“You’re going to make an excellent police officer, Miss Streng,” Dr. Horner said. “And I agree with you completely. Mr. K’s intent was to murder in a ghastly fashion, but his motive might have been personal, sexual, or even financial. But the question is, which is the most evil?”
Dr. Horner stepped closer to me, so the victim’s face projected onto his own.
“If you were at Mr. K’s mercy, Miss Streng, would you prefer him to be a sexual sadist who delighted in your agony, or a cold-blooded mercenary who dispassionately inflicted these tortures because he was just following orders?”
Present day
2010, August 10
I flexed my fingers, my bound hands becoming dangerously numb. The ball gag felt enormous in my mouth. My heart was beating so fast I felt close to fainting.
I closed my eyes, forcing myself to concentrate. I’d been following the Mr. K case for more than twenty-five years. It was both my hobby and my white whale.
We’d crossed paths before. I’d logged in a lot of hours trying to catch him. A staggering one hundred and eighteen homicides had been attributed to the enigmatic killer.
Killer. Mr. Killer. That’s the label the FBI attributed to him when they found a “MR. K” written in marker on a ball gag found at one of his scenes.
His victims seemingly had nothing in common. They were spread out across the nation, both men and women, ranging in age from seventeen to sixty-eight, encompassing many different races, religions, backgrounds, and histories.
The murder methods also varied wildly. Victims had been shot, stabbed, burned, broken, sliced, beaten, smashed, drowned, dismembered, and worse. The only thing that tied these unsolveds together were Mr. K’s signatures: ball gags, salt in the wounds, and assorted, specific kinds of torture.
I wanted this guy. Wanted him bad. Unfortunately, hard evidence had always eluded me.
Ironic that I might have hard evidence very soon, but it would come at a very high cost.
I pushed away thoughts of death, concentrating on the here and now. I’d been awake long enough for my eyes to adjust, but it was still pitch black. Storage facilities usually had some kind of light, both in the units themselves and outside in the hallway. Since barely a sliver of light penetrated through any cracks, I assumed Mr. K either taped or filled in every corner of this space.
Total blackness was disorienting, making it impossible to focus on anything. But I was able to scoot toward the concrete block my legs were tethered to. I sat up, pushed myself backward against it, and explored the surface with my tingling fingers.
Too big and heavy to move. But it was square-shaped. While the edges weren’t exactly sharp, the concrete was unfinished, rough. Was it enough to cut through the nylon cord securing my wrists?
Only one way to find out. I flexed my arms, sawing my binding against the stone’s corner. I couldn’t see my progress, and might not have even been making any, but I had excellent motivation to try.
I’d seen Mr. K’s work up close and personal. And I knew what happened to the people he left in storage lockers.
Three years ago
2007, August 8
“You got anything to eat?” My partner, Detective First Class Herb Benedict, was rooting through my glove compartment.
Two blocks ahead, the man we’d been following turned his black Cadillac DTS onto Fullerton. I gave it a little gas and continued pursuit.
“Jack? Food? I’m starving here.”
Herb was as far from starving as I was from dating George Clooney. He had to be close to the three hundred pound mark. Herb, not George.
“I think there’s a box of bran flakes in the back seat somewhere.”
Herb shifted his bulk around, making my Nova bounce on what little shocks it had left. After some grunting, and several glistening sweat beads popping out on his forehead, he found his prize.
“Got it.” Herb cradled the cereal box in his hands like it was a kitten. Then he frowned. “They’re bran flakes.”
“That’s what I said they were.”
“Where’s the milk?”
“No milk.”
“You eat them dry?”
I sighed. “No. I eat them with milk. They fell out of my grocery bag, and I keep forgetting to bring them into the house.”
“What am I supposed to do with these?”
“I have no idea. You asked if I had any food. I gave you what I had.”
Herb made a face. The Cadillac pulled over to the curb, a few hundred yards ahead of us, next to a warehouse boasting the sign “U-Store-It.” I parked alongside a fire hydrant and picked up the binoculars.
“Couldn’t you have at least bought raisin bran?” Herb asked.
“I could have. But I didn’t.”
“Who doesn’t like raisin bran?”
“My mother. They’re for her.”
Herb frowned. I peeked through the lenses and watched our person of interest exit his vehicle while Herb opened up the box.
“You’re kidding me,” I said, glancing at my partner.
“I gotta eat something. Look at me.” He patted his protruding belly. “I’m wasting away to nothing.”
Herb looked like he’d just eaten Santa Claus.
“We’ve got the rest of the day ahead of us,” I told him. “I don’t know if I want to spend it with you after you eat a box of bran.”
“I just want a few nibbles.”
My junior partner tore into the bag. I studied the surroundings. It wasn’t a good part of town. Industrial mostly, a few overgrown, fenced-in lots, some abandoned factories. Certainly not a place where a man driving a new Cadillac would hang out.
“What’s he doing?” Herb asked, his voice muffled by a mouthful of cereal.
“He’s walking over to a self-storage building.”
“Is he holding any milk? Because damn, this is dry.”
“He’s empty-handed.” I played with the focus. “Jacket is swinging funny on his left side. He’s packing.”
“Maybe he’s going to put it in storage.” Herb cleared his throat. “You got anything to drink? These flakes sucked up all my saliva. It’s like eating dust.”
“I might have a bottle of water left. Check between your feet.”
Herb rocked forward, trying to reach the floor. He failed. He tried again, bending even further, and then began to cough, spitting bran flakes all over my dashboard.
“Sorry,” he mumbled.
I winced at the mess Herb had made. He tried once more for the water, stretching and straining, his face turning red with effort, and snatched the bottle. Herb held up his prize, triumphant. Then he frowned. “This is empty.”
“He went in.” I lowered the binocs. “Now we have a choice. We can wait for him to come out, then bust him, or surprise him inside and bust him.”
“I vote for waiting,” Herb said. “Less work. And if he’s going in for something, maybe he’ll come out with it.”
We waited. Herb did a half-assed job wiping the bran off the dash, then sucked down the remaining five drops of water at the bottom of my bottle.
“I had a weird dream last night,” Herb said.
“Speaking of non sequiturs.”
“You want to hear it or not?”
“Is this the one where you’re a caveman and everyone has a bigger spear than you?”
Herb raised an eyebrow. “What the hell are you talking about?”
“I remember someone saying something like that once. Thought it was you.”
“It wasn’t. My spear is above average size, not that it’s any of your business. My dream was about lawn gnomes.”
“Lawn gnomes.”
“Yeah. A bunch of lawn gnomes.”
“What were they doing?”
“Nothing. Just standing there, looking gnomish.”
I pondered this for a moment. “And this is interesting because?”
“I dunno,” my partner said. “You think it means anything?”
“Dreams don’t
mean anything at all, Herb. You know I don’t buy into that stuff.”
“You do lack a certain spirituality.”
I checked through the binoculars again. Our person of interest hadn’t returned. “I believe in facts, not superstition.”
“How about chance? Coincidence? Fate?”
“Fate is a future you didn’t work hard enough to change.” I read that on a blog somewhere and liked it.
“Come on, Jack. Weird things happen all the time. Unexplainable, cyclical things.”
“Such as?”
“How about when you hear a new word, then a few days later you hear it again?”
“Give me an example.”
“The other day, on TV, someone said the word lugubrious. It means mournful.”
“I know what it means,” I said.
“Really? I had to look it up. Anyway, two days later, I’m at the butcher shop, and guess what word he uses?”
“Bacon?”
“Lugubrious. Things like that get me thinking. It’s like hitting your finger with a hammer, and then ten years later, hitting it again in the exact same place. You could have hit any other finger, or any other spot. But it was right smack-dab on the previous injury. What does that tell you?”
“That you shouldn’t be using a hammer.”
Herb shook his head. “I think that maybe, just maybe, there is some sort of grand scheme to everything.”
“You mean God?”
“I mean maybe the universe has a sense of irony.”
I didn’t agree, but I couldn’t completely disregard the comment either. Sometimes things did happen that could make you scratch your head.
“Think this guy might really be Mr. K?” I asked.
“Personally, I think Mr. K is an urban legend, started by one Dr. Horner to scare rookies and prove his BS about good and evil.”
I recalled that police academy lecture, and probably still had the notes from it.
“Over a hundred unsolved homicides, the only links being torture and ball gags,” I said.
“Why do they have to be connected? Because the Feebies say so?”
“You know my feelings about the Feds, Herb. But I’ve looked at these cases. The murder methods vary wildly, but there’s something about them that seems similar. Call it, I dunno, a tone.”
“Not every murderer is a serial killer, Jack.”
He was right. But I seemed to wind up dealing with more than my fair share.
Herb put his hand in the bran box again, going for seconds.
“If you spit bran in my car again, I’m firing you.”
“Like it’s my fault you don’t have any milk. I almost choked to death. Horrible way to die.” I endured more munching sounds. “Didn’t Mr. K choke his last victim?”
“Stuffed the guy’s junk down his own throat.”
“While it was still attached?”
“Severed first.”
“Would have been more impressive if it was still attached.” Herb ate more bran. “Jesus, this is dry. It’s like eating sand, but with less flavor.”
Herb put another handful into his mouth.
Finally I said, “I think we should go in.”
“I thought waiting for him was easier. Then we can grab him with whatever he brings out.”
“But if we get him now, then we can check out his storage space ourselves. Probable cause, no warrant needed.”
“I’m for staying in the car,” Herb said. “It’s hot out, and my feet hurt.”
He had a point. It was hot. And chances were high the warehouse wasn’t air-conditioned.
“Flip a coin?” I asked.
He shrugged. “Okay.”
I checked my purse but as expected didn’t find any change. I got rid of it whenever possible, not wanting to jingle when I walked. It used to annoy my ex-husband, Alan. I didn’t keep him, but I kept the habit.
“Got any coins?” I asked Herb.
“No. Vending machines are my nemesis.”
“I thought your shoelaces were your nemesis.”
Herb got a full aerobic workout whenever he tried to tie his shoes.
“A cop of my longevity makes many enemies throughout his career.”
“Check the ashtray.”
Herb checked while I took another look through the binocs. Nothing happening. I picked up the radio handset and called Dispatch, requesting possible backup.
My partner found something in the ashtray, but rather than flip it and call it, he popped it into his mouth.
“Did you just eat a dime?” I asked.
“Hell no. It was a mint.” He made a face. “I think.”
I tried to recall the last time I had mints in the car. It had been years. No, a decade, at least.
“It was a dime,” Herb said, sticking out his tongue. “I was fooled by the fuzz.”
I decided not to ask Herb why he would eat anything covered in fuzz. The radio crackled. Car 917 responded, saying they were en route. Approximate arrival in two minutes.
I made the executive decision. “We’re going in.”
“What happened to flipping a coin?”
“You ate the coin.”
“How about rock, paper, scissors?”
“You really don’t want to get out of the car, do you?”
Herb frowned. “What do we know about the guy? Sure, he’s got possible criminal associations and an expensive condo, but he hasn’t even gotten so much as a parking ticket, for chrissakes. His record is squeaky clean.”
“He’s carrying a gun.”
“Did you see a gun? Or just a bulge in his jacket? Maybe he was carrying an iPod, or a can of pop, or a magazine.”
“Or a lawn gnome.”
“Did you see a red, pointy hat? That would be eerie.”
“It was a gun,” I said. “I’m just trying to protect you from a false arrest lawsuit.”
“God, you’re lazy.”
“I prefer the term cautiously inactive.”
“Okay. Rock, paper, scissors. One, two, three…”
I held out a flat palm: paper. Herb had a fist. Rock.
“Paper covers rock,” I said. “We go in.”
“Wait, it’s two out of three. It’s always two out of three.”
I sighed. “Okay. One, two, three…”
I held out paper again. Herb held out a single, chubby finger.
“What the hell is that?”
“That’s a hot dog.”
“A hot dog?”
“I’m starving. I can’t get my mind off of food.”
“Again,” I said. “No hot dogs this time. One, two, three…”
I made a rock. Herb, paper.
“I win,” he said.
“You sure that’s paper, not a sirloin steak?”
“Mmm. Steak. Stop teasing me.”
“One more time. One, two, three…”
I held out scissors. So did Herb.
“My scissors are bigger,” he said. “I win.”
I said, “One, two, three…”
I had a rock. Herb stuck with scissors. I won.
“We’re going in.”
I hit the gas, driving the two blocks’ distance in about eight seconds, parking in front of the Cadillac. Then I dug my Colt out of my purse, checked the cylinder, and got out of my car. A moment later, Herb rocked himself out of his seat and onto the sidewalk.
“Be pretty funny if this was Mr. K, wouldn’t it?” he said.
“It would be the perfect gift to myself.”
“Oh, yeah.” Herb nodded, his three chins wiggling. “Your birthday is in a few days. You don’t have much luck with birthdays. Remember Classy Companions?”
My lips pressed together, forming a tight line. “I remember.”
Herb must have noted my expression. “Sorry, Jack. Didn’t know that was still a sore spot. I’m sure this birthday will turn out a lot better.”
“Can’t be any worse than the last twenty.”
Herb checked the clip on his
Sig. “Okay. Let’s go do it.”
“Now? Backup will be here in a minute.”
“I bet you dinner the only thing he’s got in his jacket is a magazine.”
I nodded at Herb. “You’re on.”
We headed for the entrance, and I was feeling pretty optimistic. Maybe I’d finally have a decent birthday for a change. My fiancé was out of town on business, but closing a hundred unsolved homicides was definitely the way I wanted to spend my forty-seventh.
Besides, I was more than a little curious about what he was keeping in that storage locker.
Present day
2010, August 10
The man known as Mr. K holds up the iPhone and stares at the soft, green image on the touch screen. Jack Daniels rubs her wrists against the concrete anchor, her eyes wide and glowing in the night vision camera.
Her expression is one he recognizes well.
Fear. She’s afraid.
And she has good reason to be.
Their little dance has been going on for a long time. For the better part of both their careers. The ex-cop had gotten closer than anyone else ever had.
He taps the screen, bringing up the control dial. Twirling his finger, he adjusts the camera angle and zooms in to Jack’s hands.
She’s bleeding. The rope and the concrete are causing abrasions on her wrists. It will sting like crazy because he dusted the rope in salt before tying her up.
That’s only the first taste, Jack. There will be more pain to come. Much more.
Mr. K sets the iPhone up on a stand, so the image faces him. Then he picks the filet knife off the table.
It’s a tool he’s used on countless occasions, bought at a live bait store on Chicago’s South Side almost three decades ago. He’s sharpened it so many times, the blade is less than a centimeter wide. It looks more like an ice pick than a knife.
Mr. K tests the blade’s sharpness, touching it lightly to the back of his thumbnail. He’s able to draw a line across the lunula—the bottom of the nail—with barely any pressure. The knife is honed to a razor’s edge, so he puts it in its sheath and sets it aside.
Shaken (Jacqueline Jack Daniels Mysteries) [Plus Bonus Content] Page 3