Deadly Games Read online

By the end of the art show, he’d sold four of his seven pieces and made five hundred-fifty dollars. He’d hoped, of course, to sell them all, but he was pleased nonetheless. He left the remaining three pieces at the museum for consideration. Just as he was preparing to leave, Randy Michaels stopped him.

  “Mr. Peirick, you’ve had a wonderful first show. I hope you aren’t disheartened that everything didn’t sell,” the man said.

  “I’m not. I’m rather pleased with how it turned out, and I hope you’ll find a permanent home for the three remaining pieces,” he replied.

  Mr. Michaels shifted his weight from one leg to the other. “I’m not the only one who decides, so I can’t guarantee anything. I’m rooting for you, though.”

  He shook the man’s hand. “I’m glad. I’ll be on my way then, and I look forward to hearing from you.” He needed to get out of there. He had hunting to do.

  HE WATCHED HER through the convenient store’s windows while she worked, and the pretty young woman had no idea. She was too busy bantering with the customers and the other employee to notice him.

  When the young man carried the trash out to the dumpster, he made his first move. He used enough chloroform to be lethal this time. Just to be sure, though, he also stabbed the lad ten times. Yes, it was overkill. No, he didn’t care.

  He waited until the customers were gone, and the pretty manager went looking for the young man. She followed the lad’s path out to the dumpster and shrieked in horror. She quickly turned to bolt inside, but he blocked the entrance. There was a jolt of electricity before she could scream again, and she crumpled to the ground in a quiet heap. He picked her up and carried her to the Suburban, tucking her away in the backseat after giving her a shot of scopolamine. He bound her hands with bondage cuffs and put tape over her mouth, so she’d be ready for the first wave when they reached Town and Country.

  He carried her into the house and down the steps to the basement where Margie looked up in surprise.

  “You’ve got company Minnie Mouse,” he told the frightened woman while propping the unconscious victim up against the wall. “You’ll welcome her, won’t you?” He kept the body propped while attaching the cuffs to the hook in the wall above her head. Then he used smelling salt on her to let the games begin.

  Her eyes fluttered open, and panic widened them. She tried to talk, tried to scream, but only muffled sounds came out. She looked all around, noticing Margie chained to the chair, and tears began to roll. She knew exactly who he was, and she knew her fate, or at least what the evening news was willing and able to report. Even her sister, the tough cop, couldn’t save her now. No, this was one time she’d lose.

  “Welcome,” he purred with a malicious grin. “I’m guessing you didn’t expect your evening to turn out this way. I’m sorry to ruin your plans, but that’s what they say about life, right? ‘Life happens when you’re busy making other plans.’ I’m sure you have an idea about the kind of fun you and I are going to have, but if not, let me show you.”

  He deftly wielded the knife and slashed Margie across her cheek. Then he turned to Denise and growled, “Your turn.”

  She shook her head violently, but he looked at her with pure contempt in his eyes. There was nothing but evil in his stare. There was a dark chasm of malevolence and death where a soul should be. Then there was a flash of steel as the knife came down on her.

  MY CELL PHONE woke me up from a sound sleep just after midnight. It was SLCPD calling, and my heart leaped into my throat. He’s killed again.

  “Hello?” I answered with a yawn.

  “Sasha, this is Liam. I need you to come in right away,” he said with urgency.

  “Has he killed again?” I asked even though I knew he had.

  “I’ll give you the details when you get here. Everybody has been called and is on the way. See you soon.” The line went silent, and I jumped out of bed, wondering why he didn’t answer my question.

  I quickly put on my clothes and gear and ran through the living room. I glanced at the sofa to tell Denise I was going in, but she wasn’t there. I figured she decided to go home after her shift, or it hadn’t ended yet.

  Twenty-seven minutes later, I stepped off the elevator and into the office. Everyone else was already there, and they all looked up at me with grave expressions.

  “What’s going on?” I inquired with a shaky voice. No matter what I could imagine, their faces told me what had happened was worse.

  “There’s been another murder,” Liam stated and gestured to the lit-up map. “A customer at the Shell station on North Tucker said no one was attending the register or working in the store, which was being looted, so he walked around the building to the dumpster area and found a young man stabbed to death. He immediately called nine-one-one and hid until the police arrived. They recovered the body, which Chris is examining now, and found a name tag on the ground next to the body. It doesn’t belong to the young man, Sasha. It belongs to—”

  “Denise Delossa,” I yelped before he could say it. Then I fell to my knees with tears flooding my eyes. “She had to work tonight. Oh God!”

  I felt someone’s hand on my back as I completely unhinged. I’m her big sister and a cop. I should have been able to protect her from this horrid nightmare.

  “It was him, wasn’t it? It was the Slasher, and he has her somewhere,” I sobbed. I knew I needed to call my parents, but I wanted to wait until we had all the facts. “What do we know for sure?”

  “Until Chris tells us otherwise, we just know that the man was repeatedly stabbed, and they smelled something sweet on him,” Liam answered.

  “Chloroform,” I theorized and ran to the stairs with them following me. I took them two at a time and burst through the doors to the morgue. “Chris, tell me what you know.”

  “He was dosed with a lethal amount of chloroform and already dead when the killer stabbed him ten times. The difference in the wounds is that a pocket knife was used. The Slasher has been using a butcher knife,” he explained. “I’d wonder if it was a different perp, but there’s no trace in this case either. We didn’t recover prints, fibers, DNA, or hairs on the body. I doubt two killers are going to be that cautious, especially in a violent crime like this,” he answered.

  “What about security tapes? Did you bring those in?” I asked impatiently.

  “Yes, everything we could recover was brought to the crime lab. I’m just waiting for someone to bring me the reports,” he replied.

  Just then, the door to the lab opened, and a tech I didn’t recognize handed him a file folder. I stared with a thudding heart while he read over the report.

  “There is footage of the murder and of a young woman being abducted. She was tased and then dragged away. I hate to say this, but you can’t see the killer’s face in any of the footage. He had a hat pulled down to hide his face,” he told us.

  Again, I felt a comforting hand on my back, but it didn’t provide any relief. I had anger, grief, fear, and a desire for revenge jumbling together to burn hot in my throat until it made me vomit in the sink.

  After I rinsed my mouth out, I turned to the others and told them, “Taking my sister wasn’t random. He knows she’s my flesh and flood. This is just another way to target me.”

  “But how would he know she’s your sister, and why is he targeting you? Why not one of us instead?” Eric wondered aloud.

  I shook my head and threw a hand up in the air. “The hell if I know. Maybe he has something to do with one of my old cases. I don’t think a gang banger would be this organized, but who the hell knows? Why didn’t he take the man instead? It has to be because of me.”

  “Well, we don’t take a look at any other cases until this one is solved,” Liam declared. />
  “I want to see the video footage,” I blurted and started toward the crime lab.

  “Are you sure you want to? We’ll take a look at it,” Eric said, following me.

  “I have to see it. It might be the last image of my sister alive,” I sobbed.

  I hated to say the words, but they were true. I hated that I would have to give my parents the notification of her death. First, though, I had to notify them of her abduction. I looked at my watch; it was 1:30. It could wait until a reasonable hour because there was nothing they could do. Someone in our family should be able to get sleep tonight. There was no reason we all had to suffer every minute of it. I’d call them before the morning news, though. They couldn’t hear it like that.

  “Please replay the surveillance footage for us,” I asked the lab tech, and she quickly obliged. Liam and Marisol had joined us, so we crowded in to view the recording. “Pure overkill,” I mumbled while we watched the dead young man get repeatedly stabbed with gloved hands. Then my sister came on the screen, and the room began to spin for me. “Oh God,” I cried out as I watched her body violently spasm from the electrical current. Then he just dragged her across the ground like a ragdoll until they couldn’t be seen anymore.

  “Chris was right. We can’t see his face with his hat pulled down like that,” Eric grunted in frustration.

  I stared at the dark, faceless image. “Where are we at with getting the rosters for James Sutton’s classes?”

  “To be honest, I don’t know. It fell by the wayside with everything going on, but we certainly need to find out,” Liam responded.

  “I think we need to compare the art classes to forensics classes and see if anyone is taking both. He knows how to clean up after himself. He knows how to hide in plain sight,” I told them.

  “We aren’t going to be able to get that information until Tuesday, so we need to find a different direction. We need to follow up on those two houses where no one was home,” Eric mentioned. “There was the one in Eureka and the one in Parkdale.”

  “I’ll call the police departments today,” I offered. “They can go check them out even though it’s a holiday weekend.”

  “If they won’t, we will,” Liam affirmed. “We’ll also call the FBI today. There’s nothing else we can do at this hour, though, so maybe you should try to get some rest.”

  I shook my head. “No way. The dog is fed and can let himself out. I’m not leaving. I can’t sleep knowing what he’s doing to her.”

  “Speaking of dogs, do you have something of hers the police dogs can sniff? We can take them around locally and to the houses we need to revisit,” Eric suggested.

  I rubbed the back of my neck while trying to think. “Yes, she spent the other night on my sofa. I’ll bring in the sheet and pillowcase.” I looked up at Liam. “We should also have them sniff the belongings of our missing persons. We know he has them locked away somewhere too.”

  “Agreed,” he replied.

  We went back upstairs to strategize for the day, and then I fell asleep at my desk until my alarm woke me at 5:00. I had to see my parents and tell them the horrific news.

  HE GOT UP early because he was too excited to sleep. He immediately went downstairs to visit his newest guest. Her head snapped up, and she shook it while trying to yell something through the thick tape.

  He wagged a finger at her. “Ah-ah-ah. You need to save your energy, my pet,” he chastised. “Trust me that you’ll need it for what’s in store for you.”

  He turned toward Margie and pulled the tape back to give her some of a meal replacement shake. He only let her have half, though, before putting the tape back in place.

  “You have to share with your companion,” he sniped. He turned to Denise Delossa and smiled. “If you start complaining or yelling, I’ll take the supplement away, and you’ll starve. Think about that,” he warned. He pulled just the corner of the tape back and stuck the straw in her quiet mouth. She finished off the drink, and he replaced the tape. “That’s my good girl. This is all I had to eat most of the time when I was a kid. The only time I had a decent meal was at school. Do you know how hard that is on a growing boy?” Both ladies shook their head to appease him. “Of course you don’t because you were busy leading your perfect lives,” he spat and withdrew his switchblade.

  He approached Margie first. Her eyes went wide with terror, and he lifted the camera strung around his neck to snap a photo. Then he plunged the knife into her left forearm and took another. After he withdrew the weapon from her bloody flesh, he turned it toward Denise.

  “Denise, Denise, my pretty pet. How long I’ve wanted to do this to your sister, but I guess you’ll have to suffice for now,” he threatened. The scared woman shut her eyes tight, though, depriving him of his photo opportunity. “No! Open your eyes. I need to see your pain,” he commanded, but she kept them closed. He reached out and touched her cheek, causing her to flinch. “Of course, I could just cut your eyelids off or prop them open with toothpicks, but I didn’t want to be that cruel. I’ll leave it up to you.”

  She opened her eyes, and he took her photo. She looked perfectly confused and utterly terrified, especially when he raised the knife again. He lifted her shirt just enough to expose her stomach, and he sliced the knife across it, causing copious amounts of blood to spill.

  “Oops! I think I cut too deep, and I can’t have you dying on me just yet,” he chuckled and reached for something on the table behind him. It was a needle and thread. “Sorry, but I don’t have any lidocaine. At least, I don’t have any that I care to share,” he sneered and began to stitch her up while humming to himself. Her wincing and tears only added to his pleasure. It almost made him forget the jackhammers pounding in his head. His cell phone inside his pocket rang. He held a finger up and told them, “Excuse me, ladies, but I really need to take this call.”

  “Hello?” he answered and then was silent to listen to the caller. “Oh my God! That’s just awful. I’m so sorry, and I’ll be right there. Bye.” He hung up and focused his attention on Denise. “Sorry, my pet, but I must go. Your big sister really needs me.”

  AFTER I LEFT my parents’ house, I went home to collapse for an hour before I went back to work. Instead of sleeping, though, I called Justin and explained what had happened. He promised to come right over. I had to be strong in front of my parents and my co-workers, but for now, I just needed to be vulnerable with someone. For now, I didn’t have to pretend to be a hero who would save the day in the end—I surely didn’t feel like one. I collapsed on my bed with the dog and bawled my eyes out. Sensing my pain, he whined and tried to lick my face to cheer me up.

  Justin knocked on the door thirty minutes after we hung up. I had to deactivate the alarm to let him in, and then I had to hold Duke back from knocking him over.

  “Whoa! Call off your bodyguard,” he teased and ruffled Duke’s fur.

  Justin sat on the sofa and patted the cushion for me to sit next to him. Before I could, though, Duke got in the way and sniffed him from head to toe, whimpering.

  “Have you been petting other dogs?” I joked. “He did the same thing to me when I got home from my parents’ house this mor—” My voice choked off in sobs.

  Justin stood up and led my quivering body to the couch, forcing me to sit down. He put his arm around me and squeezed.

  “I’m so sorry this is happening to you, babe. What can I do to help?” he asked.

  I looked up through my tear-filled eyes and growled, “You send him straight to the chair without delay when we catch him. That is if I even bother to bring him in alive.”

  He rubbed my arm and made a shushing sound. “You’re going to catch him before it’s too late. She’ll be fine.”

  “How can you
say that?” I squealed. “Even if he doesn’t hurt her, and of course he will, she’ll never be the same after suffering his abuse and torment.” I pounded my fist on his chest. “He’ll probably torture her more and kill her faster than the others because of me!” I jumped up and grabbed my purse. “I have to get out of here. I have to go back to the station.”

  “You need to rest,” he pleaded with me. “You’re no good to yourself or your team when you’re sleep deprived.”

  “I’ll sleep when I get my sister back alive and well. Get out!” I yelped, and Duke, sensing my tension, growled at him.

  He jumped up and stepped around the angry animal. “Okay, I’m leaving.” I followed right behind him, and so did Duke.

  I knelt down and hugged my gentle giant. “Go back inside, sweet boy. I’ll be back later.” I pointed to the door, and he dutifully trotted back in. I set the alarm and raced back to SLCPD.

  Everyone was still there, and it made me so touched, I started crying again. “I can’t believe you all stayed.”

  Eric patted my back. “When something affects one of us personally, it affects all of us personally. This team is here for you.”

  “I’ll second that,” Marisol agreed.

  Liam stepped out of Captain Roman’s office and gave us the news. “We’ll have everything we need to solve this case and get the other victims home. The FBI is on its way to assist.”

  “What about those two homes that need searching?” I wondered. “Has anyone been in touch with the Eureka PD?”

  “Yes,” Liam answered, “the one in town belongs to an elderly couple, and it’s a recreational room in the basement. The home in Parkdale is up for sale, so they dismissed it, thinking the home obviously couldn’t be shown to prospective buyers with bodies in the basement.”

  I countered, “Unless he’s using that as a ploy to lure new victims. I wouldn’t dismiss it just yet. We should check into the listing to see whom it’s through and when it was listed.”