by Rachel Ford
I didn’t argue. I didn’t tell her that she was wrong. That I knew she was wrong, because I’d seen it work already. That was classified. And it didn’t really matter if she thought I was fixated on some kind of pipe dream.
She’d wanted the truth, and she had it.
I decided to take a walk after Detective Clark left. I didn’t like walking in daylight as much as I did at night. It lacked anonymity, and there were too many distractions. Still, I needed to think. And I thought well while walking.
Now that I knew with relative certainty that Tiny hadn’t adopted his boss’s philosophy of letting bygones be bygones, I was going to have to do something about that.
If he’d left it at the truck, I would have left it alone. The truck was worth a few hundred at best. Certainly not enough to go to war over.
But Tiny had come back for more. He’d been in my house. He wasn’t giving up. Which meant, I had to do something about him.
Sooner rather than later, preferably. The longer this went on, the more of a distraction it would become. And I didn’t have time for distractions.
I stepped out into the parking lot. The late morning sun was shining wanly through a heavy layer of clouds. We’d get rain before evening, I figured.
Then, I froze. Two rows down, three cars in, was a dark blue sedan. A dark blue sedan with plates I recognized from the coffeeshop. And the church.
That’s where I’d seen him the first time: parked by himself at the Kennington Church of the Faithful Savior. The guy I’d assumed was there to light a candle for Andy.
And it was definitely the same guy behind the wheel. This time, I got a better look at him. I saw more than graying hair. I saw a fit guy in maybe his late forties, with chiseled features and short cropped hair, a short, well-trimmed salt and pepper beard that was probably supposed to look like few day old scruff, and a pair of sunglasses that didn’t remotely disguise him.
He was a cop.
The realization shouldn’t have surprised me. I should have seen it coming. Clark had already made it clear she was suspicious of me, hadn’t she? So had the cop who showed up to investigate the break in. Hell, so had the cops who responded to the fire the day before.
It made sense. She’d put a tail on me early on. Maybe, that first day. Maybe right after our interview. So of course the rest of her department was leery of me.
I should have anticipated it. It was a murder investigation, and I was a relative of one of the victims who hadn’t always been on great terms with him. Who certainly hadn’t been on great terms with his wife. Who had ideas about the case. Who didn’t break down into tears like grieving relatives were supposed to do. I should have seen it coming.
But somehow I hadn’t. And that pissed me off more than the tail itself.
Chapter Twenty-Three
I didn’t see the guy in the sedan again that afternoon. I made no secret of the fact that I’d spotted him as I walked by.
He stayed put as long as I was in view, and vanished sometime after. I had no doubt that he stayed on my tail after that. He was just more careful about it, because I didn’t see him. Or else they called someone else in, someone I hadn’t spotted yet.
The day passed uneventfully. I had no breakthroughs. I heard nothing from Megan or Clark. There was no news from the police department about the killer.
The only remotely interesting development – and my interest was purely schadenfreude – involved Wyatt Wagley. The social media platforms he’d uploaded the Dandridge video onto had pulled it, and a few had temporarily suspended his accounts for content violations.
He took to the platforms that hadn’t to complain about supposed violations of his first amendment rights: Big Tech was trying to silence him. Ironic, coming from a man who refused to shut up. But he devoted several posts to speculation about why Big Tech was trying to keep the truth from the public.
Jason seemed more invested in it than I did. He hoped the suspensions would be lifted in time for his hyped big reveal the next morning. “He’s going to tell us who he thinks the killer really is.”
The news wasn’t full of Wyatt Wagley and his absurd theories, though, when I woke Tuesday morning. The headlines were dominated by another nursery rhyme killing. Specifically, a second Three Blind Mice killing.
The victim was Charlene Fleming, the seventy-two year old owner and proprietor of Eastside Exotic Pets & Pet Supplies. The store was indeed on the east side of town, in a crumbling business park that’s better days had come and gone half a century ago.
Hers was a rundown, flat-roofed building surrounded by empty lots and abandoned shops, all of which had been thriving businesses many years ago. She lived over the building, where she’d lived for the past two decades, ever since her husband died.
She’d sold their house to maintain the business. A losing proposition, I thought, looking at pictures of the place. I doubted she got many customers anymore. Maybe not any customers.
But the proprietor’s eccentricities were the least bizarre part of the story. Charlene had been stabbed to death with a kitchen knife. The killer had left a stamped note in a Ziploc bag on her corpse.
Three blind mice. Three blind mice.
See how they run. See how they run.
They all ran after the farmer's wife,
Who cut off their tails with a carving knife
And three frozen feeder mice had been strewn over her body. Three blind mice.
The police chief issued another brief statement following Charlene’s murder. It was an ongoing investigation that they believed was linked to the Nursery Rhyme Killer.
He answered a few questions. Yes, Bret Myslinski was still being charged with the death of Breelyn Thayne. No, they did not think Breelyn’s death was the Nursery Rhyme Killer’s doing. Yes, they were investigating Charlene’s death as the fifth killing. No, he would not speculate whether this new murder was a response to the copycat killing. No, he would not take further questions at this time.
I didn’t think it was a coincidence that the real killer had used the same nursery rhyme as his second-rate imitator. On the contrary, I felt sure it wasn’t.
The police hadn’t clarified Bret Myslinski’s role in the killings. The Nursery Rhyme Killer had done it for them. He’d shown the public unequivocally that Myslinski was an amateur. An imitator. A fake.
He was the real deal. And he was still out there.
Psychiatrists and psychologists probably had all kinds of terms to describe the phenomenon. But for myself, layman’s terms worked just fine: hubris. Someone had imitated him, and they’d done it poorly. They’d sullied his reputation.
That would not – could not – be allowed to stand.
The news networks were full of speculation about what the killing signified. Experts tried to intuit meaning from his choice of victim, from his murder weapon, from the mice, and just about everything else.
I listened to it absently. I felt again that I was missing something, but I was no nearer to figuring out what than before.
The killing fit the same pattern as the others. At least, it fit my theory of the others: the killer had picked a nursery rhyme suited to the person. Who better to fill the role of victim in a scenario about mice than a pet store owner, who would have access to mice? And mice already blinded to the world around them through death.
They all ran after the farmer's wife.
Except Charlene Fleming wasn’t married, to a farmer or anyone else. She’d been married, of course. So maybe her deceased husband had been a farmer.
I pulled out my phone to text Detective Clark. But then I remembered the guy in the sedan, and I put it back again. I could figure that out on my own. I didn’t need to involve anyone who thought I might be a killer.
So I searched for information on Charlene’s husband. It was hard to come by. Most of the articles focused on her eccentricities: the crazy old pet lady who lived alone in a crumbling store, in a dead end of town.
But I started by locating his
name: David Fleming. Then I searched on it. There were plenty of articles mentioning him, but usually only in passing, through his relationship to the victim.
Eventually, I found a story that described him as a former mechanic and auto parts store owner. From there, I located the name of his shop. It was still around, and still an auto parts shop. But not under the same name.
David’s shop had been bought up by a rival, and then the rival had sold to a chain. Now, the old Fleming Auto Parts was one of a chain of hundreds of auto parts stores around the nation.
What it wasn’t, though, nor had it ever been was a farm. Not when he owned it, and not when his father before him owned it.
David Fleming hadn’t been a farmer. So Charlene Fleming wasn’t a farmer’s wife and had never been one.
Which meant…what?
There were plenty of farmers around Kennington. Finding a farmer’s wife would be easy enough. And plenty of pet stores carried feed mice, so the charade with the blind mice could still have been pulled off.
Of course, farmers would be rural, and rural homes meant the possibility of guns. Nothing like a shotgun slug to end a serial killing spree. Maybe the killer figured his dramatic flair wasn’t worth his life.
Still, it wasn’t illegal to own a gun in the city. And an old woman living on her own in a rundown part of town would be a better candidate than most for gun ownership. There would be some risk involved there.
And not just that she kept a shotgun under the counter or a revolver in her purse. She might have had surveillance equipment.
So far, the killer had avoided leaving any kind of trace of himself. Or herself. Even in Dandridge’s neighborhood, where the houses all had security systems, he’d somehow bypassed them all.
I pulled the phone out after all, and texted Clark. Did the pet store have security cameras?
I didn’t know if she’d respond, but it was worth a try. If the answer was yes, well, the cops would already be all over that. But if not, it would at least suggest that the killer had been there before.
Maybe he’d scoped the place out well in advance. Maybe he was working off a list, with his murders all preplanned. Three Blind Mice was a fairly popular nursery rhyme, and it involved violence and a knife. It followed that it would make his list, if he had a list.
So maybe he’d moved Fleming’s murder ahead on his murder schedule. Or maybe he didn’t have a schedule. Maybe he’d simply improvised when provoked, and dreamed up his own, more elaborate murder to match the rhyme. To show the world how the real Nursery Rhyme Killer would have done it.
But Clark didn’t respond.
Nor, for that matter, did Wyatt Wagley put up his bombshell theory. He claimed it was because he still hadn’t got all of his accounts back. I figured it had to do with not wanting to compete for headlines.
Right now, the fifth murder – the real Three Blind Mice killing – dominated every channel, every outlet, and every paper. It’d be hard to go viral in that atmosphere. And Wagley was all about going viral.
Jason ignored my cynicism. He was, I think, genuinely disappointed. For whatever reason, he’d latched onto the idea that Wagley might just solve the case. And now he’d have to wait another day for enlightenment.
The call came just after ten. It wasn’t from Detective Clark. It was from Maisie. She called Jason, and then Jason raced over. I’d been in bed, trying to force myself to sleep on my new schedule.
So I was awake when I heard the hammering at the door. A moment later, I’d gotten to the door and opened it.
Jason stood there, his hair wild and his expression more crazed yet. He grabbed my arm and pushed into the room. “The killer,” he said. “He came for Meg and the kids. We got to go, Owen, now. Keys: get them. We got to go.”
He was pulling me toward the door, babbling about fire and the Nursery Rhyme Killer. I shook free of him. “What the hell’s going on, Jason? In complete sentences this time.”
It took three tries, but in the end I got a clear answer from him. Someone had pitched some kind of incendiary device through the living room window. “It sounds like a Molotov cocktail. But Mais was really scared. She wasn’t making a whole lot of sense.”
He had got two facts for sure: the family was safe, and the fire department was there.
So I grabbed my shoes and keys. Jason was wearing slippers and ratty pajama pants, but he grabbed a jacket from a hook on the wall. My jacket.
I didn’t want to wait for him to go change, so I said nothing about that. We just raced downstairs and out to the SUV.
Twenty minutes and a few blown stop lights later, we rolled up as close as we dared behind a line of cop cars and a firetruck and an ambulance. Their lights were all flashing. A cop came over to divert us. I explained that we were relatives, and that Jason lived there.
He waved us to the side of the road. “You’ll need to stay there, sir.” Then he added, “The family’s alright, though. We’ll let them know you’re here.”
So I pulled over where he indicated, and he radioed something through. Jason got out of the vehicle and stood on the sidewalk. I followed, just in case he decided to do something stupid. Better if I was in a position to grab his arm or otherwise slow him down if he decided to go barreling into a burning building.
Not that the house looked like it was burning anymore. There was a lot of smoke. The street smelled almost as bad as my yard had. But I didn’t see flames, and the firemen seemed to be wrapping things up.
Figures milled about in the dark, lit up by the emergency lights but too far away to make out. Jason started to pace.
“They’re fine,” I told him. “The cop told us they’re fine.”
“I don’t see them. And there’s an ambulance there, dude. There shouldn’t be an ambulance there.”
“They’re fine.”
He went on pacing in his pajamas and slippers, tucking his hands under his armpits. I couldn’t tell if it was a nervous reaction or a response to the evening chill. “We should be able to see them.”
“They’re fine, Jason.”
The fire truck pulled away. One of the cop cars followed. Some of the other cops started cordoning off the area with crime scene tape.
The ambulance pulled away. And then we saw the family: Megan and the three kids. A series of four dark silhouettes against the red and blue lights.
Chapter Thirty-Four
A brick had flown through the window first, and then a flaming bottle. Maisie had been the one to see the brick. She and Daniel both saw the flaming bottle. It sailed through the broken glass and smashed against the floor. Flames sprang up all around it.
They called their mom in the kitchen. She got them and Ben outside, and called 9-1-1.
No one had seen anything. Megan thought she might have heard a car squealing away, but she couldn’t be sure. And I didn’t dare press her.
She was practically hysterical. She sobbed and raged in turns. She couldn’t understand why God was testing her like this. She wasn’t perfect – she knew that – but did she deserve this?
And who was this Nursery Rhyme Killer? What kind of sicko would try to burn kids in their own homes? Wasn’t it enough that he’d murdered their father already? There was a special place in hell for people like that.
She held me fast and cried into my shoulder. She kissed Jason half a dozen times and told him he was a good brother.
Mais and Daniel seemed stunned more than anything else. They stood in silence and stared. Ben was cold and tired and tearful. He wanted to go to bed. He didn’t want to be outside. His mother’s attempts to soothe him – “It’ll be alright, honey. I promise, it’ll be alright” – only provoked more tears.
The cops did what they could. They gave her the information she’d need: the case number and contact numbers, and her next steps. They asked if she had a place to stay. The sergeant volunteered to drive them to a hotel.
Megan started crying again. Her purse was in the house. She had nothing but her phone on her.
“You guys can stay with me,” I said.
The sergeant confirmed the plan with Megan. Then the cops went back to their business, and we piled into the SUV.
I explained my current living situation on the way back to the hotel. She didn’t seem surprised that Jason’s truck had gone up in flames, and I neglected to mention arson.
“So where are we going to go?”
“There’s three bedrooms total – two in my suite, and a bedroom and a sleeper sofa in Jason’s. We can bunk up however you want.”
She considered, then nodded. “Dan and Maisie can have one of the rooms. Ben and I will take another. You and Jason can take the other room.”
There was approximately a snowball’s chance in hell that I’d be sharing a room with Jason. Not when there was a perfectly serviceable sofa available. Or a floor. Or my vehicle. But I nodded anyway. “Sounds good.”
She reached over and squeezed my arm. “Thank you, Owen.”
We reached the hotel without too many shed tears or tantrums thrown. I gave Megan my key and repacked my stuff. Then I vacated the room for her and the kids.
We’d see about getting Megan’s purse and getting her her own rooms tomorrow. But for now, she and the kids could have the king suite.
Jason helped me cart my bag and boards into his suite. Then he said, “Give me a minute, dude. I’ll clear my stuff out of the bedroom.”
I glanced into the room. It was littered in trash bags, and the various belongings he’d fished out of those bags. “That’s fine,” I said. “I’ll take the couch.”
“You sure?”
“Yeah.”
“Cool. Okay. I’m going to go to sleep. Let me know if you need anything. Night.”
“Night.”
He shut his door. I set up my pillows and laid down for the second time. I closed my eyes. Sleep didn’t come. An hour passed, and then another. It was, technically, Wednesday morning.
Then someone knocked at the suite door. “I got it,” I called.
If Jason heard me – or the knock – he didn’t respond. There was no light coming from his bedroom. I went to the door. Megan was standing there, her cheeks red and her eyes puffy. “Can I come in?”