In Houston it was well known that the real estate scam was the best scam someone could pull off; if a prominent official did get caught participating in such a scam it was easy to cover up unless that official was not part of the controlling political party. Hell, one ex-mayor of Houston had done a deal with the cable TV people when cable television was new to the city. He had gotten caught taking millions of dollars in kickbacks and his only punishment had been the loss of the job the next time he came up for election. The mayorette, who had uncovered the shady dealings, was the person who replaced him. Shortly after her election she herself was suspected in taking kickbacks from a company who was hired to do a study on an overhead light rail system for Houston. She took over $3 million in kickbacks from a contractor. A contractor who had the dubious honor of being indicted in every state in the union on RICO charges and bid fixing, and, as usual in politics, no wrongdoing was ever prosecuted. To top it off, she came back to Houston to attend a dinner thrown in her honor as a “great citizen of the city of Houston!”
Graft in a fast-growing city is nothing new, Storm said to himself, as he reflected on the building’s history. The medical examiner’s offices were located on the first floor, as most Houston buildings don’t have basements due to the proximity of sea level. To say it was not a bright and cheery place was an understatement and Storm always hated coming here. He had seen lots of dead bodies in his years on the force, but coming to the M.E.’s office was the pinnacle on his list of things not to do. It was cold, metallic, smelled of chemicals, and the sight of the dissection of bodies always made him queasy.
Dr. Alisha Johnson was the Assistant M.E. in charge on weekends. Her boss was another politico, appointed by the mayor who never worked late or on weekends. He was a motivated ladder climber, so he had to stay in front of the people who got him his job to make sure he was bound for greater glory. He and the mayor’s office had been through the ringer lately for all the errors coming out of the forensic labs, but both were good at smoke screens and so far had deflected any innuendo of blame.
Dr. Johnson, on the other hand, was a different story, and she was one of the best. She knew how to run her traps and what to look for while at the same time following exacting procedural protocol. In her favor also was the fact her name hadn’t been associated with any of the problems discovered with shoddy work; so far, her documentation and procedures had been above reproach. Simply, she was just damn good at her job.
Dr. Alisha Johnson had come from the one of the toughest neighborhoods in Houston. She had worked her entire life to become a doctor and when she did, she found she liked studying the dead more than curing the living. She loved the mystery of solving the cause of death and finding the clues that could catch a killer. The medical examiner’s office has been the perfect place for her. She had grown up in the Houston’s Third Ward and had seen her share of dead bodies even before she had entered high school. The Third Ward was a very unpleasant place to grow up; it was an area where surviving was a daily struggle. Because she was smart and good at science, she had earned a scholarship to Texas Southern University. After graduating with honors she attended Texas Baylor School of Medicine. Being black had never deterred her from her goals and no one ever accused her of exploiting it, either; if they did, Storm was pretty sure he wasn’t the only one who had heard her give that unlucky person an ear full of expletives describing their own family background.
A clerk met Storm at the door and told him that the girl had been picked up and was in Exam Room 2 with Dr. Johnson. As Storm walked down the hall, he was reminded why he hated this place; it was full of bodies waiting to be autopsied. Every questionable death required an autopsy before the body could be released to the family to bury. The idea that people were kept waiting to end their suffering over someone’s death always made him uneasy. Angie’s body had been here, and he, too, had been made to wait.
He vividly remembered her lifeless form lying on a cold metal table covered with a sheet and how he had had to offer positive identification of her for the M.E. He had been made to wait in a sterile waiting room until her exam had been finished, the reports written, before he could claim her body and make arrangements for a religious service, a ritual meant to comfort the living but that did little to release the demons in his mind.
He didn’t know yet if this girl Leslie had any family to grieve for her, but he knew a funeral would not satisfy them anymore than it had him. Finding a killer and hopefully discovering a motive would be the only thing to answer those unanswered “why?”s.
Storm found Room 2 and went in. He found Dr. Johnson looking at the body of the girl he had seen earlier. The girl was even prettier than Storm remembered and she looked so much better lying on this steel table than lying amongst the garbage.
“Hey, Alisha, what do you think?”
Alisha turned around, saw Storm standing there and motioned him over. Storm hated looking at dead bodies this way; it was not right, the dead had rights, too. They deserved dignity. But he looked. He had to.
Alisha had split the girl open from the base of her neck to her pelvis and laid most of her insides out on the table. A slit had been made in her stomach and the contents removed. They would need to be analyzed to see what she had eaten in the last few hours of her life, in hopes of discovering a clue as who might have seen her last.
“She bled to death, Storm. Her throat was cut and her carotid artery was slashed. She would have bled to death in less than a minute. Whoever did this also knew to make the cut so it would stop any kind of noise from his victim. He cut the windpipe in half. The only sound she would have made is the exhaust of air from her lungs.”
“Did you find anything else?”
“Yes, she had sex in the last twelve hours.”
“How do you know that?”
“We did the rape kit; you probably know it’s routine in a case like this. I found her vaginal opening had been bruised and semen had been left. She also had spermicidal left in her vagina and sexual lubricant in her anus.”
“What does that mean? Do you mean she had anal sex before she died?” said Storm, shocked by this new revelation.
“No, I think someone sodomized her after she was dead. As I said, there is some bruising in her vagina but none in her anus. The vaginal bruising could be from consensual sex.”
“So she had sex with the perp and then after he killed her, he sodomized her?” This was over the edge even for Storm. Nothing should surprise him anymore, but sexual crimes did, and he knew he had to come to terms quickly with this one.
“Well, I can only tell you what I found. I will do a DNA test on semen in her vagina to see if I can get a verifiable donor. I will then run it through all the data bases I have access to and see if we get a hit.
“Thanks, Alisha. I am on my way back out to the crime scene. Let me know what you find.” Damn, the asshole did her, then killed her, then sodomized her. This is one sick bastard.
Alisha went back to the examination with the same methodical precision she always did.
Storm called back over his shoulder, “Oh, by the way, her name is Leslie Phillips.”
“I will put that on her toe tag, I always like a real name better than ‘Jane Doe.’” Alisha, already absorbed in her work, acknowledged this new bit of information.
* * * *
Across town Leslie Phillip’s killer sat admiring the trophy from the morning’s kill—an almost new pair of Tony Llama cowboy, or in this case, cowgirl, boots. The killer was still swooning in the delight of the rush that came when the girl’s life slowly ebbed. Each girl’s death was such ecstasy to the killer, as the victim’s eyes stared pleadingly ahead, the light in them slowly fading, while warm blood crawled across their skin.
Raping her had been done for the police’s benefit; it was not really part of the rapture, just something to throw the cops off. I’m so much smarter than the cops. “Rape” is such a strong word. An insinuation of rape will send law enforcement in a totally wron
g direction; these girls were all whores, anyway. They all cheated. They didn’t care who loved them. They all deserted the one who really loved them.
When the evening news came on, the killer finally got the confirmation. The news had just broken that a girl had been found dead in the vicinity of the Dome. There wasn’t much else in the report, just that she was found naked and dead in a dumpster outside the new stadium.
The killer knew the political cover-up had begun. It would be just like the others; the killer was the only one who had really cared about them. There might be more in tomorrow’s paper, but for now all that was mentioned was that police investigators would be looking into it. The killer knew nothing would be found—the killer was too good for that. Everything had been cleaned up: no blood trail, no bloody crime scene, just bloody clothes tossed somewhere else near where the girl had been found. There was not a sign of anything left behind belonging to the killer. It was a good thing the county didn’t have an open burning prohibition; the fifty gallon burn barrel in the backyard had taken care of any trace that might lead detectives to figure out who the killer was. The killer was sure no clues had been left, but if the cops found something, the killer would be close enough to the investigation to know.
The first girl had been a true love, but had betrayed the killer, leaving for a different way of life. The first murder had been out of rage and torment toward someone the developing serial killer had once loved, someone the killer had shared a life with. It had been sloppy and the killer had gotten lucky that no evidence was left to point to who had taken part in the girl’s disappearance. But the thoughts and memories of the total control over another person’s life and death had lingered. Ah, the exquisite pleasure I felt as the life left her eyes. And the feel of the warm blood covering my hands as it ran down her neck. That body had disappeared and would with luck never be found.
It was during these hours of lucid thought and sexual perversity after the first kill, that the thoughts about how to commit another murder began to develop. It was then the killer meticulously formulated the plan. The killer picked out the target and the execution date and then became the predator.
During the past nine years the ever-more-efficient killer had acquired increasing expertise with each murder. Disposing of the bodies in hopes they would never be found was out of the question—the killer had discovered not only how to never leave any clues behind but how to leave behind red herrings that would lead law enforcement to the wrong conclusions. The killer learned to be purposeful and patient in everything: the target selection, the timing, the method of the kill, and the clues left behind. When a chance opportunity to be involved in the largest high dollar charitable event in town each year presented itself, it became the perfect hunting ground. The killer knew that such an event could not allow negative public awareness, and if the victims were correctly chosen, there would be no one left behind to push for a solution to the girls’ deaths. The entire thing would simply disappear after a period of time and the loss of one more young nobody would be forgotten.
While sitting in the spotless trophy room, the killer with eyes closed visualized the scene once again, feeling the blood, seeing the plea in the dying girl’s eyes, which brought with it the magical orgasm of untold pleasure. Then the killer opened the diary and began to write. In the future someone would read the pages that described this death and the others, and relive vicariously the consuming passion it brought back to life.
Chapter Four
Friendship Cost
Storm called Russell Hildebrant, his lifelong friend and trusted confidant, to see if he was up yet. Russell had never been good at getting up early and it was only 9:30 Sunday morning. After rasslin’ with the receiver, Russell answered the phone in his customary Sunday morning guttural drawl and Storm was sure he had had another of his infamous late night tutorials. A “tutorial” was what Russell called his late night rendezvous with one of his many female admirers.
Russell was a local television celebrity doing the work week’s nightly weather at 6:00 and 10:00 p.m. On weekends he spent time playing golf and hanging out at the country club where he had belonged since his parents had first taken him there when he was a boy. He, too, was a Houston native born and raised, but on a different side of the tracks from Storm. They had met in college when they had become roommates and for a short time played on their college football team.
Storm figured the Saturday night before had been no different than many of Russell’s Saturday nights. He had probably participated in a charity gathering with initials for a name—there had been so many of these over the years one set of letters began to resemble all the others. Many times at these functions Russell acted as the master of ceremonies and reveled in the limelight. He would schmooze with the powerful and wannabe famous who contributed to charities in hopes of getting their pictures in the society section of the local papers. Most times these events were also attended by social-climbing young women looking for the man who would sweep them off their feet, marry them, and give them the life they felt they deserved.
Russell fit exactly the bill. Storm understood that the only problem with Russell was that he was a confirmed bachelor. Marriage had never entered his mind, and he still had a plethora of women to keep him busy. Whether at a bar or a charity dinner, his mind was on one thing, his enjoying life. If he didn’t have someone au courant accompanying him, he would simply cast his net to meet a new evening companion. The night would consist of drinking ‘til he couldn’t drive, calling a cab, taking the girl home to his house, popping a little blue pill, and trying to have sex till he passed out, which was probably before it was mutually satisfactory. More than once Russell had awakened to find some of his stuff missing, but that didn’t seem to bother him—he wrote the missing items off to “meeting Miss Wrong.” Being a trust fund baby meant money and possessions had never held too much deference to him. Things were replaceable; it was the people in his life, friends like Storm, Russell could never replace.
“You up?”
“No,” groaned Russell. “How far away are you?” Storm could tell Russell understood the drill—calling this early meant his old college friend was on his way over.
“About fifteen minutes. Time for you to get rid of the floozy,” snickered Storm.
Storm knew Russell’s modus operandi. If a girl did happen to be there, a cab would be out front before Storm could get to the building. If the girl had not yet made her departure by the time Storm got to Russell’s condominium building she would be down by the door with the doorman waiting for her ride. The doorman knew Storm and usually just waved him in, giving Storm a wink if the woman standing with him was the one Russell had just pushed out. Today was no different; a young brunette with a bad case of bed head and rumpled clothes stood next to the doorman and tried to not make eye contact with anyone. Although she looked irritated, she just stood patiently waited for her ride to wherever she had to go.
Hildebrandt lived in a high-rise condo overlooking Memorial Park near Loop 610 and the Galleria. His monthly maintenance fees were higher than Storm’s entire mortgage payment, but Russell didn’t seem to care. There was a doorman, a pool, tennis courts, and even an on-site dry cleaner. Russell lived on the eighteenth floor and the view from the huge picture windows was awesome. He had lived there for ten years and Storm and Angie had spent enough time there to feel at home. One of their favorite times was watching the downtown Fourth of July fireworks from the wraparound shatterproof windows that offered a view east toward downtown and overlooked the park.
Russell and Storm had always been at home with one another and always had each other’s backs. Lately it had been Russell’s turn to stand by Storm. Although physically different—Storm was dark, Russell was fair—they were both taller than average and athletic. Russell’s blonde hair and blue eyes made him and Storm look like different sides of the same coin. Even their personalities were different but complementary: Russell was gregarious and outgoing, where Storm was mo
re serious and soft-spoken. The friendship had developed as easy as bees take to honey. With the loss of Storm’s brother in college and Russell being an only child, they had filled a void in each of their lives and their friendship grew through the years of both bad times and good.
Storm pushed the doorbell and waited, and a rode-hard-put-up-wet Russell answered the door, dressed only in knee length shorts and with a serious case of pillow creases across his face.
“Well, Baretta, what made you wake me up so early?” asked Russell as he wiped the sleep from his eyes.
Storm didn’t care for the nickname, but Russell had used it since he had made detective. So he had learned to live with it.
“I am your wakeup-and-vanquish-your-latest-floozy service. Didn’t I tell you? It’s my new vocation in life.” Storm grinned because this has been his typical answer for more than twenty years.
“Fine. But really, to what do I owe this early morning intrusion into my otherwise exciting and devil-may-care life?”
“I’ll tell you, if you make me some coffee, or did your latest road whore steal your coffeemaker this time?”
“I don’t know, check the kitchen. If it is still there she didn’t steal it, and who told you she was a road whore?” Russell chuckled, well aware of his own reputation.
Russell went to work making himself a Bloody Mary, a habit that had been part of his Sunday morning ritual since his parents used to take him to the country club for brunch since the age of twelve. He once told Storm that he and the other children of prosperity could always get the wait staff to bring lightly made drinks while their parents weren’t looking. As he listened to the tinkle of ice in the glass, Russell asked again what had brought Storm over so early on a Sunday.
Storm snickered and said, “Oh, I was up and the thought crossed my mind, who is a bigger pain the ass in the morning than I am? Poof, your name sprang to mind. I know you love getting up early for breakfast, although it be liquid, not to mention I wanted to make sure you got off to church on time.”
Charity Kills (A David Storm Mystery) Page 4