Murder Stalks (20 page)

“
We’re all working hard to
get you cleared.”

Tony slammed the door behind Rex. He picked
up the chair and righted it next to the table. “You can sit on the
chair, I’ll take the bed. I brought some note cards so we can do a
run through of what we know.”

“
I can’t stay.”

“
What?” Tony burst out,
wondering how hard Rex was working to clear him.

“
I have plans. Did you
really want me to tell Janice I was spending the evening with you?
She’s smart. If I told her I was busy, don’t you think she would
follow me over here?”

“
Yeah, fine. You go do
your girlfriend, but don’t forget to get me the rest of the files.”
Tony clenched a handful of his hair, pulling his skin tight. The
pain felt good and gave him some clarity. “I’ve got to get back on
the force. I need to be cleared.”

“
I’ll help you as much as
I can, just not tonight. It’s almost nine and Janice is expecting
me soon.”

“
Go,” Tony said. His voice
was flat, draining the energy from the room. He felt his resolve
slip away. He needed answers now, not later.

“
You going to be
okay?”

“
Yeah. I’ll be fine,” Tony
lied. He wasn’t going to be fine until this string of murders was
solved. Until he found out who had killed Ashley, until this psycho
stopped coming after him, he wouldn’t be fine. But Rex couldn’t see
that.

The door shut behind Rex and a painful
silence followed. Tony picked up his phone, thinking about Marissa.
He placed it back on the table, fear of rejection weighing
heavy.

Tomorrow. He would contact her tomorrow.

Tony turned off the light and shifted his
body into a more comfortable position. His plans had changed. He
needed sleep now, because in the morning he was driving to Houston.
He tossed and turned for a short while before succumbing to sleep.
Dreams pulled him in fast. He rolled over in his sleep, tossing the
covers to the floor.

A shiver raced up Tony’s spine when he
touched the icy glass. They were here. The beautiful couple stepped
out of their sparkling white car. They hugged. Holding hands, they
walked towards the entry. He would have a future.

A bubble of excitement rose in his chest. He
was going home today. To a real home. Not another crummy
orphanage.

Now he was in another part of the building.
The door to the dormitory swung open and he saw Wuss packing his
clothes. Tony yelled at Wuss, “They’re my parents not yours.”

Wuss held him down and pounded his face.
Tony gasped for breath and fought for freedom, but it was useless.
The other boys stood around them, laughing as Tony was
pummeled.

Tony had been wrong when he came up with the
name Wuss. He tried to tell Wuss he’d been wrong but words wouldn’t
come, they were frozen in his throat.

Tony’s mind clicked and he saw Wuss standing
with the beautiful couple. They were holding his hand and smiling
down at him. Anger rose in Tony’s chest like a hot air balloon,
puffing up his ego and making him feel bigger than he really
was.

He ran at Wuss, knocking him to the ground.
With fists flying, Tony got in two good punches before the director
pulled him away. The words Wuss had whispered in his ear while they
were rolling on the ground echoed in Tony’s head, “Life sucks, and
then you die.”

Tony jumped, waking with a start. His heart
hammered and confusion swamped him. He sat up, unsure where he was.
The sound of a truck’s engine break echoed off the buildings
surrounding the cheap motel. He groaned, wishing Marissa was here
with him. He hated his nightmares from the past. His wife’s loving
arms were a salve to his soul when the dreams crept up on him.

He dressed quickly, stopping by the all
night McDonald’s on the freeway out of town. By six Tony had
already made it to the outskirts of Houston

At seven, Tony parked near the FBI building
and watched for Jackson to show up. He held the grainy black and
white image of Jackson he’d downloaded from the web, checking it
against each person who walked past. He placed the first call at
seven thirty. Voice mail, he didn’t leave a message. At eight the
phone rolled to voice mail again. Finally, at nine, Tony struck
gold.

“
Spade here.”

“
This is Tony Santos. I
need a favor.”

“
Oh man, I heard what
happened. So is your suspension over?”

Tony was quiet, not wanting to admit to the
agent he was still off the force. Shame rocketed through his body.
He couldn’t face the truth. He wasn’t police material anymore.

“
Hey, for what it’s worth,
I know you didn’t do it.”

“
Know? How do you
know?”

“
You’re in Houston,
right?”

“
Yeah,” Tony answered,
wondering how Jackson knew where he was.

“
Come upstairs. I’ll tell
the guard to let you in.”

“
Wait, Jackson, how do you
know I’m downstairs?”

“
I saw you sitting in your
car on the way in. I was going to come down and find you if you
didn’t call soon.”

“
Was I that
obvious?”

“
No, I’m just that
FBI.”

Tony shut his cell phone, disconnecting the
line. He made his way across the street to the tall brick and glass
building. The guard waved him through the metal detectors and onto
the elevator.

“
Press eight,” the guard
said before the elevator doors shut.

Tony obediently pressed eight and in
seconds, the doors slid open. Jackson Spade stood in the hall. He
wore a dark suit and his hair was combed neatly back. His gaze was
sharp, missing nothing and his jaw set in a ‘no nonsense’
manner.

Yep, the man was
‘
that FBI
.’

“
Santos, good to see you.
Call me Spade, makes me feel important.”

“
Sure, Spade. I need some
help.”

“
I have the morning I can
give you,” Spade replied as he moved down the hall to his
office.

“
Great, but I don’t have
all of the information from the case.”

“
Don’t worry, we don’t
need much. Tell me what you know and then we’ll start.”

Tony told Spade everything he could think
of. He talked about Angela Longfellow’s room being clean, Kelsey’s
bruises and about Latisha Enzer’s injuries. Spade made no comment,
even when Tony mentioned that all three victims had their hands cut
off post mortem. The burns and pinch marks didn’t elicit a
response. Even Sekorski’s theory that all three women had been
molested with a long cylindrical object and tortured before their
death, didn’t get a word.

An hour later, Tony was drained from
reliving the ordeal.

“
Tony, who hates you?”
Spade asked, his voice soft, almost not getting through the mental
war waging in Tony’s head.

“
What?”

“
None of this is about the
three women, four if the ‘H’ theory comes into play. The blond hair
at the first murder and the piece of cloth at the second are very
suspicious. When will Sekorski have the info back on your
daughter?”

“
Not for a
while.”

“
Hmmm. This person is
after you. Tell me about your life, your childhood, your
girlfriends, and don’t leave anything out. We need to figure out
where you made an enemy and see if we can place them in your
town.”

“
So you’re telling me
someone hates me enough to kill my daughter, and now he’s taking
his anger out on the entire town?”

“
Yes, but don’t limit it
to men. Your perp could be female.”

“
Female? But the victims
were raped.”

“
With a large cylindrical
object. You need to update yourself on the plethora of sexual
sadist devices out there. Our UNSUB, unidentified subject, could be
using any number of things. A vibrator, a dildo, hell, they even
have this contraption where the dildo is attached to a harness. As
far as that goes, the object could be a pipe or a beer
bottle.”

“
You’ve got to be kidding
me? Women raping women. I don’t believe it.”

“
In a murder two years
ago, a lesbian was raped by another woman wearing one of those
harnesses. She tore up the victim. It was bad. You can buy inserts
for the harness to fit any length desired. So, this woman goes out,
purchases the biggest dildo she can find, straps it on herself and
rapes the victim. Bruises the victim’s insides so bad it looked
like raw meat.”

“
Could she be killing off
women in Juniper?” Tony asked.

“
No, we caught her. She
was having a quarrel with her regular lover and went out to pick up
young lesbians at a bar. This young lesbian has never experienced
penetration and one thing leads to another. Our suspect gets angry,
takes her anger out on the unsuspecting virgin and kills her. The
woman felt guilty and confessed.”

“
That’s sick.”

“
That’s murder, and your
UNSUB is well skilled at murder. From the precision of the first
murder, I don’t think this guy, or gal, started his killing spree
recently. His anger has been building against you, and now he in a
position to strike. Once you’re gone, he’ll up the stakes somewhere
else. Maybe there’s someone he hates more. Maybe you’re just a pit
stop on his road to death and destruction. Whatever the cause, we
need to stop him. Now back to you. Tell me about your
life.”

Tony ran his hand over his face as he
gathered his thoughts. He was already drained and humiliated, what
more could he lose? “I wasn’t always Tony Santos. My parents died
in an automobile accident when I was four. You already know that,
right?”

“
I want to hear it from
you. All I have are the facts and figures. I need your take on
it.”

“
Okay. The neighbors
didn’t know if I had any living relatives, no one claimed me, and I
moved into the Philadelphia Boys’ Home for Displaced Children. I
lived there for a couple of years before the Santos’s adopted
me.”

“
What was your name before
the adoption?”

“
Anthony
Shepherd.”

“
I haven’t run a check on
Shepherd yet. Let me put your name into the system and see what we
come up with. You can talk while the computer searches.”

“
After the adoption, my
life was normal. I went to school in Philadelphia for two years.
Then the Santos’s died in a boating accident. There were no
relatives to move in with. I was forced to move back to the home. I
spent the rest of my pre-adult life there.”

“
Girlfriends? Any angry
women left behind?”

“
No, I didn’t really date
in high school. In college, Rex usually got the girls, and then
Marissa came along.”

“
Really? Did that bother
Rex?”

Tony hung his head. Spade had brought up a
subject Tony had hoped to avoid. Recently his suspicions had
centered on Rex. Rex had been jealous when Marissa chose Tony.
Maybe he still was.

“
Marissa ignored Rex for
the most part. She wasn’t rude, just not interested. One of the
only women at college who wasn’t interested in Rex. Could you run a
back ground check on him?”

“
Come to that has it?”
Spade questioned as he typed the information into his
computer.

“
The evidence is
squirrelly.”

“
How so?”

“
When Rex was collecting
evidence off of me, he found a hair covered in Latisha Enzer’s
blood. The hair was plastered to my leg. Guess who that hair
belonged to?”

“
Rex Hague?”

“
Bingo. But how did it get
there? Rex has never slept at my house.”

“
You spend a lot of time
with him, maybe it was on you when you came home,” Spade countered.
His face remained stoic.

“
A bag of evidence is
missing from Sekorski’s office. It’s too much of a
coincidence.”

“
I’ll put his name in the
database. We’ll do a full background check, send a guy out to
question some people, and see what we can come up with.”

“
Spade, I didn’t kill the
Enzer woman, but how could I have slept through her murder?” Tony’s
voice wavered. He was low on sleep and his emotions were strung
out. He couldn’t keep the pace he was being forced to follow.
According to Spade, someone from his past was stalking him and
killing off people near him. A thread of worry worked its way into
Tony’s consciousness. A horrible question popped into his mind.
Would Marissa be next?

“
I pulled the toxicology
report from Sekorski. You were given a very large dose of Rohypnol.
Loss of motor functions and a dream-like state combined with memory
problems and confusion is what we see from Rohypnol victims. It’s
no wonder you didn’t know what was happening. You aren’t Superman,
and this UNSUB is very crafty. He’s probably spent years perfecting
his plan. You most likely aren’t his first target, and if we don’t
stop him, you won’t be his last.”

“
Is that supposed to make
me feel better? How can we stop this bastard if we haven’t got a
clue where to start?”

“
I’m going to sift through
the information you gave me. I’ll see if we can come up with
something from the boys’ home. Go back to Juniper, keep your eyes
open, and I’ll call you when I find something. This person is
smart, but he can’t beat the FBI. Trust me. We’ve taken down worse
killers than this.”