by M J Preston
Logan walked back up the corridor ready to push the buzzer when he heard Hopper murmur something. It took a second for him to process, and he stood frozen, turning the two words over in his mind, his finger an inch from the buzzer.
“There’s more,” Hopper had said.
Logan turned and walked back to the cell. “What did you say?”
“Right to remain silent.” And Hopper looked up at him, smiling.
“Did you say there’s more?”
Now Hopper had the upper hand, and he savored it.
The big burly cop held onto the bars, his knuckles whitening, a confused look of miscalculation on his face.
“Maybe I will call that lawyer.”
Logan mentally chastised himself. Why had allowed his emotions to take over? What did this mean? More what? It could be almost anything. It could mean that he was involved in a kiddie porn ring. It could mean that he had more to confess – but Logan was worried about the other possibilities. Maybe he had an accomplice. Or worse! More bodies.
Logan relaxed his grip and tried to take control of the situation.
“Okay, Hopper, I was a bit hasty. What did you say?”
“Maybe it’s time you shut your mouth and listened. I want some things, and until I get them, I am going to leave you in suspense.” Logan opened his mouth to say something but Hopper cut him off. “You yell at me one more time, and I go mute.”
4
They were back in the interview room sitting across from one another. Watching through the one-way glass was Corporal Steel. Logan had given him a brief overview of the situation after taking Hopper back to the room. From the corner the digital video camera blinked, recording everything.
“Ready to listen,” Hopper asked.
“I’m all ears.” Logan felt foolish, but he pushed that away. His bruised ego was the least of his worries now. It was game time.
“First thing I need is a smoke,” Hopper said.
Logan looked at the [No Smoking Sign], then toward the two-way glass. “What kind of cigarettes do you smoke?”
“I’ll need a carton of Pall Malls, but in the meantime, I’ll take two of anything from one of your officers.”
Steel bolted out into the staff room. “I need a couple cigarettes right now! And… shit, something to use as an ashtray.” Only a few officers in the detachment smoked.
Constable Larson stepped up and pulled out a pack of home-rolled cigarettes. Steel took two and grabbed a soda can out of the recycle bin. No one had smoked in this building for over five years.
“Somebody head down to the store and buy a carton of Pall Malls, then bring them to me,” he said and sprinted back toward the holding wing.
There was a knock at the door to the interview room. Logan opened it and took the cigarettes from Steel. He didn’t bother to ask about the carton; he already knew that Steel was on it.
Hopper took a cigarette and put it between his teeth as Logan reached across and lit it for him. He inhaled, held it for a second, and then exhaled. “These taste like shit.”
“Get on with it, Hopper.” Logan was losing his patience.
“Alright.” Hopper took another drag and exhaled. “I want four things.”
“I’m listening.”
“I want a bible, a crucifix, and unlimited cigarettes. I smoke about a pack and a half a day. I expect I’ll be outdoors a lot so having a smoke shouldn’t be an issue.”
“You said four things.”
“Yeah, that’s right. The last thing is that I deal only with you. No one else.”
“Little late to turn to God, isn’t it?”
“Don’t mock me, asshole,” Hopper hissed. “I can always call a lawyer.”
“Okay, I can get you those things, but how do I know you’re not playing games to get special treatment? I’ll need some kind of insurance.”
“Give me those things, and I’ll start talking tonight.”
“I’ll give you half tonight, and when I’ve verified you’re not shooting me a line I’ll give you the rest tomorrow.” Logan had used this tactic on many other prisoners throughout his career. Something was chewing the fat man up, and he latched onto that vulnerability to regain the ground he had lost.
Hopper’s eyes narrowed. He said, “Okay, the Bible and the crucifix. When they’re delivered, I’ll start talking.”
Logan reached across the table and snatched up the cigarette. “Alright, I’ll take this then. Your cigarettes will be delivered when I’ve determined you’re not full of shit.”
“Alright, the bible and the cigarettes.”
“One other thing. You won’t be able to smoke in here after tonight or in your cell. We will have to make other arrangements.”
Ten minutes later there was a knock behind him, and he got up to meet Steel at the door. In his hand, he held a bible and on top of it a new carton of Pall Mall cigarettes. “Thanks, Don,” he said and closed the door again.
Steel returned to his seat on the other side of the two-way mirror.
Constable Sandra Hardy came into the observation room. “How’s it going?”
“You aren’t going to believe this, Sandy,” Steel said, “but I think this Hopper guy is a serial killer.”
“Oh my God,” Hardy whispered.
Hardy and Steel had been sleeping together for almost a year. No one in the detachment knew about it, except Steel’s best friend, Jim West. They had kept it to themselves for professional reasons, and for fear that the Chief would separate them.
She absently placed a hand on his shoulder when another officer entered the observation room. It was Constable Larson. Everyone called him Oddball. Logan had coined the nickname after Donald Sutherland from the movie Kelly’s Heroes. Strangely, Logan could not understand that his younger officers had no idea who Oddball was or that Clint Eastwood had once been a young, vibrant action movie star. Nevertheless, Oddball stuck, and no one in the detachment called him by his first name – which happened to be Keith.
“Hey, any progress?” Oddball asked.
Hardy slowly removed her hand from Steel’s shoulder.
“Things are just warming up,” Steel said.
5
Mick leaned over and knocked the phone off the night table. He had been dreaming about the day’s events – except in his dream he had vomited all over the crime scene, and Logan fired him on the spot.
“Fuck,” he cursed the darkness, reaching around blindly for the cordless phone. His hand touched the receiver, and he pushed the talk button as he brought it to his ear. “Hello?”
“Mick.” It was Logan. “You gotta come back in.”
“What’s up?” he asked, sitting up and wiping his eyes.
“We’ve got more digging to do.”
He sat there quietly trying to sort out what he had just heard.
More digging? Did we miss something?
“What are you saying, Dave?”
“There are more bodies. A lot more. Get in here as fast as you can and bring a change of clothes. We’re gonna be at this a while.” Logan’s tone was uneasy, even rattled.
“I’ll be there as quick as I can.” He set the phone back in its cradle.
“What’s going on, Hon,” his wife, Nancy, murmured, half-asleep.
He leaned into her and ran his hands over the warmth of her shoulders beneath the covers. He kissed her temple. “I gotta go back to work. Do you want me to call and wake you up?”
“Okay, sweetheart.”
Mick doubted she would even remember this. She slept like a log, and occasionally she snored.
He kissed her temple again, got up and went to the closet to grab a change of clothes and a fresh uniform.
More digging, his mind hammered. More bodies? From where?
***
Chapter 6 - Hopper’s Basement
> 1
The SPCA came that afternoon and cleared the small barn where Hopper kept a pig and a dozen chickens. The animals were in good health, exhibiting no signs of abuse or neglect. Following this, the small livestock barn was searched and sealed by Corporal West and Constable Findlay. The equipment Hopper used for harvesting his crop was stored off-site in a building rented from another farmer named Joel Hunt. The Thomasville Police intended on visiting this building, but Logan speculated there would not be much there in the way of evidence. A Co-op of farmers shared the large aluminum hut, which resembled an old airplane hangar. Among those farmers was Donald Wakeman.
Mick and Logan went out there alone that night to conduct a search of the house for anything that would help them with the investigation. Both were tired from the day’s events, but this was only the beginning of many sleepless nights to come.
Mick carried a digital video camera, and as they walked through the house, he recorded everything. At first glance, it seemed a normal enough dwelling for a man in his mid-fifties. Dirty dishes sat in the sink, laundry was strewn about the single bedroom, and yellow stains surrounded the base of the toilet bowl. There was no evidence of murder or deviance in the main level of the house.
The cellar was another story altogether.
Mick tried to flip on the cellar light, but the old switch just clicked over, giving way to mute blackness. “Must be a breaker or a bulb out,” he remarked. He tried to keep the uneasiness from his voice, but anxiety already pulsed through him.
He turned on the camera’s LED and used it to light the way, and as they descended the narrow stairway, they were assaulted by a vile smell that caused the two of them to simultaneously gag. Covering their mouths and expecting the worst, they continued down the treacherous steps into the darkness. The combined white light from the camera and a big black mag-lite carried by Logan unveiled the inches of the dank underground room as they continued on toward the smell of death and decay.
“There’s the source of the stink,” Logan announced as the beam of his light illuminated the remains of a slaughtered pig laid out on a large blue tarp a few feet from the base of the staircase. It was gutted and left to spoil on the basement floor. Maggots squirmed within its eye sockets, and bluebottle flies buzzed about ready to deposit more offspring.
“Why would he leave it to rot?” Mick asked, simultaneously opening the freezer and praying it would not contain any surprises. Inside was a stew of blood, water, rotted vegetables, and decomposing meat. The smell that wafted out was worse than the pig; foul and acrid. “God, that’s fucking ripe.” He gagged and closed it quickly to seal off the stench.
Logan turned the light into the far corner of the basement, where he saw a glint of silver next to the hot water tank. He left Mick standing by the freezer swatting away the flies. As he stepped closer and the beam of light from his torch grew nearer, it became clear what it was. Using a pen, he lifted a three-foot length of chain that had been bolted to one of the legs of the hot water tank.
“I guess he had other things on his mind.”
At the end of the chain was a set of cheap handcuffs. He wondered if the young victims had known then what their fate was going to be. Then he set the chain back on the cold floor. “Document this.”
Mick moved away from the freezer and shot video of the chain and handcuff. He imagined poor Tommy hooked there like a dog at the mercy of the ghoul who lived here. It was almost more than he could take, but there was much more to come.
He followed Logan. His shoe grazed the chain. It clinked, and Mick felt sudden odd remorse. Strange as it might seem, he felt as though he had disturbed some artifact of the dead.
Logan spotted the big steel door at the other end of the basement and began moving toward it. It was slightly ajar, but it still blocked their line of sight to whatever dark secrets it confined. Both men wanted to know but sought the answers with gloomy trepidation as to the horrors of this modern-day dungeon.
Logan reached it first and pushed the big door with the butt of his flashlight. It swung open on rusty hinges.
What the two officers were faced with was a nightmare.
Formerly it had been a passage to a cold storage room built to keep preserves and vegetables in a time when freezers were a luxury. Now it had been used for something dark and ugly. Inside the room stood a metal table, once for welding and steelwork, now transformed by Hopper into a grisly tool of torture. The cold steel had a coat of battle grey paint and on the two front legs shackles had been welded.
Logan shone the light into the room as he stepped inside to examine the table. A second set of shackles, each attached to a foot of chain were welded to the far edge of the table, giving it the appearance of a 17th Century torture rack. There was just enough room to accommodate the table, the victim, and the torturer. Once inside, Hopper would have been able to close the door behind him. Logan presumed that is what he did because Hopper had doubled the insulation on the walls, making the compartment soundproof to stifle the screams of his victims.
“Oh man,” Mick groaned, looking over Logan’s shoulder. Set up on the shelves were stacks of duct tape and a bottle of clear liquid which they could only assume was a lubricant of some sort. “What kind of man does this to a kid?”
“We’re not dealing with a man.” Logan backed out of the room, careful not to touch anything. “We’re dealing with a monster.”
With the camera focused on Logan Mick observed vulnerabilities he had never seen before. Logan was doing some personal inventory and marrying it up to the madness in this basement. Mick watched his friend with guilty fascination. He’s blaming himself for this. He isn’t saying it, but he doesn’t have to.
Feeling Mick’s gaze, Logan said, “Go in there and document it.”
He went into the room, leaving Logan there staring off into space. This whole thing, so surreal, was quickly taking its toll.
“How the hell could this have happened?” he muttered, unaware he’d said the words aloud, then added, “How did I let this happen?”
Hearing this, Mick finished documenting the cold storage room, placed the camera on pause and came back out into the main part of the basement. “We didn’t know, Dave. How could we have? This guy Hopper is a ghost; he has no priors. Certainly, nothing that could link him to this.”
Logan just looked through him, searching for some rhyme or reason to the mayhem that had taken place here. He was not just some hick cop: he had cut his teeth as a homicide detective and seen some pretty heinous things – but this had happened right under their noses. Even worse, they hadn’t even begun the process of unearthing the dark secrets Hopper’s cornfield held.
Caught in a malaise of self-deprecation, Logan stared into the abyss of ‘what if?’
Mick had seen this look before, and it scared him.
Many years ago, under the command of Chief Spencer, a young patrol officer named Michael Sedgwick came upon the scene of an overturned car. Inside the car was a woman who was banged up, but conscious. Sedgwick had tried to free her, but the damage to the vehicle had locked her in tight. He called for emergency services and waited with her while the fire department was dispatched with the necessary tools to cut her out.
He saw the gasoline on the roadway and brought his fire extinguisher out, just in case. While they waited, they talked and joked, and it seemed that it was only a matter of time before she would be on our way to the emergency room in the back of an ambulance. Neither Sedgwick nor the trapped woman could see the hot wires that ran from the brake lights directly to the battery begin to short out and spark.
Sedgwick was just about to ask her if she had any kids when the vapors from the gasoline ignited. Within seconds, the car was engulfed. He desperately tried to free her as she screamed – but his fire extinguisher was no match for the fury of the gasoline fire.
When the fire department came on the scene, the overt
urned car was still burning. Only the mummified, charred remnants of the woman remained. Sedgwick had third-degree burns on his hands. His physical wounds would heal, but the internal ones never did.
He became introverted, and one day three months later he pulled his patrol car over onto a road that was just outside of town and wrote a suicide note. In it, he apologized to the family of the woman, to his girlfriend and to his parents. He then walked into a grain field and shot himself in the head.
Mick never forgot the look Sedgwick had on his face after the incident. It was a sad self-accusatory look. He was sure he saw a hint of that in Logan’s eyes now. He would not say anything about this to anyone, but he would watch his friend carefully.
“How long,” Logan whispered.
“How long what,” Mick asked.
“How long did it go on before the bastard finally ended the misery?”
“Come on, Dave. Let’s get out of here.”
They left the basement and went back out to the front porch where Corporal West was standing guard. The big gangly corporal had already started losing his hair at twenty-eight, and towering six foot four he was a giant of a man, but his voice was soothing and thoughtful.
“All finished?” asked West.
Logan lit up a cigar staring gravely across Van Dyke Road.
“We’re done for tonight, Jim,” Mick replied and added, “What time does your relief get here?”
“We switch up after midnight, Sarge.” He peered at the Chief, puzzled.
“Okay. I don’t have to tell you how important security is, but if anyone goes back into that cornfield, I want you to call in.” Mick patted the big officer on the shoulder. “Any questions?”
“Is it true? Is this guy a serial killer?”
“We haven’t determined that yet, but it is looking quite possible.”
Obviously West and Steel had been talking, but then most of the officers in the detachment were engrossed in speculation about the case. It was what cops did.
Logan took another puff on the cigar, walked down the steps toward the cruiser. Without looking back, he said, “Keep up the good work, Westy. Keep this place secure.”