Blood List

Blood List

By

Patrick & Philip Freivald

JournalStone

San Francisco

Copyright © 2013 by Patrick & Philip Freivald

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping or by any information storage retrieval system without the written permission of the publisher except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, names, incidents, organizations, and dialogue in this novel are either the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.

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The views expressed in this work are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher, and the publisher hereby disclaims any responsibility for them.

ISBN:
978-1-936564-91-0
(sc)

ISBN:
978-1-936564-96-5
(ebook)

Library of Congress Control Number:
2013947662

Printed in the United States of America

JournalStone rev. date:  November 15, 2013

Cover Design and Artwork
Jeff Miller

Edited by: 
Dr. Michael R. Collings

To The Redhead™. You're why I write.

Patrick Freivald

To the other three Horsemen.  Thanks for the camaraderie.

Phil Freivald

We'd like to thank our brothers Mark and Jake, for their enormous help on our first trip around the block.
Blood List
wouldn't be the book it is without you. We'd also like to thank all our beta readers, typo-hunters, fact-checkers (dad for guns, Betsy Hutchison for virology, and so many others), and the wonderful staff at JournalStone – Christopher Payne, Joel Kirkpatrick, Norm Rubenstein, our editor Dr. Michael R. Collings and our proofreader Amy Eye. Finally, we'd like to thank Jeff Miller for an awesome cover.

Blood List

June 22nd, 4:48 PM PST; Café Molto Espresso; Los Angeles, California.

Paul Renner looked across the street at the woman he'd come to Beverly Hills to kill. He blended in with the throng of thirtysomethings crowding up Rodeo Drive: six feet tall, short black hair, a decent tan, and a business suit that cost more than his first car. He pretended to people-watch, his soft brown eyes scanning the crowd sweating in the summer heat, debutantes and nouveau riche Hollywooders spending thousands of dollars on outfits they'd wear once and never think about again.

The blaring TV behind him was difficult to ignore. Some talking-head CNN anchor blathered on about a mass shooting in Des Moines.
Who kills a bunch of people at the mall? What a waste of life.

He took a sip of his caramel macchiato. Across the street, Jenny Sykes screamed at a shoe-store employee. Paul typed a text message while the beleaguered clerk rang up the purchase and bustled Ms. Sykes out the door. He held his thumb over the "send" button.

Ms. Sykes lugged two full bags of Guccis and Manolo Blahniks to her car. Her body was tight and firm, thanks to Botox and a personal trainer, and she walked like a high school cheerleader.
Her shoe collection probably cost more than my house
. He looked up from the phone and caught her eye. She smiled tightly, averted her gaze, and headed to her car.

Jenny Sykes was too old to be called Jenny and wasn't remotely hip in spite of the hundreds of thousands of dollars she spent to appear to be.
She probably thinks her daughter's ten-thousand-dollar-a-week cocaine habit is her biggest problem.

Jenny slid behind the wheel of her chrome-silver Mercedes Benz, flashing far too much leg for her age. Paul stood, dropped a ten-dollar bill on the table, and walked away. When she closed the car door, Paul pressed "send" on his pre-paid NetPhone I-590 cellular phone. No annual contract, WiFi digital compatible, and, best of all, paid with cash. Totally anonymous.

Two things happened simultaneously. First, the text message fired off to a familiar number. It read,
Jenny Sykes, Rodeo Drive, Los Angeles, California
. Second, the phone sent another text to an identical phone in the trunk of Jenny Sykes' Mercedes.

The Benz erupted into a fireball, sending Jenny Sykes to whatever heaven or hell shallow socialites go. Shattered glass fell from storefront windows, but most of the shrapnel blew straight up, just as Paul had intended. Like cattle, the herd of shoppers screamed and cried as they stampeded away from the carnage. Paul joined them.

Hurrying along with the crowd, he felt none of the feigned panic he projected for the inevitable YouTube videos.
Some people are too dumb to run
. Several blocks away, he ducked into an alley between a Thai tapas restaurant and a place called Tie World.

He tossed the phone into the restaurant's dumpster. His fingerprints weren't on record, so the G-men who'd been trying to catch him for the past decade would know it was the D Street Killer, but not his identity. Leaving little clues for Special Agent Gene Palomini and his boys was part of what made these operations fun.

*   *   *

June 22nd, 5:16 PM PST; Jenny Sykes murder scene; Los Angeles, California.

Special Agent in Charge Giancarlo "Gene" Palomini held on as the two black SUVs screamed onto the sidewalk across the street from the smoking mess of what was left of the silver Mercedes Benz. The red-and-blue police lights flickered off the yellow CRIME SCENE:  DO NOT CROSS tape that two uniformed locals wrapped around a hundred yards of Rodeo Drive.

Gene looked at the damage as he hopped out of the driver's seat of the front vehicle. Just over six feet tall, in his early forties, with a medium, muscular frame and thinning, military-short blond hair, he exuded confidence and frustration in equal measure as he surveyed the wreckage scattered across the street. His older brother Marty got out behind him.

"Whoa," said his technical specialist as he emerged from the second car. "A car bomb? Are you kidding me, Gene?" Agent Carl Brent was short, black, in his mid-thirties, and looked like a kid playing dress-up. The hair was pure businessman, but his navy suit was a little too big, and Gene was sure he didn't have to shave more than twice a week. Carl was never one to avoid pointing out the obvious.

The last thing Gene's smog-choked sinuses needed was a Carl-induced headache. "Stow it, Carl. Let's make nice with the locals."

Agent Doug Goldman took point, blazing the way with his fierce gray eyes. Barrel-chested and bald, Doug was so tall that his FBI badge was at eye level for Gene. Doug was a wall with a badge and a gun, and Gene used that fact to their advantage. Gene walked at his heels, eclipsed by the large man's presence.

Gene's brother walked next to him. They looked like twins except for Marty's full head of hair and the ridiculous porn-star moustache he grew in the Navy and had refused to shave since. Behind them came Carl Brent, with Jerri Bates to his left. Agent Bates was a small, pretty woman in her early thirties with an angular face, short red hair, green eyes, and curves in places that Marty said made her standard, uptight FBI suit look naughty. Gene had never seen the appeal, no matter what she wore.

A Hispanic LAPD detective saw them coming and avoided eye contact. He whistled to a uniformed officer who was trying to figure out how to attach a pink marker-flag to a square of sidewalk concrete and jerked his head toward their group. "Hey, Jimmy! Bureau's here. Show them around, and don't let them muck up my crime scene."

Jimmy dropped the marker on the sidewalk, pulled off his latex gloves, and trotted over to Gene's group. His smile was too enthusiastic for someone who had just been tagging vaguely-identifiable body parts.

Gene watched as the uniformed officer—J. Anderson by his name tag—walked straight to Doug and stuck out his hand. It never failed. Hidden in the human psyche lurks a primitive instinct that makes people assume the biggest guy is the man-in-charge. It helped the team put people off-balance without seeming to be deliberate.

"Special Agent?" Officer Anderson asked. He looked confident, but his inflection betrayed a touch of apprehension at presenting a part of his body anywhere near the massive, scowling man in the middle.

"That's Agent Goldman," Gene said as he reached out to complete the handshake. "I'm Special Agent in Charge Palomini, call me Gene, and these are my associates, Agents Bates, Brent, and Martin Palomini." The officer's grip was far too strong, carrying on the pointless tradition of local cops trying to prove that they're just as good as the FBI. Demonstrating that it's the cop who makes the badge only tended to make them grumpy, so Gene gave the hand a good squeeze.

"I'm Officer Anderson, Jimmy Anderson. You guys sure got here quick."

"Well, we were in the neighborhood," Gene answered.

Gene held Anderson just long enough for his crew to get past. Jimmy raised his eyebrows. "Um…if you guys want to stick with me, I'll show you what we know so far…." His voice trailed off as the agents ignored him.

Gene noted with pride how his team knew exactly what needed to be done. Jerri Bates approached the witnesses and singled out a crying cashier from the shoe store. She used her disarming looks and personality to pull out details other interrogators might miss. Doug Goldman and Marty Palomini made a beeline for the uniformed PD to make some needed friends, and Carl Brent honed in on the forensics crew to add his expertise to the decades of experience already present.
Meanwhile, I get to play politics. Yippee.

Gene turned Officer Anderson toward the group of sport-coated detectives next to the wreckage and unveiled his best diplomatic smile. "Why don't you take me to the detective in charge? It's going to be a long night, so let's work together to make it shorter, okay?"

Anderson followed Gene, muttering a barely-heard mantra over and over to himself. "Mustache Martin, the other one's Gene. Mustache Martin, the other one's Gene."

*   *   *

June 23rd, 1:23 AM PST; FBI Headquarters, Wilshire Boulevard; Los Angeles, California.

The computer screen shuddered rhythmically, no doubt caused by something electronic in the rooms near Gene's makeshift office. His head throbbed in time to the pulses. He closed his eyes and rubbed his temples for the hundredth time. It eased the pain only so long as he kept doing it and felt that much worse when he stopped.