Brush Creek Charlie - D. B. Reynolds (best pdf reader for ebooks TXT) 📗

been born a black woman. Between blasting off inner-city jive talk, having an ass just as shapely as most black women, and shooting off heated attitude, she met all the requirements of being African-American. Sandy dissected the trio as they moved around the line of people. Sure would’ve been nice if Derrick came down into the tunnel section of the IRS building all my himself.
“Sandy?” Derrick named off, not certain she was the right woman.
“Derrick?” Sandy retorted, Derrick’s face conjuring up a quick memory.
“Yes, it’s me,” he smiled, picking apart every feature on her face.
“The celebrity impersonator show at Missy D’s sound familiar?”
“Yes, I remember now. You sat at the table right over from us.”
“Carol and I were close to you guys that night.”
“Well, darling, what can I do for you?”
Sandy took a quick glance at Mitchell and Kathy. “You guys mind if we talk in privacy?”
Derrick gazed at his two sidekicks. “Mitch and Kathy, you two mind if we speak alone?”
“Huh, what’s with all this privacy stuff?” Kathy smarted off, rolling her eyes in pompous motions.
“Just give myself and this lady a few mintues to talk.”
Mitchell pulled Kathy by the arm. The hint was for them to give Derrick some space. “C’mon, Kathy, let’s give them some time to converse. We’ve got plenty of work to get done upstairs.”
“We’ll be in the cafeteria at lunchtime,” Kathy cued to Derrick.
“See ya at lunchtime.”
Mitchell and Kathy slithered around the long line and returned upstairs.
“My, my, you must be famous or something,” Sandy joked, anxious to get on with the business-at-hand.
“Mitch and Kathy are the last two people who still care about me. Both might seem overly protective, but they do mean well. As for Mitch, he’s my lifetime partner. Do you know what I mean?”
“Sure, I have a lifetime partner, also.”
“It’s a great feeling.”
“Can we go outside to talk?”
“Outside sounds good.”
Derrick and Sandy drifted down the long tunnel hallway. Derrick gentlemanly opened the glass door for Sandy and they walked a few yards down the concrete pathway. More postal workers emerged from the parking area with the word “regret” molded to their faces. Several turned to give Derrick and Sandy looks that were lethal enough rip their hearts into tiny shreds.
“I’m curious, how’d you find me?” Derrick asked Sandy, flipping out a fresh pack of cigarettes.
“Wasn’t hard at all,” Sandy responded. “The night we were at Missy D’s, you must’ve talked about the IRS a million times. I had remembered that your name was Derrick and that you worked for the IRS.”
“How’d you get my last name?”
“Someone wants something bad enough, it all comes real natural.”
“Please don’t tell me that you’re with the investigative unit within the Treasury Department. Over the years, I’ve never cheated on my taxes or stole anything from the IRS.”
“Don’t be silly,” Sandy snickered. “Never would I give the federal government the satisfaction of putting somebody in jail, not unless they really deserved it.”
“Are you with the FBI, the CIA, the DEA, or the INS? Honey, I’ve never stolen classified documents from the government. Plus, I’ve never passed on secrets to foreign governments. And drugs, I’ve never sold a bag of weed or packets of cocaine or rocks of crack. Lastly, darling, I was born and raised in the United States of America.”
“Hee! Hee!” Sandy giggled from her chest. “None of those government agencies am I affiliated with. Stop worrying about me being some secret undercover agent trying to bust you.”
Derrick could’ve had skeletons that only he and government knew about.
“Then, why are you here? A strange woman showing up at my job scares me into wanting to go straight.”
“Straight as in?”
“Straight as in having a woman to be my lover and my lifetime partner.”
“Actually, I’m here to inquire about someone you mentioned at Missy D’s the night of the celebrity impersonator show.”
“Who’s this someone?”
“Charlie, but don’t remember his last name.”
“Charlie?” Derrick shook in amazement. “Charlie Rastelli?”
“Yes, I believe that’s him.”
“Charlie who lives at The Rosenburg on The Plaza?”
“A Vietnam War veteran?”
“Yes, Charlie is a Vietnam War veteran who served two tour of duties over there. How do you know so much about him?”
“He’s a cold-blooded, calculated killer.”
“Say what!”
“The four women found murdered and mutilated down in Brush Creek, I believe he’s responsible for all four all of them.”
“Mam, are you sure?”
“Call me Sandy, please. Derrick, I’m surer than sure. He tried to attack and kill me one night down in Brush Creek. My dog Bolo, I watched him kill the poor thing with his bare hands.”
“Why are you just now coming forward with this information?”
The regrets weighed real heavy on Sandy. She could’ve been a lifesaver in the end.
“It’s eating me up inside. For awhile, I didn’t want to falsely accuse just anybody. But now, I believe that Charlie is the one who killed those four women.”
“Which includes Lisa Wallace who used to work here at the IRS?”
“Yes! Yes! Yes!” Sandy shouted three times. “She was his first victim.”
“The Charlie we’re talking about, does he have a badly-pitted face?”
“A nightmare-of-a-face,” Sandy confirmed, a face she wished she could’ve forgotten. “Looks like his skin was ravaged by severe acne or something.”
“Actually, Charlie developed that bad skin condition from being in Vietnam.”
“How?”
“Those chemicals they’d been spraying over there in Vietnam, I believe he told me and my partner that they were the reason why he ended up having such a bad complexion. He explained to Mitchell and I that neither his mother nor father had skin problems.”
“Bad skin or good skin, he’s a psychotic killer. Derrick, I’m asking for your help, please.”
“What do you need for me to do?”
“Take myself and the KCPD straight to his apartment.”
“The entire police force?”
“No, but at least a few detectives and a handful of police officers. This man is dangerous and I’m sure he has to be approached with caution.”
“When do you need for me to take you to his apartment?”
“After I go down to headquarters and talk with detectives in homicide and some police officers.”
“When do you plan on doing this?”
“As soon as possible.”
“Sounds like the right thing to do.”
“He has to be stopped before another mutilated body turns up in trashbags down in Brush Creek.”
The mentioning of trashbags jingled hard inside the head of Derrick. His memory by association thrusted into full brain power. “Trashbags? It’s all coming back to me.”
“Does trashbags remind you of something?”
“Several times, I ran into Charlie coming out of his apartment, carrying large trashbags at like two and three o’clock in the morning.”
“That’s it! That’s it!” Sandy hailed with turbo-boosted adrenalin. “The bodies of those dismembered women were inside those trashbags!”
“My suspicions were aroused, but I never thought enough of it to try and investigate. None of the other people at The Rosenburg carried trash out during the early morning hours. From looking at the bulges sticking out from the sides of those trashbags, I knew something heavy was inside. Plus, Charlie acted scarier everytime he ran into either me or Mitchell carrying those bags outside.”
“Did you ever smell anything foul or disgusting?”
“If I did, I never thought anything of it. Trash smells like trash and I’d simply ignore it.”
“Derrick, we’ve gotta move fast.”
“How about I go down to headquarters with you?”
“Splendid idea.”
“Charlie’s one sicko sonofabitch.”
“I believe he’s still after me.”
“Why do you believe that?”
“On three separate occasions, he’s shown up out of nowhere.”
“Out of nowhere? How?”
“First, he shows up at a prayer vigil we’re having for the victims of the Gillham Park murders. Second, he shows up among the crowd at The Plaza Lighting Ceremony. Third, he shows up at a rally-protest that my women’s group have for the murdered victims of the Brush Creek killings.”
“You belong to a women’s group?”
“Yes, it’s called S.A.V.E.”
“S.A.V.E.?”
“Stands for Sisters Against Violent Encounters.”
“How clever, Sandy. How insightful, how invigorating, and how intuitive.”
“Nice choice of words. So, you’re with me?”
“With you until the doggone end, darling. What’s the latest on the Gillham Park murders?”
“Still not enough clues to bringing the killer to justice.”
“Black women are turning up dead all the time in that park.”
“And we’re dead tired of it, too. Women’s outrage will soon turn to vengeance.”
“Motherfuckers just don’t have any regard for human life! I say, take the sonofabitches off the streets, put them in a cell with big rats and cockroaches, feed them sewer slop everyday, come in and beat their asses with bats and pipes, and then talk to them like they were less than human beings. The crimes they committed were less than human.”
“You put it so delicately.”
“And meant