Killer in Sight (A Tom Lackey Mystery)

by Sandra Carrington-Smith

  do so. Her body felt numb – she had only felt that way

  once before, after waking up from a particularly scary

  dream and being unable to move; if she remembered

  correctly, the term her friend Amy used to explain the

  episode was something along the lines of sleep

  paralysis, although right now her mind was too foggy to

  be sure.

  She wanted to close her eyes and go back to sleep,

  but something deep inside of her told her to remain

  awake. She remembered dreaming a lot while she was

  asleep, and many of her dreams were of Tracey. She

  allowed those memories to flood her mind now that she

  was awake, and could feel tears stinging her eyes.

  Tracey was her best friend, and Shannon loved her like

  she never loved anyone else in this world, and yet she

  allowed fear to get in the way. Mary didn’t like Tracey

  because she was jealous of her, and never missed a

  chance to accuse her of wrongdoing, even when Tracey

  wasn’t around to defend herself. After Tracey was found

  murdered, Mary was the first suspect on her list. She

  remembered laying awake at night, waiting for Mary to

  killer her too, but Mary never did – in those moments,

  Shannon thought that Mary was enjoying this game of

  cat and mouse she was playing with her, and felt

  empowered by simply scaring her and keeping her in

  control. And unfortunately, Shannon was so emotionally

  abused that she believed many of the lies Mary told her,

  including the fact that Brad was possibly Tracey’s killer.

  Brad had a problem with addiction but he wasn’t a

  murderer. And what about when she accused her of

  murdering Tracey – because on the same night of the

  murder Shannon had taken her car and brought it back

  with a dent? What Mary didn’t remember was that she

  had attacked her that night, and Shannon had fled

  grabbing the first set of keys she found on her way out;

  once she got outside, she noticed that she had the wrong

  keys, but she couldn’t go back upstairs to get her own.

  She instead peeled off the parking lot, crying too hard to

  see clearly, and hit the corner of a mailbox a few blocks

  down the road. The rain was blinding but Shannon

  didn’t care – getting away was all she cared about. She

  sped out of the edges of town, and drove aimlessly

  through country roads until she was too exhausted to

  continue, then she pulled into a muddy field, locked her

  doors and slept for a few hours. When she went back

  home the next day, Mary wasn’t there, and Shannon

  cleaned the car the best she could, but some mud was

  still stuck on the undercarriage. Mary came back around

  lunch time, and the moment she walked through the

  door, Shannon knew she was in trouble. Mary’s face

  was dark and swollen like the clouds of a violent storm,

  and Shannon promptly asked for her forgiveness. A few

  days later, Tracey’s stepfather called and informed her

  of what happened. Mary was home and listened to the

  conversation from the phone in the bedroom; the

  moment Shannon hung up, Mary accused her of killing

  Tracey because of a family dispute Tracey had caused.

  The absurdity of the accusation made Shannon burst

  into spontaneous laughter -- yes, she was upset, but she

  would never kill someone she loved like a sister over

  something so insignificant. Unfortunately for her, that

  burst of unchecked emotion led to a beating. She wished

  she never met Mary, and her mind floated back to the

  day she first saw her.

  At the time, Shannon needed extra money to cover

  her car payment, and had taken a job as a barmaid at

  Green Olive, a bar Mary often frequented. Shannon

  hated to work there; she couldn’t stand the starving

  looks she got from some of the men that lurked by the

  pool tables, and was ready to quit one night, when one

  of those men tried to grab her. Mary was there to save

  the day – she yanked the man from behind and threw

  him over the pool table; he was too drunk to react, and

  surprise was the only thing that registered in his

  inebriated brain. He looked at Mary with a grin on his

  face as he tried to lift himself up, and made the fatal

  mistake of calling Mary ‘sweet cheeks’. Mary didn’t

  take it as a compliment; she gave him a hand to help

  him stand up, and when he did she punched him square

  in the stomach, knocking the wind out of him. His

  friends watched without uttering a sound, one man

  barely whispering that ‘it wasn’t cool’, but one fiery

  look from Mary was all he needed to swallow the rest of

  his complaint.

  After the men left dragging their injured friend

  along, Mary walked up to Shannon and asked her if she

  was okay. Shannon was grateful, and a part of her was in

  awe of Mary’s strength and white-knight attitude. They

  became fast friends, and from that point on Mary was

  there every night until closing to make sure nobody else

  would mess with ‘her Shannon’ as she soon nicknamed

  her. Of course, word spread fast and nobody did –

  Shannon could have walked naked around the place, and

  men would have focused on the cue ball; a cute woman

  chained at the ankle to a bulldozer was way too much

  trouble to toy with on a night out with friends; in fact, if

  a new patron went in, it didn’t take long for the older

  ones to brief him on the dangers he might encounter.

  In the beginning, Mary seemed nice. She and

  Shannon ate together several times, especially after

  Mary was fired from her daytime job and had a lot of

  time on her hands. Shannon wasn’t sure why Mary lost

  her job, but anytime she asked, Mary replied that she

  was working with a bunch of sissies with no balls, so

  she decided not to pry any further.

  During their lunch outings, Mary told Shannon a bit

  about her life and didn’t hide that she had little trust in

  people. Her own mother abandoned her and her brother

  when they were very young, and even if she re-appeared

  in their lives several years later, Mary had already

  closed that door. Never would she trust that woman

  again. Her mother had tried all she could to mend her

  relationship with the two children, but neither of them

  were interested in her repentance. After one particularly

  violent exchange, Mary had pushed her mother’s

  boyfriend against the wall, and told him to get lost. The

  two – mother and boyfriend – seemed to have gotten the

  message, and Shannon thought they were finally gone. It

  wasn’t that she didn’t like them, and in fact, many times

  she felt bad for Mary’s mother, but Mary was always

  angry after she saw them and Shannon hoped they

  would finally give up. The last time they stopped at her

  apartment, the day before Tracey disappeared, Shannon

  was in the shower and she heard Mary yelling at them.

  She locked herself in the bathroom and waited for them


  to leave before she got out, but as soon as they left Mary

  started banging on the door asking what was taking so

  long, and she had to let her in. It was the first time Mary

  hit her in the face. Until that day, there had been a few

  times when Mary grabbed her too hard, and even once

  when Mary ripped her pink shirt off her body because –

  according to her – it was too sleazy, but she never really

  hit her until then. After her mother left, Mary was like a

  pressure cooker waiting to explode, and Shannon was

  terrified. Mary’s violence had escalated over time, and

  some of its poison insinuated through crevices of their

  life together in such a way that by the time Shannon

  realized she had a problem she was too scared to do

  anything about it.

  A sharp wave of pain shot through her head, and

  Shannon shut her eyes to make it go away. Memories

  continued knocking at the edge of her consciousness,

  and although she tried to push them away to rest for a

  moment, they wouldn’t leave her alone. She

  remembered looking for the key to her storage unit and

  being unable to find it, so she asked Mary to go pick up

  another one at the management office. The next day, she

  went to store a box of books she planned to donate and

  noticed that her belongings appeared disturbed. Not

  many people would notice something so insignificant,

  but for Shannon it was a huge thing – being an overly

  organized person had served her well in many occasions

  and hurt her in others. This time, her obsession with

  neatness had cost her dearly. She opened the boxes to

  make sure everything was still as she had left it, and

  found a pair of bloody boots in one of them. A small

  voice inside her head suggested that whoever put those

  boots in the unit was the same person who killed Tracey,

  and of course, Mary was the number-one candidate

  among her suspects. Panic overtook her entire being,

  and she put the box back and locked the unit before

  going back to her apartment to think. Mary had left for

  work earlier and was probably due to return around

  seven – three hours from now – so Shannon spent the

  next hour trying to decide whether she should call the

  police or pretend she hadn’t seen anything.

  Her nerves were so raw that she almost screamed

  when someone knocked on the door. She looked through

  the spy hole and saw Mary’s stepfather – Mary’s mother

  wasn’t married to him, or even engaged, but that was

  how he liked to introduce himself. Mary was gone, so

  she felt it was safe to open; in fact, maybe she could

  explain to him what was going on with Mary, and he

  would make sure he and his girlfriend stayed the hell

  away.

  She let him in and invited him to sit and he accepted

  enthusiastically. He mentioned that he was driving

  through the area when his car started overheating, so he

  wondered if it was okay for him to stay a spell while the

  car cooled off. Shannon didn’t see anything wrong with

  that and offered him a drink. She poured two glasses of

  Coke and brought them back to the living room where

  he was sitting. He took it and smiled warmly, making

  sure to thank Shannon profusely. They talked about

  Mary for a while, and Yago expressed his wish to see his

  girlfriend reunited with her children; he said that he

  understood how Mary and her brother felt, and he was

  elated that Mary’s brother Jack was at least amenable to

  discussing the possibility of his mother being a part of

  his life. He also said that no matter how long it would

  take, he was ready to support his soon-to-be fiancée, and

  that he was proud of the fact that she was doing all she

  could to make up for the time she had missed with her

  children – to her, seeing her babies happy was a mission

  she would stick to for the rest of her life.

  After taking the first sip of a second large glass of

  Coke she just poured, Shannon had to use the bathroom,

  so she excused herself and left Yago in the living room

  while she ran to empty her bladder. When she came

  back, they picked up the conversation from where it left

  off, but it wasn’t long before Shannon started feeling

  really tired. She wanted to ask him to leave, but her

  innate sense of hospitality prevented her from doing so.

  She laid her head on the back of the couch, and

  gradually slipped away. The last thing she remembered

  was Yago asking her how she felt, and the rest was a

  complete fog. The realization of what happened

  suddenly exploded in her mind, and even if her body

  didn’t cooperate fully, the adrenaline rush pumped

  enough steel into one of her arms for her to grab the

  tube inside her mouth and yank it out. She felt a searing

  pain in her throat and nose, but she didn’t care. She tried

  to scream but her throat was on fire, so she ripped the

  tubes from her body in hope that they would set off an

  alarm. When the nurse and the police officer on duty ran

  into her room, she sat up on the bed, and with a raspy

  voice she announced: “I know who killed Tracey

  Newman.”

  #

  Mike and Rose Howard had nearly given up hope

  when the phone finally rang to announce good news. An

  employee at the bus station had found Alexis waiting to

  board a bus headed to North Carolina and she called the

  police; the moment the call went through, it was

  immediately routed to the detectives investigating

  Alexis’s disappearance who rushed to the bus station

  and were relieved to find out that their case had a happy

  ending.

  Mike burst into tears a few seconds into the call,

  and Rose – not knowing what upset her husband so

  much – immediately froze into a state of deep panic. If

  she were to live to the ripe age of a hundred, Rose

  would never forget her husband’s face when he hung up

  and the words ‘she’s alive’ sputtered from his lips

  almost drowned by the tears he could not stop. That was

  when Rose’s icy wall shattered and she fell on her knees

  praying and crying, her whole body shaken by a quake

  of powerful sobs the epicenter of which was smack in

  the middle of her heart. They hugged and cried, laughed

  and kissed, and then walked together to the car, each

  supporting the other through yet another crippling wave

  of emotion.

  Mike sped down the highway, too happy to think

  about tickets or accidents, and when they arrived at the

  bus station, he pulled straight into a handicapped spot to

  save time – if $100 was all he had to pay to see his little

  girl five minutes sooner he was more than glad to open

  his pockets and hand out a bill.

  The practically ran inside, their legs fueled by love

  and a never-before-felt sense of joy, and they nearly

  crashed into an overweight security guard clad in an illfitting uniform.

  “Si
r,” Mike asked the security guard, “Our daughter

  was found at the station today. Can you tell us where the

  director’s office is?”

  In spite of his lack of caring about his personal

  image likely caused by a minimum-wage salary and

  long hours spent ensuring the safety of a place that

  didn’t do him any favors, the young man smiled and

  shook their hands. “I’m Officer Fines. Follow me. I’ll

  take you to meet your daughter.”

  The young man walked with a different dance in his

  step, and led them to a small cluster of offices where

  one policeman in uniform and one in civilian clothing

  stood waiting. Satisfied to finally have done something

  of importance in his day – playing a part in reuniting a

  lost child with her parents was the work of a hero in his

  book – the young man bid his goodbye and left wearing

  a smile that was so bright it stole the attention from the

  quarter-size stain on the front of his shirt.

  The detective who met Mike and Rose shook their

  hands and told them how happy he was that their

  daughter was safe, and then he ushered them into the

  manager’s office where Alexis was sitting on an overly

  stuffed chair sipping a can of soda and munching peanut

  butter crackers.

  The moment Mike and Rose stepped inside, Alexis

  sucked in her breath, something she always did when

  she knew she was in trouble; but this time, Mike and

  Rose were too happy to reprimand her, and both nearly

  dove on her and squeezed her into a sandwich hug.

  “Mom! Dad! I can’t breathe!” She said laughing,

  enormously relieved to realize that her parents weren’t

  even thinking about punishments. “Where’s Petey?”

  “Petey is at home, Sweetheart,” her father replied as

  he quickly brushed tears from his eyes – happy or not,

  he had a tough-daddy reputation to uphold. “He missed

  you a lot. We all did.”

  Alexis arched her brow and looked at both of her

  parents’ faces, a bit confused by their less-than-typical

  reaction. “But aren’t you mad at me?”

  Rose smiled and hugged her tightly. “Mad? We are

  madly happy that you are okay, Alexis. Why were you

  trying to go to North Carolina?”

  Alexis cast her eyes down to meet the floor and

  balanced herself from one foot to the other. “I wanted to

  see Kathy. She understands me, and…”