Book One: Part One: Evil X 3 - Chapter Four
St. Peter’s Sunday Morning Service
May 17th – 10:45 a.m.
“In the name of The Father, The Son, The Holy Spirit, and the Holy Catholic Church; may each and every one of you, go with God. In His Holy Name, we pray, amen.”
The organist started in with her almost scary version of standard fare that would make you believe the Phantom of The Opera was in the house.
Perhaps this time he was.
The choir kicked in a half-beat after the organist, and Bishop Ekerson walked the center aisle, dressed in virginal white, heading for the twin doors to bid everyone who walked back into the light of day, a wonderful Sunday.
All twelve plainclothes police officers hadn’t seen anything to be considered out of the ordinary during the service. There had been no indication from Bishop Ekerson while he was behind the pulpit to even hint at the possibility the killer was somewhere within the congregation.
Both Baker and Ed had positioned themselves near Ekerson in hopes he might be able to recognize him as he walked at the front doors. A killer that was hell-bent on a mission of destruction and mayhem.
They watched as the procession of people flowed effortlessly out the doors into a crisp clear blue sky. Such a beautiful day.
Baker cringed.
With family in tow, came Mayor Rydell Fredrick Abrams; sauntering or wobbling, take your pick. Such a pompous ass, Baker believed. Plus he needs to lose weight. Jenny Craig would have her work cut out for her.
Alongside him was his wife, a somewhat overrated do-gooder. They stopped just long enough to introduce their son and daughter-in-law, who were going back to Seattle, Monday morning.
Baker wanted to visit with him and Deputy D.A. Mosher at their respective homes later, but Ed suggested it would be better just to have them come down to the Precinct.
As Ed said to her once, “Why risk opening a can of worms at home they wouldn’t be able to repair? If all they are guilty of was kinky sex; if they knew what we now know, they would probably stop that altogether. Why risk a marriage and a career?”
After the Mayor, came Josephine Gulatta. A short heavyset woman, cleans homes part-time, or in the General’s case: apartment. Gulatta, married twenty-nine years, three grown sons, and still married to the same “Grouch” as she called her husband, when the police first called on her to ask her a few questions.
To Baker, it appeared as if Josephine Gulatta would probably live to be ninety or die in the next ten years from a stroke. She wasn’t just heavyset, thought Baker. At 4’10” and 395, she was a baby beach wale.
Yeppers, she thought, good old Josephine is on her way to the glue factory one day down the road and she doesn’t even know it. Hell, she could fool everybody and live to be two-hundred. In this day and age, who’s to say?
“Father, I found this under the door to the Rectory with your name on it. I thought that before I locked away my music sheets, I would give this to you.”
His part-time secretary, Jayne Forest, shopper and all-around go-getter and Sunday morning organist; handed him a small envelope; the kind that would hold a greeting card. Jayne turned and went back to the organ to clean off the keys, seat, and polished the brass and chrome laced throughout the organ.
With no one else leaving the church, Baker and Ed went over and stood on each side of Bishop Ekerson.
“Open it up and see what it says.”
“What about fingerprints?”
“If there are any prints to be found other than yours or hers, we might find something, but I’d say that idea has been compromised. Try to handle the edges of the letter or note as carefully as you can, with this.” Ed handed him a pair of tweezers.
Baker looked at Ed.
“Hey, one never knows when they’ll come in handy.”
It was a single sheet of paper.
Printed in the same style as the notes left behind and it read:
We reap what we sow, but no one will know, how far I will go. Is it you, or him, or her, or will I simply vanish; flee. But (buts are great!), one truth I let out of the bag; another double-murder, but first the old hag! After them comes the other bitch.
Yes, you too skinny under-developed-excuse-for-a-woman-playing-cop. I have decided it will be time for you to go, nice and easy and very slow. Then your lover. After all you both work together.
Johnson County Airport – 3:27 p.m.
“Mom, please, let me stay! I’m not a little kid any longer!”
“I know, Stevie. It’s for that reason I’m sending you back to your father. Like I explained to you at home; until this killer is caught and put away, a threat on my life is also a threat against your own. I will not risk you being abducted from this maniac to get to me. You will be much safer back home with your father.”
Stevie had tears in his eyes.
“Mom, you know I love you, right?”
“Right.”
“You know I’ll do anything to help you, right?”
“Right.”
“You know I would die for you, mom; right?”
Silence.
Tears now ran from two sets of eyes as Baker clutched Stevie to her and whispered, “I know, but you have to live to make me a grandmother, at least a dozen times, right?”
Stevie pulled back, wiped the sniffles from his nose on his coat sleeve and nodded his head slowly, saying, “A dozen?”
“Okay, maybe a dozen is pushing it, but at least a couple times.”
Tears forgotten, they grinned at each other.
“Right.”
The agreement game they sometimes played ended there.
A few more hugs, and I love you’s, and seventeen minutes later, Stevie was in the air, Colorado bound.
Baker’s Townhouse – 10:23 p.m.
Until Ed left thirty minutes ago, both had racked their brains and ideas off each other as to where the killer would strike next, other than Baker herself.
The best thing they could come up with was seven couples; but neither one could swing the Captain in paying for extra surveillance.
Tonight, all she could hope for was a kill-free night. Four bodies in four days, and somewhere, another two, guaranteed dead, not counting herself.
She tossed and turned in the bed until the wee hours of the morning before exhaustion finally won her over.
Monday – May 18th
The Twenty-Second Precinct – 7:22 a.m.
As with every Monday through Friday, Eddie pulled up in the Hot Do-Nuts wagon, and brought in twelve dozen assorted doughnuts, along with six gallons of milk, one case of individual cereal containers, and six gallons of orange juice and left all of it on the day table in the break room.
Eddie started delivering about five months ago and is well liked by all the police. Eddie has a speech problem, and walks stooped over from an accident that occurred when he was a child, but he gets by, and always seems to have a positive attitude.
Just as he finished laying everything out, Baker walked into the break room.
“Hi, Eddie. Mmmm. I can smell them. Am I the first one here?”
“Yeth, Mithy Baker. I wath about to leave. I have other placeth to go.”
“Okay, Eddie. You have a good day.”
“You, too, Mithy Baker.”
Grabbing two doughnuts and a Dixie cup filled with orange juice, she headed up the stairs to the squad room, where she already saw a dozen people sitting around. It was already that time of the day.
As she made her way around everyone to get to the podium, she hurriedly finished off the first doughnut and set the second one on the shelf inside the podium with the orange juice.
Looking around the room once more, it looked to her as if the rest of the shift were finally here. So she began.
“Jackson, Rodgers, Quinn, Donaldson, and Cooper; study these files I’m handing you before you go to interviews you been assigned. Remember, what is in those files are sensitive information, and if any this leaks out to anyone, anywhere; you will be asked for your shield and weapon. No if’s, and’s or but’s.
“Are we clear on this?”
A couple replied with a yes, the other two nodded their heads.
“Good. As to the rest of you, nothing more to add other than what you already know about these murders. If we get an update, you will get the update as well. Meantime, go out there and stop the bad guys. Do the best you can do. Stay safe and keep our streets safe.
The meeting broke up.
One of the detectives his head in the squad room. “Baker, you got a call on line two.”
“Thanks. Got it.”
She walked into her office, sat down behind her desk, and picked up the receiver and pressed the number two button.
“Baker here. How can I help you?”
“Roses are red, violets are dead, you’ll be tied to a chair, and very soon, fucking dead!”
The words were followed with cackling laughter.
Rodgers had just stepped in her office and was concerned over the look Baker had on her face.
“Baker? You all right? What? Bad news? You look like you just saw a ghost.”
“Listen to this.” Baker put the phone on speaker, and what was a prerecorded message, played over and over.
Snapping out of her mini-panic-attack, she fired off an order to Rodgers. “Get me a trace on where this call is coming from, now.”
Four minutes was all it took.
Squad units were immediately deployed to where the call came from. They now knew who the next victim would be, or already was.
The recorded call came from the Mayor’s home.
The Mayor’s Manor – 8:41 a.m.
“Baker, in here.”
As she walked through the four-column poster interior leading to a huge walk-down into an expansive living room, to her left, stood Ed.
Walking past him into another room, a remade den, refurnished into a sewing room, her face blanched somewhat.
“He is one sick fuck, pardon my French, Ed. This guy is sick as hell.”
Tied to a chair, her blouse ripped from her body, there sat Mrs. Arlyss Abrams, fifty-four, slightly chubby, eyes opened, and staring at nothing, forever.
No more do-gooder work for her.
Baker closed her eyes.
She saw the rivulets of blood coating her long reddish hair; seeing it had stiffened against her face. Pulling the locks away from her skin, she saw both ears were missing, sliced away “clean as you please”, she remembered hearing her mother say. Otherwise, the throat was slit, and the slicing X was there.
“Look at this part, Baker,” Ed said dryly.
Baker looked at another handwritten note.
I made him watch her die. So delightful he did cry. The fucking wimp!
“Crap! Where is he, Ed?”
“I can answer that,” said Carl as he stuck his head through the doorway. Just follow my skinny butt.”
Follow they did right up fourteen steps, and then to a second room on the right better known as the Master Bedroom. This one looked something akin to something out of ‘Gone with the Wind’. A plantation-style, four-poster bed and so on and so on.
Scarlett would have been proud.
Just not today.
Tied to the bed with his throat slashed and the X imbedded into his rolls upon rolls of fat, was the Mayor, a now former all-around favorite of the people.
A note, stained with blood was stapled to Abrams foot.
LIVE ON RAEH
“Ed, get in touch with the guys doing the interviews and tell them to bring everyone down to the station. You and I will question them ourselves.
“If they won’t go easy, we’ll get warrants based on what we know about their sleazy private lives.”
“Can do. Will do.
“What about you? How are you holding up since you got that call from here? I know it had to creep you out, but if you take my offer, you could sleep a little better.”
“I’m pissed, not creeped out. Should I be scared? Maybe. And what offer are you talking about?”
“I could sleep on your couch a few nights, or until we catch this twisted bastard.”
“Thanks for the offer, Ed, really. I don’t need the neighbors talking for one. Second; if this wacko does come after me, he’ll find himself on the ground looking up after I kick his ass, or on the ground looking up with a third hole for an eye in his head.”
St. Peter’s – 8:09 a.m.
The church was empty.
No movement.
None, save for one sauntering about.
He walked through the always unlocked doors, and as always, knelt to one knee, made the sign of the cross, then got up and briskly walked to the confessional booth.
He opened the door and closed it behind him, sitting on the built-in leather seat, and waited.
… and he waited.
He looked at his watch. 8:12.
He waited a little longer.
8:17.
He stood, opened the door, and retreated back to where he first started. Before he reached the huge double doors, he whirled sharply about.
“I know you are here! I can feel you watching me! You hide behind your robes, your religion, like a little girl hiding behind her mother’s skirts.
“I know you are here somewhere, so understand this, you gutless prick for a human being; one day, I will have something special planned for you. That’s a promise.
“And no but’s about that either.”
Then he was gone.