Before he Kills (A Mackenzie White Mystery—Book 1)

by Blake Pierce

  “Thanks, sir,” Porter said, clearly at odds with taking the praise that Mackenzie mostly deserved.

  “By the way,” Nelson said, looking directly at Mackenzie now, “I sent some guys to the shed out back. There was nothing there—just some unfinished handmade stuff—a bookshelf, a few tables, things like that. I even had them check the poles behind the shed and it turns out they’re made of pine, the same as the stuff he’s building. So it was just a huge coincidence.”

  “I was sure this was the guy,” Porter said.

  “Well, don’t let this set you back,” Nelson said. “The day is young.”

  Nelson left them, heading over to speak with the tech crew that was working on getting deeper into Traylor’s laptop.

  “That was sharp thinking in there,” Porter said. “I would have missed both of those things—the software on his computer and the hardware box.”

  He sounded depressed, almost sad.

  “Thanks,” Mackenzie said, a little uncomfortable. She wanted to tell him how she had come to her conclusions but figured that would only irritate him. So she kept quiet, as always.

  “Well,” Porter said, clapping his hands together as if the matter were now totally resolved. “Let’s get back to the station and see what else we can dig up on our killer.”

  Mackenzie nodded, taking her time to get into the car. She looked back to Clive Traylor’s house and the shed in the backyard. She could see the ends of the poles from where she stood. On the surface, yes, this had seemed like a sure thing. But now that it had turned out to be something else entirely, she was again faced with the fact that they were pretty much back to square one.

  There was still a killer out there and with each minute that passed, they were giving him another chance to kill again.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  As a boy, one of his favorite pastimes was to sit out on the back porch and watch their cat stalk around the yard. It was particularly interesting whenever it came upon a bird or, on one occasion, a squirrel. He’d watched that cat spend up to fifteen minutes stalking a bird, toying with it until it finally pounced on it, tearing out its neck and sending its little feathers into the air.

  He thought of that cat now, as he watched the woman arrive home from yet another night at work—a place of employment where she stood up on a stage and pandered her flesh. Like that cat from his childhood, he had been stalking her. He’d nixed the idea of taking her at her workplace; the security was tight and even under the murky glare of the early morning streetlights, there was too much of a chance of getting caught. Instead, he’d waited in the parking lot of her apartment complex.

  He parked directly in front of the stairs on the far right side of the complex, as those were the ones she used to go to her apartment on the second floor. Then, after three o’clock, he’d climbed those stairs and waited on the landing between the first and second flight of stairs. It was poorly lit and dead quiet at this time of the night. Still, as a decoy, he had an old cell phone that he would quickly place to his ear and pretend to talk into if someone happened to pass him.

  He’d followed her for two nights now and knew that she’d get home sometime between three and four in the morning. On both of the occasions where he had followed her and parked on the opposite side of the street, he had only seen one person use those stairs between three and four in the morning, and they had been clearly drunk.

  Standing on the landing, he had seen her car pull up and he now watched as she got out. Even dressed in street clothes, she seemed to flaunt her legs. And what had she been doing all night? Showing those legs, making men yearn.

  She approached the stairwell and he brought the phone to his ear. A few more steps and she’d be right in front of him. He felt his calf muscles tightening, waiting to spring, and he once again thought of his childhood cat.

  Hearing the light sounds of her footfalls below, he started pretending to talk. He spoke quietly but not in a conspiratorial way. He thought he might even give her a smile when she showed up.

  And then she was there, coming up around the landing, heading for the second flight of stairs. She glanced at him, saw that he was occupied and looked harmless, and gave him a little nod. He nodded back, smiling.

  When her back was to him, he acted quickly.

  His right hand went into his jacket pocket, pulling out a rag that he had soaked in chloroform seconds before getting out of the car. He used his other arm to wrap around her neck, dragging her backwards and off of her feet. She was only able to let out a tiny little yelp of surprise before the rag was pressed against her mouth.

  She struggled immediately, biting down and somehow managing to dig into his pinky. Her bite was hard and he was sure she had bitten clean through his finger at first. He pulled back for just a moment, but it was enough for her to get away from him, wrenching away from the grip he had applied around her neck with the crook of his left arm.

  She started up the stairs and let out a whimper. This whimper, he knew, would evolve into a scream in no time. He dove forward, reaching out and grabbing that silken bare leg. The stairs struck him in the chest and stomach, knocking the wind from him, but he was still able to pull hard at her leg. With a desperate little cry, she went falling to the ground. There was a shuddering crack as her face struck the stairs.

  She went limp and he instantly crawled up the stairs to get a closer look. She’d struck her temple on the stair. Surprisingly, there was no blood, but even in the weak light, he could tell that a knot was already starting to form.

  Moving quickly, he put the cloth back into his pocket, finding that she had gnawed into his pinky pretty good. He then picked her up and found that there was no sturdiness in her legs. She had been knocked out cold.

  But he’d dealt with this before, too. He picked her up from the side the knot was forming on and leaned all of her weight on that side. He then dragged her down the stairs with one arm around her waist, her feet dragging uselessly behind her. With his other hand, he brought the dead phone up to his other ear just in case they passed someone in the fifteen feet or so that separated them from his car. He had his lines prepared just in case that happened: I don’t know what to tell you, man. She’s drunk—like passed out drunk. I figured it was best to take her back to her house.

  But the late hour didn’t necessitate that bit of acting. The stairs and the parking lot were absolutely dead. He got her into his car without incident, never seeing anyone.

  He cranked his car and pulled out of the parking lot, heading east.

  Ten minutes later, as her head knocked softly against the passenger window, she muttered something that he could not understand.

  He reached over and patted her hand.

  “It’s okay,” he said. “It’s all going to be okay.”

  CHAPTER NINE

  Mackenzie was reading over the final report on Clive Traylor, wondering where she went wrong, when Porter stepped into her office. He still looked a little disgruntled from the morning. Mackenzie knew he’d been sure Traylor had been their guy and he hated being wrong. But his constant irritable mood was something Mackenzie had gotten used to a long time ago.

  “Nancy said you were looking for me,” Porter said.

  “Yes,” she said. “I think we need to pay a visit to the strip club that Hailey Lizbrook worked at.”

  “Why?”

  “To speak with her boss.”

  “We’ve already spoken to him on the phone,” Porter said.

  “No, you spoke to him on the phone,” Mackenzie pointed out. “For a grand total of about three minutes, I might add.”

  Porter nodded slowly. He stepped fully into the office, closing the door behind him. “Look,” he said, “I was wrong about Traylor this morning. And you impressed the hell out of me with that takedown. It’s clear that I haven’t been showing you enough respect. But that still doesn’t give you the right to talk down to me.”

  “I’m not talking down to you,” Mackenzie said. “I’m simply pointing out
that in a case where our leads are next to zero, we need to exhaust every possible avenue.”

  “And you think this strip club owner might be the murderer?”

  “Probably not,” Mackenzie said. “But I think it’s worth talking to him to see if he can lead us to anything. Besides that, have you checked the guy’s rap sheet?”

  “No,” Porter said. The grimace on his face made it clear that he hated to admit this.

  “He has a history of domestic abuse. Also, six years ago, he was involved with a case where he supposedly had a seventeen-year-old working for him. She came out later on and said she only managed to get the job by performing sexual favors for him. The case was thrown out, though, because the girl was a runaway and no one could prove her age.”

  Porter sighed. “White, do you know the last time I stepped foot in a strip club?”

  “I’d rather not know,” Mackenzie said. And by God, did she get an actual smile out of him?

  “It’s been a long time,” he said with a roll of his eyes.

  “Well, this is business, not pleasure.”

  Porter chuckled. “When you get to be my age, the line between the two sometimes blurs. Now come on. Let’s go. I imagine strip clubs haven’t changed that much in the last thirty years.”

  *

  Mackenzie had only seen strip clubs in movies and although she hadn’t dared tell Porter, she hadn’t been sure what to expect. When they walked inside, it was just after six o’clock in the evening. The parking lot was starting to fill with stressed out men coming off of their work shifts. A few of these men gave Mackenzie a little too much attention as she and Porter walked through the lobby and toward the bar area.

  Mackenzie took the place in as best she could. The lighting was dim, like a permanent twilight, and the music was loud. Currently, two women were on a runway-like stage, dancing with a pole between them. Wearing only a pair of thin panties each, they were trying their best to dance in a sexy manner to a Rob Zombie song.

  “So,” Mackenzie said as they waited for the bartender, “has it changed?”

  “Nothing except the music,” Porter said. “This music is terrible.”

  She had to give it to him; he wasn’t watching the stage. Porter was a married man, going on twenty-five years. Seeing how he was focused on the rows of liquor bottles behind the bar rather than the topless women onstage made her respect for him go up a notch. It was hard to peg Porter as a man who respected his wife that much and on such an account, she was happy to be proven wrong.

  The bartender finally came over to them and his face went slack right away. While neither Porter nor Mackenzie wore any sort of police uniform, their attire still presented them as people that were there on business—and probably not business of the positive kind.

  “Can I help you?” the bartender asked.

  Can I help you? Mackenzie thought. He didn’t ask us what he could get us to drink. He asked if he could help us. He’s seen our kind in here before. Strike one for the owner.

  “We’d like to speak to Mr. Avery, please,” Porter said. “And I’ll have a rum and Coke.”

  “He’s busy at the moment,” the bartender said.

  “I’m sure he is,” Porter said. “But we need to speak with him.” He then took his badge out of his interior coat pocket and flashed it, returning it back as if he had just pulled off a magic trick. “But he needs to speak to us or I can make some calls and make it really official. It’s his call.”

  “One second,” the bartender said, not wasting another minute. He walked to the other side of the bar and went through double doors that reminded Mackenzie of the kind she’d seen in saloons in those cheesy Western movies.

  She looked back to the stage where there was now only one woman, dancing to Van Halen’s “Running with the Devil.” There was something about the way the woman moved that made Mackenzie wonder if strippers lacked dignity and therefore did not care about exposing their bodies, or if they were just that confident. She knew there was no way in hell she could ever do something like that. While she was confident in many things, her body was not one of them, despite the many lewd glances she received from random men from time to time.

  “You look a little out of place,” someone beside her said.

  She looked to her right and saw a man approaching her. He looked to be about thirty years old and as if he had been sitting at the bar for a while. He had that sort of gleam to his eyes that she’d seen in many a drunken altercation.

  “There’s a reason for that,” Mackenzie said.

  “I’m just saying,” the man said. “You don’t see many women in places like this. And when they are here, they’re usually here with a husband or boyfriend. And quite frankly, I don’t see the two of you,” he said, pointing to Porter, “as being an item.”

  Mackenzie heard Porter chuckle at this. She wasn’t sure what annoyed her more: the fact that this man had gotten brave enough to sit beside her or that Porter was enjoying every minute of it.

  “We’re not an item,” Mackenzie said. “We work together.”

  “Just here for the after-work drinks, huh?” he asked. He was leaning in closer—close enough for Mackenzie to smell the tequila on his breath. “Why don’t you let me buy you one?”

  “Look,” Mackenzie said, still not looking at him. “I’m not interested. So just move along to the next unwitting victim.”

  The man leaned in closer and stared at her for a moment. “You don’t have to be a bitch about it.”

  Mackenzie turned to him finally and when they locked eyes, something in the man’s gaze shifted. He could tell she meant business, but he’d had a few drinks too many and apparently just couldn’t help himself. He placed a hand on her shoulder and smiled at her. “I’m sorry,” he said. “What I meant to say is, well, no, I meant what I said. You don’t have to be a bitch about—”

  “Get your hand off of me,” Mackenzie said softly. “Last warning.”

  “You don’t like the feel of a man’s hand?” he asked, laughing. His hand slid down her arm, groping now rather than simply touching. “I guess that’s why you’re here to look at naked women, huh?”

  Mackenzie’s arm came up with lightning speed. The poor drunk man didn’t even realize what had happened until after she’d thrust her forearm into his neck and he was falling off of his barstool, gagging. When he hit, it made enough noise to attract one of the security guards that had been standing by the edge of the lounge area.

  Porter was then on his feet, stepping in between the guard and Mackenzie. He flashed his badge and, to Mackenzie’s surprise, stood nearly toe-to-toe with the much larger guard. “Slow down, big boy,” Porter said, all but rubbing the guy’s face with his badge. “In fact, if you want to avoid the spectacle of having someone arrested in this seedy establishment, I suggest you toss this jack-off out of here.”

  The guard looked from Porter to the drunk man on the floor, still coughing and gasping for air. The guard understood the option he was facing and nodded. “Sure thing,” he said, hauling the drunk man to his feet.

  Mackenzie and Porter watched as the guard escorted the drunk man to the door. Porter nudged Mackenzie and chuckled. “You’re just full of surprises, huh?”

  Mackenzie only shrugged. When they turned back around to the bar area, the bartender had returned. Another man stood beside him, staring down Mackenzie and Porter as if they were stray dogs that he didn’t trust.

  “You want to tell me what that was all about?” the man asked.

  “Are you Mr. William Avery?” Porter asked.

  “I am.”

  “Well, Mr. Avery,” Mackenzie said, “your patrons need to do a better job of keeping their mouths shut and their hands to themselves.”

  “What’s this about?” Avery asked.

  “Is there somewhere more private we can speak?” Porter asked.

  “No. Here is fine. This is the busiest time of the day for us. I need to be here to help tend bar.”

  “You sure d
o,” Porter said. “I ordered a rum and Coke five minutes ago and I still haven’t seen it.”

  The bartender scowled and then turned to the bottles behind him. In his absence, Avery leaned forward and said, “If this is about Hailey Lizbrook, I already told your other cop buddies everything I know about her.”

  “But you didn’t talk to me,” Mackenzie said.

  “So what?”

  “So, I take a different approach than almost everyone else, and this is our case,” she said, nodding toward Porter. “So I need you to answer more questions.”

  “And if I don’t?”

  “Well, if you don’t,” Mackenzie said, “I can interview a woman named Colby Barrow. That name sound familiar? I believe she was seventeen when she started working here, right? She got the job by performing oral sex on you, I believe. The case is dead, I know. But I wonder if she’d have anything to tell me about your business practices that might have been swept under the rug six years ago. I wonder if she might be able to tell me why you don’t seem to give a damn that one of your dancers was killed three nights ago.”

  Avery looked at her like he wanted to slap her. She almost wanted him to try it. She had encountered far too many men like him in the last few years—men that cared noting for women until the lights were out and they needed sex or something to punch on. She held his gaze, letting him know that she was much more than a punching bag.

  “What do you want to know?” he asked.

  Before she answered, the bartender finally delivered Porter’s drink. Porter sipped from it, smiling knowingly at Avery and the bartender.

  “Did Hailey have men that came in and usually flocked to her?” Mackenzie asked. “Did she have regulars?”

  “She had one or two,” Avery said.

  “Do you know their names?” Porter asked.

  “No. I don’t pay attention to the men that come in here. They’re just like any other men, you know?”