by G. O. Grason
Body Count Rise
A Christine Halloway Thriller ~Book 1~
G.O. Grason
Contents
About the Author
Stay In Touch With G.O. Grason
Prologue
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Also by G.O. Grason
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Review this Book
Copyright © 2020 G.O. Grason – All rights Reserved
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any similarity to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise) without the prior written permission of the copyright owner. The author acknowledges the trademarked status and trademark owners of various products referenced status and trademark owners of various products referenced in this work of fiction, which have been used without permission. The publication / use of the trademarks is not authorized, associated with or sponsored by the trademark owners.
About the Author
G.O. Grason was born on Nov 26 1964, the 3rd child of English immigrants.
Growing up in Ontario Canada, and having traveled extensively around the world, G.O. Grason has developed many friendships worldwide, enjoying learning about our many different cultures from customs to food to history.
G.O. Grason is an International Award Winning author, who has been writing since early childhood.
As a lover of suspense, your support is my inspiration. I am delighted and honoured to have you read my books, so we can step away from the everyday and continue to go on thrilling adventures together.
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Prologue
It was a busy Friday night in New York. The thick gray cloud strewn sky threatened to pour heavy torrents of rain mixed with fear and chaos onto the City. Passerby’s saw news flashes of mysterious deaths and missing persons on the TV. It had been the lead story of news outlets for the past three months.
The mere knowledge of a serial killer on the loose struck fear into the vulnerable citizens and was a frustrating concern for the authorities. The last thing they wanted was to look like they couldn’t do their job. To the public, it appeared that the New York Police Department was making little effort to discover who the killer was but, in reality, they didn’t have any leads. The police had just released to the press, the discovery of another murder and declared two others were missing. The body count was on the rise. For the department, if felt as if they were a part of some puzzle-like game. Everyone felt on edge and far less benevolent than before.
Christine Halloway - the detective of the New York Police Department in charge of solving these mysterious killings, was getting tired of every knife of criticism. Before this case, Christine had a perfect record, putting whatever criminal she was assigned to find behind bars. Which made her present effort that much harder. She had never failed with so little hope before. Her efforts at unraveling the tortuous case had proven futile. The only thing she had to go on was the sickening modus operandi of the killer from the recovered bodies.
On top of that, genital mutilation was the prevalent act of the unknown criminal on the unsuspecting female victims. Seeing those mangled bodies, she couldn’t help but think that could have been her if things had been different. These women, dead and gone, could no longer fight for their lives but, Christine could. That was her mission. Unfortunately, the mutilation was the only clue Christine had gathered so far from the investigation. The interview documents were virtually blank, as families and friends of victims made themselves unavailable for questioning so as not to become another victim.
1
"This case is just one roadblock after another. I've been working around the clock on it! It is exhausting.” Christine slammed her desk with her palm and exhaled. She knew she was complaining over the call with Lieutenant Baggins but she didn’t give a damn.
"Is that so? It seems to me you've just been fuckin’ around the whole time," retorted Baggins. "There’s another detective that will be taking over the case," he said, almost yelling and ended the call.
Before she could recover from the shock of what the Lieutenant had said, Christine noticed a tall masculine figure standing in front of the squad room TV, unapologetically browsing through the news channels. With Baggins still screaming in her ear, Christine realized after a minute who the rude intruder actually was. Christine hung up the phone and charged.
“What the hell do you think you’re doing in here unannounced?" Christine barked as she caught the intruder off guard.
“Oh sorry.” He turned around and offered his hand. “
I’m Detective Brian Thompson. I’ve been assigned to take over the case. Nice to finally meet you.
Christine grew hot with rage. She felt like a little school girl picked last for kickball. Thompson was nice enough from his introduction but Christine knew, at the end of the day, he was just another man that believed he could do the job better than her. Christine had been dealing with that her whole personal and professional life.
“Well, detective, you've landed yourself a big one” Christine said, as a call starting ringing from her office.
“If you’ll excuse me,” Christine said, faking a smile.
“Is it ok if I turn the TV back on?” Thompson asked to Christine’s back.
“No!”
“Halloway here” Christine answered.
“Another college student is missing” the caller reported. “Her name is Grace Carmen.”
“Understood,” Christine replied and hung up.
“I was joking about the TV,” said Christine nodding at the black screen.
“Oh…I wasn’t sure if you were serious or if…” Thompson stammered.
“Doesn’t matter. Another student is missing, Grace Carmen, this time from Columbia University.” She said nonchalantly to the new detective, raising her eyebrows.
“Now I understand why you’ve been unable to solve this thing. It all just seems to be an inconvenience to you," replied Thompson.
“Take the case then! It is one of the worst ones I’ve had in my life. I hope you’ll understand how difficult this has all been when you read it.” Christine threw the stack of files at Thompson and stormed out of the office.
Thomas was shocked. He looked around at the other officers with his eyes wide. A few gave him some meek shrugs but other than that, they kept their heads down. Thompson picked up the papers and walked into Christine’s office to examine the case.
One of the first names was Catherine Ferguson. She was a twenty-six year old scholar at Cornell University, here in New York.
Who could have killed this promising lady? Thompson imagined the incident, as he finished reading it over for the third time and got into his car. The only way he could fully immerse in the new murder of Grace Carmen was if he was there. That was the work. Thompson drove towards the grounds of the Columbia University.
As he drove towards the dorms, he noticed that there was some sort of demonstration going on. Placards, bearing the name of Grace, were hoisted in the air, as the police tried to hold them back. Th
e situation is under control, I guess, Thompson thought as he parked the cruiser at the entrance of the dormitory.
“I’m Detective Thompson” he nodded to Sergeant Carrow, who had been waiting for him.
Sergeant Carrow was a tall, well-built middle-aged man. He had gray, silver fox hair and a chiseled jaw line. The other officers called him The Clooney because he looked like George Clooney. The other women officers would be lying if they said they didn’t have a crush on him. Luckily for Carrow, he didn’t let his good looks get in front of his duties.
“Let’s get to work”, Sergeant Carrow said, as they entered the dorm where Grace had been living.
Sergeant Carrow scanned the bedroom. He noticed shards of glass underneath Grace’s bed that appeared to have been pushed there hastily. There was some dried blood on the comforter and the carpeted floor. The perpetrator hadn’t even tried to make it seem like an accident. Everything looked purposeful, as if the perp wanted them to know they would find these clues. The perp, whoever they were, was giving them what they wanted, not the other way around.
Carrow clicked his tongue. “Son of a bitch thinks he’s in control.”
Thompson nodded. “I don’t like this at all.”
“Look
at this,” Sergeant Carrow said as Thompson was just finishing his investigation of the comforter on top of Grace’s bed.
There, on a small cluttered desk, underneath a stack of old homework, was a knife that had dried blood on the blade. Also, there was a glass of water with a front tooth and four blood coated fingernails that had obviously been forcibly removed. Underneath of the glass was a short note with the words:
“Don't worry. Grace is in safe hands.”
The other part of the note was signed Body Count Rise.
“Can you see any traces of fingerprints?” Detective Thompson asked.
“Nothing obvious,” Sergeant Carrow replied “But we will know better when the lab processes the scene”
“Jesus Christ! Let’s go,” Thompson said to Sergeant Carrow as they stepped out of the dorm.
Thompson felt dizzy as he walked back to his car. The scene weighed heavy in his mind. He saw the bloodied papers. He saw the knife. He tried to imagine the hand that had once held the knife. Then, the note: Body Count Rise.
“Ah! Damn it” Thompson exclaimed as the nausea came over him in a wave from what he had just witnessed.
You would think I would be used to this shit by now, he thought as he crouched, kneeled over and vomited. As he wiped away the hot puke, Thompson realized he hadn't made any notes of the crime scene. A damn rookie mistake.
Carrow hovered behind Thompson. He was trying not to vomit himself. After a few hard coughs, he managed to ask, “You alright over there or we going to need to get a medic?”
But Thompson couldn’t hear Carrow’s joke. His mind was reeling as that tiny little voice began to grow louder.
Indeed, the body count will continue to rise, Thompson thought as he fastened his seat belt and jammed it into high gear.
As day turned to night and the sun was beginning to set, in the living room of a high rise in Manhattan, Detective Christine Halloway sat comfortably on an emerald green couch with her limber, strong legs stretched out onto the coffee table. In her hand was a glass of Cabernet Sauvignon. Throughout the night, Christine had lost count of how many she had. All she knew was the empty bottle stood like a soldier at attention on the end table beside her. On the couch next to her was a picture of a young man of about 15 years old. It was her brother Bobby.
It would soon be his 25th birthday. There would be no celebration as Bobby had been missing and she presumed dead, for almost 8 years. Bobby had been a troubled boy who suffered from drug addiction and depression, becoming more unstable as he got older. Christine would often think of him, particularly around his birthday or holidays. She would try and focus on the good times, like the fond memories when they were just kids going away in the summer for their annual family vacation. She smiled at the picture, but it quickly faded as she knew it wouldn’t be long before she would be consoling a grieving mother, her mother, as she did every year around this time.
Melanie Halloway has never stopped grieving for Bobby. Christine knew her mother probably never would. Christine knew the bitter truth that Bobby wasn’t coming back. He was long-dead wherever he was yet, Christine would always reassure her mother that he would come back to them soon. Love sometimes has to lie.
Christine thought of the days when her brother’s charm was everywhere around the house. He would beg her to play catch with him and bring laughter to their mother's face – erasing the sadness caused by their father. Bobby would always take the blame for her whenever Christine did wrong and he would cover for her whenever she snuck out at night to party. He would laugh and goof around the house. He was a happy kid. Bobby was the best brother.
Bobby was an excellent student and all the girls loved him. There was the occasional sign of underlying issues. When their Dad finally left for the last time, Bobby couldn’t deal with it and snapped. Their Dad was his hero and he couldn't get over it or understand why his father would just up and leave them. Bobby started becoming a shadow of his former self and was depressed. He started smoking meth well into the night. He would laugh hysterically in the shadows of his room and his mind. He was locked in his room for weeks on end. Christine would sneak him in leftovers from the kitchen. Bobby would hit his fists on the wall and scream like a demon-possessed him. They got him into rehab months after he got out of his "seclusion." When Bobby finished rehab, he seemed to be doing well, like he was becoming his old self again.
Then a few weeks later, on a cold Tuesday evening, Christine and Melanie returned to a trashed home. The windows were shattered, and the couch was torn in what looked like a knife fight. Blood was smeared on the floor all the way to the back door and her brother was gone. No note. No voicemail. No nothing. Bobby had been missing ever since.
Christine and her mother were broken for months. Christine’s mother still was. Some days, she would call Christine and ask her if she had seen Bobby. Christine had to remind her that he was missing and just like that, all at once, the truth would hit her mother like a brick and she would cry for hours. The only thing that kept Christine going was the hope that one day Bobby would return.
2
It was 3:30 a.m. on a Monday. Thompson was unable to get proper sleep because his mind kept racing about the case. He kept hearing the words: body count rise. They were haunting and echoed in the deepest caverns of his mind. The crime scene had produced no witnesses or they were too afraid to talk because of the presumption that if they did, their words would make them the next victim of the mysterious psycho criminal.
The former detective on the case – Christine Halloway - wouldn't speak with Thompson. She felt he was taking her job. He recently found out Christine had been continuing to investigate on her own even after being instructed not to interfere with the case. Thompson was learning, day by day, that detective Christine Halloway did what she wanted, no matter the consequences.
Attempts to speak with the missing woman’s family and friends proved futile. He initially thought of Grace as a loner and just didn’t have many close contacts. Quickly he came to realize that continued threats towards people, who made open statements, presumably had everyone scared. Thompson couldn’t blame them. Fear made people do crazy things.
Thompson brought out his laptop, and the case files from his drawer. He went on social media to check out Grace's page. He found nothing. There was an overwhelming feeling of mourning, even though there was nothing specific posted recently. Death emanated from Thompson’s fluorescent white screen. It was palpable.
All of Grace’s social media accounts were shut down, even her Instagram account. There was a surge of anxiety from suddenly being so disconnected. Initially, after she disappeared, there was a single picture on her page. It was an eerie-looking image of her, posted hours after she went missing, on Fri
day. Her hands and legs were tied upward to a pole giving the image of an acrobat. Blood dripped from her fingers, and her head hung low. She looked like a worn-out doll. Her upper eyelid and lower eyelid were stitched together. The room was a dimly lit gray. It was impossible to determine the exact location. Thompson couldn’t process the motive behind these heinous acts as he clicked through them.
As disturbing as it was, the common link between all the victims, according to the autopsies, was that the criminal wasn’t satisfied with just killing his victims. Instead, the killer would methodically carve out their genitalia. Furthermore, on some of the victims he would pull teeth and fingernails and leave them in jars of water. He also found out the victims were from a targeted age group. From the age of 26 to 29 and they were all women. The media became obsessed with the story in the last few months but it had been going on much longer. From June to March, there was a total of 25 disappearances across the City, including Grace Carmen's case. A total record of 9 deaths were recovered, which he secretly prayed Grace wouldn't add to the latter part of the statistics.
For the NYPD, they had no solid leads or suspects in the case and that the killer was still at large.
Thompson stood up and made himself some coffee. He glanced at pictures of himself during his service as an agent with the Department of Homeland Security. He thought about how Lieutenant Baggins implored him to help with the case given his formidable skills during his service in the DHS. Why Detective Halloway wouldn't acknowledge his expertise felt surreal to him and he resolved that he couldn’t give a shit about her as a person or her opinion of him.