Unleashed

by Jacob Stone

  Finston purposely didn’t explicitly warn people about not opening their doors to strangers. She knew if she did that and the killer was watching, he would stop gaining entry into his victims’ home by knocking, and instead would be breaking his way in. At least now there was a chance the next time he knocked on a door, the intended victim would call the police.

  “This person’s a monster,” Margot Denoir said with a shiver that Finston could tell was genuine and not part of her act. “If you let him into your home, it’s like you’re letting in a wild, savage animal.”

  The FBI profiler couldn’t disagree with her.

  Chapter 40

  It was after two a.m. when Jack Readinger, with Audrey in tow, pulled into the parking lot of one of the ubiquitous twenty-four-hour convenience stores dotting the Los Angeles landscape. Audrey’s full name turned out to be Audrey Zairn, and Readinger liked the symmetry of her initials. From A to Z. That was how he planned to mess up her life: From A to Z.

  After loosening her up with shots of tequila and hits of coke, he learned her whole sad story, which wasn’t all that different from thousands of other young women moving to Los Angeles with dreams of stardom. She had arrived from her hometown of Des Moines, Iowa, two years earlier, and since then had gotten small roles in a handful of commercials, but not enough to work steadily or to quit her waitressing job, and had become jaded after being turned down for TV and movie roles because her tits were too small, or her legs were too skinny, her eyes were the wrong color, or any other number of arbitrary reasons. At least, that was what they were telling her, but she understood that it was because she was refusing to take their hints and get on her knees for the decision makers, and more and more the hints weren’t all that subtle.

  She had reached her breaking point yesterday when a producer, who all but promised her the role for a new sitcom after two callbacks, invited her to his hotel suite so they could further discuss the part. He insisted then that he needed to see her naked from the waist down before he’d be able to make a decision. Fighting back tears, she took off her jeans, but fled the suite while she still had her panties on. On top of all that, she found out only a few days before that her creep boyfriend was cheating on her and she was absolutely sick of the tiny one-bedroom roach-infested apartment in K-Town she was sharing with two other hopeful actresses, both of whom were cold fishes. She had gone to the downtown bar that night to decide once and for all whether to give up on her dreams and take a bus back to Des Moines. But then she met Readinger.

  Jack fished out of his pocket what was left of his eight ball. Audrey was already coked to the gills, but as they sat in the car he coaxed her into taking another hit.

  “Ready?” he asked.

  She giggled. “Ready, Freddy.”

  He grinned at her. “Girl, you’re going to be an outlaw soon.”

  “I already am!”

  Sometime around nine that evening they left the bar after Audrey kept insisting that she was a good girl who had never even stolen a stick of gum. She even crossed her heart and hoped to die over that fact. “Well, that just ain’t right,” Readinger insisted, and he took her to a department store so she could shoplift a couple of scarves. She was drunk and coked up enough that she agreed to do this, and the theft excited her. She grabbed the two scarves Readinger told her to take and they ran out of the department store, Audrey acting like a giddy teenager, her skin flushing bright pink. Readinger put a hand to her cheek and felt like he was touching a furnace. She didn’t ask what the scarves were for, and instead joined him in a motel room where they silently shed their clothes and went at each other like a couple of dogs in heat. When they were done and had their clothes back on, Readinger made sure not to pour any more booze into her. As it was, she was going to have a wicked hangover the next day, and he didn’t want her passing out on him. Instead, they stuck with the coke. Later, after they had left the motel, he made two stops before driving to the convenience store; the first so he could steal license plates and put them on his car, the second so he could buy a .32 caliber pistol.

  He tied a scarf around the lower half of his face like he was a bandit, and gave Audrey the other one so she could do the same. He checked the pistol to make sure the safety was off and that there was a bullet in the chamber, and then slapped the gun into Audrey’s hand.

  “You follow my lead in there, okay, tough girl?”

  He left the car and Audrey followed after him, giggling like a schoolgirl. Once inside, Readinger barked at Audrey to point the gun at the startled employee working behind the cash register, and to shoot him in the head if he moved a muscle. Audrey giggled crazily, too coked-up to question him or care, and she lifted the gun so it was aimed at the employee’s face. There was no one else in the store. Readinger bolted for the counter and cleared it as if he were vaulting a pommel horse. The employee, a skinny man in his forties with a thick five-o’clock shadow and a mop of dirty unruly black hair, had his hands up.

  “Take the money,” the man said. “No sweat to me. It’s not mine—”

  Readinger hit him in the nose with a hard jab, dropping the man like a sack of bricks. The man had a woozy look in his eyes as he stared up at Readinger, blood oozing from his busted nose.

  Readinger flexed his hand. Sharing the pain, he thought with a hard grin. He ordered Audrey to get closer so she could hold the gun on the man as he lay on the floor.

  “You see him move, you shoot him,” he growled at her as he emptied the cash register.

  Audrey’s eyes became pinpoints as she stared at the man bleeding on the floor. In her coke-fueled haze she must’ve been looking at him as if he were every sleazy Hollywood producer who’d been trying to make her suck their cocks for her big break. She might not have even realized that her finger was tightening on the trigger—it could’ve been only a physical reaction from the adrenaline rush, but Readinger could see it happening and he kept quiet. The gun sounded like a cannon when it went off, and the bullet made a bloody mess of the man’s left shoulder. The man started moaning like he was dying, and Audrey began laughing hysterically.

  Readinger had noticed the surveillance cameras and he also spotted the closet where he knew the surveillance equipment would be kept. He could’ve gotten into the closet and destroyed the videotape or the disk drive, depending on when the equipment was last updated, but he left it, and instead jumped the counter and dragged Audrey out of the store.

  At some point she would be crashing hard, and when she woke up she might think this was all a bad dream. Or at least she would hope that was the case. But Readinger would find the video of the robbery and shooting online, and he’d make sure she’d watch it.

  She might not have been a full-fledged honeypot when he met her earlier that evening, but she was now. And he owned her ass.

  Goddamn, what a hellaciously fantastic day he was having!

  Chapter 41

  Oakland, the present

  Charlie Bogle took a six a.m. flight to Oakland, rented a car, and after a stop for doughnuts and coffee found the Pill Hill address where Clay Shelby lived. Eighteen months earlier a man had forced his way into Shelby’s apartment, tied up Shelby and his girlfriend, and proceeded to torture the girlfriend with a knife that he found in the kitchen. The girlfriend, Suzanne Markin, later died from her injuries. Bogle and Felger had spent yesterday searching for other murders that matched the profile of the two recent home invasions and murders in Los Angeles, and after talking with the Oakland police and getting a copy of the police file, he called Shelby last night and Shelby agreed to meet with him this morning.

  The apartment building where Shelby lived looked like it could’ve once been a small Spanish mission. White stucco walls, clay-roof tiles, an iron gate out front. The gate was unlocked. Bogle walked through it and continued on through the vestibule door, which was also unlocked. He climbed the stairs to Shelby’s third-floor apartment and knocked. A ski
nny man in his thirties with sunken cheeks and long blond hair tied into a ponytail answered the door. He didn’t look particularly happy to see Bogle, but he let him in. A skinny woman the same age as Shelby, who had her red hair pulled into a ponytail, was sitting at a small butcher-block kitchen table reading something on a digital tablet.

  “That’s Cynthia,” Shelby said with a weak smile. “We’ve been together for a year now. What happened to Suzie was terrible, but life goes on.”

  Cynthia got up from the table and headed for the door. Bogle offered her a doughnut and one of the coffees. She shot him a cold look and told him she drank tea and wouldn’t poison her body by eating gluten. Bogle watched as she let the door slam shut behind her.

  “Not a morning person, huh?” he said.

  Shelby made a what-are-you-gonna-do gesture with his eyebrows and shoulders. “She’s pissed,” he explained. “I told her she had to get out of here when you came over, and she didn’t like that. But I’m not about to talk about what happened to Suzie in front of her. Eh, she’ll get over it.”

  They sat at the butcher-block table where Cynthia had been sitting, and Shelby told Bogle that he had no problem drinking coffee or eating gluten, especially gluten that had been deep-fried and coated in sugar. Bogle handed him a coffee and the box of doughnuts, and Shelby chose a lemon crème. Bogle selected a chocolate glazed for himself.

  Bogle took a long sip of coffee, then asked, “This is the same apartment where the attack occurred?”

  “It is,” Shelby admitted. He showed an apologetic smile. “It must seem kind of strange that I stayed here after what happened, but I had too many good memories of Suzie here to want to leave. As time passed, the idea of leaving the little I had left of her just got harder, and then I met Cynthia, and… well…you know how that goes.”

  Bogle had no idea, but he kept that to himself. When he had talked with Shelby last night on the phone, he told him about the murders happening in Los Angeles, and that he was looking for similar crimes that might’ve been committed by the same perpetrator. Shelby hadn’t been able to talk much on the phone last night—he claimed he was too stoned at the moment to remember details of that night, but he promised he’d refrain from any toking this morning so he’d be more clearheaded when Bogle arrived. He did, though, tell Bogle how the attack happened. There was a knock on the door for someone looking for Dave. Shelby’s apartment was 3D, but there was a Dave in 3A, and when he opened the door to explain that the guy had the wrong apartment, he was punched in the jaw with brass knuckles and knocked out. When he came to, he and Suzie were tied to chairs and their tormenter began cutting Suzie with a knife.

  “I read the police report,” Bogle said. “There wasn’t much of a description of your attacker.”

  “There wasn’t much I could say. He was wearing a ski mask. Average height, average weight. That was it.”

  “You didn’t look through your security peephole before opening the door?”

  Shelby’s expression turned bleaker. “You don’t think I’ve been torturing myself about that ever since? But you have to remember, it’s ten at night, I got what I think is a drunk guy yelling out for Dave, and I just want to send him on his way.”

  “None of your neighbors heard him yelling.”

  “I don’t know what to tell you. It’s what happened.”

  Bogle let it drop. There were only four units on a floor and the building appeared to be solidly constructed. Shelby had an end unit that was in the back of the building, and it was possible no one would have heard the perp, especially if they had their TVs or stereos on.

  He asked, “How old would you guess the perpetrator was?”

  “I couldn’t tell you.”

  “If you had to guess.”

  Shelby munched on his lemon crème, his eyes glazing as he searched for an answer.

  “Thirties. That’s the best I could tell you.”

  “Perp’s eye color?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Were his eyes covered by the ski mask?”

  “No, but it wasn’t something I noticed.”

  “Could they have been blue?”

  Shelby made a face to show he had no clue. “They could’ve been anything,” he said.

  “Any tattoos?”

  “Not that I saw. But I don’t think any would’ve been visible. He was covered up pretty good.”

  “Did you see anything on the underside of his right wrist?” Bogle pointed to a spot on his own wrist. “Bruise, birthmark, anything?”

  “Uh-uh. The bastard was wearing a black long-sleeve shirt and black gloves. If there was anything to see, I wouldn’t have seen it with what he had on.”

  “Did you pick up any vibes or thoughts about him?”

  Shelby took another bite of his doughnut and chewed it slowly as he considered Bogle’s question.

  “A vicious prick. Someone who gets a kick out of dealing out pain. When I opened the door, it was like unleashing a bloodthirsty, savage beast into my home.”

  “Any idea why he chose you and Suzie?”

  “No idea.”

  Bogle had been a cop for over twenty years before joining MBI, ten of those years as a detective. After all that time on the force interviewing suspects, he could feel it in his bones when someone was lying to him, and Shelby was lying to him right then. Probably earlier, also. At least to a degree.

  “I thought you were going to help me,” he said.

  Shelby opened his eyes wide as if he were surprised by what Bogle was insinuating, but there was something a little off about the gesture. Maybe most people wouldn’t have picked up on it, but Bogle did.

  “What do you think I’m doing?” he asked, trying a little too hard to sound offended.

  “You’re holding out on me.”

  “I agreed to meet you this morning because I want that sick bastard caught for what he did to Suzie. You think I’m lying about that?”

  Shelby was trying to hold his gaze steady on Bogle’s, but he faltered. It was only for a heartbeat or two, but it was long enough to betray what he had said.

  Bogle took a long drink of coffee until Shelby began wilting under his stare.

  “If you’re doing stuff you don’t want the police to know about, that’s your business, not mine,” he said. “The only thing I care about is catching the perp who tortured and murdered Jill Kincade and Meagan Campbell. I also know damn well you’re not leveling with me, at least not completely. I’m giving you one last chance to come clean. If you don’t, I’ll stay right here in Oakland and keep watch on you twenty-four-seven until I figure out what you’re hiding, and I’ll take you straight to the Oakland PD afterwards. Why did he choose you and your girlfriend?”

  Shelby shifted his gaze to a spot on the wall to the right of Bogle. “He wanted my stash,” he muttered under his breath.

  “Weed?”

  “No. A kilo of coke.”

  Bogle thought he’d heard everything during his years on the LAPD, but this was something altogether new. Incredulously, he asked, “The perp’s stabbing your girlfriend to make you tell him where your drugs are hidden, and you let him do that?”

  “It was a kilo, man,” Shelby said in a dead, flat voice. “The guy I work for is a violent dude. Paranoid like all fuck. If I didn’t sell that coke and pay him sixty grand from the proceeds, he would do worse to me and Suzie than stabbing us with knives. I thought if I waited this guy out, he’d quit and leave Suzie alone. That maybe he’d panic about someone dropping by. But he didn’t stop, and it got to where I couldn’t take what was happening to Suzie. I told him where the kilo was hidden.”

  “He stopped then?”

  Shelby’s mouth weakened. “Yeah.”

  “Suzie was still alive when he left?”

  “Yeah, it was later, maybe an hour, when she died. I saw it in her eyes when
it happened. They just went blank, like a light being turned off.” Shelby looked up from his folded hands and gave Bogle a beseeching look. “I was left tied up and gagged and I couldn’t do anything to help her. It wasn’t until almost a day later that we were found, and I had to spend that whole time looking into the face of my dead girlfriend. Suzie was the only person I ever loved and I have to live with what I did, but I swear, everything else I told you is the truth. This sick bastard might’ve done what he did to get the coke, but he enjoyed every second of it.”

  Finally, the truth.

  Bogle asked, “Did he gain entry to your apartment the way you said earlier, or did he come here to buy coke?”

  “Exactly what I said. He was pounding on the door, yelling out for Dave, and I just wanted him to shut up.”

  Bogle decided that was the truth also. “Okay. I’m going to need a list of your customers, and anyone else who knew about you holding coke.”

  “Uh-uh. It wasn’t anyone local. My clientele are high-end, professionals. It wasn’t any of them, not any other dealers either. I looked into it; so did the badass dude I work for. Whoever did this was some sicko passing through Oakland who overheard something.”

  “I’m still going to need that list.”

  “You’re not getting it. You’d only be wasting your time if I gave it to you.”

  “My time to waste.” Bogle finished his coffee and stood up. “If I have to bring Oakland PD into this, I will.”

  Shelby smiled thinly. “You do that and I tell them I sold you a work of fiction, and they don’t get another word from me. Neither do you. And you know what else probably happens? Within a week my boss cuts my throat—Cynthia’s also—which would be really unfair, since she thinks I only drive for Uber. My getting ripped off was strike one, my talking to you would be strike two, and he doesn’t usually give any strikes.”

  Bogle didn’t like not getting that list, but he could also see the determination in Shelby’s eyes. Bringing OPD in wouldn’t help. Instead, he would find a detective within OPD’s narcotics task force and get a list of drug dealers from a year and a half ago who had since gone missing. He made an executive decision. He’d let this slide, at least as far as Shelby was concerned.