Payback (3 page)

The victim’s employer, despite the smell had made their way up the steps to find the two victim’s both lying in pools of blood on the bed with their skins removed. That was the Carver’s M.O. Brian had often wondered what it was like to be skinned; how much pain would someone be able to stand before they were completely unconscious, never to wake up again? That thought had troubled him repeatedly over the years. The Carver took his time with things. He would skin someone until that moment and wait for them to wake back up. But eventually they would bleed out and they would never wake back up. Brian had to feel sorry for the ones that did not pass out first. They would have been awake for a much bigger percentage of their deaths.

“We aren’t going to find anything,” Brian said.

“I know, but dammit we have to at least give it our best shot. Everyone messes up eventually; we just have to hope that this is the time,” Arnold said.

“Well, the killer has struck twice in quick succession and it doesn’t look like he is going to slow down any time soon.”

“Those old homicide instincts are getting sharpened already,” Arnold said with a smile. He was happy as shit that Brian was helping them work a homicide again. Brian had to resist the urge to roll his eyes over the whole thing. He knew that he was pretty good at homicide and that the department might have suffered as a result of him walking away from it, but he had to do what was best for himself and his family. He knew that Amber had been so relieved when he had made that decision. He wondered what she would be thinking to learn that he was working a homicide case again and it was this case. He would just have to explain to her that he was doing it all for her. He was doing it all because he wanted to protect her and make sure that this case was done once and for all.

But was this the same case? He kept thinking of it as the case of old, but this was a brand new perpetrator. This could not really have anything to do with the Jeffries case could it? He needed to find out. That was their best bet at finding the information that might lead to the arrest of the copycat before he struck again.

“I wouldn’t say that. This feels like an alien world to me, Jim,” Brian said.

“It will come back to you,” Arnold said.

“I don’t want it to. I don’t know why I’m here. You guys don’t really need me here. You have this all under control I’m sure. I feel like I’m in the way,” Brian said. He was actually feeling a bit like a third wheel. Since he arrived on the scene all he had really done was brood, fight nausea, and wonder why he was not sitting behind his desk right now sorting through paper work on the trail of the North side crystal meth ring that he was working on. He had not yet located where they were cooking the stuff or figured out exactly how their distribution system was set up.

He was starting to feel completely out of his element here. But it was pulling him in all the same. He felt like even a copycat of this case belonged to him somehow because he was so close to it.

“Don’t give me that. I can see the spark in your eye. I know that you want to be here,” the Chief said.

“Brian smiled good- naturedly as John patted him on the back. It did feel good to be a part of this particular team again, but he really felt off his game. Maybe Arnold was right and he was just going to have to get his feet wet and then he would start to feel like the Brian Graff of old, but he hope that he didn’t have to get too much practice in. That meant that they had to find this asshole before he killed someone else. If he hadn’t already.

“Any signs of forced entry found?” Brian asked.

“No. It looks like he picked the lock. The forensics guys talked with the team working the other crime scene and they confirmed that the same thing happened there and they confirmed it looked like the same exact knife too. The body at the other crime scene is about twelve hours older than these two.”

“So he had these victims already picked and ready to go? He just packed up at the other crime scene and came right here to start this job? It takes a while to do this; you got to figure maybe the guy is on some sort of drug to keep himself going?”

“Maybe. But you’d be surprised what people running on pure adrenaline can do. They can stay up for days. Maybe he is bipolar and he is killing on his high cycle?” John said.

“That is possible, but if he is actually on a drug or even if he is bipolar then he is more apt to make a mistake. Did we have anyone talk to the neighbors yet? Did we canvas the neighborhood?”

“We did, but nothing turned up. The guy was like a ghost. Same story at the other crime scene.”

“Do we think that maybe these are not his first murders? Usually when a killer starts out they make a lot of rookie mistakes, but if the mistakes aren’t enough to get them caught then they learn from the mistakes and get harder to catch. At least until they start to unravel and their arrogance lets them get careless.”

“The man is an encyclopedia of murder,” John said with a smile. “You should teach a class.”

“Oh, I’ve had offers,” Brian replied.

“Well, then why not do it?”

“I’m not sure,” Brian said but he knew why. He had been approached by the local university on several occasions to teach a few criminal justice classes but he had turned them down, despite obtaining a PhD early in his career. He had continued his education while being a uniformed cop simply because he enjoyed the studies and he knew that it would help him rise through the ranks more easily and command a bigger salary when he got there. Little did he know that an accident would be the thing that helped him make detective and the salary bump was not that much more. It was kind of pathetic when you really thought about it.

But he had entertained the notion of teaching. It sounded like it might be interesting to pass along his knowledge and his experience but to him it sounded more like something he wanted to do after retirement. And he wasn’t sure how he would feel talking about murder all day long. Would that put him back in that creepy mind state again? Like he felt himself being pulled into right now? He tried to shake it off and think about anything else, but he was already trying to walk around inside the killer’s head.

“Well, what do you think about this? Any thoughts or nuggets of deep insight to share with us?” Arnold asked. He was clearly desperate for anything that Brian might have on what this person was thinking when they committed the crime.

“You mean why is he copycatting the Carver? I am not sure. I would look at former victims---maybe people who had escaped the Carver—or maybe look further into Jeffries claim that he was not working alone back then. Of course we have to look at Jeffries and see if there are any former cell mates who might have been turned on by the adventure stories that Jeffries might have shared with him. And we need to see who has been coming to visit Jeffries and who he has been writing to. I know he gets a lot of fan mail, but we need to see if there are any people that he corresponds with regularly. It would be someone who was standing out among the flock.”

“Alright. So we need to interview Jeffries,” Arnold said.

“Yes,
we
do.”

Ian Jeffries was not the kind of man you would think of when you thought of a mass murderer who had terrorized an entire city. He was less than average height and couldn’t have weighed more than one hundred and sixty pounds. He had been a bit pudgier before his incarceration, but Brian guessed that prison food had to suck worse than he thought it might.

Brian and John had gone together to interview Jeffries at Wilson Prison just outside of Phoenix about twenty minutes. The drive had taken longer than Brian had thought it might due to a huge car pileup on the freeway going out of town.
The people in this city can’t drive for shit
, he thought. They were all in a hurry and drove far too damn fast to get where they were going. Half of the deaths that occurred in the town happened due to massive car accidents. If you were driving around there then you were basically taking your own life into your hands. That was the way that Brian had always looked at it. When you got where you were going and you stepped out of the car it was not uncommon to breathe a sigh of relief that you had made it where you were going safely.

Sitting across from the man who had almost killed his wife—skinned her alive even—was a surreal experience. Brian had actually never met the man in person before, except for at the crime scene. Many detectives and reporters had interviewed him hundreds of times, but Brian had stayed away from it. He had become too close to the case and far too emotional. He decided that it was best for him to just hang back and stay out of it. If he had really probed his own mind back then he would have decided that he didn’t want to work in homicide to begin with, but he had been color blinded by the shining flash of the promotion to detective. He had taken the job with a huge smile and went into the darkness wishing he was anywhere but there day after day.

“So, it sounds like you dickheads need my help,” Jeffries snarled. Every word out of Jeffries mouth sounded like he was barking at you. He was loud and irritable. Since being incarcerated he had spent at least six months in solitary confinement for behavior issues and he had been in several fights. Despite his small stature he fought like a lion and being psychotically crazy he almost always deeply injured the other person or persons he was fighting. Brian had heard that four guys ganged up on Jeffries last year in a prison fight and they had beaten him savagely. But watching the tapes in preparation for this interview before leaving the station Brian had felt sick as he saw Jeffries get up and retaliate. Two of the men had permanent brain damage from being kicked in the head repeatedly by Jeffries as another man punched him on the back and the body, Jeffries refusing to go down. As he finished stomping the two men on the ground out he suddenly lunged and attacked the man who was punching him.

In one fell swoop Jeffries had bitten the man’s neck, ripping a huge gash of flesh out of him. The man had bled to death.

Jeffries was often kept in solitary just to keep others safe.

It was surreal sitting in front of this genuine human monster. Brian had dealt with a lot of psychopaths and murderers in his time as a homicide detective, but Jeffries was by far the most inhuman person he had ever met. The man had nothing in his eyes. When you looked into them you saw nothing but a big abyss of emptiness. There was no warmth or humanity anywhere to be found and he got the impression that there never had been either.

“It’s nice to see you again too, Ian,” John replied. Brian glanced at John. He knew that John had met and interviewed Jeffries before, but he had never really put it together in his head that John would be that comfortable speaking to someone like Jeffries. John was a solid cop but he had never had the best people skills and just never could pull off that glib routine in the interview process. He was not an interrogator by any means and Brian was wondering why Arnold had allowed John to come in his place. Maybe the old man was getting too old to be traveling all over hell’s half acre just to get some info from a serial killer. Maybe the chief wanted to stay behind and ram it to those lab geeks to hunt for every piece of evidence that there possibly could be. John could just see him now yelling at them to hurry the hell up and get moving on this thing. There was evidence there somewhere and if any of them ever wanted another dime of a paycheck they would find the damn thing. He would have them all working at McDonald’s before it was all over if they thought he was playing around. It was fun to watch Arnold work sometimes. Brian missed it.

“Well, in case you missed the memo boys, I’m behind bars twenty-three hours a damn day. I haven’t been able to fit it into my busy schedule to skin anybody lately,” Jeffries said. He leaned back and smiled with smug satisfaction at his clever insults.

“Thanks, for the heads up on that one. But we were hoping you might be able to give us some insights,” Brian said.

“Insights? Do I look like Tony fucking Robbins? I don’t have any answers for you,” Jeffries said.

Brian figured that he would clam up and not tell them anything. It was quite possible that he really did not have a clue, but even if he did he was not going to divulge any information to them. He had no reason to. There was nothing in it for him. Besides this was a lot more fun for him and he had the power of these two seasoned cops begging him for answers. That would make him the hero of his cell block for a bit.

The guy was a piece of shit. End of story.

But Brian knew more than one way to get some info out of an uncooperative prisoner.

“So, you don’t have any opinions on this at all? It just seems to me that someone is basically ripping you off. They are taking something—a system, methodology, whatever you want to call it—and they are basically shoving it in your face. Some stupid poser is out there taking credit for your ideas. Hell the guy just stepped on the scene but it wouldn’t surprise me if the arrogant little prick started to taunt the cops on social media or sending letters to us claiming that you never did anything. Maybe we caught the wrong man all those years ago. Maybe you were just the patsy.”

Brian could see Jeffries getting more and more angry as his ego began to take a beating. That was precisely what he wanted from the narcissistic shit.

“Maybe you were the fall guy. Is that what happened Ian? Your partner sells you out and leave you holding the bag?”

“Fuck you! I never had no damn partner. I did it. I skinned all of those little bitches and I still jack off to the memories!”

Brian sat back and appeared to be bored, which he was. He knew that John was getting a bit upset and nervous watching this mad man become more and more agitated. The psycho was chained to a chair that was welded to the floor; he couldn’t do shit to them. But it was fun getting him all riled up.

He didn’t think that Jeffries had any idea that his intended last victim was now Brian’s wife. It was a nice little nugget of information that Brian was going to keep under severe lock and key. You never wanted someone like Jeffries to learn anything about you that they could twist or use. It could easily turn into a high grade assault and attack session.