by Jayne Blue
Ripper
A Tortured Heroes Novel
Jayne Blue
Grand City Publishing
Contents
Ripper
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Get ready for another Tortured Hero!
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Ripper
By
Jayne Blue
Copyright Jayne Blue 2017
No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without the written permission of the author or publisher, except where permitted by law or for the use of brief quotations in a book review.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events, and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.
Chapter One
Sam
“What’s on the agenda for your first night, Sam?” Jerry Moore had arrived first to set up our new Michigan offices. He’d found the building and done all the stuff we needed to open Arm Up Management’s first satellite office.
The whole thing was my baby, but still. I needed Jerry.
If Jerry hadn’t been on board to open this new office, it wouldn’t have happened. I’d managed to convince Jerry and a few of the other partners that we had to be in Grand City, Michigan.
There were too many young fighters we were missing out on by staying only in Las Vegas. And Grand City was a hotbed of talent. I wanted to be sure to sign every promising fighter to my roster.
“Arm Up won’t get the elite fighters if we wait for them to come to us.” I’d argued my case after seeing how many fighters were coming to Grand City to train. The town was perfectly situated. It was easy to get to Detroit or Chicago from Grand City. Win, win, win. I hoped.
My bread and butter— and therefore Arm Up’s— was finding new talent in the MMA world and nurturing their careers. My specialty was convincing young athletes that Arm Up was the place to be. As their agent, I could protect them and turn their winnings into careers and their names into brands. It was my job and I loved it. I lived it day and night.
The sports agent business had changed in the last few years and my older bosses were starting to come around to my way of thinking. I made the pitch that we had to be there at the beginning, in this town, with these fighters. We had to build trust. And that meant this office in Grand City. It was a risk for Arm Up and for my career. If I fell on my face, I’d be out of a job, and Arm Up would be out of money.
I was not going to fall on my face.
Jerry was hovering around my new office and me. We were each all the other had in this new place and I worried that could be a little annoying.
I sensed he was trying to make his way into my evening plans. I had to be careful with him. I had to be careful all the time. I worked with all men. I wasn’t about to ruin my career over some failed romance. I was the queen of failed romance, but always succeeded at work.
Learning how to sidestep advances at work was a dance I had gotten good at fast.
I made sure my night sounded as unsexy as possible.
“I need to go to the grocery store, toilet bowl cleaner, dishwasher soap, antacid and frozen meals. Exciting Friday night for my first weekend as a Grand City resident!”
“Well, if you need any help just text me. I’m practically a native.” Jerry wasn’t bad looking. He was tall and lean. His hair was falling out in the back, but he didn’t know it. He just didn’t do a thing for me. I didn’t think I’d want to date him, even if we weren’t co-workers. But he was a friend and he knew this business. He’d supported my pitch to open this office and here we were.
Arm Up Management’s Grand City office would consist of Jerry, me, one other agent who hadn’t been hired yet, and an administrative assistant I’d yet to meet. We were small, but—I hoped— mighty.
“Right, one month here and you’re speaking the language.” While my bosses at Arm Up agreed to the new offices, they hadn’t made me the new boss here. I reported to Jerry. It was career progress, but I wished I was the primary agent at the satellite office. That’s what I really wanted.
Oh well. I was going to make money talk. I already had my eyes on several fighters and was eager to get recruiting. The more lucrative deals I made, the more power I would have.
“That I am. Well, be careful out there.”
“Will do.” The truth was I was glad to be out of Vegas. I’d had three weird incidents happen there recently. Someone had slashed my car tires. I’d come out to my car after a long day at work, and there they were, shredded to ribbons. My apartment had been robbed and then I’d started to get weird hang up calls on my land line. Vegas was a city of weirdos and I was a weirdo magnet. It was good to be out.
The offices were close to the new condo I’d leased.
It was almost always dark when I left work in Vegas or Grand City, but at least in Grand City it was a nice quick drive or walk home. That is, if it wasn’t Michigan freezing out. Tonight wasn’t a good night to walk. It was Michigan freezing! I still had to get used to that.
I left Arm Up and headed to my car. Jerry had secured several parking spaces for us in a lot right around the corner. I pulled my coat in close. I wondered how long it would take to get used to cold like this. Maybe never? I needed to wear more layers. That was the trick.
I rounded the corner and nearly fell face-first to the pavement.
Something had grabbed my leg. I turned and kicked it free as fast as I could.
“Hey, what the hell?” I was pissed.
I scrambled up and away, and my brain processed what had happened. A man had been waiting in the alley to grab me. Jesus. He started to speak and, I guess, explain himself.
“Just need your cans. That’s all I want is your cans.” The man who had grabbed my ankle was skinny, his eyes looked wild, and he wore several layers of clothes.
“I, uh, my cans?”
“Yep. Cans cans cans, pretty lady.”
“Oh, cans. I don’t have any, but here, if you need a couple bucks.”
I fished a few dollars from my bag and put them in his hand. He looked at them and then back at me.
“Fucking cans. Not this.” He threw the money at me. I could have picked it up, but decided it was time to move on. This man was clearly disturbed. I left the money on the sidewalk and picked up my pace toward the parking lot.
“I SAID CANS!” he screamed at me. I didn’t look back. I struggled to get my heart back into a normal rhythm. I got to my car and finally did look back. The man was gone. Well, that was weird, and here I was hundreds of miles from Vegas.
I started up my Durango and took a deep breath or three. I decided maybe we needed to pay for spots in the p
arking garage under our offices. Especially since I worked late a lot.
Apparently, Las Vegas did not have the market cornered on weirdos. Great.
But I shook it off. I hadn’t lied to Jerry. I was headed to the grocery store for my Friday night of fun. The strange incident with the man and the cans couldn’t slow me down. I wasn’t a wimp and as a single woman traveling alone, convincing bad ass fighters I was there to protect them, I couldn’t be. I’d learned to be tough by necessity.
I brushed off my encounter with Can Man and did exactly what I’d told Jerry I would do. I bought boring ass household stuff.
By the time I’d loaded the Durango and parked in the garage to my new building, I’d pretty much forgotten about the homeless man welcome wagon. I was always thinking about the next thing.
That meant unloading this stuff and getting some work done. I had clients to check on and contracts to read for them. I spent my days making calls and meeting people and my nights checking to be sure my roster of athletes were getting what they deserved.
It was a lot of work, but I loved it.
My new place was the top floor of a cool refurbished old building. I had a big kitchen that opened to a nice sitting area. I had two big bedrooms and two bathrooms. It was huge and it had a view and a terrace. It was really the first thing I’d ever paid for that showed how far I’d come in my career. My Vegas place was a postage stamp size by comparison. That was another benefit to moving to the Midwest. My money was going a lot further here.
This was the second night in my new place and I was excited. I also let myself be a little proud. This place was cool and I’d swung it on my own, at 26. I’d been doing the agenting job since college. My parents thought it was nuts. But I was making it work.
I opened the door to the apartment and my little moment of pride was sucked away by a smell that was overwhelming.
What the hell was going on?
I put down the bags next to my door and walked further in.
It took me a moment to process what I was seeing, what I was smelling. There was garbage everywhere. Someone had emptied several bags of garbage all over my counter, all over my new couch, all over the apartment I was so proud of.
For a moment, I stood like a statue with no clue how to respond or what to do.
Then I took a step backward into the hall. What if the person who did this was still in there?
I may be tough, but I wasn’t stupid. I dialed 911.
Chapter Two
Kyle
“What?” I picked up in one ring. I’d been in bed not sleeping. I did a lot of not sleeping; it was a survival technique I had developed. I couldn’t afford to sleep when I was under cover, and I couldn’t remember how to now that I was out.
Hell, it was better to sleep light and be a dick all day than sleep deep and remember things I was trying to forget.
“Duvall, get your ass in.”
“Yes, sir.” Scully had kept me on light duty for the last six months. Calling me into the field office in the middle of the night had to mean some sort of emergency.
I’d filed shit, researched shit, and worked phones lately. None of that was an emergency. I suppose there could be a midnight filing emergency, but I held out hope that maybe there was a real case I could help with.
I wasn’t meant to be behind a desk, but that’s all I’d done since my cover was blown.
I’d spent the last four years so deep under cover that I’d forgotten who I was. I had begun to believe I was a gang enforcer. I’d hurt people, watched as others got hurt, and I’d suppressed any real human connection I had. It had been my job to tap into my worst impulses and stay there to survive. Now that I was out, I didn’t know how to be a normal person.
My boss had me on a tight leash. It was probably smart. But I hated it just the same.
My mission had been a success. The man I’d been sent to put away was locked up in Milan at the Federal Correctional Institution.
The hell of it was that while I’d put him in FCI Milan, I was in my own prison now. I had done enough bad that I ought to be there too; doing evil for good didn’t help a man’s soul one fucking bit.
Tom Scully was my boss. He was the only one who’d take me. That was the rumor, anyway, about how I got posted to the FBI offices in Grand City.
All of the resident agencies in Michigan reported to Detroit. There were 11 and so far this one, in Grand City, had been like being put out to pasture. My FBI career had stalled in Grand City, with zero sign that it was going to get any better.
There were about 30 agents in Grand City and a couple dozen support staff. They hadn’t trusted me with a damn thing since I’d gotten here, so a midnight call was at least a reason to be mildly interested.
The resident office was in the Federal Building of Downtown Grand City. I had to admit, Grand City wasn’t bad. Compared to the crap holes they’d had me under cover in, it was actually pretty great. I just didn’t care to connect with anyone in this city or any city. What was the point?
I used my security key to get in and up to the 14th floor. The FBI was the only office open at this hour. Scully had called me and a half a dozen other agents into the situation room, which sounded more impressive than it was. It was a conference room with upgrades. We lovingly called it ‘the Bullpen’.
“Glad you could join us, Duvall.” I nodded and sat down. I owed Scully, for sure, for adding me to his staff, but I was pissed at him. He’d been coddling me, keeping me away from the action, because he said I needed to decompress. The decompression had me climbing the walls, and so did the desk duty.
“So, as I was saying,” Scully continued. He had a map of downtown Las Vegas on the board behind him. “The Field Office in Vegas has connected the dots on four murdered women. They’ve got similarities.”
Autopsy photos were stacked in a grid on the screen behind him. I was trained to look for patterns, and in this case, that was easy. They were all dark haired and in their twenties. But each woman’s face had been mutilated: there were deep gashes from the corner of the lips up nearly to the eyes. A gruesome smile had been drawn in blood.
“The mutilations occurred before death, but weren’t the cause of death. In each case, here’s the culprit.”
Each woman’s throat had been slit, efficiently, and in a similar way. “Toxicology is inconclusive, they may also have been drugged, but the tests were all outside the ideal post mortem window.”
“What is the time table here?” Agent Culvert was sitting near the front and voiced the question. Culvert was typical FBI, tall and lean, he could have slid next to Elliot Ness and fit right in.
“These women were reported missing across a two-year span. The bodies were all found in one general area. A dumping ground. They were found one time, so four missing persons cases turned into four homicides and an apparent serial killer.”
I hadn’t worked on a serial killer case before. I had the FBI training. I knew the procedures, but I’d only studied case files. While my contemporaries had been tracking monsters down, I had been becoming one in service to the Bureau.
“So, what’s the Grand City connection?” This time it was Special Agent Dre Jasper who chimed in.
Scully advanced his PowerPoint presentation to the next slide. The body of another woman, mutilated like the others, flashed on the screen.
“This is Karie Walters. Runaway. No one reported her missing until she was found. The problem is she was found along the river here in Grand City. It wasn’t where she was killed. But, if it’s the same guy, it’ll be our Ripper’s fifth victim.”
“Shit, a cross-country jaunt, eh? And what do you mean, ‘Ripper’?” Agent Culvert asked.
“Yeah, that’s what the Vegas press decided to call this, based on the injuries I guess.” Scully moved to the next slide.
“We may or may not have a copycat. That’s our job. Find out if we’ve got the original or an imitator and stop them,” Scully said. I wondered what my role in this sort of inves
tigation would be. I envisioned Scully assigning me some tedious research into the history of Grand City.
I looked at Karie Walter’s file. She was found by a couple kids exploring an abandoned city structure near the river, an old boat house. I read the report. The kids found Walters floating in the water nearby. This case was going to rely on forensics, profiling, and the experience of people who’d hunted serial killers. I was none of those things.
Scully handed out additional materials to the assembled agents. I was the last stop.
“Does this mean I’m back in action? Are there gang ties I can help with?”
“Not that I know of, no. I need you to interview a potential witness. Well, not really a witness. A woman who looks like these women called 911 a few hours ago, her story got flagged, and GCPD called us in.”
“Here, this woman, Terry Kupanek,” Scully continued, pointing to an autopsy photo in the pile, “She’d reported a similar harassment as today’s 911 call, right before she went missing.”
“Similar harassment?”
“Yeah, uh, garbage all over the house.”
“Lovely.”
“So yeah, we’ve got a body and now this one data point that’s similar. We need to run it down.”
“This just happened? This garbage call?”
“Yep. You need to get over there fast.”
“Yes, sir.”
I had no real reason to believe that the leg work I was about to do would have a damn thing to do with the briefing we’d just had. But at least it was legwork instead of office work. I had no doubt it would be a waste of time at best and a wild goose chase at worst. But even a wild goose chase had wild and chase as elements. That was a lot better than reading reports and cross checking research data.
I grabbed my jacket and headed to the address of Sam Bosque, the dark-haired woman who probably just had an angry old boyfriend but who looked enough like the corpses I’d just seen to warrant a visit from the FBI.
