The Bluff City Butcher

by Steve Bradshaw

  He had repaired everything he could find damaged by the Butcher. They had flushed and suctioned the peritoneal cavity, inserted drain tubes, antibiotics, and closed. They bandaged the wounds and wrapped plastic tight around Tony’s abdomen and chest. He took nineteen units of blood. Although each did all humanly possible to save him, in the end the damage from the Butcher’s knife had been too great. Detective Tony Wilcox was far beyond the point of no return.

  Elliott had done his best, and thanked his team for their heroic efforts and professionalism. The only thing left to do was to remove Tony’s body from the condo and transport him to the Shelby County Morgue. They had gently placed him in the black vinyl crash bag, zipped it closed, and set him on the gurney for the somber ride out of the condo. Their heads hung low as they walked him to the waiting ambulance under the quiet lights of the local news media. For a moment all movement stopped and all heads dropped. They handled the body with care and reverence as they placed it next to the other crash bag—Officer Hanson had died three hours earlier, his body propped in his car.

  The back doors closed and the ambulance pulled away, no sirens, and no flashing lights. Detective Wilcox and Officer Hanson would be transported to the county morgue. The medical examiner had two more homicides.

  The bloody death scene would be processed by the Memphis CSI team for the next several hours. They would do everything twice because they had lost two of their own and the Butcher had gotten away, again. As they worked, heads hung. The pain, the loss, and another failure were too great.

  That night Elliott watched the slow ambulance turn onto Poplar and disappear before he returned to Tony’s bedroom. He stood at the shattered window the Butcher had crashed through an hour earlier. He saw where the Butcher landed, two-hundred-fifty pounds dropping twenty feet onto soft ground. But the tracks had gone back to the condo and ended at the thirty-foot brick wall, like the wall at Jimmy Doyle’s place.

  “Alex, can I see you a minute please?” Elliott whispered.

  “What can I do for you, sir?”

  “He’s here. He’s in the attic. Don’t say a word. Follow me.” The Memphis police had gone. Only CSI agents had remained, gathering the last of the forensics.

  Elliott and Alex pulled their guns, turned off the hall light, and opened the door to the attic stairs. Their heads reached the attic floor level. They saw the open window. It was directly above Tony’s bedroom. Stacks of boxes and covered furniture was between them and the window.

  Elliott reached for the light switch. Alex aimed at the open window. When the light flipped on, the sofa sailed across the attic toward them. Alex blindly emptied his gun in all directions before the sofa had knocked them both down the stairs. They returned to the open attic window—and fresh blood on the sill.

  “Alex, your boss would be proud. You killed a sofa and wounded the Butcher,” Elliott said. That night they watched the BCB run into the fog.

  “Thank you.” He holstered his weapon. “I’m just happy to shoot something, sir.”

  The Memphis PD had returned with dogs and picked up the trail, a straight line to the Memphis Zoo three miles away. There it ended in a sea of animal scents.

  Later that night, alone in his car, and on the way to Millington, Elliott had allowed himself one smile. Tony Wilcox did go to the Shelby County Morgue, but he would not be unloaded. Everybody had to believe Tony died that night—everybody.

  Part Four

  COLLISIONS OF LIGHT

  Fifty-One

  Carol Mason listened intently on her cell. “My preliminary came up empty, so far no Gilgamesh anything. Are you sure our government is or has been involved?” She had assigned the little chore to one of her confidential sources in Washington DC.

  “Yes. It was originally formed in the private sector by the wealthy elite. The government got involved in 1949, possibly FBI,” Carol said as she flipped through notes at her Peabody apartment. She left The Tribune at noon to avoid eyes and ears. Instincts told her Gilgamesh could be part of the evolving mystery around the BCB.

  “Why would the FBI have an interest in this Gilgamesh thing?”

  “National defense,” she replied.

  “And, what is Gilgamesh?”

  “It has something to do with genetic research.” As a rule Carol never gave sources more information than they gave her.

  “Ok, you believe Gilgamesh came in with the FBI in ’49 and moved deeper into the government in ’51, correct?”

  “Correct,” she answered while reading a new text message.

  “I wonder if the military got it. That would explain all the dead ends. Or maybe the DOD is where I need to look.”

  “Great. Maybe you could look at the DOD and military. I can find you.” Carol typed a reply to her message concerning a registered letter for her at The Tribune. It was from Belmont Floral Services, her preferred D.C. source. They had a week head start. She sent a short text to her assistant, Jen; “Courier to me at Peabody now.”

  “You know, if this Gilgamesh thing exists, it could be deeper in the system than I have ever been, for a good reason,” said the source.

  “When something is too important for Congress or sitting Presidents to know, I get really nervous. Who has the right to that kind of power?” Carol asked.

  “You’d be surprised what goes on around here.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I get to places in this crazy system. I look at changes in spending and utilities, use of office supplies, movement of personnel, death rates, and other obscure data points. You would be amazed how many cell phones a new, top secret project goes through in the first week. Someone always leaves a door open somewhere. I walk into top secret projects all the time.”

  “That's why I come to you, Richard.”

  “I know. I’m good. This time you may have outdone yourself. I’ve been kicking around these halls for thirty years and never heard the word Gilgamesh.”

  A loud knock at Carol’s door drew her attention. “I appreciate your interest in helping me find the truth. Someone’s at my door. Gotta run. I’ll find you in a week.”

  The young courier stood in the hall with an envelope and pen. When he laid eyes on Carol, he added the smile for free.

  She would never talk to Richard again. After they spoke, he placed a call to an old friend, or so he thought. He asked the wrong questions. The last entry in his HR file on October 15 was his request to use all accumulated vacation days—Richard never returned. Someone searched his phone records the same day.

  She had twenty minutes to look at the contents of the letter, fix herself up for Elliott, and walk to the Hard Rock Cafe on Beale—dinner 6:30 p.m. Elliott had something important to talk about, and now Carol had something for him to look at. They shared everything now. They were a perfect fit in more ways than one.

  She held it up to the lamp. The water stains on the flap were not aligned—the registered letter had been opened and resealed. She pulled out the photographed table, and slid it in her purse. Maybe Elliott could dissect it over dinner.

  * * *

  * * *

  The pushing crowds on the turn suspected nothing, saw little, and cared less. A man in a long, black coat helped a lady into the double-parked, white van.

  Carol left the Peabody courtyard on foot, the Hard Rock Café a short walk, one block south on Second and two east on Beale. The Butcher grabbed her at the turn. He took her the same night Jack Bellow disappeared. This time the phone call went to Albert Bell. The instructions were brief. “No police, or Mason is next to swing from Hernando. Tell the good doctor I have her, and to stay by his phone—one ring, one chance.”

  When Carol rounded the corner, she walked into an iron arm. It closed around her like a friendly embrace. He held her like a boa constrictor, her small frame lost under his black leather coat. Each time she moved, the suffocating hold tightened, taking more fight away. Helpless, she dangled, her feet inches above the dark sidewalk. The tip of the knife pressed against her
side, and the mouth of the Butcher pressed against her ear. “You can die here, or come quietly, and have a chance to live.”

  The van turned off Jackson onto James north of the interstate. After the overpass it took a short right onto a seldom used dirt road to nowhere. The lights went off. The van crawled into the woods and navigated the maze of firs in the tall brush, always taking a new path to the edge of the woods. After ten minutes of moaning shocks, it found the shallow creek bed and went to the end of a desolate ravine. The van climbed into the ten-foot drainage pipe and parked behind the black Dodge Sprinter.

  She opened her eyes when the engine cut off. She could not touch her bloody head wound; she was tied, gagged, and hooded. When the back doors whined open, the smell of sweat and vomit mixed with the stench of raw sewage. He snorted and grabbed the rope around her knees and spun her upright. She froze. He put the canvas bag over her head and threw her over his shoulder. She passed out.

  The next time she regained consciousness, she thought they had reached the final destination. He stopped walking. She heard keys and rusty hinges. The BCB leaned forward, as if kneeling or going down an incline. Carol knew her hard shoes were as close to his face as they would ever be—her only pitiful chance at life. She kicked with all she had, and felt solid hits. He dropped her. If she got his eyes, she had a chance.

  In her dark, desperate, bound world, she rolled and rolled and rolled until she could not move. She was under something—thick bushes. Maybe it would be enough in the dark, in the woods. Maybe he would not find her. Maybe she would be lost to him if she did not move, did not breathe.

  She heard the thrashing and the pounding. But then it got louder. And his giant hand gripped both ankles together. He pulled Carol from her pitiful hiding place, as she squirmed and squealed and gnawed at her gag and tugged at her ropes desperate to break free, desperate to live one more second. But exhausted and wounded and bound, the crashing blow to her head stopped everything.

  Carol did not feel the rough edges of the cold, stone steps the Butcher dragged her down. She did not get the satisfaction of witnessing the blood dripping on those stone steps from the broken nose she had given him. Carol’s last thoughts were not about him, they were about the man she loved, the one who would never hold her again. Elliott could do more than any man to rescue her, but it would not be enough. At the corner of Second and Beale, she knew it was over. This time the Butcher would kill her.

  * * *

  The night the Butcher took Carol Mason, Jack Bellow turned off Second onto South Court with a controlled fishtail and skidded to a perfect stop in his private space. As he sat beside the old Exchange Building, he thought it would forever be remembered as the place where cotton merchant fortunes were made and lost—the deepest roots of the midsouth. Now the LIFE2 Corporation took most of the twenty floors.

  The late hour and unexpected cold snap thinned downtown sidewalks. He checked the rearview mirror. Someone moved in the park by the monument. He waited—probably nothing. When he left the black Lexus, he eyed his surroundings and moved in the shadow of the old building. At that moment he realized everything had to go his way.

  The night watchman sat behind the white marble reception counter on the south wall of the lobby. William Starnes finished rounds and had his coffee. The security monitors embedded in the counter in front of him were fed by a dozen cameras inside the building and a half-dozen on selected downtown rooftops. William watched the black Lexus all the way from Washington. He saw it slide around the corner onto Second and again onto South Court ending in the precision parking maneuver. He also saw the security alert flashing on his computer next to the monitors.

  Starnes took a slow sip of his steaming coffee and entered his password with one finger. He had never fully adjusted to his cheap reading glasses on the tip of his nose, but he could see Mr. Bellow slide out of his car like a cat burglar and slink in the shadows. Now what could you be up to tonight? William took another sip and checked his computer—his access to the urgent security alert posted at 8:00 p.m. had been granted. He had to smile. Not because of access, but because the seven digit code changed every week and he remembered the right one inked on his arm.

  Over his six years at the Exchange, he had received three alerts. One announced the sale of the building and everyone’s immediate termination. The next came an hour later from the new owner—Jack Bellow—hiring everyone back. The third alert was the bad one. William was given instructions to lockdown all ground entrances and secure the building. Jack Bellow’s parents had been killed, a house fire in Dallas. Later, they said arson. A sick message left at the scene said Jack Bellow would be next.

  Jack had been in the building all day. He had no knowledge of a fire or the death of his stepparents. When the Memphis police informed him, he collapsed. They had to take him out on a gurney. Jack did not return for three months. When he did, he was never fully there.

  With his hand on his holstered Smith & Wesson—out of habit—Starnes opened the coded file, and he watched Jack Bellow approach the front doors looking up and down Second. Starnes read each word:

  * * *

  POST DATE 10/15/09, 20:00. CODE: LEVEL 3. EXTREME CAUTION, FORCE REQUIRED. DETAIN SUBJECT FOR MPD. J. BELLOW PRESIDENT/CEO TERMINATION 10/16/09, 07:00. BELLOW ACCESS TO LIFE2 CORPORATION PROPERTY DENIED. ALL PRIOR RIGHTS AND PRIVILEGES REVOKED. SUBJECT POSES CLASS 3 RISK TO COMPANY—DESTRUCTION OF LIFE2 PROPERTY AND THEFT. J. BELLOW COULD BE ARMED AND DANGEROUS. PROCEED WITH EXTREME CAUTION.

  * * *

  As Jack entered the lobby, Starnes got up from his chair—three hundred pounds of muscle on a six-five frame with a gentle face. Before Jack’s eyes found him, he thought back, Mr. Kohl said there’d be days like this. When I early retired from MPD he said he needed me to watch out for Mr. Bellow. I’ve done just that for twenty years. But Mr. Jack never knew. Mr. Kohl wanted it that way.

  Jack moved toward the private elevator. “Hey Willie. How’re you doing on this cold October night?”

  “Evenin’ Mr. Jack. It sure is hot in here I’m staying bout as warm as a frog on a lily pad in a noon sun.” William started to move down the marble fortress.

  “Well, I am glad you’re staying warm.”

  Willie kept parallel. “Mr. Jack, I’m surprised to see you tonight. Is everythin’ all right? Can I help you with somethin’?”

  Jack recalled how he had met Willie, twenty years ago. They seemed to run into each other all the time. When he purchased the Exchange Building and discovered Willie was the night watchman, he had started to put things together. For some reason, Rudolph Kohl wanted him protected 24/7. Jack had met Rudy twenty years earlier, a wealthy investor who had taken an interest when Jack enrolled at Harvard. Jack assumed, after Kohl invested in one of his businesses, it was about protecting assets. Eventually it looked like something more.

  As they moved down the counter, Jack saw the troubled look on Willie’s face. The damn internal security alert system, the board sent it out already. I bet they’re blocking my access to the executive offices. I have no more options. I’m going up.

  “No, I’m good, Willie.” He stepped onto the elevator and hit three. Willie stood a few feet from the open door blocking the light. His right hand rested on his holstered gun. They looked at each other in silence for three very long seconds. The elevator door began to close. Willie stopped it with two fingers. Jack gripped the gun in his pocket. I don’t know if I can shoot you, Willie. Please don’t test me.

  “Mr. Bellow, I need you to be extra careful tonight. It is just luck I ran into you because with all the recent downtown break-ins, I’ve been spending my time walking outside. I might be hard to find.”

  Willie took his big fingers off the doors. They closed. Jack swallowed and slid his employee card through the scanner. If it had been deactivated, he would be stopped between floors until the Memphis police arrived. The private elevator was his only access to the executive office level.

  As the old elevator inched upward, Ja
ck thought about the series of events putting him in the middle of his nightmare. His termination came as a surprise. The moment Enrique Medino died, preferred shareholders got control of the board. It had never crossed his mind his partner would die in an automobile accident. The man had survived pancreatic cancer. The genius geneticist had mastered immortality. And those greedy investors showed no respect for a surviving founder. Their words were telling. It was nothing personal. Everyone was replaceable, even Jack Bellow.

  The time had arrived to implement the secret backup plan he and Medino had laid out in the beginning. The LIFE2 technology would not be lost to imbeciles. Jack had everything in order. The single greatest breakthrough of all time would leave with him. The technology Jack would leave behind would fail in year four of the clinical studies. The robust cartilage regeneration process would stop.

  Dr. Medino had observed the unexpected phenomenon in 2005. But he had tracked down the problem and made the minor modification to his life extending formulation. I couldn’t believe his reaction, when he projected one failure event. Medino’s mistake could not have been any simpler to solve. He reversed numbers. Instead of using peptide 304, he used 403—a human error. Only Dr. Medino could have uncovered the mistake.

  After the first takeover attempt, Jack had terminated the BelMed contract. The small escape clause buried deep in the three-hundred-page document had gone unnoticed by the sharks. After tonight, Jack would have everything else that mattered—nothing personal.