Black Bird

by Greg Enslen

  Jack stood slowly, setting her purse to one side. He needed to scare her into telling him what he needed to know, and to do that, she needed to see that he was completely in control of her life. He glanced quickly at Abe, or what was really nothing more than Abe’s corpse, and looked back at her. She shivered a little, her arms crossed tightly across her chest, and he knew that he had her attention.

  “I need to talk to you, Gloria. And your friend here, he happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. He was one-ninety-nine. Now,” he said, moving towards her, smiling. “Tell me about David, and Sheriff Beaumont. Tell me everything..”

  She told him everything, but it didn’t help at all.

  Jack took what he wanted from her mind and her body and her soul and left the rest for others to find. While she was dying, he relaxed on the couch in the living room and read some of Sheriff Beaumont’s yellowed papers, learning things about Beaumont he had never known, things Jack wished he hadn’t learned.

  Beaumont had been very clever. Jack saw now more than ever that it had only been for a string of luck that Jack had gotten away without being captured or killed. The information in these files was much more detailed than the story the old woman had told him this morning, but it didn’t make him feel any better about what had happened. Jack also realized for the first time that Beaumont had won, he had beaten Jack.

  In a fair fight, Jack would’ve gone to prison a long time ago, just one more of Sheriff Beaumont’s successful cases. The man was a legend in this town, and now he knew why: the man had a knack for solving cases, for putting clues together. The man had been called in to consult on investigations all over the state, and the State Police had called upon Beaumont’s analytical mind on several occasions. The man had been very good, and Jack had been very lucky.

  Jack Terrington grew angrier with each passing page of notes from Beaumont’s personal files, and he did not notice as his fingers occasionally smudge the pages with speckles of blood from the dead man at his feet.

  There was blood on the cover and the couch and on the other boxes, and it was difficult enough for Jack to keep it off his clothes.

  In the file concerning Jasper Fines, Jack’s fake name from so many years ago, there had been many important clues, evidence that he had left behind at each crime scene that Jack had never even realized, clues that gave Sheriff William T. Beaumont insight into the killer’s motives.

  Taking a clue from the professional law enforcement officers at the state and Federal level, Beaumont had sent a copy of the file to the FBI and requested a personality sketch be drawn up by the experts, something very rarely done back in those days. Some of the personality profile’s suppositions sounded frighteningly familiar to Jack. There were explanations of the killers’ motivations, approximate descriptions of his physical and mental attributes based on past killers and their profiles, and an estimation of the killers’ plans and future actions. And they all sounded very accurate, too accurate for Jack.

  While Jack Terrington sat reading the files, waiting for Gloria to bleed out, he learned a great many things about Beaumont and the mind he had possessed. And the more Jack read, the more he felt that he had, indeed, been very lucky to survive.

  Beaumont had been good.

  And now his son would pay. The woman was worth more as bait if she was dead, and Jack had not hesitated a moment in killing her. Even though it was three deaths in two days in this little town, Jack was not concerned. He was more concerned about doing whatever it took to draw David Beaumont back to Liberty, Virginia.

  On Monday evening, the search for Lisa Stevens began in earnest.

  Almost 12 hours had passed since she was originally reported missing by her friend, but the wheels of motion in the Sheriff’s Office were creaky and lacking in oil, and it took several calls to and from the missing girls’ parents before the search for Lisa Stevens really got going.

  Bethany had officially reported her missing at around 10:00 a m Monday morning, and the cops sent to the Stevens house had spoken to the parents, confirming that the girl had not come home last night and that her car was missing.

  Lisa‘s mother had called in every hour or so since, frantic to have the Police assure her that they were doing everything they could, and they informed her that deputies were investigating. She’d been almost in tears, trying to explain to the deputy who had taken the calls that she was not sure she’d checked the machine the night before, swearing that she was sorry she hadn’t checked on her daughter or listened to the messages.

  After hearing from the deputy that had interviewed the parents, Sheriff Jes Brown spent a few minutes discussing the situation with some of his deputies and then radioed out for a “High-point” search of the town. Her description went out over the radio to each of the town’s seven mobile units, and a picture provided by the mother of the missing girl was reproduced and shown around town.

  An official Missing Person’s Report, usually filed after the person has been reported missing for at least 24 hours, is in most cases only follows what was known as a “High-point” search, a cursory investigation that involved contacting the missing person’s family and friends and visiting work or school locations. In 80% of cases where someone is reported missing, the “High-point” search usually turned them up with friends or family, simply forgetting to notify the right people.

  Only after a four or five-hour phone and location search revealed no sign of the missing person would the investigation move up to the next level: the All Points Bulletin, or APB. An APB is issued on a statewide basis, hence the reason that most jurisdictions conducted their own local search in the first 24 hours a person is missing - no local police wanted to look like fools when their ‘missing’ kid showed up at some friend’s house playing Nintendo.

  After an APB is issued by a local police or Sheriff’s office, it is transmitted by computers statewide, and officers in hundreds of cities and towns across the state are shown faxed pictures of the missing person during their squad room briefings before they head out to begin their shifts. And depending on the age and the personality of the missing person, it was usually after the APB goes out that the first organized physical searches began, searches that involve groups of civilian volunteers and members of law enforcement walking through back streets and muddy fields. In this case, Sheriff Jes Brown felt that due to the person’s age and physical characteristics, a volunteer search would be conducted around Liberty before the call went into the state boys sometime on Tuesday afternoon.

  At around 9:00 p.m. on Monday night, no new information had come in to the Sheriff’s Office and no additional sightings were reports beyond what was already known about the girl’s last confirmed location at the grocery store on Sunday night, and Sheriff Jes Brown instituted the first physical searches. Deputies at the police station began calling around for groups of volunteers that usually assisted the department in their searches, and off-duty officers were called in to assist in the search and man the phones at the station. In less than a half hour, volunteers began collecting in the lobby of the station, and pictures and descriptions of Lisa Stevens were handed out to them as they arrived, shaking the rain from their coats as they entered the glass and steel lobby. A few of them knew the girl, and they nervously awaited their search assignments. One of the last volunteers to arrive was the search coordinator, and after hearing an assessment of the situation from the Sheriff, he stepped over to a large map of the town on the wall in the lobby and began assigning volunteers to search areas and specific search patterns.

  Some of the volunteers would be searching the local teen hangouts like bowling alleys and movie theaters and at Liberty Place Mall, looking for clues and showing the girl’s picture around to anyone they could find. Another group of volunteers were sent to search the neighborhood around the girl’s home, working on the theory that she might’ve been out walking or something and been injured and not been found by anyone. Members of the police department would also be searching, visiti
ng the local hospital and clinics and the parent’s home to interview the parents again.

  And some of the volunteers were assigned large geographical search areas based on the general sections of town, marked out areas on photocopied maps that were handed out. These searches were vehicle-based searches for the girl’s missing car - the theory was that if they could find the car, they would be a lot closer to finding the girl.

  Simon Jeffers was one of these volunteers, and he was handed a map of the eastern side of town, the areas to the east and south of the Liberty Place Mall outlined in green highlighter. Several subdivisions had sprung up in that area since the opening of the mall, and there were many twisty back roads in that area of town behind the subdivisions and the mall. Simon saw that the map he had been handed was not clear enough to make out all of those little gravel and dirt roads he was expected to search, and he was glad he’d brought his own county map. This wasn’t his first search for a missing person in Liberty - Sheriff Brown relied heavily on his volunteers to help in these types of searches. Some said that it was to keep costs down, and that the town wouldn’t need to conduct searches if there were more patrolmen out there on the streets to keep people from disappearing in the first place. To this, Simon just shook his head - he hated it when people talked about politics, and the rumors and discussions about Sheriff Brown were among the worst.

  Simon Jeffers was by day an insurance salesman and spent a few nights a week working for the towns’ Volunteer Fire Department. He had begun volunteering for these type of searches when the Sheriff had sent out a call to the townspeople to get more involved in the inner workings of their town. Others might’ve said that he was already involved in the town through the Fire Department, but Simon had always felt that these types of things were very important, and he was glad to volunteer. And there was nothing else to do in this town to do on a Monday night except stay home and watch TV, and tonight’s Monday Night Football preseason match up of Tampa Bay and Oakland did not interest him - and this was a lot more important than some stupid football game.

  He’d been involved with enough of these searches in this town and others in the area to know that a search started this late could mean nothing good. He also knew that, by their very nature, these type of searches continued until there was some type of resolution, good or bad. He knew he was in for a long night, and he stopped by McDonalds for a large cup of coffee before heading out for the mall.

  The back roads behind the mall were confusing in their number and in their twisting, turning nature, and after an hour or so of driving his truck around them, he realized that he was doubling-back on himself. He decided to start marking off the areas he had already searched to keep from doubling back again. He found a green highlighter in the glove compartment and started drawing on the page in his own book of maps, taking his eyes off the dark, rain-puddled road he was on, and consequently he almost hit the little red Tercel as he came around a blind corner and suddenly saw it there, dark against the trees by the side of the road. He swerved to miss it and stopped his truck next to it.

  It had to be her car. Even in the darkness and the rain, he had seen enough Toyota Tercels to recognize the general body shape, and the bright red paint would look like a bloody maroon here under the thick, overhanging trees. He reached for his cell phone and started to call it in to the Sheriff’s Department, but then put the phone down without dialing. No need to call it in unless it really was her car - could just be some kids out here making out or something.

  Volunteer Fireman Simon Jeffers set the map aside, picked up the flashlight that he hadn’t planned to use, and opened his door into the falling rain.

  The first thing he noticed was the sound. The forest around him was alive with sound of the falling rain and the noises of insects and small animals, a monotonous chorus that hummed and chirped, and even those sounds were almost drowned out by the falling rain slapping the muddy ground and fallen leaves around his feet. Most of the leaves were off of the trees and formed a wet and slippery carpet, the smell of decaying leaves strong in his nostrils, accentuated by the rain. The spitting rain fell heavily on the fallen leaves and bare branches of the naked trees.

  He pulled his coat a little tighter around him and moved towards the car, careful to avoid the growing puddles of muddy rainwater. The car sat with two wheels on and two off the road, and the rain-slicked windows made it impossible to see inside from any distance. The car looked to be in good condition, eliminating the possibility of a car wreck or some other type of accident. The tires he could see looked fine - no flats, but then he could only see two of them. Maybe engine trouble, or maybe the girl had just run out of gas and walked to get more. Simon hoped that wasn’t the case - from the color pictures he’d seen, Lisa Stevens was a very pretty girl, and he knew that bad things could happen to pretty girls when they were alone in unfamiliar situations. He’d heard about it happening before, too many times.

  A flash of lightning whitened the sky and trees above him for one electric moment, and Simon Jeffers saw what looked like someone sitting in the driver’s seat of the blood red Tercel.

  Hurrying, he skirted the last of the puddles and ignoring the door handle, he swiped the raindrops from the driver’s side window and flashed his light inside.

  What he saw would forever haunt his dreams.

  Lisa Stevens was in there, all right, but she was naked and her eyes were glazed over, wide open and staring straight ahead.

  And her right arm was propped up on the steering wheel. It took only a glance to see that she was dead, and Simon got much more than a glance of her naked, dead form.

  The surprise affected him more than the actual finality of her death; to discover a dead body is something no one ever forgets.

  He collected himself and reached up, trying the door handle, and swung the car door open.

  A thick cloud of pungent, nauseating odor escaped the car and washed over Simon, sending him coughing and hacking to his knees. The smell was so bad - it was like meat left in the bottom of a trashcan for a week at the height of summer. But this smell, the stink from the interior of the tightly closed four-wheeled metal coffin, was much worse.

  Simon backed away from the car, almost tripping over his own feet. He stumbled back to his truck and leaned over the hood, trying to keep from puking. After a minute or two he turned around, his heart slowed from its hectic pace, and he looked up into the darkness, the rain falling cold and wet on his upturned face. During that minute or two as he was leaning over his truck, his lips inches from the hood, he repeated two words over and over again to himself like a mantra, two words borne out of fear but serving to calm his mind:

  “Oh shit, oh shit...”

  After five minutes or so, Simon was doing better. He went slowly back to the car, just wishing that this was all over. He played the flashlight over her. It was her, all right - the hair and general description were a perfect match, and the car was right, too. She was completely naked, sitting there in the drivers’ seat of this cute little Tercel, her left hand curled up in her lap. But the right hand was sitting up on top of the steering wheel, and Simon saw that her index finger was outstretched, as if pointing at something in front of the car. Her other fingers were curled into a fist.

  Simon moved closer to look at her face, being very careful not to touch the body or the inside of the car in any way. Her eyes and mouth were wide open, her chin spattered with dried rivulets of what could only be blood, although in the glare of Simon’s flashlight the blood was black and dull. Some had run off her chin and pattered into her lap, but her mouth and chin and even parts of her nose were covered with the stuff.

  More solid objects peeked though the dried blood in her open mouth, and it took Simon a moment to realize that they weren’t her teeth - her mouth was wedged open with sticks or small pieces of wood, jammed between the girl’s teeth to hold the chin and jaw open far more than it could’ve opened comfortably in life. It looked like she was screaming, and accompanied w
ith the pointing fingers and the wide-open eyes, it gave Simon the impression that she had died screaming, seeing something horrible that had literally scared her to death.

  But her tongue.

  Where was her tongue?

  “Sheriff’s Department, Search Desk. Can I help you?”

  Simon held his cellular phone shakily, his other hand gripping the steering wheel. He sat in his truck, the door closed and locked.

  It was seeing that her tongue was gone that had affected him like nothing else. He’d seen car wrecks and burn victims and shotgun suicides and murders that had left pieces of skull and brain dripping from the ceiling above the corpse, but he’d never seen anything like this. He was still looking warily over at her car when he realized that dispatch officer had answered his call.

  “Yeah, Dispatch, this is Volunteer 21. I’ve located the missing girl and her car. Send all the units and the ‘wagon’”.

  The dispatcher would know immediately what he was saying, even if he didn’t actually ‘say’ it - things were very bad. He hadn’t mentioned the girl’s condition, and that would be taken correctly to mean that the girl had been found dead - in this case, very dead. The reference to the ‘wagon’, a shortened version of the ambulances grotesque nickname of Bone Wagon, would’ve confirmed it - had the victim needed any medical assistance, he would’ve called for an ‘ambulance’, using the specific word to make sure the dispatcher understood what he needed. Additional units should be sent instead of one because there was a lot of work to do out here, a sure sign that they would be conducting a homicide investigation.

  The police units scrambled to follow the convoluted directions Simon gave to his location, and when they arrived, he climbed from his truck and stood under someone’s umbrella, describing what he’d done and seen to the lead deputy, pointing and gesturing to the blood-red car and himself as he spoke.