He was proud.
“He was into drugs. Could this be about that too? We know Rodney had a problem. Do we know if Clayton was his supplier?”
Kaleb wasn’t sure. “I can check.”
“Yeah, let’s cover our bases.”
He made a note.
“Who’s next?” Charlie asked.
“We have Harvey Wellstone. He’s a sex freak and he doesn’t care who knows it. He even tried to pick me up.”
“Yeah,” Kaleb stated, “he treated her like another hooker for sale.”
“I’ll break his legs. No one talks to my baby like she’s a sex object,” Charlie stated.
“Then you better off that ME. He’s got the hots for your baby.”
She pointed at him.
“I like Chris. He’s a smart man. I don’t like loud-mouthed cops who don’t know how to keep their traps shut. I’d rather her marry a doctor. Besides, there’s not a mean bone in that man’s body. He’s daddy approved.”
Elizabeth stared at them. “Well, if you two are finished arranging my upcoming marriage, maybe we can work?”
Charlie laughed at that. “You are your momma’s child, baby girl.”
Kaleb opted to keep his mouth shut. Baby girl had a wicked tongue when she wanted to fillet someone—as he’d seen today.
Elizabeth pushed on, “Let’s continue, shall we?”
Yeah, that was for the best.
“Last on our list is Clayton Frost. I have him at the bottom only because he’s the one who seems to be targeted by all the others. Well, some of them.”
Kaleb agreed.
“I just don’t know who to focus on?” she stated.
“Why don’t you talk to the hookers?” Charlie offered. “They might know something.”
She laughed. “Clayton won’t let us near them. I kicked the shit out of him.”
Kaleb agreed. “Plus, my partner is the bearer of bad news. Take a look at the email Glen sent me.”
He tossed her his phone.
She read it.
“That’s shitty.”
“What?” Charlie asked.
“He moved his girls elsewhere. The cop we posted on them can’t find them. He knew we were watching. When he showed up this morning, they were gone.”
“Yeah, that is bad. Is the cop an idiot?”
“Hey!”
Elizabeth kicked Kaleb in the ankle to shut him up.
“I do have an idea,” stated Elizabeth.
“What?”
“We have one of his hookers at that woman’s shelter. What if we head over, talk to her, and go from there?”
He grinned.
“That could work.”
“Do you want me to come with you?” Charlie asked. “I want you to be safe.”
“I’ll be safe, Daddy. I love you. I’ll be back later.”
He hugged her. “I adore you, baby girl. You watch your back. I don’t like that cop. He’s shifty.”
“Um, again, I’m right here.”
She snorted. “I know he is. I think it’s those eyes.”
“You two are busting my ass, aren’t you?” he asked. With her, it was hard to tell.
With both of them…?
No clue.
“Come on, Kaleb. We have a hooker to visit.”
“There’s a sentence I never thought I’d hear you say. Are we finally going to have a threesome?”
Charlie growled. “Get him out of here before I hurt him. No father wants to hear that bullshit about his daughter.”
“Relax, Charlie,” she said. “There is zero chance of that ever happening. I’m not a threesome type!”
“Make sure,” he called after her.
With his Lyzee, she was wild enough that he couldn’t be sure.
* * * E l i z a b e t h L a R u e * * *
Morgue
Autopsy
He had just finished.
It was an easy one. COD was crystal clear. She’d bled out from her face being removed. There were raw, red signs all the way around the wounds.
The killer tried to garrote her, but he’d screwed up.
The poor girl had really suffered.
“I have her ID,” Tony said, handing him a photograph. “I checked out the markers on her face and ran it through the prostitution arrest database. It matched up to one girl in particular.”
“Who is it?” he asked, as he stitched up her Y-incision.
“Her name is Lulu Schafer.”
Well, he knew who needed that information.
“Can you hit speed dial on my phone. It’s number one.”
“Gee, I wonder who that could be,” Tony teased. “Still not talking about that hickey on your neck, friend?”
He stared at him.
“Never mind.”
He did as he asked.
Elizabeth’s voice came onto the line. “Yo, Doc, what’s shaking?”
“I have your girl’s name.”
“Newton, I could kiss you. We still haven’t heard from the landlord of that dump, and the tenant downstairs didn’t know her name.”
“Well, I can help you out. I have confirmation from our friendly neighborhood anthropologist.”
“Perfect. Who is she?”
He told her.
Elizabeth knew this was one more of the pimp’s girls from the way Kaleb reacted.
“Yeah, she’s one of Clayton Frost’s hookers.”
“Well, she died like I thought. Your killer was off his game. He was rattled.”
“Tell me he left some swimmers.”
“He did, honey. We ran the semen. There’s no hit in CODIS. He’s never left DNA behind before.”
Still, this helped her out.
He was losing it.
Where the hell was that freaking profile?
“Where are you?” Chris asked. “It sounds like you’re in a car.”
“Yeah, we’re heading over to see the hooker we saved from Clayton Frost. We need to talk to her about her friends. We won’t get near the others.”
“Please be careful.”
“I will, Newton. Hey! I don’t know when I’ll be back, but tomorrow, do you want me to stop in for breakfast?” she asked.
“Late night? Should I not wait up?”
There was a pause as she thought about it. “I don’t know. It depends on what I find out from the hooker.”
“You have a key. You know where to find me,” Chris offered. He could feel Tony staring at him.
Well, the man pretty much had his confirmation.
“If you’re swinging by in the morning, grab breakfast. I think you ate the last of the marshmallow-y cereal, and we both know you hate bran.”
She laughed. “Okay, Doc.”
When she hung up, Tony opened his mouth.
“Don’t even go there,” Chris warned.
“She has breakfast at your place all the time? She sleeps over?”
He started snickering in that ‘guys in a locker room kind of way’.
“She’s my best friend, so yes. Don’t you hang out with your best friend?”
Tony got quiet. “I don’t have one.”
Chris felt bad. “Want to come over for breakfast?” he offered.
“Will she be in her pajamas? Will there be a pillow fight?” he teased.
“Yeah, and she carries a loaded gun. Think about it.”
He shut his mouth.
“Finally, silence,” Chris said.
“I’m thinking about her in my head. She can’t stop me,” Tony stated.
Chris just laughed.
“You don’t know Elizabeth LaRue. If you did…”
That was all that had to be said.
* * * E l i z a b e t h L a R u e * * *
Safe House
Becca looked scared. She was pale, shaking, and at first, Elizabeth thought she might be bottoming out from drug withdrawal. Then, as soon as she mentioned her pimp’s name, it got worse.
The girl was worried about her safety. Tha
t said a lot about the pimp.
“We need to talk to you, Becca.”
“Did he find me?” she asked.
“No, why?”
“He’s going to be mad at me. I shouldn’t have left with you. If he finds me…”
She closed her mouth.
“What do you mean?”
Becca shook her head.
It appeared she wasn’t going to say a word.
“We need to ask you about the other hookers,” Elizabeth stated. “Can you talk about them?”
She nodded.
“Was anyone bothering them?”
She shook her head.
“Did Clayton know that Precious was a cop?” Kaleb asked.
She shrugged.
“Is he violent?”
She nodded.
“Did he know some of the girls were talking to Noor?” Elizabeth asked.
She nodded and her eyes got big.
“Were you talking to Noor Blackburn?”
She shook her head, and finally broke her silence. “I knew better, but the other girls were. Precious was asking about her too.”
Elizabeth’s phone chimed. She had an email. Heading over to a corner, she opened it. It was from Gabe. It looked like his profiler was done.
Thank God!
Scanning it, she read his notes. It was the same profiler who did ‘The Butcher’ case. That simultaneously freaked her out and calmed her down. He’d been right about the killer. She’d just been slow on the figuring it out.
She studied his words.
‘Your killer is going to be a white male. He’s killing them in a manner more related to a crime perpetrated by a Caucasian. Since he’s picking all different kinds of races, he’s simply looking for women to dominate and control. He will kill his own race, but he’s picking ones who he feels are beneath him.’
Great.
Her killer was racist.
In DC, that didn’t narrow it down. Most of the town was white politicians.
‘He’s going to be young. There is barely any planning in this. I’m not saying he’s a teenager, since these are elaborate crimes, but he is mid-twenties to mid-thirties. He’s brash, arrogant, and he’s going to hate women. He has one hell of a vendetta.’
Yeah, she noticed.
This killer really didn’t like women at all. Elizabeth thought about all the people on her suspect list. As she read, she was beginning to eliminate some of them.
They were dropping like flies.
She was going to kiss this profiler on the mouth as soon as she got the chance.
He was amazing.
This was really helping her out.
‘The reason there is a gap between the first killing and second one is that the killer had never hurt a person before. It scared him. It stunned him. Then he regrouped after hiding, and he realized that he could kill more women and get away with it. He’s become confident, cocky, and thinks he’s above being caught. He will be verbally abusive, treat women like they are less than him, and he will be physically abusive if pushed.’
Yeah, well he wasn’t smarter than her.
She’d catch him.
‘This is all about religion. It’s going to be about cleansing sins. It’s going to be about purifying. At one point, he’s going to lose his grasp at reality. He’s going to begin slipping up, and he may even rape them. At this point, he’s seeing it as a duty, but he’s going to love doing this so much that he will cross the line. When he does, you need to catch him, and fast. He’s going to become unhinged. Your killer has a God complex, and like all religious fanatics, he’s dangerous to everyone around him.’
Well, she was aware that she was running out of time. The pressure was on. Any moment, the media would be swarming.
This killer was drawing big time attention.
‘Dig into the suspects, and look carefully at them. There will be one who stands out. He’s going to be the one. This killer isn’t smart enough to pull this off if he’s slipping up already.’
She pulled out her list of potential killers, and there were only two names left on it after she began eliminating them.
She had to decide.
It was up to her gut.
Elizabeth had to believe she was smart enough to close this case. There was a lot riding on it.
‘Your killer is going to be thinking that he can’t be stopped. He’s going to be hiding in plain sight. He’ll love the attention, and he’s going to be exactly how he is in real life, just burying the killer just below the surface. He’s going to be your obvious choice, simply because he’s not smart enough to be tricky.’
The more she read, the clearer it became.
She knew who her obvious choice was on her list of two remaining people.
Now it was how to prove it.
Elizabeth glanced over at the weeping hooker. She had an idea. She knew exactly how to catch a killer.
Miss Kitty was coming back.
She had a sicko to catch.
And she was the perfect bait.
* * * E l i z a b e t h L a R u e * * *
Four Hours Later
Stakeout
He wasn’t sure this was going to work. In fact, when Elizabeth told him, he thought she was insane. There was no way this person was the killer.
It was too…obvious.
When she showed him the profile, it made sense. Either the profiler was a genius, or he was a few crackers short of the box himself.
Time would tell.
Maybe they would get lucky.
This profiler was supposed shit out wisdom wrapped in gold. His fingers were crossed.
“Where is she?” asked Glen Sheehan from the seat beside him.
“She’s going to be walking down this street any minute. She’s going to be the perfect bait.”
“I don’t get this.”
“We had Becca call her pimp. She told him she wanted to come home and that she was sorry she was a bad girl.”
“And?”
“He was pissed.”
“But how does Elizabeth know Clayton Frost is the killer?” Glen asked.
“She is going by the profile.”
“And if she’s wrong?”
“Well, then no harm done. Becca is still at the safe house. She’s not going back to him. Elizabeth, after she was dressed up, looked just like Becca from the back.”
“This is dangerous. If he has a gun, she’s dead.”
“Yeah, but she has us, right?”
Glen nervously nodded.
“What it comes down to is that we have to stop him. We need to do it for Cathy. If that profile is right, Lacey is next up. He’s killing all the women he’s pissed at for betraying him. Wyanet was talking to Noor and looking to get out. Naima Abad was branching out and screwing Clayton over by working on her own.”
He still didn’t get it.
“Bao Yu wanted out.”
“How do you know all of this?”
“Becca was afraid of him. When we interviewed her, she said he would walk around and talk to himself.”
“She’s a hooker.”
“She also said he didn’t sleep with her. It was all a show. Becca found his driver’s license once. It didn’t say Clayton Frost.”
“Really? What’s his name?”
“James Austin. He’s from Washington State. When we ran him, we found out he’s on the run. He’s got a long list of arrests.”
“For?”
“He abused animals, he lit fires, and he also is suspected in the death of a neighbor. She was found garroted. The woman was having an affair with his father.”
“Okay, so we have that.”
“We also know that his father was a minister.”
Bingo.
There was the religious connection the profiler had mentioned.
“He raised his son to be a good Christian and he broke the rules himself. He likely would have hurt him, too, but he’s lashing out against women he thinks are sluts.”
; “What better way to hunt?”
“Exactly. The profile said he’d be hiding in plain sight. He made up an identity, used women to fund his mission, and when they pissed him off, he took them out one by one.”
“And Cathy?”
“We think he figured it out. You and I were always showing up, but she never took on other Johns.”
“So this is on us?”
“No, this is on him. We aren’t responsible for the crazy, Glen. He is.”
“And Elizabeth is going to catch him?”
“If she’s right, he’ll try to intercept her. There is no way he’ll do the deed in his own nest. He used all their own places, except the first one. He’ll follow pattern.”
“She’s got balls of steel.”
“Or she’s just crazy.”
Yeah, that was his bet.
* * * E l i z a b e t h L a R u e * * *
Yeah, she was crazy.
This was the most dangerous thing she’d ever done in her life. She was walking down a deserted alley, trying to lure in a killer, and she had very little backup.
If Gabe found out, he’d kill her. She wouldn’t have to worry about the killer. She’d be dead in her cubicle.
As she walked, dressed in Becca’s clothes, she was cognizant of the sounds around her. She was listening for anything.
A squeak.
A car door.
A footstep.
Anything.
As she was walking, she knew when he was there. She could feel him behind her. Elizabeth’s gut was screaming for her to run, so she did.
She needed to get closer to the team, and she needed him to believe it was Becca. This would be about playing the game.
Elizabeth was going to win.
While she could shoot him, she knew the truth. Elizabeth needed to bring him in alive. After killing ‘The Butcher’ she needed to redeem herself. That meant him living.
Stalked by the Past: An FBI Flashback Novel. (An FBI Romance Thriller Book 17) Page 36