____________________
3/23/96
Dear Diary
Today I had to arrest a man for beating on his young girlfriend. He had left her with a black eye and bruises on her arms and legs. After I arrested him, she wouldn’t file a complaint against him. The sheriff let him free. Why are girls so stupid, why would she be with a man like that?
But I had dinner with Gail. She looked so cute in shorts and the little top she wore. We had pizza and a couple of beers and went dancing, we giggled and played till after midnight. I get light headed when I am around her. I drove her home and she kissed me good night. It was my wish, to kiss her like that. She kissed me as if she loved me and I hope she does.
____________________
Storm skipped ahead in the diary, closer to the dates of the disappearance of Gail.
____________________
5/3/96
Dear Diary
Gail has moved in with me and we are together all the time now. Her parents hate me; they think I have ruined their daughter. People on the street look at us like we’re monsters. They all say bad things about us behind our backs. It seems to bother Gail more than me, she hates being looked at and ridiculed. She will be fine though our love grows everyday and I know she will be my lover for life. No one can come between Gail and me.
____________________
6/16/96
Dear Dairy
Today was a bad day. Gail stayed at her parents’ home last night and left me alone for the first time since we moved in together. Her parents hate me and I know her friends are trying to break us up. I am not sure but I think her parents had her old boyfriend over for dinner last night trying to show Gail the problem with being in love with a woman. She didn’t come home till this morning, she said she just spent the night with her parents, but I think she is listening to them. She is mine now and nothing is going to change that, even if I have to confront her parents.
Gail is mine.
____________________
6/26/96
Dear Dairy
Gail has planned a trip to the beach in Port Aransas. She says she is going with friends; the same friends who want to break us up. She has been seeing them a lot lately and she has been seeing her old boyfriend again. I won’t let her go. She belongs to me now and she belongs to me body and soul. I will stop her. I will make her understand she can’t leave me. No one can take her from me.
____________________
7/4/96
Diary
Today is Independence Day and I am independent again. Gail is gone now and no one will ever find her. I gave her a chance to change her mind; she knew she belonged to me. I told her I loved her as her eyes went blank, my kiss caressing her lips and the blood covered my hands. She was mine. She belonged to me and now she will always be mine. She looked so cute with her hair pulled back in a pony tail sticking through the back of her white longhorns hat, wearing her shorts and my cowboy boots. She pleaded, but it was too late; she would never belong to anyone else. Holding her after death was as natural and exciting as when we made love. I am ashamed of how I felt, feeling her warm blood on my arms and hands caused my orgasm.
____________________
7/4/97
Diary
It has been a year since our loss of Gail. The local police and Sheriff’s office have questioned me, but my regret of her disappearance is as bad as anyone else’s. Her parents think I had something to do with it or know where she is but it will never come out. If I had done it, do they think I would have left anything to lead them to me? Everything is gone; her clothes, her body. The knife is hidden and only my boots remain with me. Something strange has come over me, I find myself fantasizing about the day she died. About how it felt to hold her as her life ran out. The way her eyes pleaded, the intense orgasm I had.
____________________
9/1/97
Diary
I have applied for a job with the Houston Police. With my time as a Deputy Sheriff in Victoria I am sure I will get on. It is time to leave Victoria; after all this time people still look at me strangely and I can hear them muttering under their breath about “the Dyke” and Gail’s disappearance. Moving to a large city is the best for me. In a large city I can meet more women, maybe another Gail and get lost in the crowd.
____________________
11/3/97
Diary
Houston is wonderful and has opened up so much for me. I work on the south side of Houston for a Sergeant named Hebert. He is a crusty old fart, but seems to have taken a liking to me. I work days so my nights are free and he offered me a job working at the Stadium as security for one of VIP clubs that are open during special events. He tells me it is mainly making sure no one gets in without credentials and making sure the VIP drunks don’t get in trouble.
Houston also gave me a chance to take classes in martial arts and an FBI course in distinguishing killing techniques. I still have the dreams and fantasies about Gail and the exaltation I got from it. I know I can do it again. Police are mostly stupid and would never think of a fellow officer, especially a woman officer. I know I can plan it, execute it, and never get caught. I would have to do it where I can be a part of the investigation, so I know what they know. I am looking forward to this work at the stadium; it might be the perfect place to find another Gail.
____________________
As Storm leafed through the diary quickly he saw the names of all the other girls and their deaths described ghoulishly. He wanted to find her entries on Leslie and Peggy. He hastily turned the pages until he got to the dates from the days just passed. There he read Tess’s entries about Leslie. How Tess had seen Leslie on Wednesday of the barbecue and considered her another young beautiful tramp, one of those that hung out in the VIP clubs with older married men. Tess had then picked her as her next lover. Tess had done her research like she had all the other girls. She knew Leslie’s parents were dead, she knew she was from a small town and she knew the likelihood that anyone would push the investigation of her death was slim. “Lover” was the term Tess used when she talked about the girls in her diary.
The diary detailed how Tess would talk to the girls, becoming comfortable with them and them with her. She described how she would set the scene for the murder and use the Visqueen to contain the blood so no mess would be found. She wrote how she took her own clothes home to burn them and left the bloody victim’s clothes behind to be discovered close to where the body was found but not on the body; she wrote how she saved the boots as trophies and took photographs of the girls with a phallic device used on their anus. She did this, she explained, as a final humiliation of the girls and to make the cops think a man was doing it. It had to be obvious to the investigators that a man had raped these girls and then abused them anally. This kind of abuse would never be related to a female killer.
She talked about the cutting stroke that severed their windpipe and how the warm gush of air and blood felt so good on her skin. She described leaving the bodies where they could be found on the grounds of the Dome. After her first killing she had learned that the Show and police covered up events like this to save themselves the scrutiny of the public. She wrote about how very little was ever said or written about these girls and how the cases all seemed to go into the unsolved file quickly. That part had been a little disappointing. Actually, she wished she was creating more fear, but she satisfied herself with knowing it helped keep her secret of murder.
She described how she chose her victims. They all had to look like Gail and that was the first criteria. When she got to know them better the next hurdle was find out if all were from small towns and hopefully had little or no family that would push for an investigation into their deaths. She knew they all had been having affairs with older men during the show, making love to them in secret and secluded areas of the stadium. Each girl drank, normally leaving a little inebriated, making it easier for her to have an excuse to walk them outside. How they trusted her and felt
safe with her! But the girls never made it outside the stadium or off the grounds and with each girl’s death Tess would have another of what she called her “religious orgasms.”
For days after each killing Tess would polish and stroke the boots, bringing herself to another sexual delight. Leslie had been just like the others. Tess reveled in the fact she felt that no one was going to get any closer to catching her, to discovering her secret life.
Then Storm came to the entries about Peggy. Peggy was a different story. Tess had seen Peggy following him when he hadn’t that night in the VIP club, and she saw Peggy watching when he had talked to her. Tess was concerned Peggy had recognized her and was afraid that Peggy would tell Storm about the rumors from Victoria. She lost sleep that night and the decision was made—she had to get rid of Peggy and do it in a hurry, too much of a hurry to execute a good planning. Peggy didn’t really fit Tess’s type, but this was a necessity. In Tess’s mind there was no option but for Peggy to die.
Like any good police person, Tess got Peggy’s address and went to her house to check it out. There were no alarms, and she had broken in through the back door and left it open. She then drove back to the entrance into Peggy’s neighborhood and waited. When Peggy came home, she followed and waited until she figured Peggy was getting ready for bed. She quietly entered through the back and caught Peggy unaware. Peggy fought back; she had scratched Tess, but finally Tess had pinned her down and was able to use her knife on Peggy’s throat. After it was over, she staged the scene like she had with the other girls. She hoped it would lead anyone investigating the crime away from her and to the undiscovered killer of the other girls. She didn’t have time to clean up or move the body because it was about then that an HPD patrol car came down the street. Damn the neighborhood watches! Tess snuck back to her car and left, taking Peggy’s shoes with her to add to her trophy case.
Epilogue
So ends the case of Leslie Phillips and the seven tragically killed girls before her, including the beautiful young woman from Victoria, Storm reflected, as he filed the obligatory reports for Lieutenant Flynn. Storm hoped it would put Gail’s parent’s minds to rest to know her killer had been found. Although the prospective of finding her body was remote, there was the solace in knowing the final resolution of her killer.
Storm had mixed emotions about his work on the case. It was good to have solved the murders, but it was sad to know that these girls had died for the depraved fantasies of a lunatic serial murderer and their deaths had been ignored for so long. And for what? To keep the powerful of Houston and sleazeballs like Dresden and Leon Powers from getting their chaps dusty? All this to hush up bad publicity about the Show that might cause sponsors and their deep pockets to fly the coop?
He wondered how many heads would roll at the Show and in the mayor’s office, or if things would be handled differently in the future. His conclusion was probably that there wouldn’t be any major changes. Some things never change. But one thing was for sure, he was back to his old form and with a new partner, Hernandez, and he knew he didn’t want a drink.
As he stuck the forms into Flynn’s “in” box, he sighed. Some careers are going to be made with this case, others will be lost, but in the scheme of things, nothing really changes.
About the Author
A thirty-year resident of Houston, Texas, Jon Bridgewater graduated from the University of Nebraska–Omaha with a BS in Communications and English. His career was in sales, where he worked his way up to Vice President of Sales and Marketing for a US-based manufacturer of electronic equipment, prior to becoming an entrepreneur and pursuing his writing aspirations.
An ex-college football player and Omicron Delta Kappa Honor graduate, Jon has always loved entertaining people and storytelling, enough so that for a brief time in the early seventies, he tried his hand at acting and stunt work in television series and made-for-TV movies until the lack of work forced him back into sales.
His desire to entertain and tell stories never abandoned him and with a push from close friends, he decided to follow their advice and develop one of his stories into his debut release, Charity Kills. Not content with only one title, he has already completed his second book, After the Storm, and is currently working on the third as yet unnamed book to complete the trilogy.
Jon enjoys outside hobbies and activities such as fishing, skiing, riding his Harley Davidson Dyna Wide Glide and watching college football. You can often find him volunteering at events for special children or at various other charitable causes.
To contact Jon, email: [email protected]
or visit www.JonBridgewater.com
Coming Fall 2012
After the Storm
A David Storm Mystery
by Jon Bridgewater
In 2006, Hurricane Katrina blew more than just refugees into the city of Houston. Now, hardened criminals with gang affiliation are residing in the upper middle class neighborhoods, bringing with them their callous disregard for good versus evil. With yet another body on their hands in a city already reeling from monumental increases in crime, Detective David Storm and his loosely put together team of investigators struggle to solve the bizarre murder of one of their own.
Charity Kills (A David Storm Mystery) Page 22