Imagine

By Terry L. White

Officer Sharon Scott is fresh out of the Academy. Her partner, Detective Harry Yates resents her intrusion into his chauvanist male world almost as much as he hates computers. When a serial killer's activities are linked to Internet use, his world is plunged into confusion as they race with time to save the killer's final victim.

ISBN 1-59431-264-8 Mystery/Suspense

Cover Art/Maggie Dix

Also available in RTF and HTML formats.

Chapter 1



Clancy Morgan was dead. He sagged over his keyboard, salt and pepper hair just brushing the monitor which displayed a popular browser and a small side menu on which several icons blinked. He was dressed only in plaid boxer shorts. A drink with a few tiny slivers of remaining ice was still half full, and a partly smoked cigarette had burned down to the filter without being moved in the overflowing carved agate ashtray. His right hand rested quietly on the mouse and the handle of a large kitchen knife protruded from his back just under his left shoulder.

"Don't touch anything," Detective Harry Yates glanced around Morgan's study with a practiced eye. He took in the dusty floor and unmade bed with a glance and moved toward the corpse, careful not to brush against the piles of paper on a table near the corpse's left elbow.

His partner, Sharon Scott was just out of the academy. It was her first homicide, and she bravely swallowed back the bile that rose in her throat at the sight of her first dead body. She was quite pale under a mop of frenzied auburn curls, but she shook her head fiercely and snapped on a pair of latex gloves before moving closer to the primary crime scene.

"What's that?" Yates jerked a thumb toward the blinking icons.

"I ... Um. I'm not sure, Sir." Scott stepped around a puddle of blood and bent closer to the monitor. From her new perspective, directly over the last remains of Clancy Morgan, she read the names on the chat menu. "Roseanne, Dolores, Hetty, Cara and .... um Melusene? That's a new one on me, Sir," she said and backed away, suddenly nauseated by the scent of newly-spilled blood. Her throat worked, but she didn't drop or run. She was determined to be a good cop if it killed her -- and tonight, it just might.

"Call the station," Yates flipped the corners of the manuscript with the tip of his pen. "See if they can get a computer man over here before the shift ends," he ordered. "Then go on outside and show him how to get up here when he arrives."

Yates were none too pleased to have a rookie at his elbow, especially a female rookie. But he was stuck with this one ever since Frank Tucker took a bullet in his knee two weeks before. Frank would have his choice of a desk job or retirement when he got out of the hospital since he was more than 50, but Harry had eight long years to serve before he could think of turning in his shield.

Harry Yates was tall, well over six feet, and he had a rough-hewn, blue-eyed Irish face that had long since failed to register emotions at scenes like this. He came in and did his job, and he didn't lose any sleep over the blood and brains. If he had a heart, it had long since grown armor. His suit was perpetually rumpled, although originally of good quality, his shoes were scuffed and unpolished, and his tie yanked down crookedly from the original knot. He hadn't slept in a day and a half, and he could have told you without looking the full moon was waning. That was when all the crazies came out, when the full moon waned..

He poked around delicately with his pen, lifting sheets of paper and letting them fall in place once more. As far as he could guess, Morgan must have been working on a book. It looked like a mystery of all things.

Harry Yates wished all the light-in-the-loafers writers would stay the hell out of his business. If you asked him, they didn't know shit from Shinola about police procedure, and did a hell of a lot more harm than good when their books got turned into movies, which all too often glorified the bad guys and made the detectives look like bumbling idiots who only managed to solve a crime by tripping over the evidence in the dark.

He wouldn't give you the time of day for a computer, either.

But he waited patiently enough until Officer Scott led Eddie Fox, the station's computer tech back up the stairs to Morgan's bedroom a half hour later. The rookie and the geek were followed closely by a forensic photographer, the coroner and a couple of paramedics.

"Get plenty of pictures," Yates snapped and moved out of the photographer's line of sight. He motioned the reedy computer tech closer. "What are all those blinking lights?"

The tech couldn't get close to Morgan's monitor, but he recognized the chat program. "That's Imagine," he told his superior. "It's linked to one of those dating sites. Allows people who want to meet an opportunity to talk back and forth real time."

The photographer finished his roll of film and loaded his camera to take some environmental shots. Pretty soon Yates was seeing baseballs when he blinked.

"How's it work?" he hunkered down almost under the corpse's feet and nudged a piece of lint from the dark carpet into a plastic bag with the tip of his pen. He got really close, but he didn't touch the body.

The tech scratched his head. He had a flaming case of acne and greasy long hair. He didn't look twenty, but that's the way it was with computer guys. They grew up in the technology, not like Yates who struggled with his PC every time he had to turn in a report. "The people who use the program pick and choose from a long list of possible dating partners who list their qualifications and desires. They communicate by email at first, and later may agree to use the Imagine site to talk back and forth. Those blinking lights you see indicate incoming messages."

Yates squinted at the Imagine menu over the corpse's shoulder. There were five icons blinking, and below that, at least another dozen names -- all women's names. Fox whistled dryly. "Must'a been some Romeo," he said in stingy admiration.

"His wife just pulled in the yard," Scott announced from the doorway. "What do you want me to tell her?"

"Tell her not to come up here," Detective Yates sighed and stifled a yawn. "I'll be down to talk to her as soon as I can."

He turned back to mutter a conversation with the tech. The coroner was scribbling on a clipboard and the paramedics were getting ready to bag the body. A couple of officers had come in and were dusting for fingerprints. Scott was downstairs with the wife, who was screaming her head off. It was going to be a long night.

"What about all those women?" Yates asked the tech.

Fox leaned in close to the computer monitor again and scribbled something on a small pad. "They would be using aliases," he said after a moment's thought. "Most people don't use their real names in this sort of situation. You never know when you might run into a serial killer or an axe murderer." He chuckled nervously and nodded toward the corpse.

As a rule, computer techs don't get to do crime scenes.

Yates scowled at the computer. "How did we find out about this one?"

"We got a call, sir," Scott spoke from the bedroom door. "From the look of the wife's face when I told her, she didn't know anything about it. She wants to see him."

"Where was she?"