Head Shot

by Dan Ames

  It was the perfect place for Tomczak, who liked everything about hunting and fishing and absolutely nothing about people. There were two decent trout streams within walking distance of the house, and a large spring-fed lake full of pike and walleye about two miles away. Jimmy also killed plenty of deer, rabbit and squirrels, whenever the hell he wanted to, adding them to the pot and taking a load off his grocery bills.

  He worked part-time at Tucker's Plumbing Supply where he put together water pumps. His quota was sixty a day, a feat that was easily attainable as he’s always been good with his hands.

  Occasionally, maybe once or twice a year when he was feeling horny, he would drive over to Osceola, the small town near the Army base, and find a hooker at one of the little bars that catered to the servicemen who had weekend passes and nowhere to go. The Army bases in the U.P. were closing fast due to budget cuts and the towns, as well as the real estate prices, were suffering.

  Tomczak hoped the whores would stay, even if the jobs were leaving.

  "I appreciate you lettin' me dump the truck, Jimmy" said Joe Ferkovich, tipping back in the vinyl chair in the kitchen. He thought he saw the tail of a rat as it scurried behind the refrigerator.

  "Don't worry, when we catch the bass that should be spawning right about now over at Mud Lake, you can do all the cleaning."

  Joe laughed.

  Tomczak studied the label on the side of his beer. When Joe had arrived in the middle of the night, he hadn't asked any questions, and when Joe said they had to hide the truck, he still hadn't stuck his nose in his friend's business. But now he was curious.

  "Am I going to get a visit from the cops anytime soon, Joe?" Joe's smile faded.

  "Probably. But I'll be out of here soon, so don't worry about it."

  There was an awkward silence, broken at last by Joe.

  "Why don't you give me the grand tour?" he asked.

  Tomczak grabbed another longneck from the fridge and said, "Sure, but don't blink or you'll miss it."

  He led Joe from the kitchen into the living room which featured thick orange carpeting and moldy wood paneling, a rotten couch and a radio propped along a window ledge. A small bedroom was off to the left of the living room and Joe glimpsed a single, twin mattress pushed against the far wall.

  Tomczak walked over to the only piece of furniture in the living room, the gun cabinet.

  He opened the glass door and began pulling out shotguns, handing them one at a time to Joe, who commented favorably on each weapon before handing it back. It was quite a collection, Joe thought. There were over-and-unders, side-by-sides, pumps, single shots, combination shotgun rifles, and he even had a black powder rifle.

  Tomczak leaned down and opened a drawer. Inside were handguns, neatly arranged in rows by caliber. He first handed Joe a .44 Colt Anaconda with a six-inch barrel, then a Ruger GP100 .357 Magnum, followed by a Ruger .41 Magnum. Joe liked the heft of the Ruger.

  "Let's shoot something," Joe said.

  "I've got some empty bottles in the kitchen," his friend answered.

  As Tomczak rummaged around the kitchen gathering empty bottles, Joe reached into the drawer and found the .41 Magnum cartridges. He popped the cylinder and fed six shells into their respective chambers, and then quietly snapped the cylinder shut. Now the balance on the Ruger was perfect, it felt stronger in Joe's hand. His head started to hurt as he approached the kitchen.

  Joe walked into the kitchen, put the muzzle of the gun against the back of Tomczak’s head and pulled the trigger. The sound was monstrously loud in the small room and brain matter splattered onto the front of the refrigerator.

  Tomczak sunk to the floor of the kitchen and Joe looked down at him. His friend's face was peaceful, his mouth slightly parted.

  The headache was going away.

  He lifted his dead friend over his shoulder and carried him to the basement stairwell where he unceremoniously dumped him down the stairs.

  Blood had dripped onto Joe's shirt, so he went into the bedroom and got a clean one from Tomczak’s closet.

  He dug up a baseball cap and put it on, then walked outside, around the house, to where Jimmy's truck was parked. The keys were in the ignition.

  Joe went around to the small garage next to the house and quickly found fishing poles, tackle boxes and waders, which he carried back to the truck. He opened the camper topper and set the fishing gear inside, then went back and got the plastic bait bucket as well as the metal minnow pail with the mesh screen.

  He went back into the house, found a pen and a pad of paper, and wrote a sign: "Fishing - Back in a few days." He taped the note to the inside of the front door, locked both the front and back doors, then climbed into the pickup truck and left.

  The sun would be up soon and he needed to get to Rodgers Bay as quickly as possible.

  Chapter 22

  After everyone from the meeting dispersed, the door to an adjoining room opened and a man entered the room. He went to the coffee machine and poured the last of the pot into his Styrofoam cup.

  He added cream and sugar, then stepped outside the room to make sure no one was hanging just outside the door, discussing the revelations learned in the meeting.

  He walked to the stairwell, went down the stairs and out onto the sidewalk, where he lit up a cigarette and took out his cell phone.

  "Give me Nancy Bishop," he said.

  There was a pause, and then he heard her voice.

  He looked around to make sure no one was nearby and then he smiled.

  "You are going to love this..."

  Chapter 23

  Ralph Aaron, news director for Channel 6, looked up from his desk as his door burst open and Nancy Bishop stormed in, her face set as if ready for a battle.

  "Sure, come on in," he called out sarcastically, as she was already standing in front of his desk.

  His eyes drifted over her shoulder to the fly fishing calendar he had put on the far wall. When a highly unpleasant task was facing him, it had become habit for Aaron to look longingly at the fisherman captured in brilliant four-color, casting a dry fly under a thick stand of mangroves in hopes of snagging a snook.

  Ralph Aaron was a year and a half away from retirement when he would at last make the move to Southwest Florida, to fish everyday in the fabled Ten Thousand Islands. Soon, deciding which species of fish to pursue would be the weightiest thing on his mind, that and what kind of beer to start drinking on the way back to the boat landing after a hard day of fishing under the hot Florida sun.

  "I know where Ferkovich is," she said.

  Aaron waited.

  "Here's what the cops know. Ferkovich killed Lisa Young, Harriet Bednarski and he tried to kill Bednarski's friend but she got away and was able to give a good physical description, enough for the cops to come up with his name."

  Aaron waited, and she went on.

  "In each of the murders, he pulled the victim's teeth before he strangled them."

  She sat down in one of the chair's facing Aaron's desk, and pulled it closer.

  "They suspect Ferkovich has killed before. There was a girl and a woman, separate incidents, in or near Detroit. Both of them also had their teeth pulled and were asphyxiated. I've got Hopkins working on that."

  Hopkins was Susan Hopkins, a junior reporter who Aaron had assigned to assist Bishop in the Ferkovich story.

  "But here's the thing: we know Ferkovich had a traumatic childhood, mainly at the hands of his father. He went through it all with his sister Mary, who now lives in Rodgers Bay in the U.P."

  "So you think that just because they went through a hellish childhood together that he's going to run to her?" Aaron asked. He shook his head. "Come on, Nancy, that's way too thin."

  "The cops also know that when Ferkovich was in prison in Michigan, he kept in close contact with only one person."

  Aaron forced himself to take his eyes off the calendar.

  "Let me guess, his sister," he said, shaking his head. "It's not enough, so they were pen pals
when he needed someone, anyone to help him deal with prison, so what? What does she do for a living?"

  "She's a schoolteacher," Nancy replied.

  "An educator for Christ's sake, of course she's going to write her brother. She probably thought he was capable of rehabilitation, it's her job to think people can be changed. Come on Nancy, this is bullshit. Cancel your trip up north and stay here where the story is, Hopkins can't handle this end of the story alone."

  "With all due respect, sir, you're wrong," Bishop said, her voice matter-of-fact. "This guy is from Michigan and Wisconsin, he's gone up north fishing with one of his few, if not only, friends. His sister lives in the U.P. He's got nowhere else to go."

  She was jabbing her finger in the general direction of her boss with each emphatic point.

  "The U.P. is a place you can get lost. The Porcupine Mountains are almost completely uninhabited. There are areas along the Lake Superior shoreline that are as rugged and brutal as Northern Canada, and quite a few folks who live there do so because they don't like people, especially authority, and they prefer to live with a beer in one hand and a rifle in the other."

  She sat back in her chair.

  "It's the perfect place for him to go, and I guarantee," she said quietly, "some hillbilly television station in the U.P. is going to cover the capture of Joseph P. Ferkovich while I'm stuck in Milwaukee interviewing some distant cousin of his who remembers Cousin Joe seemed like a nice boy."

  Nancy Bishop stood.

  "You can sit in here and look at your goddamn fishing calendar, but I'm walking out this door right now, and I'm grabbing the first cameraman and truck I see, and I'm going to Rodgers Bay, Michigan, to wait for a serial killer. I'll come back with the story that no one else in this city had the foresight to chase down."

  She headed for the door.

  "You can fire me when I get back," she said, and slammed the door behind her.

  Aaron looked at the back of his door, then slowly his eyes drifted up to the picture of the fisherman knee-deep in beautiful, twinkling blue water.

  He would reassign a more senior reporter to help Hopkins cover the smaller stories down here and hope with all his might that Bishop was right and that Ferkovich was heading up north, where he'd run smack dab into the cops and Nancy would be there to scoop every other reporter in the state, hell, the nation.

  He would do it not because he gave a shit about journalism or his standing at the station.

  No, he would do it because if she succeeded, their ratings would go up, the station would make more money, and he'd get a bigger chunk of profit sharing dumped into his retirement fund.

  Which meant that he could say good-bye to his job and Nasty Bitch Nancy Bishop all that much sooner.

  Chapter 24

  Time was always the question. How long before someone would find Tomczak?

  Time. It was almost always working against him.

  He drove the pickup truck north on a country road that ran roughly parallel to the main highway. He was far enough away from the house to avoid having the truck recognized by a local cop, and it was much safer than the main highway where state troopers might be on the lookout for him.

  Joe’s thoughts on the drive had mostly been devoted to how much time he had.

  Factored into those considerations, of course, was how long he could go before he needed to satisfy himself again. He felt his heart lighten at the thought, a flood of adrenaline roused his libido.

  It was shocking how much more quickly he was becoming ready.

  Joe weighed his options. What he really wanted to do was go to Canada. He’d never been across the border, but he pictured Canada to be something like the United States only fifty years earlier. In other words, more innocent, naïve and unsuspecting.

  Which was perfect for him.

  He’d find a medium-sized city or large town, get some menial job and then find a few women that needed his special services.

  Joe smiled at the thought.

  Yep, a few in one town, then move on. It would take awhile for the Canadian cops to realize that Joe Ferkovich from the U.S. was now up in their country having his way with Canadian bitches. And by the time they did figure it out, he’d just keep moving west and north. Canada was a huge country, after all. He could get lost up there forever.

  But how to get there?

  That was the goddamn question, he thought.

  No doubt he would have to sneak in illegally. He didn’t even own a passport. So if he got caught going in, it would be all over.

  No, he would have to put off Canada for now. Let some of the heat blow over until he could figure out a way to sneak in.

  He needed a safe spot where he could hide out for awhile, try to avoid his urges, even though he knew that was next to impossible.

  If he couldn’t resist he would just have to be smart about it.

  And the smartest thing he could do was to stash himself where no one would think to look for him.

  He had just the place in mind.

  Chapter 25

  The town sat along two curving strips of land that served to encircle the small body of Lake Superior water known as Rodgers Bay.

  A burgeoning shipping industry had built the majority of the town at the turn of the century, but after the industry dropped off in the 1950s, tourism became the number one game in town.

  Although its charter fishing fleet was small and there was no forecast for a large increase, the harbor had undergone a comprehensive, eleven million dollar rehabilitation, designed to lure more boats from the bigger towns downstate, as well as bring in more tourists.

  It was an expense residents griped about, mainly because their taxes went way up, and no one seemed to think tourists would pour into town to see their new harbor.

  But their opinions were ignored and new, wider sidewalks had been completed, a huge play structure resembling a ship was installed, and the harbor's main complex was also home to the new Great Lakes Museum which featured memorabilia from the turn-of-the-century shipping yards located in Rodgers Bay.

  The harbor had slips for three hundred boats, although less than half of them were currently occupied.

  In Slip 31, a light flickered on in the cabin of the thirty-three foot Sea Ray as Sarah Ross put a pot of coffee on the stove. Her husband, Rocco, was still snoring soundly and she'd let him get another fifteen minutes in before she woke him up.

  She enjoyed this part of the morning, before serious preparations would begin in anticipation of the clients, who would be arriving at approximately six a.m.

  Sarah savored her cup of coffee, listened to the waves lap against the boats, and watched dawn break out over the big lake.

  She and Rocco had worked all their lives to get to this point. They had built a catering service from the ground up and put their hearts and souls into the business. It was a success, and after twenty years of throwing parties for everyone else, they threw one for themselves and promptly turned the business over to their two daughters.

  They then bought the boat and launched, quite literally, their second dream, that of starting a charter fishing service to fish for the bountiful lake trout in the cold blue waters of Lake Superior. They took clients out sporadically, never booking more than two or three outings a week. They were, after all, supposed to be semi-retired.

  This morning, a thin blanket of fog had settled in and a few seagulls had already begun the day's work, soaring high over the boats, patiently waiting for the inevitable bait to be spilled before the fishermen set out for their fishing quests.

  Sarah sat on the edge of the pier, her feet dangling above the water, and she heard the gentle rattle of fishing poles as a man emerged from the fog at the other end of the harbor.

  Sarah thought it a bit early for fishermen to be arriving as she was always the first one up around here, but he seemed to know where he was going.

  She watched him slow down around the corner of the horseshoe and she realized he was looking at the names of the b
oats. Finally, he stopped at one and very purposely climbed on board, stowed his gear and disappeared below deck.

  Sarah thought it odd the man would be invited to a fishing boat so early in the morning and then the person who had most likely invited him wasn't here yet. But, the man seemed to have no problem making himself at home.

  He must be good friends with whoever owns that boat, she thought to herself.

  She squinted her eyes and could just make out the name of the boat.

  Teacher's Pet.

  Sarah downed the last of her coffee and her old joints creaked as she stood up. Time to get the old man up and get ready for a day of fishing.

  He'd slept long enough.

  Chapter 26

  In 1975 in the Rodgers Bay Elementary School, there was one classroom that had blue carpet. It was the only room in the entire school system with carpet of this color.

  It was here, in this room, that the children labeled “developmentally disabled” were taught.

  There was one row of desks for the students, two bookcases, and a corner chest with toys designed to teach the children basic lessons as well as simple motor skills.

  Nothing in the room was breakable or presented a choking hazard.

  To the rest of the student body, the children assigned to this room were known as “blue roomers,” a name the other students would often chant in ridicule.

  It was to this room that a young boy named Hank Campbell was sent. Just ten years old at the time, Hank was close to six feet tall and weighed nearly one hundred and sixty pounds, much of the weight coming from his deep chest and incredibly muscular arms and shoulders.

  Both of his parents had been killed in an auto accident. Later reports showed the father to be drunk while driving.

  At that time, the teacher assigned to the Blue Room was Anita Karpinsky, a cute, perky blonde with octagonal glasses who seemed to attract scores of admiring glances from the school's many male teachers.