Two Graves (A Kesle City Homicide Novel) (27 page)

He wished she would break her routine and let the dog out early but knew she wouldn’t. He would wait. He was safe here in the dark, where he always belonged. Safe, hidden as he always was. But now he was starting to come out. And soon they would know the truth about beautiful, little Tracy and the mystery of all those years would be settled.

*

She finally let her little mutt out so he could “do his business”. The stupid dog had barked at him the first night. The second night, the dog barked but he had brought meat and the dog loved him. The third night, the dog only whined the whole time.

Tonight, the dog hadn’t made a sound. Well, there had been that satisfying little crunch but otherwise he was very quiet now. Such a delicate little doggie skull under his heavy work boot.

He turned up his wrist and looked at his watch. The luminous dial showed eleven twenty five. She would soon bring the dog in or at least try. She always came out each night at eleven-thirty.

She would stand in the doorway and call the dog. She stayed in the doorway so that the light shone through the short nightie she wore. Not that she wore it to bed. He knew she would be naked in bed. Sluts like her always slept naked.

She only wore the nightgown so he would be tempted. She let the light shine through to tease him. She always liked to flaunt herself. She had always flaunted her body to him. She had not changed at all.

*

Tracey Mitchell was the best looking girl in the school. Every guy dreamed of her – masturbated to fantasies of her naked body. She had long golden hair and a curving body that screamed to be touched and caressed. Every boy wanted to find out if she was a natural blonde.

“Do you think Tracey has a golden pussy?” was
the question
during tenth grade.

Plenty of boys got close to the answer. Very close but Tracey foiled their attempts. But not because she didn’t let them in her pants.

Tracey was a slut. She loved sex and she loved what the boys would do in order to have their time with her. And she took all they had to give. And she gave them all what they wanted, except the one answer they craved.

She knew what the guys all wanted to know. She knew about the bets. So, she had only done guys in the dark. That way, no guy could ever boast that he had got her. He would never be believed if he didn’t have the definitive report on her pussy. They all said they had her, and everybody knew they had, but nobody could give the word.

She worked through the boys in the school before the real surprise happened. Her parents were going out of town and she invited him to her house. She wanted
him
. He was supposed to show up at nine o’clock. It would be dark by then.

But, he wasn’t stupid. He wouldn’t fall for her tricks. He wasn’t one of the dumb jocks that she normally tricked. He told her it would have to be earlier. He would be there before dark. She would not be able to hide her golden hair from him. He was too smart for her.

By seven thirty, he was in her bedroom.

“Take off your clothes,” she said to him. “I want to see your naked body. Get naked and I will put something really sexy on.”

He couldn’t get out of his clothes fast enough. He already had his shirt off as she was leaving the room. He stripped off his pants and underwear. He was already hard as he lay back on the bed.

When the door opened, he was ready. Leaning back against the headboard, his arms open wide and his stomach sucked in as far as it would go.

He hadn’t heard them. They must have been giggling before they got to the door but the radio was on. Now, they were laughing. All her friends, boys and girls, stood in the doorway. One of them had a Polaroid and snapped his picture. They laughed at him and pointed as he got small. Tracey was laughing the hardest.

The bigger boys from the football team grabbed his clothes and wouldn’t give them back. They chased him to the front door and threw him out on the front lawn. He had to run all the way home covered only with a tarp from a neighbor’s wood pile.

*

“Benji! Here boy.” Tracey came out on the porch, blonde hair gleaming. He could see right through her little gown. Her narrow hips and big breasts showed through. She called for the dog but he didn’t come – the only one who wasn’t going to come tonight.

She looked out into the back yard but couldn’t see anything in the light coming from the house. She stepped off the porch onto the lawn and thought of the gate.

He knew she would think of the gate. She would check to see if the gate was closed. She would walk away from the light. They were all so predictable. His superior intelligence would always make it so.

She never heard him. She didn’t even sense him. No scary music, no sudden sixth sense. She didn’t know anything was wrong until she felt the rope around her neck.

Using the rope, he dragged her back to the door. She didn’t put up much of a struggle. Maybe, she had read that if you don’t struggle, you won’t get hurt. Thank God for books.

Inside the door, he turned off the light. The kitchen was in darkness. There was plenty of time to decide if she was a natural blonde or not.

He tightened the rope around her neck. She finally started to struggle against him. It was too late.

She was pressed against him and he could feel her flimsy nightgown shifting up around her waist. He felt himself harden.

He could see her laughing at him and pointing. She had said something about how small he was. She had said he was hardly a man.

She would know his manliness before she dies. She would know what she missed that day.

She had gone limp, supported only by the rope around her neck. He let go of the rope and she fell to the floor. She was unconscious but gasped in a deep breath. She regained consciousness as he bound her hands and gagged her. He stood up and started to undo his pants. Then, he remembered her legs.

Girls like to kick.

He tied one foot to one of the table legs. He then pulled her other ankle over to the next table leg. He tied it quickly because she was starting to make noise.

He turned on the light in the oven. He could see her eyes were open. She stared up at him.

He liked the fear.

Her nightgown ripped easily. He used the knife on her panties.

He smiled. “I knew it!”

“He kept this one alive for a long time,” Buchanan said. “Most of what he has done to his previous victims has been post mortem. Not this time.”

Mann looked over at the naked body of Kelly Bronson. Thirty-four, unmarried, blonde, five foot five, slim, pretty and a legal secretary, she was lying back in a recliner with her throat cut. Her upper torso from the belly button up had been mutilated, many of her organs ripped from her and tossed around the room. Her throat had been slashed so deeply it was almost severed to the spine. Her larynx was missing.

“Run it down for me,” Mann asked Shane, who had been on the scene for the past two hours. Most of that time, Mann had been dealing with the media and trying to organize the rest of the task force. As they still couldn’t find Drabick, he was a suspect in this killing.

“He knew her movements well enough to know when to kill the dog. He got her by the back gate and dragged her into the house. She has grass stains on her heels where he dragged her. Ligature marks on her ankles and the rope in the kitchen suggest she was tied to the table, legs apart.”

“He raped her in the kitchen?” Mann asked.

“Yes. The table was handy and high enough for him to get under. I think he wants us to know he did it. Lots of ejaculate all over the floor. She had to have been alive at that point. Buchanan has no doubt she died in this chair.”

“Why the kitchen?”

“I’ve already been on the phone describing the scene to the shrinks,” Greer said, interrupting Shane. “They seem to think he is reacting to the homosexual inferences in the newspapers. They think he wants us to know what a stud he is. According to them, he’s saying ‘look at me, can’t even wait to get in the door’. And he wanted us to know she was alive when he did it.”

“Wonderful,” Mann said. “He wasn’t psycho enough; we had to make him worse.”

Shane continued. “He did most of his worst in here.”

“What the hell is with that?” Mann asked, pointing at the victim’s abdomen.

“He used that bucket and cloth to wash her down,” Buchanan answered, taking up the story. “Post mortem, he cleaned up the blood on her abdomen and pubic area. He was careful not to clean up the evidence of the rape though.”

“But…” Mann said. “What does it mean?”

Written in permanent marker, with an arrow pointing to the dark patch of pubic hair, was

FRAUD

Mann massaged his temples. The city was getting into a greater panic and this latest kill had done nothing to ease the tensions. Livermore was down at The Hill trying to ease the agonies of the Mayor while trying to keep his job with the Task Force.

“We need something solid,” Mann said to himself.

Like an answer from the Gods, Alf Buchanan walked into the office.

“Talking to yourself? Bad sign, Gregg.”

“So are bleeding gums and a stomach to match. Tell me you have some good news.”

Buchanan perched his thin frame on the edge of the chair and handed a file across the desk. Mann, recognizing the look in Buchanan’s eyes, didn’t bother opening the folder.

“Our boy is five foot five to five foot seven.”

“You sure?”

Buchanan shrugged. “Best guess, I have to admit. The girl was killed sitting down in the easy chair. The killer had his back to the wall. He slit her throat. Blood spurted from carotid. The first splatter shows him at about five feet. The second shows him at five five to five-seven. Good silhouette.”

“When he cut her, he was bending over. The blood sprays; he steps back and straightens to get as far away as possible. Backs right against the wall. The next heartbeat gets that picture.”

“That is how CSU reads it. I tend to agree. He did try to wipe down the wall, though.”

“So, he knew what he was doing?”

Buchanan shrugged. “The wall was porous, a plaster. Once the wall was treated, the darker spots show the original splatter pattern. He also moved the furniture to further confuse the issue. Indentations on the rug gave him away. He knew what he was trying to do, though.”

“A cop?”

Buchanan shrugged. “Or he just watches TV. Either way, the guy is intelligent. And cool. He just banged the girl and then cut her up something awful and still has his balls together enough to try and screw us over.”

“The video from the hospital puts him at five foot nine or ten.”

“He wore lifts, I suspect,” Alf said. “He took too much time trying to disguise the splatter.”

“He knew we’d get him on video even if we didn’t get his face so he disguised himself. So we can’t rely on the weight either. He could have been wearing a body suit. What about the shower?”

“We cleaned out the drain but it’s going to be hard to get much. We’re matching everything we come up with. We have his DNA so if we match a hair, we will have color. It is going to take time.”

“The one thing we don’t have. He’s working faster.”

Livermore walked into the office. Mann noticed how haggard he looked. “How are things at The Hill?”

“A zoo. You get anything, Alf?”

“We got a height. Five five to seven.”

“Which clears Drabick,” Mann added.

“Drabick is five nine,” Buchanan said. “I don’t want to eliminate anyone too quickly just based on this. It could still be him, stooped over. But if you want my opinion, it isn’t him.”

Degget listened to the two detectives in the next booth bullshit each other about their waitress and who was going to leave with her. Nursing his third beer, Degget was depressed. These were the last two detectives on the SOCU squad for him to clear. And they were already all but cleared. He had found no evidence of any major amounts of cash, unexplained spending or anything that might lead to blackmail. Arnie had been right, nobody was totally clean but there was nothing to suggest any of these guys were in so deep that they would roll over on another cop.

That only left Flem and Degget had already cleared him in his mind, regardless of how he felt about him personally.

Inspector Flem had been the one that his Captain had met with regarding Degget’s deep cover operation. However, Flem was on the short list to replace Commissioner James and was tight with the Mayor. He had to have IA crawling all over him to vet him for this position. No way somebody gets that high and hasn’t been cleared right back to when they were still getting their ass wiped.

Suddenly Degget’s attention was brought back to the two detectives.

“Flem was totally pissed and was making noises like he would fire Beverly for getting the assignments all screwed up,” one of the detectives was saying. “We missed a couple surveillance opportunities. Flem made it sound like it was a big deal.”

Degget stopped listening as he suddenly realized his mistake.

Beverly was Flem’s assistant, a civilian who Degget had all but ignored. A position that close to Flem would offer some really useful information and the opportunity for a savvy person with good computer skills to find out even more. He had been so focused on the possibilities of a bad cop, he forgot that there were increasing numbers of civilians working on the Kesle force.

Feeling better at the prospect that it wasn’t another cop that had turned on him, Degget downed his beer. He quickly left to get some more information on Flem’s assistant.

“Go Rams!”

Although Mann barely heard the shout, the ensuing commotion caught his attention and he looked through the door into the outer office. A janitor was backed up against the wall just outside the picture room. Blaak, imposing as always, was talking to the man. Suddenly, Blaak was pushing past the janitor and shouting.

“LT, come here. We got something!”

Mann hurried across the warehouse. The janitor was looking confused and frightened at all the activity. He immediately started to apologize to Mann.