saw someone who looked like that actor, Maddoks.

Hector looked like Maddoks.

Tanya was seen walking down Kendal’s street with a package.

That package was found in a Dumpster. It had fingerprints belonging to Hector.

Hector lost those fingers months ago. Someone in black make up took them.

Tanya must have taken them, and left those prints on the knife and shower curtain.

Tanya was trying to frame Hector.

Did Tanya know Hector?

Hector was a registered sex offender. Anyone could look up where sex offenders lived. There was a database online. If The Snipper—and Tom was working under the assumption that Tanya was The Snipper—could hack Tom’s computer, then she could hack Hector’s. The Snipper found webcam models online and watched them before killing them, and probably watched Hector as well. And, like the webcam models, there would be no way to connect Hector with The Snipper.

Dead end.

So why come to the police station and file a phony report? Why go through all the trouble of leaving false fingerprints? Why not stay out of the investigation completely?

Tom was missing something. He knew some serial killers basked in the attention of the authorities and the media, but The Snipper didn’t seem like a glory hound. The Snipper had some kind of agenda.

Tom thought about the furies. Greek goddesses of vengeance. Punishing the wicked.

Hector was wicked. Why wasn’t he murdered, like the webcam girls? How did he escape with his life, only missing a few fingers?

Tom remembered something Hector had said, on the street. He turned to Roy. “Got your radio?”

“Yup.”

“See if they’ve carted off Hector yet. I have one more question for him. And get some ALS and luminol up here.”