A Dark Mind

by T. R. Ragan

  Stacey shifted in her seat, her eyes downcast.

  “Is something wrong?”

  “No, not at all. I was thinking of Jennifer. Please continue.”

  “I was saying that their loving gestures made me think they were newlyweds, which is why I was surprised to learn they had been married for so long. The second time I met them was when I dropped a contract off at their office downtown. Jennifer was on the phone and she was more than annoyed by the caller, especially agitated when the man refused to take no for an answer…something to do with someone hiring a limo driver for their anniversary party. Before I left, Michael showed up to check on Jennifer and take her to dinner.” Lizzy let out a sharp breath. “That would have been it, except Lieutenant Greer allowed me inside the realty office yesterday.” Lizzy opened her purse, pulled out a piece of paper, and handed it to Stacey. It was a copy of a picture she’d taken on her cell phone.

  “After Jennifer hung up the phone, she crumpled up a yellow sticky note and threw it toward the garbage bin, only she missed. On a hunch, I waited until Greer was in the other room before I looked to see if the note was still there. Of course, I couldn’t take anything that might be considered evidence, but that didn’t mean I couldn’t take a picture of the note. It’s all scribbles and hard to read.”

  “Best Limousines,” Stacey said, squinting to make out the letters.

  Lizzy nodded. “That’s it. That’s all I’ve got. A gut feeling that Michael is innocent and a picture of a sticky note.”

  “Thank you,” Stacey said. She picked up a photo album and handed it to Lizzy, asking her to take a look. As Lizzy flipped through page after page of Stacey and her family sharing many happy moments with Jennifer and Michael, it was her turn to listen.

  “Although I’m new to Channel 10 News, I come from a long line of reporters. My father and I have had endless talks about trusting our gut feelings. Between my father and me, we’ve talked to dozens of criminals, cold-blooded killers included. Of course, I recognize that you were forced to live with one of the worst kinds of lunatics for months. Neither of us is being naïve, Lizzy. Michael is innocent.”

  After a while, Lizzy set the photo album aside and said, “I told Lieutenant Greer I wanted to talk to Michael.”

  “Why? What would you say to him?”

  “I’m not sure at this point. I want to ask him a few questions, see his reaction, I guess.”

  Stacey nodded as she processed Lizzy’s plan. “You’ll let me know if you get to talk to Michael?”

  “Of course.”

  They both stood.

  Lizzy offered her hand, and Stacey clasped it between hers. In that moment, she noticed a look of desperation in Stacey’s eyes. Why? Something told her there was more to this story than Stacey was letting on. But for now, she decided to keep that thought to herself. Instincts were great, but there was a lot to be said for patience, too.

  CHAPTER 10

  I talked to her, saying I was sorry for what I had done. It was the first time I had apologized to someone I had killed.

  —Peter Sutcliffe

  Saturday, May 12, 2012

  The wooden stairs creaked as he descended, each step deliberate, his hand brushing against the cold wall in the dark until his right foot landed on the concrete surface below. Reaching outward and upward, he grasped onto the end of the chain and gave it a tug.

  Click.

  And then there was light.

  Everything was immaculate, just the way he liked it. The room smelled of disinfectant. Both cages at the far end of the room contained a twin mattress, a blanket, granola bars, water bottles, and even a porta potty. He was ready for the next hurrah.

  He’d spent countless hours working on his special room, making sure everything was in its place. Every time he came down the steep wooden stairs, which was not nearly as often as he would have liked, he felt overwhelmed with pride at what he’d created. One smoothly plastered wall was covered with memorabilia, including handcrafted necklaces adorned with rings, tufts of hair, gold teeth, driver’s licenses, a thumb, fingers, and five beautiful toes.

  Breathing in, he felt dizzy with satisfaction as he summoned the smell of fear and relived the terror of days and nights long past.

  His favorite bit of décor was the amazing heart-shaped design he’d made out of Susan and Raymond Fenster’s dried skin, which had been framed years ago. Susan made up the left side of the heart and Raymond the right. He’d taken special care in preserving the skin before letting it dry by using a mixture of formaldehyde and solvents. The tiny stitches he’d used to bind the two halves were hardly noticeable.

  Susan and Raymond may have suffered the longest of all his victims, but they were the only pair of all his couples who had willingly died in the name of love. Neither had been able to bear seeing the other suffer and so they had made a pact. If the opportunity arose, Raymond would kill Susan somehow and then take his own life immediately afterward. Although they had been in separate cages at the time, the cages were close enough that they were able to reach out of one and into the other if they wanted to touch each other.

  After listening to the two of them talk about starving to death in order to end their nightmare, he’d handed Susan a hunting knife, giving her the option to kill herself fast and efficiently. He’d been surprised when, more excitedly than ever, they continued their suicidal talk. He even tried to talk them out of it, but their minds were made up. Within an hour after Susan had gotten the knife, Raymond had sliced his wife’s throat clean through.

  Despite his promise to let Raymond go if he followed through in killing his wife, Raymond didn’t hesitate to cut his own throat after killing his wife, but not before reaching through the bars and clasping onto the hand of his beloved.

  Susan and Raymond, as far as he was concerned, were the epitome of true love.

  For all eternity.

  As he stared longingly at his wall of memorabilia and relived many of his best moments, his thoughts wandered. The room was windowless, and, more importantly, it was also soundproof. The small hidden door leading into his hideout was made of galvanized steel. Nothing escaped, including the eerie sounds made by thousands of beetles and their young as they burrowed through the wood inside a six foot–by–six foot box with wire mesh sidings.

  He’d avoided bugs when he was small: worms, spiders, mosquitoes, you name it. It didn’t matter what kind of bug, he’d kept his distance. He could handle rats and frogs, but bugs…bugs had too many legs and weird-looking eyes. They clicked and buzzed and they were practically invisible—now you see them, now you don’t. He never knew when a bug was going to end up in his soup or drop from the ceiling while he slept. They were quiet, creeping up on him when he was unaware.

  But it was the pine sawyer beetle that really made his skin crawl. They were large, cylindrical, hard-shelled insects with long wriggly antennae, and yet they could squeeze into any crevice, no matter how thin or small. Beetles were stealth.

  Years ago, surrounded by darkness as he slept, he had no way of telling how many beetles were under his bed or clinging to the walls, waiting and watching. He’d discovered the pine sawyer beetle after the Becks had adopted him. He had just turned thirteen. The pine sawyer beetle, he’d realized after moving into their home, made him feel things he never thought he was capable of feeling. They frightened him.

  At night, when the windows were left open, he’d hear the peculiar, unnatural hum of the fleshy, round-bodied larvae as they burrowed their way through the soft center of the many trees surrounding the property, and he would wonder if they were planning an attack. His heart would beat faster and his hands would grow clammy. Maybe it had been the beetle’s indifference to his existence that had enthralled him back then.

  His gaze left the cage and instead focused on the jar sitting next to the television. He couldn’t help but shake his head every time he looked at the preserved heart inside. Betsy Weaver had been by far the loudest, most obnoxious person he’d ever had the
pleasure to slaughter. Although it didn’t always happen, he liked to keep the clients he brought to his special hideout for as long as possible before and after their death. But within hours of abducting Betsy Weaver, he’d recognized his mistake. She didn’t love anyone but herself. She had been married for nearly thirty years, but she’d been willing to throw her poor husband under the bus within minutes of arriving.

  To this day, Stan Weaver had no idea how close he’d come to losing his life.

  Before he could even give Stan a call and put his well-laid plans into action, he’d taken care of Betsy himself, saving Stan the bother. Betsy’s death had been a painful one. And yet he still wasn’t sure if she’d learned anything from the experience. He certainly hadn’t taken any joy in killing the woman. She was the most heartless bitch he’d ever met. Literally, he thought with a smile as he stared at the contents of the jar.

  Exhaling, he moved toward the television sitting atop a tall, narrow dresser and turned it on. He also kept a small desk in the room, along with a computer. He took a seat at his desk, picked up the remote, and then pushed the buttons until he was watching the nightly news.

  As he waited for the computer to boot up, he looked at the list of names on his notebook. At the top of his list were Kassie and Drew Scott. Kassie and Drew could very well be the next couple to take up residence in his dual cages, but, contrary to popular belief, his victims were not just couples. Sometimes—exactly three times in the past ten years—he had killed on the spur of the moment without any preplanning whatsoever. For instance, after he’d discovered that a couple he’d been watching for a long while had moved to Europe due to an unexpected job opportunity, his frustrations had gotten the best of him. And Felicia Potter happened to be the unlucky recipient of his aggravation.

  Getting killed by a serial killer was like winning the lottery, at least when it came to odds, but that night, a cold windy night when even most dogs were let inside, Felicia had made the mistake of leaving pruning shears and a ladder in her front yard next to a decaying tree. The circumstances were too good to pass up, and it ended up being the first time he’d ever made love to a corpse.

  He’d spent the entire night making passionate love to the dead Felicia. The cold dank smell of death only added to his pleasure. Blood had oozed from her mouth when he mounted her. Just holding her hand made him feel loved, and he had to drag himself away from her the next morning. For days afterward, he drove by her home on 14th Street, wishing he could check up on her and pay her another visit. It was a week before her body was discovered.

  The police had been baffled.

  And that was when he understood that it was to his benefit to change things up every once in a while to throw off the police and the feds. Every time a body was discovered, the media sent the people of Sacramento into a panic.

  After Felicia, he began to spend his cooling-off periods reading about other serial killers. He became obsessed with books written by profilers and federal agents. He read about criminal profiling and motive, sociopathic behavior, and the gripping stories of other killers: his mentors, his idols, all innovative pioneers of evil. He studied, he examined, interpreted, and learned. If his last victim had been mutilated, his next victim would be strangled, and so on.

  Smiling at his cleverness, he scratched his chin as he studied his notebook, staring specifically at number two on the list: Ken and Barbie. No kidding. Kenneth and Barbara Garbes. As he made a few notes about new information he’d garnered regarding the couple, he listened to the weather report.

  More rain was expected. That was good. He liked the rain. He hoped the rain would last into the beginning of summer as it had last year. Out of the corner of his eye, he caught a glimpse of Michael Dalton’s picture when it filled the screen.

  Michael’s arrest had been the top news story for days now, but Michael Dalton was nobody. What was the big deal? Husbands killed their wives every day in America. The next picture to flash across the screen showed Lieutenant William Greer exiting the Sacramento police department. A petite blonde woman, five foot two, followed close behind.

  He turned up the volume. Lizzy Gardner, a private investigator, had reason to believe Michael Dalton had not killed his wife, Jennifer.

  Skimming through the channels, he noticed more of the same: every local news station talking about Lizzy Gardner’s belief that Michael Dalton was innocent. All speculation, of course, but still, it bothered him. What could that woman possibly have to say to the lieutenant? Michael Dalton was in custody for the murder of his wife. The evidence against him was overwhelming.

  He turned to his computer and did a quick search on Lizzy Gardner.

  Ahh, now he remembered. He’d thought she looked familiar, and now he knew why. She was the private investigator who had been kidnapped when she was a teenager, the one who got away. Lizzy Gardner had spent a few months with Spiderman, a notorious serial killer who liked to torture young girls he considered to be menaces to society, which made perfect sense. No big loss to society. But what made Lizzy Gardner special was that she had lived to tell about it.

  He scanned the articles, skipping some, reading others more than once. Her business was booming and she was still located right here in Sacramento. He laughed for no particular reason. Maybe because private investigations seemed like such a silly business to be in; anyone could slap a sign on her door and call herself a private eye.

  Jake Gittes, Jim Rockford, Sam Spade. Those guys were the real deal.

  He laughed again and then continued reading.

  Many locals considered Lizzy Gardner a hero for helping to take down a killer who had spread fear across Sacramento for too many years. A few saw her as someone who went looking for trouble, leaving chaos in her wake. At the moment, he tended to agree with the latter crowd.

  Movement in the corner of the room caught his attention. He turned toward the woman sitting on the wood chair.

  She looked tense.

  Although in the beginning he’d used a heavy rope to secure her slim ankles to the front chair legs, he no longer felt the need to strap her down. She was allowed to walk around if she wanted to, but she never did, at least not when he was around. She had snatched the granola bar he’d left by her feet and was now munching away.

  “Hungry?”

  She didn’t respond. In fact, she looked as if she might have gained a few pounds.

  “I thought you said your family loved you,” he said. “If they really loved you, they would have found you by now.”

  He shook his head. She was ignoring him again. If she wasn’t talking his ear off, trying to convince him to let her go or telling him what to do, she was pretending he didn’t exist. More than once he’d considered letting her go—he really had—but whenever he felt the urge, another thought took over his brain waves and prevented him from doing so. They both knew she would go straight to the police. Sure, he’d taken precautions—blindfolds, sleeping pills, yada yada yada—to make sure she didn’t know their location, but the truth was, as much as he tried to deny it, he was in love with her. Madly so, and had been for many years.

  He could never let her go.

  CHAPTER 11

  You’ll never get me. I’ll kill again. Then you’ll have another long trial. And then I’ll do it again.

  —Henry Brisbon

  Davis

  Monday, May 14, 2012

  Hayley opened another file, did a search on the Internet, and took some notes, but it was difficult to concentrate with Lizzy and Jared snuggling in the kitchen. Jared had returned last night, making Lizzy a little too saccharine for her liking. Jessica should be the one living with the two lovebirds, not her.

  Kitally, a girl she’d met in the detention center, would be stopping by in an hour. Lizzy and Jared should have left for work already, but they were too busy catching up after being apart. She’d had enough. “Could you two take it to the bedroom, or do I need to put on my headphones?”

  Jared laughed and said, “I’m just g
lad to be home.”

  “I never would have guessed.”

  He gave Lizzy one last kiss and then picked up his briefcase at the door. He turned to Hayley and said, “If you ever need anything, my number is on the fridge.”

  “Thanks, Dad.”

  He shook his head at her as he headed out the door.

  After he was gone, she could feel Lizzy’s eyes on her.

  “What?” Hayley asked.

  “Are you OK?”

  “I’m fine,” she said as she picked up a business card for Lily’s Flower Shop and held it in the air for Lizzy to see. “I’ve been updating the electronic spreadsheets on all of the open cases. I found this card for a flower shop in the Simpson/Dalton file. I don’t think it belongs in here.”

  Lizzy took it and examined it closer. “Are you sure this was in the Simpson file?”

  “Yep. It was stuck between the pages of the signed agreement between your agency and J&M Realty.”

  “Jennifer must have accidentally scooped it up and put it in the envelope before she handed it to me.”

  “Is this the same Jennifer that was killed recently?”

  “It is,” Lizzy said as she gathered her purse and tucked the card inside. “Do you have the Simpson file or did Jessica return it to the office?”

  “It’s right here.”

  Lizzy took the file and then headed for the door. Hand on the doorknob, ready to leave, she looked back at Hayley. “You’re sure you’re OK?”

  Hayley looked her in the eyes. “I’m fine. Really.”

  “OK. Lock up after I leave, all right?”

  “Will do.”

  Lizzy shut the door behind her.

  Figuring Lizzy was probably standing on the other side waiting to hear the click of the lock, Hayley got up and slid the dead bolt into place. Then she leaned her forehead against the door and wondered if Lizzy would ever feel safe again.