by Jacob Stone
Stonehedge closed his eyes and tried to picture the freak blindly jumping off the cliff in the pitch-black of night and surviving the fall enough so that he could run a mile on the sand and escape through the first property with beach access.
It would make a hell of a movie, he thought.
He began thinking he should hire a screenwriter and produce the movie himself. The more he thought about it, the more he liked the idea. He just wasn’t sure which role he’d want to play. Himself or the killer.
Chapter 55
The killer was inside one of the large downtown LA chain drugstores, and he moved like a crippled old man as he hobbled to the pharmacy window located in the back of the store. He placed two knee braces and three elastic bandages that he needed for his wrist and ankles on the counter. The pharmacist asked whether he’d be buying anything else.
“Yeah, I’ve got a prescription. Just one moment.”
The killer unzipped the backpack he brought and took out a hand grenade. “Yep, here it is,” the killer said as he held it up so it could be seen.
The pharmacist blinked several times. “I don’t understand,” he said.
“Seriously? You don’t recognize a prescription for a thirty-day supply of OxyContin when you see it?”
While there was a Plexiglas partition that came down almost to the counter, there was still a one-foot gap so that customers could slide over prescriptions, money, and credit cards, and the pharmacist could slide back purchases, change, and credit card slips for signing. The setup would’ve worked just fine in keeping someone from robbing the pharmacy with a gun since the pharmacist would be able to duck safely behind the counter, but it provided little protection against a hand grenade. As the pharmacist stared at the small deadly device in the killer’s hand, he soon understood that fact.
“I’ll get your prescription for you right away,” he promised, his voice fading into a frightened whisper.
“Act smart,” the killer warned. “As if your life depends on it.”
The pharmacist looked like he was on the verge of passing out, but he moved to a locked cabinet on the other side of his area. His hands shook as he unlocked the cabinet. The killer caught him glancing at a door twenty feet away, and knew what the man had to be thinking. Could he make it through the door in time? It was a good question. The hand grenade had a five-and-a-half-second fuse, not that the pharmacist knew that. The killer decided the odds of the man escaping were about fifty percent. The pharmacist must’ve either decided the odds weren’t good enough or he didn’t have it in him to give it a try, because a look of defeat settled over his features, and instead of glancing again at the door that might’ve taken him to safety, he began counting out pills.
The drugstore had opened promptly at seven a.m., while the in-store pharmacy didn’t open until nine-thirty. The killer had waited until ten minutes before then to hobble into the store and pick up the knee braces and elastic bandages that he badly needed so he could bring them to the pharmacist just as the man had finished unlocking the cash register. At that early hour on a Sunday, the drugstore had few employees, and there were no other pharmacy customers waiting.
The killer had disguised himself with a prosthetic nose and chin, fake teeth, and a wig and facial hair that gave him unruly red hair and a scraggly beard and mustache. Along with several grenades, he had also brought a .38 caliber pistol, which he would use if needed. While it could be argued that it was pure hubris on his part not to have brought the gun with him when he broke into Stonehedge’s home, and that he was now paying the price for his arrogance, the killer had his reasons. From the moment he had decided he was going to hurt Brick by slaughtering Stonehedge, he had envisioned so clearly cutting the actor’s throat from ear to ear that the thought of bringing a gun just seemed not only unimportant, but sacrilege. He knew he’d be able to sneak through Stonehedge’s bedroom without making a peep, just as he knew he’d be able to drug Evans without her stirring enough to wake her boyfriend. It just made no sense that Stonehedge would be able to grab his wrist the way he did.
The killer winced in pain as he watched the pharmacist dispensing the OxyContin. He felt as if he’d been in a bad car crash, with his body aching from head to toe. Along with the overall soreness, he believed he had a broken wrist, torn ligaments in his knees and ankles, and maybe even shin splints. He still couldn’t believe he’d been able to run along the beach after jumping off that cliff. It must’ve been fear and adrenaline pushing him, because he could barely walk now. The fear that had consumed him back on the beach wasn’t of being caught, but of his death machine not completing.
Things had not gone well over the last twenty-four hours, to put it bluntly. He had lost his chance to grab Brie Evans. He accepted it. He would now have to go with a different option. A much lesser one. But he could still plunge LA into chaos and destruction. Everything was still in place for that to happen. He’d be cheating with this last domino, but few people other than himself would ever know that. Brick would, and that fact galled him, but when the oil wells blew and LA was swallowed up by earthquakes and fires, it wouldn’t much matter what Brick knew or thought. At least the killer had to keep telling himself that.
The pharmacist brought a prescription bottle filled with pills back to the counter. Before he could slide this through the opening, the killer told him to open the bottle and show him one of the pills. The pharmacist did this. The pill was larger than the killer expected it to be and it was blue instead of white.
“I thought it was supposed to be white,” the killer said.
“Different potencies are different colors.”
That made sense to the killer. And he did see the letters “OC” etched onto the pill. He told the pharmacist to slide the bottle through the opening. While the guy had every right to be scared given that the killer was threatening him with a hand grenade, he had picked something else up from him.
“You must’ve recognized me,” he said.
The pharmacist, alarmed, shook his head, but there was a certain look in his eyes that said otherwise.
“It doesn’t matter,” the killer said, sighing. “Lie down on your stomach, close your eyes, and a count to a hundred before moving. You do that, and maybe you’ll live through this.”
The pharmacist did as he was directed. The killer had told the truth. It didn’t much matter whether the pharmacist knew that he was who the media was calling by that ridiculous name: The Sex Pervert Maniac Killer. By the end of today this would all be finished. The final act of his machine would be unveiled and the killer would be flying to South America to recuperate and rest. By the time the authorities learned his true identity, he’d have bought himself a new identity and altered his appearance with enough cosmetic surgeries that he wouldn’t have to worry about using prosthetics again. The killer knew all this was true. He didn’t need to kill this pharmacist who was lying on the floor quaking in fear. This wasn’t part of his death machine, only something he needed to do so he could see the day through. But when he had thought about Brick moments earlier and how badly his masterpiece had been marred, it put him in an exceptionally rotten mood.
The killer pulled the pin on the hand grenade, counted to two, and dropped it next the pharmacist. He’d leave the pharmacist’s life to chance. After all, the man still had three and a half seconds to keep his wits about him and toss the grenade through the opening between the counter and the Plexiglas partition.
As the killer limped his way toward the back door, he took another grenade from the backpack, pulled the pin, and rolled it down the aisle. He was walking out of the store when he heard the first grenade detonate. The explosion was louder than he thought it would be.
Chapter 56
Even though he had joked with Morris about this very thing happening, Bogle could barely believe it when the man stepped out of the house and pointed a 9mm pistol at him.
“Take it easy
there, fella,” Bogle said. In a slow, fluid movement he started to raise his hands in surrender, but then flicked his right hand into the man’s gun wrist, knocking the pistol aside so it no longer pointed at him while also grabbing his wrist. Simultaneously, he stepped forward with his left foot and twisted his body so he was parallel to the gun arm while using his open left palm to strike the elbow. The speed and power of the twisting motion of his body would’ve delivered enough force to make the man drop his weapon, but Bogle put extra muscle into it so that the man cried out in pain, and he felt well justified in doing so. Morris’s actor friend, Stonehedge, could stand in front of someone’s door at three a.m. butt naked and pound on it like a wild man, yet here he was at a quarter to ten on a sunny Sunday morning, clean-shaven and wearing a suit, and he’s the one someone’s going to point a gun at? The thought of it pissed him off.
“You broke my arm,” the man complained as he clutched his injured elbow.
“Your elbow is hyperextended, that’s all. Otherwise you’d be either passed out or screaming.” Bogle picked up the dropped gun, pulled out the magazine, and emptied its bullets into his hand. He ejected the round in the gun’s chamber, then dropped the bullets into his suit jacket pocket. “What are you doing pointing a gun at me?” he demanded.
The man showed an aggrieved expression. “What are you doing snooping around my door?”
“You mean knocking on your door?”
“Those are your words, not mine.”
“I wanted to ask you about your neighbor, Mark Sangonese.”
“How am I supposed to know that?” The man sniffed peevishly as he rubbed his elbow. “For all I know you could be that psycho who’s all over the news.”
For a long moment Bogle could only gawk at the man who had held a gun on him.
“You jackass,” he said. “The police reports have the suspect as five feet ten, a hundred and seventy pounds. I’m six feet one and two hundred and ten pounds. And I don’t look anything like him.”
“That’s who I thought you were when I looked out my window and saw you hanging around my door,” the man argued.
“Why in the world would this psycho drive to Long Beach to break into your house? You got any blond starlets stashed away in there?”
The man gave him a confused look, not picking up on Bogle’s sarcasm. “I don’t understand what you mean.”
“Forget it.” He handed the man back his now empty gun. “Like I told you before I’m trying to get ahold of your neighbor—”
“That’s your problem.”
The man tried to scoot back inside his house, but before he could close the door, Bogle stepped forward, blocking him. A dog barked angrily inside. Fortunately, the animal must’ve been kept in a closed room, because if it was anywhere near as ill-tempered as its owner, the situation would’ve become even more unpleasant.
“Uh uh,” Bogle said. “When you pointed your gun at me without any legal justification, it became your problem also. You’re going to do everything you can to help me, or I’m going to drag your ass down to the precinct on West Broadway and have you booked for assault and battery with a deadly weapon.”
“What are you talking about? You were the one who assaulted me!”
“My force was justified. What you did wasn’t. You can’t just point a gun at anyone who knocks on your door.”
“It’s my property!” the man insisted, his face folding into a perfect picture of belligerence. “You saying I can’t use a gun to protect my property? This is America, ain’t it?”
Bogle sighed. “You want to argue with me? I was on the LAPD for sixteen years. Right now, I’m deputized by them. If you want we can go down to the West Broadway precinct and see which one of us gets booked. Or you can help me find your neighbor.”
The man’s face screwed up as if he were going to argue some more, but he must’ve thought better of it, and instead said he didn’t know where Sangonese was. “We’re not exactly friends,” he said.
“I can give you Maria’s cell phone,” a woman’s voice said.
Bogle looked past the man to see that they’d been joined by a thin and pale woman wearing a ratty cloth robe and pink fuzzy slippers. She was standing by what looked like the kitchen entrance. Her husband shot her an angry look but otherwise held his tongue.
“Maria is Mark Sangonese’s wife?” Bogle asked.
“That’s right. I think they’re in church now. I know Maria goes every Sunday, but I’m afraid I can’t tell you which one.”
Finally, someone in this house who wasn’t a complete jackass!
“Ma’am, her cell phone number will be just fine.”
* * * *
Maria Sangonese’s cell phone rang to voicemail right away, which meant it was turned off. Instead of driving to every church in the Long Beach area to find Mark Sangonese, Bogle had the LAPD locate the address of the cell phone. Services were still going on when he walked into the church. He spotted Sangonese in the third pew with a woman who must’ve been his wife, Maria, and four girls ranging from tiny to teenager. Bogle squeezed past several of the churchgoers in the pew behind Sangonese so he could tap the Samson Oil & Gas manager on the shoulder. Sangonese turned and gave him a confused smile as if he were having trouble placing Bogle.
“We talked in your office a few days ago,” Bogle said in a whisper that seemed to carry throughout the church. “I was looking for Karl Crawford then. We need to talk. It’s urgent.”
A glimmer of recognition showed in Sangonese’s eyes. His smile stayed frozen on his face, but from the way he looked at Bogle he couldn’t fathom what Bogle could possibly want from him.
“I’m sorry, but can’t this wait until the service is over?”
“No. We think someone is planning to blow up your oil wells.”
What remained of Sangonese’s frozen smile turned sickly as if he thought this had to be a bad joke. Once he realized Bogle was serious, he moved quickly, squeezing himself past his family. He followed Bogle out of the church, and once they were alone outside he demanded that Bogle explain himself.
“What the heck is going on here? You first come to me about the disappearance of one of my employees, and now you’re stalking me at church to tell me some sort of cockamamie story about oil wells being blown up?”
“Calm down, okay? How about you read this.”
Bogle pulled from his inside jacket pocket a copy of the letter the LA mayor’s office provided deputizing MBI’s employees for investigating Heather Brandley’s murder.
Sangonese at first seemed too incensed to understand what he was reading, but as he stared at the letter his expression changed more into a look of bewilderment.
“This is about that madman who’s killing those actresses?” he asked.
“Yeah. This psycho’s not just killing actresses. We know he’s in possession of six hundred pounds of stolen C-4. We also know he wants to blow up oil wells around LA, thinking that will trigger some sort of cataclysmic earthquake. What we suspect is that he killed Karl Crawford so he’d be hired as Crawford’s replacement, which would give him the opportunity to hide explosives in the well casings.”
“I didn’t hire anyone to replace Karl,” Sangonese said.
Bogle had been sure that it happened the way he believed it did. The pieces just fit too nicely together for it to be any other way. What Sangonese said left him puzzled.
“How’d you get Crawford’s work done if you didn’t replace him?”
Sangonese frowned. “Due to the planned revamping of our remote monitoring capabilities, I was going to reduce the headcount by one and fire our lowest performer. After Karl went missing, I had to keep the other service tech onboard.”
“Who was that?”
“Brad Pettibone.” Sangonese looked away from Bogle and chewed on his thumbnail. When he shifted his gaze back to Bogle, he looked like som
eone who’d been told a joke a few minutes earlier and was only now getting the punch line. He said, “The funny thing is, Pettibone was supposed to service four wells yesterday, but he didn’t show up at any of them. I couldn’t reach him either. I tried calling him a dozen times, but he wasn’t answering his phone.”
Chapter 57
Todd Blankenford arranged for a taxi to whisk Mary Anne Callahan away, and once the coffee did its job and made his head feel like it was no longer going to split apart, he mixed half a quart of top quality tequila with the correct proportions of orange juice, pineapple juice, and grenadine to make a pitcher of his slightly altered version of a tequila sunrise. It wasn’t so much to have a hair of the dog as a way to slip comfortably into the day. Still draped in only his robe, he brought the pitcher, a glass, and the Sunday paper to the patio, and settled down on a lounge chair. At some point he must’ve drifted off, because he was startled awake by the sound of an intruder approaching. When he saw that the man had unruly red hair and a scraggly beard and mustache, he thought this must be the Callahan young Mary Anne had married.
“Let’s be civilized,” Blankenford suggested, his body tensing as he prepared to make a run for it.
If the intruder was indeed a cuckolded husband hell-bent on revenge, he didn’t act the part given the ah-shucks apologetic smile he showed.
“Ah, man, I’m sorry,” the intruder said. “I tried ringing your bell, but no one answered. I heard someone rustling around back here, and thought I’d check it out.”
“You must’ve heard me snoring,” Blankenford said cautiously. He was still preparing to bolt if necessary. He wished he could see the man’s eyes so he could tell whether violence was imminent, but the man had them covered with dark shades. “What’s this about?”
