Dawson's Web (10 page)

Jeff held Roxy’s arm tightly as he led her to the end room facing the harbor.  She was leaning heavily on him as the drug continued entering her system. Jeff had also rented the room next door in case any loud noises might draw attention to his activities, but judging from Roxy’s state, he probably could have saved the money. He had the whole next few hours scripted.

Earlier, he didn’t know who was going to play the part of his companion for the night. That problem was now resolved.

He opened the door, dropped his gym bag near the entrance and led Roxy to the bed where he placed her. She was semi-passed out and fell to the sheets like a bag of rocks.

Jeff prepared his tools for the game.

The first thing he did was put on his nitrile gloves. Then he went into the shower, took off all of his clothes and scrubbed himself down. He wanted to be squeaky clean when he entered her. He went back to his gym bag and took out two small Ziploc bags. In one, he had gathered hair samples from the back of a hair salon. He sprinkled the hair particles down on the shower and bathroom floor mixing with it whatever strands had fallen from his own body.

This would drive the forensic scientists crazy.

In the two previous “games”, he was fastidious about not leaving any trace evidence at all. He was getting bolder now. He wanted to taunt the police this time. He had purposefully gone to a hair salon and dumpster dived to get the bag of hair he was now using to mask any trace back to him.

He went into the bedroom and sprinkled hair on the carpet and onto the bed.

He got a second bag and opened it. It contained skin samples gathered from the trash behind a nail salon. This was much harder to get because he had to dig through wads of soiled paper towels and used emery boards to get enough material. This was going to make it more interesting and hide his presence better. He took the material from the nail salon, scraped them into a pan and let them air dry. The material was a fine powder from some of the exfoliations and skin treatments. It looked like talcum.

He sprinkled it around the room and on Roxy.

His final touch was to take a third bag out containing cigarette butts from a bar he visited three days earlier. He strategically dropped these around the room as well.

There were going to be several dead end roads the detectives would have to go down.

He was giddy with excitement.

He took his towel, laid it on the floor and sprinkled the hair and skin particles on top of it. He wiped a cigarette butt on it, as well, and threw it in the corner.

He had rented the rooms under an assumed name and paid cash. He had also put on a blonde wig and dark sunglasses as a disguise when he rented them. To hide his overall height, he had bought a pair of lifts and stood six-foot-four when he was in front of the hotel clerk. When asked questions, he only grunted answers and offered that he didn’t speak English too well.

As a final touch, and because of surveillance cameras, he had arrived at the Portofino in an Uber cab. He was picked up in a rundown strip mall in Inglewood earlier.

He had covered all his bases.

Now the games could begin in earnest.

The entire preparation had taken him forty-five minutes.

He stood naked in the room, put on his skullcap and walked toward the bed.

Roxy was starting to come around now. He had given her enough of the drug to get her to the hotel and keep her incapacitated while he prepared, but no more.

When Roxy woke up, she was also naked and had ligatures on both arms and legs. He had pulled them tight and her feet and hands were turning blue.

She was spread-eagled and still a bit groggy when Jeff climbed onto her stomach, his erection placed firmly between her taut breasts.

She came to, and through blurry eyes looked up at him.

“Hi, baby,” Jeff said. “Now we can have some fun.”

Roxy was into games, but she wasn’t sure she liked this one very much. In fact, she knew she didn’t. She started to struggle to free herself making the ligatures cut deeper into her flesh.

“My wrists and ankles hurt. Did you have to tie me so tightly? Why did you, like tie me like this?”

“Well, you said you wanted to get off and have some fun. So I thought that maybe part of the fun would be you anticipating my touches before we make love.”

Roxy smiled. “Ok, but can you loosen the ties a little or even take them off. I’m sorry I passed out baby. I’d rather hold you. I promise I won’t run away.”

“No baby. I can’t do that. Part of the fun is building the anticipation and the pain will contrast with the pleasure. It will make it better for you and for me. Trust me on this. The ties aren’t cutting you. Don’t struggle and they will loosen on their own as the leather stretches. (He was lying.)

“But I want to hold you. I want my arms around you. Loosen them please.”

“Quit struggling. It will be easier for you. All in good time. Everything will end as it should.”  He smile again, stroked her breasts and nibbled on her ear.

Next, he leaned over and gave her a deep passionate kiss.

“The next two hours are going to be the best two hours in your life,” he said. (He would make sure of that. He always liked to make his victims orgasm at least three or four times before the game ended.)

He was, after all, a caring person.

The only thing wrong was he only cared for himself.

She had almost come fully conscious because Jeff had not given her a full dose. He gave her only enough to keep her incapacitated while he prepared the game.

“Okay, honey. That’s what you want. That’s what you need. I’m all in,” Roxy said and quit struggling!

Jeff didn’t say a word, leaned over and started giving her butterfly kisses on her eyes. He then moved to her lips and kissed the side of her neck. He continued lightly kissing her under her arms and down her rib cage until he got to her hips. He then made a left turn and dragged his tongue gently across the area between her navel and the top of her vagina. He stuck his tongue in her navel, kissed it and lifted his head.

He was beaming with delight.

She was smiling, enjoying each touch. (Maybe this man knew what she needed. “He was certainly a master at foreplay,” she thought.)

He continued exploring her with his tongue. He traced a line down from her navel stopping inches above her special place.

By this time, Roxy was quivering with anticipation. Her legs were convulsing.

This first part of his game had taken 15 minutes.

He got up and went into the bathroom, leaving her there on the bed alone, still tied up.

She called out to him. “Baby, why did you stop?”

“Remember, part of this game is anticipation, honey. I’ll be there in a minute. He waited for ten and then proceeded to do the same teasing six more times.

At the end of two hours, Roxy was a volcano waiting to erupt.

This man knew what to do. And he was rich. Roxy was in Heaven. (Not yet!)

Jeff came back, put his head between Roxy’s legs and began licking her through a plastic bag he placed on her, lest he leave any saliva and DNA behind. He would wash her body from head to toe before leaving and use bleach to kill any of his remnants. The bag was a way to explore her, without leaving evidence, which would point to him. He didn’t want to catch anything she had. But more importantly, he didn’t want to be caught.

“Dump the plastic bag, baby. I want to feel you,” Roxy moaned.

“I don’t want to get any diseases. Trust me this is a better way. Lean back and enjoy it.” Jeff said calmly and then continued his work.

“He might be right,” she thought.  She leaned back and moaned. She climaxed three times. Each time she strained at the ligatures tightening them around her ankles and her wrists, but it was worth it.

Finally, Jeff put on his condom and entered her. Their lovemaking was brief. Jeff was already in such a state of ecstasy, it didn’t take him two minutes to be satisfied. The scars on the inside of his legs were purely visible to Roxy, but because she was enjoying this moment she didn’t even notice.

She was in Heaven, (or about to be.)

When Jeff was done, he got up from her and went into the bathroom to wash himself down. He sprinkled more trace evidence around. He carefully removed the condom and its contents and placed it in a double lot Ziploc bag.

He walked back to the bed holding the knife.

Roxy’s eyes widened, but then she smiled.

“Oh my God! Thank you. My wrists and ankles hurt. You’re going to cut me free. Right? I have to admit it. Like, that was pretty like, really incredible. Like, I’ve never like done anything like that before. You’re, like really amazing.”

“If she says like one more like I’m going to like rip her throat out now,” Jeff thought.

He gave her a glass of water, holding her head up to allow her to sip it. She was still restrained but passively happy. Her Cupid’s bow mouth was turned up at the corners giving her a whimsical look. She was sated.

This time, he had put three “roofies” (Rohypnol pills) in the water.  He wanted her to be at least groggy when he killed her.

Fifteen minutes after their lovemaking session, Roxy passed out. He spread out the plastic tarp in the bathroom and dragged her to the tub where he finished the job, slicing her from ear to ear first and then plunging the knife into her several more times. He was feverish. This was the best part of the night, even better than the sex they had earlier.

He had considered dragging the body to the Harbor, but the chance he would be seen were too great. He opted to leave her in the hotel. He had done enough preparations and felt confident he had left no clues.

He wiped her body down with bleach and sprinkled more false evidence around the room, on top of the bed and on her corpse, and then he left.

The cuts were clean and neat. She bled out in six minutes.

He didn’t like having to cut his signature hole above her vagina, but he so hated his stepmother, he was compelled to do it.

He liked this girl. He wanted to make sure she was going to feel no pain. He had fulfilled that promise made to her, even though she was never privy to it.

He told her it would be the best sex that she had had in her life and he was right.

He reached into his gym bag and put on his disguise again.

Very carefully, he exited the room, keeping his nitrile gloves on while he closed the door behind him.

He had been very careful this time.

The knife was intact.

Unfortunately, Roxy was not.

He went to his car and drove slowly out of the parking lot, turning left on Hermosa Avenue. He needed a drink to celebrate.

Giovanni Carlucci wasn’t a very good-looking man. He was 5 feet 8 inches tall, 61 years old, had male pattern baldness which he tried to hide by doing a comb over which made him look even more ridiculous. He also weighed 220 pounds. He resembled an Italian cue ball with an attitude. But what he lacked in looks, he made up for with a fat wallet, which is why he always had some cute bimbo on his arm, or between his legs. He was a two-time prison inmate for petty theft and grand theft auto back in New Jersey, which is where he met Hans Morgenstern through a series of circumstances.

When he was twenty-five, Giovanni was brought up on petty theft charges for shoplifting from a liquor store.

Giovanni was not as smart then as he is now.

He had been running Ponzi schemes on the streets of New York since he dropped out of high school at 16. After that, he went through a series of part-time jobs, each one ending up with him being fired because he had trouble taking orders and was continually late for work, if he showed up at all.

He routinely ran low on cash and continually hit up his uncle Vincent for money to pay his rent, or sometimes, even to eat. Vincent LaCosta, or “Vinny”, was a minor player in the New Jersey Mafia. After making several small loans to his nephew (loans Giovanni never paid back), Vinny decided the only way he was going to see any of his money again was to set his nephew up as a runner for sports bets.

But Giovanni was not good with numbers, and he certainly wasn’t good at keeping appointments.

After four months and numerous warnings that went unheeded, Vinny fired him. That’s why Giovanni ended up in a liquor store at midnight wanting a drink, having no money, and decided to try to steal a bottle of Smirnov by putting it down his shorts.

Surveillance cameras caught him in the act. Unfortunately, for him, as soon as he left, the shopkeeper called the police and gave them his description. Before Giovanni could even open the bottle, he was arrested.

Giovanni didn’t meet Hans in prison, but he did have legal representation by the same law firm that Hans used in his real estate mortgage business.

When the public defender that was set to represent him got ill, the court had to call contracted lawyers in to help beat down the caseload backlog.

The owner of the law firm the Court called to represent Giovanni was a personal friend of the district attorney. He had made a deal to have them call him when the Court’s workload warranted. This occurred in about 30% of the cases. The New York City and New Jersey Courts had backlogs that went out for months. This was good for the district attorney and it was also good for the owner of the firm that represented Hans Morgenstern, and by fiat, now represented Giovanni Carlucci.

Giovanni’s case was assigned to Jimmy McCrary. McCrary had graduated from a small university in Illinois a year earlier and when he got the opportunity to move to New York to work at the firm, he jumped at the chance to get out of Chicago. The winters there were brutal. At least in New York City, they were tolerable.

Suffice it to say; due to McCrary’s lack of experience and the surveillance video, he lost Giovanni’s case resulting in his client having to spend three months in jail along with getting a year’s probation. During that probationary period, Giovanni made several trips to the law firm to try to get his record expunged (which never happened) and over time, Giovanni became acquainted with Hans.

The second time Giovanni was arrested it was for grand theft auto.  Again, Giovanni could not hold down a steady job and wanted to visit a girlfriend who lived in upstate New York but he didn’t have a car. Not a problem. He hot-wired one and took it. Like the first incident, he only got three blocks away before was nabbed.

He called McCrery, who was now working for a different law firm, but McCrery wouldn’t take his case. He had moved on. In the end, Hans Morgenstern’s lawyer agreed to take Giovanni’s case and he and Hans became friends through this mutual connection.

Although his uncle Vinny had given up on Giovanni, Hans saw potential in him because of his boldness in taking the car in spite of the consequences.

He also liked Giovanni because of his ties to the Mafia.

Sometimes (not all the times mind you) Hans had to apply “pressure” to get a deal to close. In these cases, Giovanni, or one of his associates, could persuade the reluctant buyer or seller to settle.

Hans hired him as his personal lackey and paid him $10,000 a month as a retainer. Giovanni knew people that could help when help was needed. Hans needed to keep his record clean, and because he had befriended Giovanni, he used him as a conduit to do the dirty work he needed to have done.

This arrangement between Giovanni and Hans Morgenstern had solidified over the past 35 years and over several “jobs.” Giovanni was forever grateful to Hans for stepping in and pulling him out of the gutter.

He owed this man.

That is the only reason he left his girlfriends and his $2 million ranch-style house in Palm Springs within two hours of Hans calling him.

Giovanni arrived at the airport dressed in sweats. He liked to be comfortable when he flew. He looked out of place in first class where everyone else was dressed to the nines. He had one carry-on bag and $4000 in cash in his wallet. As far as he was concerned, this was going to be a quick trip. He left Red (his girlfriend) in charge of his Palm Springs home. He ordered her to take care of the four other girls that were supposed to be waiting there for him on his return.

He estimated it would take one day to get to New York City, two hours to get to Han’s office where he would get the particulars of this Randy Chappelle, and another full day to track down Randy and Charlene.  He had already phoned ahead and had several of Vinny’s minions turning over rocks to find those two snakes.

Little did he know that some of the same people he was relying on to find them were friends of Randy’s, who, because of Randy’s line of work, often ran with individuals of questionable character. Those friends tipped Randy off that a dangerous man, by the name of Giovanni Carlucci, was coming to look for him and Charlene. As Giovanni was flying to New York, Randy and Charlene were winging their way to LA.

The flight from Los Angeles International Airport to Newark was normally 4 ½ hours when the jet stream was blowing its standard west to east track. Today, however, the jet stream had slipped down from Canada and was running north to south making the flight extremely turbulent and irritating. He left at 8 AM on United flight 135 but didn’t arrive into Newark until 6:30 pm. He picked up his rental car at 7 pm and drove straight to Hans Morgenstern’s office, calling his boss on the way.

Hans was working late and was not very happy Gi was late, but when Giovanni walked into Han’s office, Hans got up and greeted Gi, hugging him and kissing him on both sides of his cheeks—a typical Italian greeting.

“So, Gi, here’s their portfolio.” He handed his friend a folder. “It’s everything I know about this Randy Chappelle. He hangs out at Charlies’, an upscale sports bar in lower Manhattan only a few minutes from here. I’ve gone in there several times and identified two or three people that know him. The problem is none of them knows where he lives. I want you to do whatever is necessary to find this scumbag and his slut whore girlfriend. When you find him, I also want you to rough him up. You can break his legs or whatever. I don’t care. I just want all the copies of the photos and no more trouble. You got that!”

He showed Giovanni the pictures of him and Charlene in intimate poses.

“Wow boss, she’s hot!”

“No shit! Don’t hurt her. Just bring her to me. I’m going to extract my revenge the best way I know how to, but there won’t be any pictures this time. I guarantee. But I’ll make her remember me. Trust me. I don’t care if she’s hot or not. I can’t have these pictures getting out in the press. I’m under an SEC investigation and that’s not the only problem.”

“What else, boss?”

“Well, my wife and I are going through a rough patch, if you know what I mean.”

“Oh, I get it. The Missy is giving you a hard time because she’s living in a fucking mansion and you’re not spending enough time with her.”

“No, it’s not like that!”

“Then what is it?

“She found my secondary Facebook account I registered under another name.”

“You’re shittin’ me boss. You have a Facebook account? How stupid is that?”

“Well, you’re right. It is stupid, but I did it. I was hooking up with a bunch of old girlfriends and have had many interesting experiences because of it. I may be 62 years old, but I’m not dead.”

“Okay, so you’re a high-tech geek motherfucker who got caught cheating on your wife!” Giovanni was grinning.

“That’s about it.”

“So I want you to find this Randy. I want you to find Charlene. And I want you to take care of it. I don’t want to have to pay $100,000 as a first installment, and then have to pay $10,000 a month to these people. My wife is about ready to file for divorce anyway, and I’ve already talked to my lawyer. With my net worth, it’s going to cost me over $80,000 a month when she gets through with me. I’ll be broke in 10 years.”

“I see what you mean, boss. Does that me if I don’t find them quickly you’re gonna’ cut my salary?”

“No, I’m not going to cut your salary. If you don’t do this, you’re off the payroll. I fucking mean it!”

“I got it, boss. I’m on it.”

Giovanni opened the folder. In it, there were several cellphone photos of the people Hans had met that knew Randy. There was also a yellow sticky with the address of Charlies’.

“I’ll get back with you, boss. I got some phone calls to make and some people to see. I’ll find this scumbag and his scumbag whore as well.”

Hans got up, walked over to Giovanni and gave him another hug and a kiss on each cheek. Then, he walked over to his desk and pulled out $5000 in cash and a Beretta with two extra clips.

“You’re going to need these. I know you didn’t bring any firearms with you. With the TSA screenings, it’s impossible to get any guns on planes anymore. Take this and use it if you have to.  It’s unregistered.”

Giovanni took the gun and put it in his sweatpants, turned and moved toward the door.

“I’ll find out where these guys are and be right back with you.”

Hans said nothing. He only glared at his minion. It spoke volumes.