The Coast-to-Coast Murders

by J. D. Barker

  “Max said that?”

  “Not Max.”

  “Who then?”

  “We couldn’t find Max’s medicine, but he said there was still a little left in the needle and that would be enough.”

  “Who, Michael?”

  “When we tried to give it to her, Mama started to yell, and he got scared and he pushed her down until she stopped.”

  “Michael, who are you talking about? Who pushed her down?”

  “Mitchell.”

  Chapter Fifty-Two

  Michael

  I drove.

  From the motel in Needles, I drove like a goddamn madman—twenty, thirty, sometimes forty miles an hour above the speed limit. I didn’t give a shit. If the cops pulled me over, if they locked me up, if they put a bullet in the center of my forehead…anything was better than looking down at the floor of my passenger seat and seeing that pair of shoes sitting there.

  Molly.

  I saw her in my mind, clear as day. Wearing the clothes that were in my bathtub. Wearing those shoes.

  Smiling at me. A laugh.

  Shit.

  Shit.

  Shit.

  On the dark road, the deserted highway, as long as the car remained dark, I could make those shoes go away, make them disappear, but each time I approached a rest stop, every time an exit came up, there were lights, and the interior of the car became just bright enough for me to glimpse them, those white shoes.

  Molly’s shoes.

  Twenty minutes outside Nowhere, Arizona, I pulled over.

  I slammed my foot down on the brake, locked up the rear wheels, and skidded to a halt on the gravel shoulder, the dirt and dust creating a cloud; I smelled rubber smoldering. The engine stalled, ticked with heat in the otherwise silent night.

  The shoes, refusing to disappear no matter how many times I blinked or looked away, tumbled across the floorboard.

  A voice in my head whispered, She wasn’t part of the plan, Michael. She was just for fun. Wasn’t she fun?

  I pressed my palms to my ears, tried to shut it out.

  Focus, Michael!

  Not real.

  Not real.

  I remembered her then. Where I’d seen her.

  She was real.

  Just you tonight? You look like you’re ready for a soft bed.

  I didn’t hurt her.

  I wouldn’t.

  I threw open the car door and vomited into the dirt.

  Chapter Fifty-Three

  Written Statement,

  Megan Fitzgerald

  The flight attendant smiled at me from the aisle. Gestured toward her beverage cart. Said something.

  I clicked the Pause button on my tape player and removed my headphones.

  “Would you like a complimentary beverage or perhaps a menu?” she said.

  No. I’d like you to leave me the fuck alone. Can’t you see I’m in the middle of something? I gave her a smile. “I’d kill for a Grey Goose and cranberry.”

  She smiled back. “What about your friend here? Any idea what he’s drinking?”

  “My—” I glanced at the empty seat next to me. Warren still hadn’t returned with his Viagra-laced tail between his legs.

  I leaned a little closer to her and whispered, “He said something about going to smoke pot in one of the bathrooms. I told him he shouldn’t, but he’s a nervous flier and said it’s the only thing that calms his nerves. He’s been gone a while. I hope everything is okay. Last time, he gave himself a horrible shock fiddling with the smoke detector.”

  The smile never left her face. “Perhaps I should check on him.”

  I nodded in agreement. “You need to knock twice or he probably won’t open up. He’s silly like that.”

  After mixing my drink from the ingredients on her cart, she returned to the small alcove at the front of the cabin and spoke to two male flight attendants, then the three of them rushed down the aisle to the back of the plane.

  My vodka was divine.

  I slipped my headphones back on and pressed Play.

  Dr. Bart’s voice, sounding confused. “Who’s Mitchell?”

  “Mitchell pushed Mama under the water until she stopped crying. Until she went to sleep.”

  “Michael, I’ve read the police reports. I know you were alone with your mother at this point.”

  “Not alone. Mitchell too.”

  “What did I tell you about lying, Michael? You don’t have to make up stories for me. You can tell me the truth. I won’t tell anyone. Whatever you say will stay just between us. Even if you did something wrong. Even if you did something really wrong, I won’t tell anyone. You won’t get in trouble. Not with me.”

  “Not lying. It was Mitchell. Mitchell is mean sometimes. Like Max.”

  Dr. Bart cleared his throat. “You told me you were alone on the bed when Max came back to the room. Where was Mitchell then?”

  Silence from Michael.

  “Was he on the bed with you? Watching television?”

  “Mitchell was in the closet when Max got home. Mitchell quiet.”

  “You lied to me about your mother and the medicine. Now you’re lying to me about this. You can tell me the truth, Michael. You’ll feel better if you do. Lying is hard. It’s bad. Nobody likes a liar. Telling the truth makes you feel good.” Although firm, Dr. Bart’s voice remained steady, patient. “Friends don’t lie to each other.”

  Michael’s voice didn’t falter. “Mitchell always helps Max with his medicine. Mitchell helped Mama sleep.”

  Both voices fell silent; there was only breathing, Michael’s quick, high rasps and Dr. Bart’s lower, deeper intakes and exhales.

  Dr. Bart spoke first. “Michael, did Max ever hurt you?”

  “No.” The response came fast, barely enough time for him to consider the question. Too fast.

  “Did he ever give you some of his medicine?”

  “No.”

  “Did he ever touch you in a way that made you feel uncomfortable?”

  “No.”

  “Did he—”

  “No!” Michael shouted. “No! No! No!”

  “Take a deep breath, Michael. Calm down.”

  “I don’t wanna talk about this. Not no more!”

  “Calm down, Michael.”

  Silence again.

  “Michael, did Max ever do anything to hurt Mitchell?”

  Michael screamed then, a horrific shriek. I almost tore off the headphones, and I would have if Dr. Bart hadn’t stopped the recording on his end.

  The scream gave way to silence, then several clicks, before continuing.

  “This is Dr. Barton Fitzgerald. Summary report, session two, with Michael Kepler. Although clearly traumatized, Michael Kepler doesn’t present with the markers typically found in a patient suffering from schizophrenia or dissociative disorder. As an expert in both, I’m comfortable ruling those diagnoses out, and I mention them here only because someone listening to this tape, someone less qualified to make such a diagnosis, may consider one or both viable. For the record, I am adamantly stating they are not. I imagine, if circumstances hadn’t changed, if he had continued to live in that hostile environment, it’s very possible a disorder might have developed. At this point, though, I have no reason to believe this Mitchell is anything more than an imaginary friend created by Michael to help him deal with the horrible conditions in which he was forced to live. A common toddler developmental solution. At his current weight of forty-three pounds, I find it hard to believe he forced his mother beneath the surface of her bath and held her there long enough for her to drown. Although that scenario does fit with the medical examiner’s findings for cause of death, I believe it to be only a partial explanation of events.”

  Dr. Bart paused for a moment, then added, “For those of you who have not reviewed all the relevant data, I do feel it’s important to mention that the clinical examination of Michael Kepler revealed signs of both sexual and physical assault. Scarring and bruising indicate these abuses date back
at least a year, with the most recent incident no more than a week ago. It’s common at this point for the patient to deny such abuse, particularly at his age, but I feel, given time, he would be open to discussing the details. I’m hesitant to push too hard on this. At his current age of four, the memories of these traumatic events will most likely recede and be completely forgotten by the age of six. I have yet to decide if it would prove more beneficial for him to remember and confront these memories or to bury them.”

  The recording came to an end. I removed my headphones and finished the last of my drink.

  The two male flight attendants helped Warren back into his seat. His face was flushed red and dripping with sweat. Without looking at me, he muttered, “You’re a bitch.”

  “I love you too, Warren.”

  Chapter Fifty-Four

  Dobbs

  Special Agents Omer Vela and Sammy Goggans arrived by car shortly before midnight; the U.S. marshals were five minutes behind them. Gimble had a map spread out on the hood of one of the SUVs. U.S. Marshal Garrison stood beside her, his fingers tracing the various arteries out of the small town. “We’ve got clear shots to Arizona and Nevada. He could double back to California, no way to know.”

  Sheriff Moody said, “We’ve got a small regional airport, a bus stop, and a train station. I’ve got men watching all of them on the off chance he ditches the car and opts for public transportation.”

  “He knows LA,” Dobbs said. “He could get lost there. All these highways run through nothing but wide-open spaces. That’s too dangerous; I think he’s heading back to the city.”

  Gimble’s fingers were snapping again. “If he wanted to hide in LA, I don’t think he would have gone through the trouble of securing a vehicle. I smell road trip. I think he’s heading east. You said he was from New York. Maybe he’s running home.”

  Garrison said, “No way he makes it across the country.”

  “He’s got at least a two- to three-hour jump on us. I want to widen the BOLO—Texas, Kansas, Oklahoma…all these surrounding states.” She drew a large circle with her finger.

  “Without a plate?”

  “Can’t rely on plate readers to catch every bad guy,” Gimble told him. “Go old school. Stay on highway patrol. Small, black sports car, old. MG, Fiat, Porsche…that’s gotta stand out.”

  Vela came out the mobile home’s front door, Begley behind him, carrying a cell phone and several evidence bags. He set the bags down on the hood of the SUV next to the map and handed the phone to Sammy. “We think this is Erma’s, but it’s got a pass code. Can you break it?”

  Sammy studied the phone, then plugged it into his MacBook. He brought up a program, keyed in the serial number, and studied the screen. “It’s an Alcatel Pixi Avion running an older version of Android called Lollipop. I can get in, but it will take a little while.”

  Gimble was leaning over the bag with the chrome-plated nine-millimeter, now grimy with black powder. “What’d you find here?”

  “Kepler’s prints are on it, but it hasn’t been fired recently. I found his prints all over the interior of the house too. Where I didn’t find them is on this.” He held up the bag containing the bottle of superglue. “I’ve got Erma’s, Roland’s, and an unknown’s thumbprint. No Kepler.”

  “So he put on gloves for the kill?” Dobbs said.

  Begley shrugged. “Seems odd, considering he wasn’t concerned about touching anything else in that place.”

  Gimble looked down at the third evidence bag. “What about the book?”

  The book.

  They had found the book wedged under Erma Eads’s body on the bed, a sparrow feather marking one of the pages.

  Begley picked it up, flipped through the pages, then went back to the cover. “Fractured, by one Barton Fitzgerald, MD.”

  Vela said, “It’s a case study of one of his patients with dissociative identity disorder.”

  Gimble smirked. “Multiple personalities. Is that a real thing?”

  Vela nodded. “Rare, but real.”

  “Tell me this book isn’t about Kepler.”

  “It’s not. Fitzgerald refers to his patient only as John, but the book was published in 1982—that’s ten years before Kepler was born.”

  “So why did Kepler leave it under the body?”

  Vela opened the book to the page previously marked with the feather. One sentence was underlined: Who is on the mark?

  “Fitzgerald uses this phrase throughout the book to identify which of John’s thirteen personalities he’s speaking to,” Vela explained. “David is on the mark, Joey is on the mark, John is on the mark…the personality in control is the one on the mark.”

  Dobbs said, “Kepler didn’t come out here just to leave us a book with some bullshit taunt.”

  “Kepler came out here for information,” Begley replied. “Erma Eads has signs of severe bruising. She was beaten shortly before death. He glued her nose shut at least thirty minutes before he started on her mouth. He took his time—glued her lips on the left, then slowly worked his way around, one drop at a time. I can tell by the tearing. He glued, she ripped it open with her jaw muscles. He glued again. He tortured her. He came here for information. Possibly to silence her. Maybe both.”

  Gimble took this in. “Get me background on Erma and Roland Eads. We need to figure out the connection.”

  The sheriff’s phone rang. He pressed it to his ear. “Moody.”

  He spoke for several minutes. When he hung up, his eyes fell on Gimble. “Your clusterfuck just expanded. We have another body. About three miles up the road at the Lutz Motel.”

  “Gimble!”

  The shout came from Marshal Garrison. He rounded the SUV at a run. “Your BOLO—I phoned it in, and the computer matched it to three seventy-seven calls in the past hour.”

  Gimble’s eyes narrowed. “What’s seventy-seven?”

  “Civilian traffic calls,” Dobbs said. “Reports of aggressive or erratic driving.”

  Garrison nodded. “About three hours east of here on the interstate in Arizona. Black Porsche, late-sixties model. We’ve got a state trooper on him about a mile back. I ordered him to hold visual but not to pursue.”

  Gimble considered all of this. “Begley, finish here, then get to the Lutz Motel, process the scene. Work with the locals. Garrison, I need you to mobilize marshals in Arizona. Come down I-40 west, close the distance from the opposite side, then take your team from here. Pin him down from both ends. Got it?”

  “Understood.”

  She turned back to the sheriff. “How fast can you get the rest of us back to the chopper?”

  Chapter Fifty-Five

  Written Statement,

  Megan Fitzgerald

  Warren snored.

  Not only was this beast of a man both physically and morally repugnant, he came with matching sound effects.

  One of the flight attendants had offered me earplugs, but I declined; I waved him off and held up my headphones. When he left to tend to Warren’s other offendees, I took another cassette from my bag.

  Dark room—M. Kepler—September 12, 2007

  Michael had been fifteen years old in 2007. Eleven years after the last tape.

  I had taken everything I found in Dr. Rose’s files, but surely there was more. I knew from personal experience that Dr. Bart taped all sessions, and he’d seen Michael several times per week. Possibly hundreds of tapes were missing. Either Dr. Rose had hidden them somewhere, or they were still in Dr. Bart’s office, or someone else had them.

  Where were my tapes?

  I hadn’t found any of mine.

  I put on my headphones. Slipped the cassette into my player and pressed Play.

  Dr. Bart cleared his throat. “I have something special for you today.”

  “Oh yeah? What?”

  It was weird, hearing Michael’s voice, older now. Not quite his current voice, but somewhere in between the child of the other tape and the present. A voice from my past.

  “You�
��ll need to go into the dark room.”

  “Why can’t we just stay out here and talk at your desk?”

  “You know why.”

  “Your research?”

  “Yes.”

  “Have you ever wondered how your research would play out in the light? Would you get the same results or something different?”

  “If the research was conducted in the light, it wouldn’t be the same, now would it? You change such an integral variable, and the experiment is compromised.”

  “Or possibly improved.”

  “Or degraded.”

  “Different, though,” Michael pointed out. “Sometimes different is good.”

  “Are you afraid to go into the dark room?”

  “No. Of course not.”

  “But you always come up with excuses to put it off.”

  “Did I say I wouldn’t go in?”

  “It was implied in your comments.”

  “But I didn’t say I wouldn’t.”

  Sound of a drawer opening and closing. “You’ll need these.”

  Michael didn’t respond.

  “Go on, take them.”

  “Why do I need scissors? Aren’t those Megan’s?”

  “I’ll return them when we’re done.”

  I paused the tape. I remembered my missing scissors, the ones with the purple handle. When I told Dr. Rose I couldn’t find them, she blamed me. Said I was always losing everything because I didn’t put things back where they belonged.

  Thanks, Dr. Bart. Steal from kids much?

  I pressed Play again.

  The sound of scissors slipping across the desk. I could almost see them.

  “Pleasure or pain?” Michael asked.

  “You know I can’t tell you. Not in advance.”

  “Your research.”

  “My research. You need to go in of your own free will, regardless of what is to come.”

  “And what if I say no?”

  “That is your right. I won’t force you. You know that.”