A Troubling Turn of Events

by Darrell Maloney

  Maria smiled and said, “You’ll see when we get up there.”

  “We got all the dirt we needed from a construction site two blocks away. They had torn down an old office building and were going to build a new one. The old building had a basement and the new one wasn’t going to have one. So they brought in tons of dirt to fill in the depression and to bring it up to street level.

  “Tons and tons of soft earth they no longer needed, but which we did.

  “So we helped ourselves.”

  They stopped to rest on the fifteenth floor.

  Nobody requested it. They just stopped on their own, and they all needed a rest.

  Maria and Julio because they were old. And John because he was out of shape and not used to climbing stairs.

  “After we got all the dirt we needed we started hauling other stuff. Bird seed and bags of potting soil from the Home Depot on the other side of I-37. Fertilizer. Rolls of chicken wire or bundles of straw.

  “We resolved that we’d never go back to the hotel empty handed. If nothing else, we left with two backpacks of empty water bottles and filled them all up at the river before we came back.

  “But we never came back without carrying something. After two years we’ve been able to make the ninth floor into a pretty comfortable home.”

  “I can’t imagine how much work that must have been, carrying all that stuff up here.”

  “Oh, it wasn’t that bad. We did it a little at a time. And we didn’t overtax ourselves.

  “We stopped and rested when we needed to. Depending on what we were carrying and how heavy it was, sometimes we stopped every third flight of stairs, sometimes every flight.”

  Julio had been content to let Maria do the narration, but suddenly felt the need to add his two cents.

  “I’d like to think carrying all that stuff has been beneficial to us. It’s helped keep us healthy and in shape.

  “I can almost guarantee you we’re in better health than anyone else of our age within ten miles. And I meant what I said before, that I could kick your ass if I wanted to.”

  John said, “I’ve no doubt you could. No doubt at all.”

  They started up the last few flights of stairs and Maria continued.

  “Julio isn’t really crazy. He decided early on he’d appear to be, in the belief it would help to scare people away.

  “And for the most part it’s worked. There were a couple of people who tried early on to climb the stairs to check on us, but he cursed them out and chased them away. Before long everyone within a mile radius started calling him ‘Loco Julio’ and started avoiding us.”

  “Is that a wise thing? I mean, if you ever need help from any of them will they come to your aid?”

  “Oh, yes. The sisters and I have a good relationship. They won’t have much to do with Julio but they’ll talk to me. They always ask when we take our meals if we’re doing okay and whether there’s anything we need.”

  “So, am I the only one you’ve ever given the grand tour to?”

  “Actually, yes. You’re not the first one Julio’s ever caught looking around the ninth floor. But you’re the only one he hasn’t chased off. I think he likes you.”

  “Hell no,” Julio added. “I don’t like the young punk at all. But he’s a fellow Marine so I got to be civil to him.”

  Maria looked at John and winked. John smiled back at her.

  They both knew better. They both knew that Julio had taken a liking to John.

  Perhaps it was based on their both being in the Corps. But it was definitely there.

  “You should consider yourself blessed,” Maria whispered to John.

  “Julio seems to like you. And Julio never likes anybody.”

  They reached the door to the roof. It was made of heavy steel and locked with a high-security padlock.

  It was the type of door someone would have a hard time breaking into with anything less than a blow torch.

  Julio opened it easily with a padlock key.

  As they swung it open John marveled at what he saw.

  So much so his jaw dropped in wonder.

  .

  -19-

  Sara didn’t sleep well the night they found Katie’s dismembered body.

  Each time she closed her eyes she saw those hands and feet still tied to the bed. Tied so tightly the blood was unable to drain from them, though the torso had been cut away and was long gone.

  She’d seen bodies before. They were far too common now.

  But this one was different. For this one told a story of the unspeakable agony poor Katie must have endured in her last hours.

  She awoke several times and stared at the ceiling. She wondered what kind of person Katie was. She lived alone, with no pets. There were no photographs of children in the house, at least that Sara had seen.

  She was a woman who loved her privacy. A solitary person.

  That didn’t make her a bad person. Maybe it made her a more vulnerable victim. But not a bad person.

  And even if she had been… a bad person, that is… no one deserved to die the way she did.

  About three a.m. Sara was wide awake and decided she wasn’t going to sleep another wink.

  She got up and went to the kitchen to make herself a cup of coffee.

  They’d saved a couple of Keurig coffee makers from the EMPs. They’d been on a shelf in the barn Scott had lined with a layer of sheet metal and a second layer of thin plywood.

  Sara, more than anyone else in the compound, was supremely glad.

  For before the blackout her Keurig was something she decided she couldn’t live without.

  Scott was determined to save this particular machine from a third wave of EMPs if they ever came.

  He built a metal and wooden box which completely enclosed the coffee maker. When the box was closed the only thing protruding from it was the tightly insulated electrical cord, which was connected to a surge suppressor within the box and behind the unit.

  Sara told Scott it was a pain in the butt, having to open the box to gain access to the unit to make her morning coffee.

  But then she kissed him on the cheek and thanked him for going through the trouble of making it.

  On this morning, because she couldn’t sleep, she had the kitchen all to herself.

  Linda was also up, pulling watch at the security desk. Her job was boring, watching surveillance monitors to see if anyone was trying to sneak up to their compound.

  Sara pulled the duty herself on her days off. She knew how monotonous it was.

  Normally she’d have gone to sit with Linda, to help her and to have someone to talk to.

  But on this particular morning she wasn’t in a very talkative mood.

  Linda knew she was troubled by something and took no offense. She merely asked, as Sara walked by, “Are you okay, sweetie?”

  Sara stopped long enough to hug her mother-in-law.

  “Oh, I’ll be okay. Just work stuff weighing heavy on my mind.”

  “Let me know if you need a shoulder to cry on or need to unload on somebody.”

  “I will, Linda, and thanks.”

  Jordan felt Sara crawl out of bed but didn’t think much of it. He assumed she was getting up to use the restroom and would be coming right back.

  He dozed off again.

  When he woke up a second time twenty minutes later he was concerned enough to get up and go looking for her.

  “Hi baby,” he said as he walked into the kitchen. “You feeling okay?”

  “Good morning. Yes, I’m fine. I just can’t sleep is all.”

  “Anything you want to talk about?”

  “Not really. Work stuff. There was a murder in Kerrville yesterday. I think I saw the guy who did it, but by the time I found the victim and went back looking for him he was long gone.”

  “I knew about the murder. Tom got back after you went to bed last night and I spoke to him about it briefly.”

  “Did he give you any of the details?”

 
“No, but he said it was pretty bad.”

  “It was.”

  “Should I worry about you?”

  “No. You know how I am. If I don’t sleep well one night I crash from exhaustion the next night and catch back up again.”

  “I’m not talking about you losing sleep. I mean should I worry about your safety with a killer on the loose? If you saw him I’m sure he saw you. You don’t think he’ll come after you, do you?”

  “He’d have to be pretty crazy to come after a law enforcement officer.”

  “Not to point out the obvious, baby. But he’d have to be pretty crazy to commit a murder. Is coming after a sheriff’s deputy much more of a stretch?”

  “Now you sound like Tom.”

  “Tom cares about you. And just in case you’ve forgotten, so do I.”

  “Don’t worry, honey. Tom already laid down the law and told me I had to have a partner until we catch this guy or confirm he left the area.

  “Charlie Sikes and I are riding together now.”

  “Are you okay with that?”

  “I wasn’t at first. I thought that teaming up when we’re already short-manned would be a disservice to the citizens. We’d be able to cover only half as much ground.

  “But Tom saw it another way. The way he sees it is we’ll have a better chance of catching the killer if we go at him with two guns instead of one. And if he’s right, if we catch the guy before he kills again, that’s doing the community a better service.

  “Besides, Charlie’s a nice guy. We get along okay. So it won’t be much of a problem. Maybe having somebody to talk to on patrol will be fun.”

  Sara left a couple of hours later and drove to the Sheriff’s Office to pick up her new partner. In the darkness she never saw the lone figure on the County Road 1338 overpass as she drove beneath it on her way to Kerrville.

  County Road 1338 was two highways west of Kerrville, where Jeff Barnett had seen Sara getting on the Interstate the previous night.

  If she hadn’t passed him by on her way to work, he’d have known that the night before she’d turned off on the first connecting highway, County Road 1783.

  Now he knew she lived somewhere west of the second tributary, CR 1338.

  It was important to him that he take her alive, and to do that he’d have to catch her alone, close to her home .

  And he was a step closer to finding out where that was.

  -20-

  She pulled into the Sheriff’s office parking lot right at eight a.m., sure as she could be that Charlie would be late.

  He usually was.

  But not this morning.

  This morning he was standing in the parking lot with a huge grin on his face.

  He walked to Sara’s truck as she rolled to a stop and opened the door for her.

  “Good morning, partner. A deal’s a deal.”

  “Well I’ll declare, Mr. Sikes,” she said in her best southern belle voice. “I’ll just bet this is the very first time in your entire life you beat anybody anywhere.”

  She fluttered her eyelashes for extra effect, just the way Scarlett O’Hara once did in Gone With the Wind.

  Charlie laughed.

  “It pained me to get up extra early. I hate being on-time for anything. But I hate being a passenger even less, and I couldn’t bear the thought of you doing all the driving today.”

  “That’s okay. Old habits die hard. I’m sure that tomorrow you’ll be back on your usual schedule, twenty minutes late, and I’ll get to drive then.”

  She locked up her truck and walked over to his, then crawled into the passenger seat.

  “Hey, how come you have a cloth seat and mine is vinyl?”

  “I don’t know. I guess the sheriff likes me better than he does you. Of course that’s understandable, since he tells me I’m much easier to get along with than you are.”

  Sara smiled, but wasn’t buying it.

  “Uh huh… sure he does.”

  “Was he still there when you left?”

  “Yes. Linda just finished her security station shift and was making him a quick breakfast. He said he’d be half an hour behind me, but not to wait for him. He said he wants us to start our canvass as quickly as possible.”

  “Did you show him the sketch?”

  “Yes. I showed it to him and he asked he if I thought it was a pretty good likeness. I told him it was.

  “He studied it for a couple of minutes and committed it to memory and told me to have you do the same.”

  “What’s it like living with the sheriff?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I mean, does he walk around the house in boxer shorts with big red hearts on them? Does he sit in a recliner all day and burp and fart and have you guys bring him beer?”

  “Ewww, thanks for putting that visual in my mind. Now it’ll be there forever.”

  “You’re welcome,” he said as he chuckled. “Glad I could help. But seriously, though. Isn’t it a little bit weird living in the same house as the sheriff?”

  “Not really. I mean, it’s a big house, number one.

  “And number two, no he doesn’t walk around the house in his boxer shorts. I have no idea if he has big red hearts on them or not. And to be honest, I’m happy not knowing.

  “Number three, we knew each other long before he became sheriff. He married my mother-in-law and became my father-in-law before he became sheriff.

  “So if anything, it’s not how do I feel living with the sheriff. It’s more how do I feel working with my father-in-law. And it doesn’t bother me.

  “Why is it so important to you, anyway?”

  “Oh, it’s not important at all. I was just curious, that’s all.

  He put aside the sketch and said, “Okay. That dude is burned into my memory. I have to say, though, he looks like an ordinary guy. He doesn’t look like a serial killer at all.”

  “Neither did Ted Bundy.”

  “Good point.”

  “Where do you want to start?”

  “You’re driving. You pick the place.”

  “Good. Let’s go to Martin Road. Maybe somebody saw him walking around Katie Jamison’s house either before or after the murder.”

  “Sounds logical to me.”

  The victim’s house was on a sparsely developed street on the outskirts of town. It was the kind of property which would attract someone like Katie, who valued her privacy and loved spending time alone. She was a writer and a painter by trade, and living in such a place gave her the quiet she needed to focus on her work.

  At the same time, the area in and around Kerrville was beautiful. Especially in the spring and in late summer.

  From her house she could easily hike into the mountains with easel and canvas, and paint any number of a dozen dazzling vistas.

  A short drive would place her on the banks of the Guadalupe River, where she could warm up her laptop and write the next great novel.

  Or, she could sit on her front porch and look out and see absolutely none of her neighbors’ houses.

  For each house on her road was separated by at least an eighth of a mile of tall trees and heavy brush.

  It wasn’t really a surprise, therefore, that no one else on Martin Road saw anyone lurking near Katie’s house.

  No one heard her screams.

  No one smelled the smoke from her burning corpse.

  Everyone they spoke to dutifully studied the sketch.

  They were all asked to contact the sheriff’s office immediately if they saw the suspect, but not to approach him. He could be very dangerous.

  Further, they were to alert their neighbors that he was in the area.

  They canvassed every home on every road within a quarter mile. Per Tom’s instructions, they noted every house which appeared to be occupied from which no one answered the door. They’d make a second sweep if they didn’t find him on the first one.

  One man on Buena Vista Drive said the man in the sketch looked familiar.

  “He looks
like a guy I saw on horseback, riding toward town,” he said.

  “When was this?”

  “Three, maybe four days ago. He was riding a Pinto, mostly black and white, a bit of brown.”

  “Ever seen him before or since?”

  “No. And he was maybe fifty yards away, so I can’t even be sure it was him. He resembled the man in the picture, though.”

  “Thank you sir.”

  It was a fruitless and frustrating day.

  Sara was relatively new to the law enforcement game.

  Charlie Sikes had been with the department for several years, and actually had a lot more experience as a cop than even Tom.

  But he’d always worked the streets.

  Or, more accurately since they were in a rural county, the roads.

  On patrol, he had plenty of experience taking reports of crimes, but precious little doing investigatory work.

  Both of them were naïve.

  Both thought it would be easy. That half the people they’d talk to had seen or heard something.

  That they’d easily find and capture their suspect.

  It turned out to be a lot harder than they’d expected.

  When Sara finally made her way home, just before dark, she never saw Jeff Barnett, hiding in the shrubbery adjacent to the exit to Highway 290, a couple of miles west of where he’d been that morning.

  She didn’t take the exit, which meant she lived even farther west of town.

  Sara made it home and readied herself for bed.

  Jeff mounted his horse and rode a bit farther west, where he’d watch out for her again when she headed for work the following morning.

  -21-

  The hotel roof was divided into two sections.

  Both were sights to see, but for different reasons.

  The eastern half was, in essence, a half-acre home for free-range chickens.

  John couldn’t believe his eyes.

  The entire roof wasn’t made of metal and coated with tar, as it was back in the days when the hotel was in business.

  Well actually it was, but these days the metal and tar was covered with two inches of… dirt.

  And not only that, but it was also covered with greenery.