by Jacob Stone
Duncan didn’t bother following Kammer to his gate or trying to find out which flight he was on. It didn’t much matter. Odds were that Kammer would be home within a week. If Duncan got impatient and wanted to find out when exactly Kammer was due back, he had ideas of how he could do it. Or maybe by then Duncan would’ve moved on and found other victims.
Time would tell.
Chapter 13
At eight a.m. on Monday Dennis Polk was drinking coffee and leaning against the desk of MBI’s office manager/receptionist, Greta Lindstrom, as he complained about the Dodgers’ loss the other night and ignored her hints that she was busy and needed to focus on her work. The office-suite door opened and Polk looked back to watch Philip Stonehedge walk in. Stonehedge was dressed in a cheap, ill-fitting suit that had been bought off-the-rack at the same store Polk bought his suits, and he wore thick-rimmed eyeglasses, a fake prosthetic nose, scruffy blond wig, and an equally scruffy fake mustache and beard. Even with his thick scar, he would’ve fooled them all except for the fact that they’d seen his disguise before.
Polk gave him an inscrutable look. “Look who’s here,” he said. “Mr. Hollywood. Nice suit.”
“Thanks.”
“You were told that the new guy is supposed to bring the doughnuts, right?”
Stonehedge was well aware of Polk from his earlier involvement at MBI. While maintaining a stone-faced expression, he took a fifty-dollar bill from his wallet and handed it to Polk. He further brought a smile to Greta’s face by telling Polk, “Knock yourself out with all the jelly-filleds you want.”
“Don’t think I won’t.”
“I never would’ve thought that.”
If Greta had been drinking coffee, she would’ve burned her nostrils snorting it out her nose. As it was, she had to bite her tongue to keep from bursting out laughing. Stonehedge asked her if Morris was in.
“Yep, he’s waiting for you in his office.”
The actor nodded thanks to Greta, and as he turned from them Polk called out, telling him in his honor he’d be going to one of those froufrou doughnut shops now populating Los Angeles, the type that make their jelly-filled with organic fruit and basil. “I know that’s all you sensitive actor-types can tolerate these days!”
“In that case, get me a chocolate-caramel-salted,” Stonehedge said.
Morris stepped out of his office to see what the commotion was about. He raised an eyebrow at Stonehedge.
“Polk’s taking doughnut orders,” the actor said, straight-faced.
“How about getting me a Bavarian cream,” Morris said.
“If you go to the shop on York Boulevard, could you pick me up a lemon poppy seed?” Greta chimed in.
Polk stood speechless, trying to come up with a snappy comeback. Sensing that the moment was lost, he left MBI grumbling under his breath how he liked it better when they didn’t have to deal with pampered actors. Stonehedge didn’t give any indication of having heard him, and after he was settled in Morris’s office and realized it was free of bull terriers, asked about Parker.
“Nat’s got the little guy today.”
Stonehedge was surprised by this. He knew Natalie worked as a therapist and had a private office downtown. “Her clients don’t mind?”
Morris made a face at the idea of that. “That butterball with fur? Not a chance. Today’s one of the days where she schedules only clients who respond well to him.” He handed Stonehedge a photo of a model-thin woman with haunting eyes and long, dark brown hair framing her face. “Grace Warren, twenty-eight, missing since June eighteenth.”
Stonehedge studied the photo before handing it back. “A drug addict?” he asked.
“According to her parents, Grace is a recovering heroin addict. From what I’ve been able to find out, she also likes coke, weed, and hard liquor, with tequila her favorite. A hopeful actress who in the past has worked as a waitress and bartender, but didn’t have a job for over four months before disappearing. No known address either.”
“Homeless, then?”
“Technically, but she wasn’t living on the streets. Instead, she was staying with friends, moving on to the next one before wearing out her welcome. Her parents are used to Grace disappearing for a month or two at a time, then showing up at their door to hit them up for money. After ten months of no contact they got worried enough to hire me. And I think they have a good reason to be worried.”
“Why’s that?” Stonehedge asked. “Beyond the obvious reasons.”
“Because of the guy she was last seen with.”
Chapter 14
The wildfires that recently broke out in northern California dominated the first three pages of the newspaper, and Duncan had to search through half the paper before he found a story about Jill Kincade’s murder. He was surprised by that. He would’ve thought the story would’ve been horrific enough to have made the front page, even with the wildfires devastating several of the northern towns. A beautiful, blond girl from a financially well-off family butchered in her apartment only hours after her engagement party, and the newspaper buries the story? Even after the fiancé was forced to watch and the Faustian deal he was offered? But this was Los Angeles and maybe it wasn’t such a big deal here. After the next victims, it would become a big deal. Once the city realized they were dealing with a depraved serial killer, it would be the only story!
Duncan became increasingly bewildered as he read through the article. It mentioned how Kincade’s fiancé, Alex Frey, was beaten and had suffered a concussion, and there was quite a bit about how Jill Kincade led an exemplary and caring life, and how everyone who knew her adored her, but there were no details about what was done to her, and there was nothing about the snarling wolf’s-face tattoo on the underside of her killer’s wrist. He read through the article a second time, this time more carefully, and he understood what must’ve happened. The dead girl’s family used their influence to bury the story and keep all the gory, sensationalized details out of it. He could picture Jill Kincade’s dad doing something like that, thinking he was protecting his daughter’s memory.
His thoughts were interrupted by the waitress, who brought over coffee and a plate of fried eggs and corned beef hash.
“Here you go, hon,” she said. She smiled sweetly at him. “Good choice. The hash and eggs are my favorite here.”
Duncan hadn’t paid attention to her earlier, but the tone of her voice caused him to give her a quick look. About his age, skinny, a dark, tangled mess of curly hair, nose stud, lip ring, and both thin arms covered with colorful tattoos.
“Good to know,” he said.
The disinterest in his voice should’ve sent her walking away, but instead she lingered. “Are you from around here?” she asked.
“Missouri, originally.”
“Really? St. Louis?”
“No, a small town. Look, I don’t want to be rude, but my eggs are getting cold, so let me make this easy. One of the few things that turn me off more than lip and nose piercings are tattoos. And maybe the only thing that turns me off more than tattoos is when a gal’s too stupid to realize when a guy’s not interested.”
Her dark eyes burned and anger flushed her cheeks. “What a sweet thing to say to someone,” she said in a very different tone than earlier.
Duncan smiled, showing his teeth. “Timing is everything in life. If I had told you that earlier, you would’ve had a chance to spit in my coffee or do worse to my food. Too bad for you, huh?”
The waitress stood, staring at him, her lips squeezed into a tight oval and moving in and out as if she were chewing something. Duncan wondered whether she was going to spit on his food, and he was prepared to use his hands to shield his plate if necessary. The moment passed and she turned and stormed away without adding any bodily fluids to his breakfast. He watched her. A nice, tight ass, which was really quite lovely in the way it was squeezed into her almost o
bscenely short leather skirt. A lot of passion in her also. It wouldn’t have been the worst thing in the world if he had gotten naked with her for an hour or so.
But he reminded himself that he wasn’t there to admire some tattoo-freak waitress’s nice ass, or read the paper or have breakfast. He was hunting that morning and he had followed a couple into this restaurant that was all lovey-dovey with each other, and he’d been surreptitiously watching them as they sat two tables away. He was still paying attention to them while reading his paper, and also when he was having his chat with the waitress. He caught the guy leering at the waitress’s cute ass as she stomped her way back to the kitchen, and he also saw the hurt look forming on his girlfriend’s (or wife’s?) face when she caught him doing this. Her expression quickly changed from injured to fuming.
“You got to be kidding me,” she said in a low enough voice that Duncan had to strain to hear her.
Her partner gave her a confused look, as if he had no clue what she was talking about.
“You’ve got me at a disadvantage,” he said.
“You’re drooling,” she said.
The idiot actually wiped several fingers across his lips to see if she was right. Then he showed a stupid grin to act as if he were only joking.
“I still have no idea what you’re talking about,” he claimed.
If looks could kill, the guy would’ve dropped dead at that moment.
“Screw you!” She pushed her chair back from the table and stood rigid. “And you might as well screw that freak show of a waitress, because we’re done.”
She didn’t waste any time after that fleeing the restaurant, all the while her boyfriend (or husband?) stayed seated at the table. The guy had no intention of following after her and he caught Duncan looking his way and returned an embarrassed smile, mistaking Duncan’s disappointment for sympathy.
Oh well, Duncan thought as he dipped a forkful of hash with egg yolk and shoveled it into his mouth. It wasn’t as if he had invested all that much time in that couple. Really, less than an hour. If he kept hunting, he was sure he’d find another one who’d be exactly what he was looking for.
As he chewed his food, he wondered about the vagaries of life. If he hadn’t been such a prick to his waitress, Ms. Freak Show wouldn’t have stormed off the way she did, that guy wouldn’t have broken his gal’s heart, and she’d be dying in a terrible way later that day. Now she was going to live. Or at least if she was going to die today, it wasn’t going to be by Duncan’s hand.
He took another bite of his food and found himself thinking back to a time when he wasn’t such a mean-hearted bastard. It wasn’t all that long ago, and it didn’t take a Mensa candidate to figure out what had caused him to become the way he was.
Chapter 15
Jack Readinger kept his eyes squeezed shut while he groped blindly along the floor, but it still felt as if the sunlight was piercing into his brain. Finally he found his cocaine stash—or at least the baggie that used to hold his stash. He opened his eyes a crack and saw the baggie was mostly empty. Not at all deterred, he wiped a finger along the inside of it and picked up enough residue, so that when he rubbed the finger over his gums he felt a jolt. Not much of one, but enough to get him going for a few hours.
Moaning, he sat up in bed. A grimace tightened his jaw muscles as he checked the boot-sized bruise along his right side. Two weeks ago it had been a vibrant purplish-blue color, but now the cracked ribs were mostly healed and the bruise had faded to a more muted yellowish-brown. He tested the bruise with his fingers and winced, still finding it tender to the touch. His lips twisted into a hard smirk as he thought about the beating he had taken two weeks ago.
That night he had walked into a dive bar in East Hollywood with the thought of picking up some spending money from rolling a drunk or ripping off a sucker, and that was when he spotted a potential honeypot—a woman who was young and attractive enough to entice most other men, but filled with enough self-loathing, insecurities, and masochistic tendencies that Readinger would be able to exploit her and mold her to suit his purposes. He was good at spotting a honeypot; it was like he had a special sixth sense. Not that all the potential honeypots he approached fell under his sway, but the ones that did he would milk dry before he’d cut them loose. He preferred the scams he could run with a honeypot than the ones he had to do solo. And of course, he thoroughly enjoyed the side benefits of having a honeypot under his thumb.
This one was a redhead with the type of soft, red lips that would give any man ideas. A little plump, but still, she had a nice, luscious body under her loose-fitting dress. He had her sized up before he’d taken more than two steps into the bar, and the look she gave him was better than an engraved invitation. It was always exciting when he came across a honeypot he knew was ripe for the picking. Usually when this happened, he’d be coy when he approached the woman, only hinting about what he was after, and he would wait until he got them drunk and alone before letting them know he was in charge from now on. With this one he went straight for the kill, joining her at the bar, and after introductions and a round of drinks, laying it on thick, letting her know that he was exactly what she needed.
“Is that so?” she asked.
She didn’t say this as a challenge, but more because she wanted to hear why that was. He couldn’t help laughing, seeing the desperate plea in her eyes.
“You better believe it, darling. You need a guy like me who’ll keep you in line and hurt you when you need to be hurt. And you especially need me to make the hard decisions you’re too weak to make.”
If she wasn’t a honeypot, she would’ve either laughed in his face or told him to get lost, but instead she accepted it. He nuzzled in close to her after that, getting handsy and whispering in her ear what he was going to do to her later, and how he would punish her if she didn’t sufficiently please him. Somehow, he knew that he needed to take this direct approach with her and from the way she responded, he also knew he’d hit the jackpot. It would take a few days, maybe a week, to completely break her spirit, but after that he’d have exactly what he needed. As he continued to work on her, he was too caught up in his scheming to notice the dude who had snuck up behind him, at least until he was nearly yanked off the barstool.
He twisted his neck and got a good look at the dude then. Forties, skinny, and dressed like a hipster. The guy had a long, heavily-lined face and a ridiculous pompadour, almost like he had come out of a nineties Billy Joel video.
“I don’t appreciate you making time with my girl,” the dude said.
Readinger smiled, showing all of his cracked and chipped teeth. “You own the lady, huh?”
“You better believe it.”
Readinger turned to the redhead. “What do you say? Should I toss out the trash?”
She laughed nervously. “That would be lovely.”
The dude was incensed. He raised his hand as if he were going to strike the woman across the face, but before he could do so, Readinger was off the barstool. He grabbed a handful of the dude’s pants from behind, and with his other hand he grasped the scruff of the guy’s neck and then he rushed the dude toward the bar’s front entrance. One of the other patrons opened the door so that Readinger could heave the dude out without losing any momentum. He sent the skinny-assed man airborne and crashing onto the sidewalk. Readinger considered following him outside and kicking the living daylights out of him, but he was laughing too hard from when the man had flailed helplessly in the air before gravity took over, so instead he went back inside and joined the redhead at the bar.
They had a few more drinks after that, snorted some coke in the bathroom, and then did some more serious drinking before leaving together. They were half a block from the bar when the redhead urged him down an alley.
“I want to prove my worth to you,” she told him, badly slurring her words. “Let me get on my knees so I can take care of you properly.�
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Readinger liked the idea of that. The sooner he started debasing her, the sooner he’d have her broken and trained. He joined her down the alley, and as he was unzipping his fly someone tapped him on the shoulder.
Of course, it was the dude. Readinger had been right about the redhead being a honeypot, but he was all wrong about who owned her. This was the game they ran, which was to find a sap to lure into the alley, and that night he was their sap. The booze he drank slowed his reflexes enough so that he wasn’t quick enough ducking, and the pipe the dude swung at him caught him in the jaw and knocked him off his feet. As he lay among the garbage, broken glass, and rat feces in the alley, the dude and the redhead stomped him good. After that, they went through his pockets and took his coke and wallet. Readinger was barely conscious when he heard the redhead tell the dude that Readinger was a freak and that she wanted to take his clothing. The dude must’ve liked that idea, because they left him naked in the alley, not even leaving him his boxer shorts.
* * * *
Readinger’s legs felt rubbery as he pushed himself off the bed and stumbled to the bathroom. He spent a minute splashing cold water over his face, then he gripped the sink and leaned toward the vanity mirror. Through the cracks and the grime, he could see that the cuts on his face had healed. The swelling in his jaw had gone down over a week ago and there was no longer any discoloration. Same with his nose. No black eyes anymore either. Bloodshot, maybe, but nothing much more than that. From what he could see, his face didn’t show any signs of the beating he took. That was good. It was easier to intimidate people when it looked like you were the one who gave beatings, as opposed to taking them.
If Readinger were a different type, he would’ve gone back to that East Hollywood bar by now, or at least been asking around about that pair, but he looked at revenge as a waste of time and effort. Not that he wouldn’t gut that redhead or the dude if he ever ran into either of them again and it was safe to do so, but he wouldn’t go out of his way to look for them. His philosophy: It was better to share the pain. Make the next guy hurt even worse. That way, instead of going up against someone who was waiting for him, he would instead deal with a sap who was clueless and defenseless. It was much easier that way and more profitable also. And what difference did it really make who ended up suffering as long as he made someone suffer?
