by Susan Lund
Eugene shrugged. "You have to admit it was kind of exciting to have them here—digging up bodies, finding all that porn. I always knew my biological father was a creep, but John Hammond? He seemed so ordinary. Not someone I'd think was a child pornographer, let alone a snuff film producer."
Chief Joe shook his head. "Glad they're both dead, truth be told."
Eugene stood and stretched. "Well, I gotta go. I'm going to go for a bike ride, work up a sweat. I've been sitting on my butt too long recently. I'll see you and Mom later this week for Thanksgiving."
"Okay, you take care now. Thanks for the grub. Don't tell your mom."
"I won't," Eugene said and opened the door, his hand on the knob. He closed an imaginary zipper on his lips. "Mum's the word."
He winked at Doreen as he left and shot his imaginary gun at her as he walked by her desk. "See you at Riley's on Friday?"
"I hope so," she said with a grin.
He nodded to the duty officer and ran down the steps, elated that it was all working out according to plan. He'd go to the apartment and change into his work clothes, take his bike to the spare vehicle, and go up to Cooper Lake to see Elena, finish the job.
He whistled a happy tune as he walked to his car, eager for the night to begin.
He drove back to his apartment and prepared for the evening's festivities. First, he needed to change into his gear. After pulling on a black turtleneck, black sweatpants, a black hoodie, and black down vest, he pulled on his ski mask and rolled it up into a cap that he could pull down later, when he needed to cover his face. Then he slipped his night vision goggles into his backpack and put on his leather gloves.
Before he left, he stopped and kicked himself mentally. He had to provide himself with some cover for his time away, so he rented a movie on the movie channel. It would have to do. He should have ordered some delivery so there'd be a record he had eaten at home. Oh, well.
He was too excited for the real fun to begin to care overly much.
He went out back and walked to his bike, then slipped the ski mask over his face and took off, riding along the dark back alleys towards the secondary road leading northwest out of Paradise Hill. The streets were pretty quiet for a Tuesday night, and only a few cars traveled the deserted streets. Everyone was inside watching TV or gone for the holiday.
He cycled out of town until he arrived at his secondary vehicle, which he kept parked down an abandoned lane for nights when he wanted to escape without detection. He started it up and finally drove off, alone on the road. Relatively little traffic used this stretch of road, and there were no streetlights, so he didn't worry too much about being seen. He switched off his headlights before he entered the secondary road and slipped on his night vision lenses. With them and the light from the full moon, he was able to navigate despite the tall forests on either side of the road. He played some music while he drove, some 'hurtin’ music,' as Chief Joe liked it call it—tear-jerker C&W. Old stuff—Waylon Jennings. Tom T. Hall for some lighter fare.
Music to commit serial murder to.
He turned off the secondary road onto the abandoned logging road that led to the shack and to his captive prey.
Elena.
He was a sadist, no doubt about it.
He'd been made one, all those nights in the porn room when he was the one forced to perform. When he was the one being whipped and forced to do despicable things.
Humans were all products of their own inborn temperaments and the environments in which they found themselves. He had inherited Daryl Kincaid's perversion, and had been subjected to John Hammond's perversions.
Most children, even those who had been abused like him, escaped becoming a serial killer or pedophile, but not Eugene. He suspected it was because he'd inherited the 10R-DAT1 gene from Dear Old Dad Daryl. It gave its owners a propensity for psychopathy, given the right environmental conditions. Take the 10-Repeat DAT gene and add abuse and neglect.
Check.
Check.
Check.
He was what he was.
He'd been at peace with his nature for some years, knowing what he was and why, and deciding to become the absolute best he could be at it.
Elena was becoming weaker, and he knew she wouldn't be able to stay at the shack much longer. Tonight was the night to complete the job.
He parked the car and hopped out when he arrived, his mood much lighter now that he was far from civilization and it was only him and his prey.
He kept his night vision goggles on, partly because he enjoyed tormenting Elena in the dark, and partly because he didn't want to turn the light on, just in case someone happened to be looking up at the mountain and saw some light spilling out from any cracks in the walls.
He entered the shack and was immediately assailed by a stench of feces and urine.
She'd shit and pissed herself.
Damn.
That was no good.
He couldn't stand the scent or idea of her body being soiled, so he'd have to drive back and get some water to clean her off. There was no way the water he had on hand for drinking would suffice. If he was going to stay the entire night and finish the job, he had to clean the place out completely and, more importantly, clean her up.
"What did you do, you bad girl?" he said when he arrived down at the bottom of the ladder into the pit. "I told you to wait until I got back."
She wept, snot running down her nose over her lips.
Disgusting.
"Now I have to leave and get water and soap to clean you or we'll never have any fun tonight." He removed his night vision googles before turning on the electric lantern. She squeezed her eyes shut and cowered from the light, after being in the dark for twenty-four hours. He removed his ski mask, not caring anymore that she saw him, since she'd soon be dead. He leaned down close. "I'm going to kill you when I'm done, you know."
She cried out loud at that and he smiled.
"Now, sweet Elena, I'm going, but I'll be back."
He left her, noting that he'd need clean sheets. Maybe some Lysol to deodorize the place. He was used to a body letting go at death, but he didn't find any excitement in it. He especially didn't want it before the victim died, but he usually didn't keep them long enough for them to be unable to hold it in.
He left the shack and walked to the car, then drove down the road. As he drove down the lane back to the logging road, he glanced back to make sure there was no light coming from the shack.
Then he saw movement in the bushes beside the building.
He frowned and stopped the vehicle, switching off the engine.
Was someone there?
A bear?
He slipped on his night vision goggles and got out of the car as quietly as he could, careful not to make any noise. If it was a bear, the creature might smell him, so he had to be careful. He walked along the road back towards the shack, and that was when he saw the figure open the door and go inside.
It was Tess.
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Before Tess had the chance to climb down the ladder to the girl, she heard the door open behind her.
"Bad decision," a voice said. "You should have stayed home, Tess."
It was Eugene.
Something hard struck her head—and then, only darkness.
She woke up to find she was sitting on a small child's chair, the kind you'd find in an elementary school, big enough for someone eight years old. Her hands were tied behind her back with plastic zip ties. She felt a blinding pain in her head, and her eyes had blurred from tears—and perhaps the injury. A hard rubber ball filled her mouth. She tried to spit the ball out, but it wouldn't move; then she realized it was fastened around her head with some kind of rope. Having the ball in her mouth scared her; she felt like she was going to choke to death. Pulling at her hands, which were zip-tied back behind her, was useless. She tried to move her feet, but they were zip-tied to the chair legs.
She was helpless.
She glanced around the
small room and saw that Eugene had the girl up and was washing her with a pail of water and a scrub brush. He wore black latex gloves and was rough with her, making her cry out with every movement.
"I told you to hold it in," he said, his voice angry. "It's your own fault you shit yourself."
The girl had to be only ten or eleven and was barely developed. There were cuts and bruises over her body. She'd been tortured—there was no doubting it.
Tess tried to move her arms, but due to the position she was sitting in, it was difficult.
She had to do something.
Tess watched the dirty water run down the girl’s body, pooling on the plastic sheet on which she stood. When he was finished washing Elena off, he dried her with paper towels, and threw them onto the middle of the plastic sheet.
Eugene had clearly constructed this room for the exact purpose of keeping a girl here and torturing her. Had he brought the other girls here?
He was clearly the killer they had all been hunting for all these years, but he'd escaped detection. And now she would be one of his victims.
That made her angry rather than fearful.
Angry that they had all been so prejudiced about him, believing that because he looked so normal, he was a good guy—certainly not a sadistic serial child killer. She watched him, hating him more with every moment as he treated the girl so roughly, and seeing the damage he'd already done to her innocent body.
She thought about Michael, and how he'd always hated Eugene.
How blind they all were! She and Mrs. Carter… Eugene always seemed so harmless. A devoted father. A hard worker. He had lunch every Saturday with his adopted parents, went to church on Sundays, doted on his boys.
He knew exactly how to fool everyone, in other words.
Except Michael. Michael had sensed that Eugene was dangerous. He had never trusted the man.
Now here she was, at Eugene's mercy. He would kill her—she had no doubt about it. That made her so angry she could have screamed, but with the ball-gag, her words would be muffled and would probably only incite her would-be killer. She only hoped she didn't have to watch him kill the girl—Elena. It had to be Elena.
Tess said it over and over in her mind, to keep the girl a real person. To motivate her into finding a way to fight back.
While Eugene had his back turned, she tried to stand up, but the way her arms were positioned and the fact that her feet were tied to the chair legs made it awkward. She almost fell over, the chair legs scraping against the cement floor.
Eugene heard the sound and wheeled around, his expression angry.
"What the fuck do you think you're doing?"
He threw down the scrub brush he was using on Elena and grabbed Tess, forcing her back down on the chair. He grabbed her face, his fingers squeezing her jaw, and stared in her eyes.
"Don't move or I'll cut you."
She kept still, and finally he pulled back.
"You fucked up everything, Tess. I had to move you and Elena from the cabin at Cooper Lake. We had to go to my secondary location, and that cut a lot of time off my plans."
Tess felt sick and closed her eyes, groaning as a wave of vertigo struck. How long had she been unconscious?
"Yeah," he said and glanced at her. "You’ll have a bad headache. I used ether on you to keep you unconscious. You always have to have a fallback position, and this is mine. It's not as nice as my other place but it'll do." He turned to face her, his expression gloating. "Oh, and don't hold out hope that Michael will come on his white steed and save you. I found your GPS fob, and moved your car and keys to another location. He won't find you here, so get that out of your mind."
Eugene turned back to Elena and finished drying her naked body. The bed on which she had been tied was clean, with a clean mattress cover that appeared plastic.
Eugene shoved Elena back onto it and tied her back up, then threw a blanket over her.
"Now, because of you, I have to go back into town," Eugene said, his voice angry. "They'll report you missing, if they haven't already. I had to drive your car to another spot and hide it, then ride my bike back here. I had to move you and her here, sacrificing a location I worked on for four months to get it into shape. You've made a mess of all my plans, Tess. But I still have you, and there's no way Michael will find you now."
Then he came over to her and removed the gag.
Tess coughed and spat out the saliva that had collected in her mouth because of it. She tried to wipe her chin on her shoulder but couldn't move that far because her arms were pulled back behind the chair.
"They'll know it was you," she said in defiance. "You had to have left some DNA at the other site. Some kind of evidence."
He bent down and looked at her, his gaze moving over her face. "Nope. Give up that hope. I was, and am, fastidious. I burn everything. Nothing is left behind."
He threw the paper towels on the plastic sheet and left the room, climbing up the ladder. Then, he came back down and went over to Elena, climbing on top of her and doing something vile to her.
Tess turned her head away and closed her eyes.
"You're a pig," she said under her breath.
He laughed at that and got up, leaving Elena to come over to Tess.
"Oh, yes I am," he said sardonically and bent down to look in her eyes. "Yes. I. Am. I'm a monster. You're going to wish you had stayed home tonight, Tess."
Tess knew he was right.
"Did you do Lisa?" she asked, wanting to get him talking, to distract him from what he might do to them both. "Did you do the other girls, too?"
He stood up straight. "Bingo. You were always smart, weren't you, Tess? Straight As in school. College girl with a scholarship, then a journalist. I wanted you, that night way back when." He bent down again and ran a hand over her hair. "Such pretty hair. But I got Lisa instead. I knew you'd be hard to take, because of your family, but Lisa—" He shook his head. "She was easy."
"Did you kill her?"
He raised his eyebrows. "What do you think? You're the amateur sleuth.” Then, he reached into a pocket and pulled out her recording pen. “Did you think you were actually going to record what I said with this?" He waved it in front of her face. Then he clicked it on.
“Ask me anything, Tess,” he said into the pen. “Since you’re so curious to know a killer’s mind. Well, you got one. A live one.”
Tears welled up in her eyes. She felt a stab of grief at his tone, almost bragging.
"Where's her body?"
He clicked his tongue and shook his head. "You can always ask, but I might not tell."
He slipped the pen into his shirt pocket.
Her mind worked, trying to think of how she could keep him talking.
"Aren't you proud of your work?" she said, trying not to sound too angry. "You killed Lisa and got away with it all these years. The police have no idea."
"No, they don't, do they? They're all excited thinking that my biological father and John Hammond did the kills, but they're wrong. Daryl accidentally killed Patrice, and they hid Janine's accidental death, but that's it. Those two good old boys couldn't plan, carry out, and cover up a murder successfully even if they tried."
"What about my dad? Was he involved?"
"Ron?" he said dismissively. "Are you kidding? He was a pathetic loser, a hoarder who spent all his time with stray cats and buying junk at flea markets on his route. No," he said and waved at her dismissively. "Your dad never killed any of the girls. He was so traumatized by Janine's death. He created this little scrapbook with clippings of news articles about her. He was on the case and thought my biological father had done it. He thought Daryl was a serial killer—can you imagine that? He suspected that Daryl had killed Janine and made it look like it was John's fault, but Daryl couldn't organize a gang-bang in a whorehouse with a fistful of fifties.
"So, Janine really was an accidental death…" Tess felt relieved.
"Yes. The three of them were fuck-ups who should have just gone to th
e cops and confessed, but they were afraid of being charged with statutory rape. In the end, they got what was coming to them. John and Daryl offed themselves, and your dad died of pancreatic cancer.”
"My father liked Janine. He really liked her."
"He did," Eugene said, standing with his hands on his hips. "But he was such a loser he couldn't even ask her out on a date. He moaned on and on to me about it, once he knew I’d found the jar of ashes. At the end, before he died, he confessed to me. To me! Can you appreciate the irony? He confessed to me about Janine, when I had already raped and killed over two dozen girls even younger than her. Like I'd absolve him of his guilt."
"I found the scrapbook when we started cleaning out the attic," Tess said. "He included clippings of all the crimes that took place in town afterwards."
Eugene smiled. "Your dad was an amateur sleuth, and you're just like him," he said. "Your dad asked me to carry stuff up to the attic for him, and one day after he and John had a falling out, I went up there and found the ashes."
"Did he let you go up there?"
"He gave me keys to his place," Eugene replied, laughing.
"Why?"
"You might say I blackmailed him because of the ashes. Told him I felt like I had to tell Chief Hammond the truth, but he talked me out of it. He liked me too. I used to bring him food, listen to his bullshit. He was a lonely old man. Neither of his kids came to visit him in all those years. Can you believe that? I felt sorry for such a pathetic loser.”
That stung, but Tess was more interested in keeping him talking so she knew it all. Even if he killed her, at least she’d know.
"You put the evidence up in his attic, right? To implicate him?"
Eugene shrugged. "Why not? Cops are so dumb they'll follow any lead and jump to any conclusion I want them to. Even to convict your father, in the public eye, of something he never had anything to do with. They want to close those cases so bad, they'd take any scrap of evidence I laid out for them."