Jericho's Razor (19 page)

The feds kicked us all out of the park, saying that they were taking control of the crime scene. Torrez had to be restrained from attacking them, an act that raised my opinion of him. But the frustration was taking its toll. I could see both Torrez and Jagger begin to lose control as the bodies continued to fall and the leads continue to dwindle.

Three days. That was how long the city had before another one of its citizens was struck down. In my head, I could hear a ticking clock, winding down until the next time I was called to look at a body.

I pulled into the garage and walked to the spot where Sean Booker had been killed. The area was freshly scrubbed, washed, and painted. The only hint that anything had happened was the lingering antibacterial odor of whatever chemical they used to mask the smell.

Why had Eli done it the way he did? Why kidnap Booker, take him here, recreate one of Christian's more gruesome acts, and videotape it? I thought about the message Eli left for me.

After all these years, payback has finally come looking for you.

If Eli wanted revenge, he could have just come upstairs, knocked on the door, and shot me when I answered. Instead, he killed a random drug dealer, sent me a video, went into hiding and released a manifesto. None of it made any sense.

“What the hell are you trying to prove, Eli?”

Of course, my brother may have decided to take up the family business by exterminating the people he saw as a blight on a God-fearing society. Booker and Watts certainly fit the profile. Our parents would have approved of their deaths. But Jason Rourke was a Boy Scout. He even regularly attended church. His death didn't fit the pattern, which made me wonder what piece of the puzzle I was missing.

I thought about what it must take for a person to engage in the kind of savagery we had seen. Shooting somebody was one thing, but strapping a human being to a chair and cutting off his head, or hanging them from a tree and gutting them, letting their insides fall at your feet, was a whole other level of psychotic.

The person committing these acts, if it was Eli, was out for more than revenge. They were doing it because they enjoyed it.

From the
Peoria Examiner
:

Funeral services are scheduled for Friday for Peoria police officer Jason Allen Rourke, 25, of Peoria, Illinois. Rourke was a three-year veteran of the Peoria police department with previous awards for marksmanship and bravery.

Officer Rourke leaves behind his parents, Ken and Kathy, and his widow, Alexis, who is seven months pregnant with a baby boy.

Officer Rourke is believed to be the third victim of the killer calling himself the River City Slasher.' Although details of the murder are being closely guarded by the FBI, Peoria Police Department Senior Detective Edward Torrez said that he believes the Slasher to be Elijah Sandborn, brother of local author Jericho Sands, and is guilty of taking Rourke's life. “It's him,” Torrez said. “It is definitely him. And when we find him, we're going to string him up by his [expletive].”

Day two of the countdown. After reading Rourke's obituary online, I sat in my office staring at a blank screen, smelling the three-hour-old coffee burning in the kitchen, contemplating a career change. Writing was my escape, a way to bury my past. But Torrez had been right when he first met me inside the interrogation room: I banked on my past. My infamy was my meal ticket. I changed my name, but only just enough to satisfy the desire not to carry the same exact one as Peter. Staring at a blinking cursor, wondering if I would ever again be able to crawl into a computer screen and hide, I considered the possibility that this had somehow been inevitable. I rose to fame while Eli did stints in jail. I reaped all the benefits of being notorious while he lived life like a stray dog under an overpass. No wonder he was pissed.

My phone rang. I grabbed it, hoping it was my brother, determined to get him to meet so I could knock some sense into him, even if it required a sledgehammer. But the caller ID showed the phone number for the Blue Note.

“You got a package delivered to you down here,” Tanner said. His voice was tight and clipped. Anxious. “You should come down.”

“Okay. I'll be right over.”

I parked the bike nearby and walked the rest of the way, hurrying into the wind. Temperatures had dropped thirty degrees, and the air was thick with the bite of winter. I could smell the river, low for this time of year, muddy and churning up dead fish starved for oxygen.

Tanner was behind the bar. He motioned me back to the office. A plain brown shipping package the size of a shoebox sat on the desk.

“Return address is a dead end. I checked it out. It's to a Walmart in Decatur.”

I looked at the box like it would blow up. Tanner read my mind.

“It's not an explosive. The guy who delivered it was talking on his cell phone when he walked in. Between that, and all the other signals we got running through here, any kind of explosive device would have detonated. Besides, it's way too light.”

“Could be a body part.”

“I considered that. But none of the victims had any that were unaccounted for.”

“None that we know about yet, anyway. Could be a body with no hand lying around waiting for us to find.”

“Always the optimist,” Tanner said. “Besides, if it was a body part, it would be' hard to imagine us not smelling it.”

I took out my knife and carefully cut the packaging tape. Tanner was right behind me, purely out of habit, giving me backup. Once opened, we looked inside. It was minutes before either of us spoke. Tanner finally broke the silence.

“You better call those detectives down here.”

I made the call and waited ten minutes to see Torrez's car. They came in wearing the same clothes as the night before, carrying cups of coffee Gus walked them back to the office, and I showed them the box.

“I expect this from him,” Torrez said, looking at Gus but pointing at me. “But you should know better than to open it. What the fuck were you thinking?”

“I'm not interested in your lectures, Detective. I've been retired for five years and still have twice as much time on the job as you, so don't treat me like an idiot.”

The box was still sitting open on the desk. Torrez and Jagger both took pictures. Ironic, since pictures were what was in the box. Over a dozen of them, all cataloging the three recent murders in various stages. Sean Booker looking toward the camera, mouth open in a silent scream that I could almost hear. Eric Watts with a surprised look on his face, head turned over his shoulder. Officer Jason Rourke. The River City Slasher was doing more than just killing people and holding the city in a grip of terror. He was keeping a scrapbook.

There were pictures of me as well. Walking down Main Street. Sitting behind the desk at Barnes & Noble during the book signing. I thought about Eli's words.‘
I was closer than you think
.'

On the back of the last picture was a message.

‘
I'm coming, Jericho!
'

Chapter Fifteen

Plainclothes officers trailed me like a shadow. I took Doomsday for a walk, they followed. I went for a drink at the Blue Note, they followed. When I went nowhere they sat outside my building, paranoid and obvious. Nobody mistook their attentiveness for concern for my well-being. I was bait, a lure for a predator they could not catch on their own. They waited because they knew that Eli would eventually surface, and I was the only announced target. He would make an attempt sooner or later. The problem was that if he kept to the schedule, somebody else still had to die. It was a disturbing admission that the police had nothing better to go on. My brother was operating like a phantom. He was the one person everybody in the county was looking for, and nobody could find him.

Preston Masters held a press conference. Standing on the courthouse steps, he announced that the FBI would be assisting in the manhunt for the killer known as the River City Slasher. Preston introduced two agents from the Chicago field office, citing their impressive track records, painting them as skilled investigators who ate serial killers for breakfast. The move was meant to inspire confidence. But all it did was emphasize futility.

By the third day, everybody waited to see who would be the next to die.

I watched
SportsCenter
over a cup of coffee at the Blue Note. Behind the bar was a brand-new TV that showed highlights from the Bears game.

Gus came over and filled my coffee.

“I like the new TV,” I said.

“Thanks. Try not to smash it.”

“No promises. How much do I owe you for it?”

Gus waved a hand. “I have insurance.”

“True. But that's not the point.”

“It's on the damages tab. Just relax. You look like you brewed your coffee with Red Bull.”

He was right. I sipped my coffee, thinking about going outside for a cigarette, feeling jittery. It was seven PM on the third day. Somewhere, Eli was killing his next victim. Or he already had, and he was preparing to call and tell me where to find the body. I wondered who it would be and what method Eli would use.

“Is this what being a cop was like?” I asked.

“What do you mean?”

“Waiting. Knowing that something bad is going to happen, but having no idea what or where. Waiting to respond to it when it does.”

“I would like to think that I was more proactive than that when I was on the force. But I know what you mean. The waiting always sucked.”

My phone, sitting on top of the bar, rang. Gus and I both looked at it. Calls to my phone had become synonymous with death. Especially so every three days. I was almost missing telemarketers.

“Hello?”

“Jericho Sands?”

“Yes.”

“It's Pastor Albert Grimes! I'm here with the killer!”

I turned and saw a man across the room I recognized as one of the cops keeping an eye on me. He spoke on a cell phone with his head down and titled to the side, trying very hard to hide the fact that he was not watching. He may as well have just walked up and introduced himself.

“Did you hear me?” Grimes shouted. “I said I am here with the killer!” His words were frantic. They came out in long streams powered by terror. “You have to come here alone or he'll kill me! He says if he sees any cops or helicopters or people in the woods or anything at all besides your truck he will kill me! He has a knife, a great big knife, and he says he will slice me open with it and gut me like a fish if you don't come right now!”