by Meg Muldoon
“Step back, officer! Step back, or things are going to get very ugly here very quickly!”
There was a muffled scream.
A woman’s scream.
Chapter 53
“Explain it to me. Explain why you’ve done this.”
Sam’s words came out strong and unwavering, betraying nothing of the dangerous situation he was facing.
“I don’t see any advantage to that,” the other voice said. “What’s the point? Can you tell me that? I mean, what is the damn point?”
I stood with my back against the hallway wall, creeping slowly closer toward the entrance of a large classroom.
“Because if I’m going to die here this afternoon, then I want to die knowing why,” Sam said.
I bit my lower lip, my heart going into full-on freak-out mode.
There was a low, steady laugh.
“What makes you think I’d do such a stupid thing as kill you? You’re a cop.”
“Maybe. But I see that killer look in your eyes,” Sam said. “I’ve seen it before. And I know what it means. There’s no way the two of us are walking out of here today.”
I crept closer toward the doorjamb.
There was a whimper. A high-pitched one that sounded like misery and pain.
“And besides,” Sam continued. “You want to talk. I know you do. You don’t sit on a school board for all those years and not love the sound of your own voice.”
My heart nearly stopped in my chest.
I couldn’t believe it.
The other man let out a humorless laugh.
“All right,” he said. “If you want it that way, then I’ll entertain you in your final moments.”
The man paused. Then started up again.
“You know, I’ve always thought of myself as a reasonable man. In fact, more than reasonable. A good man. I did what I could for my community. I helped people. I was a model citizen. But even good men have their breaking point when faced with something so… insulting.”
I gathered up my courage and craned my neck around the edge of the doorjamb.
I nearly let out a cry, but I clamped my front teeth down hard on my lower lip before any noise escaped.
It was an old preschool classroom. A woman was tied to a plastic school chair with rope, her face lowered, her body slumped. Sam stood near her, his long-sleeve white t-shirt soaked through with either rain or sweat.
His weapon was on the ground at his feet.
The man speaking had his back to me. He held his arm straight out in front of him, pointing it toward Sam.
Gripping something black and shiny between his fingers.
A gun.
“I love my wife,” the man said. “I know that doesn’t make much sense, considering what I did. But that’s one misunderstanding I won’t… I won’t abide. I loved her. And I did what I did because I loved her.”
The last words came out shaky and brimming with unstable emotion.
“Okay,” Sam said, holding his hands up. “I believe that. But explain to me how love had anything to do with your actions that day.”
There was a long silence.
“She was leaving me. For good this time,” he finally said. “And she… she wasn’t going to come back. And I just couldn’t have that. I couldn’t have her embarrass me and drag my name through the dirt of this town. Not after everything I did for that woman.”
“You’re saying it was an accident?” Sam said.
There was compassion and gentleness in his tone. It was an old cop trick – Sam was sympathizing with the man to gain his confidence.
“I heard her packing her bags and knew I had to act,” the man said. “I couldn’t let her leave the house. It was for her own good to keep her there. She wasn’t thinking straight. I blocked the doorway when she tried to leave. I was holding onto my vows, you understand? The ones I made thirty years ago. The ones that she apparently had discarded like yesterday’s trash.
“When I wouldn’t move, she attacked me. She started clawing at me with her nails. I defended myself. What could I do? I didn’t know she was going to fall and hit her head on the side table like that. It was a pure accident, you see?”
The shiny black metal object in his outstretched hand shook as a tremor took hold of him.
My breath caught in my throat.
“Nothing could be done at that point,” he said. “And I knew if the police showed up and saw her packed bags and the scratches on my face, then I’d have no chance.”
I was seeing it and I was hearing it.
But I still couldn’t believe what all my senses were telling me.
I couldn’t believe that this man, of all people, had done something so heinous.
“Your wife having an accident is one thing,” Sam said, his voice as steady as ever. “But why involve an elementary school teacher in any of this? What could she have possibly done to deserve this?”
The woman tied to the chair let out a muffled cry and then lifted her head.
My heart stopped beating.
Her face was dirtied. And she had a look of anguish in her expression that I knew would stay with me for a long, long time.
But Mindy Monahan was alive.
“Quiet, you!” the man shouted at the woman. “I’m telling the story!”
His voice inflected up into a girlish wail when he yelled at her. But she did as he said, lowering her head, and all was quiet again.
“I did a good job of cleaning up,” the man continued. “And I put Diane in the freezer in the basement. She bought that freezer ages ago for our Thanksgiving family get-togethers.”
A series of brutal chills reverberated down my back at the image.
“But the freezer wouldn’t do,” the man continued. “Thanksgiving’s coming up, after all. Someone was bound to find the body there. So earlier this month, I decided to move her to the backyard. I know – it’s a bit of a cliché. But we have this Jacuzzi tub back there. Nobody would think to look under it. And as long as I kept to the teaching in China story, no one would be the wiser. My wife didn’t keep too many close friends, you see. She wasn’t much of a people person.
“It was going to be easy. Nobody would have ever known what really happened to her, if they ever even thought about her at all.”
He let out a long-winded sigh.
“I was home free.”
I willed my legs to move and took a quiet step forward into the room.
Sam saw the movement and met my eyes for no more than a millisecond.
He quickly averted them, not wanting the man to know I was there.
“You thought you had it all figured out,” Sam said eagerly, turning his attention back to the man. “But then you saw Mindy’s photos in that email she sent to the school board members ahead of the meeting. And you realized the game had changed. In fact, it had been turned on its head completely.”
The man didn’t say anything for a long moment.
I gazed at Sam, trying to figure out what he wanted me to do.
But he couldn’t give me any hint about it. He couldn’t look at me without risking blowing my cover.
I didn’t know what to do. The only thing I knew was that if I made the wrong choice, then it was certain that neither Sam, Mindy, or myself was going to get out of this place alive.
The cold piece of gleaming metal in the man’s hands was going to make damn sure of it.
I had nothing on me. No weapon. Nothing to defend anybody, let alone myself, with. Just a purse, which held several notepads, a few pens, a half-empty tube of chap stick, a wallet, loose business cards and…
My mind zeroed in on it suddenly, the image coming in crystal clear.
And I suddenly knew exactly what to do.
“Mrs. Monahan emailed 10 pictures to the board members last week, saying it was about dog code violations,” the man continued. “But I knew her real purpose in sending those photos. I knew she was trying to blackmail me. The pictures were a tease – something to let me k
now that she knew what I had done.
“My house is in the background of every one of those photos. I know she was taking pictures of the field the night I buried the body. And I know that somewhere, she’s got photos of me burying Diane beneath the Jacuzzi. She saw me that night. And somewhere, she has the evidence that could put me away forever.
“Only she’s a stubborn harpy who won’t tell me where that damn evidence is. I’ve checked her house, her car, her classroom… everywhere.”
He didn’t know that Mindy had been staying at her grandfather’s house, I realized.
He turned his head and spit in Mindy’s direction.
“The teacher thought she’d run into a nice fat payday,” the man said. “But she was wrong. Dead, dead wrong…”
Mindy cried out from behind the ragged duct tape mouth covering.
It was time to do something.
I quietly reached into my bag, feeling around until I gripped the smooth metal ring and the plastic cylinder attached to it.
“So you kidnapped Mindy with a gun you stole from Taylor High?” Sam said, breaking up the man’s long monologue.
He let out one of those bone-chilling humorless chuckles.
“Did that fool tell you that?” the man asked.
“Taylor told us that he invited you over to his house this past week. He wanted your advice about how to handle the situation with Mindy catching him not picking up after his dog,” Sam said. “He said you excused yourself and went to the bathroom for a long time. But he didn’t realize the gun was missing until we checked and didn’t find it in his home office.”
“Taylor was a born patsy,” the man said. “But well done, officer. Yes, I took the gun. Then I waited for Mrs. Monahan to drive from Tabor Elementary to the school district building for the board meeting. I, uh, convinced her to stop for me. Then I made her drive us here. That junk box she calls a car is in the shed out back behind the building. I did it all, and got to the school board meeting in time. Impressive, don’t you think?”
“Sure,” Sam said. “But you messed up. You didn’t anticipate on Mindy having Bogey when you pulled her over, did you?”
“Who?”
“The bulldog.”
There were some more desperate, muffled cries from Mindy.
I took in a deep breath.
Courage, I thought. Courage.
Sam’s eyes remained on the man, but I could tell that he saw me slowly moving into the classroom.
“That dumb bulldog was a fighter,” the man continued. “Clamped down on my leg. I had to shoot the little bastard to get him off of me.”
Streams of tears were running down Mindy’s face.
She suddenly caught sight of me and her eyes nearly bulged out of their sockets. I held a finger up to my lips, hoping she wouldn’t blow the only chance we had.
“So you kidnapped Mindy here, and you’ve been trying to get her to tell you where the photos are this whole time. Right? The ones of you burying a body in the backyard?” Sam asked.
The man let out a long-winded sigh.
“We’ve already covered that, officer,” the man said. “Which means that we’re going in circles here. Which means you’re stalling.
“Which means that story time is over.”
I was now only steps away from the man. So close, the aroma of his cologne burned my nostrils.
“You see, Mrs. Monahan there had a chance to come out of here alive,” he continued. “But like most teachers, she’d rather become a martyr than actually save herself or anybody else. So she’s only really left me with one option, you see.”
Mindy started crying from behind the duct tape again.
“What option is that?” Sam asked.
He already knew the answer.
We all already knew the answer.
“I’ve got to kill her,” the man said, his voice as steady as a steel table. “I’ve got to kill her and take my chances. And that means something else, officer.
“I’ve got to kill you, too.”
The words echoed like a shotgun blast through the decrepit classroom.
I had to take action.
It was our only chance.
My heart pounded in my chest like a jackhammer drilling a well to hell.
“I’m sorry about this, officer,” the man said, raising the gun. “But she’s given me no choice.”
Sam nodded understandingly. He flashed his eyes at me.
It was now or never.
I said a silent prayer, then switched off the safety.
And before he even knew what hit him, I pepper sprayed the hell out of the murderous monster named Hal Parker.
Chapter 54
I coughed and sputtered and coughed some more and squinted through the haze of pepper spray and gun smoke.
My ears were ringing.
I saw him running toward me. His lips moved, but I couldn’t hear any words coming out.
He looked scared.
And Sam wasn’t the type who scared easily.
“Freddie? Freddie?!”
I heard him this time.
I suddenly felt queasy and weak in the knees. I started saying something, but a moment later, I felt my legs give out.
He caught me just before I hit the ground.
“Are you hurt?” he said, clutching onto me. “Did he hurt you? Please be okay. Freddie. Please be okay.”
I swallowed hard and gazed up into his hazelnut brown eyes.
“I’m okay.”
He hugged me tight. After a moment, he guided me to the far corner of the classroom, far away from Hal Parker’s unconscious body. He called dispatch on his phone.
Then Sam went over and untied Mindy Monahan.
Chapter 55
I sat on a weathered picnic table in the Dog Mountain Dog Park, watching Mugs run circles in the dying grass of the much-used off-leash area.
The pup had an expression of pure, unabashed joy on his face as he ran like a maniac through the park. Seeing him so happy gave me a warm, cozy feeling inside.
After a moment of watching the pooch, I tilted my head back, letting the slanted rays of an afternoon autumn sun warm my face. I took in a deep breath of crisp, untainted forest air, feeling nothing but gratitude for the moment.
The world could be an ugly place sometimes.
But this afternoon, sitting on a picnic table in the warm fall sunshine, that ugliness seemed like it might not exist at all.
But when I closed my eyes, I knew better.
Because lately when I closed my eyes, all I could see was Hal Parker’s body on the cold classroom floor, bloodied and unconscious. And when I saw the scene play out in my mind’s eye, a bitterness would settle at the back of my throat, reminding me of just how close Sam and I had come to being that way instead.
When I’d maced Hal Parker that Sunday afternoon at the Burnside building, he’d been taken completely by surprise. In that surprise, his finger had slipped on the trigger of the gun in his hand, and a few wild shots had ricocheted around the abandoned classroom. Luckily, the shots hadn’t hit flesh. But the shock of it, combined with the pungent pepper spray, had distracted Hal enough – giving Sam time to pick up his service weapon off the floor and shoot.
The bullets had hit Hal in the leg and in the chest, rendering him unconscious and immobile.
But not dead.
Hal Parker survived. But the bullets had done their damage, and from what I heard, the school board member might not ever fully recover.
Aside from his physical wounds, Hal Parker was in for a time of it. The list of charges against him was longer than a volume of law textbooks. Kidnapping, attempted murder, and animal abuse were only the tip of the iceberg. Because after Mindy Monahan was saved from the Burnside building and Hal Parker was taken into custody, police had found the body of a woman hidden beneath the Jacuzzi in the backyard of his home. Just like Hal had told us.
Murder could now be added to the list of deplorable charges.
I lean
ed back on the picnic table, watching as a familiar car pulled up into the lot of the mostly-empty dog park.
Mindy Monahan was shaken up pretty badly after everything that had happened, as anyone in their right mind would have been. She’d been kidnapped, bound, and interrogated for days. All over a non-existent photo and a non-existent blackmail scheme. Poor Mindy had just been fighting her dog code crusade in the wrong place at the wrong time. She didn’t even know that Hal Parker lived near the school, much less that he’d killed his wife and buried her body in the backyard.
Physically, though, Mindy had for the most part come out of the terrible ordeal uninjured. And when Sam told her that Humphrey Bogart the bulldog was alive and recovering from his own injury, the poor woman had burst into tears of joy.
Mindy had been through hell. But she’d beaten the odds. She’d come back from the dead, the way so few missing people ever did.
I watched as the door of the car opened, and somebody stepped out.
It was a strange thing. We had found Mindy. And what’s more, we had found her alive. We’d also solved another case – one that we didn’t even know about: the disappearance and murder of Diane Parker.
They were all things to feel good about.
But somehow, it didn’t feel as good as I thought it would.
“Hey,” he said, walking up to me, a heaviness in his step.
That heaviness had been with him since he shot Hal that afternoon.
In movies and television, they always made it seem like it wasn’t any big deal to shoot somebody. That it was easy to aim and pull the trigger.
But I knew that for somebody who had a heart, and a heart as big as Sam Sakai’s, shooting someone wasn’t a small thing that you could easily forget about. Even if whoever you shot deserved it.
He took a seat next to me on the picnic table. He wasn’t wearing a uniform. Just a black jacket and a pair of jeans. He hadn’t been back to work since the shooting, waiting for the standard investigation to be completed before he returned.
He looked pale. Like he wasn’t getting enough sleep.
Like something was haunting him.