Eyes of the Predator: The Pickham County Murders (The Hunters)

by Glenn Trust

  Staring through the dim light, George’s eyes were drawn to something that didn’t look right. A large tree lay on the ground not fifty feet away, probably knocked over by one of the springtime Georgia thunderstorms. Protruding up from the fallen trunk was something not quite right. It was straight. Too straight to be a natural limb or branch. Peering intently, George saw that it looked to be somewhat cylindrical. And then…it moved.

  It didn’t move greatly. The end just waivered and swung slightly, making a small arc in the air as if someone was holding it and was moving. George waited.

  When the crown of a head slowly pulled itself above the fallen tree trunk, it was all George could do to keep from pulling his head back behind the hickory. But he remained motionless, knowing that the man holding the shotgun would have a hard time spotting him. Hurt, bleeding, and in pain, the man with the shotgun would want to hide behind the fallen tree and lick his wounds, like any animal. George knew that as long as he remained immobile, it was unlikely that the man would spot him. In the dim light, he would just appear to be a lump on the side of a tree.

  George watched, still and quiet. After two long minutes of searching, the man slowly withdrew his head down and out of sight. The barrel of the shotgun, still visible above the tree, wavered and then settled into a position pointing off to George’s left. The Glock in George’s hand felt light and insubstantial up against the shotgun, but considering the situation, it was the right weapon.

  Distant sounds of sirens filtered into the woods, muffled and dispersed by the trees and foliage, but audible. The EMT’s and backup units from Rye County and the state patrol would be arriving at any minute.

  It took roughly ten seconds for George to consider the odds. The man was injured, hurt, and bleeding. He was armed with a shotgun but did not know where George was. George knew exactly where he was and knew that he was a killer, and that he enjoyed killing in painful, terrible ways. He would kill again if given the chance because that was what he loved doing. It was what he needed to do.

  During those ten seconds of taking stock of the situation and considering the odds, the images floated in front of him. Old Mr. Sims lying in a pool of blood in the church parking lot, his kidneys and liver turned to jelly by the savage thrusts of the knife. The girl thrown into the weeds on the side of Ridley Road, a hundred cuts on her body and then strangled to death. The girl, Lyn, nude on the ground, covered in the same tortuous cuts and alive by the grace of…who? Young Clay with three bullets in his chest, turning his shirt bright red. The deputy from Rye County, not yet found and status unknown, who had decided to check things out, saving the life of a girl he did not know.

  As the last of those ten seconds ticked away, the images moved away and George sprang from behind the hickory. Moving to the right, he stayed out of the direct line of the shotgun barrel.

  Crashing through the foliage and fallen limbs covering the ground under the trees, he was heard instantly by the man with the shotgun. A roaring burst went crashing through the woods to his left. The killer’s head popped above the tree trunk searching for his target. It took him several seconds to acquire the man crouching and running towards him through the trees. George stumbled, then steadied himself and leapt the fallen tree trunk as the man was trying to bring the barrel of the shotgun around to bear.

  George slid in the leaves and debris as he landed, twisting his knee painfully. It didn’t matter.

  Looking into the barrel of the Glock from a distance of five feet, the man’s hand froze. The eyes staring back at him over the sights of the handgun were focused and hard. There would be no hesitation with this man. No moment of uncertainty. Slowly and deliberately, he laid the shotgun on the ground beside him.

  After the shotgun’s roar and the sounds of George’s rushing assault on the fallen tree trunk, an eerie silence had enveloped the woods. George looked into the eyes of his quarry and saw…nothing. They were empty.

  The animal spoke.

  “You got me, deputy.” Lylee lifted one hand in surrender while gingerly touching the bloody mess that was his left knee and leg with the other. “That was a hell of a thing, charging at me like that…hell of a thing.” He smiled boyishly up at the big deputy holding the pistol pointed at his face. It was the friendly grin of a boy bested by his friend in a wrestling match and giving up good-naturedly. It was disarming. It was one of Lylee’s best performances, considering the pain in his leg and the pistol in his face. It was a great performance, and it was of no use.

  Looking into the deputy’s eyes, the uselessness of his charming, friendly performance dawned on him. Slowly, like the sun rising over the swamp chasing away the dark shadows, he understood. The realization filled his eyes, glaring back at the deputy.

  George waited, allowing the awareness to settle in until…the man, the animal, snarled.

  There were no words, just bared teeth between which the guttural, primal snarl hissed and grunted out.

  The Glock bucked in his hand, filling the silent woods with a single sharp explosion. The echo faded slowly until there was silence again.

  Doubled over on his side, the man clutched his chest, snarling and thrashing in the dirt. The gray eyes flashed up at the deputy who had killed him until the light slowly faded from them. Narrowing to slits, they stared vacantly into the dirt as the man’s head slumped to the side. Then he was dead.

  84. Done

  Covered in a metallic looking thermal blanket Sharon Price had retrieved from the Pickham County pickup’s emergency kit, Lyn heard the final roar of thunder. It came distantly, filtering its way through the woods and out into the open yard of the cabin.

  Price, kneeling beside the young man with three holes in his body, looked up, and her hand moved to the pistol on her belt. Then all was quiet again, and she went back to her work trying to stop the blood that oozed from the boy into the red, Georgia clay.

  The sound of racing engines and sirens filled the air. Vehicles began pulling into the drive along the creek, and as they came to a stop, one by one they cut their sirens until the air around the cabin was quiet again and hushed except for the rushing of the creek.

  The tumbling water seemed to wash over everything as if trying to cleanse away what had happened there and to bring things back to bucolic tranquility. But it would take time and a lot of washing before that was accomplished. No matter, the creek’s rushing seemed to offer reassurance that it would be there after the people had departed, gurgling and washing the evil memories away, until all that would remain were the trees and the hills and the creek.

  An ambulance came roaring up the rise from the drive into the backyard of the cabin. The doors flung open, and two paramedics raced towards them. Sharon stood up and saw two troopers and a Rye County deputy run across the yard on foot towards the woods to be met by George Mackey making his way out of the tree line. He spoke to them briefly and then pointed into the woods. The deputy and troopers nodded and then fanned out, moving deliberately and carefully into the trees.

  One of the paramedics looked up from Clay. She and her partner were working quickly and efficiently to stop the bleeding and start an IV. She nodded at the girl huddled and shivering under the thin thermal blanket.

  “Injuries?” she queried Sharon.

  “A lot of cuts and bruises. Not lethal, but she bled out a bit. Bleeding seems pretty much stopped. Mostly shock and mental trauma.”

  The paramedic nodded, turning back to her work on Clay. “There’s a heavier blanket in the back of the ambulance in the equipment locker. Get it and wrap it around her. Warm her up good and put her on the cot in the back of the ambulance.”

  Rye County Sheriff, John Siler, walked carefully up the steps of the cabin to the open front door. There was no movement from inside. Being from the old school, he carried a revolver, not an automatic, and the Smith and Wesson Model 60, .357 magnum was gripped snugly in his right hand.

  All of the activity was happening at the back of the cabin and in the woods to the rear. Bu
t his deputy was not in the backyard and had not been seen. He stepped to the side so as not to approach the doorway head on. Easing along the wall he called out softly, “Grover, you in there?”

  Hearing no response, the sheriff moved to the door and turned into it, the .357 extended in front of him in a two handed grip, pointed slightly down.

  “Grover, you in…” Sheriff Siler stopped mid-sentence as his worst fears were realized. Stepping over the young deputy’s feet, he squatted by his side trying to avoid the pooling blood on the floor and felt his neck for a carotid pulse. The quantity of blood on the floor told the experienced law enforcement officer that there was no point in checking, but he did so anyway, mostly because there was nothing else to do.

  A large hunting knife protruded in an ugly way from the boy’s side. Siler almost reached out to remove the offending blade, but refrained. Removing the knife could worsen the deputy’s injuries, but Grover was dead. His injuries could be no worse. The sheriff left the knife in place because it was evidence. It would be retrieved during the crime scene investigation or after the autopsy.

  Reaching for his portable radio, he started to call for the paramedics, but then put the radio back in its holder on his belt. Grover Parsons was gone. The others might make it. Grover would not. It was a matter of logic, reason, and best use of available resources, and it broke Siler’s heart.

  The sheriff stepped out onto the front porch, sat down on the top step, put his head in his hands, and cried for the boy, who less than an hour ago, he had tried to convince over the radio to wait for backup. Grover Parsons had done what he had to do. He did his duty, and the young girl would survive because of it.

  Sheriff Siler would now do his duty and try to explain to Gerald Parsons that his son, who just happened to be on duty, and who just happened to stop for lunch in Crichton, had had a friendly conversation with Gannet Carlson. And during that friendly chat, he discovered that a murderer and his next victim were holed up in a cabin at the Carlson’s. He would explain that the son, who was the pride and joy of his daddy, was gone, never to return, a hunting knife protruding obscenely from his side while blood pooled thickly around his cold body.

  He would do his duty and tell Gerald Parsons all of this, but first Sheriff Siler sat on the top step while his tears dripped softly onto the boards of the porch steps and soaked slowly into the weathered wood.

  More sirens and more units arrived on the drive beside the creek. The ambulance backed rapidly across the cabin’s yard guided by deputies and volunteer firefighters who had arrived at the scene. Sharon watched it bump down onto the drive and accelerate rapidly up the hill towards the highway.

  In the rear, the young girl, Lyn, lay on one side, wrapped in blankets, traumatized and nearly comatose from her ordeal. Clay lay across from her, carefully attended to by the paramedic and fighting for his life. On the winding roads, the ambulance would take twenty minutes at high-speed, to make the journey to the little league field in Crichton where there was space enough for the life flight helicopter to land and take the two patients aboard. From there they would be transported to the emergency trauma center in Athens.

  The girl would survive her physical injuries. The mental and emotional traumas were a different matter. Undoubtedly, those scars would leave far deeper marks on her, and their effect would be far more devastating in the coming years.

  The young man was a different story. His hold on life was tenuous. The bullets had managed to miss his heart and aorta. A hit to either would have surely resulted in his immediate death, and the round from the shotgun that slowed the killer and his execution of the girl might never have been fired.

  Fortunately for Clay, the rounds from the short-barreled .38 were underpowered, hardball ammunition. Had Harold Sims loaded the weapon with high-powered hollow points, Clay would not be unconscious in the rear of the ambulance. He would be lying in the cabin’s backyard waiting for the crime scene techs to take their pictures and gather evidence from around his corpse.

  Still, the outcome for Clay was very much in doubt. Knowing this, the medic driver pushed the unwieldy ambulance to its limits around the curves while those in the back hung on.

  George Mackey limped over to the spot where the young man had lain. The ground was stained with his blood. A few feet away, a smaller stain marked the spot where the shotgun pellets had torn into the killer’s leg.

  Footsteps approached from behind and George turned. Sharon Price looked him squarely in the eye from a distance of three feet. No words were spoken. After a few seconds, George nodded and Sharon returned the nod. Words were unnecessary. It was done.

  85. Epilogue

  Three days later, Chief Deputy Ronnie Kupman sat across from Sheriff Klineman’s desk while the latter studied the papers clipped neatly into a manila file. After several minutes, the sheriff straightened the papers and closed the file, placing it neatly in the center of his desk and then pushing it with two fingers towards his chief deputy as if its continued presence might be infectious.

  “So, George got him,” the sheriff said. It was not a question. It was a statement, tinged with distaste and disappointment, which he was unable to control.

  “Yes, he did. He and the GBI and the Rye County deputy who found the car and the killer.”

  “But Mackey was the one who got him in the end, alone.” Again the distaste with undertones of incredulity.

  “Yes. George got him. Killed him if that’s what you mean.”

  “Yes, about that,” the sheriff said pausing before continuing. “The report states the subject was shot at close range.”

  “Right.”

  “It also says that the trajectory of the round that killed him came from about three feet above and five feet away.” Klineman regarded Kupman carefully, seeking any sign of concern or deception. The chief deputy, however, was completely unconcerned and unperturbed.

  “Also correct, Sheriff.”

  “And the shotgun was on the ground beside the subject…on the left side. He was right-handed?”

  “Yes. From the thrusts of the knife that killed the Rye County deputy and Mr. Sims, it does appear that the subject was right-handed.” Ronnie nodded, smiling at the sheriff’s query as he crossed his legs comfortably.

  Klineman had had enough. “Cut the bullshit, Kupman!”

  “I’m not sure what you mean Sheriff.” But Ronnie Kupman knew exactly what the sheriff of Pickham County meant.

  “The shooting should be investigated! You know as well as I do that this was not a legal shooting.” He stopped to control the anger rising inside, and the heartburn that accompanied it, and then continued through gritted teeth. “George Mackey executed the killer, Leyland Torkman.”

  “He did?” Kupman raised his eyebrows in mock surprise. “And you know this because…?”

  “Because my common sense tells me so, and the evidence in the report points in that direction.”

  “Well, the report from Rye County doesn’t…”

  “Don’t talk to me about Rye County. I know Sheriff Siler. He loves his deputies as if they were his own kids. He would accept any report that justified the elimination of the killer of one of ‘his boys’, legalities be damned.”

  “Is that so?” Kupman returned the sheriff’s angry gaze calmly. “Hmm. Well, there’s also the GBI’s report. I believe it says ‘no evidence that the shooting was not legal and justifiable, performed in the due course of attempting to arrest a violent felon who had already committed two known murders and two attempted murders at the time of the shooting’. I’m just paraphrasing, of course, but that seemed to be the gist of the report…as I recall it.” He smiled serenely at the man the voters of Pickham County had made his boss.

  Sheriff Klineman swallowed hard in an attempt to remain calm, or at least as calm as possible. “Well, then we will conduct our own investigation into the shooting.”

  “We will?”

  “Yes. We will, and as I apparently can’t trust anyone else to handle it
honestly, I will conduct it myself.”

  “Really? Do you think that is wise, Sheriff?” The question’s tone carried the undercurrent of a threat. Ronnie let that sink in for a moment before continuing in a conciliatory tone. “I mean that George Mackey is a hero in Pickham County. The people love him, the press loves him, and the GBI is standing behind him.” Kupman gave a sighing shrug. “If you try to hang George out to dry on this, it might backfire on you.” And then Ronnie Kupman looked his boss squarely in the eye and said with finality. “I guarantee you that it will backfire on you.”

  “What? What, did you just say?” The sheriff seemed about to come out of his chair. “Did you just threaten me? Speak up! Say that again.”

  Ronnie shook his head in disgust as he leaned forward and spoke, raising his voice for the first time. “Sheriff, I know that you record the conversations that take place in this office. Hell, it’s no secret, everyone knows. So, I’ll say it again. If you try to bring charges against a deputy who has been exonerated by the GBI and who did this county a valuable service, and who is a hero by all accounts, it will backfire on you. I’ll be even more clear…you will regret it.” He leaned back in his seat, continuing. “If you want to take that as a threat, so be it. As far as I’m concerned,” and Kupman raised his voice for the recorder again, “I am offering advice to the Sheriff of Pickham County. As the chief deputy, that is my duty.”

  Chief Deputy Ronnie Kupman took the shooting file off the sheriff’s desk and walked out of the office, allowing the door to thump closed behind him.

  The secret video camera, which everyone knew about, recorded Sheriff Richard Klineman sitting motionless and staring at the desktop for a long while. After a few minutes, his hand reached under the desk and the video went black.