The message is the same for every e-mail sent out as part of the two-hundred-fifty-dollar extra service offered by the Devil’s Den. Aimed mainly at journalists and bloggers, the obvious, over-the-top wording of the message is designed to do the exact opposite of its stated intent.
The killer has seen how well it works. Within hours of the mass e-mails, his video of Sandra Jackson’s beheading was a worldwide Internet phenomenon. He is sure his second video will far surpass his first, once Kiesha’s full identity is revealed.
The killer feels his excitement building as he moves the pointer over the first of the three links that appear below the message text. As soon as he clicks the link a new browser window opens, revealing a nearly full-frame still image captured from last night’s video. The image shows the young woman bound to the chair, a pillowcase over her head. In the center of the image is a triangle pointing right and surrounded by a square, the symbol for play.
The killer directs the pointer over the symbol and clicks it.
A horizontal scroll bar appears at the bottom of the video as it starts to play. The killer holds down one of the function keys along the top of his computer keyboard until the volume is all the way up. He watches the two-minute video several times. The slightly blurred, green-tinted recording creates just the right atmosphere, certainly as good as he hoped, maybe even better. The climactic ending shoots a chill up his spine.
After closing the browser window, the killer checks the time stamp on the e-mail. It arrived in his in-box at 6:07 AM.
How long, he wonders, before the television news networks pick up the story? Perhaps they already have.
He grabs the remote control from his desk and aims it at the TV on his dresser. He presses the power button and sets the television to Channel 4.
A jolt of electricity jumps through him when he reads the caption at the bottom of the picture.
“Where the fuck have you been?” Captain Donovan shouted as Murphy walked through the door of the Homicide office. “All hell has broken loose and you’ve been AWOL for eighteen fucking hours.” Donovan stood next to the secretary’s desk, clutching a stack of reports.
Murphy didn’t say anything.
“Why the fuck haven’t you answered your phone or your radio? Why the fuck do I have to send two uniforms to find my lead fucking detective?”
That was a lot of fuck s, Murphy thought, but it did not sound as if they had found Marcy Edwards’s body. Not yet. But they would. And they would link her death to him pretty damn quickly.
“Captain, I-”
Donovan raised a hand to stop him. “I don’t want to hear it. I got more problems than just you.” He pointed down the hall to the academy’s main classroom. “I’ve got a room full of media pukes looking for blood and answers.”
Instinct told Murphy to keep his mouth shut.
“I want you off this case more than you know,” Donovan said. “You’re useless to me. I’ve been calling you and trying to get you on the radio since the first video came out.”
“What video?” Murphy asked.
“Quit interrupting me, because that video is nothing, not now.” Donovan looked at his watch. “Not since two hours ago when the second video came out.”
“Captain, I don’t-”
“Have you even seen the second video?”
Murphy shook his head, but before he could get a word out, the captain cut him off again.
“Then get in the squad room and watch it, get current on what’s been going on, because it’s your ass that’s going out front on this. We give you a radio and a cell phone for a reason. I needed you here last night… but forget that. We’ll deal with that later. Right now, everybody in this city is going bat shit, and the national media is about to descend on us like a swarm of starving fucking locusts.”
Murphy didn’t get a chance to ask the captain what he was talking about, because as soon as Donovan finished speaking he turned around and stormed off.
As Murphy bumped his way through the office in a daze, it took him a minute to realize that it was a lot noisier than normal. Nearly every detective in the division was at work. When he stepped into his squad room, he saw six detectives, including new task-force members Danny Calumet and Joey Dagalotto, pressed around one desk, staring at a computer screen.
“What’s going on?” Murphy said.
Joey Doggs looked up. “Where the hell have you been?”
Murphy wasn’t about to answer to a junior detective on loan from burglary, or robbery, or vice-wherever the hell Dagalotto and Calumet had come from. “What’s going on?” he said again.
“You haven’t heard about the second video?” Doggs said.
“I haven’t heard about the first video.”
“You’re shitting me?”
“No, I’m not shitting you. What’s on it?”
“Yo, partner.” Gaudet’s voice came from behind him. “Where the hell have you been?”
Murphy turned around. The first thing he noticed was that his partner’s face was tense. The perpetual smile was gone, replaced by a nervous frown. “What’s on the damn video?” Murphy asked.
Gaudet looked over Murphy’s shoulder into the squad room. “Make a hole over there and bring him up to speed.”
Murphy walked to the desk and elbowed his way into the huddle of detectives. On the computer screen was a freeze-frame infrared shot of a woman wearing a black dress, sitting in a chair in front of a dark wall. Some type of bag or hood was over her head. Her arms and legs appeared to be bound to the chair.
“Is she tied up?” Murphy asked.
A detective named Garcia, assigned to the first watch, clicked the play button in the center of the frame. On the screen the image began to move: The woman struggles against her bonds. A man walks into the shot from the right. A dark ski mask covers his head.
“What is this?” Murphy asked Doggs.
“It’s the second video.”
The man carries a small object in his hand. As he nears the woman in the chair, the object flashes and for an instant the screen goes white.
“Was that a strobe light?” Murphy asked.
“Stun gun,” Danny Calumet said.
“Ssshhh,” said Garcia. “The dude’s about to say something.”
“Time to have some fun,” the man says.
“Here he goes,” Calumet said.
Murphy heard the cringe in the young detective’s voice.
The man jabs the stun gun against the woman’s neck and triggers it. She bucks in her seat, then collapses. Her muscles twitch.
The man steps behind the chair and looks into the camera. “You said that I am impotent, Mr. Mayor. You said that I can’t get aroused. That I am a homosexual, a sodomite. Now, I will show you who is impotent. When I get through here, you will realize that you are the impotent one, Mr. Mayor. You and your entire police department. You can’t catch me because I am beyond your reach. I am the Lamb of God.”
“Jesus Christ,” Murphy said.
The man pulls a large knife from somewhere behind his back and slices the shoulder straps of the woman’s dress. When he looks back at the camera, the infrared light catches a flash of white teeth through the mouth hole in the ski mask.
“The motherfucker is grinning,” Doggs said.
The man peels down the front of the woman’s dress. He pushes the big knife between her breasts and cuts open the front of her bra. Then he leans over and stabs the knife into the chair between her legs.
“That’s a Marine KA-BAR,” Garcia said.