Drained (19 page)

“Anything from the personals?” Beth asked.

I scratched the side of my cheek, feeling stubble that needed to be shaved. “Not yet. Looks like she was trying to buy a car, from what I’m seeing here.”

“And rent a new apartment,” Beth said. “These sheets look like they’re all from the website’s housing and for-rent section.”

“I have some back and forths here that are from the personals section of the site,” said Andrews. “I have three different users that she was corresponding with. A Mike Money Twelve; a Writeguy, with a
W
for write; and a Lady Killer Seventy-five.”

Beth and I both looked up at Agent Andrews.

“Lady Killer?” I asked.

“Yeah,” he said. “Think it’s that obvious?”

“It would be pretty bad if it was. Keep looking,” I said.

“Sure. I’m writing the handles down. The Classified OD owner gave us a profile sheet for each person included in each correspondence. The real names for these guys should be in there,” Andrews said.

I went back to my stack of papers and continued writing down user names. We finished with Monica Whickham’s transcripts in about an hour. The bottom of my pile of papers had some messages back and forth that had come through the personals section. The LadyKiller75 handle was the only person she had been speaking with in my stack of transcripts. Apparently, they were getting to know each other. The man asked about her family, brothers and sisters, where she worked, religion, and things of that nature, and she asked him about similar topics.

Nothing from Beth’s pile of transcripts had anything other than Monica searching for an apartment or trying to buy miscellaneous items—she apparently had used the website to buy everything from shoes to furniture. Between Andrews, Beth, and I, we created one long master list of every user name she had contact with. Then we moved Monica’s files off to one side and began on Rebecca Wright.

Andrews again went through the process of splitting up the transcripts and handing them out.

I took my stack of papers and glanced at the first sheet—the messages had come from the personals segment. I flipped through the first couple of pages, looking to see if any of the names matched up with the three we had on Monica—they didn’t.

Before I flipped to the fourth page, Beth piped up. “Lady Killer Seventy-five.” She slammed her finger down to the name on the page. “Both women spoke to him.”

I leaned back in my office chair and ran my fingers through my hair. I nodded to Andrews. “Dig up the guy’s profile sheet before we get any further into this.”

Andrews dug through the file box and brought out a separate file. He began flipping through the papers, which I assumed to be the profile sheets. The stack of papers looked about an inch thick. Beth and I waited, watching him as he flipped from one page to the next.

He stopped and yanked a paper out. “Got it.”

“What’s his name?” I asked.

Andrews set the paper down on the desk before him. He ran his finger down the page and then spun it so it faced Beth and me.

“The guy’s name is Jeff Mercer,” Andrews said.

“Give an address?” Beth asked.

“No, let me go run the name and pull his information. I’ll be right back.” Andrews took the sheet and left the conference room.

I grabbed my notepad sitting next to me on the table and began flipping through pages.

“What are you looking for?” Beth asked.

“I’d written some names down. Hold on.” I flipped through my notepad until I found my notes from the interviews with Jasmine Thomas’s mother and my notes from the interview with the family of Kennedy Taylor. I found the page and ran my finger down the notes. “Here we go.” I stared at what I’d written and shook my head.

“What?”

“Jasmine Thomas’s mother mentioned the names Tom and Mark. Cassidy Taylor mentioned the name Rick as far as potential suitors.”

“None of which are Jeff,” Beth said. “But then again, we have no proof that this Jeff Mercer ever was in contact with the other women other than Monica and Rebecca.”

I nodded. “Would have been nice to have a Jeff written down.” I started through the transcripts in front of me, looking for a message from the LadyKiller75 handle. I didn’t find one. “Is he signing his name to those messages?” I asked.

“Um.” She looked over the sheet in front of her. “Yeah. It says Jeff.”

“Look and see if it does in the messages to Monica,” I said.

Beth reached across the table and picked up Monica’s file, which we’d set aside. She thumbed through the papers until she found one containing messages from our guy. “Says Jeff again.”

“Okay.”

“Think he was using different names or something?” she asked.

I shrugged. “Could have been.”

The door of the room opened a moment later. “We have four by that name in the area,” Andrews said. He slapped a sheet of paper against his hand. His mouth turned up into a smile. “But one of them lives in Aurora.”

“Really?” I asked.

He nodded. “I passed Agent Toms on my way back in. He told me Agent Bower was still in the area. I called him up and told him to grab whoever was still out there and go try to pick this guy up. I guess this Mercer works at a tire shop in that area. So if he’s not at home, maybe we can catch up with him at his work.”

“Where would he be brought? Back here?” Beth asked.

“Yeah. We have interview rooms downstairs. Bower is going to call me back as soon as they locate the guy,” Andrews said.

“Perfect,” I said. “Let’s get into all of his messages with the victims and see what we can pull out. Look for anything mentioning meeting up, asking where they live, things like that. We need to find out if we can put these two with this guy around the time they went missing. It will give us some ammunition if we get him in here.”

“Yeah, absolutely,” Andrews said. He slid out his chair and took a seat.

We dug back into the transcripts from the messaging.

Andrews got the call just before we finished up going through the messages back and forth between the victims and Jeff Mercer. Bower and another agent had picked the guy up from his work and would be back at the FBI office any minute. The dump site for Monica’s body and Rebecca’s car was between the guy’s home and the automotive shop where he was employed. However, looking at the correspondences between Monica, Rebecca and Mercer, the content of the messages didn’t look as though either woman had ever personally met with the man. We did see phone numbers exchanged with Monica, yet we still didn’t have her cell-phone records from her carrier to see if they had actually been in contact. We cross-referenced the number he’d given Monica with all of the other victims’ phone records that the bureau already had—we didn’t find a match.

Andrews and I sat in the observation room next to the interview room where Bower would lead Mercer when they arrived. The observation room door opened, and Beth walked in.

“What did Ball say?” I asked.

“Not much. He was in a meeting and could only talk for a second. I told him we had a potential that we were about to interview. Basically, he said keep doing what we’re doing and he’d call after his meeting for a full update.”

I nodded.

Beth took a seat next to Andrews and me.

“How are we playing this?” Andrews asked.

I looked at him. “Agent Bower didn’t mention that this guy looked like he was in a scuffle at all, did he?”

Andrews shook his head. “Nope.”

“Okay. Well, that’s the first thing we should look for: bruising around knuckles, scratch marks or cuts on hands and arms. Chances are whoever did what they did to the third-shift worker—”

“Ted Biller,” Andrews said.

“Chances are whoever put the beating on Ted Biller is showing signs that they were in a fight,” I said.

“And if we get nothing there,” Beth said, “we have to question him regarding all his correspondences with the two women.”

“Right,” I said. “Plus, we have the last-seen-and-spoken-with dates. Find out what he was doing on those dates. Finish up with why a woman’s body he was in talks with, along with another deceased woman’s car, also who he was in talks with, wound up in his town between his home and workplace.”

“That’s the question that will have him lawyering up,” Andrews said.

“Which is why we save it for last. Let’s get what we can out of him and save that,” I said.

“So who’s going in to question him?” Andrews asked. “All of us, one of us, two of us?”

“The guy’s handle is lady killer,” Beth said. “Let’s see if he wants to talk to a lady.”

I smirked. “I’m fine with that.”

Andrews shrugged.

“If I can’t get anywhere with him, I’ll come out, and you two can go in together.”

“Sure,” Andrews said. “It looks like you’re going to be on, here.” He pointed through the observing glass. A man in a suit, who I assumed to be Agent Bower, was seating a man in the room.

Beth walked directly to the glass and stared in at him.

The man sitting looked to be in his early thirties. He was an inch or two under six foot and in average shape. He wore a dirty red shop shirt from the tire store he worked at, with a pair of black pants. The man had short dark hair and what looked like a small tattoo on the side of his neck. Both of his arms also had other various tattoos. I tried to get a look at his knuckles and paid close attention to his forearms, but I didn’t spot any abrasions or signs that he’d been in a fight. However, something wasn’t right with him. I thought back to the glimpse I’d seen of the man at the coffee shop.

“Does that look like the kind of guy who’d show up at a coffee shop in a suit and tie?” I asked.

Beth turned back from the glass and looked at me. “I don’t think this guy has ever put on a suit in his life. Either way, he had contact with both women.”

“True,” I said.

Beth looked at Andrews. “The room is being recorded, correct?”

“Yeah,” he said.

The door of the observation room opened, and the agent who had seated Mercer entered.

“Agents Rawlings and Harper, this is Agent Geoff Bower,” Andrews said.

He shook my hand.

“Rawlings,” I said.

He shook Beth’s hand next and had a seat.

“Well, let’s see what this guy has to say,” Beth said. She walked to the door and exited.

“Did the guy give you any problems?” Andrews asked.

Agent Bower shook his head. “He seemed more scared than anything. I told him we’d like to ask him some questions regarding an investigation, and he came along quietly. He never even asked why. Never asked how he was supposed to get home. Nothing.”

“Interesting,” Andrews said. “Probably guilty of something.”

Beth entered the room and took a seat across from the man, her back to us.

I glanced over at Andrews, who was fishing his cell phone from his pocket.

He stared down at the screen and then looked at me. “Press conference tomorrow morning at nine,” he said.

I nodded. Then my attention went back to Beth inside the interview room.

She arranged her folder and cleared her throat. “I’m Agent Beth Harper. You’re Mr. Jeff Mercer, correct?”

He nodded.

“Can you please give me a verbal answer? The room is being recorded, and we need audio as well as video,” she said.

“Yes. Jeff Mercer,” he said.

“First, do you know why we asked you in today?”

“I don’t know.”

“Well, if you had to guess,” Beth said.

I watched as he squirmed in his chair. “Shit. I don’t know. Because of what I’ve been doing online.”

I looked over at Andrews, who leaned forward in his chair, staring through the glass into the observation room.

“And what is that exactly?” Beth asked.

Mercer didn’t respond.

“Mr. Mercer?” Beth asked.

“Look, it wasn’t even that much money. A ton of people do it. A couple hundred bucks, maybe a thousand at the most,” he said. “I mean, is it that serious that the FBI wants to talk to me? Should I have a lawyer? Who said something? That Debbie chick?”

Beth cleared her throat. “No. Not Debbie. I have to say that it sounds like you’re confessing to something.”

“I’m not confessing to anything. I don’t even think it’s illegal.”

“What exactly is it?” Beth asked.

“Just some whatever, talking to people, asking for help.”

“I don’t follow, Mr. Mercer. You’re going to need to explain to me precisely what you’re talking about.”

He jerked his head back. “Well, if you don’t know, I’m sure as hell not going to tell you and incriminate myself.”

“Right,” Beth said. “Why don’t we just circle back around to that in a second?”

Mercer didn’t respond.

Beth opened the file she’d taken in with her. She slipped out a few pieces of paper. “I’d like to show you a few things and then get your response.”

“Yeah, whatever,” he said.

“These are some transcripts of messages you had sent and received with a Monica Whickham.” Beth slid one of the papers over to him. “This is you, correct?”

“Yeah, that’s me,” he said. “So what?”

“We’ll get to the ‘so what’ part in a minute.” Beth took the sheet away from him and pulled out another. “Now, this is the same thing between you and a Rebecca Wright.”

“Okay,” he said. “I talk to a lot of girls online. It’s what I do.”

“It’s what you do?” Beth asked.

Mercer let out a grumble and adjusted himself in his chair. “Fine,” he said. Mercer let out a huge breath. “I try to get money out of women I meet online.”

Beth folded her arms on the table in front of her. “Expand on that.”

“I contact just about every woman in the personals section. I try to build friendships with them, but it often turns into more, just online. I never meet up with them in person. I make excuses why I can’t see them when they ask to meet up. It’s usually a money-related excuse. The women that offer to help out with money, well, I take it and make up more excuses for more money.”

“Right,” Beth said. “So you were trying to scam these two women is what you’re saying?”

“I don’t know if I’d call it that, but…”

“No. I’m pretty sure scam is the right word for it,” Beth said. “So you claim that you’ve never met either of these two women in person?”