Mounted
by
E. H. Reinhard
Copyright © 2016
All Rights Reserved
AUTHOR’S NOTE
This book is a work of fiction by E. H. Reinhard. Names, characters, and incidents are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental. Locations used vary from real streets, locations, and public buildings to fictitious residences and businesses.
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Mounted: An Agent Hank Rawlings FBI Thriller, Book 5
When a package containing macabre photos of four dead women is mailed to a Louisville newspaper, the Manassas FBI office is called upon. Agents Hank Rawlings and Beth Harper are immediately dispatched to the scene.
The man responsible for the murders, along with horrific acts upon the remains, has referred to himself as The Sportsman. A letter included with the photos pledges more killings to come.
In Louisville, Hank and Beth work diligently to track down every hint of a lead. However, with each new piece of evidence uncovered, the investigation only raises more questions—questions they simply don’t have answers to.
For the killer, the dead women, as well as his tinkering with their remains, was merely preparation for a larger goal—something he’d promised someone years before.
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Table of Contents
CHAPTER ONE
CHAPTER TWO
CHAPTER THREE
CHAPTER FOUR
CHAPTER FIVE
CHAPTER SIX
CHAPTER SEVEN
CHAPTER EIGHT
CHAPTER NINE
CHAPTER TEN
CHAPTER ELEVEN
CHAPTER TWELVE
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
CHAPTER NINETEEN
CHAPTER TWENTY
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
CHAPTER THIRTY
CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE
CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO
CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE
CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR
CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE
CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX
CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN
CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT
CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE
CHAPTER FORTY
CHAPTER FORTY-ONE
CHAPTER ONE
William Allen David sat in a gray cloth recliner in the largest of four rooms on the lower level of his home. His feet were perched on a leather ottoman. The basement of the single-story home was partially finished and contained the living room he was sitting in—complete with fireplace—another finished room that the previous owner had made into a den, and two additional rooms—one for storage and one for laundry. He’d recently purchased the home and relocated to that part of the country for a new job, one he’d been terminated from after two days. In his right hand, he clutched a remote control. A large flat-screen television was affixed to the wall beside the mantel of the fireplace, which was an odd placement for the television but one that would serve his needs. William clicked the button on the remote to rewind the DVD that had been playing on a loop—he played the recording again and paused the screen at two minutes and twenty-six seconds—his favorite part of the recorded telecast—where the female sports anchor fumbled for her words.
William set the remote control on the end table beside him and lifted his glass of scotch from its coaster. He tucked the glass under his thick, overgrown mustache and took a long, slow drink as he stared at the image paused on the television screen.
A sound caught his ear from over his left shoulder. He set his drink back down on the end table and pushed himself from his seat. William walked to a closed door at the back of the room, near the stairwell leading up, and opened it.
Inside was the storage room, with the laundry room off to his left. The left, right, and back walls in the storage room were white-painted cinder blocks though they weren’t visible. Plastic sheeting hung from the ceiling to the floor and draped over the chest freezers butted up against the left and right walls. In the center of the room was a large table, which was also covered in plastic—a couple of items sat on the table’s surface.
William stood in the doorway and stared at his guest standing near the back wall. The woman’s name was Katelyn Willard, and she was a twenty-two-year-old brunette. William had followed her from a restaurant back to her apartment and had picked her up in the parking lot. William took in her body once more. Katelyn had a thin face with big brown eyes—they’d need to be changed. Her skin was flawless, the same tone as what he sought. Katelyn’s long, straight hair hung inches past her shoulders. The hair color and style wasn’t right, but William could easily take care of that with a trim and some hair dye.
He walked over to the table and picked up an old camera. He hung it by its cord around his neck and stepped directly before her. The woman was standing with her back against the cinder-block wall. Her arms were outstretched at her sides, her wrists shackled. The cables that extended from the shackles, four feet in length each, went up to bolts through an I-beam that supported the floor above. Katelyn’s ankles were also shackled in a similar fashion though the cables restraining her were connected to anchors sunk into the concrete floor. Katelyn wore a ball gag in her mouth—nothing else.
William gently took her face in his hand—she yanked her head back from his touch. He rubbed the wetness from her teary cheeks across his brown-and-red flannel shirt. He lifted the camera and put his eye to the viewfinder, centering her head in the window. Katelyn turned away from him.
“Look at me,” William said. “They need to see what you look like while you’re alive.”
His words must have caught her off guard, for she looked directly at him. William caught her look of fear in his viewfinder as he focused on her.
“There we go,” he said and snapped the photo. “That one is going to look real nice.”
Katelyn mumbled something again.
“I didn’t catch that,” William said. He pulled the camera from around his neck and set it back on the table, from which he picked up a large hunting knife, and walked back to Katelyn. William held the knife before her so she could get a look. He spoke inches from her face. “Sorry, I’m going to have to kill you now. I need more practice.”
She screamed into the gag and ripped her body back and forth.
William tapped the blade of the knife against the ball in her mouth. “You know what they say: practice makes perfect. I need it to be perfect.”
Katelyn screamed again into the gag.
“Let’s get that thing out of your mouth.”
William reached behind her head and undid the ball
gag’s straps. He pulled it from her mouth and let it drop to the ground. Before the plastic-and-leather gag made contact with the floor, Katelyn was screaming for help.
“Shh,” William said. “You’re wasting your breath. No one is going to hear you. I was just keeping that thing in your mouth so your noise wouldn’t interrupt my television. I had some sports to catch up on—recorded most of it.” He leaned in closer to her and filled his lungs through his nose. “That smell. You smell just like her.”
William pressed his body against hers, pinning her against the cinder-block wall. Katelyn screamed at the side of his head. He could hear her teeth snapping together as she bit at the air, trying to get a bite of his ear or face or anything she could.
William kept his weight against her while he pressed his left fingertips hard against her chest above her left breast.
“Someone help!” she shouted. She tried to pull herself away from his touch.
“Just let me find the soft spot,” William said. He pressed his fingertips harder against the ribs of her upper chest. Then he found his spot and stopped moving his hand. He pressed the knife tip to the area. He looked Katelyn square in her blue eyes as he applied pressure.
“Don’t kill me,” she said.
“It’s required.”
Katelyn screamed for help again, to no avail.
William applied more pressure to the blade and felt it sink into her chest cavity. He slowly pushed the blade into her chest until it bottomed out on the knife’s guard. Her screaming, like the others before her, went silent as soon as the knife entered her. He watched her facial expressions change from fear, to shock, to panic before her eyelids went heavy and the life left her body. William backed away from her, leaving the knife in her chest. Katelyn’s screams still echoed in his head. Her body hung from her arms, her knees were buckled, and her feet no longer supported her. William watched the blood roll down her naked body and pool in the plastic beneath her left foot.
William fished his hand in his pants pocket and removed the key for the shackles. He walked back to her, knelt, and freed her dead body from the restraints. After taking Katelyn’s body in his arms, he lay her across the table, positioning her head so it was just off the table’s edge. He confirmed that she was arranged the way he liked and went to the far corner, where he pulled the plastic from the wall and exposed some metal shelving filled with supplies. He grabbed a pair of clear safety goggles and strapped them around his head. William stripped off all his clothing and tucked it away behind the plastic sheeting. Wearing only the safety goggles, William crossed the plastic-lined floor for his reciprocating saw. He took it in both hands and squeezed the trigger multiple times—the long, thin saw blade flapped back and forth in the air as he did.
CHAPTER TWO
“I have to run, babe.” I knelt and said my good-byes to Porkchop then grabbed the Jeep keys from the kitchen table. “I’ll probably be back in a few hours.”
“Hold on.” Karen walked up to me and wrapped her arms around my neck. “Ball didn’t say what he needed you guys in for?”
“He just sent the message last night to show up this morning. I’m guessing we probably have an investigation. I doubt he’d ask us in on a Sunday if it wasn’t something like that.”
“Okay.” Karen didn’t let go of my neck but stared at me and smiled.
“All right. I’ll be back in a bit. Then we’ll go do this brunch or whatever.”
She still didn’t let go—just stared at me.
“What?” I asked.
“Nothing.”
“Can I go to work?”
“I guess,” she said but didn’t let me go, continuing to smile at me.
“What’s with you this morning?”
“Nothing.”
“Mmm hmm. Something is up with you,” I said.
“What makes you think that?”
“My job is to notice when things don’t add up. You, since last night and especially this morning, don’t add up. And we never do brunch. What’s the occasion?”
Karen chuckled and scratched at the side of her head through her dark hair. “Whatever. You think you’re so smart.”
“So, I’m right is what you’re saying?”
“I guess you’ll find out when you get back.”
“Right,” I said.
Karen dropped her arms from my neck and followed me to the door. She saw me out and waved as I pulled out of the driveway—both of which weren’t normal.
I pulled up to the Manassas building a couple minutes after eight thirty and walked into our empty office ten minutes later. As I walked toward my desk, I spotted Beth and Ball sitting in the meeting room. Ball waved me in.
I popped the door open and stuck my head inside. “Morning. I assume the Sunday meeting means that we have something.” I entered the room and swung the door closed at my back.
“We do,” Ball said. “Come in. Grab a seat.”
I did and noticed Ball had a couple files sitting before him.
He ran a hand through his gray hair and leaned back in his chair. “This is ugly,” he said.
I shrugged. “I’ve seen ugly before.”
“Not like this,” Ball said.
“Okay,” I said. “So it’s that kind of bad? What are we dealing with?”
“All right.” Ball let out a puff of air. “The Louisville Press-Gazette received a roll of film and a letter in a package last Wednesday. There is a copy of the typed letter in these files. The film contained the images that are in these files—four deceased women. The letter states that he plans to kill more until his process is perfected. The original film and letter, as well as the package that they came in, are with our local office there.”
“Process perfected?” I asked.
“Yeah, you’ll see what that entails inside here.” Ball tapped on the files before him.
“Are you going to let us look at those?” I asked.
“Here.” Ball slid one file toward me and another toward Beth. “You’re going to Kentucky. Tomorrow morning.”
I took the file and flipped the cover open. The number on the cover page told me it was a new investigation. “When did this come in?” I asked.
“I got the call late last night, just before I sent you guys the messages to come in this morning,” Ball said. “The locals have been on it for a few days already. I looked over everything before I went to bed, which probably wasn’t the smartest thing to do. I didn’t sleep worth a shit.”
I turned the page and stared at the sheet before me, which showed photographs of four women’s driver’s licenses—all Kentucky issued. At a quick glance, the women all appeared in their early twenties. I looked at the names: Kelly Paige, Jennifer Pasco, Trisha Floyd, and April Backer. The fact that I was looking at actual photos of the driver’s licenses themselves, as opposed to copies of the licenses, was odd.
“What’s with the photos of the DLs?” I asked.
“The images of the driver’s licenses were processed from the film that was sent. The guy wanted the identities of his victims known.”
Ball motioned for me to flip the page. The next page was four more photographs. Each woman had a ball gag in her mouth—each was alive. I could see fear on their faces. Their foreheads were marked, in what looked like Sharpie ink, with the numbers one through four. A couple of the women had noticeable eyeliner streaks down their cheeks where tears had washed it from their eyes.
“Do we know if these women are in fact the ones that the DLs belong to?” Beth asked.
“Yeah,” Ball said. “Here comes the bad part.” Ball motioned for us to continue into the file.
I turned the page and looked. “What the hell?”
“Geez.” Beth groaned.
I rubbed my eyes and stared at the four photos. Each photo was once again of each woman’s head—severed from the body at the base of the neck and lying on a plastic-covered table.
Ball rubbed at the back of his neck. “Unfortunately, it still gets worse.”
I flipped another page and rolled my head back on the headrest of my chair. “Come on.” I shook my head and held up my palms. “Who in the hell does this shit?”
“That’s what you guys need to find out,” Ball said.
I looked back down at the page. Each head was mounted by the neck on wood—similar in fashion to a deer-head mount. The mounts looked gruesome and macabre—completely unnatural, as if they had a freak-show air to them. The necks of the women were craned so the heads looked forward. Below each woman’s head was her hands, mounted at the wrists, and fixed as though they were supposed to be holding something. Something immediately struck me as off.
“Their hair has been changed—different color and style,” I said.
“He’s apparently trying to make them look the same,” Ball said.
“To look like who, though?” Beth asked.
“Also something we’ll need to figure out,” Ball said.
“What do we know about the women?” I asked. “Any way to connect them?”
“The local office has been contacting friends and the families of the victims, and honestly, I have no idea what the hell they could have said to them. Anyway, from everything that came through, they can’t connect the women. The only thing we have is that they live in the same area geographically—about a seventy-five-mile radius or so.”
“What the hell is wrong with people?” Beth asked. “I mean, who even thinks to do this kind of stuff and then actually follows through with it?”
I grumbled, rubbed my eyes again, and looked back down at the photos. Each woman’s mount was positioned the same. The numbers written on their foreheads were still visible on the completed mounts.
“These women’s bodies?” I asked. “Have they been found?”
Ball shook his head. “No, never found.”
Mounted Page 1