He rolled his eyes, the chime indicating a new text message from his boss. He wiped his sweaty forehead and stopped. He always had to have his phone on.
He raised himself up off the boy, and stepped onto the floor, naked. Grabbing his cell phone off the night table, he read the text message, and didn’t like what it said and sighed.
Walked to the nightstand, he grabbed his wallet. he pulled out a couple of twenties and handed them to the boy. “I have to go now.”
The boy nodded, staring at the money.
“That’s yours, but don’t tell him, okay?”
“Thanks Mister!”
Tilting his head to the side, the man smiled. “Call me Carter.”
Chapter Forty-One
Exterminating Roaches
Henry got into the unmarked police car without any fuss.
The picture of Uncle had gotten to him. He needed time to think, maybe talk to his god, but he would be fine.
I wondered if Mitch would be okay with me or Henry putting the end of the barrel of a nine-millimeter pistol to Uncle’s genitals and blowing them off.
My brother sat in the car, staring off in the distance. He just needed time. After the Parnells, Henry ended up with another Foster family, the Irvines. Stu and Carol Irvine both were born and bred in Baytown, Texas.
Stu, an ex-marine or a marine who was not in the service any longer, because there was no such thing as an ex-marine, worked as a welder. Carol worked as a secretary for an electrical supply company. After years of unsuccessfully trying to have children, they adopted Henry.
From then on, Henry lived in a safe environment. He went to church every Sunday, the Irvine’s were Catholic, and over time had accepted his new family. Growing up, Stu was a huge help to Henry, a great role model. The Irvines adopted another child, a girl, Leslie, and Henry accepted her as his younger sister.
I knew each member of the Irvine clan, and was very happy for my brother.
I might Carol, and have her talk to him. Henry trusted her, calling her mom.
Mitch walked up and stood next to me.
“What?”
He shoved his hands into his pockets. “I don’t think he can go on with this investigation.”
Henry was a sitting statue inside the passenger seat. I remembered him as a three-and-a-half-foot tall innocent boy. Even then he was tough. “Why?”
“I’m afraid if he were to find this guy, Norman White, I don’t think he could be objective. He might do something stupid, try to hurt the man or even kill him.”
I felt my eye brow move up. “You think Henry killing Uncle would be a bad thing?”
“What?”
“You know what I said. You can’t tell me that it would be a terrible thing if Norman became worm food.”
“Hey, I understand, but we are police. We can’t go around killing criminals. The majority deserve death, but we must arrest them and then put them in jail. That’s our system, that’s how it works.”
Our system sucks. “But that’s not what he’d be doing Mitch. He wouldn’t be killing a person. He’d be killing the man who raped him, a monster!”
Mitch put his hand on his waist. “But…”
Both my eyes stared into his. “There’s nothing wrong with exterminating monsters.”
His hands out of his pockets now, palms up. “It’s against the law, period.”
“That’s naive Mitch, and you know it.”
“Maybe, but the law is clear.”
“The law is arbitrary. Made up rules by skillful crooks, followed blindly by scared sheep. Because they understand that the biggest gang is made up of government employees, with scum sucking lawyers filling in the gaps.”
“But wrong or right doesn’t matter to the system. If you kill somebody who isn’t threatening you, you go to prison.”
That’s if you get caught. I understood what he was saying, he couldn’t promote killing even if he wanted to.
“We catch him and put him in prison.” A wicked smile slowly crawled across Mitch’s face. “It’d be nice to know that Norman White was getting a daily dosage of ass-ramming. That’s justice.”
Justice? No, not really. “Yeah.”
Chapter Forty-Two
One Down One To Go
Lukas hadn’t broken into anybody’s house in decades, and being inside the cop’s condo gave him a thrill.
Lukas started out as an ambitious seventeen-year-old burglar.
He stole from people’s cars, houses, and businesses until that one night he got caught.
Lyle, a fellow thief and friend, had been busted with a hooker with half a pound of cocaine by Vice. To help himself, Lyle gave the cops Lukas’s name.
The cops sat on Lukas, busted him when he broke into a hardware store and tried to steal electric hand tools.
The cops held him for days before they released him. The cops could only charge him for trespassing, because they busted him before he actually left the hardware store with any merchandise. Lukas found his friend, slit his throat, and dumped Lyle’s corpse a block from the police station, with a mouth full of cheese.
Lukas picked up an eReader, grinning, remembering back then in the old days when he stole everything. Nothing was off limits: jewelry, consumer electronics, guns, riding lawn mowers, bikes, hand and power tools, office equipment, chairs, and desks. Once, he stole enough printer paper to fill the back of big U-Haul truck.
One night one of his buddies invited him to a poker game. Lukas was not a gambler, but he thought he would try it out.
He ended up losing over a thousand dollars that night but discovered the potential that gambling houses had.
Lukas opened a few gambling houses and met a lot of people, including law enforcement and city politicians.
Made a good living running the gambling houses, but they didn’t make him rich. Then one night a guy, a client of his, didn’t have money to pay his gambling debt, but offered Lukas a bag of cocaine. “You can make twice what I owe you with that bag.” Lukas sold the bag in less than twenty-four hours to a night club manager, and made almost two and a half times what the client had owed. Once Lukas learned about the earning potential in sin, gambling and drugs, there was no stopping him.
He walked around the apartment.
The size of a lunchbox, the place wasn’t bad, a typical bachelor pad, but too small for his tastes. Lukas decided to start in the kitchen. A few cookbooks lay on the counter. One of the titles, How to Make Easy Vegetarian Soups for Every Day of the Year. The other books were about the same fag vegetarian bullshit. His face contorted as if he had bit into a lemon, at the thought of having soup for more than a few days in a row. Not that he didn’t like soup, Lukas was older now and liked soup, it was easy to make and easy on the digestion. But he believed that a real man needed to live some, thought that it was natural to eat meat.
Lukas didn’t peg this cop as a fruitcake, because fruitcakes normally didn’t bother with kids. This one, divorced, and had a daughter who lived with her mother.
He checked the pantry next, but there wasn’t much, some basics. Salt and pepper and a jar of peanut butter, Jiffy, the creamy kind. A family-size box of Macaroni and Cheese sat on the top shelf next to a half-eaten bag of Doritos with a black clip on the rolled-up portion. Several packages of Ramen noodles and various kinds of cans of soups collected dust on the shelf. There were ten assortments of beans on the shelf below.
He closed the pantry.
Opening the fridge, he saw an orange box of Arm and Hammer baking soda and plastic containers on the top shelf. Three kinds of Chinese hot sauce, and one he liked himself: Frank’s Red Hot were in the door.
A pitcher sat on the top shelf. Grabbing it, he took the top off. Took a whiff, and then a swig. It wasn’t half bad, some kind of fruit juice. He grabbed a small white box from the bottom shelf, and read the words on the box. “Tofu? Why the hell would a cop eat tofu? Fucking fairy food!” He put it back and closed the fridge.
Then opened the freez
er and saw it. He reached in and pulled out a package of frozen chicken.
Then he walked over to the bookshelves in the living room. Lukas read the titles of the books occupying the shelves. Some were on law enforcement procedure, and a book on philosophy. Novels too, but he didn’t recognize any of the authors.
Several bottles of booze were on a small portable bar on the far side of the living room. All of it cheap vodka and gin.
A chessboard with the pieces was set up ready to play on the coffee table. The set was expensive, made of white and a dark green marble. He never learned the game, seemed like a waste of time.
Then he came upon a framed poster of Martin Luther King. It was an enlarged photo taken during his I have a dream speech.
He turned away from the poster, and walked into a bedroom. The bed was unmade and two pairs of tennis shoes lay on the floor, outside the closet. Rifling through the cop’s clothes, several suits, blue, gray, and black, he found a police uniform. He wanted to take it, but he wanted to leave here without any trace of him ever being here. A couple pair of expensive dress shoes were on the closet floor.
Walked back to the living room, and realized there were no pictures of this guy anywhere in the apartment. Most people presented pictures of themselves and loved ones. Maybe he kept his pictures online or on a laptop? Went around once again fast, to every room and closet to make sure he didn’t miss anything. He even took a few pictures as mementos of his care free frolicking in someone’s abode.
Lukas exited the apartment, not leaving any trace of his being there, thinking, one down one to go.
Chapter Forty-Three
Leave No Witnesses
While we stood outside of Mrs. Ramirez’s apartment, we froze our asses off.
Mitch asked Teresa if she knew how to contact Norman, but she said she didn’t. He was some rich guy who gave money to charities.
Not sure if I believed her, but I couldn’t interrogate her the way I wanted with the local Gestapo within earshot.
Today’s events began to coalesce in my mind. I understood what had basically happened: BM killed Samantha—not sure why. He then called Uncle, his local, child-sex trafficker, and asked for help. Then, Uncle had Art, his employee or some kind of contractor, get rid of the body. Art does but gets into an accident, and then the doctor tells him he’s about to check out.
Knowing that the Grim Reaper was coming for him, Art talks to his god and sprouts a conscience. Happens all the time.
I can’t say how many times a mark, right before I put a bullet in their brains, having never stepped foot in a religious building for years, if at all, all of a sudden begins praying.
Informing the cops about the girl’s body, had to be worth some Heaven points for Art. So, he got a cop to come by, Art tells Henry what he did, dumped the body of a dead girl. But Art was still loyal to his boss, I understand, and wouldn’t roll over on him.
He ain’t no snitch.
After all that, Carter shows up probably to see how Art was doing after the car accident, but he thinks Art talked to the cops. And then Carter tells Uncle.
I would have taken out Art, and not put a hit out on two cops. Killing cops was committing suicide.
Uncle had clients and by the looks of BM’s house, wealthy clients. Either way Norman and Carter needed to protect themselves, leave no witnesses. If you can’t reach the witness, you take out the investigators handling the case.
Not unheard of, but still a stupid move in my book. Killing the lead investigators of the case would delay the investigation. It’d help any lawyer down the road if Uncle was ever caught.
If you decide to kill a couple of cops who do you talk to? Several Mexican gangs, who would do the hit for pennies on the dollar, came to mind. Couple of biker gangs could do the job, but would be more expensive. But Lukas? No.
Then it hit me. Not sure why it took me so long to figure it out. Norman not only wanted the cops dead, but he wanted to expand his business. With his drug routes, Lukas was a perfect fit for Uncle’s needs. Lukas wanted to be Uncle’s private UPS!
“Mitch?”
He turned. “Yeah?”
I exhaled, but I did not remember taking a breath. “What if I told you Art told me something else?”
He closed his eyes longer than needed, and opened them. “What else did he say?”
“He told me where he picked up the girl’s body.”
Mitch grimaced. “What the fuck Chloe? It’s illegal to withhold information about a murder!”
My eyes narrowed. What did he expect? “Oh, since it’s illegal to withhold information about a murder then I don’t have any information Mister Investigator Mason. Sorry, I misspoke.” I turned to leave, and as I walked away, I felt his eyes on my ass.
“Wait!”
I turned around. “What?”
“Just wait up.”
“For what?”
Mitch looked at me, then gazed down at a spot on the ground like a shy boy asking a girl if she liked frogs. “You going to the place where Art told you he picked up the girl?”
“No, I’m going to do my taxes.”
He grinned. “You mind if I come along?”
“Why would you want to come with me? I might cheat on my taxes, and both of us know that’s illegal.”
He raised both of his eyebrows. “I can’t stop you from doing what you’re going to do, and I think I could help you, and at the same time, keep you honest, maybe.”
My shoulders moved up, then down. “I don’t think there’s a man on this planet, that could keep me honest.”
“Maybe if you gave me a chance, you might find that I have an effect on women.”
Looking at him, I found it hard not to like what I saw. I smiled, twirled my hair with a finger. “If you want to Mr. Mason.”
He gently tossed me a sexy smile, and nodded.
I pointed at the car. “Henry’s coming with us.”
Staring at my brother in the car, his face showed worry for Henry. “Come on Chloe, he isn’t himself. It’s obvious that he’s been affected by Mrs. Ramirez’s picture of that man.”
“Well, maybe, but my brother is strong. He’ll be okay.”
He shook his head. “Maybe.”
“I’ll watch him.”
He paused as if to think about it. “Alright, let’s do it!”
I winked at him. “Looks as if we are joining forces.”
Chapter Forty-Four
Towards The Front Door
Due to the cold weather, my nipples were so hard they could cut glass.
I followed Mitch and Henry in a dead man’s car to BM’s house.
When we arrived, I moved quickly. The driveway was empty so I checked the garage. A Porsche Cayenne was in there, and someone was home.
I joined Mitch and Henry in their unmarked car.
The car was filthy. The back seat was the envy of all trashcans across Texas. Old coffee cups and food wrappers, nuggets of food still clinging to some littering the back seat. I’m by no means a clean freak, but this was ridiculous. “Uh guys, is it time to clean this vehicle?”
Mitch turned his head slightly. “Oh yeah, I hadn’t had time to clean it yet, sorry about that.”
Henry didn’t acknowledge my question, just stared off in the distance.
Mitch ran the address, and Mildred Ann Longhurst came up as the sole owner to the house. Didn’t match with the initials, BM. Nobody in the car knew what that meant. Maybe the house belonged to BM’s wife or he was just a house guest, needed to wait and see.
My eyes drifted to the house. The windows were large. It was worth a few million, at least.
Henry was in the front passenger seat, Mitch was behind the wheel, right hand gripping the steering wheel, his fore finger was tapping.
My brother turned to face me. “What are we doing here?”
“Looking for a monster.”
“Chloe, Art told you that he picked up the dead girl here?” Mitch asked, pointing to the house.
“Yeah.”
No one said anything for almost ten minutes.
Mitch asked, “You have a significant other? I’d think it’d be hard with what you do and all.”
“Why do you want to know that? You looking to go out on a date with me?”
Henry turned, and grinned.
He shrugged. “Nah, just curious, making conversation.”
A dirty idea crawled out of the gutter and entered my mind. “I like girls.” I knew what girl on girl action meant to most men.
Mitch nodded. “Oh, that’s cool.” His gaze moved from the rearview mirror to the house.
“But I like guys sometimes. At the moment though, no boyfriends, only a couple of girlfriends.”
Another long silence.
My stomach growled. “I’m hungry. How about burgers? I could go for a double-meat cheeseburger. Y’all want me to grab us some?”
Mitch turned and was about to say something, but stopped when Henry grabbed his arm. “There’s a cab coming this way guys.”
We all turned our attention to the cab, which drove into BM’s driveway, the kind that was shaped like a U.
It stopped at the front door, then a man got out.
Moving my head around, I tried to get a better angle. “Can you guys see who that is?”
Mitch sighed. “No.”
Henry moved his head around a bit and shook his head.
The man walked towards the front door, didn’t knock.
As he reached the entrance the door opened. The back of the man was visible for all of five or six-seconds. He had brown hair, approximately six feet tall, but I couldn’t see much more than that, other than he wore sunglasses.
Whoever opened the front door of the house didn’t come out.
“Who opened the door?” Mitch asked, louder than needed.
My neck stretched. “I couldn’t see who it was.”
“Older white male, but I didn’t get a good look at him.” A pair of binoculars stuck to Henry’s face. “He walked directly to the house but didn’t turn around.”
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