The Merry Pranked (8 page)

“Holy fuck,” said Harry. “Is that what this is all about? You lookin’ for revenge? You fuckin’ kidding me?”

Leslie’s entire attention was on the weight of the gun in his coat pocket. It was calling to him; tempting him. He didn’t know what to do.

“Fuck no,” said Harry. “You? Revenge? You’re too much of a pussy for that. Look at you? Hell, your little shit of a sister would probably have grown up to be more dangerous than you. Who knew such a pussy could spring from Dan Marshall’s loins?”

Harry laughed some more. Leslie had just about enough of this guy; he was pissing him off. How dare he run down his family; talk about his sister. He needed to do something.

“Oh, shit, that hit a nerve, didn’t it,” said Harry. “As long as we’re reminiscing arsehole, let me share this with you. Kids that young, their heads kind of pop and explode when you pump one into them. Fucking brilliant, in a bloody sort of way.”

Harry looked at Leslie, the smile leaving Harry’s face.

“I can see the anger in your eyes, boy. You want to hurt me, don’t you? Want to kill me. I don’t suppose you came out here to do that without a plan; without a weapon. Which pocket you got it in boy? Right or left? Now’s the time to go for it; I mean, what the fuck are you waiting for?”

Harry stared intently into Leslie’s eyes. Leslie held his gaze, all the time willing his hand to go for the gun in his pocket. Harry knew about it, but if he was fast enough, he could probably kill the bastard. He had to do something, but as much as he wanted to, he couldn’t bring himself to make the move. He had no idea what was holding him back; fear maybe?

Harry finally laughed again.

“I ain’t got time to deal with you, arsehole,” said Harry. “Can’t be bothered. I’m guessing letting you live is better than putting you out of your misery. Word of advice, though, you come snooping around me again and I’ll send you straight to Hell to see your father. Got it?”

Leslie didn’t answer and Harry didn’t expect him to. Harry simply turned and started walking towards the entrance of the alley. As he did so, Leslie heard him mutter, “Fuckin’ pussy.”

Leslie watched him walk away; down the alley and out. At no point had he reached for his gun. Instead he just slumped to the alley floor, wallowing in his failure.

Leslie stayed slumped in the alleyway for quite some time; as far as he figured, he belonged there amongst the trash. He had come to do a job and had failed miserably. Even as Harry seemed to glory in what he had done to Leslie’s family, he hadn’t found the courage to pull out his gun and shoot. Some would say that was because he was civilized; he wasn’t an animal like those who had committed such a despicable act, but that wasn’t the case. He knew the urge to kill; he felt the hatred within him; he just lacked the power and courage to act upon that anger and hatred.

Leslie finally managed to find his way home. Thankfully he parked his car in the underground and took the elevator up to his condo from there, so that he didn’t have to explain to the night Doorman just what the hell had happened to him.

He headed right for the bathroom and proceeded to strip down to his boxers. His face wasn’t in the best of shape and bruises, dark blue and purple, that didn’t look normal or healthy on the human body, had started to form in the numerous places Harry’s foot and fist had connected. He was breathing all right, so he figured he’d gotten lucky and Harry hadn’t broken any ribs, but it was still painful to move. Reporters for the entertainment section of the Lakeview Examiner just weren’t accustomed to taking such an ass kicking.

“FuckFuckFuckFuckFUCKFUCKFUCKFUCK!” he screamed at himself in the mirror.
Why hadn’t he killed the bastard? WHY?

Leslie took a moment to let the rage out; it was such that he didn’t even notice the pain it caused him as he swore at himself in the mirror. After a couple of seconds he regained his composure and sat down on the toilet. As he sat there replaying the events of the night in his head, he took note of his jacket, lying on the bathroom floor. He reached for it and pulled the gun out of the pocket. It was as simple as that; he had the damned gun in his hand. It had slid out easily.

Leslie looked at the gun in his hands; examining it. It was the answer to all of his problems; why had he let it fail him. Defeated he let the gun and his hand fall down between his legs, as his whole body slumped; he had failed; he was defeated; it was as simple as that.

chapter
NINE

there
ARE
any number of reasons why people kill. In his thirty-plus year career with the police force, Ray had observed just about every one of them, or so he thought. In many cases, the crime was one of opportunity and emotion. Someone hadn’t set out to commit the ultimate sin, but somewhere along the way, someone had aggravated them, and it had gotten to the point where they’d lashed out - lashed out in such a way that the other person ended up dead. They hadn’t planned to kill, and really didn’t want to, but their actions, embraced in the heat of the moment, have led to another person’s demise. As far as he could tell, that was often the most obvious case and the easiest to solve. A crime such as that involved very little thought and generally no planning on the killer’s part, and often, when they realized the end result of their rage, it wasn’t hard to get a confession.

Of course, throughout his career there had also been many premeditated murders. These could involve
a husband and wife, where one of them was unfaithful; business partners, where one of them was greedy; or more likely, those all ready living on the edge, travelling amongst the city’s lowlifes, and killing one another over greed, drugs, or just a general disdain for life; the kind of individuals, like Morgan Neil and his crew, who considered life cheap and disposable. Again, these cases were often easier to get to the bottom of, well, except those committed by Morgan and his crew, who knew the value of covering their asses. Overall, while murder was a fact of life in the big city, solving murders, well, that wasn’t as hard as some thought. Now, solving murders and making sure you had all the facts sorted out legally, so that some hotshot lawyer couldn’t come along and find a loophole or something to free the killer, that was another matter all together – and that was beyond Ray’s scope. He just collected the evidence and made the arrests, after that it was up to the District Attorney and his office to finish the job. If he were to put it in baseball terms, he and his crew hit the ball and got their runner to third base; it was up to the D.A. to hit it one more time and drive them home. That wasn’t always the case.

When you live with murder on a daily basis, you have to find an outlet to clear your mind; to take you away from the horrors humans commit - which you get to see up close and personal - and help you realize there’s still beauty and good in the world. Ray had found his coping mechanisms. He’d never married; he’d been determined not to walk down the aisle unless he was sure it was the right thing to do; over the years, he had seen many friends get married, in his opinion, because they had been together for so long that breaking up and starting over seemed like too much work, but getting married something that was expected of them – the next step, so to speak. So they married. He’d never wanted to settle, and didn’t. Over the years he had dated many wonderful women, but just not the
one
. Presently he had been seeing the same woman, Darlene, for just over a year. These relationships helped him cope. His job demanded a lot out of him, but unlike the police detectives who populated prime time TV, who seemed to always be on the job, abandoning their loved ones and family, he strove hard to find the personal time to spend with the woman in his life. Sure it seemed glamorous to say you worked all the time and was committed to the job, but the truth of the matter was, that was how you ended up burnt out. He had discovered, very early on, that if you didn’t step back from the job, and allow yourself that
me
time, you’d be less effective at it. That time helped to clear the mind and offer perspective when you refocused the next day on the task at hand.

Ray had also joined a hockey league; a bunch of middle-aged or older men, such as himself, who met once a week to play some non-contact hockey for fun. It helped keep him fit and helped him blow off some steam.

His last coping mechanism was literature and music. Growing up, music had meant a lot to him, as it does for many teenagers. He’d been an avid rock ‘n’ roll fan, embracing the legends, such as the Beatles, the Rolling Stones, Springsteen, Bowie, the Who, etcetera. He still listened to their music – he had no idea what passed for rock ‘n’ roll today – but in recent years had embraced country music. While it opened him up for a lot of teasing, he found it soothing. It seemed kind of foolish for a man of his age to be embracing today’s rock ‘n’ roll; at the same time, he found the pacing of country music and the fact a lot of the songs seemed to tell a story, to be just what he needed. He’d traded the likes of Mick Jagger and Roger Daltrey for Tim McGraw and Brad Paisley, and was content with the trade.

For literature, he read a wide variety books, enjoying the adventure stories of Clive Cussler, the horror fiction of Stephen King, and much more. He had stayed away, for the longest time, from the True Crime section of the book store; he got enough true crime every day at work. Over the past years, however, he had picked up a few books on serial killers, just out of curiosity. In his long career, that was the one killer he had never run across, and, to tell you the truth, the one type of killer he didn’t want to run across. Every other killer he could in some way understand, but it seemed to him the serial killer was very different – a true challenge. He could have lived his entire career without running up against one of these killers, but it looked like his luck had finally run out. As he stood there on the first floor of the abandoned office building, starring at the mutilated body of Anthony Whyte, and thinking back upon the mutilated body of Leonard Cabot, he suspected that Lakeview had a serial killer on their hands and he and Detective Bryan Stork had been the lucky two who had pulled the case.

“This is fucking insane,” said Bryan as he walked around the perimeter of the body; the same M.O. as Leonard; cut apart and nailed or tied by rope to a cross; the eyes, penis and balls, where the head should be; the head, of course, on the floor, surrounded by and propped up by the intestines.

“Anthony Whyte,” said Ray as he looked through the victim’s wallet. “Based on the plastic I’m seeing in here, I’d say our victim is another big spender.”

“The layout of the body. Jesus, it’s almost artistic.”

“It has to mean something,” said Ray.

“But what?”

Ray knew better than to answer. Bryan was just trying to work things out in his mind by spitballing and talking to himself and Ray at the same time. They’d been partners long enough for both of them to know each other’s process.

“If we’re lucky, we can tie Anthony Whyte to our first victim. Might just give us the lead we’re looking for,” said Bryan.

“Let’s hope,” said Ray.

Right now they needed any lead they could get their hands on. They’d been working hard on the Cabot murder, tracking down his movements on the day and hours before he disappeared and was murdered; looking into his financial background, family and friends, looking for anything that might lead them in the right direction. They knew he was divorced and that the divorce had not been amicable. That seemed to be the biggest hiccup in his life, and while it wasn’t necessarily uncommon for a spouse to take out their husband or wife during a divorce, both Ray and Bryan suspected that wasn’t the case. If so, the crime would have been simpler; the kills not as decorative and involved as the ones they witnessed. That just seemed a little over the top.

Now, with Anthony’s murder, he suspected it was the work of a serial killer. They had tracked down Leonard’s last movements to a bar in the financial district, Tabby’s; not one of the more popular places where the younger success stories hung out, but a nice enough place on it’s own. It turned out Leonard had been a regular, having hit on and taken home many of the bars female regulars. As far as they could tell, on the night he went missing, he left the bar with a young woman; an attractive younger woman. Even as they canvassed some of the regulars, he had detected a note of envy in the men, who no doubt had wanted to leave that night with the same woman. The fact Leonard had ended up dead, didn’t seem to factor into their fantasies.

It’s possible we’re looking for a woman,
thought Ray. He looked at the scene before him and wondered what it would take for a woman to pull this off. They did know Leonard had been drugged, so it was definitely possible. A beautiful woman wouldn’t have to do much to get most guys into the position she wanted them in. Most guys were so desperate they’d agree to anything if they thought it would get them between the sheets with a beautiful young thing; so it was possible their killer was a woman. At the same time, Leonard may have left that woman’s apartment and met with his killer in the dead of night on his way home. Seeing how the killer had been careful at the scene of the murder, leaving them nothing to go on, it was anybody’s guess.

“Forensics came up with nothing at the last scene,” said Bryan, “let’s hope the killer has gotten sloppy.”

Ray nodded his head in approval. He and Bryan would do the legwork necessary to track Anthony Whyte’s movements, looking for some clue as to who had killed him, but other than that, their best bet was still the hope that with each murder committed the killer would get clumsier and clumsier and accidentally leave something of value behind for them to go on. Based on what he’d read in those True Crime books he’d eventually bought, that could either be the second murder or the twentieth murder. Definitely not a pleasant thought.

Leslie’s run-in with Harry haunted him. He’d been so sure of himself when he set out that night that he couldn’t understand how it had gone so wrong so quickly; most importantly, he couldn’t understand why he hadn’t reached for the gun, even when he thought his life was in danger. None of it made any sense, but he couldn’t stop going over and over it again in his mind.

He’d taken quite a beating in the alley and it showed, so he took a couple of days off; seeing how he was a bestselling author and his Editor knew that, no one ever complained when he called in sick; they could fire him, but who’d care. He had the kind of ‘fuck you’ money in the bank that gave him a certain freedom others could only dream of. He also wasn’t prepared to answer all the questions that would be thrown at him, when his colleagues saw his face.
What would he tell them?

Instead, he sat at home, licking his wounds. While he was haunted by the confrontation and how it played out, he was also troubled by Harry’s words. He’d been led to believe his family’s murder had been a random event; a home invasion or a case of mistaken identity. No one had ever said anything to him about his father and a connection with Morgan Neil or organized crime. That was insane. But Harry had seemed pretty damned sure. Harry seemed to know a lot more than he did; and he needed to know everything.

It was after seven on the second night of his playing hooky, that Leslie made his way to the paper. Most of the day staff would be long gone, and he’d have a good chance of arriving at his destination without running into a lot of people, or a lot of individuals who knew him well enough to question him about his appearance. He knew exactly who could tell him what he needed to know – his old friend Walter.

“You look like shit,” said Walter when Leslie darkened his door.

“Feel it,” said Leslie.

Leslie knew Walter would be working late; he came in late every morning and stayed late every night; Leslie knew Walter’s wife of almost fifty years, had passed away seven years ago, and since that time, Walter had found no reason to leave work early and head for home. The way Leslie figured it, Walter was trying to avoid going home; a place that once brought him comfort, but now in its emptiness, just reminded him how alone he was in the world.

“You join a fight club, or something?” asked Walter as Leslie took a seat in front of his desk.

“Ran into an old friend,” said Leslie, “had a lot to say about my Father.”

Walter, who had been paying half attention to Leslie, but also digging through papers on his desk, looking for something, stopped what he was doing and looked at his friend; the day he suspected would come, sounded like it was upon him.

“Old friends usually leave you in better shape than that,” said Walter.

They were doing a verbal dance, and Walter knew it, but at the same time, he wasn’t exactly keen on hearing what he knew Leslie would be getting at.

“Tell me about my Father, Walter.”

“Your Father?”

“I know your hearing’s not that bad, old man,” said Leslie. “Tell me about my Father.”

“What is there to tell?”

“You’ve been covering the crime beat for a long time, Walter. You’re our resident expert on Morgan Neil and his gang. According to my old friend, Morgan and my Dad were quite the pair.”

Leslie watched Walter carefully; he could see Walter was uncomfortable, but to hell with him, he wanted answers. Walter leaned back in his chair, all the time looking intently at Leslie.

“There are some places in life that are best not to go, kid,” said Walter.

“Tell me about my father, Walter.”

“None of this will lead anywhere good.”

Leslie just stared at Walter; Walter could see he was serious and determined.

“What exactly do you want to know?” asked Walter.

“Was he a killer?”

Walter looked uncomfortable.

“Word on the street is he was a bigger problem than Morgan himself,” said Leslie.

Walter took a deep breath. “He was a killer,” he said. “What do you remember about him?”