While he had made no further comment in that regard at the time, it seemed obvious to Kenny that Robbie was curious about this situation. It was a transient lifestyle for sure, which would go a long way to explaining their absence and Kenny had immediately pointed that out.

  As he had done so, he’d carefully watched Robbie’s facial expressions. By now, he could read the kid like a book, and he doubted that Robbie had found his answer a fully satisfactory explanation for the missing boys.

  It was then that Kenny had decided that Robbie had become far to independent in thought for his own good. He had become more trouble than he was worth.

  The problem would have to be nipped in the bud.

  Things had been going along extremely well and this development was discouraging to say the least.

  That said, Kenny had known from the start that this would probably happen at some point. He had also been fully aware that the concept of replacing Robbie would necessitate him again putting himself into direct contact with the stroll to select a replacement. With that contact would come all the risks the process would subsequently entail.

  Kenny didn’t like the idea one damn bit, but the alternative was far worse.

  Which was why this month was going to be an extra special one.

  Kenny got Robbie very drunk during their session with the September target at the house in the east-side.

  When they were finished with the victim, Kenny presented Robbie with two pre-drawn documents to sign, explaining them away as necessary for tax purposes.

  In fact, the two certificates actually served to sign away the ownership of both the house and Mustang on Robbie’s part although the signature of the purchaser on each, remained blank.

  That done, Kenny poured them each a nightcap before he got ready to leave for the night.

  He saw to it that Robbie’s drink contained a good dose of Rohypnol.

  Kenny waited for it to take effect and then, with a good deal of effort loaded the semi-conscious forms of both Robbie and the night’s target into his truck and put the Mustang into the garage before securing the house and heading for home.

  Kenny took great care on the drive. He sure as hell didn’t want to attract any attention with the two of them laid out in the back seat of the truck’s cab.

  As he stopped for an amber light two blocks away from the house, he took the opportunity to look up into his rear-view mirror to check on his cargo.

  Out of the corner of his eye, he saw a cube-van headed toward him from across the intersection. The light turned red and Kenny realized that the van was not going to stop but had instead accelerated toward him through the intersection.

  Kenny swore as he watched it shoot through the red light and as time stood still for a second, he prayed that the stupid bastard would make it safely through. He sure as hell didn’t want to be involved in an accident now.

  Luckily, traffic was light and there were no vehicles crossing on the green. The truck made it though without incident.

  Well, yes and no.

  As luck would have it, the intersection had red-light cameras and Kenny watched the camera across the intersection flash, indicating that the cube van had been recorded running the light.

  Relieved, Kenny let out a nervous laugh.

  Asshole got himself a ticket. Serves him right!

  The remainder of the trip proved uneventful, but Kenny remained on pins-and-needles, until he had parked the truck safely in his own garage and closed the door.

  The worst was over.

  Now, once he had the two of them into the secure room, he could chill and get ready to thoroughly enjoy the rest of the night.

  Kenny was highly aroused by the prospect and eager to get started.

  Kenny did Robbie first.

  The sex itself was old hat and not particularly exciting, although he did get an absolutely-stupendous, high when he was finally free to take Robbie all the way and actually haul the choke-chain tight while simultaneously finishing in Robbie’s writhing body.

  He then wrapped Robbie’s corpse in a rubber sheet and dumped it on the floor, before re-placing him on the bed with the stripped quarry and shackling him securely in place.

  Once that was done, he began to relax a little and spent a while just gazing appreciatively at his new victim as he rubbed his hands lovingly over the nude semi-conscious form.

  He decided to wait for a couple of hours before doing this new one. Letting the excitement re-build before he got started again. With that in mind he bent over the now passive form on the bed and kissed each of the firm buttock cheeks firmly, before turning his attention to dealing with Robbie’s rubber-sheet wrapped form.

  Because of the relatively high temperature of the day, he knew he would have to process the bodies quickly to save the meat. He’d determined to process them both at once, and as he would be keeping the new one for at least a couple of days before finishing with him, he needed to put Robbie into cold storage ASAP.

  Whistling softly to himself, he used the dolly to cart Robbie out to the butchering building and left him, still wrapped in the rubber sheet, on the floor of one of the big commercial freezers.

  On September the fourth, Kenny butchered the two bodies and immediately processed the meat, which resulted in his largest ever sausage run. It was a lot of work, but by the evening he had cleaned up and was in the process of burning the clothing and personal effects.

  For the first time in years, Kenny’s confidence had taken a hit. He was unhappy about, and lamenting the fact that Robbie was out of the picture and he now had to start all over in selecting a new cohort and all the trouble and risk that was likely to entail.

  Subsequently, he put it off as long as he could, but by mid-month he was already beginning to feel the pressure to get the job done to ensure that he would be ready for the first of October.

  The monthly routine he had set up was by this time, set in stone. He knew there was no way he would be mentally or physically able to skip the October first date for his next kill.

  Finding the right kid turned out to be even harder than he’d envisioned.

  He spent more than a week prowling the stroll before he was confident enough to make his move. By that time, he was a wreck. Over the period, he hadn’t been able to eat or sleep properly and his self-confidence was at a low.

  He was afraid of the risk, unsure of his ability to make a good choice and ended up rejecting his eventual choice at the very last minute on two separate nights, before, at his wits end, had let him in the truck.

  It appeared that he had lucked in.

  Joel Hurst, looked no more than fourteen but was sixteen and had a driver’s licence; necessary, as he would have to be able to drive.

  The kid was unquestionably cute, on the small size and baby-faced, but the shorts and muscle shirt he was wearing when he’d climbed into the passenger seat of the truck, clearly outlined a good body.

  Kenny figured he was new to the scene for sure. He hadn’t been on the street until the last three days of Kenny’s search. Kenny had spotted him standing off by himself. Obviously unsure of himself and scared shitless about being on the stroll.

  He certainly appeared gay, all the mannerisms were clearly there. Effeminate to a degree, though not to the point of unattractiveness.

  On that third night, when Kenny had finally pulled to the curb, he’d had to motion the kid to the truck several times, before he’d had the courage to approach.

  By the time Kenny had Joel back at the house in east Vancouver he found out that the kid had been orphaned early in life and then been taken over by the province and bounced around from foster home to foster home for the last ten years.

  He’d been both mentally and sexually abused in the last two and taken off from the final one just days before Kenny had spotted him on the stroll.

  Kenny’s self confidence had rebounded, and he was certain he had scooped up exactly what he’d been looking for.

  It would be a busy week ahead, but if I really put my mind to it, Joel will be ready to go for the first of October.

  Just after five in the evening on September the fifteenth, Inspector Dave Richards was waiting for Staff/Sergeant Ed Hamilton to join him for their regular, Monday to Friday afternoon change-of-shift meeting.

  Dave was standing looking out the window of his corner office in Major Crime, scanning the bright blue and cloudless sky when Ed knocked and entered his office.

  They exchanged greetings and moved across the room to sit at the small conference table.

  It had been an eventful five years for both men.

  The Chief had been true to his word and both had been promoted as planned. There had been some uneasy blips over that time, primary during the two years under the command of the, now retired, Inspector Campbell.

  Nothing that Dave hadn’t been able to handle by using ‘kid gloves’ and a good deal of flattery, however.

  Since Campbells retirement, things in the squad had been going very well.

  Through attrition, Dave had taken great care to recruit bright and eager young detectives to replace the older, and in some cases, less productive pool he had inherited and statistically, the squad was currently performing well above expectation.

  The day-to-day operation had become second nature to both Dave and Ed and both were becoming a little restless due to the lack of a new challenge.

  That was about to change.

  It was toward the end of the month, and it was Dave’s wife Linda, who started the ball rolling.

  She and Dave were at home cleaning up after dinner. Dave loading the dishwasher, while Linda wiped down the counters. They had been working silently for several minutes before she spoke

  “An interesting report landed on my desk this morning...”

  Dave looked up at her as he closed the door on the dishwasher.

  “Oh, and what did it have to say?’

  She tossed him the cloth she’d been using, and he rinsed it and draped it over the tap as she continued.

  “…not that much really. It’s what was implied that got my attention.

  It was from one of the front-line social workers on the ‘Boystown’ stroll.”

  She raised the wine bottle sitting on the table and waved it at him and Dave nodded as she refilled their glasses before settling down onto one of the chairs at the table. He left the sink and sat down across from her.

  “And?”

  Linda reached down and opened her briefcase, which she’d left by her chair when she got home. She pulled out a sheaf of stapled papers and passed them to him.

  “I think maybe you should read it.

  You remember way back when I said that we seemed to be losing a lot of the boys we had taken an interest in, far more than the number of girls? The statistics in this report seem to drive that point home rather strongly.

  I’ll let you form your own opinion before I tell you mine. Give it a read while I go check on Bless and the kids.”

  Dave took a sip of wine as he watched her walk out of the kitchen, then he picked up the report and began to read.

  It was about ten pages long, the last four, a set of graphs.

  He was aware of her coming back into the room some time later, but his interest had been piqued and he didn’t look up as she sat down across from him and picked up her glass.

  By this point, Dave had reached the graphs at the end and when he’d finished eyeballing them, he set the document down on the table and leaned back in his chair.

  “Intriguing for sure…doesn’t add up when you compare the males and the females…so what did you make of it. Something is out of whack, yes?”

  Linda smiled and shook her head.

  “Nope, you first.”

  Dave frowned and sat forward, resting his elbows on the table.

  “You’d have a better idea than I would. Its your bailiwick, not mine.”

  Linda raised her eyebrows.

  “Are you sure of that?”

  He frowned.

  Linda shrugged her shoulders.

  “These boys are going somewhere. I know, I know, it’s a transient lifestyle. They come, and they go. But just not as regularly or this often and none of them have come back. And did you notice…they are all recently arrived on the street, young, have similar physical descriptions and; in a general sense, are also very similar in appearance.”

  Dave nodded. He now knew where she was going with this.

  “You think maybe, just maybe, we have a serial killer on our hands.”

  Linda nodded.

  “These stats go back over at last seven years and if you base an assessment on the last five, you must accept that the numbers indicate one hell of an uptick over that time line.”

  Dave leaned back in his chair and crossed his arms. He thought for a few seconds before he responded.

  “Ok, but we’d need to have more than this one report before we reach that conclusion. What are you suggesting?

  “For now, a joint operation.

  If this is what I think it might be, it’s obviously something that you will end up running with.

  For now, I would think maybe statistics and case load facts from me and from you, a discreet on-going street surveillance, on the stroll itself by one of your teams.

  Let’s see if we can nail anything down.”

  Dave took a deep breath.

  “Ok, I’ll get my team set up tomorrow.

  You get some people working on the data relating to each of these ‘missing-in-action’ boys. Bring home whatever you have each night and we’ll discuss it. I don’t think it will take more than a few weeks to reach a conclusion one way or another.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

  - October 2005 –

  Kenny was ecstatic.

  Joel was tuning out to be a gem, though yet, not an ideally polished one.

  Perhaps a bit too early to be unquestionably convinced; but still delightfully effective at putting asunder a good deal of the worry and sweat he’d suffered over having to reset the stroll selection process.

  Brighter than Robbie, quick to learn, all the while lacking in self confidence, subservient and crying out for affection.

  Gay and horny.

  What more could one ask for?

  Kenny still had to be gentle with Joel during their initial sex acts. That went without saying, but was to be expected, at this early stage of their relationship.

  As a result, their one-on-one couplings, did not provide the ideal satisfaction level Kenny had been used to with Robbie. But that would come in time.

  Kenny had to build trust, after all.

  He pointedly kept his sessions with the kid relatively mild in nature, unfortunately reducing the personal stimulation he got from them in the early stages. On the plus side, the kid was already freely open to being dominated, and Kenny was confident that it would surely work itself out over time.

  Despite the short prep time, the October first of the month scheduled kill had gone as smooth as silk. Joel had been eager for the idea of a threesome when Kenny suggested it and had turned out to be a natural.

  Although he knew it soon had to be done, Kenny wasn’t quite yet ready to transfer ownership of the Mustang and house to Joel by way of having him sign on the part of the purchaser, the two documents he had prepared and had Robbie sign for that purpose.

  That was a big step.

  It had to be accomplished for sure, to remove any easily traceable connections between the two of them. However, prior to committing to that, he would require a little more assurance of Joel’s absolute loyalty.

  He would have to make sure to get that out of the way before the next selection process was to take place to facilitate Joel’s choosing of the November target.

  A few little things to get tidied up, but all-in-all, reasonably doable.

  By the fourth, Kenny had completed his sausage run and clean up.

  He now had the rest of the month to get all the parameters set in place for Joel and satisfy himself that he could put any currently remaining concerns aside, for the foreseeable future.

  By the end of the month, Kenny was still not completely convinced that he had the kid exactly where he wanted him. However, still uneasy about sending him out in the Mustang before it and the house had been legally put into his name; he went ahead with the ownership transfers anyway.

  In mid-October, Dave, Linda, Ed, and the two younger detectives, Julia Arnold and Jack Stewart, who Dave had selected to set up the surveillance of the stroll met, in Dave’s office.

  Julia was thirty-two, stood five feet six. She had a trim athletic build exhibiting well-formed curves in all the right places. Her thick shoulder-length, dark-brown hair framed cute, if not outright striking facial features.

  She wore dark-framed glasses, which seemed to be forever slipping down the bridge of her nose, requiring her to unconsciously push them back into place repeatedly, and spoke with a noticeable English accent.

  For work, she normally dressed relatively casually in slacks and a sweater, neither of which were provocative in cut but certainly in their own way, accented her femininity.

  Bubbly, full of energy, she didn’t like to sit still. She could have a short fuse if she felt unnecessarily pandered to, patronized by a male colleague, or challenged about her ability.

  When Julia walked into a room, men noticed.

  She was once divorced and was currently in a long-standing relationship with Phil, her engineer boyfriend.

  Her partner, Jack, was thirty-six.

  Jack worked out daily. His broad-shouldered six-foot-four frame was well muscled. He kept his dark hair short and had chiselled, if somewhat boyish features, which made him look younger than his years,

  Handsome, a quiet man of few words, cool, collected and very confident, he was a no-nonsense type, and was not known for his sense of humour. That aside, he was a skirt-chaser of some repute within the department and had a good number of successful conquests under his belt.

  When they had initially been transferred in to the squad, primarily due to their very distinct personalities and reputations, Dave had wondered about what chemistry might raise its ugly head if he chose to pair the two of them up.

 

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