Charity Kills (A David Storm Mystery)

A David Storm Mystery

By Jon Bridgewater

Charity Kills
A David Storm Mystery
By Jon Bridgewater
©2012 All Rights Reserved
Also available in print

Published by Boot Hill
Edited by Carolyn Goss,
GoodEditors.com
Art by Dehanna Bailee
Design & Layout by
EditWriteDesign.com

This book is a work of fiction. While some of its locations are real, the plot and characters are works of the author’s imagination. Any similarities to persons either living or dead are purely coincidental.

This story was written for my family. My mom and dad who, if they were still here, would be proud of me. Donnie, the little brother I miss dearly, and Jay and Roxanne, the brother and sister who remain supportive.

My thanks goes out to all the those friends who encouraged me to write—Tim, Harry, Michelle, Linda, Mike and Connie—thank you so much, and most importantly Anne Hill. A special thanks to Julie Richardson who without your help I would not have finished.

Leslie Phillips, RIP

Leslie Phillips felt her world collapsing as the life drained from her body. The struggle to remain conscious was surrendering to the grip and pressure of her attacker, an attacker with a vise-like grip that prevented her from twisting or turning to free herself. Only her mind remained alert, filled with questions of why and how this had come to happen to her? She was fully aware that her attacker was someone she had come to know and occupied a position that would evoke trust.

The proceeding day and evening had been no different than many of her days or evenings during this time of year. It had been a day of flitting from one private party to another on the last day of one of the largest barbecue competitions in the world. The parking lot of the massive Dome complex had been transformed from parking squares to avenues and promenades with names and number separating the placement of large tented structures housing the three hundred-plus teams who participated in the competition. Each team had brought high-tech barbecue pits so large they were carried on wheeled trailers. Elaborate faux fronts lined the avenues reflecting the name of each team and many of their corporate sponsors. Each tent was strictly for team participants and guests; wooden and wire fences constructed on the outer edges of their assigned spaces discouraged the casual passerby or the uninvited from entering.

Leslie had spent the day in the company of some of the rich and infamous members of the largest charity rodeo and livestock show in the world. She had parlayed her companions and the inescapable fact that she was an attractive young woman into assuring her entrance into even the most selective of venues. As the evening wore on she and the entourage she followed had retired to the VIP club, housed in the new stadium, to complete their day with a final couple of nightcaps. One of the men had been very attentive to her all night and, in her state of inebriation, she had let her morals slide and had sex with the man in the bathroom. It had been only a momentray tryst, but it was way outside her normal upright character. A liaison that left her both unsatisfied and regretful of her slip in morals and decency, but nevertheless it had been part of the role she played as a Badge Bunny.

“Badge Bunnies” or “Buckle Bunnies” were the local slang terms for girls who hung around outside the contestant facilities at rodeos seeking to meet the daring young men who rode the rough stock in the bull and horse events. The term had morphed into “Badge Bunnies” as a phrase to characterize those girls who hung around and offered themselves to generally older and married men who made up the hierarchy of this particular charity soiree.

Subsequent to her sexual adventure in the bathroom with her quick-firing admirer, she had returned to the club only to find that he and his accomplices in debauchery were fixin’ to leave for another of their frequented watering holes. The young ladies were not to be included in their company. Leslie had passed tipsy a long time ago, but she didn’t think she was too impaired to find her car and drive herself home. An offer of a ride home was made by a staff member of the club and politely turned down; after all, she reasoned, I’m a capable young woman and home is close.

At the moment of the attack she had tried to scream, but her pleading had been choked off and the only sound she could hear was the gurgling and the gush of air from her lungs. Her once shining eyes were growing dim, like someone was using a candle snuffer to extinguish the flickering flames, one by one. Her body weakened and she slumped against her attacker—a person she had once thought of as an ally.

Just as Leslie gasped to breathe her last breath, she realized her world was ending. Images of lost family flooded her mind and her face took on a mask of serenity
. I’ll soon be joining Mom and Dad....

It was in this moment the killer always found the intrigue of a victim’s death both surreal and satisfying. Still holding the victim tightly, the killer could feel the calm wash over her and the prevailing silence that accompanied the beautiful young woman’s last moments of life. These last seconds sent shivers of ecstasy through the killer’s mind and body like the afterglow of passionate lovemaking. This final surrender of the victim and the killer’s acknowledgement of total control of this lovely person’s death brought back to mind the memory of the first kill. That wondrous adventure and the reasons for starting down this path oh, so many years ago. Not a one of the killer’s victims had any idea why this was happening to them or how they had been selected. That was a secret only the killer could answer and didn’t share with the innocent; only the diary the killer kept would chronicle the passion.

Teetering on the brink of darkness, sinking into unconsciousness, Leslie was spared the knowledge of what the killer had in mind for the climax of the demented act. Her final seconds of life were filled with the smell of honeysuckle and the caress of soft lips on hers. Then she heard her nemesis whisper, “My sweet darling, you are going to join your sisters of sin where you belong.”

Death at the Dome

Storm rolled over, hoping it was a dream, but he soon knew it wasn’t. It was his mandatory office cell phone playing that god-awful “Stormy Weather” ring tone the guys at work had programmed into it just to annoy him. Done as a bad joke and play on his name, Storm was not technically savvy enough to change it, so over time he had come to accept and hate that maddening electronic version of a tune he had once liked. Sundays were the only days he could sleep in—although sleeping was rarely what he did; rather, tossing and turning was usually how he spent those extra morning hours. A few hours rest here and a few hours there were all he had been able to get since Angie, his wife, had been murdered. Her memory and the fact that no one had ever been caught for the crime gave him dreams, nightmares really, that had awakened him in the middle of almost every night since he had found her lying across the threshold of the door to the home they shared. He would find himself kicking off the blankets and sweating as if he was back in college persevering through the miserably hot two-a-days at Texas Tech fall football camp. He had tried to ignore the dreams and train his conscious mind to forget them, but the unconscious emotions they left behind were quite another matter.

He picked up the ever-present cell phone from the nightstand, quickly looking at the clock display illuminated on its face. It was 6:30 AM, way earlier than he normally arose on Sunday. As he had feared, the office was calling him. His office was not your normal Houstonian’s office. Storm was a Houston Police homicide detective and if they were calling him it meant someone had died the night before and he had to go look for a bad guy.

Though Houston had been like a small town when Storm became a cop, a town struggling with its growth and population expansion, now it had become a metropolis like any other large city, where someone always dies on a Saturday night. Death could find anyone but not all of the homicides are cases that require the expertise of a detective, especially one on his only day off. Most Saturday night fracases fell into the category of gang hits or they involved some incorrigibles in a bar fight that ended in a death. These murders were usually easily solved and seldom required a detective’s expertise.

Storm shook his head trying to clear the cobwebs and hoping to sound a little more awake when he called the number back.

“Dispatch.”

“This is Storm. What’s up?”

”Hey, Detective; Lt. Flynn passed this one to you. A body’s been found at the Dome.”

Storm knew immediately where he needed to go. Many Houstonians still called the area “the Dome” even though the old domed stadium itself had become dormant since being replaced with a new stadium and convention center complex that now almost blocked it’s view from the street.

“Got any details?”

“Nope. Only you’re to see Sergeant Hebert when you get there. The officers at the gate will tell you where to find him.”

Storm groaned. “Thanks.” He hung up the phone, rolled over, and put his feet on the old wood floor of his bedroom. The highly polished oak surface was cold in late February and it sent a shiver up his legs that ended in the base of his neck. Storm’s six-foot-three two-hundred-forty pound frame struggled to free itself of the bed. The years of physical abuse he had put his body through had left its toll. Years of sports in high school and college and years of pick-up games in the park had weakened the knees and caused his lower back to spasm as if held in a vice. Add the last few years of wallowing in self-imposed depression and alcohol, he knew he would never again be the same man he had once been. He hesitated to look in the mirror, because when he did, he saw the refection of his father looking back at him. The once black hair had grey flecks throughout the temples. The once bright brown eyes now appeared somewhat duller, and even his mustache had wild unruly whiskers of gray running through it.

As children, Storm and his little brother had always been told how much they looked like their mother. Her native American heritage and perpetually tanned skin and dark black hair repeated itself in the boys’ complexions and hair. What people often failed to notice was that their features were more angular and Anglo, more reflective of their father’s western European linage. As Angie had always said; he was a contrast in nature, a true American mutt.