Shaven: Thriller E-Book

Jack Raymond

• Herausgeber: Alfredbooks
• Kategorie: Abenteuer, Thriller, Horror
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2023

Seitenzahl: 133

Beschreibung

by Jack Raymond The size of this book is equivalent to 116 paperback pages. A series of gruesome prostitute murders baffles investigators. Again and again the mysterious killer strikes - and the city freezes in fear. Is a crazy serial killer on the loose - or is war between pimps and gangster bosses behind it? Jack Raymond (Alfred Bekker) is a well-known author of fantasy novels, thrillers and books for young people. In addition to his major book successes, he has written numerous novels for suspense series such as Ren Dhark, Jerry Cotton, Cotton reloaded, Kommissar X, John Sinclair and Jessica Bannister. He has also published under the names Neal Chadwick, Henry Rohmer, Conny Walden, and Janet Farell.

Leseprobe

Jack Raymond

Shaven: Thriller

UUID: b5ce3170-d86e-4760-829e-f992e95263c8

Dieses eBook wurde mit StreetLib Write (https://writeapp.io) erstellt.

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Shaven: Thriller

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Shaven: Thriller

by Jack Raymond

The size of this book is equivalent to 116 paperback pages.

A series of gruesome prostitute murders baffles investigators. Again and again the mysterious killer strikes - and the city freezes in fear.

Is a crazy serial killer on the loose - or is war between pimps and gangster bosses behind it?

Jack Raymond (Alfred Bekker) is a well-known author of fantasy novels, thrillers and books for young people. In addition to his major book successes, he has written numerous novels for suspense series such as Ren Dhark, Jerry Cotton, Cotton reloaded, Kommissar X, John Sinclair and Jessica Bannister. He has also published under the names Neal Chadwick, Henry Rohmer, Conny Walden, and Janet Farell.

Copyright

A CassiopeiaPress book: CASSIOPEIAPRESS, UKSAK E-Books, Alfred Bekker, Alfred Bekker presents, Casssiopeia-XXX-press, Alfredbooks, Uksak Special Edition, Cassiopeiapress Extra Edition, Cassiopeiapress/AlfredBooks and BEKKERpublishing are imprints of

Alfred Bekker

© Roman by Author

COVER A.PANADERO

Jack Raymond is a pseudonym of Alfred Bekker

© of this issue 2023 by AlfredBekker/CassiopeiaPress, Lengerich/Westphalia

The invented persons have nothing to do with actual living persons. Similarities in names are coincidental and not intended.

All rights reserved.

www.AlfredBekker.de

[email protected]

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1

New York City, Bronx...

A cold day.

A bad day.

A day that no one who had experienced it would ever forget.

Neither did the two cops who were on duty that day.

"Where do we have to go exactly, Barney?" the cop behind the wheel opined, squinting into the night.

His partner shrugged his shoulders.

"You can't ask me. I don't know my way around here."

"Great!"

"I don't know, Ed!" he growled between his teeth. He had picked up the pump action rifle on his lap and was now checking the load. "It's really a lousy neighborhood around here. And there don't even seem to be numbers on the houses..."

"Do you think you'll need that giant gun there?" asked Ed, still straining to make out anything outside. The street lights were not working. It was only to be hoped that they were not lost.

"I prefer to be a little better armed in this area."

Barney grimaced and yawned. Actually, he would have been off work, but then this thing had come up...

Damn it!, he cursed inwardly.

"I wish I was home."

"If you say so..."

"Why?"

"Well, you're always complaining about your old lady!"

"We broke up."

"You mean she took off."

"That's one way to look at it."

"And you're just telling me this now?"

"So what?"

"I could be on my way home right now, looking forward to bed. Instead, I'm going to have to risk my neck trying to catch some nutcase..."

"And that's only because we just got the closest."

"That's fate! In the wrong place at the wrong time..."

"Look out, Ed!" yelled Billy then, and his partner stepped into the irons. A figure stood in the road, waving only at the last moment. She wasn't alone; there were other people.

Billy opened the door and got out, holding the rifle in his right hand.

"Thank God, police! Come quickly!" the woman shouted.

"Did you call us?" asked Barney.

"A dead one! Quick!"

"Did you call us, I wanted to know!"

"Yes, I was."

Big pupils she has, Barney thought. Probably a drug addict. And whether she was even sane at the moment had to be in doubt.

"Yes, it was me. Our janitor is up there!"

"What does this have to do with the janitor!"

"Why don't you just go upstairs? Quick!"

"Yes, yes..."

"If you don't do it quickly, it's too late!"

"Take it easy, lady!"

She pointed to the multi-story house on the right. Lights were burning on several floors. "Quick! It's probably already too late!"

That's what I like to hear!" Billy thought sarcastically.

And they had only been a few streets away when they were notified.

It had taken them less than five minutes to get here, despite the light conditions and the fact that people here didn't seem to think much of house numbers.

Billy looked at the woman appraisingly. In the glow of the carriage lamps, he saw her face. Billy would have guessed her to be forty-five under normal circumstances.

Her teeth were bad, her complexion too.

Billy took a deep breath.

She is probably ten years younger than she looks!, he thought. Wouldn't be anything unusual for this neighborhood.... A crackhead with a crack face. Like a zombie. Except this wasn't a movie, it was reality.

And yet another thought came to him. A thought that felt like a cold, slippery hand that someone put on his shoulder.

Billy swallowed.

If someone calls the police here, then certainly not without good reason!

Ed meanwhile locked the police car. After all, he didn't want half the equipment to be missing afterwards. He held the cell phone in his hand and listened intently.

"Do you have the captain, Ed?"

"Captain Delany is on his way. With backup."

"Should we wait? If you ask me, the guy's long gone anyway. And I honestly don't feel like being here..."

"We're supposed to catch him," Ed said seriously. "At any cost."

Now the woman spoke up again. "The pervert must still be in the house!"

Billy raised his eyebrows.

"Listen! After everything that happened around here, after all the dead hookers and those perverts..."

"It's okay," Billy rudely cut her off.

"Is he armed?" meanwhile, Ed asked the woman.

"I don't know. But..."

Ed narrowed his eyes, his brows describing a curved line that expressed skepticism.

"But what?" he asked.

The woman only whispered.

Sheer horror shone from her eyes.

"It must be him..."

"What?"

"The monster!"

I love vague statements like that! Barney screwed up his face.

He turned on his flashlight, which he had hanging on the lapel of his jacket. The cone of light made the woman's nose glow reddish.

Alcohol!

But Billy still shivered.

"If he had come out of the house, we would have seen that!" said one of the other people, a man in his sixties, tracing his left leg.

"Are you sure no one came out of the house?" asked Barney.

"Not a man, anyway," someone said.

"All right," Barney said.

"So he must still be there," Ed opined.

"Yes," Barney nodded.

"What are we waiting for?"

Barney pushed his cap down his neck. He looked briefly over at his partner.

"So let's go," he growled.

He felt a cramp in his stomach area.

The elevator was broken and the stairs were quite narrow.

On some of the steps, the covering had worn through. An indefinable smell hung in the air. If someone was working here as a janitor, then he had probably not taken his duties very seriously.

Barney always took two or three steps at a time, so Ed, who was also a head shorter, had trouble keeping up with his partner.

Not a minute passed, then they had reached their destination.

The woman had also come up.

She was just too curious to miss out on it.

Barney gripped the pump action tighter while Ed knocked on the door with the grip of his police revolver.

"This is the police! Open the door now!"

A noise was heard from the apartment. It sounded like loud breathing or groaning. An almost animal sound. A full second passed without anything happening. The two cops looked at each other. Barney nodded, and Ed kicked in the door. It was a massive movement, much more violent than it would have taken to make the rotten wood splinter.

The door flew open and Barney raised his rifle.

The view was clear of a lousy one-bedroom apartment that hadn't been re-carpeted in a long time. In one place, mold began to eat its way along the ceiling.

The furniture was sparse. A sofa, a table, a chair. Also, a closet and a mattress.

Stretched out on the floor was a corpse.

Female.

And shaved bald.

Around the neck a strangle mark.

As if from a wire snare, as would be discovered later.

"There's no one else here," Billy noted.

"He must have escaped down the fire escape," Ed opined.

Barney walked to the front window. He looked into a backyard in the half-light. There was no sign of the perpetrator.

Behind the sofa set they found the janitor. He was just waking up from unconsciousness. With a laceration to the head.

"Did they see him?" asked Ed, "The perpetrator, I mean."

"No. I couldn't. Got knocked out as soon as I got here. Someone was screaming for help..."

"Take it easy, mister..."

He looked at the woman's body.

"Oh, God."

"Do you know her?"

"Yes, of course!"

"The perpetrator must have still been in the apartment when you arrived."

"You're slow on the uptake, officer? I got punched in the head!"

"That will all be sorted out in a moment, sir, and reinforcements are on the way."

2

Later, the homicide squad arrived. Traces were secured.

Captain Delany of the Homicide Squad made a serious face as he spoke on the phone and went through his preliminary report. "A murder of a suspected crack-addicted prostitute. The guy killed her with a wire snare. No one can describe him. There are no reasonable leads and all the witnesses are more or less drugged up.... No, sir, you can't expect any reasonable statements. All we can say about the course of events is that the murder weapon was presumably a wire noose. The perpetrator was still in the apartment when another woman, who shares the same apartment with the victim, returned there and heard screams inside. She called the super and the police. The super got punched in the face when he arrived.... Yes, strange, isn't it? The perpetrator stayed at the scene for so long despite the fact that he was caught.... What do I know, maybe he wanted to finish shaving the victim's head, I don't know."

Delany ended the call and pocketed his cell phone.

Barney stood nearby, stifling a yawn.

"Bad night's sleep, officer?"

"Goes like this," Barney said. "A case for the file mountain, huh?"

"That's what it's going to come down to, I'm afraid."

"Because hookers don't have a lobby?"

"Because crackheads no longer have a brain with which to formulate a reasonable statement and sort through their memories."

"That's one way to look at it."

"That's how I see it."

Barney looked at his watch. "I hope the theater here is over soon."

Delaney nodded. "We're calling it a day, folks!" he shouted.

"The coroner wasn't here yet!" someone shouted.

"He's getting his body delivered and he's supposed to go to the dissection room and see what he can do. We're not waiting any longer now."

"Okay, Chief!"

"Do you have any idea why the killer shaved off her hair?" asked Barney.

"Quite simply, because he's nuts," Delaney said.

Barney raised his shoulders. "I meant he must have been pretty routine and quick about it. And pretty fast, too..."

"Yes, like one who shears sheep."

"Funny comparison," Barney opined.

"Why?"

"Well..."

"After all, I was just comparing the dead woman to a sheep - not an innocent lamb," Delany said.

One of the trackers came up to Captain Delany. "I found something else here," he said.

"What?"

"A vial. If it's got what it says on it, it's knockout drops."

"Could have been left behind by the perpetrator."

"Exactly."

"Let's get this stuff to the lab. Then we'll see," Delany said.

3

Years later...

It was night and the Big Apple had turned into a sea of lights. As a result, hardly anything could be seen of the stars.

The black sedan stopped just outside the Parrinder Hotel on Davis Lane, Brooklyn. A young woman got out of the door in the back on the right. She wore a very skimpy leather skirt, high-heeled shoes and lots of makeup. The hydrogen blonde hair was pinned up. On the wooden barrette, the word L'AMOUR had been burned in ornate letters.

The blonde counted a few bills and put them in her purse.

The side window of the sedan slid down.

"Will I see you next week?" a male voice asked.

"You have my number, call me."

"I want you to reserve Wednesday from eight o'clock at night for us, Eileen," demanded the man, of whom nothing but an elbow leaned out could be seen.

Eileen grinned.

"But then you'll have to add another bill!"

"Okay! See you!"

"Bye!"

The limousine drove away. Eileen took a deep breath and walked toward the flickering neon sign of the nearby hotel.

A nondescript Ford was now approaching. The driver must have watched Eileen and waited until the sedan was gone.

Hopefully not another pervert like that!, she thought and grimaced. Even a decoy of the cops is easier to bear than such a pig!

4

The side window on the passenger side opened. Eileen stopped and looked inside. "Well, what can I do for you?" she asked with a suggestive undertone that made it immediately clear to any potential suitor that this dialogue was setting up a deal. On the other hand, she hadn't said anything that would have already branded her a criminal in the eyes of the law.

Prostitution was a criminal offense in New York State, and the vice divisions of the relevant police departments were fond of using decoys to charge both prostitutes and johns in rows. It was an approach that was legally highly controversial, since the police themselves actively instigated the offense they were charging. However, because it was hardly in the personal interest of the accused to actually fight this issue all the way to the Supreme Court, this practice remained in place in numerous states.

Eileen tried to see who was behind the wheel of the sedan. The figure leaned toward her. Some light now fell on the face from the neon sign of the nearby hotel.

Eileen shook her head.

"No, I'm sorry, I don't do that!" she declared firmly.

She walked down the street towards the hotel. She had a room there. The car followed her.

The figure at the wheel had now also lowered the side window on the driver's side. One hand in a leather glove held up banknotes.

Eileen turned around for a moment.

Three hundred dollars, it ran through her. She stopped, and so did the car.

She circled the car and stepped to the open side window on the driver's side. The hand held out the money to her. Something made her hesitate.

Then she took the money after all.

"I said yes, actually I don't do that kind of thing. After all, I have my principles, but..."

Silently, the figure pointed to the passenger seat. Eileen nodded. She circled the car again and got in.

"You must really need it!" she believed, putting the bills in her purse.

5

It was just after midnight when the front door of the Parrinder Hotel flew aside.

A man in a light gray wool coat entered. He wore his blue-black hair shoulder-length. It was gathered into a braid.

With wide steps, he walked across the foyer and pulled out a gun. It was a very dainty Uzi-type submachine gun.

The doorman froze and went to reach into a drawer, but the Uzi was already rattling away. A dozen shots passed just over the porter and drew a pattern of holes in the wall behind him.

"Where's Eileen?" he asked afterwards.

"I... I have no idea!" the porter stammered.

"I'll pump you full of lead if you don't give me an answer! I won't be stalled any longer!"

A man came down the staircase leading to the upper floor. He was wearing a silver-gray tailored suit. His left hand was hidden in his trouser pocket.

"Jack Mancuso, still the old hothead! What kind of circus are you running here?" he asked. "Busting up all my equipment! How much do you think all this costs!"

Jack turned and pointed the Uzi at the man in the suit, a gray-haired man in his late forties with a thin mustache and a superior smile.

"I've been trying to reach you for days, Sonny!"

"So, here I am! What's there to talk about?"

"It's about Eileen!"

"She's made up her mind, Jack."

"Like this?"

"She'd rather work for me. She won't get beaten up so often and can keep more of her money for herself. Besides, I can protect her - in contrast, you're just a loser, Jack!"

Jack's face turned red. His face contorted into a grimace. He pointed the Uzi at his opponent at head height.