“God, stop!” she screamed.
“Shh. I’m not finished, Erin. Just hear me out. If you interrupt me again, you won’t like it.” William continued, “so, once I scoop pretty much all of your brains out, I’ll get some water boiling in the kitchen and plop your skull into the pot. I’ll leave it in there for a few hours. All the scraps of meat that are still attached will just kind of fall off after that.”
“Help!” she screamed.
William jammed the end of the metal catch pole through the metal bars of the door and violently poked at her body.
Between her shouts of pain, she continued to scream for help.
“Shut your damn mouth.” He jammed the pole into the side of her head, striking her in the temple twice.
She winced and went silent.
“Good. No more with your mouth and screaming and shit. No one is going to hear you, and honestly, it’s just starting to piss me off.” He let out a big breath. “Okay, where was I? Oh, skull in the pot. So once your skull is done with the boiling, I’ll take it out and let it dry and cool. Then, I’ll start with putting everything back together. I’ll kind of mold your facial features with clay, drape your skin back on and attach it. After that, I’ll put in your glass eyes and mount your skull to the board with this little rig that I’ve created. Then I’ll dunk your head in wax, let you dry, and then put on your hair and makeup and get you just right with all the little details. And then you go up on the wall.” William clapped his hands together, held them out, and turned them up and down like a card dealer at a casino table would. “And then that’s it.”
Erin took a couple of erratic breaths. “How… how many people have you killed?”
William looked up and scratched at his chin. “Six, getting ready for you. Well, actually seven. That’s the surprise that I mentioned earlier.” He stopped talking and stared at her, waiting for a comment. She didn’t say anything.
“Oh, the suspense is killing me. I’m horrible with secrets. I’m actually really proud of myself that I kept it this long. Okay, here goes.” William pointed both index fingers at her. “Did you want to do a drumroll sound or something?”
She didn’t respond but turned a bit in her cage.
“Hmm. When I envisioned telling you, there was always kind of a drumroll sound in my head before the big news. Are you sure you don’t want to do it?”
Erin said nothing.
William slumped his shoulders. “Okay, fine. I—” He stopped his sentence short. “No, it just isn’t right without the drumroll. I’ll do it.” William flicked his tongue against the roof of his mouth, making the sound he desired and finished it with his best impression of cymbals clanking together. “I killed Mark.”
“What?” she asked between short, choppy, breaths.
“Yeah. Your hubby is dead. I blew the top half of his head off.”
Her body jerked as she cried and sniveled and shook her head. A low, sustained moan came from her mouth. She rocked back and forth, clutching her elbows with her hands over her chest. Erin raised her head. Her bottom lip quivered. “Tell me that you didn’t. William, tell me you didn’t do anything to Mark.”
“Yup. He’s worm food. Good riddance. That’s what you get for firing me so your trampy little girlfriend can take my job. And then he goes and marries you? What an idiot. You slept with half of the station. Real prize.”
Erin began to cry more loudly.
William spoke over the top of her noise. “I made sure the trajectory was right and put a gun in his hand. Shot him under the chin and splattered his brains on the ceiling. I figured he might be able to cause problems for us, so it was better to just remove him from the equation. But I did it smart. He left a suicide note that said that he killed you and dumped you in the Pacific. Couldn’t live with himself. It seemed like everyone bought it. I’d imagine that any signs that the suicide wasn’t legit probably disappeared by the time they found him, which was like ten days if I remember right. It was on the news and all that. I caught a little coverage of it on the Channel Eight website. They had some memorial to-do for one of their own, meaning you, being a victim.”
She continued to wail.
“So, you see, everyone thinks you’re dead.” William smiled wide. “There isn’t a single person looking for you. Don’t worry, though. Everyone will know that I’m the one who did this to you. You think you taking my job and getting your face in front of the cameras made you famous—not even close. You’ll be national news soon, but it won’t be anything like the coverage I get. You’ll be a footnote in the bigger story while I get the limelight.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
We slowed and pulled in behind Duffield, two wheels in the muddy grass in front of a single-story beige brick home at the end of a long, straight blacktopped driveway. Beth killed the motor on our rental car, and we stepped out. My feet squished in the wet grass as I walked around the nose of the car.
“Did it rain overnight or something?” I asked.
“I don’t think so,” Beth said.
I shrugged and stamped my wet feet on the road.
Duffield swung his driver’s door closed and stretched his back. We met him at the front of his truck.
“Ready?” he asked.
“Yeah, let’s see what they have to say,” Beth said.
We made a right into the driveway and walked toward the home. I glanced left at the black mailbox and green newspaper box at the far edge of the driveway, near the street. We passed along the side of a black couple-year-old Ford pickup parked in front of the garage and made our way up the single step to the front door. A bay window sat to the front door’s right. The television was on inside the house. Duffield reached out for the doorbell, but the front door swung open before his finger pressed it in. A woman, looking in her late thirties with long dark hair, stood inside the doorway behind the still-closed white screen door.
“Ma’am, Agents Duffield, Harper, and Rawlings,” Duffield said, pointing to each of us with our respective names.
“Hi, I’m Emily. Come on in,” she said. She opened the screen door and held it as we entered the home. “We can probably go to the kitchen table, right through there, straight ahead.” She pointed the way to the kitchen.
We walked toward where she pointed, through the living room area and past a hallway that shot off to our left.
Mrs. Emmerson stopped at the hall. “Chris!”
A man faintly yelled, “What?” as a response.
“They’re here!” she called and walked into the kitchen behind us. Mrs. Emmerson motioned to the table, and our group had a seat. She put her back to the kitchen counter. “Chris will be out in just a second.”
“Sure,” Duffield said.
Mrs. Emmerson brushed at the front of her black blouse.
A man, looking equal in age to the woman, with dark-rimmed glasses, jeans, and a hooded sweatshirt, appeared from the hall and entered the kitchen. “Hello,” he said. “Chris Emmerson.”
“Mr. Emmerson,” Duffield said. “I was who you spoke to earlier.”
He approached Duffield and shook his hand. Beth and I went through a round of introductions and handshakes with the man next.
“So I guess we don’t really know what is going on here or what you’d like to talk to us about. Basically, all we’ve been told is that someone mailed a package from our house while we were out of state. First the police call us, then the FBI, and now the FBI wants to meet with us. What’s this all about?”
“We actually just wrapped up a press conference prior to us coming here,” Duffield said. “While we can’t get into the specifics of the actual investigation, we can basically tell you what we told the press.”
“This sounds pretty serious,” Mrs. Emmerson said.
“It is,” Duffield said. “We believe we have a serial killer operating in the area. A package he mailed to a local newspaper came from your mailbox.”
“Serial killer!” Mr. Emmerson said.
“Oh, God,�
� Mrs. Emmerson said.
“Why us?” Mr. Emmerson asked. “Why did he pick our house?” He paused in thought. “How did he know that we weren’t home?”
“Are we in danger?” Mrs. Emmerson asked. “What about our kids? They’re with their grandmother now, but I don’t want them coming back here if there is a serial killer lurking around our house.”
Duffield held out his hand to slow down their onslaught of questions. “We’re going to go through everything with you,” he said.
“I sure as hell hope so,” Mrs. Emmerson said.
“First, we’ll need to know everyone that knew your family was leaving out of town,” Duffield said.
“Well, people from work obviously knew. Family, friends…” Mr. Emmerson said.
“The Osweilers down the road knew, too,” Mrs. Emmerson said.
I cleared my throat and spoke up. “Maybe you guys could start putting together a list. I assume this was a planned vacation?”
“It was,” Mr. Emmerson said. “We took the kids to the Grand Canyon and some theme parks out west.” Mr. Emmerson looked at his wife. “Honey, can you grab us a piece of paper and a pen?”
She nodded, went into one of the kitchen drawers across the room and rummaged through it. She walked back to her husband a moment later and set the paper and pen on the counter behind them. Mr. Emmerson gave us his back and started writing.
“Were there any other neighbors or locals that may have known about your absence?” Beth asked. “Passersby that may have seen you loading up for your trip?”
“Hell, I’m sure a couple of cars had to pass while I was packing up the truck, but I can’t say that I remember any of them,” Mr. Emmerson said, pausing from his writing and looking back at us over his shoulder.
“None of them looked like it could have been a police patrol vehicle or perhaps an unmarked one like a detective would drive?” Beth asked.
“I can’t say I remember seeing anything like that,” he said.
“Any neighbors that you know of own a vehicle like that?” I asked.
He shook his head and turned back toward the counter.
“We asked the Osweilers to kind of keep an eye on the place while we were gone,” Mrs. Emmerson said. “Have you talked to them?”
I looked at Duffield.
“We’ve spoken with a couple of people in the neighborhood, but we’ll be doing that again today,” Duffield said. “What direction and how far away do the Osweilers live?”
“They’re down the road a property to the south,” she said. “Dark-blue two story with white shutters.”
Mr. Emmerson turned back to face us and held the piece of paper out toward his wife. “That’s about all that I can think of for me.”
From what I could see of the paper, he’d written down about a dozen names.
She took the paper in hand and, like her husband, turned to use the countertop to write.
Mr. Emmerson crossed his arms over his chest, leaning against the counter. “So what the hell are we supposed to do here? Whoever mailed this package, or whatever, from our house had to know we weren’t home.”
“Which is why we wanted to talk to you and see if we could come up with a connection. I don’t suppose that you know anyone who maybe seems off or work with anyone who could be a bit questionable? Past criminal history, mental-health issues, anything like that?” Beth asked.
Mr. Emmerson shrugged and lifted his hands. “I work at a bank—personal banker. Only a handful of people knew that I’d be out of town, and I honestly can’t think of anyone that isn’t pretty straight up that I work with. They kind of have to be.”
“Do you know anyone that drives or owns a retired police vehicle?” I asked.
He slowly shook his head. “No. I can’t say that anyone I know owns one of those. Babe, know anyone who has an old cop car?”
Mrs. Emmerson turned around, walked a few steps toward us, and held out the paper, which Beth took. “Old cop car, no. Is that what this guy has or something?”
“We believe so,” I said.
Mrs. Emmerson pointed at the paper, which Beth was looking over. “That’s everyone that we can think of, I guess,” she said.
“Thank you,” Beth said.
“What is this person doing?” Mr. Emmerson asked. “I mean, if my family is in any kind of danger here, we’ll have to try to figure out somewhere to go.”
“We could maybe go to my mother’s,” Mrs. Emmerson said.
Mr. Emmerson’s face twitched. He apparently wasn’t keen on that idea.
“We can’t get into the finer details of it,” I said. “Let’s just leave it at taking lives of younger women. The age range seems to be in the earlier twenties.”
“So we are or are not in danger, here?” Mr. Emmerson asked.
“We have no way of telling you that. Perhaps going to a different location might be the prudent thing to do,” Beth said.
He nodded, but the rest of his body language said he was reluctant to do so.
Beth was still staring at the piece of paper with the names. “Could you maybe tell us what each name is in relation?” She reached into her pocket and removed a pen. “I’ll just say the name, and you can say co-worker or friend or family.”
“Sure,” Mrs. Emmerson said.
Beth ran through the list of names with the couple, writing down the association with the Emmersons next to each. We spent another ten or fifteen minutes with them prior to thanking them and heading for the door. They’d said that they planned on leaving the home and staying with the wife’s mother, as she’d suggested. Duffield told them he’d call if we needed to follow up.
Mr. Emmerson held the door for us as we walked out. Beth and Duffield led, with me being the last to exit.
I stopped at the front step and turned back to Mr. Emmerson. “Our team has already looked over your mailbox, but do you mind if I have a quick look as we head out?”
“Sure, go ahead,” he said. “I don’t know what more you’re going to see, other than an empty mailbox, but you have our permission, sure.”
“Thank you,” I said. “Take care.”
I took a couple quick steps to catch up with Duffield and Beth, who were talking as they walked down the driveway. The topic of conversation seemed to be what they were going to do with the names on the list.
“I’ll take a photo of it and send it back to the office,” Duffield said. “I can get some of the guys on running the names for priors right away. After that, I’ll get them on registered vehicles.” He turned his head to look over his shoulder at me. “Do we want to interview these people personally or just try contacting them by phone?”
“Let’s just see what we can get from the list and go from there,” I said.
The three of us neared the end of the driveway. I jerked my chin at the mailbox. Homeowners says it’s fine if we check it out. Figure I’ll give it a quick look.”
“Looks like a mailbox,” Beth said.
“Never know. There could be something in the grass that went overlooked. Wrapper, cigarette butt, gum, who knows.” I approached and looked down, noticing muddy tire tracks between the road surface and the mailbox itself—I figured they were from the homeowners checking the box when they arrived home or from someone delivering a newspaper. To me, the time of day seemed too early for the regular mail delivery. I stood directly before the box, my feet on the street to stay away from the mud. I surveyed the grass and surrounding areas.
“Anything catching your eye?” Beth asked.
“Nope.” I looked into the newspaper box, which was empty, and reached out to flip down the door on the main box. It came down with a squeak of rusty hinges.
“Son of a bitch,” I said.
“What?” Duffield asked.
I pointed inside the mailbox.
Beth and Duffield both closed in for a look inside.
“Same looking as the other,” Beth said. “Plain brown cardboard box.”
“Are we sure it didn’t c
ome from the homeowner? Maybe they forgot to put the flag up. Who is it addressed to?” Duffield asked.
I put my face close to try to read the address, which was typed on a white adhesive label. “Unless the Emmersons are sending something with no return label to the Louisville Press-Gazette, we’re going to need a forensics team.” I looked back over my shoulder to see Duffield already pulling his phone from his pocket.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
Within the hour, the forensics team from the local office was on the scene. They photographed the area and removed the package from the mailbox. Beth, Duffield, and I gave them space. I stared over, watching one of the forensics guys pour plaster into the muddy tire tracks while another was dusting the mailbox for prints. The forensics lead, Frank Witting, stood at the trunk of his vehicle with the package. He slipped it into a clear evidence bag and pulled the backing off the adhesive end to seal it. The package wouldn’t be opened until he had it back in his lab in a controlled environment.
“Are we ready to go?” Duffield called.
Witting turned his head toward us. “Ready when you are if you need to head back with it,” he said. “I’m going to need some time with it at the lab.”
“That’s fine,” Duffield said.
Witting nodded and placed the sealed bag with the package into a tote in his trunk. He closed the trunk lid. “My guys probably have another half hour or so, and they’ll be headed back with what they got as well.”
“Okay, give me a minute here. I have to call Collette and Tolman and see where they are, and we’ll head back,” Duffield said.
Witting confirmed and went to the driver’s door of his vehicle.
Duffield took a few steps away to make the call.
“So these guys are doing the door knocking now, and we’re going back with the package?” Beth asked.
“That’s the plan, I guess,” I said. “Wait around to see what’s inside the box and take it from there.”
Duffield clicked off from his phone call and walked back to Beth and me. “The guys should be here any second,” he said.
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