The Killers Amongst Us: Chimera Dawn Chronicles (3 page)

Friday,
10:20 a.m. July 11th, 2008. LAPD headquarters.

LA
homicide detective Brett Shaw sat at his desk, and
typed out the final paragraph to his latest solved murder report. He read the
draft and shook his head. There were more spelling mistakes than usual. He knew
his mind wasn’t attuned to the report, not with his wife at home, suffering
violent headaches. The remorse at leaving her in bed earlier in the morning
twisted his mind inside out. Those sentiments were doing battle with
practicalities. He had to work. It was his duty. There was a need to bring home
the dough. Vacations had to be paid for. College fees had to be saved for his
daughter’s future.

A security job, with regular hours on minimum wage wouldn’t
do it all. Truth was; he was addicted to his work, and his wife’s illness was
an unwelcome distraction. He loved his job. It felt like every day started with
a junkie’s fix, giving him an intense buzz. His extension rang and he snatched
the handset.

“Shaw speaking.”

“Logan wants you in his office.”

Shaw sighed with relief. He had half-expected the call would
have been from his twelve-year-old daughter Amy, or his wife’s sister, telling
him his wife had taken a turn for the worse.

“On my way.”

Shaw made his way past the empty workstations. An hour
earlier it had been bedlam. He smiled, thankful for the silence, save for the
hum of the computer fans. He disliked working on team efforts, preferring to
run solo. He wondered what his boss had for him and quickened his stride along
the corridor to Logan’s office. He tapped on the door and entered.

“Got a new case for me?” Shaw asked, hoping for something to
take his mind off events at home.

“Sort of. Missing persons.”

Shaw’s shoulders sagged. Missing person cases to him were
like being given the role of the ass end of a donkey, and being led blind up an
alley. Most of those reported missing were usually runaways who didn’t want to
be found. Only one in ten ever turned out interesting.

“Who is it?”

Logan handed Shaw a file.

“It’s not a question of who it is. There are five of them in
our area, all from this morning.”

“Five?”

Shaw raised a brow. The odds had just swung in his favor of
the cases being interesting. He opened the file and flicked through the
uniformed officers’ reports, speed reading each one in turn.

“I say five. That’s all we have,” said Logan. “There are
nineteen reports in all come through to the Missing and Unidentified Persons
Unit, over at the Department of Justice. There are two similar clusters to ours
up north.”

“What... nineteen? You’re kidding, right? Are you saying
they’re all from this morning, and all eighteen, the same age as these here?”

“I wish I was joshing. But, yeah, that’s right. Probably
they’ve all met up somewhere without telling their parents. Pity we don‘t have
the twenty-four-hour rule here in California, what with the way our personnel
are stretched. A dispatch operator noticed the trend on our missing girls, reported
it to her supervisor, and she alerted MUPU. I’ve just come off of the phone
with them, but I’ve not had time to read the reports.”

Shaw flipped through the reports again. His level of
intrigue topped the scale.

“It seems none of these are answering their cell phones, but
no mention in the reports of social media interaction between the five girls.
I’ll give the parents a call and see if they can access their accounts.”

“You do that, and then head over to a briefing at MUPU at
one o’clock. If we don‘t do anything, we’ll probably get our pants sued if
something is untoward. Pity we can’t sue them if they’re all partying. I’m
betting they’ll be at Venice beach.”

“Probably. With a bit of luck, one of them will have phoned
home when I contact the parents,” said Shaw.

“Let’s hope so.”

Shaw hauled his six-foot-two frame out of the chair, and
made his way back to his desk. He picked up the handset and dialed his home
number. His daughter answered.

“Hi, Amy, how’s my little, birthday girl?”

“Fine, Daddy. But I’m not little now. I’m twelve today.”

“I know, sweetheart, but to me you’ll always be my little
girl. How’s Mom?”

“Sleeping, Aunt Mary’s here. Do you want her?” Her voice had
radiated down the line, raising a smile.

“Put her on, sweetheart.”

Mary took the call.

“Hi, Mary, thanks again for coming at short notice. I’ll try
to get away early for Amy’s party. Just don’t let Cath take any more headache
pills. I forgot to tell you, she took the maximum this morning.”

“Don’t worry, I’ll see to her, and get everything ready for
Amy’s party. Just make sure you get here in time, never mind ‘try.’”

“I will.”

Shaw closed the call. An image of his daughter crying at the
door, with Cath standing behind her and displaying a sour face, passed through
his mind. He’d missed Amy acting at her drama-school play the week before. Much
as he didn’t want her to end up as one of the rest of the LA star wannabes,
he’d not missed her moment of glory on purpose. It came with the job. Guilt
struck him for the many times he’d missed special family occasions. All he
hoped for was that he wouldn’t become embroiled in a race against time to catch
a criminal. The hurt and sometimes frustration on the faces of his wife and daughter
when he arrived home late was a high price to swallow for job satisfaction. He
shook his head. Shaw opened the file and studied each report in detail, then he
ran through each of the officer’s reports in turn.

The first girl, Rachael Hines, hadn’t returned home from her
vacation job at an all-night gas station. She’d phoned her mom as usual to say she
was leaving for home at six in the morning. Her mom was due to take her for a
hospital checkup. She usually arrived home at six twenty. One hour later she had
not returned. Her mother had scoured the route she always took, but there was
no sign of her, and her cell phone was dead.

The second girl, Caitlin Blake, was due to arrive at her job
flipping burgers, leaving home at five thirty in the morning. The moment her
mom knew she hadn’t arrived at work was when Caitlin’s boss phoned her at seven
thirty, and her daughter wasn’t answering her cell phone. Calls weren’t even
transferring to voicemail.

The third girl’s mom said the dog had been barking and
whining at six, waking the entire household. Her daughter, Lucy Turner, had
taken him for a walk. Two hours later when Mrs. Turner had come down for
breakfast, Lucy hadn’t returned. She had left her cell phone at home.

The fourth girl, Carol Buckshaw, she had taken her dad’s car
to buy fresh baked bread for breakfast as she did every day, but didn’t return
home. Officers found the car abandoned in a rest area with the driver’s door
open, her cell phone on the passenger seat, and the key still in the ignition.

The fifth girl, Gail Harvey, hadn’t returned from jogging.
After the family searched for her, they’d found her sneaker and earphones at an
exit of the park where she went jogging every day.

The last two raised alarm bells. The circumstances raised
serious concerns and needed to be investigated as a priority. All lived within
a mile radius, so it was a possibility they knew each other. Gail had private
tutoring, and lived in a mansion, so he doubted a school connection. The window
of them going missing stretched from five thirty, through to around eight o’
clock that morning.

Shaw had long since given up on coincidences in cases.
Unless the ones with phones switched them back on, tracking the signals would
be a lost cause. He doubted five different people would consider kidnapping the
girls all of the same age within two and a half hours of each other. But the
motivation as to why someone would possibly kidnap them on the same day
scrambled his deliberations. The scale was anywhere from their friends carrying
out a prank, to dealing with some sort of sick Charles Manson type cult.

Closing the file, he sighed. Pushing his back into his
chair, he raised his arms and linked his fingers behind his head, then stared
at the ceiling. He now knew that Logan’s theory that they were all partying
together was way off the mark.

Shaw unclasped his fingers and reached out to dial the
Harvey family. His extension rang. He pressed the speaker button.

“Shaw.”

“Highway patrol officer Blake on the line for you.”

“Thanks, Marge. Put him through.”

“Detective, Shaw, Officer Blake here. I understand that
you’re coordinating the reports for the missing girls?”

“That’s me. What have you got?”

He pushed his keyboard to one side and slid his notebook in
front of him.

“Lucy Turner. We’ve found the dog, but no sign of Lucy. The
Forensic guys are here now.”

“Forensics?”

Shaw reached for his Biro, removed the chewed top with his
teeth, and scribbled the girl’s name on his notepad.

“Yeah, the dog’s had its throat ripped out. There’s blood
everywhere. A passing cyclist phoned it in, but he didn’t witness what
happened. He thought it could be a human body at a glance when he called 911,
but he wasn’t sure, because it was some way off the road. It’s understandable
when you consider the size of the dog. I phoned the number off of the dog’s tag
and Mrs. Turner told us about reporting her daughter going missing.
Incidentally, the lead was still attached to the collar.”

Shaw spat out the pen top, and paused at the turn of events,
before continuing.

“Damn, okay. Ripped out! Do you mean cut?”

“No, ripped out from what I saw. But then what do I know?”

“Okay, just make sure forensics know I’m handling the case,
and to send a report to me. Give me the location and I’ll take a look.”

Shaw wrote down the details and closed the call. Logan came
up beside him.

“You’ve not contacted the parents yet, have you?”

“No.”’

“Good, don’t. I’ve just come off another call with missing
persons. Preliminary reports indicate kidnapping as a strong possibility in at
least eight of the cases. They’re going to have an FBI psychology counselor
contact each family in turn, just to show we’re on the case and to collect
photographs. They don’t want them to be distressed any more than they are,
until MUPU decide what court orders they might need for phone tracking reports
and DNA sample requests from family. I think it’s better for them to visit the
families with a list of everything they require, rather than having to keep
calling back.”

“I agree. They’ll probably need Forensics to go and lift
fingerprints from their bedrooms. Then there’s the social media to check and e-mails.
Incidentally,” Shaw said, “three of our girls are looking like possible
kidnappings, especially Lucy Turner. I’ve just come off of a call with a
highway patrol officer. They’ve found the dog she was walking with. Its throat’s
been ripped to shreds, but no sign of her. Not sure if that one will add to
their figures. I guess the FBI will take overall charge?”

“Jesus, poor dog.” Logan winced. “At least FBI ’ll lighten
the load on our resources.”

“I could do with driving over to look at where they found
the dog.”

Logan looked at his watch, and chewed on his lip. “Fill me
in on what you find after the meeting over at MUPU. Best you get going if
you’re to make it back for the meeting.”

Shaw picked up the file.

“Listen, I’m skipping lunch so I can get home for my
daughter’s birthday party at four o’clock. Cath’s been having headaches this
last week and today she has a migraine and...”

“No problem. I hope she gets better soon. You do what you
have to do.”

Shaw rose to his feet, grabbing his jacket from the back of
his chair. He breezed along the corridor, down the stairway and through the
back exit into the parking lot. Arriving at his car, he opened
the door.
Tossing the file on the passenger seat, he then hung his jacket over his seat
and climbed inside. He located his key in the ignition and fired up the engine.
Pausing, he opened the glove compartment and checked that Amy’s present was
there. The iPhone he’d bought her was as much for his benefit as hers. At least
they would always be able to contact her. But then he thought that’s what the
parents of the missing girls would have believed. He shuddered, closed the
glove compartment, and drove out of the lot.

Picking up Santa Monica Boulevard, he drove on for a while
and turned off toward the location of where they’d found Lucy’s dog. A highway
patrol car was parked with the passenger side wheels mounted on the sidewalk.
An officer rested his backside on the hood. In front of the patrol car, the forensic
van was parked with the back doors open. He pulled over to the side of the road
and stopped. The officer slid off the hood and ambled over. Crime scene
investigators were loading something in the back of their van in a body bag.

“You can’t park here, sir.”

Shaw pulled his ID from his pocket.

“Detective Shaw.”

“Sorry, sir. The forensic guys have just finished and loaded
up the dog.”

Shaw opened the door, climbed out, leaving his door open,
and walked over to the van.

He called out to one of the forensic team. “Hey, John. Any
evidence of the girl’s presence at the scene?”

“Hi. The officer said you were handling the case. No, sorry.
Not unless the samples of blood we’ve taken come up with a match. The ground is
dry as a bone in the surrounding area, so there are no tracks. We’ve searched
the area, but there’s not even a gum wrapper worth bagging.”

“What killed the dog?”

“Could be another dog, or maybe a wild cat. If this was
Florida, I’d be thinking it could be an alligator. Whatever it was, it ripped
its throat to shreds.”

Shaw leaned into the van, and unzipped the body bag. He
sucked air through his teeth.