Pattern of Behavior Read online

  Paul Bishop Presents… Pattern of Behavior

  Ten Tales of Murder & Mayhem

  Paul Bishop

  Eric Beetner

  Nicholas Cain

  Ben Boulden

  Brian Drake

  Christine Mathews

  L.J. Martin

  Richard Prosch

  Robert J. Randisi

  Nicole Nelson-Hicks

  Paul Bishop Presents… Pattern of Behavior: Ten Tales of Murder & Mayhem

  Pattern Of Behavior and the other stories in this collection are a work of fiction. Any references to historical events, real people or real places are used fictitiously. Other names, characters, places and events are products of the author’s imagination, and any resemblance to actual events, places or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  Copyright © 2019 the individual authors

  All rights reserved.

  Published in the United States by Wolfpack Publishing, Las Vegas.

  Wolfpack Publishing

  6032 Wheat Penny Avenue

  Las Vegas, NV 89122

  wolfpackpublishing.com

  ISBN 978-1-64119-729-8

  Contents

  Get your FREE copy of The Chicago Punch: A Short Story

  Foreword

  I. Paul Bishop—Pattern Of Behavior

  Pattern of Behavior

  II. Ben Boulden—No Chips, No Bonus

  No Chips, No Bonus

  III. Richard Prosch—Dark Estate

  Dark Estate

  IV. Nicholas Cain—Dinosaur

  Dinosaur

  V. Christine Matthews—Gentle Insanities

  Gentle Insanities

  VI. Robert Randisi—So Beautiful, So Dead

  So Beautiful, So Dead

  VII. Brian Drake—The Last Ride

  The Last Ride

  VIII. Nicole Nelson-Hicks—Black Cherry

  Black Cherry

  IX. L.J. Martin—No Confession Required

  No Confession Required

  X. Eric Beetner—Split Decision

  Split Decision Round 1

  Round 2

  Round 3

  Round 4

  Round 5

  Round 6

  Round 7

  Round 8

  Round 9

  Round 10

  Round 11

  Round 12

  Round 13

  Round 14

  Round 15

  A Look at: Paul Bishop Presents… Criminal Tendencies: Ten More Tales of Murder & Mayhem

  Get your FREE copy of The Chicago Punch: A Short Story

  About the Author

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  Paul Bishop Presents… Pattern of Behavior

  Foreword

  It has been said writing is the best job in the world because you get to sit around all day in your pajamas playing with your imaginary friends. The problem for crime writers, however, is many of our imaginary friends are dangerous—bad guys, villains, stalkers, megalomaniacal malignant narcissists, sociopaths, psychopaths, lowlifes, grifters, deviants, femme fatales, and plain old bastards, none of whom play well with others. Those dangerous characters can drag a writer to some dark places, which is okay (even we’re in our pajamas) because dark places are where crime writers feel at home.

  Personally, I think writing is the best job in the world because aside from my imaginary friends, I get to spend time in person and online with some of my real friends—other crime writers. They are brilliant, creative, funny, and inspiring. They get me, and I get them. They’ve been where I’ve been, and I’m not talking Disneyland here.

  I can also reach out to many of them and say I need a great story for a crime anthology, and they respond quickly with fascinating tales of mystery and mayhem. The ten authors in this collection are good friends and great crime writers. I’m excited to share their stories with you and to also contribute one of my own. I hope you enjoy reading them as much as I did...

  Paul Bishop

  North of Los Angeles

  2019

  Pattern of Behavior

  Paul Bishop

  Pattern of Behavior started life as a spec script for a popular television series. You can probably tell which one by the structure of the story. While the script was never produced by the show for which it was designed, it did act as a strong writing example enabling me to get work on other shows. However, not wanting a good tale to go unpublished, I adapted the script to make it an original novelette for this collection. Featuring my series character L.A.P.D. homicide detective Fey Croaker, Pattern of Behavior is chronologically set after Chalk Whispers, the fourth book in the series. Like the original Fey Croaker novels, Pattern of Behavior is set in the late 90s. As such, the storyline represents the attitudes and technology relevant to the time period.

  Pattern of Behavior

  In the center of the darkened banquet room, Anna Havilland was curled into a fetal position. Her long blonde hair was scattered across her twenty-something face, obscuring her features. Her short black skirt was rucked up around her thighs, exposing her lack of underwear or pantyhose. A rope was bound around her ankles, and a colorful man's tie secured her wrists behind her back. Across her mouth was a single slash of duct tape. A large, ornate restaurant sign proclaiming Tony V's leaned drunkenly against the wall behind her.

  Whimpering, she struggled to pull her hands under her buttocks. Painfully she threaded her legs through until her hands were in front of her. She paused to rest for a few seconds—time was meaningless—before reaching up to pull the duct tape from her mouth with a swift tear. She burst into tears from the pain.

  Eventually gaining control of her emotions, Anna crawled slowly toward her abandoned purse. With shaking fingers, she reached into the purse and removed her cell phone. Massive effort was required to pick out and push the proper numbers—9-1-1.

  When the connection was made, a recording came on the line asking her to wait. Anna lay her head on the floor, the phone under her ear, and the recording repeated twice more. Finally, a live voice came on the line. "Operator fifteen-eighteen. What is your emergency?"

  Anna sucked in a breath. "Please help me. I've been raped."

  Fey Croaker sat at her desk in the Robbery-Homicide squad room and pushed keys on her computer with desultory interest.

  "Do you have a minute, Fey?" The question came from Whip Whitman who was leaning out of his Captain's office at the far end of the squad bay.

  Happy for any interruption, Fey stood up and grabbed her coffee cup as she left her desk. Inside Whitman's office, Whip sat in a high-backed chair behind his desk. Next to the desk stood a dark-haired man with sun-blackened skin. He was only slightly over five-six and wiry thin, but there was an inner stillness about him that was slightly spooky.

  "How's your team?" Whitman asked Fey without introducing his other guest.

  "What team?" Fey replied. "We still haven't replaced Hammer and Nails. Brindle and Alphabet are on vacation. And Monk is down with this damn flu."

  "Situation normal, then? All screwed up?"

  Whitman noticed Fey looking pointedly at the other visitor. "This is Mickey Crow," Whitman said finally. "I need you both to respond to a stranger rape on your old turf in West Los Angeles Division."

  "A rape case?" Fey cut her eyes back to Whitman in surprise.

  "You know that since the start of the year, RHD Rape Special has taken over city wide jurisdiction of all stranger rapes."

  "Sure, but I run a homicide team."

  "There's nobody available from Rape Speci
al to handle the case. Like everyone else, they've been decimated by the flu. You don't have a team, and Mickey just transferred in. The case is down to you. Get on it."

  Fey and Mickey Crow approached Officer Tina Delgado outside Tony V's restaurant. Tina's uniform shirt was pulled tight across her impressive chest, but Mickey Crow didn't appear to pay any attention. He'd talked little to Fey on the trip out from downtown. Fey had only learned he recently surfaced from a deep cover assignment with Organized Crime and Vice Division. He had nine years on the job and appeared apathetic toward his new assignment to RHD.

  "How's the victim?" Fey asked Tina.

  "As good as can be expected."

  "She give you anything on the suspect?" Crow asked.

  Tina consulted a small officers' notebook. "Male, Caucasian, six-foot-one, two hundred pounds. Black hair, razor cut and slicked back. Paul Newman eyes—her description, not mine."

  "Anything else?" Fey asked.

  Tina looked back at her notebook. "The victim was coming out of a play at the Shubert last night with a female friend when the suspect approached them. He said he was a movie producer—wanted to make the victim a star."

  "And she believed him?" Fey's question was rhetorical. She'd become cynically endured to the average citizen's gullibility.

  "Everyone wants to be a star in this town," Delgado said. "Suspect told the victim to meet him this morning in the lobby of the Century Towers."

  "How'd they get here from there?"

  "Suspect told her he wanted to take some publicity stills in his studio. The victim followed him over in her own car, but once the suspect got her inside—bada-bing, bada-boom."

  Fey shook her head. She looked at Crow. "You know what this country needs?"

  "What's that?" Crow asked, surprisingly willing to play the straight man.

  "A good twelve-step program for stupidity."

  Fey and Crow made their way around the building to find criminalist June Sweetwater fingerprinting the door of Tony V's back entrance. The closed restaurant occupied the lower left corner of a two-story office building. June looked up as the two detectives approached.

  "Is this the POE?" Fey asked.

  "Looks that way," June said with a smile for Fey. "I lifted a couple of prints from the doorknob. There's also a couple of tool marks on the jamb. Find the tool, I'll give you a match."

  Crow moved forward to examine the pry marks. "You find anything inside?"

  "Not much—rope from the victim's ankles, the tie used to bind her hands. The victim said the suspect used a condom, but he must have taken it with him."

  "Done this before, then?" Fey said.

  June shrugged. "Probably."

  Crow stood back to look at the building. "How long has the restaurant been out of business?"

  June shrugged again. "A couple of months. Lousy food, lousy service."

  "Go figure," Fey said. "You would have thought the L.A.'s nouveau riche would embrace it."

  Anna Havilland sat on a small couch in the soft room provided by Santa Monica Hospital's Rape Treatment Center. Vicky Torrance, the comfortable-looking rape counselor, sat next to Anna on the couch holding her hand. Fey and Crow were forced to stand as there were no other chairs in the small room.

  "I know it sounds stupid," Anna told Fey and Crow. "But he was so convincing."

  "Who was the friend you were with at the theatre?" Fey asked.

  "Tiffany Bannister."

  "Do you have her address?"

  "In my purse," Anna said. She rummaged in the black leather bag on her lap and produced an address book. Crow took it and began leafing through the pages.

  "Had either of you seen this guy before?" Fey asked.

  "Never. He just came up to me in the parking lot and asked if I was an actress."

  "Are you?"

  "I've done a couple of soap opera walk-ons, but nothing major."

  "This guy told you he was a producer?"

  "He said I was perfect for a part in the next Mel Gibson film he was casting."

  "You didn't question him," Crow cut in coldly.

  Anna was close to tears. "He seemed legit—nice suit, clean cut, good jewelry."

  "Did he tell you his name?" Crow asked.

  "John Clark."

  "He have any identification?"

  "She's not a cop," Vicky Torrance interrupted, her anger showing. "Normal people don't meet somebody and ask to see their driver's license."

  Fey stepped in to smooth things over. "When you met Clark in the hotel today, did you feel he was staying there?"

  "I guess," Anna said. "I gave him my portfolio. He was sitting in the lobby, sorting through a bunch of papers."

  "Props," said Crow.

  Fey shut him up with a look. "After you left the hotel, you drove to the restaurant?"

  "Actually, the front of the office building," Anna said. "He told me it was his production company. I could see movie posters on the walls through the glass doors, and the name—Lionheart Pictures."

  "Why did you take your own car?"

  "I'm not naive enough to come to the city without my own ride."

  Fey and Crow exchanged a glance.

  "How did you get into the restaurant?"

  "He wanted to start taking photos in his studio around the side of the building."

  "How did he open the door?"

  "It was already partially open. He stood back to let me enter, but I saw it was dark. I turned back, but he shoved me inside, and then—" Anna suddenly burst into tears and buried her face into Vicky Torrance's shoulder.

  Back in the Robbery-Homicide offices, Whip Whitman stood next to Fey as Crow fiddled with the remote control of an industrial VCR.

  "You picked the security tape up from the hotel?" Whip asked.

  "After we had an artist do a composite with the victim," Fey confirmed.

  Crow finally found the right button, and the tape in the machine began to play.

  "There are ten security cameras in the hotel," Crow said. "They rotate every two seconds." He suddenly froze the image on the screen. "That's the suspect. The back of him, anyway."

  "And he never turns around?" Whip asked.

  "Never."

  "What do you think?"

  "It's like he knew the cameras were there," Crow said.

  "You check out the restaurant?"

  Fey nodded. "The property is owned by Elgin Tremayne, the same guy behind Lionheart Pictures."

  "Not John Clarke?"

  Fey Shook her head. "Too easy."

  "Then you better get over to Lionheart and do it the hard way."

  Elgin Tremayne's office was not plush. Castoff furniture blended in functional mismatch under the framed posters of numerous B-movies. Sitting behind his desk, Tremayne was a wizened man in his seventies. His lawyer, Susan Lawrence, sat next to him like a handmaiden. Greta Martin, the Lionheart office manager, leaned against the door as Fey and Crow conducted their interview.

  "Mr. Tremayne," Fey said. "The business license registry shows you own both these offices and the attached restaurant, Tony Vs."

  Tremayne's voice was thin and reedy. "My company owns the property where Tony V's was located, but the restaurant was owned by two men who we are now engaged within major civil litigation. Can you tell us what this is all about?"

  Fey nodded. "Were you aware somebody broke into the restaurant premises yesterday and committed a rape?"

  "No! How horrible." The outburst came from Susan Lawrence.

  "Didn't we change the locks on the restaurant two weeks ago, Greta?" Tremayne asked his office manager.

  "Yes," Greta replied. "I have a set of keys, you have a set, and John has a set."

  "John?" Crow jumped on the name. "Who's John?"

  "John Clark," Tremayne said. "He's our maintenance man."

  Crow slid a copy of the suspect's composite across the desk to Tremayne. "He look like this?"

  "No way," Tremayne said, giving the composite a cursory glance. "He's about five fo
ot tall, bald, and sixty. He wishes he looked like this." Tremayne picked up the composite and studied it closer. "Wait a minute," he turned to hand the paper to Susan Lawrence. "What do you think?" he asked her.

  "You know this guy?" Crow asked.

  "Maybe," Tremayne said. "It's the eyes, mostly."

  Greta Martin moved in to take a look at the composite in Lawrence's hand. Her face paled.

  "So, who is he?" Fey asked.

  "His name is Rafe Vandermere," Lawrence said, putting the composite back on the table. "He's one of the men who owned Tony Vs."

  "The guys you're involved in the civil litigation with?"

  "Yes," Tremayne confirmed. "They stole all the ovens and other fixtures when we evicted them."

  "But there's more," Lawrence said. "Vandermere has a prior record for rape."

  Fey was in Whip Whitman's office bringing him up-to-speed when Crow entered with a sheaf of printouts.

  "Vandermere is a registered sex offender," Crow said, handing the printout to Fey.

  Putting on her glasses, Fey scanned the sheets. "Two priors for rape that stuck, and a forced oral cop arrest that bounced behind a reluctant witness."