Blood List

by Patrick Freivald

  Blood List

  By

  Patrick & Philip Freivald

  JournalStone

  San Francisco

  Copyright © 2013 by Patrick & Philip Freivald

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping or by any information storage retrieval system without the written permission of the publisher except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

  This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, names, incidents, organizations, and dialogue in this novel are either the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.

  JournalStone books may be ordered through booksellers or by contacting:

  JournalStone

  www.journalstone.com

  www.journal-store.com

  The views expressed in this work are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher, and the publisher hereby disclaims any responsibility for them.

  ISBN: 978-1-936564-91-0 (sc)

  ISBN: 978-1-936564-96-5 (ebook)

  Library of Congress Control Number: 2013947662

  Printed in the United States of America

  JournalStone rev. date: November 15, 2013

  Cover Design and Artwork Jeff Miller

  Edited by: Dr. Michael R. Collings

  To The Redhead™. You're why I write.

  Patrick Freivald

  To the other three Horsemen. Thanks for the camaraderie.

  Phil Freivald

  Acknowledgements

  We'd like to thank our brothers Mark and Jake, for their enormous help on our first trip around the block. Blood List wouldn't be the book it is without you. We'd also like to thank all our beta readers, typo-hunters, fact-checkers (dad for guns, Betsy Hutchison for virology, and so many others), and the wonderful staff at JournalStone – Christopher Payne, Joel Kirkpatrick, Norm Rubenstein, our editor Dr. Michael R. Collings and our proofreader Amy Eye. Finally, we'd like to thank Jeff Miller for an awesome cover.

  Blood List

  Chapter 1

  June 22nd, 4:48 PM PST; Café Molto Espresso; Los Angeles, California.

  Paul Renner looked across the street at the woman he'd come to Beverly Hills to kill. He blended in with the throng of thirtysomethings crowding up Rodeo Drive: six feet tall, short black hair, a decent tan, and a business suit that cost more than his first car. He pretended to people-watch, his soft brown eyes scanning the crowd sweating in the summer heat, debutantes and nouveau riche Hollywooders spending thousands of dollars on outfits they'd wear once and never think about again.

  The blaring TV behind him was difficult to ignore. Some talking-head CNN anchor blathered on about a mass shooting in Des Moines. Who kills a bunch of people at the mall? What a waste of life.

  He took a sip of his caramel macchiato. Across the street, Jenny Sykes screamed at a shoe-store employee. Paul typed a text message while the beleaguered clerk rang up the purchase and bustled Ms. Sykes out the door. He held his thumb over the "send" button.

  Ms. Sykes lugged two full bags of Guccis and Manolo Blahniks to her car. Her body was tight and firm, thanks to Botox and a personal trainer, and she walked like a high school cheerleader. Her shoe collection probably cost more than my house. He looked up from the phone and caught her eye. She smiled tightly, averted her gaze, and headed to her car.

  Jenny Sykes was too old to be called Jenny and wasn't remotely hip in spite of the hundreds of thousands of dollars she spent to appear to be. She probably thinks her daughter's ten-thousand-dollar-a-week cocaine habit is her biggest problem.

  Jenny slid behind the wheel of her chrome-silver Mercedes Benz, flashing far too much leg for her age. Paul stood, dropped a ten-dollar bill on the table, and walked away. When she closed the car door, Paul pressed "send" on his pre-paid NetPhone I-590 cellular phone. No annual contract, WiFi digital compatible, and, best of all, paid with cash. Totally anonymous.

  Two things happened simultaneously. First, the text message fired off to a familiar number. It read, Jenny Sykes, Rodeo Drive, Los Angeles, California. Second, the phone sent another text to an identical phone in the trunk of Jenny Sykes' Mercedes.

  The Benz erupted into a fireball, sending Jenny Sykes to whatever heaven or hell shallow socialites go. Shattered glass fell from storefront windows, but most of the shrapnel blew straight up, just as Paul had intended. Like cattle, the herd of shoppers screamed and cried as they stampeded away from the carnage. Paul joined them.

  Hurrying along with the crowd, he felt none of the feigned panic he projected for the inevitable YouTube videos. Some people are too dumb to run. Several blocks away, he ducked into an alley between a Thai tapas restaurant and a place called Tie World.

  He tossed the phone into the restaurant's dumpster. His fingerprints weren't on record, so the G-men who'd been trying to catch him for the past decade would know it was the D Street Killer, but not his identity. Leaving little clues for Special Agent Gene Palomini and his boys was part of what made these operations fun.

  * * *

  June 22nd, 5:16 PM PST; Jenny Sykes murder scene; Los Angeles, California.

  Special Agent in Charge Giancarlo "Gene" Palomini held on as the two black SUVs screamed onto the sidewalk across the street from the smoking mess of what was left of the silver Mercedes Benz. The red-and-blue police lights flickered off the yellow CRIME SCENE: DO NOT CROSS tape that two uniformed locals wrapped around a hundred yards of Rodeo Drive.

  Gene looked at the damage as he hopped out of the driver's seat of the front vehicle. Just over six feet tall, in his early forties, with a medium, muscular frame and thinning, military-short blond hair, he exuded confidence and frustration in equal measure as he surveyed the wreckage scattered across the street. His older brother Marty got out behind him.

  "Whoa," said his technical specialist as he emerged from the second car. "A car bomb? Are you kidding me, Gene?" Agent Carl Brent was short, black, in his mid-thirties, and looked like a kid playing dress-up. The hair was pure businessman, but his navy suit was a little too big, and Gene was sure he didn't have to shave more than twice a week. Carl was never one to avoid pointing out the obvious.

  The last thing Gene's smog-choked sinuses needed was a Carl-induced headache. "Stow it, Carl. Let's make nice with the locals."

  Agent Doug Goldman took point, blazing the way with his fierce gray eyes. Barrel-chested and bald, Doug was so tall that his FBI badge was at eye level for Gene. Doug was a wall with a badge and a gun, and Gene used that fact to their advantage. Gene walked at his heels, eclipsed by the large man's presence.

  Gene's brother walked next to him. They looked like twins except for Marty's full head of hair and the ridiculous porn-star moustache he grew in the Navy and had refused to shave since. Behind them came Carl Brent, with Jerri Bates to his left. Agent Bates was a small, pretty woman in her early thirties with an angular face, short red hair, green eyes, and curves in places that Marty said made her standard, uptight FBI suit look naughty. Gene had never seen the appeal, no matter what she wore.

  A Hispanic LAPD detective saw them coming and avoided eye contact. He whistled to a uniformed officer who was trying to figure out how to attach a pink marker-flag to a square of sidewalk concrete and jerked his head toward their group. "Hey, Jimmy! Bureau's here. Show them around, and don't let them muck up my crime scene."

  Jimmy dropped the marker on the sidewalk, pulled off his latex gloves, and trotted over to Gene's group. His smile was too enthusiastic for someone who had just been tagging vaguely-identifiable body parts.

  Gene watched as the uniformed officer—J. Anderson by his na
me tag—walked straight to Doug and stuck out his hand. It never failed. Hidden in the human psyche lurks a primitive instinct that makes people assume the biggest guy is the man-in-charge. It helped the team put people off-balance without seeming to be deliberate.

  "Special Agent?" Officer Anderson asked. He looked confident, but his inflection betrayed a touch of apprehension at presenting a part of his body anywhere near the massive, scowling man in the middle.

  "That's Agent Goldman," Gene said as he reached out to complete the handshake. "I'm Special Agent in Charge Palomini, call me Gene, and these are my associates, Agents Bates, Brent, and Martin Palomini." The officer's grip was far too strong, carrying on the pointless tradition of local cops trying to prove that they're just as good as the FBI. Demonstrating that it's the cop who makes the badge only tended to make them grumpy, so Gene gave the hand a good squeeze.

  "I'm Officer Anderson, Jimmy Anderson. You guys sure got here quick."

  "Well, we were in the neighborhood," Gene answered.

  Gene held Anderson just long enough for his crew to get past. Jimmy raised his eyebrows. "Um…if you guys want to stick with me, I'll show you what we know so far…." His voice trailed off as the agents ignored him.

  Gene noted with pride how his team knew exactly what needed to be done. Jerri Bates approached the witnesses and singled out a crying cashier from the shoe store. She used her disarming looks and personality to pull out details other interrogators might miss. Doug Goldman and Marty Palomini made a beeline for the uniformed PD to make some needed friends, and Carl Brent honed in on the forensics crew to add his expertise to the decades of experience already present. Meanwhile, I get to play politics. Yippee.

  Gene turned Officer Anderson toward the group of sport-coated detectives next to the wreckage and unveiled his best diplomatic smile. "Why don't you take me to the detective in charge? It's going to be a long night, so let's work together to make it shorter, okay?"

  Anderson followed Gene, muttering a barely-heard mantra over and over to himself. "Mustache Martin, the other one's Gene. Mustache Martin, the other one's Gene."

  * * *

  June 23rd, 1:23 AM PST; FBI Headquarters, Wilshire Boulevard; Los Angeles, California.

  The computer screen shuddered rhythmically, no doubt caused by something electronic in the rooms near Gene's makeshift office. His head throbbed in time to the pulses. He closed his eyes and rubbed his temples for the hundredth time. It eased the pain only so long as he kept doing it and felt that much worse when he stopped.

  Coffee, he thought. He grabbed his official Department of Justice mug, proudly emblazoned with the red, white, and blue shield with the bald eagle in flight on the front, and pushed his chair back from the desk. When we find this guy I'm going to beat him to a pulp with that olive branch. He shuffled down the hall toward the break room.

  "You shouldn't drink that piss this late," Marty said from the hallway. He scowled in disapproval. "You won't sleep for shit tonight."

  With a dismissive flick of his hand to stave off any more sage advice, Gene stepped around him. Marty seemed to think that once a man's ex-girlfriend could no longer nag him into a pounding headache, it became the sacred duty of the elder brother. Marty spoke behind him. "They found the phone, got prints. We forwarded them to Sam."

  Samantha Greene was the invisible sixth member of the team. Two hundred and twenty pounds and five-foot-two, she hadn't passed the FBI's physical for field work in five years. Gene doubted she could walk a mile without dying, much less run three in thirty minutes. She was an expert marksman who practiced at the shooting range three times a week but had never worn a weapon on duty. It didn't matter.

  Sam was the best field coordinator in the Bureau. She tracked the team with GPS, listened to and recorded their conversations over the COM, used gadgets and programs with other mysterious acronyms to perform astounding feats of technical magic, and crunched dizzying amounts of data for use in real time. She did all this from in front of a dozen computer monitors, safely ensconced behind a desk in the J. Edgar Hoover Building in Washington, D.C.

  Privacy didn't exist in the field anymore. Everything was recorded, flagged for important words by massive supercomputers, and analyzed by the intel weenies back at HQ.

  Marty continued, "The prints matched. We know it's him for sure now."

  Gene turned around. "We knew for sure a week ago, Marty. We just didn't know who the victim was. Just like Denver. And D.C. And…."

  "Yeah," Marty agreed. "Hell of a job we've got here, ain't it? Almost makes me wish I'd dropped out of school."

  "Mama would have killed you, Marty."

  "True," Marty said. "But then I wouldn't be working for a pencil-neck like you."

  Gene grinned and turned back down the hall. "I should be so lucky."

  Gene walked into the break room and glared at the half-empty coffee pot. The little red light stared back at him. The stale, bitter smell in the room indicated that this pot was probably brewed during the Rodney King riots, from stale beans.

  "Gene, you've got a meeting with the Chief of Police at oh-seven hundred. Get some fucking sleep, boss." Gene nodded as he emptied the pot into the sink, clicked off the machine, and headed back to the couch in his office. He didn't need to see the smirk on Marty's face to know it was there.

  He only calls me "boss" when he's telling me what to do. With an exhausted grin of his own, Gene lay down on the lumpy couch to catch as much sleep as his aching head would allow.

  * * *

  June 23rd, 6:57 AM PST; LAPD Headquarters, Parker Center; Los Angeles, California.

  Gene had done his research. By all accounts, Police Chief Logan Stukly was an ambitious and intelligent man. Born and raised in Los Angeles, he was as comfortable in the barrios and ghettos as he was in the mansions of the Hollywood elite. A third-generation police officer and a twenty-two-year veteran of the L.A.P.D., he hadn't just been around the block; he lived there. Add a fierce charisma and a pack of weasels willing to get dirty behind the scenes, and it all added up to a major appointment that had transformed a career cop into a budding politician.

  Explosions on Rodeo Drive made the local PD look bad. Given Stukly's mayoral ambitions, Gene could guess his mood. Gene's head throbbed in time with his footsteps as he approached the door.

  The man glanced up when Gene walked in. He waved Gene to a chair and kept typing. Twenty seconds later, he clicked his mouse and looked up.

  "You Palomini?"

  "Yes," Gene said.

  Chief Stukly sneered through his teeth and looked across the massive oak table that served as his desk.

  "Tell me, how long were you planning on letting a serial killer rampage through my city before you deigned to inform my men of his presence?"

  Gene suppressed a groan. He'd hoped for some level of cooperation. "You understand that all of this has to be kept confidential?"

  "Yes," Stukly said.

  "He's known as the 'D Street Killer' after the location of his first murder. He likes to toy with the FBI, give us clues. We got the city location four days ago, when—" He jumped as Stukly slammed his meaty palms on the table.

  "FOUR DAYS?" Stukly roared, spittle flying everywhere. Gene held up his hands and winced at the volume. The chief's face was flushed with rage, but his voice calmed. "I'm sorry, Agent, please go on."

  Temper versus ambition, Gene thought. This man is dangerous, but mostly to himself.

  He licked his lips and continued. "Yeah, well, this guy likes to taunt us. He gives us a state six days before a kill, always by pre-paid cellular, voice-over-IP, or text message. We get a city two days after that. Neighborhood the morning of the kill, almost always with the first and last initials of the victim. Within seconds of the kill, we get a victim ID and a street." He snarled. "Never enough time to catch the perp, though."

  Stukly's frown deepened. "And you couldn't tell LAPD that he was in Los Angeles because?"

  "Because we already had. Two of your sections we
re notified and had classified it as low priority, partly because the Bureau was already on it and partly because your homicide guys are already swamped. Until we found out the neighborhood, of course."

  Stukly raised his eyebrows. "What about the neighborhood?"

  "Rodeo Drive is not South Central," Gene said.

  The chief raised his bushy eyebrows and shuffled the papers in front of him. Instead of answering the charge, he changed the subject. "Why this vic? Why Jenny Sykes? Why Rodeo Drive?"

  "I wish we could tell you, sir," Gene said. "This guy's one of the slipperiest the Bureau's ever encountered." He told the man what precious little they knew and was asked the same old questions. M.O.? Usually a gun, but no consistent model or caliber. Knives on a couple of vics, but different kinds, usually taken from the area of the kill and always left behind, just like the guns. On top of that, they had a baseball bat, a lamp, a steel-toed boot, a television in a bathtub, and a ten-story drop to pavement. And now a car bomb.

  It took Gene an hour and a half to explain everything they didn't know. The victims didn't correlate at all: old, young, male, female, pretty, ugly, rich, poor. The killer's profile was limited to Male, Caucasian, twenty-four to fifty years old, and a childhood history of arson, bed-wetting, and cruelty to animals, just like almost every other organized serial profiled by the FBI's Violent Criminal Apprehension Program.

  Forensic linguistics on early phone calls indicated the killer grew up in the Plains, 65% probability. All they really had were anonymous fingerprints on murder weapons and cellular phones, black hair, and some skin cells from many of the crime scenes. They knew he was Caucasian and male from DNA, and that was about it.