by Harper W.
Morrison, the missile man, was well-dressed and well-fed. There was no visible evidence to suggest that he had been tortured in any way prior to the missile attack. The only marks visible were from being attached to the missile using ratchet straps. His toxicology results, however, indicated that he had been drugged heavily before he was strapped to the missile. If he hadn’t died on impact, he would have died of an overdose of temazepam. Nothing unusual came back on Anthony Black.
The only next of kin that we could locate for Mr. Morrison was a father who lived in Shreveport, Louisiana. After we knew for sure the authorities in Shreveport had broken the news to the elder Mr. Morrison, Kaie made the flight arrangements for him to come to Dallas to identify the body. We met him at the DFW International Airport that evening.
This was also the hard part of our job, and I admit that I am a bit sexist in my approach. I always leave it up to Kaie to handle the emotional part of the job since she’s a female. Truth is, she’s probably got more testosterone running through her than I do. She never complains, though, and she’s good at it. I wait back at the car while she goes in to navigate the nightmare that is the DFW airport.
He was so distraught when the plane landed that an airline official paged “the Dallas PD official meeting Mr. Harris Morrison” to please come to the ticket counter. Kaie answered the page, and they led her onto the plane. He was slumped over in his seat, crying uncontrollably. Kaie told me later she walked over and sat down beside him, placing one arm around his shoulders. He lifted his head a bit, and asked, “Did he suffer?”
Kaie answered him quietly, “No, sir, he did not.” He rubbed his hands across his eyes, stood up, and said to her, “Let’s go. I’m ok for the moment.”
The man she brought out to the car was a frail, elderly man. She put him in the front seat next to me, and hopped in the back. We drove him to hotel for him to wait for the coroner to release his son’s body for burial.
We decided to stop by to check out Morrison’s apartment. From the appearance of things, he did indeed live alone and his apartment was in desperate need of a good cleaning. We found nothing that seemed tied to our case, not even a laptop.
We called it a day, and headed our separate ways.
Chapter 3
Kaie and I decided to go back to the scene of the crime. It was cordoned off, still, but Mr. Black’s truck had already been towed off and taken to the crime lab. The tree bore the marks of the impact it took, and blood was still on the grass and the curb … and the tree trunk.
We started trying to figure out where the missile could have been launched from. Kaie headed across the street, trying to visualize a trajectory for the missile. We had a good idea of the angle it hit the truck at, and between the two of us agreed that the missile must have traveled pretty much horizontally. We wouldn’t know that details until Cortez and his crew finished their report. We still had to figure out how a missile with a payload of about 170 pounds could be launched in a suburban neighborhood with a near horizontal flight path and a speed of about two hundred miles per hour. Not just anybody owns a setup like that, much less a missile.
Just as we are heading back to the car, our phones both go off. We answered, and after a few seconds I saw Kaie lean her head back and sigh. I swore out loud. It had happened again. That maniac had strapped someone else to a missile and launched it.
We sped to the scene – Kidd Springs Park. There we found the usual pack of journalists and curious onlookers. The patrolman on the scene told us that the guy had been fully conscious when he was launched, because he was screaming like a banshee as the missile carried him through the park and into an old tree. We made our way into the cordoned off area, and I heard Kaie tell the patrolmen to “get those idiots further away from the crime scene.”
This crime scene was a bloody mess, and I mean that literally. The man was torn up badly. Dr. Hollabaugh and Cortez arrive at just about the same time and join us at tree just a minute or two after we get there. Cortez told us that the images were already going viral on the web, and they showed the missile carrying our victim before he hit the tree. It’s a bad day when the onlookers are able to start collecting evidence before the cops.
It was a good thing that missile made contact with an old oak tree, otherwise that missile might have stopped somewhere that would have meant more lives lost. The guy died on impact, as his body slid somewhat when the missile was stopped so suddenly. The top of his skull was crushed in, and his body was torn apart pretty badly by the tethers that were holding him to the missile. His head was dangling lifelessly to the side, and he looked sort of like an old rag doll that someone let the dog play with.
He was wearing dark dress pants, a light blue dress shirt, and a dark tie. He had on some really nice dark dress socks, and some highly polished dress shoes that were rather scuffed but still on his feet.
Kaie looked angry. “Thoughts?” I say, just like I always do at our crime scenes. “Yeah. I can’t believe it happened again. And what kind of a person would put kids at risk like this? What if the tree hadn’t stopped the thing … what if it had plowed through some other part of the playground?” I nodded my head. “I took my niece here to play last month when she came to visit.” I saw her jaw tighten. This was just the type of situation that Kaie despised.
Dr. Hollabaugh stepped up to us. “I can tolerate the fact that people kill each other, for whatever reason, with things like guns, knives, arrows, poison … heck, I can even tolerate the weird stuff like swords and chainsaws. But this? This is beyond sadistic.”
Kaie nodded. “He’s got a message he’s trying to send. I just wish we knew who he was sending it to, and what it supposed to mean. Find out what you can, Doc.”
Just then Kaie and I spotted a twelve-year old boy with his mother right at the edge of the crime scene. I saw that flash of anger in Kaie’s eyes, and tried to grab her arm to stop her. I was a bit too late. “What the hell kind of mother are you to let your kid look at this?” shouted Kaie as she headed toward them. I decided to leave her to it. I was glad that I never had to worry about my wife exposing our kids to anything like that. She didn’t even let me discuss my cases with them.
Kaie’s current flame was a different matter. I don’t mind him enjoying crime stories and such, but I had done some prowling on the web and discovered the guy was a frequent commenter on one of those websites with all the gruesome photos. I hoped he wasn’t dating Kaie just because she was a homicide detective. I was kind of protective of her … in a brotherly way, of course. I don’t know much about her private life, but I know there’s a lot of hurt in her past. I’d hate to be the guy that decided to add some more hurt.
Chapter 4
The next morning, I discovered that both incidents – especially the last one at the playground – had taken over the front page of the Dallas Morning News, as well as the other metroplex papers. Kaie told me that when she checked the news on her cell phone that morning, there were pictures and video all over the web. Cal even sent her some links to some disturbing footage, wondering if it was real. Sadly, she could confirm that it was.
It seems like the whole state of Texas was in an uproar, and the police administration was breathing down our necks to get some answers. Our chief told us that the mayor’s office was getting really impatient, and there were hints that the case might be turned over to the feds if we didn’t come up with something soon. Politicians were getting in the mix, too, which is never a good thing. What concerned Kaie and I the most were the concerned parents in the metroplex. How do you protect a kid from a killer that launches missiles through playgrounds? By catching him, that’s how.
The police captain was going to be holding a press conference later that morning with one goal: avert panic. The powers that be told us that we were to focus all of our resources on this case. We were going to find out who was doing it, where they were being launched from, and why they were doing it. We had our work cut out for us.
When we got back to our
desks, the report from the Cortez and his crime lab team was waiting for us. Cortez brought it to us himself, and wanted to point out the key parts. They had done some calculations, taking into account some stuff like missile fuel usage and speed. That part was Greek to us, but we did understand the results. The first missile was fired from a garden approximately three miles north of where it finally landed. The second missile was launched about two miles south of the park. They weren’t the same site. Even if you got on the map and drew a two or three mile radius around both impact points, they circles just don’t overlap. This told us that the launching system must be portable. That added an interesting wrinkle to the case, but it couldn’t be that hard to hide a portable missile launcher.
Kaie sat their thinking. “I hate to be the one to ask the stupid question, but do you think that missile could be launched from something like a truck or a bus?”
Cortez nodded his head. “Yeah, I think so.” He glanced down at his watch. “Hey, listen, I gotta run this by the captain before his briefing this morning. Catch you two later!”
I turned to Kaie. “Okay, so we are looking for a portable missile launching platform. What does a portable missile launching platform look like?”
“Well, it must not be too obvious or someone would have reported seeing one.” Kaie was busy jotting down some points on a scrap of paper. “It needs to be large enough to house at least a couple of missiles. It’s gonna need some kind of hoist to get the missile out of the truck and onto the launch pad, and I assume that launch pad is going to be on the roof. Its gonna need a strong infrastructure to carry that load.”
I agreed with her ideas so far. The phone rang, so I picked it up. It was the chief, on speakerphone with the captain. He said three words: “Give me something.”
Kaie handed me the list we had. I told them what our leads were so far.
“I need you to find that truck by tomorrow morning. Yesterday would have been better,” the chief stated.
“We’ll let you know something as soon as we have something concrete,” I replied. The chief hung up.
“The pressure’s on,” I said to Kaie as I hung up the phone.
“Do you think it’s probably an eighteen-wheeler?” she asked.
“Yeah, I do,” was my reply. We spent the rest of the day trying to track down an unmarked eighteen wheeler that some nut job was using as a portable missile launcher in a metropolitan area. I know they didn’t cover this in college. It’s hard enough trying to find someone’s hidden missile launcher, but about ten times harder to find a mobile one. That afternoon Kaie went back to Cortez to some advice. His team wasn’t able to help us out too much. They did point out that the truck would need plenty of room to park and maneuver … it wasn’t something you would find in a suburban driveway, or tucked in someone’s two car garage.
We went back to the witness reports, and followed up with a few witnesses. We asked for some patrolmen to be sent out to the area of the launch sites. They were given specific instructions to ask if anyone had seen any eighteen wheelers in the area. We headed out to the businesses around the launch sites to see if they had noticed any large trucks in their parking lots.
By the next morning, we had a definite lead. It wasn’t an ID, but a lead that could be pursued. We took it to the chief first thing. He told us who to hand it off to, and informed us that we were now to put our entire focus on figuring out why two victims were abducted and attached to the missiles. He also told us that there was another team tracking down information about the missiles, like where on earth they came from, were the assembled, were they purchased locally, etc.
When we got back to our desks, we had the id of the last victim: his name was Donnie Beams. Mr. Beams was a married man in his early forties who lived a quiet life in an apartment building near Kidd Springs Park. We needed to talk to his wife.
Chapter 5
Just as we settled down to figure out why someone was “missilizing” people, we got another bad phone call – the maniac had struck again, and this time it was a bus.
When we arrived at the scene, it was chaotic. This time a female had been attached to the missile and the target it struck was a public bus. Two passengers were brutally killed, and several others were injured. This was the first of our crime scenes that had ambulances and medical personnel around.
It looked like the missile pierced the bus from above, at about a 20 degree angle with the horizontal. It then crushed two people to death as pierced the bottom floor of the bus and lodged in the pavement. Blood was pooling beneath the missile, and the young lady that had been strapped to the missile had that same rag-doll appearance that our last victim did, except her body was folded up at a grotesque angle because of the impact. That sight was the stuff of nightmares.
She had a on a simple dress, and from what we could tell she was about forty with shoulder length blonde hair (now matted and blood stained). Her shoes were missing, but there were no scratches or marks on the bottom of her feet to suggest they were removed prior to her being strapped to the missile.
We found out that one of the people injured was a kid about the age of my own daughter. This nut job was taking more and more risks when it came to injuring kids, and if I know Kaie there’s one thing she cannot abide: innocent children being put in danger.
While we were checking out the crime scene, she got a call on her cell. It was Mr. James Morrison, the father of our first missile victim. He was letting her know that the body had been released. He knew she needed to question him before he went back home to Shreveport. After giving some instructions to the patrolmen on what to ask when canvassing the neighborhood, Kaie and I headed off to speak with him.
We arrived at his room, and he looked even worse than he did the day before. He asked in, and started off with a question for us. “I’ve seen on the news where two other people have died the same way as my boy. I don’t understand why someone would do this. Do you?”
Kaie, who was outspoken and aggressive when it came to suspects and authority figures, was always gentle and kind with victims. “No sir,” she said quietly. “That’s why we wanted to ask you some questions about your son … to see if we can find out how the victims are all connected.” I nodded my head in agreement.
We had already performed background checks on the vics we had identified, and knew the basic information like education and what kind of work they did. No red flags showed up. “Sir,” asked Kaie, “did you son have any hobbies?”
He thought a moment. “Yes, he does … I mean, he did. He loved remote-controlled toys when he was a kid, and never really outgrew. I guess his toys just got bigger as he got older. He loved to read about drones and missiles …” he voice weakened, and he put his head in hands. I figured he was crying.
Kaie reached out and put her hand on his shoulder. “It’s all right, Mr. Morrison. Just continue whenever you’re ready.” When she looked up, I shot her a glance that indicated I thought we were really on to something. She nodded at me.
After a few seconds, Mr. Morrison looked up. “As I was saying, he was interested in these things. He even got me a drone with a camera on it last Christmas. I don’t use it much, except to pester my dog and see what he’s up to in the backyard.”
We talked to him for about forty-five minutes more, but didn’t come up with any else substantial. The link to remote control vehicles, and the interest in missiles, at least linked him to the crime and gave us something to go on.
We decided to talk to Mr. Black’s widow, next. We didn’t know for sure if he was an intended target, or an unlucky random target. The fact that he used to work in a missile factory sure seemed to indicate that he wasn’t a random victim.
Mrs. Black was as helpful as she could be. We asked the usual questions, then I asked if he had any interested in remote control vehicles. She looked at us rather puzzled, and said that he used to play around with remote control kits. That was our first link between the victims. Progress was slow, but we were getting so
mewhere. Kaie and I were sure that Morrison was sent to kill Black. We didn’t have a motive, but we knew he wasn’t a random victim.
Kaie asked her about her husband’s schedule. We were curious about how the killer managed to target him accurately while he was on the road. Mrs. Black told us that he was quite regular about his schedule. She also mentioned that his truck had GPS. The killer was probably using his GPS to track him.
We went back to headquarters to check up on the new information we had about the third vic, Donnie Beams. We found out that he was the successful manager of a transport company. From his wife we found out that he had recently gotten a significant promotion after landing a contract with the US Navy base out of San Diego, California. She didn’t know anything about the contract, other than the fact that it was a major factor in his promotion.
She did tell us a bit about the company that we hadn’t had time to track down ourselves. It seems that his transport company specialized in trailers for tractor-trailer rigs … trailers with a roof that slides open and out of the way. Mrs. Beams told us that her husband talked about how they could be used to carry just about anything.
We didn’t know where our portable missile launcher was, but we had a good lead on where it came from. We didn’t have a motive yet, but we had a solid connection forming between our vics. Now it was time to see what we could find out about our latest victim.
When we arrived back at headquarters, we had a name and some background on our latest victim, named Melissa Hancock. She was a local real estate agent, and surprisingly lived just a few miles from our original missile man, Peter Morrison. She had no next of kin in the immediate area, and wasn’t married. She owned a car which was still missing, and her cell phone was apparently turned off. We decided to pay a visit to her apartment.
