DEAD MAN'S JUSTICE - A Place of Evil (Stone & McLeish Thriller Series of Stories Book 2) (26 page)

Chapter 58

Fifty yards around the corner from ‘Bad’ Billy Thompson’s old apartment, two detectives, six armed SWAT officers, Jones and Phelps, the CSI guys, and Stone, were sitting in a blacked out Ops van listening to Detective Finch. He was giving blow by blow instructions for the operation ahead to enter Thompson’s apartment. Stone had been given a bullet-proof vest and told to stay out of the way some yards back until they had gained entry and given the all clear inside.

‘Turn all cell phones and two-way radios off now,’ ordered Finch. Everyone fumbled around and held down the off buttons and waited for the screens to go dark before returning them to their pockets and belt holders. Stone had to switch two phones off.

Finch addressed the six SWAT officers and instructed them to lead off first. ‘Jack, it’s over to you guys, announce yourselves as police officers and then get us in, if he’s there, try to keep him alive. Jones and Phelps, stay well behind me and Tariq. Stone, remember what I told you okay?’ Stone nodded. ‘Okay, head out.’

The street was quiet for late afternoon and after the driver had taken the van right outside the entrance, the SWAT team jumped out of the back of the van like racehorses out of their traps. The lobby of the run down tenement building was dark and smelly. The sound of kids crying and music blasting out from every other apartment gave then cover till they got to the second floor.

Jack, the lead SWAT guy, took up his spot at the side of the door and waved the other guys to get into place. The team moved swiftly and silently into position like a choreographed dance. Six Heckler & Koch MP9 sub-machine guns were trained on the door and no one stood a chance of getting past them. Finch and the others were crouching half-way down the flight of stairs, waiting for the all clear. Jones handed out a pair of skin-tight surgical gloves to everyone.

Jack held up his hand to signal the start of the operation. He called out and knocked on the door at the same time.

‘Billy Thompson...this is the police, open up.’ Ten seconds passed; there was no response from inside the apartment. He repeated the call. ‘This is the last time Thompson, this is the police, open the door, NOW.’ Again he allowed ten seconds to pass and counted down on his fingers for all the team to see. He mouthed, THREE, TWO, ONE. ‘GO,’ he shouted.

The front door was old and almost bare of any paint whatsoever, the Yale was scratched and loose and the jamb around the lock looked as if it had been busted and repaired a thousand times. The SWAT guy who’d been standing on the other side of the door to Jack took a step back and kicked in the door, the door flew open and the team danced again like clockwork into the apartment and did what they do best.

Finch could hear their heavy footfalls through the rooms, doors were being burst open. Four shouts of ‘CLEAR’ were heard signifying that there were four rooms in the place. A SWAT guy poked his head out of the front door and said, ‘All clear Sir,’ and Finch led the rest inside.

The rooms were furnished like something out of a 1980’s catalogue, the plastic covered couch and Formica topped coffee table had long since lost their color and Finch wasn’t sure whether he was walking on a worn out carpet or fancy patterned floorboards.

Tariq looked around and found an open bottle of milk and a half eaten pizza on a small dining table in the middle of the kitchen, the pizza slices were still in the open cardboard delivery box, ‘If someone does lives here, they left in a hurry,’ he said.

Finch agreed, he picked up a newspaper from the coffee table looking for the date, it was today’s New York Times. ‘He’s here somewhere,’ he said.

‘Why do you say that?’ said Stone. He walked over to look and saw the newspaper.

From a back room - which had a dirty old mattress without any sheets on a soiled divan for a bed, a pile of empty beer cans and rubbish strewn all around the room - came a shout, ‘Sir? You’re gonna need to see this.’ Jack was looking at the wall in the bedroom and some of the other officers were reading what was pinned to it. They stepped back when Finch and Stone entered the room.

Finch automatically covered his mouth as he entered the room, the stench of urine and stale beer pervaded the air. When he saw the faded and now sepia colored newspaper clippings, which must have been there since 1995, he dropped his hand and forgot about the foul smell in the room.

‘That’s our boy, ‘Bad’ Billy Thompson,’ said Tariq who went up closer for a better look. ‘The guy’s a freak, he took such a perverted and twisted ego trip out of his sadistic handiwork that he pasted the girls on the wall one by one as he popped them off. Look.’

Finch gave him a dirty look as if to remind him that Stone was with them on the raid, ‘Sorry Sir,’ he mouthed.

In a line across the wall, the faces of four angelic looking schoolgirls, smiling and full of the joys of life, were staring back at them spookily.

‘Three were found dead in this very apartment,’ said Tariq reading from his iPad. ‘Susan Epstein, Carol Meyer and Mary Peterson, they all went to the same school.’

Stone had seen enough, he’d hoped they would find Thompson himself, or something to give them a lead, he couldn't stop thinking about Laura and wanted to leave.

Finch noticed him skulking away out of the bedroom, ‘You okay Stone?’

‘No. He’s not here, the bastard’s got them somewhere, I know it, I need to...’ He was interrupted by another shout to Finch.

‘Finch?’ Tariq was searching around; he saw that the power light to an old computer on a side table was still on. Out of curiosity he flicked the switch on to fire up the screen and there was a web page still open, it was a CNN report of the five girls that were missing. ‘Thompson must have been in the apartment very recently,’ he said. Finch had arrived and saw the report for himself. Stone looked over his shoulder. When he saw the photos of Tameka, Sofia, Jessica and Neesha from the CNN article, a feeling of dread came over him. Finch scrolled down the page and there was a photo of his daughter Laura. Thompson had saved the photos to his desktop as well.

Stone collapsed.

‘Get him outside, now, get him some air,’ ordered Finch.

Two of the SWAT team lifted Stone’s arms onto their shoulders and escorted him back to the van. Finch was having second thoughts about the decision to allow Stone to accompany them on the raid.

‘This could be something or it may be nothing, Finch began. ‘I want this place searched from top to bottom, I also want two officers by the entrance, in hiding, watching for if the bastard comes back to the apartment. Now get to work.’

Ramirez was going frantic. Five times he’d tried to call Finch and then Stone on their cell phones but got nothing. He called the precinct and screamed at a poor woman who took the call on the switchboard and asked where the hell Detective Finch was. She put him through to the duty sergeant who told him that Finch was out on a raid on an ex-con’s house, he told Ramirez about the possible link with the missing girls.

It was just after
4 p.m. Ramirez had had another call from an officer out in the field.

Sofia Perez, the second girl to go missing, had been found alive, wandering the streets, minutes from her home. The officer told Ramirez that there was evidence that she had also been drugged but the difference was that she was conscious and had ‘woken up’ when the cold air had hit her. She’d been blindfolded and her hands were tied behind her back. There were no witnesses this time.
Sofia was taken to the same hospital as Tameka for a checkup by Dr. Harper. There was a very real chance that Sofia could tell them something about her abductor.

Ramirez left a voicemail for Finch and told the sergeant to keep calling the Detective’s cell phone and get him to contact him the second he came back on line.

Tariq was sitting at the kitchen table scrolling through the idetails of Thompson’s first crimes on his IPad. Phelps was taking photos of the wall of clippings and then of the computer images before dismantling it ready for removal as evidence. CSI Officer Jones had her head in Thompson’s closet meticulously going through his clothes looking for blood and fibers with an ultra-violet scanning machine.

In the gory photographic evidence from the court case Tariq saw a photo of the cupboard where the bodies of the three dead schoolgirls were found in 1995. He wondered where it was, he hadn’t seen anything that resembled a cupboard when walking through the apartment the first time. The doors to the cupboard looked to be no more than three feet high and three feet wide. It was the same color and material as the walls all around the apartment. When Tariq’s curiosity had been aroused he was like a pit-bull, he would shake something and not let it go until he’d nailed what he was looking for.

He wandered around from room to room looking for the cupboard, but figured it had to be behind something that was slightly bigger in dimension and therefore concealing its presence. When he got to the main bedroom he saw a home-made headboard out of stained plywood at the head of the bed, it must have been four foot high. The hairs on the back of his neck prickled and a shiver ran down his spine.

‘Give me hand a here officer,’ he said to one of the SWAT guys standing nearby. They dragged the bed away from the wall and the board behind it was loose. Tariq motioned to the officer to help him slide the plywood to one side. It moved easily so they carried it and leant it against the side wall. A loose piece of gypsum had been cut away from the wall itself and held in place with tape, but it was the cupboard that was once the temporary resting place for the three poor souls who had the bad luck to cross paths with ‘Bad’ Billy Thompson.

Tariq stood back. He could smell something putrid seeping through the cracks between the makeshift door and the wall. He knew the smell, it left a taste death in the back of his throat and he wanted to spit it out. He was almost too afraid to open the cupboard.

But he did open it up.

Finch was in the next room and was pacing around getting angrier and angrier, ‘We need to put out an APB on this guy. He might not come back for days. He could be anywhere and so could the other girls.’

Tariq heard Finch.

‘No. You don't need to do that Finch.’ Tariq spoke loudly so Finch could hear.

Finch walked into the bedroom where he reckoned Tariq’s voice had come from. Tariq was still kneeling on the floor by the open cupboard. Finch glanced over his shoulder and saw why Tariq had said what he did.

Inside the cupboard was the body of ‘Bad’ Billy Thompson. His throat had been cut from ear to ear. On his bloody chest was a hand written note with five words that removed all doubt as to why he’d been murdered.

FoR sUSaN caRol aNd maRy

Chapter 59

Mac had bought a street map from a gas station and asked the attendant for directions to the address he’d found back at the house where he’d broken into earlier. It had been hours since he’d last eaten. He stopped for a meal at the diner next to the station to recharge his batteries. He had tried to call Stone several times but the special cell phone they’d agreed to keep solely to contact each other was switched off.

He ate as much as he could, he had no idea when he would he would get the next opportunity. Tracking down Scarface and finding the building might take time and he wouldn't give up till he had found whoever it was who had ordered him and Stone to be killed. All he intended to do was find the place, make sure he found Scarface and the SUV he saw him drive away in, and let the cops know exactly where he was and wait then for backup.

A waitress bringing him a refill of coffee turned her head to watch a TV update as she was filling his mug, the screen was behind Mac and he couldn’t see it, ‘What’s the world coming to,’ she said. ‘They’ve just found another girl you know? Alive. It’d be a miracle if they were all found safe and sound.’

‘There’s two now you say? What was her name?’

The waitress shouted to the server behind the counter who could hear the TV up close, ‘Barbara, what’s the name of the second girl?’

‘Sofia, Sofia Perez, the Spanish girl,’ came the reply.

Mac’s momentary glimmer of hope was dashed. He wondered how Stone was coping. He’s tough, he knew that, and he’d seen him face a lot of death and misery out in the
Middle East, and also through the whole crazy business in Trinidad. In Trinidad he hadn’t faltered once, he outsmarted them all and got Karla back from the brink of death. But this was his daughter, his own flesh and blood. He pitied the guy who was responsible if Stone got to him before the cops did.

He cleared his plate, and seconds, and three cups of coffee and he was good to go. He left the waitress a tip and got back in the car, headed for the address whilst it was still light.

*

‘How long’s he been dead?’ Finch asked Phelps, who had come to see what all the fuss was about. He was crouching down next to the body of Billy Thompson, checking it over. Phelps was lifting Billy’s arms and fingers trying to assess whether rigor mortis had begun and he had a digital thermometer with a sensor on his skin to see how much body temperature he’d lost.

‘Rigor hasn’t started fully yet and the body’s still relatively warm, he’s down about ten degrees, we’re talking an hour, two to three at the most,’ said Phelps removing the sensor and packing it away.

‘Then he’s not our man, not for these five girls anyway.’

‘How so?’

‘The first girl was found at approximately three this afternoon and I just turned my phone back on and I’ve got a VM from Ramirez, they found another girl alive and wandering near her home at just after four.’ Finch was looking at his wrist watch and making a simple calculation. ‘Someone’s releasing the girls and driving them back to where they were taken from. I reckon we can expect the next at five.’

‘I see,’ said Phelps. ‘So this is a revenge killing for the first girls all those years ago,’ referring to the body in front of him.

‘Yeah, that’s about the size of it Phelps, I reckon the disappearance of the new girls probably brought it all back to one of the fathers of Susan, Carol or Mary. He probably heard that Thompson had been released and it gave him ideas, he then found out where he lived and exacted his revenge.’

‘Shouldn’t be too difficult to close this case out.’

‘No I guess not. Who do you feel more sympathy for Phelps? The father? Or this piece of shit.’

‘No contest.’

‘I’ll leave you and Jones to work the scene.’ Finch looked over to Jack and his guys, who were waiting for instructions, ‘Jack, as ever...thanks for your help. Stand your guys down, okay?’ Finch told Tariq to get the car; he turned to look over the dingy, smelly apartment one more time before he walked out the door. ‘Billy Thompson won’t hurt anymore girls. May his body rust in piss.’

Phelps said, ‘Amen.’

Jones and Phelps went back to work.

When Finch reached the Ops van, the SWAT guys were getting changed and securing their weapons away. Jack was in the driving seat up front filling out his log.

Finch saw Stone sitting by himself wringing his hands anxiously, ‘Did they tell you?’ said Finch.

‘Tell me what? No,’ said Stone. He was drinking a coffee and by the look of his fingers he’d stopped just short of biting his nails down to the bone.

‘Billy’s dead. Tariq found him in the same cupboard that he’d put his victims, he’s not our man. Phelps says he’s been dead three hours max or thereabouts. If we’d arrived any earlier we’d have been witnesses.’

‘But the CNN report? And maybe he has an accomplice, maybe they’re still...’

‘Stone... No.’ Finch needed to stop Stone torturing himself. ‘These pedophile guys always work alone, always. Sides, our girls were found in the last two hours and...the report, these sickos have a morbid interest in all murders, especially those they would have liked to have done themselves. That’s why he would have saved the report photos.’

Stone suddenly realized that Finch had said ‘girls’, ‘Girls? There’s another been found?’ the yearning look in his eyes was painful to see.

Finch put a hand on Stones shoulder, ‘It’s not Laura. I’m sorry buddy. Sofia Perez has been found, alive. Don’t lose hope Stone. Let’s get back to the precinct and put together what we know, okay?’ Stone didn’t ask Finch who had killed Billy, he had enough to worry about. Finch didn’t go as far as to tell Stone about his theory that the next missing girl would be released at five p.m.

The last thing Stone needed was false hopes.

Ramirez never made it back to the precinct. He got a call from Officer O’Reilly telling him to get over to the safe house where his wife and daughter were right away. ‘They are okay,’ he told him, someone had tried to get to them but the Officer on protection duty had fought him off, a young guy called Danny Williams. The bad news was that he was shot in the process. ‘Lost his life in the line of duty,’ O’Reilly said.

Ramirez made the usual thirty minute long drive to the house in twenty two minutes flat. When he found himself on the driveway his head was spinning in turmoil, his thinking was just as cloudy as if he’d had a session on the bottle. He had arrived but couldn't remember how he had got there. The cold night air and the sight of a million blue flashing lights sobered him up faster than the hair of the dog the morning after.

When one of their own was down, all the stops were pulled out, Grolnick, who was off duty at the time, was holding court. All Ramirez wanted to do was to see Maria and Conchita to make sure they were both unhurt. Grolnick caught sight of Ramirez out of the corner of his eye and stepped in front of him before he got to the door and held him by the shoulders.

‘They’re fine Eddy,’ Grolnick was a hard cop but also sensitive to his men when it came to family. They’d seen a lot together over the twenty odd years, and Grolnick had been at Conchita’s baptism service, he was almost an honorary Godfather. Outside of work, Ramirez was always Eddy. ‘...they’re a little shaken up, but fine,’ Grolnick continued. ‘They didn’t see anything, they just heard the shots. Maria and Conchita hid upstairs until everything went quiet. She waited and then told Conchita to stay put, she found William’s body downstairs and called it in, and we were all here within thirty minutes.

‘Thanks, but I need to see them now.’

Grolnick let him through and followed him into the house. Ramirez knew exactly who was responsible for the attempt on their lives, he dreaded to think what would have happened if Williams hadn’t bravely stood his ground. The cowards had run off leaving a fine young rookie dead on the ground without a moment’s thought. How they had found out where they were was a mystery to him.

‘They won’t get away with this, I promise you,’ said Ramirez. Golnick knew it was the shock talking.

He trusted no one now, he told Maria to get packed up, he would look after them himself from now on, and nobody would know where he was going to take them.

Nobody.

An hour later Maria and Conchita were set up in a hotel a few miles away, where he was satisfied they would never be traced. He’d booked them in under false names and on the way over he used side streets and double backed three times and each time checked for anyone tailing him. He instructed Maria not to call his cell phone, he said he would call later in the evening to the landline in the room and be back before she knew it. He switched his own phone off and used Maria’s that he’d borrowed from her so that he couldn't be easily tracked.

Ramirez needed to find Maloof, he had a big score to settle, and he called the very person who he knew who would know where to find him - Mac.

Finch was watching the clock on the wall of the squad room. It was
5.05 p.m. and if his assumptions were correct, there would be a call sometime soon from somewhere in the city.

The atmosphere around the whole precinct was subdued, whenever a cop was lost it affected everyone, young and old, black and white, senior or junior officers, it didn’t discriminate. The force was like a family, a little disjointed at times, like a real family, but a family nonetheless, and it was always taken hard. The all realized that it could have been anyone of them, and they all thought,
‘It could have been me.’

Finch was catching up on the news about Ramirez’s family and the heroic details of how Danny, who by all accounts, had saved his wife and daughter’s lives.

The call that he had been nervously anticipating finally came through. It was close to five forty five p.m.

It was not what he or anyone else was expecting.

The area around Jessica Wong’s home had been put on full alert, several additional patrol cars had been designated to cruise the streets on the lookout for a black SUV. But the call came from somewhere else, somewhere else entirely, five miles away in fact, near a disused apartment building which was being renovated.

A night security guy, who had just come on shift, was making his first circuit around the building when he spotted an unusual looking bag at the side of the old apartment block that had not been there the night before. He thought someone had dumped some garbage over the fence, but as he got closer, he saw what looked like the legs of a discarded manikin sticking out from the bag. It wasn’t a manikin.

It was Jessica Wong’s dead body.