Slenderman Read online

  “Hell-oh there, Mr. Interpol Man.” Karma sauntered over the hulking giant. “Where have you been hiding all my life?”

  A small growl from the door pulled Jo’s attention to Abe and Maker. The noise didn’t deter Karma’s advance.

  The agent’s thick brows raised in surprise as his gaze dragged over Karma, lust lighting the brown orbs. “They keep me in the London office, but if I had known what Southern beauties were hidden away in Alabama, I would have come here sooner.”

  Jo and Sullivan shared a grin at the jealousy sparking off of Abe. The man wasn’t as indifferent as he claimed. Abe set the second set of files on the table next to Maker then spun on his heel and stormed out of the conference room.

  “Oh, an accent.” Karma continued as if Abe hadn’t been there at all as she beamed up at the agent. “Can you say blimey, mate?”

  “I could, but how about we save it for later? Say, dinner tonight?” The clipped accent deepened.

  Karma bounced on the balls of her feet. “It’s a date.”

  “You can stop anytime because that’s just disturbing, even for you.” Jo teased.

  Karma ignored Jo as she leaned into the agent’s space. “Ignore her. You’re yummy.”

  “And you’re cheeky,” he retorted the smile taking the sting out of the words.

  Jo huffed in exasperation.

  “Cheeky?” Karma frowned and turned to Jo.

  Before the agent could answer, Maker spoke up from his spot across from Jo. “It means your ass is fat, Karm.”

  A gasp as Karma twisted to look at her backside. Jo and Sullivan burst into guffaws. “That’s a good one, Maker.”

  “That’s not at all what it means,” the agent stated, his eyes rounded in surprise.

  “Meh, it’s close enough.” Maker exchanged fist bumps with Jo and Sullivan. “Besides, her ass is getting wider. Probably from that third helping of fries she had yesterday.”

  Karma’s gaze narrowed dangerously on her partner. “I only ate those because they gave you the wrong order and I didn’t want them to go to waste.”

  “You say tomato, I say bullshit. It’s all the same.” Maker sipped his coffee.

  “Cheeky is nothing to do with her arse,” the Interpol agent interrupted the brewing storm.

  “Oh, that’s a shame. So you didn’t check my ass out at all?” Karma twisted back to the agent.

  “I did. However, I was referring to you calling me yummy.” His eyes darkened as they trailed over Karma.

  Having seen enough, Jo tossed a balled-up piece of paper at the pair. “Get a room. And quit talking all James Bond-y or whatever.”

  Karma laughed and plopped down in the chair next to Jo. “I like his accent. Makes me want to ask him to take a bite out of me—”

  “The saying’s take a bite out of crime.” Sullivan leaned around her to face Karma.

  “I can be naughty if it makes him take a bite out of me.”

  “Zwart, quit flirting with Agent Blair,” Captain Walker ordered as he strode into the conference room. He’d exchanged his charcoal gray suit from last night with a dark brown one and paired it with a light green shirt.

  “Ah man, Cap. We’re dealing with the feebs again too?” Karma growled.

  Jo’s gaze narrowed on her sister. How could the woman have missed Redden and Colbert? They’d been moving around the front setting up their laptops and projector.

  Clearing her throat so she wouldn’t call Karma on her inattention, Jo chimed in, “I’ve already told them we’ll work with Redden even though he and Colbert kept me in interrogation for hours.”

  “Really?” Karma’s gaze focused on the man and her smile turned feral like a cornered alley cat. “Okay, I can play nice.”

  “Zwart, stand down, now.” Captain Walker ordered in a dark voice.

  She huffed but made a motion of zipping her lips.

  The captain turned to the FBI agents. “Tell us how we can help with this case.”

  Jo had only gotten the basics on the reading. She hadn’t opened the files for the pictures at all yet. The first full picture popped up on the projector, up close and personal. It froze her to the chair. It couldn’t be. Her partner had the same file, and he hadn’t said anything. Sullivan tensed beside her. Her head cranked to the side as Redden and Colbert prattled on about each victim.

  “It can’t be,” Jo whispered.

  Sullivan shook his head. “Looks damn close.”

  “Did you look at any of the other pictures?”

  “No, you know I like to read the files before I look at the photos. After I read what I could I went to bed. This night shift to day shift is killing me, and I needed sleep.”

  “What are you two whispering about?” Captain Walker’s intimidating stare bore into Jo then Sullivan.

  Taking a shaky breath, she stood. “I’ll be right back.” She raced from the room to her desk.

  She didn’t have everything here, but she kept a slim file with the pictures and the autopsy in case she ever came across another case like it. It’d been her second case as a homicide detective and her and Sullivan’s first failure as a team.

  Finding the file, she yanked it from the beat to hell desk, slammed the drawer shut, and hurried back into the conference room.

  “You all thought he started two years ago, right?” Jo asked setting the file down on the table. “He didn’t. He started a little over five years ago, and I can prove it.”

  She opened the file, pulled the pictures out, and passed them to Captain Walker.

  The weapon was the same, but the wounds were more ragged in the older picture as if the killer hadn’t been as skilled. Behind the lifeless form was a screen with the same game that filled some of the other pictures. Not all but at least seven of the twelve cases on the screen tied to the killer had a laptop screen emblazoned with the Legends logo done in silvery-gray and outlined with golden flames. The logo had changed from Jo’s first case to take on a more polished look but there was no mistaking it was still the same game.

  Colbert shook her head before meeting Blair’s gaze. “We didn’t find any other victims matching this description prior to two years ago. Are you sure it’s the same?”

  “Yes, and this was five years ago.” Sullivan tapped the table. “Do serial killers wait that long between kills?”

  “Not usually, unless something prevents them from carrying out whatever agenda is set in their head,” Redden said.

  “Like jail,” Karma tapped one picture hanging on the whiteboard. “Or maybe being forced into military service. Tengku, he’s from Malaysia, right?”

  “But they don’t have conscript there,” Blair said. “That’s what you’re thinking, that he had to serve his military time.”

  Captain Walker cleared his throat. “I’m sorry to interrupt, but I need the rest of the overview so I can debrief the chief and the mayor. Zach and Amy, even though they broke the law, were still known by the mayor and his children, so he’s taken a personal interest in this case.”

  The words galvanized Colbert, Redden, and Blair to finish the meeting. Jo stood and moved to the board to write notes on each of the victims but was interrupted by the captain. “Rayburn, we’re going to need to move all this to the conference room in the basement. Tomorrow’s the divisional meeting which is taking place in this conference room. Vice has the second-floor conference room with the sex trafficking ring, and our other conference room has—”

  “The new interface with the forensic software,” Karma cut in. Captain Walker’s eyes narrowed on the woman who slapped a hand over her mouth. “Sorry.”

  Karma was racking up demerits with the captain today. His main hot button was someone interrupting him. The other was being unwilling to work with other departments and jurisdictions smoothly. Which was t
he primary reason Jo didn’t buck working with Redden too much. Besides, with as much crap as she gave the man, he was a good profiler. It wasn’t his fault the Skinned and Gravedigger were such screwed-up cases. Her gut told her this would be a screwed-up case too.

  “Captain, since this case might drag out for a while, how about I offer an alternative?” Jo drew their captain’s attention away from Karma.

  “I’m listening.”

  “I have my own office in Rhys’s house. It’s about the size of this conference room, and we’ll have plenty of room to spread out. Rhys equipped it with a whiteboard and several other things he thought I’d need.”

  “And you don’t share it with anyone?”

  “No, sir. It locks so no one can access it. We also have a monitored security system with cameras and alarms.” Jo laced her fingers together to keep from biting her thumbnail.

  “Okay, but I need regular updates, and I might stop by to see how the case is progressing. I’ll also need you and Krane to still clear your other cases as well as take on the Lieutenant duties in a few months.”

  “That shouldn’t be a problem, sir.” Jo had planned to come in during the week. Police work was her second passion, Rhys had become her first. But no matter how much she loved Rhys, solving crime was an addiction for her and this latest case, the FBI and Interpol had termed the Slenderman case, might be her most challenging puzzle yet.

  The captain motioned for Colbert, Redden, and Blair. “I want to make sure I have all the points, and Agent Colbert I’d appreciate if you could bring the projections in case the chief wants more details.”

  Colbert gathered her things and the three trailed the captain to his office.

  “Way to go Lewie, we get to work from the castle. Lounging in the hot tub or in the heated pool. It’s going to be great.” Karma held her hand up for a hi-five.

  Jo ignored her raised hand and narrowed her gaze on her half-sister. “Call me Lewie one more time Karma, and I’ll put you and Maker on Black Friday detail.”

  Her sister’s face paled as she took a stumbling step away from Jo. “Okay, no more Lewie.”

  “No more anything that isn’t my name.”

  “Got it.”

  “You better have it, Karm, because I’m not going on Black Friday detail. People go postal, and it’s the primary reason I volunteer at the youth center to avoid getting called in.” Maker growled next to Karma.

  Neither took their eyes off Jo as if they thought she was a bomb about to go off. If they didn’t quit using those stupid nicknames, she just might prove them right.

  “Now help me get everything put back in their boxes and onto a trolley so we can get it loaded up when Redden and Blair get back.”

  Chapter 5

  It took an hour before they could leave the station. Redden, Colbert, and Blair were required at Captain Walker’s meeting with the mayor and the chief. Jo expected the meeting to take longer than an hour, but Colbert sent Redden and Blair back to them while she stayed behind to answer any questions that came up.

  Within half an hour they were pulling into Jo and Rhys’s driveway. This would be the first case she brought into their home. Nerves wound in her. Rhys had said it was fine, and he had been the one to set up her office. But she hated for anything this violent to touch her family.

  “You live in a castle?” Redden asked, jerking Jo from her worry.

  She huffed. “It’s not a castle, it’s smaller, and yes, I live here with my soon to be husband.”

  “How much does a lieutenant in Alabama make?” he quipped.

  “Not enough to deal with the FBI that’s for sure,” she snapped while opening the front door.

  “Yep, my sister got her a sugah-daddy—”

  “Swear to God Karma, I’m gonna beat your ass tomorrow in the ring.”

  “Bring it sista!” Karma shouted, pushing by them and heading for the kitchen.

  “Karma, my office is to the left, third door on the left.”

  “Rian?”

  “He’s at GlenCare until six.”

  Jo headed to the back of Sullivan’s car to grab a few boxes from his trunk while Redden and Blair unloaded the SUV. Hefting the boxes, she led the two into her home. The small kitchen table had come with her from her apartment. It didn’t fit the decor any more than the recliner but these two items she had been adamant about being in her office.

  The table was a dull yellow with paint chipped off from her and her siblings’ disagreements that began in her mother’s kitchen. Under the table was a drawing of a dog in red marker Jo’s youngest sister had made when she was four and ran out of coloring paper. Her mother had wanted to toss the table away but Jo had refused. It held too many memories. The first time she arrested her siblings when she was nine, and she had handcuffed them to the chairs.

  Now it would remind her of her roots as a cop brought up by a retired captain in the Moody Police Department. She was proud to be part of the Rayburn legacy and liked having the table as a reminder.

  She set the boxes on the scuffed-up table.

  “Nice place.” Blair placed more boxes next to hers.

  Sullivan whistled, and Jo flipped off all of them. “Screw you guys.”

  The office Rhys put together for her was great. No ruffle, lace, or frou-frou decorations anywhere. He had it painted tan with a cream accent on the molding. A dark, sturdy desk he had found at auction took up the far side with natural light from the window pouring through a sheer panel. Jo had asked him to keep the overstuffed furniture and wood and glass filing cabinets that graced the room when they settled on this room for her office. A door beyond the couch on the left side of the room led to Rhys’s office.

  “What did this room used to be?” Karma asked bringing in a stack of binders.

  “An outer office for Rhys’s dad so he and his buddies could drink and talk without it being a formal setting in his office.” Jo strode from the room and hurried to grab the last box so Redden could shut the door. “We done?”

  “Yep.”

  When they reached the office again, Blair pointed to Jo and Sullivan. “Walk us through the first case.”

  Sullivan rubbed a hand over his face. “We wrote it off as a break-in gone wrong. The kid, Mark, was seventeen and headed for college at the end of summer. He’d just graduated from high school and decided to hang around Birmingham until he shipped off to Tuscaloosa in the fall.”

  “Meeting up with friends and such?”

  “Yes, but not that week. It was the first week of August, so he wasn’t due to school until the weekend. Most of his friends had left for their own universities or were forced into last minute family trips. Mark and his parents did the family thing the week before so he could finish packing what he needed.” Sullivan met Jo’s gaze.

  “Why did you two think it was a burglary?” Redden propped his hip on Jo’s desk.

  Jo slumped on the couch. “It’s not that we thought it was a burglary at first. It looked like a crime of passion.”

  “Parents?”

  “At work. Rock solid. Mark’s father was in a marketing meeting, and his mother was taking minutes in a board meeting. One in Homewood and one on the twenty-fourth floor of a downtown high rise.”

  “Girlfriend?”

  “Nope,” Sullivan answered flopping down next to Jo. “They called it quits before Christmas the year before. Both wanted to experience college life to the fullest. And Lucy was dating a guy. ‘Her last summer fling,’ she called it before.”

  “What’s that mean?”

  Karma’s hand shot up. “Oh, pick me.”

  Redden squinted at her. “You were here?”

  “Nope, but I know the summer fling thing. I did that. It’s finding like a hot guy with not a lot of brains so you won’t get attached. B
asically, you use him for sex.”

  Jo planted her face in her palm.

  “Seriously?”

  Lifting her face, she sighed. “Yes, Lucy’s fling was a few years older, and he worked construction. Really buff and not very bright.”

  “So? She still could’ve—”

  “Nope, because while Mark was being stabbed, Lucy and the fling were screwing each other’s brains out. Or they were napping in between bouts. Neither could recall a minute by minute account just how many condoms they’d used,” Jo answered.

  “It was a lot,” Sullivan chimed in.

  She swung around to face her partner. “How is that helpful?”

  “Well, now they know if the two weren’t screwing they were sleeping. Because there were quite a few missing. Swear twenty-years-old have good refractory time. I should know. I was a twenty-year-old once upon a time.” Sullivan’s narrow chest puffed out.

  “Oh, God.” Karma’s head thumped on the table. “Not an image I want in my head.”

  “So you wrote it off as a break in. Any evidence to support it?”

  “Some. The window leading to the backyard was broken, the shards of glass were inside the house, and the door was unlocked. We found several large footprints in the dirt leading to the back door and out again when the killer left the house,” Sullivan said.

  “But Mark wasn’t shot.” Redden crossed his arms.

  “We think the person was surprised the house was occupied, took the nearest object, and stabbed Mark.” Jo had never felt quite settled with their findings but every rock they’d turned over led nowhere. “The problem with the theory is we found nothing in the house missing. Nor anything in the house that could make those kinds of wounds. So the thief was armed. Maybe he assumed a knife wouldn’t get him into as much trouble as a gun.”

  “Makes sense, but now we know there’s more to it. We need to dig into that first case again.” Maker said. He was quiet and introspective compared to Karma’s over the top personality. They balanced each other well. Maker knew when to rein Karma in and trusted when she said they needed to push the boundaries.