A Dark Mind

by T. R. Ragan

  Her next thought was about her mom. She couldn’t stop thinking about her. Already this morning, she’d called the house more than once, but nobody had answered. Hayley wondered if Brian was really out of her mom’s life. She looked at her phone. Maybe she could call Jessica and ask her to stop by her mom’s house.

  Before she decided whether to make the call or not, there was a knock on the door. Hayley jumped up, looked out the peephole, and saw Kitally. She let the girl inside and then shut and locked the door behind her.

  “Hey,” Kitally said. “How’s it going?”

  “Not too bad. Thanks for coming.”

  Kitally was seventeen, Asian, and stood about five foot five. She wore a retro couture red strapless dress that would never work on anyone but Kitally. The girl had strong cheekbones and a sharp, well-defined jawline. Her eyes were brown and framed with thick colorful eyeliner. Her head was shaved, leaving nothing but a soft downy layer of black fuzz.

  Despite the fact that the girl reminded Hayley of a hyper puppy dog, she had liked Kitally straight off. Kitally was brilliant, but most people might not notice since she hid her intelligence behind an odd personality. Sweet one moment, tactless and gross the next. She could be blunt with her words as well as with her actions, which is why many of the kids in the detention center had steered clear of her.

  She first noticed Kitally during her second week of incarceration when she was eating lunch. All the inmates ate their meals together. Hayley, like everyone else, looked up when Abby, the biggest bitch in the place, began shouting at the lunch lady. The woman serving the food didn’t decide what food to serve; she was just doing her job. But Abby didn’t care. Abby needed to screech and holler at someone, and the woman serving the food just happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time.

  While Abby held her plate to her side and cussed the woman out, Kitally strolled by and shot a snot rocket right into Abby’s plate of spaghetti. Nobody said a word before or after Abby sat down and munched down her spaghetti. But the lunch lady had a smile on her face for the rest of that day.

  Rumor had it that Kitally was also part of a gang. She had broken a few legs, arms, even blinded a kid with a plastic fork. There were usually guards in the room, but everyone knew they didn’t carry guns. What good was a guard without a gun? Besides, the guards liked it when an inmate stirred the pot a little and added some excitement to their shift.

  The day Hayley and Kitally became friends was the same day one of the security guards decided to pick on Hayley. He called her names and poked her with his stick. To this day she had no idea why, but he wouldn’t stop.

  Kitally happened to be sitting nearby when Hayley glanced at the metal tongs in the salad bowl that had been left on the table. Kitally scooted closer to Hayley and advised her against using the tongs as a weapon. She then proceeded to give Hayley a mathematical equation that summed up the results of what her actions would be were she to follow through with her plan, a plan she had yet to verbalize.

  The kid had fucking read her mind.

  For the next six months, they sat together at every meal, until Kitally was released. She never did tell Hayley why she was in the place.

  “Want something to eat?” Hayley asked.

  “No,” she said. “I’m good.”

  Before Hayley could reach the couch to take a seat, there was another knock on the door. Eyes narrowed, Hayley headed back that way.

  What the hell was he doing here?

  It was the boy who had helped Lizzy with her defense class months ago. Tommy. The same boy Lizzy had made a point of talking about when she came to visit Hayley at the detention center and then again when she picked her up to take her home. She’d been set up. “Shit.”

  “What is it?”

  “The lady I live with has a bad habit of trying to set me up.”

  Kitally took a peek out the peephole. “Looks like the geek squad sent him. Does he use gel in his hair?”

  Hayley agreed. Tommy Ellis was in a league of his own. His hair was neatly combed to the side. His lime-green shirt had zero wrinkles and a stiff collar. His pants weren’t exactly skintight, but they weren’t loose either. The only thing he was missing was a colorful sweater hanging loosely around his shoulders. She unlatched the dead bolt and opened the door before he could knock again. “What do you want?”

  “Hey there,” he said. “How’s it going?”

  “Fine.”

  “Did Lizzy tell you I was coming?”

  “Nope.”

  “Ahh, I see. Well, she thought you could use some company.”

  “Well, she was wrong.” She started to close the door, but he stopped her.

  “Can I at least come in for a few minutes?”

  “What’s your name again?” Hayley asked, not wanting to give him false hope of someday being her friend.

  “Tommy Ellis. I teach kids self-defense at the Self-Defense Institute in Roseville.”

  Hayley was about to send him away for the second time, when Kitally opened the door wider and said hello.

  Tommy offered his hand, but Kitally ignored it.

  Now Hayley was really worried. Just because she didn’t want to be his friend or let him inside the house didn’t mean she wanted to crush him like a bug before sending him away. And that’s exactly what Kitally would do. She didn’t like too many people.

  Kitally was still looking him over, her gaze focused on his shoes, her expression filled with disgust, when suddenly her gaze shot past him and her eyes widened. “Is that your motorcycle?” She pushed past him and headed for his bike.

  Tommy followed her.

  Hayley crossed her arms and watched them both get all animated and weird over the thing. “I’ll be in here when you guys are done talking shop.”

  Nobody responded. Hayley left the door open and headed for the couch.

  They returned a few minutes later.

  Hayley had already taken a seat, but after Tommy shut the door, she placed her foot on the coffee table and pulled the right pant leg to her knee so Kitally could take a closer look at her ankle monitor. She wanted the thing off—the sooner, the better. She refused to let Karate Kid get in the way. If he didn’t like it, he could leave.

  Kitally took a seat on the couch next to her and examined the anklet.

  “It’s a GPS ankle monitor—” Hayley began.

  “Yeah,” Kitally said, cutting her off. “It’s passively receiving information from global positioning satellites that give the ankle bracelet the satellites’ position and time. When there are at least four active satellites, the GPS receiver can mathematically determine its own three-dimensional location. The in-home unit will poll the bracelet wirelessly and ask for its coordinates. The bracelet will then encrypt its information and send it to the in-home unit. This is where it gets a little complicated and very appealing to people like me. This ‘packet’ of information holds a few items in order to communicate effectively, one of which is a MAC address—Media Access Control address—which is unique for every device that communicates via an IP.”

  Hayley didn’t like Tommy hovering over them, since she didn’t want him mentioning any of this to Lizzy or Jared, but she figured she could talk to him about that later. Threaten to break his leg if she had to. She glanced at Kitally. “Can you do it?”

  Kitally turned Hayley’s ankle to the right. After a long moment, she shook her head and said, “I don’t know. This isn’t like the tracking devices I’ve seen before.”

  “What are you trying to do?” Tommy asked.

  Hayley sighed. “I’d rather not say.”

  “A five-year-old could get that thing off you, but if you’re planning on leaving during the day, you don’t want to have to take it off and on. Too risky.”

  “Thanks,” Hayley said. She looked at Kitally. “What do you suggest?”

  Kitally looked at Tommy. “What do you think, Geek Boy?”

  Hayley angled her head, waiting to see what Tommy would say next, figuring it
was time for her to stop worrying about him. If he wanted to come over uninvited, then he would have to learn to fend for himself.

  Tommy pulled out his iPhone and took at least a dozen pictures of the device. “I think I could do a MAC address clone on another device. Then you could just leave the real device at home.”

  Hayley looked at him. “You’re shittin’ me.”

  He took two more pictures before putting his phone away.

  “You could do that?” Hayley asked.

  He blew air out of his nose and said, “This is kindergarten stuff.”

  Hayley didn’t trust what she was hearing. If Tommy could clone her monitor, she would have some freedom over the next six months or however long they made her wear the device. More importantly, she could keep an eye on her mom and make sure she was safe. She would be free to roam. “When can you get started?”

  “Today.”

  Kitally rubbed her hands together. “Well, that was easy.” She headed for the door.

  “You’re leaving?”

  Her smile looked more like a smirk. “Places to go, people to see.”

  “What do I owe you?” Hayley asked.

  Kitally laughed, a funny squeaky noise that sounded more like a sneeze, before she said, “My dad has more money than he knows what to do with, and I’m his princess. If you need me for anything else, give me a call.”

  Tommy and Hayley both followed her outside.

  She did a skip and a hop down the pathway, stopping at Tommy’s bike again. “If either of you ever wants a ride on a real bike, let me know.” She laughed and then climbed behind the wheel of a shiny silver Porsche and took off.

  “She’s great,” Tommy said.

  “Yeah.”

  “She’s driving a Porsche Carrera GT. They don’t make those cars any longer. Her dad must have some real money, since there were only six hundred sold in the US.”

  “Fascinating,” Hayley said. Not. When she glanced his way, she didn’t like the way he was smiling at her, as if he found her humorous or friendly or anything at all.

  He followed her back to the house, which was equally annoying. Stopping at the door, she turned to face him. “So, I guess you’re going to go work on cloning my ankle bracelet, right?”

  He laughed. “Yeah, sure, I can take a hint.”

  “Oh, good, because I didn’t want to have to spell it out for you.”

  “What? You don’t want to be my friend?”

  She peered into his eyes. “I thought you were some big important businessman with a company to run.”

  “Is that the impression I gave you last time we met?”

  He looked away from her, toward the street.

  Damn. Now she felt bad. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean anything by it.”

  He lifted his hands in surrender as he headed for his bike. “No problem. You don’t want to be my friend. I can handle it.”

  Hayley bent her head forward and then backward to get the kinks out. “What about the ankle bracelet?”

  He hopped on his motorcycle, even looked sort of cool for a geek. “What about it?”

  “You’re still going to help me out?”

  “I don’t know,” he said with a stupid twinkle in his eye. “I’ll have to think about it.”

  “You’re really pissing me off.”

  “OK, OK. But you have to promise me that if I do it, once you’re free again, you’ll take a ride on the back of my Suzuki.”

  She didn’t like to play games or make promises, but she wanted the ankle monitor off, so she said, “Sure, fine, whatever.”

  “Just so you know,” he said, his tone in serious mode, “I don’t break the law for just anyone.”

  Oh, God. He definitely had a major crush on her. And judging by the stupid-ass grin on his face as he slipped his helmet over his head, he knew she’d just figured it out.

  She exhaled as she headed back inside, locking the door behind her.

  Sacramento

  Monday, May 14, 2012

  It was well after midnight. Water drizzled off his hood and into his face. His coat had a double-front storm seal with inside and outside snap closures. Overall, he was reasonably dry, even in this downpour.

  He stood across the street on the curb and watched the same house he’d been watching for the past five years: a single-family residence. The house was small, with few regular windows, and painted brown. Nothing to write home about. Not really. Not unless you knew the monster who lived inside.

  He wasn’t the same imaginary monster who hid in closets and frightened kids in the middle of the night. Nor was he the grunting, green-skinned giant whom millions liked to call Frankenstein. This guy was the real deal—a man with ten fingers and ten toes, muscles, and arteries.

  Most people who looked at him or bothered to talk to him might think he was just a regular guy, but they would be wrong. The man inside the house on Bunker Street was missing an essential ingredient: a soul. And unlike the imaginary bogeyman, this monster had a name: John Robinson.

  As raindrops dripped off his nose, he took a closer look at his surroundings. The neighborhood hadn’t changed much over the past five years. Two houses down, somebody had planted a row of rosebushes with long thorny stems. A fence made of thorns. Not a bad idea. The house behind him was boarded up. A piece of paper taped to the door read: Do Not Enter. Plywood covered the broken windows. The entire house was infested with rats.

  The house he was watching, though, the house across the street, had a light on in the kitchen, which meant the man who lived there was probably washing dishes after eating his evening meal.

  Eli looked at his watch. The backlight glowed. It was fifteen minutes past nine. The monster ate at about the same time every night, at least when he was home. Some nights, he never came home, which made sense since he was a fucking monster. No wife and no kids. Made sense since murderers weren’t usually the marrying type.

  He was tidy for a madman, though.

  Eli Simpson knew this because he’d been inside the house twice already.

  Five years ago, the cops had gone inside the house, too, and found nothing. No evidence of any kind. No blood. No fingerprints. Nothing at all to prove that John Robinson, the man who lived inside that house, had ever known his sister, Rochelle.

  But Robinson had known Rochelle, and Robinson had killed her. Eli was sure of it, but he had no proof. Not even a body to bury and lay to rest. According to the police reports, John Robinson and Rochelle had been accosted by four men and then held captive for days. There were pictures in the file, and John Robinson had the black eyes and bumps and bruises to show for his ordeal, but Rochelle was never found. Not one hair, not one bit of forensic evidence, to prove or disprove Robinson’s story.

  The police had made it clear from the start that they didn’t like Eli’s attitude, which was why they hadn’t listened to Eli when he told them that John was the culprit, the man who was responsible for Rochelle’s demise. Eli hadn’t trusted the cops to do their job, so he’d found a way to get inside John Robinson’s house. But Robinson was one step ahead of him; he’d called the cops and Eli had been arrested.

  Jaw clenched, Eli rolled his fingers into fists at his sides. Eli had no choice but to watch and wait. This wasn’t the only place he visited regularly. Every month he also visited the Sacramento police station and talked to the guys working Rochelle’s case. He would walk into the station and all eyes would be averted. He would pick an officer’s desk and proceed to sit there for most of the day, making sure they were doing everything possible to find Rochelle. Now, everybody in the police department knew him, and when Eli showed up, they all had the motions down to a science. Whoever happened to draw the short stick would retrieve Rochelle’s case file from the cabinet and then tell Eli what they had done since his last visit, which was never much: a few phone calls usually, nothing more. Now when Eli walked into the police station, he liked to do the whole eeny, meeny, miny, moe thing and take a seat wherever that little rhyme
led him.

  They all knew his name and he knew theirs.

  He was pretty sure that every uniformed officer and every detective in the place thought he was crazier than the guy who had killed his sister. When John Robinson managed to get a restraining order against him, the guys in blue actually stuck up for the crazy man! His sister was dead, but he was the one named in a restraining order?

  Life was sort of strange that way.

  His parents didn’t talk to him for years. Not until his mom died and his dad needed somewhere to go. He shook his head.

  He was the only one who seemed to care about finding Rochelle. And in the process, he’d somehow become the bad guy. His parents, his ex-girlfriend, everyone he met begged him to drop it. Let it go. Move on. But he couldn’t. There was no doubt in his mind. John Robinson had killed his sister. He’d known there was something wrong with the guy within five minutes of meeting him.

  He knew John Robinson was responsible for his sister’s disappearance. He knew it as surely as he knew the sun would rise tomorrow. He would gladly snap the asshole’s neck tonight if that would help him find Rochelle’s body. Until he found her, the monster was safe.

  And he knew it.

  CHAPTER 12

  Big deal. Death always went with the territory. I’ll see you in Disneyland.

  —Richard Ramirez

  Davis

  Tuesday, May 15, 2012

  After watching Jared and Lizzy leave for work, he waited fifteen minutes before checking windows and doors to see if any were unlocked. No such luck, but he was surprised to find a flimsy lock on the garage door on the side of the house. He was glad about that because one way or another, he was going to find a way to get inside Lizzy Gardner’s house. His plan was to search through her things, get a feel for the woman, and find out what she was up to. Not only did he want to see if he could give her a nudge into the darkness she was trying to distance herself from, he suddenly found himself beyond curious about Lizzy Gardner. Who was this woman who had somehow taken out Spiderman, his champion, his idol?