by Sara Wood
Mystery:
A MASS MURDERER:
Coffin for the living
Sara Wood
3
Copyright © 2016 Sara Wood
All rights reserved.
Table Of Content
Copyright
Summary
Excert
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter3
Chapter4
Chapter5
Free Book
######################################
Copyright 2016
All Right Reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.
######################################
DESCRIPTION:
Having accounted for two of the Killers who brutally raped, mutilated and killed their wives. Ex-cop, Roy Klyne, better known as ‘the Hunter’ and his friend Bill Bates, were now hunting for the rest of the killer gang of seven. With two down and five to go they were relentlessly searching for the killers.
In their first two encounters one was killed like a dog, which he richly deserved. The second was put to rest in a novel way. The Second killer being a mortician was sealed in a coffin meant for Lovely little middle-aged lady.
In their quest for killer number three, Klyne and his friend Bill Bates end up in Fort Yuma where they found reverend Charles Smith. They kept a vigilant eye for the reverend, followed him to church, not to make a confession for their sins but simply to kill a sinner. The reverend was put to rest in his own church, but of course he too was shot down as he tried to escape. With three down and four to go what lies ahead is yet to be seen.
EXCERPT:
“You aren’t going to run? Nor fight?” Bates couldn’t believe that it was going to be this easy, and sounded almost disappointed.
The Reverend smiled gently at him. “No. I shall return to your town with you and I shall simply tell the truth. And throw myself on the mercy of the law.”
Klyne finally saw it. With both women dead, then the evidence would be at best sketchy. And with two of the killers already dead, it might be hard to press anything against such a pious man of God. He knew that the folks in his town and they might not be all that enthusiastic to see a minister swinging from the gallows.
Bates might not be all that bright, but he could spot a rat wriggling free from the trap as fast as most men.
COFFINS FOR THE LIVING
High Price of Dying
The second of the killers, a mortician by profession was down on the floor by a blow he received from Bill Bates. He made no attempt to get up, lying on his back, gray coat covered in dust, hands plucking nervously at his gold watch-chain. The sixth sense that had deserted Klyne at their earlier encounter with the first killer was back, he bent down, and on an impulse ripped the jacket off, revealing a neat little pearl-handled pistol in a shoulder holster. With a thin smile he tugged it off and threw it in the corner.
“What a dangerous customer you are, Mister Shelton. Such a pretty little gun. Didn’t need that for your wife, did you? Long strong fingers you got there.” Klyne commented.
“What do you mean? Listen to me, I’m a rich man. And I know that what I did was wrong. But I’m prepared to pay anything if you’ll let me go. I…..did you truly kill Joe Nathan?”
“Really and truly, and thanks for the offer, but we’re not in the taking vein today. More in the giving.” Klyne said.
While Klyne watched the mortician Bates wondered round the big back room. There was a large vat of murky fluid in one corner, and several sections of pine coffins made up and in parts in another corner. On trestles in the middle of the floor was the grandest coffin that either of them had ever seen.
It was part wood and part bronze, with angels carved all over it, inter-woven with wreaths and tendrils of laurel. The inside was white silk with heavy padding. Bates leaned over it, rubbing his fingers over the soft interior of the lid.
“That is the damnedest coffin I ever saw. Looks more like the inside of a rich brothel. And who is the lovely little lady inside it?”
Keeping one eye on Shelton, Klyne walked over and joined his friend at the side of the enormous structure. The dazzling interior already held an occupant. A middle-aged lady. She was dressed in a high-necked dress of black silk.
“Looks like she is smiling a mite at us,” said Bates.
Klyne shook his head. “No. That just means that she’s about ready to go underground.”
“It’s been very hot the last few days, and the family wanted it left open as long as possible,” explained the mortician from the floor. “And please don’t lean on that. It’s finest quality silk, and the whole thing is costing the poor bereaved nearly eight thousand dollars.”
“High price of dying in this town,” whistled Bill Bates, rubbing his hand over the fabric.
“It is a special,” said Shelton, obviously irritated by what he took to be slight on his professional expertise.
“What’s it waiting for?” asked Klyne, wrinkling his nose at the strong scent of flowers placed in vases round the room. A necessary addition when he saw the deteriorating state of the body in the coffin. The eyeballs were already going milky and starting to rot.
“I’m here to close it down. Then my assistant will come back and tidy up ready for the shipment back east.”
“Suppose he finds it screwed down, and you gone? What’ll he do?” Klyne asked.
“I don’t understand.”
Klyne smiled at the puzzled expression on the little man’s face. “If you tighten it all down on that great ….thing. And if your assistant comes back from his dinner and you’re not here. What will he do?”
Shelton scratched his nose, looking bemused. “Well, I will still be here. But if I were not, then he would lock this door….I have strict rules on that. The departed is never to be left in an unlocked room. And then he would carry on with his work.”
“Where does he eat?” Klyne questioned him.
“I….I don’t understand.”
Klyne went over and kicked the undertaker hard in the pit of the stomach. The attack had been completely unexpected and Shelton made no move to protect himself. The air whooshed out of his lungs, and he doubled up, gasping for breath, retching and gagging.
“That makes you understand?” Klyne asked.
Bates laughed. “He still aren’t answering you. Maybe if I put a heel through the side of his face it’ll help him to remember.”
“No give him time.”
Shelton sat back, face gray as his suit, rubbing his stomach with pain. “You didn’t have to do that. Not at all. I would have told you. I don’t want to hurt anyone. It was all Nathan’s idea. I’m glad you killed him.”
“Hey now. What happened to ‘old Joe’ that we were so friendly with? You aren’t very loyal, Mister Shelton. Where is your assistant?”
“Across at the hotel on the carner. The ‘Pan.’ Tall blond fellow. But why?”
“To tell him not to come back this afternoon. That you’ve gone and we’re taking a message.”
Shelton laughed nervously. “I’m sure I don’t understand you mister….?”
“Klyne. And this is Mister Bates. His wife and mine were killed by you bastards, remember?”
“Why tell my assistant that I’m not here? I am here and I intend to be here all afternoon.”
Klyne grinned at Bates. That is the one true thing tha
t Shelton here has said all today. He’s going to be here for all afternoon. And then some.”
To their amazement the mortician seemed oblivious to their threats. Still gasping, he stood up, walking to join them by the coffin.
“I’m sorry, but I was never much at riddles. Please don’t lean on that. It’s the finest item I’ve ever seen. So rich and heavy.”
“What would happen is she weren’t dead? Just sort of in a daze? Like if she started screaming?”
Shelton laughed, his crackle resounding round the big room. Bouncing through the flowers and seeming to ripple the sullen surface of the huge tank in the corner.
“I can safely say that if she were screwed down in it now and came alive, we would not hear her screaming to be released. There is the double silk, all with heavy padding. A layer of pine, and a reinforced layer of mahogany. Then the bronze and wood cover to weigh all down. It is quite air tight. If she were alive, which she is clearly not, I doubt that there would be enough air in there to sustain life for more than ….let us say, two or three hours.”
Thank you, thank you Shelton. That little lecture of yours gives me all the answers I need to have. Two or three hours. That must be about the time that our wives suffered from you and your friends.” Klyne said and continued.
“Joe Nathan went speeding to Hell with a few moments of exquiasite pain to remind him of his sins. You Shelton, will have much less pain, but a great deal longer to ponder on yours.”
“What do you mean?” the undertaker asked.
“Goodbye Shelton. Give our best wishes to your friend Joe Nathan,” said Klyne, kneeing Shelton hard in the groin, bringing up his leg to crack under the jaw as he doubled forward. With a gasp the little man slumped to the floor.
“In the coffin?” Bates asked.
“Right. Nice way of doing it. What they call ironic. Get the old lady out, and dump her in that tank in the corner weigh her down so she doesn’t swim up and frighten anyone before time. I’ll put him in her place.
While Batews was doing that, Klyne lifted the undertakerin her place, laying him out carefully. As an afterthought plucking a white lily and folding his limp fingers around it.
Working hard together, they managed to lower the lid over him, feeling the massive weight as it settled in place. The screws slid home in their beautifully engineered sockets, and then it was done. Klyne gave the bronze monster a familiar pat. “Right nice, Bill. I feel the great satisfaction of a job well done.”
The next Move
They found the assistant exactly where Shelton gad predicted they would, knocking back a long glass of foaming beer in the bar of the hotel. A skinny blond boy of about nineteen or twenty.
They told him that his boss had done everything necessary and given them the message for him to take the afternoon off. The boy didn’t even query the message, so delighted was he at the prospect of an unexpected half day. But he did raise a point.
“Suppose that big coffin isn’t ready in time? What’ll Mister Shelton think?”
Klyne patted him gently on the shoulder. “Don’t worry, boy. That’s his funeral!”
Fort Yuma was the home of the Reverend Charles Smith. Number three on their list. As they kept moving in their car towards their destination. Bates sucked on a stump of cigar and drained a third of whisky he’d been carrying with him.
“What do you think of the way things are going, Roy?” he asked.
“I had a friend once who stayed in a big hotel with rooms on the top floor. Ten stories high. Got drunker than a skunk one night and thought he was an eagle. Jumped clean out of his window. Folks all the way down heard him saying to himself: “So far so good. So far so good.” That’s about how I see it.” Klyne said looking at his friend.
“We should be in Yuma by sundown, day after next,” guessed Bates. “I can’t wait to get another of them bastards. We got to try and think up some new way of making this preacher suffer. Kind of take him out of town a spell and work on him.”
Klyne was slightly disgusted with Bates, his obvious delight and anticipation at the prospect of more killing and more suffering. Klyne looked upon what they were doing as a mission of revenge. Just as he’d stamp on a poisonous snake and not think any more about it. And if he could throw in a spot of suffering as well, then that was fine.
Devine retribution was down in the bible, and he’d help things along. But it was becoming clear that his friend was beginning to enjoy the violent aspect of a life that he’d never really experienced before.
Klyne slept, as easily and without dreaming, though he had thought for a long while about his beloved wife, his mind going back to the good times they’d had over the last three years, and finding his finger-nails biting into the palm of his hands as he remembered again how he’d found her mutilated on the floor and dying in his arms.
There were two of her murderers dead already. And they would hunt down the other five in time. Klyne knew well enough that the day might come when the bullet travelled the other way, and he was prepared for it. He reckoned that, without the help of his young wife, he would have been kicked out of the police force and would have ended under an unmarked grave long ago. So the three years were like a bonus. A bonus that he was prepared to spend in avenging her death.
As he slipped into the total blackness of sleep, Klyne’s last thoughts were of his wife. How she had looked in her thin summer nightdress, and how he felt the heat of her body through the cotton, her breasts pressing insistently against his naked chest. Her fingers feeling for him, grasping the swelling of his body, pulling it towards her and rolling him on top, so that he could thrust into her.
There’d been times in the past, when he’d been trailing some criminals for weeks on end when he had been without a woman. He was the sort of man who needed to use woman. To seek out the relief that they could give him. It had already been near a month since the last time with his wife and his need was growing. Before he finally slept.
For Bates, the time passed slowly. His thoughts too were travelling into the past. He briefly wondered how his wife was, he wept a tear or two for her, and her lonely death. But his thoughts were more of what had happened since. Of the gun spurting bullets into the helpless figure of Nathan. The horror of Shelton’s eyes as he finally realized what they intended to do to him. The satisfying thud that he’d almost felt as Klyne’s boot cracked home in the pit of Shelton’s stomach.
And there was more to come. Five more of them to go. But next time he was going to run it, and not his friend Klyne, spoiling all his fun. It was his wife that’d died and he was going to take it out on the remaining five men.
Without his noticing it, Bates’s breath started to come a little faster as he thought about all the things that he could do. Things he’d always wanted to do, and had only ever been able to do to animals.
They reached Fort Yuma round about seven O’clock in the evening and booked themselves into a small hotel close by. Klyne felt tired and had a meal in a clean little restaurant round the corner, while Bates went out to find where the nearest and noisiest bar was.
He came lurching back to their room after midnight, disturbing Klyne by crashing over a chair. “Get to bed, Bill. And get sobered up. We got another job to do tomorrow. You find anything about the Reverend Charles Smith?”
Bates giggled, trying to pull off his pants, toppling over on his back with the effort. “Hey, that was damned fine liquor the sell here.”
“The Reverend!” said Klyne, growing more and more impatient with his friend.
“Yeah. The good old Reverebd Smith. God bless him and all who sail with him….what was I saying?”
“You were telling me about where Smith lived and then you started babbling about killing.”
“Right, brother Roy. That’s a good old Roy, my buddy. Bill Bates will look after you, don’t worry. Maybe we can get the Reverend. Day after tomorrow, at his service.”
Klyne swung his feet out of bed, feeling the cold linolrum under them, and s
talked through the dimly-lit room to where Bates lay on his back, making houses with his fingers and grinning at the ceiling.
“Bates.” There was a strength and anger in Klyne’s voice that brought his friend upright on the bed. “Either you cut down on your drinking or we will no longer be together. I cannot carry a drunk along with me.”
“Well damn you and your high and mighty manners, Roy Klyne! If it hadn’t been for me, back home, that rich puppy would have cold-cocked you with his Derringer.”
“True. And if it hadn’t been for me, you’d have ended up in some stinking bar with your belly full of rot gut.” Klyne reminded him.
“Right. That does it. Since we’re both here in Yuma then we’ll kill this Reverend. After that we might just go our own ways.” Bates said.
“Bill, that would suit me fine. Now where does this Reverend Smith live?”
“Outside of town, he’s got himself the plainest looking woman I ever seen as a housekeeper. Maybe we hit him Sunday, right in front of everyone.”
“No. Revange is mine. That’s what the Good Book says. It doesn’t say nothing about going and glorying in the killing. Tomorrow. At his home.”
Bates flopped back on the pillow, turning his face to the wall. “Wanted to do it in the church.”
Klyne padded back to his own bed. “Tomorrow, Bill. We do it my way or not at all. All right? Or do you want to argue it?”
“Okay. Roy. Your way. This time.”
“Right. Now get some sleep. Goodnight.”
There was no reply. Just a burst of loud snoring from the other bed.
Day of Reckoning
The morning saw both men quieter. Bates nursed a hangover and Klyne had done some thinking and decided that it would be better if they could gather more information about the Reverend.
