James Swain - The Night Stalker

“You think Cheeks is trying to frame Jed?”

“Yes,” the priest said.

I rose from the stairwell. Something had happened twelve years ago that had caused Cheeks to destroy evidence, and he’d been covering it up ever since. If I could find out why, perhaps it would lead me to the person behind these crimes.

“I’ll see what I can do,” I said.

W ith a promise from Sonny to watch Buster, I drove to Tugboat Louie’s. The pain in my nose had turned to a dull, aching throb, and I stopped by the kitchen to get an ice pack. One of the cooks made a joke about my battered state.

“You should see the other guy,” I said.

I went upstairs to my office with the ice pack pressed to my face. Lying on the blotter was the transcript from Abb Grimes’s trial, the word slippers highlighted in bright yellow in the evidence log. Piper Stone had also tried to discover the secret behind the slippers, and now she was dead. I needed to find out why.

I booted up my computer, and went online. Using Google, I typed in Abb Grimes’s name, and hit Search. Within a matter of nanoseconds, the search engine had pulled up more than seventy-five thousand different websites where Abb’s name was referenced.

I scrolled through the sites. I was looking for one that had the surveillance video of Abb carrying his bloodied victim in the Smart Buy parking lot. The video had become public domain, and was regularly shown on TV documentaries. I felt certain that one of the sites would have it.

I found a site called ragingmaniacs. com, and clicked on it. The homepage was done in bloodred, and was painful to the eye. The site was devoted to famous serial killers, and included a collection of videos taken at their trials.

I quickly found the video of Abb on the site. It was simply called “The Night Stalker.” I clicked on it, and Windows Media Player filled the screen.

Like most videos shot through a surveillance camera, the quality was poor. The tape showed Abb walking around the parking lot of the Smart Buy with his female victim draped in his arms. His face was masked by shadows cast off by the building, and at times he appeared to be laughing, although it was hard to tell. He walked stiffly, his arms holding the dead girl like she’d fallen out of the sky.

I put my face next to the screen, and studied Abb’s footwear. As the clip ended, Abb’s right shoe was briefly exposed. It was in the frame for a few seconds, then vanished. Just long enough for me to see something.

I walked down the hall to Kumar’s office and knocked on the door. He’d recently bought a new computer, and the screen had a much better resolution than mine.

“It’s open,” he called out.

I poked my head in. Kumar sat at his desk, buried in spreadsheets.

“Jack, Jack! What happened to your nose?” he asked.

“I got kicked in the face,” I explained.

“Does it hurt?”

“Only when I breathe. How would you like to play detective for a little while?”

Kumar swept the spreadsheets to the floor. “Yes!”

“First, I need you to help me burn a DVD.”

“I can do that. My five-year-old daughter showed me how to burn DVDs the other night. What is it you wish to burn?”

“A tape from the Internet.”

Kumar got on his computer, and I directed him to the raging maniacs website. Soon “The Night Stalker” video was playing on the screen.

“This is what I need burned,” I said.

Kumar popped a fresh DVD into the computer, and typed in the instructions so the video was burned onto the DVD. I replayed the video, this time off the DVD.

“What are we watching? An old horror movie?” Kumar asked.

“It’s a tape of a serial killer named Abb Grimes.”

“How gruesome. What am I looking for?”

“I want to see what he was wearing on his feet.”

We watched “The Night Stalker” video in silence. Toward the end, Abb’s right foot appeared from beneath his pants, and Kumar froze the frame. The picture was much sharper on Kumar’s screen, and I could see that Abb was indeed wearing a slipper. There was an image on the side of the slipper, and I strained my eyes to make it out.

“Any idea what that is?” I asked.

Kumar typed a command on his keyboard, and blew up the image. Then he fitted on his reading glasses and stared. “It looks like a cartoon.”

“Are you sure?”

“Yes. Why are you so skeptical?”

“This guy was arrested for murdering eighteen women,” I explained.

“So he must have been crazy,” Kumar said.

“I need a copy of this,” I said.

Kumar used the mouse to hit the print icon. Moments later, a four-color photo of Abb’s right slipper spit out of the laser copier. I held the photograph beneath the light on the desk, and studied it. Kumar was right; the image on Abb’s slipper resembled a cartoon.

“I need to blow this up,” I said.

“Not a problem,” Kumar said.

Kumar placed the photo into the copy machine behind his desk, then programmed the machine to blow up the image. The copy machine began to print, and I grabbed the sheet before it hit the tray.

Kumar came up behind me, and we both stared. The slipper now filled the page, and the cartoon was plainly visible. It was the smiling face of Fred Flintstone.

I drove to LeAnn Grimes’s neighborhood with my mind reeling. Abb Grimes had been wearing a pair of kid’s cartoon slippers the night he’d murdered his last victim, which was a clear indicator that something was wrong with him. Yet no evidence about his mental state had ever been presented at trial. I had to find out why.

The storm had passed, and the sun was shining. I parked in front of LeAnn’s house. Now that Jed had been captured, the FBI had pulled up stakes, and I spotted a lone police cruiser with two officers parked a few houses away. My windows were rolled down, and I could hear the officers discussing the police’s ongoing search for Heather and Sampson. The tenor of their voices told me that they didn’t expect to find either of them alive.

I knocked on the front door. It swung open, and I found myself standing face-to-face with LeAnn. She wore a somber black dress, and was dragging a suitcase.

“May I come in?” I asked.

LeAnn stepped onto the front stoop. Her eyes were ringed from lack of sleep, and her movements were slow and painful.

“Please get out of my way,” she said.

“I need to speak with you. It will only take a minute.”

“I have to go see Abb,” she said.

Then I understood the suitcase. She was driving to Starke to see Abb get strapped on a gurney and have a needle filled with a powerful cocktail of narcotics and life-ending drugs pumped into his veins. She was going to say good-bye to her husband.

“I need to speak with you about the evidence that was destroyed in your husband’s case,” I said. “It will only take a few minutes.”

A flicker of life came into her otherwise lifeless eyes. She dropped her suitcase in the doorway, then turned around and went into the house. I picked up the suitcase and put it in the foyer, then followed her inside.

She dropped onto the couch in the living room. The bun in her hair had come undone, and as her hair fell onto her shoulders, I glimpsed the woman she’d once been.

“What do you want to know?” she asked.

I pulled up a chair. In my pocket was the photo of Abb’s slipper with the cartoon of Fred Flintstone I’d printed off Kumar’s computer. It was folded into a square, and I smoothed out the creases before showing it to her.

“Your husband was wearing these slippers the night he was filmed in the grocery store parking lot,” I said. “Do you recognize them?”