Slenderman Page 6

  “I agree. Serial killers just starting out, they always mess up the first case. Something has to be there.” Redden ran a hand through his dark hair, sending the carefully combed strands into disarray.

  “All my files are in the second drawer there.” Jo pointed to the far cabinet.

  “Mine are at home, but I’ll bring them over tomorrow,” Sullivan said.

  “Okay, let’s get our murder board set up and pick apart the cases.” Maker stood and opened the nearest box.

  The rest followed suit.

  ~ ~ ~

  Within a few hours, they had everything organized to go on the whiteboard. Redden and Sullivan worked on the profile, looking at the first case. Blair and Karma bounced ideas on how to narrow the suspect pool. Maker passed Jo the pictures while also making notes on the other side of the board about the similarities between the victims. Not that they had much, except the game seven of the victims played.

  Jo wrote notes in red, fleshing out the victims lives the best they could. The infamous corkboard she’d used at her apartment for all her past cases hung to the right of her whiteboard and held a map with flags tacked to it of where each victim was found and the month and year.

  “Jo!”

  Everyone paused, and she turned to the open door calling out, “In here, Rian.”

  Rian and his best friend, Evan, burst into the room. Luckily, they didn’t have any violent pictures up. Only the standard DMV, passport, and picture IDs they had gotten via Interpol and the FBI.

  “Why’ve you got a picture of Ook up on your board?” Evan asked.

  He was quiet. Diagnosed with high functioning autism, the young man had a lot of tics but also a high IQ that GlenCare helped foster, finding him a part-time job he could do from their facilities. His precision with numbers and computers made him a whiz at data entry.

  Jo looked at the board wondering if Karma had put up a cartoon as a joke. But no, it still held normal pictures with descriptions next to each photo. Turning back to Evan, she asked, “Who’s Ook?”

  “Ookamari is one of our gaming buddies. She’s a cool Japanese woman who dyes her hair in rainbow layers, but the top layer is black.” Evan stepped further into the room with Rian trailing him. “See,” He pointed to the hair. “Ook’s hair has the rainbow when she pulls it up in a ponytail like this woman. We talked about it for an hour while playing a mini-game—”

  “Jo, what’s going on? Why do you have her picture up there?” Rian’s question cut Evan off and jarred everyone out of their gape-jawed state.

  “Are you saying you know her?” Jo pointed to the picture. There was no information that this woman played the same game as the others. None of the crime scene photos associated with her showed Legends anywhere. It was in Jo’s notes to request each of the victims’ computer history but she couldn’t contact anyone until tomorrow since there were multiple agencies involved all in their own time zones.

  “Rian and I both do.”

  “And you think this is her?” Karma asked.

  Both nodded. There expressions stubborn at Jo and Karma pressing them.

  “Why?” Jo needed to understand why they were sure this was the same person.

  “First, she has the same mole here above the right corner of her lip, and second her rainbow hair is in the same order as Ook’s,” Evan answered.

  “How do you know this?” Maker stopped writing to face the two kids.

  “I just told you, she games with us.” Evan moved closer to the board, tipping his head from one side to the other as he rocked back on his heels and then rolled to his toes.

  “But how would you have seen them?” The question from Redden was drowned out by Blair’s question. “You’d only see their avatars, right?”

  Jo held a hand up because the questions were coming from too many people and scaring the boys. They would dig into how the boys knew them via the game later. First, while Evan was focused, it was good to question him about Himari, who Evan called Ookamari if she was the only victim they recognized. She pointed to the other three pictures on the board. “Do these other people look familiar?”

  Rian and Evan shook their heads at the pictures of Amy and Zach but paused at Rayyan Tengku.

  “He kind of looks like FishRFriends.” Rian’s head tipped to the side.

  “I don’t know, he looks young, Ri.” Evan took the picture from the board.

  “Young?” Jo prompted.

  “Well, yeah. FishR has gray here.” Evan brushed fingers across the picture, gesture at the man’s temple. “And a gray diamond in his goatee—”

  “Yeah, and he has a line.” Rian cut in motioning from his ear to the middle of his cheek.

  Jo’s heart stopped. The picture they had was an old one, but the two boys were describing him down to the last detail. Clearing her throat, she asked, “A line? Like a scar?”

  “Maybe. It was really thin and hard to see.” Rian hummed.

  “I’ve never seen it,” Evan added.

  “I hadn’t either until we did that desert boss and someone called his name from off-screen. He turned his head, and the light caught it.”

  “Oh yeah, I did that boss with Vermicelli.”

  Rian turned to Evan a grin on his face. “I remember that. Didn’t you and him get that—”

  “Okay, I don’t care about the desert boss. So, this picture looks too young to be FishRFriends?” Jo jerked them back on track while Karma stepped between the boys and Redden, who had a picture in his hand.

  “Yes.” Rian bounced on the balls of his feet. “Oh, I know. We have some of FishR’s and Ook’s pictures on our clan forums.”

  “Good idea, I forgot about those.” Evan’s fingers tapped against his legs in his excitement.

  “This game you’re referring to isn’t Legends of Stone, is it?”

  Rian nodded.

  “Could we see them?” Jo crossed her fingers hoping this was a fluke because Rhys would kill her if she involved Rian in a serial killer case.

  She wanted to be right about the game. If it was, it would make a huge impact on narrowing the suspect pool, but not at the expense of dragging Rian into the middle of this. Hell, they didn’t even know who they were looking for except that the killer was a male.

  “We’ll get our laptops and show you.” Rian tugged Evan out of the room as they talked excitedly about helping Jo in an official investigation.

  Redden dodged around Karma to confront Jo. “What the hell, Rayburn? I needed them to—”

  She crowded into Redden’s space. “I know what you were going to do, and the answer is no. Those kids don’t have the mental capacity to see the photos you were planning to whip out.” Even Jo had a problem seeing the blood-soaked bodies and pain-filled faces.

  “Jesus, Rayburn. Rian looked to be twenty and Evan twenty-two or three. If they game—”

  “Rian has the mind of a twelve-year-old and has nightmares just watching a crime show on television. Evan is a high-functioning autistic kid who has so many triggers he’d make Jigsaw’s house of horrors look tame.” She jabbed the FBI agent in the chest. “So we will gather clean pictures of the other victims to show the boys and see if they can identify anyone else.”

  Redden gulped and nodded.

  “You know this is thin,” Karma piped up. “A video game? They aren’t all going to play it.”

  “Do you have a better lead?”

  Karma gnawed on her lip several seconds before her shoulders slumped in defeat. “Nope.”

  As the boys rushed back into the room, Karma held her hand up. “Look, it’s dinner time so how about Ian and I go grab us dinner while you two brainiacs set up.”

  Jo wanted to tease Karma at using Blair’s first name but refrained since she never knew what would come out of Karma’s mo
uth. Rian beamed from where he was booting up his laptop. Most days Jo knew he felt slower than everyone else. She wanted to hug her sister for making Rian feel as smart as the rest of them.

  “Ri, here.” Evan passed Rian a handful of cables.

  Karma dragged Blair out the door while Evan and Rian chatted quietly at the yellow table.

  Jo motioned to Redden, and they dug into the twelve files looking for clean photos of each victim while Sullivan and Maker finished filling in the notes on the board. She trusted them not to add anything scary that Rian and Evan could absorb.

  “Do you really think they can identify the others?” Redden whispered.

  Jo shrugged. “We have victims from Norway, the Netherlands, England, Canada, and the US who all played the game. It was one common factor that seven of twelve had, which is too high a rate to be purely a coincidence. If we could get the other governments to cooperate, we’d know if it was the common factor. It’s why I don’t think our killer was dormant. I think he still killed, but in countries that don’t play nice with the rest of us. I never bought the conscript angle Karma and Blair tossed around.”

  “That would make sense but how is he able to get in and out so easily?”

  “No idea.”

  “Well, this is worth a shot.” Redden opened an empty folder and began placing pictures in it. “I don’t think it will help though.”

  “Can’t hurt.”

  They sorted out several in case the official photos didn’t jog the boys’ memories. By the time they were done, Karma and Blair were back with pizza, a treat Evan rarely was allowed since his parents were health nuts.

  After they ate, they cleaned the grease from their hands and picked up the mess. Jo flipped through the photos one more time while the others worked on filling in the rest of the board and profile while double checking each other’s work. Most of police work was getting as many eyes as possible on the case, so more ideas formed. Redden stood behind Rian and Jo behind Evan as they ran through a black and gray forum site with pictures of Tengku with his wife and dog.

  Both boys pointed at their screens, and Jo leaned over for a closer look at Evan’s while Redden examined Rian’s. Tengku was the same man they called FishRFriends.

  Taking a breath, she motioned the boys to move to the other side of the table. They scooched to the other seats and dragged their laptops with them.

  “We need to ask you if you know any of our other victims.” Jo passed the file with the photos in it, and the boys sorted through them. Four were placed in one stack, and the other eight were arrayed between them.

  “These we know,” Evan stated his voice held the same expressionless tone as if he had ordered lunch or chocolate milk. He wasn’t good with inflection but was always very precise.

  “From your game.” Jo clarified. “But you don’t know these four?”

  “Yes from our game, and no we do not know those four.”

  Redden looked at Jo. It didn’t fit. The four victims the boys left off the list played the game too. Before Jo could question them further, Rian chimed in.

  “They may play. I mean, the game has over a million players from all over the world.” Rian looked to Evan as if seeking confirmation for his idea. Evan nodded.

  “But these eight you definitely know.” Redden tapped the stack.

  “Yes, they were in our clan.”

  Jo was lost, but Redden seemed to understand when he said. “How big is your clan? And do these eight people have any pictures on your forums?”

  “We have a little over three hundred members. And yes, those eight have pictures on our forums site.”

  “Can we see them?”

  Evan dragged his laptop over and hit a few keys then turned it around again. “Just scroll through the album.”

  “Ev, you know how some of our friends disappeared?” Rian shared his laptop with Evan while Jo and Redden used Evan’s laptop.

  “Yes.”

  “These eight were some of them. What if the others are on there, but we’ve never seen their picture?”

  Ice poured into Jo’s veins at that suggestion. She looked at the eight pictures all in Rian’s clan.

  “I mean we had Kain who left and Tigerfan—”

  “Oh, and Dummie,” Evan added.

  “Were those three you mentioned in other countries?”

  “Well, Dummie was in Germany. Kain—I think he was in England. Tiger was in Finland or Thailand? I’m not sure about him exactly. They were really private which is cool, but it means we can’t help you too much with the question.”

  Jo needed to talk to her team. “Rian, why don’t you and Evan go grab the fruit Marta chopped up for dessert.”

  “With whip cream?” Rain stood bouncing on the balls of his feet.

  “Sure. There’s a can in the door. Eat it in the kitchen and wash your hands and face after.”

  Both boys headed for the door, and Jo waited until she couldn’t hear them in the hall before she turned to the others.

  “Eight out of twelve are in their clan.” She didn’t think that was a coincidence. Especially, considering this game had over a million players.

  “And all twelve are now confirmed as playing that game.” Maker noted the fact next to each victim.

  “You know it’s not out of the realm of possibility if the boys know eight of the twelve, they probably know all twelve,” Karma added.

  Jo groaned. “Rhys is going to kill me.”

  “Can you imagine going from over a million to three hundred? It would narrow the suspect list down a great deal.” Sullivan stuck a screenshot of the game up on the corkboard.

  “Blair, do you think some of your contacts could get us members lists if we narrow the group down to three hundred?” Jo asked.

  “Maybe. It’d be better if we could get it to a smaller number if possible.”

  “Define smaller,” Redden said.

  “Less than a hundred.”

  “Okay, when the boys get back. How about we ask them about the friends that left the game? They said they had several that disappeared. So we start there. That’s got to be less than a hundred,” Maker stated.

  Another thought hit Jo, and she pointed to Redden and Blair. “You two are staying at the Sheraton, right?”

  “Uh-huh.” Confusion pulled their brows into a frown.

  “If we have a call-out or a break, it’ll take too long to get from downtown to here.”

  “What’re you suggesting?”

  “Go and get your bags and you can stay in the guestrooms upstairs.”

  “You sure?” Redden asked. “You and I haven’t always gotten along.”

  Jo waved him away. “I wouldn’t have asked if I wasn’t sure. It’ll cut down on a lot of travel time and you two can still work the case while the rest of us work our day jobs.”

  Karma snorted and shook her head. “Listen, Maker and I need to head out. We have to run down a pusher near Woodlawn—”

  “The Vice case?”

  “Yeah, it’s one of Dad’s contacts, so we’re not telling anyone in case the guy flakes out.” Karma shrugged into her leather jacket.

  “Got it.” Jo didn’t like dealing with many of her bio-dad’s contacts as most of them were people not even the street scum would talk to. “Be careful.”

  “Will do,” Karma said and turned to Blair. “And don’t think I’ve forgotten about movies and dinner tomorrow night.”

  “Just pick me up here when you’re ready.” His brown eyes twinkled as he and Redden followed Maker and Karma out the door.

  Redden leaned back in. “We’ll be back in about an hour.”

  “Okay.”

  Then it was just her and Sullivan, which Jo liked much better.

  “When is Rhy
s due home?”

  Jo slipped her cell from her pocket. “There was a wreck on highway 280, and the last text I have is ‘I’ll be late. Don’t wait up.’“

  “How do you want to handle Rian and Evan?” Sullivan sprawled in the seat Redden vacated.

  Just then Evan and Rian returned and scooted around the table.

  “Rian, can you and Evan give us a list of the friends that haven’t logged in recently?”

  Evan hummed. “You know it’d be better if we gave you a list of those who left the clan and then left the game.”

  “Why would that be better?”

  “Because these eight people left our clan to join other clans and then left the game.”

  Jo’s heart sped up as she met Sullivan’s gaze. This could not be tied that closely to Rian. That would mean someone tied to their clan was killing people and the people dying were also their friends. At a loss for words, she was glad her partner stepped in.

  “Can I ask if you recognize this person?” Sullivan pulled out a photo of Mark.

  Evan gasped. “That’s our previous clan owner. He left our clan almost six years ago to start a bossing clan and like five months later he never logged in again.”

  Jo rubbed her temple and checked the time. “Your mom is going to be here soon to pick you up. Can you get us a list of everyone who left your clan?”

  “Sure.” Evan turned to Rian. “I’ll send you the spreadsheet, and we can go through it together when I get home. That way if I miss something, you’ll catch it.”

  “Sounds like a plan.” Rian closed his laptop and stored it in its case, and Evan did the same.

  Jo helped Sullivan finish up the board as the boys talked behind them.

  “Oh, don’t forget to add QueenAmethyst and Spacedog when you make the list,” Rian said.

  “I was glad when they left.”