Progeny

by E. H. Reinhard

  Maria crawled from inside of the trunk with the assistance of Angel pulling her. “What do you want?” Maria asked.

  Angel poked the scalpel toward Maria’s midsection. “You must have missed the part where I said I’d kill you in the street if you made a peep.”

  Maria said nothing.

  Angel turned her and pointed her toward the house. “Walk.”

  Maria obeyed and walked toward the front door, nearing the porch steps. Angel walked two feet behind her, holding the scalpel, blade down.

  Maria looked back over her shoulder. Then she slowly veered right and made a run for it. At the corner of the house, she came to the fence separating the lots. Maria hopped the small flower garden surrounded by rocks and put a foot up and over the small chain-link fence. She straddled it and tried to swing her other leg over.

  Angel caught her in a few strides. The sixty-some-year-old woman never had a chance to outrun someone half her age. Angel took a grapefruit-sized rock from the edge of the flower garden and delivered a blow to the back of Maria’s head before she made it over the fence. Maria’s body went limp and fell to the ground, slumped over in the flower garden.

  “Stupid bitch,” Angel said.

  Angel looked around—no neighbors in sight. She knelt next to Maria’s body. She put a hand under each of Maria’s armpits and began to lift. The woman’s arms hung against the ground.

  Angel felt Maria move quickly, and she saw the rock come at the side of her head. Her vision went black and came back for only a moment a few seconds later. Angel saw blades of grass and, behind them, a blurred outline of Maria running up the street. Angel tried getting to her feet, only to fall back into the grass and into unconsciousness.

  Chapter 30

  The two sheriffs and I walked into the gas station. A pair of employees stared at us from behind the counter, worry covering their faces.

  “The deputy that came in a minute ago?” I asked.

  One of the girls spoke up. “He’s with Jim, the swing manager, in the office. They just went back.” She pointed.

  She led me down the short hall, past the restroom, to an open door leading into the stockroom. We funneled in. An office took up the back corner. Through a window, I could see Weaver inside with a man. We entered through the door.

  “He’s getting it pulled up now,” Weaver said.

  “Do you guys have video in the back area as well?” I asked.

  The man seated at the desk nodded. “Camera on the back door—that’s what we need, right?”

  “That, and anything that covers farther off the back of the building,” I said.

  “Well, we have another camera that gets us a view from the far corner of our lot. Here, look.” He tilted the monitor so we could all see. “Will that work?”

  “Looks like it,” I said.

  The screen was split in two. The right side showed a close-up of the back door from above, the left, a wide angle covering the entire back of the building and a good portion of the strip mall’s parking lot behind it.

  “Can we get these back to the time in question?” I asked.

  “Yeah, I’ll just rewind the back-door cam until we see Maria.”

  “Do you know if she had her gun?” I asked.

  The deputies looked at me, confused.

  “She has a concealed-carry permit. She told me when I spoke with her earlier in the day,” I said.

  The manager shook his head. “We don’t allow it at work, here. I knew she carried outside of work but never brought it in.”

  I nodded.

  We watched the footage roll in reverse at eight-times speed. Five or six minutes passed before we got to what looked like a scuffle on the screen.

  “Play it,” I said.

  He did.

  The three deputies, the manager, and I watched.

  Something caught my eye immediately. I tapped the screen on the left. A silver sedan sat parked at the edge of the frame. “What’s that plate say?” I asked.

  “It looks like nine one eight Z U K,” Hirst said.

  “That’s our BOLO car,” I said. I couldn’t tell if anyone was inside.

  My eyes went back to the other half of the monitor when I caught movement. The back door of the gas station opened and a woman stepped out. The door closed at her back.

  “That’s Maria,” the manager said.

  I glanced to the other side of the screen, and at the car, the driver’s door opened. A woman exited the car, walked toward Maria, and appeared to say something.

  My eyes went to the other screen. Maria lit a cigarette and looked up. She appeared to reply to the woman approaching.

  I looked at the other screen, showing the woman, presumably Angel, walking toward the back door of the gas station. She was carrying a cell phone in her hand.

  “That could be the phone we found,” Hirst said.

  I watched the woman continue to advance on Maria at the back door. She stopped beside her. The two appeared to talk before Maria took the phone from the woman. I looked at the woman’s straight, dark hair. The height and weight appeared the same as what I’d read on Angel’s sheet. I went back to watching the two talk on the screen.

  “Awww!” Hirst shouted as the woman delivered a forceful elbow to the right side of Maria’s face.

  “Damn,” Weaver said.

  Maria Flores stumbled backward, only to be kicked in the chest a split second later. She fell backward over the curb into the gas station’s back wall. She seemed to reach over toward the back door’s handle, but the other woman rushed her. Maria was grabbed by the hair, her face slammed into the cinder-block wall. She didn’t move afterward. We watched as the attacker pulled Maria’s body across the back lot to the car. The woman heaved Maria in the trunk of her car, got in the driver’s seat, and started to pull away. Then the car stopped. The woman driving got out and came back toward the back door. She stopped and looked left to right. We saw her face clearly on screen. Her eyes were dark with eyeshadow, the same as Angel White’s driver’s license photo. She walked a few steps, knelt, and picked something up. She turned and headed back for her car.

  “I think that was the phone,” I said.

  Hirst grunted in confirmation.

  The woman appeared to toss it right before she got in her car and pulled away.

  “Rewind it to the point where that woman’s face is on the screen again,” I said.

  The manager did as I instructed, clicking the button.

  “There. That’s it. Pause it,” I said.

  The woman who was assumed to be Angel White was perfectly centered on the screen.

  “Can you print that?”

  “Yeah, one second.” He clicked a few keys on his computer. “Should have it in a second,” he said.

  The printer came to life and dragged in a sheet of paper. Seconds later, it kicked out a copy of the woman in the video. The manager pulled it from the tray and handed it to me.

  “One of you guys want to pull up Angel White’s DL in your car?” I asked. “I’m about ninety-nine point nine percent that is her, but I want to look at this photo and her DL side by side. I need to confirm this is her.”

  “Sure,” Hirst said.

  He walked from the office, and I followed him outside to his car. He took a seat inside. I waited outside the car at his driver’s door.

  Hirst looked out the window at me. “Just like it sounds? Angel White?”

  “Correct. Clearwater address.”

  He plugged it into his system and tilted the screen a little more toward the driver’s side so I could see. I looked at the printed image from the video and then at his screen. “Looks like a match to me,” I said.

  He took the sheet to confirm. “Yeah, that’s her.”

  “Thanks, Hirst. Go see if he can make a copy of that video somehow. I need to make a call.”

  “Will do.”

  I walked around the front of his cruiser and took a seat in my car as Hirst walked back inside. I dialed Bostok. />
  “Yeah?” he answered.

  “I have Angel White, on video, attacking Maria Flores, our juror.”

  “Positive it’s her?”

  “As much as I can be. We also have her vehicle here on video as well. Maria Flores was beaten unconscious, dragged back to the car, and placed in the trunk.”

  “On video?” Bostok asked.

  “Correct.”

  “Let me make a couple calls for your warrants. I’ll get a hold of Clearwater PD and let them know we’ll be serving it on the house.”

  “Did they send a car there?”

  “They sent two. Rick should be out there any minute. Timmons is sending two of our patrol guys as well. Are you staying out there, or what are you doing?”

  “She’s not here and has no reason to be back here. My main priority is finding her. The best place I can think of to look for leads is at her house. Looks like I’ll be heading back to Clearwater shortly. Honestly, I’m not sure there is a reason for Rick or our patrol guys to come out here.”

  “Well, we need a presence there either way. Maybe Rick can come up with something.”

  “Okay. Well, I need to know where I have to go or what I have to do to get those warrants.”

  “I’ll take care of it. I’ll meet you at the station in, like, forty-five minutes.”

  “I can take care of it. You don’t need to come back in,” I said.

  “Yeah, I do. So does everyone. You can’t work alone all night. Just meet me at the station.”

  “Okay, Cap.”

  He hung up.

  A maroon sedan pulled up beside me as I got out of my car. I glanced over and saw Rick in the driver’s seat.

  He stepped out of his car and stretched. Then he stared at me. “Have you been working this entire time?” he asked.

  “Yeah.”

  “Damn,” he said.

  “Come on. The scene is back here.” I waved for him to follow.

  “Let me just grab my kit.” Rick walked to the trunk of his car, popped the lid, and removed his box of supplies. He slammed the trunk closed with his free hand and headed over to me.

  We rounded the building to the back.

  “The attack happened at the back door there,” I said. “It looked like an elbow to the face, followed by a kick, and then the victim’s face was slammed into the back wall there. We have it on video inside, so you can take a look if you’d like.”

  “I’ll check it out after,” Rick said. “What do you think is going to be the best thing for me to get on that could maybe point us in the right direction?”

  “The phone. It looked like our attacker used it as a prop,” I began walking.

  Rick followed, staring down. “Blood drips and drag marks,” he said.

  “Yeah, she was pulled this way and placed in a trunk.”

  I continued walking. “The cell phone is there. I didn’t notice any gloves in our video, so we should be able to get prints from it.”

  Rick knelt and opened his kit. He gloved his hands and pulled out an evidence bag. “Anything else that may have belonged to our attacker?”

  “The phone seemed to be it.”

  Rick picked the phone up, placed it inside the bag, and sealed it up. He stood. “It will probably only take me a little bit here. Maybe an hour or so. I’ll get some photos and check out that video. After that, I’ll get back to the lab, get some prints off of this thing, and see if it has anything valuable inside.”

  “Sounds good, Rick.”

  “Are you sticking around?” he asked.

  I shook my head. “Call me on my cell as soon as you know something. I need to get back to the station and then out to Clearwater.”

  “Are you working all night?”

  “As long as I have to. If I keep getting more things to go on, I’ll keep going until I can’t anymore. I want Maria Flores found before she ends up like the others, and Angel White in custody before she can hurt anyone else.”

  Rick nodded.

  “Get us a copy of the security video inside if you can.”

  “I will, Kane. I’ll give you a call in a bit.”

  “Appreciate it.” I headed toward my car.

  Chapter 31

  I pulled into the station’s parking structure and walked inside. The lights inside Captain Bostok’s office were off —he wasn’t in yet. I headed to the lunch room to make multiple cups of coffee for myself. The fluorescent lights of the lunchroom buzzed overhead. I’d never noticed the sound before. I made two cups of coffee and grabbed a few Danishes from the vending machine. I couldn’t remember the last time I’d eaten anything. I walked to my office, balancing my coffees and Danishes in one hand, and unlocked the door. I set everything on my desk and took a seat in one of my guest chairs.

  I shook my head as I unwrapped the first pastry. Maria Flores’s stubbornness bothered me. I should have been sterner with her. Hearing a tap on my open door, I glanced to my left to see Hank walk into my office, his eyes puffy from recently being woken.

  “Sorry, Hank,” I said. “It was the captain’s call to get everyone back in.”

  “That’s fine,” he said. “Karen had me sleeping on the couch anyway.”

  “Couch treatment for being late?” I asked.

  “She’s emotional. Taking hormones.” He pointed at one of the coffees. “One of those mine?”

  I slid one of the coffees and one of the Danishes over to him. “Hormones?” I asked.

  “We decided to try to have a baby.”

  “Really? You didn’t mention anything about that. I thought the puppy was enough.”

  “Yeah, so did I. I don’t know. Sure, Karen and I have talked about having kids, but it went from talk to a decision in about two seconds. Now she’s dead set on it. Biological clock, I guess. She went and saw a doctor a few weeks back, and they said she may encounter some problems. They have her taking a bunch of stuff to better our odds.”

  “Well, I wish you guys luck. I’m still a little bit in a fog about it myself.”

  “You know, if Karen and I have a son and you guys have a daughter—”

  I held up my hand, stopping him. “Nope.”

  “What?” He smiled and sipped his coffee. “Bostok isn’t here yet?” he asked.

  “He’s probably getting our warrants.”

  “You’ve been working this entire time?”

  “Yeah. I came back here and traced Angel White’s phone out to Riverview. I called the HSCD and let them know that Maria Flores and Angel White were at the same location. By the time the deputy got inside the gas station Maria Flores worked at, she’d been taken. It was a window of minutes that it happened in.”

  “We’re positive it’s Angel White?”

  “We have her on video, attacking Maria Flores at the gas station and taking her away in the trunk of her car. Tags match. It was her.”

  “So what’s the game plan here?”

  “We’re headed to her house to serve the warrant. If she’s there, she’s under arrest. If she’s not, we’re searching the house in hopes of finding something to point us in the right direction,” I said.

  “Okay. Who else is coming in?” Hank asked.

  “I don’t know who the captain called. Rick was out at the gas station in Riverview when I left.”

  Hank opened his pastry, took a bite, and washed it down with some more coffee. “If we get nothing at her place in Clearwater?”

  I yawned. “I don’t know. Keep looking.”

  “You’re going to have to sleep sometime,” Hank said.

  “She’s got Maria Flores, doing who knows what to her. I’ll keep following leads until there are no more to follow.”

  Someone walked past the front windows of my office. I glanced over to see Detective Jones as he walked in.

  “Lieutenant, Sergeant,” he said. Jones collapsed onto the couch in the back of my office. My couch creaked and cracked in protest to his bulk.

  “Jones,” I said. “Sorry you got dragged back in tonigh
t.”

  He shook his head. “I’m used to the graveyard shift. This is normal for me. Donner will be here in a couple minutes. I just talked to him. What are we doing here?”

  “Waiting on the captain and heading out to Clearwater.”

  “Okay. If we have a couple minutes, I’m grabbing a coffee. It takes one an hour to keep me running. Do you guys want one?”

  I swished the last remaining sip of coffee around the bottom of my cup. “I’ll take another, Jones.”

  “Just cream?” he asked.

  I nodded.

  Jones looked at Hank.

  “I’m good for now,” Hank said.

  Jones left my office. I stood, rounded my desk, and thumbed through the file we had on the case.

  “What are you looking for?” Hank asked.

  “Anything we missed.”

  Hank motioned for me to hand him a few sheets to look over, so I did. We sat in silence, reading. My eyes began to burn, and I yawned again.

  Jones walked back through my door, set my coffee down in front of me, and took a seat next to Hank.

  “I saw Donner in the lunchroom. He just talked to Bostok. I guess he should be here within fifteen minutes.”

  “Good,” I said.

  Donner walked in a minute later. “Morning, guys… kind of,” he said, sitting on my couch.

  “You spoke with the captain?” I asked.

  “Yeah, he had someone from the DA’s office draw up the warrants and e-mail them over to him. He took them to Judge Cesaro’s. I guess he lives out by the captain. He was just leaving when we spoke.” Donner looked at his watch. “He should be here pretty soon. What are we looking at?”

  “Just going over the files, seeing if we overlooked anything.”

  Donner stood and came to the edge of my desk to lend a hand. The four of us studied the paperwork, but nothing stood out.

  My desk phone rang. I scooped it up.

  “Kane.”

  “It’s Bostok. Let’s go. I’m in the parking structure.”

  “Okay.”

  I set the phone back on the receiver and stood. “We’re ready. The captain is waiting in the structure.”

  We filed out of my office and outside.

  Bostok sat in his car, idling behind the cruisers. “We ready?” he asked.