The Perfect Revenge_A Thrilling Romantic Suspense

by Madyson Grey

  “It’s a mystery to me,” Mickey admitted. “It’s like the guy is invisible or something.”

  “I know,” Rafael said.

  The two couples sat up until ten that night talking, trying to figure everything out. At last, they admitted defeat and went to bed. They were all up the next morning at, or shortly after, five o’clock. Rafael and Mickey immediately stepped out the back door to talk to the officer who was guarding the house. He told them that as far as he knew, there had been no intruders anywhere on the property all night.

  They had mixed feelings about that. On one hand, they were grateful that there had been no more murders, but on the other hand, they were disappointed that the perp hadn’t been caught. Sarah fed them pancakes and eggs, and then they were eager to get outside and have a look around and talk to some of the other agents.

  The sun wasn’t up yet, but it was daylight when the four of them left the house to see what was happening outside. They found a knot of agents and officers gathered in the parking lot. Walking up to the group, Rafael asked what was happening.

  “Officer Revel here found another body just a couple of minutes ago,” Agent Taylor told him.

  “Good grief!” Rafael exclaimed in disbelief. “Where this time?”

  “Right at the driveway entrance at the road,” the agent told him.

  “Another note?” Rafael questioned.

  “Oh, yeah. It says, ‘You’re a slow learner. All the cops in the world aren’t enough to stop me. Tomorrow there will be bodies all over town unless you shut this stupid park down.’”

  “What should we do?” Rafael asked helplessly.

  “I really don’t know,” Agent Taylor responded. We can’t cover the entire county. We just don’t have the manpower. It’s ultimately up to you, but if you cave in to this creep, he wins. The girls still lose.”

  “Has anybody been surveilling the waterfront lately, where the bust was made in January? Also what about the house where Victoria was held captive? They could still be using that place,” Rafael suggested.

  “No, on both counts,” Agent Taylor said. “At least not to my knowledge.”

  “And what about interrogating the three who are in prison,” Victoria asked. “Maybe someone could squeeze some information out of them?”

  “I’ll suggest that to my superior this morning, and see if we can’t ramp up this investigation and widen our nets. Just where is this house where you were held hostage?” Agent Taylor asked Victoria.

  “I don’t really know,” she replied. But if you contact Officer Bradshaw at the Central Community Police Station, he can tell you, I think. He was the officer in charge of the bust and when I was released, and the three kidnappers arrested.”

  “Another person you might question is Antonio Cantu,” Rafael added. “It was his apartment where the girls were taken to be sold off to men. Because he cooperated and turned state’s evidence at the trial, he was let off. He had to wear an ankle bracelet, but I don’t know for how long. I can give you the address of his apartment building. It’s one we own.”

  “Thanks for all of these tips,” Agent Taylor said. “I’ll get some men on all of this right away.”

  “Let us know if you turn up anything,” Rafael requested.

  “Of course.”

  “I think we’ll go ahead and open up this morning,” Rafael decided. “We’ll see if your department makes any headway today, and decide about tomorrow later.”

  “Sounds fair.”

  At eight o’clock that morning the day shift of policemen and FBI agents came on. There weren’t as many of them as there were of the night shift. Agent Taylor stayed by to brief the men on what had taken place during the night and what the plan of action was for the day.

  Back at the LA Field Office of the FBI, Agent Taylor updated his supervisor of the night’s activities, and also told him everything that Rafael and Victoria had suggested they do. Assistant Director in Charge Austin Conroy thought all of their suggestions were good leads and immediately began assigning various agents to follow up on the leads.

  He sent two men to the docks in Long Beach where the bust had been made last January. He contacted Officer Bradshaw of the LAPD regarding the house when Victoria had been held hostage. After consulting his log, Bradshaw came up with the address. Conroy immediately dispatched three men to that house.

  Then he sent a couple of agents to pay a visit to Antonio Cantu, to see if he would offer up any pertinent information. Last of all, he took his best interrogator and went to the state prison in Lancaster to question Augustus Kline, Robert Norris, and Leonard Whisnant, the three men who kidnapped Victoria. And whom they thought were the top of the sex trafficking network.

  The docks didn’t prove fruitful. Antonio Cantu, on the other hand, told the agents sent to him that he had heard of the killings “through the grapevine.” When they pressed him for names, reminding him of his conditional freedom, he spilled his guts, and gave the names of several men involved in the racket.

  “I don’t think these guys are very high up in the ranks, but one or more of them might be persuaded to talk,” Antonio said. “Just do me a favor, and don’t tell them that I gave you their names. Please.”

  “Since you’ve been cooperative, we’ll keep your name out of it,” Agent Johnson promised. “Anything else of help that you can think of to tell us?”

  “No, sir. Honestly, I don’t know anything else. I’ve been trying to keep my nose clean this year. Find new interests, you might say. I don’t relish going to prison, so I’ve tried to keep my distance from that bunch. But I happened to be in a bar last night, and overheard a couple of guys talking about the killings. It was the first I’d heard of them. One of them said something to the effect of, ‘Ole Blinky’s really on the rampage, isn’t he?’

  “Another one said, ‘Yeah, when he starts killing off his own profits, he must really be riled up.’”

  “Who’s Blinky?” Agent Johnson asked.

  “I dunno,” Cantu replied. “I’ve heard the name before, and I gather that he might be the head dude around here. But that’s just my assumption. And, no, I don’t know any more of a name than that.”

  Agent Johnson made notes in his little notepad, and then thanked Antonio and the two agents left. Out in the car, he texted the info to Conroy, who was well on his way to Lancaster by that time.

  I’ve heard of Blinky, Conroy texted back. We believe him to be the head honcho of the ring in the LA area. No word on where we can find him?

  None. Cantu said only that he had heard the name, but didn’t know anything about him, Johnson replied. He gave us some other names, too, but said he thinks they’re low level minions.

  Send me all of the names, Conroy requested.

  Johnson complied and received Conroy’s thanks.

  Assistant Director in Charge Conroy and Special Agent Donaldson met Augustus Kline, Robert Norris, and Leonard Whisnant in a special, private room in the prison. They met with them one at a time, instructing the prison guards to bring them separately and privately, so that none of the three knew that the other two were being called out.

  After several hours of intense questioning and pressuring, the three men were put into a room together. None of them had claimed any knowledge of who their superior was, nor had any of them ever heard of a man called Blinky. So they decided to put them all together to see if their conversation would reveal anything.

  The room appeared to the men as a snack room. It had vending machines and a microwave and small fridge. Because it bore no resemblance to the interrogation room they had come from, they relaxed and talked freely. Which is what Conroy and Donaldson had hoped for. What the men didn’t know was that the room was outfitted with a listening device and a camera, both of which were cleverly concealed.

  “So, did they get anything out of you two bozos?” Kline asked Norris and Whisnant.

  “Not me,” Whisnant denied.

  “Me, either,” Norris asserted. “How about you?”


  “Of course not, you idiot. I’m not stupid. I’ve been a good boy in here. I’m not about to screw it up now. If I squeal, and then get out on good behavior in a few years, what’s my life worth?”

  “Yeah, even if you don’t ever get out, Blinky has eyes and ears inside,” Norris said knowingly. “You wouldn’t live long anyway.”

  “True,” Kline confirmed.

  “Say, Gus, what have you been hearing about those chicks being offed and left in some new park?” Lenny Whisnant asked.

  “Only that Blinky is doing revenge killings for us being nailed. Says the killings will stop when the park is closed.”

  “Why? Our people have been jailed before. What makes our arrests anything special? Except that it’s us?” Butch Norris put in. “It’s not like it interrupted the business. Not that much.”

  “I dunno,” Gus replied. “Guess he wants to make a point. There’s so many of those girls that losing a few to prove a point doesn’t hurt us any. I think Blinky just likes stirring the pot now and then. He gets off on the attention and pulling one over on the feds.”

  “How come we call him Blinky? That’s a dumb nickname,” Lenny asked.

  “’Cause he’s got somethin’ wrong with his eyes and he blinks all the time,” Gus told him. “Besides, it’s better than Aeneas, which is his real name.”

  Butch snorted. “Sounds like anus,” he said with a guffaw.”

  “You better never say that again,” Gus warned him. “Not if you value your life. In fact, never say his name to anyone. He’s real sensitive about it. I only know it because we went to school together when we was young’uns. He’d pound any kid who called him anything but Blinky. He even threatened a teacher or two when he got bigger.”

  “Wonder where his ma came up with that cockeyed name,” Lenny mused.

  “Said it’s a Bible name,” Gus answered. “Didn’t do him no good, though.”

  “Sure didn’t,” Lenny agreed.

  Chapter Thirteen

  As soon as Gus had spilled the name Aeneas, Conroy sent it to the field office and asked to have the name checked out. There couldn’t be very many people in the US with that name, he didn’t think. He was right. There were two, and only one was living in the LA area.

  Within fifteen minutes, several FBI agents, six of LA’s finest, and a SWAT team all were headed in the direction of the address given on Aeneas “Blinky” Nelson’s California driver’s license. Each one kept their fingers crossed that the man was home.

  The plan was that one agent, posing as a package delivery driver, would go to the house and knock on the door. If Blinky was home and came to the door, another agent in the truck would signal the rest to converge on the house. If he wasn’t home, the whole neighborhood wouldn’t be alerted to the fact that his home was about to be raided.

  Blinky Nelson wasn’t home. There was a collective sigh of disappointment that went up from all of the cars’ occupants as they turned around and headed back to their respective stations. That meant that there would be more killings that night.

  When Conroy heard that Blinky wasn’t home, he ordered two of the agents to park discreetly near the house so they could watch it and see when he came home. The other agents returned to the field office and ran a check on all of Blinky’s neighbors. They needed to know what kind of neighborhood he lived in. Whether or not any other known criminal-types lived on his block, or nearby.

  But every one of the neighbors for a two-block radius checked out clean. The worst thing that could be attributed to any of them was a few speeding tickets and a dead-beat dad who wouldn’t pay his child support.

  The day wore on, but no one came or went from Blinky’s house. Stakeouts were an agent’s most dreaded duty because of the sheer boredom. At least Agents Adams and Jeffreys were friends and they had each other to talk to. Then, just about dusk, a black Lincoln pulled into the driveway. Agent Adams grabbed his binoculars while Jeffreys focused his camera on the car and house.

  Adams read the license plate number into his radio that went to the field office. Then he reported that a man was getting out of the car. Then a woman got out, and then another, and another. There were three young women, who appeared Asian that followed the man to the front door. Jeffreys snapped photo after photo, zooming in as tight as his lens would go, of each of the girls, the man, and the car.

  The man unlocked the door and ushered the girls all in ahead of him. Before he shut the door, he scanned the street, but seemed oblivious to the gray Toyota sitting across the street and down the block a ways.

  An alert went out to all of the agents and officers who had been in the team ready to swoop down on Blinky earlier that day. Agent Jeffreys pulled the memory card from his camera, inserted it into his laptop, and sent the photos he’d just taken to the field office for identification.

  Within a few minutes, confirmation came back that indeed, the man inside the house was Blinky Nelson. Before the team could assemble a safe distance away, Adams and Jeffreys observed Blinky come out of the house and drive the Lincoln into the garage.

  That seemed odd to them. Why didn’t he put it in the garage when he first drove in the driveway? Why let the girls be seen by anyone who might be driving by, or looking out of a window? Why put the car away now? Unless he had already killed the girls and needed to load them in the car undetected.

  Adams radioed in what they had seen. Conroy and Donaldson were back in LA by this time. Conroy told the team not to make a move until he could get to the scene. But before he got there, the garage door opened again, and the Lincoln was seen backing out of the driveway.

  Agent Adams started the gray Toyota and casually pulled away from the curb after Blinky was half a block away. With headlights on, Blinky wouldn’t be able to easily identify the car behind him, or know if it was always behind him or not.

  Jeffreys gave a turn-by-turn description of where they were going. One by one other agents and undercover officers joined the procession as it wound its way west toward the ocean. Under strict orders from Assistant Director in Charge Conroy, no one moved in on the black Lincoln.

  The cars following the Lincoln took turns juggling positions, so that if Blinky suspected a tail at all, he would be put off seeing different cars behind him periodically. The procession dispersed when Blinky pulled into the parking lot of a Thai restaurant. He and the three girls whom Adams and Jeffreys had seen earlier went inside, presumably to have dinner. In addition to those three, two others got out of the car also. They must have been in the house, with strict orders not to open the door for anyone.

  “So he wines and dines them before butchering them,” Adams said sarcastically to Jeffreys.

  “At least they die happy. I guess,” Jeffreys said doubtfully.

  “With their stomachs full anyway,” Adams amended.

  An hour later, Blinky came out alone and got into his Lincoln and drove away. Mystified, the team again followed him as before. Conroy finally dismissed all but himself and Donaldson, Adams and Jeffreys, and one other pair of police officers, until further notice. It seemed pointless for so many of them to follow him all around town when they couldn’t see him doing anything that gave them the right to confront him.

  This time, the Lincoln made a beeline for the Long Beach docks. The same place where the bust had been made back in January. The procession, led this time by Conroy and Donaldson, fanned out as they neared the docks and figured out where Blinky was likely going. Conroy parked about half a block from where Blinky had entered a dockyard. He assumed that he would see him leave again.

  He was wrong. They sat there all night, taking turns napping, until daybreak. The only vehicles that had left, and they left early in the evening, had been a pickup with a camper on it, and a battered old Econline van. One of the other cars took a turn through the parking area around midnight and saw the black Lincoln still sitting there.

  Just before six that morning, dock workers began arriving, including the pickup and camper and the Ec
online. Soon after, the black Lincoln exited the parking area. Followed by the law enforcement entourage, Blinky drove home.

  Stymied, Conroy sent everyone home or back to their precincts. He went back to the field office to regroup. He hadn’t been there two minutes however, when he got a call from Special Agent Taylor over at Thornton Park reporting that for the first morning that week, there were no dead bodies found in the park.

  That call was chased by another from the Central Community Police Station. A patrol officer had just called in to report a dead Asian woman found on the sidewalk on South Broadway, in front of the Thornton Building. Conroy told the lieutenant to tell his officer to cordon off the scene and don’t touch a thing until he could get there.

  He was just about to hang up, when the lieutenant told him to hang on. Another call was coming in from another patrol officer saying another Asian woman was found dead in back of another building in the downtown area. This one was at the back entrance that led downstairs to some basement apartments. Conroy repeated his orders for that scene, also.

  Hot on the heels of that call came one from the Long Beach police department reporting an Asian woman’s dead body lying on the sidewalk in front of a gift boutique in a strip mall. Conroy gave the same direction to the Long Beach police—to cordon off the area and don’t touch a thing. Since this one was a little farther out, he asked the police to take photographs and send them to his cell phone.

  Assistant Director in Charge Conroy sprang into action. First he called Special Agent Taylor out at Thornton Park to apprise him of the new development, and to tell him to bring Rafael along and meet him at the Thornton Building.

  Then he called Special Agent Carr, who would be taking the day shift at Thornton Park and told him to go to the Spring Street address and take command of that crime scene. He was speeding to the Thornton Building as he made the calls.

  He arrived there first and took charge of the scene. The young woman was laid out on the sidewalk just as the ones in the park had been. She was wearing her native clothing and held a folded piece of paper in her hands that were folded over her lower abdomen.