He cradled his coffee, stroking his chin. The smooth skin felt strange to his touch – he had shaved his goatee off a week ago, but was still getting used to it. Its sudden disappearance had caused a few comments at work, but he’d rehearsed the reasons for the change and no one seemed suspicious – the consensus was that it took years off him. Some even speculated that he might have a new lady friend, which had made him chuckle. The bruising on his face had aroused more interest, but this too had been explained away, his colleagues having no trouble believing him foolish enough to collide with a branch while jogging after dark. Their low opinion of him was finally paying dividends.
After the disaster at Lake Calumet, he had initially panicked, terrified his carelessness would result in his capture. But an e-fit had not appeared in the press the following morning – indeed, a whole day passed before an image of a middle-aged man with a goatee started appearing in media outlets. It was a passable likeness, but no more – the eyes, the shape of face both wrong – and, besides, the police appeal was caged in muted terms. This man was a ‘person of interest’ that the police needed to talk to. He was not officially the prime suspect, or even a suspect, they just wanted to speak with him. This had cheered him – but also puzzled him. What kind of game were they playing?
Confused, unnerved, he had pored over the newspapers and online news sites, hoovering up the coverage of the investigation. And on Blacklisted.com he had got a break – the notorious news website publishing an inmate’s snatched cell phone photo of a fifteen-year-old being led to a police van. The girl was in handcuffs, on her way to the Juvenile Detention Center – the website alleging that she was the CPD’s prime suspect, the same girl that had been arrested after Jacob Jones’s murder.
He had recognized his youthful nemesis immediately – the sullen-looking teenager who seemed able to predict his every move. Claiming family illness, he had immediately taken a couple of days off work, bending his steps towards the Juvenile Detention Center on South Hamilton Avenue. A few bored journalists haunted the main entrance, but he had taken up a position across the street from the rear exit. He knew from his own experience that inmates were usually released via this discreet route, either first thing in the morning or last thing at night. And before long he had been rewarded for his foresight – the awkward teenager shuffling out to freedom through the back doors, into the gloom of a cold Chicago night, a couple of days after her initial arrest.
He had been tempted to approach her – to abduct her, demand answers from her – but the sight of undercover officers tailing her stopped him in his tracks. Instead he had followed them at a discreet distance, all the way to Back of the Yards, where the girl entered a small, neatly kept bungalow. The tailing officers immediately took up positions on the other side of road, their eyes glued to the house. He had driven away fast, his thoughts in tumult. It seemed impossible, ridiculous even, but the website was right. Clearly the slight girl was the prime suspect for the murders. There could be no other explanation for it. Obviously, the police had no idea what they were dealing with.
It was a trait they shared with his co-workers, who had shown no interest in his brief absence from work and even now seemed more interested in tech mags than the monster in their midst. Shaking his head at their boneheaded ignorance, he tugged his phone from his pocket and pulled up Jan’s profile, heading straight for his calendar. This confirmed that the young Slovakian was working the early shift and would be clocking off at 3 p.m. Had he expected any different? Of course not, he had checked Jan’s schedule three times already today. He was being overcautious, but he also knew this ritual was part of the build-up, the constant monitoring of his victim’s schedule an enjoyable prelude to what lay ahead. Poor Jan had such big plans, for himself, his girlfriend, his sister, little realizing that he had only hours to live.
Sliding the phone back into his pocket, he went through the plan once more. It was risky to strike again, so soon after Calumet, but there was no way he could stop. The terror of his victims – their begging, their distress, their agony – was one thing, but it was the wider reaction of the city that excited him now. His murders had engendered a gnawing anxiety that rippled through the well-to-do suburbs of Chicago. The city’s movers and shakers were used to reading about violence in the Tribune – pictures of the latest drive-bys – but the thought that death could stalk them, could walk right into their house and tap them on the shoulder, had them running scared. If they weren’t safe, then no one was.
You saw it in the television interviews, heard it on the radio phone-ins, read it on the online community bulletin boards – fear. Danger had never felt so close before and they wanted it to stop. They were holding community vigils, organizing protests, demanding extra police on the streets, desperately wanting this reign of terror to end.
All because of him.