Lords of the Dais (eBook)

Glenn Starkey (Autor)

eBook Download: EPUB

2025 | 1. Auflage
260 Seiten
Bookbaby (Verlag)
979-8-3178-0114-4 (ISBN)

Infos

Detective Sergeant Lewis Malcolm, a Marine Corps veteran, never thought he would one day be at the center of a modern-day Jack the Ripper investigation. The residents of Morgan City are living in terror from the horrors of random butcheries left by a ruthless serial murderer. With the city council playing political games, making demands and interfering at every step, Lewis Malcolm is forced into standing against the tide of panic enveloping a city. With the help of Police Chief James Matthews, rookie Detective Marsha Hennessey, and a prominent criminologist, Dr. Robert Edwards, Lewis must open old wounds from past investigations and delve into the mindset of an insane predator nicknamed 'Jack.' The madman could strike again, anytime any day, and Lewis Malcolm has orders to stop him at all costs. But Jack is like a ghost that comes and goes in the night, leaving fear behind when he vanishes. No one is safe. Not even the police. 'Lords of the Dais' is a mystery thriller, a psychological page-turner that keeps readers guessing who the modern-day Jack the Ripper is and when the police will capture him.

Glenn Starkey is an award-winning author living with his family in Texas. He served in the Marine Corps; is a Vietnam veteran; worked in Texas law enforcement; was a security manager for a global oil corporation, and the interim security director of a major Gulf Coast port. For eleven years, Glenn volunteered as a reading mentor to elementary school children. And for nine years served on his community's city council.

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Detective Sergeant Lewis Malcolm, a Marine Corps veteran, never thought he would one day be at the center of a modern-day Jack the Ripper investigation. The residents of Morgan City are living in terror from the horrors of random butcheries left by a ruthless serial murderer nicknamed 'Jack' by the press. With the city council playing political games, making demands and interfering at every step, Lewis Malcolm is forced into standing against the tide of panic enveloping a city. With the help of Police Chief James Matthews, rookie Detective Marsha Hennessey, and a prominent criminologist, Dr. Robert Edwards, Lewis must open old wounds from past investigations and delve into the mindset of an insane, cold-blooded predator. The madman could strike again, anytime any day, and Lewis Malcolm has orders to stop him at all costs. But Jack is like a ghost that comes and goes in the night, leaving fear behind when he vanishes. No one is safe. Not even the police. "e;Lords of the Dais"e; is a mystery thriller, a psychological page-turner that keeps readers guessing who the modern-day Jack the Ripper is and when the police will capture him.

Textauszug

Chapter One

May 13, 2019
Monday, 2:15 p.m.
Morgan City, Texas

The Chief of Police eased a handkerchief from his pocket, removed his sunglasses and squinted against the sun’s glare as he cleaned the lenses. When the first call went out dispatching officers to the scene of a suspicious package, a gut feeling told him to go as well. His instincts proved correct.

Slipping his glasses on, James Matthews glanced at the buzzards circling high in the cloudless sky, then lowered his gaze to sweep the large pasture. Fifteen feet to his right, a young officer stood bent and retching as loudly as the blaring radio speakers of the police cars parked along the shoulder of the road thirty yards away. It was Connor Mitchell’s second day to be cut loose from training and patrol alone. The Chief frowned at the memory of his own first time to see a mutilated body. The six-year-old girl still roamed the canyons of his mind.

“Captain, check on Mitchell. Make sure he’s not puking on evidence,” the Chief said calmly, motioning toward the rookie. He glanced stoically at his patrol captain. “And go easy on him… The first time is always the roughest.”

“Yes, sir.” Seth Thomason nodded and started through the two-foot-high grass.

Matthews estimated the treeless pasture to be at least twenty acres or more in size, with half freshly mowed. It sat on the western edge of the city, bordered by a desolate road that led north into the county. Letting his gaze drift, he noted the expanse of field separating the police cars on the street and his officers standing near the body. Pretty respectable distance for one man to carry a corpse over a barbed wire fence, then out to here at night. Why not dump it in the ditch and leave? Less risk of being seen. But this stretch of road had no lighting, and few people traveled on it. He renewed his slow walk to the crime scene twenty feet ahead, careful not to step on anything that might be evidence.

Toward the road, an elderly black man dressed in layered work clothes stood beside a John Deere farm tractor. His hands squeezed and twisted a small towel as he answered questions from Corporal Marsha Hennessey, a senior patrol officer. The man kept his face turned away to avoid seeing the police out in the field. Finishing the interview, she let him climb back onto the tractor to sit in its seat while he waited. Chief Matthews halted at seeing her start to him.

“His name is Melvin Armstrong, sir. The landowner hired him to mow the pasture today. He’s been here since dawn, saw the buzzards but kept working until he drew closer… Figured it was a dead animal of some kind. When he finally checked, he discovered the body wrapped in clear heavy plastic like you spread on a floor to paint a room. But he wasn’t sure what he was looking at because of the swarming flies and it was so bloody inside the plastic.” Marsha sympathetically shook her head. “Poor guy is ready to pass out. Says he’s never seen anything like this before.”

“If you have all the information you need, send him home—or have someone come get him if he’s too upset to drive. Thank him for his help and tell him we’ll be in contact later.” Matthews watched her leave, confident she had missed nothing in the interview. The twelve-year veteran officer was one of the few officers he trusted. She didn’t take crap from the young lions in the patrol division, held her ground with the best during rough arrests, and had an eye for detail in her reports. More importantly, she didn’t go whining to the mayor and the ‘wannabe’ behind his back because of every procedural change that was made. Matthews renewed his walk to the body.

Two patrol officers stood several feet away from the corpse, taking notes, looking for evidence, careful not to interfere with Eugene Dexter, the photographer and lead Crime Scene Unit technician. Seeing the Chief approach, he lowered his Nikon camera, swatted flies away and stepped back to permit an unobstructed view of the scene.

“Sorry, Chief. I should have warned the rookie that I was cutting the ropes and plastic to reveal the body. At least he moved away before losing his lunch.”

“He has to learn sometime. Today was as good as any,” the Chief remarked.

Dexter raised his blue eyes skyward as he inhaled a deep breath of fresh air. His hand swung toward the slender corpse. “It’s a woman—or what’s left of her.”

Though the humidity was low, and the temperature had only reached the mid 80s, a pungent, foul odor rose from the mutilated corpse after having laid in the sunlight all morning, baking through the clear plastic. Feces oozed from slashed intestines and caked and wet blood streaked the nude body lying on its back. Flies landed to begin their feasts, drawn to the corpse by its smell, and unable to reach it before because of the plastic.

“Mother of God,” the Chief uttered in a barely audible voice, scowling at the carnage.

There were no signs of jewelry, and a thick crimson paste encrusted her long blonde hair from the wounds on the skull. A once attractive face now remained a crimson death mask with horrid caverns where eyes had been, and the tip of a blue silk cloth extended outward from her lips, hinting at more within her mouth. Purple whip marks and cuts, tinged with blue, crisscrossed her thin arms, breasts, and down the length of her legs, while her wrists and ankles revealed deep lacerations and discolorations from being bound in captivity. But it was the vicious slicing of her vaginal region upward to her navel, which displayed the vilest butchery, leaving organs slashed and open to sight.

Jack had returned.

The Chief glanced at the tractor and saw Marsha walking to him. “Stay away. You don’t need to see this,” he called out, motioning her to halt. Revulsion filled his face, and she nodded in understanding. Not that she couldn’t handle the slaughter, but there wasn’t a reason for her to see it. Officers witnessed enough without intentionally adding to their nightmarish memories.

Shifting his gaze, he looked northward, waving the growing swarm of flies away in frustration. “Another half-mile and this would have been in the county… Three murders last year and now our second one this year,” he mumbled, talking more to himself than anyone about him.

Three years ago, Matthews resigned from a quiet chief’s position in Lufkin to take on the challenges of a larger department in a bigger city. To him and his wife Kathryn, the higher pay made it a worthwhile journey. Lufkin held a population of 40,000. But within four years prior to his arrival, Morgan City explosively grew to 60,000. Growth was already inevitable. The completion of a major freeway project looped the city and provided swifter access north to Houston and eastward to the Gulf Coast. Like a shot fired to start a gold rush, frantic grabs of prime open land and developments began, followed by expanding city limits and unbridled growth. The city council thought they were ready, but good old boy politics emerged, creating hydra-like problems.

The murders quickly cut Matthews’s honeymoon period short with the city. And today, with this latest homicide, he wished he had never left the peaceful East Texas town.

The CSU technician resumed his photography, letting the Chief stand in thought, weighing his next actions. The whirring clicks of the camera carried through the air. Another Crime Scene Unit technician took digital fingerprints and carefully bagged the hands to protect any DNA that might be under the fingernails. Creeping about the body in a widening circle, he searched the ground for the slightest physical evidence.

Dexter spoke with another CSU technician, then turned to the Chief. “A rough estimation, but we believe she’s been here since about two this morning, the way rigor is setting in over her body and the temperature has been cool.”

“Do you want me to request Detective Sergeant Crenshaw, sir? He may be in the office.”

The Chief turned to find Captain Thomason waiting. He replied with a sluggish shake of the head. At the crowning point of his thirty-plus year career, Boone Crenshaw had been an investigative powerhouse to be reckoned with. Unfortunately, those days were gone. Overweight from a love affair with junk food and being a chain-smoker were bad enough. But the stress from four high-profile murders, coupled with media frenzy, the Morgan City Council’s interfering inquisitions and pressure for arrests, all churned by a terrified citizenry, had landed the detective in the hospital. This time, raging blood pressure and anxiety were the diagnosed culprits, but doctors said with Boone’s overall condition, a ‘Widow-Maker’ heart attack would be next. He already walked a razor’s edge between remaining with the department or being forced to take a medical retirement. The last thing Boone needed was a fifth serial murder atop it all.

“I want to keep this off the radio as much as possible. Everyone in town with a scanner is probably listening and already telephoning their friends.” Looking at the officers about him, Chief Matthews spoke loudly, “Use your cellphones to call into dispatch.”

Everyone on the scene...

Produkt-Details

• Erscheint lt. Verlag: 16.5.2025
• Sprache: englisch
• Themenwelt: Literatur ► Krimi / Thriller / Horror
• ISBN-13: 979-8-3178-0114-4 / 9798317801144