Cut Throat Chapter 2 : Hell Hound

Cut Throat Chapter 2 : Hell Hound

Chapter One: Enter, Cut Throat

L.A. is a dirty city. It’s even dirtier when a high rise on Spring Street is filled with dead bodies. Slit throats and decapitations. Severed arms and legs. Puddles of blood you have to step through just to get a look at the victims.

If you consider members of the toughest gang in L.A. to be victims. A lot of people don’t. Even other cops. Got what they deserved, is whispered through the hall as I tally up the body count.

Twenty-five corpses. Twenty-five men and women, slaughtered, without a judge or jury.

“What do you think, Detective Bledsoe?”

I turn to the uniform on my right and shake my head. He doesn’t care what I think. I can see it through the smug smile he wears in the shadows of the blood-splattered hallway.

“I think there’s a lot of dead people in here,” I say.

Another uniform leads me up to the conference room. We step over bodies to climb the steps in the stairwell and come out onto another mass slaying. Bodies everywhere. The stench of death and rancid fear fill my nostrils.

“In here, sir.”

He doesn’t have to tell me. The conference room is walled with glass. One of the pains are shattered, as if a body crashed through it.

“There he is, sir.”

I see him. Fool Killer. His muscled body covered in lacerations. His thick neck severed at the carotid. Gallons of blood blanket the tile floor beneath him.

I don’t feel sympathy for him. He was a killer. A drug dealer. A sexual deviant. Leader of one of the most brutal gangs in L.A.

“Looks like the same guy who did in B-Smart and his boys,” the officer next to me says. “Cut them all to pieces. Doesn’t leave a trace.”

I nod. It’s the same M.O. I’ve been seeing for a month. Some nut case with a sword cutting the city’s bad guys to pieces. Littering the streets with corpses we clean up.

I turn around and head back down the stairs. I’ve seen enough.

Outside, the morning sun cuts through downtown smog like a runny egg. News crew vans are parked behind the meat wagons and helicopters buzz overhead. Won’t be long now they’ll give this nutcase a nickname. Give him something to live up to.

I won’t let them do that. I’ll bust him first. He can live up to it in prison.

“Detective Bledsoe.”

I turn, recognizing the voice of the Times’s most annoying crime beat reporter. Marsha Covington.

“Is this the work of the Green Street Slayer?”

She shoves a mini-recorder in my face. I smile, place my hand over it, and push it away. Marsha’s annoying, always on my tail, always the first on the scene, but the way she looks in the little red suit she packs herself into reminds me to be cordial to the press.

“This isn’t Green Street, Marsha,” I remind her. “This is Spring.”

I move past and her voice catches me again. I turn around, taking my time to scope out the legs dripping out from the bottom of her skirt.

“Is it the same suspect, Detective? Do we have a serial killing vigilante on our hands?”

I give here the smile I imagine a father gives his little nincompoop daughter when she says something stupid. I put my hands on my belt to finish off the effect.

“We don’t have any vigilantes in this city, Miss Covington. Nor do we have a serial killer. What we have here, is a murderer, plain and simple. Let’s not give him anything to live up to, okay? Call him what he is. A killer.”

“Detective,” she says, batting her eyes at me, “word is this suspect used a sword to murder his victims on Green Street. Is this the same individual?”

She’s gone to far with that one, and I give her a look that tells her so.

“We haven’t released that information, Miss Covington. Can I ask you who your source is?”

This time she smiles like I’m the dopey kid.

“So, this is the same suspect?”

“I didn’t say that. I will not confirm that, and if you print it, I’ll make sure the department sues you for all you’re worth.”

My tirade doesn’t dent her smile a bit.

“Thank you, Detective.”

I watch her move on to the one of the M.E.’s toting out a body on a gurney. I shake my head, take one more look at her, and get out of there.

 The I.C.U. is the exact opposite of the building on Spring Street.

Clean. Sterile. Signs of life.

I look down at the man on the gurney. Bandages wrapped around his throat and hands. One of his 

legs were lopped off at the knee. Still in a coma. Hasn’t said a word since we found him.

I'm hoping he’ll wake up and tell me something. Tell me who did this to him. The only answer I’ve gotten so far has been the steady beep of the heart-rate machine and the other doodads they have him plugged into.

His name is Tonto Ramirez. Gang affiliation with Green Street Thugs. No record though. Maybe he’s too young, or just never been busted. He’s been busted now, though, but not by us. Not by the law. By some nut case with a sword.

I pull up a chair and sit by the bed. Take out my phone to scroll through today’s mundane blogs and news. When he wakes up, I’ll be here, and I’ll get the answers I need to bust this psycho.

He thinks this is his town, but he’s wrong.

This is my town.

The voice croaks out like a dying frog.

“Thirsty—”

My eyes come up from my phone and I find myself smiling. The kid is awake, staring at me with calm, sedated eyes.

I’m not smiling because I’m happy for the kid. I’m smiling because now it’s my turn for vengeance.


Continued in Chapter 3: Beneath the City