Before He Preys

by Blake Pierce

  They arrived at the trailer park where King lived at 6:12 in the morning. The place was motionless with the exception of a single work truck rolling out of the trailer park entrance and onto the main road. Tate was driving and Mackenzie noted that he wasn’t having to check a database or call for an address; he knew where Lawrence King lived, perhaps by reputation.

  Tate parked the car in front of a trailer that was the very epitome of a mobile home. There was a slightly lopsided porch that covered the first half of the trailer. A glass screen door was slightly ajar, covering a front door that looked like it might be made out of cardboard. As they walked up the rickety porch steps, Mackenzie noted two cans of spray paint, discarded and on their sides in one corner of the porch. She also saw a few empty soda cans, the bottoms hollowed out and adorned with obvious burn marks.

  Tate knocked on the door rather hard. The entire trailer seemed to shake with the force of it.

  “Is there any chance of danger here?” Mackenzie asked.

  “Highly doubtful,” Tate said. “I don’t know that he’d have the capacity to actually attack someone. But really…now that I think about it, pitching people off of high places might be sort of up his alley. You might get what I mean when you speak with him.”

  There was still no answer, so Tate knocked one more time. She could tell that he was getting irritated. His posture and behavior—in addition to the fact that he had instantly knew where King lived—made Mackenzie wonder if Tate had been out here a few times in the past. It made sense if King had a history of arson.

  After another thirty seconds, Lawrence King answered the door. He was a scrawny man with shaggy black hair, looking to be in his early twenties. He was dressed only in a pair of jogging shorts, probably quickly thrown on when he had been jerked out of sleep by a knocking at his door. It was clear that he was not fully awake, squinting out to them with narrowed eyes even though the sun was not yet fully shining in the morning sky.

  “What?” King asked, apparently not too concerned with the fact that there was a cop at his front door first thing in the morning.

  “Lawrence, I’m sorry to wake you up so early this morning, but I need to ask you some questions.”

  “Okay.”

  It was clear that they were not going to be invited in. It was also clear to Mackenzie that Lawrence King was not a man of many words. And just based on the way he handled the situation, she didn’t think he was doing it out of any sort of disrespect. He was still half asleep and honestly didn’t seem to even find the situation all that strange.

  “Where were you last night?” Tate asked.

  “After work I came here and got a bite to eat. After that I went over to Mike Tharpe’s and played some poker.”

  “How long were you there?”

  King shrugged. He seemed to be coming around now. The multiple questions also seemed to bring a bit of alarm into his expression. “Maybe two or three hours. It was around eleven or so when I got back home.”

  “Did you go right to sleep when you got here?”

  “No. I was up for a while. Watched some stuff on the Internet.”

  Mackenzie was watching King’s face the entire time, trying to get a read on him. When he gave his answer about watching something on the Internet, she was certain he was being honest. He looked to her very quickly and then to the boards of the porch. He was embarrassed to admit it, meaning that he had watched something on the Internet. Probably pornography if his guilty expression was any indicator.

  Tate looked back at her, as if asking if she wanted a crack at him. She waited for King’s gaze to come back up and meet them. When it did, she asked: “How many people were playing poker last night?”

  King took a moment to think it out. “Started with six of us. But then Jimmy Hudson lost fifty bucks on one hand and got pissed. He called everyone names and then left. The rest of us rode it out, though.”

  “You come out to the better?” she asked.

  “Yeah. By only ten bucks. But that’s better than nothing.”

  “Who else was playing poker with you?”

  King gave the names without any hesitation. It was evident that he understood that they suspected him of something. He had quickly gone from sleepy one-word answers to lengthier explanations.

  “Mr. King,” Mackenzie asked, “do you know a woman by the name of Maureen Hanks?”

  “I know who she is, but I don’t know her well. She’s a little older than me, I think. Graduated like three or four years ahead of me.”

  “How about her husband? Do you know him?”

  “I did in high school. Pretty good guy. Why? Something wrong?”

  “No, not at all,” Tate said. “We’ve just been investigating something this morning. Thanks for your time, Lawrence. And look…I’m going to need you to give me your word that this conversation stays between us. Okay?”

  King nodded. “Take care, Sheriff.”

  With that, Tate started down the porch. Mackenzie was taken aback by the quick departure, but she was fine with it. She didn’t have any other questions and had already made up her mind anyway.

  Back in the car, Tate turned the key and backed out of the dirt driveway. “Thoughts?” he asked.

  “I think he’s innocent. I also think whatever he watched online last night was embarrassing to him.”

  “Same here,” Tate said. “His face got a little red, didn’t it? Anyway…the names of the guys he played poker with…I know all of them. They’re a good enough group of guys, I suppose. I’ll follow up and make sure Lawrence was indeed there but I’m expecting to find he’s telling the truth. You have to remember, I’ve questioned him at least three times about small arson claims and marking public property up. He’s a shitty liar. And what I saw this morning…he wasn’t lying.”

  Mackenzie nodded. She felt sure that Lawrence King was not their man, either. And even if they turned out to be wrong, they’d know within an hour at most, once Tate checked with the other poker players.

  It was hard to see this as a dead end, seeing as how there was no real clear path in sight in the first place. Mackenzie felt that if they were going to get any kind of valuable information, it would come from Bob Tully, the man Maureen had been sleeping with on the side.

  While she had played no hand in the unfolding of the Kingsville PD’s schedule, she thought they were doing a fine job, all things considered. During their visit to Lawrence King, two officers had been on the way to the Hanks residence to inform her husband that Maureen’s body had been found. For the sake of decency and the risk of defaming Maureen’s character any further, they had decided to wait a few hours before calling Bob Tully. Of course, they wanted to speak with him before the news spread like wildfire around the town.

  She listened to sporadic conversations between Tate and his men on the CB radio and via cell phone as they made their way from the trailer park to the station. She could sense the small-town feel of their department in these conversations, especially from the woman at the dispatch desk. When she spoke over the CB radio, Mackenzie could hear the pain in her voice, trying to restrain the emotion that came with the fact that a woman she had known on a first-name basis was dead—that she had likely been murdered.

  And while she listened to this, Mackenzie’s mind flashed back to the moment where she had stood along the platform on the water tower. She tried to hone back in on the feeling of being above it all, of being at one of the highest points in Kingsville and the sense of being able to squash everything beneath her.

  It was an odd feeling, one that was very much unlike her. But at the same time, she felt like there was something there…maybe something she was missing.

  The notion would not leave her alone and was still nagging at the back of her mind when Tate pulled them into the parking lot of the Kingsville PD. And even though the sun had properly claimed it spot in the sky, she still couldn’t help seeing that pre-dawn darkness below her, waiting to pull her down into a free fall.

  CHAPT
ER EIGHTEEN

  At the station, Maureen Hanks had been added to the list of people who had died on Miller Moon Bridge. While she had not died as a result of a fall from the bridge, her death was being compared to the others because she had fallen from a great height to her death. There were already three cops searching through records and their database to try to find connections between Maureen and any of the other victims.

  Surprisingly, they had already found one. Officer Roberts presented it to Sheriff Tate and Mackenzie when they came in.

  “Seems Maureen and Malory served on some sort of kids’ program at Kingsville Baptist church two summers ago,” he said. “Beyond that, there’s no connection between the two. It is funny, though, that Bob Tully was the guy who had been hired to mow the grounds and the cemetery that summer.”

  It was a flimsy lead but at least it gave them a deeper well to mine from if things got really dry. Mackenzie could only imagine the painstaking task of finding out what kids attended the summer program. And then getting their parents’ names and maybe even the names of anyone else who had a hand in the summer program.

  That would be a nightmare even with DC resources, she thought as she headed for the conference room. Let’s just hope it doesn’t come to that.

  She found a pot of coffee filled to the top in the back of the conference room. She helped herself as Tate and Andrews filed in behind her. Andrews was on the phone with someone, setting up a meeting. When he got off, he looked like was getting a little sick. She could only imagine what the turmoil in a small town like Kingsville must be like when there is no doubt at all that there’s a killer lurking around.

  “That was Bob Tully,” Andrews said. “I told him we needed to speak with him as soon as possible, but didn’t give a reason. He’s headed over right now.”

  “How did he respond?” Mackenzie asked.

  “He was alarmed. He asked if it was about his mother. She’s been ill for the last few weeks but refuses to take it easy. When I told him it was not about her, he seemed fine. Curious, sure, but he didn’t try to get out of it.”

  “What do we do if it’s not him?” Roberts asked.

  “We can’t jump to that just yet,” Mackenzie said, thinking of the nightmare scenario of having to dig into the most minuscule of leads like the summer program that connected Maureen Hanks and Malory Thomas. It was quite infuriating because Mackenzie felt that with such a small town, the connections between people would be much easier to uncover.

  “Then where do we jump?” Andrews asked.

  “We don’t,” Tate said, taking the words right out of Mackenzie’s mouth.

  “Has anyone ever fallen from that water tower before?” Mackenzie asked.

  “No,” Roberts said. “We had someone double-check on that this morning. There’s nothing like that. Nothing has ever happened out there that we know of.”

  “So the bridge and then the water tower,” Tate said. “Why the heights?”

  “I’m trying to piece that together myself,” Mackenzie said. “The killer is either very respectful of heights, like an adrenaline junkie that gets off by sky diving or bungee jumping, or maybe the victims themselves are scared of heights.”

  “That’s a good point,” Tate said. “Roberts, can you and a few others look into that? Look into records, call family and friends. I know it won’t be fun but it’s all we have for right now.”

  Roberts did not look happy about the task but he gave a quick nod and left the conference room.

  “So what do we do for now?” Andrews asked.

  “We wait on Bob Tully,” Mackenzie said, sitting down with her coffee. She looked to the conference room door as if willing him to show up.

  ***

  Bob Tully showed up eight minutes later. He was dressed for work, headed to his job at the small lumber yard ten miles outside of town. He wore a plain button-down shirt that had seen sweat and stains in its lifetime. He also wore a pair of faded denim pants and a pair of old tattered work boots. When he was escorted into the conference room by Deputy Andrews, he looked genuinely confused.

  Confusion seemed to turn into worry when Andrews closed the conference room door and he found himself standing in a room with the county deputy, sheriff, and a woman he had never met.

  “I won’t even lie,” Tully said. “You guys have got me a little scared.”

  “We don’t think there’s any need to be,” Sheriff Tate said. “Go ahead and take a seat, Bob.”

  Bob did as asked, pulling up a seat to the conference room table. Andrews also sat down, occupying the final seat.

  “First and foremost,” Tate said, “I’d like you to meet Agent White from the FBI. She’s in town looking into some of the terrible things that have happened lately. I assume you’ve heard about Malory Thomas and Kenny Skinner by now?”

  “I have,” Tully said, eyeing Mackenzie suspiciously.

  “We’ve brought you in because of another body that was found this morning,” Mackenzie said. She was interjecting sooner rather than later to try to gauge his facial expressions and his response to an outsider who might seem to suspect him of a crime. So far, he seemed to be far too concerned to register much of anything else.

  “Who?” Tully asked.

  It was Tate who answered, giving the name in a way that insinuated he knew the name would mean something to Tully. “It was Maureen Hanks.”

  Mackenzie actually saw the color drop out of his face. She also saw that his eyes instantly started to brim with tears but he was doing his very best to fight them back.

  “We called you in,” Tate went on, “because we’re aware of a rumor that has been circulating around town for a few months now. A rumor about you and Maureen.”

  Bob said nothing at first. One tear managed to slip down and he wiped it away from his face quickly.

  “It’s okay,” Mackenzie said. “Mr. Tully, here’s the deal. We have no intention at all of making your affair—if there is one—public. Given that Mrs. Hanks has just died, there is no benefit to smearing her name. However, if there was indeed something going on with the two of you, you might very well be our best source of information.”

  “You think I killed her?”

  “I didn’t even remotely say that,” Mackenzie said.

  “She’s right,” Tate said. “Bob…you need to tell us right now. Was there something going on between you and Maureen?”

  “Yeah,” he said, the word coming out like a gasp of breath.

  “For how long?”

  “I don’t know. Five, six months maybe.”

  “Did you see her last night?” Mackenzie asked.

  “Yeah.”

  “What time of the day was this, and what did you do?”

  Some of the color had come back into Bob’s face now. There was red in his cheeks, almost the same color she’d seen rise up in Lawrence King’s cheeks less than an hour ago. She almost pitied him for a moment. It was clear that he was not the type who was going to boast about his conquest of a married woman. She thought he looked pretty miserable, actually.

  “We met at the turn-off road off of Briar Road,” he said. “We used that spot a lot. She’d park the car just off the side where it started to become a dirt road, you know? We met yesterday evening, just before nightfall. We got in my truck, went further down the road to where the field is, right there where you can see the water tower. And really, I’d rather not spell out what happened then.”

  “And we won’t make you,” Mackenzie said. “However, please know that there’s going to be an autopsy. So if you two had sex, it’s going to be evident that she had been sexually active hours prior to hear death. If you had unprotected sex, it’s going to be traced back to you within a day or so of the exam.”

  “Shit,” he said, and this time a small sob came out.

  “How long were you together?” Tate asked.

  “I’m not sure. Maybe an hour. We met right before dark and it was pretty much completely night when I pulled back out to the di
rt road.”

  “And what happened when you left there?” Mackenzie asked.

  “I dropped her off at her car and left. It’s the same way we’ve always done it.”

  “Did you see her get into the car?”

  “No. I pulled off pretty quick. She…she sort of freaked me out last night. Made me think that if she knew we could get away with it, she’d keep going on with what we were doing. Me…I’ve been feeling guilty about it for a while now. I mean…she’s got a kid. And…well, now she’s dead?”

  “Yes,” Mackenzie said. “Her body was found at the bottom of the water tower. Her neck was broken and all signs point to her falling from the top of the tower.”

  “You think she jumped?” Bob asked.

  “Do you?”

  He shook his head right away. “No. No, not Maureen. She might have had some guilt and bad feeling about what we were doing, you know? But no. She wasn’t the suicidal type. She loved her family, as weird as that sounds, considering who you’re talking to. Her little girl was the world to her.”

  “Forgive me for asking,” Tate said, “but do you have any proof of your whereabouts after you dropped her off?”

  “A few, I guess. I went by Pop’s store and got a six-pack. Went home, drank a few beers and watched some TV. Pop would probably remember me getting the beer. There was no one in the store when I stopped by. Other than that, though…wait. I did make a phone call around ten or so.”

  “Who’d you call?” Tate asked.

  “Sam Brooks. I’m trying to talk him into selling me one of his acoustic guitars.”

  “Did you call on your cell?” Mackenzie asked.

  “Yeah,” he said. He took out his cell phone, pulled up the call history, and showed it to them. The call had been placed at 10:07 and had ended at 10:12.

  Mackenzie nodded. “I’ll be honest with you, Mr. Tully. I don’t think you did it. I really don’t. But given your relationship with her and that you were likely the last person to see her alive outside of anyone who might have forced her to the top of that tower, we need to question you pretty thoroughly.”