by Glenn Trust
“Yep. Right now that’s all we have.”
“Where’s he live?”
“Other side of the woods. Have to go around to Power Line Road. It’s an old farm house.”
“His wife know what happened?”
George nodded.
“Okay. I’ll go visit with his wife after I see to things here.”
The reality was that the sheriff was only there to visit with Mrs. Sims, and hopefully get his picture in the paper consoling the old woman. The crime scene was secure, the GBI would be handling the investigation from this point on and there was nothing for the sheriff to ‘see to’, except to make sure the voters knew how involved he was and how much he felt for the plight of the little old black woman who had lost her husband in a brutal murder. Such a tragedy. His concern for justice and dedication to apprehending the violent criminal who had committed such a heinous act in his county, along with a television appearance showing him standing beside the victim’s frail wife, maybe with a hand on her shoulder, or even an arm around her, would be worth votes.
“Deputy Davies the primary on this?”
“Yep.”
“And you?”
“Crime scene preservation.”
The sheriff looked around. “Looks like it is pretty well preserved. You can go.”
With that, Sheriff Klineman turned and walked towards the GBI man.
21. Way to Go George
George turned and got into his pickup. Cranking it up, he drove slowly from the parking lot. In the mirror, he saw Bob Shaklee kneeling at the edge of the gravel beside the woods peering hard at the ground and shining a flashlight. Sheriff Klineman appeared to be talking to him, and Shaklee appeared to be ignoring him. George smiled.
Driving around to the front of the church, George shined the pickup’s spotlight moving it in a slow arc around the churchyard looking for anything that might reflect the powerful spotlight beam. Anything, like maybe a murder weapon. There was nothing.
Pulling out onto the Jax Highway, he backtracked to Power Line Road, slowly moving the light in arcs back and forth and along the roadside ditches hoping to catch something in the light that might be of use. The only thing the light picked up was an armadillo grubbing in the dirt on the side of the road and too blinded by the light to waddle back into the woods.
George drove slowly back to the Sims’ place scanning with his light for anything that might be evidence. Pulling into the yard, he drove up to the porch and parked in the grass. Another GBI investigator, this one female, was standing on the porch talking to Mrs. Sims. The agent’s gender immediately attracted George’s attention. There were not many female law enforcement officers in that part of Georgia. It was an interesting curiosity.
A man in his mid-thirties sat beside Mrs. Sims in a rocking chair holding her hand. George realized that this must be her son or another relative. It occurred to him that the chair was the one Mr. Sims must have been sitting in when they heard the noises at the church. The son looked up as George approached the porch. He stopped at the steps.
The GBI agent was making notes on a small pad. Mrs. Sims sat staring straight ahead, gripping her son’s hand. George could see that the veins in her wrist and hand were standing out from the exertion of the grip she had on her son’s hand.
“You see my, Harry?”
The old woman’s voice wavered and cracked, partly from age, but mostly from the pain and loss of her husband. George realized after a moment that despite her gaze fixed on the tree line at the edge of the yard, she was speaking to him.
“Yes, ma’am.”
“How’s he look? Is he gonna be okay?”
The GBI agent looked around and down the steps at George. The expression on her face said, ‘Okay, so now what are going to say? Oh yes, and why are you here…dumbass?’ George was wondering the same thing.
“Well…,” he opened his mouth trying to think of the right thing to say, but there was no right thing.
“Mama,” her son said. “You know what happened. Someone hurt Papa. Hurt him real bad, and he ain’t coming back. You know that.” He said it firmly but gently trying to help her through the moment.
She lowered her head. “Yes, yes, I know.” Wet streaks glistened on her weathered cheeks. Her son leaned forward and put his head beside hers, his arm around her shoulders. They sat sobbing together on the front porch.
The GBI agent gave George another withering look that said this time, ‘Gee, thanks for coming deputy. You really helped out and made things much better.’
George understood and turned back towards his pickup.
“Deputy!”
George turned towards the old woman. She looked him firmly in the eye, lifted one weathered, brown hand and pointed at him.
“Yes, ma’am?”
“You catch this person, who did this to my Harry.”
“Yes, ma’am. I’ll try”
“You don’t try, son. You catch him.” It was final, nothing more to be said.
George nodded and walked to his vehicle. Glancing up at the investigator’s face, he saw the smirk and the look that now said, ‘Way to go…asshole’. That was precisely what George was thinking.
The noise of the engine cranking made him cringe. It seemed loud and irreverent. He backed slowly away from the house, conscious of the old woman’s eyes following him as he moved out on the road.
He drove deliberately, not in any particular direction, just away from the old woman’s gaze and pointing hand. Her words echoing in his head. ‘You catch him deputy, you catch him.’
The GBI agent was right. Way to go asshole. Way to fucking go.
22. Blank Eyes
The room was perfect, small and dingy but with cinder block walls and a heavy steel door. The closest occupied room was about ten doors away, at least that’s where the closest car was parked. No one would hear anything that was about to happen in this room. Probably no one would have heard anyway because of his preparation. Attention to detail was ingrained in his methods.
First things, first. As the door clicked quietly shut behind them, he motioned her to sit in a chair beside a small table. He did not push or touch her in any way. He simply looked at her for several minutes.
She avoided his stare. Her trembling increased as his gaze lengthened into minutes until she was shivering as if she had just come from icy water.
Finally, he walked behind her. She started to turn her head, but he reached out and roughly jerked her head around straight causing her to whimper in pain.
Stepping behind her, he pulled a piece of duct tape from his pocket and slapped it quickly over her mouth. This startled the girl, and she started to struggle but the knife was out and at her throat this time, pressing firmly into the groove between the trachea and neck muscle, about where the carotid artery would be.
Reaching down he took a roll of the tape from the duffel bag he had thrown on the floor and looped a piece around her mouth, all the way around her head, and around her mouth again. No need to worry about anyone seeing now, and it was handy stuff, duct tape. It was used so much in movies and on television for just this sort of thing that you didn’t really think it would work, but it did. It worked perfectly.
He stepped back in front of her now. The hope was gone from her eyes. The fear was back. She trembled. A shudder of excitement ran through his body.
“Now, honey. Let’s start.”
He saw the muscles of her neck and jaw contract. She was trying to scream. There was no sound. Her terror and agony at not being able to make even a sound made something roar inside him. The animal in him had been raging and now it was released to immerse himself in the kill, to drench himself in her pain and fear.
Over the next hours, her terror grew into a roaring crescendo, but no sound escaped. Her clothes had been cut away. A plastic tarp had been placed around and under the chair to catch what blood there was, but there wasn’t much. He was careful. The knife was only there to cause pain and heighten his pleasure by incr
easing her fear. The cuts he made were many but small. None bled very much. But each tiny cut was placed to cause the most pain and to inflict the most fear. Lightly across her breasts. The corners of her nose. The soles of her feet. None would cause death, but all would cause pain and increase the greatest pain of all, her fear. The animal that he was relished that fear like a great cat burying its head into a still warm carcass, withdrawing with fur bloodstained and gory. No, there was not much blood, but this predator bathed in her fear.
The girl closed her eyes. It was an escape…an attempt to wash the horror of what was happening out of her mind.
“Open your eyes,” he hissed.
The girl just trembled, eyes closed. He lifted his right hand in a fist and struck her hard in the forehead. The blow left a bruise on her, but it was not hard enough to cause serious damage. It did succeed in convincing the girl to open her eyes.
“Good,” he said. The grin was back on his face. It was the grin she had closed her eyes to avoid.
He stood in front of her naked, his clothes folded neatly on the bed, hers severed and in tatters on the floor. Placing his hands around her throat, his grip tightened until her eyes bulged and she made an attempt at struggling for her life. It was futile. He had not spared the duct tape this time, safe in their little room at the StarLite Motel.
It was awkward standing in front of her straddling the chair, and it required a great deal of strength and time to kill in this way, but that was fine. He wanted it to take a long time, and the exertion now at the end was part of his fulfillment.
Their eyes locked. Reality seemed to register in the girl’s hopeless stare. It had finally become clear to her that there would be no escape. Devoid of hope now, she was left only with the terror. It sat cold and heavy on her chest. Hopeless and helpless, nothing could ward off what was coming. And what was coming was the end. The end of everything for her and all that had awaited her in life.
Squinting in a macabre sort of concentration, he focused on his work, trying to suck out all of the fear and pain and hopelessness she was feeling. It was like sucking the marrow out of a bone—the best part. It washed over him bringing a shudder to his frame, and he relished it. Releasing the tension in his muscular hands occasionally so as not to hurry things, he gazed into the girl’s eyes. They were moist and wet. He lost himself in the eyes until, after a time, they dimmed, and her stare became blank. No longer deep, liquid pools of life seeing the world around them, they became empty and barren. That too, pleased him.
Sweating and trembling, he stood over the lifeless form bound to the chair. His chest heaved from the exertion…and something else. Waves of ecstasy coursed through his muscles and flesh. He stood in front of the dead girl until the trembling subsided and his breath calmed.
Turning, he fell onto the bed and slept.
23. Canada, Really
The old, banged-up pickup rattled some from age, but the engine hummed deeply. It was well maintained. Lyn sat between the two young men to whom ‘Aunt Kathy’ had entrusted her. She had offered to sit in the back, but the boys wouldn’t hear of it. Besides, the bed was full of tools, ladders, and equipment. Apparently, Cy and Clay were in the construction business.
Lyn’s eyes fluttered open as they passed a large truck. Out of the side window, she could see the large tires of the truck’s trailer as they moved around it. Awakening fully, she realized that her head had dropped onto the shoulder of the young man beside her, Clay. With a jerk, she sat up straight in the seat.
“Nice nap?’ Clay looked over at her with a chuckling smile.
“Sorry. I couldn’t help it.” She fidgeted and straightened her clothes out a bit in embarrassment.
“Don’t be sorry. No problem.”
“How long was I asleep?”
“Not long. Half hour maybe.”
“Didn’t mean to. I just got so tired.” She yawned and stretched her arms out in front, fingers interlocked.
“No problem. Really.”
A bump in the road caused some of the gear in the truck bed to bang loudly. Lyn looked over her shoulder through the rear cab window.
“What do you do? In Savannah, I mean.”
“Construction,” Clay answered staring out the side window at the passing landscape, still colorless and dark in the predawn light. “Working on framing up a new shopping center on the west side.”
“You’re building a shopping center?” Her voice made it sound like something big and important.
Clay smiled. “Well, we’re one of the subs…subcontractors, working on it. Takes a lot of people, job like that.”
Lyn nodded not knowing what else to say, not sure if she should say anything. These were just two strangers, and she was just a hitchhiker. Silence filled the truck’s cab, emphasized by the hum of the tires and throb of the engine.
Minutes went by. “So, where ya from?” It was Cy, the older brother and driver of the truck.
“Down south,” she replied, not comfortable with giving out too much information.
Cy and Clay glanced at each other over her head.
“Yea. Us too. We live down with our mama in Pritchard, just north of the Florida line a ways.”
“Just your mama?” she asked. She wondered what that would have been like. Living with just a mother and no father. She wondered if she would be out here on the interstate with these two young men if there had been only Mama at home.
“Yea. Just Mama,” Cy replied. “Daddy died in a tractor accident when we were little. Turned over on him in a ditch and broke his neck.”
Glancing down at her out of the corner of his eye so that she wouldn’t see him looking, Clay could see that she was pretty. A little thin, but pretty. Auburn hair and long-legged. Her knees were pushed up as her feet were on the transmission hump in the center of the cab. It made her look more like a little girl, childlike. He liked that. She may be a little thin, but so were a lot of girls who came up hard out in the Georgia countryside. He and Cy knew about that. Neither of them had ever exactly been overfed, but Mama had done her best to take care of them. They had grown up having to work hard, but it was never something they dreaded, just a fact of life. Might as well be mad at the sun rising. Just the way it was. That’s all.
Still, he and Cy had always had each other. That was something. That was a lot sometimes when things were tough. And Mama had been there for them. She couldn’t give them much, but she would listen and would talk. When she talked they listened…usually.
What had put this girl on the road? She was young, not much more than a child it seemed to Clay. He couldn’t really relate to a life so bad that you could just walk away…run away…from everything. How did that work? He thought about that, puzzling it out. He had no reference for it though. He and Cy always had Mama. Who did she have?
He felt compelled to say something. “We had Mama’s brother, Uncle Thomas, to teach us some things about building, but mostly we came up without a daddy. How about you?”
Immediately, Clay saw her discomfort. She sat stiffly, staring straight ahead out of the windshield, as if trying to avoid contact with the brothers on either side of her. After a time, she lowered her head and spoke. “I got a mama and a brother. He died in the Marines. We buried him at the church in...” She hesitated, almost naming Judges Creek and then said, “Back home.” Another pause and then, “Got a daddy, too.”
Clay and Cy listened quietly, sensing that there was more and knowing that any word from them would silence her, like stepping on a branch in the woods and spooking a deer you are watching. Besides, they both knew it was none of their business. Bad things happened sometimes. Tractors turned over in ditches killing fathers. Things happened to young girls that made them leave home. There were just lots of bad things in the world. That was all.
After a few minutes with only the highway hum filling the cab of the pickup, Cy decided it was his turn. “So, where you headed?”
Lyn shifted uncomfortably in the narrow confines of the cab. �
�North.”
“North? That’s pretty big area. Can’t pin it down any more than that, just north?”
Lyn made no reply and continued staring straight ahead. Cy shrugged and focused on his driving.
“So, things must be pretty bad at home?” It was Clay, who spoke this time. “For you to be out on the road and all,” he said, obviously waiting for an answer.
Cy cut him a sharp look over her head. Clearly, he thought that it went beyond small talk and fulfilling the assignment that Kathy had given them. They had work to do. This was an unnecessary distraction, although he would never say that to Kathy. The next time they saw the waitress at the diner, he just wanted to be able to report ‘mission accomplished’. The girl had been safely delivered to the truck stop and pointed north.
Clay knew that Cy was annoyed with his question. He would not want to become entangled in this girl’s affairs, but the thought of putting the girl out at the truck stop was beginning to bother him.
At Clay’s question, Lyn pulled the cuff of her pink pullover shirt down a bit and shifted her stare to her lap. The boy, Clay, was waiting for an answer. After several seconds, she reckoned that they deserved more of an answer for what they were doing for her, or doing for ‘Aunt Kathy’, at least.
“Yea. Things are pretty bad I guess,” she ventured as an opening.
Clay waited.
“Things are bad enough,” she continued. “Me and my daddy had a fight. I guess we always have a fight goin’.”
“You hurt?” Clay asked. He looked at her hand holding the cuff of her shirt tight.
“Not bad,” she replied softly.
“Can I see?” Clay asked. “You might need a doctor.”
“No, it’s just a bruise,” she replied, never looking up. But she slid the arm of the shirt up a ways, still looking down at her lap.
Clay saw a purple bruise on her forearm, as if she had put it up to fend off a blow that might have been more serious if it had landed elsewhere. He reached over and gently slid the shirt back down. Cy missed nothing, but kept his peace, concern evident on his face. Clay knew it was mostly for him and not the girl.