Green Tea (15 page)

“No, it’ll save me from having to repeat everything to her.”

“I’ll contact her and see when she’s available.”

“I’ll be here till you get here, thanks Steph.”

AJ and I got busy doing office stuff. I’m trying to come up with a genius way of storing all of his work. Digital photography is a wonderful thing, you can take a gazillion pictures, but then you have to be able to find them when you want them. I’m sure there are lots of programs out there that help you do that, but AJ says he has looked at most of them and they just don’t work for him, so I’m trying to come up with something that is more intuitive for him. Maybe we can package it and sell it to other photographers and that’ll be my claim to fame.

We took a few minutes and set up a table downstairs, with a few mismatched chairs, maybe my insistence on an informal setting was a mistake. We talked about getting something to eat from the diner and bringing it into the studio. We’d decided to go ahead and do that when Teagan, Steph and Carmine walked in the door.

Carmine’s name might be right out of central casting, but not his look. He is blond, young, and actually quite attractive, if you’re into surfers.

Teagan was carrying a box of donuts. Steph was carrying a six-pack of Pepsi. Carmine had a big glass with something green in it.

We sat at the table, everyone but Carmine grabbed a donut and Pepsi.

Teagan started us off, “Steph, I know that this is all very technical and legal, but I don’t need the legalese, and to be honest, I don’t understand half of it anyway…”

What a liar! Teagan is one of the smartest people I know. She understands all things legal. She works with that kind of stuff all the time. The thought crossed my mind that Steph and Teagan were dumbing it down for me, and if that’s the case, I’m gonna be really angry. I’m not a lawyer, but I don’t need anything dumbed down either. Well, nothing lawyerly. Maybe a few medical terms, and definitely some mathematics, but not something like this. I just want to know what happened. I decided not to comment.

Steph gave Carmine a pointed look, “This is all unofficial and off the record.”

Carmine snapped, “I didn’t say anything.”

Maybe that explained Teagan’s comments. I have to remember it isn’t always about me. Deep
breath
.

Steph pushed her donut aside and began, “I’m just gonna start from the beginning and give you information in very broad strokes. You guys know the way I got involved in this. A request by Teagan for information that might help safeguard Cara from any blowback for a situation she found herself in. At the time, I believed that situation to be a stalker problem with a cop named Joe Branden. From there, the situation has escalated pretty rapidly. We have all been a part of it, so there is no reason to go into detail for the majority of it, but the steps we have taken are worth revisiting; as Carmine has been working this almost since I first heard about it, he may have more information in certain areas than I, and I will ask him to share that information when appropriate.”

For this being a casual meeting, off the record, Steph sure sounded like a lawyer.

She continued, “As you are aware, I have taken some steps to assure your safety, Cara, and now, the safety of your family. The injunction I’ve gotten, sorry, the restraining order, now applies to all the members of your immediate family, their spouses, and those sharing their place of residence.”

Teagan’s eyebrows about went to her hairline, but she didn’t say anything.

Carmine stepped in, “Once it was established that the memory cards were sequestered, probably by Louis, as his fingerprints were the only prints on the cards, other than Teagan’s, smart move to wrap them in toilet paper, and a good thing it was the cheap stuff, not much lint there, anyway, we have Louis’s fingerprints on the memory cards. Those memory cards are a scrapbook of the various crimes logged in the journals. At first, it seemed that the journals were an investigative tool, or even a work of fiction, but upon further investigation, first by me, then in conjunction with law enforcement, it’s evident that the journals are a true and accurate representation, the memory cards are pictorial proof, and the victims, although not all have been identified, are in fact, the victims of homicide.”

I pushed my donut away, “Crap.”

Teagan looked like she was going to throw-up, “So, what you’re saying is that Louis killed all those girls, was stupid enough to write it down and take pictures, even though he’s a cop and would know better, then he turns up dead?”

Carmine countered, “Was a cop.”

“Doesn’t that seem a little convenient to you? What about Jerkface and his sister?”

Carmine smiled, “I’m not quite done yet.”

Teagan answered before I could, “There better be some kind of punchline, cause as funny as this isn’t, this whole explanation is a joke.”

Steph jumped in. “Okay, very long story short. What we have found is this. Louis was, in fact, a serial murderer. His crimes were recent. They were all committed since he left the police department.”

Teagan snorted, “Yeah, right!”

Steph took a breath and continued, “It appears that the event that caused Officer Arcillio, Louis, to lose his position on the force, triggered the murders. From what we can figure out, at first, he killed the girls so that he could solve the crimes, that’s what the journals were about. His plan was to solve a set of crimes.
 
Once he was able to prove himself, he would be welcomed back on the force, and be seen as a hero to the whole community.”

I had to ask, “Wait a minute. I thought that Louis was shot and off the force on medical leave, but working with a physical therapist, and was about to get back on the force, you know, the right way.”

Carmine answered me, “Arcillio had more problems mentally than he did physically. He was coming back physically, but he’d lost it mentally. He probably lost it before he was shot in the first place. His mental health issues seem to be a contributing factor to that trigger event, then the dominos started to fall. It was the department psychologist that nixed his reinstatement, not his orthopedist, that seems to be about the time everything went to shit.”

Steph took over. “From what we can piece together, Louis killed the first girl in the same week his reinstatement was declined. Then, everything was quiet for a little while. It appears that Officer Branden was supportive of Officer Arcillio, but not involved in his crimes.”

AJ asked, “Exactly what does that mean and how can you be so sure?”

Carmine answered, “It means that Branden, Arcillio’s partner on the force, stood up. He called and visited and tried to help Arcillio find another job. Help him adjust. That’s where he screwed-up. His sister was new to the area and Branden introduced them. He still didn’t know anything about Arcillio’s new pastime, killing women, obviously, or why would he introduce him to his sister?”

Teagan huffed, “This is unreal. I’m not buying this. Not for one minute!”

Steph jumped in. “It seems that Arcillio, and Brandon’s sister, became very close, very quickly. She works for a residential home…”

I blurted, “Oh Holy Crap!”

AJ looked confused.

“When I was going through all of Louis’s stuff, one of the things that seemed odd was that his life insurance was pretty large, considering he was single and didn’t have a family to support, and since he was a cop, I figured it would be pretty expensive, anyway, the beneficiary for the policy was a boy’s group home.”

Teagan said, “That’s awfully convenient. The guy is dead. The weird cop that has been stalking us is in it hip deep, but he comes out smelling like a rose and his sister just happens to work at the place that benefits the most from the cop being dead; or maybe the person that benefits the most is the real killer, since the poor guy that’s being blamed can’t defend himself. I don’t believe any of this.”

Steph tried to get us back on track, “Please, let us give you all the information we have before we come to any conclusions.”

Teagan smiled, “Obviously you’re not an O’Flynn, we try not to confuse ourselves with facts, we go with feelings instead of logic, sorry.”

We were quiet while Steph and Carmine filled us in on all the details.

What it came down to was that Steph, Carmine, and more importantly, the police, believe the story. That story goes something like: Once upon a time, there lived a handsome cop, who was acting a little funny, answered a call for a silent alarm, he and his partner, Jerkface, went into a dark building, bang bang, boom, boom, handsome cop is shot, Jerkface is not, bad guys got away.

Handsome officer works hard in rehab, tries to rejoin force, is turned down cold, because he is more than a little nuts, no details on just how crazy or what kind of crazy.

Jerkface is a good guy, tries to help handsome officer adjust, and even introduces him to his lovely sister.

Handsome cop goes off the deep end, starts killing girls in an effort to create crimes he can later solve, winning the favor of those that no longer value him, kind of a
police munchausen by proxy
nightmare.

Handsome cop and Jerkface’s sister become friends, when it became more is unclear, but it’s clear it became more. She is aware that something is just not right. She confronts him, he doesn’t exactly admit to crimes, but she is certain he has done something truly terrible. She contacts Jerkface, who races over to handsome cop’s condo, they argue, handsome cop takes off, Jerkface in fast pursuit. Handsome cop runs off the road and tragically, or fortuitously, dies in wreck.

 
Jerkface then tries to figure out what the handsome cop has done, in walks germaphobe Cara, and we know the rest.

Teagan was as livid as I’ve ever seen her. “That’s not what happened!”

Carmine looked offended, “And how do you know that?”

“Because it doesn’t work. You guys have squished all the facts into forms that fit in the little boxes that you want them in, but you had to squish them, that
isn’t
how it’s supposed to work. If the facts fit, they fit, but these facts just don’t fit at all.”

“What doesn’t fit?”

“You are telling me that a cop, a cop that helped the little old ladies in his condo complex, was off killing girls and writing it down in a journal, so that he could impress the other cops enough to work his way back onto the force? That doesn’t make any sense!”

“People with severe emotional problems often don’t act rationally.”

“I understand that, I’m not stupid, and I know I’m not a professional, but some common sense is needed here. Don’t you think this is all a little too convenient?”

Teagan went back and forth with Carmine and Steph for about twenty-five minutes. We didn’t learn much more. From where we were sitting, there wasn’t a lot of evidence, and what evidence there was, was threaded together by a crazy cop and his sister.

We didn’t get any details about forensics, or evidence. Basically, at some point, if any of this went to court, I’d be called to testify about how the journals and memory cards got to Steph, but other than that, I didn’t have any involvement.

When Teagan pointed out that Jerkface had been stalking me, and had even broken into my apartment, Carmine, in a rather pejorative manner, considering we’re good guys, informed us that if we were right, and Jerkface was a bad guy, he wouldn’t be stupid enough to hurt us now, it would blow his cover, and if he was a good guy he was simply trying to control information so that the insurance money would go to the boy’s club, to ensure that his sister would continue to have a job.

I was so disgusted that I didn’t even bother to ask any questions.

Carmine’s final comment as he and Steph walked out the door, “Cara, we got nothing but circumstantial evidence. We got no weapon. We got no other motive. We got no DNA on either guy on any of the girls. We got no fresh crime scene that we can go over again. We haven’t even found the dumpsite yet. But what we do have makes sense to the people who know what they’re lookin’ at. Sometimes that’s all you get.”