by Sean Platt
A light went bright in the second story of a house directly in front of him, a nice home with a red tiled roof and a beautifully landscaped yard. Well-lit. The house probably cost at least a million.
Jeff saw a shadow appear in the window, looking down at him.
It quickly vanished.
He ran toward the house, went to the front door and looked up. Through the window, he saw a man in his early forties yelling at his wife to get up and hide as he picked up his phone.
Too late.
Jeff shot through the window, hitting the man in his chest, causing him to drop phone. The woman screamed and ran toward an open patio door in the back of the house. Jeff raised his gun and fired, hitting her in the back.
She stumbled forward and splashed into the pool.
Jeff considered reaching in through the broken window, opening the door, and making sure both people were dead, but he didn’t have time — especially if the officers had called in his plate.
It was time to go.
He looked back and saw a red Lexus sitting in the driveway.
Maybe I should go inside after all.
He turned his camera off and headed inside the house to get the keys.
He saw a blue Southwest-style plate atop a wooden shelf just inside the doorway, holding a wallet and two sets of keys.
He grabbed the keys and was about to leave when he spotted the framed photo on the wall of the man and woman he’d just killed. With them, a young boy, around eleven.
Shit! I don’t have time for this.
He searched the house, going room to room to find the kid. Seconds turned to minutes. The clock moved faster. The kid could be hiding somewhere in the house and calling 9-1-1. Someone, maybe another sheriff’s car, could pass by and see the dead pigs outside.
Why the fuck did I come in here?
“Fuck you, kid!” Jeff yelled as he headed outside, keys in hand.
**
Jeff was pleasantly surprised not to find sheriff’s deputies standing with guns raised as he left the house, got into the Lexus and pulled up to the murder scene on the road. He was also pleasantly surprised that the dead pigs had yet to attract any attention.
He parked the Lexus in front of the car he was driving, got out, and grabbed his stuff from the trunk. He turned his camera back on, making sure not to get a shot of the Lexus in the video. Then he reached into the trunk, retrieved a canister of gasoline, poured it all over the patrol car, mostly on the hood before splashing a generous amount on the deputies, and finishing with a trail of gas leading back to the Toyota.
Jeff reached into the bag of weapons, grabbed a flare gun and walked backward to his Lexus.
A car approached.
Shit.
It turned onto a side road before it got close.
Jeff sighed, then fired the flare at the ground between the vehicles.
Flames erupted, spreading fast in both directions.
Jeff wanted to watch the pigs roast, but he had to get going. He clicked the camera off, removed his ski mask, and was about to turn back to the Lexus when a dog barked on the other side of the street.
He froze, hand reaching into his jacket for his pistol, and turned to see a child standing there with a German Shepherd.
Not just any child, but the one from the house he’d just turned into a second murder scene.
Fuck.
* * * *
CHAPTER 32 - MALLORY BLACK
10 PM came and went without a post from Orestes666, and the command room began to get antsy. Gloria, got a phone call, then went to Aanya and whispered something.
Aanya typed in the web address on her computer and then mirrored it to the screen at the front of the room. Wilson and McDaniels turned, and a hush fell over the entire room as the YouTube video began to play.
Gasps as Orestes fired at the deputies.
Then audible cries as he poured gas over both cars and shot a flare.
This monster killing their brothers in blue, and them helpless to do anything but watch as the flames swallowed the deputies.
The video went black.
Silence smothered the room.
Then robotic cackling startled them, drawing their attention to text spelling out on the screen: More in Three Days.
“Motherfucker!” Wilson yelled. “What the hell is this? This isn’t a strip club?”
Gloria cut in. “According to Chief Franks, the deputies had pulled someone over for a busted taillight and were running the license when they lost contact with dispatchers. Judging from his location, he may have been on his way to The Purple Pole.”
Wilson shook his head.
McDaniels ordered his people to send a forensics team and investigators.
Mal stared at the screen as Aanya played it again in hopes that someone might see something that yielded a clue.
But Mal wasn’t holding out much hope.
**
Mal left the Situation Room and went to her cubicle, where she felt more comfortable.
She thought about the Hunter, resuming her search on LiveLyfe, looking at the threads of everyone on her list, searching for any lead at all. She wondered how her vigilante knew about the strip club. He didn’t know the name, or maybe wasn’t volunteering it. She figured if he did know, he would’ve told her.
So how did he know the little he did? Was he on some website she didn’t know about, one where Orestes was posting additional details? That seemed like a good assumption.
She went to her browser and searched for keywords such as murder, shoot, massacre, Anon, along with “Purple Pole” hoping to find something.
But there was nothing.
There were all sorts of secret forums, chat rooms, and websites that a monster like Orestes could be outlining his plans with other sick fucks, none of them indexed by Google or any other search engine.
She wondered if her vigilante had infiltrated Orestes’s inner circle.
It made sense, even if she couldn’t figure out how he’d done it.
She wished that he’d call again. Maybe she could yell at him about giving her a shit tip and guilt him into giving her something she could use.
She checked her phone to see how much of a charge it had. Seeing fifteen percent, she plugged it into the power strip on her desk, then resumed her LiveLyfe search.
It was almost one in the morning when Mike walked in carrying his computer bag in one hand and a cold can of Diet Coke in the other. He handed her the drink.
“Thanks,” she said. “On your way home?”
“Yeah, you going to stay all night?”
“I dunno. I’ve been eying that couch in the break room. It looks like a cozy sleep.”
“Yeah, if you could somehow get all the farts out of it.”
“Thanks,” she said, scrunching up her nose at the thought of some of the more disgusting deputies, overgrown and mentally underdeveloped frat boys who considered farting a lost art in search of mastery.
“What you looking for?”
“Just looking through LiveLyfe on the off chance that Orestes will post a confession or something.”
“Good luck with that!” he said on his way toward the door. “See ya’ in the morning.”
“Ugh,” she said, looking at the clock.
Mal was about to close shop and head home herself when she spied a link to a new “In Memory Of…” page devoted to Lynn Macklin created by her brother, Stewart.
She clicked, then read through the comments on that page, including several new names which weren’t listed as her friends.
One lengthy post stuck out more than the others, a mournful outpouring from a woman named Sandra Brown, detailing her close friendship with Lynn, and how even though they’d not talked in some time, she still loved her like a sister and would miss her every day.
She ended with: I’m so sorry I let him come between us.
Aside from the post’s length, something else stuck out to Mal — the fact that there were fifteen thumbs down
on the post from people in Lynn’s circle of friends. This resulted in a few more posts from Sandra, sniping at people being cruel and how they ought to mind their own business.
Mal clicked through to Sandra’s profile and saw that the woman always posted several times a day, often long sad or angry posts, with a few on Peter Kincaid, also on her friends list, and whom she defended from the media reports about the investigation into him possibly sleeping with girls he’d coached.
Going through the woman’s entries, Mal slowly pieced together a profile. Sandra appeared to be a divorced, materialistic, possibly manic-depressive woman whose posts were a blend of nice places she was traveling to, things she wanted to buy, and things her fiancé had bought her. She sprinkled in vapid pseudo-political reposts of memes, posts about how awesome her third grade son was at pretty much everything that he already had or wanted to try, and depressing posts indicative of someone off their meds. It was these latter posts that Mal read while cringing.
Sandra had written at least ten posts about Lynn and Chip, about how close they were, how their losses would affect her profoundly and were making her take stock of her own life.
They seemed like desperate attempts to insert herself into an online conversation involving some very public deaths. The posts she wrote about Lynn turned into arguments about how she had no right to act like she was close to the woman after all the shit she put her through.
The posts where she talked about the coach only earned her condemnation from the many people who had jumped on the bandwagon to call him a child molester.
While the Sheriff’s Department had only mentioned one confirmed assault, you’d think he molested the entire town judging from the comments and accusations in response to Sandra’s posts. She followed a pattern of viciously attacking anyone who disagreed with her before vanishing, then no longer responding to posts or closing them off altogether.
Mal continued scrolling through the woman’s older posts, most of them vapid, happy entries stretching back several months.
But then Mal found another depressing and cryptic one which read:
I’m sorry to everyone about my husband. You were right. And I’m finally free of the monster.
She clicked and saw several responses congratulating her.
One name hit her like a brick.
Chip Halverson — the man that Orestes had killed last at the baseball field — wrote, Sorry to hear, but can’t say I’m surprised.
Sandra didn’t respond. Nor was she friends with him on LiveLyfe, but that made three people connected to Sandra who were now dead.
Sure, a lot of people in Creek County knew one another. If you picked any four people, there was a good chance that three of them might have some connection. But something stirred in her gut. Mal knew when she was onto something.
She kept clicking through Sandra’s post, learning that she’d been married to a man named Jeff and, while she didn’t go into specific details, Mal didn’t need her badge to connect the dots and determine that things had ended badly.
Mal couldn’t find a profile for Jeff, at least one that had a photo or wasn’t marked PRIVATE.
She grabbed her pen and made a chart with the names of the three victims whom the killer had seemed to single out.
Chip Halverson
Peter Kincaid
Lynn Macklin
And beneath that she wrote two names:
Sandra Brown
Jeff Brown
And under that, a big question mark, circled several times in red ink.
Her phone rang. Captain Wilson.
“I just got a call that they found a witness.”
“Who?” Mal asked.
“A house right near the road. Deputies went to talk to neighbors and noticed a window busted. Inside they found a mother, father, and dog shot to death, and a boy tied up.
“He didn’t kill the boy?”
“Nope.”
“Where is the kid now?”
“At the hospital. We’ve got a deputy with him until Carrie Thompson shows up.”
“I want to talk to him. I think I’ve got an ID on Orestes.”
“Really?” Wilson asked.
“Let’s see if this kid recognizes him.”
* * * *
CHAPTER 33 - JORDYN PARISH
2014
The crowd murmured. She wondered if her father was part of the bustle. He’d been taking his pills for nearly a month and was doing much better. He was still moody from time to time, and still drank more often than not, but he seemed to be in better general spirits.
Neither of them had spoken much about the night he nearly shot her. Like the time she’d come home drunk, they’d pretend it didn’t happen until they could finally forget.
Still, there was a slight iciness between them. The kind that comes when a person’s worst is put on display.
But things were better. He even let Bobby come over for dinner a couple of times. And he’d let Jordyn go on dates — weekends only, with a midnight curfew. Still, it was progress.
Jordyn looked at the wall clock — five minutes until the play.
That felt like five seconds. Suddenly, despite six months of prep, and running lines with Bobby and others in Drama class, and two rehearsals last weekend, Jordyn wasn’t sure if she could do it.
She imagined the hot, bright stage lights burning her body.
A theater packed with students, teachers, and parents. Hundreds of faces, all of them staring at her.
Jordyn was only with the Popular Crowd by association. She hadn’t earned her spot. And while most people were nice to Jordyn’s face, she heard at least some of the whispers.
He’s going out with her?
Oh, that won’t last.
I don’t know why they’re friends with her. She’s just a loser emo kid.
And then there were the racist comments.
Why’s he dating a nigger?
Can’t he get white girls anymore?
It was 2014, and yet some people still had a problem with blacks and whites dating. Funny that some of the same kids who liked hanging with Nate and other black kids on the football team still had a problem with Bobby and her.
It wasn’t like this in South Florida, where the schools were more diverse. Kids down there had been exposed to other cultures longer. Up here the majority had lived in Creek County for generations, and most of the families were white. Outsiders, no matter their color, were eyed with suspicion.
She stared at the curtains, her stomach tumbling.
“You okay?” Bobby asked.
He looked adorable in his period costume as John Proctor.
Brianna, behind him, said, “You don’t need to go on, honey. That’s what understudies are for. Want me to—”
“No, I’ve got this,” she said, working to convince herself more than Brianna. But the world swayed underfoot. She leaned on Bobby and wiped sweat from her brow.
Brianna’s eyes widened like they did when she was being dramatic. “Well, good luck. And if you do puke, try not to get any on me, okay?” She smiled then walked away.
Under normal circumstances, Jordyn might have laughed. Brianna was still a bitch to most people, but nice enough to Jordyn that she rarely took offense.
Bobby looked at Jordyn. “You sure you’re okay? You look like you’re about to faint or something.”
“I’ll be fine,” she said, then felt it coming a split second before the vomit sprayed from her mouth.
Bobby dodged the worst of it, but everyone was looking at Jordyn.
“Jordyn, are you okay?” Ms. Franks asked, running over.
“Just nerves,” Jordyn said, feeling every eye upon her.
Bobby raced away, then returned with a wet rag and wiped at Jordyn’s mouth. “Hey,” he said, trying to grab her attention.
She met his eyes.
“What the hell is this?”
“What?” she asked, confused by his anger.
“This fear thing. What do yo
u have to be scared of?”
“I might fuck up my lines, and everyone will laugh at me.”
“So what, let ‘em laugh. But you know what?”
“No. What?” she said, smiling at the unintended word play.
“You know your lines better than anyone. You’re a better actress than anyone on stage.”
Brianna wasn’t more than ten feet away, talking to Bethanee. Jordyn wondered if she had overheard. She’d probably give him no end of shit later if so. Or she’d whine to Calum.
Bobby didn’t seem to give a shit who heard him. And she kinda loved that about him.
“Listen, Jordyn; you are the real deal. You’re going to stop overthinking this, you’re going to get out there, and you’re going to kick some fucking ass.”
He hugged her, then smacked Jordyn on the ass as if she were one of the team. “What are you gonna do?”
“I’m going to—”
“I can’t hear you!” he yelled. Everyone backstage was looking at them. Again, Bobby didn’t give a damn. “What are you going to do?”
“I’m gonna kick some ass.”
“What kind of ass?”
“Some fucking ass!” she yelled, surely blushing.
“Yes, you are!”
Kids started clapping, many coming up to Jordyn and wishing her well.
She felt, perhaps for the first time, like part of the cast.
She looked up to see Brianna, still standing back, glaring at her.
Bobby, noticing this too, leaned over and whispered in Jordyn’s ear, “Don’t worry about her, she’s jealous.”
Jordyn laughed.
The curtains parted.
* * * *
As Jordyn bowed to the standing ovation alongside the cast, a rush rippled through her, unlike anything she’d ever felt. Christmas morning, meeting a new friend, the thrill of an unknown adventure — this was more intense.
The curtains closed. Bobby ran up to her and kissed her on the lips. “I’m so proud of you!”
