“He collapsed to the ground and I still didn’t make a move or shift my eyes. I just watched him fall into a lump of death on the floor and watched the blood start to make a halo of red around his head. I got down on the ground, picked up the boy and cradled him in my arms. I had never met the boy but I just didn’t want him to die without him knowing that someone cared about him. I held him in my arms and started rocking him back and forth the way mamas rock a little baby to sleep.
“I finally looked up to where he had been looking. William Montgomery was standing a few feet away, big old hammer hanging against his side. He was staring with wide eyes at his son, not displaying any emotion at all. After a few seconds, he looked at me, and said, ‘I suppose y’all think I shouldn’t have done that.’
“I didn’t say a word back to him. I just sat there, rocking the boy to sleep.
“He dropped the hammer to the ground, pulled out a .38 from the back of his jeans, then headed out of the building. He never said another word to me and never looked back on his son. And I never did a damn thing to stop him from walking out. I just sat there, holding his dead son in my arms and wishing I had never left Dallas.
“I’m not someone who spends a time regretting things I’ve done, but as I was sitting there, I hated myself for letting Gloria walk out of my life. She was a wonderful person and I didn’t do a damn thing to keep our marriage together. I must have sat there, crying about losing my wife for ten minutes before I heard the gun shots and the screams. My radio started barking out but I didn’t pay any attention to what the deputies were saying to one another. I figured William had walked out with his gun, found some more people to kill and had set about doing exactly that.
“Turns out I was right. William killed three people, including Q before William was shot in the back and dropped to the ground. Q had come looking for me and was walking down the alley between two nearby buildings when he came face to face with William. Q had his gun holstered. William didn’t.
“No one found me for a good hour. When they did, I was still holding the boy. His body was so quiet and still, it was like he was in the deepest sleep possible. But he wasn’t asleep. He was dead and so was Q and two other people. And they were all not sleeping because of me. Because I was too damn scared to look to where the boy was looking. I was petrified to even shift my eyes away from that poor, young boy.
“William Montgomery didn’t die that day on the Texas A&M campus. He took five bullets but none of them hit any critical organ. The one that severed his spinal cord put him in a wheelchair for the rest of his life, but the bullet didn’t prevent William Montgomery from making a full confession. I cannot tell you why he didn’t tell the police the full story of what happened in the equipment shed, about how I could have stopped him from killing his son and Q and the others. All he told them was he killed his son then killed the others, but he never mentioned a damn word about the investigator who could have prevented four deaths.”
I never thought Ralph was incapable of it, but when I saw him start to cry, I was shocked. I couldn’t tell if the tears falling down his face were the first shed for the boy killed by his father or if they were just drops in an ocean of spent tears, and it didn’t matter.
“My folder is in Alexander’s reading room,” he said. “Ain’t much in there but a photograph of William Montgomery Juniors tombstone, a printed out copy of his daddy’s courtroom confession and a black and white snapshot of William Montgomery sitting in a wheelchair behind bars.”
“Ralph,” I said, “If William Montgomery never said anything about that day and how he came across you, then how the hell did Alexander know enough about the case to include those the references to the case?”
“I stayed on with the Harris County Department for another nine or ten years before moving back up to the Dallas area. I got offered a pretty high ranking position with the Dallas County Sheriff’s Department and, hell, Houston just never became home for me. I did enjoy being back in the Dallas area and I did enjoy working for Dallas County. But some old memories can turn into lifetime haunts if you allow them, and the memory of that day in the shed on the Texas A&M campus grew up into one hell of a haunt for me.
“I had gotten married again; different woman but same end result. That marriage lasted a bit less than two years before she kicked me out on account of my proclivity for excessive drinking. And old whiskey’s call and my inability to ignore it didn’t just end my marriage; it got me into some hot water with the county as well. I had a few too many ‘excessive force’ complaints and I may or may not have vomited in county sheriff’s office after a night of particularly heavy drinking.
“I didn’t lose my job but was sent to one of those head shrinkers. Now, I imagine, based on what I know about you and your history, that you’ve spent time on the department assigned therapist’s couch and I am willing to bet dollars to donuts you ended those sessions feeling a bit better. But, in general, sitting there and talking about your feelings was a waste of time. Am I accurate in my assumption?”
“Spot on, actually.”
“Then you know in the movies and on those cop shows, the therapist is always a woman so attractive you’d think she’d pull the fears and issues right out of her patients but because they want to make her happy. But in real life, you get a therapist who is four shades of ugly and six types of mean. But she got into my head, somehow, and started putting pieces together for me without me even noticing. Before long, I was writing a letter to the Harris County Sheriff’s Department, apologizing for my inability to overcome my fear that day in the shed. I said in that letter that while there was no way to know for certain if I could have saved the boy and those men, what I did know is I never even tried.
“The letter was supposed to be kept confidential, but you know how things intended to remain secret end up in the ‘leaked information’ file on some newspaper reporter’s desk. Turned out not to be as big of a story as that reporter wanted since, like my therapist told me, there was no way to know what would have happened if I had taken action. But the story sure did make staying in Texas law enforcement a challenge. I came up here, took this Chief of Police job exactly three months to the day after I wrote that letter to Harris County.
“I cannot say that therapist got all the pieces put in place in my mind, but most of them are locked in tight where they belong. Yeah, I still see the boy’s face and can still hear the cracking sound the hammer made when it crashed into his skull, but I don’t need to drink those memories away no more.” Ralph stopped talking and gave me a hard look. “I will tell you one thing, Derek Cole: I will never again fail to let fear prevent me from doing my duty. This whole Alexander thing, believe it or not, has been somewhat good for me. Yes, he may have gotten into my head a bit; something I warned you against allowing. And, yes, I do want to put an end to his shenanigans in a permanent fashion, which is probably not what a good and faithful man of the law should be fixing his sights on. But I can assure you that when and if I come face to face with Alexander, I will not falter and I will not fail to act.”
“Ralph,” I said, “I can’t think of anyone I’d rather have on my side than you.” I meant it, too. I wasn’t just telling Ralph what I thought he wanted or needed to hear. “I don’t need to see your envelope unless you suspect there may be a clue somewhere hidden in the pictures or the letter.”
“The only clue he left for us is more of a challenge to me. He wants to see if I have the intestinal fortitude to see this thing to its end. I’d say he’s betting I freeze up at a critical moment and is hedging his bet by including some reminders of my past. He wants me to be seeing William Junior’s eyes when things get hairy. And I may see Junior’s eyes; I may indeed. But seeing them won’t stop me from taking action, that’s where Alex’s error lies. Seeing Junior’s eyes will remind me fear ends up killing people I care about.”
“Are we really going to do this on our own? Not going to call in the state police or any other agency?”
�
��I believe Alexander is not lying to us and that he has some leverage. And I believe if he finds out we’ve invited others to this party he is arranging, he will bring about a conclusion we are trying to avoid. So, yes my freelancing friend, we are going about this alone.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
Ralph wanted to speak with his officers without me lingering in the background, so while he was outside, I made another trip through the cabin looking for any missed clues and taking a closer look at the ones already seen. I finished after finding nothing of interest after twenty minutes and found my way back into Straus’s office. The last time I was in his office, I was reading doctor’s notes and viewing pictures of Alexander. As I sat in the desk chair, I was reminded of how utterly amazed I was when the story Thomas had told me about his brother was confirmed.
The files were all gone from the office, leaving me with nothing but my thoughts and a burning feeling I needed more. The rose petal path, the petal outlined heart shape, the message scribed into the wall and, what we assumed to be, Straus’s heart left in a cloth bag in the fireplace, were all telling me something. What? I wasn’t sure. And the envelopes left for Ralph and me didn’t seem to offer any significant clues beyond the assumed intention of Alexander to get into our heads.
As I sat in Straus’s office, I admitted seeing the pictures of the bank where Lucy had died, the schematic of the bank and the picture of my parent’s house more than rattled me a little. I had no idea why Alexander was tying in Lucy’s death with whatever he was planning, but I felt there was a connection I was missing.
I glanced at the time on my iPhone and realized Ralph had been gone for nearly a half hour. While I wasn’t concerned he and the two officers couldn’t have taken care of business if Alexander had been lying in wait outside the cabin, I wasn’t so sure about my ability to do so if he had somehow made his way inside. It pissed me off a bit, but I wasn’t comfortable being alone. I guess Alexander was deeper into my head than I was ready to admit.
I stood up and forced myself to not hightail it out of the cabin and get within eyesight of Ralph. I took a bit of comfort by pulling out my Glock and making sure there was a .40 caliber round ready. I knew the files in Straus’s file cabinet had been removed by the state police during the initial investigation, but, needing to kill time and still demanding that I force myself to not go running out of the cabin, I crossed the small office to the file cabinet and, one by one, opened and explored the contents of the three drawers.
As I expected, the file drawers were mostly empty. There were a few file folders containing financial information, appliance manuals and warranties and one rather overly stuffed folder filled with printed pictures which were as close to being pornographic as I’d ever seen. Straus, it appeared, enjoyed pictures of women taken with hidden cameras.
Sick son of a bitch.
I closed the last drawer then sat back behind the desk. There were two feelings battling for my attention as I sat behind the desk. The first was the sneaking feeling that I shouldn’t be sitting all alone and the second was I was missing something. I pushed back the first feeling and started rummaging through the desk drawers, desperate to quiet both voices in my head.
Like the file cabinet, the desk drawers were mostly empty. I wasn’t sure if it was the state police, Ralph or Straus’s ex-wife who had cleared out the office, but, whoever it was, they did a damn good job of removing all of Straus’s case files.
Except for one.
The way the folder was sitting in the bottom drawer—perfectly neat without a single piece of paper extending outside the folder—told me it hadn’t been overlooked. Anyone going through the files in the office would have either taken them (like they did with ninety-five percent of the files I had seen last time I was in the office) or would have at least plowed through the folder and wouldn’t have taken the time to tidy up the pages inside.
This folder wasn’t overlooked and it wasn’t left behind.
It was placed in bottom drawer well after the rest of the office had been gone through. It was left behind by Alexander. Of that I was certain.
________________________
I placed the folder on the desk and proceeded to thumb my way through the fifteen or so printed pages it contained. Though the notes were not written by Alexander someone, who I assumed to have been Alexander, had written notes in the margins on several of the pages. In keeping with the whole “Heart” theme this twisted play seemed commanded to stick with, the writing was done with a red ink pen.
How appropriate.
Much like the notes I had read nearly a year ago, sitting in the same chair in the same office, the notes in this folder were a mixture of test and lab results, clinical observations and general musings of doctors Straus and Brian Lucietta. Most of the margin notes—which I assumed were penned by Alexander—expressed a contrarian argument to specific statements in the doctor’s notes. For example, on one page, Lucietta had typed, “Patient displaying more notable and frequent lapses of memory. Might be indicative of cell degeneration.” Those two lines were circled in red ink and an arrow pointed from the circle to the margin note which read, “Displaying weakness, even when manufactured, is often a sign of a greater strength.”
There were plenty more pages, notes and margin notes; most of which probably were important but meant nothing to someone like me who lacks medical training. But there was one that no matter how pedestrian my understanding of medical terminology was, screamed its significance.
The note was written by Lucietta and was dated June 11, 2012:
“Muscle fiber tests collected from seven areas of patient’s body suggest each of the patient’s muscles consist of 7.4% cardiac muscle cells. Theory shared by team is patient’s fetal heart was absorbed and consumed in utero and developed as integrated parts throughout musculature system.”
The handwritten note next to Lucietta’s note simply read, “I Am A Heart.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
After reading the entire contents of the file, I padded out to the kitchen. I could see Ralph was still outside, speaking with his two officers. Still not feeling comfortable being alone in the cabin and still not wanting to interrupt Ralph, I pulled a chair from behind the kitchen table and positioned it where I had a clear view through the entryway’s windows. I pulled out my iPhone and did some research on some questions I had been thinking about. I wasn’t finding the information I had hoped, then I remembered I still had a few favors I could call in.
A few months after I opened my Freelance Detective Agency, I was hired by an Internet forensics IT firm’s owner to track down his wife who had run off, it turned out, with his own brother. The case didn’t take long. In fact, I believe I found where his wife and brother had moved to in less than a few days. The two weren’t hiding; I just thought my client didn’t want to find them.
He had paid me for two full weeks of my time, so when I delivered the results a few days later, I also returned a full week’s worth of my fee back to him. He didn’t want to accept it, saying just because I completed a two week job in three days didn’t mean the job wasn’t worth two weeks pay.
In the end, he took back the extra week of my fees and agreed to offer his services in kind. Considering what he did for a living and how weak my Internet research skills were, I figured it was time to settle up on his assumed debt.
About ten minutes after my call with my old client, Ralph, Officer Franklin and I were all standing around the kitchen table, on which we had spread out all the clues gathered so far. It was clear Franklin was beaming with pride over being included into the brain trust. But he was also tentative to share any of his thoughts or ideas until I pried them out of him after a string of directed questions.
“Well,” Franklin began, “I don’t think pictures of the bank and your parent’s house offer any significance to the suspect’s location. Like Chief Fox said, I think the suspect is trying to stir up certain emotions in you so that, when you do find him, you’ll be acti
ng more out of anger and may make some critical errors.”
He was spot on. Will Franklin, who couldn’t have been older than twenty-six, knew nothing about Alexander other than what was printed in the newspapers almost a year ago. He knew nothing about me, my wife’s murder and neither Ralph or I had shared our beliefs about the clues Alexander left for us.
“As for the empty picture frame found inside the rose petal heart pattern, I can’t say for sure, but my parents have a fancy frame like that holding their wedding picture. Maybe this frame contained a picture of someone’s wedding or other important life event.”
“It is a fancy looking frame,” Ralph said as he picked up the solid polished brass frame, inspected it closely again, then placed it back on the table. “And the other pictures left beside this frame?” he said, directing his question to Will.
There were three other pictures beside the empty frame. Each were of a family, made up of a mother, father and young girl. “Honestly, I have no idea about the significance of these,” Will said. “They’re not taking from a digital camera, so I’d assume they are at least twenty-years old. If we use that estimate, then I’d say the little girl in the pictures would be around twenty-five by now. Can you two think of any woman around that age who might be connected to the suspect?”
“First of all,” Ralph said, “we can stop referring to Alexander as the ‘suspect.’ We know who he is. Secondly, how exactly do you know the photographs aren’t digital?”
“They’re printed on Kodak photo paper, and not the kind you can buy at stores.” Will picked up one of the pictures, flipped it over and handed it to Ralph. “See? This picture was developed in a photo lab. I’m sure there are some home printers that can use this process somewhere in the world, but the parents in these pictures don’t seem the type to have the money to spend what probably is a significant amount of money on a professional photograph printer.”
Still Heartless: The Thrilling Conclusion to Heartless (Derek Cole Suspense Thrillers Book 5) Page 11