She looked over, saw the side door of the van slide open, and then watched as the man in the ski mask jumped out.
She crawled away, fueled by fear and panic, and her bloody hands touched the cool cast iron metal of a sewer grate. She kept crawling and squeezed into the sewer head first, but then she felt hands clutching at her feet, trying to pull her back. When she gave a final lurch forward, one of her shoes stayed behind and then she dropped atop a hard, wet surface, and finally passed out.
***
Jack stared down at the shoe in his hand and cursed wildly.
She had gotten away; the damn girl had gotten away. Dave ran over and shined a flashlight down into the sewer. Unlike Jack, who was dressed in all black clothing, Dave was dressed in jeans and a green hoodie with the hood up to help obscure his face.
“I see her! She must be unconscious; she’s just lying there.”
“I’ll climb in and get her.” Jack said.
Dave pointed down at the opening.
“You’ll never fit. Look how tight the space is, I’m surprised she made it.”
“We’ll slide off that manhole cover over there and I’ll climb down.”
Bright lights lit up the night, as an SUV came up the street behind them. When it reached the corner, it put on its turn signal and then blew its horn at the van blocking its way.
Jack jumped back into the van using the open side door. He didn’t want anyone to wonder why he was wearing a ski mask when the temperature was above freezing.
Then Dave shouted, “All right, all right, I’ll move it,” and jumped back into the driver’s seat.
With the SUV right behind them, they decided to ride around the block and come back. Four quick turns later, they parked the van beside the sewer grate and prepared to climb down and get the girl.
There was just one problem—she was gone.
***
Val could hear them up there and watched as the beam of their flashlight danced about the darkness.
She had awakened to a screaming pain in her left knee, and had managed to crawl just far enough to be out of sight when the men returned for her. She lay still, praying that they would just go away, yet fearing that they would venture down to get her.
“Where the hell did she go?”
“I don’t know, but she couldn’t have gotten far. I’ll go down and look for her.”
Val began to cry as she heard those words. She was in no condition to run away, she’d be lucky if she could even stand, and there was nowhere to hide. Once the man came down into the sewer, she was dead.
“Hell, Jack, she could be anywhere by now; it’s like a maze down there, you know that, remember how we got lost in the sewers when we were kids? Besides, she’s no threat, she never saw our faces.”
The men were quiet then, and Val held her breath as she waited to see what they would do.
“Fuck it! The bitch was more trouble than she was worth.”
“Yeah, so let’s go find another one.”
“Not tonight, my throat feels like it’s on fire where she hit me and my balls still hurt.”
“Shit... well all right.”
“I’m sorry buddy; I know how much you need this. I’ll make it up to you. Next week we go for Chinese instead of Italian.”
The other man laughed.
“What’s the matter? Have you lost your taste for Italian?”
“No, but this bitch tonight gave me heartburn, now let’s go before someone wonders what we’re doing.”
The light went out and Val heard them walk away.
***
Nearly two hours later, in the parking lot of Big Burger, Luis Sanchez sat in his car and scrutinized his cheeseburger by the glow of his dome light.
“What the hell are you doing to that burger?” Diego said. He was Luis’s older brother.
“I’m checking it before I eat it.”
“Checking it for what?”
“Anything, didn’t you see that news story about the guy who found a finger in his burger?”
Diego laughed.
“They should have put it in with his fries, and then he might not have noticed.”
“Fingers!”
“Bullshit, you didn’t find any fingers.”
“No dumbass, look over there, there are fingers sticking up out of that sewer.”
Valeria Mangieri had just survived the Monsters.
CHAPTER 6
Detective Ricardo Pierce walked into the hospital room of Valeria Mangieri and inwardly winced as he took in the damage that had been done to Val’s face.
A call had come in early that morning from the Special Victims Unit about the victim of an attempted rape who had managed to escape her would-be rapists.
One of the cops who caught the case was an acquaintance of Pierce who knew that he was looking into a possible serial killer. When Val told the detective about losing her phone in the street as she was thrown into the van, it triggered a memory of something that Pierce had once said to him, and he called Pierce and told him about Val.
Pierce carried a copy of Val’s incident report in his hand, and knew from reading it that she was 28 and worked as a personal assistant to a well-known TV news anchor. He also knew that she was single.
Pierce walked over to the side of Val’s bed and smiled down at her.
“Ms. Mangieri?”
“Yes?” Val said, and the word came out a bit muffled due to her facial swelling and broken nose. She also sported two black eyes, which was a side effect of having her nose broken.
Her worst injury was her knee, which suffered damage when she fell into the sewer. Her scraped palms were bandaged, as well as the side of her head, where the van’s door had smashed into it and caused a laceration as she scrambled to safety.
Despite all of her injuries and bruising, Pierce could tell that Valeria Mangieri was normally a very good looking woman.
“My name is Detective Pierce; I’m from the homicide division.”
Val looked up at him and smiled.
“Homicide? So I guess the docs were lying about my condition, eh?”
Pierce grinned.
“No ma’am, you’ll recover fully, but I am here investigating a possible murder.”
“Sit down, Detective... Pierce?”
“Yes ma’am, it’s Pierce.”
“Ma’am? Do I look like a ma’am?”
“Actually...” Pierce began, and then consulted the SVU report. “Actually, you look very young, are you really 28?”
“I am, and I know I look younger. I get carded every time I buy a beer.”
Pierce sat down in one of the plastic visitor’s chairs.
“I want to ask you about last night. I’ve read this report and know what happened, but I’d like to ask you a few more questions, would that be all right?”
“Hell yes, whatever it takes to catch those bastards, ask away.”
Pierce nodded. He liked this woman; she was tough. It was why she was able to escape her attackers.
“First of all, has anything new occurred to you since you were last interviewed?”
“Yes! I kept going over it in my mind and I remembered two things. The two guys, when they were looking down into the sewer one of them said something about getting lost in them when they were kids, so, I guess that means they grew up together and that maybe they’re brothers.”
“Are you certain you remember that correctly?”
“Yes, and that should help catch them, right?”
“Yes, it helps a great deal, and in fact, before you told your story, I thought that I was looking for only one man.”
“No, there’s two of them, and one more thing, although I don’t know if it’s important or not, but there was a trailer hitch on the back of the van. I remember it hitting me as I fell out.”
Pierce scribbled a note in the margins of the report.
“At this point everything is important, you’ve been a big help.”
“When you came in here, yo
u said that you were investigating a ‘possible murder’, what’s that mean?”
“I suspect that women were murdered, but as of now, they’re only considered missing. I think if you hadn’t gotten away from those men, you might have never been seen again.”
Val got a sick look on her face.
“Oh God, that would have been horrible. To be murdered is one thing, but to just, just disappear, oh God, their poor families.”
Pierce studied Val with interest. He had already decided he liked her, but now he was also impressed by her perceptiveness and sense of compassion.
“You say you heard them talking, is that when you heard one man referred to as ‘Jack?”
“Yes, not that it helps much; it’s a pretty common name.”
“No, it helps a lot, but Ms. Mangieri, can you recall anything else that they might have said?”
Val smiled.
“What?” Pierce said.
“The guy in the ski mask said that his balls still hurt from when I kneed him in the groin. I only wish I could do it again to the damn racist.”
Pierce leaned forward.
“Why do you call him a racist? Did you get a look at him?”
“All I could see were his eyes, mouth, and hands, but he was white. And... I guess the term misogynist would be a better fit than racist. It was just the way they talked about me, one of them said something like he ‘wanted to taste an Italian,’ and the other guy said something about having Chinese instead. But they weren’t talking about food, they were talking about women, they were talking about me.”
“They said Chinese? Are you certain?”
“Yes, absolutely, and they both sounded white, but I never actually got a look at the driver.”
Pierce leaned back in the cheap hospital chair as he tried to contain his excitement. He was sure now that whoever it was who tried to abduct Val were the same pair who had taken the other women. Two men meant that there were two chances to catch them, two times as many ways for them to screw up.
Pierce got up from his seat. He was eager to tell Val’s story to his lieutenant. He thought that it might just be enough to get a task force formed, but then he remembered that it was a Sunday. He would have to wait until the next day to present his case.
“Thank you for your time, Ms. Mangieri. I may talk with you again if I have any more questions.”
“Val.”
“Excuse me?”
“Call me Val, Detective, it’s actually Valeria, but I go by Val.”
“Feel better soon, Val.”
“And what’s your first name?”
“Ricardo, but only my mother calls me that, to everyone else it’s Rick.”
Val stared at him.
“Yeah, you look like a Rick.”
“Take care of yourself, Val.”
“You do the same, Detective Rick.”
He took three steps towards the door and then walked back over to her.
“There was something in your statement I found curious.”
“What’s that?”
“You stated that after you hit the guy in the groin, that he punched you in the face four times and broke your nose, you then said that you faked being unconscious so that he would stop.”
“Yeah?”
“Most women, hell, most men wouldn’t have to fake being unconscious after an assault like that, they would just be out cold, or perhaps whimpering from the pain, why weren’t you?”
Val gave him a big grin.
“I’m not most people. I’m a former Women’s Boxing Champion, Flyweight Division. I had a record of 21-0 when I retired. And oh yeah, the guy who hit me punched like a girl, believe me, I know.”
Pierce laughed and Val laughed along, he then walked out into the hallway, but turned back and gazed at her.
“I’ll see you around, Val.”
“You do that, Rick.”
Pierce sent her a smile and then went off to call his lieutenant, Coke Dyer.
***
As Val watched Pierce disappear down the hospital corridor, the phone next to her bed rang. It was her friend, Ginny.
“I’m coming by to see you; can I bring you anything?”
“No, I’m good.”
“Val, I’m so damn sorry that I left you alone last night.”
“It wasn’t your fault. I took a wrong turn going home and... well, I told you what happened.”
“Yeah, I hope the cops catch them.”
“He’ll catch them, count on it.”
“He’ll catch them? Who’s ‘He’?”
“A homicide detective named Rick Pierce.”
The line grew quiet and Val wondered if the phone had gone dead.
“Ginny, are you there?”
“I’m here, I just heard the way you said the cop’s name. You like him, don’t you?”
“He was cute, too skinny, but cute.”
“So, when will you see him again?”
“I don’t know, maybe never, but hey, listen I’ve changed my mind, bring me some chocolate.”
“Done, and I’ll see you soon.”
Val hung up and smiled. She would see Detective Rick Pierce again. She would make a point of it.
CHAPTER 7
Dave Owens was not having a good day.
He had returned to work on Monday morning after a week off for bereavement due to his mother’s death, only to find that no one had filled in for him. His work was ridiculously backed-up and he knew that he would be putting in late hours all week.
Manny Canto, the guy who worked in the cubicle across the aisle, walked over and leaned atop the four-foot high panel.
Manny was built much like Dave was, they were the same height, weight, and age, and both men had wiry builds, but in other ways, Manny was Dave’s opposite. While Dave was blond and blue-eyed, Manny had raven-dark hair and deep brown eyes. He also had an olive complexion that had only deepened as a teenager, when he worked summers as a lifeguard, while Dave’s pasty skin burned easily in direct sunlight.
When Manny saw the stack of files in Dave’s IN basket, he whistled.
“Wow, I guess I’m not the only one who will be working late. The Bitch really fucked you over, didn’t she?”
“The Bitch” was their supervisor, Karen Dunham. Dunham had been hired from outside the company and considered it her personal mission in life to make the division Dave worked in the, “greatest in the company”, and by “greatest”, she meant the greatest fiscal improvement in the shortest period of time.
Her method of getting there seemed to be the removal of personnel. In the nine weeks she’d been with the company, she’d already fired five people.
Dave thought that it was short term thinking at best and plain stupid at its worst. He had also been the odds-on favorite for Dunham’s position, until the company brought her in, and it irked him every time she gave him an order.
“I don’t understand why she didn’t have someone fill in for me. I may have to work the weekend just to catch up.”
“Fill in? Hell, who could she get to fill in? You know she fired two more while you were gone. Sandy and Kelli are history.”
“Sandy and Kelli? Shit, I liked them, plus they were easy on the eyes.”
“Yeah, I think The Bitch is trying to get rid of the competition. She’s fired every decent looking broad in the place.”
The cubicle that Dave worked in was the one closest to the aisle. Movement caught his eye and he could see Karen Dunham walking their way.
“Here she comes now, Manny.”
Manny looked up, saw Dunham, and swallowed hard. He then plucked the stapler from atop Dave’s desk.
“If she asks why we’re talking, I’ll tell her I came over to borrow your stapler.”
When Dunham arrived, she didn’t ask Manny anything, instead, she gave him an order.
“Get back to work.”
“Yes ma’am.”
Dave watched Manny scurry back across the aisle and then looked up at Dunham.
Karen Dunham was 32, single, and Dave thought that under the dour business suits she always wore, that there lurked a shapely body, but even if there was, her face would render it null and void. “The Bitch” always wore a perpetual scowl, while her mean, little gray eyes bore into you and let you know without words that she thought you were beneath her, and you were, because she was the boss.
Dave knew it wouldn’t help, but he tried a smile anyway.
“What’s up?”
“It’s not ‘what’s up’ but rather, what’s down, and the answer to that is your productivity. I hope you realize that you need to be caught up by the end of the week, yes?”
“I’ll catch up, but I had to take off last week. My mom died.”
“I don’t care about your reasons; I only want results. Now, get back to work.”
When he was certain that Dunham had left, Manny walked back over,
“She’s an even bigger bitch than my wife is, and I didn’t think that was possible.”
“Are you still negotiating your divorce?”
“Yeah, and I couldn’t give a fuck about what she wants, but today she said that if I don’t give her the house, she’ll take my kids and move far away, and shit man, I was raised in that house, and so was my father. It’s the only place I’ve ever lived and I love the area.”
“So, it’s your kids or the house?”
“Yeah, but even if I let her have it, she says she’ll only let them visit me for two weeks, twice a year. Do you believe that? Two weeks twice a year? Shit, I’ll be a stranger to them in no time.”
“Wow, so what are you going to do?”
Manny’s face darkened.
“I should blow her brains out, that’s what I should do.”
Dave picked up a picture from his desk. It was a picture of his teen daughters, Kathy, age 14, and Sammi, age 16. Both girls had inherited his blond haired, blue-eyed looks.
“Shit, I can’t imagine not seeing my kids.”
Manny sighed.
“Neither can I, even if it’s just twice a year. I’ll call my lawyer tomorrow and tell him she can have the damn house.”
“Sorry about all your troubles, Manny.”
“Thanks, now we better get back to work before The Bitch returns.”
***
Pierce sat beside his partner, Bob Jerold, inside the lieutenant’s office. Ironically, the office wasn’t much bigger than a jail cell, but it did have a window, and the lieutenant could come and go as he pleased.
Monsters (A Detective Pierce Novel Book 1) Page 3