by mike Evans
“You are a monster, and you don’t deserve to live.”
“Oh, that isn’t nice to say, Jamie. Are you trying to make me mad? It isn’t a good idea to make me angry.”
She shook her head slowly and said, “And how am I supposed to go on, how could you lie to me for so long? How couldn’t you have told me the truth?”
“Honestly, for years I’ve wanted to tell you about myself; what it is that goes through my mind. You felt so bad so many times when we would move and a new set of killings would start and I would get assigned. The hardest part of all of that was trying not to smile when I was invited to the crime scenes; it was almost as if they let me walk through and see where I did something wrong to make sure that the next killing would be better. Now, I almost never make a mistake, that is until Nick and Chuck decided to be good ol’ boys and drive up from Missouri. You see, they came here last night with a kill kit, not a great one but there would have been plenty in there for them to cause me a lot of pain. But unfortunately for them, there wasn’t very much they had going for them once they got here. Their plan was half-assed at best, and while they were busy talking to you I slipped into the truck. If you wouldn’t have been home they might be alive right now.”
“Don’t you dare put that burden on me! There’s absolutely no way that I could’ve known who I was sleeping next to. I can’t believe this, Matt, I really can’t fucking believe this. It is too much to try and wrap my head around.”
“Oh, I'm not blaming you for their deaths; I'm thanking you for the diversion. They never knew what was coming. The sheriff was a little smarter than I thought he was, or maybe I was just eager to get to kill and a little surprised that he was even here in the first place. He actually shot me twice in just about the same spot.”
Matt pulled up the shirt showing his makeshift bandage, stained red and just barely beginning to soak through it. “I wish they would have shot two inches to the right.”
Matt bent down, kissing her forehead. “Honey, if you’d like to live, you might want to refrain from speaking ill of me and the way that I work. This isn’t how anyone wants to be; this is just how I was born. There isn’t any help that doesn’t make me a vegetable.”
“There are a lot of people that would be okay with that though.”
“Truer words have never been spoken, but I can’t let anything like that happen to myself, yet.”
“Why don’t you care about hurting people? Doesn’t it even make you the slightest bit guilty?”
“How could I feel guilty for something that makes me feel so good? It is the most satisfying thing in my life. I couldn’t give it up if I wanted to. There’s no drug good enough to make me feel as good as this does. You’ll see what I mean one day when you see the look on one of the kids’ faces. That’s right…it’s genetic and hasn’t missed the bloodline in decades. My dad said it came on me early; you might do well to keep a watchful eye on them. It’d be like you saying that you feel guilty for breathing.”
“I’ll fucking turn them into the psych ward before I let them become like you. If they go down that path, I can’t promise what I’ll do.”
Matt leaned in very close until their eyelashes were touching. “If you do anything to hurt those children for being who they are I will come back, and the next time that I come back you and I will have a conversation but you will be my victim. You will not survive, and I will peel every inch of your skin off your body with a knife. You will experience pain like you’ve only seen in movies. Do you understand what I am saying?”
She just stared, unsure what to say. She tried to say yes but her voice would not work. “Just nod if you understand, Jamie.”
She did…very slowly. He tried to place the piece of tape back over her mouth but she yanked her head away from him. “If you aren’t here to kill me then what do you want? Why are you here?”
“I wanted to see the children one last time, and I have to admit I usually don’t get turned on when I'm killing because that is my release, but this is the sexiest you have ever looked. Too bad you aren’t into it; this could be a regular thing I think.”
She shuddered and he bent down kissing her forehead longer than she appreciated. He headed to the bathroom where he took extra gauze and a bottle of painkillers. He kissed each of his children, tucking them in and giving them their blankets that they couldn’t go to sleep without each night. His heart leapt in his throat when two sets of headlights washed over the house.
Chapter 5
Big Creek State Park crime scene
Detectives Dursky and Victoria drove up on the scene and looked around. He saw the tipped over truck that had been reported with the two men inside, each of them missing their identification. Dursky wasn’t new to the job and knew looking at two dead bodies would give him dick for answers. He didn’t waste time asking the other detective what she thought they should do. Victoria and Dursky were each typing something into their laptops to see who could get the information before the other. Dursky clapped his hands startling Victoria. “Oh shit, would you look at this, look at who this guy is. Fuck, I’d love to know more about what is going on here.”
Victoria looked at the profile for Lambert and said, “Well, looks like this just went to a whole new degree of fucked up. The killer from Missouri who is supposed to be dead. The sheriff who was in charge of the man that finally found the son of a bitch only to have him allegedly blow himself up and the daughter of the sheriff’s best friend as well. What in the hell is happening?”
“Lambert came up here and got himself shot. The other man has extreme wounds. There’s a blood smiley face and all kinds of DNA evidence everywhere at this camp. The killer is here, don’t you get that. We need to know why these two came here though. I don’t see two guys like this making road trips on a regular basis just for shits and giggles,” Dursky said.
Victoria looked up the phone number and said, “Well, the best thing to do is give a call to his office. We find out why he came up here, or what he’s been up to and maybe we know where to look. It’s pretty fucking obvious something went wrong here.”
Dursky pulled out a smoke and pushed out of the car lighting it and resting against the hood while he called the sheriff’s office. “You know we might not even get someone, this city couldn’t have been smaller; they might not have a deputy on duty at four in the morning.”
Victoria looked at the scene seeing the bullet casings in the front and the back. “There’s a lot of casings in here, someone got shot besides the cop.”
Dursky who hadn’t looked, asked, “Why do you say that”
“Because I’ve been a cop long enough to know what a single gunshot wound to the head looks like. So, whatever else happened in that truck was pointing at someone else, it’d seem.”
“Maybe we’ll get lucky and we can find this one on the run still bleeding. The reports are that the son of a bitch is a gi- yes, hello, hi. My name is Detective Joey Dursky, I wanted to see if there was anyone that I could speak to in regards to Sheriff Lambert, please.”
The deputy who’d been bored all night and thankful for it after the previous month’s craziness said, “Can I ask why, please?”
“He had an accident son, up in Iowa.”
“Iowa…are you sure you got the right guy, sir? I just saw Chief Lambert Sunday before I was coming on shift. He looked like a man on a mission, not one that was on a road trip.”
“Son, I wish that it wasn’t him, and that this call was a joke. When I Googled his name he came up with pictures about the killing. The passenger in the truck is a Chuck Pendergrast. Do you know him?”
“Shit, where’d you say you were calling from? Damn it, the sun isn’t even up yet. I don’t get to break one family's heart I get to break two of them.”
“Son, is there someone that would know why he might have come up here? I’d say that this was pretty low key and his wife probably is going to have a story that won’t match up to this. I don’t want to tell a grieving spouse. Is ther
e anyone else that I can talk to, anyone at all that might be able to assist?”
“You should talk to Sara, his secretary, but she ain’t in for a while.”
Dursky pulled a long drag on the smoke knowing his answer was close but that this kid wasn’t thinking rationally at the moment. He let it out slowly trying to think of the nicest way that he could say it without sounding condescending. “Do you think that you could call her and have her call me, or if you have her number that’d be great and I could just call her myself?”
“Are you gonna tell her what happened to the sheriff?”
“I would say if she has any intelligence at all, son, that she’s probably going to piece together why an Iowa detective is calling her at four in the morning. I’d like to get this thing moving pretty quickly, kid. There’s a hell of a lot that still needs to be done and the sooner we get the answers the better the opportunity we have for catching the asshole, or holes, who did this.”
“You got anything else I need to tell his wife?”
“Just that she’s going to want a closed casket funeral. There isn’t a lot else I want known publicly at this time. I don’t want the media to get ahold of any more information than they need.”
The man read off Sara’s number thinking at least there was one less person that he had to go and give horrible information to in the early hours of a Monday. Dursky said, “You want to talk to the secretary or do you want me to?”
Victoria said, “What, you think because we both have vaginas that she’s going to be more open to talking shit about what her boss did?”
“Typically, yeah, I was going to put it really poetically and say really sweet things about how you were a better people person, but if you want to lay it out flat like that then I’m not above that being the reason why.”
“Why did I get paired with you again?”
“Because God loves you, and you’re lucky.”
“Oh my lord, I’m going to make the call over here, away from all of the bullshit, I’m going to need some galoshes here pretty quick.”
“Go make the call Victoria, smart ass. I’m going to check in with the chief. I’m starting to think we might want to call in some help.”
“What, you want to give away all of the glory and let the FBI come in and take things over? You know what would happen if we could get that many people on this?”
“Uh, yeah, I do. We could one- catch the son of a bitch.”
“Okay, extra resources, I’ll give you that but what’s the second reason?”
“That we might live if we go after him with that much support. Their resources are fucking insane.”
She made the call sitting, waiting for a very tired and disoriented Sara to answer. “Hello, is this police business and is it an emergency because you gonna die if it isn’t, I shit you not?”
“Hello, Sara, this is Detective Britta Victoria, from Ankeny Iowa. I hope that this isn’t a bad time.”
Sara rolled over looking at the clock seeing it wasn’t even close to five in the morning yet. She rubbed at her eyes trying to compose herself knowing that her bitch face was currently in full force. “I haven’t had my coffee yet, of course it is a bad time. What can I help you with? I’m sure that you are aware there is a main phone number that you can call to talk to the police station, right?”
“Yes, ma’am, I am aware, but they told me to call you and get information from you, that there was information that you might have, that the others might not possess.”
“What the hell would I know that isn’t in the computers?”
“Just to be clear, you are the secretary that worked for Sheriff Lambert, correct?”
Sara wasn’t dumb and the words worked…hit her like a hammer. She was typically the type that could be a bit smoother. “What the fuck are you really calling about, Detective? I’ve been around for too damn long to have a line of smoke like this blown up my ass. What’s going on? What happened to Sheriff Lambert? You going to ruin my day I think, aren't you?”
“Well, if you liked your boss then I’d say yes, yes I am. The sheriff and another man named Chuck Pendergrast were found very early this morning at Big Creek State Park. There have been crime scene units working the scene all night. We ran the plates when we made it on scene and we have a reason to believe that the man in the mask is the killer, which also would mean he’s still alive.”
The phone dropped and Sara fumbled for it saying, “I’m sorry, did you just say you think it was the man with the mask? I mean…the one who killed all those people including himself?”
“If it isn’t then I’d have to say there’s a copycat killer out here who is just as effective as he was, or is. There’s no one left alive here, ma’am. The few residents that were residing here camping were each accounted for and did not survive the attacks. So I think it is of utmost importance that you tell us what happened and what he has been doing if you know anything...anything at all, Sara.”
She was quiet for a long minute thinking her words over slowly and the fact hit her in the face brutally. “He has been busy, he was actually sick to his stomach yesterday over what he was working on. He’d asked me for some information and wanted to call this LoJack company to inquire on service from one of the victims cars. Well, I’m not big on being a snooper but I had been overhearing him repeating what the other line had said, that he was confirming there was no way anyone could have gotten the information they had in order to find these kids, the ones who became national headlines, “Death in State Park”.
“I’m sorry, are you saying the detective who’d claimed to have found them and pretty much become a national hero overnight didn’t actually do anything? What I mean is—”
“Oh. I think we both know what that means. You said that you were calling from The Ankeny Police Department?”
“Yes, we were trying to figure out why he was up here.”
“Well, if him and Chuck were up there at night, and no one else seems to know what those two were doing, I’d have to say pretty confidently he was up there with very bad intentions. That’s where the previous Detective Hardin moved to. He retired from the force early, surprised us all to tell you the truth. We are still a lil bit fucked in the head after losing almost all of our deputies in one day.”
Detective Victoria was snapping her fingers trying to get Dursky’s attention. When he didn’t look she picked up a dirt clump and threw it at his ass startling the shit out of him. When he looked around ready to go and saw Victoria running he didn’t need to be told anything. He screamed, “No one touches my scene. We are heading out, there’s a lead we need to follow up on.”
Victoria said, “So, you are telling me that Hardin now resides in Ankeny and your boss and his friend, the father of the victim, just happened to show up in that same damn town?”
“Can’t beat a good ol’ fashioned coincidence now, can you, Detective Victoria?”
“You happen to have their address, Sara?”
“No, I don’t keep anything like that at home. If you check them out they shouldn't be too hard to find; just look for one with two kids and his wife's name is, or was, Jamie, if she’s still alive after tonight.”
“I can’t thank you enough, Sara. I’m going to let you go now so we can go question Hardin.”
“You’d do best to just put two in his head, Detective. But what do I know? He usually lets so many people live.”
“I understand, and thank you again.” She hung up the phone trying to let everything that she’d just learned sink in.
Dursky, who wasn’t patient at all, slammed on the wheel as they sped out of the state park. “Well, you’d best speak the fuck up, Britta. Where the hell am I going, why the fuck am I going there, and thank you very much, why the fuck are we going away from the crime scene? I didn’t even get a chance to call the chief.”
She tried staying calm, taking in his questions, and could see his eyes as wide as cue balls ready to explode if his questions weren’t answered. “Damn, D
ursky, breathe or you’re going to have another heart attack. That was the sheriff’s secretary. Apparently, he had still been investigating that case where his best friend’s daughter was killed with all the other kids and the deputies; you know the cluster-fuck case that no one would want to have to handle. The detective who was so famous afterwards said he’d used LoJack to find the victims, well, he lives up here now.”
“Right, and get to the point.”
“The point, smart ass, is that the car didn’t have LoJack to be used, the sheriff was looking into Hardin’s records, but he couldn’t find where he’d ever called the company. So, this one detective in Podunk, Missouri just happened to pick a closed state park to find these kids at. Now, said detective is living in the town where these two dead men, and a handful of what could have been witnesses if they’d have not gotten in the middle of it, are all dead.”
“So you are telling me that the killer is alive, he carried a shield all this time, and now we are heading to his place? Does that about sum it up?”
“Kind of a mess now, isn’t it?” Detective Victoria said.
“Do you really have to ask? Fuck, how do we want to do this? We’ll be back in town in five and at his place in another five, once you get the address.”
“I’m already ahead of you; he lives at 509 Myers Lane. It’s on the northeast side of town. Just stay on this road and—”
“I know Ankeny, Christ, I’ve lived here my entire life. I don’t need you telling me where to find it.” Dursky yelled, doing his best to stay calm.
“How sure are we that it is him? What I mean is… he isn’t a cop but once a cop always a cop, and it isn’t going to look real good if we go in guns blazing and then the guy is found not guilty.”
Britta was typing away with one hand looking enthusiastic about it. “Uh, this is getting better, and by that I mean worse looking by the second. Six houses in his neighborhood called to report shots fired. They said a pickup truck that matches the sheriff’s was driving away and it appeared to have three men in it. How solid does that sound?”
