Black Bird

by Greg Enslen

  Bethany pulled into the expansive parking lot in front of the glass and metal building and went inside. The lobby was a beautiful waiting room, the glass and metal stripes reflecting off of the wide, tiled floor that led up to the desk of the receptionist, a large man with the small star of a deputy pinned to his uniform. There were chairs and couches scattered around the floor of the reception area, and on a table in the center of the area stood a counter with a little plastic machine that dispensed numbers. Bethany took the next little tab of paper that read “36” and picked out a seat. The little red display above the deputies’ desk read “31”, so Bethany decided to write down what had happened, in case she had to give a statement or something.

  Behind the deputy’s desk there were several other desks manned by other police officers, large desks with nice furnishings on them and on the walls around. It was definitely the cleanest police station she’d ever heard of - it looked nothing like the squad room’s she’d seen in movies or on “NYPD Blue.” This place looked and sounded more like a fancy new library than a police station. A casual observer would think that no crime at all had ever occurred in this town, but they’d be wrong. There was plenty of small crime going on in a ten-mile radius of this sparkling little office, but for the most part, it was just ignored by the people in this fancy building.

  On the back wall behind the groupings of desks were pictures of Sheriff Jes Brown with most of the important people in town. Two doors led off from the main squad room, one leading to Sheriff Jes Brown’s office and reception area, the other leading back to the deputy’s locker room, a small gym and showering room, and the short-term incarceration cells that rarely held any occupants.

  She had plenty of time to finish writing everything down before the Deputy called her number.

  “I’ve got ‘36’”, she said, handing the little number to the deputy who waved her into a chair next to his desk and tossed the number away.

  “Okay, what can I help you with,” he asked, a completely uninterested look on his face.

  She shifted a little in her chair, wondering where to start. It looked like she needed to say something exciting to get this man’s attention or he might fall asleep right here in front of her. “My friend is missing.”

  His expression remained the same. “How long?”

  “Well, she called me last night because she was supposed to come over, but she never...” Bethany stopped when the deputy put his hand up, indicating he wanted her to stop. He reached down around his desk and pulled up a clipboard, attached a form to it, and handed it to her along with a pen. “Fill this out and bring it back up to me.”

  She was momentarily speechless, and then she found her tongue. “I’ve been waiting for almost twenty minutes, and I’m worried about my friend, and you want me to fill out a form?” She could feel the anger rising in her, creeping up a notch at a time, and she struggled to keep her voice under control.

  The deputy smiled, as if he was enjoying himself for what might’ve been the first time all day. “Well, if you’ve waited a few minutes, a few more minutes won’t really matter, right?” He dismissed her with a casual wave of his hand and called out the next number.

  Bethany got up slowly and walked back over to her seat, feeling a little numb. Here she was trying to report a missing person - why was he being so rude to her?

  She scribbled down her answers as fast as she could and took the clipboard back up, standing behind the person seated at the man’s desk, waiting for him to look up. After a few moments of conversation he did look up, and reached to take the clipboard from her. “Have a seat and I’ll be with you in a moment.”

  “No,” she said, her arms crossed.

  The deputy, his attention already drifting back to number 37, darted his eyes back to Bethany, suddenly interested in what she had to say. “What?”

  “No, I’m not sitting back down. My friend is missing and I want you to do something about it.”

  The deputy smiled the smile of someone dealing with a small child, nodding at the person in his chair. Then he looked up at Bethany. “Well, little girl, you’re not the only person with problems in this town. You’ll have to sit back down and I’ll speak to you in a few minutes,” he said, his voice slowly climbing in volume until he finished in a clearly-commanding tone. Evidently he was used to people doing what they were told when he used that tone of voice.

  Bethany shook her head, the sudden anger like a fire in her belly. “I don’t CARE if other people have problems. My friend could be out there right now dead or dying by the side of the road somewhere, and YOU ARE GOING TO LISTEN TO ME!” Bethany shouted. She knew she shouldn’t be yelling, and that it was probably counter-productive, but at this point she didn’t really care. She wanted someone to listen to her, to go out and look for Lisa, and if shouting at this stupid man was what it took, then that was what she would do. Her heart pounded in her chest as her shouts echoed around the glass and metal waiting room and died down to a oppressive silence.

  Other heads from other desk swung around, deputies unused to hearing shouting or loud voices in their peaceful police office. In the chair next to the first deputy’s desk, number 37, an older gentleman, spun around in his chair and looked up at her. In the back of the office a door came open and Sheriff Jes Brown popped his pudgy face out, looking like he had just woke up from a catnap.

  The room was very quiet for a few moments, and then the deputy stood up and took her by the arm, leading her over to a small corner by the water cooler. He sat her down in a chair there and looked at her for a long minute. “Now, there’s no need to shout and get all upset. I’ll look at your form and then I’ll come talk to you. Don’t move from this seat, or you’ll spend a night in one of our cells. Got it?” Bethany nodded, almost embarrassed from her little outburst. Almost, but not quite. The fire in her belly had cooled, and now her worry for Lisa was on the verge of sending Bethany into crying hysterics. She fought back the tears and tried to remember everything she could about Lisa and her car so that she could give a good description. And she tried not to think about the damage she might’ve already done - what if these stupid cops didn’t look for Lisa because Bethany had thrown a fit and demanded their attention? What if Bethany got her killed or something?

  A few minutes later the deputy picked up her clipboard that showed all of the vital statistics on Lisa Stevens, and then he got up and went into the Sheriff’s office. Bethany sat and fidgeted for a minute or two until he came out and walked over to her.

  “We’ll begin a search of the town, and if that doesn’t turn her up, we’ll put out an APB on...” his eyes dropped, referring back to the clipboard. “Er...Lisa Stevens. We’ll send this information out to all of the deputies in this town, and they’ll all be looking for her. Bethany’s stomach took another queasy nose dive, feeling her momentary relief being snatched away, and suddenly she was VERY sure that something was horribly wrong. “We tried to call her parents house and got the machine, so there is a squad car on the way over there now.” He looked again at the clipboard. “You’re a co-worker as well as her friend?”

  Bethany nodded, suddenly wanting to be out of here more than anything else. She felt sick to her stomach, her worry and concern for her friend so real while this man’s voice and attitude were so casual, as if Bethany shouldn’t even be worried about something so unimportant. Bethany’s stomach was spinning, and she felt like the little bit of pizza she had eaten last night was going to come back up. She wanted to get up and run out of this crazy place, where everything looked so nice and orderly and neat while outside things were turning upside down. She wanted to tell this creep whatever he wanted to know, and then she wanted out of here.

  “I also went to the Food Town last night. A couple of people remembered seeing her there, but nobody remembered her leaving or anything. I think her parents are out of town or something. They were supposed to go to a show last night in DC, but maybe they stayed over.” She told him as much as she could remember, a
nd then he thanked her and walked back over to his desk. He jotted down a couple things as she watched, handed the clipboard to another Deputy at the desk behind his, and called the next number.

  And she left. These people didn’t look like they cared one little bit, but they were the cops and at least would know what they should do.

  Outside, the cold air woke her up a little bit, quieting her stomach. First David leaves, and now this whole thing. What was going on with her life? How much could she handle before she just went home and locked the front door and refused to come out?

  Jack awoke and sat up, stretching to work the kinks out of his back and shoulders. He almost always got a crick in his neck when he slept on the hard, vinyl-covered floor of his van. As he sat up her arm fell off of him, and after he finished stretching, he looked back down at her, lying there, so quiet now, on the floor of his van. She looked beautiful in the morning sun as it came slanting in through the trees to dapple the floor of his van, the back doors standing open as they had all night. A light wind moved through the trees, stirring up the leaves beside the road, and Jack could hear birds in the forest around him.

  She was naked, still, and lying on the blanket that he had rolled out to cover the cold vinyl floor. She still had the rope burns around her wrists and below her knees where she had struggled, but her naked form lying next to his was still very exciting.

  Jack smiled as he remembered what they had done last night. Of course she had struggled, but in the long minutes before she’d passed out she had been pinned down by his gaze and by his hands and legs, doing or saying whatever he’d wanted. He’d been completely in control of this person’s life, and even when his hands had closed around her neck, she’d still made only a few low sounds, her blank eyes staring up into his as he had moved inside her with rhythmic motion. To tell the truth, Jack had thought she would’ve been more of a fighter, put up more of a fuss, like that saucy little college girl in Florida had done. In some ways, Jack had been disappointed with Miss Lisa Stevens. She had been mesmerized by his eyes somehow, and that had taken all of the fight out of her.

  But now, as he looked down lovingly at her naked body, he felt the excitement of last night grip him again, and he rolled her over onto her back and began kissing her cold, open lips. She was unresponsive, of course. She was one-ninety-eight now, just a number, but he did not care or even notice - he was too concerned with his own pleasure to really even notice, just as he had been the night before.

  The kisses were good but a little strange, her mouth feeling so empty. She continued to stare, her eyes seemingly taking in the van and the trees black with scores of birds. But the dead eyes saw nothing.

  A few hours later Jack pulled up in front of the Motel 6 on Highway 132 and checked himself into a room around the back of the hotel. He grabbed his keys and the KFC he had bought and headed up, eating before taking a shower and crashing for a nap. He’d had a long day and it wasn’t even 1:00 p.m. yet, but he had a lot of work to do today and tonight, so a rest would do him good.

  He’d driven the girl back and left her in the car for someone to find. He knew that she’d be found soon, and when she was, things would begin to happen very quickly around here. He wanted to be set up and ready to go before she was found.

  As he ate, he pulled out the Liberty phone book he’d found in the desk drawer, right next to the Bible, and began thumbing through it. Jack flipped to the “B’s” first, of course. BANER, BARABO, BAWERS, but he found no listings for anybody named “Beaumont” in there. It was a slight disappointment, to be sure, but he had been prepared to do a little detective work. It would even be better if he had to search for Beaumont’s family members, if there were any left - that would make the kill even more exciting. Or maybe he had already killed them all off.

  Jack finished his meal and tossed away the trash, still licking the BBQ sauce from his fingers as he climbed into the shower, his first in almost two weeks. The hot water felt good against his naked skin, and Jack relished it. He didn’t have the opportunity to shower very often, but this was a special occasion, and he enjoyed it. Big things were coming, and fast, and it was good that he look presentable for it.

  Stepping from the shower and toweling himself off, he tried to organize in his head what he wanted to do first. He wanted to visit some of the places he had been the last time he had been here, but that might have to wait. He had planned on coming to town and observing things for a few days before making a kill, but, as it sometimes did, the fever came over him, unstoppable, and he had killed earlier than planned. Of course it didn’t really matter - it wasn’t like he was going to get caught or anything. It was just that he would’ve liked a few days to relax before the fun began. Beaumont was long gone and he had been good, but Jack doubted if there was anyone in town good enough to catch him. He was just here to sightsee and settle an old score with the ghost of a man he had killed. All he really wanted to do was wander around town for a little while, visit some of the old haunts, kill a few people and send the town into a frenzy again, and then leave and retire to Los Angeles.

  Oh well, sometimes things didn’t go as planned.

  But some of the landmarks he would need to investigate, just in case. He’d noticed on the way back into town this afternoon after leaving Lisa Stevens to be found that a large Mall had been built on the main road leading out east of town towards the Interstate 95, and thinking back on it, the mall seemed to have been built over some of the ground he had run through on that rainy night so many years ago, chased by dogs and deputies before he’d gunned Beaumont down and escaped. He needed to see the Mall, and the sheriff station, and maybe just a peak at the inside of that grocery store he’d seen earlier.

  And then, most of all, Jack needed to visit the public library. He had work to do, serious work.

  He had snatched little Roger Myers from there, the first of his two victims so many years ago. One of the townspeople had found little Roger two days later in a field south of town. But it hadn’t been until Robert Nolan, the businessman and family man and city council member was found five days later that the town had gone a little crazy. The kid’s death could’ve been written off as a fluke, but when Nolan turned up dead, a person most of the citizens knew well, they had gone over the edge, and he’d barely gotten away in one piece. This time it would be different.

  But right now, Jack needed to look nice.

  It had been years since he had cause to even consider altering his appearance. Most of his wardrobe, if one could use that term in such a loose manner, consisted of several pairs of faded, dirtied blue jeans and a small collection of T-shirts, each festooned with different sayings and symbols and a few even carried reminders of locations he had visited in his travels. He had collected his clothing over years and years of haphazard buying, storing all of them in one of the cabinets in his van. More than a few pieces had belonged to his victims, and among the cleanest of his clothes was an FSU sweatshirt - “Go Seminoles!” - that had once belonged to Sally, the girl he had killed down in Florida.

  The small cabinet behind the driver’s seat also held, up near the top, a clothes bar, and hanging from it, hidden back in the back, there were two or three nicer-looking dress shirts that had gone unworn for many years, a thick winter parka with a brownish stain on one of the arms, and, on a shelf above the bar, a large shoe box that held his jewelry collection.

  The brownish stain on the nice parka was from one of his victims up in Seattle, and even seeing the coat sometimes brought the memories back, vivid and alive. He’d dumped the kid near the Seattle-Tacoma Airport, and the kid had gone down in history as one of the Black Diamond Killer’s victims.

  Inside the box that constituted his jewelry collection were several dozen watches ranging from cheap to expensive, a wad of gold jewelry, rings and bracelets and earrings, and a half-dozen faded police shields and stars. The watches and other jewelry were from his victims and he knew they were dangerous to keep, but he also enjoyed wearing the watches an
d a few of the rings once in a while. It was like having a trophy that you could wear around in public, unlike his real trophies, which no one ever saw. The only people who had ever seen his collection of trophies had, like the girl last night, soon become part of it.

  He wanted to go back through the town papers and read everything he could on what had happened here 18 years ago. He wanted to relive the whole thing, sure, but he also wanted to read about how the town had reacted to his violence, giving him an idea about how they might react when they realized he was back. Of course they wouldn’t know it was him, back for more, but they would most likely react in much the same manner.

  And he wanted to know everything about Beaumont that he could find, if only to prove to himself that the bastard wasn’t as clever as Jack remembered. One on one, Jack knew he would beat the man, especially now that Jack had traveled the country for so long, learning to beat the best and the brightest in law enforcement. That cop he’d shot, the one who’d played Russian roulette and lost, he epitomized Jacks’ opinion of cops. Beaumont had been the only one who’d understood Jack, the only cop who’d managed to really get into Jack’s mind, and now Jack wanted to understand Beaumont.

  And he wanted to meet Beaumont’s family and friends and living relatives and children, if there were any. He would find them, and when he did, he would tell them a little story - his version, at least.

  And after the story was finished and the members of Beaumont’s clan were all dead, Jack would forget all about this stupid place.

  Breakfast had been McDonalds, and now lunch was sitting in the passenger seat, a bag of cheeseburgers and fries and the super-sized Coke propped between his legs. David liked fast food just as much as the next person, but he had a sneaking suspicion that he would soon tire of the fare. A week or two of nothing but cheeseburgers and Cokes could ruin anybody’s craving for fast food.