Jack Ryder Mystery Series: Vol 4-6

by Willow Rose

  "But you finally got away?" I asked.

  She nodded. "I left without a word. One day when he came home from work, I simply wasn't there. I had packed my things during the day instead of going to work and, when he called to check in on me, I pretended I was still at work. Usually, he would stop by the shop to check in on me during the day, so I had picked a day when he was in meetings all day, so I knew he couldn't do that. It was all very carefully planned. Yet, once he found the note and realized I had left, he began his search. It didn't take him long to track me down, by calling around and threatening people that he was going to kill himself. I had only told one friend where I went, and she cracked when he told her he would hang himself. Soon, the guy was at my doorstep at the condo I had rented, screaming and yelling at me to open the door. When I finally caved because I didn't want the neighbors to be bothered, he was bleeding out of his mouth and was all pathetic, crying, telling me he had an ulcer and that it had erupted. I got so scared when I saw all the blood that I immediately let him inside and tried to help him. He told me he was going to die and if I didn't come back, he would kill himself. He would drive the car into the harbor with himself in it. I spoke later to a friend who is a doctor, and she told me you only bleed like that if you bite your own tongue. He bit himself so hard, just to get me back. I was scared he would harm himself."

  "And, of course, you couldn't live with that guilt, so you went back?" I asked, knowing this type of story a little too well.

  She nodded. "And once I did, everything was oh so wonderful in the beginning, but soon it turned worse. I couldn't do anything without him being terrified I was going to leave him again. I wasn't even allowed to talk on the phone with my friends or my mother. If I did, he would assume I was about to plan another escape. As soon as he felt safe that I was back to stay, he began yelling at me night after night for what I had done and the pain I had caused him. Everything was my fault. In the end, I just couldn't stand his abuse anymore, and I began to fear him. His mental stability was spiraling downward fast, and I began fearing for my life. I thought maybe he would kill me while I was asleep or maybe burn the house down with the both of us in it. Stuff like that. He even said some things as a joke from time to time. Things like, at least if we died now, we'd go together. Or that he believed Romeo and Juliet was a great story, especially how they died together. I would fear for my life when driving with him because he could say stuff for fun like, 'What if I just kept going till we hit that wall over there?' or he would run a red light, grinning and yelling at me, 'What are you scared of?' Stuff like that scared me senseless. And I started to plan my second escape. This time, I didn't tell a soul. I just left. I didn't even pack much since I had to do it fast and get as far away as possible. I had never told him about you and so when I saw your post on Facebook about this new town you had moved to a few years ago, and you wrote that your parents lived here as well, running the old motel, I realized that's where I should go. Your family has always been so good to me, when I had troubles at home with my dad. I could always come to your house. Your mom would take care of me and give me a bed for the night if I needed or just lend me an ear if I needed to talk. It's something you never forget, when someone shows you love like that. I have never forgotten you or your family. Sometimes, I even wonder how my life would have turned out if we hadn't broken up. If we had..."

  Diane lifted her eyes in the darkness and looked at me. They sparkled in the light of her flashlight. I swallowed hard, remembering how madly in love with her I had been back then. She was the one who had broken up with me because she needed to be a free spirit when taking on the world, she had said back then. She had been so full of life, so ready to conquer the world. But I guess the world had chewed her up and spit her back out like it had with most of us. Life hadn't really turned out to be what we thought it would. I had a pretty decent one; I had it better than her, but still. Things had been tough. Still were.

  I swallowed as our eyes locked. Emotions so deep and so well-buried were threatening to resurface and make themselves relevant again.

  But I couldn't let them.

  Diane leaned over, and I wondered what it would be like to kiss her again. For one unforgivable moment, I looked at those red lips and wanted to taste them again.

  Yet, I didn't. Instead, I pulled away with a deep sigh and so did she.

  "I'm sorry," she said.

  "No…no…I’m just…I need to get back to the kids."

  She nodded. "Of course. Don't worry about me. I'll be fine."

  I started to walk backward out of the yard, my heart pounding in my chest.

  "I'll check in on you in the morning, okay? Call me if anything happens. I'll send a patrol if you get scared, okay?"

  She nodded. "O-okay."

  I turned around and walked faster out of the yard and closed the gate in the fence behind me. With a deep sigh, I closed my eyes and cursed myself for letting it get this far.

  As I opened them again and started to walk back toward the Jeep, I spotted an older man standing on the porch at the neighbor's house. It wasn't so much the fact that he was standing there that made me wonder; it was the way his eyes followed my every move like he was sizing me up.

  I shook the thought and hurried to my car, then drove off, reminding myself to call Shannon and say goodnight before I went to bed.

  Part III

  Chapter 46

  Cocoa Beach 2011

  The boy ran home from school. As soon as the bus had let him off, he stormed down the street toward his house. He rushed past the neighbors’ houses and didn't even have time to say hello to Mrs. Johnson's dog like he usually did. The boy ran to the door, slammed it open, and rushed inside. He looked first in the kitchen, then the living room, and finally the garage.

  But his dad wasn't there.

  Maybe he'll come back before you go to bed?

  Every day since his father had left, slamming the door, the boy had been praying and hoping that he would come back, that he would be there once he came back from school. But, so far, he hadn't. And it had been more than two weeks now. His father had never stayed away this long. He always came back. He always did.

  When finding only his mother and baby sister inside the house, the boy hurried into the yard to be with his chickens. He opened the enclosure and walked in, then closed it behind him. He sat on the ground, then began to cry, hiding his face in his arms.

  Victoria came to him and picked at his shoe.

  "Why isn't he coming back?" he asked.

  Naturally, the chicken's only answer was a cluck. It made the boy chuckle. Few things in this world could cheer the boy up like the chickens could. After his dad had left, they were all he had.

  The boy turned his head and stared at the house. He could see his mother through the window. He narrowed his eyes and felt such rage stir up inside of him.

  "She's the reason he's not coming back, isn't she?" he asked the chickens, who still just clucked and staggered around, finding food.

  The boy stared at his mother while the anger rose inside of him, when his sister came out on the porch and yelled at him, telling him he had to come inside.

  The boy rose to his feet, told his chickens he was going to come back soon, then rushed toward the back porch and ran inside. He walked into the kitchen where his mother stood. She was waiting for him.

  He bowed his head when he saw the anger in her eyes. She had been even meaner to him than usual since his dad had left. It was like when she didn't have his dad to yell at, then she yelled at the boy instead. And it seemed like she was just looking for things to yell at him about. It could be anything and everything. There really wasn't any indication as to what would set her off.

  "What's that?" she asked now.

  She pointed at his shoes.

  "Is that bird poop? Were you in with those disgusting birds again?"

  "I'll wipe it off," he said. "Don't worry."

  "Oh, you don't get to tell me when to worry, do you hear me?" she
asked.

  He avoided her eyes and stared at the floor. "O-of course not."

  The boy had awoken the rage of the beast; he knew it very well, and he also knew there wasn't anything he could do at this point. Once she reached this level, there was no turning back.

  His mother reached out, grabbed his head, and slammed it against the wall next to them.

  "And who do you think is going to clean up this mess, huh? Who is going to clean up after your mess, huh?" she said as she banged his head against the wall, again and again, yelling at him.

  "You're just as useless as your dad was."

  BAM, she slammed it again.

  "All men are. Useless."

  BAM.

  "Useless."

  BAM

  "And then they just take off and leave."

  BAM.

  "You're just like him, do you know that? All men are the same. ALL of them."

  BAM. BAM.

  "I wish I never had you. I wish I never had a disgusting boy like you who will grow up to be a disgusting man like your father!"

  BAM. BAM. BAM.

  On and on she continued until the boy heard a ringing in his ears and tasted blood in his mouth. When she saw the blood, she finally let him go, and he sank to the floor where she let him stay till he was able to get up on his own.

  Chapter 47

  August 2018

  "I just don't understand why I can't find him."

  I exhaled and leaned back in my chair. Several days had passed, and my investigation had completely stalled. The media was all over the story of the Monday Morning Killer's return, and Weasel had her work cut out for her, trying to keep people calm and keeping the panic at bay.

  Meanwhile, I had tried to get ahold of Steve Carver, the kid who had survived the Monday Morning Killer's first kill. Mike was sitting on the other side of my desk, behind my many piles of old newspaper articles and files from the archive. I had studied everything that had ever been written about the Monday Morning Killer and his victims and still I was no closer to who he really was.

  Mike sipped his coffee then put the cup down in a rare empty spot on my desk.

  "What can I tell you?" he said. "People aren't always that easy to find. Maybe he wanted to disappear."

  I grabbed the old file with the boy's testimony from back in seventy-four. He was seventeen at the time of the killings. I had read it over and over again, every little detail of how he came home from school, holding the envelope to his chest, the envelope containing the letter about his scholarship that he was looking forward to handing to his parents because they would be so proud of him. He had seen the dog in the neighbor's yard and went to grab it; then when he came inside, he realized something was wrong when he spotted the half made peanut butter sandwich on the counter. The rest of the testimony was so terrifying I didn't like to even think about it. Finding your parents like that and then your siblings was one thing, but then to realize that the killer was still in the house and run for your life. Even being grabbed and beaten by him before getting away and then hiding underneath a dock till sunset in the murky water with the threat of alligators. It was inhumane. No one knew what that would do to a young kid. I wanted desperately to talk to him about what he remembered from back then. He had to be in his late fifties by now, but a thing like this wasn't easy to forget even if you wanted to. There had to be at least something that he could tell me to help me find this guy. Something they hadn't thought about asking him back then. If it was, in fact, the same guy we were looking for and not someone copying him. It tortured me that they had never found him back then. All they knew was that his mother's car was stolen from the garage and left in a ditch in the mainland. But the kid had to have looked into the eyes of the madman. He had to have seen him. There had to be something he could tell me to help me.

  "What do you mean?" I asked.

  "Well, he did become sort of a celebrity around here," Mike continued. "All the newspapers and TV Stations ran interviews with the kid who lived. He might have moved away to get away from the press. It's not very likely that he stayed around here with all those memories. He probably needed a brand-new start somewhere else."

  I sighed, knowing Mike was probably right. I had put out a request nationally with our colleagues, in case his name rang a bell somewhere, but those things took forever, and I wasn't sure of any response since it wasn't an urgent matter.

  I looked at the picture of the young boy from the police file. His terrified eyes stared back at me.

  "There is one thing that bothers me," I said.

  Mike sipped his coffee with a smirk. "Only one, huh?"

  "Well multiple, but this is one of them. The first time he killed, he let someone live. The same happened recently in the case of the Reynolds family. But not in any of the other cases. No one has ever survived him since."

  "Maybe it's a way of marking the fact that he is starting out? To let us know that the killings have begun and that it is him? How else would we know that he wears the same mask? Stuff like that gets those types going; you know that."

  I nodded. "True. But there's another thing. The mother," I said and pulled out the Reynolds file.

  "What about her?" he asked.

  "She was decapitated in the Reynolds case. Not in the Carver case, not in the Carpenter case, or in any of the rest of them. Eight cases in total are what we have on him from the seventies and eighties. Eight families killed and destroyed. And now, two in two-thousand and eighteen. He takes some darn long breaks in between."

  "Because he's clever," Mike said. "He knows to cool down when the ground is burning."

  "But why change your MO if you're trying to get our attention?" I asked. "Why suddenly cut the head off the mother? All the others he killed with plastic bags."

  "Except the Carver dad," Mike said. "He was strangled with a belt."

  I nodded. "Right. Argh, it makes no sense."

  Mike looked at his nails, then back at me. "Do you think that your little friend moving into the house triggered him to resurface?" he asked.

  "That's one of my fears, yes," I said.

  "What's another?" Mike asked.

  "That he'll kill again before we stop him. Right now, I have nothing. The killer could be anyone for all I care. I don't even know his age in case it's a copycat we’re looking for."

  "It's not," Mike said and leaned forward.

  "What? How can you be so sure?" I asked.

  "The flowers," he said.

  "What flowers?"

  "Someone sent Steve's mother daisies about a week before he killed her. Same thing happened to the next family he destroyed a few years later. Same thing happened to Mrs. Reynolds, and I’m pretty sure I saw a bouquet of daisies on the counter in Mrs. Carpenter's kitchen. This was never in any papers, and no one ever took any notice of it, except for me I guess. When the Monday Morning Killer reached his family number three, I was in the force and among the first responders. I remember telling my boss back then about it, but no one ever followed that lead or even contacted the florist that they came from, so I did, but it didn't lead anywhere. The flowers were paid for in cash, and no one remembered what the buyer looked like, except that he was tall. Later on, this was forgotten. But, the fact was, no newspapers ever mentioned it, and there is no way any copycat killer could know this part."

  I leaned back in my chair, a sense of dread beginning to grow deep in my stomach.

  "Daisies, huh?"

  Mike nodded. "Daisies."

  Chapter 48

  August 2018

  Shannon felt like dancing. She was done with her concert for today and staggered into her dressing room, still feeling so incredibly energized, even though she had just blown them out of the park for several hours.

  "Whoo-hoo, way to go, Shannon!" Bruce exclaimed as he entered right behind her. "You were on fire tonight, girl. I am tellin' ya' they love you out there. Everyone does, especially the critics. You're getting rave reviews for this one as well."

  Sha
nnon sighed contentedly and put the guitar down. She moved her wrist back and forth with relief.

  "Does it hurt?" Sarah asked as she came into the dressing room as well and saw Shannon looking at her hand. Shannon lifted her head and looked at her assistant.

  "Not even one bit. Can you believe it?"

  Sarah bit her lip. Her eyes had that concerned look to them again, and it annoyed Shannon.

  "That's amazing, Shan," Bruce said indifferently. He was already on his phone, walking away while talking to someone else.

  "Don't you want to sit down?" Sarah said. "Have a little break? You've been going at it non-stop for days now. Interview after interview, followed by concerts. You hardly eat and barely sleep. You must be exhausted."

  "I’m fine, really," Shannon said and sat at the makeup table and started to remove the thick layer of concealer. This was her least favorite part of the night, taking off all the heavy make-up. She hated seeing that pale old face that was revealed behind it.

  "Are you sure…?" Sarah asked. She glanced at the glass of pills on the counter, and Shannon saw her do it but ignored her.

  "So, you have two days off now," she said. "Maybe you'll be able to get some rest?"

  Shannon gasped happily. "That's right. I have two days off now. I completely forgot about that."

  "I think it'll do us all some good," Sarah said and sat down with a tired sigh. "I, for one, want to do some shopping tomorrow. Maybe treat myself to a day of spa treatments. How about you?"