by KJ Kalis
Emily nodded and put the truck back into gear. That’s what she needed to know. “Thanks. I’m headed over there now. I’ll be in touch.”
Pulling into Bradley’s driveway, the tires of the big truck thumping on the uneven ground, Emily took a deep breath. She’d gotten spooked the night before. It happened to everyone, even trained police officers, she told herself, trying to stay calm. Knowing that Bradley had a business made her feel a little better about the shiny tools hanging in his garage.
As she expected, Bradley was outside when she arrived, the big garage door open. Bradley was huddled on a little stool, leaning over a push mower. He barely looked up when she arrived, “Morning,” he said.
“What you doin’ there?” Emily said, putting her hands on her hips.
“Neighbor busted his mower. Asked me if I could take a look at it.” Without looking up, Bradley pointed, “Mind handing me that set of pliers over there?”
Emily bent over, pulling a pair of black-handled pliers out of Bradley’s toolbox. She passed them to him. “Here you go. You do repairs for a lot of your neighbors?”
“Yeah. When they have a machine that breaks, they come running.” Bradley stood up, wiping his hands on a dirty rag. “Any news on Lexi?”
“No, nothing new.” Emily stared at Bradley for a moment, catching a look at the murder boards in the garage. They’d been pushed off to the side. Emily guessed Bradley had tools he needed to access that were stored behind them. Emily sat down on the driveway, looking at the mower. It’d seen better days, rusted and dented from years of use. She traced her finger along the top of it, cleaning some of the grime off the cherry red paint on the housing. Her finger came away black. She wiped it on her jeans. “There is one development, though.”
Bradley leaned on his cane. “What’s that?”
“Agent Strickland is doing a background check on me.” Emily scrambled to her feet and stood on the opposite side of the mower from Bradley, feeling a little uncomfortable that he was standing over her with a cane in his hand. Anything could be used as a weapon. She swallowed, hard. Chasing back the thought that he was the killer, she said, “Before we get to that, let me ask you a question.”
“Sure.” The words came out of Bradley’s mouth slowly with his southern accent.
“These tools you have in your garage, those are for your business, correct? Nothing more?” As the words came out of her mouth, Emily thought they sounded preposterous. Taking such a direct approach to questioning Bradley was one that could easily backfire, but Emily had to try. She had to be certain she knew what she was dealing with. Nothing in Tifton was as it appeared.
“Yeah, of course.” Brandley glanced over his shoulder and then looked back at Emily, “You don’t think…” he said, his eyebrows furrowed.
Emily didn’t give him a chance to finish his sentence, “I just have to ask. I mean, look at all those tools.”
Bradley shook his head in disbelief, “I don’t know whether to laugh or to yell,” he said. “I mean, I lost my brother.”
Emily sighed. These kinds of conversations were never easy. “I’m sorry, I don’t mean to offend you, but it would be clever to hide in plain sight as one of the victims, right?”
Bradley leaned heavily on his cane, staring at the ground. He looked up, “I’m going to say this one time, and one time only. I am not the killer. Now, why are you here?”
Bradley’s tone had changed. He sounded angry. Emily couldn’t blame him. Being accused of being a serial killer wasn’t exactly something that happened every single day. And accusing one of the victim’s family members of it was offensive. “Let me get back to what I started by saying — Strickland is on my tail.”
“What does that mean?”
Bradley stood stock still. Emily wasn’t sure what would happen next. “Well, I found out a little while ago that he’s requested a full background check on me. I don’t have to tell you who I am, you know that. Now, I know who you are. But Strickland, he could make my life difficult, if not impossible.”
“So, you came here to ask me if I was the killer and then say goodbye?”
“Not exactly. At least, not the second part. I want to stay. I want to find out who took Lexi and more importantly who killed everyone else in the last seven years, including Sean.” Emily hoped that by mentioning Bradley’s brother, it would soften him a little bit.
“But you need something?” Bradley’s eyes narrowed, “That’s why you’re here.”
Emily looked at him. “The problem is Strickland is tracking me in my truck. That’s how he figured out who I was. Out-of-state plates. It won’t take him long for him to figure out I’m not the criminal justice student I told him I was.”
Bradley whistled, “You lied to Strickland?”
Emily shook her head, “Yeah, probably not my smartest move, but that’s what I’m working with. Any ideas?”
Bradley nodded and lifted the cane, pointing inside the garage. “I’ve got an old Jeep in there that runs like a top. She’ll get you through anything. Why don’t we put your truck in my garage and you can drive the Jeep around town? It’s so old, nobody will give it a second glance. Even has historical plates, so you’ll be legal on the road.”
Emily raised her eyebrows in surprise. “You want to help me?”
“Well, for a minute, I almost didn’t. It’s kind of early in the day to accuse someone of being a serial killer, but I forgive you,” he chuckled. A seriousness settled over his face, “Miss Emily, you are the only person who has shown any interest in my brother Sean in the last few years. A man’s gotta take what he can get, you know what I mean?”
Emily nodded. She knew exactly what he was talking about. Even when she was with the Chicago Police Department, just having a detective show interest in a case brought the family comfort. When cases went cold, it could be years before someone from any law enforcement agency showed up to check on the family. In a way, it broke Emily’s heart that Bradley felt like no one was caring for his brother’s memory. Her chest tightened. It showed how little progress the FBI had made on the case, no matter how many man-hours they had put in it.
“Are you sure? You’re okay with me borrowing your Jeep?”
“She hasn’t been driven in a while. Not good for the engine. If you wouldn’t mind putting some fresh gas in her, I’d appreciate it. High-test, please. That’s all I ask.”
Emily followed Bradley as he went into the dark of the garage. He flipped on a light, illuminating a car covered with the brown tarp. “Here she is,” he said, tugging on the tarp.
As he pulled it off, Emily saw a forest green Jeep, probably from the late 1970s. The paint was dull, but the tires looked new. There was a coat of dust on the hood, but that was it. “And you said she runs?”
Bradley raised his head in a little bit of a challenge, “Go start her up and see what you think.”
Emily opened the door and slid in, pushing the key into the ignition. Giving the engine a little gas, she turned the key. It fired right up. “She sounds good,” Emily said, getting out, letting the engine warm up a little. “Anything else I should know about her?”
Bradley had a towel in his hand and was wiping some of the dust off of the hood. “Naw, just drive her and go figure out what happened to my brother, will you?”
Emily nodded and then stopped where she was standing. She looked at Bradley, realizing how sad he looked, the years of grief piled on top of the injury he sustained. It was a miracle he had as good of an attitude as he did. Something inside of her broke. She took a couple of steps forward and gave him a quick hug. “I’ll do my best,” she whispered.
Bradley didn’t say anything, turning his face away from her as she stepped back and got in the Jeep. As Emily pulled out of the garage, she handed the keys for her truck through the window. “Here you go. In case you need to use my truck.”
Bradley shoved the keys in his pocket. “I’ll pull your truck in the garage so that snake Strickland doesn’t see it’s here. Ke
ep me posted on what you find out, okay?”
As she pulled the Jeep out into the driveway, Emily stopped, an idea forming in her mind. Leaning out the window, she called to Bradley, “Want to go for a drive?”
“Where to?” Bradley asked.
“Little Bayou Pond.”
24
Bradley and Emily didn’t say much as they drove out of town, Bradley just pointing occasionally where Emily needed to take a turn. Emily made a mental note to let Mike know she’d swapped cars. The Jeep was fun to drive, but Emily was already missing the air-conditioning and the GPS.
As they got close to the site where the killer had dropped the bodies for the last seven years, Emily’s stomach started to clench, wondering what they would find. “It’s just around the corner,” Bradley said.
Bradley pointed again and Emily took a sharp turn onto what looked like a dirt road, the woods crowding in on either side of the Jeep. This was clearly not a county or state-maintained park, Emily thought, slowing down to avoid hitting a rut in the road.
The sun had come up over the ridge, sending streams of light down into the woods. Long shadows darted across the dirt road, the trunks of the trees projected as black marks. The Jeep cut through the rough road with no trouble, the sunlight blinking on and off of the windshield as the light filtered through the trees. “Up there,” Bradley said, pointing. “Just a little further,” he whispered, barely loud enough for her to hear over the engine.
Emily downshifted the Jeep, slowing. She pulled it off to the side and turned off the engine. There wasn’t a parking area, just a little clearing. Getting out, her boots hit the clay soil with a thud. She took a minute to look around. The area around the pond was silent, eerily so. She scanned, seeing the stretch of the pond in front of her. On any other day, she’d expect to see a photographer taking pictures of the area. It was beautiful, even with the history it had absorbed.
A rickety wooden dock was at the end nearest to her. She walked through some tall grasses to get close enough to see what it looked like. The wood had buckled and rotted so badly, Emily was unsure the dock was even usable. A breath caught in her throat as she imagined the killer dropping a torso into the water. Did it make any noise? Did he throw it in, like bait? Or maybe he set it in the water like a child with a paper sailboat, watching it float away. Thinking about it made the hair on the back of her neck stand up.
Looking back at the Jeep, she saw Bradley. He was standing at the front bumper, half leaning on his cane and half leaning on the car. She wondered what was going through his mind. How many times had he visited this site before? She walked back over to him, “You okay?”
He nodded, “Okay enough.”
Emily walked the opposite direction from the dock, her back turned to Bradley. The pond itself was fairly large. Near the shore on the far side, there was algae and some sort of vegetation growing up out of the water. She didn’t know what it was. On the near side, where they’d parked the Jeep, there was an easy entrance to the water, the lip of the water touching the edge of the clearing. Someone could push a raft or rowboat into the water with no problem. For a minute, she wondered if the killer used some sort of boat to drop the bodies off, or if he just submerged them on the edge of the water, watching them float away.
In the background, Emily could hear the rustle of small animals and the buzz of bugs, but the foliage was so thick it was almost impossible to see exactly what was happening. For all she knew, it could be anything from a squirrel to something larger, like a deer. She stood for a moment, staring at the water, wondering why the killer chose this particular pond. Why was this location important to him? Every single body had been found at the Little Bayou Pond. There was something about it, something that attracted the killer every single time. It was almost ritualistic. Emily imagined the killer coming to the edge of the water and letting the bodies go, watching them disappear under the surface. She shook off the thought, knowing that anyone who would do such a thing had to be stopped. Emily swallowed hard and then gritted her teeth. That’s why she was in Tifton — to stop the killings from ever happening again.
Walking back to the Jeep, she looked at Bradley. He was staring off in the distance as though he was trying to imagine something. Maybe he was seeing the ghost of his brother? “Are there any other roads that lead in and out of here?”
Bradley blinked for a minute and then turned his head to look at her, “Not that I know of. But this is Louisiana. There’s always a little bit of voodoo on the land.”
Emily frowned. Voodoo? “What do you mean?”
“People who’ve lived out here for generations will tell you that strange stuff happens, and we don’t know why. No explanation for a lot of it. Can’t even come up with an example at the moment, but what I can tell you is there could be one hundred ways to get to this pond. We’ve only traveled on the most obvious one.”
Emily looked back at him and nodded. Some things just couldn’t be explained. “You okay if I leave you here for a minute? I wanted to take a walk back past the dock to see if I can spot other trails.”
“That’s fine. I’ll be here.”
As Emily walked away, she wondered if asking Bradley to bring her to the pond was the right move. He had a distant look in his eyes she hadn’t seen before. Not that she knew him well, but the last thing she wanted to do was traumatize him more. Make it quick, Tizzano, she thought to herself, not wanting to force Bradley to stay at the pond any longer than he needed to. Not that she wanted to stay there either. Though it was beautiful, the whole place was pretty creepy.
Passing the dock, Emily walked close to the waterline, glancing occasionally toward the woods to see if she could spot any other trails. There weren’t any she could see. Stepping on a rotted branch hidden in the grass, she nearly turned her ankle and then heard a hiss. Emily shrieked, jumping to the side. It was a snake. That was enough to get her to go right back to the Jeep.
Bradley called her, “You okay?”
“Yeah. Nearly stepped on a snake.”
“We have those here. Most of them aren’t poisonous, just a nuisance.” He looked away for a second, “Find anything?”
“No. You were right, I didn’t see any other trails. But the pond is big enough that if someone wanted to sneak in and put something in the water under the cover of night, it wouldn’t be hard to do it, even if someone else was here.”
Bradley nodded, “That’s what I’ve always thought. I think that the police or the FBI have tried staking out the pond, but they’ve never found anything. The killer is able to slither in and slither out just like that snake, with no one the wiser.”
The image of the killer as the snake sent a shiver up Emily’s spine, “All right, I’ve seen enough. Let’s go.”
The old Jeep started up without any hesitation. Emily pulled it forward and back a few times, careful to avoid the edge of the water. The last thing she wanted to do was drop Bradley’s Jeep into the pond.
Back on the road, Bradley fussed with the radio. “You can just drop me off at the house if you don’t mind. I gotta finish fixing that mower for my neighbor. Said his grass is getting too long.”
Emily nodded, “Sure thing.”
An announcement on the radio interrupted their silence. “For those of you in Clement County, including Tifton, be advised, the National Weather Service has just issued a tropical storm warning. The information is just coming out right now, but you can expect the storm to arrive sometime within the next twenty-four to forty-eight hours, coming in over the Gulf. Batten down the hatches, folks. It’s comin’.”
25
At some point during the night, Ollie had moved over to the old green chair in the basement from where he’d been sitting on the step. What time that happened, he didn’t know. He’d ended up sleeping there the entire night. When he woke, he checked on Lexi. She was still unconscious, but every few minutes she’d move, as though she was trying to wake up.
Heading upstairs, Ollie retrieved a bottle of wa
ter from the kitchen and took it downstairs. By the time he got back downstairs, Lexi’s eyes were open, wide and afraid. He stared at her and then pulled the tape off of her mouth. “Don’t cry,” he said, holding the bottle of water up to her lips. “I hate crying. No need for it.”
After she took a couple of sips, Ollie went back upstairs and got a few crackers, taking them back downstairs and feeding her small bites.
“Please don’t hurt me,” Lexi mumbled, her eyes searching his face.
He looked away. The last thing he wanted to do was hurt her, but he didn’t have a choice. “I have to go to work. I’ll be back later. No one else is in the house, so there’s no point in screaming and crying.” He left without saying anything else, leaving Lexi in the murky darkness of the cellar, one bulb casting a dull glow.
26
Elliott Day hadn’t slept in almost thirty-six hours, the thirty-six hours since he’d heard that Lexi Cooper was abducted. His mind wouldn’t rest, darting between the face of the son he lost and the little girl who was missing.
As Elliott got up from his chair, the television playing in the background with the morning news, he walked past the pictures of his family hung on the walls. He stopped at one of them, seeing the wedding picture of him and his wife. The grief of losing Joe had been too much for her. Pills had been her way out when she’d been unable to overcome the grief. He stood for a moment, staring, seeing the pictures of Joe and Sierra when they were little, pictures taken on a summer vacation they’d had in Florida. There was another set of pictures from one summer when they’d escaped the Louisiana heat and driven the entire way to Maine, the kids standing on huge boulders on the Atlantic shore at a park they found just by happenstance. Those were happy days.
