The Redeemer: Detective Shakespeare Mysteries, #3

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Table of Contents

The Novel

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Acknowledgments

Don't Miss Out!

Thank You!

About the Author

Also by the Author

For my beloved Grandma, Kathleen Kay Kennedy. You will be missed.

1 |

Stephen’s cheek twitched.

Only feet away. Inches. He could reach out right now and throttle the bastard. Or even better, get the penknife in his pocket, and plunge it into the beast’s neck; finish it all in one swift stroke.

But then he’d be the one going to prison.

And there was only one person in this elevator who deserved that.

He shuffled to one side, bumping into a guard escorting the prisoner, the object of his hate, to the courtroom. Why he had been brought up on the same elevator as him, only God knew, the twist of fate that had afforded this opportunity understandable to only the great unknown, but there he stood, just having met with the Assistant District Attorney, who had given him the unbelievable, unspeakable news that the world was about to learn.

His sister’s killer was going free.

Wayne Cooper. The man who had raped his sister for hours, stabbed her thirty-seven times, then raped her dead body for hours more. He sucked in a lungful of air quickly, noisily, at the memory.

So painful.

Cooper turned toward the sound, and when their eyes met, he smiled.

Hello, Steve. Did you hear the good news?

Stephen’s heart slammed against his ribcage. He could hear the blood rushing through his veins as the roar of rage filled his ears. He reached in his pocket and gripped the penknife.

Just one swift stroke, and it would all be over.

But instead he nodded.

Cooper smiled. Good. I’m glad my friends are here. He looked up at the display as it counted down the floors. We should go celebrate after I’m released.

Stephen saw red. Spots appeared in front of his eyes, and he realized he had been holding his breath. He felt slightly lightheaded, the pounding continuing.

He gasped in a lungful of air, clarity returning.

And he pulled the penknife from his pocket. Slowly. Reaching over with his free hand, he extended the blade. It was short, not even three inches, but properly placed, it would do some damage, and if he had enough time, enough luck, it would kill the animal in front of him. He turned his shoulder inward, to position himself so the guard to Cooper’s left couldn’t see his hands.

He stepped forward, the knife rising from his side, his eyes focused on the back of the man’s neck, just at the base of the skull. One direct hit, and it’ll all be over.

The elevator chimed and the door opened, spilling its passengers into the hall. Stephen stood frozen, knife at chest level, his opportunity lost.

And he wasn’t sure if that was a good thing.

Coming, Stephen?

The taunting voice snapped him back to reality, and he stepped out just as the doors were about to close. He dropped the knife into a nearby trash bin, and walked in the opposite direction, toward the public entrance of the courtroom.

See you soon, Stephen! he heard the bastard’s voice call from around the corner. It echoed through the corridor, as if a haunted memory. He looked up and froze.

There was the man whose fault this all was. The man who had lost the evidence that would have assured this bastard’s conviction.

There was Detective Justin Shakespeare, NYPD.

Detective Shakespeare looked up from the bench he sat on when Vincent Vinny Fantino, head of the crime lab, tapped him on the shoulder.

Look, he whispered.

Shakespeare leaned forward to see where Vinny was looking and frowned. It was Stephen Russell, brother to the first victim of Wayne Cooper, a notorious serial rapist and murderer they had taken off the streets five years ago.

And today, thanks to you, he goes free.

I should talk to him.

Are you sure that’s a good idea? If I were him, I’d be hating us right about now.

Us?

Vinny looked at Shakespeare. Yeah, ‘us’. You may have lost the gun—Shakespeare’s chest tightened at the memory—but it’s my evidence they’re tossing today. Vinny shook his head, his cheeks flushing. Fucking justice system. They know damned well the evidence is good, but just because I make a paperwork error, they toss it. Goddamned lawyers. Punish me, but keep the evidence in.

Shakespeare grunted as he pushed on his knees to get himself up, his bones feeling far older than they should, tired of carrying his bulk around. I gotta lose weight.

You okay?

Shakespeare shrugged. Just looking forward to that sweet sweet relief a massive heart attack will bring.

Vinny frowned, looking at Shakespeare, as if trying to figure out whether or not he was joking.

He wasn’t.

But he was.

Ever since his doctor had indicated he might have a problem and scheduled him for testing, every twinge, every discomfort, had him thinking ‘this is it!’. The sad thing was these were the same twinges and pains he had always felt, probably his entire life, and most likely the fitness freaks like Vinny even had them and didn’t think twice. But when your doctor says the left side of your heart may be larger than it should be due to high blood pressure caused by weight and stress, every little thing in the chest area becomes a pending heart attack.

It sucked.

Now he was afraid to even get on the treadmill. His doctor had said not to worry about it—yeah right!—and continue on as before. Try to lose some weight though, and reduce your stress. Shakespeare shook his head at the memory. Doc, diets cause me stress. His doctor had smiled, that all knowing smile doctors seem to have when they don’t want to give you an answer, because they don’t have one.

He looked at Stephen Russell and stepped toward him, but Russell glared at him, then turned on his heel, marching out of sight.

I guess that solves that, said Vinny.

Shakespeare grunted, debating whether or not to sit down again.

The courtroom doors opened, ending the debate.

Let’s go watch our careers tank.

Shakespeare nodded, following Vinny into the courtroom. The decision by the judge hadn’t been made public yet, but everyone ‘in the know’ knew what was about to happen. The evidence, the key piece, a strip of tape with DNA on it, found at the scene of the last victim, had been mislabeled. The wrong apartment number. 401A instead of 410A. And these were the exact type of screw-ups defense attorneys spent days and dollars on finding.

And they had found it.

In a Hail Mary effort they had claimed the DNA evidence against their client had been faked, and requested it be provided for their own testing, using the most recent techniques. The court had agreed, and when the evidence was delivered, they had found the error. And that was all it took. They immediately went to the press, then the court, claiming there was no way to know for certain if the evidence was actually from the crime scene, since it had been five years, and all along it had the wrong address.

It was bullshit, everyone knew it, but since it was the only piece of evidence, what with the gun stolen from Shakespeare’s car, the entire case would fall apart without it.

And the killer of seven women would be set free.

Free to do it all over again.

Shakespeare sat on the bench behind the prosecution’s table, the Assistant District Attorney who had been handling the case since the beginning already there. Vinny slid in beside Shakespeare, followed by Lieutenant Gene Phillips and the DA himself. ADA Susan Turnbull looked over her shoulder and glared at Vinny, then Shakespeare.

Both looked at their shoes.

Lt. Phillips leaned forward slightly, looking at Vinny and Shakespeare. How are you two holding up?

Both shrugged.

Uh huh. Well, as soon as we’re out of here, we’ll reopen the case.

Shakespeare leaned forward.

Who’s lead?

Lt. Phillips looked at him, a slight frown on his face, and Shakespeare knew he was about to lose the case. He didn’t blame him. It had been his fuckup that nearly cost them it in the first place. He was a diabetic. Only none of his co-workers knew it. He had been stuck at the crime scene all day, and when he left with the gun to bring it in for testing, he had felt his blood sugar drop. He knew from past experience if he went hypoglycemic he could slip into a coma and die, so he pulled over to get something to eat. In his confusion caused by the low blood sugar, he had left his car unlocked, and the gun sitting on the passenger seat.

And it had been stolen.

He and Vinny had a rip-roaring fight over it, in public, but Shakespeare had been too ashamed to admit what had really happened. That he had been sick, that he was a diabetic, and that it was because of his weight. The two had barely spoken for five years except to exchange insults, and had only recently patched things up.

And his career had taken a nosedive.

He had basically said ‘fuck it’, and began to coast through life, letting his new partner, Detective Hayden Eldridge, handle things. It wasn’t until Eldridge’s last case that Shakespeare began to reclaim his life, some hope restored by finding a woman who actually loved him, rolls, folds and all.

And he thought he had done quite well since.

He needed this.

He needed this to fully reclaim his life.

LT, I need this.

Phillips’ frown creased his face deeper.

Shakespeare leaned in. You know me. I’m back. I’m my old self again. I need to make this right. It was my fuckup that got us where we are today.

And mine, interjected Vinny.

Let me make this right.

Phillips looked at Vinny, then the DA who said nothing. Turnbull had spun around in her chair, delivering her opinion through narrowed, angry eyes. Phillips looked at Shakespeare.

Fine, it’s yours.

Shakespeare smiled, exchanging a fist bump with Vinny. He held his fist up to the lieutenant and raised his eyebrows. Come on, LT, you know you want to.

Phillips shook his head, a smile breaking out, giving him the love. Turnbull let out a burst of disgust through her lips and turned to face the front of the court.

All rise! ordered the clerk as the judge entered. Shakespeare pushed himself up with a grunt, and by the time he was standing dropped back onto the bench with the announcement of, You may be seated.

He felt a pounding in his chest that wasn’t normal, then the tightness set in. He took a deep breath, closing his eyes, then exhaled slowly. He repeated this a few times.

You okay?

He nodded to Vinny’s question without opening his eyes. Just—deep breath and exhale—relaxing.

Well, you might want to keep those eyes closed.

Shakespeare’s latest exhale stopped and he opened his eyes. Huh?

Vinny jerked his head slightly to indicate the rows behind them. Looks like our fan club is present.

Shakespeare looked over his shoulder and saw the bench behind them occupied by The Seven as he had taken to calling them. One representative for each of the victims. One stalwart who had never missed a day in court, whether it was arraignment, trial, motions. It didn’t matter. The Seven were always there.

And they didn’t like him.

That he knew. He had lost the gun, he had nearly lost the case, and now, he was about to actually lose it. At least now he had Vinny to keep him company in The Seven’s doghouse. He gave Rebecca Sorenson, the sister of the third victim, a nod and turned back to face the front of the court before she could sneer at him, but instead found himself staring at the defendant’s side of the court.

It was packed.

It appeared Wayne Cooper had quite the following. And he did. His mother had sworn he was innocent since the beginning, claiming he had been at home with her every night one of the murders was committed. Her statement was dismissed as that of a mother who would lie to protect her son. The prosecution had blown the alibi to pieces with footage of the house, a humble, unkempt home, where Cooper lived in the basement, his mother upstairs.

A basement which had its own entrance.

The prosecution had successfully convinced the jury that Cooper could have left the house at any time without his mother knowing, and besides, what mother wouldn’t lie to protect her son.

But what Shakespeare had found troubling, in fact most people attached with the case had found troubling, was the enjoyment Cooper seemed to get from the limelight. His mother had set up a Facebook page for him, Twitter accounts, a website—essentially every type of social media she could think of, to garner support. They had fundraised over the Internet, successfully paying for most of his legal fees, but what was truly sickening to those who knew how guilty he was, was the fact that he had tens of thousands of fans on his Facebook page, almost forty thousand followers on Twitter.

It was disgusting.

Shakespeare, by no means tech savvy, had let his girlfriend’s son, Tommy, set up Facebook and Twitter on his phone so he could ‘experience the twenty-first century’. He had taken the opportunity only this morning to check out what this monster had been posting through his mother’s fingers.

Be seeing you all soon! was the last thing Shakespeare had read on the Twitter feed.

Shakespeare’s eyes shifted and he shuddered as he caught Cooper staring at him, a strange look on his face—eyes glazed over, the muscles on his face slack, his head tilted slightly to the side, the left half of his mouth opened a tad more than it should be.

They said it happened during birth. Forceps had damaged his facial muscles, and according to the defense, had led to a life of bullying and heartache. A life of living at home, going out only for school where he was constantly taunted, and church where he was constantly stared at. He rarely left home, except for his morning job of delivering newspapers, which is how the prosecution had tried to show he had met his first victim.

Claire Russell.

She was one of the newspaper’s longtime subscribers, and described as a saint by those who knew her, including her brother, Stephen Russell who sat amongst The Seven, her husband dead just months before her murder. But the defense had blown the newspaper link out of the water, able to show his delivery area ended one block away, and there had been little if any chance he would have ever met her what with him being a near shut-in.

Leaving another widow with no link to her killer.

Shakespeare’s chest tightened even more, leaving him thinking of his own impending doom. If he were to marry Louise, would he leave her a widow in just a few years?

You’re not dead yet. Let it go!

He took in another deep breath as he stared at Cooper, the killer’s attention now on the proceedings that were droning on. Seven victims. Six widows. It had earned Cooper the nickname of The Widow Rapist. Splashed across the headlines of every major rag the city had to offer, vile banners like Widow Rapist Strikes Again!, Widows, Lock Your Doors!, Widows, Remarry Now!

Only Sandra Gray, the last victim, had been married, her husband Carl, a mailman, had come home early in the hopes of surprising his wife. Instead, he walked in on the crime in progress.

And it had caught Cooper off guard.

In his rush from the house he had left his gun before getting a chance to put his customary bullet in the back of her head, something he did to each victim at the end of their ordeal, despite them already being dead. They ran the serial number directly from the crime scene, and traced it to an Eileen Cooper. Detectives Walker and Curtis were immediately sent to the address, and Shakespeare, the lead detective, took charge of the gun, realizing it could be the key to solving the case and linking them all together. All they needed was to fire the weapon in their lab, and match the ballistics to the bullets from the other six crime scenes.

Walker and Curtis interviewed Eileen Cooper as the crime scene continued to be processed. Of course the gun couldn’t be produced, to which she pled ignorance, claiming she never owned a gun. Further interrogation revealed she had a son, Wayne, who lived in her basement. They ran his name and found he was on the sex offender registry, where Cooper had a conviction for propositioning a fifteen year old girl when he was twenty-one. He had spent three years behind bars, and that night was nowhere to be found.

They knew they had their man.

But the gun had been stolen, the only link between all seven crimes.

With the gun stolen, the arrest warrant was denied as the gun evidence was tainted, ‘fruit of the poisonous tree’. So Vinny and his crew had returned to the scene and scoured it again from top to bottom, eventually finding the DNA on a piece of tape holding a broken door jamb in place. And with Cooper in the sex offender’s database, with his DNA on file, they had a match, and the charges were laid.

But for only one murder.

The gun had been used to shoot the first six victims in the head after he had raped and stabbed them repeatedly, his fetish sickening by any standards. But without it to perform ballistics on, they couldn’t prove the link. He hadn’t left any other evidence at any of his previous murders.

And today that single, vital piece of evidence, the lone, solitary link between Cooper and the crime scene, was being tossed due to two transposed digits.

Shakespeare heard the gavel drop and cheers erupt from the other side of the courtroom, along with angry shouts from behind him.

Wayne Cooper stood, a smile on his face as he stared at Shakespeare, mouthing the first words Wayne Cooper would utter as a free man, the system having once again failed the innocent.

Thank you, Detective.

Sam Bishop sat in his car and waited.

It had been two hours since Cooper had been released, and he had yet to make an appearance. The front steps of the courthouse were filled with supporters, protesters and the press. Bishop knew Cooper could have gone out any number of exits, but he was counting on Cooper’s ego to take charge and have him exit where the press was.

But two hours?

Bishop shifted in his seat, his bladder demanding attention. He had assumed Cooper would sign some paperwork and leave, which was why when the verdict was announced, he had left the courtroom immediately to get his car.

When he left, his motivation was clear. He was going to follow Cooper home and kill him. Justice had to be served. But as the rage cooled, the fantasy encounter in his head, where he surprised Cooper and beat the living shit out of him before killing him by stabbing him seven times, one for each victim, turned. The fantasy began to change, and Cooper would gain the upper hand, and Bishop himself would be the one killed.

It had been enough to cool his jets.

Now the plan was just to find out where he would be staying, then report back to the others. Together they would decide what needed to be done. He sighed, closing his eyes. The group. The Seven. He had heard them called that. Initially at the trials there had been a large number of people for each victim attending the trial, but it had dragged on, and when the charges were tossed due to lack of evidence for the other six victims, most had left in outrage.

But not The Seven.

They had been more than seven initially, even after the dismissal of the other six cases. There had been about twenty of them, but over the months it had dwindled down to the seven of them, one person determined to keep the attention on Cooper for their respective loved one. And over the years, the five long years, they had become close.

Very close.

They were their own support group. No one could understand what they had been through better than each other. When one was feeling down, feeling lost, feeling scared, a message merely needed to be sent on Facebook and immediately the others would stop what they were doing and begin to chat online. Or if someone really needed that human touch, a text message, a phone call, was all that was needed and they could count on the other six arriving to help them out.

They had become friends. They had become family.

Several had even moved to New York to be closer. New York, being the type of city it was, attracted people from all over the country, and the world, so seven random victims had little chance of all being born and raised in New York.

He was fortunate in that he lived here. He had moved in with his twin sister after the death of her husband in a freak accident to help her get back on her feet. She had been devastated by his death.

A feeling he now knew too well.

His chest tightened.

Pam!

His eyes burned with tears as they escaped and ran down his cheeks. Desperately he tried to remember her face during happier times, but he couldn’t. All he could picture was her naked body, lying half on the bed, her legs draped over the side, her backside exposed, and the dozens of stab wounds to her back, some pre-mortem, some perimortem, but most post-mortem.

Her hair had been matted in blood, her face turned to the side, away from the door. When he had entered the room and found her body, he had rushed to the bed and flipped her over. Her face was covered in blood, her features almost unrecognizable from the beating she had taken before the rape had begun.

He had collapsed on the floor, holding her, trying to clean the blood and hair from her face, screaming for someone to help him for almost half an hour before the police had stormed into the house, a neighbor finally having called.

They had to pry him away from her, and in one last indignity, had handcuffed him and placed him inside a cruiser until the detectives arrived to sort things out.

And now, even after five years of staring at family photos, wedding photos, vacation photos, candid photos, he still couldn’t picture her  when his eyes closed, without seeing the bloody corpse he had discovered.

And for that Wayne Cooper had to pay.

He had no idea if the death of Cooper would allow him to move on, to put the past behind him, but he did know one thing for certain. As long as Wayne Cooper was a free man, any hope Bishop had for recovery was lost.

He opened his