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From: Rhettxxoo@aol.com
Subject: "Southern Hospitality" by Rhett Dreams, 2/10 [mf, crime drama]
SOUTHERN HOSPITALITY
by Rhett Dreams (c. 1996)
Chapter Two
Special Agent Clarice Starling got the call while she was
drinking her afternoon tea, from a woman who identified herself
as Mrs. Albert. It took Starling a second before she made the
connection and placed the name.
"Of course, Mrs. Albert. I remember you. How's Beth?"
Clarice Starling had gone to school with Beth Albert at
the University of Virginia. They had been pretty close friends at
the time, and once Clarice traveled with Beth and her mother
down to Florida during one spring break. Clarice did not
consider herself the great beauty that Beth most certainly was,
but she had enjoyed the fact that her blond friend attracted men
like a magnet and she got her pick of the leftovers. They'd
drifted apart after college, as Clarice's excellent grades and
double major in psychology and criminology got her accepted at
the FBI academy while Beth worked as a reporter for a paper in
Baltimore and then in Tallahassee. They exchanged Christmas
cards but that was all.
"She's gone," said the strained voice of Mrs. Albert.
"She's been missing for a month now. The police can't find a
trace of her, nor can the FBI."
Starling asked a series of questions, probing gently until
she had the story. Beth Albert had checked out of her hotel in
New Orleans on a Sunday thirty days ago. She was expected
at her fiancee's condo in Tampa the next morning which meant
she had planned to drive all night. She never showed and her
fiancee, Howard Stennis, filed a missing person's report the
next day. Because the police had no idea whether she was still
in Louisiana, or someplace in Florida, or in between, not much
was done and the case was transferred to the FBI. The mother
was understandably concerned, and voiced her belief that
they'd stopped looking for her daughter, believing that she'd run
away with some man.
"Why don't you give me the name of the agent who's
handling Beth's case, Mrs. Albert, and I'll call and find out
what's happening."
Starling jotted down the name and promised to get back
as soon as she knew something. She called the number in
New Orleans and left a message on the agent's answering
machine, identifying herself and asking him to call her about the
Albert case.
Starling was in the Behavioral Science section at FBI
headquarters, the Bureau specialists in serial killers, and she
only had an academic understanding of how the FBI might track
a missing person across multiple states. The current case she
was working on involved a series of rape and murders in
Southern Arkansas and Northern Mississippi. Four bodies had
been found so far and the women had been raped, seminal fluid
found in each of them, and shot three times, one through each
breast and once after the gun barrel was inserted in their
vaginas. Her boss and section chief, Jack Crawford, was now
in Dallas, attending the autopsy of the latest victim.
She also worked on the case of the psychiatrist, Dr.
Hannibal Lecter, the brilliant but psychotic killer who escaped
after helping her solve her first case. Dr. Lecter had
disappeared two years earlier, after killing the two officers who
held him. He sent her a post card every couple of months. It
would be fingerprinted, analyzed and traced, always to no avail.
She knew he was taunting her, amusing himself and
emphasizing his great intellect at the same time for having
avoided capture. But it was eerie to get these communiques,
and she shivered when she recalled their meetings at the
asylum where he'd been kept locked up. Lecter's piercing eyes
haunted her dreams, those all knowing orbs and the twisted
brilliance behind them.
A secretary brought her the preliminary autopsy report
that had just been FAXed from Dallas, and she read the
gruesome details with that part of her brain that could stay
detached from any feelings for the slain girl. The report
speculated that the vaginal wound was post-mortem, as the first
.38 caliber bullet had entered her heart and was fatal. Her
phone rang while she scanned the report.
"Gene Myers returnin' your call," said a voice with a
distinct Southern drawl.
"Thanks for calling back, Agent Myers. I got a call from
Mrs. Albert this afternoon, who told me that you're handling the
case of her daughter, Bethany Albert."
"Yep," he said. "Call be Gene, please."
"Okay, Gene. I'm Clarice. Beth and I were college
friends at UVA. I'm just calling to find out what you've learned.
Is there any hope of finding her?"
"There's always hope, Clarice, but this one's getting
cold. She had dinner Saturday night with a Ms. Kelly Smith,
who tells me that Ms. Albert was in good spirits and was
looking forward to her wedding in a couple of months. The
folks at the hotel remember the girl, who I believe was quite, ah,
memorable, going out the next morning on foot. One of the
guys at the registration desk recalls that she asked for a late
checkout time. I know she went shopping that Sunday,
because we traced a half-dozen credit card charges to various
stores and restaurants in the Latin quarter. Mostly tourist traps,
where you can buy tee shirts and doo dads. She checked out
at about seven that evening. A woman of her description was
seen at a roadside diner 'bout an hour east of N'Orleans. Then
nothing."
"East... then she was traveling toward home," noted
Starling.
"Looks that way," he conceded.
"No other stops along the way, say for gas?"
"No credit card charges. I had the Louisiana and
Mississippi Staties check the gas stations along the Interstate
but nobody remembers the girl stopping for gas. With the car
she was driving, a $90,000 Mercedes roadster, and with her
looks, I'd be real surprised if she could have stopped for gas
and gone un-remembered."
"No sign of the car?"
"None, and the bunko boys tell me there's an active
market for those babies. They're checking new registrations of
that make and model, state by state, but it'll take awhile. And
we don't really know if the car's been stolen, or if it's at the
bottom of some swamp, or if she'd decided to take off."
"I know the girl, Gene. I can't imagine her doing that,
and the report from Kelly Smith seems to support the
supposition that she was happy with her fiancee and on her
way home."
"That's my guess, too, but I got to keep all the
possibilities in mind. Do you know her fiancee, Howard
Stennis?"
"No. I've never met the man."
"I went to see him. He's rich, tanned and twice her age.
He made her sign a pre-nuptial agreement. That doesn't mean
a lot these days, not for guys in his tax bracket."
"What's your read on him?" asked Starling.
"Seems very straight. Background check showed
nothing. Always pays his alimony on time and put three kids
through college, two through grad school. Active in the
community. I believe he's genuinely concerned about the girl.
Called me yesterday as a matter of fact."
"What's next?"
"Well, normally we'd just sit and wait, hope she shows
up someplace or we find the car and can trace it back."
"But..." prompted Starling.
"I got me a funny feelin' on this. So I ran a computer
check over the last two years and found a number of similar
disappearances, all unexplained. We sorted through the
records, selecting MP's along the gulf coast who were driving
expensive cars when they disappeared, and found thirteen."
"That sounds like a lot," said Clarice.
"It is. Ran a similar check for New England and found
only two. West coast states had three. Two across the entire
midwest."
"Shit," muttered Starling..
"Yeah," drawled Myers. "And nine of those shared
another similarity with the Albert case. The MP was female,
between eighteen and thirty. I'm requesting all the files now,
hoping to find some link. Maybe trace one of those cars."
After a few more minutes Starling thanked the agent and
hung up. She knew that Agent Myers was doing all he could,
with considerable insight, but she wanted to help somehow.
"What happened to Beth?" she asked herself. "What
happened all those women?" She felt a cold knot in her belly as
she considered the implications. Acting on her worse fears
she called an agent she knew from her training days at
Quantico, and asked if he had time to talk to her.
- o -
"There's an active underground market for young women
and girls, especially white ones" said Agent Quinn after Starling
had relayed what she knew about the Albert case and the
others. Despite her background and training dealing with the
most crazed of all killers and the carnage they left behind, she
felt her skin crawl as he explained.
"Mexico is trying to cooperate but it's not doing much
good. Just last month they raided a brothel in Ciudad Juarez,
just south of El Paso, that was doing a good business with
clients from both sides of the border. They found four white
girls, and two boys, all runaways from up north who'd been
abducted and sold to the brothel."
"Slavery?"
"Oh, yes," he said. "We were extremely lucky on this
one, and were able to trace the kids back to an outfit in Houston
that bought and sold human beings. Wiretaps and surveillance
helped us time our raid perfectly, and we caught them with two
girls who'd been kidnapped, raped and were waiting to be
shipped south."
"This is sick," said Starling and Quinn smiled ruefully at
her, knowing full-well the horrors of her specialty.
"But we're not stopping the flow, not by a long shot," he
said. "A white girl can bring $100,000 or more in Asia, the
Middle East, and elsewhere. The brothels that exploit these
girls are well hidden and well financed, and the local police are
bribed to stay silent, with money and access to the girls or
boys, depending on their sick tastes. The dealers are more
secretive and careful than anybody you can name, including
big-time drug dealers. When we think we're getting close they
disappear, probably to the Caribbean or someplace else off-
shore, and live off their un-touchable bank accounts."
Starling thanked him and walked despondently back to
her office. She called Beth's mother and gave what solace she
could, explaining that the investigation remained open and
active. She didn't say a word of what she'd learned from Quinn.
Then she pushed it out of her mind and picked up the
autopsy report and resumed reading.
- o -
The white Porsche pulled off the road and stopped
neatly in front of the single row of pumps. The young man
behind the wheel peered into the well-lit office. The other
occupant of the car, an attractive redhead, reached over and
honked the horn.
"Be patient, Deb," said the man.
"Price Brothers' Towing and Service," said the girl,
reading out loud the large sign over the office area. "They'd
better fuckin' hurry if they want to service us."
Sam Price ambled out and approached the car, his eyes
admiring the expensive new sports car, then the occupants.
"Fill it?" he said.
"Yeah, thanks," said the driver.
"And hurry," said the girl.
Price noted that the driver was a strikingly handsome
guy in his early twenties and that his snotty girlfriend was quite
pretty, from what he could see. When he took the credit card
back inside the office, he made a quick call to the police, and
was quickly routed to Trent's cruiser.
"Two dirtbags, sheriff, will be traveling east in a black
van," he said, using the code that told Trent it was a white or
light-colored sports car.
"Thanks, Sam," came the response.
Sam took an imprint of the card and returned to the
impatient couple. The young man scrawled his signature on
the charge slip, grabbed his card and pulled away without
waiting for his copy if the receipt. Sam watched him pull out
and heard the car race through it's gears as roared off into the
night.
"Your welcome," said the tall, seedy-looking Price,
sliding the receipt into his pocket. If Trent caught up with the
Porsche and decided to grab em', he'd destroy the record of
their purchase.
- o -
Trent pulled the speeding Porsche over four miles down
the road. He had never before been willing to try to nab two
people. He knew he could manage it, but he also knew that
something could go wrong and judged that it wasn't worth the
added risk. As he approached the car, his flashlight checking
out the occupants, he decided to give them a ticket and leave it
at that.
"License and registration, please," he said through the
open window. Trent watched as the young man dug for his
wallet. He was surprised when the passenger door opened
and the girl got out.
"We're late already," said the redhead, her green eyes
blazing with irritation. "Can't you just let us go?"
"Please return to the vehicle, ma'am," said Trent,
reasonably.
"Listen up, asshole," she said, hands on her hips, glaring
at Trent over the top of the car. "My dad is a U.S.
Congressman, and he'll have your crummy badge if you
continue to harass us."
Trent's blood boiled hearing these insults from the
spoiled rich girl.
The driver held his paperwork out to Trent and tried to
calm the situation. "Listen, Officer, she's a little upset---"
"Zip it, mister!" said Trent through his clenched teeth,
grabbing the license and registration from the man's hand. "Get
out of the car, now!"
The man got out quickly and Trent grabbed his arm and
led him to the curb.
"This is harassment, you dickhead" shouted the irate girl.
"You're gonna get---"
Trent had un-holstered his gun as he walked the pliant
man around to the curb and now brought it up into the girl's
face. Her epitaph died on her lips as she stared down the
barrel of his revolver.
"Let me tell you exactly what you're gonna do, bitch," he
said in a tone that made it clear he'd take no more. "You and
your unfortunate friend are gonna walk over and sit your butts
in the back of that police car. You're gonna do it now, and
without another word."
The man reacted immediately, grabbing the girl's arm
and leading her to the cruiser. Once he had the two locked in
the back, behind the protective screen, Trent quickly got into
the car and took off, his tires squealing in protest as he turned
the wheel hard and reversed directions, heading back toward
town. Price passed him with the tow truck and couldn't have
missed the flashing headlights that signaled him to pick up the
Porsche.
"You dumb son of a bitch," muttered Trent to himself,
slamming his palm against the steering wheel in frustration.
This was a dangerous thing he'd started and he shouldn't have
let the bitch rile him. If she was telling the truth, and her daddy
was a Congressman, the search would be extensive. He'd let
her get under his skin but now there was no turning back. He'd
just have to get rid of them and batten down. No more
abductions for a long time. He turned off the highway and
raced down the dirt road to the Heinz farm.
- o -
The idea began to form in his mind later, after he and
Tom and shackled the pair to the wall in the basement. He
went out to the cruiser and called Sam, suggesting carefully
that he bring his load to the farm. He quickly overrode Sam's
objections, repeating his instructions very carefully. He told
Tom to watch their guests and drove back to police
headquarters.
Every police department and county sheriff in the area
had been getting regular reports from the FBI about the serial
killer up North. He quickly scanned all the reports and read the
newspaper account of the latest find, a woman found in
Clarksdale, two hundred miles north of him.
The redhead, Debbie, was probably telling the truth
about her father. The Porsche was registered in the name of
Robert Walters of Birmingham, Alabama, and there was a first-
term republican Congressman from Alabama with the same
name. The driver's license of the guy, Henry Burns, had an
address in Birmingham as well.
The idea that was forming in his head was complicated
and simple at the same time. It would ensure that his area of
the state would not be combed, looking for the congressman's
daughter and her friend. They'd find her body up North, shot in
the same manner as the other victims. He examined it from
every angle he could, using his FBI and police knowledge of
forensics and crime scene techniques to help him. It was
perfect, he decided. He knew full well that here was no way he
could duplicate the MO of the rapist/killer who was active up
North. They'd test the bullets and know they were fired from a
different gun than those found in the earlier victims. He didn't
know whether or not the semen of the rapist was non-secreting,
making the blood type a mystery. In addition, there were
probably many other details of each case that the FBI was
intentionally keeping back form the papers and police.
The beauty of his plan was, he wanted the investigators
to know Debbie Walters had been murdered by a copycat killer.
The similarities would not fool them but it was the type of
thing an amateur might try to cover his tracks. The amateur
Trent had in mind was none other than Debbie Walter's
traveling companion, Henry Burns.
Moving quickly Trent went to the basement evidence
room and found a thirty-eight who's previous owner was now in
prison. Then he left for the farm.
- o -
"We've got to do this or our operation comes to a halt for
at least a year, and this place will be crawling with Staties and
Feds, looking for her," said Trent to his three partners. The two
Price brothers were there, along with Tom, and they had
listened closely to his plan.
"Who knows what they'd find, snooping around
here bouts," conceded Sam Price.
"You sure it'll fool em'?" asked Tom.
Trent shook his head. "It's not supposed to. They'll see
right through it and conclude that somebody else knocked her
off, not the killer they're trackin'. When they find her Porsche
back in Birmingham, with his prints all over it and the gun too,
they'll like our boy downstairs for the crime."
"And they'll find him, but in no condition to talk" said
Tom, grinning.
"Yep," said Trent.
"I'm in," said Ward Price and his brother nodded.
"Me too," said Tom.
- o -
The body of Debbie Walters was found two days later,
twenty miles from the site of the previous one. The cops
arrived first, and were convinced by the twin holes in her
breasts and the mess made of her sex that this was the fifth
victim of the serial killer. The local FBI was notified and within
minutes Clarice Starling was on the phone, madly jotting down
the details. When she hung up she placed two calls, one to
secure a seat on the next flight to Jackson. The second was to
American Airlines, and she waited impatiently before she was
connected to the cockpit of the plane carrying her boss, Jack
Crawford.
"Sounds like our man," said Crawford when she relayed
the details.
"I've booked myself on the next flight down," she said,
and then held her breath, fearing that he'd call her off and go
himself.
"Good," he said. "I wont land in Baltimore for another
two hours. Get down there, Starling, and call me once you
have the details."
- o -
It wasn't until thirty-six hours later that the results of the
autopsy and forensic analysis revealed the anomalies of this
case. The body was taken from the field where it was
discovered directly to the modern coroner's building in Jackson.
The surprises and shocks came slowly but built into an
avalanche. Ten minutes into the autopsy the medical examiner
revealed to Starling, who was assisting, that the girl had been
raped anally, as well as vaginally. This was not the case with
the previous victims.
"Maybe he brought a friend," suggested the M.E.,
ruefully.
The second shock was that all three wounds were post-
mortem. The girl had died by asphyxiation, which the M.E.
described as very slow strangulation. He also found faint signs
of bruising around the wrists and ankles, suggesting that she'd
been restrained at some point before her death.
The bullets retrieved from this Jane Doe were of the
same caliber as in the previous cases, but showed under the
scope to have been fired from a different weapon. This
surprised Starling but didn't rule out their killer. He could have
changed weapons for some reason. The tests on the semen
found in both orifices clinched it---the man who raped this
woman was definitely not the same as the perp for the other
four women. The semen was consistent with the theory of one
rapist rather than two, in that both samples came from a
secretor of an uncommon blood type, but the previous killer was
not a secretor. His semen did not allow them to determine
blood type.
"We've got a copycat, boss," she said when she next
spoke to Crawford. "Definitely not the same guy."
"Oh, shit," he said. "Are you ready for another shock?"
"What?" she asked.
"We're pretty sure we know who the victim is. Deborah
Walters, the daughter of Congressman Robert Walters of
Alabama, has been missing since Sunday. According to the
MP report, she was allegedly driving back to Birmingham from
New Orleans, traveling with a friend, a Mr. Henry Burns, also
from Birmingham. Same red hair and green eyes as the
deceased, same age, same small mole on the left cheek."
"Jesus!" said Starling. Congressman Walters had been
elected on a strong law-and-order platform, and had been a
particularly harsh critic of the FBI.
"He's flying into Nashville to identify his daughter's body.
I want you to meet him at the airport, Starling, and drive him to
the coroners."
- o -
While Starling was dealing as best she could with the
Congressman's grief and anger after the positive identification
of his daughter, the Alabama State police found the Porsche
and the body of Henry Burns, slumped over the wheel, shot
once through the head. The car had been driven up a secluded
road and then off into dense shrubbery, and it was pure luck
that a young black kid stumbled across it while he was taking a
short cut to fish at a nearby pond.
Over the next few days the facts of the case became
clear. Fingerprint analysis found only Burns's prints on the gun,
and only his and Debbie Walter's in the car. The autopsy of Burns and
the forensics afterwards revealed three important things. His
blood type was consistent with that of the semen found in
Walters's vagina and anus. Minute particles of human feces
were found on Burn's penis. Third, the bullet retrieved from his
brain was fired from the same gun as the one used on Walters. The gun
they found clasped in Burns' lifeless fingers.
- o -
"Okay, Starling, let me hear how it went," said Crawford,
now back in his comfortable office in Maryland.
"Burns and Walters are driving back from New Orleans
and decide to have a little fun. They find a motel someplace or
maybe just some secluded spot for their sex games. He ties
her up, probably willingly, and they have sex. They do it again
later, but this time he takes her anally and wraps something
around her neck. I've read that this is not uncommon with the
kinky set. It's supposed to heighten the pleasure to be partially
deprived of oxygen. Something goes wrong and she
suffocates. He panics, takes her out to the field and shoots her,
trying to imitate the killer that he's read about. Then he drives
home. He's either despondent over her death or he figures that
we'll nail him, so he offs himself."
"Where does he get the unregistered gun?" asked
Crawford, ticking off one finger, then the next as he spoke.
"Where did the sex take place? Do either of them have a
history of kinky sex? Why were they so far off the route
between New Orleans and Birmingham?"
"Wrap this one up, Starling," he concluded.
- o -
Tom, the black caretaker, was pacing back and forth in
the basement room of the old plantation house. Nude, and
quite drunk, he is as horny as he could remember. It was over
seven weeks since they did the blond, his last fuck, and three
weeks since he and Trent had done the job on the redhead and
her boyfriend.
He stroked his cock and recalled the scene of that night.
They came downstairs after agreeing on the plan and had
stripped and bound the struggling girl. The guy had been
surprised when Trent released him and told him to fuck the
redhead or they'd kill the two of them. While they waited for
him to undress and to get hard, Tom worked his fingers in the
girl's sex until she was good and wet. The guy entered her and
came after five minutes or so.
Tom recalled the scene with lust and frustration.
Standing behind the pair, watching the guy's gorgeous ass flex
and relax as he drove his cock into the girl, Tom's cock had
stiffened in his pants. Later, after allowing him time to recover,
they greased the girl and forced him to fuck her up the ass.
She was a virgin there, and cried as he worked his cock inside
her. The guy cried too as he unwillingly raped his girlfriend's
ass. Tom would have given anything to have had the
opportunity, then or later, to fuck the white boy's perfect, firm
ass.
Instead, after the guy had climaxed in her ass and
dressed, Tom took Trent's gun and forced the young man
outside and into the tow truck. They drove North for a half hour
before pulling off and parking behind a deserted gas station.
They waited there for a half-hour until Trent arrived and slipped
Tom a zip-locked bag containing the .38 and a glove. The
drove for another three hours before pulling off the road and
unloading the Porsche. Tom sat in the passenger seat and
directed Burns to drive down a dirt road and then into the
bushes. The Porsche got stuck after thirty yards or so, and
that's when Tom shot him, in the temple.
Tom reloaded another shell in the magazine before
closing Burns's hand around the grip and firing again, this time
out the open window. Trent had discussed this with Tom
carefully, how the powder burns needed to be on Burn's hands
for the cops to buy the suicide. He also explained that there
needed to be four and only four bullets missing from the
cartridge.
Drunk, swaying as he stood and stroked his hard black
cock, Tom closed his eyes and played back in his mind the
image of Burns's ass while he sodomized his groaning girl
friend. This time, however, in Tom's mind, he was in turn
fucking Burns, driving his cock between those firm cheeks and
into his ass. Tom came after a few minutes, his long thick cock
squirting jet after jet of cum onto the cement floor.
--
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