Once Upon A Crime

CHAPTER ONE

SATURDAY, OCTOBER 31st

Crouching in the back, Penny Grimes heard the driver. “Ah, tasty. A coupla young ones right there.”

She felt the car slow as the window wound down.

“Whoa, ladies, those are killer costumes. I had to stop because you both could be Lady Gaga. You guys would be stars at the costume party I’m going to in River Oaks. Hop in. Beyonce’s gonna be there.”

Grimes rolled her eyes when she heard laughter.

“No, I’m serious,” he said. “Beyonce will be there.”

She heard the unmistakable voice of a young female. “Get lost, you creep, before we call nine-one-one.”

“Aw fuck you, you stuck-up bitches,” the driver yelled.

That did it. Grimes guided the needle into the side of his neck. In less than a minute, his head lolled to the right. Grabbing a handful of hair, she dragged him across the seat. Climbing over, she dropped in behind the wheel.

A half-hour later . . .

“What are you doing? Where am I?” he asked as she slipped a harness over his head, buckling it tight across his chest.

Grimes didn’t answer, watching sardonically as he squirmed and tugged against bindings holding him against the tree. She yawned.

“Okay.” She reached up and pulled on a dangling rope connected to a pulley overhead.

“What are you doing?” Wilbur Stewart asked as she clipped the rope to the harness. “Let me go,” he yelled, tugging on the restraints. “You can’t do this.”

“I can and I am,” she said, removing a length of rope fashioned into a noose from her jacket pocket.

“You can’t hang me.”

"Hush. It won’t be much longer." Grimes looped the rope over his forehead and secured it around the tree.

"Much longer for what?”

She didn’t answer.

“Stop it! You can’t do this,” he yelled, wiggling and struggling against the bindings.

“Yeah, yeah,” she said, picking up a machete. “Lady Gaga and Beyonce. How original.”

“No. Stop. Wait. I’ll pay you.”

“Nuh-uh.”

“Wait. Why are you doing this?”

“Why? You fondled a thirteen-year-old girl. The jury found you not guilty. Apparently, they thought she lied. You and I know differently, don’t we?”

“I was innocent.”

“Nope, not innocent. There wasn’t enough evidence to convict you. Okay. Time to get down to the nitty-gritty.”

Three minutes later, with the machete hanging by her side, Grimes admired her handiwork, holding his severed head up by the hair. It was like the rush she had gotten that time from bungee jumping.

Grimes approached the now skittish horse, murmuring gentling words as she felt for the muscle in its neck. The thirteen-hands-high horse snorted as she jabbed the syringe containing Rompun into the muscle. No more than two minutes passed before the terrified whites of its eyes were veiled by drooping lids, and it let out a comforted sigh.

It was a good thing Stewart was a lightweight even though she was used to lifting heavy items during her day job. Grimes raised him high enough using the pulley system and then mounted it onto the saddle. She secured the body using nylon ropes and a back brace so it stayed upright and in the saddle.

Taking a safety pin from her jeans pocket, Grimes pinned the poem she had written earlier to his pant leg. All done, she stepped back and admired her project. “Perfect.”

At eight minutes before nine, Grimes led the horse to a nearby city street. “This is what trick or treating at your age got you.”

She whacked the horse on its hindquarter and yelled, “Ya.”

It took off, trotting down the road leading into a cluster of homes. As soon as a driver or treat or treaters saw the pony with him mounted on it, there’d be a heavy infusion of cops, K-9 dogs, and whatever else.

Grimes whistled the tune of Takin Care of Business and even danced a few steps to the beat in her head as she returned to the clearing and the tree. She collected her tools and equipment then ran through a mental checklist to ensure she hadn’t inadvertently forgotten some detail. “Don’t want the cops coming knocking,” she said.

Before going home, the gloved woman placed the severed head on the driver’s seat of Stewart’s parked car, then wiped the interior with a Clorox cloth. “That ought to take care of everything.”

An hour later, at home, Grimes stripped down, tossed the clothes in the washing machine, then took a hot shower. Clean and dry, she fixed herself a scotch and water and propped her feet up on the coffee table. Using a printout she had made from the Fiction Writers website, the woman began planning her second project. The tale about the dentist was particularly intriguing since it reminded her of the one who got away. Penny Grimes would even the score with him another day.

CHAPTER TWO

Detective Madison Chase pushed the car door open and slid out. When she spotted the headless body mounted on a horse, her face paled and her mouth gaped open like a fish on a hook. “Oh shit!

Chase felt herself go cold, the horror mounted on a horse made all the gruesome evidence she’d seen afflicted by killers seem almost pedestrian. This was a new kind of madness. She shook off her revulsion and concentrated on finding facts; that’s how she would catch this monster.

Feeling a tap on her shoulder, Chase turned and looked into the head-shaking face of her partner, Terry Wise. “Hey.”

“Just got here.” He stopped dead in his tracks. “Jesus Christ, can you believe this?”

“Yep. Somebody just brought an old story to life.”

She and Wise trudged over to where members of the evidence team were snapping pictures of the body and the animal. How the hell did the killer get him up on that horse? she wondered. She ducked under the yellow crime scene tape. A young officer approached with a clipboard. She pulled her jacket back to show her badge.

“Name and badge number,” he said.

“Chase. Badge number 134.”

He recorded her name and badge number on the clipboard.

Wise did the same.

When they got closer to the horse, one of the uniformed officers griped, “This is somebody’s sick joke.”

“Sick, yeah. Joke, no,” Chase told the officer as she eyeballed the mutilated body. “See what you can find out from the uniforms.”

While Wise was gathering information from uniformed officers, Chase noticed a piece of paper pinned to the right leg of the corpse. She snapped on a pair of gloves and got ready to unpin it. “Has a picture been taken of this?”

One of the evidence collectors looked over as he finished snapping close-ups of the saddle. “Yep. It’s a poem. Kind of silly if you ask me.”

She disconnected the paper from the pant leg, then read the typed note.

Come, my friends, and hear my tale,

Of the headless horseman riding his trail,

Up and down the streets he roamed,

Hunting for children to make his own.

But on this night he met his fate

And rode to hell with an empty plate.

“If the vic is a perv, he won’t be molesting kids anymore,” Chase muttered as she filled out the tag on an evidence bag before securing the poem inside.

Another man dressed in street clothes walked up and pointed at the evidence bag. “What’s that?”

The man was her dark-skinned supervisor, Sergeant James Tolliver. “Whatcha got?”

“The last ride of Chester the molester?” Chase passed the bag to him. “Seems our killer thinks he’s the second coming of Washington Irving.”

“That… or Stephen King,” Tolliver said after reading it.

“I don’t think King writes poems, but if he did, I’d bet he would love this one.”

“One thing’s for damn sure. There’ll be a helluva lot of media interest in this one.”

“Figured as much.”

“Has anyone found the severed head?”

“Not that I know.” Chase watched as the ME’s team removed the victim off the saddle and laid it on a gurney. When the victim’s wallet was removed, Chase checked it for ID. Inside was a driver’s license and credit cards, a social security card, insurance papers, photos, and cash. “Robert James Stewart. Age forty-seven. Gives his address as 1671 Aspen Circle, Haltom City.”

“Interesting how he ended up over here since Haltom City’s up on the north side,” Tolliver mused.

“I doubt he was out trick or treating. An educated guess based on the poem would be that he was a pedophile on the hunt. I’ll run his name through the sex offender database when I get back to my car.”

Flipping open a small notepad, Chase jotted down information from the license. Then she secured the wallet and license in two separate evidence bags and filled out the form for each. Determining who owned the horse was next up. Once that was done, a whole range of possible leads would open up.

She went up to the uniformed sergeant. “Do we know who Trigger belongs to?”

“Nope. Animal Control has a method to ID it. They ought to be here pretty soon.”

“Fine. Have you guys come up with any witnesses?”

The sergeant pointed at a dark-skinned man standing by a patrol car. “Bernard Appleton.” He checked his notepad and pointed to the west. “Said he saw the horse walking up from that direction. He thought the rider was playing a joke.”

“Not so funny now,” she mumbled, heading for Appleton. As she approached him, Chase noted the man slowly shaking his head. His arms folded over his chest.

“Mr. Appleton, I’m Detective Chase. I understand you spotted the horse. Where did you first see it coming from?”

Appleton pointed in the same direction as the officer had. “Didn’t pay much attention to it, being that it’s Halloween. I figured some clown had dressed as that character from the movie. I never thought it was a real headless rider until I saw it up close.”

“Yeah, well, it’s not something one would usually see coming down the streets of Ft. Worth. Did you see anyone with it or close by?”

“Nope.” He shook his head. “Didn’t really look for anybody. I just kept my eyes on that horse.”

“We’ll need a written statement from you.”

“Done already.” He nodded at a uniformed officer standing near the yellow tape. “Gave it to him.”

Chase scanned the growing crowd gathered at the yellow crime scene tape, looking for anyone acting strange. She knew some perpetrators often mingled with the crowd at a crime scene to watch the police figure out how it happened and who did it. No one stood out to her.

A city-owned pickup truck, towing a horse trailer, parked by the crime scene tape. Two guys in coveralls got out. They went up to the closest uniform, who directed them to Chase. Both stopped dead in their tracks as soon as they saw the uncovered headless body on the gurney.

“Holy fucking shit,” the skinny guy said. “Is that for real?”

“Yeah,” Chase said. “You guys have a way of identifying the horse? I need to know who owns it.”

“Yeah, I bet,” the skinny one said. “Lex, go get that reader from the locker.” He stared at the body. “Who the hell did he piss off?”

“Don’t know yet.”

“Betcha it was his old lady.”

“Anybody’s guess at this point.”

“Well, if it was, I sure as hell don’t wanna cross paths with her.”

“It’s doubtful a woman did that,” Chase said, looking at the gurney. “Not alone, anyway.”

“You ain’t married, are you?”

“Was.”

“Yeah, well, I’m going to enlighten you on something. But then you know this, you being a woman and all. When a woman gets mad enough—I mean like super pissed—I’m telling you, she can leap tall buildings in a single bound and bend steel with her fucking teeth.”

Chase smiled at the man’s comment. “You know that from personal experience?”

“Sorta.”

Chase started to walk away. “Listen, I’ve got to interview witnesses. Why don’t you two find out who the owner of that horse is, then let me know.” She headed for the ME’s van where the attendants were preparing to load the gurney. She lifted the covering sheet to get a closer look at the neck. No obvious jagged edges. It appeared to be a smooth cut. Probably done with a large hunting knife.

A uniformed officer approached Chase. “You the lead detective?”

“Unfortunately.” Chase was trying to wrap her head around why someone felt the need to do something so horrid even if the guy was a child predator. “Whatcha got?”

“Some members of the media want to speak to you.”

“Not me,” she said. Pointing at Sergeant Tolliver, she told him. “He’s most senior here.” Tolliver better not call her over. He knew how much she hated answering inane questions from the media. Saying “No comment,” over and over to a bunch of stupid questions was a waste of time. She had a murder case to solve. The most gruesome one she’d ever worked.