Timothy, his brother-in-law, burst in drunk. He screamed for everyone to leave and yelled for his lazy no good bitch of a wife to get her ass in here. He started fighting with one of the deputies. Frank never saw how he did it but Timothy was suddenly waving the deputy’s gun at everyone. There was a sharp noise and Timothy was on the floor.
Frank brought JW home with him as the morning sun started to rise in the east. His parents raised JW like he was his brother. Frank always tried to keep his promise to his sister but Frank never forgot how JW just looked on.
Frank had thought something was different with JW before. After seeing him standing and watching the death of his parents, Frank was positive something wasn’t quite right with his nephew’s mind. JW would watch suffering with a detached cold-blooded pleasure that always drove the steel shards of the memories of the night Julie died into Frank’s mind.
Although Frank had been Julie’s younger brother, he always had to take care of her. She had been too trusting, too easily persuaded. He had been able to protect her all but two times. The one time before they left for Sioux Bluff and the night she died. The last time the deputy had done what he should have been able to, avenge her death, so Frank became a cop.
Frank could remember the faces of the thirteen other people he saw die in his life. Seven were accidents. Six were car crashes and one was a fall off the roof, which broke a neck. Three of the remaining six were heart attacks.
The forth was a drug overdose. The last two deaths drove him from the streets and to his current job as a BCA agent.
It was midnight. He was a training officer for a young recruit. The rookie had only been on active duty with the force for twelve days. They got a silent alarm from a downtown drug store. When they pulled up, they found a stolen car had been driven through the front of the store and a number of figures running down a dark back alley. Frank yelled to the rookie to wait for backup and called in a report of the situation to the station. When Frank got out of the car, the rookie started running down the alley. Frank had nightmares of the run down the alley. Never able to catch up to his partner.
Just seeing the flash of his outline race between the dark shadows. Past the corner of a building a flash and the echoing report of a shot came through the darkness. Tripping over the sprawled body of his partner, Frank smelled the blood and cordite. Before he could check his partner, the gun opened up again.
Frank felt the whoosh of a bullet speed past his head and the warmth of his own pee running down his leg from the fear. He emptied his gun at the flashes.
The silence was absolute.
When Frank’s eyes adjusted again to the darkness after the bright flashes of gunfire, he saw his partner. His mouth would open with every gasp for air he made. The rookie’s eyes caught the few rays of light in the dark alley. They luminesced with a fevered light. As Frank reached for him, he died.
Frank never knew how long he knelt next to his partner but finally a rustling made its way into his conscious. With numb fingers, he emptied the casings out of his revolver and loaded it with fresh bullets. Frank crept to the end of the alley. There the killer crawled, an empty gun by his side. The killer sensed he was not alone. He rolled to his side and looked up at Frank.
Frank heard the twelve-year-old killer whimper, stick his thumb in his mouth, and die.
Frank shook the memories from his mind. He had an old nemesis to meet.
Someone he could barely remember from his past long ago. Someone who had destroyed his sister, changed his life, and now threatened the existence of the only one he had pledged to protect. Frank got out of his car, walked to the door and opened it. A blow hit him in the side. From the floor he looked up at the old man. In his hands, the killer had a twenty-two pistol with a plastic milk jug taped to its muzzle. Frank knew the combination made a perfect silent weapon. He felt the damage the bullet had done, tearing his insides apart. He felt death coming. He looked at the old man. “I should have killed you, Billy, years ago.”
Frank’s last conscious thought was that he had failed for a third time.
The old man was shaken. Who did he just kill? He had seen the car pull up in front of his house. He had recognized the man behind the wheel as one of the policemen that had come to the school. As he watched the cop stare out the windshield of his car, the old man got some duct tape, his twenty-two, and an empty milk jug. He was ready to kill the cop when he finally got out of his car. The old man had never been worried by the cop. He knew that the cop was trained to try to arrest a suspect before shooting. That’s why people were so easy to kill. They always had to talk first.
But now the old man was worried. Somehow the cop had known him. The killer didn’t like the idea of anyone knowing him. The old man got his Coleman cooler from the closet. Filling it with ice he went into the basement and loaded it with his trophies. He was about ready to leave when he glanced at the cop. Something bright showed from the dead man’s mouth. The old man bent closer and saw that it was a gold tooth. The old man went to the closet. On a shelf in back, he found a claw hammer. Two blows with the hammer and the cop’s jaw was broken. He reached into the mouth with the claw portion of the hammer.
It took very little prying to pull the broken jaw from the dead man’s flesh.
The old man giggled at the way the gold tooth contrasted with the piece of white jaw and the other remaining teeth. He whistled the theme from the Andy Griffith Show as he packed the jaw into the cooler. The old man loaded his pickup. He drove to an old abandoned barn at the edge of town. He got comfortable on the bench seat.
The old man looked at his cooler. He could sense the ice already melting in it. He would have to find a freezer soon or everything would spoil.
He forced himself to sleep through the night. He needed the rest. He also knew he had his best ideas in the morning shortly after he woke. There was more killing to be done before he left town.
Henry called the sheriff’s department of Sioux Bluff, South Dakota. The current sheriff didn’t recognize the names of Frank Jenson or Jefferson Shermon but he promised Henry to call him right back after he talked to his father. He assured Henry that his father had lived in Sioux Bluff his whole life and knew everything about everybody.
Henry tried to make the time pass quickly by reviewing the other records to find more links. Instead of accomplishing anything, he only succeeded in shuffling papers. It was nearly two-thirty in the morning before he got a phone call from Sioux Bluff. The sheriff had called in to his night deputy with the information from his father. He had the deputy look up the old records that his father had remembered. After locating the records, the deputy had called Henry.
Vernon had followed Henry back to his office. Henry asked him to go to the main office and pick up the faxes the deputy was sending while he made a call back to the sheriff. Vernon read the faxes as soon as the machine spit them out. By the second sheet of paper, Vernon called another BCA agent and sent him to Frank’s room.
By five o’clock, the sheriff’s station was filled with cops as the news spread that another officer had disappeared. Groggy from lack of sleep, Henry tried to coordinate the search for Frank and plan the questioning of JW
Shermon.
Chris had driven through the town of Deer Lake Falls three times before the sun started to rise. He was nervous and a little scared. He had only been a town cop for ten months. He had taken the job because he needed the health insurance and the local union mills were not hiring. This killer had him scared spitless. He got queasy when he thought of what happened to Al. When he got off shift, he swore to himself that he would apply again at the union paper companies.
As the pink glow in the east faded into the long yellow shadows of early morning, the town woke up around his patrol car. Houses lit up and the streets started to empty as people left for work. Chris had not driven down every street but had stopped at the head of the occasional cul-de-sac to look down the side streets. The traffic slowed at seven forty as the first large group of
commuters had already left for their eight o’clock jobs. As Chris pulled up to an intersection, he noticed a cul-de-sac empty of vehicles except for a nondescript tan car. Chris noted the state license plate. He pulled past the intersection and radioed in to the station that he had found Frank’s car.
Chris pulled his gun from his holster and prayed that backup would arrive before anything happened.
The only reason Jacob McKinsie ran for county sheriff was that he wanted to be elected to the state senate. He knew that he was not a cop but a politician. He had let Henry Hakanen run the county’s portion of the investigation, because he knew Henry was a good cop. He also knew that if anything went wrong, he had a readymade scapegoat. The phone call at four in the morning from the state headquarters of the BCA had threatened his plans.
How could Henry let a BCA agent disappear? Jacob knew he had to fire Henry from the job but he had no idea who he could put in charge. He knew he wasn’t able to do the job.
Jacob entered the sheriff’s station and into a maelstrom of activity.
The station had turned into a way station for the out-of-town cops working the case. Jacob vaguely remembered giving permission for the BCA agents and the state highway patrol to use half of his office space, but he had never realized how many people that would mean.
Jacob was only five feet, four inches. The average highway patrolman was six feet. A human barricade of waiting officers stopped him before the office area. From the other side of unwashed bodies, he heard Henry.
“I want you to quickly and quietly get Jefferson away from his surroundings and into the interrogation room. We need to find out what he told Frank. We get him on our turf. We give him no opportunity to get mad or oriented. We give him no reason to resist our questioning and no chance to organize any lies. Vernon will handle the interview. We need to have someone in authority that Jefferson is unfamiliar with. I don’t want Jefferson to be left alone. If he goes to the bathroom, you go with him. Four of you will be going to his house. Two will go in and pick him up; the other two, Mike and John, will go in after he leaves for the station and talk to his wife.
“Now…”
“Sorry, Henry, but I think you need to take this call,” interrupted Nancy. “Makinen is on line two.”
“Hello, James, this is Henry … What! … How do you know … Thanks.”
In a loud voice, Henry shouted, “Who’s got the information on Billy Jones?”
At nearly the same instant, another voice shouted, “We got Frank’s car!”
The bodies moved, pinning Jacob’s face into a smelly armpit. He tried to talk, tried to move. The mass of bodies surged around him. Suddenly the mass broke for the doors, carrying him with them. Outside, the gas fumes from the starting patrol cars settled into the same pocket that he retreated to.
Jacob stood lost and alone, breathing the leftover fumes. Suddenly realizing who they were searching for, he took a breath and smelled death in the air. He left. He knew he had no business here. At his home, he called the BCA and in his most authoritative voice told the BCA “We are doing our job and we’re doing it right. Back off! Or we’ll just have to see which side the reporters will take.”
Shaking, he poured himself a whiskey. He didn’t know if he had done the right thing or not. He did know that he wasn’t going to be out there with a killer on the loose. That is the job of a deputy, not the sheriff.
James Makinen came in from his night watch. Unable to sleep, he started searching through the papers he got from the church. He found the church board’s meeting notes. Every comment made by Shermon was studied. During the last year, the only comments Shermon made had to do with finances except for a recommendation that a wife’s church membership be revoked for adultery. The year before that was the same, as well as the year before that and finally the year before that. On the second meeting after Shermon was elected a deacon, James finally found something. Shermon recommended a parishioner for membership. The parishioner, a William Jones, had moved from the town and church that Shermon had come from. The membership had been granted, although two other deacons had trouble remembering if Jones had ever attended a church service.
William Jones. William Jones. Why did the name sound so familiar?
William, William, Will, Bill, Billy … Billy! Billy Jones! The man who glared at him and then avoided his eyes when he confronted Kawalski and Shermon. The man, Jim remembered, who watched him from the shadows. Jim remembered watching the kids during breaks or hall duty and seeing the man with his faded blue uniform standing in the doorway or the side of the hall glaring back at him.
James knew! James realized he had known all along who it was. He had just never wanted to believe it.
He picked up the phone. It was Henry’s job to track the killer down. He was too tired. When he finished the call, he saw the others, Lori, Jeffrey, Marion, John, Ben, Bob and Betty.
Marion said, “Billy Jones. He was at the VFW right after you asked for help, Jeff.”
“I always thought he was a little strange. But a killer?” Jeffrey replied.
Lori, her face focused on the past stated, “It’s Jones.”
The others nodded and drank more of their morning coffee.
The table, the hands, the cards and the single light. The dark room is silent as the next card is turned over.
A lighted casement window with five yellow pentacles stands out on the bottom of the card. The scene is filled with snow. On the reversed card, a hunched man with a bell around his neck and a bandaged foot hobbles on homemade crutches behind a woman dressed in rags. Her head is bowed in the snow-filled night. Her bare feet leave meager prints in the fresh snow.
The still room asks the question the card presents.
––—
CHAPTER 17: The Five of Pentacles reversed
Nicole had always been a bitch. Although her parents were well off, she had not been spoiled by money and toys but by the absolute belief in her words by her parents. The first time she realized she had power over her parents was when she got in a fight with another girl in pre-school. Suzy was playing with a doll that she wanted. When she told her she wanted the doll, Suzy refused to stop playing with it. Nicole pulled the doll from Suzy’s arms and raked her fingernails across her face. Nicole laughed at the sight of blood on Suzy’s face, even when the jolt of pain from Suzy hitting her in the nose radiated through her head. When her mother picked her up from school that day, she complained how Suzy hurt her. Her mother held her so close to her breast that her bruised nose started to throb. Nicole’s mother promised to take care of everything, and by the next week, Suzy was not in class.
The next time Nicole remembered using her control over her parents was in second grade. The teacher had been hired fresh from college. She was tough and wouldn’t let Nicole get away with anything. Nicole came home every night for a month complaining how her teacher hated her. Nicole was transferred to another class and her parents hounded the teacher until she left the school at the end of the year.
By the time Nicole was fourteen, she had her parents totally deceived and in her control. She was the envy of every girl in school. She went to any concert or game she wanted to. She would stay out late at night, even during the school week. She wore the latest style hair and clothes. All the boys wanted her. Of course, she didn’t want them. They were too immature!
In late spring that year, she heard about a keg party at a lake that the high school jocks were holding to celebrate the end of the school year.
She had to go. She told her parents that she was staying with a girl friend for the weekend. She packed a backpack with her clothes and make-up. A quick discussion with her parents and they drove her out to a lake cabin that she claimed belonged to her friend’s family but was only a half mile from the party.
After her father dropped her off at the supposed lake cabin of her friend, she walked down the road until she found an empty cottage. With a rock, she broke a window and climbed in. Inside she applied her make-up
and dressed in a tight set of jeans, a satin blouse, and doused herself with some fifty dollar an ounce French perfume she’d stolen from her mother. It was still a quarter-mile walk to the site of the party. It was completely dark by the time she got there.
Nicole savored the sights and sounds of her first unchaperoned teenage party. The music from a tricked out car stereo echoed down the road for most of her quarter-mile walk. As she got within a few hundred feet of the party, tendrils of bonfire smoke hung over cars parked along both sides of the road.
Soon a scattering of partygoers surrounded her. Couples were laughing and talking. Some couples made out by the sides of the cars or in the nearby woods. A few cars moved up and down, seemingly of their own accord. A figure shrouded by the dark was throwing up his last beer and another closer to the bonfire urinated noisily against some bushes. As she entered the circle of light, a beer was handed to her and she started to drink.
Nicole was spotted by a group of boys waiting off to the side. The group had prowled the keg parties for the last year, challenging themselves with wilder and wilder sexual exploits. A boy from the group soon had her drinking her second beer. Before the hour was up, three boys from the group led the staggering Nicole back into the woods where they had a van parked. The boys then took turns fucking her.
Nicole was mostly unconscious by the time she got to the van. She was grateful to lie down. She barely noticed the first boy on her but somehow the primitive movement between her legs registered in her mind. She raised her legs and tried to move back in rhythm but failed. Every time a new body shoved itself between her legs her body tried to react until it was Dean’s turn.
Dean saw the sloppy mess between her legs and belched, “Can’t any of you fucking idiots clean up after yourselves? Somebody get me a God damn beer!”
Dean took the beer. Shook it. Stuck the foaming bottle up Nicole’s vagina. As the beer washed away the sticky mass between her legs, Nicole tried to scream from the pain of the alcohol burning her raw abused tissues. All Nicole was able to do was a few sharp inhales of breath. A rough towel was used to wipe the last remaining drops of residue from between her legs. Nicole nearly made it back to full consciousness but then Dean entered her inflamed vagina. Beyond all reason, the tortured tissue delivered to Nicole her first orgasm. It would be her only clear memory of the night since drinking her first beer.
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