by M. Z. Kelly
Dawson turned to Hass and Reed who were munching on donuts they’d commandeered from the police station’s break room before we left. “You two bulldozers cover the back. Me and Sexton will knock first, but we’re going in if anything looks suspicious. If Jason McCrazy is around I want him alive—at least until he tells us where the girl is.”
“Three and a half hours,” I said to Dawson as we walked to the front door.
“We’ve probably got less time than that. Remember, our boy likes to do a little surgery before he sets up the exhibit.”
We knocked and waited, listening with our hands on our weapons. I heard a rustling sound from inside before the door finally creaked open a couple of inches. A gray eye peeked out at us.
“Who’s there,” a woman’s voice asked. It was dark inside the house and I couldn’t make out the rest of her features.
“FBI, ma’am,” Dawson said. “We’d like to talk to you about your husband if you don’t mind.”
“He’s dead.”
“We know.” The irritation in my partner’s voice was evident. “We just need to ask you about a case he was working on when he passed.”
The door swung back and we saw an elderly woman with long gray frizzy hair. Her eyes were more blue than gray in the light, but they were sad and empty. She was in a wheelchair and maneuvered herself away from the door as we entered.
“Is anyone else in the house, Mrs. McCray,” Dawson asked, looking down the hallway and glancing over at the kitchen.
“Ruth,” the woman said, a half smile finding her lips. “And, no, I live alone.”
“We just need a few minutes,” I said. “We don’t want to bother you.”
“It’s no bother,” she said, her voice softening. I had the impression that she was lonely and maybe welcomed our company. “Please come in. I haven’t had visitors since…since the funeral.”
“Your son, Jason,” Dawson said, before we entered. “Is he home?”
“Heavens no. Haven’t seen him in…I can’t even remember how long it’s been.” Her eyes moistened. “He didn’t even come to his own father’s funeral.”
Dawson excused himself for a moment and went outside, probably to tell Haas and Reed to wait in the car. As I took a seat on the sofa, I saw that the room was shabby and cluttered with newspapers and stacks of magazines. I imagined that being in a wheelchair and living alone had its limitations. The air in the room was rank. I wasn’t sure if it was the elderly woman or something in the house.
Dawson came back through the front door and asked if we could have a drink of water.
The elderly woman pivoted in her chair. “Of course.” She started to go into the kitchen.
“Don’t bother yourself,” he said, waving her off. “I’ll get it.” As he left us, he added, “I’m going to use the little boy’s room on my way.”
After he was gone I took a moment, glancing at the local newspaper while chatting with Ruth McCray. She told me that she’d been paralyzed in an automobile accident several years ago and her health was deteriorating. “I have a housekeeper who stops by once a week and a few friends but…” She brushed a tear. “…it hasn’t been the same with Hugh gone.”
After Dawson came back into the room and brought us both a glass of water, McCray’s widow asked us why we were there.
“It’s because of Jason,” Dawson said. “Some things have come up in a recent investigation and we’d like to talk to him.”
Her voice pitched higher. I wasn’t sure if it was with concern or wariness. “What kind of investigation?”
Dawson set his water glass on the table. “We’re not at liberty to say right now. Do you have any idea where Jason is?”
Her gaze drifted away, came back, and she shook her head. “As I said, I haven’t seen him in years. I know he spent some time in Spain but that’s the last time Hugh and I heard from him.”
“Are you’re sure that your husband didn’t have contact with him before he passed away?” I asked.
She shook her head, gave me a blank stare. The concern in her voice came back. “No. If that was the case I’m sure Hugh would have told me.”
“Five seconds,” Dawson said to her.
She stared at him. “What?”
“You’ve got five seconds to tell us where Jason is or it’s going to get ugly in here.”
“I don’t know…”
Dawson jumped up and moved so quickly that I knocked over my glass of water. He lifted Ruth McCray by the arm and yanked her out of the wheelchair, kicking it against the wall.”
“What are you doing?” I yelled, standing up and coming over to them.
“I warned you it was going to get ugly.” He pulled Ruth McCray up to her feet. I was surprised that she could stand. He looked at the elderly woman. “I wasn’t kidding.” He leaned over to her and said, “Last chance, Ruthie.”
Ruth McCray’s face hardened, her thin lips turning down in defiance. Her frizzy gray hair gave her the appearance of a mad woman. I was surprised when she took a step closer to Dawson, her eyes narrowing on the big FBI agent. “Fuck you,” she spat. “Get the hell out of my house.”
Dawson twisted the woman’s arms behind her back and cuffed her. He said to me, “Go draw Ruthie a bath.”
“What?”
“A bath,” he said. “Ruthie’s hygiene isn’t what it once was. We need to clean her up.”
A few minutes later, I’d done as Dawson asked. I came down the hall to where he and Ruth McCray sat.
I called him over to me. “You really going to do this?”
He leveled his eyes on me. “We’ve got less than three hours before the girl dies. If you wanna step outside, suit yourself.”
He went over, yanked the woman up, and pushed her down the hallway as she screamed and cursed at him. I took a moment, went out to the car, and told Haas and Reed not to be alarmed if they heard something out of the ordinary.
“What’s going on?” Marcel Reed asked as I began heading back toward the house.
I turned back to him and saw that he had a donut in his hand. “Dawson’s just giving someone a bath.”
When I got back into the house there was silence. I walked down the hallway to the bathroom and saw why. Joe Dawson had Ruth McCray under water. The elderly woman’s head was in the tub, her legs and arms flailing wildly.
“This might take a little while,” Dawson said, turning to me with a smile. “Maybe you should find a hair dryer. Ruthie’s also gonna need a little styling when I’m finished.”
“How did you know…that she wasn’t paralyzed?”
“Walking shoes and a stick in the kitchen near the back door. I also checked out Jason’s room when I took a leak. Pizza boxes and soda cans all over. Junior McCrazy’s been living here and mama McNutty is covering for him.”
Dawson turned back to the woman, pulled her out of the water. She choked, screamed, and continued to flail around like a wet dog.
“We’re going to keep this up as long as it takes,” Dawson yelled at her. “Tell me about Jason and I stop.”
“Go to hell,” she screamed.
“I said it was gonna get ugly in here,” Dawson said. “Now we’re gonna see how ugly it can really get.” He pushed her under again.
It took another twenty minutes and four more dunking sessions before Ruth McCray finally broke. She came out of the water hysterical and begging for Dawson to stop.
“It’s up to you, Ruthie. Talk to me and my partner will give you a trim and a blow dry. You sure as hell could use it.”
He was right about that. Ruth McCray looked like an insane figure from a horror movie with her wild hair and crazed features.
“He uses the…the barn,” she said through her tears. “He comes and goes…spends most of his time down there. I haven’t seen him in a few days.”
“What do you mean, down there?” I demanded.
“There’s an old salt mine. I’m not even sure if he’s there now.” Her voice trailed off. She began to sob.
“He’s all I’ve got…”
“Why the wheelchair?” I asked.
“I’m on disability. Sometimes people from the state come by to check on me.”
Dawson used his key, removed one side of her handcuffs, and hooked it under the sink. “Back in a minute, Ruthie. Don’t mess with the pipes or Joe the plumber will come back and give you another bath.”
It was raining hard as Dawson and I got outside and began moving toward the barn. He yelled over to Haas and Reed who were still in the car eating donuts. “Time to take off the feed sack boys and head for the barn.”
CHAPTER TWENTY
The barn was a bigger mess than the house. We’d flipped on the dim overhead lights and found there were mounds of rusted farm equipment, piles of newspapers, an old tractor, and hay stacked almost to the ceiling. After a quick survey of our surroundings we saw nothing that looked like the entrance to a mine.
“Time for you young bulls to make some hay,” Dawson said, motioning to the bales. “We’re looking for a big gopher hole with a giant rodent inside carrying a paintbrush.”
Marcel Reed was having none of it. He crossed his arms. “I didn’t become a cop to bale hay.”
Dawson found a stick leaning up against the tractor. He walked over and whacked the big cop on his shin. Reed wailed, took a roundhouse swing at Dawson, but missed. The big FBI agent hit him in the gut. “And I didn’t become a cop to babysit some lazy ass farm boy.”
“I found something,” Haas yelled over, breaking up the fight. He’d tossed a couple of bales of hay in the corner during the confrontation.
We all went over and saw the ladder heading down into the blackness. The hole didn’t appear to be more than a couple of feet wide. The big Tulsa cops might even have trouble getting through the opening.
“We’re going to need some flashlights,” I said, looking down into the inky darkness of the passageway.
Dawson sent the local cops into the house to look for lights. While we waited, I said, “I’m starting to get a bad feeling about this.”
He glanced at his watch. “And we’re running out of time.”
Five minutes later, the two Tulsa cops came running through the rain with a couple of flashlights. “All we could find,” Hass said, handing them over.
“Old lady still in the head?” Dawson asked.
“Screaming and crying but she’s still there,” he confirmed.
Dawson led the way down the ladder, with me following. When we got to the bottom of the mineshaft we took a moment, moving our lights around and seeing nothing but a long passageway. I then flashed my light back up the shaft while Haas and Reed came down. The bigger of the two cops had trouble getting his ample girth through the hole.
“Come on, Marcie,” Dawson said. “You look like a damned hippo in a mambo contest. You get your big turd cutter stuck in that rat hole and we’re all dead.”
After a couple of minutes, the big cop finally wiggled his way down to us.
“Let’s stay together,” Dawson said, moving out. “If the fireworks start, watch the crossfire.”
Except for our flashlights, the underground shaft was darker than any night I’d ever experienced. The mine seemed to be one endless passageway, with a floor and ceiling as flat as the Oklahoma prairie. There were no support beams, just the unmined walls of salt that supported the roof. I shuttered at the thought of being trapped down here, in total darkness, without sound or sight. I tried to push down my anxiety as we moved ahead.
After a few minutes, the main shaft turned and we saw a shorter tunnel off the central passageway. I trained my light on the passage illuminating something up against the far wall. The scene was so bizarre that for a moment I had trouble comprehending what I was seeing.
Reed had his gun out and must have seen what I had. He yelled, “Targets straight ahead.”
I ducked down, afraid that he’d shoot me in the back, as Dawson said. “Put it away, son. Unless they’re zombies, I think we’re safe.”
I stood up and stepped around Dawson, the horror of what we were witnessing fully hitting me. Several young women, who looked remarkably lifelike, were sitting on benches against the far wall of the cave.
“There must be over a dozen girls,” I said, my eyes still not believing the images in front of me. “It looks like they’ve all been…posed.”
“Jason McCrazy’s kill room,” Dawson said. “Probably early victims that he practiced on.”
He walked over, shining his light on each of the girls as I followed behind. Even though they were all dead, the girls looked perfectly preserved, like they’d been frozen in time. I realized that the salt mine had probably helped in their preservation. I couldn’t stop myself. I reached out, touching one of the girl’s arms, maybe needing a reality check that she was actually dead.
The girls all looked to be in their late teens. The Artist had used his paints, giving each of his victim’s the look we’d seen in photographs of other victims, like something out of a renaissance painting. Each girl also had her hair perfectly done and was dressed in a flowing white gown. There was something about the dead girls that made me think about my high school dances, girls all made up for the evening festivities and waiting for a suitor, except for one thing. These girls were all dead and missing their eyes.
Despite dealing with death many times before, the scene was so heartbreaking that it took every bit of strength I had to keep my tears at bay. I was remembering Joe Dawson’s comment about blue-eyed soul when I heard Haas saying something from behind me.
“I think this is where he works on them.”
The beams from our flashlights moved over, illuminating a metal table with leather straps attached. There was a tray with painting supplies and brushes next to the table. Underneath the apparatus, there were several large plastic containers.
Dawson reached down and pulled out a couple of the canisters. I saw that they contained some kind of liquid. The big cop winced and moved the containers away, covering his nose with the sleeve of his shirt. “It’s formaldehyde.”
I had trouble catching my breath, the bile in my throat rising as I turned away, again seeing the line of dead girls. After a couple of deep breaths I finally turned back to Dawson and found my voice again. “I think we’re too late, Joe. He must have already taken Darcy…” Then I suddenly remembered something that I’d seen in the house. “The newspaper.”
“Yeah, when the press gets ahold of this…”
“No. I mean, there was a newspaper on the coffee table in the house. I glanced at it while waiting for you. It said something about a big art exhibit opening this weekend.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
We ran through the rain back to Ruth McCray’s house. Just as Dawson pushed the door open we heard a gunshot. We went in with guns drawn and found McCray in the bedroom. The handcuffs were dangling from one wrist after she’d apparently broken free of the bathroom plumbing. She’d then used a sawed off shotgun, depositing most of her head on the bedroom wall and ceiling.
“Guess she wasn’t happy with what I did with her hair,” Dawson said. He turned to me, “Where’s the newspaper?”
We found the paper on the coffee table in the living room. I scanned the article, reading it out loud. “An exhibit of the rare works of several artists considered masters of their craft is schedule to open at the Museum of Art this Saturday…” I looked up at Dawson. “It’s supposed to open tonight.
***
The sky was a black wall of howling rain as we ran toward the FBI helicopter. Dawson had called for the chopper that landed in a field near the McCray ranch. I saw lightning and a solid line of thunderstorms on the horizon as we took off toward the museum in Oklahoma City. I checked my watch and told Dawson that we had less than an hour before The Artist would kill Darcy Tate.
“Get this ghetto bird out of neutral,” Dawson yelled at the pilot. “We’re out of time.”
“There’s a report of possible tornados touching down in the city,” the p
ilot said. “I shouldn’t even be flying in this weather. I’ll get as close to the museum as I can but there’s no guarantee we’ll make it.”
As we lifted off, banked, and bounced toward the city I glanced out the window, thinking maybe I would see Kent Zender illuminated by the lightning strikes as he walked along the road. The profiler had probably long since gotten a ride and had already filed a complaint against Dawson.
While the airship bobbed and weaved through the air like a duck in a storm, we took the time to speculate about why Ruth McCray had committed suicide.
“Maybe Ruthie was afraid sonny boy would come after her, paint her face, and cut out her eyes one night,” Dawson suggested.
I had a different thought. “It could be that she knew exactly what her son had been up to and was covering for him.”
“Maybe both mommy and daddy knew, and daddy paid the ultimate prize with Jason making it look like a suicide. Mommy then sucked her gun, knowing that she would go down as an accomplice.”
“The only way we’re going to know for sure is if we capture Jason McCray alive.”
“Then we might never know, Buttercup. Jason McCrazy is a psychopathic monster whose DNA is going to be erased if I get a chance.”
“I think I’m gonna barf,” Marcel Reed said from the seat next to me. Haas was seated next to him, also looking a little under the weather. I didn’t blame them, the winds were so strong that it felt like any minute we could end up going down in an uncontrolled spin.
Dawson threw Reed a vomit bag. “Blow the chunks in the bag, Henrietta, or we’ll drop your big ass off in a field.”
The closer we got to Oklahoma City the darker the skies grew until the pilot said he wasn’t going any further.
“The museum’s only a couple of blocks up ahead,” Dawson fumed. “What’d you do, leave your balls back on the farm?”
The pilot motioned up ahead to what we all now saw. A funnel cloud was on the horizon. It hit some electrical wires. Sparks flew and the city went dark.