Kindred Killers: A Stanford Carter Murder Mystery Read online

  If he even dared contemplate Therese’s offer, would he be any better than Dan? He wondered if Therese was purposefully trying to turn him on, because in the next moment, she fell back into her justified ranting.

  “I gave Dan a chance to become a real man. He was nothing when I met him. I was the one who already owned my own business. I let him flounder about, getting his feet wet in the real estate market. Those first few years were dreadful. I supported him at open houses. Tying balloons to those awful lawn signs, the thought of it makes me shudder, even today. But Dan persevered, thanks to my good heart.”

  Jay felt a slight buzz from his drinks. He knew he should have refused them. Jay never labeled himself an alcoholic but felt imbibing would dull the senses required to be a detective. Maybe someone like Sid could still function afterwards. But he wasn’t Sid. He wasn’t a cop. He started to feed on Therese’s anger, commiserating with her.

  “I bet he fucked a few buyers or maybe even sellers over the years. Stupid me. He took advantage of me because I let him.”

  Jay’s paternal instinct demanded he comfort the woman, despite the anger which was burning a hole in his stomach.

  “No. You’ve got to understand you did nothing wrong . . .”

  But Therese leaped from the couch before he could finish his sentence.

  “Do you find me desirable, Mr. Fishburne?”

  “Ah . . . yes. Yes, I do. I only mean, any man would . . .”

  She sashayed over to his chair. He tried to get up, but she pushed him back down.

  “Could you show me how much you find me desirable?”

  Jay stammered. “I couldn’t—you’re a good woman—don’t demoralize yourself by stooping to his level.”

  “I bet you’re going to say that you don’t get involved with clients. Well I’ve paid you in full. We’re off the clock now . . . so to speak . . . and don’t worry about Dan. I scared the shit out of him. He won’t be back, and he’s much too cheap to hire an investigator.”

  She began to unzip his trousers.

  Before Jay knew it, she had taken him into her mouth.

  The drinks and the allure of spontaneous sex conspired to let Therese have her way with him. Only for a few moments—then he became the aggressor, removing her dress. All the while he heard voices: You’re cheating on Lucy. You’re breaking your own moral codes . . . But anger quieted those voices. Well fuck Lucy. She’s screwing how many men every day? This is just one. No emotional ties. Just fucking for fucking sake. Maybe I’ll even come to understand how Lucy can do this without attachment . . . He entered Therese with an awkwardness he never had experienced with Lucy. The voice in his head sounded a lot like the strange inflection Sid had used in the bar. The gruff accent Jay swore Sid had jokingly employed as a teen. At the moment, Jay didn’t really feel like himself.

  When Jay left the house, guilt washed over him with the power of a tidal wave. He felt as if he’d been dipped in dirty water. But he also felt there might be a way to right this guilt. Despite Therese’s moment of weakness, she had been wronged, no question about it. She never would have fucked him if it weren’t for Dan’s cheating. He never would have known her if it weren’t for Dan’s cheating.

  Poor Therese. There’s just got to be a better ending for you . . .

  Chapter 3

  The Stalker knew the change was coming. It was all so easy, just a matter of time.

  As he tailed Dan Collins from his girlfriend’s house to the hotel parking lot, The Stalker chuckled about the poor bastard’s predicament. She—the acupuncturist—yelled at Collins as he left her home, just as if she were his wife. Meet the new boss. Same as the old boss . . .

  Yet that humiliation, that punishment, would not suffice. The Stalker mulled this over as he listened to his radio playing an AC/DC song, Back in Black. It pumped The Stalker. The Stalker felt invincible.

  Moments later, the Stalker’s vehicle crept into the lot behind Collins’ vehicle with headlights off. The Stalker was coasting, stealthy as a cat about to pounce on a mouse.

  The Stalker liked to get into the head of his victims. He imagined Dan Collins was much too preoccupied with his crumbling life to take notice of his car pulling in two spaces away. The Stalker sat in his car for a long moment, wallowing in pitch darkness, rubbing his face with his hands. He felt that mimicking the gesture of a cat might actually bestow him with feline hunting prowess.

  He probably will take a room in this hotel suite because it’s near his work in the city. The Stalker could deduce this because The Stalker was at the top of his game. It was elementary.

  Finally, the husband exited with duffel bag in hand.

  The rock felt intimate in his hand. The Stalker sensed the rock’s weight, its power to inflict damage; the thin layer of the latex glove reminded him of vulnerability. The glove was gentle. The rock was harsh. Harsh would win in a fight almost every time. With one hand he opened his door and tip toed behind his victim.

  He was on top of him in a second, about an arm’s length behind. No more time to think. He raised his arm to strike.

  The rock lived up to expectations, taking Dan Collins down in one swoop. The Stalker felt his pulse rise as he launched the weapon into a patch of swampy marsh located at the perimeter of the dark parking lot. No one was around. He could hear the thud of the rock land in the thicket vegetation—it was so quiet. The adjacent swamp made him feel as if he had planned the murder scene perfectly. It would be a difficult place to find a murder weapon, but he didn’t really care. The most important matter was that everyone knew what Dan Collins had been up to. Now he just had to sprinkle a hint of the filth Dan had shared with his doctor. Then everyone would put two and two together. The Stalker returned to his vehicle and retrieved a small carton. Dan Collins lay face down on the tar, just in front of his luxury car. The Stalker hopped over him as if he were a child at play and tried the driver’s door to the victim’s sweet ride. Unlocked. Another careless mistake. He snickered and opened the door.

  He tossed the carton through the door onto the passenger seat. Now came the real work. However, work was the very nature of justice. The Stalker was grunting, sweating, in the summer heat as he propped Dan Collins’ unconscious body up and dragged him to the vehicle. Employing a see saw methodology, The Stalker finally managed to swing Collins into the driver’s seat. The Stalker took a moment to catch his breath, wearing a look of disdain; to The Stalker, Collins was nothing more than a large bag of gardening soil. A fitting metaphor: Ready to spread his seed all over town. Well that stops, here and now. He dashed around the car, and got in on the passenger side. Now The Stalker shifted the body, back, forth, sideways, until satisfied that Collins was in a natural position, seated behind the wheel of his Audi.

  “So let’s begin treatment. How’s that back of yours doing?” The Stalker whispered to the still unconscious Collins—preparing to become something or someone else, he was not quite sure which, he just knew that he was crossing a line. The Stalker muffled a snarl as he ripped at Dan’s clothing. He needed to make room for his handiwork. He jokingly apologized he should have brought a smock.

  He took the first needle from the box and jabbed it into Collins’ neck. He admired his work, but only for a second. His eyes returned to the box with glee. On the side of the carton, words on the label reminded him that 99 more needles were waiting.

  Blood trickled from the neck wound where the needle had entered the skin. In this instance, he felt happy to be incompetent. He had no idea how to use such instruments but read that it wouldn’t be difficult to puncture an organ. How about we try for the lungs? He repositioned Collins and inserted a few needles in his back. Then The Stalker poked a few in Collins’ side, using deliberate care to thread the needles past the ribcage. One thing he knew for certain. The needles were never meant to penetrate a body this deeply. He paused to observe the unconscious adulterer. The man’s breathing had become shallower. The Stalker giddily took the next needle in hand and wondered if this was t
he one that would transform him into The Killer.

  ***

  Four months earlier, forensic scientist Jill Seacrest had become engulfed in unbridled joy. Her homicide detective boyfriend Stanford Carter had finally popped the question. No more would they just be colleagues, coffee dates or roommates. Jill Seacrest would marry the soul mate she had met on the job. Today, some of that unbridled joy had been mitigated. It all came down to bureaucracy, to Jill’s disappointment.

  The Bureau of Investigative Services (BIS) had a policy. No interdepartmental marriages. It didn’t matter that Carter worked for the homicide unit and she for the Forensics Science Division. The colleagues were still subject to the bureaucratic umbrella of the BIS. If romance should lead to a vow, one of the employees—preferably the one with lesser rank—should put in for a transfer to another force in a different town: common knowledge to CSI Seacrest.

  Duty had brought her to the place she’d always longed for: Carter’s arms. It occurred two years prior when the bureau’s medical examiner suffered a mental breakdown and decided to punish Carter by holding Jill hostage. Before ME Shock threatened Jill’s life, he had killed at least several people. The ordeal was still as fresh in Jill’s memory as if it occurred yesterday.

  ***

  Jill had just returned from the gym. Succumbing to the need to quench her thirst, she opened her refrigerator to retrieve a bottle of water. Before she could put her hand on the bottle, someone was putting a hand on her.

  Her mind flashed. How did he get in? She recalled fumbling for her keys in the dimly lit hallway moments earlier. How she had heard a sound but dismissed it as a child playing.

  She was totally unprepared, attired in gym clothes. Despite her officer training and permit to carry a weapon she might as well have been bare naked. The attacker was at her side, in her blind spot. She had no peripheral vision to see him.

  She strained her head to meet his eyes but didn’t possess the strength. She was already battling a meaty forearm which was trying to spin her around. Jill surmised if her attacker achieved his desired outcome she would be as good as dead. She strained her head forward in an attempt to bite the arm. A bitter laugh mocked her. It sounded muffled as if the speaker was wearing some kind of mask.

  “Shock!” Jill screamed. “What the hell do you think you’re doing?” She was annoyed at her reaction, playing to his desires. In the nanosecond of time she had to ponder whether she might live or die, Jill’s mind worked double time in an attempt to recall policy. Yes. She had to keep her voice calm and even. The objective was to make her attacker surrender. That’s when the ME punched her in the back of her head with his free hand.

  Woozy, but determined to beat her attacker, she abandoned protocol and tact. She growled, a guttural sound mimicking a wounded animal. Jill Seacrest had been under attack before. As a child she hid underneath her bed during a home invasion. She wasn’t a child anymore. She wasn’t going to hide. She kicked a leg to her side aiming for the man’s instep. She would have preferred a more vulnerable area, something like the knee or the groin but she didn’t have the strength or the benefit of the angle. Weariness from her workout descended on every muscle. Her gym routine had given her a last spurt of adrenaline yet her muscles were inflamed. They felt like noodles. Noodles were no match for a man who resembled a wrestler.

  The kick failed. Shock only swore and taunted her. “What’s the matter, bitch? You’re too good for Carter?” With no more fight, Jill succumbed to the ME’s manhandling. She was now trapped in a bear hug with the bastard directly behind her.

  Jill attempted a scream but it came out as a muffled moan. She whispered in a raspy throat, “You don’t have to do this. I’m not against you. Not everyone in this world is against you.”

  “Tell that to my soon to be ex-wife. Or perhaps that bastard lawyer who let a murderer walk; or, I know, maybe tell that to the department counselor, the one who tried to help Carter discern why a serial behaves the way he does. Trust me, nobody knows! But I do know who’s against me.”

  Jill prayed she had delayed the inevitable. He was surely going to slice her like his other victims. She thought of Carter and wondered if he had pieced together the damning evidence as yet. Carter had suspected the ME but had no evidence of his handiwork. Maybe, she thought, the lab had found some evidence…

  Stanford Carter raced up the steps to Jill’s apartment. A search of the ME’s apartment an hour earlier revealed the bloody surgical clothes he had used to complete his kills. Attempting to reach Jill by phone had failed. He could only imagine the worst. Shock was here. He had come to take away his joy.

  Carter’s heart pounded in beat to every footstep he took up the stairs. He couldn’t recall where he parked or his car or if he had left it running.

  He began to chant. If he hyperventilated, he would be no use to Jill.

  “I’m going to find Jill and she’s going to be all right. I’m going to find…” He repeated his mantra until he came face to face with her apartment door. He kicked down the door with gun drawn.

  Carter found Jill trapped in the grip of the man who used to be his medical examiner. The devil was not dressed in blue as the old song professed but in the aqua green color of a surgical gown.

  The gown told Carter he was here to operate.

  Shock shot Carter a vengeful look through his piercing blue eyes. The remainder of the maniac’s face was hidden by a surgical mask.

  Shock swung his right arm, in his hand was a scalpel.

  Jill had no chance to move. She was trapped in the grip of her attacker’s left arm.

  Carter nodded to Jill and fired. Jill exerted a final burst of energy to slide downwards, almost but not quite out of Shock’s grip.

  His shot ripped through the ME’s upper left arm. Shock was sent backwards, his body banging against a cabinet of glassware. The impact forced him to lose his grip on both Jill and the scalpel.

  Jill had been freed. Carter kept his gun trained on the man he never really knew. Backup was on the way.

  ***

  Carter had solved yet another murder but there was no satisfaction from it as people like Sid Auerbach might like to think. He had told Jill this in so many words. ‘This job is not about glory.’ Yet Jill found glory in their union.

  After Carter freed her, she was overwhelmed with just how fulfilling a relationship with Carter could be. She not only shared the passion of her career with Carter but her pent up love and lust for the compassionate, brown-eyed detective who practiced Zen. All prior events appeared to Jill as a linear transgression. But because of bureau policy, would she be forced to take a step backwards? Jill fumbled in her bag as Carter drove her to work. Yes. She still had the faux fortune Carter had written to her. It said: You will become one with a fellow truth seeker.

  ***

  Carter asked her to meet him in the break room with her processing kit after clocking in. They would begin the day by investigating a murder in a hotel parking lot. The department’s ME was already on the scene.

  Carter was sipping his coffee when Jill burst into the break room. She didn’t even have her processing kit in hand.

  “Stanford, I’ve done something terrible. I’m so ashamed.”

  Carter placed his cup on the table. He had sensed something odd about Jill’s behavior in the car. She had been rummaging through her purse as if she misplaced something. Jill was always prepared and well organized. Details were everything to a forensic scientist. He had suppressed the urge to ask her what was wrong. Now Carter felt it was appropriate to behave more like a detective than a fiancée. “What happened? Is it about a case? Did you break the chain of evidence? If so, you must report it…”

  She smiled sheepishly.

  “No, nothing like that. And I know full well when I must make a report. You’re not the only ‘saint’ around here,” she joked. Her voice lilted, reminding Carter her retort was a loving one.

  Carter stood up and offered a seat.

  “Then please, b
y all means, enlighten me. What’s wrong?”

  Jill searched Carter’s eyes for a moment, then shook her head with exasperation.

  “We can no longer hide our engagement, Stan. Captain Eldridge knows.”

  “How?” Carter stammered.

  “I slipped up. I put my ring on after showering yesterday. He commented on it when we passed in the hallway. He complimented me. Then, he asked me who the lucky guy was. And I stupidly told him, blurted it right out without hesitation.” She looked away. “He didn’t even need an interrogation lamp.”

  Carter busted out laughing.

  Jill’s eyebrows furrowed. “This is no laughing matter.” She waved her hand, exposing the bare ringer finger. “Look, I always remember to take it off before entering the lab. I don’t put it on again until we’re home. But it’s a habit. After I shower, I want to put on my ring. I think there’s some underlying psychological reason. No matter. The deed’s done. I should have waited to shower at home.” She raised a hand to her forehead.

  “This is what had you so uptight? I’ve never seen you flinch, even in the line of fire.”

  “Well, you don’t know everything, detective. I flinched. Internally.”

  The pair both broke into laughter. Carter placed a hand on her shoulder. “I’m flattered you carry my ring with you.”

  “You’re not the least bit mad?” She rolled her eyes. “Well, you’re never really angered by anything. Anyway, it’s back in my bag.”

  “We’ll deal with this, Jill.”

  “But this is just so wrong. Eldridge isn’t my supervisor, he’s yours.”

  “Per BIS protocol, Eldridge is obligated to bring it to the bureau supervisor. Now please grab your kit. We have a crime scene waiting.”

  “It’s just that it’s so beautiful. I couldn’t conceal it,” Jill ranted about the ring while Carter guided her out of the break room, his hand resting on the small of her back.

  “And you know something?” Carter said to her. “You are so beautiful yourself.”

  Jill and Carter found ME Robert Lee Shirley peering into a car.