Glimpse Read online

  “Boss, I’m not one hundred percent clear on what you mean. Are you saying that for the duration, Tyler is no longer my partner, but Patricia Holmes is? That I work with her and if she comes up with a theory I follow her leads, with her in tow?”

  “Yes, but you report to me in advance of any leads she may come up with so that as a team we can support you.”

  “So, she puts up or shuts up and we give her one week to do so?”

  “Pretty much, yes. Any longer than that, if she isn’t successful, it isn’t fair to her teaching job, and patients she works with at Graylands. She has taken some leave, but sooner or later she must go back to her work. But, Rick, I know you’ve had some marital problems in the past, which is why we are having this chat. I’ve been told Patricia Holmes is a very attractive woman. If you think this could be a potential problem with your wife, say so and I will get her to work with someone else. This isn’t an order, Rick; it’s asking if you want to volunteer.”

  “I’m up for it. But I ought to run it by Juliet, rather than have her find out from someone else. Things have been great since I moved back in, and I don’t think this will affect anything, but, I should let her know. Give me fifteen minutes and I will give her a call.”

  “Happy wife, happy life, Rick, I’m all for that. Yeah, go talk to her, let me know what decision you come to.”

  ****

  “Hey Babe, it’s me,” he said when Juliet answered the phone on the fourth ring.

  “Oh, hi. This is a surprise, what’s wrong?”

  “Nothing is wrong, but something came up. I’ve been asked to volunteer for special duty, and I thought I would get your opinion.”

  “Sorry, who is this? It can’t be my husband; he never asks my opinion about his job.” She laughed.

  He smiled, knowing she was kidding, but there was also a lot of truth in what she said. “That was your old husband, this one wouldn’t accept this job if you were against it. And, to be fair, you might be.”

  “Oh, I see. You’re not going undercover and I won’t see you for two years, are you?”

  “No, love, nothing like that. The DCI has asked me if I would work with Pat full time on a week’s trial basis. She has taken leave of absence from the University and her patients to help us out with the case. Colin wants her babysat, but also for me to take the lead on any theories she comes up with regarding the bunch of old case files I gave her to look at.”

  “Why would I be against that, Rick?”

  He drummed his fingers on the desk; here it comes. “When you took me back, Jules, I promised you I would not only never lie to you again, but that I would share things with you that I hadn’t before about my job. You should know that Pat is a very attractive woman, she would be my partner for a week at least, and not Tyler, and we would be spending a lot of time together.”

  “Wow, Rick. You’ve blown me away here. But from what you’ve told me she sounds fascinating. I trust you; I believe you will keep it professional.”

  “You’re amazing, Jules. You know that, right?”

  “Just don’t you forget that.”

  “See you tonight, love.”

  “Hey, Rick? Before you go.”

  “Yeah, still here.”

  “I appreciate you asked me, I love you.”

  “Love you too, Babe.”

  ****

  Detective’s David Rollick and Charmaine Hilton knocked on the faded and paint peeled front door. They were following up on a lead from a neighbor, called through to the hotline, that the man inside was not only a ‘weirdo’ but had been seen carrying a large brown suitcase and putting it into his car. The timing was consistent with the day the case had been dumped at Midland.

  Adding fuel to the fire was that the neighbor had also reported there seemed to be a never-ending stream of young women knocking on the door and leaving shortly afterward.

  “Who is it?” Came the muffled yell from inside.

  “It’s the police. We would like to ask you some questions, please,” Dave shouted back.

  “Okay, I just got out of the shower, hang on.”

  “A shower?” Charmain asked quietly. “Sounds suss to me, at this time of day.”

  It was that sixth sense that saved her life, and a blatant disregard for procedure that ended Dave’s. “Let’s give him a chance; maybe he works nights.”

  Inside the home, Brad Michigan calmly took the pistol from the shelf under the coffee table. He wasn’t going to fall for the old: “I’m from the police” knocking on the front door trick. He had built up quite a considerable business manufacturing, and selling meth-amphetamine, but he had made plenty of enemies along the way.

  He’d amassed over three million dollars, which was sitting in a Canary Islands bank account, and if it was to all come to an end, so be it. But he wasn’t going to go quietly.

  He pulled the slide back on the side of the muzzle, and stood in the passage, ten feet from the voices he did not believe were police. “What’s this all about?” he yelled.

  Dave stepped in front of the door, while Charmaine moved to the side. Instinctively she slipped her hand under her black jacket and grasped the handle of her gun. Dave was a big man and had effectively shouldered her out of the way. “It’s just some routine…”

  He didn’t get to finish the sentence, as a sudden, ear-shattering, noise deafened her. A hail of bullets ripped through the wooden door, picking Dave up and throwing him backward. His chest disintegrated in mid-air, and he died before he hit the ground.

  Charmain was frozen, in deep shock; her partner was dead. She didn’t need to feel his pulse to know that. In a daze, she heard the click-clack of the lock being undone, then the handle turned. She was about to be shot as well, and she was petrified.

  The door was yanked open as she stepped back further. Her training came to the fore and she pulled her gun from its holster. She had the drop on him. Brad Michigan’s eyes were only on the dead body on the footpath. He heard the word freeze from his right and turned as Charmaine’s finger tightened on the trigger. She fired repeatedly, in shock, in an unconscious reaction.

  From a second-floor window across the street, an elderly man watched, and smiled. He was fed up with the drugged-out troublemakers who came and went from the obvious meth lab. He had reported it time and time again to the police, but they had done nothing about it? Report that a serial killer lived there though and it got action straight away.

  He smiled, faintly, and pulled the blind back down.

  ****

  She was ready when he rang the doorbell and opened the door for him within seconds. Her short hair glistened, and she wore a crisp white shirt and black pants, with high heel shoes. She looked professional, but chic and sexy. Her clothes fitted her perfectly, and as she turned ahead of him after telling him to come in, he noticed the outline of hidden bra straps through the silk top.

  Rick felt a little under dressed in his dark blue jacket which covered a pale blue shirt and black tie. He followed her down the hall, and couldn’t help himself, he glanced down at her rear but could not tell what type of underwear she wore, but once again noticed she had a perfect bottom. Admonishing himself, he jerked his eyes away. Stop that right now.

  He followed her into her study where he saw her desk which had been cluttered last visit, but now was neat and tidy. At one end was the pile of files he had given her, but three of them were lined up side by side in the middle.

  “The coffee pot is on, Rick, would you like one?”

  “Not right now, Pat, thanks all the same. I’m very keen to know what you’ve gleaned from the files.”

  “Before we get into that, Daryl called; he said you are to be my partner for a week, on a trial basis. How do you feel about that?”

  “The DCI ran the idea past me, and I volunteered. I think you will be a great asset to the squad, Pat, your insights, and reading of this guy’s mind, will be invaluable.”

  She stared at him and shook her head imperceptibly. “Yes, but
how do you feel?”

  He held her stare, and wondered to himself exactly what kind of answer she wanted to hear from him? “I feel very good about this, Pat. I didn’t come here under sufferance, or because I was ordered to. I’m looking forward to spending time and working with you.”

  She sat down, behind the desk, and he sat down too. She moistened her lips with the tip of her tongue, and then smiled. “So you don’t feel like you’ve been press-ganged into this, and your mates will be laughing at you behind your back?

  “No, I don’t. Possibly some of them may take the mickey out of me, but I’m a big boy, and can handle a bit of ribbing. Especially if we can come up with a result.”

  She smiled, and nodded, as if happy with his answer. “Just so long as I’m not causing any problems for you.” She pointed at the files. “So, what I was looking for with the files, was an escalation. Someone who started out small and worked his way up to the big league. After all, it’s not like overnight he started killing. Of the cases, you’ve brought me, I can’t find that escalation, which is perplexing.”

  “Pat it’s hard to find a file if you don’t know what you’re looking for. I searched within the parameters you gave me. I couldn’t find any attempted violent rapes that fit, no real animal cruelty that leapt off the page, no assaults against women that matched your criteria. The closest unsolved investigations I could find I brought to you.”

  She nodded and peaked her fingers under her chin. “I’m not being critical, Rick, not at all, I just thought there would be some signposts along the way. You see the mind, when it fractures, is usually caused by a build-up of things. We are the sum of our life experiences after all, so unless this man grew up in another state or another country, it’s strange that there isn’t any build up here. This leads me to think of a few possibilities. Now I stress this is only educated guessing, for want of a better expression. But here’s what I am thinking.”

  “Don’t hold back, I’m all ears.”

  She smiled and licked her lips again. “All right, let’s look at what I think we have here: As a child, he had a horrific life, but he doesn’t see it that way, to him his upbringing was normal. To some extent that has carried forward into his adulthood; he thinks he is normal and everyone else has the problems. His mother left, essentially abandoning him. This left PPP with a dad who was at best troubled and at worst a monster. The way PPP is taking his victims screams out to me that that was what triggered it. This much so far I’m sure about, he fits into the pattern of that type of upbringing, but then I think it got worse. Either he was taken into care, or he was fostered out, or of course both. He could have been a ward of the state where he was bullied because he was so small and then was lucky enough to be picked up by foster parents, or a family member took him. Sadly, I think he was abused in that relationship too, and I’m going to stick my head right into the noose here, Rick, this is pure speculation based on one of the case files you brought me. I think he was abused homosexually.”

  “How can you possibly know that, Pat?”

  “It’s not what I know, it’s what I think, and let me remind you, I could be wrong about some of this; that’s the problem with theorizing. But, reading three of the files you brought me has given me more insights than I had before. Let me come back to that when I talk to you about one of these files. Because I believe he was locked away in a home, and then taken in by a someone who completely and utterly controlled his life. So, his escalation if you like, was steeped in fantasies. He imagined doing things, hurting animals and people in all sorts of bloody and disgusting ways, but he didn’t get a chance to act out those vivid dreams until he became an adult. By then he had lived eighteen or more years as if he were the central character in a horror movie. One phrase he used in the first note, ‘are we having fun yet?’ keeps coming back to me. There is a reason he said that, and it bothers me because to him mutilating and killing is somehow fun, but then he must ask if we are having fun yet, as if there is far worse to come.”

  “I’ve always thought from the start; he was enjoying himself and that he would kill more people.”

  “Well, you are perceptive, Rick, and I believe you’re right. But, I’m positive he killed several times before the body in the suitcase. I’m sure this one was one of the very early ones, if not his first. To me, it feels like it’s the initial killing.”

  She pushed the folder over toward him and eagerly he picked it up and opened it. “This can’t be right, Pat, the victim is male. I almost didn’t give you this one because of that reason. Gordon Bridges was a closet gay, and he picked the wrong one and was knifed to death in his car at a park.”

  “Yes, the circumstances of the murder are all quite right, but he was stabbed forty times, which is about the same number of wounds as Bridget Schaeffer. If this was a homophobic killing, why was there never a second one? The weapon seems to be similar, in fact, I think it was the same knife. Gordon Bridges suffered a frenzied attack, from inside the car, so the victim knew his attacker, else why did he let him inside? If this wasn’t, as I believe, a random attack, then what does that tell us about the killer? Intricate planning. He lured Gordon Bridges to the park to meet him there. He let him in the car, and then our man brutally killed him. And, he did it in such a way that the police would think it was a gay hate crime. Can you not see the type of planning it took to get him, a married man, to the park at night time, kill him and throw the cops off the scent?

  “So, let’s hypothesize, remember, Rick, this is all about hypothesizing. They knew each other, possibly introduced by the person who took him in as a youth, or perhaps his homosexual abuser guardian. He was perhaps shared, much like a book from a library, except it was for sex. Somehow, PPP went from one to the other because he had to, until the time came when he decided, no more. Think of this too, Gordon Bridges was married, with children and he chose to go out at night and have sex, leaving his children at home. Doesn’t that remind you of our man who was left at home by his mother in the company of an abusive father.”

  Rick sat, and stared, dumfounded by the leap of perception that could find a link between two diametrically opposed cases. “So we look at all his acquaintances, let’s go to the station and read the interview statements.” He urged.

  “And look for whom? Who can you cross reference with, other than the witnesses you have from the current cases?”

  “Okay, point taken, what else do you have? You have a certain look to you, like you’re holding the best until last.”

  She pushed another folder over toward him. “This one, actually two to be precise, is where he really came of age, the launching pad if you will into the body in the suitcase.”

  “The Lake Monger Murders? But the M.O. is nothing like what followed.”

  “You don’t think it was the same type of homicidal madman showing how clever he is? You don’t see the similarity in dumping a body is a suitcase so it is found, and hanging a woman upside down in a tree in a park used by thousands of people so it is found? Look at me, aren’t I so smart and you cops are so dumb? Are we having fun yet? It just feels so right to me, Rick. I told you I thought he evolved, he learned, he got better, and he sought the limelight. He wanted to be famous, and in a way, with the Lake Monger Murders, he found the infamy he wanted.

  “I’m sorry, I don’t see it. Yes, I can see there are similarities, but there are also aspects that are nothing alike.”

  “Check the knife that was used, I bet you a thousand dollars, it’s the same type of blade.”

  “Even if you’re right, there’s not a lot of help in that case, it went nowhere. He stopped after the second killing so they had no witnesses, no DNA, absolutely nothing.”

  “Yes, he stopped. Why would he just stop? Because he got bored, he had to up the high, and how much higher was the body in the suitcase? I will have another bet with you, that he was one of the people interviewed, he would have been a jogger, or dog walker in the park, he wouldn’t have been able to resist that. That’s
how his mind works, he needs to feed his ego. In my opinion, this man is as narcissistic a person as I have ever come across. Now, there is something else, call this good luck rather than deductive reasoning. My husband, bless him, has a less than endearing quality, which annoys the heck out of me at times.”

  “Really? What’s that?”

  “He insists on reading out loud to me over breakfast the letters to the editor when something irks or interests him. And, what’s more, he gets all hot under the collar with some of the people who write in. Seriously he does my head in when he reads to me some of the crap that some people feel strongly enough about to write to the editor of the bloody newspaper. You get these holier than thou opinionated readers with nothing better to do with their life than write in for other opinionated idiots, like my husband, to read and want to debate about. It is a hive of self-righteous clap-trap, and sometimes, what happens is that one letter will trigger responses from other like-minded souls, and before you know it there are full blown conversations between these people.”

  Rick laughed, he too couldn’t understand the mentality of people who write to the papers to vent an opinion. “I’m with you, Pat, but what’s that got to do with the case in point?”

  “I remember one such outpouring after the second murder at the Lake. I mean fair enough, everyone was talking about the sheer brutality of the killings at the time, it was horrific. But my husband read to me a series of letters over a period of two or three weeks or so, and as I recall, one guy was vocal, extremely vocal. Even at the time I thought it was strange that he would be so indignant, but then he got even more bizarre in my opinion. What he started doing, after ranting and raving about how useless the police were in keeping our parklands safe, was to suggest another previous murder was committed by the same man. Interestingly you brought me the file to it as an unsolved case.”