WEBCAM (3 page)

“It’s a bow,” Roy said.

Tom gagged, spat into his own glove, and wiped it on his shirt rather than contaminate the crime scene. “What?”

“Her guts,” Roy said. “The Snipper tied her intestines in a big bow. Like a Christmas present.”

CHAPTER 4

Erinyes is searching.

Searching, searching, searching, always searching.

Searching for naughty girls.

So many naughty girls on the Internet. So many who need to be punished.

The Internet is a porn wasteland. A cesspool.

A biblical flood is needed once again, to wipe out all the sinners.

But Erinyes knows that God doesn’t care. There won’t be another intervention.

Sodom and Gomorrah is so
old
Testament.

Even the New Testament is two thousand years old.

Erinyes is writing the
now
Testament.

God’s vengeance, right now.

One dead whore at a time.

Erinyes looks at pornography. So much filth. But it is filth from the past.

Old sins.

So much of the Internet is what people
once did
.

Erinyes cares about what people
are doing
.

Erinyes has to catch the sinners in action.

So Erinyes watches webcams. Webcams are live. Webcams are
now
.

Erinyes searches for the next naughty girl to be punished.

Too many to choose from. But Erinyes is looking for someone specific.

A specific girl.

A special girl.

Erinyes uses a brute-force attack.

Erinyes
IS
a brute-force attack.

Erinyes gets a hit, and logs in as the administrator.

Erinyes is searching.

Searching.

No good.

The specific, special girl isn’t there.

Erinyes must try elsewhere.

Sometimes the search takes a long time.

The specific, special girl is tricky. She hides from Erinyes. She doesn’t want to suffer Penance.

Erinyes is patient.

Erinyes is
patience
.

Erinyes can wait for as long as it takes to find the right girl.

The
specific, special
girl.

A sound, from the basement.

Moaning. Crying.

Erinyes looks up from the computer. Checks the time.

Breakfast.

Erinyes walks into the kitchen, gets the bag from the cabinet. Gets a bottle of water.

Takes both into the basement.

It’s dark. Erinyes’ feet creak on the stairs, and that prompts whimpering to emanate from the darkness. Whimpering, and the rattling of chains.

Erinyes sees the bowl on the floor. Pours in dog food. Sets down the plastic water bottle filled with antibiotics, and picks up the empty.

“I punished another one,” Erinyes says into the darkness. “Last night.”

The darkness doesn’t answer.

Erinyes looks at the concrete floor. The dried blood.

Sinner blood.

Old
blood.

“Perhaps we once again need new blood,” Erinyes says, shivering at the thought.

There is a moan from the darkness.

“I have ordered a new whip. You wore out the old one.”

More rattling. More moaning.

Erinyes leaves the basement. Locks the door. Goes to the computer.

Erinyes is searching.

Searching.

Searching.

Searching.

Searching.

Endless searching, for the specific, special girl.

Erinyes checks the time.

Lunch.

Erinyes walks into the kitchen, gets the bag from the cabinet. Gets a bottle of water. Adds antibiotics.

Takes both into the basement.

The darkness swallows Erinyes.

The dog dish is empty. Erinyes fills it with food. Takes the empty bottle. Leaves the fresh one.

“Penance, tonight.”

“Please… no more.”

“This is for your own good. I’m saving your soul. You should thank me.”

Erinyes listens to the crying in the darkness.

Atoning for sins is painful.

Upstairs again.

Searching online.

Searching searching searching.

Erinyes takes a break from the searching, checks the local news.

The police have already found the last one.

Interesting
.

Then there’s another blunt-force hit.

This one is different than a regular sexcam site. This is a sorority house on a college campus. The girls allow themselves to be watched by those who pay.

Erinyes does not pay.

Erinyes logs in as an administrator.

Six girls. One house.

Erinyes is searching.

There.

The specific, special girl is there.

Now Erinyes is watching.

Watching watching watching.

Then Erinyes is finding out all there is to know about the specific, special girl.

Erinyes knows the deep web.

Erinyes knows darknet.

Erinyes knows port scanners, and worms.

Erinyes can get past firewalls. Past passwords. Past encryption.

Erinyes is no script kiddie. Erinyes can hack almost anything. And if Erinyes can’t hack it, Erinyes pays other hackers.

Bitcoin rules darknet.

So Erinyes soon learns about the specific, special girl.

Her credit rating. Who she owes. How much.

Health insurance information. Medical and dental history. Mental health background.

Bank statements. Income taxes.

Scholastic records. Grades. Disciplinary actions.

Court records. Family history.

The specific, special girl has no more secrets. Erinyes knows all.

“Hello, Kendal,” Erinyes says to the computer screen. “I’m Erinyes. Penance is coming.”

CHAPTER 5

Tom Mankowski returned to his humble, empty home. As he’d expected, Joan wasn’t there. Still out shopping with Roy’s girlfriend, Trish.

Tom considered calling her. He wanted to hear Joan’s voice. After an entire morning spent with a dead body, he needed to speak to someone full of life. Tom dialed, and it went to voicemail.

“Hi, babe. If you haven’t had lunch yet, let me know and I’ll meet you somewhere. If you have, how about Uno’s for dinner? Miss you.”

Tom hung up, rubbed his eyes, and wondered if he should hit the gym. Maybe a workout would help clear the ugliness from his head. But if he went that route he might miss Joan’s call. Instead, Tom stripped to his boxer shorts, did some push-ups and sit-ups and a quick round of curls with his barbell set.

The sweat came.

But the ugliness didn’t leave.

He tried to push away the images of mutilation, and fill his head with facts instead of snapshots.

The girls had much in common, even though their deaths were different.

Both were webcam models.

Both in Chicago.

Both had been murdered in their apartments, bound to their own beds.

Both had been tortured.

Both had their eyelids snipped off.

Both had extensive genital mutilation.

In the first vic’s apartment, the killer had written
PENANCE
on the wall. In the second,
FURIE
.

And both of the murdered women, perhaps coincidentally, were named Kendal.

Tom thought about the first Snipper murder, Kendal Zhanping, six weeks previously. Her cause of death was exsanguination. She’d died of hypovolemic shock; blood loss, due to traumatic injury to the carotid artery.

The ME guessed the weapon to be a butcher knife. The same one that had been shoved into her vagina had later been repeatedly shoved down her throat. The medical examiner, a no-nonsense guy named Blasky, wrote in his autopsy report that the genital and rectal mutilations “appear as if the victim was repeatedly vaginally and anally raped with the blade.”

Tom went from curls to squats, with the weights at shoulder level. Tom hated squats, but as he grunted his way through them he was able to forget about the case and focus on how much his legs hurt.

When he finished, Tom poured a glass of water from the sink, downed it, and poured another. He needed a shower. Not just to wash away the sweat, but to get the smell of death off of him.

Two online sex workers named Kendal.

A coincidence?

Roy would be following up on any links between the victims. He’d made a few calls from the scene. They hadn’t worked for the same web modeling site; that would have been too easy. Neither of them had the screen name of
Kendal
, either. He and Roy had done some research into the sexcam business, and the vast amount of performers were anonymous, and took great pains to stay that way. Tom had assumed it was to avoid stalkers. When stripping and flirting on camera, Tom figured you wouldn’t want the unknown weirdo watching you to be able to locate you in real life. But it went beyond just weirdos. Tom and Roy had interviewed another model from Kendal Zhanping’s agency, and she’d been more concerned about her friends and family finding out than some psycho coming after her.

Made sense. Most people never encountered a serial killer, but everybody had loved ones. Why worry about Norman Bates going after you when a more realistic concern was Dad finding out what you’ve been doing, or Rita from the day job tattling to everyone at work?

Unfortunately, there
was
a Norman Bates-type psycho killing webcam models.

So how was he finding out where they lived? And did he know their real names?

Was this maniac targeting webcam models named Kendal?

The phone rang, pushing Tom out of his mental stream. He was pleased to see the name
JOAN
on his iPhone.

“Hey, babe. Did you eat?”

“Not yet, and I’m starving. Trish is a machine. She’s like the Shopinator; can’t be reasoned with, can’t be bargained with, no pity or remorse or fear, won’t stop until I’m dead from exhaustion. Oh, and I realized that while I was in LA I left my credit card at the airport when I was checking in. So I had to borrow your card.”

Tom didn’t understand. He had his Visa on him. “From my wallet?”

“Not that one. The Mastercard you had on your desk. It was just sitting there, you’d already left, I figured it would be okay. Was it okay?”

That was Tom’s new card. The one he hadn’t used yet, because he needed the entire balance to afford Joan’s engagement ring—something he’d planned on buying weeks ago in preparation for her visit.

“Of course it’s okay,” he said, wincing.

“Also, Roy’s card didn’t work for some reason, so Trish used yours, too.”

The wince became a full blown grimace. Tom’s credit had gone to hell in the past few months. He’d been late on the mortgage, twice, due to forgetfulness rather than lack of funds, but it had harmed his credit rating. It was unlikely he’d be approved if he applied for a jewelry store card. If the women had maxed out his new one, there went his proposal.

“No problem,” Tom said. “Are you still doing the spa at three?”

“I don’t know if I’m up for it.”

The best laid plans of mice and men. Tom had been planning to use Joan’s time at the spa to get the ring. Not that it mattered if he couldn’t afford the ring.

His phone buzzed, and he saw
ROY
on the other line.

“Is that your other line? Is it Roy?”

“Yeah,” Tom said. Joan was eerily prescient sometimes.

“Are you going to get it?”

“I should. But I don’t want you angry with me.”

“It’s your job, Tom. We’re not in high school, and I’m not some catty, passive-aggressive teenager who wants to control you.”

“Okay. So, to be clear, I should answer the phone?”

“Answer the phone, Tom. And call me if you’re going to cancel lunch.”

“I’m not going to cancel lunch.”

“Sure.” Joan hung up.

Tom couldn’t be sure, but Joan’s tone seemed a bit catty and passive-aggressive. He connected to Roy.

“I got something. You free?”

“I’m on vacation. And you know what I was planning on doing today.”

“What?”

“I was going to propose today, Roy. I told you about this.”

“When?”

“A month ago. At the Tap Room.”

“The Tap Room? We got annihilated at the Tap Room. I don’t even remember how I got home.”

“I put you in a cab. After I told you I was going to propose to Joan.”

“I have zero memory of that. But you gonna marry Joan? Congrats, brother! You free now?”

“I’m meeting Joan for lunch.”

“You poppin’ the question then?”

“No. I don’t have the ring yet.”

“So you free now?”

“What do you want, Roy?”

His partner’s voice got lower. “We got a witness, Tom. Someone saw The Snipper.”

Tom twisted this info around in his noggin. It could be the break they needed. “Was it a good look?”

“Gonna talk to her now. Thought you’d want to be there.”

Tom didn’t want to be there. But his job meant he
had
to be there.

“Where is the wit?”

“In my office.”

“I’ll see you in ten.”

Tom clicked off, then stared at his phone. Feeling like the worst boyfriend in the world, he texted “Got to cancel lunch. So sorry. I love you.”

When he sent it, Tom realized he probably wasn’t husband material. Joan deserved better. Maybe proposing was a bad idea.

After South Carolina, Tom had told Joan he was quitting the force. He and Roy had talked about opening a fishing charter business. They’d even gone so far as to shop for boats and investigate loans.

Then Roy had met Trish. Trish had various reasons she didn’t want to move away from Chicago, and Roy had various reasons—most of them sexual—he wouldn’t leave Trish to head for the coast with Tom. Tom couldn’t blame him; he’d had his heart set on a fishing charter in order to be near Joan. So dreams were put on hold, and life went on.

Tom considered his former boss. Lt. Jacqueline Daniels was now retired, having given up police work to raise a daughter. She’d managed to walk away from The Job and stay away from it, for the most part. Tom wondered why he couldn’t pull the trigger like that. How bad could working in the private sector be? More money. Fewer hours. A much reduced chance of getting killed. He didn’t really like LA, but he loved Joan. There were worse things than giving up your career for the one you loved.