Fatally Bound

by Roger Stelljes

  The video continued.

  “When you went to leave the party, why didn’t you take Rena with you?”

  “We couldn’t find her,” Randall sobbed. “We couldn’t.”

  “You were her friend, one of her best friends. She trusted you, what do you mean you couldn’t find her?”

  “I tried,” she pleaded. “We all tried, but we couldn’t find her anywhere. She’d wandered off somewhere and we had no idea where and the police were coming and we were underage, we’d been drinking, we’d done drugs.”

  “And you had Rena do these things?”

  Randall nodded, “She did them.”

  “Did you force her to?”

  Randall hesitated and the Reaper noticed how Richardson’s head bowed.

  “This girl named Mychal Richardson, the one who drove us to the party, she …” Randall said.

  “She what?”

  “She embarrassed Rena because Rena would barely drink and wouldn’t take Ecstasy. She mocked and bullied her into it. She was so unmerciful on Rena.”

  The Reaper pushed stop on the video. He turned in rage and smacked Mychal with the back of his right hand, sending her chair careening violently to the floor again. He leaned down, grabbed her by her long blond hair and pulled her back up. She was bleeding from her nose and mouth, the blood dripping down her chin. Richardson’s body was shaking violently as the woman was feeling real palpable fear and pain for the first time in her life. “Watch!”

  The Reaper pushed play again.

  “Why didn’t you stop her from bullying her; you were Rena’s friend.”

  “I tried but … this girl, Mychal, was …manipulative. She was older. She pushed and pushed and pushed. Rena was … she … was …”

  “She was what?”

  “Weaker. This Mychal, she smelled blood. We’d tell her to ease up but she smelled blood and she just keep hammering away at her like it was sport.”

  “And Rena gave in.”

  Randall nodded.

  The rage took over again. He raised his left hand.

  “No, please no …” Richardson pleaded.

  “Did you show any mercy to Rena?” the Reaper growled as he smacked her with the back of his left hand, knocking her to the floor again. He stopped the video and let her lay on the hard dirt floor for a few minutes before he picked her up again. Now there was a gash above her left eye, blood dripping down the left side of her face.

  The video continued.

  “So you left without her?”

  “Yes.”

  “But you had everyone else, right? You had Melissa, Hannah, Janelle, Sandy, Kelly, and Danica, right?”

  “Yes.”

  “Who drove?”

  “Mychal. It was her van. She was driving.”

  “When you left the party, you turned right onto County Road 5, didn’t you?”

  “Yes.”

  “And then what happened?”

  “No … No …”

  “TELL ME!”

  “She was driving the van super fast and we came around that corner and there she was just on the right shoulder.”

  “And you hit her?”

  “I didn’t hit her, Mychal did. She was the one driving, not me. I didn’t hit Rena.”

  “And when you hit her?”

  Randall sobbed some more and didn’t respond. She just shook her head.

  “Answer the question.”

  “She went flying so far. We didn’t even realize it was Rena until we …”

  “Until you what?”

  Randall shook head, “I looked down into the ditch and I could tell it was her.”

  “Was she alive?”

  Rebecca began to sob and shook her head.

  “WAS SHE ALIVE!” Johnson growled.

  Randall nodded her head and whispered, “I don’t know, I didn’t go down to check.”

  “Why not?”

  “Mychal, Janelle and Helen pressed us to go. That we had to leave because we were in such trouble.”

  “You didn’t even call 911, did you? You couldn’t even do that for your friend, could you, for your best friend?”

  She shook her head. “No,” she answered meekly.

  “In fact, nobody did.”

  Rebecca shook her head again.

  “Did you have a cell phone?”

  She nodded.

  “One of your best friends was lying in the ditch, badly hurt but alive, and you didn’t call 911. Why?! Why didn’t you?!”

  “I was so scared, we all were. You have to believe me, we were all so scared. We were in huge trouble and Mychal said she couldn’t have this on her record and that if we didn’t flee the scene, if anyone of us called 911, she said her dad, a senator and this lawyer who worked for him, Wallace something, would bury us, ruin our lives.”

  “And you believed her?”

  Randall nodded, “I know it was wrong, but you weren’t there. You don’t understand what this girl was like. She was scary when we were dealing with this. And two of her friends, Danica and this Hannah, they had powerful families too and they wanted to get away from the scene, to just get away from it. I … I … I should have stayed. I should have stayed …”

  He turned off the videotape and stared at Mychal Richardson, tears and blood streaming down her face, terror in her eyes, her body shaking. The chickens finally came home to roost.

  The Reaper pulled his chair close to her so that his knees were touching hers. From the sheath on his hip he pulled out the long knife and held it in his hands. He waved the knife slowly in front of her face, her eyes bulging from their sockets.

  “I used this knife on Rebecca Randall after we finished that recording, when I learned of everyone involved. When I learned you were the driver, the one most responsible,” he said in a low voice as he followed the contours of her nose and mouth with the sharp long tip of the knife.

  “Then of course there was Melissa and Janelle,” he said calmly as he ran the tip of the Ka-Bar vertically down her throat, lightly applying pressure as Mychal’s body shook. “I did them just like Rebecca. I videotaped them to confirm that what Rebecca told me was true. It was, wasn’t it?”

  Richardson didn’t reply, she just whimpered.

  He put the blade of the knife to her throat, “Rebecca told the truth, didn’t she?”

  Mychal nodded, “Y… y…yes.”

  “Hannah Donahue was next and I took a good long while with her in her basement, a rich little bitch in need of punishment,” the Reaper said as he moved the blade down to her cleavage, slowly rolling the tip around the contours of her large breasts, watching her body tremble as he applied just enough pressure with the tip of the blade to make a small puncture wound over her right breast and let the blood slowly drip down and soak into the satin fabric of the slinky nightgown.

  “Helen, or I guess Sandy now, this knife ripped through her,” he said casually as he ran the tip down the front of the teddy, pricking little holes in the black satin as he made his way down to her navel. “When I cut them, I started right here,” he declared, pushing the tip against her abdomen, not cutting, just holding it, applying just enough pressure so she could feel it, feel how close it all was to coming to a grisly end. “I would start right here and then rip upwards until the sternum stopped me,” he said, making the motion, stopping the tip at the bottom of her sternum.

  “Your friend Danica experienced that the other night. I didn’t use the sodium pentothal with her either. Her body convulsed like you wouldn’t believe when I plunged the knife in and began ripping up.”

  He moved the blade back down to her navel. “Then, after I reach the sternum, I then push down with the blade and slice until I reach the pubic bone, so I end up with this long vertical incision.”

  Richardson’s body was shaking as she tried to pull away from the knife, but she was tightly bound to the chair and her movements simply caused her body to brush against the knife. As she moved and he held the knife steady, she caused little cuts to b
e made which caused little drips of bleeding from her chest and stomach.

  “You see, after I make that long vertical cut, I then make the horizontal incision. I make the Holy Cross in honor of Rena. After you left her in that ditch, she held God close to her, her rosary beads, those beads, that faith you so callously mocked,” Drake said as he ran the tip across her stomach a few inches below her breasts. “I did that on almost all of them, Melissa, Janelle, Hannah, Sandy and Danica. I’d have done it to Kelly Drew as well but I was interrupted by FBI Agents Mac McRyan and Dara Wire. They came to see you yesterday, didn’t they?”

  Mychal nodded.

  “I was watching. Have they figured out the whole story? Do they think you drove the van?”

  Mychal nodded weakly.

  “Yet they were powerless to do anything about it, weren’t they? They let you walk your manipulative perfect little ass right out of there, didn’t they?”

  She nodded meekly again.

  “I bet you arrogantly sat there and told him to go pound sand, didn’t you? McRyan knows what happened but he has no proof, no evidence, and the only people who witnessed what happened were all dead, am I right?”

  Richardson looked down and away.

  He reached for her face and turned it to him, “Am I right?”

  “Yes.”

  The Reaper shook his head and snorted, “Mac McRyan and Dara Wire think you can play by the rules, but you can’t. Not in this world, not anymore. He would probably like nothing more than to arrest you and put you away for what you’ve done. McRyan believes in the system. I don’t, not anymore. The system didn’t protect Rena, didn’t bring justice for her, and now, it won’t for you.”

  The Reaper stood up and pushed his chair away and left her in the chair and walked to the cellar steps, stopped and turned to Mychal Richardson, “I believe in my own form of poetic justice, and tonight I’m going to bring it to you.”

  CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN

  “I don’t like the tone, McRyan.”

  Mac and Wire left Congressman Weiss with a crew of agents and the McLean, Virginia, police. As they departed Weiss’s house, they had to slowly drive through a sea of reporters at the end of the winding driveway. The media had learned Mychal Richardson was missing and here was Mac and Wire at Congressman Weiss’s house. For all of their shortcomings, the media could add up that there was a connection between the two and it wouldn’t take them long to put it all together.

  If there was one thing he learned in his brief stint working a high-profile FBI case, he wasn’t in the Twin Cities anymore when it came to the media. A case like this back home and he would have a few televisions stations hovering around, maybe a newspaper reporter from the Star Tribune on the case, but that was it. Here, there was media everywhere, seemingly able to get to any location instantly, and when they arrived, they arrived in force and with a relentless intensity.

  He kept his windows up as he slowly and carefully drove his SUV through the crowd of reporters, cameras and microphones. The fact his window was up didn’t stop the questions from being shouted, the cameramen from rolling film and the photographers from snapping pictures. He may have conducted a press conference the day before, but Mac had no intention of answering questions again. There was work to do. The congressman’s car had been found.

  Twenty minutes from the congressman’s home, the dashboard flasher parting the early afternoon traffic of the beltway for him, he finally let out a breath and relaxed just a little, twenty minutes away from his next destination.

  “So will you wait for Congressman Weiss’s wife to find out in the media about her husband’s affair, or are you going to access FBI resources to contact her directly,” Mac inquired whimsically, his eyes raised, a smile spread across his face. “You may not have long. The reporters will figure it out soon enough.”

  “Now that’s a thought,” Dara suggested. “But I’ll probably let Mrs. Weiss figure it out all on her own. Now, if she stays with the bastard, I might have a little chat with her.”

  Mac laughed.

  “You’re awfully lighthearted, given our last victim is likely to be sliced and diced here any minute.”

  Mac nodded, “Is she a victim? I mean, is she really a victim?”

  “No, she’s the Ice Queen, but …”

  “We have a job to do. I’m not quitting, but if we fail …”

  “You won’t be that disappointed.”

  “I don’t know, no, yes, maybe,” Mac replied, shaking his head. “We solved it. We know who the killer is and why he’s doing it. To be honest, I don’t really care about the victims anymore. They were responsible for Rena Johnson’s death and didn’t do a damn thing about it. Not one of them stood up and did the right thing. So they made their bed and now they’re lying in it. Now Gesch and those agents he killed? That’s a different story and I want to put that fucker down for that. If in the process, we could find a way to get real justice for Rena Johnson? Now that would be satisfying. In my mind, Gesch, those agents and deputies and Rena are the true victims here.”

  Keller and Reilly were waiting for them, standing by a black Cadillac parked in an alley behind a restaurant in Columbia, Maryland, northeast of Washington, DC. The trunk was open and a forensic team was already taking pictures.

  “Looks like she was in the trunk,” Keller stated.

  “We have some blood,” Reilly added, using his flashlight to illuminate the small specks of blood in the dark charcoal fibers of the trunk.

  “This was his exchange point,” Mac answered. “Anyone know what was parked here?”

  “We’re on it,” Keller said as he waved Reilly to follow him inside the restaurant.

  “So if he rolls out of DC around 2:00 A.M., it’s still storming, being careful, following the posted, he’s here around 3:00 A.M. and it’s around 2:00 P.M. right now,” Wire speculated. “He’s got eleven hours on us. That’s an awful big radius we have to potentially be looking. He could be anywhere in eight or nine states.”

  Mac’s phone rang. “Yes, Director. When?” He looked at his watch. “Yes sir, on our way.”

  “What?” Wire asked.

  “Senator Richardson.”

  • • • •

  “Mac, please, please, please behave yourself,” Sally pleaded as Mac parked at the Hoover Building. He and Wire had an audience with Senator Richardson and Director Mitchell.

  “No promises,” Mac answered.

  The Senate minority leader was not someone known for understanding and patience. What Sally knew was that Mac was not someone who suffered such treatment without biting back.

  The mix could be combustible.

  “Mac, he’s going to provoke you, he’s going to blame you, he’s going to come after you and he’s very very good at that.”

  “Let him,” Mac replied, not worried. “I’ve got plenty to fight back with.”

  “Look, just let him blow up and then go back to doing your job,” Sally suggested. “If you engage, he’ll make it ugly.”

  “For who?” Mac asked. “Me or the White House?”

  “Hey, now wait a minute!” Sally exclaimed, annoyed.

  “Mac!” Wire warned.

  “Whose partner are you anyway?” he asked Wire, a smirk on his face.

  “Yours,” Dara answered. “Sally’s protecting you, you dumbass.”

  “Thank you, Dara,” Sally added sweetly.

  “I don’t need protection,” Mac answered, but then veered to safer territory, “Sally, it’ll be fine. I’ll be on my best behavior,” he said with as much sincerity as he could muster as they walked into the elevator.

  Two minutes later they were admitted to the director’s office.

  “Where’s my daughter?” Senator Richardson demanded. No introductions, no handshake, no time to explain, no time for a briefing of the status of the case, no chance for a breath. As Sally warned, the senator had a reputation as a bully and he came right out of the box being one.

  “Right now I don’t know,” M
ac answered calmly and honestly. “I can explain where the investigation is at …”

  “Right now, you don’t know?” the senator replied bitterly, moving into Mac’s personal space. “That’s all you have for me?” The senator then looked to the director, “This is who is running the investigation looking for my daughter?”

  “Yup, I’m that guy,” Mac retorted before the director could rise to his defense.

  The director gave Mac a stern look and Wire lightly grabbed the back of his arm to get him to step back, but Mac knew there was only one way to deal with a bully. Be an asshole back, regardless of who they were. “But you have one part wrong. I’m not hunting for your daughter. I’m hunting for the Reaper. I’m hunting for Drake Johnson.”

  “And what about my daughter? She’s the victim here.”

  “If I find him, I’ll find her.”

  “I don’t think you understand, McRyan, my daughter is missing.”

  “I’m quite aware of that,” Mac answered flatly, his hands on his hips, not shriveling from the confrontation.

  “Where are you in finding this sociopath?”

  “I’m working on it.”

  “You’re working on it.”

  “Yes, I am. Of course, this meeting only delays from me doing so.”

  “Excuse me?”

  Director Mitchell jumped in, “I think what Special Agent McRyan is trying to say is …”

  “Special Agent? That’s a hoot. There’s nothing special about him,” Senator Richardson blustered and then stuck his finger inches from Mac’s face. “You let my daughter slip through your fingers,” he pointed at Mac and Wire. “Yeah, I know you two met with her yesterday, told her she was a target of this maniac. Where the fuck were the two of you last night?”

  “We were watching your daughter. Of course, we were fighting for space with your battalion of private security from Grogan monitoring her movements,” Mac answered. “So let me ask you a question, Senator. Why was it that your daughter had that security detail on her anyway? Because I checked, she’s had that detail on her for at least a month now. Why?”