Before He Harms

by Blake Pierce

  “I want you and this new girl to come with me to the station.”

  “No, we can’t. If—”

  “I’m not asking, Amy. You can get in as my passengers or you can get in with handcuffs on, as my prisoners.”

  Amy didn’t even waste time arguing. Had she not been through so much trauma, Mackenzie would have described her behavior as pouting. She practically stormed to the nearest car—which happened to be Ellington’s—and got into the back. The other girl did the same. She still look baffled and was essentially doing whatever Amy did.

  When the girls were both in the back of Ellington’s car, Mackenzie and Ellington shared a look over the roof.

  “We good here?” he asked.

  “I think so. Amy still doesn’t feel safe, but…I don’t know.”

  “I can’t imagine what she’s been through, living in that place. Maybe she’ll never feel safe.”

  “Maybe not,” Mackenzie said. “For now, let’s get this guy to the station and see if we can find any other way to reassure her.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY TWO

  The suspect had chugged three cups of water in the past five minutes. He was too scared to string a sentence together, so Mackenzie and Ellington gave him some time. As the minutes passed, though, Mackenzie wasn’t sure if she would describe his emotional exterior as scared. She wasn’t sure what it was, exactly; he seemed to switch back and forth between uncertainty and a weird curiosity.

  “You ready to talk yet?” Mackenzie asked.

  “There’s nothing to say. I was out for a drive.”

  The man had not had any ID on him, but he’d told them his name was Bob Barton. Mackenzie thought it sounded a little too much like the alias of a Marvel superhero and assumed it was fake.

  “Out for a drive, with no ID,” Ellington said. “And just happened to pull into a closed gas station parking lot about a minute behind two young women.”

  “So you understand our suspicions, right?” Mackenzie asked.

  “I told you. I was just out for a drive. It was complete happenstance that I pulled into that gas station.”

  “Why did you?” Ellington asked.

  “I was getting tired. I was going to see if there was a drink machine there, maybe get a soda.”

  “But there was no wallet, no ID, no money on you,” Mackenzie pointed out. “So how were you going to pay for that soda?”

  When it was clear that Barton was not going to say anything, Mackenzie got to her feet. “Where do you live, Mr. Barton?”

  “I don’t have to tell you anything. Don’t I get to call a lawyer or something?”

  “Do you have one?” Mackenzie asked.

  “No. But I know my rights.”

  “Maybe you do,” Mackenzie said. “But you should also know that, at this very second, there is another man being held in an interrogation room just a few doors down from this one. We brought him in this morning, and we’re allowed to hold him for twenty-four hours. You’re going to get that same treatment and then we can talk about your rights. It’ll give you more time to figure out if you really want to lie to us. So I’ll ask you again…where do you live?”

  Barton only shook his head. “Can I have some more water?”

  Mackenzie responded by reaching out, taking the Styrofoam cup he had been drinking out of, and crumpling it. She tossed the broken remains on the table and left the room.

  Ellington followed her out into the hallway, closing the door behind him. “That was mature,” he said.

  “Don’t care. He’s not telling the truth.”

  “I’d agree with that. However, if he is from the Community and they’re all as loyal as we’re hearing, he may not crack at all. I think we might have more luck in trying to get answers from a recently escaped and somewhat scared young woman.”

  They both looked to the door directly beside Barton’s interrogation room and, without another word, walked to it. The two girls stood inside, looking through the two-way mirror that looked into Barton’s room. Barton wasn’t able to see them and apparently had no idea why the mirror was there. He wasn’t even looking in their direction.

  “We don’t know that he’s going to talk,” Mackenzie said.

  “He won’t,” Amy responded. “They’re loyal to a fault.”

  “We’re starting to understand that about the Community,” Mackenzie said. “But you women are the exception. You wanted out and risked everything to get out. So if there is something going on….something beyond the abuse and neglect that might help us figure out if this man is indeed the killer, we need your help.”

  Amy and the new girl gave one another a look. Mackenzie was relieved to see that there was hope in the new girl’s eyes. She had yet to give them a name, and Amy hadn’t told them what her new assumed name would be. For now, she and Ellington were referring to her as Jane Doe.

  Amy looked to the new girl. “Do you know him?”

  “Not personally, but he looks familiar, yes.”

  “A member of the Community?”

  “Yes.”

  “I know him, too,” Amy said. “His name is supposedly Bob Barton. He was married to Marjorie and Bethany.”

  “To both of them?” Mackenzie asked, amazed. She was not only amazed that those two young girls had been married to this man, clearly close to fifty, but that this bit of knowledge alone seemed to put the final nail in his coffin. There was now a clear link and a clear identification that he was indeed a member of the Community.

  “Want to know what’s really sick?” Amy said. “He’s also Marjorie’s uncle.”

  “Yeah, that’s sick, all right,” Ellington said.

  “I think it’s also pretty clear motive,” Mackenzie said. “The question remains, though…how did he know the two of you would be there tonight?”

  “I have no idea,” Amy said.

  She seemed to be calming down a bit now. Mackenzie supposed it was because this Jane Doe was safe and with the police. The fate that had come to the last few women who had attempted escape had been avoided.

  “I hate to go there,” Ellington said, “but we have to at least consider that your friend on the inside might also be a Community informant.”

  “That’s not possible,” Amy said. “I trust this woman with my life. She risks so much to try to help these girls get their freedom.”

  “You mean the freedom that Marjorie, Bethany, and Felicia are now enjoying?” Mackenzie asked. “Forgive me for being so blunt, but this woman’s track record for the last few days is pretty miserable.”

  “You’re not getting a name out of me,” Amy said.

  Mackenzie and Ellington looked at the Jane Doe and she shook her head. “I can’t. Amy’s right. This woman would not betray us. It has to be someone else…someone else who knows.”

  “And maybe,” Ellington said, looking back through the mirror, “we’re looking right at him.”

  Mackenzie looked at him, too. She glared at him with a bit too much malice, but the comment that came out of her mouth felt right. It felt true.

  “More than that,” she said. “It seems like we found our killer.”

  “That’s good for you,” Amy said. “But if he was indeed sent out to kill us tonight and he doesn’t make it back, the Community will know. And then they’ll start asking around, interrogating people. My insider is at risk and they will not rest until I’m killed. I know you found your killer and think you’ve won, but you haven’t. This will never end…”

  The next comment out of Mackenzie’s mouth felt just as real and true as the previous. Also, it felt pretty good to say it out loud.

  “Fuck the Community,” she said. “We’ve got the leader in custody and now we’ve got this bastard in custody. If I have to, I’ll bring the place down one creep at a time.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY THREE

  Shanda opened her bedroom door and looked out into the dark hallway. It was 3:17 in the morning and Amy still wasn’t back yet. She’d still been awake when Amy had left the house s
hortly after midnight. Amy had whispered through the bedroom door that she’d be back soon.

  But that was three hours ago and Amy was still not here. It wasn’t often that Shanda was left alone in the house—and never at night—so the fear that slowly started to creep into her was wholly unfamiliar. Sure, she had been scared before, but this was some new kind of fright. This was fright born of the darkness and the night, of not knowing what might be lurking in the shadows while she was at home alone.

  Her brain begged her to go back to her room, but the thought of being confined in there while no one else was in the house was suffocating. Slowly, she flipped on the light switch to the hallway. The light helped ease her fear a bit as she made her way into the kitchen. She poured herself some water from the tap and drank it slowly. She looked at the clock over the microwave, staring at the green digital numbers to make sure she had seen the ones in her room correctly.

  These read just two minutes ahead: 3:19.

  She was afraid Amy was dead. She knew better than to go ahead and accept this as fact until someone told her. And the fact that two FBI agents had been to the house twice in the last day or so allowed her to rest in the fact that someone would tell her if that was the case. She was also aware that a policeman had been stationed outside of the house for most of the day. So maybe Amy wasn’t dead, another victim of whoever was killing everyone.

  Maybe something else had happened. Maybe she was with the police or the FBI and things were actually going well.

  Maybe they would not have to hide anymore.

  As for Shanda, she’d been living with Amy for two months now. She’d arrived four days after her nineteenth birthday. She’d wanted to leave the Community earlier than that but had never been able to work up the nerve. The deciding factor was when Mr. Cole had come to her on the night before she was to be married. The man she would be marrying was thirty-eight years old and already had two wives. Just before she was to turn nineteen, he had also selected her. Mr. Cole had visited her the night before the ceremony, as he did all women before they were married. To make sure she was pure, he’d raped her. It was the first time she’d ever had sex.

  Shanda escaped the following night, after her new husband had his way with her for several hours. The last time, he’d made his other two wives watch. When she escaped, one of them watched her go and never made a sound. Shanda had waved at her, trying to get her to come with her toward the back section of fence all the way to the eastern corner, but she had only shaken her head.

  Shanda thought of that woman as she finished her water. That woman could have been free. But, as some of the other women of the Community had told her, you start to give up after a certain age. It becomes easy and almost routine to give up on yourself, to give up on any hope of a normal life.

  She supposed that’s why the majority of women who tried to escape were younger. The oldest who had attempted escape had been twenty-seven. She’d been caught trying to leave, though. To make an example of her, she was stripped naked and beaten with sticks in the middle of the Community. Afterward, any man, married or not, that wanted to spend intimate time with her was able to do so without repercussion for forty-eight hours.

  After that, women stopped escaping.

  Until lately, of course. During the last two weeks, there had been six who had escaped. And then, naturally, three months ago, Shanda had made her escape. She had essentially been living in the back bedroom of Amy’s house since then. She’d only come out to go to two doctor’s visits and for dinner a few times. Other than that, she mostly stayed in her room. That’s why the FBI agents had not seen her when they’d come by.

  Shanda looked to the landline phone on the kitchen wall. Amy had a cell phone but didn’t like to use it because it could be tracked and traced easily. The only phone they used in the house was the landline. Shanda stared at the phone, willing it to ring, hoping for some good news. She had stopped believing in God after seeing what the men of the Community had done to that twenty-seven-year-old who had not quite managed to escape. But standing there in the kitchen, she thought it might be easy to go crawling back to the religion she had been raised in—to pray that Amy might be all right. That she might come through the front door any minute now.

  Apparently, God had not turned His almighty back on her. Within a few minutes of casting a lazy prayer to whoever might be listening, she heard the doorknob rattle from the front of the house. It was a noise she’d heard numerous times before, as Amy’s house key often got stuck in the lock and needed to be jiggled to get the job done.

  Her heart leaped as she dashed for the front door. She was barely aware that she was chanting Amy’s name under her breath like a mantra. She wondered what girl would be with her. She dared to think it might be the woman who had watched her slip away three months before.

  Ready to pull Amy inside the house and wrap her arms around her, Shanda unlocked the door and swung it open. She let out Amy’s name but stopped short, unable to get the second syllable out.

  Amy was not standing at the door, anxious to come in.

  It was someone else, a face that honestly made no sense.

  “No…” Shanda said.

  Fear, hot and paralyzing, rushed through her body.

  The figure standing in the doorway shoved her through the door, sending Shanda stumbling backward. When she hit the floor, the figure came through the door, and though the face was familiar, the look of disgust and rage on it was not. The figure descended on her with something in their hand

  Shanda opened her mouth to scream but it never came out.

  CHAPTER TWENTY FOUR

  As the morning wore itself down toward four o’clock, Mackenzie was starting to understand that this case was becoming less about getting Marshall Cole and Bob Barton to come clean on all that they had done and more about getting Amy Campbell to share everything she knew. There was a very muddy line between the two. Finding the killer and convicting Cole were two very different things—one of which they had not even been sent to Fellsburg to do. Still, it was starting to look more and more like those things were very closely linked.

  Yes, for now Mackenzie thought it was a safe bet that Bob Barton was their killer. If he turned out to not be the man they were after, she’d be shocked. But still, even with Barton and Cole in custody—Cole for just a few more hours—the knowledge that there were women who were living in some deluded form of captivity just several miles away was infuriating.

  While Ellington sat in with Barton, trying to get him to speak, Mackenzie was sitting in one of the open offices within the Fellsburg PD with Amy. Jane Doe was currently using a cot in one of the holding cells to get some well-deserved sleep. Amy also looked tired, but she was wired on fear and adrenaline. Mackenzie assumed the poor young woman felt that she needed to be the lighthouse for these women, the sentinel that looked over everyone, and would not allow herself to rest.

  “Here’s where we currently stand,” Mackenzie said. “Cole is in custody, but only for a few more hours. We’ve got people at forensics currently running tests to ensure the black paint on his truck’s bumper is the same paint from Bethany’s car. Even if it comes back one hundred percent positive, it may not be enough to put him away. Besides that, when the state police went to take the truck away, it miraculously wasn’t there. That’s a little tidbit we just got about an hour ago. This will all ding his reputation for sure, and it will have people looking at the Community a little closer, but we can’t guarantee an arrest.

  “Then we have Bob Barton, the man that appeared to be coming to bludgeon you with a crowbar. Everything there lines up perfectly, but so far the local PD have not been able to find anything in the car to incriminate him. However, we have my testimony, of following him from the road that leads to the Community. Again, if no arrest can officially be made, there’s yet another ding against the Community.

  “In other words, all we need to bring this whole miserable place down is someone like you. Someone like you who has seen
what it’s like on the inside. If you can connect some dots to Barton, Marshall, and the abuse that takes place there—and if you can tie the recently murdered girls to it all—that would be it. We could raid the place, rescue the women, and get a positive ID on a killer. We just need you to step up. You were willing to put your neck on the line and rescue all of these women. Why not go this one extra step?”

  Amy’s eyes seemed to be wandering, as if trying to locate the right answer somewhere within the office. When she finally spoke, each word came out slowly. It was clear that she had thought about this herself in the past and was wanting to make sure she was not trying to talk herself into it.

  “It all sounds great. Yes. But what if, in the middle of all of that, someone like Cole finds out about the women who are planning to escape. He’ll kill them. And he’ll do it slowly. And no one at the Community will say anything to him or turn him in.”

  “Do you have a list of women who are actively wanting out?” Mackenzie asked.

  “No. I get them one by one from my person on the inside.”

  “And I assume you still won’t give me that name?”

  “Sorry…no.”

  “Can you get in touch with her and see if she would provide us with that list? Surely she has to know you’re involved with the law by now, right?”

  “Yeah. And she might just do that.”

  “If she did, Agent Ellington and I can go into the Community right away and take them out with us. Cole and his people can try to stop us but if he does, that would give us just cause to launch a raid on the place. And I’m assuming he would not want that.”

  “Are you sure this will work?”

  Before she could answer the question, there was a knock at the door. It opened a second later and Burke poked his head in. He did not look happy.

  “Just got word from forensics. The color of paint on Cole’s bumper and the car do appear to be the same. But there isn’t enough evidence from the bumper to make a conclusive connection. They think what they have is enough to maybe make a formal arrest and hold Cole for a while, but it won’t stand up in court.”