MYSTERY THRILLER DOUBLE PLAY BOX SET (Two full-length novels)

by Osborne, Jon

  No use. Krugman might as well have been looking at some sort of bizarre, glass-enclosed, blood-soaked ant farm at the moment, considering all the frenetic activity going on all around him right now.

  The parking lot of the Westwood Movie Cinema was teeming with cops, firemen, EMTs, doctors, nurses and just about every other possible stripe of first-responder under the sun. Fire trucks, squad cars and ambulances lit up the stormy gray skies threatening overhead with their flashing red-and-blue lights. Sirens wailed, piercing his eardrums. News trucks careened into the parking lot one after another in a long line, tires squealing, metal rattling, reporters jumping out with microphones in hand while camera operators followed close behind before their respective vehicles had even come to full stops. Onlookers held onto each other tight and sobbed hysterically in each other’s arms. Gurneys squeaked across the cracked black pavement, some bearing survivors with oxygen masks strapped across their mouths and noses while others carried unmoving, lumpy white sheets stained crimson with blood.

  Krugman blinked several times against the visual, auditory and olfactory madness that had taken his senses hostage, attempting to reconcile the horrific sights, sounds and smells that were slapping him hard across the face at the moment with the stupefying realization that he’d been delivering a eulogy for a beloved friend and colleague at St. Christopher’s Catholic Church just fifteen minutes earlier. The scene was pure carnage, like nothing else he’d ever seen before in his more than forty years with the Bureau. And Krugman had been around plenty of bloody scenes over the course of his lengthy career, that much was for sure. So many of them that he could never quite keep them from invading his dreams at night, no matter how many different and seemingly silly home-remedies Peggy prescribed.

  John Wayne Gacy’s kill-house in Illinois, where they’d dug up the badly decomposed bodies of twenty-nine teenage boys: the unlucky victims of the deranged, portly businessman who’d liked nothing better in this world than to dress up as a clown and perform at children’s birthday parties on the weekends in order to relax. Nothing better, that is, save for raping and killing the helpless boys he favored for his perverted sexual thrills before burying their strangled corpses in the foul-smelling crawlspace beneath his suburban home of horrors. Richard Ramirez’s hunting grounds out in California, where the sadistic killer had murdered at least thirteen people before his bloody rampage had finally been brought to a much belated end when enraged members of the citizenry had recognized the monster from a picture of his in the local newspaper, much too late for the people who’d already died by the Night Stalker’s steady and knife-equipped hand. The Son of Sam’s bullet-ridden playground in New York City during the blisteringly hot summer of 1977, a terrifying time in The Big Apple that had seen young women all around the city change their hairstyles in a desperate attempt to remove themselves from the ranks of females who’d possessed the preferred physical characteristics of David Berkowitz’s highly unfortunate targets.

  None of them could hold a candle to this.

  Krugman stretched his aching neck to the left and willed the painful cramp squeezing the muscles there to go away already, but it didn’t work. Not even close. Huge fucking surprise. His traitorous body had begun to betray him in earnest during his late-forties, and it had really ramped up its sabotage efforts all throughout his fifties and sixties. If nothing else, retirement was looking better and better by the second. Not unlike Danny Glover’s character in the Lethal Weapon movies, he was far too old for this shit. Had been for a good fifteen years now.

  Krugman reached a local uniform stationed outside the theater’s entrance. The man was issuing orders to the people around him in a clipped, authoritative tone. The elaborate gold piping on his hat signified his great importance to the world in no uncertain terms. “Give me a status update,” Krugman barked, not bothering to introduce himself.

  The local stopped directing things for a moment and turned to Krugman with an unmistakable look of disgust flashing across his face. His hard gray eyes narrowed into a disbelieving squint. His upper lip curled into an ugly sneer that Krugman immediately wanted to punch right off his smug face. Clearly, though, this wasn’t a guy accustomed to being barked at. He was the big dog in these parts, and God help anyone who didn’t realize that. “Who the fuck are you, asshole?”

  Krugman felt his headache worsen to the point that a radical lobotomy sounded like a pretty good idea to lessen the pain. And why not? Couldn’t possibly hurt any worse than this.

  Krugman whipped out his Bureau ID and shoved it in the other man’s face. “I’m the guy who’s going to rip off your head and shit down your fucking throat if you don’t give me a status update right now. I’m Bill Krugman, FBI Director. I’m assuming jurisdiction, so you can just give up any dreams of getting on CNN right now.”

  The local’s face blanched, then suffused with what looked to Krugman to be at least a gallon of blood, turning his clean-shaven cheeks bright red. The man glanced around quickly to see if any of his subordinates had witnessed the embarrassing exchange before turning back to Krugman with a bit more humility than he’d initially displayed. “Yes, sir,” he said, clearing his throat forcefully and reducing the puffed-out nature of his ribbon-adorned chest. “I’m Chief Mike Billingham, Rocky River PD. Anyway, status update: we’ve got thirty-eight people dead so far and twenty-five wounded, some critical, so the death toll could rise. Probably will rise.”

  Krugman nodded. Now that the brief pissing match between him and the local cop had decided a winner they could get down to the business at hand. “Any children among the victims?” he asked.

  Billingham blew out a slow breath and dropped his stare down to the pavement at his feet. “Yes, sir. Three dead; four wounded.”

  Krugman winced. If not for the hundreds of people around at the moment, he very well might have started crying. And why not? There was nothing worse in this world than dead kids. Nothing. He had seven grandchildren himself, couldn’t even begin to imagine losing any one of them, much less to cold-blooded murder. Still, the logical part of his brain knew that it could have been worse. Much worse. At least from a strategic standpoint. Children were short, low to the ground, which actually provided a measure of protection in a mass-shooting incident, however flimsy that protection might be. In most cases they didn’t need to duck very far to escape the bullets that were whizzing over their heads. No particular solace to the parents of the three dead youngsters, though; he knew that. “Any suspects?” he asked.

  “We’re checking surveillance video now,” Billingham said. “Witnesses say it was a teenager wearing a long black trench coat and wielding a machinegun.”

  Krugman closed his eyes briefly in frustration, then opened them up again as the blood pressure at his temples continued to tap out an exquisite, staccato drumbeat of pain: hard fingers with calcified fingernails at the tips drumming steadily against an unyielding wooden table. Sounded like a fucking game of Clue. “Gotcha,” he said. “Let your people know that I’m the point man for any information.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  Krugman jerked his head to the parking lot behind them, where eager news reporters had already gotten far too close for his liking. That last thing on Earth he needed right now was any of these panting newshounds to trample over any evidence and possibly destroy it in the process. They had their work cut out for them here already, couldn’t afford to lose even the tiniest shred of evidence at this early stage of the game. “Get a yellow line set up thirty yards from where we’re standing and keep the goddamn press off my back,” Krugman said. “Also, put a gag order on your people. I need to find out what breed of gorilla we’re dealing with here before any publicity whores under your command go around playing Denzel Washington with the press. We don’t have any time for movie stars today, Billingham. And I sure as hell don’t have the patience for it. Any information to the media had better come from me. If not, you can kiss those pretty scrambled eggs on your cover goodbye. Are we understood?”
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  The local bigwig nodded. For one long, uneasy moment, Krugman feared he might actually snap together his heels smartly and salute. Thankfully, though, the pomp-and-circumstance he’d been dreading never materialized. Krugman really didn’t think he’d have been able to handle that right now.

  “Yes, sir,” the local said. “We’re completely understood.”

  “Good. So get to it.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  When Billingham had scampered away in a fluttering of waving arms, loudly passing along Krugman’s orders as he went, the Director surveyed the parking lot again. He counted at least seven FBI agents who’d been at Dana’s funeral. Good. At least manpower shouldn’t be a problem for them here. Thank God for the little things in this life. Sometimes he thought they were the only things that kept him sane. If he could even be considered sane anymore. Even he knew that it took more than just a little bit of crazy to continue getting up for this job every morning.

  For the next half an hour, Krugman busied himself organizing the disparate law-enforcement agencies that were flooding into the scene, infinitely relieved for the diversion. Work kept his mind occupied and off Dana’s death. Not to mention the fact that it also helped him to compartmentalize the horrifying realization that three children had died here this afternoon and four more weren’t anywhere near out of the woods yet.

  Krugman shuddered hard, producing a skin-stitching pattern of ice-cold gooseflesh that rolled up his arms in unsettling waves underneath his long gray coat. Even under the worst of conditions: an absolutely unthinkable way to wrap up what had supposed to have been a fun day at the movies with their parents, some of them dead now, too.

  Forty minutes later, Billingham returned with an iPad in his hands. “Got the surveillance video you were asking about, sir,” he said, sounding out of breath. “Witnesses have positively ID’d the perp. Have a look for yourself.”

  Krugman looked down and watched Billingham press a digital button on the glass face of the device. On the tiny rectangular screen in the man’s hands, the ugly scene sprang to life. A boy wearing a long black trench coat who looked to be somewhere in his mid-teens walked with a slight hitch down the long hallway inside the movie theater, his free movement impeded almost imperceptibly by the machinegun hidden along his right side but definitely there.

  The footage jumped crazily several times before another camera picked up the suspect as he passed near enough to the lens for the security system to capture a clear image of his face.

  “Pause it there,” Krugman ordered.

  Thunder grumbled insistently in Krugman’s ears. The ominous smell of impending rain filled his nostrils. A shocking burst of lightning flashed brightly overhead while Billingham did as he was instructed.

  Krugman refocused his vision and felt his jaw drop as his eyes took in the image frozen on the screen. He blinked hard and grabbed the iPad from the other man’s hands, bringing it up close to his face for a better look. “Motherfucker,” he muttered underneath his breath.

  “What is it, sir?” Billingham asked eagerly.

  Krugman ignored him. He didn’t want anyone to know the identity of the perp, least of all Billingham. Not yet, at least. He needed to get all of his thoughts in order here first, needed to map out the best plan of attack for dealing with this shitstorm that had just fallen into his lap.

  Just then, though, the other storm that had been brewing like a huge pot of coffee in the sky for the past hour now finally opened up in all its glory, drenching everyone in the parking lot all the way down to the bone with soaking torrents of driving rain.

  Krugman hunched up his shoulders against the freezing-cold rain and tucked the iPad quickly into his coat in a hasty effort to shield the device from water damage. He’d be appropriating it for official purposes, of course. The locals could charge the feds for it later on. Then he looked up and scanned the parking lot again. Dozens of people were scattering for cover all around him, seeking some sort of protection from the angry storm raging in the heavens. But Krugman didn’t move. Not even an inch. What was the point?

  This day couldn’t possibly get any worse.

  PART V

  “Better murder an infant in its cradle than nurse an unacted desire.” – William Blake

  CHAPTER 18

  Horatio D’Arbinville waited until night had fallen before driving alone with the baby to Elyria, which was located forty-five miles west of downtown Cleveland.

  Stretching his kinked-up neck in the driver’s seat of the white cargo van, D’Arbinville switched on the radio and fiddled with the dial until he reached WTAM 1100, Cleveland’s Newsradio. Just as he’d expected, a female reporter with a honey-covered voice was passing along the shocking details about the stunning heist that he and Helen Morgan had pulled off earlier that morning. And where was the great surprise in that? Nothing newsworthy ever happened in Cleveland, now did it?

  Not until today, at least.

  “To recap again, Mike, we now have substantiated reports that the newborn son of Zachary Paulson was abducted at around 10 a.m. this morning from Fairview General Hospital, less than an hour after the baby’s birth. Helen Morgan, a longtime nurse at the hospital, has been taken into custody for questioning by Fairview Park Police. Morgan was the last person to be seen with the child. According to a source within the police department who has asked to remain anonymous, citing the ongoing investigation, Morgan was found unconscious on the pavement outside the hospital without the baby in her possession shortly after she’d been tasked with delivering the boy to a doctor scheduled to perform a circumcision. A horrible start to what eventually turned out to have been an even worse day.”

  The male radio host on the other end of the conversation clucked his tongue, and D’Arbinville could almost see the man shaking his head sadly. The forgotten power of radio: something lost to most people in this day and age of instant news available from high-tech devices stored easily in one’s front pocket.

  The radio host positioned his microphone closer to his mouth, practically eating the goddamn thing before drawing back again. “Farrah is referring, of course, to the mass-shooting that took place shortly past three p.m. today at the Westwood Movie Cinema in Rocky River. Do we have anything new on that yet, Farrah?”

  “As a matter of fact, Mike, yes, we do. I’ve just received word that FBI Director Bill Krugman will be conducting a news conference at the FBI building on Lakeshore Avenue downtown in about half an hour now. Krugman came into town a few days ago to attend the funeral of longtime FBI veteran Special Agent Dana Whitestone, who took her own life last Friday night.”

  The male grunted. “Oh, boy. Seems to me that we’re getting all kinds of attention for all the wrong kinds of reasons these days, Farrah.”

  “Yeah, I’d say that’s about right, Mike. Awful, awful day for the people of northeast Ohio, no doubt about it.”

  D’Arbinville flipped off the radio and widened his eyes, almost unable to believe the unexpected stroke of good luck that had just fallen into his lap. Absolutely fucking amazing. If the FBI had its attention split between the abduction of the Paulson baby and the mass shooting that had gone down at the movie theater in Rocky River this afternoon, it should make things infinitely easier for him to pull off what he needed to do from here on out. Loads easier. After all, he’d known all along that the feds would be working this case and he’d prepared his next series of moves anticipating exactly that. So if the FBI’s focus proved diverted by the movie-theater shooting, however brief that diversion might ultimately be, his road had just been paved for a much smoother ride.

  Could it get any better than this?

  D’Arbinville’s skin tingled with an almost erotic charge. He wished with all his heart and soul that he knew the identity of the shooter in the movie theater. He would’ve liked to buy the man a glass of Scotch at the moment, because they were always males in these instances, weren’t they? Maybe even two glasses of Scotch. Hell, after what he’d done to pave D’Arbinville
’s road for the rest of this thrilling ride, the mystery man deserved an entire bottle. The good stuff, too. Not any of that rotgut D’Arbinville had swilled over at the Oak Barrel Bar on Friday night.

  In any event, bless the man’s rage-fueled heart, wherever he might be right now.

  Shifting in his seat, D’Arbinville used his left knee to expertly steer the van and reached into his coveralls before extracting his cigarette case and taking out a fresh Gitane. Tucking it between his lips, he fired up the pungent tobacco with a cheap plastic lighter and breathed in deeply in excitement, not particularly concerned about any detrimental health effects this action might cause the baby in the backseat. Hell, his mother had smoked for the entire duration of her pregnancy with him, and just look how he’d turned out. Just fine. Clearly, the gloomy reports of the medical repercussions brought about by the much-maligned habit he loved so much didn’t vary too widely from the highly soothing action itself:

  A whole lot of smoke and very little fire.

  D’Arbinville leaned forward in his seat and turned on the radio again after a moment or two of contented smoking – to a classical music station this time – while he ran through all the particulars in his mind once more. For the time being, he’d entrusted Louise to hold down the home front, which in this case was unfortunately being represented by a fleabag motel on the eastern outskirts of the Renaissance City. Rooms rentable by the hour. Dirty carpets and bedding soiled with every conceivable manner of human fluid: blood, semen, vomit. More black faces than you could shake a stick at. Still, for all its many faults, the Manor Inn was also exactly the kind of place where the shifty-eyed occupants usually minded their own highly illegal business, so that much proved a comfort at least. In that sense, if in none other, he and his cousin fit in perfectly there. Two parts of a three-person group that would one day soon become a very rich collection of people, indeed, thanks entirely to the expected forthcoming largesse of one Zachary Alexander Paulson, founder and CEO of Paulson & Associates Networking Solutions.