November's Past (Larry Macklin Mysteries Book 1)

by A. E. Howe

  “Tim, listen to me, please.” All I got was a stare. He was looking at all of us slowly. Not good. I felt like a lobster in a tank at a seafood restaurant.

  “I’m your mother,” Margret started, but before she could say more he got right in her face and roared.

  “I hate you! You’ve ruined my whole life. Every thing I ever thought was true turned out to be a lie. Now I’ve done horrible things because of the lies you told me. I wish I could kill you a million times. Over and over and over again.” He was miming hitting her with a blunt object. An appeal to motherly love wasn’t going to get us very far.

  I tried again. “Let’s just talk this through. You and me. In fact, why don’t you put duct tape over your mother’s mouth?” This at least got him to look at me and smile a bit around the corners of his mouth.

  “I should apologize for leaving you to listen to her bitchy voice. I don’t have anything against you.” That was a ray of light. Though I didn’t think I’d get officer of the year if I talked him into freeing me and left his mom and sister to be killed.

  “I understand how this all happened. Believe me, I’ve seen people get out of worse scrapes.” That was a complete lie. No way was he going to “get out” of this mess. But I didn’t know what else to say. I just hoped he was in shock and not seeing the obvious cluster he’d gotten himself into. After three murders and three kidnappings, I was perfectly willing to call it a win if he killed himself and we all lived.

  “Call the sheriff’s office. Call my dad. You know him. He’ll be honest with you. You know that. No one in the county is a straighter shooter than Dad.” That was all true, and I was also confident that Dad would lie, cheat or steal to get hostages out safely.

  “I’m not calling anyone. I’m going to finish this here and now,” he said in icy tones. Not good. We were approaching “nothing to lose” on the take-a-chance meter.

  “Your real dad was gay?” I blurted out.

  Tim came over and looked down into my face. “Don’t say that,” he said in a menacing voice. Tim and Jim were very religious. I knew that aspect of the situation had to be eating at him. By harping on it, was I going to help or was I lining myself up to die with the other two? What would Quantico say?

  “Why not, it’s the truth, right?” This earned me a kick in the ass. His boot rammed into my butt three times before stopping.

  “That’s why I’ve got to kill everyone who knows. All of it is lies!” he shouted. I didn’t point out the logical fallacy of that argument.

  Margret, who’d remained silent since I suggested that Tim tape her mouth shut, had to step in. “Mark was your father. You’d better accept that. I know I did wrong not telling you a long time ago, but I thought I was doing it for your own good. Listen to me, I won’t spill your secret. You can kill these two and I’ll help you convince the cops that Tilly killed everyone.” That last part caused Tilly to start kicking and squirming on the floor in anger. I just sent a very specific telepathic message to Margret: You bitch!

  “Everyone knows that Jim was your father. No one is going to believe her.”

  “Don’t bullshit me,” he said angrily.

  I tried another angle. “Okay, listen, you believe in God. What you’ve done is wrong. But you can make up for it. You have the chance to save three people’s lives. Your dad, Jim, would have wanted that. He loved you. He loved Tilly. Hell, at one time he even loved your mom.”

  Tim looked at me with cold eyes. “After Mark told him I was his son, the son of a gay man and a woman that ‘Jim’ had learned to hate, do you know what ‘Jim’ did? He spat in my face and told me to pack my things and get out of his house. All my life I only wanted one thing, just one thing.” He was down in my face now. “I wanted that man to be proud of me. Got up every morning determined to do whatever I had to do so that he would look at me with pride. When he introduced me to people as his son I could hear the pride in his voice. All of that was gone.”

  “Then Jim was wrong. Mark was a good man. Jim never should have put that on you. I’m sure he would have felt differently over time. Obviously he didn’t know about any of this either. He was as shocked as you. Think how he must have felt. But you are a great son, and the fact that you all didn’t share DNA wouldn’t have mattered when he had time to think about it.”

  “None of this matters. We’re beyond all of that. He’s dead. Mark’s dead. My aunt is dead.”

  I was waiting for him to add that we would be joining them soon enough. I knew I hadn’t changed his mind at all. Tim was backed into a corner by fate and his own actions. He could only see one door. He only had one chance to get out of all of this—kill everyone.

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  “Redemption.” I was straining to remember Sunday sermons and the few bible classes I’d attended. “As long as there is life, there is the chance for redemption. You can be forgiven.”

  For a moment he seemed to think about what I was saying. But then he turned and left the room. I relaxed. If he wasn’t in the room, he couldn’t kill us. My only strategy now was to stall for time. For what? I didn’t know, but every second we were alive was a second more that we were alive.

  “I don’t think you’re helping,” Margret said with venom.

  “Don’t you even start. Trying to throw your own daughter and me under the bus. I get free, I’ll club you to death myself.”

  Tim came back into the room and when I saw the hammer he was carrying, a shiver ran down my spine, a spine that was feeling various shades of yellow. I couldn’t be sure, but in my heart I knew that it was the blunt object he’d used on Mark or Dell.

  “Wait.” He stopped and looked at me with those dead eyes as my mind searched for something, anything, to stall him. “At least take the gag off of Tilly.”

  His eyes narrowed. “Why would I do that?”

  “She deserves to have her say.”

  “She deserves? How the hell do you figure she deserves anything? Not once did she ever think of Dad. Never. Always what she wanted. Don’t tell me what she deserves.”

  “Let her speak. You’ve had your say. Let’s hear what she has to say.”

  He looked exasperated. “I don’t have to take that tape off. I’ll tell you what she’ll say. She’s going to whine and cry and tell us how she’s the victim.”

  “You really are afraid to give her a chance, aren’t you?” I kept going. If he was talking, he wasn’t bashing—that was my new motto.

  “Fine. You have got to be the stupidest…” He went over and ripped, literally ripped, the tape off of her mouth. She would never have to worry about hair on that upper lip.

  She screamed and kept screaming.

  “You happy?” he asked, looking at me.

  “Shut up. Hey, Tilly,” I said, trying to get her attention. “Talk to him!” I yelled over her screaming.

  “Turn me loose! Help! Help!” she continued to screech. Running out of breath, she panted and began to calm down some. “Damn it, Tim, let me go!”

  “No.”

  “Tim, pleaaaaseeee.”

  “That shit worked on Dad. Not on me. I saw through every one of your little ploys. You always got your way without lifting a finger. You’d do some stupid crap and he’d give you money or buy you a new car. You’re the one that should have been kicked out of the family. Hell, you left and he forgave you.”

  Tim raised the hammer and moved toward her. She cringed and tried to scoot away. She must have seen the same look I saw in his eyes.

  “What are you going to do, kill all of us?” I asked, trying to redirect his attention.

  “Yes.” For a minute I thought he was going to swing the hammer.

  “Then what? Tim, what are you going to do then?” I shouted this, trying to take his focus off of his sister.

  Again he hesitated. “I’ll get rid of your bodies and go on living my life.”

  “That’s not how it’s going to work. Do you think my dad is going to give up until he’s found the person who murdered
me?”

  “No one’s going to find your body. Or theirs,” he said, pointing the hammer at the women.

  “Where are you going to dump us? That old sinkhole on your property?” This surprised him. He turned back to me, and I knew that I’d guessed right. “The most obvious body dump around? Please. They’ll be dragging that before Christmas. You’d better come up with a cleverer plan than that.”

  He was staring at me now, hefting the hammer up and down.

  I looked around. There was only one dirty window in the room. I momentarily fantasized that Pete was out there somewhere with a rifle trained on Tim.

  “Maybe I can help you. The coast is only about an hour away. You could do the Dexter thing and chop us up and sink us out at sea.”

  “Shut up!” Tilly yelled. “What are you doing?”

  What you wouldn’t do; engaging him in conversation, I thought. But I ignored her and kept eye contact with Tim. I was exhausted and sore, but determined to drag this out as long as possible. I wanted to get every last second out of my life.

  “No, you’d be sure to get a ton of trace evidence in any vehicle you used. Besides, you’d have to rent a boat, which means there would be a record of it. Must be a better way.”

  Tim was staring at me. I seemed to have him mesmerized. “Okay, sinkhole out, dumping at sea out. Burning! That’s it!”

  “Don’t help him! Stop it!” Tilly screamed.

  “Shut up!” Margret yelled at Tilly. “Just shut the hell up. My God, you are the whiniest daughter any woman ever had. Tim, you and I can agree to that. Don’t you think for one minute I was happy when she said she’d go with me. I wanted you to come live with me. Like you said, you had a work ethic. She never did one damn thing to help me. Always take, take, take.”

  Tim turned on her now. I think Margret understood what we had to do, or she was just looking for another opportunity to sell us out.

  “Where do you think she learned it?” Tim demanded. “From you! I should have killed you before. Every time you called Dad on the phone wanting some shit, he’d go into a funk for days. He wanted to tell you no, but he couldn’t. That stupid old man loved you even after you tore his heart out. That’s why you never told him the truth. Finding out that you tricked him into taking care of a bastard child would have been the last straw. He would have kicked you to the curb if he’d have known that your whole marriage had been built on a lie. Nothing was real.”

  He swung the hammer, but pulled the punch at the last second, hitting Margret on the side of the head. I didn’t think it was a death blow. Margret screamed, and when she tried to avoid the hammer’s second swing, her chair toppled. The other side of her head bounced off the floor. She lay there dazed and whimpering.

  I could see that his actions had sent adrenaline coursing through Tim’s system. He was pacing up and down, swinging the hammer and mumbling, working himself up to kill one of us. At that moment I heard a noise. Someone or something was on the staircase. At this point I didn’t care what it was. I yelled for help. I screamed.

  They came through the door like champions. Smoke filled the room and there were people shouting. Thrown to the floor, Tim roared with rage like a trapped animal. A hand grabbed me. Through the haze of smoke and confusion, I saw my father dressed in tactical gear, kneeling beside me.

  “Are you okay?”

  I had to think about it for a minute. “Sure,” I answered.

  He lifted the chair into an upright position. Pulling a knife out, he started cutting away the tape. Matt had Tim on the ground, handcuffing him. Pete, wearing a tac vest several sizes too small for him, came lumbering in and over to me.

  “They had me posted on the other building or I’d have been with the entry team.”

  “Hell, we’d have used you as a battering ram,” Dad said and then turned to me. “What is going on?”

  “Tim killed them all.” The look in his eyes told me that he’d had no idea.

  “If you didn’t know that, why are you here? How’d you find me?” I asked, puzzled.

  Dad took out his phone and started going through it. “Your girlfriend called us. Lucky for you, she isn’t stupid. After half an hour of waiting, she went looking for you. Not finding you or the car, and not getting any answer when she called your cell phone, she decided she better call someone. She called the vet, got my personal number and told me that she thought something had happened to you. We put out the alarm. Had everybody looking for your car or you. Then we found your car parked in the Supersave lot.” I realized Tim must have moved it when he went out looking for Tilly.

  “About an hour ago, I got a text that gave this address with 911 and your name. We came up slowly, caught a glimpse of Tim at the window and thought that you might be inside. We were working on a plan when we heard the scream.”

  “Funny. I didn’t send you a text,” I told him.

  He looked at me and raised his eyebrows. “Well, doesn’t matter, I guess. You must have a guardian angel. I’ll leave it to you to figure out how to write up that part of the report. In my after-action report, I’m just going to put that we received an anonymous tip.”

  He put his hand out to help me out of the chair. Every muscle in my body was aching. Margret and Tilly were already being led down the stairs.

  “Wait a minute,” I called to the officers leading Margret down. “After she’s been checked out at the hospital, I want her brought to the jail and put into a holding cell.”

  She turned, her face beet red. “What are you talking about? I’m going to sue you and everyone in this backwoods sheriff’s office.”

  “Have at it. But I’m going to do my best to get the State Attorney to prosecute you as an accessory to at least one, if not two, of the murders.” Her face went from red to ashen white. The men on either side of her had to catch her to keep her from collapsing.

  I filled Dad in on all the details as he drove me home.

  “I don’t understand why he went to the trouble of cutting off Kemper’s fingers and smashing his face. He must have known we’d figure out who Kemper was.”

  “I think he was in such a daze after killing him that he wasn’t thinking. The face probably had more to do with suppressed rage than an attempt to cover up the identity of the body. The hands might have been part of a half-thought out plan. The shock of having killed him was so overwhelming that Tim probably convinced himself he could get away with it. Then, when no one arrested him and we didn’t identify Mark right away, he realized that other people knew and had to be dealt with.”

  Dad stayed with me for an hour and then left me to decompress with Ivy’s cuddly attention. Around nine o’clock I decided to call Cara. I wanted to let her know I was all right, how grateful I was, and how sorry I was for the way the day had turned out.

  “Larry, I’m so glad you weren’t hurt.”

  “Thanks to you.”

  “I kind of figured something was wrong. You don’t strike me as the type of guy to run out on a date like that.”

  “Not usually. Funny, when all of this was going down, I kept worrying about how mad you must be.”

  “I’ll admit that when I got out to the parking lot I had a moment when I thought you might be the biggest asshole I’ve ever gone out with. But when I thought about you….” She paused. “Well, I couldn’t believe that. Of course, my other uncharitable idea was that you’d had some sort of psychotic break.”

  “That could happen at any time,” I joked.

  “Larry.” She got quiet, then went on solemnly, “I’m not sure the dating thing is going to work.”

  “But you know I didn’t skip—”

  “Not that. I know you didn’t have any choice but to leave me. I just don’t think the cop thing works for me.”

  I answered sincerely, “I’m not married to this job. I know guys who are. I’m not.”

  “I believe you. But it’s too soon for me to know how I feel about you. So I can’t ask you to give it up right now. Besides, I don’t think y
ou’re ready to abandon your father.” There was no malice in her tone.

  “I wouldn’t be abandoning him.”

  “I think he might feel like you were, and you might too.” Deep down I knew she might be right.

  “We’re still friends?”

  “Of course.”

  “If I bump into you somewhere, we can chat like old school chums.”

  “Yes.”

  “You’ll leave the door open to the possibility that in the future we might date again?”

  “Yes, I will. As long as you promise not to run out and leave me with the bill again.”

  “That’s a deal.”

  We said our goodbyes. I was staring at the phone feeling sorry for myself when it rang. The caller ID said “CI.”

  “Eddie, what can I do for you?” I asked, perhaps a little more curtly than was polite.

  “That’s it? ‘What can I do for you?’” he said, sounding perturbed.

  “It’s late and I’ve had a rough day.”

  “Your day might have been a lot rougher if I hadn’t texted your daddy where you were.”

  “You did that?”

  “I heard you were missing. Told you I was keeping my ear to the ground. Not hard with the cops in the family. Then I thought they might want to check out the address where a guy told my friend he’d met a fellow who was interested in starting fires.”

  “Damn.”

  “Yeah, sounds a little better having me as an informant now, doesn’t it?” He was clearly enjoying his victory lap.

  “Yeah, Eddie, I guess it does.” I had to give him that.

  “Right, next time maybe you’ll answer my text.”

  “Promise. Thanks, I mean it. Thanks.”

  “No problem. Catch you later.” And he hung up.

  Terrific. My relationship with my confidential informant rat was going fine, but I’d somehow buggered up my chance at romance.