Rise of The Iron Eagle (The Iron Eagle Series Book 1) (3 page)

“Barry… I need you to focus. Do you see this scalpel in my hand?” He nodded slowly. “I’m going to touch your skin. Tell me if it feels cold, okay?” The old man blurted out some obscenities, but he didn’t feel anything. There were a few minutes of silence between the two, then the sound of the motor started, and he could feel pressure in his chest. Blood and bone fragments were striking him in his face. He couldn’t scream; he was out of breath. The giant hands placed a steel cage over his chest, and he recognized the contraption from many an autopsy as a rib spreader… and it was being pressed into his chest. There were a few more moments of silence between the two men. The old man could feel pressure as if someone were pulling his chest apart, then The Eagle stood to the old man’s side and said, “Barry, I want to show you something.” He saw The Eagle’s hands reach down into his chest and pull out a beating heart. At first, he was so amazed at what he saw that he didn’t realize that the heart he was seeing was his own. He could actually see it beating faster and faster as his anxiety level rose. He felt no pain; he was in shock.

“Barry,” The Eagle said in a calm voice. He looked in the direction of The Eagle’s voice and at his face. He laid the heart on his chest in plain view and moved his hands toward his head. “Barry… I’m truly sorry for the pain I caused you. I hope that you will find it in your heart to forgive me. You have caused a great deal of pain yourself, and you have gone to great pains to make sure that no one knows the truth about you and the others. I’m going to leave public perception of you alone. The truth will come out at some point.” The Eagle lifted Mullin’s heart to show it to him again. He continued, “I wish we could continue our dialogue, but I have a commitment I must keep, so I’m going to kill you now.” He placed the heart on the old man’s chest and then took off the helmet and mask that he had been wearing. The old man’s eyes grew large. “It’s you, son-bitch; it’s you…you been fuckin’ with all of us all along! How could you?” The Eagle threw the head gear on the floor and said, “I would have thought you’d have some more creative last words, but then, look who I’m talking to.” And with a quick sweep, he clamped the old man’s aorta shut, and the blood supply to the brain was cut off. He watched as the old man’s pupils dilated, and in a matter of seconds without a word he was dead.

Chapter Two

‘Steve went back to his house to
shower and dress for the day which
he knew was going to be a long one.’

T
he buzz of his cell phone roused Steve from sleep. It was still dark outside, and he groped for the flashing phone. “Hoffman,” his voice groggy and sounding like he had been in a deep sleep. His wife, Molly, roused in bed next to him but only for a moment. There were a few seconds of listening while lying back on his pillow in the dark, then he sat straight up in bed and turned on the nightstand light. “Okay. I’ll be there as fast as I can.” He jumped out of bed and threw on the clothes he had been wearing when he met the old man the night before. Molly sat up in bed as he moved around the room but never spoke. Within minutes he was pulling into the same parking lot he had pulled out of just a few short hours earlier at Legion Park. There was yellow crime scene tape in the distance. There were several locals who frequented the park still hanging around. It was four fifteen a.m. when he parked. He jumped out and walked up to one of the officers on crowd control, flashed his FBI ID and asked, “Where’s Jim?” The cop pointed off in the direction of the crime scene tape which he could see was all around the old man’s parked car. He walked toward the car, but he knew what he was going to see.

He saw Jim standing at the back of the car talking to one of his officers. Jim O’Brian was true to his Irish heritage; he was a fourth generation cop. Steve always joked with him because at 5’8” and 240 pounds Jim was a heart attack waiting to happen. He carried the bulk of the weight in his belly. Steve had tried for years to get him on a diet and exercise plan, but he would have nothing to do with it. His red hair and freckles looked like liver spots in the glow of the street lights. His uniform was, as usual, unkempt, and he had a cigarette in his hand as Steve approached.

“We have a hell of a mess here, Steve.” Jim had been a detective in the homicide division of the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department for 20 years. He and the old man had been very close friends. They were in the marshal’s office together until Jim was shot arresting a fugitive and had to retire from the force. He had to convalesce for almost a year after which he joined the LA County Sheriff’s Department. He liked dealing with homicides; it kept him on the streets and in a controlled environment. He was also a master at puzzles, and he looked at each crime scene as a puzzle that he needed to put together to catch the killer. Steve took a look around; outside of the crime scene tape, there was little out of the ordinary.

“Who found him?” “Good question. Dispatch received a 911 call about a half hour ago that there was a body in the park. We sent a unit out to take a look around, and they found the old man’s car and him inside.” He looked around at the few people who were not police. “Did anyone see anything?” Jim grabbed an extra pair of blue latex gloves and handed them to Steve. “Not so far. We’ve talked to everyone who was here when the first patrol came in, and they all said the car was just sitting there. No one thought there was anything out of the ordinary. Hell, Steve, if we hadn’t gotten the 911 call we probably wouldn’t have known about it until morning. Even my deputies don’t bother with his car if they see it here ‘cuz he’s here so much.” Steve nodded and put on the gloves. The two men walked over to the car. The driver side door was open, and he could see the old man sitting in the front seat with something on his chest. He asked for a flashlight, and when he shined it on the old man, he just shook his head.

“What?” asked Jim. “I saw him yesterday afternoon and then again here in the park about nine p.m. last night. “What did he say when you saw him?” He looked at the old man’s body in the car. His chest was open, and his heart was resting between his open chest and the steering wheel. “Shit Jim… he was half drunk and in a mood. He said that he had picked up a tip on where to find The Eagle.” Jim shook his head. “I don’t know of any LAPD messages about The Iron Eagle. There haven’t been any killings attributed to him since that U.S. Marshal… What was her name?” Steve interrupted, “Jill Makin.” Jim laughed. “Shit. I can never remember her name. That’s the last killing that we have connected to that case. This case has none of the hallmarks of that killer. What made you bring it up?” Jim shuffled his feet in the dirt and sand next to the car. “You didn’t know Makin. She was his granddaughter.” “WHAT? We never had any connection between Barry and the victim.”

Steve walked back over to the car and took a closer look with the flashlight. Nothing that he saw had any of the earmarks of The Iron Eagle. He called out to Jim and asked, “What do you think the cause of death was?” He walked back to the car, looking in over Steve’s shoulder with the light shining on Barry’s body. “Well, I’m no medical examiner, but I would say the cause of death was having his heart ripped out of his chest. That seems to me like a surefire way to die. What do you think?” Steve wasn’t amused. “Okay, smart ass. Are you done with the jokes? Can we do a little police work, or do you need to work out your standup routine for the coroner?” Jim apologized, and the two men examined the body more closely.

Jim grabbed a midi recorder from his pocket and began to make notes of the crime scene. Just as he started speaking, the crime scene photographer showed up and started snapping pictures. Steve whirled around and snapped at him. “Get the fuck out of here. We’re trying to process a crime scene.” The photographer snapped back, “What the fuck do you think I’m trying to do? A Victoria’s Secret shoot?” Steve got his composure and said, “Give us a few minutes, okay?” The photographer backed off, and Steve turned back to the car. The two men studied the body. They knew they couldn’t touch it until the coroner was on scene, so they had to do the best they could with their eyes. Jim noted that there was some kind of steel clip on the old man’s chest. Steve looked in closer and knew right away what it was. “You’re right on the money, man, only it’s not just a clip; it’s a surgical clamp, and it’s on his aorta.” They looked at each other and then said what they were thinking simultaneously, “Pre or post-mortem?” Steve looked at the wound and the clip then pulled his head out of the car. “If I had to venture a guess, premortem. The old man was alive when he was cut open.”

Jim pulled out of the car as well and said, “The son of a bitch cut his heart out while he was alive? Jesus Christ… this is a new one for me. This is not the work of The Iron Eagle.” Steve walked to the rear of the car and sat down on a parking block. Jim followed and sat beside him. “Have you put a call in to your team yet?” Jim asked. Steve just sat for a few minutes not saying a word, trying to gather his thoughts. A few moments later he said, “No. I got your call and came right over. You were too cryptic in your message. When you told me your guys found the old man’s car here in the park I figured he passed out or something.” Jim pulled a pack of cigarettes from his pocket and taped the top until one fell into his palm. He lit it and took a couple of hits. “Well, it’s my jurisdiction for now unless you think it’s The Eagle, then you should send in the forensic team from your local field office.” Steve pulled his cell phone from his hip and hit speed dial.

“This is Special Agent Hoffman, ID 556554A. I need you to send my team to Legion Park; we have a homicide.” Jim looked down at the ground; the sun was starting to rise, and there was a faint glow on the asphalt at his feet. The coroner’s van pulled up, and he was about to go meet with them when he said, “Steve, I know you two were close. You’ve called your team, so you obviously think this is the work of The Eagle. Are you taking over my investigation?” He stood up as did Jim and said, “No… let’s work this one with mutual cooperation. If this was the work of The Eagle, this takes things into a whole new realm. I think it’s best that we stay together on this. Agreed?” He reached out his hand to Jim who shook it and walked over to the coroner’s van. He called out to all of his people as Steve’s FBI vans were pulling into the park.

“Okay people, here’s the deal. This is going to be a joint department investigation; we will be taking the lead, and all information on the investigation will be relayed to the FBI through Special Agent Hoffman and his team. We all know each other, so let’s be good boys and girls and see if we can find the person who killed our friend Barry. I know you all knew him as the old man, but he’s gone and we need to work with his name. As you all also know, Steve and Barry were very close, so let’s show a little sensitivity in the handling of this matter. Let’s go people. There’s a killer out there, and we’re going to find him.” Steve walked over to the first van and spoke to his team leader and explained the situation. Everyone went to work processing the scene. Steve went back to his house to shower and dress for the day which he knew was going to be a long one.

Chapter Three

‘He called out to the firemen who were
still on scene, and they were able to
use pry bars to open the makeshift
door. No one was prepared for what
they would find on the other side.’

E
very street has its secrets. Lives lived undercover, that neighbor who’s just a bit off. The one who doesn’t talk to people or, just the opposite, seems to be in everyone’s business and is a neighborhood leader or gossip. The person who grew up in the area. Everyone knows him or her, or so they think. Elk Drive is like any ordinary street in West Covina, California: streets lined with hundred-year-old oaks, manicured lawns, and friendly neighbors who look out for one another. Stew Roskowski is the kind of neighbor anyone would want to have. He has lived in the upper middle class neighborhood for three decades. He’s the principal at the local middle school and is a pillar of the community. He does fundraisers for his school, runs several after-school programs for his students, and often throws pool parties and other celebrations at his home for his students and their parents during the school year. One of the things he is best known for is his summer block party. The neighborhood blocks off the street on the first day of summer break, and there’s a big celebration for those students moving on to high school, as well as those students who’ve worked hard all year. Stew’s known for his dedication to his students and for running one of the finest schools in the San Gabriel Valley. He received the mayor’s citation as a community leader the previous winter, and he’s also well respected in academic circles for the way he turned the school around when he took it over five years earlier. Prior to that, it was an underperforming, dilapidated school with poor attendance and was fraught with gang and drug problems. However, when Stew took over, things changed in a hurry, and over the five years since he became principal, the school became a poster campus for others in the county and the country to emulate.

Stew always looked forward to this time of year, but this year was different. There was a heaviness in the air. One of their beloved eighth graders went missing two weeks before the end of the school year. There were posters all over the area, and the police and other local law enforcement had been scouring the area looking for any clues to her disappearance. Stew stood before the neighborhood on a small platform where a band had been set up and asked for quiet from the crowed. The stage was built in the middle of the street right in front of his house. He held a microphone close to his mouth and asked for a moment of silence for Cheryl Pruitt, one of his students, and prayed for her quick return to her family who was present in the crowd. He spoke of his time with her and what a wonderful student she was and asked that anyone with information on her disappearance please contact local law enforcement. Her parents were teary-eyed as he made a plea to the person or persons who took Cheryl, asking only for her safe return.

He said, “I know that this is a bittersweet party this year. The Pruitt family will be holding a candlelight vigil for Cheryl tonight at First Trinity Church on Palmer Avenue. Please come and show your support for Cheryl and her family. And, please, please, if you know anything about her disappearance, contact law enforcement right away. We want Cheryl back safely with her family and with her school family.”

He held up a poster and pointed to a table where people could pick up information and posters. He encouraged people to post them everywhere they could. He invited Cheryl’s father to come up and make a public plea for her safe return. The local media was there, and they walked amongst the party goers doing interviews and getting information on what Cheryl was wearing along with her description for their nightly news broadcast. Stew took back the microphone from her grief-stricken father and said, “Cheryl is five feet, two inches tall with green eyes and long blond hair. She was last seen wearing a pink blouse with blue jeans and white tennis shoes. She has an infectious laugh and a wonderful smile. So please help us bring her home safely.” The festivities finished up about five p.m., and Stew helped the rest of the neighborhood to clean up and put their street back in working order. He then bid farewell to his neighbors and went home to clean up before joining the vigil at nine that night.

He walked up the manicured entry to his colonial style home, waving at his neighbor who had just returned home from work. He unlocked the door and walked into the kitchen to put some things away that he had brought to the party. He was just setting down a dish in the sink when he heard a rustling noise coming from one of the back bedrooms. There, on a small double bed, lay Cheryl Pruitt, nude and tied at the wrists and ankles to the bed frame. She was gagged, and her face was streaked with tears of fear, pain, and sadness. “What the hell is going on in here, young lady?” he asked while walking over to the bed and checking her restraints to make sure they were intact. “What did you do?” He looked around the room to see if there was anything out of place. All of his sex toys were where they belonged; nothing seemed out of the ordinary. He picked up a small whip and walked over to the bed and struck the child on the torso. “You behave yourself. Did you enjoy my speech and hearing your daddy asking for you to come home safe?” The little girl had already been crying; the pain of the whip only exacerbated it. Now she was in hysterics. Stew just laughed and threw a blanket over her lower half and said, “You should be ashamed being undressed and uncovered like that. You deserve to be punished. I will deal with you in a few minutes.” He walked out of the room smiling and humming as he went back to the kitchen.

The house had been built back in the 1930’s and was one of the few homes in the area that had a basement. He walked through the kitchen to an old painted green door that led to the basement. He turned on the light and walked down into the musty cold room. In the corner of the basement were five cages used for keeping dogs, only instead of dogs three of the five cages had young girls in them. All were malnourished and nude, bruised, and cold based on the fetal position they were all in. “Hello, my pets,” he said with a smile and a friendly voice. They made no sound. He walked over to a set of cabinets and pulled a box off one of the shelves. It was full of photographs of him and young girls. There were hundreds. He looked at several of them and as he did he became aroused. He knew he didn’t have time to act out his arousal on Cheryl right then; he had to shower and dress for her vigil. He took three photographs with him when he went back upstairs. He spoke both to himself and the caged children, “I will feed you pets when I return home.” He smiled and walked over to the cages and poked one of the girls with his finger. She jumped, and he let out a laugh. “Then I will introduce you all to my newest pet. We are going to have so much fun.”

He went back upstairs to the master bath, disrobed, and walked into the shower. He had pinned the photographs of him raping a young girl to the back shower wall so they wouldn’t get wet. He stepped into the shower and slathered petroleum jelly on his penis and began to masturbate, all the while staring and smiling at the pictures. The semen shot out of his cock with ferocity as he looked at the photograph of Cheryl Pruitt screaming in agony impaled on his cock, his arms holding her on top of him facing away from him in the direction of the camera. “Oh, how I can’t wait for the opportunity to do the same to your asshole, little Cheryl, my little beauty,” he whispered to himself as the aching in his groin ceased. He then soaped up and finished his bathing.

He had just shut off the water and was starting to shave when he heard the sound of something heavy fall in one of the rooms. He walked toward the room where Cheryl was when he heard the sound again. It was coming from her room. He opened the hall closet and pulled out a piece of barbed wire. “If she thinks she’s going to cause a commotion before her vigil she has another thing coming,” he muttered as he opened the bedroom door. Sure enough she wasn’t on the bed. “Oh God, she’s escaped. I’ll be ruined.” The room was very small. There were only two places she could hide: under the bed or in the bedroom closet. The bedroom door was locked with a double-sided keyed deadbolt; there was no way she could exit that way, and the windows were barred. He looked under the bed, but she wasn’t there. “Cheryl,” he called out softly. “If you come out of the closet now, I will not punish you for misbehaving.” He held the barbed wire high over his head, ready to strike the child the second she came out of the closet. The door knob turned, and the closet door opened a crack. He moved closer until his face was almost against the door. His flabby, fat, nude frame was ready to press against the door in the hopes of pinning her, so he could beat her soundly with the wire, but there was no further movement.

He was getting angry and knew he had to get to the vigil or people might think something was up. He didn’t have the patience, and he said as he grabbed the door knob, “You brought this on yourself.” He flung the door open and moved with a sweep of the wire downward. The wire didn’t hit anything inside but imbedded itself into his thigh causing him to scream. He fell back onto the floor, trying to pull the barbed wire out of his flesh, when suddenly a tall, powerful figure dressed all in black stepped out of the closet and grabbed him by the throat. He picked Stew up with one hand, all two hundred and fifty pounds of him, and threw him across the bedroom, his body hitting the wall and knocking him unconscious above the bed where Cheryl had been restrained.

“911. What is your emergency?” There was no sound on the other end of the line. The dispatcher asked again, but there was still no reply. She kept the line open and could see from her reverse directory the address of the caller. The address on ElkDrive was flashing on her screen, and she kept trying to speak to whoever was on the other end of the line. She suddenly heard deep breathing as if someone was asleep but no other noise. The dispatcher looked at her call log and saw that unit 57 was the closest patrol in the neighborhood. “Unit 57. This is Dispatch. We have a 911 in your area. Over.” “This is 57. Send us the address, and we’ll run. What’s the situation? Over.” “57, I have a caller on the line, nonresponsive to dialogue, not sure if they’re down or what, but there is someone on the line. Over.” “Roger that, Dispatch. We have the address and are en route. Over.”

She held the line as she waited for a response from the dispatched unit. She heard knocking on the door of the house and the calls of the officers through the open phone line. “This is the police. Open up.” “Dispatch, it looks like a faked 911 here. There’s an alarm company sticker in the front window and a sign in the yard. Looks like a crank call. Over.” The dispatcher responded, “Roger. I don’t think so, 57. I can hear heavy breathing on the other end of the line. Over.” “Unit 57 here. The door is locked. You want to call the alarm company and see if the homeowners are in town? This could be someone ‘SWATTING’ the homeowner. Over.” At that moment, she could hear the voice of the officer’s partner coming toward him saying that he had been around the whole house, and there was a broken lower window going into what looked like a basement. “Dispatch, it looks like we have forced entry. Send backup. Over.” “Roger 57. Backup is en route. Over.” “Roger that. We’re going to force entry. Over.” The dispatcher could hear the sound of glass breaking and the thud of the officer’s bodies against the front door of the home. It seemed to the dispatcher like an hour of silence when there was a call back. “Dispatch. We need an ambulance and fire to this location. Over.” The dispatcher sent out the distress call. She held the line a few more moments waiting to be cleared to hang up. “Dispatch. Backup is on scene, and we can hear the ambulance. We are going to need two more ambulances stat. Over.” “Roger 57. Units are en route. What’s the situation? Over.” There was a lot of commotion in the background before the officer radioed back. “Well, Dispatch, we have found four young girls. One of them appears to be the missing Pruitt girl. We can’t confirm that yet. Over.” “Copy that, 57. I’m patching you over to command. Good work. Over.” “Good work to you, Dispatch. Can you get me the name of the owner of this property?” “Roger 57. The owner is Mr. Stewart Roskowski. Over.” “Roger that. It looks like we broke up a kidnapping. Send in a detective unit. Over.” “Roger that, 57. Is the homeowner on the premises? Over.” “That’s a negative, Dispatch. Over.” “Roger. Patching you through. Over.”