Murders of the Zodiac Boxed Set

by Paris Morgan

  “Yes, and then I thought we’d take a crack at her boss again. It’s hard to imagine that they were close, and that he had no idea that she might be seeing someone.”

  ***

  The name I’d found led us to an office complex downtown for an oil company’s office.

  Noah Preston worked as an executive of the oil portion of the Urban Energy’s Natural Department.

  “May I help you?” his secretary asked as we stepped through the door to their offices on the tenth floor.

  “Yes, we’re here to see Noah Preston about a personal matter.” I held up my badge for her to look at, then placed it back on the belt of my slacks. At least I’d worn makeup today, so I didn’t feel as underdressed when she got up and walked to the conference room with us following her in her four-inch heels that looked expensive, and dangerous.

  “If you’ll wait in here, Mr. Preston will be with you shortly.” She closed the door without even offering us anything to drink.

  “Well, she’s not the kind of girl that you take home to Momma, but if Susan was any indication of his taste, I’d say he goes for the more power-driven type,” Joe commented, taking a seat.

  I preferred to stand so that I could pace. It was going to take a while for me to get used to walking less each day. I was going to have to make up for it when I hit the treadmill on my days off.

  The door opened, and handsome man in his thirties walked in and took a seat. “Cassie said that you wanted to see me about a personal matter?”

  “Yes. Were you acquainted with Susan Bacon?” Getting right to the point, I settled into the chair across from the one he’d taken.

  He looked at me suspiciously. “I was. I would say that we had a mutual relationship. Is she okay? Did something happen?” His calm demeanor changed slightly as he realized that we wouldn’t be there if she was okay.

  “I’m afraid not. She was murdered in her home, and we’ve been trying to find someone that knew her outside of work. Were you seeing each other?” Joe leaned forward in the chair, doling out information and watching his reactions closely.

  “We weren’t dating, but we did have the occasional moment of passion. I’m sorry to tell you that I didn’t even know where she lived, as we always met at a safe location and never used our homes.” He looked upset, but not devastated.

  “How did the two of you meet?”

  “Um…it was at a club, and mutual friends introduced us. It’s a private club, but I could get the name of one our friends that could verify we only met there.” He was being cagy about the facts.

  “The Black Tie Club?” I inquired, acting like I was consulting my notes.

  He ran a finger around his collar, loosening it nervously. “Y-Yes. It’s a private club, and no one is supposed to talk about it…you know, like fight club. And how did you know the name?” he asked accusingly.

  “I’m a cop. It’s my job to know about all sorts of private things, like exclusive clubs where people might find themselves murdered in their homes after they’ve seen something or someone they weren’t supposed to see.” I grinned, watching as he tried to keep his composure.

  “Am I being charged with something? Do I need to call my attorney?”

  “Not right now. We were just having a friendly meeting to get some additional information about Susan and anything that might have caused someone to want to murder her in her home. If you don’t know anything about that, we’ll let you get back to your day.” Joe got up and held out his hand.

  Slipping my card onto the conference room table, I advised, “If you think of anything, or something comes up that makes you change your mind about talking with us, that’s my number, and I can be reached anytime.”

  A guy like Noah would be wondering how much I knew about his kinky lifestyle, and might think that I would want to hookup instead of throwing his ass in jail. There was more to this murder than just a simple act of killing, and I was willing to bet that Noah Preston was involved in some way.

  Chapter 3

  Back at the station, I did a little digging online and pulled up as much information as I could on Noah Preston. He was considered a rising star in his company, Urban Energy, and was on track to be promoted to office manager of his division. There was no mention of his off-hour activities, or that it was something public. Most of the time, clubs like the Black Tie were hush-hush and kept secret. Like most elite clubs, you had to know someone and be recommended to be invited inside.

  “Crap!” I muttered out loud.

  Nick, who was passing by, looked over my shoulder. “Hey, I know a guy that could get you into that club if you wanted to. It’s an expensive buy-in for guys, but women normally get in at a lower cost. Couples have the same buy-in as guys do. Someone has to sponsor or mentor you. You can’t just go inside without some sort of guide.”

  I started to protest that I wasn’t interested, but it might be a good way to see what Noah was really in to.

  “Thanks. Can you send me the information? I think my victim used to go there, and I may need a way inside.”

  “Uh-huh. Your victim is the reason that you want an invite, but yeah, I can see if he can get you in.” Nick patted my shoulder and kept moving before I could defend myself.

  Great. Now all the guys would think that I was willing to accept their jokes and advances. I’d taken all my credibility away with one computer search. At least I knew that Susan had to have been invited to the club, and that someone had to sponsor her. I would have to do this part of my research from home after my date this evening.

  I moved onto the next item on my list, which was the murder weapon. A google search revealed a few ideas, including one that seemed a little crazy to me—nunchucks. However, I ran several different searches with the criteria of a wooden object that matched or came close to the description that Caleb Jones, the coroner, had given us.

  Printing out a report on possible matches, I was on my way to the printer when Nick stopped me.

  “Here’s the number of my friend. You have to tell him you’re a cop first or he’ll be very pissed when he takes you and finds out later. Trust me, you don’t want him on your bad side. Anyway, he sometimes takes guests, and you could go and observe for the night. If he takes you, then you won’t get into trouble. He’ll be responsible for you.” He handed me a paper with a simple name of Ford, and a number written on it.

  “He only goes by this name there. I’m not sure if it’s his real name or not. I didn’t ask because I sometimes need his help when a case gets a little on the sensual side.” Nick lifted an eyebrow. “Don’t judge me.”

  Relief flooded my face at his words. “Thanks for doing me a solid. It will really help, even if he can just give me some insight into this other guy we’re looking at as a possible suspect.”

  “No worries. I know you’re new, and this is someone that might help, whether it’s now or in the future. Hope you can catch this guy.” He walked back toward his desk on the other side of the room.

  The printer stopped spewing out pages for me and I took them, along with the card from Nick that could help solve the case.

  Ten pages of possible matches would take some time to wade through and mark off. I looked around curiously, noticing that my partner had vanished. Knowing he could find me if he needed to, I started poring over the papers. This guy could have been working in the metroplex, and we might not have connected other crimes because the crime scenes weren’t the same, or no one had put them together before.

  Out of the ones listed, or that had been put in the system properly, there were ten that stood out as possible connections. I marked and looked up each case in the system to see if there had been any arrests in those cases.

  Several seemed to fit the weapon used, but they were obvious crimes of passion, or there was a witness to the murders. Only two fit all of the details, but they were in Ft. Worth’s jurisdiction, and I wasn’t sure how we did things like that with an intercity connection. Joe would be the one I would need to ask, b
ecause some departments were glad for the extra help, and others got seriously pissed off that you were trying to make the collar for your city.

  Pulling out my phone to text him a message, I noticed that it was already two in the afternoon. No wonder he’d disappeared. I’d missed lunch, and would have to see if I could scrounge something up.

  “Hey, I might have a lead. I’m heading to grab some lunch across the street over at the food trucks. I’m going to need your help to figure out the next step if you want to meet me out there.”

  I closed everything up and put it all in my pack before I walked out to find some food.

  ***

  The food trucks weren’t crowded since it was already past the lunch hour, but most of them stayed around because cops wound up eating at all hours.

  Minutes later, I sat down at a table that had a pile of newspapers held down with a rock to keep them from blowing off. What caught my attention was the storyline on the paper, “Birthday murderer is here. More details on page ten.”

  Food forgotten, I frantically opened it to page ten and started reading.

  “This killer is leaving a calling card with the message ‘Happy Birthday’. When answering the door, three women who have no connection to each other, except that they were killed on their birthdays, were bludgeoned to death in the entryway of their homes over the past five days.”

  A tap on my arm brought me around, and I was reaching for my weapon when I realized it was Joe. “You about gave me a heart attack.” I placed a hand over my racing heart.

  “What were you so intent on that you didn’t hear me call your name?” Joe seated his large frame on the bench next to me with his food.

  “This.” I tapped a still shaky finger on the newspaper in front of us. “This article is from yesterday, and there are five victims of what they are calling the ‘Birthday Killer’.”

  Joe started reading the article while eating his tacos.

  I took a few bites while he caught up on the details.

  “Well?” I demanded, as he finished the article and took another bite.

  “Mmmhmm,” he mumbled with his mouth full.

  “I think it’s the same killer. That’s why I texted you to meet me. I’d found two different cases that matched ours in Ft. Worth, probably two of these. I didn’t want to call the detective on the case until I’d had a chance to see how we normally handled something like this.”

  Joe calmly wiped his mouth. “I was at a doctor’s appointment when I got your text. I forgot to mention it this morning. Take a deep breath and another bite of your food before it gets cold.”

  “But this might be the break we were looking for, Joe,” I argued, while grudgingly doing what he said.

  “It might be, but look at it this way. Our killer just moved cities, and that means they haven’t caught him. That’s just made our job a lot harder because he knows what he’s doing.” Seeing the frown on my face, he continued. “We can certainly see about meeting with the detective in charge. Can’t hurt, that’s for sure. He might have different details that we’ve missed. Just calm down, and when we finish eating, I’ll see if we can get a meeting this afternoon or in the morning.”

  Hard as it was to be patient, Joe was right. We couldn’t do anything right that moment, so I’d just finish my food. Ugh, I hated when someone else was right, but I’d gotten good at hiding it over the years.

  “If this is the same killer, then he hasn’t missed a day of killing, and might have someone that he’s stalking right now. We don’t have much time if he’s going to keep doing this.” I shoved the last two bites into my mouth and washed it down with my drink.

  I refrained from slamming my cup down and screaming, “There!” But it was so tempting.

  Joe just shook his head, as if he knew what I was thinking. He probably was, having been on the job for years. It wasn’t like I wasn’t bouncing in my seat with energy.

  He pulled out his phone. “Yes, can you transfer me to the person in charge of the birthday killer case? I’m with homicide over here in Dallas.” He nodded, then replied, “Sure. My cell phone number is 555-1111. He can call me whenever it’s convenient. Thank you.”

  “Satisfied?” Joe grinned at my impatience. “Oh, I wish I had your energy.”

  We both got up and threw our trash away. We’d barely made it inside when Joe’s phone went off.

  “Hi, Ryan. I think we’re both chasing the same killer, and I wondered if we could compare notes? If his pattern holds, he’s got someone scheduled to die today in our city, so the sooner the better.”

  Joe hung up and turned to head for the garage instead of our desks. “Well, what are you waiting for? We’re driving over to meet him, and if we want to beat the traffic, we’d better get a move on.”

  I fell into step beside him. “So you’ve just been playing it cool and letting me get all excited when you knew the clock was ticking?”

  “Yep. Figured it wouldn’t hurt you to work a little bit of that extra energy out. You planning to drive again?” He paused at the row where I’d parked my car earlier.

  “Absolutely. You’ve had enough fun for the day, old man.” I winked as he grunted in reply.

  ***

  The Fort Worth Homicide Department didn’t look that much different from ours. When we signed in and showed our IDs, the detective met us before anyone could escort us back.

  “I’m Ryan Fox, the detective in charge of the birthday killings.” He held out a hand, firmly gripping mine in his.

  A few years older than me, he was about six foot, and kept in shape. There wasn’t an ounce of fat that could hide under his dress shirt.

  Joe made the introductions as we followed him to an empty office down the hall.

  “My partner was doing some research and discovered the link between our cases. We only have two dead at the moment, and if this is the same guy, then we have at least three more that could end up dead. Leslie?” Joe motioned for me to get out our case files, which I had to run up to the office for before we left.

  It was that moment of ‘I’ll show you mine, but need to see yours first,’ and since we’d called him, it was in our court.

  “These are the two cases that we have so far. I noticed one difference, and that is the cards left at the scenes.” I pulled out my phone and showed him the picture of the Aquarius sign from the zodiac calendar.

  “You’re correct. We didn’t put that in the paper so that we could weed out false leads. From what we’ve uncovered, these have all been done on the female victim’s birthday, and a card has been found at each scene.” Ryan sighed as he recounted the facts to us.

  “That’s the only thing we’ve found that each woman had in common with the other. They’re all employed, mostly single, but there have been a few that were married and the spouse was out of town. He’s picked his victims very carefully and knows them well. From what we can tell, he has to have computer skills, because this is information that can only be attained by having access to the victim’s private files at a company or online. Now that you have several in Dallas as well, it’s almost a certainty that he doesn’t work with them. That would be too much drive time between victims to keep an eye on them. Which narrows it down to cameras in their homes, or a team of people that are working together. “

  “You have a little more to work with than we do at the moment, but there doesn’t seem to be a motive to these killings. Nothing is stolen, their deaths don’t really benefit anyone specifically, and no one that we have found yet wanted them dead. Is there anything on this from your side?” I tried to stay professional and keep my eyes off his handsome face. It was hard to maintain eye contact when his eyes were a deep green that made his face just as dreamy as the rest of him.

  “No, there seems to be no motive. We’ve interviewed their families and co-workers, but the only thing connecting them is their birthdays. We’ve put half of our department on this because we were afraid that our body count was going to keep rising, but nothing’s h
appened over the last two days, and we thought this was a one-time spree.”

  Ryan pushed the stack of files he’d laid on the desk toward us. “You’re welcome to look over these and see if anything stands out to you while I do the same. We put the article in the paper in hopes that it might save some innocent women from dying on their birthday.”

  “I think that’s the most tragic part of this whole thing, is that they were excited about their birthdays, and this killer is taking that away from them.”

  Death was never easy to deal with, but someone like this was taking pleasure from ending their lives on what should be a happy and fun day.

  “Question. Sorry, I’ve got a lot of those since this is my first set of cases as a detective. Anyway, looking at these pictures from your files, they look almost identical to ours, but I don’t think our killer is doing this out of vengeance, or as a way to get off,” I rambled nervously.

  “Was there a question in there?” Ryan grinned and exchanged a glance with Joe.

  “No. I mean, sort of.” I frowned. “These are either hits or someone’s on a quest, right? It’s coming off as if he just delivers something and does the job. There’s no going through their homes for souvenirs or assaults after they’re dead. He’s not even sticking around to watch them die.” I blushed as both men looked at me, waiting for me to finish.

  “I think she’s answering the questions she’s asking all by herself. We should just sit here and let her do all the work.” Ryan twirled a pen between his fingers.

  “That’s all I’ve been doing since she was assigned to me two days ago. If we could get all the newbies to do this much of the work, then we might not have to do more than eat donuts and drink coffee,” Joe agreed amicably.

  “All right, have fun at my expense, but what do you think? Is it a paid hit or something to simply check off his list?” My eyes kept darting between them to see who was going to answer.