The May Day Murders Sequel

by Scott Wittenburg

  In what seemed like a very short time he passed by the state park lodge and backed off on the speed. Eyeing his GPS, Sam could see that the road was coming up soon. Moments later he spotted the road and pulled on to it.The pavement was rough but no problem for the Jeep. Sam plowed over the chuck holes for a mile or so before coming to the first house. Instinctively he slowed down to a crawl and kept a keen eye up ahead. He wondered if he’d see a sheriff’s vehicle parked there when Jenkins’ house came into view. Had Roger gotten through to them? He hoped so, for the closer he came to end of the road, the more anxious he became.

  He passed by another house, noting that the place looked as dark and quiet as the other one had. If there had been any action on this road, everybody must have slept through it. He realized in a sudden fit of panic that he was totally on his own. There wasn’t going to be any sheriff at Jenkins’ home, nor was Roger Hagstrom going to be there for support.

  He rounded a curve and the house suddenly came into view. It was a very small cottage badly in need of repair, sitting about forty yards back from the road. The only light was coming from behind the place, most likely from a back porch light. And sure enough, parked in the driveway was the same Nissan he had seen the day before.

  Stanley Jenkins was in this house right now.

  Sam drove by and parked where the road abruptly ended another quarter mile further. He tried Roger again, praying that the detective would answer. He got his voicemail.

  Looks like I’m going to have to do this myself, he thought.

  He felt for the Smith and Wesson in his jacket pocket, killed the engine and got out. He walked with forced determination, knowing that the element of surprise would be his best friend. He would gain access to the house—break down a door if he had to—march into Jenkins’ bedroom, point the gun at him and keep the bastard at bay until Roger and the sheriff’s department arrived.

  But as he approached the driveway he felt his quasi-bravado evaporate. Inside that house was a psychotic murderer—a nut case who had escaped prison and managed to avoid capture all this time. A clever, meticulous man who was not only elusive but left nothing to chance.

  Get real, Sam, you are not a cop! And you’ve only fired this weapon a few times for target practice. And remember how you couldn’t hit the broad side of a shithouse? What in the holy hell are you doing?

  “I’m going to nail this fucker, that’s what I’m doing!” he said aloud.

  Having psyched himself into fully-stoked mode, he strode up the driveway with newfound resolve. Spitting on the Nissan as he passed by it, he slipped around the side of the house and on to the back porch. A single low-watt light bulb glowed feebly in the darkness. Sam grabbed the storm door handle, turned it, swung the door open and took hold of the doorknob. It turned easily in his hand. He pushed the door open.

  He stepped into the kitchen, took out the semi-automatic and pricked his ears. He heard nothing but the steady drip of water from the kitchen sink faucet. As his eyes adjusted he saw the dining room off to his left. Pointing the gun straight ahead, he crept into the living room. To his right he saw a foyer and a hallway that led back toward the rear of the house. Feeling his heart in his throat, he tiptoed along the hardwood floor, stopping dead whenever it creaked to listen for sounds and garner the courage to continue.

  He passed by a small bath and there was just enough light to make out a bedroom door at the end of the hall. Thinking it odd that Jenkins would sleep with the door closed, Sam crept down the hall and stopped outside the room. He brought his ear to the door and listened. It was dead quiet.

  It’s now or never, he thought.

  He took hold of the doorknob and quietly opened the door. In the dim green light of a clock radio he saw the outline of a body buried under the covers. Sam fumbled around for the light switch and flipped it on, aiming his pistol at the sleeping man.

  “Up, motherfucker!” he shouted.

  To his surprise, he didn’t stir. Jenkins must be a hard sleeper. Sam went over and took hold of the covers with his left hand, pulled them down, keeping his pistol trained on Jenkins.

  To his horror, it wasn’t Jenkins but the body of a young woman lying flat on her back, fully nude, her legs spread. On her breasts were the words May Day—one word per breast—written in crimson lipstick. Sam leaned over and looked at the face that was turned the opposite way and did a double-take.

  The woman was his daughter, Amy.

  “Amy!” he cried.

  He touched her forehead—it was ice cold. Her lovely auburn hair was damp and stuck to her forehead in total disarray. Her eyes were wide open in a final expression of absolute terror.

  His beautiful daughter, mother of his granddaughter, was dead.

  “No, not my daughter, too, you fucking bastard!” he wailed.

  His hands trembling violently, Sam took out his phone and punched in 911. A moment later he heard Siri’s monotonic, detached voice:

  “I’m sorry, but the number you have dialed, nine-one-one, is not a working number.”

  “Fuck you, Siri! Fuck you! Fuck you! Fuck you!” he cried.

  Sam opened his eyes, sobbing hysterically. He felt as though his heart was about to rip out of his chest as he lay there in a cold sweat, plastered against the sheets, staring at the ceiling in the darkness. He glanced over at the clock radio, half-expecting to see his daughter’s dead body. But all he saw was the time: two forty-four.

  It had all been a dream, thank God!

  A horrible dream.

  Badly shaken but grateful beyond words, Sam got out of bed and went into the kitchen. As he poured himself a glass of water, he was in awe of how real the nightmare had seemed—right up to the very end. He heaved a sigh of relief as the details rushed back to him in fleeting snippets. A mysterious caller had not called after all, telling him where Jenkins lived. Roger had not copped out on him, leaving him on his own to go after the killer. And Amy had not been murdered, her body positioned in the exact same way Marsha Bradley had been after Stanley Jenkins had raped and strangled her.

  “Thank you, God,” he spoke to the empty room.

  As Sam recovered from the nightmare, he thought of Amy and how vulnerable she was as long as Jenkins was still at large. Of course he’d considered it before, many times in fact, but he had always somehow convinced himself that the likelihood of Stanley Jenkins going after Amy was slim. It was her mother the killer had it out for—there was no viable reason for Amy to be on his kill list. Or at least that’s what he’d always thought until the tricycle had been stolen—

  He resolved to call Amy in the morning, not only to make sure she was okay but to tell her for the hundredth time to always keep an eye out for anything suspicious. In her typical know-it-all fashion, she would scoff as she always did, telling him something like, “Dad, quit worrying about us. We’ll be fine.”

  Sam hated the way kids nowadays seemed to have that I’ve got everything under control attitude—like they were invulnerable—when nothing could be further from the truth. Nobody was safe as long as monsters like Stanley Jenkins existed. And that was a fact.

  Chapter 11

  Loud rock music greeted Stanley when he entered Paddy’s. He glanced around the pub, which seemed busy considering the hour, trying to pick out Max Bernstein in the crowd. He recalled the last Irish bar he’d been to and figured it had to have been that one on High Street in Columbus he’d frequented while pecking his way into Ann Middleton’s life.

  He felt odd and uncomfortable as he made his way through the place, hoping that his disguise was sufficient to avoid being recognized. Although he looked nothing like any of the photos the press had released after his breakout, somebody with a trained eye could ID him with little imagination.

  Moving toward the rear of the club he didn’t see Bernstein so he decided to go to the bar for a drink. While awaiting the bartender he scoped out the girls—most of them in their twenties and thirties. As much as he’d like to pick one up and have his way with her h
e knew it would be too risky—something he best put on the back burner for another day. But then again. . .

  He sipped his Guinness with an eye on the door, hoping that Bernstein hadn’t changed his mind. The man had always been punctual and it had been nearly an hour since he’d spoken to him. Fearing that something was wrong, he began feeling uneasy when all of a sudden Bernstein’s familiar stocky frame entered the pub.

  The retired document forger looked around and headed toward Stanley. As he approached, Stanley waved and then became baffled when the man deliberately ignored him, moving right past him toward the rear of the bar. It suddenly dawned on him that Bernstein had never seen Stanley Jenkins since his transformation into Jerry Rankin, nor had Stanley given him a heads-up of his current disguise. Bernstein had probably ignored his wave thinking Stanley was some fag looking for a pickup, he thought with a wry grin.

  He stood up and followed Bernstein. When he caught up Stanley spoke to the back of his head.

  “Hey, Max.”

  Bernstein turned, did a double-take and stared at him in utter shock. “Is that you, Stanley?”

  “Yup. Forgot to tell you that there have been a few changes since the last time we met.”

  “Jesus, I’ll say! You don’t look the least like the same person.”

  “That’s the general idea,” Jenkins replied. “Let’s see if we can find a table.”

  “No way,” Bernstein replied. “Let’s go somewhere less congested.”

  Stanley followed him outside and they headed down Bleecker Street.

  “You bring the cash?” Max asked in a hushed voice.

  “Yeah, I got it. You aren’t setting me up are you, Max? I mean, you could do that and I’d be screwed royally.”

  “You know me, Stanley. Have I ever let you down?”

  “No, but shit happens. I mean, how do I know you’re leveling with me? You could be an undercover cop now for all I know after all this time.”

  “Trust me, Stanley. If that were the case, you would have already been hauled in by now.”

  “Yeah, I guess you have a point there.”

  “Ironically, I was once approached to do some undercover work after I gave all of this shit up. I told them to go fuck themselves. I may be out of the business but I’ve never felt particularly warm and fuzzy hobnobbing with law enforcement. Let’s go in here.”

  Bernstein led the way into the Peruvian Coffee Shop and they sat down at a booth. A server came over and they ordered coffees. After the coffee came, Bernstein leaned forward and said, “I’ll take the cash now.”

  Stanley pulled out an envelope from his pocket and handed it to Bernstein.

  “It’s all in there.”

  “Better be.”

  Bernstein gave the envelope a firm squeeze, took a peek inside and stuffed it into the breast pocket of his overcoat.

  “I’ve just got one thing to say, Stanley. If something goes wrong, I never existed. Understand? I’m sacrificing six years of being straight and am not about to go down because I did you a favor.”

  “No problem, Max—you can trust me. Nothing’s going to happen. The minute I get my ID, I’m out of the country.”

  “Alright then. I’ll give my contact a call after we leave and tell him everything’s a go. I can tell you right now you don’t want to screw around with this guy. He’ll kill you in a heartbeat if he thinks something’s not quite right tomorrow. He’s no amateur and doesn’t like being jerked around. So when you see him, give him the cash and do exactly what he says. No funny business. Got it?”

  “Got it.”

  Max Bernstein took a sip of his coffee, stood up and left the shop. Stanley waited a few minutes, killed the last of his java, dropped a ten-dollar bill on the table and left as well.

  Instead of hailing a cab, he headed back in the direction of Paddy’s. He hadn’t wanted to leave the bar in the first place and now felt an almost overwhelming desire to have another drink and check out the chicks. The last thing he wanted to do was go back to that hotel room and stare at the clock until tomorrow.

  The crowd in the pub had grown and Stanley could swear that the ratio of women to men was two to one. He had just stepped into Paradise. He waited at the bar long enough to get a beer before heading toward the video games. He noticed a blonde wearing a leather miniskirt and high heels chatting with a couple of friends. He inadvertently stuck out his hand to graze her sweet ass as he walked past her. It was the first piece of ass he’d felt in eight years and the subtle act caused him to get hard. He glanced back at the girl to see if she’d noticed his cheap feel but she was still busy blabbing to her buddies.

  Seeing all these gorgeous babes only made him want to hurry and ditch his present persona totally. Jerry Rankin was passé—yesterday’s model. He wanted to become even more handsome and godlike. Ol’ Jer had now evolved into a broken down, beaten up convict. The weathered, leathery look of his face needed to be smoothed out. His once luxurious thick bleached blond hair had grown out long ago, replaced by an ugly mousy brown streaked with gray at the temples. And the muscular physique that had once made Ann Middleton want to get to know him better? Gone to flab. He could kick himself for being such a lazy slob in the big house, content to eat shit food and lay around his cell reading instead of hitting the weights like so many of the other cons had. Many were the times Darrell had tried talking him into getting into shape until he had finally just given up. And now Stanley looked like some middle-aged couch potato.

  Feeling the anger toward himself mounting, Stanley chose an area near the Pac Man machine to drink his beer. The music was almost deafening, huge speakers hanging from the ceiling aimed directly toward this area of the bar. He’d always loved classic rock but the shit that was playing now made him feel even more out of place. And out of time. He wished he were already in Europe—away from America and its screwed up people. These kids—and he couldn’t believe he was referring to them as kids, but that’s what they were—wouldn’t know a good song if it bit them on the ass. It was one thing for the blacks to dig this rap and hip-hop shit. But what could you say about the white kids who went for this crap? Something seriously wrong there.

  He quickly drained his beer and went to get another one. On the way back he noticed a girl that resembled Marsha Stillner back when she was in high school. The only thing missing was that tight sweater she always used to wear. This chick looked to be in her early twenties with long dark hair draped over her shoulders and tits like grapefruits.

  He flashed back to the night he’d paid Marsha a visit while her husband was out with his buddy. Marsha had married a dentist, Dave Bradley, and the couple had a son who was also there at the house with her at the time. As it turned out, not killing the little boy hadn’t been a mistake after all. The kid had been so terrorized by the whole experience that he’d suffered some serious amnesia and had never been unable to describe his mother’s murderer to the cops.

  Stanley had always had a soft spot for kids. He knew what it was like to be a kid and have people not like you for one reason for another. All the loneliness and alienation that went along with it. The Bradley child sort of reminded him of himself when he’d been a kid. He had the same sort of sad, depressed look about him. He had felt so sorry for the boy that he’d wanted to hug him and tell him that things would get better someday—providing his father wasn’t as fucked up as Stanley’s had been, that is.

  He’d locked the kid in his bedroom closet instead. A calculated risk that hadn’t done any harm. Tommy’s mother however hadn’t been so lucky. Stanley had spent weeks casing Marsha out, closely observing her actions and habits, assessing the Bradley family’s daily routines. The night he had chosen to kill Marsha had been the product of intense research, over-the-top surveillance and exceptional masterminding. Not to be conceited or anything, but he had executed his plan without a single hitch.

  Well, except for one. That had been his undoing, as it turned out. That would never happen again. Had he realized sooner that
those Polaroids had fallen out of his back pocket in little Tommy Bradley’s room he would have promptly returned to the scene of the crime and retrieved them. But the excitement and sheer joy of eliminating Marsha Stillner Bradley from the face of the earth had muddied his thoughts. He had in fact never given those Polaroids a second thought until it was too late.

  He was staring at the Marsha lookalike when she suddenly caught his stare and made a face. It was a face that said, “What are you staring at, freak?” At that moment, Stanley wanted to grab the bitch by the arm and drag her out into the street. He’d force her into an ally and lay waste to her body and then her face.

  But instead he just turned away. He took a slug of Guinness and recalled the look on Marsha’s face when he first confronted her in her home that night. Priceless! He had gained access by using a copy of a key he’d “borrowed” another day from the ring hanging on the Bradley’s mud room wall—Marsha’s hubby had left the back door ajar that day while mowing the grass so Stanley had slipped inside, snatched the key and promptly headed to the hardware store.

  Once inside, he had waited in the dining room for Marsha to come down from the upstairs. He knew that it was Tommy’s bedtime and that she would be up in his room tucking him in. And like clockwork, at just a little after nine o’clock he heard her coming down the stairs. She was heading to the kitchen for her second drink of the day as she always did—another strawberry daiquiri.

  Poor Marsha never got that drink.

  He’d waited until she came into the living room before making his move. Then he had simply walked up to her smiling, thrilled to see the look of absolute shock and horror on her face at the sight of an intruder in her happy home. He’d put his hand over her mouth and stood there, advising her not to make a sound after he removed his hand or he would go upstairs and kill her son. She was compliant.

  “Who are you?” she’d cried. “What are you doing in my house?”

  “A blast from the past, Marsha,” he’d replied. “Just thought I’d drop in to say hi.”