Blackout, p.7
Blackout, page 7
“Copy that, sir,” Erin said, keeping her own voice neutral. “On our way.”
“Maybe our boy’s a cannibal,” Vic suggested as they drove. “Maybe that’s how he disposed of the body.”
“Vic, Millhouse is pretty skinny. He can’t weigh over one-sixty dripping wet. Annmarie Hilton looked like she was about five-ten on that camera, which would make her weigh at least as much as he does.”
“Your point?”
“My point is, a human being can’t eat his own body weight of meat. Even dogs can’t do that, not even a hungry boy like Rolf.” She reached back into Rolf’s compartment and ruffled his fur. The K-9 perked his head up at the word “hungry.” Erin often used that word just before giving him food. He’d never had the chance to eat ninety pounds of raw meat, but he’d be willing to give it his best shot.
“And that’s not counting the bones,” Vic said. “Oh, I know what he used!”
“What?”
“Drain cleaner.”
“Would that work?”
“Oh yeah, absolutely. It’ll dissolve anything organic, even bones. Takes a few hours, but you could fill a bathtub with the stuff, dump the body in, and pour the whole thing down the drain.”
Erin wrinkled her nose. “Okay, leaving aside the fact that you know that, which is creepy, by the way, that frat house didn’t have a bathtub. So even if he lugged a fresh corpse halfway across town—on the subway, maybe, I don’t know—he wouldn’t have a place to dissolve it. And there would’ve been a smell. Drain cleaner is strong stuff and it’s got a distinctive scent. I’m guessing a dissolving body stinks, too. There’s easier ways to get rid of bodies.”
“We have to find the corpse,” Vic said. “Otherwise we’ve got no case.”
“I know that!” she said sharply. “But he didn’t dunk her in Drano.”
“You seem pretty sure he told the truth about where it happened,” he observed.
“Yeah.”
“Why?”
“Because he thinks he’s smarter than us,” she said. “He didn’t have to come in at all. This isn’t about getting away with murder. He wants us to know he’s getting away with murder. He’s giving us just enough to suspect him, but not enough to prove anything. This is a goddamn game to him. There’s no point giving us a specific address unless he’s got a good reason. The point is to prove he can kill someone, tell us he did it, tell us when and where, and still walk.”
“This kid’s a psycho all right,” Vic said.
“Yeah, and that’s not the worst of it,” she said.
“I know. The worst is, if he gets away with it once, he’ll do it again. Guaranteed.”
“Because it’s fun,” she said.
“This guy’s just like that son of a bitch Heartbreak Killer,” he growled.
She shook her head. “No. Those were sex crimes.”
“He didn’t rape the girls he killed,” Vic said.
“Doesn’t matter whether he actually screwed them or not. He got off on the murders. That was why he killed them. To him, it was a messed-up act of love. Millhouse didn’t love Hilton.”
“Then why her? Why didn’t he pick someone at random?”
Erin had been wondering that herself. “It would’ve made it easier to get away with if he’d killed a stranger,” she said. “And that was the thing he lied about. So why Annmarie Hilton? Who was she to him?”
“You think they were screwing?”
“You always think this is about sex, don’t you.”
“You just said that Heartbreak bastard did it for sex. That’s what serial killers do! They’re messed up in the head and they can’t have healthy sex lives. It wouldn’t be the first time a good-looking prof got it on with a student.”
“Maybe,” she said. “But I’m thinking about her studying psychopaths. I think Millhouse took the class for a couple of reasons.”
“What, you don’t believe he wanted to join the FBI?”
“Not a chance. Their psych screening would’ve raised all kinds of red flags. Quantico wouldn’t touch him with a ten-foot pole. No, he did it for one of two reasons.”
“Okay, Professor O’Reilly. Is there gonna be a test on this?”
“The obvious one is that he wanted to know about other psychopaths, so he could avoid their mistakes. He could fine-tune his technique.”
“I’ll buy that. And the other?”
“Maybe he was genuinely curious about himself,” she said. “Teenagers are trying to figure out who they are. It’s possible he was just looking for information so he’d understand his own feelings.”
“Or lack thereof,” Vic said. “But then why whack the professor?”
“Saunders pegged him as a psychopath after one meeting,” Erin said. “Hilton would’ve seen a lot more of him, and she was trained to recognize people like him. I think while he was studying himself, she was studying him. Maybe she found out something he didn’t want her to know.”
Back at Major Crimes, they found Webb and Agent Johnson. The Homeland agent was at the office’s extra desk, typing up a report on a laptop. Webb was reading something on his computer and fidgeting, clearly getting ready to take a smoke break.
“Welcome back, Detectives,” Johnson said. He smiled. “I think we’re just about done with this unpleasant little situation.”
“What do you need us to do?” Erin asked.
“I’d like you to talk to the roommate, Forster,” Johnson said. “Turner claims Forster’s an idiot and didn’t know anything about what was going on, but I’d like you to grill him just in case. Assuming he’s innocent, we’ll turn him loose. I’ve sent you Turner’s statement. He spilled everything.”
“Did he say anything about Christopher Millhouse?” she asked.
Johnson shook his head. “Nothing about him. I don’t think they even knew one another.”
“Sometimes there really are coincidences, O’Reilly,” Webb said.
“If you say so, sir,” she said, unconvinced. “What happens to Turner?”
“Florence Supermax,” Vic guessed. “Or maybe Guantanamo Bay.”
“No,” Johnson said. “He’ll be under the aegis of Homeland Security. We’ll keep him under close observation, but he works for us now.”
“You’re using him as a security consultant,” Erin said, understanding. “You were already interested in recruiting him. Now you’ve got leverage so he’s got no choice.”
“Got it in one, Detective,” Johnson said. He was still smiling. “With his talent, Turner could’ve made a lot more money in the private sector.”
“But now that you’ve got his nuts in a vise, you can make him do whatever you want,” Vic said. “Jesus. And you’re supposed to be the good guys.”
Johnson’s smile vanished. “We are the good guys,” he said. “You were living in New York when the towers came down, Detective Neshenko. You’ve seen what the bad guys do. We got lucky last night. A genius prankster exposed a serious security flaw in our power grid. All he did was shut off the lights for a couple of hours. A real terrorist could’ve done incalculable damage.”
“People died,” Erin said angrily.
“We’re at war,” Johnson said. “Wars have casualties. And innocent people pay the price for our mistakes. I understand you don’t like it, but what happened is in the past. What we want is to make sure the people who are still alive are protected in the future.”
“If bin Laden had offered to work for the TSA, would you have offered him a deal?” Vic demanded.
“Yeah, I would,” the agent said. “Then, once I got him in a sealed room, I would’ve killed him with my bare hands. But Scott Turner isn’t Osama bin Laden. He’s just a kid who’s really bright in some ways and really dumb in others.”
“I hate making deals with crooks,” Vic muttered.
Erin fell silent. She was thinking about Carlyle and his immunity deal with the District Attorney. He’d done worse than Turner had. Carlyle had laundered money for the Mob, blown up garbage trucks for them, and even killed a man with his own hands. If she could forgive him all that, who was she to throw stones at Agent Johnson, who was just doing his job?
“You guys have been at war so long, I wonder how you’ll know when it’s over,” Vic said.
“That’s the trouble,” Johnson agreed. “It’s a rough deal, no matter how you slice it.”
“Now that we can agree on,” Vic said.
Erin left Rolf to take an afternoon nap, heading down to fetch Forster. Vic came with her, still grumbling.
“We’re not a damn recruitment agency for the Feds,” he said.
“They’ll keep him on a short leash,” she said. “Anyway, he’s not our problem anymore.”
“No, we get to lean on the dumb frat boy. Lucky us.”
They found Forster in the holding cell farthest from Millhouse’s. A uniform was patrolling Holding, making sure the various teenagers didn’t communicate to sync up their stories. The jock was pacing his cell like an unhappy zoo animal. He was pale, his eyes darting frantically around. When he saw Erin and Vic, a mingled look of fear and hope came into his face.
“You guys gonna let me out of here?” he asked, gripping the bars. “I swear, I didn’t do anything!”
“We’re going to have a little chat,” Erin said.
“Face the wall,” Vic ordered. “Cross your hands behind your back.”
Forster whined, but did as he was told. Vic cuffed him and they marched him to the interrogation room. On the way, they passed Millhouse’s cell. Creepy Chris was sitting exactly the way he had the last time Erin had seen him, still humming classical music. He made eye contact with Erin and smiled in a way he’d probably learned from a Stanley Kubrick movie. She resisted the urge to give him the finger and kept walking instead.
“Forty-one hours, Detectives,” Millhouse called mockingly after them.
“God, I hate that guy,” Vic muttered.
“What’s Chris doing here?” Forster asked.
Erin didn’t answer until they had him in the interrogation room. The kid was scared, so Erin decided to lean into his fear and see what she could squeeze out of him. She got right in his face, no preliminaries.
“How did you know Turner’s plan?” she snarled.
“I didn’t… I didn’t have anything to do with it!” Forster stammered. “You’ve gotta believe me! I don’t know shit about computers! That’s why I was borrowing his! Because mine’s such a piece of junk! His can run games with no lag spike at all. I was just doing some deathmatches with the other guys online.”
“Answer the question!” Erin snapped. “You knew what he was doing. How?”
She didn’t know that for certain, but Forster didn’t know she was bluffing. He wilted under her stare.
“He was bragging about it,” the kid said miserably. “Said he knew how to hack the city, that he was gonna do it to show he could. He said it’d be epic, that the thing would make the national news.”
“He was right about that,” she said grimly. Then she made a guess. “How do you know Chris Millhouse?”
“That creep? I hardly know him at all! Whatever he did, I had nothing to do with it!”
“Who said he did anything?” she retorted.
“You’ve got him locked in a cell,” he said, not unreasonably.
“We’ve got you in a cell,” Erin volleyed back. “You saying you did something?”
“No! This is a mistake! Look, my parents are coming down this weekend. You gotta let me out before then! They’re gonna kill me!”
“You’re worried about your parents? You’re looking at hard time as an accessory,” she said. “Unless you cooperate. Chris Millhouse. When’s the last time you saw him?”
“Just a minute ago! In jail!”
Erin clenched her teeth. “Before that, dumbass.”
“At a Sigma Nu party,” he said. “Last Friday night.”
“He’s a member of your frat?”
“No way! We’d never pledge a guy like that!”
“Then what was he doing there?”
“He doesn’t exactly look like a sorority babe,” Vic said. He was standing by the door, examining the floor and looking bored. When Erin decided to play bad cop, it didn’t leave much for him to do.
“I don’t know!” Forster said. “I was pretty wasted.”
“How old are you?” she asked.
“Nineteen. Almost twenty.”
“What were you drinking?”
“I don’t know. Whatever was in the bowl. Plus a couple beers. Like I said, I was trashed. But I remember Creepy Chris. He wanted to talk to me about some stuff.”
“What stuff?”
Forster shrugged. “I don’t know. Stuff!”
Erin fought down the urge to grab the kid by the collar and shake his memory loose. “Did you tell him about Turner’s little prank?”
“Uh… maybe. Things get a little fuzzy. He got me another drink and I kind of blacked out. I don’t know what happened after that.”
“You saying he roofied you?” Vic asked.
“What do you mean?” Forster looked alarmed. “You mean he… like, did something to me?”
“Not like you’re thinking,” Erin said. “So Chris was talking to you, he brought you a drink, and you blacked out? That’s all you remember? That’s not good enough.”
“Okay, yeah,” Forster said frantically. “I think… yeah, I said something about the lights going out. I said it’d happen last night.”
“Royal,” Erin said, fixing him with her stare. “Are you just telling me what you think I want to hear? I want the truth.”
“No, I told him!” Forster said. “I remember, because he smiled like I’d said something funny. Then, when he handed me the drink, as I was drinking it, he said, ‘That’s right. Lights out.’ And that’s all.”
“And did you tell anyone else about Turner?” she asked. “Anyone at all?”
“No. At least, I don’t think so. I might’ve said something on Friday, after the drink. I don’t remember.”
“Harmless,” was Vic’s assessment. They’d stepped out of the interrogation room to confer. “Stupid, but harmless.”
“Not for Annmarie Hilton,” Erin said.
“C’mon, if Millhouse was gonna kill her, he’d have found a way to do it with or without that meathead.”
“I agree, he’s not an accessory,” she said. “But he did help that son of a bitch.”
“And he didn’t report Turner’s dumbass plan,” Vic added. “Who was it who said the only thing you gotta do for the bad guys to win is nothing?”
“JFK said it, I think,” Erin said. “He was quoting somebody else, I think. But he had a point.”
Vic looked at the clock on the observation room wall. “Almost quitting time,” he said. “What do you want to do with this loser?”
“Process him and kick his ass to the curb,” she said. “He’s wasting our time.”
“And the world’s oxygen,” Vic added.
“And then we should probably help the Lieutenant with all the paperwork,” she said without enthusiasm.
“Can’t we run down more leads on Millhouse’s thing?” Vic pleaded. He’d take almost any excuse to avoid paperwork.
“Sure. Can you think of any?”
Vic thought for a moment. “No,” he said. “We can show he knew about the power outage, but I wouldn’t bet on that drunken idiot on the witness stand. And we can show Millhouse knew a missing woman. We need evidence.”
“I know.”
“And Millhouse is right. If we don’t get it in the next day and a half, we have to let him go.”
“I know!”
“So what do you want to do?”
Erin rubbed her temples. “I want a stiff drink.”
“I hear you,” Vic said.
“And I want a fancy dinner, a long, hot bath, a massage, and ten hours of uninterrupted sleep.”
“You don’t ask for much. You want a pony to go with that?”
“Instead, I’m going to do paperwork over crappy takeout and then play cards with a bunch of murderous thugs.”
Vic lowered his voice. “Hanging with the O’Malleys tonight?”
“Yeah.”
“Good luck with that.”
“Thanks.”
“How’s it going?” He hardly ever asked about her undercover assignment.
“I’m still breathing, so I guess it’s going okay so far.”
He smiled grimly. “Say, did you hear the one about the guy who falls out of an airplane? He pulls out his phone and calls his wife while he’s free falling, twenty thousand feet up. He tells her what’s happening. ‘Oh, my God!’ she screams. ‘You’re going to die!’
“The guy replies, ‘Honey, why would you say that? I feel fine. So far, it’s going okay.’”
“Thanks for the vote of confidence.”
“Hey, it’s why I’m here.”
Chapter 9
Most people pictured Hell as a fiery pit, where sinners got roasted for what they’d done wrong in life and demons stabbed them with giant toasting forks; a sort of eternal diabolical barbecue. Some preferred to think of it as a cold place, all ice and darkness.
Erin knew, whatever it looked like on the surface, if you drilled down deep enough, Hell was a bureaucracy. It was full of forms, pointless paperwork, authorizations, justifications, and red tape. How could it be anything else?
She’d been filling out arrest forms, typing up statements, and of course handling the ubiquitous, infamous DD-5s, and she’d been doing it for hours. Cops got used to the paperwork after a few years on duty, but they never got to like it. It was like pulling a week-old corpse out of an apartment; a nasty, ugly chore, but it was part of the Job and somebody had to do it.
“I’ve got an idea,” she said, more than two hours after her shift should have ended.
“We can’t set fire to our Fives,” Vic said without looking up. “I tried that at my first posting. Almost burned down the station house. Got a three-day rip.”
“I was just thinking we could make the perps in Holding fill out the forms,” she said. “It’s not like they’ve got anything better to do.”
