Case of the Black Widow Ch. 05

"So be it." I said, getting up. "Consider yourself under arrest. Stay right here. Get comfortable." I told Senior Patrolman Morton to read Harlan his rights, process him through booking, take him to Interrogation-1 on the 'perp' side of Headquarters, and to provide Harlan with a phone so he could call his lawyer.

Then Cindy and I went into the anteroom. The others were headed to the Conference room already, and Curly Goodwin was coming upstairs and met us as we walked down to join them.

In the conference room, I said "Mr. Krasney, would you go ahead and get the warrant for her arrest? We can hold Brian Harlan here overnight, but we have to get Angela into custody before she finds out what we know and skips town." Krasney nodded to Paulina, who had her cellphone out and was speed-dialing the Courthouse.

"Martin," I said to Detective Nash, "we're also going to get a warrant for Angela's apartment. One thing in particular that you are searching for is hair brushes. Look for hair brushes everywhere, the one she used to comb Selena Steele's hair may be hidden away."

"Yes sir." Nash said, not questioning my instruction at all. Cindy did, of course.

"Hair brush?" Cindy asked.

"Yep. If we get that hair brush, we're halfway home to a conviction. St. Louis might have to provide the other half, unless the coach does the unexpected and turns on his blood kin." I said. "Okay, Cindy, explanations later: get your heavy gear on, we're going on a takedown mission. Where's Hugh?"

"He's off duty, and we haven't been able to get in touch with him." Martin Nash said.

"Shit." I said. "Martin, keep trying to reach Hugh. I just hope he's not with Angela right now. Okay guys, let's go."

"I'm coming, too!"

The voice behind us was Tanya Perlman. She had her heavy bulletproof gear and was dressed in a tactical uniform that allowed freedom of movement.

"All right, Perlman." I said. "And if it's peaceful, you get to make the arrest... IF it's peaceful." Everyone scrambled to get their gear and get ready.

I felt a hand clutch my bicep. It was the Chief practically dragging me back into the conference room.

"Are you certain about bringing Perlman, Don?" he asked.

I looked the Chief in the eye. "Dead certain, Chief." He said no more but waved me on to get ready.

Part 32 - Near Miss

"Hi Hugh, let's go get some late-night pizza." said Angela Harlan when Hugh opened his apartment door.

"Okay." said Hugh. They got into Angela's car, her driving.

"Where have you been these days?" Angela asked.

"The Chief has me doing all this SWAT stuff." Hugh said. "He says he wants every 'i' dotted and 't' crossed when we go to the Council for final approval. If you ask me, it's all busy work, but orders are orders. What about you?"

"It's all about Feeley's murder in MCD." Angela said. "Cindy says she's never seen the Iron Crowbar so cold and determined."

"Yeah, Pete's murder really hit him hard. He feels like he could've stopped it." Hugh said.

"Really?" Angela said, her husky voice sharp and incisive. "Does he have any clue who the Black Widow is, if it's not Selena Steele?"

"I don't know. " said Hugh. "Don doesn't tell us everything he's thinking of-- hey! where are we going?" He realized they were driving into the Warehouse District."

"I want to check something out on the way." Angela said. "I want to see if the warehouse where Feeley was killed is being used again."

"No way." said Hugh. "That place has been compromised, they'll avoid it like the plague."

"That's just it." said Angela, "logically they'll think it's safe precisely because we think they won't come back."

They drove up to the front gate, which was wide open. Angela drove onto the site and up to the door of the warehouse... the door that had proved fatal to Pete Feeley.

"Angela," Hugh said, "the Chief told us we can't be doing this without backup."

"We're not trying to arrest anyone, we're just looking around. There's a light on inside the warehouse. If we see anyone, we'll call for backup and wait."

Before he could stop her, Angela had scurried out of the car. Hugh was feeling extremely unwilling to be doing this, but felt he had no choice as Angela went to the door and peered inside. He got out of the car and followed her as she went inside.

There was a light on in the middle of the warehouse, beaming down a circle of light. Angela darted into the building before Hugh had any chance to stop her. As he stepped through the door, his war-honed instincts told him to duck!-- and the plywood beam just grazed the top of his head as he whirled.

"AMBUSH!" Hugh yelled in warning to Angela as he turned to face his opponent. He parried the next blow, then was spun around by a second man who grabbed him from behind. Using the military personal combat tactics he'd mastered and used all too many times, he threw the man over his shoulder as the first man rushed him again. Hugh again avoided the rush, spinning and pushing the man on by him. Hugh went for his gun as the two men prepared to attack him again--

*ZZZZZZZT!!!*

The TASER prods embedded into Hugh's back and 50,000 volts of electricity seared through him. He began falling, totally helpless. Angela Harlan had used the TASER on Hugh and was fiercely continuing to pour the juice into him, a slight smell of burning flesh wafting up into the air.

Finally the two men managed to get Hugh's hands handcuffed behind him, and half carried, half dragged him to the metal chair directly under the cone of light.

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When Hugh opened his eyes, he felt the agony of his muscles having been TASERed. He realized that his shirt had been pulled over his arms, which were pulled over the back of the chair and that he was handcuffed to the chair. His pants and underwear were puddled at his ankles, which were also bound with an electric extension cord.

"You idiot." said the husky voice as Hugh's vision cleared. Angela was standing in front of him, totally naked except for high heel black pumps. Her body looked magnificent, like a goddess in the strange light, her firm breasts standing proudly on her chest, the slight quiver of her taut abs betraying her excitement.

"Give him a full dose." Angela instructed one of her helpers, a slightly overweight man with a thin beard and goatee. Skinny Beard injected the contents of the syringe into Hugh's shoulder. Burning heat seared at the spot of the entry, then began spreading as the drugs entered his bloodstream.

"I just can't believe you, Hugh." Angela said in a mock 'hurt' voice. "Why in the world would you fuck that whore Selena Steele? Wasn't this enough for you?" Angela said, pointing to her own luscious body. She cupped her firm breasts in her hands, massaging them she stood over Hugh. "You were tapping this every night if you wanted, Hugh. And you could've been having me every night from now on... but what did you do but go and fuck that skank whore Selena Steele!"

Hugh was trying to concentrate through the grogginess of the drug as well as having been TASERed and subdued. He'd endured hardships and extreme dangers in Afghanistan, but never had he been so near death than he was at this moment. He tried to speak, but couldn't; his mouth had been duck-taped shut.

"Oh, Goddammit, I was so close, so fucking close!" Angela wailed, looking to the sky. "I had that bitch going down, she was going to get the death penalty! But no, Hugh, you had to go and fucking cheat on me with that bitch! You fucking ruined everything!"

Angela peered down at Hugh, then began pacing in front of him, the clicking of her high heel pumps echoing through the warehouse.

"I have to admit, Hugh," said Angela, strutting in front of the war hero. "You're pretty damn good in bed. Really good. We could've been something together. Oh look, your cock is getting hard."

Angela leaned over and began stroking Hugh's big cock, her other hand massaging his large, full balls. Her breasts were right in his face, tantalizingly close but untouchable. She continued to massage his cock and play with him as she tormented him with her words. "Yeah, this cock liked my tight little pussy, didn't it? And all you had to do is be faithful to it, Hugh, and you'd be getting this all the time. All you wanted. But now..."

Angela straddled Hugh, then grabbed his throbbing hard eight inch cock. As she lowered herself onto it, she said "Let's have one more time, for old times sake, huh? One final time, eh?" With that, Angela began riding Hugh's cock, impaling her sopping wet cunt onto his weapon of lust, taking him balls-deep, clutching at his cock as she slowly eased up, then slamming her cunt back down onto him again.

The warehouse filled with the staccato slaps of flesh on flesh as Angela's asscheeks pounded into Hugh's thighs each time she dropped her full weight onto him. The other men began to become aroused as the watched Angela fuck the muscular young man. They both wanted her, but at the same time knew the fatal consequences of mating with this woman.

Skinny Beard headed towards the door to be on the lookout while the other man, bigger and stronger, wielded a solid aluminum baseball bat. He would soon be swinging it with all of his power at the softball that was the back of Hugh Hewitt's head.

The pleasure of the sex rocketed through Hugh's loins Angela rode him hard. He could feel that she was about to come. He worked hard to deaden his own sensations, trying desperately not to climax, trying to work his bonds but to no avail.

"Oh God, oh God, oh UNNH!!!!" Angela moaned loudly as she climaxed. A puddle of wetness smeared Hugh's groin as her cunt clutched hard at his cock. Her whole body shook with pleasure as her climax raced up her spine.

"Oh baby, that was good." Angela said, gasping. "That was a damn good cum. So... where should I paint the hourglass on you, baby? How about a really big one, all over your chest and abdomen, so that they'll admire your entire body while looking at it... oh yeah, it's so unfortunate that this magnificent body is going to go to waste, but that's what happens when you cheat on me with that whore Selena Steele!"

Angela began bouncing up and down on Hugh's cock again. If she came again, great, but she was now trying to bring Hugh off and so complete her deadly mission...

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"Harlan is not at her apartment, repeat, not at her apartment." said Martin Nash into my cellphone. I was driving towards there with my partner, Detective Cindy Ross, in the passenger seat. Other police cars were headed to Brian Harlan's home to see if she'd gone there.

"Have you contacted Hewitt yet?" I asked. Nash replied that he'd been unable to get in touch with Hugh.

"Damn." I said. "I've got a bad feeling that she's got him somewhere."

"This is just a hunch, but let's try the same warehouse where Pete was killed." Cindy said. "Angela uses convoluted logic sometimes: she'll think that will be the last place we'd look for."

"I'm willing to try it." I said, turning down a street to head south to the Warehouse District. "And let me try this." I said. I activated a program on the dashboard computer in my Police SUV and punched in several numbers.

"What's that?" Cindy asked.

"Tracking device. There's one in all of our police issue gun holsters. That's a secret you should keep and guard with your life, by the way." I said, noticing the shocked look on Cindy's face. "I'm punching in Hugh's code now."

Soon I had a faint beep on the computer GPS map. "Yep, Warehouse District. You may have hit the jackpot, Cindy." I got on the police radio and called for all units to head straight to the warehouse where Pete had been killed. As we neared the location, I called for all cars to cut their sirens, so that it was only blue lights flashing as we entered the grounds of the warehouse.

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Skinny Beard heard the sirens in the distance, then suddenly a silence. He realized what was happening: the police were onto them! He knew that he had little time to act, and he did. No one else saw him slip into the darkness of the warehouse to a back door.

He made no attempt to inform his cohorts of the impending danger to them; instead he brutally betrayed them by sneaking out and leaving them behind. Truly there was no honor among thieves...

Soon he was on the street, hurrying away from the crime scene. Only two patrol cars whizzed by him, and he was not noticed.

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Pulling right up to the door next to Angela Harlan's car, I quickly jumped out and went to the door, gun drawn, Cindy right with me. The next car that pulled up was Patrolman Rudistan with Tanya Perlman in the car, followed by three more vehicles.

We crept inside, walking rapidly but carefully towards the circle of light. I could hear voices, moans in the distance. Rounding a stacked pallet of bags, I saw in the distance Angela Harlan, naked, riding Hugh Hewitt's cock. He was bound to the chair he was sitting on. Behind him and to his left, a large man swung a baseball bat back, ready to strike Hewitt on the head.

"He's close... come on Hugh, come inside me!" Angela yelled. "Work that nut out, boy, get that nut!" Hugh desperately tried to keep from coming but it was too late, he felt the spurts of hot semen fire from his cock and deep into Angela's cunt.

"Yeah, there it is!" Angela yelled. She nodded at the big man, who readied. He knew that as soon as she disengaged and stood up, he would swing.

"POLICE! FREEZE!" I yelled as I rushed them, the others coming with me. The man looked at us, then began to swing his bat, trying to kill Hugh before we could get to him. But our bullets traveled faster as we opened fire.

Angela had stood up, Hugh's semen dripping out of her freshly fucked cunt. Though she made no moves, several of the the fusillade of bullets struck her. Forensics later would tell us the man was struck 23 times by police gunfire, and Angela seven. Of those seven, one was from Cindy's gun... the other six from Tanya Perlman's.

"CEASE FIRE, CEASE FIRE!" I ordered. There was moment of silence, no movement, then everything burst into a chaos of movement and sound.

Rudistan unhandcuffed Hugh as Dr. Heinz and Dr. Laura Fredricson reached him with an EMT team. Dr. Heinz injected a syringe full of a clear liquid into Hugh's neck.

"This is the antidote to the poison, but vee must hurry him to da hospital, ja?" Dr. Heinz said.

"Yes we must." Laura replied, then gave orders to the EMTs: "Get him to University Hospital, stat. I'll ride with him. Call on the radio that we'll need whole blood and plasma for blood transfusions."

I watched as Hugh was put on the gurney and whisked out of the warehouse. Looking over, I saw Cindy holding Tanya Perlman back, off to one side. A circle of police officers surrounded Angela Harlan. She was lying on her back, still alive, though barely. I went through the cordon and knelt beside her. She looked up at me and tried to grasp at my shirt.

"Under... under my desk drawer." she gasped, then added with her final, supreme effort, "Tell Brian... I love him..." I nodded as I saw the light going out of Angela's eyes. Then they opaqued, staring sightlessly up at the ceiling.

The Black Widow was dead.

Part 33 - Solution

Most desks have drawers with open holes to the next drawer down, but Angela had put some stiff cardboard under the top left drawer and concealed a manila envelope there. Inside was a jump drive and some papers.

Some were notes detailing her stalking of Selena Steele, but not her reasons for doing so. There were also several lists of names of people we found to be bank officers, possible targets for the Black Widow. The only reference to Tom Burleson was one sheet of paper with his name on it and a scribbled, cryptic message: "found out about the four."

"Well, Jack," I said to Special Agent In Charge Jack Muscone, "I don't know what this 'Four' is about, but I suspect Ward and Angela Harlan were a part of it. Maybe Karen Warner, also?"

"Why don't we question them about it?" Jack asked, not really meaning it.

"Nooooo," I said, "let's just keep this little secret under our hats for a while, and observe them..."

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One letter was addressed to 'Brian Harlan's attorney'. In it, Angela Harlan wrote a full confession to the murder of Tim Dawdle, stating that her cousin had no knowledge of her actions and lied about her being with him because she told him she was meeting a married man for sex.

"So, do we charge Brian Harlan?" asked Paulina. "He lied to police, and he might have known about it, no matter what she writes from the grave."

"I don't know." I said. "His lawyer will have a field day with all of this. He'll never be convicted of accessory. What's he going to get for lying to police, a fine? Probation?"

"He has no priors, so likely that's all he'll get... if that." Paulina said.

"I'll talk to the Powers-That-Be at the University, and see if they want to retain this scumbag as their head coach. If they do, we might as well drop it, it'll be fruitless to pursue...

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"Hugh is making a full recovery." Laura informed the group of us in the back room of the Irish Pub as she walked in to join us. "Last night we had to give him a pint of whole blood and several plasmas, but we got him stabilized. He's improved all through the day, and he's doing much better now." A cheer and applause filled the room.

The antidote Dr. Heinz gave Hugh stopped the poison from killing him, but had the side effect of thickening Hugh's blood. To say the stuff was experimental was an understatement, but I was glad Heinz disregarded the FDA regulations and saved my officer's life. The blood and plasma transfusions thinned Hugh's blood as it was filtered.

"Great work, Doctor. Thank you." I said, kissing my wife on the cheek. "Have a seat with us."

"Okay, Don, tell us how you figured it out." Cindy said as we settled into our chairs.

"I almost didn't." I said. "I was culpably slow. I simply forgot objectivity and refused to consider that a police officer might be the criminal."

"I think we're all guilty of that." said Martin Nash.

"Yeah, but the clues were staring me in the face." I said. "For starters, I should've seen it when Angela first said she'd investigated the Texas cases. Curious that she was in the area for those, then she's moved up to this County and the Black Widow appears here at the same time."

"Easy to see with perfect 20/20 hindsight, and as you said, suspecting a fellow police officer is not the first thought any of us would've had. So when did you start catching on." Detective Ross asked. A persistent one, is my friend Cindy.

"I'm getting there. Another clue I should've seen was what the FBI guys were calling the 'Dawdle deviation'." I said. "My contract killer idea was wrong, and shows the failure of theorizing before having adequate facts. But the Dawdle case was such a deviation from all of the other Black Widow killings that I should've seen the deviation itself as the clue. The murder scene had the same motifs, so it was obvious it was the same person... but the killing was done for totally different reasons than any of the other murders. The reason? Dawdle was going after Coach Harlan. Now who was in Texas at the time of those killings, then up here -AND- with a motive to kill her cousin's persecutor? In a case that otherwise did not fit the pattern?"

"Again, perfect 20/20 hindsight." said Laura, taking up Cindy's cause.

"Yes, but it was slapping me in the face and I just didn't catch on." I said. "I will say this, though: I think Selena Steele won the lottery the night she picked up Hugh at that bar and took him home on New Year's Eve. If she hadn't, she might have been facing a death penalty trial, which is what Angela had been working for, and for several years. And we never would've solved this case."