“This is Special Agent Hoffman, ID 556554A. I need you to send my team to Legion Park; we have a homicide.” Jim looked down at the ground; the sun was starting to rise, and there was a faint glow on the asphalt at his feet. The coroner’s van pulled up, and he was about to go meet with them when he said, “Steve, I know you two were close. You’ve called your team, so you obviously think this is the work of The Eagle. Are you taking over my investigation?” He stood up as did Jim and said, “No… let’s work this one with mutual cooperation. If this was the work of The Eagle, this takes things into a whole new realm. I think it’s best that we stay together on this. Agreed?” He reached out his hand to Jim who shook it and walked over to the coroner’s van. He called out to all of his people as Steve’s FBI vans were pulling into the park.
“Okay people, here’s the deal. This is going to be a joint department investigation; we will be taking the lead, and all information on the investigation will be relayed to the FBI through Special Agent Hoffman and his team. We all know each other, so let’s be good boys and girls and see if we can find the person who killed our friend Barry. I know you all knew him as the old man, but he’s gone and we need to work with his name. As you all also know, Steve and Barry were very close, so let’s show a little sensitivity in the handling of this matter. Let’s go people. There’s a killer out there, and we’re going to find him.” Steve walked over to the first van and spoke to his team leader and explained the situation. Everyone went to work processing the scene. Steve went back to his house to shower and dress for the day which he knew was going to be a long one.
Chapter Three
‘He called out to the firemen who were
still on scene, and they were able to
use pry bars to open the makeshift
door. No one was prepared for what
they would find on the other side.’
Every street has its secrets. Lives lived undercover, that neighbor who’s just a bit off. The one who doesn’t talk to people or, just the opposite, seems to be in everyone’s business and is a neighborhood leader or gossip. The person who grew up in the area. Everyone knows him or her, or so they think. Elk Drive is like any ordinary street in West Covina, California: streets lined with hundred-year-old oaks, manicured lawns, and friendly neighbors who look out for one another. Stew Roskowski is the kind of neighbor anyone would want to have. He has lived in the upper middle class neighborhood for three decades. He’s the principal at the local middle school and is a pillar of the community. He does fundraisers for his school, runs several after-school programs for his students, and often throws pool parties and other celebrations at his home for his students and their parents during the school year. One of the things he is best known for is his summer block party. The neighborhood blocks off the street on the first day of summer break, and there’s a big celebration for those students moving on to high school, as well as those students who’ve worked hard all year. Stew’s known for his dedication to his students and for running one of the finest schools in the San Gabriel Valley. He received the mayor’s citation as a community leader the previous winter, and he’s also well respected in academic circles for the way he turned the school around when he took it over five years earlier. Prior to that, it was an underperforming, dilapidated school with poor attendance and was fraught with gang and drug problems. However, when Stew took over, things changed in a hurry, and over the five years since he became principal, the school became a poster campus for others in the county and the country to emulate.
Stew always looked forward to this time of year, but this year was different. There was a heaviness in the air. One of their beloved eighth graders went missing two weeks before the end of the school year. There were posters all over the area, and the police and other local law enforcement had been scouring the area looking for any clues to her disappearance. Stew stood before the neighborhood on a small platform where a band had been set up and asked for quiet from the crowed. The stage was built in the middle of the street right in front of his house. He held a microphone close to his mouth and asked for a moment of silence for Cheryl Pruitt, one of his students, and prayed for her quick return to her family who was present in the crowd. He spoke of his time with her and what a wonderful student she was and asked that anyone with information on her disappearance please contact local law enforcement. Her parents were teary-eyed as he made a plea to the person or persons who took Cheryl, asking only for her safe return.
He said, “I know that this is a bittersweet party this year. The Pruitt family will be holding a candlelight vigil for Cheryl tonight at First Trinity Church on Palmer Avenue. Please come and show your support for Cheryl and her family. And, please, please, if you know anything about her disappearance, contact law enforcement right away. We want Cheryl back safely with her family and with her school family.”
He held up a poster and pointed to a table where people could pick up information and posters. He encouraged people to post them everywhere they could. He invited Cheryl’s father to come up and make a public plea for her safe return. The local media was there, and they walked amongst the party goers doing interviews and getting information on what Cheryl was wearing along with her description for their nightly news broadcast. Stew took back the microphone from her grief-stricken father and said, “Cheryl is five feet, two inches tall with green eyes and long blond hair. She was last seen wearing a pink blouse with blue jeans and white tennis shoes. She has an infectious laugh and a wonderful smile. So please help us bring her home safely.” The festivities finished up about five p.m., and Stew helped the rest of the neighborhood to clean up and put their street back in working order. He then bid farewell to his neighbors and went home to clean up before joining the vigil at nine that night.
He walked up the manicured entry to his colonial style home, waving at his neighbor who had just returned home from work. He unlocked the door and walked into the kitchen to put some things away that he had brought to the party. He was just setting down a dish in the sink when he heard a rustling noise coming from one of the back bedrooms. There, on a small double bed, lay Cheryl Pruitt, nude and tied at the wrists and ankles to the bed frame. She was gagged, and her face was streaked with tears of fear, pain, and sadness. “What the hell is going on in here, young lady?” he asked while walking over to the bed and checking her restraints to make sure they were intact. “What did you do?” He looked around the room to see if there was anything out of place. All of his sex toys were where they belonged; nothing seemed out of the ordinary. He picked up a small whip and walked over to the bed and struck the child on the torso. “You behave yourself. Did you enjoy my speech and hearing your daddy asking for you to come home safe?” The little girl had already been crying; the pain of the whip only exacerbated it. Now she was in hysterics. Stew just laughed and threw a blanket over her lower half and said, “You should be ashamed being undressed and uncovered like that. You deserve to be punished. I will deal with you in a few minutes.” He walked out of the room smiling and humming as he went back to the kitchen.
The house had been built back in the 1930’s and was one of the few homes in the area that had a basement. He walked through the kitchen to an old painted green door that led to the basement. He turned on the light and walked down into the musty cold room. In the corner of the basement were five cages used for keeping dogs, only instead of dogs three of the five cages had young girls in them. All were malnourished and nude, bruised, and cold based on the fetal position they were all in. “Hello, my pets,” he said with a smile and a friendly voice. They made no sound. He walked over to a set of cabinets and pulled a box off one of the shelves. It was full of photographs of him and young girls. There were hundreds. He looked at several of them and as he did he became aroused. He knew he didn’t have time to act out his arousal on Cheryl right then; he had to shower and dress for her vigil. He took three photographs with him when he went back upstairs. He spoke both to himself and the c
aged children, “I will feed you pets when I return home.” He smiled and walked over to the cages and poked one of the girls with his finger. She jumped, and he let out a laugh. “Then I will introduce you all to my newest pet. We are going to have so much fun.”
He went back upstairs to the master bath, disrobed, and walked into the shower. He had pinned the photographs of him raping a young girl to the back shower wall so they wouldn’t get wet. He stepped into the shower and slathered petroleum jelly on his penis and began to masturbate, all the while staring and smiling at the pictures. The semen shot out of his cock with ferocity as he looked at the photograph of Cheryl Pruitt screaming in agony impaled on his cock, his arms holding her on top of him facing away from him in the direction of the camera. “Oh, how I can’t wait for the opportunity to do the same to your asshole, little Cheryl, my little beauty,” he whispered to himself as the aching in his groin ceased. He then soaped up and finished his bathing.
He had just shut off the water and was starting to shave when he heard the sound of something heavy fall in one of the rooms. He walked toward the room where Cheryl was when he heard the sound again. It was coming from her room. He opened the hall closet and pulled out a piece of barbed wire. “If she thinks she’s going to cause a commotion before her vigil she has another thing coming,” he muttered as he opened the bedroom door. Sure enough she wasn’t on the bed. “Oh God, she’s escaped. I’ll be ruined.” The room was very small. There were only two places she could hide: under the bed or in the bedroom closet. The bedroom door was locked with a double-sided keyed deadbolt; there was no way she could exit that way, and the windows were barred. He looked under the bed, but she wasn’t there. “Cheryl,” he called out softly. “If you come out of the closet now, I will not punish you for misbehaving.” He held the barbed wire high over his head, ready to strike the child the second she came out of the closet. The door knob turned, and the closet door opened a crack. He moved closer until his face was almost against the door. His flabby, fat, nude frame was ready to press against the door in the hopes of pinning her, so he could beat her soundly with the wire, but there was no further movement.
He was getting angry and knew he had to get to the vigil or people might think something was up. He didn’t have the patience, and he said as he grabbed the door knob, “You brought this on yourself.” He flung the door open and moved with a sweep of the wire downward. The wire didn’t hit anything inside but imbedded itself into his thigh causing him to scream. He fell back onto the floor, trying to pull the barbed wire out of his flesh, when suddenly a tall, powerful figure dressed all in black stepped out of the closet and grabbed him by the throat. He picked Stew up with one hand, all two hundred and fifty pounds of him, and threw him across the bedroom, his body hitting the wall and knocking him unconscious above the bed where Cheryl had been restrained.
“911. What is your emergency?” There was no sound on the other end of the line. The dispatcher asked again, but there was still no reply. She kept the line open and could see from her reverse directory the address of the caller. The address on ElkDrive was flashing on her screen, and she kept trying to speak to whoever was on the other end of the line. She suddenly heard deep breathing as if someone was asleep but no other noise. The dispatcher looked at her call log and saw that unit 57 was the closest patrol in the neighborhood. “Unit 57. This is Dispatch. We have a 911 in your area. Over.” “This is 57. Send us the address, and we’ll run. What’s the situation? Over.” “57, I have a caller on the line, nonresponsive to dialogue, not sure if they’re down or what, but there is someone on the line. Over.” “Roger that, Dispatch. We have the address and are en route. Over.”
She held the line as she waited for a response from the dispatched unit. She heard knocking on the door of the house and the calls of the officers through the open phone line. “This is the police. Open up.” “Dispatch, it looks like a faked 911 here. There’s an alarm company sticker in the front window and a sign in the yard. Looks like a crank call. Over.” The dispatcher responded, “Roger. I don’t think so, 57. I can hear heavy breathing on the other end of the line. Over.” “Unit 57 here. The door is locked. You want to call the alarm company and see if the homeowners are in town? This could be someone ‘SWATTING’ the homeowner. Over.” At that moment, she could hear the voice of the officer’s partner coming toward him saying that he had been around the whole house, and there was a broken lower window going into what looked like a basement. “Dispatch, it looks like we have forced entry. Send backup. Over.” “Roger 57. Backup is en route. Over.” “Roger that. We’re going to force entry. Over.” The dispatcher could hear the sound of glass breaking and the thud of the officer’s bodies against the front door of the home. It seemed to the dispatcher like an hour of silence when there was a call back. “Dispatch. We need an ambulance and fire to this location. Over.” The dispatcher sent out the distress call. She held the line a few more moments waiting to be cleared to hang up. “Dispatch. Backup is on scene, and we can hear the ambulance. We are going to need two more ambulances stat. Over.” “Roger 57. Units are en route. What’s the situation? Over.” There was a lot of commotion in the background before the officer radioed back. “Well, Dispatch, we have found four young girls. One of them appears to be the missing Pruitt girl. We can’t confirm that yet. Over.” “Copy that, 57. I’m patching you over to command. Good work. Over.” “Good work to you, Dispatch. Can you get me the name of the owner of this property?” “Roger 57. The owner is Mr. Stewart Roskowski. Over.” “Roger that. It looks like we broke up a kidnapping. Send in a detective unit. Over.” “Roger that, 57. Is the homeowner on the premises? Over.” “That’s a negative, Dispatch. Over.” “Roger. Patching you through. Over.”
Jim’s unit was sent in from LA County to investigate with West Covina PD. When he arrived on scene, he asked where the homicide was but no one had an answer. He was told that four young girls had been found alive, between eight and fourteen; three had been in cages in the basement; the fourth was, indeed, Cheryl Pruitt, who told the police that she was rescued by a man who hid her behind him in the closet of the home. Jim walked up to speak to the first two officers on scene and asked why homicide had been called in. They both shrugged their shoulders. “So let me get this straight. You two have your guns and badges, and you’re cops. Jesus Christ! I just drove all the way from downtown. I’m a homicide detective not a missing person locater. Now someone better give me a good goddamn reason why I’m here!” He scowled as one of the West Covina PD detectives emerged from the house sheet white. Jim recognized him and called out, “Tony. What the fuck is going on? Do you have a homicide here, or are you stiffs busting my balls?” Tony only nodded. Jim talked to the first two officers on scene, and they explained that they found the missing Pruitt girl. They didn’t know much else. Jim asked where the girl was, and they pointed to an ambulance with the back doors open. He walked over to the unit where the little girl was. She was sitting in an ambulance awaiting transport when he went over to speak to her. She was wrapped in a blanket, and the paramedics were setting an IV as she sat shivering.
“Cheryl, my name is Detective O’Brian, sweetheart.” She jolted from the prick of the IV needle. “It’s okay, honey; you’re safe. The paramedics are going to take you to the hospital. We’ve called your mom and dad; you will be together soon.” She started to cry. “I need to ask you some quick questions. Can you understand me?” She nodded. “How did you get to Mr. Roskowski’s house?” She was shaking badly but he needed to get what he could from her now. The paramedics gave her five milligrams of Valium to relax her, and she started to calm down. “Did you hear what I asked you, Cheryl?” She nodded. “Can you tell me?” “Mr. Roskowski invited me to his house after finals.” Jim held his midi recorder to take her statement. “Did Mr. Roskowski bring you to his house from school?” She shook her head. “Then how did you get to his house?” She told him that he asked her to walk to a grocery store about a mile from school
. He had some errands to run, and he would meet her there. She said that when she got there she saw the front of his car behind the store, so she walked back to see if he was there. “When you got to the back of the store was he there?” She shook her head. “Do you know where he was?” She shook her head again. “Do you remember how you got to his house?” Once more, she shook her head and started to slip off to sleep.
Jim put his hand on her head and asked, “Did Mr. Roskowski do bad things to you here in his house?” She was starting to fall asleep as she replied, “I woke up, and I was in a room on a bed. Mr. Roskowski came in and told me to take off my clothes. I told him no, and he hit me with a long stick. I begged him not to hit me. I begged him, but he hit me again, so I took off my clothes. Then he took off his clothes and started taking pictures of me. I did all he asked, so he wouldn’t hit me anymore, but he wouldn’t stop.” Jim could see the trauma in her face. Her eyes were red, and she was bruised on her face and arms. “One last question, Cheryl. Did Mr. Roskowski touch you?” She was almost asleep but whispered to Jim as she was going out, “He put things inside me. He put his penis inside me. He hurt me, he hurt me… screaming, I was screaming.” The Valium finally lulled her to sleep, and Jim turned off the recorder. He softly told her, “It’s over, Cheryl; you’re safe. It’s going to be okay,” and he stepped out of the ambulance.
Rise of The Iron Eagle (The Iron Eagle Series Book 1) Page 3
