“Yeah, maybe they’re influenced by DFA, and now they’re doing their own thing,” Fraser added.
“The birthday fixation could be their point to differentiate from DFA,” Hayes said.
“What if they all had some traumatic experience on a birthday as a child,” Wakamatsu said.
“Christ, Wakamatsu. You a psych major, too?” Fraser laughed.
“All right, I think we’re onto something.” Staal glanced at Gooch.
She nodded.
“I’m gonna make some calls, see what I can get. Everybody keep at it. Wakamatsu, get on line and try to break that DFA site code.”
“I got clearance for a tap on Hennessey, but not Mohammed,” Gooch said.
“Good we’ll set up a stakeout on Hennessey, as soon as his shift ends.” Staal glanced at clock on Hayes’s PC. It was only thirty-five minutes until 6:00 PM and the full news coverage. He knew that the tip-lines could narrow the search to Hennessey, broaden it to Mohammed, or send the team in a completely new direction.
Fraser called Staal and motioned him to his desk. “Mohammed and Shultz are online.”
Staal moved to get a view of Fraser’s monitor. Fraser was online and in an Internet chat-room. Staal looked over the screen and noticed five screen names in the room. “I see Mohammed. Which one is Shultz?”
“Here,” Fraser pointed. “SkullDigger is Shultz. The other two don’t talk to our guys.”
“Okay. They saying anything interesting?” Staal asked.
“Nothing yet,” Fraser said.
HateRaven- Yo skull. You heard from Blood???
SKULLDIGGER- Nah the Fuck must be working. You get the mail I sent you Raven?
HateRaven-Ya. Nice shit. Printed it…it’s on the WALL!!
SKULLDIGGER- hey. Who the fuck is Chimera? He aint saying shit.
“Ah, shit! Chimera is me,” Fraser announced.
“Do something, man!” Staal ordered. Fraser typed in as Chimera.
Chimera69- You dicks like pictures? Try these!
Fraser sent an e-mail to Mohammed and Shultz. It contained crime scene photographs from a murder investigation training program. Staal hoped the two suspects hadn’t seen them before.
“Those are some of the nastiest shit we have on file,” Fraser said.
The suspects responded.
HateRaven- Awesome shit!!!! Welcome CHIMERA!!!!
SKULLDIGGER-That shit is the BOMB!!!
Chimera69- Glad you guys like it. Got anything for me?
SKULLDIGGER- Coming up
L
Fraser received an e-mail from Shultz a minute later. “Let’s take a look,” Fraser said.
The screen filled with image after image of women who had been beaten, raped, slashed, and mutilated. Some appeared to be the same as the ones on Hennessey’s wall.
“Jesus fucking Christ!”
Staal turned away from the images. “Get back to the chat-room, Kenny. Remember, you love it all.”
Fraser nodded and countered as Chimera.
Chimera69- Not bad. Kinda tame compared to these…
Fraser pulled up a file and sent some images from the FBI’s Behavioral Sciences Unit. The file contained brutal pictures from some of the worst serial murder cases of the last fifty years. There was a pause of several minutes before Shultz and Mohammed answered. Staal imagined the two drooling over the pictures and saving them for their future enjoyment. They typed their responses.
HateRaven- Fuck Chim!! These pics are the shit!
SKULLDIGGER- Hey, hold on a sec—where did you find this? I’ve been into this stuff for years and never saw anything like them.
Chimera69- Skull you pussy, U just don’t know where 2 look!!
“I hate to upset this little bonding session,” Gooch said. “But the news is on in two minutes.”
“Kenny’s got two of Hennessey’s buddies in a chat-room,” Staal said. “I think he should stay on during the broadcast and see what he can get from these pricks.”
“Agreed. I’ve got Brownie and T-Rod on the phones for this one.”
“Where’s Barnes?”
Gooch shook her head. “Dinner break?”
Staal was about to comment when his phone buzzed. “Corporal
Chin. How’s it going?”
“Cut the shit. I’m canceling the tip line.” Chin said, with a sharp commanding tone.
“Huh, why?”
“I don’t answer to you, Staal.” Chin hung up.
Staal made three quick calls. First to Degarmo. She told him that IHIT was still working Douglas. She didn’t know why Corporal Chin had cancelled the tip line.
Staal began to dial one of his connections in television broadcasting.
“CBC. Walter Banks Office,” A young female voice answered.
“Get Walt on the line. Tell him it’s Detective Jack Staal and it’s about Birthday Boy.” Staal pleaded his case about putting the tip line back on for the six o’clock news. Banks was the program director for the CBC British Columbia and told Staal it would be tight but he would have line up in time.
“Walt can you call your counterparts at Global and CTV and work your magic. I’ll owe you big time.”
“Damn right you’ll owe me,” Banks promised he would do his best to make sure the broadcasts would air and that the tip-line number would now be an HPS number.
Detectives Thomas Rodriquez and Lenny Brown from General Investigations sat at the conference room table and both checked their desk phones for dial tones. The networks’ opening segments played on the TVs placed on the table and the talking faces began their monologue and banter. Two of the three anchor people were thirty-something women, as were all of the victims.
All three programs lead the broadcast with stories about the Birthday Boy case. Brown turned up the sound on one television and muted the others. The talking face mentioned the Knight facsimiles; then the composite drawings filled the screen with the perpetrator’s probable height and weight. Finally, the network ran the security tape and an interview with the two old-timers from Westlake Mall.
Staal grew anxious when the investigation’s lack of a suspect and the department’s competence came into question. Even IHIT was taking some heat. “Just show the damn number,” he snapped.
“By your command, Detective Staal,” Brown said when the number appeared.
Staal answered six prank calls in the first ten minutes. Each caller pointed the finger at imaginary suspects, like Bart Simpson or the Boogieman. Staal was unimpressed with their lack of originality.
“Staal!” Rodriquez called. “Got a guy on line five—talk to him, would you?”
“Detective Staal speaking. Whom am I talking to?” The line was quiet. Staal glanced at the sets. Each aired a fast-food commercial. He was about to hang up when a man in his thirties spoke.
“Yes, um...I, ah,” the man stammered. “I’m Michael Penske.”
“Do you have any information on these crimes, Mr. Penske?”
“Well, I not sure. The tape you ran and the drawing—well they look like a guy at my work.”
“Where do you work?” Staal expected Penske to point the finger at his employer.
“The Department of Motor vehicles, on 232
nd
. It looks just like Frank—Frank Hennessey, the night janitor.”
“Do you have a beef with Mr. Hennessey, Mike?”
“No, not at all. He works in maintenance and I’m in customer service, so we really don’t work together. This guy is just strange, Detective. No one here is friends with him or anything like that.”
Staal wrote down Penske’s name and number and thanked him for his cooperation.
“Strike two for Francis Hennessey,” he mumbled. His respect for humanity reached an all time low after he took several more calls that wasted his time, including a jerk who swore that Knight was his son.
“Hanson Police Service,” Staal said to the next caller.
“Is this the tip line?” a male voice with an East Indian accent asked.
“Yes. Do you have any information, Sir?” Staal glanced at the call display terminal. “Mr. Dhalliwal?”
“That man. On the news. He was a fare in my cab a few nights ago.”
“Which night, sir?” Staal grew irritated. Another waste of time, he thought.
“June 29.” He spoke again after a long pause. “The night the Walker woman was killed.”
“Where did you pick him up and at what time?”
“It was the 1800 block of Second Avenue, around 11:30 at night.”
Staal perked up in his chair. The address was two blocks from Jim Dell’s diner and the time fit with the murder.
“Mr. Dhalliwal. What cab company did you say you worked for?”
“Emerald Cab Company,” he said.
“We checked with every cab company in the lower mainland and none had any record of a fare at that time and in that neighborhood.”
“That is because—because I didn’t enter into Driver Safe.” His accent increased as he grew nervous.
“You didn’t make a computer entry?” Every time a cab driver picked up a customer, it was procedure to record it in the onboard computer. Thus, the dispatcher knew his driver’s whereabouts which made the driver less apt to be robbed.
“No, I did not.”
When Staal asked Dhalliwal why he had ignored the entry, Dhalliwal said he forgot. It wasn’t until Staal threatened to call Dhalliwal’s supervisor that the cabby told the truth; the man in black had offered Dhalliwal one hundred dollars to drive from Second Avenue to the Smyth Cove marina on Lake Hanson and demanded that Dhalliwal not record the fare.
“That’s a fifteen dollar fare, Detective. I have three kids. I need the money. But please—please don’t tell my boss!”
Staal said he would call Dhalliwal’s employer if the driver didn’t come to the precinct and give a written statement. Staal didn’t need a statement; but if Dhalliwal saw the killer shortly after the murder, he should still be able to identify the suspect.
“No problem, Detective. I see you in twenty minutes.”
Staal noticed that the other detectives were no longer answering calls. “Anybody get anything?”
“Yeah. Another DMV staff member calling to say that Hennessey is a swell guy,” Gooch said.
“Christ, that makes three. This guy looks better by the second,” Staal said. “Anybody else?”
“I’m thinking we should get warrants for Eminem, Harry Potter, and that bald fuck from Seinfeld,” Rodriquez joked.
Staal thanked Rodriquez and Brown for their help manning the call center phones. He told the others about the cab driver and his willingness to cooperate. He walked to the coffee room and restarted the machine to brew a fresh pot. Then he flipped out his phone and ordered an assortment of sandwiches for delivery from the deli across the street. His next move was to visit Ken Fraser’s desk.
“So, how are you and your online buddies doing?” Staal asked.
“They went down for a nap, I guess. Hey, I had our man Francis on for a few minutes. The three of them talk in some kinda code...I haven’t figured much of it out, but I saved the conversation if you wanna take a peek,” Fraser said.
“Yeah, I’ll take a look later. Got food coming in fifteen. Hey, did you get into that DFA site?”
“Wakamatsu got in. It’s all blood and guts photos, and more of the same bullshit code. Some code; it’s English with a bunch of words changed.” Fraser referred to a sheet. “I have some red rice coming in last week on turtle, from Mr. Dress Up.”
“A delivery of photographs?” Staal asked.
“Yeah, red is blood, pink is porn. Rice is photographs, last week is today or next week, turtle is regular mail, and cheetah is e-mail.”
“Mr. Dress Up—a cross dresser or what?”
“Yeah, that’s my guess too.”
“Kenny, try and find as much of this coded shit as you can. Decipher it and try to talk to these turds in their code. Only use the code when you’re certain it’s translated correctly. Maybe you can earn these fucks’ trust and who knows, maybe set a trap.”
“You got it, Jack. Just call me the code breaker. With the exchange of pics, and the chit-chat—I think I can get solid with these fuck-heads.”
Rachael Gooch had a habit of appearing out of nowhere like a cat when a can of tuna is opened. “Jack, that cab driver is waiting in the coffee room.”
Jaswinder Dhalliwal stared at each of the six photographs from Staal’s photo line up. One image was of Francis Hennessey, and the others were of cops.
Dhalliwal continuously returned to one picture. “Dis one, I’m pretty certain that it is dis man,” he said.
Staal took the photo from the cab driver, and glanced and rolled his eyes at Gooch. “Mr. Dhalliwal, meet Constable Stanley Marshall.” Staal dropped the print in front of Dhalliwal.
“Dis is not the man? If you tell me which one, I will say that is him. Okay?”