Rising Darkness

by T. S. Worthington

  Tracy had told her that she needed to just go and not look back. There had to be a better way than to put up with this abuse. Joe had to agree. Had Heather decided to leave John once and for all? Did John discover this and decide to punish Tracy for forcing his wife away?

  Joe called up Alex to tell him what he discovered. The last few messages were very creepy and it didn’t even really sound like Heather the way they had been worded. The entire color and demeanor of the messages changed. Joe had a strong suspicion that it was John sending out those last few messages. He had discovered that Heather was communicating with Tracy and that she was thinking of leaving him. Then it was totally different. He wondered if Tracy could tell. Maybe she just thought that Heather was being beaten down to the point that she wasn’t even her anymore.

  “Yea, that does sound pretty strange. I think you hit the nail on the head with that one,” Alex said. “I’ll look into him. Do you want to come on this one?”

  “Yea, I’ll check him out with you. If the guy is that much of a psycho then you are gonna want some back up.”

  ****

  An hour later they were at Heather and John’s house. It was a nice house in a wealthy section in the hills. Joe drove past this way several times a day on his way into the city and he had even done business with some of the residents of that neighborhood. It was one of those neighborhoods where the wealthy often lived alongside the working class, which had never made a lot of sense to him. There would be a very large, crazy expensive house and then a few houses down you would see a modest style house. John wondered who had decided to build houses and properties that way when the neighborhood was designed. He had nothing against anyone who made an honest living, whether they were wealthy or not, but it had been his experience that most wealthy people tended to live very isolated on huge estates or they lived in neighborhoods with other very wealthy individuals.

  When Heather answered the door both Joe and Alex were stunned by how beautiful the woman was in person. They had seen the pictures of her social media, but she was stunning in person way beyond what a picture could capture. Joe could see Alex’s eyes bulging out of his head as he was instantly captivated by the woman’s beauty. Heather had this sweetness to her that instantly made you want to take care of her and keep her safe as well. She cast that sort of a vibe, but she did it without seeming like a victim somehow.

  They followed Heather into her house and out by the pool area where she made them a few drinks by the mini bar. It was a nice setup and Joe found that he was fascinated by the view of the city from the pool, where it overlooked the huge cliff. He had thought about living in an area like this one, but when he had found his place in the valley he knew that nothing would ever beat that.

  “Is your husband home?” Joe asked. He just had the feeling that he was being watched and kept replaying an image in his mind of being tackled by some crazy version of John.

  “No, he is at work,” Heather said. Her voice was sultry and seductive and Joe wondered if that was something she had practiced to the point that it was virtually her own now or if she had been born that way.

  “I understand that you and my wife Tracy were pretty close,” Joe said.

  “Yes, we were. I was so sorry to hear about what happened to her. She was one of the best friends I’ve ever had,” Heather said breaking into tears. It was as if she had been holding them in the entire time and had decided that now was the best time to let it all out. “I wanted to come to the funeral, but John would never have let me.”

  “Your husband is pretty controlling isn’t he?” Alex asked. He had a look of intensity on his face that Joe had never really seen before. He wondered if Alex was thinking about bashing John’s skull in right then.

  “Yes, that would be the understatement of the year.”

  “Why don’t you just leave? Call the cops and have a restraining order against him and divorce his ass.”

  “It is not that easy. He would track me down and he would have me killed. I’m sure of it.”

  “You think he is capable of murder?” Alex asked.

  “I know that he is,” Heather replied quietly.

  “Did he have anything to do with what happened to my wife?” Joe asked point blank. He was tired of dancing around the obvious questions with these people.

  Heather looked at him strangely as if she didn’t understand the question that he was posing. She took a moment before answering and removed her sunglasses to look right at him. She had the most intense looking eyes he had ever seen. They were bright blue and bright. It was captivating beyond anything he had ever seen before and he almost forgot to pay attention to her response.

  “He found out about me and Tracy being friends. Unbeknown to me he hijacked my Facebook account in an effort to keep better tabs on me and he saw that we were close friends and that she was trying to get me to leave him. He said that he would put a stop to that sort of thing and if I ever left then he would kill her and then when he tracked me down he would kill me too. I’ve asked myself that question a hundred times since the murder happened. I really don’t know if he did or not.”

  Joe wanted to smash this guy to pieces so badly. He stood up and began to pace around slowly. His energy would not let him sit still any longer. It was like this ball of anxiety that was welling up inside of him and mixing with the anger.

  “Easy, Joe,” Alex said.

  “When will your husband be home? We would like to talk with him,” Joe said.

  “I don’t think that is a good idea. He will be very angry if he finds out that I had anybody here, especially you guys. Please you have to go soon.”

  “We are going to have to investigate his whereabouts during the time the murder occurred. He might have just become the new prime suspect,” Joe said.

  “Heather you have to work with us. If you think at all that John might have had anything to do with this then we have to know. If he did then we can have him put away for life where he can never hurt you again. Don’t you understand that? If he goes free for this crime then Joe will be going to prison in his place. You don’t want that to happen,” Alex said. Joe admired the way Alex was appealing to her reasoning.

  Heather tried to control the tears that were flowing out of her eyes, but they kept coming as she became more and more emotional. Joe wondered if she was too damaged and too much under John’s spell to let them get close enough to him to pull the noose tightly around his throat.

  “I really don’t have any proof. It’s just a suspicion I have, that’s all. I know who John is and I know what he is capable of. When he found out about me and Tracy he flew into a rage and he beat me until I blacked out. When I came to he explained to me that if I didn’t sever all ties with Tracy then he would kill us both. Then he began to communicate with her through my Facebook pretending to be me. I wanted to go on there and warn her somehow, but he would have known and I couldn’t leave the house to warn her because I was being followed constantly by that Investigator. I think his name is Dyer… something. I haven’t seen him since Tracy’s death actually.”

  “Wait, you said that Dyer is the one that was hired to follow you around?” Alex asked.

  “Yea. Why, does that mean something to you guys?”

  Alex played it off cool. “Maybe. He sounds familiar is all.”

  As they left Heather’s house they were both thinking the same thing. The common thread they were starting to see was Dyer.

  “Do you think Dyer saw something somewhere that might blow this case open?” Joe asked.

  “I’m not sure. If he was tailing Heather then he probably had no idea what the hell John was up to,” Alex said.

  “But he was also supposed to be tailing Robin at the same time. I’m not sure how he could have done both jobs at the same time without having a little help. You think he outsources things to an assistant?” Joe asked.

  “I’m not sure. It’s possible, but something here isn’t adding up. I’ll need
to talk with him and find out what he knows. It might be nothing, but right now we don’t have a lot else to go on.”

  “We aren’t just letting John off the hook here, are we? If anyone is capable of cold blooded murder, it’s got to be that guy.”

  “Well, if Dyer is supposed to be tailing Robin then he might have seen something about the deaths of Robin and his wife. The cops have had time to process the crime scene and the evidence by now. I have a friend who works in forensics. I’m going to see if they found anything. Maybe the killer got messy and left some clues this time.”

  “I’m surprised they haven’t tried to pin that one on me, yet,” Joe said.

  “Well, you have an alibi for that one. You have been at home with your girls or you’ve been hanging out with me. I’d say you are in the clear on that.”

  When they got back to the car Alex called his source in forensics. She told him that the crime scene had been swept and they actually found a few pieces of evidence this time. They found a hair follicle and they found a partial print. It looks like the killer was aiming for Robin and had been surprised when Jess walked into the house. Robin had most likely never seen it coming, but Jess had tried to run based on the blood spatter patterns. She had been killed out of impulse and had fought like tiger, getting bits of hair and skin under her nails from the assailant.

  “Wow, she scratched the bastard?” Alex asked.

  “Well, she tried to, but it was very superficial and probably didn’t draw blood. All we got was a few skin cells and shreds of skin. Not quite enough for a DNA match, but the hair we found was definitely more than enough.”

  “Great news. Do you have enough for a profile?”

  “We didn’t get any matches in the database, so whoever it is may be a first time offender. They either haven’t been in trouble with the law before or they did petty stuff where the DNA was not recorded.”

  “Ok, not quite what I was wanting to hear, but we will take it. What color was the hair that was found there?”

  “It was dark brown in color.”

  “Thanks, Shelly,” Alex said as he ended the call.

  He told Joe what Shelly had said. Joe thought for a few moments about it all. He wasn’t sure they were one step closer to catching the killer or not, but it sounded like good news at least.

  “Does John have a criminal record?” Joe asked.

  “No, despite being an abusive psycho his record is surprisingly clean,” Alex replied.

  “Shit. It seems like we take one step forward and two steps back here,” Joe said. He was no longer able to hide the frustration in his voice.

  “Don’t lose heart here. We are getting close to something,” Alex replied.

  “How can you be so sure? It seems like we have established a few possibilities but we don’t have anything where we can really seal the deal here. I can see my future becoming less and less bright all the time.”

  Alex didn’t say anything as he drove off. Joe knew that he wanted to ease his mind, but there was really no way to do that right then.

  ****

  Joe couldn’t sleep. He had been lying in bed for several hours staring at the ceiling and sleep just would not come to him. There were just too many things rolling around inside of his head for him to deal with at the moment. There were too many things that were just not adding up.

  He wanted to think that John was the culprit, but they had no proof. If anyone was capable of committing these murders that he knew of then it would have been him. Alex said that with the murders of Robin and Jess they had some DNA evidence, but no one to match it too. This basically meant that the cops were going to twiddle their thumbs while they tried to match it to a suspect who would miraculously fall out of the sky.

  Joe had asked Alex why they wouldn’t talk to the police and see if they would be interested in what they had found out, but Alex told him that the cops were really not going to bend over backwards to try to find a viable new suspect in this thing. It was almost as if they had been bought off some way.

  Joe wondered if there was a way to get ahold of John’s DNA. He doubted that the obviously good natured man would succumb to a mouth swab or anything of the sort. The more he thought about John the more he wanted to kill that bastard. Joe had seldom really wanted to kill anyone in his life but an abusive wife beater like him who may have killed Tracy was someone that Joe was happy to fantasize about putting six feet deep in the ground. People like that did not deserve to be alive.

  Joe rolled out of bed and put on a pair of sweats and a T shirt. He laced up his sneakers and decided that he needed to clear his head by going for a jog. He had never been one to be obsessive about exercise or working out, but he liked to jog a few times a week. Occasionally he had bouts with insomnia and jogging for just a few miles late at night seemed to do the trick for him.

  He was careful not to wake the girls as he moved downstairs and slipped carefully out the door.

  The night air felt good. It was the perfect time of year where it was not too warm and it was not too cool either. The nights were perfect and felt like an endless summer like he remembered from when he was a kid. Those were the best and most innocent times of his life and he often thought about how they had shaped his perception on the world.

  It didn’t take long for him to break into a nice pace as he jogged along the street that he had lived on for several years. The huge estates and the perfectly manicured lawns were the things that one saw in Hollywood movies that really depicted the perfect life and the perfect community. It was anything but those things, but Joe loved it because he knew it could always be so much worse.

  He ran past the end of his street and turned onto Davis Drive. He liked to venture out of the community at times, especially when he jogged. It was refreshing to see how the rest of the world lived and to be one of them, even if he was just passing through.

  Joe often thought about what it would be like if he weren’t rich and if he had never been so driven to succeed at the work that he loved. He had not been born rich and he could have easily have gone on into the family business and wound up like his dad falling over dead of a heart attack at fifty-three. But he had other things in the cards for himself.

  Joe almost didn’t see the shadowy figure leap in front of him. It happened so fast that he did not have time to be scared or to react at all as the burly figure brought the club down on his shoulder. He felt his whole body surge with pain as he was knocked to the side of the sidewalk. He landed rolling on his back, briefly knocking the air from his lungs, but he was thankful that his body instinctively rolled with the blow to soften it just a bit.

  The burly figure came towards him quickly before Joe had time to gain his bearings, and Joe felt the pain in his back jolt throughout his body as the club came down on him again and again. He was hardly able to comprehend what was happening, but somehow he summoned the guts to throw himself into the man who was attacking him.

  The man collapsed beneath him taken totally by surprise at the stamina of Joe. Without thinking Joe began to punch the man in the face repeatedly, hitting him hard in the jaw, the nose, and the eye. The man winced with pain but did not grunt. The blows almost seemed to be reflecting off him and it was tough to tell if he was even being hurt by it in the dark.

  Suddenly Joe’s body was thrust backwards as the man pushed him hard. Joe rolled onto his back but was immediately kicked in the stomach. He felt his entire stomach lurch, trying to empty its contents as he struggled to find the air to breathe again.

  That was when he saw the club on the ground. The man had dropped it during the scuffle. Joe grabbed it and swung it hard at the man, connecting with his nose, which busted open spraying blood everywhere. The man staggered backwards grasping his nose in pain. Joe threw his body at him and tackled the man to the ground. He reared back with the club and was just about to bash the man’s skull in when a car drove by, illuminating the two men in the headlights.

  Joe saw for
a second that the man he was fighting was John Myers. It was Heather’s husband. He had come to kill Joe. That split second of confusion was all that John needed as he slugged Joe hard upside the head, hitting him in the ear and the temple. The entire world went numb as a loud ringing sound vibrated throughout his entire consciousness.

  Joe stumbled backwards clutching his head as John got up and ran away. Joe was not sure how a man who probably had a concussion and a broken nose was able to just walk away. The adrenaline must have been flowing through him pretty hard.

  After a few minutes of reeling from the pain and wondering if the ringing in his ears would ever stop and if he had permanent damage to his eardrum, Joe realized what a gift this whole thing had actually been. As he limped back towards home cradling his possibly broken ribs and feeling his lips swell in several places where they had been mashed against his teeth, he realized that his prayers had actually been answered—he had John Myer’s DNA on the club.

  He had to smile in spite of everything. He had to smile indeed.

  Chapter 8: Sticks and Stones

  “The asshole lawyered up.”

  Detective Mitch Daniels slammed the door to the interrogation room and entered the control room. He lit up a cigarette ignoring the no smoking policy that was pretty much state wide and grabbed the lukewarm cup of coffee he had sitting on the counter.

  Joe watched all of this with pained amusement. It was weird when you wanted to laugh, cry, and hit someone all at the same time. He had been pleasantly surprised by the fast turnaround between him reporting the incident where John Myers had tried to kill him on the city streets. The bastard had obviously been stalking him and watching his house, waiting for the right opportunity. The more he thought about it the angrier he became. His kids were home. What if the bastard had decided to break in and kill them all while they were asleep?