And We All Fall (Book 1)

by Michael Patrick Jr. Mahoney

  “Go wait in the truck, Jax.”

  “What are you going to do?” Jax asked as his father who raced to the table and snatched the cell phone before Thomas could get to it, knocking the small framed bug collector to the tile in the process.

  “Get in the truck!” Jackson couldn’t stop coughing as Thomas rose to his feet. “Go! Now!”

  Jax ran crying through the living room of the little house and out through the front door to the truck. He was in the truck for less than a minute before he saw Jackson walk out the front door.

  “What happened?” he asked Jackson as he slid into the truck, bloody.

  Jackson shook his head as he started the truck, but didn’t answer.

  “Dad?” Jax asked, sobbing. “What did you to do to that man?”

  Jackson shook his head, shook Jax off, as he had another coughing fit, spilling more blood on his shirt.

  “Let’s go home,” he managed to say as he started the truck and then sped off.

  Chapter 30

  “Tommy? Are you in there? Tommy?” Thomas Long’s neighbor, Kevin, yelled as he repeatedly knocked on the door with his body pressed against it. He tried his best to see into the peephole. It was futile. The two had been friends since elementary school.

  He turned and eyed the bloody footprints that marked a gradually fading path from the door to the street. He turned back to the door and knocked as hard as he could for nearly a minute, calling out his neighbor’s name with growing anxiety.

  Everyone that lives in the little town knew that Kevin had a crush on Thomas, and that Thomas did not have one on him. Anymore.

  He moved to the left and peered through the window, but saw nothing aside from the grand piano that he played chopsticks on with Thomas from time to time. Really, he went for it as often as he could. He started to smile, thinking about it, but it quickly faded as worry consumed him. He moved to the far right and looked in the other window.

  “Tom?” he asked aloud as he focused on the entryway of the kitchen. It took a second for his brain to process what he was looking at. “Blood? Is that blood! Tommy!” he yelled as he beat frantically on the window. “Tommy!” He turned the knob on the front door. Locked.

  He ran back to his house and dialed the police department. Officer Mark Biggs soon pulled his police car in front of the house for the second time in two days, ready to arrest someone this time.

  A strange feeling came over him as he stepped out of his cruiser. He noted the blood on the sidewalk as he saw Kevin sitting on the porch with his head in his hands.

  Officer Biggs pushed his hat tighter on his head and wrapped his hand around his gun handle as he walked carefully towards the door, trying not to step on any of the bloody evidence. “Kevin?”

  Kevin looked up. “Mark.” He stood up and turned to the side, as if to clear a path for Officer Biggs to walk past him.

  “What’s going on here, Kev?”

  “I don’t know,” Kevin said emotionally as he stood up and eyed the bloody footprint. “There’s blood inside too,” he replied, fighting the urge to fall apart. “You can see it through the window.”

  “Do you know what happened?” Officer Biggs asked as he tried to turn the doorknob after snapping on latex gloves.

  “It’s locked. So is the back.”

  Officer Biggs looked out at the street. “Both cars are here. You know anything?”

  “No. I came over to say hello and found it like this.”

  “Did you see or hear anything suspicious?”

  “No. Not today.”

  Officer Biggs walked to the right window and looked into it. He pushed the microphone on his shoulder radio. “Twenty-two on scene at the Long residence, Grasshopper Lane. Over.”

  “Read you twenty-two. Go ahead. Over.”

  “We have blood evidence at the scene. Send back up and CSI. Over.” Officer Biggs tried the door again, harder than before.

  “Ten four.” Officer Biggs and Kevin heard dispatch call out to back up officers and the CSI unit over the shared radio frequency.

  “Probable cause to enter the residence,” Officer Biggs said into the radio. “I’m going to force entry. Over.”

  “10-4.”

  Officer Biggs kicked the heavy front door as hard as he could. It took three tries, but the door flew open out of the now cracked doorframe.

  “Stay here,” he said to Kevin and then moved carefully through the living room with his gun pointed straight ahead. He followed the trail of bloody footprints that led out of the kitchen to the entryway. He could feel his own blood pumping forcefully with the flood of adrenaline.

  Of course, Kevin followed behind him, looking terrified.

  As Officer Biggs got closer to the kitchen, he saw Craig’s leg. He ran into the kitchen and gasped. He pushed the microphone on his shoulder radio. “I need EMS! Now!”

  “Oh, God! Is he dead? Where’s Tommy?”

  “You need to get out of here!” Officer Biggs yelled to Kevin as he placed his fingers against Craig’s neck, finding no pulse.

  “Copy that twenty-two. EMS is in route.”

  “Beginning CPR,” he said into his radio and then proceeded attempts to bring Craig back to life. He shook his head in disbelief, as he always pictured it would be the other way around someday. Craig wouldn’t be the one dead on the floor. “What did you do, Tom?” he asked aloud.

  “Thomas! Thomas! Where are you?” Officer Biggs heard Kevin yelling from somewhere else in the house as he continued to work on Craig.

  A litany of official vehicles arrived at the scene a few minutes later. EMS wheeled Craig’s lifeless body on the gurney past Officer Biggs who was speaking to Detective Matthews in the nicely manicured Maine yard.

  “Our victim is Craig Lattimer. Correct Officer Biggs?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “You were here yesterday on a domestic. Is that right?”

  “Yes,” Officer Biggs replied. “That’s correct, detective.”

  “You believe we should be looking for the victim’s partner? A Thomas Long?”

  “Yes.”

  “What happened yesterday?”

  “They had a fight. The neighbor called it in.”

  “Him?” Detective Matthews asked as he looked over at Kevin, who was talking to another detective, distraught as if his whole world just ended. “The same man that called 911 today?”

  “Yes.”

  “Any injuries yesterday?”

  “No. It was just a verbal argument.”

  “What do you know about Mr. Long?” Detective Matthews asked the officer as he walked over to the sidewalk a few feet away and knelt down with a measuring tape. He measured the partial bloody footprint.

  “Everything. I’ve known him since we were kids?”

  “How about his shoe size?”

  Officer Biggs shook his head. “No.”

  “Do you have all his information entered into the computer?”

  “Yes.”

  “I’ll issue the BOLO for him. Are you okay, officer? You look sick.”

  Officer Biggs nodded. “Yeah. It’s just...”

  “What”

  “I don’t see how,” Officer Biggs replied as he stared into the back of the ambulance just as the EMS team shut the back doors, Craig’s bloody body hidden from view. “Lattimer was so much bigger and tougher than Thomas. Lattimer could have easily taken Tommy.”

  “Not today.” Detective Matthews put his hand on the officer’s shoulder as he watched the ambulance drive away. “I’ll keep you posted. Why don’t you head back to the station and write up your report.”

  Officer Biggs nodded. “Okay. Thanks, detective.”

  He drove to the station in a fog.

  Detective Matthews took pictures of the bloody shoe print and walked into the house. He proceeded to the kitchen where the forensic team was busy collecting evidence.

  “What do you think?” he asked the team leader, CSI Amber Mitchell, lying on the floor dipping a long Q-tip i
n blood on the tile.

  She was a team of one.

  “I think someone was angry as hell with this poor guy,” CSI Mitchell replied as she stood up. “Blood patterns indicate there was a major struggle here between the three of them.”

  “Three?”

  “Yes. As in the number that comes after two and before four.”

  “You’re saying there were three people involved in this?”

  “You’re catching on,” she said with a smile. “See that blood pattern?” She pointed to a large bloodstain in another area of the kitchen. “There was another man lying there, not the victim. Those are his bloody footprints all over the place. He walked through them after he got up and walked out of here.”

  They both squatted down and stared at the blood.

  “Okay. So?”

  “You can see that he walked over to the victim, probably to see if he was alive. There was a bloody lip print on the victim’s cheek. From a kiss. That bloody handprint on the floor suggests the same guy leaned down right there.”

  “What makes you think it was a man?”

  “This small pube that I pulled off this dead guy’s cheek. It’s a facial hair. Could be the bearded lady I guess. Is the circus in town?”

  “None of that means there was a third person involved.”

  “No. It doesn’t.” CSI Mitchell walked out of the kitchen to the front door. “But that does,” she continued, staring at the doorknob on the inside of the front door.

  “Blood,” Detective Matthews said, noticing blood all over the doorknob.

  “A bloody handprint to be exact. A print that doesn’t match the victim’s prints or the man that left his handprint in blood on the floor next to the victim, and smooched him before he apparently took off.”

  “A witness.”

  “Maybe. Or the killer.”

  “Have we run the prints yet?”

  “Lab is running them as we speak.”

  They walked back into the kitchen.

  “What about that knife?” Detective Matthews asked.

  “No blood on it, oddly enough. It’s the only thing in the kitchen that doesn’t. It does, however, have the victim’s prints on it. My guess, based on position, is that he was planning to use it, and didn’t get a chance. It looks like they may have all been fighting over this.” CSI Mitchell picked up the remnants of the insect exhibit and stared at the area missing glass. “That’s an impact zone. There’s blood, skin, and hair in it. All the deceased’s, I’m sure. It appears that he was hit in the head with it.”

  “Maybe because he was coming at the person who was holding it with that knife.”

  “Sure. I guess that’s why they pay you the big bucks. Maybe self-defense.”

  “Maybe. He’ll get his day in court. Looks like for now we will have a manhunt on our hands. Let me know the results of the prints as soon as you get them.”

  “Will do.”

  “What happened here Thomas Long?” the detective said as he walked down the steps outside the front door. “Where are you?”

  Chapter 31

  “Mom,” Jackson said to Jax when he squinted at the caller ID on the phone that rang in his blood stained hand. He moved it closer and further away a few times, trying to see it, his vision still blurry.

  For the first time that Jax could ever remember in his young life, his father didn’t seem happy to hear from Jamie.

  “You can talk to her first.” Jackson handed the phone to Jax.

  “Hi, mom,” Jax said as he answered the call, trying to hide the uneasiness he felt inside. It suddenly felt like he didn’t know the man next to him. He was somebody else.

  “Hey, Jax! It’s so good to hear your voice! I’m sorry I haven’t been able to call. Where’s your dad?”

  Jax wondered that himself, but didn’t know what else to say. “He’s right here.”

  “What are you guys doing?”

  “Driving.”

  “Are you on your way back home?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Are you okay Jax? You sound upset.”

  Jax looked at his father, bloody for the second day in a row. “Yeah.”

  “Are you sure? What’s wrong? Are you sick?”

  “No. Not me.”

  “Is your dad sick?”

  “I think so.”

  Jamie felt her heart skip a beat. “What’s wrong with him?” she asked sharply. Sick was the scariest word in the dictionary right now as far as she was concerned, but she didn’t want to jump to any conclusions.

  “I’ll let him tell you about it mom. How’s work going?”

  “Busy. Really busy. How’s the trip going? Have you had fun spending time with your dad?”

  If she asked Jax that question this morning, he would have said yes. Now, he didn’t know what to say, so he didn’t say anything.

  “Jax? You there?”

  “Yes. We saved a mom and her baby.”

  “What? How?”

  “Their car crashed off the road. And we were in a robbery at the gas station.”

  “What!”

  “Here’s dad. I love you, mom.” Jax handed the phone to Jackson as if it was the hot potato.

  “Hey.”

  “Hey, baby.” It only took the one word for Jamie to realize that Jackson didn’t sound like her husband. Something was different. “What’s Jax talking about, Jackson? You saved some people and were in a robbery?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Tell me more about that. What happened?”

  “Where have you been? I haven’t been able to reach you.” He sounded like a jealous lover.

  “Work has been… difficult. Are you okay, honey?”

  “I’m fine.”

  He couldn’t have sounded further away.

  “You don’t sound fine. Jax says you are sick.”

  “I’m not sick!” Jackson heard the beeps on his phone indicating it was dying just as he started another bout of coughing.

  “Oh God, Jackson! You sound awful! When did that start?”

  “Look. I forgot to plug the phone in last night,” he said as he finally caught his breath. “Not much charge left.”

  “Tell me your symptoms.”

  “I’m fine. Just the flu or something.”

  “What are your symptoms? Is Jax sick too?”

  “No.”

  Jackson started coughing again, uncontrollably. He tried to speak but couldn’t do anything but cough. He handed the phone back to Jax as a mist of his blood sprayed the steering wheel.

  “He can’t stop coughing, mom,” Jax said nervously into the phone as he heard another round of beeping. “He’s coughing up blood.”

  “Blood? What happened to him, Jax? Tell me everything. Please. It’s important.”

  “I don’t know. Nothing really. Except for the mosquito bite.” There was silence on the line except for the phone beeping again. Jax looked at the battery indicator. “Mom? Are you still there?”

  “Did you say mosquito bite?”

  “Yeah. Only once percent battery left mom.”

  Jamie felt her office spinning.

  “I need you to answer my questions carefully, Jax.” Jamie could hear her husband coughing hard in the background as she tried to gather herself.

  “Okay.”

  “Are you sure that it is a mosquito bite?”

  “Yes.”

  “Where?”

  “On his left elbow.”

  “Where did it happen? Where were you at on your trip?”

  “Uhh. Virginia. I think? Yeah. In the woods.” “Why were you in the woods?”

  “Grandpa. He…”

  Jax stopped short. It was all becoming more than he could handle as his father coughed in the background, gasping for air in between each bout. Jax didn’t know what to say.

  “What about Grandpa? Did something happen to him?”

  “Yes,” Jax said, unable to stop the flood of tears.

  “Oh God. What does the mosquito bite look like now
, Jax? Tell me.”

  “Now?”

  “Yes.”

  “Like someone ripped all dad’s flesh off all around it. He said he scratched it off. His skin is like… gray.”

  “He needs to go to a hospital right now. Where are you right now?”

  “I don’t know. We left that guy’s house a while ago.”

  “In Maine?”

  “Yes.”

  “Let me talk to your dad.”

  “She wants to talk to you,” Jax said as he handed the phone back to his father. “She says you need to go to a hospital.”

  “I will,” Jackson said into the phone like an angry child after snatching it from Jax. He received no response from his wife. “Jamie? Are you there?”

  “Is she there?” Jax asked nervously.

  Jackson looked at the phone.

  It was off.

  “Phone’s dead.” He coughed again, this time into his right elbow. It was very dark, abnormally thick blood.

  Jax hung his head.

  “We’ll charge it up a little at the hotel tonight and call her back. Alright?”

  Jax nodded. Nothing his father could say could comfort him now. Nothing except one thing. “Are we going to stop at a hospital now?”

  “Soon. I promise. Move it, asshole!” Jackson leaned on the horn as he came within a millimeter of hitting the car in front of him. It had been tailgating for the last ten minutes. “Learn how to fucking drive!”

  He honked again and didn’t release the horn until the car moved to the right. Jackson sped up and weaved in and out of traffic wildly with Jax hanging onto the truck for dear life. He held on to Jumper, who was having trouble staying upright on the swerving bench seat, with the other hand.

  “You’re scaring me, dad. And Jumper.”

  “Jesus! Grow up, Jax!”

  Jax whipped his head towards the window and stared out into the countryside. Time and space felt so empty. What’s happening? He wiped his face, trying to hide his tears. He couldn’t stop crying.

  It didn’t take long for Jackson’s reckless driving to be noticed by the highway patrol.

  “Super,” Jackson griped as he hesitantly slowed to a stop on the shoulder of the interstate. He stared at the trooper in the side view mirror, walking slowly to the truck. “No time for this,” he muttered under his breath as he rolled down the window and visualized himself killing the officer. He pictured his hand yanking the officer’s gun out of the holster strapped to his belt and shooting him in the heart. Or, just ripping it out with his bare hands.