2nd Cycle of the Harbinger Series: The continuation of the #1 Hard-boiled/Police Procedural smash Plain Jane

by Carolyn McCray

  Despite his misgivings, Ruben could find nothing to support his feeling of dread. The machines were truly in disrepair. The boxes sagged from too much time stacked upon one another.

  He met Nicole on the other side of the large room. A single door lead to the back half of the warehouse.

  Nicole clicked off her light. Ruben did the same.

  The room plunged into utter darkness.

  He heard Nicole’s hand reach out and turn the doorknob. He didn’t like this, not at all. Ruben put his arm out and placed his hand on Nicole’s shoulder, so as not to lose her. This was the most contact that they’d had since Kent crashed back into their lives.

  Following silently, they made their way into the new area. This section of the warehouse was divided into many separate rooms. Or at least that was how it seemed. As his eyes adjusted to the darkness, he could make out vague shapes.

  Was that a light through a window? Or just an illusion his mind cooked up in the pressing darkness?

  Nicole struck in that direction, so apparently it wasn’t an illusion.

  No, there was definitively a light back there and by the way it flickered, more than likely candlelight.

  Someone was back there.

  CHAPTER 6

  Joshua jumped off his seat, sending the stool clattering across the old tile floor.

  “I’ve got a match!”

  Maybe he shouldn’t have been quite so excited. Now that they knew the cultists went into the clubs as elderly women, it was only a matter of time when they found one of them on the security footage.

  Jimmi rolled his way over. “Whatcha got?”

  “I built an algorithm to ignore hair and clothing and focus on bone structure.”

  “And? Don’t bury the lead, dude.”

  “And look at what I found.”

  In one frame was the picture of a young man trying to look older. His hair, or more likely a wig, was salt and pepper. A longer, hooked nose and high forehead. In the other frame was a middle-aged man with a double chin and white hair. What was exactly the same was the distance between their eyes and the height of their ears. No matter your disguise, there were a few features you simply couldn’t hide.

  “Great job…” Jimmi said, typing rapidly, doing his part. “And here is the best composite of what the guy actually looks like.”

  Joshua stared at the new picture. The guy looked, well normal. Not a monster. No enlarged brow or filed down teeth. The guy seemed like you could meet him at a café and never give him another look.

  How could so much evil dwell in such an utterly ordinary vessel?

  “Do you recognize him?” Jimmi asked.

  “He could be like five guys from my Starbucks.”

  Jimmi nodded. “I know. I feel like I might have seen him, but can’t put my finger on it.”

  “Does he pop up on any registry?”

  Jimmi clicked a few more keys. “Nope. He’s clean.”

  Of course he was.

  But he wasn’t. He wasn’t at all clean.

  * * *

  Kent stood in the exercise yard. It was nearly vacant. There were only a few dozen prisoners out and about, scattered over an area meant to hold hundreds. They were only allowed out when the general population was at meals.

  A few of his fellow protective custody inmates lifted weights. A few threw some hoops. Kent supposed if they got organized, they could form a baseball team, but none seemed so inclined.

  All the better for Kent. He wasn’t exactly a team sport kind of guy.

  As a matter of fact he was striking for the far end of the yard where some bleachers sat in the shade of the infirmary. He couldn’t have these outings spoil his otherwise pale, brooding features.

  Kent sat in the shade, looking past the fence, as if he longed for home. Which he did. He missed Nicole’s scent. He missed Logan making his intensely endearing gurgling sounds. Such was parental love. He missed busting Ruben’s chops.

  But right now he needed to act completely disinterested in what Martin was doing.

  Martin was being equally circumspect. He appeared to be taking a little stroll around the yard, yet that flabby gut told Kent the serial killer wasn’t doing it for the exercise.

  How many hours of yard tape did Kent watch? He’d been trying to spot Martin’s dead drop. The serial killer had to have one. He just had to. The man was on restricted access to the internet and had no visitors, not even his lawyer. So how was he sending out orders to his cult?

  A dead drop was the only answer. Martin placed instructions in some hiding nook or cranny, then later a prisoner or guard picked up the note and passed it along to the outside.

  As much sense as it made, Kent still could find no evidence of the actual dead drop.

  And Martin was being as cagey as an experienced serial killer could be. For as much as Kent ragged on Martin, there was no doubt the man was a vicious, talented serialist. If it hadn’t been for that taillight, Martin might still be out killing to this day.

  Staring back out into the nothingness, Kent used his peripheral vision. But as good as it was, Martin truly did seem to be taking a stroll.

  Right.

  * * *

  Nicole and Ruben flanked the door. It had a large window that allowed the candlelight to flood from the far room to this one. Figures passed by the light, casting long, dark shadows.

  Neither had called for backup.

  They probably should, however they simply didn’t have the time. They could be detected at any moment.

  Ruben put his hand on the doorknob. Nicole gave the nod.

  Ruben twisted the knob then shoved the door open. Nicole burst into the room, pushing her lead foot out to stop the door from rebounding.

  “Police!” Nicole shouted, sweeping her lighted gun from the left to the right.

  People scattered from her inspection. Ruben rushed in beside her.

  “Stop! Police.”

  Apparently that was the reason that the others fled. Each was dressed in a thick dark robe, their hoods up. Nicole couldn’t get a good look at any of them.

  Nicole squeezed the trigger, but didn’t fire. Damn it, she just couldn’t be sure these weren’t just messed up teenagers. Harmlessly rebelling in an abandoned warehouse.

  Ruben hadn’t fired either.

  Neither wanted to shoot an unarmed innocent. Which left her very little options as the robed mystery guests all sprang in different directions.

  She holstered her gun and took off.

  Time to catch some rabbits.

  * * *

  Ruben took off right as Nicole took off left.

  They needed to catch these creeps alive.

  And they were fast. Young and fast.

  He was after three of them. Their robes flicked and snapped behind them. One jumped over a stack of crates, knocking them over behind him. Pretty classic escaping perp move.

  Ruben was ready for it and put his track skills to good use, sailing over the tumbling crates.

  The three split off in three different directions. Ruben kept to the nearest. He was the smallest and seemed the most vulnerable. The kid hit a door and stumbled out into the street.

  Thank goodness. There was light now. Blinding, at the moment, but Ruben would take it.

  The area was abandoned. Not just this building but the entire block. Ruben would get no help from pedestrians, because there were none.

  Hopefully he wouldn’t need it. He was closing in on the kid. It appeared the escapee was barefoot. Too bad for him. Ruben reached out. The cloth of the kid’s cape brushed past his fingers.

  So close.

  Gritting his teeth, Ruben kicked it into another gear. A speed normally only seen on the treadmill.

  This time when he reached out, Ruben snagged the edge of the robe. He wrapped his fingers around the cloth and jerked back, knocking the kid off his feet.

  With a startled scream, the kid went down. Ruben had to put on the brakes, running several feet past the figure, then double
d back, jerking the hood away from the Downer’s face.

  It really was just a kid. Thirteen. Fourteen? How could that be? He was too young to be in a murderous cult. He had way too many pimples to be a killer.

  Grabbing the boy by the collar, Ruben hauled him to his feet.

  “Well, what do you have to say for yourself?” Ruben asked, pulling the kid’s face an inch away from his.

  Then the boy smiled, showing off his braces.

  Then he bit down, hard.

  Damn it.

  The boy became dead weight. Ruben lowered him to the ground and tried to fish whatever capsule the boy had just bit into. But the braces made it hard.

  Slicing the crap out of his fingers, Ruben still couldn’t get the poison out of the kid’s mouth. The boy foamed at the mouth, seizing right under Ruben’s hold. There was nothing he could do as the boy’s eyes rolled back in his head and he took his last shuddering breath.

  “Yours too?” Nicole said, panting next to Ruben.

  So they’d both lost their suspects.

  This case just couldn’t get much worse.

  * * *

  Nicole couldn’t believe it. They had been so close. Maybe they should have waited for backup. But then they’d probably just have six dead bodies on their hands. At least then there wouldn’t be any more Debbie Downer deaths.

  Ruben seemed even more shaken than she was. As EMT and CSIs swarmed the warehouse, Ruben was out back, pacing it off. She knew not to approach him when he was in pacing-mode. Not that she really wanted to talk to him much anyway. He was the reason her husband was in prison. So work, yes, she’d figured out how to work with him. But comfort him? No, just no.

  Now that the work lights were set up off a generator, Nicole stepped back into the warehouse.

  It was about as macabre as you would imagine. Lots of violent religious imagery. Then to counterpoint all the drama was a single propane hot plate with a cold pan of Spaghetti-O’s.

  They had just been kids.

  God, what happened in your young life that would drive you to this? Living in a derelict warehouse, eating reheated Spaghetti-O’s? Planning your next massacre?

  There was a pile of dirty laundry in the corner. Discarded robes stained with blood. Nicole was pretty damned sure that blood would come back as victims of the honky tonk massacre.

  There were surveillance photographs from previous crime scenes. Clearly the murders were planned thoroughly and well in advance.

  However, there weren’t any pictures of new sites. They must have had a new crime in mind, didn’t they? Mass murderers seldom came out of the gate then just stopped.

  So why weren’t there any pictures of their new target?

  Something about this felt all-wrong. Like somehow it was staged just for their amusement.

  Enough information left to prove it was the Debbie Downer cult, but absolutely no clue as to how they were moving forward.

  God, she wished Kent was here. He would see through the illusion and see the scene for what it really was. An elaborate hoax told as much about the killer as a real crime scene could.

  * * *

  “Come on, come on, come on,” Nicole urged, placing her hands on Joshua’s shoulder. It might have been exciting except she dug her fingernails into Joshua’s flesh. There was nothing seductive about that move.

  Joshua knew exactly how frustrated she was. Both of her and Ruben’s suspects had killed themselves with arsenic capsules. Not a pretty way to go.

  But her real frustration was after having two suspects and a warehouse full of evidence, the case hadn’t progressed a single bit. Hundreds of fingerprints had been cataloged, yet not a one popped up on any of their systems. The dead Downers were still unidentified.

  “This can’t be a set up,” Ruben said as he paced at the back of his room.

  These two were starting to freak Joshua out.

  “It has to be,” Nicole retorted, removing her hands from Joshua’s shoulders. “Nobody is this lucky. And without a sign of their next target?”

  “I can’t…I can’t even wrap my head around what it would take to put on this much of a show.”

  Ruben was no Kent, that was for sure. Even if Joshua was just a little biased. Kent wouldn’t bother with why a crime was missing. He would figure out a way to have it all make sense.

  But not even Nicole was offering up much more than conjecture.

  “Why would anyone set up such an elaborate ruse for nothing?” Jimmi asked.

  Nicole swung around, doing a nearly dead-on impersonation of her husband, but before snapping in irritation, she stopped, very un-Kent like and cocked her head.

  “Not for nothing, right?” Nicole asked.

  “Well, what else do you use a ruse for?” Joshua asked. “To fool someone.”

  “Misdirection?” Ruben offered.

  Nicole nodded, pointing to the screen with the warehouse feed. “Let’s not focus on what they didn’t leave us, but on what they did. They want us to find a clue that will lead us to a trap of some sort.”

  Joshua rubbed his hands together.

  Now Nicole was talking.

  * * *

  Kent laid back against a bleacher seat. While Martin wasn’t exactly giving up the goods, it was an otherwise pleasant afternoon, which would be over soon as the general population finished lunch and got their turn in the yard.

  Three men headed toward Kent. If trouble could walk, it would be these three. Aryans, Kent would assume. The shaved heads. The tattoos. The permanent frowns.

  These men were not part of the protective custody cellblock. Kent thought he would have recognized them.

  Oh, those silly guards. So very easy to bribe.

  “You,” the largest of the large men grunted.

  Kent ignored him, looking out past the fence. Soon, very soon, he would be out of here, that was if he survived this little White Pride encounter.

  “I said, you,” the man repeated sounding rather annoyed. Really? Kent should be the annoyed party here?

  Kent only had a few heartbeats to assess the situation. None of the men seemed to have weapons, but those thick fists could do plenty of damage. But why would the Aryans be after him? He’d just beat the crap out of the Latin Kings. Shouldn’t that have gotten him on the Aryans’ good side?

  Apparently not.

  “He said, you.”

  Ah. The power of vocabulary.

  “Yes?” Kent asked brightly with a smile on his face.

  Yep, that kind of freaked these guys out. They had expected some kind of hostile rebuttal or at the very least some venom-dripping sarcasm. Switch it up. That was Kent’s motto.

  “Um…um…” the first Aryan stammered.

  “Can I help you?” Kent queried, again honey-tongued.

  The smallest of the bald men stepped forward. “He’s had enough of your fancy-pants talk. He wants you to shut your trap.”

  Kent pressed that smile on his lips. For one thing, he’d been called quite a few things, bastard, Svengali, and effing bastard, but fancy-pants? Not so much. “And who is ‘he?’”

  The three men looked to one another. Clearly they had been given a message by someone, but they didn’t know if they should reveal the name. Such was the results of a grand total of fifth grade education between the three.

  “How am I to know to shut my mouth in front of him, if I don’t’ know who ‘he’ is?” Kent clarified.

  As the three continued their silent, idiotic struggle, Kent wondered what it felt like to have such a narrow view of the world. White is Right. That was about all they could fit in their brains. For a brief moment he felt sorry for the thugs.

  They would never know the deep satisfaction of completing a New York Times crossword puzzle or understanding how screwed the world was if they killed off too many more bees.

  Let’s see how well White is Right held up when the world’s crops began failing due to lack of pollination.

  “Any trouble here?” Martin asked as he walked
up.

  “No, no,” Kent said. “Apparently I am a fancy-pants and I am trying to determine who dislikes me so.”

  “Wouldn’t it be easier to figure out who likes you?” Martin said with a grin. “Why don’t you guys just shuffle off to your man cave.”

  The men’s hands balled into fists, but they did not act on their anger. Interesting.

  Martin shooed the men away and lo and behold, they actually left.

  Like Kent said. Interesting.

  CHAPTER 7

  Ruben hated head games. He hated picking through the brain of a serial killer. Which made the fact his fiancée had been a serialist all the more ironic. She’d seemed so straightforward. Not simple by any means, but ordinary in the best possible way.

  Then the knives had come out.

  And the worst part? Kent was never, ever going to let him live it down. All the better that the profiler was in prison, now wasn’t it. Glick was the only person besides Ruben who was happy about it, but that was okay. He’d rather take the recriminating stares of his co-workers than the berating from the profiler.

  “Hey, did anyone else notice this?” Jimmi asked, pointing to a blown up picture of the latest crime scene. Or was it?

  Ruben stepped forward. “His neck hasn’t been cut yet.”

  Nicole nodded. “This picture was taken before the final blow.”

  But what did that matter?

  It seemed in every other way the scene was exactly the same as the crime scene photographs. But then again he’d never been very good at those “find five differences” game.

  “There,” Nicole said, pointing to a matchbook on the floor next to the kneeling victim. “Blow it up.”

  Joshua did as instructed. The Down the Rabbit Hole Club Extraordinaire.

  Nicole swung around to face him. “That is the next ‘target.’”

  Or at the least that was what the cultists wanted them to believe.

  “But when?” Ruben asked. “There have been weeks to months between attacks. We could be waiting around forever for another attack.”