“I know.” She turned and plucked the coffee from his hand. “Thank you, baby doll.”
Edwin Klozowski, “Kloz” to most, strolled in behind her, an overflowing briefcase in one hand and the remains of a Little Debbie chocolate cupcake in the other. “So, we’re finally getting the band back together? It’s about time. If I had to spend one more minute down in Central IT dissecting the hard drive of another porn lover gone rogue, I might have considered going back to video game design. How you doing, Sammy?” He reached out and smacked Porter’s shoulder.
“Hey, Kloz.”
“Good to see you back.” He dropped his briefcase on one of the empty desks and shoved the rest of the cupcake into his mouth.
Porter spied Watson standing at the door and motioned for him to come inside. “Kloz, Clair, this is Paul Watson. He’s on loan from CSI. He’s going to be helping us out. Has anyone seen Hosman?”
Clair nodded. “I talked to him about twenty minutes ago. He’s running Talbot’s finances but hasn’t come up with anything yet. Said he’ll get in touch with you as soon as he finds something.”
Porter nodded. “All right, let’s get started.”
They crossed the room and settled at the conference table. The Four Monkey Killer’s victims stared down at them from the whiteboards. “Nash, where’s that picture of Emory?”
Nash dug the photo out of his pocket and handed it to him. Porter taped it onto the board at the far right. “I’m going to run through this from the beginning. It’s old news for most of you, but Watson hasn’t heard it before and maybe we’ll pick something up from the refresher.” He pointed to the picture in the top left corner. “Calli Tremell. Twenty years old, taken March 15, 2009. This was his first victim—”
“That we know of,” Clair interjected.
“She’s the first victim in his pattern as 4MK, but the evidence suggests he’s sophisticated and had most likely killed before,” Klozowski said. “Nobody comes out of the box killing like him. They build up, developing methods and technique over time.”
Porter went on. “Her parents reported her missing that Tuesday, and they received her ear in the mail on Thursday. Her eyes followed on Saturday, and her tongue arrived on Tuesday. All were packaged in small white boxes tied with black strings, handwritten shipping labels, and zero prints. He’s always been careful.”
“Suggesting she wasn’t really his first,” Klozowski reiterated.
“Three days after the last box arrived, a jogger found her body in Almond Park. She had been propped up on a bench with a cardboard sign glued to her hands, which read DO NO EVIL. We had picked up on his MO when her eyes arrived, but that sign confirmed our theory.”
Watson raised his hand.
Nash rolled his eyes. “This isn’t third grade, Doc. Feel free to speak up.”
“Doc?” Klozowski repeated. “Oh, I get it.”
“Didn’t I read somewhere that was how he picked his victims? ‘Do no evil’?” Watson asked.
Porter nodded. “With his second victim, Elle Borton, we caught that. Initially we thought the victims themselves had done something 4MK deemed wrong, and that was why he went after them, but with Elle we learned his focus wasn’t on the victims at all but on their families. Elle Borton disappeared on April 2, 2010, nearly a year after his first victim. She was twenty-three. Her case was handed to us when her parents received her ear in the mail two days later. When her body was found a little over a week after that, she was holding a tax return in her grandmother’s name covering tax year 2008. We dug a little bit and discovered that she actually died in 2005. Her father had been filing false returns for the past three years. We brought Matt Hosman in from Financial Crimes at that point, and he discovered that the scam went much deeper. Elle’s father had filed returns on more than a dozen people, all deceased. They were residents of the nursing home he managed.”
“How could 4MK possibly know that?” Watson asked.
Porter shrugged. “Not sure. But the new evidence prompted us to go back and look at Calli Tremell’s family.”
“The first victim.”
“Turns out her mother was laundering money from the bank where she worked, upward of three million dollars over the previous ten years,” Porter said.
Watson frowned. “Again, how could 4MK know what she was doing? Maybe that’s the link. Figure out who has access to this information, and you find 4MK’s identity.”
Klozowski snorted. “Yeah, ’cause it’s that easy.” He stood up and walked to the board. “Melissa Lumax, victim number three. Her father was selling kiddie porn. Susan Devoro’s father swapped fake diamonds for the real ones at his own jewelry store. Barbara McInley’s sister hit and killed a pedestrian six years before Barbara went missing. Nobody connected the sister to the crime until 4MK. Allison Crammer’s brother ran a sweatshop full of illegals down in Florida. Then there’s Jodi Blumington, his most recent victim—”
“Prior to Emory Connors,” Nash chimed in.
“Sorry, his most recent victim prior to Ms. Connors. Her father was importing coke for the Carlito Cartel.” He tapped each of the photos. “All of these girls are related to someone who did something bad, but there is no connection between them. The crimes are across the board, no common thread.”
“He’s like a vigilante,” Watson muttered.
“Yeah, with better intel than law enforcement. None of these crimes were on our radar; we found them while investigating the murders,” Porter told him. “Without 4MK, these people would still be on the streets.”
Watson stood and walked over to the board, his eyes narrowing as he reviewed the photographs one by one.
“What’s up, Doc?” Kloz said, before bursting into laughter.
Everyone stared at him.
Kloz frowned. “Oh, so it’s funny when Nash does it, but not the IT guy? I see how things work down here in the basement.”
Watson tapped the board. “He’s escalating. Look at the dates.”
“Escalated,” Nash said. “His killing days are behind him.”
“Right, escalated. About one per year until after his fifth victim, Barbara McInley, then about every six or seven months. There’s this too.” He pointed at the photo of Barbara McInley. “She’s the only blonde. All the others are brunettes. Is there any significance to that?”
Porter ran his hand through his hair. “I don’t think so. With these kills, he’s really punishing the families for their crimes. I don’t think it was ever about the victims for him.”
“All these other girls are similar in appearance. Pretty, long brown hair, close in age. For someone without a type, he sure seems to have a type. All but Barbara, the only blonde. She’s an anomaly.” Watson paused for a second before asking, “Were any of the girls sexually assaulted?”
Clair shook her head. “Not one.”
“Did any of the girls have a brother?”