No, he’d known her since college. She couldn’t be.
Yet the last picture in his mind was of her on the phone staring at him. She certainly hadn’t raised the alarm when he’d been conked on the back of the head and dragged into the alley or he wouldn’t be here, would he?
Sonya.
His heart felt like it was down in his belly.
But he couldn’t dwell on his grief.
His life was in mortal danger. He needed to get a plan to escape and get it quickly. Who knew when Bute or Sonya would come to get him? He was sure that they had a very vivid plan for his demise.
He couldn’t count on a rescue. He was suspended until the IA board cleared him.
Had anyone even noticed his absence? Someone must have.
The entire police department was hopefully looking for him.
Perhaps Nicole would come bursting in any moment.
Yah, right.
Ruben checked his wrists. They were zip tied. He’d almost prefer chains. Those he might be able to wiggle out of. Zip ties. No way. His ankles were the same. Bound by plastic to the chair legs.
Okay, this was really going to hurt.
Ruben rocked back and forth until the chair fell over onto its side. His skull screamed in protest.
He was working on breaking the chair legs when he heard sounds above him. It sounded like footsteps. And not the fast patter of a police rescue. The steps were heavy. It was one rather large person up there.
Bute was coming for him.
* * *
Kent fidgeted with a pen. Okay, there were some drawbacks to being “dead.” Every instinct he had told him to be out in the field. That as good as his dear wife was, she wasn’t him. She might be missing essential clues that would lead them to the killers.
“Nothing,” Nicole reported. “I’m at the school and there were nothing but residential streets here. I could check around the ball fields…”
Even she sounded defeated.
“No. Joshua is going to send you Mr. Varding’s credit card receipts. I need you to trace his movements. Maybe we’ll get lucky there.”
“On it,” his wife responded.
Despite the lack of experience stalking people, his wife made up for it in her persistence.
But Mr. Varding got around town. Nicole could use some help. “I know Ruben is suspended, but that doesn’t mean he can’t do some of this grunt work,” Kent suggested.
“He missed his afternoon appointment with IA. Glick is looking for him.”
The hairs at the nape of Kent’s neck went up. An electrical shock coursed through his body. His physical reaction was so strong that he bolted up out of his chair.
“Ruben is missing?”
This could be their biggest clue yet.
“I wouldn’t say missing. He’s had a rough day. He is probably off licking his wounds.”
Kent wasn’t buying it. “Nic, how many times has he texted or called you in the last four hours?”
Nicole paused and answered with great hesitation. “None.”
Pacing Joshua’s office, Kent’s mind starting piecing the information together. “He contacts you on average three times per hour. Especially if he was licking his wounds. Especially if I were dead.”
“What are you saying?” Nicole asked.
“Isn’t it obvious? The killers have kidnapped him,” Kent answered.
“No…”
Kent stopped pacing, patting Joshua on the back, pointing to the screen. “Where was Ruben last?”
Joshua started the search of Ruben’s cell phone GPS.
“A meeting with his lawyer,” Nicole answered.
He liked it when two people were working a single command of his. “Who is a woman, is she not?”
He could hear Nicole gulp. “Yes.”
Oh, now it was coming together.
“Weren’t there some legal papers in Mr. Varding’s house?”
“Yes,” Nicole said barely louder than a mouse.
“How much do you want to bet they were from Ruben’s lawyer’s firm?”
* * *
Nicole did not want to guess. Kent’s supposition would turn out right.
Ruben couldn’t really have been abducted, could he?
Her phone jangled in her hand as another call buzzed. Glick.
“It’s the Captain,” Nicole said. “I’ll call you right back.”
She hung up on Kent and answered the call. “Captain?”
“We’ve got a problem,” Glick stated in that gravelly voice of his.
“Ruben has been taken,” Nicole stated.
“Yes, how did you know?” her captain asked.
“He’s been too quiet for too long,” Nicole explained.
“No kidding,” Glick said. “I’ve checked everywhere. Paggie hasn’t heard from him in hours. She’s going out of her mind. His car is still at the café where he was meeting his lawyer for a meeting.”
Nicole’s heart sank. She’d hoped Kent was wrong. For once in his life, couldn’t he be wrong?
“What is the game plan?” Nicole asked.
“I tracked down Sonya. She was the last person to see him. Supposedly he walked off to his car and that’s the last time anyone heard from him.”
“I’ll head over and talk to her,” Nicole replied. She couldn’t tell her captain Kent’s theory without revealing his not-quite-so-dead status. It was going to have to be enough that she knew that the lawyer was now their prime suspect.
“She has gone home for the day. I will text you her address. Let me know if you get any information,” Glick said, then hung up.
The address came through almost immediately. Glick was worried. Now she was worried.
How the hell had they misplaced Ruben?
* * *
Ruben jerked his legs forward and back, trying to break the chair before Bute showed up, but he just didn’t have the strength or the time.
The large man descended the steps into the dank basement.
Bute chuckled as he found Ruben on the ground.
“I told her we should have given you the heroin now, but no…”
Heroin.
All of Ruben’s blood went to his feet. The reality of the situation hit him. He truly was in the clutches of a pair of vicious serial killers, who at first had tried to frame him for the murders and now had taken him hostage.
Bute walked over, leaned over and with no preamble, lifted Ruben’s chair up and set it aright. Ruben wasn’t a skinny guy. Bute’s upper body strength was impressive. He’d spent his time in prison wisely for his new occupation, apparently.
“Normally, I’d just kill you, but no, she’s got a plan,” Bute mumbled. “If it weren’t for the sex, I’d kill the both of you. I mean I knew from her letters she was a freak, but in person? You don’t have to rev that motor if you know what I mean. Front door. Back door. Side door. Hell I didn’t even know there was a side door.”
Unfortunately, Ruben did indeed know what Bute meant. Sonya and he had dated in college. It hadn’t worked out due to her rather, voracious sexual appetite. She put 50 Shades to shame.
Ruben had broken it off within the first two weeks. First, he simply wasn’t as limber as she needed. Second, she freaked him out. He wasn’t used to choking his lover as a form of foreplay.
Apparently her sexual tendencies belied an even darker interior.
Should he have seen this coming?
“Oh, we’ve got plans for you,” Bute said, circling Ruben. “Our finale in this town, then we take this show on the road.”
“Plans?” Ruben asked, then gulped. Maybe he didn’t want to know.
Bute smiled, showing off a mouthful of broken teeth. He cracked his knuckles for effect. It worked, as Ruben’s pulse skipped a beat.
“First I gets to have my way with you. I been looking forward to really letting loose,” Bute explained slowly as if he enjoyed his bad grammar. “I’ve got to do what she calls some murder decorating to make it just so. Then more s
ex. Isn’t freedom great?”
Yes, it was just wonderful.
* * *
Ruben’s abduction had been the best thing to happen in this investigation, than, well, anything. Or so Kent said.
Joshua was used to Kent or Nicole getting kidnapped. It was like how they operated, but Ruben? First accused of mass murder, then possibly the victim of one.
Yes, sirree, these were exciting days.
Joshua was busy running through traffic cam footage near the café where Ruben had disappeared. So far, he had come up empty, but Joshua was an optimist. The killers had to leave some kind of trail.
Kent paced behind him, craning to look over Joshua’s shoulder every few minutes, like that was going to make Joshua work any faster. Actually, it kind of did, but he didn’t want the profiler to know that.
A sound came from behind them. Kent bolted for the back door, but not in time as Jimmi rushed into the room. His friend must have been high on five Red Bulls because the techie usually kind of sauntered.
There was a super-awkward moment when Kent stopped his flight, and Jimmi stared at the profiler like he was seeing a ghost. Which technically, Jimmi kind of was.
“Wha…”
Kent turned, then straightened his jacket. “I am not dead.”
“Mind. Officially. Blown,” Jimmi said, making the hand movements to match his speech. “But there was a funeral and everything.”
“Sorry, I had to stay dead to catch our latest serial killer.”
Jimmi’s pupils were dilated to the point his eyes looked like big anime black orbs. “You’re alive?”
Kent smiled. “Most definitely so, I assure you.”
“You aren’t like a zombie or anything?” Jimmi asked.
“No, but wouldn’t that have been cool?” Joshua asked.
“Sorry to disappoint,” Kent said. “But there is a serial killer out there with Ruben…”
That seemed to jar Jimmi out of his shocked trance. “Right, right. That’s why I’m here. Seemed easier than texting back and forth…” Jimmi hit the palm of his hand on his forehead. “So that’s why you wouldn’t come over to my lab! I got it now. You needed to be near Kent!”
Joshua smiled as the dawning realization hit Jimmi. Kent had picked Joshua, not Jimmi, to confide in. Actually it was more a matter of practicality. Kent needed Joshua to fake the autopsy. To really sell the whole “Kent is dead thing.”
Still a look of pure unadulterated jealousy crossed Jimmi’s face.
That’s right, sucker. I got him all to myself for days.
Jimmi gave him a sideways glare usually reserved for buff guys at the bar who hit on chicks Jimmi liked.
“You two done cock fighting?” Kent asked.
“Absolutely,” Joshua said, giving a wink to Jimmi, which only seemed to enrage the techie further.
“Let’s find our errant Ruben, shall we?”
CHAPTER 17
Nicole knew from experience that, when you knocked on a suspect’s door and it opened all by itself, there was trouble.
“Hello?” she called out to the apparently empty house.
Did she really expect anyone to answer?
Nicole might not be as smart as Kent, but she wasn’t stupid either. She whipped out her phone and called Glick.
“Captain,” Nicole said. “Sonya’s house is open and no one is responding.”
Glick didn’t waste any time. “I’m sending back up. Wait until they arrive.”
Nicole was more than happy to obey that request, however, she did keep her ear cocked, listening for any chance Ruben may be inside.
She dialed Kent. “I’m at the lawyer’s house, but the front door was open.”
“Okay, let’s see what’s inside,” her husband replied.
“I’m waiting for backup,” Nicole explained.
Kent snickered. “And what fun would that be?”
It went against all her training, but she knew what Kent would say next. That every second counted, that Ruben could be in mortal danger as she waited. And Kent wouldn’t be wrong as much as she wished he could be.
Nicole pulled her gun and nudged the door open more with her toe.
Nothing still.
“I’m coming in,” Nicole said on the off chance that Sonya was just taking a shower and forgot to lock or even shut her door properly.
Right, because chicks, especially ADAs, were that loosey goosey with their safety.
Nicole took a step inside and checked her corners. All she found was a house worthy of being in Better Homes & Gardens. Sonya kept a tidy house, that was for sure.
Picking up speed, Nicole checked a bathroom off the living room, then swiftly moved into the kitchen, opening a closet in the hallway first.
So far, nothing.
The kitchen was spotless and devoid of life.
“Well?” Kent asked in her ear.
“Nothing so far,” Nicole answered.
“See? Told ya nothing to worry about.”
That was yet to be seen.
There was a guest room and bath on this floor, which were equally clean.
Time to head downstairs.
There was a kitchen door which clearly led to a basement.
God, she hated basements. Nothing good ever came out of a basement.
* * *
Kent watched with a bit of wonder as Jimmi and Joshua were working in fast forward mode. The two J’s did better together where they pushed each other to greater and greater heights.
The chatter though. For all that was holy, Kent really didn’t need to know Marvel’s movie release schedule through 2018. Seriously, he didn’t. But too bad. If Kent wanted information fast, that was simply the price he paid.
Besides the constant talking became white noise, giving Kent the opportunity to unhook from the conversation and process information in his subconscious.
Sonya was an interesting choice, but after reviewing her blog and social media accounts, Kent had come to the conclusion that the woman might be another distraction. She certainly hadn’t kidnapped Ruben. But she was still very, very important. Sonya meant something to Ruben, so she meant something to their girl.
Tugging at the logic lines, Kent was coming to the conclusion that Ruben was, in fact, smack dab in the middle of their girl’s tangled web. For the first time in his life, Ruben was the center of attention. Kent wondered how Ruben was enjoying the sensation.
Who in the world would put Ruben in such an esteemed position?
Theories and facts clashed in Kent’s mind. He wasn’t used to having so many conflicting thoughts about a case. Usually his path was obtuse, but logical.
His eyes found the screen that showed the map of the heroin overdoses.
Now though he looked at it through the prism of Ruben.
Two blocks from the first dead sex worker was Ruben’s favorite diner. The one with whole wheat bread and alfalfa sprouts on every freaking sandwich. Even the fake BLT.
The second death was right around the corner to the barber where Ruben received a hot shave once a week. Because, well, Ruben was Ruben.
Rapidly Kent spotted establishments that Ruben frequented very near each of the pros deaths.
The killer had been trying to entice Ruben this whole time. She had been dancing a dance that Ruben couldn’t or wouldn’t see.
Ruben, Ruben, Ruben.
There was only one person in the world that felt like that.
“Joshua….” Kent said, feeling outside his body. The answer was so simple it was almost ludicrous.
“I know, I know. We’re hurrying,” the morgue attendant whined.
“No. You can stop.”
“What?” Jimmi said, swinging around to face Kent. “Why?”
“Because I know who our killer is.”
* * *
Ruben took a punch to the face. Apparently, Bute had tired of waiting for his partner and decided to start “enjoying” himself a little early.
The guy was strong. Like cra
zy strong. The convict had already broken Ruben’s nose. A few ribs and possibly Ruben’s cheek bone.
He knew though that this was only the beginning. Bute had just gotten started. Ruben would have liked to have thought that he could have given Bute a run for his money, had his hands and feet been free, but honestly Ruben doubted it. Bute was a monster.
Then a creak on the steps stopped the pummeling.
Someone was coming down the stairs.
Could it be a rescue? It had to be a rescue. It had to be his salvation.
“Nicole?”
As the figure descended the stairs, she came into better view.
“Nicole?” Ruben slurred.
The woman wasn’t his partner, but his fiancée…“Paggie?”
How was Paggie here?
“What? What are you doing to him?” Paggie yelled, grabbing a pipe laying on the floor. She went at Bute like a Berserker.
Ruben knew that she’d taken some martial arts classes, but damn.
She got some really good hits in before Bute fought back.
Crack. The pipe slammed into the big man’s side.
He grabbed the pipe and went to jerk it out of Paggie’s hands. Ruben couldn’t let that happen. Throwing his weight to the side, he knocked into Bute, enough to make the killer lose his balance. Paggie took total advantage of the situation, jerking the pipe out of the man’s hands.
“How dare you!” she yelled, wailing on Bute’s forearm and thigh.
The man howled with rage, like really howled and threw himself at Paggie, enveloping her small frame in his bulk.
Ruben was down for the count, lying on his broken ribs, each breath a flare of pain.
He couldn’t see what was happening, but he could hear Paggie’s screams and Bute’s grunts. Then she must have squirmed out from under the man. She swung her pipe up and brought it back down hard at the back of Bute’s knee.
Bute’s leg buckled under him.
Once he was down, Paggie went to town, showering his head and upper body with blows. Blood sprayed everywhere, creating a modern art painting on the wall in bright red.
Bute went down on both knees, trying to fend off the attack with his arms which were now littered with cuts and bruises. But Paggie wasn’t done.
She concentrated on Bute’s head. His scalp split open, sending blood gushing down Bute’s face.
2nd Cycle of the Harbinger Series: The continuation of the #1 Hard-boiled/Police Procedural smash Plain Jane Page 16