by Jacob Stone
He had timed it perfectly. The vestibule door was just about to close shut and he rushed forward to keep that from happening, but someone from inside the building stepped forward and pushed the door open. He looked up and saw a statuesque blonde staring back at him. Duncan blinked several times, wondering why she looked so familiar. Then he remembered: Sandra.
She recognized him immediately and gave him an odd smile, then looked back at the woman Duncan had followed, the same one who at that moment was stepping into the elevator.
“Were you following Rachel?” she asked.
“What?” Duncan asked, looking as confused as he felt at that moment, his mind racing over this unexpected development.
“Rachel Brick. My fellow law school student who just walked into this building.”
“No, of course not. I realized what an idiot I was for not taking you up on your offer. I mean, damn, you’re absolutely luscious. So I asked about you at the law school and got your address. And here I am, hoping your offer still stands.”
She didn’t look at all convinced he was telling the truth. “I could’ve sworn you were following Rachel,” she said.
He took hold of her hand and held it against his cheek. “Feel how feverish I’ve gotten thinking of you.”
He knew he’d gotten feverish over his anticipation of what he hoped to be doing to the woman who he now knew was named Rachel Brick (and why’d the name Brick sound so damned familiar?). He manufactured a wolfish grin and her suspicion weakened. He caressed her cheek with his other hand, and he felt that she was beginning to heat up also. Squeezing his eyes closed, he bent forward to kiss her, and tried to imagine she was Julia. Her tongue, hot and thick, was soon probing his throat, breaking any illusion that she could be Julia, but thankfully he didn’t shudder or give any indication of how much that disgusted him. She pulled her tongue out of his mouth so she could whisper in his ear that they should go to her apartment and get naked, her voice husky and full of expectation.
She took him by the hand and led him to her apartment, which was on the first floor and in the back of the building. Once they were inside, she was on him, her tongue once again pushing into his mouth. He shoved her away. There was no point dragging this out. If he was going to make Rachel Brick one of his victims, Sandra had to die. There was no way around it, and he so much wanted to make that flinty-eyed girl one of his victims, especially after he realized why the name Brick had sounded familiar.
Sandra mistook his reason for pushing her away, thinking that it was so that they’d both get out of their clothes. But then she saw the look in his eyes and froze. Before she could scream for help, Duncan stepped forward and punched her hard enough in the stomach that he could swear his knuckles pressed against her spine. She collapsed onto the carpeted floor, nearly folded in two as she desperately tried to gasp for air. He got down on the floor with her and forced her onto her stomach, then grabbed her by the chin with one hand as he held the side of her head with his other. He put his shoulder into it and twisted her head until her neck snapped.
He got to his feet and looked at the way her head was unnaturally positioned.
That should shut her up for good, he thought.
He put on the leather gloves that he kept in his backpack, then hefted Sandra over his shoulder, carried her into the bedroom, and stuffed her into the closet.
Rachel Brick had to be in her apartment at that moment. He sat down on the bed and tried to think of a ruse he could use to get her to open her door to him, and he couldn’t think of anything that had a reasonable chance of working. If he tried picking her lock, she’d hear him and call the police. If he waited outside her apartment door for her to leave so he could surprise her, there would be too great a chance that someone would see him. As badly as he wanted her, he had to show some patience and come back later.
He hadn’t touched anything since entering the apartment, so he didn’t have to worry about wiping off prints. The blinds were closed on the two windows in the bedroom. He pushed a pair of slats apart. There was a walkway running along the back of the building, and a dense copse of trees separating this building from the one behind it. He could climb out the window and the odds were no one would see him do so. That was a better option than walking out of Sandra’s apartment, past the elevators, and out the vestibule door.
Duncan was about to open the window when he remembered Sandra’s pocketbook. He found it not too far from where he had killed her and searched for her keys since one would open the vestibule door. He then brought the pocketbook back to the bedroom so he could leave it in the closet with Sandra. With that accomplished, he left through one of the windows.
It wouldn’t be long before he came back for Rachel.
Chapter 53
Showtime.
Philip Stonehedge took a deep, cleansing breath. He was about to give the performance of a lifetime, except this time it wouldn’t be for a film, but to catch a serial killer. The thought of that was staggering.
He stood outside the High Spot Lounge and concentrated on arranging his facial muscles to show a tough, hard grin; the type a scumbag, chiseling crook would show. The building, a squat, cement structure painted black, looked more like a bunker than a place for people to gather for a drink, although it did have a small movie marquee–like sign with gold letters spelling out its name and a cardboard sign in the darkened window advertising $2.00 draft beers. Stonehedge opened the door and walked in.
The Inglewood bar looked every bit as much a dive inside as it did outside: A dark and dingy space with a musty, stale-beer smell lingering in the air. On the right, a dark-stained oak bar ran halfway down the room, booths lined the left side, and a pool table, jukebox, and a scattering of tables were in the back. Creedence Clearwater Revival’s “Who’ll Stop the Rain” was playing on the jukebox, so the place at least had that going for it.
Stonehedge was in disguise and had on the same grungy clothes he’d worn when he met Trey Johnson. He stood in the doorway, pulled a comb from his pants pocket, and ran it through his scruffy, blond wig, but this was only to give his eyes a chance to adjust to the darkness of the room. He spotted Fred Lemmon and Detective Annie Walsh camped out at a table in the back. They had gone to the bar a half-hour earlier to look for the Cupid Killer, and if they had seen him the cavalry would’ve been called in. Lemmon and Walsh were also dressed casually, and Stonehedge thought they made quite the couple. Besides them, there were an elderly couple in a booth and a middle-aged man huddled at the end of the bar nursing a gin and tonic.
Stonehedge took a seat at the bar and the bartender gave him a bland, welcoming smile. “How about a two-dollar draft?”
“Friend, that’s only during happy hour,” the bartender said apologetically. He was a balding, short, thick-bodied man in his fifties with a square, fleshy face and a flat nose.
“But I’m feeling happy now,” Stonehedge said.
“Sorry, but rules are rules.”
“Bureaucracy is a beautiful thing, isn’t it?” Stonehedge said, letting his grin turn sour. He wrestled his wallet from his back pants pocket and rummaged through it for a fifty-dollar bill, which he laid out in front of him. If this made the bartender at all curious, he didn’t show it, and instead he maintained his bland expression.
“A Bud, then,” Stonehedge said. “And you can keep the change if you get a message to Jack.”
“I know several Jacks, but I don’t have a clue which one you’re talking about.”
“He also likes to use the name Spenser.”
The bartender finished pouring Stonehedge a draft, placed the beer in front of him, and picked up the fifty.
“Friend, I don’t think I know anybody by that name. What do you want me to do with your change?”
“How about you keep it for now? See if it helps jog your memory. If it doesn’t, you can buy a round for the house on me.”
T
he bartender’s bland smile began to show some strain. “Let’s say I make a few calls and figure out who this Jack/Spenser fellow is. What message do you want me to leave him?”
“Tell him I’m giving him until five, and if he’s not here by then I’ll be messing up the game he’s running and sending his ass to prison.”
The bartender’s smile was gone and his eyes darkened as if a veil had slipped over them. “That’s quite a stick, friend. What’s the carrot?”
“Simple. He pays me a small percentage of his game and I leave him alone, maybe even cut him in on an even more lucrative game I’ll be starting soon. If he shows up, I also pay you another two hundred.”
“Awfully generous.” The bartender’s smile was back. “In the rare event that I locate this fellow, who do I say wants to meet him so badly?”
“I don’t believe he needs to know that.”
Stonehedge picked up his beer and made sure to show an overly-confident swagger as he sauntered over to an empty booth. An Oscar-worthy performance. It was a shame he couldn’t send it in for consideration.
He had the bartender hooked and was certain that the Cupid Killer would be making an appearance within the hour. Or at least trying to. Morris, Dennis Polk, and a dozen LAPD officers were in position to arrest the Cupid Killer once he showed his face. In the unlikely event this sicko killer eluded them and got inside the High Spot Lounge, Lemmon and Walsh would be cuffing him before he even realized what happened.
Stonehedge would’ve liked to have been part of the team arresting the Cupid Killer, but even so, this was going to be a wet dream for his publicist. He took a sip of beer and tried to keep from showing the excitement he was feeling. The fact was, he found this absolutely thrilling and quite a departure from the drudgery of acting in a movie. When he was on set, he’d sit around for an hour or two waiting for the next scene to be set up, then the same scene would be shot over and over again until he wanted to scream.
He bit his tongue to keep from laughing over what a prima donna he was being. Yeah, sure, he led such a tough life making all that money with a bullshit acting gig, and poor, pitiful him having to do the same lovemaking scenes a dozen or more times with beautiful actresses like Claire Rose. Still, though, he wasn’t joking as much as Morris might think about giving up the acting life to work for him as an investigator. He soon found himself fantasizing about the Cupid Killer making his way past Morris and all the others so that he could deal with the psycho himself.
Now that would be something!
Chapter 54
Boston, Massachusetts. October 2014
Duncan found Wes Cafferty sitting in a booth with a pint of Guinness and a shot of whiskey waiting for him. He slid into the seat across from Cafferty, nodded thanks as he lifted the shot glass, and swallowed down the whiskey, feeling it burn the back of his throat.
“What do you got for me?” he asked.
Cafferty, his expression inscrutable, said, “Family’s fine. Thanks for asking.”
“Why would I care how your family is?”
Cafferty’s thick eyelids lowered as he took a healthy drink of his beer. It had to be a Heineken. Cafferty was on a Heineken kick this year and that was all he’d been drinking. After he placed the half-empty glass back on the table, he wiped a hand across his mouth and gave Duncan a pitying look.
“Because we’re both human beings and that’s what human beings do. They inquire about what’s important to each other.”
“What’s important to me is that you tell me about the job.”
“There’s no helping you,” he said with disgust. He leaned forward and lowered his voice so that only Duncan could hear him. “Unless you’re really good with safes, this job will require some rough behavior, but you’ll be nicely rewarded as your take will be twenty-five grand.”
Duncan met Wes Cafferty three years ago, and since then Cafferty had set him up with dozens of burglaries in which Duncan was able to get the job done without hurting anyone. He was inclined to turn Cafferty down on this one, but the opportunity to make twenty-five grand on a single score was enticing. He was averaging three grand apiece on the jobs Cafferty put him on, and the most he had gotten from any of them was $7,200.
“How rough?” he asked.
“There’s fifty grand sitting in a safe. However rough you need to be to get the target to open it.”
“Are you sure about the fifty grand?”
“I can guarantee it.”
Cafferty wasn’t one for bluster and he wouldn’t guarantee something unless it was true. Still, there was something about the way he looked at Duncan that made him wary.
“Is the guy I’ll be hitting connected?”
“Not with the mob. A different crime syndicate. He’s a cop, but you won’t get any heat from this. There’s not a damn thing this asshole will be able to do about being ripped off, except take his lumps.”
“A dirty cop, huh?”
“As dirty as a sewer rat.”
Duncan smiled thinly. “You know what? I think I like the idea of that.”
Cafferty’s own smile was broader and he showed all his teeth, even his broken and cracked ones. “Why isn’t that a surprise?” He reached under the table and handed Duncan a sheet of paper that had been folded into a thick, two-inch square. Duncan slipped it in his pants pocket without looking at it. He didn’t need to see it to know that every relevant detail for the job would be written on it.
He asked, “The job’s not scheduled for tonight, is it?”
Cafferty sat back in the booth and polished off the rest of his beer before mouthing the word tomorrow to Duncan.
Duncan winked at his associate. “In that case, there’s still drinking to be done tonight. I’ll get us another round.”
Duncan, at twenty-three, was still as lean as a rail and had little trouble slipping out of the booth and squeezing his way through the crowd that had gathered at the Blue Rose, a bar in East Boston that was popular among the local blue-collar crowd and a certain unsavory criminal element that he and Cafferty were part of. As much as the police would’ve liked to have planted an undercover cop inside the Blue Rose to listen in on conversations like the one he had just had, any stranger showing up would be noticed and made to feel unwelcome.
Duncan was working his way through the crowd surrounding the bar, when he noticed a big gorilla-type harassing a blonde wearing a light-brown suede jacket and designer jeans. He couldn’t see much of her because she couldn’t have been more than five feet two and was slight in stature and the big, drunken oaf was all over her. From what little he could see, she seemed scared and was trying desperately to get away from the Neanderthal who had her cornered. Duncan didn’t know the guy’s name, but he had seen him before in the neighborhood: A big bruiser who worked as a leg-breaker for a local loan shark by the name of Jimmy Jordan.
Duncan wasn’t planning to get involved. This East Boston neighborhood was slowly becoming gentrified, but still there were rules in place. If someone who didn’t belong, like that woman, tried slumming it at a place like the Blue Rose, they were going to take their lumps. But when the leg-breaker grabbed the woman by the upper arm and started dragging her toward the back of the bar, he got a look at her horror-stricken face, and he couldn’t help himself from veering off course to intersect them.
He got in their way and told the big lummox, “Buddy, how about you leave the lady alone?”
The leg-breaker gave Duncan a drunken, confused look, as if he didn’t understand what Duncan had said. Then his eyes got piggish and mean.
“How about you mind your own business?” the leg-breaker said, his words badly slurred. He let go of the woman’s arm and threw a wild haymaker. Duncan ducked under it. He bent the leg-breaker over by rabbit-punching him below the belt, then straightened the man up with an elbow to the nose, which left his face a bloody mess. The woman looked like
she would’ve screamed if she weren’t so shocked by this sudden flurry of violence.
“Ah, I’m sorry,” Duncan told the leg-breaker. “I got you all bloody. Let’s take you back to the men’s room and clean you up.”
The crowd gave Duncan and the leg-breaker a wide berth as Duncan rushed the man toward the back of the bar, but instead of heading to the men’s room, he pushed the oaf through the fire door and sent him falling face-first into the alley behind the bar.
“You sumabitch,” the man slurred badly as he pushed himself up. Before he could get to his feet, Duncan kicked him in the chin and sent him tumbling backwards. He crouched next to the drunk and warned him about what would happen if he ever showed his face at the Blue Rose again.
The drunk tried giving Duncan a cold stare, but his eyes were too unfocused to manage it. “You know who I work for?” he grunted out as a threat.
“You think I give two fucks?”
Duncan grabbed him by his big, floppy ears and slammed the back of his head onto the pavement. The blow knocked him out for good.
Duncan went back inside and was surprised to find the woman he had rescued waiting near the fire door. He caught her staring at his bruised knuckles.
“What did you do to him?” she asked.
Duncan rubbed his knuckles. “I convinced the big gorilla that he had too much to drink and it would be better if he went home and slept it off. Surprisingly—because usually drunks aren’t all that agreeable—he did as I suggested. This bruise was from when I gave him a little tap to the nose.”
A sigh of relief escaped from her. “Thank you,” she said. “I was scared to death about what he planned to do to me.”
