Rise of The Iron Eagle (The Iron Eagle Series Book 1) (7 page)

They walked back out to the security guard who was now sitting up with no paramedic in sight. Jim asked if he wanted to go to the hospital. The guard shook his head no. “Tell us what you saw, heard, anything.” He went to stand but was still a little light-headed, so he sat back down. “There’s not much to tell. I finished my rounds and bent over because my pepper spray had fallen to the ground, and when I came to I was in Mr. Roskowski’s office.” “You said that just before you went out you saw a shadow behind you.” “Yea. I never saw anyone, and then I saw a shadow come up from behind me. A big-ass shadow, but I never got the chance to turn around.” “Be glad you didn’t,” said Jim. The kid was startled. “You think if I had seen him I would end up like Mr. Roskowski?” Steve interjected, “No…but there’s a good chance that you wouldn’t be here to talk to us about this at all. Did you hear anything? Breathing, footsteps, a voice.” He just shook his head. “Not a thing, sirs. I just came to, and I was lying on the floor next to the body.”

He sat for a few seconds, and then he said, “I’m still a little groggy, but now that you mention it, it might have been a dream, but I thought I heard the sound of choking or gagging when I was starting to come to.” They both went back to the office where the body was and each touched the corpse. “He’s still warm,” Steve said. “The son of a bitch killed him here.” Jim looked out the window that was behind Roskowski’s desk. It looked out over First Street which intersected with Coston. There was an empty lot with heavy ground cover between the school and the street at the corner of First and Coston. He looked at his watch; it was one fifteen a.m. He motioned to Steve to follow him. The two men left the room and walked out into the hall.

“He’s still here!” Steve looked at Jim’s face; it was grave. “The Eagle?” Jim nodded. “Where?” “The corner of First and Coston.” “Did you see something?” Jim shook his head, “I just have a hunch. “Okay… I’ll exit toward First and you exit toward Coston. We will work our way up and meet at the corner.” Steve pulled out his weapon. Jim motioned, “No…don’t pull the gun. If you go out armed, the choppers are going to pick you up. Take off your windbreaker; just walk out calmly and cross the street. I’ll do the same.” The two separated, and Steve hit First before Jim even got out of the building.

He started walking the street, staying in the shadows. He had a perfect view of the school as he walked and of the office where Roskowski’s body remained. He tried to look down the Coston side, but he couldn’t see Jim. He figured he was doing the same shadow play that he was doing. As he approached the corner of First and Coston, he noticed an overgrown clump of dark bushes and trees that were on the empty corner lot. He reached into his jacket and pulled his weapon. He moved deeper into the brush, out of the light of the school and street lamps, until there was almost no light. He heard a rustle behind him, and he jumped, jerking his weapon toward the bushes behind him. A rat scurried from one of the bushes and headed toward the street. His heart was pounding, and he lowered his weapon when suddenly he felt an arm reach out and grab him by the throat, disarming him with the other hand. He was in a choke hold; there was nothing he could do. The arm was massive and pressed his face into the grass and weeds of the lot.

“I intended for you to come looking for me.” The voice was disguised but not the way it sounded on the video. “Detective O’Brian can’t be far behind.” Steve felt the arms pulling him back away from the lights of the school, away from safety. He felt the ground change over from dirt and weeds to asphalt. His weapon was taken and the choke hold released. He was laying face down on the ground. He heard rustling in the bushes ahead of him, but it was too far off, and he dared not make a sound. “Special Agent Hoffman, I want to apologize for killing Mr. Mullin. I know you two were close, but he was a bad person who had done and had knowledge of others who had done even worse things.” Steve moved to turn from his stomach, and he was greeted by a towering figure dressed all in black. There were no discernible features, and he was not acting threatening in any manner. He was just standing there looking at him. Steve raised his hand to his throat and coughed. The dark figure raised a finger to his face as a gesture of silence. Steve asked, “Why did you kill my friend?” There was no movement. “It’s complicated.” Steve felt a little more bold and said, “He knew you, didn’t he?” His voice was hoarse from the choke hold, and he was keeping his voice low as not to end up getting killed. “Yes, but that’s not why I killed him. You will learn in time why he’s dead. I will tell you that he and Mr. Roskowski knew each other very well, and he knew all about Mr. Roskowski’s hobbies.”

Steve sat up, and with a whisper he said, “I don’t understand. You killed Barry, and you killed his granddaughter. Why did you do that? What had she done wrong?” The Eagle didn’t move but said, “Ms. Makin was getting too close to me. I assure you, however, that I didn’t intend her any harm initially. In the end, while her death protected my identity, what happened to Ms. Makin was a fortuitous yet tragic accident and not by my design. I didn’t know about the relationship between her and Barry until near the moment of her death.” “Is that supposed to somehow make me feel better? Is it supposed to justify your actions?” The dark figure dropped his head a little and responded apologetically, “No sir.” “Who the fuck are you? Why are you doing this?” Taking a step back from Steve, he said, “You know who I am, and you know why I’m doing what I’m doing. I just wanted to talk to you one on one and apologize to you for taking Mr. Mullin out of your life.”

Steve was now becoming irate; however, he could tell that The Eagle recognized his anger. “You can’t just go around dispensing justice the way you see fit.” The Eagle stood looking down at him on the ground. “I do what I can to save lives. I’m in their heads faster and faster these days. I can see them now, and I’m getting better at spotting and stopping them. Soon I will be able to stop them before they kill.” “You’re not a fucking clairvoyant. You can’t read minds. You’re killing people, and it’s my job to stop you.” The Eagle bent down close to Steve’s face and whispered, “If you keep tracking me, I’m going to have to kill you. I don’t want to, Agent Hoffman. I like you. I think you’re a good man. You don’t understand why I’m doing what I’m doing yet, but you will. I can be friend or foe; you will have to decide which. I will be in contact again.”

He turned toward the alley where he had drug Steve. There was rustling in the brush coming from the Coston corner of the street. The Eagle stood up tall and with a firm even voice said, “Detective O’Brian!” This time he was not quiet. He was intentionally louder. Jim stepped out from the bushes with his weapon trained on The Eagle. “It’s good to see you again.” Jim didn’t say a word. “Please lower your weapon.” There was a tense moment between all three. Jim complied. “Thank you…that’s really no way to greet the man who saved your life, detective. Please take Agent Hoffman back to the crime scene. I’ve promised to contact him again. Good night gentlemen.” And in a flash he disappeared into the darkness of the alley.

Jim calmly reached his hand out to Steve. Once on his feet, he started to run into the darkness. “STOP,” yelled Jim. “The only thing that you will achieve is to end up winded. He’s gone.” “You two have met before?” Jim didn’t say anything; he just holstered his weapon and started to walk back toward the school. “Jim…what the fuck? Do you know who this guy is ? Because he sure as hell knows who you are!” Jim kept walking. They made it to the corner of First and Coston and were now in the light of the school and all of the action. Jim stopped and looked at the school but not at Steve. “I didn’t know who he was… Barry and I were working on a joint task force. He had tracked a bail jumper, and Barry, being an ex U.S. Marshal, had the heads up on serving the warrant and taking the guy into custody for the reward. Do you remember that I got shot?” Steve nodded. “We were making an arrest in San Diego. It was a routine warrant; the suspect had no history of violence. It was pre-dawn, and we approached like we would any other nonviolent offender. Barry knocked on the door and called out to identify himself. I was standing to his right. The next thing I know there’s gunfire; it was a shotgun blast that caught me on the left side of my chest, inches from my heart. Barry was able to take cover, but I was hit hard and couldn’t get to cover. The perp was making a move down the front stairs toward me with the weapon trained on me, and Barry was pinned down on the opposite side of the house. There was no backup. I couldn’t reach for my weapon because my left arm had been hit. I was ready to get it when there was a shot over my shoulder, and the perp dropped. I saw the hulk of a man through the darkness behind me. He said, “You’re welcome” and disappeared. We would learn later in our investigation into the shooting and arrest that the perp was responsible for the death of three hookers. They found the evidence in his apartment after searching the premises. The only thing I can figure is that we got there at the same time as The Eagle. He was obviously going to kill the perp, and did, and in the process saved my life. This is the first time I’ve seen him since that morning. I had no idea that the man who saved me was The Eagle.”

Steve didn’t know what to say. The two walked back to the school and finished up with their people. Steve looked at Jim as they walked out of the school toward their cars. “Thank you.” Jim smiled. “You want to get a beer?” “It’s 5:30 in the morning.” He laughed. “You know the old saying: it’s five o’clock somewhere. Come on. I know just the place. You’re gonna love it.”

Chapter Seven

‘And with that Jim walked on down
Atlantic to his car, leaving Steve
standing on the corner looking at
the buildings and businesses, lost in
what his next move was going to be.’

T
he Los Angeles River winds its concrete way through the LA basin. They call it a river, but it’s really a flood control channel that starts in the San Fernando Valley and winds its way through the basin until it pours into the ocean in Long Beach. The Basin River Killer, as he has been nicknamed, has been stalking these riverbeds and washes for nearly forty years. He’s very particular about his prey. He likes the homeless and infirm, the kind of people who aren’t missed, who never get reported to the police until their bodies are found. Every now and then, over the past four decades there’s been a missing person report, but they are almost always reported as transient family members who either didn’t show up for a holiday or someone from one of the shelters noticed they were missing. The cops don’t give them much attention, which is why he likes to prey on them. He has a very specific body type but gender doesn’t matter. He likes them meaty, too thin and he can’t do the things he likes to do with and to them.

He lies on his stomach in the predawn light in tan camouflage peering through a pair of night vision goggles. He’s been stalking two men for the better part of a week, and they are finally in an area where he can grab them without being noticed. He stands up and walks back to his white windowless van and pulls out onto the basin floor and drives over to where the two men are camped. He stops in front of the makeshift camp and exits the vehicle. He’s got two Tasers on each hip, zip ties, and duct tape. He moves silently and surprises the sleeping men. In a matter of minutes, both are incapacitated and are in the back of the van headed for his home. He’s excited at the result of his hunt, and he whispers back to the two dazed men, “We’re going to have a lot of FUN!” His high pitched, breathy laugh is diabolical.

The drive home is relatively brief. He has a small cabin off Parson’s Trail in the hills overlooking the San Fernando Valley. The road is an access road, so the only traffic he ever gets is either from the electric company when they service the nearby power lines or fire crews if there’s a fire in the area or they are doing maneuvers. He’s been fortunate in his forty years living in the hills and has never had to evacuate. The van pulls up to a large solid steel gate, and he pushes a remote. The gate creeks slowly open, and he pulls the van in as it closes behind him. He backs up to a small storage container he has set next to the cabin. He opens the container doors and the van’s back doors and drags each of the men into the container. Inside, a crude lighting system has been erected. A patch of hay is in the corner of the unit – a makeshift bed for those unfortunate enough to occupy the container. Bolted to the walls are several different types of restraints, some steel and others leather; there are a litany of different power tools, saws, drills, belt sanders, grinders. The average person would think it was your run of the mill workshop, but it was anything but.

He pulled his victims over onto the hay and grabbed a long leather whip and began to shout instructions to the men to disrobe. When they resisted, he began striking them repeatedly until both men were undressed and cowering in the corner on the hay. “You two smell like pigs; you should be ashamed of yourselves.” Mounted to one of the steel walls was a fire hose, spooled on a hose rack with a high pressure nozzle on the end of it; it was hooked up to a fire hydrant in the middle of the unit. “You need to be cleaned,” he said as he was unspooling the hose. There was a hydrant key in place, and he turned it to open the valve and then began spraying the men. The two were still dazed and had no idea where they were or what was happening. They were screaming, “Why…why are you hurting me…why…I’m sorry. I won’t do it again. I’m sorry.” Their screams and pleas were the first shot of adrenaline he received from his prey. He loved the sound of begging and pleading in the opening hours of his time with the Swine he had captured. He turned off the hose and rolled it back up. The clothes were picked up and thrown into an old oil drum with the top cut off that he used for his victims’ laundry. The men were separated and each chained to the wall, one on each side facing each other. Their bare flesh burned against the hot steel container as he lashed them tight to the unit walls; they screamed against the restraints, fearing what might happen next.

Jim and Steve sat at a small table in the back of Santiago’s bar in East LA. The small restaurant and bar had been in the Santiago family for nearly five generations. In a part of a city riddled with gang violence, drug trafficking, and prostitution, Santiago’s was a bastion of safety for locals and strangers. Nothing violent from the area was allowed inside or within a thousand feet of its walls; this was a rule handed down from generation to generation and passed on to the neighborhood where it sat. No one ever crossed the line at Santiago’s! Javier Santiago was the fifth generation operator and at seventy-seven was grooming his thirty-five-year-old son, Valente, to take over the business. Santiago’s was the only public establishment where you could walk in on a Friday night and find gang members of every race and affiliation, warring or not, drinking, talking, partying, and having a good time. The bar was the stuff that urban legends are made of. The stories of how it came to be were as varied as the groups that inhabited the bar.

The most credible story, and the one that Javier verified, was that in 1906 after the great earthquake in San Francisco, a lot of the survivors fearing more destruction left the city and moved south settling in LA. The bar at that time was one of the few watering holes for both horses as well as people. One evening, a fight broke out between three men of varying ethnicities. Javier’s first generation relative took a shot gun from behind the bar, and, without saying a word, shot all three men dead then dragged their bodies into the street and stacked them on top of each other. When the sheriff came in to investigate, they asked him why he had done this. He is said to have responded, “This my tavern; it feed my family; it feed my customers; it will not feed the hate of men. If they come here to fight, they come here to die, not by fighting each other but by being killed by me. Men will get along here or die.” Word spread like wildfire throughout the city then the state and even across the country. For the next three years, people came from far and wide to test the story, and every one of them died. No conversation and no warning. If they came in armed and were aggressive (and not lawmen), they were shot, no exceptions. There had not been a reported act of violence in that bar since 1910.

The walls were littered with old and new photographs. Each wall was dedicated to a different theme. One wall had signed photos of celebrities, sports figures, and music icons of the past and present. The wall adjacent to it was what Javier called the ‘political’ wall. There were dozens of photographs of U.S. presidents, congress people, state and federal judges, even several Supreme Court judges, as well as the current chief justice and several from the past. To look on those walls was to look back in time. The ceiling of the bar was covered in newspaper front page headlines dating back before prohibition. It was Javier’s own fresco like that of Michelangelo in the Sistine Chapel at the Vatican. It was a living history museum and like Michelangelo, Javier lay on his back on a small scaffold built for the bar and placed the pages as his ancestors had been doing since they opened the bar in 1898. The back wall was reserved as a shrine. It held the names, badge numbers, and photographs (if they existed) of every police officer, sheriff’s deputy, California Highway Patrol officer, or fireman or medic killed in the line of duty dating back to 1898.

Jim and Steve sat with a beer in front of them, neither man saying a word. Javier brought over an ice bucket with six beers in it and placed it next to the table. “Romantic,” Javier said and laughed. He looked Steve up and down. He had never seen him before. He knew Jim very well; he’d been coming in for decades. Javier broke the silence, “Well, Jim, I’ve not seen your friend before, but he’s a badge?” Steve looked at him confused, “How do you know I’m a badge?” Javier pointed to his blue windbreaker with FBI written on the sleeves as well as the front and back. “If you not a badge, you in big trouble. Is a crime to…how you say…imperson?” Jim interrupted, “Impersonate.” “Si… do that of a federal officer. So you FBI; Jim why you not bring…” He didn’t know the man’s name. Jim spoke again, “I’m sorry, Javier. This is my very good friend Special Agent Steve Hoffman of the FBI. I’ve never brought him in because I just never had the time. Plus, Steve and I don’t run with the same crowd.” There was a laugh from the old Mexican, and he said, “Well, you now know our place. Everyone here family. You need anything, Javier help you. Si?” Steve nodded his head and thanked him as the old man hobbled back over behind the bar.

“Jesus, how long have you been coming here?” Jim took a drink of his beer and sat back in his chair. “Shit, let’s see…Barry and I started coming here after the academy and that was…oh hell, you’re making me think about just how damn old I am. A long time, okay?” Steve laughed and took a drink of his beer. “So, do you want to finish telling me about what happened between you and The Eagle?” Jim took another swig of his beer and called out to Javier for permission to smoke. “Is illegal to smoke in bar, Jim. You know that!” Jim brushed him off and placed the unlit cigarette in his mouth. “It gives me smoothing to chew on. Steve, I told you everything I know about The Eagle. He saved my life; shit, he saved Barry’s life that day.” Steve asked if Barry knew who The Eagle was. Jim finished off the beer and grabbed another from the ice bucket. “About two weeks after Jill was killed, Barry called me and asked me to come by his office. When I got there he was pretty well blitzed. I’d known Barry for a lot of years, so him being blitzed was nothing new. What was new was he was crying; now that’s behavior I had never seen in him. Barry was one of the meanest hardcore cops I had ever known.” Steve interrupted and said, “He was a racist, Jim.”

There was a laugh. “The fuck he was. Barry couldn’t be a racist. He hated everyone. He didn’t care about race, creed, religion, sexuality, disability, gender or age. He hated everyone equally. That was one of the things I liked about him; you always knew where you stood with him. He didn’t mince words. He told you what he thought of you and your ideas, and he hated the term ‘politically correct.’” Steve nodded. “Anyway, when I got to his office he was sitting behind his desk holding a photograph and crying. I asked him what was going on. He showed me the picture of Jill.” “You told me you didn’t know that he was related to her.” “Yea…sorry about that. I lied. We were close friends. He also thought a great deal of you. He loved you in his own way even though the two of you weren’t blood.” There was a moment of silence and a nod. “So, answer my question, Jim. Did he know who The Eagle was?”

“I’m getting to it. Shit. So I got him calmed down, and he started telling me about Jill, telling me that she had been investigating The Eagle. He said that the last time he spoke to her she told him that she was working to set up a sting to catch him.” “Well, we know that didn’t go well.” Jim nodded his head slowly, his eyes looking down at the floor. “Barry told me that he had intercepted a radio call on his scanner, and that there had been reports of suspicious activity at Sumner Mill Works. He said that the call referred to The Eagle and that he was going after him.” “You were his friend, Jim. Why didn’t you stop him?” Jim’s face got angry. He swigged his beer and said loudly to Steve, “Why didn’t you?” There was a pause. Steve knew Jim had him.

“I didn’t really think he would go through with it.” “Yet you went out and purchased everything he asked for?” Steve slammed the beer down on the table, and the few folks in the bar looked over at the two men and then went on about their business. “Fuck you!” Jim cracked the top on another beer and said, “Fuck me? No. Fuck you…You were the last one to see him alive; he never told me when he was going after him. He just told me about the scanner. You, on the other hand, knew about all of it and even aided him in his pursuit of The Eagle.” Steve leaned in toward Jim sitting across from him and asked, “So Barry’s blood’s on my hands?” Jim shook his head. “Barry knew exactly what he was doing. His blood is on his own hands. I just wanted to make sure that the two of us are on the same page.” Steve took a drink of his beer and said, “I offered to go with him that night.” Jim didn’t respond. “I also told him that he was going to die.” Still no response, the cigarette between his teeth only released when he parted his lips to take a swig of his beer. Jim broke his silence, “Well, if you had gone with him you’d be dead, too.” The look on Steve’s face was all the revelation that Jim needed to see. “Look,” said Jim, “The Eagle told you why he killed Jill and Barry.” Steve got an indignant look on his face, “He may have told me his twisted reasoning for killing them, but that in no way justifies his actions.” “The guy helps us out.” “Bullshit…he’s a sociopath. He may have been just killing serial killers, but he has broken the pattern and killed innocents. He killed a law enforcement officer; he killed our best friend.” Steve’s face was red in anger after making the statement. Jim saw it and tried to ease him down, “I know…the guy crossed the line, and now he has threatened a federal officer and me.” “We have to catch this guy before he kills someone else in our law enforcement family.”