by L V Gaudet
He shakes his head.
“How she did the impossible, I don’t know. Only Beth could get her hands on a copy of the signed transfer for Underwood. It all looks legitimate. Even the names and signatures are what they should be.”
Jim scowls at his beer.
“I was counting on it proving to be a fake transfer request. How did he do it? How did Underwood fake his way into the police department and get transferred to my unit? Why?”
Lawrence walks in. He looks around, gets his bearings, and spots Jim. He heads over.
“Jim,” he says as he sits down.
“Lawrence.” Jim reaches for and takes a swig of his beer.
The waitress spots Lawrence and starts in their direction. He signals to her, pointing at Jim and himself, and she turns around, heading back towards the bar. She knows what he wants.
“Find anything good?” Lawrence asks.
“Can’t say, police stuff,” Jim mutters around the beer glass at his lips. “You?”
“Can’t say, confidential informant.”
Lawrence smiles and nods at the waitress as she arrives and sets down their drinks. He watches her walk away to stalk other customers to serve.
Formalities out of the way, they get down to business.
“This little town sure grew fast,” Lawrence says. “I saw an aerial photo today of what it used to be. I think we’re sitting in a pig farm right now.”
“What did the old goats have to say?” Jim asks, pun fully intended.
Lawrence grimaces at the bad joke.
“They had a lot to say about Jason McAllister and his family. Unfortunately, they were long on talk and short on facts. But that’s gossip, the truth behind the truth, just without the facts.”
Jim snorts. Gossip is anything but truthful. He can’t deny, though, that too often there is that grain of truth behind the gossip. Gossip is often the only lead he has to go on. From that, he has to ferret out what is real from what is made up, but it usually eventually leads to facts and evidence after sorting out the lies.
“The old farmers think McAllister senior is the one behind the graves in the woods,” Lawrence says.
“Is the old man even still alive?” Jim asks. “They might be right; partially right. The graves go back further than William McAllister’s lifetime. Odds are Jason McAllister learned from someone, and that person could well have been his own father.
“I don’t know.” Lawrence takes a sip of his drink, grimacing. “There were some young women murdered when the McAllisters lived here when Jason was just a kid, some that were never found, and a kid vanished. William McAllister was the only suspect as far as the town folks were concerned. The whole community decided he was guilty.
Only the Sheriff wasn’t convinced. They called him that back then when it was just a couple guys working out of a small office. Everyone knew William McAllister was guilty except the sheriff.” He looks down at his notes, “One Sheriff Rick Dalton, refused to arrest him.
That’s when some of the people around town decided to take matters into their own hands. Things got a bit crazy. The whole town had William McAllister convicted without a trial and a group showed up at the McAllister farm intent on tearing the place apart. They were determined they would find the bodies of the missing girls there or something that would put McAllister away.”
“A lynch mob,” Jim mutters, “sounds like a scene out of a bad western.”
“McAllister took off with his family then. Just drove off and vanished. They were run out of town.”
“Or running from the law. So, he got away with murder.” Jim shakes his head.
“I’m not so sure. The old men at the lumber store think so. They were insistent William McAllister was guilty of the killings happening in the area at the time. At the same time the McAllisters vanished, the sheriff arrested someone else for the murders. They never got him on the child that vanished, but the murders were solved.”
“But the old men don’t agree.”
Lawrence shakes his head. “They still think William McAllister did it, even though someone else was convicted.”
Jim nods. “With what we know now about Jason McAllister, I’m not surprised. I remember some of these unsolved cases. Local cases of unsolved murders and missing persons were the first thing I checked when we discovered the graves in the woods.
There were a few women that were never found. Those are still unsolved missing cases. A child too, Dodds I believe the name was.”
“That’s the girl the old men said was never found,” Hawkworth says. “Amy Dodds. Twelve years old. Apparently, Jason McAllister had a thing for her. They were the same age.”
He pauses to swallow some of his drink, grimacing at the burn and unpleasant taste of the bourbon.
Jim files this piece of information.
“This is an interesting coincidence. If Jason McAllister or his father had anything to do with the Dodds girl’s disappearance, it might just be Jason’s first introduction to murder. Thrown out there at the right time, this might put McAllister off and make him slip up.”
“The oddest part is there have been just these couple of blips,” Jim adds. “A rash of kidnappings and killings over a very short period of time back then; and then again now. Otherwise, this is the safest place around because nobody goes missing under suspicious circumstances.”
“I have more locals to interview,” Lawrence says. “I’m betting there is still someone alive who knows something we don’t already know about the McAllister family history.”
“Maybe someone will know where the McAllisters went,” Jim says. “I don’t think Jason McAllister is going to cooperate and tell us.”
“I doubt it. Sounds like the McAllisters really kept to themselves. I think there will be a better chance of finding where they went by searching for anything that could lead to them everywhere but here.”
“That’s a pretty big area to search,” Jim snorts. “Just search the world except this one place.”
“People will surprise you with the trail they leave behind without knowing it,” Lawrence says with a sly grin. “Whatever they did, if they were involved with the bodies buried in the woods, it all centers right here. Work outward from the center and sooner or later something will stand out.”
“You do have a knack for finding things nobody wants found, no matter how obscure or hidden.”
“People aren’t very good at hiding things,” Lawrence smiles wryly. “Like your boys trying to keep the location of the graveyard in the woods secret.”
He chuckles. “It wasn’t exactly hard to find. All anyone had to do was drive up the road past the turnoff to the McAllister farm and watch for cars and flashing lights.”
“Yeah, well, nobody really went up there.”
“There must be a lot of gawkers up there now. Our generation never even heard of the McAllisters until the Jason McAllister trial. I still don’t get why nobody ever went up that way.”
“I guess nobody thought of it. A casual hiker could easily get lost up there. There are no trails.”
Jim downs his beer and looks sadly at the empty glass.
“She’s already gone through it a few times, but I’ll get Beth running everything she can on the name McAllister again. With luck she’ll find something, anything, a driver’s license or vehicle registration. Maybe even a criminal record,” Jim says.
He looks at Lawrence with a serious look.
“You were right. McAllister is being cut loose.” His voice is heavy. “The judge is cutting him loose pending the outcome of an appeal.”
“That man has something on someone important, doesn’t he?” Lawrence shakes his head in disbelief.
“If there are any more bodies to be found, if anyone knows where the bodies are, it’s him. This might be a good thing,” Jim says. “I’m going to keep a very close eye on him. If that bastard so much as sneezes wrong, I’m going to know about it.”
Lawrence nods. “Chances are if he has any fami
ly he’ll try to contact them. Then we know where he’s been.”
“He might contact Michael,” Jim says, an edge of disgust in his voice at the feel of the name on his tongue.
Lawrence raises an eyebrow at this. “Why do you think so?”
“I let a few things slip. I told him Michael wasn’t as smart at keeping things to himself as he thought. I also let on I know about the three missing women associated with the two of them.”
“Three? There are only two, Katherine Kingslow and the Jane Doe.”
“I’ve got a name of a third, Cassie. No last name.”
“Who is that?” Lawrence is already chewing on the name in his mind.
“Hell if I know, but I’m going to find out.”
7It’s A Beautiful Day to Be Free
“It’s a beautiful day to be free,” Jason McAllister says as he is escorted down the hallway of the courthouse in cuffs and chains.
His armed escort only scowls without looking at him, one on each side, and keeps going down the hall.
They shepherd him into the courtroom and to the prisoner’s box, which isn’t really a box at all. It’s just a chair a few feet out of reach of the table where his lawyer sits waiting.
The guards seat him and stand to each side, ready to take him down if he so much as breathes funny.
The nearly empty courtroom is anticlimactic for the seriousness of the proceeding. In attendance are Jason McAllister, the two officers escorting him, two more guarding the door they entered, and another pair standing at the door the judge will enter by. The court stenographer sits at her little table pretending to ignore McAllister even as she can’t stop sneaking peaks at the infamous killer. His lawyer nods at him with a look that is not entirely confident, and the prosecution sits smugly refusing to acknowledge his presence.
A few witnesses sit scattered in the mostly empty gallery in ones and twos, diehards who have little better to do than haunt the courtrooms to feed some strange need to be involved in the inner workings of the court system. Court groupies, they are mockingly called.
They have no idea what they are about to witness, or even what the case about to be presided over is about.
The proceeding had been kept secret, the court docket giving little clue what is booked in the courtroom at that time. The news will break later after the shocked witnesses spread the news.
A few of the witnesses perk up, recognizing Jason.
The guards at the judge’s door snap to attention and the one on the right commands them all to rise. A heartbeat later, a judge in his long judicial robe enters regally.
He takes his time taking his position and settling himself before acknowledging the courtroom and allowing them to sit and the proceedings to start.
He surveys the nearly empty courtroom with tired eyes. He slept little in the preceding nights. What he is about to do weighs heavily on his conscience and in his heart.
When I am done, I have a bottle of vodka waiting in the desk drawer in my chamber behind me.
When I finish that, I have a bottle of port waiting for me in my desk drawer in my home office. Next to that bottle is a loaded revolver. If the drive home doesn’t kill me, I will empty first the bottle of port, and then the revolver.
I am about to do the unimaginable. This is not my choice. I was ordered to do it. The hollow pounding of my gavel echoing through the courtroom closing the proceeding I am about to start will signal the end of my career.
I won’t bother with a note. There is no need. As soon as the news agencies start to run with this, there will be no wondering why. After decades of being married more to my job than my wife, affairs, and the cold indifference that has become my childless marriage over the past twenty years, it seems pointless to bother saying goodbye now.
He bangs his gavel and the sound echoes in the courtroom, bringing the small shuffling sounds to silence and marking the beginning of his end.
“Be seated,” he commands the room.
Half an hour later the boom of the gavel echoes again through the room to the shocked gasps and outcries of the few witnesses in the public seating and Jason McAllister smiles.
An hour after that Jason McAllister is walking down the courthouse steps looking up at the bright sunshine, smiling, a free man.
“Yes, it is a beautiful day to be free,” Jason says.
Part Two
Talking to One’s Self
8Talking to Crazy
Kathy Kingslow looks out at Michael through the glass patio door. He is in the backyard, sitting in a partially broken lawn chair that was left behind by some previous tenant, drinking a beer, his back to the house. Scattered empty beer cans litter the ground around him.
The sight sends the stiffness of dread through her, the memory of her ex-boyfriend Ronnie’s drunken violence haunting her. She knows Michael isn’t drunk. The empty cans have collected over the past few days.
Something about the rundown cheap rental house seems to suck the will out of them both, with it the will to pick up after themselves. The house is as depressing as the neighbourhood is and the clutter of empty cans and other trash is beginning to pile up.
The yard is not large, carpeted with a mix of half dead grass and bald patches and partially shaded by a large sickly looking tree. The cracked and peeling fence is long past the point of needing repairs and needs to be torn down and rebuilt. A few sections were repaired at one point by stapling haphazardly stretched out chicken wire to the boards that look like they had been partially consumed by either termites or a rather angry large squirrel.
Michael puts his beer down on the ground next to the chair, talking to himself again. Not really to himself, but rather talking to someone who is not there.
It makes Kathy feel sick in the way that fear of a danger you cannot hope to escape makes you feel sick, that strength sapping, soul draining kind of sick feeling.
“The first time I noticed it was outside the prison where he visited Jason McAllister before we left. He looked down and reached out as if to take the hand of someone who was not there and said something.
“Everything is fine,” he said to me. “Let’s go.”
But then he said something else. He looked down, reaching out, and said “Everything’s going to be just fine Cassie, you’ll see.”
It wasn’t me he was talking to. He tried to cover it up, pretend it was me, but I saw. I knew.
I let it slide; trying to convince myself that I only imagined it. I can’t pretend anymore.
Michael tries to hide it, but he is talking to this imaginary person more and more. He is being secretive too, acting like he is hiding something.”
She can’t say the next thought out loud.
I know about the other women, the women he stalked, kidnapped, and murdered all in the search for her. Even thinking it, she puts that special emphasis on ‘her’. She is another woman and a special kind of threat to Michael and herself.
I finally understand who she is; the woman Michael was so obsessed with finding. She was his younger sister who died as a child. At least, Michael said he believed she died back then, but he could not let go of his guilt and needed her to be alive, to be able to protect her and keep her safe. He was driven to find her even though everything he knew told him she was long gone.
But, then it turned out that she was not dead. He found her. Jane Doe, they called her. His sister, Cassie.
Now Cassie is probably dead for real, taken, Michael is sure, by Jason McAllister. I still don’t know who Jason McAllister is to Michael. I only know that he’s a killer.
“Michael is going crazy,” Kathy whispers. “If he isn’t, then I am. Or his crazy is just going to drive me crazy. Either way, it’s not good.”
Her thoughts turn back to the life she now finds herself trapped in. She feels exactly that, trapped.
It’s like the world suddenly snapped shut on me and I’m stuck here all alone with no escape. No one knows I’m here. Just like the farmhouse basement.
&nb
sp; We kept our first names after we left. Michael said they are common enough first names. But we had to take on new last names, new identities.
We are getting married soon, after we move again, and Michael says we have to change our names again before the wedding. He knows a guy who can get us legitimate identification, even set up officially in the government’s computers. We will be real people again; real people with fake pasts. New schools, new birth places, and new birth parents.
The thought of getting married should warm her, but it doesn’t.
Michael doesn’t even know who his birth parents are, so it doesn’t matter to him. But, for Kathy it is a sharp pain in her heart to know she can never contact her mother again. Her mother will never know if she is alive and she will not be able to invite her to their wedding.
She has to push these thoughts away. They are too depressing.
Kathy turns her attention to Michael again, watching him talk to nobody.
It feels like watching a crash about to happen that you can’t stop. The tightness of stress fills her until she feels it will snap her in half.
Michael starts turning around in his seat and she quickly slips out of sight past the edge of the patio door.
He looks at the house. He has that vague feeling of being watched. No one is there.
Michael turns his back to the house again, facing straight ahead. Cassie stares up at him, her expression serious. She is angry with him. Little Cassie, who is so pretty even when she is so angry, still the little girl after all these years.
Kathy peeks out again to see Michael turned away and talking again.
A shiver shudders down her spine and she suddenly feels an uneasy feeling rush through her.
A premonition? That’s silly, I don’t believe in nonsense like that.
She turns away, going into the kitchen. She can't watch any longer.
Michael pleads with Cassie to understand.
“I did my best to protect you, I really did. There was only so much I could do.”
“But you didn’t protect me, did you?” Cassie accuses. “You didn’t protect me ever, David.”