Everything now seemed to be slowing down for Marcus. He was seeing things more clearly, or he felt like he was on the verge, at least, of doing so. He turned off the road and drove down the gravel driveway. He could hear the gravel crunch under the car’s tires. Marcus swung the car back into the clearing his father had made for parking.
The sun was just beginning to come over the horizon when Marcus and Angela stood outside his father’s quiet house. Crime scene tape stretched across the front door. Marcus had called Sheriff Etheridge to let him know they would be visiting the house again. He didn’t want a repeat performance of the other night.
Angela pulled the collar of her coat up against her neck. The wind was coming in strong from the south, and it cut right through her. She looked at Marcus, but he didn’t seem bothered by the cold anymore.
“The sins of the father,” he mumbled to himself.
Marcus then headed for the front door.
CHAPTER 35
The Trunk in the Closet
Angela’s brother Charlie quietly opened the bedroom and watched his daughter sleep. The toddler was too young to fully grasp the agony and turmoil that was going on inside her family. He had not told Christie yet that her mother wasn’t coming back. He had no idea how to break the news. What could he say that would make sense to her? It didn’t make sense to him.
He stared at her for several minutes. He desperately wanted to walk across the room and hug her close to him. Instead, he closed the door softly, not wanting to wake her. He knew she would sense his agony. He didn’t want to bring her his pain. But he knew in the end it would visit her too. Maybe in a few years’ time the hurt would start to dull for her, but there would always be the longing for a mother that had been torn away from her. It wasn’t fair. Sara had done nothing wrong. He couldn’t think of a kinder, more gentle person in the world. How had this happened? What type of world did they live in that something like this could happen?
Angela walked into Frank Carter’s home office. There was a nice desk that looked out the window to the vast backyard. There was an old desktop computer under the desk and an old-style tube monitor on top. She couldn’t believe she used to lug those things from apartment to apartment when she was younger. On one side of the room was a line of inexpensive book shelves. Angela scanned the shelves, looking for any notebook or piece of paper that might be jammed between the books. Marcus had told her he was convinced there was something in the house. But what? A note? A photograph?
“There’s a connection my father has to this case.” he had said on the drive over. “I think MAI has left something here for us to find.”
His confidence had spread to her now. She just needed to look. It would be there, and she would undoubtedly know it when she found it.
But she could find nothing in the books. So Angela turned her back on the bookshelf and walked over to the desk.
“What could his father have to do with this case?” she asked herself again, probably for the hundredth time that morning.
Angela pulled open the long drawer in the center of the desk and began to search some more.
Marcus entered his father’s bedroom. It felt like an invasion of his privacy. He had never entered his father’s bedroom as a child. In turn, his father had left Marcus’ room alone once he became a teenager. It was an understanding they had, and he couldn’t recall the exact moment when the rule had been implemented, but he knew it had never been broken, until these last few days.
Now that rule took on a new significance today. Had his father been hiding something? If so, what, and how could it possibly be related to this case?
All along, Marcus had thought the messages were for the public, but now he understood they were personal. They were all meant for his eyes alone and that knowledge left him with a feeling of dread.
Marcus kneeled to the floor and looked under the bed. There was nothing there but dust. He stood up and walked over to the dresser, pulling out each drawer and searching the contents thoroughly. Nothing but clothes. Nothing out of the ordinary.
Maybe he was wrong. Maybe he was just being paranoid. Maybe there was no connection. There couldn’t be. This was all just a big joke by MAI, an effective and torturous attempt to get under Marcus’s skin. Leah’s recent appearances had not been a dream. They were real. Maybe she was even working with the MAI killer. Maybe that’s how he knew so much about Marcus’s family. It would have been easy for her to gather information about them. She had access, and she had time. But what was her motive? What possible reason could she have to want to help that lunatic who was hunting women?
Charlie Darden walked across his bedroom and entered the master bathroom. He turned the nozzle in the sink all the way to the cold side. He bent over and splashed full handfuls of cold water all over his face. It made him feel a little better but not much.
He looked at himself in the mirror and watched the drops of water run down his face. God, it looked like he had aged twenty years in the last couple of days. His hair had turned gray overnight. He had heard about that happening to people, but he never believed it. Now he was living proof that it could and did happen. Would he ever feel better? Could he possibly get through this? He would have to. He had a daughter to raise. If for no other reason, he had to keep going for her.
He thought of the funeral. That would need to be planned. His aunt had offered to take care of the arrangements for him. But he needed to be the one to do it. It was for his wife. He should be the one.
Sara’s parents would be arriving this afternoon. There was a part of him that was glad they were coming. Maybe they could help him tell his child that her mother was dead. But deep down he didn’t want them there. He didn’t want to have to face Sara’s father. Her father had told Charlie on his wedding day that it was now up to him to protect Sara. He had failed Sara’s father. He had failed him at the only thing he asked of him. Sara was dead, and there was nothing he could do to bring her back.
He thought back to his conversation with Angela. He had been hard on her, but she deserved it. This was all her fault. He had tried to warn her about joining the police force. But she wouldn’t listen, and now his family was paying the price for her mistake.
Marcus opened his father’s bedroom closet. The clothes rod was bending from the weight of clothes. He couldn’t believe his father had so many clothes. He had always worn the same three shirts when Marcus was growing up.
Then Marcus realized most of the clothes belonged to his mother. It had been over ten years since she died, but his father had never bothered to get rid of them. Maybe he couldn’t. Maybe his father would have felt the death was too permanent if he threw all her items away. Maybe this was his way of thinking she might be back one day. He had never actually believed his father loved his mother. Marcus had never seen the man say or do a kind thing to her, ever. Now he realized he might be wrong.
Marcus pushed the clothes to the side, as far as they would go. He looked down to the floor and saw a metal trunk that had been pushed against the back wall of the closet. It had been mostly hidden by the hanging clothes. Was this the trunk his father had talked about? Had this trunk belonged to his grandfather at one point?
Marcus got down on his knees and opened the lid of the trunk. The hinges were stiff, and they squealed as Marcus pried the lid upwards.
Inside was a thin leather journal that sat on a black cloth that was covering the rest of the trunk’s contents. Marcus picked up the journal and flipped through it. There was only one entry on the first few pages. The rest of the journal was blank. He began to read the neat handwriting and recognized it at once as belonging to his father.
The first words on the first page read: “She was alone. That was the only reason we picked her.”
In the home office, Angela pushed the center drawer of Frank’s desk shut and began to search the side drawers. They were filled with stacks of folders and notebooks.
She pulled out several of the folders and began to go through them o
ne at a time.
Marcus continued to read his father’s writing in the journal.
“It had nothing to do with her age or the way she carried herself. It was something as random as the fact that she was alone. My father had such an easy manner. She suspected nothing. Never thought for one moment that her life was about to end.”
Charlie Darden walked over to the shower curtain and pulled it open. He turned the water on and set it to full hot. He yanked off his shirt and tossed it on the floor under the sink.
He was so tired he felt like he might collapse on the bathroom floor. He had not slept all night. He had sat alone in the dark, staring across the room at nothing in particular.
Every time he heard a noise he turned to the front door to see if it was his wife coming home from her business trip. Maybe it all had been a horrible nightmare. Maybe she was still alive and the faceless woman in the medical examiner’s office was a random victim. Maybe the killer had marked the tattoo on the leg to fool Angela and punish her family.
But there would be no one to walk in the door. He was alone, with a young child sleeping down the hall, completely unaware that her mother was dead.
Marcus could have sworn he felt his father’s breath on the back of his neck as he continued to read the journal. It was almost like the dead man was reading his own words over Marcus’s shoulder.
“After my father slit her throat, we took her body into the woods behind the house. He stood over her for the longest time, perhaps admiring his work.”
Angela continued to go through the folders. So far she had found nothing of interest, just old credit card statements, tax returns, the usual stuff you find crammed into old files.
She reached back into the drawer and grabbed the next folder. This one felt slightly heavier.
Marcus couldn’t believe what he was reading. They had to be lies. But it was his father’s handwriting. How could this have happened? How could they do these unspeakable acts?
“My father began to skin her face. He asked me to join him. I didn’t want to, but he demanded it. We started to argue, and I ran.”
Charlie climbed out of the shower and began to towel dry his hair.
He looked at himself in the mirror again. There were dark circles under his eyes. He ran his fingers through his wet hair.
Then the rage came back. It pushed the despair out of the way. It filled his body with warmth and power. Charlie smashed the mirror above the sink with his fist. Glass flew everywhere. It was impulsive, and now he immediately regretted it. But the rage stayed, and he was glad it did. It was actually giving him something positive to think about. He would find the killer. He would make the man pay with his life.
Charlie looked down at his hand and saw his knuckles were bleeding badly. He grabbed the towel off the hanger near the sink and wrapped his hand with it.
Marcus’s hands began to shake, and it became difficult to read the words in the journal.
“I know he’s not worried about me telling the police. I’m sure they would find me guilty, even though I did nothing but watch.”
Angela opened the heavy folder and saw it contained a stack of 8x10 photographs. They matched the surveillance style shots she saw pinned to the wall in Leah Grey’s bedroom.
She flipped through them quickly: Eva Parks, Julia Davis, Carrie Dempsey, Sara Darden, and Professor Hutchins. So had he been killed too? She had to warn him. Tell him to flee. Tell him not to think twice about it. Just leave. Get as far away as he possibly could.
She continued to go through the photos and saw shots of the MAI’s earlier victims. Everyone was there.
Then she got to the photo at the bottom of the stack. Her heart rate quickened, and she found herself involuntarily holding her breath. It was a shot of her brother Charlie and his daughter, Christie. They were smiling at the camera.
Angela recognized the photo at once. She had taken it at one of the rare family functions she attended a couple of years ago. The last time she had seen it, the photo was hanging in a frame in her brother’s front hallway. MAI was there. He had gotten them.
Marcus laid the journal on the floor beside the trunk. Was this story possible? Had his grandfather been a killer? Had his father known about it? Was this event what caused the rift between them? Or was this nothing more than a twisted trick by MAI?
The killer had found his way into his own house and into his father’s house. It would not be hard to place the journal here. He looked at the writing in the journal again. It did look like his father’s, but that too could be faked.
Marcus had been close to his grandfather, and he never suspected for a moment the man could be capable of such things. The image of his dead grandfather lying on the bed near the window entered his mind. Leah had told him she thought his grandfather looked like he was dreaming. He had looked that way to Marcus too, or maybe Marcus just chose to imagine him that way.
If he had been dreaming, would it have been of the event the journal described? Was his father a butcher, too? Had he delighted in the suffering of others?
No.
There was no way he could have done those things. It was nothing more than an illusion created by the sick mind of a killer.
Marcus looked back into the trunk. The black cloth still hid what was underneath.
He slowly pulled back the cloth and saw a skinned face staring up at him. He pushed it to the side and saw another face and then another. The trunk was filled with the dried faces of women.
Then he heard Angela scream his name.
CHAPTER 36
Charlie Darden’s Pain
Marcus drove Angela’s car as fast as he could on the winding road. There were no street lights, and the car’s headlights were weakened considerably by the fog and light rain that had moved into the area.
Angela sat on the passenger seat and redialed her brother’s phone number. It must have been the tenth time she had called it in the last few minutes, Marcus thought.
“Come on. Answer the damn phone,” she said.
Charlie’s voicemail kicked on again, and Angela ended the call.
Charlie, wearing a heavy white robe, entered his bedroom. He heard his cell phone ring, but he couldn’t get to it on time. The truth is he didn’t want to get to it. He didn’t feel like talking to anyone right now, even the concerned family members who had been calling him nonstop ever since the news of Sara’s death had been passed from one relative to the next.
He walked over to the night stand and picked up his phone. He checked the caller display and saw several calls from Angela in the last few minutes. Something must be wrong, he thought. He pressed the voicemail button and put the phone to his ear.
Then he flew forward onto the edge of the bed as a crushing punch hit him between the shoulder blades. The brutal pain rippled through every muscle in his back, causing it to go into spasms.
He struggled to get to his feet when he was hit in the kidney. Then he was hit in the other kidney. The pain racing through his body was excruciating. He gasped for breath and tried to turn around to see who was attacking him.
He had dropped the phone on the floor and now it began to ring again. He tried to reach the phone and scream for help, but his attacker grabbed him by the hair and threw him onto his back on the floor.
The man in black stood over Charlie. He slammed his foot down onto Charlie’s sternum. Charlie could hear the loud crack, and there was no doubt his sternum broke under the pressure of the heavy boot.
The man in black pulled the hood back to reveal his face. He was wearing a mask of flesh. It only took a second for Charlie to recognize it. His attacker was wearing the skin of his wife Sara’s face.
Charlie tried to scream, but the pain was too intense, and it was taking every bit of strength he had left just to breathe.
The man in black kneeled beside him on the floor. He grabbed Charlie’s throat and began to squeeze.
It had been a solid forty-five-minute drive before Marcus and Angela arrived at C
harlie’s house. She had called for back-up, but they weren’t here yet. How could that be possible? Had they come and left after Charlie assured them everything was fine? If that was the case, then why didn’t they call her? Why hadn’t Charlie called her? Did he hate her that much? Yes, Angela thought, he probably did.
Marcus and Angela jumped out of the car and ran to the front door. They both saw it at the same time. The door was slightly ajar. MAI was in the house. There was no doubt now. They both drew their guns, and Angela slid the door open with Marcus covering her. She slipped quietly into the house.
The storm outside had intensified and the downstairs was mostly dark. She listened for movement, voices, anything, but she heard nothing. She turned to Marcus and motioned for him to check the downstairs. He nodded his head in agreement and moved away as Angela slowly walked up the stairs.
She was convinced that MAI would appear at the top of the staircase and shoot her down, but she had no choice but to proceed. She thought of Charlie and his daughter. She needed to save them no matter what. She couldn’t lose them too. She couldn’t be the cause of more death.
But MAI didn’t appear on the stairs. Did that mean she was too late?
She got to the second floor and saw a faint light coming from her niece’s bedroom. She looked in the room and saw the light was coming from a nightlight by the door. It was bright enough for her to see there was no one in the small bed. The bed was made.
Angela turned and headed for her brother’s room, dreading what she would find.
Marcus continued his search of the downstairs. He made his way through the dining room and into the kitchen. No one and no sounds except for his own breathing. He did his best to calm down, but his heart was racing too fast.
“The sins of the father.”
Marcus whirled around when he heard the female’s voice. But there was no one there. He walked back into the dining room. It was the same as before. A long table. Several chairs. A glass cabinet with the good tableware, no doubt gifts from their wedding. But no person.
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