Consumed (14 page)

“That’s going to be you,” Richard said. He made her look at the half-chopped-up leg, the foot removed at the ankle, and the coagulated blood covering the kitchen counter. More blood drips had run from the counter’s edge and created a puddle on the floor.

Crystal tried screaming, scratching, and doing everything in her power to get away, but she couldn’t break Richard’s hold around her neck. He lifted her by her neck and took the hooker to the living room.

“Would you like to meet my mother?” Richard pointed at his mother’s twenty-year-old rotted corpse, positioned on the couch.

He laughed as the girl tried to scream and fight with everything she had. Richard dragged her back to the kitchen, reached to his hunting knife on his hip, flicked the button that secured the handle to the sheath, and pulled the knife out. He reached it around the front of her and poked the tip into her chest. She let out a short scream that turned into the sound of a gag when Richard applied pressure, letting the blade slide into her inch by inch. Crystal jerked violently. He stopped applying pressure when he felt the tip of the hunting knife come out of her back and poke into his sternum. Then Richard slid the blade back out. Her body jerked again—she didn’t make a sound. Richard put the hunting knife into her again—and again. Blood ran down the front of her and pooled at her feet. Richard could feel the front of his shirt go warm from the blood coming from her back. He continued the slow process for another two minutes, bringing the knife in and out of her ten or more times. Crystal was dead after the second.

Richard moved his left arm from her neck down to her chest to keep her standing. He pulled the knife across her throat. Blood cascaded over Richard’s left arm. He let her drop to the floor and reached down to wipe the knife off on the small section of her jean shorts that wasn’t red with blood. He stuck the knife back in the sheath and wiped the blood off his arm with a kitchen towel. Richard then wadded the towel up, tossed it into the kitchen sink, and walked out to the living room to watch a bit of television, planning to deal with the girl later.

Beth sat the man back on his plastic chair and went to retrieve the file of photos from the car.

“He try running?” I asked.

Tom nodded. “He got about five feet.”

“Search him?” I asked.

“Yeah, his things are on the table there.” Tom nodded toward it.

I went over and set down everything I’d taken from the other man—a wallet, a phone, and a small bag of marijuana. I looked at what Beth and Tom had pulled off of the other guy—a pile of multicolored condoms, a wad of money that on quick glance looked like about a thousand bucks, a pack of cigarettes, and some more marijuana. I pulled the IDs from both wallets and walked back to Tom. Beth came back from the car with the file.

I held the two IDs up. “Alex Rivera and Curt Daly. What are you gentlemen running for, exactly?” I asked.

Neither of the two responded.

I looked at the guy I’d chased down. “Couldn’t be for the little bit of weed I found on you, was it? You know you could probably run faster if your pants weren’t hanging off of your ass,” I said.

He shook his head but said nothing.

“Mr. Rivera. You want to tell me what you were running for?” I asked.

He didn’t respond.

“Looks like we have a couple of mutes,” Beth said.

“Yeah, it does. I assume you ran because the pair of you are wanted for something,” I said.

The one named Curt, whom I’d chased, rocked his head back. “It’s just missing a court date, man. My mom was sick. I couldn’t make it.”

“Your mother was sick? From what?” I asked.

“Um, the flu,” he said.

“And she’s better now?”

“Yeah.”

“Well, that’s great. Court date for what?” I asked.

“Suspended license.”

“That’s it?” I asked.

He nodded. “That’s it.”

“Seems kind of minor for you to be running. We’re going to get to that in a bit, though. Now that we’ve established that Curt here can talk, what about you, Mr. Rivera?” I asked. “Reason for running?”

“Parking tickets,” he said.

“So, suspended license and parking tickets. You two are traffic offenders, huh?” Beth asked.

“Mr. Rivera, what’s with all the rubbers and money?” I asked.

“I like to practice safe sex,” he said.

“And the wad of money?” I asked.

“Um, it was payday today.”

“Right,” I said. “All of you two’s responses so far sound completely legit,” I said as sarcastically as possible. “All right you two, what do you have for priors?”

They both shook their heads.

“Nothing,” Alex said.

“Yeah, me either,” Curt said.

“So neither of you two have ever been in trouble before?” Beth asked. “You know, aside from the traffic offenses.” She looked at me.

I shrugged. “I believe them.” More sarcasm hung from my words.

“Man, I can’t go back to jail. I can’t get arrested,” Curt mumbled.

“Thought you just said you didn’t have any priors? You two aren’t that bright, are you?” Beth asked.

Neither responded.

“Okay, listen up, dumb and dumber. We’re not here to arrest you in the first place,” I said. “We just want some information on a couple of local girls. If the suspended-license story and the parking-ticket story both check out, we won’t run you in for it.”

Neither said anything.

I looked at Beth. “You have those photos?”

“Yeah.” She handed them over.

“I’m going to show you guys a couple of photos. I want to know every last thing you can tell me about them.”

The guy on the left, Alex, nodded.

I held the photo of Candice Schwarz in front of him. “We’ve been told that she worked the local area,” I said.

“Candy,” Alex said. “Yeah, she works around these parts.”

“One of yours?” Tom asked.

“Um,” Alex said.

“We don’t know what you mean by that,” Curt said quickly, making sure that his associate didn’t speak further.

“Cut the shit, or we’ll just take the both of you in for pimping and pandering,” Tom said. “We saw the girl leave the room and come out to pay you guys your cut.”

Neither man responded.

“I’ll ask again,” Tom said. “One of yours?”

Curt shook his head. “Not like that. I sell a little weed to the girls. Sometimes, I’ll front them a bit. After they are done doing whatever they’re doing, they pay me the money that’s owed.”

His copping to dealing a little bit of weed carried far fewer legal ramifications than being involved in prostitution. I imagined he was street educated enough to know that fact.

“Okay, let’s just try this a different way.” I said. “What do you know about her?”

“She’s always with another girl that goes by the name Peaches,” Alex said.

“Yeah, the girls try to get men that like a little two for one, if you know what I’m saying. You normally see them around here every night. Haven’t seen them tonight, though,” Curt said.

I looked through the photos and found the one of Rachael Mendez, the other victim that had been found that morning. “Is this Peaches?” I held the photo up in front of the two men.

Curt nodded. “What do you want them for?”

I waved away his question. “Do you know if the girls had regular Johns?”

“No clue,” he said.

“What about where these girls were staying?” Beth asked.

“Somewhere around here, I’d guess,” Alex said.

We spent the next twenty minutes playing the same game with each girl’s photo that we showed them. Both men admitted to having “seen them around,” but that was all the information they could provide. They either didn’t know the girls personally or were full of it. I couldn’t quite figure out which one it was. There was a chance we could get more if we put the guys under an interrogation lamp for a few hours, but I wasn’t sure how much good it would do. Unless someone told us specifically what vehicle each girl had last gotten into and could provide us a plate number, I wasn’t sure how much good random general information was going to do to help our investigation.

I motioned Tom a few feet away from the two men. He walked over.

“Why don’t you go and run these two,” I said. “Let’s see what they are actually wanted for.”

“Don’t think we’re going to get anything from them?” he asked.

“No. At least nothing that’s going to help us catch whoever is doing this.”

“Okay, I’ll run the two quick and see what we get. You’re not buying their warrants for traffic offenses?”

“Not even a little bit. Let’s just see what is in the system on them, and then we’ll go from there.”

“Sure,” Tom said. “It should just take a second.” He walked toward his car.

I went back to Beth’s side.

“We free to go?” Curt asked.

“We’re just checking on a few things right now,” I said.

He was quiet for a moment.

“On what?” Alex asked. “What are you checking on?”

“A few things,” I said.

The pair talked quietly to each other. As I watched them, they both looked a bit more nervous than they ought to be. The one named Alex was leaning forward in his chair, his head once again darting left and right.

“Looking for something?” I asked.

He sat up straight and stopped moving around.

I spoke over my shoulder at Beth. “Keep your eyes peeled on these two. Alex here is looking a little fidgety.”

She nodded.

Tom started back toward us. I walked to him so he could tell me what he’d gotten without the guys hearing our conversation.

“I called them in to the local PD.”

“What are they wanted for?” I asked.

“Curt Daly is wanted on failing to appear in court on assault charges. Also has a history of the same. Did two years plus for aggravated assault a few years back—it was against a female. Alex Rivera has an arrest warrant for promoting prostitution.”

“Doesn’t sound like traffic offenses to me. What was the ETA on local law enforcement for picking these two up?”

“Couple minutes,” Tom said.

“All right. Let’s go inform these gentlemen that they will have accommodations provided for them this evening.”

Tom smirked.

We walked back to Beth, who was keeping an eye on the pair.

I slapped my hands together. “Good news, fellas. Both of your stories checked out.”

The pair looked at each other and then back at me.

“I am, of course, lying to you,” I said. “Just like you lied to us about what you were wanted for. But the good news is that you’ll be done dealing with us in a second here when the Nashville PD arrives to take you into custody.”

“Man, shit,” Alex said. “I told you we should’ve ran as soon as we saw that fed car pull into the lot.”

“You were waiting to get paid from Naomi,” Curt said.

“Not really helping your cause right now, guys,” Beth said. She shook her head.

While our little outing to talk with some of the nightlife in the area had been worth a shot, it didn’t really get us anywhere. I saw the red-and-blue lights of a police cruiser flickering from down the street. The squad car pulled in with lights on but no siren. The car parked next to Agent Clifford’s government-issue Crown Victoria. An officer in uniform stepped out and approached.

We handed the pair off to the Nashville officer, had a short conversation with him, and went back to our car.

Our presence at the motel had turned what was looking like a local hotspot to a virtual ghost town. Tom pulled back toward the street. I gave the area a quick look left and right but spotted no one.

“What do we want to do?” Tom asked. “More parking and waiting?”

I looked at Beth in the back. “What do you think?” I asked.

“Up to you guys. I’m a night owl anyway,” she said.

I looked at the time on the dash of Tom’s car—almost midnight. If the area did pick up again, that wouldn’t happen for a number of hours.

“Nah,” I said. “I think us being at the motel with the red and blues is going to put a serious damper on this place for the night. Let’s shut her down.”

“Head back to your hotel?” Tom asked. “Start again tomorrow?”

“Yeah,” I said.

He pulled out of the motel parking lot and headed down the road.

I’d been up for a few minutes, lying in bed, watching some college sports highlights from the weekend. My cell phone rang on the nightstand. I caught the time on the hotel room clock’s red LED numbers as I reached over for the phone—a couple minutes past seven in the morning. I brought the phone to my face and checked who was calling—Karen. I hit Talk.

“Hey, babe. What’s up?” I asked.

“I didn’t wake you up, did I?”

“Nah, I’ve been up for a bit.”

“You sound rough. Late night searching for streetwalkers, huh? I got your text when I woke up that you were back to the hotel, hooker free.”

I chuckled and sat up. “You liked that, huh?”

“Yeah, cute,” she said. “So what did happen? Did you find anything out?”

“No, but I got to chase a guy down. We asked him and his buddy a few questions. They didn’t really give us anything, but they had warrants, so we got them off the street.”

“Always good,” Karen said. “Did you call your dad back?”

“Yeah, I talked to him. He and Mom are fine. It seemed like he just wanted to shoot the breeze about some yard work he was doing. Mom was all jazzed up about some quilt she was making—same old stuff.”

“Okay. Well, not that I wasn’t going to call you to talk this morning anyway, but I just got an e-mail for flight deals. We can get back and forth to Tampa next weekend for three hundred bucks for the both of us.”

“Three hundred is cheap,” I said. “Are they transferable?”

“I don’t think so, babe. But we can use our credit and still have some left over.”

I kicked my feet off the side of the bed and stood. “Yeah, book it. Worst-case scenario, we eat three hundred bucks. Pretty sure I’ve wasted more money on worse things before.”

“Okay, good. I’ll get it taken care of. I should probably call Callie and let her know.”

“Sure,” I said.

“What is your schedule like today?” Karen asked.

I opened the blinds and took a seat in the chair by the window. “Going to call back to Manassas and check in with Ball. He was trying to get me some information, but it seems like it’s a little hard to come by. I think we’re going to go and view all the dump sites today. Still waiting to hear back on some forensic info as well: a couple irons in the fire, nothing red-hot, though.” My cell phone beeped, signaling I had another incoming call. I glanced at the screen—Ball. “Well, looks like I don’t have to call Agent Ball. He’s calling now on the other line.”