Patterns of Brutality: Erter & Dobbs Book 2

by Nick Keller

“I was…” he made a smoking pot gesture. “High.”

  “When did you see her last?”

  “That was the last time I saw her. I woke up, she was gone.” He looked at them desperately. “Why you asking me this?”

  “Why do you think?”

  “I don’t know.” His voice was rising, afraid of what he might learn.

  Mark and Bernie looked at each other, then Mark said, “Chrissie Newton—or Harlie Davison—is dead.”

  Chrome’s shoulders fell. His mouth dropped open. Face went colorless. “What do you mean dead?”

  “Someone ran her off Mulholland Drive. Slit her throat. Cut her face off.” Mark’s delivery was a pragmatic monotone. Even Bernie felt himself get offended. He didn’t even know the girl.

  Chrome froze, appeared to go catatonic. Mark waved his hand in his face. “Hey…” Chrome blinked and looked at him. “You do porn?”

  “Huh? Oh, uh-huh… well, adult entertainment.” His eyes drifted to the table and he spoke as if he was unaware of his own words.

  “And Chrissie—did she do porn, too?”

  He looked up still slack-jawed, eyes glazing over. “Uh—yeah, uh-huh.”

  “Why didn’t you fuck her?”

  He caught Chrome’s attention. He cried out, “What?”

  “Your cum was all up in her stomach. But not her pussy. Why not?”

  “She—she never fucked.”

  “Bullshit!” Mark shouted causing Chrome to jerk back in his seat.

  “Seriously! We just did oral. I fingered her ‘cause I got squirtability, and she sucked me off ‘cause she’s the B.J. queen. It’s all we ever did. I swear, man.”

  “You expect me to believe that?”

  Chrome yelled, “I swear to God.”

  “You know what I think?” Mark got to his feet. “I think you wanted to fuck her, but she said no because that thing of yours is too fat, and it throbs like one of those Chinese Tonga drums. Shit—might hurt a girl. So, she met you half way and gave you the ole’ gobble-dee-goo. But you—oh no, man. You wanted more. So, you followed her, didn’t you? Followed her straight down Mulholland. And when the time was right, when no one was looking, you just gave her a little bump off the road. Wouldn’t take much. Just a nudge. Bet your car has silver paint on the passenger side fender, right now. Then, you thought, oh shit, I took it too far. So you went down there and hacked her fucking face off!”

  Chrome was half-in and half-out of his seat, beside himself, with his face all twisted up in terror and anguish. He screamed, “No, man. I promise! All we did—” he forced a swallow, “all we ever did was fingers and blowjobs. I swear to God! That was her thing. I mean, maybe she played with toys, you know, or maybe she had some dude on the side, I don’t know. But she made her money with her mouth. She was like—you know…”

  “No, I don’t know,” Mark said.

  “She was the blowjob queen, man! The blowjob queen!” He started bawling profusely, collapsing onto the table.

  Mark sniggered through his mouth and looked at Bernie who diverted his eyes, on the edge of a chuckle. “Relax, kid,” Mark said, “I’m just teasing.” He started to leave but looked back. “Or am I?”

  Chrome stiffened, waiting.

  Mark left, leaving Bernie alone in the room with him. He stood over Chrome with his hands in his pockets jiggling change. After a moment Bernie blurted out, “Candy Starr. Andi Jones. Dulce Dios?”

  Chrome looked up at him lost in bewilderment. “Who…?”

  “What about Beatrice Harlow?”

  He didn’t know them. It was a long shot, anyway. Disappointed, Bernie said, “Nothing, kid.”

  When Bernie stepped out of interrogation room one he and Mark shared a look. It was hard to stomach for Bernie—hell, it was hard to stomach for Mark, too—but the look they shared was mutual, like two partners having the same thought. It was beyond either of them to acknowledge it, so Bernie just grumbled, “I’m stepping out a minute.”

  “Yeah, alright.”

  They parted ways. Before Bernie hit the station exit, he had his phone up to his ear saying, “William. Yeah, it’s Bernie. I got something for you—a couple things. You at home? Good, I’ll be there in…” he checked his watch, “…thirty.”

  27

  CASE DISCUSSION

  William had seen the files before. Bernie assumed he’d spent the last day and a half staring at photo copies of them in the sick and sweet silence of his home, his eyes feverishly collecting every nuance, absorbing the backgrounds, the colored grains, the unseen details. William could see through those photos and into the moment of the real, watching the murders play out with near-exact precision, investigating the investigable—seeing them as windows into a past world defined by the moments before death, and the prime seconds directly after. It was his knack, a sixth sense only a rare mind like William possessed, both giving life to those victims and architecting the taking of life from them.

  But now there was a fourth file. Chrissie Newton’s, a.k.a. Harlie Davison. She was fresh kill. And there was semen involved. It was in her stomach, and on the tree. “Bizarre,” he muttered.

  “Mmm…”

  “What do they know about the semen?” William asked.

  “They’re analyzing it,” Bernie said.

  “They’re not likely to find anything.”

  “How do you know?”

  “Historical observation. They’ve concluded nothing. Not by the semen. This perpetrator’s careful.” He looked up matching eyes with Bernie. “Who’s doing the analysis?”

  “Derrick Smyth over in Hollywood Station. He’s leading the investigation with Neiman. Some joint effort. Plus,” Bernie sighed with frustration, “the FBI’s getting curious. They want what we got.”

  “The FBI? Can they help?”

  “Yeah, suppose so, as long as they keep their agendas off the table.”

  “I see. Are you in contact with this Derrick Smyth?”

  “I’m in contact with Mark.”

  “That’s good enough. Tell him to have the Hollywood Station labs analyze the samples for hormone levels—estrone, prolactin, oxytocin.” He pointed at him, “Serotonin, too.”

  “Okay, why?” Bernie sighed, waiting for him to get to the point.

  “As I’ve discovered, this could potentially give us some insight into the killer’s movements; referencing the hormone levels could offer us insight into his routines, habits—tell us what he eats, where he goes, if he’s on any meds. If they can’t ID him through his semen, maybe they can track him through his hormonal levels, find out his patterns.”

  Bernie scribbled something in his little flip pad. “I’ll mention it.” He looked up. “How do you know all this?”

  William looked caught. “Uh—research. I’ve researched it.”

  Bernie gave him a sideways look. “Bullshit. You got a source.” He was a human lie detector, and William was a shitty liar.

  “It’s nothing. I know someone. That’s all,” William said.

  “A she?” Bernie said, a childlike grin on his face.

  “Is that relevant, Bernie?”

  Bernie full on smiled, showing teeth. “Will, you little horn-bird, are you getting laid?”

  William flushed trying to withhold a grin. “Uh, no, Bernie, I’m not… getting laid.”

  Bernie still gave him a scrupulous look. “It’s okay if you are, you know. You’re supposed to get laid, kid.”

  “Can we get back to this?” William said, indicating his discomfort and desire to get back to the investigation materials.

  Bernie gave him a whatever gesture, and mentioned, “There’s something else.”

  William looked up. Bernie dropped another file down on the coffee table. It had a label sticker on it framed in a red and black striped pattern. A Victim File. It was labeled, Beatrice Harlow.

  This was number five.

  “You know anything about that?” Bernie asked gruffly.

  “Not a thing,” William said without l
ooking up and opened the file. Bernie watched him analyze it, flipping through the papers, scanning them quickly and pinching his lips together. “More of the same,” he said.

  “Yeah. If this is the same perp, it’s more than a serial. It’s a fucking spree.”

  William shuffled back and forth through the files, reading and studying, finding connections between them, sluicing together patterns in the connections and interconnections only he could see. This was his element.

  Bernie sighed, feeling a little unnecessary. He assumed, “You don’t have a drink, do you.”

  William pointed out, “To the left of the fridge.”

  Bernie put on a shocked expression, almost screaming hallelujah! He grabbed a tumbler and opened the cupboard to find an unopened bottle of Jack black label. He whispered, “Hallelujah.” He poured and went back to the couch, full glass, bottle and all.

  William finally looked up. “There’s a lot to work with here.”

  Bernie gulped and said, “Could have fooled me, pal.”

  William gave him a crooked grin and looked back down, eyes probing.

  “So, what do you see?” Bernie asked.

  “Someone dreams about death. They see it when they sleep. Not just dying, but actually dealing death. They obsess over it, but they allow their obsession to choke them. They struggle under it, but…” he motioned with a finger, “it’s the struggle that keeps them sane.”

  “You call this sane?” Bernie said.

  “Absolutely.” He looked up. “Do you not?”

  “I call it fucked up, is what I call it.”

  William grinned at him. “You’re looking at it through the eyes of a detective. You have to look at it through the eyes of…”

  “A killer?” Bernie said.

  William paused, trapped by the word. He said, “Yes.” He cleared his throat and collected himself. “Bernie, whoever’s doing this is freed by it. It frees them. They see you as their antithesis. They see you as a man so limited by his ideals, and so trapped by his encoding that you’ve sacrificed your health—both mentally and physically—to perform a task they believe is futile. They believe you’ve traded off your liberties, replaced your time right down to the minutes of your life, with an unhappy, bitter facsimile of what you were meant to be. What boggles their mind is that you’ve done this by choice. It was your decision that drove you to this.” William looked up. “You’ve chosen a moral life.” He smiled ironically, looked back down. “If whoever’s doing this was asked, they’d say it was you who was insane, not them.”

  Bernie sat frowning at him, eyes dark and angry. For a second, William shrank feeling as though he’d stepped across some invisible line. Bernie swished the glass in his hands unconsciously and said, “And what do you think, Will?”

  “I’m with you, Bernie.”

  “Until when?”

  Will looked up again. “Until we catch him.”

  Bernie hid his disgust, and hid it well. That kind of perspective was exactly why he’d come to William. He snapped out of it and said, “Heh—who am I to argue? Okay, why do you say they’re obsessed?”

  “The dates.”

  “Huh?”

  “These four murders. The dates—January, July, and December of oh-twelve, then June of fourteen. They happened over the course of two-and-a-half years. Then this one. Three days ago. He’s been waiting to satisfy his needs, patient but desperate. He waited three years to silence the dreams.” William reflected on himself for a second.

  “There’s a three-year gap. Why?” Bernie said.

  “That’s precisely the question.” William paused with a thought banging around in his head. He looked up. “Could there be other murders that we don’t know about?”

  Bernie’s eyebrows lifted. “Could be. These—they fell into my lap. But without an M.O., finding others that are connected would be like finding needles in haystacks.”

  “That’s because you still think there’s an M.O. There may not be an M.O.”

  “Okay,” Bernie muttered, “then we’re fucked.”

  William rested his chin on his hands settling into his next question. “Have you ever beheld a star explode?”

  “Uh—yeah just the other day.”

  William looked at him, interested.

  Bernie grunted laughter. “No, Will, I’ve never beheld a star explode. Do stars explode?”

  “Oh yes, they do indeed, Bernie, and it’s chaos, the truest definition of. And even still, there are definable patterns within the explosion of a star. This,” he presented the papers and printouts slathered across his desk, “has a pattern. And therein lies our perpetrator’s modus operandi.”

  Bernie drained his drink. “Well, I hope you have better luck than me so far.” He rattled the ice. William looked back down and dove into the worlds playing out on the table. Bernie felt cut out, again. He stood up and went to the window looking out. Dusk was turning to dark. His thoughts went to Iva. He should probably go check on her. What was she doing right now, in all this chaos? What was she, an M.O. or a pattern? He grinned without knowing it. Nah—Iva was neither of those things. She was an obsession.

  Bernie looked back and said, “I’m going to get out of here.”

  William didn’t look up. He merely said, “Yeah, okay. Go check on Iva.”

  Half-spooked, Bernie said, “Uh-huh…” and walked out.

  When he was gone, William tore off a piece of paper from a pad and scribbled out:

  Starlet Murders:

  Dulce Dios

  Candy Starr

  Andi Jones

  Beatrice Harlow

  Chrissie Newton

  He picked up the paper staring into it and saw something strange, a thorn in his processing. Dulce Dios—it was a screen name. He checked her file. Her real name was Rosita Florez. William’s eyes looked around in thought. The killer was murdering actresses. He was fixated on their stage names, not their Christian. Okay…

  William scribbled out Chrissie Newton on the paper and wrote in Harlie Davison. Her stage name. The thorn in his processing went away. Yes—feeling better. There was something in their stage names that mattered to the killer. The pattern was filling. He sat staring at the list, searching the names, hunting for patterns.

  They all had so much in common. They were actresses. They were pretty. Their careers were moving in the right direction. They probably all had new-kindled hope when they died. Bad semen. William pinched his lips together. These patterns were so easy to find. But they were leading nowhere. He growled to himself. They were the wrong patterns.

  Look harder. Look deeper. Look at the unimportant. See the semantics. Study the pragmatic.

  He squinted bringing the list closer to his face. William blinked refreshing his eyes. He checked the victims’ dates of death and arranged their names in chronological order. He leaned back and whispered, “Oh my...”

  He erased his list and reordered it numerically, according to their dates of death, scribbling their names like a ravenous dog tearing into a bowl of food. He blew away the eraser marks and studied it, seeing something new:

  Starlet Murders:

  Andi Jones

  Beatrice Harlow

  Candy Starr

  Dulce Dios

  Harlie Davison

  “There’s five names here…” William said putting puzzle pieces together in his head. “The first four letters of the alphabet…” His face turned up in a wild grin. A through D, in order by date.

  Then, three years later, came the letter H. He tapped his lips with a finger, then gasped. E, F and G were missing. But they were somewhere.

  He stood up holding the paper in front of him. “This isn’t random. The odds would be…”

  Astronomical.

  “It’s alphabetical. This is a pattern.” He snatched up his recorder and held it to his lips. “These names don’t just represent female victims. They represent a pattern. They’re being picked alphabetically.”

  But there were only more questions
to ask, more answers to find.

  WHEN will he do it next? WHO will be the victim? HOW will he choose? WHERE will it happen?

  “That equals the killer.”

  William marched to his desk and snatched a Sharpie pen knocking his pen cup over and splattering utensils to the ground. Uncapping the marker in a fist he turned around to face the blank wall of his apartment, licking his lips with an obsessive determination falling over him. There was mania in his eyes.

  “Okay, let’s start…”

  28

  EVIDENCE

  Bernie was half way to Central P.D. when the pickup truck three cars ahead of him blew a tire. He heard the bang from where he was two hundred feet behind. Tuned to the sound of bangs, he shot a look forward to see the black flecks of rubber explode into traffic. The truck jerked toward the shoulder as the driver fought for control.

  The car behind the truck smashed its brakes. White smoke lifted up. Brake lights went on. They narrowly avoided a wreck, but the second car was too late. There was a collision on the highway which jostled the two cars cant-wise. Bernie already had his foot on the brake pedal and he pumped it mightily, careening toward the shoulder. His own tires screamed underneath him, and with teeth clenched he pounded to a stop. Something punched the back of his seat and clattered to the floorboard.

  He shot a look into his rearview mirror. The cars immediately behind Bernie started slowing one at a time. This was where the traffic jam started. Relieved he hadn’t smacked the car in front of him, he threw the Crown Vic into Park and got out. Highway traffic was responding to the crash as cars slowed to a crawl and swerved around, continuing on their journey.

  The drivers involved in the wreck were no worse for wear. The woman driver was shook up, but uninjured. The male driver who’d smashed into her was more inconvenienced than hurt. The hood of his silver Mercedes was tee-peed. Once Metro showed up with their Black-and-Whites, Bernie offered a quick report for insurance purposes and went back to his car.

  He got in and started to pull back out into traffic, but stopped. Something in his back seat had reacted to his brakes, flew forward and thumped against his seat. He got out, opened the back door, and saw a shoebox full of garbage scattered all over his backseat. Then he remembered—Lesha Sanders had handed him her mementos on Andi Jones, the first murdered girl. They were in a shoebox he’d dropped in his back seat.