He finished with, ‘One victim was left in situ, the other two are still unaccounted for. Two fingers were taken from each victim, one ante-mortem and one post-mortem. The two missing victims had both been anaesthetised.’
‘Anaesthetised? That’s some fucked-up shit you’ve got going on over there, Sergeant Poe.’
‘Tell me about it.’
‘And you think this asshole’s not operating remotely?’
‘We know he’s been here as the single-board computers were all placed locally. When is up for debate. My IT specialist says they could have been there for months, years even.’
‘Do you have anyone for the murders yet?’
‘A brother and sister.’
‘And let me guess. They both copped to things you hadn’t even known about but vehemently deny murdering anyone.’
‘Pretty much,’ Poe admitted.
‘How’d you identify them?’
Poe was about to say ‘good police work’ but managed to stop himself.
‘There was … evidence,’ he said carefully.
‘Solid?’
‘Yes.’
‘But not easily found?’
‘No. We had to work for it.’ I had to climb a bloody tree, he almost added.
‘So you were more likely to have faith in it.’
Poe said nothing. The thought had crossed his mind a couple of times. Human nature meant that evidence you worked for tended to be trusted more than evidence that came easily.
‘What did you have?’
‘A kite we traced back to the brother was found in a tree overlooking one victim’s house and a piece of paper found in his bin matched documents left at the deposition sites.’
‘Careless of him.’
‘It was.’
‘Maybe too careless.’
‘As I said, there are similarities,’ Poe said.
Melody Lee sighed. ‘Sergeant Poe, I think it’s about time I told you about a man who calls himself the Curator …’
Chapter 48
‘It didn’t even start as a rumour,’ Melody Lee said. ‘More like the rumour of a rumour. I’d picked up this guy outta Boston on a racketeering charge and he tried to sweeten the DA’s deal with some bullshit story about a fixer for hire. Calls himself the Curator because of the way he goes about his business. All long-arm. Never gets involved directly so he can’t be caught via traditional law enforcement methods. He supposedly uses online tools to manipulate vulnerable kids into doing what needs to be done.’
‘He’s a contract killer?’ Poe said.
‘He didn’t think so. He claimed that this guy was more of a problem solver. For the right price he offers bespoke solutions to whatever mess you’ve gotten yourself into. Manipulates a hacker into planting kiddie porn on the computer of the man who dumped you, fixes a DUI by getting some kid to burn down the lab storing the blood sample. That type of thing. Even if the person is caught, there’s no link back to him. And therefore absolutely no way back to the person who hired him.’
‘Murders?’