by Rick Reed
“Get the book and I’ll show you,” Bobby answered.
Maddy Brooks looked around before sneaking out the back door of the television station. She wedged a Popsicle stick between the door latch and the strike plate so the door wouldn’t lock, made sure the coast was clear, and then took out a pack of smokes. The last thing she needed was for the station manager to catch her smoking near the building. Actually, she didn’t want anyone to see. Evansville had passed a nonsmoking ordinance that forbade smoking in or within one hundred feet of an occupied structure. Of course, the two-faced assholes at city hall had made an exception for the Blue Star Casino and for most taverns. When it came to politicians, money always spoke louder than words.
And the thought of someone being allowed to smoke in the confined spaces of the riverboat, while she had to sneak off to light up, made her angry. You’d think her job as news anchor for Channel Six would give her a few privileges. Like being able to smoke in her office. Like Bob Sampson. I can smell smoke in his office all the time.
But Bob Sampson was a man, and as such, was immune from the same rules as women at the station. She wondered briefly if Sampson was the one leaving the notes on her desk, but quickly dismissed the idea. Sampson was a dickless little shit. He wouldn’t have the nerve to do something like that.
Maddy sucked the smoke deep into her lungs and held it. What she wouldn’t give for a joint right now. But smoking cigarettes outside the back door, and smoking dope outside the back door, were two different things. She smiled at the thought of getting caught smoking a doobie, and just then the back door crashed open.
“Maddy?”
The party crasher was Lois, the television station’s secretary. Lois Hensley was short, paunchy, wrinkled, and an annoying little twit that Maddy knew was trying to get her fired. Lois had been with the station almost twenty years before Maddy had been hired.
“Yes, Lois.” There was no hint of annoyance in her voice. She hated Lois, but she respected the power that Lois had with the station manager. Maybe Lois had never been a reporter, but she was not someone you wanted to piss off. She knew more about the operation of the station than God, and she was the mayor’s mother.
“I found this taped to the front door.” Lois handed Maddy an envelope with Maddy’s name scrawled on the outside in red crayon.
“Is this a joke, Lois?” Maddy asked before remembering that Lois was dispossessed of a sense of humor. “Sorry, Lois. Who left it?”
Lois looked haughtily at Maddy. “I did say I found it taped to the front door, didn’t I?” She turned to leave, and then, as if she had just remembered, Lois said, “Oh yeah, there was another of those silly notes, and I put it in your mail slot.”
“When was that, Lois?” Maddy asked. She could barely contain her agitation, and Lois seemed to be enjoying herself.
“Well, it didn’t look important. I really don’t remember. Yesterday, today, I really don’t remember.”
Maddy tried to control her temper. She’d love to slap silly Lois—well, silly. So, it wasn’t someone playing a joke on me, she thought. Lois would never take any part in an attempt at humor or playing a joke on anyone. And there was no one in the building who would dare involve Lois in something for fear it would come back on them.
She took the note and said, “Thanks, Lois.” Lois gave her a smug grin and turned to go back inside, then turned back again, long enough to say, “You know there is no smoking near the building, Maddy.”
Maddy dropped the cigarette on the concrete. “Bitch,” she snarled as the door shut behind the older woman. Then she had a thought and pulled the door open.
“Lois, did you leave some other notes on my desk? Notes like this one?” Maddy asked, hoping that Lois had noticed something that might help her learn who was doing this.
“If you got notes, I’m probably the one that left them,” Lois answered nastily. “That’s my job.”
Maddy barely heard the response. Her mind was trying to wrap itself around something just out of her reach. She opened the note Lois had just given her. Oh my God! she thought.
In her bare feet, she rushed down the hallway, stopping just long enough at her own office to collect the other two notes, then straight to the station manager’s office. They would need the station’s legal counsel.
The recaps of the day’s events were as disappointing as they were time consuming. Marlin Pope, as chief of police, had made them go through every detail of the case from beginning to end at least a dozen times. Captain Franklin had asked both the forensic pathologist and the coroner to be present at the meeting, but Carmodi was unable to attend. Lilly Caskins was there representing the coroner.
Liddell leaned in to whisper in Jack’s ear. “I wonder where Double Dick is.”
Jack shrugged. “In hell, I hope,” he said, causing Liddell to chuckle a little too loudly.
“Do you have something to add, Detective?” Chief Pope asked.
Liddell turned red. “I was just noticing that Deputy Chief Dick was not present, sir.”
Lilly Caskins guffawed. She had overheard Jack’s response and couldn’t agree more. She hated the deputy chief for reasons unrelated to anything to do with the police department. Her job as chief deputy coroner gave her an inside ear to the current political arena, and she had heard some things regarding Dick that she was not happy about. The very idea of him becoming chief of police sickened her. She respected Marlin Pope, but more than that, she respected the position of chief of police. A man like Richard Dick would fuck up everything he touched.
Pope waited until Caskins got herself under control, then cleared his throat and said, “Now, if we can continue. I need to know what our plan of action is. Captain?”
Franklin looked at Jack and Liddell before beginning. “Summarizing all this, we have two sets of murders that may, or may not, be connected by notes left at the scenes—more particularly, left on the bodies of the victims. No progress was made on the Lewis case, and now we have a killing on the riverfront, where a note, similar to the one left on the body of Anne Lewis, was discovered shoved down the throat of this boy, Timmy Ryan. Crime Scene can tell us that the wounds in both cases were caused by a large, heavy, sharp instrument, like a machete, and that in both cases the bodies were moved after death. No witnesses in either case. No suspects. Nothing so far on the neighborhood canvassing, and in the case of Timmy Ryan, we have been unable to locate a next of kin. Is that about right?” Franklin asked Jack and Liddell.
Jack answered. “We also have no connection between the victims—outside of cryptic notes written in red crayon, that is.”
Chief Pope looked around the room until his gaze rested on Captain Franklin. “What I want to know is how in the hell did I not know about the first note? The one left on Anne Lewis’s body.”
“It was lying on the floor when crime scene and detectives arrived, Chief,” Franklin explained. “Apparently the cleaning woman that found the bodies called for an ambulance, and by the time dispatch figured out what was going on, the ambulance crew had moved the note and covered the victims with sheets.”
Chief Pope ran a hand down his face. He knew all that, but he also knew after reading part of the files, that the first detective on the scene was Detective Jansen, and that Jansen probably screwed the pooch, so to speak.
And so the meeting went into the late hours of the evening, until finally, everyone was told to go home and get some rest. Fresh minds see fresh details. They would start again before the sun was up. Then they would meticulously go over every report, recanvass every neighborhood, reexamine every speck of physical evidence, re-interview everyone, and with any luck, find a next of kin for Timmy Ryan.
As Jack was getting into his personal vehicle to go home, Liddell stopped him.
“How in the world can a kid be murdered and there is no one to claim him? No one to mourn him.” Liddell shook his head sadly.
Jack could see the sadness in his partner’s eyes. “He’s got us,” Jack said.
CHAPTER
TEN
The neighborhood had seen better days, but the residents were rallying, trying their best to create a quaint atmosphere that would attract family buyers and keep the slumlords at bay. What they didn’t want were more rental properties. They weren’t being snobbish. It was logical that renters would have less money to put into landscaping and/or other eye-pleasing decor.
Even though Elaine Lamar was an outsider—not really a homeowner—she had been asked to join the Homeowners Association. She had gone to one meeting, and that was enough for her. Between finger sandwiches and tiny cups of punch, she had been told by at least ten different people that they would “be happy to help her come up with some ideas for giving her house a face-lift.” What they didn’t offer was the money to do this with.
Elaine leaned against her ten-year-old Toyota Camry and looked up at the peeling paint and warped wood of the two-bedroom home she was renting from a friend. The grass needed cutting, and weeds grew in the gravel driveway. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d given the inside of the house a decent cleaning. She inwardly groaned and thought, There’s just not enough time in the day.
She looked at her watch. It was only noon, but she was dead on her feet and two hours late getting home on a Saturday that she wasn’t supposed to be working. Not to mention that her children had been left home with orders to stay inside on an absolutely beautiful day, when they should have been outside playing or riding their bicycles, or doing something with their mother.
Working a full-time job and taking care of three kids with no help or financial support was killing her, but it wasn’t like she had any choice. When her husband left her and their three children behind for a younger woman, she had been angry at first, and then the shock set in. She had almost had a nervous breakdown from worrying how she could support them or put them in a good school. Then a friend had found her the rental house, and another friend got her on at a realty firm as office manager.
The job had been an answer to her prayers, and though she loved her work with the realty company, sometimes the hours she had to put in did not seem worth the money when she considered how much of her children’s lives she was missing.
The thought of how Carl had treated his children would normally infuriate her, but tonight she was just too tired to care. She was so tired, in fact, that she didn’t notice that the front door was standing wide open until she reached to put the key in the door.
Jenny left the front door unlocked. What was that girl thinking? Jenny was her oldest. Ten years old going on twenty, and the only girl. Elaine knew it had been hard on her daughter to be strapped with caring for two younger brothers when Jenny was a mere child herself. But, if it hadn’t been for Jenny’s maturity, Elaine would have given up long ago and lived on the welfare system. The little girl’s positive and uncomplaining attitude had been the one thing that had given Elaine the courage to keep working a full-time job and taking night classes until she got her Realtor’s license.
Elaine walked into the living room and called out, “Jenny? Jeremy? Ricky?” No answer. She smiled when she thought about how the two younger boys, ages three and four, still called each other “Icky” and “Germy” instead of Ricky and Jeremy. And how Jenny would patiently correct them, telling them both that they were special and shouldn’t make fun of their names.
Are they hiding from me? she wondered. Is that why the door was left unlocked?
“Okay, you guys, game’s over. Come on out.” She walked into the kitchen expecting them to leap out at her and try to scare her, but the house was quiet. A short hallway led to the two bedrooms. The bedroom on the left was Elaine’s. The bedroom on the right had been the master bedroom, but because it was bigger, her three children were sharing it. If she could just keep up these hours a little longer, she would have the money to move them into a real house where they could all have their own rooms.
She stopped at the door to her bedroom and found it closed, as it should have been. When you share a small space with three children, you value all the privacy you can get. But the door to the kids’ room was also closed, and that was never the case. One or the other of them was continually running in and out of that room.
So this is where they’re hiding, she thought. She grabbed the door handle, intending to rush into the room growling to play into their little game. But when she tried the handle, it wouldn’t turn—the door was locked. When she’d first moved in she had thought it strange that all of the bedrooms had doorknobs that allowed the door to be locked from the inside. But it had been explained to her that because the house had been a rental property, that some of the renters had installed locking knobs on their rooms for privacy. She’d meant to put regular bedroom doorknobs on at least the children’s room, but when was there time for things like that? And, she’d never imagined a scenario where the children would lock her out.
“Come on. It’s not nice to lock the door on Mommy,” she said, teasingly at first, and then she began to get a bad feeling.
“Jenny. Open the door, honey. You’re scaring Mommy.”
There was no response, and she started to panic, but then remembered that the door lock could be defeated by inserting a slender pushpin in a hole on the outside of the knob. She rummaged in her purse and found a paper clip. She straightened one end and plunged it into the hole in the center knob and heard the inside button pop open.
Anxious, and a little scared, she pushed the door open.
Susan Summers was a vision of beauty with her tanned and fit body and long, strawberry-blond hair as she walked from her car to the side door of the Indiana State Parole building.
“I could eat her up,” Eddie said, and grinned at his brother. But Bobby was looking pale and nervous. “What’s the matter, bro?” Eddie asked. “No one’s going to see us here.” Bobby didn’t answer. He didn’t seem himself lately. He hardly spoke, and when he did it was negative.
“You worried they got warrants out on us?” Eddie asked. They had violated parole many times before, and Eddie had missed the last four or five appointments with them. But Bobby was acting funny, and if Eddie didn’t know that Bobby was incapable of fear he would swear his brother was scared.
“What the fuck, Bobby? So we get busted sittin’ out here. They don’t have nothing, so we go in front of a judge for violatin’ parole, get a slap on the wrist, and back out the fuckin’ door.”
Instead of speaking, Bobby pointed to the Mother Goose book. Eddie reached in the glove box and pulled out the only thing left from his childhood, a tattered copy of Mother Goose Rhymes. This was the same book Bobby had read to him when they were kids. He opened it to the page his brother had marked and read the passage out loud:
“Little Nancy Etticoat,
In a white petticoat,
And a red nose;
The longer she stands,
The shorter she grows.”
This was one of his favorite riddles. It had been a game he and Bobby had played when he was little, and Eddie was always good at guessing the answers. The answer to this one was “a candle.” Nancy Etticoat was a tall white candle, and the red nose was the flame. The longer the candle burns, the shorter the candle gets. This would be the next riddle, because the candle was burning for Murphy, and time was running out. Too bad Murphy’s too stupid to figure it out, he thought.
Murphy was supposed to have caught on when they killed the kid along the river by Murphy’s cabin, but Murphy hadn’t reacted like they thought he would. Eddie had watched from a distance as Murphy and that big partner of his walked around the body, giving orders and looking all smug, with not one tear or look of anger or anything. Murphy hadn’t even seemed to notice that the kid was cut up just like Bobby had done to him a while back. Damn near cut Murphy’s head off, Eddie thought. Too bad Murphy didn’t die when Bobby cut him.
So it was Murphy’s fault that three more kids had died, Murphy’s fault he had to up the ante. If Murphy had paid attention to the notes, maybe they wouldn’t have killed
the kids. But he had to admit, “The Old Woman Who Lived in a Shoe” was the perfect rhyme for the three brats he’d killed that late afternoon. She had so many kids she didn’t know what to do, Eddie thought. Well, I knew what to do. Now she won’t have to worry no more.
In a way, Eddie was sorry the mother wasn’t home when they’d done the kids. His own mother had run off and left him and Bobby when he was too little to know what was going on. Everything the preacher had done to him and Bobby was her fault. Yeah, he would have done the mom with the kids if she’d been home. But, what the hell, maybe they’d be back for her later. Right now he had things to do. Someone else was about to have a very bad day. Too bad it wouldn’t be Susan Summers. She would have to wait.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
So many children
There will be more
The words were scrawled on the wall over one of the twin beds; the blood, still wet, was an obscene mockery of the innocent lives it had been taken from.
“What does it mean?” Jack asked in a whisper, not really expecting an answer.
The two detectives stood just inside the doorway of what would have been a typical kid’s bedroom, with brightly colored clothing, tattered jeans, and scuffed tennis shoes scattered around the floor along with a mishmash of comic books, schoolbooks, and toys. But this room had been transformed by sprays of dark blood clinging to the walls, the curtains, the well-worn carpet, and what they saw was right out of a horror movie.
There were two twin beds in the little room. Jack guessed that one bed belonged to the little girl and the other was shared by the boys. The three little bodies lay side by side on one bed, posed in death by the killer, as if they were laid out for a wake. Little arms were crossed over unmoving chests, skinny legs straightened with toes pointed skyward, and each head brutally removed. The heads had been carefully arranged on one pillow at the foot of the bed, the faces wiped clean of blood so that the expression of fear and pain was clearly visible in their features. A blanket had been pulled up over the bodies when the mother had found them, and according to the crime scene guys, she had pulled this off in her panic. It lay on the floor beside the bed now, waiting to be methodically documented, photographed, and collected.
