by K. J. Dahlen
The room went silent for a few minutes. The men looked troubled.
“Once the FBI step in Charlie will step aside and let him handle things.” Hades nodded at the pile of jewelry. “This will become their evidence and we won’t be able to stop them from tramping all over the farm.”
“We’ll give them a copy of the journals but keep the originals until Jordan Tate is in jail,” Jessie stated.
Hades shook his head. “Yeah, right. FBI is going to come in here and take what they want. They’ll call it justified but they’ll take it all the same.”
“They can’t take it if it isn’t here,” Jessie told him. “We promised them a copy and a copy is all they will get.”
“Hades has a point,” Lucifer agreed. “If the journals are here, they will tear the place apart until they find them.”
Jessie turned her head to look at him “Then once the books are copied take the originals and hide them. You will be the only one to know where they are. I can’t tell them what I don’t know, and neither can anyone else.” Shaking her head, she added, “Not that I doubt your men’s ability to keep a secret but this way, they wouldn’t have to lie. They wouldn’t know where the books are.”
Lucifer looked at his men and one by one, they nodded their agreement. Then he looked at her. “I can do that.”
“But what are we gonna do about this Tate guy?” Hades asked. “Are we gonna leave it to the Feds to bring him in?”
Lucifer smiled. “Are you on crack boy? Of course, we’re not. But we do have to draw him into making a mistake, a mistake that will secure his capture. After all, we have the right to protect our home.”
Hades grinned slowly and looked around the table at the others.
They all seemed to agree with Lucifer.
Hades looked back at Lucifer and asked, “You got a plan boss?”
“Not yet, but if we put our heads together, we can come up with one.” Lucifer smirked.
*
It was late afternoon when his office door opened, and Charlie looked up to find Mitch Kimber standing in his doorway. Charlie leaned back in his chair and stared at his oldest friend.
Mitch looked exhausted. He came inside the office and sat down opposite Charlie. “Well my friend, you opened up a rather nasty can of worms this time, didn’t you?”
Charlie nodded. “Yeah, I guess I did.”
“How did you come by this information in the first place?”
“I told you about the journals last night.” Charlie shook his head. He pushed some pages toward Mitch. “These are what I was given at two this morning.”
Mitch barely glanced at the pages Charlie handed over to him. He had a feeling Charlie knew more now than he did then. “What is it?”
“We might have figured out who the killer is.” Charlie twirled a pen in his fingers.
“Is that a problem?”
“It could be,” Charlie admitted. “Ever heard of a man named Jordan Tate?”
Mitch frown for a moment, then slowly nodded. “Yeah, in fact we’ve used him as a liaison between us and the police departments as a profiler. Why?”
“Someone I know dug into his background and found it to be a big fat lie.” Charlie growled. “This guy killed the real Jordan Tate when he was a kid and just stepped into his life. He so totally became Jordan Tate that no one ever knew the difference. The real Jordan Tate didn’t have any family, so it was easy for him to do just that, step in and take over another man’s life. We still wouldn’t know it if this guy hadn’t dug a little deeper than most.”
“So, what’s the problem?” Mitch asked.
“It’s all speculation right now. Jordan Tate is in town at the moment and we can’t exactly question him without giving any the whole game.”
“What exactly are we looking at here?” Mitch asked.
“The young woman in question, Jessie Grant found a set of three journals hidden at her grandmother’s old farm three hours away from here. From what the girl told me, the journals contain information that a man referring to himself as Michael murdered and buried nine women in the woods around a farm at the top of the bluff overlooking Whiskey Bend. When she went to see if the journal was correct or not, the MC living on the farm took her in. She says she’s there of her own free will, so I can’t do anything about that for the time being, but the men uncovered one of the bodies this Michael claims he buried. When they told me, I called you.”
Mitch nodded. “We did some checking and found three more possible sites. We haven’t found any bodies yet, but we’re still looking.” He shrugged then added, “The three bodies we did find might not belong to this Michael guy but we’re still trying to find out who these women are and who might have killed them.”
Charlie nodded. “I might be able to help you with that. The girl, Jessie Grant is making us a copy of the journals she found at the farm. This Michael might have recorded the location of the other women he buried over the years.”
Mitch frowned. “She’s making us a copy? Why doesn’t she just give us the originals?”
Charlie shook his head. “She won’t do that. She’s afraid you might come after the men that live on the farm as suspects.”
Mitch leaned forward in his chair. “Could they be suspects?”
“Not a chance. My nephew Aaron is one of the men who live out there and he was in the military until about four years ago. So were the rest of those guys.”
“Then why would she need to keep the originals?”
“She has her reasons,” Charlie told him. He twirled the pen again in his fingers.
The action brought Mitch’s tired eyes to his fingers. Then he frowned and looked at his friend’s face. He could see Charlie was nervous about something. “What are you not telling me Charlie?”
“We were wrong about it being nine women,” Charlie told his friend quietly.
Mitch had a feeling he didn’t like in the pit of his belly. He motioned for Charlie to continue.
“It was eight women and a little girl.”
Mitch slowly hung his head. His mind went blank and he didn’t want to feel anything. He knew in the moment he would never find his family because they were already gone. He’d felt it six and a half years ago. And yet, he kept searching for them every day. He would search the internet, social media and everywhere else he could think of to look.
He often told himself that Frannie wouldn’t just give up trying to find him. Now he knew she hadn’t. If she was this close to being home she would have found a way to get in touch with him. Mitch lifted his head to stare at Charlie. “Frannie and Ashley?”
Charlie nodded.
Mitch sighed. “Are you sure?”
“Jessie told me their names were mentioned in the journals. I haven’t read it for myself, but she found evidence. This Michael character kept a memento of his victims. She found a set of barrettes in a pile of jewelry he kept in a small box.”
“So, if this killer is Jordan Tate why do you keep referring to him as Michael?”
Charlie nodded at the stack pf papers between them. “In the pages of his journals, that’s the name he calls himself. He sometimes speaks in the third person about what he’s done and why.”
Mitch was silent for a few minutes then suggested, “I need to meet this Jessie Grant and I need to see for myself these journals I’ve bene hearing so much about.”
“I’d like nothing more than to take you up to the farm right now but we have to be very careful about how we do this. We can’t alert Jordan that we know he’s been found out. I don’t want or need a panicked serial killer on my hands and I don’t want to put any citizens of this town in a hostage situation.”
Mitch got up and walked over to the window overlooking the main street of the town. From this point, he could see St. John’s Lutheran Church in the distance. Turning his head slightly he saw the steeple of St. Vincent’s Catholic Church across the street.
A little closer to where he stood he knew there were three separate ba
rs, Doogan’s, Dam View and Shorty’s. When he and Charlie were growing up here there were seven bars in and around this small town but over time, things had changed. Sometimes those changes were good and sometimes bad. In this case, he wasn’t sure if it were good or bad. He knew there were businesses in between the bars, one a bakery, a general store and the small building that was at one time a hardware store.
Flashing back, he remembered growing up here, falling in love here and then he remembered the day he left this town. When Frannie left without saying goodbye, he’d been unable to stay here. There were just too many memories. He hadn’t known why she left and he’d been bitter for several years. Then Charlie told him why, told him she didn’t have a choice. His friend told him Frannie ended up pregnant with his child and her father shipped her off to hide the pregnancy.
Mitch had been so furious with himself when he heard he had a child out there somewhere. That Frannie hadn’t left him of her own free will. It took him eight years to find them but he never gave up.
Ashley was a beautiful little girl and Frannie had been waiting all that time for Mitch to find them. She hadn’t known how much he loved her either. They had been planning a new life together but before they got married, she wanted to confront her father. He offered to go with her, but she insisted this was something she had to do alone, just her and Ashley. Her father, Jack Morgan had a farm ten miles outside of Whiskey Bend.
Now he knew why she’d never made it home.
“So, what do you suggest we do?” he asked without looking away from the window.
“Let me call Aaron and see if they’ve copied the books yet. I can ask them what they’ve got in mind for capturing Jordan. I know for a fact these guys aren’t about to let him escape.” Charlie reached for the phone.
Mitch turned and frowned at Charlie. “These guys? What about them? They belong to an MC don’t they? What so special about that?”
Charlie paused with his hand over the phone. He looked at his old friend. “These guys are so much more than just an MC, my friend. Each and every one of them is ex-military, highly trained officers and grunts. Aaron and his friends have more skills in hand to hand combat than you and I will ever know. I believe they were all special forces at one time.”
Mitch shrugged. “So what? That doesn’t mean much in this situation now does it?” He moved back over to the desk and sat down. His exhaustion was even more present now. “This is a police matter, not a civilian matter. It’s not even a military matter. From what you’ve already told me, we don’t have much in the way of actual evidence other than the journals. Journals we can’t even get our hands on. We can only read a copy of the original journal. We don’t have a legal connection to the killer other than the name Michael and we can’t prove that this Michael character is actually Jordan Tate. Is that about right? Isn’t that all we got right now?”
Charlie frowned. The tone in Mitch’s voice didn’t set right. He sat back in his chair and stared at the other man. “I know you’re upset and tired but this is what we got right now.”
Mitch narrowed his eyes and glared at Charlie. “If you can’t handle this, I can bring in some agents to take over this case.”
“I really wish you wouldn’t do that.” Charlie looked upset.
“As we are dealing with a serial killer with nine bodies out there I could step in and take over. That way the chips would fall where they may and the blame would be on my shoulders. Your nephew and his friends would be my problem then. The witness could go into WITSEC and we would protect her if the journals are telling a real story. Jordan Tate might escape but we’d have every agent of the FBI looking for him. He wouldn’t stay out there for long.”
Charlie just glared at the man on the other side of the desk. “If you do that my friend, you will see firsthand the beginning of world war three, right here in Whiskey Bend. Those boys out there have been in hell already and if they are pushed, they will bring a war here to the streets of this town. A war that no one will win.”
Mitch shook his head. “If that’s the case, then that would be on them not on me. I would just be doing my job in trying to bring a serial killer to justice.”
Charlie shook his head. “What you don’t know is that some of those boys have been prisoners of war. They spent months in a remote camp where they were tortured until they were finally rescued. If you threaten to throw them in jail for not cooperating, they will fight back. The girl, Jessie has been claimed by the President of the club and that’s nothing to dismiss so easily. If you take her away from them and put her into WITSEC, they will tear this country apart until they find her and bring her home to him. Then they’ll come looking for you.”
Mitch scoffed. “And what will they do to me? If they’re soldiers like you said, they won’t do anything to me.”
Charlie leaned forward and glared at his friend. “If you push them, they will push back. They will destroy you if you hurt what they have.”
Mitch just shook his head. “You just told me Frannie and Ashley are dead and have been for some time. Do you actually think I have anything left to destroy? That I care for a moment what they could do to me? I’ve got nothing left worth taking away.”
“Do you think your pain trumps everyone else’s or everything else?” Charlie asked him in disgust. “You aren’t the only one who’s lost something here. There could be seven other bodies out there that need to be found, seven other families that need closure and answers to questions of what happened to their own loved ones.”
Mitch just stared at him. “I’m sorry but right now I don’t care about anything but my own pain. I’ve been looking for Frannie and my baby girl for almost sixteen years. I found them once and then they slipped between my fingers and a serial killer took them both away from me forever. That bastard killed my future and I’m sorry, but I don’t care about anything right now but finding them and bringing them home.” Shaking his head, he admitted, “I know that sounds selfish, but I can’t help it. Frannie was the reason I left this town to begin with. We were going to build a life here, a good life, one with a family, raising kids and growing old together. Her father took that away from us for no other reason than he thought we were too young to know what we wanted. Now I’ll do what I have to do to recover what he cost me.”
“But you can’t just barge in there and take control and push these people around just because you’re hurting.” Charlie shook his head. “All that will accomplish is trouble. Let me mediate this and we can work it out, so no one loses.”
Mitch didn’t say anything for a moment then he asked, “What about this Jordan Tate. Where is he right now? Please tell me you have his murderous ass sitting in a jail cell.”
Charlie shook his head. “I have eyes on the man but until we have no concrete evidence against him we can’t touch him. If we spook him, he’ll go underground and then no one gets justice. Not you, not Frannie nor the countless other women he’s killed. I’d rather this ends here and now with him off the streets for good.”
Mitch didn’t want to see the other man’s point but he did. All he wanted right now was to alleviate his own pain. He knew deep down in his heart, it was wrong but he couldn’t help it. “So how do we play this then?” he finally asked. “Do we have to beg for their cooperation?”
“No, we don’t have to beg for anything,” Charlie assured him. “The girl, Jessie Grant wants to cooperate. She knows that by finding the journals she’s got a target on her back. She went to see if what the journals said was true, but the MC stopped her. She didn’t want to tell them about the journals but in the end, she did.”
Mitch looked skeptical. “And what, out of the goodness of their hearts they believed her?”
“No they didn’t,” Charlie said quietly. “The President, Lucifer owns the farm and he wanted to know if there was anything to her story. He didn’t want anything to jeopardize him or his men. I know a few of they’re stories. They live out there because they want to, because they can be free and sti
ll live a productive life. They will fight tooth and nail to stay safe. When Jessie told them there could be nine bodies buried on that land, then of course, they wanted to know if it was true or not. They found out it could be. They found the first body and they called me in. At the same time, they captured a camera feed of a man going to where the body was buried and when he found out it was no longer there, he was pissed. Now we never got to see the man’s face but we think it could have been Jordan.”
Mitch nodded. “When you called me this morning I began to look for other areas this could have happened. So far, its only speculation but we identified three other areas. We’re hoping the journals will give us more details. That’s why I came here.”
Charlie looked toward the window and noted the sun was setting. “We can’t be seen going out there so as soon as it’s dark, we can leave. If Jordan is watching the farm he won’t see us going back out there.”
“You said you had eyes on him, what did you mean?”
“I mean one of the men at the farm has been watching him. My nephew called me after sunup this morning. They’re keeping an eye on the man.”
Mitch just stared at the other man. “Is that how you want it?”
Charlie nodded. “I don’t have a choice here. If Jordan sees a bunch of extra cops or even FBI agents in the area, he’s likely to run or start killing again. I don’t want either to happen.”
“Ok, let’s go see what the journals actually have to say and go from there.” Mitch wearily got to his feet.
Chapter Twelve
Twenty minutes later, they pulled up to the farm house. Three men were standing around the parking lot, but they didn’t stop Charlie and Mitch from going inside.
Once inside, Charlie saw Lucifer, Demon, Jessie and several others sitting at one of the tables.
There was a large stack of printed pages sitting on the table and as Charlie and Mitch sat down, they glanced at the pages before they looked over at Jessie.
“Is this the journal pages?” Mitch asked.
Jessie nodded.