Rage: The Reckoning

by Christopher C. Page

  “You didn’t call my dad, did you?”

  “Heck no!” he laughed. “I think you would have kicked my butt. You were pretty insistent and since you don’t seem to be hurt too bad, I decided to give you a few hours to rest before you decided what to do next.”

  “Thanks,” Mark said, a tear running down his cheek.

  He felt the bed sink beneath him and his eyes snapped open, his host was sitting on the edge of the bed beside him looking at him with such a look of love and empathy that Mark finally lost control, exploding into a mix of sobs and snorts. Harrington reached out with a massive hand and patted his thigh.

  “That’s alright, son. You let it all out, I won’t tell anyone. That’s what friends are for, Mark, and I would never betray the trust of a friend.”

  Mark managed to get control of himself long enough to thank him. He had never felt the kind of appreciation that he had for Taylor and his dad, it almost made him wish he were part of their family rather than the disaster that was his own.

  “Thank-you so much,” he managed to say.

  “Do you know the people who did this to you?”

  Mark was hesitant to tell him. He could just imagine the repercussions that would befall him if he told the truth, but something told him Mr. Harrington, if anyone, would understand that.

  “I know who they are, but . . . ”

  Just then, Taylor appeared at the doorway of the room, when he saw Mark he suddenly became enraged.

  “What’s he doing here?” he demanded.

  “Somebody beat him up,” his dad replied, rising from the bed. “He had someone call here looking for you but you weren’t home.”

  Taylor pushed his way past his father and pulled Mark up by one of his arms, “Come on, get up.”

  A bolt of lightning shot through Mark’s torso and he grimaced against the pain. As he rose, the duvet slid off of him and Taylor’s eyes widened, “Where are his fucking clothes?”

  To this his father only shrugged. Taylor helped him to his feet and quickly wrapped him in the duvet and led him out of the room. Before he could thank Mr. Harrington again for his kindness, Taylor had whisked him off to his bedroom, slamming the door and locking it behind them.

  Twenty-six

  Disassembling the cement mixer turned out to be a fairly straightforward but time consuming task. Basically, the custom made machine was basically nothing more than a big iron egg with a hole in the top of it. The egg was made in two pieces, bolted together in the center by a couple hundred nuts and bolts. Once the nuts and bolts were removed, in theory, the bottom half would drop to the ground and with a little work, it could then be pulled away leaving the top half with the open end suspended by the stand. Nobody on site, not even the forty or so construction workers, had ever taken one apart before. The process was slow and tedious with long passages of time being wasted while men argued back and forth about the best way to proceed.

  It was two o’clock that afternoon before the bickering finally paid off and the weight of the concrete finally pulled the bottom half free from the top half, leaving a mass of concrete resembling half of a hard-boiled egg. Aside from the boot and the stump sticking out from the top, there was no sign that anything else was contained within.

  The same forensics team that had just wrapped up the reservoir crime scene returned to Ratcliff to work the construction site. John had been holding out some faint hope that they were still dealing with a hoax until a suspicious vehicle was found parked nearby. An old two door Oldsmobile from the 1970’s, painted flat black, was found hidden from sight in the woods not more than a few hundred yards from the cement mixer. A check of the registration raised a few eyebrows.

  Robert White, aged seventeen, was a resident of Ratcliff and had a few criminal charges on his record for theft and dealing marijuana. The theft charges were validated when they observed a bunch of stripped wire and freshly cut copper pipes sitting on the back seat of the car identical to a pile found near the mixer. The boy in question was still in high school, though his attendance was questionable, he was still technically a student and had no legitimate reason for being parked overnight on the site.

  John was suspending his judgement until they actually saw a body, but deep down he knew the truth; Robert White was in the cement mixer. What was more, the person who had put him in there was the one who’d killed Paul Dushku, it had to be.

  The construction foreman verified that it was virtually impossible to fall inside the mixer, even more impossible that any member of his crew would have gone home for the day with a fresh batch of cement left to harden. The only logical explanation was that someone had forced the victim to climb into the machine, or possibly even killed him first and then dropped the body in. Then the mixer was filled with water and ready-mix concrete and turned on. The machine was left to run until the engine that turned it had run out of gas.

  The foreman said the mixer would run for three hours on a full tank, after that, it wouldn’t have taken long for the mix to set.

  Workers normally arrived on the site at seven in the morning and nobody could remember the mixer running when they got there. If it took several hours for the concrete to harden after it was mixed, the likely time of death would have been around midnight.

  A helicopter arrived with more forensics people and, shortly after, a large caravan drove into Ratcliff comprised of a second black SUV, sixteen marked patrol cars and a fifty-foot long RV used as a Mobile Command Center. When they made the turn off of the highway, Sarah jogged out to greet them, giving them detailed instructions and showing them where she wanted them to park.

  John watched her from a distance for most of the day. She’d assigned him and his partner, along with half a dozen more local cops, to perform crowd control duties. She made the decision to close the construction site but refused to let any of the workers to leave until they’d all been interviewed. Smart woman. But John couldn’t help but wonder if she had any idea the size of the forces that were massing against her.

  Knowing how many male members of law enforcement felt about taking orders from a woman and knowing that Harrington, McLeary and the mayor had secretly tapped him to participate in the investigation, she had her work cut out for her. John knew all too well the pressure she must have been under and he could see it in her expression every time she answered her cell phone.

  Dust was flying in the wind as a crew of three worked on the concrete with jackhammers and hammers while a member of Cannon’s team recorded the process on digital video. It didn’t take long to confirm what they had known all along; they were looking at a second victim. The entire town was already talking and news helicopters were hovering overhead which meant that the broadcast vans would be arriving any moment.

  John felt his heart sink in his chest when McLeary drove onto the site with the mayor riding shotgun. He drove right through the police tape they’d strung and made a beeline for Cannon. Mayor Tate leapt from the passenger’s side and started gesturing maniacally at her and, judging from her body language, she was having a hard time restraining herself from beating him to death with her collapsible baton. A few seconds later McLeary appeared at the front of the SUV and waved John over.

  Let the games begin.

  Even over the sound of the jackhammers, John could still hear the mayor tearing a strip off of Cannon. He’d been on the receiving end of barn burning sessions like this more times than he could count. By her demeanor, John deduced that she mustn’t be a stranger to the scenario but wondered how she’d take the news when she learned that he and McLeary were about to butt their noses in.

  “I’m not sure where you got your information, sir,” John heard her say, “but it was the attorney general who assigned us to the investigation in the first place.”

  Tate looked as pleased as punch. Clearly, he had the upper hand this time and he knew it. “Well Missy,” he gloated, “you may want to check with someone in the loop, because your boss in Orillia just gave the green light for captai
n McLeary and officer Stevens to join your team for the duration.”

  “Bullshit,” she said, her normally icy exterior cracking slightly.

  The mayor hooked his thumbs into his belt, his smug grin visible from a mile away. “A lot of things can change in an hour, can’t they?”

  John reached the group and Cannon looked over at him as if she would have liked to hit him in the face with a two by four and who could blame her? Though he couldn’t say it out loud, he tried to convey his innocence in the situation through his expression. It was hard to tell if she got it or not, she was too busy wishing them all harm and it was hard (if not impossible) to hold it against her.

  “John,” McLeary said, clapping a hand on his shoulder. “Word just came down from Ottawa. You and I are going to assist Miss Cannon here in the investigation.”

  John’s eyes never left hers, “Well, anything we can do to help.”

  The mayor wasn’t done with her yet, walking over to John and McLeary, he faced her as if the three of them were allies in a battle where she’d been deemed the enemy. In John’s mind, nothing could have been farther from the truth.

  “She’s going to help you, John.” Tate grinned. “You’re the one who should have been running this thing in the first place.”

  “All due respect, Mr. Mayor,” John began, hoping McLeary would back him up. “I’ve been out of the game for almost a year now. Detective Cannon appears to be a top notch professional with all the tools necessary for this kind of investigation and any interference she receives from this department would only hurt this investigation and, in my opinion, won’t look to good come election time.”

  Tate looked at John as if he’d just slapped him across the face. Men like him never got their own hands dirty, they didn’t even know how to, instead they farmed out their dirty work and slept like babies at night.

  Turning to face McLeary, he said, “Can you control him?”

  McLeary shook his head apologetically, “Well sir, the man is kind of an artist. Artists don’t respond well to being backed into a corner.”

  “So what are you telling me, that you can’t control your own men?”

  McLeary did something John wasn’t sure he was capable of; he looked the mayor right in the eye and fucked his career.

  “Well Larry,” he began, “like the man said, it’s her investigation. Any help she needs will certainly be made available to her. Outside of that . . . ”

  McLeary didn’t finish the thought, didn’t really feel like he had to. Tate gave a final glance to each of them before retreating to the captain’s patrol car to sulk. Nobody spoke until he slammed the door shut, then Cannon said, “I appreciate what you just did.”

  “I didn’t do it for you,” McLeary informed her. “I did it for him.”

  It took John a second to realize that he was the one McLeary was referring to. Maybe it was his age, or the fact that he seemed resigned to retirement, whatever his motivation, Ralph McLeary had taken a stand for the first time in a long time. If Lawrence Tate were reelected, he’d just talked himself out of a job.

  “So, hotshot,” Cannon said, placing her fists on her slender hips. “You think you can help me out on this thing or what?”

  John almost laughed at the absurdity of the question. He had no more chance of avoiding the assignment than she did.

  “I’ve been in town for about a month,” John pointed out. “People are about as likely to talk to me as they are you. In my opinion, our best bet for getting people to talk is to have captain McLeary do the talking while you and I observe. Of course, if we’re going to help you, then you need to stop fucking us around and cut us into the loop, detective.”

  She appeared to think about it for a minute, John couldn’t imagine why as the only option left to her had been made perfectly clear. She nodded to both of them and pulled her notebook out of her jacket pocket and flipped it open.

  “Tell me about Randy Boyd. You can start by telling me . . . has he ever worn glasses?”

  Twenty-seven

  By the time John signed off duty for the night, he’d been on duty for just over fourteen hours. After the uniformed officers of the OPP had arrived from Orillia and took over the crime scene at the construction site, John had been instructed to drive to the motel where he and McLeary were made privy to the evidence that had been collected for the first time.

  He finally understood then why Cannon had been so secretive.

  Whoever had murdered Paul Dushku had extensive knowledge of how homicide detectives applied their trade. Few civilians realized just how much DNA they left behind them as they went about their lives. Skin fell off their bodies, saliva shot from their mouths, fingerprints painted everything they touched, hair fell from their heads, microscopic fibers fell from their clothing . . . yet, they had nothing. What this person had done was remarkable and could not be done by accident. It seemed as if nothing had been left to chance which was indicative not of a lust killing but a monster without a conscience.

  The wire used to tie the victim up to the fallen tree had been cut from a nearby fence with a simple pair of wire cutters, which were never found. He was burned with a highly concentrated form of sulfuric acid used for dozens of purposes and was of the most commonly purchased brand produced, crushing any hope that the sale could be traced. A pair of eye glasses found nearby was still being examined by experts in Orillia who were trying to trace their origin, but there was little hope that the person who had so meticulously carried out the attack would be as foolish as to leave them behind.

  John couldn’t help but think about how Mark had lost his and wondered if they were mistakenly thinking they had been left behind by Dushku’s killer. John kept that particular detail to himself. With all the calls flooding into the tip lines, there was no need to further muddy the waters by involving his son in the investigation. But still, it was one hell of a coincidence.

  But the coup de gras had come when she’d finally confessed her actual reason for returning to the high school that morning, Randy Boyd.

  There was that name again.

  Boyd, the nephew of the man who John had arrested within hours of starting his first shift, that was one hell of a coincidence too. Only this time, the information was actually useful. Cannon’s reason for wanting to interview the youngest of the Boyd clan was a bombshell; apparently, not only had he been beating on Mark, he also had a history of assaulting Paul Dushku every chance he got. Even more explosive, he’d been heard by numerous people calling the victim the very same name that had been carved into his chest. In fact, he was rumored to use that very slur against anyone and everyone he disliked.

  If that was a coincidence, then hurricane Katrina was a light rain shower and Jeffery Dahmer was a vegan.

  By four o’clock that afternoon, more than twenty vans bearing every conceivable four-letter station I.D. had descended on the town. Helicopters were whirling overhead and the entire town was a buzz. By the time the six o’clock news aired on television, it was doubtful that very many people in the province hadn’t heard about the serial killer operating in Ratcliff.

  At least, that’s what they were calling him.

  Though the experts with the FBI defined a serial killer as someone who kills three people on separate occasions with a cooling off period in between, John was inclined to agree with the press. Two murders, both brutal, separated by mere days without a single witness or notable piece of evidence left behind? That was practically historic. It was also the reason that the big brass in Orillia and the attorney general had finally decided to bring out the big guns. For Paul Dushku, they’d brought in five detectives and five forensics stooges. For Robert White, budding career criminal, they brought out a dozen forensic technicians, and sixteen manned patrol cars.

  And some people say there isn’t any justice in the world.

  The OPP had set up their mobile command center just outside the construction site where their latest victim had been discovered. The local motel was now filled
to almost twice its capacity with cops sleeping on a rotating basis. The ones on duty patrolled the town aimlessly, stopping only long enough to take on fuel and giving the vehicle’s pilot a chance to relieve themselves of the gallons of coffee per hour they were collectively consuming. The majority of their time was spent performing crowd control duties surrounding the media. Reporters had practically rushed the town hall, barraging anyone in the area with a litany of unanswerable questions. When the members of the town council attempted to flee the premises, news vans pursued them to their homes and continued their inquiries right up to their front doors.

  A press conference was called for ten o’clock and the Mayor summoned his appendages to stand by him while he delivered his hastily prepared diatribe, McLeary on his right, Foster Harrington on his left.

  For the first time in the town’s history, a curfew was put in place.

  There was no use in hiding it anymore; the town was in crisis. An evil predator had arrived in their little utopia and action had to be taken. Starting the very next night, exactly 24 hours from the time at which he was speaking, all residents were to clear the streets by 10 pm or risk detainment by members of law enforcement.

  Then, with a forced affect, he expressed his condolences to the parents of their latest victim. Of course, he felt it necessary to point out that the parents were in fact foster parents.

  He might as well have said; ‘It’s not like he was your real kid or anything’.

  John watched the scene unfold from his desktop computer at the station via the Internet. Many officers with whom he’d begun the day with him were still present, remaining on duty, assisting any way they could long after their shifts had ended. It wasn’t for the overtime, there wasn’t any budget for it. The majority of them would have worked until they collapsed on their faces, if there had been anything for them to do.

  The reports had been written; detailed accounts of which detectives they had been assigned to, where they went and who they talked to followed by a short de-briefing with McLeary. Three hours later, those who remained were gathered around a twenty-inch computer screen on Doug Green’s desk, watching the Mayor go down like the Titanic.