Hunting Michael Underwood

by L V Gaudet

  He can’t sleep because his victims keep him up.

  They are the victims of his cases, the victims the police failed to save; the victims that he himself failed to save. They come to his desk after it’s too late for anyone to save them, but he still feels the guilt. If he could, every one of the degenerates committing the atrocities he sees every day would be caught and put away before they can harm a single victim. Unfortunately, it doesn’t work that way.

  He could not save Michael’s victims, but he will stop him before there are more if he can. First he has to find him.

  Jim turns and closes the car door with a screech of the hinges and a bang, and heads for the rooming house.

  This is his third visit. The first one was to scope the place out before McAllister was released from prison.

  The second visit was when he got the call that Jason McAllister was on the move while he was at Lawrence’s apartment. He has no reason to expect him to run yet so, as planned, the person he has watching him followed McAllister while he went to the house.

  It was easy enough to break into this old house without damaging the door or lock. It was also easy to break into McAllister’s room without leaving any visible evidence.

  He searched the room thoroughly and was gone long before McAllister returned. There was nothing to find. The man could not have been cleaner.

  This time it’s a social call.

  Following protocol, Jim mounts the stairs and pauses at the front door, raising a fist to knock.

  The door is yanked open before his knuckles can touch it.

  The couple exiting stop and stare at him in surprise, not expecting to come face to face with anyone.

  Jim is immediately assaulted by the smell of unwashed body and cheap perfume.

  He steps aside and the pair passes, not caring to ask him who he is or who he’s there to see.

  They opened the door and granted me entry.

  Jim enters the house, closing the door behind him.

  He notices immediately that the place feels and smells cleaner.

  He takes the few steps to reach the living room doorway and looks in. The old television is pulled out from the wall and someone is lying on the floor behind it. The back cover is removed and leaning against a wall. Otherwise the room is tidy, a surprising transformation from the filth pit it was before.

  There is no way of telling who is behind the television.

  Ready to reach for his weapon only a few inches from his hand if needed, Jim speaks.

  “Hello.”

  “Detective McNelly, I guess you are here to see me,” Jason says, sitting and then standing up and coming out from behind the television he is working on.

  “I see you are keeping yourself busy,” Jim says. “Trying to fix it?”

  “Yes, not sure if I can though,” Jason says. “As you can see I’m still here.” He spreads his arms for emphasis. “I’m behaving myself.”

  He lowers his arms.

  “The last time I saw you I was a guest in one of your institutions,” Jason says. It is an intentional rub over the fact he’s now free. “Now I’m here in this fine home where my social worker set me up in an accommodation paid for by the government, with a bunch of housemates in similar circumstances, the final step before complete freedom after whatever crimes we are each accused of.”

  He tilts his head curiously.

  “I am curious to know what kinds of crimes my housemates were accused of and put away for. It takes something special to have to go through this multi-step process to freedom.”

  “You know I can’t tell you that. If they choose to tell you, that’s on them. I came to finish our conversation,” Jim says. “Now that you are out of a prison cell, I’m willing to bet you’ve been in touch with a mutual acquaintance of ours.”

  “A mutual acquaintance,” Jason says as if he’s guessing. He already knew the moment he heard the detective’s voice.

  “You know who,” Jim says sourly, hating to have to say the name. “Michael Underwood.”

  Jason seems to be thinking about it, and then looks triumphant.

  “Is that the guy who showed up at the farm before all the other cops? He was your partner, wasn’t he?”

  Jim grinds his teeth at that. Underwood was no partner of mine. He was no cop. He was nothing more than another degenerate criminal who kidnapped and murdered innocents.

  “Who is he really?” Jim asks. “Don’t play games.” He looks around. “We’re not in jail, not in an interview room. There’s no one listening. It’s just you and me, off the record.

  I’m going to find him anyway. If you help make that happen faster, maybe you can get your total freedom faster. No more social workers checking in.”

  “I have no problem with social workers. Mine is actually a nice lady once you get past her attempt to seem hard. Not bad to look at either.”

  The thought comes unbidden to Jason’s mind, his social worker, her suit askew, skirt pushed up to reveal more of those legs. Her hair is mussed like she had gone to sleep with that tied back and up hairdo and just woke up with it half falling down, and it makes her look more attractive. Her blouse usually has the top couple of buttons undone to reveal just a hint of cleavage and her always tasteful necklace. But in his image she has a couple more buttons undone, popped off and missing from the strain against the fabric of her blouse.

  She is tied up by her hands and feet, sitting in a corner on the floor, frightened eyes staring at him over the gag in her mouth. A trickle of blood from her nose is already drying, her mouth puffy with swelling from where she had been punched, mashing her lips against her teeth.

  He can feel the silky feel of her pantyhose as he runs his hands up her legs, hear the shredding tearing of them as he pinches and grips them, tearing them away to leave her legs bare. He feels the smooth shaved skin of her bare legs.

  And that will be as far as it will go. It’s only a tease, to bring out greater fear in her before he really begins to play.

  But it hasn’t happened. He hasn’t touched her. Not yet.

  Jason pulls himself back to the present, regretfully leaving his fantasy behind.

  Jim thinks he’s likely thinking it over, the comment about the social worker just empty posturing.

  “You help me and maybe I can help you,” Jim says. “Just tell me where Michael Underwood is. What’s his real name? He won’t even know it came from you.”

  Jason smirks.

  “You sound like you think I should be afraid of your partner,” he says. He chuckles.

  Jim scowls. It’s time to stop playing good cop.

  “I was going over the interview notes from Michael’s debriefing after your arrest at the McAllister farm.” He pauses to let Jason think. “I talked with the others who interviewed him, everyone on his shift who knew him, his neighbours. I even talked to the clerks at the store where he bought groceries and the regulars at his gym.”

  He pauses again.

  “Michael Underwood is not as smart as he thinks he is. He let more slip than just in the interviews with me. The man has a loose tongue.

  You would be surprised what you can piece together from all these different conversations with different people.”

  Jason’s heart beats faster. David has always had a reckless streak in him, even as a boy. What could he have said?

  He plays casual, telling himself the detective is just fishing, that he has nothing.

  “It’s no matter to me, he’s your partner,” Jason says.

  “It’s his connection to you that interests me; his connection to the McAllister Farm, the graves in the woods, and to Jane Doe.”

  Jim watches Jason carefully, reading his responses, the dilation of his eyes and tension in his jaw.

  Despite Jason’s best effort to not react, he can't stop the involuntary responses of his body. Those responses give him away.

  You are just grasping, Jason says silently, keeping the words to himself. You know nothing. You are just trying t
o get at me.

  He shrugs noncommittally. “Means nothing to me.”

  “And Cassie,” Jim throws the name out there. The name Michael was overheard yelling behind closed doors when he met with Jason McAllister in prison after the conviction came down; the same day Michael vanished. The name that brought out a reaction in Jason before.

  Jason feels the name like a physical blow. Cassie, sweet innocent little Cassie.

  The name brings up a well of pain from deep inside him.

  I never wanted kids, he thinks. I never expected kids. They were an accident. A mistake. I should have just ditched them someplace far from both home and the farm. They could have said anything. At their ages they would have not been able to tell anyone where they ended up. They never would have looked in the right place.

  The image of Cassie comes, unwanted, her little body so frail, full of blood and dirt.

  The memory pushes on him.

  He came home that day to find David and Cassie in the barn. David had done unspeakable things to her. He had beaten and tortured her.

  Little Cassie, so small and frail; the sight of her, ruined, filled him with pain; waves of sickness washing over him, making him feel weak.

  David, a thin slip of a boy, looking at him in shock at getting caught, covered in his sister’s blood, his eyes burning and breath coming fast with excitement repulsed him.

  Even more unsettling was the memories of his own childhood that welled up as he stared at them; torturing the pretty little female coyote, the coyote pups. The knife sliding into the rabbit, its warm wet blood and absolute surrender to its fate. Amy Dodds.

  After that things went a bit dark, fuzzy, his mind blocking out the details of that long ago moment in a fog of pain and anger.

  When David hurt Cassie, he moved mechanically, wrapping Cassie and covering her face. He had been sure she was dead.

  He remembers the trip to the woods vividly, hiking through them with her almost weightless body slung over his shoulder, David struggling to keep up with the unbearable weight of the shovel and his deed.

  Watching David’s feeble attempts to break ground and finally taking over to do it himself. The agony of every shovel full of dirt as it plops on Cassie’s lifeless body.

  David frantically attacking the partially filled in grave, clawing at the dirt with his bare hands and pulling her out. David holding her lifeless body in his arms, cradling her and sobbing over his sister. David’s eyes staring up at him, accusing, as if he was the one who had done this to the little girl. The fresh anguish of seeing her dirt and blood smeared little face.

  David running off, tormented by his loss and the horror of having murdered his own sister.

  Walking away, lost in anguish over the little girl he raised as his own, over the ruination of the boy, David, and knowing it’s his fault. He did this. He turned the child into a monster.

  When he knelt to wrap and rebury Cassie he saw a flicker of life. After all that she still clung to life, barely. He had to finish that job too. He couldn’t. He couldn’t strangle her with his own hands; see that glimmer of her looking at him through mostly closed eyes while the last of her life fled her broken body.

  He needed something to finish David’s mess, tarps and another shovel. He would cave her skull in, one quick hit, or shoot her, but he couldn’t look at her. He had to pretend she was something else.

  When he returned to the open grave Cassie was gone.

  He remembers the numb shock, thinking David took her, realizing it was not possible. Searching the woods, growing more frantic with each heartbeat, and finally stumbling to the road just in time to see a couple putting her in their car and driving away.

  He pushes the memories away, coming back to the present. He is filled with revulsion and sorrow at what David had done.

  I should have killed David then. I tried to protect them, to look after them. I failed.

  Jason struggles to lock his jaw from clenching, to keep it loose, unconcerned. He tries to keep his eyes steady.

  Jim sees the shift of his eyes, the clenching of his jaw, and the grinding of his teeth. He smiles inwardly.

  “I learned more about Cassie,” Jim says, pressing his advantage, pushing the man closer to the precipice.

  Jason McAllister is nothing but a cold-blooded killer; him and Michael both. I’ll push as hard as it takes. If I can break the man, I will do it with pleasure.

  He switches gears, leaving Jason to stew on the other thoughts, trying to keep him off balance.

  “What did Michael do with Katherine Kingslow? She vanished the same day he did. She’s dead, isn’t she? Where’s the body?”

  “I wouldn’t know.” Jason’s voice has an edge to it despite his attempt to keep it sounding casual.

  “I’m very close to learning the rest,” Jim presses on. “The pieces of the puzzle are all falling together. The bodies, the McAllister Farm, Michael, you… Cassie.”

  He is careful not to reveal anything.

  Just stick to the names, no details. Any slip could blow the whole thing, letting McAllister know that I’m as blind as a titmouse with its head taken off by the owl hunting it.

  Where the hell did that come from? He wonders briefly of the comparison to the mouse and bird.

  “I know all about your family,” Jim presses it home, “the trouble your family had. I talked to the sheriff at the time, Sheriff Rick Dalton.”

  He hadn’t. He hasn’t even located the retired sheriff and doesn’t know if he’s dead or alive. Jason McAllister doesn’t need to know that.

  “I know about the women, the murders,” he pauses, enjoying the game. “Amy Dodds.”

  The name comes like a blow out of nowhere, knocking the wind out of Jason. He almost staggers, but manages to hold his body firm, if only barely.

  Amy Dodds. I haven’t heard that name in decades. Haven’t even thought of her until today.

  He feels dizzy suddenly, sick.

  “I know what happened to Amy Dodds.” Jim steps closer to close the gap, using his bulk to make Jason feels closed in, trapped, in the small living room.

  Amy Dodds is a wild card, Lawrence’s guess. The body has never even been found. The only links we have is that she happened to be Jason McAllister’s age, went to school with him, the possibility they were friends and that he may even have had a crush on her, and that the McAllister family vanished soon after her disappearance.

  There are so many other mitigating factors that point to other reasons for them to run. The McAllister family had good reason to leave because of the harassment and threats directed against them for crimes committed by another man which the town blamed William McAllister for. Jason was only a child at the time and child killers are extremely rare.

  These are good reasons to believe Jason McAllister and his father had nothing at all to do with the Dodds girl’s disappearance. But, Lawrence’s instincts are rarely wrong.

  Jim sees Jason’s eyes shift, looking for an escape route.

  He has him.

  “I only have one more person to talk to,” Jim says, “your father, William McAllister. I’m going to visit him next week.”

  He sees Jason swoon and thinks he might faint. He presses deeper.

  “I learned some interesting things about the McAllister family, very interesting things. About your mother Marjory, your sister Sophie,” he pauses, “your grandfather.”

  Jason McAllister is not hearing him anymore. He is a caged animal. I have to get out of here right now.

  20Trevor Swears Revenge

  The other guys at the slaughterhouse show Michael, Ryan Crowley to them, a new respect since he threatened Trevor with the bolt gun. They show their victims a new respect too, warily glancing at Michael as they handle the animals.

  Trevor keeps glaring at Michael with an intense hatred that would make anyone else cringe.

  Ryan Crowley, you bastard, Trevor fumes silently, you will pay for threatening me. You think you scare me? You are the one who should
be afraid.

  Trevor can’t focus on his job with the anger burning through him. With his mind elsewhere, he manages to get his foot stepped on by a cow and gets pinned between another cow and the rail, bruising his ribs. He doesn’t dare abuse the animals with Ryan in the next killing pit. He’s afraid of him, but he will never admit it even to himself.

  Michael doesn’t seem to notice. He just goes on mechanically slaughtering cow after cow.

  21Michael Goes on a Trip

  Michael is shoving clothes into a backpack.

  Kathy leans against the bedroom doorway, watching him. “Do you have to go?” she asks unhappily.

  “I won’t be gone long. Four days.”

  “Why? I thought we were settling in here.”

  “It’s just something I have to do. I told you that from time to time I would have to go away on a little trip.”

  He’s keeping a big secret from me, Kathy thinks. I can feel it and I don’t like it. Is it another woman? No, I don’t think so. He goes to work and comes home. He never goes out. He never does anything to give me reason to suspect he has another woman. He has been acting so strange. Maybe there is another woman. I know who, but, she’s probably dead.

  “It’s her, isn’t it?” Kathy asks.

  Michael stops packing and turns to her, surprised.

  “What? No.” He says it too quickly, making Kathy think he’s lying.

  It is her. I’m sure of it now. She looks down at her crossed arms. Kathy doesn’t know where to go from here, or what to say.

  Michael comes across the room to her, stopping in front of her and trying to look into her eyes.

  She won’t meet his gaze.

  “It’s not her,” Michael repeats.

  She finally looks up to meet his eyes. Her eyes are clouded with uncertainty, his pleading for understanding.

  “You want to find her again,” she says.

  “I don’t even know if she’s alive,” Michael says. “She’s probably dead.”

  “You can’t let her go.”