Chapter 10
Zen
I wake up at sunrise. I never left the clubhouse last night, nor did I get much sleep. I spent the hours researching everything possible about Lexi’s father’s murder and then crashed out in the wee hours of the morning. I’m still groggy but I need a shower and some coffee so I can get back to piecing together this murder mystery.
When I’m in the shower all my drowsy mind can think of is Lexi’s smiling face. Her long dark hair and how she looked wearing leather. I can’t help but imagine her wearing my leather. The thought of Lexi in my property cut made my cock hard. When my cock is hard, I’m not shy about stroking it.
I know deep down inside that Lexi is my kind of woman. She builds computers, dresses how she wants, expresses herself freely, and is quick to tell me when she thinks I’m wrong about something. Her self-confidence is sexy, and so is the way she challenges me.
I dare for the first time in the heat of the moment to imagine what she looks like naked. All that pale skin and long dark hair flips all the right switches for me. My mouth waters at the thought of having my mouth between her legs. Having her kick and scream my name as I tip her into one orgasm after another brings out the beast in me and then I’m having the hardest orgasm of my life. My cock won’t stop throbbing and spewing for ages. If stroking myself off to thoughts of her is this good. I can’t imagine what sex with her would be like.
Of course, I have to make sure she survives the fucking asshole who killed her father in order to get around to sounding out a relationship with her. I don’t care what she says about it being ten months later and it being highly unlikely the bastard is still looking for her, and I don’t give a shit if she accepts me or rejects me. I’m gonna make sure she doesn’t have to worry about this fucker popping up when she least expects it.
I rinse myself off and get dressed, still thinking about the man who killed her father in cold blood. If I have my way, he’ll end up dead rather than behind bars where he could possibly escape and come after her again. Still, I can’t shake the feeling that I’m missing something important.
After being back at my computer for a while, I find some information that might be relevant to the case. I scratch around, getting as much of it together as possible because it’s close to nine and I want to present it to my club brothers in a coherent way.
When I finish, I grab my laptop and head for the meeting room. Lexi is sitting at the table all by herself and our club officers are standing off to the side brainstorming coverage for her house. I walk over and take the seat to her right. I don’t like her sitting all by herself looking scared and vulnerable.
“Did you get something to eat?” I ask just to make conversation.
“No. I came straight into the meeting room, so as not to make anyone wait.”
“We can grab food after the meeting. I found something that might help shed light on why your father was always so paranoid.”
Siege’s voice rings out behind me, “You found a lead already?”
The club officers surge forward and take their seats at the table.
“Yeah, I did.”
“I can’t wait to hear it,” Siege responds. “But first I want to talk to your friend about our participation in this situation.”
Focusing his attention on Lexi, he explains, “As Zen’s probably already told you, the Savage Legion MC isn’t a one-percent club. That means we don’t typically engage in illegal activities. We do sometimes take up cases involving missing children or deal with criminal organizations trying to set up shop in Las Salinas, more as a community service than anything. For us, your father’s murder falls in that category. No one wants a killer running free in their town. So, we’re gonna do our best to figure out who killed your dad and see that justice is served.”
“Thank you,” Lexi responds in a trembling voice. “Seeing him getting killed has been really difficult.”
“Yes,” Rigs interjects. “Things like that can cause PTSD. I hope you have a counselor you can talk to about your feelings?”
“I did when it first happened. I even spent some time in the hospital, trying to deal with losing the only family member I had left but also him being brutally murdered. That’s not how anyone wants their loved one to die.”
“Ain’t that the damn truth,” Dutch adds. “I know it’s been ten months since your dad died but you have my deepest condolences.”
The others join Dutch in giving condolences. Lexi tears up but manages to thank them.
Siege gestures to me. “Zen, why don’t you tell us what you found.”
“I traced back Lexi’s family hoping to find something in their background to explain her father’s paranoia and obsession with security. I dug up every bit of information I could find and pieced it together.”
Rigs asks, “What did that puzzle look like when you completed it?”
“To be honest, it was a bit sketchy. I couldn’t find much about her father’s early years. But I managed to get details of his high school and college education and work history. I easily found his marriage certificate and even Lexi’s birth certificate. Then three years later—boom—there was nothing.”
Rigs, ever the analytical brother in our club, murmurs, “It sounds like there must have been an event that changed the course of their lives.”
“I scratched around in public records, newspapers, and such for the area they were living in when everything went dark and discovered something interesting.”
Glancing from one club brother to another, I tell them, “Their last known address was in the suburbs of Buffalo, New York. Her father worked as a literature professor and his wife was a stay-at-home mom to Lexi. Believe it or not, a co-ed went missing. According to newspaper articles at the time, all the evidence pointed to a fellow student. A man by the name of Matthew Graves. He went missing right after the co-ed’s naked body was found floating in a pond a couple of miles from the university campus. Then the police discovered that Matthew Graves was a stolen identity, from an old man who died fourteen years earlier.”
Lexi speaks up, “I don’t understand what that has to do with my father. He clearly wasn’t involved in any of that.”
Rigs asks, “How do you know he wasn’t involved? Don’t you think it’s a bit of a coincidence that right after this horrific event happened on the college campus he worked at that he took his family and moved to Las Salinas?”
Lexi looks away. “We didn’t move to Las Salinas right away. My dad moved us every couple of years, and we ended up here about five years before he died.”
I give them my theories of what might have happened. “It could be that your father saw the abduction and reported it, which pissed the perp off. He might have seen the perp staring at the victim, intervened when the perp was harassing her, the perp might have said something suspicious in passing, or your father might have seen him dumping the body. It could have even been a situation where the perp got fixated on your mother. After looking at pictures of the co-ed and your family, I noticed a strong resemblance between your mother and the co-ed. Of course that could have been a coincidence, but it bears closer scrutiny anyway.”
Lexi looks shell-shocked by this piece of information. She’s sitting there with her mouth hanging open while the club officers have all broken out in excited conversation about it.
Finally Rigs asks, “Were you able to pull any information on the perp’s family?”
“No, seeing as he used a stolen identity. I was up for the better part of the night piecing all this together. I plan to get right on that today though.”
Siege begins giving directions, “Alright, this is a good start. Zen, you keep digging for information digitally. We’ll keep protection in place for Lexi. And Lexi, I don’t want you leaving on your own. If what Zen has found ends up to be related to your father, that means the perp has killed twice and has a history of fixating on women and then killing them—he might have gotten obsessed with your mother which prompted the move.”
“That’s a gigantic leap,” she responds, clearly not buying the connection.
“Regardless, it pays to prepare for the worst. If anything short of that happens then we’ll consider it a blessing. Got it?”
She nods, rubbing at her forehead. “Yeah, that actually makes good sense.”
I come to my feet. “I’m going to take Lexi to the kitchen and feed her. If you need either of us, shoot me a text.”
Siege barely acknowledges my words because he’s already diving into a conversation with Rigs about sending someone out to NY to talk with the witnesses. Glad to escape the enthusiasm of my club brothers, Lexi follows me to the kitchen where we fill our plates and get a table in the back of the nearly empty bar.
Since we didn’t exactly part on good terms the last time we spoke, and then I turned her life upside down after seeing those crime scene photos, I let a long silence spin out between the two of us.
Finally, she asks, “You really are as good as you say, aren’t you?”
“Yeah, I’m better than most, but not quite delusional enough to think I’m the best.”
“And your club is the real deal when it comes to helping me track down the man that killed my dad, right?”
“Yes, I can guarantee that we’ve solved tougher cases than this one.”
“Alright, I’m gonna calm down and let you guys do your thing.” Shoving food around her plate for a few seconds, she asks, “Do you really think my dad had some kind of connection to that murder case when I was a baby, and it led to the killer stalking him?”
“You tell me. Think long and hard about your mom, and in particular, your dad. And then tell me if any of this rings true.”
“I remember my mom used to wake up screaming and my father used to hold her and tell her everything was going to be okay and that she was safe now.”
“Sounds like she might have had some kind of crisis in her life that gave her bad dreams. I don’t know if it was related to the perp that killed that co-ed, but it wouldn’t surprise me.”
She takes a drink of her coffee and looks out the window before admitting, “I look a lot like my mother did when she was my age.”
This is the part that makes my chest hurt, the part I didn’t want to come right and say. “Yeah, I noticed that as well.”
“If my dad had told that asshole where I was, he might still be alive today.”
I stop eating and put my fork down. “Your dad doesn’t sound like the kind of man who would throw his wife or daughter under the bus to save himself. He was a hero who protected the women in his life. He has my respect for that.”
“I was thinking the whole time you were talking in the meeting room. I never went through my mom’s things when she died, or my father’s when he was murdered. I don’t know why. I think with my mother, it was because my father didn’t want any of her stuff disturbed. And with my father it was because the loss was too fresh, you know?”
“Yeah, I do know. But now I think it’s time to have a look, see if we can find clues to help make sense of this situation.”
“Okay, do you want to do that when we’re finished eating? I have a feeling that if I wait, I’ll chicken out.”
“Sure. We can do it together. No matter what we find, I promise that everything will be okay.” I take a bite of my food and chase it down with coffee before asking, “You told me about that odd behavior of that food delivery person. Have other strange things happened to you, things that might be related to your father’s death?”
“No, not really. The only weird things that have happened are related to my PTSD, not the case.”
“You mean like bad dreams and stuff?” I ask, wiping my fingers on my napkin.
She nods, “Yeah, my therapist said to expect stuff like that. She said it’s perfectly normal after what I’ve been through.”
***
After lunch during which we talked politely about anything and everything that wasn’t related to her father’s brutal murder, we head to her place. We park in the back and enter through the back door because she said she prefers to avoid the living room where her father was killed. It makes perfect sense.
The thing is, when we approach the back door, there’s a bag on the mat from a local restaurant. “Did you order food?”
“No. Of course not. We just ate.”
I bend down, pick up the bag, and peer inside. Instead of food from the restaurant, inside the bag there’s box of heart-shaped chocolates with a note that reads, ‘Through time and space some hearts are meant to be joined’.
Showing her the note, I ask, “Are you seeing someone?”
“Of course not. It’s probably been delivered to the wrong address. You know how those delivery drivers can be.”
I’m not sure I believe her, but I let it lie.
Unlocking her door and pushing it open, she adds, “I bet there’s probably some sad lady who didn’t get her gift.”
I flip the note over and look at the back before discarding it on the kitchen table. We make our way through the house to the master bedroom. Her house looks very dated but nice. It’s clear her parents liked collecting things but were nowhere near having a hoarding mentality.
When she opens her parents’ bedroom door, the room is immaculate. All her mother’s personal effects are still in place around the room.
She turns around to look at me, “Where do we start?”
“I say we start at the dresser and move around the room in a circle that way we don’t miss anything.”
“Sounds good,” she responds.
We approach the dresser. Lexi’s shaking hands reach out to pick up her mother’s large jewelry box. We dump it all out and she begins combing through it while I inspect the jewelry box itself. I quickly realize there’s nothing unusual about the box, and Lexi begins dumping all the jewelry back into it.
We start searching through all the dresser drawers, finding nothing of note. If I’m being honest, going through dead people’s stuff is a bit unnerving. It feels like a personal violation, although with them both being dead, I can’t imagine what kind of violation it would be.
We continue going through the whole room, finding all kinds of interesting things—like a hatbox full of pictures, a small box full of Lexi’s childhood mementos, some stuffed animals, and random antique collectibles. It’s sweet how Lexi takes a trip down memory lane with each new item we find. She tells me when and where her parents got the item and why. Lexi’s family reminds me a lot of my own.
I pull out yet another hatbox from the top of her mother’s closet. Lexi lifts a tiny pillbox hat out of the box and puts it on her head. “This belonged to my grandmother. I never met her, but my mom used to tell me stories about her.”
As Lexi talks about the stories her mother told her of her grandmother, I gaze down into the box totally dumbfounded. Interrupting her, I say, “Lexi, I think we may have found something.”
She leans over to look inside the small hat box. “Why would my parents have kept flash drives?”
“I don’t know but I think we should take a look at what’s on the drives. They could be full of family pictures or contain something that relates to the case.”
“I agree,” she says, digging each flash drive out of the box and handing them to me. “Follow me. I’ll take you to my personal space downstairs.”
When we approach her safe room, I see she wasn’t joking about using it for her living quarters. She’s got a staggeringly good setup. Much like me, she has a super-nice chair and multiple monitors. Lexi literally jumps into her chair and slides the first drive into her computer. I stand behind her, looking over her shoulder. Lexi laughs, “Looks like it’s all my mom’s old recipes.”
She pulls it out, tosses it onto her desk, and puts another in. “You called it earlier. This one is all family photos. Didn’t realize we had so many.”
The next one is full of her dad’s favorite literature and poems. There’s one filled with information on plumbing. Another on electrical wiring. A couple filled with information on generalized carpentry and home maintenance.
Then we started getting to the good stuff. “This looks like tons of information on home security, living off the grid, hiding in plain sight.”
“I’m assuming this one was your father’s?”
“I agree.”
Pulling that one out and discarding it she puts in a couple of more before we find what we’re looking for. When she clicks the file open, we see images of her mother. She’s bruised and battered, sitting in a hospital bed.
Lexi gasps. “That’s my mom!”
“I know. Don’t freak out. Let’s try to figure out what happened to her.”
She clicks on a document and when it opens, we see the title is ‘Medical Discharge Report’. I squat down beside Lexi and put my arm around her. We silently read the document together. It talks about how she was attacked in the parking lot of the local college by an unknown assailant who abandoned the attack when her husband, who she came to pick up, approached the vehicle. The report says her injuries were superficial, but referred her for follow-up with a therapist.
Lexi’s hand comes up to cover her mouth. “So it’s true that my mom had a crisis event during that time period. Do you think it was the same man who attacked the co-ed and killed her?”
“We can’t know. Let’s keep looking through the files on his flash drives.”
She glances up at me for a brief second before clicking open the next folder in the row. It was an official police report of the crime. We kept looking through the files, but it didn’t appear that her attacker was ever arrested or that the police had suspected it may be linked to the co-ed murder. “Either there were two men attacking women at your father’s campus, or this is the same man,” I tell her.
“I can’t believe my mother lived with that secret every day of my life and I never knew.” The hurt in Lexi voice tears at my heart.
“Your mother probably liked her privacy, and your father supported her by doing whatever it took to help her move past this horrific event.”
“I keep thinking it’s the same guy,” she admits.
“Most killers don’t start out murdering someone. The work their way up to it by committing smaller crimes. There are serial killers out there that started this way and were never caught,” I explain.
“That’s a chilling thought,” she whispers as she stares at one of the images of her mother.
I reach over and pull the flash drive from her computer. “This explains why your father was so paranoid and security conscious. He had it in his mind that if he kept moving this guy would never find your mother again.”
“That makes sense,” she murmurs. Lexi looks a little shell-shocked at discovering her mother had been attacked possibly by the same individual who ended up killing another woman.
I see the exhaustion on her face and wonder if she actually got any sleep last night. I ask, “Do you want to lie down and rest? I could stay here with you.” Pulling my black leather rucksack off my back I add, “I brought my laptop. I can go through all the flash drives more thoroughly while you catch some z’s.” There was quite a mix of stuff on those flash drives, I don’t know how tech-minded Lexi’s father was, but I want to check the metadata in case some of the photos are hiding stuff.
She nods and climbs from her chair to her bed, and burrows down under her blankets. “I didn’t get much sleep last night, she admits. “Maybe just a short rest.”
I leave Lexi’s computer active because I don’t know if she’s working on downloads or updating her games. Instead I edge her keyboard out of the way to make space for my computer and start with the flash drive that contains details of her mother’s attack. I realize rather quickly that she was lucky it wasn’t damn sight worse. Her husband interrupted the attack in time to save her from being raped or killed. The look on his face in some of the hospital pictures is just downright tragic. I can tell he really loved his wife and was devastated to see her injured.
I put in one of the last few flash drives that we didn’t look at and make a shocking discovery. There are maps and handwritten notes scanned into a digital file relating to five more dead women strung across three states. It takes me only a moment to realize that her father wasn’t hiding from the man who attacked his wife and killed the co-ed, he was trying to track down the guy. From the looks of it, his wife was helping him. It seems like every time they caught up with him, it was too late.
Shit, this explains why he was so anally retentive about security. It wasn’t because he feared the killer would find them. It was because he was worried that he’d get the drop on the killer, and he’d retaliate. What was this man thinking of playing a cat-and-mouse game with a serial killer with his wife and kid in tow?
I glance over at Lexi’s now sleeping face. Her expression is so relaxed and innocent. I literally cannot fathom putting her at risk this way. Poor Lexi was raised by a crazy man. He just wasn’t crazy in the way we thought he was.
I keep digging through the flash drives, looking for more information, but it looks like this is it. The drives with family photos and recipes are just that, there’s nothing hidden in the metadata. I reach for my phone and text Siege about what I just found. I want to take Lexi to the clubhouse where I know she’ll be safe until I can figure out what’s going on, but I dare not. I can’t risk drawing a serial killer to our clubhouse, nor can I risk letting this man get away to prey upon more innocent women.
I’m deep in thought when I hear someone whisper, “Leave. You should not be here.”
My head jerks up and I look around the room. Lexi is still fast asleep, so it wasn’t her. Maybe I imagined it. I wiggle her mouse and check to see if she has anything playing, like music or a video. There is nothing that I can see.
I quickly start loading the contents of each flash drive onto my laptop. I want to be able to review this information once I get back to my office because I’m almost certain to find more clues scattered about. I can’t afford to leave any stone unturned. Lexi’s life may depend on it.