by A P Morgan
This killer was making this more personal every day and it was making me really mad. I’d known going into being a cop that I would have injuries. They were expected, but this was on a whole new level. I hadn’t lost anyone yet, but somehow I didn’t think that he was going to leave me unscathed.
Since he’d gone after Jesse and it had been years in between when Ryan had been his partner, evidently no one was off limits. The problem was that my closet friends were Jerome, Ryan, Flora and my sister which meant when he came after my family it was going to hurt a whole lot more than it was right now.
I wasn’t just tired, I was ready to give up. Trying to get justice for people was so overwhelming. How could the little bit of a dent we made in trying to make things right, even matter?”
The shower washed my tears away, but it didn’t do anything for the hole in my heart. I wanted to make a difference not dig up dead bodies. Maybe Jerome had the right idea, I could choose a different career and help a lot more people.
I couldn’t stay in here forever and I really wanted to be in bed before Ryan made it back. Forcing my body to move, I dried off and crawled into bed.
Tomorrow was the start of a new day and with any luck Agent Perez would be back to make my life miserable.
-----------
The Killer
I stood at the diner smoking a cigarette watching the Sheriff’s office. They weren’t doing a very good job of keeping watch over their prisoner. In fact the minute that Agent Perez had left town, the security surrounding their suspect had dropped to almost nil.
That lady detective had been fun to watch and I could have grabbed her at any moment. I wouldn’t have been able to make it very far, but the idea was intriguing. For now, I would have to enjoy watching the FBI and the detectives chase their tails.
They had found my burial grounds, but I had another one they should stumble over in the next few days if they continued to dig. It was the last one that needed to stay hidden until the month was over. I couldn’t afford for anything to go wrong. I had a lead on the man who had hired me and I was going to take him out before I finished my assignment.
The women in the truck might not agree with my methods, but they could wait just a little longer before I dropped them off to wake up in their new home for the next few days.
“Hey, Dave said to tell you he’s got your order ready. He’s also got some scraps if you want them for your dogs.” A waitress stuck her head out of the diner door.
“Thanks sweetie. I appreciate it.” I gave her a peck on the cheek and slipped her a five dollar bill for her trouble.
“That the food for the prisoner they’re keeping at the jail?”
“Yeah, I got to run it over here in a few when I get a minute.” She waved to the take out containers sitting next to the sacks with my order.
I lifted the lid and took a sniff, “Even if you’re guilty, you got eat, right?” I smiled and headed out the door with my meal.
She waved from across the room. I was a regular that tipped well, not like some of these guys who didn’t appreciate how much work it was to cook and wait on us every day. She’d earned every penny I’d ever spent by giving me a little extra here or there.
It smelled so good. The girls and I were going to eat well tonight. After all they needed their strength for the run of their lives.
Chapter 10
Leslie
The sound of an ambulance woke me up and I started to ignore it until I realized that it had stopped outside the Sheriff’s station across the street.
Ryan hadn’t come to bed yet, but I wasn’t about to run out the door in a t-shirt and shorts. The sirens had stopped by the time I got dressed and across the street, but the news channels were filming like their awards depended on it.
Gavin was standing next to Ryan as they watched a stretcher come out of the station with a body.
“Tom’s dead? How did that happen?” I demanded.
“We think it was either a heart attack or someone put something in his food.” Ryan answered.
“Crap, I really liked the old guy and was pulling for him to get out.”
“Yeah, I think we all were. At least the Sheriff can’t blame it on Agent Perez.”
“How could something like this happen? He was guarded.”
“Someone didn’t want him talking or they were trying take out a killer. Either way, it won’t bring him back.” Gavin sympathized.
The waitress was giving one of the t.v. crews an interview.
“We were pretty busy and I had the food ready to bring over, but I wasn’t able to because one of the other ladies had already called in and I was working the whole front by myself. When I got a second to take it over, it was gone so I assumed that someone from the Sheriff’s had done it for me.” She fanned herself, “I’m just so sorry. Tom was a good guy. Strange, but he didn’t deserve to be murdered.”
I raised an eyebrow at her emotions, “Her opinions sure changed from this morning when I heard her tell someone that he was getting what was coming to him.”
“There won’t be any way to find out who did it. This town doesn’t have cameras and they never expected someone to be dishonest so they aren’t prepared for it.” Ryan shook his head in frustration.
“I guess now’s as good a time as any to start going through those missing girls.”
“Kevin and I are going over the maps. We may have a couple of places to try out tomorrow and see if we can find another site.” Ryan turned back to the conference room as the ambulance drove away without lights. He’d join the women for an autopsy just in case they could find out how he was drugged.
-------
I rolled up a section of the maps so that I could put the missing girls reports. There was a one page sheet on each girl with the basic details so I started sorting into cities where the girls went missing first.
The larger cities had bigger stacks, but after three hours I had noticed a pattern developing.
A girl would go missing in the bigger city, followed by two smaller towns around to the other large city. There were a few cases that didn’t I’d put in a separate stack that didn’t seem to make the mo or general areas where the rest had disappeared from.
He had been kidnapping a different girl every two months before grabbing another one. None of the women were married, but they lived alone. He did his homework before taking them. He know which women wouldn’t be missed as quickly.
The timing between women those first ten years was only three or four a year and I’d only gotten through the first stack. I felt like he would be gaining momentum now that he’d figured out his methods. He had to have a large track of land available to house that many bodies.
These new bodies were for show and so we’d find them. He wasn’t giving us his trophies, but his finished works of art. We were going to find a place that held women who had been missing for years.
It was going to be somewhere he could look at them on a regular basis and watch over them.
Even with the short nap I’d managed it was creeping up toward one am and I was going to need my eyes again in the morning.
“How are things going over here?” I asked walking over to where Ryan and Kevin were still pouring over descriptions of public places that could hold more bodies.
“Eh, we’re making progress. We have four or five possible locations and one of them should be up closer to Salinas where we found those cars.” Ryan pointed to a couple of pins that were sticking out of the state map on the wall.
“Are they going to check them out in the morning?”
“That all depends on the mood of Agent Perez when she gets here. We’d like to pin it down a little more.” Ryan grinned over at Kevin. “He’s been telling me a few stories about the good agent.”
“Oh, really?”
“She’s been a real mover up in the ranks, but last month she had a case that didn’t go well. Since then, she’s snapped at the team even if they are doing their jobs. She’s been on edge
.” Kevin explained in a low voice.
“That might explain a few things. We’ll just have to play things by ear and hope that a day away will relieve a little pressure.”
“So what have you come up with?” Ryan pointed to the two stacks of papers that were still sitting on the table.
“I’m starting to see a pattern. I think he started out with just a few and practiced until he could tell if anyone noticed they were missing. By choosing different cities, he didn’t dip out of his zone too often. He was able to stay off the radar and when a new woman would disappear, it wasn’t connected to anything else because they just vanished.” I started to take another sip of coffee and then thought better of it if I was headed to bed.
“So he has a certain type.”
“You could call it that, more like a certain profile. He didn’t take those that were supper successful or strong willed at least not in the beginning. It didn’t matter what they looked like as long as they were single and under thirty.”
“He was more interested in the chase. He needs women who will run around and give him something to hunt without them possibly escaping and getting help.” Ryan nodded in agreement.
“Yes, he didn’t pick larger women either. They wouldn’t have given him the hunt he was looking for or the stamina to intrigue him.” I was the right size to interest him actually. I shivered because I didn’t want to think about that possibility.
“Based on the other three places he’s hidden his bodies, I’m thinking that over here on the other side of the highway would be the opposite of where we’ve focused.”
“It’s closer to the coastal line, but are there enough wooded areas with public access that aren’t beach?” I wasn’t great at reading topographical maps that told the difference between mountains or hills, sand or woods.
“If he’s going to be working in a circle then,” Ryan took his pencil and drew a half moon using the divider as the highway. “It’s not a perfect circle, but if we broadened that to the other side then it would give us the radius with Seaside as the middle ground.”
“That’s the pattern I’ve established with the missing women. He’ll start in L.A. and then a small town and another on his way to San Francisco. Until he makes the same half-moon back the other direction and back to L.A.”
“Kevin, can you put together a map that has each of these missing women on it? Use a different color per year so we can see if there are any spots he uses more than once.” I brought over the stack I’d sorted and flagged so far.
“Ryan while he does that help me sort through these other two stacks please.”
“Okay.” He took the most current list and I picked up where I’d left off.
The sun was just coming up when we got the last missing woman into the computer.
“Would you look at this?” Kevin asked in awe.
The map was covered in dots from each of the same places. Some years it looked like he’d tried to hold off a month or two so that a pattern didn’t become visible.
“Do you have a total number of missing women?” I feared what the total numbers would be considering the amount of pins in the board.
“Over the course of the twenty years that you’ve been working with? About one a month which would be about two hundred and forty, but you have to add in the extras that he did in the two larger cities. I’d say that we have almost three hundred missing women that can be attributed to this guy.”
“Whew! That is a lot of property he would need to use to bury that many bodies without anyone knowing about it or stumbling over it.” Ryan whistled.
“I’m going to say that he’s covered his burial sites better than the ones recently discovered. That’s part of this game he’s playing, he wants us to find them so he didn’t plant anything or mark the trees where each woman is buried.”
“I just can’t believe that there are that many missing women each year.”
“That’s why he chooses those that are single, there’s less chance of them being noticed. If they just never come back to their homes and their vehicles aren’t discovered then nobody goes looking for them. It becomes a closed case very quickly.” I felt I was getting a better picture of our killer.
“Thank you, Kevin for all of your hard work.” Ryan gave him a pat on the back, “I’m going to go update Gavin and coordinate with him to find the other sites he’s left out in the open for us. We shouldn’t have to hunt too hard to find them.”
“You’re going to start searching now without any sleep?” I knew that sometimes we would have to go without sleep or a work on less than we needed, but there was no point in starting out exhausted.
“No, I’m going to go have him assign teams before Agent Perez gets here. If they’re already in the field then we can be killing two birds with one stone.”
“Okay, I should be asleep when you get in there then. I’m only going to catch a few hours and then get back to it. We should know if we are on the right track by then. Something is bothering me about the Tom Prings and the Springs family. Why kill only Tom Prings and not Sebastian Spring?” I started to mumble to myself as I turned the thoughts over in my head.
“What?” Ryan looked back at me.
“Oh, nothing. I’m just thinking out loud. What did Tom know that made him a threat?”
“All right. Don’t start dreaming on your way over to the hotel.” Ryan teased.
I waved at him and continued through the early morning light, Could there be a family secret that the killer doesn’t want out.
Nothing was making sense in my head and it probably wouldn’t until I refueled. There was something that I needed to figure out, but my brain wouldn’t cooperate as I laid down on the bed.
---------
“My brother is dead.” Tom’s voice rang out clearly. “Follow the blood and you’ll find your killer. He was born in violence and pain.”
“Why?”
“Why was he born that way?” Tom answered my question patiently. “Everyone once in a while someone is born that has to do things for themselves. They must try it and be the best at what they do, when this happens to someone that is pure evil all those around them can do is try to keep the damage to a minimum.”
Tom’s held up his hands, “I was innocent, but I know who did it and they aren’t who they claim to be.”
His hands started to drip with blood that was coming from above us. “If you don’t stop them from becoming evil, it grows until you are part of their schemes even if you try to ignore who and what they’ve become.”
“Who is he, Tom?” I cried as the figure melted away leaving only the blood drops on the floor.
He was here. I could feel him. No, that wasn’t the killer it was a softer presence.
A smile lit my face, Flora.
“Hi, friend. I’ve come to warn you. Those who lurk in the moments between life and death are those who hold the power to choose who lives and dies. This one you are chasing is hoarding death. When he takes a life, he inhales their essence converting their presence to darkness.”
“I need to find him. How can I see this darkness?” I asked bewildered.
“You will know and learn. He wears a mask, but even those closest to him aren’t his friends. To be in his presence is to be touched by evil. You will only find death surrounding him.” Flora looked around worried, “I must leave and so must you. The evil is trying to get into the dream.”
She blew me a kiss as she too faded.
With her gone, the feeling of darkness closing in grew, but I had no idea how to leave this in between place.
“Wake up. I have to wake up.”
An evil laugh echoed around me, “I’ll have you my pretty little thing.”
“No, wake up.” I screamed sitting upright in the bed.
The room was dark, but light was streaming in through the window.
I raced over and threw open the curtains drinking in the sunlight. I wanted to chase away all forms of the shadows that had been in my dreams.
The key clicked and I was about to dive for my gun, when Ryan entered.
“Um, everything okay?” He held up a coffee as a peace offering.
“Yeah, bad dream.” I brushed my hand across my face without wincing at my stitches.
“Thank you.” I took the coffee he offered and sat on the edge of the bed with my knees pulled up to my chest.
He took in my protective position, “That bad huh?”
I just nodded clutching the coffee in my hand.
“What time is it?” I asked wondering if Ryan had even slept at all.
“It’s a little after two in the afternoon. I came in last night or rather this morning, but I could only sleep a few hours. I kept wanting to find out how the hunt was going.”
He gestured to the coffee, “I figured if you were going to wake up to hear what we discovered, then you might want coffee to get your brain going.”
“Oh, yeah, sure. What did they find?” I took a sip and tried to relax the tension running through my body.
“They found two more burial sites on the other side of the highway. They looked in a few of the places, but when they walked up to the first one it was obvious they’d found one of them. If anyone was looking you could find them. Now we just have to find his last one before he finished his mission.”
“Um, about that. I dreamed about Tom.” I was going to leave out anything to do with Flora unless I had to because Ryan was already a sceptic and this was pretty unbelievable.
“He knew who the killer was or rather who the killer is.” I took another sip to help calm my nerves.
“I think he was related to Tom or had something to do with the death of his parents and brother.”
“But his brother was declared dead years after the parents’ death wasn’t he?” Ryan raised an eyebrow.
“Yes, but I think the brother died when they did. Whatever happened it’s a family secret that the killer decided Tom might tell us and he couldn’t take that chance.”
