Malicious. Jacob Stone

      “You’ll get it. Now get out of my office before your stench makes me lose my lunch.”

      Lemmon shook his head sadly at Fowler as he got up from his chair. “If you’re going to be a thief you should learn to treat your fellow thieves with more respect.”

      Lemmon whistled the tune “We’re in the Money” as he left Fowler’s office. Waiting for him in the office he’d been given was Chester Eckhardt, the founder and CEO of Eckhardt Engineering. Eckhardt’s round, jowly face was livid with rage.

      “Did you get all that?” Lemmon asked, because he had kept an open cell phone connection with Chester Eckhardt while he had been in Fowler’s office.

      “Every word,” Eckhardt said, his voice shaking with anger. “I’d like to go in there now and break his jaw.”

      “I don’t blame you. If it will make you feel any better, I gave him a good shot right in the breadbasket.” Lemmon tapped his own stomach. “The way the color drained out of his face, I’m lucky he didn’t puke on my shoes. The good news is you have enough now for an arrest, but I’d suggest waiting for him to wire the forty-eight thousand into the account you set up. It will make the case against him that much stronger.”

      Eckhardt was still seething. “You don’t think Alice Gleason was involved?” he asked.

      “I don’t think so. I grilled her pretty good. If she fooled me, she’s a damned good liar. And a sociopath.”

      “I don’t believe she’s that,” Eckhardt said with a decisive nod of his head. “Just someone who got taken advantage of. But I’ll be talking to her. And I’ll be wanting to look at her banking records.” He held his hand out to Lemmon. Lemmon took it, and fought to keep from wincing. It was almost like a python had wrapped itself around his hand.

      “I’d been hoping that being underbid like we were was a fluke. That sonofabitch Fowler might’ve cost my company eighteen million dollars.” Ekhardt cleared his throat, and added, “This incident has made me realize I need to open a new position. Vice president of corporate security. It’s yours if you want it.”

      Lemmon thanked him for the thought, but told Eckhardt he was afraid the position would become too boring once the other employees saw what happened to Fowler. After a few more words with Eckhardt, Lemmon bid adieu. He waited until he was outside before shaking his hand crushed by Eckhardt’s beefy paw. He further waited until he was in his car before calling Morris.

      “I rolled the dice like we talked about and got a useable confession, and am available to help with this serial killer case.”

      “That’s good,” Morris said, his voice sounding weary over the phone. “We got another body. A doorman by the name of Javier Lopez who was working at Heather Brandley’s condo building.”

      “That was fast.”

      “Yeah, it was, although I think it was partly a murder of necessity. That the killer needed Lopez dead. We should be able to confirm this after we get a look at some phone records. But I also suspect this psycho wants to keep us from catching our breath. Anyway, I can certainly use you on this. Are you still in San Diego?”

      “Yep, I just got in my car. I’ll call you when I get to LA.”

      Chapter 17

      “Excuse me, Miss, do you have this in teal?”

      For several minutes, Hannah Welker intentionally ignored the skinny man with the scraggly beard as he performed an assortment of pantomimes to get her attention. One of the perks of working for Hipster Dipster was that the sales personnel were required to be rude. It was considered part of the ironic charm of the store. But she also had an English Lit paper due tomorrow on Wise Blood by Flannery O’Connor, and she still had over a hundred pages that she needed to read before her shift ended, so she was planning to be more than just ironically rude to this guy. If she could get away with it, she was going to flat out act as if he didn’t exist.

      “Wise Blood. Cool book,” the guy said. “Must be hard reading it with customers like me bugging you, huh, Miss?”

      “It’s Ms.,” Hannah hissed under her breath.

      “Ah ha! I got your attention. Finally. So will you see if you have this in teal? Twenty-eight waist, thirty-six length.”

      Hannah had made the mistake of acknowledging his presence. He wasn’t going to leave now. She looked up from her book to see the skinny guy grinning widely. After all, treating him like dog poop was all part of the fun. Sighing and giving him her best put-upon look, she said, “If that’s the only way I can get you to leave me alone, fine, I’ll go check.”

      She got up and flashed him an exasperated look. He giggled, thinking it was part of the act. It wasn’t. On her way to the stockroom, she gave an extra-long look at a mannequin she passed in the women’s section. This one was dressed in tan leather boots, plaid green and yellow pants, a gray blouse, and a flowery cotton sweater. It wasn’t the outfit that made her stare. She kind of liked it. But each time she had passed the mannequin that day something about it seemed off, and she couldn’t quite figure out what it was.

      She found the teal-colored pants that the skinny guy was asking for. She almost went back empty-handed, because now she was going to have to spend time ringing up the sale. But doing something like telling that guy the store didn’t have an item that it did could get her fired, and this was a sweet gig, especially with all the time it gave her for her college work.

      She stopped to look again at the mannequin. Something was definitely wrong about it. She decided after she finished Wise Blood she’d satisfy her curiosity and figure out what it was that bugged her.

      “Your lucky day,” she told the skinny guy in her best bored voice as she handed him the pants.

      “I’m sorry if I interfered with your reading pleasure,” he said, still grinning.

      “English Lit assignment,” she said.

      “Paper due?”

      “Tomorrow.”

      “Ah ha. You figure out yet what your paper’s going to be about?”

      “I’m not sure yet. I still have over a hundred pages to read. But something about sin and faith.”

      A loud popping noise, like what a large firecracker might make, got both of them turning in the direction of the stockroom. This was followed almost immediately by a crashing noise.

      “What was that?” the skinny man asked.

      Hannah had no idea.

      “I better go see,” she said.

      “I’ll join you.”

      She wasn’t going to turn down his offer of chivalry. What really spooked her was where the crashing sound came from. It might’ve only been her imagination, but she could’ve sworn it was where that creepy mannequin had been set up—the one that had something off-putting about it.

      The skinny guy, who told Hannah his name was Josef, led the way toward the stockroom, and sure enough it was the mannequin that had crashed to the floor and now lay in two pieces—the upper torso and the lower half. The lower half was by far the bigger piece, and it didn’t look right to Hannah. Whatever the popping noise was, it had split the pants revealing not plastic, but instead what looked like bloodless, way-too-white flesh.

      “That’s not blood, is it?” Josef asked.

      He was pointing at a small puddle leaking out of the lower half. Hannah all at once felt woozy, and she would’ve collapsed to the floor if Josef hadn’t caught her.