Patterns of Brutality: Erter & Dobbs Book 2 Read online

  PATTERNS OF BRUTALITY

  ERTER & DOBBS BOOK 2

  NICK KELLER

  First published 2017

  By NKBooks

  DFW, TX, U.S.A.

  All Rights Reserved

  © Copyright 2017

  www.NickKellerBooks.com

  This book is sold subject to the condition that no part of it may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted, in any form or by any means without the prior written permission of the author or authors, nor be otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it was published and without a similar condition being imposed on the publisher or subsequent purchaser.

  Created by NKBooks

  Edited by www.FadingStreet.com

  Cover Design By: Cormar Covers

  www.cormarcovers.com

  CONTENTS

  Acknowledgments

  1. The Dead Bin

  2. Visitation

  3. Iva

  4. The Dead Bin

  5. Bernie Dobbs at Work

  6. Chrissie Newton

  7. William Erter at Work

  8. Looking for Jacky

  9. Captain Heller

  10. Lesha Sanders-Maine

  11. Carter

  12. Starlight Reps, Inc.

  13. Wise Donna’tella

  14. Erter & Dobbs

  15. Bernie Mounts a Rescue

  16. The Dobbs Household

  17. Neiman Gets the Case

  18. Bernie Makes a Fine Point

  19. Red Rocket Studios

  20. Neiman & Dobbs

  21. Autopsy

  22. Introducing Ruthi

  23. Date Night

  24. Message from the Past

  25. Bernie Gets the Message

  26. Chrome Steel

  27. Case Discussion

  28. Evidence

  29. Bernie on the Phone

  30. The Real William Erter

  31. William Wakes Up

  32. Double Date

  33. After

  34. The F.B.I.

  35. The Bust

  36. Hospital Bed

  37. Chasing Ghosts

  38. Internal Workings

  39. The Dobbs Residence

  40. Comforting Arms

  41. Game Time

  42. Iva

  43. Questions

  44. Doubt

  45. Oscar & Son

  46. Roulette, Russian

  47. Pattern of Brutality, Complete

  48. Fallout

  49. Broken Bond

  50. After

  About the Author

  Book 3 Excerpt

  Grave Situation

  Oscar

  New Recruit

  Floppy

  Dash

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  There are those who have shown a great deal of interest in my writing career… and, at times, a very pointed interest as well. And though I have often been puffy and mystified at their suggestions, I want them to know I value their word a great deal, and I never complete a book without considering their input. Admittedly, I’ve found those suggestions to be right more often than wrong. If you have read this or any previous work of mine and offered direct and honest input with the intention of chiseling away at all of my bad literary habits, you know who you are. There is a great deal of story within these pages directly informed by your patience and wisdom. Thank you.

  BOOKS IN THE ERTER & DOBBS THRILLER SERIES

  A KILLER’S ROLE —Pre-Order Now!

  PATTERNS OF BRUTALITY—Pre-Order Now!

  MORBID CURIOSITY—Pre-Order Now!

  GAMES OF LEVERAGE—Coming Soon

  MODUS OPERANDI—Coming Soon

  COMPOUNDING INTEREST—A novella

  from the case files of Bernie Dobbs.

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  1

  THE DEAD BIN

  January 2012. Andi Jones was first.

  The autopsy deduced the obvious. She was bludgeoned to death. Massive cranial fractures caused hemorrhaging in the brain. The meat of her scalp turned ash-colored brain matter into shades of red. Her face was crushed with violent force. Skull shattered. Impact concussions jarred soft tissue apart. There was nothing left by which to identify her. They had to use DNA records.

  Massive soft tissue damage throughout the body suggested the beating continued post mortem. It would have been a case of deadly torture otherwise. The first blow to her head either rendered her unconscious or killed her outright, delivering her from the kind of anguish only a devil could enjoy inflicting. Over a hundred bones in her body were fractured or shattered altogether. Andi Jones’s killer beat on her body with uncalculated maliciousness. The weapon was a heavy pipe of some sort, perhaps an aluminum baseball bat.

  Investigators ruled it was the first of its kind. They had no profile on such a killer, so they collected whatever evidence they could. The degree of brutality suggested psychotic tendencies, even insanity. There could be no other reason as to why a man would pound and pound on a dead girl.

  The only real evidence left at the scene was the killer’s semen, yet, oddly enough, there were no other trace elements to identify the killer. The semen was found in her uterus. There had been intercourse implying he was a seducer, probably the dark and mysterious type making promises he never intended to keep. That kind of seduction was easy to exercise on a young starlet like Andi Jones.

  DNA screens proved problematic, though. The semen was bad. All that was left of it was a smattering of hormonal trace elements, not unlike the hormones which could be found in any Angelino. This gave rise to mysterious questions. Semen could survive ten days, maybe more, in a deceased body, if the conditions were perfect, yet Andi’s death had been recent. Something was amiss.

  And there were no witnesses.

  Aside from the fact he was male, there was no other lead. The entire male population of the city of Los Angeles was a suspect. Everything turned cold on the Andi Jones case. Three years later in January of 2015, her murder was filed away as unsolved.

  And with that, Andi Jones’s dreams of being the next big thing in Hollywood were smashed into bloody little bits.

  2

  VISITATION

  Breathe out when you pull up.

  Breathe in when you release.

  It’s a cycle. A pattern.

  Up. Breathe out.

  Down. Breathe in.

  Repeat.

  Chin-ups. He could do eighteen of them in one set. He used to do more, a lot more. But that was back when he was a much younger man. Now it was eighteen chin-ups—not bad for a sixty-six year old.

  They’d given Oscar Erter a chin-up bar when he asked for one. It was anchored into the wall by six-inch mortar bolts and inspected daily just to make sure he wasn’t loosening it. The Frederick M. Vinson Federal Penitentiary could never be too careful, and they could see where an inmate like Oscar Erter might find some flashy uses for a chin-up bar. He could bust windows out with it like a ramming device, force open maintenance hatches and doorways like a lever, bash people’s brains out like a club, you name it. With some clever intent, it could be used as a key to escape. Which was why the Frederick M. Vinson prison was a pi
er barge rested several hundred meters over the ocean on concrete pillars. In the event an inmate escaped his cell, there was no escaping the barge. Nevertheless, there were no signs of tampering. The prison had allowed him the use of a chin-up bar on good behavior. Oscar Erter was an ideal inmate.

  Aside from the chin-ups he would do fifty push-ups, eighty sit-ups and an assortment of stretching and meditation exercises. It was his routine. He did this every day, torquing his body over time into a lean machine. There was nothing more peaceful than feeling his body expel its energy into the world. It reminded him of his positive space, that all things in existence had to acknowledge him—the breeze, the rain, even the mountains—and that he was an object in the world of the real.

  Yet the exercising and the fatigue also assembled his spirit into a unified, single whole, and made him aware of a deeper, less tangible reality—the underneath. This was the world they could not take away from him. Even when they strapped him to the gurney, read him his last rights, depressed the final plunger releasing the poisons which would collapse his airways, liquefy his organs, stop his heart. Even then, the underneath would remain unscathed, untouched. It would remain his. And after he evacuated from the world, he would wait there in the underneath to thank his killers when they joined him, for one day they would, just as his own victims were there now, waiting for him to die, watching for his last breath, anticipating his arrival.

  Today he would forgo the full workout. He had a visitor coming—the one person on Earth who hadn’t judged him, who understood him and who might even continue his work. At least one day.

  William was coming.

  His son was coming.

  “Yo, Oscar,” Billings, the shift officer said. “Got a visitor.”

  Oscar turned around slowly and said, “Good.”

  WILLIAM ERTER WATCHED his father shuffle into the visitation hold. They had the old man’s hands cuffed together, then chained the cuffs onto a steel belt around his waist and secured his feet together with another chain. He wasn’t going anywhere, even if he wanted to. But in reality, he’d always been happier than a pig in shit to be in prison. Death row suited him fine. Escaping was the last thing on his mind. So, he followed Billings over to the chair and sat down.

  William followed his father with his eyes.

  Oscar rubbed his beard and mustache having to lift both hands. He was smiling. “Hello, son,” he said.

  “Hello, dad.”

  “How’s everything?”

  “Fine.”

  “Just fine?”

  William gave him a patient look. “Job’s good. Car’s running. Just like always.”

  “Wonderful. And your mom?”

  William sniffled and looked around. The old man was always asking about Mrs. Erter, as if she were still alive. William sighed, forcing a breath, figuring maybe she was alive, at least to the old man, in some strange way. “She’s fine,” William said.

  “She’s dead,” Oscar said flatly, coldly.

  The suddenness of his dad’s words snapped William up. He said, “That’s right.”

  The old man chuckled, and said, “She’s watching us from the other side. She’s waiting for us.” His eyes went to the table. “Waiting for me, perhaps.”

  As if offering the punch line to a joke, William said, “Well, she isn’t going anywhere.”

  “Hmm…” his dad murmured. “Usually I get—you shouldn’t beat yourself up, dad, or she drank herself to death, dad, or it wasn’t your fault, dad. But—this time you make light?”

  William looked down. “I shouldn’t have said that.”

  “It was the right thing to say,” his dad said, thumping the table with a knuckle. “It requires an understanding few have.” His father tilted his head at him, reading him. “I know there are things about me that frighten you, son—the monster in the closet, so to speak. I know you always want to do right. I know you’re a moral person. And I hate to say it, but, I’m afraid we’re very much alike, you and me. I know the struggle you fight inside yourself.”

  Not wanting to discuss his urges with the old man, William snapped half-angrily, “I was just being ironic, dad.”

  The old man settled back, still smiling a benevolent, understanding grin which tempted so dangerously to condescend. William bit his lip and held the flesh between his teeth. Here came the story, an enlightening tale from the old man. They always started out the same way: “Let me tell you a story, son.”

  Those words—the bearer of dark and delicious things. Especially when they came from his old man.

  “There was this undertaker. This was in Albuquerque. He lived his whole life caring for the dead. He dressed them, cleaned them, made them look nice. It’s a real art making the dead look alive. Then one day he meets a man at a bar not far from the airport. They get drunk and talk for hours, just the undertaker and his new friend. They buy each other drinks and talk about life things. Pretty soon, they develop a trust, the kind of trust two fellas who will probably never hang out again develop, and when all their huffing and puffing about the world and politics and wives is over, this undertaker from Albuquerque goes home. He drives a four-year-old Lexus, and he’s drunk. But his new friend—oh, his new friend, yes, yes, yes—he doesn’t want the night to end. The new friend sees such delicious and undeniable irony in caring for a dead undertaker. The idea swallows him. It makes him giggle and slobber like a dog. So, he flags a taxi and follows the undertaker. Follows him straight home. It’s a nice house. Big. There’s an incredibly cuddly-looking wife with big breasts, loose and squeezable, like you’d expect a mother of two to have, sleeping in the upstairs bedroom. Beautiful children in their own bedrooms down the hall. God, the girl was an angel.”

  William knew how the story ended. He watched his dad get lost in memory, then come slewing back to the here-and-now. He blinked and cleared his throat and said, “As you can imagine, the new friend got to be the undertaker for a day, and the undertaker got to be all the people he had painted and loved over the years. He got to finally be them.” He leaned forward. “That’s irony, son.”

  William couldn’t stop the frown coming over him. “You've never told me…”

  “Told you what?”

  “One of your…” the word didn’t come for a long time. He said, “… exploits.”

  “What do you think—to know that?”

  “I never… imagined… how it was. I never saw, really… what you did.”

  “And now?”

  “I think I see it.”

  “We’ve changed the pattern, haven’t we?”

  “What do you mean?” William awaited the inevitable clarification.

  Oscar grinned. “Another story. The boy tries to understand the world but always sees it through the eyes of his father, so his father comforts him, tells the boy what he wants to hear, tells him it’s not so bad from this side of righteousness. Tisk, tisk—the world disagrees. Then, satisfied, the boy leaves, goes back into that cynical world with his father’s words echoing in his ears, in his memory, in his soul—it’s not so bad on this side of righteousness—over and over. Finally, he gives in to what he knows will overtake him. His nature. Not his father’s, but his own. He makes light of death. He sees his mom in her grave, happy as she can be, freed from a horrible world. He watches his father, even watches him kill. The boy is starting to see the world through his own eyes, now. He’s realizing they’re not so different than his father’s.”

  “I’m never going to do what you did, dad.”

  “If what you mean is that you will never conduct the tithing of fate, you already have.”

  “I’ve never killed anyone.” William wasn’t angry. His words were low and logical, dipped in a bowl of compassion.

  Oscar Erter sat back grinning the way fathers grin when they watch their sons mature. He said, “No you haven’t, have you? But I sense the pattern is changing, son.”

  3

  IVA

  Bernie’s lovemaking had changed over the last sever
al months. The change wasn’t subtle, either. He’d begun doing it slower, touching her shoulders and running his fingers down her arms sending goose pimples up her neck and back. He was kissier, too, putting his lips on her throat and ears. She’d even begun letting him steal a few pecks on the lips which was a strict no-no for a girl in Iva’s profession. Plus, he didn’t seem to relish doing it from behind as much, either. There was less pounding and more frontal pulsing, arms and legs tangling up in each other. Even when she went down on him, he’d often pull her back up saying you don’t have to do that, baby…