Oliver Stark - 88 Killer

The fourth wall was fitted with a door that had special seals to ensure that no air could get in or out. The final piece of the fourth wall was about to be completed. Glass would have been perfect but it was too heavy and too expensive. He’d bought a single eight-foot by six-foot piece of clear Plexiglass and fitted it into the large window space. On the inner side, he had cemented security bars between the two walls. The Plexiglass was sealed into place, and then he added a further layer of bricks on the sides and bottom to add strength.

He stood back, looked at his creation and was pleased. He opened the door and walked in. The door shut into a wide jamb and was sealed on the outside by an old-fashioned set of bolts. Inside, the space was ten feet by ten feet. It was large enough to make a cell for a number of people. He looked up at the ceiling. The small inner room was still open to the roof.

He levered four strips of corrugated iron into place across two supports made of simple wooden planks. He drilled the iron into the wood and then bolted it together to form the roof.

He climbed up the ladder and on to the roof carrying a thick latex sealant and coated all the joints and bolts.

It had taken all morning and he sat with a take-out staring at his construction. He finally picked up his tubes. He would have two feeder tubes running from the roof of the inner building. He cut two holes in the roof and fixed shower heads into the corrugated roof, then sealed the join and a joining piece to his tubes and ran them both across the roof, down each side of the building and around to a central unit made of an old plastic bin with a sealed lid.

He welded the tubes together, ensuring that they were fixed. Finally he joined both to the large plastic bin.

He inspected his finished cell. It was perfect. He had a chair, throne-like, positioned opposite the Plexiglass wall.

He took a red flare, lit it and placed it inside the room and locked the door. The room filled with thick red smoke and for a while all the smoke was contained within the room, but soon, several wisps started to escape through the joins in the brickwork. He walked around, carefully marking each leak with a spray can. When he had marked each space, he started to plaster each one with more sealant or mortar. As he sealed, the red smoke reduced until no more was escaping. His cell was airtight. That was vitally important.

He watched for thirty minutes and then, satisfied, opened the door to let the smoke dissipate. He walked outside into the yard, pulled his balaclava back on, opened the trunk of his car and looked down at Lucy.

Apartment, Upper East Side

March 14, 11.18 a.m.

Harper had re-sent CSU to look for what they could at Lucy’s apartment. If the killer had been a past boyfriend, then there might be other evidence. He now paced around her apartment, looking and desperately trying to work it out. Then there was a call from the hallway.

Harper found the CSU team dusting the linoleum just inside the door and taking pictures. ‘What have you got?’

‘We’ve found a print of a boot. The bastard tried to clean it, but rubber can’t just be dusted off. It’s left one or two marks.’

‘Is it anything you can work on?’ Harper asked.

‘Sure it is,’ said the Crime Scene detective. ‘Look at this.’ He crouched and shone his flashlight at the boot-print. ‘See these marks of the sole? There’s lots of small tears in the rubber. It’s unusual. It would identify the boot, for sure. It’s as good as a fingerprint.’

Harper stared at the small marks. ‘I think I know what they are,’ he said. ‘Tears from barbed wire. The killer was rolling David Capske with his foot. Shit, he hasn’t even changed his boots. That’s how confident this guy is. It’s nothing if we don’t find the owner of that boot. How the hell do we do that?’

‘It might not help you find him, but it’ll help you nail him, Detective.’

‘I just worked out why the killer called the networks,’ said Harper. ‘David Capske was personal. He realized he’d made a mistake. Jesus, we should’ve seen it. That’s what felt so wrong about the whole political angle. It was fake, but it worked. We were sidelined — and he knew that we would be.’

Harper’s cell buzzed. He picked it up.

‘I’ve got good news,’ said Denise.

‘What is it? I need some good news.’

‘We followed your suggestion and looked into Lucy’s past. We found something.’

‘A name?’

‘No.’

‘A picture?’

‘No.’

‘Then what?’

‘Get back over here and we’ll show you.’

Harper rushed into the investigation room. Denise and Gerry Ratten were hunched over a computer screen.

‘What have you got for me?’

‘Ratten has found something. Postings on the Internet by a girl called Lucy S.’

‘Is this Lucy Steller?’

‘These are posts from fourteen months ago. And our suspect wouldn’t have known anything about them.’

‘Why not?’

‘She wrote them on a women’s forum, a help group for victims of domestic violence. A place to talk, to get up the courage to report the bastards.’

‘What makes you think it’s her?’

‘She says she’s writing a book. Her name is Lucy S.’

‘It’s not enough,’ said Harper.

‘And she says there’s a grocer’s which she can see from her apartment window.’

‘It wouldn’t wash in court.’

‘We’ve got evidence,’ said Gerry Ratten.

‘How the hell did you find it?’

‘You got to know where to look,’ said Gerry. ‘I just got a warrant and got her ISP to release her IP address and browsing history.’

‘They give you the websites?’

‘Yeah. We saw where she’d visited. We tracked a lot of them. I got two interesting things. One, that she was seeing a man that she called X. Two, that he was beating on her. Three, that he was racist and four, that about a couple of weeks earlier, they’d gone on a road trip to Yellowstone Park together.’

‘Why did she call him X?’

‘It’s a domestic violence forum,’ said Denise. ‘You’re not allowed to name the bastards. That would be against the law.’

‘Seriously?’

‘Yeah, seriously. She made over four hundred posts over an eight-month period. Read some of the highlights.’

I am in an abusive relationship. My boyfriend does not let me go out or look at other men. He tries to make me admit that I have had an affair. He interrogates me for hours until I admit it, then he beats me.

X hit me twice today. Both times in the back. I don’t know what to do.

He drinks and he rapes me sometimes, but I kid myself it’s not rape, right?

X accused me of liking Jews too much and Blacks. It’s only because I’m supposed to be going to a party tomorrow. He said I’m trying to undermine him. He says I’m a slut. I said that I wasn’t. He gave me a black eye so I couldn’t go to the party.

I’m a good girl today. Will I get high fives all round? I finally broke up with X. It wasn’t as bad as I’d expected. He wasn’t happy, but he didn’t shout or scream. He just stared at me. Just stared and stared and didn’t say a thing. Not a word. Not one single word.

I got home today. X was standing outside the building again. He looked okay, but he’d obviously been drinking. I can always tell. Then he ran at me and put his hands all over me. It was only when I got inside the door that I realized that I was smeared all over with blood. I don’t even know where it came from.

Midnight. I woke up, he was at my bed. He was in my room, at my bedside. I screamed in terror. He pleaded with me to take him back. I would die if he came back. I can’t take it. He tells me that if I report him, he’ll make my life a living hell. It already is. Not one day goes by without phone calls or visits or one of his reports.