Phoenix Fatale

4. Loyalty To Women

4

Loyalty To Women

Detective Dan Whelan stood in the hospital security office and watched the video surveillance tape. And just as the doctor had told him, he observed a male subject walk down the alley, enter the locked door, then drop the female victim inside.

She was officially known as ‘Jane Doe’ on the hospital charts, and Whelan intended on finding out who she was, and what had happened inside that bar.

He got in his car and headed back to Chopper Town, Pearland, Texas’ most notorious biker bar. When he arrived, police cruisers were everywhere. Throngs of the bar’s patrons were divided into small groups, each being interviewed by a uniformed officer or detective.

Whelan lifted a section of crime scene tape and walked underneath. Inside, more crime scene tape separated the back room of the club from the smoke-filled pool table area in the front.

“What do we have, Bill?” Whelan said.

“The tape from the security camera in here sucks, but you won’t believe what you do see on it.”

“Give me the annotated version. She was gang-raped?”

“No doubt. Beaten pretty badly. The strange thing is, she doesn’t look like a girl you’d normally see in a place like this.”

“How so?”

“The way she was dressed. High-class, for sure. No one here had ever seen her before tonight. And other things, like the hairstyle. Not to mention that she’s got all her teeth. Well, she had all of them, anyway. Sorry, don’t mean to be so crude. At any rate, they all say ‘city’ to me. Definitely not a biker babe.”

“So, what is it you want me to see on the tape?”

“It’s the fight that ensued after a lone subject walked into view to stop them,” Bill said.

“What about it?”

“Let me put it this way. You had four biker gang members at the emergency room, right?”

“Yeah, and one of them was DOA.”

“Well, there’s three more DOA’s here.”

“What? No one told me there were three more bodies here.”

“Yeah, and I shouldn’t call them ‘dead on arrivals;’ I’d say they were more like ‘killed in action.’”

“I don’t follow,” Whelan said

“The difference is that our hero, if that’s what you want to call him, would make Rambo look like a p***y. He’s ex-military for sure. From the way he mowed through these guys, I’d say he’s special ops, maybe Navy SEALs, or Army Delta Force. I’ve never seen anything like it.”

“Holy shit.”

“Yeah," Bill replied. "And the three dead guys in here? They all look like someone smashed their heads in with a sledgehammer. But the security camera shows he used no weapons, other than his hands and feet, that is. All their necks are broken too.”

They walked to the manager's office and the two detectives watched and re-watched the surveillance video. The man, who had moved in to stop the attack on Jane Doe, looked like something out of the movie The Terminator; a mass of lean muscle covering bones of steel. It didn’t appear as though he had an ounce of body-fat on him.

“My God,” Whelan said. “It’s not that he just went in to stop these guys from raping her. He went in there with the express purpose to kill them all, like he snapped or something. If he doesn't turn up at the hospital tonight, we’ll need to build a psychological profile on him. He must have a fierce sense of loyalty to women or something. I’d bet he comes from a bad home, you know, somewhere where the father beat the mother? All that shit.”

“Kind of rare these days.”

“No kidding,” Whelan replied.

“You’re right," Bill said. "Once he saw what they were doing to her, he wasn’t going to let any of them escape. I mean, look at how he grabbed this guy here who was trying to get away.”

“The victim, Jane Doe, we need an identity on her. She might not make it. The hospital is desperate to find any family members. No one here’s ever seen her before? Maybe you’re right," he said as he looked at Bill. "Maybe she didn’t frequent s**t-holes like this.”

“But what would make a girl like that come in here in the first place? I mean, it’s not safe, obviously. And look around. It’s a dump. Why risk it?”

Whelan answered, “I don’t know. But then again, we’ve seen this kind of behavior before, right? You know, sometimes a perfectly normal woman gets a thing in her head and decides she wants a biker dude. I don’t know, it’s the danger or something that turns them on.”

A few hours later, as Whelan and the other officers gathered evidence at the crime scene, Whelan’s cell phone rang.

"Whelan,” he said into the phone.

“Detective? This is Dr. Ken Brantley, Pearland Medical Center. We spoke earlier this evening?”

“Yes, Dr. Brantley. Did my suspect make it into your emergency room?”

“No. We didn’t see anyone that even remotely looked like they’d just annihilated four gang members.”

“Seven.”

“Seven?” the doctor said.

“Yeah, there are three other DRT’s down here at the biker bar, Rigg’s said, using the cop slang for Dead Right There. “Anyway, what about Jane Doe? How’s she doing?”

“Still alive, anyway. She’s out of surgery. Lost her spleen, severe concussion. Several bones are crushed in her facial area. And yes, she drew a positive on the rape kit. All of the bikers have been genitally swabbed to collect evidence, and from the looks of it, I’d say these are definitely your guys. The state forensic lab will have to confirm it, obviously.”

“Is she going to survive?" Whelan said.

“It’s too soon to tell," the doctor answered.

"Is she conscious?”

"No, and if she does pull through, she won’t be conscious for quite a while. She’s been placed in a medically-induced coma. The surgeons were concerned about the swelling in her brain. They’ll keep her sedated for a while to see if it dissipates. She seems like a fighter though. If I were a betting man, I’d say she’ll make it.”

“Doc?" Whelan said. "What about the bikers that came into the ER? What’s their condition? They looked pretty bad.”

“No kidding. I spoke to the orthopedic surgeon. He said he’d only ever seen joint breakages that bad in car accidents. Never as the result of a fight. It would take an awful lot of skill and rage to smash a knee or elbow joint so hard that it snapped backward.”

“Yeah, I watched it on surveillance tape. Thanks for calling, Doc. Let me know how our girl is doing, okay? And Doc?”

“Yeah?”

“I’m going to nail these sons of bitches that attacked her.”