A Dark Mind

by T. R. Ragan

  Seconds later, endless footsteps fell on the stairs, booted feet like the low bass beat of a hundred conga drums. John imagined the feet belonging to a dozen military men, coming to save the day. But it wasn’t the military at all. It was the big guy with the massive hands. The same man he and Rochelle had seen leaning against his car days ago…back when they’d still had a chance to get away…back when he’d forced Rochelle to be brave. And she’d been so courageous, too: her spine stiffened, her resolve scrawled across her face for all to see as she followed him unknowingly into Hell.

  The massive hands ripped the bat from the other guy’s hold, and before anyone knew what was happening, he turned toward John and swung swiftly and concisely, hitting a home run on the first swing.

  CHAPTER 13

  I don’t believe in man, God nor Devil. I hate the whole damned human race, including myself…I preyed upon the weak, the harmless and the unsuspecting. This lesson I was taught by others: might makes right.

  —Carl Panzram

  Sacramento State Prison

  Wednesday, May 16, 2012

  Lizzy was subjected to a thorough search before she was allowed to enter the ten-by-ten room. The room was painted white from floor to ceiling. The wall to her right was completely bare; the wall to her left had a large two-way mirror. A uniformed security guard stood at the door.

  Michael Dalton sat at a long rectangular table. His attorney, a big-boned woman with shoulder-length gray hair, sat next to him.

  Dark shadows circled Michael’s eyes, making him look ten years older than the last time she’d seen him. Lizzy met his gaze and said, “Thank you for meeting with me.”

  “Why are you here?” he asked without greeting her first.

  “She wants to help you,” his attorney said.

  Michael’s eyes bored into Lizzy’s. “Is that true?”

  For the first time since Lizzy had heard about Jennifer Dalton’s death, she felt unsure of Michael’s innocence. His dark emotionless eyes made her question her reason for being here. She hardly knew the man. He seemed depressed and ill-tempered. “I needed to talk to you, face-to-face.”

  “So you’re really not sure why you’re here, are you?”

  That much was certainly true. She refused to let him get the best of her, though, and refused to look away. He was angry and he was going to take his anger out on anyone who came near him. “I’m here because when I met you and your wife, I was struck by the love and devotion the two of you shared. I thought you two were newlyweds. When Jennifer told me you were celebrating your fifteenth anniversary, I was surprised.”

  “And now you’re wondering if it was all an act?”

  “The media has said as much. They think I’m a paranoid schizophrenic who believes a serial killer hides behind every bush in Sacramento, and they think you’re a nut job.”

  He smiled.

  “Why is that funny?”

  “It’s not. It’s just that I appreciate your honesty. That’s what Jennifer and I both liked about you from the moment we met you.”

  Within the blink of an eye, Michael Dalton’s expression went from despairing to hopeful.

  Lizzy exhaled a breath she hadn’t realized she was holding and said, “Can you tell me what happened?”

  His lawyer reached over and touched his forearm.

  “It’s OK,” he told her. “The truth will set me free. It has to. It’s all I’ve got.”

  Lizzy reached inside her purse and retrieved a notebook and pen. “Is it all right if I take notes?”

  Michael nodded.

  His lawyer whispered something into his ear.

  He disagreed with whatever she had told him and said, “I received a voice mail on my cell from Jennifer to meet her at 134 Deer Valley in El Dorado Hills.”

  “So you have proof, then.”

  He shook his head. “They’ve been unable to locate my cell.”

  “But there should be a phone record of some sort.”

  He glanced at his lawyer before saying, “They’re working on it. Anyhow, I tried calling Jennifer on my way to the house in El Dorado Hills. As you know, we specialize in foreclosures, auctions, and bank-owned homes. This particular foreclosure has been on the market for two years. It’s a monstrosity of a house that sits on top of a hill overlooking Folsom Lake.”

  Lizzy nodded, taking notes as he talked.

  “When Jennifer called me that day, she said the man who was showing interest was the same guy who had called the day you were in the office, the day you brought the contract for us to sign. She was unable to get to the phone before the caller hung up. She was excited at the prospect of selling this house. I was, too.” He raked his fingers through his thick head of hair. “When I got to the property, her car was the only vehicle parked in the area as far as I could see.”

  “But she wasn’t alone when you went inside?”

  “No. She wasn’t alone.”

  Lizzy could see the pain etched across his face.

  “The door was unlocked. I walked inside, didn’t see or hear anyone. I called out for Jennifer, but she didn’t answer. I’ve been inside the house dozens of times. I know my way around. There were no strange sounds. Nothing unusual. Nothing out of place.”

  Lizzy watched him swallow a knot in his throat. He was struggling to continue. She wasn’t sure how much time she would be allowed with Michael, but she refused to rush him or push him into saying anything he wasn’t ready to divulge. She didn’t have to wait long for him to find his voice again.

  “The people who designed the house spared no expense. There were two laundry rooms, a theatre room, and a wine cellar. I found her downstairs, lying on the floor in the cellar. She was on her back and I could see her breathing. Her eyes were closed tight, and she didn’t open them. I thought it was because she was scared. Hell, I know she was scared—I was scared. She kept mumbling. Her speech was slurred and it was difficult to understand her. It turned out she was trying to warn me. By the time I turned toward the door, someone had shut and locked it. I couldn’t get out. More importantly, I couldn’t get Jennifer the help she needed.”

  His shoulders slumped forward in defeat.

  “What was wrong with her?” Lizzy asked.

  “I have no idea,” he said. He lifted his head and met Lizzy’s gaze. “I’m sure she was drugged. She was also chained to the built-in wine rack.”

  “She was chained?”

  “Handcuffed,” he amended. “Her right wrist was handcuffed to the wine rack.”

  “So, her speech was slurred,” Lizzy said, trying to keep him talking.

  He nodded. “After she’d made more than a few attempts at speaking, I understood some of what she was trying to tell me. Somebody had injected her multiple times with a needle. She kept saying the word heroin, but that didn’t compute because she’d never done drugs before and it never entered my mind that somebody would give her drugs against her wishes. Nothing made sense. Neither one of us was ever into drugs.”

  “What did you do next?” she asked.

  “I couldn’t understand why she wouldn’t open her eyes, so I tried to open them for her. That’s when I noticed that there was a hard, crusty substance on her eyelashes. Both of her eyes had been glued shut.”

  He took a moment to breathe as he relived the nightmare.

  Lizzy found herself thinking about the glue found in his glove compartment.

  “Her lips were turning blue and her breathing was slowing with every passing moment. Then I heard a voice.”

  Lizzy narrowed her eyes. “As in a heavenly voice?”

  “No, not even close. Satan’s voice. The real deal.”

  Lizzy waited for him to go on.

  Michael lifted his hands to the sides of his face and rubbed his temples. “I never saw him, but I’ll never forget his voice. He was talking to me from the other side of the door. He spoke slowly and calmly.”

  “What did he say?”

  “He said Jennifer was going to die unless I did
something. He told me there was a hypodermic needle in the room to my left. I turned that way and there it was on the bottom shelf, where a wine bottle should have been.”

  Michael looked downward, visibly upset. For a moment, Lizzy wondered whether or not he’d be able to continue, but then he said, “He then asked me if I’d ever seen the movie Pulp Fiction. I told him I had.”

  “And then what?”

  “He said, ‘That’s good because you’re going to have to do exactly what they did in the movie. You’re going to have to stab her in the heart.’”

  Michael’s hands were on the table and his fingers curled into fists. “Why would he do such a thing?”

  Lizzy didn’t have an answer for him, so she merely shook her head.

  “Jennifer was losing consciousness,” Michael continued, his voice cracking.

  Lizzy gave him time to pull himself together.

  “The voice told me to thrust the needle directly into her heart if I wanted to save her. I reached for the needle, picked it up, and held it high above my wife’s chest.”

  Michael was staring at Lizzy, his eyes pleading for answers, but all she had were more questions. “What happened after that?”

  “I asked him what was in the needle. He told me it was adrenaline.” Michael’s mouth turned down and his eyes drooped in sadness. “I knew then that it was all just a game to him.”

  “Did you have your cell phone in the cellar?”

  “Yes.”

  “Did you try to call 911?”

  He nodded. “More than once, but I couldn’t get a signal. A knife had been left in the cellar, too. I used it on the door, hoping I could unlock it.”

  “Did you know that the knife was from your house?”

  His shoulders sagged. “No.”

  “So did you use the needle as instructed?”

  “I lifted the needle high above her chest, aimed and ready to go, but I couldn’t do it.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because nothing the voice said made any sense. My wife was having trouble breathing…she was having respiratory problems. Shooting adrenaline into her heart wouldn’t help her. It wasn’t her heart that was the problem.”

  “You’re not a doctor. How would you know that?”

  “Talk to my friend Stacey Whitmore. Jennifer and I have spent a lot of time with Stacey and her husband, Dan. One of our longest-running arguments has been about the scene in Pulp Fiction. I think this guy…the voice…he knew that.”

  “You think he researched your life that thoroughly? He would have had to bug your house or theirs.”

  “That’s right. Definitely. Anyhow, adrenaline wouldn’t sober up someone who had overdosed. If the guy had truly followed the movie to a tee and given her heroin, then I needed something else.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “To neutralize heroin you’d administer a drug”—he snapped his fingers—“I forget the name of the drug, but you would give the person a drug that would block the receptors in the brain. That’s the drug that might bring a junkie back to life in minutes.”

  “OK,” Lizzy said. “What happened after you decided not to use the needle on your wife?”

  “I started noticing other things on her body. There were bruises on her arms and blood on her shirt, so I lifted her shirt.” He squeezed his eyes shut. “There were sutures everywhere. She’d been dissected and sewn up in several places.”

  The anguish on his face was heartbreaking.

  “I asked her why he would do such a thing, but by then she couldn’t talk any longer. I was losing her fast. That’s when the voice told me that I didn’t know Jennifer as well as I thought I did. He told me that although she had never cheated on me physically with another man, she had lied to me on many occasions. He told me that Jennifer had been putting money into a private account.”

  “Is that true?”

  He nodded. “Jennifer had no idea that I knew about the account. There’s no more than five thousand dollars there. I believe having the money stashed away gave her a feeling of independence. Either way, I didn’t care. The only thing I cared about at that moment was getting my hands on that man’s neck and squeezing the life out of him.”

  Lizzy wanted to reach over the table for his hand, but she wasn’t allowed to touch him.

  “Even if I had thought the adrenaline would work, I never would have plunged the needle into my wife’s heart. I could never have risked killing her. The main thought running through my mind the entire time I was in that room was that I needed to escape. I knew that if I could escape, I could get Jennifer help before it was too late.”

  “According to the reports, you did plunge the needle into her heart. Your fingerprints were on the syringe.”

  “Of course they were.”

  Lizzy sighed. “It wasn’t adrenaline in the syringe.”

  “That doesn’t surprise me.”

  “How did you escape?”

  He shook his head. “The killer must have understood that I wasn’t going to do what he said, so he decided to let me go.” Michael shrugged. “Maybe that was his plan all along. Suddenly, I heard a click. I checked the door and, sure enough, it was unlocked. I didn’t see anyone, so I ran.”

  “Did you look for the man?”

  He shook his head. “There wasn’t time. Jennifer needed help.”

  “You left Jennifer?”

  “She was handcuffed to the wine rack. I had no choice but to try to get her help before it was too late.”

  “You could have taken the needle with you.”

  “I guess I could have done a lot of things differently, but I did the first thing that made sense to me. I ran to get help.”

  “And it took you five minutes to get to the neighbor’s house?”

  “Two or three minutes at the most. The woman who answered the door looked frightened, but she let me use her phone. I called 911. I returned to the house moments later. Jennifer was dead. He’d killed her.”

  “I read the report, but why don’t you tell me what you saw.”

  “A hypodermic needle was protruding from her chest.” His voice quavered, but he closed his eyes for a moment and composed himself. “I pulled the needle out,” he went on. “I’m not sure how long I held her in my arms after that, but I know it wasn’t long enough. The ambulance came. The police came, too, and they took her from me.”

  “What about the handcuffs?”

  “Wasn’t that in the report?” he asked.

  Lizzy shook her head.

  “When I returned, the handcuffs were gone.”

  “You never heard the voice or saw the man after you returned to the house?”

  “No, but I believe Jennifer tried to give me a clue.”

  It took all the restraint Lizzy had not to look over her shoulder at the two-way mirror. “What clue?”

  “When Jennifer was trying to talk to me, she kept repeating the word limo.”

  “Why wasn’t that in the report?”

  He shrugged. “You might ask Greer, because I told them everything I’ve told you. Seems they’re withholding information from you.”

  Lizzy stiffened, but she kept her thoughts to herself. “I have two more questions for you, if you don’t mind.”

  He waited.

  “Do you recall my being at the realty office when you showed up to take Jennifer to dinner?”

  “Like it was yesterday.”

  “Before you arrived, Jennifer said something to me about dead bugs, hang-up calls, and bumps in the night.”

  “Yeah,” he said without hesitating, “we had been receiving quite a few hang-up calls.”

  “Did you do anything about it?”

  He shook his head. “We were both busy. If it didn’t stop soon, one of us would have taken care of it. That’s how we handled things.”

  “How about the dead bugs?”

  He rubbed his temples again. “I do remember her complaining about bugs, but I don’t recall where she had seen or found them, may
be in her car. That was long before we called you about the workers’ compensation claim.”

  “And the bumps in the night?”

  He shook his head again. “I’m a sound sleeper. She never mentioned bumps in the night.”

  “Time’s up,” the guard said.

  Lizzy held up a hand and asked the last question. “When I was leaving J&M Realty the last time I saw you and Jennifer, you were staring at me. I was in my car. Your eyes narrowed, and the look on your face was what I would call intense.”

  “There’s a pub across the street,” he said. “The windows are tinted, but I saw a man sitting at the table by the door. He was watching us. I wasn’t looking at you. I was watching him watch us. I thought it was odd.”

  Fifteen minutes later, two security guards escorted Lizzy out of the prison. She followed them with Stacey on her right and Lieutenant Greer on her left. She had called Stacey on her way to the prison, and Stacey had not come as a reporter. She had come as a friend of Michael’s and now Lizzy’s.

  “Why didn’t you tell me about dead bugs and hang-up calls, not to mention the strange look he was giving you that day?” Lieutenant Greer asked Lizzy.

  “Because Jennifer told me it was no big deal and that she was upset because of her mother’s recent passing. Why didn’t you tell me about the cuffs or Jennifer saying the word limo?”

  They were approaching the exit.

  “We’ll talk about this later,” Greer said.

  “Looks like we’ve got some ambulance chasers outside,” one of Greer’s men told him.

  “Just a bunch of greenies,” Stacey said as she stepped outside, greeting the paparazzi and the cub reporters with composure that only someone with her experience could pull off with such ease.

  CHAPTER 14

  I’m sorry I killed five people, OK?

  —Gary Alan Walker

  Antelope

  Wednesday, May 16, 2012

  Jessica parked her car at the curb and headed for the trailer where she knew Dominic Povo spent much of his day. It was early. She looked around. The site looked clean, no garbage bags to be seen. She needed to stop being so paranoid.