Free Midnight Rambler by James Swain Page B

to the evil of “Midnight Rambler.”
    The song was six minutes and fifty-two seconds long and had four distinct tempo changes, each rapidly building upon the next. I could not hear it played without imagining a terrified woman running for her life.
    “Two and a half years ago, I went to an apartment complex in Fort Lauderdale where a prostitute named Chantel Roberts lived,” I began. “I'd known Chantel as a teenager when she was living on the streets, and I'd helped her out. We spoke about once a month. When the calls stopped, I decided to check up on her.
    “Chantel's neighbors hadn't seen her in a while. I got the super to open her apartment, and there was no sign of foul play. Her car was also parked downstairs. I left the complex not sure what was going on. Driving away, I spotted graffiti on a schoolyard wall across the street and stopped to have a look. The graffiti was the opening lyrics to ‘Midnight Rambler,’ and included the words ‘The one that shut the kitchen door.’”
    “The graffiti disturbed me, so I drove back to Chantel's apartment and got the super to open her place back up. In the kitchen was a swinging door, and I saw a man's shoe print to one side of where it had been kicked.
    “I kept looking for Chantel but never found her. I knew she hadn't run away or just skipped town. I knew something was wrong.”
    “How did you know that?” Linderman asked.
    “On her kitchen table was a brochure for Broward Community College, with pencil checks next to classes for cosmetology. I called the school and learned she'd enrolled.”
    “So she had dreams,” Linderman said.
    I thought of his lost daughter and nodded.
    “Yes. Chantel had dreams. Over the next fourteen months, I stopped hearing from other young women I knew in the sex industry, with each vanishing every few months. I'd go to their apartments or houses and find lyrics from ‘Midnight Rambler’ painted on a wall outside. If the lyric referenced something being smashed or broken, I would find that inside the dwelling.
    “For a while, the case went nowhere. Then one day, a prostitute named Julie Lopez called, and said her sister Carmella, who was also a prostitute, was missing. I decided to visit Carmella's apartment and do a search. Nothing appeared out of place. Then I went outside and looked around. The lyrics were painted on the parking garage wall. Carmella had disappeared the day before, so I knew her trail was warm.
    “I went to Bobby Russo, who heads up the homicide division of the Broward County Police Department, and asked for help. Russo put half his team on the case. One of them tracked down Carmella's cell phone service and obtained a list of phone calls Carmella had made the day she went missing.
    “There were over forty messages. Carmella did out-calls, so we knew most of them were johns. Russo's detectives got the names and addresses for every one. We split them up, with each person taking five names.
    “Simon Skell was on my list. I went to his house in Lauderdale Lakes and spoke with him. He was cordial and let me look around. I asked about Carmella, and he admitted hiring her for sex a few days before but said he hadn't seen her since. I asked him if he'd let a forensic team search his place, and he said yes.
    “At that point, I didn't think Skell was our killer. He wasn't hiding anything and was actually quite friendly. His house was filled with books, and I saw a certificate from Mensa, the genius organization, hanging in his study, which didn't fit the profile of any killer I've ever hunted.
    “I started to leave, and he offered me a cold drink. I said sure and followed him into the kitchen. A CD player was on the kitchen table, and I realized that I'd seen stereos and boom boxes and CD players in every room of the house. Skell was also wearing an iPod, and I asked him what kind of music he listened to.
    “Skell just stared at me. He has strange eyes that are too small for his face. I saw a darkness in them