LET ME GO (Eva Rae Thomas Mystery Book 5) Page 4

  Chapter 15

  “They say they got an emergency call from someone claiming to be Tim who said that he was inside our house and that he had just shot his mom and dad and that he was going to shoot himself. He told them he was armed and that he would shoot anyone who came to the house if they tried to stop him from killing himself.”

  Liam leaned back in my old couch that I bought off Craigslist and took a moment to gather himself.

  “I know they’re not lying since I heard the recordings, but the voice on that tape wasn’t Tim’s.”

  “But the police had no way of knowing that,” I said. “I’m guessing it looked like the call came from your house, right? When they traced it?”

  Liam nodded. “You’re right about that. I don’t know how that is even possible.”

  “It’s not that hard today, using spoofing technology,” I said. “It can be an app or computer software.”

  “I saw them from my window right before they stormed the house. You’ve probably heard it all on the news or read it in those magazines that are all writing about it. A hashtag with my name in it on Twitter exploded when it happened, or so I’ve heard.”

  “They thought he was armed, right?” I asked. “When they came to your house? Because the caller had said he was and then your son made one wrong move and…well, they assumed he was going for his gun?”

  Liam rubbed his stubble and nodded. “Yes. That’s exactly what happened. I wasn’t in the room, so I don’t know what he reached for, but he reached for something, and the police claim they were convinced it was a gun. It could have been his phone or maybe nothing at all. They’re still investigating it, though. I hope the officer who shot him will rot in jail.”

  “In their defense, there had been a shooting just a week before where six officers got shot when approaching an armed guy in his home. It shakes them up and makes them anxious.”

  “That’s what they keep telling me,” Liam said, breathing heavily. “They were only doing their job.”

  “But, of course, your son wasn’t armed, am I right?”

  “No! He’s never owned a gun.”

  “But do you?” I asked.

  He nodded. “Sure. We have a gun in the house. I have a permit.”

  “If there is a gun registered to the address, it will have made the officers even more anxious, thinking the boy got ahold of your gun and shot his parents. That’s any uniformed man’s worst nightmare right there. They’re tense and scared even before they get there, and, of course, they’ll shoot if they have the slightest fear that he is carrying a weapon, and for all they know, he is, and he will shoot because that’s what he told them on the phone.”

  “So, now it’s my fault?”

  “That’s not what I said.”

  “Okay, I’m not getting anywhere here,” Liam said, shaking his head violently. “I know you’re a cop or used to be, or whatever, so, of course, you’ll defend them, I kind of expected that. But what I came here to ask you is how you knew. How did you know something would happen to Tim? You said someone wanted him killed? Who and how did you know?”

  I grabbed my cup and sipped more of the spiked coffee, then looked at him intently. “All right. But I’m going to need you to keep an open mind here.”

  “I am as open as I can be,” he said. “Full-blown open.”

  “And you’re sure you want to know? It’s not going to be pleasant.”

  He nodded. “Yes. Absolutely certain.”

  Chapter 16

  Amal Bukhari looked at her phone as she boarded flight 456 from Atlanta to New York. She rechecked her email for the fifth time in the past ten minutes—still nothing.

  Amal was waiting for an email from her agent. NBC wanted her for a big new live talk show, and she was awaiting the final confirmation. It was down to her and another famous YouTuber who had seventeen million followers, whereas Amal or IWondergirl, had eighteen million. According to her agent, she was in the lead and best suited for this job. But he was supposed to say that, wasn’t he? It was his job to make her feel confident and cheer her on.

  Come on. Just say, yes.

  Amal sat down in her seat and placed her bag with her computer under the seat in front of her. She was going to work on her bits during the plane ride. She was doing a stand-up show tomorrow night.

  Amal checked her email again. Still nothing.

  The road to success had been long for Amal, but it had been her own. Her Pakistani background didn’t make it easier, especially not when her family didn’t approve of what she did. They had cut all their ties to her except for her brother, Samir, who still called now and then when he wasn’t near any other family member.

  Come on. I need that email before I have to shut off my phone.

  The guy who was going to sit in the seat next to her arrived, and she got up to make room for him to get into the window seat. Amal had asked for a window seat because she hated sitting on the aisle, but apparently, there had been none available.

  Amal checked her email again as the plane filled up around her. Her stomach was lurching, and it didn’t feel good. Shouldn’t they have decided by now? What was taking them so long?

  I’m not getting it, am I? It’s because of my skin color; I just know it is.

  The door was closed, and the flight attendant checked that their seatbelts were fastened. Amal stared at the phone, touching the screen lightly with her finger. The flight attendant came to her seat and spoke from behind a toothy smile.

  “Please, turn off your cellphone now.”

  Amal felt like making a snappy joke about phones and planes and why people had to shut them off, but she refrained. She didn’t feel like it. Instead, she nodded and returned the smile, then pretended to be shutting off the phone as the plane slowly rolled out on the runway.

  As the flight attendant moved away, she checked her email once again, frantically tapping on the screen.

  And there it was.

  Heart in her throat, Amal opened the email and read through it, skimming it as fast as she could.

  I got it. I can’t believe it. I actually got it!

  Smiling widely, Amal shut off the phone and leaned back in her seat, just as the plane accelerated down the runway and, seconds later, soared into the air. Amal couldn’t help comparing the feeling to her career literally taking off, and she broke into cheerful laughter as they reached their cruising altitude.

  Chapter 17

  “It’s called swatting.”

  I looked up at Liam’s face. I had poured us a second cup of coffee, and he was holding his between his hands.

  “Swatting?”

  I nodded. “It’s a criminal act in which the perpetrators call or message a target’s local nine-one-one operators, claiming a fake hostage situation or a bomb threat in progress with the expectation that the local police may respond to the target’s address or whereabouts with deadly force, more than often sending in a SWAT team, hence the name.”

  Liam blinked. He stared at me for several seconds before sipping his coffee. “You mean to tell me that’s what happened to us? To my…to Tim? Someone called in and told them to go to my address…deliberately?”

  “Yes. I’m afraid so. It’s something that has been going on for the past year or so. I’ve been trying to tell the local police about this; in your case, I even telephoned all the departments in Philadelphia and warned them that this would happen, that someone would call in a false incident. But…” I paused and shook my head.

  Liam leaned back in his chair, rubbing his forehead. I could tell he was fighting his tears. He started biting his nails vigorously.

  “So, you mean to tell me that my…my Tim…died because of some…prank?” he asked, his eyes gleaming in anger.

  I cleared my throat. “I’m not sure I’d call it that exactly. I think this guy is very serious and extremely brilliant.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I believe what we’re facing is a serial swatter…someone who’s responsible f
or a series of these calls and many of them with deaths to follow. I believe this guy is responsible for eleven deaths so far all over the country. Not all are fatal, and I have traced him to other swatting attempts where no one died. But so far, eleven have. And those are just the ones I’ve detected. But there could be more.”

  Liam looked at me, puzzled. “How do you know it’s the same guy who’s behind all those calls?”

  “There’s a pattern that I have detected. First of all, many of them are called in at the same time of day. At exactly 8:56 p.m. is when dispatch usually receives the call. That’s the case in most of the incidents I’ve found. Second, I’ve found that he leaves clues as to who he’ll strike next. He seems to be choosing rich and famous people, YouTubers, gamers, or in your case, a famous cook’s sons. My guess is that he chooses celebrities to gain attention. He wants to make sure the story gets on the news. Why? I don’t know. Maybe it makes him feel proud like when some killers take a trophy from their victims, or maybe he feels stronger when the world knows what he’s doing and fears him. That’s one of the characteristics in his pattern that I still need to establish.”

  “And you think it was the same guy who called in the emergency that ended up killing Tim?”

  “I do. In my opinion, he’s a serial killer like any other. I think this is a murderer who is so clever that he has found a way not to have to do the actual killing and take responsibility.”

  “It’s the perfect murder,” he said

  “Exactly,” I said. “Because it doesn’t look like murder. He can sit anywhere in the country and do this. The police usually think it’s a prankster and may try to find the caller, via tracking the number it was called from, but when they can’t find him, they give up. The majority of the time, they don’t even try to find out who called it in since they simply don’t have the resources for such an investigation. They call it an accident or an unfortunate incident, and only the event itself is investigated. Last month, there was a similar event in Utah where a woman was shot in her home because the officer thought she had a gun when it was, in fact, a glittery cell phone. The public demanded that the officer stand trial. He did and was sentenced to ten years in prison. So, it’s not like it’s not taken seriously; they’re just not seeing the real issue. The problem is that the investigators in these cases usually focus their investigation on the event itself. They almost never dig really deep into what started the event, who the caller was because they can’t find him and don’t know that this person is not just a prankster. And they don’t talk to one another across state lines about this. That’s why they don’t realize they have a serial killer on their hands. But they do. He’s a killer who has swatted and killed more than eleven times.”

  “But you did. You dug deeper and found a connection between these calls. Why?”

  I exhaled and sipped my coffee. “Let’s just say I’m not like most detectives.”

  Chapter 18

  Liam was back to biting his nails again. I wanted to tell him to stop, that there was barely anything left to bite, but then I remembered I did it myself when I was agitated or even scared. I bit my lip or my nails.

  I rose to my feet, then walked to the counter and found a folder. I opened it and pulled out a sheet of paper.

  “This is the earliest case I have found so far. I call him victim zero. His name was Peter James. His gaming name was EvilPeterPan, and he had more than six million followers on YouTube. On November 4, 2018, at exactly 8:56 p.m., the emergency operators in New Orleans received a call from a guy who called himself Peter James. He said that he had shot his father in the head and was holding his sister and mother as hostages, that he was armed and going to kill them, that he had poured gasoline all around the house and was going to light them on fire. The police arrived at the scene and shot him on his front porch. It didn’t help that he was African American. Police claimed he was armed, but that was later proven to be wrong by investigators. He’s the earliest one I’ve found so far. But there might be others. I just don’t have enough time in the day to find them.”

  “What made you realize that it was the same guy?” Liam asked and leaned forward. “And why did you start looking into it in the first place? I mean, it looked like ordinary police activity, right?”

  I paused and took in a deep breath. “I know someone it happened to.”

  “Really? Who?”

  I pulled out another sheet of paper from my folder. “This one. Victim six.”

  “Let me guess. He’s also a gamer, right?”

  “That has been the pattern so far, yes. They all stream on Twitch, a live video streaming service that primarily focuses on video game live streaming.”

  “Just like Tim,” Liam said. “It was all he ever did.”

  “And they’re all celebrities either from YouTube, or they have a famous parent like your son had. Something to make sure the story reaches the news.”

  “How did you know him? Victim six?”

  I swallowed. “It was a she. KittyWolfGamer was her online name. In real life, she was Stacy. She was also my old neighbor and best friend, Priscilla’s daughter. She was twenty-two when she died.”

  “Next-door neighbor here?”

  I shook my head. “Back when I lived in D.C. Stacy was killed two months ago, and her mom called me crying the next day and told me everything. I’ve known Stacy since she was eight. I loved that kid. I promised her I’d take a closer look at exactly what happened and why Stacy’s condo was raided. By then, Stacy was still in ICU, and they thought she might survive, but she died three days later. I contacted everyone I knew up there in law enforcement and had every paper and file in the case sent to me. I went through it and just couldn’t believe what had happened. I then started to search through the Internet and found similar stories all over the country. And some of them had more than a lot in common, among them the time of receiving the call.”

  “What else? What else do they have in common?” Liam asked.

  “Well, as I said, they’re all gamers, which tells me the killer is one himself. And, as I said, they’re all celebrities in some form, enough to make headlines.”

  “What else? I have a feeling there’s more?”

  “Well…he sort of tells us who will be the next victim. This, I found out later.”

  “I see. And that’s how you found out that my Tim would be next?”

  I nodded. “Yes. I didn’t know this until his last victim, and that’s why I rushed to tell you. You were the first one I knew beforehand.”

  He sighed and slumped his shoulders. “So, it is all my fault. Because I didn’t listen.”

  I looked away. I knew it had to be eating the guy up, and I certainly didn’t want to rub salt in an open wound. It had to be killing him. But I guess he was right, even though I couldn’t blame him for not believing me. I was, after all, a stranger, and as a celebrity, he had to have met his share of crazy people.

  “So, what is it? How does he tell you?”

  Chapter 19

  Amal didn’t even realize that she had fallen asleep until she woke up. She blinked a few times when she realized that the lights had been turned on in the cabin, and the flight attendants were walking up and down the aisle, telling people to put their seats up and make sure their seatbelts were fastened.

  Are we there already?

  Amal looked at her watch. They had only been in the air for an hour. It was a four-hour flight. What was going on? Were they about to enter heavy turbulence?

  Amal turned to look at the flight attendants. Their faces were strained. They were smiling and talking in a calming manner, but still, there was an uneasy nervousness behind it. A female flight attendant who walked past her mumbled under her breath. It sounded like a small prayer.

  What the heck is this?

  Amal had never been keen on flying and hated turbulence like nothing else in this world. She pushed her head back in the seat and closed her eyes to calm herself, mumbling the phrases she knew to be true.
>
  “No plane has ever fallen due to turbulence. It’s just wind and bad weather on the ground. It’s not dangerous. You will not die from this.”

  Amal exhaled and opened her eyes again, then met the eyes of the man sitting next to her. He, too, seemed confused. She was trying to smile, but then she spotted something out of the corner of her eye that just about made her heart stop.

  “Is that…Is that an…?”

  Amal leaned toward the guy by the window who turned his head to look at the F-16 that flew by their window.

  That was when panic erupted both inside and outside of Amal. She turned to look at the other side, where another F-16 fighter jet pulled up and seemed to be escorting them.

  Around her, all the passengers sat up straight and started to talk. People looked around them, casting nervous glances around the cabin. Tension was thick in the air, lots of furrowed brows and frowns. Some pulled out their phones and began to film. Amal decided to do the same. If nothing else, then to document her last hours in case the phone survived.

  Finally, an announcement was made by the captain.

  “Ladies and gentlemen. We are preparing to make an emergency landing in a few minutes. Please make sure you are all in position. Seats are up, seatbelts fastened. I need all of you to remain calm.”

  “Kind of hard when you don’t sound calm,” Amal said to the camera. She felt terrified as she stared out at the F-16 escorting the airplane, then spoke with a low voice to her camera.

  “What I’m asking myself right now, just like probably most of the people here, is if they will shoot us down if necessary? I mean, that’s why they’re there, right? That’s what I heard, at least. To protect the people on the ground. Why else would they send out military planes?”

  The man sitting next to Amal whimpered slightly. Amal couldn’t blame him. She was terrified, too, and she was beginning to wonder if she’d make it out alive. The cabin crew tried to keep their cool, but Amal could see how anxious they were. Amal felt claustrophobic. The cabin suddenly seemed so small. People were chatting nervously to one another. A child was crying and asking her mother if they’d make it home alive.