by Rod Kackley
Bree would have felt better if she was dressed in clothes from Gap instead of Goodwill. This had not been part of the plan.
Bree had picked out what she wanted to wear the night before. She had packed an overnight bag, but Tim had pulled her out of the house in such a hurry she hadn’t had time to change.
Bree loved to spend as much time as she could as close to nude as she could.
Still being close to naked in a teddy under the rug got a little old and cold. Jeans and a tank top were a real improvement.
Her hands were tied at the wrist and her legs at the ankles. Bree insisted on it.
Tim knew it was part of her fantasy so he gave in. Besides most of the fight had gone out of him once the adrenalin from the Steven and Debbie murders had washed out of his system.
But he was still buzzing a little. It was kind of like the feeling he’d have after downing the Big Breakfast at the St. Izzy Diner following a night of drinking.
Just like in the diner, Tim was having trouble keeping his eyes open.
As the adrenaline drained, he was having trouble keeping his eyes open.
Yawning.
Glancing at Bree.
The sight of her tied up brought him back to life. He wasn’t that far gone. Having her hands and feet tied was so hot.
It was part of their fantasy.
And it was all becoming reality.
Bree wasn’t even close to drowsy. This was all working out even better than she expected. There was no way that Steven or Debbie could have survived that explosion. Bree did feel a little tug at her heart when she thought of her mother dying like that, but she couldn’t care less about Steven.
Well, not true. Bree did have one regret. She wished she had been able to watch him die.
Tim told her about the way Steven went down screaming and then crawled across the floor with the steak knife.
“OMG. Who was he kidding?” Bree texted to Beth. “A steak knife. LMFAO.”
“I do wish I could have seen you shoot him,” Bree said to Tim, her thumbs working like lightening under a blanket she had wrapped around her for warmth, and privacy.
They didn’t want anyone who drove by to see that her hands and feet were tied up. At least Tim didn’t.
Bree flashed a couple of cars. “You are such an attention whore,” one of her friends used to tell her.
She didn’t show the other cars much, just enough to let them know there was a teenage girl in a car with her hands and feet tied.
What more did they need to know?
Nothing.
CHAPTER THIRTY ONE
Everyone Bree flashed called 911. Her face was all over the television along with her texts to Beth. The whole state was following the story. This was more than the story of a teenaged victim of a kidnapping — and who knows what else — by a former high school teacher who had a history of molesting his students.
This was the tale of a good girl fighting for her life against true evil.
The cable TV news anchors were breathless.
Cable networks sent trucks to St. Isidore High School. The principal, old man Watson got some face time, as did the mayor, as did everyone else with an opinion.
It turned out there were as many opinions as assholes in St. Isidore. Anyone with one had the other.
Who could blame the media?
The story now included the murder of the teacher’s boyhood friend who was found swinging naked at the end of a thick rope in the same woods where girls had been found hanging since the 1970s.
Then the home of the kidnapping victim exploded and burned. Two bodies were found inside, both “burned beyond recognition” as the TV and radio newspeople liked to say probably because they couldn’t think of any other way to put it.
When the media discovered Bree’s Facebook, Pinterest and SnapChat photos with a little help from her friends, the sex really hit the fan.
Bree was an overnight screen saver sensation. Websites with Bree photo and video collections went up. There wasn’t a teenage boy or middle-aged man who would not have invited her inside if she had come knocking at the door.
Fifteen minutes of fame was so, whenever Andy Warhol said it the first time. This was the twenty-first century. This was a wall-to-wall, never ending, always a fresh angle, gotta have new spin, kind of pundit-driven fame.
Bree became a cash cow for experts who did pundit festivals on everything from teenage sex, to bad parenting, to suburban sloth, to online sex — thanks to several of Tim’s chat buddies coming out of the closet just in time to pick up a couple of bucks.
So, when people started seeing Bree in a beat-up, old black Chevy Lumina, with her wrists tied together, wearing only a tank top that was way too thin for the late fall weather and a pair of old jeans, they couldn’t dial 911 fast enough.
The entrepreneurs among them made some real money. They didn’t call the cops.They called TMZ. And they blogged and tweeted it to the world, along with photos and video of the girl in the Lumina.
Tim still smelled of gasoline so bad that she wanted to roll down the window, but Bree didn’t dare. She was getting a little worried about her partner in crime. He might be a moron, a klutz and a total perv; but he was also driving the car.
Tim was turning catatonic behind the wheel. Bree didn’t have to worry about hiding the texting. Tim was on a different planet. He was still high from the gasoline fumes, and then there were the murders of three people — Paul, Steven and Debbie — that fueled his maniacal drive.
Killing had always turned Tim on. Doing two in ten minutes was a quantum leap from anything he had done in the past. This was better than Cheryl or any of the others. This was the best.
Tim was also paranoid. His eyes went to the car’s mirrors more than the windshield. He was watching the gas gauge, too. Tim did not want to have to stop again. It was get to the cabin or bust as far as he was concerned.
Bree put a hand on his leg.
And Tim appreciated it.
They were getting closer to that new life.
Maybe.
But Tim was thinking, he had always thought, that perhaps life was better alone.
Old habits are hard to break. And so were old suspicions and paranoia.
What if Bree is playing me for a fool?
He had thrown the leftover rope into the trunk.
And a bullet was left in the gun.
Just in case.
Tim looked at Bree and thought, better to be prepared with a plan, right?
CHAPTER THIRTY TWO
Tim’s cabin had become a peninsula of knotty pine surrounded by an ocean of blue uniforms on three sides. The only opening was the one-lane dirt road that led to his one-story, one-bedroom, asylum for the perpetually disaffected.
St. Isidore police and their new best friends, the state police, had Tim’s sanctuary surrounded. It was so painfully obvious this was where he was taking Bree, they could not help but land there although they had stumbled over each other plenty in a testament to the side effects of interdepartmental cooperation.
SWAT teams had been inside, carefully picking the lock rather than battering down the door.
The inventory came next. It was simple. No guns, no bombs, one computer and plenty of porn.
“Not bad,” one trooper said to another.
Stimulating as it was from an adrenaline point of view to be getting ready to SWAT someone, the state police didn’t want to disturb anything, figuring Tim was already a bundle of high-frequency nerve endings that would just as soon kill Bree as fuck her.
They were sure he had done that.
They would have.
Who wouldn’t?
They wanted Tim to be calm and relaxed when he got out of the car. The first priority was rescuing Bree. If they couldn’t get a clear shot, the troopers were more than willing to let him get into the cabin.
Tim would be trapped. One door on the front, one door on the back, no cellar, no escape once the cabin was surrounded. And they only had to
close off one side. The other three were already covered.
Snipers were posted on three sides of the cabin; north, east and west. Two more snipers would move in to cover the southern entrance if Tim got inside the wood frame building. But, the SWAT team’s first plan was to let him drive in, then stop, park, and die.
“Sheldon gets out of the car on the drivers’ side, a red light dots his forehead, and the whole thing will be over in a trigger squeeze,” Chief Lumpy said.
“We don’t need to identify ourselves. We don’t need to call to him to surrender. The safety of that girl is everything,” Lumpy said. “Sheldon is going to be too close to the girl to risk any kind of an arrest.”
“We put him down. He stays down. The girl is safe,” the SWAT team commander said. “We have done this before. Follow our lead.”
POLICE THERE? BREE asked Beth, her partner in texting.
Cops r everywhere replied Beth. U did everything but get there first and walk back leaving trail of donut crumbs.
“TV people r behind us about a mile,” texted Bree. “See them on curves. Showdown coming.”
Live on TV!
So hot!
This will be over soon.
Then it’s me, you and the money, right?
Bree didn’t answer.
Beth knew she was busy, but still.
Right?
“What are you doing under that blanket?” Tim asked with a smile on his face and a gleam in his eye. “Your fingers look awfully busy. Maybe I should pull over?”
“No baby, I want to do it in the cabin,” Bree said. “I want you to start a fire. I want to get laid on a big bear rug.”
“Don’t get too far ahead of me. I hate to play catch up.”
“You have nothing to worry about, baby. You’ll never have to worry about that,” Bree said as she stroked Tim’s thigh, cuddling up against him and giggling.
He’ll never have to worry about that again, ever, she thought.
CHAPTER THIRTY THREE
Every weapon ringing Tim’s cabin property was locked and loaded as the SWAT team got the word that a black, Chevy Lumina was about a mile away.
“This is it, everybody get ready. I don’t want this girl hurt. Whatever it takes to put Sheldon down, we do it,” the state police commander said for a final time.
Tim was so into the feeling of Bree’s hand working its way toward his zipper that he didn’t notice the sunlight glinting off the field glasses of a state trooper posted behind a line of bushes.
Bree spotted the trooper with her teenage eyes and smiled a teenager’s smile as her fingers found their middle-aged target.
Tim, even though he had not seen anything, slowed the Lumina down. He was having one of his feelings. It was a Tim moment that he had learned to trust. He throttled down the car and Bree too, peeling her hand off his almost creamed jeans finger by finger.
“What the fuck is going on?” Tim said half to himself and half to Bree. “Something is wrong here. Something’s fucked up. I can feel it.”
“Nothing’s wrong baby. Everything is good. Come on. I want to get to the cabin.”
Tim shoved her across the bench seat of the old Lumina, cracking her head against the door frame, feeling bad about it, glancing to his right, reaching out to her, and then he saw it.
More correctly, Tim saw them.
St. Isidore police officers.
“Cops. There are cops out there,” Tim shouted and shoved Bree back against the passenger door when she bounced his way, stabbed the brake to the floor board, and dropped the Lumina into reverse, punched the accelerator with his foot, creating a cloud of dirt and gravel flying into the air, covering the Swinging Izzy Barney Fifes.
Looking in the mirror, he saw the TV trucks behind them. Looking to the left, Tim saw more cops.
He was positive there would be a road block ahead or worse waiting for them, but still Tim floored it, sending another angry cloud of dirt and gravel back at the TV trucks.
Tim knew this was his finish line.
Coming sooner than I thought.
But it is the finish line.
Time to fight.
Nothing left to lose.
Tim was as ugly as Tim could get.
“This is it baby,” Tim said. “They aren’t going to take us. It’s you and me to the end and this is the end. It’s our blaze of glory.”
“Fuck that shit,” said Bree, grabbing for the door handle and yanking it as hard as she could with her wrists still tied.
It was locked.
Fuck.
Chevy engineers made the Lumina into a childproof vehicle. Nobody could open a window or a door if the driver didn’t want it to happen.
And, Tim didn’t.
“Don’t jump. I know a way out,” Tim shouted, as the speedometer hit fifty-five on the dirt road leading to his cabin.
Tim’s new plan as to swing hard right. St. Isidore cops didn’t bother him much. He had dealt with them before.
“Hell, they’re my buddies. Should be able to blast right by them. They’ll move aside. If not, well, this friendship shit only goes so far,” he screamed.
Bree disagreed. She had her own plan, developed on the fly.
Bree chose life.
It was a decision she might have been wrestling with all four of her teenage years. But now the decision was made. Bree chose life, the life that would be hers if the police would only aim straight.
Tim turned to the right. Bree caught the wheel and pushed it back to the left.
Bree wasn’t stronger than Tim. Yet, she had the advantage of leverage, pushing up on the wheel, putting her shoulders and back into the effort.
Bree only weighed ninety-eight pounds on the worst days of a bad month, but she put it all into her grip on the wheel.
Tim, however, had two advantages Bree couldn’t beat. The gas pedal and the brake pedal.
He took his foot off one and slammed it down on the other.
The Lumina’s brakes locked up on the dirt and gravel, throwing Bree against the dashboard, breaking her grip on the steering wheel.
As the Lumina spun to the right, Tim grabbed Paul’s gun off the seat beside him, opened his door and jumped. Bree fell to the floor, arms over her head and face. The car slammed into a tree wrapping the front of the vehicle around her.
“Shoot them, Tim. Shoot them. Kill the cops,” Bree yelled, blood dripping from her mouth and nose.
Tim hit the ground, rolled, stood up and the instant a red light dotted on his forehead, the idea light went on inside his head.
This bitch!
Tim knew. He didn’t have to look into Bree’s eyes to know the truth. In a flash, Tim had it figured out.
She set me up! This bitch!
Tim had one bullet left in his gun. He could have fired at the cops but now Tim was glad he had not.
Discretion was the better part of valor.
Tim had never understood that before.
Now he did.
She wanted me to go through all my rounds.
This bitch.
It has been said that Hell hath no fury like that of a scorned woman.
Hell had never met Tim.
But Hell would, and soon.
Bree was huddled inside the crumpled Lumina. Her head was a perfect target. She was this season’s deer in the rifle scope for Tim. Bree fever? Were any feelings left for this girl who brought his internet dreams off the small screen and into his bedroom.
Fat chance.
Tim pulled the hammer on the revolver back, took a bead between Bree’s beautiful eyes and failed to feel the red dot on his forehead.
Her eyes were the last thing Tim saw before a flash of white light.
He rose to the tips of his toes, felt the glowing warmth of his next world, and fell over in this world.
CHAPTER THIRTY FOUR
Bree was bruised, battered, bloody, and soaked with Tim’s brains, blood, and skull fragments. St. Isidore rescue crews pulled her out of the crumpled L
umina after they cut through the twisted metal.
The TV crews had their satellite dishes and reporters’ teeth beaming. One of the “first responders pulled the young woman, this kidnapping victim from the wreckage of the car that very nearly became her deadly coffin,” as one TV reporter in a helicopter reported the rescue live.
“Her former teacher, Timothy Sheldon, is dead. A red hole on his forehead marking the entrance of the bullet that would end his life and free his victim,” said another reporter.
“And now this young girl, Bree, as the world has come to know her, can begin her new life. This is such a tragic story. A kidnapping victim, her mother and stepfather murdered in a deadly attack on their home, believed to have been perpetrated by the very same man who abducted young Bree from a St. Isidore City park,” said a third.
Tim was arrested, tried, and convicted by the media before the last of his blood and brains had seeped out of the fist-sized hole on the back of his head. No objections could be raised. No appeal filed. No stay of his execution was possible.
Tim’s body and the Lumina were covered with yellow tarps. The media crews finished their reports — kept away from Bree by police officers — and went home.
But they didn’t leave the story. It had legs that wouldn’t stop running. The spin-off, second day, and second week stories would run every day for a month.
The medical examiner’s office van was the last to arrive at Tim’s cabin and the last to leave, putting Tim into one of their large-size black bags and driving away into the clouds of dust and dirt left by all the other vehicles.
So many police to kill just one man, Bree thought with a smirk. I only needed one man to kill three people.
Bree was huddled under a blanket in the back seat of a state police SUV, the windows darkened to keep unwelcoming prying eyes and camera lenses out.
“I have bad news about your mother and stepfather,” said one of the officers in the seat facing Bree.
“I know, he killed them!” Bree said, bursting into tears. “My mommy and daddy are gone.”