The Collie Murders: A Serial Killer Crime Thriller

by Jared Paul

  ********

  “That was fun.”

  Travis glanced at his best friend and saw him roll his eyes. Louis Kale was the last person on earth who would have gone to a wedding just to support the bride and groom. As proof of the sentiment, Travis had to suppress a grin as Louis’ eyes made a beeline for the bridesmaids.

  “Would you look at them, all grouped together like antelope waiting for a lion to come along and get em’.”

  “If you get slapped at my brother’s wedding, I get to drive the cruiser for the next month. Fair?”

  Louis dragged his eyes away from the women he was staring at like a starving man would stare at freshly grilled steak, and he waggled his eyebrows at Travis.

  “You should see the master at work, my friend. You think I’ll get slapped only cause’ you’re out of practice.”

  Louis’ face scrunched in one of his flashes where he could go from lecher to serious friend in zero to sixty.

  “Where’s your woman? Abby should have been here at least an hour ago.”

  Travis shrugged. “She isn’t here because she chose not to come.”

  There it was, in the simplest terms. It was either she made the decision, or her father made it for her.

  Louis placed a hand on Travis’ shoulder, forgetting about his intentions with the gaggle of bridesmaids for the moment.

  “Man, you ought to give that old man of hers the what for. You are both adults, this sneaking around is ridiculous.”

  Louis’s words hit Travis where it hurt and he shirked his friend’s hand and moved away from him, through the throng of well-wishers, past his brother and Cory and out to the parking lot where not a soul was standing. The situation with Abigail was annoying, and he had to admit that much. In the beginning, his relationship with Abby Bradley had been exciting, taboo. The thrill of knowing who she was and that she was his had been enoughthe notch of all notches to add to his belt. When he’d been taken in as a suspect for murder, it had been one of the lowest points of his life, not because he was guilty but because he’d been embarrassed when the number of women he’d been with had been a topic of discussion for the entire town. Abigail had run through that gossiping gaggle head first, disregarded what it might mean if she put their relationship out in the open, and tried to give him an alibi. Even if it hadn’t worked, he’d had a while to think of the stones it had taken Abby to waltz into the police station and demand he be released because he was hers. The action changed the course of their relationship, and bumped Abigail from conquest trophy to girlfrienda word he’d thought didn’t exist in his vocabulary.

  Travis kicked an empty soda can out of his way and stuck his hand in his pockets to find his car keys. Jon would have to forgive him for cutting out of his wedding early, but he’d had all of the lovey doveyness he could handle for one day. He made it to his car, got inside and reached for the ignition. He considered pulling out his cell phone and giving Abby a ring, but Louis’ words echoed back to him and he decided against it. He never thought he’d credit Louis for having good relationship advice, but the man was right. It was ridiculous to sneak in the dark like a couple of mice. If Abby wanted to continue seeing him, she’d have to make some decisions, the first of which would be to decide to give her old man the finger and tell him that she was a grown woman who could live her own life and choose for herself who she wanted at her side.

  ********

  Abigail Bradley stared at the dress that she would have worn to the Harper wedding as if it was going to lift off of her bed and attack her. She had only just taken the thing off, finally giving in to the solid fact that she wasn’t going anywhere anytime soon. Her father had seen to it.

  Earlier, she had gone down to her car, dressed to cease heartbeats with a single look, and as she’d gone to start her car, the engine wouldn’t turn over. Someone had taken the battery out of her car while she had been dressing, she was certain of it. Not deterred, she’d pulled out her cell phone and attempted to dial out for a taxi. The cab drivers were a bunch of good old boys that made a living using their vehicles to cart around the citizens of Collie, and they were decent on their charges. Twenty bucks and some sweet talking would have gotten her to the wedding on time, though when she had Charlie Callahan on the phone, he’d told her all the cars were out with passengers. If she had been born the day before, Abby might have believed Charlie, but it was likely that her father had covered all his bases and called the service ahead of time and told them not to accept a call from her.

  The last thing that Abby thought of, and she might have done it if she wouldn’t have thought it would turn her into a horrible person, was that of calling Travis and having him come pick her up. The only reason she didn’t was because Travis had been his brother’s best man, and if he had to leave to get her, the whole wedding would have been held up on her account.

  Abby sat on the edge of her bed and with a swish of her hand, she shuffled the dress off of her comforter and watched it flutter to the floor. It had been the perfect choiceit was flattering enough to have kept Travis’ attention on her, but not so over the top that it would have taken eyes away from Cory when she came out in her dress. She smiled. That dress of Cory’s would be the talk of Collie for years to come; it was the kind of wedding gown that you had to go five towns over to a specialty boutique to find and when you found it, you had to donate an organ or two to afford it.

  She took a second to lean backwards on the plush softness of her bed, just enough to reach her cell phone from the place she‘s tossed it as she came in. She was certain that the wedding was over with, that Travis was on his way home or there already, and still there wasn’t so much as a text message from him. It made her wonder if this was the last time she would be forced to stand him up and be able to apologize to him later for it.

  CHAPTER 11

  ………………………………..

  Travis sat behind the steering wheel of his police cruiser, waiting patiently for Louis to come out of the convenience store they were parked at. Given the fact that he was driving, he knew Louis hadn’t been that graceful at the wedding after he’d left it. They’d had a good chuckle about it, and even Louis admitted that once Cory had thrown herself into the fray of perturbed bridesmaids, that the whole ceremony had become something of a legend in Collie shindigs.

  As usual, when he was left alone, his thoughts roamed back to Abby, about what she was doing at this precise moment, what emotions might be displayed on her face, and as usual he forced himself to think about something else. If she’d cared, if he was important, she would have called him by now. The fact that he felt like a girl hemming and hawing and chewing over whether or not the phone would ring made him want to rip the steering wheel right out of the cruiser’s console.

  The passenger’s door opened and closed as Louis got into the cab. His arms were full of junk food, and Travis wondered how in the world the man looked as he did and put all that crap into his body. Junk food was the enemy of Lady Killers.

  “What? Growing boy’s gotta eat.” Louis grinned as he pulled a wrapper halfway off of a Mars bar. As Travis watched, Louis opened his mouth and bit off a chunk.

  Travis shook his head and lifted his hand to turn the ignition so that they could get to their rounds when a woman came running out of the convenience store, her arms waving wildly. Her face was contorted in alarm, and even before Travis could make out what the woman was shouting, his door was opening and he was getting out intercepting her.

  “Mrs. Lawson collapsed in the store! She just fell right on over! Help her!”

  Travis had kept his door open, and he glanced at Louis who had shoved his bounty to the floor of the cab and was on the radio calling an ambulance before the woman was even five feet away from them.

  It was understandable that the woman was running to them for help; a lot of the local stores didn’t have their own landlines.

  Travis nodded at Louis, who handed him a thumbs up as he put their station’s dispatch on
the job of arranging for the paramedics, and as he bridged the gap between himself and the woman, he walked straight past her and made his way to her store to help the woman who was in trouble.

  Mrs. Lawson lay on the floor of the store, her body quite still, her breathing very slow. If he hadn’t waited for her chest to rise, Travis would have been concerned that the woman had stopped breathing. He knelt to her and placed a hand to her neck to check her pulse. The rhythm of her heart was sketchy, and not very experienced with first-aid, even he could tell that the woman’s heart was in some serious trouble.

  Gently, and because he figured it would help the paramedics when they arrived, Travis eased Mrs. Lawson on her back, watching her face to see if he was causing her pain. He knew the woman; even though she must now be nearing her early seventies.

  Mrs. Lawson had been his third grade teacher once upon a time ago. She was kind and wise, and even as her chest struggled to rise, Travis knew he didn’t want to be the one person at her side when she died.

  For the first time since he’d seen Mrs. Lawson on the floor, he noticed the perspiration dotting her forehead. Curious, Travis placed the back of his hand to her clammy skin and noticed that she felt warm as if she were a child who’s fever had just broken. Was she sick?

  Travis was frowning when Louis came into the store with the paramedics, and as they carted their gear and began to swarm the kindly old lady, Travis had seconds to move before he would have been shoved out of the way. He watched as the nearest paramedic, Carl something-or-other-from-high-school, put a blood pressure cuff on Mrs. Lawson’s arm. Carl waited for the cuff to pressurize and then he eased it, gauging how Mrs. Lawson’s ticker was fairing, and when he got his answer, Carl’s face turned serious. He pressed a couple of fingers to the woman’s neck and then to the radial in her wrist. A shared look with his partner, whose name Travis didn’t know, had the pair of paramedics jumping into CPR.

  Travis, as he watched in silence, hadn’t been aware that he’d gotten to his feet or that he was backing away from the scene. The second his back hit against a Little Debbie snack stand, reality threw into extremely sharp focus. Things seemed to speed up and slow down all at the same time.

  “One, Two, Three!” Carl semi-shouted right as Mrs. Lawson’s tilted mouth connected with his. His partner was on top of the compressions to the woman’s chest and as Carl inflated Mrs. Lawson’s lungs with his own air three more times, Travis was certain that his old teacher’s chest was no longer rising on its own. He wasn’t certain when the change happened, only that now it was a fact. One more set of compressions, and Carl lifted from Mrs. Lawson’s body, his fingers pressed to her neck for the second time. He looked to his partner and they both seemed to nod, agreeing with each other.

  “Does anyone know this woman?” Carl asked as he was packing equipment back into his bag.

  “I can‘t say I knew her, not really,” the woman who had come running out to the police cruiser mumbled. Her eyes were full of tears, the tag on her shirt telling Travis that she’d been working the counter in the store when Mrs. Lawson collapsed. He moved forward, knowing that his eyes were looking anywhere else except for at the dead body at his feet.

  “I knew her. Her name is Maudette Lawson, she lived off the main road. She’s a retired teacher and a widow. I think her son Ben still lives in town.”

  Louis shook his head. “Ben Lawson went to live in Hadley when he got that job promotion. I can get someone in on getting a hold of him.” As Louis headed out of the store, he patted his partner on the back as if he was sorry that there wasn’t more that he could do.

  ********

  Travis stayed at the convenience store until someone could take Mrs. Lawson’s body to the coroner. There was only the one guy in Collie that came to collect the dead, and he took his time because he knew everyone had to wait on him as there were no other options.

  “You ready to pack up camp, Buddy? I had the Chief put Nate and Luke on our route, so if you want to wander home, you could.”

  Travis stared at the back of the coroner’s van as Buck Davidson loaded Mrs. Lawson on a stretcher. Buck had zipped her up in a black bag and that was all there was to it, the end of his teacher’s story.

  “Shit. Heads up pal.”

  In the last second, Travis looked up and noticed what Louis was swearing over. It turned out it was a second he’d wish he had a chance to do over.

  Abby was sliding out of her car, her blond hair tossed over a bare shoulder, her shorts riding high on her upper thighs to show off her legs. The tank top she was wearing was tastefully sexy, conforming to her body but not appearing as if she’d been poured into it. It was the perfect outfit for the evening, since it was summer in Collie and evenings were muggy and sweltering, like being imprisoned in the mouth of a giant.

  Travis had to remember how to breathe. Whatever issues they had as a couple, most of them paled next to how drop dead incredible she was. She was the absolute personification of incredible.

  Abby had gone to the convenience store to pick up something she needed, and it was the only stop on her way home from work. The last person she wanted to see was literally the first person her eyes locked gazes with as she got out of the car. Leaning against his patrol car, his uniform cut to fit his frame as if it existed merely to make him look better was Travis and his million-yard stare. She saw, even from the eight foot or so distance they were from each other, that he was somewhere in between Happyland and Irritatedville. She couldn’t tell in which direction he was headed.

  Abby decided to take the long way to the entrance to the store, and to take a deep breath and face Travis. She crossed the parking lot, her purse on her shoulder and her chin lifted. She hoped her brave face was working.

  “Hi,” she said as she came within a foot of the patrol car.

  Louis tilted his head toward the convenience store. “I’m going to walk in that direction until something gets in my way. Excuse me.”

  Abby turned her attention away from Louis, smiled at Louis‘ weird sense of humor, and after he’d gone, dropped her head and sighed.

  “You know you want to forgive me, so yell at me and get it over with and let’s be friends again.”

  Despite his mood, Travis smiled. It was difficult to try and prove a point to someone that you couldn’t stay mad at. He crossed his arms to his chest, thinking of a hundred different things to say but then settling on just the one thing. It really was the last idea that should have come to him, and it certainly wasn’t going to win an illumination awards, but as far as solutions went, it had its upside.

  “Move in with me.”

  Abby, upon hearing such a ridiculous suggestion, began laughing. When she saw that Travis wasn’t laughing, she sobered.

  “What?”

  Travis looked over his shoulder as the coroner’s van started, and in the wake of what had gone on earlier, he didn’t want to have what should be a private conversation with a bunch of people wandering around come to see the spot on the floor where and old woman had died. He said, “After you get what you need out of the store, come find me at my place and we’ll talk.”

  CHAPTER 12

  ………………………………..

  Abby let her eyes roam around Travis’ home, wondering not for the first time if there was any amount of feminine touches that could remove the absolute bachelor quality of the place. Socks, underwear, old wrappers from candy bars, and pretty much anything else that never made it to where it was supposed to go littered the floor. The only safe place in the whole of Travis’ living room was the couch.

  As Travis made his way from his kitchen, drinking from a glass filled with soda, Abby decided to strike an offensive comment.

  “What makes you think it is a good idea to move in together? Have you ever lived with a woman, Travis?”

  Travis set his glass onto his coffee table and sighed as he plopped down on his love seat catty corner to Abby. He knew how things often went with them; the woman loved to solve
their relationship problems by using his attraction of her to her advantage.

  Travis replied, “Because I’m tired of having to deal with your father every time I want to see you. Wouldn’t it be nice to wake up next to each other, share breakfast together or justhell, I’ve never even met the man and I dream about strangling him. I‘m tired of his crap, Abby.”

  Abby frowned. “I care about you, Travis. I think there isn’t a woman in the whole of Collie that would have stuck with you longer than me, and that’s only because I care about you. You’re twenty four, I’m twenty twowe’re not ready to live together yet. We’ve only been dating for seven months, that’s not a very long time.”

  Travis relaxed deeper into his loveseat, and tilted his head upwards so that he could stare at his ceiling. “I know I did my share of wandering around, Abbs. I’m sick of people throwing that in my face. I want to be with you and just you. Sure, this might not be the brightest idea but I can’t understand, even if you won’t move in with me, why you just won’t move out on your own.”