Black Cat Weekly #84

Chapter 5-1

byThe call came up on Officer Amanda Hodges’s onboard computer screen as an assault in progress. The address was only a few blocks from her present location so she keyed in her response code and made a right turn at the next intersection. Her destination was an affluent neighborhood, one not usually known for this kind of call-out. In addition to meriting a higher-than-average police presence, River Heights employed its own private security firm.

Hodges ran her lights to make sure other vehicles cleared a path for her, but she kept the siren off. She wanted to catch the offenders, not frighten them off.

When she arrived, she witnessed a scene that could have come straight out of a science fiction movie. Two security guards were holding a disheveled man in a firm grip between them while a third attended to the supposed victim, which—at first glance—looked like the love child of a Dalek and R2-D2. The five-foot-long, bullet-shaped device was lying on its side near a storm drain. Red lights flashed around its perimeter. Its wheels spun helplessly in the air, and a loud commanding voice repeated the same phrase over and over. “Step away from the machine now.”

nowHodges approached the private cops and their captive, a man of about forty with shaggy brown hair and badly in need of a shave. His eyes were bloodshot and unfocused. Hodges could smell the booze from three feet away. If the two guards hadn’t been holding him up, he probably would have been flat on his back next to—whatever the hell that thing was.

“What’s going on, gentlemen?” she asked. It paid to be polite. These private security guards might act like pompous asses sometimes, but they were a good visible deterrent, and every little bit helped.

“He tried to make a run for it,” the guy on the right said, “but he’s not very steady on his feet, so he didn’t get far.”

Hodges tipped her head at the recumbent machine in the gutter. “Is that the victim?”

The private cop nodded.

“What is it?”

“Security robot,” his partner said. “Our friend here—he claims he’s an engineer and he was just ‘testing’ our robot—knocked it over. That set off the system’s alarms and we responded.”

“Did he break it?” Hodges asked.

“Floyd is still running diagnostics, but it seems OK, other than some scratches and a dent or two.”

“A little help here?” called the guy named Floyd.

“Will you take him into custody? We’d like to file a complaint for damage to our property and for prowling.”

Hodges flashed her Maglite in the suspect’s face. He grinned and flinched. “I think I can add public intoxication,” she said. “What’s your name, sir?”

“Ivan Abbott,” the man said. “What’s yours, good lookin’?”

“I’m Officer Hodges of the Houston Police Department, and I’m placing you under arrest.” She circled behind him and secured his wrists after donning a pair of latex gloves, a precaution she always took before putting her hands on a civilian. She then went through the ritual of searching him before depositing him in the back seat of her cruiser. “If you puke in my ride, I’m going to be very unhappy—do you read me?”

“Loud and clear, Officer Hottie.” The man couldn’t keep the sloppy grin off his face.

By the time she returned to the scene to get the details she’d need for her report, the three guards had the robot upright. Now it looked more like the nose cone of a futuristic rocket. It was dotted with lights and sensors, but no effort had been taken to make it resemble a human being.

“What does it do?” she asked.

“Her anomaly detection software surveys the neighborhood for suspicious activity,” Floyd said. “She has thermal imaging and night vision, so she can see someone hiding, even in the dark. Using the latest OCR technology, she can read license plates and access a database of suspicious or unwanted vehicles. She can also recognize faces and records video 24/7, all uploaded to the cloud.”

Floyd seemed overly fond of the robot, Hodges thought. “Sounds like it’s going to be replacing you guys soon,” she said, deliberately refusing to use a female pronoun to refer to it.

One of the other guards shrugged. “She’s out here all day long, patrolling the neighborhood in the heat while we’re in our nice, air-conditioned office watching live video on the monitors. You won’t hear me complaining.”

A few weeks later, after roll call, the sergeant waved Hodges aside. “Are you up for an undercover assignment?”

Hodges paused, but only for a second. Female officers didn’t often get the chance to go undercover, and even though it probably meant she would be going on a p**********n sting to round up johns, it was always a pleasant change from routine patrol work. “Sure, Sarge,” she said. “Should I iron my hot pants?”

He raised an eyebrow, which was about as demonstrative as he ever got. “This is a little different. Some creep has been assaulting women in River Heights. Broad daylight, he comes up and grabs them. At first he was only grabbing a*s, but now he’s fondling and rubbing up against them. Five victims so far—at least, five who’ve filed complaints. Guys like him are hard to catch, and he has all the signs that he’s escalating, probably working his way up to r**e. Someone this active in such a short period of time, he’s not likely to change location, and he’s not going to slow down.” He gave her a meaningful nod. “You fit the profile of his targets pretty well.”

Hodges wasn’t sure how to take that. Given the neighborhood, she imagined dowdy women dolled up in high fashion, wearing too much jewelry, too much makeup and too much perfume. Perhaps with a miniature dog tucked under one arm and an oversized bag—adorned with a haute-couture label—hanging over the other. Assaulted en route to their Porsches, no doubt. The composite sketch didn’t give her much to go on. It could have matched anyone, including the Unabomber.

That evening, she was quickly disabused of her—admittedly snobbish—preconception. Detective Fitz Holland introduced her to two of the five victims, who had agreed to be re-interviewed. They were pretty but not overly done up. Both were in their early forties, a few years older than Hodges.

“The press is starting to cover the story,” Holland told Hodges privately. “They’re calling him the River Heights Ripper, but we’re hoping that doesn’t catch on. Too sensational for this neighborhood. And ‘ripper’ sounds too much like ‘r****t,’ don’t you think? He’s not there…yet.”

Hodges nodded, but she couldn’t concern herself with press matters. Her duty was to the victims. She escorted the women to a lounge rather than an interrogation room. They told similar stories of how they had been jogging when confronted by a male wearing a hoodie and sunglasses. Their first indication of his presence was when he laid his hands on them. One woman was the first reported victim. The perp had grabbed her buttocks with both hands, clinging and squeezing for several seconds. She was wearing ear buds, so she hadn’t heard him approach. The assault took her so much by surprise that she was momentarily frozen in place. When she wheeled around to confront her attacker, he scampered off down the side street and was long gone before security arrived.

The other woman was training for a half marathon and stopped at a fence to catch her breath, stretch her muscles, and take a drink of water. She had her back to the street, one leg propped up on a fence, when she became aware of someone approaching. Not interested in starting a conversation that would interrupt her routine, she pretended to be preoccupied with her wrist computer.

The man grabbed her from behind, wrapping his arms around her torso to fondle her while he ground his pelvis into her backside. She could tell he was excited, she told Hodges with a shaky voice, and was certain he intended to r**e her. A passing driver honked his horn and frightened the attacker off. Police and security arrived in due course, but again the perp managed to escape.

Hodges thanked the women for sharing their stories. “I’m going to do my best to catch this creep,” she told them.

The attacks had all occurred between three and six in the afternoon. Hodges reported for duty in River Heights the following afternoon shortly before three. The department had given her a small budget to buy clothes for the assignment, so she’d spent the morning at the mall. She was wearing a yellow V-back boxy T-shirt over a black sports b*a and tight Capri leggings. Sufficiently fashionable for the neighborhood and deliberately form-fitting to entice, but comfortable enough for an extended jogging session, too. She had decided against new sneakers because she didn’t want to have to break them in.

“Meet your new partner,” Detective Holland said after he oriented her to the part of town she would be covering.

“Good afternoon,” a voice behind her said. “Would you like to take a selfie with me?”

Hodges turned. A bemused smile crossed her lips. “Oh, we’ve already met,” she said, “after a fashion.” She looked at the surveillance robot. “Last time I saw you, you were lying on your back in the gutter.”

Blue lights flashed on the robot’s front panel, but it did not respond. She told Detective Holland about the “assault.” She recognized the man standing next to the robot with what looked like a remote control in his hands. Floyd, she thought he was called.

“We’ll have backup nearby,” Holland said. “But in a neighborhood like this, anyone lingering too long without good reason looks out of place.”

Hodges nodded. When she worked as a decoy in p**********n stings, her backup detail usually pretended to be taxi drivers or homeless people, neither of which would work in River Heights. “We’ll have a couple of people dressed as gardeners, but you’ll be on the move, so they won’t be able to follow you closely. Our guy seems to have a thing for athletic woman of a certain age.” He gave her a long appraising block. “I think you’ll get his attention. You’ve got that MILF vibe.”

Hodges bristled but refused to let the detective get under her skin. She was used to having crude and lascivious comments directed at her by coworkers and colleagues. Before becoming a cop, she had tended bar in a place frequented by cops, so she had plenty of experience fending off unwanted advances and discouraging guys from trying to grope her. The police department was still very much a man’s world, though, and women who entered it had to put up with a lot of sexist crap to get ahead. Only once in her career had Hodges filed a complaint, when a former sergeant pursued her relentlessly, refusing to take no for an answer. Her superiors had taken her accusations seriously, but she was the one who was transferred, not the persistent sergeant. All he got was a few sessions of s****l harassment training.

“You’ll need to carry your badge,” Holland told her, “but a sidearm would look a little conspicuous in that getup, don’t you think?”