Running in Circles

by Laurèn Lee

Twenty-Five

  “Hello?” Earl asked in a raspy voice. He eyed his alarm clock which read six AM.

  He only went to bed a few hours ago, and he’d hit the pillow with a bottle of rum in his hand. The district attorney was just about to file charges against their number one suspect, Timmy, when a prostitute came forward and admitted to being his alibi. Earl was hesitant at first, but the woman said they made a video that night, a homemade porno. Sure enough, forensics analyzed the cell phone footage and confirmed Timmy was with this woman the newest victims were killed. He couldn’t be the killer, and rage enveloped Earl. He thought he saved the town, but he only disappointed them further.

  “Boss? We’ve got a situation down at the station. I think you should come down now.”

  “What do you mean?” Earl questioned as he sat up in bed. “What’s going on?”

  “Well, we have two sets of parents who are concerned about their kids.” Ricky paused.

  “Go on,” Earl said. He rubbed his eyes vigorously.

  “Both parents said their kids have been missing for over twenty-four hours now.”

  “Did they file a missing person’s report?”

  “No,” Ricky answered with caution in his voice.

  “Uh, why not?” Earl asked impatiently.

  “They think, or rather, are afraid those two bodies we found might be them.”

  “Jesus H. Christ. Why would they assume that?”

  “I don’t know, sir, but they’re causing quite a fuss. They want to know the identities of the victims.”

  “I’d like to know that, too, but forensics hasn’t gotten back to us yet.”

  “That’s what I told them, sir,” Ricky trailed off.

  “Be there in a few,” Earl grumbled. He slammed the phone into its cradle and stood from his bed.

  The sheriff dressed quickly, rinsed his mouth with Listerine and slabbed a few spritzes of aftershave on his cheeks. He wouldn’t have time to shave his beard this morning, not with raving lunatics at the station causing a raucous.

  Not twenty minutes later did Earl step into the station. A weary-looking Ricky and two sets of distressed parents greeted him. Both women had puffy eyes and clutched tissues in their hands. The men looked as though they hadn’t slept a wink in days.

  “Sheriff! Sheriff!” the couples called out like a mini-mob of paparazzi.

  “Slow down, folks. Let me get my bearings real quick,” Earl pleaded.

  The couples stepped back with desperation plastered across their faces.

  “Ricky, come to my office, please,” Earl said. “Folks, I’ll be with you in a few moments. Let me talk with my lieutenant here, and I’ll be right back. Take a seat. I’ll have someone bring y’all some coffee, okay?”

  The parents nodded and took a seat as Earl suggested; however, it didn’t stop the women from crying and the men from looking weary and worn.

  Ricky followed Earl into his office, shuddering when he slammed the door, which caused the walls and decor to rattle.

  “What do we tell them?”

  Earl rubbed his eyes and desperately wished he could have slept a few more hours. He remembered back in his college days when he could pull an all-nighter, go to class the next day and then have a few beers at the bar after that. How had he once had so much energy? And, now, how had he become so fatigued and even feeble?

  “First, do we have any photographs of what their kids look like? What is their relationship to each other?”

  “I didn’t have a chance to question them, sir. When they came in, they were shouting and crying. I couldn’t get them to calm down. That’s why I called you.” Ricky shrugged.

  “All right, all right. Let’s get ‘em in a room and get as much info about the kids as we can. Okay? I’ll place another call to forensics to see if we have a positive ID yet for either of the bodies.”

  “I’m on it, sir!” Ricky affirmed.

  Earl loitered in his office for a few minutes which allowed Ricky time to bring the parents into the interviewing room. Earl placed that call to the forensics team, and they confirmed their tests were nearly finished and the results would be ready within a few hours or less.

  Earl paced his office from the door to the window and back again. He needed something to take the edge off. He hadn’t been this stressed on the job in years. He sincerely hoped none of this shit would throw off his retirement plan. Earl wanted to retire at fifty, which is when he’d be eligible for his pension. He thought about staying on the job longer, but every year that passed, he felt the job had taken another year off his life. As much as he obsessed with his position as sheriff, he often dreamed about finding another obsession or passion. Maybe fishing? Or he’d write a true crime book. Mostly, he just wanted the option to do whatever damn well he pleased.

  While he paced, Earl remembered there was some Crown Royal in the kitchen reserved for special occasions or toasts. Maybe a little dash of whiskey in his coffee would help him relax? It’d be worth a try.

  He made his way to the kitchen, which was in desperate need of a remodel, and glanced over his shoulder. No one else was in the kitchen. Quickly, Earl opened the fridge, unscrewed the bottle’s cap and poured a shot into his coffee mug. He immediately put the top back on and left the room. Earl didn’t want anyone else to smell the Crown in his drink, so he gulped it down, not even minding the burn in his throat as the scorching liquid flushed through his body.

  Earl instantly felt a sense of relief and calm. He took a deep breath and walked into the interviewing room where Ricky and the parents waited for him to arrive.

  “Thanks for waiting. All right, let’s get down to business. Shall we?” Earl asked.

  “Sheriff, we need to know if those are our kids in the morgue,” one of the fathers urged.

  Earl put his hand up. “I can imagine how worried y’all are, but even I don’t have the IDs for the vics yet, so I can’t possibly give them to you. Let’s start from the beginning, huh?”

  “What are their names?” Ricky asked.

  “Rhiannon is our girl,” said Mr. and Mrs. Boon. Mr. Boon took a photo out of his wallet and presented it to Earl and Ricky. A young girl smiled at the camera. It was a school picture taken in black and white, but Earl noticed the girl pulled her long dark hair in a ponytail.

  “Is this a recent photograph?” Earl asked.

  “It’s a few years old.” Mr. Boon shrugged.

  “Well, we’re going to need something more recent so we can publish it across all media platforms. An outdated photo won’t be much use.”

  The Boons nodded.

  “This is our son, Daniel,” Mr. Wheeler said as he showed Earl his phone. The handsome teen smiled in the photograph his father had used as a screensaver.

  “How old are they?”

  “Rhiannon is sixteen,” Mrs. Boon said.

  “Daniel just turned seventeen,” Mrs. Wheeler answered..

  For the next hour and a half, Earl asked all the basic questions of the parents. Where did they go to school? How did they know each other? Did they have many friends? Any enemies? Did they ever get into trouble?

  It turned out, Rhiannon and Daniel had been dating for over a year. They met in drama class and were connected by the hip ever since. Both parents were adamant their children were straight-A students who never got in trouble. They had a large group of friends, but all those kids were well-behaved, too. Both Daniel and Rhiannon had last been seen two nights before. They planned a movie date, but both promised they’d be back before curfew.

  Neither came home that night.

  The parents explained that at first, they thought the kids lied and went to a party. Maybe they slept over at a friend's house because they’d drank too much. But, when the school called the next day and said neither arrived, the parents flew off the handle.

  “It was very unlike them to disappear,” Mrs. Wheeler said, choked up. “We always trusted them to do the right thing.”

  Earl sighed. “I mean no harm by my next que
stion, but were Rhiannon and Daniel having sex?”

  As expected, both sets of parents gasped and vehemently shook their heads.

  “So, they couldn’t have run off together? You know, kids this age sometimes run away, but come back when they need some money.”

  “Sheriff Davis, our Rhiannon would never do such a thing,” her parents said with disgust in their eyes.

  “It’s just a question, folks. Calm down, please,” Earl said. “We’ll put out an APB on both kids, and in the meantime, we suggest you start calling their friends and asking the neighbors if they saw them that night or since they disappeared. I’ll have some officers start patrolling your respective neighborhoods, too.”

  “Thank you, thank you!” Both sets of parents cried.

  “Uh, one last thing. Does either of them have access to a car?”

  “Yes,” Mr. Wheeler said. “Daniel saved up and bought a used car a few months ago.”

  “Make, model and color?” Ricky asked.

  “A blue Ford Focus,” Mr. Wheeler said.

  Earl and Ricky looked at each other, and each felt their stomachs drop. They saw a blue Ford Focus the night they left The Stolen Leaf and discovered two kids having sex in the parking lot.

  Twenty-Six

  Earl and Ricky left the interviewing room as casually as possible. They didn't want to further upset the parents behind them. However, Earl knew they were about to feel a hell of a lot more devastation very soon. Now, instead of searching for their kids, they’d have to plan a pair of funerals.

  “Do you really think these kids are the vics laying in the morgue?” Ricky asked nervously.

  “Well, we obviously can’t know for sure until the forensics report is back,” Earl reminded his young protégée.

  “Boss?”

  “Yeah, Ricky?”

  “Do you think the kids in the morgue are the same ones we saw that night outside the bar?”

  “Sure seems very suspicious. That’s absolutely the same car we saw in the lot. Hey, why don’t you go back and get those photographs from the parents? Let’s compare them to the DMV mugs of the kids in the system.”

  Ricky returned a few minutes later with the photographs as requested. Earl pulled up the report on the computer, along with the tickets he issued that night. Both Ricky and Earl compared the school photographs with the license photographs, and they matched as closely as they possibly could. Yes, the missing kids were the very same that Earl and Ricky had caught in the act and cited just a few nights ago. But, the question remained: was this couple the same who was murdered? Or, had Daniel and Rhiannon run off and another young couple was killed? It seemed like too much of a coincidence, though. Earl and Ricky knew in their hearts Daniel and Rhiannon lay dead on a cold, steel table just a few blocks away.

  “What do we tell the parents?” Ricky asked.

  “Nothing right now,” Earl said.

  “Shouldn’t we tell them about the tickets? About how we saw them just a few nights ago?”

  “No, I don’t think they need to know right now. We will certainly include it in the investigation’s report, but I don’t think it will do any good to tell them we caught their precious honor students fornicating in a bar parking lot.”

  Ricky nodded and sunk his head. “Do you think we are some of the last people to have seen them alive?”

  “The murderer is the last one to have seen them alive. Don’t go all soft on me now, son,” Earl urged.

  “Maybe if we told them to leave the premises right away this wouldn’t have happened?”

  “Ricky, not now, son. We have three dead bodies on our hands. It’s not the time to play the hindsight game. You hear me?”

  “Yes, sir,” Ricky said. He focused his eyes on the floor.

  Just then, Earl's cell phone rang loudly and echoed within the cubicle.

  “Davis,” Earl answered. “You have the report? All right, we’ll be right down.” Earl hung up the phone and looked at his partner. “They’ve ID'd the bodies. “

  Earl and Ricky stepped into the morgue. Blinding lights and a sanitized scent accosted them before they gathered their bearings. A chilling draft sent shivers down their spines. Ricky noticed the life-size drawers beside them and wondered how many were filled with cold, lifeless bodies.

  The coroner, Henry Willows, appeared even more melancholy than usual. Ricky and Henry shook hands.

  “Hi, Sheriff,” Henry said quietly.

  “So, you were able to ID the bodies?”

  “Yes, sir. And, we have a positive match for the two missing kids Ricky told me about earlier today.”

  “Damn it,” Ricky said and rubbed his eyes vehemently.

  “And, it appears to be the same killer who took Jackie Malone’s life, too.”

  “Yeah?” Earl asked curiously.

  “Same type of injuries. Consistencies all across the board. It seems like the killer even used the same knife to cut out the eyes,” Henry said.

  “Both kids are missing their eyes?”

  “No, just the girl,” Henry confirmed.

  “Why is this son of a bitch cuttin’ out the women’s eyes?” Ricky cried out.

  “Probably doesn’t want them to see him for who he truly is,” Earl mumbled.

  “Well, he’s an evil son of a bitch,” Rick said.

  “Mhmm,” Henry agreed.

  “Any other pieces of evidence I can use?” Earl asked.

  “Well, both bodies had plenty of small stones embedded into their wounds,” Henry said. “And, this time, the head wounds indicate a sharp object such as a large rock was used to bludgeon them.”

  “Makes sense. We believe the killer murdered them in one spot and moved them to the ravine,” Earl replied. “Anything else?”

  “The bodies had traces of corn kernels embedded in some of their wounds, too. But, they could have been at any of the cornfields in the state. There’s no way to know which one, but I’ll keep looking and running tests. I just wanted to let you know about the positive IDs first and foremost.”

  “I appreciate it, Henry,” Earl said.

  “Well, Ricky, I suppose we ought to head back to the station and break the news to the parents.”

  “Poor bastards,” Ricky said and wiped a tear away.

  Twenty-Seven

  “Something’s wrong with that boy, Meg. I’m tellin’ ya right now!” Jim cried.

  “He’s just quiet. There’s nothing wrong with our son!” Meghan snapped back.

  “He’s stealing Gabby’s dolls and playing with them. Do you think that’s fucking normal?”

  “Not every little boy has to play with guns and cars. For Christ’s sake, he’s not hurting anyone, Jim! And, Gabby likes sharing her toys with her big brother. You’re blowing this out of proportion.”

  Jim took a large swig of his vodka on the table and set it back down. “Well, if it’s harmless, then why do all these dolls go missing, huh? We’ve had to buy Gabby at least four more Barbie dolls in the past month because hers have gone missing!”

  “Jim, Gabby is still a child. She probably misplaces them or leaves them at a neighbor’s house when she goes over to play.”

  “Something is not right here, Meg. You mark my words: that boy of ours is up to no good.”

  “You’re overreacting, Jim,” Meghan said, accentuating her husband’s name.

  “Mama?” Gabby interrupted another one of her parents’ arguments.

  “Yes, my love?” Meghan questioned.

  Gabby wailed and pointed outside where rain down poured across their backyard.

  “It’s just a storm, baby. Everything is okay!” Meghan crooned.

  “No, Mama!” Gabby cried. “Look outside!”

  Jim sighed, and Meg looked outside. She noticed it rained harder than the weatherman predicted. Their property stood on a slight hill which often caused a mini mudslide to form during storms. Meg squinted and noticed peach blotches appeared in the mud.

  “What the heck?” Meg whispered to hersel
f.

  “What is it?” Jim asked, finally curious.

  “There’s something in the mud,” she said.

  “Mama!” Gabby wailed.

  “It’s okay, sweetie. Why don’t you go play upstairs?”

  Gabby ran upstairs with her ratty, tattered doll under her arms. Once Meg knew her daughter had gone into her room, she threw on a raincoat. She needed a better look at what rose through the mud.

  “Jesus Christ, Meg. What are you doing?”

  “I’m going to see what’s out there,” she said and ventured into the storm.

  Meghan splashed through puddles despite her attempt to avoid them, but it was inevitable. She stepped closer and closer to the tan blobs and let out a high-pitched shriek. Jim heard her cry and opened the sliding door.

  “What is it?” he called out.

  “Jim!” Meghan screeched. “You better come out here!”

  Jim groaned but ran out to meet his wife in the rushing rainstorm. He took one look at what Meghan pointed to, and his heart sank into oblivion. Right before the freezing, soaking parents, bobbed over a dozen doll heads floating in the mud.

  “We need to go back inside!” Jim shouted over the thunder. He grabbed his wife’s elbow and steered her into the house. They stomped their muddy boots upon the mat just inside the door. Little did they know, Kit watched his parents’ adventure from his bedroom window and stared down at the dismembered dolls which floated and bobbed in the storm.

  “What the fuck was that?” Jim asked, visibly shaken.

  “I think we found Gabby’s missing dolls,” Meghan said solemnly.

  “Kit did it,” Jim said furiously.

  “You don’t know that, Jim!” Meghan cried.

  “Yes, I do! What the hell, Meg? I just told you something is wrong with him, and then we find all of our daughter’s missing dolls with their body parts cut up! We gotta talk to him right fucking now!”

  “Jim, no—”

  “Kit! Get your ass down here right now!” Jim called out.

  Kit made no indication of coming to his father. He remained firmly beside his bedroom window with clenched fists.