The first and second buildings sat about thirty feet apart, and a breezeway in the middle of the first connected with the second about a third of the way up. The padlock on the door into the second building was on the ground, the chains dangled from the handles. Drexel jogged across the grass at an angle to the breezeway. He poked the barrel of the gun into the space between the doors, shining the light into a hallway. Pointing the barrel down to the ground, he leaned up against the door and looked in, seeing as far down the hallway in both directions as he could. He saw three sets of double doors. The kind he had walked through many a time in his high school days to the gymnasium.
He pulled his head back in and leaned against the door. Daniela was next to him, his gun in her hands, pointed to the ground. Sweat dribbled from his temple down his cheek. The back of his head was wet. A glistening of sweat dotted her forehead. In as low a volume as he could muster between heavy breaths, he said, “Gym just the other side of there. Three double-doors, all closed.” He held up three fingers. “Let’s take it slow.”
She nodded.
He turned back to the door and held up the shotgun to his right shoulder, using his left hand to push open the door a bit. He slipped into the building, flashing the light up and down the hallway. He stepped across the hallway and leaned up against a glazed, tan brick wall. When she was next to him, he slid down the wall toward the first set of doors. Keeping his body against the wall, he leaned so that he could put his ear against the door and listen. But he could not hear anything. He reached out and grabbed the door handle and tugged. It was unlocked. He paused and took a deep breath. And another. He pulled open the door and swung himself into the gym, holding the shotgun forward, ready to shoot any threat.
Chapter 35
Drexel pulled up short, and Daniela’s shoulder drove into the small of his back. He stepped forward to keep from falling and the shotgun’s tip rebounded after hitting metal.
“What the hell?” asked Daniela in a volume so low Drexel barely heard it.
He lifted the shotgun back up and pointed it straight ahead into, what he now realized, were foldable bleachers that had been extended for seating. The killer must have moved them in front of the door and pulled them forward. The shotgun had clipped one of the metal structural components. Drexel pointed the shotgun to his right and then left and then started walking, ducking to avoid hitting his head. He stepped around the supporting, angled struts. After directing the light toward the front of the bleachers and back to expose the shadows, he confirmed to himself the bleachers had been set up and telescoped for some time. Dust piled on the floor a few seats in and stood thick on the struts. The bleachers ended several feet beyond the third double door leading to the gym. He stepped out from underneath and pointed the shotgun to the center of the gym.
They stood at one goal end of the court. The center circle of the court featured the silhouette of a man with a Vandyke beard with a large flowing handlebar mustache, a cavalier hat sporting a large flowing feather on its right, and a pair of crossed rapiers with Locke High School Musketeers written at the top and bottom. A netless goal hung from the wall on the far end with another set of three double doors, though these were not blocked by bleachers. Drexel took several steps forward, shining the light to illuminate the space.
He smelled it first. Body odor. Urine. Feces. It cut through the stale dust and old wood smells of the bleachers. As he continued to walk forward and swinging the light back and forth, he saw it. Daniela saw it at the same time, at least Drexel assumed so from the muted gasp behind him.
Not quite in the far corner of the gym opposite of their point of entry, a large outdoor dog kennel—like the kind his good grade-school friend Asher’s dad had for keeping their two Doberman pinschers—stood. Tall, long, and narrow. He recognized it from the front narrow door and the chain-link fencing. The rest was covered by gym mats layered around the sides and piled on top. To the right of it, a gleaming metal table. On the floor, a tool box. A small generator sat against the wall and a set of lamps sat beside it.
He picked up his pace and approached the kennel’s entrance, fixing the light longer and longer on it. As he got closer, he could see the padlock and chain on it were hanging loose to the kennel and the door was maybe two inches ajar. His heart pounded and he held his breath. The kennel’s depths remained in darkness except for the light’s dance with his steps. Twenty feet from the kennel. Fifteen. He moved faster. Ten. Five and he saw a form in the back reaches. A woman. Her back was to him, but he knew it was a woman. Her hair was cut short and she wore running clothes, though her feet were bare.
He reached for the kennel door. He paused. He shined the light to the table and reached down and turned the volume up on his radio.
Daniela said, “What are you—” And she grunted.
Drexel swung around, the light landing on Daniela’s face, a gleam of metal at her throat, and Cheryl holding a knife with one hand and holding the back of Daniela’s head by the hair, pulling it back and exposing her neck.
“Drop it,” Cheryl said. “And get that light out of my face.”
Daniela tossed her pistol, which clanged loud against the wood a couple of feet in front of her. Drexel lowered the tip of the shotgun so that the light still shined on the women but not directly into their eyes. Where had she come from? And a lot of good a shotgun was going to do him. Even if he had his pistol, taking a shot would be risky. A shotgun would kill Daniela. But he was a cop, and giving up your gun meant certain death.
“Seems you’ve arrived uninvited.” Cheryl’s smile blossomed across her face.
Holding the shotgun pointed in her general direction, Drexel said, “So you and Malcolm?”
“My acolyte. He understood what I wanted to accomplish, where we needed to arrive.”
“And that was where?”
“Escape from the flesh, redemption for sin.”
“I thought Jesus did that.”
“He told us of the way—gave us a path, but each of us must free our own soul from bondage. Look at how people live. You’ve seen it.” Cheryl pulled on Daniela’s hair, causing her to wince. “You’ve been in their homes. The Days, for example. All that stuff. Stuff that ties them to this world.”
“So what, you killed Brittany Day to help her and her parents?”
“Don’t you understand?” She stepped forward, pushing Daniela ahead of her. “We’re saving the world. Saving the world from itself.”
He did not understand. “Why Brandon Marshall?”
She squinted and twisted her head.
“The plumber that lived next door to Malcolm?”
“Ah. Yes. I wanted him as a distraction for you. But Malcolm eventually freaked out. He wanted to remove that, that connection. It was a mistake. I thought we’d have enough time to finish. But like the crusade, you want to interrupt, to stop me at a critical time.”
“Finish what?”
“To give redemption requires a point in time, a completion.”
Drexel nodded toward the kennel. “Was she the last?”
Cheryl tilted her head and smirked.
“So why Brittany? You knew her.”
“I did. We knew them all.”
“What do you mean?”
“Jodi. She rejected Malcolm. Met him like she did so many and spurned him. Jared rejected me. I could have given him so much. And Brittany, well, she had her mother to thank. Angling in the department for favor. Bad-mouthing, fucking, whatever she needed to do. So I stripped her of her lovely girl, the only possession that truly mattered to her. Took it. And froze her and took her apart like the bag of meat she was. The bag of meat we all are. And with it began the message of redemption.” She smiled and laughed. “But why any of them? Why her? Why him? It doesn’t matter. What matters is they’re part of the plan and better off for it.”
Drexel allowed himself a glance at Daniela
. She held her mouth closed tight, but her eyes were focused on him. His radio squawked. A male voice he did not recognize blared out into the cavernous gym. “Unit 1, breach.”
Cheryl looked back behind her, and as she did so, Daniela drove her left foot down against Cheryl’s left shin and raised her hands to push the knife blade forward. As Cheryl cried out, Daniela slipped below her captor’s arm and lunged forward, kicking the pistol toward Drexel. He stepped to the right and raised the shotgun but could not get a clear shot.
Enraged, Cheryl lunged forward toward Daniela as Drexel kept sliding to his right. The knife plunged into Daniela’s back but glanced off the vest she wore, tumbling her forward and down. Her legs flew sideways and snapped into Drexel’s shins. The pain rose up his leg into his knees, and he stumbled and, as he thrust his arms—his left letting go of the barrel of the shotgun—out to catch himself, pulled the trigger. The shot reverberated in the hollowness of the gym. The flash might as well have been the Big Bang for all its brightness and suddenness. The recoil kicked it out of his hand. He heard the gun land on the court, but he was still blinded from the flash.
Someone screamed. A mad, frothing, desperate scream. Footsteps. He got to his knees. Footsteps racing toward him. He looked up. A shot. He recognized the sound of his Glock. The flash of his pistol’s firing exposed Cheryl standing over him, knife raised, her free hand reaching behind her. A second flash-shot. Cheryl fell toward him. He rolled to the right, and she landed beside him. The knife clattered away. Drexel scrambled away from her, reached out, and found the shotgun. He swung the barrel to where he had heard Cheryl’s body land. The light fell on her back. Two dark stains grew on her shirt.
“She’s down,” he said. He heard the pistol being set on the floor. He turned and shined the light on Daniela. She sat on the floor, the pistol between her legs and her hands next to it. He walked over and sat down beside her, not bothering to cuff Cheryl. They sat together in silence for a few minutes with only the sounds of their breathing and the single light from the shotgun shining on the other half of Simon.
The gym doors they had entered through banged open. Drexel shouted, “Clear,” as the SWAT team poured in, almost crashing into the underside of the bleachers. They moved quickly toward Drexel and Daniela, their Colt carbines held at their shoulders, lights darting back and forth. Drexel held up his badge as they approached. He pointed to the kennel. “Need a medical team in there. A woman is there. Probably drugged.”
One of the team members stopped and spoke into his radio, calling in the EMTs. Another member of the team reached down and touched the carotid on Cheryl’s neck. He stood up and looked back at the detective, shaking his head.
Drexel put his arm around Daniela. “I’m glad you asked for a gun.”
She nodded.
“Thank you.”
She leaned into his shoulder and cried.
Chapter 36
Her name was Mary Simms. She had disappeared four days ago while out on her morning run. She spent the night in the hospital. Cheryl and Malcolm had given her a cocktail of Percocets and liquor to keep her quiet. After getting an IV of fluids, seeing her parents, and sleeping the night away with the aid of sedatives, she returned home. The nightmares would haunt her for the rest of her life. Outside of the immediate kidnapping (a Hollywood-style van pulling up in the early morning hours, hood, squeal of tires), most of the time was a fog. She had met Malcolm, styling himself Edward, on ForeverMate.com a few weeks before. Something about him bothered her, so she did not return his calls. Turned out, Edward had gone on many dates, none of which resulted in a second.
At the Locke High School gym, CSIs found a Polaroid camera. Their best guess was that Cheryl had arrived to take those final photographs before killing Mary. Malcolm’s killing of Marshall had accelerated the plan.
Drexel spoke to Malcolm again. He confirmed they used the gym to hold their most recent captives. They had used another abandoned school earlier in the year, but with the same basic setup. A storage unit in Avondale had two large freezer chests where they had stored the bodies. One for freezing them and one for storing the dismembered parts. The gruesome site included a table and hand power saw. Malcolm had lined the unit with plastic wrap and then gym mats. The freezers were empty. And why Mary and the couple? Mary because she was pretty and needed to be freed from the physical. The couple because they had crossed paths one time with Cheryl and she just decided they needed to be part of the plan. They were too much in love or something.
When asked about the plans, how he and Cheryl had expected to bring redemption or complete the Simonian imagery, Malcolm was little help. “She has the grand plan,” he said. “She worked it out but never told me.” He would work himself into a frenzy and become unintelligible.
They had met when Malcolm was a student of hers and expressed an interest in the Cathars. Drexel presumed Cheryl manipulated him over time, tapping into some broken place in Malcolm and leveraging it.
Drexel, Doggett, Connor—the Kid Dunkadelic case having gone cold—and other detectives spent three days interrogating him. Special Agent Vivaldi visited, confirming Cheryl was the dominant partner, and Malcolm acted on her command.
When after those three days, Drexel told Malcolm Cheryl had died at the hands of the police, he became inconsolable. The detectives did not get anything useful from him after that.
The night of the encounter at the gym, Commander Carl Sobieski held a news conference announcing the successful conclusion to the Simon killings. Anyone not in the know would be forgiven for thinking the commander had personally captured Malcolm, found Cheryl, and rescued Mary. The reporters ate it up.
Daniela found the footage where a hooded Cheryl handed Lester Hawkins a package after he left the interview with Drexel. They were unable to find the other instances where Cheryl or Malcolm paid someone to deliver the package. Too much footage around the station, and they more than likely did it out of sight of most of the cameras. The DA thought they had enough to prosecute Malcolm regardless should it come to that, so the Homicide unit typed up their final reports. Daniela and Drexel took pictures of their whiteboard and then pulled the magnets off the images they had tacked there and then the images themselves. They piled all the documents and photographs and placed them into manila folders and stuffed those into a large archival box. Rain pelted the windows. Large blobs of rainwater accumulated and then fell along the glass in long streaks. Distant thunder loud enough for Drexel to know that when it arrived in the city it would shake walls.
After all the items were boxed, Drexel laid the top on it. A corner did not quite drop into place, and he gestured to it. Daniela looked at him with a confused look. He gestured again to the corner, telling her, it was the ending of the case. She nodded and put the tip of her index finger on the corner. She paused and then pushed. “Thank you.”
“For what?” he asked.
“For not talking about it. For not asking me.”
He nodded once.
“I’ve got something for you.” She leaned over the chair where her blue backpack sat. She unzipped it and pulled out a light green folder. She slid it to him. “Don’t look at this here.” She grabbed her backpack and slung it over her shoulder. “I’ll let you put the evidence box away.”
He looked at the folder on the table. What is it? He picked it up and put it on top of the box. He walked out and took the box down to the basement, where he checked it in with the evidence officer. Back at his desk, he stuffed the green folder into his messenger bag, packed up his desk and locked his drawer. As he headed to the stairs, Victor stepped out of his office and gestured Drexel over to him. Drexel nodded and walked up to his captain, who smiled and leaned in close. He put his hand on Drexel’s shoulder and said, “The IA investigation is over. It’s been dustbinned. Won’t even show up in our jackets.” Victor winked and turned back into his office. Drexel nodded, letting a thin smile cross his
lips. He walked out of the station, lifting up the collar on his sport jacket and jogging for the LaSalle L station. He turned it back down as the Blue Line L headed toward home.
At the Damen Station stop, he got off. The rain had stopped so he walked. He passed the High Ball, paused outside the double oak doors, and went in. He walked by a set of booths against the exposed brick walls. Raincoats—red, tan, white—hung from the hooks at the ends of the booths. Drexel pulled a stool from under the bar and sat down. The bartender asked him what he wanted. Drexel scanned the bourbons and Scotches. The rain had brought a chill to the city, so he felt like a double of Laphroaig. The bartender was generous with his pour and held the ice at Drexel’s wave. He dropped a napkin on the bar, set the glass down, and nodded. Drexel picked up the glass and stuck it beneath his nose. Peaty smoke hit his nose and clambered to the back of his throat. He held the glass there and breathed it in. He thought sometimes Scotland—or what he thought Scotland was like—was a place meant for him. A dark bar in a rainy, sea-drenched coast with whisky that smelled of the ancient earth.
He took a sip. Felt the peat and alcohol hit his tongue and throat. He poured the rest of it down. The bartender poured another double after gesturing with the bottle and Drexel nodded.
He pulled the folder Daniela had given him from his messenger bag and set it on the counter. He stared at it.
He pulled out his phone and called Ryan. His brother answered on the third ring. “Hey there. Saw the big news. Congrats.”
“Hah, thanks.”
“Why’d they do it?”
The question everyone asked about murder. A reasonable, understandable question. The insatiable human question, “Why?” He had asked himself this any number of times when looking at lives cut short too soon by violent means.
Kill Them All (Drexel Pierce Book 2) Page 29
