Turtle Island (30 page)

‘Mickey fuckin Mouse…Well get O’Neil here, with the diary and
the Polack.’

Barbara Dace picked up the ringing telephone. The break was a
welcome interruption for Anna who was feeling exhausted. The strain
of the past few days was beginning to show.

‘It’s for you.’ Barbara passed the phone handset to
Georgina.

‘Hello?’

‘It’s Leroy. Frusco wants you back here. All sorts of shit’s
occurring. Our killer has set up his own web site and is promising
to kill either Rick, Jo-Lynn or the boy live, online.’

‘What?’

‘I know, I know. Just get back here as soon as you can and
bring the diary. It’s now states evidence, Frusco knows about
it.’

‘Shit.’

‘More crazy news as well. Your guys at Quantico dental records
came up with a match and this is a doozy.’

‘Who Leroy? I don’t play guessing games for fun.’

‘Jordan Montoya.’

Georgina didn’t say goodbye. She placed the receiver down on
the cradle.

She grabbed the Diary from Anna and physically pulled her from
the chair. ‘I’m sorry but you’re gonna have to read this to me as
we drive to the police station.’

‘What? You can’t do that.’ Barbara stormed.

‘Watch me.’ Georgina was dragging a bemused Anna Piekarska
along the hall to the lift before she could protest, with Barbara
Dace following. The three women rode down in the lift to the
basement and Georgina’s parked car.

‘I don’t have time to argue with you Barbara. There have been
developments. Frusco needs the diary and Anna to
translate.’

‘But the deal was I’d get the scoop. So far that amounts to
squat.’

Georgina opened the rear passenger door and manhandled Anna
into the car before jumping in to the driver’s seat, leaving
Barbara standing breathing in the fumes from the over rich petrol
mix of the car. As Georgina drove up and out of the basement she
apologised to Anna.

‘I’m sorry to treat you like this.’

Anna looked on bewildered from the rear seat.

John Keller caught up with Barbara in the basement car park.
His camera was in the carry bag over his shoulder.

‘I don’t care what you do John, just get me to the police
station faster than yesterday.’

Keller opened the door to the Cherokee jeep and they climbed
in.

‘Did you hear those passages relating to England, Fleisher and
Rick?’ Keller asked.

‘O’Neil’s a cool cookie. I am sure she made the connection.’
Dace smiled.

Before she had buckled up, Keller had the car in drive and was
up into the drizzly night and the evening rush hour traffic.
Barbara looked for Georgina O’Neil's taillights. The Cherokee
zipped through the traffic, handled with consummate ease by Keller.
Dace switched on her cell phone then dialled the TV
station.

‘Jenny, it's Barbara, put me through to Chris.’ She cupped the
mouthpiece as she began to explain what was happening to her
cameraman. ‘Securing a slot for the ten o' clock bulletin. I think
this is about to blow big time.’

‘Jesus, Barbara where the hell have you been?’ The urgency in
her boss’s voice told her news was breaking at the station as well
as with her.

‘Got a potential scoop here Chris, to do with the Montoya
kidnapping. We need an eight minute slot.’

Keller turned his head and mouthed eight minutes' in surprise.
Knowing that at the moment they barely had enough new material to
cover two minutes.

‘Never mind. Get back here as soon as you can.’

‘But I'm....’

‘The killer's gone online and wants to talk with you at 8pm
sharp over the Internet. Can you believe this, his agent…you heard
me right, his agent just rang to arrange the interview.’

Barbara looked at the clock inset on the Jeep’s consol.
7-37pm. She felt her heart turn.‘Leave O’Neil, John. Get back to
the TV station, NOW.’ Keller screeched the jeep to a halt, looked
over his shoulder and swung the car left onto the opposite
carriageway as soon as there was a clearing in the
traffic.

‘Read some more from the diary.’ Georgina passed the book over
her shoulder to Anna. She was focused on the road ahead but her
mind listened with intent to every word from Anna.

‘Sunday18th May. The barbeque was great fun. We had a
basketball match. The women verse the men. We won. Thanks to the
FBI agent that is working with Mr Montoya. Her name is
Georgina.’

Anna began to falter as her eyes raced ahead reading the next
couple of lines.

‘She is quite beautiful. It was a shame that they had to race
away. Mr Montoya did not return home Saturday. The arguments seem
to be getting worse. They were talking about the man who called on
Wednesday. The voices were angry and his name bounced from both
sets of lips as a tennis ball. Charles.

Monday 19th May. Jo-Lynn has shocked me today. She confided in
me that she was thinking of getting a divorce. She seemed very
upset.’

Georgina continued to drive, taking mental notes. She wasn't
surprised to hear that the Montoya's marriage was going through a
rough patch. She remembered Jo-Lynn's remarks by the hole in the
ground that was going to be the swimming pool. Between Rick's job,
the death of a child and her own time consuming career, Georgina
had figured that something would give. What concerned her though
was the remark's linking them to Charles. She wondered if it was
Charles Fleisher or some other person named Charles. Could it be
co-incidence? But co-incidence was a phenomenon she placed just
above religion in the believability stakes. The large police
precinct appeared in view as she turned the car into Biston
Boulevard. She slowed down on the approach to the underground car
park and swiped her pass card through the reader. The barrier
waited for the electronic instruction to be issued before
rising.

Anna continued reading.

‘May 20th. It would seem that Mr Montoya and the FBI Agent
have caught the Turtle Island killer. There have been a lot of TV
cameras here today. It feels like a dark cloud has lifted from the
island.

The car stopped.

Georgina turned. ‘We're here.’

Jo-Lynn tried to keep moving to stay warm but the skin on the
soles of her feet were soft and splitting from over-exposure to the
water, making walking painful. She hobbled up the short set of
steps and sat near the top by the locked door. At least it was dry
there. Her eyes scanned the room, three chairs, water and a strip
light. The Grand Floridian it wasn’t.

Her mind was working, trying to fathom a way out, wondering
what had happened to her husband, trying to come to terms with what
she had done to deserve this predicament. He had not visited her
for a long time. She couldn’t judge how long, a day, sixteen
hours…eight hours? Bouts of sleep had come in-between, disturbing
any accurate estimate. She tried to comfort herself with the
thought that maybe her husband and son were being held somewhere
dry and warm. She pulled her legs up to her chest to try and gain
extra warmth from them. The soles of her feet scraped against the
rough surface, leaving a smear of blood from the split skin. She
looked around at the door behind her. A flat metal panel faced her,
secured to the frame of the door with rivets. There was no visible
lock or handle and less than a five millimetre gap between the door
and the frame. No way out. She sighed. Near the top of the wall
directly opposite where she sat, about eight feet from the ground
was a metal grill. Too small for a body, it fed the room with its
supply of fresh air. To the left was a standpipe with tap attached.
There seemed to be no way out other than through the door. Jo-Lynn
shivered, cold air danced over her spine, chilling her.

7-52pm. Barbara Dace ran up the stairs to the third floor and
along the slim corridor. Her breathing laboured as she cursed her
twenty a day habit. Two clear glass doors lay ahead; she pushed
through one and entered the open office. Small blocks of desks, or
working units as they were known in management speak, occupied
virtually every available space, leaving small paths in-between to
walk from A to B. On each desk was at least one computer monitor.
The room was alive, a hubbub of activity and noise. The air
bristled with excitement; it virtually jumped off the walls like
forked lightning ricocheting in a box.

Chris Hurley was the first to notice her arrival.

‘Thank God you’re here.’ Hurley ran across the room to greet
her. He pulled her along to her workstation and sat her down behind
her already glowing PC.

‘How long we got?’ Barbara asked. It was a general question,
which somehow in the melee obtained an answer.

‘Seven minutes.’ Hurley’s personal assistant answered. He was
at another computer with a large group gathered around.

Hurley bit into his lip. ‘Shit. Not long. Right, listen
Barbara; this is what’s happening. We got E-Mail earlier today; at
first we thought it was from some crank. He said he was the Turtle
Island killer’s agent and that his client wanted an interview with
you tonight. We were going to dismiss it but he gave us a web site
to check out.’ Hurley shivered as the image of its contents
replayed in his head. ‘What you can see on the screen at the moment
are some link pages from the site.’

Barbara looked at the screen. ‘His agent?’ She said
incredulously.

‘I know. Wesley Timms. Apparently he doesn’t know where this
psycho is, but has made contact via the Internet. Our lawyers
inform us that he hasn’t even broken the law.’

‘Glory be the new revolution.’

The Death cam page had been accessed. The live feed showed a
woman, partially clothed, crouched on a set of stairs asleep.
Barbara turned.

‘That's...’

‘Jo-Lynn Montoya.’ Hurley interjected. ‘And there's worse to
come.’

He scrolled up the page to the hit counters and the pictures
of Rick, Jo-Lynn and Ray. Under Jo-Lynn’s name was a figure of one
hundred and eighty thousand, three hundred and thirty four followed
by a button that read YES. Barbara quickly read the
page.

‘Four minutes.’ Hurley's PA shouted.

‘On some of the other pages there are short films of him
torturing and killing some of his victims. He's somehow set up a
whole site dedicated to his crimes and managed to get it on search
engines and linked to various other sites, Christ he’s even got
sponsors. The count under Jo-Lynn's name has increased by over
fifteen thousand in the past half hour.’ Hurley leaned over
Barbara's shoulder, moved the mouse pointer onto the file heading
marked open and clicked. A small box appeared on the screen.
Reading from a printed piece of paper he copy typed a web address
and clicked Okay.

‘Two and a half minutes.’

‘Is this thing set up properly?’ Hurley asked. His question
aimed at the desk with his PA.

‘It's working fine.’

Barbara noticed for the first time the small triangular object
on top of her PC. A small lens in the centre reflected light in a
multitude of subdued colours. For someone who spent most of her
working day staring in to a lens, Barbara felt distinctly
uncomfortable.

‘Is this what I think it is?’

‘He only wants to speak to you. This is going to be the
biggest thing that has happened to this station since....’ Hurley
was lost for a comparison.

‘One minute.’

The computer linked to the web address. The title 'DEATHCAM'
confirmed the location. A small orange highlighted box stood out
from the black background. Static fuzz filled the box.

‘Thirty seconds.’

‘Why has he chosen me?’

‘Who knows? You're a local media celeb. Maybe he’s very
parochial.’

Barbara laughed blackly.

‘Ten seconds.’ Hurley’s PA began a countdown.

Barbara took a gulp of water from a plastic cup, which had
thoughtfully been placed by her computer. From the corner of her
eye she could see John Keller moving closer. His camera perched on
his shoulder to record the event.

‘Five...four...three...two...one.’

Barbara drew on her breath to steady her nerves. She knew that
this was the opportunity of a lifetime, possibly an award winning
opportunity. Reporter of the year had been awarded for less. She
stared at the small static area on the computer monitor.

‘Maybe he doesn't keep eastern time.’ Hurley’s PA
quipped.

The foggy dancing white balls of interference suddenly cleared
and an image began to form. Barbara could feel the nerves in the
pit of her stomach jumping and pulsing. The picture became clear
though it was like watching an old silent movie. He was sitting in
a chair. The light around him was dull. When he moved forward the
image on Barbara's monitor jerked as the processor struggled to
assimilate all the information. He was wearing a black ski mask.
The whites of his eyes shone through the darkness, staring and
intense. The resolution of the image was too poor to see eye colour
but they appeared to be dark, almost black.