Next Girl On The List - A serial killer thriller (McRyan Mystery Series Book)

by Roger Stelljes

  “It’s Eleanor something then,” Wire yells excitedly. “Eleanor, Roosevelt, eagle, horizon and sun.”

  “Eleanor, Roosevelt, eagle, horizon and … sun,” Mac says loudly. “The Roosevelt is too easy. If I dump that, I get Eleanor Eagle—”

  “Eagleson!” Dara yelped. “Eleanor Eagleson, Mac. Try that name.”

  “I’m on the laptop,” Mac replied excitedly, his fingers flying on the keyboard, typing in the search terms and slamming the enter key with his thumb. “I’ve got nine options.” He started clicking on each link.

  “Hurry, Mac! It’s 8:53!”

  “I’m working on it.” He replied as he clicked on the second Eleanor Eagleson. “No, not her.”

  Then on the third. “No, not Rubenesque, too skinny.”

  Then on the fourth. “No, she’s married. And … the same on number five.”

  He clicked on number six. This Eleanor Eagleson was unmarried. Her license photo, two years old, showed a woman with a round face and a shortish pixie haircut, and then he looked at her physical measurements. “Dara, this might be it. This Eleanor is unmarried and is five foot five and 185 pounds.”

  He checked the last three and none were good options. “I think it’s number six, Dara. She looks right for it!”

  “That’s gotta be her,” Dara replied. “It’s gotta be.”

  Mac clicked on an address link. “Jesus, she’s just minutes away.” He glanced down to his watch. 8:58. “Shit, Dara, it’s this Eleanor Eagleson! It’s her. We gotta go.” He read off the address to Dara as he burst out the front door. “Let’s go! Let’s go! Let’s go! We’ve got the victim,” he bellowed to the patrol officers waiting in front, who immediately got down into the patrol car.

  “Hang on,” the officer driving warned as Mac pulled the back passenger door closed.

  • • •

  The effects were starting on Eleanor. Her eyes were starting to droop just a bit and as always, the speech started to slur, just slightly at the beginning. Not enough that Eleanor was noticing. As far as she knew it was simply the wine. A quick glance down to his watch told him that the drug had not affected her as quickly as he wanted but it wouldn’t be long as they continued to talk.

  One thing that has always bothered him a little about Eleanor was that she had the annoying habit of keeping her cell phone close. It wasn’t as if based upon his observations of her over time she had a large social circle that would be constantly texting her, so it always seemed odd to him. Yet there it was and it was beeping. She had a text. The good news was she seemed to be ignoring it.

  “More wine?” he offered.

  “Tom, are you trying to get me tipsy?”

  He smiled and shrugged. “Maybe.”

  Eleanor held her glass out. “Yes, please,” and then slid a little closer to him and unsteadily leaned into him. He could tell she was feeling a little amorous as she moved her lips close. He kissed her back and then poured more wine into her glass, lightly reaching for and steadying her right hand while he poured.

  Her phone beeped again and as he glanced left, this text was in caps and read: URGENT!

  This time, the phone drew Eleanor’s attention and she sloppily reached for it.

  He watched as her lips slowly moved while reading the text message: Urgent! Tom Edwards is on the news! He’s Rubens! Get out!

  The change in her expression was immediate, even in her weakened state. She looked to him. “Yoooou’re hiiim are … are… aren’t you?” she slurred.

  “Who, Eleanor?” he asked in reply, while at the same time he reached into his suit coat pocket, pulling out black leather gloves.

  “Ru…Ru…Rubens,” she slurred. “Yo…yo…you’re … h…h…him.”

  Eleanor pushed herself off the couch, scrambling to get away from him. The drug was working on her but she wasn’t yet completely immobilized.

  He quickly jumped off the couch after her, lunging for her but he was off-balance.

  Eleanor pushed him away but as she did, she stumbled backward toward the kitchen, crashing into the wall, but not down to the floor.

  Leaning against the wall, trying to steady herself, she reached to the glass and metal bookshelf to her right. She grabbed a snow globe off the shelf and weakly threw it at him, yelping out a half-shouted “Help! Help!”

  She reached over for a small statue but it fell out of her hands as Rubens threw his shoulder into her, trying to pin her to the wall. As he wrestled with her, they both fell to the left and into the bookshelf, knocking them both hard down to the floor, with the metal and glass shelf landing on top of them in a loud crash.

  “Help!” she yelped, a guttural yelp, not loud enough to be a scream, but too loud nonetheless.

  Swiftly he threw the shelving off of them. He rolled on top of Eleanor, straddling her with his legs and frantically grabbing at her throat with both of his hands and squeezing, his thumbs depressing her windpipe while his fingers wrapped around the back of her neck. He shook her head and banged it violently and repeatedly against the floor, grunting as he increased the pressure.

  Eleanor weakly flailed away at him, trying to fight him but the drug has taken too much effect. She had no strength and her punches had none.

  Anger and rage rising up in him, he tightened his grip on her throat like a vise, strangling her while she gasped for air, her eyes frantically blinking as he drained the life out of her.

  He kept pressing on her throat, grunting as he shook her head until the movement underneath him quit. He stopped and felt that her body was still and unmoving beneath him. Breathing heavily, he rolled off of her and leaned into the wall, wiping the sweat off his brow.

  There was a heavy knock on the door.

  “Eleanor, is everything alright in there?” a man’s voice yelled through the door. “Eleanor! Eleanor!”

  Then there was a siren and not just one. There were sirens plural and they were closing fast.

  This was trouble.

  Think quickly, think quickly.

  He pushed himself up off the floor and grabbed his wine glass off the coffee table and smashed it on the floor, stomping on it.

  The knocking on the door frantically continued, the neighbor sensing something was very wrong. He raised his voice and pounded harder on the door. “Eleanor! Eleanor!”

  Rubens went to the front door and quickly peered through the peephole to see a small man pounding on the door. “Eleanor, I heard a yell for help. Eleanor, are you okay? Eleanor!”

  The sirens were getting louder.

  There wasn’t much time.

  He quickly pulled his backpack over his shoulder and then grabbed the nearly empty wine bottle from the coffee table. At the front door, he quickly turned the deadbolt open and pulled the door open to find Eleanor’s neighbor in mid-knock.

  “What’s going on in the—”

  Rubens smashed the wine bottle against the right side of the small man’s head, sending him instantly down to the floor of the hallway. He kicked the man in the head.

  Another woman’s head was sticking out of her apartment door to his left. “I’m calling the police!” she screamed.

  Rubens heard her slide the deadbolt closed as he ran past her door and to the back hallway of the building.

  • • •

  “We need to set a perimeter! Lock it down, the whole area and send an ambulance!” Mac barked into the police radio.

  “Agent McRyan,” the patrol officer in the passenger seat reported, “someone called in Eleanor Eagleson’s name, saying she was with a man named Tom Edwards who looked like the Rubens pictures from the Renwick Gallery at the Smithsonian.”

  “This is it, then, for sure,” Mac exclaimed. “We’ve got to hustle!”

  “Almost there,” the officer driving yelled as he turned the patrol unit hard right, fishtailing slightly and then accelerating down the street and screeching to a halt in front of the building mid-block. “This is it!”

  Two more patrol units arrived from the west as
Mac got out of the back of the patrol car. He could see another set of flashing lights several blocks away approaching the area. More sirens were audible in the distance.

  Mac quickly glanced to his watch as he ran up the steps. 9:02 P.M. “Dammit!” He looked to his right and pointed to a senior officer, a sergeant, who was up and out of his patrol car. “Lock the entire area down, expand the perimeter around this building as units arrive and stop everyone and everything, and I mean everything! Nobody moves. Shelter in place!”

  “Copy that,” the Sergeant yelled back and then reached for his shoulder radio.

  “The rest of you are with me!” Mac ordered as he burst through the front door of the building. A resident was holding the interior security door open. “Up on the third floor.”

  Mac noticed the hallway leading through to the back of the building and another set of steps. He quickly turned, pointed at two officers with two fingers and gestured to the back of the apartment. The two officers, guns drawn, moved past Mac and went to the back.

  “Up here! Up here!” a voice yelled down.

  Mac started up the steps, taking two at a time.

  At the third floor landing, Mac looked left to see a man lying on the floor and what looked like dark green glass lying around him. He was bleeding profusely at his left temple. “I’m not getting much of a pulse,” a tenant reported as a uniformed officer kneeled down to help.

  “Agent McRyan,” another officer yelled pointing toward the open door. “Inside the apartment.”

  Mac looked to his right and the open door for Unit 304, and inside he saw a pair of legs lying on the floor. He pushed himself up off the floor and went inside, and found Eleanor lying on her back, her arms lying spread away from the sides of her body. Mac leaned down and checked for a pulse at her throat and got nothing, then reached for her wrist. “Shit!”

  He put his head down to her chest and listened. Then he felt it, or thought he felt something, maybe the beat of the heart. She was probably fibrillating but there still might be a chance. “Is that ambulance here? Where are the paramedics?”

  “Right here,” a paramedic replied as he charged into the room and kneeled down.

  “I’m not getting a pulse,” Mac reported, looking up to the paramedic. “But I thought I felt her heart beat.”

  The paramedic’s partner came into the condo and the two of them went to work on Eleanor. Mac looked back to his right to see another set of paramedics were arriving and tending to the man in the hallway.

  Mac pushed himself up and stepped back into the hallway to find Wire coming up the front steps and checked his watch: 9:06.

  “Agent McRyan, you need to hear this,” a patrol officer hailed from down the hall to the left.

  Mac and Wire hurriedly approached the officer and an older man standing outside the door to his condo. “I saw him,” the man reported. “I saw him out the peephole go down the back steps. I did follow and looked down. He went out the back door.”

  “How long ago?” Wire asked.

  “One minute, maybe two,” the tenant answered. “We could hear sirens when it was all happening.”

  Mac went to the stairway and yelled down, “He went out the back! He went out the back!” As he yelled, he could see officers rushing out the back. He reached for his police radio. “This is McRyan—set the perimeter at six blocks. Our man is on the run out the back of the building. He may be hiding. He may have gotten into another building. Again, lock everything down, no vehicles move, shelter in place! Shelter in place!” Then Mac’s phone rang.

  It was a number he didn’t recognize; it wasn’t tied to a contact. “I bet this is him,” Mac said as he looked to Wire and then swiped the screen to answer. “McRyan.”

  “You were so close, Mac,” the masked voice greeted. “I’ve never had a call this close. So exciting.”

  He’s outside the perimeter, Mac immediately thought as he checked his watch. “I’m on to you.”

  “Do you really think so?”

  “I figured out Eleanor Eagleson, didn’t I?”

  “Come on, Mac,” the voice teased. “I had to keep you in the game a little bit. Eleanor was easy as far as the clues go. I mean, it was right there in the mirrors. How long did you actually have to sit there and stare at it to figure it out? I’m actually kind of disappointed it took you as long as it did.”

  “Bullshit,” Mac answered, having stopped on the main level of the building, looking out the back, seeing patrol units and officers out searching with flashlights. “I’m in your head. I know how you think now. And as for Eleanor … we’re going to save her,” he bluffed. “Paramedics are working her now. I heard her heartbeat—I felt it. We’re going to save her, you piece of shit. The ambulance is leaving right now.”

  He could tell there was a hesitation, albeit slight, on the other end. “She’ll tell you nothing. She’ll be able to tell you nothing.”

  “We’ll see, but even worse for you, you sick fuck, you didn’t get to make her the third Grace. You didn’t get to leave your little clue or set your clock. You didn’t get your masterpiece. You failed.”

  “Did I, Mac? It must absolutely kill you knowing how close you were to catching me,” Rubens taunted. “Knowing you were within mere minutes, maybe even a minute, maybe even seconds of catching me, and yet you failed. You failed another victim, Mac. And Mac, this is not over. We go on. It goes on.”

  “When? When does it go on?”

  “This is the best part, Mac.” And even with the voice disguised, he could hear the laugh, the sick laugh. “You have less than two days—you have forty-seven hours until the last one. You get one more chance.”

  “What? No clue? That’s hardly sporting.”

  “This isn’t a sport, it’s winner takes all,” Rubens replied evilly. “You had your chance and you missed. In fact, you’ve missed twice. Nobody else ever got one shot at me, let alone two. You’ve done better than anyone else in the game but still, you failed. And now you will pay the penalty for that failure. Now I’m not telling you who the victim is. You’re not going to find her—you’re going to have to find me. And Mac, no matter what you know or even what you think you know about me and how I look and how I operate, you don’t know anything. Remember that.”

  The line went dead. “Jesus.”

  “Mac, get out here now!” Wire yelled, waving from outside, standing in the driveway leading to the underground parking garage.

  Mac pushed the back door open. “What do you have? Do we have him?”

  “No, but I think I know where he went. Follow me,” Wire replied, leading him across the parking lot into a small grove of trees and brush to find two uniformed officers and a civilian standing around a pipe sticking up a foot above ground. A cover and crowbar lay on the ground to the left. “Mac, this looks like an old sewer line,” Wire reported.

  “Seriously?” Mac asked in disbelief. “There? He went down there?”

  Wire crouched down, aiming her flashlight down the narrow hole. “I think I can see what look like fresh footprints in the dirt at the bottom of the ladder.”

  “I never even knew this was back here,” a tenant reported. “And I’ve lived here for five years.”

  “Shit, now this guy is a gopher,” Mac bitched, kneeling and looking down into the hole.

  “Down we go?” Wire sighed.

  “Down we go,” Mac answered. He looked to a patrol officer. “Let me borrow your flashlight.” The officer handed it over to Mac and Mac pointed it down into the darkness of the hole. There was a narrow ladder leading down the cylinder-like tube. He slipped the flashlight into his jacket pocket and stuffed his Sig Sauer in the front of his jeans. “Cover me.”

  Wire had her gun in her right hand as she held the flashlight in her left, aiming it down the narrow hole while Mac climbed down as quickly as he dared. The shaft down to the sewer was barely large enough for him to shimmy down the ladder. He kept his focus down while the light from Wire’s flashlight was somewhat blocked by his bo
dy. Even with the spotty lighting, he could see the fresh footprints in the dirt on the bottom of the old sewer pipe. At the last step, Mac stopped for a brief moment, listened and then held the rung of the ladder with his left hand and pulled his gun from his waistband. Hearing nothing, he jumped down the last step to the floor of the tunnel, crouching down to avoid hitting the top of the pipe with his head. He took out the flashlight and pointed it down the narrow sewer tunnel. There was nobody ahead but he could see footprints leading away.

  He looked up and Wire was already making her way down. He moved forward ten feet, dropped down on one knee, pointing the light forward. While doing so, he quickly checked his cell phone and noticed he didn’t have a cell signal. No bars.

  A minute later Mac, Wire and two officers were with him in the pipe. “Stay on your radios,” Mac yelled back up the tunnel. “The footprints lead forward to what I think is the west,” Mac reported and then led the group ahead into the darkness of the tunnel.

  At six-foot-one, Mac had to crouch down to move through the tunnel, as did the two officers. Even Wire, who was five-nine, had to keep her head down. It made for slow going and then there was the stench. The sewer pipe had likely been out of commission for years but it was still a sewer pipe and there were remnants of sewage in it.

  “This is awful,” Wire moaned as she coughed, pulling her t-shirt up and over her nose.

  “Breathe through your mouth,” Mac suggested through a cough.

  “Like that ever works.”

  As they worked their way straight down the tunnel, Mac called back to the officers. “Do your radios work down here?”

  One officer called into his radio but only got static. “Negative, sir.”

  Mac checked his phone again and he continued to have no cell signal.

  “Me neither,” Wire added, checking hers. “What time do you have, Mac?”

  He looked at his phone. “I have 9:09 now.”

  The group cautiously worked their way forward, moving more quickly as they became more comfortable with the low ceiling height of the pipe.