The Collie Murders: A Serial Killer Crime Thriller

by Jared Paul

He said, “Early this morning, the superintendent of this apartment complex decided to pay a visit to one of his tenants since the tenant was a week past due on her rent. He noticed a smell coming out of the apartment, and curious, he opened the door. He not only discovered why his tenant was late on the rent, but that she’d had a girlfriend with her to keep her company as they both decomposed.”

  Louis looked away from Jon before he continued, “As we were processing the scene, waiting on the coroner to arrive, we were kindly removed by some dingle berries from Hadley City who told us that the case was now theirs. All I can guess is that someone called them in, most likely that ass mayor of ours.”

  Jon frowned. There was something Louis was gliding over. He could understand that the discovery of three murdered women in a small town might be big enough news that the Mayor’s panties might get bunched so much he’d call in help, but that wasn’t what had caused the excited near panicked tone in Louis’ voice. Jon asked, “What aren’t you telling me?”

  Again, Louis glanced at Cory, possibly to make sure she was listening, and then he directed his eyes to Jon. He replied, his voice hollow, “Man, your brother’s been arrested as a suspect.”

  ********

  In Louis’ cruiser, headed toward the station, Jon’s anger could barely remain contained within the cab of the vehicle.

  “What the hell do they mean by arresting him?” Jon said as he slammed his hand down on the steering wheel.

  Louis sighed as he looked out of the window of the cruiser and watched as Collie flew by in a rush of election posts and hand-painted advertisements.

  Louis answered, “They found out that Travis had a previous relationship with at least two of the victims. They arrested him because he’s the only connection there seems to be between them, since none of those women seemed to have known each other. The third victim is unidentified.”

  Jon growled a foul expletive underneath his breath. “I told him that dogging around was going to get him into trouble, that idiot. Were they all strangled?”

  Louis shook his head. “The two women in the apartment had been shot point blank in the chest. There wasn’t a sign of forced entry, no sign of a struggle insideit was as if those ladies hopped in front of the gun and asked to be done in.”

  “How long before the good ole’ boys showed up?”

  Louis shrugged. “We were at the crime scene a good while. The coroner had just arrived and was getting his mitts dirty when they waved their city badges and told us to get lost. I have no idea how they knew that the girl from Pete’s was connected, since even we didn’t know, but they asked a few questions, frowned a little bit and then carted Travis off to the station.” Louis clucked his tongue against the roof of his mouth, a sound that meant he was irritated, and he added, “If Travis did this, then I’m my own Aunt Fanny.”

  Jon had pulled into the station and was out of the car before he thought to remark on Louis’ comment. The station had marked cars from the bigger city to the north taking and they took up the prime parking spaces. Even as he neared the door, he could see the figures of about five men in uniform meandering all through what appeared to be the remains of the deputy’s work desks and files. They’d torn the place upside down.

  As the front door to the station closed behind him, Jon demanded, “Who the hell is running this circus?”

  The nearest cop turned slowly in his direction, his crisp suit crinkling as his eyes took in what probably appeared to him to be a civilian, and he said, “Who the hell are you?”

  Jon scoffed and stepped forward to make room for Louis who was just making his way inside. He replied, “I’m Sheriff Jonathan Harper, this is my station. I want an explanation and quick like.”

  A man moved from around the edge of the hallway leading to the two interrogation rooms they possessed, and judging by his official pickled-rear way of walking, Jon knew he was the chief among the Indians. He was tall, though perhaps an inch shy of him, bronzed from too many days in the sun, and his deep brown eyes whispered intelligence.

  “It’s about time you showed, Sheriff. I was just about to send out an APB for you, perhaps with the thought that you might have helped your brother kill off his conquests. Do you think it might be wise to arrest you, too?”

  Jon fought the reflex to grab the man and choke the life from him. For one thing, it wouldn’t have satisfied him, and for two, there were more of them than there were of him. He said, his teeth together so he was almost hissing, “Your asinine reasoning aside, what evidence do you have to arrest anyone?”

  The man moved to stand in front of Jon and he extended his hand. “My name is Sheriff Martin Pence. I can understand your anger, particularly when our suspect happens to be your brother, however you ought to cool down some before your temper leads you to make some bad decisions.” Sheriff Pence smiled. “Maybe you’d like to ask your deputy some questions? I have a mind that he might talk to you.”

  As he was led into the interrogation room where they had Travis handcuffed to a chair, he’d fought hard against the inclination to lose his control. When this was over, he was going to need a series of stiff drinks from his trusty flask.

  Travis looked as if he’d been pulled through a car wash by the hairs in his nose. Since the last time he’d seen him, Jon thought his brother had undergone a disturbing transformation. It really was true about what they say of wild animals getting locked inside of cages. No longer than it had been Travis looked as if he’d given up all hope.

  “Hi there, bro.” Travis said as Jon took a seat across from him.

  “Hey yourself.” Jon replied as he leaned in forward on his elbows against the table that was set between him and Travis. He added, “Heard you had a rough morning.”

  Travis smirked. “Nothing I can’t handle.”

  “You going to be okay?”

  Travis looked at Jon square in the eyes as he replied, “You betcha. But, do me a favor?”

  Jon smiled. It might not be apparent to those who were watching the exchange going on, but a world of information was had passed between them. A brother knew how to talk to his sibling without saying much of anything. Travis was telling him he was innocent, that there was still a job to be done and that he was going to have to do it underneath the noses of these suited braying jackasses.

  Jon nodded. “Sure, what’s on your mind?”

  “Punch that Pence guy in the face first chance you get.”

  ********

  Cory wasn’t happy that Jon had decided to leave his truck in front of her apartment, but she didn’t have the time to dwell on it. When she arrived at work, she came to a very frayed-looking intern and the devil himself for a boss. The bodies had been in the lab since the morning, waiting on God knew what to be processed, and as soon as Dr. Willis saw her, he set into gnawing on her posterior.

  “Do you think that in your job description it states that you are entitled to show into work whenever you wish to arrive?”

  Willis’ face was the color of a plum, his tiny round head and beady eyes appeared as if they were about to pop like zits out of his skull. He continued, “If I didn’t need your hands right now, I’d have you fired and barred from ever working as an M.E again. You have a lot of nerve, what with me tolerating you working here to begin with, and with you being a woman to boot. What about the world worries you besides saving for high heels and lipstick?”

  Cory shook her head, but kept quiet. She could see that Drew had taken most of the verbal beating as it showed in her eyes and in the redness that rimmed them. Cory took a deep breath, straightened her clothing, and said, “Sir, if you would allow me, I’d like to examine the bodies with you. I was told that they were in advanced stages of decomposition. I don’t think we should wait much longer, do you?”

  “I will be heading up the examinations to make sure you don‘t go messing anything up like you‘re bound to do and you will be assisting. If you so much as look off into space during the exams, I’ll fire your pretty little rump on t
he spot.”

  Cory followed Willis into the lab, struck first by the smell that had filled the entire room. The smell coming from a human body that had had a week long to decompose had a kind of rank odor that could have wafted out of Hell itself. The hitch to her stomach, the moderate tilt-a-whirl that seemed to slosh her insides back and forth had her gagging like she was fresh out of med school.

  “You going to be okay, or do I need to send in for your hopeless intern to take over?”

  Cory glared at Willis behind his back. The man was a monster, the kind of creature outdated by more modern standards of thinking. She could bet that in his day, it would have been a crime to consider a woman an equal. She hadn’t realized before now how much she’d grown to hate the man.

  She watched as Willis began to examine the first body, a woman by the name of Heather. Cory had known Heather; she’d lived only five apartments down from hers. Friendly enough, Heather had a son who lived with her mother because Heather had had some trouble with drugs after her boy was born. The woman had been living in the apartment on her own under a clean-living program and had been scheduled for a custody hearing next month. Whenever Heather had talked about the hearing, her face had lit up like it was the night before Christmas.

  Now, Heather was a bloated, barely recognizable mass of a human being, the subcutaneous fatty tissue oozing out of places on her body where the decomposing gases had torn the skin open were yellow and reminded Cory of honey. The wound in her chest was the obvious cause of death, a star-shaped brand marking where a gun had been fired point blank at her. The bullet probably shredded its way through the chest and then lodged somewhere within the body. It wasn’t a nice, or pretty way to die, but at least it had been quick.

  Dr. Willis took his frail looking arms and lifted Heather so that she would then roll over onto what appeared to be her side. Cory moved in closer, interested against her better judgment, to see if there would be that strange little hole in her shoulder. She couldn’t imagine that it would be there, since the victim found in the parking lot had been strangled and Heather had been shot. If there was a serial killer running on the loose, they would stick to one method of killing and only one method. Right?

  Cory had to blink as her eyes took in the splotchy colors of the skin of Heather’s back. She’d been found lying against the far wall of her apartment facing the door, her eyes wide open looking to greet anyone who ventured in. The way she’d sat had formed the discoloration on the bottom side of her showed where the blood in her body had settled. It would prove that Heather hadn’t been moved after she’d been shot, that someone had gone into her apartment and murdered her.

  “What is that indentation there? Dr. Lance, come shine a light where my finger is resting.”

  There on Heather’s back, obscured by bloated tissue, was a small circular hole with smooth, surgical edges. Cory could tell what it was even before she found a pen light to do as Dr. Willis had commanded.

  “Hold it still, woman.”

  Cory hadn’t realized that her hand was shaking or that the bottom of her stomach had given way so that her insides now resided on the tiled floor. The room itself was spinning, warning her that something significant was about to happen. As she thought this, Willis pulled out a small pill-like plastic object from the hole in which she’d illuminated for him.

  Willis pulled his tape recorder, pressed the record button and began speaking, “Small cylindrical foreign object located in the upper deltoid muscle of the right shoulder. Possible projectile.” He then pressed stop on the recorder and dropped the plastic object into a sample bag.

  “Take this and see if you can scrape off a slide for me. I want to know what that is made of and what it might be or have belonged to.”

  Cory took the bag from him, not bothering to tell him that she already had a good idea of what it was and moved off to the slide table. Instead of picking out a magnifying glass of a slicer, she removed the little object from its bag and pulled it apart. As before, there was a message inside. As she read it, her breathing began to speed up.

  Number two, coming for you.

  CHAPTER 6

  ………………………………..

  Jon drummed his fingers on the steering wheel of his brother’s cruiser. The atmosphere inside of the station was too heavy. He’d wandered out to the cruiser to keep from going on a killing spree to murder duck tarts. Louis was sitting next to him, keeping his eyes directed out at the parking lot.

  “What do you want to do?”

  Louis’ voice had calmed down somewhat, but Jon could tell that the man, despite his predilections with women, was a fierce friend and a good man. Louis had been partnered with Travis since they’d both joined up two years ago and Louis was more like an adopted brother than a friend to either Travis or Jon. It was too bad Louis’ last name was Kale instead of Harper.

  “I don’t know. I’m just drawing up blanks wherever this is concerned. Where do we look when there’s nothing to point us in the direction we need to go?”

  The feel of the ribbed padding of the steering wheel as he squeezed it in his hands made him feel frustrated. Louis had made a good point, a point that he’d already put to himself a hundred times. Jon replied, “There is a lead at the hardware store across the street from the grocery store. I think it’s safe to assume that all three of these murders are related.”

  “How do you figure that?”

  Jon scoffed. “Louis, this is Collie. When was the last time someone was killed in this town?” Jon saw Louis shrugging and he added, “Precisely.”

  A hand slapped itself against the glass of the driver’s side window. It was slender and manicured, the nails colored a cute pink. Just as Jon registered the hand, it lifted and slapped again.

  Instead of saying anything through the closed window, since at least for today, nothing was going to be that surprising, Jon pressed the button on the door rest to slide the glass into the door. Jon could see the body of a girl, a rather beautiful girl peering down at him with tear-blazed determined amber brown eyes.

  “May I help you?” Jon was nothing if not curious.

  “Sheriff Harper?”

  Jon stuck his elbow on his door and lifted an eyebrow. “The one and only. What do you want?”

  “My name is Abigail Bradley and I believe you have my boyfriend in custody.”

  Jon sighed. This was just not his day. He couldn’t remember all the times he’d had to turn girls down because Travis hadn’t liked to hurt the feelings of women. He’d probably told the girl he was going to see her when he was off duty and she was irritated that he was being held up. The girl looked the part of the stressed-out mall rat whose whole life probably revolved around which of her shoes matched with which purse.

  “Look doll, I’m sure he rocked your world, but”

  “Excuse me?”

  Jon felt a hand on his left shoulder and then he was being pushed back into his seat so that Louis could lean around him and get a look at the girl at the window. He grinned when their eyes met.

  “You the girl he’s been telling me about, the one who’s got him on the hook for good?” Louis waited for the girl to nod, and then he directed his eyes to Jon.

  “I think you might want to listen to her. She’s Mayor Bradley’s daughter.”

  Jon waved his hand at the woman to back away from his window, gave a glance at Louis and then hoisted himself out of the cruiser. Just what had been going on underneath his nose was anyone’s guess. He never would have expected that Travis would keep a girl longer than an eveninghis version of a relationship was allergic to the sunrise.

  Jon sighed as he let his body rest against the cruiser. “All right, spill.”

  Abigail huffed, as if she were preparing for an Olympic foot stamping event for spoiled brats, and she said, “He couldn’t have killed anyone because he spends all his off duty time with me and he hasn’t been with another girl except for me for the last three months.”

  Jon felt his
brows lifting off his eyes in surprise. Three months? Jon frowned. “If he’s been dating you for that long, then how is it that this is the first time I’m meeting you?”

  Louis answered Jon’s question as he walked from around the other side of the car, “Because of who her daddy is, right Abby? I bet he’d have a heart attack knowing who his little girl is running around town with.” He glanced at Jon, “No offense, buddy.”

  Jon shrugged, “None taken.”

  “My father makes dating anyone difficult, so what? I didn’t want to make trouble for Travis. As it is, you got more on your hands than you realize. My father wants this stuff hushed out and dealt with quick because of the elections coming up. He doesn’t want the people to think he’s not able to keep them safe.”

  Jon put a hand to the bridge of his nose. Abigail’s words made a lot more sense than he wanted them to. He knew the Mayor, knew the type of man he was. Marshal Bradley would step on his grandmother if she was in the way of what he wanted. It also made sense why the Hadley boys were keeping roost inside of his station. Hadley was close, it was a bigger city and it held auxiliary force for the town of Collie if any major event happened and they needed the extra men. On any day of the week, Jon knew he had about five men at his disposal, more if he tapped the trainees. However, Hadley had a regular force of about thirty.