Chapter 13 #2
“Make it official,” he suggested. “Tap phones, get a hold of their phone records, and see who else is checking their dating apps.”
“That’ll mean subpoenas and warrants,” she muttered. “Lots of them.”
“Yeah, I know, … but, if you are thinking we potentially have another incident about to happen, we need to do everything we can to keep the next intended victim alive.”
She walked back to her office, deep in thought.
Rodney looked up as she came into the bullpen. “Penny for your thoughts?”
“A penny? It’ll take at least one silver dollar,” she grumbled, with a shrug.
She sat down, then turned to face Rodney.
“So, the shrink gave me some other angles, but nothing clicks with me yet. And I’ve got Sherry coming in at nine for her interview, so help me out here with questions to ask her. Let’s start with, you’re male …”
His eyebrows shot up, and he chortled with laughter. “Yeah, I am. Thanks for noticing.”
She blinked, then snorted. “How would anybody find these particular victims?”
He frowned at her. “I don’t understand. You mean, to kill them?”
“Not necessarily to kill them.” She rolled her eyes. “Obviously that’s been the end result, but I’m not sure our killer is starting there. I guess the biggest issue is that, if our killer is a woman, has she found her fourth victim, or is she still looking?”
“Oh God, don’t even say that,” Rodney whispered, staring at her in shock.
“Where would be the best place for anybody who has now lost their casual sex partners in this dating venture to find a new one?”
“That would be the dating apps,” Rodney stated. “All kinds of them are online. They’re mostly just straight hookups with time, place, meet, have sex, and leave.”
“That sounds so hollow and empty,” she noted, staring off in the distance.
“But that appears to be exactly what we’re looking at, … hollow and empty,” he pointed out.
She nodded. Rodney was right. “So, all those phone numbers were handed over to Reese. She’s compiling a spreadsheet or entering into some database or whatever.
Therefore, she could run that mess of phone numbers on these three cases through a program to cross-reference everything, which is way more efficient than what I was doing. ”
“Okay,” Rodney replied. “So are you thinking we also need to find which dating app was most commonly used by our three vics? And what was the length of their association with each app?”
Kate frowned. “Do you think that makes a difference?”
“I would think, at this point in time, our three playboys had a really good idea of what works for them—and maybe a good idea of what doesn’t. So the rejected apps might be useful.”
Kate slowly shook her head, pacing the bullpen now. “Maybe we’re looking at this all wrong,” she began. “Maybe it’s not somebody who wants these men to settle down and to stop their sinful ways, but maybe it’s somebody who wanted to get to first base and can’t.”
“That could be thousands of women—and men,” he noted.
“I know. And that’s why I’m beyond frustrated at the moment.” She groaned. “Way-too-many avenues.”
She sat down at her desk, her mind running through all kinds of scenarios, yet knowing that the unknown was likely to be the correct one more than what she could try to force the data to create. When her phone rang, she glanced down and saw it was Simon. “Hey,” she greeted him.
“How did it go this morning with the shrink?”
“It was okay,” she muttered, “not that we’re any further along because we still don’t have enough information to really get a profile.
He’s leaning toward a male. I’m leaning toward a female.
Or two working together. However, we also have to consider that anybody who can’t get all these women could see our buff lover boys as an object of great envy and, if their competition were out of the picture, the women would be more available.
In which case the dating apps would be a huge source of disgruntled males, as would many of the online social media groups. So, we’re looking into all that.”
“Not necessarily a fast process though,” Simon noted. “Those three men probably looked at all the same dating apps and used all of them.”
“At the end of the day, maybe not this particular killer though,” she declared. “We will still find whoever is doing this. Because of the role of social media in our fact gathering, it’s taking quite a bit more time and manpower. And I’ve got my nine o’clock coming soon.”
They talked some more, and, when she got off the phone, she walked over to see Reese. “Can we do a run of all the victims’ social media accounts, private DMs, anything that you can get a hold of, and see if we have anything consistent between them?”
Reese raised her eyebrows. “I’ve asked for social media usage by Kurt, the case in Coquitlam. I can call them and see if they have done it yet,” she offered. “However, Kurt Conner’s online accounts from two years ago have been canceled by now.”
Kate swore about that. “I’ll contact his sister again and see if I can come up with anything else. First, I’ve got an interview to deal with.”
She questioned Sherry, touching on all the various suggestions made by Dudley and Rodney, but eventually confirmed that Sherry was not their killer.
As she got back to her desk, she sat down and phoned Esther.
Kurt’s sister just groaned and started to bitch. “I really want this all to go away.”
Kate snapped, “I know you do. So do I, but I want it to go away after we know exactly what happened.”
“And yet, as far as we’re concerned, it was an accidental drug overdose.”
“Yes, but can you tell me if he was plagued by anybody on social media or on any of his dating sites? Were there threats or anything weird? Anything at all along those lines?”
The sister swore. “He did get a bunch of threats a couple years ago, maybe three.”
“So one year before he died? Or right before he died?” Kate asked.
“I don’t know. I’m really not sure on the timeline.”
“Any idea what the threats were about?”
“Something about the way he was acting.” Then she added, her voice rising, “Something about stealing girlfriends.”
“Did he ever send you any DMs or anything to show these threats to you? Did he ever report these?”
“I think he may have contacted somebody from the police force, but I don’t think he got very far. They could do nothing at that stage but, if it got worse, to let them know.”
“Interesting,” Kate murmured, and she wrote down a bunch of notes.
“Do you really think something happened to Kurt? Like he was murdered?”
“The thing is, we have no clue,” she replied. “But I can tell you that, because I do have two other similar cases, we must take a serious look at Kurt’s case.”
“Oh my God,” she murmured. “All this time I’ve just been blaming him for being an out-of-control druggie, and now you’re saying—”
“I’m saying there’s a possibility. Yes. Could you please search your phone? If you happen to find any of those messages, could you screenshot them and send them to me?” Kate quickly gave Esther her email and added, “If you remember anything else, call me.”
“Right,” she muttered. “I know you told me that before, but I put it out of my mind because I thought this was all just a waste of time and police money. And now I don’t know what to believe.”
“Neither do we. So please,” Kate pleaded, “take the time to go through everything you have in terms of communication from your brother and let me know if anything shows up.”
With that done, she headed back over to Reese and gave her the update. “See if you can find a case file under Kurt’s name regarding a harassment report.”
“I don’t know if they even open one for those complaints,” Reese remarked, turning to her. “It could have been an informal conversation.”
“Okay, but just see if anything’s there. If you find something, let me know so I can talk to the officer directly. You could also give them a call.”
“I have a lot of data running, and I have a lot of phone calls pending, particularly into the Coquitlam office. I’m not really getting very far on that one.”
Kate looked over at her and nodded. “I’ll call them.” And, with that, she returned to her desk and called the Coquitlam detective on Kurt’s death.
He replied, “You guys keep asking for stuff, and we just haven’t gotten there yet.”
“We’re trying to help you guys along, and you keep turning us down, but I get it,” Kate responded.
“You’re swamped, we’re swamped, and everybody’s dealing with their own stuff.
But there’s a damn good chance that I have connected your case to my two cases.
Yet these won’t solve themselves if I can’t get that information on Kurt. ”
“I just can’t believe that you think there’s a connection between this case and your two who died just a few days ago. That’s too many, too fast, … and your MO is poison.”
“I understand,” she said, “and, being poison, you would think it’s a woman, but it could also be some skinny scrawny male with a self-confidence issue, who’s using poison because these vics are prime specimens of men in a physical sense.
So don’t go down that pathway of thinking you know all the answers. ”
A huffy silence followed, then a grunt. “Fine. Give me a little bit, and I’ll try to get you some more information as to what we’ve collected. It’s not even been put into the reports yet.”
“I understand that,” she shared, “but let’s not have another body show up because we couldn’t get our paperwork sorted out.” And, with that, she ended the call.
Rodney looked over at her and raised one eyebrow. “They say honey and sweetness go a long way.”
She glared at him. “Yeah, that’s me. All honey and sweetness. Then there’s all that BS about who’ll get the credit when we solve their case,” she pointed out, “but I do not care one damn bit.”