Before He Preys

by Blake Pierce

  “Holy shit,” she whispered.

  The sketched showed a body that looked as if it had been mutilated with a sledgehammer. The pools of blood looked eerily real, even done in pencil. Behind the body was what looked, at first, like scraggly lines of graphite. But then she saw the shape standing off to the right side, again shaded to appear as if it was way off in the back.

  It was another shape that resembled a water tower but was distinctly different.

  It was a grain silo, standing among those graphite smudges which Mackenzie now understood was a grain field.

  That’s his next stop, she thought.

  She quickly looked through the other sketches for other landmarks but found none. She wasn’t sure if she was looking at a sketched out set of plans or just the drawn fantasies of a killer, but instinct told her that if two of the murder sites were present in these drawings, then the image of grain silos surely meant that he would strike there, too.

  She recalled Tate mentioning the silos as potential high points in Kingsville but then ruling them out because getting up to the top would be next to impossible.

  She shut the picture down and pulled up Tate’s number. The phone rang twice and went to voicemail just like before. Assuming he’d call her back like before, she waited a few seconds. And then she waited some more.

  Apparently, Tate was going to play by the rules, not wanting to rub McGrath the wrong way. He was not going to return her call.

  But then her phone rang. “This is Agent White,” she answered.

  “Hey, Agent White,” Tate said. “What can I do for you?”

  “Maybe upgrade your phone for starters,” she said, trying to sound funny and serious at the same time. “Other than that, I think I might have come across something. Have you thought about—”

  “Now hold on, Agent White. I appreciate all you did for us while you were here and you’re a damned fine agent from what I can tell. But I’ve been informed by your supervisor that you aren’t on this case anymore. He also asked that I not contact you or speak with you should you contact me. I shouldn’t have even called you back.”

  “When was this?”

  “No more than an hour after you were gone. He said there would be two other agents coming in tomorrow to wrap things up.”

  “Yes, I’ve been texting with one of them. But Sheriff Tate, I know where—”

  “Again, I’m sorry,” Tate said, interrupting. “I hate to do it, but I’m hanging up now. I’m not about to go against the wishes of your supervisor.”

  “But—”

  Mackenzie heard the click of the line going dead in her ear. She nearly called him right back, defiant and stubborn. But she finally thought better of it, doing what she could to remain responsible and clear-headed.

  She also pushed aside any thoughts of calling McGrath. She wasn’t sure if she wanted to give him a piece of her mind or if she wanted to pass on her hunch to him in the hopes that he would send them to Tate.

  With a sudden burst of energy, Mackenzie got to her feet. She paced the room for a moment, pocketing her cell phone and picking her holstered Glock up from its usual place atop her dresser.

  After a few moments, she walked out into the living room where Ellington was watching Pawn Stars. Without saying a word, Mackenzie picked up the remote control and cut the television off. She stood directly in front of him and looked down to him. For a moment, she thought she was going to cry. The words she had planned seemed to stick on the end of her tongue; she had to force it a bit in order to get them out.

  “I need you to ask me again,” she said softly.

  It seemed as if it took Ellington a second or two to understand what she was talking about. When he finally understood, he leaned forward with a smile and took her hand. He clumsily moved from his sitting position on the couch to one knee on the floor.

  “Mackenzie White…will you marry me?”

  She wished hearing him say it again would have made her instantly become more vulnerable, more willing to risk fully giving herself away. And while there was a part of her heart that softened at the sincerity in his voice and in his expression, there was still something that didn’t quite click together for her.

  Still, she knew she loved him. There was no doubt of that. He made her feel safe and cherished, the sort of man who would risk coming to see her and assist with a case even after he had been suspended. The sort of man who had literally taken bullets for her.

  “Yes,” she said.

  And rather than him stand up for her, she dropped down to her knees and embraced him. The embrace quickly became a kiss, a slow one that seemed to put a stamp on the moment. When it was broken, she looked him in the eyes, uncertain as to whether or not the next moment would require a serious tone or a comical one.

  “There is one condition, though,” she said.

  “Of course there is,” he replied with a smirk. “Name it.”

  “In about five minutes, I’m leaving to go back to Kingsville. I need you to not try to talk me out of it and not tell McGrath…though I’m sure he’ll find out pretty soon one way or the other.”

  He thought about this for a moment, clearly not liking the way she had cornered him on the issue, but nodded. “Why are you going back?”

  “I think I know where he’s going next. I tried to call Tate to tell him but he won’t talk to me due to McGrath’s orders.”

  “Smart man,” Ellington said with a hint of spite. “Is it dangerous? I only ask because this guy did get the drop on you once before, you know?”

  She nodded. If she was being honest, getting revenge for attacking her was a small part of why she was so insistent on sticking with the case. “I know. And I can’t promise anything. But if you’re crazy enough to ask for my hand in marriage, you have to be crazy enough to trust me on this.”

  “I trust you,” he said. “I’d just hate to lose you so soon after I managed to nail you down for the rest of your life.”

  She kissed him again, a quick playful peck this time. “Don’t worry,” she said. “I’m not going anywhere.”

  With that, she headed back into the bedroom to finish getting ready. As she did, images of Jimmy Gibbons’s sketches floated through her mind—the shaded pools of blood, the mangled bodies and battered skin—and it made her wonder if maybe she wasn’t as safe as she assumed at all.

  CHAPTER THIRTY ONE

  Dr. Jan Haggerty had first met with Jimmy Gibbons three years ago. He had come to her at the age of twenty-six, complaining of headaches, night terrors, and a state of depression that was nearly crippling. He had told her during that first meeting about his childhood—how his parents had died when their car had gone off of a bridge; how his mother had essentially ended her own life to save his.

  His grandparents had raised him until the age of twelve and when his grandmother had died of breast cancer, his grandfather had been unable to raise him by himself. Jimmy had ended up in foster care, being bumped around to a few homes before heading at the age of eighteen to work in one of the last surviving grain fields on the edge of town.

  She’d seen him as a well-intentioned kid, maybe dealing with a bit of a dark side. He’d expressed that side of himself in a few drawings she had seen and in a few conversations that had taken a morbid turn. He’d talked about a fear he had of turning into some monster, a monster who dwelled far too much on the death of his parents not because of his young loss, but because of his fascination with how they had died.

  She’d seen no real trouble there. She’d walked him through those moments and he had seemed to always come back around.

  But now she saw it. Now she saw the monster he had mentioned a few times and it made her wonder if she had done him a huge disservice by not tackling his dark side a little more aggressively.

  And it’s him…the person who has been killing those people from the bridge and the water tower, she thought. How did I not see it?

  She knew where they were headed the moment he had turned onto Baxter Roa
d. It was dark now, making it impossible to see the grain silos. But she knew they were there and she knew that at least one of them was just as high as the water tower that Jimmy had pitched Maureen Hanks from.

  He’d admitted to it during the five hours he had held her captive in her home. On two occasions someone had knocked on her door—both scheduled clients—and he had threatened her with the gun both times. On the second occasion, he had forced her into the chair behind her desk and placed the gun to the back of her head. She thought he was going to do it then, just pull the trigger and kill her. After all, he had spent the bulk of the afternoon talking about grotesque things. He’d explained his fascination not only with death, but with gore.

  We possess these beautifully created bodies that are amazingly knit together inside, he had told her. But when these bodies hit something hard, it all comes undone. It breaks. It unspools.

  He’d waited until it got dark to really dive deep, though. He’d made his way around the house, making her lead the way while holding the gun to her back. She expected him to be violent or even rape her. But the worst she got was a groping incident that didn’t really even seem intentional.

  No, he was more interested in what was to come. Even before he led her out of the house at 10 o’clock at night, she knew what he had planned for her. Her only hope was that the police had figured out what he was up to and could step in to save the day.

  Yet as they sped further down Baxter Road with Jimmy behind the wheel of her car, she started to get the feeling that there would be no help. The starless night and the scattering of dark clouds in the sky seemed to echo it.

  “What are you hoping to accomplish?” she asked him. “It won’t make you better. It won’t change the fact that your parents are dead. Jimmy, you see that, don’t you?”

  “I don’t care about my dead parents,” he said. “And you’re wrong. This does help. I’m sleeping better. I’m not as depressed. I’m sorry, Doc…but I just like it. Others get off on drugs or sex. This is my thing. I enjoy it. Is that normal?”

  “No, it’s not.”

  She tried to keep herself from crying, but the tears came anyway. When he shrugged innocently at her comment, she knew she was in trouble. He seemed to have no conscience about this sort of thing. If it was bringing him genuine relief in some skewed and morbid way, he would fail to see the evil in it.

  And in that regard, maybe he had become a monster.

  CHAPTER THIRTY TWO

  Mackenzie arrived in Kingsville at 10:08. She felt more alone than she had any of the other times she had driven into town. Maybe it was the pitch-black sky, the moon only a fingernail sliver in the sky, roaming clouds blocking out the stars. Or maybe it was because she was taking a huge roll of the dice on this. Even if her hunch was correct and she apprehended the killer, McGrath would still rain down hellfire on her. And if she was wrong—well, she and Ellington might enjoy the first few months of their engagement together with mutual suspensions.

  She could not recall where Tate had said the grain silos were located, if he had ever mentioned it at all. She had to use the process of elimination, a risky choice given that the majority of Kingsville consisted of forests and back roads. Still, she did her best. She knew that the western edge of town was where the Case cornfields took over most of the land. She also knew that the grain fields were nowhere near the center of town.

  She used the map on her GPS to determine that the fields were either on the eastern side of town or to the south. According to the map, everything else was covered in forest with no open expanses of land visible.

  She sped down the back roads, assuming the grain fields would be to the south, where the town of Kingsville came to an abrupt end leaving nothing more than more open space and forest until the next neighboring small town took over. That’s where the map seemed to show the most open land, perfect for running fields of grain.

  She took the turns along the back roads at dangerous speeds, the tires screeching beneath her. She thought about calling Tate again to tell him he may as well listen to her now because she was already in town. She decided not to, not wanting to seem overly defiant of her supervisor’s orders until she knew she was right.

  Five minutes later, the canopy of forest to her left dropped away and revealed a field of grain. It was in poor shape and badly maintained, but that didn’t matter. Up ahead, she saw a turn-off road that seemed to lead directly along the edge of the field. She turned onto this road—Baxter Road—and decreased her speed. As she crept along, two objects seemed to spring up out of the darkness further out into the fields—almost in the same way they had appeared in Jimmy’s drawings.

  Two grain silos.

  Simply from their shapes in the darkness, she could tell that they were old—relics, really. She knew that the newer silos were usually wide and shorter than these, often made of some kind of shiny metal. But these were from another time, probably used as early as the fifties or so. They were tall and relatively thin, ending in a dulled dome shape. If they were like the other older silos she had once seen while in Nebraska, they’d be made out of a strange mix of aluminum and concrete. While it was impossible to estimate their height, she guessed they were just as tall as the water tower. Maybe even a few feet taller.

  She continued to creep along, looking for an access road. It did not take long before she saw it, a strip of dirt track that seemed to appear out of nowhere. She turned off onto this road a bit too fast, causing the undercarriage of the car to scrape the dirt. She slowed a bit and started down the road. Going purely on instinct, she killed her headlights and proceeded forward. It took he eyes a while to adjust to the absolute darkness ahead of her, but she managed to still creep along.

  About five hundred yards down the road, she came to a parked car. There were two old posts on either side of the dirt track and a cable hanging between them. An ancient sign that barely read No Trespassing hung from the cable, riddled with bullet holes.

  She pulled her car behind the parked car, wishing she could call in the tags to see who it belonged to. But honestly, the fact that there was a vehicle parked there at all was enough reason for Mackenzie to get out of her car and instantly withdraw her Glock.

  The night was so quiet all around her that she could easily hear the cooling ticks of her car’s engine. She made her way over the cable in the middle of the dirt track and started walking forward, into a darkness that seemed all too eager to have her.

  ***

  Jimmy struck Dr. Haggerty for the first time when they reached the second silo. He had walked directly by the first one, making a line for the second one. He ordered her to stop walking and then, unprovoked and seemingly out of nowhere, he drew back the hand holding the gun and struck her on the back of the head.

  The world swam for a moment as she went to the ground. The pain wasn’t as bad as the dizziness and the sudden surge in her stomach. As she tried to get to her knees, she was vaguely aware of Jimmy walking back toward the thickness of the grain. He bent down to retrieve something and she watched as he pulled a hidden ladder out of the grain. It was the sturdy sort that unhinged in the center, extending to add to the length of the ladder. As he worked on extending it, he looked back over at her to make sure she was still knocked down.

  And she was. Even amidst the stark blackness of the night, she could still see the little black stars in her vision. The back of her head ached terribly, too.

  Before she knew it, she felt Jimmy’s hand on her arm. He gripped her tight and hauled her up to her feet. He gave a shove that nearly caused her to fall again. Wincing against the pain in the back of her head, she looked ahead and saw that in her pain and dizziness, she had missed him placing the ladder against the side of the silo. There were old iron handholds creating a ladder along the center of it but a few of them looked to have been knocked loose over time.

  “Up,” Jimmy said, nestling the gun into the small of her back.

  For a moment, she thought of refusing. The worst he could
do was shoot her and she figured she was going to die one way or another. But that was a defeatist way to think. She figured there was always the small chance that the police could show up or that Jimmy might even have a change of heart when they neared the top.

  So with one last flickering beat of hope in her heart, Dr. Haggerty walked toward the ladder. With a final nudge from the gun at her back, she placed her foot on the first rung and started up.

  ***

  Mackenzie came to the end of the thin dirt track in the grain field. Right away, she could see the slightly trampled grain in front of her, indicating that someone had passed through recently. She did not follow this disrupted path, though; she walked directly beside it, trying to dig out as many clues from the path as she could. It looked mostly like a single file path but in a few areas, she saw where it veered out a little. She took her flashlight out and hunkered down, hiding herself in the overgrown grain.

  She saw the passage of two people—one ahead and one behind. And just as she made this out, she heard something in the distance up ahead. A creaking noise, like metal on metal but muted.

  And then she heard a moan.

  She looked toward the grain silos, now about one hundred yards ahead of her. She hurried along, still trying to remain as discreet as possible. If she could reach the silos without being seen, she’d be in good shape. She ran in a half crouch that mostly hid her body but her passage through the grain would be obvious to anyone who was bothering to look.

  She heard the noise again, a screeching kind of metal-on-metal complaint. She peered ahead in the darkness and could see nothing out of the ordinary. Now that she was closer to the silos, though, she got a better idea of their shape and size. They were both the same height and looked to be slightly taller than the water tower. The darkness and distance made it hard, but she’d be surprised if they were any less than one hundred feet tall.

  As she drew in closer and started to see the sides of the silos, she saw a thin structure that seemed to come off of the side of one of the silos. It went downward at an angle and appeared to have a series of struts in its center.