With that, she slapped the cuffs on Traylor’s wrists as Porter stood motionless, his hand still frozen by his hip where his gun still remained holstered.
Mackenzie looked at the plastic bag and was sickened by what she was pretty sure was on the USB drives inside. There were eleven of them in all. After some harsh interrogation, they’d discovered that these USBs were what Traylor had been going for when he’d made the mistake of trying to dash past Mackenzie.
“Hot damn,” Nelson said, looking a bit too happy as Clive Traylor was placed into the back of a police cruiser. “It’s not the arrest I wanted today, but I sure will take it.”
A little less than an hour had passed since Traylor had denied being involved in anything suspicious. In that hour, his laptop had been confiscated and his history had been recovered. Several USB drives had also been found in the house, filled with photos and videos. With what was found on his computer, including websites visited in the last two days, and the USB drives, Clive Traylor had been in possession of more than five hundred images and twenty-five videos of child pornography. More than that, he was selling the files online. The most recent transaction had been to an IP address in France for a sum of two hundred dollars – a transaction that had been confirmed by Traylor’s bank.
Clive Traylor had been nowhere near the cornfield where Hailey Lizbrook had been killed two nights ago. Instead, he had been online, distributing child pornography.
When Mackenzie had seen the icon for incognito browsing software on Traylor’s home screen and then the box for IP-blocking hardware in Traylor’s hallway, she had been able to put the pieces together. The fact that Traylor was a known sex offender had made the equation all the easier to solve.
Nelson was standing with Mackenzie and Porter while Traylor was driven away.
“We think we just touched the surface of this,” he said. “Once we can get past that software he had installed, I think we’re going to find a hell of a whole lot more. Damn good work, you two.”
“Thanks, sir,” Porter said, clearly at odds with taking the praise that Mackenzie mostly deserved.
“By the way,” Nelson said, looking directly at Mackenzie now, “I sent some guys to the shed out back. There was nothing there – just some unfinished handmade stuff – a bookshelf, a few tables, things like that. I even had them check the poles behind the shed and it turns out they’re made of pine, the same as the stuff he’s building. So it was just a huge coincidence.”
“I was sure this was the guy,” Porter said.
“Well, don’t let this set you back,” Nelson said. “The day is young.”
Nelson left them, heading over to speak with the tech crew that was working on getting deeper into Traylor’s laptop.
“That was sharp thinking in there,” Porter said. “I would have missed both of those things – the software on his computer and the hardware box.”
He sounded depressed, almost sad.
“Thanks,” Mackenzie said, a little uncomfortable. She wanted to tell him how she had come to her conclusions but figured that would only irritate him. So she kept quiet, as always.
“Well,” Porter said, clapping his hands together as if the matter were now totally resolved. “Let’s get back to the station and see what else we can dig up on our killer.”
Mackenzie nodded, taking her time to get into the car. She looked back to Clive Traylor’s house and the shed in the backyard. She could see the ends of the poles from where she stood. On the surface, yes, this had seemed like a sure thing. But now that it had turned out to be something else entirely, she was again faced with the fact that they were pretty much back to square one.
There was still a killer out there and with each minute that passed, they were giving him another chance to kill again.
CHAPTER EIGHT
As a boy, one of his favorite pastimes was to sit out on the back porch and watch their cat stalk around the yard. It was particularly interesting whenever it came upon a bird or, on one occasion, a squirrel. He’d watched that cat spend up to fifteen minutes stalking a bird, toying with it until it finally pounced on it, tearing out its neck and sending its little feathers into the air.
He thought of that cat now, as he watched the woman arrive home from yet another night at work – a place of employment where she stood up on a stage and pandered her flesh. Like that cat from his childhood, he had been stalking her. He’d nixed the idea of taking her at her workplace; the security was tight and even under the murky glare of the early morning streetlights, there was too much of a chance of getting caught. Instead, he’d waited in the parking lot of her apartment complex.
He parked directly in front of the stairs on the far right side of the complex, as those were the ones she used to go to her apartment on the second floor. Then, after three o’clock, he’d climbed those stairs and waited on the landing between the first and second flight of stairs. It was poorly lit and dead quiet at this time of the night. Still, as a decoy, he had an old cell phone that he would quickly place to his ear and pretend to talk into if someone happened to pass him.
He’d followed her for two nights now and knew that she’d get home sometime between three and four in the morning. On both of the occasions where he had followed her and parked on the opposite side of the street, he had only seen one person use those stairs between three and four in the morning, and they had been clearly drunk.
Standing on the landing, he had seen her car pull up and he now watched as she got out. Even dressed in street clothes, she seemed to flaunt her legs. And what had she been doing all night? Showing those legs, making men yearn.
She approached the stairwell and he brought the phone to his ear. A few more steps and she’d be right in front of him. He felt his calf muscles tightening, waiting to spring, and he once again thought of his childhood cat.
Hearing the light sounds of her footfalls below, he started pretending to talk. He spoke quietly but not in a conspiratorial way. He thought he might even give her a smile when she showed up.
And then she was there, coming up around the landing, heading for the second flight of stairs. She glanced at him, saw that he was occupied and looked harmless, and gave him a little nod. He nodded back, smiling.
When her back was to him, he acted quickly.
His right hand went into his jacket pocket, pulling out a rag that he had soaked in chloroform seconds before getting out of the car. He used his other arm to wrap around her neck, dragging her backwards and off of her feet. She was only able to let out a tiny little yelp of surprise before the rag was pressed against her mouth.
She struggled immediately, biting down and somehow managing to dig into his pinky. Her bite was hard and he was sure she had bitten clean through his finger at first. He pulled back for just a moment, but it was enough for her to get away from him, wrenching away from the grip he had applied around her neck with the crook of his left arm.
She started up the stairs and let out a whimper. This whimper, he knew, would evolve into a scream in no time. He dove forward, reaching out and grabbing that silken bare leg. The stairs struck him in the chest and stomach, knocking the wind from him, but he was still able to pull hard at her leg. With a desperate little cry, she went falling to the ground. There was a shuddering crack as her face struck the stairs.
She went limp and he instantly crawled up the stairs to get a closer look. She’d struck her temple on the stair. Surprisingly, there was no blood, but even in the weak light, he could tell that a knot was already starting to form.
Moving quickly, he put the cloth back into his pocket, finding that she had gnawed into his pinky pretty good. He then picked her up and found that there was no sturdiness in her legs. She had been knocked out cold.