by Willow Rose
I nodded. "I owe you one. Thanks, Mike."
"No problem."
Chapter 67
August 2018
"There's a patrol coming," Diane said and walked back to Dennis, who was sitting in a chair on the porch, staring at his shoes.
The front door was still wide open and, as she glanced inside, she could see Frank's shoes. She took in a deep breath to calm herself down. She had never seen a dead person before, and the thought of him lying in there gave her goosebumps. She turned to look at Dennis instead, wondering why Jack wouldn't come and help her. She had really screwed up with him, hadn't she? As soon as all this was over, she was getting out of here.
"Are you okay?" she asked Dennis.
He rubbed the sides of his head, then nodded. Diane exhaled. "My hands are still shaking," she said. "And my legs are kind of too."
Dennis made a strange sound and, at first, Diane believed he was crying. He sat with his head bent down toward his legs and his hands rubbing his temples, making what sounded like a sobbing sound, but soon changed into something else.
Is he laughing?
"Dennis?"
Dennis lifted his head and looked at her, grinning from ear to ear when he burst into full-blown laughter.
Why is he laughing? What's so funny and why is he looking at me weirdly like that?
"D-Dennis? You're kind of scaring me here. What's so funny?"
He shook his head. "Nothing. And everything, I guess."
Has he gone mad?
He grabbed the gun in his hand and looked at it.
"Maybe you should put that back down," she said. "It's evidence now."
He looked up at her, and their eyes met. There was a madness in them she hadn't seen in him before.
"I'm gonna be charged with murder, aren't I?" he said. "I'm gonna have to do time."
"No, no. It was self-defense. Plus, you're a security guard. You saved my life, remember?"
He got up to his feet and reached out for her. She didn't move fast enough, and Dennis grabbed her arm, tight.
"You owe me big time now; you do realize that, right?"
He was pressing himself uncomfortably toward her, but she couldn't get away. She could feel the gun between them. She could feel his breath on her face as he spoke.
"You know I could have had you. I should just have kissed you that other night when I cut your power line. I wanted you to come running to me. I wanted you to come knocking on my door for help. That was why I did it, but instead, you came running into the yard and took me off guard."
Diane stared at him, her heart pounding in her chest. "Y-you cut the power line?"
Dennis grinned goofily. "Heh. I thought you'd figured that one out when you met me." He used a hand to caress her cheek while pushing the gun toward her stomach. "I should have just kissed you right there. Lord knows I wanted to. But I was a chicken. I kept thinking this isn't the way it was supposed to happen. It has to be done right. I wanted it to be perfect."
Diane felt sweat spring on her upper lip. "W-what are you telling me, Dennis?"
"That I have wanted you since the day I first laid eyes on you. I knew I had to have you. A woman like you shouldn't be all alone in that awful old house. But then you kept hanging out with that detective, and he ended up sitting with you in the kitchen, comforting you on that night. It should have been me."
"You’ve been watching me? D-did you open all my cabinets and lock in my cat as well?" Diane asked. "And lie on my bed?"
"You liked that one, did you? The one with the cabinets? I thought that was very clever myself. The moving of your car was too. I wanted you to be scared, Diane, because I wanted you to come running to me for help. But you never did. I told you. Anything. I'll be happy to help, but you didn't want my help, did you? You kept running to that Jack Ryder fellow. Boy, that made me so MAD."
Diane whimpered as Dennis pressed himself against her. She closed her eyes and tried to turn her head away, but he grabbed her chin and forced her to turn her head toward him, then planted his lips on top of hers. He pushed his tongue into her mouth, and Diane felt like throwing up. He held her so tightly that she couldn't move, stuffing his tongue down her throat, when she heard a loud thud from behind him, and Dennis suddenly went numb. His tongue slid out of her mouth, and his hand let go of her chin as his eyes rolled back into his head and he fell onto the wooden porch with a loud plump sound.
Diane gasped and blinked. In front of her stood Mr. Fogerty, still wearing his dogcatcher uniform. His cheeks were blushing in agitation, his hair standing up sporadically.
Between his hands, he held a baseball bat. He looked at Dennis on the porch, then up at Diane while correcting his hair.
"Should've done that a mighty long time ago," he said and spat on the wood next to the unconscious Dennis. "You all right there, hon?"
Diane nodded with a whimper. "I…I think so."
"Good."
With a nod, he turned around and walked down the three steps to the grass, the bat swung over his shoulder, and returned to his house, where Diane heard the door slam shut.
She looked after him for quite some time, then down at Dennis, who soon started to moan. Diane gasped. Mr. Fogerty hadn't hit him half as hard as they had both thought and he was already waking up.
Diane turned to look toward Mr. Fogerty's house, wondering if he would be able to help her once again if she screamed, then decided she wasn't going to stick around to get the answer.
Diane bent down and grabbed the gun between two fingers, then ran inside, found her purse, put the gun inside the purse, then grabbed her cat under the other arm, and rushed to her car.
She watched as Dennis squirmed and moved on the porch, then sat up. Her heart pounded in her chest as she frantically put the key in the ignition and turned it.
The car coughed a few times, then stopped.
"Oh, no. Sweet, sweet car, please don't fail me now. Please don't."
But the car was dead. It wasn't even coughing anymore as she tried to start it and soon Dennis was on his feet, stumbling around until he gathered himself and spotted her inside the car. With an angry movement, he lunged toward her.
Chapter 68
August 2018
I couldn't stop thinking about Diane and praying that she was okay. Facing her ex-husband in that manner had to be terrifying. I felt so guilty for not being there for her, but I simply couldn't. I had to stay away from her if I was going to save my marriage, and I wanted that more than anything in the world. I had played a weighty part of Shannon's demise. My taking in Diane and letting her have dinners at our house with my family must have been terrible for Shannon, especially since she was away. I knew Shannon had taken the pills herself; she was the one who had decided to put them in her body but knowing I was at home with my high school sweetheart played a huge part of her decision to do so. I knew it did. I had to take my part of the responsibility. I had triggered it and, from now on, I had to stay far away from Diane in order for it not to happen again. I had to be professional and, as it was, it would never have been me who was the first responder to a scene like that. It would always be a patrol. Then they would call me in later. That was the usual procedure, and I was sticking to it. It was tough, and it felt like I was hiding behind it, but this was what I had to do right now.
"I heard you caught the Reynolds’ killer," a voice said coming from behind me. "Congratulations."
I looked up and saw Weasel.
"Joe filled me in," she said.
"I was going to tell you about it," I said, “but your secretary said you were in a meeting."
"So, it was the son, huh?" she asked. "Who'd have thought that?"
I nodded. "But that also means that the Monday Morning Killer is still out there," I said. "Somewhere."
Weasel smiled. "Don't look at what you haven't done yet. Celebrate your victories, Ryder. And this is one. No one could have cracked this case the way you did. I’m proud of you."
Those were big words
coming from Weasel. I knew that much.
"And the mom knew, huh? She knew who he was? Why didn't she come to us?"
I shrugged. "Probably scared out of her wits. Finding out that you’ve married a serial killer and had his children can't be easy. She was probably terrified that he would come back and kill them all. Parker told us she was terrified of him, that she was afraid he was going to turn into the monster his dad was. That's why she couldn't stand him or having him around. That's why she told him to sleep in the shed."
"And in treating him that way, she actually did turn him into exactly that," Weasel said.
I nodded. "That's the irony of it all, I guess."
I glared out the window for a short second, then back at the piles on my desk. "I just can't help feeling that he's right…here. I can almost reach out and grab him, you know?"
"And I have a feeling you will," she said.
"All that time, I thought that what triggered him to resurface was the fact that someone, that Diane had moved into that old house. I thought that seeing someone living there again had made him lose it and start killing again. But that wasn't it. It was the fact that his son killed like him, that his son copied his first kill by killing his own mother. If you read the notebook, that was exactly what Steve Carver had fantasized about, that was why he killed. Because he hated his mother so deeply. And so, when his son killed his own mother, Steve had to give in to his urges and kill as well. So, he attacked the Carpenter family. That was why those two killings were different."
"And, in a way, that was what the son wanted too, right? For his dad to resurface. To bond with him in a sick sort of way."
I nodded. "Parker copied it down to the smallest detail, and he could do that because he had the book. He even knew about the daisies…even though…no one else had…"
I paused and looked out the window again as an idea shaped in my mind. I shook my head. No, it was nothing.
That was when the phone rang. Weasel took it as a signal to leave me and gave me a smile and a keep up the good work, then disappeared down the hallway while I picked up my phone.
"Ryder."
"Hello, this is Judy Marsh from the courthouse. You called earlier in the week and asked about a name change. From back in seventy-four?"
It took me a second to remember what she was talking about, but then I did. "Oh, yes, the name change. Hello, Mrs. Marsh, thank you for calling me back."
"Well, it wasn't easy to find; that's why it took some time. Not just because it was a long time ago, and I had to go through all the archives for that year, but mostly because it was the wrong year. Steve Carver didn't change his name till nineteen-seventy-six. So, I was looking in all the wrong files."
I leaned forward. "But you found it? You know his new name?"
"I sure do," she said.
My heart pounded loudly in my chest while I listened, and Mrs. Marsh told me what she had found out. As I hung up and stared at the name I had jotted down on the notepad in front of me, I kept shaking my head.
"I'll be damned," I mumbled while fixating my eyes on it, letting the realization sink in, making sure I was seeing things right. It suddenly all made a lot of sense.
Chapter 69
August 2018
She was turning the key over and over again, but the car wouldn't start. Her hands were getting clammy as Dennis plunged toward her car and now stood in front of it, grinning widely as the car once again coughed, then gave up.
"Come on, please," she whimpered.
Dennis slammed his hand onto her car, then laughed and approached her.
"Oh, dear God," she mumbled, trying to start the car again, but it still refused to obey.
Outside the window, she watched him come closer, then looked at her purse in the passenger seat next to her. She had never held a gun between her hands before.
Dennis was now by her door. Diane managed to lock it before he grabbed the handle and pulled it. In frustration, he slammed his hands against the window.
"Come out here, you bitch. I need to talk to you."
Diane looked at the purse again, her heart pounding in her chest. Could she shoot him if she had to? Would she be able to?
As he pulled the handle again, she reached over with a loud whimper and tried to grab the gun when she spotted a police car in her rearview mirror. Her eyes grew wide, and she forgot all about the gun as the car drove up behind her and stopped.
"Help," she screamed. "Help me, please."
Seeing the car, Dennis stopped pulling the handle of the car and stood up straight. The officer stepped out. Diane watched it all in the rearview mirror and could see the officer come closer.
"Thank you, God," she mumbled. "Thank you."
Diane stayed in the car and watched from the side view mirror how the officer approached Dennis and stopped outside of the back door of the car. Dennis approached him.
"Thank you for coming, Officer; she locked herself inside the car…Wait a minute," she heard Dennis say.
Diane looked in the side view mirror and saw the officer pull out his gun, then fire it. With a gasp, she watched Dennis's body fall to the asphalt.
Did he just shoot Dennis? Oh, dear God, he did. He shot Dennis!
Diane hardly breathed. Panic rushed through her body. She moved and tried to get a better look at what was going on outside her car when the officer approached her window. He bent down and looked directly in at her.
The face was covered with a doll's mask, the mask picturing a woman with rosy red lips, light pink skin, and black painted eyebrows. The mask had deep holes where the eyes peeked out. Big steel-grey eyes.
Like those of a wolf.
Chapter 70
August 2018
I was calling her frantically while racing up A1A toward the north side of town. But Diane wasn't picking up.
"Come on, Diane. Pick up, pick up, pick up, please."
When she didn't, I threw the phone on the passenger seat next to me with a groan. I slammed my hand onto the steering wheel, scolding myself.
"Why didn't you go yourself? She called you. She needed your help. And you sent a lion to tend the sheep. How could you have been so stupid?"
I should have known it when he had started to talk about the daisies. I should have figured it out back then. Why hadn't I? Because it was too darn crazy to believe. But it made sense. It made a lot of sense. He was the only one who knew about the flowers. No one else did. It wasn't in any of the reports. I couldn't understand why it wasn't in any of the files, but now I understood. He was bragging, letting me know how superior he was.
The bastard.
I should have recognized him when looking at the old pictures of Steve Carver. I should have recognized the eyes, even the height that was so unusual, but I didn't because I could never have imagined it being him. It was too crazy to fathom. The guy had been fooling us for ages. Forty years on the force. Forty years he had been keeping a close eye on all of us, knowing as much as we did, knowing every move the police made. That was how he had stayed out of the spotlight. That was how he stayed under the radar.
Because he was one of us.
Dang it, Mike. I loved you, man. You were the nicest guy around. Why did it have to be you? Why?
I raced into Suwannee Lane, ignoring every red light and stop sign on the way, my sirens blaring from the car. I wanted him to know I was coming for him. I wanted him to understand that I knew. I had figured him out. He was never going to fool me again. Never.
As I raced up the street, I spotted Diane's car parked outside of her house. Behind it was one of our patrol cars. And there was Mike. He was wearing a mask, but I would recognize him anywhere. He was standing over a dead body on the ground, bent down by Diane's window, slamming his baton into the glass.
Chapter 71
August 2018
The glass splintered and flew everywhere. Diane managed to close her eyes but felt the splinters tear at her skin on her face and her arm. She screamed and threw herself to the
side, trying to get to the gun. The officer reached inside and grabbed her arm with his gloved hand. Then she screamed. Diane screamed with all she had while the officer unlocked the car with the other hand and opened the door, then pulled her out onto the asphalt, her skin getting cut by the broken glass.
"Stop," she screamed. "Stop it."
She was thrown onto the ground before he pulled off his belt and wrapped it around her neck, tightening it so much that she had to gasp to breathe. Diane could hear the sound of another car stopping, and then someone yelling, but she had no idea what was going on. She felt the belt tighten around her throat and soon she couldn't breathe at all.
"Stop it," a voice said. "Please, Mike."
In her dizziness, she recognized it.
Jack?
"Don't get any closer," Mike said. "Or I'll kill her. I'll tighten the belt just enough. You won't be able to make it over here in time. Trust me. I have a lot of experience with these things. I know exactly how much pressure I need to add to close the deal. I have years of practice."
Diane managed to open her eyes while gasping for air, just enough to see Jack standing a few steps away, holding a gun pointed toward Mike, who was now taking off the mask.
She felt like her head was about to explode. Mike's massive body was holding her down.
"I prefer plastic bags, you know?" Mike said looking at her. "But this way is slower. This is just like when I killed my father. My first kill. Something so perfect about it, isn't there?"
"Stop it, Mike. You don't have to do this," Jack said.
"See, that's where you're wrong," Mike said. "So terribly wrong. I do have to do this. I do have to kill. For so many years, I was able to keep my desire at bay; I was able to live almost like a normal guy, only killing now and then when I could get away with it in the line of duty. But I knew it was bound to happen again. I was certain it would have happened when I was married to Amber. I was so sure I was going to kill her because she deserved it more than anyone. But it was too risky. It would have attracted way too much attention to me. So, I couldn't. But I dreamt of doing it; oh, how I dreamt of it, so many times. Instead, I walked away. I only spent a few years with her before I could tell it wasn't going to end well. And then, years later, my son did it. I cried when I saw it. It was so beautiful. The son completed what his father never managed to do. Made the old man proud. After that, I couldn't hold back. But I was rusty and needed a practice kill, so I spotted Mrs. Carpenter and just went for it. But my real fantasy was this one. Returning to where it all began. To close the circle. I stalked her for weeks and entered her house when she wasn't there or when she slept at night. I laid in her bed. I sent her the flowers while dreaming about how I was going to do it."