Shadow of Vengeance

by Kristine Mason

  “Aside from the obvious, what do you mean?” Owen asked.

  “The only other pre-mortem injuries are his dislocated shoulders.” Henry turned off the x-ray view box. “Mr. Baker weighs two hundred and forty pounds. According to my dad, he was found about a half mile from the river. Right?”

  “That’s right,” she said, her mind zeroing in on what she suspected Henry was thinking.

  “How long did it take your search party to walk a half mile in the snow?” Henry asked, and folded his arms and clipboard against his chest.

  With the way the ME frowned, add on the weariness lining his eyes, she realized he was older than she’d originally thought. Perceptive, too.

  “A solid hour,” Jake answered.

  “If it took us an hour and we were walking on our own, uninjured, how long would it take to drag Bill?” Owen rubbed his chin, then looked over his shoulder. “The ligature marks around his neck and hands…could be his wrists were tied and he was forced to walk.”

  “Could be he knew the person he walked with,” she added. “Not that it matters. Faint tracks were found in the snow and none of them indicated someone was dragged.”

  “Between the frostbite and the crows it’s difficult to say whether he was bound before reaching the tree.” Henry shook his head. “In my opinion, the ligature marks around his neck were of his own doing. Like he was trying to loosen the ropes. I found abrasion along his chin that led me to that conclusion.” With a long exhale, he looked at the clipboard, then flipped a page. “Our lab rushed the toxicology report. No alcohol or drugs of any kind.”

  “Did they screen for Rohypnol or chloroform?” Rachel asked. Again, not that it mattered at this point. Even if Bill had the drug in his system—a drug that would link him to Sean and his kidnapping/beating—the killer had left a note behind. Why?

  “I’m friends with Dr. Gregory. I know about your brother and am no stranger to all this Hell Week crap. So, yeah. They checked for those drugs and didn’t find any.” He set the clipboard on the counter. “Did you want to view the body?”

  She glanced between Owen and Jake, then offered her hand to Henry. “We’re good.” As she exited the morgue, she felt as if they were leaving with more questions than answers. Could it be that Bill had known the killer? Could he have been involved in the kidnappings? And the note stuffed in his pocket. Was the killer taunting them?

  “We could have used that steam coming out of your ears when we were out in the freezing cold,” Owen said as he snagged her arm. “You’re obviously thinking hard about something. What do you have?”

  She leaned against the whitewashed, basement cinder blocks, and stuffed her hands in her pockets. “Too many questions and not enough answers.”

  Jake mimicked her pose against the opposite wall. “Did something happen during your interviews at the university?” he asked, his voice quiet, distant.

  Owen ran both hands through his hair, then linked his fingers behind his head. “Yes and no.” He dropped his arms and looked to Jake. “Bill’s girlfriend, Kaylie Gallagher, isn’t a girlfriend at all.”

  “So, Joy misunderstood.”

  “No.” Rachel shook her head. “I think Bill misunderstood.”

  Jake nodded and winced. “Gotcha.”

  “We caught up with her just when she was finishing her morning shift at the library,” Rachel continued. “Kaylie works part time at the library, but is also Professor Stronach’s teaching assistant.”

  Jake pushed off the wall. “I can’t stand that guy.”

  Owen grinned. “You and me both.”

  “So what did the girl have to say?” Jake asked.

  Rachel swallowed hard while trying her best to keep her emotions in check. But she couldn’t stop Kaylie’s tear-streaked face from popping into her head. She cleared her throat and looked to the tiled floor. “She said she saw Bill Friday afternoon. He stopped by after his shift to let her know the security system had malfunctioned. That was the last time they spoke.”

  “And the other interviews?” Jake asked.

  Owen quickly told him that they’d met with ten university employees. “These men began working for Wexman ten to fifteen years ago. The other two men on our list retired from their jobs. One moved to South Carolina and the other died three years ago.”

  “None of them fit our profile,” Rachel added.

  “You said two of the guys retired. What about the ones who retired around the time Hell Week started?”

  Rachel frowned. “If they retired twenty years ago, they’d be too old.”

  “Maybe your profile is wrong.”

  She bit the inside of her cheek. Jake was being a jerk and she didn’t need it. “Maybe you should tell us if you made any progress on the incident that started the no hazing policy.”

  “Fair enough,” the sheriff said with a curt nod. “I got nothing.”

  “Not one thing?”

  “That would be the definition of nothing.”

  “Why so combative, Jake?” The way Owen clenched his jaw belied the calm, quiet tone he used on the sheriff. “Something on your mind you want to get out?”

  Irritation flashed in Jake’s eyes. He rubbed a hand down his face. “No.”

  “Good,” Owen said. “Have you thought about our suggestion?”

  Between their interview with Kaylie and the university employees, she’d called Jake and recommended he ask the Michigan State Police to become involved. He’d said he would think about it, but based on the way the investigators with the state police had treated him and the community he represented, she’d worried he wouldn’t be on board.

  “I thought about it, and I think you’re right. We need some extra manpower during the festival. State police also has a lab in Neguanee. It’s about an hour and half from here. Their facility doesn’t have all the technical services like the Lansing lab, and probably won’t be as quick as the lab CORE uses, but it’s close, and worth a shot. I’ll make the call when I get back to my office. Which is where I’m heading now.” He started down the hallway, then stopped, and looked over his shoulder. “Bill was a friend.” Then with a slight nod, he continued on until he disappeared around a corner.

  “He’s not mad at us,” she finally said, then started to walk down the hallway.

  Owen walked alongside. “Nope. He’s pissed off at the situation. Can’t say I blame him.”

  Nodding, she shoved her hands into her pocket before she did something stupid. Like reach for Owen. Just like Jake, she was angry with the whole situation. What happened to Bill didn’t make sense. “Why leave a note?”

  Owen pushed the door open and held it for her. The cold wind practically took her breath away.

  “Now look what you made me do,” he said, repeating a line from the note, and unlocked the Lexus. Once inside the SUV, he started the ignition and cranked the heat. “It’s as if the killer is blaming us.”

  “Or taunting.” She looked out the window, then rubbed her temple. “Let’s say Bill’s an innocent victim.”

  “Do you think he is?”

  She thought about Bill, her initial interpretation of him, what Joy and others had said about him. “Honestly, yes. He might have slacked a little on the job, but he doesn’t seem the type who would get involved in kidnapping and murder. I think he had too much integrity.”

  “Agreed. Okay, so Bill’s an innocent victim…”

  “Right. Friday, the killer somehow causes the malfunction of the majority of the campus’s electronic locks. Saturday, he not only drugs my brother and Josh, but Bill, too. While Bill is out of it, he moves the security camera at the residence hall, takes Bill’s pickup, kidnaps Sean and Josh, then…” Damn it, she didn’t know.

  “Then he returns the truck. Bill’s too sick to notice it’s been moved,” he finished for her. “If Sean had been tossed from a truck Sunday night, then it couldn’t have been Bill’s. He told us he went home after his shift and stayed in bed the rest of the day.”

  “Unless the ki
ller went to his house and borrowed it again,” she suggested. “But that doesn’t ring true. Too risky.”

  “So the killer uses his own truck or SUV to get rid of Sean. He did it late on a Sunday night when the traffic is down to nothing and the risk of being seen isn’t as high.”

  “Then why use Bill’s truck at all?” She drummed her fingers on her thigh. “Okay, back to Bill. We ask him to go to the lab for blood work, he leaves and disappears. Someone either overheard us, or Bill might’ve let it slip…I can’t help thinking that if we didn’t ask him—”

  He grabbed her hand. “We didn’t kill him.”

  She stared at their joined, gloved hands and wished they were skin to skin, his strength and confidence seeping into her. Although she knew in her heart that Bill’s death wasn’t her fault, she couldn’t stop the guilt. She couldn’t help thinking about how they could have done things differently, like escort Bill to the lab themselves.

  Bill’s horrifying image entered her mind again and her stomach knotted. Before she burst into tears, she let go of Owen’s hand and said, “Anyway, if the killer was concerned about Bill’s blood work coming up positive for Rohypnol, it makes sense that he would go after Bill before he made it to the lab.”

  “Then why kill him the way he did? Why tie him to a tree and force him to freeze to death?”

  She shook her head at her stupidity. “Because the killer wanted the drug to run its course,” she said with exasperation. “And because Rohypnol could stay in the system for up to sixty hours, if he murdered Bill too soon, a tox screen would still show evidence of the drug. Tying Bill to the tree gave the killer extra time, but also ensured him that Bill wouldn’t be talking to anyone.”

  “Great theory, and I don’t disagree.” He parked the Lexus in front of Bill’s house. Hal, Joy and Walter had promised to meet them there to give them a chance to look through Bill’s things. Rachel hoped to find items from Saturday night. Anything, something that might put them in the right direction.

  “But?” she asked.

  He killed the ignition. “Again. Why leave the note? Unless it was meant to blame or taunt us, it seems like overkill to me.”

  She stepped out of the Lexus. A crow cawed from above, and as she watched the ugly bird soar, the image of Bill’s crow-bitten, frozen face emerged. She shook the memory from her mind and focused on what Owen had just said.

  Meant to taunt or blame us…overkill…

  Her mind raced with everything they’d just discussed, along with the interviews they’d done today, as well as the leads and clues they’d organized last night. Glancing away from the gray, cloudy sky, she caught sight of the bumper stickers on the backend of Walt’s truck. One said, “Gone Sasquatching,” while the other had the words “I Believe” etched onto a Bigfoot footprint. She thought about the Bigfoot festival starting tomorrow, about the hundreds of people who would be infiltrating the town and campgrounds, about the need for extra security, and how the festival might distract from the initial Hell Week.

  She drew in a shaky breath and stared at Bill’s house. “Why do I feel like he’s setting us up?”

  *

  Naked rage clawed at his throat. That pure emotion, so strong, so vile, so unlike anything he’d experienced since that fateful night twenty-five years ago splintered. Raising his tear-soaked face he stared blindly out the kitchen window. To the woods. To where all his pledges rested. Their young bodies decimated by the elements and muriatic acid. Their short lives a token of Hell Week. His Hell Week. His shame, anger and hatred.

  Chin trembling, he raised the brandy snifter. With his nose too clogged to enjoy the aroma of the aged cognac, deeper frustration rose and shattered. Why? Why did Junior have to be such a fucked-up piece of shit? He’d thought she had half a brain, but clearly had been wrong. She couldn’t follow simple directions. She couldn’t do as she was told. Had she no respect for him? For his authority? Didn’t she realize whom she was dealing with? The white trash Townies knew. They knew to fear him and so did the little shitheads prancing around campus in their designer clothes mommy and daddy had bought for them, flashing their fancy phones and latest digital devices as if they didn’t cost what most Townies might make in a month.

  Obviously Junior had never learned to respect authority. She would. He gripped the snifter, furious the phlegm gathering in his throat and the snot in his nose made drinking the expensive liquor pointless. Turning away from the window, he moved into the living room where a roaring fire crackled. He stared at the flames, envisioned tossing Junior into the hearth. Imagined her hair igniting, her face melting, her mouth open as she screamed and writhed in pain.

  But he couldn’t touch her. He couldn’t do a fucking thing to her. At this point, she needed to remain…unmarred. If she moved around campus with bruises on her face, people would question. They would demand answers.

  Despite not being able to taste the cognac or feel the delicious burn slide down his throat, he tossed back a swallow, then threw the glass into the fireplace. The snifter cracked and splintered into pieces, just like his patience. He might not be able to punish her now, but the time would come. Maybe the little bitch should experience Hell Week first hand. He couldn’t help smiling as he pictured his daughter bound and hanging from the rock wall in the basement. His smile grew as he fantasized. Beating her. Torturing her. Making her feel and understand the pain he’d gone through twenty-five years ago.

  His smile fell. He looked across the room, to the foyer. To where the trapdoor remained closed. Junior would have to wait. Because of her, because of what she’d done to that fat, useless, hillbilly security guard, he now had no choice but to deviate from his plan. Fresh tears emerged, but he quickly brushed them away. He was a man, damn it. Not a weepy little boy. No. Never again.

  “Never again!” He took the fireplace poker and smashed it against the curio cabinet. Ugly, glass figurines, once belonging to his mother, crashed to the floor. Not satisfied, he raised the poker again and swung. Over and over. “Never, ever, ever!” Chunks of wood flew across the room and hit him in the head and face. Ignoring the sting of glass and splinters of wood, he didn’t stop his tirade until the curio cabinet had become nothing but kindling for his fire.

  Breathing hard, sweat dripping down his back and temple he stared at the mess he’d made, then looked to his hands. To the poker. His heart and mind still in turmoil, an eerie calm settled in his soul. He knew what needed to be done, and it needed to begin now. Glancing at the closed trapdoor, he marched into the foyer.

  He whipped open the trapdoor. Wood smacked wood as the door bounced from the impact. Holding the poker in one hand, he rushed down the ladder and when he reached the bottom, rested his head against a rung. You must begin tonight. Must. Must. Must. But he didn’t want to. He was so close to earning the pathetic puke’s trust. How can there be betrayal without trust? Without that trust all of this…this Hell Week would have no meaning.

  Torture without meaning.

  Pushing off the rung, he reached for the lantern. But torture he must. Be a man, his mother had told him after…after his Hell Week happening. That had been what she’d called it. The Hell Week happening. She’d nurtured him back to health, had tended to his wounds while his oblivious, incompetent, simple-minded father assumed his son had developed the sort of affliction one might contract when living with a houseful of filthy, young, teenaged boys. No, his father hadn’t known, but his mother knew, she knew what they’d done—every heinous detail. And as he’d lain in bed, suffering both physically and mentally, she hadn’t an ounce of sympathy.

  “Vengeance,” he whispered, and turned the light on his pledge. That had been what Mother told him as she’d nursed him back to health. As he stared at the puke, he realized the boy could use a little nursing, as well. But that would be pointless. Thanks to Junior’s fuck up, the pledge would be dead in less than two days.

  Fresh tears prickled his eyes. He wanted to hurt the pledge. He needed to hurt him in order to keep the
demons at bay. Today was only Wednesday, though. If he rushed through Hell Week, would there still be satisfaction? There had to be. This was supposed to be his last Hell Week. His coup de gras. He didn’t want there to be another. How could any other Hell Week top this one? After all, his pledge was the son of the demon who had tortured him.

  Be a man. Don’t let what they did to you change you. Find a woman. Use her. Prove you’re still a man. And when you’re done, when you’re more successful than your pitiful father and his father before him…get your revenge.

  Those words had been his mother’s mantra as she’d applied a warm cloth to his wounds that cold, icy Sunday night twenty-five years ago. As he stared at the pledge, he saw himself. Stumbling naked from the fraternity house, running, tripping and sliding through ice and snow as he’d fought to find a way home. Even slightly delusional with the onset of hypothermia, he’d managed to find his parents’ home, his home. Beaten, naked, multiple parts of his battered body in the first stages of frostbite, his mother had found him on the doorstep. Instead of reporting the incident, she forced him to suffer in silence. No one could know what had been done to him. The Townies might think he was a sinner who’d brought upon him the wrath of God in the form of a twenty-year-old demon. They might think he liked it. His mother had suspected as much, but she’d been wrong.

  There is no pleasure in rape. Only pain.

  But he’d reported the incident, and had sent an anonymous letter to the university president before transferring schools. Not all the gory details, nor did he name names. He’d feared his tormentor, and had worried the demon would seek vengeance against him.

  A tear slid down his cheek. “Vengeance,” he repeated as he slowly approached the pledge. With his free hand, he ran his palm along the boy’s bony cheek. When the puke’s head lulled to the side and rested in his palm, a fresh wave of sadness and rage overwhelmed him. He had sought that same comfort from his own mother the night he’d returned home defeated, demoralized and haunted by what he’d endured. That same need for a tender hand, to know he was safe. While she had performed her motherly duties and healed his wounds, she’d done so clinically, coolly. There had been no love in her healing touch. There had been nothing but disgust.