DEAD MAN'S JUSTICE - A Place of Evil (Stone & McLeish Thriller Series of Stories Book 2)

by Gregory Stenson

It was just after 4 p.m. Ramirez had had another call from an officer out in the field.

  Sofia Perez, the second girl to go missing, had been found alive, wandering the streets, minutes from her home. The officer told Ramirez that there was evidence that she had also been drugged but the difference was that she was conscious and had ‘woken up’ when the cold air had hit her. She’d been blindfolded and her hands were tied behind her back. There were no witnesses this time. Sofia was taken to the same hospital as Tameka for a checkup by Dr. Harper. There was a very real chance that Sofia could tell them something about her abductor.

  Ramirez left a voicemail for Finch and told the sergeant to keep calling the Detective’s cell phone and get him to contact him the second he came back on line.

  Tariq was sitting at the kitchen table scrolling through the idetails of Thompson’s first crimes on his IPad. Phelps was taking photos of the wall of clippings and then of the computer images before dismantling it ready for removal as evidence. CSI Officer Jones had her head in Thompson’s closet meticulously going through his clothes looking for blood and fibers with an ultra-violet scanning machine.

  In the gory photographic evidence from the court case Tariq saw a photo of the cupboard where the bodies of the three dead schoolgirls were found in 1995. He wondered where it was, he hadn’t seen anything that resembled a cupboard when walking through the apartment the first time. The doors to the cupboard looked to be no more than three feet high and three feet wide. It was the same color and material as the walls all around the apartment. When Tariq’s curiosity had been aroused he was like a pit-bull, he would shake something and not let it go until he’d nailed what he was looking for.

  He wandered around from room to room looking for the cupboard, but figured it had to be behind something that was slightly bigger in dimension and therefore concealing its presence. When he got to the main bedroom he saw a home-made headboard out of stained plywood at the head of the bed, it must have been four foot high. The hairs on the back of his neck prickled and a shiver ran down his spine.

  ‘Give me hand a here officer,’ he said to one of the SWAT guys standing nearby. They dragged the bed away from the wall and the board behind it was loose. Tariq motioned to the officer to help him slide the plywood to one side. It moved easily so they carried it and leant it against the side wall. A loose piece of gypsum had been cut away from the wall itself and held in place with tape, but it was the cupboard that was once the temporary resting place for the three poor souls who had the bad luck to cross paths with ‘Bad’ Billy Thompson.

  Tariq stood back. He could smell something putrid seeping through the cracks between the makeshift door and the wall. He knew the smell, it left a taste death in the back of his throat and he wanted to spit it out. He was almost too afraid to open the cupboard.

  But he did open it up.

  Finch was in the next room and was pacing around getting angrier and angrier, ‘We need to put out an APB on this guy. He might not come back for days. He could be anywhere and so could the other girls.’

  Tariq heard Finch.

  ‘No. You don't need to do that Finch.’ Tariq spoke loudly so Finch could hear.

  Finch walked into the bedroom where he reckoned Tariq’s voice had come from. Tariq was still kneeling on the floor by the open cupboard. Finch glanced over his shoulder and saw why Tariq had said what he did.

  Inside the cupboard was the body of ‘Bad’ Billy Thompson. His throat had been cut from ear to ear. On his bloody chest was a hand written note with five words that removed all doubt as to why he’d been murdered.

  FoR sUSaN caRol aNd maRy

  Chapter 59

  Mac had bought a street map from a gas station and asked the attendant for directions to the address he’d found back at the house where he’d broken into earlier. It had been hours since he’d last eaten. He stopped for a meal at the diner next to the station to recharge his batteries. He had tried to call Stone several times but the special cell phone they’d agreed to keep solely to contact each other was switched off.

  He ate as much as he could, he had no idea when he would he would get the next opportunity. Tracking down Scarface and finding the building might take time and he wouldn't give up till he had found whoever it was who had ordered him and Stone to be killed. All he intended to do was find the place, make sure he found Scarface and the SUV he saw him drive away in, and let the cops know exactly where he was and wait then for backup.

  A waitress bringing him a refill of coffee turned her head to watch a TV update as she was filling his mug, the screen was behind Mac and he couldn’t see it, ‘What’s the world coming to,’ she said. ‘They’ve just found another girl you know? Alive. It’d be a miracle if they were all found safe and sound.’

  ‘There’s two now you say? What was her name?’

  The waitress shouted to the server behind the counter who could hear the TV up close, ‘Barbara, what’s the name of the second girl?’

  ‘Sofia, Sofia Perez, the Spanish girl,’ came the reply.

  Mac’s momentary glimmer of hope was dashed. He wondered how Stone was coping. He’s tough, he knew that, and he’d seen him face a lot of death and misery out in the Middle East, and also through the whole crazy business in Trinidad. In Trinidad he hadn’t faltered once, he outsmarted them all and got Karla back from the brink of death. But this was his daughter, his own flesh and blood. He pitied the guy who was responsible if Stone got to him before the cops did.

  He cleared his plate, and seconds, and three cups of coffee and he was good to go. He left the waitress a tip and got back in the car, headed for the address whilst it was still light.

  *

  ‘How long’s he been dead?’ Finch asked Phelps, who had come to see what all the fuss was about. He was crouching down next to the body of Billy Thompson, checking it over. Phelps was lifting Billy’s arms and fingers trying to assess whether rigor mortis had begun and he had a digital thermometer with a sensor on his skin to see how much body temperature he’d lost.

  ‘Rigor hasn’t started fully yet and the body’s still relatively warm, he’s down about ten degrees, we’re talking an hour, two to three at the most,’ said Phelps removing the sensor and packing it away.

  ‘Then he’s not our man, not for these five girls anyway.’

  ‘How so?’

  ‘The first girl was found at approximately three this afternoon and I just turned my phone back on and I’ve got a VM from Ramirez, they found another girl alive and wandering near her home at just after four.’ Finch was looking at his wrist watch and making a simple calculation. ‘Someone’s releasing the girls and driving them back to where they were taken from. I reckon we can expect the next at five.’

  ‘I see,’ said Phelps. ‘So this is a revenge killing for the first girls all those years ago,’ referring to the body in front of him.

  ‘Yeah, that’s about the size of it Phelps, I reckon the disappearance of the new girls probably brought it all back to one of the fathers of Susan, Carol or Mary. He probably heard that Thompson had been released and it gave him ideas, he then found out where he lived and exacted his revenge.’

  ‘Shouldn’t be too difficult to close this case out.’

  ‘No I guess not. Who do you feel more sympathy for Phelps? The father? Or this piece of shit.’

  ‘No contest.’

  ‘I’ll leave you and Jones to work the scene.’ Finch looked over to Jack and his guys, who were waiting for instructions, ‘Jack, as ever...thanks for your help. Stand your guys down, okay?’ Finch told Tariq to get the car; he turned to look over the dingy, smelly apartment one more time before he walked out the door. ‘Billy Thompson won’t hurt anymore girls. May his body rust in piss.’

  Phelps said, ‘Amen.’

  Jones and Phelps went back to work.

  When Finch reached the Ops van, the SWAT guys were getting changed and securing their weapons away. Jack was in the driving seat up front filling out his log.

  Finch
saw Stone sitting by himself wringing his hands anxiously, ‘Did they tell you?’ said Finch.

  ‘Tell me what? No,’ said Stone. He was drinking a coffee and by the look of his fingers he’d stopped just short of biting his nails down to the bone.

  ‘Billy’s dead. Tariq found him in the same cupboard that he’d put his victims, he’s not our man. Phelps says he’s been dead three hours max or thereabouts. If we’d arrived any earlier we’d have been witnesses.’

  ‘But the CNN report? And maybe he has an accomplice, maybe they’re still...’

  ‘Stone... No.’ Finch needed to stop Stone torturing himself. ‘These pedophile guys always work alone, always. Sides, our girls were found in the last two hours and...the report, these sickos have a morbid interest in all murders, especially those they would have liked to have done themselves. That’s why he would have saved the report photos.’

  Stone suddenly realized that Finch had said ‘girls’, ‘Girls? There’s another been found?’ the yearning look in his eyes was painful to see.

  Finch put a hand on Stones shoulder, ‘It’s not Laura. I’m sorry buddy. Sofia Perez has been found, alive. Don’t lose hope Stone. Let’s get back to the precinct and put together what we know, okay?’ Stone didn’t ask Finch who had killed Billy, he had enough to worry about. Finch didn’t go as far as to tell Stone about his theory that the next missing girl would be released at five p.m.

  The last thing Stone needed was false hopes.

  Ramirez never made it back to the precinct. He got a call from Officer O’Reilly telling him to get over to the safe house where his wife and daughter were right away. ‘They are okay,’ he told him, someone had tried to get to them but the Officer on protection duty had fought him off, a young guy called Danny Williams. The bad news was that he was shot in the process. ‘Lost his life in the line of duty,’ O’Reilly said.

  Ramirez made the usual thirty minute long drive to the house in twenty two minutes flat. When he found himself on the driveway his head was spinning in turmoil, his thinking was just as cloudy as if he’d had a session on the bottle. He had arrived but couldn't remember how he had got there. The cold night air and the sight of a million blue flashing lights sobered him up faster than the hair of the dog the morning after.

  When one of their own was down, all the stops were pulled out, Grolnick, who was off duty at the time, was holding court. All Ramirez wanted to do was to see Maria and Conchita to make sure they were both unhurt. Grolnick caught sight of Ramirez out of the corner of his eye and stepped in front of him before he got to the door and held him by the shoulders.

  ‘They’re fine Eddy,’ Grolnick was a hard cop but also sensitive to his men when it came to family. They’d seen a lot together over the twenty odd years, and Grolnick had been at Conchita’s baptism service, he was almost an honorary Godfather. Outside of work, Ramirez was always Eddy. ‘...they’re a little shaken up, but fine,’ Grolnick continued. ‘They didn’t see anything, they just heard the shots. Maria and Conchita hid upstairs until everything went quiet. She waited and then told Conchita to stay put, she found William’s body downstairs and called it in, and we were all here within thirty minutes.

  ‘Thanks, but I need to see them now.’

  Grolnick let him through and followed him into the house. Ramirez knew exactly who was responsible for the attempt on their lives, he dreaded to think what would have happened if Williams hadn’t bravely stood his ground. The cowards had run off leaving a fine young rookie dead on the ground without a moment’s thought. How they had found out where they were was a mystery to him.

  ‘They won’t get away with this, I promise you,’ said Ramirez. Golnick knew it was the shock talking.

  He trusted no one now, he told Maria to get packed up, he would look after them himself from now on, and nobody would know where he was going to take them.

  Nobody.

  An hour later Maria and Conchita were set up in a hotel a few miles away, where he was satisfied they would never be traced. He’d booked them in under false names and on the way over he used side streets and double backed three times and each time checked for anyone tailing him. He instructed Maria not to call his cell phone, he said he would call later in the evening to the landline in the room and be back before she knew it. He switched his own phone off and used Maria’s that he’d borrowed from her so that he couldn't be easily tracked.

  Ramirez needed to find Maloof, he had a big score to settle, and he called the very person who he knew who would know where to find him - Mac.

  Finch was watching the clock on the wall of the squad room. It was 5.05 p.m. and if his assumptions were correct, there would be a call sometime soon from somewhere in the city.

  The atmosphere around the whole precinct was subdued, whenever a cop was lost it affected everyone, young and old, black and white, senior or junior officers, it didn’t discriminate. The force was like a family, a little disjointed at times, like a real family, but a family nonetheless, and it was always taken hard. The all realized that it could have been anyone of them, and they all thought, ‘It could have been me.’

  Finch was catching up on the news about Ramirez’s family and the heroic details of how Danny, who by all accounts, had saved his wife and daughter’s lives.

  The call that he had been nervously anticipating finally came through. It was close to five forty five p.m.

  It was not what he or anyone else was expecting.

  The area around Jessica Wong’s home had been put on full alert, several additional patrol cars had been designated to cruise the streets on the lookout for a black SUV. But the call came from somewhere else, somewhere else entirely, five miles away in fact, near a disused apartment building which was being renovated.

  A night security guy, who had just come on shift, was making his first circuit around the building when he spotted an unusual looking bag at the side of the old apartment block that had not been there the night before. He thought someone had dumped some garbage over the fence, but as he got closer, he saw what looked like the legs of a discarded manikin sticking out from the bag. It wasn’t a manikin.

  It was Jessica Wong’s dead body.

  Chapter 60

  ‘Where’d you get this number?’ said Mac, angry and curious at the same time as to how Ramirez had gotten hold of his private number that only Stone and he knew.

  ‘Credit me with some detective ability Mac please, when you reported in last time about the body from the house? I saw Stone using a new cell phone. He went to the washroom without it, what can I say?’

  ‘What do you want, I’m kind of busy.’

  ‘Mac you’re heading for real danger, you’re chasing a ruthless gang of murderers across town without back up and you don't even have a gun.’

  ‘I know what I’m doing...’

  ‘I don't think you do, now let me...’

  ‘Ramirez, now you credit me with the ability to look after myself. In your job you swan around playing Cowboys and Indians, falsely accusing people of murder and generally trying to act the tough guy, I used to lead a unit of professional soldiers into enemy territory, under fire, day or night and it’s kill or be killed.’

  ‘Hello? ‘Time-out’ Mac. I’m just trying to help, okay? What you don’t know is that the FBI have been on to you ever since you got mixed up in their business, they were watching that house you broke into, you were in danger of blowing their cover, they pull rank on me Mac, they told me to get you off their backs otherwise they’d....Look I told them I’d watch you okay?’

  ‘FBI? How are they involved...?’

  ‘They wouldn't tell me, it’s big, that’s all they’d say. Now, what d’ya say? You and me are on the same side man.’

  Mac thought over what Ramirez was saying, he knew he was taking risks and that things could get pretty hot. He eased up on him.

  ‘I guess we are,’ he conceded. ‘Suppose you want Maloof just as badly as we do. So, what are you saying?’

  ‘I’m saying, tel
l me where you’re headed and we’ll hook up, you can't bring Maloof down by yourself, you’ll need firepower and cover, that’s all I’m saying.’ Ramirez thought he’d sold it well, he wanted Maloof for himself, and needed Mac more than he needed him.

  ‘Okay,’ said Mac. ‘There’s a warehouse over by the river, all I have is a sketchy address, so I’m going over there to take a look around. Head for Furman St. At the end of Atlantic Avenue, then call me again, I’ll be parked up. I’m in a dark blue Taurus.’

  ‘Give me an hour to catch you up, call me if anything stupid happens.’

  ‘Okay. I’ll wait for you.’ Mac rang off and checked the map to make sure he was still on the right road.

  Stone was under strict instructions to stay in the car whilst Finch and Tariq, followed by the CSI guys, Phelps and Jones, followed the night security guard down the side alley to see the body before it could be moved from the site.

  It hadn’t been formally indentified yet, but the officer who was first on the scene had the photographs of all five missing girls - as did every other patrol cop in the city – and they had been briefed as to what to look for by their precinct Inspectors.

  Finch reached the body and thanked the guard for his help and congratulated him on his vigilance, he told him that they would handle things from here on in but might need a statement from him later. Finch told Tariq to make a note of his contact details in case he suffered any stress after finding the dead body.

  Phelps and Jones got to work combing the area for any prints, fibers and anything left behind by the person or persons who had callously dumped Jessica’s body in the alley. They had brought along two assistants who set about securing the area off with yellow and black ‘CRIME SCENE DO NOT CROSS THIS LINE’ tape and then assisted by logging and placing numbered markers next to any items that they found which needed examination and photographing.