Taker of Lives: A Gripping Crime Thriller

by Leslie Wolfe

  Fradella came to a stop in front of the Kennedy residence and cut the engine. He still didn’t say a word, but his gaze was heavy with worry when he looked at her. Last thing she needed, an overbearing alpha male who thinks she can’t tie her shoelaces without his help. She got out of the car and he followed, while unwanted guilt swirled in her mind, for having thought so little of Fradella. Was it that bad, that unacceptable if someone cared about her?

  She pushed the unanswered question to the side and rang the doorbell. It took a few seconds, but eventually Mrs. Kennedy opened the door. She was ghostly pale, and her black attire didn’t help with that. She recognized them and invited them in without a word.

  “Mrs. Kennedy,” Fradella said, “please accept our deepest sympathies.”

  “Thank you,” she whispered.

  Tess stepped into the living room, where Estelle was lying on the sofa with her head in a young brunette’s lap. The girl caressed Estelle’s hair while she sniffled, keeping her eyes shut. Tess frowned, seeing how inert Estelle looked, how completely out of it.

  “I’ll take care of it,” the girl said quietly, looking at Tess, then whispered in Estelle’s ear, “The cops are here, sweetie, wake up.” Then she patted Estelle gently on the shoulder, gave her another moment, then repeated her request and her pat, a little louder and stronger the second time.

  Estelle made a visible effort to pull herself up to a sitting position and opened her eyes. They were bloodshot and swollen, her gaze unfocused, wandering, glassy.

  “And you are?” Tess asked, looking at the girl.

  “I’m Abby,” she said, meeting her gaze without hesitation. “Abby Sharp.”

  “Friend or family?”

  Abby smiled shyly. “Lifelong friend.”

  Estelle pulled herself up and sat, leaning against the sofa back, her eyes half-closed, clutching Abby’s hand.

  Tess crouched in front of her. “Miss Kennedy? Thanks for seeing us,” she said, looking for a spark of recognition, of awareness in her eyes. There was none. “Let’s get her a glass of cold water,” she suggested, with a poorly disguised sigh of frustration.

  Mrs. Kennedy brought a tall glass of water, and Estelle grabbed it with trembling hands, then reluctantly took a few swigs.

  Tess watched her closely. It was a miracle if Estelle remembered her own name.

  “What did you give her? What did she take, huh?” Tess asked Abby in an aggressive tone of voice, as if the girl were a drug peddler working a street corner.

  Abby’s pupils dilated with fear, and she raised her hands in the air, in a pacifying gesture. “Nothing, I swear! Their family doctor prescribed some Xanax, to help her cope. That’s all.”

  “I found it,” she heard Fradella say. When she turned around, she saw him counting the pills left in a prescription bottle.

  “It was filled today, and two are missing,” he announced after he finished counting.

  Tess swallowed her anger; it was misplaced, to say the least. She had no right to judge Estelle for taking a couple of pills, after what she’d been through. She crouched in front of Estelle again to bring their eyes on the same level.

  “I’m really sorry for what happened to you,” she said gently. “I know you prefer to be left alone, but I’d rather catch the man who’s responsible for assaulting you and for your father’s death.”

  When she mentioned her father, Estelle had a flicker of recognition in her eyes. She probably mourned his loss rather than her own destroyed life, and that made sense.

  “Can you think of any enemies, any creeps or stalkers, anyone who could’ve done this to you?” Tess asked.

  Estelle lowered her head. “No,” she whispered.

  “Her ex-boyfriend is a real peach,” Abby said, her sarcasm unmistakable despite her low tone.

  “In what way?” Tess asked, turning her attention to the brunette. She was moderately attractive, overly adorned in jewelry, countless strands of thin, long necklaces paired up with bracelets that jingled with every move she made, and lots of rings on her fingers and toes.

  “He always competed with her. Always. Everything was a fucking pissing contest to him,” she added, lowering her voice even more when she said the profanity, throwing Mrs. Kennedy a quick, side glance.

  “Name?” Fradella asked, approaching the sofa. He’d been slowly pacing the living room, giving her some space.

  “Ben… Pagano, I think,” Abby replied. “Right, Es?”

  “Uh-huh,” Estelle replied, without raising her head that hung low, hiding her face behind the curtain of her long, blonde hair. “It wasn’t him,” she added.

  “Do you remember who assaulted you?” Tess asked.

  “No… I’m sorry.”

  “Then we don’t know it wasn’t him,” Tess replied, her pushback as gentle as she could muster. “What else can you tell me about this man?” she asked, turning her attention to Abby. It was better to speak with someone who was clearheaded.

  “It was painful to watch,” Abby replied, “their interactions. He always wanted to come out on top, and that’s hard, being how famous and successful Estelle is. He’s not really anybody, just some guy, but he was jealous of everything she achieved, every piece of fan mail she got, every news article, every show.”

  “How did it end between them?”

  “Es left him one day and moved back in with her parents. Smart girl,” she added, then squeezed Estelle’s hand.

  “When was that?”

  “I’d say a few months ago—”

  “January 20,” Estelle mumbled. “The day I had the Sony appointment.”

  “Ah, yes,” Abby said. “You know what the pissant did? He drugged her, so she’d miss the audition with Sony Music Entertainment. She left him when she woke up and realized it.”

  Drugged her? Now that sounded interesting. She shot Fradella a quick glance, but he was already typing something on his phone.

  Tess turned her attention back to Estelle. She touched her arm gently to get her attention, and the young woman looked at her with hollow eyes.

  “I need to ask you again, anything else you remember from May 10? Any soreness on your body, any sickness the morning after the assault?”

  Estelle shook her head once, then closed her eyes. Tess took out a business card and put it in Estelle’s limp hand. “If you remember anything, please call me, night or day.”

  “There’s nothing to remember,” she whispered. “I tried… don’t imagine I didn’t. All this was my fault.” Tears started rolling down her cheeks, and Abby wrapped an arm around her shoulders.

  “It’s not your fault,” Tess said, sounding almost harsh. “None of this—”

  “You’ll be fine, you’ll see. Just trust me on this,” Abby said in a soothing tone. “You’ll go indie and make a killing. Imagine Dragons is indie, right? And that rock band tops the charts.”

  Tess frowned, remembering the award she’d seen framed on the wall. It was engraved with the highly recognizable Sony Music logo. “What happened?” she asked.

  “There was a morality clause in her contract,” Abby said in a low whisper. “Somehow, Sony found out about the, um, photos, and terminated her with prejudice.”

  How the hell did it find out so fast? Yesterday no one knew, although the photos had been out there for a while. Now, everyone knew? The unsub kept busy at further raping Estelle’s life, pushing her to the breaking point. He was killing her, taking her life one slow, pain-ridden moment at a time, and there was nothing Tess could do. She wished she had the bastard in her service weapon’s sights—she’d pull that trigger at the slightest twitch.

  “One more question,” Tess asked. “Do either of you know Christina Bartlett?”

  “No,” Estelle replied.

  “Uh-uh,” Abby said, “me neither. Why?”

  Fradella gave Tess his phone, and she looked at the screen, then stood and put some distance between her and the two girls.

  He’d brought up a database search, and the resul
t showed one Benjamin Pagano, 24, currently doing time in Miami-Dade County jail since late March, on a cocaine possession charge. The jealous, drug-savvy ex-boyfriend was a dead end.

  “He’s not the Taker of Lives, is he?” she whispered in Fradella’s ear, venting her frustration quietly, so only he could hear.

  “Nope.”

  She still held Fradella’s phone in her hand on top of her own phone when they climbed in his SUV. Two chimes sounded almost simultaneously from the devices; they both received the same text message. It was from Donovan, and it read, “New activity on the unsub’s page.”

  22

  Stakeout

  Michowsky abandoned his Ford Explorer in favor of an inconspicuous silver Honda Accord as soon as he left the coroner’s office, then stopped for a burrito, anticipating a long evening. It was Friday afternoon, right before Memorial Day weekend, and that meant young people, like that Carrillo character, were just waking up and hitting the streets. He took the burrito to his car and flipped through the green file once more, page by page, then looked attentively at the man’s photo. He could recognize him anywhere. The man had to have a serious death wish, playing games with a fed’s daughter.

  He took another bite of the double meat and cheese burrito, then called Donovan. The analyst picked up with his official greeting, probably not recognizing Gary’s caller ID.

  “Detective Michowsky here,” he said, skipping over the pleasantries. “I need a phone number located, special request from our mutual acquaintance, SA Winnett.”

  “Shoot,” Donovan said.

  He gave him the number, then waited, soon taking another mouthful of delectable Mexican fast food.

  “No active GPS on this phone,” Donovan announced. “Triangulating now… It will be less accurate, but it will give you something.”

  “What kind of something? How accurate?”

  “A few hundred yards, maybe less if you’re lucky. I’ve texted you a map. He’s the red dot smack in the middle of it.”

  “Thanks, Donovan, I owe you one,” he said, but the last part of the phrase was spoken to an already disconnected line.

  He finished his burrito with one last satisfying mouthful, then wiped his mouth with the wrapper and drove off, in a hurry to get close to Carrillo’s location before he vanished from there. As he approached the location shown on the map, he slowed down somewhat, searching for the white Lexus convertible. He zigzagged through a section of about a square mile, centered on that red dot, and finally found the Lexus, parked in front of a doctor’s office in downtown Delray Beach.

  He rolled past Carrillo’s car and parked a few hundred feet away, in the shade of a large magnolia, then watched the silhouettes visible through the partly open window shades inside the doctor’s waiting room. Carrillo was talking with another man, showing him documentation and offering demo packages of drugs he was marketing.

  Huh… this Carrillo dude was still working, on a Friday night at about 6:00PM. Who would’ve thought?

  Soon he saw the young man leave the doctor’s office with a satisfied smile on his lips, then hop into his car. The moment the engine turned, blaring music filled the street—a hot, Latino sound almost hypnotic in its rhythm. Then he pulled out of the parking lot, and Michowsky followed him from a safe distance.

  Carrillo took two other sales meetings, one in a small family practice, and another one at a walk-in clinic. By the time he called it quits, it was almost dark. His day was nothing like Michowsky had expected. He thought Carrillo would take Miss Pearson out or do something exciting, when in fact all he’d done thus far was work.

  Michowsky realized he wasn’t going to yet another sales meeting when the Lexus stopped in front of a house in Kings Point, one of the many, almost identical, crammed-together, two-story brick properties that sell like hotcakes for about half a million dollars. He noted the address, 1105 Mercury Boulevard, then parked his car a few numbers down and waited.

  He didn’t liked stakeouts; when he didn’t stay busy, he turned restless and hated the confinement of his vehicle. Keeping one eye on the Lexus and dimming the laptop screen light, he ran a property deed search for 1105 Mercury. It came back in someone else’s name, not Carrillo’s. He ran priors for that person, also a Latino, judging by his name, but that turned out clean. Just as he was about to start digging deeper into the property owner’s background, another Lexus, a burgundy SUV, pulled up at the curb and a couple of African American men in their twenties ambled inside, shuffling their feet and talking loudly in a profanity-ridden jargon Michowsky barely understood.

  He waited for a moment until the traffic cleared and snuck out of his car, then returned with the tag number for the SUV. A quick search, and he found the owner was a small-time drug dealer who’d just gotten out of jail after doing time for possession with intent to distribute. It was Miami’s influence; even the lampposts had records for possession with intent.

  Nothing moved in and out of that property for at least thirty minutes, when another SUV pulled up, this time a black Cadillac Escalade with flashy custom hubcaps that kept spinning after the wheels had come to a stop. A middle-aged man with a nose ring and arms covered in prison ink got out from behind the wheel, then waited for his passengers, three young girls, to catch up with him.

  “Move your scrawny ass already,” he admonished the girl who’d fallen behind and still fumbled with a transparent, high-heeled shoe that had slipped off her foot. “Ain’t gonna make me no cash here, in the damn street.”

  “Sorry, Pete, I’m coming,” the girl whimpered, scampering on the driveway to catch up with the man. She couldn’t’ve been more than nineteen or twenty; Michowsky hoped she was at least legal.

  The girls wore minimalistic skirts, ridiculously high heels, and revealing tops, baring as much skin as possible. It didn’t take being a cop for almost thirty years to know they were hookers, which most likely made dear old Pete their pimp. So, the party was heating up.

  Over the next hour or so, several vehicles arrived and unloaded colorful assortments of men and women; almost all vehicles were registered to people with criminal records, ranging from a variety of drug charges all the way to assault and battery, even manslaughter, most respectable upstanding citizens out on parole. Michowsky felt tempted to call for backup and raid the place, slap some collars on those thugs for parole violations if nothing else stuck, shove the losers behind bars where they belonged, but he was on a different mission. It was their lucky night.

  After the last bunch made it inside the house, Michowsky dialed the Real Time Crime Center.

  “Yeah, this is Detective Michowsky, Palm Beach County Sheriff’s Office, badge number 57374.”

  “Go ahead, Detective,” the RTCC operator replied.

  “What do you have on 1105 Mercury in Kings Point?”

  “Please hold,” the operator said, typing quickly on the keyboard. “We show the property flagged as possible brothel or drug hub. No active warrants on the owner or address. Anything else?”

  “No, thanks,” he replied, then hung up.

  He took a few gulps of water from a fresh bottle and sighed; the burrito had left him chronically thirsty and with the makings of a fierce heartburn attack. He let out his belt a few notches, then settled into his seat, grunting and shifting until he found a comfortable position.

  It was going to be a long night.

  23

  Countdown

  There was silence again on their drive back to the office; this time Tess was committed to contain her personal feelings and give the one piece of evidence they had some much-needed attention. She’d asked Doc Rizza to evaluate Christina and Estelle’s photos, the ones taken and published by the unsub, and write a conclusion. Was the unsub escalating? Was he nearing the moment he’d rape or kill? She’d asked Doc for help because whenever she looked at those images, her blood came to an instant boil and rage clouded her judgment so badly she couldn’t organize her thoughts anymore.

  She struggled to understan
d why she had such a strong emotional response to this form of violation, of abuse. To quote from yesterday’s conversation, there was no blood on the walls, and at least one victim was still alive. Alive to do what? To hide and suffer in silence? To forfeit her life completely and be resigned to living in shame, withering away, praying to be forgotten? What was one’s life but a series of days, inescapably marked by the world’s perceptions of one’s image, value, emotions, and relationships? Just because the pain was psychological, that didn’t make the suffering any less severe. The Taker of Lives knew that perfectly well. Even if Estelle was still alive, she wasn’t. She’d died on May 10, soon after midnight, in a stealth and merciless attack.

  She opened the file that Doc Rizza had shoved in her reluctant hand before she left his office and read the handwritten note affixed to the photos.

  “There’s definite progression in the unsub’s repressed violence,” the note said. “The way Christina was postured showed care for the victim and for the setting. Her body was attentively positioned, her limbs were posed artistically, her head was propped up on a pillow, her hair arranged neatly around her head. With Estelle, all that care is gone. I guess the main question we need to ask right now is why isn’t there penetrative sexual assault? If I were a betting man, I’d say next time there will be. The rest is for you to figure out. Maybe your friend at the BAU can help more than I could.”

  She put the note aside and looked at the photos, first at Christina’s, then at Estelle’s, willing herself to stay lucid, analytical. Doc was right; the photos taken of Christina’s unconscious body were tasteful, almost classy, her body positioned in ways that led you to think Playboy magazine, not gas-station porn. The duvet was neatly folded alongside, the lighting was near-perfect, enhancing the curves of her body with carefully positioned areas of direct light or shadow, hiding some areas, showcasing others.