Fatally Bound

by Roger Stelljes

  “Why didn’t you protect her, Rebecca? You were her friend.”

  “I tried, but we couldn’t find her anywhere,” Rebecca pleaded. “I looked and looked but I couldn’t find her. I didn’t know where she went. I searched. I tried. I tried!”

  He’d confronted Rebecca about it one-on-one, no partner and no husband around. He just went to Rebecca’s house one day and asked if he could come in. In the kitchen of her home, with a cup of coffee in their hands, he sprung the photo on her and watched for her reaction. It was all he needed to see. The look in her eyes, the expressional change on her face, the way she gasped before catching herself, she knew what she was looking at and she knew that he knew.

  Rebecca Randall knew what happened to Rena.

  He demanded an explanation but she didn’t give in. She composed herself and claimed to know nothing about it; that she was shocked to see a picture of Rena and that she had no idea how it got on her computer. That morning, in the kitchen light, when it was just the two of them, she wouldn’t admit to anything.

  His life was a shambles at that point. He was going to lose his job and certainly was going to lose the brutality case and since he beat the husband on his own time and not while he was working, he was looking at his own civil liability and there wasn’t any insurance policy that was coming to bail him out. He would pay for it for the rest of his life. And here was Rebecca Randall denying she knew anything about his sister’s death.

  The photo in and of itself meant nothing without more evidence. He knew what was in the case file up in Auburn. The photo wouldn’t move the case forward without more, and there was no way to get more—at least not legally.

  The only answer was using some other means.

  “So tell me how it happened after you left.”

  “We drove away and turned right, away from where we wanted to go back towards Auburn because we saw police lights approaching.” Rebecca sniffled and more tears rolled down her check from that night over two years ago in the basement of the abandoned building in Ithaca. “It was foggy and the road was winding and we were all over the road. We came around a corner fast and there she was.”

  “And you hit her. The van hit Rena. You hit Rena,” It wasn’t a question.

  Rebecca nodded.

  “You hit her, didn’t you? Say it!”

  “Yes,” she answered quietly.

  “And when you hit her what happened?”

  Rebecca just shook her head, whimpering, “No… no…”

  “Tell me! Tell me what happened!” he thundered.

  “She went flying in the air and down into the ditch.”

  “So you stopped?”

  Rebecca didn’t respond, she just cried and shook her head.

  “Answer yes or no!”

  “No.”

  “Why not?”

  She kept shaking her head and mumbling “No, no, no …”

  “Look at the camera! WHY NOT!”

  “We were so afraid and we hit her going so fast that everyone thought she was dead, that she had to be dead. Nobody could have survived that.”

  “Nobody said to stop?”

  “I did, but I wasn’t driving and I couldn’t make them stop. I couldn’t!”

  “You knew it was Rena, right?”

  Rebecca weakly nodded her head.

  “Yes or no?”

  She nodded, “I knew it was her. Even in the flash of an instant, I knew it, I knew it was her.”

  “Your friend. Your best friend right?”

  Rebecca nodded, tears streaming down her face.

  “Yes or no, she was your best friend?”

  “Yes.”

  “And you didn’t stop.”

  “I wanted to stop. I wanted to but I wasn’t driving. I couldn’t make them stop. They wouldn’t stop. I begged them to stop and they wouldn’t.”

  An alarm went off on another program open on his computer.

  He closed the video of Rebecca Randall and opened the other window and a little smile creased his face. “And let the fun begin.”

  • • • •

  9:32 P.M.

  It was nearly dark, the sun now down behind the hill to the west of the river. The FBI had a heat signature of a large body in the cabin, lying on the couch in what looked to be a family room area.

  Gesch carefully approached the front of the cabin. Lights were on inside and as reported, to the right of the cabin, a pickup truck, a Dodge Ram, was parked in front of the garage with the garage door closed. He had an agent flanking him on his left and a Lancaster County sheriff’s deputy to his right, carrying a battering ram. Agents were approaching from the south to the left and two more from the north. Deputies were down river in speedboats, awaiting the signal to approach. Everyone held one hundred feet out, deadly quiet. There was light flickering inside the cabin, the unmistakable light from a television.

  “Go,” Gesch ordered.

  The deputy sprinted ahead, battering ram in hand.

  • • • •

  Delmonico was on the line on Wire’s cell, which she had put on speaker for Mac to hear. Delmonico was providing the play-by-play. “Gesch just gave them the go,” Grace reported.

  Mac’s cell phone rang. He looked at the display: Dara Wire. “It’s him,” Mac said ominously. “Hello, Drake.”

  • • • •

  “Ahh, you know, I won’t ask how, but you know. So nice we can finally be on a first name basis now, Mac,” the Reaper replied lightly, but then turned sinister. “But Mac, you, you of all people should understand me by now. I mean, don’t you think I’d be prepared for this? Didn’t you think I’d know it was possible that someone like you would find me eventually and that when you did, I’d be prepared, that I would have taken action to be ready?”

  Mac was ready to respond with a taunt of his own, but hesitated. The Reaper wasn’t just calling to taunt him. There was more to the call. He could hear it in the killer’s voice. “What kind of action, Drake?” he asked warily. “What are you ready for?”

  “Well, right now, I’m watching Senior Special Agent Aubry Gesch and, well, there went the front door, oh and the back door as well. Oh my goodness, we have cops and agents coming from every direction. My only disappointment is that you and Dara don’t appear to be there as well.”

  Wire was watching Mac and she saw the look of horror slowly overtake his face. This was all wrong. “Drake, what are you up to?”

  “I think you know, Mac,” the Reaper replied darkly and Mac knew.

  It was a trap.

  He grabbed Wire’s phone, “Grace, pull them out of there! PULL them out of there now!”

  It was too late.

  The explosion blasted over the phone.

  Delmonico screamed in horror.

  “Oh my God, Mac,” Dara croaked in horror, taking the phone. “Grace, are you there! Grace! GRACE!”

  Mac sat down in a chair in shock, not believing what had happened, only to hear someone laughing uncontrollably in a sick and sadistic laugh. Mac looked down at his hand. The laughter was coming from his cell phone. Drake Johnson was still there.

  “You son of a bitch,” Mac said darkly, the anger raging inside him.

  “I win again. You’re losses are piling up, Mac.”

  “You know your bible verses, right, Drake?”

  “I do.”

  “Then let me remind you of Romans: ‘Vengeance is mine; I will repay, says the Lord.’”

  “That’s Romans 12:19, to be exact, Mac. But first things first,” the Reaper replied sickly. “The night … is only beginning.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

  “We’re too late.”

  Mac and Wire pulled up in front of the FBI’s Washington, DC, Field Office and were immediately greeted by a security detail that kept the media swarm at bay. The security didn’t prevent many questions from being asked, all of which Mac and Wire ignored as they briskly strode into the building to find Director Mitchell awaiting their arrival.

 
FBI Director Thomas Mitchell, sensing as everyone else that the Reaper was at the cabin, was present monitoring from the perimeter when the cabin exploded. He witnessed it firsthand and the impact of it was evident on his face, a mixture of anguish, sadness and anger. He lost men tonight and witnessed their loss firsthand, a rare occurrence for an FBI director.

  The night’s events cast an equally dark pallor over the field office, people somber, quiet and sad with their heads down. Yet there was also a quiet determination in the air to press on and keep working. That determination would be needed if there was any truth to Drake Johnson’s last words to Mac.

  Mac and Wire fell in behind the director, loosely surrounded by the security detail, automatic weapons visible, as they entered the field office. The three of them were led into a private conference room.

  “How many dead, sir?” Mac asked quietly.

  “Six men dead, many others injured,” the director answered sadly, hands in his suit pant pockets, looking out the window, “Gesch, three other bureau agents and two deputies from the Lancaster Sheriff’s Department died. If there was any saving grace, their deaths were instant. The devastation is complete, there is nothing left of the cabin and the garage but debris and rubble. The pickup truck is a melted wreckage. The fire department was still working the site when I left, everything was still smoldering.”

  “Director, he detonated this thing remotely. I was on the phone with him when he did it,” Mac reported. “And the last thing he said to me was, ‘The night is just beginning.’ That means …”

  “He’s got his next victim lined up,” Wire finished. “He could attack any minute.”

  “And we think we know who that victim is, sir,” Mac added, and took out the picture they’d found on the Randall’s computer. “In this photo are all of our victims except one, sir, this woman.” He pointed to the blond woman. “The picture is seven years old, but nevertheless, we need to figure out who she is. We need people on Gesch’s team, anyone here in the field offices, other jurisdictions on the task force, contacting the families and friends of all of the victims. Most of all, sir, we must now go public with Drake Johnson’s picture. We need people on alert. Johnson knows we’ve identified him. We can do the full press conference in the morning but we need to give the media the picture now.”

  Mitchell gave it a moment’s thought. “Do we have media out front?”

  Wire flipped her fingers between the vertical blinds. “They were there aplenty a few minutes ago and the swarm is growing by the minute.”

  “Let’s go. You two come with.”

  The director walked out the front door of the field office at 11:25 P.M., Mac and Wire in tow, and said to the assembled media, “I’ll give you one minute. You need to go live.”

  The director gave them two minutes, then he started with little prologue. “We will have a press conference in the morning to answer questions regarding the bombing in Pennsylvania this evening. Right now, everyone needs to be on the lookout for the Reaper. Today we have identified the Reaper as Drake Johnson formerly of Ithaca, New York. We are making available, as we speak, additional information and pictures of Johnson. He is responsible for the deaths of six law enforcement officers this evening. He has murdered four women, we think we’ve identified another he may have killed, attempted to murder another in Frederick and we believe is looking to strike again tonight. In fact, we believe he has identified his next target. It is this woman,” the director showed a cropped picture of the woman leaning against the van. “We have only just within the last few hours identified her as the next potential victim. We do not know who she is. If anyone recognizes this woman in the picture, contact the FBI immediately. Her life is in danger.”

  The reporters attempted to ask questions, but the director stuck to his guns. “We aren’t taking questions now. The information on Johnson is being made available. We’ll answer questions in the morning. Thank you.”

  The director turned around and walked back inside, Mac and Wire right behind him. Once inside, the director said to the agents surrounding him, “Get the information on Johnson and the picture of this woman out now, to everyone, to every television station, radio station, network, newspaper, news website, anyone and everyone who can help us reach the public. Do it and do it now.”

  The director looked at his watch. It was just after 11:30 P.M. “I hope we can get to her before it’s too late.” Then he turned to Mac and Wire, “Listen, unless we catch a break tonight, we will have the press conference in the morning and we’ll have to answer some questions. I am going back to the Hoover Building and will monitor things from there until we get to the press conference in the morning. I want you both there. In fact, Mac, there is something I should discuss with you before the press conference. I need you to do something for me.”

  “Yes sir. What do you need?”

  “We’ll talk early in the morning,” Director Mitchell answered. “Be at the Hoover Building at 7:00 A.M. In the meantime, see if you can figure out who our next victim is.”

  Just then four members of Gesch’s team approached. “What do we know about the possible victim?” a short and stocky agent named Kurt Keller asked. He had three other agents with him.

  “We just have this picture. We haven’t had a chance to figure out who she is yet. In addition to getting this out to every imaginable media outlet, everyone needs to start calling family and friends of our victims right now to see if they know who she is. He’s going to act tonight.”

  Keller and the agents ran off and suddenly Mac and Wire stood and looked at one another. “What do we do now, Mac?”

  “Wait,” Mac said, exhaling a breath and rubbing his temples, his headache returning. His energy reserves were running low and the concussion effects were returning. But there was no stopping. He made his way towards the cafeteria. “We hydrate and wait.”

  The wait took fifteen minutes.

  “Mac,” Keller yelled as he ran into the cafeteria. “Danica Brunner. She lives in Arlington. Here’s the address.”

  “Do you have a phone number?”

  “Just a cell.”

  • • • •

  With the owner out of town, Danica wasn’t able to leave the gallery until 11:15 P.M., having finished the books for the day, a very good day for the gallery. She loved the work, a manager at age twenty-seven. Nevertheless, it had been an agonizing couple of weeks with the dual responsibilities of running the gallery dawn to dusk and also constantly looking over her shoulder, paranoia sweeping over her. There were only two of them left from that horrible night. The call earlier in the night put her mind at ease finally. The killer would be caught. He might be in custody already. It was over.

  That night seemed so long ago yet often still felt like it had just happened. It was a nightmare that never seemed to end and she just wanted it to end, to go away. It took her a long time, but now, for once, after all these years, she was allowing herself to be happy. She’d decided, right or wrong, that she wasn’t the driver of the van, just a passenger. The Rena girl wandered away from them at that party and she was walking along a dangerous dark road. It was part her fault too.

  Ultimately, that’s how she brought herself to be able to rationalize it. Did she call 911 that night? No.

  Did she make the van stop?

  No, but she wasn’t driving.

  Should she have done something?

  It would have been the humane thing to do, the right thing to do.

  She wrestled with those questions every day for years. There were days, heck, there were years, she literally willed herself out of bed every day, to keep going despite what happened that night.

  It wasn’t her fault, despite the massive guilt she felt. To make amends, she no longer drank alcohol, didn’t do drugs and regularly donated money to Mothers Against Drunk Driving (MADD). She tried to live a clean life, having learned something from the night.

  Now, she just wanted to get to Sam’s place, take a shower and climb into bed with
him, let him rub her shoulders and wrap his arms around her. They’d been together for nearly a year now and she could feel he was the one, the one to settle down with and start a life together, to move on from her past, to just leave it all behind.

  She was finally ready for it and she could sense he was as well. Having just turned thirty-two, his business taking off, he’d started talking about commitment, marriage and even hinted at kids. The kind of hints someone drops when they’re thinking about the final step, and the thought of it made her so happy. They were going on vacation next month to San Francisco. She couldn’t think of a more romantic city for him to propose in. It was all so exciting and exhilarating to her.

  The call earlier was comforting. The last month had completely worn her out. Now, she wanted to live her life.

  Exhausted, her mind was shutting down and she just wanted to relax. “I need music,” she said to her empty car, flipping to The Blend on satellite radio for some light rock. It was time for some easy listening.

  • • • •

  He saw the illumination begin to the south, the powerful engine of the Audi A3 approaching, the lights getting brighter and then turning hard left into the alley. The engine purred as the car pulled into the driveway, the Sara Bareilles song Brave quietly audible. She killed the engine and turned off the lights. A few seconds later he heard the car door open and then close, followed by quick footsteps, high heels echoing on the cement driveway. The cedar fence door swung open and she strolled carefree down the dark sidewalk.

  She walked just past him, reaching in her purse, her cell phone ringing.

  She never saw him, and with the phone ringing, she never heard him.