The X-Man by Brian R. Lundin (100 best novels of all time .TXT) 📕

or would want to harm her?

ANGELO
No, she never told me about any problems at work or anywhere. I can’t shake it that if I was there with her maybe it wouldn’t have happened.

RINGO
One last question, where were you last Saturday?

ANGELO
At work damnit, I have to work two Saturdays a month, are we done? Angelo said getting off the bench.

RINGO
You nervous?

ANGELO
Shit yeah, I’m nervous. Everybody knows the first suspect for you guys is the people close to the person

EVETTA
When was the last time you saw Peggy?

ANGELO
Last Thursday, we spent the night together. I dropped her off at work that Friday morning

EVETTA
Did you ever pay attention to her underwear?

ANGELO (PUT HIS CIGARETTE OUT ON THE GROUND)
Not really, why?

EVETTA
What about panty-hose?

ANGELO (ANGELO CLOSED HIS EYES)
I don’t think she ever wore those, I remember her saying we gave her some type of woman’s infection

EVETTA (HANDING ANGELO HER CARD)
Thanks for your time, we’ll be in touch

RINGO PICKS UP THE CIGARETTE BUTT AND PUT IT IN AN EVIDENCE BAGGIE
INT: COOK COUNTY MEDICAL EXAMINER’S OFFICE-DR. DIXON OFFICE
RINGO
Anything on the pantyhose?

DIXON
Nope, cheap, can be purchased at any Dollar or discount store

RINGO
We interviewed the boyfriend and were told that she didn’t wear pantyhose, gave her an infection, maybe he brought them with him

DIXON (RUBBING HIS SMALL, DARK, BUT EXTREMELY CLEAN HANDS TOGETHER)
So, maybe the killer brought them with him but there was sperm found inside her could be the boyfriends, if we could get a sample of his DNA we’ll know definitely.

RINGO (HANDING THE DOCTOR THE EVIDENCE BAGGIE WITH ANGELO’S BUTT)
No sperm was found anywhere in the apartment in this or the other five similar homicides. The victims were average young working women, no money or drug involvement, they all seemingly were picked at random, didn’t know each other, what is his damn motive?” I asked more to myself than the doctor. This is the boyfriends maybe you can get some DNA off it.

DIXON
I’ll send it to the lab with a top priority, check back in a couple of days.


EVETTA
What about the bruise on her head?

DIXON
Not too severe, but it could have knocked her out for a few minutes. Hey Ringo let’s get together for a game of chess one evening at Border’s in Hyde Park, do you some good to get away from this for a minute

RNGO
You’re on, I’ll call you and thanks, doc


FADE IN:
Ringo and Evetta are on their way back to the office.

RINGO
Ain’t it unusual for a woman living alone not to have curtains in her home, especially the bedroom, was she an exhibitionist who got off exposed herself? Had a voyeur who been watching her crawled into the open window and confronted her in the bathroom? Had the killer been watching her and knew her routine, knew when the boyfriend came over and when he left? Were there other routines, common links in the other killings that we have missed? Had she had a fight with Angelo? Was Peggy a victim of a copycat? It was well document that some psychopaths followed murders reported by the media and attempted to duplicate them. Did she use drug and owed a drug dealer? I know he’s still out there somewhere stalking his next victim. I want you to stay in touch with doc. I gave him Angelo’s cigarette butt and hopefully he can pull some DNA from it and I want you to use your snitches to find out how heavily Peggy was into drugs. Dixon said we found small amounts of marijuana in her blood and the CSI crew found some at her apartment. Also see if anyone ever saw her parading around her apartment nude or half-clothed. I’ve got a funny feeling about this one. I’ve assigned Scotty to try to track down her sister and her husband, ok?

EVETTA
Yep, that’s very unusual for a woman not to have curtains in her apartment. Could be a copycat but I doubt it, too many similarities.

RINGO
How are Clarence and the boys?”

EVETTA
Good, he’s taking them camping and fishing at Starved Rock, for some male bonding. Evetta placed the folder into her large bag and looked hard at me, I knew it was mama-nurturing time.

EVETTA
Listen, you come to the house this Sunday for dinner, spend some time with your godsons and chill out, you are beginning to look terrible, do you understand me?

RINGO
Yes ma’am

FADE IN:
After Evetta dropped me off at the office I thought about what Evetta had said, I pulled a small mirror out my desk drawer and looked at myself. Evetta was right I looked terrible and definitely needed to chill, my leg began to ache. I notified the unit secretary and told her I would be at the River Oaks Bally Fitness Center if she needed me.

INT: River Oaks Bally Fitness Center
Bally Fitness Center was a state-of-the art facility located in the River Oaks Shopping Mall on the far southeast side of the city. It had cardiovascular machines, resistance training equipment, exercise classes, personal trainers, tennis courts, saunas, juice bar and a pool. I tried to get in a swim and a workout at least four times a week, even though I was not a dues-paying member, the fitness center like other businesses in the city welcomed police officer and usually gave them a discount rate or no charge at all. The black female receptionist had a baldhead, wore oversized earrings and a thin face. The gymnasium white t-shirt with Bally’s silk- screened across her ample chest displayed hard nipples. She got out of her chair and I noticed her hard and flat dark brown abdomen. She wore white snugly fitting French-cut shorts that rode high on her flanks.

RECEPTIONIST (SEDUCTIVE TONE SHE WHISPERED)
Hi Detective

RINGO
Not too crowded today

RECEPTIONIST
Not yet, just wait a couple of hours

FADE IN:
The club’s stereo speakers were pounding out Lionel Richie’s “All Night Long,” as I changed into my sweats and exited the locker room. A well-shaped, young black woman wearing an orange Lycra body suit so tight it she might as well been naked passed him, smiled and seemed to walking in time with the music. I stopped and watched her as her ass shifted back and forth. I entered a large room, loud rock music was thumping over the room speakers and Lionel Richie’s tune was tuned out, thank goodness, I never could stand Lionel Richie’s commercialized music. Twenty men and eight women who comprised the aerobic class were pumping, flexing, running in place and leaping in unison to the sensual, thumping beat of Teddy Pendergrass. I went through a sliding glass into the smaller weight- room. This room had floor to ceiling mirrors, highly polished wooden floor and smelled of sweat. There was no piped in music and the only sounds were the grunts of the men and women lifting weights. I noticed on a lift bench Hispanic women wearing a low cut sweat shirt and cut-off was lying on her back, lifting a weight above her head and humping the air with rigorous pelvic trusts, legs spread wide, feet flat on the floor. The cut-off shorts had bunched up and I could see underneath, she was not wearing panties, grunting and grimacing seem to be acceptable and desired, and there was no modesty here. An Oriental woman with long black hair tied in a ponytail was working with an overweight young black girl, she spotted me and waived, in a few minutes the young girl left the room.
LEE (SMILING)
Ready for some pain?

RINGO
Let’s get it on, Lee

The personal trainer took me through a series of workouts: fifteen minutes lifting forty pound weights, thirty pull-ups, chest flexes and other exercises that were used in basic army physical training, but being a former Navy Seal this was nothing for me. After the workout I changed into swimming trunks and went into the humid, chlorinated room that housed the club’s Olympic-sized pool. A young woman in a white thong bikini was getting out the pool as I entered. She was striking, long black hair and I noticed that the bottom of the skimpy bikini had slipped into the crack of her buttocks and her nipples were hard, I could not help staring at the pubic hairs that were escaping her crotch. Absentmindedly, she attempted to adjust the tong, gave up and smiled at me as she passed. The pool was usually empty during this time of day. I dove into the therapeutic water headfirst; it always made me feel better being in the water. After two years in Iraq as a member of the Navy Seals, water was like my second home; I was at no disadvantage in the water, and not as much at a disadvantage on land as some people might think, seeing me limping alone. Together with my twenty-minute swims, lifting weights and regular exercises I had forged a strong upper torso and arms and a conditioned quickness with an iron grip. I swam fifteen laps before turning on my back and swimming another ten laps, afterwards I just floated in the warm water, eyes closed and thought about the war and my injury.

FLASHBACK – Kuwait- 1995
My heavily armed five-man Seal Team had been inserted near Kuwait, and we swam ten miles to Al Basra a small fishing village on the east coast. After hiding our swim gear we moved quickly to our objective a 14,300-foot mountain in the Kushan Pass. I was First Lieutenant and in charge of the team, we climbed three hundred feet up the mountain and strategically positioned ourselves on the high ground above a narrow, winding trail. It was a cold, dark and moonless night. I looked through my night vision goggles and saw the forty-man group of Taliban fighters all armed with AK-47 Assault rifles which were slung over their shoulders and bandoliers of bullets draped across their chest casually walking on the trail, I watched as they lit cigarettes and listened as they laughed and talked. Two dusty pickup trucks covered with a brown awning took up the rear. I watched as a tall man walked in front and seemed to be leading the way, he like the other men wore baggy cotton pants and long cotton shirts with a sash around the waist and a dirty turban sat on top of a skullcap. Naval Intelligence learned that this band of fighters were transporting arms and other weapons to other fighters in the area and my team mission was to ambush the fighters and to eliminate them with “Extreme Prejudice,” which was naval intelligent jargon which meant kill them. I selected a bend in the trail the fighters had to walk single file, Corporal Willis Logan, a black man from Chicago and weapons expert was station behind large boulders directly in front of the bend, his .50 caliber machine primed and ready, Sergeant first-class Richard Ramos armed with an RPG or Rocket Propelled Grenade was a few yards behind the Corporal and had an unobstructed view of the tail column of the group and the two pick-up trucks. The other members of the team were armed with Uzi Machine guns and had open fields of fire on the fighters. “Now,” I said over my head microphone.
The sudden burst of automatic machine gun fire broke the stillness of the night as