Splintered (4 page)

He munched on his cold fries as he tried to focus on the maps and profile pictures of the victims tacked on the walls. “What the fuck am I missing?”

“Other than a large portion of your brain? Don’t know,” Byte deadpanned.

“If that’s your attempt at humor, you need to step up your game. It wasn’t even remotely funny, and if I wasn’t so fucking tired, I’d come over there and slap you upside your thick skull,” Hutch threatened.

Byte snorted as he leaned back into his chair and propped his John Lobb oxford-covered feet on the bed in front of him. Hutch didn’t give a shit about fashion, and he looked down fondly at his five-year-old scuffed and worn cowboy boots. He was more about comfort than statement. The only reason he knew Byte’s shoes were John Lobb oxfords was because the prissy bastard had whined and complained nearly every fucking day for the seven months he’d had to wait for them to be constructed. By the time Byte had gotten his shoes, Hutch could recite the entire history of the shoemaker. If he’d had to hear “A pair of Lobb’s handmade shoes are a work of art, unique to their owner” blah, blah, blah, one more time, he’d have strangled Byte with his five-hundred-dollar Italian silk tie.

“Okay, so let’s look at what we do know,” Byte offered. “Seventeen victims, all small in stature and openly gay. All but one frequented known gay clubs within a fifty-mile radius of each other. The one vic that didn’t hang out in a club was last seen at a coffee shop located directly across from the Torch, a club frequented by four other victims. We also know what type of victim he hunts and where he cruises them.”

“And thanks to me, we have an approximate location of where the bastard lives,” Granite added with a sly smile.

“Seriously?” Hutch asked and moved to stand next to the bed where Granite was stretched out surrounded by files with his laptop resting on his thighs.

Byte joined them, and both he and Hutch stared at the computer screen showing a geometric map with various intersecting lines, formulas, and dots that made absolutely no sense.

“What are we looking at?” Hutch asked quizzically.

“It’s a map of Chicago with a grid overlaying it. Each one of these little boxes is a sector. A sector, say this one”—Granite pointed to the screen—“is the square on row
I
and column
J
, located at coordinates—”

“Dude, you mind speaking English?” Byte interrupted.

Granite arched a brow. “You’re a fine one to be bitching about speaking English, Mr. Computer Geek.”

“Okay, okay. Just tell us what we’re looking at.” Hutch grunted wearily and rubbed at his tired and burning eyes.

“Sorry. I’m basically using taxicab geometry, in which the distance between two points is the sum of the absolute differences—”

“Granite,” Hutch growled warningly.

Granite glared at Hutch and then rolled his eyes. “Fine,” he huffed in irritation. “These dots are where the vics were last seen, these ones are where the bodies were dumped. See how the colors get closer and closer to the red, or hot zone here in the center?”

Hutch nodded.

“The red is the highest probability of where the guy lives.”

Hutch rolled his shoulders and rubbed at the back of his neck as he studied the map. It was still a hell of a big area to check out, but considering what they were working with before, it seemed at least somewhat manageable.

“Great job,” Hutch praised and patted Granite on the shoulder. “Byte, can you get me a list of remote homes within that area as well as all companies who sell soundproofing material.”

“Sure,” Byte responded, returning to his seat. “But if he’s ordering his supplies online, I don’t know that I’d be able to track that.”

“See what you can come up with. It seems like a long shot anyway, but what’s a few more thousand bits of data,” Hutch said dejectedly. He dumped the rest of his fries and his half-eaten burger in the trash.

“Now the only thing we’re missing is his name and the why of it.”

“Only?” Hutch snorted. “That’s a hell of a thing to be missing. While he’s out cruising his next victim, we’re sitting here with our thumbs up our asses waiting for the next body.”

Byte blinked at Hutch a couple of times without saying a word before grabbing his laptop and tapping on the keys.

Yeah, it was a shitty thing to say, they were all working as hard as they could, but unfortunately it was also true. They didn’t have so much as a hair—literally—of evidence to help them find their killer. Hutch turned back to the map taped to the wall and rolled his shoulders, trying to release some of the tension that had settled in. He hadn’t slept more than a couple of hours at a stretch since getting off the plane at O’Hare five days ago, and it was catching up with him. It felt as if his lids were made of sandpaper, but he couldn’t sleep. Every time he tried, dead eyes stared at him accusingly, and he’d guiltily reach for another file.

“What’s the timeline again?” he asked Byte as he pulled the cap off a marker. “First victim to second?”

Byte sighed heavily. “We’ve already been over this.”

Hutch waited without turning back to Byte. After a few seconds, Hutch heard the distinctive sound of a laptop closing as he poised his marker against the map. When Byte still didn’t say anything further, Hutch said, “C’mon, Byte, work with me here.”

“Jared Martin, March third, 2007. Three months later, Steven Croft, June fifth.”

Hutch added the dates and circled the dump zones of each victim. “Next.”

“Edward Thompson, September first.”

He continued to mark the map as Byte called off each of the seventeen known victims and the dates they were found. Once he was finished adding the date of the latest victim, he took a step back and narrowed his eyes. He continued to study the map intently as Byte moved to stand next to him. Hutch blocked out everything else as he tried to understand what he was seeing. Something was there. He wasn’t sure what it was, but he felt it. He always trusted his gut, and the way it was flip-flopping told him he was on to something. But what?

“Nearly every twelve weeks like clockwork, just like I said,” Byte commented with a cocky lilt to his voice. “Only a couple variations where they occurred sooner, like the guy was on vacation or something.”

Maybe that’s what he was seeing, shit he already knew, but his sleep-deprived mind was twisting facts. “Goddammit,” Hutch cussed in irritation as he ran a hand across the stubble on his chin. He needed a shave and, fuck, he needed sleep, but he didn’t see either of those things happening anytime soon. He needed to figure this out.

“Why? Why twelve weeks? It’s not like the urge to kill pops up on a set schedule. It’s always there, just below the surface, waiting for the next victim. Why twelve weeks?”

“I don’t know,” Byte admitted.

Hutch tapped his fingers against his pursed lips as he continued to stare at the map. “I get the random dump sites. He’s doing it on purpose. He’s making sure they’re in different jurisdictions to avoid their being tied together. He’s smart, so there has to be a reason why there’s a pattern to the timeline between kills.”

Byte nodded slowly. “Yeah, I think so too, just can’t figure it out.” Byte headed back to his chair and opened his laptop. “But I will,” he said confidently.

“Well, just figure it out faster, will ya?”

As Hutch turned around, he ignored the one-finger salute from Byte and started searching through the case files from 2007. He grabbed Jared Martin’s file and scanned the contents. He wouldn’t find much. He’d been through the file with a fine-tooth comb. Jared Martin had been a vibrant twenty-two-year-old effeminate gay male. He’d worked only a month at the infamous hard-core BDSM club Ram Rod before he was found dumped in a ravine. Ram Rod was a far cry from the exclusive clubs that catered to the lifestyle. The appeal of Ram Rod was that there were no rules. When a Dom was blacklisted for disregarding safewords and causing his sub true harm, he could still find admittance at Ram Rod. No one batted an eye when Jared wound up dead. The heavy bruising and castration had been attributed to a Dom with a seriously sick kink. The case had been stamped as a cold
file almost immediately, and Hutch highly doubted anyone had really tried to solve the crime.

If the killer kept to his schedule, Hutch had about eleven weeks to figure out who his man was. But as he reached for another file, something gnawed at his gut. For some reason, he wasn’t sure why, but something was telling him he had a lot less time to catch this psycho before he stuck again.

Hutch checked his watch, surprised to find it was only eight forty. It felt later. He pulled his cell out and dialed the number for the Jefferson office. It was answered on the second ring by a pleasant female voice.

“This is Special Agent Hutchinson, any chance Sergeant Struk is in tonight?”

“I’m not sure, sir, but I can connect you with his office.”

“That would be great, thank you.”

“One moment, please.”

Hutch tapped the file in his hand against his thigh along with the elevator music that played through the phone line as he stared at the wall of information. The sheer volume of information was staggering, making it difficult to hone in on individual facts. His mind raced through the data like the rapid fire of a machine gun.

“This is Sergeant Struk. What can I do for you, Agent Hutchinson?”

Hutch hadn’t expected Struk to be in this time of night, had figured he’d get his voice mail, so he floundered for a moment before he responded. “Uh… yeah. Good evening. I was hoping you could answer a few questions about the Akira Kimura case.”

There was a long pause before the officer responded. “I’m not sure I’m the right person to be asking. I’m not the lead investigator. That would be Detective Blanchfield. I can transfer your call to his office.”

“No, it’s you I’d like to talk to,” Hutch informed him. “I got the distinct feeling that, given the type of victims we’re dealing with, there are a few in your precinct who don’t really care about solving this case.”

Again there was a long pause before Struk responded. This time when he did, his voice was lower, as if he might have been trying to speak without being heard. “Okay. I don’t know how much I can help you, but….” There was a rustling sound, like Struk had covered the phone, before Hutch heard his muffled voice say, “Be right there.” Struk then returned his attention back to Hutch. “I can’t talk right now. How about we meet after my shift? Say, eleven thirty?”

“Where?”

“Apollo’s on Broad Street.”

“I’ll be there,” Hutch assured him and ended the call.

“Be where?” Granite asked with his brows raised.

“I’m going to meet Struk at Apollo’s.” Hutch tilted his head and looked at his partner. “I have a feeling I’m going to learn a lot more from Sergeant Struk than we did from the rest of his fellow officers combined.”

“You want me to come with?” Granite offered.

“Nah, wouldn’t want to take you away from all your fun.” He smirked with a nod toward the mess around Granite.

“Oh yeah, geo shit gets me hard as a rock,” Granite responded and grabbed his crotch.

“You have some serious issues, my man,” Hutch chided and threw the file on the bed. “I’m going to go get a shower.”

S
TRUK
LOOKED
tense and nervous when Hutch slid into the booth across from him. “Thanks for agreeing to meet me,” Hutch said by way of greeting.

“I wouldn’t thank me yet. I’m not sure how much help I can be to you.”

“We’ll see about that.” Hutch waved over the waitress. He ordered a cup of coffee and a glass of water, then turned his attentions to Struk. “As I mentioned on the phone, I got the feeling that a couple dead faggots wasn’t high on the force’s list of priorities.”

Once again, Struk flinched at the use of the derogatory remark, and his brow dipped slightly. “Most of the guys can…. Look, I know how it sounded, all the macho bullshit, but they’re good cops for the most part,” he muttered and picked at his napkin.

Hutch thanked the waitress as she set down his drinks and then reached for his coffee, blowing into it before taking a tentative sip. “And do you share their sentiments about homosexuals?” Hutch asked over the rim of his mug and then took another sip.

“Hell no,” Struk balked, sounding offended. “I don’t care how people swing. I treat everyone the same and give each and every case, no matter who is involved, one hundred percent.”

“And how do you swing?”

Struk’s eyes narrowed, his face turning red. “I don’t think that’s any of your business,” he snapped.

“Oh simmer down,” Hutch said coolly and leaned back in the booth, taking his mug with him. “It was simply a question, not an accusation. I’ve been doing this job long enough to know homophobia runs rampant among law enforcement, and I’m just trying to figure out if my instincts about you are accurate.”

Struk’s frown deepened, and he visibly stiffened. “What’s that supposed to mean?” he muttered suspiciously.

“That regardless of who the lead investigator is, you’re the one who will be most cooperative in helping me catch who killed Akira Kimura,” Hutch informed him confidently.

“This isn’t my case. I can lose my job for ignoring the chain of command and butting my nose in where it doesn’t belong.”

Hutch could tell by the way Struk was bouncing his knee and his avoidance of Hutch’s gaze that the subject was bothering him. Struk might be uncomfortable with the idea, but the fact that he’d agreed to meet Hutch and hadn’t yet stormed off showed he might still be willing to help Hutch. He decided to try a different approach.

“How many murders do you think this guy has committed?”

“We’ve been briefed on two,” Struk responded, still not looking at Hutch. Instead, he was scanning the room, his gaze never settling on one thing for long.

“You think there’s more, don’t you?”

“Yeah,” Struk said quietly with a nod. “I think we got us a serial killer, but no one in the station is willing to put a label like that on it. Cap thinks it will cause an unnecessary panic among the public.”

“What do you think?”

Struk wrapped his hands around his coffee mug and looked down into it. His shoulders slumped as he let out a heavy sigh, before finally looking at Hutch. “I think the public needs to be warned,” he admitted quietly.