by Rebecca Rane
“Okay, yeah, wow, that sounds great,” Kendra said, still trying to wrap her head around five million.
“Yeah, it does, someone else to make the sandwich run,” Shoop said and put a hand in the air for a high five.
Kendra matched it.
They spent the day answering emails and calls. Filling out expense reports and considering what and how a new staffer might fit in.
“Okay, I’m heading out. See you Saturday night, right? Total R and R?”
Kendra and Shoop were catching dinner to celebrate, blow off steam, and just reset after the last few days.
With Kyle and Gillian working, it would be just Shoop and Kendra. But they needed it.
“Sounds good. Where are we headed again?”
“Tony Franzy is doing a soft opening of his new place. He invited us to check it out.”
“Woohoo! And we can check him out, not a bad Saturday night.”
Kendra laughed.
They closed up the office, and for the first time in a month, Kendra felt lighter. The weight of the podcast was off her shoulders, at least for a few days.
She planned to make a run to the grocery store and the pet store.
Kendra knew her condo was woefully low on cat food, and it was also her weekend for Swisshelm. Scott would not be pleased. Kendra was going to be in the doghouse about the cat if she didn’t have things stocked. She also planned to get a new gym for Swissy, the full works! Swissy should get the benefit of living with a famous podcaster.
Before the store, though, she needed to fulfill her promise to Margie. She pulled into the familiar neighborhood and parked.
Margie’s gift was on the passenger seat of her Jeep. Kendra wanted closure, just like Margie, and this was the last promise she’d made when it came to Josh.
There were follow-ups, sure. They’d done epilogue episodes of the Sister David case and were still hoping to someday learn who’d killed the I-80 Jane Doe victim, Annie Walters.
But in the end, the bulk of this story was now out of their hands. Kendra needed this gift from Margie to Josh out of her hands as well.
She walked to the front door and knocked. There was no answer.
Kendra decided to leave a note and place the gift between the screen and the door. She opened the screen and saw that the front door was unlocked. Maybe it was best to put the package in the house for safekeeping.
Kendra did worry about gawkers, weirdos who got off on seeing the real places depicted in her podcast.
“Josh? Are you home?” she called out, stepping into the home.
There was no answer.
Then she heard it.
A tapping sound filled the empty space.
She spun around in a circle. There wasn’t anyone in the front room. She walked to the kitchen, and it was empty too.
She heard a pounding noise above her. This house was single-story; there wasn’t an upstairs, but now the tapping was followed by crying, from above.
“Josh?” she said again. There was no answer.
Kendra walked into the short hallway that led to the bedrooms.
She’d never been this far in the house. As she did, the noise got louder, and now, there was a definite whimpering.
Kendra looked up and saw where it was coming from.
There was an attic door in the ceiling of the hallway. It had a handle, but she couldn’t reach it.
“I’m coming,” she called up to the ceiling. The whimpering continued. Was it a cat trapped in the attic?
Kendra raced to the kitchen and grabbed a chair. The thought crossed her mind that it wasn’t a cat. Maybe Josh was up there, in distress. He’d been through so much. What if he tried to hurt himself?
She knew she needed to hurry. Kendra climbed up on the chair, grabbed the pull chord, and yanked. The stairs came tumbling into the hallway.
Kendra pushed the chair out of the way and climbed up.
“Hello?” she said softly and again, heard the whimper. It was a young voice, too young for Josh. Kendra strained to see in the darkened attic space.
She hoisted herself up and in and followed the sound.
When she saw the source, a gasp escaped her lips.
A little boy sat in the corner, knees curled to his chest and a strip of duct tape over his lips. Kendra rushed to him. As she did, her feet tangled on something, and she fell, face first toward the little boy.
She looked down, this time, it wasn’t a gasp, but a scream escaped her lips.
On the attic floor lay a body, still recognizable, but clearly dead. A part of his skull, misshapen, caved in.
Kendra had no doubt it was Tim Wagy, dead, stashed in the attic.
She looked at the little boy. She scrambled toward him. She was horrified. She knew he must feel even worse. Her mind filled in a million answers and that many more questions.
But she knew one thing without a doubt: She needed to get this boy out of here, now, fast. She crawled next to him.
And slowly pulled the tape from one side of his mouth.
“My name is Brylon Coleman. I live at 4311 Welling Avenue, Hickory Ridge Estates. Apartment 3-B.”
“It’s okay, honey. I know we need to hurry.”
“It’s too late,” the boy said.
Kendra felt a sharp crack on the back of her head like she’d hit one of the low beams of the attic.
And then everything went dark.
Chapter 39
“It won’t hurt. I have seen it done a lot. It never hurts.”
That was what he’d learned, and he wanted Brylon to know too.
The boy whimpered; all he ever did was whimper.
“I’m going to hug you really hard, that’s it, okay?”
Brylon nodded. He didn’t understand. Not one thing. Josh tried and tried to make friends with him, but he wouldn’t be friends.
He didn’t like space or astronauts or mac and cheese.
He was so stupid.
Josh just wanted to be best friends with him.
Brothers even.
He needed a new brother.
But Brylon wasn’t a good brother. He was dumb as a bump on a log.
That’s it, a bump on a log. He kept crying about his head, and it wasn’t even a goose egg. Goooose egg!
Brylon was going to have to get a good hard hug. Josh was tired of feeding him and washing him and driving him around.
He’d hug him, and that would be that.
Mean Dad taught him how, and Nice Dad gave him a candy bar for keeping quiet about it.
But Mean Dad was gone, and Nice Dad said mean things. Said he’d have to go to prison. Nice Dad was going to tell.
Telling wasn’t allowed.
Nice Dad was starting to smell funny.
Well, two birds, one stone! He’d get them both to the building and try again for a new best friend.
Chapter 40
Kendra didn’t know how long she’d been out. Long enough for her to lose feeling in her shoulders. She couldn’t move anything. What had happened?
She was on her face, her hands behind her back. Her hands were tied at the wrists.
She rolled to her side, and she felt a hand pat her.
She looked up to see the face of a sweet little boy, Brylon Coleman. Why was Brylon here?
It rushed back to her.
Kendra, Brylon, and the corpse of Tim Wagy were trapped in the attic. She tried to speak and realized her mouth was taped, just like the boy’s had been.
She inhaled deeply through her nose, to wake up, to assure herself she was still alive. She was still alive but unable to do anything to stay that way. With the deep breath came a terrible smell, Wagy’s body.
A motion in the corner of the attic caught her eye.
It was Josh Wagy, dragging the body of Tim Wagy toward the opening of the attic.
“You had to come. You just had to,” Josh muttered.
Kendra couldn’t answer. She could barely understand what she was seeing.
Brylon he
lped her to sit. What a sweet little boy, she thought.
“Tim is going to have to go in your car. I’m going to take your car. Isn’t that smart of me?” Josh said to her.
Did he want approval? She nodded in response.
“Tim said I was the smartest one, always the smartest one. This one, this kid? He’s dumb. I mean, so dumb. I just cannot be best friends with him.”
Little Brylon didn’t cry or react to Josh. He just leaned closer to Kendra. He was scared but calm. As though he’d already seen terrible things.
Kendra looked over at the body and realized he had.
“Did you know, I’m nearly twenty-three. I looked five, but I was older. That’s why I was so valuable too. I’m little,” Josh rambled on.
He dropped Tim’s body through the open attic door on the floor. It landed with a sickening sound. Kendra envisioned herself landing somewhere, lifeless.
“I’m going to hug him first, and then you. Come on, Brylon, come here.”
Brylon leaned closer to Kendra, and she shook her head no to Josh. She needed to reason with him if there was reason left.
“I taped your mouth, so I didn’t have to listen to you talk talk talk talk. There’s nothing you can do. I tried to get you to help me. I didn’t want to be like this.”
Josh collapsed on the attic floor and started to cry.
He cried for a long time. Kendra tried to free her hands as the minutes turned into an hour. Maybe more? How long had she been out after he’d hit her?
Kendra had told Shoop she was going home, and Kyle as well. There was no one to know that she hadn’t made it there.
Josh stopped crying.
The sobbing that had gone on and on stopped like someone cut the power. He stood up.
“It’s time. I’ll give you something to cry about.”
Josh grabbed Brylon, and Kendra didn’t know how to stop it, but she kicked at Josh.
“That’s not nice, ow.” He said it like they were in kindergarten.
“Fine, you can go first. I don’t care!”
Was Josh going to try to kill her like he’d killed Tim. Hit her?
She slid away from him, and he grabbed her ankle, and then her arm. He dragged her to the attic door and pushed her roughly to the steps. She didn’t want to fall, knock herself out again, or break a limb.
Kendra used her bound hands to try to steady herself down the ladder but wound up crashing down to the floor and on top of the body of Tim Wagy. It horrified her, and she somehow managed to skitter off him and to crawl down the hall.
Josh was down the ladder stairs and right behind her. He grabbed her leg and yanked her to him.
“I didn’t want to kill you, or that boy last year, or the one this year, or Brylon. I tried not to. I TRIED.”
His face was inches from hers. Josh put his hands around Kendra’s neck. She’d already been having trouble breathing with the tape, and now it was worse.
Her own body crunched her arms underneath her, and Josh’s hands squeezed tighter and tighter. She had no way to fight back.
“I didn’t want to do it. That’s why I came to you. That’s why!”
Kendra kicked her legs, she shook her body, anything to stop Josh. But he kept squeezing, blaming her for not helping.
She tried to fight. She always tried. She heard Big Don’s voice in her head.
If she was going to die, she’d have that in her head, not this lunatic.
“You’re brave, kiddo.” Her dad called her kiddo, someone else did too.
Darkness was seeping in around Kendra’s peripheral vision as Josh kept squeezing.
“Take your hands off her, young man,” came a deep voice, a familiar voice, issuing the command. It startled Josh enough to let Kendra go.
She scrambled back, away from his grip. Kendra sucked in as much air as she could through her nose.
“Officer, I was just doing as I was told. I was.”
In the dim light, Kendra saw Retired Sheriff Howard Meriwether standing tall. He had a service weapon pointed at Josh.
“Facedown, son,” the sheriff said.
There was a warmth in it. But there was also authority. No one would argue with Sheriff Meriwether’s command.
Josh listened to father figures. Howard Meriwether was that, with a badge.
Josh did as he was told. Kendra coughed as she watched the sheriff cuff Josh’s hands behind his back.
He turned to Kendra, and there was an alarm in his eyes.
“Can you hang on?”
Kendra nodded, yes. Meriwether was doing what he had done for a lifetime. He secured the scene, called for backup.
Soon, the sounds of sirens filled the air.
Howard Meriwether kept an eye on Josh, now cuffed to the kitchen table, and helped Kendra to her feet. Her head throbbed. He took the tape off her mouth, she gasped for air again, and it flooded her throat like it was made of glass.
“It’s okay, slow, it’s okay,” Howard said to her, and she struggled to get her breathing right. He used a Leatherman tool to slice the tape at her wrists. Kendra realized now, for the first time, how much Howard Meriwether reminded her of her own dad, of Big Don.
“Is anything broken?” Meriwether asked her as he assessed Kendra’s situation.
But she had to get it out, had to let them know.
“Brylon Coleman is up in the attic.”
“Is he?” the Sheriff Meriwether asked. She knew what he meant.
“He’s alive,” Kendra said.
Sheriff Meriwether raced back to the hallway as a PLPD cruiser showed up.
“Retired Sheriff Howard Meriwether here. I’ve got a suspect in the kitchen, secured, and a victim upstairs. A child.”
Kendra rubbed her neck. It was sore, but she was okay. She was whole. Josh was in custody.
She looked through the front window to the outside.
The sun had set.
“What time is it?” Her voice sounded odd to her, as ragged as it felt.
“It’s 9 p.m.”
Kendra had been there for nearly four hours.
“He would have killed us both if you hadn’t gotten here.”
“Well, I got here.”
“How did you know?”
“I got a tip.”
“From whom?”
“I don’t know, anonymous.”
Kendra was grateful for it, grateful for Meriwether.
Soon, her sister and Kyle were there, in the front yard of Tim Wagy’s house.
“Sis!” Gillian hugged her, and then Kyle did the same.
“How did you know it was Josh?” Kyle asked her.
“I didn’t know. When I got here I didn’t, but I found Brylon. He was crying. Is he okay?”
“As far as we can tell, so far. He’s about to be on the way to the hospital,” Gillian told her.
“Good,” Kendra said.
“I should go there too, Kyle,” Gillian said.
“I’m okay, I’m really okay,” Kendra reassured her sister.
Gillian needed to go be with Brylon Coleman. Kendra knew that and agreed wholeheartedly.
“We’re going to need to get a statement from you, a long one,” Gillian told her and hugged her again.
“Yep,” Kendra said.
With each moment, her breathing felt easier. Her heartbeat slowed to normal. She was okay, like Meriwether said. She was okay.
Brylon was okay.
“If Mom finds out about this, she’s going to kill me,” Kendra said.
“I know that’s true. What say we get you out of here before the media shows up,” Gillian suggested.
“I’ll go in the ambulance with her. You go with Brylon. We’ll meet you at the hospital?” Kyle told Gillian, and she nodded. Kendra knew her sister needed to see this case through, and Kendra also knew she was going to be just fine. She was fine.
“Okay, try not to get into any dangerous spots before then,” Gillian said half-jokingly, and Kendra nodded in agreement.
&nbs
p; “I’m not going in an ambulance,” Kendra asserted after her sister left.
“Can I at least drive you?”
“Sure, here’s my Jeep key.”
Kyle put a gentle arm around her. And for a moment, Kendra cried. Hot tears.
Tears of relief. Of fear. Tears for the little boys she didn’t save. And the one, she hoped they did.
Kyle was patient and quiet. He gave her a tissue.
“I’m okay, I’m done.”
“You’re allowed to feel, cry, scream.”
She was allowed to feel. She didn’t have to comfort Kyle. He was there for her. This was new. And not the dynamic she was used to.
“Okay, maybe more later, but let’s go.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“And thank you for the tissue.”
It took hours, first with doctors and then of police interviews.
But a picture emerged.
Of just what Josh Wagy had done.
He’d been raised by two monsters to lure children.
He’d witnessed the pleasure they took in the killing. And he’d been a good student.
He’d always been a good student.
The media swarmed over Brylon.
For that, at least, there was a happy ending. The little boy lost had been found.
Several days afterward, Kendra taped an epilogue to season three.
Joshua Wagy was raised by two monsters. One that would lure you in and the other that would kill you.
He learned from both. He learned well.
It is important to keep in mind that he was a victim in the beginning.
He was sold by his mother into the hands of Tim Wagy, who abused him. He was trained by Frank Drager to trap prey for his masters.
Frank Drager was in charge of Rising Wings Academy for Young Men and Tim Wagy’s custodial firm was contracted to clean it.
Cleaning was also something Josh learned. He learned how to clean away a body once it no longer served its purpose. Josh hid bodies where Frank Drager had dumped them decades before.
An old, abandoned building.
Police believe Frank Drager dumped and destroyed bodies at the 17th Street location he first used as a mailing address for Rising Wings. Rising Wings was located across town, but the building they’d used briefly proved to be the perfect place to hide what they’d done.