Thrills

by K. T. Tomb

  Oh, Yago. I should have warned you today when I had the chance. I should have told you to be careful.

  His hands, that had once made her tremble with desire, were marked with defensive wounds. One of his knuckles looked like it had been sliced down to the bone, but when she looked closer it appeared that there was a tooth embedded in it.

  At least you went down with a fight. At least you took a piece of him with you, she thought to herself.

  Chapter Six

  The police arrived shortly thereafter. They found her in the office and immediately started asking her questions.

  “Miss Crews, why did you think to look for him in the office?” one of the detectives asked her.

  “The only reason I came up here was because he was late for our appointment. He was never late for any of the sessions we’d had over the couple of days I’ve been training with him. Not even once. He was training me for competitive bodybuilding,” she added.

  The detective looked at his partner and raised his eyebrows.

  “What?” she asked.

  “Well, steroid rage is a type of… psychosis… that someone can go into. It causes them to… blackout and lose control of themselves,” one of the detectives said.

  “Are you taking any type of steroid right now, Miss Crews?” the other detective asked.

  “No, of course not—Yago believed in clean training,” she replied. “He didn’t give us drugs or tell us to take anything,” she added.

  “Okay, Okay. We understand this is hard but we just have a few more questions,” the first detective said. “What was your relationship with the victim?” he asked.

  “What do you mean?” she said, eyebrows raised.

  “Were you… involved? Ummm… sexually, perhaps?” the second detective clarified.

  “Of… of course not,” Courtney replied. “I had just started training with him. I didn’t even know the man. Not really,” Courtney said.

  “That’s fine. Thank you for helping us. Just one more thing,” the detective added.

  “Sure,” Courtney said.

  “Great. I want to go back to steroid rage. You said you just started training with him,” the detective said. “Is there anyone else you can think of that might have wanted to hurt the victim? Anyone you trained with seem like they were having a bad time? Or a hard time? Anyone go through random mood swings during the workouts?”

  “Again, not that I know of. I just started here two days ago. If you count our initial consultation, this is the fourth time I’ve laid eyes on Yago. I don’t even know his last name. You might want to get in touch with some of the other clients he trained. I only know Ed and Ron by name but they’ve also mentioned a guy named Steve. You should try talking to them. Ron is close to his first competition and that’s a long process of training. He could give you a list of people that might be more helpful to you. But like I said, Yago doesn’t push steroids, so if he was killed by one of his clients, it must have been someone who decided to use on his own,” Courtney said.

  “OK, we’ll get… Ron’s… contact information from the front desk,” the second detective said.

  “Is there anything else you guys need from me? I’d… I’d like to go home now,” Courtney said.

  “Sure. If we need anything, we’ll contact you at the number you gave us. Is that okay?” the first detective asked.

  “Yeah, absolutely,” Courtney replied.

  “Thank you,” the detectives said, one after the other.

  “No problem,” Courtney replied and she headed for the parking lot.

  The minute she walked into the house she ran to the laptop and downloaded the picture of Yago from her phone onto her laptop. She opened the browser and then copy and pasted the photo into the body of an email. Then she typed:

  Kim,

  This is what happened to Yago. I can’t imagine it was anyone other than S.S. Looks like he’s living up to the nickname ‘Killer’ the other guys in the bodybuilding group gave him. This seems like it’s bad news for your company and for your product. What do you want me to do about it?

  Please reply quickly,

  Court

  Kim responded almost immediately.

  Court,

  We’re already taking steps to get PTX off the shelves now, and then get the replacement product out there. We need your help finding out if any of the other gyms supplied it, and if they did we need lists of to whom it went out.

  We also need your help finding out if there are any other places S.S. might have trained because there is a chance that he could keep going after other trainers that are giving PTX out.

  Thank you for getting this to us and for your help so far—it has been tremendous.

  Kim

  Courtney read through the email, showered and then went to bed.

  Chapter Seven

  “I just don’t know, Scully,” Jacobs said.

  “What don’t you know?” Scully asked.

  “That chick from the gym. It just seems like there was more to her story that she wasn’t sharing. Not that she lied about anything, not that. I just feel like maybe she didn’t tell us everything, you know?” Jacobs said.

  “I… I kinda got the same feeling. You think she held something back to protect someone or what?” Scully replied.

  “Yeah maybe. Maybe a… a boyfriend or something? Like… someone she knows and someone she wants to keep protected, you know?” Jacobs said.

  “That pisses me off. I really hope, for her sake, she didn’t do that. God… why do people hide things from us?” Scully asked out loud.

  “I wonder the same thing every day. You know what would be fuckin’ great?” Jacobs asked his partner of twelve years.

  “Yeah, I do. It would be fuckin’ great if every crime came with the name and address of the schmuck that committed the crime. That’s what would be fuckin’ great,” Scully replied.

  “Goddamn mind reader over there,” Jacobs said under his breath. “It would be the greatest fuckin’ thing in the world. No reason for anyone to commit a crime ever, if they knew they would immediately be caught. That’s the best way to stop crimes… before they even happen,” he said out loud.

  “Well, what do we do? Do we take another run at ‘er?” Scully asked.

  “I don’t know. I suppose we could. Do you think it’s worth it? If we take another run at her, we might spook her. She might just go to ground,” Jacobs said.

  “True. Or we might spook her into running to whoever she needs to protect,” Scully said.

  “Yeah, we could end up getting that lucky too I suppose. But here’s maybe a better solution. Maybe we should put eyes on her for a while. Maybe we follow her, and see where she leads us?” Jacobs thought out loud.

  “That’s a great idea,” Scully said. “Let’s get on that.”

  “Yeah, let’s get on that,” Jacobs agreed.

  They got into their unmarked patrol car and headed out to find Courtney when a dispatch came through over the radio.

  One eight seven at 518 Second Street… the corner of Main and Second. One eight seven at 518 Second Street, the corner of Main and Second. Adult female and one child. Any units, please respond.

  Jacobs and Scully looked at each other, then Jacobs picked up the radio and called in their location and let the dispatcher know they were on their way there.

  They pulled into the driveway of the house and walked in the open front door. The scene was grisly—it was almost worse than the scene at the gym. The woman on the floor had been pummeled and, based on all the bruising, she had been beaten for a long time. The child was worse. His head had been smashed against the granite countertop in the kitchen. He was young—and the killer—whoever he had been—had lifted the boy off his feet and based on the way his head was caved in on one side, he had been swung by his feet and slammed against the counter. There was still gunk on the stone.

  Scully turned to one of the officers that had been dispatched to the scene and asked, “Where’s the husband?
”

  “No idea, sir—but she don’t have a wedding band on. No sign of an engagement ring neither. And none a’ the pictures on the walls have a photo of a man in ‘em. So we figure this ain’t somebody she knew. This is some guy, kicks in a door, then just…goes apeshit on them. I mean… look at this place… Mom was clearly beaten at the stairs when she came down to see what the fuck was going on. That’s where he landed the first blow. Then he drags ‘er in here, and starts beaten’ the hell outta her. That’s when the kid probably comes down, prolly hearin’ her screamin’. The perp grabs the poor kid, uses him like a baseball bat against the countertop, and then tosses the kid over here. Ma can’t move, that much is clear, and she ends up takin’ even more of a beating once the kid is dead.”

  “Jesus fuckin’ Christ on a Popsicle stick,” Scully said.

  “Easy there,” Jacobs said to his partner. “This is one sick fuck. Any idea what could set a guy off like this?”

  “Not a clue, not really. All we know is that this is one bad dude,” the patrol sergeant told him.

  Scully was angry. He was more than angry, he was pissed. He doubted it was just coincidence they’d had two bludgeonings in one night; the crimes were too similar. His expertise also told him that these kinds of killings were of a highly personal nature, never usually random; too much rage was involved. Of course, all sensible deductions would be out the window if they were dealing with a damn maniac. His mind went back to the class at the academy where they’d learned about psycho serial killers; his thoughts were specifically about the Helter Skelter murders. It was obvious that it was going to be a race against time to put whoever this son of a bitch was in prison, and he wasn’t going to take no for an answer. He was going to find this guy, one way or another, and he would find whoever this guy was, and he vowed that, by the end of the week, the mother fucker would be on death row.

  “So, what we’ve got here is either a crazy murderer who wants nothing more than to run around and kill innocent strangers, or we’ve got a killer that has some emotional tie to both our crime scenes and some connection all of our victims. But I’ll be damned if I know what either of those are,” Scully said.

  “Hmm,” Jacobs said. “There was a case that was a bit like this right when I first got my plainclothes badge. There were a couple of different women that got stabbed all over town, kinda like this. Turns out, there were housewives out running around on their husbands. All with the same guy. One of the girls that was friends with the other housewives… went off her rocker and killed a couple of them. She was so jilted by her friends’ actions… well… she kind of lost it. Maybe we’re looking for a jilted lover?” Jacobs said.

  “Well… that seems rather implausible to me,” Scully said. “I doubt one guy was sleeping with both this poor woman and our witness. And if he was, why the hell would he go off his rocker? Why not one of the ladies he was messing around with?”

  “Good point,” Jacobs said. “That doesn’t make sense. Not at all.”

  “Alright, game plan,” Scully said. “Let’s let the patrol sergeants get the rest of this crap back to the forensic lab. You an’ me are gonna go sit on our girl’s house and see if that shakes anything out.”

  “Let’s go,” Jacobs said.

  Chapter Eight

  Courtney woke up to the ringing of her phone. She rolled over, still half-asleep. She answered in a groggy voice.

  “Hello?”

  “Court, wake up. You need to wake up,” Kim said.

  “Okay… ummm… what’s going on?” Courtney said, her tongue feeling swollen and dry in her mouth.

  “Court, sit up for this. I know you’re still in bed—I know what you sound like on the phone when you’re half-asleep. You need to sit up. Are you sitting up yet? Court?” the urgency in Kim’s voice was starting to shock her awake.

  “Yeah, yeah I’m sitting up. What the hell is going on?” she asked Kim.

  “Okay. Last night… a woman and her young son were murdered in their home. The door had been kicked in. There is absolutely no connection between the murder and anyone in her—the mom’s—life. No boyfriend, no ex-husband. She wanted to be a mom, so she had him through artificial insemination. She’s quite literally the last person on earth with any enemies. She was a secretary at a law firm—a patent law firm which must be the most boring type of law out there—and she was well-liked by everyone in the firm. Not a single person disliked her,” Kim said.

  “Okay… so maybe it was a—” Courtney started to say but Kim cut her off.

  “There’s no way it was a robbery gone wrong, Court. Just no way. The woman didn’t have expensive jewelry. She didn’t have cash. She didn’t really have anything worth stealing. It was a modest house in a modest neighborhood. It’s definitely Steve. We have to get that product out of the gyms. We have to do it now. Get up, grab something to eat and then get over here. I need you to be in uniform, take one of our vans and get out to a few dozen drug stores, convenience stores and fitness clubs. We have a list of them now; everyone who ever received a shipment. Let them know you’re working directly with us and that every bottle is being recalled. Replace every bottle you collect with the new product and tell them we’ve found a defect in our capsule-filling plant that may have compromised the quality,” Kim said.

  “What’s the end game here?” Courtney asked.

  “The way I figure it, this guy, Steve, doesn’t have an unlimited supply. The thing about PTX is that it doesn’t stay in the system long. The body metabolizes it pretty quickly. That’s why it’s supposed to be taken twice a day, eight to twelve hours apart. But the difference is that overnight, the body should completely metabolize the PTX in the system. So, like a… like a drug addict… eventually, he will dry up. And once that happens, hopefully, he won’t completely crash and go off the deep end even worse,” Kim said.

  “Don’t you think that at this point we should just bring what we know to the cops and let them handle it from here?” Courtney asked. “I mean, I can absolutely go and get this stuff off the street, I have no problem with that. Here’s the thing, though. At this point, there’s just… too much on this, right? I mean… don’t you think the cops would be more capable of handling it?”

  “No, I don’t. And now that my employers are… acknowledging that this is an issue… well… they want to get this mitigated as quickly as possible. That means getting the product off the shelves and getting this Schmitz guy the help he needs. But they do not want this getting out to the public. This is the very best product we’ve ever produced, and it gets results. They’re not gonna let us off the hook on this one. Do you remember Ephedra?” Kim replied.

  Her tone suggested that she was beginning to become defensive and she just wanted to get off the phone.

  “Kim, what’s wrong?” Courtney asked. “Something’s up. I don’t know why you’re being so defensive—it makes perfect sense to let the authorities handle it at this point. So let’s just let them take it from here, okay?”

  “We can’t,” Kim replied. “We just can’t. I’m sorry that you’re in this situation. Look, if it helps, your next check will be double. Okay? But please… please don’t give up on this right now. Okay? I need your help, Court. I really, really need to know that you’re going to help me. Because if you’re not, I’m… I’m screwed.”

  “I would ask you what that means, but I get the feeling that you wouldn’t tell me anyway, so I’m just gonna let that one go,” Courtney replied. “I’ll get dressed and I’ll get over there.”

  “Thank you,” Kim replied. “Thank you so much, Court. This will get cleared up and I really appreciate the help you’re giving me with it.”

  “Yeah, no problem at all,” Courtney replied, feeling overwhelmed and exasperated.

  She got dressed. It just wasn’t the day, she decided, for the workout gear look but apparently, she was going to be masquerading as a BoostTech employee. Still, today was the day for business professional. She pulled out a black and charcoal pen
cil skirt and a white, low-cut blouse out of her closet. Looking professional could only help. She spent a couple minutes curling her hair, and then she put on her makeup. She laid on the eyeliner, mascara and the finishing touch was very red lipstick. She checked herself in the mirror once more and retrieved her map of the gyms from a couple of weeks past. Then she got in the car and made her way to the BoostTech warehouse at the edge of town. The compound was impressive and a bit imposing too. As Courtney drove through the high-security gates, she spotted several armed guards and even more ground personnel moving around. She was directed to a large warehouse loading dock where a huge door in the side of the building was pushed open for her to drive inside. Kim was waiting for her on the loading dock.

  Courtney parked in a designated spot and walked over to give her friend a hug. She was sure that she felt Kim shaking.

  “Are you okay?” she asked her quietly.

  “I’m fine… or at least I will be. I know you’ll be able to fix this for me.”

  Courtney opened her mouth to say something more but Kim flashed her a look that said talking time was over. She held out a clipboard to Courtney with all sorts of paperwork attached to it and a set of car keys.

  “That’s the van over there,” Kim said, pointing to a small white panel van with the BoostTech logo on it. “And this is the list of locations where our product is. Have each person sign to the number of bottles returned and the number of new product received and that’s basically it.”