by Becky Durfee
“That’s a can-do.”
After circling the block, she passed the house again, trying to be slow enough for Zack to read the number, but not so slow as to attract attention to her car. Zack was able to get the address; whether or not she had been inconspicuous remained to be seen.
“Twenty-five-twenty-one,” he said.
“Perfect. Now don’t let me forget that before I can call Kyle.”
Zack began a twenty-five-twenty-one mantra as they looped around the block. By the time they parked, Zack had repeated it so many times that Jenny didn’t think she’d ever be able to forget that number.
A quick press of a button got her on the phone with Kyle. “I really need a favor,” she said as soon as he picked up. “I mean, like, now, if possible.”
“Sure, what is it?” he asked.
“Can you please tell me who lives at twenty-five-twenty-one Seven Springs Road in Bennett?”
“That should be easy enough,” he replied. “Let me get on that. I’ll text you the name.”
“You’re my hero,” she said before she hung up.
She bobbed her foot nervously as she waited for his repsonse. Her phone chirped rather quickly, stating, The house is owned by Tanner and Sophia Kirkland.
Jenny relayed the information to Zack. “Who is that?” he asked.
“I don’t know, but I would assume they are a married couple. I doubt he’s in there attacking the wife, especially considering he looked like he was just casually hanging out with that other guy.
“So, these are just friends of Mark’s?”
“That’s what I’m guessing. Let me check something out, though.” She shot a text back to Kyle. Can I have pictures of them, please?
The response came almost immediately. That will take a little more time. Hang on.
The couple sat wordlessly as they waited. Zack reached down and pulled the lever next to his seat, causing the back to recline. Jenny leaned her elbow against the window sill, using her hand to hold her head up. After a while, a chirp caused Jenny to look at her phone, which had a picture of a woman on the screen. She appeared to be an Italian woman with dark hair and eyes, looking to be in her mid-to-late twenties. This woman didn’t seem familiar to Jenny in any capacity; it seemed that neither she nor the victims had ever come into contact with her. Soon, another photo appeared, scooting Sophia’s picture out of the way.
It was the stocky bouncer she had seen in her vision earlier in the day.
“Uh oh,” Jenny said. “This might be trouble.”
“Why? What’s up?”
“The guy who lives here works with Mark at Shenanigans. But it isn’t his job that scares me, it’s his build.”
“Ah,” Zack said. “I’m guessing he’s stocky and he might be our note-writing friend?”
“Yes,” Jenny replied, “those friendly little notes. Do you think they’re in there conspiring as we speak?”
“It looked more like they were watching a baseball game, if you ask me.”
Letting out a sigh, Jenny said, “I certainly hope you are right.”
Jenny’s bottom felt numb. She had already peed in somebody’s front yard, and she was feeling the urge to do it again. The past few hours of surveillance had felt like days. “I think he’s having a sleepover,” she said with a yawn.
“This stake-out business isn’t all it’s cracked up to be. You’d think that being a cop or a private investigator would be cool, but if this is what it’s like, it’s not really all that fun.”
“I’m sure Kyle would tell you it’s not always a laugh a minute.”
Silence took over the car again. Zack stretched. Jenny took a mint out of her purse and popped it in her mouth. They waited.
And they waited some more.
Eventually, Jenny noticed some tail lights in what appeared to be the driveway where Mark had parked. “Zack,” she said with a nudge, “this might be it.”
They both sat up straighter as Jenny grasped the key and Zack turned on the phone. The car backed out of the driveway, heading in Zack and Jenny’s direction. She muttered a few choice swear words under her breath as he passed them, but he didn’t seem to recognize their car or notice that there were people sitting inside it.
“That’s him,” Zack said. “At least, that’s his car.” He held up the phone. “We have movement.”
Waiting until the monitored vehicle was safely around the corner and out of sight, Jenny turned the key and maneuvered a three-point turn. Soon, she was following in the path outlined by the blue arrow.
A quick glance at the clock showed it was three-fifteen.
“I’m not sure what outcome I’m hoping for,” Jenny said nervously. “Part of me hopes he just goes home to bed, but we’ll never catch him that way.”
“It doesn’t matter what we hope for,” Zack replied. “We’re going to get what we get. He just turned left.”
“Onto what street?”
Zack squinted at the screen. “Looks like Elwood Avenue.”
Jenny read the street signs until Elwood Avenue came into sight. Taking a left, she didn’t see tail lights in front of her.
“Right on Cooperstown,” Zack added.
Putting on her high-beams, Jenny looked for the street sign, feeling relief when she found it. They proceeded this way for several minutes until Zack announced, “His car just stopped.”
“Where?” Jenny asked.
“Talmadge Road,” he replied. “One of the places he circled this afternoon.”
Chapter 22
“Oh my God, you’re kidding,” Jenny said.
“I wish I was,” Zack assured her.
“Where do I go?”
“Left on Spruce, then another left on Talmadge.”
“Oh my God. Oh my God. Oh my God.” Jenny kept the chant going in a whisper as her whole body tensed. If she missed a turn, someone could literally die. The sign for Spruce appeared, and she made the left.
“Talmadge shouldn’t be that far,” Zack said.
His words turned out to be true. She took a left again, gunning the gas pedal, unsure how far down the road she needed to go. After about thirty seconds, Mark’s car appeared, parked along the right side of the road.
Now to figure out which house he was targeting.
As soon as their car ground to a halt, Zack was outside looking around. Jenny joined him soon after, hearing Zack say, “There he is.”
She followed the direction of Zack’s pointed finger, seeing only a shadow hop down from a side window and disappear into the backyard of the house.
Zack started to run in that direction, but Jenny shouted, “Zack, don’t! He has a knife!” She dialed the police.
Instead of following Mark, Zack ran to the front door of the house, ringing the bell incessantly.
“Nine-one-one, what is your emergency?”
“We need the police to come out to Talmadge Road. Now. We just caught a man trying to break into a woman’s window.”
“What’s the house number?”
Jenny looked at the mailbox. “Eighty-six-oh-three.”
“Where is the man now?”
The porch light of the house came on, and Jenny could see more light peek out from behind the curtain, which the person inside had just moved out of place to see what was going on.
“He ran into the backyard,” Jenny explained. “He’s wearing dark clothes. We can’t see him anymore. I think his name is Mark Neighbors.”
“Please!” Zack shouted to the person inside as he knocked feverishly. “Open the door! We just caught someone trying to break into your house!”
It worried Jenny that she didn’t know where Mark was. He could have been breaking into someone else’s house for all she knew. A thought popped into her head. She reached in the car and pressed the horn, not releasing it for several seconds.
She did it again.
Lights came on all around her. The neighbors were most likely upset, but they were awake—and they wouldn’t be attacked in th
eir sleep by Mark Neighbors.
“Police have been dispatched,” the operator said. “What’s happening now?”
“I’m waking the neighbors,” Jenny replied, wailing on the horn again. “I don’t want anyone to be caught off guard if he tries to break into someone else’s house.”
“What the hell’s the matter with you?” a man’s voice called. She saw his silhouette on his front porch.
The front door of the victimized house opened, and a young woman stood in the entryway. Jenny couldn’t hear what Zack was saying to her above the horn, but she could see the woman put her hand over her mouth and step outside. Zack led her to the side of the house where Mark had been, pointing at the window.
“Shut up!” somebody screamed.
“They hate me now,” Jenny muttered, “but they will love me in the morning.”
“Can you see the intruder now?” the operator asked.
“No, ma’am,” Jenny said, “I still can’t. And that terrifies me.”
Jenny heard the operator speak, although she knew it wasn’t to her. “We’ll need the canine unit to track the suspect. He may have gone into hiding.”
The canine unit. Jenny smiled. The dogs would find him, no doubt.
“Oh my God, lay off the horn!” someone else yelled.
Feeling as if the entire neighborhood had already been woken up, Jenny did just that.
Without the sound of the horn, she could make out the sirens in the distance. “I hear them,” Jenny said. “The police are on their way.”
“Stay on the phone with me until they get there, okay?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
It seemed to take forever for the police to arrive. The sirens kept getting louder, but she must have originally heard them from miles away. Finally, red and blue lights rounded the corner, eventually coming so close that their brightness was blinding. She shielded her eyes as the officers rushed out of the car.
“He went that way,” Jenny told them, pointing behind the woman’s house. “He was trying to break into a window on the side of the house.”
The brave officers trotted off into the darkness, hands on their weapons. She hoped they didn’t get ambushed.
“They’re here,” she told the operator over the phone. “Thanks for your help.” She hung up as several more police cars arrived. Most of the officers scattered to find Mark, but a few stayed behind.
One male officer approached Jenny. “Are you the one who called?”
“Yes, sir.”
He held his flashlight above his shoulder, fixating it on Jenny. “Hey,” he said, “I know you. You’re the psychic.”
“Exactly,” Jenny said, “and this guy is the serial killer you’ve been looking for all along.” She gestured over her shoulder with her thumb. “Not Gary Kimbrough.”
He paused for a moment, apparently unsure what to say. “What happened here?”
“He was trying to break into a window.” Releasing a sigh, she added, “Rachel Moore let me know in a vision that Mark Neighbors was her killer. My husband and I put a tracking device on his car, so we know he’d circled this house a few times earlier today. Sure enough, he came back out here tonight, but we were following him. When we pulled up just a few minutes ago, he was trying to get into the window. He left when he heard my husband say we’d found him.”
“And which direction did he go?”
Jenny pointed. “Around the house. That way.”
“That his car?” The officer aimed his flashlight at Mark’s vehicle.
“Sure is.”
Another squad car pulled up, and Jenny saw the outline of a man emerge, led by an overly-excited German Shepard.
“Grandy. Over here,” the officer who was speaking with Jenny said.
The canine patrol officer walked over with the dog, who looked like it was about to have the time of its life. “What’s the scenario?”
“The guy was caught breaking into a window, and then he ran off behind the house. That’s the perp’s car. I bet you can get a scent off that.”
“Excellent,” the canine officer said. “Come on, Lexi.”
The dog trotted off and was led to the driver’s side door of Mark’s car. With a single gesture, the officer commanded the dog to sniff the handle. Lexi’s tail wagged as she took in the scent.
“Okay, Lexi,” he said firmly, “find it.”
The dog ran excitedly in a back and forth pattern, nose to the ground, heading straight for the window that Mark had just tried to climb into. Jenny watched as Lexi paused there for a moment, circling around, before leading her handler right along the path Mark had taken into the darkness.
“He can run, but he can’t hide,” Jenny remarked with a smile.
“Nope,” the officer replied. “Lexi will find him. She always does.”
At that moment, Zack approached with his arm around the woman who lived in the house. Jenny couldn’t imagine the fear and confusion going on in that poor woman’s head. One minute she had been sound asleep; the next moment she was waking up to a nightmare.
“Are you the resident?” the officer asked the shaken woman.
She nodded wearily. “Yeah, I live here.”
“Can you tell me what happened?”
Looking bewildered, she replied, “I don’t even know. I woke up when I heard my doorbell ringing. Apparently, somebody was trying to break into my window?” Tucking her hair behind her ear, she added, “I thought they caught that guy.”
Jenny closed her eyes, trying to swallow her anger toward Gary Kimbrough. Now that she was actually able to lay eyes on the woman whose life was put into jeopardy because of his false confession, her hate toward the man multiplied. Maintaining her self-control, however, she simply said, “Sadly, I think they arrested the wrong man.”
The officer didn’t argue.
“Tell me,” Jenny asked the woman, “do you ever go to Shenanigans?”
“Yeah, I do,” the victim said.
Jenny looked at the policeman. “And there’s your connection.”
The sound of aggressive barking interrupted the conversation. They all looked in the direction of the noise, hearing an officer shout, “Come out with your hands up!”
Lexi snarled and growled like she wanted to tear Mark apart; the sick and twisted part of Jenny wished they would let her.
“Get on the ground! Hands behind your back!”
While she couldn’t see any of the action, those were the best words Jenny could have ever heard. It was over. The women of Bennett were once again safe, and she could go back to her baby. The thought of it made her feel physically lighter.
Out of the darkness, three officers walked with their hands on Mark, who was cuffed and hanging his head. They were heading to one of the patrol cars when Jenny asked the officer, “Can I go over and spit on him?”
“Nah,” he replied, sounding amused. “Your DNA might mess with the evidence. Let his fellow inmates take care of him; they’ll make sure justice is served.”
She knew of the hierarchy that existed inside prison walls; she wondered how low Mark would be on it.
Her thoughts were interrupted by the sight of officers unraveling a large roll of crime scene tape around the entire property. She had to step out of the way so that she would end up on the civilian side of it.
“Jenny,” she heard a familiar voice say. She turned around to see a silhouette of a man approaching her. Although she couldn’t see his face until he got right up next to her, she knew it was Chief DePalo from his voice. “Clearly, I owe you an apology,” he announced, “and a huge thank you.”
“It’s no problem, sir,” Jenny replied. “I’m just glad it all worked out.”
He shook his head. “I should have had more faith in you.”
“Under the circumstances, I can see why you didn’t. To be honest, I still have no idea how Gary Kimbrough knew details of the crime scene that he shouldn’t have.”
“Loose lips,” the chief said. “Just a few hours ago,
we figured out that one of our rookie officers had told the details to his wife, who told her sister, who told her neighbor—who happened to be Gary’s aunt. He overheard the conversation.”
“Oh, dear,” Jenny said.
“Yeah, we’re going to have a little chat with Rookie when this is all over.”
She watched the officers lead Mark to the car, opening the back door and pushing his head down as they guided him inside. The door closed behind him.
“Well, I just wanted to come over and thank you, but now I’ve got a lot to take care of,” Chief DePalo said as he put his hand on Jenny’s shoulder.
“By all means. But before you go, I want to give you one more name.”
“And who is that?”
“Tanner Kirkland,” Jenny replied. “Something tells me he’s in on this, and he’s the guy who has been harassing me.”
“Tanner Kirkland,” the chief repeated, “got it.” He smiled and walked away.
Chapter 23
Jenny sat the car seat down in the foyer of Mick and John’s townhouse. As Lucy, the dog, curiously sniffed Steve from head to toe, Jenny greeted Mick with what she reminded herself was just a friendly hug. “Wow, he’s gotten big,” Mick noted, looking at the baby.
“Tell me about it,” Jenny said. “He’s growing so fast.” She picked the car seat up again as they walked into the living room. “It looks great,” she added, looking around. “I love what you’ve done with the place.”
Mick laughed, his beautiful blue eyes twinkling. “We just added a few comforts of home, that’s all.”
“Well, it looks nice. So, how are things going?” Jenny took the baby out of his car seat and held him—something she hadn’t been able to stop doing ever since she’d gotten home from Missouri the day before.
“They’re going well,” Mick said, inviting Jenny to sit down on the couch.
She took a seat, placing little Steve on her lap. “Really?” she said skeptically. “The reason I wanted to come here a little early was so you could tell me the truth.”