The Highway Axeman – Chapter One

NOT EDITED

Chapter One

Sunday: June 14, 2020

7:30 AM; LOS ANGELES, SLICE OF LIFE DINER

The Slice of Life Diner had always been one of the only places that felt like home to Bo Austen. His adoptive parents had taken him there many times to celebrate achievements with key lime pie and ridiculously overpriced ice cream. Over the last year or so, the diner had expanded into making those sickeningly sweet and sugary coffees that were so popular. Even Bo’s sweet tooth couldn’t quite handle the way the sugar stirred in his stomach. But the brewed coffee smelled strong and hung in the air with some of the more aromatic flavor options, and that was good enough for Bo. He didn’t really do much eating these days, so hanging out in the diner with a mostly untouched cup of coffee was usually enough to settle most of whatever appetite he had.

His laptop open on the little table in front of him, he scrolled through the houses for sale in Los Angeles. Hopping between hotels while he waited for his own home to sell was getting old. Of course, if it wasn’t for the tall, dark-haired bastard tailing him, he wouldn’t need to hop between hotels – not that it seemed to stop said bastard from finding him. He’d already seen his car in the parking lot shortly after he’d picked a table at the diner. His tail almost never stepped out of the vehicle, and Bo never saw him follow him to places, but he was always there at his destination, watching.

Bo had grown to assume he was one of Kathy Baker’s people, sent to report back to her on how miserable and depressed he was in life, likely one of her only forms of entertainment and joy in her little prison cell. The stalker hadn’t yet attacked or tried to kill him, so even if he was sent by Kathy, Bo admittedly had to chalk that up to a success, given how many times Kathy had threatened to send ‘her people’ after him to kill him for his role in locking her and Dallas Silver away.

“Bo Austen?”

Bo’s hand stilled over his laptop’s track pad as he lifted his blue-eyed gaze to the man’s face. Not his stalker. That was either very good or very bad. “Can… I ask who wants to know?”

The man, dressed in a faded t-shirt for a band Bo didn’t recognize, didn’t offer an answer. Still standing beside the table, he dropped a manila folder onto Bo’s keyboard. A piece of paper slid out from the side, fluttering to the floor. Bo glanced back up at the man to confirm he had absolutely no intention of picking it up before leaning down himself to grab it.

A headless, bloated corpse greeted him. Bo winced as he sat up straight and tucked the picture back into the folder. Admittedly, a warning would have been nice.

“Her name’s Rosa. She was my friend, and now she’s dead. She laid in a ditch on the highway for almost two weeks before they found her, another month on a cold slab before they identified her. A month in some cold, sterile morgue drawer, all by herself. Didn’t even have a name to her to give her some sort of peace in that time.”

Bo swallowed, lifting the folder from his laptop to hand it back to the man. He wouldn’t take it. “I’m sorry for your loss, I really am, but I don’t do any of… this any more.”

“But you used to, before you tucked tail and ran away. You used to identify these victims, get them back to their friends and families, and find the fuckers who cut off their heads.”

Bo’s lips parted, but he struggled to force any words out. His second attempt was only slightly more successful, “I’m not that guy any more.”

The man dropped both hands to the table and leaned down, practically nose-to-nose with Bo. “With you gone, you know who cares about dead, beheaded prostitutes? Not a single fucking person, Austen. Not the cops, not the chief, not the coroner, not even the reporters. No one.”

Bo set the folder down on the table and leaned back to distance himself from the man. “I know how you feel, and I know it’s horrible and it feels like it’s going to eat you alive and like it’s never going to stop. But I’m just not… capable any longer.”

“I’d take an incapable guy who gives a shit about these women and their justice over the most capable guy in the world who couldn’t give a fuck because she ‘sold’ her body. Because she’s a whore who got what she deserved.” His voice broke on ‘whore’, and he scrubbed an angry hand across his face to keep the tears at bay.

Bo looked back down at the closed folder. The woman hidden beneath the cover deserved someone to give a shit, even if it was just Bo. His eyes flicked back up to the man’s face. “What’s your name?”

“Lyle.”

“Lyle,” Bo repeated. He reached past his laptop for the folder and lifted the corner of the cover just enough to see the photo again. The stack of papers beneath it was thin, but he’d opened case files before that were even thinner. “Where’d you get the picture?”

“One of my Johns works at the station. Doesn’t give a shit about Rosa, but he does give a shit about sex.” Bo opened his mouth to respond, but Lyle interrupted him, “She’s not the only one. Three of my friends have gone missing in the last six months. Rosa was found and eventually identified, but the other two…” He licked his lips, finally sitting down across from Bo. “I haven’t heard from them. I haven’t seen them. They aren’t in their usual motels. They aren’t working their usual spots. No one else has heard anything about or from them. Cops won’t take a missing persons report. But I-I know they have at least one other Jane Doe at the station. I need to know if it’s one of them, and if it is, I need to know if every last one of us is in danger.”

“I know you said he doesn’t care, but… have you asked your John for photos of the other Jane Doe?”

“He said he’d get me info on one of them, and he made me choose. Rosa’s file was slightly thicker, so I… I chose hers. I thought having something to go on might entice you a bit more than, well… nothing.”

Bo couldn’t help but think how the police chief would feel about one of his cops handing out case files to sex workers. He had no intention of finding out. “I’ll take a look, see what I can see. But I-I can’t promise anything to come of this. I don’t work with the LAPD anymore. I don’t work with… anyone anymore.”

“Well, then I guess you’re working with me. Yeah?”

Bo’s brow furrowed. Working with Bo was begging for danger or a tragic outcome, and Bo getting attached to someone risked destabilizing whatever it was inside of him that kept forcing him to wake up and live each day. But if there were three women in that folder, if all three of them were dead and beheaded, then LA had a serial killer targeting sex workers. Much as he hated it, he knew Lyle was right. Most of the cops wouldn’t care. Most of the cops believed the sex workers simply had it coming. The women deserved names. They deserved care and respect.

They deserved justice, even if Bo was the one who had to give it to them.

Bo stuck out a hand, which Lyle grabbed and gave a firm shake. “Yeah. I… I guess I am.”

“Partners?”

Bo blew out a harsh breath, forcing himself to nod before he could change his mind again. “Partners.”

8:00 AM; LOS ANGELES, PACIFIC COAST HIGHWAY

Detective David Quinn stared down at a young woman’s naked corpse for the second time in just as many months. Two months, two corpses hacked at with an ax, two missing heads, and zero leads.

“Do we know who she is?” David asked.

Travis snorted, tilting his camera back against his shoulder. “The hell do you think I am? Bo?”

“Not gonna lie, man, that’d be nice.”

“She doesn’t have a head, and her fingerprints aren’t gonna tell us shit, just like the last chick’s prints didn’t tell us shit. If you want something further than that, go track down your alcoholic ‘genius’ and see what he and his little inventor doodads have to say about her.”

“Watch it.”

Travis offered a shrug before going back to photographing her neck, where their killer had chopped at her flesh, muscle, and bone until he successfully removed her head. “You know, the rest of us were solving cases long before Bo came around and made his little gizmos, we solved cases after he left us for Clinstone, and we’ve solved cases since he left them for booze. Something will cave and give us a break sooner or later, and we’ll be fine. I just need more than two seconds to find it.”

David chose to do both Travis and himself a favor and ignore the booze comment. “It’s been two months since the first gal turned up dead, and we still don’t know who the hell she is. Who she is, where she came from, where the hell her head is. We don’t have anything, Travis.”

“Which I’m sure is the dude’s goal when he’s hunting down women to kill. Probably prostitutes. Not exactly an uncommon type of victim, Quinn.”

David gestured to the woman with his coffee cup. “You think he chose this ‘prostitute’ while she was working, wearing jeans, tennis shoes, and a windbreaker on a warm June evening in Los Angeles?”

“I said ‘probably’. Jesus, Bo’s ‘no assumption’ thing might just be the one thing he did right. You assholes are such a pain in the fucking ass about every little goddamn thing we say.”

“His ‘no assumption’ thing is because you and Kathy harassed him for daring to think his opinion was worth anything if she was on a case. I’m not biting your head off for your assumptions. I’m simply questioning them.”

Travis smiled for a split second—annoyed or cocky, David wasn’t quite sure. “Right.”

David took a sip of his coffee, giving himself a moment to think rather than attack. As Bo had told him many times when they had worked together, not everyone liked him, and that was okay. Bo would hate knowing David had defended him to Travis for even a second. Bo had always said the defenses only made it worse. Travis’s obscene hatred of him seemed to confirm that. “What do you know? Actually, genuinely know.”

Travis snorted, shaking his head. “Well, David, I can tell you that she’d dead and her killer started chopping off her head before she was dead. That’s what I genuinely know. If you want a few assumptions that won’t offend you, the hack and slashing done here looks like it came straight from the first body. If this wasn’t done with the same weapon and by the same guy who killed the first woman, I’d be blown the fuck away.”

“And… you’re certain her head was removed while she was alive?”

“Not removed, but yeah. He started swinging his blade into her neck while she was alive. She probably bled out pretty damn fast, but her heart was still pumping blood for at least the first two or three swings.”

“Was that the case with the first victim?”

“If it was, I would’ve put it in my report, Quinn. You can read, can’t you?”

David closed his eyes, tilting his head back as he drew in a breath. When he opened his eyes again, the smug little smile on Travis’s face seemed to confirm that his only goal that morning was to piss him off. “Let me know if and when you’re able to confirm the weapon?”

“Yep.”

“Okay,” David whispered. He turned and started back toward his car, surprised to see Jamal Pitman seated in the passenger seat. The chief wasn’t exactly David’s biggest fan, a fair trade since David absolutely loathed the man. He ducked under the crime scene tape and pulled open the driver’s side door. “Morning, Chief.”

“Morning.” Jamal gestured to the driver’s seat. Clearing his throat, David slid into the car and closed the door behind him. Jamal watched him a little more intently than necessary as he fitted his coffee cup into the center cup holder. “Have you spoken to Bo lately?”

“Not since last month. He usually ignores my calls, and he’s not big on opening the door if I knock.”

“Mm.”

“Have… you?”

“I don’t try. I get the impression it would make things worse.”

David scoffed.

“What?”

“Nothing. I’m just… glad you finally realized that. Hell of a late realization, but we all need to get there eventually.” It felt dangerous to blatantly state it, what with Jamal’s rumored murderous extra-curricular activities and the gun holstered on the police chief’s hip, but it seemed unlikely he’d kill him right in front of a crime scene with so many witnesses scattered about, phones out and recording to see who could garner the most views and clicks online.

“Yes,” Jamal said after a long silence. “I’m aware I heavily contributed to Bo’s state of mind. I did not open the wound, but I helped it fester. I’m aware of my responsibility there, David.”

David cleared his throat. “What do you need, Chief?”

“Do you know why he’s not staying at his house any longer?”

“He’s selling it.”

“Is he leaving California?”

“Not that I know of.”

“Is he moving back with his parents?”

David shifted in his seat, eyes scanning the crime scene he so desperately wanted to see his short blonde friend at instead of Travis’s insufferable face. “No. He believes that, uh, that he’s robbing someone else of the house, someone whose more alive than he is.”

“Jesus.” Jamal rubbed a hand over his short hair. “So he’s still actively planning to end his life, yes?”

“Yes and no, I, uh, I guess. He knows he doesn’t want to be alive, but he isn’t planning out how to make it happen. He’s just passively drinking himself to death.”

Jamal nodded. “I need you to show him this case, David.”

“Jesus fucking Christ, Jamal.”

“Not for me. Not for you. For him. Working a case no one else has made progress on? You really don’t think that’ll help him?”

“I… I don’t know,” David admitted. “Besides, I showed him the case file when the first woman was murdered. He said he wasn’t interested.” Bo’s actual phrasing had of course been a bit more self-deprecating. ‘I can’t help you, Dave. There is no part of me that is capable of helping you solve a case anymore. That part of me is… gone. Dead.’

“There’s a second victim now. Try again.”

“If I got him to say yes, and that’s a damn big ‘if’, you know how that would go over? The shit Travis would put him through when he got back to the station?”

“Don’t worry about Travis. If you get Bo to come back, Travis will not be a problem. You have my word.”

David chuckled, shaking his head. “No offense, Chief, but your word doesn’t mean shit to me. You told Bo that no one would ever mistreat him at West Department the way he’d been mistreated before his relocation. And look what you did to him. Look what they all did to him.”

“I know,” Jamal said, his voice soft. “I did not… handle Katherine’s departure well, and I will never be able to make up for what I did to him. But giving up on trying to make it right is allowing Bo to think he doesn’t belong here. Not just L.A., but the Earth itself. I won’t allow him to think that. I will not allow him to drink himself to death while thinking there isn’t a single place on this Earth that he deserves to live happily in. I won’t allow Bo to die thinking he’s a worthless piece of shit, and I know you don’t want him to die that way either.”

David drew in a long breath, releasing it as he offered a nod. “Tonight, after I have this woman’s details added to the file, I’ll show it to him and see what I can get from him. Maybe a second unidentified woman will entice him out of the dark fucking abyss he’s sitting in. I can’t promise that it will, but I’ll try.”

“That’s all I can ask. Let me know how it goes.”

“Sure thing, Chief. I’ll… see what I can do.”

---

Enjoying the story? Consider dropping a comment or a like down below!!

---