What Lies Beneath

by Archer, David

  There was a bit of trepidation in the smile, however. “You know, you might want to be careful digging through some of my old boxes,” he said. “Remember that, up until just a few weeks ago, I was a single guy. I wouldn’t want you to be shocked at anything you find, but I don’t know what boxes might have some kind of naughty surprises in them.”

  Cassie laughed. “Why, Mike Kendall,” she said, “are you afraid I’m going to run across your personal porn stash?”

  He blushed. “Well, there might be a few items scattered here and there that could possibly traumatize a sweet young thing like you. Why don’t you hold off on digging through any more of these boxes, and I’ll go through them myself this weekend?”

  Cassie rolled her eyes. “Mike, that’s sweet, but I’m not exactly a blushing bride. Sex is just part of life—I’m not going to get all bent out of shape if you have some dirty magazines or porn videos stashed away.” She winked at him. “Maybe we could watch a few together.”

  His eyes suggested that there might be something more that was worrying him. “I know, I know,” he said, “but—well, sometimes a single guy can get into some interesting fantasies, you might say. I’m not sure if I’ve even got any of the old stuff still around, but…”

  Cassie lowered her eyelids and looked at him suggestively. “Oh? Had a few kinky videos, did we? What kind?”

  Mike could be stubborn when he wanted to, and this was definitely one of those times. No matter how she tried, he absolutely refused to discuss any of the fantasies he had been into, and she finally gave up asking.

  Still, she respected his wishes and left the boxes for him to go through. He actually started on some of them that night, and she told him how pleased she was to see quite a few of them disappear. Of course, she knew that he only stashed some of them in the garage, but at least they were out of the way.

  Life began to settle into a routine, and it seemed very, very good. Cassie was looking forward to December, when she would finally become Mrs. Mike Kendall. After that, they could seriously begin thinking about starting a family.

  A family. All her years of daydreaming about the day she would finally be a mother, finally have a child of her own, were coming together in what almost seemed like a fairy-tale romance. Mike admitted that he wanted kids just as much as she did, and while he had teased her about having half a dozen or more, they had finally agreed that two or three would be plenty. Goodness, she thought, if they stopped at two, the house they had would be big enough for them forever.

  After all, they were in a pretty nice neighborhood. Things had been looking up economically around the area, and when they built the new super Walmart only three blocks away, property values had skyrocketed. The house that Mike had purchased for only a hundred and twenty thousand would probably appraise now for three times as much. With that much equity, moving and starting all over with a new mortgage might not be the smartest thing to do.

  And then a serial killer came to town, and Mike was working more than ever. He would be gone when she got up in the morning, and often didn’t come back until she had gone to bed. She knew how important his work was to him, so she did her best not to complain, but she privately admitted that she was feeling somewhat neglected.

  Her dad had always told her that life was what happened while you’re making other plans, something he said he learned from John Lennon of the Beatles. She chalked it up to just the way things were and forced herself to deal with it, but the rare days off Mike was able to take were suddenly very important to her. She would make plans for them, try to find something exciting for them to do during his brief respites from his job, and occasionally her plans would even succeed in bringing them to a romantic evening. Those were the nights when she got lucky, and for a short time, Mike made her feel like the woman he loved again.

  The rest of the time, though, he was bad tempered and short with her. It seemed like anytime she called him at work, her timing couldn’t be worse. More than once he got angry enough to hang up on her, but he would always call back later when he got a break and apologize. She told herself that she could understand the stress he was under, so she always forgave him and put it out of her mind.

  Chapter 6

  June passed by, and then July came. By the time they were nearing the first of August and she was starting to think about school again, Mike’s cases were often keeping him busy for three weeks at a time. With only one day off out of every twenty-one, Cassie was beginning to wonder if she even knew her fiancé at all anymore.

  Of course, she never let on to anyone else that she had such feelings. Her parents knew nothing, and even when she spoke to Abby on the phone, she was always careful to make it sound like everything was okay.

  And it was okay, she told herself. At least Mike wasn’t coming home and taking out his frustrations on her, the way some men did. She spoke occasionally with the wives and girlfriends of other police officers and learned that a lot of them did exactly that.

  Of course, he was still irritable a lot, but Cassie only chalked it up to the stress of his job. Having to look at all the crime scene photos and actually see the bodies of murder victims had to be stressful, no matter how you looked at it. All of the police procedural shows on television made it seem like something the cops just took in stride, and some of them even seemed to make light of such things, but Cassie knew enough about how the mind works to realize that was ridiculous. Only the most hardhearted psychopath could ever find humor in the brutal murder of a human being.

  Cops like Mike had to learn to suppress their emotions, to push them down and lock them away so they could concentrate on gathering the facts necessary to catch the killers. Mike was very good at deduction, at putting the clues together and figuring out just who among the suspects in each case was the guilty party. He could build his case methodically, locking each piece into place like a giant jigsaw puzzle until he had a clear enough picture to allow the DA to present it to a grand jury. Then, once a warrant was issued, Mike was the guy who went to bring the murderer in. He and his partner, another detective named Harry, would approach the suspect as if they only wanted to ask another question, then inform him that he was under arrest and take him into custody.

  On one hot, humid Friday, Mike’s diligent efforts had resulted in a true bill from the grand jury, and a warrant was issued for a man named Jerry Sheppard. Despite Sheppard’s efforts to cover it up, Mike had learned that he had been having an affair with his boss, a woman named Sheila Martin who had been found murdered nearly a month earlier. She had been killed in her own home, and the brutal nature of the crime had told Mike it was something that had happened in the heat of passion. The closer he looked at the situation, the more it led him to the conclusion that she had been killed by a secret lover, and several tiny clues that would otherwise seem unconnected had led him to Sheppard.

  He had been able to reconstruct the crime in his mind, and build his case on the theory that Sheila had tried to break off the affair. She and her husband had just agreed to start marriage counseling, and Mike figured she had told Sheppard it was over, that she was going to try to make her marriage work after all.

  At some point, Sheppard had come to her home to try to talk to her, and she had apparently let him in. She had remained adamant, however, that the affair was at an end, and that was when Sheppard simply lost it. Sheila had been struck repeatedly by a heavy object, and more than one of the blows had fractured her skull. The medical examiner said that while the injuries were sufficient to cause brain damage, she was probably still alive at that point.

  Sheppard had come to his senses and realized what he had done, but Sheila was still breathing. He had decided he could not take the chance that she would recover enough to tell what had happened, so he had gone into the kitchen and taken one of her butcher knives. He had then coldly stabbed her more than twenty times, and then, in a final attempt to be certain she would never talk, he had cut her throat.

  By that time, of course, she had alr
eady been dead. Sheppard had then wiped the weapons clean of his fingerprints and carefully cleaned up any trace of his presence before leaving the house.

  None of Sheila’s friends had any idea who her secret lover might have been, but Mike had discovered that she had been receiving text messages from an unregistered cell phone, a burner phone. While he could not determine who owned the phone, he was able to use cell tower triangulation to trace its movements around the city over the last month or so, and it turned out that it was located at the lumber company where Sheila was sales manager on many occasions. That led him to suspect that her affair had been with one of the other employees there, so he had interviewed all of them.

  Naturally, all of them denied having any kind of relationship with her other than a professional one, but Sheppard had been the one who denied an affair the most vehemently. He spoke of how much he respected Sheila, and how he would like to get his hands on whoever did this to her. He talked about how he had met her husband and found the man quite likable. When Mike asked if he had ever been alone with Sheila, Sheppard had denied it.

  All of these things could have been true, but there was something in Sheppard’s eyes that told Mike he was looking at the killer. All he had to do was come up with evidence that would convince the DA.

  The break came when Mike was talking to the husband. At one point, Mike mentioned Sheppard by name, and the husband had been forced to think for a moment before remembering him. He said they had never met, but he remembered Sheila talking about Sheppard from time to time. He was a good salesman, and was the one she usually chose to work with her when she went to the trade shows.

  Mike went through Sheila’s business records and found that she had taken only Sheppard with her on several occasions, making it clear that Sheppard had lied about not being alone with her. Mike had gone back to the cell phone location record and found that it had been used twice from Sheppard’s home, as well as a few times from where the trade shows were taking place.

  All of these little details painted a picture, and that picture had been sufficient to convince the grand jury. Mike and Harry had gone to the lumberyard to arrest Sheppard, but the man had decided he would rather die than go to jail. He had pulled a gun, and Mike had been forced to shoot him dead.

  It was the first time Mike had ever fired his weapon in the line of duty, and the shock of taking a life had been great. He had tried to play it off as no big deal, saying that Sheppard got what he deserved, but police rules required him to go into counseling. He attended four sessions over a two-week period and was finally cleared to return to duty, but there was something different about him. No one else seemed to notice, but Cassie did.

  When he wasn’t overstressed by work, Mike had always been the jovial sort. He was playful and loved to pull practical jokes, always looking for a laugh.

  After the shooting, however, that part of him was gone. When he came home from work, he would grab a bottle of beer out of the refrigerator and sit down to watch television, rather than spend any time talking to Cassie. If she tried to ask him what was bothering him, he would brush her off and say that it was a long day, he just wanted to relax.

  His temper had also changed, and for the worse. If she happened to call him at work now, he would be cold and angry, but the apology calls quit coming. She would apologize to him when he got home, and he would simply tell her to stop calling when he was busy.

  On the fifteenth of July, Cassie had nervously called him at work because the caterer for the wedding reception had contacted her to say they were accidentally double-booked for the day and would have to cancel. She had frantically looked for another caterer, but the only one that was available around Christmas time was more than twice as expensive. The problem was there were so many different events happening at that time of year that they were likely to be booked at any moment, but she was reluctant to agree without Mike’s approval. She told them she would get back to them quickly and then gathered her courage to call him.

  He answered the phone by saying, “I thought I told you to stop calling me at work!”

  “Mike, I’m sorry, but something’s come up,” Cassie said. “It’s the caterer for the reception, they…”

  “Do I sound like I care? Geez, Cassie, I told you not to call me when I’m busy!” He hung up, and Cassie was left staring at the phone in her hand.

  Well, she figured, if he didn’t care, then she would just make the decision on her own. She called the new caterer back and booked them for the day, giving them the number of the debit card from their joint bank account.

  When Mike got home that day, he got the beer out of the refrigerator and sat down in his recliner, just like he always did lately. Cassie waited till he had gotten comfortable, then walked into the living room.

  “I’m sorry I upset you today,” she said. “I called because our caterer had called me and said they had to cancel, and the only one I could find was going to cost twice as much. I just wanted to check with you before I arranged for them.”

  “That couldn’t have waited till I got home?” Mike asked, looking at her coldly.

  “Actually, no,” she said. “They said I had to give them an answer as soon as possible, because they had other things going on around that time and could be booked at any moment. I went ahead and did it after I called you, because…”

  “You did what?” Mike sat forward, slamming the footrest down. “You spent that much money without asking me first?”

  “I tried to ask you,” she said. “Mike, that’s why I called, to try to ask if it was okay, but you hung up on me.”

  The bottle in his hand suddenly flew across the room, shattering on the fireplace. Before Cassie realized what was happening, he was on his feet and had grabbed her by the arm.

  “What is it, you think I’m made out of money? We’ve already gone way over the budget we had set for the wedding, but now you’re going to spend another two or three hundred dollars on it?”

  “Mike, stop it, you’re hurting me!” Cassie said. “And I tried to ask you, remember? You said you didn’t care, do you remember that?”

  Suddenly, Cassie was on the floor. Her head was reeling, and it took her a moment to realize that Mike had struck her. She didn’t actually remember his fist coming around and slamming into the side of her head, but the throbbing pain told her that had to be what happened.

  He was standing over her, breathing heavily. She looked up at him for a second, then turned her face back toward the floor.

  “Mike,” she said, “I’m—I’m sorry, I just thought…”

  “You didn’t think,” he said. “If you had thought, you would’ve known that we are going through money way too fast!”

  Tears began running down her cheeks as she squeezed her eyes shut. She couldn’t believe Mike had actually hit her, but it was true. All of her conversations with Abby came flooding back into her memories, and she knew exactly what her friend would say to her at that moment if she was there.

  Cassie felt Mike’s hand on her arm and flinched, but he took hold of it again. This time, he was gentle.

  “Cassie, I’m so sorry,” he said. “I don’t know what came over me, I’ve never done anything like that before, and I never will again. I’ve just been under so much stress lately, and everything’s been crazy since the shooting. Baby, please forgive me. I swear, I will never, ever hit you again.”

  She turned her face to look at him, and saw that he had tears of his own. He reached out and put a hand under her shoulder, lifting her up to a sitting position.

  “Baby, I am so sorry,” he said again. “Please, please forgive me.”

  Cassie nodded, and flinched when it made her head hurt even worse. “It’s okay,” she said. “It’s okay, Mike, I know you didn’t mean to. Just—just never again, okay?”

  “I swear, baby, I swear I never will.” He gathered her into his arms and helped her to her feet, then set her down on the sofa and held her tight.

  For the next couple of d
ays, Mike was as gentle as she could ever remember him being. He helped her with dinner that night, and they spent the evening sitting on the sofa, cuddling as they watched television. That night, they made love for the first time in almost three weeks.

  The next day, he called her twice while he was at work to make sure she was all right, and when he got home that day he didn’t even reach for a beer. He sat in the kitchen and talked with her while she made dinner, and they had another nice evening of cuddling together and watching television. Cassie was starting to feel like things might be getting back to normal at last.

  For the most part, they did. Mike would still become stressed out and irritable from time to time, but he wasn’t quite as grumpy with her when she had to call him at work, and while he went back to grabbing a beer and relaxing in front of the TV most evenings, things were usually pretty calm.

  But not always. One night, Cassie managed to burn the frozen lasagna, and Mike had gotten angry about it. She tried to appease him by getting out some pot pies, but he had slapped them out of her hands.

  “You don’t get it,” he said. “How hard is it to simply heat up a frozen lasagna, Cassie?”

  “Well, I’m sorry,” she yelled back in his face, and then she was on the floor again.

  This time, he dropped to his knees beside her instantly and started telling her how sorry he was. He’d had a rough day, things were more stressful than usual on the job, and he had struck without thinking. He was so contrite that she let go of her own anger and forgave him, and he was super nice for the next few days.

  A couple of weeks later, it happened again. This time, she told him that she wasn’t going to put up with him hitting her anymore, and he swore it would never happen again. He seemed so ashamed of what he had done that she accepted his word and let it go.

  And then, the Ripper came to town.