B-Movie Attack by Alan Spencer Read Free Book Online Page A

the Claims and Lost Possessions Branch of Chicago without another word on the subject.
     
    Detective Vickers bent onto his haunches to duck under the yellow crime scene tape. The coppery smell of blood floated up to him immediately. He froze when he noted the narrow trenches dug into the walls. Talon marks.  
    “My God, they were here too.”
    “Who?” Officer Baker asked. “Who was here?”
    “Nothing. Give me a moment.”
    Vickers stopped at the door ripped from its hinges. Ripped wasn’t the proper way to describe it. Decimated. The lock boxes within were untouched except for the corner ones. The steel fronts were twisted into a pathetic version of a peeled-back top of a sardine tin. The break-in was specific. Only one set of lockers had been robbed.  
    “What did they steal?”
    A man stormed into the room. He wore a beige business suit and appeared to be in his sixties. His pot belly was so large, the detective could see the shape of his belly button through his shirt. He was bumbling and huffing, his face boiling with contempt. “They broke into my boxes. This is valuable property stolen. Worthless security couldn’t guard their own balls, never mind my reels.”
    “Reels?” Vickers stepped up to the man. He noticed his skin was drying around his eyebrows and scalp with a dusting of dandruff. “What exactly were in those lockers?”
    Three officers bounded into the room to force the man outside the crime scene, but Vickers waved them off. “I want to hear the man out for a moment, if you don’t mind? You won’t touch anything, correct, sir? What’s your name?”
    “I’m Dennis Brauman, head of the Private Film Coalition of Public Morals.”
    “Sounds like a made-up organization,” Baker said. “What gives you the right to bust in here, sir?”
    Vickers urged him aside. “Answer a few questions first.”
    “Where the hell’s my reels?” Dennis demanded, pressing his hands firmly at his hips and pacing in a line. “I can’t let those reach the public. My God, I locked those up for good reason. Immoral trash. All of it. If people see that trash, God knows what it'd inspire in those perverts out there.”
    “What exactly were you storing? What kind of reels?”
    “I don’t want to say. You’ll tell people, and then people will be interested. Film groups will be up my ass. And the fans. We'd have a riot on our hands.”
    “How so?”
    “I seized the property for the benefit of society. I was taking the high road. I was doing the right thing.”
    Vickers was confused. “Are you saying these reels were stolen?”
    “For good reason.” The man's eyes bulged, and he was sweating. He anticipated a negative reaction from the detective. “They’re smut. Nothing better than seedy porno flicks. God awful drivel. It’d turn good people into savages. Rapists. Charles Mansons. Chronic fornicators. Druggies. Hippies. Sickos, you get me? Weirdos.”
    Vickers stumbled for words while stifling an incredulous laugh. “Wait, you said you were from, um, the Private Film Coalition of Public Morals, right? Is that a religious group?”
    “No sir! We’re a group of normal citizens sick and tired of violence and sex in the cinema. We disbanded nearly two decades ago, but we were strong in the seventies and eighties. We did good work.”
    Vickers was already making a new connection, and he hadn’t interviewed a single one of Ted Fuller’s friends. Someone stole Brauman’s reels, and he was venturing to guess they resembled Fuller’s “trash cinema”. The marks on these walls were identical to the marks along the movie theatre walls at the university and the style of wounds on many of the victims in Iowa.
    “Would you happen to own any reels by Ted Fuller?”
    “Ted Fuller!” Dennis’s face turned ugly and the color of a blocked artery. “That bastard tried to steal my daughter from me. I shut down that relationship. He shot pornos with monsters. I swear to the holy lord he did. My daughter