Charity Kills (A David Storm Mystery) (16 page)

The two men’s first stop had been the Center VIP club and she had seen the man with the detective flash some identification and the two of them precede as if they owned the place. She watched the detective stop and chat with the policemen working security at the door. He produced what looked like a picture from his pocket, obviously asking them if they knew the person in the picture. Each had shaken their heads “no” and the detective had replaced the picture back in the pocket of his sport coat.

It was then Peggy got her first really good view of the man the detective had come with. He was the weatherman on Channel 5! She knew he was the son of one of the retired presidents of the Show. His name was Russell, Russell Hildebrant, but why would the detective be with him?

Confused but undaunted, she continued to observe them, following every move without appearing as if she was watching. She had closely followed the two men with her eyes, watching them traverse the crowd, noticing how so many of people in the crowd spoke or shook hands with the weatherman as the pair made their way, meandering through the tables filled with ladies in garish dresses and men in boots that looked they hurt their feet.

It was then she saw the men separate. The weather man was chatting to Ellen Dresden, while the detective visited with Joe. She watched as the expression on Joe’s face went from his normal ruddy self-confident leer to a mask of complete and total terror. Whatever the detective had said, it obviously had scared Joe, and his intimidation increased when he looked at the picture Storm pulled from his jacket and held in front of Joe’s face. Joe’s face had turned the color of a dead fish.

Immediately after the confrontation with Joe, the weatherman and the detective left and she needed to follow them but before she could go, she saw Joe grabbing Ellen’s arm and amidst Ellen’s plea to stay they fled in a flash as Joe dragged Ellen out of the club. In Ellen’s hasty retreat she mouthed a hasty hello to Peggy, but was in too big a rush to say more.

Peggy knew Joe’s reputation and she had seen it first hand on more than one occasion. She knew her friend Elaine had met Joe; Elaine had told her so. She had warned Elaine about Joe, but Elaine had just laughed and blew it off, saying she knew how to handle jerks like Joe. What was the face-off between Joe and the detective? Does the detective think Joe could be a killer? Could Joe be a killer? Peggy asked herself. It didn’t seem likely but at this point, who knew?

Joe was a better lead than Peggy had at the moment, but it just didn’t seem possible. From what she knew, Joe was a puss. He was addicted to Ellen’s money and he liked his lifestyle, but he was a wimp. Peggy had seen more than one girl slap his face and watched him retreat like a scalded dog. No, Joe couldn’t be the killer. But the question remained.

After the abrupt departure of Joe and Ellen, Peggy caught sight of the two she was following as they made their way through the crowd headed in the direction of the stadium and the Gold Badge entrance. Peggy was not supposed to go the stadium, but being invisible did have its perks. She followed the weatherman and detective upstairs to the ninth level on the next elevator, going up immediately after the one that had taken the pair of men up.

When she got to the entrance of the VIP club. she stopped dead in her tracks, her senses suddenly alert. Standing just inside the entry she saw police Sergeant Hebert and two cops loitering in front of the door. She also saw Hebert excuse himself from the door officers and go talk to the detective, but it was the tall blonde female policewoman who got her attention.

Peggy was originally from Victoria, Texas, a medium-sized Texas town about ninety miles from Houston, and she knew she had seen this woman before. She had seen pictures of this female cop in the Victoria newspapers about nine years ago. The blonde had been the roommate of a girl who had disappeared, and as far as Peggy knew, her disappearance had never been solved. No trace of the girl had ever been found. Although the sheriff’s office had reasoned she had met with foul play, no body meant no crime, and the girls remained as missing, never being declared dead yet. Peggy remembered her family had not given up hope that they would ever know where she was or what had happened to her.

Now she remembered. The blonde female cop’s name was Tess, Tess Stone. Around Victoria, it had been rumored that Tess and the missing girl had been living together in a lesbian relationship, but then again Peggy didn’t know if there was any truth to it—she had just heard the rumor.

Peggy remained in the shadows long enough to see the detective speaking to Hebert and later to the officers working the door. She waited until she saw him and the weatherman fix themselves plates of food from the buffet and reasoned they were done investigating for the night. Stealthily she slipped away so she could return to her office and access pay records from the Show. She had to see how long the blonde cop had been on the payroll.

* * * *

All the time Peggy had been following the weatherman and the detective, she hadn’t realized her invisibility had abandoned her. She had not been the only person that had seen the detective checking out possibly the last place Leslie had been seen, nor the only person who knew of his confrontation with Joe. The killer knew it was not a coincidence that a staff member was in a place she shouldn’t be.

It appeared Peggy was following the two tall men. Did she just happen to be in the same place as these men, or was she tailing them? What could this girl possibly think she knew, or did she suspect something, and who had she talked to? As methodical as the killer was, nothing could be left to chance; this girl would not be the destruction of a perfect plan. Something would have to be done about her and soon.

Method and Madness but No Motive

The Rodeo telegraph was in full swing and operating without delay. Policewoman Stone had been told of the banter between Storm and Joe Dresden; she had been told of the shock that had registered on Joe’s face and how Joe had jerked his wife’s arm, hurriedly leaving the club. She waited until Sergeant Hebert had finished with the detective and his friend and then updated him on the message she had just received from the officers working in the center.

* * * *

The next link in the chain was for Hebert to quickly follow up with Dakota Taylor and inform her. He didn’t know what Storm had, but he did know what was on video and why he would be interested in Joe. Independently Hebert and Storm had come to the same assumption, and that was that Joe was probably the last to see Leslie and he was a player, if not the killer, in this mystery. The conclusion had already been made that if a sacrificial lamb was needed, Joe would be the easiest to give up. It would come out that Joe had the morals of a tomcat; everyone knew that Joe’s reputation as a ladies’ man was not limited to the Show. Joe had a real problem keeping it in his pants and with Ellen’s money, he could fish in many of the more expensive creeks around town.

* * * *

On the ride home Russell had filled Storm in on some more of the Show’s little peccadilloes that were hidden from the public, like how money and influence made the difference in who rose in the power structure and who didn’t. How membership in this closed society was passed down from father to son and grandson. How the unpublished ban on cameras was the way for the leadership of the Show to make sure they and their friends could enjoy all the “perks” in a friendly, nonjudgmental environment. Influence, benefits, notoriety, and secrecy all went hand in hand for these birds of rare air. Over the years there had been rumors in the inner circle about various members, but among these powerful men such innuendos and even sometimes negative truths were hushed and forgotten as quickly as they were discovered.

But...with media scrutiny having become what it was over the past few years, secrets had become harder to keep. There had been occasions that couldn’t be covered up, like a director convicted of child molestation, a vice president arrested for growth and intent to sell marijuana, and an older member of the inner circle “outed” for being a homosexual. Married with grandchildren, that member had paid for young men to be flown around the country to spend weekends in extravagant hotels with him. His passing shortly after it all became public assured, like other transgressions, that all would be forgotten and never mentioned again. The Show distanced itself from such incidents as quickly as possible to avoid any fallout that might tarnish its reputation of squeaky clean family fun and philanthropy.

As a multimillion dollar cash cow for the city, the charity connected to the Show and Rodeo had always had the cooperation of the police and mayor’s office. Only one mayor had ever tried to take on the Show, wanting to change the image of Houston to a more metropolitan big city image, but she was promptly put in her place. In her case, it was “Cowboys 1, Mayor 0.” Since that time most mayors were more concerned with their wallets than the city’s image anyway, the mayors elected after her all understood it was beneficial to everyone involved to get along and leave things be.

* * * *

After an abbreviated night’s sleep, Storm woke up early, not really unusual, but this morning it was with a sense of vigor and vitality after the best night’s rest he had had in years, or at least since Angie’s murder. He still had had some disturbing dreams, but this time they were about Leslie Phillips and how to catch her killer. As he thought about all the girls, he was more and more convinced they had all been killed by the same person.

He dressed quickly and headed to Reisner Street. As he walked in, Sergeant Hernandez waved him to the coffee room and Storm followed. “The lieutenant is waiting for you and he has company,” said Hernandez.

“Who?”

“Some guy from the mayor’s office.”

“Know his name?”

“Nope just that he was sitting in the lieutenant’s office bright and early. How did it go last night?” Hernandez asked.

“Great. Scared the shit out of Joe Dresden,” Storm said, smiling a little.

Hernandez smiled back; he knew it doesn’t take much for a cop to scare a citizen, especially if the citizen doesn’t know what the cop knows.

“Can you get me pictures of all the girls?” Storm asked.

“Sure, but I have to be careful. They will be copies,” he answered, his eyes asking if that was OK.

“No problem. Cover your tracks, but do it.”

“Storm, we are going to catch this
pendejo
,” promised Hernandez.

“Damn straight, Pancho.” What a great addition to the little team of investigators Hernandez was. He could see Hernandez was feeling like a cop again and that was good.

“Have you gotten any information on serial murders or any hints on what we should be looking for?”

“Yeah, some, but I will have more when we meet again.” Hernandez’s smile showed he was pleased with what he had found.

Storm saw the lieutenant waving him to his office, so he grabbed a cup of coffee and went in. Sure enough, there sat Vern Nagel, the guy he had met at the Show with Dakota Taylor on Sunday.

“Detective, I believe you have met Mr. Nagel from the mayor’s office,” said Lieutenant Flynn.

“Yes, sir, we met the other day.”

“Well, he is here to get caught up on where we stand with the murder at the stadium.”

“Lieutenant, I am working on it. We don’t have a suspect or a motive yet, but I have viewed the security videos from that night and the victim was on it entering the VIP Club with a man. We don’t have an ID on him yet,” Storm lied.

“Is this man you don’t know the killer?” piped in Nagel.

“I don’t know yet. The video shows him going into the stadium with her, but he left with other men around midnight without the girl.”

“The video doesn’t show her leaving?” the lieutenant inquired.

“No, the only place she appears is going in, not leaving.”

“Then she didn’t leave with him?” the lieutenant responded.

“Seemingly not.” As the questions became more repetitive and inane, Storm was becoming more irritated and his replies more terse. They were talking about things that shouldn’t be discussed in front of an outsider. He had to be careful; he knew everything he said was going directly back to the Show.

“Do you know the victim’s name?” asked Nagel.

“Yes, Sergeant Hebert’s people found her purse and her driver’s license in another dumpster on the other side of the stadium. Her name was Leslie Phillips,” said Storm.

“What else did you find, Detective? We can be forthcoming with the mayor’s office, David.” It sounded strange, the lieutenant using his Christian name.

“Yes, Lieutenant, well, her clothes were found in the dumpster on the other side of the stadium from where her body was found, but no bloody crime scene could be found anywhere.” Storm replied. Something gnawed at Storm about that, and he felt a renewed urgency to get out of the waste of time that he had become inadvertently a part of and back to discovering where she had actually been killed.

“How was she killed?” asked the lieutenant.

“Throat cut completely through her wind pipe. She couldn’t have screamed if she’d tried. She bled out. This was not the work of an amateur.” Storm left out the other things they knew. He sure didn’t want to tell them he believed there had been seven murders and they were connected. That cat had to stay in the bag for the time being.

“We need to find the crime scene. With that much blood, it had to be a mess,” the lieutenant commented and then asked, “Who’s working on that?”

“Sergeant Hebert has men who work out at the Show full time, so I’m going to ask him to have his guys continue their search,” Storm said. “And there is always the possibility that the cleaning crew may find something.”

“Good idea. Get him on it,” the lieutenant replied.

Storm knew that nothing would come of asking Hebert and his men to do the search. Hebert resented him and all cops that worked downtown. But he would ask, indicating that the request had come from his boss and the mayor’s office, although he didn’t think that would change anything.

“What’s your next step, Detective?” Nagel again. What a nosy son of a bitch, Storm couldn’t help thinking.