“What’s the matter honey,” she asked hand sliding onto his knee.
“I’ll tell you later, Doll, we’ve got to get going.” He pulled out of the space and headed toward the outskirts of town.
“Teddy, what is it?” she asked again, “You look terrified. What happened?”
“We’ve got to go somewhere, Honey, just for a little while. Please don’t ask any questions now, please, it’s too hard to talk about it like this. Please, Honey?” he begged her to cooperate with him.
“But, Teddy,” she insisted, “I have to know, what’s the matter with you? Are you in trouble? Are you running from something?” Monica knew Teddy had been in jail. He had told her that. She assumed that some of his business dealings were a bit shady, but she didn’t think it was more than that. She believed him when he told her he was straight now. They were speeding along the highway heading toward Pittsburgh. “Teddy, where are we going? Where are you taking me?” she demanded. She was beginning to get upset now. This felt serious to her and she was frightened.
Teddy drove on resolutely, “I cannot take the time to tell you things now. It isn’t safe. Please, Monica I’m begging you to be quiet so I can think. I’ve got to get us out of here. It’s dangerous. I may have to leave you at a friend’s house. It may not be safe for you to be with me. You might be in danger, too. I love you too much to risk having you hurt.” Silently Monica started to weep. She didn’t know what was going on, but she knew that her boyfriend was deadly serious. She knew he was in trouble and so was she. She sat back in her seat clinging to her pocketbook. She resolutely zipped up her coat and put on her gloves. She didn’t know what was going to happen next, but she was ready to run.
Back at Teddy’s apartment, Jake had gotten impatient and broke through the door. It took him just a few minutes to notice today’s newspaper on the kitchen table along with a mug of recently brewed coffee and a half eaten bagel. He then realized that Teddy Ruff had run out on him. He had just missed him. He was furious. Teddy was his ace in the hole. He was depending on Ruff n Red-y to help him out of this mess. He was looking forward to showing him off to his gang. His old buddy the computer genius! And right now he needed a computer whiz to figure things out. Maybe hack into the FBI network and plant false leads. Like the gang was headed to Florida or San Francisco. Teddy was his buddy. If Teddy was running from him, it must be really bad. Jake was mad, but he was also confused. He had been so caught up in the craziness of one crisis after the other he had not stopped and really considered his situation. He had to figure out why Teddy ran off like that and left him in the lurch.
He did that now. He sat down in Teddy’s lovely living room and thought. Slim and Custer left him alone. Apparently, this Teddy fella was a touchy subject with Jake. It seemed Jake was all excited about him and now he was pissed off. They wandered around the apartment investigating and looking for things to steal. But Jake just sat there. It seemed to Slim he was in a daze. He looked over at Custer to see if he agreed. Maybe now was the time to take him on, now when he seemed so out of it. Custer seemed uncertain. He shrugged at Slim with a ‘wait and see’ message. While they continued to rummage through the apartment, Jake was deciding what to do next. His mind was flooded with thoughts. He didn’t know if he could trust his gang anymore and wondered if it would be a good idea to shoot them and move on. He thought he could manage without them, but he was really used to them. And when he caught Reggie, he might need their help. He didn’t know where she was or how many people he’d have to kill to get to her. No, he thought now was probably not the time to shoot them, but he needed to test them and make sure they were still with him.
Then there was the problem of Teddy Ruff. Teddy was in the wind… Why had he run? He didn’t know whether to chase Teddy down or not. He had wanted Teddy to do him a favor, to help him deal with the cops and to help him find Reggie. But Teddy running off like this had set him on edge. He wasn’t sure if he should chase him or just move on to another plan. He couldn’t figure what spooked him though. He thought and thought. What kind of friend was he, anyway? What about the Teacher and the Hacker? They were buddies. The thought of him running off made him mad again. He wanted to catch him and kill him. He gazed around the room. Slowly a framed snapshot of Teddy snuggling with a pretty young blonde came into focus. ‘Ah ha,’ he smiled to himself, ‘that’s why he left. He’s got a new girlfriend. A really pretty one! She’s just my type.’ He smirked, ‘Well, I wonder where old Teddy went with his pretty little girlfriend. If I was Teddy where would I go with my pretty girl? I’d run away from old Jake that’s what I’d do. I’d run as far as I could. I’d get me to an airport, fast, that’s what I’d do.’
“Okay, Boys,” he said, “we can go find Teddy or we can hang out here and see what happens next. What’s your vote?” Custer came into the room chewing on an apple. Slim had found some weed in Teddy’s night table and came in puffing. The three killers sat in Teddy’s impeccable living room and talked about what to do next. “This would be a safe place to hang out for a while,” Custer said, “No one knows we’re here. There’s plenty of food, plus a TV and a nice big bathroom.”
Slim inhaled deeply and then said, “Let’s hang out. I’m cool with that.” Jake tossed a scowl in his direction.
“Well,” Custer said, catching his drift immediately “how we gonna find this guy, Jake? We don’t know where he’s gone or how long ago he left, right?”
“I think he just left,” Jake said, “today’s paper and fresh coffee’s still in the kitchen. And I think he’s gone to the airport.”
“Why the airport?” Slim asked with a lazy smile on his face, he loved pot.
“I just think so that’s why,” Jake snapped.
“How about this,” Jake said, “I’ll go after Teddy and you two can wait here for me to come back.” Jake looked at them coolly waiting for their response. Custer got it first. He knew a trap when he saw one. Jake never wanted to leave them somewhere and go on some mission by himself. Jake needed them. He needed someone to push around, someone to back him up. He was not the loner type. Plus, Jake knew that the two of them would take off the minute his back was turned. This was a test for sure. Custer knew that agreeing to stay behind would mean a bullet in the head.
“Hell, no, Jake,” he said robustly, “I don’t think that’s such a good idea. We’re a team, Man. Where you go, we go.”
Slim picked up on it fast enough. “Yea, Man, if you want to go we’ll go with ya. Up to you, Man. You want to go get that Teddy fella we’re gonna back your ass up!”
CHAPTER 54
RE-GROUPING
No doubt about it. They were hurting. They’d been outmaneuvered and the killers had disappeared. Chester and Lou sat across from each other in Gus’s Diner. The body count kept mounting.
The recently discovered victims had been identified as:
Raylene Michaels -18 - Resident of Hurricane W. VA. Reported missing on June 8, 1994. Family contacted the police when she didn’t return home from cosmetic school. Manner of death was blunt force trauma. No evident signs of sexual trauma. Body was buried 4 feet below the ground and appears to have been wrapped in a sleeping bag.
Rita Mae Shrewsbury – 19 – Resident of Charleston, W. VA. Reported missing on April 23, 1999. Had been attending West Virginia State University and went missing from the campus. Manner of death was strangulation. There were assorted signs of trauma on the body. Body was buried 4 ½ feet below ground and was wrapped in a camping blanket.
Ruby Ann Pakowsky – 18 ½ – Resident of Winston-Salem, NC had disappeared from her grand-parents’ home in Huntington, W.VA. Reported missing on October 11, 2000. Manner of death was knife wound to the chest. Body was buried 3 ½ feet below ground wrapped in her clothing.
They stared wearily at the names in front of them, thinking as they waited for their order. These victims had been dead and buried on the Raines Family Farm for years undiscovered. Apparently Jake and his buddies felt safe to roam around the farm
doing whatever they did without fear of being caught. That was puzzling. There were people living on the farm. Earl and Hattie were there but so were their daughters, who had not yet married. Plus Clint and Dale lived there for several years before moving away. In addition Earl had several neighbor boys working the fields with him and roaming the woods at will. It didn’t make sense. It was hard to imagine that these three women could have been captured, tortured, killed and buried with so many people wandering around. That raised several questions:
-Why weren’t they discovered? If they were discovered why wasn’t it reported? If someone knew what Jake was up to why didn’t they do something to stop him?
-Why did the killers move their base of operations when they did? Apparently these early kills were all buried in this section of the Raines Farm and then suddenly they moved their base of operations to the parks and random burial sites. Why?
Raylene Michaels was murdered about 4 months prior to the time that Jake attacked Reggie and she fled the family farm. That challenged the theory that Jake was killing Reggie substitutes, if Raylene was killed before Reggie what was his motive in killing her? They would have to search every inch of that farm thoroughly as soon as possible. In the meantime, there were some idiosyncrasies to consider. One was that each of these bodies was wrapped in cloth of some type. That would indicate a level of caring or remorse. This was uncharacteristic of the later bodies. They were unsure if it represented a shift in thinking or perhaps a different person buried these women. Then there was the manner of death which was inconsistent between the earlier and the later groups and yet the other injuries were entirely consistent with the Parkland Killers profile. It raised a plethora of questions. They hoped forensics would resolve them.
And then an added wrinkle presented itself in the form of Special Agent Marie Del Monte who rushed into Gus’s Diner red-cheeked and breathless. “OK” she said sitting down and motioning Star for a cup of coffee. She had been at the hospital with the Raines children on and off since the crisis at the farm. Now she said “Listen up, you guys, I’ve just learned something that will put a whole different spin on things. Our probable first victim, Raylene Michaels is not a random victim. She is not only Mary Beth Raines’ older sister but she and Clint were engaged to be married when she disappeared in 1994. Clint Raines and Mary Beth Michaels grew close while they were struggling with Raylene’s disappearance. Once they finally accepted she was probably dead, they were married three years later.” The men stared at her unsure where this information would lead them.
“There had been 3 girls in the Michael’s family,” Marie continued, “Raylene, Mary Beth, Sara Jane. Both of the Michaels parents worked full time so Raylene pretty much raised her younger sisters. After Raylene went missing Mrs. Michaels went into a severe depression and ended up being confined to a psychiatric facility. Mr. Michaels started drinking heavily and ended up in a car accident that left him wheel-chair bound. Losing Raylene destroyed the Michaels family and it nearly destroyed Mary Beth and Clint, too. Since their marriage, they have been burdened with caring for the youngest sister, Sara Jane and later both of her parents moved in with them. Her parents still live there. Clint and Mary Beth are responsible for them as well as for their own three children. Now here’s the interesting part. I saw some photos of Raylene and she does not fit Jake’s profile. She was short and a bit over-weight with curly red hair. Also there were no evident signs of sexual abuse. It looks like she was killed for another reason entirely, like to play out a vendetta against Clint or perhaps she was killed by another killer entirely, someone who is not in the gang now.”
Lou reflecting on this suggested, “This is a game changer. It’s the first kill and it varies with everything else we’ve got. But it has to be related somehow to Jake cause the rest of the bodies in that little graveyard are definitely his and that’s not a coincidence. Two different killers don’t just happen to bury their victims in the same location.” Reflecting on her visit with Clint and Mary Beth at their home on the eve of the Raines Farm catastrophe, Marie recalled feeling Clint and his wife had been hiding something, but in the rush of events that immediately followed that idea was pushed aside.
“I was just on the phone with Mary Beth,” Marie reported, “and here’s another bit. I described a piece of jewelry Hattie had kept for Jake. Clint had a strange reaction when he saw that photo and when I described it to Mary Beth she told me it sounded like her sister’s cross. So we have another clear connection between Raylene’s death and the Parkland Killers and it looks like Raylene may have been Jake’s first victim, perhaps killed before the victim profile pattern was established with Reggie. Mary Beth said they had always worried that whatever happened to Raylene had also happened to Reggie Lee. But they never knew what happened to either of them. This necklace draws a clear connection between those killings and the Raines family. Jake probably killed Raylene and is certainly responsible for whatever happened to Reggie Lee, he killed his father and put his mother in the ICU; she thinks Clint just might ‘go off the deep end and go after him.’ Mary Beth told me Clint said Jake destroyed our families. He’s over at the hospital talking to Dale and he looks like he wants to punch holes in walls. We have to make sure the two of them don’t go running off and complicate the crime spree we already have.”
As the team discussed this newest development, coffee arrived fresh and steaming. They looked at the evidence before them: crime scene photos in one pile, national police crime reports in another pile, witness reports in another pile, road maps of the USA in another pile and discussed the most recent information about the Raines family history. Chester picked through the witness reports and reviewed them again. The biggest lead is that phone call the killers made from the church. The priest’s cell phone had been dumped but it turned out that the number was a dead end. The call was placed to a two year old burner phone that was bought somewhere in western PA.
“There’s that Pennsylvania connection again,” Chester said. He was re-reading Father Wallington’s report for the 3rd time. “I want to talk to that priest again,” he said, picking up his phone.
They were mopping egg yolk from their plates when Father Wallington entered the diner, stomping snow off his boots on the doormat. ‘Sis’ a new waitress was at his elbow the moment he sat down asking what she could get for him. “Just coffee please, Sis,” he said settling himself down at the table.
“Thank you for coming in, Father,” Chester began, “we have a few follow up questions that may be important.”
“Of course,” the priest answered, “anything I can do to help. They are troubled souls with violence on their minds.”
“Father, we’re particularly interested in the phone call one of the men made while you were in the church. What can you tell us about that?”
“Well, it was the man called Jake who made that call. I was in my study sitting at my desk. He ordered me to stay put and not move or he’d shoot me then he stepped out into the community room and made this call. I heard nearly every word he said.” “That’s great, Father,” Lou said, “Can you tell us whatever you can remember. Anything you remember could be important.”
Father Wallington nodded and said “His first words were ‘Hey, Ruff n Ready old buddy’ then he said something like, ‘It’s me… right! I need you to check something for me.’ He was watching his friends who were in the garage and got the idea he had to hurry up I think and said ‘No, listen Buddy I have to make this quick. I need you to find this gal. Yea…’ then I missed some words because he was whispering, then he said ‘Think maybe so.’ Then something like ‘I’m in a load of shit ….” Then the priest shrugged “Excuse my language officers, but that’s what he said.”
“Of course Father,” Chester said, “please go ahead.”
The priest nodded, he said “…‘Ready,’ my friend.’ Ready was like a name not meaning are you ready,” the priest clarified. “Then he listened for a while, rubbing his chin and nodding, uh, uh’s into the phone
and then he said, ‘I need it quick, Man. If all goes well, I’ll see you or meet you something something ‘Sit in.’” Then the priest reported that Jake listened some more and added, “‘That’s a plan, I’ll hold onto this one. Thanks buddy, I owe you one!’ then he hung up.”
“Father that was terrific you have perfect recall!” Marie was impressed.
“Well,” Father Wallington said modestly, “I spend a lot of time listening.”
Chester had written down the priest’s report of the conversation and was reading his notes. “Father, can you remember anything else about that greeting? Was it the man’s name?”
“I think ‘Ruff n Ready’ was a long nickname. Like calling someone ‘peaches and cream’ or something,” the priest said.
Chester made a note. “And the part about meeting him… you said something like meet you …‘sit in?’ was that like a place or more like we’ll sit in somewhere.
The priest thought for a while, “I think it sounded like a place. I’ll meet you at something like Sit Inn, not like we’ll drive through rather than sitting inside.”
“Ok good,” Chester said moving through his notes “and one more thing, that part about hanging onto something... what was that about?”
“I’m not completely sure, but from the tone it was that he would hang onto this one, meaning what he already had or was holding. The emphasis was on the word ‘this.’ That would make it something like the phone he had, which was mine or the number, like my phone number. So this ‘Ready’ person would be able to contact him at that number. That’s what I got out of it,” said the priest.
Relentless (Elisabeth Reinhardt Book 1) Page 31