IN HIS KEEPING: CLAIMED

Brady helped them out of the SUV.  Sylvie was visibly shaken.  ‘Are you sure you’re up to it?’  Connor didn’t think this was such a good idea.  Not in her present state!

Sylvie nodded.  ‘I need to do this Connor, otherwise…’  She never finished the sentence, just shook her head forlornly.

Their last two weeks in Belize had been anything but idyllic.  She’d awakened screaming almost every night.  A black-garbed killer haunting her dreams.  Cloaked in darkness, he came to torment her.  Connor consulted several physicians about the situation.  A couple suggested the nightmares might have been triggered by the withdrawal of her meds, principally the antidepressants.  But most said that given what happened to her, she was most likely suffering from PTSD.  She needed therapy they told him.  With her memory returning in fits and starts, and violent images filling her brain night and day, there was no way of escaping the dreams.

They’d started the night he proposed.  Something he’d done had triggered the memories.  Since then, scenes of the assault, visions of torture and pain, continually flashed in her mind.  The memories were fluid, they came and went.  One moment they’d be clear, the next fuzzy.  And sometimes they’d disappear altogether.  Things she remembered in the morning were gone by afternoon.  Sylvie worried whether the images in her head had really happened or were just figments of her imagination, plucked from one of her nightmares.  She’d taken to writing everything down since she couldn’t be sure a particular memory would be retained, or vanish completely in the blink of an eye.

The psychiatrists told him it would be best if he encouraged Sylvie to confront her fears, talk about what happened.  But the more he tried to engage her, the more she withdrew.  It had gotten so bad she was scared to go to sleep at night.  Afraid of being left alone in the dark.  He and Estelle took turns sitting with her.  Holding her hand and trying to reassure her that it was only a dream.  But that did little to assuage her fears or keep the evil, menacing presence from haunting her.  Connor was at his wit’s end to know what to do to help her.

Sylvie’s recollections suddenly snow-balled when she discovered her research.  Just as he’d suspected, she’d been trying to investigate the original seven murders on her own.  Her laptop had been destroyed, but her bookmarks were still out in cyberspace right where she’d left them on her Google Chrome homepage.  She’d amassed a wealth of information about him, his businesses, his friends, his enemies, his school, and the murders.  There were newspaper and magazine articles, photos, maps, blog posts, some legal documents, Facebook, Pinterest and other social media pages.  Like everything she did, Sylvie was thorough.  She was the type of person who had to dot every i and cross every t when it came to researching something.  She also located a text file titled ‘classmates and possible suspects.’  She thought it was lost in the fire, but discovered it in an app called Box that she accessed from her bookmarks bar.  He had to give Sylvie credit, she was quite the sleuth.

He’d arranged a conference call with Special Agent Dover, Morretti, McCoy, and a number of other investigators on the case, as well as several of the criminologists and consulting detectives he’d hired.  When she told him she thought the killer’s first victim was a girl he’d dated in high school, Zahara Posner, he couldn’t believe it.  How did Sylvie come up with this stuff?  He remembered Zahara.  She’d been beautiful and vivacious.  A real flirt.  What politically incorrect guys used to call a cock-teaser.  Everyone in his circle of friends had gone out with her at one time or another and tried to get in her pants.  In a school with no female students, no girls at all, having Zahara on your arm was the equivalent of dating the captain of the cheerleading squad or the homecoming queen in a coed one.  He remembered hearing about her death.  But the papers had reported it as a random mugging gone awry.

Sylvie had a knack for putting things together.  Seeing connections.  She could take a bunch of disparate occurrences: an underage drinking party on the beach, an allegation of rape, and a suspicious fire; put them all together and come up with a murder.  The police were looking into Zahara’s death and the fire at the Posner house, but thought her theory that a boy from the party had killed her, a bit farfetched.  At Connor’s behest, she’d emailed them everything she had.  He’d hoped that once the authorities knew what she knew, she’d feel better about letting them handle it.  But Sylvie had yet to have a ‘come to Jesus moment’ concerning the investigation.  For some inexplicable reason, she was convinced that the case wouldn’t be solved without her.  That this army of experts and investigators needed her help.  They didn’t!  But she wouldn’t listen to reason.  Sylvie was like a bulldog in that respect.  Once she got her teeth into something, she was in for the long haul.  She wouldn’t let it go!

It bothered Connor that she’d zeroed in on his friends as the most likely suspects.  Not Victor so much, but Sean, Drake, Alex, and Nathan.  She was also investigating Jameson Bryant and Justin and Jason Frommer.  The boys who attended Collegiate might qualify as ‘rich-boy assholes’ as Sylvie liked to call them.  But thinking any of them capable of murder, not just any murder, but a string of brutal serial killings, was a stretch.  Sylvie was putting 2 and 2 together, but coming up with 5.  She’d asked the police to go back and check the alibis of his friends for the night the reporter was killed.  And told them she didn’t believe Caputo had committed the crime.  He didn’t know why she continually tried to throw his friends under the bus, but she did.  She didn’t even back off when they told her they’d done that already.  Since it had been summer and all her prime suspects were rich, they were out in the Hamptons partying at one estate or another.  As a matter of fact, the party attended by Sean, Nathan, Drake, Alex, and Victor was well-known to the local police.  It had turned into a drunken debauch, with men brawling and half-naked women running around topless.  The cops were called in when a caravan of inebriated revelers leaving the party failed to notice a bend in the road and plowed en masse into a nearby neighbor’s pergola and garden.  Resulting in a five-car pile-up!  Everyone was there when the reporter was killed, they assured her; either sleeping it off or getting it on.  The bedrooms at the beachside mansion were filled to capacity that night.

Sylvie seemed almost disappointed at the news.  She certainly didn’t appear convinced!

Connor had told her about the other murders and Sylvie had immediately fixated on them.  She asked the investigators if she could review the files for each of the murder victims.  Something there might stir her memory, she told them.  Or perhaps she could find a connection between the victims.  Connor’s people already had copies of the files, but he didn’t tell her that.  He didn’t want Sylvie involved in any of this.  But she was insistent and Special Agent Dover caved, agreeing to let her see them.  Connor thought that very unwise.  What the man from the FBI didn’t seem to understand, was that Sylvie wasn’t just curious about the other victims; she was balls to the wall serious about catching the bastard who’d killed them and almost killed her.  She wasn’t going to rest until she found him.

The investigators suggested that if Sylvie really wanted to help them apprehend the killer, the best way was to walk them through what happened to her.  Preferably at the scene of the crime.  That’s why they were here.

He’d been in contact with Sylvie’s lawyer, Pearly, about what to do with Tiz’s property since before they went to Montauk.  Connor had thought the fire would have destroyed the house, but it hadn’t.  Only the interior walls and some of the ceiling beams had burned.  Connor figured Sylvie would want to sell it and rid herself of a place that held such horrible memories for her.  But when he broached the subject, she’d gotten upset.  Sylvie had every intention of keeping it.  She would never sell Tiz’s home!  So the cottage had been repaired.

With the police and Feds pressing him to question her, Connor had asked the psychiatrists what he should do with regard to Sylvie returning to the scene of the crime.  He thought it was too soon.  To his surprise, they informed him that it might actually be beneficial, cathartic, for her to see the place the way it was the day of the attack.  It would allow her to confront her worst fears and, hopefully, move on.  Get past it.  She’d been brutally assaulted, tortured, and raped with an object.  How the hell was she supposed to get past that?  He worried that reliving the event, dragging out painful memories, might further traumatize her.

Pearly had the same people working on the repairs this time that he used when the building sustained storm damage last fall.  They’d coordinated with the insurance company, an independent adjuster Pearly had used before, and a New York city interior decorator Connor knew to put the house back exactly as it was.  ‘Down to the last pillow, tin can, and gun,’ he’d been assured–whatever the hell that meant!

Everything was at the ready now.  He just hoped that the evidence the police would gather from putting her through this was worth it.

Sylvie was obviously scared, but she wouldn’t back away from doing what she thought was necessary.  She said she owed it to the victims, every one of them: his parents, all the women who’d died at the hands of this homicidal maniac, and all those who still might.  Most times Connor viewed Sylvie as being fragile and vulnerable, in need of direction and protection.  But watching her shaking, as she forced herself to put one foot in front of the other and make her way into the house, he suddenly realized she was the strongest person he knew.  Inside, his little Sylvie was made of pure steel.

Sylvie didn’t utter a word for nearly an hour.  She just walked from room to room taking it all in.  When Pearly arrived, she asked him about her aunt’s ashes.  She thought she remembered throwing the urn at her attacker.  Had they spilled out during the struggle?  Pearly assured her they hadn’t.  The exterior cover got dented, but the actual urn inside remained intact.  He’d had the outside replaced and it looked like new.  Whoever had fixed the cottage, had seen to every detail.  The furniture looked the same…only better, with fresh ticking and thicker cushions.  The hurricane lamps were the same shade of blue as before.  The decorative tins, even the orange pillows, were an exact match to the ones she had.  She looked down at the floors, washed clean of blood, oil, and soot.  At the rebuilt walls and freshly painted cabinets.  It looked so peaceful, so cozy, like nothing bad could ever happen here.  And yet it did.

After the last investigator was ushered into the house and all the introduction were made, Sylvie took a deep breath and began to tell her story.

Sylvie told them everything she could remember from the moment she arrived from the city.  What she did.  Where she went.  She talked about the intruder trying to break in the night before.  Seeing him on the porch and thinking he was a bear.  Calling the contractor in a panic to fix the back door.  Going outside to try to get a signal on her cell phone.  How she’d come into the house and gone to the kitchen.  Found an iPod on the counter and thought it had been left by a workman.  She’d tried to call the contractor to tell him, but the phone was dead.  That’s when she knew something was wrong.

Sylvie became visibly agitated as she continued.  Music started coming from the iPod.  It was playing O Fortuna from Carmina Burana.  That’s when she noticed an expensive leather bag on the floor, filled with items intended to torture and kill.  Near it were pieces of wood that could be screwed together to form an X.  Sylvie said she’d planned to escape out the backdoor, but he’d rigged it, installing some kind of alarms on the top of the door.  She was trapped, but tried not to panic.

One by one she picked imaginary items out of a bag and off the floor that only she could see.  Then disposed of them.  Into the oven.  Into the fire.  She told them how she’d poured little bottles of liquids she thought were acid down the drain, then confiscated his stun guns.  Finding his cell phone, she tried to call for help.  That’s when she remembered the gun in the coffee table drawer.  They followed her into the living room.  She described how the music was blaring, when she saw him running down the hall at her.  He was dressed in black leather from head to toe.  She described it as a form-fitting bodysuit with a leather mask that covered his face and head, with a zipper for a mouth and plastic lenses for eyes.  He had a black plastic device affixed to his neck that made his voice sound electronic, like a space alien or a ghost.  He wore heavy, black, lace-up work boots.  She said her assailant was a big man.  Around 6’3′.  That he had the same height and build as Connor, with a broad chest and flat belly.

‘I managed to get the gun and turned on him.  He said ‘That won’t save you Sylvie,’ and I fired.’  Forming her fingers into the shape of a gun, she pointed to where he’d been standing.  ‘I hit him square in the chest, but he didn’t go down.  He just slumped over.  He was wheezing and struggling to breathe, but then all of a sudden he charged at me.  So I shot him in the belly.  He was groaning and howling, but still standing.  When he came at me again, I emptied the revolver into him and he finally fell to the floor.  I hit him six times, but he wasn’t bleeding.  I didn’t know what to make of it.  I thought he was dead, but I couldn’t be sure.  I just knew I needed more ammo.’

She showed them how she’d picked her way along the wall, past his body, trying to get to the guns in the bedroom.  Told them the killer had found her shotgun and rifles under the bed and had unloaded them.  Sylvie explained that she’d reloaded the revolver, shotgun and one of the rifles, then grabbed the other handguns from the nightstands.

Everyone in the room stared at her in disbelief, especially Connor.  ‘Where did you get the guns?’ he wanted to know.

‘They belonged to my Aunt Tizzy.  She was a gun nut.  I inherited them.’

Dover gave Connor a disapproving look.  He didn’t want his witness to veer off track.  ‘Please continue Miss Jenkins.’

Sylvie furrowed her brow, trying to recall where she’d left off.  Then told them about throwing the other guns and ammo out the window so the killer couldn’t get them.  She racked her brain.  Had she left out any details?  No.  She hadn’t.  Suddenly, tears started trickling down her cheeks.  Sylvie told them she’d hoped to flee through the bedroom windows, but they were too small.  It became clear to her then, that the only means of escape was through the front door.  She made it past him, but he caught her as she was unlocking the door.  They’d struggled and the shotgun and the purse with all her guns went flying.  All except the rifle.  She was laying on it.  She’d kicked and thrown things at him, trying to keep him at bay until she could get off a shot.  But before she could fire, he’d hit her in the head with the poker.

The words caught in her throat as she recalled waking up cold and naked on the floor with a blindfold glued to her face and him on top of her, rubbing himself against her.  Sylvie sobbed when she confessed she’d thought it was Connor at first.

‘Why?’  Connor was horrified.  ‘Why in God’s name would you think that?’

‘I’m sorry Connor,’ she sniffled in apology.  ‘The cigar smoke.  The way he smelled.  His size.  The weight of him on top of me.  It all reminded me of you.’  Her face turned scarlet.  ‘And the music.  He was playing Bolero.’

‘Bolero and O Fortuna?’  Connor looked pensive.  Something was troubling him.  ‘Anything else?’

‘No.  Just those two.’

‘Does that mean something to you Mr. Hudson?’ Dover asked.

‘I give a lot of money to the arts.  Especially to symphonies.  Two years ago one of the symphonies I donate to held a fundraising gala.  As part of the event, they presented a special program in my honor.  They asked me what two pieces I’d like to hear them perform.  I chose O Fortuna and Bolero.’

‘Was this a big event?’ Morretti began questioning him.

‘Two thousand people maybe?’

‘Where was it held?’

‘In Brooklyn.’

‘Any way we can get a list of attendees?’

‘I’m sure someone at my foundation has that information.’

‘Good.  We’ll need it!’ Moretti replied.

‘Miss Jenkins, you said Bolero reminded you of Mr. Hudson.  Can I ask why?’  Dover inquired.

She looked at Connor, her blush intensifying.  He nodded to her.  Sylvie couldn’t look at the FBI agent, she was too embarrassed.  ‘We made love to it once,’ she whispered.

‘Oh.  I see,’ Dover responded, looking sheepish.  ‘You said he smelled like Mr. Hudson.  Was it just the cigars?  A lot of people smoke cigars.’

She shook her head.  ‘I’ve smelled those cigars before.  But I don’t remember where.  I’m sure it was expensive, Cuban maybe.  But it was more than just the cigar…it was the cologne.  He was wearing the same expensive cologne that Connor uses; only something was slightly different about it, but I’m not sure what.’

‘Expensive?’ Dover perked up his ears.

‘It costs $500 a bottle,’ Sylvie informed him.

‘That might narrow down our suspect pool.  There can’t be that many places that sell $500 cologne for men,’ another man she didn’t know chimed in.

‘Not really,’ Connor told him.  ‘I gave that same cologne as Christmas gifts a year ago.  All my friends, the executives and senior management teams at all my companies and corporations, and all my business associates got a bottle.’

‘How many people is that?’  The same man wanted to know.  By the look of his uniform, and the star he wore on his chest, Sylvie was sure he was a sheriff.  But since he was wearing a cowboy hat and cowboy boots, she didn’t think he was here investigating the New York cases.  Probably looking into one of the out-of-state murders.

‘I couldn’t even hazard a guess.  Fifteen hundred, two thousand.  Possibly more.’

‘Is there a list of who got them?’ Dover asked.

‘I have a high-end boutique in each of my hotels.  I think that company placed the order, and handled the wrapping and distribution for me; but I’ll have to check.’

Dover nodded.  ‘Miss Jenkins,’ he began, ‘what else made you think it was Mr. Hudson?’

‘The words he used, the way he talked.  He was well educated.’

‘When did you realize it wasn’t Mr. Hudson?’ Morretti asked.

‘When he told me not to bother screaming my safe word.  He said it wouldn’t do me any good.  I don’t have a safe word,’ she said, trembling with emotion.  ‘He told me he had one girl repeat her safe word over and over again, so he slit her throat.  She must have been a sub and thought that if she kept saying it, he’d stop hurting her.  But he didn’t.  He said he killed her because she wouldn’t shut up.  Do you know which girl that was?’

‘A sub, you mean you thought she was a submissive?’  Dover wanted clarification.

‘Yes.  I think BDSM, dominance and submission, has something to do with the case.’  She looked at Connor with genuine sorrow and then lowered her eyes to the floor.  ‘I think he targets women he thinks are submissives.’

‘Why would you say that?’  Dover asked, reluctant to go down that road.

Sylvie didn’t answer.  She felt like she was betraying Connor, but this was a murder investigation.

‘It’s OK baby,’ Connor assured her, using his thumb to wipe away her tears.  ‘What Sylvie’s trying to tell you, as delicately as possible, is that there were elements of bondage and discipline in the relationships I had with four of the murder victims.  They were submissives.’

That was news to everyone there.  The investigation hadn’t uncovered that particular predilection on any of the victims’ parts and certainly not Hudson’s.  How the hell had they missed it?  This was going to take the investigation in a whole other direction.

No one said a word for at least a minute.  Then Sean McCoy from the State Police BCI spoke up.  ‘I’m assuming then, that you have that kind of relationship with Miss Jenkins?’

‘No!  Miss Jenkins is not a sub.’  Connor was adamant.  Thankfully, no one pressed him on that point.

‘But it’s quite possible that in light of your previous relationships, the killer might have thought she was,’ Dover said grimly.

Connor nodded.

‘Were the other women submissives?’ Sylvie wanted to know.  ‘When he told me about the woman he killed, and the fact that she kept repeating her safe word…that sounds like something a submissive would say to her dom to stop him from inflicting more pain than she could bear.’

Morretti put a hand to his brow.  This case was getting curiouser and curiouser.

‘Not that we know of,’ Dover responded.  ‘They’re scattered all over the country.  They’re from small towns where this sort of thing just doesn’t go on.  There wasn’t a hint of scandal about any of these women.  It hardly seems possible.’

‘You’d be surprised!  I did a lot of research on the BDSM lifestyle for Mr. Hudson’s latest books.  There are so many bestselling novels on the market now that focus on erotica, spankings, and submission that a lot of women, even those you think of as nice, good girls, are curious.  There are hundreds of sites on the web, in the U.S. alone, that cater to their curiosity.  It’s anonymous so no one knows who or where you are unless you tell them.’

‘Yes, but…’ Dover began to argue.  Sylvie cut him off.

‘There are a ton of dating sites on the web that hook you up sight unseen.  Why is it so difficult to believe that the same thing could happen in this case?’

Dover sighed in resignation.  ‘We’ll look into it,’ he said, conceding she might have a point.

Sylvie talked about the fire alarm going off and how, when he left the room, she sniffed the air and located his cigar on the floor.  Then threw it in the same direction the firecrackers had scattered.  She related how she found a large shard of glass and a linga to use as weapons.  She recalled her assailant threw water on her when he returned from the kitchen, to wake her up.  When she reacted, he started kicking her.  She’d tried to stab him with the glass, but he managed to kick it away.  Angry, he’d slammed her head into the floor.  That’s when she passed out again.  Sylvie told them she awoke to the sound of firecrackers going off and debris flying through the air.  He was on the floor, taking cover between her legs.  Seizing the opportunity, she started hitting him with the linga.  Then a car pulled up outside.  That’s when he managed to get away from her.

‘He said it was a cop.  That he was going to kill him.  That it was my fault.  I heard him getting the gun and wanted to warn the officer, but I could barely move,’ she sobbed.

Sylvie explained about kicking the tin and breaking the window, and then hearing gunshots.  She shuddered when she told them how he lit and flicked matches around the room.  And played O Fortuna as choking smoke filled the house.  Sylvie said she could feel cold air blowing in through the open window and tried to inch her way closer to it.  But she didn’t have the strength.  It was then that she found his phone.  He’d dropped it on the floor.  Sylvie showed them how she put it on her chest and carefully protected it with her bloody hands.  That way, she reasoned, when the police found her body, they’d finally have a clue to help catch him.

There was dead silence in the room when she finished.  Dover thought it was amazing that this tiny woman, who a good gust of wind could blow away, had survived it all and lived to tell about it.  He couldn’t help but admire her.  She was both smart and spunky.  That’s what saved her life.  She had the presence of mind not to panic.  Some of the things she’d done were ingenious, like putting his tools in the oven and woodstove, and using his cigar to ignite the firecrackers.  He could see the retelling had upset her.  But unfortunately, they weren’t done with her yet.

They questioned her for another two hours.  Forcing her to recall every detail regardless of how insignificant or unimportant it seemed.  They needed a second by second accounting.  It was grueling.  They kept wanting to know if Sylvie was sure she’d shot him.  Mightn’t she have missed?  No way!  She was one hundred percent sure she’d hit him.  She’d seen the bullet holes.

‘In that case, he had to be wearing a bullet proof vest,’ Morretti offered.  Sylvie’s eyes widened at his words.  ‘What is it Miss Jenkins?  Do you remember something?’

‘Yes.  I recall thinking that.  His chest was big, but it didn’t feel muscular.  It was more rigid.  Almost like a shield.  Do the vests feel like a shell?’

‘Well I’ve never heard it put quite that way before; but yeah, some body armor is very dense and solid.’

‘Then I think he was wearing one.  There was no give at all.  It was hard as a rock.’

He nodded his head.  ‘Good.  It gives us something to go on.  Maybe we can track him down by that.’

‘You know, this area is kind of remote,’ the fellow with the cowboy hat said as he scratched his whiskers thoughtfully.  ‘It’s what, a couple of hours from the city.  Seems to me there wasn’t enough time between his visit in the middle of the night and his attack the next day for him to leave and then come back again.  I doubt he rented a motel room dressed in that getup either.  I think he just moved his car and kept driving around till the police left, then circled back and waited for the opportune time to attack Miss Jenkins.

‘You think he was here the whole time?’ she asked, horror-struck at the news.  ‘God, I was so stupid,’ she said, sinking to the couch and putting her head in her hands.  ‘I thought I’d be prepared when he came back.  I figured he wouldn’t return until after dark and by then I’d be ready and waiting for him.  But he must have been watching me all day.  He waited till the workmen left and then he struck.’

‘Wait a minute,’ Connor said, looking furious and ready to explode.  ‘Let me get this straight…you thought this lunatic, this crazed killer might come back, so you waited for him?  What the fuck, Sylvie!  He’s a stone cold killer!  What did you think you were going to do?  Overpower him?  Why didn’t you call the police?’

‘I did!  The night before.  But they thought it was you.  I couldn’t go home.  I wasn’t going to have him follow me back to Wyoming and endanger my family.  And I didn’t want to go back to New York.  I thought I could end it once and for all.  And then we could get our lives back.’

Connor had to restrain himself from grabbing and shaking her.  How could she have been so reckless with her life?

Dover could see Hudson was about ready to lose it, so he interrupted and asked Sylvie if she remembered her assailant taking pictures of her.

‘No!  Did he?’  Her eyes brimmed with tears.  She’d been naked.

Then he asked if she remembered how she’d sustained the rest of her injuries.  The ones she hadn’t spoken about.  She tried to think.  She’d cut her palm when she tried to stab him and recalled him stomping on her hand.  Sylvie said she had no recollection of how she got the burns, or the cuts on her front, or…’  Sylvie suddenly looked terrified, unable to catch her breath.  She stood, then crumpled to the floor, gagging.  She was going to be sick.

Connor rushed to her side, lifted her up, and carried her into the bathroom where he repeatedly washed her face with cold water until the nausea subsided and she regained her composure.

A few minutes later they came out to find the various lawmen and investigators having a serious conversation with Brady and his security people.

‘Are we done here?’ Connor asked, angrily.  Why in hell had Dover brought up the pictures?  It wouldn’t take long before she figured out what they were of.

Dover nodded.  ‘Miss Jenkins, I don’t want to frighten you, but this killer went to a lot of trouble to disguise his identity.  My guess is he’s not a stranger!