Houston, 2030: The Year Zero

by Mike McKay

HOUSTON, 2030: The Year Zero.

  Mike McKay

  Text copyright © Mike McKay 2006-2014

  Cover illustration copyright © Mike McKay 2013

  The right of Mike McKay to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988.

  This book is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This book may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you are reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to your favorite eBook retailer and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

  Chapter 1

  Mark's mobile phone vibrated on his desk and emitted a high-pitched beep: an urgent Police call. The caller ID was from a small Police station, or beat, as they called them in Houston, at the north-eastern boundary of their district.

  The FBI Special Agent-in-Charge touched the screen. “Mark Pendergrass.”

  “Sir, Deputy Kim here. GRS. We've got another case!”

  “The Butcher?”

  The phone crackled. “Yes, looks like. Two vics, youngsters, in the woods. The girl… You see it for yourself. I thought to call you right away instead of going through the Dispatch…” Then, after a short pause: “Sorry…”

  “Location?” Mark tried to stay calm. The two-year chase made him weary.

  “North of Sheldon Reservoir Park, corner of Pineland and Garret. Tan and I are already at the scene. Looks fresh…”

  “OK, Deputy, we are coming. Please make sure everything is intact…”

  Mark disconnected the call and marched to the Station Chief's office across the hallway. Major Benito Ferelli, a stocky man in his early sixties, updated a spreadsheet. Two dozen personnel records piled on the desk.

  “Tell me good news, dude,” Benito raised his eyes from the computer screen.

  Mark shook his head, indicating no good news would follow. “Just got a call, Ben. Two more victims for me. North of Sheldon-Res.”

  “Shit… Shit! When is it going to end?” From a hook on the wall, Major took a car key and threw it to Mark, “go catch the Bear. Get Missis Gardener from the lab. Do you need a deputy – as well?”

  “Thanks, Ben. Three of us can manage…”

  Despite Mark's position was called Special Agent-in-Charge, he no longer had other agents under him. The only FBI representative in this part of Houston, he took care of two Police districts: one hundred and thirty square miles and four hundred thousand population. After the FBI staff reductions, they had to rely on the Sheriff's Office for practically anything. Fifteen minutes later, Mark and the officers were preparing one of the two remaining response vehicles. Sergeant Investigator Alex Zuiko filled diesel from orange two-gallon jerrycan, while Natalie Gardener, who already changed to a scene coverall, checked the contents of her CSI kit.

  Alex Zuiko, in his mid-fifties, was an immigrant from Russia. Being in the States for twenty years, he spoke literate English, but with a strange mixture of Texan and Slavic accents. In the Police beats, they called him Russian Bear. As rumors had it, before coming to America, Alex was involved with either the Russian mafia or Russian Police, and both organizations used the same interrogation methods. Alex never repudiated the rumors.

  Natalie Gardener, the CSI, twenty-six and new to the district, already proved herself useful. Cheerful and humorous, she could stomach even the most gruesome scenes and work a case for several days, with almost no sleep. Such a strong team, Mark thought, but it can't help this case.

  The chain of murders started in June 2028. The FBI was not officially involved until case number three, but Mark helped out at the crime scene later named case number one. Mark was convinced the case followed an exploded love triangle: a young man finds his former girlfriend with another fellow. Perhaps, he has military background – most young men have one nowadays. A knife is pulled, and both lovers are killed. The murderer removes the girl's breast. Unusually cruel, but not impossible: maybe, hiding a tattoo or other evidence.

  Back then, Mark predicted this investigation would not last. With proper legwork, such cases were cracked within a week or two, despite an unusual lack of forensic data. The Police interviewed the victims' families and friends, but with no clue revealed. Five weeks later, another couple died in the woods in very much the same way. This time, the killer took away the girl's lower leg. The third murder followed, exactly one month after the second. Again: two young lovers in the bush, and again, the girl's lower leg was cut off. After a brief denial, the Police had accepted a sad fact: they had a serial killer at large.

  And so, the Sheldon Butcher investigation landed on Mark's plate. After all, the FBI still had a mandate for serial killers.

  A twenty-seconds pause upon a short turn of the starter allowed oil to spread through the bearings. After starting the engine, Alex let it warm up for another thirty seconds before driving off. A great driver, Sarge frequently complained he only drove on sad occasions of homicides or other major crimes. The Police cars were not much in use for any other, less pressing cases: fuel – prohibitively expensive, and budgets – limited.

  On C.E.King Parkway, Alex switched the truck's blinking lights and a siren, but Mark told him to kill the show. Mid-afternoon, traffic was light. Few push-bikes and tricycles did not interfere with the Police vehicle, and they had no reason to alert people unnecessary. After all, the dead were dead. Avoiding multiple potholes, Sarge navigated to Garret Road. The upstream part of Sheldon Reservoir, or Sheldon-Res, as the locals abbreviated it, was to their left, and from here looked more a sedge swamp than a lake. A small patch of woods extended to their right. The beat deputy waited for them at the head of a dirt trail in the woods under rusted and barely visible sign: CRITICAL WATER SUPPLY. EXCLUSION ZONE. Violators may and will be prosecuted.

  They got out of their truck, and Mark introduced Natalie to Deputy Kim. He and Alex knew this man from their previous case – of the same serial killer's chain. Upon the introductions, the team followed the young policeman along the dirt trail. One hundred and fifty yards on foot, and they found themselves at the crime scene. A little secluded clearing in the bush made a pretty spot if not for the yellow-and-black police tape stretched between the trees. The second local cop, Deputy Tan, guarded the scene. Bystanders, mainly teenagers, watched from behind the tape.

  The first victim, a man no older than twenty-five, was face-up on a blood-soaked picnic pad. Next to it, a pair of heavy Army boots, one boot accompanied by a standard, government-issued, leg prosthesis. Mark felt sympathy for the victims – his older son, William, was also an Army veteran. He caught a brief glance of Alex, who gave Mark a short nod. Despite the difference in ranks, Mark and Alex had a lot in common. Not your typical close friends, they drank enough beers together. Like Mark, Alex had a war veteran in the family: his son was wounded at the Mexican front and lost a leg. Three months earlier, investigating similar crime scene, Russian Bear made a secret promise that if they find the killer and have an indisputable proof, no arrest and no trial would follow. This animal had to die running, and by no means a quick painless death either.

  The second vic, a young woman, was face-down in a pool of dried blood. Her jeans were cut at the back, and the meat from both buttocks and both upper legs – removed to the bones. A swarm of flies buzzed above the body.

  “It's the same M.O. all-right,” Alex pointed to the female victim.

  “Let's hope we didn't get ourselves a copycat,” Mark replied, “as for now, you may call it
case number sixteen, Sarge…”

  Natalie started the usual CSI routine, setting plastic numbers next to everything at the scene and making photos. Mark studied a patch of grass under his feet – not to disturb any evidence, switched his mobile phone into a map app, and placed the phone on the ground. The GPS navigation was notoriously slow: only thirteen GPS satellites remained active around the Earth, and a proper location fix would take time.

  “Want to do the witnesses, Alex?” Mark asked. More than anything, the Special Agent desired to be left alone. I've been on the case too long, he thought.

  He watched how Sergeant approached Deputy Tan, who in turn pointed at three boys, eleven or twelve by the looks, in the small crowd of bystanders. The boys, in tattered but reasonably clean school camo and barefoot, clenched their school bags. Typical Amerasian kids, Mark observed. Mischievous, but well-disciplined. The usual story: they went to the park after classes, probably for a quick dip at the Reservoir. Suddenly found the bodies; scared, they ran to the nearest dwelling to call adults. Unlikely the boys report anything of value. Most of the previous scenes were also discovered by kids in the early after-school hours.

  On the picnic pad: a tiny Sunbeam electric lantern, a plastic box with home-made cookies, and a small thermal flask. Tea for two. Naturally, before having sex. Not their first time together in the woods, Mark concluded: the young man disconnected his artificial leg – one got to be exceptionally brave to show his disability during the first date…

  After each serial killer's attack, the Police issued warnings through the local TV and radio stations, asking youngsters to avoid woods after dark. It had the same effect as if you asked them not to have sex. Mark thought of his son William dating Clarice two-three years ago. They also disappeared to nearby parks almost every night. Mark's second son, Michael, was going through the same period, but Mark was unaware if any of Mike's girlfriends were of permanent nature.

  “Mark, I've got the preliminary T.O.D.,” Natalie approached, “by the body temperature and the insect insemination – between 7 PM and the midnight yesterday. Well, you can safely assume it from 8:20 PM, – the sunset was at 7:53, give another half-hour to get dark. Both vics are killed with what looks like the same standard-issue Army knife, and both – with a single hit to the neck.”

  “Did you see the glove pattern?”

  “Yes, the same rubber dots as on the other scenes. The most prominent imprint is on the girl's right leg, below the knee,” she scrolled through photographs in her camera. Yes, this was ‘their’ serial killer, not a copycat.

  Many believed the Butcher was called so because of the mutilated victims. Mark and few others knew the full story. The serial killer received this name after the fourth murder. On the crime scene, officers found a flyer from a butcher shoppe: a cow carcass scheme with names of different cuts. It looked a valid lead initially. The killer was very proficient with his knife, as one might expect from a butcher, and the flyer had several distinctive fingerprints.

  They followed the lead enthusiastically, locating the butcher shop. Everybody had a rock-solid alibi. The fingerprints belonged to the male victim, the butcher's mother-in-law and two boys. On the morning of the murder, the kids distributed the flyers to multiple dwellings, including the house of the victim. Perhaps, the vic himself used this paper to wrap a snack.

  Thus, the butcher flyer led them nowhere, but the name stuck. Someone in the Police should have kept his or her mouth shut. The newsies learned about the body parts being cut off, someone leaked that the FBI interrogated a butcher, and media's vivid imagination did the rest. Anyhow, the name turned out sufficiently descriptive, and now even the FBI used it in official documents…

  Mark glanced at the bystanders: the crowd grew. Inevitably, the detectives made the news again. A young woman behind the police tape held a tiny video camera pointed at the scene. It looked like she was tending to a vegetable patch before running here with her camera: a conical straw hat, long-sleeved mens shirt and khaki work pants, rolled up to the knees. The TV stations could not afford their camera vans anymore, but multiple volunteers, such as this girl, supplied the footage. Add few wise-cracks from the anchor, or an ‘educated opinion’ from a standby ‘expert,’ and the evening news would be ready to roll. At least there were no real reporters – with their invasive long-shot lenses and directional microphones – less chance of any information leaks.

  He retrieved his telephone from the grass. A red cross of the GPS fix sat over a toned-down satellite photograph, but on the screen Mark did not see the trail, and the woods appeared denser. No surprise here: space photos dated at least fifteen years and did not match the actual land features anymore. He extracted a stylus and attached a note to the fix: #16. ETOD 20:00 to 24:00 04/22/2030. Male: Caucasian, 20-22 yo. Female: Amerasian, 17-20 yo. M.O. consistent (gloves, knife).

  The perpetrator was careful, methodical and what CSIs called forensic-aware. In the chain of fifteen known murders, no significant material evidence and no witnesses! The same Army knife was used each time. Of course, if the knife was found on the perp, the CSIs could match it to the wounds, but otherwise – a poor lead. Thanks to endless wars the USA had been fighting since 2001, there were millions of identical Army knives in circulation.

  The Butcher always wore simple working gloves – textile with tiny rubber dots on the palm side. They left no fingerprints, and despite the limited supply for the last several years, one would still find a pair in every household. The CSIs found no usable footprints. None of the victims were sexually violated, which meant no biological evidence. On several occasions, they located potential witnesses, often young couples, who happened to be in the same woods around the time of the murder. One couple nearly walked into a fresh corpse, less than an hour after the kill. Sadly, none of the witnesses heard any screams or saw anything unusual.

  The FBI best hope was that one night the Butcher would make a simple, stupid mistake. Why don't you, bastard, cut your finger or drop something from your pocket, Mark fantasized. Or get yourself robbed, so the mobsters take your own knife and stick it back – between your ribs. Or suffer a traffic accident. No cars on the road, but you still can get under a horse or collide with a speeding cyclist. Or move to another state, why freaking not? Let's say, Florida! Wonderful state and has plenty of forests. Move to Florida and kill lovers there, not on my territory. Or throw your ass from a sky-scraper!

  Alex returned to the picnic pad, “So much for the witnesses, Mark. The boys are from Null Middle, two miles to the west, and live in Chinamerican slums north of Garret Road. I got the names and the parents' phone numbers, so we can contact them later, if anything. On the way from school, they always swing by these woods. They saw just one body, the girl on the grass, blood and all, and ran to the local blacksmith, that gentleman on the left.”

  “With the leather apron?”

  “That's him! He called Kim at the Beat, then came here with the boys. The smith's helper – that fellow next to the blacksmith, a bodybuilder, with no shirt… He came next. Lucky us, the good men prevented the crowd from roaming over the scene. The Beat officers arrived twelve minutes later.”

  “Anybody else?”

  “Nope. All the others just saw what we saw. I've collected the names and phone numbers…”

  As foreseen: no worthy witnesses.

  “Can we get the local deputies to do a door-to-door tomorrow?”

  “Not a problem. I give deputies a hand,” Alex replied.

  Natalie handled Mark two plastic bags with the victims' belongings: no IDs and no mobile phones. The girl's purse included the usual lady stuff: a little mirror, a re-manufactured lipstick, and a comb with few missing teeth. The man's pockets contained about nine hundred dollars: twenties and fifties. In the purse, – a single five hundred-dollar bill. Less than fifteen hundred dollars among two of them – not much. The couple was not murdered for money.

 
; “I got the vics' fingerprints and sent them to Identifications,” the CSI said, “for the male, we got a positive already. You have a CC. For the female – they are still searching, but – I would not expect an ID any time soon.”

  Mark nodded and pulled out his phone. The e-mail had an attachment: a standard US Army personnel record, in PDF format. He scanned through the terse statements. Hobson, Nicholas S. Born in 2009. High-school incomplete: dropped off at fifteen. No criminal record. Drafted in 2027, the US Army Corps of Engineers. A boot camp in Fort Worth. Deployments: Colombia, 2027, Mexico, 2028, Venezuela, 2028. Decorations: a Purple Heart. Honorably discharged in March 2029… Shit! William also got his Purple Heart in Venezuela!

  The last known address: 187th Street, New York, NY. No registration in Texas whatsoever. The file contained a mobile phone number. Mark dialed it right away, just to hear an automatic message: this number has been disconnected. There was an e-mail address too. Mark composed a message: If you are reading this, please contact urgently… Mark's e-mail address and the phone number followed. As slim as the probability was, the e-mail account might have more than one owner.

  “I'm afraid, no ID on the female,” Natalie said, looking into her phone. Twenty years ago, a girl of the victim's age would get her driving license, and with the license came fingerprinting. Now private cars were no longer in use, and the driving license dropped off the girl's priority list. Only the Department of Defense supported the mandatory conscripts' registration, and only for combat-fit young men.

  “This e-mail address,” Mark pointed to his phone screen, “can we figure out how to get data from the provider? The recent mails sent or an address book on the server?”

  “Already thought of this,” Natalie said. “The server is in Quebec, former Canada. For those guys up-north, an order from a Texan Justice of Peace and an order from little green Martians, – have the same legal power. Even if they reply, they tell you the account is encrypted, the server has been set on fire, the backup copies – shipped to Bulgaria. And the damn Yanks may go mind their own business, thank you so much! Or should I say: merci beaucoup?”

  “Still, a polite asking will not hurt.”

  “I'll try tonight, but almost sure it won't work. I'm no good in French.”

  “The male vic is not registered in Texas, but his family members may be,” Alex said. “Can you ask Identifications to run all the Hobsons in the area?”

  “Hobson is not an unusual surname, Sarge. How wide do you want the search?”

  “The victims must be not from far away,” Mark said, “I don't think the male vic walked more than a couple of miles on his artificial leg…”

  “Oh, you never know, Mark,” Alex disagreed, “a young man may go into a great deal to impress his date… On the second thought, you're probably right. The female has wooden flip-flops. Flowers and hieroglyphs. In these, one can't walk fast or far.”

  Natalie chuckled: “You, gentlemen, don't use hand-painted jandals much, do you? They're a fashion accessory, not practical shoes. The girl's bag has a two-inch carabiner. If you have to walk a mile or ride a bike, you kick jandals off and hang them on your bag, simple enough… Wait a moment… You do have a point! On her jeans, there are three – little black spots, see? I didn't get it first, but guess what?”

  “What?”

  “It's an imprint of a rear sprocket! The victims came here on a bike. I admit, it's not a fact and can be a coincidence…”

  “Well, there is no bike at the scene,” Mark said, “the Butcher may take it, but it doesn't fall into his modus operandi… Probably, somebody had visited the clearing before the boys got here this afternoon. If the victims had a bike, it opens our search to ten miles.”

  “OK, I will ask the girls to run ten and twenty mile radii for us. But don't hold your breath, gentlemen. There will be tons of useless hits.”

  They worked the scene for another hour, meticulously searching the grass and the bush. Several e-mails from Identifications confirmed that no female's ID could be recovered, and the current address of the male victim was unknown. No missing person with matching description had been reported. The surname search returned over fifty hits, few with associated phone numbers, most without. Mark rang all the numbers, with no luck. He envisaged several long days ahead: checking all the other addresses.

  “It will go dark in two hours. I'd say, we bag the vics and bring them to the Station,” Mark decided.

  “Yep. No sense to wait,” Alex nodded, “our flashlights are pretty wasted. On a full charge, the batteries will not last even twenty minutes.”

  This was against the standing orders. Every effort was applied not to bring the bodies into the morgue, but to make the relatives to pick them directly from the scene, so to save fuel and electricity. Yet, Mark had no choice. They could not wait much longer.

  After wrapping into reusable tarps (the supplies of single-use body bags were long exhausted), the policemen carried the bodies to the pickup. The evidence was all packed and loaded, and the Beat deputies had removed the police tape. Right before the sunset, the detectives left the scene for the Station. This time, Natalie was driving – she begged Sarge to allow her behind the steering wheel. With two hours of her mandatory training, she was not any faster than your average bicycle.

  It took them another hour and a half to siphon the remaining diesel to the jerrycan, surrender the car key to the on-duty deputy, and complete the papers for the bodies and the evidence. The rest had to wait till the morning. Ten years ago, high-profile crime investigations would run day and night. Not anymore. The electricity and fuel became too expensive to perform any meaningful activities during the dark hours; the paperwork and database searches – could be done from home.

  Mark changed from his office clothes to a T-shirt and sandals, – and jumped on his bike. Considering total darkness and inevitable potholes, the five-mile trip home would take from forty minutes to an hour.

  He rode east, towards Sam Houston Tollway. This was the better part of town: newer houses, and away from the slums. Everything was locked up, and the streets were deserted and dark, save for an LED lantern here and there, and an occasional dim glare of TV and computer screens in the windows.