Lilith: a novel (4 page)

They were leaving Cincinnati now, heading up Interstate I-71, in the general direction of Alan’s farmhouse residence, and toward the Ohio Department of Criminal Investigation’s Cincinnati area office.

“Not much of a life, huh?” Maribel sighed.

Alan had been focused on the highway, and the details of the interviews they had conducted this morning. There wasn't much there, in terms of anything that would lead them to the killer. The conversation with Mrs. Billings had at least confirmed that Robert Billings had been a victim of Lilith.

Even though Mrs. Billings had never met ‘Lilith’, it was apparent that Robert had been taken in by a complex plan of deceit. This bolstered Maribel’s theory: that a woman had been deeply involved in the killings, and was perhaps the main perpetrator.

“Hmm?” he said.

“I’m referring to Robert Billings—to all of these guys, really. None of them had much of a life.”

“No,” Alan said, “I suppose not.”

Alan realized that he had been fortunate in that area of his personal life. During his teenage years and early adulthood, he had not exactly been a ladies’ man, but he had had a few girlfriends. Then during the middle of a romantic drought, at the comparatively youthful age of twenty-three, he had met Vicki in the PX at Fort Benning. It had not been love at first sight—not exactly—but the two of them had hit it off right away.

Alan knew that he couldn't comprehend the struggle that a truly awkward, unprepossessing man like Robert Billings would have undergone in the quest for normal human companionship.

“You know,” Maribel said, “when we talk about people being ‘underprivileged’, we almost always focus on economic privilege.”

“That’s true,” Alan allowed. The son of a construction worker, Alan had grown up not exactly poor, but far from wealthy, either. He knew firsthand what it was like to live with limited economic resources.

“But here’s what we miss,” Maribel continued. “Economic poverty is something that you can overcome. Think about all of the rags-to-riches stories there are out there, and all the people who manage to make it from poverty to the middle class.”

Alan knew that Maribel had come from a relatively prosperous background: Her father was an orthodontist in El Paso, Texas. Her talk of poor people pulling themselves up by their bootstraps therefore rang a little bit glib.

But he agreed with her basic premise. Lacking money for college, Alan had submitted four years of his life to the U.S. Army, done his time as an MP, and then gone to college on the GI Bill. Now he earned a very comfortable living as a supervising detective first grade for the ODCI.

“I agree,” Alan said, “but what does that have to do with Robert Billings?” Despite the question, Alan believed that he did know where Maribel was going with this.

“This is what I’m talking about: society focuses all this attention on economic disadvantage, when economic disadvantage is something that the individual can overcome. But guys like Robert Billings, who are socially awkward, who weren’t blessed with good looks, they can’t simply lift themselves up by their bootstraps.”

“I don’t know about that, Maribel.” Alan disliked the victimization cult that seemed to be everywhere in society of late. “When I was looking through Robert Billing’s file, and the pictures of him when he was alive, I didn't see a guy who was disfigured, or—”

“You don’t understand,” Maribel countered. “Only a woman would truly understand.”

Alan was going to point out that everyone, even relatively attractive women, had romantic problems. Then he thought better of it. He recalled that Maribel’s own romantic life was less than happy. She had recently broken off an engagement with a 38-year-old corporate attorney. Or rather, Maribel’s fiancée had broken off the engagement. Alan was not privy to the details and he didn't want to pry. 

“Are you saying that if Robert Billings had asked you out when he was alive, that you wouldn't have jumped at his invitation?”

“
Yes
—that is
exactly
what I’m saying. I would have avoided him at all costs, almost instinctively. I didn't know Robert Billings, of course; but I know the
type
. Guys like that, no matter what they do, they just give off the wrong vibes.”

“I don’t know,” Alan said. “I think that no matter what society does, or the government does, people will always be unequal in some ways. It's a part of the human condition.

“Some people, like Robert Billings, will have to work harder at what comes easily to other people. But they have to lift themselves up.

“And maybe that’s what he was doing, by doing the online dating thing. He was thirty-three. Not exactly a kid, but not an old man yet, by any stretch. You heard what Mrs. Billings said. Robert had never had a girlfriend, but he was trying to change that—”

“Until he ran into Lilith,” Maribel said.

“Exactly,” Alan said. “Until he ran into Lilith.”

The Cincinnati area office of the Ohio Department of Criminal Investigation lay in the middle of a flat plain of barren farmland, about twenty miles north of the city. The building itself was a smallish, one-story glass and concrete affair directly off the Interstate.

The office had a small parking lot, with a flagpole flying the U.S. flag, the state flag, and the flag of the ODCI.

The ODCI flag consisted of a five-pointed, old-fashioned lawman’s star, superimposed across the shape of the State of Ohio, and a crossed pair of flintlock rifles. All of this against a blue field. The ODCI flag was a holdover from the flag of the original department, which had changed names several times, and originated in the days when the Ohio Territory was the edge of the nation’s western frontier.

Alan pulled off onto the exit, then drove the short distance down the rural access road to the ODCI office. From the highway, the building could be easily mistaken for a civilian office, until one saw the official government sign mounted in the middle of the lawn, and the ODCI flag.

Alan, Maribel, and Dave comprised one of several ODCI teams based at this location. Alan and Maribel opened the front door with their photo ID badges. They passed through a small reception area, down a short hallway, and into the room that had been allocated to the three of them. The floor of the room was covered with low-pile grey carpet. There was a desk and cubicle for each of them, and a folding table in the middle of the room where they could talk or jointly review evidence. A bulletin board was located at one end of the room; at the other end, a fax, a laser printer/copy machine, and a whiteboard.

Dave Hennessey greeted them as soon as they came in. He had been sitting at his desk, behind his cubicle wall. He wheeled out into the main floor area.

“You’re back,” Dave said. “Anything revealing from Billings’ colleagues or his mother?”

“Not really,” Alan said. “We did find out from Mrs. Billings that Robert was indeed in contact with Lilith through an online dating site, but we had already more or less concluded that.”

Alan paused and waited for Dave to report on the computer-related evidence. Then Alan noticed Dave noticing Maribel, and wondered vaguely what that might be all about. Dave was aware, of course, that Maribel’s engagement had ended recently. Perhaps he was hoping to get Maribel on the rebound. They were both single now, after all, and both the same age. But would Maribel go for Dave? Alan wasn't sure but he didn't think so.

For the millionth time, and for the umpteenth reason, Alan expressed inner gratitude that he was married, and happily so. He also hoped that if Dave did have any designs on Maribel, those designs would either work out, or they would crash and burn quickly and painlessly. The three of them worked well together, and he didn't want to see the unit have to split up because of some girl-boy stuff.

“What about you?” Alan said. “Did you get reports on Robert Billings’ online activities?”

“I did,” Dave said, looking away from Maribel. “Billings’ computer wasn't password protected, and he of course never expected anyone else to have access to it. He was using a Hotmail account with a password, but he had that saved in the cache, so that when you launched the browser, his entire email history popped up immediately.”

“And?”

“And—just like Green and Markey, Billings was doing the online dating thing. The dating site was in his browser history, too; and just like with the email, the login and password information was saved in the cache. I was able to read all of his interactions with different women on the site. Most of it went in one direction.”

“Meaning?”

“Meaning that Billings sent out a lot of messages to women on the site, but he didn't get many responses. Even lukewarm ones.”

“See what I mean?” Maribel said.

“What?” Dave asked. He had not been part of the conversation about the social challenges faced by men like Robert Billings.

“Nothing,” Alan said. “Go on. And?”

“And then ‘Lilith’ apparently found Billings and started messaging him. Billings received unsolicited, out-of-the-blue messages from a woman who identified herself as Lilly or Lilith, and another as Ellie. The third fake profile, ‘Elizabeth’, pinged Billings’ profile, but never sent him a message.”

“Hmm,” Alan said.

“What?”

“Ellie. That’s a new one. It’s not exactly a variant of Lilith, but it’s sort of close. It could be a coincidence, though. Can we be sure they’re the same person?”

“Oh, yeah,” Dave said. “Just like up in Columbus and Dayton, ‘Lilith’ approached Billings via multiple fake profiles, and then followed through on the one that he bit on—the original Lilith, in this case. The language and phraseology of all of the suspect profiles are almost the same, and there’s more.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah.” Dave reached into his cubicle and retrieved a stack of color printouts from the group’s laser printer. The printouts were all obviously screenshots of online profiles from the dating site. All of them contained photos of attractive but relatively generic brunette women.

He pulled three sheets out from the pile and extended them so that Alan and Maribel could see them. “You see these?” These profiles were all used up in Dayton and Columbus.

“Yeah, you’re right.” Alan remembered seeing them in the interagency database.

“Did you get any hits back on searches of the photos?”

“Oh, yeah,” Dave said, barely concealing his pride. “We got something, all right.”

This was the area in which Dave Hennessey excelled. Dave didn't look like a cop: He was portly and stoop-shouldered, and had the soft features of a typical office worker. But Dave had double-majored in computer science and criminal justice at Ohio State University. He was able to find things online that the average person never could. While his capabilities were easily matched by the ODCI’s dedicated cybercrimes unit, Dave processed these items much faster.

“Two of these women are Ukrainian models. Their pictures were grabbed randomly off the Internet. But the third one is a local woman.”

“Local as in Cincinnati?”

“Local as in Columbus. Her name is Lorelei Monroe. She’s a fitness instructor at a health club up there.”

“Where did you find her photos?” Alan asked.

“She has a profile on Facebook. The photos on the dating website are among the photos in her public Facebook profile.”

Dave handed Alan another printout. It was a screenshot of Lorelei Monroe’s Facebook profile. She identified herself as a “Fitness Instructor at Shell Gym & Fitness” in Hilliard, Ohio, which was a suburb of Columbus. There were multiple pictures of her in workout attire. Like the Ukrainian models, she was slender, brunette, and likely between the ages of 25 and 35.

Alan handed the printout back to Dave. “Is Lorelei’s the profile that Robert went for?”

“No. It would appear that Robert was skeptical of the Lorelei profile.”

Strange, Alan thought. You could never tell what a man—or a woman, for that matter—was going to go for. Lorelei Monroe was, in her own way, every bit as attractive as either of the airbrushed Ukrainian Internet models. More importantly, the candid, unstaged nature of her photos would be far more believable in an online dating profile. But Robert Billings had chosen to believe in the illusion of a Ukrainian model instead.

“Were you able to get any information about the source of the fake profiles?”

“Yes and no. The headquarters of the dating site is in New Jersey, so they’re in the Eastern Time Zone. I made a call up there first thing, and the head of their customer data group was very helpful and forthcoming.”

Dave tapped the printouts of the three fake profiles. “These had all been deleted from the main site. The guy up at the dating site pulled them off the backup server for me. There’s usually a few days’ gap between the data on the backup server and that on the main server, so we got lucky.”

“And that would mean that the profiles were only deleted recently from the main site,” Maribel said.

“That’s right,” Dave replied. “According to the site’s records, late last night.”

“Right after Robert Billings was murdered,” Alan concluded. “So it looks like they covered their tracks.”

“You don’t know the half of it,” Dave said. “I followed up with the cybercrime groups in Dayton and Columbus this morning. They hadn’t tracked down the photos yet, but they were able to track the IP addresses of the devices that accessed the dating sites in the previous murders to create those fake profiles. ‘Lilith”—whoever Lilith is, wasn't going to let us track him or her to a home computer. These profiles were created on tablet devices—an iPad in at least one case—working on a public WiFi. One of the networks was the WiFi at Port Columbus airport. The other two were very public networks: the guest access node of the University of Dayton’s network, and another at one of the major hospitals in the Columbus area.”

“What about the devices themselves? Were they able to trace those? The manufacturers should have a record of who bought them.”

“One of them, yes. That was the iPad. The iPad was originally sold to a fifty-five-year-old schoolteacher in Fort Wayne, Indiana, six months ago. It turns out the iPad was stolen from her car four months ago.

“I don't think that Lilith was the one who stole the iPad, mind you. I think it was stolen by one of those organized rings that opportunistically steals tablets and cell phones and then resells them. That’s all underground, of course, and the same device might be sold and resold several times.”

Dave smacked his open palm on his thigh for emphasis. “They covered their bases, all right. The Columbus and Dayton PDs have traced all of the cell phone numbers in the previous victims’ call logs. The two suspicious ones were both traced to throwaway phones. So we looked up the phones: They were both bought from large retailers with cash, no record of the purchaser given.”

“What about credit card numbers?” Maribel asked. “For the dating sites, I mean. Aren’t there membership fees for those sites?”

“Not in every case,” Dave replied. “A handful of dating sites are completely free and make their money from ad revenues. And most of the ones that charge a fee only charge the men. The women join for free. I can tell you’ve never done much online dating, Maribel.”

“Are we to take it that you have a lot of experience with online dating, Dave?” Alan asked.

Dave’s cheeks reddened slightly. “I will after this investigation. Lilith apparently didn't use any dating sites that charge the female members a fee. That would have necessitated a credit card; and that would have meant another complication. In other words, another way to get caught. But there are plenty of places for her to hunt while avoiding those sites. Assuming it's a her, that is.”

Alan allowed himself a moment to ponder all that Dave had just said. This wasn't going to end the easy way, with the techies tracking down Lilith via an IP address.

“It might be a her,” Alan said. “Maribel thinks so, and I’m inclined to agree with that theory, though I still think there’s a man involved. A single individual, either male or female, couldn't pull off both the deceptions and the murders. These men were shot without a struggle, which means that they were distracted while the gunman—or gunwoman—walked up behind them.”

“Not necessarily,” Maribel said. “Suppose a man trusts a woman, and he becomes comfortable with having her around. She could easily walk up behind him with a concealed pistol, and shoot him in the head without him ever realizing it.”

“It’s possible,” Alan allowed. In fact it was more than possible, but his gut told him that ‘Lilith’ was not a woman acting alone.

“You don’t think a woman could be that cold-blooded?” Maribel challenged, sensing his doubt of her hypothesis.

“It’s not that,” Alan replied. “But given the degree of organization that these crimes required, it would be difficult for anyone—man or woman—to pull them off single-handedly. We’ll see, though. Did you have a chance to check with the bank, Dave?”

Dave nodded. “Yes. I also followed up with the bank where Robert Billings kept all of his money. Three days ago he made a withdrawal of fifteen thousand dollars.”

“How much did he have in his combined savings and checking accounts?” Alan asked.

“Just shy of sixty grand,” Dave said. “Do you want me to look up the exact amount for you?”

“No, that’s close enough.”

Billings had been a bit thriftier than his mother had predicted him to be—though not by much.

“So Billings withdrew about a quarter of all the money he had—to give to Lilith,” Maribel observed. “A man in love—or headed that way.”

She and Alan exchanged meaningful looks, both recalling their conversation in the Explorer.

“What?” Dave asked.

“Nothing,” Maribel said. “We were discussing the way Lilith operates. We both agreed that a man wouldn't put that much money on the line for sex—but he might for love.”

Dave squirmed uncomfortably in his chair. He might have been wondering if Maribel’s remark had been intended as a question about the nature of his own vulnerabilities.

“Anyway,” Alan said. “Did you get a report back from the crime scene team, Dave?”

Dave sighed. “Yeah. Just like the two earlier murders. No fingerprints that don’t belong there. No fibers, either. The murder scene was clean.”