The First Time I Hunted

by Jo Macgregor

  No, the youth says. No, I don’t.

  I think she doesn’t want me asking difficult questions of the old man’s family, if he even had any. I think there ain't no death certificate up there. And you know why that is? He points the bottle at the young man. Because the old man never left this here place. You could say, he bought the farm.

  He laughs and puts a hand up to shield his eyes while he scans to the left and the right. Where do you think I’d find him if I went looking? Under the barn floor, under a tree in the woods … at the bottom of the old well? Yeah, I figured that would be a real good place to dump the old man, and I was right.

  The youth says nothing, but his face tightens as he stares down at the weeds growing in the dirt.

  The man downs the last of his beer and tosses the bottle aside. Did you do it? Or was it your momma? Wouldn’t surprise me none if it was her. Scrawny bitches like her are always stronger than they look.

  What do you want from me, the younger man asks dully.

  The deed to this place.

  We’ve got no deed.

  Well, you must have some cash stashed away from the sale of the store. And you’re a hard-working fella. You’ll make more as the years go by. As long as you keep mailing me checks every month, no one needs to know what happened to grandpops. But if you don’t, well then, you’ll have a real problem right soon.

  You’re the problem. I want you to go away.

  And I’m happy to oblige, boy! There’s nothing keeping me here.

  The younger man nods slowly. Okay. But then you’ve got to go directly. Today.

  Fine. I need to collect on a bet or two in town, and while I’m there, I’ll take my leave of the good folks of Crowbury. I’ll be back here this afternoon for the money. He waves, and the ring on his finger flashes in the sunlight.

  I opened my eyes, blinking hard and shaking my head to clear it. My mother, father and Ryan were all staring expectantly at me.

  “I’ve been hunting the wrong man,” I said softly. “The right name but the wrong man. Or is it the other way around?”

  “What do you mean?” Ryan asked urgently.

  “It wasn’t Larry Johnson who killed all those men.”

  “I’m so confused,” my mother said. “You said it was him. If he isn’t the murderer, then why did he kidnap me?”

  “The real killer,” I said, “is the man who calls himself Lawrence Johnson.”

  My father was also looking perplexed. “There’s a difference between those two?”

  “And I think I have an idea where he might be headed.”

  “You know who the killer is?” Ryan asked. “Where he is?”

  “Do I know, like know for sure?” I shook my head slowly. “Nope. It’s just a hunch, that’s all. So if you’re going to suggest I call Singh, don’t.”

  “Would it matter so much if you called them, and then it turned out to be a false alarm?” my father asked.

  “It’s not the embarrassment of being wrong that I’m worried about.” I was well over that. I’d had lots of practice dealing with my mistakes. “It’s that they simply wouldn’t come, not on the basis of a mere guess.”

  Ryan nodded grudgingly; he knew I was right.

  “Plus, Singh will arrest me if he knows I’m still nosing about. I need to go check it out myself first,” I said. “I’ll call him if I find anything.”

  I stood up and grabbed my handbag, ignoring the vociferous protests of my parents, who both believed this was sheer folly — my father because it might be dangerous and had I learned nothing, my mother because it was positively foolhardy to rush off into the unknown without first reading the cards for celestial guidance.

  Ryan stood up, too, and for a moment, I thought he was going to block my path. But instead, he said, “You’re not going alone. I’m going with you.”

  My mouth opened, an automatic protest on my lips at both the order and the peremptory tone. I didn’t like being told what to do, not by anybody. And hadn’t I just spent most of the last twenty-four hours regretting bringing someone else into my investigation and swearing never to endanger anyone again? Then again, as he himself had once said, Ryan wasn’t just anyone. He was a cop; he could take care of himself. He would probably even take care of me. When I’d fallen through the trapdoor at that barn, I’d learned for myself that it was crazy-stupid to walk into potential danger alone. I trusted him, and more than that, I actually wanted him by my side through this.

  Ryan had his hands on his hips and was glowering at me. His change of expression when I merely said, “Okay, sure,” was comical. He hadn’t expected me to give in so quickly.

  “On one condition,” I added quickly.

  At once, he looked wary. “Oh yeah? And what’s that?”

  “You bring your gun.”

  – 47 –

  We went in Ryan’s car. It was faster, and after my sleepless night, I was too tired to drive. I wasn’t too tired to eat, however. At my mother’s insistence, my father had sent us off with packed sandwiches and a couple of cans of Coke. As tense as I was, I shouldn’t have been hungry. But anxiety always gave me an appetite, as did boredom, exercise and anger. Life, really.

  As soon as we were on the highway headed north, as per my directions, Ryan said, “Explain everything.”

  “The Button Man,” I said, “is Derek Kehoe, son of Mary Kay and grandson of Marvin or Mervin Kehoe.”

  “It’s the boy?”

  “He was only a few years younger than Larry.” I ate my ham sandwich, mulling over what I’d seen and how it connected to what I’d learned. “I was so used to viewing him as the tragic victim — which he was — and the sweet little boy that girls and teachers loved that I never really considered him seriously as the killer, especially after what we found out about ‘Larry’ having worked at that store in Woodbridge and assaulting the guy there. Derek’s trail just went cold and all signs seemed to point to Larry. But it was all there,” I said, thinking of Derek’s childhood, the abandonment, abuse, and head injury.

  “So who was Larry Johnson, then?” Ryan asked.

  “Just a drifter and a grifter, I guess.” I handed Ryan a sandwich half. “He was a fraudster who hustled and exploited lonely women and maybe cheated at cards. But when he progressed to blackmail, that’s when he met his end.” I told Ryan the details of the altercation between Larry and Derek that I’d witnessed in my vision. “Larry said his goodbyes to the people in town, who would then think nothing of it when he disappeared, and returned to the farm, expecting to get a nice, fat package of cash. But Derek had other plans for him.”

  “How old would Derek have been then?”

  “About nineteen or twenty, I think. Old enough to take on Larry, anyway, especially if he’d been drinking since the morning, which it looked like he had in my vision.”

  “So Derek Kehoe murdered Lawrence Johnson.”

  “That’s what I believe, yeah. He slit Larry’s throat and buried the body in the woods at the back of the farm, where no one was likely to come across it. But he must’ve kept Larry’s belongings — his class ring, definitely, and some form of ID at the very least, like his driver’s license or social security, if he had one. And, of course, the Thunderbird.” I popped the tab on my can of soda. “He would’ve needed to hide that from his mother.”

  “You don’t think she knew?”

  I took a long swallow, considering. “I can’t be sure, but I don’t think so. I’m guessing she loved Larry, or thought she did, and wouldn’t have wanted him harmed. And with her pitiful self-esteem, she would’ve been all too ready to believe that yet another man had run off and left her. When she killed herself, there was nothing keeping Derek on the farm any longer.”

  “Then he took on the identity of Larry Johnson,” Ryan said.

  “I reckon he would’ve been keen to shed his horrible past, leave that good-for-nothing farm behind, and make a fresh start. So he became charming Larry Johnson, the guy with the cool car and class ring. Maybe th
at wasn’t immediate, maybe it took time to assume that personality, but either way, poor pathetic Derek Kehoe was no more.”

  “Hmm.” Ryan braked hard to avoid crashing into the back of a truck taking a turn without signaling. “Except that wherever we go, that’s where we are.”

  “Exactly. So Derek left Crowbury and, at some stage, maybe even immediately, went to Woodbridge and got a job at that store there under his new name. Maybe he overdid the charming act, and that’s why the guy there got the wrong idea about him.”

  “You don’t think Derek Kehoe’s gay?”

  “I don’t know,” I said. “Maybe, maybe not. I do know that his grandfather had drilled it into him that he mustn’t be a pansy or a sissy. It’s not a huge leap to imagine Derek taking on his grandfather’s homophobic attitudes and then lashing out at that guy at the drive-in when he made a pass.”

  “And after that, he went … where?” Ryan asked.

  “I don’t know that either,” I admitted. “Perhaps that’s when he started his haberdashery supply business, using the Ford until he could afford a van. I saw the Thunderbird in my vision, which makes me think that in the early days, he would have been cruising the highways of New England in that car, picking up hitchhikers, runaways, seasonal workers, and maybe even sex workers.”

  “And killing them.” Ryan’s hands tightened on the steering wheel.

  I nodded. “I imagine it would’ve been much later that Lawrence Johnson became the respected expert on buttons and the owner of Heavenly Haberdashery.”

  “What’s your theory on motive?” Ryan asked. “Anger, control, the thrill of the power?”

  “All of that, yeah. And maybe more,” I said, thinking of what I’d seen in my visions. “The stitching of their lips — pushing a needle into and out of the flesh — that’s a kind of penetration.”

  “That’s a bit far-fetched, isn’t it?” Ryan said.

  “Well, it is Freudian,” I said. “He saw penises in everything.”

  I didn’t think it was a stretch to see Kehoe thrusting his thumb in and out of the still-warm mouth of a dead man as a kind of fellatio or rape, though whether that impulse had originated in sexual desire or the desire for power and dominance — a need at the core of rape — I couldn’t tell. The problem with my visions was that I saw only narrow slivers of time. I didn’t know what all might’ve happened before or after Kehoe killed his victims.

  We rode in silence for a few minutes. The afternoon sun was warm on my arms, but inside, I felt cold, thinking about Kehoe refining his methods, executing his fantasy, and hiding the remains of all those lives. My phone signaled an incoming text message, and checking it, I saw that it was from Deaver. “Not again,” I muttered, expecting another request for more information on the serial killer case. Deaver might just be a harmless psychology professor, but that didn’t make him any less of a nuisance. This time, however, it was him giving me the update.

  Have you seen the news about them finding a match for the bones in the Nash Stream Forest?

  The last news I’d read on the investigation was that two sets of remains from the mass burial site remained unidentified. I’d had more important things occupying my time in the last two days than staying on top of news sites. I opened a browser on my phone and after checking my news app, I let out a sound of surprise when I read a post with the headline New Development in Nash Remains.

  “What’s up?” Ryan asked.

  “Remember how Singh refused to tell me what they found in the well at the Crowbury farm? Well News24 is reporting that it was a couple of smaller human bones plus a scrap of fabric with a buckle on it,” I said, excited by what I’d read. “And the unidentified, incomplete remains found in the Nash forest?”

  “The bones and fabric from the well are a match for that?” Ryan guessed.

  “Right in one. That body is Kehoe senior’s. It’s got to be! That’s why that set of remains didn’t match the others in terms of age or date of death. Kehoe was older, and he died sometime in the mid-nineties. And I’m guessing he did die in the well. That’s why I sensed death there.”

  “So sometime afterward, Derek Kehoe must’ve moved his grandfather’s remains to the forest in New Hampshire,” Ryan said.

  “Yeah. I wonder why he did that,” I said.

  “It must’ve been done many years later. The body was probably skeletonized, and a couple of bones fell off when he removed it from the well.”

  “And his clothes would’ve been disintegrating, too, so that’s why fragments of them were left behind. I’ll bet the fabric and buckle are from the overalls I saw him wearing in my vision. And the button!” I exclaimed, connecting another series of dots. “That rusted metal snap button Singh brought me to touch, that must’ve been from the coveralls too. The body didn’t match the usual victim profile. That’s why he wanted me to read it and get a feel for whether it was the same killer.”

  I read to the end of the article and checked a few more news sites. There was coverage of the kidnapping of a woman from a hotel in Montpelier, and one site had already reported the news of her safe return, but it seemed like neither the FBI nor the cops had alerted the media to the fact that the kidnapper was also a suspect in the Gay Slayer case.

  “They’re reporting the FBI as saying they have several new leads and are hopeful of making an arrest shortly.” I bit a hard ridge of skin on the side of a fingernail. “I hope that’s true. I truly hope they’re closing in on him.”

  Ryan cast me an appraising glance. “Do you think they are?”

  I considered for a moment. “I have a feeling they’ll be searching New Hampshire for him. But I think he’s going to ground,” I said. “He’s going home.”

  – 48 –

  The sun was setting by the time we took the turnoff to the old Kehoe farm. Ryan pulled over on the dirt track, killed the engine, and said, “We need to discuss our plan.”

  “A plan, right!”

  “Give me an idea of the layout of this place.”

  “I can draw it for you,” I said. “Do you have some paper?”

  He handed me a leather-bound notepad with a pen in a holder on the side, and I sketched a map of the dirt track, the house, and the outbuildings beyond.

  “We’ll have to search them all,” Ryan said. He parked the car across the dirt track between a dense thicket of bushes on one side and a huge tree on the other, blocking the easiest way out.

  I gave him an approving nod. “Good thinking.”

  “Speaking of good thinking,” Ryan said, “I think you should wait here until I’ve checked this place out.”

  “Like that’s going happen,” I said and got out of the car.

  Ryan followed suit, closing his door with a soft click. “Stay by my side,” he said softly, and we set off in the direction of the farmhouse.

  It was difficult to keep from whimpering with every step. My feet were still raw and tender, and it hurt to walk. If I got through this, I swore to myself that I would get professional help for my excoriation disorder. After a few steps, I discovered that walking on the outside edge of my feet hurt less. The only problem was that Ryan noticed my odd gait at once.

  “What’s up?” he asked.

  “Nothing, I just um … I just have a splinter, I think.”

  “In both feet?”

  “Over there.” I pointed ahead to where the dilapidated old house had come into view. The half-collapsed porch roof and broken windows gave it the appearance of a face leering at us. As we drew closer, sticking to the deep shadows on the side of the track, we saw the barn behind the house, a hulking presence against the dimming sky, where swallows or perhaps bats darted in swift black arcs. As before, a heaviness settled in my chest, and nervous dread filled my stomach.

  Tripping on a protruding piece of rock and landing hard on my mangled right foot, I hissed in pain then crept up to the house in a hunched and painful trot, heading for the porch steps. But Ryan whispered an order to stop. I crouched, waiting, while he
drew his gun and peered into the front windows. When he gave me the all-clear, I climbed the stairs behind him, both of us keeping to the sides to minimize any telltale creaks.

  The front door listed on its hinges, leaving enough space for us to get past. Had the FBI left it open when they finished searching this place weeks ago? Or had the killer visited more recently? As soon as I stepped inside, I could tell that the Button Man wasn’t in the house, though it seemed to me that Mary Kay and old man Kehoe lingered in the shadowed corners, faint memories rather than ghosts.

  “He’s not here,” I told Ryan, but he still searched every room and possible hiding place.

  I walked directly to the back door, already feeling the pull of the barn.

  No.

  Colby was back. I felt a surge of comfort, even though his presence meant I was most likely in danger.

  “Nothing,” Ryan said, joining me in the kitchen. “And no sign of another vehicle that I can see.”

  “He’s in the barn. I can feel it.”

  “He’s there? Like, right this moment?”

  “Yes.”

  I sensed Derek’s presence with every alert fiber of my being. The round barn with its peeling red paint and rotting roof thrummed with the presence of the man I’d come to confront, and my very cells vibrated in sync with that frequency. My fatigue slipped off me like shed skin, and energy surged from my core. I reflected on how ironic it was that the more I connected with those who’d passed on, the more I flirted with my own death, the more I felt wonderfully, vitally alive.

  I opened the back door of the house and began the walk, which seemed an inevitable move in a chess game that had started months ago when I touched that rib bone and first sensed the darkness. All my steps since, even the false starts and dead ends, had led me ultimately and inexorably to this moment. The magnetic pull drawing me to the barn increased as I drew closer.

  It became so strong that in my thrall to it, I no longer felt the pain in my feet and only dimly heard Ryan ask, “What’s that?”