Blood Red Winter: A Thriller

by J. Conrad

  “You know about this? What – why didn’t you tell me? What is going on?”

  “I just found out yesterday about this threat against your life. This just happened. I wanted to tell you last night but I didn’t want to worry you,” I said. I cringed at how redundant that sounded.

  “Didn’t want to worry me? Is this a joke?”

  I took a deep breath. “Okay, I need you to calm down for a minute and listen to me. I just found out yesterday. I wasn’t going to spring that on you at Chupacabra on a Friday night, when I haven’t seen you in months! I notified the sheriff’s office that I had received what looked like a threat against you. A lot has happened since you left. You have no idea. Let me come over and I’ll fill you in.”

  “Oh geez, Trent! Do you have people after you? What the hell did you do?”

  “I didn’t do anything!” I said. Not entirely true, but let’s face it, I was the good guy here. I wished she’d settle down and talk to me instead of reacting. “I discovered a crime and reported it. That really pissed this guy off and he’s after me, and I guess threatening you is part of it now. Go online and look up the County Road 118 case. I’ll be there in 45 minutes.”

  “Oh my God,” she said. I heard a wet sniff, followed by a long, shaky breath. “Okay. Please hurry.”

  “I will,” I said. “Stay inside until I get there.”

  Elizabeth’s apartment was in an older Austin neighborhood known as Tarrytown, which was three miles from downtown Austin. I would call it a high rent district, though she would probably disagree. She was a good CPA and could afford it. Tarrytown is just east of the MoPac Expressway, our loop highway so named because it was built along the right-of-way of the Missouri Pacific Railroad in the 60’s. On the west side of Tarrytown is Lake Austin, which is actually a water reservoir on the Colorado River.

  On the way to Elizabeth’s complex I passed a couple of brick homes built about fifty years ago with ornamental wrought iron porch columns painted white. They reminded me of my grandmother’s house in Dallas. I half-expected to see an old Chevelle parked in one of the driveways. Next to them was a newer, generous estate-style home which was modeled after a quaint stone cottage. It had two brick chimney stacks, a sharply peaked roof and an arched front door made of heavy dark brown timber attached by medieval black hinges. Turning my head to keep the landscaping in view as I rolled by, I saw that the trees and bushes were professionally manicured and there didn’t seem to be a blade of glass out of place. Proceeding the suburban mansion was a clean and well-kept but modest bungalow with gray siding and azalea bushes lining a gravel walkway. There’s something for everyone.

  Elizabeth’s apartment building wasn’t nearly so posh as the mansion. It was one of the complexes built in the mid twentieth century: upgraded and remodeled inside, but nothing to drool over on the exterior. This was a different complex than where she had lived before we moved in together, but she’d been renting for about seven years while she saved for a house. She planned to buy a home in cash, or mostly, in a few years. Unlike me, Elizabeth had used the days of her youth wisely, setting herself up very well.

  Grabbing the railing with its peeling paint, I propelled myself up the steps to Elizabeth’s unit. She opened the door before I could ring the bell. She turned, and with unsteady fingers, hastily locked us in, securing the deadbolt. Elizabeth’s black hair was pulled up into a messy bun and she wore a faded t-shirt and jeans.

  “I read the news articles,” she said. Her eyes portrayed a token of disbelief and something else. Intrigue, maybe. “Tell me everything.”

  I took off my shoes and left them by the door. We sat next to each other on the plush dark blue sedan and I started from day one, the dreary day when Tim called me to check on his neglected house on County Road 118. In the middle of our conversation, someone knocked on the door and Elizabeth jumped, cursing under her breath. She ran her hands over her face and got up to answer the door.

  “I’m Officer Jeffery Spade,” the visitor said. He had dark brown skin, was well over six feet tall and was built like he pumped iron on a daily basis. The police uniform barely contained his nearly three hundred pounds of lean muscle.

  “Nice to meet you, Officer Spade,” Elizabeth replied. She extended her hand and they shook. “I’m Elizabeth Reinhardt. This is my fiancé, Trent Lemend. Thank you for coming.” Spade and I nodded. He already knew my name from Reyes in Williamson County, as his report had transferred this part of the case to Austin.

  I stood by while Officer Spade and Elizabeth exchanged information, keeping my mouth shut since my input wasn’t necessary right now. Spade briefed Elizabeth on how police watch worked. He confirmed her work’s contact information and her mother’s as well.

  “All right ma’am,” Spade said, putting Elizabeth’s card inside the compartment of a metal clipboard. “Do you have any questions?” His face relaxed into a smile.

  “Yes,” Elizabeth said. “What do I do if I can’t get a hold of you?”

  “You should always call 911 first,” Officer Spade said. “Then call me. The dispatcher will send whoever’s closest to your location.”

  “Okay. Always 911 first, then you.”

  “That’s right. I’ll be patrolling the key areas throughout the day, but if I get other calls I may not be able to respond. But I can follow up as soon as I’m able.” His forehead drew into a frown as he confronted Elizabeth, making sure his next words sunk in. “Keep something on you at all times for self-defense: a can of mace, pepper spray, something you’re comfortable using. Always keep your doors and windows locked. That includes your car doors – at all times. Don’t speak to strangers, don’t go into unfamiliar places. If anything seems fishy, stay away. If something seems fine but you just have a bad feeling about it, don’t do it. I can’t tell you how many people wouldn’t have become victims if they’d just trusted their gut instincts. So trust your gut instinct.”

  “Okay,” she nodded. “I will. Not a problem.”

  “Any other questions?”

  “How close are you to catching this guy?” Elizabeth asked. She held a hair tie in her right hand, which she worked in and out of her fingers nervously.

  “Unfortunately I don’t have that information, ma’am,” Spade said. “But as soon as we get him, I promise that you and Mr. Lemend will be the first to know.”

  Elizabeth exhaled and thanked him. I liked this Spade guy. He could probably break someone’s neck with one hand while maintaining a professional demeanor. The officer handed Elizabeth a second card for me, so that I could call him if needed when I was in Austin.

  After he left, I got back to explaining things to Elizabeth. I opened up the camera roll on my cell phone to show her the photo. Though Reyes made me hand over the original as evidence, I had snapped a picture of each side.

  “This is what the guy left at my work – the threat,” I said. “Here’s the front.”

  I handed my cell to Elizabeth. Her expression morphed from its strained panic to muddied confusion.

  “Where did you get this?” she asked. Her blue eyes flicked up to me, searching my face.

  “Like I said, someone left it at my work. The guy who’s after me, I guess. This came in a white envelope. Is that you and the guy you were –”

  “Jared has blond hair,” Elizabeth said.

  Jared, then. Nice.

  “Is that you?” she asked.

  “No,” I said. “Kyle asked me the same thing. But honestly I’m not a hundred percent certain. Is that you? Have we ever gone to Amy’s on Congress? Look in the background.”

  I had thought showing Elizabeth the photo would help resolve things, but her reaction was a lot like mine had been.

  “I can’t tell,” Elizabeth said. She squinted at the pixelated image. “That looks like me from the back, but without seeing the face there’s no way to know for sure.”

  “Who else could it be?” I asked.

  “Maybe he has the wrong people,” Elizabeth said. “The girl you
found – the survivor. I saw her picture in the news article. How do we know this isn’t her?”

  I’d thought of that too, like anyone would have. Mistaken identity, something I thought occurred mostly in crime novels and rarely in real life. It was just a little hard to believe that someone could be that off base when it came to tormenting someone as thoroughly as he’d been tormenting me. Wouldn’t this jackass have done his research? Marking us for murder wasn’t a decision you made over breakfast.

  “Well, we don’t know,” I said. “I guess it’s the hair. This woman in the photo has dark hair, the same length as yours.” I closed out of the camera roll and opened another app, where I had saved all the news articles I’d found to date. I scrolled to the one revealing Aria Owen as the survivor. “And here’s Aria. Her hair is dark, but I guess I can’t say it’s black. And we can’t see how long it is.”

  Elizabeth tilted the phone and frowned. “You’re right.”

  Outside the wind had begun howling, a painful whine which skirted the apartment complex. It was going on noon, but with all the blinds closed the living room was dim, even with the side lamp on. Maybe we’d get a winter storm.

  “Do you know anyone else besides me who looks like this guy?” I asked, bringing the strange photo back onto the screen.

  Elizabeth put a finger to her chin, biting her lip. She shook her head. “I don’t know. It’s such a bad image it could be almost anyone your age with dark hair.”

  “You mean any average white guy my age with dark hair,” I cracked. It won a faint smile from her.

  “I’ll think on it,” she said. “But like you, I don’t think we’ve ever been to Amy’s on Congress together. That’s the ‘tell,’ in my opinion. Either that, or he took this photo of us and changed the background.” She rubbed her hands together, trying to shake off the cold that was more than the weather. “The thing is, he can do anything. He could have taken other people’s bodies and put our heads on them, or taken pictures of us separately and put them together. Or these people aren’t us, but he’s trying to get us to think they are. We don’t know.”

  “Agreed,” I said. “Let me show you the back.” I opened the image I took of the other side of the photo.

  Who does her sins lament… Then see the sorrow of my heart, ere it be too late.

  “What does that even mean?” Elizabeth asked. “Why not just kill me and be done with?”

  “Geez, Elizabeth,” I said.

  “No, I mean why the weird bit of poetry? To scare us more? To make us try and figure it out while we wait?”

  “No idea. You don’t understand how sick this guy is. What I saw in that room –” I wasn’t going to give her a graphic description. Aria’s body, violated, bloodied, and hanging limp, coupled with the smell of her rotting stepmother would defile my memory forever.

  “I know,” she said. Her blue eyes softened. She wanted to understand. “I’m just saying, for the sake of our safety we need to think with the clues we are given. Think.”

  The idea of Elizabeth as a guileful detective made me laugh. “When did you become a crime solver?”

  Elizabeth tried to keep the tremor from her voice as she managed a crooked grin. “Tax deductions. I can find everything.”

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  February 5th

  We made it through the week in one piece. Officer Spade had checked on Elizabeth several times by phone, in addition to keeping an eye on her apartment as he made his rounds. Even the weather was cooperating. It didn’t storm after all and the temperature had risen into the upper forties with mostly sunny days. By the morning of Friday, the 5th of February, slate gray clouds rolled back in, but there still wasn’t any rain.

  New suspect named in County Road 118 case.

  WILLIAMSON COUNTY (KXAV) – The Criminal Investigations Division has now released the name of the prime suspect in the County Road 118 case. According to survivor Aria Owen, she and her stepmother were abducted by Owen’s ex-boyfriend, Korey Nemeth, of Round Rock.

  Nemeth is described as twenty-eight years old, 5’ 10,” brown hair and brown eyes, 160 pounds. He was last seen driving a white GMC Suburban with the Texas license plate number DL7 – xxxx. Nemeth’s last known place of business was the City of Austin’s Developmental Assistance Center on Barton Springs Road. A City of Austin representative tells us that Nemeth ended his employment with the city in early December, stating that he was taking a higher paying job at the Georgetown Municipal Court. Georgetown municipal sources say that Nemeth did apply for a position. However, the job was awarded to a better qualified applicant. It is unknown whether Nemeth is currently employed.

  Aria Owen, the twenty-four-year-old survivor of the brutal abduction, is in stable condition and recovering at St. David’s Hospital. Hospital officials report that Owen will be released as soon as her health allows. Per Owen, she and Nemeth had ended their four-year relationship in early December, due to a pattern of jealous behavior that concerned her. Owen said that Nemeth had never been violent. She told KXAV that on the day she and her stepmother, Carol Brandt, were kidnapped, she was walking to her car, where her stepmother was waiting. Someone tapped her on the shoulder and when she turned around, someone sprayed something in her face. She lost consciousness, and when she woke up, she and her stepmother were lying on the floor in the abandoned home on County Road 118. Newspaper had been stuffed into their mouths and they were tied in a way that they could barely move. Owen has declined giving KXAV a full account of what happened at this time.

  “Once he’s caught and we get a DNA sample, we’ll have enough to keep him off the street and we can prosecute,” said Williamson County Sheriff Marcus Gonzales.

  Nemeth is considered armed and extremely dangerous. We ask that if you see Nemeth, call your local law enforcement right away. Do not approach him. You can also contact KXAV’s hotline at…

  The article featured a crystal clear photo of the killer. He didn’t really look like a psycho. The only “tell” was a faint trace of crazy in his eyes, like a school shooter who was loaded up on psychotropics. But it wasn’t that obvious, not really. It was just that I was looking for it. He had brown eyes and dark hair, but he had shaved his head almost to the skin. No beard and no other facial hair. Long, thin nose, and yellowish complexion. Kind of a sallow color, except that he was still young enough to not look ill. We all knew that wasn’t true, of course. This was the face of the sickest man I’d ever seen.

  I couldn’t help but wonder why the article would let all of Central Texas know that Aria Owen would be released from the hospital soon. It reeked of carelessness. Then again, I wasn’t a reporter or a police officer, so what would I know? I was just a guy who worked at a gas station.

  Our situation would have been grounds for Elizabeth to insist that I come stay with her – if that was something she wanted. We were still engaged. It made sense and I expected her to ask, but she didn’t. That was admirable under the circumstances and reinforced my decision to give her another chance. I kept close tabs on her and swung by her apartment as often as I could. Elizabeth knew she was forbidden from my place. It was absolutely off limits.

  February 5th was a Friday, and Kyle called bright and early to invite Elizabeth and me to a party hosted by Kyle’s real estate firm. I was surprised that a company would have any kind of get together only a month after Christmas, but Kyle explained that the company had just acquired a new location in San Antonio. The boss was the celebratory type.

  “The Salt Lick in Driftwood?” I asked. It was about an hour south of Georgetown. Since Kyle’s broker was in Austin, Driftwood was the closest location.

  “I’m afraid so,” Kyle said. “Come on, it’s better for you and Elizabeth to be out of the house anyway. She moved back in, right?”

  “No,” I said. “We’re not living together. And I told her she can’t come here until the guy is caught.”

  Kyle hesitated, like he thought that was odd. “Do you think that’s best?”

  “Wel
l I think it’s best for her not to be anywhere near this death trap, yeah,” I said. “Anyway, she didn’t ask. And I can’t live with her in Austin. I need to be closer to work.”

  “You need to get a different job,” Kyle said. “How long are you going to be able to hold out at Texaco?”

  “I don’t know,” I said. I hadn’t even been looking much. All I could think about was surveilling my place and keeping Elizabeth safe. “If things stay calm I’ll probably get some applications next week.”

  “Good,” Kyle said. “What time are you going to show up tonight?”

  “Damn, Driftwood? Really? You’re killing me,” I said. “I don’t get off work until 7:00.”

  Kyle laughed. “It’s not a problem. It’s not unusual for these parties to last until 10:30 or 11:00. I went to one last year after we opened the San Marcos branch.”

  “Please tell me your boss didn’t make you go to San Marcos,” I said. I grumbled under my breath and he finally got me to agree. It was only a half hour farther than Chupacabra. I called Elizabeth and she was interested. She’d be leaving from Austin and would arrive at the Salt Lick around 6:30.

  When my shift was over at 7:00, I already felt tired. I decided to do the sensible thing and take the 130 toll. I’d rather pay, and use a longer route, than risk getting stuck in the madness of Austin’s rush hour traffic. I flew along in my newly acquired Dakota at eighty. At times my foot got heavy and it was more like ninety. The winter darkness didn’t give me much to look at besides dark fields and soon my mind wandered to the latest news article.

  What would happen when Aria Owen was able to leave the hospital? I assumed she must have family, not that there was any reason to assume that. Would her release mean that this Nemeth bastard would forget about Elizabeth, and go after his prize? Or would it mean nothing at all in terms of Elizabeth and me? I’d have to call Detective Menard. With no new incident in weeks, I needed to know how things stood. I needed to know how close he thought they were to catching this guy.