Stress Fracture: Book One in the Dub Walker Series Read online

  DEDICATION:

  For my parents, Victor and Elaine Lyle.

  Published 2010 by Medallion Press, Inc.

  The MEDALLION PRESS LOGO

  is a registered trademark of Medallion Press, Inc.

  If you purchased this book without a cover, you should be aware that this book is stolen property. It was reported as “unsold and destroyed” to the publisher, and neither the author nor the publisher has received any payment from this “stripped book.”

  Copyright © 2010 by D.P. Lyle

  Cover design by Michal Wlos

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without written permission of the publisher, except where permitted by law.

  Names, characters, places, and incidents are the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictionally. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  Typeset in Adobe Garamond Pro Printed in the United States of America Title font set in Cacavia01

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Lyle, D.P.

  Stress fracture/D.P. Lyle.

  p. cm.

  ISBN-13: 978-1-60542-13 4-6 (hardcover: alk. paper)

  ISBN-10: 1-60542-134-0 (hardcover: alk. paper)

  1. Laboratory technicians-Fiction. 2. Huntsville (Ala.)–Fiction. 3. Serial murderers–Fiction. I. Title.

  PS3612.Y43S77 2010

  813′.6–dc22

  2009041124

  10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

  First Edition

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS:

  A writer depends upon many people to research, to write, and to bring a story to print. This one is no different. I thank the following individuals for their time and for sharing their knowledge and support.

  Dr. Emily Ward, Roger Morrison, Chris Crow, Allen Perry, Robert Bass, Glen Brown, Yolanda Tapscott, and all the wonderful professionals at the Alabama Department of Forensic Sciences. Your help with understanding the workings of your office was invaluable.

  Protocol Specialist Gena Cox for the personal tour of NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center, and of course, the visit to Florida for the spectacular night shuttle launch. What a thrill.

  NASA’s Dr. David Hathaway, Solar Physics Group director and developer of the VISAR system, for sharing his expertise in video enhancement techniques.

  NASA’s Dr. James W. Bilbro, assistant director for technology, for his time and valuable discussion of the work—past, present, and future—at the Marshall Space Flight Center.

  Shelly Haskins, city editor for the Huntsville Times, for his time and expertise.

  My wonderful agent, Kimberley Cameron of Kimberley Cameron & Associates. KC, you’re the best.

  My editor, Christy Phillippe, for her tireless work on this manuscript. My parents, Victor and Elaine Lyle, for their unwavering support.

  And of course, Nan, who makes all this possible and worthwhile.

  TABLE OF CONTENTS

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Chapter 41

  Chapter 42

  Chapter 43

  Chapter 44

  Chapter 45

  Chapter 46

  Chapter 47

  Chapter 48

  Chapter 49

  Chapter 50

  Chapter 51

  Chapter 52

  Chapter 53

  Chapter 54

  Chapter 55

  Chapter 56

  Chapter 57

  Chapter 58

  Chapter 59

  Chapter 60

  Chapter 61

  Chapter 62

  Chapter 63

  Chapter 64

  Chapter 65

  Chapter 66

  Chapter 67

  Chapter 68

  Chapter 69

  Chapter 70

  Chapter 71

  Chapter 72

  Chapter 73

  Chapter 74

  Chapter 75

  Chapter 76

  CHAPTER 1

  SUNDAY 11:36 P.M.

  HE RELISHED THE MOMENTS BEFORE THE KILL.

  When his heart thumped against his chest. When sweat slicked his skin and stung his eyes, his breathing coarse and raspy. When the muscles of his shoulders tightened and his hands tingled as if awakening. He closed his eyes and took several breaths, the night air warm and sweet. No hurry. He had time. Time to enjoy the anticipation.

  Squatting behind a thick, five-foot row of hydrangeas, Brian Kurtz leaned against the cool brick wall. Its roughness tugged at his T-shirt. Inside, his victim slept. The deep, peaceful sleep of someone who thought the future held many such restful nights. Not so, Mr. Michael Savage.

  Savage. He liked that name. It possessed power and passion and violence and rage. It conjured images of the old man at the Russel Erskine and the little fag over in Madison. Savage. They had learned the meaning of the word. Tonight the man beyond the wall would, too.

  “Very soon, Mr. Savage”

  He often talked aloud to himself, though at these times his voice sounded foreign. Tinny, flat, muffled. His pulse hammered in his ears, and the familiar rage-fueled knot expanded in his stomach. The anger wanted out. Not yet.

  God, he loved this feeling.

  He shifted his weight. The marble sized gravel beneath the shrubs crunched softly. His shoulder shook loose a few petals from one of the ball-shaped flowers. They floated to the ground, joining others that had already taken the fall.

  His plan looped through his mind for the hundreth time. Every step a crisp picture. Jump the fence into the backyard. Through the side garage door, the kitchen, and down the hall to where Savage sprawled on his bed, casy prey. The gun, the soft pop, the recoil. Then, Savage was his. The images kicked his pulse up a notch. Sweat collected on his face, and he swiped it away with the front of his shirt.

  It was time.

  CHAPTER 2

  MONDAY 12:37 A.M.

  BRIAN LAY CURLED ON THE FLOOR OF HIS APARTMENT. NAKED. THE unpadded, wafer-thin carpet did little to soften the slab of concrete beneath. The exhaustion that always followed these outings seemed particularly heavy tonight. Even a cold shower hadn’t revitalized him. He flipped over the sofa pillow he had wedged beneath his head, noticing that his damp hair had created a dark circle on its coarse fabric. He rolled to his back, stared at the ceiling, and began absently counting the tiny holes in the acoustic tiles. He lost count several times, his mind wandering to the night’s events.

  It ha
d been insanely intense. The best so far. The release of his rage had been almost complete. Savage received what he so deserved.

  The ringing of the phone startled him. Even though he knew the call would come, its sudden intrusion reignited his anger. He rolled to his side and stared at the phone on his desk across the room. His impulse was to yank its cord from the wall. Instead, he endured its screaming until it fell silent. Not tonight. Tonight he couldn’t talk to him.

  He settled on his back again and readjusted the pillow. He closed his eyes and was immediately crouching in the shrubbery at Savage’s place again. He could smell the night air and feel the roughness of the bricks against his back. The feeling of anticipation returned. So did the ringing. Damn it.

  Each ring pumped up the headache that had begun to gather behind his eyes. Fuck him. After a dozen rings, he crawled over and snatched up the phone. “Yes.”

  “What took you so long?”

  “I was in the shower.” He settled his back against his desk.

  “I see.” A moment of silence. He could hear the man’s breathing. Slow and steady. “You did well tonight.”

  “How would you know?”

  He laughed softly. “I saw.”

  “When?”

  “Before … during … after. I mean it. You did well.”

  “I live for your approval.”

  “No need to get sarcastic.”

  “I’m not. I’m tired.”

  Another soft laugh. “You get some rest. Soon we’ll begin again.”

  “When?”

  “Eager, I see. That’s good. I’ll call.” The line went dead.

  He hung up the phone and stood. The pulsing in his head increased. He massaged his temples, but the headache didn’t seem to notice. He moved into the kitchen, snagged a cold PBR from the fridge, popped the cap, and chugged down half of it.

  A knock at the door. Then a voice. “I know you’re home. I heard the shower.”

  It was Laranne Millonzi. She and her husband, Carl, lived in the next apartment. If she was knocking on his door after midnight, it meant that Carl was on a trip. He drove eighteen-wheelers all over the East Coast. Brian and Laranne had first hooked up three months earlier. During one of Carl’s extended trips. She came over for a beer, and they ended up rolling on the carpet. He wasn’t really in the mood for company, but Laranne sure knew how to relieve a headache.

  He didn’t bother to dress or even to pick up the towel from the floor. He opened the door.

  She flashed a look of surprise and then smiled. “That should take care of the small talk.”

  “No talk. Let’s just get to it.”

  She stepped inside and closed the door. She was barefoot and wore a silk kimono, short, midthigh. It slid from her shoulders to the floor. She wore nothing underneath.

  The sex was quick, hot, and angry. He needed to purge his demons, and she apparently did, too. The floor, the kitchen counter, the bed, they used them all. Then he dropped into a deep sleep. He awoke just after 3:00 a.m., and she was gone.

  CHAPTER 3

  MONDAY 8:07 A.M.

  “YOU AIN’T TO LIKE IT,” SHERIFF LUTHER RANDALL SAID.

  My gut knotted. “Let’s do it.”

  Life morphed into slow motion as I followed Luther down the hallway toward Mike’s bedroom. My legs felt heavy, and my shoe soles grabbed the carpet as if trying to hold me back. As if they knew what lay ahead.

  My name is Dub Walker. I’ve worked more than a hundred homicides in my career. As an MP for the US Marines, as a lab tech with the Alabama Department of Forensic Sciences here in Huntsville, as a trainee and consultant in Quantico with the FBI’s Behavioral Analysis Unit, and as a crime scene and evidence analyst on cases all over the country. I’m considered somewhat of an expert in this stuff. I’ve written a dozen books on these subjects, and if you do that people automatically think you know a bunch about it. Maybe I do; maybe I don’t. Could go either way. It was that perception-reality deal.

  I’ve seen angry spouses slice, dice, and shoot each other; drug deals gone sideways; murders for hire; gang massacres; Mafia hits; and a few killings that didn’t fit into any pigeonhole. I’ve seen victims of shootings, poisonings, beatings, fires, explosive devices, and one-way flights off tall buildings. I’ve seen firsthand the work of serial killers who tortured, mutilated, cannibalized, and even preserved victims.

  None of this prepared me for this one.

  Luther stepped aside and let me enter. Three lamps and the overhead light burned, yet my vision dimmed and constricted. Images raced toward me as if fired down a gun barrel. Acid surged in my stomach.

  This wasn’t Mike. This wasn’t human. Arms and legs, bruised and fractured, twisted into some grotesque Mummenschanz. Face nonexistent. I could make out a shattered jawbone. Several teeth lay on the blood-soaked carpet. A wrought-iron poker, which I recognized as being from the living room fireplace, protruded from his abdomen.

  “Told you it wasn’t pretty,” Luther said.

  I swallowed down a wave of nausea. Relax, you’ve seen worse. That was a lie.

  “What was the time of death?” I asked.

  “According to Sidau, body temps, lividity, rigor all suggest somewhere between ten and one.”

  “Who’s running the case?”

  “It’s a joint effort. Sheriff’s department and HPD. Our guy is Scotty Simpson. For HPD it’s your buddy Tortelli.” Luther looked down the hallway. “Here he comes.” He stepped aside and let T-Tommy enter.

  Tommy Tortelli. T-Tommy to his friends. I’d known him since the fourth grade. First day of school. First day we suited up for football together. Now, at thirty-nine, he was simply a bigger version of what he had been at nine. The word was thick: legs, arms, chest, neck. Even his hair was thick and black. He had played linebacker. Still walked like one. A straight-ahead, no-nonsense, jump-right-in-your-chili sort of walk. At six feet, we stood eye to eye, but his 230 had me by 50 pounds.

  “Ain’t this some shit?” T-Tommy said.

  “And then some.” I felt a throbbing behind my left eye. I looked back at Mike’s corpse. “I hate this.”

  T-Tommy clamped a hand on my shoulder and squeezed. “We’ll get this fucker.” He looked at Luther. “You tell him yet?”

  Luther shook his head.

  T-Tommy sighed. “We’ve got two other murders that look exactly like this.”

  I still couldn’t swallow the thick saliva that collected in my throat. Breathing wasn’t exactly easy either. I looked at T-Tommy. “You’re kidding?”

  “Wish I was.”

  “You’re thinking we have a serial?”

  T-Tommy stared at the floor for a brief moment and then toward the window that looked out over the backyard, eyes unfocused. “Just a theory yesterday. After this? I’d say we’ve moved beyond the theoretical.” His gaze rose to meet mine.

  #x201C;At least that’s the way I see it. ’Course, I want your opinion.”

  “HPD caught the first two murders,” Luther said. “We got this one. A few days ago T-Tommy came to see me. Wanted to know if we had any similar cases. We didn’t.” His jaw tightened. “Until now. When I saw this … I knew this had to be the same guy and called T-Tommy.” He massaged the back of his neck. “Scotty’s setting up a task force room downtown. We have more space than HPD. They’re taking all the evidence they have on the first two murders over there.”

  The headquarters for the Madison County Sheriff’s Department, including Luther’s office, occupied the second floor of the county courthouse in the middle of the downtown square. I suspected setting up the task force there had nothing to do with architecture. Simply meant Luther would keep a close eye on everything. HPD might help handle the cases, but Luther was in charge. He grabbed this case so it wouldn’t get screwed up. And because he had to. For Mike. I understood.

  Luther glanced down at Mike’s corpse, closed his eyes for a moment, and then said to T-Tommy, “Why don’t you bring Dub up to speed. I need to get back to the of
fice. When you wrap things up here, we’ll sit down and determine how best to handle the media. I’ll set up a press conference for later today.” He hesitated a beat and then turned and headed down the hallway.

  “Let’s do the tour,” T-Tommy said.

  CHAPTER 4

  MONDAY 8:32 A.M.

  THE TOUR BEGAN OUTSIDE. Two CRIMINALISTS CROUCHED NEAR the fat hydrangeas that hugged the front of the house. One aimed a camera at a visible shoe print and the foot ruler that had been laid next to it for scale.

  “How’s it going?” T-Tommy asked.

  “Finished with the photos.” Sidau Yamaguchi looked up and then stood. “Dub.” He pulled off his latex gloves, and we shook hands. “I had a feeling they’d call you in.” He waved a hand toward the house. “Sorry about Mike. Bad shit.”

  Sidau was the chief criminalist at the Alabama Department of Forensic Sciences. I had worked with him for six years and then as a consultant on a few cases since I left the department. I’d learned a ton of forensic tricks from Sidau.

  I squatted near the print. “What’ve you got here?”

  “Several prints here in the dirt. At the edge of this gravel. Looks like an athletic-type shoe. Should be able to grab some good casts.

  Get at least a size and manufacturer.”

  I remembered when Mike and I put down this gravel. I shoveled it from his rusty old wheelbarrow while he got on his hands and knees to spread it beneath the shrubs. Helped hold in water, according to Mike.

  I glanced toward the street. “Probably where he waited. Checking to make sure no one saw him. Where’d he enter the house?”

  “This way,” T-Tommy said. He led Sidau and me around the side of the house and through the gate in the hedge-covered wooden fence that wrapped the backyard. “He jumped the gate here. It was locked. Lock hadn’t been tampered with. We opened it for access. We found a few white cotton fibers on the gate and on the poker inside.” He looked at me. “We found similar fibers at the other two scenes.”