The Coast-to-Coast Murders

by J. D. Barker

  The Mark Twain National Forest sprawled out before him, a sea of green treetops over rolling hills. A small lake in the distance. Several hiking trails.

  He hadn’t seen another person in more than forty minutes.

  According to his GPS, the address Patchen had given him was less than half a mile away.

  He transferred the contents of his guitar case to a lightweight nylon carrying bag tailored specifically for this use, slung it over his shoulder, and set off into the woods.

  Twelve minutes later, the house appeared. A small cabin nestled in a narrow valley beside a meandering creek. No neighbors. One car.

  He moved through the brush soundlessly, circling the structure, to a ridge on the west side—slightly elevated, offering a clear view not only of the house but of the dirt path that served as a driveway.

  Remaining low, close to the ground, he pressed his thumb down on the zipper of the nylon bag and pulled it back slowly to ensure the least amount of noise.

  Polished and oiled, the DVL-10 M2 sniper rifle glistened.

  He removed the weapon, extended the stock, snapped the scope into place, and spread the legs of the bipod. The suppressor screwed into the barrel without resistance. His movements were practiced, fast but not hurried. The rifle was assembled, loaded, and in place in under thirty seconds.

  Lying on his belly, he viewed the cabin, the approach, and the surrounding area through the scope.

  Clear line of sight to all.

  Chapter Seventy-Two

  Gimble

  The SUV hit another pothole and Gimble’s head cracked against the roof.

  “Sorry,” their driver muttered. A young kid, couldn’t have been more than a year out of the FBI academy. Several raindrops smacked the windshield; the sky looked like it was about to open up.

  In the back seat, Sammy somehow kept his eyes fixed on his MacBook screen—Judge Rines had approved their warrant, and patient files had been coming in one at a time. “Okay, I’ve got the file on Darcey Haas.”

  “She’s the one Kepler threw down the stairs,” Vela said over the open communications link. He was in the SUV behind them. U.S. Marshal Garrison and his team occupied the two vehicles at the rear. They’d flown to St. Louis in an FBI charter and driven nonstop from the moment they touched down. If Kepler and his sister were driving, and they almost certainly were, the FBI had a few hours’ lead time on them.

  The SUV swerved hard to the left, then jerked back over. “Sorry,” their driver muttered again.

  “This is more of a deer path than a road,” Gimble said, rubbing the bump on her head. Large live oaks loomed above them. Thick branches swayed across the sky, painting their way with shadows.

  “Half a mile out,” Garrison said over the communications link. “Look sharp.”

  “This guy lives in the middle of nowhere.”

  “Darcey Haas,” Sammy continued, reading aloud. “She was arrested several times for public intoxication. Court-ordered to see Fitzgerald. He filed six reports. Minimal notes. He filed just enough to satisfy the courts but didn’t include any substance. Last known address was about three hours from here in Springfield, Missouri. That’s where Kepler killed her.”

  “Fitzgerald’s hiding something,” Vela broke in. “There’s a common thread. We’re close.”

  When their SUV came to the top of the rise Gimble said, “I’ve got visual on a house. Small, single story. Red Honda Accord in the driveway. Several lights on inside. Smoke coming from the chimney. Garrison, hang back with your team. Secure the perimeter, but stay out of sight. We don’t want to spook him. Sammy and Vela, you’re with me.”

  The kid pulled to a stop behind the Honda, blocking it in, and shifted into park. Vela’s driver pulled up behind them.

  “Wait here,” Gimble told the kid as she stepped out of the SUV, her leg muscles groaning. Sammy got out behind her, and they started toward the front porch.

  As they neared the small cabin, the hair on the back of Gimble’s neck stood on end and her skin prickled—something wasn’t right. Her hand instinctively brushed the butt of her gun. Her fingers were on the leather release strap when she heard a shotgun cock behind them.

  Chapter Seventy-Three

  Written Statement,

  Megan Fitzgerald

  “Who’s Mitchell?”

  When I said it, I took my eyes off the windshield for only a second. We were going too fast, and the rain was picking up again. The road—if you could even call it a road—was shit.

  Michael was in the passenger seat, the contents of my backpack spread out over the center console and spilling over his knees onto the floorboard. He was leafing through his file for what must have been the third or fourth time. He’d listened to the tapes but hadn’t said anything. He just put my tape player and headphones aside and returned to Dr. Bart’s notes, his finger skimming each page as he went.

  “This can’t possibly be true,” he finally said.

  “Which part?”

  “All of it. Any of it. It’s crazy.”

  “Michael, who is Mitchell?”

  “He’s nobody, just somebody I made up when I was a kid. An imaginary friend. You heard Dr. Bart; he said Mitchell was a common toddler developmental solution. Those are his exact words. Something I created to help deal with my mom and Max.”

  Gooseflesh crawled over my skin. The temperature had fallen with the arrival of the rain. I reached over and turned up the heat. “When he locked you in the dark room with the scissors and the girl, you said you wouldn’t hurt her, and he told you Mitchell would. Also his exact words, ‘Mitchell would.’ That’s what he said.”

  Michael’s eyes dropped to his hands. When he finally spoke, his voice was soft. “He used a stun gun on me. Did I ever tell you that?”

  “What?”

  “Sometimes he’d force my head underwater. He had this big metal bin, the kind you’d use to bob for apples at a kid’s party. We’d be in the dark room, just talking—pitch-black, couldn’t see a damn thing. I’d be midsentence, and he’d grab me by the hair and force me underwater. I don’t think I was more than five or six the first time. When I started to expect it, he’d change things up.” His finger rubbed the corner of one of the pages from his folder. “That’s what these abbreviations are in his notes—SG is stun gun, WT is water treatment, AD is air deprivation.”

  “Air deprivation?”

  “He’d zip-tie my hands and feet, then put a plastic bag over my head.”

  “Jesus, Michael! Why? What was the point?”

  “I’d be so scared,” Michael went on, ignoring my question, “especially when I was a little kid. Then as I got older, it became like this challenge thing—could I get through another of his dark-room sessions without showing any fear? When I did, boy, did that piss him off. He wanted me scared, and if he couldn’t get me there, he tried harder the next time. He’d come up with something new. Like the sessions with the girl on your tape.”

  “Did he really give her a hacksaw?”

  Michael shrugged. “I have no idea. I don’t know if she was even in there with me. He’d do that sometimes too. Tell me I wasn’t alone before he’d lock me in. Or he’d tell me I was alone, lock me in, and after a few minutes, I’d hear someone else breathing in there or feel fingers brush over my arm. Other times he told me the dark room represented the closet in that motel room, and I’d hear these noises coming from the other side of the door, his side, sounds meant to be Max cutting up…”

  His voice trailed off, and he turned toward the window. “He tortured me; there’s no other way to describe it. I don’t remember half the stuff in this file; I blocked it out. That’s if it’s even true. This entire folder could be just another one of his mind games. Something he meant to show me at some point but never did.” Michael closed his eyes, rubbed at his temples.

  “Magic pills working for you?”

  He nodded. “I feel hungover, but the fog is lifting, almost gone now.”

  He reached over, sli
pped his hand into mine, and squeezed. A smile touched his lips. “Thank you.”

  His skin felt rougher than I remembered. Warm, though. It was nice. I squeezed back, didn’t want him to let go. That’s when I put my foot in my mouth. “If there’s no Mitchell, then who killed your mother?”

  I shouldn’t have said it, and I wanted to take it back. Michael looked like I’d slapped him. He pulled his hand from mine and inched away, his eyes on the rain rolling down the passenger window.

  “It was Max, had to be.”

  “But that’s not how you remember it.”

  “I don’t remember it at all; I was just a kid.”

  “On the tape, I mean. When Dr. Bart first interviewed you. You said it was Mitchell.”

  Michael glanced down at the map on the seat beside him, then squinted out at the sign coming up on our right. “Slow down; I think that’s our exit up ahead.”

  Chapter Seventy-Four

  Gimble

  What the hell are you doing on my land?”

  The voice was gruff, a dry rasp. The barrel of the man’s rifle was less than an inch from Sammy’s ear.

  “Federal agents! Drop the weapon!” Gimble shouted from up ahead. She stood in the path leading to the front door of the house with her gun out and pointing past Sammy. Vela stood beside her, his palms up.

  “Badges, right now,” the man said.

  “Lower your weapon!” Gimble said, unflinching. “I’ve got people all around you.”

  Vela took a step forward, his right hand slowly reaching to his back pocket. “I’m taking out my identification.”

  “Slow.”

  Vela nodded. His wallet out, he held up his badge. “I’m Special Agent Omer Vela, this is Agent Gimble, and the man you’re pointing your shotgun at works in our IT department. Are you Jeffery Longtin?”

  “Why are you here?”

  “Put down the shotgun and we’ll talk about it,” Vela said.

  “I haven’t done anything.”

  “I know you haven’t,” Vela told him. “We believe your life is in danger. That’s why we’re here. We want to protect you.”

  “Who would want to hurt me?”

  “Michael Kepler,” Sammy said, slowly turning toward him. “You may have seen him on the news.”

  “I said don’t move,” he said firmly.

  Sammy froze.

  “I don’t know any Michael Kepler. Don’t have no television or radio out here. I just want to be left alone. Why won’t everyone just leave me alone?”

  “You may know him as Michael Fitzgerald,” Vela said.

  The man thought about this, then said, “Fitzgerald? Like Doc Fitzgerald?”

  “His adopted son,” Vela replied. “Dr. Fitzgerald passed away a few days ago.”

  “Doc Fitzgerald’s dead?”

  “Aneurysm,” Vela said. “Back at his home in New York.”

  As he lowered the shotgun to his side, Jeffery Longtin did something none of them had expected. He began to sob.

  Chapter Seventy-Five

  Gimble

  Longtin’s house wasn’t very large, but it was comfortable. A fire burned steadily in the hearth, thick logs crackling under bright flames. A couch and two chairs surrounded a small table made of milk crates and pine boards stained dark. The furniture was threadbare, the cloth faded and worn through in parts, pulled taut and stitched by hand in others.

  Sammy said he’d found something strange in the GPS data from Kepler’s truck but wasn’t ready to share it yet. He had cleared a spot at a small table just outside the kitchen to work on whatever it was, pushing aside dozens of leather-bound books and paperbacks, most of them horror novels and thrillers from the late eighties, nothing recent. The table also held a plate with the remains of a sandwich and several stacks of unopened mail.

  Outside, Longtin had dropped the shotgun to his side but had been unwilling to give it up. Several of Garrison’s marshals had worked their way through the trees, ready to come up from behind. Gimble ordered everyone to stand down and let him keep the weapon once he’d agreed to engage the safety.

  He’d nodded, ushered them inside the house, and collapsed into a chair.

  Gimble sat on one arm of the couch. She’d seen grown men cry but she always found it unsettling. Longtin was large, at least six two, and around two hundred and twenty pounds, all of it muscle. Fifty-nine years old, according to their records. He kept his gray hair closely cropped. Hadn’t shaved in several days. Judging by the smell, he hadn’t bathed in equally as long.

  “You’re sure he’s dead?” he finally said, wiping his nose on the back of his hand.

  Gimble looked around for tissues, didn’t see any.

  “We’re sure,” Vela told him. “When was the last time you spoke to him?”

  “August twelfth, 1987,” Longtin said, without missing a beat. “Thirty-one years, one month, five days.”

  A voice came over the communication link in Gimble’s ear. “Gimble? It’s Garrison. Copy?”

  “Go, Garrison,” she replied.

  “We’re moving all the vehicles to a small logging road about an eighth of a mile into the woods to get them out of sight. My team is positioned around the perimeter. I’ve got a lookout stationed back at the main road. We should have about a three-minute warning on his approach.”

  “Understood.”

  Garrison’s voice dropped off for a second, like he was talking to someone next to him. When he came back on the line, he said, “There’s something else, probably nothing, but you should be aware.”

  “What is it?”

  “A truck driver just flagged down a state trooper outside Kansas City. Got up behind him and started flashing his headlights. He claims a man jumped into the cab of his truck back at the Flying T, put a gun on him, and forced him to get on the interstate. That was a few minutes after the roadblocks went down. He rode with him for about half the day, made the man take him downtown—said he had a train to catch—then tied him up in the back of the truck. The guy’s not sure how long he was back there but says it was four or five hours at least. He ID’d Kepler from a photo lineup.”

  “What about the sister?”

  “Only Kepler,” Garrison replied. “Here’s the thing, though—the state police said the truck driver kept bringing up the reward money, trying to claim it. The trooper who interviewed him thinks he just saw Kepler on television and was trying to line his pockets.”

  “So you don’t believe him?”

  “I didn’t, but…”

  “But what?”

  “This guy told the truck driver he had to catch a train,” Garrison said. “Amtrak has a direct route from Kansas City to St. Louis. It’s called the Missouri River Runner. It pulled into St. Louis about two hours ago.”

  Gimble exchanged a look with Vela. “Understood. Have someone check the security footage on the train and the stations. It’s probably bullshit, but I don’t want to discount it. Let me know what they find.”

  “Copy.”

  Longtin watched all this, appeared confused, then saw Gimble’s small earbud. “Is that a phone?”

  “It’s linked to my phone,” Gimble told him.

  “Every time I go to town, seems like things just get smaller.”

  Vela asked, “How long have you been out here?”

  “I bought this place with the settlement money in ’87.” Longtin’s eyes were still red and puffy. “If he’s dead, do you know if the checks will stop?”

  “He sends you checks?”

  “Two thousand a month. That was part of the settlement.”

  “From your malpractice claim?” Gimble asked.

  Longtin nodded. “Last time I actually saw him was at the mediation. He agreed to the fifty-thousand-dollar lump payment and the monthlies.”

  There were Post-it notes everywhere, on cabinet doors, on chair backs, on the walls. One on the lamp beside Gimble read Grocery pickup—9/18, 4 p.m. Tomorrow. Another had the name of the president scrawled on it. Some
just had dates and times with a brief description, others were filled with tiny handwriting, nearly illegible.

  Gimble’s eyes met Vela’s; he had seen them too.

  “Why would Doc Fitzgerald’s son come after me?”

  “I was hoping you might be able to tell us,” Vela said.

  “I have no idea.”

  Gimble said, “Do any of these names mean anything to you? Alyssa Tepper, Darcey Haas, Issac Dorrough…”

  She ran through all of them, all of Kepler’s victims. Longtin stared at her blankly, slowly shaking his head. “I…I don’t leave here much. It’s quiet here; I like that.”

  “You prefer to be alone,” Vela said.

  Longtin nodded.

  “Do you have trouble interacting with other people?”

  “Sometimes.”

  “What did you do yesterday? Can you walk me through your day?”

  Gimble gave Vela an impatient glance.

  Longtin pursed his lips, then looked down at several Post-it notes on the table. “I read from ten in the morning until noon. Then I made a sandwich—roast beef on white with American cheese. At two, I went for a walk. Walked for about three hours—”

  Vela picked up a book and set it down on top of the remaining notes.

  Longtin went quiet, his eyes still fixed on the table.

  “Are you able to remember without the notes?”

  Longtin didn’t answer.

  “Mr. Longtin?”

  “Sometimes, but the notes help.”

  “But you remember the last time you saw Dr. Fitzgerald?”

  “August twelfth, 1987,” Longtin said with confidence. “Thirty-one years, one month, five days.”

  Gimble saw it then. Before responding, Longtin had glanced quickly at a calendar hanging near the door. Each day was crossed out with a solid red X. The marker hung next to the calendar on a string.

  Vela reached down, picked up one of the other notes, and crushed it in his fist.