Death's Valley

by Roy A. Teel, Jr.

  Cantrell laughed. “Really nothing. They are clueless.” “Don’t underestimate Hoffman. He’s been doing this a long time, and he knows who I am, and sooner or later, if he lives long enough, he’s going to put two and two together.” “So kill him.” “Oh no…the plan is the plan, and we stick to it. This is about police corruption and nothing more.” “And the Iron Eagle?” “Not a concern to us. He has no idea who we are or what we do. We are immune to his meddling.”

  Cantrell stood up and walked into the kitchen, passing the man. “Don’t kid yourself. The Eagle is watching and looking, and if he gets a whiff of who might be involved, it will bring his wrath on everyone.” “You let me worry about that. Just follow the court’s instructions. You will be vindicated. We got Chavez and Washington today.” “Well, you are moving right along.” “That should be enough to get the charges against you dismissed. I will get a secret message to your attorney.”

  Cantrell sat down at the table in his kitchen and said, “These killing are only treating the symptoms; the disease is still rampant.” “Yes, but that’s where the Iron Eagle will come in. He will figure out the core problem and rid the city of it once and for all.” “You’re playing a dangerous game with the Eagle.” “Well…it’s what must be done.” The man handed Cantrell a small satchel. “There is enough cash in here to last you a very, very long time. We will give you the all clear when we are finished.” Cantrell just sat at the table with the satchel of cash as the man disappeared out the back door of his home. He sat looking at the stacks of money and said, “I think you’re wrong. I think the Iron Eagle is going to get you all.” He was talking to empty air as he packed the cash back into the bag and continued cleaning up the mess.

  Chapter Eight

  “What do you know about

  these cop killings?”

  Steve and John made it back to the office with Espinoza in tow. They sent him up to booking, and when he was finished there, he was sent down to an interrogation room on John’s floor. When John got the call, he buzzed Steve that Espinoza was ready to be interviewed.

  “Well, Howard certainly fucked things up, didn’t he?” Marco Estrada was sitting in the plush Beverly Hills estate of Mark El Compo. El Compo handed him a drink and continued, “I mean, the fucker was a sick and sadistic bastard and deserved to die. I just wish he hadn’t been killed on one of my properties…and just when I have several shipments of women and drugs coming into the country.”

  “It will have no impact, sir. I have everything worked out with customs. Nothing will go wrong. All I need to know is where you want the girls. The drugs already have a home, and there is a silver lining to Howard’s death.” “Oh really?” El Compo said. “Yes, sir, there is. You can now offer virgins to your customers. You don’t have that asshole screwing them up. Man, he tore the shit out of the last two girls before he was killed. I heard one of my people at the hospital say that while vaginas and anuses can take a pounding and retain their shape, Washington really trashed both girls’ throats. They would have been of no use for oral pleasure for your customers.”

  El Compo laughed and said, “You’re really wrong on the throat issue. Howard did cost me money on selling virgins, and, yes, they do fetch a better price. But what he did to all of the girls he forced himself on orally was the best thing to happen to them for the sex trade. When he was done with them, they had no gag reflex, and they could take any size man. Here, I will show you.”

  El Compo called out two names, and the two women walked into the room, nude. He was sitting in a satin robe and opened it to reveal a large boner. “Take out your cock.” Estrada pulled his pants down, and El Compo ordered the two girls to perform oral sex on them. When they were finished, they stood up and wiped the sides of their mouths and smiled. “You see? No gag reflex. No matter what the angle, Howard did do me a service there.”

  He sent the women off to prepare his meal and said, “I would invite you to join me, but I know you have other work to attend to. Have the ten girls coming in this week taken to my house in Woodland Hills. It has been rebuilt, and there are no neighbors to deal with. I want you to break them. It won’t take much, then I want you to use them for out calls only. Let’s keep the johns away from my properties for a while.” They shook hands, and El Compo said, “Cantrell has been dealt with. He’s on pretrial release and GPS tracking.” Marco laughed and said, “Really? You really think that he has been dealt with? That will only happen when there’s a bullet in his head.” El Compo said, “I have been to his house, and we have talked. He will be compensated for his fall. There’s nothing to worry about from him.” Marco just laughed as he walked out the door.

  John walked down the hall to get Steve and found him asleep in his chair. He walked up and checked his pulse, and it was strong, but his breathing was labored. He stood for a moment and then pressed firmly on Steve’s shoulder, and he woke up. “Oh, John, shit. Did I fall asleep?” “Yea…it’s been a rough day. Are you sure you want to be in on the Espinoza interview?” “Yes. I have a feeling that Espinoza knows way more than we think.” John wheeled him into the interrogation room. When they arrived, Espinosa was clearly shaken. “Look, John, I didn’t mean to strike your agent. It was an accident.” “Yes…of course, an accident. Tell me about you and Jade Morgan?” Andre had a surprised look on his face as if he didn’t think John knew that there was a relationship. “There’s nothing to tell. We’re friends with benefits.” John sat back in a chair across from Andre and said, “Yea…I’m not clear on that. Want to elaborate a little more?”

  Andre was getting angry, and he asked, “Did you assholes arrest me so you can dig into my love life?” John laughed as did Steve. Steve said, “No, Andre, we don’t give a flying fuck about your love life. We want to know what you were doing on that crime scene.” “I already answered that question.”

  John sat back and put his arms behind his head. He had changed out of his suit and was in an FBI polo shirt and jeans. Andre just stared at his huge arms. “You did and you didn’t, Andre,” John said, “I pulled your call logs, and you were on duty. You called a code for lunch, and you were a hell of a long way from East LA. Now, I’m not a lunch expert, but I do know that a guy on duty doesn’t drive some thirty plus miles from his patrol turf home for lunch. I mean, what are you? A mama’s boy?” Andre was defiant, “I answered the question. I had a two-hour break, and I went over to see my folks. I was on the record, and my whole day up to the call to the crime scene is logged. Unless you forgot, my patrol car has a GPS tracker in it, so the department knows where my car is at any moment.”

  John nodded and asked, “Do you know Officer Garrison Cantrell?” There was a moment of silence. “Um…do I know him? No. Have I heard of him? Yea, of course. The dude got railroaded out of the department for breaking the law.” “You would never do that, would you Officer Espinoza…break the law, I mean?” Steve asked coldly. “No…my job is to uphold the law and protect the people of Los Angeles.” John asked, “You were a sniper in the Army, isn’t that correct?” Andre remained defiant. “What? Did you pull my fuckin’ background and military records?” “Yes!” “Yea, I was a sharp shooter in the Army, and I was a sniper in the field.” “You saw a lot of action in Afghanistan and Iraq.” “Yea…that was a long time ago. I’ve been a civilian and a cop for nearly five years.” John put his hands down on the table and said, “Yes, I know that.” He pointed to Steve and said, “We know that. What we don’t understand is what you were doing on a crime scene where a police officer and two others had their heads blown off by a sniper.”

  It was near sundown, and Patricia Salazar walked out of one of the makeshift trailers at the West Valley branch of the LAPD. She had been a detective in internal affairs for nearly a decade and had a reputation as a brutal investigator and a man hater. Part of that was a result of her merciless attack on the men in her department, and the other was her long-time openly lesbian relationship with Mary Schultz. The commen
ts around the department since Schultz’s murder were that Salazar was gunning for anyone. She walked out to her unmarked sedan, popped the trunk, dropped her bag and laptop inside, and drove out of the parking lot, destination unknown. What Pat didn’t know was that she wasn’t alone, and the blinking light of the GPS signal from her car was reading strongly in the car that was following at a great distance.

  She stopped at a well-known gay bar at the corner of Vanowen and Tampa, parked, and walked in. Her pursuer followed the blinking light and parked across the street from the bar and waited. Patricia was greeted immediately by several friends that she and Mary were involved with. She joined them for a drink and some quiet conversation until one of the ladies asked, “So, do you want to take out your frustrations?” Patricia swigged the shot of bourbon in her glass and said, “Fuck yes!” “Well, then, follow me.”

  It was Chris Alton who had made the invitation, and she and Patricia walked back to a red door at the back of the bar that led into a private club. They knocked, and the bouncer inside slid a panel on the door to see who was there. Patricia said, “It’s like going into a speakeasy in the twenties during prohibition.” Chris laughed as the door opened, and they entered the underground club. The name said it all, ‘House of Pain,’ in red neon, nearly the only light in the dimly lit room painted in red and black. The two sat down in a black leather booth, and the bartender walked over and gave them another drink.

  Patricia was very well-known in the club, and they keep a very, very select group of slaves just for her. Mary used to be her slave in the bondage and S&M club, but since her death Pat didn’t want role play anymore. She wanted to inflict pain on innocent victims. The club specialized in human trafficking, mostly Asians, and since they were plentiful, they were also disposable, which allowed an elite group of clients to inflict pain on those sold into servitude.

  Pat slugged down her shot and walked into one of the dressing rooms off the main floor. There were six doors, each went to a different dungeon. All were soundproof, and the staff of the club cleaned up the mess. She stripped down nude and put on a pair of thigh high leather boots with stiletto heels, a pair of crotchless leather panties, and nothing more. She walked into the dungeon where two young Asian men laid nude on two Saint Andrew’s Cross boards facing each other. She walked in and took down a whip and stood in between the two men. Waving the whip over her head in a profane and professional manner, she struck each man as she moved with grace in her opening of torture.

  Her long blond hair went down to the middle of her back, and for a woman of sixty, she had a great body. She walked between the men, forcing them to pleasure her as she moved the cross into the positions that she desired with a remote. Both men were gagged with ball gags. The red balls in their mouths had been modified; they were steel not plastic, and the head restraints that held them in place were spiked on the inside. It kept the ball in the mouth of the victim while causing excruciating pain as the steel spikes dug into their skulls.

  Small trickles of blood were running down both of the boy’s faces as she worked on them. She attached weights to their testicles, one on each ball, and when she raised the cross, the weight pulled down on their scrotum, causing them to scream through the gag. The more pain she inflicted, the more excited and brutal she became. She pierced each man’s penis with a hot steel rod, then removed it, reheated it, and rammed it up their urethras where it smoked and sizzled. All the while, the helpless men could only scream.

  She took inch and a half injection needles and passed them through each man’s nipples and scrotum, working in a lattice pattern, tying their balls together with a string on the needles, and when she was finished with her crafting, she ripped the needles out of the nipples and scrotum at the same time.

  One of the bouncers called out to her over a loud speaker that it was two a.m. She would need to wrap things up because it was closing time. She removed each man from the cross and tied them on their knees to a leather bench. She tied their necks to the bench and their ankles together with a strap across their mid section.

  She grabbed a three foot two inch pole and lubricated it good then drove it up through the anus of the first boy. He let out a yelp through the gag, and she grabbed a long, hard board and, with great strength, used it like a hammer to drive the pole deeper and deeper into the kid until he was dead. The other boy watched in horror as blood began to run out of the other’s mouth, and his pupils began to dilate.

  She walked over to the other and said, “It’s your turn to please me, my boy,” and she repeated the process. When she was finished, she took a shower in the bath provided and finally left the club a little after three a.m. with Chris. The two walked out into the dimly lit parking lot, and Chris asked, “Does my dominatrix want to take this party to my place?” Pat nodded and got in Chris’s car, and the two sped off to Chris’s home just a few blocks from the club. Chris spent the rest of the night pleasing Pat and doing her bidding, knowing she had gotten the desire to kill out of her system…for at least that night.

  Steve and John had finished interrogating Andre and remanded him to the custody of the U.S. Marshal’s office in the federal building. He had begged to be released, but John told him that he had to face a federal judge at the courthouse on the charges he had been arrested on. It was nearly ten p.m. when Steve and John left the office for home. As they drove down PCH to Malibu, Steve asked, “So…do you think he’s the sniper?” John never took his eyes off the road while answering, “I think he is one of them.” Steve looked out the window and struggled to take a deep breath and said, “You think there are more?” “Yes…I think this goes way beyond the police force itself. I think that a few officers are doing some house cleaning but not for the betterment of the department. I think it is to raise their fellow officers through the ranks to strengthen their position.” “What the hell kind of position would that be?” “A crime syndicate that can move with impunity through LA, trafficking in drugs, guns, humans. You name it.” “That’s it? A few bad cops are doing all this to make even more cops bad?” “Yep…but in order to do it they are going to have to kill at least six more high ranking officials, and I have to figure out how to stop them.” “YOU or the Eagle?” John looked over at Steve for a moment and said, “For the first time in my career, and in the life of the Eagle, I can’t tell where the line is.”

  Steve started to shake his head slowly and said, “Remember that slippery slope I told you about regarding keeping your work separate from the Eagle’s?” John nodded. “Well, you’re sliding down it. You better get it sorted out really, really fast, John, because if the Iron Eagle and John Swenson become one and the same…you will get caught, and you will die.”

  John nodded as they pulled up to the main entrance of the house. John helped Steve into his wheelchair, and Steve sat up and said, “I’m having trouble breathing.” “I’ll take you to Sara. She will know what to do.” He headed toward the main house, and Steve said, “I feel my time is starting to run out, John. We need to solve this case. It’s the last case that I’m going to work on. If I die before it gets resolved, you could end up lost.” John didn’t say anything. He just wheeled Steve into the house and woke Sara who took Steve to one of the operating rooms.

  Karen Faber had finished a seventy-two hour shift and was getting ready to leave the hospital for the night when a patient she had seen a few days earlier stopped her in the hall. He was a nice looking young man, she figured in his early twenties, and he asked if he could buy her a drink. She laughed and said, “That’s very sweet of you, but I don’t drink. It’s also after closing time for most restaurants and bars. It’s almost three a.m.” Her prospective suitor would not be dissuaded and asked her on a date. “I tell you what…Marco, right?” He nodded. “I will go out with you but not tonight. Why don’t you give me a call?” She took out her prescription pad and wrote her cell phone number on it and handed it to him. “Call me tomorrow, and we will set up a time to h
ave lunch…agreed?”

  Marco Estrada had been in the ER when Gilbert was brought in. He had come in as an unconnected patient, though he wanted to make sure that Gil died, and in the act of doing that was smitten with Karen. “Okay, Doctor Faber. I will give you a call tomorrow afternoon, so I make sure you get a good night’s sleep.” She nodded, and he asked if she needed a ride. She told him that she had her own car, and he offered to walk her to it. She smiled and said, “That would be nice. I would feel much safer having a police escort.” Marco smiled and said, “A beautiful woman like you should have twenty-four seven police protection, and if I have anything to say about it that’s what you’re going to get.” They shared a laugh as they exited the hospital and headed for the parking structure.

  Chapter Nine

  “You know what the Eagle once told me?

  ‘The early cop gets the corpse.’”

  The house was quiet when Jim walked in after two a.m. He knew that Barbara would be asleep, or so he thought. He reset the alarm and saw a light on at the far end of the house. He walked down to the living room, and the patio doors were open, and Barbara was sitting in a lounge chair with her feet in the pool. It was high tide, and the sound of the sea pounding against the rocks far below the cliffside home they had built almost drowned out his voice. “Good morning!” he said in a loud voice. Barbara jumped, throwing her drink in the air. “Jesus Christ, Jimmy. Are you trying to give me a fuckin’ heart attack? Shit. My fuckin’ scotch is all over me. Where the hell have you been?” She removed her robe, exposing her nude skin, and walked over and filled her glass with ice and scotch and poured one for Jim.