Purification

Chapter 8
Short on Time

Chapter Description: The full extent of the madman's plan becomes clearer.

It took two hours for the biohazard team to declare the apartment safe. Scott headed over as soon as he heard it was clear. He’d already seen the whole AOS team being carted away drooling all over themselves. He felt anger at the chief for that one, but also at himself. If he’d thought about the camera earlier he might have been able to save them. Now he searched the apartment for any clues to what this mad man was planning next.

“He was definitely here for a while,” someone commented to Scott as he examined the trip wire.

Looking up from the wire Scott saw that it was the North Shore detective, Dan Mower. “How can you be sure of that?” Scott asked.

“The victim’s cell phone and Facebook page. He’s been posting regular updates about travelling Asia and Africa on Facebook. But he hasn’t used his cell phone since texting friends about his sudden decision to travel. That was three months ago.”

“And nobody noticed this guy was missing? How is that possible?” Scott asked, horrified.

The detective just shrugged. “I dunno, makes you think, eh? All I know is he’s been in nappies for three months now.”

“So who the hell was he and what did he do to piss our guy off?”

“Well it seems he worked for the major erotica expo they hold here every year.”

Scott shrugged. “Yeah, a lot of people work for them. What made this guy so special?”

Mower grinned. “Well Mr. Kingi wasn’t just some lowly employee running a stall on vibrators or something. He was the organiser of the Boobs on Bikes parade.”

Scott nodded sorrowfully. Now he understood why Kingi had been made to suffer. The Boobs on Bikes parade was an annual Auckland tradition to advertise the Erotica Expo. Porn stars and exotic dancers from the US, Australia and NZ all came to Auckland and rode on a pack of Harley Davidsons up Queen Street, the heart of the business district. As the name implies, all the women rode topless, boobs fully exposed. Unlike the US, New Zealand had no laws against women being topless in public. But New Zealand wasn’t Europe either. Most nude bathers stuck to secluded nude beaches and many people found the Boobs on Bikes parade the height of offensiveness. It looked like this time the organiser pissed off the wrong guy.

“Man, I can’t believe showing a little flesh got this guy in so much trouble,” Scott mused.

“You don’t know the half of it,” Mower replied.

“What do you mean?”

“We found restraints in the bedroom and lots of other crazy shit like gags and handcuffs.”

“Why would he need to restrain him? The poor guy couldn’t count to three let alone figure out an escape plan.”

“That’s the thing. I think Kingi was held here for weeks or maybe even months before our guy screwed up his mind.”

Scott felt physically sick at the very thought. “You mean he was being held here and forced to behave like a baby, but still had an adult mind?”

“Looks like it. I think he was using the guy to get info on heaps of the other victims. Y’know, their addresses, phone numbers and such. Using Kingi’s cell to text them to meet-ups then abducting them and wiping their minds. He used this guy to take down a lot of the sex industry.”

“Y’know when they legalised the whole sex industry, prostitution and all back in ’05, I wasn’t so sure if it was a good idea. I mean I never liked bottom-feeders like Kingi. But nobody deserves that mate!”

Mower nodded. “Yeah I’d say the nicest thing our suspect did to this guy was to finally turn his brain to mush. At least after that the poor guy would have been happy to wallow in his own filth and eat baby food with his fingers.”

Scott did his best to shake the disturbing image from his mind. “Okay, did you find anything else?”

“Yeah, we did actually. There was this shipping order from some chemical lab company. He seems to have fooled them into thinking he was a doctoral student at a university doing some chemistry experiments.”

“Do we know what chemical it was?” Scott asked.

“Yeah, it was a match to one of the ingredients in the samples we’ve gotten from his victims. But here’s the thing, I’m not a chemist, but I can tell you that a shipment of this size means he was making a whole shitload of this stuff.”

“When was the delivery?”

“Last week, Friday.”

“Thanks,” Scott told the North Shore detective, then headed out to the living room to talk to the chief. The poor guy still looked shell-shocked by all that had happened that day.

“Chief, I think we have a situation,” Scott told the man, gravely.

“A situation? What the hell is that supposed to mean? We’re already in a pretty damn bad situation as it is.”

“According to Mower, the suspect has obtained enough of one ingredient in his mix to make a massive amount of the mind-wiping agent. I don’t know if he has the rest of the ingredients but I doubt he’d be playing the game this way if he didn’t.”

The chief’s face went even paler than usual. “So what is this all about then? Why did he lead us here? I need answers Scott.”

“I think it’s all about distraction. He wants to get caught, I’m sure of that, but not until after his big finale. That’s why he’s giving us all the clues to lead us to him, but keeping us just busy enough to get away with it. How long did it take us to get in this apartment after the AOS team got hit?”

“About two hours,” one of the other detectives answered.

“Exactly, long enough for him to put whatever plan he has into action. He wants to carry it out but then get caught so he gets all the credit. He’s a religious nut, so he thinks people will understand, he thinks he’s a hero.”

“So what do we do now Detective Newcomb? He’s been toying with you more than anyone. You’ve been given the clues, so what is his next move?” the chief asked.

“I’ve been thinking about it and I’m almost certain his next target is the water supply. Graham said that he’d spoken of a cleansing flood and I can’t think of how else he could do it.”

The chief nodded thoughtfully. “Okay Scott let’s go with your idea. We haven’t got anything else to go on anyway. I’ll call the Metrowater people up and find out how secure their facilities are. Let’s try and get one step ahead of this guy instead of one step behind him.”

**

Back at Police HQ the whole crisis team was now assembled around the large map of Auckland again. They’d been joined this time by the new commander of the SGT, the regional commander for the New Zealand Army Territorials and the top engineer for Metrowater. Despite all the high ranking men and women in the room, the chief of detectives was clearly in charge.

“Okay everyone, this here is Brian Mitchell from Metrowater. He’s going to tell us exactly where we need to go to secure the drinking water supply,” the chief announced.

The room had gone silent the moment the chief began to shout in his gruff voice. All eyes focused on the skinny young man the chief was introducing. Mitchell couldn’t have been thirty years old, he barely looked twenty-five. He was thin to the point of gauntness and wore overly large glasses on his long nose. He cleared his throat several times before speaking, clearly uncomfortable about being thrust into the limelight.

“Um, yes, uh, gentleman, I’m here to answer whatever question you, um, have... um... for me,” he stammered.

“Well the only question that I’ve got for you Brian, is whether it is possible to poison the city’s water supply?” Nick Lewis, the commander of the SGT, barked at the timid young man.

The weedy water company engineer didn’t cower at this question but simply replied, “Oh yes, I think that would certainly be possible.”

“Okay then,” the Territorials commander, Colonel Reed, replied, taking the spotlight. “In that case, what is the most likely place for him to strike?”

“Well that would be impossible to say...” Mitchell began.

“Don’t give me that company bullshit. You know where you’re system in weakest,” the colonel snapped.

“It isn’t about weakness! Really it isn’t. The thing is Auckland gets its water from several sources. We have a few small reservoirs in the Hunua Ranges south of the city, an underground aquifer in Onehunga, pipes from the Waikato River, and dams in the Waitakere Ranges to the west of the city,” he explained.

The assembled detectives and military men looked horrified by this revelation. And as the engineer proceeded to show them the locations of the water sources in greater detail using the map, their faces only grew graver. It was a daunting task to secure the water supply. A task that simply seemed, as the engineer himself had said, impossible.

“Okay, okay,” the chief yelled to cut off the fruitless moaning and griping about difficulties. “We know this’ll be tough, but we need to act fast. Half the water comes from the Hunua Ranges so we’ll send the Territorials to secure those reservoirs. The SGT will secure the Onehunga location. Detectives Mower and Cremshaw will take the Waikato treatment plant. Newcomb and Hale will go to the Waitakere damns.”

“Wait, you’re sending us out alone?” Mower demanded.

“I need every available cop to canvas the city warning people not to use the water. We’ll make sure to use radio and TV warnings too but those won’t reach everyone. This guy has a big head start on us. We need to move now.”

“Hold on chief, I have one more question for Mr. Mitchell,” Scott interrupted. Turning to the overwhelmed engineer Scott asked, “If he succeeds in tainting one of the sources will it only reach a section of the city?”

The engineers frowned and shook his head. “No, I’m afraid if he contaminates one source it can easily spread throughout the whole system.”

The Territorials commander summed up what everyone was thinking when he said, “So basically we have to successfully defend every water source and he only needs to breach one, if he hasn’t already.”

“Yes, that’s about the size of it,” Mitchell agreed. “If he taints the system at this time in the afternoon we’d be looking at anywhere from 100,000 to 500,000 people being exposed within four hours.”

For a moment Scott and the others all stood stock still in dumbfounded silence. Then the chief barked, “Well let’s do this thing people!”

Jerked out of his stupor Scott raced for his cruiser. It was time to get this son of a bitch, before he got them all.