The Mather Triad: Series Boxed Set (Chloe Mather Thrillers)

by Lawrence Kelter

  “Trust me, I checked her out thoroughly, and she came back with top marks. Besides, it was far better than having an old nearsighted coot threading the laser up my business. I fantasized about the procedure for days before it took place.”

  “But you were unconscious.”

  He grinned. “Not for the follow-up … and she wants to see me again in six months.”

  What a lucky girl. “Jesus, you didn’t … I mean you wouldn’t …”

  “Pop a boner when she examined me? No, Mather. I’m not a pig.”

  That’s a matter of opinion. I placed my cup of rocky road on his fender and pretended to spit into my palms he-man style. “Tell you what; one for you and one for me. Ice cream is to me like spinach is to Popeye.” I popped the trunk on the rental and retrieved a brand-new cherry red, twenty-four-inch bolt-cutter, which I had purchased at the Ace Hardware store on my way out of Saranac Lake.

  Cabrera followed me over to the unit. “Give that to me,” he insisted.

  “No, really, one apiece—I’m up to it.”

  “Forget about it,” he said and snatched the bolt-cutter out of my hands. “It’s a matter of pride now, goddamn it.” The old American Standard padlocks were formidable, likely produced in the days when America still did most of its own manufacturing with good old Pittsburg-forged steel. I saw the veins stand out on Cabrera’s forehead as he squeezed the bolt-cutter. The blades ate into the steel, slowly at first, and then the lock jumped as the shackle snapped. Cabrera looked up at me. There were beads of sweat on his forehead. “Son of a bitch.” He moved to the other side of the door.

  “Don’t be a hero, Cabrera. I’m more than up to a little lock popping.”

  “Eat shit, Gumdrop.” I heard him grunt as he worked on the second padlock. His back was to me as he applied pressure. I heard the pop. “Thank God,” he swore.

  I picked up my ice cream and was fawning over it when he turned back to me after removing the second lock.

  “Sure, very nice—rub a little salt in the wound.”

  I was standing beside him when he squatted to grab the handle at the base of the roll-up door. The metal was lightweight, and it flew upward with a loud clatter. As I peered into the darkness, I was pummeled by the stench of death as it rushed forward, desperately racing to escape the tomb that had confined it. I felt the blood drain from my face. I was alongside Cabrera and needed to grab his shoulder to steady myself as I took in the shocking scene before me. “Oh. Dear. God!” I glanced at Cabrera and saw that he was reeling as well.

  Chapter 21

  February 9, 2014

  Leon Drade and Kiley, his eight-year-old daughter, sat at the kitchen table ten seconds into a staring contest.

  His wife, Serena, watched with amusement as Leon contorted his face into silly poses, trying to make Kiley flinch before he did.

  Kiley was a staunch opponent, but her father’s sad-puppy-dog face did her in. She giggled hysterically. “Shoot! I thought I had you, Daddy.”

  “Of course you did, but I am still the master,” he said with bravado. He drew closer with his hands poised to tickle. “Now are you gonna eat your carrots, or do I have to get rough?”

  Kiley giggled. “Nope.”

  “Nope? What do you mean, nope? Vegetables are good for you.”

  His hands were just inches away, so close that Kiley backed away, pressing her back against the chair to avoid them.

  His right hand shot forward, catching her by surprise.

  “Ha, ha, ha, ha, ha. Stop it,” Kiley snorted.

  Leon’s onslaught was merciless. He had his right hand on her belly and the left under her arm.

  “Stop, Daddy, I’m gonna puke. Stop it. Ha, ha, ha. Stop it.”

  Leon pulled his hands away for a moment, holding them up in front of Kiley’s face. “These hands are lethal weapons. Now eat your carrots, eat them now while I’m feeling merciful.”

  “Nope,” Kiley said defiantly, trying to provoke a second attack. “I said, ‘Nope,’” she persisted.

  “Oh, I heard you.” Leon put his lips on her neck and blew a fierce raspberry as he moved in for the kill, tickling her sides with both hands. “You’re putty in my hands, little girl. Surrender. Eat your carrots or suffer the consequences.”

  Kiley was breathless and so weak from laughter that she could no longer defend herself.

  “Leave her alone,” Serena insisted. She had a smirk on her face as she came to her daughter’s rescue. “That’s enough, Leon. She can’t breathe.”

  “Do you give up?” he asked without stopping. “Give up? Give up?”

  “Okay, okay,” Kiley acquiesced while trying to catch her breath. “I give. I give.”

  “That’s better.” Leon finally relented. He withdrew his fingers, stood up, and kissed Kiley on the head. He walked toward the kitchen door and then turned to Serena. “Make sure the prisoner finishes all of her carrots,” he said authoritatively.

  “Bully,” Serena said with a chuckle. “Where are you going? It’s getting late.”

  “To my shop. My power tools need cleaning and oiling before I start the new job in the morning.”

  “Gonna be long?” Serena asked.

  “A pretty good while. I kind of let things get out of hand. Don’t wait up.” He sneered at Kiley playfully. “Keep an eye on this one—she looks like trouble.”

  “I love you, Daddy,” Kiley said adoringly.

  “Love you too, munchkin.” He turned and disappeared out the door.

  ~~~

  Eva Brown was someone’s daughter too. She was nineteen years old, tall, and willowy. She was a pretty girl with long blond hair that shimmered like strands of silk, high cheekbones, and an infant’s pointy little chin. Bound, gagged, blindfolded, and lying on the floor of Drade’s storeroom, she looked anything but pretty. She had been sitting in the same spot for almost twenty-four hours. Her silky hair now looked like a rat’s nest. Her eyes were raw and her face streaked with grime. Her lips, normally rich and plump, had dried from dehydration and were stained purple where blood had dried in the crevices. She was naked except for her panties, her skin covered with goose bumps and bruises.

  Eva knew that she was not alone because she sensed someone moving behind her. She heard the same type of rustling noise that she herself made each time she tested her bonds, moving just an inch in any one direction, just as far as the restraints allowed. She heard the same muted protests, sounds of panic choked off by a mouthful of rags.

  A shiver ran through her when she heard the jingle of a key ring outside the storeroom and the telltale pop of the padlock as the shank jumped free of the body.

  ~~~

  Drade looked around and then up at the sky—the moon and stars were hiding from him, just as he was hiding his true character from everyone that knew him as a husband, father, and handyman. This location was his and his alone. Although his wife knew that he maintained a workshop where he prepared his work and housed tools and equipment, he had never shared the location with her. It was his private place, a place where he alone made the rules and did as he wished. Here he had no husbandly or fatherly responsibilities. His only duty was to satisfy his lusts, and tonight he would do just that. He pulled open the storage compartment roll-up door, stepped in, and closed it, all in the span of an instant.

  Eva began to cry. She could not see him, but she could feel his presence pour into the shed like sinister ooze. The gag that had been tightly knotted around her head muted her pleas for help—her desperate screams registered barely louder than a whisper.

  Drade was brazen. He immediately unbuckled his belt and let his pants drop to the floor. He yanked off Eva’s blindfold, all the time watching her face and feeding from her fear. He slipped his sweatshirt over his head and glowered at her with a look of superiority. He then slid his boxers off and approached her, fully erect.

  Eva squirmed, doing her best to inch away from him, movement all but impossible because of the tight bonds that held her in place.

&n
bsp; He had pulled her arms around to her back, aligned her wrists, and fastened them together so tightly that at first she thought her shoulder muscles would tear. Her ankles were shackled to the legs of a heavy workbench upon which rested his heavy-duty band saw, drill press, and router—all told, close to five hundred pounds of immovable mass.

  Drade was a beast of a man with a narrow waist and gargantuan chest and shoulders. “I don’t want to hurt you, but if you resist, I’ll snap your neck. Nod if you understand.”

  Eva nodded nervously, her eyes frozen wide with fear.

  He unshackled her ankles and flipped her over so that she was on her knees, facing away from him. He cut the tape that bound her wrists so that she could extend her arms straight and use them to brace against the floor. He tore away her panties while she stared upward in disbelief. The source of the noises that had come from behind her had finally been revealed. A woman had been shackled to the wall with her wrists and ankles secured by manacles that were anchored in cinderblock. A sack completely covered her head.

  Eva could sense his presence behind her and then finally his enormous hands on her flank. All concerns for the other captive disappeared as her focused turned inward. Oh no, she thought. He’s going to … She was powerless to fight him. Tears streamed from her eyes. He was about to enter her—she could sense him readying himself to … But then she heard him getting to his feet. She sighed dramatically, and momentarily clutched at her pounding heart. Curiosity and relief registered simultaneously, What? Oh thank God. Why?

  And then she knew.

  He reached for the sack covering the shackled woman’s head and yanked it off.

  She locked eyes with the woman who was fettered to the wall, and the breath froze within her lungs.

  Chapter 22

  The stink of death nailed us with a wallop. The odor was so strong that Cabrera thought I was going to pass out, and reached out to support me. The storage unit was filled with hundreds of blowflies that fled as soon as the roll-up door had opened.

  Before us, two naked female corpses hung from the wall behind a Ford pickup truck, which still held captive the corpse I presumed was once Leon Drade. The bats had not been kind to him—from where I stood I could see that the sockets around his eyes had been eaten away. His eyes had shrunk to the size of raisins and seemed to float within blackened hollows on either side of his nose.

  We let the storage unit air out for a few minutes before entering. I used the time to contact my CO, Bill Wallace, police chiefs Sparks and Teller, and Glutt the imprudent profiler.

  “Geez,” Cabrera said. “So where do you think these three are going in the hereafter?”

  I pointed at the two women in turn and then Drade, making a snap judgment. “Heaven. Heaven. Hell.”

  “Ha. The way you chanted your response reminded me of the old kid’s rhyme. You know, milk, milk, lemonade, around the corner fudge is made?”

  I chuckled. “I’m so happy that I amuse you, Cabrera. I take it that you believe in heaven and hell?”

  “You betcha. That’s why I’m a good little Boy Scout. You think I chose a dangerous, low-paying job like this for the glamour? No way. Who better to be granted entry through the pearly gates than a defender of the peace? I’m racking up Brownie points Monday through Friday, nine to five.”

  “I had no idea you were so religious.” Cabrera was a playuh, a man who liked women. I’d seen him in action with the ladies, and trust me, his path to heaven was hardly a sure thing.

  Cabrera gritted his teeth and shook his head from side to side. “I’m actually more superstitious than religious. I’m not afraid of many things in this world, but the idea of having my skin seared off by hellfire while Beelzebub pokes me in my fat little keister with his pitchfork for all eternity ain’t exactly up there on my bucket list. You don’t worry about going to hell, Mather?”

  “I’ve killed too many men to worry about the next stop on the never-ending highway.”

  “Oh, that’s right, I forgot that you were a combat marine. How many Taliban douchebags did you shoot while you were over there?”

  “The number’s not all that important, is it? I understand that the concept of heaven gives you comfort, but … if I spent time worrying about how I’m to be judged, I wouldn’t be able to function.” I redirected my gaze toward the inside of the storage room. “Okay, you devil-fearing scaredy-cat, what do you say we take our chances in the crypt of the dead over here and do some homicide investigating?”

  “Yeah, of course,” he said, most matter-of-factly. “What the hell else am I here for?”

  “Sure you don’t want to say an Our Father and sprinkle yourself with holy water first?”

  He glared at me. “Blasphemer!”

  “Worrywart!” That’s enough. I pulled out a pair of rubber gloves and forged forward.

  The corpse in the driver’s seat matched the general description of Leon Drade. Drade was African-American and was listed as six foot four inches tall on his driver’s license. Based on photographs his wife had supplied, he had probably weighed in at two-fifty before he bought the farm. He was now literally skin and bone. Between the bats, the maggots, and starvation there wasn’t a whole lot left of him, and what was visible to the eye was sickening. I imagined the bats had eaten their fill from him before the UNSUB came back and removed them. He was naked only from the waist down. Every inch of exposed flesh was covered with wounds, dried blood, and excrement.

  Cabrera tapped me on the arm and handed me a disposable particle respirator mask. His was already in place.

  I winked at him and put the mask over my nose, wishing I had done so before approaching Drade, the Toxic Avenger. He reeked of death and bacteria and God knows what else. A HAZMAT suit would’ve been more appropriate than the flimsy little mask. Looking at Drade, I wanted to say that it was a terrible way for someone to die, but based on the fact that two female corpses were shackled to the wall behind him, I knew better than to say anything nice about him. I didn’t yet know how the multiple homicides were connected—several theories ran through my head simultaneously, all vying for attention.

  Like Drade, the two female corpses had significantly decomposed, but there was no evidence of bat bites. Blowflies had attacked them in the most vulnerable places, the eyes, mouth, and private parts. They were bloodless and gray. Beneath them were the residues of dried bodily fluids and excrement that had migrated out of the body postmortem. It didn’t take long for the first clue to surface. Impaled upon a galvanized roofing nail that jutted out of the wall between them was a parchment certificate. It was fine quality paper inscribed upon in calligraphy. The certificate read:

  Rewards of the Kill

  Certificate of Merit

  Award of One Thousand Points

  For the Murder of Twins

  Chapter 23

  Local law enforcement showed up within minutes of my call to the Liberty Police Criminal Investigations Unit, but it took Glutt a full four hours to drive down from Saranac Lake. By the time she made the drive to Pandora’s, the local crime scene unit had completed its on-site investigation. I asked them to delay moving the bodies until Glutt arrived.

  Max Teller rolled in with one of his officers. He wasted no time at all—he held a mask to his nose and entered the storage unit like the brave buckaroo I knew he was.

  Glutt was less anxious to get up close and personal with the deceased. “Kinky,” she exclaimed, standing outside the unit looking in.

  “Don’t you want to get a closer look?” I asked.

  “Do I want to? No. Am I going to? Yes, but I have to work up to it. I may be a trained profiler but down deep I’m just a rabbi’s wife—I draw the line at freshly slaughtered kosher chickens.”

  Cabrera stood next to Glutt and, I dare say, barely spoke a word, which was quite out of character for a blabbermouth like him. He normally had a wisecrack for every occasion, but his persona seemed to change when he was around her. Four hours of waiting time had given Cabrera and me s
ignificant opportunity to catch up, and I had learned that he and his new girlfriend, Lorraine, were going at it like hippies at a free love festival. Who knows, maybe he was just worn out from incessant boinking.

  Glutt turned to Cabrera a couple of times, I presume to initiate conversation, but had been unsuccessful. “What’s your story, tall, dark, and speechless?” She was nothing if not direct.

  Cabrera raised his eyebrows. “I’m sorry,” he began with the patented bureau deadpan expression. “Did you have a question about the crime scene?” Reading between the lines, he was saying, “Can’t you pretend I’m not here?”

  “No, but you haven’t said a word since I arrived, and I was checking to make sure your jaws aren’t wired shut.”

  Cabrera was taken aback by Glutt’s bluntness. He looked at me while pointing at her with an expression that said this one’s got balls. “Oh, honey,” he said. “My jaws work just fine. I’ve got a full set of choppers and a bite like a hungry piranha.”

  They both chuckled. The tension had broken, and Glutt was now one of the boys, so to speak.

  “So what’s your take on the three stiffs in there?” Cabrera asked.

  “I won’t have a real opinion until we get DNA reports back on the three victims,” Glutt said, “but for now I’d say there’s been a lot of lust, fucking, and murder. You see things any differently?”

  “Differently? No,” I interjected, “but if I had to hazard a guess, I’d say that the male victim raped and murdered the two women and then a third man, our UNSUB, subdued, tortured, and murdered him. My second favorite scenario is that Drade, if that’s who he is, had a partner and that they raped and murdered the two women in tandem before the UNSUB turned double agent and did a number on his partner. If the lab finds the same semen on both female victims and can match it to Drade, we’ll know which theory is correct.”

  “That’s what I like about you, Mather, you’ve got a fertile imagination,” Cabrera said. He turned to Glutt. “And you?”