4
Detective Fisher stood incredulous in the Sunset Harbor detention center, hands on hips, staring down the length of aisle. He listened to the sobbing and thumping that echoed from the cells around him. Cells filled with people who’d all just participated in a mass murder in his sleepy little town. People to which he swore none—or most of them, anyway—would’ve ever have hurt a fly.
Yet they were all locked up in cells, banging their heads against his walls, sobbing and professing their innocence—their disbelief. Praying for forgiveness.
What the hell had happened?
After talking with several, he still had even less of a picture than he’d hoped. Housewives and husbands. Sons and daughters. All of them overloaded his jails. He had suspects scattered across two counties.
Detective Fisher shook his head and left for his office.
Fisher’s office was a ten-by-ten meager enclosure consisting of a desk, chair, and about half-a-dozen stacked bookcases, and what had once been wall space, but was now plastered with hundreds of crime-scene notes, photos, a whiteboard and a couple plaques, and various assorted bulletins. His desk was surrounded by and under books, files, and paperwork. Sunset Harbor wasn’t exactly brimming with funds—nor crime—but there was enough to keep him employed. Most transgressions involved petty thievery of some kind. Stolen cars, bikes, or stereos—a domestic disturbance here and there—so the current task definitely stirred things up a bit. Fisher sat in his chair and stared at his whiteboard, where he’d written leads to an earlier, already solved, pawn store break-in.
So, what’d he have? He had an attacked retirement center. A murdered gate guard and residents. All the residents, key point, here. None of those who’d been visiting—who hadn’t actually lived there—had been touched—even as they slept in the master bedrooms of some of those homes. It was as if the killers knew exactly who was who, and where. Only one resident couple had survived. Many homes had been unoccupied and some were still being built, and were, therefore, left untouched by the murderers. Additionally, all the murder scenes appeared to have been crimes of passion, and when their deeds were done, the perps all wandered about aimlessly, as if they had no idea what they’d just done, until confronted... the evidence on their clothes, their hands... their souls. They hadn’t even fled. It appeared to have the trappings of a cult murder—yet not quite. Or it was just their way of trying to throw him and the rest of the police force off. Were they done? Were there more of them? What had been their motive? There was just something downright creepy about it all.
Fisher went to his whiteboard, wiped off a large section of it, and wrote down what he had. Then he sat down and stared at what he’d written.
Stared at it some more.
Then picked up the phone and dialed Dr. Kimberly Preston, clinical and forensic psychologist for the Sunset Harbor police department.
Chapter Six
1
Jack and Hedda Hocker headed for the Exit 189 on-ramp, destination: Tampa. Loaded in the back of their “Marine Green,” as Jack referred to the truck’s color, Ford were all of their important bits and pieces from their Safe Harbor existence, including, in the extra-cab, their pet cat, “KA-BAR,” curled up in his cat-carrier. They just weren’t going to stay there any longer. There was no longer anything remotely “safe” about Safe Harbor after last night, Hedda decided, and she wanted out. They were headed to see their son in Tampa, after just having left some friends in East Venice, and were headed out as fast as the speed limit-plus-five would allow. Jack was at the wheel, Hedda in the passenger seat, a folded newspaper in her lap. She held her face, eyes closed, toward the warm, late-morning sun, radiating in through her window and onto her face. Jack looked to her lovingly, reliving the moment they first met over sixty years ago, in that MASH unit in Korea. He’d had a shoulder wound and she’d been his nurse. He couldn’t believe they’d been together all this time, through a handful of wars and “conflicts.” He’d spent most of his life defending a way of life for people he’d never meet, but had found a woman he loved more than life itself. Through thick and thin they’d remained together, and, he could honestly say, their love was greater today than it had been sixty-one years ago—which had been love at first sight. She hadn’t admitted it until after they’d married, not wanting to appear “easy,” but never had there been any doubt. They married a year after they’d met. She’d put up with a lot from him and his tours of duty, but it was their deep and unwavering love and devotion that’d kept them together. And now, as he looked to her, the morning sun warming her calm face, he still felt that love like an unbreakable chain binding them together.
Hedda opened her eyes.
“Well, let’s see what the paper says about last night,” she said, looking to him. “Hey—what’s wrong?”
Hedda reached over and wiped away a tear from the corner of Jack’s eye.
“Nuthin.”
“‘Nuthin’ my ass.” She narrowed her gaze. “Spill it, Marine.”
Jack didn’t immediately pony up, and Hedda playfully shook her head, returning to the paper.
“I almost lost you back there,” he finally said, jaw set.
Hedda looked up from the paper and smiled. Again reached out to him.
“We’ll always be together, honey. In life or death, I firmly believe this—and I ain’t afraid of going, you know that—”
“—me neither. I just don’t want to go on living if you ever left me, is all. But, I’d hate it if I went first. Couldn’t bear the thought of you—”
“Oh, stop it,” she said, swatting him. “I promise to go first, how’s that?”
Jack chuckled, though he felt oddly nervous. “Let’s just look to the road ahead, and get the hell outta Dodge!”
“Agreed!”
Hedda continued to unfold and snap the paper into position. “Oh, boy,” she said, reading the headline, “here it is. And, it’s by that lady reporter!”
“What’s it say?”
Hedda scanned the article, reading the important parts.
“‘Sometime after one this morning, an inexplicable band of killers entered the Safe Harbor Retirement Community and systematically slaughtered all its residents—except for one fortunate couple. Jack and Hedda Hocker...”
Hedda looked up to Jack, smiling nervously.
“... he a retired Marine Master Gunnery Sergeant of thirty-three years and gun shop owner of nearly three decades, and she an ex-Army nurse, housewife, and retired realtor took on the attackers single handedly. Reported retired MGYSgt Hocker, 79, ‘I was awoken by a presence in our bedroom and sprang into action. It was good to see I still had what it takes.’ Together the Hockers managed to prevent their murder by going on the offensive, which is all the more remarkable, given their ages....”
Again, Hedda looked to Jack, smirking. “We’re getting old, Jack.”
“Eh, what are you gonna do?”
Hedda continued.
“Retired MGYSgt Hocker, KA-BAR knife and .45 in hand, took the fight out into the early-morning streets of Safe Harbor, once dispatching their own threat. Hedda Hocker, also 79, immediately called police and took up position with her husband’s Browning hunting rifle. Together the couple managed to survive until police arrived, but sadly, many had not been so lucky....”
Hedda stopped reading, scanning the rest of the piece.
“How sad,” she said. “It just goes on to say that there’s something like forty suspects scattered between two county jails... and some seventy victims.”
Hedda lay the paper down on her lap, and stared out the window.
“I don’t know, Jack... I don’t get a good feeling about this... it’s like, I don’t know... like there’s still something... something bad... still out there. Unfinished.” She paused. “I just get a feeling it’s not over. Yet.”
“Hey—what’s this?” Jack said, leaning forward and peering off to the side of the Interstate.
Up ahead, on their side of the Interstate
as they approached the Exit 191 overpass, a man stumbled his way over the guardrail of a grassy embankment. He then teetered unsteadily on the shoulder alongside.
“I don’t know about this, Jack. After yesterday?”
Jack was already slowing down, hitting the hazards.
“Just be wary, hon, okay? Dial 911 into the cell,” he said, handing Hedda the cell phone, “ready to send.”
Hedda took the phone and dialed in the number without sending. Then she eyed her husband as he slowed down the Ford and brought it onto the shoulder.
Jack and Hedda looked to each other. Hedda reached over and gave Jack’s hand another squeeze before exiting. Not knowing it, both thought to the other I love you.
Vehicle still running and leaving both truck doors open, Jack and Hedda exited the truck and cautiously approached the man, who had now stumbled back to the overpass guardrail and leaned against it. He held a hand to his head, as if cradling a wound. Traffic screamed past behind the three at dizzying rates.
“Be careful, babe,” Jack again warned his wife, in a low, cautious tone above the din of traffic. “Sir!” he then called out to the man, “Are you all right? Sir?”
The man muttered unintelligibly, as he continued to lean against the guardrail. He broke off into bursts of further incoherent babble, which neither Jack nor Hedda could make out. Hedda advanced a little quicker toward the man, concerned about the head wound. Jack eyed the surrounding terrain and embankment from where the man had come.
“Be careful, hon,” Jack again urged, as he came to the embankment near the man—keeping an eye on both his wife and the stranger. Jack peered over the side, then diverted back toward the man who continued to babble and rant.
“Sir! Are you all right?” Hedda asked, her finger still poised on the cell phone’s “Send” button. She then cast a wary glance back to her husband. An eighteen wheeler blew past, tugging at the air around Hedda. She cast a nervous look behind her.
As Jack and Hedda came within arm’s length of the guy, they stopped. What at first appeared to be ratty attire and destitution now took on a more sinister, unnerving appearance. Both noticed that what they initially mistook for rags and hardship was a man covered in dried blood and dirt. The perception of ratty street clothes gave way to a tattered and abused high-end suit and heavily scuffed leather shoes. Jack and Hedda shot each other looks.
The man mumbled something about “chin gas.”
“I don’t like the feel of this...,” Jack said, “not at all... this is all wrong, all...”
It was like the old days in the bush. That sick-to-your-stomach-we’re-surrounded feeling. All the tiny hairs on Jack’s neck shot to attention as he cried out to Hedda and attempted to sprint toward her. But his age and body betrayed him, and he was a lifetime too short.
As Hedda reached out to the man, who was now just beginning to look up at them, she also had a sudden flash of intuition. Damaged looking as he was, Hedda also saw him in another, quite different way. A way she couldn’t put her finger on, like the finger that still rested on her cell phone’s “Send” button, but which tugged at portions of a memory that didn’t seem possible. She noticed the man was well-manicured, yet extremely scraped and cut up, gashes all over his exposed skin, especially his face. One eye was somewhat puffy and swollen, actually closed up on itself. She also saw, as he lifted his head to look directly into her eyes, that it looked as if he were missing teeth. But it was in this instant when this damaged, mumbling man looked up and into Hedda’s eyes that something snapped, and a look of dreaded recognition crossed his face. Hedda also recognized what was about to happen, but a bit slower than her husband had, which was already far too late. Hedda hit “Send” as the man lurched up and bolted for her, still screaming his unknown tongue.
The man, his face a mixture of all manner of rage and hatred, bolted directly for Hedda.
He slammed into her, and with an angry drawn-out grunt lifted her up off the pavement and into the air like a sack of potatoes. He continued yelling as he charged with her, braked to an abrupt halt—then launched Hedda out into the blast of Interstate traffic. As Jack watched in utter sickened, horror-struck helplessness, arms outstretched toward his wife, a passing semi caught Hedda square in its front grill. The last thing Hedda saw was the stunned and incredulous look on her husband’s face, as he stood powerless and watched her connect with the front end of a Freightliner, whisked away in a barrage of noisy air brakes, screeching tires, and skipping thuds.
The sickening introduction of his wife against 90-mph metal hit Jack just as hard, and all time slowed. He watched as the cell phone Hedda had held was knocked from her hands like a spent tooth during a boxing match, smashing on the shoulder of the Interstate at his feet. Jack’s knees wobbled and his breath grew thick and short, as if some incredible weight had just been dropped square on his chest. All of Jack’s experience in the jungles and deserts of the world meant shit. He, sluggishly (it felt), turned to the attacker and saw that the man was now making his crazed advance toward him, and for a moment—just the quickest of moments—Jack didn’t see the attacker he expected to see, but saw a very different man, a very different... face. A face that was now dirtied and angry and weary, but determined. Dirt covering it in patches, and the eyes... so much hatred. Jack never knew a person could contain so much hatred in one look. He couldn’t make out everything about this new... point of view... but knew the man he was looking at was quite different than the one they’d stopped to help—yet the very same man.
But all this was brought back into cohesive perspective by the force of the man’s attack, as he slammed into him, bowling him over.
Time shifted back into present-tense mode, and Jack found himself under a raging attack by Mister Tattered Hugo Boss Suit, who screamed unintelligible garble and raked and pummeled his body with his bare, damaged, hands. Cars and trucks continued to slam into each other from the collision of his wife with the Freightliner and its subsequent jack-knifing behind him. Jack felt stones and other debris strike his body as he fell to the shoulder. He thought about how Hedda’d probably slid from the truck’s grill as it decelerated, fell to the concrete, and how the thump-thump-thumping of the jack-knifing semi was probably the truck’s eighteen wheels plowing over her dead body as it continued to charge forward, before finally skidding to its gory conclusion. His eyes also caught sight of their still-running truck, and he thought about KA-BAR, curled up in his cat-carrier.
Seconds.
Seconds can change a life forever.
It was at this point that all of Jack’s fighting instincts finally kicked in. Hugo Boss had gone crazy and was not only beating the shit out of him, but was also alternately scraping up dirt and gravel and flinging it into his face. Spitting on him, even vomited once. Never in all his years had Jack ever experienced such an attack. This was like no hand-to-hand he’d ever been trained for, or been a part of.
Finally able to get a hold on his enemy, Jack flung the man, who seemed to be two men, off him, and against the guardrail. Reeling from his age, a possible broken bone or two, and the nausea of just having seen his wife splattered all over Florida Interstate, and that all his efforts from last night, not to mention his adult-life for that matter, had been for naught, Jack shakily got to his knees. As much as he was mentally ready for action, as much adrenaline was coursing through his body, and as much experience as he had had in hand-to-hand combat, Jack’s body was no longer as willing a participant as it used to be. His mind raced with ingrained responses, but his body continually denied him the speed and power in which to wield it. He was just barely getting a foot underneath himself, when he was again bowled over onto the concrete, his face and shoulder mixing with Interstate debris. As he hit and slid along the road’s shoulder, his eyes locked onto a familiar sight he’d seen plenty of in his lifetime, a sight that all but took the fight out of him.
A thick discharge of blood.
He’d seen plenty of blood across the world, but what took a
ll the fight out of him was that it had come from his wife, from her precise moment of impact with the Freightliner’s grill.
Jack lay on the debris-laden shoulder staring at the dark pool, and in a moment that seemed an eternity, asked himself the worth of it all. All his years of covert and not-so-covert defense. All his experience at saving his country from external aggressors, from training others to do the same... from an at-once finely honed and tuned body that saw every human as a potential target—to look where he was now. Look where his wife was now, strewn who knew how far down the road, amid a pile of still screaming Interstate carnage.
Where had all his training gone when he needed it most?
He’d served his country and served well, kept it free from aggressors, but couldn’t do shit for the one person he loved most... the one person he was, consciously and unconsciously, fighting for his entire life. If he couldn’t save her, what did it matter if he survived?
Marine.
That term echoed hollowly in his head.
Semper fi.
What good was any of that to him—or Hedda—now? Jack felt the once-polished shoes of Mr. Hugo Boss Suit repeatedly slam into him—his stomach, groin, and back—and felt no need to respond.
What the hell did anything matter?
He’d done his time and he’d still lost his wife. The love of his life, his reason for living and fighting.
It just didn’t fucking matter.
And Mr. Hugo Boss Suit was more than happy to oblige, as his once-polished shoes came crashing down upon Mr. Semper Fi’s head. Again and again and...
* * *
Mr. Hugo Boss Suit unsteadily backed away from his handiwork, wildly panting and foaming at the mouth and leaning forward and bracing himself on his knees. The current spate of vehicles slamming into each other seemed to bring him out of his rage.
He looked up.
Shocked by what he saw, he slipped and collapsed to the ground.
“Oh, nooooo... no-no-NO!” Mr. Hugo Boss Suit whined, “Not again! What have I done!”
The Uninvited Page 8