Page 8

Connor

The deeper I dug, the more obsessed I became.

The files, the men – it wasn’t random, it couldn’t be, and I had to know why.

For two weeks, I had barely slept.

My days were spent pretending to be a functioning human being at work, whilst my nights bled into obsession.

My apartment became a crime scene of its own – papers scattered across my desk, sticky notes plastered along my walls with victims detailed on each one, all joined to a large question mark with a tangled mess of red string which tried to connect dots that kept fucking refusing to align.

Joe often came over giving me any new information they had found, but it was barely anything at all.

It wasn’t making sense, none of it was, because nothing about this screamed serial killer.

Serial killers were meant to be messy, impulsive, driven by something unhinged in their heads.

But this felt more controlled and precise.

I stared at the files for hours, my eyes burning as I flipped through the case reports, searching for something I’d missed.

Each victim was different – different backgrounds, different ages, different social circles.

The only think they had in common was that they were all men.

Some of them were rich and respected men.

Some were men with influence and promise of bright futures.

I understood that serial killers often stuck to their own little demographic, like Dahmer targeting the LGBTQ community, but other than being men and most of them having money, that’s where their connections ended. They ranged from sport players in their twenties, to businessmen in their forties. Everything I found on these men just showed them to be typical guys, I was missing something. I had to be. I wanted to believe Joe, that this was just some psychopath with a lust for blood, but my gut told me otherwise, and my gut hadn’t been wrong before, and that’s why I needed those confession tapes. Joe had been adamant about me staying away from them, which only made me want them more. I had asked again and again over the course of those two weeks because there had to be something on those videos that the department didn’t want anyone seeing. Something important enough that despite their desperation, they couldn’t bring themselves to release them. I couldn’t hold off any longer, two weeks with nothing more to show than a mess in my apartment and a lingering migraine, I’d had enough.

Hacking into the police departments database wasn’t easy, but it wasn’t impossible either.

Their security system was just your standard system to manoeuvre, something any half decent hacker with a braincell could get into.

Within ten minutes, I was in.

My hands were shaking as I sat staring at the open database before me, it was reckless of me to be doing this, to betray my best friend, to hack into federal files, but I’d stopped caring about crossing lines the second this case started getting under my skin.

My obsession had begun to take over me and when I set my mind to something, I had to do it, I had to complete the task, and I had set my mind on solving this fucking case.

I scrolled through endless files, quite surprised at how well organised it all was.

Each crime labelled by category, petty theft, break ins, you name it, it had its own special file.

But nothing that said ‘confession tapes’.

Clearly, they wanted those buried a little deeper.

I spent a good half an hour scrolling through endless folders, feeling myself getting more irritated with each dead end.

They had to be on here, but where? I stood from my computer exasperated at my lack of findings, pacing up and down the room with irritation scraping at my insides.

If I wanted to keep forbidden tapes on a database, where would I store them.

Of fucking course.

In plain sight.

I rushed to sit back down at my computer, quickly scanning the files before clicking on the one I chose to ignore, thinking it wouldn’t be important: ‘signed off’.

I took a deep inhale before double clicking the file, instantly being met with a password protection alert popping up, asking me for a code.

Bingo.

I hooked up the software already downloaded on my computer that could discover any password or code within minutes and sat back, watching as it did its work.

One of my other friends from college, who was an absolute genius when it came to his hacking abilities, created this software in our final year.

Its not surprise he now works for the FBI, although I’m convinced he actually works for the pentagon and he just isn’t telling me.

I was hoping he forgot he gave me access to his programme, or he’s another person I could be getting in deep shit here.

Access permitted.

I let out a shaky exhale, the file labelled ‘confessions’ sat in front of me, all by itself in one single encrypted folder.

Taking my time, ensuring my tampering didn’t trigger anything in their system, my pulse spiked as I clicked on the oldest dated clip, Warren Davis.

The video opened to a dimly lit basement, a single bulb casting harsh light over the scene.

The man I assumed was Warren sat in a chair, his wrists bound, his face swollen and bloody as his chest heaved.

His sweat was dripping down his temples as he looked past the camera, eyes glassy with fear.

“I—I did it,”

he gasped, voice hoarse.

“I raped her, I hurt her.

I—I deserve this.

I’m sorry.”

A chill crawled up my spine, my stomach churning hearing the words that spilled from his mouth.

I clicked the next one, then the next, each tape was the same, each man confessing to something vile – rape, assault, abuse, whilst being tied down to that same chair in that same basement.

These were crimes that should have put these men behind bars, but from the look of these videos, they clearly never did.

So, I was right, they weren’t random murders pulled off by a crazed, blood thirsty serial killer, they were executions.

But how had I not found something about those men before, something in the news, fuck, even rumours, but there was absolutely nothing.

There were no public allegations, no police records, no arrests, absolutely no public knowledge of this whatsoever, and it didn’t make any fucking sense.

I went back into the police stations main database, and ran a deeper search, looking through sealed records and classified case files, and there it was.

The entire reason why nobody had ever heard about these crimes, the entire reason these men had been fucking untouchable.

Some corrupt bastard working for the police had buried all evidence.

Every single one of these vile men had been accused before, and the reports had been filed, some even having their victims evidence collected, and then? Disappeared, into the deepest parts of the system, with their easily available records wiped clean except for the occasional petty crime like a fight or altercation.

That way, anybody who knew that these men had been involved with the police, saw their files, and would just assume that it was due to small, unimportant crimes listed beneath their names.

But the darkest parts of their files would never been seen in the light of day, stored somewhere nobody would find them.

Each of their victims silenced before they could even get close to the justice they so rightly deserved.

There was another player in this game though, clearly a connection the police hadn’t yet made, because every missing persons original cases traced back to the same law firm.

The law firm in our town that claimed to specialise in representing victims of sexual assault.

Every single asshole and piece of shit that existed in this town had at some point had their names passed through that office.

Unfortunately, someone had been working against these women, someone very high up the ladder was getting paid off by the right people, getting cases dismissed before they saw the light of day.

It wasn’t just the justice system that failed them – it was a well-oiled machine, designed to protect the guilty, constructed by rich, powerful men.

Only now, it seemed someone had decided to start dismantling that very machine, one missing person at a time.

So, this wasn’t just a mindless killer, if that’s what they were, after all, bodies were never found, only reported as missing with gruesome tapes attached.

But I guess it didn’t take a genius to figure out what happened once those tapes stopped rolling.

This was somebody who was going out of their way to deliver justice to the scum of the world that the system failed to.

I leaned back in my chair, running my hands through my hair as I stared at the screen, my heart pounding in my chest.

Fuck.

My hands trembled slightly as I closed the files down, rubbing at my face.

This changed everything, because these men weren’t victims, they were monsters, and someone had made it their very own personal mission to take them out one by one.

I should have been horrified at that realisation, disgusted even.

Instead, a sick sort of admiration curled in my gut, because whoever was behind this wasn’t just killing for the sake of it, they had a moral code and a mission.

And that alone made them even more dangerous.

Who was I to try and stop someone who was doing something for the greater good, illegal or otherwise.

This person wasn’t evil, they were just… morally grey so to speak.

A modern-day Robin Hood, but instead of stealing money from the rich to give to the poor, they were murdering abusers to give their victims a sense of peace.

This was the part where I knew I should walk away from this, turn a blind eye and pretend I knew nothing, maybe even tell Joe that I felt wrong for getting involved with this.

But I wasn’t going to, I couldn’t.

I needed to find out who was doing this, who was the mastermind behind taking away the scum from the streets.

I went into the kitchen to make myself another coffee, setting my mind on the next step that I needed to take.

I needed to see just how deeply the law firm was connected in all of this.

I sat back down, taking a large drink before beginning to dig around.

Justice4You, what an ironic name considering the current events happening right under their noses.

Their database was just as easy, if not easier, to access than the police’s.

Christ, after I figured out who was doing this, maybe I’d teach these places how to set up decent protection on their systems, who knows what kinds of crazy assholes could be lurking about.

I looked through the files of cases first, typing in each missing mans name to ensure I was right, making sure that every single one of them had come through this office, and they had.

Only this time, their files weren’t clean, only marked as dismissed.

Each one of their files detailed the depraved acts they had carried out, some files being pages long, with multiple victims.

I felt sick, my palms starting to slick with sweat as I read the inhumane things these men had done.

I had to pause and calm myself down when I got to the pages that had their victims’ testimonies.

Some of these men had so much evidence piled against them and yet they somehow still managed to walk free, unscathed by the system whilst their victims had to deal with lasting trauma.

I couldn’t begin to imagine how those women felt hearing that their cases had been dismissed, how despite reliving their horrific stories in hope for justice, they were shut down and told there was nothing that could be done. I was furious, outraged, and absolutely devastated for these women. The system was fucked. I closed down the files, taking a deep breath. I couldn’t read anymore, I couldn’t look at one more sentence that described the depravity of these men, so I moved on to the employee files. It was a small firm with only thirty or so people working there, a handful of lawyers, HR, assistants. Nobody that really stood out and screamed ‘serial killer’. But I suppose if serial killers looked a certain way it would make life a whole lot easier.

But those employee files were exactly how I found her.