The Aftermath

22

"We'll check for a blood match with your mother Mr. Blake." Detective Redman told Tom on the phone, "And I strongly advise that where ever your family is that they remain where they are, until we have this person."

"I've already called them and that is the plan at this point," Tom agreed. "What about tracing this email back to the sender?"

"That probably won't happen," Redman admitted. "We'll get a warrant of course and send it over to Yahoo to see what they can do, but with all of the publicly available Internet access points in and around San Diego, as well as freely available things like onion-routers, it will not amount to much. We will leave the account he is using active, to keep communication open."

"Should I write him back?" Tom asked.

"That is up to you, but I strongly advise against it for right now. You never know what will antagonize a person of this nature." Redman pointed out.

"What should I do?" Tom asked.

"Nothing. This is our job Mr. Blake," Redman told him. "I know it is difficult, but really, the less you do the better."

Tom sighed and leaned back in his chair.

"Look," Redman said, "I'll call you as soon as there is any change, or we find out anything new. I understand what is at stake. Let us do our job. Honest, we're good at catching bad guys."

"Alright. I'll have my phone with me." Tom agreed.

It was an easy agreement to make, Tom decided as he hung up his phone. He really didn't have any idea of what to do in order to catch this guy, no idea of where to start. Despite what this person calling himself the Coroner Killer said, Tom wasn't a hunter. He did, however, know a hunter.

Tom's next call was to Kemp Simmons. After running down the information of the email and forwarding a copy of it to Kemp's address, Kemp said, "This is some serious shit doc."

"Yeah," Tom agreed, "Any thoughts?"

"Maybe." Kemp murmured, "You called detective Redman already, right?"

"First thing." Tom admitted.

"Good." Kemp said absently, "Look, we can go after this guy if you want."

"You don't sound too sure about that." Tom observed.

"No, no, I'm just thinking doc." Kemp told him. "It takes some man power to do something like this. First thing, don't go near your wife for a while. He's probably watching you, tailing you. I would guess he has help as well."

"How you figure?" Tom asked.

"Well, look at your house. First of all it was a day job." Kemp pointed out. "You are laid off, your wife is a house wife, right?"

"Yeah."

"Well, he had to be staking the place out, and then following you when you left the house, keeping an eye on you while someone trashed the place." Kemp reasoned.

Tom scratched the back of his neck, "Alright."

"Another thing, I have an inside guy at the Oceanside Police station, and they found puke just outside the house where your mom was killed. The guard that found your mom said he puked in the bathroom, and none of the officers on the scene puked. So, either the guy that cut her up couldn't stand what he was doing, or someone else was there," Kemp told him. "Now, according to the reports from the scene, there were no hesitation marks on your mom's body. Straight cuts, professional like. That's the story I'm getting."

"So you are saying it is two of them. One of them conditioned and the other fresh to this sort of thing." Tom reasoned.

"Exactly. So, two men, or we can be political and say persons, but I'm betting they are both men." Kemp told him.