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

by Glenn Trust

  *******

  Bob Shaklee leaned against the doorframe of the office in a building in Savannah. The building, located in a quiet office park filled with trees and manicured grass, was leased by the state for the GBI. Inside the building, investigators considered the terrible things contained in the case files on their desks and searched for answers. Outside, landscapers mowed the grass and planted flowers, and lunchtime joggers wandered the paths of the park.

  “Forensics are in.”

  Sharon Price looked up from the follow-up report she was writing. Leyland ‘Lylee’ Torkman it turns out was not missed. After tracing the vehicle identification number on the Chevy, she had started the interviews. Work – he did his job, kept his nose clean, and people did not interfere with him. Neighbors – he was an unknown, no interaction with anyone, kept quietly to himself, although Mrs. Abbot across the street always knew there was something ‘strange’ about him. Friends – none. Relatives – none. Criminal history – none, at least none ever recorded, until now.

  “That’s good. Anything?” Her eyes met his, conveying a momentary look of concern.

  “No. Not really.” He smiled back and gave just the slightest shake of his head acknowledging her concern and removing it at the same time. “The rounds that hit the boy were plain enough. We were able to find one of your rounds fired from the truck in a tree trunk at the tree line, but we dug .00 buck shot out of the trees in the woods for three days trying to recreate the scene for the follow-up on the shooting report.”

  Sharon placed the papers in her hand on the desk and looked up and directly into Bob Shaklee’s eyes.

  “And? What’s the follow up?”

  “Nothing much, I guess.” Shaklee broke away from her gaze and looked out the window behind her where beds of geraniums and petunias showed off their colors in the sunlight. “Pretty much like you and George said. Working your search pattern in the area when the call comes out. The deputy from Rye County advises over the radio that he is going to check things out and then you arrive on the scene…”

  “Grover.”

  “What?”

  “Grover Parsons. That was his name, the Rye County deputy. Just a boy really, barely old enough to be a deputy.”

  “Oh, right. Sorry, I don’t have much on that. Rye County is working that part of the case. He was a brave boy. He did his duty.” Shaklee waited for a moment. It was clear that the death of the young deputy along with everything else was a painful memory. “He did his duty, just as you and George did.”

  “Did we?”

  “Yes. You did.” He waited until Sharon’s moist eyes looked up. “You did your duty, Sharon. Saved the girl’s life and the boy who followed her. Parsons did his duty. He did what any of us would have done, and yes, he paid the price for it. I don’t have an answer for that.” Shrugging as if to ward off the inevitable, he added, “Sometimes bad things happen to good people, no matter what you do.”

  “Yes, sometimes,” Sharon agreed. “And the shooting?”

  “That. Yes, well that seems to be pretty straightforward, doesn’t it? You were in hot pursuit of a killer. He exchanged fire with you. George tracked him into the woods. Another exchange of gunfire. George ended it using the force necessary to take the suspect out before he hurt someone else. One round fired at fairly close rang. Forensics confirms it was from George’s Glock.”

  “That’s it?”

  “Shouldn’t it be?” He was looking out of the window behind Price. “I can’t think of anything else, Sharon. Can you?” His eyes shifted to her face.

  “No,” she said firmly. “But I’ve heard that that asshole sheriff down in Pickham is making a stir. That we didn’t look at all of the evidence. That the shooting was more than just self-defense. He’s calling it an execution, but he doesn’t want to do the investigation himself. Too much political liability.”

  “Really. So, what do you think?”

  “I think George did what he had to do.” The statement and the look on her face indicated the finality of her opinion in the matter.

  “Yes, well I look at it this way. There was a firefight that started when the killer fired on you and continued when George followed him into the woods. There were a number of gunshots, and the bad guy ended up dead. Anything else is pure speculation, and we don’t deal in speculation.” Now the look of finality was on Shaklee’s face. “Like you said, George did what he had to do.”

  The look of tranquility that followed on Shaklee’s face as he moved his gaze to the window again said it all. The matter was closed from the GBI’s point of view.

  “So, partner,” he continued. “Have a new case for us. Series of convenience store robberies between here and Macon. Locals, a police chief and a sheriff, are requesting assistance with the investigation. You up for it?”

  “Chief and a sheriff? Geez, how could I refuse.”

  “Good, meet me for lunch, and we’ll go over the case file.”

  Bob Shaklee turned and walked down the corridor with a final wave of his hand. Sharon Price picked up the pages of the report and dropped them in the out basket at the edge of her desk. Case closed.

  *******

  The small group on the porch was quiet. The glasses of sweet iced tea in their hands dripped condensation onto the porch where the water soaked into the bare planks and disappeared.

  The parents of Paula Jean Glover looked across the yard to the trees and the path leading through the woods to the old church and tried to understand the events that had connected their pretty, petite daughter to Mrs. Sims and her dead husband, Harold. There were no satisfactory answers.

  Angel Sims sat quietly, her son’s hand resting on top of hers on the arm of the rocking chair. Other than greetings and small talk about the weather, there had not been much conversation.

  Finally, Paula Glover’s mother pulled her eyes away from the trees and faced them.

  “I...we can’t tell you how sorry we are for the loss of your husband, Mrs. Sims.”

  “There’s nothing to say,” Mrs. Sims replied in a small voice that was almost a whisper. “What’s done, is done.”

  “I know, but somehow, it feels…it feels wrong that you were dragged into this situation.”

  The old woman studied the younger woman for a moment before speaking. “Honey, there is no need for guilt. You lost a daughter. I lost my Harold. A bad man did it, not you. He did bad things to Harold and to your girl, and now he’s gone.”

  There was finality to her words. Nothing would change what had happened. Bad things happened to people sometimes. Too many times, Angel Sims thought, but they happened anyway. She had lived long enough to accept the inevitability of that fact.

  “Your husband tried to save our little girl.” Paula Glover’s father turned his tear stained face towards Mrs. Sims and her son. “I thank you for that.”

  There was nothing more to say. The losses of both families were equally tragic and equally inexplicable. A terrible, bad thing had happened, and the lives of the old man and young girl had meandered through the world until they met in the dark in the church parking lot. There was no meaning, only pain.

  A few minutes later, the dripping glasses were placed gently on the porch, and the Glovers drove away.

  *******

  The out-of-focus form over him slowly took shape. His eyes felt glued together.

  “Cy,” was all Clay could manage to say at the sight of his brother. He became aware of Cy’s strong grip on his hand.

  “‘Bout time you woke up.” Clay perceived that the smile on Cy’s face was more one of relief than any other emotion.

  “Mama?”

  “She’s fine. Been by your side for a week now. I sent her back to the motel to get some rest. I’ll let her know you’re awake. She’ll want to be here.”

  Clay nodded.

  “The girl. Last I remember…” his voice faded. It was an effort to force the air up from his lungs, over the vocal chords and out of his mouth to speak.

 
“She’s alive. Not good though. The things that he did to her. They don’t tell us much, but it was bad. They have her in a room. She’ll be okay physically, lot of cuts and scars, but she’ll heal. They have her in some kind of counseling for emotional and mental trauma. I’ve been checking on her. I knew you’d want to know. I guess it’ll be a while before things get back to normal for her, if they ever do.”

  The look of guilt and pain that flashed across the young man’s face was unmistakable.

  “It’s not your fault brother,” Cy said, seeing the guilt. “If anyone is to blame, it’s me. I’m the one who wanted her gone so we could get back to work. She was just a distraction.” He paused and then continued, “I’m the guilty one. Not you. You saved her life they say. You and that deputy in Rye County. That buckshot you put in his leg slowed him down, and the deputy from Pickham killed him. Been in all the papers, not just the Everett Gazette, but the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, too. You’re a pretty big deal.”

  “Don’t feel too much like a big deal,” he managed to whisper.

  “Well, you are.” Cy’s grip on his brothers hand tightened. “I’m proud of you. And something else, I wish I had been…I wish I was more like you.”

  The brothers sat hand in hand until Clay drifted off to sleep again, and Cy could wipe the tears off of his face.

  *******

  In another room, on another floor, Lyn sat in a chair staring out into the hospital courtyard. Ruby Stinson sat beside her daughter, their arms entwined. They spent much of the time like that.

  Lyn seemed to drift off to another place, a place her mother could not go, and it made the burden of guilt heavy for the older woman. She had sent her young daughter out into a world she knew nothing about. It was an act of desperation, but in doing so, she had almost lost her daughter. Still, she did not know what else she could have done. Her father would have beaten her, probably to death.

  She reached up, touched the swollen side of her own face, and then withdrew her hand at the pain. As it was, the old man had beaten her badly after regaining consciousness the night Lyn left. So badly, that she had called the law on him, for the first time. Oh, there had been plenty of other times she could have called, should have called, she knew. But fearing for her daughter’s life and sending her away and then the beating, it was too much, the final pain and degradation.

  The old man was in the Pickham County Jail on domestic violence charges where he would probably stay until trial. Word around Judges Creek was that no one would be bailing the mean, son of a bitch out of jail, so they were safe, for a while. It seemed that Carl Stinson’s relationship with the world was no better than with his family.

  Ruby wondered if it had always been that way. There must have been some happy times early on. If so, the memories had faded in the swirl of physical and mental abuse that had become her life.

  The sheriff’s department had put her in touch with a women’s advocacy group. Lyn’s ordeal had received a good deal of coverage in the press, and the group was going to great lengths to assist the mother and daughter. The case’s notoriety had put a spotlight on the abuse of women and children. And while the group would have assisted in any event, they were sparing no effort or expense to help the two. She had a hotel room in Athens for as long as Lyn was recovering in the hospital. They were helping with something else too. For the first time, Ruby was talking to someone who could help her understand the patterns of domestic violence, and her own self-worth so that the pattern in this case would be broken permanently.

  The counseling for the mother would continue for months. For the daughter, it might be necessary for the rest of her life. Lyn’s counselor had assured her mother that the emotional scars her daughter bore would heal, slowly, but they could be healed.

  The guilt for what had happened to Lyn was overwhelming. She could have acted to stop the abuse years ago. She should have, she knew it. Somehow, she couldn’t. She had been trapped. But now, maybe the puzzle could be unraveled. Maybe, with the counseling, she would end the cycle. She was coming to understand that what had happened to her daughter was the result of a long chain of events. Break that chain, and you could change your life. Ruby Stinson ached for not having broken the chain earlier and because of her own guilt for what had happened to her daughter.

  Wrapping her arm more tightly around Lyn’s, she pulled the girl as close to her as she could. There was no response, but the warmth of the contact with her daughter brought her some small comfort.

  Lyn’s eyes focused intently on the tops of the swaying pine trees in the courtyard. They pulled her in, and she felt herself leaving the hospital room again, even as her mother struggled to hold her close to no avail. Lyn drifted to a faraway place where her mother could not go.

  *******

  Gerald Parsons sat quietly on the porch of his small house nestled among the trees at the base of one of the foothills of the Appalachian Mountains. The southern end of the Appalachian Trail was only a few miles from that spot. From there you could hike all the way to Maine if you had a mind to, and good, strong set of legs. He and Grover had hiked parts of it all through north Georgia when Grover was still a boy.

  “Good night, Gerald.” Sheriff Bill Siler had been coming by to visit Grover’s father as much as possible since the young deputy’s murder. They rarely spoke. There wasn’t anything to say. Mostly, Siler just sat on the porch with him hoping in some way that his company might dull the knifing pain in the father’s heart. It seemed to have no effect, but he would not abandon the man whose boy did not abandon his duty.

  Parsons pulled his empty gaze away from the darkness that surrounded the small house and nodded his good night back to the sheriff. An instant later, he was lost again in the darkness. There was no other world for him, only the dark loss of the boy that had been his life

  Things moved in the dark, in the trees. Mostly harmless, some not. Gerald Parsons ignored them all and listened, straining to hear. But the husky, happy voice of his son was gone. So many things were gone.

  *******

  Some small creature moved in the high grass in the ditch alongside the dirt road. Tom Ridley took no notice. He stood quietly at the edge of his property looking down the dirt road. The place where he had found the young girl’s body was visible. The grass and weeds had been trampled down by the deputies and GBI people. Remnants of yellow crime scene tape fluttered in the breeze. It was still dark, but in the dim, misty light of the oncoming day, he could just make out the silhouette of a vehicle.

  Behind him in the little frame house, he could hear his wife busying herself with breakfast. It was a comforting sound. One he took pleasure in most mornings as he stood for a few minutes in the yard looking at the sky, watching the stars fade. After a few minutes, he would smell coffee and sometimes bacon frying. But this morning, he paid no attention to the homey sounds and smells. Turning, he walked briskly into the house.

  “Breakfast be ready in a few minutes, Tom,” Margaret said from the kitchen.

  Reaching up over the front door, he took the shotgun from the two pegs that served as a gun rack and then reached into a box on a shelf under the pegs, pulling out four .00 buckshot shells.

  “Tom?” Margaret said from the doorway. “What are you doing?”

  Without looking he said, “Nothing. Just gonna go check something.”

  “Tom! What is it? You stop right there and tell me what’s going on.”

  He turned and looked at her. “Nothing…probably nothing. Looks like a car or truck down the road. Down there where…”

  Margaret Ridley nodded her head. “All right then. Be careful.”

  Tom nodded, turned, and walked out the door. As he crossed the little dirt yard, he heard the screen door open behind him. He knew that Margaret would be watching from the driveway.

  Holding the shotgun in both hands, the barrel pointing to the side but at the ready, he walked quickly and quietly down the dirt road. He made no sound in the dirt.

  As he got
within fifty feet of the vehicle, the door opened and the interior light came on. Tom relaxed and let the barrel of the shotgun lower, resting it under one arm.

  George Mackey stepped out of the brown sheriff’s department pickup.

  “Morning, Tom.”

  “Morning, George.” Ridley came closer until they could see each other clearly in the dim light from the truck interior.

  “You’re not going to shoot me with that are you?”

  “Naw, George, not gonna shoot you. Didn’t know who it was down here. Just checking.”

  “Yea. I know. Me too.”

  The two men stood there, looking into the weeds and grass on the side of the road. The yellow crime scene tape was still there, wrapped around trees and brush, marking off the area where the girl’s body had been found. Tom reached into his shirt pocket, pulled a cigarette from a beat up pack, and lit up. He looked at George and held the pack out. George just shook his head. The two men leaned against the sheriff’s truck not saying anything for a few minutes.

  Finally, Tom broke the silence.

  “I thought it was you.”

  “What?”

  “That morning. I was standing in the yard and heard the car tires moving. I thought it was you. Figured you’d been napping.”

  “I know. You told me. I wish to God it had been me, Tom.”

  “Yea, me too. I reckon that fella would have had a surprise when he pulled down my road if you’d been there.”

  “Yea, Tom. I reckon…who knows…maybe I’d have had the surprise.”

  “Oh, you’d have got him, George. You’re a good deputy.”

  George felt the guilt well up inside him. He looked over at Tom.

  “Not that good, Tom. Not very good at all.”