The Folds

by Clint Townsend

  “Sorry to say but, no.”

  Danny’s shot on the yellow one ball, like Butch’s fifteen ball, bounced off the corner of the side pocket bumper.

  “They closed the case.” Butch lined up and delicately sank the fourteen ball. “Huddleston said to close it as a cold case with a kidnapping, grand theft auto, a triple homicide, armed robbery, and four charges of vehicular manslaughter.” He then missed an easy bank shot on the thirteen while finishing his explanation. “So I closed the investigation. We know what happened, who done it, where and to who, but never found the who done it.”

  “Kidnapping?” Danny asked, confused. “Who got kidnapped?”

  “The girl!” Butch answered gruffly.

  “Brooke? Backseat Brooke?”

  “Brooke.”

  “Headless Brooke?”

  “Yes! Headless Brooke! Backseat Brooke. The only Brooke in the whole thing!”

  Danny stepped up to the table and dropped his six ball with a crack as he bluntly gave his interpretation of the scenario. “She wasn’t kidnapped.”

  “She most certainly was!” Butch countered.

  “Okay! What idiot kidnaps someone, takes their car, and then takes them with him to rob a store?” As Butch prepared to speak, Danny raised his finger and smartly added, “Mind you now, not tied up, gagged, or put into the trunk, but left sitting alone—waiting—in a running car, out in front of the store?”

  “Now see right there! How do you know that?” Butch asked, frustrated.

  Danny smiled and squatted for his next shot, then pointed to his head, giving his skull a tap.

  While Danny prepared to drop the four ball, Butch suggested, “They think that he probl’y shot her before he went into the store.”

  “Okay, then,” Danny rephrased, “what idiot kidnaps someone, takes their car, shoots them, and decides to take their dead body with him to rob a store?” He tried not to laugh as irritation washed over Butch’s face.

  “Look, I’m sorry. We didn’t have anyone else to go to!” Butch explained. “I was doin’ what I was told! This was my first investigation and it was a monster.”

  “Did ya’ll ever find who shot my daddy?” Danny quipped with a piercing stare.

  Butch was speechless.

  “Whoa, whoa, whoa…let’s get this straight!” Danny snapped. “Three girls get shot and out of the blue, a dead guy shows up out in the country somewhere and lo and behold, this new dead guy just so happens to be the murderer of the three girls over the past fifteen years! Yet after twenty-seven years, you can’t find the man who murdered my friends and my daddy?” He tossed the pool cue onto the table. He shook his head, stifling his anger as he walked back to the table to finish his beer.

  Delicately, Butch tried to console him. “Look, I know how you feel. I—”

  “You have no idea how I feel!” Danny hissed through clenched cheeks. After a brief and intent glare, he looked past Butch and, hoisting his bottle in the air, motioning for the waitress to bring another round, hollered, “Yo!” He drew in a deep breath, calmly stepped over to the pool table, and picked up his pool cue. Stretching out his arm to aim at his five ball, he asked, “Just outta curiosity, when did this last girl die?”

  Butch looked through the file as Danny finished his shot. Once the ball sank, the waitress appeared with another round of beer.

  “Uh, she was, uh, lessee…July twenty-third,” Butch answered.

  Danny dropped his beer at the mention of the date. The sound of crashing glass on the concrete floor drew everyone’s attention to the two men. The waitress quickly reappeared with another beer and extra bar towels then squatted to help Butch pick up the broken glass. Danny took his seat and gazed at the picture of the last murder victim.

  Once the beer and broken glass were swept up, Butch joined Danny at the table. “What was that?”

  Danny looked pale when he asked, “What about the others?”

  “Huh?”

  “The others! The others! When were they killed?”

  Butch began thumbing through the files and recited the dates. “July twenty-third 1991. And…July twenty-third 1989. So?” He waited for Danny’s response, then repeated, “So?”

  “So he murdered them all on the same day!”

  “So what?” Butch asked, rising from his seat and taking his pool cue with him. “Serial killers maintain special behavioral patterns that they establish for themselves.”

  Danny listened to Butch’s seminar while flashes of Brooke’s and Dale’s faces intertwined with those of his father and four friends.

  “It could be something like the process of picking someone out by a physical characteristic, a career fixation on the victim; they all did this one particular thing,” Butch elaborated. “It could be a color, a location, a way of committing the crime…sometimes keeping a particular amputated piece of a body as a souvenir.”

  “Could it be date related?” Danny piped up.

  “Could be a date,” Butch agreed, shrugging. “Wouldn’t surprise me. So what’s the big deal? We got the guy! Actually, he got himself for us!”

  “Do you know what happened on July twenty-third 1978?”

  “Yeah,” Butch immediately recalled. “That’s the day a kidnapping, an armed robbery, a triple homicide, grand theft auto, and the vehicular manslaughter of four children occurred.” He sank his eleven ball while describing the events of the day. “I know! We went through this already and that case is closed. I’m sorry, but—”

  “Well, it needs to be reopened!” Danny demanded. “Doesn’t it seem strange? A bit odd that these occurred on the same day?”

  “I told you what the habits of serial killers are. So they have a common date. Big deal!”

  “You’re making these out as two separate cases and they’re not!” Danny pointed out, rising from his seat.

  “They’re completely separate!” Butch refuted. “One is a car crash and so on, on one day. The other is three murders spread over fifteen years with one—”

  “How did all your girls die?” Danny interjected. “All were from one gunshot wound to the left chest. Right?”

  “Uh-huh.” Butch nodded in agreement.

  “And how did ‘Backseat Brooke’ die?”

  “Decapitation,” Butch answered, turning to look at the table.

  “But she was shot first!” Danny corrected with a smile.

  “Then she was decapitated!”

  “She was shot first and fell out a door! And what kind of gunshot was it?” Danny asked, holding his hand up to his ear. “Where? How? Excuse me, where was Brooke shot?”

  Butch walked around the table in an attempt to get away from Danny as he pressed for an answer. “A single shot to the left chest! Okay? There, I said it! A single gunshot wound to the left side of the chest.”

  “Exactly!” Danny agreed, then closed with the recap. “Four girls, all shot, shot on the same day and all look alike! One person did this!”

  “You’re pretty proud of yourself right now, aren’t you?” Butch asked with a smile and a nod of his head.

  “Man, I am good!” Danny boasted, raising a fist in the air.

  “All right, I’ll bite,” Butch offered, leaning against the table, crossing his arms. “So what happens now, Inspector Clouseau?”

  “Well, I don’t rightly know. Hey! You got a pic of John Doe?”

  “Yeah!” He walked back to the table, looked through the file, and handed the black and white to Danny. “Here we go. That’s him.”

  Danny took a quick glance at the face of the dead man and confidently stated, “This ain’t your boy!” He tossed the picture on the table then walked to the pool table for his next shot.

  “What do ya mean this ain’t our boy?” Butch countered, looking at the picture under the light. “Of course it’s our boy! The ballistics from the girls all matched the one found in his head! Not our boy! You either need another beer or you don’t need another beer! How do you know that ain’t him?”

  Dann
y smiled again and pointed to his head.

  “Oh, would ya quit with the whole head thing?” Butch demanded. “This is serious!”

  He leaned on the pool table, blasting back, “You think I’m not serious? My whole life has been nothin’ but serious! You tell me to use this for something good and then you shoot me down! What’s with you?”

  “Nothin’!” Butch mumbled, rubbing his eyes. “What are you getting at?”

  “Reopen the cases! Both of ’em!”

  “Hah!” Butch said, covering his eyes in disbelief.

  “Is there something funny? Something I’m missing?”

  “Oh, no! Nothing at all!” Butch patronized. “I’ll get right on that first thing in the morning. Are you freakin’ crazy?”

  “Yes! No! Well, yes, but really, no—”

  “Aw, come on! Listen to you!” Butch complained. “This is all circumstantial!”

  “I would almost be willing to bet you,” Danny challenged with a smile, shaking a pointed finger, “that the ballistics analysis of the round from Brooke’s report would match those found on all three of your girls and your John Doe. And…if you were to check the same report for my daddy, it would match, too!”

  “All right. Here’s the run down as I see it! Now correct me if I’m off base here.”

  Danny leaned against the tabletop, slowly nursing his beer in preparation for Butch’s lecture.

  “You want me to go to Huddleston and say, ‘Sir, I want to reopen both of these cases because there was a kid who was in a car wreck in 1978. Remember the ten-year-old kid, the one who started seeing things after his daddy got shot? The boy who went to all kinds of counselors and psychiatrists, given all kinds of medications? The one that ran away from home when his girlfriend died? That kid? Remember?’”

  “Know him well!” Danny interjected.

  “‘Well,” Butch resumed, “he, that kid, has come back home after being a drunk run away for nineteen years, and now says he had a vision! He thinks that these cases are related to each other by the very slim chance to none that the shooter is the same person in both. And, and…the John Doe, the hitcher, isn’t the shooter at all. He’s just a guy, a decoy. The shooter, the real shooter now, mind you, is actually still alive somewhere and is responsible for the ’78 triple homicide, the grocery store robbery, the vehicular manslaughter of four children of four Texas DPS troopers, the ’78 homicide of a Texas DPS Trooper and three—no, make it four—four more homicides over the past seventeen years!’”

  Danny nodded and smiled at Butch’s summation.

  “Is that it?” Butch asked, frustrated. “Is that what you want me to say to Huddleston?”

  With a poke of his finger on Butch’s arm, Danny exclaimed, “Exactly!”

  TESTING THE HYPOTHESIS

  “You want me to what?” Sgt. Huddleston shouted. Danny heard it clear down the hallway as he sat and waited for Butch to finish his meeting. “Are you outta your mind?”

  “Sir, I know that what I’m suggesting sounds a little unorthodox—” Butch confessed.

  “You bet it does!” Sgt. Huddleston blasted, leaning across his desk. “Farley, this request of yours is teetering on the brink of stupidity! Where in the name of lunacy did you get this idea?”

  “Well, sir,” he began with a crack in his voice. “I was talking to Danny Albright the day before yesterday and—”

  “Danny Albright!” Huddleston repeated, astounded. “There’s your problem! No disrespect to his mother and father, God rest their souls, but you been spending too much time with Señor Whacko!” He smiled sarcastically and tapped his finger on the glass-topped desk. “I strongly recommend you rethink your proposal, identify who your real friends are, remember what your job is and what you were hired to do, and get your head out of the clouds or whatever orifice you’ve got it shoved into.”

  Butch momentarily closed his eyes, trying to remain calm. “Sir, if you can just—”

  “If I can just nothing, Farley!” the sergeant interrupted angrily. “Quit tryin’ to rewrite the past. I can’t believe what I’m hearing!” He began pacing back and forth behind his desk, waving his arms. “You honestly expect me to reopen two closed investigations because an unstable Jesus freak has a nightmare or two? Huh?”

  Rising from his seat to address the verbal attack, Butch stated clearly and firmly, “Sir, with all due respect, I think this is the right thing to do. And you don’t need to reassign this to anybody else. I can do this. I want to do this and all that I’m really going to need is—”

  “You don’t get it, do ya, Farley?” Sgt. Huddleston interrupted again. “I been tryin’ to talk some sense into ya but you just ain’t taking the hint! So! Here’s what I’m gonna do for you! I’m giving you the rest of the day off!”

  “A day off? For what, sir, if you don’t mind me asking?”

  “So you can get up off your brain and get it back where it belongs!” Huddleston replied, speaking slowly and politely as he took his seat.

  “Sir! That is not necessary, and if you would—”

  “Don’t you interrupt me when I’m talking!” he barked, glaring up at Butch. “That’s two days!”

  “Please just allow me the opportunity to collect more information—”

  “Make it three!”

  “I think there is more than justifiable cause to reopen both investigations—”

  “Now it’s a week, Farley! Keep it up!” the sergeant shouted, standing once again.

  Butch raised the level of his voice to that of Huddleston’s and pointed his finger. “Due to acts of gross negligence committed by you, me, and this entire department with regard to evidence-gathering procedures, incomplete and inconsistent evidence reporting, tampered and adulterated crime scenes—”

  “That’s two weeks, Farley!” Huddleston bellowed.

  “And all likelihood there is an unstable predator still out in the public sector!”

  “Two weeks and no pay!” he roared in Butch’s face. The room fell silent.

  “He’s my friend,” Butch stated softly. “I have faith in him and I trust him. I’ve gotten more outta life this past year and a half because of that guy. I’ve learned more about life in the past eighteen months than what this job has taught me in over twenty-five years.” He walked to the door, prepared to leave, but instead turned to Huddleston and asked, “Tell me something, who and what are you living for?”

  Butch exited the office and slowly strode toward Danny as Sgt. Huddleston yelled out, “Hey! You get back here and close that door!”

  “So!” Danny quipped, clasping his hands together in sarcastic joy. “Everything’s okay, huh? When do we start?”

  Butch turned around to see Sergeant Huddleston exiting his office.

  Danny continued his sarcastic jocularity with a slight punch to Butch’s arm and said, “I smell another promotion!”

  “I don’t think that’s what you smell,” Butch commented.

  “Farley!” Huddleston blasted as he approached the two men. “You hard a hearin’? I said for you to close that door!”

  Danny jumped in-between Butch and Sgt. Huddleston, holding his hands up as he jokingly explained, “I’m sorry, sir, but my client here, Mr. Farley, is currently unemployed and is not to be subjected to cruel and unusual verbal punishment! So if you would please refrain—”

  “Shut up, Albright!” the sergeant ordered, pushing Danny to the side. “Get him outta my hallway, Farley!”

  Danny regained his balance, turned to face Sergeant Huddleston, and placed his fingers to temples. He glared at him and made a low humming sound.

  “Oh, great! Now ya done it!” Butch lamented, shaking his head.

  “Done it? What do you mean ‘done it’? Done what?” asked Huddleston, backing away from Danny.

  “Now he’s gonna find out how it happens!” Butch replied.

  “How what happens? Find out what?” the sergeant asked, uneasy with Danny’s behavior.

  Danny moved to stand directly be
side Sgt. Huddleston, leaning into his face, humming all the while.

  “Stop that, you idiot! Why’s he doin’ that? Stop him!” the sergeant complained, moving slightly backward.

  “Well, that’s how he does it,” Butch answered with a sinister smile, crossing his arms.

  “Does what?”

  “Sees when and how someone’s gon’ die,” Butch whispered. “And now you’ll know how you die!”

  Danny stopped humming, closed his eyes, and let loose with an, “Ohhh! Wow!” and a foreboding, “Uuuuhhh-oh!” then stood perfectly still. For a brief moment, the hallway was still and quiet. Sgt. Huddleston waited for Danny’s next move as small beads of sweat appeared on his forehead. Danny lightly chuckled to himself as he slightly peeped open his right eye, amused at the look on the staunch sergeant’s face.

  “You!” Huddleston shouted, waving his finger at Danny. “I don’t want to see your sorry-lookin’ face again! Is that clear? And you!” he added, turning his attention to Butch as he and Danny started walking away, “that’s two unpaid weeks! Ya here me, Farley? Two weeks!”

  Danny stopped, did an about-face and took slow, concentrated strides back to Sgt. Huddleston. “Hey!” he whispered, standing face-to-face with Sergeant Huddleston. “A little word of advice: don’t use the bathroom in your guest bedroom and make sure you never park under the tree in your front yard! Oh, and check the expiration date on your milk!”

  The next day, the duo was driving back to town to get the rest of Danny’s personal belongings. Minus a few wisps of bright-white, fingerlike clouds, the wide Texas sky was a clear, bright blue. They joined Pat Green as he sang “Wave Upon Wave,” holding their hands out the windows. They arrived at Danny’s garage apartment and, before too long, had sorted through his belongings and decided what to keep and what to throw or give away. By four o’clock, when the last box was loaded, both men were pleased to find that all of Danny’s earthly possessions fit perfectly into one load. As the two climbed into the cab of the truck, Danny smiled to himself, confident about the new change in his life.