Flashback to the Dragon

By Terri L. Powers

A serial killer is loose in the city of Seattle stalking women in the downtown area near Elliott Bay. Detective Nate Cliff ton is assigned to the Monroe case, tagged with that name by the newspapers because the victims all look like 1950s pin-up models. Nate is relentless in his hunt for this smart killer who keeps eluding police to fulfill his bloodlust.

Meanwhile, John Carpenters peaceful life is changed forever following a terrible car accident. Awakening from a coma, John now has an ability to see events from the past to flashback. During one such flashback into the past, John sees a distinctive tattoo when he witnesses a murder in an alleyway near Pike Place Market. Who can he trust? He certainly doesnt want to involve his family, so he turns to Nate. Nate is skeptical of Johns newly acquired ability at first. Will the detective believe him, or will John become the number one suspect in the investigation into the brutal crime?

When John sees the tattoo for a second time in another flashback, Nate must learn to use the past to alter the future. Another woman will die if the killer is not stopped. The clock is ticking. John must learn to accept his gift, and then learn to use it as he becomes mixed up in the hunt for a serial killer. Will John Carpenter end up a hero, or will he end up dead?

• Language: English
• Publisher: Abbott Press
• Release date: Aug 28, 2012
• ISBN: 9781458205612

Terri L. Powers

Terri L. Powers, author of the Flashback thriller series, was born in Michigan. When not writing, Terri enjoys her family, reading, and will hit a golf ball around a course if she is in the mood and the weather is perfect. You can follow her on Twitter, user name @Phaedra4Real, or here: http://soiwanttowriteanovel.wordpress.com/

Book preview

PROLOGUE

SEATTLE, WASHINGTON

Plip… plip …

Have to get up to tighten the faucet handles. Carmen Rogers groaned, disappointed that the dripping sound had seeped into her consciousness. Frowning slightly, she thought, If that doesn’t work, a towel in the tub placed right under the drip would muffle the noise it’s making that’s giving me a headache. Maybe grab a couple aspirin out of the cupboard to fight the hangover. Her head felt like it was tethered to her body by a few strands of over-stretched tendons, threatening to tumble to the floor and roll into a corner. Carmen didn’t think she’d miss her head much, not the way it was pounding.

Plip.

There you are.

Deep and sinister sounding, the words overshadowed her thoughts, and then a low chuckle brought her fully awake. Her heart pounded so hard it threatened to beat through her chest like a trapped bird fluttering around trying to escape the confines of its cage. Her breathing became shallow and erratic. She prayed for a heart attack rather than her current situation. Realizing she was not safe and secure in her apartment nursing a hangover, she now understood she must have passed out from pain, shock, exhaustion, or a combination of the three.

Plip.

Where is the leak? Carmen looked wildly around the small room. Thick, quilted blankets hung from the walls and above her along the ceiling. The better to soundproof the room, my dear. A naked bulb glared down on her, and she could see the shine bounce off the sharp instruments on the table next to where she lay tied at her ankles and wrists. The better to see you, my dear. The better to hold you against your will. Her thoughts had been reduced to nursery rhymes. The better to cope, my dear.

Her eyes found her tormentor, and she tried to plead with him to let her go, but a hard rubber ball filled her mouth and distorted any sounds she made. He seemed to take pleasure in her struggles and encouraged the muffled begging. His eyes that had looked so fun and flirty in the bar were predatory and slightly mad now. His eyes were the reason I left the bar with him tonight . last night. She realized she had no idea how long she had been there.

When they got outside the bar, she had turned away for a second, and he had jabbed her in the neck with what felt like a needle. Carmen had turned back around to voice her displeasure, but before she uttered a word, her legs folded up beneath her and she blacked out.

When she woke, she was naked and disoriented, lying on a cold, poured concrete floor, with him grunting on top of her. She screamed, and a fist cut off the sound, breaking her front incisor on the top right side. She bit her tongue when the blow came and could taste blood in her mouth almost immediately. After that, she pressed her lips together to keep quiet and endured the sexual battery, hoping that when it was over, he would let her go.

When he had roared his last thrust and was done, he flipped the used condom into a corner. She begged him to let her go and promised to forget that the assault ever happened, even introducing herself and letting him know about her dog, Sinjin, at home waiting to be fed and walked around the block, thinking that if she revealed a little about herself, she would no longer be an object in his eyes. Her attempts fell on deaf ears as he grabbed her by the hair and threw her on the metal table, her arms flailing as she fought to get his hands away. Fighting against him proved useless as he fitted the leather straps on her wrists and ankles and gagged her mouth. She could feel the muscles in his arms, and she still felt slightly woozy and uncoordinated from whatever drug he had forced on her.

Raping her had been bad enough; she still felt sore all over from that humiliation. But what scared Carmen more than the physical violation was the way he would gently stroke her cheek and call her Mommy with an expression of love on his face. Then his features would change dramatically, melting from the loving gaze to one of sadistic lust before he cut her flesh, causing more pain than she had ever felt. She begged when he asked her to and asked for forgiveness when he wanted that. This was what she had been taught to do in the self-defense classes: anything to stay alive. But he didn’t in fact want her to participate in the macabre ritual he was acting out.

She was disoriented, fading in and out of consciousness, only to be awoken by a slap on the face or a sharp pain, such as when he shoved a knife into the sole of her right foot. Much to her own dismay, she had lost control and urinated—once in the beginning because her bladder was full from the beers and shots of tequila that she had consumed at the bar, and the last time out of fear.

She watched in horror, her eyes wide and wild, as he brought a sharp object up into view and, with the tip of it, began circling her left nipple around the areola. The pain was almost numbing—almost. She screamed into the gag as she watched his progress. As he worked, her eyes were drawn to the detailed tattoo on his right hand, a mythical creature with intricate scales and a barbed tail that wrapped around his wrist. She was mesmerized by the movement of the beast as it seemed independent of the hand on which it was marked. He continued muttering to her, calling her a whore, or worse, Mommy, and she kept staring at the dragon, wishing for things like white knights in shining armor.

Plip.

Carmen knew the sound now; the dripping was coming from her. She was bleeding from several cuts on her breasts, abdomen, and the deep incision on the bottom of her foot. The blood was running off of her and down the tracks that were indented on the sides of the metal table on which she lay, dripping off the table into a drain somewhere near her feet. She knew this because he had described the room and equipment to her in great detail before he began carving.

Tears formed in her eyes as she came to the realization that this would be her final view of the world. That tomorrow was never coming.

Plip ...

Carmen would survive another forty-eight hours before life trickled out of her one drip at a time onto the stone floor and into the drain, releasing her from her tormenter.

CHAPTER 1

APRIL 10

John Carpenter loudly sang along to Katy Perry’s E.T. as the radio broadcast looked at the history of Top-40 hits over the past several years. The song blasted from the speakers of his car stereo as he drove to A.I. Technical where he worked. The top was folded down on his Mustang convertible, allowing the unseasonably warm morning breeze to play with his thick, brown hair and the slanting rays of the sun to warm his shoulders. He switched to the lower tones of Kanye West, following the words in the song and sounding out the technically altered vocals and staying mostly on-key.

He drove past the ice-cream parlor on Third Street and watched as a pretty girl opened the shop, cranking out the red-and-white-striped awning. He could almost taste the chocolate, marshmallows, and nuts of rocky road ice cream, his favorite flavor. It was getting to be that time of year when flowers bloomed, kites appeared in the sky, and eating ice cream again sounded like a good idea.

The song was over, and the news team came on as John brought the car to a stop at a red light. As he sat there waiting for the light to turn green, he started to mentally list off his day’s agenda: finish the month-end report, call the auditors to get a list of their most recent findings, and set up a lunch with Brandy on her next day off.

John was the oldest sibling in the Carpenter family of East Essex Circle, and Brandy was John’s baby sister. The two were as different in appearance as they were in actions. Where John was dark, soft-spoken, and deliberate, with interests in history or historic events, Brandy was blonde, outgoing, and hyper, interested in what was happening on a current reality television show or the latest fashion trend to hit the city. John loved her completely and looked forward to their monthly lunches. No matter what mood Brandy might be in that day, it was usually an entertaining hour. Maybe they should check out the new bistro over on Cavanaugh Avenue. He would call her from the office after … shit!

A block from work, he remembered he was supposed to bring in bagels for the staff meeting at nine o’clock that morning. There would be hell to pay if he didn’t. He knew not to get between the office staff and food. He swore a person could put out a serving platter filled with mouse turds, and there wouldn’t be a single one left by noon.

Where could he get bagels between there and work? Mentally pulling up maps of the area, he searched around in his memory for a likely bagel place. Maybe I can show up with some story about having purchased the bagels but then leaving them at home because my apartment building caught fire, and my only thought was to get out of the building safely, leaving the bagels behind to the smoke and confusion. He shook his head, bringing himself out of his reverie. No one would believe him, or if they did, they would wonder why he hadn’t waited for the fire fighters to put the fire out and gone back in for the bagels.

He took his foot off the brake and moved the car forward when the light turned green, thinking that he could turn left at the block his office was on, go down to Turner Street, and get bagels at Morning Sunshine Deli, a place that opened for the breakfast crowd. It would be expensive, but that’s what he got for forgetting until now.

He never saw it coming. One minute he was moving forward, thinking about bagels and cream cheese, and the next he was looking over to his left and thinking how big the grasshopper was in the front grill of the semi-truck that seemed much too close for comfort.

John’s world exploded with bright lights and the jangle of breaking glass. He threw one arm up to protect his face as his windshield caved and exploded inward. His head didn’t feel attached to his body any longer, as it was whipped to the right and then left, hitting hard against the body of the car. He heard a crunch and imagined more than felt an explosion of white light inside his head, and then everything faded to black.

CHAPTER 2

The Mack truck driver was in a hurry and talking on his cell phone, getting a major ass-chewing from his boss over being late, laced with threats of losing his job. Ralph Thompson needed the job because it was the only thing that stood between him and living out of a discarded washing-machine crate on the streets of Seattle, eating out of garbage cans, and begging for enough money to continue his addiction to crack cocaine.

He had started on the drug a couple of years back to stay awake and to deliver the goods within an impossible timeline, beating out the competition, flying high like a superhero. At first, he was invincible, delivering truckload after truckload to the warehouse in record time; the golden boy of the shipping yards. But soon the crashes came, at odd hours of the day, and he needed more crack to keep going. It’s only a little after eight-thirty, for chrissake; I’ll get there in five minutes, he wanted to yell into the mouthpiece.

When the light up ahead turned from yellow to red, he figured it was more like orange anyway, and besides, who would challenge a big rig like that? Someone sees me coming, they will get out of the way and let me through, he thought, so he opted out of hitting the brakes, deciding to keep going straight through.

His boss on the other end of the line had pretty much wound down, and Ralph started to say, I’ll be there in five minutes. Don’t get your shorts all in a bunch, when he saw a flash of red and felt the impact. Whatever his vehicle ran into made the cab shutter and jerked the steering wheel to the left. He threw the cell phone to the floor and grabbed onto the wheel with both hands, standing on the air brakes to stop.

Oh God, oh God, oh God, Ralph muttered under his breath. Over the screaming metal, he still could hear his boss’s voice, tinny and far away. Please, no. Ralph started thinking of what he could say that would throw the blame anywhere but in his lap.

When the truck came to a stop, the silence was deafening. He felt frozen to the seat. Slowly he reached his hand down to disengage the seatbelt, pushed his stringy blond hair out of his eyes, and opened the door. He stumbled down from the cab to see what he had hit, thinking he didn’t want to be around when the cops got there. What if they take me in and give me a blood test? If they find crack in my system, my boss is going to can my ass faster than a judge can say guilty, and I will no longer be searching for that perfect discarded carton, I’ll be in jail. And it won’t be my ass anymore; I’ll belong to Butch in the lower bunk. Hold on there, the cops don’t automatically arrest someone, right? He fought the urge to run. Hell, it was only an accident.

As he looked at the crumpled metal that once passed for a car, all he wanted to do was go home, do some coke, eat one of those frozen burritos, and crawl into bed to never come out again. Instead, Ralph moved shakily toward the red lump of metal caught up under the cab of his truck.