Killing Mary Jane: A Dark Romantic Thriller

by Amarie Avant

  “I don’t know.” Lemuel paused to drink down his glass of water. “Maybe he brought her about a month ago. The girls stay in a room for a while, Lyle said, before they change.”

  “Do you know how Lyle changed them?”

  “No, well, some little pill then a computer thingamajig finishes them off. Clears their system, he says. Beta brain blockers and some other big words. Anyhow, this is the story. A few weeks ago, he was making his rounds, giving them their pills. Mary Jane was in one room and a young girl in the other, a young one. I mean, too young.”

  “Do you know her name?” Ariel held in her concern. Thirteen-year-old Bonnie? “Age? What did she look like?”

  “Don’t know. But when I say young, she was too damn young to be sent to The Petting Zoo. Lyle went to see the girl first. He said somehow the young’n was loose from her chains when he opened the door. She ran past him. Jake had just come by—oh, funny story.”

  Lemuel clapped his thighs.

  “Lyle said Jake used to be some type of badass. Beasley and everyone but him knows his head has been screwed with. Lyle said when they got Jake, he was meaner than a rattlesnake! Lyle wet his pants a couple times he went to give Jake the medicine. Now, they say Jake’s still crazy, but the computer thingy got him straightened out. So he just ain’t crazy enough to cross anyone. And when I tell you crazy, I mean, Beasley bragged about being worshiped by a criminal—and I mean a fucking war criminal.”

  Ariel Juarez gulped softly, so Jake really was Jakob Woods.

  “So, anyhow, the little girl…oh, I remember more about her. She was some big-time minister’s kid. They said she’d pray all the time. That’s all I know. When Lyle told me the pastor could afford to drop the little filly off with no remorse, it was beyond me. And I just wouldn’t believe no church folk got dinero like that!”

  Bingo! This must be Bonnie Timms’ story. Ariel gulped. She just needed evidence to back-up Lemuel’s statement. “Tell me more.”

  “So, Jake saw the kid but he didn’t know ’bout the brainwashing. He doesn’t usually see the girls until they go to The Petting Zoo. He has this one-track mind. When they get there, somehow he knows not to kill ’em. And he hadn’t seen her ’round town either.” Lemuel shrugged.

  Ariel Juarez held in her emotions. Bonnie Timms’ body wasn’t as old as many of the other skeletal remains. The body had begun to decompose and with the heat of each day, the putrefaction process had sped up. However, the coroner’s report indicated that she had a fractured skull, bleeding in the ears and eye sockets. She silently listened, waiting for his story to either match with the coroner’s report or not.

  “That child ran for her life, leaving Lyle in the dust. She was running down the stairs of Beasley’s mansion. Jake had just come in, and he heard a bunch of commotion—”

  “From the girl?”

  “No, the movie.”

  “What movie?”

  “Lyle was watching The Eradicator II. He’d said the movie just became clear enough to see on his Kodi Firestick. When Beasley was gone all day and the maids weren’t there, my brother would go for a swim and eat like a hog. Heck, one time he tried to have a house party, but people were too scared to come. Anyway, Lyle had on the entertainment system and it was loud as shit. He said it helped pump him up, making him not feel sorry before he went to give the girls their pills.”

  On the TV screen, Special Agent Anya Randolph followed rogue agent Trent Winehouse onto the balcony of the beachfront hotel. Lyle rolled his eyes and took a swig of his beer. The romance parts were boring, but the remote control was on the coffee table next to his feet. Lyle glanced at his watch as Anya entered the hotel bedroom to ask Trent why he’d left her. Lyle had streamed the movie back to back. It was just that good. He thought about fast-forwarding it up to the next morning when the agents were blindsided by Trent’s crew, but he needed to give Bonnie her shot and that sexy new chick too. He smiled, getting up to the sound of Anya and Trent rolling on the bed.

  He grabbed the medicine case next to the remote and went into the new girl’s room first. The room was quiet, aside from the loud surround sound of the television below.

  He smiled at her. Her name was to be Mary Jane. She didn’t look like one. She lay on her bed, the only piece of furniture in the room. He shrugged. He couldn’t get a good look at her ample shape as she slept in a ball, meek and scared. When he grabbed her arm, she awoke. The chain on her left ankle chinked against the metal bedpost. Grienke’s girl didn’t put up much of a fight, just whimpered and cried and asked for Peter, over and over again.

  He gave Mary Jane the cup and the pill. “You haven’t started forgetting yet, girl, so keep in mind I have a gun and take your medication.” He spoke harshly, although he wouldn’t dream of touching her. It would be the death of him.

  When finished, Lyle closed and locked the door. Cracking his knuckles, he headed to the next room. Little Bonnie always put up a fight. If only she’d fought her father off a few more times. If only she would have told on the pastor.

  Just outside the door, he grabbed another pill. Bonnie had a few more days before her brain could be safely erased. Beasley planned to sell her for a ridiculous amount of money to a foreigner who wanted a child bride. With the syringe in one hand, he smiled at the sound of bullets blazing in the background. Yes, Anya had to be scampering off the bed and behind the side stand. He opened the door and fell back on his ass.

  The chain and lock were on the bed. The blur that just rushed past him had to be little Bonnie.

  “Fuck!” he screamed, knowing Jake should be here any moment to get Sugarland for her doctor’s appointment. She wasn’t transitioning well, although she’d been here for a long time.

  “Bonnie, wait!” Lyle scrambled to his feet and ran the length of the mansion toward the stairs. Beasley would be pissed. If Jake was here, then any unknown person’s life would be in jeopardy. He hastened down the left side. “Jake!” he screamed, noticing Beasley’s reaper standing near the front door.

  Jake’s eyes narrowed as Bonnie ran toward him, making a beeline for the door. Bonnie stopped in her tracks and was getting ready to turn around when Jake grabbed her about the waist.

  “Leave me alone!” she screamed, chomping her teeth into his taut forearm.

  Jake grabbed her head with one hand and slammed it against the Greek goddess statue. The sound of her skull cracking was deafening, even louder than the shots fired on The Eradicator II in the background.

  “Lyle even had a few tears in his eyes when he told me about the lil’ girl.”

  Robertson and Juarez gave a quick glance at each other. Lemuel’s story matched the coroner’s report for Bonnie Timms’ death due to blunt force trauma to the head.

  “All right, you were saying there was something important that occurred on that day. Something happened to Jake?” Robertson asked. They still didn’t have much of a reason to connect the national terrorist, Jakob Woods, to Beasley and Grienke’s side business. Jake had been a mercenary until the cause that he fought for turned out to be a sham. Then he’d gone off, pillaging the countryside, killing all in his way. One day, he’d just stopped. The FBI agents on the case were stumped by the cold trail. With that erratic criminal profile in mind, Robertson mentioned the only possibility that would tie together all three men. “You said Jake had been previously brainwashed to do Beasley’s bidding?”

  “Yes, he was.” Lemuel cracked a smile. “Like I said, Lyle had The Eradicator on, that action-love story. He said before Jake left for the evening, he seemed weird. Lyle heard him in the room with Sugarland. They were talking. Lyle said Sugarland had become childlike when they tried to brainwash her. That’s why they always kept her in such a nice little room. Jake was in the room with her, having tea, and chatting.” He laughed.

  They stared.

  “Y’all still don’t get it?” Lemuel asked.

  “Explain please,” Robertson requested.

  “All right. For the first time in his life,
Jake didn’t do as Beasley had told him. After Jake got all Doctor Phil with Sugarland, Jake went back downstairs. He noticed the little girl and he cried—as if she was his own child—as if that crazy mofo hadn’t killed her. Jake picked up her lifeless body, took her outside, and dug a grave for her; even put a little stone at the head of it.”

  “All right.” Juarez waved a hand. Yes, Lemuel’s story added up with the forensic pathologist’s report. Bonnie Timms’ body was the only one that hadn’t been buried in the graveyard behind The Petting Zoo.

  “You guys are really missing the big picture here!” Lemuel exclaimed. “Lyle also said, a few days later when Jake went to The Petting Zoo, he met Mary Jane for the first time. MJ was there so Beasley could taunt the guys with a quick look before she made her stay at the home while she learned to be a good girl. As I said, she had a few weeks before her brain was finished changing. Oh, the two of you are no fun! Listen, I think she turned into that super-agent on The Eradicator. Bad bitch or not, I didn’t expect to see her ever again after disrespecting Beasley. Anyhow, Lyle told me that Beasley let Jake have her for the night. Jake fell in love! And Mary Jane turned into an action type chick like in the movie, and he was the costar.”

  Juarez and Robertson exchanged looks. She folded her hands thinking about how Robertson had said that Jake risked being identified to bring Mary Jane a blanket at the crime scene. However, he was previously brainwashed to do everything Beasley told him.

  She remembered Mary Jane’s story. Peter Grienke’s wife didn’t fit the profile for tactical abilities. How had she apprehended Officer Wulf’s gun? Lemuel’s farfetched story correlated with this.

  If Jake heard the movie and the sociopath fell in love, and Mary Jane heard the movie and subconsciously learned defense skills—Juarez, really? She couldn’t believe this outlandish story, she thought, while kneading the tension in her shoulders. Everyone who’d mentioned Mary Jane’s fighting affirmed to her having no fear. She was a crack-shot with a gun. Had her brain internalized the female character in The Eradicator? Juarez hadn’t seen the movie, but she could pretty much guess the farfetched action.

  “Okay, Mr. Fetters, did your brother ever seem brainwashed?” Juarez asked. “If Jake was brainwashed previously to become Beasley’s ‘human weapon’ and he was so susceptible to becoming brainwashed again, due to The Eradicator, like you indicated, did it ever appear that Lyle was brainwashed as well?”

  “Hell, no.”

  She had lower level agents working with the strippers at the club to identify any information, because although the FBI needed to keep this case under wraps there had to be a million bones in Beasley’s dumping ground. Bones belonging to dozens of women.

  So far it was reported that all the women were highly loyal. Each one had a special agent assigned to her while undergoing medical examinations. In addition, the lower level henchmen Beasley hired didn’t seem to know anything. So right now, Ariel knew she and Robertson were grasping for straws.

  “Okay, so you’re saying that Jake and Mary Jane were sustainable due to their brainwashing. Sugarland internalized the brainwashing and…Hurricane? Can you tell us his role in being brainwashed? I assume he stayed at Beasley’s mansion.”

  “He spends most of his time locked up like Knight and King.” Lemuel chuckled. “Hurricane was Beasley’s favorite dog to torture. So, I reckon he was tortured while he was being brainwashed.”

  Ariel nodded and allowed him to continue with his story. A lot of the stories he’d heard secondhand from his brother, Lyle, corroborated with the missing women found in the dumping ground. Once completed, she and Robertson stepped out of the interrogation room.

  “Learn something new every time we walk into work, huh?” Juarez shook her head as they walked down the hall.

  “Some days more than others.”

  “So Beasley received some sort of kickback from Grienke for altering the minds of women, and I’m assuming Grienke was paid out the nose to get rid of certain people.”

  “We’re in a shit storm,” Juarez said. “For now, we’ve placed Mrs. Portman-Grienke at the scene because her husband was too much of a pussy to clear her own brain with his own system. He just wanted to come and save the day.”

  Robertson chuckled. “Yeah, I could see an asshole like him. Those grandiose delusions offer him a role as her savior. You’d think he’d lock her into a palace tower, a more romantic scene than Beasley’s cage. That warrant we had for his cell phone provided us with enough clues to add a shoddy fairytale ending to their story. He was on his way here to bring his confused, little wife home.”

  Her steps faltered for a moment as she considered, “But he did try to feed her to the wolves—ahem, dogs.”

  “C’mon, she probably pissed him off again. And the poor man snapped.”

  The two agents stepped into a conference room next door to the interrogation room. Officer Samuel sat at a table, looking through the two-way mirror at a lone Lemuel. His dark eyes slowly turned away as if he was still attempting to absorb the man’s story.

  Juarez said, “Samuel, what’s the ETA on Officer Wulf and Mallory Portman-Grienke’s arrival? I want them in different interrogation rooms like yesterday.”

  Samuel stood up. “They haven’t answered their cell phones. I’ve already sent a team to Wulf’s address.”

  Ariel Juarez huffed. She needed them to tell their stories again. After Lemuel Fetters’ statement, everything was beginning to add up. Yet more puzzle pieces were appearing.

  Robertson rubbed his goatee. “Okay, so Lemuel Fetters has put the puzzle together in ways we haven’t even begun to.”

  “Yes, he has.”

  “We have a team devoted to searching for double-brain-scrambled Jake. I almost wish Fetters’ story was one hundred percent concrete, and we could turn Jake into the Pope. Seems like a more noble way to fuck with people’s heads, right?”

  “That would be nice.” She nodded.

  25

  After they’d all taken turns showering at his trailer, Wulf rented a Malibu. They dropped off Quincy at the airport. Now, they were headed to the train station. He checked the magazine clip in his Beretta as she drove.

  “Wulf,” she began, glancing at him. Though she’d stood in the background while he parted ways with his friend, she’d listened in. Jones had good reason for Wulf to return to L.A. Wulf had been selective of his words. She wasn’t sure if he knew she’d eavesdropped, but he was putting her needs before his very own life.

  Now they were headed to the train station. “I know you’re returning to Los Angeles,” Mary Jane began.

  “I might as well go home, maybe at the end of the week when Juarez says I can leave town. I’ve come to realize that disappearing is not an effective way to escape the past.”

  “About Gracie?” she asked sincerely.

  He nodded.

  “I’m sorry for how things transpired with her. But, before you go, can I tell you my story? Well, two stories. I have Megan and Mallory’s memories in my head. Their shortcomings, their trials and tribulations—I don’t want to travel the world and have them stuck inside. You know, it’s hard keeping a secret.” She paused from all the rambling, while pulling into the train station parking lot. “Never mind, you’re right. I have been hit in the head too much.”

  “You can tell me.” He put away the gun and gave her all his attention as Mary Jane found a spot in the second row.

  “Nah,” she said, unhooking the seat belt to get out. “I have two lifetimes worth of stories. It would take too long. Just stay on the lookout. If there are any signs of Jake, and you’re right about him wanting to love and kill me, please shoot his ass. To be completely transparent, if there’s nothing in this box, I might hunt him down and shoot him myself.”

  He chuckled softly at her attempt at a joke. They both knew this was almost the end of the line for them. Wulf was a short chapter in her epic, crummy, never-ending tragedy of a life.

  Inside the one-room train station
, Mary Jane smiled at the clerk and turned in the direction of the lockers against the left wall with Wulf close behind her. She passed by two wood benches and pulled out the letter from Jake, which had the exact locker number. For some reason when he first gave her the six-digit locker code—she assumed it was a phone number. He had said the rest of the clue about getting to the train station was in the trunk of the Corolla. He’d said if she was found, he didn’t want one of Beasley’s men taking the code and the locker number. After a shaky breath, she put in the code and opened the door to see a large duffel bag.

  “Let me open it,” said Wulf.

  “No way!” Mary Jane snatched it out.

  “What if there’s something dangerous inside?”

  “What if it’s my money?”

  And don’t be so good to me, Wulf, you haven’t even promised to come with me.

  She pulled at the zipper. It stuck and she yanked, but it wouldn’t give. Wulf grabbed the bag. He pulled at the zipper, and stacks of money flew out. They quickly grabbed the bills and stuffed them back inside, though nobody was around.

  “It might be drug money,” Wulf advised.

  “It just might, Wulf,” she said, exasperated. “Don’t you understand that I don’t give a damn? A naive conscience isn’t the same as a guilty conscience. While the SCPD is a wash, I’m sure you aren’t going to rat me out.”

  She snatched the bag, and they hurried out the door. She went to the trunk of the car, pressed the remote, and it popped open. She placed the duffel inside and closed it. She laughed giddily.

  “Do you think Glenn will sell me his Grand National? Never mind, just drop me off at the first used-car dealership you see, Dylan. I’m getting a badass bungalow on the ocean!” She rubbed her hands together.

  He stopped at the door. “Why’d you call me that?”

  “Huh?”

  “You just called me by my first name. We’ve already established the reasons you call me Wulf.”

  She stroked a hand over his broad chest saying, “I can call you whatever I want.” C’mon, Wulf, don’t make me ask you to come with me. She sighed. Sex as manipulation might work, but she didn’t want the guilt of making Wulf leave behind some shitty town for a life with her, to only find out her crazy ass wasn’t worth it. But the part of her that was Megan didn’t care. That very part of her craved happiness and didn’t consider remorse or regret. It craved Dylan Wulf.