The Night Stalker

CHAPTER FIFTY-ONE

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.