Eyes of the Predator: The Pickham County Murders (The Hunters)

by Glenn Trust

  “Need to come in and talk to you…and your wife.”

  “My wife, too?”

  “Your wife, too,” Grover replied, pausing and then adding a formal, “sir”.

  Parsons watched as the man at the door turned his head and called over his shoulder, “Honey, cover yourself up! We got company.”

  And with that, the man at the door opened it slightly farther to allow the deputy to enter the cabin. The deputy started into the room, tensed and alert, eyes searching for the girl somewhere in the dim interior of the cabin.

  Something glittered in the afternoon sunlight shining through the door. Parsons’ eyes flicked to the right. The reflected light sparkled from the Texas longhorn ring on the finger of the man’s hand, holding the door, just at Parsons’ eye level. It was an awkward way to hold the door, the deputy thought, and at the same moment, he knew that it was the ring described and noted carefully on the small pad in the breast pocket of his shirt, along with the description of a medium built man with a Texas twang and driving an old Chevy with Texas plates.

  He knew it instantly, but it was an instant too late. As the deputy’s hand began to lift the pistol from its holster, the man’s left hand jerked the door fully open and then came across the back of the deputy’s shoulders until the forearm was across the front of Parsons’ throat. Simultaneously, the knife moved with practiced precision and uncanny speed from the waistband of his jeans into Lylee’s right hand and then to the opening between the front and rear panels of the protective vest the deputy wore. The deputy’s pistol had not fully cleared its holster when the heavy blade was pushed deep into his side.

  A gasp, followed by a deep, throaty moan of pain escaped through the deputy’s quivering lips. He clutched at the man who had just taken his life. They stood in an intimate embrace in the doorway. The deputy struggled to turn and put his arms around the man that had killed him while the other tried to extricate himself from the grasp of his dying victim.

  As light and life faded from young Deputy Parsons’ eyes, he saw the girl, seated on the chair across the room. Their eyes met, and he struggled to hold more tightly to the man in his grasp. The girl’s eyes were wide and staring into the deputy’s face.

  “Run.”

  The girl stared back. He had said something, and somehow, dimly she knew he had spoken to her.

  “Run!” The deputy’s voice was a hoarse grunt.

  Grover Parsons sank to his knees as the girl’s eyes cleared with understanding. She sprang from the chair and through the cabin’s back door as the deputy’s eyes clouded and his life bled out onto the cabin floor. Yet still, in death, he clutched at the man who had killed him.

  It only took seconds for Lylee to pull himself from the deputy’s death grip. But those seconds were enough for Lyn to make her attempt at escape, and as she moved, her mind came crashing back into the real world of the present.

  Clay knelt in the foliage at the edge of the tree line behind the cabin, resting the shotgun on his bent knee. Deputy Parsons had disappeared around the front of the cabin not more than three minutes earlier, when Clay heard the noises. They were indistinguishable, muffled sounds, barely audible over the creek’s rushing. For a moment, he thought to go to the front and help Deputy Parsons with whatever was happening, but then the rear door of the cabin slammed open.

  Startled, he raised the shotgun to his shoulder, fearing what might happen next. Kneeling in the brush contemplating taking a man’s life was far different from sitting in a tree stand stalking white tail deer.

  An instant later, he lowered the shotgun to his side and stood up. The girl, completely nude and covered in bleeding cuts, ran across the cabin’s small backyard. He stood still in the shock of the moment. It was Lyn. It was the girl they had dropped at the truck stop just yesterday morning; the girl that had become his obsession. The object of his pursuit and search was before him, and yet seeing her so suddenly and in that condition immobilized him. He watched her run, directly at him, her eyes unrecognizing. He tried to speak and move, and think what to do next.

  But what to do next took care of itself. The cabin’s rear door banged again. A man in tee shirt and jeans sprinted from the back door and into the yard, clearly in pursuit of the girl.

  Lifting the shotgun to his shoulder, Clay shouted, “Drop! Lyn, drop!”

  For the first time in her panicked flight, Lyn became aware of the young man in work clothes standing in front of her. He shouted something. He looked familiar. Why was he shouting? What was he shouting?

  She saw him raise a big gun to his shoulder, pointing it at her. Why would he do that? Why would he point a gun at her? He was shouting again.

  Fearing the shotgun’s blast, one more in a long series of fears she had faced in the last two days, Lyn dropped to the ground. Behind her, Lylee slowed as he became aware of the young man at the edge of the woods pointing the shotgun at him.

  “Whoa! Hold on, don’t shoot, son. I’m one of the good guys.”

  “Stop right there!” Clay gripped the shotgun tightly. “Who are you? Where’s Deputy Parsons?”

  “I’m Tommy Sims,” Lylee said, the lie tripping off his tongue as if it were a truth he had learned from his mama. “Maintenance man here. I was down by the creek, and I heard the commotion so I came to check it out. Found the deputy and some other fella inside on the floor and saw the girl running out the back door.” He smiled and put his hands out, showing the young man that they were empty. “Just trying to help. Please take it easy with that shotgun, buddy.”

  The young man was still wary and cautious, but Lylee saw the small signs as the boy relaxed, just slightly. A small change in his posture. A slight variation in his breathing.

  Lying in the cool, damp grass between the two men, Lyn became aware of talking above her. Why were they talking? She recognized one of the voices. It was the boy, Clay. He had given her a ride. She closed her eyes and smelled the fragrant grass.

  The other voice spoke again and she recognized it too. It was…the man. Her throat struggled to form words. Her breath came in pants, and she tried to push herself up to flee once more, but could barely come to her knees.

  “No,” the sound came from her in a whisper. “No, no.” She struggled to form other words, to warn the young man. None came.

  Hearing the whispers, Clay looked down at the girl. That brief second was all that the predator required.

  Reaching in his rear pocket, he pulled the small .38 Smith and Wesson taken from old Harold Sims in his moment of death two nights earlier. An instant later, as the young man with the shotgun just barely became aware of his movement, he pulled the trigger of the small revolver, and then pulled it two more times.

  Thunder cracked over her head, and Lyn tried to claw her way into the ground. And then after the last thunderous crack, a deeper louder roar that seemed to shake the ground and grass around her, pounded down on her, taking her breath away.

  The three bullets slammed Clay in the chest and abdomen plunging him into stunned and breathless shock. He fell with the realization that he had failed. He had found Lyn only to know that she would be murdered.

  The ground came up and slammed him in the back. The shotgun rose slightly from the impact. He became aware that he still held the gun and that his finger was still locked on the trigger as he fell. With one last conscious thought, Clay put the slight amount of pressure required on the trigger, and the shotgun roared as it bucked from his hand. It was the last thing he knew.

  Leyland, “Lylee”, Torkman, predator, howled and snarled his curse in pain. The shotgun blast had not been a direct hit, but three .00 buck pellets had struck him in the left leg, one piercing his kneecap.

  The voice of caution screeched in his ear, End it! I told you! END IT!

  The agonizing throbbing in his leg and the screech inside his head forced him up to stand on his remaining good leg. The girl lay trembling in the grass before him, face buried in the dirt. He would have preferred the knife. Even in the disappo
intment of not having all that he wanted from the girl, the knife would have made the end better, sweeter.

  But the knife was lodged in the side of the deputy lying on the cabin floor. He had left it there in his pursuit of the girl. The small revolver would have to do. There were three rounds left. It would only take one. He raised his arm and pointed the pistol at the back of the girl’s head. The muzzle of the pistol was barely two feet from its target. He smiled at the thought that the medical examiner would find powder residue in the wound.

  The Pickham County pickup had come fishtailing off the highway and down the drive of the Creek Side Cabins. Roaring past the office, George and Sharon ignored the couple still standing there arm-in-arm and pointing down the drive. They knew from the alert given by the Rye County deputy where they were going.

  At the turn along the creek, they saw no one by the Rye County car. The deputy had advised dispatch that he was going to check the situation and had explained tersely to his sheriff over the open radio waves that if the girl was there, she was in danger, imminent or not, and that every minute of delay constituted an increase in the threat to the girl. He was going to check it out, despite the sheriff’s objections.

  After that, no one had come on the radio to argue with him. Any one of the units responding might have made the same decision, probably would have, George Mackey knew. Correct procedure in law enforcement was often a very subjective thing. This was not accounting or engineering. Answers were not defined by mathematics and science. The right or wrong thing to do usually depended largely on an officer’s interpretation of the facts, the perceived threat, and a million other subjective bits of information. Often, there was no absolute ‘right’ answer, and the right or wrong of it was determined by the outcome, or the press, or the courts years later.

  Gunning the engine as they made the turn along the creek, George brought the pickup to a sliding halt just short of the last cabin. From the angle, he could see that the front door was open, but there was no movement.

  The crack and roar of Sharon Price’s pistol reverberated through the cab of the truck as George started to open the door and scared the shit out of him in the process. Price stood just outside the truck with the door open, surrounded by the dust of the pickup’s braking. Her pistol was pointed towards the backyard, visible from their angle on the road.

  The pop of a small caliber weapon and the whiz of a round overhead caused George to crouch by the car as Sharon’s weapon discharged again. Peering over the hood of the pickup, George saw a man limp into the woods carrying something that looked like a rifle or shotgun. Clearly, it was not the weapon he had fired at George and Sharon.

  Two bodies were visible on the ground where the man had stood a moment before.

  “Did you hit him…or anything at that range?” George asked, judging the distance to the backyard at about seventy-five yards, a long distance for an accurate shot from Price’s nine-millimeter pistol.

  “No, pretty sure I didn’t, but he was about to put a round into one of those bodies. Had to get his attention.” Still holding the pistol, Sharon Price had jogged half way up the side yard towards the back before George made it around the pickup and started after her. “Come on,” she called over her shoulder.

  Approaching the bodies on the ground, they slowed. George could barely bring himself to examine them. They were bloody. The girl was nude. The young man was… “Shit,” he said. “That’s the kid from last night, isn’t it?” George stood with his Glock at the ready in a two-handed stance, watching the woods into which the man who had fired at them had disappeared.

  Price knelt to check the bodies as George stood watch. “Yeah. It’s him, Clay was his name.” Three spreading red spots covered his work shirt, the same shirt he had been wearing the night before as they sat talking in the state patrol office.

  She turned towards the nude girl. “This would be the girl they left at the truck stop, the one on the voice mail.” She knelt beside the girl and placed her hand on her head as if trying to take away the terror and fear she had felt in the last day, in her last moments.

  The tear that ran down George’s face dropped silently into the grass beside the girl. Late. Again. He felt the frustration and desperate anger rise in him, and something else. George Mackey was the hunter now. He knew how to hunt, and he would hunt down this animal.

  The blood trail on the ground showed the way. Young Clay must have given a good account of himself before he went down. George moved towards the woods but stopped at Price’s next words.

  “She’s alive.”

  “What?” George spoke the word softly as a prayer and looked at Sharon who was now kneeling beside the girl.

  Sharon placed her hand on the girl’s bare, bloody back. There was an unmistakable shudder, followed by a low, soft sob and then a whispered question, too low to be understood.

  “What’s that, baby? What did you say?” Sharon Price knelt with her mouth near the girl’s ear, hand still softly resting on her back.

  “Is – he – gone?” The words were spoken so softly and with evident terror of the possible response that they were barely audible, even with Sharon so close.

  “He’s gone baby. He’s gone. He won’t hurt you now. We won’t let him.” Price whispered the words into the girl’s ear, putting an arm around her on the ground and stroking her hair as if she were a child having a bad dream.

  “He came for me.”

  “Who baby. Who came for you?”

  “The boy. His name is Clay. I left him a message, and he came for me.”

  “I know. I know.” Sharon’s words were whispered softly as she looked at the young man in the bloody shirt and brushed away her own tears.

  “He came for me. He saved me. Where is he?”

  Sharon had already shifted on her knees to the young man’s body. Gently, she felt for the carotid artery, and then more firmly pressed into his neck with two fingers, a look of surprise and urgency on her face. Pulling the portable radio from her belt, Price looked up at George Mackey and nodded. Her eyes burned into his taking only a second to say, “Go! Do what you have to do. Find him. End this.” And then she raised the radio and spoke.

  As he disappeared into the tree line, George heard Price’s call for EMT’s… ‘person shot…vital signs weak…’

  The blood trail was clear at first. In the low foliage and brush at the edge of the woods, it was easily visible. It did not appear to be arterial bleeding. Not enough blood and not spread far enough to be from a spurting artery. It was likely that he would not bleed out before George found him. That was good, George thought. Very good.

  As he moved deeper into the woods, the trail became harder to follow. The blood blended in with the leaves and pine straw on the ground and was not as visible as when spattered across the green foliage in the daylight. George lifted his head from his inspection of the ground to peer into the dim woods around him. He was keenly aware that the danger here was watching the blood trail on the ground too closely and not his surroundings, becoming an easy, unaware target.

  There was a loud popping bang not fifty yards away, followed by the sounds of rustling leaves and snapping twigs, and ending with an almost simultaneous dull thunk as the bullet plowed into a tree to his right. Okay, he thought, I’m in the general vicinity at least.

  George moved around a tree to his front, advanced a few yards, staying low, and then found cover behind a large hickory. His efforts drew a quick bang followed by the buzz of the round flying by into the ground. Closer, but still no immediate threat. The shooter was not much of a shot, he thought. Still he had a gun, and it only took one round to make him a great shot, and George a very dead deputy.

  George took stock and thought. Looked like three rounds into the boy, Clay. One fired at them as they pulled up in the pickup. Two here in the woods. That made six. Unless he had reloads, he was out of ammo, for the revolver at least. And George doubted that he had any reloads. He knew that the pistol must be the one he took from
Harold Sims, and it was not likely that Sims was carrying any extra rounds.

  That left the long weapon, rifle or shotgun. George suspected it was the deputy’s shotgun loaned to the boy to watch the back door while he checked things out. It was just a guess, but it made sense. He had no idea how young Clay had found them and showed up at the Creek Side Cabins, but having done so, he was clearly not the kind to let the deputy go to the door of the cabin without some backup. As George pondered it, he was sure the weapon must be the deputy’s shotgun.

  His thoughts were confirmed a second later when a loud roar slammed through the woods sending numerous pellets ricocheting through the trees. Shotgun it was.

  So, the shooter had taken one round from Clay and was bleeding. He had fired one wild round into the trees, either to draw George out or to see what he might hit. That left three to five rounds or so, depending on the shotgun’s magazine, the make of the shotgun, whether there was a round in the chamber with a full magazine or whether Clay had had to pump a round in before firing. In short, George had no way of knowing exactly how many rounds the shooter had left.

  He took a breath and decided he wasn’t going to wait to find out. Slowly, he moved his head to the side of the hickory and studied the woods ahead, showing just enough of his face to allow his right eye to see forward.

  The light in the woods was dim and dusky in the waning autumn afternoon. The sun set early in the mountain valleys where the horizon was a thousand feet above your head. It occurred to George that he did not want to be out here in the dark, looking for a wounded man with a shotgun. He studied the woods ahead, hunting and searching one small area at a time, eliminating an area with his eyes and then moving to the next, looking for any movement. There was none, except for the rustling of squirrels in the trees overhead.

  George wanted very much to pull his head back behind the safety of the large tree trunk, but he knew that he couldn’t. He had to spot the shooter before he was spotted. So far, the shooting had been erratic and not aimed. It was suppression fire, hoping to discourage the pursuer. At other times, it might have suppressed the hell out of George. But not this time. George Mackey would see this through. He may have been too late to prevent much of anything, but he would not be late for the ending.