“Wait, what?”
“All you need to be a police officer in the United States is the equivalent of a high school diploma and be a citizen. That’s it. You can be disqualified for having a record, but the base requirements aren’t all that much. The various departments and cities are responsible for the training of officers.”
“That’s it?”
“What, do you want to be a cop?”
“Well, not particularly, but I didn’t think I was qualified. I thought I needed a degree or something.”
“No, no degree is required.”
Huh. I clicked on Loureni’s basic profile, ignored the cover letter swearing legal death, doom, and destruction if I misused the information present in the file, and began reading about the man. His monthly salary beat my yearly pay as a customer service slave, and I sighed over the unfairness of it all.
“That was rather heartbroken. What’s wrong with my little lynx?”
“The potential serial killer asshole makes more in a month than I do in a year, and I’m so much more useful than he is. People need working internet. The world needs potential serial killer assholes to be evicted from life in a swift and brutal fashion.”
“Would you like me to rub your back tonight and massage your scalp? Will that help you get over his salary?”
“Yes, if you wouldn’t mind.” I continued to read. “He’s forty, he has a degree in business of some sort, and he manages people who manage people who make money for other people. I’m assuming that’s what an upper management in stock investments person does.”
“That is actually a pretty good summary, yes. He also oversees various intellectual properties of the company he works for. He’s a candidate to become a member of the board, but he doesn’t quite have the right image for it.”
“Right image?”
“House, wife, kids, and perfect life. A lot of these companies want their visible board members to maintain the appearance of upstanding individuals.”
“Doesn’t that make him less likely to be a candidate if he’s a serial killer who murders pregnant women and steals the babies?”
“The killings have been happening over a period of eight years, which falls in line with his initial promotion to upper management. The investigation records I’ve read so far state that it is usually a ten year promotional gap from his position to the board. That would give him plenty of time to cherry pick the perfect kid from the batch—and it implies he has a woman in the wings who will play the part of his wife. Anything that fits the narrative he wants the corporation to see. Becoming a board member would significantly increase his personal wealth, which is a fairly strong motive. The interviews the FBI has conducted offer some other clues.”
“Such as?”
“He has been a lobbyist for one woman, one child laws in the United States, modeled after large-population countries around the world. The lobbyist group he’s a part of wants all women to undergo mandatory sterilization after the birth of her first child.”
My mouth dropped open, and I scrolled through the file in search of any references to the lobbying group. Sure enough, I found references in the general notes section, and I went to a browser to look up the group. “He touches my momma, and they’ll be using tweezers to pick him out of the treetops, Sebastian.”
“When I saw that notation, I figured you would not be happy about that group’s existence. In good news, it’s considered to be a radical religious group, and they do not have the backing they might like. There are too many people who want the multiple kids and white picket fence family image.”
“Except he might get that, he’s just murdering the women and keeping the kids—or worse, cherry picking the kids.”
“The FBI is highly concerned that Loureni is keeping the children to evaluate their temperament, keeping the ones that appeal to his goals, and getting rid of the others. Unfortunately, there’s no sign of any of these kids. We do have a DNA sample of his, which will be useful if we find any children that might be his. We can run the paternity tests if we do find any kids that may be his. If the maternity tests come back positive from the murdered women, then the courts have the legal right to inquire for an angel during the trial.”
“There just needs to be sufficient evidence.” I grunted, reading over the lobbying group’s website. “Have you read this load of shit about this group?”
“The one woman, one child group?”
“Yes.”
“Let’s just say I was roaring for unpleasant reasons over it, and when some of my co-workers wanted to know what was going on, they likewise made similar noises, and eventually, the entire floor got worked up. Yeah, we read about it. Basically, it boils down to people wanting to control women using the guise of overpopulation to do it.”
“Because there isn’t a one man, one child portion of their campaign.”
“Correct. The group also lobbies for a lot of restrictions on women as well, from evaluations on if the woman is healthy enough to have a child, if she is genetically sound, and so on. The men have no such requirements.”
“Can I douse him in gasoline and light him on fire?”
“No.”
“Come on, Sebastian. If this shit is true, he deserves it.”
“The fifty thousand dollars he submitted to them as a donation implies it’s true, but you still have to follow the CDC’s general guidelines on dispatching a bounty, should sufficient evidence be gathered.”
“Well, shit.”
“If you think that’s bad, it gets worse,” Sebastian informed me.
“How could this possibly get worse?”
“The first of his victims, and which is what tipped the FBI off that he might be involved, is his cousin. His first cousin, to be specific.”
“That is disgusting!”
“Yeah. This whole case is disgusting.”
“Just for the record, I did not need to be paid to look into this one. If this is even remotely true, I would have done this one on the house for the sheer enjoyment of wringing the bastard’s neck between my hands.”
“For some reason, you’re not the only one.”
Eleven
I have more than two problems.
We stopped at a motel once on our way back to my home, and we spent the time working. Sebastian made use of his upper connections to ferret out more information on Stefan Loureni while I reviewed the information we had. It turned out the week at the spa hadn’t changed much of anything beyond solidifying Loureni as the top suspect.
We wouldn’t have been able to work until the last day of our retreat anyway. Half of the information we needed had been submitted on our final day in Cincinnati, which meant we would have been waiting around with our hands tied. Despite the mountain of circumstantial evidence surrounding Loureni, the CDC couldn’t make an accusation without more proof—and the government couldn’t approach an angel with an accusation, either.
A team of ten investigators from various branches of law enforcement came to the same basic conclusion. They believed Loureni held significant responsibility for the murders, but none of them could find any proof. Finding the proof was my problem, and I expected I’d be finding proof by following the pattern and seeing what happened while Sebastian went insane trying to figure out how to keep me away from a serial killer when my job required me to get close and personal to put an end to said serial killer.