The Elk (A Caine & Murphy Paranormal Thriller Series Book 1)

by Dominika Waclawiak

  “Amazing how time goes by at this age,” Judy said, nodding. She took a rather large gulp of margarita and coughed hard. Her face turned red as Marvin clapped her hard on the back.

  “Louise Fairbanks,” Mary Ann said as Barney watched their reactions. It would have been hard not to notice their shared grimace. Silence fell over the table.

  “So you know her?” Barney said.

  “Are you really friends with her?” Judy whispered to Mary Ann. Mary Ann looked to Barney for direction, and he gave her a small nod.

  “Not even a little bit,” she continued. “We weren’t sure if you’d know her or were friends with her and we wanted to be careful, in case,” Mary Ann explained.

  “Thank God she left. I felt so bad for Dads though,” Marvin said. Judy leaned away from her husband in astonishment.

  “I didn’t know that you thought that way about Dads. The man was a downright creep when he was lucid,” she said.

  “How could you say that about that nice man?” Marvin asked, putting down his drink. He looked shocked at his wife’s sentiment.

  “You knew I tried to get him taken away from her,” Marvin said.

  “Well yes, because people were dying and she was most likely responsible. Doesn’t mean the man wasn’t a creep,” Judy countered.

  Barney leaned in. “Did people start dying out of the blue?” he asked.

  Marvin nodded. “Lots of healthy folks getting felled by heart attacks.”

  “Healthy folks,” Judy repeated for emphasis.

  “How did you get rid of her?” Mary Ann took another sip.

  “Initially, we revolted,” Judy said, “but that didn’t work.”

  “So we made life miserable for her,” Marvin said. “Enough for her not to be able to do her job.”

  “Thank God she left,” Judy said to Mary Ann.

  “Here’s the best part though. Ole Jebediah gave her a good recommend to cover his ass. It was a full on cover-up in my opinion,” Marvin said. “He was such a chicken shit. Still is.”

  “When she came here at first, she was so very nice,” Judy continued, “but something was off with the BOTH of them.”

  “How do you know her?” Marvin asked. Barney took Mary Ann’s hand in his.

  “She’s killing us off one by one, and no one believes us. We also tried to get rid of her, but it hasn’t stuck,” Barney said. Judy and Marvin exchanged a knowing look.

  “We thought she was drugging him. I’ve been around enough people with dementia, and he didn’t have the typical symptoms. And he was lucid. Too lucid sometimes,” Marvin said.

  “We figured it was a perfect cover. She lived with us because of Dads and had access to us at night. We’re easy pickins,” Judy added.

  “I can’t believe you thought Dads was creepy,” Marvin cut in.

  “I don’t know. Maybe it was my imagination or that whole lucid versus dementia thing. I was just so happy when they left.”

  “Sorry to hear ya’ll are plagued by her now,” Marvin said.

  “Not for long. We’re going to put a stop to her, aren’t we, Mary Ann?” Barney said. Mary Ann nodded in agreement; all gaiety gone.

  Detective Eddie Larson watched Louise Fairbanks sweat in the smallest interrogation room he could find. He’d been cursing Murphy with saddling him with the rest of the paperwork when Louise Fairbanks all but delivered herself to him. Now, he had a chance to break her, his favorite part of this job, her cockamamie ghost stories notwithstanding.

  “I’ve heard enough,” he said and hit stop on the recorder she brought in. Sobbing on a tape was not what this interview would be about.

  “It has to be Barney Leonard. He accused me of being the one killing all my patients. It would be just like him to come up with such a stupid con. He’s always talking about ghosts,” Lou said.

  “Why would he accuse you of murder?” He kept his tone casual and hoped to keep her talking. Her laugh came out in a low rumble.

  “As if I know. The man is dangerous. Have you checked him out as a suspect? And I’m not so sure that all these supposed deaths are really suspicious. What if they died of fright? My patients are not in the best of health and if he could fake haunt me, what if he did the same with Barbara? She could have died of the heart attack caused by stress and fright.”

  “Do people die of fright? That sounds like something out of a horror movie,” he said and leaned in to study her face. “An old woman dies of a heart attack. No one is going to check for anything other than natural causes, are they?” he asked. “And you know that, don’t you, Nurse Louise? They’re close to death anyway. Why not give them release?” He sat back and waited.

  After Murphy told him what Grimley said about the Angels of Death, he’d gone and done some reading himself. Medical practitioners killing their patients to help them lessen their pain was some jacked up shit. Some of the caught killers actually thought they had done nothing wrong. Playing God got to their head, he figured.

  The time in the interrogation room expanded then contracted, flowed, and ebbed. Larson watched Nurse Louise struggle to catch her breath and go to the door. She turned back to him, her face red. She knew now what he was getting to.

  “I didn’t kill them, if that’s what you’re implying. I’m not under arrest, am I? You can’t keep me here.”

  “I can put you on a twenty-four-hour hold. Why don’t you just tell me the truth?”

  Time was an interrogator’s best friend, Larson thought. He might not be the most patient detective in their unit, but he had an instinct for how long he’d need to hold out until a perp talked. He could tell this one would take a bit of time. She was strung way too tight, facial tics already appearing underneath her right eye and in her hairline.

  It was just a matter of time. It would be his collar and not Murphy’s and he liked the sound of that.

  Detective Eva Murphy gave the hard assed receptionist her warmest smile and repeated the question. “Is Dr. Riley in today?” she asked, tapping her fingers on the polished wood of the barrier. Mrs. Doubleday eyed her fingers with annoyance. “Sorry, nervous habit,” Murphy said and put her hand back in her pocket. “This is official police business. He’ll want to see me.”

  “Your badge?” Mrs. Doubleday asked. Murphy kept her smile pasted on her face as she pulled out her badge and stuck it in the old bat’s face. As she guessed, the woman wrote down her badge number. “This says you’re LAPD. Not really your jurisdiction, is it?” Mrs. Doubleday said, raising her painted on eyebrow at her. Great, another one who watched cop shows.

  “Not entirely. However, I am investigating murders at assisted living facilities. I spoke with Mr. Jenkins, the manager of Sunny Days. The place on Route 12. Anyway, Mr Jenkins mentioned that Dr. Riley found something on one of the deaths some years back,” Murphy said.

  “Well, why didn’t you say so? I thought you were here on that other thing.” Her tone warmed up considerably.

  “What other thing?” Murphy asked.

  “Never you mind,” Mrs. Doubleday said as she picked up the phone. “Doctor, there’s a detective here to see you about the Sunny Days assisted living murders,” she said and listened for a second. “I’ll send her back,” she said and rattled the phone back into its cradle. “It’s the first door on the right,” she said, motioning behind her.

  “Thank you, Mrs. Doubleday. Much appreciated,” Murphy said, and headed down the bright and cheerful hallway. A small, round man with snow white hair and round, tortoise shell spectacles stepped out into the hall, his hand outstretched. He reminded Murphy of Boss Hog, the villain from that old TV series from the 80s. What was it called? Dukes of Hazzard.

  He wore a serious expression on his face, and his grasp felt firm. “Thank you for taking the time to meet with me, Dr. Riley,” Murphy said and smiled. “I’m Detective Murphy with the LAPD,” she continued. He motioned for her to take a seat across from him.

  “LAPD doesn’t have jurisdiction up here, does it?” he asked and slid in
to a leather chair behind a massive, mahogany desk. Unlike the shabby exterior office, the doctor’s inner office spoke of wealth.

  “No, we don’t. I’m investigating a series of murders at the Sunshine Assisted Living facility down in Los Angeles, and we’ve found a possible connection to deaths up here.” She stopped when she noticed that he was eager to talk.

  “I told that man there was something wrong with Maybel’s death. This is a small town so I double as coroner,” he explained and paused. “Lots of deaths coming out of that home but I could never find anything suspicious. I mean, sure, they had puncture marks in their arms but every single one of the victims had tests done at their doctor’s offices within days of their deaths. Nothing conclusive, you understand. I did mark Maybel’s a suspicious death because of that mark.”

  “What mark?” Murphy asked. Dr. Riley opened up a file and slid the picture over to her.

  “I would have almost missed it. I had been so flummoxed by the number of deaths, I was on a mission to find something. Anything to show the deaths were suspicious,” he said and pointed to a place on the photo.

  A woman’s hairline filled up most of the image. His finger obscured an odd looking mark, showing through the hairs. He pushed it over to her and she studied a vertical line with three diagonals coming out the top of it, almost like a child’s crude drawing of a trident. “What is it?” Murphy asked.

  “An ink drawing. Most likely black ink from a ballpoint pen. I caught it before I washed her. Otherwise, I would have washed it off. When I brought it up to the police, they figured the old lady did it herself and I had no other proof that the death was unnatural. She died of a heart attack, same as the others.”

  “Did any of the other bodies have this mark on them?” Murphy asked.

  “I didn’t check the others this closely. All of them were buried or cremated,” he said, and bit his lip. “I think the killer did that to her.”

  “I agree,” Murphy said and stared hard at the photo. A deep memory twisted in her brain. A lost and forgotten fragment from some past case. “Can I take this photo with me?” she asked.

  “You think it’s the same guy?” Dr. Riley fished.

  “Or woman. An Angel of Death,” Murphy said.

  “Have you found that mark on the other victims?” Dr. Riley asked, gesturing to the photo.

  “Not that I’ve seen in the files but no one was treating them as homicides either,” she said and stopped. Where had she seen that symbol? It seemed so familiar. “Thank you so much for your help, Dr. Riley,” she said and stood up, placing the photo in her bag. “One more thing. How many deaths would you have labeled suspicious from that time?”

  “22,” he said without any hesitation.

  “You seem so sure,” Murphy said in surprise.

  “I’ve gone over those files every year. They keep me up at night. I should have found out what was happening sooner,” Dr. Riley admitted and turned away from her to stare out the window.

  “Thank you,” she said to his back.

  Sara Caine stood at Richie’s door with a bottle of Templeton Rye Whiskey in one hand and the drawing of the symbol in the other. Richie opened the door and smiled when he saw it was her.

  “Is our case heating up?” he asked, motioning her inside.

  “You could say that again,” Sara said and handed him the drawing of the tattoo from her visions. “Have you ever seen this before?”

  “Looks like a rune.”

  Sara looked at him in surprise, and he grinned back. “Let’s scan it in and run it. My baby will find out what it is,” Richie said as he opened up the scanner and put the drawing against the glass. Several keystrokes and a scan later, the image uploaded and the computer started to churn.

  “I wrote a program that does a scan and recognition protocol, almost like facial or fingerprint matching. It hits all the main websites like Wikipedia, Google, and image banks to find the source,” Richie explained as the Internet windows popped open with the results.

  “You were right. It’s a rune,” Sara said, reading over his shoulder. “Known as the Algiz rune, it translates into the word for Elk. That’s weird. Elk? Why would that be on a dead body?”

  Richie scrolled down one of the pages. “The rune got pulled into Nazi occultism and was called the “life rune”. Woah, they used to put it on headstones for the birth date. That’s wild!” Richie exclaimed.

  “So what does that mean when scrawled on the belly of a dead woman,” Sara said as another window popped up.

  “Holy shit,” Richie said and stared at the gruesome images on the computer screen.

  “That’s what I see when I close my eyes,” Sara whispered unable to take her eyes off the screen.

  “Is that her?” Richie asked. “Or her?” he asked a moment later as more images of victims surfaced.

  “You’re scanning police archives?”

  “No. Just anything leaked online to journalists, online bloggers, those kinds of people,” he said and clicked through the windows. “I remember reading about this case. It was massive. He was kind of like the Zodiac, never caught and most people thought he died. They called him The Jerry Killer.” He stopped at a declassified FBI file. “They put his numbers at over fifty people killed all up and down the West Coast. Both men and women. You’ve heard of the Jerry Killer, haven’t you?”

  “Of course. Never understood why they called him the Jerry Killer though,” Sara said as Richie scanned more of the files.

  “Ah, here it is. Guess it started in the seventies. Former German soldiers from World War II turned up dead with this tattoo on them. The allied forces, including the Americans and the British called the German soldiers Jerrys during the war. His murders span over forty years. He moved to women in the eighties.”

  Sara left Ritchie at the computers and sat down on the couch. Nurse Louise couldn’t be the Jerry killer. She was too young.

  “Do the files say how he killed his victims?” she asked and heard Richie clicking.

  “Damn, the men were castrated and the women had hysterectomies post mortem. It says here a chemical combo was found in each victim’s blood stream and, to top it off, some of them were shot in the head, execution style. I guess the FBI thought some neo-Nazi group was involved because of the symbol found on each one of the bodies.” Richie swiveled his chair to look at her. “I guess. It’s popular among those groups.”

  “Weird. Why would they kill their own? I mean, the neo-Nazis.”

  “What do you mean?” Richie asked.

  “Former German soldiers? All the women are blond, Germanic like.”

  “Is Nurse Louise blond?” Richie asked. Sara shook her head no.

  “She’s too young, isn’t she?”

  “She looks in her late fifties. She’d have had to start killing at fifteen. Who was the first victim of the Jerry killer?”

  “A Maxim Bauch. He was in his sixties. Burly looking guy,” Richie said. Sara pushed into the couch. She had to tell the detectives about the symbol. The only problem was how she was going to explain where she saw it. She doubted they would believe her if she said she had a vision of it.

  Maybe Detective Murphy would listen. She seemed more receptive then her partner.

  She pulled out her phone and dialed Johan, hoping he already talked to that detective friend of his. When he didn’t answer, she let the phone go to voicemail.

  “Johan, call me. I’ve found something and wanted to know whether you spoke with…” She heard the electronic voice stating that if she was happy with her message, she could hang up.

  “I have to go to the police,” she said.

  “Would it help your career if you brought in a notorious serial killer yourself?” Richie asked.

  “I guess, but it would probably get me killed first. I’m going to see the nice detective instead,” Sara said, her mind made up and got up from the couch. “You, as always, are amazing,” Sara said. Richie smiled and turned back to the computer.

  “I�
��m going to do more research on this. Maybe I can find something that will connect your Louise Fairbanks to the Jerry Killer,” he trailed off, his attention back on the files.

  Nurse Louise Fairbanks opened the door to her apartment and gasped in shock, her worst nightmare coming true.

  The room was empty.

  She ran into the bathroom, but he wasn’t there either. If he had taken the pills she’d been giving him there was no way he would be capable of leaving the building. Which meant he was wandering the halls.

  She dropped her purse to the ground and opened up a drawer filled with syringes. If she gave him a larger dose of the sedative then she should be able to overpower him and get him back in here. She should have killed him when she had the chance, she thought, angry with herself for being such a chicken shit. Enough was enough.

  She ground ten pills to a fine powder and added water to create a colorless solution. She sucked up the liquid into the syringe and got it ready for a quick stab.

  She rushed out of the room with the filled syringe hidden in her pocket in case she encountered anyone in the halls. She’d been gone long enough for Dads to be anywhere in the home. She could start at the topmost floor and sweep down. She would miss him if he rode up the elevator but that was the chance she had to take.

  She ran down the corridor and took the stairs up to the eleventh floor.

  She fought back tears as she walked the length of the corridor and peered down the old servant’s staircase. The whole thing felt useless, but she had to try.

  She found the entire floor empty and took the servant’s staircase down to the tenth floor. She paced up and down that hallway, listening at the doors in case someone was entertaining him. When she found no sign of him, she went down to the ninth floor.

  Repeating what she did on the last two floors was getting her nowhere so she stopped in the middle of the corridor. What if he was with Barney? The man had gone and talked to Dads. It was entirely possible that he wanted to turn Dads against her. She laughed at the very thought. Let him try. He had no idea who he was dealing with. She wiped away her tears and decided to check her theory. It was better than just wandering the halls.