It Can't Be Her

by Darrell Maloney

  -5-

  Most residents of the county knew Sara by now, or at least knew of her. And as soon as they found out she was missing and possibly abducted they were willing to help.

  Tom’s unofficial posse was growing by the day.

  Rhett Butler and Tony Martinez had requested and received permission from the San Antonio city council to stay for a few days to help out.

  Their marked San Antonio police cars cruising up and down the streets of Kerrville were attracting a lot of attention.

  And that was okay. For the more attention they attracted the more people were getting the word and trying to help.

  All were given a description of the suspect in the case: Caucasian, 5’8” to 5’10”, medium build, and short brown hair.

  It wasn’t much. That description fit twenty percent of the men in Kerrville.

  But Kerrville and Kerr County was a tight-knit community even before the first blackout.

  It still was, although the population was considerably smaller than it once was.

  There was a feeling that no resident of Kerrville or Kerr County would murder anyone, much less someone as vulnerable as little Katie Jamison.

  Therefore, it must be an outsider.

  Anyone who wasn’t recognized as a local, therefore, was looked upon with great suspicion.

  Anyone who was a stranger and fit the given description was examined even closer.

  There was a firm belief among all the county’s residents that the net was tightening and the killer would soon be arrested.

  Hopefully before he did any harm to Sara.

  But Jeff Barnett wasn’t cooperating. Not at all.

  In order to be seen, questioned and arrested Jeff would have had to go out in public and mingle with the citizens.

  And he had no intention of doing that.

  The ranch house where he held Sara was well stocked with food and water.

  He had absolutely no reason at all to get out and mingle with the townsfolk.

  From here on out he’d keep a very low profile.

  Now, that wasn’t to say he wasn’t going to get out at all.

  For he definitely had another place which would require his presence.

  He’d go there only as much as necessary.

  And only at night, when presumably the searchers would be taking a few hours to regroup and replan their efforts.

  And then he’d be extremely careful.

  Jeffrey Barnett considered himself smarter than the average bear. A cut above, if you will, than the typical Joe.

  And way smarter than the “dumb cops” he knew were after him.

  He seldom uttered the term “cop” or “policeman” without a derogative adjective immediately preceding it.

  The trouble was Jeff would have made a good politician.

  After all, politicians and sadistic serial killers share many of the same traits.

  They consider themselves smarter and more talented than they actually are.

  They have no empathy for the common man; they’re out only for themselves.

  They’re very good at lying and deceit.

  And most of them, if they’re in the game long enough, do something which proves they weren’t as smart as they thought. They get caught doing something they weren’t supposed to do.

  And they go down in flames.

  Jeff Barnett didn’t know it yet, and his twisted mind wouldn’t let him consider the possibility, but he’d soon fall.

  And it would be his absolute conviction that he was smarter than anyone else which would be his downfall.

  You see, Sara wasn’t the only one he’d targeted before he took action to capture her.

  Before he took her prisoner he had to have a place to take her. There was just too much risk in hiding her in the woods and hoping a hunter or fisherman didn’t happen along to find her.

  No, after he’d determined that Sara traveled up and down Highway 83 to get to and from work every day he needed to find a place within a few miles of Highway 83 to take her.

  Someplace where he could have some privacy while he played his games with her and ultimately killed her.

  It had to be a place which was isolated and deserted. A place where her screams wouldn’t be heard.

  That’s how he ended up on Winston Road the day before he finally took her.

  Winston Road was one of hundreds of rural roads which snaked through the mountains of Kerr County.

  It was developed in the 1970s by a firm which advertised “new homes, built to suit, on twenty acre plots far from the hustle and bustle of city life.”

  Back in the 1970s life in Kerrville could be described in many ways.

  “Hustle and bustle” wasn’t one of them.

  Kerrville back then was transitioning from a sleepy little getaway town to a mid-sized city.

  In the seventies it catered to a tourist crowd who came in the warm weather months to camp on the shores of the Guadalupe River. In the fall it catered to hunters. In the spring it hosted sports fishermen in some of the most prestigious tournaments in the nation.

  And of course, it was a golfer’s paradise any time of the year.

  No, the developer wasn’t catering to Kerrville residents when he hawked his isolated home sites. Kerrville residents were happy where they were.

  But there were a lot of moneyed people in Houston and Dallas who were tired of big city life and looking for quieter and more relaxing places to retire.

  Those were the people who purchased the land the Williams Land Development Company had to offer on Winston Road.

  Roy Williams, who ran the company? He eventually sold all the properties on that road and others like it and made his fortune. Then he retired himself.

  In Houston.

  It’s funny how people seeking their own personal nirvana find it in such vastly different things.

  -6-

  One of Roy Williams first customers, back in 1971, was a man everybody called “General.”

  Ashton Salinas was a Vietnam War hero who retired with three stars on his epaulets. He’d had enough of war. He’d had enough of the politics of being a high ranking Army officer.

  Most of all he was tired of the Nixon administration’s tying of his hands.

  He was convinced that his army – the most powerful army in the world – could have ended Vietnam years before and brought our boys back home.

  But he wasn’t allowed to take the necessary steps to bring the war to a close.

  He wasn’t allowed to win.

  Instead, he chose to retire.

  He and wife Mildred looked hard, all over the country, to find a suitable place to live out their years. They wanted someplace that was isolated, yet close enough to a big city to allow them to frequent cocktail parties and socialize with their wide circle of friends.

  Ashton, though, was an avid hunter and sports fisherman.

  He wanted a place where he could walk into the woods and take a deer or a couple of rabbits when he wanted to.

  A place with a nearby stream or river would be the icing on his cake.

  Ashton and Mildred moved into their home at 4110 Winston Road in the spring of 1972 after their dream house had been built to their specifications. Two stories with a full basement, a wet bar and a wrap-around porch.

  That was so they could sit on rockers in the evenings and watch the fireflies do their nightly dances.

  The general and his beautiful bride eventually passed and left the house to their only son Malcolm.

  Malcolm shared his father’s love for hunting and fishing. He was brought up going out with his father every couple of weekends and for him it was a way of life.

  But he didn’t share his parents’ love for isolationism.

  Malcolm loved the big city. He made his own fortune as a stock trader in New York and spent most of his time there.

  For Malcolm and wife Cathy the house in Kerr County would be a vacation retreat they’d visit several weeks a year. It would remain in the
hands of a property management firm for most of the year. That firm would provide security for it, hire a cleaning service to keep it tidy and keep an eye on it for them between visits.

  That firm was one of the first to go out of business when the world went dark.

  And for the first time since 1972 the property would be left to fend for itself.

  Jeff Barnett, when stumbling across it on the day before he took Sara, thought he’d found a goldmine. A well-kept and well-furnished house with a working wind-powered water system, cupboards full of food and a bar full of liquor.

  If that was to be his next torture and killing house, though, he needed to investigate the neighborhood a bit first.

  It just wouldn’t do to find out after the fact the county sheriff lived next door, for example, and was within earshot of a woman’s screams.

  For several hours on the afternoon before he laid those roofing nails on Highway 83 to flatten Sara’s tires, Jeff was knocking on doors on Winston Road.

  “I hate to bother you, sir. My name is Bill Southerby and my wife and I are looking for some property to purchase. Houston is getting too dangerous these days and we’re looking for someplace a little safer. I have gold to trade for the right property.

  “We were looking at the property at the end of the road. 4110. It seems the perfect house for us but no one will answer the door. I was wondering if you know who owns the house, or if it’s for sale.”

  He was generally well-received, for the people who live in and around Kerrville are a friendly lot.

  He was told several times the house once belonged to a retired Army general and his wife, but was now owned by their son. He was a nice enough fellow who used the house infrequently. No, they didn’t know how to get ahold of him, since he lived in Manhattan.

  By the end of the afternoon he’d met most of the neighbors and determined none of them would be a threat to him.

  One of the neighbors who would certainly be no threat at all was a petite little old woman who said her name was Anne.

  Anne was spunky enough to have answered the door. She was friendly enough to have answered his questions.

  But other than that the tiny old woman was nothing special.

  Not, at least, to Jeff Barnett.

  He didn’t need her house. She probably had little food or valuables.

  She struck Jeff as one of those little old ladies who are cared for by her neighbors, who dropped by every few days to check on her and bring her what she needed.

  He thanked her and went away, thinking visiting her was a waste of his time.

  It wasn’t until after he’d taken Sara and was weighing his options that he decided he might have a use for Anne after all.

  Sara was in her fourth day as a hostage and still hadn’t been given anything to eat. Her stomach was starting to cramp badly as her mere hunger pangs were starting to transition into starvation pain.

  She couldn’t ask Jeff for food and probably wouldn’t anyway despite the pain.

  She’d be damned if she’d lower herself to begging for food from this animal.

  He did make one concession to her, though, when he used an ink pen to poke a hole in the duct tape over her mouth.

  Several times a day he went to her with a bottle of water and let her sip from it through a straw.

  At least it kept her thirst at bay.

  And now, four days in, he still hadn’t beaten her.

  That puzzled her, for talking about the various ways he was going to rape her and beat her seemed to be one of his favorite pastimes.

  She tried not to get her hopes up that she’d be rescued before the torture began.

  And she wondered what in hell he was waiting for.

  -7-

  Perhaps it was because she was in such pain from having been tied to a bed in the same position for four days.

  Perhaps it was because she was still too blind with anger to think clearly.

  Or maybe because the pains in her abdomen made it hard for her to focus.

  Or maybe because she felt humiliation from having to lie in bed sheets soaked with her own urine.

  Whatever caused her oversight, her fourth day in hell was almost over before she even noticed something was different.

  She caught Jeff looking at his watch and heard him mumble something about it being five o’clock, and he wouldn’t have to wait much longer.

  That in itself was ominous enough, as Sara lay there wondering exactly what it was he was waiting for.

  Then the most obvious thing occurred to her. Something she should have noticed hours before.

  Jeff was fully clothed, and had been since she woke up that morning.

  Now that shouldn’t have been a surprise.

  But in the two previous days of her captivity Jeff paraded around naked every minute of every day.

  He seemed to take great delight in standing over her and watching her eyes as they watched him. The first time he gave her water he told her if she closed her eyes or looked away she’d got no more water for several days.

  Since then she felt required to lock her gaze on his private parts as she sipped.

  Doing so apparently gave him a perverse pleasure and while the act made her want to vomit, she obviously benefited from it more than he did.

  As she saw it, she needed to escape to make sure he paid not only for what he did to Katie, but for what he was doing to her.

  She couldn’t escape if she weren’t ready to seize the first opportunity she was presented with.

  Dehydration would take her off her game and slow her movements as well as her ability to think.

  Therefore she’d play his sadistic game.

  If watching his naked body was a requirement to getting water she’d do it.

  And all the while she’d fantasize about beating his head into mush with whatever blunt force instrument she could get her hands on.

  She was almost embarrassed it had taken her so long to notice he was fully clothed.

  It was also a warning to her. She had to find a way to sharpen her faculties; to play closer attention.

  She wondered what else she’d missed. Had she had an opportunity to escape all along? Had she just been too blinded by pain and anger and exhaustion to notice it?

  She tried to focus on her surroundings. Not Jeff, because she was tired of looking at him whether he was clothed or not.

  She struggled to look around the room. To really look, at each and every object and where it was in relation to her bed.

  Just in case she got loose and had the opportunity to use something as a weapon.

  It hurt her to move, and that worried her. The human body wasn’t meant to be locked into the same position for days at a time.

  It made her wonder, if she were suddenly given an opportunity to make a run for it, whether her body would allow her to do so.

  She was afraid that after going so long without any movement her body might just collapse under its own weight.

  As she looked around the basement, studying each and every item and evaluating its potential use as a weapon, she continued to wonder why he was clothed on this particular day.

  And suddenly, as he checked his watch again, it dawned on her.

  He was going out at some point.

  And she was amazed that she hadn’t figured it out sooner.

  She assumed he’d kill the generator and darken the room when he left as he typically did.

  That would be a problem for her, for if she did manage to work herself free she’d have to find the generator and restart it before she could begin the process of searching for an escape route.

  She’d heard the incessant hum of the generator non-stop any time the lights were on. That meant there was no battery back-up. She might be able to use that to her advantage.

  She’d also noted the generator was located in another room of the basement. She could tell by the muffled noise the unit made. And that made sense. It was probably located in a small room built just for that pur
pose which was ventilated to the outside.

  Typically when he left he killed the generator and used a small oil lantern to find his way from the generator room to the top of the stairs.

  Then he killed the lantern and left it on the landing awaiting his return.

  With any luck he’d leave a gun behind and she could blow him away when he opened the door to re-light the lantern.

  She watched him closely as he sat on the edge of the couch, waiting for the hours to tick by, pondering what her future held.

  She’d also made note of three potential weapons: an aluminum softball bat leaning against the wall next to the couch. A Bowie knife in a sheathe on the small end table. And a handgun in a holster resting on the back of the couch.

  He’d almost certainly take the gun with him, and quite probably the knife as well. She couldn’t count on them.

  Of course, she could only see a small potion of the basement.

  If she got loose and was given the opportunity to explore there was no way of telling what she might find.

  She was almost startled when Jeff leapt to his feet and announced, “Well, it’s time for me to go and have some fun.”

  He went to her and whispered into her ear, “Try not to miss me while I’m gone, baby. I’ll give you some lovin’ when I get back, I promise.”

  With that he took the sheathed knife and clipped it onto his left boot.

  He fastened the gun belt to his waist and slipped out of sight.

  The room got dark as the generator’s hum come to an end and Sara sat in perfect silence for several seconds.

  Then she heard the familiar sound of a cigarette lighter sparking, and a few seconds later a new light, albeit it much dimmer, filled the room.

  Jeff walked slowly past her, carrying the oil lantern.

  He stumbled on something in the semi-darkness and cursed.

  He kicked something across the room.

  Sara wasn’t able to see what it was, or where it ended up.

  But she made a mental note to look for it if she was able to get free and restart the generator.

  It just might be something she could use as a weapon when he returned.

  He climbed the basement steps, blew out the lantern and placed it on the landing in front of the basement door, then opened the door and walked through it.