Free to Kill

by Julie Mellon

  Katie heard Patty and Sarah arguing late into the night, but she was too busy trying to figure out what her mother meant by no financial support.

  Patty came to Katie’s room early the next morning. It was Katie’s first lesson in finance. She knew math, but had never been taught about rent and electricity and water bills. Patty told her everything in a quick and hushed tone. She had even written out a list of all the common bills and gave Katie a lecture about debt and credit cards.

  With her head spinning, Katie began to pack her belongings. How was she going to survive? She didn’t have a dime and Patty said there were deposits that had to be paid before you could live somewhere. Patty had also explained about tuition. How had her tuition been paid for the past two years? She didn’t know, but she bet that her mother hadn’t been the one paying it.

  At ten o’clock, Patty knocked on her door and came in to help Katie bring her things out to the car. The two of them drove away from the ranch and toward Katie’s new future. “You are going back, right?” Katie asked, as they passed through the gate. The only time Katie had ever been past the gates was the one trip to the hospital to have her tonsils removed.

  “Of course, dear. Someone has to take care of Sarah. Don’t you worry. We will all be fine. Your mom will come around in time.” Patty gently patted Katie’s leg as she drove on.

  Patty spent three days in Phoenix with Katie. They got her a driver’s license, a checking account, an apartment near campus, and turned on all the utilities. When it came time for Patty to leave, Katie hugged her hard and tried not to cry. Patty gave her an envelope as she turned and left, smiling one more time and wishing Katie good luck. “You are going to be someone, Katie Freeman. Just hold your head high and learn as much as you can.”

  As Patty pulled away from the apartment, Katie opened the envelope. There was a check from Patty for $20,000. The simple note only said that her tuition was paid, and would always be paid. She instructed Katie to get a job, but not to work too much, as Patty didn’t want her grades to suffer. She promised to send Katie what she could and asked for Katie to always keep in touch.

  “Hey, Earth to Katie!” She snapped out of her thoughts as Michael gently tapped her shoulder. Everyone was looking at her. “I asked if you would like some peach cobbler,” Michael said with a small smile.

  “Sorry, I was lost in thought. Peach cobbler sounds amazing.” Katie smiled tentatively back at Michael and worked hard to stay in the present as the conversation returned to the Underground Railroad.

  Later that night, Katie wrote another letter home, this time including one for Patty.

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  Michael arrived to pick up Katie at seven o’clock on Monday morning. Today he was wearing a black suit with shades of orange and peach in his shirt and tie. Fighting the traffic, they arrived at headquarters shortly before eight. With Barbie safe and all leads to the abductor stalled, they had decided to spend the morning in the office catching up on their reports and looking over the autopsy findings. Katie was also interested in finding out what Lucy had discovered about David Williams.

  Sitting at the computer, Michael logged on to his email and pulled up the report from Dr. Bennett. After printing two copies, he handed one to Katie, who had just dashed off an email to Lucy asking about her progress. They read the autopsy report in silence for a few minutes. “Looks like Elaine died from suffocation, though exsanguination was a close second.” Katie muttered, removing her thumbnail from between her teeth. It was a bad habit she had tried to break from the time she was fourteen.

  “How can she have died from suffocation?” Michael asked.

  “Well, when the device is squeezed around a person, their ribs break and their spine dislocates. It causes massive pressure on the internal organs. Sometimes the ribs will puncture organs, especially the lungs. It looks like none of the ribs did that in the case of Elaine Henderson; however, as the injuries persisted, her body swelled causing further compression. She eventually was unable to breathe.” Katie’s recitation was said in an almost trancelike state, as if she could picture exactly what was happening. Michael regretted asking the question.

  A commotion in the hallway broke her concentration as several people rushed by the door. Getting up, Michael and Katie followed the procession down the hall. They got to the elevator just as the doors were closing on Jessie and SAC Nelson. Jessie had gone into labor and had a death grip on Nelson’s hand. Nelson looked as though he was going to pass out from the pain, which was amusing considering he wasn’t the one in labor. As the agents all cheered and sent well wishes through the closing doors, Katie just quietly backed away and went into the break room. Not long after, all the other agents gathered to begin talking about what was happening. It appeared that the two o’clock meeting was happening early today.

  Half an hour later, Katie and Michael gathered around the whiteboard in their office.

  “Ok, so we have Elaine Henderson abducted on Wednesday. A search that lasted over a week with nothing, no sign of her anywhere, until she’s deposited on her own front porch the following Saturday. Ten days later. This guy has to have someplace to keep the women for prolonged periods of time,” Katie mused.

  “Of course he does. He has an underground lair. Barbie said it had rock and dirt walls and a hard-packed floor. I wonder if he gagged them because they were near enough to be overheard, or if he just liked that they couldn’t scream while he tortured them?” What had started as a smart-ass reply ended with serious questions. Michael was still unsure how far he could push Katie with his humor, but he took every opportunity to find out.

  “I don’t know,” Katie said, “but let’s not get too far ahead.” Apparently she didn’t get his humor, or chose to ignore it. “So he returns Elaine Saturday morning and abducts Barbara Jones on Saturday afternoon. That’s a very quick turn around time for abductions. Either he had Barbie picked out before he returned Elaine, or he picked her because the opportunity presented itself. So this lair he has, it has to be secure enough that no one can escape, it has to be near enough that he can come and go without disrupting his routine, and it has to be far enough that even muffled screams aren’t heard. Does that about sum it up?” Katie asked.

  “Well, it also has to be easily accessible to him but difficult to find for other people. It would be hard to just build a room in your basement and bring women in and out. Neighbors would see something like that. But then, you don’t want it in a random place in the woods because hunters or kids might come across it. It has to be secure, not only for the woman trapped inside, but from people accidentally finding it from outside.”

  Both of them stood in thought for a few minutes. Finally Katie said, “Let’s move on to the torture. If he proceeds the same with all his victims, he starts by tying them to the posts in the cave and whipping them.” Katie disappeared into her trance again as she talked. “So he appears behind them, uses the whip on their backside. Then moves to the front and addresses their sins. When they protest, he proceeds to whip them from the front. Judging from the shape of Elaine’s body, he does this for days on end. She had evidence that the bruising had begun to heal, underneath fresh bruises.”

  Pausing to pick up the autopsy report, Katie studied something for a moment, once again worrying her thumbnail with her teeth. Michael didn’t interrupt. He was fascinated at watching how her brain processed information. He and Stan had just batted back and forth scenarios until one seemed right. Katie disappeared into her imagination to see if she could weave the scenario that fit the evidence.

  Finally, Katie resumed her story. “It says here that there was swelling around the Pear of Anguish. It appears that the muscles tore slowly. So he didn’t insert the Pear and immediately open it all the way. I would assume from this that he inserted it and continued the beatings. As the days went on and she didn’t confess or express remorse, he probably proceeded to open the Pear slowly, prolonging the agony.”

  “What makes you think that? Why co
uldn’t the Pear be the final act? Maybe she confessed and he used that as the final punishment for whatever sin she had committed.”

  “Well, the autopsy says that there is evidence of irritation to the lining of her nasal passages. This would fit with the method of torture. In medieval times, they used smelling salts to reawaken a victim. The smelling salts were crystallized ammonia. I would assume that this guy is using something similar. The salts are normally harmless, but if used repeatedly or for a prolonged amount of time, they cause irritation to the mucus lining of the nose, and sometimes even to the trachea. So he would have kept waking her if she passed out. I can only imagine the pain the Pear caused. By that point in the process, she probably passed out quite often.

  “Judging from Barbie’s abduction, he likes his victims conscious for the torture. When Barbie passed out and couldn’t be reawakened, he got rid of her. So with Elaine, he probably beat her until she passed out, brought her around and continued on. He had to release her at some point though, there isn’t evidence in her joints that she hung from the posts the entire time,” Katie explained.

  “What evidence would show if that were the case?” Michael knew this answer; he just wanted to hear Katie’s reasoning.

  “Her shoulders were not dislocated, nor were her wrists. There was evidence of struggle from the ligature marks, but if she had been forced to stay upright for the entire ten days, she would have slept sometime and probably passed out for prolonged periods of time. This would mean that her entire body weight would rest on her arms, dislocating something, either her shoulder or her wrists. Based on the lack of stretching or dislocation, I’m assuming that he took her down when he was finished with the torture for the time being and strapped her down elsewhere.”

  Michael nodded and they lapsed back into silence. He flipped through the autopsy file once more. “There isn’t any indication that she was raped or sodomized. That seems unusual.”

  Katie nodded. She liked that Michael threw things out there for them to puzzle through together. Her partner in Louisiana had ignored all her ideas until the case was solved. Then he liked to take credit for them. She didn’t sense that with Michael. “I think you’re right, that he didn’t sexually assault them. Though with no fibers found on the victim and the only dirt found being common Tennessee clay, it could be that he washed them down. I don’t get the feeling that he was in this for sexual gratification.”

  Katie looked up as if she had been struck by lightning, her eyes bugging out. “Holy cow, how could we not see this? She immediately went to the whiteboard and wrote ‘CONFESSION’ in front of the word ‘abducted’ on the timeline of each woman’s disappearance. Turning back to Michael she said, “Each woman gave her confession within hours of being abducted. That has to be connected somehow.”

  Michael thought that through for a few minutes. “I don’t see the priest as our guy here,” he said. He didn’t know why he thought that, just that Father Joe seemed like a gentle soul, exactly as Evelyn had described him. Not to mention that he couldn’t have gotten rid of Elaine in time to get to her sister and remain visible while the search happened.

  “You’re right. I don’t see the priest as responsible; he doesn’t seem strong enough. But what about David Williams? He works at the church and could easily overhear confessions. Perhaps he sees it as his responsibility to punish the offenders. I think we need to talk to Barbara Jones and see what she confessed.”

  As they both reached for their jackets to head out, Lucy popped her head in the door. “You guys heading out? Got a few minutes first?”

  Nodding and sitting back down, Michael and Katie looked at Lucy, waiting to see what she had to say. Lucy just dropped a file that had to be two inches thick onto the desk between them. Katie pulled it closer and looked inside. There were names and addresses listed inside. Actually, there was only one name: David Williams. Each had a different middle name or initial and a different address.

  Lucy smiled as she said, “There are thousands of David Williamses out there. I need more to go on to narrow this search down. I ran the tax records for Christ the King Church, but they didn’t issue a W-2 to anyone with that name. So if he is employed, it has to be on a volunteer basis. I will happily look more, but I need more information.” With that, Lucy turned and headed out of the office.

  Katie and Michael looked at each other, shaking their heads as they got up and headed for the door. Katie grabbed the file of people named David and took it with her.

  Nearly two hours later, after fighting traffic down Interstate 24, Michael pulled into the parking lot of the hospital. Checking with the front desk, they located the room Barbie had been moved to. They found her room overflowing with family as they all tried to talk over one another. It took a few minutes for the people to notice the two newcomers in the doorway, but when they did, a hush fell over everyone. The silence was deafening.

  Barbie looked up gratefully from her bed. She was exhausted and all the attention and activity was draining her further. Chuck wasn’t in the room. “Come in you two,” Barbie said. Looking at her family she said, “Can you all give me a few minutes? These are the FBI agents that are looking into my abduction. I’m sure they need to ask me a few questions.” Grumbling, Barbie’s family made their way out of the room.

  Once the room was clear, Katie closed the door behind everyone and she and Michael took seats beside the bed. “How are you feeling?” Michael asked.

  Barbie groaned and Michael jumped up thinking she was in pain. Katie laughed, causing Michael to glare at her. “Oh, stop looking at me like that. She isn’t in pain. She’s just tired of answering that question.” Turning to Barbie, the two women smiled at each other.

  Barbie said, “You are so right. If one more person asks me that I might borrow your gun so I can shoot them in the knee and ask them repeatedly how they feel. I really just want to get out of this bed and walk around a little bit, but they’re treating me like an invalid. Seriously, how am I supposed to get better if I’m stuck in this bed?”

  “How about we help you up and we can talk while we walk the hall?” Katie asked.

  The relieved look on Barbie’s face said it all. Katie helped her stand up and linked their arms together, as Barbie’s other hand gripped the IV pole to pull it along. With a robe wrapped around her shoulders, Barbie led the way out of the room. They walked one lap in silence before Barbie said, “Did you know I’m pregnant?” Her voice was so small it was almost non-existent.

  “Yes, we heard the doctor talking to Chuck yesterday,” Katie said. “I’m glad someone finally told you.”

  “I am having an ultrasound today to see if everything is okay. Maybe this baby will be a survivor too.” The wistful tone in her voice was heartbreaking and Katie sincerely hoped that everything would be all right. Barbie didn’t deserve any additional heartbreak.

  Wiping her tears, Barbie turned to Katie, “I’m sure that isn’t why you’re here. What can I help you with?”

  Glad to be back on solid ground, Katie asked, “May I ask about your confession to Father Joe the day you were abducted? I would like to know what you two talked about.”

  Barbie was surprised by the question. “Well, we didn’t really talk about anything. I mean I have petty sins, but nothing that would be earth shattering. I told him about the little white lies I tell my mom. But really, that woman would make a saint lie. Sometimes she just doesn’t get it to mind her own business. Let’s see, then we talked about me and Chuck wanting to have kids. I told him about our four babies dying and how we really just wanted a baby. Other than that we didn’t talk about anything else. Why?”

  Ignoring her questions, Katie asked, “What do you know about David, the handyman at the church?”

  “Oh, he is a sweetheart. He’s very quiet. I know he was in Afghanistan and that his family used to live around here. I think they were from Kingston Springs or something. Anyway, he talks one-on-one but isn’t very good around a lot of people. He says it makes him nerv
ous to be in a crowd. He lives at the motel up by the highway. Says the owner cuts him a deal. He provides security and his room is free of charge. I think it’s nice that our community still helps those less fortunate. You don’t think he did this, do you? I just don’t see it.”

  Katie smiled down at Barbie as they rounded the final corner on their third lap of the hallway. They found Chuck coming out of her room with a worried look on his face. The minute he saw her, his relief was palpable. “You had me worried, beautiful. You shouldn’t be up walking.” Chuck tried to pick her up, but Barbie put a hand on his chest.

  “If you want to walk out of here without a gunshot wound, I suggest you back off and let me walk to my room.” Chuck just smiled the biggest grin Katie had ever seen at the show of spunk from Barbie. He did back off and allow her to walk the rest of the way, though he replaced Katie as the anchor on the left side.

  Katie and Michael stayed a few minutes longer, but left when the technician showed up to take Barbie for her ultrasound.

  As they were leaving the hospital, Katie’s stomach grumbled. Michael looked over and smiled. He drove them back to the drive thru and ordered the same meal they had the day before. Katie knew she would have to put a stop to this, but it could wait until after this meal.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  After their late lunch, Katie and Michael returned to the church to see if David had shown up for work. They both looked forward to sizing him up. It seemed that their case hinged on this one guy. Katie didn’t know why she felt this way, but David Williams was either responsible for both abductions and Elaine’s murder or he knew something that could help direct their search. The sooner they talked to him, the sooner they could move forward.