A Killer Among Us

by Rhys Stalba-Smith

  Charlie ran to the girl’s aid, talking to her and telling her it would be okay. He’d never seen that much blood before, but that’s what people said. Then he heard the bus driver descending from the bus, Holy shit man, that was a fuck’n person? The hysteria that the killer had wanted was suddenly here. Very real, very loud, and very true. People rushing from the shadows, from the bus stop. People were helping. Shouting and calling while some stayed silent and watched with unblinking eyes.

  Then different yelling, inside the convenience store. The clerk had been shot. Dying and bleeding out. Charlie there supporting the woman’s head, helping her as people rushed around them like torrential flooding. The fear caught him and he was shaking. The horror of the night. That even if this had happened, even if accidents were coincidental and not destined, he couldn’t help but believe it because of the murders. He couldn’t help believe that had the city not just discovered there was a serial murderer in their midsts, that he among it all hadn’t been thinking of his own sister’s death because of the name spelt out with the bodies, that maybe the madness would’ve been kept at bay a bit longer. That maybe some kid wouldn’t have shot and robbed a convenience store. Shot and wounded a lady. That maybe he wouldn’t have pushed this poor woman into hysteria and gotten her tackled through the middle. That maybe the kid would’ve escaped the store without firing. That maybe the bus driver wouldn’t have had to see a body shoot forward at the powers of his own command.

  But it had. It all had happened. With Charlie at the middle of it all. Yet again with a woman in his arms crying and covered in blood. He felt the fear. He felt the death. He felt the terror.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  They found Ethan Burke hiding in the pantry cupboard of the kitchen. The two crossed bodies that were his parents just metres away. Elaine draped over Tom. The blood spreading out over the linoleum floor now reaching the kitchen sink. They knew to look for a kid. The kid had called. Then they noticed the phone cord. Stretched across the floor, through the blood, snagging into the pantry cupboard. They opened it.

  The kid was silent, just staring at his parents. Unblinking, same as them. One of the officers took his jacket off, bundled the boy into it and carried him out. On the way he began the screaming. Sarah, over and over again. There was another kid? The other officer began searching for the second, sweeping through the house and it’s rooms. The boy crying, sitting in the car bawling and swinging fists. Calling for his mother. The girl. As the officer tried to comfort the boy, he noticed something in the front garden bed. Something that had been missed on the way in. A shoe, girl’s size six. Initials on the inside saying R. Gardner. The double murder now included kidnapping.

  Five days of pandemonium followed. Charlie really only remembered that it seemed to pass quickly, that he’d never seen his mother, or father, cry so much. He knew it was serious because he didn’t have to go to school. And when he eventually returned weeks later everyone treated him almost fearfully. He was the brother of the Gardner girl. But before that could all happen, a scrap of paper was placed in the Gardner’s letterbox overnight. Vague directions that only to the people of Silversgrove in the Adelaide Hills could understand easily. Out past the range. At the corner of Precinct and Rains. Only there will you find her again.

  Sarah was found tied up in a cage, hidden in an old stop station on the far side of Spilsby Hill. A heritage stone building like a shed. Long abandoned, long exposed to the elements. It stood less than ten metres from a road running from Silversgrove to the highway that left for the city. For two days, Sarah despite her best efforts, had lain in that cage listening to car after car pass by.

  When she was finally reunited with her family, all she could do was cry. All they could do was meet those tears with their own. Her body was covered in bruises and welts, cuts, things had happened that Charlie had to leave the room for. When he was much older, and when Sarah confessed everything to him before killing herself, he understood what those things were that had happened. What her parents didn’t understand, or more her father at least, was that if she knew who the attackers were, why was she refusing to say their names? If she could remember them, why was she refusing to look at pictures, or identify them in a line-up? Why was she being a silly stubborn girl? Why was she refusing to tell the two constables that had just arrived at the hospital to help her? They were after all, there to help. Constables Michael Stephens and Derrick Reynar had already done so much for the case. But how could Sarah tell her parents that the two men that had kidnapped her, were standing right in front of her? That Constable Michael Stephens’s promise of things getting worse for her, had been well and truly honest?

  She couldn’t, and didn’t. Until she told everything to Charlie some eternal months later, she barely muttered anything else. She was taken out of school, became agoraphobic. All the goals and dreams she’d had for her life vanished like the very steam that billowed from her mother’s iron.

  That then became Sarah Gardner’s life. Day after day watching her mother press garment after garment, sheet after sheet. Every time Maurie tied off a set of finished pieces with twine Sarah began violently shaking and flinching. If she had to cut a piece of stray thread or fabric, Maurie Gardner learned to leave the room, despite how inconvenient it became. She loved her daughter and only wanted to do what she could to help her. If that meant changing some of her work practices then so be it. But she could no longer leave the house to work. Sarah couldn’t handle being alone. More than the twine being tied, more than fabric being cut, she couldn’t handle being alone. Not after two days in a cage. Not after three days at the hands of those men. That, when Charlie was much older and working his way through his own problems, should’ve been the first sign that something was different when he headed off to the supermarket.

  Paul Gardner was a hardworking man. He was considered open by his friends, had a working wife and a daughter that had often spoken about women’s rights and some other thing called feminism. It being the sixties wasn’t necessarily an odd thing, but it was noted that sometimes down at the pub Paul sided with a woman in certain instances or arguments. He sympathised a little too easily for some of his friends perceptions. But as much as Paul was open to understanding, there were some things he couldn’t wrap his head around. There were some things that were just women’s business and some things that were just men’s business. For him, justice was a man’s business. Because justice was just as close to honour as the sand was to a beach. His daughter’s problems and issues were just as much his own, and if he couldn’t understand them he assumed that neither could his daughter. So even though his daughter protested and pleaded not to keep bringing it up, he did. Even though she cried and screamed to not involve the police again, he did. When one evening he dragged her from the house and threw her in the car, drove her down to the police station where Constable Michael Stephens had organised a line-up of potential suspects, he did it out of his own want of justice. Out of his own want of protecting his honour. His daughter was being silly and stubborn anyway. As helpful as the police officer was, why couldn’t she see him helping them? Why did she refuse to barely acknowledge him or his actions?

  After that Paul stopped trying to understand. He stopped trying to help. Stopped rushing home from the pub to be on time for dinner with his family, he stopped doing a lot of things. Because he couldn’t understand, and from that decision it decided everything else. As bad as it was, it obviously wasn’t meant for understanding by a man. Some things were just women’s business, and some things were just men’s business. So he stayed with men’s business and focused on his other child, his boy Charlie.

  Whilst Charlie at his young age didn’t fully understand what had transpired to his sister, he knew it was bad if she’d been pulled from school. Especially that he still had to go. It used to rub him thr wrong way in the beginning, but when his sister refused to leave the house, he began to feel sorry for her. Because before the incident his sister had always been the first to take
in the sunshine, to feel the rains or cold. She walked with him to school even when she’d left primary for high school. She loved being outside. But after the incident she hated the outdoors. Despised it just as much as she’d used to love it.

  In this way the two years passed. Misunderstanding met with frustration and resentment. Later Charlie would write in his thesis at university that ignorance was the base of all frustrations. That misunderstanding the perceptions of others was what fed anger. Not that he’d been angry at his sister, he was angry at her after her death, but as he became a psychiatrist specialising in abuse and childhood, he only felt a great sadness. But it was not sadness he felt listening to this voice on the telephone talking to him. It was not anger at this person telling him his past and talking so casually about his sister’s horrible experience and death. It was cold blooded fear, dread. Because how did they know?

  Charlie no longer heard the voice on the phone. He barely felt it in his hands. All he could remember was the slip of paper. The clue to where his sister was. Where she’d been left after all this time. Whatever this place was, wherever this place was his parents had taken him, he had to get out. He had to save her! He couldn’t remember finding it, it was just in his hand, just here! The letterbox. Just like she’d just been gone and was now here.

  He threw the sheets aside and fell from the bed with a scream. He clutched at the lamp cord, pulling everything from the side table off and bringing the thing down with him. The drawer opened and a book came out. He rolled over and pinched his legs, they were numb. Not working. Why couldn’t he feel them? What in the hell had happened since they dropped him off? He began crawling for the door. Had to get out and save his sister. He had to get out. He hoped the door wasn’t locked. Reached up and strained for it. The handle depressed and he pulled it open. Scrambling around the heavy door. Had to find the exit. Find the way out. Everything was new and different. Who were all these people? These grownups? Where were the kids? Wasn’t he at after school care?

  He clutched the paper in his fist and crawled. The carpet burning his elbows. He heard screaming. Saw the little green man signs for the exit. The screaming louder. Now on him. He was being stopped. Restrained. Charlie bucking, trying to get these adults off. His body not working. Screaming. Didn’t these people know? He had to save his sister! He waved the piece of paper around, screaming Sarah’s name over and over. More people holding him down. She was drowning in her loneliness. Swore he could feel his toes now. If he could just move his legs. The door was so close. Move his legs. The exit. Sarah. Everything loud. People talking at him, saying his name. Charlie. Telling him calm down. Sarah. Calm down. Charlie. A pinch in his arm. Then darkness.

  ETHAN

  Charlie struggled to remember Ethan Burke after it all. All he’d ever been was the kid his sister looked after. The kid who’d watched his parents die. He, nor did he think anyone else, ever really thought about him after that. They’d all been focused on Sarah, but then when she returned it was the unidentified culprits. There were theories, ideas and gossip, but nothing real. It was hoped that he would speak, that he could identify the killers and kidnappers. But when the boy had stayed mute and the excitement had worn off, it was assumed he’d go to whoever his biological father was. Or maybe he’d go off to some foster family. The church could probably do him some good. Someone somewhere else.

  When he thought about it as an adult, Charlie was astounded at how quickly a small town had forgotten such a harrowing event. How he had too. Just as his father hadn’t been able to comprehend it, so had the people. In this misunderstanding grew the reasoning and rationalising of life. Obviously they’d done something to deserve it. No honest to god normal person would get themselves killed. There was also the matter of Tom attacking Constable Michael Stephens. That hadn’t been an accident. If Constable Michael Stephens was involved then everything was as good as forgotten. Best for the people that way. Only Sarah was the one that wouldn’t or couldn’t forget.

  With all this to worry about and ponder the assumptions of Ethan’s future had been correct in one sense, he had gone to his biological father. He went to Constable Michael Stephens, and from then on, learned about control and fear.

  PERSECUTORY

  III

  ETHAN

  Chapter 15

  Charlie struggled to remember Ethan Burke after it all. All he’d ever been was the kid his sister looked after. The kid who’d watched his parents die. He, nor did he think anyone else, ever really thought about him after that. They’d all been focused on Sarah, but then when she returned it was the unidentified culprits. There were theories, ideas and gossip, but nothing real. It was hoped that he would speak, that he could identify the killers and kidnappers. But when the boy had stayed mute and the excitement had worn off, it was assumed he’d go to whoever his biological father was. Or maybe he’d go off to some foster family. The church could probably do him some good. Someone somewhere else.

  When he thought about it as an adult, Charlie was astounded at how quickly a small town had forgotten such a harrowing event. How he had too. Just as his father hadn’t been able to comprehend it, so had the people. In this misunderstanding grew the reasoning and rationalising of life. Obviously they’d done something to deserve it. No honest to god normal person would get themselves killed. There was also the matter of Tom attacking Constable Michael Stephens. That hadn’t been an accident. If Constable Michael Stephens was involved then everything was as good as forgotten. Best for the people that way. Only Sarah was the one that wouldn’t or couldn’t forget.

  With all this to worry about and ponder the assumptions of Ethan’s future had been correct in one sense, he had gone to his biological father. He went to Constable Michael Stephens, and from then on, learned about control and fear.

  IV

  PERSECUTORY

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  It’d been a week since Charlie had come home covered in the blood of a random woman and his own vomit. Eve meeting him at the door, the whispering threats dying in her throat as she saw him in the dim light. Him standing there as if he didn’t know how he’d got any of it on him. In a way he didn’t know, how had it come to watching a woman get shot? A boy get hit by a bus? A store clerk die?

  What the fuck happened Charlie? Eve asked.

  Charlie tried to say, had been going over and over it on his bus ride home. He’d explained it in his mind so easily, so willingly. He wanted to talk at length about it, except when they did talk, it all seemed so quick, bland without detail. The woman was bleeding out in his arms, the boy dying, the clerk dead. Yet all he could stammer on about was that he didn’t do it, didn’t do anything, just tried to help. Just wanted to help. That they’d stayed like that with her on his lap for thirty minutes until the ambulance came. Then when he spoke to the officers, the details seemed just as important but just as missing. For them the case was solved. Boy holds up store. Boy shoots owner. Boy shoots innocent bystander. Boy panics. Boy gets what’s coming to him. At least that’s how everyone kept syaing. That the boy had brought it on himself. That Charlie had been a witness to justice being served.

  As he sat there at Gary’s fortieth birthday party, sitting in the corner finishing his beer, he didn’t believe that justice had truly been served. What did any of these people know about justice? About the legal system or better yet, being on the receiving end of media justice system? A whole different cage.

  At least half the people at the party, Charlie assumed, were Gary’s friends from the paper or any other of his journalistic voyages. There were academics that Charlie recognised too among the friends that he’d grown past from high school or university. Any other year and Charlie would’ve been avoided because he was Charlie Gardner, except this year he was a different Charlie Gardner. He was the Charlie Gardner that had saved a life. As eloquently put by his boss Carl.

  The day after the announcement of the Picture Killer and that of his incident, had been tough for the office. More so for him
because somehow Carl already knew about it. That Charlie had been instrumental in the saving of the woman who was actually called Elizabeth Hardy. Carl’s connections, or Roger’s, had told him your boy at the centre of it. Charlie bloody Gardner

  Charlie endured questions from the officers afterwards about his history. Was it really him? Don’t worry too much, just saved the state some money really. Wicked bitch deserved it. But had the others? Had they known that when Jesse Mullins returned from her interview that they would be dying that evening? He doubted it. Doubted many things, especially justice. Justice was an easy word for when things seemed going to plan, but when justice failed, when accountability failed, justice seemed to turned to destiny. Or some other cheap word.

  Charlie felt like smoking again. Maybe he could bum one from one of the fellas outside? Suck it down before Eve could see. But she’d noticed. She’d noticed it on him the night he’d returned. Had been watching him all night this evening. The mother checking on the lame lamb. Gary insisting that she be at his shoulder as he did the rounds. Charlie needed that cigarette.

  He hadn’t even told Eve about the phone call.

  Hey, you’re Charlie Gardner yeah? a man asked at the sliding door. A beer in one hand, cigarette in the other.

  Depends, Charlie replied. Got another cigarette?

  The man smiled and took another from his packet. Handed it over. Busy week for your lot over at the Courier, he took a drag of his smoke, a mouthful of drink, then exhaled. You’re their newbie. Carl’s under pressure no doubt from the high-ups on the murders. Then you saved that Hardy girl while the kid got hit for six. He shook his head, another drag. Mike Walker, work with Gary.