by Mike Monson
Phil took another deep breath. Paige approached him with the cattle-prod and the pistol. He recognized the same blank look in her eyes from the first night they had sex. She didn’t blink.
“Time for the main event,” Jeff said.
“Oh, wow,” a voice said from the doorway. “What the fuck?”
Jessica, unbound, the gag removed, stared at her parents’ bloody corpses. Paige and Jeff turned and looked at her. She ran down the hall to the stairs.
“Shit,” Jeff said. “Briggs, keep an eye on Gaines.”
Jeff and Paige took off to catch Jessica.
When Briggs looked toward the door, Phil pulled his back-up pistol from his boot. He shot the biker twice in the heart. As Briggs fell, Phil grabbed and then holstered his Colt. He opened the French doors and stepped out onto the balcony. Reaching out and grabbing onto a branch of a large oak tree planted about five feet away, he estimated the drop to the yard below. He held tight and swung himself over the rail. Suspended for a moment in the cool night air, Phil felt the bough bending from his weight. He let go and fell down to the grass and ran to the darkness of the thick almond orchards.
He was gone.
Paige and Jeff returned. Jeff dragged Jessica by her hair. They found Briggs on his back on the floor, dead from the two bloody wounds in his chest.
“Where’s Phil?” Paige said. She was out of breath from chasing Jessica and looked afraid and confused for the first time.
“That slippery asshole got the fuck away.”
“Shit!”
“We can’t worry about him now. At least he saved us the trouble of killing Briggs. Let’s get out of this house. Somebody heard those shots for sure. Make sure all the weapons and everything else we brought in here is back in the bag.”
Dixon’s research wasn’t accurate. Moments before, the graveyard shift security guard drove over to check out a report of a strange vehicle parked across the street from the Schmitz’s. Then, he got a call from his dispatcher: two neighboring residents reported shots fired at the Schmitz house. As the guard approached, he saw the strange blue Caddy still parked across the street. Up in the window of the Schmitz residence, he noticed swiftly moving lights and shadows. He parked, called the police, and went up to the front door.
“Stay cool, sweetie,” Jeff said to Jessica as he and Paige led her down the hall, “so we don’t have to shoot you.”
Paige carried the loot. Jeff had the tools and weapons.
They walked down the hall to the stairs. The doorbell rang.
“Mr. Schmitz?” said a voice outside the door. “Security patrol. You okay? We heard shots.”
Jeff opened the front door and came out of the darkness, pulling Jessica, followed by Paige. He let go of Jessica and shot the security guard in the chest, then leaned over to shoot the man in the face. Twice.
Sirens could be heard, not too far away.
Jessica saw her chance and tried to run toward the street, but Paige grabbed her hair.
More sirens. Closer.
Paige and Jeff ran toward Ladd Road, away from the sound of the sirens, dragging Jessica behind. By the time the police arrived, they were moving fast toward the van, hidden by the endless rows of almond trees.
13
Phil Gaines went straight back to Tully Manor, picked up his Jeep, and drove due east of Modesto. Wanting to get far away from the town and civilization as soon as possible, he took Highway 108 through Riverbank and Oakdale toward the Sierra foothills.
After an hour, he turned onto Highway 120 toward Yosemite National Park. Phil flipped on the radio and heard that one of the Schmitz girls was missing. Following this, he heard the names of all the dead and knew, at that point, there were no suspects for the crimes. At least that’s what the police were telling the media. The names Jeff Sweet and Paige and Phil Gaines were not mentioned.
Just before the park entrance, he turned left onto Evergreen Road toward Camp Mather, the San Francisco-owned family camp. He abandoned the Jeep about a mile up one of the many desolate fire roads and then buried the license plates a couple hundred feet from the car.
The sun was up. Phil hoisted the backpack and began to hike west, parallel with the 120. It wasn’t easy picking his way through the thick forest without a trail to follow, tripping over rocks and dead trees and getting slapped in the face by sharp branches. But he needed to make sure he stayed out of sight of the road.
He hiked all day, covering twenty miles in about ten hours. And, as the day’s light began to fade, he made camp near the town of Groveland, sixty miles from Modesto.
Phil loved the mountains. Since moving to Modesto he’d often backpack all over the Sierras—always alone. He knew he could survive off the grid as long as the weather stayed warm and he had enough money to slip in and out of town for food and supplies. If he needed to, he felt certain he could find another place in another state to live and had no doubt he could figure out a way to make a living, legal or illegal, and escape detection indefinitely. Part of him had always prepared for this possibility.
After eating a light dinner of beef jerky and nuts, Phil created a make-shift cushion from his down sleeping bag and sat in the lotus posture next to his tent, ready to sit zazen all night, if necessary, to become clear and open enough to know exactly how to proceed.
When Jeff and Paige first dragged her away from the carnage at her house, Jessica Schmitz was terrified. Both of them were so bloody and cruel. She sat in the back of the van crying softly as Jeff drove out a country road heading east from Modesto toward the Sierra Nevada foothills. She had seen the corpses of her brothers and sister. Even though they were never close, she felt sorry for what had happened to them. The images of their bodies boiled up in her brainpan. But as far as she could tell, she felt nothing about the violent deaths of her parents.
A couple of times Paige turned around, slapped her, and shouted, “Shut the fuck up! Jesus!”
Slowly, Jessica felt calmer and calmer. She began to watch the events from outside of herself, like she did during those horrible private times with her father. But, this time, she was interested in what she saw and curious to see what happened next.
After about an hour, Jeff pulled over in front of a small cottage two hundred yards up from the road.
“Come on, let’s clean up and get changed.”
“What is this place?” Paige said. She pointed a gun at Jessica, grabbed her arm, and pulled her out of the car and toward the tiny structure.
“It used to belong to my uncle Boyd, but he used it as collateral for some money I loaned him. Fucker didn’t pay, so I beat the shit out of him and foreclosed. It’s mine now.”
“Are you sure it is safe for us to be here?”
“It’s okay, but we can’t stay long.”
Jeff unlocked the door and turned on the light. Jessica was surprised to see that it was so clean and nice: walls freshly painted, polished wooden floors, new tasteful furniture.
“Come on,” Jeff said, “we need to keep moving. Paige, let’s get in the shower and then get changed. Now.”
Jeff led them both to the small bathroom. There was a showerhead over a bathtub, but no shower curtain. Paige shoved Jessica, still in her bra and panties, onto the toilet seat. Then Jeff and Paige peeled off all their clothes, which Jeff carefully placed in a plastic bag.
Jessica watched as they got under the shower and began cleaning each other with sensual and playful lathering punctuated with giggles and kisses. She tried not to look, but she could not keep herself from sneaking glances at her two captors’ naked bodies as her family’s blood swirled down the drain.
Before getting into the shower, Paige had taken off her bloodstained black cap and put it on the back of the toilet tank behind Jessica, then freed her hair from all of the pins. Now naked, beautiful, clean and relaxed, her ruby wet hair clinging to her white freckled back, Paige looked like a naughty angel to Jessica. Dangerous and, surprisingly, appealing.
When, they stepped out of the
bath and began drying off, Jessica found her eyes irresistibly drawn to Jeff’s penis. It was as big as the ones in her favorite dirty movies. Plus, he was freaking hot. Her face burned with embarrassment. She felt confused and disoriented. Somehow, within the past two hours, her life had turned, first into a horror movie, and then to a scene from one of her favorite pornos. She didn’t know who to be or how to act.
“What are you looking at, you little slut?” Paige said, laughing. “Like what you see? It’s an awesome fucking cock, isn’t it?”
Jessica stared as it actually became larger, thicker, stiffer. She looked up at Jeff’s face. He grinned at her and appeared delighted at her attention.
“Answer me!” Paige shouted. Again, she slapped Jessica.
Jessica had taken enough. She suddenly felt strong. She turned to Paige and slapped her as hard as she could.
Shocked, Paige took a step back.
Jessica could not believe what she’d done. She stood there, frightened, waiting to see what Paige was going to do. To her surprise, Jeff laughed and Paige smiled broadly.
Jeff grabbed Paige by both hands from behind.
“Do it again. She likes it—I like it.”
Jessica slapped Paige twice more. Paige looked Jessica right in the eyes and grinned. She looked delighted.
“I think I like this girl,” Jeff said.
“Me, too,” said Paige. She reached out and pulled Jessica toward her and kissed her gently on the lips. Jeff also embraced Jessica. Both he and Paige kissed her several times on the face and neck. Paige caressed her in a way that felt sweet and reassuring.
“There, there,” Paige said. “Everything’s going to be just fine for you, little girl, I promise. We’re all going to have the best time together.”
Still disoriented, Jessica knew what to do next if she was one of the Fs in her favorite FFM movies. But, she didn’t know what they expected of her, or what action gave her the best chance of survival. Were they seducing her—or toying with her? The way felines paw at their prey before devouring them.
She began to finally feel a little safe and calm when Paige suggested that Jeff take Jessica to the bed right then.
He replied, “No, not yet. We need to let her ease into it, it’s way more fun when they like it and want it. Plus, we gotta keep moving.”
Paige seemed to understand. All that day, as they wandered from car to car and city to city, she doted on Jessica, dressing her, brushing her hair, applying make-up, and asking her questions about herself. Questions about everything but her family.
Later, Jessica sat in the back seat of a nearly new Hyundai Genesis. She stared at Jeff Sweet and Paige Gaines. This was the fourth car Jeff had stolen since they abandoned and torched the van outside of Stockton. She didn’t know if he was being extra cautious or if he just enjoyed stealing cars. Probably both.
Jessica had never met anyone like them before. It wasn’t only the fact they’d viciously killed her brothers, her sister, her parents, and three other people. It wasn’t that they never stopped talking—and all they ever talked about was sex and violence, all the things they wanted to steal, and all the people they wanted to hurt and kill. It wasn’t that they never stopped moving—by now, as far as Jessica could tell, Jeff had driven in a zig-zag pattern over most of Northern California. It wasn’t that Paige had the best weed she’s ever smoked either, but it was a definite plus. They were clearly batshit crazy and completely dangerous and unpredictable, but it wasn’t that either. No, the most interesting thing about Jeff and Paige was that they both seemed completely obsessed with her, Jessica Schmitz.
She liked that about them. She loved that about them.
Jeff was on a tirade about the time he went to juvie at seventeen for raping a sixteen-year-old girl who “asked for it. I mean, she literary asked me—begged me—to fuck her. The whole thing was such bullshit.”
Jessica got up the nerve to interrupt. “Where are we going? I mean, like, what is next on the agenda?”
“We’re going to Berkeley, sweetie,” Paige said. “Jeff has a girlfriend who’s got a house up in the hills there.”
“Oh, cool. Sounds awesome. I’m going to Cal in the fall you know.”
“Oh wow,” Paige said. “Congrats. I never even made it to Modesto Junior fucking College.”
Jeff and Paige stopped talking for a moment. They looked at each other. Jeff shrugged.
“My friend is Marlene Huggley,” Jeff said. “You know who that is?”
“The porn star?”
“Damn straight,” Jeff said, turning to Paige. “Jesus, I knew it was a good idea to abduct this foxy little bitch.”
“Yeah, I know. Jessica is the best.”
Paige turned around in her seat and smiled at Jessica and gently stroked her up and down along the inside of her thighs. Jessica wore short cut-offs and a black halter-top supplied by Paige. They fit her remarkably well.
Marlene Huggley was someone Jessica had been into for a while. Marlene had a series of ‘how to’ sex videos Jessica found particularly instructive, and, a great turn on. She looked forward to meeting Ms. Huggley and getting a chance to have a little chat with the woman. Alone. Maybe there was a chance she was not part of all this; maybe she could help her escape.
“When we get there,” Jeff said, “you’re gonna be Paige’s sister … Jennifer, okay? And you’re eighteen years old. Get it? This is very important. Marlene is cool and everything, but I don’t need her getting any bad ideas about things. Hopefully, no one will ever know we were involved in that thing last night, but we need somewhere to lay low until we’re sure we’re in the clear.”
“And you’re positive he’ll show up?” Paige said quietly and directly to Jeff.
“Oh, he’ll be there for sure. He wants this thing to end as much as we do. Dude doesn’t realize it, but I know him better than he knows himself. He’s spending all day covering his tracks and he’ll be in Berkeley sometime tomorrow. Just keep your ears open and a gun close.”
“Who are you talking about?” Jessica said.
“Oh, no one,” Paige said. “It’s nothing for you to worry about, sweetie.”
Marlene Huggley was a news junkie. She kept her big-screen HD TV on all day, every day, constantly flipping back and forth from CNN, MSNBC, to the various local news channels. In her car, instead of music, she listened to National Public Radio. Very tuned into the internet, she constantly posted her opinions on Facebook and Twitter using her PC and iPhone. Throughout the day, she’d also leave comments on news stories she saw on Yahoo and the Huffington Post, or wherever else she happened to click. She had three blogs and updated them at least once a day: one all about sex that promoted her videos; one that covered her various spiritual interests; and one focused exclusively on her liberal political views.
Marlene Huggley was plugged in, she was engaged.
She’d followed the story of the murders at the Schmitz Mansion in the Del Rio section of Modesto (or The Del Rio Massacre, as the media were now describing the event.) She was shocked by the brutality of the crimes and shared the public’s concern for the safety of Jessica Schmitz, the beautiful model student and recent recipient of a full scholarship to the University of California.
Marlene wondered if her lover, Jeff Sweet, who lived in Modesto—and who she thought for sure was some kind of criminal—knew anything about the crimes. She’d ask, but that asshole had never given her his cell number. Plus, as far as she knew, he wasn’t on Facebook or Twitter. She doubted he even had a computer. Dude was elusive.
Jeff showed up whenever the fuck he felt like it. Not that she minded. She was used to his banging knock at all hours and always welcomed him into her house and into her bed.
Things were different when he showed up this night. He wasn’t alone, like usual, but with two beautiful women, one in her late twenties, and one a very awkward and embarrassed-looking teenager. She suddenly had the awful sinking feeling that Jeff Sweet knew all about the murders at the Schmitz house. Esp
ecially when she saw him standing at her front door with a pistol in his waistband and a heavy-looking gym bag around his shoulder. And, more importantly, because the girl standing next to him looked exactly like the high school yearbook photo of Jessica Schmitz that she’d been seeing on the news all day.
“Surprise,” Jeff said.
14
Early that same evening a biker named Otis Peele walked into the Red Devil Lounge. He was about six-foot five and weighed 350 lbs. Around his neck was a long, thick, silver chain necklace, from which hung a large, solid silver iron cross.
Paige’s old boss, Maddie Ferguson, stood behind the bar. As Peele approached he took off the chain and swung it around his head. Faster and faster.
“Have you thought about my offer?” Peele said.
“Fuck you, you stupid asshole,” Maddie Ferguson answered.
“You’re making a big mistake, bitch.”
He struck Ferguson in the face with the iron cross, again and again. The cross connected with her cheek and brow, causing several cuts. Spots of blood flew all over the bar top, the clean beer mugs, even the liquor bottles on the shelves against the wall. Maddie tried to protect her eyes while several patrons, most of whom were large bikers themselves, attempted to subdue Otis Peele. Barmaid Angela Burns called the police.
Retired truck driver William LaRoux finally caught hold of the iron cross and jerked it from Peele’s hand. Then LaRoux and another bar regular traded punches with Peele. Police sirens approached.
“No police!” Peele said. “I told you, no police!”
“Oh yeah?” said the bleeding Maggie. “What the fuck are you going to do about it?”
“You’ll see.”
A split-second later, LaRoux hit him on the side of the head hard enough to knock him down.