The Bedroom Killer

by Taylor Waters

  "She say anything yet?" Bell asked.

  Kennedy shook his head. "She's been crying and moaning about her daughter, Katie. She's the one who's missing."

  Bell peered down at the water on the floor near the back door.

  "The water?"

  Kennedy turned and looked at the wet floor. "It appears that's where he got in. That water shouldn't be there according to the mother. I got that much out of her. The door should have been locked, but it wasn't. She doesn't know why. No signs of entry anywhere else in the home."

  They stood over Karen Sharp as she cried into her robe. Bell had been a detective long enough that he could pretty much plan out the timing of everything that would come next. The victim's mother would soon stop sobbing—giving Bell his cue to throw out the first question—and the chase would begin.

  This prick they called the Bedroom Killer was getting closer to his own end. He'd fuck up sooner or later, leave a clue, something to add to what they already had, which wasn't much, and this clusterfuck would end. And if Gerald Bell had his way, it would be at the end of his gun. Who gives a shit about due process? Let's all get together and empty our guns into the fucker and get it over with.

  Bell glanced into the living room. Homicide Detective Megan Ash slipped in and headed for the hallway as if she were just popping in to use the bathroom. It's about friggin' time. More and more she was turning up late, digging for information after the fact. She should've been here. She should've been the one filling him in. He was the lead detective. He was the master at solving these crimes and he would solve this one, if his partner could get her shit together and do her job. Sure there were long hours, but they were all doing long hours. Why should it be any different for her?

  ***

  Megan tucked her hair behind her ear as she approached the bedroom door. She wore the same black slacks and white blouse she’d thrown on at Greg's house when she got the call. No time to go home to change. She hoped no one would notice they were the same clothes she'd worn the day before. Despite this fashion faux pas, she carried herself with authority.

  Being one of the youngest women to achieve detective in her division had been both a blessing and a curse for Megan. All the prejudices applied. She was known for her ability to pick up on clues that others didn't see, or she'd follow up on a small hunch that turned out to be the missing piece of the puzzle. She'd grown into one of the best detectives in the county. But she'd been getting sloppy lately and she knew it. Her mind was wandering too much. It was time to focus.

  The first thing she noticed was bloody fingerprints smeared on the wall next to the door jam, as if someone grabbed the doorframe as they entered the room. There had never been blood found at any of the other killings.

  Maybe this wasn't him.

  Megan stepped in the bedroom to find a tech working inside. There wasn't much room for anyone else. She looked at the bed and saw the young girl, her arms at her side, mouth and eyes opened. Megan steeled herself and locked up her emotions. She had to be purely analytical, but all she wanted to do was scream. A brown teddy bear was on the floor and a few feet away, the ligature. It was common cotton rope, 12-strand, costing $7.95 for a 20-foot length at any hardware store. Yes, this was the Bedroom Killer…but why was the rope on the floor and red with what appeared to be blood?

  The tech brushed black powder onto the wooden bedpost. Megan approached the bed and examined Rachel's feet and legs, then moved up to her stomach, then farther up to her neck, where she could see the blackish-purple bruising.

  Just like the others.

  Rachel Sharp had the dubious distinction of being the fourth in a series of murders that had taken place over the past four months. Each victim was between fourteen and nineteen years old. Each one lived with their mom, but from there, the similarities got murky. Megan stepped over the teddy bear and rope. She looked at the carpet in the corner of the room, hoping to find any sort of clue, when she heard a scream.

  "Mom!"

  Megan sprinted from the bedroom, into the short hallway, then into the living room to find a crowd of people standing around what appeared to be the mother and a young woman, embracing. The mother stroked the girl's hair.

  "Katie!"

  The mother sobbed, gripping the young woman tightly. Megan spotted Bell in the crowd. He stared right at her. Andy was, too, but his eyes showed a different emotion than the one in Bell's eyes. They showed compassion.

  Bell broke free of the crowd and marched over to Megan with his right index finger pointing toward her. Megan had seen that index finger so many times in her career.

  Fuck him.

  Bell stooped down to within five inches of Megan's face. "Where the hell have you been?"

  "Shopping."

  "Shopping? What the hell do you mean shopping?" Bell's voice pitched in a raised whisper.

  "I needed groceries…so I went shopping."

  "At fucking three a.m.?"

  "No, at midnight, after I left the office. I could go in the middle of the day if that suits you better, but I seem to be really busy these days, so the only time I have to actually buy groceries is midnight."

  Andy shouted at Bell and ran up to both of them, his cell phone stuck to his ear. He spoke into the phone, "Yes…okay. Thank you. Thank you very much."

  Andy pulled the phone from his ear, punched off, and with a smile. "That was Greenwood Emergency. They have a patient. Gunshot wound. He was found in a late model BMW, with a baseball bat and gun inside his car. The driver's-side window is gone."

  Bell's eyes lit up, and he turned to Megan with a big, shit-eating grin on his face—one that put shivers down her spine. She hated it when he smiled like a hyena.

  "We got him," Bell said.

  Andy nodded. "We got him."

  "Let's go." Bell stormed out the front door, followed by Andy. Megan took a deep breath. She should be happy, but she had a feeling of foreboding, as if the case were still a long way from being over.

  CHAPTER 9

  "What happened, John?" Nurse Carrie asked.

  John swatted at Nurse Carrie's hand as she tried to finish the stitches she had been working on for the past fifteen minutes.

  "I want Danny," he said, slurring his words.

  "Maggie called him," Nurse Carrie said. She knew John Randall, knew him as Dr. John Randall, trauma surgeon and head of this particular emergency room…until a year ago.

  "I can't believe he's in here," Nurse Maggie whispered, as she assisted Carrie.

  "You did page him, right?" Carrie whispered back.

  "Yes. He's coming," she said.

  John moaned, but Carrie continued stitching.

  ***

  Less than five minutes later, Dr. Daniel "Danny" Turner stepped into the room as Nurse Carrie placed a large bandage over the trail of twenty stitches that appeared as a zipper closing up John's cheek. Danny's frame and gait resembled John's, and more than once when they stood together talking in the hospital hallways, curious women would break the ice by asking if they were brothers. When side by side, there was a sense of relation, although Danny's dark brown hair had not started graying on the edges as John's had in the past year. They always got a kick out of it.

  "What happened?"

  Carrie stood aside so Danny could see his friend, the whiskered, bandaged, hunched man with glassy, bloodshot eyes. He looked more like the homeless guy pushing the shopping cart than the clean-shaven, accomplished trauma surgeon that Danny once knew.

  "We found him in his car outside, passed out, with a gunshot wound to his cheek."

  "Gunshot?"

  "Yes," said Carrie, concern in her voice.

  "And?"

  "And he should be fine. He lost some blood, but we have him on fluids."

  Danny glanced at the IV inserted into John's hand, then moved to the side of the bed and took John's other hand in his.

  "Hey, buddy. So what happened to you tonight?"

  John gave no response. Danny tapped on his good cheek.
>
  "John, can you hear me?"

  John's eyes opened to slivers.

  "Hey, it's me. Danny."

  John's eyes opened wider. He looked around as if he had no memory of where he was, then he broke down in tears.

  "Oh God, Danny, I think I hurt someone."

  Carrie and Maggie stiffened. Danny took a deep breath, braced himself, and sat on the edge of the bed.

  "What do you mean you hurt someone?"

  "I don't know for sure."

  "Who was it?"

  "A woman…I…she was hitting me with a baseball bat."

  "A baseball bat?" Danny said, his voice rose an octave.

  "Yes."

  "Where did this happen?"

  John closed his eyes and turned away.

  "Is that how you got cut, the baseball bat?"

  "There was a man, too. Very dark eyes. He ran into my car. Then she beat me with the bat. I don't know why. I don't know why she was hitting me."

  Danny turned to Carrie and Maggie and said, "Give us a minute, would you please?"

  Carrie and Maggie left the room, and Danny returned his attention to John. He looked at the large bandage on John's face, and the blood stains on his fingertips and his shirt. At this point, he wasn't entirely sure the blood was all John's.

  "What about the gun, John?"

  "Huh?"

  "The gun…"

  John turned to his side and began crying again. Danny left the room, walked into the hallway, and down to the nurses' station where Nurse Carrie faced a monitor and typed on a keyboard.

  "Did you call it in?" Danny asked.

  It was standard protocol, what every emergency room was required to do when a gunshot victim came to emergency. They had to report the gunshot victim to the local police department.

  She nodded. "They should be here any minute."

  CHAPTER 10

  We got him.

  Bell sat shotgun while Andy, siren blaring, sped toward Greenwood Memorial Hospital Emergency Room, where the perp was getting stitched up. For Bell, the anticipation of finally making a bust on the case was too much to bear.

  Bell turned to Andy. "We got him."

  "You bet your ass we got him," Andy said.

  "We're going to march that fuck right outside for the entire world to see. You on one arm, me on the other. We'll be on the front page of every newspaper across the country."

  "Shouldn't it be Megan?" Andy asked. "She's second-in-command."

  "Fuck her," Bell said, waving his hand in the air. "You see how long it took for her to get to the scene tonight? If she's going to drag her ass every time we get a new vic, then she can just watch from the sidelines."

  Andy nodded, hesitantly.

  "Tell me more about the tip."

  "Pretty cut and dried." Andy pulled his notepad out of his breast pocket and read, keeping one eye on the road. "A nurse, Carrie Atwood, called it in. Gunshot wound."

  "Gunshot," Bell said. "He had a gun? Why didn't he use it on the mom?"

  Andy shrugged. "Probably felt he didn't need to, you know, wake up the whole neighborhood. Probably figured he could fight his way out. Which he did."

  "Hmm. But he left behind a witness. But so, how did he get shot?"

  Andy shook his head and kept reading. "She said the patient had lost lots of blood, but get this, when they asked the nurse how he arrived at the hospital, she said he drove himself, that he crashed his car into the planter outside, and they found a bloodied baseball bat inside the car."

  Bell's eyes went wide again, and he smacked the dashboard. "We got him, Andy. We fucking got him."

  "Hell yes."

  Bell ran the evidence through his mind. He compared the information from the nurse's call to the police with what he knew without a doubt was the Bedroom Killer's fourth victim, just blocks away from the hospital. A distraught mother claims she beat the hell out of the man that was in her house…bashing in his car window with a baseball bat.

  It all fit.

  Andy sped up to the emergency room entrance. Multiple black-and-whites, lights flashing, were behind them. The black BMW sat in the bushes just as reported, surrounded by uniformed officers peering inside with bouncing flashlight beams. Yellow crime scene tape surrounded everything. Andy threw the car into park and cut the engine. Bell was already out, racing toward the emergency room entrance. He pointed at the BMW and said, "Check out the car," before disappearing inside the hospital doors.

  ***

  Andy jogged across the wet asphalt to the perp's car. A uniformed officer spotted him and, before the guy could say anything, Andy flashed his badge.

  "The owner's inside getting stitched up," the uniformed officer said.

  Andy nodded, then pulled a pair of latex gloves from his coat pocket and snapped them on. The driver's side door was wide open. Probably how they got him out. Andy unclipped his Mag-Lite from his utility belt, clicked it on, leaned forward, and shone the bright beam inside the car. The bloody aluminum baseball bat was there with the business end on the passenger side floor and the handle leaning against the door. He moved the beam to the floor and spotted the gun next to bat. Shards of window glass were everywhere. Blood was smeared on the steering wheel and ignition. Bloody handprints were on the dashboard, and little specks of blood were splattered on the windshield.

  On the passenger seat sat a half-empty bottle of Jack Daniels, a favorite of rock stars and, evidently, serial killers. Andy's brow furrowed. That doesn't make sense. The profile didn't indicate this guy would be intoxicated when he conducting his crime. Maybe that was what he did right after. Apparently, this time, he really needed it after the fight with the mom. Something under the bottle of Jack caught Andy's eye. He walked around to the other side, climbed over the planter's low wall, crushing plants before he reached the door. He pulled on the door, but the bottom was caught against the plants. Andy yanked harder and it cleared, but just as it did, the baseball bat's bloodied handle fell onto the doorway's baseboard. Andy ignored the bat. He'd deal with it later.

  Instead, he reached in with his gloved hand and moved the bottle just enough to reveal three envelopes. The ink was smeared on the top envelope, but Andy could read the name. Dr. Burt Larson. He moved the top envelope. The name on the next one was Dr. Daniel Turner. Then he slipped out the last one—Nurse Carrie Atwood. Andy looked at the emergency room entrance. Is that why the killer came here? Sirens from another police car approached from behind him. He turned to see the CSI van entering the parking lot, followed by what he thought was the first news van right behind it.

  "Here we go," he said to himself, then he climbed out of the planter and made his way toward the emergency room door.

  ***

  Bell hurried inside the door and rushed to the first uniform he saw.

  "Where is he?" he shouted, barely able to contain his enthusiasm.

  The uniform pointed to double doors and, as Bell turned toward them, a young doctor sidled up to Bell, raising his hands.

  "He just got stitches." As if the word "stitches" would be enough to calm Bell down.

  "Good for him," Bell said. "He'll need more before I'm done with him."

  This blunt statement stopped the doctor in his tracks. Bell brushed past him and pushed the red button on the wall, which threw open the double doors, revealing a long, broad corridor lined with workstations for emergency patients. Bell spotted a room with a uniform standing at the door. Bingo. He marched up, showed the uniform his badge, then stepped inside the door of the already crowded room.

  "I'm Detective Gerald Bell," he said, flashing his badge. "Let me see him."

  A doctor and nurse turned to face Bell, with the killer sitting behind them. Another uniform stood at one side. This wasn't how Bell had pictured it. Didn't they know who this guy was? Didn't someone tell them this guy was the Bedroom Killer?

  "Why the hell isn't he in cuffs?" he asked the uniform by the bed. Bell didn't wait for the answer. He pushed past the doctor and nurse, then grabbed the k
iller by the arm. Bell yanked him off the bed, twisting his wrist and forcing him to the floor. He shoved his knee onto the killer's back and yanked his arms behind him, zipping cuffs onto his wrists with a loud click.

  "What are you doing?" the nurse yelled. "You idiot. He just got the stitches. You're going to tear them out!"

  Bell gripped the killer's arms, pulled him off the floor, and sat him back down on the bed. He snapped his fingers in front of the killer. "What's your name?"

  The nurse said, "His name is—"

  "I'm not asking you," Bell said, then turned to the killer.

  "What's your name?"

  "John."

  "John what?"

  "Randall."

  Bell stood straight, placing his hands on his hips and puffing out his chest.

  "You're under arrest, Mr. Randall, for the murder of Rachel Sharp."

  "What?" the doctor and nurse said in unison. They continued questioning this accusation as Bell read John his rights. When he finished, he turned to the uniform at the door.

  "Watch him. He moves, you shoot him."

  Bell walked past the uniform and into the hallway just in time to see Andy push through the double doors at the end of the hall.

  "Whaddaya got?" Bell asked.

  "Baseball bat, gun, and lots of blood."

  "Great. I just cuffed him and read him his rights." Bell nodded to the door. "Take a look."

  Andy moved to the door and peeked inside.

  “Who's outside?" Bell asked.

  "Some uniforms. The techs just arrived. They'll have a lot—"

  "No. News stations?" Bell said.

  "Oh…just Channel 4 right now."

  Bell's hands went to his hips. He exhaled loudly, turned away, and paced the hall.

  "There's probably more pulling in as we speak. Give it another fifteen minutes, and everyone will be here."