The Highway Axeman – Chapter Six

NOT EDITED

Chapter Six

10:02 AM; LOS ANGELES, SARAH STONE’S APARTMENT, HALLWAY

It had admittedly been quite a while since Bo had picked a lock, but it was a bit like riding a bike. The mechanics were still locked away in his brain somewhere, and as soon as he set the pick and tension wrench into the keyhole, muscle memory took over with ease.

“And to think you said you didn’t do this anymore.”

Bo snorted as he rose back to his feet, opening the door with a gloved hand. “It was technically the forensics thing I said I didn’t do. I never mentioned anything about how much I do or don’t dabble in breaking and entering.”

Lyle chuckled. “Yeah, I guess that’s fair.” He followed Bo into the apartment, arms crossed over his chest. Bo had offered him a pair of gloves, but Lyle preferred to simply not touch anything at all, with or without fingerprints.

Bo reached past him to close the door and try the light switch. “Looks like the electric’s being paid too.”

“So… what? She ran off but keeps the place paid up in case she decides to come back and work the corner again?” Lyle asked.

“Maybe she just needed a break,” Bo mumbled, but he knew it was bullshit. The longer he stood in the entryway, the more apparent that became. It was old and stale, but he could still smell it. It was impossible to miss if you were at all familiar with it.

Death clung to the walls and fibers in any place it touched down, and it had certainly touched Sarah’s apartment.

“I think you should wait here,” Bo said.

Lyle held up both ungloved hands before stuffing them into his pockets. “No complaints here. They ever find her, I don’t need my fingerprints all over the damn place.”

Bo nodded, so incredibly thankful Lyle hadn’t requested an explanation, and walked further into the apartment. He checked every room and door until there was only one left. The door was closed, and from the hallway, blankets and towels had been rolled up and shoved against the bottom. Unfortunately, Bo could about imagine why, and he could pretty well imagine the smell that was going to assault him once the towels and blankets were no longer holding back the odor.

“In for a penny, in for a pound,” Bo muttered as he twisted the doorknob and pushed open the door.

Sarah Stone’s decayed, mostly headless corpse lay sprawled out in the middle of the floor. Bo could hardly open the door wide enough for him to fit through the gap, her body preventing it from going any further. The crime scene techs would have to take the damn thing off the hinges to get in there. Bo wished he could do it himself now, get a better look at her, at anything the killer may have left behind. His inability to completely behead her meant something. That he hadn’t been entirely prepared for how difficult it’d be, that he’d been in a rush, that he’d been interrupted, that he’d been nervous, that this had been the first.

Maybe he could get David to show him a couple of the photos afterward. With how close she was too the door, he couldn’t force his way into the bathroom enough to get any pictures that would be worth a damn for himself.

Unfortunately, with Sarah Stone finally located, it was time to turn this one over to the LAPD, no matter what that meant for his and Lyle’s little investigation.

10:37 AM; LOS ANGELES, SARAH STONE’S APARTMENT BUILDING, PARKING LOT

Jensen watched two uniformed cops walk into the apartment building. David Quinn arrived and followed shortly thereafter. Jensen let out a sigh. He absolutely should have trusted his gut and gone up with Bo and the prostitute to see what the hell they were up to, but it was a little too late for that now.

He grabbed his phone from the cup holder and dialed Jamal’s number. Setting it to speaker, he set the device on his dashboard and waited.

“Jensen.”

“Hey. I’m sitting outside the, uh, Slate Apartments here and some cops just showed up, Quinn included. Bo and the prostitute went in about half an hour ago, give or take. You… happen to know what they’re here for, in terms of a call?” Jensen asked.

“Yes, I was just about ready to send you a text. A body was found in one of the apartments, and dispatch says the caller ID’d himself as Bo Austen. Quinn headed out in case that was true and it really was our Bo who called it in.” A pause. “Your turn now. Do you happen to know what Bo and a prostitute are doing discovering corpses?”

“You said I can’t make contact, Jamal. I’m not close enough to hear what they’re chatting about.”

“Mm.”

“If you’ve changed your mind—”

“I haven’t. Do you have a picture of the hooker?”

“Yeah.”

“Send it over. I’ll be in touch.”

“Does it really matter who he’s sleeping with?”

Jamal snorted. “I’m far less concerned about him sleeping with a hooker than I am about what the hell kind of shenanigans he’s up to working with one. Send me the picture.”

Jensen barely got out a, “Yes, sir,” before Jamal hung up. He couldn’t help but roll his eyes as he grabbed his phone and dropped it back into the cup holder. The old man would do anything to avoid admitting he’d get more information if he were up close and personal.

Inside the building and in the hallway outside of the dead woman’s apartment, David stood in front of Bo, arms crossed over his chest. “So you’re saying this random woman is your friend?”

“Yep.”

“Right,” David said with a nod. “And you just… decided to drop in today?”

“You decide to drop in on me all the time.”

“Mm.”

“I haven’t heard from her in a while, so I decided to come by. I knocked and she didn’t answer. I called her phone again, but it went straight to voicemail, and that’s been pretty commonplace for quite a while now. She gave me a key to her place several months ago when she went out of town so I could put her mail on the table for her, so I let myself in, and I… Well, I’m sure you smelled it too. It was more faint before I opened the bathroom door, but it was still obviously there. When I found her, I came back out here and called it in.”

“You didn’t touch anything?” David asked.

Bo shook his head with a little chuckle. “Me? You think I would run around tainting crime scenes?”

David offered a shrug. “Hey, you’ve apparently got a whole array of friendships I don’t know about, so I thought I’d ask.”

“I didn’t touch anything,” Bo assured.

“And it was just you out here?” David asked.

“Just me.”

“So it’s totally a coincidence that the prostitute—”

“Sex worker.”

“Sure. Totally a coincidence that the sex worker hanging out in your hotel room last night happens to be smoking outside the building right now?” David asked.

“I said that I pay for an hour or two of his time some days, not that I tell him what parts of the city he’s allowed to smoke in.”

David sighed. “Bo, if you wanna work a case—”

“The absolute last thing I want to do is work a case.”

“Okay,” David whispered. “Look, Bo, I’m not an idiot, okay? I know this is… all some kind of bullshit. Don’t know exactly what variety of it, but bullshit nonetheless. Just promise me you’re being safe, yeah? That you’re not gonna be putting yourself in harm’s way?”

“I’m safe, I promise.”

“Good. And if you do find yourself in harm’s way—”

“Then I have your number. I know, David,” Bo said, his voice soft.

David nodded, and even Bo could see the slight relief that passed over the man’s face. “I’m gonna head inside, see if we’ve got any important information to share. You’re free to head out for now, but I’ll probably call you later, get more information on ‘your’ friend. Okay?”

“Okay.”

David lifted a hand, hesitating for a moment before laying it on Bo’s shoulder. “Be careful, Bo. Whatever the hell you’re doing… just be careful.”

Bo offered a smile. “I am. I promise.”

“Okay,” David whispered. He squeezed Bo’s shoulder and turned to walk into Sarah’s apartment. Bo waited, just in case David suddenly changed his mind and wanted to drag him to the station for a full-blown interrogation—which seemed pretty unlike anything David would ever do, but he used to think Dallas Silver wasn’t a serial killer, so he wasn’t really a big fan of trusting his own instincts anymore—and when David didn’t come back out to arrest him, he finally headed downstairs and out to the parking lot.

Lyle was leaned back against the corner of the building, one arm crossed over his chest and the other hanging down at his side, lit cigarette still held between his fingers. “Everything go okay?” Lyle asked once Bo was close enough.

“More or less. He knows I’m lying about something, but that’s fine. I’ll give him the important and necessary information. There’s no reason to drag you into it and risk you being detained.”

“Thanks.” Lyle chuckled, shaking his head as he put the cigarette back to his lips. “Kinda embarrassing that that’s, like, the nicest thing anyone’s ever done for me.”

“Embarrassing, no. Sad hat the people in your life might suck a little? Yes. But that’s not a fault of yours to be embarrassed about. It’s a fault of theirs.”

“I think I’ll just have to take your word on that one, Austen.”

Bo nodded. He was the same way when someone explained something wasn’t his fault. It was hard not to be that way. It was impossible not to understand why Lyle would struggle with it too.

“David will have more questions about Sarah later today. I’ll do my best to come up with the questions I imagine he’ll ask so you can give me some answers to have prepared. In the meantime, we’ll have to wait until this isn’t a crime scene any more before we can go back inside. Or… at least until they’ve collected all the evidence they’re going to.”

“And then what? They’re going to have all the pictures and reports of her, right? So what’re we gonna do there? Break into the station too?”

“No, though I’m sure Pitman would be thrilled to have me back inside the damn building, regardless of circumstance,” Bo said. “I can ask David for a favor or I can hope everything’s uploaded to the server in a timely manner. I didn’t recognize the tech, but it wasn’t Travis, so there’s always a chance they’ll actually follow procedure on that particular aspect of things.”

“And if David doesn’t want to honor a favor and the analyst doesn’t give a shit about the server?” Lyle asked.

“Then… we’ll cross those bridges when we come to them. In the meantime, let’s hope for success with at least one of the two options.”

“Sure, we’ll try for that.” Lyle took one last drag of his cigarette before flicking it to the ground and grinding it beneath his shoe. “You’ve noticed the dude following us around, yeah?”

“I have.”

“Who is he?”

Bo chuckled. “I assumed you’d run into him at least once during your adventure of stalking me.”

“Stalking is strong. I visited your house a couple times and then showed your picture to a bunch of different coffee shops around town until I found the one you liked. Then I stalked the coffee shop, not you.”

Bo rolled his eyes. “He claims to be… someone like you, really. The friend or family of a victim that’s been forgotten about and left cold and unsolved.”

“Claims,” Lyle echoed. “So you don’t believe him?”

“He didn’t hand me a file like you did. It’s a bit harder to confirm without one.”

“Want me to go interrogate him?”

Bo shook his head, unable to stop the little smile on his face. “That’s all right, thank you. We have more important things to worry about. If he wants to follow us between those important things, he can.” Bo cleared his throat. “You said you didn’t really know Sarah all that well, yes?”

“Yeah. Met her a couple times here and there, but we were on different tracks.”

“So… you have a different pimp than her?”

Lyle scratched the side of his head. “I’ve been renegading for about two years. I don’t know about Sarah, but I could ask and find out.”

“We need to rule out the possibility of her and the other girls having the same pimp,” Bo said. He raised a brow. “I thought being without one was, you know, against the rules of the street?”

“Rules of the street,” Lyle repeated with a little chuckle. “Yeah, it’ll definitely get your ass kicked or killed. But only if they find out.”

“I’m not sure I’m a big fan of the dangerous game you’re playing there.”

“We can worry about me and my game later. My pimp’s not around any more because he was roughing up my friends a little too much for my liking, and I made sure he was dealt with. Now this fucker is roughing up my friends too much for my liking, and I want him dealt with too. That work okay for you?”

“Yes,” Bo said after a moment. “Let’s… go rule out some pimps.”

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