by Daniel Jeudy
“There was no way to determine whether the perp felt connected to the blood in the first victims, due to the extreme nature of their wounds. However, he has purposely chosen to murder this girl by severing the carotid artery in her neck after hacking off her ears, and that raises the prospect his methodology involves bleeding the victims out.”
Jed whistled while Addison mulled over Coniglio’s awareness. Collins might be hard-pressed to reject this development as being nothing more than satanic hoo-ha.
“The corpse is in a more advanced stage of rigor mortis than either of the first two,” Coniglio continued. “My estimation is that she likely expired approximately eight hours before her body was dumped here. He achieved his objective much earlier in the day, then waited until it started to get dark before driving her body up the mountain.”
Forensics was combing the vegetation down the side of the slope as floodlights illuminated the crime scene. The abundant fibers, butts, and trace materials lying in the dirt were making things challenging for them tonight. It would be like gathering missing pieces from a hundred different picture puzzles and creating an image that made sense.
Jed looked over at Addison. “Now wouldn’t it be a treat if they managed to find something to blow this case open,” he said evenly. “The scumbag is piling up bodies faster than we can put ’em in the ground, and he ain’t showing signs of slowing down. I don’t think it’s any stretch to declare that the investigation has officially become a freakin’ nightmare.”
It always amused Addison how his partner bottled the cussing whenever he found himself in the presence of a lady. The kid could be rough around the edges at times, but he was a perfect gentleman as far as females were concerned.
“What’s he trying to do?” Jed continued. “Get himself a kill record?”
“I don’t think so,” Addison countered.
Jed looked up while shielding his eyes against the artificial light. “What do you mean you don’t think so? He’s completely out of control.”
Addison maintained his focus on the body. “It’s like I’ve said already. I reckon if he were concerned with matters of longevity, then he’d most likely be making more of an effort to hide the corpses, and he sure as hell wouldn’t be calling them in one after the other fresh off the grill. I believe he’s operating under a loose time frame of his own making. If he happens to accomplish whatever it is he’s trying to do, then he’ll likely become a ghost.”
“A ghost, man, you really believe that?”
“Yeah, partner. I do.”
Coniglio paused her work. “That’s an interesting theory you’ve developed, Mowbray. You feel like going any deeper on it while we’re all here?”
Addison composed his thoughts to streamline his response. “Well, so far he’s dropped three bodies at the door in a single week, and each victim has been killed in a similar yet unique kind of way. It appears as if he’s holding onto the missing body parts, and he doesn’t interfere with them sexually. He’s collecting pieces for a reason, and I imagine as soon as he gets all the bits he’s after, then it will be game over. At least as far as advertising his crimes is concerned.”
“Wow,” Coniglio replied, clearly impressed.
She appreciated his brain’s methodical approach as he calculated what he was going to say and how best to say it. Mowbray’s allure increased with each new encounter, and his rugged masculinity appealed to the little girl inside of her. The LAPD was blessed to have him on the team, because he sure made for one heck of an adversary.
“Have you figured how to get him before he clocks off?” she asked.
“The planning part is still very much at a rudimentary stage, but I’m thinking he may end up being a single branch on a larger tree.”
“Whoa, wait a second, are you suggesting he might belong to a cult?”
“I’m open to the possibility he may share an association with something bigger than himself, and I’m also considering whether we’ll need to locate whatever tree it is he’s attached to so that we can cut away the branch.”
Jed exhaled while stretching his arms into the air.
“What?” Addison asked.
“If that Plume woman turns out to be right, then the tree could be a big part of the problem,” Jed remarked as the abrasive hatred returned to his voice.
“That would make for a horrible situation.”
“Damned right it would. And if it turns out to be the case, then we’ll have to find ourselves a nice big chainsaw so we can cut the whole freakin’ thing down.”
His partner’s drive had nothing to do with gaining promotion, nor did it come from a place of great empathy. He cared about people, but so did most cops in their way. It was Jed’s disgust for scumbags that got him out of bed each morning, and his craving for justice could sometimes lead to trouble. The kid seemed so hell-bent on preserving his fury. Still, it was better to be burning from both ends of the candle than not to be burning at all, and Addison felt well covered with Jed at his side.
“Have you boys got any leads on this tree?”
Addison picked up on his partner’s grin.
“A witch has pointed us toward a dark priest for answers.” Jed explained.
Coniglio’s confusion was apparent.
“A witch and a dark priest?”
“He’s being somewhat facetious,” Addison replied. “And he’s a retired priest who’s not returning any of our calls. But it’s best if we fill you in with those details another time, or we’re going to be stuck on this mountain all night. Surely there must be other things you’d rather be doing by tomorrow. I imagine you would have a lot on offer in your spare time.”
Coniglio looked down at the corpse again to hide her smile. It sure sounded like Mowbray was fishing and maybe even complimenting her in a roundabout way.
“I think you’d be surprised,” she replied eventually.
“About?”
“How many gaps there are in my social calendar.”
Addison was about to say something flattering but sensed his partner’s eyes all over him. One of the main drawbacks of spending most of his time in the kid’s company was how he picked up on things uninvited. When the onset of awkwardness began stirring inside his gut, he turned to start making his way back up the path toward his truck.
“Where are you going?” Jed called out with a grin.
“For a smoke,” Addison replied without a hint of tenderness.
Coniglio looked up at the kid with a happy smile, so Jed winked at her and touched his nose before watching his partner stomp off in the distance.
Twenty-Five
Narek sat shirtless on his third-floor balcony watching a news update on the latest Griffith Park murder victim. He sipped his strong black coffee and wondered whether the dead bitch had provided much opposition in her final moments.
Most of the saps he’d murdered had tried resisting their fate in one way or another. Some pleaded for mercy with snot and tears, while others dashed around hollering as they searched for an improvised weapon. The will to live bubbled like a dormant volcano until the Grim Reaper stared its victim in the face. It supplied Narek an additional security layer because if anyone were planning on doing him in, they’d need to contemplate how his latent fire spring might break out from within.
On this one occasion, he strangled a pimp with his bare hands after his piece misfired on the kill shot. It took Narek ten minutes to finish the sorry sack of shit while he clawed at his face with feverish desperation. The liquid growl he heard as the prick attempted to squeeze stale air up his throat was fuckin’ nauseating, a sound he’d only encountered coming from a person who was in the process of having their windpipe slowly crushed. The worst of it occurred when the cocksucker’s bladder gave out to saturate Narek’s pants in a dark yellow stink. Notwithstanding the fact it had been hard work, it was still cool to know he could finish a man without a weapon if the situation presented.
He ended up floating out of the pimp’s house
on a puffy cloud of pure adrenaline. But it was undoubtedly a whole lot easier to shoot someone in the head, and when he put them down fast, they never got a chance to strike back. Even the Irish fag from Monterey Hills kicked about like a wild buck, and that was with Bedros locking him up from behind.
It had been one helluva week. Narek didn’t climb out of bed on Wednesday with an expectation of whacking three people, and he wasn’t a sick fuck whose cock went hard at the thought of slaying humans. Certain folk might be capable of homicide when faced with the situation of kill or be killed. He even knew a couple of guys who stabbed a woman full of holes to find out whether they could cross that line. However, it required an iron-cast determination to be an effective hitman. A ruthless indifference toward human life was essential if a person wanted to survive inside the snuff game.
Narek’s primary motivation was to make sure he died with a vault full of cash. He approached his work without a hint of repentance because what he did on the streets wasn’t much different from garbage disposal. As far as he was concerned, the LAPD should be kicking him a fee for doing society a favor.
He rarely got called into neighborhood disputes nowadays due to his elevated status. The lower-ranked soldiers battled on the front lines with their drive-by shootings and ongoing turf wars. The boss’s consent wasn’t always required to whack a notorious criminal, but his approval was essential for any target which happened to be a regular Joe. Killing a citizen brought a lot of heat, yet the LAPD might assign a couple of fair-minded detectives to investigate the execution of a known degenerate.
The city’s many illegal enterprises were all expected to maintain a stringent set of procedural guidelines. Nevertheless, any boss worth pissing on would know how to give the impression they played by the rules. So long as they were perceived to be toeing the line, there was never much police opposition. Cops generally looked the other way if no innocents got caught inside the crossfire.
Every so often, Narek popped someone for personal reasons that didn’t involve a bag full of money. Like the time he murdered a couple of peckerwood white boys over at UCLA after supplying them with a batch of B-grade heroin.
The cum stains were supposed to sling his smack to their classmates but decided to have a private dope party instead. When Narek eventually located them unconscious inside their dorm, he had to drop a bucket of water on their heads to hear what was already evident. He told them they had forty-eight hours to come up with his cash, and they called two days later to explain how they were still four grand short. Narek had allowed them to think they could split the difference on the next consignment, and when he strolled into their room the following day with a bag of poison junk in his hand, they couldn’t get it up a vein quickly enough. He’d watched on while they foamed from the mouth and filled their pants with shit, convulsing like fuckin’ retards before becoming permanently still. Best of all, it didn’t even rate a mention on the news, and their deaths were confirmed as accidental drug overdoses.
Narek could only think of one instance where he’d come close to screwing things up. The night he unloaded two clips into a couple of pigs in retaliation to a tune-up he’d received a week earlier. He set the scene for a random ambush by reporting suspicious activity in an alley. When a patrol car rolled up five minutes later, he just stepped out from behind a dumpster and started blasting bullets.
He split the scene on a Ducati Panigale, riding back to Glendale without breaking a sweat. A bitch cop died, which sent the city into lockdown as the LAPD went combing the streets for a culprit. Every mobster in Cali wanted to discover who was behind the bloodshed after the law applied the blowtorch to their illicit operations.
Fortunately, Narek didn’t speak a word of what he intended to do, so nobody had the chance to snitch him out. Still, it was imprudent business, and he certainly wouldn’t be attempting anything similar again in a hurry.
A female news correspondent on the TV was standing beside an SUV with a satellite dish sticking up from the roof. She came across as an uppity little cunt, but she had a nice pair of perky titties, and her mouth worked like a cock vacuum. Narek turned the volume up on the television to hear what the dead girl’s father was saying to the vultures gathered on his front lawn. Butchering white chicks from respectable families was a surefire way to get the attention of every lawman in the country, and it seemed only a matter of time until the crazy fuckin’ pervert got apprehended.
The Armenian Mafia rarely left their corpses on the street if they could help it. A sidewalk grave was preferred when the boss wanted to deliver a message to the entire city. It was much safer to make the bodies disappear. That’s why Davit dropped sixty large on the meat grinder inside his industrial warehouse.
Los Angeles was going to be blessed with lovely weather as the morning sunshine gilded the city in warm custardy light. Narek lowered his designer sunglasses over his eyes while he gazed out across to the Verdugo Mountains in the near distance. Anna was preparing him eggs like the good wife she mostly was, and Narek intended to enjoy his breakfast outdoors. Maybe later, he might give Bedros a call to see if he felt like heading over to Venice Beach. It would be kinda cool to kick back with an ice-cold Bud while they gawked at some tight young asses. An easy smirk spread across Narek’s face as he looked down to the street below. Even though it had been a crazy couple of days, life really couldn’t get any fuckin’ better.
Twenty-Six
Sean Brody pulled off Freeway 101 and continued down the road to his favorite mini-mart. All morning he’d doubted himself, questioning his ability to maintain the patient control he’d employed during this past year. Sean’s desire for violence felt like it was snowballing. Everywhere he looked, more diseased minds were walking around the city—a cavalcade of scumbags begging to be put down.
He drummed his fingers against the steering wheel in time with the radio, thinking how the one advantage of living in LA was the anonymity it provided. Because aside from having to deal with his gasbag neighbor’s attempted infidelity, he had no problem appearing as a washed-out face in the crowd. Almost everybody in California worked hard to emulate the glamorous movie stars they saw on their TVs, and if a person didn’t look important in this town, they likely weren’t. People were so caught up in the superficial bullshit of their pretend lives, posting updates on social media every time they needed to wipe their ass. No one could be bothered examining the reality of what they were presented with anymore. If the idiot box suggested black was white—the slender-minded douchebags just swallowed it whole.
Sean drove into the parking lot behind Manny’s Market and killed the engine, sitting quietly for a moment while he made a mental note of what he needed to buy. The produce store was in a dying part of the city, and a beat-up red Honda was the only other vehicle in the area. Sean grabbed his wallet from the center console and put on a Dodgers cap before exiting his Chrysler to make his way inside.
The same family had operated the little market for three generations, and they knew most of their customers by name. If a product wasn’t available on the shelves, all a person needed to do was ask, and Manny Junior would do his best to order it in. It wasn’t too long ago when this shop was considered the heart of the community—a local clubhouse for grannies and young kids alike. Sadly, most of those customers now shopped at the Walmart that opened a few blocks up the road. The original signage still hung from the street canopy. Its bold red letters now faded to hot pink. Sean looked at the well-worn tracks on the floor when he entered the store—the trails left behind from countless feet that traversed these lanes for more than forty years.
Sean nodded at Manny Jr’s son before he walked up the second aisle to get pickles for the hot dogs he intended to make for lunch. As he approached the condiment shelf, he noticed a skittish young lady standing silently by the freezer. She held a basket in two small hands and looked extremely uncertain of herself. The woman had short brown hair, olive skin, and the kind of frightened brown eyes that suggested she was accu
stomed to jumping at shadows. Fresh bruises formed a ring around her upper arms, and her bottom lip was split and swollen. Sean was about to inquire whether she was okay when a chubby, red-haired male moved in beside her. The guy was aged in his thirties, with large, stooped shoulders and a protruding brow. He wore faded denim jeans with a Jack Daniels T-shirt and a pair of heavy-duty work boots. A collection of silver rings covered his fat fingers. Sean observed as the girl tugged on her simple brown dress before quickly dropping her eyes to the floor.
“I can’t fucking believe this,” the guy accused spitefully, his fleshy cheeks shining with sweat. “This place is a waste of my time.”
“Wh-why … what is it, Joel?”
“These burritos have got to go in the damned oven; they ain’t even got the microwave ones in the freezer. I thought you said you shop here all the time, Tara. You better not be lying to me, bitch.” The girl had unintentionally flinched at the sound of her name as a swell of anger began rising at the base of Sean’s gut. This asshole was twice her size.
“I ain’t lying to you. I promise you I ain’t.”
Joel stared at Tara with an unblinking scowl while he raised a hand in the air.
“If I ever find out you’re playing around on me, God only knows what I’ll end up doing to you. But last night will seem like a teddy bear picnic. That much I can promise.”
Sean coughed as he reached for a jar of pickles, watching as the gutless snake lowered his hand and slinked off down the next aisle to get out of sight. Tara smiled meekly before following her fat cocksucker boyfriend with a subservience beaten into her over time. While Sean continued shopping, he realized something needed to be done to rectify the situation he’d just witnessed. Sean presumed the battered Honda in the parking lot belonged to the couple, and with any luck, nobody else would pull in until he’d finished knocking some sense into Joel. As soon as he collected all the ingredients required for his lunch, Sean approached the cashier, where he asked for a pack of Salems.