Deadly Days: A Gripping Detective Thriller (Logan Stone Book 1)

by Brad Hart

  She looked at him. “I was being sarcastic.”

  “I know. He’s not the killer of course. That’s a silly thought, an amateur one. It’s not going to be like the movies where we stumble upon a deranged officer who happens to be living a double life as a murderer.”

  “How do you know?” She said.

  Logan thought about it and shrugged. “I don’t. But come on. I know the chances are slim.”

  “But still possible,” she said. “I mean, hell. This whole case is sick and crazy. Murder doesn’t make sense. He just wants to kill, and so he’s doing just that.”

  “And he’s going to keep killing. He’s not going to stop until we find him.”

  They drove on in silence. Both of them were lost in thought, wondering what was in store for them next.

  **

  At the same time in Los Angeles, California, a woman was out for a jog on Ocean Avenue. Her name was Ellie Wilson, and she owned a restaurant that had seen major recent success after being featured in popular magazines and social media pages.

  She did well for herself, and she owned a condominium on the twelfth floor of a building that overlooked Santa Monica Beach. These kind of morning jogs were routine for her. With a complete set of part-time employees, she rarely had to go into the restaurant anymore, but she did when she felt like it. Life was good, and getting better every day as the money rolled in.

  It was early morning, but the sun was already out, bright and shining in the blue sky. The area was mostly empty, except for a few other runners coming past her in the opposite direction. Ellie jogged, keeping at a steady pace and not breaking a sweat. She’d gotten into exercise two years earlier after losing her brother to a heart attack. In her present condition, she was as fit as a fiddle. Men wanted her, and women wanted to be her.

  She took short breaths as she kept her pace, and then she headed past a small park adjacent to the sidewalk that had a big cliffside drop off. Below it was the PCH, California 1 Highway. Beyond that was the wide stretch of Santa Monica Beach, and the Pacific Ocean.

  She headed for the stairs, which was a popular spot for runners and fitness fanatics like herself. Each morning she’d run up and down the 170 steps three times. That was when she would break a sweat. It was a fantastic cardio workout, and she credited it for her major weight loss as of late.

  On that morning, however, Ellie Wilson wouldn’t get a chance to run up and down the Santa Monica Stairs. In fact, she would never run them again in her life. She didn’t know it at the time, but as she passed the white van and neared the steps, a man stepped out of the driver’s side door holding a metal baseball bat.

  He could run too, and in fact, he could run rather quickly – which he did at that moment; heading right for Ellie Wilson as she jogged at a brisk pace. She never knew that the man was coming up behind her, holding the bat firmly with both hands like he was about to play for the major leagues. She never knew a thing about it. Perhaps it was best that way, not knowing.

  Because what came next was ugly.

  Chapter Eight

  They drove on through the early morning sun for what felt like an eternity. The backed-up traffic on the 101 didn’t help, but after a few hours they’d made it to the outskirts of sunny LA. Logan drove to Calabasas and followed the route by memory to the house.

  He could have called, but he didn’t. That wasn’t his style. He didn’t want them to get antsy or prepare anything for him. He just wanted to drop by and see how they were doing and pick their brains a little more. He also needed to speak with the mother since he’d missed her the first time he was there.

  “Want me to come in?” Walsh said as they rode up to the house.

  “Of course.”

  They stopped on the street. The driveway had the same Porsche and it looked like it hadn’t moved since Logan had last left. He hoped Mrs. Jones would be there. Maybe she couldn’t tell Logan anything of value, especially considering how upset she must have been. But anything could help. Any nugget of information could lead Logan down a trail that would potentially crack the case, or at least lead to some clues.

  They knocked on the door and it opened quickly. Michael Jones stood there, smiling at them. “I was reading in my study and I saw you pulling up,” his eyes were watery and red. He was sweating. “I saw the news. Come in, please.”

  “You look like you just worked out, sir,” Logan said.

  “No,” he paused, wiping his brow. “No, not at all.”

  Logan stepped inside, followed by Walsh. “This is Officer Walsh. She’s working with me temporarily on the case.”

  “There were more murders,” Michael Jones said and sighed. “This isn’t giving me much… Hope.” His voice had cracked on the last few words and he put his hands to his face which looked like it had aged ten years since the last time Logan had seen him.

  “Unfortunately, I’m not here to give you any more hope, Mr. Jones.”

  “Call me Michael, please.”

  “Michael,” Logan said. “We’re trying to find her still. Another girl is missing as well. He might not have killed them.”

  “Oh, don’t say that word! For God’s sake, don’t say that word around me about my daughter. Do you understand me, Mr. Stone?”

  Logan paused. “Yes,” he said. He could smell the sweat dripping from Michael Jones, whose face was flushed a funny shade of blue as he stared at the two of them. “I just don’t want to get your hopes up.”

  The phone began to ring. Michael Jones kept his gaze on Logan, acting like he didn’t hear it. Logan didn’t feel uncomfortable at all. He’d dealt with people who behaved like this plenty of times. When a parent has a missing child, then they will act all sorts of ways. It was understandable, and Logan could even see himself in Michael’s shoes. He didn’t have kids, but he could imagine what it must feel like to have one and then lose it. Awful.

  “You can answer the phone,” Logan said. “It might be important.”

  “It’s not,” Michael said. His eye twitched.

  “How do you know if you don’t answer it, sir?” Walsh asked.

  “It’s not important, alright! Oh, hell. Go on - get!”

  Logan stood there, slightly stunned. “What?”

  “Get out of this house,” Jones bellowed.

  “Mr. Jones, do you still want me on the case?”

  “What? You haven’t done jack-shit, Mr. Stone,” he scowled. “You left San Feliz. You left the town where my daughter went missing, you moron. And I thought they call you the best. Consider yourself fired. I’ll pay you a percentage of what we initially agreed on, because you failed. Did you hear me, Mr. Stone? You failed the case, you didn’t bring my daughter back, and now you have royally pissed me off,” he said, fuming. Then he began to cry.

  “Mr. Jones, please think about this. This isn’t about the payment now. This is about missing women and a sick killer who’s taking them and possibly murdering them like he’s already done to some. I want to find Brianne, I really do. And now we know he’s probably here in LA, or at least he was heading this way. We don’t know if she went missing in San Feliz, or anywhere between here and there. She could have gone missing the moment she walked out your door.”

  Michael Jones winced and scowled even harder at Logan. He looked repulsed by his mere presence and began to clench his fists together while his head twitched and shook. “Could have gone missing when she walked out this door,” he murmured. “Is that a threat to me, Mr. Stone?”

  “A threat? No, of course not. It’s a fact. Anything is possible.”

  “Oh, you’re pathetic, Mr. Stone.”

  “I’ve heard that a lot.”

  “Good, you should hear it every day until you find my daughter!”

  “She could be right here in LA County, Michael. She could be in San Feliz. But for now, I need to follow the killer’s tracks. I need to find out where he is. And it seems like I made a mistake by coming to your house today, because I feel that I’m wasting time. Before we lea
ve, however, I was hoping we could speak to Mrs. Jones.”

  “Oh, Christ – she’s not here. She has a life, you know. She’s at work.”

  “Where does she work?”

  “Why on earth do you insist on hassling my wife? Do you know the only reason she didn’t take off from work is that she can’t bear to wallow in her misery in this house? The memories of her, Mr. Stone… The memories of Brianne are all over this damned house. My wife is trying to escape those thoughts. She needs to distract herself and try to continue as if things are normal. She can’t have a police officer and a private eye barging in her office and asking questions about her possibly dead daughter! Now get the hell out!”

  Logan shuffled his feet and motioned for Walsh to head out before him. He didn’t want her to be behind him, between Michael and himself. Michael seemed enraged and vicious, and in his current state of mind, Logan wouldn’t have been surprised to have seen him throw a few punches or blows.

  Walsh hurried out the door and Logan followed. They got to the car and sat inside. Logan looked back at the house. Michael Jones was standing in the doorway with his hands propped against both sides. He was screaming at them. Logan didn’t know if he was still fired, but he guessed he was.

  If he was, then all that meant was that he wasn’t going to be getting paid the full rate. That was fine by him. At this point in time, he’d be fine getting paid nothing. The best form of payment for him was his own personal satisfaction in helping others, and right then and there all he wanted more than anything in the world was to help the two girls that were missing. If they were alive, then that was great.

  If they were dead, then that wasn’t. But in the end, the plan was the same. Logan was going to take down the killer, and he aimed to do just that before anyone else got a chance. The police he had dealt with in his time were notorious for being slow, clumsy and careless. They were everything Logan was not – or at least the majority of them.

  In Walsh, he found all the qualities that many officers he’d worked with lacked. She was going to be a good asset. Maybe she was going to even be a good friend. Either way, Logan needed all the real help he could get, and the two of them set off down the winding road and into the San Fernando Valley. Logan kept the radio on. He told Walsh to keep checking her phone and texting other officers back in San Feliz to find out what was going on, if anything.

  The radio was silent. Logan drove on down Ventura Boulevard aimlessly through the traffic. His spirits were getting low. The radio said nothing. There was no news about the killer, which in most ways was a good thing. The only good news would be if he had been caught, which Logan knew wouldn’t happen. Not until he got ahold of him.

  Any other news would be terrible, in all likelihood. Logan breathed a sigh of relief, thinking it over for now. He would wait and try to make sense of it all. He would wait until he heard something on the radio, and he hoped it wouldn’t be bad news.

  Two minutes later, the waiting was over. And the news was bad, maybe the worst yet.

  The music on the radio stopped. A recorded voice came on the air. “Attention, this emergency broadcast is brought to you by the Los Angeles Police Department. There is a serial killer in Los Angeles County. Keep your children and loved ones close to you. Lock your doors and set your home alarms. Suspect was last seen driving a white van with no license plate. He was last seen wearing a black bag over his head and a dark gray coat with black boots. Suspect was last seen in Santa Monica near Ocean Avenue fleeing the scene in his van. There have been three murders within the last hour. We urge all citizens of Los Angeles to stay inside and check for news updates.”

  Logan did an illegal U-turn on the jam-packed Ventura Boulevard, ran a red light to turn left onto Coldwater Canyon, and slammed his foot on the gas pedal, careening the vehicle up the road and into the Hollywood Hills.

  He wasn’t going to let anyone else die. Not this time.

  Chapter Nine

  Chief Walker sat in the parking lot on the ground next to the rocks. He could see the waves rolling in from the Pacific. If he looked to his right, he could see a dark red stain on the ground where Patrick’s body had lain. He didn’t look to the right, instead, he kept his eyes straight ahead at the sunny skies over the water.

  He pulled out a pack of his smokes and brought the tip of one to his lips, placed it inside and then fired up a match and let it burn for a moment so that the cigarette wouldn’t taste like chemicals when he finally lit it.

  “Everything’s going to be good,” he said to himself. “It’s all going to be cleared up now.” He took a long breath and exhaled.

  He was supposed to have finished work hours ago, and he was going on about three hours of sleep in the last twenty-four hours. A fight with his wife, a disagreement with his son. Frank Walter hadn’t been Mr. Popular with his family as of late, but that was the last thing on his mind at that moment while he exhaled smoke and stared out at the sea.

  The nicotine had a calming effect on him, or at least he liked to tell himself that. He knew it was an awful habit; one that he’d die from if he didn’t quit, but he figured he could quit on another day when his stress wasn’t at an all-time high. He figured he could stop the nasty habit when the killer was caught, or maybe in a couple of weeks when things cooled off at home. Maybe in a year or two when things were perfect in his life. Walker had used every excuse in the book.

  He took a long hit of the smoke and let it roll from his nostrils. His head felt buzzed and exhausted. He thought about everything that had happened, and how quickly it had happened. He thought about how it was over now, except for the cleanup and the investigation. The boys in LA would probably be the ones to find whoever did it, so all Walker had to do was make sure nothing else bad happened in his sleepy little town.

  He got the news in a text message about the murders in Santa Monica, and in a slightly twisted way, he felt relieved, albeit only for a while. The killer had left his sleepy little town, and he would be able to clean up this mess with the help of his men and then work on moving on and forgetting about the whole nasty ordeal. Things would go back to normal, yes indeed.

  Frank Walker took a long drag of smoke in his mouth and held it there. He would hold it there for a second longer until he glanced at the text message on his vibrating cell phone. Then he would choke on the smoke when he read what the text message said.

  It read: Guy just stabbed to death hitchhiking in San Feliz. Witnesses saw the entire thing.

  He started to gag on the smoke and found himself on all fours dry heaving in the parking lot; face red and dripping sweat as his fists clenched into balls of fury. How? He wondered. How is it possible? A girl just killed in LA, three hours away, and now this? This? Again? He’s back? It’s not possible.

  He managed to find his footing and stood up straight. The lump that had formed in his throat was swelling as the amount of saliva grew more and more. He needed to find a place to throw up, but he wasn’t going to do that. A family van had just pulled up to the lot and he didn’t want to look like a weak fool.

  “Not today, folks, it’s closed for a couple days. See the barricade?” He choked, motioning toward the three wooden barricades that had been placed at both entrances.

  “Why?” A man asked, having stepped out of the van, hands on his hips and a look of bitterness etched across his pudgy face.

  At that moment, Frank Walker hated that man. He hated everything he represented. Innocence, naivety, love. He could see a boy and a girl in the back of the van, young enough to be in child seats. He could see a blonde wife in the passenger seat. His blood boiled like a bull being taunted by one of those idiotic people in the ring.

  “Because this place was a damn slaughterhouse last night. Now get back in the van and get your ass moving down the road.”

  The man hurried back into the van without a word and burned rubber. Sand and dust left a trail behind the van as it rushed off, north down the highway. Maybe they were from Ohio and going on the family road
trip he’d always dreamed of. Maybe Frank ruined their entire day. Maybe they’d go back to the Midwest and gossip to their friends and neighbors about how foul-mouthed and disrespectful Californians were, even the police.

  Frank took a deep breath and felt completely out of it. His mind was spinning, and he felt dizzy. He hobbled to his patrol car and leaned against it with his hand clutching his throbbing head. He hadn’t screamed like that in ages, ever since he’d arrested a twenty-something year old punk kid after he had robbed a liquor store. Before that, he had screamed a lot. It was a regular thing for him to have outbursts as a young guy. Part of old Frank’s tough guy demeanor. He couldn’t live it down. He didn’t want to be seen as an arrogant cop taking advantage of his power, but he knew it was too late for some people to see him as anything else.

  It was too late for the kid he had arrested to see Frank as anything but that, but he didn’t give a damn about how that kid saw him. It was ten years ago, and that kid would be a grown man now, probably in prison, if he was even alive. He hadn’t gone easy on him during the arrest, but that kid hadn’t gone easy on the store clerk either, waving a sawed-off shotgun in his face and threatening to kill his whole family if the clerk didn’t hand over the bottles of vodka.

  Frank closed his eyes and inhaled. He tried to remember the meditation his wife had made him learn some years back. She’d taken him to lessons, but he was stubborn as could be and always thought that kind of thing was a load of crap.

  He tried to empty his mind, but it wouldn’t empty. He’d never been so stressed in the line of work before. Not since he was a rookie who had gotten two people killed.

  But it wasn’t my fault… Or was it? That’s what’s killing me on the inside. That buzzing question. Just stop… Just leave me be…

  He thought back to his first month on the job when he had witnessed a homicide and stood there in shock for three solid minutes before pursuing the killer. He thought about how sick it had made his stomach to see the dead girl on the ground. He thought about how intense the panic attack was. He thought about how the killer had narrowly escaped him, only to kill two more that night before he was caught and gunned down by police. If Frank hadn’t wasted those three minutes, he would have nabbed the bad guy before he had picked off those two other innocent women. Their blood was on Frank’s hands, or so he felt.