Darla sipped a drink that she swore was not alcoholic as the other three moved into the lounge chattering with each other and then sitting down at the table with her. Darla’s first thought was that Sherry has a big mouth as her smile ranked as the biggest of the three. The gossip stream was alive and well, and she only hoped that the University wouldn’t get too bent out of shape over this whole deal as far as she was involved. She sighed and leaned forward to deal with the trio who just joined her.
“Well, girls,” she said casually, “now that he’s dead, and nobody gets him, was anyone trying at this table, besides me, trying to bag the guy?”
“Not me,” Colette replied in a voice that definitely sounded of the cigarettes she often smoked, shaking her head. “I’ve been through one divorce and that’s more than enough for me, thank you very much.”
“Oh, he slept with you too, Darla?” Sherry replied innocently. Darla rolled her eyes. “Here I thought I was special.”
“Sherry, I still never would have guessed that you would have been one of them.” Anna said. “What about Bob?” she asked, referring to Sherry’s normally absent husband.
“What can I say,” Darla said with a shrug. “I was smitten.”
“Well, I was never one of his harem,” Colette said with more than a touch of actual disdain. “Disgusting how some of you were just taken in by him.”
“Bob’s ok,” Sherry said, replying to Anna’s comment. As I understand it, their conversation was more of a cluster than an actual conversation, but I digress. “But he’s always away,” Sherry continued. “I had to find someone to fill my time, and another married man is just convenient. Neither of us was interested in commitment or talking about it.”
“There’s no denying he was handsome,” Anna said.
“He may have been handsome,” Darla said, “but he was a bastard.”
“Well, that goes without saying,” Colette said, “All men are bastards.”
“He may have been a two-timer and all, not that I’m one to talk,” Sherry shrugged, “but I got what I needed out of him at the time.”
“Still, we should have a little respect for the dead,” Anna said. “Especially the way he died. So terrible.”
“I don’t think so,” Darla said coldly. “I, for one, am glad he’s dead.” The others gasped as if she’d given a full confession and stare at her, gape-mouthed. Darla was unmoved by their surprise.
“You can’t be serious,” Anna said. “I thought you liked him.”
“I am serious,” Darla said. “That man was a no good, two-timing, son of a bitch, who deserved to die. Whoever offed him deserves a Nobel Prize or something for ridding the world of that scoundrel.”
“Darla you’d better not let the police hear you talking like that when they come by,” Sherry warned, lowering her voice a touch as if I had decided to listen at their door.
“And you know they will,” Colette said. “They might even say you did it.” Darla scoffed.
“Wouldn’t that have been nice?” Darla said. “I wish I had thought of it. I wouldn’t’ve just hidden it either. I would have displayed the bloody knife in my office and let the women that he screwed know that one more predator was off the streets and they were safe from his ways.”
“Come on, Darla,” Anna said, doubtfully.
“No, you come on,” Darla said. “He screwed me in more ways than one, and I was fed up. I’m telling you that if I had done it, I would’ve admitted it. I doubt anyone would’ve cared. Frankly, I think his wife did it.”
Another teacher walked into the lounge breaking up the conversation, since no one was interested in hearing any more of this.
“Well, this is enough excitement for me,” Darla said, standing. “I gotta get to class.” She walked away from them, their mouths still open in surprise. She was more interested in trying not to think about it.
The rest of the day was actually pretty standard at the school. Anyone who was upset or disturbed by the death of Professor Michaels was excused from classes, which meant that half the school stayed home, including those who never had Michaels as a teacher, curiously. As day faded into night, the students and faculty disappeared from the campus proper, and the dorms lit up little by little until the lights started going out as the moon rose higher.
With shadows dominating the nightscape of the college, one more shadow moved across the side of the girls’ dorm and stopped beneath one of the windows that was still dimly lit. Scott Owen reached up and knocked on the window. When he didn’t get an answer, he knocked again and waited, looking around. He knew he was alone out there, but part of him felt like he was being watched. He stared out to the line of trees just beyond the manicured edge of the lawn wondering if there were eyes back there somewhere or if he was just being paranoid. The window opened which brought his attention back.
Jenny Thurman looked out the window and then down at her visitor. “Scott?” she asked with a smile. “What are you doing here?”
“I saw you were still up,” he said. “I wanted to take you out. Make up for being a jerk earlier, you know?”
“Are you crazy?” she whispered. “We’ll get in trouble for being out after curfew. Besides, I have a Sociology test tomorrow.” She thumbed back into her room where her bed was overrun by papers, her book, and a desk lamp, which left the rest of the room in darkness. Her roommate snored softly somewhere on the dark side of the room.
“I’ve got tests too, but come on,” he said. “Where’s your sense of adventure?”
“My sense of adventure is wanting to graduate and work with children,” she replied, but with an underlying reluctance to send him away.
“And when I pass the bar, I’ll acquit for you all the curfews you’ve broken,” he said reaching his arms up and gesturing with his fingers. “Come on!”
Jenny was unsure about this, given her upcoming test and what happened the previous night. She glanced to her roommate, who had already kicked her covers to the floor and slept with her legs tucked under her and her panty-clad butt sticking out of her T-shirt which was riding halfway up her back at this point. Jenny hadn’t changed yet, so she was at least decent.
“You’re impossible,” she said, looking back to Scott and chuckling. “You know that?”
She climbed out of her window and landed softly in the grass in her bare feet. Leaving her window open, he took her hand and they kissed before they crept along the side of the building, ducking beneath the windows. They reached the edge of the building, and Scott looked for security.
“Where are we going?” Jenny whispered.
“It’s a surprise,” he replied.
“What if the R.A. is wandering around?” she asked with considerable concern.
“So we get busted for blowing curfew,” he shrugged.
“And get fined for it.”
“But it’s all worth it,” he said, pulling her close to him. He kissed her neck, and she closed her eyes and took in the full sensation of the electricity running down her body. Finally, she laughed quietly and pushed him away.
“I know what you’re doing,” she smiled.
“Are you complaining?”
“No, but I said work with children, not make them.”
“I promise I’m totally responsible,” he assured her, “and in the worst case scenario, completely honorable too.”
Jenny gasped and slapped his arm. He laughed, and she wrapped her arms around his neck again. He shushed her.
“Let’s go, you mean old awful boy,” she whispered.
With another look to make sure the coast was clear, they ran across the moonlit lawn into the trees bordering the college grounds. What they didn’t know at the time, unfortunately, was that Scott’s earlier intuition about someone watching them was completely correct. Someone had been following their every movement from the moment that Scott showed up at Jenny’s window. This woman had witnessed their playful banter and had followed them as they ran into the treeline. Before she had crossed into
the trees behind him, she paused by a small tree held by wire wrapped around two stakes. She unwrapped the wire from one of the stakes and pulled it from the ground before continuing.
Scott and Jenny arrived at a small clearing in the trees where Scott had laid out a blanket earlier. They sat down on the blanket and embraced each other, making out. He moved from her lips to her neck and ran his hands all over her body. She leaned back, taking in the attention he was giving. She lay down completely on her back, and he climbed on top of her, kissing her neck again. His hands found her waist, and he ran them under her shirt lifting it to the base of her breasts.
She turned her head to look at him, but then froze. Scott noticed she stopped reacting to him, and moved his head back up to look into her eyes.
“What’s wrong, beautiful?” he asked casually. Then he noticed her gaze was locked behind him, her eyes glazed over in fear. He heart leapt into his throat as he slowly turned to look behind him.
Standing over both of them was the figure dressed in black, her face covered as it was at the original murder. She held the tree stake over them, and before they had a chance to cry out, she brought the stake down hard at an angle, which impossibly pierced both of their bodies through their hearts and went into the ground below them.
I wouldn’t have believed it if I hadn’t seen it myself. Examination of the weapon revealed that the reason she was able to accomplish such an act was due to two factors: the weight of the stake and the piercing end. The stake, itself, was not made of plastic, but heavy steel, so it weighed about 50 pounds. In addition the end that one would normally hammer into the ground was very sharp to allow it to cut through hard ground very easily. When these factors were combined with the killer’s inherent strength, momentum and gravity allowed the stake to snap through the bones of the victims’ rib cages and pierce their hearts before supporting itself in the ground. And before you question the stake piercing both hearts when Scott was face to face with Jenny on top of her, remember that Scott had turned to look behind him. Since he had turned to look over his left shoulder, this moved his body so that his heart was roughly above hers. Also based on Hank’s murder, the killer knew enough about human physiology to be able to stab a man and not kill him, so she would be able to stab a pair of hearts.
As my investigation developed, I learned that poor Scott was simply with the wrong girl at the wrong time. Jenny was the target.
CHAPTER FOUR
Holding Sanity Hostage
We allowed Athena back into her house after we had completed our forensic sweeps and decided we had all the evidence we could get. While she was nervous about staying in the house by herself, she also did not feel she would be comfortable anywhere else, including Mrs. Brackett’s house, where she was certain she had worn out her welcome, even though Kathy had no problem with her remaining. I asked about anyone else in the area she might have to be with, but the only family she had was her mother in Monument who had left on a long trip the day before. Depending on how far news traveled and where she was going, she might or might not know about this for some time. On the day after Athena had returned home to the grisly scene, she had the news playing in her kitchen as she stood nearby looking like a woman who had not slept well, regardless of how comfortable she thought she might be. Her hair was in complete disarray and she wore old, paint-stained sweat pants and a T-shirt that had seen better days.
According to news transcripts from the time of day when this piece occurred, the anchor on channel three was broadcasting the following: “Today, on News Three at noon: the city council voted eight to four yesterday in favor of using the vacant wing of the Bluffs Mental Health Facility as a temporary holding pen for minimum security prisoners. More on that story and more in segment two.
“But first, our top story: Bluffs University experienced its second tragedy in only two days in the form of another double homicide. Two students were found by a groundskeeper this morning stabbed to death in a wooded area just outside their dorms. Our KBLF correspondent, John Franklin, is on the scene. John?”
Athena turned off the television with a scowl, pushing down the feelings of fear that warned her that the killer was still out there. She reached over to a tub of cottage cheese with a spoon in it.
“Did you sleep with her too, Professor Michaels?” Athena asked out loud with considerable disgust. She took a bite of her comfort food, and with her mouth full, uttered, “Make me sick…”
She carried her cottage cheese tub to the dining room table and sat in her spot at one end. The diminutive table still had two placemats and candlesticks at either end for the pair of them ready for her to set the dishes and food for breakfast or dinner. She stared at the setup, wondering to herself how everything could have been so wrong when it felt so right.
She dropped her head onto an arm on the table and cried, as she thought back to her last meal with Hank the morning she had gone to her mother’s. It was all so perfect at the time. The table was set with silverware and glasses of milk and coffee. She had just served a complete breakfast with eggs, sausage, and pancakes, as she often did for him, and they sat across from each other before starting out on their days. Hank told her she didn’t need to work since he wanted to support her, so most of her days were spent ensuring the house was in top condition and properly set for any company they might have. This was an exception, of course, since she was going to be gone all day.
“Another beautiful Tuesday,” she said to Hank as she placed the last dish and sat with a flourish across from him.
“So you’ll be heading to your mother’s in Monument,” Hank confirmed taking his silverware in hand.
“And staying the night,” Athena finished.
“Athena, it’s been a year,” Hank sighed preparing a bite. “Don’t you think your mother can get along without you coming over every week by now?”
“Of course,” she replied, “but without dad, mom just doesn’t have anyone else to spend time with.”
“What about those church people?” Hank suggested, but Athena gave him a look which said, “You know what I mean.” Hank nodded, “Ok, I get it. I wish you didn’t have to go, but you’re a fit example to us all on parental care. Well done.”
“Well, you call yours, which is more than a lot of people do,” she offered.
“At least I get points for that, right?” he smiled taking a bite.
“Yeah, but you get points for a lot of things.”
“And your going is just about your mother?”
“Are you going to analyze me?” she asked seductively.
“No, I was just asking,” he replied missing her look completely. She shrugged and took a bite. “I noticed you refilled your prescription.”
Athena paused in her chewing and swallowed her bite. She looked at him.
“All right … doctor … maybe if you’d spend a little more time with me–” Athena started with some irritation.
“Now, you know I need to work,” Hank began.
“Yes, but late every day?” she asked. “Then you meet with friends? Sometimes, it feels like you’re avoiding me.”
“I would never do that,” Hank insisted. “I sure didn’t avoid you last night, did I?”
Athena smiled a little and shook her head.
“And every Sunday, I’m right there by your side at our church,” he noted. “You don’t think I’m doing anything I shouldn’t, do you?” He stared at her without a word, waiting for her response. Athena stirred her breakfast around on her plate. She shook her head again.
“I guess not,” she finally answered. “If you were getting what you needed elsewhere, I figure you wouldn’t still be making love to me.”
“See?” he said triumphantly, “I do love you.”
“I know.” Athena nodded. “Why don’t you come with me?”
“I can’t just take off during the week, Athena,” Hank said. “We should go over a weekend sometime.”
“Ok,” Athena nodded. “I just want to see more of
you.”
“I’ll see what I can do,” Hank assured her.
They didn’t say much else during their perfect breakfast before Hank had left for the University. She wished their final full conversation had gone better, but at least, she knows now why he always stayed late and why he always let her go by herself. She had always gone during the week, so they had their weekends together. Little did she know at the time that it only allowed him to have company over for the evening.
What really got to her was the conversation she had had with her mother that same evening. Like the conversation with Kathy, the subject had turned to adding a child to their family. She was sitting in the living room of the house she grew up in with her mother, Sharon Reynolds.
The room was fairly small with just enough room for a couch, chair and television. It was all in a soft blue color which matched the curtains, and the carpet was a brown berber which her mother liked because it was easy to keep clean even when it wasn’t. Between the couch and chair was a small coffee table where they each had a coaster sitting on for their individual cups of tea, from which they drank as they talked.
Sharon Reynolds was an average looking woman in her late fifties with short, salt and pepper hair and dressed in yellow pants and a white blouse with yellow flowers. She rarely wore makeup while at home, and kept it to a minimum while out. She said that after the loss of her husband, Athena’s father, she had no one to show off for anymore, so she refused to do more than she needed to for social norms. She did tend to dress up a little more for church, which she regularly attended primarily because they had become her family with Athena living too far away to see regularly.
“I really feel like we’re ready to start a family,” Athena told her mother in a tone that felt more like she was trying to convince her mother of it rather than telling her. “We’ve been talking about it, and he seems really enthusiastic.”
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