Victim 14

by KJ Kalis

Walking into the kitchen, Emily set her duffel bag off to the side, picked up her laptop and the charging cable and stuffed it into a matching backpack, along with her cell phone charger, a notebook and a couple of pens. From the kitchen drawer, she pulled out her Sig Sauer pistol, checked to make sure it was loaded and set it next to her backpack along with two extra already-filled magazines and a couple of boxes of ammunition. There was more ammo in the truck, but it was hard to be too careful. Trouble could come at any time. She wanted to be prepared.

  A rattle at the back door sent Miner scurrying, his hackles up and his ears pricked. All of the people in and out of the house over the last couple of days, even though it was just the addition of Flynn, had put her dog on edge. Emily called to him, “Easy, boy.” For a moment, Emily thought about telling Mike she wasn’t going to go. She could stay in Chicago, go to her boxing classes with Clarence, and get back to living her life. As Flynn walked in the back door, Emily sighed, a wave of fear almost stopping her. She hoped this wasn’t the trip she didn’t come home from.

  “You’re here early,” Mike said.

  “Well, I wanted to see Emily off and say hello to my new friend Miner.” Flynn knelt, but Miner turned away, only offering a short growl.

  “I think he knows his mom is headed out for a trip. He doesn’t like those black bags, that’s for sure,” Mike said, shrugging. He bent over, catching the dog as he walked by, “But, we’ll have fun together, won’t we? Us and Uncle Flynn.”

  “Uncle Flynn?” Emily said, sticking her wallet and cell phone in her backpack.

  Mike shrugged, “It seemed like a good idea when I said it, I guess.”

  Although Emily could have stood around and joked with the guys for another half hour or so, she knew there was a long drive ahead of her, due south, to Louisiana. The truck was gassed and ready. Emily took one last pass through both of her bags, making sure she had everything she might need. Her rifle, more ammunition, and an extensive first-aid kit were in the truck already.

  Zipping the bags closed, Emily looked at the two young men standing in her kitchen. “Anything else I should know before I head out?”

  Flynn rustled through a plastic bag he’d brought with him and then handed it to Emily. “I stopped and got you some protein bars for the trip. In case you can’t find a place to eat, you know.”

  Emily smiled. Mike’s new friend was sweet, in an awkward kind of way. “Thank you,” she said, taking the bag from him. Emily stuffed it inside of her backpack. “I’m sure these will come in handy at some point.” Emily reached around her back, pulling her long black ponytail around the side of her shoulder. It was a habit, nothing more, one that signaled she was thinking. “Mike, any tech gear I need to take with me?”

  Mike shook his head no and handed her a small black bag, “Just take this. It’s a bag of goodies. Just in case, you know. Might give us more options if we need them. You should have no problems while you’re down there. Flynn and I will stay here, monitoring you and the situation, as well as news out of Louisiana. If anything changes, I’ll let you know.”

  With that, Emily knew it was time to go. Not one for extensive goodbyes, she squatted down and gave Miner a good scratch behind his ears, running her fingers over the white spot on the top of his forehead — the one mark all cattle dogs had in common, the Bentley. She felt his warmth under her fingers and whispered in his ear, “I’ll be back soon. Take care of Mike and Uncle Flynn, okay?” The dog wagged as she stood up. Emily grabbed her bag and her backpack and walked out the door, giving the guys a little wave. Turning back for just a second, Emily said, “Mike, take good care of Miner. I look forward to seeing both of you here when I get home.”

  The color drained from Mike’s face, the realization that Emily was calling him out on making sure that her home and her dog were exactly where she left them when she got back, unlike their last case. Sure, she thought to herself, I trust him, but he’s also human.

  Shutting the door behind her, Emily walked out to the truck. For the drive, she decided to wear jeans and tennis shoes, with a tank top and a flannel shirt over top. Although it was summer, once she got the air conditioning going in the truck, she always felt cold. Emily opened the back door and threw her bag in, settling her backpack on the front seat next to her. She pulled the passenger side seat belt over and clipped it, securing her backpack. It would prevent the bag from falling over while she was driving and also save her the annoyance of the seatbelt warning bell from pinging the entire way between Chicago and Tifton.

  The first few hours of the drive went by quickly, Emily enjoying watching the city melt away behind her, plunging the truck headfirst into the heartland. She passed miles and miles of corn, soybeans and wheat, pastures filled with cows and sheep and horses. Emily lost count of the number of dilapidated, abandoned barns near the interstate. A calm passed over her as she started to drive. The calm before the storm, maybe, she wondered.

  The temperature on her truck’s thermostat steadily climbed the further south she drove. About seven hours into her drive, Emily stopped for the second time, taking a few minutes to stretch her legs and get something to eat at a local fast-food place along the highway. When she traveled, she didn’t like to drift too far off her route. She wasn’t on a sightseeing trip, so taking the time to stop to go shopping or find a gourmet eatery wasn’t on her agenda. Maybe if I was still married to Luca, she thought. Then again, if she was still married to Luca, she probably wouldn’t be going to Tifton, but rather home with him and maybe a family. Getting back in the truck, her phone rang. It was Mike.

  “How’s the drive going?”

  Emily started the truck, putting it into gear. As she pulled out of the parking lot and merged back onto the highway, she said, “Good. My GPS says I’m five hours out. How are things at home?”

  “Fine. Miner and I went for a walk and we stopped at Carl’s on the way back. Miner is laying down. I think he may have eaten too much sausage.”

  Emily shook her head. Sammy’s Butcher Shop was one of her favorite places to go. Carl, the owner, loved Miner so Emily usually went in the back door and hung out in his office instead of going in the front door. Dogs and the health department didn’t always get along. Carl would show up a couple of minutes later, his hand filled with dried sausage. Miner loved it and loved the attention from the big man as well. “Well, at least I don’t have to clean up the puke,” Emily said, wondering how much sausage Miner had eaten. It seemed strange to her to be talking about the normal things of life. She was driving headlong into a city that very well could be looking at the abduction and killing of yet another person in the next few days. Silence settled between her and Mike for a minute.

  “Emily, you okay? Did I lose you?”

  She sighed, “No. I’m here. Just thinking. Any updates from Tifton?” It made her feel better to focus on the case at hand. Her life at home was behind her, at least for the moment. There would be time for her to do the things she loved to do, but right now she was on a case. Focus, she thought. Staying focused might be the only way for her to return home alive.

  “No, nothing significant. Flynn found an article from the local paper that noted we are five months and twenty-four days past the last killing. There’s also been a little chatter on the forums about the timing.”

  Knowing that the Tifton torso killer was coming up on another deadline made Emily’s stomach churn. Would he strike again? Would Emily be able to concentrate on the cold cases? “Is there any speculation on whether he’ll take someone again?” she asked. Although she knew neither Mike nor Flynn could answer the question for her, hearing some other voices after so many hours on the road helped to pass the time.

  “No idea,” Mike said. “Flynn’s been monitoring the forums. There’s nothing that’s changed in the last few months to suggest there either would be another killing or not.”

  “Any community deaths in the last six months? Have you guys looked at that?” Emily shifted in her seat, her back getting tight from s
itting for so long.

  “What do you mean?”

  “Well, if I were profiling the person who’s chopping people up, I’d say he’s male, somewhere between the age of thirty and sixty, probably a longtime resident of the area, with a mediocre job and not much education. Could be somebody well-known in the community, or maybe not. If the guy died, there might not be another abduction. Did you check the obituaries?”

  “I haven’t, but that’s a good idea. Let me look into that and get back to you. Oh, by the way, there’s not a hotel in Tifton. Just a bed-and-breakfast. I made you a reservation.”

  As they hung up, Emily tried to imagine what a bed-and-breakfast in Tifton, Louisiana might look like. Quaint, with decor that probably looked a lot like the things her grandmother used to have in her house on the other side of Chicago — maybe lace curtains with some dusty figurines sitting on display shelves. Emily frowned, shifting in her seat. Though she appreciated the reservation, it might be that she spent the trip sleeping in her truck. At least it was clean.

  With five hours of driving still ahead of her, her mind wandered. It seemed like every few miles, the memory of Lou Gonzales, her partner in the cold case division, snapping the handcuffs around her wrists popped up. Now that some time had passed, and she’d made contact with him, she knew it’d been hard on him as well. Her last case was based in Chicago, which was something she normally didn’t do. Out of town was better, but because her last case was in her area, she needed some help. What she got from Lou restored their relationship to at least speaking, which was better than it was before. Emily stretched her neck left and right, trying to get the kinks out of it. Maybe solving these cold cases wasn’t the best idea, she thought. A knot formed in her stomach. She knew she could turn the truck around at the next off-ramp and head right back to Chicago. She could go back to taking Miner on his walks and stopping at Sammy’s Butcher Shop and get in the ring for her boxing lessons with Clarence. Watching another field of corn go by — one of about a million she’d passed in the last seven hours — she considered it, the muscles of her hands nearly pulling the truck onto an exit. It would be easy. Flynn could send a message to Bradley and no one would be the wiser. After all, this was a problem for Louisiana law enforcement to solve, not her.

  The thought settled across crossed her uncomfortably, as though it was too tight a fit. Sure, she loved her life at home, but did she want to spend the rest of her days just collecting the five thousand dollars in cash out of her mailbox? Emily felt herself wrestling, the pull to go home just as strong as the pull to do something with her life. Doing something with her life had cost her, and dearly. Trying to get away from the thought, Emily fussed with the radio, looking for a new station. It seemed like every couple hundred miles, the radio would fade out and she’d have to find new music. Even though she was fussing with the radio, trying to distract herself, the question lingered in her thoughts: Was the risk of solving these cases actually worth it?

  * * *

  About an hour out of Tifton, Mike called again. Emily hadn’t stopped, except to get gas, for the last few hours. The truck had been on a steady downward slope toward the ocean and the flatlands that marked the bayous of Louisiana. “I see you are about an hour out,” he said, a bounce to his voice.

  “Yep,” she paused. “You sound happy,” Emily said with more than a hint of sarcasm. All the driving was exhausting, even though the only thing she was doing was sitting behind the wheel.

  “Well, you know me. Always chipper and happy!” Mike said, matching her sarcasm.

  “I’m assuming you’re calling with news?” Emily grunted. No matter how cheerful Mike felt, Emily’s mood declined. She was an hour outside of Tifton and still felt a strong urge to wheel the truck around in a U-turn and head right back to Chicago. What was the problem? Why was she so unsure about this case? She blinked, trying to focus on Mike.

  “I researched the local obituaries like you suggested.”

  “And?”

  “Nothing doing. I checked through all the notices over the last six months, figuring there was no point in searching earlier than that. We know the last body was dropped almost exactly six months ago, a man named Gerald Wexner. Since that time, there haven’t been any significant deaths in the Tifton area.”

  “Did you check surrounding areas?”

  “I thought you might ask me that, so I did. Nothing there either. I’m guessing, though, that the person you’re looking for is probably in Tifton. I mean, everyone he’s killed is a resident of the Township. Maybe this is some weird vendetta against the town? Is that possible?”

  “Anything is possible,” Emily said. “There’s never just one reason people get killed, that’s for sure. Tell me about this Gerald Wexner.”

  There was a pause for a second, as though Mike was looking for something. A moment later, he came back on the line, “I think Flynn will be able to give you more information later. We figured we could conference call tonight after you get settled at the bed-and-breakfast.”

  Emily grunted again, the idea of staying in a dusty bed-and-breakfast with a lumpy bed not sounding any better than sleeping in the back seat of her truck. “Okay, but do you know anything about Gerald Wexner you can tell me now?”

  “Sure. Guy was in his late thirties. Single. Worked in construction but was out of town a lot according to the article I read about him. He’d leave to go take care of hurricane damage in the area. According to the articles I read, he’d come home from working a job in Texas about two weeks before his disappearance. Was at a bar late at night — that was the last time he was seen — and then disappeared. His torso was found a couple of days later in the Little Bayou Pond, just like the others.”

  The whole story made Emily’s skin crawl. It wasn’t so much the history of the people that disappeared, but the way they were found -- chunks of flesh discarded in the water. “Any other information on why this guy cuts his victims up?”

  “I think Flynn will give you more background when we talk in a couple of hours. He had to go take care of a few things for work, but he should be back here about the time you get settled. Sound okay?”

  Emily nodded to no one in particular. It wasn’t as if Mike could see her. “Yeah, that sounds okay. I’m almost there. I’ll text you once I get checked in.”

  Mike chuckled on the other end of the line, “Well, you can, but I can see exactly where you are. I’m trying out some new toys on this case.”

  Emily shook her head and sighed. Mike and his tech toys. “Sounds good. Stay in touch.”

  As Emily hung up with Mike, the truck seemed to plateau after spending a few hours descending toward the Gulf Coast. Like many of the southern states, the northern portion of Louisiana was much different in geography than the southern portion. The southern edge of the state is what made it famous, from the jazz bars in New Orleans to the massive hurricanes — including Hurricane Katrina — which could create billions of dollars in damage in just a day or so, forcing the antiquated levee system to try to deal with the rush of waters up out of the Gulf.

  Emily had only been in Louisiana one other time. It was with Luca. They’d traveled there together so he could attend an architectural conference. While he was in his seminars, Emily walked the streets of New Orleans, stopping for a beignet and a coffee and watching the people stroll by.

  Tifton was an entirely different kind of city, Emily noticed as she passed the signs for the Township. There was low hanging scrub near the edge of the road, the woods crowded and heavy with the moisture from the tropical winds encouraging the trees to grow dense and twisted together. The road narrowed in front of her, a small area carved out where a tiny house sat. Dense woods quickly took over the area again as she drove, leading to another small carved out area for another tiny house.

  The GPS on Emily’s truck beeped, warning her that she was only a mile out from the bed-and-breakfast. She frowned. Although she’d programmed her GPS for the center of Tifton, somehow Mike had been able to log i
n and change her destination. On the right, Emily saw a small school and the Tifton General Store. She almost laughed. What kind of city still had a general store?

  As Emily glanced left and right, trying to get her bearings on the little city that had popped up virtually out of nowhere, she realized the most startling feature of the Township was the amount of foliage. She had honestly never seen such dense woods in her life. Maybe it was the Gulf Coast heat and humidity, she wondered, making the turn into a narrow driveway just off the road into the bed-and-breakfast. Emily looked at the building as she pulled past it, finding a parking spot in the back.

  The Tifton Center B & B was a sprawling, white clapboard house with black louvered shutters, a wide porch across the entire front, dotted with the shadows of chairs Emily could see in the dusk. The sun had begun to set, leaving Tifton in an orange glow.

  As Emily got out of her truck, she stretched, grateful to be done sitting, at least for now. The heavy, thick Louisiana air covered her before she barely had time to take a breath. It was hot. Hotter and more humid than she’d expected.

  Droplets of sweat forming on her brow, Emily started walking around the front of the building, taking in her surroundings, brushing off a bug that landed on her arm. The back of the house was just as neat as the front, the roughhewn foundation painted a bright white, pots of flowers and vines placed carefully around the perimeter of the house. Emily glanced up, noticing it was three stories with what looked to be an attic at the top. “I hope I’m not in the attic,” she mumbled. “With my luck, that’s where my room will be.”

  Emily left her bags in the car, still not sure she wanted to stay at the bed-and-breakfast. She worried they would hover over her. That was the last thing she wanted while she was on a case. Anonymity was her friend. Walking around the side of the house, Emily approached the front, climbing five wooden steps onto the porch. There was a screen door off to the right. She pulled it open, giving the interior door, one with a long oval etched glass window in it, a push open.