The Coast-to-Coast Murders

by J. D. Barker

  As his voice trailed off, his eyes shifted to the floor.

  “You’re remembering something,” Vela said. More of a statement than a question.

  Longtin nodded. “My room at the treatment center. He put me on restriction so I couldn’t leave. I couldn’t watch television. The TV set was in the common room, and I wasn’t allowed to go there. He took away my books. The only window was this small little slit in the door to the hallway. He covered it up from the outside so I couldn’t see anything, and then he’d turn out my lights. The room would go pitch-black. He didn’t allow other patients or members of the staff to see me. He began to administer my medications on his own. He delivered my meals too, but he didn’t stick to the schedule. At least, I don’t think he did. Sometimes it felt like I went days without food. I’d get so thirsty. I think Kevin and some of the others took turns on the mark to make it all bearable. I began to black out again, lose time. I don’t know how long this went on, but at some point someone in the center must have figured out what was happening and put an end to it. I didn’t see Doc Fitzgerald again for months. My attorney came to see me, said the court considered my time for the breaking and entering to be served, and told me I was free to go. When she heard what he had done to me, she filed the malpractice claim on my behalf. She got me into a halfway house, even helped me find this place when the settlement money came in. She was a very good person.”

  “What was her name?” Vela asked.

  Longtin’s eyes narrowed and his brows pulled together as he searched his memories. After about twenty seconds he gave up, shook his head, and rolled up his right sleeve. He looked down at a tattoo on his forearm. A name written in thin black script: Margaret Tepper.

  Chapter Eighty

  Written Statement,

  Megan Fitzgerald

  “Are you saying you shot Roland Eads?”

  “I’m saying I don’t know who shot him. I can’t remember any details. I had one of my headaches. It started back at my apartment and just got worse as the night went on. I remember hearing the shot, looking over, seeing him dead. The gun was in his lap. I thought I saw somebody, but I don’t know for sure, not anymore. Everything is just so hazy.”

  A car beeped behind us.

  The light was green.

  I peered through the strengthening storm and stomped on the accelerator. The wheels spun on the wet pavement, caught, and we started forward again. “He said you paid him to bust you out of police custody.”

  “I have no memory of that either. I’d never met him before. At least, I don’t remember meeting him.”

  “So you think what? This alternate personality did it? Paid Roland, shot Roland…you think this was all Mitchell?”

  “Erma Eads recognized me too, and I had no idea who she was,” Michael pointed out. “How else do you explain that?” Michael was rubbing at his temples again. His eyes were squeezed shut.

  “Are you getting one of your headaches now?”

  He nodded.

  “Take another dorozapine. Where are they?”

  “I don’t want to.”

  “Take one,” I insisted. “Whatever this is, we need to hold it off.”

  A sign for Mark Twain National Forest came up on our left. We were close now.

  Michael pulled the pill bottle from his pocket and took one. I fought the urge to ask him to open his mouth and show me that he’d actually swallowed.

  The bottle went back into his pocket. He wouldn’t look at me. “That would mean that I killed Alyssa Tepper, I just don’t remember doing it.”

  “No way.”

  “Meg, she had a key to my apartment. She kept some of her things there. The police found them. They found a phone in my trash with messages between the two of us going back months. They found my clothes at her place. My clothes, Meg. Clothes I recognized. There were pictures of the two of us together. There was a video—a damn sex tape. It was me. Me and her. How else do you explain any of that? I’d clearly been with this girl for months, and I don’t remember a second of it.”

  “You remember going to the movies the day you found her body, right?”

  “I don’t remember the movie, not really. I fell asleep.”

  “But you remember going?” I pressed. “You remember being at the theater. Waking up there, leaving there, going to the grocery store after…that gives you an ali—”

  “I lost time, Meg,” he said. “The movie was two hours and thirty-eight minutes long and I barely remember the opening credits. I had plenty of time to go home and—”

  “I’m not gonna believe you got up from a movie, ran home, drowned your girlfriend in the bathtub real quick, then slid back in to catch the ending.”

  “If I needed to create an alibi, going to a movie and sneaking out makes perfect sense.”

  “Assuming you’re the kind of person who kills people, why would you want to kill your girl? I mean, who are you going to bang on the off-weeks if you put the gas to your steady girlfriend? That’s just poor planning.”

  “I’m serious, Meg!”

  “So am I!”

  He fell silent for a second. “You’re asking the wrong question. What we really need to figure out is why Mitchell would want to kill her.”

  Now I was getting a headache.

  The GPS dinged, and I made another left. Longtin’s house wasn’t on the main road. It was up some side road so small, it turned into a mud track a quarter mile into the woods. We were less than a minute away, and I couldn’t see a damn thing.

  “Pull over here,” Michael said.

  “What?”

  “We can’t just drive right on up. I’m gonna check it out first.”

  “Not a chance. We’re going together.”

  Between the heavy rain, the muddy road, and the low overhanging branches, we were moving at a crawl. Michael opened his door and jumped out. He disappeared into the trees before I could stop him.

  Chapter Eighty-One

  Gimble

  At the mention of the name Margaret Tepper, Sammy glanced up from his MacBook for the first time in nearly an hour. He exchanged a quick look with Gimble and Vela. “I’m checking, hold on—”

  It took him only a moment. “She was Alyssa Tepper’s mother. Looks like she passed away about ten years ago, breast cancer.”

  Gimble turned to Longtin. “I asked you if you knew the name Alyssa Tepper, and you said you didn’t.”

  “You asked me that? I’m sorry.”

  Gimble stood, started pacing.

  Vela reached into his back pocket and took out the feather they had found in the book. “Have you ever seen this type of feather?”

  Longtin’s face went white. He reached for the feather, his hand shaking. “Where did you get that?”

  Vela ignored the question. “You recognize it?”

  Longtin’s fingers closed around the feather. He raised it to his cheek and stroked his skin with it. His eyes filled with tears again. “Early on at the treatment center, before I was confined to my room, I’d walk the grounds. I found a baby sparrow at the base of a willow tree. It fell from a nest about nine feet up. Doc Fitzgerald let me keep it, nurse it back to health. I had to feed it with an eyedropper for nearly a month, but eventually it got better and we had this little ceremony where I released it back into the wild.” He paused, wiping at his eyes with the back of his hand. “At the settlement hearing, Doc gave me a feather just like this, but it had dried blood on it. He told me, ‘Broken things don’t always deserve a second chance.’”

  With a loud pop, the power went out.

  The small cabin went dark.

  The only remaining light came from the fire, which was nothing but glowing embers now.

  A single shot echoed outside, and Gimble whipped around to the window.

  Chapter Eighty-Two

  Written Statement,

  Megan Fitzgerald

  Michael was out the door.

  One moment he was there and the next he was gone, disappearing into the win
d, rain, and dark like he’d never existed at all. His door thudded shut behind him; the woods swallowed him whole, and I was alone. The steady thump of the windshield wipers was the only sound louder than my own breathing.

  One beat.

  Two.

  The windshield cracked.

  A small hole appeared with a pop in the top corner, just below my visor, and things began to move in slow motion. A spiderweb of cracks spread from the hole outward.

  Something slammed into the leather just above the armrest in my door. Another hole there too. I felt something—a bullet, I realized—rush past my head, a thin streak of warm air.

  I threw the SUV into reverse and hit the gas. The wheels spun, throwing mud, and the car lurched backward. I scraped a tree and almost went into the woods, but by some miracle—or maybe my latent badass driving abilities—I managed to stay on the path.

  Another hole in the windshield.

  My left arm was snapped back.

  Then searing heat halfway between my elbow and shoulder.

  The next shot hit the SUV in the back, the driver’s-side rear tire.

  The SUV slumped to the left.

  When I hit the gas again, the steering was off, the car pulling hard to the left. I gave it more gas, too much. I’d dug a hole in the mud, and within seconds I knew I wasn’t going anywhere. The next shot, the one that took out the other rear tire, confirmed that.

  My left arm was a screaming, bloody mess, so I tugged at the door handle with my right hand. When the door opened, I tumbled out into the muddy grass and weeds and lay still. Who knows what kind of gross bugs were down there. I felt something wriggle under my palm. I pretty much have to be dying or sedated to lie around in the wilderness with shit crawling on me, so you know it was bad.

  After a few seconds, I tried to get to my feet.

  Another shot.

  The bullet smacked into the mud less than an inch from my hand.

  I couldn’t see where the shots were coming from; it was too dark. Even when lightning crackled across the sky, I saw nothing, only the giant trees leaning over me.

  When I tried to move again, there was another shot.

  Somewhere, through the rain, I heard a single word:

  “Don’t.”

  Chapter Eighty-Three

  Gimble

  Gimble touched her earbud. “Garrison, do you copy?”

  No response came back. “Garrison?”

  Vela looked up at her. “I can hear you in mine.”

  Sammy’s pale face glowed in the light of his MacBook screen. “I can too.”

  “What’s happening?” Longtin said. He sat up stiffly, his head swiveling around.

  Gimble’s hand went to the gun on her hip. She stepped over to the side of the window, pressed tight against the wall, and looked out from the corner. “This is Special Agent Gimble. If anyone copies, please respond.”

  “Was that a gunshot or thunder?” Longtin asked. “The generator usually kicks in when the power goes out. Why isn’t the generator coming on?”

  “I can’t see anything,” Gimble said. “It’s raining too hard.”

  Sammy said, “Garrison has six people out there. Even with the rain, no way all their comms are down.”

  “Where’s your breaker box?” Vela asked Longtin.

  Longtin’s eyes had glazed over.

  Vela snapped his fingers. “Mr. Longtin?”

  Longtin shook his head. “Breaker box, right. It’s on the side of the house. Out the front door, to the left, around the corner.”

  “Is the generator there too?”

  He nodded.

  “Stay off the comms.” Gimble drew her gun and started for the front door. “I’m going out there. The rest of you stay here. Keep away from the windows.”

  “I’m still connected to the satellite,” Sammy said. “Do you want me to call for backup?”

  Gimble nodded, then slipped out the front door into the pouring rain as another shot cracked through the night.

  Chapter Eighty-Four

  Written Statement,

  Megan Fitzgerald

  I don’t know who yelled it. Sounded like a man.

  I leaned against the bullet-pocked SUV completely still, my eyes fixed on that last bullet hole in the ground. In the glow of the headlights, I watched it fill with rainwater and disappear into the mud like it had never been there.

  My arm throbbed; I couldn’t even look at it.

  My left leg was behind me, my right folded under me. My right arm was holding up much of my weight, helping me keep my head and shoulders up, and it began to twitch, wobble.

  A rock flew through the air and landed at my side with a muddy splash. A piece of paper was secured to it with two rubber bands. “Seriously?” I looked in the direction it had come, up and to my right, but saw nothing except a steep hill covered in brush and weeds. More trees. More woods.

  With my good hand, I picked up the rock, peeled off the rubber bands with my thumb and forefinger, and unfolded the note, pulling at the edge of the paper with my teeth. An earbud fell out, dropped into the mud. It was tiny, no bigger than a hearing aid—I almost lost it. The words of the note smeared as the unrelenting rain smacked the paper.

  Put the radio in your ear. Stand. Walk toward the cabin. Call your brother’s name. Anything else = bullet to the head.

  Chapter Eighty-Five

  Gimble

  The rain pelted her. Tiny icy needles jabbing at her exposed skin.

  When had it gotten so dark?

  Gimble knelt just outside the door and tightened her grip on the Glock. She waited for her eyes to adjust to the dark. Shadows became shapes; shapes became trees, branches, a stack of logs next to a picnic table off in the distance, an ax buried in a stump with its handle pointing at the black sky.

  Lightning splintered dark clouds, followed by the deep rumble of rolling thunder.

  Gimble darted around the left side of the house in a crouch, gun leading. She smelled propane before she came upon the generator. Someone had cut the line, and the wet air stank of rotten eggs from the gas.

  The door to the breaker panel was open. All the breakers were flipped to the off position. A thick wire jutted out from the main switch at the top of the box, ran down the wall, and disappeared into the damaged gas pipe. Someone had rigged it—if you flipped the breaker, you sent a charge down into the gas. Whoever had done it hadn’t taken the time to hide his handiwork; it was left as a warning, or maybe it was a decoy—disable this little trap and a not-so-obvious second one blows the whole thing when the power clicks back on.

  Gimble didn’t touch any of it. Her eyes had already moved on to the body slumped on the opposite side of the generator.

  The name on his black Kevlar vest was MONTGOMERY. His throat had been slashed, left to right, from behind—Gimble had spent enough time with the coroner to recognize the wound. The cut was fresh, the rain hadn’t had time to wash away the blood. Probably within the past ten to fifteen minutes, at most.

  Gimble raised a finger to her earbud. “Garrison, do you copy?”

  Silence.

  “This is Special Agent Gimble to any U.S. marshal, respond.”

  Nothing.

  Gimble slipped her Glock back into the holster and took Montgomery’s weapon, a Heckler and Koch MP5. Standard-issue; the other marshals would be carrying the same. It was a compact nine-millimeter submachine gun—not the source of the shots she had heard. Those had sounded like they came from a high-powered rifle. Had Garrison brought a sharpshooter and not told her? No, he would have said something. It had to be Kepler.

  Remaining low, Gimble rounded the corner of the cabin, ran to the side yard, and ducked behind the large log pile. She found another slain marshal lying in the grass, partially hidden behind a tree. His throat was also cut; there was a second stab wound near his kidney. She took the magazine from his MP5 along with both his spares and dropped them in her pockets. She slung his weapon over her shoulder and tapped her earbud again. �
��Garrison? Any marshal, do you copy?” Gimble said, fighting to keep her voice from cracking. Her heart felt like it was going to burst through her chest.

  “Garrison isn’t available, Agent Gimble. Would you like me to take a message and have him get back to you? It may be a while.”

  Kepler’s voice.

  Gimble pressed her back tight against the logs and peered at the trees surrounding the house. No light; she saw nothing but shadows. The marshal beside her had a Maglite clipped to his belt. She snatched it up with her free hand but didn’t dare switch it on.

  Kepler said, “I count six, does that seem about right to you? Three around the cabin, one back on the road near the start of the driveway. Another with your vehicles, and then your friend Garrison wandering around here in the woods. Did I miss anyone?”

  Here in the woods. Gimble’s eyes went back to the tree line.

  Lightning cracked across the sky, a bright flash, then nothing again.

  “You shouldn’t have come here, Agent Gimble. You put your people in danger for no reason. I don’t want to hurt you or your friends. I’m nearly done with my work. You just keep getting in the way.”

  Gimble tapped her earbud. “Lay down your weapons and step out into the clearing with your hands on your head, Kepler.”