The Warriors Series Boxset I

by Ty Patterson

  Alisha switched her weight between her legs and glanced at her watch not very subtly.

  Zeb didn’t take the hint.

  ‘Your mother didn’t tell you about Lester? You weren’t curious about who your father might be?’

  Her eyes flashed. ‘Of course I was. I used to pester her when I was younger. Mom said he was a commitment phobe and didn’t want anything to do with him. Mom worked her ass off to give me a good life, put me through college. When she fell ill, I supported her, did what I could. When she died, I picked up the pieces of my life and here I am now. Lester Benjamin was my biological father, but that’s just a statistic for me.’

  She moved to brush past Zeb, he blocked her way.

  ‘You inherit everything now, his store, the apartment.’

  She laughed harshly. ‘Dude, are you saying I killed him for all that?’

  Zeb swore at himself. Should’ve brought Broker along. He’s better with women.

  ‘No ma’am. I meant to ask what do you intend to do with them?’

  ‘None of your business. You wanted to know if I had any connection to Lester, the answer is, no.’

  She shouldered past him and ran swiftly.

  Broker looked at him in bemusement. ‘I thought you were going to get her permission to go through the apartment.’

  ‘I didn’t get there. She disappeared in a hurry once I asked her plans for the apartment.’

  Broker tried to keep a straight face for as long as possible, but his mirth finally burst. ‘Give you a gun and you’re the most dangerous man alive. But when in front of a woman....’ He chuckled.

  He sobered when Zeb looked at him. ‘We do this the hard way?’

  Zeb nodded.

  The hard way involved Zeb picking the lock on Lester’s apartment in less than a minute late at night, when the store was shut. They slipped in silently and Zeb turned on a red light flashlight.

  Broker smiled silently in the dark as he looked around.

  Zeb was a neat freak; Lester’s apartment came up to his high standards.

  The apartment was sparsely furnished, a couch and a couple of chairs in the living room, a round dining table with three chairs in the kitchen, a neatly made bed in the bedroom and a filing cabinet in one corner of the bedroom.

  Forty minutes later, Zeb handed a diary to Broker and let him browse in silence while he completed searching the rest of the apartment.

  The rest of the apartment didn’t yield any clues.

  ‘He always intended to leave everything to Shaniya and Alisha.’ Broker looked at Zeb as he stood motionless in the bedroom door.

  ‘Yeah.’

  The diary was filled with Lester’s neat handwriting; his attempts to reach out to Shaniya and make amends, her rebuff of his attempts, his discovery of Alisha’s existence. Pages filled Lester’s routine of observing Alisha from a distance, every moment meticulously recorded. Sadness tinged the pages when he learnt of Shaniya’s illness. He offered financial assistance, she declined, he credited her account, it was returned. He accepted it stoically, no bitterness coated his words. He offered to help with Alisha’s college fees, Shaniya turned it down. He requested a meeting with his daughter; it was met with stony silence.

  ‘Quite a man. A lesser one would have turned bitter, filled with anger.’ Broker shut the diary and placed it back in the filing cabinet.

  ‘Nothing?’ He asked Zeb when they exited the bedroom.

  Zeb nodded.

  Nothing, and he wasn’t disappointed. He hadn’t expected to find anything that pointed to the killer.

  He drove them out and when they were a block away, he turned on the headlamps.

  Broker leant back, looked at him and broke the silence. ‘Let this go. This one’s for the cops.’

  Broker’s right.

  Zeb exhaled slowly and let the New York night envelop them.

  The killer reveled in the night. Night was when he did his research, looked at various possible victims, rejected several and selected a few. The lucky few. His thin lips smiled.

  A television flickered silently in the corner of his bedroom, unwatched. The killer was on his computer, idly flicking through several images.

  The internet exists to serve me.

  He snorted and flipped through the next profile.

  The first kill had happened almost by accident, opportunity had come seeking him. The killer had been walking alone at night on Driggs Avenue in Brooklyn, when he’d spotted the drunk shambling ahead. He peered beyond the drunk, the street ahead was empty. Dim streetlamps tried defiantly to brighten the darkness and failed.

  He looked behind. No one.

  He looked above; darkened windows looked back at him.

  The thing in him surged through his blood. He quickened his step and fell ten feet behind the drunk.

  A hundred feet ahead he saw the dark entrance of an alley. He knew that alley. It was a dead end, the sides of two buildings boxing it in. It doubled as a urinal for drunks.

  The man ahead seemed to read his thoughts and lurched toward the alley and the thing spoke to the killer.

  He stooped in a flash, unlaced his shoes, and tied them together. He pulled a black mask from a pocket and pulled it over his face. Another pocket disgorged a pair of gloves that he donned.

  One second the drunk had stumbled in the alley, the next he was shoved against the wall. A cord whipped around his neck before his befuddled mind could comprehend and was pulled tightly.

  The killer stood well back from the drunk, evaded his ineffective struggle, and as the blood sang in him, choked the man.

  He stood enthralled for a few seconds when the drunk slumped and only when the first drop of rain hit him did he come out of his thrall.

  First kill.

  The words ran, tripped over themselves through his mind in a continuous stream, flowing along with his blood.

  He breathed deeply, forced himself to calm down, bent over the drunk, and stripped him swiftly of all his clothing and possessions.

  He dragged the body to the deeper recesses of the alley, walked back to the entry, peered to check it was clear, and made his way out.

  Back to the living world, to a world that had changed. Or maybe it was he who had changed.

  He walked briskly a couple of blocks, found a graffiti covered alley which was empty and set fire to the clothes behind a trash bin.

  Ash.

  That sounded deep to him and he smiled.

  He crushed the ash, scattered it around and an hour later was back in his apartment. He burnt his clothes, the mask, the gloves, gathered the ash in a plastic bag. The ashes would be scattered in the river and the bag would be burnt as well.

  He slept for eight hours straight and awoke refreshed.

  First kill.

  The killer stretched in his chair and yawned. That first kill had been messy and he’d gotten away with it due to sheer luck. The second kill was better, he kept improving and by the time he had four kills under his belt, it became routine.

  Well, not quite routine. He grinned silently.

  He read voraciously about serial killers, because that was who he was. He acknowledged it, accepted it and a deep joy surged through him whenever those two magic words flashed across the screen in his mind.

  Serial killer.

  The most exclusive club in America.

  He read theories, case studies, psychology tomes, everything that he could grab hold of. He knew all about abused childhoods, parental rage, isolation, frequency of killing, overconfidence, and other mistakes that killers made.

  He was different.

  He tapped the keyboard and another profile popped up.

  The internet. It was so simple, so easy.

  It’s opportunity.

  He no longer had to wait for the thing to identify a random person on the street as his next victim.

  The internet did that for him. People filled the internet with all kinds of shit, right down to their innermost desires.

  The
killer used the internet to find his next victims. He spent hours every day randomly skimming through profiles, playing a game of You Live, You Die. From the research, he identified those people who didn’t seem to have many friends. He then whittled those down to people within his reach.

  He had thought about broadening his territory but soon discarded the idea. Too many risks.

  Once the thing in him identified the next victim, it was a matter of finding details of where the victim lived and worked. That wasn’t difficult. People and the shit they left on the net.

  Then came getting to know the victim’s routine. This was the part the killer looked forward to. Following unsuspecting people, thinking how he would end their today, or maybe their tomorrow. Sitting next to the victim at a deli, maybe even nodding a ‘hi, how’re you?’

  He tried to draw this part out. It was almost like courting and falling in love.

  When he had the routine down, the thing took over.

  Not my fault, Your Honor. It was the thing in me.

  A woman’s brown eyes stared back at him. A single mom, one kid, waited tables at a burger joint. Pictures of her in various outfits flooded the screen, some lewd comments below a couple of them. He looked in her eyes.

  No women so far, maybe it was time to change the pattern.

  Patterns were what got killers caught.

  The thing in him slithered back.

  No.

  Yeah.

  Hell no!

  No won the day.

  He sighed and continued looking.

  Three hours later, he had a list of ten possible victims. All were males of various ages, in different professions.

  They all lived in Brooklyn or Manhattan. All of them worked in jobs that had lot of routine.

  The thing in him was happy.

  It was time for someone’s tomorrow to make his day.

  Chapter 5

  New York lay still, brooding, shrouded in darkness; dawn had not yet broken and lightened its mood. A mist hung thick over Central Park, deterring all but the most determined.

  Through the mist, a shape appeared, got more defined and cut through, leaving the swirls behind, and futilely reaching out.

  Zeb ran silently, making no more noise than a hare across the green. He was one with the silence and the stillness of the park, following the same route Alisha had. His eyes picked out various ambush points with practiced ease and on his third pass, he spotted the slightest opening in the copse through which Lester watched his daughter run.

  He continued running and on his fourth round, he swung toward the copse and studied it. The trees were bunched tightly and towered well above an average man’s height. Thick undergrowth crowded the trees and the smallest animal track provided an entry to the copse. Inside, it was spacious, a natural den with a thick green carpet on the ground that deadened sound.

  The grass was faintly trampled; the copse had the occasional human visitor.

  Zeb waited for the copse to speak to him and when nothing came, he gave one silent look and continued his run.

  It was on his fifth pass, as he was overtaking another solitary runner that it struck him.

  It must have taken time for the killer to set this up. Rolando said he chose his victims, studied their patterns and then struck. That means at least a few weeks of watching. And if he was watching, then maybe, just maybe, he was spotted.

  He ran with more urgency, this time out of the park.

  The forty floors building on Columbus Avenue were all mirrored glass and chrome. The glass reflected the city’s skyline as Zeb walked toward it. The entrance lobby was gleaming marble, manned by a security team, who nodded at him as he headed to the elevator bank.

  Broker had his apartment on one floor and his office on another, the rest of the floors were occupied by other tenants, most of them offices, a few apartments. Broker could have converted the whole building into his office if he wished. Zeb, he, and the rest of the team owned it.

  Zeb stepped into the office and stopped abruptly as a woman swooned at his sight.

  She was five feet seven, well-formed features, slimly built with well-defined muscle tone, casually dressed in a flannel shirt over jeans. Brown hair covered most of her face as she lay on the floor.

  Right behind her, another five seven woman with the same features, bowed elaborately in his direction.

  ‘All hail the warrior as he returns from battles,’ Meghan Petersen intoned. She straightened and hauled her twin, Beth Petersen, up. They high fived each other and wicked grins crossed their face as two pairs of green eyes drilled Zeb.

  ‘Hiya, Zeb. Brought any goodies for us from Turkey?’ Beth asked him.

  Her sister chuckled. ‘I doubt Zeb knows what that word means. He probably thinks they are some model of guns.’

  The mirth in their eyes died as they approached him and hugged him tightly.

  Broker watched them through the open doorway and nodded at Zeb. He knew what the hugs were for.

  The twins came from a cop family; their father had been a SWAT team leader in Jackson, Wyoming.

  Several years back, a bunch of students had run rampant in the University of Wyoming as they shot and killed indiscriminately. They held a few students hostage in a stand-off with the SWAT rescue team lead by Bud Petersen, the twins’ father. Unbeknownst to Bud, Beth Petersen was one of the hostages.

  Bud lost his life in the assault and Beth was shot in the head. She recovered, but her memory didn’t and she lived with that permanent hole in her past ever since. The sisters moved to Boston after the tragedy and started a new life for themselves, as business-women, owners of a web design firm.

  Zeb had come across them in a previous mission, when the sisters had been vacationing in Yellowstone National Park, where he was camping and taking some downtime.

  Zeb had been hiking when he came across the women who were being hunted by a gang for reasons unknown.

  He had rescued them in the park and had then gone on to help them face down kidnappers and ruthless assassins. Broker and he had uncovered the motive behind the attacks and in the final showdown; Zeb had nearly lost his life.

  Their father, Bud was a hero to the girls. Zeb now occupied the same pedestal as their father.

  Months after the mission, the sisters sold their business in Boston, relocated to New York and joined Zeb’s team. They took care of logistics, weaponry, ran the extensive garage that Broker owned, and played an active role in planning.

  Zeb asked them once why they wanted to join his team. Meghan had looked pityingly at him. ‘Face it, Zeb. This is the only way you’re going to have some hot women in your life.’

  Broker grinned at that. ‘A hermit has more fun than Zeb.’ His smile widened as he chortled. ‘But you ladies came because of me, didn’t you? My looks and charm wore you down. I knew they would.’

  The sisters were whip smart, had a ready, irreverent wit, brought energy and youth to Zeb’s outfit and had re-energized the team. Zeb, Broker, and the rest of the team, accepted them unqualifiedly and made them feel at home.

  The sisters had passed the tests of life. That was qualification enough.

  The twins led Zeb and Broker to an inner office and pointed dramatically to a chart pinned to white board.

  ‘We knew you wouldn’t let go of this, so we decided to do your thinking for you.’ Beth said smugly as Zeb studied the chart.

  ‘Someone should.’ Meghan echoed.

  It was a map of New York, with seven red pins clustered in the boroughs of Brooklyn and Manhattan, one for each of the killer’s victims. Next to each pin was a sticky note with the details of the victim.

  Meghan plugged her laptop to a projector and brought up the victim’s profiles.

  ‘Three were killed in Brooklyn, four in Manhattan. The three in Brooklyn were killed in a five block area, the ones in Manhattan were in or around Central Park. Commuting time from the blocks in Brooklyn to Manhattan is about an hour. The killer could be living somewhere in one o
f those two boroughs and could easily get to the kill spots in less than ninety minutes.’

  Scary smart. We did well to take them onboard.

  He smiled mentally and corrected himself.

  It was Broker who took them on. They harangued me till I gave in.

  ‘The first victim was the only one who was strangled. We think that’s because the killer was unprepared, it being his first kill. He used what he had at hand. The killer carried baseball bats for the other kills.’

  She ran them through the victim profiles quickly; no two persons had similar jobs, and while all of them lived in one of the two boroughs, none of their paths crossed.

  ‘Serial killers have held a variety of jobs. Ottis Toole of Jacksonville, Florida, was a drifter who killed from 1961 to 1983 and didn’t hold down any regular job. He is reported to have killed anywhere from six to sixty-five people. John Wayne Gacy, of Chicago, was a businessman. He was convicted of thirty-three murders between 1972 and 1978 and was executed in 1994. Dennis Rader, the BTK killer, BTK for bind, torture, kill, murdered ten people in Sedgwick County, Kansas, from 1974 to 1991. He worked in various jobs; in an alarm systems company and in the Compliance Department at Park City. He was also a member of Christ Lutheran Church. Ted Bundy raped and killed several women across the U.S. before he was executed in 1989. He held various jobs such as grocery store clerk, stocker, and was also a Republican Party campaign worker.’

  ‘Bottom-line, no common denominator for jobs held by serial killers.’ Beth said brightly when Meghan paused.

  Sunlight leaked through the floor-to-ceiling windows and bathed the twins in fire. Zeb leaned back in his seat, crossed his leg and observed the light playing in the room. ‘Seven victims in four months,’ he mused. ‘If our man had randomly picked victims, chances are he would leave some clues behind for the cops to latch onto.’

  Beth’s eyes sparked. ‘You’re saying the killer knew the victims?’

  The sound of the Jura reached them; Broker getting started on coffee for the day. He joined them, carrying three cups which he handed across. ‘I’m with Zeb on this. The killer may not know the victims, but I think he studied them before making his move.’

  He saw the sisters look at each other.