Jack King - Vile Blood

Vile Blood

A Detective Cliff Husto Thriller

JACK KING

Postmodern Publishing New York

2023 Jack King

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner without written permission except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews. This is a work of fiction. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is coincidental and not intended by the author.

This novel is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and events either are products of the authors feverishly fertile imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual incidents, locales, or people, living or dead, is totally coincidental.

Vile Blood

Postmodern Publishing New York, NY

In Appreciation

of the talented team
at Postmodern Publishing

Table of Contents

Prologue

Rape of Spring

10:19 p.m., March 15, 1977, Houston Memorial Park

You got the stuff? the boy softly muttered as he approached.

Yeah. Why wouldnt I?

You sure theres nobody around? whispered the skinny teenager. He was fidgety, his head turning from side to side, eyeballing the shadows among the trees and the running cement path curving like an enormous gray snake off in the distance behind them.

Yup. Were all alone. All the old geezer walkers, ladies with the baby strollers, and runners finished hours ago. His heavyset friend grinned. Relax, bro. Its all good. He was always the cool, confident one.

Lower your voice, his companion hissed. How do you know for sure were alone now? He glanced nervously again at the running track.

Dont worry, dude. I came out here yesterday. Before sundown. The bigger boy spoke in a quieter voice this time, nodding encouragingly. Just hung out. Watched. Everybody was gone an hour after dark. By seven oclock, it was dead city. The cops dont even bother to patrol here. Unless, of course, someone sees something and calls them. But theres no one around now to see anything.

He patted his friends shoulder and smiled. Chill.

Staying out late on a school night was not a big problem for either. So long as they had mostly finished homework beforehand. Ate some dinner. Didnt come home high. Or drunk. Or in trouble. And got to bed before eleven thirty.

They were pushing it tonight.

They finished their little drug deal, then stood talking idly for a few minutes. Feeling the cool breeze. Listening to the wind whistling through the treetops. The sound of the crickets.

They knew each other from high school. In the same grade.

As an extra precaution, both had parked their old clunkers in the auxiliary parking around the bend. They then walked through the woods to the designated spot. The main parking lot for the south side of the park loomed seventy-five yards diagonally behind them. But there were no cars parked there now. And the thick cluster of trees and near darkness shielded their presence anyway.

The skinny boy finally began to relax. Enjoying a few minutes of camaraderie before rushing home.

Suddenly, a car pulled into the big parking lot. It moved slowly, its tires heavily crunching against the loose gravel before grinding to a halt. The headlights beamed for a few seconds into the gloom of the trees before flashing off. They heard doors opening and shutting, footsteps on the uneven surface. And muted voices.

Although there was no way whoever it was could possibly notice them hidden in the woods, the nervous boy subconsciously stepped back and ducked behind a massive oak. His buddy, though, stayed where he waslistening intently. With the wind blowing and the distance between them, the two boys couldnt make out specific words. But they did hear a girls voice whimpering. She sounded scared. The others were male. Callous. Laughing. Indifferent to whatever the girls plight was.

Finally, his curiosity won out over his cowardice. The scrawnier teen crept cautiously forward, darting from one tree to another until he could spy what was going on without being seen.

He craned his neck around the base of the big tree to watch in the darkness.

Oh, shit, he murmured. His eyes were wide with panic. This is bad. This isvery bad. He saw two men with a girl being held down on the ground. She started to cry out, but her mouth was roughly covered up.

Shut it, bitch.

The man growled, his breathing hoarse and labored with sexual frenzy. He used his body weight on top of the girl to pin her while his free hand thrust violently under her skirt.

The hidden boy sucked in slow, ragged breaths as he watchedequal parts fascinated and horrified. He saw the first man brutally rape the girl, three times, his right hand crushing her mouth, while the second man dispassionately viewed the action, occasionally glancing around to make sure they were alone.

What came next was worst of all.

The rapist strangled the girl, his hands squeezing both air and blood from her slender neck, her once-beautiful eyes bulging in terror until they saw no more. Slowly, the man rolled off her lifeless body.

The other man coughed. Seemingly unconcerned. But that was all a front. Inside, he felt sick and frightened.

I want a souvenir, the rapist whispered. So beautiful. But the words were spoken too softly. The wind stirred just then, making it impossible for boy to hear.

The skinny teen saw the man pull something out of his left pants pocket. He knelt on one knee and lifted the dead girls stiffening leg up over his other knee.

What the hell is he doing now?

He couldnt make out what was happening. Which only intensified his terror.

The boy watched as the killer wiped something on the grass, then suddenly stood up, cramming whatever he had in his hands into his two pockets. The man ran his hands over his disheveled hair, smoothing it back into place as he stood there, thinking. The man glanced once at his vehicle, then walked out into the woods directly in front of the parking lot, searching. He strode thirty yards deep among the trees until he saw what he was looking for. He returned to his companion standing by the body and motioned. The two men picked up the girls still form and carried it to the base of a mighty water oak tree, an ancient specimen that had a massive gap above the ground among its ancient, tangled roots.

The boy warily followed them at a distance, creeping from tree trunk to tree trunk, until he could just make out where they had taken the body.

He watched the two men cram the corpse deep inside and cleverly hide the gap by stuffing ground cover, sod, sticks, rocks, forest debris into the opening untilit was no longer an opening. But crammed full and camouflaged completely.

The killer pushed and shoved against the outer surface of the compaction with his hands, packing more stuff in. Then he got down in a push-up position on the ground with his feet against the surface, packing everything in tighter with the strength of his legs. Packed it so tightly that even wild animals might not be able to get at the soon-to-be decomposing corpse.

He backed away, breathing heavily, but satisfied with his efforts.

He nodded to the other. Lets go.

When the men returned to their car, the boy waited until the moment the vehicle had finishing backing out and turned to leave with the headlights no longer shining on the woods. He nimbly hurried from one trunk to another until he was close enough to see the back of the departing car, briefly illuminated by the light of the full moon for a couple seconds.

The boy stood as still as a statue for nearly a minute, his brain processing all that he had seen. Finally, he returned to the other teenager, who was still waiting for a report.

He told his friend everything. Whadda we do, man? That is some serious shit right there. He gulped and shook his lanky head morosely.