Damaged Goods

by Lainey Reese

  He sighed and made a couple noncommittal sounds into the phone and looked at the pictures hanging on his wall. They were of his kids from the center over the years. Alan used to look at those photos with pride. Now he looked at them and just felt defeated. Seeing not the girls he’d helped succeed, but only the many he had never been able to reach.

  It was eerie coincidence that the moment his eyes touched on Mandy, he heard her name from the eager detective. Alan sat up straight as chills raced down his spine. He stared into the vacant eyes on his wall while he listened to tales of murder.

  “Detective,” he interrupted, struggling not to give anything away in his voice. “You have to know I am not at liberty to say anything without a warrant.”

  But he wanted to, he really wanted to.

  “I can get you a warrant, but girls are dying. If you know anything that pertains to this, you’ve got to tell me.”

  Alan’s eyes closed, in a torment of indecision.

  “I can’t. I can’t even acknowledge that she was here without risking my job.” He stopped for a moment and added, “And I’m sure I don’t need to point out what might happen to your case if the right lawyer twists around how you got your information.” Alan heard the detective curse and said, “All I can tell you is please. Please get that warrant.” After a beat, he said, “Hurry. I’ll be waiting for your call.”

  Brice hung up with too much force and the sound brought several looks his way. Then Kent hung up too and the two of them said at the same time, “I think I’ve got something.”

  That gave Brice pause. “What have you got?”

  Kent smiled like he was relishing what he had to say, “Bastard Brian Gwin made a little trip to the hardware store about two weeks ago and just guess what he did there?” The smile got a lot meaner. “Fucker had some keys made. How much you wanna bet one of those keys was to the coffee shop?”

  Brice felt a lead ball drop in his gut at that. Kent added, “I knew there was something off about a guy that clean. No normal guy keeps his house that spotless.” His brows shot up and he continued, “Makes perfect sense now. No one else on Earth coulda walked away from those scenes so clean. Had to be him. Felix fucking Unger.”

  “That’s a pretty far stretch,” Brice cautioned. “But hell, I’m game. We didn’t have enough evidence to do more than a walk-through on his place the first time around. Let’s see if we can get a warrant for a full search. Nobody’s clean enough to fool forensics.”

  Kent was so excited he didn’t even start whistling that stupid song like he did whenever the sexy assistant D.A. Ziporah Feldman was brought up. As he reached for the phone to call for the warrant, he stopped before dialing to ask, “Hey. What was it that you got?”

  Alan had paced for an hour after pulling out Mandy Brickman’s file. Then he asked his assistant to check his line and stay off the phone for the rest of the day if at all possible. Then he paced some more. After another grueling thirty minutes, a fax came through with the NYPD symbol on it. A morbid kind of excitement exhilarated him while it also saddened him.

  Another hour and still no call. He checked the warrant for a call back number, but there was nothing there. The urgency was gnawing at his gut and all he could do was pace.

  Chapter Eighteen

  “He’s not answering his phone.” Brice hung up and waded through the mess the search crew was making of Brian Gwin’s pristine apartment. There were white-coated technicians swarming the place and blood-revealing chemicals coating every surface. “Brian didn’t show up for work today and his boss told me he had a date last night with a girl from the coffee shop next door.”

  Kent stood up from his search of Brian’s sock drawer. “Fucker didn’t take long to mourn Katie, did he?” He shook his head in disgust and resumed emptying the drawers as he asked, “So much for his big crying jag when we told him she was gone. How’s the warrant for the kids’ center coming? You get the news that it’s through yet?”

  “No,” Brice said, less upset than he would have been if that were their only lead. “It should’ve been pushed through the same time this one was. Ziporah said she’d get them both through, so I don’t know what the holdup is.”

  “Well…” Kent whooped and pulled a small black box from the bottom corner of the bottom drawer. “Look at what we have here. I don’t know about you, Brice, but to me this looks like a goddamn souvenir stash.” Then he opened the lid and cursed a blue streak as he pulled out a brand-new key that looked a lot like the ones for the deadbolt to the Surf-n-Slurp.

  “Hey, you.” Brian Gwin walked into the shop and smiled with surprise at Terryn. “You work here now? When did that happen?” He sauntered up to the counter and Terryn smiled back at him.

  “Yes,” she answered. “For a while, at least. Once the dust settles and Brice catches this guy, Jenny can hire someone else and I can go back to my girls at the rec center.”

  “Yeah, Katie said you were great with the girls. Even the troublemakers.”

  Terryn’s smiled turned wistful and she watched as Mandy wiped down the glass front door and the windows on either side of it, “Yeah, there’s nothing more reckless than a teenage girl with an unstable home life. It’ll give a girl a wild streak, that’s for sure.”

  Brian gave her an inscrutable look and leaned on the counter.

  The search was on with renewed gusto after the box had been discovered. It held a photo of Katie and Amber together at the shop. There was a set of earrings that matched the ones Amber was wearing in the photo and a pair of skimpy pink lace panties. The lab would discover which girl those panties belonged to and now they all set themselves to finding DNA evidence with a whole new vigor so they could lock this cage once they got Brian into it.

  Brice was on his cell with the precinct asking for an all points lookout for Brian as a person of interest when his other line signaled. He almost ignored it.

  “Detective,” Alan had said as soon as he clicked over. “I have the warrant, but you didn’t call back. Have you arrested Mandy?”

  Brice felt a warning tingle on the back of his neck. He stepped aside to a room that was mostly empty and answered, “No, we’ve got a break in the case and we’re following that lead. What have you got to tell me about Mandy, Alan?”

  “Oh, well,” Alan hedged, “if you think you’ve got someone else, that would be a relief. I guess.”

  “It’s not closed yet. If you have information that could shed some light on this, I need to hear it,” he responded as that warning tingle spread from his neck to his gut.

  “Mandy came to us as a teen because she’d been getting into fights at school with the other girls. Only they weren’t just fights. She was ambushing girls for no apparent reason.” Alan stopped and Brice could hear the shuffle of papers and surmised that the man must have been reading her file. “Three girls. All three of these girls had been brutally beaten and needed medical attention. These were vicious attacks, Detective, unwarranted, and all done in true ambush fashion. She’d hide in the alleys behind their homes and attack from behind when they walked by. Detective, when I asked her about it, her response was completely casual. She told me they were sluts and deserved what they got. She was convinced that any girl who ‘put out’ was worthless and needed to be put down.”

  Alan had stopped again and repeated himself, not realizing that Brice would be hearing those words in his nightmares for the next two weeks. “I have it here in my file. That’s an actual quote from Mandy when she was little more than a child: ‘Put out and get put down’.”

  He huffed a loud breath and finished with, “I could never reach her. She had a vacant kind of manner that made her seem disconnected from reality. Her parents were religious people, but not fanatics. They wanted their girl to wait until she married, but they were just as shocked by her actions as everyone else. Even they couldn’t reach her. She just retreated behind that vacant façade and floated away whenever anyone tried to talk to her. Like we’d think she was dumb. But she was sma
rt, Detective, smart and dedicated to the belief that she was right and any girl who had sex was worthless, damaged goods. I always thought it ironic that it was her psyche that was the damaged one.”

  “Kent!” he shouted after he hung up while every cell in his body vibrated in fear. “They’re at the coffee shop!” And ran out the door like the fires of hell were chasing him.

  Terryn was chatting away with Brian about her most challenging girls. She was leaving the names out, of course, and each story only made him laugh more as he sipped his coffee and nibbled on his muffin. With no warning his face sobered and she slowly stopped talking.

  “Brian? Is something wrong?”

  His expression darkened even more and he suddenly looked murderous. “What the hell?” he said, grabbing Terryn by the collar and yanking her across the counter. Over her surprised scream, she could swear she heard laughter.

  Sirens blaring, Kent weaved in and out of traffic like an Indy racecar driver. Brice hung on to the dash with one hand and barked into his cell with the other. “I don’t want any excuses—get every car we got out there now! The suspect is considered armed and dangerous. One-ninety, blond and blue, and don’t let her fumbling manner fool you. That bitch is a stone-cold killer.”

  Chapter Nineteen

  Brian crashed into the table with Terryn on top of him. His long arms clamped her to his chest and he yelped, “What the fuck, Mandy?”

  Terryn whipped her head back to see Mandy stab into the air where she’d been standing less than two seconds ago. Then watched in horror as Mandy stalked around the counter clutching the biggest knife Terryn had ever seen. Terryn screamed and scrambled off of Brian as he lunged to his feet and shoved her behind him.

  What he did next caused Mandy to laugh maniacally—he picked up a chair and pointed the legs at her like he was a lion tamer.

  “Oh, that’s so funny, Brian.” She laughed like there was nothing wrong and she wasn’t threatening them with a knife. It was eerie and caused a sweat to break out over Terryn’s whole body. “Shouldn’t you have a whip too?”

  More creepy laughter when Brian swung it at her as she got closer. “I’m not some dumb animal.” Her laughter melted away, leaving behind nothing but unmistakable madness on her face. “You won’t be able to stop me with that. Nothing can stop me.” Then she feinted to the left and then back to the right when he countered, and she sliced a vicious cut into his forearm. Terryn clutched at him when he staggered and yelled.

  “Mandy!” Terryn barely recognized the sound of her own voice, it was so choked with fear, “Mandy, why are you doing this?”

  Mandy lunged with a furious snarl at Brian’s face, but he was ready this time and caught her in the stomach with the chair. She staggered back and actually pouted at him.

  “Stop that,” she snapped. “You don’t get to hit back. Stupid, stupid, stupid boy.” She opened her mouth to reprimand him more, but Brian swung the chair at her again, catching her in the face with one of the legs.

  Her head snapped to the side with a nasty crunch and a spray of blood. Almost as though it was happening in slow motion, Mandy turned back to look at them with eyes that had gone flat and a smile smeared with blood. She gave him one searing glance, then looked right at Terryn as though Brian were no longer in the room.

  “I’m going to kill you, slut. Kill you so you don’t help any more of those little sluts at your center. And when I’m done,” she continued as she slowly inched toward them again, “I’m going to kill them.”

  Quicker than either she or Brian could track, Mandy jumped at them with a howl of rage. They both fell under the force of the tackle. Terryn was trapped under Brian and she watched in horror as he grappled with Mandy for the knife.

  Brian’s shout of pain and terror turned Terryn’s blood to ice. With desperate panic, she shoved out from under him in time to see Mandy’s knife come down toward Brian’s unprotected stomach.

  Terryn didn’t think—she just leaped. She barreled into the larger woman without fear for herself and a boiling rage from realizing that this was who took Katie from her. A wordless scream of vengeance spilled from her mouth as she scrambled to latch on to Mandy’s knife hand.

  Brice flew from the car and toward the door while his worst nightmare unfolded in front of his eyes. Brian Gwin was bleeding and struggling to get up, his focus on the fighting girls. Terryn was on top of Mandy and they both had blood on them.

  Brice started praying as he pounded up to the door, only to come to a fast, hard stop as he discovered it was locked. He stepped back and pulled his gun. One shot and the shattered glass fell like rain.

  “Mandy! Freeze, police!” He didn’t expect it to stop them, but he couldn’t get a clear shot. Terryn was smaller, but she was wrapped around the other woman like a python.

  “Kent, cover me,” he shouted over the girls’ shrieking and reached for the knife in Mandy’s hand.

  Mandy saw him and flexed back out of Terryn’s grasp with a violent wrench of muscle. Then she arced it forward with every intention of stabbing Terryn right in the face. Brice registered the intent and acted in the same second.

  He shouted, “Now!” and instead of making a grab for the knife, he grabbed for his sub. He yanked her away from the vicious swing of that blade and the two of them crashed to the floor behind him.

  The very next second, Kent fired and Mandy’s chest fluttered and bloomed a sickening red.

  Brice landed on his ass with Terryn gripped by her underarms. It took a while for her flight or fight frenzy to register that she was safe. She continued to struggle and scream. Eventually, the reality and terror of the moment faded away and took her energy with it like air leaving a balloon and she wilted in his arms before turning to curl in his lap.

  “I love you.” she gushed, emotions stark on her tear-ravaged face. “I was afraid I would never get to tell you that.” She swallowed with a gulp and a loud sniff. “I do, though. I love you so much, Brice.” Then she buried her face in his neck and bawled.

  Kent kicked the knife from Mandy’s grasp before turning to check on Brian. Back-up was swarming within moments, but Brice stayed on the floor. He tightened his grip on Terryn and rocked as sobs wracked her whole body. With a soft curse, he buried his face in her hair and thanked God for the phone call that had sent him here in the nick of time.

  “Hey.” Kent crouched down beside them and brought Brice back to the moment. “You okay?” Brice didn’t trust his voice so opted to nod instead. “The paramedics are taking Brian. She got a couple good ones in. He’s going to need surgery.”

  Brice looked over to see that Mandy was not covered in a sheet, but was also being loaded onto a gurney.

  Brice grunted and lay one more kiss on the top of Terryn’s head. “Red, I need you to let the paramedics check you over.” He set her back from him a little and looked into her tear-soaked face.

  “It was Mandy.” Her bottom lip trembled and damn near broke his heart in two. “She tried to kill me and Brian dragged me over the counter.” They both looked to where Brian was being loaded into the ambulance and she said, “He saved me. He shoved me behind him and used a chair to keep her away from us.”

  Brice and Kent shared a look and Brice realized that he was going to owe Brian a lifelong debt. “We need two crews. One to search here and another at Mandy’s.”

  “Already on it,” Kent said as he stood to let the EMT take his place so the man could check Terryn for injury. “I’ll take Mandy’s if you want to take over here.”

  Brice agreed and when the medic cleared Terryn from needing to go to the hospital, he wrapped her in his coat and tucked her into a booth. Once assured that she was taken care of, he faced the shop and the men and women that were assembled there.

  “Officers,” he started, “she worked here forty plus hours a week and two of the attacks took place in the alley right out back.” He looked each man in the eye and finished with, “No one is leaving this building until we find the DNA needed to tie this
case with a big fucking red bow.”

  Chapter Twenty

  Two weeks later

  “Man. You gotta be kidding me, dude.”

  Brian’s baffled complaint was met with laughter. Brice, Terryn and surprisingly Kent were there to help Brian home from the hospital. Terryn had made him smile and blush when she’d waltzed into his hospital room with a bouquet of roses and announced that, as her hero, she and the detectives were going to see him home in style. In style turned out to be a limo ride to Cade’s restaurant for a five-course meal followed by the three of them pitching in to help clean his place.

  “Aw, c’mon, Bri,” Terryn laughed and stepped into the center of the once again pristine living room. “You didn’t really believe we’d make you clean up a mess like that on your first day home, did you?”

  Terryn smiled as Brian slowly circled the room with jaw agape. “See, I thought it would mean more if the three of us did the cleaning ourselves.” She ignored Kent’s cough-covered “bullshit” and said, “But Officer Moneybags here pointed out that a neat freak like you would appreciate a professional job more.”

  She wasn’t the least surprised or insulted when Brian nodded agreement and gave Brice a fist bump. “Good call.” Then he wandered to check out the rest of his place.

  “So, I gotta ask,” Kent said as he picked up Brian’s black box of mementos. “I know you said Katie went with you to make the key so you could help her with the after-hours deep cleaning, but…did you really do it or was that just a line to get her to go out with you?” Kent’s expression made it clear which one it would have been had he been the one in that situation.